PRELUDE

A CHAPTER OF WHICH THE LAST PAGE ONLY IS OF ANY IMPORTANCE

Comedy is a game played to throw reflections upon social life, and it
deals with human nature in the drawing-room of civilized men and women,
where we have no dust of the struggling outer world, no mire, no
violent crashes, to make the correctness of the representation
convincing. Credulity is not wooed through the impressionable senses;
nor have we recourse to the small circular glow of the watchmaker's eye
to raise in bright relief minutest grains of evidence for the routing
of incredulity. The Comic Spirit conceives a definite situation for a
number of characters, and rejects all accessories in the exclusive
pursuit of them and their speech. For being a spirit, he hunts the
spirit in men; vision and ardour constitute his merit; he has not a
thought of persuading you to believe in him. Follow and you will see.
But there is a question of the value of a run at his heels.

Now the world is possessed of a certain big book, the biggest book on
earth; that might indeed be called the Book of Earth; whose title is
the Book of Egoism, and it is a book full of the world's wisdom. So
full of it, and of such dimensions is this book, in which the
generations have written ever since they took to writing, that to be
profitable to us the Book needs a powerful compression.

Who, says the notable humourist, in allusion to this Book, who can
studiously travel through sheets of leaves now capable of a stretch
from the Lizard to the last few poor pulmonary snips and shreds of
leagues dancing on their toes for cold, explorers tell us, and catching
breath by good luck, like dogs at bones about a table, on the edge of
the Pole? Inordinate unvaried length, sheer longinquity, staggers the
heart, ages the very heart of us at a view. And how if we manage
finally to print one of our pages on the crow-scalp of that solitary
majestic outsider? We may get him into the Book; yet the knowledge we
want will not be more present with us than it was when the chapters
hung their end over the cliff you ken of at Dover, where sits our great
lord and master contemplating the seas without upon the reflex of that
within!

In other words, as I venture to translate him (humourists are
difficult: it is a piece of their humour to puzzle our wits), the
inward mirror, the embracing and condensing spirit, is required to give
us those interminable milepost piles of matter (extending well-nigh to
the very Pole) in essence, in chosen samples, digestibly. I conceive
him to indicate that the realistic method of a conscientious
transcription of all the visible, and a repetition of all the audible,
is mainly accountable for our present branfulness, and that
prolongation of the vasty and the noisy, out of which, as from an
undrained fen, steams the malady of sameness, our modern malady. We
have the malady, whatever may be the cure or the cause. We drove in a
body to Science the other day for an antidote; which was as if tired
pedestrians should mount the engine-box of headlong trains; and Science
introduced us to our o'er-hoary ancestry--them in the Oriental posture;
whereupon we set up a primaeval chattering to rival the Amazon forest
nigh nightfall, cured, we fancied. And before daybreak our disease was
hanging on to us again, with the extension of a tail. We had it fore
and aft. We were the same, and animals into the bargain. That is all we
got from Science.

Art is the specific. We have little to learn of apes, and they may be
left. The chief consideration for us is, what particular practice of
Art in letters is the best for the perusal of the Book of our common
wisdom; so that with clearer minds and livelier manners we may escape,
as it were, into daylight and song from a land of fog-horns. Shall we
read it by the watchmaker's eye in luminous rings eruptive of the
infinitesimal, or pointed with examples and types under the broad
Alpine survey of the spirit born of our united social intelligence,
which is the Comic Spirit? Wise men say the latter. They tell us that
there is a constant tendency in the Book to accumulate excess of
substance, and such repleteness, obscuring the glass it holds to
mankind, renders us inexact in the recognition of our individual
countenances: a perilous thing for civilization. And these wise men are
strong in their opinion that we should encourage the Comic Spirit, who
is after all our own offspring, to relieve the Book. Comedy, they say,
is the true diversion, as it is likewise the key of the great Book, the
music of the Book. They tell us how it condenses whole sections of the
book in a sentence, volumes in a character; so that a fair pan of a
book outstripping thousands of leagues when unrolled may be compassed
in one comic sitting.

For verily, say they, we must read what we can of it, at least the page
before us, if we would be men. One, with an index on the Book, cries
out, in a style pardonable to his fervency: The remedy of your
frightful affliction is here, through the stillatory of Comedy, and not
in Science, nor yet in Speed, whose name is but another for voracity.
Why, to be alive, to be quick in the soul, there should be diversity in
the companion throbs of your pulses. Interrogate them. They lump along
like the old loblegs of Dobbin the horse; or do their business like
cudgels of carpet-thwackers expelling dust or the cottage-clock
pendulum teaching the infant hour over midnight simple arithmetic. This
too in spite of Bacchus. And let them gallop; let them gallop with the
God bestriding them; gallop to Hymen, gallop to Hades, they strike the
same note. Monstrous monotonousness has enfolded us as with the arms of
Amphitrite! We hear a shout of war for a diversion.--Comedy he
pronounces to be our means of reading swiftly and comprehensively. She
it is who proposes the correcting of pretentiousness, of inflation, of
dulness, and of the vestiges of rawness and grossness to be found among
us. She is the ultimate civilizer, the polisher, a sweet cook. If, he
says, she watches over sentimentalism with a birch-rod, she is not
opposed to romance. You may love, and warmly love, so long as you are
honest. Do not offend reason. A lover pretending too much by one
foot's length of pretence, will have that foot caught in her trap. In
Comedy is the singular scene of charity issuing of disdain under the
stroke of honourable laughter: an Ariel released by Prospero's wand
from the fetters of the damned witch Sycorax. And this laughter of
reason refreshed is floriferous, like the magical great gale of the
shifty Spring deciding for Summer. You hear it giving the delicate
spirit his liberty. Listen, for comparison, to an unleavened society: a
low as of the udderful cow past milking hour! O for a titled
ecclesiastic to curse to excommunication that unholy thing!--So far an
enthusiast perhaps; but he should have a hearing.

Concerning pathos, no ship can now set sail without pathos; and we are
not totally deficient of pathos; which is, I do not accurately know
what, if not the ballast, reducible to moisture by patent process, on
board our modern vessel; for it can hardly be the cargo, and the
general water supply has other uses; and ships well charged with it
seem to sail the stiffest:--there is a touch of pathos. The Egoist
surely inspires pity. He who would desire to clothe himself at
everybody's expense, and is of that desire condemned to strip himself
stark naked, he, if pathos ever had a form, might be taken for the
actual person. Only he is not allowed to rush at you, roll you over and
squeeze your body for the briny drops. There is the innovation.

You may as well know him out of hand, as a gentleman of our time and
country, of wealth and station; a not flexile figure, do what we may
with him; the humour of whom scarcely dimples the surface and is
distinguishable but by very penetrative, very wicked imps, whose fits
of roaring below at some generally imperceptible stroke of his quality,
have first made the mild literary angels aware of something comic in
him, when they were one and all about to describe the gentleman on the
heading of the records baldly (where brevity is most complimentary) as
a gentleman of family and property, an idol of a decorous island that
admires the concrete. Imps have their freakish wickedness in them to
kindle detective vision: malignly do they love to uncover
ridiculousness in imposing figures. Wherever they catch sight of Egoism
they pitch their camps, they circle and squat, and forthwith they trim
their lanterns, confident of the ludicrous to come. So confident that
their grip of an English gentleman, in whom they have spied their game,
never relaxes until he begins insensibly to frolic and antic, unknown
to himself, and comes out in the native steam which is their scent of
the chase. Instantly off they scour, Egoist and imps. They will, it is
known of them, dog a great House for centuries, and be at the birth of
all the new heirs in succession, diligently taking confirmatory notes,
to join hands and chime their chorus in one of their merry rings round
the tottering pillar of the House, when his turn arrives; as if they
had (possibly they had) smelt of old date a doomed colossus of Egoism
in that unborn, unconceived inheritor of the stuff of the family. They
dare not be chuckling while Egoism is valiant, while sober, while
socially valuable, nationally serviceable. They wait.

Aforetime a grand old Egoism built the House. It would appear that ever
finer essences of it are demanded to sustain the structure; but
especially would it appear that a reversion to the gross original,
beneath a mask and in a vein of fineness, is an earthquake at the
foundations of the House. Better that it should not have consented to
motion, and have held stubbornly to all ancestral ways, than have bred
that anachronic spectre. The sight, however, is one to make our
squatting imps in circle grow restless on their haunches, as they bend
eyes instantly, ears at full cock, for the commencement of the comic
drama of the suicide. If this line of verse be not yet in our
literature,

          Through very love of self himself he slew,

let it be admitted for his epitaph.



CHAPTER I

A MINOR INCIDENT SHOWING AN HEREDITARY APTITUDE IN THE USE OF THE KNIFE

There was an ominously anxious watch of eyes visible and invisible over
the infancy of Willoughby, fifth in descent from Simon Patterne, of
Patterne Hall, premier of this family, a lawyer, a man of solid
acquirements and stout ambition, who well understood the
foundation-work of a House, and was endowed with the power of saying No
to those first agents of destruction, besieging relatives. He said it
with the resonant emphasis of death to younger sons. For if the oak is
to become a stately tree, we must provide against the crowding of
timber. Also the tree beset with parasites prospers not. A great House
in its beginning lives, we may truly say, by the knife. Soil is easily
got, and so are bricks, and a wife, and children come of wishing for
them, but the vigorous use of the knife is a natural gift and points to
growth. Pauper Patternes were numerous when the fifth head of the race
was the hope of his county. A Patterne was in the Marines.

The country and the chief of this family were simultaneously informed
of the existence of one Lieutenant Crossjay Patterne, of the corps of
the famous hard fighters, through an act of heroism of the unpretending
cool sort which kindles British blood, on the part of the modest young
officer, in the storming of some eastern riverain stronghold, somewhere
about the coast of China. The officer's youth was assumed on the
strength of his rank, perhaps likewise from the tale of his modesty:
"he had only done his duty". Our Willoughby was then at College,
emulous of the generous enthusiasm of his years, and strangely
impressed by the report, and the printing of his name in the
newspapers. He thought over it for several months, when, coming to his
title and heritage, he sent Lieutenant Crossjay Patterne a cheque for a
sum of money amounting to the gallant fellow's pay per annum, at the
same time showing his acquaintance with the first, or chemical,
principles of generosity, in the remark to friends at home, that "blood
is thicker than water". The man is a Marine, but he is a Patterne. How
any Patterne should have drifted into the Marines, is of the order of
questions which are senselessly asked of the great dispensary. In the
complimentary letter accompanying his cheque, the lieutenant was
invited to present himself at the ancestral Hall, when convenient to
him, and he was assured that he had given his relative and friend a
taste for a soldier's life. Young Sir Willoughby was fond of talking of
his "military namesake and distant cousin, young Patterne--the Marine".
It was funny; and not less laughable was the description of his
namesake's deed of valour: with the rescued British sailor inebriate,
and the hauling off to captivity of the three braves of the black
dragon on a yellow ground, and the tying of them together back to back
by their pigtails, and driving of them into our lines upon a newly
devised dying-top style of march that inclined to the oblique, like the
astonished six eyes of the celestial prisoners, for straight they could
not go. The humour of gentlemen at home is always highly excited by
such cool feats. We are a small island, but you see what we do. The
ladies at the Hall, Sir Willoughby's mother, and his aunts Eleanor and
Isabel, were more affected than he by the circumstance of their having
a Patterne in the Marines. But how then! We English have ducal blood
in business: we have, genealogists tell us, royal blood in common
trades. For all our pride we are a queer people; and you may be
ordering butcher's meat of a Tudor, sitting on the cane-bottom chairs
of a Plantagenet. By and by you may . . . but cherish your reverence.
Young Willoughby made a kind of shock-head or football hero of his
gallant distant cousin, and wondered occasionally that the fellow had
been content to dispatch a letter of effusive thanks without availing
himself of the invitation to partake of the hospitalities of Patterne.

He was one afternoon parading between showers on the stately garden
terrace of the Hall, in company with his affianced, the beautiful and
dashing Constantia Durham, followed by knots of ladies and gentlemen
vowed to fresh air before dinner, while it was to be had. Chancing with
his usual happy fortune (we call these things dealt to us out of the
great hidden dispensary, chance) to glance up the avenue of limes, as
he was in the act of turning on his heel at the end of the terrace, and
it should be added, discoursing with passion's privilege of the passion
of love to Miss Durham, Sir Willoughby, who was anything but obtuse,
experienced a presentiment upon espying a thick-set stumpy man crossing
the gravel space from the avenue to the front steps of the Hall,
decidedly not bearing the stamp of the gentleman "on his hat, his coat,
his feet, or anything that was his," Willoughby subsequently observed
to the ladies of his family in the Scriptural style of gentlemen who do
bear the stamp. His brief sketch of the creature was repulsive. The
visitor carried a bag, and his coat-collar was up, his hat was
melancholy; he had the appearance of a bankrupt tradesman absconding;
no gloves, no umbrella.

As to the incident we have to note, it was very slight. The card of
Lieutenant Patterne was handed to Sir Willoughby, who laid it on the
salver, saying to the footman, "Not at home."

He had been disappointed in the age, grossly deceived in the appearance
of the man claiming to be his relative in this unseasonable fashion;
and his acute instinct advised him swiftly of the absurdity of
introducing to his friends a heavy unpresentable senior as the
celebrated gallant Lieutenant of Marines, and the same as a member of
his family! He had talked of the man too much, too enthusiastically, to
be able to do so. A young subaltern, even if passably vulgar in figure,
can be shuffled through by the aid of the heroical story humourously
exaggerated in apology for his aspect. Nothing can be done with a
mature and stumpy Marine of that rank. Considerateness dismisses him on
the spot, without parley. It was performed by a gentleman supremely
advanced at a very early age in the art of cutting.

Young Sir Willoughby spoke a word of the rejected visitor to Miss
Durham, in response to her startled look: "I shall drop him a cheque,"
he said, for she seemed personally wounded, and had a face of crimson.

The young lady did not reply.

Dating from the humble departure of Lieutenant Crossjay Patterne up the
limes-avenue under a gathering rain-cloud, the ring of imps in
attendance on Sir Willoughby maintained their station with strict
observation of his movements at all hours; and were comparisons in
quest, the sympathetic eagerness of the eyes of caged monkeys for the
hand about to feed them, would supply one. They perceived in him a
fresh development and very subtle manifestation of the very old thing
from which he had sprung.



CHAPTER II

THE YOUNG SIR WILLOUGHBY

These little scoundrel imps, who have attained to some respectability
as the dogs and pets of the Comic Spirit, had been curiously attentive
three years earlier, long before the public announcement of his
engagement to the beautiful Miss Durham, on the day of Sir Willoughby's
majority, when Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson said her word of him. Mrs.
Mountstuart was a lady certain to say the remembered, if not the right,
thing. Again and again was it confirmed on days of high celebration,
days of birth or bridal, how sure she was to hit the mark that rang the
bell; and away her word went over the county: and had she been an
uncharitable woman she could have ruled the county with an iron rod of
caricature, so sharp was her touch. A grain of malice would have sent
county faces and characters awry into the currency. She was wealthy and
kindly, and resembled our mother Nature in her reasonable antipathies
to one or two things which none can defend, and her decided preference
of persons that shone in the sun. Her word sprang out of her. She
looked at you, and forth it came: and it stuck to you, as nothing
laboured or literary could have adhered. Her saying of Laetitia Dale:
"Here she comes with a romantic tale on her eyelashes," was a portrait
of Laetitia. And that of Vernon Whitford: "He is a Phoebus Apollo
turned fasting friar," painted the sunken brilliancy of the lean
long-walker and scholar at a stroke.

Of the young Sir Willoughby, her word was brief; and there was the
merit of it on a day when he was hearing from sunrise to the setting of
the moon salutes in his honour, songs of praise and Ciceronian eulogy.
Rich, handsome, courteous, generous, lord of the Hall, the feast and
the dance, he excited his guests of both sexes to a holiday of
flattery. And, says Mrs. Mountstuart, while grand phrases were mouthing
round about him, "You see he has a leg."

That you saw, of course. But after she had spoken you saw much more.
Mrs. Mountstuart said it just as others utter empty nothings, with
never a hint of a stress. Her word was taken up, and very soon, from
the extreme end of the long drawing-room, the circulation of something
of Mrs. Mountstuart's was distinctly perceptible. Lady Patterne sent a
little Hebe down, skirting the dancers, for an accurate report of it;
and even the inappreciative lips of a very young lady transmitting the
word could not damp the impression of its weighty truthfulness. It was
perfect! Adulation of the young Sir Willoughby's beauty and wit, and
aristocratic bearing and mien, and of his moral virtues, was common;
welcome if you like, as a form of homage; but common, almost vulgar,
beside Mrs. Mountstuart's quiet little touch of nature. In seeming to
say infinitely less than others, as Miss Isabel Patterne pointed out to
Lady Busshe, Mrs. Mountstuart comprised all that the others had said,
by showing the needlessness of allusions to the saliently evident. She
was the aristocrat reproving the provincial. "He is everything you have
had the goodness to remark, ladies and dear sirs, he talks charmingly,
dances divinely, rides with the air of a commander-in-chief, has the
most natural grand pose possible without ceasing for a moment to be the
young English gentleman he is. Alcibiades, fresh from a Louis IV
perruquier, could not surpass him: whatever you please; I could outdo
you in sublime comparisons, were I minded to pelt him. Have you noticed
that he has a leg?"

So might it be amplified. A simple-seeming word of this import is the
triumph of the spiritual, and where it passes for coin of value, the
society has reached a high refinement: Arcadian by the aesthetic route.
Observation of Willoughby was not, as Miss Eleanor Patterne pointed out
to Lady Culmer, drawn down to the leg, but directed to estimate him
from the leg upward. That, however, is prosaic. Dwell a short space on
Mrs. Mountstuart's word; and whither, into what fair region, and with
how decorously voluptuous a sensation, do not we fly, who have, through
mournful veneration of the Martyr Charles, a coy attachment to the
Court of his Merrie Son, where the leg was ribanded with love-knots and
reigned. Oh! it was a naughty Court. Yet have we dreamed of it as the
period when an English cavalier was grace incarnate; far from the boor
now hustling us in another sphere; beautifully mannered, every gesture
dulcet. And if the ladies were . . . we will hope they have been
traduced. But if they were, if they were too tender, ah! gentlemen
were gentlemen then--worth perishing for! There is this dream in the
English country; and it must be an aspiration after some form of
melodious gentlemanliness which is imagined to have inhabited the
island at one time; as among our poets the dream of the period of a
circle of chivalry here is encouraged for the pleasure of the
imagination.

Mrs. Mountstuart touched a thrilling chord. "In spite of men's hateful
modern costume, you see he has a leg."

That is, the leg of the born cavalier is before you: and obscure it as
you will, dress degenerately, there it is for ladies who have eyes. You
see it: or, you see he has it. Miss Isabel and Miss Eleanor disputed
the incidence of the emphasis, but surely, though a slight difference
of meaning may be heard, either will do: many, with a good show of
reason, throw the accent upon leg. And the ladies knew for a fact that
Willoughby's leg was exquisite; he had a cavalier court-suit in his
wardrobe. Mrs. Mountstuart signified that the leg was to be seen
because it was a burning leg. There it is, and it will shine through!
He has the leg of Rochester, Buckingham, Dorset, Suckling; the leg that
smiles, that winks, is obsequious to you, yet perforce of beauty
self-satisfied; that twinkles to a tender midway between imperiousness
and seductiveness, audacity and discretion; between "You shall worship
me", and "I am devoted to you;" is your lord, your slave, alternately
and in one. It is a leg of ebb and flow and high-tide ripples. Such a
leg, when it has done with pretending to retire, will walk straight
into the hearts of women. Nothing so fatal to them.

Self-satisfied it must be. Humbleness does not win multitudes or the
sex. It must be vain to have a sheen. Captivating melodies (to prove to
you the unavoidableness of self-satisfaction when you know that you
have hit perfection), listen to them closely, have an inner pipe of
that conceit almost ludicrous when you detect the chirp.

And you need not be reminded that he has the leg without the
naughtiness. You see eminent in him what we would fain have brought
about in a nation that has lost its leg in gaining a possibly cleaner
morality. And that is often contested; but there is no doubt of the
loss of the leg.

Well, footmen and courtiers and Scottish Highlanders, and the corps de
ballet, draymen too, have legs, and staring legs, shapely enough. But
what are they? not the modulated instrument we mean--simply legs for
leg-work, dumb as the brutes. Our cavalier's is the poetic leg, a
portent, a valiance. He has it as Cicero had a tongue. It is a lute to
scatter songs to his mistress; a rapier, is she obdurate. In sooth a
leg with brains in it, soul.

And its shadows are an ambush, its lights a surprise. It blushes, it
pales, can whisper, exclaim. It is a peep, a part revelation, just
sufferable, of the Olympian god--Jove playing carpet-knight.

For the young Sir Willoughby's family and his thoughtful admirers, it
is not too much to say that Mrs. Mountstuart's little word fetched an
epoch of our history to colour the evening of his arrival at man's
estate. He was all that Merrie Charles's court should have been,
subtracting not a sparkle from what it was. Under this light he
danced, and you may consider the effect of it on his company.

He had received the domestic education of a prince. Little princes
abound in a land of heaped riches. Where they have not to yield
military service to an Imperial master, they are necessarily here and
there dainty during youth, sometimes unmanageable, and as they are
bound in no personal duty to the State, each is for himself, with full
present, and what is more, luxurious, prospective leisure for the
practice of that allegiance. They are sometimes enervated by it: that
must be in continental countries. Happily our climate and our brave
blood precipitate the greater number upon the hunting-field, to do the
public service of heading the chase of the fox, with benefit to their
constitutions. Hence a manly as well as useful race of little princes,
and Willoughby was as manly as any. He cultivated himself, he would not
be outdone in popular accomplishments. Had the standard of the public
taste been set in philosophy, and the national enthusiasm centred in
philosophers, he would at least have worked at books. He did work at
science, and had a laboratory. His admirable passion to excel, however,
was chiefly directed in his youth upon sport; and so great was the
passion in him, that it was commonly the presence of rivals which led
him to the declaration of love.

He knew himself, nevertheless, to be the most constant of men in his
attachment to the sex. He had never discouraged Laetitia Dale's
devotion to him, and even when he followed in the sweeping tide of the
beautiful Constantia Durham (whom Mrs. Mountstuart called "The Racing
Cutter"), he thought of Laetitia, and looked at her. She was a shy
violet.

Willoughby's comportment while the showers of adulation drenched him
might be likened to the composure of Indian Gods undergoing worship,
but unlike them he reposed upon no seat of amplitude to preserve him
from a betrayal of intoxication; he had to continue tripping, dancing,
exactly balancing himself, head to right, head to left, addressing his
idolaters in phrases of perfect choiceness. This is only to say that it
is easier to be a wooden idol than one in the flesh; yet Willoughby was
equal to his task. The little prince's education teaches him that he
is other than you, and by virtue of the instruction he receives, and
also something, we know not what, within, he is enabled to maintain his
posture where you would be tottering.

Urchins upon whose curly pates grave seniors lay their hands with
conventional encomium and speculation, look older than they are
immediately, and Willoughby looked older than his years, not for want
of freshness, but because he felt that he had to stand eminently and
correctly poised.

Hearing of Mrs. Mountstuart's word on him, he smiled and said, "It is
at her service."

The speech was communicated to her, and she proposed to attach a
dedicatory strip of silk. And then they came together, and there was
wit and repartee suitable to the electrical atmosphere of the
dancing-room, on the march to a magical hall of supper. Willoughby
conducted Mrs. Mountstuart to the supper-table.

"Were I," said she, "twenty years younger, I think I would marry you,
to cure my infatuation."

"Then let me tell you in advance, madam," said he, "that I will do
everything to obtain a new lease of it, except divorce you."

They were infinitely wittier, but so much was heard and may be
reported.

"It makes the business of choosing a wife for him superhumanly
difficult!" Mrs. Mountstuart observed, after listening to the praises
she had set going again when the ladies were weeded of us, in Lady
Patterne's Indian room, and could converse unhampered upon their own
ethereal themes.

"Willoughby will choose a wife for himself," said his mother.



CHAPTER III

CONSTANTIA DURHAM

The great question for the county was debated in many households,
daughter-thronged and daughterless, long subsequent to the memorable
day of Willoughby's coming of age. Lady Busshe was for Constantia
Durham. She laughed at Mrs Mountstuart Jenkinson's notion of Laetitia
Dale. She was a little older than Mrs. Mountstuart, and had known
Willoughby's father, whose marriage into the wealthiest branch of the
Whitford family had been strictly sagacious. "Patternes marry money;
they are not romantic people," she said. Miss Durham had money, and she
had health and beauty: three mighty qualifications for a Patterne
bride. Her father, Sir John Durham, was a large landowner in the
western division of the county; a pompous gentleman, the picture of a
father-in-law for Willoughby. The father of Miss Dale was a battered
army surgeon from India, tenant of one of Sir Willoughby's cottages
bordering Patterne Park. His girl was portionless and a poetess. Her
writing of the song in celebration of the young baronet's birthday was
thought a clever venture, bold as only your timid creatures can be
bold. She let the cat out of her bag of verse before the multitude; she
almost proposed to her hero in her rhymes. She was pretty; her
eyelashes were long and dark, her eyes dark-blue, and her soul was
ready to shoot like a rocket out of them at a look from Willoughby. And
he looked, he certainly looked, though he did not dance with her once
that night, and danced repeatedly with Miss Durham. He gave Laetitia to
Vernon Whitford for the final dance of the night, and he may have
looked at her so much in pity of an elegant girl allied to such a
partner. The "Phoebus Apollo turned fasting friar" had entirely
forgotten his musical gifts in motion. He crossed himself and crossed
his bewildered lady, and crossed everybody in the figure, extorting
shouts of cordial laughter from his cousin Willoughby. Be it said that
the hour was four in the morning, when dancers must laugh at somebody,
if only to refresh their feet, and the wit of the hour administers to
the wildest laughter. Vernon was likened to Theseus in the maze,
entirely dependent upon his Ariadne; to a fly released from a jam-pot;
to a "salvage", or green, man caught in a web of nymphs and made to go
the paces. Willoughby was inexhaustible in the happy similes he poured
out to Miss Durham across the lines of Sir Roger de Coverley, and they
were not forgotten, they procured him a reputation as a convivial
sparkler. Rumour went the round that he intended to give Laetitia to
Vernon for good, when he could decide to take Miss Durham to himself;
his generosity was famous; but that decision, though the rope was in
the form of a knot, seemed reluctant for the conclusive close haul; it
preferred the state of slackness; and if he courted Laetitia on behalf
of his cousin, his cousinly love must have been greater than his
passion, one had to suppose. He was generous enough for it, or for
marrying the portionless girl himself.

There was a story of a brilliant young widow of our aristocracy who had
very nearly snared him. Why should he object to marry into our
aristocracy? Mrs. Mountstuart asked him, and he replied that the girls
of that class have no money, and he doubted the quality of their blood.
He had his eyes awake. His duty to his House was a foremost thought
with him, and for such a reason he may have been more anxious to give
the slim and not robust Laetitia to Vernon than accede to his personal
inclination. The mention of the widow singularly offended him,
notwithstanding the high rank of the lady named. "A widow?" he said.
"I!" He spoke to a widow; an oldish one truly; but his wrath at the
suggestion of his union with a widow led him to be for the moment
oblivious of the minor shades of good taste. He desired Mrs.
Mountstuart to contradict the story in positive terms. He repeated his
desire; he was urgent to have it contradicted, and said again, "A
widow!" straightening his whole figure to the erectness of the letter
I. She was a widow unmarried a second time, and it has been known of
the stedfast women who retain the name of their first husband, or do
not hamper his title with a little new squire at their skirts, that
they can partially approve the objections indicated by Sir Willoughby.
They are thinking of themselves when they do so, and they will rarely
say, "I might have married;" rarely within them will they avow that,
with their permission, it might have been. They can catch an idea of a
gentleman's view of the widow's cap. But a niceness that could feel
sharply wounded by the simple rumour of his alliance with the young
relict of an earl was mystifying. Sir Willoughby unbent. His military
letter I took a careless glance at itself lounging idly and proudly at
ease in the glass of his mind, decked with a wanton wreath, as he
dropped a hint, generously vague, just to show the origin of the
rumour, and the excellent basis it had for not being credited. He was
chidden. Mrs. Mountstuart read him a lecture. She was however able to
contradict the tale of the young countess. "There is no fear of his
marrying her, my dears."

Meanwhile there was a fear that he would lose his chance of marrying
the beautiful Miss Durham.

The dilemmas of little princes are often grave. They should be dwelt on
now and then for an example to poor struggling commoners, of the slings
and arrows assailing fortune's most favoured men, that we may preach
contentment to the wretch who cannot muster wherewithal to marry a
wife, or has done it and trots the streets, pack-laden, to maintain the
dame and troops of children painfully reared to fill subordinate
stations. According to our reading, a moral is always welcome in a
moral country, and especially so when silly envy is to be chastised by
it, the restless craving for change rebuked. Young Sir Willoughby,
then, stood in this dilemma:--a lady was at either hand of him; the
only two that had ever, apart from metropolitan conquests, not to be
recited, touched his emotions. Susceptible to beauty, he had never seen
so beautiful a girl as Constantia Durham. Equally susceptible to
admiration of himself, he considered Laetitia Dale a paragon of
cleverness. He stood between the queenly rose and the modest violet.
One he bowed to; the other bowed to him. He could not have both; it is
the law governing princes and pedestrians alike. But which could he
forfeit? His growing acquaintance with the world taught him to put an
increasing price on the sentiments of Miss Dale. Still Constantia's
beauty was of a kind to send away beholders aching. She had the glory
of the racing cutter full sail on a whining breeze; and she did not
court to win him, she flew. In his more reflective hour the
attractiveness of that lady which held the mirror to his features was
paramount. But he had passionate snatches when the magnetism of the
flyer drew him in her wake. Further to add to the complexity, he loved
his liberty; he was princelier free; he had more subjects, more slaves;
he ruled arrogantly in the world of women; he was more himself. His
metropolitan experiences did not answer to his liking the particular
question, Do we bind the woman down to us idolatrously by making a wife
of her?

In the midst of his deliberations, a report of the hot pursuit of Miss
Durham, casually mentioned to him by Lady Busshe, drew an immediate
proposal from Sir Willoughby. She accepted him, and they were engaged.
She had been nibbled at, all but eaten up, while he hung dubitative;
and though that was the cause of his winning her, it offended his
niceness. She had not come to him out of cloistral purity, out of
perfect radiancy. Spiritually, likewise, was he a little prince, a
despotic prince. He wished for her to have come to him out of an
egg-shell, somewhat more astonished at things than a chicken, but as
completely enclosed before he tapped the shell, and seeing him with her
sex's eyes first of all men. She talked frankly of her cousins and
friends, young males. She could have replied to his bitter wish: "Had
you asked me on the night of your twenty-first birthday, Willoughby!"
Since then she had been in the dust of the world, and he conceived his
peculiar antipathy, destined to be so fatal to him, from the earlier
hours of his engagement. He was quaintly incapable of a jealousy of
individuals. A young Captain Oxford had been foremost in the swarm
pursuing Constantia. Willoughby thought as little of Captain Oxford as
he did of Vernon Whitford. His enemy was the world, the mass, which
confounds us in a lump, which has breathed on her whom we have
selected, whom we cannot, can never, rub quite clear of her contact
with the abominated crowd. The pleasure of the world is to bowl down
our soldierly letter I; to encroach on our identity, soil our niceness.
To begin to think is the beginning of disgust of the world.

As soon the engagement was published all the county said that there had
not been a chance for Laetitia, and Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson humbly
remarked, in an attitude of penitence, "I'm not a witch." Lady Busshe
could claim to be one; she had foretold the event. Laetitia was of the
same opinion as the county. She had looked up, but not hopefully. She
had only looked up to the brightest, and, as he was the highest, how
could she have hoped? She was the solitary companion of a sick father,
whose inveterate prognostic of her, that she would live to rule at
Patterne Hall, tortured the poor girl in proportion as he seemed to
derive comfort from it. The noise of the engagement merely silenced
him; recluse invalids cling obstinately to their ideas. He had observed
Sir Willoughby in the society of his daughter, when the young baronet
revived to a sprightly boyishness immediately. Indeed, as big boy and
little girl, they had played together of old. Willoughby had been a
handsome, fair boy. The portrait of him at the Hall, in a hat, leaning
on his pony, with crossed legs, and long flaxen curls over his
shoulders, was the image of her soul's most present angel; and, as a
man, he had--she did not suppose intentionally--subjected her nature to
bow to him; so submissive was she, that it was fuller happiness for her
to think him right in all his actions than to imagine the circumstances
different. This may appear to resemble the ecstasy of the devotee of
Juggernaut, It is a form of the passion inspired by little princes, and
we need not marvel that a conservative sex should assist to keep them
in their lofty places. What were there otherwise to look up to? We
should have no dazzling beacon-lights if they were levelled and treated
as clod earth; and it is worth while for here and there a woman to be
burned, so long as women's general adoration of an ideal young man
shall be preserved. Purity is our demand of them. They may justly cry
for attraction. They cannot have it brighter than in the universal
bearing of the eyes of their sisters upon a little prince, one who has
the ostensible virtues in his pay, and can practise them without
injuring himself to make himself unsightly. Let the races of men be
by-and-by astonished at their Gods, if they please. Meantime they had
better continue to worship.

Laetitia did continue. She saw Miss Durham at Patterne on several
occasions. She admired the pair. She had a wish to witness the bridal
ceremony. She was looking forward to the day with that mixture of
eagerness and withholding which we have as we draw nigh the
disenchanting termination of an enchanting romance, when Sir Willoughby
met her on a Sunday morning, as she crossed his park solitarily to
church. They were within ten days of the appointed ceremony. He should
have been away at Miss Durham's end of the county. He had, Laetitia
knew, ridden over to her the day before; but there he was; and very
unwontedly, quite surprisingly, he presented his arm to conduct
Laetitia to the church-door, and talked and laughed in a way that
reminded her of a hunting gentleman she had seen once rising to his
feet, staggering from an ugly fall across hedge and fence into one of
the lanes of her short winter walks. "All's well, all sound, never
better, only a scratch!" the gentleman had said, as he reeled and
pressed a bleeding head. Sir Willoughby chattered of his felicity in
meeting her. "I am really wonderfully lucky," he said, and he said that
and other things over and over, incessantly talking, and telling an
anecdote of county occurrences, and laughing at it with a mouth that
would not widen. He went on talking in the church porch, and murmuring
softly some steps up the aisle, passing the pews of Mrs. Mountstuart
Jenkinson and Lady Busshe. Of course he was entertaining, but what a
strangeness it was to Laetitia! His face would have been half under an
antique bonnet. It came very close to hers, and the scrutiny he bent on
her was most solicitous.

After the service, he avoided the great ladies by sauntering up to
within a yard or two of where she sat; he craved her hand on his arm to
lead her forth by the park entrance to the church, all the while
bending to her, discoursing rapidly, appearing radiantly interested in
her quiet replies, with fits of intentness that stared itself out into
dim abstraction. She hazarded the briefest replies for fear of not
having understood him.

One question she asked: "Miss Durham is well, I trust?"

And he answered "Durham?" and said, "There is no Miss Durham to my
knowledge."

The impression he left with her was, that he might yesterday during his
ride have had an accident and fallen on his head.

She would have asked that, if she had not known him for so thorough an
Englishman, in his dislike to have it thought that accidents could hurt
even when they happened to him.

He called the next day to claim her for a walk. He assured her she had
promised it, and he appealed to her father, who could not testify to a
promise he had not heard, but begged her to leave him to have her walk.
So once more she was in the park with Sir Willoughby, listening to his
raptures over old days. A word of assent from her sufficed him. "I am
now myself," was one of the remarks he repeated this day. She dilated
on the beauty of the park and the Hall to gratify him.

He did not speak of Miss Durham, and Laetitia became afraid to mention
her name.

At their parting, Willoughby promised Laetitia that he would call on
the morrow. He did not come; and she could well excuse him, after her
hearing of the tale.

It was a lamentable tale. He had ridden to Sir John Durham's mansion, a
distance of thirty miles, to hear, on his arrival, that Constantia had
quitted her father's house two days previously on a visit to an aunt in
London, and had just sent word that she was the wife of Captain Oxford,
hussar, and messmate of one of her brothers. A letter from the bride
awaited Willoughby at the Hall. He had ridden back at night, not
caring how he used his horse in order to get swiftly home, so forgetful
of himself was he under the terrible blow. That was the night of
Saturday. On the day following, being Sunday, he met Laetitia in his
park, led her to church, led her out of it, and the day after that,
previous to his disappearance for some weeks, was walking with her in
full view of the carriages along the road.

He had, indeed, you see, been very fortunately, if not considerately,
liberated by Miss Durham. He, as a man of honour, could not have taken
the initiative, but the frenzy of a jealous girl might urge her to such
a course; and how little he suffered from it had been shown to the
world. Miss Durham, the story went, was his mother's choice for him
against his heart's inclinations; which had finally subdued Lady
Patterne. Consequently, there was no longer an obstacle between Sir
Willoughby and Miss Dale. It was a pleasant and romantic story, and it
put most people in good humour with the county's favourite, as his
choice of a portionless girl of no position would not have done without
the shock of astonishment at the conduct of Miss Durham, and the desire
to feel that so prevailing a gentleman was not in any degree pitiable.
Constantia was called "that mad thing". Laetitia broke forth in novel
and abundant merits; and one of the chief points of requisition in
relation to Patterne--a Lady Willoughby who would entertain well and
animate the deadness of the Hall, became a certainty when her
gentleness and liveliness and exceeding cleverness were considered. She
was often a visitor at the Hall by Lady Patterne's express invitation,
and sometimes on these occasions Willoughby was there too,
superintending the filling up of his laboratory, though he was not at
home to the county; it was not expected that he should be yet. He had
taken heartily to the pursuit of science, and spoke of little else.
Science, he said, was in our days the sole object worth a devoted
pursuit. But the sweeping remark could hardly apply to Laetitia, of
whom he was the courteous, quiet wooer you behold when a man has broken
loose from an unhappy tangle to return to the lady of his first and
strongest affections.

Some months of homely courtship ensued, and then, the decent interval
prescribed by the situation having elapsed, Sir Willoughby Patterne
left his native land on a tour of the globe.



CHAPTER IV

LAETITIA DALE

That was another surprise to the county.

Let us not inquire into the feelings of patiently starving women; they
must obtain some sustenance of their own, since, as you perceive, they
live; evidently they are not in need of a great amount of nourishment;
and we may set them down for creatures with a rush-light of animal fire
to warm them. They cannot have much vitality who are so little
exclamatory. A corresponding sentiment of patient compassion, akin to
scorn, is provoked by persons having the opportunity for pathos, and
declining to use it. The public bosom was open to Laetitia for several
weeks, and had she run to it to bewail herself she would have been
cherished in thankfulness for a country drama. There would have been a
party against her, cold people, critical of her pretensions to rise
from an unrecognized sphere to be mistress of Patterne Hall, but there
would also have been a party against Sir Willoughby, composed of the
two or three revolutionists, tired of the yoke, which are to be found
in England when there is a stir; a larger number of born sympathetics,
ever ready to yield the tear for the tear; and here and there a
Samaritan soul prompt to succour poor humanity in distress. The
opportunity passed undramatized. Laetitia presented herself at church
with a face mildly devout, according to her custom, and she accepted
invitations to the Hall, she assisted at the reading of Willoughby's
letters to his family, and fed on dry husks of him wherein her name was
not mentioned; never one note of the summoning call for pathos did this
young lady blow.

So, very soon the public bosom closed. She had, under the fresh
interpretation of affairs, too small a spirit to be Lady Willoughby of
Patterne; she could not have entertained becomingly; he must have seen
that the girl was not the match for him in station, and off he went to
conquer the remainder of a troublesome first attachment, no longer
extremely disturbing, to judge from the tenour of his letters; really
incomparable letters! Lady Busshe and Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson
enjoyed a perusal of them. Sir Willoughby appeared as a splendid young
representative island lord in these letters to his family, despatched
from the principal cities of the United States of America. He would
give them a sketch of "our democratic cousins", he said. Such cousins!
They might all have been in the Marines. He carried his English
standard over that continent, and by simply jotting down facts, he left
an idea of the results of the measurement to his family and friends at
home. He was an adept in the irony of incongruously grouping. The
nature of the Equality under the stars and stripes was presented in
this manner. Equality! Reflections came occasionally: "These cousins of
ours are highly amusing. I am among the descendants of the Roundheads.
Now and then an allusion to old domestic differences, in perfect good
temper. We go on in our way; they theirs, in the apparent belief that
Republicanism operates remarkable changes in human nature. Vernon tries
hard to think it does. The upper ten of our cousins are the Infernal of
Paris. The rest of them is Radical England, as far as I am acquainted
with that section of my country."--Where we compared, they were absurd;
where we contrasted, they were monstrous. The contrast of Vernon's
letters with Willoughby's was just as extreme. You could hardly have
taken them for relatives travelling together, or Vernon Whitford for a
born and bred Englishman. The same scenes furnished by these two pens
might have been sketched in different hemispheres. Vernon had no irony.
He had nothing of Willoughby's epistolary creative power, which,
causing his family and friends to exclaim: "How like him that is!"
conjured them across the broad Atlantic to behold and clap hands at his
lordliness.

They saw him distinctly, as with the naked eye; a word, a turn of the
pen, or a word unsaid, offered the picture of him in America, Japan,
China, Australia, nay, the continent of Europe, holding an English
review of his Maker's grotesques. Vernon seemed a sheepish fellow,
without stature abroad, glad of a compliment, grateful for a dinner,
endeavouring sadly to digest all he saw and heard. But one was a
Patterne; the other a Whitford. One had genius; the other pottered
after him with the title of student. One was the English gentleman
wherever he went; the other was a new kind of thing, nondescript,
produced in England of late, and not likely to come to much good
himself, or do much good to the country.

Vernon's dancing in America was capitally described by Willoughby.
"Adieu to our cousins!" the latter wrote on his voyage to Japan. "I
may possibly have had some vogue in their ball-rooms, and in showing
them an English seat on horseback: I must resign myself if I have not
been popular among them. I could not sing their national song--if a
congery of states be a nation--and I must confess I listened with
frigid politeness to their singing of it. A great people, no doubt.
Adieu to them. I have had to tear old Vernon away. He had serious
thoughts of settling, means to correspond with some of them." On the
whole, forgetting two or more "traits of insolence" on the part of his
hosts, which he cited, Willoughby escaped pretty comfortably. The
President had been, consciously or not, uncivil, but one knew his
origin! Upon these interjections, placable flicks of the lionly tail
addressed to Britannia the Ruler, who expected him in some mildish way
to lash terga cauda in retiring, Sir Willoughby Patterne passed from a
land of alien manners; and ever after he spoke of America respectfully
and pensively, with a tail tucked in, as it were. His travels were
profitable to himself. The fact is, that there are cousins who come to
greatness and must be pacified, or they will prove annoying. Heaven
forefend a collision between cousins!

Willoughby returned to his England after an absence of three years. On
a fair April morning, the last of the month, he drove along his park
palings, and, by the luck of things, Laetitia was the first of his
friends whom he met. She was crossing from field to field with a band
of school-children, gathering wild flowers for the morrow May-day. He
sprang to the ground and seized her hand. "Laetitia Dale!" he said. He
panted. "Your name is sweet English music! And you are well?" The
anxious question permitted him to read deeply in her eyes. He found the
man he sought there, squeezed him passionately, and let her go, saying:
"I could not have prayed for a lovelier home-scene to welcome me than
you and these children flower-gathering. I don't believe in chance. It
was decreed that we should meet. Do not you think so?"

Laetitia breathed faintly of her gladness.

He begged her to distribute a gold coin among the little ones; asked
for the names of some of them, and repeated: "Mary, Susan,
Charlotte--only the Christian names, pray! Well, my dears, you will
bring your garlands to the Hall to-morrow morning; and mind, early! no
slugabeds tomorrow; I suppose I am browned, Laetitia?" He smiled in
apology for the foreign sun, and murmured with rapture: "The green of
this English country is unsurpassed. It is wonderful. Leave England
and be baked, if you would appreciate it. You can't, unless you taste
exile as I have done--for how many years? How many?"

"Three," said Laetitia.

"Thirty!" said he. "It seems to me that length. At least, I am
immensely older. But looking at you, I could think it less than three.
You have not changed. You are absolutely unchanged. I am bound to hope
so. I shall see you soon. I have much to talk of, much to tell you. I
shall hasten to call on your father. I have specially to speak with
him. I--what happiness this is, Laetitia! But I must not forget I have
a mother. Adieu; for some hours--not for many!"

He pressed her hand again. He was gone.

She dismissed the children to their homes. Plucking primroses was hard
labour now--a dusty business. She could have wished that her planet had
not descended to earth, his presence agitated her so; but his
enthusiastic patriotism was like a shower that, in the Spring season of
the year, sweeps against the hard-binding East and melts the air and
brings out new colours, makes life flow; and her thoughts recurred in
wonderment to the behaviour of Constantia Durham. That was Laetitia's
manner of taking up her weakness once more. She could almost have
reviled the woman who had given this beneficent magician, this pathetic
exile, of the aristocratic sunburned visage and deeply scrutinizing
eyes, cause for grief. How deeply his eyes could read! The starveling
of patience awoke to the idea of a feast. The sense of hunger came with
it, and hope came, and patience fled. She would have rejected hope to
keep patience nigh her; but surely it can not always be Winter! said
her reasoning blood, and we must excuse her as best we can if she was
assured, by her restored warmth that Willoughby came in the order of
the revolving seasons, marking a long Winter past. He had specially to
speak with her father, he had said. What could that mean? What,
but--She dared not phrase it or view it.

At their next meeting she was "Miss Dale".

A week later he was closeted with her father.

Mr. Dale, in the evening of that pregnant day, eulogized Sir Willoughby
as a landlord. A new lease of the cottage was to be granted him on the
old terms, he said. Except that Sir Willoughby had congratulated him in
the possession of an excellent daughter, their interview was one of
landlord and tenant, it appeared; and Laetitia said, "So we shall not
have to leave the cottage?" in a tone of satisfaction, while she
quietly gave a wrench to the neck of the young hope in her breast. At
night her diary received the line: "This day I was a fool. To-morrow?"

To-morrow and many days afterwards there were dashes instead of words.

Patience travelled back to her sullenly. As we must have some kind of
food, and she had nothing else, she took to that and found it dryer
than of yore. It is a composing but a lean dietary. The dead are
patient, and we get a certain likeness to them in feeding on it
unintermittingly overlong. Her hollowed cheeks with the fallen leaf in
them pleaded against herself to justify her idol for not looking down
on one like her. She saw him when he was at the Hall. He did not
notice any change. He was exceedingly gentle and courteous. More than
once she discovered his eyes dwelling on her, and then he looked
hurriedly at his mother, and Laetitia had to shut her mind from
thinking, lest thinking should be a sin and hope a guilty spectre. But
had his mother objected to her? She could not avoid asking herself. His
tour of the globe had been undertaken at his mother's desire; she was
an ambitious lady, in failing health; and she wished to have him living
with her at Patterne, yet seemed to agree that he did wisely to reside
in London.

One day Sir Willoughby, in the quiet manner which was his humour,
informed her that he had become a country gentleman; he had abandoned
London, he loathed it as the burial-place of the individual man. He
intended to sit down on his estates and have his cousin Vernon Whitford
to assist him in managing them, he said; and very amusing was his
description of his cousin's shifts to live by literature, and add
enough to a beggarly income to get his usual two months of the year in
the Alps. Previous to his great tour, Willoughby had spoken of Vernon's
judgement with derision; nor was it entirely unknown that Vernon had
offended his family pride by some extravagant act. But after their
return he acknowledged Vernon's talents, and seemed unable to do
without him.

The new arrangement gave Laetitia a companion for her walks.
Pedestrianism was a sour business to Willoughby, whose exclamation of
the word indicated a willingness for any amount of exercise on
horseback; but she had no horse, and so, while he hunted, Laetitia and
Vernon walked, and the neighbourhood speculated on the circumstances,
until the ladies Eleanor and Isabel Patterne engaged her more
frequently for carriage exercise, and Sir Willoughby was observed
riding beside them.

A real and sunny pleasure befell Laetitia in the establishment of young
Crossjay Patterne under her roof; the son of the lieutenant, now
captain, of Marines; a boy of twelve with the sprights of twelve boys
in him, for whose board and lodgement Vernon provided by arrangement
with her father. Vernon was one of your men that have no occupation for
their money, no bills to pay for repair of their property, and are
insane to spend. He had heard of Captain Patterne's large family, and
proposed to have his eldest boy at the Hall, to teach him; but
Willoughby declined to house the son of such a father, predicting that
the boy's hair would be red, his skin eruptive, and his practices
detestable. So Vernon, having obtained Mr. Dale's consent to
accommodate this youth, stalked off to Devonport, and brought back a
rosy-cheeked, round-bodied rogue of a boy, who fell upon meats and
puddings, and defeated them, with a captivating simplicity in his
confession that he had never had enough to eat in his life. He had gone
through a training for a plentiful table. At first, after a number of
helps, young Crossjay would sit and sigh heavily, in contemplation of
the unfinished dish. Subsequently, he told his host and hostess that he
had two sisters above his own age, and three brothers and two sisters
younger than he: "All hungry!" said die boy.

His pathos was most comical. It was a good month before he could see
pudding taken away from table without a sigh of regret that he could
not finish it as deputy for the Devonport household. The pranks of the
little fellow, and his revel in a country life, and muddy wildness in
it, amused Laetitia from morning to night. She, when she had caught
him, taught him in the morning; Vernon, favoured by the chase, in the
afternoon. Young Crossjay would have enlivened any household. He was
not only indolent, he was opposed to the acquisition of knowledge
through the medium of books, and would say: "But I don't want to!" in a
tone to make a logician thoughtful. Nature was very strong in him. He
had, on each return of the hour for instruction, to be plucked out of
the earth, rank of the soil, like a root, for the exercise of his big
round headpiece on those tyrannous puzzles. But the habits of birds,
and the place for their eggs, and the management of rabbits, and the
tickling of fish, and poaching joys with combative boys of the
district, and how to wheedle a cook for a luncheon for a whole day in
the rain, he soon knew of his great nature. His passion for our naval
service was a means of screwing his attention to lessons after he had
begun to understand that the desert had to be traversed to attain
midshipman's rank. He boasted ardently of his fighting father, and,
chancing to be near the Hall as he was talking to Vernon and Laetitia
of his father, he propounded a question close to his heart, and he put
it in these words, following: "My father's the one to lead an army!"
when he paused. "I say, Mr. Whitford, Sir Willoughby's kind to me, and
gives me crown-pieces, why wouldn't he see my father, and my father
came here ten miles in the rain to see him, and had to walk ten miles
back, and sleep at an inn?"

The only answer to be given was, that Sir Willoughby could not have
been at home. "Oh! my father saw him, and Sir Willoughby said he was
not at home," the boy replied, producing an odd ring in the ear by his
repetition of "not at home" in the same voice as the apology, plainly
innocent of malice. Vernon told Laetitia, however, that the boy never
asked an explanation of Sir Willoughby.

Unlike the horse of the adage, it was easier to compel young Crossjay
to drink of the waters of instruction than to get him to the brink. His
heart was not so antagonistic as his nature, and by degrees, owing to a
proper mixture of discipline and cajolery, he imbibed. He was whistling
at the cook's windows after a day of wicked truancy, on an April night,
and reported adventures over the supper supplied to him. Laetitia
entered the kitchen with a reproving forefinger. He jumped to kiss her,
and went on chattering of a place fifteen miles distant, where he had
seen Sir Willoughby riding with a young lady. The impossibility that
the boy should have got so far on foot made Laetitia doubtful of his
veracity, until she heard that a gentleman had taken him up on the road
in a gig, and had driven him to a farm to show him strings of birds'
eggs and stuffed birds of every English kind, kingfishers, yaffles,
black woodpeckers, goat-sucker owls, more mouth than head, with dusty,
dark-spotted wings, like moths; all very circumstantial. Still, in
spite of his tea at the farm, and ride back by rail at the gentleman's
expense, the tale seemed fictitious to Laetitia until Crossjay related
how that he had stood to salute on the road to the railway, and taken
off his cap to Sir Willoughby, and Sir Willoughby had passed him, not
noticing him, though the young lady did, and looked back and nodded.
The hue of truth was in that picture.

Strange eclipse, when the hue of truth comes shadowing over our bright
ideal planet. It will not seem the planet's fault, but truth's. Reality
is the offender; delusion our treasure that we are robbed of. Then
begins with us the term of wilful delusion, and its necessary
accompaniment of the disgust of reality; exhausting the heart much more
than patient endurance of starvation.

Hints were dropping about the neighbourhood; the hedgeways twittered,
the tree-tops cawed. Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson was loud on the
subject: "Patterne is to have a mistress at last, you say? But there
never was a doubt of his marrying--he must marry; and, so long as he
does not marry a foreign woman, we have no cause to complain. He met
her at Cherriton. Both were struck at the same moment. Her father is, I
hear, some sort of learned man; money; no land. No house either, I
believe. People who spend half their time on the Continent. They are
now for a year at Upton Park. The very girl to settle down and
entertain when she does think of settling. Eighteen, perfect manners;
you need not ask if a beauty. Sir Willoughby will have his dues. We
must teach her to make amends to him--but don't listen to Lady Busshe!
He was too young at twenty-three or twenty-four. No young man is ever
jilted; he is allowed to escape. A young man married is a fire-eater
bound over to keep the peace; if he keeps it he worries it. At
thirty-one or thirty-two he is ripe for his command, because he knows
how to bend. And Sir Willoughby is a splendid creature, only wanting a
wife to complete him. For a man like that to go on running about would
never do. Soberly--no! It would soon be getting ridiculous. He has been
no worse than other men, probably better--infinitely more excusable;
but now we have him, and it was time we should. I shall see her and
study her, sharply, you may be sure; though I fancy I can rely on his
judgement."

In confirmation of the swelling buzz, the Rev. Dr. Middleton and his
daughter paid a flying visit to the Hall, where they were seen only by
the members of the Patterne family. Young Crossjay had a short
conversation with Miss Middleton, and ran to the cottage full of
her--she loved the navy and had a merry face. She had a smile of very
pleasant humour according to Vernon. The young lady was outlined to
Laetitia as tall, elegant, lively; and painted as carrying youth like a
flag. With her smile of "very pleasant humour", she could not but be
winning.

Vernon spoke more of her father, a scholar of high repute; happily, a
scholar of an independent fortune. His maturer recollection of Miss
Middleton grew poetic, or he described her in an image to suit a poetic
end: "She gives you an idea of the Mountain Echo. Doctor Middleton has
one of the grandest heads in England."

"What is her Christian name?" said Laetitia.

He thought her Christian name was Clara.

Laetitia went to bed and walked through the day conceiving the Mountain
Echo the swift, wild spirit, Clara by name, sent fleeting on a far half
circle by the voice it is roused to subserve; sweeter than beautiful,
high above drawing-room beauties as the colours of the sky; and if, at
the same time, elegant and of loveable smiling, could a man resist her?
To inspire the title of Mountain Echo in any mind, a young lady must be
singularly spiritualized. Her father doated on her, Vernon said. Who
would not? It seemed an additional cruelty that the grace of a poetical
attractiveness should be round her, for this was robbing Laetitia of
some of her own little fortune, mystical though that might be. But a
man like Sir Willoughby had claims on poetry, possessing as he did
every manly grace; and to think that Miss Middleton had won him by
virtue of something native to her likewise, though mystically, touched
Laetitia with a faint sense of relationship to the chosen girl. "What
is in me, he sees on her." It decked her pride to think so, as a wreath
on the gravestone. She encouraged her imagination to brood over Clara,
and invested her designedly with romantic charms, in spite of pain; the
ascetic zealot hugs his share of Heaven--most bitter, most blessed--in
his hair-shirt and scourge, and Laetitia's happiness was to glorify
Clara. Through that chosen rival, through her comprehension of the
spirit of Sir Willoughby's choice of one such as Clara, she was linked
to him yet.

Her mood of ecstatic fidelity was a dangerous exaltation; one that in a
desert will distort the brain, and in the world where the idol dwells
will put him, should he come nigh, to its own furnace-test, and get a
clear brain out of a burnt heart. She was frequently at the Hall,
helping to nurse Lady Patterne. Sir Willoughby had hitherto treated her
as a dear insignificant friend, to whom it was unnecessary that he
should mention the object of his rides to Upton Park.

He had, however, in the contemplation of what he was gaining, fallen
into anxiety about what he might be losing. She belonged to his
brilliant youth; her devotion was the bride of his youth; he was a man
who lived backward almost as intensely as in the present; and,
notwithstanding Laetitia's praiseworthy zeal in attending on his
mother, he suspected some unfaithfulness: hardly without cause: she had
not looked paler of late; her eyes had not reproached him; the secret
of the old days between them had been as little concealed as it was
exposed. She might have buried it, after the way of woman, whose bosoms
can be tombs, if we and the world allow them to be; absolutely
sepulchres, where you lie dead, ghastly. Even if not dead and horrible
to think of, you may be lying cold, somewhere in a corner. Even if
embalmed, you may not be much visited. And how is the world to know you
are embalmed? You are no better than a rotting wretch to the world
that does not have peeps of you in the woman's breast, and see lights
burning and an occasional exhibition of the services of worship. There
are women--tell us not of her of Ephesus!--that have embalmed you, and
have quitted the world to keep the tapers alight, and a stranger comes,
and they, who have your image before them, will suddenly blow out the
vestal flames and treat you as dust to fatten the garden of their
bosoms for a fresh flower of love. Sir Willoughby knew it; he had
experience of it in the form of the stranger; and he knew the
stranger's feelings toward his predecessor and the lady.

He waylaid Laetitia, to talk of himself and his plans: the project of a
run to Italy. Enviable? Yes, but in England you live the higher moral
life. Italy boasts of sensual beauty; the spiritual is yours. "I know
Italy well; I have often wished to act as a cicerone to you there. As
it is, I suppose I shall be with those who know the land as well as I
do, and will not be particularly enthusiastic:--if you are what you
were?" He was guilty of this perplexing twist from one person to
another in a sentence more than once. While he talked exclusively of
himself it seemed to her a condescension. In time he talked principally
of her, beginning with her admirable care of his mother; and he wished
to introduce "a Miss Middleton" to her; he wanted her opinion of Miss
Middleton; he relied on her intuition of character, had never known it
err.

"If I supposed it could err, Miss Dale, I should not be so certain of
myself. I am bound up in my good opinion of you, you see; and you must
continue the same, or where shall I be?" Thus he was led to dwell upon
friendship, and the charm of the friendship of men and women,
"Platonism", as it was called. "I have laughed at it in the world, but
not in the depth of my heart. The world's platonic attachments are
laughable enough. You have taught me that the ideal of friendship is
possible--when we find two who are capable of a disinterested esteem.
The rest of life is duty; duty to parents, duty to country. But
friendship is the holiday of those who can be friends. Wives are
plentiful, friends are rare. I know how rare!"

Laetitia swallowed her thoughts as they sprang up. Why was he torturing
her?--to give himself a holiday? She could bear to lose him--she was
used to it--and bear his indifference, but not that he should disfigure
himself; it made her poor. It was as if he required an oath of her when
he said: "Italy! But I shall never see a day in Italy to compare with
the day of my return to England, or know a pleasure so exquisite as
your welcome of me. Will you be true to that? May I look forward to
just another such meeting?"

He pressed her for an answer. She gave the best she could. He was
dissatisfied, and to her hearing it was hardly in the tone of manliness
that he entreated her to reassure him; he womanized his language. She
had to say: "I am afraid I can not undertake to make it an appointment,
Sir Willoughby," before he recovered his alertness, which he did, for
he was anything but obtuse, with the reply, "You would keep it if you
promised, and freeze at your post. So, as accidents happen, we must
leave it to fate. The will's the thing. You know my detestation of
changes. At least I have you for my tenant, and wherever I am, I see
your light at the end of my park."

"Neither my father nor I would willingly quit Ivy Cottage," said
Laetitia.

"So far, then," he murmured. "You will give me a long notice, and it
must be with my consent if you think of quitting?"

"I could almost engage to do that," she said.

"You love the place?"

"Yes; I am the most contented of cottagers."

"I believe, Miss Dale, it would be well for my happiness were I a
cottager."

"That is the dream of the palace. But to be one, and not to wish to be
other, is quiet sleep in comparison."

"You paint a cottage in colours that tempt one to run from big houses
and households."

"You would run back to them faster, Sir Willoughby."

"You may know me," said he, bowing and passing on contentedly. He
stopped. "But I am not ambitious."

"Perhaps you are too proud for ambition, Sir Willoughby."

"You hit me to the life!"

He passed on regretfully. Clara Middleton did not study and know him
like Laetitia Dale.

Laetitia was left to think it pleased him to play at cat and mouse.
She had not "hit him to the life", or she would have marvelled in
acknowledging how sincere he was.

At her next sitting by the bedside of Lady Patterne she received a
certain measure of insight that might have helped her to fathom him, if
only she could have kept her feelings down.

The old lady was affectionately confidential in talking of her one
subject, her son. "And here is another dashing girl, my dear; she has
money and health and beauty; and so has he; and it appears a fortunate
union; I hope and pray it may be; but we begin to read the world when
our eyes grow dim, because we read the plain lines, and I ask myself
whether money and health and beauty on both sides have not been the
mutual attraction. We tried it before; and that girl Durham was honest,
whatever we may call her. I should have desired an appreciative
thoughtful partner for him, a woman of mind, with another sort of
wealth and beauty. She was honest, she ran away in time; there was a
worse thing possible than that. And now we have the same chapter, and
the same kind of person, who may not be quite as honest; and I shall
not see the end of it. Promise me you will always be good to him; be
my son's friend; his Egeria, he names you. Be what you were to him when
that girl broke his heart, and no one, not even his mother, was allowed
to see that he suffered anything. Comfort him in his sensitiveness.
Willoughby has the most entire faith in you. Were that destroyed--I
shudder! You are, he says, and he has often said, his image of the
constant woman."

Laetitia's hearing took in no more. She repeated to herself for days:
"His image of the constant woman!" Now, when he was a second time
forsaking her, his praise of her constancy wore the painful
ludicrousness of the look of a whimper on the face.



CHAPTER V

CLARA MIDDLETON

The great meeting of Sir Willoughby Patterne and Miss Middleton had
taken place at Cherriton Grange, the seat of a county grandee, where
this young lady of eighteen was first seen rising above the horizon.
She had money and health and beauty, the triune of perfect starriness,
which makes all men astronomers. He looked on her, expecting her to
look at him. But as soon as he looked he found that he must be in
motion to win a look in return. He was one of a pack; many were ahead
of him, the whole of them were eager. He had to debate within himself
how best to communicate to her that he was Willoughby Patterne, before
her gloves were too much soiled to flatter his niceness, for here and
there, all around, she was yielding her hand to partners--obscurant
males whose touch leaves a stain. Far too generally gracious was Her
Starriness to please him. The effect of it, nevertheless, was to hurry
him with all his might into the heat of the chase, while yet he knew no
more of her than that he was competing for a prize, and Willoughby
Patterne was only one of dozens to the young lady.

A deeper student of Science than his rivals, he appreciated Nature's
compliment in the fair ones choice of you. We now scientifically know
that in this department of the universal struggle, success is awarded
to the bettermost. You spread a handsomer tail than your fellows, you
dress a finer top-knot, you pipe a newer note, have a longer stride;
she reviews you in competition, and selects you. The superlative is
magnetic to her. She may be looking elsewhere, and you will see--the
superlative will simply have to beckon, away she glides. She cannot
help herself; it is her nature, and her nature is the guarantee for the
noblest races of men to come of her. In complimenting you, she is a
promise of superior offspring. Science thus--or it is better to say--an
acquaintance with science facilitates the cultivation of aristocracy.
Consequently a successful pursuit and a wresting of her from a body of
competitors, tells you that you are the best man. What is more, it
tells the world so.

Willoughby aired his amiable superlatives in the eye of Miss Middleton;
he had a leg. He was the heir of successful competitors. He had a
style, a tone, an artist tailor, an authority of manner; he had in the
hopeful ardour of the chase among a multitude a freshness that gave him
advantage; and together with his undeviating energy when there was a
prize to be won and possessed, these were scarce resistible. He spared
no pains, for he was adust and athirst for the winning-post. He courted
her father, aware that men likewise, and parents pre-eminently, have
their preference for the larger offer, the deeper pocket, the broader
lands, the respectfuller consideration. Men, after their fashion, as
well as women, distinguish the bettermost, and aid him to succeed, as
Dr. Middleton certainly did in the crisis of the memorable question
proposed to his daughter within a month of Willoughby's reception at
Upton Park. The young lady was astonished at his whirlwind wooing of
her, and bent to it like a sapling. She begged for time; Willoughby
could barely wait. She unhesitatingly owned that she liked no one
better, and he consented. A calm examination of his position told him
that it was unfair so long as he stood engaged, and she did not. She
pleaded a desire to see a little of the world before she plighted
herself. She alarmed him; he assumed the amazing god of love under the
subtlest guise of the divinity. Willingly would he obey her behests,
resignedly languish, were it not for his mother's desire to see the
future lady of Patterne established there before she died. Love shone
cunningly through the mask of filial duty, but the plea of urgency was
reasonable. Dr. Middleton thought it reasonable, supposing his daughter
to have an inclination. She had no disinclination, though she had a
maidenly desire to see a little of the world--grace for one year, she
said. Willoughby reduced the year to six months, and granted that term,
for which, in gratitude, she submitted to stand engaged; and that was
no light whispering of a word. She was implored to enter the state of
captivity by the pronunciation of vows--a private but a binding
ceremonial. She had health and beauty, and money to gild these gifts;
not that he stipulated for money with his bride, but it adds a lustre
to dazzle the world; and, moreover, the pack of rival pursuers hung
close behind, yelping and raising their dolorous throats to the moon.
Captive she must be.

He made her engagement no light whispering matter. It was a solemn
plighting of a troth. Why not? Having said, I am yours, she could say,
I am wholly yours, I am yours forever, I swear it, I will never swerve
from it, I am your wife in heart, yours utterly; our engagement is
written above. To this she considerately appended, "as far as I am
concerned"; a piece of somewhat chilling generosity, and he forced her
to pass him through love's catechism in turn, and came out with fervent
answers that bound him to her too indissolubly to let her doubt of her
being loved. And I am loved! she exclaimed to her heart's echoes, in
simple faith and wonderment. Hardly had she begun to think of love ere
the apparition arose in her path. She had not thought of love with any
warmth, and here it was. She had only dreamed of love as one of the
distant blessings of the mighty world, lying somewhere in the world's
forests, across wild seas, veiled, encompassed with beautiful perils, a
throbbing secrecy, but too remote to quicken her bosom's throbs. Her
chief idea of it was, the enrichment of the world by love.

Thus did Miss Middleton acquiesce in the principle of selection.

And then did the best man of a host blow his triumphant horn, and
loudly.

He looked the fittest; he justified the dictum of Science. The survival
of the Patternes was assured. "I would," he said to his admirer, Mrs.
Mountstuart Jenkinson, "have bargained for health above everything, but
she has everything besides--lineage, beauty, breeding: is what they
call an heiress, and is the most accomplished of her sex." With a
delicate art he conveyed to the lady's understanding that Miss
Middleton had been snatched from a crowd, without a breath of the crowd
having offended his niceness. He did it through sarcasm at your modern
young women, who run about the world nibbling and nibbled at, until
they know one sex as well as the other, and are not a whit less
cognizant of the market than men; pure, possibly; it is not so easy to
say innocent; decidedly not our feminine ideal. Miss Middleton was
different: she was the true ideal, fresh-gathered morning fruit in a
basket, warranted by her bloom.

Women do not defend their younger sisters for doing what they perhaps
have done--lifting a veil to be seen, and peeping at a world where
innocence is as poor a guarantee as a babe's caul against shipwreck.
Women of the world never think of attacking the sensual stipulation for
perfect bloom, silver purity, which is redolent of the Oriental origin
of the love-passion of their lords. Mrs. Mountstuart congratulated Sir
Willoughby on the prize he had won in the fair western-eastern.

"Let me see her," she said; and Miss Middleton was introduced and
critically observed.

She had the mouth that smiles in repose. The lips met full on the
centre of the bow and thinned along to a lifting dimple; the eyelids
also lifted slightly at the outer corners, and seemed, like the lip
into the limpid cheek, quickening up the temples, as with a run of
light, or the ascension indicated off a shoot of colour. Her features
were playfellows of one another, none of them pretending to rigid
correctness, nor the nose to the ordinary dignity of governess among
merry girls, despite which the nose was of a fair design, not acutely
interrogative or inviting to gambols. Aspens imaged in water, waiting
for the breeze, would offer a susceptible lover some suggestion of her
face: a pure, smooth-white face, tenderly flushed in the cheeks, where
the gentle dints, were faintly intermelting even during quietness. Her
eyes were brown, set well between mild lids, often shadowed, not
unwakeful. Her hair of lighter brown, swelling above her temples on the
sweep to the knot, imposed the triangle of the fabulous wild woodland
visage from brow to mouth and chin, evidently in agreement with her
taste; and the triangle suited her; but her face was not significant of
a tameless wildness or of weakness; her equable shut mouth threw its
long curve to guard the small round chin from that effect; her eyes
wavered only in humour, they were steady when thoughtfulness was
awakened; and at such seasons the build of her winter-beechwood hair
lost the touch of nymphlike and whimsical, and strangely, by mere
outline, added to her appearance of studious concentration. Observe the
hawk on stretched wings over the prey he spies, for an idea of this
change in the look of a young lady whom Vernon Whitford could liken to
the Mountain Echo, and Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson pronounced to be "a
dainty rogue in porcelain".

Vernon's fancy of her must have sprung from her prompt and most musical
responsiveness. He preferred the society of her learned father to that
of a girl under twenty engaged to his cousin, but the charm of her
ready tongue and her voice was to his intelligent understanding wit,
natural wit, crystal wit, as opposed to the paste-sparkle of the wit of
the town. In his encomiums he did not quote Miss Middleton's wit;
nevertheless, he ventured to speak of it to Mrs. Mountstuart, causing
that lady to say: "Ah, well, I have not noticed the wit. You may have
the art of drawing it out."

No one had noticed the wit. The corrupted hearing of people required a
collision of sounds, Vernon supposed. For his part, to prove their
excellence, he recollected a great many of Miss Middleton's remarks;
they came flying to him; and so long as he forbore to speak them aloud,
they had a curious wealth of meaning. It could not be all her manner,
however much his own manner might spoil them. It might be, to a certain
degree, her quickness at catching the hue and shade of evanescent
conversation. Possibly by remembering the whole of a conversation
wherein she had her place, the wit was to be tested; only how could any
one retain the heavy portion? As there was no use in being
argumentative on a subject affording him personally, and apparently
solitarily, refreshment and enjoyment, Vernon resolved to keep it to
himself. The eulogies of her beauty, a possession in which he did not
consider her so very conspicuous, irritated him in consequence. To
flatter Sir Willoughby, it was the fashion to exalt her as one of the
types of beauty; the one providentially selected to set off his
masculine type. She was compared to those delicate flowers, the ladies
of the Court of China, on rice-paper. A little French dressing would
make her at home on the sward by the fountain among the lutes and
whispers of the bewitching silken shepherdesses who live though they
never were. Lady Busshe was reminded of the favourite lineaments of the
women of Leonardo, the angels of Luini. Lady Culmer had seen crayon
sketches of demoiselles of the French aristocracy resembling her. Some
one mentioned an antique statue of a figure breathing into a flute: and
the mouth at the flutestop might have a distant semblance of the bend
of her mouth, but this comparison was repelled as grotesque.

For once Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson was unsuccessful.

Her "dainty rogue in porcelain" displeased Sir Willoughby. "Why rogue?"
he said. The lady's fame for hitting the mark fretted him, and the
grace of his bride's fine bearing stood to support him in his
objection. Clara was young, healthy, handsome; she was therefore fitted
to be his wife, the mother of his children, his companion picture.
Certainly they looked well side by side. In walking with her, in
drooping to her, the whole man was made conscious of the female image
of himself by her exquisite unlikeness. She completed him, added the
softer lines wanting to his portrait before the world. He had wooed her
rageingly; he courted her becomingly; with the manly self-possession
enlivened by watchful tact which is pleasing to girls. He never seemed
to undervalue himself in valuing her: a secret priceless in the
courtship of young women that have heads; the lover doubles their sense
of personal worth through not forfeiting his own. Those were proud and
happy days when he rode Black Norman over to Upton Park, and his lady
looked forth for him and knew him coming by the faster beating of her
heart.

Her mind, too, was receptive. She took impressions of his
characteristics, and supplied him a feast. She remembered his chance
phrases; noted his ways, his peculiarities, as no one of her sex had
done. He thanked his cousin Vernon for saying she had wit. She had it,
and of so high a flavour that the more he thought of the epigram
launched at her the more he grew displeased. With the wit to understand
him, and the heart to worship, she had a dignity rarely seen in young
ladies.

"Why rogue?" he insisted with Mrs. Mountstuart.

"I said--in porcelain," she replied.

"Rogue perplexes me."

"Porcelain explains it."

"She has the keenest sense of honour."

"I am sure she is a paragon of rectitude."

"She has a beautiful bearing."

"The carriage of a young princess!"

"I find her perfect."

"And still she may be a dainty rogue in porcelain."

"Are you judging by the mind or the person, ma'am?"

"Both."

"And which is which?"

"There's no distinction."

"Rogue and mistress of Patterne do not go together."

"Why not? She will be a novelty to our neighbourhood and an animation
of the Hall."

"To be frank, rogue does not rightly match with me."

"Take her for a supplement."

"You like her?"

"In love with her! I can imagine life-long amusement in her company.
Attend to my advice: prize the porcelain and play with the rogue."

Sir Willoughby nodded, unilluminated. There was nothing of rogue in
himself, so there could be nothing of it in his bride. Elfishness,
tricksiness, freakishness, were antipathetic to his nature; and he
argued that it was impossible he should have chosen for his complement
a person deserving the title. It would not have been sanctioned by his
guardian genius. His closer acquaintance with Miss Middleton squared
with his first impressions; you know that this is convincing; the
common jury justifies the presentation of the case to them by the grand
jury; and his original conclusion that she was essentially feminine, in
other words, a parasite and a chalice, Clara's conduct confirmed from
day to day. He began to instruct her in the knowledge of himself
without reserve, and she, as she grew less timid with him, became more
reflective.

"I judge by character," he said to Mrs. Mountstuart.

"If you have caught the character of a girl," said she.

"I think I am not far off it."

"So it was thought by the man who dived for the moon in a well."

"How women despise their sex!"

"Not a bit. She has no character yet. You are forming it, and pray be
advised and be merry; the solid is your safest guide; physiognomy and
manners will give you more of a girl's character than all the divings
you can do. She is a charming young woman, only she is one of that
sort."

"Of what sort?" Sir Willoughby asked, impatiently.

"Rogues in porcelain."

"I am persuaded I shall never comprehend it."

"I cannot help you one bit further."

"The word rogue!"

"It was dainty rogue."

"Brittle, would you say?"

"I am quite unable to say."

"An innocent naughtiness?"

"Prettily moulded in a delicate substance."

"You are thinking of some piece of Dresden you suppose her to
resemble."

"I dare say."

"Artificial?"

"You would not have her natural?"

"I am heartily satisfied with her from head to foot, my dear Mrs.
Mountstuart."

"Nothing could be better. And sometimes she will lead, and generally
you will lead, and everything will go well, my dear Sir Willoughby."

Like all rapid phrasers, Mrs. Mountstuart detested the analysis of her
sentence. It had an outline in vagueness, and was flung out to be
apprehended, not dissected. Her directions for the reading of Miss
Middleton's character were the same that she practised in reading Sir
Willoughby's, whose physiognomy and manners bespoke him what she
presumed him to be, a splendidly proud gentleman, with good reason.

Mrs. Mountstuart's advice was wiser than her procedure, for she stopped
short where he declined to begin. He dived below the surface without
studying that index-page. He had won Miss Middleton's hand; he believed
he had captured her heart; but he was not so certain of his possession
of her soul, and he went after it. Our enamoured gentleman had
therefore no tally of Nature's writing above to set beside his
discoveries in the deeps. Now it is a dangerous accompaniment of this
habit of driving, that where we do not light on the discoveries we
anticipate, we fall to work sowing and planting; which becomes a
disturbance of the gentle bosom. Miss Middleton's features were legible
as to the mainspring of her character. He could have seen that she had
a spirit with a natural love of liberty, and required the next thing to
liberty, spaciousness, if she was to own allegiance. Those features,
unhappily, instead of serving for an introduction to the within, were
treated as the mirror of himself. They were indeed of an amiable
sweetness to tempt an accepted lover to angle for the first person in
the second. But he had made the discovery that their minds differed on
one or two points, and a difference of view in his bride was obnoxious
to his repose. He struck at it recurringly to show her error under
various aspects. He desired to shape her character to the feminine of
his own, and betrayed the surprise of a slight disappointment at her
advocacy of her ideas. She said immediately: "It is not too late,
Willoughby," and wounded him, for he wanted her simply to be material
in his hands for him to mould her; he had no other thought. He lectured
her on the theme of the infinity of love. How was it not too late? They
were plighted; they were one eternally; they could not be parted. She
listened gravely, conceiving the infinity as a narrow dwelling where a
voice droned and ceased not. However, she listened. She became an
attentive listener.



CHAPTER VI

HIS COURTSHIP

The world was the principal topic of dissension between these lovers.
His opinion of the world affected her like a creature threatened with a
deprivation of air. He explained to his darling that lovers of
necessity do loathe the world. They live in the world, they accept its
benefits, and assist it as well as they can. In their hearts they must
despise it, shut it out, that their love for one another may pour in a
clear channel, and with all the force they have. They cannot enjoy the
sense of security for their love unless they fence away the world. It
is, you will allow, gross; it is a beast. Formally we thank it for the
good we get of it; only we two have an inner temple where the worship
we conduct is actually, if you would but see it, an excommunication of
the world. We abhor that beast to adore that divinity. This gives us
our oneness, our isolation, our happiness. This is to love with the
soul. Do you see, darling?

She shook her head; she could not see it. She would admit none of the
notorious errors, of the world; its backbiting, selfishness,
coarseness, intrusiveness, infectiousness. She was young. She might,
Willoughby thought, have let herself be led; she was not docile. She
must be up in arms as a champion of the world; and one saw she was
hugging her dream of a romantic world, nothing else. She spoilt the
secret bower-song he delighted to tell over to her. And how, Powers of
Love! is love-making to be pursued if we may not kick the world out of
our bower and wash our hands of it? Love that does not spurn the world
when lovers curtain themselves is a love--is it not so?--that seems to
the unwhipped, scoffing world to go slinking into basiation's
obscurity, instead of on a glorious march behind the screen. Our hero
had a strong sentiment as to the policy of scorning the world for the
sake of defending his personal pride and (to his honour, be it said)
his lady's delicacy.

The act of seeming put them both above the world, said retro Sathanas!
So much, as a piece of tactics: he was highly civilized: in the second
instance, he knew it to be the world which must furnish the dry sticks
for the bonfire of a woman's worship. He knew, too, that he was
prescribing poetry to his betrothed, practicable poetry. She had a
liking for poetry, and sometimes quoted the stuff in defiance of his
pursed mouth and pained murmur: "I am no poet;" but his poetry of the
enclosed and fortified bower, without nonsensical rhymes to catch the
ears of women, appeared incomprehensible to her, if not adverse. She
would not burn the world for him; she would not, though a purer poetry
is little imaginable, reduce herself to ashes, or incense, or essence,
in honour of him, and so, by love's transmutation, literally be the man
she was to marry. She preferred to be herself, with the egoism of
women. She said it: she said: "I must be myself to be of any value to
you, Willoughby." He was indefatigable in his lectures on the
aesthetics of love. Frequently, for an indemnification to her (he had
no desire that she should be a loser by ceasing to admire the world),
he dwelt on his own youthful ideas; and his original fancies about the
world were presented to her as a substitute for the theme.

Miss Middleton bore it well, for she was sure that he meant well.
Bearing so well what was distasteful to her, she became less well able
to bear what she had merely noted in observation before; his view of
scholarship; his manner toward Mr. Vernon Whitford, of whom her father
spoke warmly; the rumour concerning his treatment of a Miss Dale. And
the country tale of Constantia Durham sang itself to her in a new key.
He had no contempt for the world's praises. Mr. Whitford wrote the
letters to the county paper which gained him applause at various great
houses, and he accepted it, and betrayed a tingling fright lest he
should be the victim of a sneer of the world he contemned. Recollecting
his remarks, her mind was afflicted by the "something illogical" in him
that we readily discover when our natures are no longer running free,
and then at once we yearn for a disputation. She resolved that she
would one day, one distant day, provoke it--upon what? The special
point eluded her. The world is too huge a client, and too pervious, too
spotty, for a girl to defend against a man. That "something illogical"
had stirred her feelings more than her intellect to revolt. She could
not constitute herself the advocate of Mr. Whitford. Still she marked
the disputation for an event to come.

Meditating on it, she fell to picturing Sir Willoughby's face at the
first accents of his bride's decided disagreement with him. The
picture once conjured up would not be laid. He was handsome; so
correctly handsome, that a slight unfriendly touch precipitated him
into caricature. His habitual air of happy pride, of indignant
contentment rather, could easily be overdone. Surprise, when he threw
emphasis on it, stretched him with the tall eyebrows of a
mask--limitless under the spell of caricature; and in time, whenever
she was not pleased by her thoughts, she had that, and not his
likeness, for the vision of him. And it was unjust, contrary to her
deeper feelings; she rebuked herself, and as much as her naughty spirit
permitted, she tried to look on him as the world did; an effort
inducing reflections upon the blessings of ignorance. She seemed to
herself beset by a circle of imps, hardly responsible for her thoughts.

He outshone Mr. Whitford in his behaviour to young Crossjay. She had
seen him with the boy, and he was amused, indulgent, almost frolicsome,
in contradistinction to Mr. Whitford's tutorly sharpness. He had the
English father's tone of a liberal allowance for boys' tastes and
pranks, and he ministered to the partiality of the genus for
pocket-money. He did not play the schoolmaster, like bookworms who get
poor little lads in their grasp.

Mr. Whitford avoided her very much. He came to Upton Park on a visit to
her father, and she was not particularly sorry that she saw him only at
table. He treated her by fits to a level scrutiny of deep-set eyes
unpleasantly penetrating. She had liked his eyes. They became
unbearable; they dwelt in the memory as if they had left a
phosphorescent line. She had been taken by playmate boys in her infancy
to peep into hedge-leaves, where the mother-bird brooded on the nest;
and the eyes of the bird in that marvellous dark thickset home, had
sent her away with worlds of fancy. Mr. Whitford's gaze revived her
susceptibility, but not the old happy wondering. She was glad of his
absence, after a certain hour that she passed with Willoughby, a
wretched hour to remember. Mr. Whitford had left, and Willoughby came,
bringing bad news of his mother's health. Lady Patterne was fast
failing. Her son spoke of the loss she would be to him; he spoke of the
dreadfulness of death. He alluded to his own death to come carelessly,
with a philosophical air.

"All of us must go! our time is short."

"Very," she assented.

It sounded like want of feeling.

"If you lose me, Clara!"

"But you are strong, Willoughby."

"I may be cut off to-morrow."

"Do not talk in such a manner."

"It is as well that it should be faced."

"I cannot see what purpose it serves."

"Should you lose me, my love!"

"Willoughby!"

"Oh, the bitter pang of leaving you!"

"Dear Willoughby, you are distressed; your mother may recover; let us
hope she will; I will help to nurse her; I have offered, you know; I am
ready, most anxious. I believe I am a good nurse."

"It is this belief--that one does not die with death!"

"That is our comfort."

"When we love?"

"Does it not promise that we meet again?"

"To walk the world and see you perhaps--with another!"

"See me?--Where? Here?"

"Wedded . . . to another. You! my bride; whom I call mine; and you are!
You would be still--in that horror! But all things are possible; women
are women; they swim in infidelity, from wave to wave! I know them."

"Willoughby, do not torment yourself and me, I beg you."

He meditated profoundly, and asked her: "Could you be such a saint
among women?"

"I think I am a more than usually childish girl."

"Not to forget me?"

"Oh! no."

"Still to be mine?"

"I am yours."

"To plight yourself?"

"It is done."

"Be mine beyond death?"

"Married is married, I think."

"Clara! to dedicate your life to our love! Never one touch; not one
whisper! not a thought, not a dream! Could you--it agonizes me to
imagine . . . be inviolate? mine above?--mine before all men, though I
am gone:--true to my dust? Tell me. Give me that assurance. True to my
name!--Oh, I hear them. 'His relict!' Buzzings about Lady Patterne.
'The widow.' If you knew their talk of widows! Shut your ears, my
angel! But if she holds them off and keeps her path, they are forced to
respect her. The dead husband is not the dishonoured wretch they
fancied him, because he was out of their way. He lives in the heart of
his wife. Clara! my Clara! as I live in yours, whether here or away;
whether you are a wife or widow, there is no distinction for love--I am
your husband--say it--eternally. I must have peace; I cannot endure the
pain. Depressed, yes; I have cause to be. But it has haunted me ever
since we joined hands. To have you--to lose you!"

"Is it not possible that I may be the first to die?" said Miss
Middleton.

"And lose you, with the thought that you, lovely as you are, and the
dogs of the world barking round you, might . . . Is it any wonder that
I have my feeling for the world? This hand!--the thought is horrible.
You would be surrounded; men are brutes; the scent of unfaithfulness
excites them, overjoys them. And I helpless! The thought is maddening.
I see a ring of monkeys grinning. There is your beauty, and man's
delight in desecrating. You would be worried night and day to quit my
name, to . . . I feel the blow now. You would have no rest for them,
nothing to cling to without your oath."

"An oath!" said Miss Middleton.

"It is no delusion, my love, when I tell you that with this thought
upon me I see a ring of monkey faces grinning at me; they haunt me. But
you do swear it! Once, and I will never trouble you on the subject
again. My weakness! if you like. You will learn that it is love, a
man's love, stronger than death."

"An oath?" she said, and moved her lips to recall what she might have
said and forgotten. "To what? what oath?"

"That you will be true to me dead as well as living! Whisper it."

"Willoughby, I shall be true to my vows at the altar."

"To me! me!"

"It will be to you."

"To my soul. No heaven can be for me--I see none, only torture, unless
I have your word, Clara. I trust it. I will trust it implicitly. My
confidence in you is absolute."

"Then you need not be troubled."

"It is for you, my love; that you may be armed and strong when I am not
by to protect you."

"Our views of the world are opposed, Willoughby."

"Consent; gratify me; swear it. Say: 'Beyond death.' Whisper it. I ask
for nothing more. Women think the husband's grave breaks the bond, cuts
the tie, sets them loose. They wed the flesh--pah! What I call on you
for is nobility; the transcendent nobility of faithfulness beyond
death. 'His widow!' let them say; a saint in widowhood."

"My vows at the altar must suffice."

"You will not? Clara!"

"I am plighted to you."

"Not a word?--a simple promise? But you love me?"

"I have given you the best proof of it that I can."

"Consider how utterly I place confidence in you."

"I hope it is well placed."

"I could kneel to you, to worship you, if you would, Clara!"

"Kneel to Heaven, not to me, Willoughby. I am--I wish I were able to
tell what I am. I may be inconstant; I do not know myself. Think;
question yourself whether I am really the person you should marry. Your
wife should have great qualities of mind and soul. I will consent to
hear that I do not possess them, and abide by the verdict."

"You do; you do possess them!" Willoughby cried. "When you know better
what the world is, you will understand my anxiety. Alive, I am strong
to shield you from it; dead, helpless--that is all. You would be clad
in mail, steel-proof, inviolable, if you would . . . But try to enter
into my mind; think with me, feel with me. When you have once
comprehended the intensity of the love of a man like me, you will not
require asking. It is the difference of the elect and the vulgar; of
the ideal of love from the coupling of the herds. We will let it drop.
At least, I have your hand. As long as I live I have your hand. Ought I
not to be satisfied? I am; only I see further than most men, and feel
more deeply. And now I must ride to my mother's bedside. She dies Lady
Patterne! It might have been that she . . . But she is a woman of
women! With a father-in-law! Just heaven! Could I have stood by her
then with the same feelings of reverence? A very little, my love, and
everything gained for us by civilization crumbles; we fall back to the
first mortar-bowl we were bruised and stirred in. My thoughts, when I
take my stand to watch by her, come to this conclusion, that,
especially in women, distinction is the thing to be aimed at. Otherwise
we are a weltering human mass. Women must teach us to venerate them, or
we may as well be bleating and barking and bellowing. So, now enough.
You have but to think a little. I must be off. It may have happened
during my absence. I will write. I shall hear from you? Come and see me
mount Black Norman. My respects to your father. I have no time to pay
them in person. One!"

He took the one--love's mystical number--from which commonly spring
multitudes; but, on the present occasion, it was a single one, and
cold. She watched him riding away on his gallant horse, as handsome a
cavalier as the world could show, and the contrast of his recent
language and his fine figure was a riddle that froze her blood. Speech
so foreign to her ears, unnatural in tone, unmanlike even for a lover
(who is allowed a softer dialect), set her vainly sounding for the
source and drift of it. She was glad of not having to encounter eyes
like Mr. Vernon Whitford's.

On behalf of Sir Willoughby, it is to be said that his mother, without
infringing on the degree of respect for his decisions and sentiments
exacted by him, had talked to him of Miss Middleton, suggesting a
volatility of temperament in the young lady that struck him as
consentaneous with Mrs Mountstuart's "rogue in porcelain", and
alarmed him as the independent observations of two world-wise women.
Nor was it incumbent upon him personally to credit the volatility in
order, as far as he could, to effect the soul-insurance of his bride,
that he might hold the security of the policy. The desire for it was in
him; his mother had merely tolled a warning bell that he had put in
motion before. Clara was not a Constantia. But she was a woman, and he
had been deceived by women, as a man fostering his high ideal of them
will surely be. The strain he adopted was quite natural to his passion
and his theme. The language of the primitive sentiments of men is of
the same expression at all times, minus the primitive colours when a
modern gentleman addresses his lady.

Lady Patterne died in the winter season of the new year. In April Dr
Middleton had to quit Upton Park, and he had not found a place of
residence, nor did he quite know what to do with himself in the
prospect of his daughter's marriage and desertion of him. Sir
Willoughby proposed to find him a house within a circuit of the
neighbourhood of Patterne. Moreover, he invited the Rev. Doctor and his
daughter to come to Patterne from Upton for a month, and make
acquaintance with his aunts, the ladies Eleanor and Isabel Patterne, so
that it might not be so strange to Clara to have them as her housemates
after her marriage. Dr. Middleton omitted to consult his daughter
before accepting the invitation, and it appeared, when he did speak to
her, that it should have been done. But she said, mildly, "Very well,
papa."

Sir Willoughby had to visit the metropolis and an estate in another
county, whence he wrote to his betrothed daily. He returned to Patterne
in time to arrange for the welcome of his guests; too late, however, to
ride over to them; and, meanwhile, during his absence, Miss Middleton
had bethought herself that she ought to have given her last days of
freedom to her friends. After the weeks to be passed at Patterne, very
few weeks were left to her, and she had a wish to run to Switzerland or
Tyrol and see the Alps; a quaint idea, her father thought. She repeated
it seriously, and Dr. Middleton perceived a feminine shuttle of
indecision at work in her head, frightful to him, considering that they
signified hesitation between the excellent library and capital
wine-cellar of Patterne Hall, together with the society of that
promising young scholar, Mr. Vernon Whitford, on the one side, and a
career of hotels--equivalent to being rammed into monster artillery
with a crowd every night, and shot off on a day's journey through space
every morning--on the other.

"You will have your travelling and your Alps after the ceremony," he
said.

"I think I would rather stay at home," said she.

Dr Middleton rejoined: "I would."

"But I am not married yet papa."

"As good, my dear."

"A little change of scene, I thought . . ."

"We have accepted Willoughby's invitation. And he helps me to a house
near you."

"You wish to be near me, papa?"

"Proximate--at a remove: communicable."

"Why should we separate?"

"For the reason, my dear, that you exchange a father for a husband."

"If I do not want to exchange?"

"To purchase, you must pay, my child. Husbands are not given for
nothing."

"No. But I should have you, papa!"

"Should?"

"They have not yet parted us, dear papa."

"What does that mean?" he asked, fussily. He was in a gentle stew
already, apprehensive of a disturbance of the serenity precious to
scholars by postponements of the ceremony and a prolongation of a
father's worries.

"Oh, the common meaning, papa," she said, seeing how it was with him.

"Ah!" said he, nodding and blinking gradually back to a state of
composure, glad to be appeased on any terms; for mutability is but
another name for the sex, and it is the enemy of the scholar.

She suggested that two weeks of Patterne would offer plenty of time to
inspect the empty houses of the district, and should be sufficient,
considering the claims of friends, and the necessity of going the round
of London shops.

"Two or three weeks," he agreed, hurriedly, by way of compromise with
that fearful prospect.



CHAPTER VII

THE BETROTHED

During the drive from Upton to Patterne, Miss Middleton hoped, she
partly believed, that there was to be a change in Sir Willoughby's
manner of courtship. He had been so different a wooer. She remembered
with some half-conscious desperation of fervour what she had thought of
him at his first approaches, and in accepting him. Had she seen him
with the eyes of the world, thinking they were her own? That look of
his, the look of "indignant contentment", had then been a most noble
conquering look, splendid as a general's plume at the gallop. It could
not have altered. Was it that her eyes had altered?

The spirit of those days rose up within her to reproach, her and
whisper of their renewal: she remembered her rosy dreams and the image
she had of him, her throbbing pride in him, her choking richness of
happiness: and also her vain attempting to be very humble, usually
ending in a carol, quaint to think of, not without charm, but quaint,
puzzling.

Now men whose incomes have been restricted to the extent that they must
live on their capital, soon grow relieved of the forethoughtful anguish
wasting them by the hilarious comforts of the lap upon which they have
sunk back, insomuch that they are apt to solace themselves for their
intolerable anticipations of famine in the household by giving loose to
one fit or more of reckless lavishness. Lovers in like manner live on
their capital from failure of income: they, too, for the sake of
stifling apprehension and piping to the present hour, are lavish of
their stock, so as rapidly to attenuate it: they have their fits of
intoxication in view of coming famine: they force memory into play,
love retrospectively, enter the old house of the past and ravage the
larder, and would gladly, even resolutely, continue in illusion if it
were possible for the broadest honey-store of reminiscences to hold out
for a length of time against a mortal appetite: which in good sooth
stands on the alternative of a consumption of the hive or of the
creature it is for nourishing. Here do lovers show that they are
perishable. More than the poor clay world they need fresh supplies,
right wholesome juices; as it were, life in the burst of the bud,
fruits yet on the tree, rather than potted provender. The latter is
excellent for by-and-by, when there will be a vast deal more to
remember, and appetite shall have but one tooth remaining. Should their
minds perchance have been saturated by their first impressions and have
retained them, loving by the accountable light of reason, they may have
fair harvests, as in the early time; but that case is rare. In other
words, love is an affair of two, and is only for two that can be as
quick, as constant in intercommunication as are sun and earth, through
the cloud or face to face. They take their breath of life from one
another in signs of affection, proofs of faithfulness, incentives to
admiration. Thus it is with men and women in love's good season. But a
solitary soul dragging a log must make the log a God to rejoice in the
burden. That is not love.

Clara was the least fitted of all women to drag a log. Few girls would
be so rapid in exhausting capital. She was feminine indeed, but she
wanted comradeship, a living and frank exchange of the best in both,
with the deeper feelings untroubled. To be fixed at the mouth of a
mine, and to have to descend it daily, and not to discover great
opulence below; on the contrary, to be chilled in subterranean
sunlessness, without any substantial quality that she could grasp, only
the mystery of the inefficient tallow-light in those caverns of the
complacent-talking man: this appeared to her too extreme a probation
for two or three weeks. How of a lifetime of it!

She was compelled by her nature to hope, expect and believe that Sir
Willoughby would again be the man she had known when she accepted him.
Very singularly, to show her simple spirit at the time, she was unaware
of any physical coldness to him; she knew of nothing but her mind at
work, objecting to this and that, desiring changes. She did not dream
of being on the giddy ridge of the passive or negative sentiment of
love, where one step to the wrong side precipitates us into the state
of repulsion.

Her eyes were lively at their meeting--so were his. She liked to see
him on the steps, with young Crossjay under his arm. Sir Willoughby
told her in his pleasantest humour of the boy's having got into the
laboratory that morning to escape his task-master, and blown out the
windows. She administered a chiding to the delinquent in the same
spirit, while Sir Willoughby led her on his arm across the threshold,
whispering: "Soon for good!" In reply to the whisper, she begged for
more of the story of young Crossjay. "Come into the laboratory," said
he, a little less laughingly than softly; and Clara begged her father
to come and see young Crossjay's latest pranks. Sir Willoughby
whispered to her of the length of their separation, and his joy to
welcome her to the house where she would reign as mistress very won. He
numbered the weeks. He whispered: "Come." In the hurry of the moment
she did not examine a lightning terror that shot through her. It
passed, and was no more than the shadow which bends the summer grasses,
leaving a ruffle of her ideas, in wonder of her having feared herself
for something. Her father was with them. She and Willoughby were not
yet alone.

Young Crossjay had not accomplished so fine a piece of destruction as
Sir Willoughby's humour proclaimed of him. He had connected a battery
with a train of gunpowder, shattering a window-frame and unsettling
some bricks. Dr. Middleton asked if the youth was excluded from the
library, and rejoiced to hear that it was a sealed door to him. Thither
they went. Vernon Whitford was away on one of his long walks.

"There, papa, you see he is not so very faithful to you," said Clara.

Dr Middleton stood frowning over MS notes on the table, in Vernon's
handwriting. He flung up the hair from his forehead and dropped into a
seat to inspect them closely. He was now immoveable. Clara was obliged
to leave him there. She was led to think that Willoughby had drawn them
to the library with the design to be rid of her protector, and she
began to fear him. She proposed to pay her respects to the ladies
Eleanor and Isabel. They were not seen, and a footman reported in the
drawing-room that they were out driving. She grasped young Crossjay's
hand. Sir Willoughby dispatched him to Mrs. Montague, the housekeeper,
for a tea of cakes and jam.

"Off!" he said, and the boy had to run.

Clara saw herself without a shield.

"And the garden!" she cried. "I love the garden; I must go and see what
flowers are up with you. In spring I care most for wild flowers, and if
you will show me daffodils and crocuses and anemones . . ."

"My dearest Clara! my bride!" said he.

"Because they are vulgar flowers?" she asked him, artlessly, to account
for his detaining her.

Why would he not wait to deserve her!--no, not deserve--to reconcile
her with her real position; not reconcile, but to repair the image of
him in her mind, before he claimed his apparent right!

He did not wait. He pressed her to his bosom.

"You are mine, my Clara--utterly mine; every thought, every feeling. We
are one: the world may do its worst. I have been longing for you,
looking forward. You save me from a thousand vexations. One is
perpetually crossed. That is all outside us. We two! With you I am
secure! Soon! I could not tell you whether the world's alive or dead.
My dearest!"

She came out of it with the sensations of the frightened child that has
had its dip in sea-water, sharpened to think that after all it was not
so severe a trial. Such was her idea; and she said to herself
immediately: What am I that I should complain? Two minutes earlier she
would not have thought it; but humiliated pride falls lower than
humbleness.

She did not blame him; she fell in her own esteem; less because she was
the betrothed Clara Middleton, which was now palpable as a shot in the
breast of a bird, than that she was a captured woman, of whom it is
absolutely expected that she must submit, and when she would rather be
gazing at flowers. Clara had shame of her sex. They cannot take a step
without becoming bondwomen: into what a slavery! For herself, her trial
was over, she thought. As for herself, she merely complained of a
prematureness and crudity best unanalyzed. In truth, she could hardly
be said to complain. She did but criticize him and wonder that a man
was unable to perceive, or was not arrested by perceiving,
unwillingness, discordance, dull compliance; the bondwoman's due
instead of the bride's consent. Oh, sharp distinction, as between two
spheres!

She meted him justice; she admitted that he had spoken in a lover-like
tone. Had it not been for the iteration of "the world", she would not
have objected critically to his words, though they were words of
downright appropriation. He had the right to use them, since she was to
be married to him. But if he had only waited before playing the
privileged lover!

Sir Willoughby was enraptured with her. Even so purely coldly,
statue-like, Dian-like, would he have prescribed his bride's reception
of his caress. The suffusion of crimson coming over her subsequently,
showing her divinely feminine in reflective bashfulness, agreed with
his highest definitions of female character.

"Let me conduct you to the garden, my love," he said.

She replied: "I think I would rather go to my room."

"I will send you a wild-flower posy."

"Flowers, no; I do not like them to be gathered."

"I will wait for you on the lawn."

"My head is rather heavy."

His deep concern and tenderness brought him close.

She assured him sparklingly that she was well. She was ready to
accompany him to the garden and stroll over the park.

"Headache it is not," she added.

But she had to pay the fee for inviting a solicitous accepted
gentleman's proximity.

This time she blamed herself and him, and the world he abused, and
destiny into the bargain. And she cared less about the probation; but
she craved for liberty. With a frigidity that astonished her, she
marvelled at the act of kissing, and at the obligation it forced upon
an inanimate person to be an accomplice. Why was she not free? By what
strange right was it that she was treated as a possession?

"I will try to walk off the heaviness," she said.

"My own girl must not fatigue herself."

"Oh, no; I shall not."

"Sit with me. Your Willoughby is your devoted attendant."

"I have a desire for the air."

"Then we will walk out."

She was horrified to think how far she had drawn away from him, and now
placed her hand on his arm to appease her self-accusations and
propitiate duty. He spoke as she had wished, his manner was what she
had wished; she was his bride, almost his wife; her conduct was a kind
of madness; she could not understand it.

Good sense and duty counselled her to control her wayward spirit.

He fondled her hand, and to that she grew accustomed; her hand was at a
distance. And what is a hand? Leaving it where it was, she treated it
as a link between herself and dutiful goodness. Two months hence she
was a bondwoman for life! She regretted that she had not gone to her
room to strengthen herself with a review of her situation, and meet him
thoroughly resigned to her fate. She fancied she would have come down
to him amicably. It was his present respectfulness and easy
conversation that tricked her burning nerves with the fancy. Five weeks
of perfect liberty in the mountains, she thought, would have prepared
her for the days of bells. All that she required was a separation
offering new scenes, where she might reflect undisturbed, feel clear
again.

He led her about the flower-beds; too much as if he were giving a
convalescent an airing. She chafed at it, and pricked herself with
remorse. In contrition she expatiated on the beauty of the garden.

"All is yours, my Clara."

An oppressive load it seemed to her! She passively yielded to the man
in his form of attentive courtier; his mansion, estate, and wealth
overwhelmed her. They suggested the price to be paid. Yet she
recollected that on her last departure through the park she had been
proud of the rolling green and spreading trees. Poison of some sort
must be operating in her. She had not come to him to-day with this
feeling of sullen antagonism; she had caught it here.

"You have been well, my Clara?"

"Quite."

"Not a hint of illness?"

"None."

"My bride must have her health if all the doctors in the kingdom die
for it! My darling!"

"And tell me: the dogs?"

"Dogs and horses are in very good condition."

"I am glad. Do you know, I love those ancient French chateaux and farms
in one, where salon windows look on poultry-yard and stalls. I like
that homeliness with beasts and peasants."

He bowed indulgently.

"I am afraid we can't do it for you in England, my Clara."

"No."

"And I like the farm," said he. "But I think our drawing-rooms have a
better atmosphere off the garden. As to our peasantry, we cannot, I
apprehend, modify our class demarcations without risk of disintegrating
the social structure."

"Perhaps. I proposed nothing."

"My love, I would entreat you to propose if I were convinced that I
could obey."

"You are very good."

"I find my merit nowhere but in your satisfaction."

Although she was not thirsting for dulcet sayings, the peacefulness of
other than invitations to the exposition of his mysteries and of their
isolation in oneness, inspired her with such calm that she beat about
in her brain, as if it were in the brain, for the specific injury he
had committed. Sweeping from sensation to sensation, the young, whom
sensations impel and distract, can rarely date their disturbance from a
particular one; unless it be some great villain injury that has been
done; and Clara had not felt an individual shame in his caress; the
shame of her sex was but a passing protest, that left no stamp. So she
conceived she had been behaving cruelly, and said, "Willoughby";
because she was aware of the omission of his name in her previous
remarks.

His whole attention was given to her.

She had to invent the sequel. "I was going to beg you, Willoughby, do
not seek to spoil me. You compliment me. Compliments are not suited to
me. You think too highly of me. It is nearly as bad as to be slighted.
I am . . . I am a . . ." But she could not follow his example; even as
far as she had gone, her prim little sketch of herself, set beside her
real, ugly, earnest feelings, rang of a mincing simplicity, and was a
step in falseness. How could she display what she was?

"Do I not know you?" he said.

The melodious bass notes, expressive of conviction on that point,
signified as well as the words that no answer was the right answer. She
could not dissent without turning his music to discord, his complacency
to amazement. She held her tongue, knowing that he did not know her,
and speculating on the division made bare by their degrees of the
knowledge, a deep cleft.

He alluded to friends in her neighbourhood and his own. The
bridesmaids were mentioned.

"Miss Dale, you will hear from my aunt Eleanor, declines, on the plea
of indifferent health. She is rather a morbid person, with all her
really estimable qualities. It will do no harm to have none but young
ladies of your own age; a bouquet of young buds: though one blowing
flower among them . . . However, she has decided. My principal
annoyance has been Vernon's refusal to act as my best man."

"Mr. Whitford refuses?"

"He half refuses. I do not take no from him. His pretext is a dislike
to the ceremony."

"I share it with him."

"I sympathize with you. If we might say the words and pass from sight!
There is a way of cutting off the world: I have it at times completely:
I lose it again, as if it were a cabalistic phrase one had to utter.
But with you! You give it me for good. It will be for ever, eternally,
my Clara. Nothing can harm, nothing touch us; we are one another's. Let
the world fight it out; we have nothing to do with it."

"If Mr. Whitford should persist in refusing?"

"So entirely one, that there never can be question of external
influences. I am, we will say, riding home from the hunt: I see you
awaiting me: I read your heart as though you were beside me. And I
know that I am coming to the one who reads mine! You have me, you have
me like an open book, you, and only you!"

"I am to be always at home?" Clara said, unheeded, and relieved by his
not hearing.

"Have you realized it?--that we are invulnerable! The world cannot hurt
us: it cannot touch us. Felicity is ours, and we are impervious in the
enjoyment of it. Something divine! surely something divine on earth?
Clara!--being to one another that between which the world can never
interpose! What I do is right: what you do is right. Perfect to one
another! Each new day we rise to study and delight in new secrets. Away
with the crowd! We have not even to say it; we are in an atmosphere
where the world cannot breathe."

"Oh, the world!" Clara partly carolled on a sigh that sunk deep.

Hearing him talk as one exulting on the mountain-top, when she knew him
to be in the abyss, was very strange, provocative of scorn.

"My letters?" he said, incitingly.

"I read them."

"Circumstances have imposed a long courtship on us, my Clara; and I,
perhaps lamenting the laws of decorum--I have done so!--still felt the
benefit of the gradual initiation. It is not good for women to be
surprised by a sudden revelation of man's character. We also have
things to learn--there is matter for learning everywhere. Some day you
will tell me the difference of what you think of me now, from what you
thought when we first . . . ?"

An impulse of double-minded acquiescence caused Clara to stammer as on
a sob.

"I--I daresay I shall."

She added, "If it is necessary."

Then she cried out: "Why do you attack the world? You always make me
pity it."

He smiled at her youthfulness. "I have passed through that stage. It
leads to my sentiment. Pity it, by all means."

"No," said she, "but pity it, side with it, not consider it so bad. The
world has faults; glaciers have crevices, mountains have chasms; but is
not the effect of the whole sublime? Not to admire the mountain and the
glacier because they can be cruel, seems to me . . . And the world is
beautiful."

"The world of nature, yes. The world of men?"

"Yes."

"My love, I suspect you to be thinking of the world of ballrooms."

"I am thinking of the world that contains real and great generosity,
true heroism. We see it round us."

"We read of it. The world of the romance writer!"

"No: the living world. I am sure it is our duty to love it. I am sure
we weaken ourselves if we do not. If I did not, I should be looking on
mist, hearing a perpetual boom instead of music. I remember hearing Mr.
Whitford say that cynicism is intellectual dandyism without the
coxcomb's feathers; and it seems to me that cynics are only happy in
making the world as barren to others as they have made it for
themselves."

"Old Vernon!" ejaculated Sir Willoughby, with a countenance rather
uneasy, as if it had been flicked with a glove. "He strings his phrases
by the dozen."

"Papa contradicts that, and says he is very clever and very simple."

"As to cynics, my dear Clara, oh, certainly, certainly: you are right.
They are laughable, contemptible. But understand me. I mean, we cannot
feel, or if we feel we cannot so intensely feel, our oneness, except by
dividing ourselves from the world."

"Is it an art?"

"If you like. It is our poetry! But does not love shun the world? Two
that love must have their sustenance in isolation."

"No: they will be eating themselves up."

"The purer the beauty, the more it will be out of the world."

"But not opposed."

"Put it in this way," Willoughby condescended. "Has experience the same
opinion of the world as ignorance?"

"It should have more charity."

"Does virtue feel at home in the world?"

"Where it should be an example, to my idea."

"Is the world agreeable to holiness?"

"Then, are you in favour of monasteries?"

He poured a little runlet of half laughter over her head, of the sound
assumed by genial compassion.

It is irritating to hear that when we imagine we have spoken to the
point.

"Now in my letters, Clara . . ."

"I have no memory, Willoughby!"

"You will, however, have observed that I am not completely myself in my
letters . . ."

"In your letters to men you may be."

The remark threw a pause across his thoughts. He was of a sensitiveness
terribly tender. A single stroke on it reverberated swellingly within
the man, and most, and infuriately searching, at the spots where he had
been wounded, especially where he feared the world might have guessed
the wound. Did she imply that he had no hand for love-letters? Was it
her meaning that women would not have much taste for his epistolary
correspondence? She had spoken in the plural, with an accent on "men".
Had she heard of Constantia? Had she formed her own judgement about the
creature? The supernatural sensitiveness of Sir Willoughby shrieked a
peal of affirmatives. He had often meditated on the moral obligation of
his unfolding to Clara the whole truth of his conduct to Constantia;
for whom, as for other suicides, there were excuses. He at least was
bound to supply them. She had behaved badly; but had he not given her
some cause? If so, manliness was bound to confess it.

Supposing Clara heard the world's version first! Men whose pride is
their backbone suffer convulsions where other men are barely aware of a
shock, and Sir Willoughby was taken with galvanic jumpings of the
spirit within him, at the idea of the world whispering to Clara that he
had been jilted.

"My letters to men, you say, my love?"

"Your letters of business."

"Completely myself in my letters of business?" He stared indeed.

She relaxed the tension of his figure by remarking: "You are able to
express yourself to men as your meaning dictates. In writing to . . .
to us it is, I suppose, more difficult."

"True, my love. I will not exactly say difficult. I can acknowledge no
difficulty. Language, I should say, is not fitted to express emotion.
Passion rejects it."

"For dumb-show and pantomime?"

"No; but the writing of it coldly."

"Ah, coldly!"

"My letters disappoint you?"

"I have not implied that they do."

"My feelings, dearest, are too strong for transcription. I feel, pen in
hand, like the mythological Titan at war with Jove, strong enough to
hurl mountains, and finding nothing but pebbles. The simile is a good
one. You must not judge of me by my letters."

"I do not; I like them," said Clara.

She blushed, eyed him hurriedly, and seeing him complacent, resumed, "I
prefer the pebble to the mountain; but if you read poetry you would not
think human speech incapable of. . ."

"My love, I detest artifice. Poetry is a profession."

"Our poets would prove to you . . ."

"As I have often observed, Clara, I am no poet."

"I have not accused you, Willoughby."

"No poet, and with no wish to be a poet. Were I one, my life would
supply material, I can assure you, my love. My conscience is not
entirely at rest. Perhaps the heaviest matter troubling it is that in
which I was least wilfully guilty. You have heard of a Miss Durham?"

"I have heard--yes--of her."

"She may be happy. I trust she is. If she is not, I cannot escape some
blame. An instance of the difference between myself and the world, now.
The world charges it upon her. I have interceded to exonerate her."

"That was generous, Willoughby."

"Stay. I fear I was the primary offender. But I, Clara, I, under a
sense of honour, acting under a sense of honour, would have carried my
engagement through."

"What had you done?"

"The story is long, dating from an early day, in the 'downy antiquity
of my youth', as Vernon says."

"Mr. Whitford says that?"

"One of old Vernon's odd sayings. It's a story of an early
fascination."

"Papa tells me Mr. Whitford speaks at times with wise humour."

"Family considerations--the lady's health among other things; her
position in the calculations of relatives--intervened. Still there was
the fascination. I have to own it. Grounds for feminine jealousy."

"Is it at an end?"

"Now? with you? my darling Clara! indeed at an end, or could I have
opened my inmost heart to you! Could I have spoken of myself so
unreservedly that in part you know me as I know myself! Oh, but would
it have been possible to enclose you with myself in that intimate
union? so secret, unassailable!"

"You did not speak to her as you speak to me?"

"In no degree."

"What could have! . . ." Clara checked the murmured exclamation.

Sir Willoughby's expoundings on his latest of texts would have poured
forth, had not a footman stepped across the lawn to inform him that his
builder was in the laboratory and requested permission to consult with
him.

Clara's plea of a horror of the talk of bricks and joists excused her
from accompanying him. He had hardly been satisfied by her manner, he
knew not why. He left her, convinced that he must do and say more to
reach down to her female intelligence.

She saw young Crossjay, springing with pots of jam in him, join his
patron at a bound, and taking a lift of arms, fly aloft, clapping
heels. Her reflections were confused. Sir Willoughby was admirable with
the lad. "Is he two men?" she thought; and the thought ensued, "Am I
unjust?" She headed a run with young Crossjay to divert her mind.



CHAPTER VIII

A RUN WITH THE TRUANT; A WALK WITH THE MASTER

The sight of Miss Middleton running inflamed young Crossjay with the
passion of the game of hare and hounds. He shouted a view-halloo, and
flung up his legs. She was fleet; she ran as though a hundred little
feet were bearing her onward smooth as water over the lawn and the
sweeps of grass of the park, so swiftly did the hidden pair multiply
one another to speed her. So sweet was she in her flowing pace, that
the boy, as became his age, translated admiration into a dogged frenzy
of pursuit, and continued pounding along, when far outstripped,
determined to run her down or die. Suddenly her flight wound to an end
in a dozen twittering steps, and she sank. Young Crossjay attained her,
with just breath enough to say: "You are a runner!"

"I forgot you had been having your tea, my poor boy," said she.

"And you don't pant a bit!" was his encomium.

"Dear me, no; not more than a bird. You might as well try to catch a
bird."

Young Crossjay gave a knowing nod. "Wait till I get my second wind."

"Now you must confess that girls run faster than boys."

"They may at the start."

"They do everything better."

"They're flash-in-the-pans."

"They learn their lessons."

"You can't make soldiers or sailors of them, though."

"And that is untrue. Have you never read of Mary Ambree? and Mistress
Hannah Snell of Pondicherry? And there was the bride of the celebrated
William Taylor. And what do you say to Joan of Arc? What do you say to
Boadicea? I suppose you have never heard of the Amazons."

"They weren't English."

"Then it is your own countrywomen you decry, sir!"

Young Crossjay betrayed anxiety about his false position, and begged
for the stories of Mary Ambree and the others who were English.

"See, you will not read for yourself, you hide and play truant with Mr.
Whitford, and the consequence is you are ignorant of your country's
history."

Miss Middleton rebuked him, enjoying his wriggle between a perception
of her fun and an acknowledgment of his peccancy. She commanded him to
tell her which was the glorious Valentine's day of our naval annals;
the name of the hero of the day, and the name of his ship. To these
questions his answers were as ready as the guns of the good ship
Captain, for the Spanish four-decker.

"And that you owe to Mr. Whitford," said Miss Middleton.

"He bought me the books," young Crossjay growled, and plucked at grass
blades and bit them, foreseeing dimly but certainly the termination of
all this.

Miss Middleton lay back on the grass and said: "Are you going to be
fond of me, Crossjay?"

The boy sat blinking. His desire was to prove to her that lie was
immoderately fond of her already; and he might have flown at her neck
had she been sitting up, but her recumbency and eyelids half closed
excited wonder in him and awe. His young heart beat fast.

"Because, my dear boy," she said, leaning on her elbow, "you are a very
nice boy, but an ungrateful boy, and there is no telling whether you
will not punish any one who cares for you. Come along with me; pluck me
some of these cowslips, and the speedwells near them; I think we both
love wild-flowers." She rose and took his arm. "You shall row me on the
lake while I talk to you seriously."

It was she, however, who took the sculls at the boat-house, for she had
been a playfellow with boys, and knew that one of them engaged in a
manly exercise is not likely to listen to a woman.

"Now, Crossjay," she said. Dense gloom overcame him like a cowl. She
bent across her hands to laugh. "As if I were going to lecture you, you
silly boy!" He began to brighten dubiously. "I used to be as fond of
birdsnesting as you are. I like brave boys, and I like you for wanting
to enter the Royal Navy. Only, how can you if you do not learn? You
must get the captains to pass you, you know. Somebody spoils you: Miss
Dale or Mr. Whitford."

"Do they?" sung out young Crossjay.

"Sir Willoughby does?"

"I don't know about spoil. I can come round him."

"I am sure he is very kind to you. I dare say you think Mr. Whitford
rather severe. You should remember he has to teach you, so that you may
pass for the navy. You must not dislike him because he makes you work.
Supposing you had blown yourself up to-day! You would have thought it
better to have been working with Mr. Whitford."

"Sir Willoughby says, when he's married, you won't let me hide."

"Ah! It is wrong to pet a big boy like you. Does not he what you call
tip you, Crossjay?"

"Generally half-crown pieces. I've had a crown-piece. I've had
sovereigns."

"And for that you do as he bids you? And he indulges you because you
. . . Well, but though Mr. Whitford does not give you money, he gives you
his time, he tries to get you into the navy."

"He pays for me."

"What do you say?"

"My keep. And, as for liking him, if he were at the bottom of the water
here, I'd go down after him. I mean to learn. We're both of us here at
six o'clock in the morning, when it's light, and have a swim. He taught
me. Only, I never cared for schoolbooks."

"Are you quite certain that Mr. Whitford pays for you."

"My father told me he did, and I must obey him. He heard my father was
poor, with a family. He went down to see my father. My father came here
once, and Sir Willoughby wouldn't see him. I know Mr. Whitford does.
And Miss Dale told me he did. My mother says she thinks he does it to
make up to us for my father's long walk in the rain and the cold he
caught coming here to Patterne."

"So you see you should not vex him, Crossjay. He is a good friend to
your father and to you. You ought to love him."

"I like him, and I like his face."

"Why his face?"

"It's not like those faces! Miss Dale and I talk about him. She thinks
that Sir Willoughby is the best-looking man ever born."

"Were you not speaking of Mr. Whitford?"

"Yes; old Vernon. That's what Sir Willoughby calls him," young Crossjay
excused himself to her look of surprise. "Do you know what he makes me
think of?--his eyes, I mean. He makes me think of Robinson Crusoe's old
goat in the cavern. I like him because he's always the same, and you're
not positive about some people. Miss Middleton, if you look on at
cricket, in comes a safe man for ten runs. He may get more, and he
never gets less; and you should hear the old farmers talk of him in the
booth. That's just my feeling."

Miss Middleton understood that some illustration from the
cricketing-field was intended to throw light on the boy's feeling for
Mr. Whitford. Young Crossjay was evidently warming to speak from his
heart. But the sun was low, she had to dress for the dinner-table, and
she landed him with regret, as at a holiday over. Before they parted,
he offered to swim across the lake in his clothes, or dive to the bed
for anything she pleased to throw, declaring solemnly that it should
not be lost.

She walked back at a slow pace, and sung to herself above her
darker-flowing thoughts, like the reed-warbler on the branch beside the
night-stream; a simple song of a lighthearted sound, independent of the
shifting black and grey of the flood underneath.

A step was at her heels.

"I see you have been petting my scapegrace."

"Mr. Whitford! Yes; not petting, I hope. I tried to give him a lecture.
He's a dear lad, but, I fancy, trying."

She was in fine sunset colour, unable to arrest the mounting tide. She
had been rowing, she said; and, as he directed his eyes, according to
his wont, penetratingly, she defended herself by fixing her mind on
Robinson Crusoe's old goat in the recess of the cavern.

"I must have him away from here very soon," said Vernon. "Here he's
quite spoiled. Speak of him to Willoughby. I can't guess at his ideas
of the boy's future, but the chance of passing for the navy won't bear
trifling with, and if ever there was a lad made for the navy, it's
Crossjay."

The incident of the explosion in the laboratory was new to Vernon.

"And Willoughby laughed?" he said. "There are sea-port crammers who
stuff young fellows for examination, and we shall have to pack off the
boy at once to the best one of the lot we can find. I would rather have
had him under me up to the last three months, and have made sure of
some roots to what is knocked into his head. But he's ruined here. And
I am going. So I shall not trouble him for many weeks longer. Dr.
Middleton is well?"

"My father is well, yes. He pounced like a falcon on your notes in the
library."

Vernon came out with a chuckle.

"They were left to attract him. I am in for a controversy."

"Papa will not spare you, to judge from his look."

"I know the look."

"Have you walked far to-day?"

"Nine and a half hours. My Flibbertigibbet is too much for me at
times, and I had to walk off my temper."

She cast her eyes on him, thinking of the pleasure of dealing with a
temper honestly coltish, and manfully open to a specific.

"All those hours were required?"

"Not quite so long."

"You are training for your Alpine tour."

"It's doubtful whether I shall get to the Alps this year. I leave the
Hall, and shall probably be in London with a pen to sell."

"Willoughby knows that you leave him?"

"As much as Mont Blanc knows that he is going to be climbed by a party
below. He sees a speck or two in the valley."

"He has not spoken of it."

"He would attribute it to changes . . ."

Vernon did not conclude the sentence.

She became breathless, without emotion, but checked by the barrier
confronting an impulse to ask, what changes? She stooped to pluck a
cowslip.

"I saw daffodils lower down the park," she said. "One or two; they're
nearly over."

"We are well off for wild flowers here," he answered.

"Do not leave him, Mr. Whitford."

"He will not want me."

"You are devoted to him."

"I can't pretend that."

"Then it is the changes you imagine you foresee . . . If any occur, why
should they drive you away?"

"Well, I'm two and thirty, and have never been in the fray: a kind of
nondescript, half scholar, and by nature half billman or bowman or
musketeer; if I'm worth anything, London's the field for me. But that's
what I have to try."

"Papa will not like your serving with your pen in London: he will say
you are worth too much for that."

"Good men are at it; I should not care to be ranked above them."

"They are wasted, he says."

"Error! If they have their private ambition, they may suppose they are
wasted. But the value to the world of a private ambition, I do not
clearly understand."

"You have not an evil opinion of the world?" said Miss Middleton, sick
at heart as she spoke, with the sensation of having invited herself to
take a drop of poison.

He replied: "One might as well have an evil opinion of a river: here
it's muddy, there it's clear; one day troubled, another at rest. We
have to treat it with common sense."

"Love it?"

"In the sense of serving it."

"Not think it beautiful?"

"Part of it is, part of it the reverse."

"Papa would quote the 'mulier formosa'".

"Except that 'fish' is too good for the black extremity. 'Woman' is
excellent for the upper."

"How do you say that?--not cynically, I believe. Your view commends
itself to my reason."

She was grateful to him for not stating it in ideal contrast with Sir
Willoughby's view. If he had, so intensely did her youthful blood
desire to be enamoured of the world, that she felt he would have lifted
her off her feet. For a moment a gulf beneath had been threatening.
When she said, "Love it?" a little enthusiasm would have wafted her
into space fierily as wine; but the sober, "In the sense of serving
it", entered her brain, and was matter for reflection upon it and him.

She could think of him in pleasant liberty, uncorrected by her woman's
instinct of peril. He had neither arts nor graces; nothing of his
cousin's easy social front-face. She had once witnessed the military
precision of his dancing, and had to learn to like him before she
ceased to pray that she might never be the victim of it as his partner.
He walked heroically, his pedestrian vigour being famous, but that
means one who walks away from the sex, not excelling in the recreations
where men and women join hands. He was not much of a horseman either.
Sir Willoughby enjoyed seeing him on horseback. And he could scarcely
be said to shine in a drawingroom, unless when seated beside a person
ready for real talk. Even more than his merits, his demerits pointed
him out as a man to be a friend to a young woman who wanted one. His
way of life pictured to her troubled spirit an enviable smoothness; and
his having achieved that smooth way she considered a sign of strength;
and she wished to lean in idea upon some friendly strength. His
reputation for indifference to the frivolous charms of girls clothed
him with a noble coldness, and gave him the distinction of a far-seen
solitary iceberg in Southern waters. The popular notion of hereditary
titled aristocracy resembles her sentiment for a man that would not
flatter and could not be flattered by her sex: he appeared superior
almost to awfulness. She was young, but she had received much flattery
in her ears, and by it she had been snared; and he, disdaining to
practise the fowler's arts or to cast a thought on small fowls,
appeared to her to have a pride founded on natural loftiness.

They had not spoken for awhile, when Vernon said abruptly, "The boy's
future rather depends on you, Miss Middleton. I mean to leave as soon
as possible, and I do not like his being here without me, though you
will look after him, I have no doubt. But you may not at first see
where the spoiling hurts him. He should be packed off at once to the
crammer, before you are Lady Patterne. Use your influence. Willoughby
will support the lad at your request. The cost cannot be great. There
are strong grounds against my having him in London, even if I could
manage it. May I count on you?"

"I will mention it: I will do my best," said Miss Middleton, strangely
dejected.

They were now on the lawn, where Sir Willoughby was walking with the
ladies Eleanor and Isabel, his maiden aunts.

"You seem to have coursed the hare and captured the hart." he said to
his bride.

"Started the truant and run down the paedagogue," said Vernon.

"Ay, you won't listen to me about the management of that boy," Sir
Willoughby retorted.

The ladies embraced Miss Middleton. One offered up an ejaculation in
eulogy of her looks, the other of her healthfulness: then both remarked
that with indulgence young Crossjay could be induced to do anything.
Clara wondered whether inclination or Sir Willoughby had disciplined
their individuality out of them and made them his shadows, his echoes.
She gazed from them to him, and feared him. But as yet she had not
experienced the power in him which could threaten and wrestle to
subject the members of his household to the state of satellites. Though
she had in fact been giving battle to it for several months, she had
held her own too well to perceive definitely the character of the
spirit opposing her.

She said to the ladies, "Ah, no! Mr. Whitford has chosen the only
method for teaching a boy like Crossjay."

"I propose to make a man of him," said Sir Willoughby.

"What is to become of him if he learns nothing?"

"If he pleases me, he will be provided for. I have never abandoned a
dependent."

Clara let her eyes rest on his and, without turning or dropping, shut
them.

The effect was discomforting to him. He was very sensitive to the
intentions of eyes and tones; which was one secret of his rigid grasp
of the dwellers in his household. They were taught that they had to
render agreement under sharp scrutiny. Studious eyes, devoid of warmth,
devoid of the shyness of sex, that suddenly closed on their look,
signified a want of comprehension of some kind, it might be hostility
of understanding. Was it possible he did not possess her utterly? He
frowned up.

Clara saw the lift of his brows, and thought, "My mind is my own,
married or not."

It was the point in dispute.



CHAPTER IX

CLARA AND LAETITIA MEET: THEY ARE COMPARED

An hour before the time for lessons next morning young Crossjay was on
the lawn with a big bunch of wild flowers. He left them at the hall
door for Miss Middleton, and vanished into bushes.

These vulgar weeds were about to be dismissed to the dustheap by the
great officials of the household; but as it happened that Miss
Middleton had seen them from the window in Crossjay's hands, the
discovery was made that they were indeed his presentation-bouquet, and
a footman received orders to place them before her. She was very
pleased. The arrangement of the flowers bore witness to fairer fingers
than the boy's own in the disposition of the rings of colour, red
campion and anemone, cowslip and speedwell, primroses and
wood-hyacinths; and rising out of the blue was a branch bearing thick
white blossom, so thick, and of so pure a whiteness, that Miss
Middleton, while praising Crossjay for soliciting the aid of Miss Dale,
was at a loss to name the tree.

"It is a gardener's improvement on the Vestal of the forest, the wild
cherry," said Dr. Middleton, "and in this case we may admit the
gardener's claim to be valid, though I believe that, with his gift of
double blossom, he has improved away the fruit. Call this the Vestal of
civilization, then; he has at least done something to vindicate the
beauty of the office as well as the justness of the title."

"It is Vernon's Holy Tree the young rascal has been despoiling," said
Sir Willoughby merrily.

Miss Middleton was informed that this double-blossom wild cherry-tree
was worshipped by Mr. Whitford.

Sir Willoughby promised he would conduct her to it.

"You," he said to her, "can bear the trial; few complexions can; it is
to most ladies a crueller test than snow. Miss Dale, for example,
becomes old lace within a dozen yards of it. I should like to place her
under the tree beside you."

"Dear me, though; but that is investing the hamadryad with novel and
terrible functions," exclaimed Dr. Middleton.

Clara said: "Miss Dale could drag me into a superior Court to show me
fading beside her in gifts more valuable than a complexion."

"She has a fine ability," said Vernon.

All the world knew, so Clara knew of Miss Dales romantic admiration of
Sir Willoughby; she was curious to see Miss Dale and study the nature
of a devotion that might be, within reason, imitable--for a man who
could speak with such steely coldness of the poor lady he had
fascinated? Well, perhaps it was good for the hearts of women to be
beneath a frost; to be schooled, restrained, turned inward on their
dreams. Yes, then, his coldness was desireable; it encouraged an ideal
of him. It suggested and seemed to propose to Clara's mind the
divineness of separation instead of the deadly accuracy of an intimate
perusal. She tried to look on him as Miss Dale might look, and while
partly despising her for the dupery she envied, and more than
criticizing him for the inhuman numbness of sentiment which offered up
his worshipper to point a complimentary comparison, she was able to
imagine a distance whence it would be possible to observe him
uncritically, kindly, admiringly; as the moon a handsome mortal, for
example.

In the midst of her thoughts, she surprised herself by saying: "I
certainly was difficult to instruct. I might see things clearer if I
had a fine ability. I never remember to have been perfectly pleased
with my immediate lesson . . ."

She stopped, wondering whither her tongue was leading her; then added,
to save herself, "And that may be why I feel for poor Crossjay."

Mr. Whitford apparently did not think it remarkable that she should
have been set off gabbling of "a fine ability", though the eulogistic
phrase had been pronounced by him with an impressiveness to make his
ear aware of an echo.

Sir Willoughby dispersed her vapourish confusion. "Exactly," he said.
"I have insisted with Vernon, I don't know how often, that you must
have the lad by his affections. He won't bear driving. It had no effect
on me. Boys of spirit kick at it. I think I know boys, Clara."

He found himself addressing eyes that regarded him as though he were a
small speck, a pin's head, in the circle of their remote contemplation.
They were wide; they closed.

She opened them to gaze elsewhere.

He was very sensitive.

Even then, when knowingly wounding him, or because of it, she was
trying to climb back to that altitude of the thin division of neutral
ground, from which we see a lover's faults and are above them, pure
surveyors. She climbed unsuccessfully, it is true; soon despairing and
using the effort as a pretext to fall back lower.

Dr. Middleton withdrew Sir Willoughby's attention from the
imperceptible annoyance. "No, sir, no: the birch! the birch! Boys of
spirit commonly turn into solid men, and the solider the men the more
surely do they vote for Busby. For me, I pray he may be immortal in
Great Britain. Sea-air nor mountain-air is half so bracing. I venture
to say that the power to take a licking is better worth having than the
power to administer one. Horse him and birch him if Crossjay runs from
his books."

"It is your opinion, sir?" his host bowed to him affably, shocked on
behalf of the ladies.

"So positively so, sir, that I will undertake, without knowledge of
their antecedents, to lay my finger on the men in public life who have
not had early Busby. They are ill-balanced men. Their seat of reason is
not a concrete. They won't take rough and smooth as they come. They
make bad blood, can't forgive, sniff right and left for approbation,
and are excited to anger if an East wind does not flatter them. Why,
sir, when they have grown to be seniors, you find these men mixed up
with the nonsense of their youth; you see they are unthrashed. We
English beat the world because we take a licking well. I hold it for a
surety of a proper sweetness of blood."

The smile of Sir Willoughby waxed ever softer as the shakes of his head
increased in contradictoriness. "And yet," said he, with the air of
conceding a little after having answered the Rev. Doctor and convicted
him of error, "Jack requires it to keep him in order. On board ship
your argument may apply. Not, I suspect, among gentlemen. No."

"Good-night to you, gentlemen!" said Dr. Middleton.

Clara heard Miss Eleanor and Miss Isabel interchange remarks:

"Willoughby would not have suffered it!"

"It would entirely have altered him!"

She sighed and put a tooth on her under-lip. The gift of humourous
fancy is in women fenced round with forbidding placards; they have to
choke it; if they perceive a piece of humour, for instance, the young
Willoughby grasped by his master,--and his horrified relatives rigid at
the sight of preparations for the seed of sacrilege, they have to
blindfold the mind's eye. They are society's hard-drilled soldiery.
Prussians that must both march and think in step. It is for the
advantage of the civilized world, if you like, since men have decreed
it, or matrons have so read the decree; but here and there a younger
woman, haply an uncorrected insurgent of the sex matured here and
there, feels that her lot was cast with her head in a narrower pit than
her limbs.

Clara speculated as to whether Miss Dale might be perchance a person of
a certain liberty of mind. She asked for some little, only some little,
free play of mind in a house that seemed to wear, as it were, a cap of
iron. Sir Willoughby not merely ruled, he throned, he inspired: and
how? She had noticed an irascible sensitiveness in him alert against a
shadow of disagreement; and as he was kind when perfectly appeased, the
sop was offered by him for submission. She noticed that even Mr.
Whitford forbore to alarm the sentiment of authority in his cousin. If
he did not breathe Sir Willoughby, like the ladies Eleanor and Isabel,
he would either acquiesce in a syllable or be silent. He never strongly
dissented. The habit of the house, with its iron cap, was on him, as it
was on the servants, and would be, oh, shudders of the shipwrecked that
see their end in drowning! on the wife.

"When do I meet Miss Dale?" she inquired.

"This very evening, at dinner," replied Sir Willoughby.

Then, thought she, there is that to look forward to.

She indulged her morbid fit, and shut up her senses that she might live
in the anticipation of meeting Miss Dale; and, long before the approach
of the hour, her hope of encountering any other than another dull
adherent of Sir Willoughby had fled. So she was languid for two of the
three minutes when she sat alone with Laetitia in the drawing-room
before the rest had assembled.

"It is Miss Middleton?" Laetitia said, advancing to her. "My jealousy
tells me; for you have won my boy Crossjay's heart, and done more to
bring him to obedience in a few minutes than we have been able to do in
months."

"His wild flowers were so welcome to me," said Clara.

"He was very modest over them. And I mention it because boys of his age
usually thrust their gifts in our faces fresh as they pluck them, and
you were to be treated quite differently."

"We saw his good fairy's hand."

"She resigns her office; but I pray you not to love him too well in
return; for he ought to be away reading with one of those men who get
boys through their examinations. He is, we all think, a born sailor,
and his place is in the navy."

"But, Miss Dale, I love him so well that I shall consult his interests
and not my own selfishness. And, if I have influence, he will not be a
week with you longer. It should have been spoke of to-day; I must have
been in some dream; I thought of it, I know. I will not forget to do
what may be in my power."

Clara's heart sank at the renewed engagement and plighting of herself
involved in her asking a favour, urging any sort of petition. The cause
was good. Besides, she was plighted already.

"Sir Willoughby is really fond of the boy," she said.

"He is fond of exciting fondness in the boy," said Miss Dale. "He has
not dealt much with children. I am sure he likes Crossjay; he could not
otherwise be so forbearing; it is wonderful what he endures and laughs
at."

Sir Willoughby entered. The presence of Miss Dale illuminated him as
the burning taper lights up consecrated plate. Deeply respecting her
for her constancy, esteeming her for a model of taste, he was never in
her society without that happy consciousness of shining which calls
forth the treasures of the man; and these it is no exaggeration to term
unbounded, when all that comes from him is taken for gold.

The effect of the evening on Clara was to render her distrustful of her
later antagonism. She had unknowingly passed into the spirit of Miss
Dale, Sir Willoughby aiding; for she could sympathize with the view of
his constant admirer on seeing him so cordially and smoothly gay; as
one may say, domestically witty, the most agreeable form of wit. Mrs
Mountstuart Jenkinson discerned that he had a leg of physical
perfection; Miss Dale distinguished it in him in the vital essence; and
before either of these ladies he was not simply a radiant, he was a
productive creature, so true it is that praise is our fructifying sun.
He had even a touch of the romantic air which Clara remembered as her
first impression of the favourite of the county; and strange she found
it to observe this resuscitated idea confronting her experience. What
if she had been captious, inconsiderate? Oh, blissful revival of the
sense of peace! The happiness of pain departing was all that she looked
for, and her conception of liberty was to learn to love her chains,
provided that he would spare her the caress. In this mood she sternly
condemned Constantia. "We must try to do good; we must not be thinking
of ourselves; we must make the best of our path in life." She revolved
these infantile precepts with humble earnestness; and not to be tardy
in her striving to do good, with a remote but pleasurable glimpse of
Mr. Whitford hearing of it, she took the opportunity to speak to Sir
Willoughby on the subject of young Crossjay, at a moment when,
alighting from horseback, he had shown himself to advantage among a
gallant cantering company. He showed to great advantage on horseback
among men, being invariably the best mounted, and he had a cavalierly
style, possibly cultivated, but effective. On foot his raised head and
half-dropped eyelids too palpably assumed superiority. "Willoughby, I
want to speak," she said, and shrank as she spoke, lest he should
immediately grant everything in the mood of courtship, and invade her
respite; "I want to speak of that dear boy Crossjay. You are fond of
him. He is rather an idle boy here, and wasting time . . ."

"Now you are here, and when you are here for good, my love for good
. . ." he fluttered away in loverliness, forgetful of Crossjay, whom
he presently took up. "The boy recognizes his most sovereign lady, and
will do your bidding, though you should order him to learn his lessons!
Who would not obey? Your beauty alone commands. But what is there
beyond?--a grace, a hue divine, that sets you not so much above as
apart, severed from the world."

Clara produced an active smile in duty, and pursued: "If Crossjay were
sent at once to some house where men prepare boys to pass for the navy,
he would have his chance, and the navy is distinctly his profession.
His father is a brave man, and he inherits bravery, and he has a
passion for a sailor's life; only he must be able to pass his
examination, and he has not much time."

Sir Willoughby gave a slight laugh in sad amusement.

"My dear Clara, you adore the world; and I suppose you have to learn
that there is not a question in this wrangling world about which we
have not disputes and contests ad nauseam. I have my notions concerning
Crossjay, Vernon has his. I should wish to make a gentleman of him.
Vernon marks him for a sailor. But Vernon is the lad's protector, I am
not. Vernon took him from his father to instruct him, and he has a
right to say what shall be done with him. I do not interfere. Only I
can't prevent the lad from liking me. Old Vernon seems to feel it. I
assure you I hold entirely aloof. If I am asked, in spite of my
disapproval of Vernon's plans for the boy, to subscribe to his
departure, I can but shrug, because, as you see, I have never opposed.
Old Vernon pays for him, he is the master, he decides, and if Crossjay
is blown from the masthead in a gale, the blame does not fall on me.
These, my dear, are matters of reason."

"I would not venture to intrude on them," said Clara, "if I had not
suspected that money . . ."

"Yes," cried Willoughby; "and it is a part. And let old Vernon
surrender the boy to me, I will immediately relieve him of the burden
on his purse. Can I do that, my dear, for the furtherance of a scheme I
condemn? The point is thus: latterly I have invited Captain Patterne to
visit me: just previous to his departure for the African Coast, where
Government despatches Marines when there is no other way of killing
them, I sent him a special invitation. He thanked me and curtly
declined. The man, I may almost say, is my pensioner. Well, he calls
himself a Patterne, he is undoubtedly a man of courage, he has elements
of our blood, and the name. I think I am to be approved for desiring to
make a better gentleman of the son than I behold in the father: and
seeing that life from an early age on board ship has anything but made
a gentleman of the father, I hold that I am right in shaping another
course for the son."

"Naval officers . . ." Clara suggested.

"Some," said Willoughby. "But they must be men of birth, coming out of
homes of good breeding. Strip them of the halo of the title of naval
officers, and I fear you would not often say gentlemen when they step
into a drawing-room. I went so far as to fancy I had some claim to make
young Crossjay something different. It can be done: the Patterne comes
out in his behaviour to you, my love; it can be done. But if I take
him, I claim undisputed sway over him. I cannot make a gentleman of the
fellow if I am to compete with this person and that. In fine, he must
look up to me, he must have one model."

"Would you, then, provide for him subsequently?"

"According to his behaviour."

"Would not that be precarious for him?"

"More so than the profession you appear inclined to choose for him?"

"But there he would be under clear regulations."

"With me he would have to respond to affection."

"Would you secure to him a settled income? For an idle gentleman is bad
enough; a penniless gentleman . . ."

"He has only to please me, my dear, and he will be launched and
protected."

"But if he does not succeed in pleasing you?"

"Is it so difficult?"

"Oh!" Clara fretted.

"You see, my love, I answer you," said Sir Willoughby.

He resumed: "But let old Vernon have his trial with the lad. He has his
own ideas. Let him carry them out. I shall watch the experiment."

Clara was for abandoning her task in sheer faintness.

"Is not the question one of money?" she said, shyly, knowing Mr.
Whitford to be poor.

"Old Vernon chooses to spend his money that way." replied Sir
Willoughby. "If it saves him from breaking his shins and risking his
neck on his Alps, we may consider it well employed."

"Yes," Clara's voice occupied a pause.

She seized her languor as it were a curling snake and cast it off.
"But I understand that Mr. Whitford wants your assistance. Is he
not--not rich? When he leaves the Hall to try his fortune in literature
in London, he may not be so well able to support Crossjay and obtain
the instruction necessary for the boy: and it would be generous to help
him."

"Leaves the Hall!" exclaimed Willoughby. "I have not heard a word of
it. He made a bad start at the beginning, and I should have thought
that would have tamed him: had to throw over his Fellowship; ahem. Then
he received a small legacy some time back, and wanted to be off to push
his luck in Literature: rank gambling, as I told him. Londonizing can
do him no good. I thought that nonsense of his was over years ago. What
is it he has from me?--about a hundred and fifty a year: and it might
be doubled for the asking: and all the books he requires: and these
writers and scholars no sooner think of a book than they must have it.
And do not suppose me to complain. I am a man who will not have a
single shilling expended by those who serve immediately about my
person. I confess to exacting that kind of dependency. Feudalism is not
an objectionable thing if you can be sure of the lord. You know, Clara,
and you should know me in my weakness too, I do not claim servitude, I
stipulate for affection. I claim to be surrounded by persons loving me.
And with one? . . . dearest! So that we two can shut out the world; we
live what is the dream of others. Nothing imaginable can be sweeter. It
is a veritable heaven on earth. To be the possessor of the whole of
you! Your thoughts, hopes, all."

Sir Willoughby intensified his imagination to conceive more: he could
not, or could not express it, and pursued: "But what is this talk of
Vernon's leaving me? He cannot leave. He has barely a hundred a year of
his own. You see, I consider him. I do not speak of the ingratitude of
the wish to leave. You know, my dear, I have a deadly abhorrence of
partings and such like. As far as I can, I surround myself with healthy
people specially to guard myself from having my feelings wrung; and
excepting Miss Dale, whom you like--my darling does like her?"--the
answer satisfied him; "with that one exception, I am not aware of a
case that threatens to torment me. And here is a man, under no
compulsion, talking of leaving the Hall! In the name of goodness, why?
But why? Am I to imagine that the sight of perfect felicity distresses
him? We are told that the world is 'desperately wicked'. I do not like
to think it of my friends; yet otherwise their conduct is often hard to
account for."

"If it were true, you would not punish Crossjay?" Clara feebly
interposed.

"I should certainly take Crossjay and make a man of him after my own
model, my dear. But who spoke to you of this?"

"Mr. Whitford himself. And let me give you my opinion, Willoughby, that
he will take Crossjay with him rather than leave him, if there is a
fear of the boy's missing his chance of the navy."

"Marines appear to be in the ascendant," said Sir Willoughby,
astonished at the locution and pleading in the interests of a son of
one. "Then Crossjay he must take. I cannot accept half the boy. I am,"
he laughed, "the legitimate claimant in the application for judgement
before the wise king. Besides, the boy has a dose of my blood in him;
he has none of Vernon's, not one drop."

"Ah!"

"You see, my love?"

"Oh, I do see; yes."

"I put forth no pretensions to perfection," Sir Willoughby continued.
"I can bear a considerable amount of provocation; still I can be
offended, and I am unforgiving when I have been offended. Speak to
Vernon, if a natural occasion should spring up. I shall, of course,
have to speak to him. You may, Clara, have observed a man who passed me
on the road as we were cantering home, without a hint of a touch to his
hat. That man is a tenant of mine, farming six hundred acres, Hoppner
by name: a man bound to remember that I have, independently of my
position, obliged him frequently. His lease of my ground has five years
to run. I must say I detest the churlishness of our country population,
and where it comes across me I chastise it. Vernon is a different
matter: he will only require to be spoken to. One would fancy the old
fellow laboured now and then under a magnetic attraction to beggary. My
love," he bent to her and checked their pacing up and down, "you are
tired?"

"I am very tired to-day," said Clara.

His arm was offered. She laid two fingers on it, and they dropped when
he attempted to press them to his rib.

He did not insist. To walk beside her was to share in the stateliness
of her walking.

He placed himself at a corner of the door-way for her to pass him into
the house, and doated on her cheek, her ear, and the softly dusky nape
of her neck, where this way and that the little lighter-coloured
irreclaimable curls running truant from the comb and the knot--curls,
half-curls, root-curls, vine-ringlets, wedding-rings, fledgling
feathers, tufts of down, blown wisps--waved or fell, waved over or up
or involutedly, or strayed, loose and downward, in the form of small
silken paws, hardly any of them much thicker than a crayon shading,
cunninger than long round locks of gold to trick the heart.

Laetitia had nothing to show resembling such beauty.



CHAPTER X

IN WHICH SIR WILLOUGHBY CHANCES TO SUPPLY THE TITLE FOR HIMSELF

Now Vernon was useful to his cousin; he was the accomplished secretary
of a man who governed his estate shrewdly and diligently, but had been
once or twice unlucky in his judgements pronounced from the magisterial
bench as a justice of the Peace, on which occasions a half column of
trenchant English supported by an apposite classical quotation
impressed Sir Willoughby with the value of such a secretary in a
controversy. He had no fear of that fiery dragon of scorching
breath--the newspaper press--while Vernon was his right hand man; and
as he intended to enter Parliament, he foresaw the greater need of him.
Furthermore, he liked his cousin to date his own controversial
writings, on classical subjects, from Patterne Hall. It caused his
house to shine in a foreign field; proved the service of scholarship by
giving it a flavour of a bookish aristocracy that, though not so well
worth having, and indeed in itself contemptible, is above the material
and titular; one cannot quite say how. There, however, is the flavour.
Dainty sauces are the life, the nobility, of famous dishes; taken
alone, the former would be nauseating, the latter plebeian. It is thus,
or somewhat so, when you have a poet, still better a scholar, attached
to your household. Sir Willoughby deserved to have him, for he was
above his county friends in his apprehension of the flavour bestowed by
the man; and having him, he had made them conscious of their
deficiency. His cook, M. Dehors, pupil of the great Godefroy, was not
the only French cook in the county; but his cousin and secretary, the
rising scholar, the elegant essayist, was an unparalleled decoration;
of his kind, of course. Personally, we laugh at him; you had better
not, unless you are fain to show that the higher world of polite
literature is unknown to you. Sir Willoughby could create an abject
silence at a county dinner-table by an allusion to Vernon "at work at
home upon his Etruscans or his Dorians"; and he paused a moment to let
the allusion sink, laughed audibly to himself over his eccentric
cousin, and let him rest.

In addition, Sir Willoughby abhorred the loss of a familiar face in his
domestic circle. He thought ill of servants who could accept their
dismissal without petitioning to stay with him. A servant that gave
warning partook of a certain fiendishness. Vernon's project of leaving
the Hall offended and alarmed the sensitive gentleman. "I shall have to
hand Letty Dale to him at last!" he thought, yielding in bitter
generosity to the conditions imposed on him by the ungenerousness of
another. For, since his engagement to Miss Middleton, his electrically
forethoughtful mind had seen in Miss Dale, if she stayed in the
neighbourhood, and remained unmarried, the governess of his infant
children, often consulting with him. But here was a prospect dashed
out. The two, then, may marry, and live in a cottage on the borders of
his park; and Vernon can retain his post, and Laetitia her devotion.
The risk of her casting it of had to be faced. Marriage has been known
to have such an effect on the most faithful of women that a great
passion fades to naught in their volatile bosoms when they have taken a
husband. We see in women especially the triumph of the animal over the
spiritual. Nevertheless, risks must be run for a purpose in view.

Having no taste for a discussion with Vernon, whom it was his habit to
confound by breaking away from him abruptly when he had delivered his
opinion, he left it to both the persons interesting themselves in young
Crossjay to imagine that he was meditating on the question of the lad,
and to imagine that it would be wise to leave him to meditate; for he
could be preternaturally acute in reading any of his fellow-creatures
if they crossed the current of his feelings. And, meanwhile, he
instructed the ladies Eleanor and Isabel to bring Laetitia Dale on a
visit to the Hall, where dinner-parties were soon to be given and a
pleasing talker would be wanted, where also a woman of intellect,
steeped in a splendid sentiment, hitherto a miracle of female
constancy, might stir a younger woman to some emulation. Definitely to
resolve to bestow Laetitia upon Vernon was more than he could do;
enough that he held the card.

Regarding Clara, his genius for perusing the heart which was not in
perfect harmony with him through the series of responsive movements to
his own, informed him of a something in her character that might have
suggested to Mrs Mountstuart Jenkinson her indefensible, absurd "rogue
in porcelain". Idea there was none in that phrase; yet, if you looked
on Clara as a delicately inimitable porcelain beauty, the suspicion of
a delicately inimitable ripple over her features touched a thought of
innocent roguery, wildwood roguery; the likeness to the costly and
lovely substance appeared to admit a fitness in the dubious epithet. He
detested but was haunted by the phrase.

She certainly had at times the look of the nymph that has gazed too
long on the faun, and has unwittingly copied his lurking lip and long
sliding eye. Her play with young Crossjay resembled a return of the
lady to the cat; she flung herself into it as if her real vitality had
been in suspense till she saw the boy. Sir Willoughby by no means
disapproved of a physical liveliness that promised him health in his
mate; but he began to feel in their conversations that she did not
sufficiently think of making herself a nest for him. Steely points were
opposed to him when he, figuratively, bared his bosom to be taken to
the softest and fairest. She reasoned: in other words, armed her
ignorance. She reasoned against him publicly, and lured Vernon to
support her. Influence is to be counted for power, and her influence
over Vernon was displayed in her persuading him to dance one evening at
Lady Culmer's, after his melancholy exhibitions of himself in the art;
and not only did she persuade him to stand up fronting her, she
manoeuvred him through the dance like a clever boy cajoling a top to
come to him without reeling, both to Vernon's contentment and to Sir
Willoughby's; for he was the last man to object to a manifestation of
power in his bride. Considering her influence with Vernon, he renewed
the discourse upon young Crossjay; and, as he was addicted to system,
he took her into his confidence, that she might be taught to look to
him and act for him.

"Old Vernon has not spoken to you again of that lad?" he said.

"Yes, Mr. Whitford has asked me."

"He does not ask me, my dear!"

"He may fancy me of greater aid than I am."

"You see, my love, if he puts Crossjay on me, he will be off. He has
this craze for 'enlisting' his pen in London, as he calls it; and I am
accustomed to him; I don't like to think of him as a hack scribe,
writing nonsense from dictation to earn a pitiful subsistence; I want
him here; and, supposing he goes, he offends me; he loses a friend; and
it will not be the first time that a friend has tried me too far; but
if he offends me, he is extinct."

"Is what?" cried Clara, with a look of fright.

"He becomes to me at once as if he had never been. He is extinct."

"In spite of your affection?"

"On account of it, I might say. Our nature is mysterious, and mine as
much so as any. Whatever my regrets, he goes out. This is not a
language I talk to the world. I do the man no harm; I am not to be
named unchristian. But . . . !"

Sir Willoughby mildly shrugged, and indicated a spreading out of the
arms.

"But do, do talk to me as you talk to the world, Willoughby; give me
some relief!"

"My own Clara, we are one. You should know me at my worst, we will say,
if you like, as well as at my best."

"Should I speak too?"

"What could you have to confess?"

She hung silent; the wave of an insane resolution swelled in her bosom
and subsided before she said, "Cowardice, incapacity to speak."

"Women!" said he.

We do not expect so much of women; the heroic virtues as little as the
vices. They have not to unfold the scroll of character.

He resumed, and by his tone she understood that she was now in the
inner temple of him: "I tell you these things; I quite acknowledge they
do not elevate me. They help to constitute my character. I tell you
most humbly that I have in me much--too much of the fallen archangel's
pride."

Clara bowed her head over a sustained in-drawn breath.

"It must be pride," he said, in a reverie superinduced by her
thoughtfulness over the revelation, and glorying in the black flames
demoniacal wherewith he crowned himself.

"Can you not correct it?" said she.

He replied, profoundly vexed by disappointment: "I am what I am. It
might be demonstrated to you mathematically that it is corrected by
equivalents or substitutions in my character. If it be a
failing--assuming that."

"It seems one to me: so cruelly to punish Mr. Whitford for seeking to
improve his fortunes."

"He reflects on my share in his fortunes. He has had but to apply to me
for his honorarium to be doubled."

"He wishes for independence."

"Independence of me!"

"Liberty!"

"At my expense!"

"Oh, Willoughby!"

"Ay, but this is the world, and I know it, my love; and beautiful as
your incredulity may be, you will find it more comforting to confide in
my knowledge of the selfishness of the world. My sweetest, you
will?--you do! For a breath of difference between us is intolerable. Do
you not feel how it breaks our magic ring? One small fissure, and we
have the world with its muddy deluge!--But my subject was old Vernon.
Yes, I pay for Crossjay, if Vernon consents to stay. I waive my own
scheme for the lad, though I think it the better one. Now, then, to
induce Vernon to stay. He has his ideas about staying under a mistress
of the household; and therefore, not to contest it--he is a man of no
argument; a sort of lunatic determination takes the place of it with
old Vernon!--let him settle close by me, in one of my cottages; very
well, and to settle him we must marry him."

"Who is there?" said Clara, beating for the lady in her mind.

"Women," said Willoughby, "are born match-makers, and the most
persuasive is a young bride. With a man--and a man like old Vernon!--
she is irresistible. It is my wish, and that arms you. It is your wish,
that subjugates him. If he goes, he goes for good. If he stays, he is
my friend. I deal simply with him, as with every one. It is the secret
of authority. Now Miss Dale will soon lose her father. He exists on a
pension; she has the prospect of having to leave the neighbourhood of
the Hall, unless she is established near us. Her whole heart is in this
region; it is the poor soul's passion. Count on her agreeing. But she
will require a little wooing: and old Vernon wooing! Picture the scene
to yourself, my love. His notion of wooing. I suspect, will be to treat
the lady like a lexicon, and turn over the leaves for the word, and fly
through the leaves for another word, and so get a sentence. Don't frown
at the poor old fellow, my Clara; some have the language on their
tongues, and some have not. Some are very dry sticks; manly men, honest
fellows, but so cut away, so polished away from the sex, that they are
in absolute want of outsiders to supply the silken filaments to attach
them. Actually!" Sir Willoughby laughed in Clara's face to relax the
dreamy stoniness of her look. "But I can assure you, my dearest, I have
seen it. Vernon does not know how to speak--as we speak. He has, or he
had, what is called a sneaking affection for Miss Dale. It was the most
amusing thing possible; his courtship!--the air of a dog with an uneasy
conscience, trying to reconcile himself with his master! We were all in
fits of laughter. Of course it came to nothing."

"Will Mr. Whitford," said Clara, "offend you to extinction if he
declines?"

Willoughby breathed an affectionate "Tush!" to her silliness.

"We bring them together, as we best can. You see, Clara, I desire, and
I will make some sacrifices to detain him."

"But what do you sacrifice?--a cottage?" said Clara, combative at all
points.

"An ideal, perhaps. I lay no stress on sacrifice. I strongly object to
separations. And therefore, you will say, I prepare the ground for
unions? Put your influence to good service, my love. I believe you
could persuade him to give us the Highland fling on the drawing-room
table."

"There is nothing to say to him of Crossjay?"

"We hold Crossjay in reserve."

"It is urgent."

"Trust me. I have my ideas. I am not idle. That boy bids fair for a
capital horseman. Eventualities might . . ." Sir Willoughby murmured to
himself, and addressing his bride, "The cavalry? If we put him into the
cavalry, we might make a gentleman of him--not be ashamed of him. Or,
under certain eventualities, the Guards. Think it over, my love. De
Craye, who will, I suppose, act best man for me, supposing old Vernon
to pull at the collar, is a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Guards, a
thorough gentleman--of the brainless class, if you like, but an elegant
fellow; an Irishman; you will see him, and I should like to set a naval
lieutenant beside him in a drawingroom, for you to compare them and
consider the model you would choose for a boy you are interested in.
Horace is grace and gallantry incarnate; fatuous, probably: I have
always been too friendly with him to examine closely. He made himself
one of my dogs, though my elder, and seemed to like to be at my heels.
One of the few men's faces I can call admirably handsome;--with
nothing behind it, perhaps. As Vernon says, 'a nothing picked by the
vultures and bleached by the desert'. Not a bad talker, if you are
satisfied with keeping up the ball. He will amuse you. Old Horace does
not know how amusing he is!"

"Did Mr. Whitford say that of Colonel De Craye?"

"I forget the person of whom he said it. So you have noticed old
Vernon's foible? Quote him one of his epigrams, and he is in motion
head and heels! It is an infallible receipt for tuning him. If I want
to have him in good temper, I have only to remark, 'as you said'. I
straighten his back instantly."

"I," said Clara, "have noticed chiefly his anxiety concerning the boy;
for which I admire him."

"Creditable, if not particularly far-sighted and sagacious. Well, then,
my dear, attack him at once; lead him to the subject of our fair
neighbour. She is to be our guest for a week or so, and the whole
affair might be concluded far enough to fix him before she leaves. She
is at present awaiting the arrival of a cousin to attend on her father.
A little gentle pushing will precipitate old Vernon on his knees as far
as he ever can unbend them; but when a lady is made ready to expect a
declaration, you know, why, she does not--does she?--demand the entire
formula?--though some beautiful fortresses . . ."

He enfolded her. Clara was growing hardened to it. To this she was
fated; and not seeing any way to escape, she invoked a friendly frost
to strike her blood, and passed through the minute unfeelingly. Having
passed it, she reproached herself for making so much of it, thinking it
a lesser endurance than to listen to him. What could she do?--she was
caged; by her word of honour, as she at one time thought; by her
cowardice, at another; and dimly sensible that the latter was a
stronger lock than the former, she mused on the abstract question
whether a woman's cowardice can be so absolute as to cast her into the
jaws of her aversion. Is it to be conceived? Is there not a moment when
it stands at bay? But haggard-visaged Honour then starts up claiming to
be dealt with in turn; for having courage restored to her, she must
have the courage to break with honour, she must dare to be faithless,
and not merely say, I will be brave, but be brave enough to be
dishonourable. The cage of a plighted woman hungering for her
disengagement has two keepers, a noble and a vile; where on earth is
creature so dreadfully enclosed? It lies with her to overcome what
degrades her, that she may win to liberty by overcoming what exalts.

Contemplating her situation, this idea (or vapour of youth taking the
god-like semblance of an idea) sprang, born of her present sickness, in
Clara's mind; that it must be an ill-constructed tumbling world where
the hour of ignorance is made the creator of our destiny by being
forced to the decisive elections upon which life's main issues hang.
Her teacher had brought her to contemplate his view of the world.

She thought likewise: how must a man despise women, who can expose
himself as he does to me!

Miss Middleton owed it to Sir Willoughby Patterne that she ceased to
think like a girl. When had the great change begun? Glancing back, she
could imagine that it was near the period we call in love the
first--almost from the first. And she was led to imagine it through
having become barred from imagining her own emotions of that season.
They were so dead as not to arise even under the form of shadows in
fancy. Without imputing blame to him, for she was reasonable so far,
she deemed herself a person entrapped. In a dream somehow she had
committed herself to a life-long imprisonment; and, oh terror! not in a
quiet dungeon; the barren walls closed round her, talked, called for
ardour, expected admiration.

She was unable to say why she could not give it; why she retreated more
and more inwardly; why she invoked the frost to kill her tenderest
feelings. She was in revolt, until a whisper of the day of bells
reduced her to blank submission; out of which a breath of peace drew
her to revolt again in gradual rapid stages, and once more the aspect
of that singular day of merry blackness felled her to earth. It was
alive, it advanced, it had a mouth, it had a song. She received letters
of bridesmaids writing of it, and felt them as waves that hurl a log of
wreck to shore. Following which afflicting sense of antagonism to the
whole circle sweeping on with her, she considered the possibility of
her being in a commencement of madness. Otherwise might she not be
accused of a capriciousness quite as deplorable to consider? She had
written to certain of these young ladies not very long since of this
gentleman--how?--in what tone? And was it her madness then?--her
recovery now? It seemed to her that to have written of him
enthusiastically resembled madness more than to shudder away from the
union; but standing alone, opposing all she has consented to set in
motion, is too strange to a girl for perfect justification to be found
in reason when she seeks it.

Sir Willoughby was destined himself to supply her with that key of
special insight which revealed and stamped him in a title to fortify
her spirit of revolt, consecrate it almost.

The popular physician of the county and famous anecdotal wit, Dr.
Corney, had been a guest at dinner overnight, and the next day there
was talk of him, and of the resources of his art displayed by Armand
Dehors on his hearing that he was to minister to the tastes of a
gathering of hommes d'esprit. Sir Willoughby glanced at Dehors with his
customary benevolent irony in speaking of the persons, great in their
way, who served him. "Why he cannot give us daily so good a dinner, one
must, I suppose, go to French nature to learn. The French are in the
habit of making up for all their deficiencies with enthusiasm. They
have no reverence; if I had said to him, 'I want something particularly
excellent, Dehors', I should have had a commonplace dinner. But they
have enthusiasm on draught, and that is what we must pull at. Know one
Frenchman and you know France. I have had Dehors under my eye two
years, and I can mount his enthusiasm at a word. He took hommes
d'esprit to denote men of letters. Frenchmen have destroyed their
nobility, so, for the sake of excitement, they put up the literary
man--not to worship him; that they can't do; it's to put themselves in
a state of effervescence. They will not have real greatness above them,
so they have sham. That they may justly call it equality, perhaps! Ay,
for all your shake of the head, my good Vernon! You see, human nature
comes round again, try as we may to upset it, and the French only
differ from us in wading through blood to discover that they are at
their old trick once more; 'I am your equal, sir, your born equal. Oh!
you are a man of letters? Allow me to be in a bubble about you!' Yes,
Vernon, and I believe the fellow looks up to you as the head of the
establishment. I am not jealous. Provided he attends to his functions!
There's a French philosopher who's for naming the days of the year
after the birthdays of French men of letters. Voltaire-day,
Rousseau-day, Racine-day, so on. Perhaps Vernon will inform us who
takes April 1st."

"A few trifling errors are of no consequence when you are in the vein
of satire," said Vernon. "Be satisfied with knowing a nation in the
person of a cook."

"They may be reading us English off in a jockey!" said Dr. Middleton.
"I believe that jockeys are the exchange we make for cooks; and our
neighbours do not get the best of the bargain."

"No; but, my dear good Vernon, it's nonsensical," said Sir Willoughby;
"why be bawling every day the name of men of letters?"

"Philosophers."

"Well, philosophers."

"Of all countries and times. And they are the benefactors of humanity."

"Bene--!" Sir Willoughby's derisive laugh broke the word. "There's a
pretension in all that, irreconcilable with English sound sense. Surely
you see it?"

"We might," said Vernon, "if you like, give alternative titles to the
days, or have alternating days, devoted to our great families that
performed meritorious deeds upon such a day."

The rebel Clara, delighting in his banter, was heard: "Can we furnish
sufficient?"

"A poet or two could help us."

"Perhaps a statesman," she suggested.

"A pugilist, if wanted."

"For blowy days," observed Dr. Middleton, and hastily in penitence
picked up the conversation he had unintentionally prostrated, with a
general remark on new-fangled notions, and a word aside to Vernon;
which created the blissful suspicion in Clara that her father was
indisposed to second Sir Willoughby's opinions even when sharing them.

Sir Willoughby had led the conversation. Displeased that the lead
should be withdrawn from him, he turned to Clara and related one of the
after-dinner anecdotes of Dr. Corney; and another, with a vast deal of
human nature in it, concerning a valetudinarian gentleman, whose wife
chanced to be desperately ill, and he went to the physicians assembled
in consultation outside the sick-room, imploring them by all he valued,
and in tears, to save the poor patient for him, saying: "She is
everything to me, everything; and if she dies I am compelled to run the
risks of marrying again; I must marry again; for she has accustomed me
so to the little attentions of a wife, that in truth I can't. I can't
lose her! She must be saved!" And the loving husband of any devoted
wife wrung his hands.

"Now, there, Clara, there you have the Egoist," added Sir Willoughby.
"That is the perfect Egoist. You see what he comes to--and his wife!
The man was utterly unconscious of giving vent to the grossest
selfishness."

"An Egoist!" said Clara.

"Beware of marrying an Egoist, my dear!" He bowed gallantly; and so
blindly fatuous did he appear to her, that she could hardly believe him
guilty of uttering the words she had heard from him, and kept her eyes
on him vacantly till she came to a sudden full stop in the thoughts
directing her gaze. She looked at Vernon, she looked at her father, and
at the ladies Eleanor and Isabel. None of them saw the man in the
word, none noticed the word; yet this word was her medical herb, her
illuminating lamp, the key of him (and, alas, but she thought it by
feeling her need of one), the advocate pleading in apology for her.
Egoist! She beheld him--unfortunate, self-designated man that he
was!--in his good qualities as well as bad under the implacable lamp,
and his good were drenched in his first person singular. His generosity
roared of I louder than the rest. Conceive him at the age of Dr.
Corney's hero: "Pray, save my wife for me. I shall positively have to
get another if I lose her, and one who may not love me half so well, or
understand the peculiarities of my character and appreciate my
attitudes." He was in his thirty-second year, therefore a young man,
strong and healthy, yet his garrulous return to his principal theme,
his emphasis on I and me, lent him the seeming of an old man spotted
with decaying youth.

"Beware of marrying an Egoist."

Would he help her to escape? The idea of the scene ensuing upon her
petition for release, and the being dragged round the walls of his
egoism, and having her head knocked against the corners, alarmed her
with sensations of sickness.

There was the example of Constantia. But that desperate young lady had
been assisted by a gallant, loving gentleman; she had met a Captain
Oxford.

Clara brooded on those two until they seemed heroic. She questioned
herself. Could she . . . ? were one to come? She shut her eyes in
languor, leaning the wrong way of her wishes, yet unable to say No.

Sir Willoughby had positively said beware! Marrying him would be a deed
committed in spite of his express warning. She went so far as to
conceive him subsequently saying: "I warned you." She conceived the
state of marriage with him as that of a woman tied not to a man of
heart, but to an obelisk lettered all over with hieroglyphics, and
everlastingly hearing him expound them, relishing renewing his lectures
on them.

Full surely this immovable stone-man would not release her. This
petrifaction of egoism would from amazedly to austerely refuse the
petition. His pride would debar him from understanding her desire to be
released. And if she resolved on it, without doing it straightway in
Constantia's manner, the miserable bewilderment of her father, for whom
such a complication would be a tragic dilemma, had to be thought of.
Her father, with all his tenderness for his child, would make a stand
on the point of honour; though certain to yield to her, he would be
distressed in a tempest of worry; and Dr. Middleton thus afflicted
threw up his arms, he shunned books, shunned speech, and resembled a
castaway on the ocean, with nothing between himself and his calamity.
As for the world, it would be barking at her heels. She might call the
man she wrenched her hand from, Egoist; jilt, the world would call her.
She dwelt bitterly on her agreement with Sir Willoughby regarding the
world, laying it to his charge that her garden had become a place of
nettles, her horizon an unlighted fourth side of a square.

Clara passed from person to person visiting the Hall. There was
universal, and as she was compelled to see, honest admiration of the
host. Not a soul had a suspicion of his cloaked nature. Her agony of
hypocrisy in accepting their compliments as the bride of Sir Willoughby
Patterne was poorly moderated by contempt of them for their
infatuation. She tried to cheat herself with the thought that they were
right and that she was the foolish and wicked inconstant. In her
anxiety to strangle the rebelliousness which had been communicated from
her mind to her blood, and was present with her whether her mind was in
action or not, she encouraged the ladies Eleanor and Isabel to magnify
the fictitious man of their idolatry, hoping that she might enter into
them imaginatively, that she might to some degree subdue herself to the
necessity of her position. If she partly succeeded in stupefying her
antagonism, five minutes of him undid the work.

He requested her to wear the Patterne pearls for a dinner-party of
grand ladies, telling her that he would commission Miss Isabel to take
them to her. Clara begged leave to decline them, on the plea of having
no right to wear them. He laughed at her modish modesty. "But really
it might almost be classed with affectation," said he. "I give you the
right. Virtually you are my wife."

"No."

"Before heaven?"

"No. We are not married."

"As my betrothed, will you wear them, to please me?"

"I would rather not. I cannot wear borrowed jewels. These I cannot
wear. Forgive me, I cannot. And, Willoughby," she said, scorning
herself for want of fortitude in not keeping to the simply blunt
provocative refusal, "does one not look like a victim decked for the
sacrifice?--the garlanded heifer you see on Greek vases, in that array
of jewellery?"

"My dear Clara!" exclaimed the astonished lover, "how can you term them
borrowed, when they are the Patterne jewels, our family heirloom
pearls, unmatched, I venture to affirm, decidedly in my county and many
others, and passing to the use of the mistress of the house in the
natural course of things?"

"They are yours, they are not mine."

"Prospectively they are yours."

"It would be to anticipate the fact to wear them."

"With my consent, my approval? at my request?"

"I am not yet . . . I never may be . . ."

"My wife?" He laughed triumphantly, and silenced her by manly
smothering.

Her scruple was perhaps an honourable one, he said. Perhaps the jewels
were safer in their iron box. He had merely intended a surprise and
gratification to her.

Courage was coming to enable her to speak more plainly, when his
discontinuing to insist on her wearing the jewels, under an appearance
of deference of her wishes, disarmed her by touching her sympathies.

She said, however, "I fear we do not often agree, Willoughby."

"When you are a little older!" was the irritating answer.

"It would then be too late to make the discovery."

"The discovery, I apprehend, is not imperative, my love."

"It seems to me that our minds are opposed."

"I should," said he, "have been awake to it at a single indication, be
sure."

"But I know," she pursued, "I have learned that the ideal of conduct
for women is to subject their minds to the part of an accompaniment."

"For women, my love? my wife will be in natural harmony with me."

"Ah!" She compressed her lips. The yawn would come. "I am sleepier here
than anywhere."

"Ours, my Clara, is the finest air of the kingdom. It has the effect of
sea-air."

"But if I am always asleep here?"

"We shall have to make a public exhibition of the Beauty."

This dash of his liveliness defeated her.

She left him, feeling the contempt of the brain feverishly quickened
and fine-pointed, for the brain chewing the cud in the happy pastures
of unawakedness. So violent was the fever, so keen her introspection,
that she spared few, and Vernon was not among them. Young Crossjay,
whom she considered the least able of all to act as an ally, was the
only one she courted with a real desire to please him, he was the one
she affectionately envied; he was the youngest, the freest, he had the
world before him, and he did not know how horrible the world was, or
could be made to look. She loved the boy from expecting nothing of him.
Others, Vernon Whitford, for instance, could help, and moved no hand.
He read her case. A scrutiny so penetrating under its air of abstract
thoughtfulness, though his eyes did but rest on her a second or two,
signified that he read her line by line, and to the end--excepting
what she thought of him for probing her with that sharp steel of
insight without a purpose.

She knew her mind's injustice. It was her case, her lamentable
case--the impatient panic-stricken nerves of a captured wild creature
which cried for help. She exaggerated her sufferings to get strength to
throw them off, and lost it in the recognition that they were
exaggerated: and out of the conflict issued recklessness, with a cry as
wild as any coming of madness; for she did not blush in saying to
herself. "If some one loved me!" Before hearing of Constantia, she had
mused upon liberty as a virgin Goddess--men were out of her thoughts;
even the figure of a rescuer, if one dawned in her mind, was more angel
than hero. That fair childish maidenliness had ceased. With her body
straining in her dragon's grasp, with the savour of loathing, unable to
contend, unable to speak aloud, she began to speak to herself, and all
the health of her nature made her outcry womanly: "If I were
loved!"--not for the sake of love, but for free breathing; and her
utterance of it was to insure life and enduringness to the wish, as the
yearning of a mother on a drowning ship is to get her infant to shore.
"If some noble gentleman could see me as I am and not disdain to aid
me! Oh! to be caught up out of this prison of thorns and brambles. I
cannot tear my own way out. I am a coward. My cry for help confesses
that. A beckoning of a finger would change me, I believe. I could fly
bleeding and through hootings to a comrade. Oh! a comrade! I do not
want a lover. I should find another Egoist, not so bad, but enough to
make me take a breath like death. I could follow a soldier, like poor
Sally or Molly. He stakes his life for his country, and a woman may be
proud of the worst of men who do that. Constantia met a soldier.
Perhaps she prayed and her prayer was answered. She did ill. But, oh,
how I love her for it! His name was Harry Oxford. Papa would call him
her Perseus. She must have felt that there was no explaining what she
suffered. She had only to act, to plunge. First she fixed her mind on
Harry Oxford. To be able to speak his name and see him awaiting her,
must have been relief, a reprieve. She did not waver, she cut the
links, she signed herself over. Oh, brave girl! what do you think of
me? But I have no Harry Whitford, I am alone. Let anything be said
against women; we must be very bad to have such bad things written of
us: only, say this, that to ask them to sign themselves over by oath
and ceremony, because of an ignorant promise, to the man they have been
mistaken in, is . . . it is--" the sudden consciousness that she had
put another name for Oxford, struck her a buffet, drowning her in
crimson.



CHAPTER XI

THE DOUBLE-BLOSSOM WILD CHERRY-TREE

Sir Willoughby chose a moment when Clara was with him and he had a good
retreat through folding-windows to the lawn, in case of cogency on the
enemy's part, to attack his cousin regarding the preposterous plot to
upset the family by a scamper to London: "By the way, Vernon, what is
this you've been mumbling to everybody save me, about leaving us to
pitch yourself into the stew-pot and be made broth of? London is no
better, and you are fit for considerably better. Don't, I beg you,
continue to annoy me. Take a run abroad, if you are restless. Take two
or three months, and join us as we are travelling home; and then think
of settling, pray. Follow my example, if you like. You can have one of
my cottages, or a place built for you. Anything to keep a man from
destroying the sense of stability about one. In London, my dear old
fellow, you lose your identity. What are you there? I ask you, what?
One has the feeling of the house crumbling when a man is perpetually
for shifting and cannot fix himself. Here you are known, you can study
at your ease; up in London you are nobody; I tell you honestly, I feel
it myself, a week of London literally drives me home to discover the
individual where I left him. Be advised. You don't mean to go."

"I have the intention," said Vernon.

"Why?"

"I've mentioned it to you."

"To my face?"

"Over your shoulder is generally the only chance you give me."

"You have not mentioned it to me, to my knowledge. As to the reason, I
might hear a dozen of your reasons, and I should not understand one.
It's against your interests and against my wishes. Come, friend, I am
not the only one you distress. Why, Vernon, you yourself have said that
the English would be very perfect Jews if they could manage to live on
the patriarchal system. You said it, yes, you said it!--but I recollect
it clearly. Oh, as for your double-meanings, you said the thing, and
you jeered at the incapacity of English families to live together, on
account of bad temper; and now you are the first to break up our union!
I decidedly do not profess to be a perfect Jew, but I do . . ."

Sir Willoughby caught signs of a probably smiling commerce between his
bride and his cousin. He raised his face, appeared to be consulting his
eyelids, and resolved to laugh: "Well, I own it. I do like the idea of
living patriarchally." He turned to Clara. "The Rev. Doctor one of
us!"

"My father?" she said.

"Why not?"

"Papa's habits are those of a scholar."

"That you might not be separated from him, my dear!"

Clara thanked Sir Willoughby for the kindness of thinking of her
father, mentally analysing the kindness, in which at least she found no
unkindness, scarcely egoism, though she knew it to be there.

"We might propose it," said he.

"As a compliment?"

"If he would condescend to accept it as a compliment. These great
scholars! . . . And if Vernon goes, our inducement for Dr. Middleton to
stay . . . But it is too absurd for discussion . . . Oh, Vernon, about
Master Crossjay; I will see to it."

He was about to give Vernon his shoulder and step into the garden, when
Clara said, "You will have Crossjay trained for the navy, Willoughby?
There is not a day to lose."

"Yes, yes; I will see to it. Depend on me for holding the young rascal
in view."

He presented his hand to her to lead her over the step to the gravel,
surprised to behold how flushed she was.

She responded to the invitation by putting her hand forth from a bent
elbow, with hesitating fingers. "It should not be postponed,
Willoughby."

Her attitude suggested a stipulation before she touched him.

"It's an affair of money, as you know, Willoughby," said Vernon. "If
I'm in London, I can't well provide for the boy for some time to come,
or it's not certain that I can."

"Why on earth should you go?"

"That's another matter. I want you to take my place with him."

"In which case the circumstances are changed. I am responsible for him,
and I have a right to bring him up according to my own prescription."

"We are likely to have one idle lout the more."

"I guarantee to make a gentleman of him."

"We have too many of your gentlemen already."

"You can't have enough, my good Vernon."

"They're the national apology for indolence. Training a penniless boy
to be one of them is nearly as bad as an education in a thieves' den;
he will be just as much at war with society, if not game for the
police."

"Vernon, have you seen Crossjay's father, the now Captain of Marines? I
think you have."

"He's a good man and a very gallant officer."

"And in spite of his qualities he's a cub, and an old cub. He is a
captain now, but he takes that rank very late, you will own. There you
have what you call a good man, undoubtedly a gallant officer,
neutralized by the fact that he is not a gentleman. Holding intercourse
with him is out of the question. No wonder Government declines to
advance him rapidly. Young Crossjay does not bear your name. He bears
mine, and on that point alone I should have a voice in the settlement
of his career. And I say emphatically that a drawing-room approval of a
young man is the best certificate for his general chances in life. I
know of a City of London merchant of some sort, and I know a firm of
lawyers, who will have none but University men at their office; at
least, they have the preference."

"Crossjay has a bullet head, fit neither for the University nor the
drawing-room," said Vernon; "equal to fighting and dying for you, and
that's all."

Sir Willoughby contented himself with replying, "The lad is a favourite
of mine."

His anxiety to escape a rejoinder caused him to step into the garden,
leaving Clara behind him. "My love!" said he, in apology, as he turned
to her. She could not look stern, but she had a look without a dimple
to soften it, and her eyes shone. For she had wagered in her heart that
the dialogue she provoked upon Crossjay would expose the Egoist. And
there were other motives, wrapped up and intertwisted, unrecognizable,
sufficient to strike her with worse than the flush of her
self-knowledge of wickedness when she detained him to speak of Crossjay
before Vernon.

At last it had been seen that she was conscious of suffering in her
association with this Egoist! Vernon stood for the world taken into her
confidence. The world, then, would not think so ill of her, she thought
hopefully, at the same time that she thought most evilly of herself.
But self-accusations were for the day of reckoning; she would and must
have the world with her, or the belief that it was coming to her, in
the terrible struggle she foresaw within her horizon of self, now her
utter boundary. She needed it for the inevitable conflict. Little
sacrifices of her honesty might be made. Considering how weak she was,
how solitary, how dismally entangled, daily disgraced beyond the power
of any veiling to conceal from her fiery sensations, a little hypocrisy
was a poor girl's natural weapon. She crushed her conscientious mind
with the assurance that it was magnifying trifles: not entirely unaware
that she was thereby preparing it for a convenient blindness in the
presence of dread alternatives; but the pride of laying such stress on
small sins gave her purity a blush of pleasure and overcame the inner
warning. In truth she dared not think evilly of herself for long,
sailing into battle as she was. Nuns and anchorites may; they have
leisure. She regretted the forfeits she had to pay for self-assistance,
and, if it might be won, the world's; regretted, felt the peril of the
loss, and took them up and flung them.

"You see, old Vernon has no argument," Willoughby said to her.

He drew her hand more securely on his arm to make her sensible that she
leaned on a pillar of strength.

"Whenever the little brain is in doubt, perplexed, undecided which
course to adopt, she will come to me, will she not? I shall always
listen," he resumed, soothingly. "My own! and I to you when the world
vexes me. So we round our completeness. You will know me; you will know
me in good time. I am not a mystery to those to whom I unfold myself. I
do not pretend to mystery: yet, I will confess, your home--your
heart's--Willoughby is not exactly identical with the Willoughby before
the world. One must be armed against that rough beast."

Certain is the vengeance of the young upon monotony; nothing more
certain. They do not scheme it, but sameness is a poison to their
systems; and vengeance is their heartier breathing, their stretch of
the limbs, run in the fields; nature avenges them.

"When does Colonel De Craye arrive?" said Clara.

"Horace? In two or three days. You wish him to be on the spot to learn
his part, my love?"

She had not flown forward to the thought of Colonel De Craye's arrival;
she knew not why she had mentioned him; but now she flew back, shocked,
first into shadowy subterfuge, and then into the criminal's dock.

"I do not wish him to be here. I do not know that he has a part to
learn. I have no wish. Willoughby, did you not say I should come to you
and you would listen?--will you listen? I am so commonplace that I
shall not be understood by you unless you take my words for the very
meaning of the words. I am unworthy. I am volatile. I love my liberty.
I want to be free . . ."

"Flitch!" he called.

It sounded necromantic.

"Pardon me, my love," he said. "The man you see yonder violates my
express injunction that he is not to come on my grounds, and here I
find him on the borders of my garden!"

Sir Willoughby waved his hand to the abject figure of a man standing to
intercept him.

"Volatile, unworthy, liberty--my dearest!" he bent to her when the man
had appeased him by departing, "you are at liberty within the law, like
all good women; I shall control and direct your volatility; and your
sense of worthiness must be re-established when we are more intimate;
it is timidity. The sense of unworthiness is a guarantee of worthiness
ensuing. I believe I am in the vein of a sermon! Whose the fault? The
sight of that man was annoying. Flitch was a stable-boy, groom, and
coachman, like his father before him, at the Hall thirty years; his
father died in our service. Mr. Flitch had not a single grievance here;
only one day the demon seizes him with the notion of bettering himself
he wants his independence, and he presents himself to me with a story
of a shop in our county town.--Flitch! remember, if you go you go for
good.--Oh, he quite comprehended.--Very well; good-bye, Flitch;--the
man was respectful: he looked the fool he was very soon to turn out to
be. Since then, within a period of several years, I have had him,
against my express injunctions, ten times on my grounds. It's curious
to calculate. Of course the shop failed, and Flitch's independence
consists in walking about with his hands in his empty pockets, and
looking at the Hall from some elevation near."

"Is he married? Has he children?" said Clara.

"Nine; and a wife that cannot cook or sew or wash linen."

"You could not give him employment?"

"After his having dismissed himself?"

"It might be overlooked."

"Here he was happy. He decided to go elsewhere, to be free--of course,
of my yoke. He quitted my service against my warning. Flitch, we will
say, emigrated with his wife and children, and the ship foundered. He
returns, but his place is filled; he is a ghost here, and I object to
ghosts."

"Some work might be found for him."

"It will be the same with old Vernon, my dear. If he goes, he goes for
good. It is the vital principle of my authority to insist on that. A
dead leaf might as reasonably demand to return to the tree. Once off,
off for all eternity! I am sorry, but such was your decision, my
friend. I have, you see, Clara, elements in me--"

"Dreadful!"

"Exert your persuasive powers with Vernon. You can do well-nigh what
you will with the old fellow. We have Miss Dale this evening for a week
or two. Lead him to some ideas of her.--Elements in me, I was
remarking, which will no more bear to be handled carelessly than
gunpowder. At the same time, there is no reason why they should not be
respected, managed with some degree of regard for me and attention to
consequences. Those who have not done so have repented."

"You do not speak to others of the elements in you," said Clara.

"I certainly do not: I have but one bride," was his handsome reply.

"Is it fair to me that you should show me the worst of you?"

"All myself, my own?"

His ingratiating droop and familiar smile rendered "All myself" so
affectionately meaningful in its happy reliance upon her excess of
love, that at last she understood she was expected to worship him and
uphold him for whatsoever he might be, without any estimation of
qualities: as indeed love does, or young love does: as she perhaps did
once, before he chilled her senses. That was before her "little brain"
had become active and had turned her senses to revolt.

It was on the full river of love that Sir Willoughby supposed the whole
floating bulk of his personality to be securely sustained; and
therefore it was that, believing himself swimming at his ease, he
discoursed of himself.

She went straight away from that idea with her mental exclamation:
"Why does he not paint himself in brighter colours to me!" and the
question: "Has he no ideal of generosity and chivalry?"

But the unfortunate gentleman imagined himself to be loved, on Love's
very bosom. He fancied that everything relating to himself excited
maidenly curiosity, womanly reverence, ardours to know more of him,
which he was ever willing to satisfy by repeating the same things. His
notion of women was the primitive black and white: there are good
women, bad women; and he possessed a good one. His high opinion of
himself fortified the belief that Providence, as a matter of justice
and fitness, must necessarily select a good one for him--or what are we
to think of Providence? And this female, shaped by that informing
hand, would naturally be in harmony with him, from the centre of his
profound identity to the raying circle of his variations. Know the
centre, you know the circle, and you discover that the variations are
simply characteristics, but you must travel on the rays from the circle
to get to the centre. Consequently Sir Willoughby put Miss Middleton on
one or other of these converging lines from time to time. Us, too, he
drags into the deeps, but when we have harpooned a whale and are
attached to the rope, down we must go; the miracle is to see us rise
again.

Women of mixed essences shading off the divine to the considerably
lower were outside his vision of woman. His mind could as little admit
an angel in pottery as a rogue in porcelain. For him they were what
they were when fashioned at the beginning; many cracked, many stained,
here and there a perfect specimen designed for the elect of men. At a
whisper of the world he shut the prude's door on them with a slam;
himself would have branded them with the letters in the hue of fire.
Privately he did so; and he was constituted by his extreme
sensitiveness and taste for ultra-feminine refinement to be a severe
critic of them during the carnival of egoism, the love-season.
Constantia . . . can it be told? She had been, be it said, a fair and
frank young merchant with him in that season; she was of a nature to be
a mother of heroes; she met the salute, almost half-way, ingenuously
unlike the coming mothers of the regiments of marionettes, who retire
in vapours, downcast, as by convention; ladies most flattering to the
egoistical gentleman, for they proclaim him the "first". Constantia's
offence had been no greater, but it was not that dramatic performance
of purity which he desired of an affianced lady, and so the offence was
great.

The love-season is the carnival of egoism, and it brings the touchstone
to our natures. I speak of love, not the mask, and not of the flutings
upon the theme of love, but of the passion; a flame having, like our
mortality, death in it as well as life, that may or may not be lasting.
Applied to Sir Willoughby, as to thousands of civilized males, the
touchstone found him requiring to be dealt with by his betrothed as an
original savage. She was required to play incessantly on the first
reclaiming chord which led our ancestral satyr to the measures of the
dance, the threading of the maze, and the setting conformably to his
partner before it was accorded to him to spin her with both hands and a
chirrup of his frisky heels. To keep him in awe and hold him enchained,
there are things she must never do, dare never say, must not think. She
must be cloistral. Now, strange and awful though it be to hear, women
perceive this requirement of them in the spirit of the man; they
perceive, too, and it may be gratefully, that they address their
performances less to the taming of the green and prankish monsieur of
the forest than to the pacification of a voracious aesthetic gluttony,
craving them insatiably, through all the tenses, with shrieks of the
lamentable letter "I" for their purity. Whether they see that it has
its foundation in the sensual, and distinguish the ultra-refined but
lineally great-grandson of the Hoof in this vast and dainty exacting
appetite is uncertain. They probably do not; the more the damage; for
in the appeasement of the glutton they have to practise much
simulation; they are in their way losers like their ancient mothers. It
is the palpable and material of them still which they are tempted to
flourish, wherewith to invite and allay pursuit: a condition under
which the spiritual, wherein their hope lies, languishes. The
capaciously strong in soul among women will ultimately detect an
infinite grossness in the demand for purity infinite, spotless bloom.
Earlier or later they see they have been victims of the singular
Egoist, have worn a mask of ignorance to be named innocent, have turned
themselves into market produce for his delight, and have really
abandoned the commodity in ministering to the lust for it, suffered
themselves to be dragged ages back in playing upon the fleshly
innocence of happy accident to gratify his jealous greed of possession,
when it should have been their task to set the soul above the fairest
fortune and the gift of strength in women beyond ornamental whiteness.
Are they not of nature warriors, like men?--men's mates to bear them
heroes instead of puppets? But the devouring male Egoist prefers them
as inanimate overwrought polished pure metal precious vessels, fresh
from the hands of the artificer, for him to walk away with hugging,
call all his own, drink of, and fill and drink of, and forget that he
stole them.

This running off on a by-road is no deviation from Sir Willoughby
Patterne and Miss Clara Middleton. He, a fairly intelligent man, and
very sensitive, was blinded to what was going on within her visibly
enough, by her production of the article he demanded of her sex. He had
to leave the fair young lady to ride to his county-town, and his design
was to conduct her through the covert of a group of laurels, there to
revel in her soft confusion. She resisted; nay, resolutely returned to
the lawn-sward. He contrasted her with Constantia in the amorous time,
and rejoiced in his disappointment. He saw the goddess Modesty guarding
Purity; and one would be bold to say that he did not hear the Precepts,
Purity's aged grannams maternal and paternal, cawing approval of her
over their munching gums. And if you ask whether a man, sensitive and a
lover, can be so blinded, you are condemned to re-peruse the foregoing
paragraph.

Miss Middleton was not sufficiently instructed in the position of her
sex to know that she had plunged herself in the thick of the strife of
one of their great battles. Her personal position, however, was
instilling knowledge rapidly, as a disease in the frame teaches us what
we are and have to contend with. Could she marry this man? He was
evidently manageable. Could she condescend to the use of arts in
managing him to obtain a placable life?--a horror of swampy flatness!
So vividly did the sight of that dead heaven over an unvarying level
earth swim on her fancy, that she shut her eyes in angry exclusion of
it as if it were outside, assailing her; and she nearly stumbled upon
young Crossjay.

"Oh, have I hurt you?" he cried.

"No," said she, "it was my fault. Lead me somewhere away from
everybody."

The boy took her hand, and she resumed her thoughts; and, pressing his
fingers and feeling warm to him both for his presence and silence, so
does the blood in youth lead the mind, even cool and innocent blood,
even with a touch, that she said to herself, "And if I marry, and then
. . . Where will honour be then? I marry him to be true to my word of
honour, and if then . . . !" An intolerable languor caused her to sigh
profoundly. It is written as she thought it; she thought in blanks, as
girls do, and some women. A shadow of the male Egoist is in the chamber
of their brains overawing them.

"Were I to marry, and to run!" There is the thought; she is offered up
to your mercy. We are dealing with a girl feeling herself desperately
situated, and not a fool.

"I'm sure you're dead tired, though," said Crossjay.

"No, I am not; what makes you think so?" said Clara.

"I do think so."

"But why do you think so?"

"You're so hot."

"What makes you think that?"

"You're so red."

"So are you, Crossjay."

"I'm only red in the middle of the cheeks, except when I've been
running. And then you talk to yourself, just as boys do when they are
blown."

"Do they?"

"They say: 'I know I could have kept up longer', or, 'my buckle broke',
all to themselves, when they break down running."

"And you have noticed that?"

"And, Miss Middleton, I don't wish you were a boy, but I should like to
live near you all my life and be a gentleman. I'm coming with Miss Dale
this evening to stay at the Hall and be looked after, instead of
stopping with her cousin who takes care of her father. Perhaps you and
I'll play chess at night."

"At night you will go to bed, Crossjay."

"Not if I have Sir Willoughby to catch hold of. He says I'm an
authority on birds' eggs. I can manage rabbits and poultry. Isn't a
farmer a happy man? But he doesn't marry ladies. A cavalry officer has
the best chance."

"But you are going to be a naval officer."

"I don't know. It's not positive. I shall bring my two dormice, and
make them perform gymnastics on the dinnertable. They're such dear
little things. Naval officers are not like Sir Willoughby."

"No, they are not," said Clara, "they give their lives to their
country."

"And then they're dead," said Crossjay.

Clara wished Sir Willoughby were confronting her: she could have
spoken.

She asked the boy where Mr. Whitford was. Crossjay pointed very
secretly in the direction of the double-blossom wild-cherry. Coming
within gaze of the stem, she beheld Vernon stretched at length,
reading, she supposed; asleep, she discovered: his finger in the leaves
of a book; and what book? She had a curiosity to know the title of the
book he would read beneath these boughs, and grasping Crossjay's hand
fast she craned her neck, as one timorous of a fall in peeping over
chasms, for a glimpse of the page; but immediately, and still with a
bent head, she turned her face to where the load of virginal blossom,
whiter than summer-cloud on the sky, showered and drooped and clustered
so thick as to claim colour and seem, like higher Alpine snows in
noon-sunlight, a flush of white. From deep to deeper heavens of white,
her eyes perched and soared. Wonder lived in her. Happiness in the
beauty of the tree pressed to supplant it, and was more mortal and
narrower. Reflection came, contracting her vision and weighing her to
earth. Her reflection was: "He must be good who loves to be and sleep
beneath the branches of this tree!" She would rather have clung to her
first impression: wonder so divine, so unbounded, was like soaring into
homes of angel-crowded space, sweeping through folded and on to folded
white fountain-bow of wings, in innumerable columns; but the thought of
it was no recovery of it; she might as well have striven to be a child.
The sensation of happiness promised to be less short-lived in memory,
and would have been had not her present disease of the longing for
happiness ravaged every corner of it for the secret of its existence.
The reflection took root. "He must be good . . . !" That reflection
vowed to endure. Poor by comparison with what it displaced, it
presented itself to her as conferring something on him, and she would
not have had it absent though it robbed her.

She looked down. Vernon was dreamily looking up.

She plucked Crossjay hurriedly away, whispering that he had better not
wake Mr. Whitford, and then she proposed to reverse their previous
chase, and she be the hound and he the hare. Crossjay fetched a
magnificent start. On his glancing behind he saw Miss Middleton walking
listlessly, with a hand at her side.

"There's a regular girl!" said he in some disgust; for his theory was,
that girls always have something the matter with them to spoil a game.



CHAPTER XII

MISS MIDDLETON AND MR. VERNON WHITFORD

Looking upward, not quite awakened out of a transient doze, at a fair
head circled in dazzling blossom, one may temporize awhile with common
sense, and take it for a vision after the eyes have regained direction
of the mind. Vernon did so until the plastic vision interwound with
reality alarmingly. This is the embrace of a Melusine who will soon
have the brain if she is encouraged. Slight dalliance with her makes
the very diminutive seem as big as life. He jumped to his feet, rattled
his throat, planted firmness on his brows and mouth, and attacked the
dream-giving earth with tremendous long strides, that his blood might
be lively at the throne of understanding. Miss Middleton and young
Crossjay were within hail: it was her face he had seen, and still the
idea of a vision, chased from his reasonable wits, knocked hard and
again for readmission. There was little for a man of humble mind
toward the sex to think of in the fact of a young lady's bending rather
low to peep at him asleep, except that the poise of her slender figure,
between an air of spying and of listening, vividly recalled his
likening of her to the Mountain Echo. Man or maid sleeping in the open
air provokes your tiptoe curiosity. Men, it is known, have in that
state cruelly been kissed; and no rights are bestowed on them, they are
teased by a vapourish rapture; what has happened to them the poor
fellows barely divine: they have a crazy step from that day. But a
vision is not so distracting; it is our own, we can put it aside and
return to it, play at rich and poor with it, and are not to be summoned
before your laws and rules for secreting it in our treasury. Besides,
it is the golden key of all the possible; new worlds expand beneath the
dawn it brings us. Just outside reality, it illumines, enriches and
softens real things;--and to desire it in preference to the simple fact
is a damning proof of enervation.

Such was Vernon's winding up of his brief drama of fantasy. He was
aware of the fantastical element in him and soon had it under. Which
of us who is of any worth is without it? He had not much vanity to
trouble him, and passion was quiet, so his task was not gigantic.
Especially be it remarked, that he was a man of quick pace, the
sovereign remedy for the dispersing of the mental fen-mist. He had
tried it and knew that nonsense is to be walked off.

Near the end of the park young Crossjay overtook him, and after acting
the pumped one a trifle more than needful, cried: "I say, Mr. Whitford,
there's Miss Middleton with her handkerchief out."

"What for, my lad?" said Vernon.

"I'm sure I don't know. All of a sudden she bumped down. And, look what
fellows girls are!--here she comes as if nothing had happened, and I
saw her feel at her side."

Clara was shaking her head to express a denial. "I am not at all
unwell," she said, when she came near. "I guessed Crossjay's business
in running up to you; he's a good-for-nothing, officious boy. I was
tired, and rested for a moment."

Crossjay peered at her eyelids. Vernon looked away and said: "Are you
too tired for a stroll?"

"Not now."

"Shall it be brisk?"

"You have the lead."

He led at a swing of the legs that accelerated young Crossjay's to the
double, but she with her short, swift, equal steps glided along easily
on a fine by his shoulder, and he groaned to think that of all the
girls of earth this one should have been chosen for the position of
fine lady.

"You won't tire me," said she, in answer to his look.

"You remind me of the little Piedmontese Bersaglieri on the march."

"I have seen them trotting into Como from Milan."

"They cover a quantity of ground in a day, if the ground's flat. You
want another sort of step for the mountains."

"I should not attempt to dance up."

"They soon tame romantic notions of them."

"The mountains tame luxurious dreams, you mean. I see how they are
conquered. I can plod. Anything to be high up!"

"Well, there you have the secret of good work: to plod on and still
keep the passion fresh."

"Yes, when we have an aim in view."

"We always have one."

"Captives have?"

"More than the rest of us."

Ignorant man! What of wives miserably wedded? What aim in view have
these most woeful captives? Horror shrouds it, and shame reddens
through the folds to tell of innermost horror.

"Take me back to the mountains, if you please, Mr. Whitford," Miss
Middleton said, fallen out of sympathy with him. "Captives have death
in view, but that is not an aim."

"Why may not captives expect a release?"

"Hardly from a tyrant."

"If you are thinking of tyrants, it may be so. Say the tyrant dies?"

"The prison-gates are unlocked and out comes a skeleton. But why will
you talk of skeletons! The very name of mountain seems life in
comparison with any other subject."

"I assure you," said Vernon, with the fervour of a man lighting on an
actual truth in his conversation with a young lady, "it's not the first
time I have thought you would be at home in the Alps. You would walk
and climb as well as you dance."

She liked to hear Clara Middleton talked of, and of her having been
thought of, and giving him friendly eyes, barely noticing that he was
in a glow, she said: "If you speak so encouragingly I shall fancy we
are near an ascent."

"I wish we were," said he.

"We can realize it by dwelling on it, don't you think?"

"We can begin climbing."

"Oh!" she squeezed herself shadowily.

"Which mountain shall it be?" said Vernon, in the right real earnest
tone.

Miss Middleton suggested a lady's mountain first, for a trial. "And
then, if you think well enough of me--if I have not stumbled more than
twice, or asked more than ten times how far it is from the top, I
should like to be promoted to scale a giant."

They went up to some of the lesser heights of Switzerland and Styria,
and settled in South Tyrol, the young lady preferring this district for
the strenuous exercise of her climbing powers because she loved Italian
colour; and it seemed an exceedingly good reason to the genial
imagination she had awakened in Mr. Whitford. "Though," said he,
abruptly, "you are not so much Italian as French."

She hoped she was English, she remarked.

"Of course you are English; . . . yes." He moderated his ascent with
the halting affirmative.

She inquired wonderingly why he spoke in apparent hesitation.

"Well, you have French feet, for example: French wits, French
impatience," he lowered his voice, "and charm"

"And love of compliments."

"Possibly. I was not conscious of paying them"

"And a disposition to rebel?"

"To challenge authority, at least."

"That is a dreadful character."

"At all events, it is a character."

"Fit for an Alpine comrade?"

"For the best of comrades anywhere."

"It is not a piece of drawing-room sculpture: that is the most one can
say for it!" she dropped a dramatic sigh.

Had he been willing she would have continued the theme, for the
pleasure a poor creature long gnawing her sensations finds in seeing
herself from the outside. It fell away. After a silence, she could not
renew it; and he was evidently indifferent, having to his own
satisfaction dissected and stamped her a foreigner. With it passed her
holiday. She had forgotten Sir Willoughby: she remembered him and said.
"You knew Miss Durham, Mr. Whitford?"

He answered briefly, "I did."

"Was she? . . ." some hot-faced inquiry peered forth and withdrew.

"Very handsome," said Vernon.

"English?"

"Yes; the dashing style of English."

"Very courageous."

"I dare say she had a kind of courage."

"She did very wrong."

"I won't say no. She discovered a man more of a match with herself;
luckily not too late. We're at the mercy . . ."

"Was she not unpardonable?"

"I should be sorry to think that of any one."

"But you agree that she did wrong."

"I suppose I do. She made a mistake and she corrected it. If she had
not, she would have made a greater mistake."

"The manner. . ."

"That was bad--as far as we know. The world has not much right to
judge. A false start must now and then be made. It's better not to take
notice of it, I think."

"What is it we are at the mercy of?"

"Currents of feeling, our natures. I am the last man to preach on the
subject: young ladies are enigmas to me; I fancy they must have a
natural perception of the husband suitable to them, and the reverse;
and if they have a certain degree of courage, it follows that they
please themselves."

"They are not to reflect on the harm they do?" said Miss Middleton.

"By all means let them reflect; they hurt nobody by doing that."

"But a breach of faith!"

"If the faith can be kept through life, all's well."

"And then there is the cruelty, the injury!"

"I really think that if a young lady came to me to inform me she must
break our engagement--I have never been put to the proof, but to
suppose it:--I should not think her cruel."

"Then she would not be much of a loss."

"And I should not think so for this reason, that it is impossible for a
girl to come to such a resolution without previously showing signs of
it to her . . . the man she is engaged to. I think it unfair to engage
a girl for longer than a week or two, just time enough for her
preparations and publications."

"If he is always intent on himself, signs are likely to be unheeded by
him," said Miss Middleton.

He did not answer, and she said, quickly:

"It must always be a cruelty. The world will think so. It is an act of
inconstancy."

"If they knew one another well before they were engaged."

"Are you not singularly tolerant?" said she.

To which Vernon replied with airy cordiality:--

"In some cases it is right to judge by results; we'll leave severity to
the historian, who is bound to be a professional moralist and put pleas
of human nature out of the scales. The lady in question may have been
to blame, but no hearts were broken, and here we have four happy
instead of two miserable."

His persecuting geniality of countenance appealed to her to confirm
this judgement by results, and she nodded and said: "Four," as the
awe-stricken speak.

From that moment until young Crossjay fell into the green-rutted lane
from a tree, and was got on his legs half stunned, with a hanging lip
and a face like the inside of a flayed eel-skin, she might have been
walking in the desert, and alone, for the pleasure she had in society.

They led the fated lad home between them, singularly drawn together by
their joint ministrations to him, in which her delicacy had to stand
fire, and sweet good-nature made naught of any trial. They were hand in
hand with the little fellow as physician and professional nurse.



CHAPTER XIII

THE FIRST EFFORT AFTER FREEDOM

Crossjay's accident was only another proof, as Vernon told Miss Dale,
that the boy was but half monkey.

"Something fresh?" she exclaimed on seeing him brought into the Hall,
where she had just arrived.

"Simply a continuation," said Vernon. "He is not so prehensile as he
should be. He probably in extremity relies on the tail that has been
docked. Are you a man, Crossjay?"

"I should think I was!" Crossjay replied, with an old man's voice, and
a ghastly twitch for a smile overwhelmed the compassionate ladies.

Miss Dale took possession of him. "You err in the other direction," she
remarked to Vernon.

"But a little bracing roughness is better than spoiling him." said Miss
Middleton.

She did not receive an answer, and she thought: "Whatever Willoughby
does is right, to this lady!"

Clara's impression was renewed when Sir Willoughby sat beside Miss Dale
in the evening; and certainly she had never seen him shine so
picturesquely as in his bearing with Miss Dale. The sprightly sallies
of the two, their rallyings, their laughter, and her fine eyes, and his
handsome gestures, won attention like a fencing match of a couple keen
with the foils to display the mutual skill. And it was his design that
she should admire the display; he was anything but obtuse; enjoying the
match as he did and necessarily did to act so excellent a part in it,
he meant the observer to see the man he was with a lady not of raw
understanding. So it went on from day to day for three days.

She fancied once that she detected the agreeable stirring of the brood
of jealousy, and found it neither in her heart nor in her mind, but in
the book of wishes, well known to the young where they write matter
which may sometimes be independent of both those volcanic albums.
Jealousy would have been a relief to her, a dear devil's aid. She
studied the complexion of jealousy to delude herself with the sense of
the spirit being in her, and all the while she laughed, as at a vile
theatre whereof the imperfection of the stage machinery rather than the
performance is the wretched source of amusement.

Vernon had deeply depressed her. She was hunted by the figure 4. Four
happy instead of two miserable. He had said it, involving her among the
four; and so it must be, she considered, and she must be as happy as
she could; for not only was he incapable of perceiving her state, he
was unable to imagine other circumstances to surround her. How, to be
just to him, were they imaginable by him or any one?

Her horrible isolation of secrecy in a world amiable in
unsuspectingness frightened her. To fling away her secret, to conform,
to be unrebellious, uncritical, submissive, became an impatient desire;
and the task did not appear so difficult since Miss Dale's arrival.
Endearments had been rare, more formal; living bodily untroubled and
unashamed, and, as she phrased it, having no one to care for her, she
turned insensibly in the direction where she was due; she slightly
imitated Miss Dale's colloquial responsiveness. To tell truth, she felt
vivacious in a moderate way with Willoughby after seeing him with Miss
Dale. Liberty wore the aspect of a towering prison-wall; the desperate
undertaking of climbing one side and dropping to the other was more
than she, unaided, could resolve on; consequently, as no one cared for
her, a worthless creature might as well cease dreaming and stipulating
for the fulfilment of her dreams; she might as well yield to her fate;
nay, make the best of it.

Sir Willoughby was flattered and satisfied. Clara's adopted vivacity
proved his thorough knowledge of feminine nature; nor did her
feebleness in sustaining it displease him. A steady look of hers had of
late perplexed the man, and he was comforted by signs of her
inefficiency where he excelled. The effort and the failure were both of
good omen.

But she could not continue the effort. He had overweighted her too much
for the mimicry of a sentiment to harden and have an apparently natural
place among her impulses; and now an idea came to her that he might, it
might be hoped, possibly see in Miss Dale, by present contrast, the
mate he sought; by contrast with an unanswering creature like herself,
he might perhaps realize in Miss Dale's greater accomplishments and her
devotion to him the merit of suitability; he might be induced to do her
justice. Dim as the loop-hole was, Clara fixed her mind on it till it
gathered light. And as a prelude to action, she plunged herself into a
state of such profound humility, that to accuse it of being simulated
would be venturesome, though it was not positive. The tempers of the
young are liquid fires in isles of quicksand; the precious metals not
yet cooled in a solid earth. Her compassion for Laetitia was less
forced, but really she was almost as earnest in her self-abasement, for
she had not latterly been brilliant, not even adequate to the ordinary
requirements of conversation. She had no courage, no wit, no diligence,
nothing that she could distinguish save discontentment like a corroding
acid, and she went so far in sincerity as with a curious shift of
feeling to pity the man plighted to her. If it suited her purpose to
pity Sir Willoughby, she was not moved by policy, be assured; her needs
were her nature, her moods her mind; she had the capacity to make
anything serve her by passing into it with the glance which discerned
its usefulness; and this is how it is that the young, when they are in
trouble, without approaching the elevation of scientific hypocrites,
can teach that able class lessons in hypocrisy.

"Why should not Willoughby be happy?" she said; and the exclamation was
pushed forth by the second thought: "Then I shall be free!" Still that
thought came second.

The desire for the happiness of Willoughby was fervent on his behalf
and wafted her far from friends and letters to a narrow Tyrolean
valley, where a shallow river ran, with the indentations of a remotely
seen army of winding ranks in column, topaz over the pebbles to hollows
of ravishing emerald. There sat Liberty, after her fearful leap over
the prison-wall, at peace to watch the water and the falls of sunshine
on the mountain above, between descending pine-stem shadows. Clara's
wish for his happiness, as soon as she had housed herself in the
imagination of her freedom, was of a purity that made it seem
exceedingly easy for her to speak to him.

The opportunity was offered by Sir Willoughby. Every morning after
breakfast Miss Dale walked across the park to see her father, and on
this occasion Sir Willoughby and Miss Middleton went with her as far as
the lake, all three discoursing of the beauty of various trees,
birches, aspens, poplars, beeches, then in their new green. Miss Dale
loved the aspen, Miss Middleton the beech, Sir Willoughby the birch,
and pretty things were said by each in praise of the favoured object,
particularly by Miss Dale. So much so that when she had gone on he
recalled one of her remarks, and said: "I believe, if the whole place
were swept away to-morrow, Laetitia Dale could reconstruct it and put
those aspens on the north of the lake in number and situation correctly
where you have them now. I would guarantee her description of it in
absence correct."

"Why should she be absent?" said Clara, palpitating.

"Well, why!" returned Sir Willoughby. "As you say, there is no reason
why. The art of life, and mine will be principally a country life--town
is not life, but a tornado whirling atoms--the art is to associate a
group of sympathetic friends in our neighbourhood; and it is a fact
worth noting that if ever I feel tired of the place, a short talk with
Laetitia Dale refreshes it more than a month or two on the Continent.
She has the well of enthusiasm. And there is a great advantage in
having a cultivated person at command, with whom one can chat of any
topic under the sun. I repeat, you have no need of town if you have
friends like Laetitia Dale within call. My mother esteemed her highly."

"Willoughby, she is not obliged to go."

"I hope not. And, my love, I rejoice that you have taken to her. Her
father's health is poor. She would be a young spinster to live alone in
a country cottage."

"What of your scheme?"

"Old Vernon is a very foolish fellow."

"He has declined?"

"Not a word on the subject! I have only to propose it to be snubbed, I
know."

"You may not be aware how you throw him into the shade with her."

"Nothing seems to teach him the art of dialogue with ladies."

"Are not gentlemen shy when they see themselves outshone?"

"He hasn't it, my love: Vernon is deficient in the lady's tongue."

"I respect him for that."

"Outshone, you say? I do not know of any shining--save to one, who
lights me, path and person!"

The identity of the one was conveyed to her in a bow and a soft
pressure.

"Not only has he not the lady's tongue, which I hold to be a man's
proper accomplishment," continued Sir Willoughby, "he cannot turn his
advantages to account. Here has Miss Dale been with him now four days
in the house. They are exactly on the same footing as when she entered
it. You ask? I will tell you. It is this: it is want of warmth. Old
Vernon is a scholar--and a fish. Well, perhaps he has cause to be shy
of matrimony; but he is a fish."

"You are reconciled to his leaving you?"

"False alarm! The resolution to do anything unaccustomed is quite
beyond old Vernon."

"But if Mr. Oxford--Whitford . . . your swans coming sailing up the
lake, how beautiful they look when they are indignant! I was going to
ask you, surely men witnessing a marked admiration for some one else
will naturally be discouraged?"

Sir Willoughby stiffened with sudden enlightenment.

Though the word jealousy had not been spoken, the drift of her
observations was clear. Smiling inwardly, he said, and the sentences
were not enigmas to her: "Surely, too, young ladies . . . a
little?--Too far? But an old friendship! About the same as the fitting
of an old glove to a hand. Hand and glove have only to meet. Where
there is natural harmony you would not have discord. Ay, but you have
it if you check the harmony. My dear girl! You child!"

He had actually, in this parabolic, and commendable, obscureness, for
which she thanked him in her soul, struck the very point she had not
named and did not wish to hear named, but wished him to strike; he was
anything but obtuse. His exultation, of the compressed sort, was
extreme, on hearing her cry out:

"Young ladies may be. Oh! not I, not I. I can convince you. Not that.
Believe me, Willoughby. I do not know what it is to feel that, or
anything like it. I cannot conceive a claim on any one's life--as a
claim: or the continuation of an engagement not founded on perfect,
perfect sympathy. How should I feel it, then? It is, as you say of Mr.
Ox--Whitford, beyond me."

Sir Willoughby caught up the Ox--Whitford.

Bursting with laughter in his joyful pride, he called it a portrait of
old Vernon in society. For she thought a trifle too highly of Vernon,
as here and there a raw young lady does think of the friends of her
plighted man, which is waste of substance properly belonging to him, as
it were, in the loftier sense, an expenditure in genuflexions to
wayside idols of the reverence she should bring intact to the temple.
Derision instructs her.

Of the other subject--her jealousy--he had no desire to hear more. She
had winced: the woman had been touched to smarting in the girl: enough.
She attempted the subject once, but faintly, and his careless parrying
threw her out. Clara could have bitten her tongue for that reiterated
stupid slip on the name of Whitford; and because she was innocent at
heart she persisted in asking herself how she could be guilty of it.

"You both know the botanic titles of these wild flowers," she said.

"Who?" he inquired.

"You and Miss Dale."

Sir Willoughby shrugged. He was amused.

"No woman on earth will grace a barouche so exquisitely as my Clara."

"Where?" said she.

"During our annual two months in London. I drive a barouche there, and
venture to prophesy that my equipage will create the greatest
excitement of any in London. I see old Horace De Craye gazing!"

She sighed. She could not drag him to the word, or a hint of it
necessary to her subject.

But there it was; she saw it. She had nearly let it go, and blushed at
being obliged to name it.

"Jealousy, do you mean. Willoughby? the people in London would be
jealous?--Colonel De Craye? How strange! That is a sentiment I cannot
understand."

Sir Willoughby gesticulated the "Of course not" of an established
assurance to the contrary.

"Indeed, Willoughby, I do not."

"Certainly not."

He was now in her trap. And he was imagining himself to be anatomizing
her feminine nature.

"Can I give you a proof, Willoughby? I am so utterly incapable of it
that--listen to me--were you to come to me to tell me, as you might,
how much better suited to you Miss Dale has appeared than I am--and I
fear I am not; it should be spoken plainly; unsuited altogether,
perhaps--I would, I beseech you to believe--you must believe me--give
you . . . give you your freedom instantly; most truly; and engage to
speak of you as I should think of you. Willoughby, you would have no
one to praise you in public and in private as I should, for you would
be to me the most honest, truthful, chivalrous gentleman alive. And in
that case I would undertake to declare that she would not admire you
more than I; Miss Dale would not; she would not admire you more than I;
not even Miss Dale."

This, her first direct leap for liberty, set Clara panting, and so much
had she to say that the nervous and the intellectual halves of her
dashed like cymbals, dazing and stunning her with the appositeness of
things to be said, and dividing her in indecision as to the cunningest
to move him of the many pressing.

The condition of feminine jealousy stood revealed.

He had driven her farther than he intended.

"Come, let me allay these . . ." he soothed her with hand and voice,
while seeking for his phrase; "these magnified pinpoints. Now, my
Clara! on my honour! and when I put it forward in attestation, my
honour has the most serious meaning speech can have; ordinarily my word
has to suffice for bonds, promises, or asseverations; on my honour! not
merely is there, my poor child! no ground of suspicion, I assure you,
I declare to you, the fact of the case is the very reverse. Now, mark
me; of her sentiments I cannot pretend to speak; I did not, to my
knowledge, originate, I am not responsible for them, and I am, before
the law, as we will say, ignorant of them; that is, I have never heard
a declaration of them, and I, am, therefore, under pain of the stigma
of excessive fatuity, bound to be non-cognizant. But as to myself I can
speak for myself and, on my honour! Clara--to be as direct as
possible, even to baldness, and you know I loathe it--I could not, I
repeat, I could not marry Laetitia Dale! Let me impress it on you. No
flatteries--we are all susceptible more or less--no conceivable
condition could bring it about; no amount of admiration. She and I are
excellent friends; we cannot be more. When you see us together, the
natural concord of our minds is of course misleading. She is a woman of
genius. I do not conceal, I profess my admiration of her. There are
times when, I confess, I require a Laetitia Dale to bring me out, give
and take. I am indebted to her for the enjoyment of the duet few know,
few can accord with, fewer still are allowed the privilege of playing
with a human being. I am indebted, I own, and I feel deep gratitude; I
own to a lively friendship for Miss Dale, but if she is displeasing in
the sight of my bride by . . . by the breadth of an eyelash, then
. . ."

Sir Willoughby's arm waved Miss Dale off away into outer darkness in
the wilderness.

Clara shut her eyes and rolled her eyeballs in a frenzy of unuttered
revolt from the Egoist.

But she was not engaged in the colloquy to be an advocate of Miss Dale
or of common humanity.

"Ah!" she said, simply determining that the subject should not drop.

"And, ah!" he mocked her tenderly. "True, though! And who knows better
than my Clara that I require youth, health, beauty, and the other
undefinable attributes fitting with mine and beseeming the station of
the lady called to preside over my household and represent me? What
says my other self? my fairer? But you are! my love, you are!
Understand my nature rightly, and you . . . "

"I do! I do!" interposed Clara; "if I did not by this time I should be
idiotic. Let me assure you, I understand it. Oh! listen to me: one
moment. Miss Dale regards me as the happiest woman on earth.
Willoughby, if I possessed her good qualities, her heart and mind, no
doubt I should be. It is my wish--you must hear me, hear me out--my
wish, my earnest wish, my burning prayer, my wish to make way for her.
She appreciates you: I do not--to my shame, I do not. She worships you:
I do not, I cannot. You are the rising sun to her. It has been so for
years. No one can account for love; I daresay not for the impossibility
of loving . . . loving where we should; all love bewilders me. I was
not created to understand it. But she loves you, she has pined. I
believe it has destroyed the health you demand as one item in your
list. But you, Willoughby, can restore that. Travelling, and . . . and
your society, the pleasure of your society would certainly restore it.
You look so handsome together! She has unbounded devotion! as for me, I
cannot idolize. I see faults: I see them daily. They astonish and wound
me. Your pride would not bear to hear them spoken of, least of all by
your wife. You warned me to beware--that is, you said, you said
something."

Her busy brain missed the subterfuge to cover her slip of the tongue.

Sir Willoughby struck in: "And when I say that the entire concatenation
is based on an erroneous observation of facts, and an erroneous
deduction from that erroneous observation!--? No, no. Have confidence
in me. I propose it to you in this instance, purely to save you from
deception. You are cold, my love? you shivered."

"I am not cold," said Clara. "Some one, I suppose, was walking over my
grave."

The gulf of a caress hove in view like an enormous billow hollowing
under the curled ridge.

She stooped to a buttercup; the monster swept by.

"Your grave!" he exclaimed over her head; "my own girl!"

"Is not the orchid naturally a stranger in ground so far away from the
chalk, Willoughby?"

"I am incompetent to pronounce an opinion on such important matters. My
mother had a passion for every description of flower. I fancy I have
some recollection of her scattering the flower you mention over the
park."

"If she were living now!"

"We should be happy in the blessing of the most estimable of women, my
Clara."

"She would have listened to me. She would have realized what I mean."

"Indeed, Clara--poor soul!" he murmured to himself, aloud; "indeed you
are absolutely in error. If I have seemed--but I repeat, you are
deceived. The idea of 'fitness' is a total hallucination. Supposing
you--I do it even in play painfully--entirely out of the way,
unthought of. . ."

"Extinct," Clara said low.

"Non-existent for me," he selected a preferable term. "Suppose it; I
should still, in spite of an admiration I have never thought it
incumbent on me to conceal, still be--I speak emphatically--utterly
incapable of the offer of my hand to Miss Dale. It may be that she is
embedded in my mind as a friend, and nothing but a friend. I received
the stamp in early youth. People have noticed it--we do, it seems,
bring one another out, reflecting, counter-reflecting."

She glanced up at him with a shrewd satisfaction to see that her wicked
shaft had stuck.

"You do; it is a common remark," she said. "The instantaneous
difference when she comes near, any one might notice."

"My love," he opened the iron gate into the garden, "you encourage the
naughty little suspicion."

"But it is a beautiful sight, Willoughby. I like to see you together. I
like it as I like to see colours match."

"Very well. There is no harm then. We shall often be together. I like
my fair friend. But the instant!--you have only to express a sentiment
of disapprobation."

"And you dismiss her."

"I dismiss her. That is, as to the word, I constitute myself your echo,
to clear any vestige of suspicion. She goes."

"That is a case of a person doomed to extinction without offending."

"Not without: for whoever offends my bride, my wife, my sovereign lady,
offends me: very deeply offends me."

"Then the caprices of your wife . . ." Clara stamped her foot
imperceptibly on the lawn-sward, which was irresponsively soft to her
fretfulness. She broke from the inconsequent meaningless mild tone of
irony, and said: "Willoughby, women have their honour to swear by
equally with men:--girls have: they have to swear an oath at the altar;
may I to you now? Take it for uttered when I tell you that nothing
would make me happier than your union with Miss Dale. I have spoken as
much as I can. Tell me you release me."

With the well-known screw-smile of duty upholding weariness worn to
inanition, he rejoined: "Allow me once more to reiterate, that it is
repulsive, inconceivable, that I should ever, under any mortal
conditions, bring myself to the point of taking Miss Dale for my wife.
You reduce me to this perfectly childish protestation--pitiably
childish! But, my love, have I to remind you that you and I are
plighted, and that I am an honourable man?"

"I know it, I feel it--release me!" cried Clara.

Sir Willoughby severely reprehended his short-sightedness for seeing
but the one proximate object in the particular attention he had
bestowed on Miss Dale. He could not disavow that they had been marked,
and with an object, and he was distressed by the unwonted want of
wisdom through which he had been drawn to overshoot his object. His
design to excite a touch of the insane emotion in Clara's bosom was too
successful, and, "I was not thinking of her," he said to himself in his
candour, contrite.

She cried again: "Will you not, Willoughby--release me?"

He begged her to take his arm.

To consent to touch him while petitioning for a detachment, appeared
discordant to Clara, but, if she expected him to accede, it was right
that she should do as much as she could, and she surrendered her hand
at arm's length, disdaining the imprisoned fingers. He pressed them and
said: "Dr Middleton is in the library. I see Vernon is at work with
Crossjay in the West-room--the boy has had sufficient for the day.
Now, is it not like old Vernon to drive his books at a cracked head
before it's half mended?"

He signalled to young Crossjay, who was up and out through the folding
windows in a twinkling.

"And you will go in, and talk to Vernon of the lady in question," Sir
Willoughby whispered to Clara. "Use your best persuasions in our joint
names. You have my warrant for saying that money is no consideration;
house and income are assured. You can hardly have taken me seriously
when I requested you to undertake Vernon before. I was quite in earnest
then as now. I prepare Miss Dale. I will not have a wedding on our
wedding-day; but either before or after it, I gladly speed their
alliance. I think now I give you the best proof possible, and though I
know that with women a delusion may be seen to be groundless and still
be cherished, I rely on your good sense."

Vernon was at the window and stood aside for her to enter. Sir
Willoughby used a gentle insistence with her. She bent her head as if
she were stepping into a cave. So frigid was she, that a ridiculous
dread of calling Mr. Whitford Mr. Oxford was her only present anxiety
when Sir Willoughby had closed the window on them.



CHAPTER XIV

SIR WILLOUGHBY AND LAETITIA

"I prepare Miss Dale."

Sir Willoughby thought of his promise to Clara. He trifled awhile with
young Crossjay, and then sent the boy flying, and wrapped himself in
meditation. So shall you see standing many a statue of statesmen who
have died in harness for their country.

In the hundred and fourth chapter of the thirteenth volume of the Book
of Egoism it is written: Possession without obligation to the object
possessed approaches felicity.

It is the rarest condition of ownership. For example: the possession of
land is not without obligation both to the soil and the tax-collector;
the possession of fine clothing is oppressed by obligation; gold,
jewelry, works of art, enviable household furniture, are positive
fetters; the possession of a wife we find surcharged with obligation.
In all these cases possession is a gentle term for enslavement,
bestowing the sort of felicity attained to by the helot drunk. You can
have the joy, the pride, the intoxication of possession; you can have
no free soul.

But there is one instance of possession, and that the most perfect,
which leaves us free, under not a shadow of obligation, receiving ever,
never giving, or if giving, giving only of our waste; as it were (sauf
votre respect), by form of perspiration, radiation, if you like;
unconscious poral bountifulness; and it is a beneficent process for the
system. Our possession of an adoring female's worship is this instance.

The soft cherishable Parsee is hardly at any season other than
prostrate. She craves nothing save that you continue in being--her
sun: which is your firm constitutional endeavour: and thus you have a
most exact alliance; she supplying spirit to your matter, while at the
same time presenting matter to your spirit, verily a comfortable
apposition. The Gods do bless it.

That they do so indeed is evident in the men they select for such a
felicitous crown and aureole. Weak men would be rendered nervous by the
flattery of a woman's worship; or they would be for returning it, at
least partially, as though it could be bandied to and fro without
emulgence of the poetry; or they would be pitiful, and quite spoil the
thing. Some would be for transforming the beautiful solitary vestal
flame by the first effort of the multiplication-table into your
hearth-fire of slippered affection. So these men are not they whom the
Gods have ever selected, but rather men of a pattern with themselves,
very high and very solid men, who maintain the crown by holding
divinely independent of the great emotion they have sown.

Even for them a pass of danger is ahead, as we shall see in our sample
of one among the highest of them.

A clear approach to felicity had long been the portion of Sir
Willoughby Patterne in his relations with Laetitia Dale. She belonged
to him; he was quite unshackled by her. She was everything that is good
in a parasite, nothing that is bad. His dedicated critic she was,
reviewing him with a favour equal to perfect efficiency in her office;
and whatever the world might say of him, to her the happy gentleman
could constantly turn for his refreshing balsamic bath. She flew to the
soul in him, pleasingly arousing sensations of that inhabitant; and he
allowed her the right to fly, in the manner of kings, as we have heard,
consenting to the privileges acted on by cats. These may not address
their Majesties, but they may stare; nor will it be contested that the
attentive circular eyes of the humble domestic creatures are an
embellishment to Royal pomp and grandeur, such truly as should one day
gain for them an inweaving and figurement--in the place of bees, ermine
tufts, and their various present decorations--upon the august great
robes back-flowing and foaming over the gaspy page-boys.

Further to quote from the same volume of The Book: There is pain in the
surrendering of that we are fain to relinquish.

The idea is too exquisitely attenuate, as are those of the whole
body-guard of the heart of Egoism, and will slip through you unless you
shall have made a study of the gross of volumes of the first and second
sections of The Book, and that will take you up to senility; or you
must make a personal entry into the pages, perchance; or an escape out
of them. There was once a venerable gentleman for whom a white hair
grew on the cop of his nose, laughing at removals. He resigned himself
to it in the end, and lastingly contemplated the apparition. It does
not concern us what effect was produced on his countenance and his
mind; enough that he saw a fine thing, but not so fine as the idea
cited above; which has been between the two eyes of humanity ever since
women were sought in marriage. With yonder old gentleman it may have
been a ghostly hair or a disease of the optic nerves; but for us it is
a real growth, and humanity might profitably imitate him in his patient
speculation upon it.

Sir Willoughby Patterne, though ready in the pursuit of duty and policy
(an oft-united couple) to cast Miss Dale away, had to consider that he
was not simply, so to speak, casting her over a hedge, he was casting
her for a man to catch her; and this was a much greater trial than it
had been on the previous occasion, when she went over bump to the
ground. In the arms of a husband, there was no knowing how soon she
might forget her soul's fidelity. It had not hurt him to sketch the
project of the conjunction; benevolence assisted him; but he winced and
smarted on seeing it take shape. It sullied his idea of Laetitia.

Still, if, in spite of so great a change in her fortune, her spirit
could be guaranteed changeless, he, for the sake of pacifying his
bride, and to keep two serviceable persons near him, at command, might
resolve to join them. The vision of his resolution brought with it a
certain pallid contempt of the physically faithless woman; no wonder he
betook himself to The Book, and opened it on the scorching chapters
treating of the sex, and the execrable wiles of that foremost creature
of the chase, who runs for life. She is not spared in the Biggest of
Books. But close it.

The writing in it having been done chiefly by men, men naturally
receive their fortification from its wisdom, and half a dozen of the
popular sentences for the confusion of women (cut in brass worn to a
polish like sombre gold), refreshed Sir Willoughby for his undertaking.

An examination of Laetitia's faded complexion braced him very
cordially.

His Clara, jealous of this poor leaf!

He could have desired the transfusion of a quality or two from Laetitia
to his bride; but you cannot, as in cookery, obtain a mixture of the
essences of these creatures; and if, as it is possible to do, and as he
had been doing recently with the pair of them at the Hall, you stew
them in one pot, you are far likelier to intensify their little
birthmarks of individuality. Had they a tendency to excellence it might
be otherwise; they might then make the exchanges we wish for; or
scientifically concocted in a harem for a sufficient length of time by
a sultan anything but obtuse, they might. It is, however, fruitless to
dwell on what was only a glimpse of a wild regret, like the crossing of
two express trains along the rails in Sir Willoughby's head.

The ladies Eleanor and Isabel were sitting with Miss Dale, all three at
work on embroideries. He had merely to look at Miss Eleanor. She rose.
She looked at Miss Isabel, and rattled her chatelaine to account for
her departure. After a decent interval Miss Isabel glided out. Such was
the perfect discipline of the household.

Sir Willoughby played an air on the knee of his crossed leg.

Laetitia grew conscious of a meaning in the silence. She said, "You
have not been vexed by affairs to-day?"

"Affairs," he replied, "must be peculiarly vexatious to trouble me.
Concerning the country or my personal affairs?"

"I fancy I was alluding to the country."

"I trust I am as good a patriot as any man living," said he; "but I am
used to the follies of my countrymen, and we are on board a stout ship.
At the worst it's no worse than a rise in rates and taxes; soup at the
Hall gates, perhaps; license to fell timber in one of the outer copses,
or some dozen loads of coal. You hit my feudalism."

"The knight in armour has gone," said Laetitia, "and the castle with
the draw-bridge. Immunity for our island has gone too since we took to
commerce."

"We bartered independence for commerce. You hit our old controversy.
Ay, but we do not want this overgrown population! However, we will put
politics and sociology and the pack of their modern barbarous words
aside. You read me intuitively. I have been, I will not say annoyed,
but ruffled. I have much to do, and going into Parliament would make me
almost helpless if I lose Vernon. You know of some absurd notion he
has?--literary fame, and bachelor's chambers, and a chop-house, and the
rest of it."

She knew, and thinking differently in the matter of literary fame, she
flushed, and, ashamed of the flush, frowned.

He bent over to her with the perusing earnestness of a gentleman about
to trifle.

"You cannot intend that frown?"

"Did I frown?"

"You do."

"Now?"

"Fiercely."

"Oh!"

"Will you smile to reassure me?"

"Willingly, as well as I can."

A gloom overcame him. With no woman on earth did he shine so as to
recall to himself seigneur and dame of the old French Court as he did
with Laetitia Dale. He did not wish the period revived, but reserved it
as a garden to stray into when he was in the mood for displaying
elegance and brightness in the society of a lady; and in speech
Laetitia helped him to the nice delusion. She was not devoid of grace
of bearing either.

Would she preserve her beautiful responsiveness to his ascendency?
Hitherto she had, and for years, and quite fresh. But how of her as a
married woman? Our souls are hideously subject to the conditions of our
animal nature! A wife, possibly mother, it was within sober calculation
that there would be great changes in her. And the hint of any change
appeared a total change to one of the lofty order who, when they are
called on to relinquish possession instead of aspiring to it, say, All
or nothing!

Well, but if there was danger of the marriage-tie effecting the
slightest alteration of her character or habit of mind, wherefore press
it upon a tolerably hardened spinster!

Besides, though he did once put her hand in Vernon's for the dance, he
remembered acutely that the injury then done by his generosity to his
tender sensitiveness had sickened and tarnished the effulgence of two
or three successive anniversaries of his coming of age. Nor had he
altogether yet got over the passion of greed for the whole group of the
well-favoured of the fair sex, which in his early youth had made it
bitter for him to submit to the fickleness, not to say the modest
fickleness, of any handsome one of them in yielding her hand to a man
and suffering herself to be led away. Ladies whom he had only heard of
as ladies of some beauty incurred his wrath for having lovers or taking
husbands. He was of a vast embrace; and do not exclaim, in
covetousness;--for well he knew that even under Moslem law he could not
have them all--but as the enamoured custodian of the sex's purity,
that blushes at such big spots as lovers and husbands; and it was
unbearable to see it sacrificed for others. Without their purity what
are they!--what are fruiterer's plums?--unsaleable. O for the bloom
on them!

"As I said, I lose my right hand in Vernon," he resumed, "and I am, it
seems, inevitably to lose him, unless we contrive to fasten him down
here. I think, my dear Miss Dale, you have my character. At least, I
should recommend my future biographer to you--with a caution, of
course. You would have to write selfishness with a dash under it. I
cannot endure to lose a member of my household--not under any
circumstances; and a change of feeling toward me on the part of any of
my friends because of marriage, I think hard. I would ask you, how can
it be for Vernon's good to quit an easy pleasant home for the wretched
profession of Literature?--wretchedly paying, I mean," he bowed to the
authoress. "Let him leave the house, if he imagines he will not
harmonize with its young mistress. He is queer, though a good fellow.
But he ought, in that event, to have an establishment. And my scheme
for Vernon--men, Miss Dale, do not change to their old friends when
they marry--my scheme, which would cause the alteration in his system
of life to be barely perceptible, is to build him a poetical little
cottage, large enough for a couple, on the borders of my park. I have
the spot in my eye. The point is, can he live alone there? Men, I say,
do not change. How is it that we cannot say the same of women?"

Laetitia remarked: "The generic woman appears to have an extraordinary
faculty for swallowing the individual."

"As to the individual, as to a particular person, I may be wrong.
Precisely because it is her case I think of, my strong friendship
inspires the fear: unworthy of both, no doubt, but trace it to the
source. Even pure friendship, such is the taint in us, knows a kind of
jealousy; though I would gladly see her established, and near me, happy
and contributing to my happiness with her incomparable social charm.
Her I do not estimate generically, be sure."

"If you do me the honour to allude to me, Sir Willoughby," said
Laetitia, "I am my father's housemate."

"What wooer would take that for a refusal? He would beg to be a third
in the house and sharer of your affectionate burden. Honestly, why
not? And I may be arguing against my own happiness; it may be the end
of me!"

"The end?"

"Old friends are captious, exacting. No, not the end. Yet if my friend
is not the same to me, it is the end to that form of friendship: not to
the degree possibly. But when one is used to the form! And do you, in
its application to friendship, scorn the word 'use'? We are creatures
of custom. I am, I confess, a poltroon in my affections; I dread
changes. The shadow of the tenth of an inch in the customary elevation
of an eyelid!--to give you an idea of my susceptibility. And, my dear
Miss Dale, I throw myself on your charity, with all my weakness bare,
let me add, as I could do to none but you. Consider, then, if I lose
you! The fear is due to my pusillanimity entirely. High-souled women
may be wives, mothers, and still reserve that home for their friend.
They can and will conquer the viler conditions of human life. Our
states, I have always contended, our various phases have to be passed
through, and there is no disgrace in it so long as they do not levy
toll on the quintessential, the spiritual element. You understand me? I
am no adept in these abstract elucidations."

"You explain yourself clearly," said Laetitia.

"I have never pretended that psychology was my forte," said he, feeling
overshadowed by her cold commendation: he was not less acutely
sensitive to the fractional divisions of tones than of eyelids, being,
as it were, a melody with which everything was out of tune that did not
modestly or mutely accord; and to bear about a melody in your person is
incomparably more searching than the best of touchstones and talismans
ever invented. "Your father's health has improved latterly?"

"He did not complain of his health when I saw him this morning. My
cousin Amelia is with him, and she is an excellent nurse."

"He has a liking for Vernon."

"He has a great respect for Mr. Whitford."

"You have?"

"Oh, yes; I have it equally."

"For a foundation, that is the surest. I would have the friends dearest
to me begin on that. The headlong match is--how can we describe it? By
its finale I am afraid. Vernon's abilities are really to be respected.
His shyness is his malady. I suppose he reflected that he was not a
capitalist. He might, one would think, have addressed himself to me; my
purse is not locked."

"No, Sir Willoughby!" Laetitia said, warmly, for his donations in
charity were famous.

Her eyes gave him the food he enjoyed, and basking in them, he
continued:

"Vernon's income would at once have been regulated commensurately with
a new position requiring an increase. This money, money, money! But the
world will have it so. Happily I have inherited habits of business and
personal economy. Vernon is a man who would do fifty times more with a
companion appreciating his abilities and making light of his little
deficiencies. They are palpable, small enough. He has always been aware
of my wishes:--when perhaps the fulfilment might have sent me off on
another tour of the world, homebird though I am. When was it that our
friendship commenced? In my boyhood, I know. Very many years back."

"I am in my thirtieth year," said Laetitia.

Surprised and pained by a baldness resembling the deeds of ladies (they
have been known, either through absence of mind, or mania, to displace
a wig) in the deadly intimacy which slaughters poetic admiration, Sir
Willoughby punished her by deliberately reckoning that she did not look
less.

"Genius," he observed, "is unacquainted with wrinkles"; hardly one of
his prettiest speeches; but he had been wounded, and he never could
recover immediately. Coming on him in a mood of sentiment, the wound
was sharp. He could very well have calculated the lady's age. It was
the jarring clash of her brazen declaration of it upon his low rich
flute-notes that shocked him.

He glanced at the gold cathedral-clock on the mantel-piece, and
proposed a stroll on the lawn before dinner. Laetitia gathered up her
embroidery work.

"As a rule," he said, "authoresses are not needle-women."

"I shall resign the needle or the pen if it stamps me an exception,"
she replied.

He attempted a compliment on her truly exceptional character. As when
the player's finger rests in distraction on the organ, it was without
measure and disgusted his own hearing. Nevertheless, she had been so
good as to diminish his apprehension that the marriage of a lady in her
thirtieth year with his cousin Vernon would be so much of a loss to
him; hence, while parading the lawn, now and then casting an eye at the
window of the room where his Clara and Vernon were in council, the
schemes he indulged for his prospective comfort and his feelings of the
moment were in such striving harmony as that to which we hear
orchestral musicians bringing their instruments under the process
called tuning. It is not perfect, but it promises to be so soon. We are
not angels, which have their dulcimers ever on the choral pitch. We are
mortals attaining the celestial accord with effort, through a stage of
pain. Some degree of pain was necessary to Sir Willoughby, otherwise he
would not have seen his generosity confronting him. He grew,
therefore, tenderly inclined to Laetitia once more, so far as to say
within himself. "For conversation she would be a valuable wife". And
this valuable wife he was presenting to his cousin.

Apparently, considering the duration of the conference of his Clara and
Vernon, his cousin required strong persuasion to accept the present.



CHAPTER XV

THE PETITION FOR A RELEASE

Neither Clara nor Vernon appeared at the mid-day table. Dr. Middleton
talked with Miss Dale on classical matters, like a good-natured giant
giving a child the jump from stone to stone across a brawling mountain
ford, so that an unedified audience might really suppose, upon seeing
her over the difficulty, she had done something for herself. Sir
Willoughby was proud of her, and therefore anxious to settle her
business while he was in the humour to lose her. He hoped to finish it
by shooting a word or two at Vernon before dinner. Clara's petition to
be set free, released from him, had vaguely frightened even more than
it offended his pride.

Miss Isabel quitted the room.

She came back, saying: "They decline to lunch."

"Then we may rise," remarked Sir Willoughby.

"She was weeping," Miss Isabel murmured to him.

"Girlish enough," he said.

The two elderly ladies went away together. Miss Dale, pursuing her
theme with the Rev. Doctor, was invited by him to a course in the
library. Sir Willoughby walked up and down the lawn, taking a glance at
the West-room as he swung round on the turn of his leg. Growing
impatient, he looked in at the window and found the room vacant.

Nothing was to be seen of Clara and Vernon during the afternoon. Near
the dinner-hour the ladies were informed by Miss Middleton's maid that
her mistress was lying down on her bed, too unwell with headache to be
present. Young Crossjay brought a message from Vernon (delayed by
birds' eggs in the delivery), to say that he was off over the hills,
and thought of dining with Dr. Corney.

Sir Willoughby despatched condolences to his bride. He was not well
able to employ his mind on its customary topic, being, like the dome of
a bell, a man of so pervading a ring within himself concerning himself,
that the recollection of a doubtful speech or unpleasant circumstance
touching him closely deranged his inward peace; and as dubious and
unpleasant things will often occur, he had great need of a worshipper,
and was often compelled to appeal to her for signs of antidotal
idolatry. In this instance, when the need of a worshipper was sharply
felt, he obtained no signs at all. The Rev. Doctor had fascinated Miss
Dale; so that, both within and without, Sir Willoughby was uncomforted.
His themes in public were those of an English gentleman; horses, dogs,
game, sport, intrigue, scandal, politics, wines, the manly themes; with
a condescension to ladies' tattle, and approbation of a racy anecdote.
What interest could he possibly take in the Athenian Theatre and the
girl whose flute-playing behind the scenes, imitating the nightingale,
enraptured a Greek audience! He would have suspected a motive in Miss
Dale's eager attentiveness, if the motive could have been conceived.
Besides, the ancients were not decorous; they did not, as we make our
moderns do, write for ladies. He ventured at the dinner-table to
interrupt Dr. Middleton once:--

"Miss Dale will do wisely, I think, sir, by confining herself to your
present edition of the classics."

"That," replied Dr. Middleton, "is the observation of a student of the
dictionary of classical mythology in the English tongue."

"The Theatre is a matter of climate, sir. You will grant me that."

"If quick wits come of climate, it is as you say, sir."

"With us it seems a matter of painful fostering, or the need of it,"
said Miss Dale, with a question to Dr. Middleton, excluding Sir
Willoughby, as though he had been a temporary disturbance of the flow
of their dialogue.

The ladies Eleanor and Isabel, previously excellent listeners to the
learned talk, saw the necessity of coming to his rescue; but you cannot
converse with your aunts, inmates of your house, on general subjects at
table; the attempt increased his discomposure; he considered that he
had ill-chosen his father-in-law; that scholars are an impolite race;
that young or youngish women are devotees of power in any form, and
will be absorbed by a scholar for a variation of a man; concluding that
he must have a round of dinner-parties to friends, especially ladies,
appreciating him, during the Doctor's visit. Clara's headache above,
and Dr. Middleton's unmannerliness below, affected his instincts in a
way to make him apprehend that a stroke of misfortune was impending;
thunder was in the air. Still he learned something, by which he was to
profit subsequently. The topic of wine withdrew the doctor from his
classics; it was magical on him. A strong fraternity of taste was
discovered in the sentiments of host and guest upon particular wines
and vintages; they kindled one another by naming great years of the
grape, and if Sir Willoughby had to sacrifice the ladies to the topic,
he much regretted a condition of things that compelled him to sin
against his habit, for the sake of being in the conversation and
probing an elderly gentleman's foible.

Late at night he heard the house-bell, and meeting Vernon in the hall,
invited him to enter the laboratory and tell him Dr. Corney's last.
Vernon was brief, Corney had not let fly a single anecdote, he said,
and lighted his candle.

"By the way, Vernon, you had a talk with Miss Middleton?"

"She will speak to you to-morrow at twelve."

"To-morrow at twelve?"

"It gives her four-and-twenty hours."

Sir Willoughby determined that his perplexity should be seen; but
Vernon said good-night to him, and was shooting up the stairs before
the dramatic exhibition of surprise had yielded to speech.

Thunder was in the air and a blow coming. Sir Willoughby's instincts
were awake to the many signs, nor, though silenced, were they hushed by
his harping on the frantic excesses to which women are driven by the
passion of jealousy. He believed in Clara's jealousy because he really
had intended to rouse it; under the form of emulation, feebly. He could
not suppose she had spoken of it to Vernon. And as for the seriousness
of her desire to be released from her engagement, that was little
credible. Still the fixing of an hour for her to speak to him after an
interval of four-and-twenty hours, left an opening for the incredible
to add its weight to the suspicious mass; and who would have fancied
Clara Middleton so wild a victim of the intemperate passion! He
muttered to himself several assuaging observations to excuse a young
lady half demented, and rejected them in a lump for their nonsensical
inapplicability to Clara. In order to obtain some sleep, he consented
to blame himself slightly, in the style of the enamoured historian of
erring beauties alluding to their peccadilloes. He had done it to edify
her. Sleep, however, failed him. That an inordinate jealousy argued an
overpowering love, solved his problem until he tried to fit the
proposition to Clara's character. He had discerned nothing southern in
her. Latterly, with the blushing Day in prospect, she had contracted
and frozen. There was no reading either of her or of the mystery.

In the morning, at the breakfast-table, a confession of sleeplessness
was general. Excepting Miss Dale and Dr. Middleton, none had slept a
wink. "I, sir," the Doctor replied to Sir Willoughby, "slept like a
lexicon in your library when Mr. Whitford and I are out of it."

Vernon incidentally mentioned that he had been writing through the
night.

"You fellows kill yourselves," Sir Willoughby reproved him. "For my
part, I make it a principle to get through my work without
self-slaughter."

Clara watched her father for a symptom of ridicule. He gazed mildly on
the systematic worker. She was unable to guess whether she would have
in him an ally or a judge. The latter, she feared. Now that she had
embraced the strife, she saw the division of the line where she stood
from that one where the world places girls who are affianced wives; her
father could hardly be with her; it had gone too far. He loved her, but
he would certainly take her to be moved by a maddish whim; he would not
try to understand her case. The scholar's detestation of a
disarrangement of human affairs that had been by miracle contrived to
run smoothly, would of itself rank him against her; and with the world
to back his view of her, he might behave like a despotic father. How
could she defend herself before him? At one thought of Sir Willoughby,
her tongue made ready, and feminine craft was alert to prompt it; but
to her father she could imagine herself opposing only dumbness and
obstinacy.

"It is not exactly the same kind of work," she said.

Dr Middleton rewarded her with a bushy eyebrow's beam of his revolting
humour at the baronet's notion of work.

So little was needed to quicken her that she sunned herself in the
beam, coaxing her father's eyes to stay with hers as long as she could,
and beginning to hope he might be won to her side, if she confessed she
had been more in the wrong than she felt; owned to him, that is, her
error in not earlier disturbing his peace.

"I do not say it is the same," observed Sir Willoughby, bowing to their
alliance of opinion. "My poor work is for the day, and Vernon's, no
doubt, for the day to come. I contend, nevertheless, for the
preservation of health as the chief implement of work."

"Of continued work; there I agree with you," said Dr. Middleton,
cordially.

Clara's heart sunk; so little was needed to deaden her.

Accuse her of an overweening antagonism to her betrothed; yet remember
that though the words had not been uttered to give her good reason for
it, nature reads nature; captives may be stript of everything save that
power to read their tyrant; remember also that she was not, as she well
knew, blameless; her rage at him was partly against herself.

The rising from table left her to Sir Willoughby. She swam away after
Miss Dale, exclaiming: "The laboratory! Will you have me for a
companion on your walk to see your father? One breathes earth and
heaven to-day out of doors. Isn't it Summer with a Spring Breeze? I
will wander about your garden and not hurry your visit, I promise."

"I shall be very happy indeed. But I am going immediately," said
Laetitia, seeing Sir Willoughby hovering to snap up his bride.

"Yes; and a garden-hat and I am on the march."

"I will wait for you on the terrace."

"You will not have to wait."

"Five minutes at the most," Sir Willoughby said to Laetitia, and she
passed out, leaving them alone together.

"Well, and my love!" he addressed his bride almost huggingly; "and what
is the story? and how did you succeed with old Vernon yesterday? He
will and he won't? He's a very woman in these affairs. I can't forgive
him for giving you a headache. You were found weeping."

"Yes, I cried," said Clara.

"And now tell me about it. You know, my dear girl, whether he does or
doesn't, our keeping him somewhere in the neighbourhood--perhaps not
in the house--that is the material point. It can hardly be necessary in
these days to urge marriages on. I'm sure the country is over . . .
Most marriages ought to be celebrated with the funeral knell!"

"I think so," said Clara.

"It will come to this, that marriages of consequence, and none but
those, will be hailed with joyful peals."

"Do not say such things in public, Willoughby."

"Only to you, to you! Don't think me likely to expose myself to the
world. Well, and I sounded Miss Dale, and there will be no violent
obstacle. And now about Vernon?"

"I will speak to you, Willoughby, when I return from my walk with Miss
Dale, soon after twelve."

"Twelve!" said he

"I name an hour. It seems childish. I can explain it. But it is named,
I cannot deny, because I am a rather childish person perhaps, and have
it prescribed to me to delay my speaking for a certain length of time.
I may tell you at once that Mr. Whitford is not to be persuaded by me,
and the breaking of our engagement would not induce him to remain."

"Vernon used those words?"

"It was I."

"'The breaking of our engagement!' Come into the laboratory, my love."

"I shall not have time."

"Time shall stop rather than interfere with our conversation! 'The
breaking . . .'! But it's a sort of sacrilege to speak of it."

"That I feel; yet it has to be spoken of"

"Sometimes? Why? I can't conceive the occasion. You know, to me, Clara,
plighted faith, the affiancing of two lovers, is a piece of religion. I
rank it as holy as marriage; nay, to me it is holier; I really cannot
tell you how; I can only appeal to you in your bosom to understand me.
We read of divorces with comparative indifference. They occur between
couples who have rubbed off all romance."

She could have asked him in her fit of ironic iciness, on hearing him
thus blindly challenge her to speak out, whether the romance might be
his piece of religion.

He propitiated the more unwarlike sentiments in her by ejaculating,
"Poor souls! let them go their several ways. Married people no longer
lovers are in the category of the unnameable. But the hint of the
breaking of an engagement--our engagement!--between us? Oh!"

"Oh!" Clara came out with a swan's note swelling over mechanical
imitation of him to dolorousness illimitable. "Oh!" she breathed short,
"let it be now. Do not speak till you have heard me. My head may not be
clear by-and-by. And two scenes--twice will be beyond my endurance. I
am penitent for the wrong I have done you. I grieve for you. All the
blame is mine. Willoughby, you must release me. Do not let me hear a
word of that word; jealousy is unknown to me . . . Happy if I could
call you friend and see you with a worthier than I, who might by-and-by
call me friend! You have my plighted troth . . . given in ignorance of
my feelings. Reprobate a weak and foolish girl's ignorance. I have
thought of it, and I cannot see wickedness, though the blame is great,
shameful. You have none. You are without any blame. You will not suffer
as I do. You will be generous to me? I have no respect for myself when
I beg you to be generous and release me."

"But was this the . . ." Willoughby preserved his calmness, "this,
then, the subject of your interview with Vernon?"

"I have spoken to him. I did my commission, and I spoke to him."

"Of me?"

"Of myself. I see how I hurt you; I could not avoid it. Yes, of you, as
far as we are related. I said I believed you would release me. I said
I could be true to my plighted word, but that you would not insist.
Could a gentleman insist? But not a step beyond; not love; I have none.
And, Willoughby, treat me as one perfectly worthless; I am. I should
have known it a year back. I was deceived in myself. There should be
love."

"Should be!" Willoughby's tone was a pungent comment on her.

"Love, then, I find I have not. I think I am antagonistic to it. What
people say of it I have not experienced. I find I was mistaken. It is
lightly said, but very painful. You understand me, that my prayer is
for liberty, that I may not be tied. If you can release and pardon me,
or promise ultimately to pardon me, or say some kind word, I shall know
it is because I am beneath you utterly that I have been unable to give
you the love you should have with a wife. Only say to me, go! It is you
who break the match, discovering my want of a heart. What people think
of me matters little. My anxiety will be to save you annoyance."

She waited for him; he seemed on the verge of speaking.

He perceived her expectation; he had nothing but clownish tumult
within, and his dignity counselled him to disappoint her.

Swaying his head, like the oriental palm whose shade is a blessing to
the perfervid wanderer below, smiling gravely, he was indirectly asking
his dignity what he could say to maintain it and deal this mad young
woman a bitterly compassionate rebuke. What to think, hung remoter. The
thing to do struck him first.

He squeezed both her hands, threw the door wide open, and said, with
countless blinkings: "In the laboratory we are uninterrupted. I was at
a loss to guess where that most unpleasant effect on the senses came
from. They are always 'guessing' through the nose. I mean, the
remainder of breakfast here. Perhaps I satirized them too smartly--if
you know the letters. When they are not 'calculating'. More offensive
than debris of a midnight banquet! An American tour is instructive,
though not so romantic. Not so romantic as Italy, I mean. Let us
escape."

She held back from his arm. She had scattered his brains; it was
pitiable: but she was in the torrent and could not suffer a pause or a
change of place.

"It must be here; one minute more--I cannot go elsewhere to begin
again. Speak to me here; answer my request. Once; one word. If you
forgive me, it will be superhuman. But, release me."

"Seriously," he rejoined, "tea-cups and coffee-cups, breadcrumbs.
egg-shells, caviare, butter, beef, bacon! Can we? The room reeks."

"Then I will go for my walk with Miss Dale. And you will speak to me
when I return?"

"At all seasons. You shall go with Miss Dale. But, my dear! my love!
Seriously, where are we? One hears of lover's quarrels. Now I never
quarrel. It is a characteristic of mine. And you speak of me to my
cousin Vernon! Seriously, plighted faith signifies plighted faith, as
much as an iron-cable is iron to hold by. Some little twist of the
mind? To Vernon, of all men! Tush! she has been dreaming of a hero of
perfection, and the comparison is unfavourable to her Willoughby. But,
my Clara, when I say to you, that bride is bride, and you are mine,
mine!"

"Willoughby, you mentioned them,--those separations of two married. You
said, if they do not love . . . Oh! say, is it not better--instead of
later?"

He took advantage of her modesty in speaking to exclaim. "Where are we
now? Bride is bride, and wife is wife, and affianced is, in honour,
wedded. You cannot be released. We are united. Recognize it; united.
There is no possibility of releasing a wife!"

"Not if she ran . . . ?"

This was too direct to be histrionically misunderstood. He had driven
her to the extremity of more distinctly imagining the circumstance she
had cited, and with that cleared view the desperate creature gloried in
launching such a bolt at the man's real or assumed insensibility as
must, by shivering it, waken him.

But in a moment she stood in burning rose, with dimmed eyesight. She
saw his horror, and, seeing, shared it; shared just then only by seeing
it; which led her to rejoice with the deepest of sighs that some shame
was left in her.

"Ran? ran? ran?" he said as rapidly as he blinked. "How? where? what
idea . . . ?"

Close was he upon an explosion that would have sullied his conception
of the purity of the younger members of the sex hauntingly.

That she, a young lady, maiden, of strictest education, should, and
without his teaching, know that wives ran!--know that by running they
compelled their husbands to abandon pursuit, surrender possession!--and
that she should suggest it of herself as a wife!--that she should
speak of running!

His ideal, the common male Egoist ideal of a waxwork sex, would have
been shocked to fragments had she spoken further to fill in the
outlines of these awful interjections.

She was tempted: for during the last few minutes the fire of her
situation had enlightened her understanding upon a subject far from her
as the ice-fields of the North a short while before; and the prospect
offered to her courage if she would only outstare shame and seem at
home in the doings of wickedness, was his loathing and dreading so vile
a young woman. She restrained herself; chiefly, after the first
bridling of maidenly timidity, because she could not bear to lower the
idea of her sex even in his esteem.

The door was open. She had thoughts of flying out to breathe in an
interval of truce.

She reflected on her situation hurriedly askance:

"If one must go through this, to be disentangled from an engagement,
what must it be to poor women seeking to be free of a marriage?"

Had she spoken it, Sir Willoughby might have learned that she was not
so iniquitously wise of the things of this world as her mere sex's
instinct, roused to the intemperateness of a creature struggling with
fetters, had made her appear in her dash to seize a weapon, indicated
moreover by him.

Clara took up the old broken vow of women to vow it afresh: "Never to
any man will I give my hand."

She replied to Sir Willoughby, "I have said all. I cannot explain what
I have said."

She had heard a step in the passage. Vernon entered.

Perceiving them, he stated his mission in apology: "Doctor Middleton
left a book in this room. I see it; it's a Heinsius."

"Ha! by the way, a book; books would not be left here if they were not
brought here, with my compliments to Doctor Middleton, who may do as he
pleases, though, seriously, order is order," said Sir Willoughby. "Come
away to the laboratory, Clara. It's a comment on human beings that
wherever they have been there's a mess, and you admirers of them," he
divided a sickly nod between Vernon and the stale breakfast-table,
"must make what you can of it. Come, Clara."

Clara protested that she was engaged to walk with Miss Dale.

"Miss Dale is waiting in the hall," said Vernon.

"Miss Dale is waiting?" said Clara.

"Walk with Miss Dale; walk with Miss Dale," Sir Willoughby remarked,
pressingly. "I will beg her to wait another two minutes. You shall
find her in the hall when you come down."

He rang the bell and went out.

"Take Miss Dale into your confidence; she is quite trustworthy," Vernon
said to Clara.

"I have not advanced one step," she replied.

"Recollect that you are in a position of your own choosing; and if,
after thinking over it, you mean to escape, you must make up your mind
to pitched battles, and not be dejected if you are beaten in all of
them; there is your only chance."

"Not my choosing; do not say choosing, Mr. Whitford. I did not choose.
I was incapable of really choosing. I consented."

"It's the same in fact. But be sure of what you wish."

"Yes," she assented, taking it for her just punishment that she should
be supposed not quite to know her wishes. "Your advice has helped me
to-day."

"Did I advise?"

"Do you regret advising?"

"I should certainly regret a word that intruded between you and him."

"But you will not leave the Hall yet? You will not leave me without a
friend? If papa and I were to leave to-morrow, I foresee endless
correspondence. I have to stay at least some days, and wear through it,
and then, if I have to speak to my poor father, you can imagine the
effect on him."

Sir Willoughby came striding in, to correct the error of his going out.

"Miss Dale awaits you, my dear. You have bonnet, hat?--No? Have you
forgotten your appointment to walk with her?"

"I am ready," said Clara, departing.

The two gentlemen behind her separated in the passage. They had not
spoken.

She had read of the reproach upon women, that they divide the
friendships of men. She reproached herself but she was in action,
driven by necessity, between sea and rock. Dreadful to think of! she
was one of the creatures who are written about.



CHAPTER XVI

CLARA AND LAETITIA

In spite of his honourable caution, Vernon had said things to render
Miss Middleton more angrily determined than she had been in the scene
with Sir Willoughby. His counting on pitched battles and a defeat for
her in all of them, made her previous feelings appear slack in
comparison with the energy of combat now animating her. And she could
vehemently declare that she had not chosen; she was too young, too
ignorant to choose. He had wrongly used that word; it sounded
malicious; and to call consenting the same in fact as choosing was
wilfully unjust. Mr. Whitford meant well; he was conscientious, very
conscientious. But he was not the hero descending from heaven
bright-sworded to smite a woman's fetters of her limbs and deliver her
from the yawning mouth-abyss.

His logical coolness of expostulation with her when she cast aside the
silly mission entrusted to her by Sir Willoughby and wept for herself,
was unheroic in proportion to its praiseworthiness. He had left it to
her to do everything she wished done, stipulating simply that there
should be a pause of four-and-twenty hours for her to consider of it
before she proceeded in the attempt to extricate herself. Of
consolation there had not been a word. Said he, "I am the last man to
give advice in such a case". Yet she had by no means astonished him
when her confession came out. It came out, she knew not how. It was led
up to by his declining the idea of marriage, and her congratulating him
on his exemption from the prospect of the yoke, but memory was too dull
to revive the one or two fiery minutes of broken language when she had
been guilty of her dire misconduct.

This gentleman was no flatterer, scarcely a friend. He could look on
her grief without soothing her. Supposing he had soothed her warmly?
All her sentiments collected in her bosom to dash in reprobation of him
at the thought. She nevertheless condemned him for his excessive
coolness; his transparent anxiety not to be compromised by a syllable;
his air of saying, "I guessed as much, but why plead your case to me?"
And his recommendation to her to be quite sure she did know what she
meant, was a little insulting. She exonerated him from the intention;
he treated her as a girl. By what he said of Miss Dale, he proposed
that lady for imitation.

"I must be myself or I shall be playing hypocrite to dig my own
pitfall," she said to herself, while taking counsel with Laetitia as to
the route for their walk, and admiring a becoming curve in her
companion's hat.

Sir Willoughby, with many protestations of regret that letters of
business debarred him from the pleasure of accompanying them, remarked
upon the path proposed by Miss Dale, "In that case you must have a
footman."

"Then we adopt the other," said Clara, and they set forth.

"Sir Willoughby," Miss Dale said to her, "is always in alarm about our
unprotectedness."

Clara glanced up at the clouds and closed her parasol. She replied, "It
inspires timidity."

There was that in the accent and character of the answer which warned
Laetitia to expect the reverse of a quiet chatter with Miss Middleton.

"You are fond of walking?" She chose a peaceful topic.

"Walking or riding; yes, of walking," said Clara. "The difficulty is to
find companions."

"We shall lose Mr. Whitford next week."

"He goes?"

"He will be a great loss to me, for I do not ride," Laetitia replied to
the off-hand inquiry.

"Ah!"

Miss Middleton did not fan conversation when she simply breathed her
voice.

Laetitia tried another neutral theme.

"The weather to-day suits our country," she said.

"England, or Patterne Park? I am so devoted to mountains that I have no
enthusiasm for flat land."

"Do you call our country flat, Miss Middleton? We have undulations,
hills, and we have sufficient diversity, meadows, rivers, copses,
brooks, and good roads, and pretty by-paths."

"The prettiness is overwhelming. It is very pretty to see; but to live
with, I think I prefer ugliness. I can imagine learning to love
ugliness. It's honest. However young you are, you cannot be deceived by
it. These parks of rich people are a part of the prettiness. I would
rather have fields, commons."

"The parks give us delightful green walks, paths through beautiful
woods."

"If there is a right-of-way for the public."

"There should be," said Miss Dale, wondering; and Clara cried: "I chafe
at restraint: hedges and palings everywhere! I should have to travel
ten years to sit down contented among these fortifications. Of course I
can read of this rich kind of English country with pleasure in poetry.
But it seems to me to require poetry. What would you say of human
beings requiring it?"

"That they are not so companionable but that the haze of distance
improves the view."

"Then you do know that you are the wisest?"

Laetitia raised her dark eyelashes; she sought to understand. She could
only fancy she did; and if she did, it meant that Miss Middleton
thought her wise in remaining single.

Clara was full of a sombre preconception that her "jealousy" had been
hinted to Miss Dale.

"You knew Miss Durham?" she said.

"Not intimately."

"As well as you know me?"

"Not so well."

"But you saw more of her?"

"She was more reserved with me."

"Oh! Miss Dale, I would not be reserved with you."

The thrill of the voice caused Laetitia to steal a look. Clara's eyes
were bright, and she had the readiness to run to volubility of the
fever-stricken; otherwise she did not betray excitement.

"You will never allow any of these noble trees to be felled, Miss
Middleton?"

"The axe is better than decay, do you not think?"

"I think your influence will be great and always used to good purpose."

"My influence, Miss Dale? I have begged a favour this morning and can
not obtain the grant."

It was lightly said, but Clara's face was more significant, and "What?"
leaped from Laetitia's lips.

Before she could excuse herself, Clara had answered: "My liberty."

In another and higher tone Laetitia said, "What?" and she looked round
on her companion; she looked in the doubt that is open to conviction by
a narrow aperture, and slowly and painfully yields access. Clara saw
the vacancy of her expression gradually filling with woefulness.

"I have begged him to release me from my engagement, Miss Dale."

"Sir Willoughby?"

"It is incredible to you. He refuses. You see I have no influence."

"Miss Middleton, it is terrible!"

"To be dragged to the marriage service against one's will? Yes."

"Oh! Miss Middleton!"

"Do you not think so?"

"That cannot be your meaning."

"You do not suspect me of trifling? You know I would not. I am as much
in earnest as a mouse in a trap."

"No, you will not misunderstand me! Miss Middleton, such a blow to Sir
Willoughby would be shocking, most cruel! He is devoted to you."

"He was devoted to Miss Durham."

"Not so deeply: differently."

"Was he not very much courted at that time? He is now; not so much: he
is not so young. But my reason for speaking of Miss Durham was to
exclaim at the strangeness of a girl winning her freedom to plunge into
wedlock. Is it comprehensible to you? She flies from one dungeon into
another. These are the acts which astonish men at our conduct, and
cause them to ridicule and, I dare say, despise us."

"But, Miss Middleton, for Sir Willoughby to grant such a request, if it
was made . . ."

"It was made, and by me, and will be made again. I throw it all on my
unworthiness, Miss Dale. So the county will think of me, and quite
justly. I would rather defend him than myself. He requires a different
wife from anything I can be. That is my discovery; unhappily a late
one. The blame is all mine. The world cannot be too hard on me. But I
must be free if I am to be kind in my judgements even of the gentleman
I have injured."

"So noble a gentleman!" Laetitia sighed.

"I will subscribe to any eulogy of him," said Clara, with a penetrating
thought as to the possibility of a lady experienced in him like
Laetitia taking him for noble. "He has a noble air. I say it sincerely,
that your appreciation of him proves his nobility." Her feeling of
opposition to Sir Willoughby pushed her to this extravagance, gravely
perplexing Laetitia. "And it is," added Clara, as if to support what
she had said, "a withering rebuke to me; I know him less, at least have
not had so long an experience of him."

Laetitia pondered on an obscurity in these words which would have
accused her thick intelligence but for a glimmer it threw on another
most obscure communication. She feared it might be, strange though it
seemed, jealousy, a shade of jealousy affecting Miss Middleton, as had
been vaguely intimated by Sir Willoughby when they were waiting in the
hall. "A little feminine ailment, a want of comprehension of a perfect
friendship;" those were his words to her: and he suggested vaguely that
care must be taken in the eulogy of her friend.

She resolved to be explicit.

"I have not said that I think him beyond criticism, Miss Middleton."

"Noble?"

"He has faults. When we have known a person for years the faults come
out, but custom makes light of them; and I suppose we feel flattered by
seeing what it would be difficult to be blind to! A very little
flatters us! Now, do you not admire that view? It is my favourite."

Clara gazed over rolling richness of foliage, wood and water, and a
church-spire, a town and horizon hills. There sung a sky-lark.

"Not even the bird that does not fly away!" she said; meaning, she had
no heart for the bird satisfied to rise and descend in this place.

Laetitia travelled to some notion, dim and immense, of Miss Middleton's
fever of distaste. She shrunk from it in a kind of dread lest it might
be contagious and rob her of her one ever-fresh possession of the
homely picturesque; but Clara melted her by saying, "For your sake I
could love it . . . in time; or some dear old English scene. Since
. . . since this . . . this change in me, I find I cannot separate
landscape from associations. Now I learn how youth goes. I have grown
years older in a week.--Miss Dale, if he were to give me my freedom? if
he were to cast me off? if he stood alone?"

"I should pity him."

"Him--not me! Oh! right! I hoped you would; I knew you would."

Laetitia's attempt to shift with Miss Middleton's shiftiness was vain;
for now she seemed really listening to the language of
Jealousy:--jealous of the ancient Letty Dale--and immediately before
the tone was quite void of it.

"Yes," she said, "but you make me feel myself in the dark, and when I
do I have the habit of throwing myself for guidance upon such light as
I have within. You shall know me, if you will, as well as I know
myself. And do not think me far from the point when I say I have a
feeble health. I am what the doctors call anaemic; a rather bloodless
creature. The blood is life, so I have not much life. Ten years
back--eleven, if I must be precise, I thought of conquering the world
with a pen! The result is that I am glad of a fireside, and not sure of
always having one: and that is my achievement. My days are monotonous,
but if I have a dread, it is that there will be an alteration in them.
My father has very little money. We subsist on what private income he
has, and his pension: he was an army doctor. I may by-and-by have to
live in a town for pupils. I could be grateful to any one who would
save me from that. I should be astonished at his choosing to have me
burden his household as well.--Have I now explained the nature of my
pity? It would be the pity of common sympathy, pure lymph of pity, as
nearly disembodied as can be. Last year's sheddings from the tree do
not form an attractive garland. Their merit is, that they have not the
ambition. I am like them. Now, Miss Middleton, I cannot make myself
more bare to you. I hope you see my sincerity."

"I do see it," Clara said.

With the second heaving of her heart, she cried: "See it, and envy you
that humility! proud if I could ape it! Oh, how proud if I could speak
so truthfully true!--You would not have spoken so to me without some
good feeling out of which friends are made. That I am sure of. To be
very truthful to a person, one must have a liking. So I judge by
myself. Do I presume too much?"

Kindness was on Laetitia's face.

"But now," said Clara, swimming on the wave in her bosom, "I tax you
with the silliest suspicion ever entertained by one of your rank. Lady,
you have deemed me capable of the meanest of our vices!--Hold this
hand, Laetitia; my friend, will you? Something is going on in me."

Laetitia took her hand, and saw and felt that something was going on.

Clara said, "You are a woman."

It was her effort to account for the something.

She swam for a brilliant instant on tears, and yielded to the overflow.

When they had fallen, she remarked upon her first long breath quite
coolly: "An encouraging picture of a rebel, is it not?"

Her companion murmured to soothe her.

"It's little, it's nothing," said Clara, pained to keep her lips in
line.

They walked forward, holding hands, deep-hearted to one another.

"I like this country better now," the shaken girl resumed. "I could lie
down in it and ask only for sleep. I should like to think of you here.
How nobly self-respecting you must be, to speak as you did! Our dreams
of heroes and heroines are cold glitter beside the reality. I have been
lately thinking of myself as an outcast of my sex, and to have a good
woman liking me a little . . . loving? Oh, Laetitia, my friend, I
should have kissed you, and not made this exhibition of myself--and if
you call it hysterics, woe to you! for I bit my tongue to keep it off
when I had hardly strength to bring my teeth together--if that idea of
jealousy had not been in your head. You had it from him."

"I have not alluded to it in any word that I can recollect."

"He can imagine no other cause for my wish to be released. I have
noticed, it is his instinct to reckon on women as constant by their
nature. They are the needles, and he the magnet. Jealousy of you, Miss
Dale! Laetitia, may I speak?"

"Say everything you please."

"I could wish:--Do you know my baptismal name?"

"Clara."

"At last! I could wish . . . that is, if it were your wish. Yes, I
could wish that. Next to independence, my wish would be that. I risk
offending you. Do not let your delicacy take arms against me. I wish
him happy in the only way that he can be made happy. There is my
jealousy."

"Was it what you were going to say just now?"

"No."

"I thought not."

"I was going to say--and I believe the rack would not make me truthful
like you, Laetitia--well, has it ever struck you: remember, I do see
his merits; I speak to his faithfullest friend, and I acknowledge he is
attractive, he has manly tastes and habits; but has it never struck you
. . . I have no right to ask; I know that men must have faults, I do
not expect them to be saints; I am not one; I wish I were."

"Has it never struck me . . . ?" Laetitia prompted her.

"That very few women are able to be straightforwardly sincere in their
speech, however much they may desire to be?"

"They are differently educated. Great misfortune brings it to them."

"I am sure your answer is correct. Have you ever known a woman who was
entirely an Egoist?"

"Personally known one? We are not better than men."

"I do not pretend that we are. I have latterly become an Egoist,
thinking of no one but myself, scheming to make use of every soul I
meet. But then, women are in the position of inferiors. They are hardly
out of the nursery when a lasso is round their necks; and if they have
beauty, no wonder they turn it to a weapon and make as many captives as
they can. I do not wonder! My sense of shame at my natural weakness and
the arrogance of men would urge me to make hundreds captive, if that is
being a coquette. I should not have compassion for those lofty birds,
the hawks. To see them with their wings clipped would amuse me. Is
there any other way of punishing them?"

"Consider what you lose in punishing them."

"I consider what they gain if we do not."

Laetitia supposed she was listening to discursive observations upon the
inequality in the relations of the sexes. A suspicion of a drift to a
closer meaning had been lulled, and the colour flooded her swiftly when
Clara said: "Here is the difference I see; I see it; I am certain of
it: women who are called coquettes make their conquests not of the best
of men; but men who are Egoists have good women for their victims;
women on whose devoted constancy they feed; they drink it like blood. I
am sure I am not taking the merely feminine view. They punish
themselves too by passing over the one suitable to them, who could
really give them what they crave to have, and they go where they . . ."
Clara stopped. "I have not your power to express ideas," she said.

"Miss Middleton, you have a dreadful power," said Laetitia.

Clara smiled affectionately. "I am not aware of any. Whose cottage is
this?"

"My father's. Will you not come in? into the garden?"

Clara took note of ivied windows and roses in the porch. She thanked
Laetitia and said: "I will call for you in an hour."

"Are you walking on the road alone?" said Laetitia, incredulously, with
an eye to Sir Willoughby's dismay.

"I put my trust in the high-road," Clara replied, and turned away, but
turned back to Laetitia and offered her face to be kissed.

The "dreadful power" of this young lady had fervently impressed
Laetitia, and in kissing her she marvelled at her gentleness and
girlishness.

Clara walked on, unconscious of her possession of power of any kind.



CHAPTER XVII

THE PORCELAIN VASE

During the term of Clara's walk with Laetitia, Sir Willoughby's
shrunken self-esteem, like a garment hung to the fire after exposure to
tempestuous weather, recovered some of the sleekness of its velvet pile
in the society of Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson, who represented to him
the world he feared and tried to keep sunny for himself by all the arts
he could exercise. She expected him to be the gay Sir Willoughby, and
her look being as good as an incantation summons, he produced the
accustomed sprite, giving her sally for sally. Queens govern the
polite. Popularity with men, serviceable as it is for winning
favouritism with women, is of poor value to a sensitive gentleman,
anxious even to prognostic apprehension on behalf of his pride, his
comfort and his prevalence. And men are grossly purchasable; good wines
have them, good cigars, a goodfellow air: they are never quite worth
their salt even then; you can make head against their ill looks. But
the looks of women will at one blow work on you the downright
difference which is between the cock of lordly plume and the moulting.
Happily they may be gained: a clever tongue will gain them, a leg. They
are with you to a certainty if Nature is with you; if you are elegant
and discreet: if the sun is on you, and they see you shining in it; or
if they have seen you well-stationed and handsome in the sun. And once
gained they are your mirrors for life, and far more constant than the
glass. That tale of their caprice is absurd. Hit their imaginations
once, they are your slaves, only demanding common courtier service of
you. They will deny that you are ageing, they will cover you from
scandal, they will refuse to see you ridiculous. Sir Willoughby's
instinct, or skin, or outfloating feelers, told him of these mysteries
of the influence of the sex; he had as little need to study them as a
lady breathed on.

He had some need to know them in fact; and with him the need of a
protection for himself called it forth; he was intuitively a conjurer
in self-defence, long-sighted, wanting no directions to the herb he was
to suck at when fighting a serpent. His dulness of vision into the
heart of his enemy was compensated by the agile sensitiveness obscuring
but rendering him miraculously active, and, without supposing his need
immediate, he deemed it politic to fascinate Mrs. Mountstuart and
anticipate ghastly possibilities in the future by dropping a hint; not
of Clara's fickleness, you may be sure; of his own, rather; or, more
justly, of an altered view of Clara's character. He touched on the
rogue in porcelain.

Set gently laughing by his relishing humour. "I get nearer to it," he
said.

"Remember I'm in love with her," said Mrs. Mountstuart.

"That is our penalty."

"A pleasant one for you."

He assented. "Is the 'rogue' to be eliminated?"

"Ask when she's a mother, my dear Sir Willoughby."

"This is how I read you:--"

"I shall accept any interpretation that is complimentary."

"Not one will satisfy me of being sufficiently so, and so I leave it to
the character to fill out the epigram."

"Do. What hurry is there? And don't be misled by your objection to
rogue; which would be reasonable if you had not secured her."

The door of a hollow chamber of horrible reverberation was opened
within him by this remark.

He tried to say in jest, that it was not always a passionate admiration
that held the rogue fast; but he muddled it in the thick of his
conscious thunder, and Mrs. Mountstuart smiled to see him shot from the
smooth-flowing dialogue into the cataracts by one simple reminder to
the lover of his luck. Necessarily, after a fall, the pitch of their
conversation relaxed.

"Miss Dale is looking well," he said.

"Fairly: she ought to marry," said Mrs. Mountstuart.

He shook his head. "Persuade her."

She nodded. "Example may have some effect."

He looked extremely abstracted. "Yes, it is time. Where is the man you
could recommend for her complement? She has now what was missing
before, a ripe intelligence in addition to her happy
disposition--romantic, you would say. I can't think women the worse for
that."

"A dash of it."

"She calls it 'leafage'."

"Very pretty. And have you relented about your horse Achmet?"

"I don't sell him under four hundred."

"Poor Johnny Busshe! You forget that his wife doles him out his money.
You're a hard bargainer, Sir Willoughby."

"I mean the price to be prohibitive."

"Very well; and 'leafage' is good for hide-and-seek; especially when
there is no rogue in ambush. And that's the worst I can say of Laetitia
Dale. An exaggerated devotion is the scandal of our sex. They say
you're the hardest man of business in the county too, and I can believe
it; for at home and abroad your aim is to get the best of everybody.
You see I've no leafage, I am perfectly matter-of-fact, bald."

"Nevertheless, my dear Mrs. Mountstuart, I can assure you that
conversing with you has much the same exhilarating effect on me as
conversing with Miss Dale."

"But, leafage! leafage! You hard bargainers have no compassion for
devoted spinsters."

"I tell you my sentiments absolutely."

"And you have mine moderately expressed."

She recollected the purpose of her morning's visit, which was to engage
Dr. Middleton to dine with her, and Sir Willoughby conducted her to the
library-door. "Insist," he said.

Awaiting her reappearance, the refreshment of the talk he had
sustained, not without point, assisted him to distinguish in its
complete abhorrent orb the offence committed against him by his bride.
And this he did through projecting it more and more away from him, so
that in the outer distance it involved his personal emotions less,
while observation was enabled to compass its vastness, and, as it were,
perceive the whole spherical mass of the wretched girl's guilt
impudently turning on its axis.

Thus to detach an injury done to us, and plant it in space, for
mathematical measurement of its weight and bulk, is an art; it may also
be an instinct of self-preservation; otherwise, as when mountains
crumble adjacent villages are crushed, men of feeling may at any moment
be killed outright by the iniquitous and the callous. But, as an art,
it should be known to those who are for practising an art so
beneficent, that circumstances must lend their aid. Sir Willoughby's
instinct even had sat dull and crushed before his conversation with
Mrs. Mountstuart. She lifted him to one of his ideals of himself. Among
gentlemen he was the English gentleman; with ladies his aim was the
Gallican courtier of any period from Louis Treize to Louis Quinze. He
could doat on those who led him to talk in that character--backed by
English solidity, you understand. Roast beef stood eminent behind the
souffle and champagne. An English squire excelling his fellows at
hazardous leaps in public, he was additionally a polished whisperer, a
lively dialoguer, one for witty bouts, with something in him--capacity
for a drive and dig or two--beyond mere wit, as they soon learned who
called up his reserves, and had a bosom for pinking. So much for his
ideal of himself. Now, Clara not only never evoked, never responded to
it, she repelled it; there was no flourishing of it near her. He
considerately overlooked these facts in his ordinary calculations; he
was a man of honour and she was a girl of beauty; but the accidental
blooming of his ideal, with Mrs. Mountstuart, on the very heels of
Clara's offence, restored him to full command of his art of detachment,
and he thrust her out, quite apart from himself, to contemplate her
disgraceful revolutions.

Deeply read in the Book of Egoism that he was, he knew the wisdom of
the sentence: An injured pride that strikes not out will strike home.
What was he to strike with? Ten years younger, Laetitia might have been
the instrument. To think of her now was preposterous. Beside Clara she
had the hue of Winter under the springing bough. He tossed her away,
vexed to the very soul by an ostentatious decay that shrank from
comparison with the blooming creature he had to scourge in
self-defence, by some agency or other.

Mrs. Mountstuart was on the step of her carriage when the silken
parasols of the young ladies were descried on a slope of the park,
where the yellow green of May-clothed beeches flowed over the brown
ground of last year's leaves.

"Who's the cavalier?" she inquired.

A gentleman escorted them.

"Vernon? No! he's pegging at Crossjay," quoth Willoughby.

Vernon and Crossjay came out for the boy's half-hour's run before his
dinner. Crossjay spied Miss Middleton and was off to meet her at a
bound. Vernon followed him leisurely.

"The rogue has no cousin, has she?" said Mrs. Mountstuart.

"It's a family of one son or one daughter for generations," replied
Willoughby.

"And Letty Dale?"

"Cousin!" he exclaimed, as if wealth had been imputed to Miss Dale;
adding: "No male cousin."

A railway station fly drove out of the avenue on the circle to the
hall-entrance. Flitch was driver. He had no right to be there, he was
doing wrong, but he was doing it under cover of an office, to support
his wife and young ones, and his deprecating touches of the hat spoke
of these apologies to his former master with dog-like pathos.

Sir Willoughby beckoned to him to approach.

"So you are here," he said. "You have luggage."

Flitch jumped from the box and read one of the labels aloud:
"Lieutenant-Colonel H. De Craye."

"And the colonel met the ladies? Overtook them?"

Here seemed to come dismal matter for Flitch to relate.

He began upon the abstract origin of it: he had lost his place in Sir
Willoughby's establishment, and was obliged to look about for work
where it was to be got, and though he knew he had no right to be where
he was, he hoped to be forgiven because of the mouths he had to feed as
a flyman attached to the railway station, where this gentleman, the
colonel, hired him, and he believed Sir Willoughby would excuse him for
driving a friend, which the colonel was, he recollected well, and the
colonel recollected him, and he said, not noticing how he was rigged:
"What! Flitch! back in your old place? Am I expected?" and he told the
colonel his unfortunate situation. "Not back, colonel; no such luck for
me" and Colonel De Craye was a very kind-hearted gentleman, as he
always had been, and asked kindly after his family. And it might be
that such poor work as he was doing now he might be deprived of, such
is misfortune when it once harpoons a man; you may dive, and you may
fly, but it sticks in you, once do a foolish thing. "May I humbly beg
of you, if you'll be so good, Sir Willoughby," said Flitch, passing to
evidence of the sad mishap. He opened the door of the fly, displaying
fragments of broken porcelain.

"But, what, what! what's the story of this?" cried Sir Willoughby.

"What is it?" said Mrs. Mountstuart, pricking up her ears.

"It was a vaws," Flitch replied in elegy.

"A porcelain vase!" interpreted Sir Willoughby.

"China!" Mrs. Mountstuart faintly shrieked.

One of the pieces was handed to her inspection.

She held it close, she held it distant. She sighed horribly.

"The man had better have hanged himself," said she.

Flitch bestirred his misfortune-sodden features and members for a
continuation of the doleful narrative.

"How did this occur?" Sir Willoughby peremptorily asked him.

Flitch appealed to his former master for testimony that he was a good
and a careful driver.

Sir Willoughby thundered: "I tell you to tell me how this occurred."

"Not a drop, my lady! not since my supper last night, if there's any
truth in me!" Flitch implored succour of Mrs Mountstuart.

"Drive straight," she said, and braced him.

His narrative was then direct.

Near Piper's mill, where the Wicker brook crossed the Rebdon road, one
of Hoppner's wagons, overloaded as usual, was forcing the horses
uphill, when Flitch drove down at an easy pace, and saw himself between
Hoppner's cart come to a stand and a young lady advancing: and just
then the carter smacks his whip, the horses pull half mad. The young
lady starts behind the cart, and up jumps the colonel, and, to save the
young lady, Flitch dashed ahead and did save her, he thanked Heaven for
it, and more when he came to see who the young lady was.

"She was alone?" said Sir Willoughby in tragic amazement, staring at
Flitch.

"Very well, you saved her, and you upset the fly," Mountstuart jogged
him on.

"Bardett, our old head-keeper, was a witness, my lady, had to drive
half up the bank, and it's true--over the fly did go; and the vaws it
shoots out against the twelfth mile-stone, just as though there was the
chance for it! for nobody else was injured, and knocked against
anything else, it never would have flown all to pieces, so that it took
Bardett and me ten minutes to collect every one, down to the smallest
piece there was; and he said, and I can't help thinking myself, there
was a Providence in it, for we all come together so as you might say we
was made to do as we did."

"So then Horace adopted the prudent course of walking on with the
ladies instead of trusting his limbs again to this capsizing fly," Sir
Willoughby said to Mrs. Mountstuart; and she rejoined: "Lucky that no
one was hurt."

Both of them eyed the nose of poor Flitch, and simultaneously they
delivered a verdict in "Humph!"

Mrs. Mountstuart handed the wretch a half-crown from her purse. Sir
Willoughby directed the footman in attendance to unload the fly and
gather up the fragments of porcelain carefully, bidding Flitch be quick
in his departing.

"The colonel's wedding-present! I shall call to-morrow." Mrs.
Mountstuart waved her adieu.

"Come every day!--Yes, I suppose we may guess the destination of the
vase." He bowed her off, and she cried:

"Well, now, the gift can be shared, if you're either of you for a
division." In the crash of the carriage-wheels he heard, "At any rate
there was a rogue in that porcelain."

These are the slaps we get from a heedless world.

As for the vase, it was Horace De Craye's loss. Wedding-present he
would have to produce, and decidedly not in chips. It had the look of a
costly vase, but that was no question for the moment:--What was meant
by Clara being seen walking on the high-road alone?--What snare,
traceable ad inferas, had ever induced Willoughby Patterne to make her
the repository and fortress of his honour!



CHAPTER XVIII

COLONEL DE CRAYE

Clara came along chatting and laughing with Colonel De Craye, young
Crossjay's hand under one of her arms, and her parasol flashing; a
dazzling offender; as if she wished to compel the spectator to
recognize the dainty rogue in porcelain; really insufferably fair:
perfect in height and grace of movement; exquisitely tressed;
red-lipped, the colour striking out to a distance from her ivory skin;
a sight to set the woodland dancing, and turn the heads of the town;
though beautiful, a jury of art critics might pronounce her not to be.
Irregular features are condemned in beauty. Beautiful figure, they
could say. A description of her figure and her walking would have won
her any praises: and she wore a dress cunning to embrace the shape and
flutter loose about it, in the spirit of a Summer's day. Calypso-clad,
Dr. Middleton would have called her. See the silver birch in a breeze:
here it swells, there it scatters, and it is puffed to a round and it
streams like a pennon, and now gives the glimpse and shine of the white
stem's line within, now hurries over it, denying that it was visible,
with a chatter along the sweeping folds, while still the white peeps
through. She had the wonderful art of dressing to suit the season and
the sky. To-day the art was ravishingly companionable with her
sweet-lighted face: too sweet, too vividly meaningful for pretty, if
not of the strict severity for beautiful. Millinery would tell us that
she wore a fichu of thin white muslin crossed in front on a dress of
the same light stuff, trimmed with deep rose. She carried a grey-silk
parasol, traced at the borders with green creepers, and across the arm
devoted to Crossjay a length of trailing ivy, and in that hand a bunch
of the first long grasses. These hues of red rose and pale green
ruffled and pouted in the billowy white of the dress ballooning and
valleying softly, like a yacht before the sail bends low; but she
walked not like one blown against; resembling rather the day of the
South-west driving the clouds, gallantly firm in commotion; interfusing
colour and varying in her features from laugh to smile and look of
settled pleasure, like the heavens above the breeze.

Sir Willoughby, as he frequently had occasion to protest to Clara, was
no poet: he was a more than commonly candid English gentleman in his
avowed dislike of the poet's nonsense, verbiage, verse; not one of
those latterly terrorized by the noise made about the fellow into
silent contempt; a sentiment that may sleep, and has not to be
defended. He loathed the fellow, fought the fellow. But he was one with
the poet upon that prevailing theme of verse, the charms of women. He
was, to his ill-luck, intensely susceptible, and where he led men after
him to admire, his admiration became a fury. He could see at a glance
that Horace De Craye admired Miss Middleton. Horace was a man of taste,
could hardly, could not, do other than admire; but how curious that in
the setting forth of Clara and Miss Dale, to his own contemplation and
comparison of them, Sir Willoughby had given but a nodding approbation
of his bride's appearance! He had not attached weight to it recently.

Her conduct, and foremost, if not chiefly, her having been discovered,
positively met by his friend Horace, walking on the high-road without
companion or attendant, increased a sense of pain so very unusual with
him that he had cause to be indignant. Coming on this condition, his
admiration of the girl who wounded him was as bitter a thing as a man
could feel. Resentment, fed from the main springs of his nature, turned
it to wormwood, and not a whit the less was it admiration when he
resolved to chastise her with a formal indication of his disdain. Her
present gaiety sounded to him like laughter heard in the shadow of the
pulpit.

"You have escaped!" he said to her, while shaking the hand of his
friend Horace and cordially welcoming him. "My dear fellow! and, by the
way, you had a squeak for it, I hear from Flitch."

"I, Willoughby? not a bit," said the colonel; "we get into a fly to
get, out of it; and Flitch helped me out as well as in, good fellow;
just dusting my coat as he did it. The only bit of bad management was
that Miss Middleton had to step aside a trifle hurriedly."

"You knew Miss Middleton at once?"

"Flitch did me the favour to introduce me. He first precipitated me at
Miss Middleton's feet, and then he introduced me, in old oriental
fashion, to my sovereign."

Sir Willoughby's countenance was enough for his friend Horace.
Quarter-wheeling to Clara, he said: "'Tis the place I'm to occupy for
life, Miss Middleton, though one is not always fortunate to have a
bright excuse for taking it at the commencement."

Clara said: "Happily you were not hurt, Colonel De Craye."

"I was in the hands of the Loves. Not the Graces, I'm afraid; I've an
image of myself. Dear, no! My dear Willoughby, you never made such a
headlong declaration as that. It would have looked like a magnificent
impulse, if the posture had only been choicer. And Miss Middleton
didn't laugh. At least I saw nothing but pity."

"You did not write," said Willoughby.

"Because it was a toss-up of a run to Ireland or here, and I came here
not to go there; and, by the way, fetched a jug with me to offer up to
the gods of ill-luck; and they accepted the propitiation."

"Wasn't it packed in a box?"

"No, it was wrapped in paper, to show its elegant form. I caught sight
of it in the shop yesterday and carried it off this morning, and
presented it to Miss Middleton at noon, without any form at all."

Willoughby knew his friend Horace's mood when the Irish tongue in him
threatened to wag.

"You see what may happen," he said to Clara.

"As far as I am in fault I regret it," she answered.

"Flitch says the accident occurred through his driving up the bank to
save you from the wheels."

"Flitch may go and whisper that down the neck of his empty
whisky-flask," said Horace De Craye. "And then let him cork it."

"The consequence is that we have a porcelain vase broken. You should
not walk on the road alone, Clara. You ought to have a companion,
always. It is the rule here."

"I had left Miss Dale at the cottage."

"You ought to have had the dogs."

"Would they have been any protection to the vase?"

Horace De Craye crowed cordially.

"I'm afraid not, Miss Middleton. One must go to the witches for
protection to vases; and they're all in the air now, having their own
way with us, which accounts for the confusion in politics and society,
and the rise in the price of broomsticks, to prove it true, as they
tell us, that every nook and corner wants a mighty sweeping. Miss Dale
looks beaming," said De Craye, wishing to divert Willoughby from his
anger with sense as well as nonsense.

"You have not been visiting Ireland recently?" said Sir Willoughby.

"No, nor making acquaintance with an actor in an Irish part in a drama
cast in the Green Island. 'Tis Flitch, my dear Willoughby, has been
and stirred the native in me, and we'll present him to you for the like
good office when we hear after a number of years that you've not
wrinkled your forehead once at your liege lady. Take the poor old dog
back home, will you? He's crazed to be at the Hall. I say, Willoughby,
it would be a good bit of work to take him back. Think of it; you'll do
the popular thing, I'm sure. I've a superstition that Flitch ought to
drive you from the church-door. If I were in luck, I'd have him drive
me."

"The man's a drunkard, Horace."

"He fuddles his poor nose. 'Tis merely unction to the exile. Sober
struggles below. He drinks to rock his heart, because he has one. Now
let me intercede for poor Flitch."

"Not a word of him. He threw up his place."

"To try his fortune in the world, as the best of us do, though livery
runs after us to tell us there's no being an independent gentleman, and
comes a cold day we haul on the metal-button coat again, with a good
ha! of satisfaction. You'll do the popular thing. Miss Middleton joins
in the pleading."

"No pleading!"

"When I've vowed upon my eloquence, Willoughby, I'd bring you to pardon
the poor dog?"

"Not a word of him!"

"Just one!"

Sir Willoughby battled with himself to repress a state of temper that
put him to marked disadvantage beside his friend Horace in high
spirits. Ordinarily he enjoyed these fits of Irish of him, which were
Horace's fun and play, at times involuntary, and then they indicated a
recklessness that might embrace mischief. De Craye, as Willoughby had
often reminded him, was properly Norman. The blood of two or three
Irish mothers in his line, however, was enough to dance him, and if his
fine profile spoke of the stiffer race, his eyes and the quick run of
the lip in the cheek, and a number of his qualities, were evidence of
the maternal legacy.

"My word has been said about the man," Willoughby replied.

"But I've wagered on your heart against your word, and cant afford to
lose; and there's a double reason for revoking for you!"

"I don't see either of them. Here are the ladies."

"You'll think of the poor beast, Willoughby."

"I hope for better occupation."

"If he drives a wheelbarrow at the Hall he'll be happier than on board
a chariot at large. He's broken-hearted."

"He's too much in the way of breakages, my dear Horace."

"Oh, the vase! the bit of porcelain!" sung De Craye. "Well, we'll talk
him over by and by."

"If it pleases you; but my rules are never amended."

"Inalterable, are they?--like those of an ancient people, who might as
well have worn a jacket of lead for the comfort they had of their
boast. The beauty of laws for human creatures is their adaptability to
new stitchings."

Colonel De Craye walked at the heels of his leader to make his bow to
the ladies Eleanor and Isabel.

Sir Willoughby had guessed the person who inspired his friend Horace to
plead so pertinaciously and inopportunely for the man Flitch: and it
had not improved his temper or the pose of his rejoinders; he had
winced under the contrast of his friend Horace's easy, laughing,
sparkling, musical air and manner with his own stiffness; and he had
seen Clara's face, too, scanning the contrast--he was fatally driven to
exaggerate his discontentment, which did not restore him to serenity.
He would have learned more from what his abrupt swing round of the
shoulder precluded his beholding. There was an interchange between
Colonel De Craye and Miss Middleton; spontaneous on both sides. His was
a look that said: "You were right"; hers: "I knew it". Her look was
calmer, and after the first instant clouded as by wearifulness of
sameness; his was brilliant, astonished, speculative, and admiring,
pitiful: a look that poised over a revelation, called up the hosts of
wonder to question strange fact.

It had passed unseen by Sir Willoughby. The observer was the one who
could also supply the key of the secret. Miss Dale had found Colonel De
Craye in company with Miss Middleton at her gateway. They were
laughing and talking together like friends of old standing, De Craye as
Irish as he could be: and the Irish tongue and gentlemanly manner are
an irresistible challenge to the opening steps of familiarity when
accident has broken the ice. Flitch was their theme; and: "Oh, but if
we go tip to Willoughby hand in hand; and bob a courtesy to 'm and 
beg his pardon for Mister Flitch, won't he melt to such a pair of
suppliants? of course he will!" Miss Middleton said he would not.
Colonel De Craye wagered he would; he knew Willoughby best. Miss
Middleton looked simply grave; a way of asserting the contrary opinion
that tells of rueful experience. "We'll see," said the colonel. They
chatted like a couple unexpectedly discovering in one another a common
dialect among strangers. Can there be an end to it when those two meet?
They prattle, they fill the minutes, as though they were violently to
be torn asunder at a coming signal, and must have it out while they
can; it is a meeting of mountain brooks; not a colloquy, but a chasing,
impossible to say which flies, which follows, or what the topic, so
interlinguistic are they and rapidly counterchanging. After their
conversation of an hour before, Laetitia watched Miss Middleton in
surprise at her lightness of mind. Clara bathed in mirth. A boy in a
summer stream shows not heartier refreshment of his whole being.
Laetitia could now understand Vernon's idea of her wit. And it seemed
that she also had Irish blood. Speaking of Ireland, Miss Middleton said
she had cousins there, her only relatives.

"The laugh told me that," said Colonel De Craye.

Laetitia and Vernon paced up and down the lawn. Colonel De Craye was
talking with English sedateness to the ladies Eleanor and Isabel. Clara
and young Crossjay strayed.

"If I might advise, I would say, do not leave the Hall immediately, not
yet," Laetitia said to Vernon.

"You know, then?"

"I cannot understand why it was that I was taken into her confidence."

"I counselled it."

"But it was done without an object that I can see."

"The speaking did her good."

"But how capricious! how changeful!"

"Better now than later."

"Surely she has only to ask to be released?--to ask earnestly: if it
is her wish."

"You are mistaken."

"Why does she not make a confidant of her father?"

"That she will have to do. She wished to spare him."

"He cannot be spared if she is to break the engagement."

She thought of sparing him the annoyance. "Now there's to be a tussle,
he must share in it."

"Or she thought he might not side with her?"

"She has not a single instinct of cunning. You judge her harshly."

"She moved me on the walk out. Coming home I felt differently."

Vernon glanced at Colonel De Craye.

"She wants good guidance," continued Laetitia.

"She has not an idea of treachery."

"You think so? It may be true. But she seems one born devoid of
patience, easily made reckless. There is a wildness . . . I judge by
her way of speaking; that at least appeared sincere. She does not
practise concealment. He will naturally find it almost incredible. The
change in her, so sudden, so wayward, is unintelligible to me. To me it
is the conduct of a creature untamed. He may hold her to her word and
be justified."

"Let him look out if he does!"

"Is not that harsher than anything I have said of her?"

"I'm not appointed to praise her. I fancy I read the case; and it's a
case of opposition of temperaments. We never can tell the person quite
suited to us; it strikes us in a flash."

"That they are not suited to us? Oh, no; that comes by degrees."

"Yes, but the accumulation of evidence, or sentience, if you like, is
combustible; we don't command the spark; it may be late in falling. And
you argue in her favour. Consider her as a generous and impulsive girl,
outwearied at last."

"By what?"

"By anything; by his loftiness, if you like. He flies too high for her,
we will say."

"Sir Willoughby an eagle?"

"She may be tired of his eyrie."

The sound of the word in Vernon's mouth smote on a consciousness she
had of his full grasp of Sir Willoughby and her own timid knowledge,
though he was not a man who played on words.

If he had eased his heart in stressing the first syllable, it was only
temporary relief. He was heavy-browed enough.

"But I cannot conceive what she expects me to do by confiding her sense
of her position to me," said Laetitia.

"We none of us know what will be done. We hang on Willoughby, who hangs
on whatever it is that supports him: and there we are in a swarm."

"You see the wisdom of staying, Mr. Whitford."

"It must be over in a day or two. Yes, I stay."

"She inclines to obey you."

"I should be sorry to stake my authority on her obedience. We must
decide something about Crossjay, and get the money for his crammer, if
it is to be got. If not, I may get a man to trust me. I mean to drag
the boy away. Willoughby has been at him with the tune of gentleman,
and has laid hold of him by one ear. When I say 'her obedience,' she is
not in a situation, nor in a condition to be led blindly by anybody.
She must rely on herself, do everything herself. It's a knot that won't
bear touching by any hand save hers."

"I fear . . ." said Laetitia.

"Have no such fear."

"If it should come to his positively refusing."

"He faces the consequences."

"You do not think of her."

Vernon looked at his companion.



CHAPTER XIX

COLONEL DE CRAYE AND CLARA MIDDLETON

MISS MIDDLETON finished her stroll with Crossjay by winding her trailer
of ivy in a wreath round his hat and sticking her bunch of grasses in
the wreath. She then commanded him to sit on the ground beside a big
rhododendron, there to await her return. Crossjay had informed her of a
design he entertained to be off with a horde of boys nesting in high
trees, and marking spots where wasps and hornets were to be attacked in
Autumn: she thought it a dangerous business, and as the boy's
dinner-bell had very little restraint over him when he was in the flush
of a scheme of this description, she wished to make tolerably sure of
him through the charm she not unreadily believed she could fling on
lads of his age. "Promise me you will not move from here until I come
back, and when I come I will give you a kiss." Crossjay promised. She
left him and forgot him.

Seeing by her watch fifteen minutes to the ringing of the bell, a
sudden resolve that she would speak to her father without another
minute's delay had prompted her like a superstitious impulse to abandon
her aimless course and be direct. She knew what was good for her; she
knew it now more clearly than in the morning. To be taken away
instantly! was her cry. There could be no further doubt. Had there been
any before? But she would not in the morning have suspected herself of
a capacity for evil, and of a pressing need to be saved from herself.
She was not pure of nature: it may be that we breed saintly souls which
are: she was pure of will: fire rather than ice. And in beginning to
see the elements she was made of she did not shuffle them to a heap
with her sweet looks to front her. She put to her account some
strength, much weakness; she almost dared to gaze unblinking at a
perilous evil tendency. The glimpse of it drove her to her father.

"He must take me away at once; to-morrow!"

She wished to spare her father. So unsparing of herself was she, that,
in her hesitation to speak to him of her change of feeling for Sir
Willoughby, she would not suffer it to be attributed in her own mind to
a daughter's anxious consideration about her father's loneliness; an
idea she had indulged formerly. Acknowledging that it was imperative
she should speak, she understood that she had refrained, even to the
inflicting upon herself of such humiliation as to run dilating on her
woes to others, because of the silliest of human desires to preserve
her reputation for consistency. She had heard women abused for
shallowness and flightiness: she had heard her father denounce them as
veering weather-vanes, and his oft-repeated quid femina possit: for her
sex's sake, and also to appear an exception to her sex, this reasoning
creature desired to be thought consistent.

Just on the instant of her addressing him, saying: "Father," a note of
seriousness in his ear, it struck her that the occasion for saying all
had not yet arrived, and she quickly interposed: "Papa"; and helped
him to look lighter. The petition to be taken away was uttered.

"To London?" said Dr. Middleton. "I don't know who'll take us in."

"To France, papa?"

"That means hotel-life."

"Only for two or three weeks."

"Weeks! I am under an engagement to dine with Mrs Mountstuart Jenkinson
five days hence: that is, on Thursday."

"Could we not find an excuse?"

"Break an engagement? No, my dear, not even to escape drinking a
widow's wine."

"Does a word bind us?"

"Why, what else should?"

"I think I am not very well."

"We'll call in that man we met at dinner here: Corney: a capital
doctor; an old-fashioned anecdotal doctor. How is it you are not well,
my love? You look well. I cannot conceive your not being well."

"It is only that I want change of air, papa."

"There we are--a change! semper eadem! Women will be wanting a change
of air in Paradise; a change of angels too, I might surmise. A change
from quarters like these to a French hotel would be a descent!--'this
the seat, this mournful gloom for that celestial light.' I am
perfectly at home in the library here. That excellent fellow Whitford
and I have real days: and I like him for showing fight to his elder and
better."

"He is going to leave."

"I know nothing of it, and I shall append no credit to the tale until I
do know. He is headstrong, but he answers to a rap."

Clara's bosom heaved. The speechless insurrection threatened her eyes.

A South-west shower lashed the window-panes and suggested to Dr.
Middleton shuddering visions of the Channel passage on board a steamer.

"Corney shall see you: he is a sparkling draught in person; probably
illiterate, if I may judge from one interruption of my discourse when
he sat opposite me, but lettered enough to respect Learning and write
out his prescription: I do not ask more of men or of physicians." Dr.
Middleton said this rising, glancing at the clock and at the back of
his hands. "'Quod autem secundum litteras difficillimum esse
artificium?' But what after letters is the more difficult practice?
'Ego puto medicum.' The medicus next to the scholar: though I have not
to my recollection required him next me, nor ever expected child of
mine to be crying for that milk. Daughter she is--of the unexplained
sex: we will send a messenger for Corney. Change, my dear, you will
speedily have, to satisfy the most craving of women, if Willoughby, as
I suppose, is in the neoteric fashion of spending a honeymoon on a
railway: apt image, exposition and perpetuation of the state of mania
conducting to the institution! In my time we lay by to brood on
happiness; we had no thought of chasing it over a continent, mistaking
hurly-burly clothed in dust for the divinity we sought. A smaller
generation sacrifices to excitement. Dust and hurly-burly must perforce
be the issue. And that is your modern world. Now, my dear, let us go
and wash our hands. Midday-bells expect immediate attention. They know
of no anteroom of assembly."

Clara stood gathered up, despairing at opportunity lost. He had noticed
her contracted shape and her eyes, and had talked magisterially to
smother and overbear the something disagreeable prefigured in her
appearance.

"You do not despise your girl, father?"

"I do not; I could not; I love her; I love my girl. But you need not
sing to me like a gnat to propound that question, my dear."

"Then, father, tell Willoughby to-day we have to leave tomorrow. You
shall return in time for Mrs. Mountstuart's dinner. Friends will take
us in, the Darletons, the Erpinghams. We can go to Oxford, where you
are sure of welcome. A little will recover me. Do not mention doctors.
But you see I am nervous. I am quite ashamed of it; I am well enough to
laugh at it, only I cannot overcome it; and I feel that a day or two
will restore me. Say you will. Say it in First-Lesson-Book language;
anything above a primer splits my foolish head to-day."

Dr Middleton shrugged, spreading out his arms.

"The office of ambassador from you to Willoughby, Clara? You decree me
to the part of ball between two bats. The Play being assured, the
prologue is a bladder of wind. I seem to be instructed in one of the
mysteries of erotic esotery, yet on my word I am no wiser. If
Willoughby is to hear anything from you, he will hear it from your
lips."

"Yes, father, yes. We have differences. I am not fit for contests at
present; my head is giddy. I wish to avoid an illness. He and I . . . I
accuse myself."

"There is the bell!" ejaculated Dr. Middleton. "I'll debate on it with
Willoughby."

"This afternoon?"

"Somewhen, before the dinner-bell. I cannot tie myself to the
minute-hand of the clock, my dear child. And let me direct you, for the
next occasion when you shall bring the vowels I and A, in verbally
detached letters, into collision, that you do not fill the hiatus with
so pronounced a Y. It is the vulgarization of our tongue of which I
accuse you. I do not like my girl to be guilty of it."

He smiled to moderate the severity of the correction, and kissed her
forehead.

She declared her inability to sit and eat; she went to her room, after
begging him very earnestly to send her the assurance that he had
spoken. She had not shed a tear, and she rejoiced in her self-control;
it whispered to her of true courage when she had given herself such
evidence of the reverse.

Shower and sunshine alternated through the half-hours of the afternoon,
like a procession of dark and fair holding hands and passing. The
shadow came, and she was chill; the light yellow in moisture, and she
buried her face not to be caught up by cheerfulness. Believing that her
head ached, she afflicted herself with all the heavy symptoms, and
oppressed her mind so thoroughly that its occupation was to speculate
on Laetitia Dale's modest enthusiasm for rural pleasures, for this
place especially, with its rich foliage and peeps of scenic peace. The
prospect of an escape from it inspired thoughts of a loveable round of
life where the sun was not a naked ball of fire, but a friend clothed
in woodland; where park and meadow swept to well-known features East
and West; and distantly circling hills, and the hearts of poor
cottagers too--sympathy with whom assured her of goodness--were
familiar, homely to the dweller in the place, morning and night. And
she had the love of wild flowers, the watchful happiness in the
seasons; poets thrilled her, books absorbed. She dwelt strongly on that
sincerity of feeling; it gave her root in our earth; she needed it as
she pressed a hand on her eyeballs, conscious of acting the invalid,
though the reasons she had for languishing under headache were so
convincing that her brain refused to disbelieve in it and went some way
to produce positive throbs. Otherwise she had no excuse for shutting
herself in her room. Vernon Whitford would be sceptical. Headache or
none, Colonel De Craye must be thinking strangely of her; she had not
shown him any sign of illness. His laughter and his talk sung about her
and dispersed the fiction; he was the very sea-wind for bracing
unstrung nerves. Her ideas reverted to Sir Willoughby, and at once they
had no more cohesion than the foam on a torrent-water.

But soon she was undergoing a variation of sentiment. Her maid Barclay
brought her this pencilled line from her father:

"Factum est; laetus est; amantium irae, etc."

That it was done, that Willoughby had put on an air of glad
acquiescence, and that her father assumed the existence of a lovers'
quarrel, was wonderful to her at first sight, simple the succeeding
minute. Willoughby indeed must be tired of her, glad of her going. He
would know that it was not to return. She was grateful to him for
perhaps hinting at the amantium irae, though she rejected the folly of
the verse. And she gazed over dear homely country through her windows
now. Happy the lady of the place, if happy she can be in her choice!
Clara Middleton envied her the double-blossom wild cherry-tree, nothing
else. One sprig of it, if it had not faded and gone to dust-colour like
crusty Alpine snow in the lower hollows, and then she could depart,
bearing away a memory of the best here! Her fiction of the headache
pained her no longer. She changed her muslin dress for silk; she was
contented with the first bonnet Barclay presented. Amicable toward
every one in the house, Willoughby included, she threw up her window,
breathed, blessed mankind; and she thought: "If Willoughby would open
his heart to nature, he would be relieved of his wretched opinion of
the world." Nature was then sparkling refreshed in the last drops of a
sweeping rain-curtain, favourably disposed for a background to her
joyful optimism. A little nibble of hunger within, real hunger, unknown
to her of late, added to this healthy view, without precipitating her
to appease it; she was more inclined to foster it, for the sake of the
sinewy activity of mind and limb it gave her; and in the style of young
ladies very light of heart, she went downstairs like a cascade, and
like the meteor observed in its vanishing trace she alighted close to
Colonel De Craye and entered one of the rooms off the hall.

He cocked an eye at the half-shut door.

Now you have only to be reminded that it is the habit of the sportive
gentleman of easy life, bewildered as he would otherwise be by the
tricks, twists, and windings of the hunted sex, to parcel out fair
women into classes; and some are flyers and some are runners; these
birds are wild on the wing, those exposed their bosoms to the shot. For
him there is no individual woman. He grants her a characteristic only
to enroll her in a class. He is our immortal dunce at learning to
distinguish her as a personal variety, of a separate growth.

Colonel De Craye's cock of the eye at the door said that he had seen a
rageing coquette go behind it. He had his excuse for forming the
judgement. She had spoken strangely of the fall of his wedding-present,
strangely of Willoughby; or there was a sound of strangeness in an
allusion to her appointed husband: and she had treated Willoughby
strangely when they met. Above all, her word about Flitch was curious.
And then that look of hers! And subsequently she transferred her polite
attentions to Willoughby's friend. After a charming colloquy, the
sweetest give and take rattle he had ever enjoyed with a girl, she
developed headache to avoid him; and next she developed blindness, for
the same purpose.

He was feeling hurt, but considered it preferable to feel challenged.

Miss Middleton came out of another door. She had seen him when she had
passed him and when it was too late to convey her recognition; and now
she addressed him with an air of having bowed as she went by.

"No one?" she said. "Am I alone in the house?"

"There is a figure naught," said he, "but it's as good as annihilated,
and no figure at all, if you put yourself on the wrong side of it, and
wish to be alone in the house."

"Where is Willoughby?"

"Away on business."

"Riding?"

"Achmet is the horse, and pray don't let him be sold, Miss Middleton. I
am deputed to attend on you."

"I should like a stroll."

"Are you perfectly restored?"

"Perfectly."

"Strong?"

"I was never better."

"It was the answer of the ghost of the wicked old man's wife when she
came to persuade him he had one chance remaining. Then, says he, I'll
believe in heaven if ye'll stop that bottle, and hurls it; and the
bottle broke and he committed suicide, not without suspicion of her
laying a trap for him. These showers curling away and leaving sweet
scents are divine, Miss Middleton. I have the privilege of the
Christian name on the nuptial-day. This park of Willoughby's is one of
the best things in England. There's a glimpse over the lake that smokes
of a corner of Killarney; tempts the eye to dream, I mean." De Craye
wound his finger spirally upward, like a smoke-wreath. "Are you for
Irish scenery?"

"Irish, English, Scottish."

"All's one so long as it's beautiful: yes, you speak for me.
Cosmopolitanism of races is a different affair. I beg leave to doubt
the true union of some; Irish and Saxon, for example, let Cupid be
master of the ceremonies and the dwelling-place of the happy couple at
the mouth of a Cornucopia. Yet I have seen a flower of Erin worn by a
Saxon gentleman proudly; and the Hibernian courting a Rowena! So we'll
undo what I said, and consider it cancelled."

"Are you of the rebel party, Colonel De Craye?"

"I am Protestant and Conservative, Miss Middleton."

"I have not a head for politics."

"The political heads I have seen would tempt me to that opinion."

"Did Willoughby say when he would be back?"

"He named no particular time. Doctor Middleton and Mr. Whitford are in
the library upon a battle of the books."

"Happy battle!"

"You are accustomed to scholars. They are rather intolerant of us poor
fellows."

"Of ignorance perhaps; not of persons."

"Your father educated you himself, I presume?"

"He gave me as much Latin as I could take. The fault is mine that it is
little."

"Greek?"

"A little Greek."

"Ah! And you carry it like a feather."

"Because it is so light."

"Miss Middleton, I could sit down to be instructed, old as I am. When
women beat us, I verily believe we are the most beaten dogs in
existence. You like the theatre?"

"Ours?"

"Acting, then."

"Good acting, of course."

"May I venture to say you would act admirably?"

"The venture is bold, for I have never tried."

"Let me see; there is Miss Dale and Mr. Whitford; you and I; sufficient
for a two-act piece. THE IRISHMAN IN SPAIN would do." He bent to touch
the grass as she stepped on it. "The lawn is wet."

She signified that she had no dread of wet, and said: "English women
afraid of the weather might as well be shut up."

De Craye proceeded: "Patrick O'Neill passes over from Hibernia to
Iberia, a disinherited son of a father in the claws of the lawyers,
with a letter of introduction to Don Beltran d'Arragon, a Grandee of
the First Class, who has a daughter Dona Seraphina (Miss Middleton),
the proudest beauty of her day, in the custody of a duenna (Miss Dale),
and plighted to Don Fernan, of the Guzman family (Mr. Whitford). There
you have our dramatis personae."

"You are Patrick?"

"Patrick himself. And I lose my letter, and I stand on the Prado of
Madrid with the last portrait of Britannia in the palm of my hand, and
crying in the purest brogue of my native land: 'It's all through
dropping a letter I'm here in Iberia instead of Hibernia, worse luck to
the spelling!'"

"But Patrick will be sure to aspirate the initial letter of Hibernia."

"That is clever criticism, upon my word, Miss Middleton! So he would.
And there we have two letters dropped. But he'd do it in a groan, so
that it wouldn't count for more than a ghost of one; and everything
goes on the stage, since it's only the laugh we want on the brink of
the action. Besides you are to suppose the performance before a London
audience, who have a native opposite to the aspirate and wouldn't bear
to hear him spoil a joke, as if he were a lord or a constable. It's an
instinct of the English democracy. So with my bit of coin turning over
and over in an undecided way, whether it shall commit suicide to supply
me a supper, I behold a pair of Spanish eyes like violet lightning in
the black heavens of that favoured clime. Won't you have violet?"

"Violet forbids my impersonation."

"But the lustre on black is dark violet blue."

"You remind me that I have no pretension to black."

Colonel De Craye permitted himself to take a flitting gaze at Miss
Middleton's eyes. "Chestnut," he said. "Well, and Spain is the land of
chestnuts."

"Then it follows that I am a daughter of Spain."

"Clearly."

"Logically?"

"By positive deduction."

"And do I behold Patrick?"

"As one looks upon a beast of burden."

"Oh!"

Miss Middleton's exclamation was louder than the matter of the dialogue
seemed to require. She caught her hands up.

In the line of the outer extremity of the rhododendron, screened from
the house windows, young Crossjay lay at his length, with his head
resting on a doubled arm, and his ivy-wreathed hat on his cheek, just
where she had left him, commanding him to stay. Half-way toward him up
the lawn, she saw the poor boy, and the spur of that pitiful sight set
her gliding swiftly. Colonel De Craye followed, pulling an end of his
moustache.

Crossjay jumped to his feet.

"My dear, dear Crossjay!" she addressed him and reproached him. "And
how hungry you must be! And you must be drenched! This is really too
had."

"You told me to wait here," said Crossjay, in shy self-defence.

"I did, and you should not have done it, foolish boy! I told him to
wait for me here before luncheon, Colonel De Craye, and the foolish,
foolish boy!--he has had nothing to eat, and he must have been wet
through two or three times:--because I did not come to him!"

"Quite right. And the lava might overflow him and take the mould of
him, like the sentinel at Pompeii, if he's of the true stuff."

"He may have caught cold, he may have a fever."

"He was under your orders to stay."

"I know, and I cannot forgive myself. Run in, Crossjay, and change your
clothes. Oh, run, run to Mrs. Montague, and get her to give you a warm
bath, and tell her from me to prepare some dinner for you. And change
every garment you have. This is unpardonable of me. I said--'not for
politics!'--I begin to think I have not a head for anything. But could
it be imagined that Crossjay would not move for the dinner-bell!
through all that rain! I forgot you, Crossjay. I am so sorry; so sorry!
You shall make me pay any forfeit you like. Remember, I am deep, deep
in your debt. And now let me see you run fast. You shall come in to
dessert this evening."

Crossjay did not run. He touched her hand.

"You said something?"

"What did I say, Crossjay?"

"You promised."

"What did I promise?"

"Something."

"Name it, my dear boy."

He mumbled, ". . . kiss me."

Clara plumped down on him, enveloped him and kissed him.

The affectionately remorseful impulse was too quick for a conventional
note of admonition to arrest her from paying that portion of her debt.
When she had sped him off to Mrs Montague, she was in a blush.

"Dear, dear Crossjay!" she said, sighing.

"Yes, he's a good lad," remarked the colonel. "The fellow may well be a
faithful soldier and stick to his post, if he receives promise of such
a solde. He is a great favourite with you."

"He is. You will do him a service by persuading Willoughby to send him
to one of those men who get boys through their naval examination. And,
Colonel De Craye, will you be kind enough to ask at the dinner-table
that Crossjay may come in to dessert?"

"Certainly," said he, wondering.

"And will you look after him while you are here? See that no one spoils
him. If you could get him away before you leave, it would be much to
his advantage. He is born for the navy and should be preparing to enter
it now."

"Certainly, certainly," said De Craye, wondering more.

"I thank you in advance."

"Shall I not be usurping . . ."

"No, we leave to-morrow."

"For a day?"

"For longer."

"Two?"

"It will be longer."

"A week? I shall not see you again?"

"I fear not."

Colonel De Craye controlled his astonishment; he smothered a sensation
of veritable pain, and amiably said: "I feel a blow, but I am sure you
would not willingly strike. We are all involved in the regrets."

Miss Middleton spoke of having to see Mrs. Montague, the housekeeper,
with reference to the bath for Crossjay, and stepped off the grass. He
bowed, watched her a moment, and for parallel reasons, running close
enough to hit one mark, he commiserated his friend Willoughby. The
winning or the losing of that young lady struck him as equally
lamentable for Willoughby.



CHAPTER XX

AN AGED AND A GREAT WINE

THE leisurely promenade up and down the lawn with ladies and
deferential gentlemen, in anticipation of the dinner-bell, was Dr.
Middleton's evening pleasure. He walked as one who had formerly danced
(in Apollo's time and the young god Cupid's), elastic on the muscles of
the calf and foot, bearing his broad iron-grey head in grand elevation.
The hard labour of the day approved the cooling exercise and the
crowning refreshments of French cookery and wines of known vintages. He
was happy at that hour in dispensing wisdom or nugae to his hearers,
like the Western sun whose habit it is, when he is fairly treated, to
break out in quiet splendours, which by no means exhaust his treasury.
Blessed indeed above his fellows, by the height of the bow-winged bird
in a fair weather sunset sky above the pecking sparrow, is he that ever
in the recurrent evening of his day sees the best of it ahead and soon
to come. He has the rich reward of a youth and manhood of virtuous
living. Dr. Middleton misdoubted the future as well as the past of the
man who did not, in becoming gravity, exult to dine. That man he
deemed unfit for this world and the next.

An example of the good fruit of temperance, he had a comfortable pride
in his digestion, and his political sentiments were attuned by his
veneration of the Powers rewarding virtue. We must have a stable world
where this is to be done.

The Rev. Doctor was a fine old picture; a specimen of art peculiarly
English; combining in himself piety and epicurism, learning and
gentlemanliness, with good room for each and a seat at one another's
table: for the rest, a strong man, an athlete in his youth, a keen
reader of facts and no reader of persons, genial, a giant at a task, a
steady worker besides, but easily discomposed. He loved his daughter
and he feared her. However much he liked her character, the dread of
her sex and age was constantly present to warn him that he was not tied
to perfect sanity while the damsel Clara remained unmarried. Her mother
had been an amiable woman, of the poetical temperament nevertheless,
too enthusiastic, imaginative, impulsive, for the repose of a sober
scholar; an admirable woman, still, as you see, a woman, a fire-work.
The girl resembled her. Why should she wish to run away from Patterne
Hall for a single hour? Simply because she was of the sex born mutable
and explosive. A husband was her proper custodian, justly relieving a
father. With demagogues abroad and daughters at home, philosophy is
needed for us to keep erect. Let the girl be Cicero's Tullia: well, she
dies! The choicest of them will furnish us examples of a strange
perversity.

Miss Dale was beside Dr. Middleton. Clara came to them and took the
other side.

"I was telling Miss Dale that the signal for your subjection is my
enfranchisement," he said to her, sighing and smiling. "We know the
date. The date of an event to come certifies to it as a fact to be
counted on."

"Are you anxious to lose me?" Clara faltered.

"My dear, you have planted me on a field where I am to expect the
trumpet, and when it blows I shall be quit of my nerves, no more."

Clara found nothing to seize on for a reply in these words. She thought
upon the silence of Laetitia.

Sir Willoughby advanced, appearing in a cordial mood.

"I need not ask you whether you are better," he said to Clara, sparkled
to Laetitia, and raised a key to the level of Dr. Middleton's breast,
remarking, "I am going down to my inner cellar."

"An inner cellar!" exclaimed the doctor.

"Sacred from the butler. It is interdicted to Stoneman. Shall I offer
myself as guide to you? My cellars are worth a visit."

"Cellars are not catacombs. They are, if rightly constructed, rightly
considered, cloisters, where the bottle meditates on joys to bestow,
not on dust misused! Have you anything great?"

"A wine aged ninety."

"Is it associated with your pedigree that you pronounce the age with
such assurance?"

"My grandfather inherited it."

"Your grandfather, Sir Willoughby, had meritorious offspring, not to
speak of generous progenitors. What would have happened had it fallen
into the female line! I shall be glad to accompany you. Port?
Hermitage?"

"Port."

"Ah! We are in England!"

"There will just be time," said Sir Willoughby, inducing Dr. Middleton
to step out.

A chirrup was in the reverend doctor's tone: "Hocks, too, have
compassed age. I have tasted senior Hocks. Their flavours are as a
brook of many voices; they have depth also. Senatorial Port! we say. We
cannot say that of any other wine. Port is deep-sea deep. It is in its
flavour deep; mark the difference. It is like a classic tragedy,
organic in conception. An ancient Hermitage has the light of the
antique; the merit that it can grow to an extreme old age; a merit.
Neither of Hermitage nor of Hock can you say that it is the blood of
those long years, retaining the strength of youth with the wisdom of
age. To Port for that! Port is our noblest legacy! Observe, I do not
compare the wines; I distinguish the qualities. Let them live together
for our enrichment; they are not rivals like the Idaean Three. Were
they rivals, a fourth would challenge them. Burgundy has great genius.
It does wonders within its period; it does all except to keep up in the
race; it is short-lived. An aged Burgundy runs with a beardless Port. I
cherish the fancy that Port speaks the sentences of wisdom, Burgundy
sings the inspired Ode. Or put it, that Port is the Homeric hexameter,
Burgundy the pindaric dithyramb. What do you say?"

"The comparison is excellent, sir."

"The distinction, you would remark. Pindar astounds. But his elder
brings us the more sustaining cup. One is a fountain of prodigious
ascent. One is the unsounded purple sea of marching billows."

"A very fine distinction."

"I conceive you to be now commending the similes. They pertain to the
time of the first critics of those poets. Touch the Greeks, and you can
nothing new; all has been said: 'Graiis . . . praeter, laudem nullius
avaris.' Genius dedicated to Fame is immortal. We, sir, dedicate genius
to the cloacaline floods. We do not address the unforgetting gods, but
the popular stomach."

Sir Willoughby was patient. He was about as accordantly coupled with
Dr. Middleton in discourse as a drum duetting with a bass-viol; and
when he struck in he received correction from the
paedagogue-instrument. If he thumped affirmative or negative, he was
wrong. However, he knew scholars to be an unmannered species; and the
doctor's learnedness would be a subject to dilate on.

In the cellar, it was the turn for the drum. Dr. Middleton was
tongue-tied there. Sir Willoughby gave the history of his wine in heads
of chapters; whence it came to the family originally, and how it had
come down to him in the quantity to be seen. "Curiously, my
grandfather, who inherited it, was a water-drinker. My father died
early."

"Indeed! Dear me!" the doctor ejaculated in astonishment and
condolence. The former glanced at the contrariety of man, the latter
embraced his melancholy destiny.

He was impressed with respect for the family. This cool vaulted cellar,
and the central square block, or enceinte, where the thick darkness was
not penetrated by the intruding lamp, but rather took it as an eye,
bore witness to forethoughtful practical solidity in the man who had
built the house on such foundations. A house having a great wine stored
below lives in our imaginations as a joyful house, fast and splendidly
rooted in the soil. And imagination has a place for the heir of the
house. His grandfather a water-drinker, his father dying early, present
circumstances to us arguing predestination to an illustrious heirship
and career. Dr Middleton's musings were coloured by the friendly
vision of glasses of the great wine; his mind was festive; it pleased
him, and he chose to indulge in his whimsical, robustious,
grandiose-airy style of thinking: from which the festive mind will
sometimes take a certain print that we cannot obliterate immediately.
Expectation is grateful, you know; in the mood of gratitude we are
waxen. And he was a self-humouring gentleman.

He liked Sir Willoughby's tone in ordering the servant at his heels to
take up "those two bottles": it prescribed, without overdoing it, a
proper amount of caution, and it named an agreeable number.

Watching the man's hand keenly, he said:

"But here is the misfortune of a thing super-excellent:--not more than
one in twenty will do it justice."

Sir Willoughby replied: "Very true, sir; and I think we may pass over
the nineteen."

"Women, for example; and most men."

"This wine would be a scaled book to them."

"I believe it would. It would be a grievous waste."

"Vernon is a claret man; and so is Horace De Craye. They are both below
the mark of this wine. They will join the ladies. Perhaps you and I,
sir, might remain together."

"With the utmost good-will on my part."

"I am anxious for your verdict, sir."

"You shall have it, sir, and not out of harmony with the chorus
preceding me, I can predict. Cool, not frigid." Dr. Middleton summed
the attributes of the cellar on quitting it. "North side and South. No
musty damp. A pure air. Everything requisite. One might lie down one's
self and keep sweet here."

Of all our venerable British of the two Isles professing a suckling
attachment to an ancient port-wine, lawyer, doctor, squire, rosy
admiral, city merchant, the classic scholar is he whose blood is most
nuptial to the webbed bottle. The reason must be, that he is full of
the old poets. He has their spirit to sing with, and the best that Time
has done on earth to feed it. He may also perceive a resemblance in the
wine to the studious mind, which is the obverse of our mortality, and
throws off acids and crusty particles in the piling of the years, until
it is fulgent by clarity. Port hymns to his conservatism. It is
magical: at one sip he is off swimming in the purple flood of the
ever-youthful antique.

By comparison, then, the enjoyment of others is brutish; they have not
the soul for it; but he is worthy of the wine, as are poets of Beauty.
In truth, these should be severally apportioned to them, scholar and
poet, as his own good thing. Let it be so.

Meanwhile Dr. Middleton sipped.

After the departure of the ladies, Sir Willoughby had practised a
studied curtness upon Vernon and Horace.

"You drink claret," he remarked to them, passing it round. "Port, I
think, Doctor Middleton? The wine before you may serve for a preface.
We shall have your wine in five minutes."

The claret jug empty, Sir Willoughby offered to send for more. De Craye
was languid over the question. Vernon rose from the table.

"We have a bottle of Doctor Middleton's port coming in," Willoughby
said to him.

"Mine, you call it?" cried the doctor.

"It's a royal wine, that won't suffer sharing," said Vernon.

"We'll be with you, if you go into the billiard-room, Vernon."

"I shall hurry my drinking of good wine for no man," said the Rev.
Doctor.

"Horace?"

"I'm beneath it, ephemeral, Willoughby. I am going to the ladies."

Vernon and De Craye retired upon the arrival of the wine; and Dr.
Middleton sipped. He sipped and looked at the owner of it.

"Some thirty dozen?" he said.

"Fifty."

The doctor nodded humbly.

"I shall remember, sir," his host addressed him, "whenever I have the
honour of entertaining you, I am cellarer of that wine."

The Rev. Doctor set down his glass. "You have, sir, in some sense, an
enviable post. It is a responsible one, if that be a blessing. On you
it devolves to retard the day of the last dozen."

"Your opinion of the wine is favourable, sir?"

"I will say this:--shallow souls run to rhapsody:--I will say, that I
am consoled for not having lived ninety years back, or at any period
but the present, by this one glass of your ancestral wine."

"I am careful of it," Sir Willoughby said, modestly; "still its natural
destination is to those who can appreciate it. You do, sir."

"Still my good friend, still! It is a charge; it is a possession, but
part in trusteeship. Though we cannot declare it an entailed estate,
our consciences are in some sort pledged that it shall be a succession
not too considerably diminished."

"You will not object to drink it, sir, to the health of your
grandchildren. And may you live to toast them in it on their
marriage-day!"

"You colour the idea of a prolonged existence in seductive hues. Ha!
It is a wine for Tithonus. This wine would speed him to the rosy
Morning--aha!"

"I will undertake to sit you through it up to morning," said Sir
Willoughby, innocent of the Bacchic nuptiality of the allusion.

Dr Middleton eyed the decanter. There is a grief in gladness, for a
premonition of our mortal state. The amount of wine in the decanter did
not promise to sustain the starry roof of night and greet the dawn.
"Old wine, my friend, denies us the full bottle!"

"Another bottle is to follow."

"No!"

"It is ordered."

"I protest."

"It is uncorked."

"I entreat."

"It is decanted."

"I submit. But, mark, it must be honest partnership. You are my worthy
host, sir, on that stipulation. Note the superiority of wine over
Venus!--I may say, the magnanimity of wine; our jealousy turns on him
that will not share! But the corks, Willoughby. The corks excite my
amazement."

"The corking is examined at regular intervals. I remember the
occurrence in my father's time. I have seen to it once."

"It must be perilous as an operation for tracheotomy; which I should
assume it to resemble in surgical skill and firmness of hand, not to
mention the imminent gasp of the patient."

A fresh decanter was placed before the doctor.

He said: "I have but a girl to give!" He was melted.

Sir Willoughby replied: "I take her for the highest prize this world
affords."

"I have beaten some small stock of Latin into her head, and a note of
Greek. She contains a savour of the classics. I hoped once . . . But
she is a girl. The nymph of the woods is in her. Still she will bring
you her flower-cup of Hippocrene. She has that aristocracy--the
noblest. She is fair; a Beauty, some have said, who judge not by lines.
Fair to me, Willoughby! She is my sky. There were applicants. In Italy
she was besought of me. She has no history. You are the first heading
of the chapter. With you she will have her one tale, as it should be.
'Mulier tum bene olet', you know. Most fragrant she that smells of
naught. She goes to you from me, from me alone, from her father to her
husband. 'Ut flos in septis secretus nascitur hortis.'" He murmured on
the lines to, "'Sic virgo, dum . . .' I shall feel the parting. She
goes to one who will have my pride in her, and more. I will add, who
will be envied. Mr. Whitford must write you a Carmen Nuptiale."

The heart of the unfortunate gentleman listening to Dr. Middleton set
in for irregular leaps. His offended temper broke away from the image
of Clara, revealing her as he had seen her in the morning beside Horace
De Craye, distressingly sweet; sweet with the breezy radiance of an
English soft-breathing day; sweet with sharpness of young sap. Her
eyes, her lips, her fluttering dress that played happy mother across
her bosom, giving peeps of the veiled twins; and her laughter, her slim
figure, peerless carriage, all her terrible sweetness touched his wound
to the smarting quick.

Her wish to be free of him was his anguish. In his pain he thought
sincerely. When the pain was easier he muffled himself in the idea of
her jealousy of Laetitia Dale, and deemed the wish a fiction. But she
had expressed it. That was the wound he sought to comfort; for the
double reason, that he could love her better after punishing her, and
that to meditate on doing so masked the fear of losing her--the dread
abyss she had succeeded in forcing his nature to shudder at as a giddy
edge possibly near, in spite of his arts of self-defence.

"What I shall do to-morrow evening!" he exclaimed. "I do not care to
fling a bottle to Colonel De Craye and Vernon. I cannot open one for
myself. To sit with the ladies will be sitting in the cold for me. When
do you bring me back my bride, sir?"

"My dear Willoughby!" The Rev. Doctor puffed, composed himself, and
sipped. "The expedition is an absurdity. I am unable to see the aim of
it. She had a headache, vapours. They are over, and she will show a
return of good sense. I have ever maintained that nonsense is not to be
encouraged in girls. I can put my foot on it. My arrangements are for
staying here a further ten days, in the terms of your hospitable
invitation. And I stay."

"I applaud your resolution, sir. Will you prove firm?"

"I am never false to my engagement, Willoughby."

"Not under pressure?"

"Under no pressure."

"Persuasion, I should have said."

"Certainly not. The weakness is in the yielding, either to persuasion
or to pressure. The latter brings weight to bear on us; the former
blows at our want of it."

"You gratify me, Doctor Middleton, and relieve me."

"I cordially dislike a breach in good habits, Willoughby. But I do
remember--was I wrong?--informing Clara that you appeared light-hearted
in regard to a departure, or gap in a visit, that was not, I must
confess, to my liking."

"Simply, my dear doctor, your pleasure was my pleasure; but make my
pleasure yours, and you remain to crack many a bottle with your
son-in-law."

"Excellently said. You have a courtly speech, Willoughby. I can imagine
you to conduct a lovers' quarrel with a politeness to read a lesson to
well-bred damsels. Aha?"

"Spare me the futility of the quarrel."

"All's well?"

"Clara," replied Sir Willoughby, in dramatic epigram, "is perfection."

"I rejoice," the Rev. Doctor responded; taught thus to understand that
the lovers' quarrel between his daughter and his host was at an end.

He left the table a little after eleven o'clock. A short dialogue
ensued upon the subject of the ladies. They must have gone to bed?
Why, yes; of course they must. It is good that they should go to bed
early to preserve their complexions for us. Ladies are creation's
glory, but they are anti-climax, following a wine of a century old.
They are anti-climax, recoil, cross-current; morally, they are
repentance, penance; imagerially, the frozen North on the young brown
buds bursting to green. What know they of a critic in the palate, and a
frame all revelry! And mark you, revelry in sobriety, containment in
exultation; classic revelry. Can they, dear though they be to us, light
up candelabras in the brain, to illuminate all history and solve the
secret of the destiny of man? They cannot; they cannot sympathize with
them that can. So therefore this division is between us; yet are we not
turbaned Orientals, nor are they inmates of the harem. We are not
Moslem. Be assured of it in the contemplation of the table's decanter.

Dr Middleton said: "Then I go straight to bed."

"I will conduct you to your door, sir," said his host.

The piano was heard. Dr. Middleton laid his hand on the banisters, and
remarked: "The ladies must have gone to bed?"

Vernon came out of the library and was hailed, "Fellow-student!"

He waved a good-night to the Doctor, and said to Willoughby: "The
ladies are in the drawing-room."

"I am on my way upstairs," was the reply.

"Solitude and sleep, after such a wine as that; and forefend us human
society!" the Doctor shouted. "But, Willoughby!"

"Sir."

"One to-morrow."

"You dispose of the cellar, sir."

"I am fitter to drive the horses of the sun. I would rigidly counsel,
one, and no more. We have made a breach in the fiftieth dozen. Daily
one will preserve us from having to name the fortieth quite so
unseasonably. The couple of bottles per diem prognosticates
disintegration, with its accompanying recklessness. Constitutionally,
let me add, I bear three. I speak for posterity."

During Dr. Middleton's allocution the ladies issued from the
drawing-room, Clara foremost, for she had heard her father's voice, and
desired to ask him this in reference to their departure: "Papa, will
you tell me the hour to-morrow?"

She ran up the stairs to kiss him, saying again: "When will you be
ready to-morrow morning?"

Dr Middleton announced a stoutly deliberative mind in the bugle-notes
of a repeated ahem. He bethought him of replying in his doctorial
tongue. Clara's eager face admonished him to brevity: it began to look
starved. Intruding on his vision of the houris couched in the inner
cellar to be the reward of valiant men, it annoyed him. His brows
joined. He said: "I shall not be ready to-morrow morning."

"In the afternoon?"

"Nor in the afternoon."

"When?"

"My dear, I am ready for bed at this moment, and know of no other
readiness. Ladies," he bowed to the group in the hall below him, "may
fair dreams pay court to you this night!"

Sir Willoughby had hastily descended and shaken the hands of the
ladies, directed Horace De Craye to the laboratory for a smoking-room,
and returned to Dr. Middleton. Vexed by the scene, uncertain of his
temper if he stayed with Clara, for whom he had arranged that her
disappointment should take place on the morrow, in his absence, he
said: "Good-night, good-night," to her, with due fervour, bending over
her flaccid finger-tips; then offered his arm to the Rev. Doctor.

"Ay, son Willoughby, in friendliness, if you will, though I am a man to
bear my load," the father of the stupefied girl addressed him.
"Candles, I believe, are on the first landing. Good-night, my love.
Clara!"

"Papa!"

"Good-night."

"Oh!" she lifted her breast with the interjection, standing in shame of
the curtained conspiracy and herself, "good night".

Her father wound up the stairs. She stepped down.

"There was an understanding that papa and I should go to London
to-morrow early," she said, unconcernedly, to the ladies, and her voice
was clear, but her face too legible. De Craye was heartily unhappy at
the sight.



CHAPTER XXI

CLARA'S MEDITATIONS

Two were sleepless that night: Miss Middleton and Colonel De Craye.

She was in a fever, lying like stone, with her brain burning. Quick
natures run out to calamity in any little shadow of it flung before.
Terrors of apprehension drive them. They stop not short of the
uttermost when they are on the wings of dread. A frown means tempest, a
wind wreck; to see fire is to be seized by it. When it is the approach
of their loathing that they fear, they are in the tragedy of the
embrace at a breath; and then is the wrestle between themselves and
horror, between themselves and evil, which promises aid; themselves and
weakness, which calls on evil; themselves and the better part of them,
which whispers no beguilement.

The false course she had taken through sophistical cowardice appalled
the girl; she was lost. The advantage taken of it by Willoughby put on
the form of strength, and made her feel abject, reptilious; she was
lost, carried away on the flood of the cataract. He had won her father
for an ally. Strangely, she knew not how, he had succeeded in swaying
her father, who had previously not more than tolerated him. "Son
Willoughby" on her father's lips meant something that scenes and scenes
would have to struggle with, to the out-wearying of her father and
herself. She revolved the "Son Willoughby" through moods of
stupefaction, contempt, revolt, subjection. It meant that she was
vanquished. It meant that her father's esteem for her was forfeited.
She saw him a gigantic image of discomposure.

Her recognition of her cowardly feebleness brought the brood of
fatalism. What was the right of so miserable a creature as she to
excite disturbance, let her fortunes be good or ill? It would be
quieter to float, kinder to everybody. Thank heaven for the chances of
a short life! Once in a net, desperation is graceless. We may be
brutes in our earthly destinies: in our endurance of them we need not
be brutish.

She was now in the luxury of passivity, when we throw our burden on the
Powers above, and do not love them. The need to love them drew her out
of it, that she might strive with the unbearable, and by sheer
striving, even though she were graceless, come to love them humbly. It
is here that the seed of good teaching supports a soul, for the
condition might be mapped, and where kismet whispers us to shut eyes,
and instruction bids us look up, is at a well-marked cross-road of the
contest.

Quick of sensation, but not courageously resolved, she perceived how
blunderingly she had acted. For a punishment, it seemed to her that she
who had not known her mind must learn to conquer her nature, and
submit. She had accepted Willoughby; therefore she accepted him. The
fact became a matter of the past, past debating.

In the abstract this contemplation of circumstances went well. A plain
duty lay in her way. And then a disembodied thought flew round her,
comparing her with Vernon to her discredit. He had for years borne much
that was distasteful to him, for the purpose of studying, and with his
poor income helping the poorer than himself. She dwelt on him in pity
and envy; he had lived in this place, and so must she; and he had not
been dishonoured by his modesty: he had not failed of self-control,
because he had a life within. She was almost imagining she might
imitate him when the clash of a sharp physical thought, "The
difference! the difference!" told her she was woman and never could
submit. Can a woman have an inner life apart from him she is yoked to?
She tried to nestle deep away in herself: in some corner where the
abstract view had comforted her, to flee from thinking as her feminine
blood directed. It was a vain effort. The difference, the cruel fate,
the defencelessness of women, pursued her, strung her to wild horses'
backs, tossed her on savage wastes. In her case duty was shame: hence,
it could not be broadly duty. That intolerable difference proscribed
the word.

But the fire of a brain burning high and kindling everything lighted up
herself against herself.--Was one so volatile as she a person with a
will?--Were they not a multitude of flitting wishes that she took for a
will? Was she, feather-headed that she was, a person to make a stand on
physical pride?--If she could yield her hand without reflection (as she
conceived she had done, from incapacity to conceive herself doing it
reflectively) was she much better than purchaseable stuff that has
nothing to say to the bargain?

Furthermore, said her incandescent reason, she had not suspected such
art of cunning in Willoughby. Then might she not be deceived
altogether--might she not have misread him? Stronger than she had
fancied, might he not be likewise more estimable? The world was
favourable to him; he was prized by his friends.

She reviewed him. It was all in one flash. It was not much less
intentionally favourable than the world's review and that of his
friends, but, beginning with the idea of them, she recollected--heard
Willoughby's voice pronouncing his opinion of his friends and the
world; of Vernon Whitford and Colonel De Craye for example, and of men
and women. An undefined agreement to have the same regard for him as
his friends and the world had, provided that he kept at the same
distance from her, was the termination of this phase, occupying about a
minute in time, and reached through a series of intensely vivid
pictures:--his face, at her petition to be released, lowering behind
them for a background and a comment.

"I cannot! I cannot!" she cried, aloud; and it struck her that her
repulsion was a holy warning. Better be graceless than a loathing wife:
better appear inconsistent. Why should she not appear such as she was?

Why? We answer that question usually in angry reliance on certain
superb qualities, injured fine qualities of ours undiscovered by the
world, not much more than suspected by ourselves, which are still our
fortress, where pride sits at home, solitary and impervious as an
octogenarian conservative. But it is not possible to answer it so when
the brain is rageing like a pine-torch and the devouring illumination
leaves not a spot of our nature covert. The aspect of her weakness was
unrelieved, and frightened her back to her loathing. From her loathing,
as soon as her sensations had quickened to realize it, she was hurled
on her weakness. She was graceless, she was inconsistent, she was
volatile, she was unprincipled, she was worse than a prey to
wickedness--capable of it; she was only waiting to be misled. Nay, the
idea of being misled suffused her with languor; for then the battle
would be over and she a happy weed of the sea no longer suffering those
tugs at the roots, but leaving it to the sea to heave and contend. She
would be like Constantia then: like her in her fortunes: never so
brave, she feared.

Perhaps very like Constantia in her fortunes!

Poor troubled bodies waking up in the night to behold visually the
spectre cast forth from the perplexed machinery inside them, stare at
it for a space, till touching consciousness they dive down under the
sheets with fish-like alacrity. Clara looked at her thought, and
suddenly headed downward in a crimson gulf.

She must have obtained absolution, or else it was oblivion, below.
Soon after the plunge her first object of meditation was Colonel De
Craye. She thought of him calmly: he seemed a refuge. He was very nice,
he was a holiday character. His lithe figure, neat firm footing of the
stag, swift intelligent expression, and his ready frolicsomeness,
pleasant humour, cordial temper, and his Irishry, whereon he was at
liberty to play, as on the emblem harp of the Isle, were soothing to
think of. The suspicion that she tricked herself with this calm
observation of him was dismissed. Issuing out of torture, her young
nature eluded the irradiating brain in search of refreshment, and she
luxuriated at a feast in considering him--shower on a parched land that
he was! He spread new air abroad. She had no reason to suppose he was
not a good man: she could securely think of him. Besides he was bound
by his prospective office in support of his friend Willoughby to be
quite harmless. And besides (you are not to expect logical sequences)
the showery refreshment in thinking of him lay in the sort of assurance
it conveyed, that the more she thought, the less would he be likely to
figure as an obnoxious official--that is, as the man to do by
Willoughby at the altar what her father would, under the supposition,
be doing by her. Her mind reposed on Colonel De Craye.

His name was Horace. Her father had worked with her at Horace. She knew
most of the Odes and some of the Satires and Epistles of the poet. They
reflected benevolent beams on the gentleman of the poet's name. He too
was vivacious, had fun, common sense, elegance; loved rusticity, he
said, sighed for a country life, fancied retiring to Canada to
cultivate his own domain; "modus agri non ita magnus:" a delight. And
he, too, when in the country, sighed for town. There were strong
features of resemblance. He had hinted in fun at not being rich. "Quae
virtus et quanta sit vivere parvo." But that quotation applied to and
belonged to Vernon Whitford. Even so little disarranged her
meditations.

She would have thought of Vernon, as her instinct of safety prompted,
had not his exactions been excessive. He proposed to help her with
advice only. She was to do everything for herself, do and dare
everything, decide upon everything. He told her flatly that so would
she learn to know her own mind; and flatly, that it was her penance.
She had gained nothing by breaking down and pouring herself out to him.
He would have her bring Willoughby and her father face to face, and be
witness of their interview--herself the theme. What alternative was
there?--obedience to the word she had pledged. He talked of patience,
of self-examination and patience. But all of her--she was all marked
urgent. This house was a cage, and the world--her brain was a cage,
until she could obtain her prospect of freedom.

As for the house, she might leave it; yonder was the dawn.

She went to her window to gaze at the first colour along the grey.
Small satisfaction came of gazing at that or at herself. She shunned
glass and sky. One and the other stamped her as a slave in a frame. It
seemed to her she had been so long in this place that she was fixed
here: it was her world, and to imagine an Alp was like seeking to get
back to childhood. Unless a miracle intervened here she would have to
pass her days. Men are so little chivalrous now that no miracle ever
intervenes. Consequently she was doomed.

She took a pen and began a letter to a dear friend, Lucy Darleton, a
promised bridesmaid, bidding her countermand orders for her bridal
dress, and purposing a tour in Switzerland. She wrote of the mountain
country with real abandonment to imagination. It became a visioned
loophole of escape. She rose and clasped a shawl over her night-dress
to ward off chillness, and sitting to the table again, could not
produce a word. The lines she had written were condemned: they were
ludicrously inefficient. The letter was torn to pieces. She stood very
clearly doomed.

After a fall of tears, upon looking at the scraps, she dressed herself,
and sat by the window and watched the blackbird on the lawn as he
hopped from shafts of dewy sunlight to the long-stretched dewy
tree-shadows, considering in her mind that dark dews are more
meaningful than bright, the beauty of the dews of woods more sweet than
meadow-dews. It signified only that she was quieter. She had gone
through her crisis in the anticipation of it. That is how quick natures
will often be cold and hard, or not much moved, when the positive
crisis arrives, and why it is that they are prepared for astonishing
leaps over the gradations which should render their conduct
comprehensible to us, if not excuseable. She watched the blackbird
throw up his head stiffly, and peck to right and left, dangling the
worm on each side his orange beak. Specklebreasted thrushes were at
work, and a wagtail that ran as with Clara's own rapid little steps.
Thrush and blackbird flew to the nest. They had wings. The lovely
morning breathed of sweet earth into her open window, and made it
painful, in the dense twitter, chirp, cheep, and song of the air, to
resist the innocent intoxication. O to love! was not said by her, but
if she had sung, as her nature prompted, it would have been. Her war
with Willoughby sprang of a desire to love repelled by distaste. Her
cry for freedom was a cry to be free to love: she discovered it, half
shuddering: to love, oh! no--no shape of man, nor impalpable nature
either: but to love unselfishness, and helpfulness, and planted
strength in something. Then, loving and being loved a little, what
strength would be hers! She could utter all the words needed to
Willoughby and to her father, locked in her love: walking in this
world, living in that.

Previously she had cried, despairing: If I were loved! Jealousy of
Constantia's happiness, envy of her escape, ruled her then: and she
remembered the cry, though not perfectly her plain-speaking to herself:
she chose to think she had meant: If Willoughby were capable of truly
loving! For now the fire of her brain had sunk, and refuges and
subterfuges were round about it. The thought of personal love was
encouraged, she chose to think, for the sake of the strength it lent
her to carve her way to freedom. She had just before felt rather the
reverse, but she could not exist with that feeling; and it was true
that freedom was not so indistinct in her fancy as the idea of love.

Were men, when they were known, like him she knew too well?

The arch-tempter's question to her was there.

She put it away. Wherever she turned it stood observing her. She knew
so much of one man, nothing of the rest: naturally she was curious.
Vernon might be sworn to be unlike. But he was exceptional. What of the
other in the house?

Maidens are commonly reduced to read the masters of their destinies by
their instincts; and when these have been edged by over-activity they
must hoodwink their maidenliness to suffer themselves to read; and then
they must dupe their minds, else men would soon see they were gifted to
discern. Total ignorance being their pledge of purity to men, they have
to expunge the writing of their perceptives on the tablets of the
brain: they have to know not when they do know. The instinct of seeking
to know, crossed by the task of blotting knowledge out, creates that
conflict of the natural with the artificial creature to which their
ultimately revealed double-face, complained of by ever-dissatisfied
men, is owing. Wonder in no degree that they indulge a craving to be
fools, or that many of them act the character. Jeer at them as little
for not showing growth. You have reared them to this pitch, and at this
pitch they have partly civilized you. Supposing you to want it done
wholly, you must yield just as many points in your requisitions as are
needed to let the wits of young women reap their due harvest and be of
good use to their souls. You will then have a fair battle, a braver,
with better results.

Clara's inner eye traversed Colonel De Craye at a shot.

She had immediately to blot out the vision of Captain Oxford in him,
the revelation of his laughing contempt for Willoughby, the view of
mercurial principles, the scribbled histories of light love-passages.

She blotted it out, kept it from her mind: so she knew him, knew him to
be a sweeter and a variable Willoughby, a generous kind of Willoughby,
a Willoughby-butterfly, without having the free mind to summarize him
and picture him for a warning. Scattered features of him, such as the
instincts call up, were not sufficiently impressive. Besides, the
clouded mind was opposed to her receiving impressions.

Young Crossjay's voice in the still morning air came to her cars. The
dear guileless chatter of the boy's voice. Why, assuredly it was young
Crossjay who was the man she loved. And he loved her. And he was going
to be an unselfish, sustaining, true, strong man, the man she longed
for, for anchorage. Oh, the dear voice! woodpecker and thrush in one.
He never ceased to chatter to Vernon Whitford walking beside him with a
swinging stride off to the lake for their morning swim. Happy couple!
The morning gave them both a freshness and innocence above human. They
seemed to Clara made of morning air and clear lake water. Crossjay's
voice ran up and down a diatonic scale with here and there a query in
semitone and a laugh on a ringing note. She wondered what he could have
to talk of so incessantly, and imagined all the dialogue. He prattled
of his yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow, which did not imply past and
future, but his vivid present. She felt like one vainly trying to fly
in hearing him; she felt old. The consolation she arrived at was to
feel maternal. She wished to hug the boy.

Trot and stride, Crossjay and Vernon entered the park, careless about
wet grass, not once looking at the house. Crossjay ranged ahead and
picked flowers, bounding back to show them. Clara's heart beat at a
fancy that her name was mentioned. If those flowers were for her she
would prize them.

The two bathers dipped over an undulation.

Her loss of them rattled her chains.

Deeply dwelling on their troubles has the effect upon the young of
helping to forgetfulness; for they cannot think without imagining,
their imaginations are saturated with their Pleasures, and the
collision, though they are unable to exchange sad for sweet, distills
an opiate.

"Am I solemnly engaged?" she asked herself. She seemed to be awakening.

She glanced at her bed, where she had passed the night of ineffectual
moaning, and out on the high wave of grass, where Crossjay and his good
friend had vanished.

Was the struggle all to be gone over again?

Little by little her intelligence of her actual position crept up to
submerge her heart.

"I am in his house!" she said. It resembled a discovery, so strangely
had her opiate and power of dreaming wrought through her tortures. She
said it gasping. She was in his house, his guest, his betrothed, sworn
to him. The fact stood out cut in steel on the pitiless daylight.

That consideration drove her to be an early wanderer in the wake of
Crossjay.

Her station was among the beeches on the flank of the boy's return; and
while waiting there the novelty of her waiting to waylay anyone--she
who had played the contrary part!--told her more than it pleased her to
think. Yet she could admit that she did desire to speak with Vernon, as
with a counsellor, harsh and curt, but wholesome.

The bathers reappeared on the grass-ridge, racing and flapping wet
towels.

Some one hailed them. A sound of the galloping hoof drew her attention
to the avenue. She saw Willoughby dash across the park level, and
dropping a word to Vernon, ride away. Then she allowed herself to be
seen.

Crossjay shouted. Willoughby turned his head, but not his horse's head.
The boy sprang up to Clara. He had swum across the lake and back; he
had raced Mr. Whitford--and beaten him! How he wished Miss Middleton
had been able to be one of them!

Clara listened to him enviously. Her thought was: We women are nailed
to our sex!

She said: "And you have just been talking to Sir Willoughby."

Crossjay drew himself up to give an imitation of the baronet's
hand-moving in adieu.

He would not have done that had he not smelled sympathy with the
performance.

She declined to smile. Crossjay repeated it, and laughed. He made a
broader exhibition of it to Vernon approaching: "I say. Mr. Whitford,
who's this?"

Vernon doubled to catch him. Crossjay fled and resumed his magnificent
air in the distance.

"Good-morning, Miss Middleton; you are out early," said Vernon, rather
pale and stringy from his cold swim, and rather hard-eyed with the
sharp exercise following it.

She had expected some of the kindness she wanted to reject, for he
could speak very kindly, and she regarded him as her doctor of
medicine, who would at least present the futile drug.

"Good morning," she replied.

"Willoughby will not be home till the evening."

"You could not have had a finer morning for your bath."

"No."

"I will walk as fast as you like."

"I'm perfectly warm."

"But you prefer fast walking."

"Out."

"Ah! yes, that I understand. The walk back! Why is Willoughby away
to-day?"

"He has business."

After several steps she said: "He makes very sure of papa."

"Not without reason, you will find," said Vernon.

"Can it be? I am bewildered. I had papa's promise."

"To leave the Hall for a day or two."

"It would have been . . ."

"Possibly. But other heads are at work as well as yours. If you had
been in earnest about it you would have taken your father into your
confidence at once. That was the course I ventured to propose, on the
supposition."

"In earnest! I cannot imagine that you doubt it. I wished to spare
him."

"This is a case in which he can't be spared."

"If I had been bound to any other! I did not know then who held me a
prisoner. I thought I had only to speak to him sincerely."

"Not many men would give up their prize for a word, Willoughby the last
of any."

"Prize" rang through her thrillingly from Vernon's mouth, and soothed
her degradation.

She would have liked to protest that she was very little of a prize; a
poor prize; not one at all in general estimation; only one to a man
reckoning his property; no prize in the true sense.

The importunity of pain saved her.

"Does he think I can change again? Am I treated as something won in a
lottery? To stay here is indeed more than I can bear. And if he is
calculating--Mr. Whitford, if he calculates on another change, his
plotting to keep me here is inconsiderate, not very wise. Changes may
occur in absence."

"Wise or not, he has the right to scheme his best to keep you."

She looked on Vernon with a shade of wondering reproach.

"Why? What right?"

"The right you admit when you ask him to release you. He has the right
to think you deluded; and to think you may come to a better mood if you
remain--a mood more agreeable to him, I mean. He has that right
absolutely. You are bound to remember also that you stand in the wrong.
You confess it when you appeal to his generosity. And every man has the
right to retain a treasure in his hand if he can. Look straight at
these facts."

"You expect me to be all reason!"

"Try to be. It's the way to learn whether you are really in earnest."

"I will try. It will drive me to worse!"

"Try honestly. What is wisest now is, in my opinion, for you to resolve
to stay. I speak in the character of the person you sketched for
yourself as requiring. Well, then, a friend repeats the same advice.
You might have gone with your father: now you will only disturb him and
annoy him. The chances are he will refuse to go."

"Are women ever so changeable as men, then? Papa consented; he agreed;
he had some of my feeling; I saw it. That was yesterday. And at night!
He spoke to each of us at night in a different tone from usual. With me
he was hardly affectionate. But when you advise me to stay, Mr.
Whitford, you do not perhaps reflect that it would be at the sacrifice
of all candour."

"Regard it as a probational term."

"It has gone too far with me."

"Take the matter into the head: try the case there."

"Are you not counselling me as if I were a woman of intellect?"

The crystal ring in her voice told him that tears were near to flowing.

He shuddered slightly. "You have intellect," he said, nodded, and
crossed the lawn, leaving her. He had to dress.

She was not permitted to feel lonely, for she was immediately joined by
Colonel De Craye.



CHAPTER XXII

THE RIDE

Crossjay darted up to her a nose ahead of the colonel.

"I say, Miss Middleton, we're to have the whole day to ourselves, after
morning lessons. Will you come and fish with me and see me
bird's-nest?"

"Not for the satisfaction of beholding another cracked crown, my son,"
the colonel interposed: and bowing to Clara: "Miss Middleton is handed
over to my exclusive charge for the day, with her consent?"

"I scarcely know," said she, consulting a sensation of languor that
seemed to contain some reminiscence. "If I am here. My father's plans
are uncertain. I will speak to him. If I am here, perhaps Crossjay
would like a ride in the afternoon."

"Oh, yes," cried the boy; "out over Bournden, through Mewsey up to
Closharn Beacon, and down on Aspenwell, where there's a common for
racing. And ford the stream!"

"An inducement for you," De Craye said to her.

She smiled and squeezed the boy's hand.

"We won't go without you, Crossjay."

"You don't carry a comb, my man, when you bathe?"

At this remark of the colonel's young Crossjay conceived the appearance
of his matted locks in the eyes of his adorable lady. He gave her one
dear look through his redness, and fled.

"I like that boy," said De Craye.

"I love him," said Clara.

Crossjay's troubled eyelids in his honest young face became a picture
for her.

"After all, Miss Middleton, Willoughby's notions about him are not so
bad, if we consider that you will be in the place of a mother to him."

"I think them bad."

"You are disinclined to calculate the good fortune of the boy in having
more of you on land than he would have in crown and anchor buttons!"

"You have talked of him with Willoughby."

"We had a talk last night."

Of how much? thought she.

"Willoughby returns?" she said.

"He dines here, I know; for he holds the key of the inner cellar, and
Doctor Middleton does him the honour to applaud his wine. Willoughby
was good enough to tell me that he thought I might contribute to amuse
you."

She was brooding in stupefaction on her father and the wine as she
requested Colonel De Craye to persuade Willoughby to take the general
view of Crossjay's future and act on it.

"He seems fond of the boy, too," said De Craye, musingly.

"You speak in doubt?"

"Not at all. But is he not--men are queer fish!--make allowance for
us--a trifle tyrannical, pleasantly, with those he is fond of?"

"If they look right and left?"

It was meant for an interrogation; it was not with the sound of one
that the words dropped. "My dear Crossjay!" she sighed. "I would
willingly pay for him out of my own purse, and I will do so rather than
have him miss his chance. I have not mustered resolution to propose
it."

"I may be mistaken, Miss Middleton. He talked of the boy's fondness of
him."

"He would."

"I suppose he is hardly peculiar in liking to play Pole-star."

"He may not be."

"For the rest, your influence should be all-powerful."

"It is not."

De Craye looked with a wandering eye at the heavens.

"We are having a spell of weather perfectly superb. And the odd thing
is, that whenever we have splendid weather at home we're all for
rushing abroad. I'm booked for a Mediterranean cruise--postponed to
give place to your ceremony."

"That?" she could not control her accent.

"What worthier?"

She was guilty of a pause.

De Craye saved it from an awkward length. "I have written half an essay
on Honeymoons, Miss Middleton."

"Is that the same as a half-written essay, Colonel De Craye?"

"Just the same, with the difference that it's a whole essay written all
on one side."

"On which side?"

"The bachelor's."

"Why does he trouble himself with such topics?"

"To warm himself for being left out in the cold."

"Does he feel envy?"

"He has to confess it."

"He has liberty."

"A commodity he can't tell the value of if there's no one to buy."

"Why should he wish to sell?"

"He's bent on completing his essay."

"To make the reading dull."

"There we touch the key of the subject. For what is to rescue the pair
from a monotony multiplied by two? And so a bachelor's recommendation,
when each has discovered the right sort of person to be dull with,
pushes them from the churchdoor on a round of adventures containing a
spice of peril, if 'tis to be had. Let them be in danger of their lives
the first or second day. A bachelor's loneliness is a private affair of
his own; he hasn't to look into a face to be ashamed of feeling it and
inflicting it at the same time; 'tis his pillow; he can punch it an he
pleases, and turn it over t'other side, if he's for a mighty variation;
there's a dream in it. But our poor couple are staring wide awake. All
their dreaming's done. They've emptied their bottle of elixir, or
broken it; and she has a thirst for the use of the tongue, and he to
yawn with a crony; and they may converse, they're not aware of it, more
than the desert that has drunk a shower. So as soon as possible she's
away to the ladies, and he puts on his Club. That's what your bachelor
sees and would like to spare them; and if he didn't see something of
the sort he'd be off with a noose round his neck, on his knees in the
dew to the morning milkmaid."

"The bachelor is happily warned and on his guard," said Clara,
diverted, as he wished her to be. "Sketch me a few of the adventures
you propose."

"I have a friend who rowed his bride from the Houses of Parliament up
the Thames to the Severn on into North Wales. They shot some pretty
weirs and rapids."

"That was nice."

"They had an infinity of adventures, and the best proof of the benefit
they derived is, that they forgot everything about them except that the
adventures occurred."

"Those two must have returned bright enough to please you."

"They returned, and shone like a wrecker's beacon to the mariner. You
see, Miss Middleton, there was the landscape, and the exercise, and the
occasional bit of danger. I think it's to be recommended. The scene is
always changing, and not too fast; and 'tis not too sublime, like big
mountains, to tire them of their everlasting big Ohs. There's the
difference between going into a howling wind and launching among
zephyrs. They have fresh air and movement, and not in a railway
carriage; they can take in what they look on. And she has the steering
ropes, and that's a wise commencement. And my lord is all day making an
exhibition of his manly strength, bowing before her some sixty to the
minute; and she, to help him, just inclines when she's in the mood. And
they're face to face in the nature of things, and are not under the
obligation of looking the unutterable, because, you see, there's
business in hand; and the boat's just the right sort of third party,
who never interferes, but must be attended to. And they feel they're
labouring together to get along, all in the proper proportion; and
whether he has to labour in life or not, he proves his ability. What do
you think of it, Miss Middleton?"

"I think you have only to propose it, Colonel De Craye."

"And if they capsize, why, 'tis a natural ducking!"

"You forgot the lady's dressing-bag."

"The stain on the metal for a constant reminder of his prowess in
saving it! Well, and there's an alternative to that scheme, and a
finer:--This, then: they read dramatic pieces during courtship, to stop
the saying of things over again till the drum of the car becomes
nothing but a drum to the poor head, and a little before they affix
their signatures to the fatal Registry-book of the vestry, they enter
into an engagement with a body of provincial actors to join the troop
on the day of their nuptials, and away they go in their coach and four,
and she is Lady Kitty Caper for a month, and he Sir Harry Highflyer.
See the honeymoon spinning! The marvel to me is that none of the young
couples do it. They could enjoy the world, see life, amuse the company,
and come back fresh to their own characters, instead of giving
themselves a dose of Africa without a savage to diversify it: an
impression they never get over, I'm told. Many a character of the
happiest auspices has irreparable mischief done it by the ordinary
honeymoon. For my part, I rather lean to the second plan of campaign."

Clara was expected to reply, and she said: "Probably because you are
fond of acting. It would require capacity on both sides."

"Miss Middleton, I would undertake to breathe the enthusiasm for the
stage and the adventure."

"You are recommending it generally."

"Let my gentleman only have a fund of enthusiasm. The lady will kindle.
She always does at a spark."

"If he has not any?"

"Then I'm afraid they must be mortally dull."

She allowed her silence to speak; she knew that it did so too
eloquently, and could not control the personal adumbration she gave to
the one point of light revealed in, "if he has not any". Her figure
seemed immediately to wear a cap and cloak of dulness.

She was full of revolt and anger, she was burning with her situation;
if sensible of shame now at anything that she did, it turned to wrath
and threw the burden on the author of her desperate distress. The hour
for blaming herself had gone by, to be renewed ultimately perhaps in a
season of freedom. She was bereft of her insight within at present, so
blind to herself that, while conscious of an accurate reading of
Willoughby's friend, she thanked him in her heart for seeking simply to
amuse her and slightly succeeding. The afternoon's ride with him and
Crossjay was an agreeable beguilement to her in prospect.

Laetitia came to divide her from Colonel De Craye. Dr. Middleton was
not seen before his appearance at the breakfast-table, where a certain
air of anxiety in his daughter's presence produced the semblance of a
raised map at intervals on his forehead. Few sights on earth are more
deserving of our sympathy than a good man who has a troubled conscience
thrust on him.

The Rev. Doctor's perturbation was observed. The ladies Eleanor and
Isabel, seeing his daughter to be the cause of it, blamed her, and
would have assisted him to escape, but Miss Dale, whom he courted with
that object, was of the opposite faction. She made way for Clara to
lead her father out. He called to Vernon, who merely nodded while
leaving the room by the window with Crossjay.

Half an eye on Dr. Middleton's pathetic exit in captivity sufficed to
tell Colonel De Craye that parties divided the house. At first he
thought how deplorable it would be to lose Miss Middleton for two days
or three: and it struck him that Vernon Whitford and Laetitia Dale were
acting oddly in seconding her, their aim not being discernible. For he
was of the order of gentlemen of the obscurely-clear in mind who have a
predetermined acuteness in their watch upon the human play, and mark
men and women as pieces of a bad game of chess, each pursuing an
interested course. His experience of a section of the world had
educated him--as gallant, frank, and manly a comrade as one could wish
for--up to this point. But he soon abandoned speculations, which may be
compared to a shaking anemometer that will not let the troubled
indicator take station. Reposing on his perceptions and his instincts,
he fixed his attention on the chief persons, only glancing at the
others to establish a postulate, that where there are parties in a
house the most bewitching person present is the origin of them. It is
ever Helen's achievement. Miss Middleton appeared to him bewitching
beyond mortal; sunny in her laughter, shadowy in her smiling; a young
lady shaped for perfect music with a lover.

She was that, and no less, to every man's eye on earth. High breeding
did not freeze her lovely girlishness.--But Willoughby did. This
reflection intervened to blot luxurious picturings of her, and made
itself acceptable by leading him back to several instances of an
evident want of harmony of the pair.

And now (for purely undirected impulse all within us is not, though we
may be eye-bandaged agents under direction) it became necessary for an
honourable gentleman to cast vehement rebukes at the fellow who did not
comprehend the jewel he had won. How could Willoughby behave like so
complete a donkey! De Craye knew him to be in his interior stiff,
strange, exacting: women had talked of him; he had been too much for
one woman--the dashing Constantia: he had worn one woman, sacrificing
far more for him than Constantia, to death. Still, with such a prize as
Clara Middleton, Willoughby's behaviour was past calculating in its
contemptible absurdity. And during courtship! And courtship of that
girl! It was the way of a man ten years after marriage.

The idea drew him to picture her doatingly in her young matronly bloom
ten years after marriage: without a touch of age, matronly wise,
womanly sweet: perhaps with a couple of little ones to love, never
having known the love of a man.

To think of a girl like Clara Middleton never having at
nine-and-twenty, and with two fair children! known the love of a man or
the loving of a man, possibly, became torture to the Colonel.

For a pacification he had to reconsider that she was as yet only
nineteen and unmarried.

But she was engaged, and she was unloved. One might swear to it, that
she was unloved. And she was not a girl to be satisfied with a big
house and a high-nosed husband.

There was a rapid alteration of the sad history of Clara the unloved
matron solaced by two little ones. A childless Clara tragically loving
and beloved flashed across the dark glass of the future.

Either way her fate was cruel.

Some astonishment moved De Craye in the contemplation of the distance
he had stepped in this morass of fancy. He distinguished the choice
open to him of forward or back, and he selected forward. But fancy was
dead: the poetry hovering about her grew invisible to him: he stood in
the morass; that was all he knew; and momently he plunged deeper; and
he was aware of an intense desire to see her face, that he might study
her features again: he understood no more.

It was the clouding of the brain by the man's heart, which had come to
the knowledge that it was caught.

A certain measure of astonishment moved him still. It had hitherto been
his portion to do mischief to women and avoid the vengeance of the sex.
What was there in Miss Middleton's face and air to ensnare a veteran
handsome man of society numbering six-and-thirty years, nearly as many
conquests? "Each bullet has got its commission." He was hit at last.
That accident effected by Mr. Flitch had fired the shot. Clean through
the heart, does not tell us of our misfortune, till the heart is asked
to renew its natural beating. It fell into the condition of the
porcelain vase over a thought of Miss Middleton standing above his
prostrate form on the road, and walking beside him to the Hall. Her
words? What have they been? She had not uttered words, she had shed
meanings. He did not for an instant conceive that he had charmed her:
the charm she had cast on him was too thrilling for coxcombry to lift a
head; still she had enjoyed his prattle. In return for her touch upon
the Irish fountain in him, he had manifestly given her relief And could
not one see that so sprightly a girl would soon be deadened by a man
like Willoughby? Deadened she was: she had not responded to a
compliment on her approaching marriage. An allusion to it killed her
smiling. The case of Mr. Flitch, with the half wager about his
reinstation in the service of the Hall, was conclusive evidence of her
opinion of Willoughby.

It became again necessary that he should abuse Willoughby for his
folly. Why was the man worrying her? In some way he was worrying her.

What if Willoughby as well as Miss Middleton wished to be quit of the
engagement? . . .

For just a second, the handsome, woman-flattered officer proved his
man's heart more whole than he supposed it. That great organ, instead
of leaping at the thought, suffered a check.

Bear in mind that his heart was not merely man's, it was a conqueror's.
He was of the race of amorous heroes who glory in pursuing, overtaking,
subduing: wresting the prize from a rival, having her ripe from
exquisitely feminine inward conflicts, plucking her out of resistance
in good old primitive fashion. You win the creature in her delicious
flutterings. He liked her thus, in cooler blood, because of society's
admiration of the capturer, and somewhat because of the strife, which
always enhances the value of a prize, and refreshes our vanity in
recollection.

Moreover, he had been matched against Willoughby: the circumstance had
occurred two or three times. He could name a lady he had won, a lady he
had lost. Willoughby's large fortune and grandeur of style had given
him advantages at the start. But the start often means the race--with
women, and a bit of luck.

The gentle check upon the galloping heart of Colonel De Craye endured
no longer than a second--a simple side-glance in a headlong pace.
Clara's enchantingness for a temperament like his, which is to say, for
him specially, in part through the testimony her conquest of himself
presented as to her power of sway over the universal heart known as
man's, assured him she was worth winning even from a hand that dropped
her.

He had now a double reason for exclaiming at the folly of Willoughby.
Willoughby's treatment of her showed either temper or weariness. Vanity
and judgement led De Craye to guess the former. Regarding her
sentiments for Willoughby, he had come to his own conclusion. The
certainty of it caused him to assume that he possessed an absolute
knowledge of her character: she was an angel, born supple; she was a
heavenly soul, with half a dozen of the tricks of earth. Skittish filly
was among his phrases; but she had a bearing and a gaze that forbade
the dip in the common gutter for wherewithal to paint the creature she
was.

Now, then, to see whether he was wrong for the first time in his life!
If not wrong, he had a chance.

There could be nothing dishonourable in rescuing a girl from an
engagement she detested. An attempt to think it a service to Willoughby
faded midway. De Craye dismissed that chicanery. It would be a service
to Willoughby in the end, without question. There was that to soothe
his manly honour. Meanwhile he had to face the thought of Willoughby as
an antagonist, and the world looking heavy on his honour as a friend.

Such considerations drew him tenderly close to Miss Middleton. It must,
however, be confessed that the mental ardour of Colonel De Craye had
been a little sobered by his glance at the possibility of both of the
couple being of one mind on the subject of their betrothal. Desirable
as it was that they should be united in disagreeing, it reduced the
romance to platitude, and the third person in the drama to the
appearance of a stick. No man likes to play that part. Memoirs of the
favourites of Goddesses, if we had them, would confirm it of men's
tastes in this respect, though the divinest be the prize. We behold
what part they played.

De Craye chanced to be crossing the hall from the laboratory to the
stables when Clara shut the library-door behind her. He said something
whimsical, and did not stop, nor did he look twice at the face he had
been longing for.

What he had seen made him fear there would be no ride out with her that
day. Their next meeting reassured him; she was dressed in her
riding-habit, and wore a countenance resolutely cheerful. He gave
himself the word of command to take his tone from her.

He was of a nature as quick as Clara's. Experience pushed him farther
than she could go in fancy; but experience laid a sobering finger on
his practical steps, and bade them hang upon her initiative. She talked
little. Young Crossjay cantering ahead was her favourite subject. She
was very much changed since the early morning: his liveliness, essayed
by him at a hazard, was unsuccessful; grave English pleased her best.
The descent from that was naturally to melancholy. She mentioned a
regret she had that the Veil was interdicted to women in Protestant
countries. De Craye was fortunately silent; he could think of no other
veil than the Moslem, and when her meaning struck his witless head, he
admitted to himself that devout attendance on a young lady's mind
stupefies man's intelligence. Half an hour later, he was as foolish in
supposing it a confidence. He was again saved by silence.

In Aspenwell village she drew a letter from her bosom and called to
Crossjay to post it. The boy sang out, "Miss Lucy Darleton! What a
nice name!"

Clara did not show that the name betrayed anything.

She said to De Craye. "It proves he should not be here thinking of nice
names."

Her companion replied, "You may be right." He added, to avoid feeling
too subservient: "Boys will."

"Not if they have stern masters to teach them their daily lessons, and
some of the lessons of existence."

"Vernon Whitford is not stern enough?"

"Mr. Whitford has to contend with other influences here."

"With Willoughby?"

"Not with Willoughby."

He understood her. She touched the delicate indication firmly. The
man's, heart respected her for it; not many girls could be so
thoughtful or dare to be so direct; he saw that she had become deeply
serious, and he felt her love of the boy to be maternal, past maiden
sentiment.

By this light of her seriousness, the posting of her letter in a
distant village, not entrusting it to the Hall post-box, might have
import; not that she would apprehend the violation of her private
correspondence, but we like to see our letter of weighty meaning pass
into the mouth of the public box.

Consequently this letter was important. It was to suppose a sequency in
the conduct of a variable damsel. Coupled with her remark about the
Veil, and with other things, not words, breathing from her (which were
the breath of her condition), it was not unreasonably to be supposed.
She might even be a very consistent person. If one only had the key of
her!

She spoke once of an immediate visit to London, supposing that she
could induce her father to go. De Craye remembered the occurrence in
the Hall at night, and her aspect of distress.

They raced along Aspenwell Common to the ford; shallow, to the chagrin
of young Crossjay, between whom and themselves they left a fitting
space for his rapture in leading his pony to splash up and down, lord
of the stream.

Swiftness of motion so strikes the blood on the brain that our thoughts
are lightnings, the heart is master of them.

De Craye was heated by his gallop to venture on the angling question:
"Am I to hear the names of the bridesmaids?"

The pace had nerved Clara to speak to it sharply: "There is no need."

"Have I no claim?"

She was mute.

"Miss Lucy Darleton, for instance; whose name I am almost as much in
love with as Crossjay."

"She will not be bridesmaid to me."

"She declines? Add my petition, I beg."

"To all? or to her?"

"Do all the bridesmaids decline?"

"The scene is too ghastly."

"A marriage?"

"Girls have grown sick of it."

"Of weddings? We'll overcome the sickness."

"With some."

"Not with Miss Darleton? You tempt my eloquence."

"You wish it?"

"To win her consent? Certainly."

"The scene?"

"Do I wish that?"

"Marriage!" exclaimed Clara, dashing into the ford, fearful of her
ungovernable wildness and of what it might have kindled.--You, father!
you have driven me to unmaidenliness!--She forgot Willoughby, in her
father, who would not quit a comfortable house for her all but
prostrate beseeching; would not bend his mind to her explanations,
answered her with the horrid iteration of such deaf misunderstanding as
may be associated with a tolling bell.

De Craye allowed her to catch Crossjay by herself. They entered a narrow
lane, mysterious with possible birds' eggs in the May-green hedges. As
there was not room for three abreast, the colonel made up the
rear-guard, and was consoled by having Miss Middleton's figure to
contemplate; but the readiness of her joining in Crossjay's pastime of
the nest-hunt was not so pleasing to a man that she had wound to a
pitch of excitement. Her scornful accent on "Marriage" rang through
him. Apparently she was beginning to do with him just as she liked,
herself entirely unconcerned.

She kept Crossjay beside her till she dismounted, and the colonel was
left to the procession of elephantine ideas in his head, whose
ponderousness he took for natural weight. We do not with impunity
abandon the initiative. Men who have yielded it are like cavalry put on
the defensive; a very small force with an ictus will scatter them.

Anxiety to recover lost ground reduced the dimensions of his ideas to a
practical standard.

Two ideas were opposed like duellists bent on the slaughter of one
another. Either she amazed him by confirming the suspicions he had
gathered of her sentiments for Willoughby in the moments of his
introduction to her; or she amazed him as a model for coquettes--the
married and the widow might apply to her for lessons.

These combatants exchanged shots, but remained standing; the encounter
was undecided. Whatever the result, no person so seductive as Clara
Middleton had he ever met. Her cry of loathing, "Marriage!" coming from
a girl, rang faintly clear of an ancient virginal aspiration of the sex
to escape from their coil, and bespoke a pure, cold, savage pride that
transplanted his thirst for her to higher fields.



CHAPTER XXIII

TREATS OF THE UNION OF TEMPER AND POLICY

Sir Willoughby meanwhile was on a line of conduct suiting his
appreciation of his duty to himself. He had deluded himself with the
simple notion that good fruit would come of the union of temper and
policy.

No delusion is older, none apparently so promising, both parties being
eager for the alliance. Yet, the theorist upon human nature will say,
they are obviously of adverse disposition. And this is true, inasmuch
as neither of them win submit to the yoke of an established union; as
soon as they have done their mischief, they set to work tugging for a
divorce. But they have attractions, the one for the other, which
precipitate them to embrace whenever they meet in a breast; each is
earnest with the owner of it to get him to officiate forthwith as
wedding-priest. And here is the reason: temper, to warrant its
appearance, desires to be thought as deliberative as policy, and
policy, the sooner to prove its shrewdness, is impatient for the quick
blood of temper.

It will be well for men to resolve at the first approaches of the
amorous but fickle pair upon interdicting even an accidental temporary
junction: for the astonishing sweetness of the couple when no more than
the ghosts of them have come together in a projecting mind is an
intoxication beyond fermented grapejuice or a witch's brewage; and
under the guise of active wits they will lead us to the parental
meditation of antics compared with which a Pagan Saturnalia were less
impious in the sight of sanity. This is full-mouthed language; but on
our studious way through any human career we are subject to fits of
moral elevation; the theme inspires it, and the sage residing in every
civilized bosom approves it.

Decide at the outset, that temper is fatal to policy: hold them with
both hands in division. One might add, be doubtful of your policy and
repress your temper: it would be to suppose you wise. You can,
however, by incorporating two or three captains of the great army of
truisms bequeathed to us by ancient wisdom, fix in your service those
veteran old standfasts to check you. They will not be serviceless in
their admonitions to your understanding, and they will so contrive to
reconcile with it the natural caperings of the wayward young sprig
Conduct, that the latter, who commonly learns to walk upright and
straight from nothing softer than raps of a bludgeon on his crown,
shall foot soberly, appearing at least wary of dangerous corners.

Now Willoughby had not to be taught that temper is fatal to policy; he
was beginning to see in addition that the temper he encouraged was
particularly obnoxious to the policy he adopted; and although his
purpose in mounting horse after yesterday frowning on his bride was
definite, and might be deemed sagacious, he bemoaned already the
fatality pushing him ever farther from her in chase of a satisfaction
impossible to grasp.

But the bare fact that her behaviour demanded a line of policy crossed
the grain of his temper: it was very offensive.

Considering that she wounded him severely, her reversal of their proper
parts, by taking the part belonging to him, and requiring his
watchfulness, and the careful dealings he was accustomed to expect from
others, and had a right to exact of her, was injuriously unjust. The
feelings of a man hereditarily sensitive to property accused her of a
trespassing imprudence, and knowing himself, by testimony of his
household, his tenants, and the neighbourhood, and the world as well,
amiable when he received his dues, he contemplated her with an air of
stiff-backed ill-treatment, not devoid of a certain sanctification of
martyrdom.

His bitterest enemy would hardly declare that it was he who was in the
wrong.

Clara herself had never been audacious enough to say that. Distaste of
his person was inconceivable to the favourite of society. The
capricious creature probably wanted a whipping to bring her to the
understanding of the principle called mastery, which is in man.

But was he administering it? If he retained a hold on her, he could
undoubtedly apply the scourge at leisure; any kind of scourge; he could
shun her, look on her frigidly, unbend to her to find a warmer place
for sarcasm, pityingly smile, ridicule, pay court elsewhere. He could
do these things if he retained a hold on her; and he could do them well
because of the faith he had in his renowned amiability; for in doing
them, he could feel that he was other than he seemed, and his own
cordial nature was there to comfort him while he bestowed punishment.
Cordial indeed, the chills he endured were flung from the world. His
heart was in that fiction: half the hearts now beating have a mild form
of it to keep them merry: and the chastisement he desired to inflict
was really no more than righteous vengeance for an offended goodness of
heart. Clara figuratively, absolutely perhaps, on her knees, he would
raise her and forgive her. He yearned for the situation. To let her
understand how little she had known him! It would be worth the pain she
had dealt, to pour forth the stream of re-established confidences, to
paint himself to her as he was; as he was in the spirit, not as he was
to the world: though the world had reason to do him honour.

First, however, she would have to be humbled.

Something whispered that his hold on her was lost.

In such a case, every blow he struck would set her flying farther, till
the breach between them would be past bridging.

Determination not to let her go was the best finish to this perpetually
revolving round which went like the same old wheel-planks of a water
mill in his head at a review of the injury he sustained. He had come to
it before, and he came to it again. There was his vengeance. It melted
him, she was so sweet! She shone for him like the sunny breeze on
water. Thinking of her caused a catch of his breath.

The dreadful young woman had a keener edge for the senses of men than
sovereign beauty.

It would be madness to let her go.

She affected him like an outlook on the great Patterne estate after an
absence, when his welcoming flag wept for pride above Patterne Hall!

It would be treason to let her go.

It would be cruelty to her.

He was bound to reflect that she was of tender age, and the foolishness
of the wretch was excusable to extreme youth.

We toss away a flower that we are tired of smelling and do not wish to
carry. But the rose--young woman--is not cast off with impunity. A
fiend in shape of man is always behind us to appropriate her. He that
touches that rejected thing is larcenous. Willoughby had been sensible
of it in the person of Laetitia: and by all the more that Clara's
charms exceeded the faded creature's, he felt it now. Ten thousand
Furies thickened about him at a thought of her lying by the road-side
without his having crushed all bloom and odour out of her which might
tempt even the curiosity of the fiend, man.

On the other hand, supposing her to be there untouched, universally
declined by the sniffling, sagacious dog-fiend, a miserable spinster
for years, he could conceive notions of his remorse. A soft remorse may
be adopted as an agreeable sensation within view of the wasted penitent
whom we have struck a trifle too hard. Seeing her penitent, he
certainly would be willing to surround her with little offices of
compromising kindness. It would depend on her age. Supposing her still
youngish, there might be captivating passages between them, as thus, in
a style not unfamiliar:

"And was it my fault, my poor girl? Am I to blame, that you have passed
a lonely, unloved youth?"

"No, Willoughby! The irreparable error was mine, the blame is mine,
mine only. I live to repent it. I do not seek, for I have not deserved,
your pardon. Had I it, I should need my own self-esteem to presume to
clasp it to a bosom ever unworthy of you."

"I may have been impatient, Clara: we are human!"

"Never be it mine to accuse one on whom I laid so heavy a weight of
forbearance!"

"Still, my old love!--for I am merely quoting history in naming you
so--I cannot have been perfectly blameless."

"To me you were, and are."

"Clara!"

"Willoughby!"

"Must I recognize the bitter truth that we two, once nearly one! so
nearly one! are eternally separated?"

"I have envisaged it. My friend--I may call you friend; you have ever
been my friend, my best friend! oh, that eyes had been mine to know the
friend I had!--Willoughby, in the darkness of night, and during days
that were as night to my soul, I have seen the inexorable finger
pointing my solitary way through the wilderness from a Paradise
forfeited by my most wilful, my wanton, sin. We have met. It is more
than I have merited. We part. In mercy let it be for ever. Oh, terrible
word! Coined by the passions of our youth, it comes to us for our sole
riches when we are bankrupt of earthly treasures, and is the passport
given by Abnegation unto Woe that prays to quit this probationary
sphere. Willoughby, we part. It is better so."

"Clara! one--one only--one last--one holy kiss!"

"If these poor lips, that once were sweet to you . . ."

The kiss, to continue the language of the imaginative composition of
his time, favourite readings in which had inspired Sir Willoughby with
a colloquy so pathetic, was imprinted.

Ay, she had the kiss, and no mean one. It was intended to swallow every
vestige of dwindling attractiveness out of her, and there was a bit of
scandal springing of it in the background that satisfactorily settled
her business, and left her 'enshrined in memory, a divine recollection
to him,' as his popular romances would say, and have said for years.

Unhappily, the fancied salute of her lips encircled him with the
breathing Clara. She rushed up from vacancy like a wind summoned to
wreck a stately vessel.

His reverie had thrown him into severe commotion. The slave of a
passion thinks in a ring, as hares run: he will cease where he began.
Her sweetness had set him off, and he whirled back to her sweetness:
and that being incalculable and he insatiable, you have the picture of
his torments when you consider that her behaviour made her as a cloud
to him.

Riding slack, horse and man, in the likeness of those two ajog homeward
from the miry hunt, the horse pricked his cars, and Willoughby looked
down from his road along the bills on the race headed by young Crossjay
with a short start over Aspenwell Common to the ford. There was no
mistaking who they were, though they were well-nigh a mile distant
below. He noticed that they did not overtake the boy. They drew rein at
the ford, talking not simply face to face, but face in face.
Willoughby's novel feeling of he knew not what drew them up to him,
enabling him to fancy them bathing in one another's eyes. Then she
sprang through the ford, De Craye following, but not close after--and
why not close? She had flicked him with one of her peremptorily saucy
speeches when she was bold with the gallop. They were not unknown to
Willoughby. They signified intimacy.

Last night he had proposed to De Craye to take Miss Middleton for a
ride the next afternoon. It never came to his mind then that he and his
friend had formerly been rivals. He wished Clara to be amused. Policy
dictated that every thread should be used to attach her to her
residence at the Hall until he could command his temper to talk to her
calmly and overwhelm her, as any man in earnest, with command of temper
and a point of vantage, may be sure to whelm a young woman. Policy,
adulterated by temper, yet policy it was that had sent him on his
errand in the early morning to beat about for a house and garden
suitable to Dr. Middleton within a circuit of five, six, or seven miles
of Patterne Hall. If the Rev. Doctor liked the house and took it (and
Willoughby had seen the place to suit him), the neighbourhood would be
a chain upon Clara: and if the house did not please a gentleman rather
hard to please (except in a venerable wine), an excuse would have been
started for his visiting other houses, and he had that response to his
importunate daughter, that he believed an excellent house was on view.
Dr. Middleton had been prepared by numerous hints to meet Clara's black
misreading of a lovers' quarrel, so that everything looked full of
promise as far as Willoughby's exercise of policy went.

But the strange pang traversing him now convicted him of a large
adulteration of profitless temper with it. The loyalty of De Craye to a
friend, where a woman walked in the drama, was notorious. It was there,
and a most flexible thing it was: and it soon resembled reason
manipulated by the sophists. Not to have reckoned on his peculiar
loyalty was proof of the blindness cast on us by temper.

And De Craye had an Irish tongue; and he had it under control, so that
he could talk good sense and airy nonsense at discretion. The strongest
overboiling of English Puritan contempt of a gabbler, would not stop
women from liking it. Evidently Clara did like it, and Willoughby
thundered on her sex. Unto such brainless things as these do we, under
the irony of circumstances, confide our honour!

For he was no gabbler. He remembered having rattled in earlier days; he
had rattled with an object to gain, desiring to be taken for an easy,
careless, vivacious, charming fellow, as any young gentleman may be who
gaily wears the golden dish of Fifty thousand pounds per annum, nailed
to the back of his very saintly young pate. The growth of the critical
spirit in him, however, had informed him that slang had been a
principal component of his rattling; and as he justly supposed it a
betraying art for his race and for him, he passed through the prim and
the yawning phases of affected indifference, to the pine Puritanism of
a leaden contempt of gabblers.

They snare women, you see--girls! How despicable the host of girls!--at
least, that girl below there!

Married women understood him: widows did. He placed an exceedingly
handsome and flattering young widow of his acquaintance, Lady Mary
Lewison, beside Clara for a comparison, involuntarily; and at once, in
a flash, in despite of him (he would rather it had been otherwise), and
in despite of Lady Mary's high birth and connections as well, the
silver lustre of the maid sicklied the poor widow.

The effect of the luckless comparison was to produce an image of
surpassingness in the features of Clara that gave him the final, or
mace-blow. Jealousy invaded him.

He had hitherto been free of it, regarding jealousy as a foreign devil,
the accursed familiar of the vulgar. Luckless fellows might be victims
of the disease; he was not; and neither Captain Oxford, nor Vernon, nor
De Craye, nor any of his compeers, had given him one shrewd pinch: the
woman had, not the man; and she in quite a different fashion from his
present wallowing anguish: she had never pulled him to earth's level,
where jealousy gnaws the grasses. He had boasted himself above the
humiliating visitation.

If that had been the case, we should not have needed to trouble
ourselves much about him. A run or two with the pack of imps would have
satisfied us. But he desired Clara Middleton manfully enough at an
intimation of rivalry to be jealous; in a minute the foreign devil had
him, he was flame: flaming verdigris, one might almost dare to say, for
an exact illustration; such was actually the colour; but accept it as
unsaid.

Remember the poets upon jealousy. It is to be haunted in the heaven of
two by a Third; preceded or succeeded, therefore surrounded, embraced,
bugged by this infernal Third: it is Love's bed of burning marl; to see
and taste the withering Third in the bosom of sweetness; to be dragged
through the past and find the fair Eden of it sulphurous; to be dragged
to the gates of the future and glory to behold them blood: to adore the
bitter creature trebly and with treble power to clutch her by the
windpipe: it is to be cheated, derided, shamed, and abject and
supplicating, and consciously demoniacal in treacherousness, and
victoriously self-justified in revenge.

And still there is no change in what men feel, though in what they do
the modern may be judicious.

You know the many paintings of man transformed to rageing beast by the
curse: and this, the fieriest trial of our egoism, worked in the Egoist
to produce division of himself from himself, a concentration of his
thoughts upon another object, still himself, but in another breast,
which had to be looked at and into for the discovery of him. By the
gaping jaw-chasm of his greed we may gather comprehension of his
insatiate force of jealousy. Let her go? Not though he were to become a
mark of public scorn in strangling her with the yoke! His concentration
was marvellous. Unused to the exercise of imaginative powers, he
nevertheless conjured her before him visually till his eyeballs ached.
He saw none but Clara, hated none, loved none, save the intolerable
woman. What logic was in him deduced her to be individual and most
distinctive from the circumstance that only she had ever wrought these
pangs. She had made him ready for them, as we know. An idea of De Craye
being no stranger to her when he arrived at the Hall, dashed him at De
Craye for a second: it might be or might not be that they had a
secret;--Clara was the spell. So prodigiously did he love and hate,
that he had no permanent sense except for her. The soul of him writhed
under her eyes at one moment, and the next it closed on her without
mercy. She was his possession escaping; his own gliding away to the
Third.

There would be pangs for him too, that Third! Standing at the altar to
see her fast-bound, soul and body, to another, would be good roasting
fire.

It would be good roasting fire for her too, should she be averse. To
conceive her aversion was to burn her and devour her. She would then be
his!--what say you? Burned and devoured! Rivals would vanish then. Her
reluctance to espouse the man she was plighted to would cease to be
uttered, cease to be felt.

At last he believed in her reluctance. All that had been wanted to
bring him to the belief was the scene on the common; such a mere spark,
or an imagined spark! But the presence of the Third was necessary;
otherwise he would have had to suppose himself personally distasteful.

Women have us back to the conditions of primitive man, or they shoot us
higher than the topmost star. But it is as we please. Let them tell us
what we are to them: for us, they are our back and front of life: the
poet's Lesbia, the poet's Beatrice; ours is the choice. And were it
proved that some of the bright things are in the pay of Darkness, with
the stamp of his coin on their palms, and that some are the very angels
we hear sung of, not the less might we say that they find us out; they
have us by our leanings. They are to us what we hold of best or worst
within. By their state is our civilization judged: and if it is hugely
animal still, that is because primitive men abound and will have their
pasture. Since the lead is ours, the leaders must bow their heads to
the sentence. Jealousy of a woman is the primitive egoism seeking to
refine in a blood gone to savagery under apprehension of an invasion of
rights; it is in action the tiger threatened by a rifle when his paw is
rigid on quick flesh; he tears the flesh for rage at the intruder. The
Egoist, who is our original male in giant form, had no bleeding victim
beneath his paw, but there was the sex to mangle. Much as he prefers
the well-behaved among women, who can worship and fawn, and in whom
terror can be inspired, in his wrath he would make of Beatrice a Lesbia
Quadrantaria.

Let women tell us of their side of the battle. We are not so much the
test of the Egoist in them as they to us. Movements of similarity shown
in crowned and undiademed ladies of intrepid independence, suggest
their occasional capacity to be like men when it is given to them to
hunt. At present they fly, and there is the difference. Our manner of
the chase informs them of the creature we are.

Dimly as young women are informed, they have a youthful ardour of
detestation that renders them less tolerant of the Egoist than their
perceptive elder sisters. What they do perceive, however, they have a
redoubtable grasp of, and Clara's behaviour would be indefensible if
her detective feminine vision might not sanction her acting on its
direction. Seeing him as she did, she turned from him and shunned his
house as the antre of an ogre. She had posted her letter to Lucy
Darleton. Otherwise, if it had been open to her to dismiss Colonel De
Craye, she might, with a warm kiss to Vernon's pupil, have seriously
thought of the next shrill steam-whistle across yonder hills for a
travelling companion on the way to her friend Lucy; so abhorrent was to
her the putting of her horse's head toward the Hall. Oh, the breaking
of bread there! It had to be gone through for another day and more;
that is to say, forty hours, it might be six-and-forty hours; and no
prospect of sleep to speed any of them on wings!

Such were Clara's inward interjections while poor Willoughby burned
himself out with verdigris flame having the savour of bad metal, till
the hollow of his breast was not unlike to a corroded old cuirass,
found, we will assume, by criminal lantern-beams in a digging beside
green-mantled pools of the sullen soil, lumped with a strange adhesive
concrete. How else picture the sad man?--the cavity felt empty to him,
and heavy; sick of an ancient and mortal combat, and burning; deeply
dinted too:

    With the starry hole
    Whence fled the soul:

very sore; important for aught save sluggish agony; a specimen and the
issue of strife.

Measurelessly to loathe was not sufficient to save him from pain: he
tried it: nor to despise; he went to a depth there also. The fact that
she was a healthy young woman returned to the surface of his thoughts
like the murdered body pitched into the river, which will not drown,
and calls upon the elements of dissolution to float it. His grand
hereditary desire to transmit his estates, wealth and name to a solid
posterity, while it prompted him in his loathing and contempt of a
nature mean and ephemeral compared with his, attached him desperately
to her splendid healthiness. The council of elders, whose descendant he
was, pointed to this young woman for his mate. He had wooed her with
the idea that they consented. O she was healthy! And he likewise: but,
as if it had been a duel between two clearly designated by quality of
blood to bid a House endure, she was the first who taught him what it
was to have sensations of his mortality.

He could not forgive her. It seemed to him consequently politic to
continue frigid and let her have a further taste of his shadow, when it
was his burning wish to strain her in his arms to a flatness provoking
his compassion.

"You have had your ride?" he addressed her politely in the general
assembly on the lawn.

"I have had my ride, yes," Clara replied.

"Agreeable, I trust?"

"Very agreeable."

So it appeared. Oh, blushless!

The next instant he was in conversation with Laetitia, questioning her
upon a dejected droop of her eyelashes.

"I am, I think," said she, "constitutionally melancholy."

He murmured to her: "I believe in the existence of specifics, and not
far to seek, for all our ailments except those we bear at the hands of
others."

She did not dissent.

De Craye, whose humour for being convinced that Willoughby cared about
as little for Miss Middleton as she for him was nourished by his
immediate observation of them, dilated on the beauty of the ride and
his fair companion's equestrian skill.

"You should start a travelling circus," Willoughby rejoined. "But the
idea's a worthy one!--There's another alternative to the expedition I
proposed, Miss Middleton," said De Craye. "And I be clown? I haven't a
scruple of objection. I must read up books of jokes."

"Don't," said Willoughby.

"I'd spoil my part! But a natural clown won't keep up an artificial
performance for an entire month, you see; which is the length of time
we propose. He'll exhaust his nature in a day and be bowled over by the
dullest regular donkey-engine with paint on his cheeks and a nodding
topknot."

"What is this expedition 'we' propose?"

De Craye was advised in his heart to spare Miss Middleton any allusion
to honeymoons.

"Merely a game to cure dulness."

"Ah!" Willoughby acquiesced. "A month, you said?"

"One'd like it to last for years."

"Ah! You are driving one of Mr. Merriman's witticisms at me, Horace; I
am dense."

Willoughby bowed to Dr. Middleton, and drew him from Vernon, filially
taking his turn to talk with him closely.

De Craye saw Clara's look as her father and Willoughby went aside thus
linked.

It lifted him over anxieties and casuistries concerning loyalty.
Powder was in the look to make a warhorse breathe high and shiver for
the signal.



CHAPTER XXIV

CONTAINS AN INSTANCE OF THE GENEROSITY OF WILLOUGHBY

Observers of a gathering complication and a character in action
commonly resemble gleaners who are intent only on picking up the cars
of grain and huddling their store. Disinterestedly or interestedly they
wax over-eager for the little trifles, and make too much of them.
Observers should begin upon the precept, that not all we see is worth
hoarding, and that the things we see are to be weighed in the scale
with what we know of the situation, before we commit ourselves to a
measurement. And they may be accurate observers without being good
judges. They do not think so, and their bent is to glean hurriedly and
form conclusions as hasty, when their business should be sift at each
step, and question.

Miss Dale seconded Vernon Whitford in the occupation of counting looks
and tones, and noting scraps of dialogue. She was quite disinterested;
he quite believed that he was; to this degree they were competent for
their post; and neither of them imagined they could be personally
involved in the dubious result of the scenes they witnessed. They were
but anxious observers, diligently collecting. She fancied Clara
susceptible to his advice: he had fancied it, and was considering it
one of his vanities. Each mentally compared Clara's abruptness in
taking them into her confidence with her abstention from any secret
word since the arrival of Colonel De Craye. Sir Willoughby requested
Laetitia to give Miss Middleton as much of her company as she could;
showing that he was on the alert. Another Constantia Durham seemed
beating her wings for flight. The suddenness of the evident intimacy
between Clara and Colonel De Craye shocked Laetitia; their acquaintance
could be computed by hours. Yet at their first interview she had
suspected the possibility of worse than she now supposed to be; and she
had begged Vernon not immediately to quit the Hall, in consequence of
that faint suspicion. She had been led to it by meeting Clara and De
Craye at her cottage-gate, and finding them as fluent and
laughter-breathing in conversation as friends. Unable to realize the
rapid advance to a familiarity, more ostensible than actual, of two
lively natures, after such an introduction as they had undergone: and
one of the two pining in a drought of liveliness: Laetitia listened to
their wager of nothing at all--a no against a yes--in the case of poor
Flitch; and Clara's, "Willoughby will not forgive"; and De Craye's "Oh,
he's human": and the silence of Clara and De Craye's hearty cry,
"Flitch shall be a gentleman's coachman in his old seat or I haven't a
tongue!" to which there was a negative of Clara's head: and it then
struck Laetitia that this young betrothed lady, whose alienated heart
acknowledged no lord an hour earlier, had met her match, and, as the
observer would have said, her destiny. She judged of the alarming
possibility by the recent revelation to herself of Miss Middleton's
character, and by Clara's having spoken to a man as well (to Vernon),
and previously. That a young lady should speak on the subject of the
inner holies to a man, though he were Vernon Whitford, was incredible
to Laetitia; but it had to be accepted as one of the dread facts of our
inexplicable life, which drag our bodies at their wheels and leave our
minds exclaiming. Then, if Clara could speak to Vernon, which Laetitia
would not have done for a mighty bribe, she could speak to De Craye,
Laetitia thought deductively: this being the logic of untrained heads
opposed to the proceeding whereby their condemnatory deduction
hangs.--Clara must have spoken to De Craye!

Laetitia remembered how winning and prevailing Miss Middleton could be
in her confidences. A gentleman hearing her might forget his duty to
his friend, she thought, for she had been strangely swayed by Clara:
ideas of Sir Willoughby that she had never before imagined herself to
entertain had been sown in her, she thought; not asking herself whether
the searchingness of the young lady had struck them and bidden them
rise from where they lay imbedded. Very gentle women take in that
manner impressions of persons, especially of the worshipped person,
wounding them; like the new fortifications with embankments of soft
earth, where explosive missiles bury themselves harmlessly until they
are plucked out; and it may be a reason why those injured ladies
outlive a Clara Middleton similarly battered.

Vernon less than Laetitia took into account that Clara was in a state
of fever, scarcely reasonable. Her confidences to him he had excused,
as a piece of conduct, in sympathy with her position. He had not been
greatly astonished by the circumstances confided; and, on the whole, as
she was excited and unhappy, he excused her thoroughly; he could have
extolled her: it was natural that she should come to him, brave in her
to speak so frankly, a compliment that she should condescend to treat
him as a friend. Her position excused her widely. But she was not
excused for making a confidential friend of De Craye. There was a
difference.

Well, the difference was, that De Craye had not the smarting sense of
honour with women which our meditator had: an impartial judiciary, it
will be seen: and he discriminated between himself and the other
justly: but sensation surging to his brain at the same instant, he
reproached Miss Middleton for not perceiving that difference as
clearly, before she betrayed her position to De Craye, which Vernon
assumed that she had done. Of course he did. She had been guilty of it
once: why, then, in the mind of an offended friend, she would be guilty
of it twice. There was evidence. Ladies, fatally predestined to appeal
to that from which they have to be guarded, must expect severity when
they run off their railed highroad: justice is out of the question:
man's brains might, his blood cannot administer it to them. By chilling
him to the bone they may get what they cry for. But that is a method
deadening to their point of appeal.

I the evening, Miss Middleton and the colonel sang a duet. She had of
late declined to sing. Her voice was noticeably firm. Sir Willoughby
said to her, "You have recovered your richness of tone, Clara." She
smiled and appeared happy in pleasing him. He named a French ballad.
She went to the music-rack and gave the song unasked. He should have
been satisfied, for she said to him at the finish, "Is that as you like
it?" He broke from a murmur to Miss Dale, "Admirable." Some one
mentioned a Tuscan popular canzone. She waited for Willoughby's
approval, and took his nod for a mandate.

Traitress! he could have bellowed.

He had read of this characteristic of caressing obedience of the women
about to deceive. He had in his time profited by it.

"Is it intuitively or by their experience that our neighbours across
Channel surpass us in the knowledge of your sex?" he said to Miss Dale,
and talked through Clara's apostrophe to the 'Santissinia Virgine
Maria,' still treating temper as a part of policy, without any effect
on Clara; and that was matter for sickly green reflections. The lover
who cannot wound has indeed lost anchorage; he is woefully adrift: he
stabs air, which is to stab himself. Her complacent proof-armour bids
him know himself supplanted.

During the short conversational period before the ladies retired for
the night, Miss Eleanor alluded to the wedding by chance. Miss Isabel
replied to her, and addressed an interrogation to Clara. De Craye
foiled it adroitly. Clara did not utter a syllable. Her bosom lifted to
a wavering height and sank. Subsequently she looked at De Craye
vacantly, like a person awakened, but she looked. She was astonished by
his readiness, and thankful for the succour. Her look was cold, wide,
unfixed, with nothing of gratitude or of personal in it. The look,
however, stood too long for Willoughby's endurance.

Ejaculating "Porcelain!" he uncrossed his legs; a signal for the ladies
Eleanor and Isabel to retire. Vernon bowed to Clara as she was rising.
He had not been once in her eyes, and he expected a partial recognition
at the good-night. She said it, turning her head to Miss Isabel, who
was condoling once more with Colonel De Craye over the ruins of his
wedding-present, the porcelain vase, which she supposed to have been in
Willoughby's mind when he displayed the signal. Vernon walked off to
his room, dark as one smitten blind: bile tumet jecur: her stroke of
neglect hit him there where a blow sends thick obscuration upon
eyeballs and brain alike.

Clara saw that she was paining him and regretted it when they were
separated. That was her real friend! But he prescribed too hard a task.
Besides, she had done everything he demanded of her, except the
consenting to stay where she was and wear out Willoughby, whose
dexterity wearied her small stock of patience. She had vainly tried
remonstrance and supplication with her father hoodwinked by his host,
she refused to consider how; through wine?--the thought was
repulsive.

Nevertheless, she was drawn to the edge of it by the contemplation of
her scheme of release. If Lucy Darleton was at home; if Lucy invited
her to come: if she flew to Lucy: oh! then her father would have cause
for anger. He would not remember that but for hateful wine! . . .

What was there in this wine of great age which expelled reasonableness,
fatherliness? He was her dear father: she was his beloved child: yet
something divided them; something closed her father's ears to her: and
could it be that incomprehensible seduction of the wine? Her
dutifulness cried violently no. She bowed, stupefied, to his arguments
for remaining awhile, and rose clear-headed and rebellious with the
reminiscence of the many strong reasons she had urged against them.

The strangeness of men, young and old, the little things (she regarded
a grand wine as a little thing) twisting and changing them, amazed her.
And these are they by whom women are abused for variability! Only the
most imperious reasons, never mean trifles, move women, thought she.
Would women do an injury to one they loved for oceans of that--ah, pah!

And women must respect men. They necessarily respect a father. "My
dear, dear father!" Clara said in the solitude of her chamber, musing
on all his goodness, and she endeavoured to reconcile the desperate
sentiments of the position he forced her to sustain, with those of a
venerating daughter. The blow which was to fall on him beat on her
heavily in advance. "I have not one excuse!" she said, glancing at
numbers and a mighty one. But the idea of her father suffering at her
hands cast her down lower than self-justification. She sought to
imagine herself sparing him. It was too fictitious.

The sanctuary of her chamber, the pure white room so homely to her
maidenly feelings, whispered peace, only to follow the whisper with
another that went through her swelling to a roar, and leaving her as a
suing of music unkindly smitten. If she stayed in this house her
chamber would no longer be a sanctuary. Dolorous bondage! Insolent
death is not worse. Death's worm we cannot keep away, but when he has
us we are numb to dishonour, happily senseless.

Youth weighed her eyelids to sleep, though she was quivering, and
quivering she awoke to the sound of her name beneath her window. "I
can love still, for I love him," she said, as she luxuriated in young
Crossjay's boy's voice, again envying him his bath in the lake waters,
which seemed to her to have the power to wash away grief and chains.
Then it was that she resolved to let Crossjay see the last of her in
this place. He should be made gleeful by doing her a piece of service;
he should escort her on her walk to the railway station next morning,
thence be sent flying for a long day's truancy, with a little note of
apology on his behalf that she would write for him to deliver to Vernon
at night.

Crossjay came running to her after his breakfast with Mrs Montague, the
housekeeper, to tell her he had called her up.

"You won't to-morrow: I shall be up far ahead of you," said she; and
musing on her father, while Crossjay vowed to be up the first, she
thought it her duty to plunge into another expostulation.

Willoughby had need of Vernon on private affairs. Dr. Middleton betook
himself as usual to the library, after answering "I will ruin you yet,"
to Willoughby's liberal offer to despatch an order to London for any
books he might want.

His fine unruffled air, as of a mountain in still morning beams, made
Clara not indisposed to a preliminary scene with Willoughby that might
save her from distressing him, but she could not stop Willoughby; as
little could she look an invitation. He stood in the Hall, holding
Vernon by the arm. She passed him; he did not speak, and she entered
the library.

"What now, my dear? what is it?" said Dr. Middleton, seeing that the
door was shut on them.

"Nothing, papa," she replied, calmly.

"You've not locked the door, my child? You turned something there: try
the handle."

"I assure you, papa, the door is not locked."

"Mr. Whitford will be here instantly. We are engaged on tough matter.
Women have not, and opinion is universal that they never will have, a
conception of the value of time."

"We are vain and shallow, my dear papa."

"No, no, not you, Clara. But I suspect you to require to learn by
having work in progress how important is . . . is a quiet commencement
of the day's task. There is not a scholar who will not tell you so. We
must have a retreat. These invasions!--So you intend to have another
ride to-day? They do you good. To-morrow we dine with Mrs. Mountstuart
Jenkinson, an estimable person indeed, though I do not perfectly
understand our accepting.--You have not to accuse me of sitting over
wine last night, my Clara! I never do it, unless I am appealed to for
my judgement upon a wine."

"I have come to entreat you to take me away, papa."

In the midst of the storm aroused by this renewal of perplexity, Dr
Middleton replaced a book his elbow had knocked over in his haste to
dash the hair off his forehead, crying: "Whither? To what spot? That
reading of guide-books, and idle people's notes of Travel, and
picturesque correspondence in the newspapers, unsettles man and maid.
My objection to the living in hotels is known. I do not hesitate to say
that I do cordially abhor it. I have had penitentially to submit to it
in your dear mother's time, [Greek], up to the full ten thousand times.
But will you not comprehend that to the older man his miseries are
multiplied by his years? But is it utterly useless to solicit your
sympathy with an old man, Clara?"

"General Darleton will take us in, papa."

"His table is detestable. I say nothing of that; but his wine is
poison. Let that pass--I should rather say, let it not pass!--but our
political views are not in accord. True, we are not under the
obligation to propound them in presence, but we are destitute of an
opinion in common. We have no discourse. Military men have produced, or
diverged in, noteworthy epicures; they are often devout; they have
blossomed in lettered men: they are gentlemen; the country rightly
holds them in honour; but, in fine, I reject the proposal to go to
General Darleton.--Tears?"

"No, papa."

"I do hope not. Here we have everything man can desire; without
contest, an excellent host. You have your transitory tea-cup tempests,
which you magnify to hurricanes, in the approved historic manner of the
book of Cupid. And all the better; I repeat, it is the better that you
should have them over in the infancy of the alliance. Come in!" Dr.
Middleton shouted cheerily in response to a knock at the door.

He feared the door was locked: he had a fear that his daughter intended
to keep it locked.

"Clara!" he cried.

She reluctantly turned the handle, and the ladies Eleanor and Isabel
came in, apologizing with as much coherence as Dr. Middleton ever
expected from their sex. They wished to speak to Clara, but they
declined to take her away. In vain the Rev. Doctor assured them she
was at their service; they protested that they had very few words to
say, and would not intrude one moment further than to speak them.

Like a shy deputation of young scholars before the master, these very
words to come were preceded by none at all; a dismal and trying cause;
refreshing however to Dr. Middleton, who joyfully anticipated that the
ladies could be induced to take away Clara when they had finished.

"We may appear to you a little formal," Miss Isabel began, and turned
to her sister.

"We have no intention to lay undue weight on our mission, if mission it
can be called," said Miss Eleanor.

"Is it entrusted to you by Willoughby?" said Clara.

"Dear child, that you may know it all the more earnest with us, and our
personal desire to contribute to your happiness: therefore does
Willoughby entrust the speaking of it to us."

Hereupon the sisters alternated in addressing Clara, and she gazed from
one to the other, piecing fragments of empty signification to get the
full meaning when she might.

"--And in saying your happiness, dear Clara, we have our Willoughby's
in view, which is dependent on yours."

"--And we never could sanction that our own inclinations should stand
in the way."

"--No. We love the old place; and if it were only our punishment for
loving it too idolatrously, we should deem it ground enough for our
departure."

"--Without, really, an idea of unkindness; none, not any."

"--Young wives naturally prefer to be undisputed queens of their own
establishment."

"--Youth and age!"

"But I," said Clara, "have never mentioned, never had a thought . . ."

"--You have, dear child, a lover who in his solicitude for your
happiness both sees what you desire and what is due to you."

"--And for us, Clara, to recognize what is due to you is to act on it."

"--Besides, dear, a sea-side cottage has always been one of our
dreams."

"--We have not to learn that we are a couple of old maids, incongruous
associates for a young wife in the government of a great house."

"--With our antiquated notions, questions of domestic management might
arise, and with the best will in the world to be harmonious!"

"--So, dear Clara, consider it settled."

"--From time to time gladly shall we be your guests."

"--Your guests, dear, not censorious critics."

"And you think me such an Egoist!--dear ladies! The suggestion of so
cruel a piece of selfishness wounds me. I would not have had you leave
the Hall. I like your society; I respect you. My complaint, if I had
one, would be, that you do not sufficiently assert yourselves. I could
have wished you to be here for an example to me. I would not have
allowed you to go. What can he think of me! Did Willoughby speak of it
this morning?"

It was hard to distinguish which was the completer dupe of these two
echoes of one another in worship of a family idol.

"Willoughby," Miss Eleanor presented herself to be stamped with the
title hanging ready for the first that should open her lips, "our
Willoughby is observant--he is ever generous--and he is not less
forethoughtful. His arrangement is for our good on all sides."

"An index is enough," said Miss Isabel, appearing in her turn the
monster dupe.

"You will not have to leave, dear ladies. Were I mistress here I should
oppose it."

"Willoughby blames himself for not reassuring you before."

"Indeed we blame ourselves for not undertaking to go."

"Did he speak of it first this morning?" said Clara; but she could draw
no reply to that from them. They resumed the duet, and she resigned
herself to have her cars boxed with nonsense.

"So, it is understood?" said Miss Eleanor.

"I see your kindness, ladies."

"And I am to be Aunt Eleanor again?"

"And I Aunt Isabel?"

Clara could have wrung her hands at the impediment which prohibited her
delicacy from telling them why she could not name them so as she had
done in the earlier days of Willoughby's courtship. She kissed them
warmly, ashamed of kissing, though the warmth was real.

They retired with a flow of excuses to Dr. Middleton for disturbing
him. He stood at the door to bow them out, and holding the door for
Clara, to wind up the procession, discovered her at a far corner of the
room.

He was debating upon the advisability of leaving her there, when Vernon
Whitford crossed the hall from the laboratory door, a mirror of himself
in his companion air of discomposure.

That was not important, so long as Vernon was a check on Clara; but the
moment Clara, thus baffled, moved to quit the library, Dr. Middleton
felt the horror of having an uncomfortable face opposite.

"No botheration, I hope? It's the worst thing possible to work on.
Where have you been? I suspect your weak point is not to arm yourself
in triple brass against bother and worry, and no good work can you do
unless you do. You have come out of that laboratory."

"I have, sir.--Can I get you any book?" Vernon said to Clara.

She thanked him, promising to depart immediately.

"Now you are at the section of Italian literature, my love," said Dr
Middleton. "Well, Mr. Whitford, the laboratory--ah!--where the amount
of labour done within the space of a year would not stretch an electric
current between this Hall and the railway station: say, four miles,
which I presume the distance to be. Well, sir, and a dilettantism
costly in time and machinery is as ornamental as foxes' tails and
deers' horns to an independent gentleman whose fellows are contented
with the latter decorations for their civic wreath. Willoughby, let me
remark, has recently shown himself most considerate for my girl. As far
as I could gather--I have been listening to a dialogue of ladies--he is
as generous as he is discreet. There are certain combats in which to be
the one to succumb is to claim the honours;--and that is what women
will not learn. I doubt their seeing the glory of it."

"I have heard of it; I have been with Willoughby," Vernon said,
hastily, to shield Clara from her father's allusive attacks. He wished
to convey to her that his interview with Willoughby had not been
profitable in her interests, and that she had better at once, having
him present to support her, pour out her whole heart to her father. But
how was it to be conveyed? She would not meet his eyes, and he was too
poor an intriguer to be ready on the instant to deal out the verbal
obscurities which are transparencies to one.

"I shall regret it, if Willoughby has annoyed you, for he stands high
in my favour," said Dr. Middleton.

Clara dropped a book. Her father started higher than the nervous
impulse warranted in his chair. Vernon tried to win a glance, and she
was conscious of his effort, but her angry and guilty feelings,
prompting her resolution to follow her own counsel, kept her eyelids on
the defensive.

"I don't say he annoys me, sir. I am here to give him my advice, and if
he does not accept it I have no right to be annoyed. Willoughby seems
annoyed that Colonel De Craye should talk of going to-morrow or next
day."

"He likes his friends about him. Upon my word, a man of a more genial
heart you might march a day without finding. But you have it on the
forehead, Mr. Whitford."

"Oh! no, sir."

"There," Dr. Middleton drew his finger along his brows.

Vernon felt along his own, and coined an excuse for their blackness;
not aware that the direction of his mind toward Clara pushed him to a
kind of clumsy double meaning, while he satisfied an inward and craving
wrath, as he said: "By the way, I have been racking my head; I must
apply to you, sir. I have a line, and I am uncertain of the run of the
line. Will this pass, do you think?

     'In Asination's tongue he asinates';

signifying that he excels any man of us at donkey-dialect."

After a decent interval for the genius of criticism to seem to have
been sitting under his frown, Dr. Middleton rejoined with sober
jocularity: "No, sir, it will not pass; and your uncertainty in regard
to the run of the line would only be extended were the line centipedal.
Our recommendation is, that you erase it before the arrival of the
ferule. This might do:

     'In Assignation's name he assignats';

signifying that he pre-eminently flourishes hypothetical promises, to
pay by appointment. That might pass. But you will forbear to cite me
for your authority."

"The line would be acceptable if I could get it to apply," said Vernon.

"Or this . . ." Dr. Middleton was offering a second suggestion, but
Clara fled, astonished at men as she never yet had been. Why, in a
burning world they would be exercising their minds in absurdities! And
those two were scholars, learned men! And both knew they were in the
presence of a soul in a tragic fever!

A minute after she had closed the door they were deep in their work.
Dr. Middleton forgot his alternative line.

"Nothing serious?" he said in reproof of the want of honourable
clearness on Vernon's brows.

"I trust not, sir; it's a case for common sense."

"And you call that not serious?"

"I take Hermann's praise of the versus dochmiachus to be not only
serious but unexaggerated," said Vernon.

Dr. Middleton assented and entered on the voiceful ground of Greek
metres, shoving your dry dusty world from his elbow.



CHAPTER XXV

THE FLIGHT IN WILD WEATHER

The morning of Lucy Darleton's letter of reply to her friend Clara was
fair before sunrise, with luminous colours that are an omen to the
husbandman. Clara had no weather-eye for the rich Eastern crimson, nor
a quiet space within her for the beauty. She looked on it as her gate
of promise, and it set her throbbing with a revived belief in radiant
things which she had once dreamed of to surround her life, but her
accelerated pulses narrowed her thoughts upon the machinery of her
project. She herself was metal, pointing all to her one aim when in
motion. Nothing came amiss to it, everything was fuel; fibs, evasions,
the serene battalions of white lies parallel on the march with dainty
rogue falsehoods. She had delivered herself of many yesterday in her
engagements for to-day. Pressure was put on her to engage herself, and
she did so liberally, throwing the burden of deceitfulness on the
extraordinary pressure. "I want the early part of the morning; the rest
of the day I shall be at liberty." She said it to Willoughby, Miss
Dale, Colonel De Craye, and only the third time was she aware of the
delicious double meaning. Hence she associated it with the colonel.

Your loudest outcry against the wretch who breaks your rules is in
asking how a tolerably conscientious person could have done this and
the other besides the main offence, which you vow you could overlook
but for the minor objections pertaining to conscience, the
incomprehensible and abominable lies, for example, or the brazen
coolness of the lying. Yet you know that we live in an undisciplined
world, where in our seasons of activity we are servants of our design,
and that this comes of our passions, and those of our position. Our
design shapes us for the work in hand, the passions man the ship, the
position is their apology: and now should conscience be a passenger on
board, a merely seeming swiftness of our vessel will keep him dumb as
the unwilling guest of a pirate captain scudding from the cruiser half
in cloven brine through rocks and shoals to save his black flag. Beware
the false position.

That is easy to say: sometimes the tangle descends on us like a net of
blight on a rose-bush. There is then an instant choice for us between
courage to cut loose, and desperation if we do not. But not many men
are trained to courage; young women are trained to cowardice. For them
to front an evil with plain speech is to be guilty of effrontery and
forfeit the waxen polish of purity, and therewith their commanding
place in the market. They are trained to please man's taste, for which
purpose they soon learn to live out of themselves, and look on
themselves as he looks, almost as little disturbed as he by the
undiscovered. Without courage, conscience is a sorry guest; and if all
goes well with the pirate captain, conscience will be made to walk the
plank for being of no service to either party.

Clara's fibs and evasions disturbed her not in the least that morning.
She had chosen desperation, and she thought herself very brave because
she was just brave enough to fly from her abhorrence. She was
light-hearted, or, more truly, drunken-hearted. Her quick nature
realized the out of prison as vividly and suddenly as it had sunk
suddenly and leadenly under the sense of imprisonment. Vernon crossed
her mind: that was a friend! Yes, and there was a guide; but he would
disapprove, and even he, thwarting her way to sacred liberty, must be
thrust aside.

What would he think? They might never meet, for her to know. Or one day
in the Alps they might meet, a middle-aged couple, he famous, she
regretful only to have fallen below his lofty standard. "For, Mr.
Whitford," says she, very earnestly, "I did wish at that time, believe
me or not, to merit your approbation." The brows of the phantom Vernon
whom she conjured up were stern, as she had seen them yesterday in the
library.

She gave herself a chiding for thinking of him when her mind should be
intent on that which he was opposed to.

It was a livelier relaxation to think of young Crossjay's shame-faced
confession presently, that he had been a laggard in bed while she swept
the dews. She laughed at him, and immediately Crossjay popped out on
her from behind a tree, causing her to clap hand to heart and stand
fast. A conspirator is not of the stuff to bear surprises. He feared he
had hurt her, and was manly in his efforts to soothe: he had been up
"hours", he said, and had watched her coming along the avenue, and did
not mean to startle her: it was the kind of fun he played with fellows,
and if he had hurt her, she might do anything to him she liked, and she
would see if he could not stand to be punished. He was urgent with her
to inflict corporal punishment on him.

"I shall leave it to the boatswain to do that when you're in the navy,"
said Clara.

"The boatswain daren't strike an officer! so now you see what you know
of the navy," said Crossjay.

"But you could not have been out before me, you naughty boy, for I
found all the locks and bolts when I went to the door."

"But you didn't go to the back door, and Sir Willoughby's private door:
you came out by the hall door; and I know what you want, Miss
Middleton, you want not to pay what you've lost."

"What have I lost, Crossjay?"

"Your wager."

"What was that?"

"You know."

"Speak."

"A kiss."

"Nothing of the sort. But, dear boy, I don't love you less for not
kissing you. All that is nonsense: you have to think only of learning,
and to be truthful. Never tell a story: suffer anything rather than be
dishonest." She was particularly impressive upon the silliness and
wickedness of falsehood, and added: "Do you hear?"

"Yes: but you kissed me when I had been out in the rain that day."

"Because I promised."

"And, Miss Middleton, you betted a kiss yesterday."

"I am sure, Crossjay--no, I will not say I am sure: but can you say you
are sure you were out first this morning? Well, will you say you are
sure that when you left the house you did not see me in the avenue? You
can't: ah!"

"Miss Middleton, I do really believe I was dressed first."

"Always be truthful, my dear boy, and then you may feel that Clara
Middleton will always love you."

"But, Miss Middleton, when you're married you won't be Clara
Middleton."

"I certainly shall, Crossjay."

"No, you won't, because I'm so fond of your name!"

She considered, and said: "You have warned me, Crossjay, and I shall
not marry. I shall wait," she was going to say, "for you," but turned
the hesitation to a period. "Is the village where I posted my letter
the day before yesterday too far for you?"

Crossjay howled in contempt. "Next to Clara, my favourite's Lucy," he
said.

"I thought Clara came next to Nelson," said she; "and a long way off
too, if you're not going to be a landlubber."

"I'm not going to be a landlubber. Miss Middleton, you may be
absolutely positive on your solemn word."

"You're getting to talk like one a little now and then, Crossjay."

"Then I won't talk at all."

He stuck to his resolution for one whole minute.

Clara hoped that on this morning of a doubtful though imperative
venture she had done some good.

They walked fast to cover the distance to the village post-office, and
back before the breakfast hour: and they had plenty of time, arriving
too early for the opening of the door, so that Crossjay began to dance
with an appetite, and was despatched to besiege a bakery. Clara felt
lonely without him: apprehensively timid in the shuttered, unmoving
village street. She was glad of his return. When at last her letter was
handed to her, on the testimony of the postman that she was the lawful
applicant, Crossjay and she put out on a sharp trot to be back at the
Hall in good time. She took a swallowing glance of the first page of
Lucy's writing:

"Telegraph, and I will meet you. I will supply you with everything you
can want for the two nights, if you cannot stop longer."

That was the gist of the letter. A second, less voracious, glance at it
along the road brought sweetness:--Lucy wrote:

"Do I love you as I did? my best friend, you must fall into unhappiness
to have the answer to that."

Clara broke a silence.

"Yes, dear Crossjay, and if you like you shall have another walk with
me after breakfast. But, remember, you must not say where you have gone
with me. I shall give you twenty shillings to go and buy those bird's
eggs and the butterflies you want for your collection; and mind,
promise me, to-day is your last day of truancy. Tell Mr. Whitford how
ungrateful you know you have been, that he may have some hope of you.
You know the way across the fields to the railway station?"

"You save a mile; you drop on the road by Combline's mill, and then
there's another five-minutes' cut, and the rest's road."

"Then, Crossjay, immediately after breakfast run round behind the
pheasantry, and there I'll find you. And if any one comes to you before
I come, say you are admiring the plumage of the Himalaya--the
beautiful Indian bird; and if we're found together, we run a race, and
of course you can catch me, but you mustn't until we're out of sight.
Tell Mr. Vernon at night--tell Mr. Whitford at night you had the money
from me as part of my allowance to you for pocket-money. I used to like
to have pocket-money, Crossjay. And you may tell him I gave you the
holiday, and I may write to him for his excuse, if he is not too harsh
to grant it. He can be very harsh."

"You look right into his eyes next time, Miss Middleton. I used to
think him awful till he made me look at him. He says men ought to look
straight at one another, just as we do when he gives me my
boxing-lesson, and then we won't have quarrelling half so much. I can't
recollect everything he says."

"You are not bound to, Crossjay."

"No, but you like to hear."

"Really, dear boy. I can't accuse myself of having told you that."

"No, but, Miss Middleton, you do. And he's fond of your singing and
playing on the piano, and watches you."

"We shall be late if we don't mind," said Clara, starting to a pace
close on a run.

They were in time for a circuit in the park to the wild double
cherry-blossom, no longer all white. Clara gazed up from under it,
where she had imagined a fairer visible heavenliness than any other
sight of earth had ever given her. That was when Vernon lay beneath.
But she had certainly looked above, not at him. The tree seemed
sorrowful in its withering flowers of the colour of trodden snow.

Crossjay resumed the conversation.

"He says ladies don't like him much."

"Who says that?"

"Mr. Whitford."

"Were those his words?"

"I forget the words: but he said they wouldn't be taught by him, like
me, ever since you came; and since you came I've liked him ten times
more."

"The more you like him the more I shall like you, Crossjay."

The boy raised a shout and scampered away to Sir Willoughby, at the
appearance of whom Clara felt herself nipped and curling inward.
Crossjay ran up to him with every sign of pleasure. Yet he had not
mentioned him during the walk; and Clara took it for a sign that the
boy understood the entire satisfaction Willoughby had in mere shows of
affection, and acted up to it. Hardly blaming Crossjay, she was a
critic of the scene, for the reason that youthful creatures who have
ceased to love a person, hunger for evidence against him to confirm
their hard animus, which will seem to them sometimes, when he is not
immediately irritating them, brutish, because they can not analyze it
and reduce it to the multitude of just antagonisms whereof it came. It
has passed by large accumulation into a sombre and speechless load upon
the senses, and fresh evidence, the smallest item, is a champion to
speak for it. Being about to do wrong, she grasped at this eagerly, and
brooded on the little of vital and truthful that there was in the man
and how he corrupted the boy. Nevertheless, she instinctively imitated
Crossjay in an almost sparkling salute to him.

"Good-morning, Willoughby; it was not a morning to lose: have you been
out long?"

He retained her hand. "My dear Clara! and you, have you not
overfatigued yourself? Where have you been?"

"Round--everywhere! And I am certainly not tired."

"Only you and Crossjay? You should have loosened the dogs."

"Their barking would have annoyed the house."

"Less than I am annoyed to think of you without protection."

He kissed her fingers: it was a loving speech.

"The household . . ." said Clara, but would not insist to convict him
of what he could not have perceived.

"If you outstrip me another morning, Clara, promise me to take the
dogs; will you?"

"Yes."

"To-day I am altogether yours."

"Are you?"

"From the first to the last hour of it!--So you fall in with Horace's
humour pleasantly?"

"He is very amusing."

"As good as though one had hired him."

"Here comes Colonel De Craye."

"He must think we have hired him!"

She noticed the bitterness of Willoughby's tone. He sang out a
good-morning to De Craye, and remarked that he must go to the stables.

"Darleton? Darleton, Miss Middleton?" said the colonel, rising from his
bow to her: "a daughter of General Darleton? If so, I have had the
honour to dance with her. And have not you?--practised with her, I
mean; or gone off in a triumph to dance it out as young ladies do? So
you know what a delightful partner she is."

"She is!" cried Clara, enthusiastic for her succouring friend, whose
letter was the treasure in her bosom.

"Oddly, the name did not strike me yesterday, Miss Middleton. In the
middle of the night it rang a little silver bell in my ear, and I
remembered the lady I was half in love with, if only for her dancing.
She is dark, of your height, as light on her feet; a sister in another
colour. Now that I know her to be your friend . . . !"

"Why, you may meet her, Colonel De Craye."

"It'll be to offer her a castaway. And one only meets a charming girl
to hear that she's engaged! 'Tis not a line of a ballad, Miss
Middleton, but out of the heart."

"Lucy Darleton . . . You were leading me to talk seriously to you,
Colonel De Craye."

"Will you one day?--and not think me a perpetual tumbler! You have
heard of melancholy clowns. You will find the face not so laughable
behind my paint. When I was thirteen years younger I was loved, and my
dearest sank to the grave. Since then I have not been quite at home in
life; probably because of finding no one so charitable as she. 'Tis
easy to win smiles and hands, but not so easy to win a woman whose
faith you would trust as your own heart before the enemy. I was poor
then. She said. 'The day after my twenty-first birthday'; and that day
I went for her, and I wondered they did not refuse me at the door. I
was shown upstairs, and I saw her, and saw death. She wished to marry
me, to leave me her fortune!"

"Then, never marry," said Clara, in an underbreath.

She glanced behind.

Sir Willoughby was close, walking on turf.

"I must be cunning to escape him after breakfast," she thought.

He had discarded his foolishness of the previous days, and the thought
in him could have replied: "I am a dolt if I let you out of my sight."

Vernon appeared, formal as usual of late. Clara begged his excuse for
withdrawing Crossjay from his morning swim. He nodded.

De Craye called to Willoughby for a book of the trains.

"There's a card in the smoking-room; eleven, one, and four are the
hours, if you must go," said Willoughby.

"You leave the Hall, Colonel De Craye?"

"In two or three days, Miss Middleton."

She did not request him to stay: his announcement produced no effect on
her. Consequently, thought he--well, what? nothing: well, then, that
she might not be minded to stay herself. Otherwise she would have
regretted the loss of an amusing companion: that is the modest way of
putting it. There is a modest and a vain for the same sentiment; and
both may be simultaneously in the same breast; and each one as honest
as the other; so shy is man's vanity in the presence of here and there
a lady. She liked him: she did not care a pin for him--how could she?
yet she liked him: O, to be able to do her some kindling bit of
service! These were his consecutive fancies, resolving naturally to the
exclamation, and built on the conviction that she did not love
Willoughby, and waited for a spirited lift from circumstances. His call
for a book of the trains had been a sheer piece of impromptu, in the
mind as well as on the mouth. It sprang, unknown to him, of conjectures
he had indulged yesterday and the day before. This morning she would
have an answer to her letter to her friend, Miss Lucy Darleton, the
pretty dark girl, whom De Craye was astonished not to have noticed more
when he danced with her. She, pretty as she was, had come to his
recollection through the name and rank of her father, a famous general
of cavalry, and tactician in that arm. The colonel despised himself for
not having been devoted to Clara Middleton's friend.

The morning's letters were on the bronze plate in the hall. Clara
passed on her way to her room without inspecting them. De Craye opened
an envelope and went upstairs to scribble a line. Sir Willoughby
observed their absence at the solemn reading to the domestic servants
in advance of breakfast. Three chairs were unoccupied. Vernon had his
own notions of a mechanical service--and a precious profit he derived
from them! but the other two seats returned the stare Willoughby cast
at their backs with an impudence that reminded him of his friend
Horace's calling for a book of the trains, when a minute afterward he
admitted he was going to stay at the Hall another two days, or three.
The man possessed by jealousy is never in need of matter for it: he
magnifies; grass is jungle, hillocks are mountains. Willoughby's legs
crossing and uncrossing audibly, and his tight-folded arms and clearing
of the throat, were faint indications of his condition.

"Are you in fair health this morning, Willoughby?" Dr. Middleton said
to him after he had closed his volumes.

"The thing is not much questioned by those who know me intimately," he
replied.

"Willoughby unwell!" and, "He is health incarnate!" exclaimed the
ladies Eleanor and Isabel.

Laetitia grieved for him. Sun-rays on a pest-stricken city, she
thought, were like the smile of his face. She believed that he deeply
loved Clara, and had learned more of her alienation.

He went into the ball to look into the well for the pair of
malefactors; on fire with what he could not reveal to a soul.

De Craye was in the housekeeper's room, talking to young Crossjay, and
Mrs. Montague just come up to breakfast. He had heard the boy
chattering, and as the door was ajar he peeped in, and was invited to
enter. Mrs. Montague was very fond of hearing him talk: he paid her the
familiar respect which a lady of fallen fortunes, at a certain period
after the fall, enjoys as a befittingly sad souvenir, and the
respectfulness of the lord of the house was more chilling.

She bewailed the boy's trying his constitution with long walks before
he had anything in him to walk on.

"And where did you go this morning, my lad?" said De Craye.

"Ah, you know the ground, colonel," said Crossjay. "I am hungry! I
shall eat three eggs and some bacon, and buttered cakes, and jam, then
begin again, on my second cup of coffee."

"It's not braggadocio," remarked Mrs. Montague. "He waits empty from
five in the morning till nine, and then he comes famished to my table,
and cats too much."

"Oh! Mrs. Montague, that is what the country people call roemancing.
For, Colonel De Craye, I had a bun at seven o'clock. Miss Middleton
forced me to go and buy it"

"A stale bun, my boy?"

"Yesterday's: there wasn't much of a stopper to you in it, like a new
bun."

"And where did you leave Miss Middleton when you went to buy the bun?
You should never leave a lady; and the street of a country town is
lonely at that early hour. Crossjay, you surprise me."

"She forced me to go, colonel. Indeed she did. What do I care for a
bun! And she was quite safe. We could hear the people stirring in the
post-office, and I met our postman going for his letter-bag. I didn't
want to go: bother the bun!--but you can't disobey Miss Middleton. I
never want to, and wouldn't."

"There we're of the same mind," said the colonel, and Crossjay shouted,
for the lady whom they exalted was at the door.

"You will be too tired for a ride this morning," De Craye said to her,
descending the stairs.

She swung a bonnet by the ribands. "I don't think of riding to-day."

"Why did you not depute your mission to me?"

"I like to bear my own burdens, as far as I can."

"Miss Darleton is well?"

"I presume so."

"Will you try her recollection for me?"

"It will probably be quite as lively as yours was."

"Shall you see her soon?"

"I hope so."

Sir Willoughby met her at the foot of the stairs, but refrained from
giving her a hand that shook.

"We shall have the day together," he said.

Clara bowed.

At the breakfast-table she faced a clock.

De Craye took out his watch. "You are five and a half minutes too slow
by that clock, Willoughby."

"The man omitted to come from Rendon to set it last week, Horace. He
will find the hour too late here for him when he does come."

One of the ladies compared the time of her watch with De Craye's, and
Clara looked at hers and gratefully noted that she was four minutes in
arrear.

She left the breakfast-room at a quarter to ten, after kissing her
father. Willoughby was behind her. He had been soothed by thinking of
his personal advantages over De Craye, and he felt assured that if he
could be solitary with his eccentric bride and fold her in himself, he
would, cutting temper adrift, be the man he had been to her not so many
days back. Considering how few days back, his temper was roused, but he
controlled it.

They were slightly dissenting as De Craye stepped into the hall.

"A present worth examining," Willoughby said to her: "and I do not
dwell on the costliness. Come presently, then. I am at your disposal
all day. I will drive you in the afternoon to call on Lady Busshe to
offer your thanks: but you must see it first. It is laid out in the
laboratory."

"There is time before the afternoon," said Clara.

"Wedding presents?" interposed De Craye.

"A porcelain service from Lady Busshe, Horace."

"Not in fragments? Let me have a look at it. I'm haunted by an idea
that porcelain always goes to pieces. I'll have a look and take a hint.
We're in the laboratory, Miss Middleton."

He put his arm under Willoughby's. The resistance to him was momentary:
Willoughby had the satisfaction of the thought that De Craye being with
him was not with Clara; and seeing her giving orders to her maid
Barclay, he deferred his claim on her company for some short period.

De Craye detained him in the laboratory, first over the China cups and
saucers, and then with the latest of London--tales of youngest Cupid
upon subterranean adventures, having high titles to light him.
Willoughby liked the tale thus illuminated, for without the title there
was no special savour in such affairs, and it pulled down his betters
in rank. He was of a morality to reprobate the erring dame while he
enjoyed the incidents. He could not help interrupting De Craye to point
at Vernon through the window, striding this way and that, evidently on
the hunt for young Crossjay. "No one here knows how to manage the boy
except myself But go on, Horace," he said, checking his contemptuous
laugh; and Vernon did look ridiculous, out there half-drenched already
in a white rain, again shuffled off by the little rascal. It seemed
that he was determined to have his runaway: he struck up the avenue at
full pedestrian racing pace.

"A man looks a fool cutting after a cricket-ball; but, putting on steam
in a storm of rain to catch a young villain out of sight, beats
anything I've witnessed," Willoughby resumed, in his amusement.

"Aiha!" said De Craye, waving a hand to accompany the melodious accent,
"there are things to beat that for fun."

He had smoked in the laboratory, so Willoughby directed a servant to
transfer the porcelain service to one of the sitting-rooms for Clara's
inspection of it.

"You're a bold man," De Craye remarked. "The luck may be with you,
though. I wouldn't handle the fragile treasure for a trifle."

"I believe in my luck," said Willoughby.

Clara was now sought for. The lord of the house desired her presence
impatiently, and had to wait. She was in none of the lower rooms.
Barclay, her maid, upon interrogation, declared she was in none of the
upper. Willoughby turned sharp on De Craye: he was there.

The ladies Eleanor and Isabel and Miss Dale were consulted. They had
nothing to say about Clara's movements, more than that they could not
understand her exceeding restlessness. The idea of her being out of
doors grew serious; heaven was black, hard thunder rolled, and
lightning flushed the battering rain. Men bearing umbrellas, shawls,
and cloaks were dispatched on a circuit of the park. De Craye said:
"I'll be one."

"No," cried Willoughby, starting to interrupt him, "I can't allow it."

"I've the scent of a hound, Willoughby; I'll soon be on the track."

"My dear Horace, I won't let you go."

"Adieu, dear boy! and if the lady's discoverable, I'm the one to find
her."

He stepped to the umbrella-stand. There was then a general question
whether Clara had taken her umbrella. Barclay said she had. The fact
indicated a wider stroll than round inside the park: Crossjay was
likewise absent. De Craye nodded to himself.

Willoughby struck a rattling blow on the barometer.

"Where's Pollington?" he called, and sent word for his man Pollington
to bring big fishing-boots and waterproof wrappers.

An urgent debate within him was in progress.

Should he go forth alone on his chance of discovering Clara and
forgiving her under his umbrella and cloak? or should he prevent De
Craye from going forth alone on the chance he vaunted so impudently?

"You will offend me, Horace, if you insist," he said.

"Regard me as an instrument of destiny, Willoughby," replied De Craye.

"Then we go in company."

"But that's an addition of one that cancels the other by conjunction,
and's worse than simple division: for I can't trust my wits unless I
rely on them alone, you see."

"Upon my word, you talk at times most unintelligible stuff, to be frank
with you, Horace. Give it in English."

"'Tis not suited, perhaps, to the genius of the language, for I thought
I talked English."

"Oh, there's English gibberish as well as Irish, we know!"

"And a deal foolisher when they do go at it; for it won't bear
squeezing, we think, like Irish."

"Where!" exclaimed the ladies, "where can she be! The storm is
terrible."

Laetitia suggested the boathouse.

"For Crossjay hadn't a swim this morning!" said De Craye.

No one reflected on the absurdity that Clara should think of taking
Crossjay for a swim in the lake, and immediately after his breakfast:
it was accepted as a suggestion at least that she and Crossjay had gone
to the lake for a row.

In the hopefulness of the idea, Willoughby suffered De Craye to go on
his chance unaccompanied. He was near chuckling. He projected a plan
for dismissing Crossjay and remaining in the boathouse with Clara,
luxuriating in the prestige which would attach to him for seeking and
finding her. Deadly sentiments intervened. Still he might expect to be
alone with her where she could not slip from him.

The throwing open of the hall-doors for the gentlemen presented a
framed picture of a deluge. All the young-leaved trees were steely
black, without a gradation of green, drooping and pouring, and the song
of rain had become an inveterate hiss.

The ladies beholding it exclaimed against Clara, even apostrophized
her, so dark are trivial errors when circumstances frown. She must be
mad to tempt such weather: she was very giddy; she was never at rest.
Clara! Clara! how could you be so wild! Ought we not to tell Dr.
Middleton?

Laetitia induced them to spare him.

"Which way do you take?" said Willoughby, rather fearful that his
companion was not to be got rid of now.

"Any way," said De Craye. "I chuck up my head like a halfpenny, and go
by the toss."

This enraging nonsense drove off Willoughby. De Craye saw him cast a
furtive eye at his heels to make sure he was not followed, and thought,
"Jove! he may be fond of her. But he's not on the track. She's a
determined girl, if I'm correct. She's a girl of a hundred thousand.
Girls like that make the right sort of wives for the right men. They're
the girls to make men think of marrying. To-morrow! only give me a
chance. They stick to you fast when they do stick."

Then a thought of her flower-like drapery and face caused him fervently
to hope she had escaped the storm.

Calling at the West park-lodge he heard that Miss Middleton had been
seen passing through the gate with Master Crossjay; but she had not
been seen coming back. Mr. Vernon Whitford had passed through half an
hour later.

"After his young man!" said the colonel.

The lodge-keeper's wife and daughter knew of Master Crossjay's pranks;
Mr. Whitford, they said, had made inquiries about him and must have
caught him and sent him home to change his dripping things; for Master
Crossjay had come back, and had declined shelter in the lodge; he
seemed to be crying; he went away soaking over the wet grass, hanging
his head. The opinion at the lodge was that Master Crossjay was
unhappy.

"He very properly received a wigging from Mr. Whitford, I have no
doubt," said Colonel Do Craye.

Mother and daughter supposed it to be the case, and considered Crossjay
very wilful for not going straight home to the Hall to change his wet
clothes; he was drenched.

Do Craye drew out his watch. The time was ten minutes past eleven. If
the surmise he had distantly spied was correct, Miss Middleton would
have been caught in the storm midway to her destination. By his guess
at her character (knowledge of it, he would have said), he judged that
no storm would daunt her on a predetermined expedition. He deduced in
consequence that she was at the present moment flying to her friend,
the charming brunette Lucy Darleton.

Still, as there was a possibility of the rain having been too much for
her, and as he had no other speculation concerning the route she had
taken, he decided upon keeping along the road to Rendon, with a keen
eye at cottage and farmhouse windows.



CHAPTER XXVI

VERNON IN PURSUIT

The lodge-keeper had a son, who was a chum of Master Crossjay's, and
errant-fellow with him upon many adventures; for this boy's passion was
to become a gamekeeper, and accompanied by one of the head-gamekeeper's
youngsters, he and Crossjay were in the habit of rangeing over the
country, preparing for a profession delightful to the tastes of all
three. Crossjay's prospective connection with the mysterious ocean
bestowed the title of captain on him by common consent; he led them,
and when missing for lessons he was generally in the society of Jacob
Croom or Jonathan Fernaway. Vernon made sure of Crossjay when he
perceived Jacob Croom sitting on a stool in the little lodge-parlour.
Jacob's appearance of a diligent perusal of a book he had presented to
the lad, he took for a decent piece of trickery. It was with amazement
that he heard from the mother and daughter, as well as Jacob, of Miss
Middleton's going through the gate before ten o'clock with Crossjay
beside her, the latter too hurried to spare a nod to Jacob. That she,
of all on earth, should be encouraging Crossjay to truancy was
incredible. Vernon had to fall back upon Greek and Latin aphoristic
shots at the sex to believe it.

Rain was universal; a thick robe of it swept from hill to hill; thunder
rumbled remote, and between the ruffled roars the downpour pressed on
the land with a great noise of eager gobbling, much like that of the
swine's trough fresh filled, as though a vast assembly of the hungered
had seated themselves clamorously and fallen to on meats and drinks in
a silence, save of the chaps. A rapid walker poetically and humourously
minded gathers multitudes of images on his way. And rain, the heaviest
you can meet, is a lively companion when the resolute pacer scorns
discomfort of wet clothes and squealing boots. South-western
rain-clouds, too, are never long sullen: they enfold and will have the
earth in a good strong glut of the kissing overflow; then, as a hawk
with feathers on his beak of the bird in his claw lifts head, they rise
and take veiled feature in long climbing watery lines: at any moment
they may break the veil and show soft upper cloud, show sun on it, show
sky, green near the verge they spring from, of the green of grass in
early dew; or, along a travelling sweep that rolls asunder overhead,
heaven's laughter of purest blue among titanic white shoulders: it may
mean fair smiling for awhile, or be the lightest interlude; but the
watery lines, and the drifting, the chasing, the upsoaring, all in a
shadowy fingering of form, and the animation of the leaves of the trees
pointing them on, the bending of the tree-tops, the snapping of
branches, and the hurrahings of the stubborn hedge at wrestle with the
flaws, yielding but a leaf at most, and that on a fling, make a glory
of contest and wildness without aid of colour to inflame the man who is
at home in them from old association on road, heath, and mountain. Let
him be drenched, his heart will sing. And thou, trim cockney, that
jeerest, consider thyself, to whom it may occur to be out in such a
scene, and with what steps of a nervous dancing-master it would be
thine to play the hunted rat of the elements, for the preservation of
the one imagined dryspot about thee, somewhere on thy luckless person!
The taking of rain and sun alike befits men of our climate, and he who
would have the secret of a strengthening intoxication must court the
clouds of the South-west with a lover's blood.

Vernon's happy recklessness was dashed by fears for Miss Middleton.
Apart from those fears, he had the pleasure of a gull wheeling among
foam-streaks of the wave. He supposed the Swiss and Tyrol Alps to have
hidden their heads from him for many a day to come, and the springing
and chiming South-west was the next best thing. A milder rain
descended; the country expanded darkly defined underneath the moving
curtain; the clouds were as he liked to see them, scaling; but their
skirts dragged. Torrents were in store, for they coursed streamingly
still and had not the higher lift, or eagle ascent, which he knew for
one of the signs of fairness, nor had the hills any belt of mist-like
vapour.

On a step of the stile leading to the short-cut to Rendon young
Crossjay was espied. A man-tramp sat on the top-bar.

"There you are; what are you doing there? Where's Miss Middleton?" said
Vernon. "Now, take care before you open your mouth."

Crossjay shut the mouth he had opened.

"The lady has gone away over to a station, sir," said the tramp.

"You fool!" roared Crossjay, ready to fly at him.

"But ain't it now, young gentleman? Can you say it ain't?"

"I gave you a shilling, you ass!"

"You give me that sum, young gentleman, to stop here and take care of
you, and here I stopped."

"Mr. Whitford!" Crossjay appealed to his master, and broke of in
disgust. "Take care of me! As if anybody who knows me would think I
wanted taking care of! Why, what a beast you must be, you fellow!"

"Just as you like, young gentleman. I chaunted you all I know, to keep
up your downcast spirits. You did want comforting. You wanted it
rarely. You cried like an infant."

"I let you 'chaunt', as you call it, to keep you from swearing."

"And why did I swear, young gentleman? because I've got an itchy coat
in the wet, and no shirt for a lining. And no breakfast to give me a
stomach for this kind of weather. That's what I've come to in this
world! I'm a walking moral. No wonder I swears, when I don't strike up
a chaunt."

"But why are you sitting here wet through, Crossjay! Be off home at
once, and change, and get ready for me."

"Mr. Whitford, I promised, and I tossed this fellow a shilling not to
go bothering Miss Middleton."

"The lady wouldn't have none o" the young gentleman, sir, and I offered
to go pioneer for her to the station, behind her, at a respectful
distance."

"As if!--you treacherous cur!" Crossjay ground his teeth at the
betrayer. "Well, Mr. Whitford, and I didn't trust him, and I stuck to
him, or he'd have been after her whining about his coat and stomach,
and talking of his being a moral. He repeats that to everybody."

"She has gone to the station?" said Vernon.

Not a word on that subject was to be won from Crossjay.

"How long since?" Vernon partly addressed Mr. Tramp.

The latter became seized with shivers as he supplied the information
that it might be a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes. "But what's
time to me, sir? If I had reglar meals, I should carry a clock in my
inside. I got the rheumatics instead."

"Way there!" Vernon cried, and took the stile at a vault.

"That's what gentlemen can do, who sleeps in their beds warm," moaned
the tramp. "They've no joints."

Vernon handed him a half-crown piece, for he had been of use for once.

"Mr. Whitford, let me come. If you tell me to come I may. Do let me
come," Crossjay begged with great entreaty. "I sha'n't see her for
. . ."

"Be off, quick!" Vernon cut him short and pushed on.

The tramp and Crossjay were audible to him; Crossjay spurning the
consolations of the professional sad man.

Vernon spun across the fields, timing himself by his watch to reach
Rendon station ten minutes before eleven, though without clearly
questioning the nature of the resolution which precipitated him.
Dropping to the road, he had better foothold than on the slippery
field-path, and he ran. His principal hope was that Clara would have
missed her way. Another pelting of rain agitated him on her behalf.
Might she not as well be suffered to go?--and sit three hours and more
in a railway-carriage with wet feet!

He clasped the visionary little feet to warm them on his breast.--But
Willoughby's obstinate fatuity deserved the blow!--But neither she nor
her father deserved the scandal. But she was desperate. Could reasoning
touch her? if not, what would? He knew of nothing. Yesterday he had
spoken strongly to Willoughby, to plead with him to favour her
departure and give her leisure to sound her mind, and he had left his
cousin, convinced that Clara's best measure was flight: a man so
cunning in a pretended obtuseness backed by senseless pride, and in
petty tricks that sprang of a grovelling tyranny, could only be taught
by facts.

Her recent treatment of him, however, was very strange; so strange that
he might have known himself better if he had reflected on the bound
with which it shot him to a hard suspicion. De Craye had prepared the
world to hear that he was leaving the Hall. Were they in concert? The
idea struck at his heart colder than if her damp little feet had been
there.

Vernon's full exoneration of her for making a confidant of himself, did
not extend its leniency to the young lady's character when there was
question of her doing the same with a second gentleman. He could
suspect much: he could even expect to find De Craye at the station.

That idea drew him up in his run, to meditate on the part he should
play; and by drove little Dr. Corney on the way to Rendon and hailed
him, and gave his cheerless figure the nearest approach to an Irish bug
in the form of a dry seat under an umbrella and water-proof covering.

"Though it is the worst I can do for you, if you decline to supplement
it with a dose of hot brandy and water at the Dolphin," said he: "and
I'll see you take it, if you please. I'm bound to ease a Rendon patient
out of the world. Medicine's one of their superstitions, which they
cling to the harder the more useless it gets. Pill and priest launch
him happy between them.--'And what's on your conscience, Pat?--It's
whether your blessing, your Riverence, would disagree with another
drop. Then put the horse before the cart, my son, and you shall have
the two in harmony, and God speed ye!'--Rendon station, did you say,
Vernon? You shall have my prescription at the Railway Arms, if you're
hurried. You have the look. What is it? Can I help?"

"No. And don't ask."

"You're like the Irish Grenadier who had a bullet in a humiliating
situation. Here's Rendon, and through it we go with a spanking clatter.
Here's Doctor Corney's dog-cart post-haste again. For there's no dying
without him now, and Repentance is on the death-bed for not calling him
in before. Half a charge of humbug hurts no son of a gun, friend
Vernon, if he'd have his firing take effect. Be tender to't in man or
woman, particularly woman. So, by goes the meteoric doctor, and I'll
bring noses to window-panes, you'll see, which reminds me of the
sweetest young lady I ever saw, and the luckiest man. When is she off
for her bridal trousseau? And when are they spliced? I'll not call her
perfection, for that's a post, afraid to move. But she's a dancing
sprig of the tree next it. Poetry's wanted to speak of her. I'm Irish
and inflammable, I suppose, but I never looked on a girl to make a man
comprehend the entire holy meaning of the word rapturous, like that
one. And away she goes! We'll not say another word. But you're a
Grecian, friend Vernon. Now, couldn't you think her just a whiff of an
idea of a daughter of a peccadillo-Goddess?"

"Deuce take you, Corney, drop me here; I shall be late for the train,"
said Vernon, laying hand on the doctor's arm to check him on the way to
the station in view.

Dr Corney had a Celtic intelligence for a meaning behind an illogical
tongue. He drew up, observing. "Two minutes run won't hurt you."

He slightly fancied he might have given offence, though he was well
acquainted with Vernon and had a cordial grasp at the parting.

The truth must be told that Vernon could not at the moment bear any
more talk from an Irishman. Dr. Corney had succeeded in persuading him
not to wonder at Clara Middleton's liking for Colonel de Craye.



CHAPTER XXVII

AT THE RAILWAY STATION

Clara stood in the waiting-room contemplating the white rails of the
rain-swept line. Her lips parted at the sight of Vernon.

"You have your ticket?" said he.

She nodded, and breathed more freely; the matter-of-fact question was
reassuring.

"You are wet," he resumed; and it could not be denied.

"A little. I do not feel it."

"I must beg you to come to the inn hard by--half a dozen steps. We
shall see your train signalled. Come."

She thought him startlingly authoritative, but he had good sense to
back him; and depressed as she was by the dampness, she was disposed to
yield to reason if he continued to respect her independence. So she
submitted outwardly, resisted inwardly, on the watch to stop him from
taking any decisive lead.

"Shall we be sure to see the signal, Mr. Whitford?"

"I'll provide for that."

He spoke to the station-clerk, and conducted her across the road.

"You are quite alone, Miss Middleton?"

"I am: I have not brought my maid."

"You must take off boots and stockings at once, and have them dried.
I'll put you in the hands of the landlady."

"But my train!"

"You have full fifteen minutes, besides fair chances of delay."

He seemed reasonable, the reverse of hostile, in spite of his
commanding air, and that was not unpleasant in one friendly to her
adventure. She controlled her alert distrustfulness, and passed from
him to the landlady, for her feet were wet and cold, the skirts of her
dress were soiled; generally inspecting herself, she was an object to
be shuddered at, and she was grateful to Vernon for his inattention to
her appearance.

Vernon ordered Dr. Corney's dose, and was ushered upstairs to a room of
portraits, where the publican's ancestors and family sat against the
walls, flat on their canvas as weeds of the botanist's portfolio,
although corpulency was pretty generally insisted on, and there were
formidable battalions of bust among the females. All of them had the
aspect of the national energy which has vanquished obstacles to subside
on its ideal. They all gazed straight at the guest. "Drink, and come to
this!" they might have been labelled to say to him. He was in the
private Walhalla of a large class of his countrymen. The existing host
had taken forethought to be of the party in his prime, and in the
central place, looking fresh-fattened there and sanguine from the
performance. By and by a son would shove him aside; meanwhile he
shelved his parent, according to the manners of energy.

One should not be a critic of our works of Art in uncomfortable
garments. Vernon turned from the portraits to a stuffed pike in a glass
case, and plunged into sympathy with the fish for a refuge.

Clara soon rejoined him, saying: "But you, you must be very wet. You
were without an umbrella. You must be wet through, Mr. Whitford."

"We're all wet through, to-day," said Vernon. "Crossjay's wet through,
and a tramp he met."

"The horrid man! But Crossjay should have turned back when I told him.
Cannot the landlord assist you? You are not tied to time. I begged
Crossjay to turn back when it began to rain: when it became heavy I
compelled him. So you met my poor Crossjay?"

"You have not to blame him for betraying you. The tramp did that. I
was thrown on your track quite by accident. Now pardon me for using
authority, and don't be alarmed, Miss Middleton; you are perfectly free
for me; but you must not run a risk to your health. I met Doctor
Corney coming along, and he prescribed hot brandy and water for a wet
skin, especially for sitting in it. There's the stuff on the table; I
see you have been aware of a singular odour; you must consent to sip
some, as medicine; merely to give you warmth."

"Impossible, Mr. Whitford: I could not taste it. But pray, obey Dr.
Corney, if he ordered it for you."

"I can't, unless you do."

"I will, then: I will try."

She held the glass, attempted, and was baffled by the reek of it.

"Try: you can do anything," said Vernon.

"Now that you find me here, Mr. Whitford! Anything for myself it would
seem, and nothing to save a friend. But I will really try."

"It must be a good mouthful."

"I will try. And you will finish the glass?"

"With your permission, if you do not leave too much."

They were to drink out of the same glass; and she was to drink some of
this infamous mixture: and she was in a kind of hotel alone with him:
and he was drenched in running after her:--all this came of breaking
loose for an hour!

"Oh! what a misfortune that it should be such a day, Mr. Whitford!"

"Did you not choose the day?"

"Not the weather."

"And the worst of it is, that Willoughby will come upon Crossjay wet to
the bone, and pump him and get nothing but shufflings, blank lies, and
then find him out and chase him from the house."

Clara drank immediately, and more than she intended. She held the glass
as an enemy to be delivered from, gasping, uncertain of her breath.

"Never let me be asked to endure such a thing again!"

"You are unlikely to be running away from father and friends again."

She panted still with the fiery liquid she had gulped: and she wondered
that it should belie its reputation in not fortifying her, but
rendering her painfully susceptible to his remarks.

"Mr. Whitford, I need not seek to know what you think of me."

"What I think? I don't think at all; I wish to serve you if I can."

"Am I right in supposing you a little afraid of me? You should not be.
I have deceived no one. I have opened my heart to you, and am not
ashamed of having done so."

"It is an excellent habit, they say."

"It is not a habit with me."

He was touched, and for that reason, in his dissatisfaction with
himself, not unwilling to hurt. "We take our turn, Miss Middleton. I'm
no hero, and a bad conspirator, so I am not of much avail."

"You have been reserved--but I am going, and I leave my character
behind. You condemned me to the poison-bowl; you have not touched it
yourself"

"In vino veritas: if I do I shall be speaking my mind."

"Then do, for the sake of mind and body."

"It won't be complimentary."

"You can be harsh. Only say everything."

"Have we time?"

They looked at their watches.

"Six minutes," Clara said.

Vernon's had stopped, penetrated by his total drenching.

She reproached herself. He laughed to quiet her. "My dies solemnes are
sure to give me duckings; I'm used to them. As for the watch, it will
remind me that it stopped when you went."

She raised the glass to him. She was happier and hoped for some little
harshness and kindness mixed that she might carry away to travel with
and think over.

He turned the glass as she had given it, turned it round in putting it
to his lips: a scarce perceptible manoeuvre, but that she had given it
expressly on one side.

It may be hoped that it was not done by design. Done even accidentally,
without a taint of contrivance, it was an affliction to see, and coiled
through her, causing her to shrink and redden.

Fugitives are subject to strange incidents; they are not vessels lying
safe in harbour. She shut her lips tight, as if they had stung. The
realizing sensitiveness of her quick nature accused them of a loss of
bloom. And the man who made her smart like this was formal as a railway
official on a platform.

"Now we are both pledged in the poison-bowl," said he. "And it has the
taste of rank poison, I confess. But the doctor prescribed it, and at
sea we must be sailors. Now, Miss Middleton, time presses: will you
return with me?"

"No! no!"

"Where do you propose to go?"

"To London; to a friend--Miss Darleton."

"What message is there for your father?"

"Say I have left a letter for him in a letter to be delivered to you."

"To me! And what message for Willoughby?"

"My maid Barclay will hand him a letter at noon."

"You have sealed Crossjay's fate."

"How?"

"He is probably at this instant undergoing an interrogation. You may
guess at his replies. The letter will expose him, and Willoughby does
not pardon."

"I regret it. I cannot avoid it. Poor boy! My dear Crossjay! I did not
think of how Willoughby might punish him. I was very thoughtless. Mr.
Whitford, my pin-money shall go for his education. Later, when I am a
little older, I shall be able to support him."

"That's an encumbrance; you should not tie yourself to drag it about.
You are unalterable, of course, but circumstances are not, and as it
happens, women are more subject to them than we are."

"But I will not be!"

"Your command of them is shown at the present moment."

"Because I determine to be free?"

"No: because you do the contrary; you don't determine: you run away
from the difficulty, and leave it to your father and friends to bear.
As for Crossjay, you see you destroy one of his chances. I should have
carried him off before this, if I had not thought it prudent to keep
him on terms with Willoughby. We'll let Crossjay stand aside. He'll
behave like a man of honour, imitating others who have had to do the
same for ladies."

"Have spoken falsely to shelter cowards, you mean, Mr. Whitford. Oh, I
know.--I have but two minutes. The die is cast. I cannot go back. I
must get ready. Will you see me to the station? I would rather you
should hurry home."

"I will see the last of you. I will wait for you here. An express runs
ahead of your train, and I have arranged with the clerk for a signal; I
have an eye on the window."

"You are still my best friend, Mr. Whitford."

"Though?"

"Well, though you do not perfectly understand what torments have driven
me to this."

"Carried on tides and blown by winds?"

"Ah! you do not understand."

"Mysteries?"

"Sufferings are not mysteries, they are very simple facts."

"Well, then, I don't understand. But decide at once. I wish you to have
your free will."

She left the room.

Dry stockings and boots are better for travelling in than wet ones, but
in spite of her direct resolve, she felt when drawing them on like one
that has been tripped. The goal was desirable, the ardour was damped.
Vernon's wish that she should have her free will compelled her to sound
it: and it was of course to go, to be liberated, to cast off incubus
and hurt her father? injure Crossjay? distress her friends? No, and ten
times no!

She returned to Vernon in haste, to shun the reflex of her mind.

He was looking at a closed carriage drawn up at the station door.

"Shall we run over now, Mr. Whitford?"

"There's no signal. Here it's not so chilly."

"I ventured to enclose my letter to papa in yours, trusting you would
attend to my request to you to break the news to him gently and plead
for me."

"We will all do the utmost we can."

"I am doomed to vex those who care for me. I tried to follow your
counsel."

"First you spoke to me, and then you spoke to Miss Dale; and at least
you have a clear conscience."

"No."

"What burdens it?"

"I have done nothing to burden it."

"Then it's a clear conscience."

"No."

Vernon's shoulders jerked. Our patience with an innocent duplicity in
women is measured by the place it assigns to us and another. If he had
liked he could have thought: "You have not done but meditated something
to trouble conscience." That was evident, and her speaking of it was
proof too of the willingness to be dear. He would not help her. Man's
blood, which is the link with women and responsive to them on the
instant for or against, obscured him. He shrugged anew when she said:
"My character would have been degraded utterly by my staying there.
Could you advise it?"

"Certainly not the degradation of your character," he said, black on
the subject of De Craye, and not lightened by feelings which made him
sharply sensible of the beggarly dependant that he was, or poor
adventuring scribbler that he was to become.

"Why did you pursue me and wish to stop me, Mr. Whitford?" said Clara,
on the spur of a wound from his tone.

He replied: "I suppose I'm a busybody; I was never aware of it till
now."

"You are my friend. Only you speak in irony so much. That was irony,
about my clear conscience. I spoke to you and to Miss Dale: and then I
rested and drifted. Can you not feel for me, that to mention it is like
a scorching furnace? Willoughby has entangled papa. He schemes
incessantly to keep me entangled. I fly from his cunning as much as
from anything. I dread it. I have told you that I am more to blame than
he, but I must accuse him. And wedding-presents! and congratulations!
And to be his guest!"

"All that makes up a plea in mitigation," said Vernon.

"Is it not sufficient for you?" she asked him timidly.

"You have a masculine good sense that tells you you won't be respected
if you run. Three more days there might cover a retreat with your
father."

"He will not listen to me. He confuses me; Willoughby has bewitched
him."

"Commission me: I will see that he listens."

"And go back? Oh, no! To London! Besides, there is the dining with Mrs.
Mountstuart this evening; and I like her very well, but I must avoid
her. She has a kind of idolatry . . . And what answers can I give? I
supplicate her with looks. She observes them, my efforts to divert them
from being painful produce a comic expression to her, and I am a
charming 'rogue', and I am entertained on the topic she assumes to be
principally interesting me. I must avoid her. The thought of her leaves
me no choice. She is clever. She could tattoo me with epigrams."

"Stay . . . there you can hold your own."

"She has told me you give me credit for a spice of wit. I have not
discovered my possession. We have spoken of it; we call it your
delusion. She grants me some beauty; that must be hers."

"There's no delusion in one case or the other, Miss Middleton. You have
beauty and wit; public opinion will say, wildness: indifference to your
reputation will be charged on you, and your friends will have to admit
it. But you will be out of this difficulty."

"Ah--to weave a second?"

"Impossible to judge until we see how you escape the first. And I have
no more to say. I love your father. His humour of sententiousness and
doctorial stilts is a mask he delights in, but you ought to know him
and not be frightened by it. If you sat with him an hour at a Latin
task, and if you took his hand and told him you could not leave him,
and no tears!--he would answer you at once. It would involve a day or
two further; disagreeable to you, no doubt: preferable to the present
mode of escape, as I think. But I have no power whatever to persuade. I
have not the 'lady's tongue'. My appeal is always to reason."

"It is a compliment. I loathe the 'lady's tongue'."

"It's a distinctly good gift, and I wish I had it. I might have
succeeded instead of failing, and appearing to pay a compliment."

"Surely the express train is very late, Mr. Whitford?"

"The express has gone by."

"Then we will cross over."

"You would rather not be seen by Mrs. Mountstuart. That is her carriage
drawn up at the station, and she is in it."

Clara looked, and with the sinking of her heart said: "I must brave
her!"

"In that case I will take my leave of you here, Miss Middleton."

She gave him her hand. "Why is Mrs. Mountstuart at the station to-day?"

"I suppose she has driven to meet one of the guests for her
dinner-party. Professor Crooklyn was promised to your father, and he
may be coming by the down-train."

"Go back to the Hall!" exclaimed Clara. "How can I? I have no more
endurance left in me. If I had some support!--if it were the sense of
secretly doing wrong, it might help me through. I am in a web. I cannot
do right, whatever I do. There is only the thought of saving Crossjay.
Yes, and sparing papa.--Good-bye, Mr. Whitford. I shall remember your
kindness gratefully. I cannot go back."

"You will not?" said he, tempting her to hesitate.

"No."

"But if you are seen by Mrs. Mountstuart, you must go back. I'll do my
best to take her away. Should she see you, you must patch up a story
and apply to her for a lift. That, I think, is imperative."

"Not to my mind," said Clara.

He bowed hurriedly, and withdrew. After her confession, peculiar to
her, of possibly finding sustainment in secretly doing wrong, her
flying or remaining seemed to him a choice of evils: and whilst she
stood in bewildered speculation on his reason for pursuing her--which
was not evident--he remembered the special fear inciting him, and so
far did her justice as to have at himself on that subject. He had done
something perhaps to save her from a cold: such was his only
consolatory thought. He had also behaved like a man of honour, taking
no personal advantage of her situation; but to reflect on it recalled
his astonishing dryness. The strict man of honour plays a part that he
should not reflect on till about the fall of the curtain, otherwise he
will be likely sometimes to feel the shiver of foolishness at his good
conduct.



CHAPTER XXVIII

THE RETURN

Posted in observation at a corner of the window Clara saw Vernon cross
the road to Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson's carriage, transformed to the
leanest pattern of himself by narrowed shoulders and raised
coat-collar. He had such an air of saying, "Tom's a-cold", that her
skin crept in sympathy.

Presently he left the carriage and went into the station: a bell had
rung. Was it her train? He approved her going, for he was employed in
assisting her to go: a proceeding at variance with many things he had
said, but he was as full of contradiction to-day as women are accused
of being. The train came up. She trembled: no signal had appeared, and
Vernon must have deceived her.

He returned; he entered the carriage, and the wheels were soon in
motion. Immediately thereupon, Flitch's fly drove past, containing
Colonel De Craye.

Vernon could not but have perceived him!

But what was it that had brought the colonel to this place? The
pressure of Vernon's mind was on her and foiled her efforts to assert
her perfect innocence, though she knew she had done nothing to allure
the colonel hither. Excepting Willoughby, Colonel De Craye was the last
person she would have wished to encounter.

She had now a dread of hearing the bell which would tell her that
Vernon had not deceived her, and that she was out of his hands, in the
hands of some one else.

She bit at her glove; she glanced at the concentrated eyes of the
publican's family portraits, all looking as one; she noticed the empty
tumbler, and went round to it and touched it, and the silly spoon in
it.

A little yielding to desperation shoots us to strange distances!

Vernon had asked her whether she was alone. Connecting that inquiry,
singular in itself, and singular in his manner of putting it, with the
glass of burning liquid, she repeated: "He must have seen Colonel De
Craye!" and she stared at the empty glass, as at something that
witnessed to something: for Vernon was not your supple cavalier
assiduously on the smirk to pin a gallantry to commonplaces. But all
the doors are not open in a young lady's consciousness, quick of nature
though she may be: some are locked and keyless, some will not open to
the key, some are defended by ghosts inside. She could not have said
what the something witnessed to. If we by chance know more, we have
still no right to make it more prominent than it was with her. And the
smell of the glass was odious; it disgraced her. She had an impulse to
pocket the spoon for a memento, to show it to grandchildren for a
warning. Even the prelude to the morality to be uttered on the occasion
sprang to her lips: "Here, my dears, is a spoon you would be ashamed to
use in your teacups, yet it was of more value to me at one period of my
life than silver and gold in pointing out, etc.": the conclusion was
hazy, like the conception; she had her idea.

And in this mood she ran down-stairs and met Colonel De Craye on the
station steps.

The bright illumination of his face was that of the confident man
confirmed in a risky guess in the crisis of doubt and dispute.

"Miss Middleton!" his joyful surprise predominated; the pride of an
accurate forecast, adding: "I am not too late to be of service?"

She thanked him for the offer.

"Have you dismissed the fly, Colonel De Craye?"

"I have just been getting change to pay Mr. Flitch. He passed me on the
road. He is interwound with our fates to a certainty. I had only to
jump in; I knew it, and rolled along like a magician commanding a
genie."

"Have I been . . ."

"Not seriously, nobody doubts you being under shelter. You will allow
me to protect you? My time is yours."

"I was thinking of a running visit to my friend Miss Darleton."

"May I venture? I had the fancy that you wished to see Miss Darleton
to-day. You cannot make the journey unescorted."

"Please retain the fly. Where is Willoughby?"

"He is in jack-boots. But may I not, Miss Middleton? I shall never be
forgiven if you refuse me."

"There has been searching for me?"

"Some hallooing. But why am I rejected? Besides, I don't require the
fly; I shall walk if I am banished. Flitch is a wonderful conjurer, but
the virtue is out of him for the next four-and-twenty hours. And it
will be an opportunity to me to make my bow to Miss Darleton!"

"She is rigorous on the conventionalities, Colonel De Craye."

"I'll appear before her as an ignoramus or a rebel, whichever she likes
best to take in leading-strings. I remember her. I was greatly struck
by her."

"Upon recollection!"

"Memory didn't happen to be handy at the first mention of the lady's
name. As the general said of his ammunition and transport, there's the
army!--but it was leagues in the rear. Like the footman who went to
sleep after smelling fire in the house, I was thinking of other things.
It will serve me right to be forgotten--if I am. I've a curiosity to
know: a remainder of my coxcombry. Not that exactly: a wish to see the
impression I made on your friend.--None at all? But any pebble casts a
ripple."

"That is hardly an impression," said Clara, pacifying her
irresoluteness with this light talk.

"The utmost to be hoped for by men like me! I have your
permission?--one minute--I will get my ticket."

"Do not," said Clara.

"Your man-servant entreats you!"

She signified a decided negative with the head, but her eyes were
dreamy. She breathed deep: this thing done would cut the cord. Her
sensation of languor swept over her.

De Craye took a stride. He was accosted by one of the railway-porters.
Flitch's fly was in request for a gentleman. A portly old gentleman
bothered about luggage appeared on the landing.

"The gentleman can have it," said De Craye, handing Flitch his money.

"Open the door." Clara said to Flitch.

He tugged at the handle with enthusiasm. The door was open: she stepped
in.

"Then mount the box and I'll jump up beside you," De Craye called out,
after the passion of regretful astonishment had melted from his
features.

Clara directed him to the seat fronting her; he protested indifference
to the wet; she kept the door unshut. His temper would have preferred
to buffet the angry weather. The invitation was too sweet.

She heard now the bell of her own train. Driving beside the railway
embankment she met the train: it was eighteen minutes late, by her
watch. And why, when it flung up its whale-spouts of steam, she was not
journeying in it, she could not tell. She had acted of her free will:
that she could say. Vernon had not induced her to remain; assuredly her
present companion had not; and her whole heart was for flight: yet she
was driving back to the Hall, not devoid of calmness. She speculated on
the circumstance enough to think herself incomprehensible, and there
left it, intent on the scene to come with Willoughby.

"I must choose a better day for London," she remarked.

De Craye bowed, but did not remove his eyes from her.

"Miss Middleton, you do not trust me."

She answered: "Say in what way. It seems to me that I do."

"I may speak?"

"If it depends on my authority."

"Fully?"

"Whatever you have to say. Let me stipulate, be not very grave. I want
cheering in wet weather."

"Miss Middleton, Flitch is charioteer once more. Think of it. There's
a tide that carries him perpetually to the place where he was cast
forth, and a thread that ties us to him in continuity. I have not the
honour to be a friend of long standing: one ventures on one's devotion:
it dates from the first moment of my seeing you. Flitch is to blame, if
any one. Perhaps the spell would be broken, were he reinstated in his
ancient office."

"Perhaps it would," said Clara, not with her best of smiles.
Willoughby's pride of relentlessness appeared to her to be receiving a
blow by rebound, and that seemed high justice.

"I am afraid you were right; the poor fellow has no chance," De Craye
pursued. He paused, as for decorum in the presence of misfortune, and
laughed sparklingly: "Unless I engage him, or pretend to! I verily
believe that Flitch's melancholy person on the skirts of the Hall
completes the picture of the Eden within.--Why will you not put some
trust in me, Miss Middleton?"

"But why should you not pretend to engage him then, Colonel De Craye?"

"We'll plot it, if you like. Can you trust me for that?"

"For any act of disinterested kindness, I am sure."

"You mean it?"

"Without reserve. You could talk publicly of taking him to London."

"Miss Middleton, just now you were going. My arrival changed your mind.
You distrust me: and ought I to wonder? The wonder would be all the
other way. You have not had the sort of report of me which would
persuade you to confide, even in a case of extremity. I guessed you
were going. Do you ask me how? I cannot say. Through what they call
sympathy, and that's inexplicable. There's natural sympathy, natural
antipathy. People have to live together to discover how deep it is!"

Clara breathed her dumb admission of his truth.

The fly jolted and threatened to lurch.

"Flitch, my dear man!" the colonel gave a murmuring remonstrance;
"for," said he to Clara, whom his apostrophe to Flitch had set smiling,
"we're not safe with him, however we make believe, and he'll be jerking
the heart out of me before he has done.--But if two of us have not the
misfortune to be united when they come to the discovery, there's hope.
That is, if one has courage and the other has wisdom. Otherwise they
may go to the yoke in spite of themselves. The great enemy is Pride,
who has them both in a coach and drives them to the fatal door, and the
only thing to do is to knock him off his box while there's a minute to
spare. And as there's no pride like the pride of possession, the
deadliest wound to him is to make that doubtful. Pride won't be taught
wisdom in any other fashion. But one must have the courage to do it!"

De Craye trifled with the window-sash, to give his words time to sink
in solution.

Who but Willoughby stood for Pride? And who, swayed by languor, had
dreamed of a method that would be surest and swiftest to teach him the
wisdom of surrendering her?

"You know, Miss Middleton, I study character," said the colonel.

"I see that you do," she answered.

"You intend to return?"

"Oh, decidedly."

"The day is unfavourable for travelling, I must say."

"It is."

"You may count on my discretion in the fullest degree. I throw myself
on your generosity when I assure you that it was not my design to
surprise a secret. I guessed the station, and went there, to put myself
at your disposal."

"Did you," said Clara, reddening slightly, "chance to see Mrs.
Mountstuart Jenkinson's carriage pass you when you drove up to the
station?"

De Craye had passed a carriage. "I did not see the lady. She was in
it?"

"Yes. And therefore it is better to put discretion on one side: we may
be certain she saw you."

"But not you, Miss Middleton."

"I prefer to think that I am seen. I have a description of courage,
Colonel De Craye, when it is forced on me."

"I have not suspected the reverse. Courage wants training, as well as
other fine capacities. Mine is often rusty and rheumatic."

"I cannot hear of concealment or plotting."

"Except, pray, to advance the cause of poor Flitch!"

"He shall be excepted."

The colonel screwed his head round for a glance at his coachman's back.

"Perfectly guaranteed to-day!" he said of Flitch's look of solidity.
"The convulsion of the elements appears to sober our friend; he is only
dangerous in calms. Five minutes will bring us to the park-gates."

Clara leaned forward to gaze at the hedgeways in the neighbourhood of
the Hall strangely renewing their familiarity with her. Both in thought
and sensation she was like a flower beaten to earth, and she thanked
her feminine mask for not showing how nerveless and languid she was.
She could have accused Vernon of a treacherous cunning for imposing it
on her free will to decide her fate.

Involuntarily she sighed.

"There is a train at three," said De Craye, with splendid promptitude.

"Yes, and one at five. We dine with Mrs. Mountstuart tonight. And I
have a passion for solitude! I think I was never intended for
obligations. The moment I am bound I begin to brood on freedom."

"Ladies who say that, Miss Middleton!. . ."

"What of them?"

"They're feeling too much alone."

She could not combat the remark: by her self-assurance that she had the
principle of faithfulness, she acknowledged to herself the truth of
it:--there is no freedom for the weak. Vernon had said that once. She
tried to resist the weight of it, and her sheer inability precipitated
her into a sense of pitiful dependence.

Half an hour earlier it would have been a perilous condition to be
traversing in the society of a closely scanning reader of fair faces.
Circumstances had changed. They were at the gates of the park.

"Shall I leave you?" said De Craye.

"Why should you?" she replied.

He bent to her gracefully.

The mild subservience flattered Clara's languor. He had not compelled
her to be watchful on her guard, and she was unaware that he passed it
when she acquiesced to his observation, "An anticipatory story is a
trap to the teller."

"It is," she said. She had been thinking as much.

He threw up his head to consult the brain comically with a dozen little
blinks.

"No, you are right, Miss Middleton, inventing beforehand never
prospers; 't is a way to trip our own cleverness. Truth and mother-wit
are the best counsellors: and as you are the former, I'll try to act up
to the character you assign me."

Some tangle, more prospective than present, seemed to be about her as
she reflected. But her intention being to speak to Willoughby without
subterfuge, she was grateful to her companion for not tempting her to
swerve. No one could doubt his talent for elegant fibbing, and she was
in the humour both to admire and adopt the art, so she was glad to be
rescued from herself. How mother-wit was to second truth she did not
inquire, and as she did not happen to be thinking of Crossjay, she was
not troubled by having to consider how truth and his tale of the
morning would be likely to harmonize.

Driving down the park, she had full occupation in questioning whether
her return would be pleasing to Vernon, who was the virtual cause of
it, though he had done so little to promote it: so little that she
really doubted his pleasure in seeing her return.



CHAPTER XXIX

IN WHICH THE SENSITIVENESS OF SIR WILLOUGHBY IS EXPLAINED: AND HE
RECEIVES MUCH INSTRUCTION

THE Hall-dock over the stables was then striking twelve. It was the
hour for her flight to be made known, and Clara sat in a turmoil of dim
apprehension that prepared her nervous frame for a painful blush on her
being asked by Colonel De Craye whether she had set her watch
correctly. He must, she understood, have seen through her at the
breakfast table: and was she not cruelly indebted to him for her
evasion of Willoughby? Such perspicacity of vision distressed and
frightened her; at the same time she was obliged to acknowledge that he
had not presumed on it. Her dignity was in no way the worse for him.
But it had been at a man's mercy, and there was the affliction.

She jumped from the fly as if she were leaving danger behind. She could
at the moment have greeted Willoughby with a conventionally friendly
smile. The doors were thrown open and young Crossjay flew out to her.
He hung and danced on her hand, pressed the hand to his mouth, hardly
believing that he saw and touched her, and in a lingo of dashes and
asterisks related how Sir Willoughby had found him under the boathouse
eaves and pumped him, and had been sent off to Hoppner's farm, where
there was a sick child, and on along the road to a labourer's cottage:
"For I said you're so kind to poor people, Miss Middleton; that's true,
now that is true. And I said you wouldn't have me with you for fear of
contagion!" This was what she had feared.

"Every crack and bang in a boys vocabulary," remarked the colonel,
listening to him after he had paid Flitch.

The latter touched his hat till he had drawn attention to himself, when
he exclaimed, with rosy melancholy: "Ah! my lady, ah! colonel, if ever
I lives to drink some of the old port wine in the old Hall at
Christmastide!" Their healths would on that occasion be drunk, it was
implied. He threw up his eyes at the windows, humped his body and drove
away.

"Then Mr. Whitford has not come back?" said Clara to Crossjay.

"No, Miss Middleton. Sir Willoughby has, and he's upstairs in his room
dressing."

"Have you seen Barclay?"

"She has just gone into the laboratory. I told her Sir Willoughby
wasn't there."

"Tell me, Crossjay, had she a letter?"

"She had something."

"Run: say I am here; I want the letter, it is mine."

Crossjay sprang away and plunged into the arms of Sir Willoughby.

"One has to catch the fellow like a football," exclaimed the injured
gentleman, doubled across the boy and holding him fast, that he might
have an object to trifle with, to give himself countenance: he needed
it. "Clara, you have not been exposed to the weather?"

"Hardly at all."

"I rejoice. You found shelter?"

"Yes."

"In one of the cottages?"

"Not in a cottage; but I was perfectly sheltered. Colonel De Craye
passed a fly before he met me . . ."

"Flitch again!" ejaculated the colonel.

"Yes, you have luck, you have luck," Willoughby addressed him, still
clutching Crossjay and treating his tugs to get loose as an invitation
to caresses. But the foil barely concealed his livid perturbation.

"Stay by me, sir," he said at last sharply to Crossjay, and Clara
touched the boy's shoulder in admonishment of him.

She turned to the colonel as they stepped into the hall: "I have not
thanked you, Colonel De Craye." She dropped her voice to its lowest: "A
letter in my handwriting in the laboratory."

Crossjay cried aloud with pain.

"I have you!" Willoughby rallied him with a laugh not unlike the squeak
of his victim.

"You squeeze awfully hard, sir."

"Why, you milksop!"

"Am I! But I want to get a book."

"Where is the book?"

"In the laboratory."

Colonel De Craye, sauntering by the laboratory door, sung out: "I'll
fetch you your book. What is it? EARLY NAVIGATORS? INFANT HYMNS? I
think my cigar-case is in here."

"Barclay speaks of a letter for me," Willoughby said to Clara, "marked
to be delivered to me at noon!"

"In case of my not being back earlier; it was written to avert
anxiety," she replied.

"You are very good."

"Oh, good! Call me anything but good. Here are the ladies. Dear
ladies!" Clara swam to meet them as they issued from a morning-room
into the hall, and interjections reigned for a couple of minutes.

Willoughby relinquished his grasp of Crossjay, who darted
instantaneously at an angle to the laboratory, whither he followed, and
he encountered De Craye coming out, but passed him in silence.

Crossjay was rangeing and peering all over the room. Willoughby went
to his desk and the battery-table and the mantelpiece. He found no
letter. Barclay had undoubtedly informed him that she had left a letter
for him in the laboratory, by order of her mistress after breakfast.

He hurried out and ran upstairs in time to see De Craye and Barclay
breaking a conference.

He beckoned to her. The maid lengthened her upper lip and beat her
dress down smooth: signs of the apprehension of a crisis and of the
getting ready for action.

"My mistress's bell has just rung, Sir Willoughby."

"You had a letter for me."

"I said . . ."

"You said when I met you at the foot of the stairs that you had left a
letter for me in the laboratory."

"It is lying on my mistress's toilet-table."

"Get it."

Barclay swept round with another of her demure grimaces. It was
apparently necessary with her that she should talk to herself in this
public manner.

Willoughby waited for her; but there was no reappearance of the maid.

Struck by the ridicule of his posture of expectation, and of his whole
behaviour, he went to his bedroom suite, shut himself in, and paced the
chambers, amazed at the creature he had become. Agitated like the
commonest of wretches, destitute of self-control, not able to preserve
a decent mask, be, accustomed to inflict these emotions and tremours
upon others, was at once the puppet and dupe of an intriguing girl. His
very stature seemed lessened. The glass did not say so, but the
shrunken heart within him did, and wailfully too. Her
compunction--'Call me anything but good'--coming after her return to
the Hall beside De Craye, and after the visible passage of a secret
between them in his presence, was a confession: it blew at him with the
fury of a furnace-blast in his face. Egoist agony wrung the outcry from
him that dupery is a more blessed condition. He desired to be deceived.

He could desire such a thing only in a temporary transport; for above
all he desired that no one should know of his being deceived; and were
he a dupe the deceiver would know it, and her accomplice would know it,
and the world would soon know of it: that world against whose tongue
he stood defenceless. Within the shadow of his presence he compressed
opinion, as a strong frost binds the springs of earth, but beyond it
his shivering sensitiveness ran about in dread of a stripping in a
wintry atmosphere. This was the ground of his hatred of the world: it
was an appalling fear on behalf of his naked eidolon, the tender infant
Self swaddled in his name before the world, for which he felt as the
most highly civilized of men alone can feel, and which it was
impossible for him to stretch out hands to protect. There the poor
little loveable creature ran for any mouth to blow on; and frostnipped
and bruised, it cried to him, and he was of no avail! Must we not
detest a world that so treats us? We loathe it the more, by the measure
of our contempt for them, when we have made the people within the
shadow-circle of our person slavish.

And he had been once a young prince in popularity: the world had been
his possession. Clara's treatment of him was a robbery of land and
subjects. His grander dream had been a marriage with a lady of so
glowing a fame for beauty and attachment to her lord that the world
perforce must take her for witness to merits which would silence
detraction and almost, not quite (it was undesireable), extinguish
envy. But for the nature of women his dream would have been realized.
He could not bring himself to denounce Fortune. It had cost him a
grievous pang to tell Horace De Craye he was lucky; he had been
educated in the belief that Fortune specially prized and cherished
little Willoughby: hence of necessity his maledictions fell upon women,
or he would have forfeited the last blanket of a dream warm as poets
revel in.

But if Clara deceived him, he inspired her with timidity. There was
matter in that to make him wish to be deceived. She had not looked him
much in the face: she had not crossed his eyes: she had looked
deliberately downward, keeping her head up, to preserve an exterior
pride. The attitude had its bewitchingness: the girl's physical pride
of stature scorning to bend under a load of conscious guilt, had a
certain black-angel beauty for which he felt a hugging hatred: and
according to his policy when these fits of amorous meditation seized
him, he burst from the present one in the mood of his more favourable
conception of Clara, and sought her out.

The quality of the mood of hugging hatred is, that if you are
disallowed the hug, you do not hate the fiercer.

Contrariwise the prescription of a decorous distance of two feet ten
inches, which is by measurement the delimitation exacted of a rightly
respectful deportment, has this miraculous effect on the great creature
man, or often it has: that his peculiar hatred returns to the reluctant
admiration begetting it, and his passion for the hug falls prostrate as
one of the Faithful before the shrine; he is reduced to worship by
fasting.

(For these mysteries, consult the sublime chapter in the GREAT BOOK,
the Seventy-first on LOVE, wherein nothing is written, but the Reader
receives a Lanthorn, a Powder-cask and a Pick-axe, and therewith
pursues his yellow-dusking path across the rubble of preceding
excavators in the solitary quarry: a yet more instructive passage than
the overscrawled Seventieth, or French Section, whence the chapter
opens, and where hitherto the polite world has halted.)

The hurry of the hero is on us, we have no time to spare for mining
works: he hurried to catch her alone, to wreak his tortures on her in a
bitter semblance of bodily worship, and satiated, then comfortably to
spurn. He found her protected by Barclay on the stairs.

"That letter for me?" he said.

"I think I told you, Willoughby, there was a letter I left with Barclay
to reassure you in case of my not returning early," said Clara. "It was
unnecessary for her to deliver it."

"Indeed? But any letter, any writing of yours, and from you to me! You
have it still?"

"No, I have destroyed it."

"That was wrong."

"It could not have given you pleasure."

"My dear Clara, one line from you!"

"There were but three."

Barclay stood sucking her lips. A maid in the secrets of her mistress
is a purchaseable maid, for if she will take a bribe with her right
hand she will with her left; all that has to be calculated is the
nature and amount of the bribe: such was the speculation indulged by
Sir Willoughby, and he shrank from the thought and declined to know
more than that he was on a volcanic hillside where a thin crust quaked
over lava. This was a new condition with him, representing Clara's gain
in their combat. Clara did not fear his questioning so much as he
feared her candour.

Mutually timid, they were of course formally polite, and no plain
speaking could have told one another more distinctly that each was
defensive. Clara stood pledged to the fib; packed, scaled and posted;
and he had only to ask to have it, supposing that he asked with a voice
not exactly peremptory.

She said in her heart, "It is your fault: you are relentless and you
would ruin Crossjay to punish him for devoting himself to me, like the
poor thoughtless boy he is! and so I am bound in honour to do my utmost
for him."

The reciprocal devotedness, moreover, served two purposes: it preserved
her from brooding on the humiliation of her lame flight, and flutter
back, and it quieted her mind in regard to the precipitate intimacy of
her relations with Colonel De Craye. Willoughby's boast of his
implacable character was to blame. She was at war with him, and she was
compelled to put the case in that light. Crossjay must be shielded from
one who could not spare an offender, so Colonel De Craye quite
naturally was called on for his help, and the colonel's dexterous aid
appeared to her more admirable than alarming.

Nevertheless, she would not have answered a direct question falsely.
She was for the fib, but not the lie; at a word she could be disdainful
of subterfuges. Her look said that. Willoughby perceived it. She had
written him a letter of three lines: "There were but three": and she
had destroyed the letter. Something perchance was repented by her? Then
she had done him an injury! Between his wrath at the suspicion of an
injury, and the prudence enjoined by his abject coveting of her, he
consented to be fooled for the sake of vengeance, and something
besides.

"Well! here you are, safe; I have you!" said he, with courtly
exultation: "and that is better than your handwriting. I have been all
over the country after you."

"Why did you? We are not in a barbarous land," said Clara.

"Crossjay talks of your visiting a sick child, my love:--you have
changed your dress?"

"You see."

"The boy declared you were going to that farm of Hoppner's, and some
cottage. I met at my gates a tramping vagabond who swore to seeing you
and the boy in a totally contrary direction."

"Did you give him money?"

"I fancy so."

"Then he was paid for having seen me."

Willoughby tossed his head: it might be as she suggested; beggars are
liars.

"But who sheltered you, my dear Clara? You had not been heard of at
Hoppner's."

"The people have been indemnified for their pains. To pay them more
would be to spoil them. You disperse money too liberally. There was no
fever in the place. Who could have anticipated such a downpour! I want
to consult Miss Dale on the important theme of a dress I think of
wearing at Mrs Mountstuart's to-night."

"Do. She is unerring."

"She has excellent taste."

"She dresses very simply herself."

"But it becomes her. She is one of the few women whom I feel I could
not improve with a touch."

"She has judgement."

He reflected and repeated his encomium.

The shadow of a dimple in Clara's cheek awakened him to the idea that
she had struck him somewhere: and certainly he would never again be
able to put up the fiction of her jealousy of Laetitia. What, then,
could be this girl's motive for praying to be released? The
interrogation humbled him: he fled from the answer.

Willoughby went in search of De Craye. That sprightly intriguer had no
intention to let himself be caught solus. He was undiscoverable until
the assembly sounded, when Clara dropped a public word or two, and he
spoke in perfect harmony with her. After that, he gave his company to
Willoughby for an hour at billiards, and was well beaten.

The announcement of a visit of Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson took the
gentlemen to the drawing-room, rather suspecting that something stood
in the way of her dinner-party. As it happened, she was lamenting only
the loss of one of the jewels of the party: to wit, the great Professor
Crooklyn, invited to meet Dr. Middleton at her table; and she related
how she had driven to the station by appointment, the professor being
notoriously a bother-headed traveller: as was shown by the fact that he
had missed his train in town, for he had not arrived; nothing had been
seen of him. She cited Vernon Whitford for her authority that the train
had been inspected, and the platform scoured to find the professor.

"And so," said she, "I drove home your Green Man to dry him; he was wet
through and chattering; the man was exactly like a skeleton wrapped in
a sponge, and if he escapes a cold he must be as invulnerable as he
boasts himself. These athletes are terrible boasters."

"They climb their Alps to crow," said Clara, excited by her
apprehension that Mrs. Mountstuart would speak of having seen the
colonel near the station.

There was a laugh, and Colonel De Craye laughed loudly as it flashed
through him that a quick-witted impressionable girl like Miss Middleton
must, before his arrival at the Hall, have speculated on such obdurate
clay as Vernon Whitford was, with humourous despair at his uselessness
to her. Glancing round, he saw Vernon standing fixed in a stare at the
young lady.

"You heard that, Whitford?" he said, and Clara's face betokening an
extremer contrition than he thought was demanded, the colonel rallied
the Alpine climber for striving to be the tallest of them--Signor
Excelsior!--and described these conquerors of mountains pancaked on the
rocks in desperate embraces, bleached here, burned there, barked all
over, all to be able to say they had been up "so high"--had conquered
another mountain! He was extravagantly funny and self-satisfied: a
conqueror of the sex having such different rewards of enterprise.

Vernon recovered in time to accept the absurdities heaped on him.

"Climbing peaks won't compare with hunting a wriggler," said he.

His allusion to the incessant pursuit of young Crossjay to pin him to
lessons was appreciated.

Clara felt the thread of the look he cast from herself to Colonel De
Craye. She was helpless, if he chose to misjudge her. Colonel De Craye
did not!

Crossjay had the misfortune to enter the drawing-room while Mrs.
Mountstuart was compassionating Vernon for his ducking in pursuit of
the wriggler; which De Craye likened to "going through the river after
his eel:" and immediately there was a cross-questioning of the boy
between De Craye and Willoughby on the subject of his latest truancy,
each gentleman trying to run him down in a palpable fib. They were
succeeding brilliantly when Vernon put a stop to it by marching him off
to hard labour. Mrs. Mountstuart was led away to inspect the beautiful
porcelain service, the present of Lady Busshe. "Porcelain again!" she
said to Willoughby, and would have signalled to the "dainty rogue" to
come with them, had not Clara been leaning over to Laetitia, talking to
her in an attitude too graceful to be disturbed. She called his
attention to it, slightly wondering at his impatience. She departed to
meet an afternoon train on the chance that it would land the professor.
"But tell Dr. Middleton," said she, "I fear I shall have no one worthy
of him! And," she added to Willoughby, as she walked out to her
carriage, "I shall expect you to do the great-gunnery talk at table."

"Miss Dale keeps it up with him best," said Willoughby.

"She does everything best! But my dinner-table is involved, and I
cannot count on a young woman to talk across it. I would hire a lion of
a menagerie, if one were handy, rather than have a famous scholar at my
table, unsupported by another famous scholar. Doctor Middleton would
ride down a duke when the wine is in him. He will terrify my poor
flock. The truth is, we can't leaven him: I foresee undigested lumps of
conversation, unless you devote yourself."

"I will devote myself," said Willoughby.

"I can calculate on Colonel De Craye and our porcelain beauty for any
quantity of sparkles, if you promise that. They play well together. You
are not to be one of the gods to-night, but a kind of Jupiter's
cup-bearer;--Juno's, if you like; and Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer, and
all your admirers shall know subsequently what you have done. You see
my alarm. I certainly did not rank Professor Crooklyn among the
possibly faithless, or I never would have ventured on Doctor Middleton
at my table. My dinner-parties have hitherto been all successes.
Naturally I feel the greater anxiety about this one. For a single
failure is all the more conspicuous. The exception is everlastingly
cited! It is not so much what people say, but my own sentiments. I hate
to fail. However, if you are true, we may do."

"Whenever the great gun goes off I will fall on my face, madam!"

"Something of that sort," said the dame, smiling, and leaving him to
reflect on the egoism of women. For the sake of her dinner-party he was
to be a cipher in attendance on Dr. Middleton, and Clara and De Craye
were to be encouraged in sparkling together! And it happened that he
particularly wished to shine. The admiration of his county made him
believe he had a flavour in general society that was not yet
distinguished by his bride, and he was to relinquish his opportunity in
order to please Mrs. Mountstuart! Had she been in the pay of his
rival, she could not have stipulated for more.

He remembered young Crossjay's instant quietude, after struggling in
his grasp, when Clara laid her hand on the boy: and from that
infinitesimal circumstance he deduced the boy's perception of a
differing between himself and his bride, and a transfer of Crossjay's
allegiance from him to her. She shone; she had the gift of female
beauty; the boy was attracted to it. That boy must be made to feel his
treason. But the point of the cogitation was, that similarly were Clara
to see her affianced shining, as shine he could when lighted up by
admirers, there was the probability that the sensation of her
littleness would animate her to take aim at him once more. And then was
the time for her chastisement.

A visit to Dr. Middleton in the library satisfied him that she had not
been renewing her entreaties to leave Patterne. No, the miserable
coquette had now her pastime, and was content to stay. Deceit was in
the air: he heard the sound of the shuttle of deceit without seeing it;
but, on the whole, mindful of what he had dreaded during the hours of
her absence, he was rather flattered, witheringly flattered. What was
it that he had dreaded? Nothing less than news of her running away.
Indeed a silly fancy, a lover's fancy! yet it had led him so far as to
suspect, after parting with De Craye in the rain, that his friend and
his bride were in collusion, and that he should not see them again. He
had actually shouted on the rainy road the theatric call "Fooled!" one
of the stage-cries which are cries of nature! particularly the cry of
nature with men who have driven other men to the cry.

Constantia Durham had taught him to believe women capable of explosions
of treason at half a minute's notice. And strangely, to prove that
women are all of a pack, she had worn exactly the same placidity of
countenance just before she fled, as Clara yesterday and to-day; no
nervousness, no flushes, no twitches of the brows, but smoothness, ease
of manner--an elegant sisterliness, one might almost say: as if the
creature had found a midway and borderline to walk on between cruelty
and kindness, and between repulsion and attraction; so that up to the
verge of her breath she did forcefully attract, repelling at one foot's
length with her armour of chill serenity. Not with any disdain, with no
passion: such a line as she herself pursued she indicated to him on a
neighbouring parallel. The passion in her was like a place of waves
evaporated to a crust of salt. Clara's resemblance to Constantia in
this instance was ominous. For him whose tragic privilege it had been
to fold each of them in his arms, and weigh on their eyelids, and see
the dissolving mist-deeps in their eyes, it was horrible. Once more the
comparison overcame him. Constantia he could condemn for revealing too
much to his manly sight: she had met him almost half-way: well, that
was complimentary and sanguine: but her frankness was a baldness often
rendering it doubtful which of the two, lady or gentleman, was the
object of the chase--an extreme perplexity to his manly soul. Now
Clara's inner spirit was shyer, shy as a doe down those rose-tinged
abysses; she allured both the lover and the hunter; forests of
heavenliness were in her flitting eyes. Here the difference of these
fair women made his present fate an intolerable anguish. For if
Constantia was like certain of the ladies whom he had rendered unhappy,
triumphed over, as it is queerly called, Clara was not. Her
individuality as a woman was a thing he had to bow to. It was
impossible to roll her up in the sex and bestow a kick on the
travelling bundle. Hence he loved her, though she hurt him. Hence his
wretchedness, and but for the hearty sincerity of his faith in the Self
he loved likewise and more, he would have been hangdog abject.

As for De Craye, Willoughby recollected his own exploits too proudly to
put his trust in a man. That fatal conjunction of temper and policy had
utterly thrown him off his guard, or he would not have trusted the
fellow even in the first hour of his acquaintance with Clara. But he
had wished her to be amused while he wove his plans to retain her at
the Hall:--partly imagining that she would weary of his neglect: vile
delusion! In truth he should have given festivities, he should have
been the sun of a circle, and have revealed himself to her in his more
dazzling form. He went near to calling himself foolish after the
tremendous reverberation of "Fooled!" had ceased to shake him.

How behave? It slapped the poor gentleman's pride in the face to ask. A
private talk with her would rouse her to renew her supplications. He
saw them flickering behind the girl's transparent calmness. That
calmness really drew its dead ivory hue from the suppression of them:
something as much he guessed; and he was not sure either of his temper
or his policy if he should hear her repeat her profane request.

An impulse to address himself to Vernon and discourse with him
jocularly on the childish whim of a young lady, moved perhaps by some
whiff of jealousy, to shun the yoke, was checked. He had always taken
so superior a pose with Vernon that he could not abandon it for a
moment: on such a subject too! Besides, Vernon was one of your men who
entertain the ideas about women of fellows that have never conquered
one: or only one, we will say in his case, knowing his secret history;
and that one no flag to boast of. Densely ignorant of the sex, his
nincompoopish idealizations, at other times preposterous, would now be
annoying. He would probably presume on Clara's inconceivable lapse of
dignity to read his master a lecture: he was quite equal to a philippic
upon woman's rights. This man had not been afraid to say that he talked
common sense to women. He was an example of the consequence!

Another result was that Vernon did not talk sense to men. Willoughby's
wrath at Clara's exposure of him to his cousin dismissed the proposal
of a colloquy so likely to sting his temper, and so certain to diminish
his loftiness. Unwilling to speak to anybody, he was isolated, yet
consciously begirt by the mysterious action going on all over the
house, from Clara and De Craye to Laetitia and young Crossjay, down to
Barclay the maid. His blind sensitiveness felt as we may suppose a
spider to feel when plucked from his own web and set in the centre of
another's. Laetitia looked her share in the mystery. A burden was on
her eyelashes. How she could have come to any suspicion of the
circumstances, he was unable to imagine. Her intense personal sympathy,
it might be; he thought so with some gentle pity for her--of the
paternal pat-back order of pity. She adored him, by decree of Venus;
and the Goddess had not decreed that he should find consolation in
adoring her. Nor could the temptings of prudent counsel in his head
induce him to run the risk of such a total turnover as the incurring of
Laetitia's pity of himself by confiding in her. He checked that impulse
also, and more sovereignly. For him to be pitied by Laetitia seemed an
upsetting of the scheme of Providence. Providence, otherwise the
discriminating dispensation of the good things of life, had made him
the beacon, her the bird: she was really the last person to whom he
could unbosom. The idea of his being in a position that suggested his
doing so, thrilled him with fits of rage; and it appalled him. There
appeared to be another Power. The same which had humiliated him once
was menacing him anew. For it could not be Providence, whose favourite
he had ever been. We must have a couple of Powers to account for
discomfort when Egoism is the kernel of our religion. Benevolence had
singled him for uncommon benefits: malignancy was at work to rob him of
them. And you think well of the world, do you!

Of necessity he associated Clara with the darker Power pointing the
knife at the quick of his pride. Still, he would have raised her
weeping: he would have stanched her wounds bleeding: he had an infinite
thirst for her misery, that he might ease his heart of its charitable
love. Or let her commit herself, and be cast off. Only she must commit
herself glaringly, and be cast off by the world as well. Contemplating
her in the form of a discarded weed, he had a catch of the breath: she
was fair. He implored his Power that Horace De Craye might not be the
man! Why any man? An illness, fever, fire, runaway horses, personal
disfigurement, a laming, were sufficient. And then a formal and noble
offer on his part to keep to the engagement with the unhappy wreck:
yes, and to lead the limping thing to the altar, if she insisted. His
imagination conceived it, and the world's applause besides.

Nausea, together with a sense of duty to his line, extinguished that
loathsome prospect of a mate, though without obscuring his chivalrous
devotion to his gentleman's word of honour, which remained in his mind
to compliment him permanently.

On the whole, he could reasonably hope to subdue her to admiration. He
drank a glass of champagne at his dressing; an unaccustomed act, but,
as he remarked casually to his man Pollington, for whom the rest of the
bottle was left, he had taken no horse-exercise that day.

Having to speak to Vernon on business, he went to the schoolroom, where
he discovered Clara, beautiful in full evening attire, with her arm on
young Crossjay's shoulder, and heard that the hard task-master had
abjured Mrs. Mountstuart's party, and had already excused himself,
intending to keep Crossjay to the grindstone. Willoughby was for the
boy, as usual, and more sparklingly than usual. Clara looked at him in
some surprise. He rallied Vernon with great zest, quite silencing him
when he said: "I bear witness that the fellow was here at his regular
hour for lessons, and were you?" He laid his hand on Crossjay, touching
Clara's.

"You will remember what I told you, Crossjay," said she, rising from
the seat gracefully to escape the touch. "It is my command."

Crossjay frowned and puffed.

"But only if I'm questioned," he said.

"Certainly," she replied.

"Then I question the rascal," said Willoughby, causing a start. "What,
sir, is your opinion of Miss Middleton in her robe of state this
evening?"

"Now, the truth, Crossjay!" Clara held up a finger; and the boy could
see she was playing at archness, but for Willoughby it was earnest.
"The truth is not likely to offend you or me either," he murmured to
her.

"I wish him never, never, on any excuse, to speak anything else."

"I always did think her a Beauty," Crossjay growled. He hated the
having to say it.

"There!" exclaimed Sir Willoughby, and bent, extending an arm to her.
"You have not suffered from the truth, my Clara!"

Her answer was: "I was thinking how he might suffer if he were taught
to tell the reverse."

"Oh! for a fair lady!"

"That is the worst of teaching, Willoughby."

"We'll leave it to the fellow's instinct; he has our blood in him. I
could convince you, though, if I might cite circumstances. Yes! But
yes! And yes again! The entire truth cannot invariably be told. I
venture to say it should not."

"You would pardon it for the 'fair lady'?"

"Applaud, my love."

He squeezed the hand within his arm, contemplating her.

She was arrayed in a voluminous robe of pale blue silk vapourous with
trimmings of light gauze of the same hue, gaze de Chambery, matching
her fair hair and dear skin for the complete overthrow of less
inflammable men than Willoughby.

"Clara!" sighed be.

"If so, it would really be generous," she said, "though the teaching h
bad."

"I fancy I can be generous."

"Do we ever know?"

He turned his head to Vernon, issuing brief succinct instructions for
letters to be written, and drew her into the hall, saying: "Know?
There are people who do not know themselves and as they are the
majority they manufacture the axioms. And it is assumed that we have to
swallow them. I may observe that I think I know. I decline to be
engulphed in those majorities. 'Among them, but not of them.' I know
this, that my aim in life is to be generous."

"Is it not an impulse or disposition rather than an aim?"

"So much I know," pursued Willoughby, refusing to be tripped. But she
rang discordantly in his ear. His "fancy that he could be generous" and
his "aim at being generous" had met with no response. "I have given
proofs," he said, briefly, to drop a subject upon which he was not
permitted to dilate; and he murmured, "People acquainted with me . . . !" 
She was asked if she expected him to boast of generous deeds. "From
childhood!" she heard him mutter; and she said to herself, "Release me,
and you shall be everything!"

The unhappy gentleman ached as he talked: for with men and with hosts
of women to whom he was indifferent, never did he converse in this
shambling, third-rate, sheepish manner, devoid of all highness of tone
and the proper precision of an authority. He was unable to fathom the
cause of it, but Clara imposed it on him, and only in anger could he
throw it off. The temptation to an outburst that would flatter him with
the sound of his authoritative voice had to be resisted on a night when
he must be composed if he intended to shine, so he merely mentioned
Lady Busshe's present, to gratify spleen by preparing the ground for
dissension, and prudently acquiesced in her anticipated slipperiness.
She would rather not look at it now, she said.

"Not now; very well," said he.

His immediate deference made her regretful. "There is hardly time,
Willoughby."

"My dear, we shall have to express our thanks to her."

"I cannot."

His arm contracted sharply. He was obliged to be silent.

Dr Middleton, Laetitia, and the ladies Eleanor and Isabel joining them
in the hall, found two figures linked together in a shadowy indication
of halves that have fallen apart and hang on the last thread of
junction. Willoughby retained her hand on his arm; he held to it as the
symbol of their alliance, and oppressed the girl's nerves by contact,
with a frame labouring for breath. De Craye looked on them from
overhead. The carriages were at the door, and Willoughby said, "Where's
Horace? I suppose he's taking a final shot at his Book of Anecdotes and
neat collection of Irishisms."

"No," replied the colonel, descending. "That's a spring works of itself
and has discovered the secret of continuous motion, more's the
pity!--unless you'll be pleased to make it of use to Science."

He gave a laugh of good-humour.

"Your laughter, Horace, is a capital comment on your wit."

Willoughby said it with the air of one who has flicked a whip.

"'Tis a genial advertisement of a vacancy," said De Craye.

"Precisely: three parts auctioneer to one for the property."

"Oh, if you have a musical quack, score it a point in his favour,
Willoughby, though you don't swallow his drug."

"If he means to be musical, let him keep time."

"Am I late?" said De Craye to the ladies, proving himself an adept in
the art of being gracefully vanquished, and so winning tender hearts.

Willoughby had refreshed himself. At the back of his mind there was a
suspicion that his adversary would not have yielded so flatly without
an assurance of practically triumphing, secretly getting the better of
him; and it filled him with venom for a further bout at the next
opportunity: but as he had been sarcastic and mordant, he had shown
Clara what he could do in a way of speaking different from the
lamentable cooing stuff, gasps and feeble protestations to which, he
knew not how, she reduced him. Sharing the opinion of his race, that
blunt personalities, or the pugilistic form, administered directly on
the salient features, are exhibitions of mastery in such encounters, he
felt strong and solid, eager for the successes of the evening. De Craye
was in the first carriage as escort to the ladies Eleanor and Isabel.
Willoughby, with Clara, Laetitia, and Dr. Middleton, followed, all
silent, for the Rev. Doctor was ostensibly pondering; and Willoughby
was damped a little when he unlocked his mouth to say:

"And yet I have not observed that Colonel de Craye is anything of a
Celtiberian Egnatius meriting fustigation for an untimely display of
well-whitened teeth, sir: 'quicquid est, ubicunque est, quodcunque
agit, renidet:':--ha? a morbus neither charming nor urbane to the
general eye, however consolatory to the actor. But this gentleman does
not offend so, or I am so strangely prepossessed in his favour as to be
an incompetent witness."

Dr Middleton's persistent ha? eh? upon an honest frown of inquiry
plucked an answer out of Willoughby that was meant to be humourously
scornful, and soon became apologetic under the Doctor's interrogatively
grasping gaze.

"These Irishmen," Willoughby said, "will play the professional jester
as if it were an office they were born to. We must play critic now and
then, otherwise we should have them deluging us with their Joe
Millerisms."

"With their O'Millerisms you would say, perhaps?"

Willoughby did his duty to the joke, but the Rev. Doctor, though he
wore the paternal smile of a man that has begotten hilarity, was not
perfectly propitiated, and pursued: "Nor to my apprehension is 'the
man's laugh the comment on his wit' unchallengeably new: instances of
cousinship germane to the phrase will recur to you. But it has to be
noted that it was a phrase of assault; it was ostentatiously battery;
and I would venture to remind you, friend, that among the elect,
considering that it is as fatally facile to spring the laugh upon a man
as to deprive him of his life, considering that we have only to
condescend to the weapon, and that the more popular necessarily the
more murderous that weapon is,--among the elect, to which it is your
distinction to aspire to belong, the rule holds to abstain from any
employment of the obvious, the percoct, and likewise, for your own
sake, from the epitonic, the overstrained; for if the former, by
readily assimilating with the understandings of your audience, are
empowered to commit assassination on your victim, the latter come under
the charge of unseemliness, inasmuch as they are a description of
public suicide. Assuming, then, manslaughter to be your pastime, and
hari-kari not to be your bent, the phrase, to escape criminality, must
rise in you as you would have it fall on him, ex improviso. Am I
right?"

"I am in the habit of thinking it impossible, sir, that you can be in
error," said Willoughby.

Dr Middleton left it the more emphatic by saying nothing further.

Both his daughter and Miss Dale, who had disapproved the waspish snap
at Colonel De Craye, were in wonderment of the art of speech which
could so soothingly inform a gentleman that his behaviour had not been
gentlemanly.

Willoughby was damped by what he comprehended of it for a few minutes.
In proportion as he realized an evening with his ancient admirers he
was restored, and he began to marvel greatly at his folly in not giving
banquets and Balls, instead of making a solitude about himself and his
bride. For solitude, thought he, is good for the man, the man being a
creature consumed by passion; woman's love, on the contrary, will only
be nourished by the reflex light she catches of you in the eyes of
others, she having no passion of her own, but simply an instinct
driving her to attach herself to whatsoever is most largely admired,
most shining. So thinking, he determined to change his course of
conduct, and he was happier. In the first gush of our wisdom drawn
directly from experience there is a mental intoxication that cancels
the old world and establishes a new one, not allowing us to ask whether
it is too late.



CHAPTER XXX

TREATING OF THE DINNER-PARTY AT MRS. MOUNTSTUART JENKINSON'S

Vernon and young Crossjay had tolerably steady work together for a
couple of hours, varied by the arrival of a plate of meat on a tray for
the master, and some interrogations put to him from time to time by the
boy in reference to Miss Middleton. Crossjay made the discovery that if
he abstained from alluding to Miss Middleton's beauty he might water
his dusty path with her name nearly as much as he liked. Mention of her
beauty incurred a reprimand. On the first occasion his master was
wistful. "Isn't she glorious!" Crossjay fancied he had started a
sovereign receipt for blessed deviations. He tried it again, but
paedagogue-thunder broke over his head.

"Yes, only I can't understand what she means, Mr. Whitford," he excused
himself "First I was not to tell; I know I wasn't, because she said so;
she quite as good as said so. Her last words were: 'Mind, Crossjay,
you know nothing about me', when I stuck to that beast of a tramp,
who's a 'walking moral,' and gets money out of people by snuffling it."

"Attend to your lesson, or you'll be one," said Vernon.

"Yes, but, Mr. Whitford, now I am to tell. I'm to answer straight out
to every question."

"Miss Middleton is anxious that you should be truthful."

"Yes; but in the morning she told me not to tell."

"She was in a hurry. She has it on her conscience that you may have
misunderstood her, and she wishes you never to be guilty of an untruth,
least of all on her account."

Crossjay committed an unspoken resolution to the air in a violent sigh:
"Ah!" and said: "If I were sure!"

"Do as she bids you, my boy."

"But I don't know what it is she wants."

"Hold to her last words to you."

"So I do. If she told me to run till I dropped, on I'd go."

"She told you to study your lessons; do that."

Crossjay buckled to his book, invigorated by an imagination of his
liege lady on the page.

After a studious interval, until the impression of his lady had
subsided, he resumed: "She's so funny. She's just like a girl, and then
she's a lady, too. She's my idea of a princess. And Colonel De Craye!
Wasn't he taught dancing! When he says something funny he ducks and
seems to be setting to his partner. I should like to be as clever as
her father. That is a clever man. I dare say Colonel De Craye will
dance with her tonight. I wish I was there."

"It's a dinner-party, not a dance," Vernon forced himself to say, to
dispel that ugly vision.

"Isn't it, sir? I thought they danced after dinner-parties, Mr.
Whitford, have you ever seen her run?"

Vernon pointed him to his task.

They were silent for a lengthened period.

"But does Miss Middleton mean me to speak out if Sir Willoughby asks
me?" said Crossjay.

"Certainly. You needn't make much of it. All's plain and simple."

"But I'm positive, Mr. Whitford, he wasn't to hear of her going to the
post-office with me before breakfast. And how did Colonel De Craye find
her and bring her back, with that old Flitch? He's a man and can go
where he pleases, and I'd have found her, too, give me the chance. You
know. I'm fond of Miss Dale, but she--I'm very fond of her--but you
can't think she's a girl as well. And about Miss Dale, when she says a
thing, there it is, clear. But Miss Middleton has a lot of meanings.
Never mind; I go by what's inside, and I'm pretty sure to please her."

"Take your chin off your hand and your elbow off the book, and fix
yourself," said Vernon, wrestling with the seduction of Crossjay's
idolatry, for Miss Middleton's appearance had been preternaturally
sweet on her departure, and the next pleasure to seeing her was hearing
of her from the lips of this passionate young poet.

"Remember that you please her by speaking truth," Vernon added, and
laid himself open to questions upon the truth, by which he learnt, with
a perplexed sense of envy and sympathy, that the boy's idea of truth
strongly approximated to his conception of what should be agreeable to
Miss Middleton.

He was lonely, bereft of the bard, when he had tucked Crossjay up in
his bed and left him. Books he could not read; thoughts were
disturbing. A seat in the library and a stupid stare helped to pass the
hours, and but for the spot of sadness moving meditation in spite of
his effort to stun himself, he would have borne a happy resemblance to
an idiot in the sun. He had verily no command of his reason. She was
too beautiful! Whatever she did was best. That was the refrain of the
fountain-song in him; the burden being her whims, variations,
inconsistencies, wiles; her tremblings between good and naughty, that
might be stamped to noble or to terrible; her sincereness, her
duplicity, her courage, cowardice, possibilities for heroism and for
treachery. By dint of dwelling on the theme, he magnified the young
lady to extraordinary stature. And he had sense enough to own that her
character was yet liquid in the mould, and that she was a creature of
only naturally youthful wildness provoked to freakishness by the ordeal
of a situation shrewd as any that can happen to her sex in civilized
life. But he was compelled to think of her extravagantly, and he leaned
a little to the discrediting of her, because her actual image ummanned
him and was unbearable; and to say at the end of it: "She is too
beautiful! whatever she does is best," smoothed away the wrong he did
her. Had it been in his power he would have thought of her in the
abstract--the stage contiguous to that which he adopted: but the
attempt was luckless; the Stagyrite would have faded in it. What
philosopher could have set down that face of sun and breeze and nymph
in shadow as a point in a problem?

The library door was opened at midnight by Miss Dale. She dosed it
quietly. "You are not working, Mr. Whitford? I fancied you would wish
to hear of the evening. Professor Crooklyn arrived after all! Mrs.
Mountstuart is bewildered: she says she expected you, and that you did
not excuse yourself to her, and she cannot comprehend, et caetera. That
is to say, she chooses bewilderment to indulge in the exclamatory. She
must be very much annoyed. The professor did come by the train she
drove to meet!"

"I thought it probable," said Vernon.

"He had to remain a couple of hours at the Railway Inn; no conveyance
was to be found for him. He thinks he has caught a cold, and cannot
stifle his fretfulness about it. He may be as learned as Doctor
Middleton; he has not the same happy constitution. Nothing more
unfortunate could have occurred; he spoilt the party. Mrs. Mountstuart
tried petting him, which drew attention to him, and put us all in his
key for several awkward minutes, more than once. She lost her head; she
was unlike herself I may be presumptuous in criticizing her, but should
not the president of a dinner-table treat it like a battlefield, and
let the guest that sinks descend, and not allow the voice of a
discordant, however illustrious, to rule it? Of course, it is when I
see failures that I fancy I could manage so well: comparison is
prudently reserved in the other cases. I am a daring critic, no doubt,
because I know I shall never be tried by experiment. I have no ambition
to be tried."

She did not notice a smile of Vernon's, and continued: "Mrs Mountstuart
gave him the lead upon any subject he chose. I thought the professor
never would have ceased talking of a young lady who had been at the inn
before him drinking hot brandy and water with a gentleman!"

"How did he hear of that?" cried Vernon, roused by the malignity of the
Fates.

"From the landlady, trying to comfort him. And a story of her lending
shoes and stockings while those of the young lady were drying. He has
the dreadful snappish humourous way of recounting which impresses it;
the table took up the subject of this remarkable young lady, and
whether she was a lady of the neighbourhood, and who she could be that
went abroad on foot in heavy rain. It was painful to me; I knew enough
to be sure of who she was."

"Did she betray it?"

"No."

"Did Willoughby look at her?"

"Without suspicion then."

"Then?"

"Colonel De Craye was diverting us, and he was very amusing. Mrs.
Mountstuart told him afterward that he ought to be paid salvage for
saving the wreck of her party. Sir Willoughby was a little too cynical;
he talked well; what he said was good, but it was not good-humoured; he
has not the reckless indifference of Colonel De Craye to uttering
nonsense that amusement may come of it. And in the drawing-room he lost
such gaiety as he had. I was close to Mrs. Mountstuart when Professor
Crooklyn approached her and spoke in my hearing of that gentleman and
that young lady. They were, you could see by his nods, Colonel De
Craye and Miss Middleton."

"And she at once mentioned it to Willoughby?"

"Colonel De Craye gave her no chance, if she sought it. He courted her
profusely. Behind his rattle he must have brains. It ran in all
directions to entertain her and her circle."

"Willoughby knows nothing?"

"I cannot judge. He stood with Mrs. Mountstuart a minute as we were
taking leave. She looked strange. I heard her say: 'The rogue!' He
laughed. She lifted her shoulders. He scarcely opened his mouth on the
way home."

"The thing must run its course," Vernon said, with the philosophical
air which is desperation rendered decorous. "Willoughby deserves it. A
man of full growth ought to know that nothing on earth tempts
Providence so much as the binding of a young woman against her will.
Those two are mutually attracted: they're both . . . They meet, and
the mischief's done: both are bright. He can persuade with a word.
Another might discourse like an angel and it would be useless. I said
everything I could think of, to no purpose. And so it is: there are
those attractions!--just as, with her, Willoughby is the reverse, he
repels. I'm in about the same predicament--or should be if she were
plighted to me. That is, for the length of five minutes; about the
space of time I should require for the formality of handing her back
her freedom. How a sane man can imagine a girl like that . . . ! But if
she has changed, she has changed! You can't conciliate a withered
affection. This detaining her, and tricking, and not listening, only
increases her aversion; she learns the art in turn. Here she is,
detained by fresh plots to keep Dr. Middleton at the Hall. That's
true, is it not?" He saw that it was. "No, she's not to blame! She has
told him her mind; he won't listen. The question then is, whether she
keeps to her word, or breaks it. It's a dispute between a conventional
idea of obligation and an injury to her nature. Which is the more
dishonourable thing to do? Why, you and I see in a moment that her
feelings guide her best. It's one of the few cases in which nature may
be consulted like an oracle."

"Is she so sure of her nature?" said Miss Dale.

"You may doubt it; I do not. I am surprised at her coming back. De
Craye is a man of the world, and advised it, I suppose. He--well, I
never had the persuasive tongue, and my failing doesn't count for
much."

"But the suddenness of the intimacy!"

"The disaster is rather famous 'at first sight'. He came in a fortunate
hour . . . for him. A pigmy's a giant if he can manage to arrive in
season. Did you not notice that there was danger, at their second or
third glance? You counselled me to hang on here, where the amount of
good I do in proportion to what I have to endure is microscopic."

"It was against your wishes, I know," said Laetitia, and when the words
were out she feared that they were tentative. Her delicacy shrank from
even seeming to sound him in relation to a situation so delicate as
Miss Middleton's.

The same sentiment guarded him from betraying himself, and he said:
"Partly against. We both foresaw the possible--because, like most
prophets, we knew a little more of circumstances enabling us to see the
fatal. A pigmy would have served, but De Craye is a handsome,
intelligent, pleasant fellow."

"Sir Willoughby's friend!"

"Well, in these affairs! A great deal must be charged on the goddess."

"That is really Pagan fatalism!"

"Our modern word for it is Nature. Science condescends to speak of
natural selection. Look at these! They are both graceful and winning
and witty, bright to mind and eye, made for one another, as country
people say. I can't blame him. Besides, we don't know that he's guilty.
We're quite in the dark, except that we're certain how it must end. If
the chance should occur to you of giving Willoughby a word of
counsel--it may--you might, without irritating him as my knowledge of
his plight does, hint at your eyes being open. His insane dread of a
detective world makes him artificially blind. As soon as he fancies
himself seen, he sets to work spinning a web, and he discerns nothing
else. It's generally a clever kind of web; but if it's a tangle to
others it's the same to him, and a veil as well. He is preparing the
catastrophe, he forces the issue. Tell him of her extreme desire to
depart. Treat her as mad, to soothe him. Otherwise one morning he will
wake a second time . . . ! It is perfectly certain. And the second time
it will be entirely his own fault. Inspire him with some philosophy."

"I have none."

"I if I thought so, I would say you have better. There are two kinds of
philosophy, mine and yours. Mine comes of coldness, yours of devotion."

"He is unlikely to choose me for his confidante."

Vernon meditated. "One can never quite guess what he will do, from
never knowing the heat of the centre in him which precipitates his
actions: he has a great art of concealment. As to me, as you perceive,
my views are too philosophical to let me be of use to any of them. I
blame only the one who holds to the bond. The sooner I am gone!--in
fact, I cannot stay on. So Dr. Middleton and the Professor did not
strike fire together?"

"Doctor Middleton was ready, and pursued him, but Professor Crooklyn
insisted on shivering. His line of blank verse, 'A Railway platform and
a Railway inn!' became pathetic in repetition. He must have suffered."

"Somebody has to!"

"Why the innocent?"

"He arrives a propos. But remember that Fridolin sometimes contrives to
escape and have the guilty scorched. The Professor would not have
suffered if he had missed his train, as he appears to be in the habit
of doing. Thus his unaccustomed good-fortune was the cause of his bad."

"You saw him on the platform?"

"I am unacquainted with the professor. I had to get Mrs Mountstuart out
of the way."

"She says she described him to you. 'Complexion of a sweetbread,
consistency of a quenelle, grey, and like a Saint without his dish
behind the head.'"

"Her descriptions are strikingly accurate, but she forgot to sketch his
back, and all that I saw was a narrow sloping back and a broad hat
resting the brim on it. My report to her spoke of an old gentleman of
dark complexion, as the only traveller on the platform. She has faith
in the efficiency of her descriptive powers, and so she was willing to
drive off immediately. The intention was a start to London. Colonel De
Craye came up and effected in five minutes what I could not compass in
thirty."

"But you saw Colonel De Craye pass you?"

"My work was done; I should have been an intruder. Besides I was acting
wet jacket with Mrs. Mountstuart to get her to drive off fast, or she
might have jumped out in search of her Professor herself."

"She says you were lean as a fork, with the wind whistling through the
prongs."

"You see how easy it is to deceive one who is an artist in phrases.
Avoid them, Miss Dale; they dazzle the penetration of the composer.
That is why people of ability like Mrs Mountstuart see so little; they
are so bent on describing brilliantly. However, she is kind and
charitable at heart. I have been considering to-night that, to cut this
knot as it is now, Miss Middleton might do worse than speak straight
out to Mrs. Mountstuart. No one else would have such influence with
Willoughby. The simple fact of Mrs. Mountstuart's knowing of it would
be almost enough. But courage would be required for that. Good-night,
Miss Dale."

"Good-night, Mr. Whitford. You pardon me for disturbing you?"

Vernon pressed her hand reassuringly. He had but to look at her and
review her history to think his cousin Willoughby punished by just
retribution. Indeed, for any maltreatment of the dear boy Love by man
or by woman, coming under your cognizance, you, if you be of common
soundness, shall behold the retributive blow struck in your time.

Miss Dale retired thinking how like she and Vernon were to one another
in the toneless condition they had achieved through sorrow. He
succeeded in masking himself from her, owing to her awe of the
circumstances. She reproached herself for not having the same devotion
to the cold idea of duty as he had; and though it provoked inquiry, she
would not stop to ask why he had left Miss Middleton a prey to the
sparkling colonel. It seemed a proof of the philosophy he preached.

As she was passing by young Crossjay's bedroom door a face appeared.
Sir Willoughby slowly emerged and presented himself in his full length,
beseeching her to banish alarm.

He said it in a hushed voice, with a face qualified to create
sentiment.

"Are you tired? sleepy?" said he.

She protested that she was not: she intended to read for an hour.

He begged to have the hour dedicated to him. "I shall be relieved by
conversing with a friend."

No subterfuge crossed her mind; she thought his midnight visit to the
boy's bedside a pretty feature in him; she was full of pity, too; she
yielded to the strange request, feeling that it did not become "an old
woman" to attach importance even to the public discovery of midnight
interviews involving herself as one, and feeling also that she was
being treated as an old friend in the form of a very old woman. Her
mind was bent on arresting any recurrence to the project she had so
frequently outlined in the tongue of innuendo, of which, because of her
repeated tremblings under it, she thought him a master.

He conducted her along the corridor to the private sitting-room of the
ladies Eleanor and Isabel.

"Deceit!" he said, while lighting the candles on the mantelpiece.

She was earnestly compassionate, and a word that could not relate to
her personal destinies refreshed her by displacing her apprehensive
antagonism and giving pity free play.



CHAPTER XXXI

SIR WILLOUGHBY ATTEMPTS AND ACHIEVES PATHOS

Both were seated. Apparently he would have preferred to watch her dark
downcast eyelashes in silence under sanction of his air of abstract
meditation and the melancholy superinducing it. Blood-colour was in
her cheeks; the party had inspirited her features. Might it be that
lively company, an absence of economical solicitudes, and a flourishing
home were all she required to make her bloom again? The supposition was
not hazardous in presence of her heightened complexion.

She raised her eyes. He could not meet her look without speaking.

"Can you forgive deceit?"

"It would be to boast of more charity than I know myself to possess,
were I to say that I can, Sir Willoughby. I hope I am able to forgive.
I cannot tell. I should like to say yes."

"Could you live with the deceiver?"

"No."

"No. I could have given that answer for you. No semblance of union
should be maintained between the deceiver and ourselves. Laetitia!"

"Sir Willoughby?"

"Have I no right to your name?"

"If it pleases you to . . ."

"I speak as my thoughts run, and they did not know a Miss Dale so well
as a dear Laetitia: my truest friend! You have talked with Clara
Middleton?"

"We had a conversation."

Her brevity affrighted him. He flew off in a cloud.

"Reverting to that question of deceivers: is it not your opinion that
to pardon, to condone, is to corrupt society by passing off as pure
what is false? Do we not," he wore the smile of haggard playfulness of
a convalescent child the first day back to its toys, "Laetitia, do we
not impose a counterfeit on the currency?"

"Supposing it to be really deception."

"Apart from my loathing of deception, of falseness in any shape, upon
any grounds, I hold it an imperious duty to expose, punish, off with
it. I take it to be one of the forms of noxiousness which a good
citizen is bound to extirpate. I am not myself good citizen enough, I
confess, for much more than passive abhorrence. I do not forgive: I am
at heart serious and I cannot forgive:--there is no possible
reconciliation, there can be only an ostensible truce, between the two
hostile powers dividing this world."

She glanced at him quickly.

"Good and evil!" he said.

Her face expressed a surprise relapsing on the heart.

He spelt the puckers of her forehead to mean that she feared he might
be speaking unchristianly.

"You will find it so in all religions, my dear Laetitia: the Hindoo,
the Persian, ours. It is universal; an experience of our humanity.
Deceit and sincerity cannot live together. Truth must kill the lie, or
the lie will kill truth. I do not forgive. All I say to the person is,
go!"

"But that is right! that is generous!" exclaimed Laetitia, glad to
approve him for the sake of escaping her critical soul, and relieved by
the idea of Clara's difficulty solved.

"Capable of generosity, perhaps," he mused, aloud.

She wounded him by not supplying the expected enthusiastic asseveration
of her belief in his general tendency to magnanimity.

He said, after a pause: "But the world is not likely to be impressed by
anything not immediately gratifying it. People change, I find: as we
increase in years we cease to be the heroes we were. I myself am
insensible to change: I do not admit the charge. Except in this we will
say: personal ambition. I have it no more. And what is it when we have
it? Decidedly a confession of inferiority! That is, the desire to be
distinguished is an acknowledgement of insufficiency. But I have still
the craving for my dearest friends to think well of me. A weakness?
Call it so. Not a dishonourable weakness!"

Laetitia racked her brain for the connection of his present speech with
the preceding dialogue. She was baffled, from not knowing "the heat of
the centre in him", as Vernon opaquely phrased it in charity to the
object of her worship.

"Well," said he, unappeased, "and besides the passion to excel, I have
changed somewhat in the heartiness of my thirst for the amusements
incident to my station. I do not care to keep a stud--I was once
tempted: nor hounds. And I can remember the day when I determined to
have the best kennels and the best breed of horses in the kingdom.
Puerile! What is distinction of that sort, or of any acquisition and
accomplishment? We ask! one's self is not the greater. To seek it, owns
to our smallness, in real fact; and when it is attained, what then? My
horses are good, they are admired, I challenge the county to surpass
them: well? These are but my horses; the praise is of the animals, not
of me. I decline to share in it. Yet I know men content to swallow the
praise of their beasts and be semi-equine. The littleness of one's
fellows in the mob of life is a very strange experience! One may regret
to have lost the simplicity of one's forefathers, which could accept
those and other distinctions with a cordial pleasure, not to say pride.
As, for instance, I am, as it is called, a dead shot. 'Give your
acclamations, gentlemen, to my ancestors, from whom I inherited a
steady hand and quick sight.' They do not touch me. Where I do not find
myself--that I am essentially I--no applause can move me. To speak to
you as I would speak to none, admiration--you know that in my early
youth I swam in flattery--I had to swim to avoid drowning!--admiration
of my personal gifts has grown tasteless. Changed, therefore, inasmuch
as there has been a growth of spirituality. We are all in submission to
mortal laws, and so far I have indeed changed. I may add that it is
unusual for country gentlemen to apply themselves to scientific
researches. These are, however, in the spirit of the time. I
apprehended that instinctively when at College. I forsook the classics
for science. And thereby escaped the vice of domineering
self-sufficiency peculiar to classical men, of which you had an amusing
example in the carriage, on the way to Mrs. Mountstuart's this evening.
Science is modest; slow, if you like; it deals with facts, and having
mastered them, it masters men; of necessity, not with a stupid,
loud-mouthed arrogance: words big and oddly garbed as the Pope's
body-guard. Of course, one bows to the Infallible; we must, when his
giant-mercenaries level bayonets."

Sir Willoughby offered Miss Dale half a minute that she might in gentle
feminine fashion acquiesce in the implied reproof of Dr. Middleton's
behaviour to him during the drive to Mrs. Mountstuart's. She did not.

Her heart was accusing Clara of having done it a wrong and a hurt. For
while he talked he seemed to her to justify Clara's feelings and her
conduct: and her own reawakened sensations of injury came to the
surface a moment to look at him, affirming that they pardoned him, and
pitied, but hardly wondered.

The heat of the centre in him had administered the comfort he wanted,
though the conclusive accordant notes he loved on woman's lips, that
subservient harmony of another instrument desired of musicians when
they have done their solo-playing, came not to wind up the performance:
not a single bar. She did not speak. Probably his Laetitia was
overcome, as he had long known her to be when they conversed;
nerve-subdued, unable to deploy her mental resources or her musical.
Yet ordinarily she had command of the latter.--Was she too condoling?
Did a reason exist for it? Had the impulsive and desperate girl spoken
out to Laetitia to the fullest?--shameless daughter of a domineering
sire that she was! Ghastlier inquiry (it struck the centre of him with
a sounding ring), was Laetitia pitying him overmuch for worse than the
pain of a little difference between lovers--for treason on the part of
his bride? Did she know of a rival? know more than he?

When the centre of him was violently struck he was a genius in
penetration. He guessed that she did know: and by this was he presently
helped to achieve pathos.

"So my election was for Science," he continued; "and if it makes me, as
I fear, a rara avis among country gentlemen, it unites me, puts me in
the main, I may say, in the only current of progress--a word
sufficiently despicable in their political jargon.--You enjoyed your
evening at Mrs. Mountstuart's?"

"Very greatly."

"She brings her Professor to dine here the day after tomorrow. Does it
astonish you? You started."

"I did not hear the invitation."

"It was arranged at the table: you and I were separated--cruelly, I
told her: she declared that we see enough of one another, and that it
was good for me that we should be separated; neither of which is true.
I may not have known what is the best for me: I do know what is good.
If in my younger days I egregiously erred, that, taken of itself alone,
is, assuming me to have sense and feeling, the surer proof of present
wisdom. I can testify in person that wisdom is pain. If pain is to add
to wisdom, let me suffer! Do you approve of that, Laetitia?"

"It is well said."

"It is felt. Those who themselves have suffered should know the benefit
of the resolution."

"One may have suffered so much as to wish only for peace."

"True: but you! have you?"

"It would be for peace, if I prayed for any earthly gift."

Sir Willoughby dropped a smile on her. "I mentioned the Pope's
parti-coloured body-guard just now. In my youth their singular attire
impressed me. People tell me they have been re-uniformed: I am sorry.
They remain one of my liveliest recollections of the Eternal City. They
affected my sense of humour, always alert in me, as you are aware. We
English have humour. It is the first thing struck in us when we land on
the Continent: our risible faculties are generally active all through
the tour. Humour, or the clash of sense with novel examples of the
absurd, is our characteristic. I do not condescend to boisterous
displays of it. I observe, and note the people's comicalities for my
correspondence. But you have read my letters--most of them, if not
all?"

"Many of them."

"I was with you then!--I was about to say--that Swiss-guard reminded
me--you have not been in Italy. I have constantly regretted it. You are
the very woman, you have the soul for Italy. I know no other of whom I
could say it, with whom I should not feel that she was out of place,
discordant with me. Italy and Laetitia! often have I joined you
together. We shall see. I begin to have hopes. Here you have literally
stagnated. Why, a dinner-party refreshes you! What would not travel do,
and that heavenly climate! You are a reader of history and poetry.
Well, poetry! I never yet saw the poetry that expressed the tenth part
of what I feel in the presence of beauty and magnificence, and when I
really meditate--profoundly. Call me a positive mind. I feel: only I
feel too intensely for poetry. By the nature of it, poetry cannot be
sincere. I will have sincerity. Whatever touches our emotions should be
spontaneous, not a craft. I know you are in favour of poetry. You would
win me, if any one could. But history! there I am with you. Walking
over ruins: at night: the arches of the solemn black amphitheatre
pouring moonlight on us--the moonlight of Italy!"

"You would not laugh there, Sir Willoughby?" said Laetitia, rousing
herself from a stupor of apprehensive amazement, to utter something and
realize actual circumstances.

"Besides, you, I think, or I am mistaken in you"--he deviated from his
projected speech--"you are not a victim of the sense of association and
the ludicrous."

"I can understand the influence of it: I have at least a conception of
the humourous, but ridicule would not strike me in the Coliseum of
Rome. I could not bear it, no, Sir Willoughby!"

She appeared to be taking him in very strong earnest, by thus
petitioning him not to laugh in the Coliseum, and now he said:
"Besides, you are one who could accommodate yourself to the society of
the ladies, my aunts. Good women, Laetitia! I cannot imagine them de
trop in Italy, or in a household. I have of course reason to be partial
in my judgement."

"They are excellent and most amiable ladies; I love them," said
Laetitia, fervently; the more strongly excited to fervour by her
enlightenment as to his drift.

She read it that he designed to take her to Italy with the ladies:
--after giving Miss Middleton her liberty; that was necessarily
implied. And that was truly generous. In his boyhood he had been famous
for his bountifulness in scattering silver and gold. Might he not have
caused himself to be misperused in later life?

Clara had spoken to her of the visit and mission of the ladies to the
library: and Laetitia daringly conceived herself to be on the certain
track of his meaning, she being able to enjoy their society as she
supposed him to consider that Miss Middleton did not, and would not
either abroad or at home.

Sir Willoughby asked her: "You could travel with them?"

"Indeed I could!"

"Honestly?"

"As affirmatively as one may protest. Delightedly."

"Agreed. It is an undertaking." He put his hand out.

"Whether I be of the party or not! To Italy, Laetitia! It would give me
pleasure to be with you, and it will, if I must be excluded, to think
of you in Italy."

His hand was out. She had to feign inattention or yield her own. She
had not the effrontery to pretend not to see, and she yielded it. He
pressed it, and whenever it shrunk a quarter inch to withdraw, he shook
it up and down, as an instrument that had been lent him for due
emphasis to his remarks. And very emphatic an amorous orator can make
it upon a captive lady.

"I am unable to speak decisively on that or any subject. I am, I think
you once quoted, 'tossed like a weed on the ocean.' Of myself I can
speak: I cannot speak for a second person. I am infinitely harassed. If
I could cry, 'To Italy tomorrow!' Ah! . . . Do not set me down for
complaining. I know the lot of man. But, Laetitia, deceit! deceit! It
is a bad taste in the mouth. It sickens us of humanity. I compare it to
an earthquake: we lose all our reliance on the solidity of the world.
It is a betrayal not simply of the person; it is a betrayal of
humankind. My friend! Constant friend! No, I will not despair. Yes, I
have faults; I will remember them. Only, forgiveness is another
question. Yes, the injury I can forgive; the falseness never. In the
interests of humanity, no. So young, and such deceit!"

Laetitia's bosom rose: her hand was detained: a lady who has yielded it
cannot wrestle to have it back; those outworks which protect her
treacherously shelter the enemy aiming at the citadel when he has taken
them. In return for the silken armour bestowed on her by our
civilization, it is exacted that she be soft and civil nigh up to
perishing-point. She breathed tremulously high, saying on her
top-breath: "If it--it may not be so; it can scarcely. . ." A deep sigh
intervened. It saddened her that she knew so much.

"For when I love I love," said Sir Willoughby; "my friends and my
servants know that. There can be no medium: not with me. I give all, I
claim all. As I am absorbed, so must I absorb. We both cancel and
create, we extinguish and we illumine one another. The error may be in
the choice of an object: it is not in the passion. Perfect confidence,
perfect abandonment. I repeat, I claim it because I give it. The
selfishness of love may be denounced: it is a part of us. My answer
would be, it is an element only of the noblest of us! Love, Laetitia! I
speak of love. But one who breaks faith to drag us through the mire,
who betrays, betrays and hands us over to the world, whose prey we
become identically because of virtues we were educated to think it a
blessing to possess: tell me the name for that!--Again, it has ever
been a principle with me to respect the sex. But if we see women false,
treacherous . . . Why indulge in these abstract views, you would ask!
The world presses them on us, full as it is of the vilest specimens.
They seek to pluck up every rooted principle: they sneer at our
worship: they rob us of our religion. This bitter experience of the
world drives us back to the antidote of what we knew before we plunged
into it: of one . . . of something we esteemed and still esteem. Is
that antidote strong enough to expel the poison? I hope so! I believe
so! To lose faith in womankind is terrible."

He studied her. She looked distressed: she was not moved.

She was thinking that, with the exception of a strain of haughtiness,
he talked excellently to men, at least in the tone of the things he
meant to say; but that his manner of talking to women went to an excess
in the artificial tongue--the tutored tongue of sentimental deference
of the towering male: he fluted exceedingly; and she wondered whether
it was this which had wrecked him with Miss Middleton.

His intuitive sagacity counselled him to strive for pathos to move her.
It was a task; for while he perceived her to be not ignorant of his
plight, he doubted her knowing the extent of it, and as his desire was
merely to move her without an exposure of himself, he had to compass
being pathetic as it were under the impediments of a mailed and
gauntletted knight, who cannot easily heave the bosom, or show it
heaving.

Moreover, pathos is a tide: often it carries the awakener of it off his
feet, and whirls him over and over armour and all in ignominious
attitudes of helpless prostration, whereof he may well be ashamed in
the retrospect. We cannot quite preserve our dignity when we stoop to
the work of calling forth tears. Moses had probably to take a nimble
jump away from the rock after that venerable Law-giver had knocked the
water out of it.

However, it was imperative in his mind that he should be sure he had
the power to move her.

He began; clumsily at first, as yonder gauntletted knight attempting
the briny handkerchief.

"What are we! We last but a very short time. Why not live to gratify
our appetites? I might really ask myself why. All the means of
satiating them are at my disposal. But no: I must aim at the
highest:--at that which in my blindness I took for the highest. You
know the sportsman's instinct, Laetitia; he is not tempted by the
stationary object. Such are we in youth, toying with happiness, leaving
it, to aim at the dazzling and attractive."

"We gain knowledge," said Laetitia.

"At what a cost!"

The exclamation summoned self-pity to his aid, and pathos was handy.

"By paying half our lives for it and all our hopes! Yes, we gain
knowledge, we are the wiser; very probably my value surpasses now what
it was when I was happier. But the loss! That youthful bloom of the
soul is like health to the body; once gone, it leaves cripples behind.
Nay, my friend and precious friend, these four fingers I must retain.
They seem to me the residue of a wreck: you shall be released shortly:
absolutely, Laetitia, I have nothing else remaining--We have spoken of
deception; what of being undeceived?--when one whom we adored is laid
bare, and the wretched consolation of a worthy object is denied to us.
No misfortune can be like that. Were it death, we could worship still.
Death would be preferable. But may you be spared to know a situation in
which the comparison with your inferior is forced on you to your
disadvantage and your loss because of your generously giving up your
whole heart to the custody of some shallow, light-minded, self--! . . .
We will not deal in epithets. If I were to find as many bad names for
the serpent as there are spots on his body, it would be serpent still,
neither better nor worse. The loneliness! And the darkness! Our
luminary is extinguished. Self-respect refuses to continue
worshipping, but the affection will not be turned aside. We are
literally in the dust, we grovel, we would fling away self-respect if
we could; we would adopt for a model the creature preferred to us; we
would humiliate, degrade ourselves; we cry for justice as if it were
for pardon . . ."

"For pardon! when we are straining to grant it!" Laetitia murmured, and
it was as much as she could do. She remembered how in her old misery
her efforts after charity had twisted her round to feel herself the
sinner, and beg forgiveness in prayer: a noble sentiment, that filled
her with pity of the bosom in which it had sprung. There was no
similarity between his idea and hers, but her idea had certainly been
roused by his word "pardon", and he had the benefit of it in the
moisture of her eyes. Her lips trembled, tears fell.

He had heard something; he had not caught the words, but they were
manifestly favourable; her sign of emotion assured him of it and of the
success he had sought. There was one woman who bowed to him to all
eternity! He had inspired one woman with the mysterious, man-desired
passion of self-abandonment, self-immolation! The evidence was before
him. At any instant he could, if he pleased, fly to her and command her
enthusiasm.

He had, in fact, perhaps by sympathetic action, succeeded in striking
the same springs of pathos in her which animated his lively endeavour
to produce it in himself.

He kissed her hand; then released it, quitting his chair to bend above
her soothingly.

"Do not weep, Laetitia, you see that I do not; I can smile. Help me to
bear it; you must not unman me."

She tried to stop her crying, but self-pity threatened to rain all her
long years of grief on her head, and she said: "I must go . . . I am
unfit . . . good-night, Sir Willoughby."

Fearing seriously that he had sunk his pride too low in her
consideration, and had been carried farther than he intended on the
tide of pathos, he remarked: "We will speak about Crossjay to-morrow.
His deceitfulness has been gross. As I said, I am grievously offended
by deception. But you are tired. Good-night, my dear friend."

"Good-night, Sir Willoughby."

She was allowed to go forth.

Colonel De Craye coming up from the smoking-room, met her and noticed
the state of her eyelids, as he wished her goodnight. He saw Willoughby
in the room she had quitted, but considerately passed without speaking,
and without reflecting why he was considerate.

Our hero's review of the scene made him, on the whole, satisfied with
his part in it. Of his power upon one woman he was now perfectly
sure:--Clara had agonized him with a doubt of his personal mastery of
any. One was a poor feast, but the pangs of his flesh during the last
few days and the latest hours caused him to snatch at it, hungrily if
contemptuously. A poor feast, she was yet a fortress, a point of
succour, both shield and lance; a cover and an impetus. He could now
encounter Clara boldly. Should she resist and defy him, he would not be
naked and alone; he foresaw that he might win honour in the world's eye
from his position--a matter to be thought of only in most urgent need.
The effect on him of his recent exercise in pathos was to compose him
to slumber. He was for the period well satisfied.

His attendant imps were well satisfied likewise, and danced around
about his bed after the vigilant gentleman had ceased to debate on the
question of his unveiling of himself past forgiveness of her to
Laetitia, and had surrendered to sleep the present direction of his
affairs.



CHAPTER XXXII

LAETITIA DALE DISCOVERS A SPIRITUAL CHANGE AND DR MIDDLETON A PHYSICAL

Clara tripped over the lawn in the early morning to Laetitia to greet
her. She broke away from a colloquy with Colonel De Craye under Sir
Willoughby's windows. The colonel had been one of the bathers, and he
stood like a circus-driver flicking a wet towel at Crossjay capering.

"My dear, I am very unhappy!" said Clara.

"My dear, I bring you news," Laetitia replied.

"Tell me. But the poor boy is to be expelled! He burst into Crossjay's
bedroom last night and dragged the sleeping boy out of bed to question
him, and he had the truth. That is one comfort: only Crossjay is to be
driven from the Hall, because he was untruthful previously--for me; to
serve me; really, I feel it was at my command. Crossjay will be out of
the way to-day, and has promised to come back at night to try to be
forgiven. You must help me, Laetitia."

"You are free, Clara! If you desire it, you have but to ask for your
freedom."

"You mean . . ."

"He will release you."

"You are sure?"

"We had a long conversation last night."

"I owe it to you?"

"Nothing is owing to me. He volunteered it."

Clara made as if to lift her eyes in apostrophe. "Professor Crooklyn!
Professor Crooklyn! I see. I did not guess that."

"Give credit for some generosity, Clara; you are unjust!"

"By and by: I will be more than just by and by. I will practise on the
trumpet: I will lecture on the greatness of the souls of men when we
know them thoroughly. At present we do but half know them, and we are
unjust. You are not deceived, Laetitia? There is to be no speaking to
papa? no delusions? You have agitated me. I feel myself a very small
person indeed. I feel I can understand those who admire him. He gives
me back my word simply? clearly? without--Oh, that long wrangle in
scenes and letters? And it will be arranged for papa and me to go not
later than to-morrow? Never shall I be able to explain to any one how I
fell into this! I am frightened at myself when I think of it. I take
the whole blame: I have been scandalous. And, dear Laetitia! you came
out so early in order to tell me?"

"I wished you to hear it."

"Take my heart."

"Present me with a part--but for good."

"Fie! But you have a right to say it."

"I mean no unkindness; but is not the heart you allude to an alarmingly
searching one?"

"Selfish it is, for I have been forgetting Crossjay. If we are going to
be generous, is not Crossjay to be forgiven? If it were only that the
boy's father is away fighting for his country, endangering his life day
by day, and for a stipend not enough to support his family, we are
bound to think of the boy! Poor dear silly lad! with his 'I say, Miss
Middleton, why wouldn't (some one) see my father when he came here to
call on him, and had to walk back ten miles in the rain?'--I could
almost fancy that did me mischief. . . But we have a splendid morning
after yesterday's rain. And we will be generous. Own, Laetitia, that it
is possible to gild the most glorious day of creation."

"Doubtless the spirit may do it and make its hues permanent," said
Laetitia.

"You to me, I to you, he to us. Well, then, if he does, it shall be one
of my heavenly days. Which is for the probation of experience. We are
not yet at sunset."

"Have you seen Mr. Whitford this morning?"

"He passed me."

"Do not imagine him ever ill-tempered."

"I had a governess, a learned lady, who taught me in person the
picturesqueness of grumpiness. Her temper was ever perfect, because she
was never in the wrong, but I being so, she was grumpy. She carried my
iniquity under her brows, and looked out on me through it. I was a
trying child."

Laetitia said, laughing: "I can believe it!"

"Yet I liked her and she liked me: we were a kind of foreground and
background: she threw me into relief and I was an apology for her
existence."

"You picture her to me."

"She says of me now that I am the only creature she has loved. Who
knows that I may not come to say the same of her?"

"You would plague her and puzzle her still."

"Have I plagued and puzzled Mr. Whitford?"

"He reminds you of her?"

"You said you had her picture."

"Ah! do not laugh at him. He is a true friend."

"The man who can be a friend is the man who will presume to be a
censor."

"A mild one."

"As to the sentence he pronounces, I am unable to speak, but his
forehead is Rhadamanthine condemnation."

"Dr Middleton!"

Clara looked round. "Who? I? Did you hear an echo of papa? He would
never have put Rhadamanthus over European souls, because it appears
that Rhadamanthus judged only the Asiatic; so you are wrong, Miss Dale.
My father is infatuated with Mr. Whitford. What can it be? We women
cannot sound the depths of scholars, probably because their pearls have
no value in our market; except when they deign to chasten an
impertinent; and Mr. Whitford stands aloof from any notice of small
fry. He is deep, studious, excellent; and does it not strike you that
if he descended among us he would be like a Triton ashore?"

Laetitia's habit of wholly subservient sweetness, which was her ideal
of the feminine, not yet conciliated with her acuter character, owing
to the absence of full pleasure from her life--the unhealed wound she
had sustained and the cramp of a bondage of such old date as to seem
iron--induced her to say, as if consenting: "You think he is not quite
at home in society?" But she wished to defend him strenuously, and as a
consequence she had to quit the self-imposed ideal of her daily acting,
whereby--the case being unwonted, very novel to her--the lady's
intelligence became confused through the process that quickened it; so
sovereign a method of hoodwinking our bright selves is the acting of a
part, however naturally it may come to us! and to this will each honest
autobiographical member of the animated world bear witness.

She added: "You have not found him sympathetic? He is. You fancy him
brooding, gloomy? He is the reverse, he is cheerful, he is indifferent
to personal misfortune. Dr. Corney says there is no laugh like Vernon
Whitford's, and no humour like his. Latterly he certainly . . . But it
has not been your cruel word grumpiness. The truth is, he is anxious
about Crossjay: and about other things; and he wants to leave. He is at
a disadvantage beside very lively and careless gentlemen at present,
but your 'Triton ashore' is unfair, it is ugly. He is, I can say, the
truest man I know."

"I did not question his goodness, Laetitia."

"You threw an accent on it."

"Did I? I must be like Crossjay, who declares he likes fun best."

"Crossjay ought to know him, if anybody should. Mr. Whitford has
defended you against me, Clara, even since I took to calling you Clara.
Perhaps when you supposed him so like your ancient governess, he was
meditating how he could aid you. Last night he gave me reasons for
thinking you would do wisely to confide in Mrs. Mountstuart. It is no
longer necessary. I merely mention it. He is a devoted friend."

"He is an untiring pedestrian."

"Oh!"

Colonel De Craye, after hovering near the ladies in the hope of seeing
them divide, now adopted the system of making three that two may come
of it.

As he joined them with his glittering chatter, Laetitia looked at Clara
to consult her, and saw the face rosy as a bride's.

The suspicion she had nursed sprung out of her arms a muscular fact on
the spot.

"Where is my dear boy?" Clara said.

"Out for a holiday," the colonel answered in her tone.

"Advise Mr. Whitford not to waste his time in searching for Crossjay,
Laetitia. Crossjay is better out of the way to-day. At least, I thought
so just now. Has he pocket-money, Colonel De Craye?"

"My lord can command his inn."

"How thoughtful you are!"

Laetitia's bosom swelled upon a mute exclamation, equivalent to:
"Woman! woman! snared ever by the sparkling and frivolous!
undiscerning of the faithful, the modest and beneficent!"

In the secret musings of moralists this dramatic rhetoric survives.

The comparison was all of her own making, and she was indignant at the
contrast, though to what end she was indignant she could not have said,
for she had no idea of Vernon as a rival of De Craye in the favour of a
plighted lady. But she was jealous on behalf of her sex: her sex's
reputation seemed at stake, and the purity of it was menaced by Clara's
idle preference of the shallower man. When the young lady spoke so
carelessly of being like Crossjay, she did not perhaps know that a
likeness, based on a similarity of their enthusiasms, loves, and
appetites, had been established between women and boys. Laetitia had
formerly chafed at it, rejecting it utterly, save when now and then in
a season of bitterness she handed here and there a volatile young lady
(none but the young) to be stamped with the degrading brand. Vernon
might be as philosophical as he pleased. To her the gaiety of these
two, Colonel De Craye and Clara Middleton, was distressingly musical:
they harmonized painfully. The representative of her sex was hurt by
it.

She had to stay beside them: Clara held her arm. The colonel's voice
dropped at times to something very like a whisper. He was answered
audibly and smoothly. The quickwitted gentleman accepted the
correction: but in immediately paying assiduous attentions to Miss
Dale, in the approved intriguer's fashion, he showed himself in need of
another amounting to a reproof. Clara said: "We have been consulting,
Laetitia, what is to be done to cure Professor Crooklyn of his cold."
De Craye perceived that he had taken a wrong step, and he was mightily
surprised that a lesson in intrigue should be read to him of all men.
Miss Middleton's audacity was not so astonishing: he recognized grand
capabilities in the young lady. Fearing lest she should proceed further
and cut away from him his vantage-ground of secrecy with her, he turned
the subject and was adroitly submissive.

Clara's manner of meeting Sir Willoughby expressed a timid disposition
to friendliness upon a veiled inquiry, understood by none save
Laetitia, whose brain was racked to convey assurances to herself of her
not having misinterpreted him. Could there be any doubt? She resolved
that there could not be; and it was upon this basis of reason that she
fancied she had led him to it. Legitimate or not, the fancy sprang from
a solid foundation. Yesterday morning she could not have conceived it.
Now she was endowed to feel that she had power to influence him,
because now, since the midnight, she felt some emancipation from the
spell of his physical mastery. He did not appear to her as a different
man, but she had grown sensible of being a stronger woman. He was no
more the cloud over her, nor the magnet; the cloud once
heaven-suffused, the magnet fatally compelling her to sway round to
him. She admired him still: his handsome air, his fine proportions, the
courtesy of his bending to Clara and touching of her hand, excused a
fanatical excess of admiration on the part of a woman in her youth, who
is never the anatomist of the hero's lordly graces. But now she admired
him piecemeal. When it came to the putting of him together, she did it
coldly. To compassionate him was her utmost warmth. Without conceiving
in him anything of the strange old monster of earth which had struck
the awakened girl's mind of Miss Middleton, Laetitia classed him with
other men; he was "one of them". And she did not bring her
disenchantment as a charge against him. She accused herself,
acknowledged the secret of the change to be, and her youthfulness was
dead:--otherwise could she have given him compassion, and not herself
have been carried on the flood of it? The compassion was fervent, and
pure too. She supposed he would supplicate; she saw that Clara
Middleton was pleasant with him only for what she expected of his
generosity. She grieved. Sir Willoughby was fortified by her sorrowful
gaze as he and Clara passed out together to the laboratory arm in arm.

Laetitia had to tell Vernon of the uselessness of his beating the house
and grounds for Crossjay. Dr. Middleton held him fast in discussion
upon an overnight's classical wrangle with Professor Crooklyn, which
was to be renewed that day. The Professor had appointed to call
expressly to renew it. "A fine scholar," said the Rev. Doctor, "but
crotchety, like all men who cannot stand their Port."

"I hear that he had a cold," Vernon remarked. "I hope the wine was
good, sir."

As when the foreman of a sentimental jury is commissioned to inform an
awful Bench exact in perspicuous English, of a verdict that must of
necessity be pronounced in favour of the hanging of the culprit, yet
would fain attenuate the crime of a palpable villain by a
recommendation to mercy, such foreman, standing in the attentive eye of
a master of grammatical construction, and feeling the weight of at
least three sentences on his brain, together with a prospect of
Judicial interrogation for the discovery of his precise meaning, is
oppressed, himself is put on trial, in turn, and he hesitates, he
recapitulates, the fear of involution leads him to be involved; as far
as a man so posted may, he on his own behalf appeals for mercy;
entreats that his indistinct statement of preposterous reasons may be
taken for understood, and would gladly, were permission to do it
credible, throw in an imploring word that he may sink back among the
crowd without for the one imperishable moment publicly swinging in his
lordship's estimation:--much so, moved by chivalry toward a lady,
courtesy to the recollection of a hostess, and particularly by the
knowledge that his hearer would expect with a certain frigid rigour
charity of him, Dr. Middleton paused, spoke and paused: he stammered.
Ladies, he said, were famous poisoners in the Middle Ages. His opinion
was, that we had a class of manufacturing wine merchants on the watch
for widows in this country. But he was bound to state the fact of his
waking at his usual hour to the minute unassailed by headache. On the
other hand, this was a condition of blessedness unanticipated when he
went to bed. Mr. Whitford, however, was not to think that he
entertained rancour toward the wine. It was no doubt dispensed with the
honourable intention of cheering. In point of flavour execrable,
judging by results it was innocuous.

"The test of it shall be the effect of it upon Professor Crooklyn, and
his appearance in the forenoon according to promise," Dr. Middleton
came to an end with his perturbed balancings. "If I hear more of the
eight or twelve winds discharged at once upon a railway platform, and
the young lady who dries herself of a drenching by drinking brandy and
water with a gentleman at a railway inn, I shall solicit your sanction
to my condemnation of the wine as anti-Bacchic and a counterfeit
presentment. Do not misjudge me. Our hostess is not responsible. But
widows should marry."

"You must contrive to stop the Professor, sir, if he should attack his
hostess in that manner," said Vernon.

"Widows should marry!" Dr. Middleton repeated.

He murmured of objecting to be at the discretion of a butler; unless,
he was careful to add, the aforesaid functionary could boast of an
University education; and even then, said he, it requires a line of
ancestry to train a man's taste.

The Rev. Doctor smothered a yawn. The repression of it caused a second
one, a real monster, to come, big as our old friend of the sea
advancing on the chained-up Beauty.

Disconcerted by this damning evidence of indigestion, his countenance
showed that he considered himself to have been too lenient to the wine
of an unhusbanded hostess. He frowned terribly.

In the interval Laetitia told Vernon of Crossjay's flight for the day,
hastily bidding the master to excuse him: she had no time to hint the
grounds of excuse. Vernon mentally made a guess.

Dr Middleton took his arm and discharged a volley at the crotchetty
scholarship of Professor Crooklyn, whom to confute by book, he directed
his march to the library. Having persuaded himself that he was
dyspeptic, he had grown irascible. He denounced all dining out,
eulogized Patterne Hall as if it were his home, and remembered he had
dreamed in the night--a most humiliating sign of physical disturbance.
"But let me find a house in proximity to Patterne, as I am induced to
suppose I shall," he said, "and here only am I to be met when I stir
abroad."

Laetitia went to her room. She was complacently anxious enough to
prefer solitude and be willing to read. She was more seriously anxious
about Crossjay than about any of the others. For Clara would be certain
to speak very definitely, and how then could a gentleman oppose her? He
would supplicate, and could she be brought to yield? It was not to be
expected of a young lady who had turned from Sir Willoughby. His
inferiors would have had a better chance. Whatever his faults, he had
that element of greatness which excludes the intercession of pity.
Supplication would be with him a form of condescension. It would be
seen to be such. His was a monumental pride that could not stoop. She
had preserved this image of the gentleman for a relic in the shipwreck
of her idolatry. So she mused between the lines of her book, and
finishing her reading and marking the page, she glanced down on the
lawn. Dr. Middleton was there, and alone; his hands behind his back,
his head bent. His meditative pace and unwonted perusal of the turf
proclaimed that a non-sentimental jury within had delivered an
unmitigated verdict upon the widow's wine.

Laetitia hurried to find Vernon.

He was in the hall. As she drew near him, the laboratory door opened
and shut.

"It is being decided," said Laetitia.

Vernon was paler than the hue of perfect calmness.

"I want to know whether I ought to take to my heels like Crossjay, and
shun the Professor," he said.

They spoke in under-tones, furtively watching the door.

"I wish what she wishes, I am sure; but it will go badly with the boy,"
said Laetitia.

"Oh, well, then I'll take him," said Vernon, "I would rather. I think I
can manage it."

Again the laboratory door opened. This time it shut behind Miss
Middleton. She was highly flushed. Seeing them, she shook the storm
from her brows, with a dead smile; the best piece of serenity she could
put on for public wear.

She took a breath before she moved.

Vernon strode out of the house.

Clara swept up to Laetitia.

"You were deceived!"

The hard sob of anger barred her voice.

Laetitia begged her to come to her room with her.

"I want air: I must be by myself," said Clara, catching at her
garden-hat.

She walked swiftly to the portico steps and turned to the right, to
avoid the laboratory windows.



CHAPTER XXXIII

IN WHICH THE COMIC MUSE HAS AN EYE ON TWO GOOD SOULS

Clara met Vernon on the bowling-green among the laurels. She asked him
where her father was.

"Don't speak to him now," said Vernon.

"Mr. Whitford, will you?"

"It is not advisable just now. Wait."

"Wait? Why not now?"

"He is not in the right humour."

She choked. There are times when there is no medicine for us in sages,
we want slaves; we scorn to temporize, we must overbear. On she sped,
as if she had made the mistake of exchanging words with a post.

The scene between herself and Willoughby was a thick mist in her head,
except the burden and result of it, that he held to her fast, would
neither assist her to depart nor disengage her.

Oh, men! men! They astounded the girl; she could not define them to her
understanding. Their motives, their tastes, their vanity, their
tyranny, and the domino on their vanity, the baldness of their tyranny,
clinched her in feminine antagonism to brute power. She was not the
less disposed to rebellion by a very present sense of the justice of
what could be said to reprove her. She had but one answer: "Anything
but marry him!" It threw her on her nature, our last and headlong
advocate, who is quick as the flood to hurry us from the heights to our
level, and lower, if there be accidental gaps in the channel. For say
we have been guilty of misconduct: can we redeem it by violating that
which we are and live by? The question sinks us back to the
luxuriousness of a sunny relinquishment of effort in the direction
against tide. Our nature becomes ingenious in devices, penetrative of
the enemy, confidently citing its cause for being frankly elvish or
worse. Clara saw a particular way of forcing herself to be
surrendered. She shut her eyes from it: the sight carried her too
violently to her escape; but her heart caught it up and huzzaed. To
press the points of her fingers at her bosom, looking up to the sky as
she did, and cry: "I am not my own; I am his!" was instigation
sufficient to make her heart leap up with all her body's blush to urge
it to recklessness. A despairing creature then may say she has
addressed the heavens and has had no answer to restrain her.

Happily for Miss Middleton, she had walked some minutes in her chafing
fit before the falcon eye of Colonel De Craye spied her away on one of
the beech-knots.

Vernon stood irresolute. It was decidedly not a moment for disturbing
Dr. Middleton's composure. He meditated upon a conversation, as
friendly as possible, with Willoughby. Round on the front-lawn, he
beheld Willoughby and Dr. Middleton together, the latter having halted
to lend attentive ear to his excellent host. Unnoticed by them or
disregarded, Vernon turned back to Laetitia, and sauntered, talking
with her of things current for as long as he could endure to listen to
praise of his pure self-abnegation; proof of how well he had disguised
himself, but it smacked unpleasantly to him. His humourous intimacy
with men's minds likened the source of this distaste to the gallant
all-or-nothing of the gambler, who hates the little when he cannot have
the much, and would rather stalk from the tables clean-picked than
suffer ruin to be tickled by driblets of the glorious fortune he has
played for and lost. If we are not to be beloved, spare us the small
coin of compliments on character; especially when they compliment only
our acting. It is partly endurable to win eulogy for our stately
fortitude in losing, but Laetitia was unaware that he flung away a
stake; so she could not praise him for his merits.

"Willoughby makes the pardoning of Crossjay conditional," he said, "and
the person pleading for him has to grant the terms. How could you
imagine Willoughby would give her up! How could he! Who! . . . He
should, is easily said. I was no witness of the scene between them just
now, but I could have foretold the end of it; I could almost recount
the passages. The consequence is, that everything depends upon the
amount of courage she possesses. Dr. Middleton won't leave Patterne
yet. And it is of no use to speak to him to-day. And she is by nature
impatient, and is rendered desperate."

"Why is it of no use to speak to Dr. Middleton today?" cried Laetitia.

"He drank wine yesterday that did not agree with him; he can't work.
To-day he is looking forward to Patterne Port. He is not likely to
listen to any proposals to leave to-day."

"Goodness!"

"I know the depth of that cry!"

"You are excluded, Mr. Whitford."

"Not a bit of it; I am in with the rest. Say that men are to be
exclaimed at. Men have a right to expect you to know your own minds
when you close on a bargain. You don't know the world or yourselves
very well, it's true; still the original error is on your side, and
upon that you should fix your attention. She brought her father here,
and no sooner was he very comfortably established than she wished to
dislocate him."

"I cannot explain it; I cannot comprehend it," said Laetitia.

"You are Constancy."

"No." She coloured. "I am 'in with rest'. I do not say I should have
done the same. But I have the knowledge that I must not sit in
judgement on her. I can waver."

She coloured again. She was anxious that he should know her to be not
that stupid statue of Constancy in a corner doating on the antic
Deception. Reminiscences of the interview overnight made it oppressive
to her to hear herself praised for always pointing like the needle. Her
newly enfranchised individuality pressed to assert its existence.
Vernon, however, not seeing this novelty, continued, to her excessive
discomfort, to baste her old abandoned image with his praises. They
checked hers; and, moreover, he had suddenly conceived an envy of her
life-long, uncomplaining, almost unaspiring, constancy of sentiment. If
you know lovers when they have not reason to be blissful, you will
remember that in this mood of admiring envy they are given to fits of
uncontrollable maundering. Praise of constancy, moreover, smote
shadowily a certain inconstant, enough to seem to ruffle her smoothness
and do no hurt. He found his consolation in it, and poor Laetitia
writhed. Without designing to retort, she instinctively grasped at a
weapon of defence in further exalting his devotedness; which reduced
him to cast his head to the heavens and implore them to partially
enlighten her. Nevertheless, maunder he must; and he recurred to it in
a way so utterly unlike himself that Laetitia stared in his face. She
wondered whether there could be anything secreted behind this
everlasting theme of constancy. He took her awakened gaze for a summons
to asseverations of sincerity, and out they came. She would have fled
from him, but to think of flying was to think how little it was that
urged her to fly, and yet the thought of remaining and listening to
praises undeserved and no longer flattering, was a torture.

"Mr. Whitford, I bear no comparison with you."

"I do and must set you for my example, Miss Dale."

"Indeed, you do wrongly; you do not know me."

"I could say that. For years . . ."

"Pray, Mr. Whitford!"

"Well, I have admired it. You show us how self can be smothered."

"An echo would be a retort on you!"

"On me? I am never thinking of anything else."

"I could say that."

"You are necessarily conscious of not swerving."

"But I do; I waver dreadfully; I am not the same two days running."

"You are the same, with 'ravishing divisions' upon the same."

"And you without the 'divisions.' I draw such support as I have from
you."

"From some simulacrum of me, then. And that will show you how little
you require support."

"I do not speak my own opinion only."

"Whose?"

"I am not alone."

"Again let me say, I wish I were like you!"

"Then let me add, I would willingly make the exchange!"

"You would be amazed at your bargain."

"Others would be!"

"Your exchange would give me the qualities I'm in want of, Miss Dale."

"Negative, passive, at the best, Mr. Whitford. But I should have . . ."

"Oh!--pardon me. But you inflict the sensations of a boy, with a dose
of honesty in him, called up to receive a prize he has won by the
dexterous use of a crib."

"And how do you suppose she feels who has a crown of Queen o' the May
forced on her head when she is verging on November?"

He rejected her analogy, and she his. They could neither of them bring
to light the circumstances which made one another's admiration so
unbearable. The more he exalted her for constancy, the more did her
mind become bent upon critically examining the object of that imagined
virtue; and the more she praised him for possessing the spirit of
perfect friendliness, the fiercer grew the passion in him which
disdained the imputation, hissing like a heated iron-bar that flings
the waterdrops to steam. He would none of it; would rather have stood
exposed in his profound foolishness.

Amiable though they were, and mutually affectionate, they came to a
stop in their walk, longing to separate, and not seeing how it was to
be done, they had so knit themselves together with the pelting of their
interlaudation.

"I think it is time for me to run home to my father for an hour," said
Laetitia.

"I ought to be working," said Vernon.

Good progress was made to the disgarlanding of themselves thus far;
yet, an acutely civilized pair, the abruptness of the transition from
floweriness to commonplace affected them both, Laetitia chiefly, as she
had broken the pause, and she remarked:--"I am really Constancy in my
opinions."

"Another title is customary where stiff opinions are concerned. Perhaps
by and by you will learn your mistake, and then you will acknowledge
the name for it."

"How?" said she. "What shall I learn?"

"If you learn that I am a grisly Egoist?"

"You? And it would not be egoism," added Laetitia, revealing to him at
the same instant as to herself that she swung suspended on a scarce
credible guess.

"--Will nothing pierce your ears, Mr. Whitford?"

He heard the intruding voice, but he was bent on rubbing out the cloudy
letters Laetitia had begun to spell, and he stammered, in a tone of
matter-of-fact: "Just that and no better"; then turned to Mrs.
Mountstuart Jenkinson.

"--Or are you resolved you will never see Professor Crooklyn when you
look on him?" said the great lady.

Vernon bowed to the Professor and apologized to him shufflingly and
rapidly, incoherently, and with a red face; which induced Mrs.
Mountstuart to scan Laetitia's.

After lecturing Vernon for his abandonment of her yesterday evening,
and flouting his protestations, she returned to the business of the
day. "We walked from the lodge-gates to see the park and prepare
ourselves for Dr. Middleton. We parted last night in the middle of a
controversy and are rageing to resume it. Where is our redoubtable
antagonist?"

Mrs. Mountstuart wheeled Professor Crooklyn round to accompany Vernon.

"We," she said, "are for modern English scholarship, opposed to the
champion of German."

"The contrary," observed Professor Crooklyn.

"Oh! We," she corrected the error serenely, "are for German scholarship
opposed to English."

"Certain editions."

"We defend certain editions."

"Defend is a term of imperfect application to my position, ma'am."

"My dear Professor, you have in Dr. Middleton a match for you in
conscientious pugnacity, and you will not waste it upon me. There,
there they are; there he is. Mr. Whitford will conduct you. I stand
away from the first shock."

Mrs. Mountstuart fell back to Laetitia, saying: "He pores over a little
inexactitude in phrases, and pecks at it like a domestic fowl."

Professor Crooklyn's attitude and air were so well described that
Laetitia could have laughed.

"These mighty scholars have their flavour," the great lady hastened to
add, lest her younger companion should be misled to suppose that they
were not valuable to a governing hostess: "their shadow-fights are
ridiculous, but they have their flavour at a table. Last night, no: I
discard all mention of last night. We failed: as none else in this
neighbourhood could fail, but we failed. If we have among us a
cormorant devouring young lady who drinks up all the--ha!--brandy and
water--of our inns and occupies all our flys, why, our condition is
abnormal, and we must expect to fail: we are deprived of accommodation
for accidental circumstances. How Mr. Whitford could have missed seeing
Professor Crooklyn! And what was he doing at the station, Miss Dale?"

"Your portrait of Professor Crooklyn was too striking, Mrs Mountstuart,
and deceived him by its excellence. He appears to have seen only the
blank side of the slate."

"Ah! He is a faithful friend of his cousin, do you not think?"

"He is the truest of friends."

"As for Dr. Middleton," Mrs. Mountstuart diverged from her inquiry, "he
will swell the letters of my vocabulary to gigantic proportions if I
see much of him: he is contagious."

"I believe it is a form of his humour."

"I caught it of him yesterday at my dinner-table in my distress, and
must pass it off as a form of mine, while it lasts. I talked Dr.
Middleton half the dreary night through to my pillow. Your candid
opinion, my dear, come! As for me, I don't hesitate. We seemed to have
sat down to a solitary performance on the bass-viol. We were positively
an assembly of insects during thunder. My very soul thanked Colonel De
Craye for his diversions, but I heard nothing but Dr. Middleton. It
struck me that my table was petrified, and every one sat listening to
bowls played overhead."

"I was amused."

"Really? You delight me. Who knows but that my guests were sincere in
their congratulations on a thoroughly successful evening? I have fallen
to this, you see! And I know, wretched people! that as often as not it
is their way of condoling with one. I do it myself: but only where
there have been amiable efforts. But imagine my being congratulated for
that!--Good-morning, Sir Willoughby.--The worst offender! and I am in
no pleasant mood with him," Mrs. Mountstuart said aside to Laetitia,
who drew back, retiring.

Sir Willoughby came on a step or two. He stopped to watch Laetitia's
figure swimming to the house.

So, as, for instance, beside a stream, when a flower on the surface
extends its petals drowning to subside in the clear still water, we
exercise our privilege to be absent in the charmed contemplation of a
beautiful natural incident.

A smile of pleased abstraction melted on his features.



CHAPTER XXXIV

MRS. MOUNTSTUART AND SIR WILLOUGHBY

"Good morning, my dear Mrs. Mountstuart," Sir Willoughby wakened
himself to address the great lady. "Why has she fled?"

"Has any one fled?"

"Laetitia Dale."

"Letty Dale? Oh, if you call that flying. Possibly to renew a close
conversation with Vernon Whitford, that I cut short. You frightened me
with your 'Shepherds-tell-me' air and tone. Lead me to one of your
garden-seats: out of hearing to Dr. Middleton, I beg. He mesmerizes me,
he makes me talk Latin. I was curiously susceptible last night. I know
I shall everlastingly associate him with an abortive entertainment and
solos on big instruments. We were flat."

"Horace was in good vein."

"You were not."

"And Laetitia--Miss Dale talked well, I thought."

"She talked with you, and no doubt she talked well. We did not mix. The
yeast was bad. You shot darts at Colonel De Craye: you tried to sting.
You brought Dr. Middleton down on you. Dear me, that man is a
reverberation in my head. Where is your lady and love?"

"Who?"

"Am I to name her?"

"Clara? I have not seen her for the last hour. Wandering, I suppose."

"A very pretty summer bower," said Mrs. Mountstuart, seating herself
"Well, my dear Sir Willoughby, preferences, preferences are not to be
accounted for, and one never knows whether to pity or congratulate,
whatever may occur. I want to see Miss Middleton."

"Your 'dainty rogue in porcelain' will be at your beck--you lunch with
us?--before you leave."

"So now you have taken to quoting me, have you?"

"But 'a romantic tale on her eyelashes' is hardly descriptive any
longer."

"Descriptive of whom? Now you are upon Laetitia Dale!"

"I quote you generally. She has now a graver look."

"And well may have!"

"Not that the romance has entirely disappeared."

"No; it looks as if it were in print."

"You have hit it perfectly, as usual, ma'am."

Sir Willoughby mused.

Like one resuming his instrument to take up the melody in a concerted
piece, he said: "I thought Laetitia Dale had a singularly animated air
last night."

"Why!--" Mrs. Mountstuart mildly gaped.

"I want a new description of her. You know, I collect your mottoes and
sentences."

"It seems to me she is coming three parts out of her shell, and wearing
it as a hood for convenience."

"Ready to issue forth at an invitation? Admirable! exact!"

"Ay, my good Sir Willoughby, but are we so very admirable and exact?
Are we never to know our own minds?"

He produced a polysyllabic sigh, like those many-jointed compounds of
poets in happy languages, which are copious in a single expression:
"Mine is known to me. It always has been. Cleverness in women is not
uncommon. Intellect is the pearl. A woman of intellect is as good as a
Greek statue; she is divinely wrought, and she is divinely rare."

"Proceed," said the lady, confiding a cough to the air.

"The rarity of it: and it is not mere intellect, it is a sympathetic
intellect; or else it is an intellect in perfect accord with an
intensely sympathetic disposition;--the rarity of it makes it too
precious to be parted with when once we have met it. I prize it the
more the older I grow."

"Are we on the feminine or the neuter?"

"I beg pardon?"

"The universal or the individual?"

He shrugged. "For the rest, psychological affinities may exist
coincident with and entirely independent of material or moral
prepossessions, relations, engagements, ties."

"Well, that is not the raving of passion, certainly," said Mrs
Mountstuart, "and it sounds as if it were a comfortable doctrine for
men. On that plea, you might all of you be having Aspasia and a wife.
We saw your fair Middleton and Colonel de Craye at a distance as we
entered the park. Professor Crooklyn is under some hallucination."

"What more likely?"

The readiness and the double-bearing of the reply struck her comic
sense with awe.

"The Professor must hear that. He insists on the fly, and the inn, and
the wet boots, and the warming mixture, and the testimony of the
landlady and the railway porter."

"I say, what more likely?"

"Than that he should insist?"

"If he is under the hallucination!"

"He may convince others."

"I have only to repeat. . ."

"'What more likely?' It's extremely philosophical. Coincident with a
pursuit of the psychological affinities."

"Professor Crooklyn will hardly descend, I suppose, from his classical
altitudes to lay his hallucinations before Dr. Middleton?"

"Sir Willoughby, you are the pink of chivalry!"

By harping on Laetitia, he had emboldened Mrs. Mountstuart to lift the
curtain upon Clara. It was offensive to him, but the injury done to his
pride had to be endured for the sake of his general plan of
self-protection.

"Simply desirous to save my guests from annoyance of any kind", he
said. "Dr Middleton can look 'Olympus and thunder', as Vernon calls
it."

"Don't. I see him. That look! It is Dictionary-bitten! Angry, homed
Dictionary!--an apparition of Dictionary in the night--to a dunce!"

"One would undergo a good deal to avoid the sight."

"What the man must be in a storm! Speak as you please of yourself: you
are a true and chivalrous knight to dread it for her. But now,
candidly, how is it you cannot condescend to a little management?
Listen to an old friend. You are too lordly. No lover can afford to be
incomprehensible for half an hour. Stoop a little. Sermonizings are
not to be thought of. You can govern unseen. You are to know that I am
one who disbelieves in philosophy in love. I admire the look of it, I
give no credit to the assumption. I rather like lovers to be out at
times: it makes them picturesque, and it enlivens their monotony. I
perceived she had a spot of wildness. It's proper that she should wear
it off before marriage."

"Clara? The wildness of an infant!" said Willoughby, paternally, musing
over an inward shiver. "You saw her at a distance just now, or you
might have heard her laughing. Horace diverts her excessively."

"I owe him my eternal gratitude for his behaviour last night. She was
one of my bright faces. Her laughter was delicious; rain in the desert!
It will tell you what the load on me was, when I assure you those two
were merely a spectacle to me--points I scored in a lost game. And I
know they were witty."

"They both have wit; a kind of wit," Willoughby assented.

"They struck together like a pair of cymbals."

"Not the highest description of instrument. However, they amuse me. I
like to hear them when I am in the vein."

"That vein should be more at command with you, my friend. You can be
perfect, if you like."

"Under your tuition."

Willoughby leaned to her, bowing languidly. He was easier in his pain
for having hoodwinked the lady. She was the outer world to him; she
could tune the world's voice; prescribe which of the two was to be
pitied, himself or Clara; and he did not intend it to be himself, if it
came to the worst. They were far away from that at present, and he
continued:

"Probably a man's power of putting on a face is not equal to a girl's.
I detest petty dissensions. Probably I show it when all is not quite
smooth. Little fits of suspicion vex me. It is a weakness, not to play
them off, I know. Men have to learn the arts which come to women by
nature. I don't sympathize with suspicion, from having none myself."

His eyebrows shot up. That ill-omened man Flitch had sidled round by
the bushes to within a few feet of him. Flitch primarily defended
himself against the accusation of drunkenness, which was hurled at him
to account for his audacity in trespassing against the interdict; but
he admitted that he had taken "something short" for a fortification in
visiting scenes where he had once been happy--at Christmastide, when
all the servants, and the butler at head, grey old Mr. Chessington, sat
in rows, toasting the young heir of the old Hall in the old port wine!
Happy had he been then, before ambition for a shop, to be his own
master and an independent gentleman, had led him into his quagmire:--to
look back envying a dog on the old estate, and sigh for the smell of
Patterne stables: sweeter than Arabia, his drooping nose appeared to
say.

He held up close against it something that imposed silence on Sir
Willoughby as effectively as a cunning exordium in oratory will enchain
mobs to swallow what is not complimenting them; and this he displayed
secure in its being his licence to drivel his abominable pathos. Sir
Willoughby recognized Clara's purse. He understood at once how the must
have come by it: he was not so quick in devising a means of stopping
the tale. Flitch foiled him. "Intact," he replied to the question:
"What have you there?" He repeated this grand word. And then he turned
to Mrs. Mountstuart to speak of Paradise and Adam, in whom he saw the
prototype of himself: also the Hebrew people in the bondage of Egypt,
discoursed of by the clergymen, not without a likeness to him.

"Sorrows have done me one good, to send me attentive to church, my
lady," said Flitch, "when I might have gone to London, the coachman's
home, and been driving some honourable family, with no great advantage
to my morals, according to what I hear of. And a purse found under the
seat of a fly in London would have a poor chance of returning intact to
the young lady losing it."

"Put it down on that chair; inquiries will be made, and you will see
Sir Willoughby," said Mrs. Mountstuart. "Intact, no doubt; it is not
disputed."

With one motion of a finger she set the man rounding.

Flitch halted; he was very regretful of the termination of his feast of
pathos, and he wished to relate the finding of the purse, but he could
not encounter Mrs. Mountstuart's look; he slouched away in very close
resemblance to the ejected Adam of illustrated books.

"It's my belief that naturalness among the common people has died out
of the kingdom," she said.

Willoughby charitably apologized for him. "He has been fuddling
himself."

Her vigilant considerateness had dealt the sensitive gentleman a shock,
plainly telling him she had her ideas of his actual posture. Nor was he
unhurt by her superior acuteness and her display of authority on his
grounds.

He said, boldly, as he weighed the purse, half tossing it: "It's not
unlike Clara's."

He feared that his lips and cheeks were twitching, and as he grew aware
of a glassiness of aspect that would reflect any suspicion of a
keen-eyed woman, he became bolder still!

"Laetitia's, I know it is not. Hers is an ancient purse."

"A present from you!"

"How do you hit on that, my dear lady?"

"Deductively."

"Well, the purse looks as good as new in quality, like the owner."

"The poor dear has not much occasion for using it."

"You are mistaken: she uses it daily."

"If it were better filled, Sir Willoughby, your old scheme might be
arranged. The parties do not appear so unwilling. Professor Crooklyn
and I came on them just now rather by surprise, and I assure you their
heads were close, faces meeting, eyes musing."

"Impossible."

"Because when they approach the point, you won't allow it! Selfish!"

"Now," said Willoughby, very animatedly, "question Clara. Now, do, my
dear Mrs. Mountstuart, do speak to Clara on that head; she will
convince you I have striven quite recently against myself, if you like.
I have instructed her to aid me, given her the fullest instructions,
carte blanche. She cannot possibly have a doubt. I may look to her to
remove any you may entertain from your mind on the subject. I have
proposed, seconded, and chorussed it, and it will not be arranged. If
you expect me to deplore that fact, I can only answer that my actions
are under my control, my feelings are not. I will do everything
consistent with the duties of a man of honour perpetually running into
fatal errors because he did not properly consult the dictates of those
feelings at the right season. I can violate them: but I can no more
command them than I can my destiny. They were crushed of old, and so
let them be now. Sentiments we won't discuss; though you know that
sentiments have a bearing on social life: are factors, as they say in
their later jargon. I never speak of mine. To you I could. It is not
necessary. If old Vernon, instead of flattening his chest at a desk,
had any manly ambition to take part in public affairs, she would be the
woman for him. I have called her my Egeria. She would be his Cornelia.
One could swear of her that she would have noble offspring!--But old
Vernon has had his disappointment, and will moan over it up to the end.
And she? So it appears. I have tried; yes, personally: without effect.
In other matters I may have influence with her: not in that one. She
declines. She will live and die Laetitia Dale. We are alone: I confess
to you, I love the name. It's an old song in my ears. Do not be too
ready with a name for me. Believe me--I speak from my experience
hitherto--there is a fatality in these things. I cannot conceal from my
poor girl that this fatality exists . . ."

"Which is the poor girl at present?" said Mrs. Mountstuart, cool in a
mystification.

"And though she will tell you that I have authorized and Clara
Middleton--done as much as man can to institute the union you suggest,
she will own that she is conscious of the presence of this--fatality, I
call it for want of a better title between us. It drives her in one
direction, me in another--or would, if I submitted to the pressure. She
is not the first who has been conscious of it."

"Are we laying hold of a third poor girl?" said Mrs. Mountstuart. "Ah!
I remember. And I remember we used to call it playing fast and loose in
those days, not fatality. It is very strange. It may be that you were
unblushingly courted in those days, and excusable; and we all supposed
. . . but away you went for your tour."

"My mother's medical receipt for me. Partially it succeeded. She was
for grand marriages: not I. I could make, I could not be, a sacrifice.
And then I went in due time to Dr. Cupid on my own account. She has the
kind of attraction. . . But one changes! On revient toujours. First we
begin with a liking; then we give ourselves up to the passion of
beauty: then comes the serious question of suitableness of the mate to
match us; and perhaps we discover that we were wiser in early youth
than somewhat later. However, she has beauty. Now, Mrs Mountstuart,
you do admire her. Chase the idea of the 'dainty rogue' out of your
view of her: you admire her: she is captivating; she has a particular
charm of her own, nay, she has real beauty."

Mrs. Mountstuart fronted him to say: "Upon my word, my dear Sir
Willoughby, I think she has it to such a degree that I don't know the
man who could hold out against her if she took the field. She is one of
the women who are dead shots with men. Whether it's in their tongues or
their eyes, or it's an effusion and an atmosphere--whatever it is,
it's a spell, another fatality for you!"

"Animal; not spiritual!"

"Oh, she hasn't the head of Letty Dale."

Sir Willoughby allowed Mrs. Mountstuart to pause and follow her
thoughts.

"Dear me!" she exclaimed. "I noticed a change in Letty Dale last night;
and to-day. She looked fresher and younger; extremely well: which is
not what I can say for you, my friend. Fatalizing is not good for the
complexion."

"Don't take away my health, pray," cried Willoughby, with a snapping
laugh.

"Be careful," said Mrs. Mountstuart. "You have got a sentimental tone.
You talk of 'feelings crushed of old'. It is to a woman, not to a man
that you speak, but that sort of talk is a way of making the ground
slippery. I listen in vain for a natural tongue; and when I don't hear
it, I suspect plotting in men. You show your under-teeth too at times
when you draw in a breath, like a condemned high-caste Hindoo my
husband took me to see in a jail in Calcutta, to give me some
excitement when I was pining for England. The creature did it regularly
as he breathed; you did it last night, and you have been doing it
to-day, as if the air cut you to the quick. You have been spoilt. You
have been too much anointed. What I've just mentioned is a sign with me
of a settled something on the brain of a man."

"The brain?" said Sir Willoughby, frowning.

"Yes, you laugh sourly, to look at," said she. "Mountstuart told me
that the muscles of the mouth betray men sooner than the eyes, when
they have cause to be uneasy in their minds."

"But, ma'am, I shall not break my word; I shall not, not; I intend, I
have resolved to keep it. I do not fatalize, let my complexion be black
or white. Despite my resemblance to a high-caste malefactor of the
Calcutta prison-wards . . ."

"Friend! friend! you know how I chatter."

He saluted her finger-ends. "Despite the extraordinary display of
teeth, you will find me go to execution with perfect calmness; with a
resignation as good as happiness."

"Like a Jacobite lord under the Georges."

"You have told me that you wept to read of one: like him, then. My
principles have not changed, if I have. When I was younger, I had an
idea of a wife who would be with me in my thoughts as well as aims: a
woman with a spirit of romance, and a brain of solid sense. I shall
sooner or later dedicate myself to a public life; and shall, I suppose,
want the counsellor or comforter who ought always to be found at home.
It may be unfortunate that I have the ideal in my head. But I would
never make rigorous demands for specific qualities. The cruellest thing
in the world is to set up a living model before a wife, and compel her
to copy it. In any case, here we are upon the road: the die is cast. I
shall not reprieve myself. I cannot release her. Marriage represents
facts, courtship fancies. She will be cured by-and-by of that coveting
of everything that I do, feel, think, dream, imagine . . . ta-ta-ta-ta
ad infinitum. Laetitia was invited here to show her the example of a
fixed character--solid as any concrete substance you would choose to
build on, and not a whit the less feminine."

"Ta-ta-ta-ta ad infinitum. You need not tell me you have a design in
all that you do, Willoughby Patterne."

"You smell the autocrat? Yes, he can mould and govern the creatures
about him. His toughest rebel is himself! If you see Clara . . . You
wish to see her, I think you said?"

"Her behaviour to Lady Busshe last night was queer."

"If you will. She makes a mouth at porcelain. Toujours la porcelaine!
For me, her pettishness is one of her charms, I confess it. Ten years
younger, I could not have compared them."

"Whom?"

"Laetitia and Clara."

"Sir Willoughby, in any case, to quote you, here we are all upon the
road, and we must act as if events were going to happen; and I must ask
her to help me on the subject of my wedding-present, for I don't want
to have her making mouths at mine, however pretty--and she does it
prettily."

"'Another dedicatory offering to the rogue in me!' she says of
porcelain."

"Then porcelain it shall not be. I mean to consult her; I have come
determined upon a chat with her. I think I understand. But she produces
false impressions on those who don't know you both. 'I shall have that
porcelain back,' says Lady Busshe to me, when we were shaking hands
last night: 'I think,' says she, 'it should have been the Willow
Pattern.' And she really said: 'He's in for being jilted a second
time!'"

Sir Willoughby restrained a bound of his body that would have sent him
up some feet into the air. He felt his skull thundered at within.

"Rather than that it should fan upon her!" ejaculated he, correcting
his resemblance to the high-caste culprit as soon as it recurred to
him.

"But you know Lady Busshe," said Mrs. Mountstuart, genuinely solicitous
to ease the proud man of his pain. She could see through him to the
depth of the skin, which his fencing sensitiveness vainly attempted to
cover as it did the heart of him. "Lady Busshe is nothing without her
flights, fads, and fancies. She has always insisted that you have an
unfortunate nose. I remember her saying on the day of your majority, it
was the nose of a monarch destined to lose a throne."

"Have I ever offended Lady Busshe?"

"She trumpets you. She carries Lady Culmer with her too, and you may
expect a visit of nods and hints and pots of alabaster. They worship
you: you are the hope of England in their eyes, and no woman is worthy
of you: but they are a pair of fatalists, and if you begin upon Letty
Dale with them, you might as well forbid your banns. They will be all
over the country exclaiming on predestination and marriages made in
heaven."

"Clara and her father!" cried Sir Willoughby.

Dr Middleton and his daughter appeared in the circle of shrubs and
flowers.

"Bring her to me, and save me from the polyglot," said Mrs Mountstuart,
in afright at Dr. Middleton's manner of pouring forth into the ears of
the downcast girl.

The leisure he loved that he might debate with his genius upon any next
step was denied to Willoughby: he had to place his trust in the skill
with which he had sown and prepared Mrs Mountstuart's understanding to
meet the girl--beautiful abhorred that she was! detested darling!
thing to squeeze to death and throw to the dust, and mourn over!

He had to risk it; and at an hour when Lady Busshe's prognostic
grievously impressed his intense apprehensiveness of nature.

As it happened that Dr. Middleton's notion of a disagreeable duty in
colloquy was to deliver all that he contained, and escape the listening
to a syllable of reply, Willoughby withdrew his daughter from him
opportunely.

"Mrs. Mountstuart wants you, Clara."

"I shall be very happy," Clara replied, and put on a new face. An
imperceptible nervous shrinking was met by another force in her bosom,
that pushed her to advance without a sign of reluctance. She seemed to
glitter.

She was handed to Mrs. Mountstuart.

Dr Middleton laid his hand over Willoughby's shoulder, retiring on a
bow before the great lady of the district. He blew and said: "An
opposition of female instincts to masculine intellect necessarily
creates a corresponding antagonism of intellect to instinct."

"Her answer, sir? Her reasons? Has she named any?"

"The cat," said Dr. Middleton, taking breath for a sentence, "that
humps her back in the figure of the letter H, or a Chinese bridge has
given the dog her answer and her reasons, we may presume: but he that
undertakes to translate them into human speech might likewise venture
to propose an addition to the alphabet and a continuation of Homer. The
one performance would be not more wonderful than the other. Daughters,
Willoughby, daughters! Above most human peccancies, I do abhor a breach
of faith. She will not be guilty of that. I demand a cheerful
fulfilment of a pledge: and I sigh to think that I cannot count on it
without administering a lecture."

"She will soon be my care, sir."

"She shall be. Why, she is as good as married. She is at the altar. She
is in her house. She is--why, where is she not? She has entered the
sanctuary. She is out of the market. This maenad shriek for freedom
would happily entitle her to the Republican cap--the Phrygian--in a
revolutionary Parisian procession. To me it has no meaning; and but
that I cannot credit child of mine with mania, I should be in
trepidation of her wits."

Sir Willoughby's livelier fears were pacified by the information that
Clara had simply emitted a cry. Clara had once or twice given him cause
for starting and considering whether to think of her sex differently or
condemningly of her, yet he could not deem her capable of fully
unbosoming herself even to him, and under excitement. His idea of the
cowardice of girls combined with his ideal of a waxwork sex to persuade
him that though they are often (he had experienced it) wantonly
desperate in their acts, their tongues are curbed by rosy prudency. And
this was in his favour. For if she proved speechless and stupid with
Mrs. Mountstuart, the lady would turn her over, and beat her flat, beat
her angular, in fine, turn her to any shape, despising her, and
cordially believe him to be the model gentleman of Christendom. She
would fill in the outlines he had sketched to her of a picture that he
had small pride in by comparison with his early vision of a
fortune-favoured, triumphing squire, whose career is like the sun's,
intelligibly lordly to all comprehensions. Not like your model
gentleman, that has to be expounded--a thing for abstract esteem!
However, it was the choice left to him. And an alternative was enfolded
in that. Mrs. Mountstuart's model gentleman could marry either one of
two women, throwing the other overboard. He was bound to marry: he was
bound to take to himself one of them: and whichever one he selected
would cast a lustre on his reputation. At least she would rescue him
from the claws of Lady Busshe, and her owl's hoot of "Willow Pattern",
and her hag's shriek of "twice jilted". That flying infant
Willoughby--his unprotected little incorporeal omnipresent Self (not
thought of so much as passionately felt for)--would not be scoffed at
as the luckless with women. A fall indeed from his original conception
of his name of fame abroad! But Willoughby had the high consolation of
knowing that others have fallen lower. There is the fate of the devils
to comfort us, if we are driven hard. "For one of your pangs another
bosom is racked by ten", we read in the solacing Book.

With all these nice calculations at work, Willoughby stood above
himself, contemplating his active machinery, which he could partly
criticize but could not stop, in a singular wonderment at the aims and
schemes and tremours of one who was handsome, manly, acceptable in the
world's eyes: and had he not loved himself most heartily he would have
been divided to the extent of repudiating that urgent and excited half
of his being, whose motions appeared as those of a body of insects
perpetually erecting and repairing a structure of extraordinary
pettiness. He loved himself too seriously to dwell on the division for
more than a minute or so. But having seen it, and for the first time,
as he believed, his passion for the woman causing it became surcharged
with bitterness, atrabiliar.

A glance behind him, as he walked away with Dr. Middleton, showed
Clara, cunning creature that she was, airily executing her malicious
graces in the preliminary courtesies with Mrs. Mountstuart.



CHAPTER XXXV

MISS MIDDLETON AND MRS. MOUNTSTUART

"Sit beside me, fair Middleton," said the great lady.

"Gladly," said Clara, bowing to her title.

"I want to sound you, my dear."

Clara presented an open countenance with a dim interrogation on the
forehead. "Yes?" she said, submissively.

"You were one of my bright faces last night. I was in love with you.
Delicate vessels ring sweetly to a finger-nail, and if the wit is true,
you answer to it; that I can see, and that is what I like. Most of the
people one has at a table are drums. A ruba-dub-dub on them is the only
way to get a sound. When they can be persuaded to do it upon one
another, they call it conversation."

"Colonel De Craye was very funny."

"Funny, and witty too."

"But never spiteful."

"These Irish or half Irishmen are my taste. If they're not politicians,
mind; I mean Irish gentlemen. I will never have another dinner-party
without one. Our men's tempers are uncertain. You can't get them to
forget themselves. And when the wine is in them the nature comes out,
and they must be buffetting, and up start politics, and good-bye to
harmony! My husband, I am sorry to say, was one of those who have a
long account of ruined dinners against them. I have seen him and his
friends red as the roast and white as the boiled with wrath on a
popular topic they had excited themselves over, intrinsically not worth
a snap of the fingers. In London!" exclaimed Mrs. Mountstuart, to
aggravate the charge against her lord in the Shades. "But town or
country, the table should be sacred. I have heard women say it is a
plot on the side of the men to teach us our littleness. I don't believe
they have a plot. It would be to compliment them on a talent. I believe
they fall upon one another blindly, simply because they are full; which
is, we are told, the preparation for the fighting Englishman. They
cannot eat and keep a truce. Did you notice that dreadful Mr. Capes?"

"The gentleman who frequently contradicted papa? But Colonel De Craye
was good enough to relieve us."

"How, my dear?"

"You did not hear him? He took advantage of an interval when Mr. Capes
was breathing after a paean to his friend, the Governor--I think--of
one of the presidencies, to say to the lady beside him: 'He was a
wonderful administrator and great logician; he married an Anglo-Indian
widow, and soon after published a pamphlet in favour of Suttee.'"

"And what did the lady say?"

"She said: 'Oh.'"

"Hark at her! And was it heard?"

"Mr. Capes granted the widow, but declared he had never seen the
pamphlet in favour of Suttee, and disbelieved in it. He insisted that
it was to be named Sati. He was vehement."

"Now I do remember:--which must have delighted the colonel. And Mr.
Capes retired from the front upon a repetition of 'in toto, in toto'.
As if 'in toto' were the language of a dinner-table! But what will ever
teach these men? Must we import Frenchmen to give them an example in
the art of conversation, as their grandfathers brought over marquises
to instruct them in salads? And our young men too! Women have to take
to the hunting-field to be able to talk with them, and be on a par with
their grooms. Now, there was Willoughby Patterne, a prince among them
formerly. Now, did you observe him last night? did you notice how,
instead of conversing, instead of assisting me--as he was bound to do
doubly owing to the defection of Vernon Whitford: a thing I don't yet
comprehend--there he sat sharpening his lower lip for cutting remarks.
And at my best man! at Colonel De Craye! If he had attacked Mr. Capes,
with his Governor of Bomby, as the man pronounces it, or Colonel
Wildjohn and his Protestant Church in Danger, or Sir Wilson Pettifer
harping on his Monarchical Republic, or any other! No, he preferred to
be sarcastic upon friend Horace, and he had the worst of it. Sarcasm is
so silly! What is the gain if he has been smart? People forget the
epigram and remember the other's good temper. On that field, my dear,
you must make up your mind to be beaten by 'friend Horace'. I have my
prejudices and I have my prepossessions, but I love good temper, and I
love wit, and when I see a man possessed of both, I set my cap at him,
and there's my flat confession, and highly unfeminine it is."

"Not at all!" cried Clara.

"We are one, then."

Clara put up a mouth empty of words: she was quite one with her. Mrs.
Mountstuart pressed her hand. "When one does get intimate with a dainty
rogue!" she said. "You forgive me all that, for I could vow that
Willoughby has betrayed me."

Clara looked soft, kind, bright, in turns, and clouded instantly when
the lady resumed: "A friend of my own sex, and young, and a close
neighbour, is just what I would have prayed for. And I'll excuse you,
my dear, for not being so anxious about the friendship of an old woman.
But I shall be of use to you, you will find. In the first place, I
never tap for secrets. In the second, I keep them. Thirdly, I have some
power. And fourth, every young married woman has need of a friend like
me. Yes, and Lady Patterne heading all the county will be the stronger
for my backing. You don't look so mighty well pleased, my dear. Speak
out."

"Dear Mrs. Mountstuart!"

"I tell you, I am very fond of Willoughby, but I saw the faults of the
boy and see the man's. He has the pride of a king, and it's a pity if
you offend it. He is prodigal in generosity, but he can't forgive. As
to his own errors, you must be blind to them as a Saint. The secret of
him is, that he is one of those excessively civilized creatures who aim
at perfection: and I think he ought to be supported in his conceit of
having attained it; for the more men of that class, the greater our
influence. He excels in manly sports, because he won't be excelled in
anything, but as men don't comprehend his fineness, he comes to us; and
his wife must manage him by that key. You look down at the idea of
managing. It has to be done. One thing you may be assured of, he will
be proud of you. His wife won't be very much enamoured of herself if
she is not the happiest woman in the world. You will have the best
horses, the best dresses, the finest jewels in England; and an
incomparable cook. The house will be changed the moment you enter it as
Lady Patterne. And, my dear, just where he is, with all his graces,
deficient of attraction, yours will tell. The sort of Othello he would
make, or Leontes, I don't know, and none of us ever needs to know. My
impression is, that if even a shadow of a suspicion flitted across him,
he is a sort of man to double-dye himself in guilt by way of vengeance
in anticipation of an imagined offence. Not uncommon with men. I have
heard strange stories of them: and so will you in your time to come,
but not from me. No young woman shall ever be the sourer for having
been my friend. One word of advice now we are on the topic: never play
at counter-strokes with him. He will be certain to out-stroke you, and
you will be driven further than you meant to go. They say we beat men
at that game; and so we do, at the cost of beating ourselves. And if
once we are started, it is a race-course ending on a precipice--over
goes the winner. We must be moderately slavish to keep our place; which
is given us in appearance; but appearances make up a remarkably large
part of life, and far the most comfortable, so long as we are discreet
at the right moment. He is a man whose pride, when hurt, would run his
wife to perdition to solace it. If he married a troublesome widow, his
pamphlet on Suttee would be out within the year. Vernon Whitford would
receive instructions about it the first frosty moon. You like Miss
Dale?"

"I think I like her better than she likes me," said Clara.

"Have you never warmed together?"

"I have tried it. She is not one bit to blame. I can see how it is that
she misunderstands me: or justly condemns me, perhaps I should say."

"The hero of two women must die and be wept over in common before they
can appreciate one another. You are not cold?"

"No."

"You shuddered, my dear."

"Did I?"

"I do sometimes. Feet will be walking over ones grave, wherever it
lies. Be sure of this: Willoughby Patterne is a man of unimpeachable
honour."

"I do not doubt it."

"He means to be devoted to you. He has been accustomed to have women
hanging around him like votive offerings."

"I . . .!"

"You cannot: of course not: any one could see that at a glance. You
are all the sweeter to me for not being tame. Marriage cures a
multitude of indispositions."

"Oh! Mrs. Mountstuart, will you listen to me?"

"Presently. Don't threaten me with confidences. Eloquence is a terrible
thing in woman. I suspect, my dear, that we both know as much as could
be spoken."

"You hardly suspect the truth, I fear."

"Let me tell you one thing about jealous men--when they are not
blackamoors married to disobedient daughters. I speak of our civil
creature of the drawing-rooms: and lovers, mind, not husbands: two
distinct species, married or not:--they're rarely given to jealousy
unless they are flighty themselves. The jealousy fixes them. They have
only to imagine that we are for some fun likewise and they grow as
deferential as my footman, as harmless as the sportsman whose gun has
burst. Ah! my fair Middleton, am I pretending to teach you? You have
read him his lesson, and my table suffered for it last night, but I
bear no rancour."

"You bewilder me, Mrs. Mountstuart."

"Not if I tell you that you have driven the poor man to try whether it
would be possible for him to give you up."

"I have?"

"Well, and you are successful."

"I am?"

"Jump, my dear!"

"He will?"

"When men love stale instead of fresh, withered better than blooming,
excellence in the abstract rather than the palpable. With their idle
prate of feminine intellect, and a grotto nymph, and a mother of
Gracchi! Why, he must think me dazed with admiration of him to talk to
me! One listens, you know. And he is one of the men who cast a kind of
physical spell on you while he has you by the ear, until you begin to
think of it by talking to somebody else. I suppose there are clever
people who do see deep into the breast while dialogue is in progress.
One reads of them. No, my dear, you have very cleverly managed to show
him that it isn't at all possible: he can't. And the real cause for
alarm, in my humble opinion, is lest your amiable foil should have been
a trifle, as he would say, deceived, too much in earnest, led too far.
One may reprove him for not being wiser, but men won't learn without
groaning that they are simply weapons taken up to be put down when done
with. Leave it to me to compose him.--Willoughby can't give you up. I'm
certain he has tried; his pride has been horridly wounded. You were
shrewd, and he has had his lesson. If these little rufflings don't come
before marriage they come after; so it's not time lost; and it's good
to be able to look back on them. You are very white, my child."

"Can you, Mrs. Mountstuart, can you think I would be so heartlessly
treacherous?"

"Be honest, fair Middleton, and answer me: Can you say you had not a
corner of an idea of producing an effect on Willoughby?"

Clara checked the instinct of her tongue to defend her reddening
cheeks, with a sense that she was disintegrating and crumbling, but she
wanted this lady for a friend, and she had to submit to the conditions,
and be red and silent.

Mrs. Mountstuart examined her leisurely.

"That will do. Conscience blushes. One knows it by the conflagration.
Don't be hard on yourself . . . there you are in the other extreme. 
That blush of yours would count with me against any quantity of
evidence--all the Crooklyns in the kingdom. You lost your purse."

"I discovered that it was lost this morning."

"Flitch has been here with it. Willoughby has it. You will ask him for
it; he will demand payment: you will be a couple of yards' length or so
of cramoisy: and there ends the episode, nobody killed, only a poor man
melancholy-wounded, and I must offer him my hand to mend him, vowing to
prove to him that Suttee was properly abolished. Well, and now to
business. I said I wanted to sound you. You have been overdone with
porcelain. Poor Lady Busshe is in despair at your disappointment. Now,
I mean my wedding-present to be to your taste."

"Madam!"

"Who is the madam you are imploring?"

"Dear Mrs. Mountstuart!"

"Well?"

"I shall fall in your esteem. Perhaps you will help me. No one else
can. I am a prisoner: I am compelled to continue this imposture. Oh, I
shun speaking much: you object to it and I dislike it: but I must
endeavour to explain to you that I am unworthy of the position you
think a proud one."

"Tut-tut; we are all unworthy, cross our arms, bow our heads; and
accept the honours. Are you playing humble handmaid? What an old
organ-tune that is! Well? Give me reasons."

"I do not wish to marry."

"He's the great match of the county!"

"I cannot marry him."

"Why, you are at the church door with him! Cannot marry him?"

"It does not bind me."

"The church door is as binding as the altar to an honourable girl.
What have you been about? Since I am in for confidences, half ones
won't do. We must have honourable young women as well as men of honour.
You can't imagine he is to be thrown over now, at this hour? What have
you against him? come!"

"I have found that I do not . . ."

"What?"

"Love him."

Mrs. Mountstuart grimaced transiently. "That is no answer. The cause!"
she said. "What has he done?"

"Nothing."

"And when did you discover this nothing?"

"By degrees: unknown to myself; suddenly."

"Suddenly and by degrees? I suppose it's useless to ask for a head. But
if all this is true, you ought not to be here."

"I wish to go; I am unable."

"Have you had a scene together?"

"I have expressed my wish."

"In roundabout?--girl's English?"

"Quite clearly; oh, very clearly."

"Have you spoken to your father?"

"I have."

"And what does Dr. Middleton say?"

"It is incredible to him."

"To me too! I can understand little differences, little whims,
caprices: we don't settle into harness for a tap on the shoulder as a
man becomes a knight: but to break and bounce away from an unhappy
gentleman at the church door is either madness or it's one of the
things without a name. You think you are quite sure of yourself?"

"I am so sure, that I look back with regret on the time when I was
not."

"But you were in love with him."

"I was mistaken."

"No love?"

"I have none to give."

"Dear me!--Yes, yes, but that tone of sorrowful conviction is often a
trick, it's not new: and I know that assumption of plain sense to pass
off a monstrosity." Mrs. Mountstuart struck her lap. "Soh! but I've
had to rack my brain for it: feminine disgust? You have been hearing
imputations of his past life? moral character? No? Circumstances might
make him behave unkindly, not unhandsomely: and we have no claim over a
man's past, or it's too late to assert it. What is the case?"

"We are quite divided."

"Nothing in the way of . . . nothing green-eyed?"

"Far from that!"

"Then name it."

"We disagree."

"Many a very good agreement is founded on disagreeing. It's to be
regretted that you are not portionless. If you had been, you would have
made very little of disagreeing. You are just as much bound in honour
as if you had the ring on your finger."

"In honour! But I appeal to his, I am no wife for him."

"But if he insists, you consent?"

"I appeal to reason. Is it, madam . . ."

"But, I say, if he insists, you consent?"

"He will insist upon his own misery as well as mine."

Mrs. Mountstuart rocked herself "My poor Sir Willoughby! What a
fate!--And I took you for a clever girl! Why, I have been admiring
your management of him! And here am I bound to take a lesson from Lady
Busshe. My dear good Middleton, don't let it be said that Lady Busshe
saw deeper than I! I put some little vanity in it, I own: I won't
conceal it. She declares that when she sent her present--I don't
believe her--she had a premonition that it would come back. Surely you
won't justify the extravagances of a woman without common
reverence:--for anatomize him as we please to ourselves, he is a
splendid man (and I did it chiefly to encourage and come at you). We
don't often behold such a lordly-looking man: so conversable too when
he feels at home; a picture of an English gentleman! The very man we
want married for our neighbourhood! A woman who can openly talk of
expecting him to be twice jilted! You shrink. It is repulsive. It would
be incomprehensible: except, of course, to Lady Busshe, who rushed to
one of her violent conclusions, and became a prophetess. Conceive a
woman's imagining it could happen twice to the same man! I am not sure
she did not send the identical present that arrived and returned once
before: you know, the Durham engagement. She told me last night she
had it back. I watched her listening very suspiciously to Professor
Crooklyn. My dear, it is her passion to foretell disasters--her
passion! And when they are confirmed, she triumphs, of course. We shall
have her domineering over us with sapient nods at every trifle
occurring. The county will be unendurable. Unsay it, my Middleton! And
don't answer like an oracle because I do all the talking. Pour out to
me. You'll soon come to a stop and find the want of reason in the want
of words. I assure you that's true. Let me have a good gaze at you.
No," said Mrs. Mountstuart, after posturing herself to peruse Clara's
features, "brains you have; one can see it by the nose and the mouth. I
could vow you are the girl I thought you; you have your wits on tiptoe.
How of the heart?"

"None," Clara sighed.

The sigh was partly voluntary, though unforced; as one may with ready
sincerity act a character that is our own only through sympathy.

Mrs. Mountstuart felt the extra weight in the young lady's falling
breath. There was no necessity for a deep sigh over an absence of heart
or confession of it. If Clara did not love the man to whom she was
betrothed, sighing about it signified what? some pretence; and a
pretence is the cloak of a secret. Girls do not sigh in that way with
compassion for the man they have no heart for, unless at the same time
they should be oppressed by the knowledge or dread of having a heart
for some one else. As a rule, they have no compassion to bestow on him:
you might as reasonably expect a soldier to bewail the enemy he strikes
in action: they must be very disengaged to have it. And supposing a
show of the thing to be exhibited, when it has not been worried out of
them, there is a reserve in the background: they are pitying themselves
under a mask of decent pity of their wretch.

So ran Mrs. Mountstuart's calculations, which were like her suspicion,
coarse and broad, not absolutely incorrect, but not of an exact measure
with the truth. That pin's head of the truth is rarely hit by design.
The search after it of the professionally penetrative in the dark of a
bosom may bring it forth by the heavy knocking all about the
neighbourhood that we call good guessing, but it does not come out
clean; other matter adheres to it; and being more it is less than
truth. The unadulterate is to be had only by faith in it or by waiting
for it.

A lover! thought the sagacious dame. There was no lover: some love
there was: or, rather, there was a preparation of the chamber, with no
lamp yet lighted.

"Do you positively tell me you have no heart for the position of first
lady of the county?" said Mrs. Mountstuart.

Clara's reply was firm: "None whatever."

"My dear, I will believe you on one condition. Look at me. You have
eyes. If you are for mischief, you are armed for it. But how much
better, when you have won a prize, to settle down and wear it! Lady
Patterne will have entire occupation for her flights and whimsies in
leading the county. And the man, surely the man--he behaved badly last
night: but a beauty like this," she pushed a finger at Clara's cheek,
and doated a half instant, "you have the very beauty to break in an
ogre's temper. And the man is as governable as he is presentable. You
have the beauty the French call--no, it's the beauty of a queen of
elves: one sees them lurking about you, one here, one there.
Smile--they dance: be doleful--they hang themselves. No, there's not a
trace of satanic; at least, not yet. And come, come, my Middleton, the
man is a man to be proud of. You can send him into Parliament to wear
off his humours. To my thinking, he has a fine style: conscious? I
never thought so before last night. I can't guess what has happened to
him recently. He was once a young Grand Monarque. He was really a
superb young English gentleman. Have you been wounding him?"

"It is my misfortune to be obliged to wound him," said Clara.

"Quite needlessly, my child, for marry him you must."

Clara's bosom rose: her shoulders rose too, narrowing, and her head
fell slight back.

Mrs. Mountstuart exclaimed: "But the scandal! You would never, never
think of following the example of that Durham girl?--whether she was
provoked to it by jealousy or not. It seems to have gone so
astonishingly far with you in a very short time, that one is alarmed as
to where you will stop. Your look just now was downright revulsion."

"I fear it is. It is. I am past my own control. Dear madam, you have my
assurance that I will not behave scandalously or dishonourably. What I
would entreat of you is to help me. I know this of myself . . . I am not
the best of women. I am impatient, wickedly. I should be no good wife.
Feelings like mine teach me unhappy things of myself."

"Rich, handsome, lordly, influential, brilliant health, fine estates,"
Mrs. Mountstuart enumerated in petulant accents as there started across
her mind some of Sir Willoughby's attributes for the attraction of the
soul of woman. "I suppose you wish me to take you in earnest?"

"I appeal to you for help."

"What help?"

"Persuade him of the folly of pressing me to keep my word."

"I will believe you, my dear Middleton, on one condition: your talk of
no heart is nonsense. A change like this, if one is to believe in the
change, occurs through the heart, not because there is none. Don't you
see that? But if you want me for a friend, you must not sham stupid.
It's bad enough in itself: the imitation's horrid. You have to be
honest with me, and answer me right out. You came here on this visit
intending to marry Willoughby Patterne."

"Yes."

"And gradually you suddenly discovered, since you came here, that you
did not intend it, if you could find a means of avoiding it."

"Oh, madam, yes, it is true."

"Now comes the test. And, my lovely Middleton, your flaming cheeks
won't suffice for me this time. The old serpent can blush like an
innocent maid on occasion. You are to speak, and you are to tell me in
six words why that was: and don't waste one on 'madam', or 'Oh! Mrs.
Mountstuart' Why did you change?"

"I came--When I came I was in some doubt. Indeed I speak the truth. I
found I could not give him the admiration he has, I dare say, a right
to expect. I turned--it surprised me; it surprises me now. But so
completely! So that to think of marrying him is . . ."

"Defer the simile," Mrs. Mountstuart interposed. "If you hit on a
clever one, you will never get the better of it. Now, by just as much
as you have outstripped my limitation of words to you, you show me you
are dishonest."

"I could make a vow."

"You would forswear yourself."

"Will you help me?"

"If you are perfectly ingenuous, I may try."

"Dear lady, what more can I say?"

"It may be difficult. You can reply to a catechism."

"I shall have your help?"

"Well, yes; though I don't like stipulations between friends. There is
no man living to whom you could willingly give your hand? That is my
question. I cannot possibly take a step unless I know. Reply briefly:
there is or there is not." Clara sat back with bated breath, mentally
taking the leap into the abyss, realizing it, and the cold prudence of
abstention, and the delirium of the confession. Was there such a man?
It resembled freedom to think there was: to avow it promised freedom.

"Oh, Mrs. Mountstuart!"

"Well?"

"You will help me?"

"Upon my word, I shall begin to doubt your desire for it."

"Willingly give my hand, madam?"

"For shame! And with wits like yours, can't you perceive where
hesitation in answering such a question lands you?"

"Dearest lady, will you give me your hand? may I whisper?"

"You need not whisper; I won't look."

Clara's voice trembled on a tense chord.

"There is one . . . compared with him I feel my insignificance. If I
could aid him."

"What necessity have you to tell me more than that there is one?"

"Ah, madam, it is different: not as you imagine. You bid me be
scrupulously truthful: I am: I wish you to know the different kind of
feeling it is from what might be suspected from . . . a confession. To
give my hand, is beyond any thought I have ever encouraged. If you had
asked me whether there is one whom I admire--yes, I do. I cannot help
admiring a beautiful and brave self-denying nature. It is one whom you
must pity, and to pity casts you beneath him: for you pity him because
it is his nobleness that has been the enemy of his fortunes. He lives
for others."

Her voice was musically thrilling in that low muted tone of the very
heart, impossible to deride or disbelieve.

Mrs. Mountstuart set her head nodding on springs.

"Is he clever?"

"Very."

"He talks well?"

"Yes."

"Handsome?"

"He might be thought so."

"Witty?"

"I think he is."

"Gay, cheerful?"

"In his manner."

"Why, the man would be a mountebank if he adopted any other. And poor?"

"He is not wealthy."

Mrs. Mountstuart preserved a lengthened silence, but nipped Clara's
fingers once or twice to reassure her without approving. "Of course
he's poor," she said at last; "directly the reverse of what you could
have, it must be. Well, my fair Middleton, I can't say you have been
dishonest. I'll help you as far as I'm able. How, it is quite
impossible to tell. We're in the mire. The best way seems to me to get
this pitiable angel to cut some ridiculous capers and present you
another view of him. I don't believe in his innocence. He knew you to
be a plighted woman."

"He has not once by word or sign hinted a disloyalty."

"Then how do you know."

"I do not know."

"He is not the cause of your wish to break your engagement?"

"No."

"Then you have succeeded in just telling me nothing. What is?"

"Ah! madam!"

"You would break your engagement purely because the admirable creature
is in existence?"

Clara shook her head: she could not say she was dizzy. She had spoken
out more than she had ever spoken to herself, and in doing so she had
cast herself a step beyond the line she dared to contemplate.

"I won't detain you any longer," said Mrs. Mountstuart. "The more we
learn, the more we are taught that we are not so wise as we thought we
were. I have to go to school to Lady Busshe! I really took you for a
very clever girl. If you change again, you will notify the important
circumstance to me, I trust."

"I will," said Clara, and no violent declaration of the impossibility
of her changing again would have had such an effect on her hearer.

Mrs. Mountstuart scanned her face for a new reading of it to match with
her later impressions.

"I am to do as I please with the knowledge I have gained?"

"I am utterly in your hands, madam."

"I have not meant to be unkind."

"You have not been unkind; I could embrace you."

"I am rather too shattered, and kissing won't put me together. I
laughed at Lady Busshe! No wonder you went off like a rocket with a
disappointing bouquet when I told you you had been successful with poor
Sir Willoughby and he could not give you up. I noticed that. A woman
like Lady Busshe, always prying for the lamentable, would have required
no further enlightenment. Has he a temper?"

Clara did not ask her to signalize the person thus abruptly obtruded.

"He has faults," she said.

"There's an end to Sir Willoughby, then! Though I don't say he will
give you up even when he hears the worst, if he must hear it, as for
his own sake he should. And I won't say he ought to give you up. He'll
be the pitiable angel if he does. For you--but you don't deserve
compliments; they would be immoral. You have behaved badly, badly,
badly. I have never had such a right-about-face in my life. You will
deserve the stigma: you will be notorious: you will be called Number
Two. Think of that! Not even original! We will break the conference, or
I shall twaddle to extinction. I think I heard the luncheon bell."

"It rang."

"You don't look fit for company, but you had better come."

"Oh, yes; every day it's the same."

"Whether you're in my hands or I'm in yours, we're a couple of
arch-conspirators against the peace of the family whose table we're
sitting at, and the more we rattle the viler we are, but we must do it
to ease our minds."

Mrs. Mountstuart spread the skirts of her voluminous dress, remarking
further: "At a certain age our teachers are young people: we learn by
looking backward. It speaks highly for me that I have not called you
mad.--Full of faults, goodish-looking, not a bad talker, cheerful,
poorish;--and she prefers that to this!" the great lady exclaimed in
her reverie while emerging from the circle of shrubs upon a view of the
Hall. Colonel De Craye advanced to her; certainly good-looking,
certainly cheerful, by no means a bad talker, nothing of a Croesus, and
variegated with faults.

His laughing smile attacked the irresolute hostility of her mien,
confident as the sparkle of sunlight in a breeze. The effect of it on
herself angered her on behalf of Sir Willoughby's bride.

"Good-morning, Mrs. Mountstuart; I believe I am the last to greet you."

"And how long do you remain here, Colonel De Craye?"

"I kissed earth when I arrived, like the Norman William, and
consequently I've an attachment to the soil, ma'am."

"You're not going to take possession of it, I suppose?"

"A handful would satisfy me."

"You play the Conqueror pretty much, I have heard. But property is held
more sacred than in the times of the Norman William."

"And speaking of property, Miss Middleton, your purse is found." he
said.

"I know it is," she replied as unaffectedly as Mrs. Mountstuart could
have desired, though the ingenuous air of the girl incensed her
somewhat.

Clara passed on.

"You restore purses," observed Mrs. Mountstuart.

Her stress on the word and her look thrilled De Craye; for there had
been a long conversation between the young lady and the dame.

"It was an article that dropped and was not stolen," said he.

"Barely sweet enough to keep, then!"

"I think I could have felt to it like poor Flitch, the flyman, who was
the finder."

"If you are conscious of these temptations to appropriate what is not
your own, you should quit the neighbourhood."

"And do it elsewhere? But that's not virtuous counsel."

"And I'm not counselling in the interests of your virtue, Colonel De
Craye."

"And I dared for a moment to hope that you were, ma'am," he said,
ruefully drooping.

They were close to the dining-room window, and Mrs Mountstuart
preferred the terminating of a dialogue that did not promise to leave
her features the austerely iron cast with which she had commenced it.
She was under the spell of gratitude for his behaviour yesterday
evening at her dinner-table; she could not be very severe.



CHAPTER XXXVI

ANIMATED CONVERSATION AT A LUNCHEON-TABLE

Vernon was crossing the hall to the dining-room as Mrs Mountstuart
stepped in. She called to him: "Are the champions reconciled?"

He replied: "Hardly that, but they have consented to meet at an altar
to offer up a victim to the gods in the shape of modern poetic
imitations of the classical."

"That seems innocent enough. The Professor has not been anxious about
his chest?"

"He recollects his cough now and then."

"You must help him to forget it."

"Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer are here," said Vernon, not supposing it
to be a grave announcement until the effect of it on Mrs. Mountstuart
admonished him.

She dropped her voice: "Engage my fair friend for one of your walks the
moment we rise from table. You may have to rescue her; but do. I mean
it."

"She's a capital walker." Vernon remarked in simpleton style.

"There's no necessity for any of your pedestrian feats," Mrs
Mountstuart said, and let him go, turning to Colonel De Craye to
pronounce an encomium on him: "The most open-minded man I know!
Warranted to do perpetual service, and no mischief. If you were all
. . . instead of catching at every prize you covet! Yes, you would
have your reward for unselfishness, I assure you. Yes, and where you
seek it! That is what none of you men will believe."

"When you behold me in your own livery!" cried the colonel.

"Do I?" said she, dallying with a half-formed design to be
confidential. "How is it one is always tempted to address you in
the language of innuendo? I can't guess."

"Except that as a dog doesn't comprehend good English we naturally talk
bad to him."

The great lady was tickled. Who could help being amused by this man?
And after all, if her fair Middleton chose to be a fool there could be
no gainsaying her, sorry though poor Sir Willoughby's friends must feel
for him.

She tried not to smile.

"You are too absurd. Or a baby, you might have added."

"I hadn't the daring."

"I'll tell you what, Colonel De Craye, I shall end by falling in love
with you; and without esteeming you, I fear."

"The second follows as surely as the flavour upon a draught of Bacchus,
if you'll but toss off the glass, ma'am."

"We women, sir, think it should be first."

"'Tis to transpose the seasons, and give October the blossom and April
the apple, and no sweet one! Esteem's a mellow thing that comes after
bloom and fire, like an evening at home; because if it went before it
would have no father and couldn't hope for progeny; for there'd be no
nature in the business. So please, ma'am, keep to the original order,
and you'll be nature's child, and I the most blessed of mankind."

"Really, were I fifteen years younger. I am not so certain . . . I
might try and make you harmless."

"Draw the teeth of the lamb so long as you pet him!"

"I challenged you, colonel, and I won't complain of your pitch. But
now lay your wit down beside your candour, and descend to an every-day
level with me for a minute."

"Is it innuendo?"

"No; though I daresay it would be easier for you to respond to if it
were."

"I'm the straightforwardest of men at a word of command."

"This is a whisper. Be alert, as you were last night. Shuffle the table
well. A little liveliness will do it. I don't imagine malice, but
there's curiosity, which is often as bad, and not so lightly foiled. We
have Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer here."

"To sweep the cobwebs out of the sky!"

"Well, then, can you fence with broomsticks?"

"I have had a bout with them in my time."

"They are terribly direct."

"They 'give point', as Napoleon commanded his cavalry to do."

"You must help me to ward it."

"They will require variety in the conversation."

"Constant. You are an angel of intelligence, and if I have the judgeing
of you, I'm afraid you'll be allowed to pass, in spite of the scandal
above. Open the door; I don't unbonnet."

De Craye threw the door open.

Lady Busshe was at that moment saying, "And are we indeed to have you
for a neighbour, Dr. Middleton?"

The Rev. Doctor's reply was drowned by the new arrivals.

"I thought you had forsaken us," observed Sir Willoughby to Mrs.
Mountstuart.

"And run away with Colonel De Craye? I'm too weighty, my dear friend.
Besides, I have not looked at the wedding-presents yet."

"The very object of our call!" exclaimed Lady Culmer.

"I have to confess I am in dire alarm about mine," Lady Busshe nodded
across the table at Clara. "Oh! you may shake your head, but I would
rather hear a rough truth than the most complimentary evasion."

"How would you define a rough truth, Dr. Middleton?" said Mrs.
Mountstuart.

Like the trained warrior who is ready at all hours for the trumpet to
arms, Dr. Middleton waked up for judicial allocution in a trice.

"A rough truth, madam, I should define to be that description of truth
which is not imparted to mankind without a powerful impregnation of the
roughness of the teller."

"It is a rough truth, ma'am, that the world is composed of fools, and
that the exceptions are knaves," Professor Crooklyn furnished that
example avoided by the Rev. Doctor.

"Not to precipitate myself into the jaws of the foregone definition,
which strikes me as being as happy as Jonah's whale, that could carry
probably the most learned man of his time inside without the necessity
of digesting him," said De Craye, "a rough truth is a rather strong
charge of universal nature for the firing off of a modicum of personal
fact."

"It is a rough truth that Plato is Moses atticizing," said Vernon to
Dr. Middleton, to keep the diversion alive.

"And that Aristotle had the globe under his cranium," rejoined the Rev.
Doctor.

"And that the Moderns live on the Ancients."

"And that not one in ten thousand can refer to the particular treasury
he filches."

"The Art of our days is a revel of rough truth," remarked Professor
Crooklyn.

"And the literature has laboriously mastered the adjective, wherever it
may be in relation to the noun," Dr. Middleton added.

"Orson's first appearance at court was in the figure of a rough truth,
causing the Maids of Honour, accustomed to Tapestry Adams, astonishment
and terror," said De Craye. That he might not be left out of the
sprightly play, Sir Willoughby levelled a lance at the quintain,
smiling on Laetitia: "In fine, caricature is rough truth."

She said, "Is one end of it, and realistic directness is the other."

He bowed. "The palm is yours."

Mrs. Mountstuart admired herself as each one trotted forth in turn
characteristically, with one exception unaware of the aid which was
being rendered to a distressed damsel wretchedly incapable of decent
hypocrisy. Her intrepid lead had shown her hand to the colonel and
drawn the enemy at a blow.

Sir Willoughby's "in fine", however, did not please her: still less did
his lackadaisical Lothario-like bowing and smiling to Miss Dale: and he
perceived it and was hurt. For how, carrying his tremendous load, was
he to compete with these unhandicapped men in the game of nonsense she
had such a fondness for starting at a table? He was further annoyed to
hear Miss Eleanor and Miss Isabel Patterne agree together that
"caricature" was the final word of the definition. Relatives should
know better than to deliver these awards to us in public.

"Well?" quoth Lady Busshe, expressive of stupefaction at the strange
dust she had raised.

"Are they on view, Miss Middleton?" inquired Lady Culmer.

"There's a regiment of us on view and ready for inspection." Colonel De
Craye bowed to her, but she would not be foiled.

"Miss Middleton's admirers are always on view." said he.

"Are they to be seen?" said Lady Busshe.

Clara made her face a question, with a laudable smoothness.

"The wedding-presents," Lady Culmer explained.

"No."

"Otherwise, my dear, we are in danger of duplicating and triplicating
and quadruplicating, not at all to the satisfaction of the bride."

"But there's a worse danger to encounter in the 'on view', my lady,"
said De Craye; "and that's the magnetic attraction a display of
wedding-presents is sure to have for the ineffable burglar, who must
have a nuptial soul in him, for wherever there's that collection on
view, he's never a league off. And 'tis said he knows a lady's
dressing-case presented to her on the occasion fifteen years after the
event."

"As many as fifteen?" said Mrs. Mountstuart.

"By computation of the police. And if the presents are on view, dogs
are of no use, nor bolts, nor bars:--he's worse than Cupid. The only
protection to be found, singular as it may be thought, is in a couple
of bottles of the oldest Jamaica rum in the British isles."

"Rum?" cried Lady Busshe.

"The liquor of the Royal Navy, my lady. And with your permission, I'll
relate the tale in proof of it. I had a friend engaged to a young lady,
niece of an old sea-captain of the old school, the Benbow school, the
wooden leg and pigtail school; a perfectly salt old gentleman with a
pickled tongue, and a dash of brine in every deed he committed. He
looked rolled over to you by the last wave on the shore, sparkling: he
was Neptune's own for humour. And when his present to the bride was
opened, sure enough there lay a couple of bottles of the oldest Jamaica
rum in the British Isles, born before himself, and his father to boot.
'Tis a fabulous spirit I beg you to believe in, my lady, the sole merit
of the story being its portentous veracity. The bottles were tied to
make them appear twins, as they both had the same claim to seniority.
And there was a label on them, telling their great age, to maintain
their identity. They were in truth a pair of patriarchal bottles
rivalling many of the biggest houses in the kingdom for antiquity. They
would have made the donkey that stood between the two bundles of hay
look at them with obliquity: supposing him to have, for an animal, a
rum taste, and a turn for hilarity. Wonderful old bottles! So, on the
label, just over the date, was written large: UNCLE BENJAMIN'S WEDDING
PRESENT TO HIS NIECE BESSY. Poor Bessy shed tears of disappointment and
indignation enough to float the old gentleman on his native element,
ship and all. She vowed it was done curmudgeonly to vex her, because
her uncle hated wedding-presents and had grunted at the exhibition of
cups and saucers, and this and that beautiful service, and epergnes and
inkstands, mirrors, knives and forks, dressing-cases, and the whole
mighty category. She protested, she flung herself about, she declared
those two ugly bottles should not join the exhibition in the
dining-room, where it was laid out for days, and the family ate their
meals where they could, on the walls, like flies. But there was also
Uncle Benjamin's legacy on view, in the distance, so it was ruled
against her that the bottles should have their place. And one fine
morning down came the family after a fearful row of the domestics;
shouting, screaming, cries for the police, and murder topping all. What
did they see? They saw two prodigious burglars extended along the
floor, each with one of the twin bottles in his hand, and a remainder
of the horror of the midnight hanging about his person like a blown
fog, sufficient to frighten them whilst they kicked the rascals
entirely intoxicated. Never was wilder disorder of wedding-presents,
and not one lost!--owing, you'll own, to Uncle Benjy's two bottles of
ancient Jamaica rum."

Colonel De Craye concluded with an asseveration of the truth of the
story.

"A most provident, far-sighted old sea-captain!" exclaimed Mrs.
Mountstuart, laughing at Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer. These ladies
chimed in with her gingerly.

"And have you many more clever stories, Colonel De Craye?" said Lady
Busshe.

"Ah! my lady, when the tree begins to count its gold 'tis nigh upon
bankruptcy."

"Poetic!" ejaculated Lady Culmer, spying at Miss Middleton's rippled
countenance, and noting that she and Sir Willoughby had not
interchanged word or look.

"But that in the case of your Patterne Port a bottle of it would
outvalue the catalogue of nuptial presents, Willoughby, I would
recommend your stationing some such constabulary to keep watch and
ward." said Dr. Middleton, as he filled his glass, taking Bordeaux in
the middle of the day, under a consciousness of virtue and its reward
to come at half-past seven in the evening.

"The rascals would require a dozen of that, sir," said De Craye.

"Then it is not to be thought of. Indeed one!" Dr. Middleton negatived
the idea.

"We are no further advanced than when we began," observed Lady Busshe.

"If we are marked to go by stages," Mrs. Mountstuart assented.

"Why, then, we shall be called old coaches," remarked the colonel.

"You," said Lady Culmer, "have the advantage of us in a closer
acquaintance with Miss Middleton. You know her tastes, and how far they
have been consulted in the little souvenirs already grouped somewhere,
although not yet for inspection. I am at sea. And here is Lady Busshe
in deadly alarm. There is plenty of time to effect a change--though we
are drawing on rapidly to the fatal day, Miss Middleton. We are, we are
very near it. Oh! yes. I am one who thinks that these little affairs
should be spoken of openly, without that ridiculous bourgeois
affectation, so that we may be sure of giving satisfaction. It is a
transaction like everything else in life. I, for my part, wish to be
remembered favourably. I put it as a test of breeding to speak of these
things as plain matter-of-fact. You marry; I wish you to have something
by you to remind you of me. What shall it be?--useful or ornamental.
For an ordinary household the choice is not difficult. But where wealth
abounds we are in a dilemma."

"And with persons of decided tastes," added Lady Busshe.

"I am really very unhappy," she protested to Clara.

Sir Willoughby dropped Laetitia; Clara's look of a sedate resolution to
preserve silence on the topic of the nuptial gifts made a diversion
imperative.

"Your porcelain was exquisitely chosen, and I profess to be a
connoisseur," he said. "I am poor in Old Saxony, as you know; I can
match the country in Savres, and my inheritance of China will not
easily be matched in the country."

"You may consider your Dragon vases a present from young Crossjay,"
said De Craye.

"How?"

"Hasn't he abstained from breaking them? the capital boy! Porcelain
and a boy in the house together is a case of prospective disaster fully
equal to Flitch and a fly."

"You should understand that my friend Horace--whose wit is in this
instance founded on another tale of a boy--brought us a magnificent
piece of porcelain, destroyed by the capsizing of his conveyance from
the station," said Sir Willoughby to Lady Busshe.

She and Lady Culmer gave out lamentable Ohs, while Miss Eleanor and
Miss Isabel Patterne sketched the incident. Then the lady visitors
fixed their eyes in united sympathy upon Clara: recovering from which,
after a contemplation of marble, Lady Busshe emphasized, "No, you do
not love porcelain, it is evident, Miss Middleton."

"I am glad to be assured of it," said Lady Culmer.

"Oh, I know that face: I know that look," Lady Busshe affected to
remark rallyingly: "it is not the first time I have seen it."

Sir Willoughby smarted to his marrow. "We will rout these fancies of an
overscrupulous generosity, my dear Lady Busshe."

Her unwonted breach of delicacy in speaking publicly of her present,
and the vulgar persistency of her sticking to the theme, very much
perplexed him. And if he mistook her not, she had just alluded to the
demoniacal Constantia Durham.

It might be that he had mistaken her: he was on guard against his
terrible sensitiveness. Nevertheless it was hard to account for this
behaviour of a lady greatly his friend and admirer, a lady of birth.
And Lady Culmer as well!--likewise a lady of birth. Were they in
collusion? had they a suspicion? He turned to Laetitia's face for the
antidote to his pain.

"Oh, but you are not one yet, and I shall require two voices to
convince me," Lady Busshe rejoined, after another stare at the marble.

"Lady Busshe, I beg you not to think me ungrateful," said Clara.

"Fiddle!--gratitude! it is to please your taste, to satisfy you. I
care for gratitude as little as for flattery."

"But gratitude is flattering," said Vernon.

"Now, no metaphysics, Mr. Whitford."

"But do care a bit for flattery, my lady," said De Craye. "'Tis the
finest of the Arts; we might call it moral sculpture. Adepts in it can
cut their friends to any shape they like by practising it with the
requisite skill. I myself, poor hand as I am, have made a man act
Solomon by constantly praising his wisdom. He took a sagacious turn at
an early period of the dose. He weighed the smallest question of his
daily occasions with a deliberation truly oriental. Had I pushed it,
he'd have hired a baby and a couple of mothers to squabble over the
undivided morsel."

"I shall hope for a day in London with you," said Lady Culmer to Clara.

"You did not forget the Queen of Sheba?" said Mrs. Mountstuart to De
Craye.

"With her appearance, the game has to be resigned to her entirely," he
rejoined.

"That is," Lady Culmer continued, "if you do not despise an old woman
for your comrade on a shopping excursion."

"Despise whom we fleece!" exclaimed Dr. Middleton. "Oh, no, Lady
Culmer, the sheep is sacred."

"I am not so sure," said Vernon.

"In what way, and to what extent, are you not so sure?" said Dr.
Middleton.

"The natural tendency is to scorn the fleeced."

"I stand for the contrary. Pity, if you like: particularly when they
bleat."

"This is to assume that makers of gifts are a fleeced people: I demur,"
said Mrs. Mountstuart.

"Madam, we are expected to give; we are incited to give; you have
dubbed it the fashion to give; and the person refusing to give, or
incapable of giving, may anticipate that he will be regarded as
benignly as a sheep of a drooping and flaccid wool by the farmer, who
is reminded by the poor beast's appearance of a strange dog that
worried the flock. Even Captain Benjamin, as you have seen, was unable
to withstand the demand on him. The hymeneal pair are licensed
freebooters levying blackmail on us; survivors of an uncivilized
period. But in taking without mercy, I venture to trust that the
manners of a happier era instruct them not to scorn us. I apprehend
that Mr. Whitford has a lower order of latrons in his mind."

"Permit me to say, sir, that you have not considered the ignoble aspect
of the fleeced," said Vernon. "I appeal to the ladies: would they not,
if they beheld an ostrich walking down a Queen's Drawing Room,
clean-plucked, despise him though they were wearing his plumes?"

"An extreme supposition, indeed," said Dr. Middleton, frowning over it;
"scarcely legitimately to be suggested."

"I think it fair, sir, as an instance."

"Has the circumstance occurred, I would ask?"

"In life? a thousand times."

"I fear so," said Mrs. Mountstuart.

Lady Busshe showed symptoms of a desire to leave a profitless table.

Vernon started up, glancing at the window.

"Did you see Crossjay?" he said to Clara.

"No; I must, if he is there," said she.

She made her way out, Vernon after her. They both had the excuse.

"Which way did the poor boy go?" she asked him.

"I have not the slightest idea," he replied. "But put on your bonnet,
if you would escape that pair of inquisitors."

"Mr. Whitford, what humiliation!"

"I suspect you do not feel it the most, and the end of it can't be
remote," said he.

Thus it happened that when Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer quitted the
dining-room, Miss Middleton had spirited herself away from summoning
voice and messenger.

Sir Willoughby apologized for her absence. "If I could be jealous, it
would be of that boy Crossjay."

"You are an excellent man, and the best of cousins," was Lady Busshe's
enigmatical answer.

The exceedingly lively conversation at his table was lauded by Lady
Culmer.

"Though," said she, "what it all meant, and what was the drift of it, I
couldn't tell to save my life. Is it every day the same with you here?"

"Very much."

"How you must enjoy a spell of dulness!"

"If you said simplicity and not talking for effect! I generally cast
anchor by Laetitia Dale."

"Ah!" Lady Busshe coughed. "But the fact is, Mrs. Mountstuart is made
for cleverness!"

"I think, my lady, Laetitia Dale is to the full as clever as any of the
stars Mrs. Mountstuart assembles, or I."

"Talkative cleverness, I mean."

"In conversation as well. Perhaps you have not yet given her a chance."

"Yes, yes, she is clever, of course, poor dear. She is looking better
too."

"Handsome, I thought," said Lady Culmer.

"She varies," observed Sir Willoughby.

The ladies took seat in their carriage and fell at once into a
close-bonnet colloquy. Not a single allusion had they made to the
wedding-presents after leaving the luncheon-table. The cause of their
visit was obvious.



CHAPTER XXXVII

CONTAINS CLEVER FENCING AND INTIMATIONS OF THE NEED FOR IT

That woman, Lady Busshe, had predicted, after the event, Constantia
Durham's defection. She had also, subsequent to Willoughby's departure
on his travels, uttered sceptical things concerning his rooted
attachment to Laetitia Dale. In her bitter vulgarity, that beaten rival
of Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson for the leadership of the county had
taken his nose for a melancholy prognostic of his fortunes; she had
recently played on his name: she had spoken the hideous English of his
fate. Little as she knew, she was alive to the worst interpretation of
appearances. No other eulogy occurred to her now than to call him the
best of cousins, because Vernon Whitford was housed and clothed and fed
by him. She had nothing else to say for a man she thought luckless!
She was a woman barren of wit, stripped of style, but she was wealthy
and a gossip--a forge of showering sparks--and she carried Lady Culmer
with her. The two had driven from his house to spread the malignant
rumour abroad; already they blew the biting world on his raw wound.
Neither of them was like Mrs. Mountstuart, a witty woman, who could be
hoodwinked; they were dull women, who steadily kept on their own scent
of the fact, and the only way to confound such inveterate forces was to
be ahead of them, and seize and transform the expected fact, and
astonish them, when they came up to him, with a totally unanticipated
fact.

"You see, you were in error, ladies."

"And so we were, Sir Willoughby, and we acknowledge it. We never could
have guessed that!"

Thus the phantom couple in the future delivered themselves, as well
they might at the revelation. He could run far ahead.

Ay, but to combat these dolts, facts had to be encountered, deeds done,
in groaning earnest. These representatives of the pig-sconces of the
population judged by circumstances: airy shows and seems had no effect
on them. Dexterity of fence was thrown away.

A flying peep at the remorseless might of dulness in compelling us to a
concrete performance counter to our inclinations, if we would deceive
its terrible instinct, gave Willoughby for a moment the survey of a
sage. His intensity of personal feeling struck so vivid an illumination
of mankind at intervals that he would have been individually wise, had
he not been moved by the source of his accurate perceptions to a
personal feeling of opposition to his own sagacity. He loathed and he
despised the vision, so his mind had no benefit of it, though he
himself was whipped along. He chose rather (and the choice is open to
us all) to be flattered by the distinction it revealed between himself
and mankind.

But if he was not as others were, why was he discomfited, solicitous,
miserable? To think that it should be so, ran dead against his
conqueror's theories wherein he had been trained, which, so long as he
gained success awarded success to native merit, grandeur to the grand
in soul, as light kindles light: nature presents the example. His
early training, his bright beginning of life, had taught him to look to
earth's principal fruits as his natural portion, and it was owing to a
girl that he stood a mark for tongues, naked, wincing at the possible
malignity of a pair of harridans. Why not whistle the girl away?

Why, then he would be free to enjoy, careless, younger than his youth
in the rebound to happiness!

And then would his nostrils begin to lift and sniff at the creeping up
of a thick pestiferous vapour. Then in that volume of stench would he
discern the sullen yellow eye of malice. A malarious earth would hunt
him all over it. The breath of the world, the world's view of him, was
partly his vital breath, his view of himself. The ancestry of the
tortured man had bequeathed him this condition of high civilization
among their other bequests. Your withered contracted Egoists of the hut
and the grot reck not of public opinion; they crave but for liberty and
leisure to scratch themselves and soothe an excessive scratch.
Willoughby was expansive, a blooming one, born to look down upon a
tributary world, and to exult in being looked to. Do we wonder at his
consternation in the prospect of that world's blowing foul on him?
Princes have their obligations to teach them they are mortal, and the
brilliant heir of a tributary world is equally enchained by the homage
it brings him;--more, inasmuch as it is immaterial, elusive, not
gathered by the tax, and he cannot capitally punish the treasonable
recusants. Still must he be brilliant; he must court his people. He
must ever, both in his reputation and his person, aching though he be,
show them a face and a leg.

The wounded gentleman shut himself up in his laboratory, where he could
stride to and fro, and stretch out his arms for physical relief, secure
from observation of his fantastical shapes, under the idea that he was
meditating. There was perhaps enough to make him fancy it in the heavy
fire of shots exchanged between his nerves and the situation; there
were notable flashes. He would not avow that he was in an agony: it was
merely a desire for exercise.

Quintessence of worldliness, Mrs. Mountstuart appeared through his
farthest window, swinging her skirts on a turn at the end of the lawn,
with Horace De Craye smirking beside her. And the woman's vaunted
penetration was unable to detect the histrionic Irishism of the fellow.
Or she liked him for his acting and nonsense; nor she only. The voluble
beast was created to snare women. Willoughby became smitten with an
adoration of stedfastness in women. The incarnation of that divine
quality crossed his eyes. She was clad in beauty. A horrible
nondescript convulsion composed of yawn and groan drove him to his
instruments, to avert a renewal of the shock; and while arranging and
fixing them for their unwonted task, he compared himself advantageously
with men like Vernon and De Craye, and others of the county, his
fellows in the hunting-field and on the Magistrate's bench, who neither
understood nor cared for solid work, beneficial practical work, the
work of Science.

He was obliged to relinquish it: his hand shook.

"Experiments will not advance much at this rate," he said, casting the
noxious retardation on his enemies.

It was not to be contested that he must speak with Mrs Mountstuart,
however he might shrink from the trial of his facial muscles. Her not
coming to him seemed ominous: nor was her behaviour at the
luncheon-table quite obscure. She had evidently instigated the
gentlemen to cross and counterchatter Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer. For
what purpose?

Clara's features gave the answer.

They were implacable. And he could be the same.

In the solitude of his room he cried right out: "I swear it, I will
never yield her to Horace De Craye! She shall feel some of my torments,
and try to get the better of them by knowing she deserves them." He had
spoken it, and it was an oath upon the record.

Desire to do her intolerable hurt became an ecstasy in his veins, and
produced another stretching fit that terminated in a violent shake of
the body and limbs; during which he was a spectacle for Mrs.
Mountstuart at one of the windows. He laughed as he went to her,
saying: "No, no work to-day; it won't be done, positively refuses."

"I am taking the Professor away," said she; "he is fidgety about the
cold he caught."

Sir Willoughby stepped out to her. "I was trying at a bit of work for
an hour, not to be idle all day."

"You work in that den of yours every day?"

"Never less than an hour, if I can snatch it."

"It is a wonderful resource!"

The remark set him throbbing and thinking that a prolongation of his
crisis exposed him to the approaches of some organic malady, possibly
heart-disease.

"A habit," he said. "In there I throw off the world."

"We shall see some results in due time."

"I promise none: I like to be abreast of the real knowledge of my day,
that is all."

"And a pearl among country gentlemen!"

"In your gracious consideration, my dear lady. Generally speaking, it
would be more advisable to become a chatterer and keep an anecdotal
note-book. I could not do it, simply because I could not live with my
own emptiness for the sake of making an occasional display of
fireworks. I aim at solidity. It is a narrow aim, no doubt; not much
appreciated."

"Laetitia Dale appreciates it."

A smile of enforced ruefulness, like a leaf curling in heat, wrinkled
his mouth.

Why did she not speak of her conversation with Clara?

"Have they caught Crossjay?" he said.

"Apparently they are giving chase to him."

The likelihood was, that Clara had been overcome by timidity.

"Must you leave us?"

"I think it prudent to take Professor Crooklyn away."

"He still . . . ?"

"The extraordinary resemblance!"

"A word aside to Dr. Middleton will dispel that."

"You are thoroughly good."

This hateful encomium of commiseration transfixed him. Then she knew of
his calamity!

"Philosophical," he said, "would be the proper term, I think."

"Colonel De Craye, by the way, promises me a visit when he leaves you."

"To-morrow?"

"The earlier the better. He is too captivating; he is delightful. He
won me in five minutes. I don't accuse him. Nature gifted him to cast
the spell. We are weak women, Sir Willoughby."

She knew!

"Like to like: the witty to the witty, ma'am."

"You won't compliment me with a little bit of jealousy?"

"I forbear from complimenting him."

"Be philosophical, of course, if you have the philosophy."

"I pretend to it. Probably I suppose myself to succeed because I have
no great requirement of it; I cannot say. We are riddles to ourselves."

Mrs. Mountstuart pricked the turf with the point of her parasol. She
looked down and she looked up.

"Well?" said he to her eyes.

"Well, and where is Laetitia Dale?"

He turned about to show his face elsewhere.

When he fronted her again, she looked very fixedly, and set her head
shaking.

"It will not do, my dear Sir Willoughby!"

"What?"

"I never could solve enigmas."

"Playing ta-ta-ta-ta ad infinitum, then. Things have gone far. All
parties would be happier for an excursion. Send her home."

"Laetitia? I can't part with her."

Mrs. Mountstuart put a tooth on her under lip as her head renewed its
brushing negative.

"In what way can it be hurtful that she should be here, ma'am?" he
ventured to persist.

"Think."

"She is proof."

"Twice!"

The word was big artillery. He tried the affectation of a staring
stupidity. She might have seen his heart thump, and he quitted the mask
for an agreeable grimace.

"She is inaccessible. She is my friend. I guarantee her, on my honour.
Have no fear for her. I beg you to have confidence in me. I would
perish rather. No soul on earth is to be compared with her."

Mrs. Mountstuart repeated "Twice!"

The low monosyllable, musically spoken in the same tone of warning of a
gentle ghost, rolled a thunder that maddened him, but he dared not take
it up to fight against it on plain terms.

"Is it for my sake?" he said.

"It will not do, Sir Willoughby."

She spurred him to a frenzy.

"My dear Mrs. Mountstuart, you have been listening to tales. I am not a
tyrant. I am one of the most easy-going of men. Let us preserve the
forms due to society: I say no more. As for poor old Vernon, people
call me a good sort of cousin; I should like to see him comfortably
married; decently married this time. I have proposed to contribute to
his establishment. I mention it to show that the case has been
practically considered. He has had a tolerably souring experience of
the state; he might be inclined if, say, you took him in hand, for
another venture. It's a demoralizing lottery. However, Government
sanctions it."

"But, Sir Willoughby, what is the use of my taking him in hand when, as
you tell me, Laetitia Dale holds back?"

"She certainly does."

"Then we are talking to no purpose, unless you undertake to melt her."

He suffered a lurking smile to kindle to some strength of meaning.

"You are not over-considerate in committing me to such an office."

"You are afraid of the danger?" she all but sneered.

Sharpened by her tone, he said, "I have such a love of stedfastness of
character, that I should be a poor advocate in the endeavour to break
it. And frankly, I know the danger. I saved my honour when I made the
attempt: that is all I can say."

"Upon my word," Mrs. Mountstuart threw back her head to let her eyes
behold him summarily over their fine aquiline bridge, "you have the art
of mystification, my good friend."

"Abandon the idea of Laetitia Dale."

"And marry your cousin Vernon to whom? Where are we?"

"As I said, ma'am, I am an easy-going man. I really have not a spice of
the tyrant in me. An intemperate creature held by the collar may have
that notion of me, while pulling to be released as promptly as it
entered the noose. But I do strictly and sternly object to the scandal
of violent separations, open breaches of solemn engagements, a public
rupture. Put it that I am the cause, I will not consent to a violation
of decorum. Is that clear? It is just possible for things to be
arranged so that all parties may be happy in their way without much
hubbub. Mind, it is not I who have willed it so. I am, and I am forced
to be, passive. But I will not be obstructive."

He paused, waving his hand to signify the vanity of the more that might
be said.

Some conception of him, dashed by incredulity, excited the lady's
intelligence.

"Well!" she exclaimed, "you have planted me in the land of conjecture.
As my husband used to say, I don't see light, but I think I see the
lynx that does. We won't discuss it at present. I certainly must be a
younger woman than I supposed, for I am learning hard.--Here comes the
Professor, buttoned up to the ears, and Dr. Middleton flapping in the
breeze. There will be a cough, and a footnote referring to the young
lady at the station, if we stand together, so please order my
carriage."

"You found Clara complacent? roguish?"

"I will call to-morrow. You have simplified my task, Sir Willoughby,
very much; that is, assuming that I have not entirely mistaken you. I
am so far in the dark that I have to help myself by recollecting how
Lady Busshe opposed my view of a certain matter formerly. Scepticism is
her forte. It will be the very oddest thing if after all . . . ! No, I
shall own, romance has not departed. Are you fond of dupes?"

"I detest the race."

"An excellent answer. I could pardon you for it." She refrained from
adding, "If you are making one of me."

Sir Willoughby went to ring for her carriage.

She knew. That was palpable: Clara had betrayed him.

"The earlier Colonel De Craye leaves Patterne Hall the better:" she had
said that: and, "all parties would be happier for an excursion." She
knew the position of things and she guessed the remainder. But what she
did not know, and could not divine, was the man who fenced her. He
speculated further on the witty and the dull. These latter are the
redoubtable body. They will have facts to convince them: they had, he
confessed it to himself, precipitated him into the novel sphere of his
dark hints to Mrs. Mountstuart; from which the utter darkness might
allow him to escape, yet it embraced him singularly, and even
pleasantly, with the sense of a fact established.

It embraced him even very pleasantly. There was an end to his tortures.
He sailed on a tranquil sea, the husband of a stedfast woman--no rogue.
The exceeding beauty of stedfastness in women clothed Laetitia in
graces Clara could not match. A tried stedfast woman is the one jewel
of the sex. She points to her husband like the sunflower; her love
illuminates him; she lives in him, for him; she testifies to his worth;
she drags the world to his feet; she leads the chorus of his praises;
she justifies him in his own esteem. Surely there is not on earth such
beauty!

If we have to pass through anguish to discover it and cherish the peace
it gives to clasp it, calling it ours, is a full reward. Deep in his
reverie, he said his adieus to Mrs. Mountstuart, and strolled up the
avenue behind the carriage-wheels, unwilling to meet Laetitia till he
had exhausted the fresh savour of the cud of fancy.

Supposing it done!--

It would be generous on his part. It would redound to his credit.

His home would be a fortress, impregnable to tongues. He would have
divine security in his home.

One who read and knew and worshipped him would be sitting there
star-like: sitting there, awaiting him, his fixed star.

It would be marriage with a mirror, with an echo; marriage with a
shining mirror, a choric echo.

It would be marriage with an intellect, with a fine understanding; to
make his home a fountain of repeatable wit: to make his dear old
Patterne Hall the luminary of the county.

He revolved it as a chant: with anon and anon involuntarily a
discordant animadversion on Lady Busshe. Its attendant imps heard the
angry inward cry.

Forthwith he set about painting Laetitia in delectable human colours,
like a miniature of the past century, reserving her ideal figure for
his private satisfaction. The world was to bow to her visible beauty,
and he gave her enamel and glow, a taller stature, a swimming air, a
transcendency that exorcized the image of the old witch who had driven
him to this.

The result in him was, that Laetitia became humanly and avowedly
beautiful. Her dark eyelashes on the pallor of her cheeks lent their
aid to the transformation, which was a necessity to him, so it was
performed. He received the waxen impression.

His retinue of imps had a revel. We hear wonders of men, and we see a
lifting up of hands in the world. The wonders would be explained, and
never a hand need to interject, if the mystifying man were but
accompanied by that monkey-eyed confraternity. They spy the heart and
its twists.

The heart is the magical gentleman. None of them would follow where
there was no heart. The twists of the heart are the comedy.

"The secret of the heart is its pressing love of self ", says the Book.

By that secret the mystery of the organ is legible: and a comparison of
the heart to the mountain rillet is taken up to show us the unbaffled
force of the little channel in seeking to swell its volume,
strenuously, sinuously, ever in pursuit of self; the busiest as it is
the most single-aiming of forces on our earth. And we are directed to
the sinuosities for posts of observation chiefly instructive.

Few maintain a stand there. People see, and they rush away to
interchange liftings of hands at the sight, instead of patiently
studying the phenomenon of energy.

Consequently a man in love with one woman, and in all but absolute
consciousness, behind the thinnest of veils, preparing his mind to love
another, will be barely credible. The particular hunger of the forceful
but adaptable heart is the key of him. Behold the mountain rillet,
become a brook, become a torrent, how it inarms a handsome boulder: yet
if the stone will not go with it, on it hurries, pursuing self in
extension, down to where perchance a dam has been raised of a
sufficient depth to enfold and keep it from inordinate restlessness.
Laetitia represented this peaceful restraining space in prospect.

But she was a faded young woman. He was aware of it; and
systematically looking at himself with her upturned orbs, he accepted
her benevolently as a God grateful for worship, and used the divinity
she imparted to paint and renovate her. His heart required her so. The
heart works the springs of imagination; imagination received its
commission from the heart, and was a cunning artist.

Cunning to such a degree of seductive genius that the masterpiece it
offered to his contemplation enabled him simultaneously to gaze on
Clara and think of Laetitia. Clara came through the park-gates with
Vernon, a brilliant girl indeed, and a shallow one: a healthy creature,
and an animal; attractive, but capricious, impatient, treacherous,
foul; a woman to drag men through the mud. She approached.



CHAPTER XXXVIII

IN WHICH WE TAKE A STEP TO THE CENTRE OF EGOISM

They met; Vernon soon left them.

"You have not seen Crossjay?" Willoughby inquired.

"No," said Clara. "Once more I beg you to pardon him. He spoke falsely,
owing to his poor boy's idea of chivalry."

"The chivalry to the sex which commences in lies ends by creating the
woman's hero, whom we see about the world and in certain courts of
law."

His ability to silence her was great: she could not reply to speech
like that.

"You have," said he, "made a confidante of Mrs. Mountstuart."

"Yes."

"This is your purse."

"I thank you."

"Professor Crooklyn has managed to make your father acquainted with
your project. That, I suppose, is the railway ticket in the fold of the
purse. He was assured at the station that you had taken a ticket to
London, and would not want the fly."

"It is true. I was foolish."

"You have had a pleasant walk with Vernon--turning me in and out?"

"We did not speak of you. You allude to what he would never consent
to."

"He's an honest fellow, in his old-fashioned way. He's a secret old
fellow. Does he ever talk about his wife to you?"

Clara dropped her purse, and stooped and picked it up.

"I know nothing of Mr. Whitford's affairs," she said, and she opened
the purse and tore to pieces the railway ticket.

"The story's a proof that romantic spirits do not furnish the most
romantic history. You have the word 'chivalry' frequently on your lips.
He chivalrously married the daughter of the lodging-house where he
resided before I took him. We obtained information of the auspicious
union in a newspaper report of Mrs. Whitford's drunkenness and rioting
at a London railway terminus--probably the one whither your ticket
would have taken you yesterday, for I heard the lady was on her way to
us for supplies, the connubial larder being empty."

"I am sorry; I am ignorant; I have heard nothing; I know nothing," said
Clara.

"You are disgusted. But half the students and authors you hear of marry
in that way. And very few have Vernon's luck."

"She had good qualities?" asked Clara.

Her under lip hung.

It looked like disgust; he begged her not indulge the feeling.

"Literary men, it is notorious, even with the entry to society, have no
taste in women. The housewife is their object. Ladies frighten and
would, no doubt, be an annoyance and hindrance to them at home."

"You said he was fortunate."

"You have a kindness for him."

"I respect him."

"He is a friendly old fellow in his awkward fashion; honourable, and so
forth. But a disreputable alliance of that sort sticks to a man. The
world will talk. Yes, he was fortunate so far; he fell into the mire
and got out of it. Were he to marry again . . ."

"She . . ."

"Died. Do not be startled; it was a natural death. She responded to the
sole wishes left to his family. He buried the woman, and I received
him. I took him on my tour. A second marriage might cover the first:
there would be a buzz about the old business: the woman's relatives
write to him still, try to bleed him, I dare say. However, now you
understand his gloominess. I don't imagine he regrets his loss. He
probably sentimentalizes, like most men when they are well rid of a
burden. You must not think the worse of him."

"I do not," said Clara.

"I defend him whenever the matter's discussed."

"I hope you do."

"Without approving his folly. I can't wash him clean."

They were at the Hall-doors. She waited for any personal communications
he might be pleased to make, and as there was none, she ran upstairs to
her room.

He had tossed her to Vernon in his mind, not only painlessly, but with
a keen acid of satisfaction. The heart is the wizard.

Next he bent his deliberate steps to Laetitia.

The mind was guilty of some hesitation; the feet went forward.

She was working at an embroidery by an open window. Colonel De Craye
leaned outside, and Willoughby pardoned her air of demure amusement, on
hearing him say: "No, I have had one of the pleasantest half-hours of
my life, and would rather idle here, if idle you will have it, than
employ my faculties on horse-back,"

"Time is not lost in conversing with Miss Dale," said Willoughby.

The light was tender to her complexion where she sat in partial shadow.

De Craye asked whether Crossjay had been caught.

Laetitia murmured a kind word for the boy. Willoughby examined her
embroidery.

The ladies Eleanor and Isabel appeared.

They invited her to take carriage exercise with them.

Laetitia did not immediately answer, and Willoughby remarked: "Miss
Dale has been reproving Horace for idleness and I recommend you to
enlist him to do duty, while I relieve him here."

The ladies had but to look at the colonel. He was at their disposal, if
they would have him. He was marched to the carriage.

Laetitia plied her threads.

"Colonel De Craye spoke of Crossjay," she said. "May I hope you have
forgiven the poor boy, Sir Willoughby?"

He replied: "Plead for him."

"I wish I had eloquence."

"In my opinion you have it."

"If he offends, it is never from meanness. At school, among comrades,
he would shine. He is in too strong a light; his feelings and his moral
nature are over-excited."

"That was not the case when he was at home with you."

"I am severe; I am stern."

"A Spartan mother!"

"My system of managing a boy would be after that model: except in this:
he should always feet that he could obtain forgiveness."

"Not at the expense of justice?"

"Ah! young creatures are not to be arraigned before the higher Courts.
It seems to me perilous to terrify their imaginations. If we do so,
are we not likely to produce the very evil we are combating? The
alternations for the young should be school and home: and it should be
in their hearts to have confidence that forgiveness alternates with
discipline. They are of too tender an age for the rigours of the world;
we are in danger of hardening them. I prove to you that I am not
possessed of eloquence. You encouraged me to speak, Sir Willoughby."

"You speak wisely, Laetitia."

"I think it true. Will not you reflect on it? You have only to do so to
forgive him. I am growing bold indeed, and shall have to beg
forgiveness for myself."

"You still write? you continue to work with your pen?" said Willoughby.

"A little; a very little."

"I do not like you to squander yourself, waste yourself, on the public.
You are too precious to feed the beast. Giving out incessantly must end
by attenuating. Reserve yourself for your friends. Why should they be
robbed of so much of you? Is it not reasonable to assume that by lying
fallow you would be more enriched for domestic life? Candidly, had I
authority I would confiscate your pen: I would 'away with that bauble'.
You will not often find me quoting Cromwell, but his words apply in
this instance. I would say rather, that lancet. Perhaps it is the more
correct term. It bleeds you, it wastes you. For what? For a breath of
fame!"

"I write for money."

"And there--I would say of another--you subject yourself to the risk of
mental degradation. Who knows?--moral! Trafficking the brains for money
must bring them to the level of the purchasers in time. I confiscate
your pen, Laetitia."

"It will be to confiscate your own gift, Sir Willoughby."

"Then that proves--will you tell me the date?"

"You sent me a gold pen-holder on my sixteenth birthday."

"It proves my utter thoughtlessness then, and later. And later!"

He rested an elbow on his knee, and covered his eyes, murmuring in that
profound hollow which is haunted by the voice of a contrite past: "And
later!"

The deed could be done. He had come to the conclusion that it could be
done, though the effort to harmonize the figure sitting near him, with
the artistic figure of his purest pigments, had cost him labour and a
blinking of the eyelids. That also could be done. Her pleasant tone,
sensible talk, and the light favouring her complexion, helped him in
his effort. She was a sober cup; sober and wholesome. Deliriousness is
for adolescence. The men who seek intoxicating cups are men who invite
their fates.

Curiously, yet as positively as things can be affirmed, the husband of
this woman would be able to boast of her virtues and treasures abroad,
as he could not--impossible to say why not--boast of a beautiful wife
or a blue-stocking wife. One of her merits as a wife would be this
extraordinary neutral merit of a character that demanded colour from
the marital hand, and would take it.

Laetitia had not to learn that he had much to distress him. Her wonder
at his exposure of his grief counteracted a fluttering of vague alarm.
She was nervous; she sat in expectation of some burst of regrets or of
passion.

"I may hope that you have pardoned Crossjay?" she said.

"My friend," said he, uncovering his face, "I am governed by
principles. Convince me of an error, I shall not obstinately pursue a
premeditated course. But you know me. Men who have not principles to
rule their conduct are--well, they are unworthy of a half hour of
companionship with you. I will speak to you to-night. I have letters to
dispatch. To-night: at twelve: in the room where we spoke last. Or
await me in the drawing-room. I have to attend to my guests till late."

He bowed; he was in a hurry to go.

The deed could be done. It must be done; it was his destiny.



CHAPTER XXXIX

IN THE HEART OF THE EGOIST

But already he had begun to regard the deed as his executioner. He
dreaded meeting Clara. The folly of having retained her stood before
him. How now to look on her and keep a sane resolution unwavering? She
tempted to the insane. Had she been away, he could have walked through
the performance composed by the sense of doing a duty to himself;
perhaps faintly hating the poor wretch he made happy at last, kind to
her in a manner, polite. Clara's presence in the house previous to the
deed, and, oh, heaven! after it, threatened his wits. Pride? He had
none; he cast it down for her to trample it; he caught it back ere it
was trodden on. Yes; he had pride: he had it as a dagger in his breast:
his pride was his misery. But he was too proud to submit to misery.
"What I do is right." He said the words, and rectitude smoothed his
path, till the question clamoured for answer: Would the world
countenance and endorse his pride in Laetitia? At one time, yes. And
now? Clara's beauty ascended, laid a beam on him. We are on board the
labouring vessel of humanity in a storm, when cries and countercries
ring out, disorderliness mixes the crew, and the fury of
self-preservation divides: this one is for the ship, that one for his
life. Clara was the former to him, Laetitia the latter. But what if
there might not be greater safety in holding tenaciously to Clara than
in casting her off for Laetitia? No, she had done things to set his
pride throbbing in the quick. She had gone bleeding about first to one,
then to another; she had betrayed him to Vernon, and to Mrs.
Mountstuart; a look in the eyes of Horace De Craye said, to him as
well: to whom not? He might hold to her for vengeance; but that
appetite was short-lived in him if it ministered nothing to his
purposes. "I discard all idea of vengeance," he said, and thrilled
burningly to a smart in his admiration of the man who could be so
magnanimous under mortal injury; for the more admirable he, the more
pitiable. He drank a drop or two of self-pity like a poison, repelling
the assaults of public pity. Clara must be given up. It must be seen by
the world that, as he felt, the thing he did was right. Laocoon of his
own serpents, he struggled to a certain magnificence of attitude in the
muscular net of constrictions he flung around himself. Clara must be
given up. Oh, bright Abominable! She must be given up: but not to one
whose touch of her would be darts in the blood of the yielder, snakes
in his bed: she must be given up to an extinguisher; to be the second
wife of an old-fashioned semi-recluse, disgraced in his first. And were
it publicly known that she had been cast off, and had fallen on old
Vernon for a refuge, and part in spite, part in shame, part in
desperation, part in a fit of good sense under the circumstances,
espoused him, her beauty would not influence the world in its
judgement. The world would know what to think. As the instinct of
self-preservation whispered to Willoughby, the world, were it
requisite, might be taught to think what it assuredly would not think
if she should be seen tripping to the altar with Horace De Craye.
Self-preservation, not vengeance, breathed that whisper. He glanced at
her iniquity for a justification of it, without any desire to do her a
permanent hurt: he was highly civilized: but with a strong intention to
give her all the benefit of a scandal, supposing a scandal, or ordinary
tattle.

"And so he handed her to his cousin and secretary, Vernon Whitford, who
opened his mouth and shut his eyes."

You hear the world? How are we to stop it from chattering? Enough that
he had no desire to harm her. Some gentle anticipations of her being
tarnished were imperative; they came spontaneously to him; otherwise
the radiance of that bright Abominable in loss would have been
insufferable; he could not have borne it; he could never have
surrendered her. Moreover, a happy present effect was the result. He
conjured up the anticipated chatter and shrug of the world so vividly
that her beauty grew hectic with the stain, bereft of its formidable
magnetism. He could meet her calmly; he had steeled himself. Purity in
women was his principal stipulation, and a woman puffed at, was not
the person to cause him tremours.

Consider him indulgently: the Egoist is the Son of Himself. He is
likewise the Father. And the son loves the father, the father the son;
they reciprocate affection through the closest of ties; and shall they
view behaviour unkindly wounding either of them, not for each other's
dear sake abhorring the criminal? They would not injure you, but they
cannot consent to see one another suffer or crave in vain. The two rub
together in sympathy besides relationship to an intenser one. Are you,
without much offending, sacrificed by them, it is on the altar of their
mutual love, to filial piety or paternal tenderness: the younger has
offered a dainty morsel to the elder, or the elder to the younger.
Absorbed in their great example of devotion do they not think of you.
They are beautiful.

Yet is it most true that the younger has the passions of youth:
whereof will come division between them; and this is a tragic state.
They are then pathetic. This was the state of Sir Willoughby lending
ear to his elder, until he submitted to bite at the fruit proposed to
him--with how wry a mouth the venerable senior chose not to mark. At
least, as we perceive, a half of him was ripe of wisdom in his own
interests. The cruder half had but to be obedient to the leadership of
sagacity for his interests to be secured, and a filial disposition
assisted him; painfully indeed; but the same rare quality directed the
good gentleman to swallow his pain. That the son should bewail his fate
were a dishonour to the sire. He reverenced, and submitted. Thus, to
say, consider him indulgently, is too much an appeal for charity on
behalf of one requiring but initial anatomy--a slicing in halves--to
exonerate, perchance exalt him. The Egoist is our fountain-head,
primeval man: the primitive is born again, the elemental reconstituted.
Born again, into new conditions, the primitive may be highly polished
of men, and forfeit nothing save the roughness of his original nature.
He is not only his own father, he is ours; and he is also our son. We
have produced him, he us. Such were we, to such are we returning: not
other, sings the poet, than one who toilfully works his shallop against
the tide, "si brachia forte remisit":--let him haply relax the labour
of his arms, however high up the stream, and back he goes, "in pejus",
to the early principle of our being, with seeds and plants, that are as
carelessly weighed in the hand and as indiscriminately husbanded as our
humanity.

Poets on the other side may be cited for an assurance that the
primitive is not the degenerate: rather is he a sign of the
indestructibility of the race, of the ancient energy in removing
obstacles to individual growth; a sample of what we would be, had we
his concentrated power. He is the original innocent, the pure simple.
It is we who have fallen; we have melted into Society, diluted our
essence, dissolved. He stands in the midst monumentally, a land-mark of
the tough and honest old Ages, with the symbolic alphabet of striking
arms and running legs, our early language, scrawled over his person,
and the glorious first flint and arrow-head for his crest: at once the
spectre of the Kitchen-midden and our ripest issue.

But Society is about him. The occasional spectacle of the primitive
dangling on a rope has impressed his mind with the strength of his
natural enemy: from which uncongenial sight he has turned shuddering
hardly less to behold the blast that is blown upon a reputation where
one has been disrespectful of the many. By these means, through
meditation on the contrast of circumstances in life, a pulse of
imagination has begun to stir, and he has entered the upper sphere or
circle of spiritual Egoism: he has become the civilized Egoist;
primitive still, as sure as man has teeth, but developed in his manner
of using them.

Degenerate or not (and there is no just reason to suppose it) Sir
Willoughby was a social Egoist, fiercely imaginative in whatsoever
concerned him. He had discovered a greater realm than that of the
sensual appetites, and he rushed across and around it in his conquering
period with an Alexander's pride. On these wind-like journeys he had
carried Constantia, subsequently Clara; and however it may have been in
the case of Miss Durham, in that of Miss Middleton it is almost certain
she caught a glimpse of his interior from sheer fatigue in hearing him
discourse of it. What he revealed was not the cause of her sickness:
women can bear revelations--they are exciting: but the monotonousness.
He slew imagination. There is no direr disaster in love than the death
of imagination. He dragged her through the labyrinths of his
penetralia, in his hungry coveting to be loved more and still more,
more still, until imagination gave up the ghost, and he talked to her
plain hearing like a monster. It must have been that; for the spell of
the primitive upon women is masterful up to the time of contact.

"And so he handed her to his cousin and secretary, Vernon Whitford, who
opened his mouth and shut his eyes."

The urgent question was, how it was to be accomplished. Willoughby
worked at the subject with all his power of concentration: a power that
had often led him to feel and say, that as a barrister, a diplomatist,
or a general, he would have won his grades: and granting him a personal
interest in the business, he might have achieved eminence: he schemed
and fenced remarkably well.

He projected a scene, following expressions of anxiety on account of
old Vernon and his future settlement: and then Clara maintaining her
doggedness, to which he was now so accustomed that he could not
conceive a change in it--says he: "If you determine on breaking I give
you back your word on one condition." Whereupon she starts: he insists
on her promise: she declines: affairs resume their former footing; she
frets: she begs for the disclosure: he flatters her by telling her his
desire to keep her in the family: she is unilluminated, but strongly
moved by curiosity: he philosophizes on marriage "What are we? poor
creatures! we must get through life as we can, doing as much good as we
can to those we love; and think as you please, I love old Vernon. Am I
not giving you the greatest possible proof of it?" She will not see.
Then flatly out comes the one condition. That and no other. "Take
Vernon and I release you." She refuses. Now ensues the debate, all the
oratory being with him. "Is it because of his unfortunate first
marriage? You assured me you thought no worse of him," etc. She
declares the proposal revolting. He can distinguish nothing that should
offend her in a proposal to make his cousin happy if she will not him.
Irony and sarcasm relieve his emotions, but he convinces her he is
dealing plainly and intends generosity. She is confused; she speaks in
maiden fashion. He touches again on Vernon's early escapade. She does
not enjoy it. The scene closes with his bidding her reflect on it, and
remember the one condition of her release. Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson,
now reduced to believe that he burns to be free, is then called in for
an interview with Clara. His aunts Eleanor and Isabel besiege her.
Laetitia in passionate earnest besieges her. Her father is wrought on
to besiege her. Finally Vernon is attacked by Willoughby and Mrs.
Mountstuart:--and here, Willoughby chose to think, was the main
difficulty. But the girl has money; she is agreeable; Vernon likes her;
she is fond of his "Alps", they have tastes in common, he likes her
father, and in the end he besieges her. Will she yield? De Craye is
absent. There is no other way of shunning a marriage she is
incomprehensibly but frantically averse to. She is in the toils. Her
father will stay at Patterne Hall as long as his host desires it. She
hesitates, she is overcome; in spite of a certain nausea due to
Vernon's preceding alliance, she yields.

Willoughby revolved the entire drama in Clara's presence. It helped him
to look on her coolly. Conducting her to the dinner-table, he spoke of
Crossjay, not unkindly; and at table, he revolved the set of scenes
with a heated animation that took fire from the wine and the face of
his friend Horace, while he encouraged Horace to be flowingly Irish. He
nipped the fellow good-humouredly once or twice, having never felt so
friendly to him since the day of his arrival; but the position of
critic is instinctively taken by men who do not flow: and Patterne Port
kept Dr Middleton in a benevolent reserve when Willoughby decided that
something said by De Craye was not new, and laughingly accused him of
failing to consult his anecdotal notebook for the double-cross to his
last sprightly sally. "Your sallies are excellent, Horace, but spare us
your Aunt Sallies!" De Craye had no repartee, nor did Dr. Middleton
challenge a pun. We have only to sharpen our wits to trip your
seductive rattler whenever we may choose to think proper; and
evidently, if we condescended to it, we could do better than he. The
critic who has hatched a witticism is impelled to this opinion. Judging
by the smiles of the ladies, they thought so, too.

Shortly before eleven o'clock Dr. Middleton made a Spartan stand
against the offer of another bottle of Port. The regulation couple of
bottles had been consumed in equal partnership, and the Rev. Doctor
and his host were free to pay a ceremonial visit to the drawing-room,
where they were not expected. A piece of work of the elder ladies, a
silken boudoir sofa-rug, was being examined, with high approval of the
two younger. Vernon and Colonel De Craye had gone out in search of
Crossjay, one to Mr. Dale's cottage, the other to call at the head and
under-gamekeeper's. They were said to be strolling and smoking, for the
night was fine. Willoughby left the room and came back with the key of
Crossjay's door in his pocket. He foresaw that the delinquent might be
of service to him.

Laetitia and Clara sang together. Laetitia was flushed, Clara pale. At
eleven they saluted the ladies Eleanor and Isabel. Willoughby said
"Good-night" to each of them, contrasting as he did so the downcast
look of Laetitia with Clara's frigid directness. He divined that they
were off to talk over their one object of common interest, Crossjay.
Saluting his aunts, he took up the rug, to celebrate their diligence
and taste; and that he might make Dr. Middleton impatient for bed, he
provoked him to admire it, held it out and laid it out, and caused the
courteous old gentleman some confusion in hitting on fresh terms of
commendation.

Before midnight the room was empty. Ten minutes later Willoughby paid
it a visit, and found it untenanted by the person he had engaged to be
there. Vexed by his disappointment, he paced up and down, and chanced
abstractedly to catch the rug in his hand; for what purpose, he might
well ask himself; admiration of ladies' work, in their absence, was
unlikely to occur to him. Nevertheless, the touch of the warm, soft
silk was meltingly feminine. A glance at the mantel-piece clock told
him Laetitia was twenty minutes behind the hour. Her remissness might
endanger all his plans, alter the whole course of his life. The colours
in which he painted her were too lively to last; the madness in his
head threatened to subside. Certain it was that he could not be ready a
second night for the sacrifice he had been about to perform.

The clock was at the half hour after twelve. He flung the silken thing
on the central ottoman, extinguished the lamps, and walked out of the
room, charging the absent Laetitia to bear her misfortune with a
consciousness of deserving it.



CHAPTER XL

MIDNIGHT: SIR WILLOUGHBY AND LAETITIA: WITH YOUNG CROSSJAY UNDER A
COVERLET

Young Crossjay was a glutton at holidays and never thought of home till
it was dark. The close of the day saw him several miles away from the
Hall, dubious whether he would not round his numerous adventures by
sleeping at an inn; for he had lots of money, and the idea of jumping
up in the morning in a strange place was thrilling. Besides, when he
was shaken out of sleep by Sir Willoughby, he had been told that he was
to go, and not to show his face at Patterne again. On the other hand,
Miss Middleton had bidden him come back. There was little question with
him which person he should obey: he followed his heart.

Supper at an inn, where he found a company to listen to his adventures,
delayed him, and a short cut, intended to make up for it, lost him his
road. He reached the Hall very late, ready to be in love with the
horrible pleasure of a night's rest under the stars, if necessary. But
a candle burned at one of the back windows. He knocked, and a
kitchen-maid let him in. She had a bowl of hot soup prepared for him.
Crossjay tried a mouthful to please her. His head dropped over it. She
roused him to his feet, and he pitched against her shoulder. The dry
air of the kitchen department had proved too much for the tired
youngster. Mary, the maid, got him to step as firmly as he was able,
and led him by the back-way to the hall, bidding him creep noiselessly
to bed. He understood his position in the house, and though he could
have gone fast to sleep on the stairs, he took a steady aim at his room
and gained the door cat-like. The door resisted. He was appalled and
unstrung in a minute. The door was locked. Crossjay felt as if he were
in the presence of Sir Willoughby. He fled on ricketty legs, and had a
fall and bumps down half a dozen stairs. A door opened above. He rushed
across the hall to the drawing-room, invitingly open, and there
staggered in darkness to the ottoman and rolled himself in something
sleek and warm, soft as hands of ladies, and redolent of them; so
delicious that he hugged the folds about his head and heels. While he
was endeavouring to think where he was, his legs curled, his eyelids
shut, and he was in the thick of the day's adventures, doing yet more
wonderful things.

He heard his own name: that was quite certain. He knew that he heard it
with his ears, as he pursued the fleetest dreams ever accorded to
mortal. It did not mix: it was outside him, and like the danger-pole in
the ice, which the skater shooting hither and yonder comes on again, it
recurred; and now it marked a point in his career, how it caused him to
relax his pace; he began to circle, and whirled closer round it, until,
as at a blow, his heart knocked, he tightened himself, thought of
bolting, and lay dead-still to throb and hearken.

"Oh! Sir Willoughby," a voice had said.

The accents were sharp with alarm.

"My friend! my dearest!" was the answer.

"I came to speak of Crossjay."

"Will you sit here on the ottoman?"

"No, I cannot wait. I hoped I had heard Crossjay return. I would rather
not sit down. May I entreat you to pardon him when he comes home?"

"You, and you only, may do so. I permit none else. Of Crossjay
to-morrow."

"He may be lying in the fields. We are anxious."

"The rascal can take pretty good care of himself."

"Crossjay is perpetually meeting accidents."

"He shall be indemnified if he has had excess of punishment."

"I think I will say good-night, Sir Willoughby."

"When freely and unreservedly you have given me your hand."

There was hesitation.

"To say good-night?"

"I ask you for your hand."

"Good-night, Sir Willoughby."

"You do not give it. You are in doubt? Still? What language must I use
to convince you? And yet you know me. Who knows me but you? You have
always known me. You are my home and my temple. Have you forgotten your
verses of the day of my majority?

       'The dawn-star has arisen
         In plenitude of light . . .'"

"Do not repeat them, pray!" cried Laetitia, with a gasp.

"I have repeated them to myself a thousand times: in India, America,
Japan: they were like our English skylark, carolling to me.

       'My heart, now burst thy prison
         With proud aerial flight!'"

"Oh, I beg you will not force me to listen to nonsense that I wrote
when I was a child. No more of those most foolish lines! If you knew
what it is to write and despise one's writing, you would not distress
me. And since you will not speak of Crossjay to-night, allow me to
retire."

"You know me, and therefore you know my contempt for verses, as a rule,
Laetitia. But not for yours to me. Why should you call them foolish?
They expressed your feelings--hold them sacred. They are something
religious to me, not mere poetry. Perhaps the third verse is my
favourite . . ."

"It will be more than I can bear!"

"You were in earnest when you wrote them?"

"I was very young, very enthusiastic, very silly."

"You were and are my image of constancy!"

"It is an error, Sir Willoughby; I am far from being the same."

"We are all older, I trust wiser. I am, I will own; much wiser. Wise
at last! I offer you my hand."

She did not reply. "I offer you my hand and name, Laetitia."

No response.

"You think me bound in honour to another?"

She was mute.

"I am free. Thank Heaven! I am free to choose my mate--the woman I have
always loved! Freely and unreservedly, as I ask you to give your hand,
I offer mine. You are the mistress of Patterne Hall; my wife."

She had not a word.

"My dearest! do you not rightly understand? The hand I am offering you
is disengaged. It is offered to the lady I respect above all others. I
have made the discovery that I cannot love without respecting; and as I
will not marry without loving, it ensues that I am free--I am yours. At
last?--your lips move: tell me the words. Have always loved, I said.
You carry in your bosom the magnet of constancy, and I, in spite of
apparent deviations, declare to you that I have never ceased to be
sensible of the attraction. And now there is not an impediment. We two
against the world! we are one. Let me confess to an old
foible--perfectly youthful, and you will ascribe it to youth: once I
desired to absorb. I mistrusted; that was the reason: I perceive it.
You teach me the difference of an alliance with a lady of intellect.
The pride I have in you, Laetitia, definitely cures me of that insane
passion--call it an insatiable hunger. I recognize it as a folly of
youth. I have, as it were, gone the tour, to come home to you--at
last?--and live our manly life of comparative equals. At last, then!
But remember that in the younger man you would have had a
despot--perhaps a jealous despot. Young men, I assure you, are
orientally inclined in their ideas of love. Love gets a bad name from
them. We, my Laetitia, do not regard love as a selfishness. If it is,
it is the essence of life. At least it is our selfishness rendered
beautiful. I talk to you like a man who has found a compatriot in a
foreign land. It seems to me that I have not opened my mouth for an
age. I certainly have not unlocked my heart. Those who sing for joy are
not unintelligible to me. If I had not something in me worth saying I
think I should sing. In every sense you reconcile me to men and the
world, Laetitia. Why press you to speak? I will be the speaker. As
surely as you know me, I know you: and . . ."

Laetitia burst forth with: "No!"

"I do not know you?" said he, searchingly mellifluous.

"Hardly."

"How not?"

"I am changed."

"In what way?"

"Deeply."

"Sedater?"

"Materially."

"Colour will come back: have no fear; I promise it. If you imagine you
want renewing, I have the specific, I, my love, I!"

"Forgive me--will you tell me, Sir Willoughby, whether you have broken
with Miss Middleton?"

"Rest satisfied, my dear Laetitia. She is as free as I am. I can do no
more than a man of honour should do. She releases me. To-morrow or
next day she departs. We, Laetitia, you and I, my love, are home birds.
It does not do for the home bird to couple with the migratory. The
little imperceptible change you allude to, is nothing. Italy will
restore you. I am ready to stake my own health--never yet shaken by a
doctor of medicine:--I say medicine advisedly, for there are doctors of
divinity who would shake giants:--that an Italian trip will send you
back--that I shall bring you home from Italy a blooming bride. You
shake your head--despondently? My love, I guarantee it. Cannot I give
you colour? Behold! Come to the light, look in the glass."

"I may redden," said Laetitia. "I suppose that is due to the action of
the heart. I am changed. Heart, for any other purpose, I have not. I am
like you, Sir Willoughby, in this: I could not marry without loving,
and I do not know what love is, except that it is an empty dream."

"Marriage, my dearest. . ."

"You are mistaken."

"I will cure you, my Laetitia. Look to me, I am the tonic. It is not
common confidence, but conviction. I, my love, I!"

"There is no cure for what I feel, Sir Willoughby."

"Spare me the formal prefix, I beg. You place your hand in mine,
relying on me. I am pledge for the remainder. We end as we began: my
request is for your hand--your hand in marriage."

"I cannot give it."

"To be my wife!"

"It is an honour; I must decline it."

"Are you quite well, Laetitia? I propose in the plainest terms I can
employ, to make you Lady Patterne--mine."

"I am compelled to refuse."

"Why? Refuse? Your reason!"

"The reason has been named."

He took a stride to inspirit his wits.

"There's a madness comes over women at times, I know. Answer me,
Laetitia:--by all the evidence a man can have, I could swear it:--but
answer me; you loved me once?"

"I was an exceedingly foolish, romantic girl."

"You evade my question: I am serious. Oh!" he walked away from her
booming a sound of utter repudiation of her present imbecility, and
hurrying to her side, said: "But it was manifest to the whole world! It
was a legend. To love like Laetitia Dale, was a current phrase. You
were an example, a light to women: no one was your match for devotion.
You were a precious cameo, still gazing! And I was the object. You
loved me. You loved me, you belonged to me, you were mine, my
possession, my jewel; I was prouder of your constancy than of anything
else that I had on earth. It was a part of the order of the universe to
me. A doubt of it would have disturbed my creed. Why, good heaven!
where are we? Is nothing solid on earth? You loved me!"

"I was childish, indeed."

"You loved me passionately!"

"Do you insist on shaming me through and through, Sir Willoughby? I
have been exposed enough."

"You cannot blot out the past: it is written, it is recorded. You loved
me devotedly, silence is no escape. You loved me."

"I did."

"You never loved me, you shallow woman! 'I did!' As if there could be a
cessation of a love! What are we to reckon on as ours? We prize a
woman's love; we guard it jealously, we trust to it, dream of it; there
is our wealth; there is our talisman! And when we open the casket it
has flown!--barren vacuity!--we are poorer than dogs. As well think of
keeping a costly wine in potter's clay as love in the heart of a woman!
There are women--women! Oh, they are all of a stamp coin! Coin for any
hand! It's a fiction, an imposture--they cannot love. They are the
shadows of men. Compared with men, they have as much heart in them as
the shadow beside the body. Laetitia!"

"Sir Willoughby."

"You refuse my offer?"

"I must."

"You refuse to take me for your husband?"

"I cannot be your wife."

"You have changed? . . . you have set your heart? . . . you could
marry? . . . there is a man? . . . you could marry one! I will have an
answer, I am sick of evasions. What was in the mind of Heaven when
women were created, will be the riddle to the end of the world! Every
good man in turn has made the inquiry. I have a right to know who robs
me--We may try as we like to solve it.--Satan is painted laughing!--I
say I have a right to know who robs me. Answer me."

"I shall not marry."

"That is not an answer."

"I love no one."

"You loved me.--You are silent?--but you confessed it. Then you confess
it was a love that could die! Are you unable to perceive how that
redounds to my discredit? You loved me, you have ceased to love me. In
other words you charge me with incapacity to sustain a woman's love.
You accuse me of inspiring a miserable passion that cannot last a
lifetime! You let the world see that I am a man to be aimed at for a
temporary mark! And simply because I happen to be in your neighbourhood
at an age when a young woman is impressionable! You make a public
example of me as a for whom women may have a caprice, but that is all;
he cannot enchain them; he fascinates passingly; they fall off. Is it
just, for me to be taken up and cast down at your will? Reflect on that
scandal! Shadows? Why, a man's shadow is faithful to him at least.
What are women? There is not a comparison in nature that does not tower
above them! not one that does not hoot at them! I, throughout my life,
guided by absolute deference to their weakness--paying them politeness,
courtesy--whatever I touch I am happy in, except when I touch women!
How is it? What is the mystery? Some monstrous explanation must exist.
What can it be? I am favoured by fortune from my birth until I enter
into relations with women. But will you be so good as to account for it
in your defence of them? Oh! were the relations dishonourable, it
would be quite another matter. Then they . . . I could recount . . . I
disdain to chronicle such victories. Quite another matter. But they are
flies, and I am something more stable. They are flies. I look beyond
the day; I owe a duty to my line. They are flies. I foresee it, I shall
be crossed in my fate so long as I fail to shun them--flies! Not merely
born for the day, I maintain that they are spiritually ephemeral--Well,
my opinion of your sex is directly traceable to you. You may alter it,
or fling another of us men out on the world with the old bitter
experience. Consider this, that it is on your head if my ideal of women
is wrecked. It rests with you to restore it. I love you. I discover
that you are the one woman I have always loved. I come to you, I sue
you, and suddenly--you have changed! 'I have changed: I am not the
same.' What can it mean? 'I cannot marry: I love no one.' And you say
you do not know what love is--avowing in the same breath that you did
love me! Am I the empty dream? My hand, heart, fortune, name, are
yours, at your feet; you kick them hence. I am here--you reject me. But
why, for what mortal reason am I here other than my faith in your love?
You drew me to you, to repel me, and have a wretched revenge."

"You know it is not that, Sir Willoughby."

"Have you any possible suspicion that I am still entangled, not, as I
assure you I am, perfectly free in fact and in honour?"

"It is not that."

"Name it; for you see your power. Would you have me kneel to you,
madam?"

"Oh, no; it would complete my grief."

"You feel grief? Then you believe in my affection, and you hurl it
away. I have no doubt that as a poetess you would say, love is eternal.
And you have loved me. And you tell me you love me no more. You are not
very logical, Laetitia Dale."

"Poetesses rarely are: if I am one, which I little pretend to be for
writing silly verses. I have passed out of that delusion, with the
rest."

"You shall not wrong those dear old days, Laetitia. I see them now;
when I rode by your cottage and you were at your window, pen in hand,
your hair straying over your forehead. Romantic, yes; not foolish. Why
were you foolish in thinking of me? Some day I will commission an
artist to paint me that portrait of you from my description. And I
remember when we first whispered . . . I remember your trembling. You
have forgotten--I remember. I remember our meeting in the park on the
path to church. I remember the heavenly morning of my return from my
travels, and the same Laetitia meeting me, stedfast and unchangeable.
Could I ever forget? Those are ineradicable scenes; pictures of my
youth, interwound with me. I may say, that as I recede from them, I
dwell on them the more. Tell me, Laetitia, was there not a certain
prophecy of your father's concerning us two? I fancy I heard of one.
There was one."

"He was an invalid. Elderly people nurse illusions."

"Ask yourself Laetitia, who is the obstacle to the fulfilment of his
prediction?--truth, if ever a truth was foreseen on earth. You have
not changed so far that you would feel no pleasure in gratifying him? I
go to him to-morrow morning with the first light."

"You will compel me to follow, and undeceive him."

"Do so, and I denounce an unworthy affection you are ashamed to avow."

"That would be idle, though it would be base."

"Proof of love, then! For no one but you should it be done, and no one
but you dare accuse me of a baseness."

"Sir Willoughby, you will let my father die in peace."

"He and I together will contrive to persuade you."

"You tempt me to imagine that you want a wife at any cost."

"You, Laetitia, you."

"I am tired," she said. "It is late, I would rather not hear more. I
am sorry if I have caused you pain. I suppose you to have spoken with
candour. I defend neither my sex nor myself. I can only say I am a
woman as good as dead: happy to be made happy in my way, but so little
alive that I cannot realize any other way. As for love, I am thankful
to have broken a spell. You have a younger woman in your mind; I am an
old one: I have no ambition and no warmth. My utmost prayer is to float
on the stream--a purely physical desire of life: I have no strength to
swim. Such a woman is not the wife for you, Sir Willoughby. Good night."

"One final word. Weigh it. Express no conventional regrets. Resolutely
you refuse?"

"Resolutely I do."

"You refuse?"

"Yes."

"I have sacrificed my pride for nothing! You refuse?"

"Yes."

"Humbled myself! And this is the answer! You do refuse?"

"I do."

"Good night, Laetitia Dale."

He gave her passage.

"Good night, Sir Willoughby."

"I am in your power," he said, in a voice between supplication and
menace that laid a claw on her, and she turned and replied:

"You will not be betrayed."

"I can trust you . . . ?"

"I go home to-morrow before breakfast."

"Permit me to escort you upstairs."

"If you please: but I see no one here either to-night or tomorrow."

"It is for the privilege of seeing the last of you."

They withdrew.

Young Crossjay listened to the drumming of his head. Somewhere in or
over the cavity a drummer rattled tremendously.

Sir Willoughby's laboratory door shut with a slam.

Crossjay tumbled himself off the ottoman. He stole up to the unclosed
drawing-room door, and peeped. Never was a boy more thoroughly
awakened. His object was to get out of the house and go through the
night avoiding everything human, for he was big with information of a
character that he knew to be of the nature of gunpowder, and he feared
to explode. He crossed the hall. In the passage to the scullery he ran
against Colonel De Craye.

"So there you are," said the colonel, "I've been hunting you."

Crossjay related that his bedroom door was locked and the key gone, and
Sir Willoughby sitting up in the laboratory.

Colonel De Craye took the boy to his own room, where Crossjay lay on a
sofa, comfortably covered over and snug in a swelling pillow; but he
was restless; he wanted to speak, to bellow, to cry; and he bounced
round to his left side, and bounced to his right, not knowing what to
think, except that there was treason to his adored Miss Middleton.

"Why, my lad, you're not half a campaigner," the colonel called out to
him; attributing his uneasiness to the material discomfort of the sofa:
and Crossjay had to swallow the taunt, bitter though it was. A dim
sentiment of impropriety in unburdening his overcharged mind on the
subject of Miss Middleton to Colonel De Craye restrained him from
defending himself; and so he heaved and tossed about till daybreak. At
an early hour, while his hospitable friend, who looked very handsome in
profile half breast and head above the sheets, continued to slumber,
Crossjay was on his legs and away. "He says I'm not half a campaigner,
and a couple of hours of bed are enough for me," the boy thought
proudly, and snuffed the springing air of the young sun on the fields.
A glance back at Patterne Hall dismayed him, for he knew not how to
act, and he was immoderately combustible, too full of knowledge for
self-containment; much too zealously excited on behalf of his dear Miss
Middleton to keep silent for many hours of the day.



CHAPTER XLI

THE REV. DR. MIDDLETON, CLARA, AND SIR WILLOUGHBY

When Master Crossjay tumbled down the stairs, Laetitia was in Clara's
room, speculating on the various mishaps which might have befallen that
battered youngster; and Clara listened anxiously after Laetitia had run
out, until she heard Sir Willoughby's voice; which in some way
satisfied her that the boy was not in the house.

She waited, expecting Miss Dale to return; then undressed, went to bed,
tried to sleep. She was tired of strife. Strange thoughts for a young
head shot through her: as, that it is possible for the sense of duty to
counteract distaste; and that one may live a life apart from one's
admirations and dislikes: she owned the singular strength of Sir
Willoughby in outwearying: she asked herself how much she had gained by
struggling:--every effort seemed to expend her spirit's force, and
rendered her less able to get the clear vision of her prospects, as
though it had sunk her deeper: the contrary of her intention to make
each further step confirm her liberty. Looking back, she marvelled at
the things she had done. Looking round, how ineffectual they appeared!
She had still the great scene of positive rebellion to go through with
her father.

The anticipation of that was the cause of her extreme discouragement.
He had not spoken to her since he became aware of her attempted flight:
but the scene was coming; and besides the wish not to inflict it on
him, as well as to escape it herself, the girl's peculiar unhappiness
lay in her knowledge that they were alienated and stood opposed, owing
to one among the more perplexing masculine weaknesses, which she could
not hint at, dared barely think of, and would not name in her
meditations. Diverting to other subjects, she allowed herself to
exclaim, "Wine, wine!" in renewed wonder of what there could be in wine
to entrap venerable men and obscure their judgements. She was too young
to consider that her being very much in the wrong gave all the
importance to the cordial glass in a venerable gentleman's appreciation
of his dues. Why should he fly from a priceless wine to gratify the
caprices of a fantastical child guilty of seeking to commit a breach of
faith? He harped on those words. Her fault was grave. No doubt the wine
coloured it to him, as a drop or two will do in any cup: still her
fault was grave.

She was too young for such considerations. She was ready to expatiate
on the gravity of her fault, so long as the humiliation assisted to her
disentanglement: her snared nature in the toils would not permit her to
reflect on it further. She had never accurately perceived it: for the
reason perhaps that Willoughby had not been moving in his appeals: but,
admitting the charge of waywardness, she had come to terms with
conscience, upon the understanding that she was to perceive it and
regret it and do penance for it by-and-by:--by renouncing marriage
altogether? How light a penance!

In the morning, she went to Laetitia's room, knocked, and had no
answer.

She was informed at the breakfast-table of Miss Dale's departure. The
ladies Eleanor and Isabel feared it to be a case of urgency at the
cottage. No one had seen Vernon, and Clara requested Colonel De Craye
to walk over to the cottage for news of Crossjay. He accepted the
commission, simply to obey and be in her service: assuring her,
however, that there was no need to be disturbed about the boy. He would
have told her more, had not Dr. Middleton led her out.

Sir Willoughby marked a lapse of ten minutes by his watch. His
excellent aunts had ventured a comment on his appearance that
frightened him lest he himself should be the person to betray his
astounding discomfiture. He regarded his conduct as an act of madness,
and Laetitia's as no less that of a madwoman--happily mad! Very happily
mad indeed! Her rejection of his ridiculously generous proposal seemed
to show an intervening hand in his favour, that sent her distraught at
the right moment. He entirely trusted her to be discreet; but she was a
miserable creature, who had lost the one last chance offered her by
Providence, and furnished him with a signal instance of the mediocrity
of woman's love.

Time was flying. In a little while Mrs. Mountstuart would arrive. He
could not fence her without a design in his head; he was destitute of
an armoury if he had no scheme: he racked the brain only to succeed in
rousing phantasmal vapours. Her infernal "Twice!" would cease now to
apply to Laetitia; it would be an echo of Lady Busshe. Nay, were all in
the secret, Thrice jilted! might become the universal roar. And this,
he reflected bitterly, of a man whom nothing but duty to his line had
arrested from being the most mischievous of his class with women! Such
is our reward for uprightness!

At the expiration of fifteen minutes by his watch, he struck a knuckle
on the library door. Dr. Middleton held it open to him.

"You are disengaged, sir?"

"The sermon is upon the paragraph which is toned to awaken the clerk,"
replied the Rev. Doctor.

Clara was weeping.

Sir Willoughby drew near her solicitously.

Dr Middleton's mane of silvery hair was in a state bearing witness to
the vehemence of the sermon, and Willoughby said: "I hope, sir, you
have not made too much of a trifle."

"I believe, sir, that I have produced an effect, and that was the point
in contemplation."

"Clara! my dear Clara!" Willoughby touched her.

"She sincerely repents her conduct, I may inform you," said Dr.
Middleton.

"My love!" Willoughby whispered. "We have had a misunderstanding. I am
at a loss to discover where I have been guilty, but I take the blame,
all the blame. I implore you not to weep. Do me the favour to look at
me. I would not have had you subjected to any interrogation whatever."

"You are not to blame," Clara said on a sob.

"Undoubtedly Willoughby is not to blame. It was not he who was bound on
a runaway errand in flagrant breach of duty and decorum, nor he who
inflicted a catarrh on a brother of my craft and cloth," said her
father.

"The clerk, sir, has pronounced Amen," observed Willoughby.

"And no man is happier to hear an ejaculation that he has laboured for
with so much sweat of his brow than the parson, I can assure you," Dr.
Middleton mildly groaned. "I have notions of the trouble of Abraham. A
sermon of that description is an immolation of the parent, however it
may go with the child."

Willoughby soothed his Clara.

"I wish I had been here to share it. I might have saved you some tears.
I may have been hasty in our little dissensions. I will acknowledge
that I have been. My temper is often irascible."

"And so is mine!" exclaimed Dr. Middleton. "And yet I am not aware that
I made the worse husband for it. Nor do I rightly comprehend how a
probably justly excitable temper can stand for a plea in mitigation of
an attempt at an outrageous breach of faith."

"The sermon is over, sir."

"Reverberations!" the Rev. Doctor waved his arm placably. "Take it for
thunder heard remote."

"Your hand, my love," Willoughby murmured.

The hand was not put forth.

Dr. Middleton remarked the fact. He walked to the window, and
perceiving the pair in the same position when he faced about, he
delivered a cough of admonition.

"It is cruel!" said Clara.

"That the owner of your hand should petition you for it?" inquired her
father.

She sought refuge in a fit of tears.

Willoughby bent above her, mute.

"Is a scene that is hardly conceivable as a parent's obligation once in
a lustrum, to be repeated within the half hour?" shouted her father.

She drew up her shoulders and shook; let them fall and dropped her
head.

"My dearest! your hand!" fluted Willoughby.

The hand surrendered; it was much like the icicle of a sudden thaw.

Willoughby squeezed it to his ribs.

Dr. Middleton marched up and down the room with his arms locked behind
him. The silence between the young people seemed to denounce his
presence.

He said, cordially: "Old Hiems has but to withdraw for buds to burst.
'Jam ver egelidos refert tepores.' The equinoctial fury departs. I
will leave you for a term."

Clara and Willoughby simultaneously raised their faces with opposing
expressions.

"My girl!" Her father stood by her, laying gentle hand on her.

"Yes, papa, I will come out to you," she replied to his apology for the
rather heavy weight of his vocabulary, and smiled.

"No, sir, I beg you will remain," said Willoughby.

"I keep you frost-bound."

Clara did not deny it.

Willoughby emphatically did.

Then which of them was the more lover-like? Dr. Middleton would for the
moment have supposed his daughter.

Clara said: "Shall you be on the lawn, papa?"

Willoughby interposed. "Stay, sir; give us your blessing."

"That you have." Dr. Middleton hastily motioned the paternal ceremony
in outline.

"A few minutes, papa," said Clara.

"Will she name the day?" came eagerly from Willoughby.

"I cannot!" Clara cried in extremity.

"The day is important on its arrival," said her father; "but I
apprehend the decision to be of the chief importance at present. First
prime your piece of artillery, my friend."

"The decision is taken, sir."

"Then I will be out of the way of the firing. Hit what day you please."

Clara checked herself on an impetuous exclamation. It was done that her
father might not be detained.

Her astute self-compression sharpened Willoughby as much as it
mortified and terrified him. He understood how he would stand in an
instant were Dr. Middleton absent. Her father was the tribunal she
dreaded, and affairs must be settled and made irrevocable while he was
with them. To sting the blood of the girl, he called her his darling,
and half enwound her, shadowing forth a salute.

She strung her body to submit, seeing her father take it as a signal
for his immediate retirement.

Willoughby was upon him before he reached the door.

"Hear us out, sir. Do not go. Stay, at my entreaty. I fear we have not
come to a perfect reconcilement."

"If that is your opinion," said Clara, "it is good reason for not
distressing my father."

"Dr Middleton, I love your daughter. I wooed her and won her; I had
your consent to our union, and I was the happiest of mankind. In some
way, since her coming to my house, I know not how--she will not tell
me, or cannot--I offended. One may be innocent and offend. I have never
pretended to impeccability, which is an admission that I may very
naturally offend. My appeal to her is for an explanation or for pardon.
I obtain neither. Had our positions been reversed, oh, not for any real
offence--not for the worst that can be imagined--I think not--I hope
not--could I have been tempted to propose the dissolution of our
engagement. To love is to love, with me; an engagement a solemn bond.
With all my errors I have that merit of utter fidelity--to the world
laughable! I confess to a multitude of errors; I have that single
merit, and am not the more estimable in your daughter's eyes on account
of it, I fear. In plain words, I am, I do not doubt, one of the fools
among men; of the description of human dog commonly known as
faithful--whose destiny is that of a tribe. A man who cries out when he
is hurt is absurd, and I am not asking for sympathy. Call me luckless.
But I abhor a breach of faith. A broken pledge is hateful to me. I
should regard it myself as a form of suicide. There are principles
which civilized men must contend for. Our social fabric is based on
them. As my word stands for me, I hold others to theirs. If that is not
done, the world is more or less a carnival of counterfeits. In this
instance--Ah! Clara, my love! and you have principles: you have
inherited, you have been indoctrinated with them: have I, then, in my
ignorance, offended past penitence, that you, of all women? . . . And
without being able to name my sin!--Not only for what I lose by it, but
in the abstract, judicially--apart from the sentiment of personal
interest, grief, pain, and the possibility of my having to endure that
which no temptation would induce me to commit:--judicially;--I fear,
sir, I am a poor forensic orator . . ."

"The situation, sir, does not demand a Cicero: proceed," said Dr.
Middleton, balked in his approving nods at the right true things
delivered.

"Judicially, I am bold to say, though it may appear a presumption in
one suffering acutely, I abhor a breach of faith."

Dr. Middleton brought his nod down low upon the phrase he had
anticipated. "And I," said he, "personally, and presently, abhor a
breach of faith. Judicially? Judicially to examine, judicially to
condemn: but does the judicial mind detest? I think, sir, we are not on
the bench when we say that we abhor: we have unseated ourselves. Yet
our abhorrence of bad conduct is very certain. You would signify,
impersonally: which suffices for this exposition of your feelings."

He peered at the gentleman under his brows, and resumed:

"She has had it, Willoughby; she has had it in plain Saxon and in
uncompromising Olympian. There is, I conceive, no necessity to revert
to it."

"Pardon me, sir, but I am still unforgiven."

"You must babble out the rest between you. I am about as much at home
as a turkey with a pair of pigeons."

"Leave us, father," said Clara.

"First join our hands, and let me give you that title, sir."

"Reach the good man your hand, my girl; forthright, from the shoulder,
like a brave boxer. Humour a lover. He asks for his own."

"It is more than I can do, father."

"How, it is more than you can do? You are engaged to him, a plighted
woman."

"I do not wish to marry."

"The apology is inadequate."

"I am unworthy. . ."

"Chatter! chatter!"

"I beg him to release me."

"Lunacy!"

"I have no love to give him."

"Have you gone back to your cradle, Clara Middleton?"

"Oh, leave us, dear father!"

"My offence, Clara, my offence! What is it? Will you only name it?"

"Father, will you leave us? We can better speak together . . ."

"We have spoken, Clara, how often!" Willoughby resumed, "with what
result?--that you loved me, that you have ceased to love me: that your
heart was mine, that you have withdrawn it, plucked it from me: that
you request me to consent to a sacrifice involving my reputation, my
life. And what have I done? I am the same, unchangeable. I loved and
love you: my heart was yours, and is, and will be yours forever. You
are my affianced--that is, my wife. What have I done?"

"It is indeed useless," Clara sighed.

"Not useless, my girl, that you should inform this gentleman, your
affianced husband, of the ground of the objection you conceived against
him."

"I cannot say."

"Do you know?"

"If I could name it, I could hope to overcome it."

Dr. Middleton addressed Sir Willoughby.

"I verily believe we are directing the girl to dissect a caprice. Such
things are seen large by these young people, but as they have neither
organs, nor arteries, nor brains, nor membranes, dissection and
inspection will be alike profitlessly practised. Your inquiry is
natural for a lover, whose passion to enter into relations with the sex
is ordinarily in proportion to his ignorance of the stuff composing
them. At a particular age they traffic in whims: which are, I presume,
the spiritual of hysterics; and are indubitably preferable, so long as
they are not pushed too far. Examples are not wanting to prove that a
flighty initiative on the part of the male is a handsome corrective. In
that case, we should probably have had the roof off the house, and the
girl now at your feet. Ha!"

"Despise me, father. I am punished for ever thinking myself the
superior of any woman," said Clara.

"Your hand out to him, my dear, since he is for a formal
reconciliation; and I can't wonder."

"Father! I have said I do not . . . I have said I cannot . . ."

"By the most merciful! what? what? the name for it, words for it!"

"Do not frown on me, father. I wish him happiness. I cannot marry him.
I do not love him."

"You will remember that you informed me aforetime that you did love
him."

"I was ignorant . . . I did not know myself. I wish him to be happy."

"You deny him the happiness you wish him!"

"It would not be for his happiness were I to wed him."

"Oh!" burst from Willoughby.

"You hear him. He rejects your prediction, Clara Middleton." She caught
her clasped hands up to her throat. "Wretched, wretched, both!"

"And you have not a word against him, miserable girl."

"Miserable! I am."

"It is the cry of an animal!"

"Yes, father."

"You feel like one? Your behaviour is of that shape. You have not a
word?"

"Against myself, not against him."

"And I, when you speak so generously, am to yield you? give you up?"
cried Willoughby. "Ah! my love, my Clara, impose what you will on me;
not that. It is too much for man. It is, I swear it, beyond my
strength."

"Pursue, continue the strain; 'tis in the right key," said Dr.
Middleton, departing.

Willoughby wheeled and waylaid him with a bound.

"Plead for me, sir; you are all-powerful. Let her be mine, she shall be
happy, or I will perish for it. I will call it on my head.--Impossible!
I cannot lose her. Lose you, my love? it would be to strip myself of
every blessing of body and soul. It would be to deny myself possession
of grace, beauty, wit, all the incomparable charms of loveliness of
mind and person in woman, and plant myself in a desert. You are my
mate, the sum of everything I call mine. Clara, I should be less than
man to submit to such a loss. Consent to it? But I love you! I worship
you! How can I consent to lose you . . . ?"

He saw the eyes of the desperately wily young woman slink sideways. Dr.
Middleton was pacing at ever shorter lengths closer by the door.

"You hate me?" Willoughby sunk his voice.

"If it should turn to hate!" she murmured.

"Hatred of your husband?"

"I could not promise," she murmured, more softly in her wiliness.

"Hatred?" he cried aloud, and Dr. Middleton stopped in his walk and
flung up his head: "Hatred of your husband? of the man you have vowed
to love and honour? Oh, no! Once mine, it is not to be feared. I trust
to my knowledge of your nature; I trust in your blood, I trust in your
education. Had I nothing else to inspire confidence, I could trust in
your eyes. And, Clara, take the confession: I would rather be hated
than lose you. For if I lose you, you are in another world, out of this
one holding me in its death-like cold; but if you hate me we are
together, we are still together. Any alliance, any, in preference to
separation!"

Clara listened with critical ear. His language and tone were new; and
comprehending that they were in part addressed to her father, whose
phrase: "A breach of faith": he had so cunningly used, disdain of the
actor prompted the extreme blunder of her saying--frigidly though she
said it:

"You have not talked to me in this way before."

"Finally," remarked her father, summing up the situation to settle it
from that little speech, "he talks to you in this way now; and you are
under my injunction to stretch your hand out to him for a symbol of
union, or to state your objection to that course. He, by your
admission, is at the terminus, and there, failing the why not, must you
join him."

Her head whirled. She had been severely flagellated and weakened
previous to Willoughby's entrance. Language to express her peculiar
repulsion eluded her. She formed the words, and perceived that they
would not stand to bear a breath from her father. She perceived too
that Willoughby was as ready with his agony of supplication as she with
hers. If she had tears for a resource, he had gestures quite as
eloquent; and a cry of her loathing of the union would fetch a
countervailing torrent of the man's love.--What could she say? he is
an Egoist? The epithet has no meaning in such a scene. Invent! shrieked
the hundred-voiced instinct of dislike within her, and alone with her
father, alone with Willoughby, she could have invented some equivalent,
to do her heart justice for the injury it sustained in her being unable
to name the true and immense objection: but the pair in presence
paralyzed her. She dramatized them each springing forward by turns,
with crushing rejoinders. The activity of her mind revelled in giving
them a tongue, but would not do it for herself. Then ensued the
inevitable consequence of an incapacity to speak at the heart's urgent
dictate: heart and mind became divided. One throbbed hotly, the other
hung aloof, and mentally, while the sick inarticulate heart kept
clamouring, she answered it with all that she imagined for those two
men to say. And she dropped poison on it to still its reproaches:
bidding herself remember her fatal postponements in order to preserve
the seeming of consistency before her father; calling it hypocrite;
asking herself, what was she! who loved her! And thus beating down her
heart, she completed the mischief with a piercing view of the
foundation of her father's advocacy of Willoughby, and more lamentably
asked herself what her value was, if she stood bereft of respect for
her father.

Reason, on the other hand, was animated by her better nature to plead
his case against her: she clung to her respect for him, and felt
herself drowning with it: and she echoed Willoughby consciously,
doubling her horror with the consciousness, in crying out on a world
where the most sacred feelings are subject to such lapses. It doubled
her horror, that she should echo the man: but it proved that she was no
better than be: only some years younger. Those years would soon be
outlived: after which, he and she would be of a pattern. She was
unloved: she did no harm to any one by keeping her word to this man;
she had pledged it, and it would be a breach of faith not to keep it.
No one loved her. Behold the quality of her father's love! To give him
happiness was now the principal aim for her, her own happiness being
decently buried; and here he was happy: why should she be the cause of
his going and losing the poor pleasure he so much enjoyed?

The idea of her devotedness flattered her feebleness. She betrayed
signs of hesitation; and in hesitating, she looked away from a look at
Willoughby, thinking (so much against her nature was it to resign
herself to him) that it would not have been so difficult with an
ill-favoured man. With one horribly ugly, it would have been a horrible
exultation to cast off her youth and take the fiendish leap.

Unfortunately for Sir Willoughby, he had his reasons for pressing
impatience; and seeing her deliberate, seeing her hasty look at his
fine figure, his opinion of himself combined with his recollection of a
particular maxim of the Great Book to assure him that her resistance
was over: chiefly owing, as he supposed, to his physical perfections.

Frequently indeed, in the contest between gentlemen and ladies, have
the maxims of the Book stimulated the assailant to victory. They are
rosy with blood of victims. To bear them is to hear a horn that blows
the mort: has blown it a thousand times. It is good to remember how
often they have succeeded, when, for the benefit of some future Lady
Vauban, who may bestir her wits to gather maxims for the inspiriting of
the Defence, the circumstance of a failure has to be recorded.

Willoughby could not wait for the melting of the snows. He saw full
surely the dissolving process; and sincerely admiring and coveting her
as he did, rashly this ill-fated gentleman attempted to precipitate it,
and so doing arrested.

Whence might we draw a note upon yonder maxim, in words akin to these:
Make certain ere a breath come from thee that thou be not a frost.

"Mine! She is mine!" he cried: "mine once more! mine utterly! mine
eternally!" and he followed up his devouring exclamations in person as
she, less decidedly, retreated. She retreated as young ladies should
ever do, two or three steps, and he would not notice that she had
become an angry Dian, all arrows: her maidenliness in surrendering
pleased him. Grasping one fair hand, he just allowed her to edge on the
outer circle of his embrace, crying: "Not a syllable of what I have
gone through! You shall not have to explain it, my Clara. I will study
you more diligently, to be guided by you, my darling. If I offend
again, my wife will not find it hard to speak what my bride withheld--I
do not ask why: perhaps not able to weigh the effect of her reticence:
not at that time, when she was younger and less experienced, estimating
the sacredness of a plighted engagement. It is past, we are one, my
dear sir and father. You may leave us now."

"I profoundly rejoice to hear that I may," said Dr. Middleton. Clara
writhed her captured hand.

"No, papa, stay. It is an error, an error. You must not leave me. Do
not think me utterly, eternally, belonging to any one but you. No one
shall say I am his but you."

"Are you quicksands, Clara Middleton, that nothing can be built on you?
Whither is a flighty head and a shifty will carrying the girl?"

"Clara and I, sir," said Willoughby.

"And so you shall," said the Doctor, turning about.

"Not yet, papa:" Clara sprang to him.

"Why, you, you, you, it was you who craved to be alone with
Willoughby!" her father shouted; "and here we are rounded to our
starting-point, with the solitary difference that now you do not want
to be alone with Willoughby. First I am bidden go; next I am pulled
back; and judging by collar and coat-tag, I suspect you to be a young
woman to wear an angel's temper threadbare before you determine upon
which one of the tides driving him to and fro you intend to launch on
yourself, Where is your mind?"

Clara smoothed her forehead.

"I wish to please you, papa."

"I request you to please the gentleman who is your appointed husband."

"I am anxious to perform my duty."

"That should be a satisfactory basis for you, Willoughby; as girls go!"

"Let me, sir, simply entreat to have her hand in mine before you."

"Why not, Clara?"

"Why an empty ceremony, papa?"

"The implication is, that she is prepared for the important one, friend
Willoughby."

"Her hand, sir; the reassurance of her hand in mine under your
eyes:--after all that I have suffered, I claim it, I think I claim it
reasonably, to restore me to confidence."

"Quite reasonably; which is not to say, necessarily; but, I will add,
justifiably; and it may be, sagaciously, when dealing with the
volatile."

"And here," said Willoughby, "is my hand."

Clara recoiled.

He stepped on. Her father frowned. She lifted both her hands from the
shrinking elbows, darted a look of repulsion at her pursuer, and ran to
her father, crying: "Call it my mood! I am volatile, capricious,
flighty, very foolish. But you see that I attach a real meaning to it,
and feel it to be binding: I cannot think it an empty ceremony, if it
is before you. Yes, only be a little considerate to your moody girl.
She will be in a fitter state in a few hours. Spare me this moment; I
must collect myself. I thought I was free; I thought he would not press
me. If I give my hand hurriedly now, I shall, I know, immediately
repent it. There is the picture of me! But, papa, I mean to try to be
above that, and if I go and walk by myself, I shall grow calm to
perceive where my duty lies . . ."

"In which direction shall you walk?" said Willoughby.

"Wisdom is not upon a particular road," said Dr. Middleton.

"I have a dread, sir, of that one which leads to the railway-station."

"With some justice!" Dr. Middleton sighed over his daughter.

Clara coloured to deep crimson: but she was beyond anger, and was
rather gratified by an offence coming from Willoughby.

"I will promise not to leave his grounds, papa."

"My child, you have threatened to be a breaker of promises."

"Oh!" she wailed. "But I will make it a vow to you."

"Why not make it a vow to me this moment, for this gentleman's
contentment, that he shall be your husband within a given period?"

"I will come to you voluntarily. I burn to be alone."

"I shall lose her," exclaimed Willoughby, in heartfelt earnest.

"How so?" said Dr. Middleton. "I have her, sir, if you will favour me
by continuing in abeyance.--You will come within an hour voluntarily,
Clara; and you will either at once yield your hand to him or you will
furnish reasons, and they must be good ones, for withholding it."

"Yes, papa."

"You will?"

"I will."

"Mind, I say reasons."

"Reasons, papa. If I have none . . ."

"If you have none that are to my satisfaction, you implicitly and
instantly, and cordially obey my command."

"I will obey."

"What more would you require?" Dr. Middleton bowed to Sir Willoughby in
triumph.

"Will she. . ."

"Sir! Sir!"

"She is your daughter, sir. I am satisfied."

"She has perchance wrestled with her engagement, as the aboriginals of
a land newly discovered by a crew of adventurous colonists do battle
with the garments imposed on them by our considerate civilization;--
ultimately to rejoice with excessive dignity in the wearing of a 
battered cocked-hat and trowsers not extending to the shanks: but she 
did not break her engagement, sir; and we will anticipate that, 
moderating a young woman's native wildness, she may, after the manner
of my comparison, take a similar pride in her fortune in good season."

Willoughby had not leisure to sound the depth of Dr. Middleton's
compliment. He had seen Clara gliding out of the room during the
delivery; and his fear returned on him that, not being won, she was
lost.

"She has gone." Her father noticed her absence. "She does not waste
time in her mission to procure that astonishing product of a shallow
soil, her reasons; if such be the object of her search. But no: it
signifies that she deems herself to have need of composure--nothing
more. No one likes to be turned about; we like to turn ourselves about;
and in the question of an act to be committed, we stipulate that it
shall be our act--girls and others. After the lapse of an hour, it
will appear to her as her act. Happily, Willoughby, we do not dine
away from Patterne to-night."

"No, sir."

"It may be attributable to a sense of deserving, but I could plead
guilty to a weakness for old Port to-day."

"There shall be an extra bottle, sir."

"All going favourably with you, as I have no cause to doubt," said Dr
Middleton, with the motion of wafting his host out of the library.



CHAPTER XLII

SHOWS THE DIVINING ARTS OF A PERCEPTIVE MIND

Starting from the Hall a few minutes before Dr. Middleton and Sir
Willoughby had entered the drawing-room overnight, Vernon parted
company with Colonel De Craye at the park-gates, and betook himself to
the cottage of the Dales, where nothing had been heard of his wanderer;
and he received the same disappointing reply from Dr. Corney, out of
the bedroom window of the genial physician, whose astonishment at his
covering so long a stretch of road at night for news of a boy like
Crossjay--gifted with the lives of a cat--became violent and rapped
Punch-like blows on the window-sill at Vernon's refusal to take shelter
and rest. Vernon's excuse was that he had "no one but that fellow to
care for", and he strode off, naming a farm five miles distant. Dr.
Corney howled an invitation to early breakfast to him, in the event of
his passing on his way back, and retired to bed to think of him. The
result of a variety of conjectures caused him to set Vernon down as
Miss Middleton's knight, and he felt a strong compassion for his poor
friend. "Though," thought he, "a hopeless attachment is as pretty an
accompaniment to the tune of life as a gentleman might wish to have,
for it's one of those big doses of discord which make all the minor
ones fit in like an agreeable harmony, and so he shuffles along as
pleasantly as the fortune-favoured, when they come to compute!"

Sir Willoughby was the fortune-favoured in the little doctor's mind;
that high-stepping gentleman having wealth, and public consideration,
and the most ravishing young lady in the world for a bride. Still,
though he reckoned all these advantages enjoyed by Sir Willoughby at
their full value, he could imagine the ultimate balance of good fortune
to be in favour of Vernon. But to do so, he had to reduce the whole
calculation to the extreme abstract, and feed his lean friend, as it
were, on dew and roots; and the happy effect for Vernon lay in a
distant future, on the borders of old age, where he was to be blessed
with his lady's regretful preference, and rejoice in the fruits of good
constitutional habits. The reviewing mind was Irish. Sir Willoughby was
a character of man profoundly opposed to Dr. Corney's nature; the
latter's instincts bristled with antagonism--not to his race, for
Vernon was of the same race, partly of the same blood, and Corney loved
him: the type of person was the annoyance. And the circumstance of its
prevailing successfulness in the country where he was placed, while it
held him silent as if under a law, heaped stores of insurgency in the
Celtic bosom. Corney contemplating Sir Willoughby, and a trotting kern
governed by Strongbow, have a point of likeness between them; with the
point of difference, that Corney was enlightened to know of a friend
better adapted for eminent station, and especially better adapted to
please a lovely lady--could these high-bred Englishwomen but be taught
to conceive another idea of manliness than the formal carved-in-wood
idol of their national worship!

Dr Corney breakfasted very early, without seeing Vernon. He was off to
a patient while the first lark of the morning carolled above, and the
business of the day, not yet fallen upon men in the shape of cloud, was
happily intermixed with nature's hues and pipings. Turning off the
high-road tip a green lane, an hour later, he beheld a youngster prying
into a hedge head and arms, by the peculiar strenuous twist of whose
hinder parts, indicative of a frame plunged on the pursuit in hand, he
clearly distinguished young Crossjay. Out came eggs. The doctor pulled
up.

"What bird?" he bellowed.

"Yellowhammer," Crossjay yelled back.

"Now, sir, you'll drop a couple of those eggs in the nest."

"Don't order me," Crossjay was retorting. "Oh, it's you, Doctor Corney.
Good morning. I said that, because I always do drop a couple back. I
promised Mr. Whitford I would, and Miss Middleton too."

"Had breakfast?"

"Not yet."

"Not hungry?"

"I should be if I thought about it."

"Jump up."

"I think I'd rather not, Doctor Corney."

"And you'll just do what Doctor Corney tells you; and set your mind on
rashers of curly fat bacon and sweetly smoking coffee, toast, hot
cakes, marmalade, and damson-jam. Wide go the fellow's nostrils, and
there's water at the dimples of his mouth! Up, my man."

Crossjay jumped up beside the doctor, who remarked, as he touched his
horse: "I don't want a man this morning, though I'll enlist you in my
service if I do. You're fond of Miss Middleton?"

Instead of answering, Crossjay heaved the sigh of love that bears a
burden.

"And so am I," pursued the doctor: "You'll have to put up with a rival.
It's worse than fond: I'm in love with her. How do you like that?"

"I don't mind how many love her," said Crossjay.

"You're worthy of a gratuitous breakfast in the front parlour of the
best hotel of the place they call Arcadia. And how about your bed last
night?"

"Pretty middling."

"Hard, was it, where the bones haven't cushion?"

"I don't care for bed. A couple of hours, and that's enough for me."

"But you're fond of Miss Middleton anyhow, and that's a virtue."

To his great surprise, Dr. Corney beheld two big round tears force
their way out of this tough youngster's eyes, and all the while the
boy's face was proud.

Crossjay said, when he could trust himself to disjoin his lips:

"I want to see Mr. Whitford."

"Have you got news for him?"

"I've something to ask him. It's about what I ought to do."

"Then, my boy, you have the right name addressed in the wrong
direction: for I found you turning your shoulders on Mr. Whitford. And
he has been out of his bed hunting you all the unholy night you've made
it for him. That's melancholy. What do you say to asking my advice?"

Crossjay sighed. "I can't speak to anybody but Mr. Whitford."

"And you're hot to speak to him?"

"I want to."

"And I found you running away from him. You're a curiosity, Mr.
Crossjay Patterne."

"Ah! so'd anybody be who knew as much as I do," said Crossjay, with a
sober sadness that caused the doctor to treat him seriously.

"The fact is," he said, "Mr. Whitford is beating the country for you.
My best plan will be to drive you to the Hall."

"I'd rather not go to the Hall," Crossjay spoke resolutely.

"You won't see Miss Middleton anywhere but at the Hall."

"I don't want to see Miss Middleton, if I can't be a bit of use to
her."

"No danger threatening the lady, is there?"

Crossjay treated the question as if it had not been put.

"Now, tell me," said Dr. Corney, "would there be a chance for me,
supposing Miss Middleton were disengaged?"

The answer was easy. "I'm sure she wouldn't."

"And why, sir, are you so cock sure?"

There was no saying; but the doctor pressed for it, and at last
Crossjay gave his opinion that she would take Mr. Whitford.

The doctor asked why; and Crossjay said it was because Mr. Whitford
was the best man in the world. To which, with a lusty "Amen to that,"
Dr. Corney remarked: "I should have fancied Colonel De Craye would have
had the first chance: he's more of a lady's man."

Crossjay surprised him again by petulantly saying: "Don't."

The boy added: "I don't want to talk, except about birds and things.
What a jolly morning it is! I saw the sun rise. No rain to-day. You're
right about hungry, Doctor Corney!"

The kindly little man swung his whip. Crossjay informed him of his
disgrace at the Hall, and of every incident connected with it, from the
tramp to the baronet, save Miss Middleton's adventure and the night
scene in the drawing-room. A strong smell of something left out struck
Dr. Corney, and he said: "You'll not let Miss Middleton know of my
affection. After all, it's only a little bit of love. But, as Patrick
said to Kathleen, when she owned to such a little bit, 'that's the best
bit of all!' and he was as right as I am about hungry."

Crossjay scorned to talk of loving, he declared. "I never tell Miss
Middleton what I feel. Why, there's Miss Dale's cottage!"

"It's nearer to your empty inside than my mansion," said the doctor,
"and we'll stop just to inquire whether a bed's to be had for you there
to-night, and if not, I'll have you with me, and bottle you, and
exhibit you, for you're a rare specimen. Breakfast you may count on
from Mr. Dale. I spy a gentleman."

"It's Colonel De Craye."

"Come after news of you."

"I wonder!"

"Miss Middleton sends him; of course she does."

Crossjay turned his full face to the doctor. "I haven't seen her for
such a long time! But he saw me last night, and he might have told her
that, if she's anxious.--Good-morning, colonel. I've had a good walk,
and a capital drive, and I'm as hungry as the boat's crew of Captain
Bligh."

He jumped down.

The colonel and the doctor saluted, smiling.

"I've rung the bell," said De Craye.

A maid came to the gate, and upon her steps appeared Miss Dale, who
flung herself at Crossjay, mingling kisses and reproaches. She scarcely
raised her face to the colonel more than to reply to his greeting, and
excuse the hungry boy for hurrying indoors to breakfast.

"I'll wait," said De Craye. He had seen that she was paler than usual.
So had Dr. Corney; and the doctor called to her concerning her father's
health. She reported that he had not yet risen, and took Crossjay to
herself.

"That's well," said the doctor, "if the invalid sleeps long. The lady
is not looking so well, though. But ladies vary; they show the mind on
the countenance, for want of the punching we meet with to conceal it;
they're like military flags for a funeral or a gala; one day furled,
and next day streaming. Men are ships' figure-heads, about the same for
a storm or a calm, and not too handsome, thanks to the ocean. It's an
age since we encountered last, colonel: on board the Dublin boat, I
recollect, and a night it was."

"I recollect that you set me on my legs, doctor."

"Ah! and you'll please to notify that Corney's no quack at sea, by
favour of the monks of the Chartreuse, whose elixir has power to still
the waves. And we hear that miracles are done with!"

"Roll a physician and a monk together, doctor!"

"True: it'll be a miracle if they combine. Though the cure of the soul
is often the entire and total cure of the body: and it's maliciously
said that the body given over to our treatment is a signal to set the
soul flying. By the way, colonel, that boy has a trifle on his mind."

"I suppose he has been worrying a farmer or a gamekeeper."

"Try him. You'll find him tight. He's got Miss Middleton on the brain.
There's a bit of a secret; and he's not so cheerful about it."

"We'll see," said the colonel.

Dr Corney nodded. "I have to visit my patient here presently. I'm too
early for him: so I'll make a call or two on the lame birds that are
up," he remarked, and drove away.

De Craye strolled through the garden. He was a gentleman of those
actively perceptive wits which, if ever they reflect, do so by hops and
jumps: upon some dancing mirror within, we may fancy. He penetrated a
plot in a flash; and in a flash he formed one; but in both cases, it
was after long hovering and not over-eager deliberation, by the patient
exercise of his quick perceptives. The fact that Crossjay was
considered to have Miss Middleton on the brain, threw a series of
images of everything relating to Crossjay for the last forty hours into
relief before him: and as he did not in the slightest degree speculate
on any one of them, but merely shifted and surveyed them, the falcon
that he was in spirit as well as in his handsome face leisurely allowed
his instinct to direct him where to strike. A reflective disposition
has this danger in action, that it commonly precipitates conjecture for
the purpose of working upon probabilities with the methods and in the
tracks to which it is accustomed: and to conjecture rashly is to play
into the puzzles of the maze. He who can watch circling above it
awhile, quietly viewing, and collecting in his eye, gathers matter that
makes the secret thing discourse to the brain by weight and balance; he
will get either the right clue or none; more frequently none; but he
will escape the entanglement of his own cleverness, he will always be
nearer to the enigma than the guesser or the calculator, and he will
retain a breadth of vision forfeited by them. He must, however, to have
his chance of success, be acutely besides calmly perceptive, a reader
of features, audacious at the proper moment.

De Craye wished to look at Miss Dale. She had returned home very
suddenly, not, as it appeared, owing to her father's illness; and he
remembered a redness of her eyelids when he passed her on the corridor
one night. She sent Crossjay out to him as soon as the boy was well
filled. He sent Crossjay back with a request. She did not yield to it
immediately. She stepped to the front door reluctantly, and seemed
disconcerted. De Craye begged for a message to Miss Middleton. There
was none to give. He persisted. But there was really none at present,
she said.

"You won't entrust me with the smallest word?" said he, and set her
visibly thinking whether she could dispatch a word. She could not; she
had no heart for messages.

"I shall see her in a day or two, Colonel De Craye."

"She will miss you severely."

"We shall soon meet."

"And poor Willoughby!"

Laetitia coloured and stood silent.

A butterfly of some rarity allured Crossjay.

"I fear he has been doing mischief," she said. "I cannot get him to
look at me."

"His appetite is good?"

"Very good indeed."

De Craye nodded. A boy with a noble appetite is never a hopeless lock.

The colonel and Crossjay lounged over the garden.

"And now," said the colonel, "we'll see if we can't arrange a meeting
between you and Miss Middleton. You're a lucky fellow, for she's always
thinking of you."

"I know I'm always thinking of her," said Crossjay.

"If ever you're in a scrape, she's the person you must go to."

"Yes, if I know where she is!"

"Why, generally she'll be at the Hall."

There was no reply: Crossjay's dreadful secret jumped to his throat. He
certainly was a weaker lock for being full of breakfast.

"I want to see Mr. Whitford so much," he said.

"Something to tell him?"

"I don't know what to do: I don't understand it!" The secret wriggled
to his mouth. He swallowed it down. "Yes, I want to talk to Mr.
Whitford."

"He's another of Miss Middleton's friends."

"I know he is. He's true steel."

"We're all her friends, Crossjay. I flatter myself I'm a Toledo when
I'm wanted. How long had you been in the house last night before you
ran into me?"

"I don't know, sir; I fell asleep for some time, and then I woke!
. . ."

"Where did you find yourself?"

"I was in the drawing-room."

"Come, Crossjay, you're not a fellow to be scared by ghosts? You looked
it when you made a dash at my midriff."

"I don't believe there are such things. Do you, colonel? You can't!"

"There's no saying. We'll hope not; for it wouldn't be fair fighting. A
man with a ghost to back him'd beat any ten. We couldn't box him or
play cards, or stand a chance with him as a rival in love. Did you,
now, catch a sight of a ghost?"

"They weren't ghosts!" Crossjay said what he was sure of, and his voice
pronounced his conviction.

"I doubt whether Miss Middleton is particularly happy," remarked the
colonel. "Why? Why, you upset her, you know, now and then."

The boy swelled. "I'd do . . . I'd go . . . I wouldn't have her unhappy
. . . It's that! that's it! And I don't know what I ought to do. I wish
I could see Mr. Whitford."

"You get into such headlong scrapes, my lad."

"I wasn't in any scrape yesterday."

"So you made yourself up a comfortable bed in the drawing-room? Luckily
Sir Willoughby didn't see you."

"He didn't, though!"

"A close shave, was it?"

"I was under a covering of something silk."

"He woke you?"

"I suppose he did. I heard him."

"Talking?"

"He was talking."

"What! talking to himself?"

"No."

The secret threatened Crossjay to be out or suffocate him. De Craye
gave him a respite.

"You like Sir Willoughby, don't you?"

Crossjay produced a still-born affirmative.

"He's kind to you," said the colonel; "he'll set you up and look after
your interests."

"Yes, I like him," said Crossjay, with his customary rapidity in
touching the subject; "I like him; he's kind and all that, and tips and
plays with you, and all that; but I never can make out why he wouldn't
see my father when my father came here to see him ten miles, and had to
walk back ten miles in the rain, to go by rail a long way, down home,
as far as Devonport, because Sir Willoughby wouldn't see him, though he
was at home, my father saw. We all thought it so odd: and my father
wouldn't let us talk much about it. My father's a very brave man."

"Captain Patterne is as brave a man as ever lived," said De Craye.

"I'm positive you'd like him, colonel."

"I know of his deeds, and I admire him, and that's a good step to
liking."

He warmed the boy's thoughts of his father.

"Because, what they say at home is, a little bread and cheese, and a
glass of ale, and a rest, to a poor man--lots of great houses will give
you that, and we wouldn't have asked for more than that. My sisters
say they think Sir Willoughby must be selfish. He's awfully proud; and
perhaps it was because my father wasn't dressed well enough. But what
can we do? We're very poor at home, and lots of us, and all hungry. My
father says he isn't paid very well for his services to the Government.
He's only a marine."

"He's a hero!" said De Craye.

"He came home very tired, with a cold, and had a doctor. But Sir
Willoughby did send him money, and mother wished to send it back, and
my father said she was not like a woman--with our big family. He said
he thought Sir Willoughby an extraordinary man."

"Not at all; very common; indigenous," said De Craye. "The art of
cutting is one of the branches of a polite education in this country,
and you'll have to learn it, if you expect to be looked on as a
gentleman and a Patterne, my boy. I begin to see how it is Miss
Middleton takes to you so. Follow her directions. But I hope you did
not listen to a private conversation. Miss Middleton would not approve
of that."

"Colonel De Craye, how could I help myself? I heard a lot before I knew
what it was. There was poetry!"

"Still, Crossjay, if it was important--was it?"

The boy swelled again, and the colonel asked him, "Does Miss Dale know
of your having played listener?"

"She!" said Crossjay. "Oh, I couldn't tell her."

He breathed thick; then came a threat of tears. "She wouldn't do
anything to hurt Miss Middleton. I'm sure of that. It wasn't her fault.
She--There goes Mr. Whitford!" Crossjay bounded away.

The colonel had no inclination to wait for his return. He walked fast
up the road, not perspicuously conscious that his motive was to be well
in advance of Vernon Whitford: to whom, after all, the knowledge
imparted by Crossjay would be of small advantage. That fellow would
probably trot of to Willoughby to row him for breaking his word to Miss
Middleton! There are men, thought De Craye, who see nothing, feel
nothing.

He crossed a stile into the wood above the lake, where, as he was in
the humour to think himself signally lucky, espying her, he took it as
a matter of course that the lady who taught his heart to leap should be
posted by the Fates. And he wondered little at her power, for rarely
had the world seen such union of princess and sylph as in that lady's
figure. She stood holding by a beech-branch, gazing down on the water.

She had not heard him. When she looked she flushed at the spectacle of
one of her thousand thoughts, but she was not startled; the colour
overflowed a grave face.

"And 'tis not quite the first time that Willoughby has played this
trick!" De Craye said to her, keenly smiling with a parted mouth.

Clara moved her lips to recall remarks introductory to so abrupt and
strange a plunge.

He smiled in that peculiar manner of an illuminated comic perception:
for the moment he was all falcon; and he surprised himself more than
Clara, who was not in the mood to take surprises. It was the sight of
her which had animated him to strike his game; he was down on it.

Another instinct at work (they spring up in twenties oftener than in
twos when the heart is the hunter) prompted him to directness and
quickness, to carry her on the flood of the discovery.

She regained something of her mental self-possession as soon as she was
on a level with a meaning she had not yet inspected; but she had to
submit to his lead, distinctly perceiving where its drift divided to
the forked currents of what might be in his mind and what was in hers.

"Miss Middleton, I bear a bit of a likeness to the messenger to the
glorious despot--my head is off if I speak not true! Everything I have
is on the die. Did I guess wrong your wish?--I read it in the dark, by
the heart. But here's a certainty: Willoughby sets you free."

"You have come from him?" she could imagine nothing else, and she was
unable to preserve a disguise; she trembled.

"From Miss Dale."

"Ah!" Clara drooped. "She told me that once."

"'Tis the fact that tells it now."

"You have not seen him since you left the house?"

"Darkly: clear enough: not unlike the hand of destiny--through a veil.
He offered himself to Miss Dale last night, about between the witching
hours of twelve and one."

"Miss Dale . . ."

"Would she other? Could she? The poor lady has languished beyond a
decade. She's love in the feminine person."

"Are you speaking seriously, Colonel De Craye?"

"Would I dare to trifle with you, Miss Middleton?"

"I have reason to know it cannot be."

"If I have a head, it is a fresh and blooming truth. And more--I stake
my vanity on it!"

"Let me go to her." She stepped.

"Consider," said he.

"Miss Dale and I are excellent friends. It would not seem indelicate to
her. She has a kind of regard for me, through Crossjay.--Oh, can it be?
There must be some delusion. You have seen--you wish to be of service
to me; you may too easily be deceived. Last night?--he last night . . .?
And this morning!"

"'Tis not the first time our friend has played the trick, Miss
Middleton."

"But this is incredible, that last night . . . and this morning, in my
father's presence, he presses! . . . You have seen Miss Dale?
Everything is possible of him: they were together, I know. Colonel De
Craye, I have not the slightest chance of concealment with you. I think
I felt that when I first saw you. Will you let me hear why you are so
certain?"

"Miss Middleton, when I first had the honour of looking on you, it was
in a posture that necessitated my looking up, and morally so it has
been since. I conceived that Willoughby had won the greatest prize of
earth. And next I was led to the conclusion that he had won it to lose
it. Whether he much cares, is the mystery I haven't leisure to fathom.
Himself is the principal consideration with himself, and ever was."

"You discovered it!" said Clara.

"He uncovered it," said De Craye. "The miracle was, that the world
wouldn't see. But the world is a piggy-wiggy world for the wealthy
fellow who fills a trough for it, and that he has always very
sagaciously done. Only women besides myself have detected him. I have
never exposed him; I have been an observer pure and simple; and because
I apprehended another catastrophe--making something like the fourth, to
my knowledge, one being public . . ."

"You knew Miss Durham?"

"And Harry Oxford too. And they're a pair as happy as blackbirds in a
cherry-tree, in a summer sunrise, with the owner of the garden asleep.
Because of that apprehension of mine, I refused the office of best man
till Willoughby had sent me a third letter. He insisted on my coming. I
came, saw, and was conquered. I trust with all my soul I did not betray
myself, I owed that duty to my position of concealing it. As for
entirely hiding that I had used my eyes, I can't say: they must answer
for it."

The colonel was using his eyes with an increasing suavity that
threatened more than sweetness.

"I believe you have been sincerely kind," said Clara. "We will descend
to the path round the lake."

She did not refuse her hand on the descent, and he let it escape the
moment the service was done. As he was performing the admirable
character of the man of honour, he had to attend to the observance of
details; and sure of her though he was beginning to feel, there was a
touch of the unknown in Clara Middleton which made him fear to stamp
assurance; despite a barely resistible impulse, coming of his emotions
and approved by his maxims. He looked at the hand, now a free lady's
hand. Willoughby settled, his chance was great. Who else was in the
way? No one. He counselled himself to wait for her; she might have
ideas of delicacy. Her face was troubled, speculative; the brows
clouded, the lips compressed.

"You have not heard this from Miss Dale?" she said.

"Last night they were together: this morning she fled. I saw her this
morning distressed. She is unwilling to send you a message: she talks
vaguely of meeting you some days hence. And it is not the first time he
has gone to her for his consolation."

"That is not a proposal," Clara reflected. "He is too prudent. He did
not propose to her at the time you mention. Have you not been hasty,
Colonel De Craye?"

Shadows crossed her forehead. She glanced in the direction of the house
and stopped her walk.

"Last night, Miss Middleton, there was a listener."

"Who?"

"Crossjay was under that pretty silk coverlet worked by the Miss
Patternes. He came home late, found his door locked, and dashed
downstairs into the drawing-room, where he snuggled up and dropped
asleep. The two speakers woke him; they frightened the poor dear lad in
his love for you, and after they had gone, he wanted to run out of the
house, and I met him just after I had come back from my search,
bursting, and took him to my room, and laid him on the sofa, and abused
him for not lying quiet. He was restless as a fish on a bank. When I
woke in the morning he was off. Doctor Corney came across him somewhere
on the road and drove him to the cottage. I was ringing the bell.
Corney told me the boy had you on his brain, and was miserable, so
Crossjay and I had a talk."

"Crossjay did not repeat to you the conversation he had heard?" said
Clara.

"No."

She smiled rejoicingly, proud of the boy, as she walked on.

"But you'll pardon me, Miss Middleton--and I'm for him as much as you
are--if I was guilty of a little angling."

"My sympathies are with the fish."

"The poor fellow had a secret that hurt him. It rose to the surface
crying to be hooked, and I spared him twice or thrice, because he had a
sort of holy sentiment I respected, that none but Mr. Whitford ought to
be his father confessor."

"Crossjay!" she cried, hugging her love of the boy.

"The secret was one not to be communicated to Miss Dale of all people."

"He said that?"

"As good as the very words. She informed me, too, that she couldn't
induce him to face her straight."

"Oh, that looks like it. And Crossjay was unhappy? Very unhappy?"

"He was just where tears are on the brim, and would have been over, if
he were not such a manly youngster."

"It looks. . ." She reverted in thought to Willoughby, and doubted, and
blindly stretched hands to her recollection of the strange old monster
she had discovered in him. Such a man could do anything.

That conclusion fortified her to pursue her walk to the house and give
battle for freedom. Willoughby appeared to her scarce human,
unreadable, save by the key that she could supply. She determined to
put faith in Colonel De Craye's marvellous divination of circumstances
in the dark. Marvels are solid weapons when we are attacked by real
prodigies of nature. Her countenance cleared. She conversed with De
Craye of the polite and the political world, throwing off her personal
burden completely, and charming him.

At the edge of the garden, on the bridge that crossed the haha from the
park, he had a second impulse, almost a warning within, to seize his
heavenly opportunity to ask for thanks and move her tender lowered
eyelids to hint at his reward. He repressed it, doubtful of the wisdom.

Something like "heaven forgive me" was in Clara's mind, though she
would have declared herself innocent before the scrutator.



CHAPTER XLIII

IN WHICH SIR WILLOUGHBY IS LED TO THINK THAT THE ELEMENTS HAVE
CONSPIRED AGAINST HIM

Clara had not taken many steps in the garden before she learned how
great was her debt of gratitude to Colonel De Craye. Willoughby and
her father were awaiting her. De Craye, with his ready comprehension of
circumstances, turned aside unseen among the shrubs. She advanced
slowly.

"The vapours, we may trust, have dispersed?" her father hailed her.

"One word, and these discussions are over, we dislike them equally,"
said Willoughby.

"No scenes," Dr. Middleton added. "Speak your decision, my girl, pro
forma, seeing that he who has the right demands it, and pray release
me."

Clara looked at Willoughby.

"I have decided to go to Miss Dale for her advice."

There was no appearance in him of a man that has been shot.

"To Miss Dale?--for advice?"

Dr Middleton invoked the Furies. "What is the signification of this new
freak?"

"Miss Dale must be consulted, papa."

"Consulted with reference to the disposal of your hand in marriage?"

"She must be."

"Miss Dale, do you say?"

"I do, Papa."

Dr Middleton regained his natural elevation from the bend of body
habitual with men of an established sanity, paedagogues and others, who
are called on at odd intervals to inspect the magnitude of the
infinitesimally absurd in human nature: small, that is, under the light
of reason, immense in the realms of madness.

His daughter profoundly confused him. He swelled out his chest,
remarking to Willoughby: "I do not wonder at your scared expression of
countenance, my friend. To discover yourself engaged to a girl mad as
Cassandra, without a boast of the distinction of her being sun-struck,
can be no specially comfortable enlightenment. I am opposed to delays,
and I will not have a breach of faith committed by daughter of mine."

"Do not repeat those words," Clara said to Willoughby. He started. She
had evidently come armed. But how, within so short a space? What could
have instructed her? And in his bewilderment he gazed hurriedly above,
gulped air, and cried: "Scared, sir? I am not aware that my countenance
can show a scare. I am not accustomed to sue for long: I am unable to
sustain the part of humble supplicant. She puts me out of harmony with
creation--We are plighted, Clara. It is pure waste of time to speak of
soliciting advice on the subject."

"Would it be a breach of faith for me to break my engagement?" she
said.

"You ask?"

"It is a breach of sanity to propound the interrogation," said her
father.

She looked at Willoughby. "Now?"

He shrugged haughtily.

"Since last night?" she said.

"Last night?"

"Am I not released?"

"Not by me."

"By your act."

"My dear Clara!"

"Have you not virtually disengaged me?"

"I who claim you as mine?"

"Can you?"

"I do and must."

"After last night?"

"Tricks! shufflings! jabber of a barbarian woman upon the evolutions of
a serpent!" exclaimed Dr. Middleton. "You were to capitulate, or to
furnish reasons for your refusal. You have none. Give him your hand,
girl, according to the compact. I praised you to him for returning
within the allotted term, and now forbear to disgrace yourself and me."

"Is he perfectly free to offer his? Ask him, papa."

"Perform your duty. Do let us have peace!"

"Perfectly free! as on the day when I offered it first." Willoughby
frankly waved his honourable hand.

His face was blanched: enemies in the air seemed to have whispered
things to her: he doubted the fidelity of the Powers above.

"Since last night?" said she.

"Oh! if you insist, I reply, since last night."

"You know what I mean, Sir Willoughby."

"Oh! certainly."

"You speak the truth?"

"'Sir Willoughby!'" her father ejaculated in wrath. "But will you
explain what you mean, epitome that you are of all the contradictions
and mutabilities ascribed to women from the beginning! 'Certainly', he
says, and knows no more than I. She begs grace for an hour, and returns
with a fresh store of evasions, to insult the man she has injured. It
is my humiliation to confess that our share in this contract is rescued
from public ignominy by his generosity. Nor can I congratulate him on
his fortune, should he condescend to bear with you to the utmost; for
instead of the young woman I supposed myself to be bestowing on him, I
see a fantastical planguncula enlivened by the wanton tempers of a
nursery chit. If one may conceive a meaning in her, in miserable
apology for such behaviour, some spirit of jealousy informs the girl."

"I can only remark that there is no foundation for it," said
Willoughby. "I am willing to satisfy you, Clara. Name the person who
discomposes you. I can scarcely imagine one to exist: but who can
tell?"

She could name no person. The detestable imputation of jealousy would
be confirmed if she mentioned a name: and indeed Laetitia was not to be
named.

He pursued his advantage: "Jealousy is one of the fits I am a stranger
to,--I fancy, sir, that gentlemen have dismissed it. I speak for
myself.--But I can make allowances. In some cases, it is considered a
compliment; and often a word will soothe it. The whole affair is so
senseless! However, I will enter the witness-box, or stand at the
prisoner's bar! Anything to quiet a distempered mind."

"Of you, sir," said Dr. Middleton, "might a parent be justly proud."

"It is not jealousy; I could not be jealous!" Clara cried, stung by the
very passion; and she ran through her brain for a suggestion to win a
sign of meltingness if not esteem from her father. She was not an iron
maiden, but one among the nervous natures which live largely in the
moment, though she was then sacrificing it to her nature's deep
dislike. "You may be proud of me again, papa."

She could hardly have uttered anything more impolitic.

"Optume; but deliver yourself ad rem," he rejoined, alarmingly
pacified. "Firmavit fidem. Do you likewise, and double on us no more
like puss in the field."

"I wish to see Miss Dale," she said.

Up flew the Rev. Doctor's arms in wrathful despair resembling an
imprecation.

"She is at the cottage. You could have seen her," said Willoughby.

Evidently she had not.

"Is it untrue that last night, between twelve o'clock and one, in the
drawing-room, you proposed marriage to Miss Dale?" He became convinced
that she must have stolen down-stairs during his colloquy with
Laetitia, and listened at the door.

"On behalf of old Vernon?" he said, lightly laughing. "The idea is not
novel, as you know. They are suited, if they could see it.--Laetitia
Dale and my cousin Vernon Whitford, sir."

"Fairly schemed, my friend, and I will say for you, you have the
patience, Willoughby, of a husband!"

Willoughby bowed to the encomium, and allowed some fatigue to be
visible. He half yawned: "I claim no happier title, sir," and made
light of the weariful discussion.

Clara was shaken: she feared that Crossjay had heard incorrectly, or
that Colonel De Craye had guessed erroneously. It was too likely that
Willoughby should have proposed Vernon to Laetitia.

There was nothing to reassure her save the vision of the panic
amazement of his face at her persistency in speaking of Miss Dale. She
could have declared on oath that she was right, while admitting all the
suppositions to be against her. And unhappily all the Delicacies (a
doughty battalion for the defence of ladies until they enter into
difficulties and are shorn of them at a blow, bare as dairymaids), all
the body-guard of a young gentlewoman, the drawing-room sylphides,
which bear her train, which wreathe her hair, which modulate her voice
and tone her complexion, which are arrows and shield to awe the
creature man, forbade her utterance of what she felt, on pain of
instant fulfilment of their oft-repeated threat of late to leave her to
the last remnant of a protecting sprite. She could not, as in a dear
melodrama, from the aim of a pointed finger denounce him, on the
testimony of her instincts, false of speech, false in deed. She could
not even declare that she doubted his truthfulness. The refuge of a
sullen fit, the refuge of tears, the pretext of a mood, were denied her
now by the rigour of those laws of decency which are a garment to
ladies of pure breeding.

"One more respite, papa," she implored him, bitterly conscious of the
closer tangle her petition involved, and, if it must be betrayed of
her, perceiving in an illumination how the knot might become so
woefully Gordian that haply in a cloud of wild events the intervention
of a gallant gentleman out of heaven, albeit in the likeness of one of
earth, would have to cut it: her cry within, as she succumbed to
weakness, being fervider, "Anything but marry this one!" She was faint
with strife and dejected, a condition in the young when their
imaginative energies hold revel uncontrolled and are projectively
desperate.

"No respite!" said Willoughby, genially.

"And I say, no respite!" observed her father. "You have assumed a
position that has not been granted you, Clara Middleton."

"I cannot bear to offend you, father."

"Him! Your duty is not to offend him. Address your excuses to him. I
refuse to be dragged over the same ground, to reiterate the same
command perpetually."

"If authority is deputed to me, I claim you," said Willoughby.

"You have not broken faith with me?"

"Assuredly not, or would it be possible for me to press my claim?"

"And join the right hand to the right," said Dr. Middleton; "no, it
would not be possible. What insane root she has been nibbling, I know
not, but she must consign herself to the guidance of those whom the
gods have not abandoned, until her intellect is liberated. She was once
. . . there: I look not back--if she it was, and no simulacrum of a
reasonable daughter. I welcome the appearance of my friend Mr.
Whitford. He is my sea-bath and supper on the beach of Troy, after the
day's battle and dust."

Vernon walked straight up to them: an act unusual with him, for he was
shy of committing an intrusion.

Clara guessed by that, and more by the dancing frown of speculative
humour he turned on Willoughby, that he had come charged in support of
her. His forehead was curiously lively, as of one who has got a
surprise well under, to feed on its amusing contents.

"Have you seen Crossjay, Mr. Whitford?" she said.

"I've pounced on Crossjay; his bones are sound."

"Where did he sleep?"

"On a sofa, it seems."

She smiled, with good hope--Vernon had the story.

Willoughby thought it just to himself that he should defend his measure
of severity.

"The boy lied; he played a double game."

"For which he should have been reasoned with at the Grecian portico of
a boy," said the Rev. Doctor.

"My system is different, sir. I could not inflict what I would not
endure myself"

"So is Greek excluded from the later generations; and you leave a
field, the most fertile in the moralities in youth, unplowed and
unsown. Ah! well. This growing too fine is our way of relapsing upon
barbarism. Beware of over-sensitiveness, where nature has plainly
indicated her alternative gateway of knowledge. And now, I presume, I
am at liberty."

"Vernon will excuse us for a minute or two."

"I hold by Mr. Whitford now I have him."

"I'll join you in the laboratory, Vernon," Willoughby nodded bluntly.

"We will leave them, Mr. Whitford. They are at the time-honoured
dissension upon a particular day, that, for the sake of dignity,
blushes to be named."

"What day?" said Vernon, like a rustic.

"THE day, these people call it."

Vernon sent one of his vivid eyeshots from one to the other. His eyes
fixed on Willoughby's with a quivering glow, beyond amazement, as if
his humour stood at furnace-heat, and absorbed all that came.

Willoughby motioned to him to go.

"Have you seen Miss Dale, Mr. Whitford?" said Clara.

He answered, "No. Something has shocked her."

"Is it her feeling for Crossjay?"

"Ah!" Vernon said to Willoughby, "your pocketing of the key of
Crossjay's bedroom door was a master-stroke!"

The celestial irony suffused her, and she bathed and swam in it, on
hearing its dupe reply: "My methods of discipline are short. I was not
aware that she had been to his door."

"But I may hope that Miss Dale will see me," said Clara. "We are in
sympathy about the boy."

"Mr. Dale might be seen. He seems to be of a divided mind with his
daughter," Vernon rejoined. "She has locked herself up in her room."

"He is not the only father in that unwholesome predicament," said Dr
Middleton.

"He talks of coming to you, Willoughby."

"Why to me?" Willoughby chastened his irritation: "He will be welcome,
of course. It would be better that the boy should come."

"If there is a chance of your forgiving him," said Clara. "Let the
Dales know I am prepared to listen to the boy, Vernon. There can be no
necessity for Mr. Dale to drag himself here."

"How are Mr. Dale and his daughter of a divided mind, Mr. Whitford?"
said Clara.

Vernon simulated an uneasiness. With a vacant gaze that enlarged around
Willoughby and was more discomforting than intentness, he replied:
"Perhaps she is unwilling to give him her entire confidence, Miss
Middleton."

"In which respect, then, our situations present their solitary point of
unlikeness in resemblance, for I have it in excess," observed Dr.
Middleton.

Clara dropped her eyelids for the wave to pass over. "It struck me that
Miss Dale was a person of the extremest candour."

"Why should we be prying into the domestic affairs of the Dales?"
Willoughby interjected, and drew out his watch, merely for a diversion;
he was on tiptoe to learn whether Vernon was as well instructed as
Clara, and hung to the view that he could not be, while drenching in
the sensation that he was:--and if so, what were the Powers above but a
body of conspirators? He paid Laetitia that compliment. He could not
conceive the human betrayal of the secret. Clara's discovery of it had
set his common sense adrift.

"The domestic affairs of the Dales do not concern me," said Vernon.

"And yet, my friend," Dr. Middleton balanced himself, and with an air
of benevolent slyness the import of which did not awaken Willoughby,
until too late, remarked: "They might concern you. I will even add,
that there is a probability of your being not less than the fount and
origin of this division of father and daughter, though Willoughby in
the drawingroom last night stands accusably the agent."

"Favour me, sir, with an explanation," said Vernon, seeking to gather
it from Clara.

Dr Middleton threw the explanation upon Willoughby.

Clara, communicated as much as she was able in one of those looks of
still depth which say, Think! and without causing a thought to stir,
takes us into the pellucid mind.

Vernon was enlightened before Willoughby had spoken. His mouth shut
rigidly, and there was a springing increase of the luminous wavering of
his eyes. Some star that Clara had watched at night was like them in
the vivid wink and overflow of its light. Yet, as he was perfectly
sedate, none could have suspected his blood to be chasing wild with
laughter, and his frame strung to the utmost to keep it from volleying.
So happy was she in his aspect, that her chief anxiety was to recover
the name of the star whose shining beckons and speaks, and is in the
quick of spirit-fire. It is the sole star which on a night of frost and
strong moonlight preserves an indomitable fervency: that she
remembered, and the picture of a hoar earth and a lean Orion in flooded
heavens, and the star beneath Eastward of him: but the name! the
name!--She heard Willoughby indistinctly.

"Oh, the old story; another effort; you know my wish; a failure, of
course, and no thanks on either side, I suppose I must ask your
excuse.--They neither of them see what's good for them, sir."

"Manifestly, however," said Dr. Middleton, "if one may opine from the
division we have heard of, the father is disposed to back your
nominee."

"I can't say; as far as I am concerned, I made a mess of it." Vernon
withstood the incitement to acquiesce, but he sparkled with his
recognition of the fact.

"You meant well, Willoughby."

"I hope so, Vernon."

"Only you have driven her away."

"We must resign ourselves."

"It won't affect me, for I'm off to-morrow."

"You see, sir, the thanks I get."

"Mr. Whitford," said Dr. Middleton, "You have a tower of strength in
the lady's father."

"Would you have me bring it to bear upon the lady, sir?"

"Wherefore not?"

"To make her marriage a matter of obedience to her father?"

"Ay, my friend, a lusty lover would have her gladly on those terms,
well knowing it to be for the lady's good. What do you say,
Willoughby?"

"Sir! Say? What can I say? Miss Dale has not plighted her faith. Had
she done so, she is a lady who would never dishonour it."

"She is an ideal of constancy, who would keep to it though it had been
broken on the other side," said Vernon, and Clara thrilled.

"I take that, sir, to be a statue of constancy, modelled upon which a
lady of our flesh may be proclaimed as graduating for the condition of
idiocy," said Dr. Middleton.

"But faith is faith, sir."

"But the broken is the broken, sir, whether in porcelain or in human
engagements; and all that one of the two continuing faithful, I should
rather say, regretful, can do, is to devote the remainder of life to
the picking up of the fragments; an occupation properly to be pursued,
for the comfort of mankind, within the enclosure of an appointed
asylum."

"You destroy the poetry of sentiment, Dr. Middleton."

"To invigorate the poetry of nature, Mr. Whitford."

"Then you maintain, sir, that when faith is broken by one, the
engagement ceases, and the other is absolutely free?"

"I do; I am the champion of that platitude, and sound that knell to the
sentimental world; and since you have chosen to defend it, I will
appeal to Willoughby, and ask him if he would not side with the world
of good sense in applauding the nuptials of man or maid married within
a month of a jilting?" Clara slipped her arm under her father's.

"Poetry, sir," said Willoughby, "I never have been hypocrite enough to
pretend to understand or care for."

Dr. Middleton laughed. Vernon too seemed to admire his cousin for a
reply that rung in Clara's ears as the dullest ever spoken. Her arm
grew cold on her father's. She began to fear Willoughby again.

He depended entirely on his agility to elude the thrusts that assailed
him. Had he been able to believe in the treachery of the Powers above,
he would at once have seen design in these deadly strokes, for his
feelings had rarely been more acute than at the present crisis; and he
would then have led away Clara, to wrangle it out with her, relying on
Vernon's friendliness not to betray him to her father: but a wrangle
with Clara promised no immediate fruits, nothing agreeable; and the
lifelong trust he had reposed in his protecting genii obscured his
intelligence to evidence he would otherwise have accepted on the spot,
on the faith of his delicate susceptibility to the mildest impressions
which wounded him. Clara might have stooped to listen at the door: she
might have heard sufficient to create a suspicion. But Vernon was not
in the house last night; she could not have communicated it to him, and
he had not seen Laetitia, who was, besides trustworthy, an admirable if
a foolish and ill-fated woman.

Preferring to consider Vernon a pragmatical moralist played upon by a
sententious drone, he thought it politic to detach them, and vanquish
Clara while she was in the beaten mood, as she had appeared before
Vernon's vexatious arrival.

"I'm afraid, my dear fellow, you are rather too dainty and fussy for a
very successful wooer," he said. "It's beautiful on paper, and absurd
in life. We have a bit of private business to discuss. We will go
inside, sir, I think. I will soon release you." Clara pressed her
father's arm.

"More?" said he.

"Five minutes. There's a slight delusion to clear, sir. My dear Clara,
you will see with different eyes."

"Papa wishes to work with Mr. Whitford."

Her heart sunk to hear her father say: "No, 'tis a lost morning. I must
consent to pay tax of it for giving another young woman to the world. I
have a daughter! You will, I hope, compensate me, Mr. Whitford, in the
afternoon. Be not downcast. I have observed you meditative of late. You
will have no clear brain so long as that stuff is on the mind. I could
venture to propose to do some pleading for you, should it be needed for
the prompter expedition of the affair."

Vernon briefly thanked him, and said:

"Willoughby has exerted all his eloquence, and you see the result: you
have lost Miss Dale and I have not won her. He did everything that one
man can do for another in so delicate a case: even to the repeating of
her famous birthday verses to him, to flatter the poetess. His best
efforts were foiled by the lady's indisposition for me."

"Behold," said Dr. Middleton, as Willoughby, electrified by the mention
of the verses, took a sharp stride or two, "you have in him an advocate
who will not be rebuffed by one refusal, and I can affirm that he is
tenacious, pertinacious as are few. Justly so. Not to believe in a
lady's No is the approved method of carrying that fortress built to
yield. Although unquestionably to have a young man pleading in our
interests with a lady, counts its objections. Yet Willoughby being
notoriously engaged, may be held to enjoy the privileges of his
elders."

"As an engaged man, sir, he was on a level with his elders in pleading
on my behalf with Miss Dale," said Vernon. Willoughby strode and
muttered. Providence had grown mythical in his thoughts, if not
malicious: and it is the peril of this worship that the object will
wear such an alternative aspect when it appears no longer subservient.

"Are we coming, sir?" he said, and was unheeded. The Rev. Doctor would
not be defrauded of rolling his billow.

"As an honourable gentleman faithful to his own engagement and desirous
of establishing his relatives, he deserves, in my judgement, the lady's
esteem as well as your cordial thanks; nor should a temporary failure
dishearten either of you, notwithstanding the precipitate retreat of
the lady from Patterne, and her seclusion in her sanctum on the
occasion of your recent visit."

"Supposing he had succeeded," said Vernon, driving Willoughby to
frenzy, "should I have been bound to marry?" Matter for cogitation was
offered to Dr. Middleton.

"The proposal was without your sanction?"

"Entirely."

"You admire the lady?"

"Respectfully."

"You do not incline to the state?"

"An inch of an angle would exaggerate my inclination."

"How long are we to stand and hear this insufferable nonsense you
talk?" cried Willoughby.

"But if Mr. Whitford was not consulted . . ." Dr. Middleton said, and
was overborne by Willoughby's hurried, "Oblige me, sir.--Oblige me, my
good fellow!" He swept his arm to Vernon, and gestured a conducting
hand to Clara.

"Here is Mrs. Mountstuart!" she exclaimed.

Willoughby stared. Was it an irruption of a friend or a foe? He
doubted, and stood petrified between the double question. Clara had
seen Mrs. Mountstuart and Colonel De Craye separating: and now the
great lady sailed along the sward like a royal barge in festival trim.

She looked friendly, but friendly to everybody, which was always a
frost on Willoughby, and terribly friendly to Clara.

Coming up to her she whispered: "News, indeed! Wonderful! I could not
credit his hint of it yesterday. Are you satisfied?"

"Pray, Mrs. Mountstuart, take an opportunity to speak to papa," Clara
whispered in return.

Mrs. Mountstuart bowed to Dr. Middleton, nodded to Vernon, and swam
upon Willoughby, with, "Is it? But is it? Am I really to believe? You
have? My dear Sir Willoughby? Really?" The confounded gentleman heaved
on a bare plank of wreck in mid sea.

He could oppose only a paralyzed smile to the assault.

His intuitive discretion taught him to fall back a step while she said,
"So!" the plummet word of our mysterious deep fathoms; and he fell back
further saying, "Madam?" in a tone advising her to speak low.

She recovered her volubility, followed his partial retreat, and dropped
her voice,--

"Impossible to have imagined it as an actual fact! You were always full
of surprises, but this! this! Nothing manlier, nothing more gentlemanly
has ever been done: nothing: nothing that so completely changes an
untenable situation into a comfortable and proper footing for
everybody. It is what I like: it is what I love:--sound sense! Men are
so selfish: one cannot persuade them to be reasonable in such
positions. But you, Sir Willoughby, have shown wisdom and sentiment:
the rarest of all combinations in men."

"Where have you? . . ." Willoughby contrived to say.

"Heard? The hedges, the housetops, everywhere. All the neighbourhood
will have it before nightfall. Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer will soon be
rushing here, and declaring they never expected anything else, I do not
doubt. I am not so pretentious. I beg your excuse for that 'twice' of
mine yesterday. Even if it hurt my vanity, I should be happy to confess
my error: I was utterly out. But then I did not reckon on a fatal
attachment, I thought men were incapable of it. I thought we women were
the only poor creatures persecuted by a fatality. It is a fatality! You
tried hard to escape, indeed you did. And she will do honour to your
final surrender, my dear friend. She is gentle, and very clever, very:
she is devoted to you: she will entertain excellently. I see her like a
flower in sunshine. She will expand to a perfect hostess. Patterne will
shine under her reign; you have my warrant for that. And so will you.
Yes, you flourish best when adored. It must be adoration. You have been
under a cloud of late. Years ago I said it was a match, when no one
supposed you could stoop. Lady Busshe would have it was a screen, and
she was deemed high wisdom. The world will be with you. All the women
will be: excepting, of course, Lady Busshe, whose pride is in prophecy;
and she will soon be too glad to swell the host. There, my friend, your
sincerest and oldest admirer congratulates you. I could not contain
myself; I was compelled to pour forth. And now I must go and be talked
to by Dr. Middleton. How does he take it? They leave?"

"He is perfectly well," said Willoughby, aloud, quite distraught.

She acknowledged his just correction of her for running on to an
extreme in low-toned converse, though they stood sufficiently isolated
from the others. These had by this time been joined by Colonel De
Craye, and were all chatting in a group--of himself, Willoughby
horribly suspected.

Clara was gone from him! Gone! but he remembered his oath and vowed it
again: not to Horace de Craye! She was gone, lost, sunk into the world
of waters of rival men, and he determined that his whole force should
be used to keep her from that man, the false friend who had supplanted
him in her shallow heart, and might, if he succeeded, boast of having
done it by simply appearing on the scene.

Willoughby intercepted Mrs. Mountstuart as she was passing over to Dr
Middleton. "My dear lady! spare me a minute."

De Craye sauntered up, with a face of the friendliest humour:

"Never was man like you, Willoughby, for shaking new patterns in a
kaleidoscope."

"Have you turned punster, Horace?" Willoughby replied, smarting to find
yet another in the demon secret, and he draw Dr. Middleton two or three
steps aside, and hurriedly begged him to abstain from prosecuting the
subject with Clara.

"We must try to make her happy as we best can, sir. She may have her
reasons--a young lady's reasons!" He laughed, and left the Rev. Doctor
considering within himself under the arch of his lofty frown of
stupefaction.

De Craye smiled slyly and winningly as he shadowed a deep droop on the
bend of his head before Clara, signifying his absolute devotion to her
service, and this present good fruit for witness of his merits.

She smiled sweetly though vaguely. There was no concealment of their
intimacy.

"The battle is over," Vernon said quietly, when Willoughby had walked
some paces beside Mrs. Mountstuart, adding: "You may expect to see Mr.
Dale here. He knows."

Vernon and Clara exchanged one look, hard on his part, in contrast with
her softness, and he proceeded to the house. De Craye waited for a word
or a promising look. He was patient, being self-assured, and passed on.

Clara linked her arm with her father's once more, and said, on a sudden
brightness: "Sirius, papa!" He repeated it in the profoundest manner:
"Sirius! And is there," he asked, "a feminine scintilla of sense in
that?"

"It is the name of the star I was thinking of, dear papa."

"It was the star observed by King Agamemnon before the sacrifice in
Aulis. You were thinking of that? But, my love, my Iphigenia, you have
not a father who will insist on sacrificing you."

"Did I hear him tell you to humour me, papa?"

Dr Middleton humphed.

"Verily the dog-star rages in many heads," he responded.



CHAPTER XLIV

DR MIDDLETON: THE LADIES ELEANOR AND ISABEL: AND MR. DALE

Clara looked up at the flying clouds. She travelled with them now, and
tasted freedom, but she prudently forbore to vex her father; she held
herself in reserve.

They were summoned by the midday bell.

Few were speakers at the meal, few were eaters. Clara was impelled to
join it by her desire to study Mrs. Mountstuart's face. Willoughby was
obliged to preside. It was a meal of an assembly of mutes and plates,
that struck the ear like the well-known sound of a collection of
offerings in church after an impressive exhortation from the pulpit. A
sally of Colonel De Craye's met the reception given to a charity-boy's
muffled burst of animal spirits in the silence of the sacred edifice.
Willoughby tried politics with Dr. Middleton, whose regular appetite
preserved him from uncongenial speculations when the hour for appeasing
it had come; and he alone did honour to the dishes, replying to his
host:

"Times are bad, you say, and we have a Ministry doing with us what they
will. Well, sir, and that being so, and opposition a manner of kicking
them into greater stability, it is the time for wise men to retire
within themselves, with the steady determination of the seed in the
earth to grow. Repose upon nature, sleep in firm faith, and abide the
seasons. That is my counsel to the weaker party."

The counsel was excellent, but it killed the topic.

Dr. Middleton's appetite was watched for the signal to rise and breathe
freely; and such is the grace accorded to a good man of an untroubled
conscience engaged in doing his duty to himself, that he perceived
nothing of the general restlessness; he went through the dishes calmly,
and as calmly he quoted Milton to the ladies Eleanor and Isabel, when
the company sprung up all at once upon his closing his repast. Vernon
was taken away from him by Willoughby. Mrs Mountstuart beckoned
covertly to Clara. Willoughby should have had something to say to him,
Dr. Middleton thought: the position was not clear. But the situation
was not disagreeable; and he was in no serious hurry, though he wished
to be enlightened.

"This," Dr. Middleton said to the spinster aunts, as he accompanied
them to the drawing-room, "shall be no lost day for me if I may devote
the remainder of it to you."

"The thunder, we fear, is not remote," murmured one.

"We fear it is imminent," sighed the other.

They took to chanting in alternation.

"--We are accustomed to peruse our Willoughby, and we know him by a
shadow."

"--From his infancy to his glorious youth and his established manhood."

"--He was ever the soul of chivalry."

"--Duty: duty first. The happiness of his family. The well-being of his
dependants."

"--If proud of his name it was not an overweening pride; it was founded
in the conscious possession of exalted qualities. He could be humble
when occasion called for it."

Dr Middleton bowed to the litany, feeling that occasion called for
humbleness from him.

"Let us hope . . . !" he said, with unassumed penitence on behalf of
his inscrutable daughter.

The ladies resumed:--

"--Vernon Whitford, not of his blood, is his brother!"

"--A thousand instances! Laetitia Dale remembers them better than we."

"--That any blow should strike him!"

"--That another should be in store for him!"

"--It seems impossible he can be quite misunderstood!"

"Let us hope . . . !" said Dr. Middleton.

"--One would not deem it too much for the dispenser of goodness to
expect to be a little looked up to!"

"--When he was a child he one day mounted a chair, and there he stood
in danger, would not let us touch him because he was taller than we,
and we were to gaze. Do you remember him, Eleanor? 'I am the sun of the
house!' It was inimitable!"

"--Your feelings; he would have your feelings! He was fourteen when his
cousin Grace Whitford married, and we lost him. They had been the
greatest friends; and it was long before he appeared among us. He has
never cared to see her since."

"--But he has befriended her husband. Never has he failed in
generosity. His only fault is--"

"--His sensitiveness. And that is--"

"--His secret. And that--"

"--You are not to discover! It is the same with him in manhood. No one
will accuse Willoughby Patterne of a deficiency of manlinesss: but what
is it?--he suffers, as none suffer, if he is not loved. He himself is
inalterably constant in affection."

"--What it is no one can say. We have lived with him all his life, and
we know him ready to make any sacrifice; only, he does demand the whole
heart in return. And if he doubts, he looks as we have seen him
to-day."

"--Shattered: as we have never seen him look before."

"We will hope," said Dr. Middleton, this time hastily. He tingled to
say, "what it was": he had it in him to solve perplexity in their
inquiry. He did say, adopting familiar speech to suit the theme, "You
know, ladies, we English come of a rough stock. A dose of rough dealing
in our youth does us no harm, braces us. Otherwise we are likely to
feel chilly: we grow too fine where tenuity of stature is necessarily
buffetted by gales, namely, in our self-esteem. We are barbarians, on a
forcing soil of wealth, in a conservatory of comfortable security; but
still barbarians. So, you see, we shine at our best when we are
plucked out of that, to where hard blows are given, in a state of war.
In a state of war we are at home, our men are high-minded fellows,
Scipios and good legionaries. In the state of peace we do not live in
peace: our native roughness breaks out in unexpected places, under
extraordinary aspects--tyrannies, extravagances, domestic exactions:
and if we have not had sharp early training . . . within and without
. . . the old-fashioned island-instrument to drill into us the
civilization of our masters, the ancients, we show it by running here
and there to some excess. Ahem. Yet," added the Rev. Doctor,
abandoning his effort to deliver a weighty truth obscurely for the
comprehension of dainty spinster ladies, the superabundance of whom in
England was in his opinion largely the cause of our decay as a people,
"Yet I have not observed this ultra-sensitiveness in Willoughby. He has
borne to hear more than I, certainly no example of the frailty, could
have endured."

"He concealed it," said the ladies. "It is intense."

"Then is it a disease?"

"It bears no explanation; it is mystic."

"It is a cultus, then, a form of self-worship."

"Self!" they ejaculated. "But is not Self indifferent to others? Is it
Self that craves for sympathy, love, and devotion?"

"He is an admirable host, ladies."

"He is admirable in all respects."

"Admirable must he be who can impress discerning women, his life-long
housemates, so favourably. He is, I repeat, a perfect host."

"He will be a perfect husband."

"In all probability."

"It is a certainty. Let him be loved and obeyed, he will be guided.
That is the secret for her whom he so fatally loves. That, if we had
dared, we would have hinted to her. She will rule him through her love
of him, and through him all about her. And it will not be a rule he
submits to, but a love he accepts. If she could see it!"

"If she were a metaphysician!" sighed Dr. Middleton.

"--But a sensitiveness so keen as his might--"

"--Fretted by an unsympathizing mate--"

"--In the end become, for the best of us is mortal--"

"--Callous!"

"--He would feel perhaps as much--"

"--Or more!--"

"--He would still be tender--"

"--But he might grow outwardly hard!"

Both ladies looked up at Dr. Middleton, as they revealed the dreadful
prospect.

"It is the story told of corns!" he said, sad as they.

The three stood drooping: the ladies with an attempt to digest his
remark; the Rev. Doctor in dejection lest his gallantry should no
longer continue to wrestle with his good sense.

He was rescued.

The door opened and a footman announced:--

"Mr. Dale."

Miss Eleanor and Miss Isabel made a sign to one another of raising
their hands.

They advanced to him, and welcomed him.

"Pray be seated, Mr. Dale. You have not brought us bad news of our
Laetitia?"

"So rare is the pleasure of welcoming you here, Mr. Dale, that we are
in some alarm, when, as we trust, it should be matter for unmixed
congratulation."

"Has Doctor Corney been doing wonders?"

"I am indebted to him for the drive to your house, ladies," said Mr.
Dale, a spare, close-buttoned gentleman, with an Indian complexion
deadened in the sick-chamber. "It is unusual for me to stir from my
precincts."

"The Rev. Dr. Middleton."

Mr. Dale bowed. He seemed surprised.

"You live in a splendid air, sir," observed the Rev. Doctor.

"I can profit little by it, sir," replied Mr. Dale. He asked the
ladies: "Will Sir Willoughby be disengaged?"

They consulted. "He is with Vernon. We will send to him."

The bell was rung.

"I have had the gratification of making the acquaintance of your
daughter, Mr. Dale, a most estimable lady," said Dr. Middleton.

Mr. Dale bowed. "She is honoured by your praises, sir. To the best of
my belief--I speak as a father--she merits them. Hitherto I have had no
doubts."

"Of Laetitia?" exclaimed the ladies; and spoke of her as gentleness and
goodness incarnate.

"Hitherto I have devoutly thought so," said Mr. Dale.

"Surely she is the very sweetest nurse, the most devoted of daughters."

"As far as concerns her duty to her father, I can say she is that,
ladies."

"In all her relations, Mr. Dale!"

"It is my prayer," he said.

The footman appeared. He announced that Sir Willoughby was in the
laboratory with Mr. Whitford, and the door locked.

"Domestic business," the ladies remarked. "You know Willoughby's
diligent attention to affairs, Mr. Dale."

"He is well?" Mr. Dale inquired.

"In excellent health."

"Body and mind?"

"But, dear Mr. Dale, he is never ill."

"Ah! for one to hear that who is never well! And Mr. Whitford is quite
sound?"

"Sound? The question alarms me for myself," said Dr. Middleton. "Sound
as our Constitution, the Credit of the country, the reputation of our
Prince of poets. I pray you to have no fears for him."

Mr. Dale gave the mild little sniff of a man thrown deeper into
perplexity.

He said: "Mr. Whitford works his head; he is a hard student; he may not
be always, if I may so put it, at home on worldly affairs."

"Dismiss that defamatory legend of the student, Mr. Dale; and take my
word for it, that he who persistently works his head has the strongest
for all affairs."

"Ah! Your daughter, sir, is here?"

"My daughter is here, sir, and will be most happy to present her
respects to the father of her friend, Miss Dale."

"They are friends?"

"Very cordial friends."

Mr. Dale administered another feebly pacifying sniff to himself.

"Laetitia!" he sighed, in apostrophe, and swept his forehead with a
hand seen to shake.

The ladies asked him anxiously whether he felt the heat of the room;
and one offered him a smelling-bottle.

He thanked them. "I can hold out until Sir Willoughby comes."

"We fear to disturb him when his door is locked, Mr. Dale; but, if you
wish it, we will venture on a message. You have really no bad news of
our Laetitia? She left us hurriedly this morning, without any
leave-taking, except a word to one of the maids, that your condition
required her immediate presence."

"My condition! And now her door is locked to me! We have spoken through
the door, and that is all. I stand sick and stupefied between two
locked doors, neither of which will open, it appears, to give me the
enlightenment I need more than medicine."

"Dear me!" cried Dr. Middleton, "I am struck by your description of
your position, Mr. Dale. It would aptly apply to our humanity of the
present generation; and were these the days when I sermonized, I could
propose that it should afford me an illustration for the pulpit. For my
part, when doors are closed I try not their locks; and I attribute my
perfect equanimity, health even, to an uninquiring acceptation of the
fact that they are closed to me. I read my page by the light I have. On
the contrary, the world of this day, if I may presume to quote you for
my purpose, is heard knocking at those two locked doors of the secret
of things on each side of us, and is beheld standing sick and stupefied
because it has got no response to its knocking. Why, sir, let the world
compare the diverse fortunes of the beggar and the postman: knock to
give, and it is opened unto you: knock to crave, and it continues shut.
I say, carry a letter to your locked door, and you shall have a good
reception: but there is none that is handed out. For which reason
. . ."

Mr. Dale swept a perspiring forehead, and extended his hand in
supplication. "I am an invalid, Dr. Middleton," he said. "I am unable
to cope with analogies. I have but strength for the slow digestion of
facts."

"For facts, we are bradypeptics to a man, sir. We know not yet if
nature be a fact or an effort to master one. The world has not yet
assimilated the first fact it stepped on. We are still in the endeavour
to make good blood of the fact of our being." Pressing his hands at his
temples, Mr. Dale moaned: "My head twirls; I did unwisely to come out.
I came on an impulse; I trust, honourable. I am unfit--I cannot follow
you, Dr. Middleton. Pardon me."

"Nay, sir, let me say, from my experience of my countrymen, that if you
do not follow me and can abstain from abusing me in consequence, you
are magnanimous," the Rev. Doctor replied, hardly consenting to let go
the man he had found to indemnify him for his gallant service of
acquiescing as a mute to the ladies, though he knew his breathing
robustfulness to be as an East wind to weak nerves, and himself an
engine of punishment when he had been torn for a day from his books.

Miss Eleanor said: "The enlightenment you need, Mr. Dale? Can we
enlighten you?"

"I think not," he answered, faintly. "I think I will wait for Sir
Willoughby . . . or Mr. Whitford. If I can keep my strength. Or could I
exchange--I fear to break down--two words with the young lady who is,
was . . ."

"Miss Middleton, my daughter, sir? She shall be at your disposition; I
will bring her to you." Dr. Middleton stopped at the window. "She, it
is true, may better know the mind of Miss Dale than I. But I flatter
myself I know the gentleman better. I think, Mr. Dale, addressing you
as the lady's father, you will find me a persuasive, I could be an
impassioned, advocate in his interests."

Mr. Dale was confounded; the weakly sapling caught in a gust falls back
as he did.

"Advocate?" he said. He had little breath.

"His impassioned advocate, I repeat; for I have the highest opinion of
him. You see, sir, I am acquainted with the circumstances. I believe,"
Dr. Middleton half turned to the ladies, "we must, until your potent
inducements, Mr. Dale, have been joined to my instances, and we
overcome what feminine scruples there may be, treat the circumstances
as not generally public. Our Strephon may be chargeable with shyness.
But if for the present it is incumbent on us, in proper consideration
for the parties, not to be nominally precise, it is hardly requisite in
this household that we should be. He is now for protesting indifference
to the state. I fancy we understand that phase of amatory frigidity.
Frankly, Mr. Dale, I was once in my life myself refused by a lady, and
I was not indignant, merely indifferent to the marriage-tie."

"My daughter has refused him, sir?"

"Temporarily it would appear that she has declined the proposal."

"He was at liberty? . . . he could honourably? . . ."

"His best friend and nearest relative is your guarantee."

"I know it; I hear so; I am informed of that: I have heard of the
proposal, and that he could honourably make it. Still, I am helpless, I
cannot move, until I am assured that my daughter's reasons are such as
a father need not underline."

"Does the lady, perchance, equivocate?"

"I have not seen her this morning; I rise late. I hear an astounding
account of the cause for her departure from Patterne, and I find her
door locked to me--no answer."

"It is that she had no reasons to give, and she feared the demand for
them."

"Ladies!" dolorously exclaimed Mr. Dale.

"We guess the secret, we guess it!" they exclaimed in reply; and they
looked smilingly, as Dr. Middleton looked.

"She had no reasons to give?" Mr. Dale spelled these words to his
understanding. "Then, sir, she knew you not adverse?"

"Undoubtedly, by my high esteem for the gentleman, she must have known
me not adverse. But she would not consider me a principal. She could
hardly have conceived me an obstacle. I am simply the gentleman's
friend. A zealous friend, let me add."

Mr. Dale put out an imploring hand; it was too much for him.

"Pardon me; I have a poor head. And your daughter the same, sir?"

"We will not measure it too closely, but I may say, my daughter the
same, sir. And likewise--may I not add--these ladies."

Mr. Dale made sign that he was overfilled. "Where am I! And Laetitia
refused him?"

"Temporarily, let us assume. Will it not partly depend on you, Mr.
Dale?"

"But what strange things have been happening during my daughter's
absence from the cottage!" cried Mr. Dale, betraying an elixir in his
veins. "I feel that I could laugh if I did not dread to be thought
insane. She refused his hand, and he was at liberty to offer it? My
girl! We are all on our heads. The fairy-tales were right and the
lesson-books were wrong. But it is really, it is really very
demoralizing. An invalid--and I am one, and no momentary exhilaration
will be taken for the contrary--clings to the idea of stability, order.
The slightest disturbance of the wonted course of things unsettles him.
Why, for years I have been prophesying it! and for years I have had
everything against me, and now when it is confirmed, I am wondering
that I must not call myself a fool!"

"And for years, dear Mr. Dale, this union, in spite of counter-currents
and human arrangements, has been our Willoughby's constant
preoccupation," said Miss Eleanor.

"His most cherished aim," said Miss Isabel.

"The name was not spoken by me," said Dr. Middleton.

"But it is out, and perhaps better out, if we would avoid the chance of
mystifications. I do not suppose we are seriously committing a breach
of confidence, though he might have wished to mention it to you first
himself. I have it from Willoughby that last night he appealed to your
daughter, Mr. Dale--not for the first time, if I apprehend him
correctly; and unsuccessfully. He despairs. I do not: supposing, that
is, your assistance vouchsafed to us. And I do not despair, because the
gentleman is a gentleman of worth, of acknowledged worth. You know him
well enough to grant me that. I will bring you my daughter to help me
in sounding his praises."

Dr Middleton stepped through the window to the lawn on an elastic foot,
beaming with the happiness he felt charged to confer on his friend Mr.
Whitford.

"Ladies! it passes all wonders," Mr. Dale gasped.

"Willoughby's generosity does pass all wonders," they said in chorus.

The door opened; Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer were announced.



CHAPTER XLV

THE PATTERNE LADIES: MR. DALE: LADY BUSSHE AND LADY CULMER: WITH MRS.
MOUNTSTUART JENKINSON

Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer entered spying to right and left. At the
sight of Mr. Dale in the room Lady Busshe murmured to her friend:
"Confirmation!"

Lady Culmer murmured: "Corney is quite reliable."

"The man is his own best tonic."

"He is invaluable for the country."

Miss Eleanor and Miss Isabel greeted them.

The amiability of the Patterne ladies combined with their total eclipse
behind their illustrious nephew invited enterprising women of the world
to take liberties, and they were not backward.

Lady Busshe said: "Well? the news! we have the outlines. Don't be
astonished: we know the points: we have heard the gun. I could have
told you as much yesterday. I saw it. And I guessed it the day before.
Oh, I do believe in fatalities now. Lady Culmer and I agree to take
that view: it is the simplest. Well, and are you satisfied, my dears?"

The ladies grimaced interrogatively: "With what?"

"With it? with all! with her! with him!"

"Our Willoughby?"

"Can it be possible that they require a dose of Corney?" Lady Busshe
remarked to Lady Culmer.

"They play discretion to perfection," said Lady Culmer. "But, my dears,
we are in the secret."

"How did she behave?" whispered Lady Busshe. "No high flights and
flutters, I do hope. She was well-connected, they say; though I don't
comprehend what they mean by a line of scholars--one thinks of a row of
pinafores: and she was pretty."

"That is well enough at the start. It never will stand against brains.
He had the two in the house to contrast them, and . . . the result! A
young woman with brains--in a house--beats all your beauties. Lady
Culmer and I have determined on that view. He thought her a delightful
partner for a dance, and found her rather tiresome at the end of the
gallopade. I saw it yesterday, clear as daylight. She did not
understand him, and he did understand her. That will be our report."

"She is young: she will learn," said the ladies uneasily, but in total
ignorance of her meaning.

"And you are charitable, and always were. I remember you had a good
word for that girl Durham."

Lady Busshe crossed the room to Mr. Dale, who was turning over leaves
of a grand book of the heraldic devices of our great Families.

"Study it," she said, "study it, my dear Mr. Dale; you are in it, by
right of possessing a clever and accomplished daughter. At page 300
you will find the Patterne crest. And mark me, she will drag you into
the peerage before she has done--relatively, you know. Sir Willoughby
and wife will not be contented to sit down and manage the estates. Has
not Laetitia immense ambition? And very creditable, I say."

Mr. Dale tried to protest something. He shut the book, examining the
binding, flapped the cover with a finger, hoped her ladyship was in
good health, alluded to his own and the strangeness of the bird out of
the cage.

"You will probably take up your residence here, in a larger and
handsomer cage. Mr. Dale."

He shook his head. "Do I apprehend . . ." he said.

"I know," said she.

"Dear me, can it be?"

Mr. Dale gazed upward, with the feelings of one awakened late to see a
world alive in broad daylight.

Lady Busshe dropped her voice. She took the liberty permitted to her
with an inferior in station, while treating him to a tone of
familiarity in acknowledgment of his expected rise; which is high
breeding, or the exact measurement of social dues.

"Laetitia will be happy, you may be sure. I love to see a long and
faithful attachment rewarded--love it! Her tale is the triumph of
patience. Far above Grizzel! No woman will be ashamed of pointing to
Lady Patterne. You are uncertain? You are in doubt? Let me hear--as low
as you like. But there is no doubt of the new shifting of the
scene?--no doubt of the proposal? Dear Mr. Dale! a very little louder.
You are here because--? of course you wish to see Sir Willoughby. She?
I did not catch you quite. She? . . . it seems, you say . . . ?"

Lady Culmer said to the Patterne ladies:--

"You must have had a distressing time. These affairs always mount up to
a climax, unless people are very well bred. We saw it coming.
Naturally we did not expect such a transformation of brides: who could?
If I had laid myself down on my back to think, I should have had it. I
am unerring when I set to speculating on my back. One is cooler: ideas
come; they have not to be forced. That is why I am brighter on a dull
winter afternoon, on the sofa, beside my tea-service, than at any other
season. However, your trouble is over. When did the Middletons leave?"

"The Middletons leave?" said the ladies.

"Dr. Middleton and his daughter."

"They have not left us."

"The Middletons are here?"

"They are here, yes. Why should they have left Patterne?"

"Why?"

"Yes. They are likely to stay some days longer."

"Goodness!"

"There is no ground for any report to the contrary, Lady Culmer."

"No ground!"

Lady Culmer called out to Lady Busshe.

A cry came back from that startled dame.

"She has refused him!"

"Who?"

"She has."

"She?--Sir Willoughby?"

"Refused!--declines the honour."

"Oh, never! No, that carries the incredible beyond romance. But is he
perfectly at . . ."

"Quite, it seems. And she was asked in due form and refused."

"No, and no again!"

"My dear, I have it from Mr. Dale."

"Mr. Dale, what can be the signification of her conduct?"

"Indeed, Lady Culmer," said Mr. Dale, not unpleasantly agitated by the
interest he excited, in spite of his astonishment at a public
discussion of the matter in this house, "I am in the dark. Her father
should know, but I do not. Her door is locked to me; I have not seen
her. I am absolutely in the dark. I am a recluse. I have forgotten the
ways of the world. I should have supposed her father would first have
been addressed."

"Tut-tut. Modern gentlemen are not so formal; they are creatures of
impulse and take a pride in it. He spoke. We settle that. But where did
you get this tale of a refusal?"

"I have it from Dr. Middleton."

"From Dr. Middleton?" shouted Lady Busshe.

"The Middletons are here," said Lady Culmer.

"What whirl are we in?" Lady Busshe got up, ran two or three steps and
seated herself in another chair. "Oh! do let us proceed upon system. If
not we shall presently be rageing; we shall be dangerous. The
Middletons are here, and Dr. Middleton himself communicates to Mr. Dale
that Laetitia Dale has refused the hand of Sir Willoughby, who is
ostensibly engaged to his own daughter! And pray, Mr. Dale, how did
Dr. Middleton speak of it? Compose yourself; there is no violent hurry,
though our sympathy with you and our interest in all the parties does
perhaps agitate us a little. Quite at your leisure--speak!"

"Madam . . . Lady Busshe." Mr. Dale gulped a ball in his throat. "I see
no reason why I should not speak. I do not see how I can have been
deluded. The Miss Patternes heard him. Dr. Middleton began upon it, not
I. I was unaware, when I came, that it was a refusal. I had been
informed that there was a proposal. My authority for the tale was
positive. The object of my visit was to assure myself of the integrity
of my daughter's conduct. She had always the highest sense of honour.
But passion is known to mislead, and there was this most strange
report. I feared that our humblest apologies were due to Dr. Middleton
and his daughter. I know the charm Laetitia can exercise. Madam, in the
plainest language, without a possibility of my misapprehending him, Dr.
Middleton spoke of himself as the advocate of the suitor for my
daughter's hand. I have a poor head. I supposed at once an amicable
rupture between Sir Willoughby and Miss Middleton, or that the version
which had reached me of their engagement was not strictly accurate. My
head is weak. Dr. Middleton's language is trying to a head like mine;
but I can speak positively on the essential points: he spoke of himself
as ready to be the impassioned advocate of the suitor for my daughter's
hand. Those were his words. I understood him to entreat me to intercede
with her. Nay, the name was mentioned. There was no concealment. I am
certain there could not be a misapprehension. And my feelings were
touched by his anxiety for Sir Willoughby's happiness. I attributed it
to a sentiment upon which I need not dwell. Impassioned advocate, he
said."

"We are in a perfect maelstrom!" cried Lady Busshe, turning to
everybody.

"It is a complete hurricane!" cried Lady Culmer.

A light broke over the faces of the Patterne ladies. They exchanged it
with one another.

They had been so shocked as to be almost offended by Lady Busshe, but
their natural gentleness and habitual submission rendered them unequal
to the task of checking her.

"Is it not," said Miss Eleanor, "a misunderstanding that a change of
names will rectify?"

"This is by no means the first occasion," said Miss Isabel, "that
Willoughby has pleaded for his cousin Vernon."

"We deplore extremely the painful error into which Mr. Dale has
fallen."

"It springs, we now perceive, from an entire misapprehension of Dr.
Middleton."

"Vernon was in his mind. It was clear to us."

"Impossible that it could have been Willoughby!"

"You see the impossibility, the error!"

"And the Middletons here!" said Lady Busshe. "Oh! if we leave
unilluminated we shall be the laughing-stock of the county. Mr. Dale,
please, wake up. Do you see? You may have been mistaken."

"Lady Busshe," he woke up; "I may have mistaken Dr. Middleton; he has a
language that I can compare only to a review-day of the field forces.
But I have the story on authority that I cannot question: it is
confirmed by my daughter's unexampled behaviour. And if I live through
this day I shall look about me as a ghost to-morrow."

"Dear Mr. Dale!" said the Patterne ladies, compassionately. Lady Busshe
murmured to them: "You know the two did not agree; they did not get on:
I saw it; I predicted it."

"She will understand him in time," said they.

"Never. And my belief is, they have parted by consent, and Letty Dale
wins the day at last. Yes, now I do believe it."

The ladies maintained a decided negative, but they knew too much not to
feel perplexed, and they betrayed it, though they said: "Dear Lady
Busshe! is it credible, in decency?"

"Dear Mrs. Mountstuart!" Lady Busshe invoked her great rival appearing
among them: "You come most opportunely; we are in a state of
inextricable confusion: we are bordering on frenzy. You, and none but
you, can help us. You know, you always know; we hang on you. Is there
any truth in it? a particle?"

Mrs. Mountstuart seated herself regally "Ah, Mr. Dale!" she said,
inclining to him. "Yes, dear Lady Busshe, there is a particle."

"Now, do not roast us. You can; you have the art. I have the whole
story. That is, I have a part. I mean, I have the outlines, I cannot be
deceived, but you can fill them in, I know you can. I saw it yesterday.
Now, tell us, tell us. It must be quite true or utterly false. Which is
it?"

"Be precise."

"His fatality! you called her. Yes, I was sceptical. But here we have
it all come round again, and if the tale is true, I shall own you
infallible. Has he?--and she?"

"Both."

"And the Middletons here? They have not gone; they keep the field. And
more astounding, she refuses him. And to add to it, Dr. Middleton
intercedes with Mr. Dale for Sir Willoughby."

"Dr. Middleton intercedes!" This was rather astonishing to Mrs.
Mountstuart.

"For Vernon," Miss Eleanor emphasized.

"For Vernon Whitford, his cousin." said Miss Isabel, still more
emphatically.

"Who," said Mrs. Mountstuart, with a sovereign lift and turn of her
head, "speaks of a refusal?"

"I have it from Mr. Dale," said Lady Busshe.

"I had it, I thought, distinctly from Dr. Middleton," said Mr. Dale.

"That Willoughby proposed to Laetitia for his cousin Vernon, Doctor
Middleton meant," said Miss Eleanor.

Her sister followed: "Hence this really ridiculous misconception!
--sad, indeed," she added, for balm to Mr. Dale.

"Willoughby was Vernon's proxy. His cousin, if not his first, is ever
the second thought with him."

"But can we continue . . . ?"

"Such a discussion!"

Mrs. Mountstuart gave them a judicial hearing. They were regarded in
the county as the most indulgent of nonentities, and she as little as
Lady Busshe was restrained from the burning topic in their presence.
She pronounced:

"Each party is right, and each is wrong."

A dry: "I shall shriek!" came from Lady Busshe.

"Cruel!" groaned Lady Culmer.

"Mixed, you are all wrong. Disentangled, you are each of you right. Sir
Willoughby does think of his cousin Vernon; he is anxious to establish
him; he is the author of a proposal to that effect."

"We know it!" the Patterne ladies exclaimed. "And Laetitia rejected
poor Vernon once more!"

"Who spoke of Miss Dale's rejection of Mr. Whitford?"

"Is he not rejected?" Lady Culmer inquired.

"It is in debate, and at this moment being decided."

"Oh! do he seated, Mr. Dale," Lady Busshe implored him, rising to
thrust him back to his chair if necessary. "Any dislocation, and we are
thrown out again! We must hold together if this riddle is ever to be
read. Then, dear Mrs. Mountstuart, we are to say that there is-no truth
in the other story?"

"You are to say nothing of the sort, dear Lady Busshe."

"Be merciful! And what of the fatality?"

"As positive as the Pole to the needle."

"She has not refused him?"

"Ask your own sagacity."

"Accepted?"

"Wait."

"And all the world's ahead of me! Now, Mrs. Mountstuart, you are
oracle. Riddles, if you like, only speak. If we can't have corn, why,
give us husks."

"Is any one of us able to anticipate events, Lady Busshe?"

"Yes, I believe that you are. I bow to you. I do sincerely. So it's
another person for Mr. Whitford? You nod. And it is our Laetitia for
Sir Willoughby? You smile. You would not deceive me? A very little,
and I run about crazed and howl at your doors. And Dr. Middleton is
made to play blind man in the midst? And the other person is--now I see
day! An amicable rupture, and a smooth new arrangement. She has money;
she was never the match for our hero; never; I saw it yesterday, and
before, often; and so he hands her over--tuthe-rum-tum-tum,
tuthe-rum-tum-tum," Lady Busshe struck a quick march on her knee. "Now
isn't that clever guessing? The shadow of a clue for me. And because I
know human nature. One peep, and I see the combination in a minute. So
he keeps the money in the family, becomes a benefactor to his cousin by
getting rid of the girl, and succumbs to his fatality. Rather a pity he
let it ebb and flow so long. Time counts the tides, you know. But it
improves the story. I defy any other county in the kingdom to produce
one fresh and living to equal it. Let me tell you I suspected Mr.
Whitford, and I hinted it yesterday."

"Did you indeed!" said Mrs. Mountstuart, humouring her excessive
acuteness.

"I really did. There is that dear good man on his feet again. And looks
agitated again."

Mr. Dale had been compelled both by the lady's voice and his interest
in the subject to listen. He had listened more than enough; he was
exceedingly nervous. He held on by his chair, afraid to quit his
moorings, and "Manners!" he said to himself unconsciously aloud, as he
cogitated on the libertine way with which these chartered great ladies
of the district discussed his daughter. He was heard and unnoticed. The
supposition, if any, would have been that he was admonishing himself.
At this juncture Sir Willoughby entered the drawing-room by the garden
window, and simultaneously Dr. Middleton by the door.



CHAPTER XLVI

THE SCENE OF SIR WILLOUGHBY'S GENERALSHIP

History, we may fear, will never know the qualities of leadership
inherent in Sir Willoughby Patterne to fit him for the post of
Commander of an army, seeing that he avoided the fatigues of the
service and preferred the honours bestowed in his country upon the
quiet administrators of their own estates: but his possession of
particular gifts, which are military, and especially of the proleptic
mind, which is the stamp and sign-warrant of the heaven-sent General,
was displayed on every urgent occasion when, in the midst of
difficulties likely to have extinguished one less alert than he to the
threatening aspect of disaster, he had to manoeuvre himself.

He had received no intimation of Mr. Dale's presence in his house, nor
of the arrival of the dreaded women Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer: his
locked door was too great a terror to his domestics. Having finished
with Vernon, after a tedious endeavour to bring the fellow to a sense
of the policy of the step urged on him, he walked out on the lawn with
the desire to behold the opening of an interview not promising to lead
to much, and possibly to profit by its failure. Clara had been
prepared, according to his directions, by Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson,
as Vernon had been prepared by him. His wishes, candidly and kindly
expressed both to Vernon and Mrs Mountstuart, were, that since the girl
appeared disinclined to make him a happy man, she would make one of his
cousin. Intimating to Mrs. Mountstuart that he would be happier
without her, he alluded to the benefit of the girl's money to poor old
Vernon, the general escape from a scandal if old Vernon could manage to
catch her as she dropped, the harmonious arrangement it would be for
all parties. And only on the condition of her taking Vernon would he
consent to give her up. This he said imperatively, adding that such was
the meaning of the news she had received relating to Laetitia Dale.
From what quarter had she received it? he asked. She shuffled in her
reply, made a gesture to signify that it was in the air, universal, and
fell upon the proposed arrangement. He would listen to none of Mrs.
Mountstuart's woman-of-the-world instances of the folly of pressing it
upon a girl who had shown herself a girl of spirit. She foretold the
failure. He would not be advised; he said: "It is my scheme"; and
perhaps the look of mad benevolence about it induced the lady to try
whether there was a chance that it would hit the madness in our nature,
and somehow succeed or lead to a pacification. Sir Willoughby
condescended to arrange things thus for Clara's good; he would then
proceed to realize his own. Such was the face he put upon it. We can
wear what appearance we please before the world until we are found out,
nor is the world's praise knocking upon hollowness always hollow music;
but Mrs Mountstuart's laudation of his kindness and simplicity
disturbed him; for though he had recovered from his rebuff enough to
imagine that Laetitia could not refuse him under reiterated pressure,
he had let it be supposed that she was a submissive handmaiden
throbbing for her elevation; and Mrs Mountstuart's belief in it
afflicted his recent bitter experience; his footing was not perfectly
secure. Besides, assuming it to be so, he considered the sort of prize
he had won; and a spasm of downright hatred of a world for which we
make mighty sacrifices to be repaid in a worn, thin, comparatively
valueless coin, troubled his counting of his gains. Laetitia, it was
true, had not passed through other hands in coming to him, as Vernon
would know it to be Clara's case: time only had worn her: but the
comfort of the reflection was annoyed by the physical contrast of the
two. Hence an unusual melancholy in his tone that Mrs. Mountstuart
thought touching. It had the scenic effect on her which greatly
contributes to delude the wits. She talked of him to Clara as being a
man who had revealed an unsuspected depth.

Vernon took the communication curiously. He seemed readier to be in
love with his benevolent relative than with the lady. He was confused,
undisguisedly moved, said the plan was impossible, out of the question,
but thanked Willoughby for the best of intentions, thanked him warmly.
After saying that the plan was impossible, the comical fellow allowed
himself to be pushed forth on the lawn to see how Miss Middleton might
have come out of her interview with Mrs. Mountstuart. Willoughby
observed Mrs. Mountstuart meet him, usher him to the place she had
quitted among the shrubs, and return to the open turf-spaces. He sprang
to her.

"She will listen." Mrs. Mountstuart said: "She likes him, respects him,
thinks he is a very sincere friend, clever, a scholar, and a good
mountaineer; and thinks you mean very kindly. So much I have impressed
on her, but I have not done much for Mr. Whitford."

"She consents to listen," said Willoughby, snatching at that as the
death-blow to his friend Horace.

"She consents to listen, because you have arranged it so that if she
declined she would be rather a savage."

"You think it will have no result?"

"None at all."

"Her listening will do."

"And you must be satisfied with it."

"We shall see."

"'Anything for peace', she says: and I don't say that a gentleman with
a tongue would not have a chance. She wishes to please you."

"Old Vernon has no tongue for women, poor fellow! You will have us be
spider or fly, and if a man can't spin a web all he can hope is not to
be caught in one. She knows his history, too, and that won't be in his
favour. How did she look when you left them?"

"Not so bright: like a bit of china that wants dusting. She looked a
trifle gauche, it struck me; more like a country girl with the hoyden
taming in her than the well-bred creature she is. I did not suspect her
to have feeling. You must remember, Sir Willoughby, that she has obeyed
your wishes, done her utmost: I do think we may say she has made some
amends; and if she is to blame she repents, and you will not insist too
far."

"I do insist," said he.

"Beneficent, but a tyrant!"

"Well, well." He did not dislike the character.

They perceived Dr. Middleton wandering over the lawn, and Willoughby
went to him to put him on the wrong track: Mrs. Mountstuart swept into
the drawing-room. Willoughby quitted the Rev. Doctor, and hung about
the bower where he supposed his pair of dupes had by this time ceased
to stutter mutually:--or what if they had found the word of harmony? He
could bear that, just bear it. He rounded the shrubs, and, behold, both
had vanished. The trellis decorated emptiness. His idea was, that they
had soon discovered their inability to be turtles: and desiring not to
lose a moment while Clara was fretted by the scene, he rushed to the
drawing-room with the hope of lighting on her there, getting her to
himself, and finally, urgently, passionately offering her the sole
alternative of what she had immediately rejected. Why had he not used
passion before, instead of limping crippled between temper and policy?
He was capable of it: as soon as imagination in him conceived his
personal feelings unwounded and unimperiled, the might of it inspired
him with heroical confidence, and Clara grateful, Clara softly moved,
led him to think of Clara melted. Thus anticipating her he burst into
the room.

One step there warned him that he was in the jaws of the world. We have
the phrase, that a man is himself under certain trying circumstances.
There is no need to say it of Sir Willoughby: he was thrice himself
when danger menaced, himself inspired him. He could read at a single
glance the Polyphemus eye in the general head of a company. Lady
Busshe, Lady Culmer, Mrs. Mountstuart, Mr. Dale, had a similarity in
the variety of their expressions that made up one giant eye for him
perfectly, if awfully, legible. He discerned the fact that his demon
secret was abroad, universal. He ascribed it to fate. He was in the
jaws of the world, on the world's teeth. This time he thought Laetitia
must have betrayed him, and bowing to Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer,
gallantly pressing their fingers and responding to their becks and
archnesses, he ruminated on his defences before he should accost her
father. He did not want to be alone with the man, and he considered how
his presence might be made useful.

"I am glad to see you, Mr. Dale. Pray, be seated. Is it nature
asserting her strength? or the efficacy of medicine? I fancy it can't
be both. You have brought us back your daughter?"

Mr. Dale sank into a chair, unable to resist the hand forcing him.

"No, Sir Willoughby, no. I have not; I have not seen her since she came
home this morning from Patterne."

"Indeed? She is unwell?"

"I cannot say. She secludes herself."

"Has locked herself in," said Lady Busshe.

Willoughby threw her a smile. It made them intimate.

This was an advantage against the world, but an exposure of himself to
the abominable woman.

Dr. Middleton came up to Mr. Dale to apologize for not presenting his
daughter Clara, whom he could find neither in nor out of the house.

"We have in Mr. Dale, as I suspected," he said to Willoughby, "a stout
ally."

"If I may beg two minutes with you, Sir Willoughby," said Mr. Dale.

"Your visits are too rare for me to allow of your numbering the
minutes," Willoughby replied. "We cannot let Mr. Dale escape us now
that we have him, I think, Dr. Middleton."

"Not without ransom," said the Rev. Doctor.

Mr. Dale shook his head. "My strength, Sir Willoughby, will not sustain
me long."

"You are at home, Mr. Dale."

"Not far from home, in truth, but too far for an invalid beginning to
grow sensible of weakness."

"You will regard Patterne as your home, Mr. Dale," Willoughby repeated
for the world to hear.

"Unconditionally?" Dr. Middleton inquired, with a humourous air of
dissenting.

Willoughby gave him a look that was coldly courteous, and then he
looked at Lady Busshe. She nodded imperceptibly. Her eyebrows rose, and
Willoughby returned a similar nod.

Translated, the signs ran thus:

"--Pestered by the Rev. gentleman:--I see you are. Is the story I have
heard correct?--Possibly it may err in a few details."

This was fettering himself in loose manacles.

But Lady Busshe would not be satisfied with the compliment of the
intimate looks and nods. She thought she might still be behind Mrs.
Mountstuart; and she was a bold woman, and anxious about him,
half-crazed by the riddle of the pot she was boiling in, and having
very few minutes to spare. Not extremely reticent by nature, privileged
by station, and made intimate with him by his covert looks, she stood
up to him. "One word to an old friend. Which is the father of the
fortunate creature? I don't know how to behave to them." No time was
afforded him to be disgusted with her vulgarity and audacity.

He replied, feeling her rivet his gyves: "The house will be empty
to-morrow."

"I see. A decent withdrawal, and very well cloaked. We had a tale here
of her running off to decline the honour, afraid, or on her dignity or
something."

How was it that the woman was ready to accept the altered posture of
affairs in his house--if she had received a hint of them? He forgot
that he had prepared her in self-defence.

"From whom did you have that?" he asked.

"Her father. And the lady aunts declare it was the cousin she refused!"
Willoughby's brain turned over. He righted it for action, and crossed
the room to the ladies Eleanor and Isabel. His ears tingled. He and his
whole story discussed in public! Himself unroofed! And the marvel that
he of all men should be in such a tangle, naked and blown on, condemned
to use his cunningest arts to unwind and cover himself, struck him as
though the lord of his kind were running the gauntlet of a legion of
imps. He felt their lashes.

The ladies were talking to Mrs. Mountstuart and Lady Culmer of Vernon
and the suitableness of Laetitia to a scholar. He made sign to them,
and both rose.

"It is the hour for your drive. To the cottage! Mr. Dale is in. She
must come. Her sick father! No delay, going or returning. Bring her
here at once."

"Poor man!" they sighed; and "Willoughby," said one, and the other
said: "There is a strange misconception you will do well to correct."

They were about to murmur what it was. He swept his hand round, and
excusing themselves to their guests, obediently they retired.

Lady Busshe at his entreaty remained, and took a seat beside Lady
Culmer and Mrs. Mountstuart.

She said to the latter: "You have tried scholars. What do you think?"

"Excellent, but hard to mix," was the reply.

"I never make experiments," said Lady Culmer.

"Some one must!" Mrs. Mountstuart groaned over her dull dinner-party.

Lady Busshe consoled her. "At any rate, the loss of a scholar is no
loss to the county."

"They are well enough in towns," Lady Culmer said.

"And then I am sure you must have them by themselves."

"We have nothing to regret."

"My opinion."

The voice of Dr. Middleton in colloquy with Mr. Dale swelled on a
melodious thunder: "For whom else should I plead as the passionate
advocate I proclaimed myself to you, sir? There is but one man known to
me who would move me to back him upon such an adventure. Willoughby,
join me. I am informing Mr. Dale . . ."

Willoughby stretched his hands out to Mr. Dale to support him on his
legs, though he had shown no sign of a wish to rise.

"You are feeling unwell, Mr. Dale."

"Do I look very ill, Sir Willoughby?"

"It will pass. Laetitia will be with us in twenty minutes." Mr. Dale
struck his hands in a clasp. He looked alarmingly ill, and
satisfactorily revealed to his host how he could be made to look so.

"I was informing Mr. Dale that the petitioner enjoys our concurrent
good wishes: and mine in no degree less than yours, Willoughby,"
observed Dr. Middleton, whose billows grew the bigger for a check. He
supposed himself speaking confidentially. "Ladies have the trick, they
have, I may say, the natural disposition for playing enigma now and
again. Pressure is often a sovereign specific. Let it be tried upon her
all round from every radiating line of the circle. You she refuses.
Then I venture to propose myself to appeal to her. My daughter has
assuredly an esteem for the applicant that will animate a woman's
tongue in such a case. The ladies of the house will not be backward.
Lastly, if necessary, we trust the lady's father to add his instances.
My prescription is, to fatigue her negatives; and where no rooted
objection exists, I maintain it to be the unfailing receipt for the
conduct of the siege. No woman can say No forever. The defence has not
such resources against even a single assailant, and we shall have
solved the problem of continuous motion before she will have learned to
deny in perpetuity. That I stand on."

Willoughby glanced at Mrs. Mountstuart.

"What is that?" she said. "Treason to our sex, Dr. Middleton?"

"I think I heard that no woman can say No forever!" remarked Lady
Busshe.

"To a loyal gentleman, ma'am: assuming the field of the recurring
request to be not unholy ground; consecrated to affirmatives rather."

Dr Middleton was attacked by three angry bees. They made him say yes
and no alternately so many times that he had to admit in men a shiftier
yieldingness than women were charged with.

Willoughby gesticulated as mute chorus on the side of the ladies; and a
little show of party spirit like that, coming upon their excitement
under the topic, inclined them to him genially. He drew Mr. Dale away
while the conflict subsided in sharp snaps of rifles and an interval
rejoinder of a cannon. Mr. Dale had shown by signs that he was growing
fretfully restive under his burden of doubt.

"Sir Willoughby, I have a question. I beg you to lead me where I may
ask it. I know my head is weak."

"Mr. Dale, it is answered when I say that my house is your home, and
that Laetitia will soon be with us."

"Then this report is true?"

"I know nothing of reports. You are answered."

"Can my daughter be accused of any shadow of falseness, dishonourable
dealing?"

"As little as I."

Mr. Dale scanned his face. He saw no shadow.

"For I should go to my grave bankrupt if that could be said of her; and
I have never yet felt poor, though you know the extent of a pensioner's
income. Then this tale of a refusal . . . ?"

"Is nonsense."

"She has accepted?"

"There are situations, Mr. Dale, too delicate to be clothed in positive
definitions."

"Ah, Sir Willoughby, but it becomes a father to see that his daughter
is not forced into delicate situations. I hope all is well. I am
confused. It may be my head. She puzzles me. You are not . . . Can I
ask it here? You are quite . . . ? Will you moderate my anxiety? My
infirmities must excuse me."

Sir Willoughby conveyed by a shake of the head and a pressure of Mr.
Dale's hand, that he was not, and that he was quite.

"Dr Middleton?" said Mr. Dale.

"He leaves us to-morrow."

"Really!" The invalid wore a look as if wine had been poured into him.
He routed his host's calculations by calling to the Rev. Doctor. "We
are to lose you, sir?"

Willoughby attempted an interposition, but Dr. Middleton crashed
through it like the lordly organ swallowing a flute.

"Not before I score my victory, Mr. Dale, and establish my friend upon
his rightful throne."

"You do not leave to-morrow, sir?"

"Have you heard, sir, that I leave to-morrow?"

Mr. Dale turned to Sir Willoughby.

The latter said: "Clara named to-day. To-morrow I thought preferable."

"Ah!" Dr. Middleton towered on the swelling exclamation, but with no
dark light. He radiated splendidly. "Yes, then, to-morrow. That is, if
we subdue the lady."

He advanced to Willoughby, seized his hand, squeezed it, thanked him,
praised him. He spoke under his breath, for a wonder; but: "We are in
your debt lastingly, my friend", was heard, and he was impressive, he
seemed subdued, and saying aloud: "Though I should wish to aid in the
reduction of that fortress", he let it be seen that his mind was rid of
a load.

Dr. Middleton partly stupefied Willoughby by his way of taking it, but
his conduct was too serviceable to allow of speculation on his
readiness to break the match. It was the turning-point of the
engagement.

Lady Busshe made a stir.

"I cannot keep my horses waiting any longer," she said, and beckoned.
Sir Willoughby was beside her immediately.

"You are admirable! perfect! Don't ask me to hold my tongue. I retract,
I recant. It is a fatality. I have resolved upon that view. You could
stand the shot of beauty, not of brains. That is our report. There! And
it's delicious to feel that the county wins you. No tea. I cannot
possibly wait. And, oh! here she is. I must have a look at her. My dear
Laetitia Dale!"

Willoughby hurried to Mr. Dale.

"You are not to be excited, sir: compose yourself. You will recover and
be strong to-morrow: you are at home; you are in your own house; you
are in Laetitia's drawing-room. All will be clear to-morrow. Till
to-morrow we talk riddles by consent. Sit, I beg. You stay with us."

He met Laetitia and rescued her from Lady Busshe, murmuring, with the
air of a lover who says, "my love! my sweet!" that she had done rightly
to come and come at once. Her father had been thrown into the proper
condition of clammy nervousness to create the impression. Laetitia's
anxiety sat prettily on her long eyelashes as she bent over him in his
chair.

Hereupon Dr. Corney appeared; and his name had a bracing effect on Mr.
Dale. "Corney has come to drive me to the cottage," he said. "I am
ashamed of this public exhibition of myself, my dear. Let us go. My
head is a poor one."

Dr. Corney had been intercepted. He broke from Sir Willoughby with a
dozen little nods of accurate understanding of him, even to beyond the
mark of the communications. He touched his patient's pulse lightly,
briefly sighed with professional composure, and pronounced: "Rest. Must
not be moved. No, no, nothing serious," he quieted Laetitia's fears,
"but rest, rest. A change of residence for a night will tone him. I
will bring him a draught in the course of the evening. Yes, yes, I'll
fetch everything wanted from the cottage for you and for him. Repose
on Corney's forethought."

"You are sure, Dr. Corney?" said Laetitia, frightened on her father's
account and on her own.

"Which aspect will be the best for Mr. Dale's bedroom?" the hospitable
ladies Eleanor and Isabel inquired.

"Southeast, decidedly: let him have the morning sun: a warm air, a
vigorous air, and a bright air, and the patient wakes and sings in his
bed."

Still doubtful whether she was in a trap, Laetitia whispered to her
father of the privacy and comforts of his home. He replied to her that
he thought he would rather be in his own home.

Dr Corney positively pronounced No to it.

Laetitia breathed again of home, but with the sigh of one overborne.

The ladies Eleanor and Isabel took the word from Willoughby, and said:
"But you are at home, my dear. This is your home. Your father will be
at least as well attended here as at the cottage."

She raised her eyelids on them mournfully, and by chance diverted her
look to Dr. Middleton, quite by chance.

It spoke eloquently to the assembly of all that Willoughby desired to
be imagined.

"But there is Crossjay," she cried. "My cousin has gone, and the boy is
left alone. I cannot have him left alone. If we, if, Dr. Corney, you
are sure it is unsafe for papa to be moved to-day, Crossjay must . . .
he cannot be left."

"Bring him with you, Corney," said Sir Willoughby; and the little
doctor heartily promised that he would, in the event of his finding
Crossjay at the cottage, which he thought a distant probability.

"He gave me his word he would not go out till my return," said
Laetitia.

"And if Crossjay gave you his word," the accents of a new voice
vibrated close by, "be certain that he will not come back with Dr.
Corney unless he has authority in your handwriting."

Clara Middleton stepped gently to Laetitia, and with a manner that was
an embrace, as much as kissed her for what she was doing on behalf of
Crossjay. She put her lips in a pouting form to simulate saying: "Press
it."

"He is to come," said Laetitia.

"Then write him his permit."

There was a chatter about Crossjay and the sentinel true to his post
that he could be, during which Laetitia distressfully scribbled a line
for Dr. Corney to deliver to him. Clara stood near. She had rebuked
herself for want of reserve in the presence of Lady Busshe and Lady
Culmer, and she was guilty of a slightly excessive containment when she
next addressed Laetitia. It was, like Laetitia's look at Dr. Middleton,
opportune: enough to make a man who watched as Willoughby did a
fatalist for life: the shadow of a difference in her bearing toward
Laetitia sufficed to impute acting either to her present coolness or
her previous warmth. Better still, when Dr. Middleton said: "So we
leave to-morrow, my dear, and I hope you have written to the
Darletons," Clara flushed and beamed, and repressed her animation on a
sudden, with one grave look, that might be thought regretful, to where
Willoughby stood.

Chance works for us when we are good captains.

Willoughby's pride was high, though he knew himself to be keeping it up
like a fearfully dexterous juggler, and for an empty reward: but he
was in the toils of the world.

"Have you written? The post-bag leaves in half an hour," he addressed
her.

"We are expected, but I will write," she replied: and her not having
yet written counted in his favour.

She went to write the letter. Dr. Corney had departed on his mission to
fetch Crossjay and medicine. Lady Busshe was impatient to be gone.
"Corney," she said to Lady Culmer, "is a deadly gossip."

"Inveterate," was the answer.

"My poor horses!"

"Not the young pair of bays?"

"Luckily they are, my dear. And don't let me hear of dining to-night!"

Sir Willoughby was leading out Mr. Dale to a quiet room, contiguous to
the invalid gentleman's bedchamber. He resigned him to Laetitia in the
hall, that he might have the pleasure of conducting the ladies to their
carriage.

"As little agitation as possible. Corney will soon be back," he said,
bitterly admiring the graceful subservience of Laetitia's figure to her
father's weight on her arm.

He had won a desperate battle, but what had he won?

What had the world given him in return for his efforts to gain it?
Just a shirt, it might be said: simple scanty clothing, no warmth.
Lady Busshe was unbearable; she gabbled; she was ill-bred, permitted
herself to speak of Dr. Middleton as ineligible, no loss to the county.
And Mrs. Mountstuart was hardly much above her, with her inevitable
stroke of caricature:--"You see Doctor Middleton's pulpit scampering
after him with legs!" Perhaps the Rev. Doctor did punish the world for
his having forsaken his pulpit, and might be conceived as haunted by it
at his heels, but Willoughby was in the mood to abhor comic images; he
hated the perpetrators of them and the grinners. Contempt of this
laughing empty world, for which he had performed a monstrous
immolation, led him to associate Dr. Middleton in his mind, and Clara
too, with the desireable things he had sacrificed--a shape of youth and
health; a sparkling companion; a face of innumerable charms; and his
own veracity; his inner sense of his dignity; and his temper, and the
limpid frankness of his air of scorn, that was to him a visage of
candid happiness in the dim retrospect. Haply also he had sacrificed
more: he looked scientifically into the future: he might have
sacrificed a nameless more. And for what? he asked again. For the
favourable looks and tongues of these women whose looks and tongues he
detested!

"Dr Middleton says he is indebted to me: I am deeply in his debt," he
remarked.

"It is we who are in your debt for a lovely romance, my dear Sir
Willoughby," said Lady Busshe, incapable of taking a correction, so
thoroughly had he imbued her with his fiction, or with the belief that
she had a good story to circulate. Away she drove, rattling her tongue
to Lady Culmer.

"A hat and horn, and she would be in the old figure of a post-boy on a
hue-and-cry sheet," said Mrs. Mountstuart.

Willoughby thanked the great lady for her services, and she
complimented the polished gentleman on his noble self-possession. But
she complained at the same time of being defrauded of her "charmer"
Colonel De Craye, since luncheon. An absence of warmth in her
compliment caused Willoughby to shrink and think the wretched shirt he
had got from the world no covering after all: a breath flapped it.

"He comes to me to-morrow, I believe," she said, reflecting on her
superior knowledge of facts in comparison with Lady Busshe, who would
presently be hearing of something novel, and exclaiming: "So, that is
why you patronized the colonel!" And it was nothing of the sort, for
Mrs. Mountstuart could honestly say she was not the woman to make a
business of her pleasure.

"Horace is an enviable fellow," said Willoughby, wise in The Book,
which bids us ever, for an assuagement to fancy our friend's condition
worse than our own, and recommends the deglutition of irony as the most
balsamic for wounds in the whole moral pharmacopoeia.

"I don't know," she replied, with a marked accent of deliberation.

"The colonel is to have you to himself to-morrow!"

"I can't be sure of what I shall have in the colonel!"

"Your perpetual sparkler?"

Mrs. Mountstuart set her head in motion. She left the matter silent.

"I'll come for him in the morning," she said, and her carriage whirled
her off. Either she had guessed it, or Clara had confided to her the
treacherous passion of Horace De Craye.

However, the world was shut away from Patterne for the night.



CHAPTER XLVII

SIR WILLOUGHBY AND HIS FRIEND HORACE DE CRAYE

Willoughby shut himself up in his laboratory to brood awhile after the
conflict. Sounding through himself, as it was habitual with him to do,
for the plan most agreeable to his taste, he came on a strange
discovery among the lower circles of that microcosm. He was no longer
guided in his choice by liking and appetite: he had to put it on the
edge of a sharp discrimination, and try it by his acutest judgement
before it was acceptable to his heart: and knowing well the direction
of his desire, he was nevertheless unable to run two strides on a wish.
He had learned to read the world: his partial capacity for reading
persons had fled. The mysteries of his own bosom were bare to him; but
he could comprehend them only in their immediate relation to the world
outside. This hateful world had caught him and transformed him to a
machine. The discovery he made was, that in the gratification of the
egoistic instinct we may so beset ourselves as to deal a slaughtering
wound upon Self to whatsoever quarter we turn.

Surely there is nothing stranger in mortal experience. The man was
confounded. At the game of Chess it is the dishonour of our adversary
when we are stale-mated: but in life, combatting the world, such a
winning of the game questions our sentiments.

Willoughby's interpretation of his discovery was directed by pity: he
had no other strong emotion left in him. He pitied himself, and he
reached the conclusion that he suffered because he was active; he could
not be quiescent. Had it not been for his devotion to his house and
name, never would he have stood twice the victim of womankind. Had he
been selfish, he would have been the happiest of men! He said it aloud.
He schemed benevolently for his unborn young, and for the persons about
him: hence he was in a position forbidding a step under pain of injury
to his feelings. He was generous: otherwise would he not in scorn of
soul, at the outset, straight off have pitched Clara Middleton to the
wanton winds? He was faithful in his affection: Laetitia Dale was
beneath his roof to prove it. Both these women were examples of his
power of forgiveness, and now a tender word to Clara might fasten shame
on him--such was her gratitude! And if he did not marry Laetitia,
laughter would be devilish all around him--such was the world's!
Probably Vernon would not long be thankful for the chance which varied
the monotony of his days. What of Horace? Willoughby stripped to enter
the ring with Horace: he cast away disguise. That man had been the
first to divide him in the all but equal slices of his egoistic from
his amatory self: murder of his individuality was the crime of Horace
De Craye. And further, suspicion fixed on Horace (he knew not how,
except that The Book bids us be suspicious of those we hate) as the man
who had betrayed his recent dealings with Laetitia.

Willoughby walked the thoroughfares of the house to meet Clara and make
certain of her either for himself, or, if it must be, for Vernon,
before he took another step with Laetitia Dale. Clara could reunite
him, turn him once more into a whole and an animated man; and she might
be willing. Her willingness to listen to Vernon promised it. "A
gentleman with a tongue would have a chance", Mrs. Mountstuart had
said. How much greater the chance of a lover! For he had not yet
supplicated her: he had shown pride and temper. He could woo, he was a
torrential wooer. And it would be glorious to swing round on Lady
Busshe and the world, with Clara nestling under an arm, and protest
astonishment at the erroneous and utterly unfounded anticipations of
any other development. And it would righteously punish Laetitia.

Clara came downstairs, bearing her letter to Miss Darleton.

"Must it be posted?" Willoughby said, meeting her in the hall.

"They expect us any day, but it will be more comfortable for papa," was
her answer. She looked kindly in her new shyness.

She did not seem to think he had treated her contemptuously in flinging
her to his cousin, which was odd.

"You have seen Vernon?"

"It was your wish."

"You had a talk?"

"We conversed."

"A long one?"

"We walked some distance."

"Clara, I tried to make the best arrangement I could."

"Your intention was generous."

"He took no advantage of it?"

"It could not be treated seriously."

"It was meant seriously."

"There I see the generosity."

Willoughby thought this encomium, and her consent to speak on the
subject, and her scarcely embarrassed air and richness of tone in
speaking, very strange: and strange was her taking him quite in
earnest. Apparently she had no feminine sensation of the unwontedness
and the absurdity of the matter!

"But, Clara, am I to understand that he did not speak out?"

"We are excellent friends."

"To miss it, though his chance were the smallest!"

"You forget that it may not wear that appearance to him."

"He spoke not one word of himself?"

"No."

"Ah! the poor old fellow was taught to see it was hopeless--chilled.
May I plead? Will you step into the laboratory for a minute? We are two
sensible persons . . ."

"Pardon me, I must go to papa."

"Vernon's personal history, perhaps . . ."

"I think it honourable to him."

"Honourable!--'hem!"

"By comparison."

"Comparison with what?"

"With others."

He drew up to relieve himself of a critical and condemnatory expiration
of a certain length. This young lady knew too much. But how physically
exquisite she was!

"Could you, Clara, could you promise me--I hold to it. I must have it,
I know his shy tricks--promise me to give him ultimately another
chance? Is the idea repulsive to you?"

"It is one not to be thought of."

"It is not repulsive?"

"Nothing could be repulsive in Mr. Whitford."

"I have no wish to annoy you, Clara."

"I feel bound to listen to you, Willoughby. Whatever I can do to please
you, I will. It is my life-long duty."

"Could you, Clara, could you conceive it, could you simply conceive
it--give him your hand?"

"As a friend. Oh, yes."

"In marriage."

She paused. She, so penetrative of him when he opposed her, was
hoodwinked when he softened her feelings: for the heart, though the
clearest, is not the most constant instructor of the head; the heart,
unlike the often obtuser head, works for itself and not for the
commonwealth.

"You are so kind . . . I would do much . . ." she said.

"Would you accept him--marry him? He is poor."

"I am not ambitious of wealth."

"Would you marry him?"

"Marriage is not in my thoughts."

"But could you marry him?"

Willoughby expected no. In his expectation of it he hung inflated.

She said these words: "I could engage to marry no one else." His
amazement breathed without a syllable.

He flapped his arms, resembling for the moment those birds of enormous
body which attempt a rise upon their wings and achieve a hop.

"Would you engage it?" he said, content to see himself stepped on as an
insect if he could but feel the agony of his false friend Horace--their
common pretensions to win her were now of that comparative size.

"Oh! there can be no necessity. And an oath--no!" said Clara, inwardly
shivering at a recollection.

"But you could?"

"My wish is to please you."

"You could?"

"I said so."

It has been known to the patriotic mountaineer of a hoary pile of
winters, with little life remaining in him, but that little on fire for
his country, that by the brink of the precipice he has flung himself on
a young and lusty invader, dedicating himself exultingly to death if
only he may score a point for his country by extinguishing in his
country's enemy the stronger man. So likewise did Willoughby, in the
blow that deprived him of hope, exult in the toppling over of Horace De
Craye. They perished together, but which one sublimely relished the
headlong descent? And Vernon taken by Clara would be Vernon simply
tolerated. And Clara taken by Vernon would be Clara previously touched,
smirched. Altogether he could enjoy his fall.

It was at least upon a comfortable bed, where his pride would be
dressed daily and would never be disagreeably treated.

He was henceforth Laetitia's own. The bell telling of Dr. Corney's
return was a welcome sound to Willoughby, and he said good-humouredly:
"Wait, Clara, you will see your hero Crossjay."

Crossjay and Dr. Corney tumbled into the hall. Willoughby caught
Crossjay under the arms to give him a lift in the old fashion pleasing
to Clara to see. The boy was heavy as lead.

"I had work to hook him and worse to net him," said Dr. Corney. "I had
to make him believe he was to nurse every soul in the house, you among
them, Miss Middleton."

Willoughby pulled the boy aside.

Crossjay came back to Clara heavier in looks than his limbs had been.
She dropped her letter in the hall-box, and took his hand to have a
private hug of him. When they were alone, she said: "Crossjay, my
dear, my dear! you look unhappy."

"Yes, and who wouldn't be, and you're not to marry Sir Willoughby!" his
voice threatened a cry. "I know you're not, for Dr. Corney says you are
going to leave."

"Did you so very much wish it, Crossjay?"

"I should have seen a lot of you, and I sha'n't see you at all, and I'm
sure if I'd known I wouldn't have--And he has been and tipped me this."

Crossjay opened his fist in which lay three gold pieces.

"That was very kind of him," said Clara.

"Yes, but how can I keep it?"

"By handing it to Mr. Whitford to keep for you."

"Yes, but, Miss Middleton, oughtn't I to tell him? I mean Sir
Willoughby."

"What?"

"Why, that I"--Crossjay got close to her--"why, that I, that I--you
know what you used to say. I wouldn't tell a lie, but oughtn't I,
without his asking . . . and this money! I don't mind being turned out
again."

"Consult Mr. Whitford," said Clara.

"I know what you think, though."

"Perhaps you had better not say anything at present, dear boy."

"But what am I to do with this money?"

Crossjay held the gold pieces out as things that had not yet mingled
with his ideas of possession.

"I listened, and I told of him," he said. "I couldn't help listening,
but I went and told; and I don't like being here, and his money, and he
not knowing what I did. Haven't you heard? I'm certain I know what you
think, and so do I, and I must take my luck. I'm always in mischief,
getting into a mess or getting out of it. I don't mind, I really don't,
Miss Middleton, I can sleep in a tree quite comfortably. If you're not
going to be here, I'd just as soon be anywhere. I must try to earn my
living some day. And why not a cabin-boy? Sir Cloudesley Shovel was no
better. And I don't mind his being wrecked at last, if you're drowned
an admiral. So I shall go and ask him to take his money back, and if he
asks me I shall tell him, and there. You know what it is: I guessed
that from what Dr. Corney said. I'm sure I know you're thinking what's
manly. Fancy me keeping his money, and you not marrying him! I wouldn't
mind driving a plough. I shouldn't make a bad gamekeeper. Of course I
love boats best, but you can't have everything."

"Speak to Mr. Whitford first," said Clara, too proud of the boy for
growing as she had trained him, to advise a course of conduct opposed
to his notions of manliness, though now that her battle was over she
would gladly have acquiesced in little casuistic compromises for the
sake of the general peace.

Some time later Vernon and Dr. Corney were arguing upon the question.
Corney was dead against the sentimental view of the morality of the
case propounded by Vernon as coming from Miss Middleton and partly
shared by him. "If it's on the boy's mind," Vernon said, "I can't
prohibit his going to Willoughby and making a clean breast of it,
especially as it involves me, and sooner or later I should have to tell
him myself."

Dr. Corney said no at all points. "Now hear me," he said, finally.
"This is between ourselves, and no breach of confidence, which I'd not
be guilty of for forty friends, though I'd give my hand from the
wrist-joint for one--my left, that's to say. Sir Willoughby puts me one
or two searching interrogations on a point of interest to him, his
house and name. Very well, and good night to that, and I wish Miss Dale
had been ten years younger, or had passed the ten with no heartrisings
and sinkings wearing to the tissues of the frame and the moral fibre to
boot. She'll have a fairish health, with a little occasional doctoring;
taking her rank and wealth in right earnest, and shying her pen back to
Mother Goose. She'll do. And, by the way, I think it's to the credit
of my sagacity that I fetched Mr. Dale here fully primed, and roused
the neighbourhood, which I did, and so fixed our gentleman, neat as a
prodded eel on a pair of prongs--namely, the positive fact and the
general knowledge of it. But, mark me, my friend. We understand one
another at a nod. This boy, young Squire Crossjay, is a good stiff
hearty kind of a Saxon boy, out of whom you may cut as gallant a fellow
as ever wore epaulettes. I like him, you like him, Miss Dale and Miss
Middleton like him; and Sir Willoughby Patterne, of Patterne Hall and
other places, won't be indisposed to like him mightily in the event of
the sun being seen to shine upon him with a particular determination to
make him appear a prominent object, because a solitary, and a
Patterne." Dr. Corney lifted his chest and his finger: "Now mark me,
and verbum sap: Crossjay must not offend Sir Willoughby. I say no
more. Look ahead. Miracles happen, but it's best to reckon that they
won't. Well, now, and Miss Dale. She'll not be cruel."

"It appears as if she would," said Vernon, meditating on the cloudy
sketch Dr. Corney had drawn.

"She can't, my friend. Her position's precarious; her father has little
besides a pension. And her writing damages her health. She can't. And
she likes the baronet. Oh, it's only a little fit of proud blood. She's
the woman for him. She'll manage him--give him an idea he's got a lot
of ideas. It'd kill her father if she were obstinate. He talked to me,
when I told him of the business, about his dream fulfilled, and if the
dream turns to vapour, he'll be another example that we hang more upon
dreams than realities for nourishment, and medicine too. Last week I
couldn't have got him out of his house with all my art and science. Oh,
she'll come round. Her father prophesied this, and I'll prophesy that.
She's fond of him."

"She was."

"She sees through him?"

"Without quite doing justice to him now," said Vernon. "He can be
generous--in his way."

"How?" Corney inquired, and was informed that he should hear in time to
come.

Meanwhile Colonel De Craye, after hovering over the park and about the
cottage for the opportunity of pouncing on Miss Middleton alone, had
returned crest-fallen for once, and plumped into Willoughby's hands.

"My dear Horace," Willoughby said, "I've been looking for you all the
afternoon. The fact is--I fancy you'll think yourself lured down here
on false pretences: but the truth is, I am not so much to blame as the
world will suppose. In point of fact, to be brief, Miss Dale and I
. . . I never consult other men how they would have acted. The fact of
the matter is, Miss Middleton . . . I fancy you have partly guessed it."

"Partly," said De Craye.

"Well, she has a liking that way, and if it should turn out strong
enough, it's the best arrangement I can think of," The lively play of
the colonel's features fixed in a blank inquiry.

"One can back a good friend for making a good husband," said
Willoughby. "I could not break with her in the present stage of affairs
without seeing to that. And I can speak of her highly, though she and I
have seen in time that we do not suit one another. My wife must have
brains."

"I have always thought it," said Colonel De Craye, glistening, and
looking hungry as a wolf through his wonderment.

"There will not be a word against her, you understand. You know my
dislike of tattle and gossip. However, let it fall on me; my shoulders
are broad. I have done my utmost to persuade her, and there seems a
likelihood of her consenting. She tells me her wish is to please me,
and this will please me."

"Certainly. Who's the gentleman?"

"My best friend, I tell you. I could hardly have proposed another.
Allow this business to go on smoothly just now." There was an uproar
within the colonel to blind his wits, and Willoughby looked so friendly
that it was possible to suppose the man of projects had mentioned his
best friend to Miss Middleton.

And who was the best friend?

Not having accused himself of treachery, the quick-eyed colonel was
duped.

"Have you his name handy, Willoughby?"

"That would be unfair to him at present, Horace--ask yourself--and to
her. Things are in a ticklish posture at present. Don't be hasty."

"Certainly. I don't ask. Initials'll do."

"You have a remarkable aptitude for guessing, Horace, and this case
offers you no tough problem--if ever you acknowledged toughness. I have
a regard for her and for him--for both pretty equally; you know I have,
and I should be thoroughly thankful to bring the matter about."

"Lordly!" said De Craye.

"I don't see it. I call it sensible."

"Oh, undoubtedly. The style, I mean. Tolerably antique?"

"Novel, I should say, and not the worse for that. We want plain
practical dealings between men and women. Usually we go the wrong way
to work. And I loathe sentimental rubbish."

De Craye hummed an air. "But the lady?" said he.

"I told you, there seems a likelihood of her consenting."

Willoughby's fish gave a perceptible little leap now that he had been
taught to exercise his aptitude for guessing.

"Without any of the customary preliminaries on the side of the
gentleman?" he said.

"We must put him through his paces, friend Horace. He's a notorious
blunderer with women; hasn't a word for them, never marked a conquest."

De Craye crested his plumes under the agreeable banter. He presented a
face humourously sceptical.

"The lady is positively not indisposed to give the poor fellow a
hearing?"

"I have cause to think she is not," said Willoughby, glad of acting the
indifference to her which could talk of her inclinations.

"Cause?"

"Good cause."

"Bless us!"

"As good as one can have with a woman."

"Ah?"

"I assure you."

"Ah! Does it seem like her, though?"

"Well, she wouldn't engage herself to accept him."

"Well, that seems more like her."

"But she said she could engage to marry no one else."

The colonel sprang up, crying: "Clara Middleton said it?" He curbed
himself "That's a bit of wonderful compliancy."

"She wishes to please me. We separate on those terms. And I wish her
happiness. I've developed a heart lately and taken to think of others."

"Nothing better. You appear to make cock sure of the other party--our
friend?"

"You know him too well, Horace, to doubt his readiness."

"Do you, Willoughby?"

"She has money and good looks. Yes, I can say I do."

"It wouldn't be much of a man who'd want hard pulling to that lighted
altar!"

"And if he requires persuasion, you and I, Horace, might bring him to
his senses."

"Kicking, 't would be!"

"I like to see everybody happy about me," said Willoughby, naming the
hour as time to dress for dinner.

The sentiment he had delivered was De Craye's excuse for grasping his
hand and complimenting him; but the colonel betrayed himself by doing
it with an extreme fervour almost tremulous.

"When shall we hear more?" he said.

"Oh, probably to-morrow," said Willoughby. "Don't be in such a hurry."

"I'm an infant asleep!" the colonel replied, departing.

He resembled one, to Willoughby's mind: or a traitor drugged.

"There is a fellow I thought had some brains!"

Who are not fools to beset spinning if we choose to whip them with
their vanity! it is the consolation of the great to watch them spin.
But the pleasure is loftier, and may comfort our unmerited misfortune
for a while, in making a false friend drunk.

Willoughby, among his many preoccupations, had the satisfaction of
seeing the effect of drunkenness on Horace De Craye when the latter was
in Clara's presence. He could have laughed. Cut in keen epigram were
the marginal notes added by him to that chapter of The Book which
treats of friends and a woman; and had he not been profoundly
preoccupied, troubled by recent intelligence communicated by the
ladies, his aunts, he would have played the two together for the royal
amusement afforded him by his friend Horace.



CHAPTER XLVIII

THE LOVERS

The hour was close upon eleven at night. Laetitia sat in the room
adjoining her father's bedchamber. Her elbow was on the table beside
her chair, and two fingers pressed her temples. The state between
thinking and feeling, when both are molten and flow by us, is one of
our natures coming after thought has quieted the fiery nerves, and can
do no more. She seemed to be meditating. She was conscious only of a
struggle past.

She answered a tap at the door, and raised her eyes on Clara. Clara
stepped softly. "Mr. Dale is asleep?"

"I hope so."

"Ah! dear friend."

Laetitia let her hand be pressed.

"Have you had a pleasant evening?"

"Mr. Whitford and papa have gone to the library."

"Colonel De Craye has been singing?"

"Yes--with a voice! I thought of you upstairs, but could not ask him to
sing piano."

"He is probably exhilarated."

"One would suppose it: he sang well."

"You are not aware of any reason?"

"It cannot concern me."

Clara was in rosy colour, but could meet a steady gaze.

"And Crossjay has gone to bed?"

"Long since. He was at dessert. He would not touch anything."

"He is a strange boy."

"Not very strange, Laetitia."

"He did not come to me to wish me good-night."

"That is not strange."

"It is his habit at the cottage and here; and he professes to like me."

"Oh, he does. I may have wakened his enthusiasm, but you he loves."

"Why do you say it is not strange, Clara?"

"He fears you a little."

"And why should Crossjay fear me?"

"Dear, I will tell you. Last night--You will forgive him, for it was by
accident: his own bed-room door was locked and he ran down to the
drawing-room and curled himself up on the ottoman, and fell asleep,
under that padded silken coverlet of the ladies--boots and all, I am
afraid!"

Laetitia profited by this absurd allusion, thanking Clara in her heart
for the refuge.

"He should have taken off his boots," she said.

"He slept there, and woke up. Dear, he meant no harm. Next day he
repeated what he had heard. You will blame him. He meant well in his
poor boy's head. And now it is over the county. Ah! do not frown."

"That explains Lady Busshe!" exclaimed Laetitia.

"Dear, dear friend," said Clara. "Why--I presume on your tenderness for
me; but let me: to-morrow I go--why will you reject your happiness?
Those kind good ladies are deeply troubled. They say your resolution
is inflexible; you resist their entreaties and your father's. Can it be
that you have any doubt of the strength of this attachment? I have
none. I have never had a doubt that it was the strongest of his
feelings. If before I go I could see you . . . both happy, I should be
relieved, I should rejoice."

Laetitia said, quietly: "Do you remember a walk we had one day together
to the cottage?"

Clara put up her hands with the motion of intending to stop her ears.

"Before I go!" said she. "If I might know this was to be, which all
desire, before I leave, I should not feel as I do now. I long to see
you happy . . . him, yes, him too. Is it like asking you to pay my
debt? Then, please! But, no; I am not more than partly selfish on this
occasion. He has won my gratitude. He can be really generous."

"An Egoist?"

"Who is?"

"You have forgotten our conversation on the day of our walk to the
cottage?"

"Help me to forget it--that day, and those days, and all those days! I
should be glad to think I passed a time beneath the earth, and have
risen again. I was the Egoist. I am sure, if I had been buried, I
should not have stood up seeing myself more vilely stained, soiled,
disfigured--oh! Help me to forget my conduct, Laetitia. He and I were
unsuited--and I remember I blamed myself then. You and he are not: and
now I can perceive the pride that can be felt in him. The worst that
can be said is that he schemes too much."

"Is there any fresh scheme?" said Laetitia.

The rose came over Clara's face.

"You have not heard? It was impossible, but it was kindly intended.
Judging by my own feeling at this moment, I can understand his. We love
to see our friends established."

Laetitia bowed. "My curiosity is piqued, of course."

"Dear friend, to-morrow we shall be parted. I trust to be thought of by
you as a little better in grain than I have appeared, and my reason for
trusting it is that I know I have been always honest--a boorish young
woman in my stupid mad impatience: but not insincere. It is no lofty
ambition to desire to be remembered in that character, but such is your
Clara, she discovers. I will tell you. It is his wish . . . his wish
that I should promise to give my hand to Mr. Whitford. You see the
kindness."

Laetitia's eyes widened and fixed:

"You think it kindness?"

"The intention. He sent Mr. Whitford to me, and I was taught to expect
him."

"Was that quite kind to Mr. Whitford?"

"What an impression I must have made on you during that walk to the
cottage, Laetitia! I do not wonder; I was in a fever."

"You consented to listen?"

"I really did. It astonishes me now, but I thought I could not refuse."

"My poor friend Vernon Whitford tried a love speech?"

"He? no: Oh! no."

"You discouraged him?"

"I? No."

"Gently, I mean."

"No."

"Surely you did not dream of trifling? He has a deep heart."

"Has he?"

"You ask that: and you know something of him."

"He did not expose it to me, dear; not even the surface of the mighty
deep."

Laetitia knitted her brows.

"No," said Clara, "not a coquette: she is not a coquette, I assure
you."

With a laugh, Laetitia replied: "You have still the 'dreadful power'
you made me feel that day."

"I wish I could use it to good purpose!"

"He did not speak?"

"Of Switzerland, Tyrol, the Iliad, Antigone."

"That was all?"

"No, Political Economy. Our situation, you will own, was unexampled: or
mine was. Are you interested in me?"

"I should be if I knew your sentiments."

"I was grateful to Sir Willoughby: grieved for Mr. Whitford."

"Real grief?"

"Because the task unposed on him of showing me politely that he did not
enter into his cousin's ideas was evidently very great, extremely
burdensome."

"You, so quick-eyed in some things, Clara!"

"He felt for me. I saw that in his avoidance of. . . And he was, as he
always is, pleasant. We rambled over the park for I know not how long,
though it did not seem long."

"Never touching that subject?"

"Not ever neighbouring it, dear. A gentleman should esteem the girl he
would ask . . . certain questions. I fancy he has a liking for me as a
volatile friend."

"If he had offered himself?"

"Despising me?"

"You can be childish, Clara. Probably you delight to tease. He had his
time of it, and it is now my turn."

"But he must despise me a little."

"Are you blind?"

"Perhaps, dear, we both are, a little."

The ladies looked deeper into one another.

"Will you answer me?" said Laetitia.

"Your if? If he had, it would have been an act of condescension."

"You are too slippery."

"Stay, dear Laetitia. He was considerate in forbearing to pain me."

"That is an answer. You allowed him to perceive that it would have
pained you."

"Dearest, if I may convey to you what I was, in a simile for
comparison: I think I was like a fisherman's float on the water,
perfectly still, and ready to go down at any instant, or up. So much
for my behaviour."

"Similes have the merit of satisfying the finder of them, and cheating
the hearer," said Laetitia. "You admit that your feelings would have
been painful."

"I was a fisherman's float: please admire my simile; any way you like,
this way or that, or so quiet as to tempt the eyes to go to sleep. And
suddenly I might have disappeared in the depths, or flown in the air.
But no fish bit."

"Well, then, to follow you, supposing the fish or the fisherman, for I
don't know which is which . . . Oh! no, no: this is too serious for
imagery. I am to understand that you thanked him at least for his
reserve."

"Yes."

"Without the slightest encouragement to him to break it?"

"A fisherman's float, Laetitia!"

Baffled and sighing, Laetitia kept silence for a space. The simile
chafed her wits with a suspicion of a meaning hidden in it.

"If he had spoken?" she said.

"He is too truthful a man."

"And the railings of men at pussy women who wind about and will not be
brought to a mark, become intelligible to me."

"Then Laetitia, if he had spoken, if, and one could have imagined him
sincere . . ."

"So truthful a man?"

"I am looking at myself If!--why, then, I should have burnt to death
with shame. Where have I read?--some story--of an inextinguishable
spark. That would have been shot into my heart."

"Shame, Clara? You are free."

"As much as remains of me."

"I could imagine a certain shame, in such a position, where there was
no feeling but pride."

"I could not imagine it where there was no feeling but pride."

Laetitia mused. "And you dwell on the kindness of a proposition so
extraordinary!" Gaining some light, impatiently she cried: "Vernon
loves you."

"Do not say it!"

"I have seen it."

"I have never had a sign of it."

"There is the proof."

"When it might have been shown again and again!"

"The greater proof!"

"Why did he not speak when he was privileged?--strangely, but
privileged."

"He feared."

"Me?"

"Feared to wound you--and himself as well, possibly. Men may be
pardoned for thinking of themselves in these cases."

"But why should he fear?"

"That another was dearer to you?"

"What cause had I given . . . Ah I see! He could fear that; suspect it!
See his opinion of me! Can he care for such a girl? Abuse me, Laetitia.
I should like a good round of abuse. I need purification by fire. What
have I been in this house? I have a sense of whirling through it like a
madwoman. And to be loved, after it all!--No! we must be hearing a tale
of an antiquary prizing a battered relic of the battle-field that no
one else would look at. To be loved, I see, is to feel our littleness,
hollowness--feel shame. We come out in all our spots. Never to have
given me one sign, when a lover would have been so tempted! Let me be
incredulous, my own dear Laetitia. Because he is a man of honour, you
would say! But are you unconscious of the torture you inflict? For if I
am--you say it--loved by this gentleman, what an object it is he
loves--that has gone clamouring about more immodestly than women will
bear to hear of, and she herself to think of! Oh, I have seen my own
heart. It is a frightful spectre. I have seen a weakness in me that
would have carried me anywhere. And truly I shall be charitable to
women--I have gained that. But loved! by Vernon Whitford! The miserable
little me to be taken up and loved after tearing myself to pieces! Have
you been simply speculating? You have no positive knowledge of it! Why
do you kiss me?"

"Why do you tremble and blush so?"

Clara looked at her as clearly as she could. She bowed her head. "It
makes my conduct worse!"

She received a tenderer kiss for that. It was her avowal, and it was
understood: to know that she had loved or had been ready to love him,
shadowed her in the retrospect.

"Ah! you read me through and through," said Clara, sliding to her for a
whole embrace.

"Then there never was cause for him to fear?" Laetitia whispered.

Clara slid her head more out of sight. "Not that my heart . . . But I
said I have seen it; and it is unworthy of him. And if, as I think now,
I could have been so rash, so weak, wicked, unpardonable--such
thoughts were in me!--then to hear him speak would make it necessary
for me to uncover myself and tell him--incredible to you, yes!--that
while . . . yes, Laetitia, all this is true: and thinking of him as the
noblest of men, I could have welcomed any help to cut my knot. So
there," said Clara, issuing from her nest with winking eyelids, "you
see the pain I mentioned."

"Why did you not explain it to me at once?"

"Dearest, I wanted a century to pass."

"And you feel that it has passed?"

"Yes; in Purgatory--with an angel by me. My report of the place will be
favourable. Good angel, I have yet to say something."

"Say it, and expiate."

"I think I did fancy once or twice, very dimly, and especially to-day
. . . properly I ought not to have had any idea: but his coming to me,
and his not doing as another would have done, seemed . . . A gentleman
of real nobleness does not carry the common light for us to read him
by. I wanted his voice; but silence, I think, did tell me more: if a
nature like mine could only have had faith without bearing the rattle
of a tongue."

A knock at the door caused the ladies to exchange looks. Laetitia rose
as Vernon entered.

"I am just going to my father for a few minutes," she said.

"And I have just come from yours." Vernon said to Clara. She observed a
very threatening expression in him. The sprite of contrariety mounted
to her brain to indemnify her for her recent self-abasement. Seeing the
bedroom door shut on Laetitia, she said: "And of course papa has gone
to bed"; implying, "otherwise . . ."

"Yes, he has gone. He wished me well."

"His formula of good-night would embrace that wish."

"And failing, it will be good-night for good to me!"

Clara's breathing gave a little leap. "We leave early tomorrow."

"I know. I have an appointment at Bregenz for June."

"So soon? With papa?"

"And from there we break into Tyrol, and round away to the right,
Southward."

"To the Italian Alps! And was it assumed that I should be of this
expedition?"

"Your father speaks dubiously."

"You have spoken of me, then?"

"I ventured to speak of you. I am not over-bold, as you know."

Her lovely eyes troubled the lids to hide their softness.

"Papa should not think of my presence with him dubiously."

"He leaves it to you to decide."

"Yes, then: many times: all that can be uttered."

"Do you consider what you are saying?"

"Mr. Whitford, I shut my eyes and say Yes."

"Beware. I give you one warning. If you shut your eyes . . ."

"Of course," she flew from him, "big mountains must be satisfied with
my admiration at their feet."

"That will do for a beginning."

"They speak encouragingly."

"One of them." Vernon's breast heaved high.

"To be at your feet makes a mountain of you?" said she.

"With the heart of a mouse if that satisfies me!"

"You tower too high; you are inaccessible."

"I give you a second warning. You may be seized and lifted."

"Some one would stoop, then."

"To plant you like the flag on the conquered peak!"

"You have indeed been talking to papa, Mr. Whitford."

Vernon changed his tone.

"Shall I tell you what he said?"

"I know his language so well."

"He said--"

"But you have acted on it?"

"Only partly. He said--"

"You will teach me nothing."

"He said . . ."

"Vernon, no! oh! not in this house!"

That supplication coupled with his name confessed the end to which her
quick vision perceived she was being led, where she would succumb.

She revived the same shrinking in him from a breath of their great word
yet: not here; somewhere in the shadow of the mountains.

But he was sure of her. And their hands might join. The two hands
thought so, or did not think, behaved like innocents.

The spirit of Dr. Middleton, as Clara felt, had been blown into Vernon,
rewarding him for forthright outspeaking. Over their books, Vernon had
abruptly shut up a volume and related the tale of the house. "Has this
man a spice of religion in him?" the Rev. Doctor asked midway. Vernon
made out a fair general case for his cousin in that respect. "The
complemental dot on his i of a commonly civilized human creature!" said
Dr. Middleton, looking at his watch and finding it too late to leave
the house before morning. The risky communication was to come. Vernon
was proceeding with the narrative of Willoughby's generous plan when
Dr. Middleton electrified him by calling out: "He whom of all men
living I should desire my daughter to espouse!" and Willoughby rose in
the Rev. Doctor's esteem: he praised that sensibly minded gentleman,
who could acquiesce in the turn of mood of a little maid, albeit
Fortune had withheld from him a taste of the switch at school. The
father of the little maid's appreciation of her volatility was
exhibited in his exhortation to Vernon to be off to her at once with
his authority to finish her moods and assure him of peace in the
morning. Vernon hesitated. Dr. Middleton remarked upon being not so
sure that it was not he who had done the mischief. Thereupon Vernon, to
prove his honesty, made his own story bare. "Go to her," said Dr.
Middleton. Vernon proposed a meeting in Switzerland, to which Dr.
Middleton assented, adding: "Go to her": and as he appeared a total
stranger to the decorum of the situation, Vernon put his delicacy
aside, and taking his heart up, obeyed. He too had pondered on Clara's
consent to meet him after she knew of Willoughby's terms, and her grave
sweet manner during the ramble over the park. Her father's breath had
been blown into him; so now, with nothing but the faith lying in
sensation to convince him of his happy fortune (and how unconvincing
that may be until the mind has grasped and stamped it, we experience
even then when we acknowledge that we are most blessed), he held her
hand. And if it was hard for him, for both, but harder for the man, to
restrain their particular word from a flight to heaven when the cage
stood open and nature beckoned, he was practised in self-mastery, and
she loved him the more.

Laetitia was a witness of their union of hands on her coming back to
the room.

They promised to visit her very early in the morning, neither of them
conceiving that they left her to a night of storm and tears.

She sat meditating on Clara's present appreciation of Sir Willoughby's
generosity.



CHAPTER XLIX

LAETITIA AND SIR WILLOUGHBY

We cannot be abettors of the tribes of imps whose revelry is in the
frailties of our poor human constitution. They have their place and
their service, and so long as we continue to be what we are now, they
will hang on to us, restlessly plucking at the garments which cover our
nakedness, nor ever ceasing to twitch them and strain at them until
they have stripped us for one of their horrible Walpurgis nights: when
the laughter heard is of a character to render laughter frightful to
the ears of men throughout the remainder of their days. But if in these
festival hours under the beam of Hecate they are uncontrollable by the
Comic Muse, she will not flatter them with her presence during the
course of their insane and impious hilarities, whereof a description
would out-Brocken Brockens and make Graymalkin and Paddock too
intimately our familiars.

It shall suffice to say that from hour to hour of the midnight to the
grey-eyed morn, assisted at intervals by the ladies Eleanor and Isabel,
and by Mr. Dale awakened and re-awakened--hearing the vehemence of his
petitioning outcry to soften her obduracy--Sir Willoughby pursued
Laetitia with solicitations to espouse him, until the inveteracy of his
wooing wore the aspect of the life-long love he raved of aroused to a
state of mania. He appeared, he departed, he returned; and all the
while his imps were about him and upon him, riding him, prompting,
driving, inspiring him with outrageous pathos, an eloquence to move any
one but the dead, which its object seemed to be in her torpid
attention. He heard them, he talked to them, caressed them; he flung
them off, and ran from them, and stood vanquished for them to mount him
again and swarm on him. There are men thus imp-haunted. Men who,
setting their minds upon an object, must have it, breed imps. They are
noted for their singularities, as their converse with the invisible and
amazing distractions are called. Willoughby became aware of them that
night. He said to himself, upon one of his dashes into solitude: I
believe I am possessed! And if he did not actually believe it, but only
suspected it, or framed speech to account for the transformation he had
undergone into a desperately beseeching creature, having lost
acquaintance with his habitual personality, the operations of an impish
host had undoubtedly smitten his consciousness.

He had them in his brain: for while burning with an ardour for
Laetitia, that incited him to frantic excesses of language and
comportment, he was aware of shouts of the names of Lady Busshe and
Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson, the which, freezing him as they did, were
directly the cause of his hurrying to a wilder extravagance and more
headlong determination to subdue before break of day the woman he
almost dreaded to behold by daylight, though he had now passionately
persuaded himself of his love of her. He could not, he felt, stand in
the daylight without her. She was his morning. She was, he raved, his
predestinated wife. He cried, "Darling!" both to her and to solitude.
Every prescription of his ideal of demeanour as an example to his class
and country, was abandoned by the enamoured gentleman. He had lost
command of his countenance. He stooped so far as to kneel, and not
gracefully. Nay, it is in the chronicles of the invisible host around
him, that in a fit of supplication, upon a cry of "Laetitia!" twice
repeated, he whimpered.

Let so much suffice. And indeed not without reason do the multitudes of
the servants of the Muse in this land of social policy avoid scenes of
an inordinate wantonness, which detract from the dignity of our leaders
and menace human nature with confusion. Sagacious are they who conduct
the individual on broad lines, over familiar tracks, under well-known
characteristics. What men will do, and amorously minded men will do,
is less the question than what it is politic they should be shown to
do.

The night wore through. Laetitia was bent, but had not yielded. She
had been obliged to say--and how many times she could not bear to
recollect: "I do not love you; I have no love to give"; and issuing
from such a night to look again upon the face of day, she scarcely felt
that she was alive.

The contest was renewed by her father with the singing of the birds.
Mr. Dale then produced the first serious impression she had received.
He spoke of their circumstances, of his being taken from her and
leaving her to poverty, in weak health; of the injury done to her
health by writing for bread; and of the oppressive weight he would be
relieved of by her consenting.

He no longer implored her; he put the case on common ground.

And he wound up: "Pray do not be ruthless, my girl."

The practical statement, and this adjuration incongruously to conclude
it, harmonized with her disordered understanding, her loss of all
sentiment and her desire to be kind. She sighed to herself. "Happily,
it is over!"

Her father was too weak to rise. He fell asleep. She was bound down to
the house for hours; and she walked through her suite, here at the
doors, there at the windows, thinking of Clara's remark "of a century
passing". She had not wished it, but a light had come on her to show
her what she would have supposed a century could not have effected: she
saw the impossible of overnight a possible thing: not desireable, yet
possible, wearing the features of the possible. Happily, she had
resisted too firmly to be again besought.

Those features of the possible once beheld allured the mind to
reconsider them. Wealth gives us the power to do good on earth. Wealth
enables us to see the world, the beautiful scenes of the earth.
Laetitia had long thirsted both for a dowering money-bag at her girdle,
and the wings to fly abroad over lands which had begun to seem fabulous
in her starved imagination. Then, moreover, if her sentiment for this
gentleman was gone, it was only a delusion gone; accurate sight and
knowledge of him would not make a woman the less helpful mate. That was
the mate he required: and he could be led. A sentimental attachment
would have been serviceless to him. Not so the woman allied by a purely
rational bond: and he wanted guiding. Happily, she had told him too
much of her feeble health and her lovelessness to be reduced to submit
to another attack.

She busied herself in her room, arranging for her departure, so that no
minutes might be lost after her father had breakfasted and dressed.

Clara was her earliest visitor, and each asked the other whether she
had slept, and took the answer from the face presented to her. The
rings of Laetitia's eyes were very dark. Clara was her mirror, and she
said: "A singular object to be persecuted through a night for her hand!
I know these two damp dead leaves I wear on my cheeks to remind me of
midnight vigils. But you have slept well, Clara."

"I have slept well, and yet I could say I have not slept at all,
Laetitia. I was with you, dear, part in dream and part in thought:
hoping to find you sensible before I go."

"Sensible. That is the word for me."

Laetitia briefly sketched the history of the night; and Clara said,
with a manifest sincerity that testified of her gratitude to Sir
Willoughby: "Could you resist him, so earnest as he is?" Laetitia saw
the human nature, without sourness: and replied, "I hope, Clara, you
will not begin with a large stock of sentiment, for there is nothing
like it for making you hard, matter-of-fact, worldly, calculating."

The next visitor was Vernon, exceedingly anxious for news of Mr. Dale.
Laetitia went into her father's room to obtain it for him. Returning,
she found them both with sad visages, and she ventured, in alarm for
them, to ask the cause.

"It's this," Vernon said: "Willoughby will everlastingly tease that boy
to be loved by him. Perhaps, poor fellow, he had an excuse last night.
Anyhow, he went into Crossjay's room this morning, woke him up and
talked to him, and set the lad crying, and what with one thing and
another Crossjay got a berry in his throat, as he calls it, and poured
out everything he knew and all he had done. I needn't tell you the
consequence. He has ruined himself here for good, so I must take him."

Vernon glanced at Clara. "You must indeed," said she. "He is my boy as
well as yours. No chance of pardon?"

"It's not likely."

"Laetitia!"

"What can I do?"

"Oh! what can you not do?"

"I do not know."

"Teach him to forgive!"

Laetitia's brows were heavy and Clara forbore to torment her.

She would not descend to the family breakfast-table. Clara would fain
have stayed to drink tea with her in her own room, but a last act of
conformity was demanded of the liberated young lady. She promised to
run up the moment breakfast was over. Not unnaturally, therefore,
Laetitia supposed it to be she to whom she gave admission, half an hour
later, with a glad cry of, "Come in, dear."

The knock had sounded like Clara's.

Sir Willoughby entered.

He stepped forward. He seized her hands. "Dear!" he said.

"You cannot withdraw that. You call me dear. I am, I must be dear to
you. The word is out, by accident or not, but, by heaven, I have it and
I give it up to no one. And love me or not--marry me, and my love will
bring it back to you. You have taught me I am not so strong. I must
have you by my side. You have powers I did not credit you with."

"You are mistaken in me, Sir Willoughby." Laetitia said feebly, outworn
as she was.

"A woman who can resist me by declining to be my wife, through a whole
night of entreaty, has the quality I need for my house, and I will
batter at her ears for months, with as little rest as I had last night,
before I surrender my chance of her. But I told you last night I want
you within the twelve hours. I have staked my pride on it. By noon you
are mine: you are introduced to Mrs. Mountstuart as mine, as the lady
of my life and house. And to the world! I shall not let you go."

"You will not detain me here, Sir Willoughby?"

"I will detain you. I will use force and guile. I will spare nothing."

He raved for a term, as he had done overnight.

On his growing rather breathless, Laetitia said: "You do not ask me for
love?"

"I do not. I pay you the higher compliment of asking for you, love or
no love. My love shall be enough. Reward me or not. I am not used to be
denied."

"But do you know what you ask for? Do you remember what I told you of
myself? I am hard, materialistic; I have lost faith in romance, the
skeleton is present with me all over life. And my health is not good.
I crave for money. I should marry to be rich. I should not worship you.
I should be a burden, barely a living one, irresponsive and cold.
Conceive such a wife, Sir Willoughby!"

"It will be you!"

She tried to recall how this would have sung in her cars long back. Her
bosom rose and fell in absolute dejection. Her ammunition of arguments
against him had been expended overnight.

"You are so unforgiving," she said.

"Is it I who am?"

"You do not know me."

"But you are the woman of all the world who knows me, Laetitia."

"Can you think it better for you to be known?"

He was about to say other words: he checked them. "I believe I do not
know myself. Anything you will, only give me your hand; give it; trust
to me; you shall direct me. If I have faults, help me to obliterate
them."

"Will you not expect me to regard them as the virtues of meaner men?"

"You will be my wife!"

Laetitia broke from him, crying: "Your wife, your critic! Oh, I cannot
think it possible. Send for the ladies. Let them hear me."

"They are at hand," said Willoughby, opening the door.

They were in one of the upper rooms anxiously on the watch.

"Dear ladies," Laetitia said to them, as they entered. "I am going to
wound you, and I grieve to do it: but rather now than later, if I am to
be your housemate. He asks me for a hand that cannot carry a heart,
because mine is dead. I repeat it. I used to think the heart a woman's
marriage portion for her husband. I see now that she may consent, and
he accept her, without one. But it is right that you should know what I
am when I consent. I was once a foolish, romantic girl; now I am a
sickly woman, all illusions vanished. Privation has made me what an
abounding fortune usually makes of others--I am an Egoist. I am not
deceiving you. That is my real character. My girl's view of him has
entirely changed; and I am almost indifferent to the change. I can
endeavour to respect him, I cannot venerate."

"Dear child!" the ladies gently remonstrated.

Willoughby motioned to them.

"If we are to live together, and I could very happily live with you,"
Laetitia continued to address them, "you must not be ignorant of me.
And if you, as I imagine, worship him blindly, I do not know how we are
to live together. And never shall you quit this house to make way for
me. I have a hard detective eye. I see many faults."

"Have we not all of us faults, dear child?"

"Not such as he has; though the excuses of a gentleman nurtured in
idolatry may be pleaded. But he should know that they are seen, and
seen by her he asks to be his wife, that no misunderstanding may exist,
and while it is yet time he may consult his feelings. He worships
himself."

"Willoughby?"

"He is vindictive!"

"Our Willoughby?"

"That is not your opinion, ladies. It is firmly mine. Time has taught
it me. So, if you and I are at such variance, how can we live together?
It is an impossibility."

They looked at Willoughby. He nodded imperiously.

"We have never affirmed that our dear nephew is devoid of faults, if
he is offended . . . And supposing he claims to be foremost, is it not
his rightful claim, made good by much generosity? Reflect, dear
Laetitia. We are your friends too."

She could not chastise the kind ladies any further.

"You have always been my good friends."

"And you have no other charge against him?"

Laetitia was milder in saying, "He is unpardoning."

"Name one instance, Laetitia."

"He has turned Crossjay out of his house, interdicting the poor boy
ever to enter it again."

"Crossjay," said Willoughby, "was guilty of a piece of infamous
treachery."

"Which is the cause of your persecuting me to become your wife!"

There was a cry of "Persecuting!"

"No young fellow behaving so basely can come to good," said Willoughby,
stained about the face with flecks of redness at the lashings he
received.

"Honestly," she retorted. "He told of himself: and he must have
anticipated the punishment he would meet. He should have been studying
with a master for his profession. He has been kept here in comparative
idleness to be alternately petted and discarded: no one but Vernon
Whitford, a poor gentleman doomed to struggle for a livelihood by
literature--I know something of that struggle--too much for me!--no one
but Mr. Whitford for his friend."

"Crossjay is forgiven," said Willoughby.

"You promise me that?"

"He shall be packed off to a crammer at once."

"But my home must be Crossjay's home."

"You are mistress of my house, Laetitia."

She hesitated. Her eyelashes grew moist. "You can be generous."

"He is, dear child!" the ladies cried. "He is. Forget his errors, in
his generosity, as we do."

"There is that wretched man Flitch."

"That sot has gone about the county for years to get me a bad
character," said Willoughby.

"It would have been generous in you to have offered him another chance.
He has children."

"Nine. And I am responsible for them?"

"I speak of being generous."

"Dictate." Willoughby spread out his arms.

"Surely now you should be satisfied, Laetitia?" said the ladies.

"Is he?"

Willoughby perceived Mrs. Mountstuart's carriage coming down the
avenue.

"To the full." He presented his hand.

She raised hers with the fingers catching back before she ceased to
speak and dropped it:--

"Ladies. You are witnesses that there is no concealment, there has been
no reserve, on my part. May Heaven grant me kinder eyes than I have
now. I would not have you change your opinion of him; only that you
should see how I read him. For the rest, I vow to do my duty by him.
Whatever is of worth in me is at his service. I am very tired. I feel I
must yield or break. This is his wish, and I submit."

"And I salute my wife," said Willoughby, making her hand his own, and
warming to his possession as he performed the act.

Mrs. Mountstuart's indecent hurry to be at the Hall before the
departure of Dr. Middleton and his daughter, afflicted him with visions
of the physical contrast which would be sharply perceptible to her this
morning of his Laetitia beside Clara.

But he had the lady with brains! He had: and he was to learn the nature
of that possession in the woman who is our wife.



CHAPTER L

UPON WHICH THE CURTAIN FALLS

"Plain sense upon the marriage question is my demand upon man and
woman, for the stopping of many a tragedy."

These were Dr. Middleton's words in reply to Willoughby's brief
explanation.

He did not say that he had shown it parentally while the tragedy was
threatening, or at least there was danger of a precipitate descent from
the levels of comedy. The parents of hymeneal men and women he was
indisposed to consider as dramatis personae. Nor did he mention certain
sympathetic regrets he entertained in contemplation of the health of
Mr. Dale, for whom, poor gentleman, the proffer of a bottle of the
Patterne Port would be an egregious mockery. He paced about, anxious
for his departure, and seeming better pleased with the society of
Colonel De Craye than with that of any of the others. Colonel De Craye
assiduously courted him, was anecdotal, deferential, charmingly
vivacious, the very man the Rev. Doctor liked for company when plunged
in the bustle of the preliminaries to a journey.

"You would be a cheerful travelling comrade, sir," he remarked, and
spoke of his doom to lead his daughter over the Alps and Alpine lakes
for the Summer months.

Strange to tell, the Alps, for the Summer months, was a settled project
of the colonel's.

And thence Dr. Middleton was to be hauled along to the habitable
quarters of North Italy in high Summer-tide.

That also had been traced for a route on the map of Colonel De Craye.

"We are started in June, I am informed," said Dr. Middleton.

June, by miracle, was the month the colonel had fixed upon.

"I trust we shall meet, sir," said he.

"I would gladly reckon it in my catalogue of pleasures," the Rev.
Doctor responded; "for in good sooth it is conjecturable that I shall
be left very much alone."

"Paris, Strasburg, Basle?" the colonel inquired.

"The Lake of Constance, I am told," said Dr. Middleton. Colonel De
Craye spied eagerly for an opportunity of exchanging a pair of
syllables with the third and fairest party of this glorious expedition
to come.

Willoughby met him, and rewarded the colonel's frankness in stating
that he was on the look-out for Miss Middleton to take his leave of
her, by furnishing him the occasion. He conducted his friend Horace to
the Blue Room, where Clara and Laetitia were seated circling a half
embrace with a brook of chatter, and contrived an excuse for leading
Laetitia forth. Some minutes later Mrs. Mountstuart called aloud for
the colonel, to drive him away. Willoughby, whose good offices were
unabated by the services he performed to each in rotation, ushered her
into the Blue Room, hearing her say, as she stood at the entrance: "Is
the man coming to spend a day with me with a face like that?"

She was met and detained by Clara.

De Craye came out.

"What are you thinking of?" said Willoughby.

"I was thinking," said the colonel, "of developing a heart, like you,
and taking to think of others."

"At last!"

"Ay, you're a true friend, Willoughby, a true friend. And a cousin to
boot!"

"What! has Clara been communicative?"

"The itinerary of a voyage Miss Middleton is going to make."

"Do you join them?"

"Why, it would be delightful, Willoughby, but it happens I've got a lot
of powder I want to let off, and so I've an idea of shouldering my gun
along the sea-coast and shooting gulls: which'll be a harmless form of
committing patricide and matricide and fratricide--for there's my
family, and I come of it!--the gull! And I've to talk lively to Mrs.
Mountstuart for something like a matter of twelve hours, calculating
that she goes to bed at midnight: and I wouldn't bet on it; such is the
energy of ladies of that age!"

Willoughby scorned the man who could not conceal a blow, even though he
joked over his discomfiture.

"Gull!" he muttered.

"A bird that's easy to be had, and better for stuffing than for
eating," said De Craye. "You'll miss your cousin."

"I have," replied Willoughby, "one fully equal to supplying his place."

There was confusion in the hall for a time, and an assembly of the
household to witness the departure of Dr. Middleton and his daughter.
Vernon had been driven off by Dr. Corney, who further recommended rest
for Mr. Dale, and promised to keep an eye for Crossjay along the road.

"I think you will find him at the station, and if you do, command him
to come straight back here," Laetitia said to Clara. The answer was an
affectionate squeeze, and Clara's hand was extended to Willoughby, who
bowed over it with perfect courtesy, bidding her adieu.

So the knot was cut. And the next carriage to Dr. Middleton's was Mrs.
Mountstuart's, conveying the great lady and Colonel De Craye.

"I beg you not to wear that face with me," she said to him.

"I have had to dissemble, which I hate, and I have quite enough to
endure, and I must be amused, or I shall run away from you and enlist
that little countryman of yours, and him I can count on to be
professionally restorative. Who can fathom the heart of a girl! Here
is Lady Busshe right once more! And I was wrong. She must be a gambler
by nature. I never should have risked such a guess as that. Colonel De
Craye, you lengthen your face preternaturally, you distort it
purposely."

"Ma'am," returned De Craye, "the boast of our army is never to know
when we are beaten, and that tells of a great-hearted soldiery. But
there's a field where the Briton must own his defeat, whether smiling
or crying, and I'm not so sure that a short howl doesn't do him
honour."

"She was, I am certain, in love with Vernon Whitford all along.
Colonel De Craye!"

"Ah!" the colonel drank it in. "I have learnt that it was not the
gentleman in whom I am chiefly interested. So it was not so hard for
the lady to vow to friend Willoughby she would marry no one else?"

"Girls are unfathomable! And Lady Busshe--I know she did not go by
character--shot one of her random guesses, and she triumphs. We shall
never hear the last of it. And I had all the opportunities. I'm bound
to confess I had."

"Did you by chance, ma'am," De Craye said, with a twinkle, "drop a hint
to Willoughby of her turn for Vernon Whitford?"

"No," said Mrs. Mountstuart, "I'm not a mischief-maker; and the policy
of the county is to keep him in love with himself, or Patterne will be
likely to be as dull as it was without a lady enthroned. When his pride
is at ease he is a prince. I can read men. Now, Colonel De Craye, pray,
be lively."

"I should have been livelier, I'm afraid, if you had dropped a bit of a
hint to Willoughby. But you're the magnanimous person, ma'am, and
revenge for a stroke in the game of love shows us unworthy to win."

Mrs. Mountstuart menaced him with her parasol. "I forbid sentiments,
Colonel De Craye. They are always followed by sighs."

"Grant me five minutes of inward retirement, and I'll come out formed
for your commands, ma'am," said he.

Before the termination of that space De Craye was enchanting Mrs.
Mountstuart, and she in consequence was restored to her natural wit.

So, and much so universally, the world of his dread and his unconscious
worship wagged over Sir Willoughby Patterne and his change of brides,
until the preparations for the festivities of the marriage flushed him
in his county's eyes to something of the splendid glow he had worn on
the great day of his majority. That was upon the season when two lovers
met between the Swiss and Tyrol Alps over the Lake of Constance.
Sitting beside them the Comic Muse is grave and sisterly. But taking a
glance at the others of her late company of actors, she compresses her lips.









THE TRAGIC COMEDIANS

A STUDY IN A WELL-KNOWN STORY

By George Meredith

1892



BOOK 1.

The word 'fantastical' is accentuated in our tongue to so scornful an
utterance that the constant good service it does would make it seem an
appointed instrument for reviewers of books of imaginative matter
distasteful to those expository pens. Upon examination, claimants to the
epithet will be found outside of books and of poets, in many quarters,
Nature being one of the prominent, if not the foremost. Wherever she can
get to drink her fill of sunlight she pushes forth fantastically. As for
that wandering ship of the drunken pilot, the mutinous crew and the angry
captain, called Human Nature, 'fantastical' fits it no less completely
than a continental baby's skull-cap the stormy infant.

Our sympathies, one may fancy, will be broader, our critical acumen
shrewder, if we at once accept the thing as a part of us and worthy of
study.

The pair of tragic comedians of whom there will be question pass under
this word as under their banner and motto. Their acts are incredible:
they drank sunlight and drove their bark in a manner to eclipse
historical couples upon our planet. Yet they do belong to history, they
breathed the stouter air than fiction's, the last chapter of them is
written in red blood, and the man pouring out that last chapter, was of a
mighty nature not unheroical, a man of the active grappling modern brain
which wrestles with facts, to keep the world alive, and can create them,
to set it spinning.

A Faust-like legend might spring from him: he had a devil. He was the
leader of a host, the hope of a party, venerated by his followers, well
hated by his enemies, respected by the intellectual chiefs of his time,
in the pride of his manhood and his labours when he fell. And why this
man should have come to his end through love, and the woman who loved him
have laid her hand in the hand of the slayer, is the problem we have to
study, nothing inventing, in the spirit and flesh of both. To ask if it
was love is useless. Love may be celestial fire before it enters into the
systems of mortals. It will then take the character of its place of
abode, and we have to look not so much for the pure thing as for the
passion. Did it move them, hurry them, animating the giants and gnomes of
one, the elves and sprites of the other, and putting animal nature out of
its fashionable front rank? The bare railway-line of their story tells of
a passion honest enough to entitle it to be related. Nor is there
anything invented, because an addition of fictitious incidents could
never tell us how she came to do this, he to do that; or how the comic in
their natures led by interplay to the tragic issue. They are real
creatures, exquisitely fantastical, strangely exposed to the world by a
lurid catastrophe, who teach us, that fiction, if it can imagine events
and persons more agreeable to the taste it has educated, can read us no
such furrowing lesson in life.




THE TRAGIC COMEDIANS



CHAPTER I

An unresisted lady-killer is probably less aware that he roams the
pastures in pursuit of a coquette, than is the diligent Arachne that her
web is for the devouring lion. At an early age Clotilde von Rudiger was
dissatisfied with her conquests, though they were already numerous in her
seventeenth year, for she began precociously, having at her dawn a lively
fancy, a womanly person, and singular attractions of colour, eyes, and
style. She belonged by birth to the small aristocracy of her native land.
Nature had disposed her to coquettry, which is a pastime counting among
the arts of fence, and often innocent, often serviceable, though
sometimes dangerous, in the centres of polished barbarism known as
aristocratic societies, where nature is not absent, but on the contrary
very extravagant, tropical, by reason of her idle hours for the imbibing
of copious draughts of sunlight. The young lady of charming countenance
and sprightly manners is too much besought to choose for her choice to be
decided; the numbers beseeching prevent her from choosing instantly,
after the fashion of holiday schoolboys crowding a buffet of pastry.
These are not coquettish, they clutch what is handy: and little so is the
starved damsel of the sequestered village, whose one object of the
worldly picturesque is the passing curate; her heart is his for a nod.
But to be desired ardently of trooping hosts is an incentive to taste to
try for yourself. Men (the jury of householders empanelled to deliver
verdicts upon the ways of women) can almost understand that. And as it
happens, tasting before you have sounded the sense of your taste will
frequently mislead by a step or two difficult to retrieve: the young
coquette must then be cruel, as necessarily we kick the waters to escape
drowning: and she is not in all cases dealing with simple blocks or limp
festoons, she comes upon veteran tricksters that have a knowledge of her
sex, capable of outfencing her nascent individuality. The more
imagination she has, for a source of strength in the future days, the
more is she a prey to the enemy in her time of ignorance.

Clotilde's younger maiden hours and their love episodes are wrapped in
the mists Diana considerately drops over her adventurous favourites. She
was not under a French mother's rigid supervision. In France the mother
resolves that her daughter shall be guarded from the risks of that
unequal rencounter between foolish innocence and the predatory. Vigilant
foresight is not so much practised where the world is less accurately
comprehended. Young people of Clotilde's upper world everywhere, and the
young women of it especially, are troubled by an idea drawn from what
they inhale and guess at in the spirituous life surrounding them, that
the servants of the devil are the valiant host, this world's elect,
getting and deserving to get the best it can give in return for a little
dashing audacity, a flavour of the Fronde in their conduct; they sin, but
they have the world; and then they repent perhaps, but they have had the
world. The world is the golden apple. Thirst for it is common during
youth: and one would think the French mother worthy of the crown of
wisdom if she were not so scrupulously provident in excluding love from
the calculations on behalf of her girl.

Say (for Diana's mists are impenetrable and freeze curiosity) that
Clotilde was walking with Count Constantine, the brilliant Tartar trained
in Paris, when first she met Prince Marko Romaris, at the Hungarian Baths
on the borders of the Styrian highlands. The scene at all events is
pretty, and weaves a fable out of a variety of floating threads. A
stranger to the Baths, dressed in white and scarlet, sprang from his
carriage into a group of musical gypsies round an inn at the arch of the
chestnut avenue, after pulling up to listen to them for a while. The
music had seized him. He snatched bow and fiddle from one of the ring,
and with a few strokes kindled their faces. Then seating himself, on a
bench he laid the fiddle on his knee, and pinched the strings and flung
up his voice, not ceasing to roll out the spontaneous notes when Clotilde
and her cavalier, and other couples of the party, came nigh; for he was
on the tide of the song, warm in it, and loved it too well to suffer
intruders to break the flow, or to think of them. They were close by when
the last of it rattled (it was a popular song of a fiery tribe) to its
finish: He rose and saluted Clotilde, smiled and jumped back to his
carriage, sending a cry of adieu to the swarthy, lank-locked,
leather-hued circle, of which his dark oriental eyes and skin of
burnished walnut made him look an offshoot, but one of the celestial
branch.

He was in her father's reception-room when she reached home: he was
paying a visit of ceremony on behalf of his family to General von
Rudiger; which helped her to remember that he had been expected, and also
that his favourite colours were known to be white and scarlet. In those
very colours, strange to tell, Clotilde was dressed; Prince Marko had
recognized her by miraculous divination, he assured her he could have
staked his life on the guess as he bowed to her. Adieu to Count
Constantine. Fate had interposed the prince opportunely, we have to
suppose, for she received a strong impression of his coming straight from
her invisible guardian; and the stroke was consequently trenchant which
sent the conquering Tartar raving of her fickleness. She struck, like
fate, one blow. She discovered that the prince, in addition to his beauty
and sweet manners and gift of song, was good; she fell in love with
goodness, whereof Count Constantine was not an example: so she set her
face another way, soon discovering that there may be fragility in
goodness. And now first her imagination conceived the hero who was to
subdue her. Could Prince Marko be he, soft as he was, pliable, a docile
infant, burning to please her, enraptured in obeying?--the hero who would
wrestle with her, overcome and hold her bound? Siegfried could not be
dreamed in him, or a Siegfried's baby son-in-arms. She caught a glorious
image of the woman rejecting him and his rival, and it informed her that
she, dissatisfied with an Adonis, and more than a match for a famous
conqueror, was a woman of decisive and independent, perhaps unexampled,
force of character. Her idea of a spiritual superiority that could soar
over those two men, the bad and the good--the bad because of his
vileness, the good because of his frailness--whispered to her of
deserving, possibly of attracting, the best of men: the best, that is, in
the woman's view of us--the strongest, the great eagle of men, lord of
earth and air.

One who will dominate me, she thought.

Now when a young lady of lively intelligence and taking charm has brought
her mind to believe that she possesses force of character, she persuades
the rest of the world easily to agree with her, and so long as her
pretensions are not directly opposed to their habits of thought, her
parents will be the loudest in proclaiming it, fortifying so the maid's
presumption, which is ready to take root in any shadow of subserviency.
Her father was a gouty general of infantry in the diplomatic service,
disinclined to unnecessary disputes, out of consideration for his
vehement irritability when roused. Her mother had been one of the
beauties of her set, and was preserving an attenuated reign, through the
conversational arts, to save herself from fading into the wall. Her
brothers and sisters were not of an age to contest her lead. The temper
of the period was revolutionary in society by reflection of the state of
politics, and juniors were sturdy democrats, letting their elders know
that they had come to their inheritance, while the elders, confused by
the impudent topsy-turvy, put on the gaping mask (not unfamiliar to
history) of the disestablished conservative, whose astounded state
paralyzes his wrath.

Clotilde maintained a decent measure in the liberty she claimed, and it
was exercised in wildness of dialogue rather than in capricious
behaviour. If her flowing tongue was imperfectly controlled, it was
because she discoursed by preference to men upon our various affairs and
tangles, and they encouraged her with the tickled wonder which bids the
bold advance yet farther into bogland. Becoming the renowned original of
her society, wherever it might be, in Germany, Italy, Southern France,
she grew chillily sensible of the solitude decreed for their heritage to
our loftiest souls. Her Indian Bacchus, as a learned professor supplied
Prince Marko's title for her, was a pet, not a companion. She to him was
what she sought for in another. As much as she pitied herself for not
lighting on the predestined man, she pitied him for having met the woman,
so that her tenderness for both inspired many signs of warm affection,
not very unlike the thing it moaned secretly the not being. For she could
not but distinguish a more poignant sorrow in the seeing of the object we
yearn to vainly than in vainly yearning to one unseen. Dressed, to
delight him, in Prince Marko's colours, the care she bestowed on her
dressing was for the one absent, the shrouded comer: so she pleased the
prince to be pleasing to her soul's lord, and this, owing to an
appearance of satisfactory deception that it bore, led to her thinking
guiltily. We may ask it: an eagle is expected, and how is he to declare
his eagleship save by breaking through our mean conventional systems,
tearing links asunder, taking his own in the teeth of vulgar ordinances?
Clotilde's imagination drew on her reading for the knots it tied and
untied, and its ideas of grandeur. Her reading was an interfusion of
philosophy skimmed, and realistic romances deep-sounded. She tried hard,
but could get no other terrible tangle for her hero's exhibition of
flaming azure divineness than the vile one of the wedded woman. Further
thinking of it, she revived and recovered; she despised the complication,
yet without perceiving how else he was to manifest himself legitimately
in a dull modern world. The rescuing her from death would be a poor
imitation of worn-out heroes. His publication of a trumpeting book fell
appallingly flat in her survey. Deeds of gallantry done as an officer in
war (defending his country too) distinguished the soldier, but failed to
add the eagle feather to the man. She had a mind of considerable soaring
scope, and eclectic: it analyzed a Napoleon, and declined the position of
his empress. The man must be a gentleman. Poets, princes, warriors,
potentates, marched before her speculative fancy unselected.

So far, as far as she can be portrayed introductorily, she is not without
exemplars in the sex. Young women have been known to turn from us
altogether, never to turn back, so poor and shrunken, or so fleshly-bulgy
have we all appeared in the fairy jacket they wove for the right one of
us to wear becomingly. But the busy great world was round Clotilde while
she was malleable, though she might be losing her fresh ideas of the
hammer and the block, and that is a world of much solicitation to induce
a vivid girl to merge an ideal in a living image. Supposing, when she has
accomplished it, that men justify her choice, the living will retain the
colours of the ideal. We have it on record that he may seem an eagle.

'You talk curiously like Alvan, do you know,' a gentleman of her country
said to her as they were descending the rock of Capri, one day. He said
it musingly.

He belonged to a circle beneath her own: the learned and artistic. She
had not heard of this Alvan, or had forgotten him; but professing
universal knowledge, especially of celebrities, besides having an envious
eye for that particular circle, which can pretend to be the choicest of
all, she was unwilling to betray her ignorance, and she dimpled her
cheek, as one who had often heard the thing said to her before. She
smiled musingly.




CHAPTER II

'Who is the man they call Alvan?' She put the question at the first
opportunity to an aunt of hers.

Up went five-fingered hands. This violent natural sign of horror was
comforting: she saw that he was a celebrity indeed.

'Alvan! My dear Clotilde! What on earth can you want to know about a
creature who is the worst of demagogues, a disreputable person, and a
Jew!'

Clotilde remarked that she had asked only who he was. 'Is he clever?'

'He is one of the basest of those wretches who are for upsetting the
Throne and Society to gratify their own wicked passions: that is what he
is.'

'But is he clever?'

'Able as Satan himself, they say. He is a really dangerous, bad man. You
could not have been curious about a worse one.'

'Politically, you mean.'

'Of course I do.'

The lady had not thought of any other kind of danger from a man of that
station.

The likening of one to Satan does not always exclude meditation upon him.
Clotilde was anxious to learn in what way her talk resembled Alvan's. He
being that furious creature, she thought of herself at her wildest, which
was in her estimation her best; and consequently, she being by no means a
furious creature, though very original, she could not meditate on him
without softening the outlines given him by report; all because of the
likeness between them; and, therefore, as she had knowingly been taken
for furious by very foolish people, she settled it that Alvan was also a
victim of the prejudices he scorned. It had pleased her at times to scorn
our prejudices and feel the tremendous weight she brought on herself by
the indulgence. She drew on her recollections of the Satanic in her bosom
when so situated, and never having admired herself more ardently than
when wearing that aspect, she would have admired the man who had won the
frightful title in public, except for one thing--he was a Jew.

The Jew was to Clotilde as flesh of swine to the Jew. Her parents had the
same abhorrence of Jewry. One of the favourite similes of the family for
whatsoever grunted in grossness, wriggled with meanness, was Jew: and it
was noteworthy from the fact that a streak of the blood was in the veins
of the latest generation and might have been traced on the maternal side.

Now a meanness that clothes itself in the Satanic to terrify cowards is
the vilest form of impudence venturing at insolence; and an insolent
impudence with Jew features, the Jew nose and lips, is past endurance
repulsive. She dismissed her contemplation of Alvan. Luckily for the
gentleman who had compared her to the Jew politician, she did not meet
him again in Italy.

She had meanwhile formed an idea of the Alvanesque in dialogue; she
summoned her forces to take aim at it, without becoming anything Jewish,
still remaining clean and Christian; and by her astonishing practice of
the art she could at any time blow up a company--scatter mature and
seasoned dames, as had they been balloons on a wind, ay, and give our
stout sex a shaking.

Clotilde rejected another aspirant proposed by her parents, and falling
into disgrace at home, she went to live for some months with an ancient
lady who was her close relative residing in the capital city where the
brain of her race is located. There it occurred that a dashing officer of
social besides military rank, dancing with her at a ball, said, for a
comment on certain boldly independent remarks she had been making: 'I see
you know Alvan.'

Alvan once more.

'Indeed I do not,' she said, for she was addressing an officer high above
Alvan in social rank; and she shrugged, implying that she was almost past
contradiction of the charge.

'Surely you must,' said he; 'where is the lady who could talk and think
as you do without knowing Alvan and sharing his views!'

Clotilde was both startled and nettled.

'But I do not know him at all; I have never met him, never seen him. I am
unlikely to meet the kind of person,' she protested; and she was amazed
yet secretly rejoiced on hearing him, a noble of her own circle, and a
dashing officer, rejoin: 'Come, come, let us be honest. That is all very
well for the little midges floating round us to say of Alvan, but we two
can clasp hands and avow proudly that we both know and love the man.'

'Were it true, I would own it at once, but I repeat, that he is a total
stranger to me,' she said, seeing the Jew under quite a different
illumination.

'Actually?'

'In honour.'

'You have never met, never seen him, never read any of his writings?'

'Never. I have heard his name, that is all.'

'Then,' the officer's voice was earnest, 'I pity him, and you no less,
while you remain strangers, for you were made for one another. Those
ideas you have expressed, nay, the very words, are Alvan's: I have heard
him use them. He has just the same original views of society and history
as yours; they're identical; your features are not unlike . . . you talk
alike: I could fancy your voice the sister of his. You look incredulous?
You were speaking of Pompeius, and you said "Plutarch's Pompeius," and
more for it is almost incredible under the supposition that you do not
know and have never listened to Alvan--you said that Pompeius appeared to
have been decorated with all the gifts of the Gods to make the greater
sacrifice of him to Caesar, who was not personally worth a pretty woman's
"bite." Come, now--you must believe me: at a supper at Alvan's table the
other night, the talk happened to be of a modern Caesar, which led to the
real one, and from him to "Plutarch's Pompeius," as Alvan called him; and
then he said of him what you have just said, absolutely the same down to
the allusion to the bite. I assure you. And you have numbers of little
phrases in common: you are partners in aphorisms: Barriers are for those
who cannot fly: that is Alvan's. I could multiply them if I could
remember; they struck me as you spoke.'

'I must be a shameless plagiarist,' said Clotilde.

'Or he,' said Count Kollin.

It is here the place of the Chorus to state that these: ideas were in the
air at the time; sparks of the Vulcanic smithy at work in politics and
pervading literature: which both Alvan and Clotilde might catch and give
out as their own, in the honest belief that the epigram was, original to
them. They were not members of a country where literature is confined to
its little paddock, without, influence on the larger field (part lawn,
part marsh) of the social world: they were readers in sympathetic action
with thinkers and literary artists. Their saying in common, 'Plutarch's
Pompeius,' may be traceable to a reading of some professorial article on
the common portrait-painting of the sage of Chaeroneia. The dainty
savageness in the 'bite' Plutarch mentions, evidently struck on a
similarity of tastes in both, as it has done with others. And in regard
to Caesar, Clotilde thought much of Caesar; she had often wished that
Caesar (for the additional pleasure in thinking of him) had been endowed
with the beauty of his rival: one or two of Plutarch's touches upon the
earlier history of Pompeius had netted her fancy, faintly (your
generosity must be equal to hearing it) stung her blood; she liked the
man; and if he had not been beaten in the end, she would have preferred
him femininely. His name was not written Pompey to her, as in English, to
sound absurd: it was a note of grandeur befitting great and lamentable
fortunes, which the young lady declined to share solely because of her
attraction to the victor, her compulsion to render unto the victor the
sunflower's homage. She rendered it as a slave: the splendid man beloved
to ecstasy by the flower of Roman women was her natural choice.

Alvan could not be even a Caesar in person, he was a Jew. Still a Jew of
whom Count Kollin spoke so warmly must be exceptional, and of the
exceptional she dreamed. He might have the head of a Caesar. She imagined
a huge head, the cauldron of a boiling brain, anything but bright to the
eye, like a pot always on the fire, black, greasy, encrusted, unkempt:
the head of a malicious tremendous dwarf. Her hungry inquiries in a city
where Alvan was well known, brought her full information of one who
enjoyed a highly convivial reputation besides the influence of his
political leadership; but no description of his aspect accompanied it,
for where he was nightly to be met somewhere about the city, none thought
of describing him, and she did not push that question because she had
sketched him for herself, and rather wished, the more she heard of his
genius, to keep him repulsive. It appeared that his bravery was as well
proved as his genius, and a brilliant instance of it had been given in
the city not long since. He had her ideas, and he won multitudes with
them: he was a talker, a writer, and an orator; and he was learned, while
she could not pretend either to learning or to a flow of rhetoric. She
could prattle deliciously, at times pointedly, relying on her intuition
to tell her more than we get from books, and on her sweet impudence for a
richer original strain. She began to appreciate now a reputation for
profound acquirements. Learned professors of jurisprudence and history
were as enthusiastic for Alvan in their way as Count Kollin. She heard
things related of Alvan by the underbreath. That circle below her own,
the literary and artistic, idolized him; his talk, his classic breakfasts
and suppers, his undisguised ambition, his indomitable energy, his
dauntlessness and sway over her sex, were subjects of eulogy all round
her; and she heard of an enamoured baroness. No one blamed Alvan. He had
shown his chivalrous valour in defending her. The baroness was not a
young woman, and she was a hardbound Blue. She had been the first to
discover the prodigy, and had pruned, corrected, and published him; he
was one of her political works, promising to be the most successful. An
old affair apparently; but the association of a woman's name with
Alvan's, albeit the name of a veteran, roused the girl's curiosity,
leading her to think his mental and magnetic powers must be of the very
highest, considering his physical repulsiveness, for a woman of rank to
yield him such extreme devotion. She commissioned her princely
serving-man, who had followed and was never far away from her, to obtain
precise intelligence of this notorious Alvan.

Prince Marko did what he could to please her; he knew something of the
rumours about Alvan and the baroness. But why should his lady trouble
herself for particulars of such people, whom it could scarcely be
supposed she would meet by accident? He asked her this. Clotilde said it
was common curiosity. She read him a short lecture on the dismal
narrowness of their upper world; and on the advantage of taking an
interest in the world below them and more enlightened; a world where
ideas were current and speech was wine. The prince nodded; if she had
these opinions, it must be good for him to have them too, and he shared
them, as it were, by the touch of her hand, and for the length of time
that he touched her hand, as an electrical shock may be taken by one far
removed from the battery, susceptible to it only through the link; he was
capable of thinking all that came to him from her a blessing--shocks,
wounds and disruptions. He did not add largely to her stock of items, nor
did he fetch new colours. The telegraph wire was his model of style. He
was more or less a serviceless Indian Bacchus, standing for sign of the
beauty and vacuity of their world: and how dismally narrow that world
was, she felt with renewed astonishment at every dive out of her
gold-fish pool into the world of tides below; so that she was ready to
scorn the cultivation of the graces, and had, when not submitting to the
smell, fanciful fits of a liking for tobacco smoke--the familiar incense
of those homes where speech was wine.

At last she fell to the asking of herself whether, in the same city with
him, often among his friends, hearing his latest intimate remarks--things
homely redolent of him as hot bread of the oven--she was ever to meet
this man upon whom her thoughts were bent to the eclipse of all others.
She desired to meet him for comparison's sake, and to criticize a popular
hero. It was inconceivable that any one popular could approach her
standard, but she was curious; flame played about him; she had some
expectation of easing a spiteful sentiment created by the recent
subjection of her thoughts to the prodigious little Jew; and some feeling
of closer pity for Prince Marko she had, which urged her to be rid of her
delusion as to the existence of a wonder-working man on our earth, that
she might be sympathetically kind to the prince, perhaps compliant, and
so please her parents, be good and dull, and please everybody, and adieu
to dreams, good night, and so to sleep with the beasts! . . .

Calling one afternoon on a new acquaintance of the flat table-land she
liked tripping down to from her heights, Clotilde found the lady in
supreme toilette, glowing, bubbling: 'Such a breakfast, my dear!' The
costly profusion, the anecdotes, the wit, the fun, the copious draughts
of the choicest of life--was there ever anything to match it? Never in
that lady's recollection, or her husband's either, she exclaimed. And
where was the breakfast? Why, at Alvan's, to be sure; where else could
such a breakfast be?

'And you know Alvan!' cried Clotilde, catching excitement from the lady's
flush.

'Alvan is one of my husband's closest friends'

Clotilde put on the playful frenzy; she made show of wringing her hands:
'Oh! happy you! you know Alvan? And everybody is to know him except me?
why? I proclaim it unjust. Because I am unmarried? I'll take a husband
to-morrow morning to be entitled to meet Alvan in the evening.'

The playful frenzy is accepted in its exact innocent signification of
'this is my pretty wilful will and way,' and the lady responded to it
cordially; for it is pleasant to have some one to show, and pleasant to
assist some one eager to see: besides, many had petitioned her for a
sight of Alvan; she was used to the request.

'You're not obliged to wait for to-morrow,' she said. 'Come to one of our
gatherings to-night. Alvan will be here.'

'You invite me?'

'Distinctly. Pray, come. He is sure to be here. We have his promise, and
Alvan never fails. Was it not Frau v. Crestow who did us the favour of
our introduction? She will bring you.'

The Frau v. Crestow was a cousin of Clotilde's by marriage, sentimental,
but strict in her reading of the proprieties. She saw nothing wrong in
undertaking to conduct Clotilde to one of those famous gatherings of the
finer souls of the city and the race; and her husband agreed to join them
after the sitting of the Chamber upon a military-budget vote. The whole
plan was nicely arranged and went well. Clotilde dressed carefully,
letting her gold-locks cloud her fine forehead carelessly, with finishing
touches to the negligence, for she might be challenged to take part in
disputations on serious themes, and a handsome young woman who has to
sustain an argument against a man does wisely when she forearms her
beauties for a reserve, to carry out flanking movements if required. The
object is to beat him.




CHAPTER III

Her hostess met her at the entrance of the rooms, murmuring that Alvan
was present, and was there: a direction of a nod that any quick-witted
damsel must pretend to think sufficient, so Clotilde slipped from her
companion and gazed into the recess of a doorless inner room, where three
gentlemen stood, backed by book cases, conversing in blue vapours of
tobacco. They were indistinct; she could see that one of them was of good
stature. One she knew; he was the master of the house, mildly Jewish. The
third was distressingly branded with the slum and gutter signs of the
Ahasuerus race. Three hats on his head could not have done it more
effectively. The vindictive caricatures of the God Pan, executed by
priests of the later religion burning to hunt him out of worship in the
semblance of the hairy, hoofy, snouty Evil One, were not more loathsome.
She sank on a sofa. That the man? Oh! Jew, and fifty times over Jew!
nothing but Jew!

The three stepped into the long saloon, and she saw how veritably
magnificent was the first whom she had noticed.

She sat at her lamb's-wool work in the little ivory frame, feeding on the
contrast. This man's face was the born orator's, with the light-giving
eyes, the forward nose, the animated mouth, all stamped for speechfulness
and enterprise, of Cicero's rival in the forum before he took the
headship of armies and marched to empire.

The gifts of speech, enterprise, decision, were marked on his features
and his bearing, but with a fine air of lordly mildness. Alas, he could
not be other than Christian, so glorious was he in build! One could
vision an eagle swooping to his helm by divine election. So vigorously
rich was his blood that the swift emotion running with the theme as he
talked pictured itself in passing and was like the play of sheet
lightning on the variations of the uninterrupted and many-glancing
outpour. Looking on him was listening. Yes, the looking on him sufficed.
Here was an image of the beauty of a new order of godlike men, that
drained an Indian Bacchus of his thin seductions at a breath-reduced him
to the state of nursery plaything, spangles and wax, in the contemplation
of a girl suddenly plunged on the deeps of her womanhood. She shrank to
smaller and smaller as she looked.

Be sure that she knew who he was. No, says she. But she knew. It
terrified her soul to think he was Alvan. She feared scarcely less that
it might not be he. Between these dreads of doubt and belief she played
at cat and mouse with herself, escaped from cat, persecuted mouse, teased
herself, and gloated. It is he! not he! he! not he! most certainly!
impossible!--And then it ran: If he, oh me! If another, woe me! For she
had come to see Alvan. Alvan and she shared ideas. They talked
marvellously alike, so as to startle Count Kollin: and supposing he was
not Alvan, it would be a bitter disappointment. The supposition that he
was, threatened her with instant and life-long bondage.

Then again, could that face be the face of a Jew? She feasted. It was a
noble profile, an ivory skin, most lustrous eyes. Perchance a Jew of the
Spanish branch of the exodus, not the Polish. There is the noble Jew as
well as the bestial Gentile. There is not in the sublimest of Gentiles a
majesty comparable to that of the Jew elect. He may well think his race
favoured of heaven, though heaven chastise them still. The noble Jew is
grave in age, but in his youth he is the arrow to the bow of his fiery
eastern blood, and in his manhood he is--ay, what you see there! a figure
of easy and superb preponderance, whose fire has mounted to inspirit and
be tempered by the intellect.

She was therefore prepared all the while for the surprise of learning
that the gentleman so unlike a Jew was Alvan; and she was prepared to
express her recordation of the circumstance in her diary with phrases of
very eminent surprise. Necessarily it would be the greatest of surprises.

The three, this man and his two of the tribe, upon whom Clotilde's
attention centred, with a comparison in her mind too sacred to be other
than profane (comparisons will thrust themselves on minds disordered),
dropped to the cushions of the double-seated sofa, by one side of which
she cowered over her wool-work, willing to dwindle to a pin's head if her
insignificance might enable her to hear the words of the speaker. He
pursued his talk: there was little danger of not hearing him. There was
only the danger of feeling too deeply the spell of his voice. His voice
had the mellow fulness of the clarionet. But for the subject, she could
have fancied a noontide piping of great Pan by the sedges. She had never
heard a continuous monologue so musical, so varied in music, amply
flowing, vivacious, interwovenly the brook, the stream, the torrent: a
perfect natural orchestra in a single instrument. He had notes less
pastorally imageable, notes that fired the blood, with the ranging of his
theme. The subject became clearer to her subjugated wits, until the
mental vivacity he roused on certain impetuous phrases of assertion
caused her pride to waken up and rebel as she took a glance at herself,
remembering that she likewise was a thinker, deemed in her society an
original thinker, an intrepid thinker and talker, not so very much
beneath this man in audacity of brain, it might be. He kindled her thus,
and the close-shut but expanded and knew the fretting desire to breathe
out the secret within it, and be appreciated in turn.

The young flower of her sex burned to speak, to deliver an opinion. She
was unaccustomed to yield a fascinated ear. She was accustomed rather to
dictate and be the victorious performer, and though now she was not
anxious to occupy the pulpit--being too strictly bred to wish for a post
publicly in any of the rostra--and meant still less to dispossess the
present speaker of the place he filled so well, she yearned to join him:
and as that could not be done by a stranger approving, she panted to
dissent. A young lady cannot so well say to an unknown gentleman: 'You
have spoken truly, sir,' as, 'That is false!' for to speak in the former
case would be gratuitous, and in the latter she is excused by the moral
warmth provoking her. Further, dissent rings out finely, and approval is
a feeble murmur--a poor introduction of oneself. Her moral warmth was
ready and waiting for the instigating subject, but of course she was
unconscious of the goad within. Excitement wafted her out of herself, as
we say, or out of the conventional vessel into the waves of her troubled
nature. He had not yet given her an opportunity for dissenting; she was
compelled to agree, dragged at his chariot-wheels in headlong agreement.

His theme was Action; the political advantages of Action; and he
illustrated his view with historical examples, to the credit of the
French, the temporary discredit of the German and English races, who tend
to compromise instead. Of the English he spoke as of a power extinct, a
people 'gone to fat,' who have gained their end in a hoard of gold and
shut the door upon bandit ideas. Action means life to the soul as to the
body. Compromise is virtual death: it is the pact between cowardice and
comfort under the title of expediency. So do we gather dead matter about
us. So are we gradually self-stifled, corrupt. The war with evil in every
form must be incessant; we cannot have peace. Let then our joy be in war:
in uncompromising Action, which need not be the less a sagacious conduct
of the war . . . . Action energizes men's brains, generates grander
capacities, provokes greatness of soul between enemies, and is the
guarantee of positive conquest for the benefit of our species. To doubt
that, is to doubt of good being to be had for the seeking. He drew
pictures of the healthy Rome when turbulent, the doomed quiescent. Rome
struggling grasped the world. Rome stagnant invited Goth and Vandal. So
forth: alliterative antitheses of the accustomed pamphleteer. At last her
chance arrived.

His opposition sketch of Inaction was refreshed by an analysis of the
character of Hamlet. Then he reverted to Hamlet's promising youth. How
brilliantly endowed was the Prince of Denmark in the beginning!

'Mad from the first!' cried Clotilde.

She produced an effect not unlike that of a sudden crack of thunder. The
three made chorus in a noise of boots on the floor.

Her hero faced about and stood up, looking at her fulgently. Their eyes
engaged without wavering on either side. Brave eyes they seemed, each
pair of them, for his were fastened on a comely girl, and she had strung
herself to her gallantest to meet the crisis.

His friends quitted him at a motion of the elbows. He knelt on the sofa,
leaning across it, with clasped hands.

'You are she!--So, then, is a contradiction of me to be the
commencement?'

'After the apparition of Hamlet's father the prince was mad,' said
Clotilde hurriedly, and she gazed for her hostess, a paroxysm of alarm
succeeding that of her boldness.

'Why should we two wait to be introduced?' said he. 'We know one another.
I am Alvan. You are she of whom I heard from Kollin: who else? Lucretia
the gold-haired; the gold-crested serpent, wise as her sire; Aurora
breaking the clouds; in short, Clotilde!'

Her heart exulted to hear him speak her name. She laughed with a radiant
face. His being Alvan, and his knowing her and speaking her name, all was
like the happy reading of a riddle. He came round to her, bowing, and his
hand out. She gave hers: she could have said, if asked, 'For good!' And
it looked as though she had given it for good.




CHAPTER IV

'Hamlet in due season,' said he, as they sat together. 'I shall convince
you.'

She shook her head.

'Yes, yes, an opinion formed by a woman is inflexible; I know that: the
fact is not half so stubborn. But at present there are two more important
actors: we are not at Elsinore. You are aware that I hoped to meet you?'

'Is there a periodical advertisement of your hopes?--or do they come to
us by intuition?'

'Kollin was right!--the ways of the serpent will be serpentine. I knew we
must meet. It is no true day so long as the goddess of the morning and
the sun-god are kept asunder. I speak of myself, by what I have felt
since I heard of you.'

'You are sure of your divinity?'

'Through my belief in yours!'

They bowed smiling at the courtly exchanges.

'And tell me,' said he, 'as to meeting me . . . ?'

She replied: 'When we are so like the rest of the world we may confess
our weakness.'

'Unlike! for the world and I meet and part: not we two.'

Clotilde attempted an answer: it would not come. She tried to be revolted
by his lording tone, and found it strangely inoffensive. His lording
presence and the smile that was like a waving feather on it compelled her
so strongly to submit to hear, as to put her in danger of appearing to
embrace this man's rapid advances.

She said: 'I first heed of you at Capri.'

'And I was at Capri seven days after you had left.'

'You knew my name then?'

'Be not too curious with necromancers. Here is the date--March 15th. You
departed on the 8th.'

'I think I did. That is a year from now.'

'Then we missed: now we meet. It is a year lost. A year is a great age!
Reflect on it and what you owe me. How I wished for a comrade at Capri!
Not a "young lady," and certainly no man. The understanding Feminine, was
my desire--a different thing from the feminine understanding, usually. I
wanted my comrade young and fair, necessarily of your sex, but with heart
and brain: an insane request, I fancied, until I heard that you were the
person I wanted. In default of you I paraded the island with Tiberius,
who is my favourite tyrant. We took the initiative against the
patricians, at my suggestion, and the Annals were written by a plebeian
demagogue, instead of by one of that party, whose account of my
extinction by command of the emperor was pathetic. He apologized in turn
for my imperial master and me, saying truly, that the misunderstanding
between us was past cement: for each of us loved the man but hated his
office; and as the man is always more in his office than he is in
himself, clearly it was the lesser portion of our friend that each of us
loved. So, I, as the weaker, had to perish, as he would have done had I
been the stronger; I admitted it, and sent my emperor my respectful
adieux, with directions for the avoiding of assassins. Mademoiselle, by
delaying your departure seven days you would have saved me from death.
You see, the official is the artificial man, and I ought to have known
there is no natural man left in us to weigh against the artificial. I
counted on the emperor's personal affection, forgetting that princes
cannot be our friends.'

'You died bravely?'

Clotilde entered into the extravagance with a happy simulation of zest.

'Simply, we will say. My time had come, and I took no sturdy pose, but
let the life-stream run its course for a less confined embankment.
Sapphire sea, sapphire sky: one believes in life there, thrills with it,
when life is ebbing: ay, as warmly as when life is at the flow in our
sick and shrivelled North--the climate for dried fish! Verily the second
death of hearing that a gold-haired Lucretia had been on the island seven
days earlier, was harder to bear. Tell me frankly--the music in Italy?'

'Amorous and martial, brainless and monotonous.'

'Excellent!' his eyes flashed delightedly. 'O comrade of comrades! that
year lost to me will count heavily as I learn to value those I have
gained. Yes, brainless! There, in music, we beat them, as politically
France beats us. No life without brain! The brainless in Art and in
Statecraft are nothing but a little more obstructive than the dead. It is
less easy to cut a way through them. But it must be done, or the
Philistine will be as the locust in his increase, and devour the green
blades of the earth. You have been trained to shudder at the demagogue?'

'I do not shudder,' said Clotilde.

'A diamond from the lapidary!--Your sentences have many facets. Well, you
are conversing with a demagogue, an avowed one: a demagogue and a Jew.
You take it as a matter of course: you should exhibit some sparkling
incredulity. The Christian is like the politician in supposing the
original obverse of him everlastingly the same, after the pattern of the
monster he was originally taught to hate. But the Jew has been a little
christianized, and we have a little bejewed the Christian. So with
demagogues: as we see the conservative crumbling, we grow conservatived.
Try to think individually upon what you have to learn collectively--that
is your task. You are of the few who will be equal to it. We are not men
of blood, believe me. I am not. For example, I detest and I decline the
duel. I have done it, and proved myself a man of metal notwithstanding.
To say nothing of the inhumanity, the senselessness of duelling revolts
me. 'Tis a folly, so your nobles practise it, and your royal wiseacre
sanctions. No blood for me: and yet I tell you that whatever opposes me,
I will sweep away. How? With the brain. If we descend to poor brute
strength or brutal craft, it is from failing in the brain: we quit the
leadership of our forces, and the descent is the beast's confession. Do I
say how? Perhaps by your aid.--You do not start and cry: "Mine!" That is
well. I have not much esteem for non-professional actresses. They are
numerous and not entertaining.--You leave it to me to talk.'

'Could I do better?'

'You listen sweetly.'

'It is because I like to hear.'

'You have the pearly little ear of a shell on the sand.'

'With the great sea sounding near it!'

Alvan drew closer to her.

'I look into your eyes and perceive that one may listen to you and speak
to you. Heart to heart, then! Yes, a sea to lull you, a sea to win
you--temperately, let us hope; by storm, if need be. My prize is found!
The good friend who did the part of Iris for us came bounding to me: "I
have discovered the wife for you, Alvan." I had previously heard of her
from another as having touched the islet of Capri. "But," said Kollin,
"she is a gold-crested serpent--slippery!" Is she? That only tells me of
a little more to be mastered. I feel my future now. Hitherto it has been
a land without sunlight. Do you know how the look of sunlight on a land
calms one? It signifies to the eye possession and repose, the end
gained--not the end to labour, just heaven! but peace to the heart's
craving, which is the renewal of strength for work, the fresh dip in the
waters of life. Conjure up your vision of Italy. Remember the meaning of
Italian light and colour: the clearness, the luminous fulness, the
thoughtful shadows. Mountain and wooded headland are solid, deep to the
eye, spirit-speaking to the mind. They throb. You carve shapes of Gods
out of that sky, the sea, those peaks. They live with you. How they
satiate the vacant soul by influx, and draw forth the troubled from its
prickly nest!--Well, and you are my sunlighted land. And you will have to
be fought for. And I see not the less repose in the prospect! Part of you
may be shifty-sand. The sands are famous for their golden shining--as you
shine. Well, then, we must make the quicksands concrete. I have a perfect
faith in you, and in the winning of you. Clearly you will have to be
fought for. I should imagine it a tough battle to come. But as I doubt
neither you nor myself, I see beyond it.--We use phrases in common, and
aphorisms, it appears. Why? but that our minds act in unison. What if I
were to make a comparison of you with Paris?--the city of Paris,
Lutetia.'

'Could you make it good?' said Clotilde.

He laughed and postponed it for a series of skimming discussions, like
swallow-flights from the nest beneath the eaves to the surface of the
stream, perpetually reverting to her, and provoking spirited replies,
leading her to fly with him in expectation of a crowning compliment that
must be singular and was evidently gathering confirmation in his mind
from the touchings and probings of her character on these flights.

She was like a lady danced off her sense of fixity, to whom the
appearance of her whirling figure in the mirror is both wonderful and
reassuring; and she liked to be discussed, to be compared to anything,
for the sake of being the subject, so as to be sure it was she that
listened to a man who was a stranger, claiming her for his own; sure it
was she that by not breaking from him implied consent, she that went
speeding in this magical rapid round which slung her more and more out of
her actual into her imagined self, compelled her to proceed, denied her
the right to faint and call upon the world for aid, and catch at it,
though it was close by and at a signal would stop the terrible circling.
The world was close by and had begun to stare. She half apprehended that
fact, but she was in the presence of the irresistible. In the presence of
the irresistible the conventional is a crazy structure swept away with
very little creaking of its timbers on the flood. When we feel its power
we are immediately primitive creatures, flying anywhere in space,
indifferent to nakedness. And after trimming ourselves for it, the sage
asks your permission to add, it will be the thing we are most certain
some day to feel. Had not she trimmed herself?--so much that she had won
fame for an originality mistaken by her for the independent mind, and
perilously, for courage. She had trimmed herself and Alvan too--herself
to meet it, and Alvan to be it. Her famous originality was a trumpet
blown abroad proclaiming her the prize of the man who sounded as loudly
his esteem for the quality--in a fair young woman of good breeding. Each
had evoked the other. Their common anticipations differed in this, that
he had expected comeliness, she the reverse--an Esau of the cities; and
seeing superb manly beauty in the place of the thick-featured sodden
satyr of her miscreating fancy, the irresistible was revealed to her on
its divinest whirlwind.

They both desired beauty; they had each stipulated for beauty before
captivity could be acknowledged; and he beholding her very attractive
comeliness, walked into the net, deeming the same a light thing to wear,
and rather a finishing grace to his armoury; but she, a trained disciple
of the conventional in social behaviour (as to the serious points and the
extremer trifles), fluttered exceedingly; she knew not what she was
doing, where her hand was, how she looked at him, how she drank in his
looks on her. Her woman's eyes had no guard they had scarcely
speculation. She saw nothing in its passing, but everything backward,
under haphazard flashes. The sight of her hand disengaged told her it had
been detained; a glance at the company reminded her that those were men
and women who had been other than phantoms; recollections of the words
she listened to, assented to, replied to, displayed the gulfs she had
crossed. And nevertheless her brain was as quick as his to press forward
to pluck the themes which would demonstrate her mental vividness and at
least indicate her force of character. The splendour of the man quite
extinguished, or over-brightened, her sense of personal charm; she set
fire to her brain to shine intellectually, treating the tale of her fair
face as a childish tale that might have a grain of truth in it, some
truth, a very little, and that little nearly worthless, merely womanly, a
poor charm of her sex. The intellectual endowment was rarer: still rarer
the moral audacity. O, to match this man's embracing discursiveness! his
ardour, his complacent energy, the full strong sound he brought out of
all subjects! He struck, and they rang. There was a bell in everything
for him; Nature gave out her cry, and significance was on all sides of
the universe; no dead stuff, no longer any afflicting lumpishness. His
brain was vivifying light. And how humane he was! how supremely tolerant!
Where she had really thought instead of flippantly tapping at the doors
of thought, or crying vagrantly for an echo, his firm footing in the
region thrilled her; and where she had felt deeper than fancifully, his
wise tenderness overwhelmed. Strange to consider: with all his precious
gifts, which must make the gift of life thrice dear to him, he was
fearless. Less by what he said than by divination she discerned that he
knew not fear. If for only that, she would have hung to him like his
shadow. She could have detected a brazen pretender. A meaner mortal
vaunting his great stores she would have written down coxcomb. Her social
training and natural perception raised her to a height to measure the
bombastical and distinguish it from the eloquently lofty. He spoke of
himself, as the towering Alp speaks out at a first view, bidding that
which he was be known. Fearless, confident, able, he could not but be, as
he believed himself, indomitable. She who was this man's mate would
consequently wed his possessions, including courage. Clotilde at once
reached the conclusion of her having it in an equal degree. Was she not
displaying it? The worthy people of the company stared, as she now
perceived, and she was indifferent; her relatives were present without
disturbing her exaltation. She wheeled above their heads in the fiery
chariot beside her sun-god. It could not but be courage, active courage,
superior to her previous tentative steps--the verbal temerities she had
supposed so dauntless. For now she was in action, now she was being tried
to match the preacher and incarnation of the virtues of action!

Alvan shaped a comparison of her with Paris, his beloved of cities--the
symbolized goddess of the lightning brain that is quick to conceive,
eager to realize ideas, impassioned for her hero, but ever putting him to
proof, graceful beyond all rhyme, colloquial as never the Muse; light in
light hands, yet valiant unto death for a principle; and therefore not
light, anything but light in strong hands, very stedfast rather: and oh!
constantly entertaining.

The comparison had to be strained to fit the living lady's shape. Did he
think it, or a dash of something like it?

His mood was luxurious. He had found the fair and youthful original woman
of refinement and station desired by him. He had good reason to wish to
find her. Having won a name, standing on firm ground, with promise of a
great career, chief of what was then taken for a growing party and is not
yet a collapsed, nor will be, though the foot on it is iron, his youth
had flown under the tutelage of an extraordinary Mentor, whom to call
Athene robs the goddess of her personal repute for wisdom in conduct, but
whose head was wise, wise as it was now grey. Verily she was original;
and a grey original should seem remarkable above a blooming blonde. If
originality in woman were our prime request, the grey should bear the
palm. She has gone through the battle, retaining the standard she carried
into it, which is a victory. Alas, that grey, so spirit-touching in Art,
should be so wintry in reality!

The discovery of a feminine original breathing Spring, softer, warmer
than the ancient one, gold instead of snowcrested, and fully as intrepid
as devoted, was an immense joy to Alvan. He took it luxuriously because
he believed in his fortune, a kind of natal star, the common heritage of
the adventurous, that brought him his good things in time, in return for
energetic strivings in a higher direction apart from his natural
longings.

Fortune had delayed, he had wintered long. All the sweeter was the breath
of the young Spring. That exquisite new sweetness robed Clotilde in the
attributes of the person dreamed of for his mate; and deductively
assuming her to possess them, he could not doubt his power of winning
her. Barriers are for those who cannot fly. The barriers were palpable
about a girl of noble Christian birth: so was the courage in her which
would give her wings, he thought, coming to that judgement through the
mixture of his knowledge of himself and his perusal of her exterior. He
saw that she could take an impression deeply enough to express it
sincerely, and he counted on it, sympathetically endowing her with his
courage to support the originality she was famed for.

They were interrupted between-whiles by weariful men running to Alvan for
counsel on various matters--how to play their game, or the exact phrasing
of some pregnant sentence current in politics or literature. He satisfied
them severally and shouldered them away, begging for peace that night.
Clotilde corroborated his accurate recital of the lines of a contested
verse of the incomparable Heinrich, and they fell to capping verses of
the poet-lucid metheglin, with here and there no dubious flavour of acid,
and a lively sting in the tail of the honey. Sentiment, cynicism, and
satin impropriety and scabrous, are among those verses, where pure poetry
has a recognized voice; but the lower elements constitute the popularity
in a cultivated society inclining to wantonness out of bravado as well as
by taste. Alvan, looking indolently royal and royally roguish, quoted a
verse that speaks of the superfluousness of a faithless lady's vowing
bite:

       'The kisses were in the course of things,
        The bite was a needless addition.'

Clotilde could not repress her reddening--Count Kollin had repeated too
much! She dropped her eyes, with a face of sculpture, then resumed their
chatter. He spared her the allusion to Pompeius. She convinced him of her
capacity for reserve besides intrepidity, and flattered him too with her
blush. She could dare to say to Kollin what her scarlet sensibility
forbade her touching on with him: not that she would not have had an airy
latitude with him to touch on what she pleased: he liked her for her
boldness and the cold peeping of the senses displayed in it: he liked
also the distinction she made.

The cry to supper conduced to a further insight of her adaptation to his
requirements in a wife. They marched to the table together, and sat
together, and drank a noble Rhine wine together--true Rauenthal. His
robustness of body and soul inspired the wish that his well-born wife
might be, in her dainty fashion, yet honestly and without mincing, his
possible boonfellow: he and she, glass in hand, thanking the bountiful
heavens, blessing mankind in chorus. It belonged to his hearty dream of
the wife he would choose, were she to be had. The position of interpreter
of heaven's benevolence to mankind through his own enjoyment of the
gifts, was one that he sagaciously demanded for himself, sharing it with
the Philistine unknowingly; and to have a wife no less wise than he on
this throne of existence was a rosy exaltation. Clotilde kindled to the
hint of his festival mood of Solomon at the banquet. She was not devoid
of a discernment of flavours; she had heard grave judges at her father's
board profoundly deliver their verdicts upon this and that vineyard and
vintage; and it is a note of patriotism in her country to be enthusiastic
for wine of the Rhine: she was, moreover, thirsty from much talking and
excitement. She drank her glass relishingly, declaring the wine princely.
Alvan smacked his hands in a rapture: 'You are not for the extract of
raisin our people have taken to copy from French Sauternes, to suit a
female predilection for sugar?'

'No, no, the grape for me!' said she: 'the Rhine grape with the elf in
it, and the silver harp and the stained legend!'

'Glorious!'

He toasted the grape. 'Wine of the grape is the young bride--the young
sun-bride! divine, and never too sweet, never cloying like the withered
sun-dried, with its one drop of concentrated sugar, that becomes ten of
gout. No raisin-juice for us! None of their too-long-on-the-stem
clusters! We are for the blood of the grape in her youth, her
heaven-kissing ardour. I have a cellar charged with the bravest of the
Rhine. We--will we not assail it, bleed it in the gallant days to come?
we two!' The picture of his bride and him drinking the sun down after a
day of savage toil was in the shout--a burst unnoticed in the incessantly
verbalizing buzz of a continental supper-table. Clotilde acquiesced: she
chimed to it like a fair boonfellow of the rollicking faun. She was
realizing fairyland.

They retired to the divan-corner where it was you-and-I between them as
with rivulets meeting and branching, running parallel, uniting and
branching again, divided by the theme, but unending in the flow of the
harmony. So ran their chirping arguments and diversions. The carrying on
of a prolonged and determined you-and-I in company intimates to those
undetermined floating atoms about us that a certain sacred something is
in process of formation, or has formed; and people looked; and looked
hard at the pair, and at one another afterward: none approached them. The
Signor conjuror who has a thousand arts for conjuring with nature was
generally considered to have done that night his most ancient and
reputedly fabulous trick--the dream of poets, rarely witnessed anywhere,
and almost too wonderful for credence in a haunt of our later
civilization. Yet there it was: the sudden revelation of the intense
divinity to a couple fused in oneness by his apparition, could be
perceived of all having man and woman in them; love at first sight, was
visible. 'Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?' And if nature,
character, circumstance, and a maid clever at dressing her mistress's
golden hair, did prepare them for Love's lightning-match, not the less
were they proclaimingly alight and in full blaze. Likewise, Time,
imperious old gentleman though we know him to be, with his fussy
reiterations concerning the hour for bed and sleep, bowed to the magical
fact of their condition, and forbore to warn them of his passing from
night to day. He had to go, he must, he has to be always going, but as
long as he could he left them on their bank by the margin of the stream,
where a shadow-cycle of the eternal wound a circle for them and allowed
them to imagine they had thrust that old driver of the dusty high-road
quietly out of the way. They were ungrateful, of course, when the
performance of his duties necessitated his pulling them up beside him
pretty smartly, but he uttered no prophecy of ever intending to rob them
of the celestial moments they had cut from him and meant to keep between
them 'for ever,' and fresh.

The hour was close on the dawn of a March morning. Alvan assisted at the
cloaking and hooding of Clotilde. Her relatives were at hand; they hung
by while he led her to the stairs and down into a spacious moonlight that
laid the traceries of the bare tree-twigs clear-black on grass and stone.

'A night to head the Spring!' said Alvan. 'Come.'

He lifted her off the steps and set her on the ground, as one who had an
established right to the privilege and she did not contest it, nor did
her people, so kingly was he, arrayed in the thunder of the bolt which
had struck the pair. These things, and many things that islands know not
of, are done upon continents, where perhaps traditions of the awfulness
of Love remain more potent in society; or it may be, that an island
atmosphere dispossesses the bolt of its promptitude to strike, or the
breastplates of the islanders are strengthened to resist the bolt, or no
tropical heat is there to create and launch it, or nothing is to be seen
of it for the haziness, or else giants do not walk there. But even where
he walked, amid a society intellectually fostering sentiment, in a land
bowing to see the simplicity of the mystery paraded, Alvan's behaviour
was passing heteroclite. He needed to be the kingly fellow he was,
crowned by another kingly fellow--the lord of hearts--to impose it
uninterruptedly. 'She is mine; I have won her this night!' his bearing
said; and Clotilde's acquiesced; and the worthy couple following them had
to exhibit a copy of the same, much wondering. Partly by habit, and of
his natural astuteness, Alvan peremptorily usurped a lead that once taken
could not easily be challenged, and would roll him on a good tideway
strong in his own passion and his lady's up against the last
defences--her parents. A difficulty with them was foreseen. What is a
difficulty!--a gate in the hunting-field: an opponent on a platform: a
knot beneath a sword: the dam to waters that draw from the heavens. Not
desiring it in this case--it would have been to love the difficulty
better than the woman--he still enjoyed the bracing prospect of a
resistance, if only because it was a portion of the dowry she brought
him. Good soldiers (who have won their grades) are often of a peaceful
temper and would not raise an invocation to war, but a view of the enemy
sets their pugnacious forces in motion, the bugle fills their veins with
electrical fire, till they are as racers on the race-course.--His inmost
hearty devil was glad of a combat that pertained to his possession of
her, for battle gives the savour of the passion to win, and victory
dignifies a prize: he was, however, resolved to have it, if possible,
according to the regular arrangement of such encounters, formal, without
snatchings, without rash violence; a victory won by personal ascendancy,
reasoning eloquence.

He laughed to hear her say, in answer to a question as to her present
feelings: 'I feel that I am carried away by a centaur!' The comparison
had been used or implied to him before.

'No!' said he, responding to a host of memories, to shake them off, 'no
more of the quadruped man! You tempt him--may I tell you that? Why, now,
this moment, at the snap of my fingers, what is to hinder our taking the
short cut to happiness, centaur and nymph? One leap and a gallop, and we
should be into the morning, leaving night to grope for us, parents and
friends to run about for the wits they lose in running. But no! No more
scandals. That silver moon invites us by its very spell of bright
serenity, to be mad: just as, when you drink of a reverie, the more
prolonged it is the greater the readiness for wild delirium at the end of
the draught. But no!' his voice deepened--'the handsome face of the orb
that lights us would be well enough were it only a gallop between us two.
Dearest, the orb that lights us two for a lifetime must be taken all
round, and I have been on the wrong side of the moon.

I have seen the other face of it--a visage scored with regrets, dead
dreams, burnt passions, bald illusions, and the like, the like!--sunless,
waterless, without a flower! It is the old volcano land: it grows one
bitter herb: if ever you see my mouth distorted you will know I am
revolving a taste of it; and as I need the antidote you give, I will not
be the centaur to win you, for that is the land where he stables himself;
yes, there he ends his course, and that is the herb he finishes by
pasturing on. You have no dislike of metaphors and parables? We Jews are
a parable people.'

'I am sure I do understand . . .' said Clotilde, catching her breath to
be conscientious, lest he should ask her for an elucidation.

'Provided always that the metaphor be not like the metaphysician's
treatise on Nature: a torch to see the sunrise!--You were going to add?'

'I was going to say, I think I understand, but you run away with me
still.'

'May the sensation never quit you!'

'It will not.'

'What a night!' Alvan raised his head: 'A night cast for our first
meeting and betrothing! You are near home?'

'The third house yonder in the moonlight.'

'The moonlight lays a white hand on it!'

'That is my window sparkling.'

'That is the vestal's cresset. Shall I blow it out?'

'You are too far. And it is a celestial flame, sir!'

'Celestial in truth! My hope of heaven! Dian's crescent will be ever on
that house for me, Clotilde. I would it were leagues distant, or the door
not forbidden!'

'I could minister to a good knight humbly.'

Alvan bent to her, on a sudden prompting:

'When do father and mother arrive?'

'To-morrow.'

He took her hand. 'To-morrow, then! The worst of omens is delay.'

Clotilde faintly gasped. Could he mean it?--he of so evil a name in her
family and circle!

Her playfulness and pleasure in the game of courtliness forsook her.

'Tell me the hour when it will be most convenient to them to receive me,'
said Alvan.

She stopped walking in sheer fright.

'My father--my mother?' she said, imaging within her the varied horror of
each and the commotion.

'To-morrow or the day after--not later. No delays! You are mine, we are
one; and the sooner my cause is pleaded the better for us both. If I
could step in and see them this instant, it would be forestalling
mischances. Do you not see, that time is due to us, and the minutes are
our gold slipping away?'

She shrank her hand back: she did not wish to withdraw the hand, only to
shun the pledge it signified. He opened an abyss at her feet, and in
deadly alarm of him she exclaimed: 'Oh! not yet; not immediately.' She
trembled, she made her petition dismal by her anguish of speechlessness.
'There will be such . . . not yet! Perhaps later. They must not be
troubled yet--at present. I am . . . I cannot--pray, delay!'

'But you are mine!' said Alvan. 'You feel it as I do. There can be no
real impediment?'

She gave an empty sigh that sought to be a run of entreaties. In fear of
his tongue she caught at words to baffle it, senseless of their
imbecility: 'Do not insist: yes, in time: they will--they--they may. My
father is not very well . . . my mother: she is not very well. They are
neither of them very well: not at present!--Spare them at present.'

To avoid being carried away, she flung herself from the centaur's back to
the disenchanting earth; she separated herself from him in spirit, and
beheld him as her father and mother and her circle would look on this
pretender to her hand, with his lordly air, his Jew blood, and his
hissing reputation--for it was a reputation that stirred the snakes and
the geese of the world. She saw him in their eyes, quite coldly: which
imaginative capacity was one of the remarkable feats of cowardice, active
and cold of brain even while the heart is active and would be warm.

He read something of her weakness. 'And supposing I decide that it must
be?'

'How can I supplicate you!' she replied with a shiver, feeling that she
had lost her chance of slipping from his grasp, as trained women of the
world, or very sprightly young wits know how to do at the critical
moment: and she had lost it by being too sincere. Her cowardice appeared
to her under that aspect.

'Now I perceive that the task is harder,' said Alvan, seeing her huddled
in a real dismay. 'Why will you not rise to my level and fear nothing!
The way is clear: we have only to take the step. Have you not seen
tonight that we are fated for one another? It is your destiny, and
trifling with destiny is a dark business. Look at me. Do you doubt my
having absolute control of myself to bear whatever they put on me to
bear, and hold firmly to my will to overcome them! Oh! no delays.'

'Yes!' she cried; 'yes, there must be.'

'You say it?'

The courage to repeat her cry was wanting.

She trembled visibly: she could more readily have bidden him bear her
hence than have named a day for the interview with her parents; but
desperately she feared that he would be the one to bid; and he had this
of the character of destiny about him, that she felt in him a maker of
facts. He was her dream in human shape, her eagle of men, and she felt
like a lamb in the air; she had no resistance, only terror of his power,
and a crushing new view of the nature of reality.

'I see!' said he, and his breast fell. Her timid inability to join with
him for instant action reminded him that he carried many weights: a bad
name among her people and class, and chains in private. He was old enough
to strangle his impulses, if necessary, or any of the brood less fiery
than the junction of his passions. 'Well, well!--but we might so soon
have broken through the hedge into the broad highroad! It is but to
determine to do it--to take the bold short path instead of the wearisome
circuit. Just a little lightning in the brain and tightening of the
heart. Battles are won in that way: not by tender girls! and she is a
girl, and the task is too much for her. So, then, we are in your hands,
child! Adieu, and let the gold-crested serpent glide to her bed, and
sleep, dream, and wake, and ask herself in the morning whether she is not
a wedded soul. Is she not a serpent? gold-crested, all the world may see;
and with a mortal bite, I know. I have had the bite before the kisses.
That is rather an unjust reversal of the order of things. Apropos, Hamlet
was poisoned--ghost-poisoned.'

'Mad, he was mad!' said Clotilde, recovering and smiling.

'He was born bilious; he partook of the father's constitution, not the
mother's. High-thoughted, quick-nerved to follow the thought, reflective,
if an interval yawned between his hand and the act, he was by nature
two-minded: as full of conscience as a nursing mother that sleeps beside
her infant:--she hears the silent beginning of a cry. Before the ghost
walked he was an elementary hero; one puff of action would have whiffed
away his melancholy. After it, he was a dizzy moralizer, waiting for the
winds to blow him to his deed-ox out. The apparition of his father to him
poisoned a sluggish run of blood, and that venom in the blood distracted
a head steeped in Wittenberg philosophy. With metaphysics in one and
poison in the other, with the outer world opened on him and this world
stirred to confusion, he wore the semblance of madness; he was throughout
sane; sick, but never with his reason dethroned.'

'Nothing but madness excuses his conduct to Ophelia!'

'Poison in the blood is a pretty good apology for infidelity to a lady.'

'No!'

'Well, to an Ophelia of fifty?' said Alvan.

Clotilde laughed, not perfectly assured of the wherefore, but pleased to
be able to laugh. Her friends were standing at the house door, farewells
were spoken, Alvan had gone. And then she thought of the person that
Ophelia of fifty might be, who would have to find a good apology for him
in his dose of snake-bite, or love of a younger woman whom he termed
gold-crested serpent.

He was a lover, surely a lover: he slid off to some chance bit of
likeness to himself in every subject he discussed with her.

And she? She speeded recklessly on the back of the centaur when he had
returned to the state of phantom and the realities he threatened her with
were no longer imminent.




CHAPTER V

Clotilde was of the order of the erring who should by rights have a short
sermon to preface an exposure of them, administering the whip to her own
sex and to ours, lest we scorn too much to take an interest in her. The
exposure she had done for herself, and she has not had the art to frame
her apology. The day after her meeting, with her eagle, Alvan, she saw
Prince Marko. She was gentle to him, in anticipation of his grief; she
could hardly be ungentle on account of his obsequious beauty, and when
her soft eyes and voice had thrilled him to an acute sensibility to the
blow, honourably she inflicted it.

'Marko, my friend, you know that I cannot be false; then let me tell you
I yesterday met the man who has but to lift his hand and I go to him, and
he may lead me whither he will.'

The burning eyes of her Indian Bacchus fixed on her till their brightness
moistened and flashed.

Whatever was for her happiness he bowed his head to, he said. He knew the
man.

Her duty was thus performed; she had plighted herself. For the first few
days she was in dread of meeting, seeing, or hearing of Alvan. She feared
the mention of a name that rolled the world so swiftly. Her parents had
postponed their coming, she had no reason for instant alarm; it was his
violent earnestness, his imperial self-confidence that she feared, as
nervous people shrink from cannon: and neither meeting, seeing, nor
hearing of him, she began to yearn, like the child whose curiosity is
refreshed by a desire to try again the startling thing which frightened
it. Her yearning grew, the illusion of her courage flooded back; she
hoped he would present himself to claim her, marvelled that he did not,
reproached him; she could almost have scorned him for listening to the
hesitations of the despicable girl so little resembling what she really
was--a poor untried girl, anxious only on behalf of her family to spare
them a sudden shock. Remembering her generous considerations in their
interests, she thought he should have known that the creature he called a
child would have yielded upon supplication to fly with him. Her
considerateness for him too, it struck her next, was the cause of her
seeming cowardly, and the man ought to have perceived it and put it
aside. He should have seen that she could be brave, and was a mate for
him. And if his shallow experience of her wrote her down nerveless, his
love should be doing.

Was it love? Her restoration to the belief in her possessing a decided
will whispered of high achievements she could do in proof of love, had
she the freedom of a man. She would not have listened (it was quite true)
to a silly supplicating girl; she would not have allowed an interval to
yawn after the first wild wooing of her. Prince Marko loved. Yes, that
was love! It failed in no sign of the passion. She set herself to study
it in Marko, and was moved by many sentiments, numbering among them pity,
thankfulness, and the shiver of a feeling between admiration and pathetic
esteem, like that the musician has for a precious instrument giving sweet
sound when shattered. He served her faithfully, in spite of his distaste
for some of his lady's commissions. She had to get her news of Alvan
through Marko. He brought her particulars of the old trial of Alvan, and
Alvan's oration in defence of himself for a lawless act of devotion to
the baroness; nothing less than the successfully scheming to wrest by
force from that lady's enemy a document precious to her lawful interests.
It was one of those cases which have a really high gallant side as well
as a bad; an excellent case for rhetoric. Marko supplied the world's
opinion of the affair, bravely owning it to be not unfavourable. Her
worthy relatives, the Frau v. Crestow and husband, had very properly
furnished a report to the family of the memorable evening; and the hubbub
over it, with the epithets applied to Alvan, intimated how he would have
been received on a visit to demand her in marriage. There was no chance
of her being allowed to enter houses where this 'rageing demagogue and
popular buffoon' was a guest; his name was banished from her hearing, so
she was compelled to have recourse to Marko. Unable to take such services
without rewarding him, she fondled: it pained her to see him suffer.
Those who toss crumbs to their domestic favourites will now and then be
moved to toss meat, which is not so good for them, but the dumb
mendicant's delight in it is winning, and a little cannot hurt. Besides,
if any one had a claim on her it was the prince; and as he was always
adoring, never importunate, he restored her to the pedestal she had been
really rudely shaken from by that other who had caught her up suddenly
into the air, and dropped her! A hand abandoned to her slave rewarded him
immeasurably. A heightening of the reward almost took his life. In the
peacefulness of dealing with a submissive love that made her queenly, the
royal, which plucked her from throne to footstool, seemed predatory and
insolent. Thus, after that scene of 'first love,' in which she had been
actress, she became almost (with an inward thrill or two for the
recovering of him) reconciled to the not seeing of the noble actor; for
nothing could erase the scene--it was historic; and Alvan would always be
thought of as a delicious electricity. She and Marko were together on the
summer excursion of her people, and quite sisterly, she could say, in her
delicate scorn of his advantages and her emotions. True gentlemen are
imperfectly valued when they are under the shadow of giants; but still
Clotilde's experience of a giant's manners was favourable to the liberty
she could enjoy in a sisterly intimacy of this kind, rather warmer than
her word for it would imply. She owned that she could better live the
poetic life--that is, trifle with fire and reflect on its charms in the
society of Marko. He was very young, he was little more than an
adolescent, and safely timid; a turn of her fingers would string or
slacken him. One could play on him securely, thinking of a distant
day--and some shipwreck of herself for an interlude--when he might be
made happy.

Her strangest mood of the tender cruelty was when the passion to
anatomize him beset her. The ground of it was, that she found him in her
likeness, adoring as she adored, and a similar loftiness; now grovelling,
now soaring; the most radiant of beings, the most abject; and the
pleasure she had of the sensational comparison was in an alteregoistic
home she found in him, that allowed of her gathering a picked
self-knowledge, and of her saying: 'That is like me: that is very like
me: that is terribly like': up to the point where the comparison wooed
her no longer with an agreeable lure of affinity, but nipped her so
shrewdly as to force her to say: 'That is he, not I': and the vivisected
youth received the caress which quickened him to wholeness at a touch. It
was given with impulsive tenderness, in pity of him. Anatomy is the title
for the operation, because the probing of herself in another, with the
liberty to cease probing as soon as it hurt her, allowed her while unhurt
to feel that she prosecuted her researches in a dead body. The moment her
strong susceptibility to the likeness shrank under a stroke of pain, she
abstained from carving, and simultaneously conscious that he lived, she
was kind to him.

'This love of yours, Marko--is it so deep?'

'I love you.'

'You think me the highest and best?'

'You are.'

'So deep that you could bear anything from me?'

'Try me!'

'Unfaithfulness?'

'You would be you!'

'Do you not say that because you cannot suspect evil of me?'

'Let me only see you!'

'You are sure that happiness would not smother it?'

'Has it done so yet?'

'Though you know I am a serpent to that man's music?'

'Ah, heaven! Oh!--do not say music. Yes! though anything!'

'And if ever you were to witness the power of his just breathing to me?'

'I would . . . . Ah!'

'What? If you saw his music working the spell?--even the first notes of
his prelude!'

'I would wait'

'It might be for long.'

'I would eat my heart.'

'Bitter! bitter!'

'I would wait till he flung you off, and kneel to you.'

She had a seizure of the nerves.

The likeness between them was, she felt, too flamingly keen to be looked
at further. She reached to the dim idea of some such nauseous devotion,
and took a shot in her breast as she did so, and abjured it, and softened
to her victim. Clotilde opened her arms, charming away her wound, as she
soothed him, both by the act of soothing and the reflection that she
could not be so very like one whom she pitied and consoled.

She was charitably tender. If it be thought that she was cruel to excess,
plead for her the temptation to simple human nature at sight of a youth
who could be precipitated into the writhings of dissolution, and raised
out of it by a smile. This young man's responsive spirit acted on her as
the discovery of specifics for restoring soundness to the frame excites
the brilliant empiric: he would slay us with benevolent soul to show the
miracle of our revival. Worship provokes the mortal goddess to a
manifestation of her powers; and really the devotee is full half to
blame.

She had latterly been thinking of Alvan's rejection of the part of
centaur; and his phrase, the quadruped man, breathed meaning. He was to
gain her lawfully after dominating her utterly. That was right, but it
levelled imagination. There is in the sentimental kingdom of Love a form
of reasoning, by which a lady of romantic notions who is dominated
utterly, will ask herself why she should be gained lawfully: and she is
moved to do so by the consideration that if the latter, no necessity can
exist for the former: and the reverse. In the union of the two conditions
she sees herself slavishly domesticated. With her Indian Bacchus
imagination rose, for he was pliant: she had only to fancy, and he was
beside her.--Quick to the saddle, away! The forest of terrors is ahead;
they are at the verge of it; a last hamlet perches on its borders; the
dwellers have haunted faces; the timbers of their huts lean to an upright
in wry splinters; warnings are moaned by men and women with the voice of
a night-wind; but on and on! the forest cannot be worse than a world
defied. They drain a cup of milk apiece and they spur, for this is the
way to the golden Indian land of the planted vine and the lover's
godship.--Ludicrous! There is no getting farther than the cup of milk
with Marko. They curvet and caper to be forward unavailingly. It should
be Alvan to bring her through the forest to the planted vine in sunland.
Her splendid prose Alvan could do what the sprig of poetry can but
suggest. Never would malicious fairy in old woman's form have offered
Alvan a cup of milk to paralyze his bride's imagination of him
confronting perils. Yet, O shameful contrariety of the fates! he who
could, will not; he who would, is incapable. Let it not be supposed that
the desire of her bosom was to be run away with in person. Her simple
human nature wished for the hero to lift her insensibly over the
difficult opening chapter of the romance--through 'the forest,' or half
imagined: that done, she felt bold enough to meet the unimagined, which,
as there was no picture of it to terrify her, seemed an easy gallop into
sunland.--Yes, but in the grasp of a great prose giant, with the poetic
departed! Naturally she turned to caress the poetic while she had it
beside her. And it was a wonder to observe the young prince's heavenly
sensitiveness to every variation of her moods. He knew without hearing
when she had next seen Alvan, though it had not been to speak to him. He
looked, and he knew. The liquid darkness of his large eastern eyes cast a
light that brought her heart out: she confessed it, and she comforted
him. The sweetest in the woman caused her double-dealing.

Now she was aware that Alvan moved behind the screen concealing him. A
common friend of Alvan and her family talked to her of him. He was an
eminent professor, a middleaged, grave and honourable man, not ignorant
that her family entertained views opposed to the pretensions of such a
man as the demagogue and Jew. Nevertheless Alvan could persuade him to
abet the scheme for his meeting Clotilde; nay, to lead to it; ultimately
to allow his own house to be their place of meeting. Alvan achieved the
first of the steps unassisted. Whether or not his character stood well
with a man of the world, his force of character, backed by solid
attainments in addition to brilliant gifts, could win a reputable citizen
and erudite to support him. Rhetoric in a worthy cause has good chances
of carrying the gravest, and the cause might reasonably seem excellent to
the professor when one promising fair to be the political genius of his
time, but hitherto not the quietest of livers, could make him believe
that marriage with this girl would be his clear salvation. The second
step was undesignedly Clotilde's.

She was on the professor's arm at one of the great winter balls of her
conductor's brethren in the law, and he said: 'Alvan is here.' She
answered: 'No, he has not yet come.'--How could she tell that he was not
present in the crowd?

'Has he come now?' said the professor.

'No.'

And no Alvan was discernible.

'Now?'

'Not yet.'

The professor stared about. She waited.

'Now he has come; he is in the room now,' said Clotilde.

Alvan was perceived. He stood in the centre of the throng surrounding him
to buzz about some recent pamphlet.

She could well play at faith in his magnetization of her, for as by
degrees she made herself more nervously apprehensive by thinking of him,
it came to an overclouding and then a panic; and that she took for the
physical sign of his presence, and by that time, the hour being late,
Alvan happened to have arrived. The touch of his hand, the instant
naturalness in their speaking together after a long separation, as if
there had not been an interval, confirmed her notion of his influence on
her, almost to the making it planetary. And a glance at the professor
revealed how picturesque it was. Alvan and he murmured aside. They spoke
of it: What wonder that Alvan, though he saw Prince Marko whirl her in
the dance, and keep her to the measure--dancing like a song of the limbs
in his desperate poor lover's little flitting eternity of the possession
of her--should say, after she had been led back to her friends: 'That is
he, then! one of the dragons guarding my apple of the Hesperides, whom I
must brush away.'

'He?' replied Clotilde, sincerely feeling Marko to be of as fractional a
weight as her tone declared him. 'Oh, he is my mute, harmless, he does
not count among the dragons.'

But there had been, notwithstanding the high presumption of his remark, a
manful thickness of voice in Alvan's 'That is he!' The rivals had
fastened a look on one another, wary, strong, and summary as the
wrestlers' first grapple. In fire of gaze, Marko was not outdone.

'He does not count? With those eyes of his?' Alvan exclaimed. He knew
something of the sex, and spied from that point of knowledge into the
character of Clotilde; not too venturesomely, with the assistance of
rumour, hazarding the suspicion which he put forth as a certainty, and
made sharply bitter to himself in proportion to the belief in it that his
vehemence engendered: 'I know all--without exception; all, everything;
all! I repeat. But what of it, if I win you? as I shall--only aid me a
little.'

She slightly surprised the man by not striving to attenuate the import of
the big and surcharged All: but her silence bore witness to his
penetrative knowledge. Dozens of amorous gentlemen, lovers, of excellent
substance, have before now prepared this peculiar dose for
themselves--the dose of the lady silent under a sort of pardoning grand
accusation; and they have had to drink it, and they have blinked over the
tonic draught with such power of taking a bracing as their constitutions
could summon. At no moment of their quaint mutual history are the sexes
to be seen standing more acutely divided. Well may the lady be silent;
her little sins are magnified to herself to the proportion of the
greatness of heart forgiving her; and that, with his mysterious
penetration and a throb of her conscience, holds her tongue-tied. She
does not imagine the effect of her silence upon the magnanimous wretch.
Some of these lovers, it has to be stated in sadness for the good name of
man, have not preserved an attitude that said so nobly, 'Child, thou art
human--thou art woman!' They have undone it and gone to pieces with an
injured lover's babble of persecuting inquiries for confessions. Some, on
the contrary, retaining the attitude, have been unable to digest the
tonic; they did not prepare their systems as they did their dose,
possibly thinking the latter a supererogatory heavy thump on a trifle,
the which was performed by them artfully for a means of swallowing and
getting that obnoxious trifle well down. These are ever after love's
dyspeptics. Very few indeed continue at heart in harmony with their
opening note to the silent fair, because in truth the general
anticipation is of her proclaiming, if not angelical innocence, a softly
reddened or blush-rose of it, where the little guiltiness lies pathetic
on its bed of white.

Alvan's robustness of temper, as a conqueror pleased with his capture,
could inspirit him to feel as he said it:

'I know all; what matters that to me?' Even her silence, extending the
'all' beyond limits, as it did to the over-knowing man, who could number
these indicative characteristics of the young woman: impulsive, without
will, readily able to lie: her silence worked no discord in him. He would
have remarked, that he was not looking out for a saint, but rather for a
sprightly comrade, perfectly feminine, thoroughly mastered, young,
graceful, comely, and a lady of station. Once in his good keeping, her
lord would answer for her. And this was a manfully generous view of the
situation. It belongs to the robustness of the conqueror's mood. But how
of his opinion of her character in the fret of a baffling, a repulse, a
defeat? Supposing the circumstances not to have helped her to shine as a
heroine, while he was reduced to appear no hero to himself! Wise are the
mothers who keep vigilant personal watch over their girls, were it only
to guard them at present, from the gentleman's condescending generosity,
until he has become something more than robust in his ideas of the
sex--say, for lack of the ringing word, fraternal.

Clotilde never knew, and Alvan would have been unable to date, the origin
of the black thing flung at her in time to come--when the man was
frenzied, doubtless, but it was in his mind, and more than froth of
madness.

After the night of the ball they met beneath the sanctioning roof of the
amiable professor; and on one occasion the latter, perhaps waxing
anxious, and after bringing about the introduction of Clotilde to the
sister of Alvan, pursued his prudent measures bypassing the pair through
a demi-ceremony of betrothal. It sprang Clotilde astride nearer to
reality, both actually and in feeling; and she began to show the change
at home. A rebuff that came of the coupling of her name with Alvan's
pushed her back as far below the surface as she had ever been. She waited
for him to take the step she had again implored him not yet to take; she
feared that he would, she marvelled at his abstaining; the old wheel
revolved, as it ever does with creatures that wait for circumstances to
bring the change they cannot work for themselves; and once more the two
fell asunder. She had thoughts of the cloister. Her venerable relative
died joining her hand to Prince Marko's; she was induced to think of
marriage. An illness laid her prostrate; she contemplated the peace of
death.

Shortly before she fell sick the prince was a guest of her father's, and
had won the household by his perfect amiability as an associate. The
grace and glow, and some of the imaginable accomplishments of an Indian
Bacchus were native to him. In her convalescence, she asked herself what
more she could crave than the worship of a godlike youth, whom she in
return might cherish, strengthening his frail health with happiness. For
she had seen how suffering ate him up; he required no teaching in the
Spartan virtue of suffering, wolf-gnawed, silently. But he was a flower
in sunshine to happiness, and he looked to her for it. Why should she
withhold from him a thing so easily given? The convalescent is receptive
and undesiring, or but very faintly desiring: the new blood coming into
the frame like first dawn of light has not stirred the old passions; it
is infant nature, with a tinge of superadded knowledge that is not cloud
across it and lends it only a tender wistfulness.

Her physician sentenced her to the Alps, whither a friend, a daughter of
our island, whose acquaintance she had made in Italy, was going, and at
an invitation Clotilde accompanied her, and she breathed Alpine air.
Marko sank into the category of dreams during sickness. There came a
letter from the professor mentioning that Alvan was on one of the kingly
Alpine heights in view, and the new blood running through her veins
became a torrent. He there! So near! Could he not be reached?

He had a saying: Two wishes make a will.

The wishes of two lovers, he meant. A prettier sentence for lovers, and
one more intoxicating to them, was never devised. It chirrups of the dear
silly couple. Well, this was her wish. Was it his? Young health on the
flow of her leaping blood cried out that it could not be other than
Alvan's wish; she believed in his wishing it. Then as he wished and she
wished, she had the will immediately, and it was all the more her own for
being his as well. She hurried her friend and her friend's friends on
horseback off to the heights where the wounded eagle lodged overlooking
mountain and lake. The professor reported him outwearied with excess of
work. Alvan lived the lives of three; the sins of thirty were laid to his
charge. Do you judge of heroes as of lesser men? Her reckless defence of
him, half spoken, half in her mind, helped her to comprehend his dealings
with her, and how it was that he stormed her and consented to be beaten.
He had a thousand occupations, an ambition out of the world of love,
chains to break, temptations, leanings . . . tut, tut! She had not lived
in her circle of society, and listened to the tales of his friends and
enemies, and been the correspondent of flattering and flattered men of
learning, without understanding how a man like Alvan found diversions
when forbidden to act in a given direction: and now that her healthful
new blood inspired the courage to turn two wishes to a will, she saw both
herself and him very clearly, enough at least to pardon the man more than
she did herself. She had perforce of her radiant new healthfulness
arrived at an exact understanding of him. Where she was deluded was in
supposing that she would no longer dread his impetuous disposition to
turn rosy visions into facts. But she had the revived convalescent's
ardour to embrace things positive while they were not knocking at the
door; dreams were abhorrent to her, tasteless and innutritious; she cast
herself on the flood, relying on his towering strength and mastery of men
and events to bring her to some safe landing--the dream of hearts athirst
for facts.




CHAPTER VI

Alvan was at his writing-table doing stout gladiator's work on paper in a
chamber of one of the gaunt hotels of the heights, which are Death's
Heads there in Winter and have the tongues in Summer, when a Swiss lad
entered with a round grin to tell him that a lady on horseback below had
asked for him--Dr. Alvan. Who could the lady be? He thought of too many.
The thought of Clotilde was dismissed in its dimness. Issuing and
beholding her, his face became illuminated as by a stroke of sunlight.

'Clotilde! by all the holiest!'

She smiled demurely, and they greeted.

She admired the look of rich pleasure shining through surprise in him.
Her heart thanked him for appearing so handsome before her friends.

'I was writing,' said he. 'Guess to whom?--I had just finished my
political stuff, and fell on a letter to the professor and another for an
immediate introduction to your father.'

'True?'

'The truth, as you shall see. So, you have come, you have found me! This
time if I let you slip, may I be stamped slack-fingered!'

'"Two wishes make a will," you say.'

He answered her with one of his bursts of brightness.

Her having sought him he read for the frank surrender which he was ready
to match with a loyal devotion to his captive. Her coming cleared
everything.

Clotilde introduced him to her friends, and he was enrolled a member of
the party. His appearance was that of a man to whom the sphinx has
whispered. They ascended to the topmost of the mountain stages, to
another caravanserai of tourists, whence the singular people emerge in
morning darkness night-capped and blanketed, and behold the great orb of
day at his birth--he them.

Walking slowly beside Clotilde on the mountain way, Alvan said: 'Two
wishes! Mine was in your breast. You wedded yours to it. At last!--and we
are one. Not a word more of time lost. My wish is almost a will in
itself--was it not?--and has been wooing yours all this while!--till the
sleeper awakened, the well-spring leapt up from the earth; and our two
wishes united dare the world to divide them. What can? My wish was your
destiny, yours is mine. We are one.' He poetized on his passion, and
dramatized it: 'Stood you at the altar, I would pluck you from the man
holding your hand! There is no escape for you. Nay, into the vaults, were
you to grow pale and need my vital warmth--down to the vaults! Speak--or
no: look! That will do. You hold a Titan in your eyes, like metal in the
furnace, to turn him to any shape you please, liquid or solid. You make
him a god: he is the river Alvan or the rock Alvan: but fixed or flowing,
he is lord of you. That is the universal penalty: you must, if you have
this creative soul, be the slave of your creature: if you raise him to
heaven, you must be his! Ay, look! I know the eyes! They can melt
granite, they can freeze fire. Pierce me, sweet eyes! And now flutter,
for there is that in me to make them.'

'Consider!' Clotilde flutteringly entreated him.

'The world? you dear heaven of me! Looking down on me does not compromise
you, and I am not ashamed of my devotions. I sat in gloom: you came: I
saw my goddess and worshipped. The world, Lutece, the world is a variable
monster; it rends the weak whether sincere or false; but those who weld
strength with sincerity may practise their rites of religion publicly,
and it fawns to them, and bellows to imitate. Nay, I say that strength in
love is the sole sincerity, and the world knows it, muffs it in the air
about us, and so we two are privileged. Politically also we know that
strength is the one reality: the rest is shadow. Behind the veil of our
human conventions power is constant as ever, and to perceive the fact is
to have the divining rod-to walk clear of shams. He is the teacher who
shows where power exists: he is the leader who wakens and forms it. Why
have I unfailingly succeeded?--I never doubted! The world voluntarily
opens a path to those who step determinedly. You--to your honour?--I
won't decide--but you have the longest in my experience resisted. I have
a Durandal to hew the mountain walls; I have a voice for ears, a net for
butterflies, a hook for fish, and desperation to plunge into marshes: but
the feu follet will not be caught. One must wait--wait till her desire to
have a soul bids her come to us. She has come! A soul is hers: and see
how, instantly, the old monster, the world, which has no soul--not yet:
we are helping it to get one--becomes a shadow, powerless to stop or
overawe. For I do give you a soul, think as you will of it. I give you
strength to realize, courage to act. It is the soul that does things in
this life--the rest is vapour. How do we distinguish love?--as we do
music by the pure note won from resolute strings. The tense chord is
music, and it is love. This higher and higher mountain air, with you
beside me, sweeps me like a harp.'

'Oh! talk on, talk on! talk ever! do not cease talking to me!' exclaimed
Clotilde.

'You feel the mountain spirit?'

'I feel that you reveal it.'

'Tell me the books you have been reading.'

'Oh, light literature-poor stuff.'

'When we two read together you will not say that. Light literature is the
garden and the orchard, the fountain, the rainbow, the far view; the view
within us as well as without. Our blood runs through it, our history in
the quick. The Philistine detests it, because he has no view, out or in.
The dry confess they are cut off from the living tree, peeled and
sapless, when they condemn it. The vulgar demand to have their pleasures
in their own likeness--and let them swamp their troughs! they shall not
degrade the fame of noble fiction. We are the choice public, which will
have good writing for light reading. Poet, novelist, essayist, dramatist,
shall be ranked honourable in my Republic. I am neither, but a man of
law, a student of the sciences, a politician, on the road to government
and statecraft: and yet I say I have learnt as much from light literature
as from heavy-as much, that is, from the pictures of our human blood in
motion as from the clever assortment of our forefatherly heaps of bones.
Shun those who cry out against fiction and have no taste for elegant
writing. For to have no sympathy with the playful mind is not to have a
mind: it is a test. But name the books.'

She named one or two.

'And when does Dr. Alvan date the first year of his Republic?'

'Clotilde!' he turned on her.

'My good sir?'

'These worthy good people who are with you: tell me-to-morrow we leave
them!'

'Leave them?'

'You with me. No more partings. The first year, the first day shall be
dated from to-morrow. You and I proclaim our Republic on these heights.
All the ceremonies to follow. We will have a reaping of them, and make a
sheaf to present to the world with compliments. To-morrow!'

'You do not speak seriously?'

'I jest as little as the Talmud. Decide at once, in the happy flush of
this moment.'

'I cannot listen to you, dear sir!'

'But your heart beats!'

'I am not mistress of it.'

'Call me master of it. I make ready for to-morrow.'

'No! no! no! A thousand times no! You have been reading too much fiction
and verse. Properly I should spurn you.'

'Will you fail me, play feu follet, ward me off again?'

'I must be won by rules, brave knight!'

'Will you be won?'

'And are you he--the Alvan who would not be centaur?'

'I am he who chased a marsh-fire, and encountered a retiarius, and the
meshes are on my head and arms. I fancied I dealt with a woman; a woman
needing protection! She has me fast--I am netted, centaur or man. That is
between us two. But think of us facing the world, and trust me; take my
hand, take the leap; I am the best fighter in that fight. Trust it to me,
and all your difficulties are at an end. To fly solves the problem.'

'Indeed, indeed, I have more courage than I had,' said Clotilde.

His eyes dilated, steadied, speculated, weighed her.

'Put it to proof while you can believe in it!'

'How is it every one but you thinks me bold?' she complained.

'Because I carry a touchstone that brings out the truth. I am your
reality: all others are phantoms. You can impose on them, not on me.
Courage for one inspired plunge you may have, and it will be your
salvation:--southward, over to Italy, that is the line of flight, and the
subsequent struggle will be mine: you will not have to face it. But the
courage for daily contention at home, standing alone, while I am distant
and maligned--can you fancy your having that? No! be wise of what you
really are; cast the die for love, and mount away tomorrow.'

'Then,' said Clotilde, with elvish cunning, 'do you doubt your ability to
win me without a scandal?'

'Back me, and I win you!' he replied in a tone of unwonted humility: a
sudden droop.

She let her hand fall. He grasped it.

'Gradations appear to be unknown to you,' she said.

He cried out: 'Count the years of life, span them, think of the work to
be done, and ask yourself whether time and strength should run to waste
in retarding the inevitable? Pottering up steps that can be taken at one
bound is very well for peasant pilgrims whose shrine is their bourne, and
their kneecaps the footing stumps. But for us two life begins up there.
Onward, and everywhere around, when we two are together, is our shrine. I
have worked, and wasted life; I have not lived, and I thirst to live.'

She murmured, in a fervour, 'You shall!' and slipped behind her defences.
'To-morrow morning we shall wander about; I must have a little time; all
to-morrow morning we can discuss plans.'

'You know you command me,' said he, and gazed at her.

She was really a child compared with him in years, and if it was an
excuse for taking her destiny into his hands, she consenting,--it was
also a reason why he dared not press his whole weight to win her to the
step.

She had the pride of the secret knowledge of her command of this giant at
the long table of the guests at dinner, where, after some play of knife
and fork among notable professors, Prussian officers, lively Frenchmen
and Italians, and the usual over-supply of touring English of both sexes,
not encouraging to conversation in their look of pallid disgust of the
art, Alvan started general topics and led them. The lead came to him
naturally, because he was a natural speaker, of a mind both stored and
effervescent; and he was genial, interested in every growth of life. She
did not wonder at his popularity among men of all classes and sets, or
that he should be famed for charming women. Her friend was enraptured
with him. Friendly questions pressed in an evening chatter between the
ladies, and Clotilde fenced, which is half a confession.

'But you are not engaged?' said the blunt Englishwoman.

According to the explanation, Clotilde was hardly engaged. It was not an
easy thing to say how she stood definitely. She had obeyed her dying
relative and dearest on earth by joining her hand to Prince Marko's, and
had pleased her parents by following it up with the kindest attentions to
the prince. It had been done, however, for the sake of peace; and chiefly
for his well-being. She had reserved her full consent: the plighting was
incomplete. Prince Marko knew that there was another, a magical person, a
genius of the ring, irresistible. He had been warned, that should the
other come forth to claim her . . . . And she was about to write to him
this very night to tell him . . . tell him fully . . . . In truth, she
loved both, but each so differently! And both loved her! And she had to
make her choice of one, and tell the prince she did love him, but . . .
Dots are the best of symbols for rendering cardisophistical subtleties
intelligible, and as they are much used in dialogue, one should have now
and then permission to print them. Especially feminine dialogue referring
to matters of the uncertain heart takes assistance from troops of dots;
and not to understand them at least as well as words, when words have as
it were conducted us to the brink of expression, and shown us the
precipice, is to be dull, bucolic of the marketplace.

Sunless rose the morning. The blanketed figures went out to salute a
blanketed sky. Drizzling they returned, images of woefulness in various
forms, including laughter's. Alvan frankly declared himself the
disappointed showman; he had hoped for his beloved to see the sight long
loved by him of golden chariot and sun-steeds crossing the peaks and the
lakes; and his disappointment became consternation on hearing Clotilde's
English friend (after objection to his pagan clothing of the solemn
reality of sunrise, which destroyed or minimized by too materially
defining a grandeur that derived its essence from mystery, she thought)
announce the hour for her departure. He promised her a positive sunrise
if she would delay. Her child lay recovering from an illness in the town
below, and she could not stay. But Clotilde had coughed in the damp
morning air, and it would, he urged, be dangerous for her to be exposed
to it. Had not the lady heard her cough? She had, but personally she was
obliged to go; with her child lying ill she could not remain. 'But,
madam, do you hear that cough again? Will you drag her out with such a
cough as that?' The lady repeated 'My child!' Clotilde said it had been
agreed they should descend this day; her friend must be beside her child.
Alvan thundered an 'Impossible!' The child was recovering; Clotilde was
running into danger: he argued with the senseless woman, opposing reason
to the feminine sentiment of the maternal, and of course he was beaten.
He was compelled to sit and gnaw his eloquence. Clotilde likened his
appearance to a strangled roar. 'Mothers and their children are too much
for me!' he said, penitent for his betrayal of over-urgency, as he helped
to wrap her warmly, and counselled her very mode of breathing in the raw
mountain atmosphere.

'I admire you for knowing when to yield,' said she.

He groaned, with frown and laugh: 'You know what I would beg!'

She implored him to have some faith in her.

The missiles of the impassioned were discharged at the poor English: a
customary volley in most places where they intrude after quitting their
shores, if they diverge from the avenue of hotel-keepers and waiters: but
Clotilde pointed out to him that her English friend was not showing
coldness in devoting herself to her child.

'No, they attend to their duties,' he assented generally, desperately
just.

'And you owe it to her that you have seen me.'

'I do,' he said, and forthwith courted the lady to be forgiven.

Clotilde was taken from him in a heavy downpour and trailing of mists.

At the foot of the mountain a boy handed her a letter from Alvan--a
burning flood, rolled out of him like lava after they had separated on
the second plateau, and confided to one who knew how to outstrip
pathfarers. She entered her hotel across the lake, and met a telegram. At
night the wires flashed 'Sleep well' to her; on her awakening, 'Good
morning.' A lengthened history of the day was telegraphed for her
amusement. Again at night there was a 'God guard you!'

'Who can resist him?' sighed Clotilde, excited, nervous, flattered,
happy, but yearning to repose and be curtained from the buzz of the
excess of life that he put about her. This time there was no prospect of
his courtship relapsing.

'He is a wonderful, an ideal lover!' replied her friend.

'If he were only that!' said Clotilde, musing expressively. 'If, dear
Englishwoman, he were only that, he might be withstood. But Alvan mounts
high over such lovers: he is a wonderful and ideal man: so great, so
generous, heroical, giant-like, that what he wills must be.'

The Englishwoman was quick enough to seize an indication difficult to
miss--more was expected to be said of him.

'You see the perfect gentleman in Dr. Alvan,' she remarked, for she had
heard him ordering his morning bath at the hotel, and he had also been
polite to her under vexation.

Clotilde nodded hurriedly; she saw something infinitely greater, and
disliked the bringing of that island microscope to bear upon a giant. She
found it repugnant to hear a word of Alvan as a perfect gentleman.
Justly, however, she took him for a splendid nature, and assuming upon
good authority that the greater contains the lesser, she supposed the
lesser to be a chiselled figure serviceably alive in the embrace.




BOOK 2.




CHAPTER VII

He was down on the plains to her the second day, and as usual when they
met, it was as if they had not parted; his animation made it seem so. He
was like summer's morning sunlight, his warmth striking instantly through
her blood dispersed any hesitating strangeness that sometimes gathers
during absences, caused by girlish dread of a step to take, or shame at
the step taken, when coldish gentlemen rather create these backflowings
and gaps in the feelings. She had grown reconciled to the perturbation of
his messages, and would have preferred to have him startling and
thrilling her from a distance; but seeing him, she welcomed him, and
feeling in his bright presence not the faintest chill of the fit of
shyness, she took her bravery of heart for a sign that she had reached
his level, and might own it by speaking of the practical measures to lead
to their union. On one subject sure to be raised against him by her
parents, she had a right to be inquisitive: the baroness.

She asked to see a photograph of her.

Alvan gave her one out of his pocketbook, and watched her eyelids in
profile as she perused those features of the budless grey woman. The
eyelids in such scrutinies reveal the critical mind; Clotilde's drooped
till they almost closed upon their lashes--deadly criticism.

'Think of her age,' said Alvan, colouring. He named a grandmaternal date
for the year of the baroness's birth.

Her eyebrows now stood up; her contemplation of those disenchanting
lineaments came to an abrupt finish.

She returned the square card to him, slowly shaking her head, still
eyeing earth as her hand stretched forth the card laterally. He could not
contest the woeful verdict.

'Twenty years back!' he murmured, writhing. The baroness was a woman fair
to see in the days twenty years back, though Clotilde might think it
incredible: she really was once.

Clotilde resumed her doleful shaking of the head; she sighed. He
shrugged; she looked at him, and he blinked a little. For the first time
since they had come together she had a clear advantage, and as it was
likely to be a rare occasion, she did not let it slip. She sighed again.
He was wounded by her underestimate of his ancient conquest.

'Yes--now,' he said, impatiently.

'I cannot feel jealousy, I cannot feel rivalry,' said she, sad of voice.

The humour of her tranced eyes in the shaking head provoked him to defend
the baroness for her goodness of heart, her energy of brain.

Clotilde 'tolled' her naughty head.

'But it is a strong face,' she said, 'a strong face--a strong jaw, by
Lavater! You were young--and daringly adventurous; she was captivating in
her distress. Now she is old--and you are friends.'

'Friends, yes,' Alvan replied, and praised the girl, as of course she
deserved to be praised for her open mind.

'We are friends!' he said, dropping a deep-chested breath. The title this
girl scornfully supplied was balm to the vanity she had stung, and his
burnt skin was too eager for a covering of any sort to examine the mood
of the giver. She had positively humbled him so far as with a single word
to relieve him; for he had seen bristling chapters in her look at the
photograph. Yet for all the natural sensitiveness of the man's vanity, he
did not seek to bury the subject at the cost of a misconception injurious
in the slightest degree to the sentiments he entertained toward the older
lady as well as the younger. 'Friends! you are right; good friends; only
you should know that it is just a little--a trifle different. The fact
is, I cannot kill the past, and I would not. It would try me sharply to
break the tie connecting us, were it possible to break it. I am bound to
her by gratitude. She is old now; and were she twice that age, I should
retain my feeling for her. You raise your eyes, Clotilde! Well, when I
was much younger I found this lady in desperate ill-fortune, and she
honoured me with her confidence. Young man though I was, I defended her;
I stopped at no measure to defend her: against a powerful husband,
remember--the most unscrupulous of foes, who sought to rob her of every
right she possessed. And what I did then I again would do. I was vowed to
her interests, to protect a woman shamefully wronged; I did not stick at
trifles, as you know; you have read my speech in defence of myself before
the court. By my interpretation of the case, I was justified; but I
estranged my family and made the world my enemy. I gave my time and
money, besides the forfeit of reputation, to the case, and reasonably
there was an arrangement to repay me out of the estate reserved for her,
so that the baroness should not be under the degradation of feeling
herself indebted. You will not think that out of the way: men of the
world do not. As for matters of the heart between us, we're as far apart
as the Poles.'

He spoke hurriedly. He had said all that could be expected of him.

They were in a wood, walking through lines of spruce firs of deep golden
green in the yellow beams. One of these trees among its well-robed
fellows fronting them was all lichen-smitten. From the low sweeping
branches touching earth to the plumed top, the tree was dead-black as its
shadow; a vision of blackness.

'I will compose a beautiful, dutiful, modest, oddest, beseeching,
screeching, mildish, childish epistle to her, and you shall read it, and
if you approve it, we shall despatch it,' said Clotilde.

'There speaks my gold-crested serpent at her wisest!' replied Alvan. 'And
now for my visit to your family: I follow you in a day. En avant! contre
les canons! A run to Lake Leman brings us to them in the afternoon. I
shall see you in the evening. So our separation won't be for long this
time. All the auspices are good. We shall not be rich--nor poor.'

Clotilde reminded him that a portion of money would be brought to the
store by her.

'We don't count it,' said he. 'Not rich, certainly. And you will not
expect me to make money by my pen. Above all things I detest the writing
for money. Fiction and verse appeal to a besotted public, that judges of
the merit of the work by the standard of its taste: avaunt! And
journalism for money is Egyptian bondage. No slavery is comparable to the
chains of hired journalism. My pen is my fountain--the key of me; and I
give my self, I do not sell. I write when I have matter in me and in the
direction it presses for, otherwise not one word!'

'I would never ask you to sell yourself,' said Clotilde. 'I would rather
be in want of common comforts.'

He squeezed her wrist. They were again in front of the black-draped
blighted tree. It was the sole tree of the host clad thus in scurf
bearing a semblance of livid metal. They looked at it as having seen it
before, and passed on.

'But the wife of Sigismund Alvan will not be poor in renown!' he resumed,
radiating his full bloom on her.

'My highest ambition is to be Sigismund Alvan's wife!' she exclaimed.

To hear her was as good as wine, and his heart came out on a genial
chuckle. 'Ay, the choice you have made is not, by heaven, so bad.
Sigismund Alvan's wife shall take the foremost place of all. Look at me.'
He lifted his head to the highest on his shoulders, widening his eagle
eyes. He was now thoroughly restored and in his own upper element,
expansive after the humiliating contraction of his man's vanity under the
glances of a girl. 'Do you take me for one who could be content with the
part of second? I will work and do battle unceasingly, but I will have
too the prize of battle to clasp it, savour it richly. I was not
fashioned to be the lean meek martyr of a cause, not I. I carry too
decisive a weight in the balance to victory. I have a taste for fruits,
my fairest! And Republics, my bright Lutetia, can give you splendid
honours.' He helped her to realize this with the assuring splendour of
his eyes.

'"Bride of the Elect of the People!" is not that as glorious a title,
think you, as queen of an hereditary sovereign mumbling of God's grace on
his worm-eaten throne? I win that seat by service, by the dedication of
this brain to the people's interests. They have been ground to the dust,
and I lift them, as I did a persecuted lady in my boyhood. I am the
soldier of justice against the army of the unjust. But I claim my reward.
If I live to fight, I live also to enjoy. I will have my station. I win
it not only because I serve, but because also I have seen, have seen
ahead, seen where all is dark, read the unwritten--because I am soldier
and prophet. The brain of man is Jove's eagle and his lightning on
earth--the title to majesty henceforth. Ah! my fairest; entering the city
beside me, and the people shouting around, she would not think her choice
a bad one?'

Clotilde made sign and gave some earnest on his arm of ecstatic hugging.

'We may have hard battles, grim deceptions, to go through before that day
comes,' he continued after a while. 'The day is coming, but we must wait
for it, work on. I have the secret of how to head the people--to put a
head to their movement and make it irresistible, as I believe it will be
beneficent. I set them moving on the lines of the law of things. I am no
empty theorizer, no phantasmal speculator; I am the man of science in
politics. When my system is grasped by the people, there is but a step to
the realization of it. One step. It will be taken in my time, or
acknowledged later. I stand for index to the people of the path they
should take to triumph--must take, as triumph they must sooner or later:
not by the route of what is called Progress--pooh! That is a middle-class
invention to effect a compromise. With the people the matter rests with
their intelligence! meanwhile my star is bright and shines reflected.'

'I notice,' she said, favouring him with as much reflection as a splendid
lover could crave for, 'that you never look down, you never look on the
ground, but always either up or straight before you.'

'People have remarked it,' said he, smiling. 'Here we are at this
funereal tree again. All roads lead to Rome, and ours appears to conduct
us perpetually to this tree. It 's the only dead one here.'

He sighted the plumed black top and along the swelling branches
decorously clothed in decay: a salted ebon moss when seen closely; the
small grey particles giving a sick shimmer to the darkness of the mass.
It was very witch-like, of a witch in her incantation-smoke.

'Not a single bare spot! but dead, dead as any peeled and fallen!' said
Alvan, fingering a tuft of the sooty snake-lichen. 'This is a tree for a
melancholy poet--eh, Clotilde?--for him to come on it by moonlight, after
a scene with his mistress, or tales of her! By the way and by the way, my
fair darling, let me never think of your wearing this kind of garb for
me, should I be ordered off the first to join the dusky army below. Women
who put on their dead husbands in public are not well-mannered women,
though they may be excellent professional widows, excellent!'

He snapped the lichen-dust from his fingers, observing that he was not
sure the contrast of the flourishing and blighted was not more impressive
in sunlight: and then he looked from the tree to his true love's hair.
The tree at a little distance seemed run over with sunless lizards: her
locks were golden serpents.

'Shall I soon see your baroness?' Clotilde asked him.

'Not in advance of the ceremony,' he answered. 'In good time. You
understand--an old friend making room for a new one, and that one young
and beautiful, with golden tresses; at first . . . ! But her heart is
quite sound. Have no fear! I guarantee it; I know her to the roots. She
desires my welfare, she does my behests. If I am bound to her by
gratitude, so, and in a greater degree, is she to me. The utmost she will
demand is that my bride shall be worthy of me--a good mate for me in the
fight to come; and I have tested my bride and found her half my heart;
therefore she passes the examination with the baroness.'

They left the tree behind them.

'We will take good care not to return this way again,' said Alvan,
without looking back. 'That tree belongs to a plantation of the under
world; its fellows grow in the wood across Acheron, and that tree has
looked into the ghastliness of the flood and seen itself. Hecate and
Hermes know about it. Phoebus cannot light it. That tree stands for Death
blooming. We think it sinister, but down there it is a homely tree. Down
there! When do we go? The shudder in that tree is the air exchanging
between Life and Death--the ghosts going and coming: it's on the border
line. I just felt the creep. I think you did. The reason is--there is
always a material reason--that you were warm, and a bit of chill breeze
took you as you gazed; while for my part I was imagining at that very
moment what of all possible causes might separate us, and I acknowledged
that death could do the trick. But death, my love, is far from us two!'

'Does she look as grimmish as she does in the photograph?' said Clotilde.

'Who? the baroness?' Alvan laughed. The baroness was not so easily
defended from a girl as from her husband, it appeared. 'She is the best
of comrades, best of friends. She has her faults; may not relish the writ
announcing her final deposition, but be you true to me, and as true as
she has unfailingly been to me, she will be to you. That I can promise.
My poor Lucie! She is winter, if you will. It is not the winter of the
steppes; you may compare her to winter in a noble country; a fine
landscape of winter. The outlines of her face . . . . She has a great
brain. How much I owe that woman for instruction! You meet now and then
men who have the woman in them without being womanized; they are the pick
of men. And the choicest women are those who yield not a feather of their
womanliness for some amount of manlike strength. And she is one; man's
brain, woman's heart. I thought her unique till I heard of you. And how
do I stand between you two? She has the only fault you can charge me
with; she is before me in time, as I am before you. Shall I spoil you as
she spoilt me? No, no! Obedience to a boy is the recognition of the
heir-apparent, and I respect the salique law as much as I love my love. I
do not offer obedience to a girl, but succour, support. You will not rule
me, but you will invigorate, and if you are petted, you shall not be
spoilt. Do not expect me to show like that undertakerly tree till my
years are one hundred. Even then it will be dangerous to repose beneath
my branches in the belief that I am sapless because I have changed
colour. We Jews have a lusty blood. We are strong of the earth. We serve
you, but you must minister to us. Sensual? We have truly excellent
appetites. And why not? Heroical too! Soldiers, poets, musicians; the
Gentile's masters in mental arithmetic--keenest of weapons: surpassing
him in common sense and capacity for brotherhood. Ay, and in charity; or
what stores of vengeance should we not have nourished! Already we have
the money-bags. Soon we shall hold the chief offices. And when the
popular election is as unimpeded as the coursing of the blood in a
healthy body, the Jew shall be foremost and topmost, for he is
pre-eminently by comparison the brain of these latter-day communities.
But that is only my answer to the brutish contempt of the Jew. I am no
champion of a race. I am for the world, for man!'

Clotilde remarked that he had many friends, all men of eminence, and a
large following among the people.

He assented: 'Yes: Tresten, Retka, Kehlen, the Nizzian. Yes, if I were
other than for legality:--if it came to a rising, I could tell off able
lieutenants.'

'Tell me of your interview with Ironsides,' she said proudly and fondly.

'Would this ambitious little head know everything?' said Alvan, putting
his lips among the locks. 'Well, we met: he requested it. We agreed that
we were on neutral ground for the moment: that he might ultimately have
to decapitate me, or I to banish him, but temporarily we could compare
our plans for governing. He showed me his hand. I showed him mine. We
played open-handed, like two at whist. He did not doubt my honesty, and I
astonished him by taking him quite in earnest. He has dealt with
diplomatists, who imagine nothing but shuffling: the old Ironer! I love
him for his love of common sense, his contempt of mean deceit. He will
outwit you, but his dexterity is a giant's--a simple evolution rapidly
performed: and nothing so much perplexes pygmies! Then he has them,
bagsful of them! The world will see; and see giant meet giant, I suspect.
He and I proposed each of us in the mildest manner contrary
schemes--schemes to stiffen the hair of Europe! Enough that we parted
with mutual respect. He is a fine fellow: and so was my friend the
Emperor Tiberius, and so was Richelieu. Napoleon was a fine
engine:--there is a difference. Yes, Ironsides is a fine fellow! but he
and I may cross. His ideas are not many. The point to remember is that he
is iron on them: he can drive them hard into the density of the globe. He
has quick nerves and imagination: he can conjure up, penetrate, and
traverse complications--an enemy's plans, all that the enemy will be able
to combine, and the likeliest that he will do. Good. We opine that we are
equal to the same. He is for kingcraft to mask his viziercraft--and save
him the labour of patiently attempting oratory and persuasion, which
accomplishment he does not possess:--it is not in iron. We think the more
precious metal will beat him when the broader conflict comes. But such an
adversary is not to be underrated. I do not underrate him: and certainly
not he me. Had he been born with the gifts of patience and a fluent
tongue, and not a petty noble, he might have been for the people, as
knowing them the greater power. He sees that their knowledge of their
power must eventually come to them. In the meantime his party is forcible
enough to assure him he is not fighting a losing game at present: and he
is, no doubt, by lineage and his traditions monarchical. He is curiously
simple, not really cynical. His apparent cynicism is sheer irritability.
His contemptuous phrases are directed against obstacles: against things,
persons, nations that oppose him or cannot serve his turn against his
king, if his king is restive; but he respects his king: against your
friends' country, because there is no fixing it to a line of policy, and
it seems to have collapsed; but he likes that country the best in Europe
after his own. He is nearest to contempt in his treatment of his dupes
and tools, who are dropped out of his mind when he has quite squeezed
them for his occasion; to be taken up again when they are of use to him.
Hence he will have no following. But let me die to-morrow, the party I
have created survives. In him you see the dam, in me the stream. Judge,
then, which of them gains the future!--admitting that, in the present he
may beat me. He is a Prussian, stoutly defined from a German, and yet
again a German stoutly defined from our borderers: and that completes
him. He has as little the idea of humanity as the sword of our Hermann,
the cannon-ball of our Frederick. Observe him. What an eye he has! I
watched it as we were talking: and he has, I repeat, imagination; he can
project his mind in front of him as far as his reasoning on the possible
allows: and that eye of his flashes; and not only flashes, you see it
hurling a bolt; it gives me the picture of a Balearic slinger about to
whizz the stone for that eye looks far, and is hard, and is dead certain
of its mark-within his practical compass, as I have said. I see farther,
and I fancy I proved to him that I am not a dreamer. In my opinion, when
we cross our swords I stand a fair chance of not being worsted. We shall:
you shrink? Figuratively, my darling have no fear! Combative as we may
be, both of us, we are now grave seniors, we have serious business: a
party looks to him, my party looks to me. Never need you fear that I
shall be at sword or pistol with any one. I will challenge my man,
whoever he as that needs a lesson, to touch buttons on a waistcoat with
the button on the foil, or drill fiver and eights in cards at twenty
paces: but I will not fight him though he offend me, for I am stronger
than my temper, and as I do not want to take his nip of life, and judge
it to be of less value than mine, the imperilling of either is an
absurdity.'

'Oh! because I know you are incapable of craven fear,' cried Clotilde,
answering aloud the question within herself of why she so much admired,
why she so fondly loved him. To feel his courage backing his high good
sense was to repose in security, and her knowledge that an astute
self-control was behind his courage assured her he was invincible. It
seemed to her, therefore, as they walked side by side, and she saw their
triumphant pair of figures in her fancy, natural that she should
instantly take the step to prepare her for becoming his Republican
Princess. She walked an equal with the great of the earth, by virtue of
her being the mate of the greatest of the great; she trod on some, and
she thrilled gratefully to the man who sustained her and shielded her on
that eminence. Elect of the people he! and by a vaster power than kings
can summon through the trumpet! She could surely pass through the trial
with her parents that she might step to the place beside him! She pressed
his arm to be physically a sharer of his glory. Was it love? It was as
lofty a stretch as her nature could strain to.

She named the city on the shores of the great Swiss lake where her
parents were residing; she bade him follow her thither, and name the
hotel where he was to be found, the hour when he was to arrive. 'Am I not
precise as an office clerk?' she said, with a pleasant taste of the
reality her preciseness pictured.

'Practical as the head of a State department,' said he, in good faith.

'I shall not keep you waiting,' she resumed.

'The sooner we are together after the action opens the better for our
success, my golden crest!'

'Have no misgivings, Sigismund. You have transformed me. A spark of you
is in my blood. Come. I shall send word to your hotel when you are to
appear. But you will come, you will be there, I know. I know you so
entirely.'

'As a rule, Lutetia, women know no more than half of a man even when they
have married him. At least you ought to know me. You know that if I were
to exercise my will firmly now--it would not waver if I called it
forth--I could carry you off and spare you the flutter you will have to
go through during our interlude with papa and mama.'

'I almost wish you would,' said she. She looked half imploringly, biting
her lip to correct the peeping wish.

Alvan pressed a finger on one of her dimples: 'Be brave. Flight and
defiance are our last resource. Now that I see you resolved I shun the
scandal, and we will leave it to them to insist on it, if it must be. How
can you be less than resolved after I have poured my influence into your
veins? The other day on the heights--had you consented then? Well! it
would have been very well, but not so well. We two have a future, and are
bound to make the opening chapters good sober reading, for an example, if
we can. I take you from your father's house, from your mother's arms,
from the "God speed" of your friends. That is how Alvan's wife should be
presented to the world.'

Clotilde's epistle to the baroness was composed, approved, and
despatched. To a frigid eye it read as more hypocritical than it really
was; for supposing it had to be written, the language of the natural
impulse called up to write it was necessarily in request, and that
language is easily overdone, so as to be discordant with the situation,
while it is, as the writer feels, a fairly true and well-formed
expression of the pretty impulse. But wiser is it always that the star in
the ascendant should not address the one waning. Hardly can a word be
uttered without grossly wounding. She would not do it to a younger rival:
the letter strikes on the recipient's age! She babbles of a friendship:
she plays at childish ninny! The display of her ingenuous happiness
causes feminine nature's bosom to rise in surges. The declarations of her
devotedness to the man waken comparisons with a deeper, a longer-tried
suffering. Actually the letter of the rising star assumes personal
feeling to have died out of the abandoned luminary, and personal feeling
is chafed to its acutest edge by the perusal; contempt also of one who
can stupidly simulate such innocence, is roused.

Among Alvan's gifts the understanding of women did not rank high. He was
too robust, he had been too successful. Your very successful hero regards
them as nine-pins destined to fall, the whole tuneful nine, at a peculiar
poetical twist of the bowler's wrist, one knocking down the
other--figuratively, for their scruples, or for their example with their
sisters. His tastes had led him into the avenues of success, and as he
had not encountered grand resistances, he entertained his opinion of
their sex. The particular maxim he cherished was, to stake everything on
his making a favourable first impression: after which single figure, he
said, all your empty naughts count with women for hundreds, thousands,
millions: noblest virtues are but sickly units. He would have stared like
any Philistine at the tale of their capacity to advance to a likeness
unto men in their fight with the world. Women for him were objects to be
chased, the politician's relaxation, taken like the sportsman's business,
with keen relish both for the pursuit and the prey, and a view of the
termination of his pastime. Their feelings he could appreciate during the
time when they flew and fell, perhaps a little longer; but the change in
his own feelings withdrew him from the communion of sentiment. This is
the state of men who frequent the avenues of success. At present he was
thinking of a wife, and he approved the epistle to the baroness
cordially.

'I do think it a nice kind of letter, and quite humble enough,' said
Clotilde.

He agreed, 'Yes, yes: she knows already that this is really serious with
me.'

So much for the baroness.

Now for their parting. A parting that is no worse than the turning of a
page to a final meeting is made light of, but felt. Reason is all in our
favour, and yet the gods are jealous of the bliss of mortals; the slip
between the cup and the lip is emotionally watched for, even though it be
not apprehended, when the cup trembles for very fulness. Clotilde
required reassuring and comforting: 'I am certain you will prevail; you
must; you cannot be resisted; I stand to witness to the fact,' she sighed
in a languor: 'only, my people are hard to manage. I see more clearly
now, that I have imposed on them; and they have given away by a sort of
compact so long as I did nothing decisive. That I see. But, then again,
have I not your spirit in me now? What has ever resisted you?--Then, as I
am Alvan's wife, I share his heart with his fortunes, and I do not really
dread the scenes from anticipating failure, still-the truth is, I fear I
am three parts an actress, and the fourth feels itself a shivering morsel
to face reality. No, I do not really feel it, but press my hand, I shall
be true--I am so utterly yours: and because I have such faith in you. You
never, yet have failed'

'Never: and it is impossible for me to conceive it,' said Alvan
thoughtfully.

His last word to her on her departure was 'Courage!' Hers to him was
conveyed by the fondest of looks. She had previously said 'To-morrow!' to
remind him of his appointment to be with her on the morrow, and herself
that she would not long stand alone. She did not doubt of her courage
while feasting on the beauty of one of the acknowledged strong men of
earth. She kissed her hand, she flung her heart to him from the waving
fingers.




CHAPTER VIII

Alvan, left to himself, had a quiet belief in the subjugation of his
tricksy Clotilde, and the inspiriting he had given her. All the rest to
come was mere business matter of the conflict, scarcely calling for a
plan of action. Who can hold her back when a woman is decided to move?
Husbands have tried it vainly, and parents; and though the husband and
the parents are not dealing with the same kind of woman, you see the same
elemental power in her under both conditions of rebel wife and rebel
daughter to break conventional laws, and be splendidly irrational. That
is, if she can be decided: in other words, aimed at a mark and inflamed
to fly the barriers intercepting. He fancied he had achieved it. Alvan
thanked his fortune that he had to treat with parents. The consolatory
sensation of a pure intent soothed his inherent wildness, in the
contemplation of the possibility that the latter might be roused by those
people, her parents, to upset his honourable ambition to win a wife after
the fashion of orderly citizens. It would be on their heads! But why
vision mischance? An old half-jesting prophecy of his among his friends,
that he would not pass his fortieth year, rose upon his recollection
without casting a shadow. Lo, the reckless prophet about to marry!

No dark bride, no skeleton, no colourless thing, no lichened tree, was
she. Not Death, my friends, but Life, is the bride of this doomed
fortieth year! Was animation ever vivider in contrast with obstruction?
Her hair would kindle the frosty shades to a throb of vitality: it would
be sunshine in the subterranean sphere. The very thinking of her
dispersed that realm of the poison hue, and the eternally inviting
phosphorescent, still, curved forefinger, which says, 'Come.'

To think of her as his vernal bride, while the snowy Alps were a
celestial garden of no sunset before his eyes, was to have the taste of
mortal life in the highest. He wondered how it was that he could have
waited so long for her since the first night of their meeting, and he
just distinguished the fact that he lived with the pulses of the minutes,
much as she did, only more fierily. The ceaseless warfare called politics
must have been the distraction: he forgot any other of another kind. He
was a bridegroom for whom the rosed Alps rolled out, a panorama of
illimitable felicity. And there were certain things he must overcome
before he could name his bride his own, so that his innate love of
contention, which had been constantly flattered by triumph, brought, his
whole nature into play with the prospect of the morrow: not much liking
it either. There is a nerve, in brave warriors that does not like the
battle before, the crackle of musketry is heard, and the big artillery.

Methodically, according to his habit, he jotted down the hours of the
trains, the hotel mentioned by Clotilde, the address of her father; he
looked to his card-case, his writing materials, his notes upon Swiss law;
considering that the scene would be in Switzerland, and he was a lawyer
bent on acting within and up to the measure of the law as well as
pleading eloquently. The desire to wing a telegram to her he thought it
wise to repress, and he found himself in consequence composing verses,
turgid enough, even to his own judgement. Poets would have failed at such
a time, and he was not one, but an orator enamoured. He was a wild man,
cased in the knowledge of jurisprudence, and wishing to enter the ranks
of the soberly blissful. These he could imagine that he complimented by
the wish. Then why should he doubt of his fortune? He did not.

The night passed, the morning came, and carried him on his journey. Late
in the afternoon he alighted at the hotel he called Clotilde's. A letter
was handed to him. His eyes all over the page caught the note of it for
her beginning of the battle and despair at the first repulse. 'And now my
turn!' said he, not overjoyously. The words Jew and demagogue and
baroness, quoted in the letter, were old missiles hurling again at him.
But Clotilde's parents were yet to learn that this Jew, demagogue, and
champion of an injured lady, was a gentleman respectful to their legal
and natural claims upon their child while maintaining his own: they were
to know him and change their tone.

As he was reading the letter upstairs by sentences, his door opened at
the answer to a tap. He started; his face was a shield's welcome to the
birdlike applicant for admission. Clotilde stood hesitating.

He sent the introducing waiter speeding on his most kellnerish legs, and
drew her in.

'Alvan, I have come.'

She was like a bird in his hands, palpitating to extinction.

He bent over her: 'What has happened?'

Trembling, and very pale, hard in her throat she said, 'The worst.'

'You have spoken to them both subsequent to this?' he shook the letter.

'It is hopeless.'

'Both to father and mother?'

'Both. They will not hear your name; they will not hear me speak. I
repeat, it is past all hope, all chance of moving them. They hate--hate
you, hate me for thinking of you. I had no choice; I wrote at once and
followed my letter; I ran through the streets; I pant for want of breath,
not want of courage. I prove I have it, Alvan; I have done all I can do.

She was enfolded; she sank on the nest, dropping her eyelids.

But he said nothing. She looked up at him. Her strained pale eyes
provoked a closer embrace.

'This would be the home for you if we were flying,' said he, glancing
round at the room, with a sensation like a shudder, 'Tell me what there
is to be told.'

'Alvan, I have; that is all. They will not listen; they loathe Oh! what
possesses them!'

'They have not met me yet!'

'They will not, will not ever--no!'

'They must.'

'They refuse. Their child, for daring to say she loves you, is detested.
Take me--take me away!'

'Run?--facing the enemy?' His countenance was the fiery laugh of a
thirster for strife. 'They have to be taught the stuff Alvan is made of!'

Clotilde moaned to signify she was sure he nursed an illusion. 'I found
them celebrating the betrothal of my sister Lotte with the Austrian Count
Walburg; I thought it favourable for us. I spoke of you to my mother. Oh,
that scene! What she said I cannot recollect: it was a hiss. Then my
father. Your name changed his features and his voice. They treated me as
impure for mentioning it. You must have deadly enemies. I was unable to
recognize either father or mother--they have become transformed. But you
see I am here. Courage! you said; and I determined I would show it, and
be worthy of you. But I am pursued, I am sure. My father is powerful in
this place; we shall barely have time to escape.'

Alvan's resolution was taken.

'Some friend--a lady living in the city here--name her, quick!--one you
can trust,' he said, and fondled her hastily, much as a gentle kind of
drillmaster straightens a fair pupil's shoulders. 'Yes, you have shown
courage. Now it must be submission to me. You shall be no runaway bride,
but honoured at the altar. Out of this hotel is the first point. You know
some such lady?'

Clotilde tried to remonstrate and to suggest. She could have prophesied
certain evil from any evasion of the straight line of flight; she was so
sure of it because of her intuition that her courage had done its utmost
in casting her on him, and that the remainder within her would be a
drawing back. She could not get the word or even the look to encounter
his close and warm imperiousness; and, hesitating, she noticed where they
were together alone. She could not refuse the protection he offered in a
person of her own sex; and now, flushing with the thought of where they
were together alone, feminine modesty shrivelled at the idea of
entreating a man to bear her off, though feminine desperation urged to
it. She felt herself very bare of clothing, and she named a lady, a
Madame Emerly, living near the hotel. Her heart sank like a stone. 'It is
for you!' cried Alvan, keenly sensible of his loss and his generosity in
temporarily resigning her--for a subsequent triumph. 'But my wife shall
not be snatched by a thief in the night. Are you not my wife--my golden
bride? And you may give me this pledge of it, as if the vows had just
been uttered . . . and still I resign you till we speak the vows. It
shall not be said of Alvan's wife, in the days of her glory, that she ran
to her nuptials through rat-passages.'

His pride in his prevailingness thrilled her. She was cooled by her
despondency sufficiently to perceive where the centre of it lay, but that
centre of self was magnificent; she recovered some of her enthusiasm,
thinking him perhaps to be acting rightly; in any case they were united,
her step was irrevocable. Her having entered the hotel, her being in this
room, certified to that. It seemed to her while she was waiting for the
carriage he had ordered that she was already half a wife. She was not
conscious of a blush. The sprite in the young woman's mind whispered of
fire not burning when one is in the heart of it. And undoubtedly,
contemplated from the outside, this room was the heart of fire. An
impulse to fall on Alvan's breast and bless him for his chivalrousness
had to be kept under lest she should wreck the thing she praised.
Otherwise she was not ill at ease. Alvan summoned his gaiety, all his
homeliness of tone, to give her composure, and on her quitting the room
she was more than ever bound to him, despite her gloomy foreboding. A
maid of her household, a middle-aged woman, gabbling of devotion to her,
ran up the steps of the hotel. Her tale was, that the General had roused
the city in pursuit of his daughter; and she heard whither Clotilde was
going.

Within half an hour, Clotilde was in Madame Emerly's drawing-room
relating her desperate history of love and parental tyranny, assisted by
the lover whom she had introduced. Her hostess promised shelter and
exhibited sympathy. The whole Teutonic portion of the Continent knew
Alvan by reputation. He was insurrectionally notorious in morals and
menacingly in politics; but his fine air, handsome face, flowing tongue,
and the signal proof of his respect for the lady of his love and
deference toward her family, won her personally. She promised the best
help she could give them. They were certainly in a romantic situation,
such as few women could see and decline their aid to the lovers.

Madame Emerly proved at least her sincerity before many minutes had
passed.

Chancing to look out into the street, she saw Clotilde's mother and her
betrothed sister stepping up to the house. What was to be done? And was
the visit accidental? She announced it, and Clotilde cried out, but Alvan
cried louder: 'Heaven-directed! and so, let me see her and speak to
her--nothing could be better.'

Madame Emerly took mute counsel of Clotilde, shaking her own head
premonitorily; and then she said: 'I think indeed it will be safer, if I
am asked, to say you are not here, and I know not where you are.'

'Yes! yes!' Clotilde replied: 'Oh! do that.'

She half turned to Alvan, rigid with an entreaty that hung on his coming
voice.

'No!' said Alvan, shocked in both pride and vanity. 'Plain-dealing; no
subterfuge! Begin with foul falsehood? No. I would not have you burdened,
madame, with the shadow of a conventional untruth on our account. And
when it would be bad policy? . . . Oh, no, worse than the sin! as the
honest cynic says. We will go down to Madame von Rudiger, and she shall
make acquaintance with the man who claims her daughter's hand.'

Clotilde rocked in an agony. Her friend was troubled. Both ladies knew
what there would be to encounter better than he. But the man, strong in
his belief in himself, imposed his will on them.

Alvan and Clotilde clasped hands as they went downstairs to Madame
Emerly's reception room. She could hardly speak: 'Do not forsake me.'

'Is this forsaking?' He could ask it in the deeply questioning tone which
supplies the answer.

'Oh, Alvan!' She would have said: 'Be warned.'

He kissed her fingers. 'Trust to me.'

She had to wrap her shivering spirit in a blind reliance and utter
leaning on him.

She could almost have said: 'Know me better'; and she would, sincere as
her passion in its shallow vessel was, have been moved to say it for a
warning while yet there was time to leave the house instead of turning
into that room, had not a remainder of her first exaltation (rapidly
degenerating to desperation) inspired her with the thought of her being a
part of this handsome, undaunted, triumph-flashing man.

Such a state of blind reliance and utter leaning, however, has a certain
tendency to disintegrate the will, and by so doing it prepares the spirit
to be a melting prize of the winner.

Men and women alike, who renounce their own individuality by cowering
thus abjectly under some other before the storm, are in reality abjuring
their idea of that other, and offering themselves up to the genius of
Power in whatsoever direction it may chance to be manifested, in
whatsoever person. We no sooner shut our eyes than we consent to be prey,
we lose the soul of election.

Mark her as she proceeds. For should her hero fail, and she be suffering
through his failure and her reliance on him, the blindness of it will
seem to her to have been an infinite virtue, anything but her deplorable
weakness crouching beneath his show of superhuman strength. And it will
seem to her, so long as her sufferings endure, that he deceived her just
expectations, and was a vain pretender to the superhuman:--for it was
only a superhuman Jew and democrat whom she could have thought of
espousing. The pusillanimous are under a necessity to be self-consoled
when they are not self-justified: it is their instinctive manner of
putting themselves in the right to themselves. The love she bore him,
because it was the love his high conceit exacted, hung on success she was
ready to fly with him and love him faithfully but not without some reason
(where reason, we will own, should not quite so coldly obtrude) will it
seem to her, that the man who would not fly, and would try the conflict,
insisted to stake her love on the issue he provoked. He roused the
tempest, he angered the Fates, he tossed her to them; and reason, coldest
reason, close as it ever is to the craven's heart in its hour of trial,
whispers that he was prompted to fling the gambler's die by the swollen
conceit in his fortune rather than by his desire for the prize. That
frigid reason of the craven has red-hot perceptions. It spies the spot of
truth. Were the spot revealed in the man the whole man, then, so unerring
is the eyeshot at him, we should have only to transform ourselves into
cowards fronting a crisis to read him through and topple over the Sphinx
of life by presenting her the sum of her most mysterious creature in an
epigram. But there was as much more in Alvan than any faint-hearted
thing, seeing however keenly, could see, as there is more in the world
than the epigrams aimed at it contain.

'Courage!' said he: and she tremblingly: 'Be careful!' And then they were
in the presence of her mother and sister.

Her sister was at the window, hanging her head low, a poor figure. Her
mother stood in the middle of the room, and met them full face, with a
woman's combative frown of great eyes, in which the stare is a bolt.

'Away with that man! I will not suffer him near me,' she cried.

Alvan advanced to her: 'Tell me, madame, in God's name, what you have
against me.'

She swung her back on him. 'Go, sir! my husband will know how to deal
with one like you. Out of my sight, I say!'

The brutality of this reception of Alvan nerved Clotilde. She went up to
him, and laying her hand on his arm, feeling herself almost his equal,
said: 'Let us go: come. I will not bear to hear you so spoken to. No one
shall treat you like that when I am near.'

She expected him to give up the hopeless task, after such an experience
of the commencement. He did but clasp her hand, assuring the Frau von
Rudiger that no word of hers could irritate him. 'Nothing can make me
forget that you are Clotilde's mother. You are the mother of the lady I
love, and may say what you will to me, madame. I bear it.'

'A man spotted with every iniquity the world abhors, and I am to see him
holding my daughter by the hand!--it is too abominable! And because there
is no one present to chastise him, he dares to address me and talk of his
foul passion for my daughter. I repeat: that which you have to do is to
go. My ears are shut. You can annoy, you can insult, you cannot move me.
Go.' She stamped: her aspect spat.

Alvan bowed. Under perfect self-command, he said: 'I will go at once to
Clotilde's father. I may hope, that with a reasonable man I shall
speedily come to an understanding.'

She retorted: 'Enter his house, and he will have you driven out by his
lacqueys.'

'Hardly: I am not of those men who are driven from houses,' Alvan said,
smiling. 'But, madame, I will act on your warning, and spare her father,
for all sakes, the attempt; seeing he does not yet know whom he deals
with. I will write to him.'

'Letters from you will be flung back unopened.

'It may, of course, be possible to destroy even my patience, madame.'

'Mine, sir, is at an end.'

'You reduce us to rely on ourselves; it is the sole alternative.'

'You have not waited for that,' rejoined Frau von Rudiger. 'You have
already destroyed my daughter's reputation by inducing her to leave her
father's house and hesitate to return. Oh! you are known. You are known
for your dealings with women as well as men. We know you. We have, we
pray to God, little more to learn of you. You! ah--thief!'

'Thief!' Alvan's voice rose on hers like the clapping echo of it. She had
up the whole angry pride of the man in arms, and could discern that she
had struck the wound in his history; but he was terrible to look at, so
she made the charge supportable by saying:

'You have stolen my child from me!'

Clotilde raised her throat, shrewish in excitement. 'False! He did not. I
went to him of my own will, to run from your heartlessness, mother--that
I call mother!--and be out of hearing of my father's curses and threats.
Yes, to him I fled, feeling that I belonged more to him than to you. And
never will I return to you. You have killed my love; I am this man's own
because I love him only; him ever! him you abuse, as his partner in life
for all it may give!--as his wife! Trample on him, you trample on me.
Make black brows at your child for choosing the man, of all men alive, to
worship and follow through the world. I do. I am his. I glory in him.'

Her gaze on Alvan said: 'Now!' Was she not worthy of him now? And would
they not go forth together now? Oh! now!

Her gaze was met by nothing like the brilliant counterpart she merited.
It was as if she had offered her beauty to a glass, and found a
reflection in dull metal. He smiled calmly from her to her mother. He
said:

'You accuse me of stealing your child, madame. You shall acknowledge that
you have wronged me. Clotilde, my Clotilde! may I count on you to do all
and everything for me? Is there any sacrifice I could ask that would be
too hard for you? Will you at one sign from me go or do as I request
you?'

She replied, in an anguish over the chilling riddle of his calmness: 'I
will,' but sprang out of that obedient consent, fearful of over-acting
her part of slave to him before her mother, in a ghastly apprehension of
the part he was for playing to the same audience. 'Yes, I will do all,
all that you command. I am yours. I will go with you. Bid me do whatever
you can think of, all except bid me go back to the people I have hitherto
called mine:--not that!'

'And that is what I have to request of you,' said he, with his calm smile
brightening and growing more foreign, histrionic, unreadable to her. 'And
this greatest sacrifice that you can perform for me, are you prepared to
do it? Will you?'

She tried to decipher the mask he wore: it was proof against her
imploring eyes. 'If you can ask me--if you can positively wish it--yes,'
she said. 'But think of what you are doing. Oh! Alvan, not back to them!
Think!'

He smiled insufferably. He was bent on winning a parent-blest bride, an
unimpeachable wife, a lady handed to him instead of taken, one of the
world's polished silver vessels.

'Think that you are doing this for me!' said he. 'It is for my sake. And
now, madame, I give you back your daughter. You see she is mine to give,
she obeys me, and I--though it can be only for a short time--give her
back to you. She goes with you purely because it is my wish: do not
forget that. And so, madame, I have the honour,' he bowed profoundly.

He turned to Clotilde and drew her within his arm. 'What you have done in
obedience to my wish, my beloved, shall never be forgotten. Never can I
sufficiently thank you. I know how much it has cost you. But here is the
end of your trials. All the rest is now my task. Rely on me with your
whole heart. Let them not misuse you: otherwise do their bidding. Be sure
of my knowing how you are treated, and at the slightest act of injustice
I shall be beside you to take you to myself. Be sure of that, and be not
unhappy. They shall not keep you from me for long. Submit a short while
to the will of your parents: mine you will find the stronger. Resolve it
in your soul that I, your lover, cannot fail, for it is impossible to me
to waver. Consider me as the one fixed light in your world, and look to
me. Soon, then! Have patience, be true, and we are one!'

He kissed cold lips, he squeezed an inanimate hand. The horribly empty
sublimity of his behaviour appeared to her in her mother's contemptuous
face.

His eyes were on her as he released her and she stood alone. She seemed a
dead thing; but the sense of his having done gloriously in mastering
himself to give these worldly people of hers a lesson and proof that he
could within due measure bow to their laws and customs, dispelled the
brief vision of her unfitness to be left. The compressed energy of the
man under his conscious display of a great-minded deference to the claims
of family ties and duties, intoxicated him. He thought but of the present
achievement and its just effect: he had cancelled a bad reputation among
these people, from whom he was about to lead forth a daughter for Alvan's
wife, and he reasoned by the grandeur of his exhibition of
generosity--which was brought out in strong relief when he delivered his
retiring bow to the Frau von Rudiger's shoulder--that the worst was over;
he had to deal no more with silly women: now for Clotilde's father! Women
were privileged to oppose their senselessness to the divine fire: men
could not retreat behind such defences; they must meet him on the common
ground of men, where this constant battler had never yet encountered a
reverse.

Clotilde's cold staring gaze, a little livelier to wonderment than to
reflection, observed him to be scrupulous of the formalities in the
diverse character of his parting salutations to her mother, her sister;
and the lady of the house. He was going--he could actually go and leave
her! She stretched herself to him faintly; she let it be seen that she
did so as much as she had force to make it visible. She saw him smiling
incomprehensibly, like a winner of the field to be left to the enemy. She
could get nothing from him but that insensible round smile, and she took
the ebbing of her poor effort for his rebuff.

'You that offered yourself in flight to him who once proposed it, he had
the choice of you and he abjured you. He has cast you off!'

She phrased it in speech to herself. It was incredible, but it was clear:
he had gone.

The room was vacant; the room was black and silent as a dungeon.

'He will not have you: he has handed you back to them the more readily to
renounce you.'

She framed the words half aloud in a moan as she glanced at her mother
heaving in stern triumph, her sister drooping, Madame Emerly standing at
the window.

The craven's first instinct for safety, quick as the cavern lynx for
light, set her on the idea that she was abandoned: it whispered of
quietness if she submitted.

And thus she reasoned: Had Alvan taken her, she would not have been
guilty of more than a common piece of love-desperation in running to him,
the which may be love's glory when marriage crowns it. By his rejecting
her and leaving her, he rendered her not only a runaway, but a castaway.
It was not natural that he should leave her; 'not natural in him to act
his recent part; but he had done it; consequently she was at the mercy of
those who might pick her up. She was, in her humiliation and dread, all
of the moment, she could see to no distance; and judging of him, feeling
for herself, within that contracted circle of sensation--sure, from her
knowledge of her cowardice, that he had done unwisely--she became swayed
about like a castaway in soul, until her distinguishing of his mad
recklessness in the challenge of a power greater than his own grew
present with her as his personal cruelty to the woman who had flung off
everything, flung herself on the tempestuous deeps, on his behalf. And
here she was, left to float or founder! Alvan had gone. The man rageing
over the room, abusing her 'infamous lover, the dirty Jew, the notorious
thief, scoundrel, gallowsbird,' etc., etc., frightful epithets, not to be
transcribed--was her father. He had come, she knew not how. Alvan had
tossed her to him.

Abuse of a lover is ordinarily retorted on in the lady's heart by the
brighter perception of his merits; but when the heart is weak, the
creature suffering shame, her lover the cause of it, and seeming cruel,
she is likely to lose all perception and bend like a flower pelted. Her
cry to him: 'If you had been wiser, this would not have been!' will sink
to the inward meditation: 'If he had been truer!'--and though she does
not necessarily think him untrue for charging him with it, there is
already a loosening of the bonds where the accusation has begun. They are
not broken because they are loosened: still the loosening of them makes
it possible to cut them with less of a snap and less pain.

Alvan had relinquished her he loved to brave the tempest in a frail small
boat, and he certainly could not have apprehended the furious outbreak
she was exposed to. She might so far have exonerated him had she been
able to reflect; but she whom he had forced to depend on him in blind
reliance, now opened her eyes on an opposite power exercising material
rigours. After having enjoyed extraordinary independence for a young
woman, she was treated as a refractory child, literally marched through
the streets in the custody of her father, who clutched her by the
hair-Alvan's beloved golden locks!--and held her under terror of a huge
forester's weapon, that he had seized at the first tidings of his
daughter's flight to the Jew. He seemed to have a grim indifference to
exposure; contempt, with a sense of the humour of it: and this was a
satisfaction to him, founded on his practical observance of two or three
maxims quite equal to the fullest knowledge of women for rightly managing
them: preferable, inasmuch as they are simpler, and, by merely cracking a
whip, bring her back to the post, instead of wasting time by hunting her
as she likes to run. Police were round his house. The General chattered
and shouted of the desperate lawlessness and larcenies of that Jew--the
things that Jew would attempt. He dragged her indoors, muttering of his
policy in treating her at last to a wholesome despotism.

This was the medicine for her--he knew her! Whether he did or not, he
knew the potency of his physic. He knew that osiers can be made to bend.
With a frightful noise of hammering, he himself nailed up the
window-shutters of the room she was locked in hard and fast, and he left
her there and roared across the household that any one holding
communication with the prisoner should be shot like a dog. This was a
manifestation of power in a form more convincing than the orator's.

She was friendless, abused, degraded, benighted in broad daylight;
abandoned by her lover. She sank on the floor of the room, conceiving
with much strangeness of sentiment under these hard stripes of
misfortune, that reality had come. The monster had hold of her. She was
isolated, fed like a dungeoned captive. She had nothing but our natural
obstinacy to hug, or seem to do so when wearifulness reduced her to cling
to the semblance of it only. 'I marry Alvan!' was her iterated answer to
her father, on his visits to see whether he had yet broken her; and she
spoke with the desperate firmness of weak creatures that strive to nail
themselves to the sound of it. He listened and named his time for
returning. The tug between rigour and endurance continued for about forty
hours. She then thought, in an exhaustion: 'Strange that my father should
be so fiercely excited against this man! Can he have reasons I have not
heard of?' Her father's unwonted harshness suggested the question in her
quailing nature, which was beginning to have a movement to kiss the whip.
The question set her thinking of the reasons she knew. She saw them
involuntarily from the side of parents, and they wore a sinister
appearance; in reality her present scourging was due to them as well as
to Alvan's fatal decision. Her misery was traceable to his conduct and
his judgement--both bad. And yet all this while he might be working to
release her, near upon rescuing! She swung round to the side of her lover
against these executioner parents, and scribbled to him as well as she
could under the cracks in her windowshutters, urging him to appear. She
spent her heart on it. A note to her friend, the English lady, protested
her love for Alvan, but with less abandonment, with a frozen resignation
to the loss of him--all around her was so dark! By-and-by there was a
scratching at her door. The maid whom she trusted brought her news of
Alvan: outside the door and in, the maid and mistress knelt. Hope
flickered up in the bosom of Clotilde: the whispers were exchanged
through the partition.

'Where is he?'

'Gone.'

'But where?'

'He has left the city.'

Clotilde pushed the letter for her friend under the door: that one for
Alvan she retained, stung by his desertion of her, and thinking
practically that it was useless to aim a letter at a man without an
address. She did not ask herself whether the maid's information was
honest, for she wanted to despair, as the exhausted want to lie down.

She wept through the night. It was one of those nights of the torrents of
tears which wash away all save the adamantine within us, if there be
ought of that besides the breathing structure. The reason why she wept
with so delirious a persistency was, that her nature felt the necessity
for draining her of her self-pitifulness, knowing that it nourished the
love whereby she was tormented. They do not weep thus who have a heart
for the struggle. In the morning she was a dried channel of tears, no
longer self-pitiful; careless of herself, as she thought: in other words,
unable any further to contend.

Reality was too strong! This morning her sisters came to her room
imploring her to yield:--if she married Alvan, what could be their
prospects as the sisters-in law of such a man?--her betrothed sister
Lotte could not hope to espouse Count Walburg: Alvan's name was infamous
in society; their house would be a lazar-house, they would be condemned
to seclusion. A favourite brother followed, with sympathy that set her
tears running again, and arguments she could not answer: how could he
hold up his head in his regiment as the relative of the scandalous Jew
democrat? He would have to leave the service, or be duelling with his
brother officers every other day of his life, for rightly or wrongly
Alvan was abhorred, and his connection would be fatal to them all,
perhaps to her father's military and diplomatic career principally: the
head of their house would be ruined. She was compelled to weep again by
having no other reply. The tears were now mixed drops of pity for her
absent lover and her family; she was already disunited from him when she
shed them, feeling that she was dry rock to herself, heartless as many
bosoms drained of self-pity will become.

Incapable of that any further, she leaned still in that direction and had
a languid willingness to gain outward comfort. To be caressed a little by
her own kindred before she ceased to live was desireable after her heavy
scourging. She wished for the touches of affection, knowing them to be
selfish, but her love of life and hard view of its reality made them seem
a soft reminder of what life had been. Alvan had gone. Her natural
blankness of imagination read his absence as an entire relinquishment; it
knelled in a vacant chamber. He had gone; he had committed an
irretrievable error, he had given up a fight of his own vain provoking,
that was too severe for him: he was not the lover he fancied himself, or
not the lord of men she had fancied him. Her excessive misery would not
suffer a picture of him, not one clear recollection of him, to stand
before her. He who should have been at hand, had gone, and she was
fearfully beset, almost lifeless; and being abandoned, her blank night of
imagination felt that there was nothing left for her save to fall upon
those nearest.

She gave her submission to her mother. In her mind, during the last
wrestling with a weakness that was alternately her love, and her
cowardice, the interpretation of the act ran: 'He may come, and I am his
if he comes: and if not, I am bound to my people.' He had taught her to
rely on him blindly, and thus she did it inanimately while cutting
herself loose from him. In a similar mood, the spiritual waverer vows to
believe if the saint will appear. However, she submitted. Then there was
joy in the family, and she tasted their caresses.




CHAPTER IX

After his deed of loftiness Alvan walked to his hotel, where the sight of
the room Clotilde had entered that morning caught his breath. He
proceeded to write his first letter to General von Rudiger, repressing
his heart's intimations that he had stepped out of the friendly path, and
was on a strange and tangled one. The sense of power in him was leonine
enough to promise the forcing of a way whithersoever the path: yet did
that ghost of her figure across the room haunt him with searching eyes.
They set him spying over himself at an actor who had not needed to be
acting his part, brilliant though it was. He crammed his energy into his
idea of the part, to carry it forward victoriously. Before the world, it
would without question redound to his credit, and he heard the world
acclaiming him:

'Alvan's wife was honourably won, as became the wife of a Doctor of Law,
from the bosom of her family, when he could have had her in the old
lawless fashion, for a call to a coachman! Alvan, the republican, is
eminently a citizen. Consider his past life by that test of his
character.'

He who had many times defied the world in hot rebellion, had become,
through his desire to cherish a respectable passion, if not exactly
slavish to it, subservient, as we see royal personages, that are happy to
be on bowing terms with the multitude bowing lower. Lower, of course, the
multitude must bow, to inspire an august serenity; but the nod they have
in exchange for it is not an independent one. Ceasing to be a social
rebel, he conceived himself as a recognized dignitary, and he passed
under the bondage of that position.

Clotilde had been in this room; she had furnished proof that she could be
trusted now. She had committed herself, perished as a maiden of society,
and her parents, even the senseless mother, must see it and decide by it.
The General would bring her to reason: General von Rudiger was a man of
the world. An honourable son-in-law could not but be acceptable to
him--now, at least. And such a son-in-law would ultimately be the pride
of his house. 'A flower from thy garden, friend, and my wearing it shall
in good time be cause for some parental gratification.'

The letter despatched, Alvan paced his chamber with the ghost of
Clotilde. He was presently summoned to meet Count Walburg and another
intimate of the family, in the hotel downstairs. These gentlemen brought
no message from General von Rudiger: their words were directed to extract
a promise from him that he would quit his pursuit of Clotilde, and of
course he refused; they hinted that the General might have official
influence to get him expelled the city, and he referred them to the
proof; but he looked beyond the words at a new something of extraordinary
and sinister aspect revealed to him in their manner of treating his
pretensions to the hand of the lady.

He had not yet perfectly seen the view the world took of him, because of
his armed opposition to the world; nor could he rightly reflect on it
yet, being too anxious to sign the peace. He felt as it were a blow
startling him from sleep. His visitors tasked themselves to be strictly
polite; they did not undervalue his resources for commanding respect
between man and man. The strange matter was behind their bearing, which
indicated the positive impossibility of the union of Clotilde with one
such as he, and struck at the curtain covering his history. He could not
raise it to thunder his defence of himself, or even allude to the implied
contempt of his character: with a boiling gorge he was obliged to swallow
both the history and the insult, returning them the equivalent of their
courtesies, though it was on his lips to thunder heavily.

A second endeavour, in an urgent letter before nightfall to gain him
admission to head-quarters, met the same repulse as the foregoing. The
bearer of it was dismissed without an answer.

Alvan passed a night of dire disturbance. The fate of the noble Genoese
conspirator, slipping into still harbour water on the step from boat to
boat, and borne down by the weight of his armour in the moment of the
ripeness of his plot at midnight, when the signal for action sparkled to
lighten across the ships and forts, had touched him in his boy's
readings, and he found a resemblance of himself to Fiesco, stopped as he
was by a base impediment, tripped ignominiously, choked by the weight of
the powers fitting him for battle. A man such as Alvan, arrested on his
career by an opposition to his enrolment of a bride!--think of it! What
was this girl in a life like his? But, oh! the question was no sooner
asked than the thought that this girl had been in this room illuminated
the room, telling him she might have been his own this instant,
confounding him with an accusation of madness for rejecting her. Why had
he done it? Surely women, weak women, must be at times divinely inspired.
She warned him against the step. But he, proud of his armoury, went his
way. He choked, he suffered the torture of the mailed Genoese going
under; worse, for the drowner's delirium swirls but a minute in the
gaping brain, while he had to lie all, night at the mercy of the night.

He was only calmer when morning came. Night has little mercy for the
self-reproachful, and for a strong man denouncing the folly of his error,
it has none. The bequest of the night was a fever of passion; and upon
that fever the light of morning cleared his head to weigh the force
opposing him. He gnawed the paradox, that it was huge because it was
petty, getting a miserable sour sustenance out of his consciousness of
the position it explained. Great enemies, great undertakings, would have
revived him as they had always revived and fortified. But here was a
stolid small obstacle, scarce assailable on its own level; and he had
chosen that it should be attacked through its own laws and forms. By
shutting a door, by withholding an answer to his knocks, the thing
reduced him to hesitation. And the thing had weapons to shoot at him; his
history, his very blood, stood open to its shafts; and the sole quality
of a giant, which he could show to front it, was the breath of one for a
mark.

These direct perceptions of the circumstances were played on by the fever
he drew from his Fiesco bed. Accuracy of vision in our crises is not so
uncommon as the proportionate equality of feeling: we do indeed.
frequently see with eyes of just measurement while we are conducting
ourselves like madmen. The facts are seen, and yet the spinning nerves
will change their complexion; and without enlarging or minimizing, they
will alternate their effect on us immensely through the colour presenting
them now sombre, now hopeful: doing its work of extravagance upon
perceptibly plain matter. The fitful colour is the fever. He must win
her, for he never yet had failed--he had lost her by his folly! She was
his--she was torn from him! She would come at his bidding--she would
cower to her tyrants! The thought of her was life and death in his frame,
bright heaven and the abyss. At one beat of the heart she swam to his
arms, at another he was straining over darkness. And whose the fault?

He rose out of his amazement crying it with a roar, and foreignly
beholding himself. He pelted himself with epithets; his worst enemies
could not have been handier in using them. From Alvan to Alvan, they
signified such an earthquake in a land of splendid structures as shatters
to dust the pride of the works of men. He was down among them, lower than
the herd, rolling in vulgar epithets that, attached to one like him,
became of monstrous distortion. O fool! dolt! blind ass! tottering idiot!
drunken masquerader! miserable Jack Knave, performing suicide with that
blessed coxcomb air of curling a lock!--Clotilde! Clotilde! Where has one
read the story of a man who had the jewel of jewels in his hand, and
flung in into the deeps, thinking that he flung a pebble? Fish, fool,
fish! and fish till Doomsday! There's nothing but your fool's face in the
water to be got to bite at the bait you throw, fool! Fish for the
flung-away beauty, and hook your shadow of a Bottom's head! What impious
villain was it refused the gift of the gods, that he might have it
bestowed on him according to his own prescription of the ceremonies! They
laugh! By Orcus! how they laugh! The laughter of the gods is the
lightning of death's irony over mortals. Can they have a finer subject
than a giant gone fool?

Tears burst from him: tears of rage, regret, selflashing. O for
yesterday! He called aloud for the recovery of yesterday, bellowed,
groaned. A giant at war with pigmies, having nought but their weapons,
having to fight them on his knees, to fight them with the right hand
while smiting himself with the left, has too much upon him to keep his
private dignity in order. He was the same in his letters--a Cyclops
hurling rocks and raising the seas to shipwreck. Dignity was cast off; he
came out naked. Letters to Clotilde, and to the baroness, to the friend
nearest him just then, Colonel von Tresten, calling them to him, were
dashed to paper in this naked frenzy, and he could rave with all the
truth of life, that to have acted the idiot, more than the loss of the
woman, was the ground of his anguish. Each antecedent of his career had
been a step of strength and success departed. The woman was but a
fragment of the tremendous wreck; the woman was utterly diminutive, yet
she was the key of the reconstruction; the woman won, he would be himself
once more: and feeling that, his passion for her swelled to full tide and
she became a towering splendour whereat his eyeballs ached, she became a
melting armful that shook him to big bursts of tears.

The feeling of the return of strength was his love in force. The giant in
him loved her warmly. Her sweetness, her archness, the opening of her
lips, their way of holding closed, and her brightness of wit, her tender
eyelashes, her appreciating looks, her sighing, the thousand varying
shades of her motions and her features interflowing like a lighted water,
swam to him one by one like so many handmaiden messengers distinctly
beheld of the radiant indistinct whom he adored with more of spirit in
his passion than before this tempest. A giant going through a giant's
contortions, fleshly as the race of giants, and gross, coarse, dreadful,
likely to be horrible when whipped and stirred to the dregs, Alvan was
great-hearted: he could love in his giant's fashion, love and lay down
life for the woman he loved, though the nature of the passion was not
heavenly; or for the friend who would have to excuse him often; or for
the public cause--which was to minister to his appetites. He was true
man, a native of earth, and if he could not quit his huge personality to
pipe spiritual music during a storm of trouble, being a soul wedged in
the gnarled wood of the standing giant oak, and giving mighty sound of
timber at strife rather than the angelical cry, he suffered, as he loved,
to his depths.

We have not to plumb the depths; he was not heroic, but hugely man. Love
and man sometimes meet for noble concord; the strings of the hungry
instrument are not all so rough that Love's touch on them is
indistinguishable from the rattling of the wheels within; certain herald
harmonies have been heard. But Love, which purifies and enlarges us, and
sets free the soul, Love visiting a fleshly frame must have time and
space, and some help of circumstance, to give the world assurance that
the man is a temple fit for the rites. Out of romances, he is not
melodiously composed. And in a giant are various giants to be slain, or
thoroughly subdued, ere this divinity is taken for leader. It is not done
by miracle.

As it happened cruelly for Alvan, the woman who had become the radiant
indistinct in his desiring mind was one whom he knew to be of a shivery
stedfastness. His plucking her from another was neither wonderful nor
indefensible; they two were suited as no other two could be; the handsome
boy who had gone through a form of plighting with her was her slave, and
she required for her mate a master: she felt it and she sided to him
quite naturally, moved by the sacred direction of the acknowledgement of
a mutual fitness. Twice, however, she had relapsed on the occasions of
his absence, and owning his power over her when they were together again,
she sowed the fatal conviction that he held her at present, and that she
was a woman only to be held at present, by the palpable grasp of his
physical influence. Partly it was correct, not entirely, seeing that she
kept the impression of a belief in him even when she drifted away through
sheer weakness, but it was the single positive view he had of her, and it
was fatal, for it begat a devil of impatience.

'They are undermining her now--now--now!'

He started himself into busy frenzies to reach to her, already
indifferent to the means, and waxing increasingly reckless as he fed on
his agitation. Some faith in her, even the little she deserved, would
have arrested him: unhappily he had less than she, who had enough to
nurse the dim sense of his fixity, and sank from him only in her heart's
faintness, but he, when no longer flattered by the evidence of his
mastery, took her for sand. Why, then, had he let her out of his grasp?
The horrid echoed interrogation flashed a hideous view of the woman. But
how had he come to be guilty of it? he asked himself again; and, without
answering him, his counsellors to that poor wisdom set to work to
complete it: Giant Vanity urged Giant Energy to make use of Giant
Duplicity. He wrote to Clotilde, with one voice quoting the law in their
favour, with another commanding her to break it. He gathered and drilled
a legion of spies, and showered his gold in bribes and plots to get the
letter to her, to get an interview--one human word between them.




CHAPTER X

His friend Colonel von Tresten was beside him when he received the
enemy's counter-stroke. Count Walburg and his companion brought a letter
from Clotilde--no reply; a letter renouncing him.

Briefly, in cold words befitting the act, she stated that the past must
be dead between them; for the future she belonged to her parents; she had
left the city. She knew not where he might be, her letter concluded, but
henceforward he should know that they were strangers.

Alvan held out the deadly paper when he had read the contents; he smote a
forefinger on it and crumpled it in his hand. That was the dumb oration
of a man shocked by the outrage upon passionate feeling to the state of
brute. His fist, outstretched to the length of his arm, shook the reptile
letter under a terrible frown.

Tresten saw that he supposed himself to be perfectly master of his acts
because he had not spoken, and had managed to preserve the ordinary
courtesies.

'You have done your commission,' the colonel said to Count Walburg, whose
companion was not disposed to go without obtaining satisfactory
assurances, and pressed for them.

Alvan fastened on him. 'You adopt the responsibility of this?' He
displayed the letter.

'I do.'

'It lies.'

Tresten remarked to Count Walburg: 'These visits are provocations.'

'They are not so intended,' said the count, bowing pacifically. His
friend was not a man of the sword, and was not under the obligation to
accept an insult. They left the letter to do its work.

Big natures in their fits of explosiveness must be taken by flying shots,
as dwarfs peep on a monster, or the Scythian attacked a phalanx. Were we
to hear all the roarings of the shirted Heracles, a world of comfortable
little ones would doubt the unselfishness of his love of Dejaneira. Yes,
really; they would think it was not a chivalrous love: they would
consider that he thought of himself too much. They would doubt, too, of
his being a gentleman! Partial glimpses of him, one may fear, will be
discomposing to simple natures. There was a short black eruption. Alvan
controlled it, to ask hastily what the baroness thought and what she had
heard of Clotilde. Tresten made sign that it was nothing of the best.

'See! my girl has hundreds of enemies, and I, only I, know her and can
defend her--weak, base shallow trickster, traitress that she is!' cried
Alvan, and came down in a thundershower upon her: 'Yesterday--the day
before--when? just now, here, in this room; gave herself--and now!' He
bent, and immediately straightening his back, addressed Colonel von
Tresten as her calumniator, 'Say your worst of her, and I say I will make
of that girl the peerless woman of earth! I! in earnest! it's no dream.
She can be made . . . . O God! the beast has turned tail! I knew she
could. There 's three of beast to one of goddess in her, and set her
alone, and let her be hunted and I not by, beast it is with her! cowardly
skulking beast--the noblest and very bravest under my wing!
Incomprehensible to you, Tresten? But who understands women! You hate
her. Do not. She 's a riddle, but no worse than the rest of the tangle.
She gives me up? Pooh! She writes it. She writes anything. And that
vilest, I say, I will make more enviable, more Clotilde! he thundered her
signature in an amazement, broken suddenly by the sight of her putting
her name to the letter. She had done that, written her name to the
renunciation of him! No individual could bear the sight of such a crime,
and no suffering man could be appeased by a single victim to atone for
it. Her sex must be slaughtered; he raged against the woman; she became
that ancient poisonous thing, the woman; his fury would not distinguish
her as Clotilde, though the name had started him, and it was his
knowledge of the particular sinner which drew down his curses on the sex.
He twisted his body, hugging at his breast as if he had her letter
sticking in his ribs. The letter was up against his ribs, and he thumped
it, crushed it, patted it; he kissed it, and flung it, stamped on it, and
was foul-mouthed. Seeing it at his feet, he bent to it like a man snapped
in two, lamenting, bewailing himself, recovering sight of her
fragmentarily. It stuck in his ribs, and in scorn of the writer, and
sceptical of her penning it, he tugged to pull it out, and broke the
shaft, but left the rankling arrow-head:--she had traced the lines, and
though tyranny racked her to do that thing, his agony followed her hand
over the paper to her name, which fixed and bit in him like the
deadly-toothed arrow-head called asp, and there was no uprooting it. The
thing lived; her deed was the woman; there was no separating them:
witness it in love murdered.

O that woman! She has murdered love. She has blotted love completely out.
She is the arch-thief and assassin of mankind--the female Apollyon. He
lost sight of her in the prodigious iniquity covering her sex with a cowl
of night, and it was what women are, what women will do, the one and all
alike simpering simulacra that men find them to be, soulless, clogs on
us, bloodsuckers! until a feature of the particular sinner peeped out on
him, and brought the fresh agony of a reminder of his great-heartedness.
'For that woman--Tresten, you know me--I would have sacrificed for that
woman fortune and life, my hope, my duty, my immortality. She knew it,
and she--look!' he unwrinkled the letter carefully for it to be legible,
and clenched it in a ball.' Signs her name, signs her name, her
name!--God of heaven! it would be incredible in a holy chronicle--signs
her name to the infamous harlotry! See: "Clotilde von Rudiger." It's her
writing; that's her signature: "Clotilde" in full. You'd hardly fancy
that, now? But look!' the colonel's eyelids were blinking, and Alvan
dinted his finger-nail under her name: 'there it is: Clotilde: signed
shamelessly. Just as she might have written to one of her friends about
bonnets, and balls, and books! Henceforward strangers, she and I?'

His laughter, even to Tresten, a man of camps, sounded profane as a yell
beneath a cathedral dome. 'Why, the woman has been in my hands--I
released her, spared her, drilled brain and blood, ransacked all the
code, to do her homage and honour in every mortal way; and we two
strangers! Do you hear that, Tresten? Why, if you had seen her!--she was
lost, and I, this man she now pierces with ice, kept hell down under bolt
and bar-worse, I believe, broke a good woman's heart! that never a breath
should rise that could accuse her on suspicion, or in malice, or by
accident, justly, or with a shadow of truth. "I think it best for us
both." So she thinks for me! She not only decides, she thinks; she is the
active principle; 'tis mine to submit.--A certain presumption was in that
girl always. Ha! do you hear me? Her letter may sting, it shall not dupe.
Strangers? Poor fool! You see plainly she was nailed down to write the
thing. This letter is a flat lie. She can lie--Oh! born to the art! born
to it!--lies like a Saint tricking Satan! But she says she has left the
city. Now to find her!'

He began marching about the room with great strides. 'I 'll have the
whole Continent up; her keepers shall have no rest; I 'll have them by
the Law Courts; and by stratagem, and, if law and cunning fail, force. I
have sworn it. I have done all that honour can ask of a man; more than
any man, to my knowledge, would have done, and now it's war. I declare
war on them. They will have it! I mean to take that girl from
them--snatch or catch! The girl is my girl, and if there are laws against
my having my own, to powder with the laws! Well, and do you suppose me
likely to be beaten? Then Cicero was a fiction, and Caesar a people's
legend. Not if they are history, and eloquence and commandership have
power over the blood and souls of men. First, I write to her!'

His friend suggested that he knew not where she was. But already the pen
was at work, the brain pouring as from a pitcher.

Writing was blood-letting, and the interminable pages drained him of his
fever. As he wrote, she grew more radiant, more indistinct, more fiercely
desired. The concentration of his active mind directed his whole being on
the track of Clotilde, idealizing her beyond human. That last day when he
had seen her appeared to him as the day of days. That day was Clotilde
herself, she in person; he saw it as the woman, and saw himself
translucent in the great luminousness; and behind it all was dark, as in
front. That one day was the sun of his life. It had been a day of rain,
and he beheld it in memory just as it had been, with the dark threaded
air, the dripping streets; and he glorified it past all daily radiance.
His letter was a burning hymn to the day. His moral grandeur on the day
made him live as part of the splendour. Was it possible for the woman who
had seen him then to be faithless to him? The swift deduction from his
own feelings cleansed her of a suspicion to the contrary, and he became
lighthearted. He hummed an air when he had finished his letter to her.

Councils with his adherents and couriers were held, and some were
despatched to watch the house and slip the letter to her maid; others
were told off to bribe and hound their way on the track of Clotilde. His
gold rained into their hands with the directions.

Colonel von Tresten was the friend of his attachment to the baroness; a
friend of both, and a warm one. Men coming into contact with Alvan took
their shape of friend or enemy sharply, for he was friend or enemy of no
dubious feature, devoted to them he loved, and a battery on them he
opposed. The colonel had been the confidant of the baroness's grief over
this love-passion of Alvan's, and her resignation. He shared her doubts
of Clotilde's nobility of character: the reports were not favourable to
the young lady. But the baroness and he were of one opinion, that Alvan
in love was not likely to be governable by prudent counsel. He dropped a
word of the whispers of Clotilde's volatility.

Alvan nodded his perfect assent. 'She is that, she is anything you like;
you cannot exaggerate her for good or evil. She is matchless, colour her
as you please.' Adopting the tone of argument, he said: 'She writes that
letter. Well? It is her writing, and the moment, I am sure of it as hers,
I would not have it unwritten. I love it!' He looked maddish with his
love of the horrible thing, and resumed soberly: 'The point is, that she
has the charm for me. She is plastic in my hands. Other men would waste
the treasure. I make of her what I will, and she knows it, and knows that
she hangs on me to flourish worthily. I breathe the very soul of the
woman into her. As for that letter of hers--' it burnt him this time to
speak of the letter: 'she may write and write! She's weak, thin, a reed;
she--let her be! Say of her when she plays beast--she is absent from
Alvan! I can forgive. The letter's nothing; it means nothing--except
"Thou fool, Alvan, to let me go." Yes, that! Her people are acting tyrant
with her--as legally they have no right to do in this country, and I
shall prove it to them. When I have gained admission to her--and I soon
shall: it can't be refused: I am off to the head of her father's office
to-morrow, and I have only to represent the state of affairs to the
Minister in my language to obtain his authority to demand admission to
her:--then, friend, you will see! I lift my finger, and you will see! At
my request she went back to her mother. I have but to beckon.'

He had cooled to the happy assurance of his authority over her, all the
giants of his system being well in action, and when that is the case with
a big nature it is at rest, or such is the condition of repose granted it
in life.

On the morrow he was off to batter at doors which would have expected
rather the summons of an armed mob at his heels than the strange cry of
the Radical man maltreated by love.




CHAPTER XI

The story of Clotilde's departure from the city, like that of Alvan's,
communicated to her by her maid, was an anticipation of the truth,
disseminated by her parents. She was removed when the swarm of spies and
secret letter-bearers were attaining a position of dignity through the
rumour of legal gentlemen about to direct the movements of the besieging
army.

A stir seemed to her to prognosticate a rescue and she went not
unwillingly. To be in motion, to see roadside faces, pricked her senses
with some hope. She had gained the peace she needed, and in that state
her heart began to be agitated by a fresh awakening, luxurious at first
rather than troublesome. She had sunk so low that the light of Alvan
seemed too distant for a positive expectation of him; but few approached
her whom she did not fancy under strange disguises: the gentlemen were
servants, the blouses were gentlemen; she looked wistfully at old women
bearing baskets, for the forbidden fruit to peep out in the form of an
envelope. All passed her blankly, noticing her eyes.

The journey was short; she was taken to a place a little beyond the head
of the lake, and there, though she had liberty to breathe the air, fast
fixed within the walls of a daily sameness that became gradually the hum
of voices accusing Alvan of one in excess of the many sins laid against
him by his enemies. Was he not possibly an empty pretender to power--a
mere great talker?

Her bit of liberty increased her chafing at the deadly monotony of this
existence, and envenomed the accusation by seeming to push her forth
quite half way to meet him, if he would but come or show sign! She
impetuously vindicated him from the charge of crediting the sincerity of
any words she might have committed to paper at the despotic dictation of
her father. Oh, no; Alvan could not be guilty of such folly as that; he
could not; it would be to suppose him unacquainted with her, ignorant of
the nature of women. He would know that she wrote the words--why? She
could not perfectly recollect how she had come to write them, and found
it easier to extinguish the act of having written them at all, which was
done by the angry recurrence to his failure to intervene now when the
drama cried for his godlike appearance. Perhaps he was really
unacquainted with her thought her stronger than she was! The idea
reflected a shadow on his intelligence. She was not in a situation that
could bear of her blaming herself.

While she was thus devoured by the legions of her enfeebled wits,
Clotilde was assiduously courted by her family, and her father from time
to time brought pen and paper for her to write anew from his dictation.
He was pleased to hail her as his fair secretary, and when the letters
were unimportant she wrote flowingly, happy to be praised. They were
occasionally addressed to friends; she discovered herself writing one to
the professor, in which he was about to be informed that she had resolved
to banish Alvan from her mind for ever. She stopped; her heart stopped;
the pen fell from her hand, in loathing. Her father warily bade her
proceed. She could not; she signified it choking. Only a few days before
she had written to the professor exultingly of her engagement. She
refused to belie herself in such a manner; retrospectively her rapid
contradictions appeared impossible; the picture of her was not human, and
she gave out a negative of her whole frame convulsed, whereat the General
was not slow to remind her of the scourgings she had undergone by a
sudden burst of his wrath. He knew the proper physic. 'You girls want the
lesson we read to skittish recruits; you shall have it. Write: "He is now
as nothing to me." You shall write that you hate him, if you hesitate!
Why, you unreasonable slut, you have given him up; you have told him you
have given him up, and what objection can you have to telling others now
you have done it?'

'I was forced to it, body and soul!' cried Clotilde, sobbing and bursting
into desperation out of a weak show of petulance that she had put on to
propitiate him. 'If I have to tell, I will tell how it was. For that my
heart is unchanged, and Alvan is, and will be, my lord, all the world may
see. I would rather write that I hate him.'

'You write, the man is now as nothing to me!' said her father, dashing
his finger in a fiery zig-zag along the line for her pen to follow. 'Or
else, my girl, you've been playing us a pretty farce!' He strung himself
for a mad gallop of wrath, gave her a shudder, and relapsed. 'No, no,
you're wiser, you're a better girl than that. Write it. I must have it
written-here, come! The worst is over; the rest is child's play. Come,
take the pen, I'll guide your hand.'

The pen was fixed in her hand, and the first words formed. They looked
such sprawling skeletons that Clotilde had the comfort of feeling sure
they would be discerned as the work of compulsion. So she wrote on
mechanically, solacing herself for what she did with vows of future
revolt. Alvan had a saying, that want of courage is want of sense; and
she remembered his illustration of how sense would nourish courage by
scattering the fear of death, if we would only grasp the thought that we
sink to oblivion gladly at night, and, most of us, quit it reluctantly in
the morning. She shut her eyes while writing; she fancied death would be
welcome; and as she certainly had sense, she took it for the promise of
courage. She flattered herself by believing, therefore, that she who did
not object to die was only awaiting the cruelly-delayed advent of her
lover to be almost as brave as he--the feminine of him. With these ideas
in her head much clearer than when she wrote the couple of lines to
Alvan--for then her head was reeling, she was then beaten and
prostrate--she signed her name to a second renunciation of him, and was
aware of a flush of self-reproach at the simple suspicion of his being
deceived by it; it was an insult to his understanding. Full surely the
professor would not be deceived, and a lover with a heart to reach to her
and read her could never be hoodwinked by so palpable a piece of
slavishness. She was indeed slavish; the apology necessitated the
confession. But that promise of courage, coming of her ownership of
sense, vindicated her prospectively; she had so little of it that she
embraced it as a present possession, and she made it Alvan's task to put
it to the trial. Hence it became Alvan's offence if, owing to his
absence, she could be charged with behaving badly. Her generosity
pardoned him his inexplicable delay to appear in his might: 'But see what
your continued delay causes!' she said, and her tone was merely
sorrowful.

She had forgotten her signature to the letter to the professor when his
answer arrived. The sight of the handwriting of one of her lover's
faithfullest friends was like a peal of bells to her, and she tore the
letter open, and began to blink and spell at a strange language, taking
the frosty sentences piecemeal. He begged her to be firm in her
resolution, give up Alvan and obey her parents! This man of high
intelligence and cultivation wrote like a provincial schoolmistress
moralizing. Though he knew the depth of her passion for Alvan, and had
within the month received her lark-song of her betrothal, he, this
man--if living man he could be thought--counselled her to endeavour to
deserve the love and respect of her parents, alluded to Alvan's age and
her better birth, approved her resolve to consult the wishes of her
family, and in fine was as rank a traitor to friendship as any
chronicled. Out on him! She swept him from earth.

And she had built some of her hopes on the professor. 'False friend!' she
cried.

She wept over Alvan for having had so false a friend.

There remained no one that could be expected to intervene with a strong
arm save the baroness. The professor's emphasized approval of her resolve
to consult the wishes of her family was a shocking hypocrisy, and
Clotilde thought of the contrast to it in her letter to the baroness. The
tripping and stumbling, prettily awkward little tone of gosling innocent
new from its egg, throughout the letter, was a triumph of candour. She
repeated passages, paragraphs, of the letter, assuring herself that such
affectionately reverential prattle would have moved her, and with the
strongest desire to cast her arms about the writer: it had been composed
to be moving to a woman, to any woman. The old woman was entreated to
bestow her blessing on the young one, all in Arcadia, and let the young
one nestle to the bosom she had not an idea of robbing. She could not
have had the idea, else how could she have made the petition? And in
order to compliment a venerable dame on her pure friendship for a
gentleman, it was imperative to reject the idea. Besides, after seeing
the photograph of the baroness, common civility insisted on the purity of
her friendship. Nay, in mercy to the poor gentleman, friendship it must
be.

A letter of reply from that noble lady was due. Possibly she had
determined not to write, but to act. She was a lady of exalted birth, a
lady of the upper aristocracy, who could, if she would, bring both a
social and official pressure upon the General: and it might be in motion
now behind the scenes, Clotilde laid hold of her phantom baroness, almost
happy under the phantom's whisper that she need not despair. 'You have
been a little weak,' the phantom said to her, and she acquiesced with a
soft sniffle, adding: 'But, dearest, honoured lady, you are a woman, and
know what our trials are when we are so persecuted. O that I had your
beautiful sedateness! I do admire it, madam. I wish I could imitate.' She
carried her dramatic ingenuousness farthel still by saying: 'I have seen
your photograph'; implying that the inimitable, the much coveted air of
composure breathed out of yonder presentment of her features. 'For I
can't call you good looking,' she said within herself, for the
satisfaction of her sense of candour, of her sense of contrast as well.
And shutting her eyes, she thought of the horrid penitent a harsh-faced
woman in confession must be:

The picture sent her swimmingly to the confessional, where sat a man with
his head in a hood, and he soon heard enough of mixed substance to dash
his hood, almost his head, off. Beauty may be immoderately frank in soul
to the ghostly. The black page comprised a very long list. 'But put this
on the white page,' says she to the surging father inside his box--'I
loved Alvan!' A sentence or two more fetches the Alvanic man jumping out
of the priest: and so closely does she realize it that she has to hunt
herself into a corner with the question, whether she shall tell him she
guessed him to be no other than her lover. 'How could you expect a girl,
who is not a Papist, to come kneeling here?' she says. And he answers
with no matter what of a gallant kind.

In this manner her natural effervescence amused her sorrowful mind while
gazing from her chamber window at the mountain sides across the valley,
where tourists, in the autumnal season, sweep up and down like a tidal
river. She had ceased to weep; she had outwept the colour of her eyes and
the consolation of weeping. Dressed in black to the throat, she sat and
waited the arrival of her phantom friend, the baroness--that angel! who
proved her goodness in consenting to be the friend of Alvan's beloved,
because she was the true friend of Alvan! How cheap such a way of proving
goodness, Clotilde did not consider. She wanted it so.

The mountain heights were in dusty sunlight. She had seen them day after
day thinly lined on the dead sky, inviting thunder and doomed to
sultriness. She looked on the garden of the house, a desert under bee and
butterfly. Looking beyond the garden she perceived her father on the
glaring road, and one with him, the sight of whom did not flush her cheek
or spring her heart to a throb, though she pitied the poor boy: he was
useless to her, utterly.

Soon her Indian Bacchus was in her room, and alone with her, and at her
feet. Her father had given him hope. He came bearing eyes that were like
hope's own; and kneeling, kissing her hands, her knees, her hair, he
seemed unaware that she was inanimate.

There was nothing imaginable in which he could be of use.

He was only another dust-cloud of the sultry sameness. She had been
expecting a woman, a tempest choral with sky and mountain and
valley-hollows, as the overture to Alvan's appearance.

But he roused her. With Marko she had never felt her cowardice, and his
passionately beseeching, trembling, 'Will you have me?' called up the
tiger in the girl; in spite of pity for his voice she retorted on her
parents:

'Will I have you? I? You ask me what is my will? It sounds oddly from
you, seeing that I wrote to you in Lucerne what I would have, and nothing
has changed in me since then, nothing! My feeling for him is unaltered,
and everything you have heard of me was wrung out of me by my
unhappiness. The world is dead to me, and all in it that is not.
Sigismund Alvan. To you I am accustomed to speak every thought of my
soul, and I tell you the world and all it has is dead to me, even my
parents--I hate them.'

Marko pressed her hands. If he loved her slavishly, it was generously.
The wild thing he said was one of the frantic leaps of generosity in a
heart that was gone to impulse: 'I see it, they have martyrized you. I
know you so well, Clotilde! So, then, come to me, come with me, let me
cherish you. I will take you and rescue you from your people, and should
it be your positive wish to meet Alvan again, I myself will take you to
him, and then you may choose between us.'

The generosity was evident. There was nevertheless, to a young woman
realizing the position foreshadowed by such a project, the suspicion of a
slavish hope nestling among the circumstances in the background, and this
she was taught by the dangerous emotion of gratitude gaining on her, and
melting her to him.

She too had a slavish hope that was athirst and sinking, and it flew at
the throat of Marko's, eager to satiate its vengeance for these long
delays in the destroying of a weaker.

She left her chair and cried: 'As you will. What is it to me? Take me, if
you please. Take that glove; it is the shape of my hand. You have as much
of me as is there. My life is gone. You or another! But take this warning
and my oath with it. I swear to you, that wherever I see Sigismund Alvan
I go straight to him, though the way be over you, all of you, lying dead
beneath me.'

The lift of incredulous horror in Marko's large black eyes excited her to
a more savage imagination: 'Rejoice! I should rejoice to see you, all of
you, dead, that I might walk across you safe from disturbance to get to
him I love. Be under no delusion. I love him better than the lives of any
dear to me, or my own. I am his. He is my faith, my worship. I am true to
him, I am, I am. You force my hand from me, you take this miserable body,
but my soul is free to love him and to go to him when God gives me sight
of him. I am Alvan's eternally. All your laws are mockeries. You, and my
people, and your priests, and your law-makers, are shadows,
brain-vapours. Let him beckon!--So you have your warning. Do what I may,
I cannot be called untrue. And now let me be; I want repose; my head
breaks; I have been on the rack and I am in pieces!'

Marko clung to her hand, said she was terrible and pitiless, but clung.

The hand was nerveless: it was her dear hand. Had her tongue been more
venomous in wildness than the encounter with a weaker than herself made
it be, the holding of her hand would have been his antidote. In him there
was love for two.

Clotilde allowed him to keep the hand, assuring herself she was
unconscious he did so. He brought her peace, he brought her old throning
self back to her, and he was handsome and tame as a leopard-skin at her
feet.

If she was doomed to reach to Alvan through him, at least she had warned
him. The vision of the truthfulness of her nature threw a celestial wan
beam on her guilty destiny.

She patted his head and bade him leave her, narrowing her shoulders on
the breast to let it be seen that the dark household within was locked
and shuttered.

He went. He was good, obedient, humane; he was generous, exquisitely
bred; he brought her peace, and he had been warned. It is difficult in
affliction to think of one who belongs to us as one to whom we owe a
duty. The unquestionably sincere and devoted lover is also in his candour
a featureless person; and though we would not punish him for his
goodness, we have the right to anticipate that it will be equal to every
trial. Perhaps, for the sake of peace . . . after warning him . . . her
meditations tottered in dots.

But when the heart hungers behind such meditations, that thinking without
language is a dangerous habit; for there will suddenly come a dash
usurping the series of tentative dots, which is nothing other than the
dreadful thing resolved on, as of necessity, as naturally as the
adventurous bow-legged infant pitches back from an excursion of two paces
to mother's lap; and not much less innocently within the mind, it would
appear. The dash is a haven reached that would not be greeted if it stood
out in words. Could we live without ourselves letting our animal do our
thinking for us legibly? We live with ourselves agreeably so long as his
projects are phrased in his primitive tongue, even though we have clearly
apprehended what he means, and though we sufficiently well understand the
whither of our destination under his guidance. No counsel can be saner
than that the heart should be bidden to speak out in plain verbal speech
within us. For want of it, Clotilde's short explorations in Dot-and-Dash
land were of a kind to terrify her, and yet they seemed not only
unavoidable, but foreshadowing of the unavoidable to come. Or
possibly--the thought came to her--Alvan would keep his word, and save
her from worse by stepping to the altar between her and Marko, there
calling on her to decide and quit the prince; and his presence would
breathe courage into her to go to him. It set her looking to the altar
as a prospect of deliverance.

Her mother could not fail to notice a change in Clotilde's wintry face
now that Marko was among them; her inference tallied with his report of
their interview, so she supposed the girl to have accepted more or less
heartily Marko's forgiveness. For him the girl's eyes were soft and kind;
her gaze was through the eyelashes, as one seeing a dream on a far
horizon. Marko spoke of her cheerfully, and was happy to call her his
own, but would not have her troubled by any ceremonial talk of their
engagement, so she had much to thank him for, and her consciousness of
the signal instance of ingratitude lying ahead in the darkness, like a
house mined beneath the smiling slumberer, made her eager to show the
real gratefulness and tenderness of her feelings. This had the appearance
of renewed affection; consequently her parents lost much of their fear of
the besieger outside, and she was removed to the city. Two parties were
in the city, one favouring Alvan, and one abhorring the audacious Jew.
Together they managed to spread incredible reports of his doings, which
required little exaggeration to convince an enemy that he was a man with
whom hostility could not be left to sleep. The General heard of the man's
pleading his cause in all directions to get pressure put upon him,
showing something like a devilish persuasiveness, Jew and demagogue
though he was; for there seemed to be a feeling abroad that the interview
this howling lover claimed with Clotilde ought to be granted. The latest
report spoke of him as off to the General's Court for an audience of his
official chief. General von Rudiger looked to his defences, and he had
sufficient penetration to see that the weakest point of them might be a
submissive daughter.

A letter to Clotilde from the baroness was brought to the house by a
messenger. The General thought over it. The letter was by no means a
seductive letter for a young lady to receive from such a person, yet he
did not anticipate the whole effect it would produce when ultimately he
decided to give it to her, being of course unaware of the noble style of
Clotilde's address to the baroness. He stipulated that there must be no
reply to it except through him, and Clotilde had the coveted letter in
her hands at last. Here was the mediatrix--the veritable goddess with the
sword to cut the knot! Here was the manifestation of Alvan!




BOOK 3.




CHAPTER XII

She ran out to the shade of the garden walls to be by herself and in the
air, and she read; and instantly her own letter to the baroness crashed
sentence upon sentence, in retort, springing up with the combative
instinct of a beast, to make discord of the stuff she read, and deride
it. Twice she went over the lines with this defensive accompaniment; then
they laid octopus-limbs on her. The writing struck chill as a glacier
cave. Oh, what an answer to that letter of fervid respectfulness, of
innocent supplication for maternal affection, for some degree of
benignant friendship!

The baroness coldly stated, that she had arrived in the city to do her
best in assisting to arrange matters which had come to a most unfortunate
and impracticable pass. She alluded to her established friendship for
Alvan, but it was chiefly in the interests of Clotilde that the latter
was requested to perceive the necessity for bringing her relations with
Dr. Alvan to an end in the discreetest manner now possible to the
circumstances. This, the baroness pursued, could only be done by her
intervention, and her friendship for Dr. Alvan had caused her to
undertake the little agreeable office. For which purpose, promising her
an exemption from anything in the nature of tragedy scenes, the baroness
desired Clotilde to call on her the following day between certain
specified hours of the afternoon.

That was all.

The girl in her letter to the baroness had constrained herself to write,
and therefore to think, in so beautiful a spirit of ignorant innocence,
that the vileness of an answer thus brutally throwing off the mask of
personal disinterestedness appeared to her both an abominable piece of
cynicism on the part of a scandalous old woman, and an insulting
rejection of the cover of decency proposed to the creature by a
daisy-minded maiden.

She scribbled a single line in receipt of the letter and signed her
initials.

'The woman is hateful!' she said to her father; she was ready to agree
with him about the woman and Alvan. She was ashamed to have hoped
anything of the woman, and stamped down her disappointment under a
vehement indignation, that disfigured the man as well. He had put the
matter into the hands of this most detestable of women, to settle it as
she might think best! He and she!--the miserable old thing with her
ancient arts and cajoleries had lured him back! She had him fast again,
in spite of--for who could tell? perhaps by reason of her dirty habits:
she smoked dragoon cigars! All day she was emitting tobacco-smoke; it was
notorious, Clotilde had not to learn it from her father; but now she saw
the filthy rag that standard of female independence was--that petticoated
Unfeminine, fouler than masculine! Alvan preferred the lichen-draped tree
to the sunny flower, it was evident, for never a letter from Alvan had
come to her. She thought in wrath, nothing but the thoughts of wrath, and
ran her wits through every reasonable reflection like a lighted brand
that flings its colour, if not fire, upon surrounding images. Contempt of
the square-jawed withered woman was too great for Clotilde to have a
sensation of her driving jealousy until painful glimpses of the man made
jealousy so sharp that she flew for refuge to contempt of the pair. That
beldam had him back: she had him fast. Oh! let her keep him! Was he to be
regretted who could make that choice?

Her father did not let the occasion slip to speak insistingly as the
world opined of Alvan and his baroness. He forced her to swallow the
calumny, and draw away with her family against herself through strong
disgust.

Out of a state of fire Clotilde passed into solid frigidity. She had
neither a throb nor a passion. Wishing seemed to her senseless as life
was. She could hear without a thrill of her frame that Alvan was in the
city, without a question whether it was true. He had not written, and he
had handed her over to the baroness! She did not ask herself how it was
that she had no letter from him, being afraid to think about it, because,
if a letter had been withheld by her father, it was a part of her
whipping; if none had been written, there was nothing to hope for. Her
recent humiliation condemned him by the voice of her sufferings for his
failure to be giant, eagle, angel, or any of the prodigious things he had
taught her to expect; and as he had thus deceived her, the glorious lover
she had imaged in her mind was put aside with some of the angry disdain
she bestowed upon the woman by whom she had been wounded. He ceased to be
a visioned Alvan, and became an obscurity; her principal sentiment in
relation to him was, that he threatened her peace. But for him she would
never have been taught to hate her parents; she would have enjoyed the
quiet domestic evenings with her people, when Marko sang, and her sisters
knitted, and the betrothed sister wore a look very enviable in the
abstract; she would be seeing a future instead of a black iron gate! But
for him she certainly would never have had, that letter from the
baroness!

On the morning after the information of Alvan's return, her father, who
deserved credit as a tactician, came to her to say that Alvan had sent to
demand his letters and presents. The demand was unlike what her stunned
heart recollected of Alvan; but a hint that the baroness was behind it,
and that a refusal would bring the baroness down on her with another
piece of insolence, was effective. She dealt out the letters, arranged
the presents, made up the books, pamphlets, trinkets, amulet coins, lock
of black hair, and worn post-marked paper addressed in his hand to
Clotilde von Rudiger, carefully; and half as souvenir, half with the
forlorn yearning of the look of lovers when they break asunder--or of one
of them--she signed inside the packet not 'Clotilde,' but the gentlest
title he had bestowed on her, trusting to the pathos of the word 'child'
to tell him that she was enforced and still true, if he should be
interested in knowing it. Weak souls are much moved by having the pathos
on their side. They are consoled too.

Time passed, whole days: the tender reminder had no effect on him! It had
been her last appeal: she reflected that she had really felt when he had
not been feeling at all: and this marks a division.

She was next requested to write a letter to Alvan, signifying his release
by the notification of her engagement to Prince Marko. She was personally
to deliver it to a gentleman who was of neither party, and who would give
her a letter from Alvan in exchange, which, while assuring the gentleman
she was acting with perfect freedom, she was to be under her oath not to
read, and dutifully to hand to Marko, her betrothed. Her father assumed
the fact of her renewed engagement to the prince, as her whole family
did; strangely, she thought: it struck her as a fatality. He said that
Alvan was working him great mischief, doing him deadly injury in his
position, and for no just reason, inasmuch as he--a bold, bad man
striving to ruin the family on a point of pride--had declared that he
simply considered himself bound in honour to her, only a little doubtful
of her independent action at present; and a release of him, accompanied
by her plain statement of her being under no compulsion, voluntarily the
betrothed of another, would solve the difficulty. A certain old woman, it
seemed, was anxious to have him formally released.

With the usual dose for such a patient, of cajoleries and threats, the
General begged her to comply, pulling the hands he squeezed in a way to
strongly emphasize his affectionate entreaty.

She went straight to Marko, consenting that he should have Alvan's letter
unopened (she cared not to read it, she said), on his promise to give it
up to her within a stated period. There was a kind of prohibited
pleasure, sweet acid, catching discord, in the idea of this lover's
keeping the forbidden thing she could ask for when she was curious about
the other, which at present she was not; dead rather; anxious to please
her parents, and determined to be no rival of the baroness. Marko
promised it readily, adding: 'Only let the storm roll over, that we may
have more liberty, and I myself, when we two are free, will lead you to
Alvan, and leave it to you to choose between us. Your happiness, beloved,
is my sole thought. Submit for the moment.' He spoke sweetly, with his
dearest look, touching her luxurious nature with a belief that she could
love him; untroubled by another, she could love and be true to him: her
maternal inner nature yearned to the frailbodied youth.

She made a comparison in her mind of Alvan's love and Marko's, and of the
lives of the two men. There was no grisly baroness attached to the
prince's life.

She wrote the letter to Alvan, feeling in the words that said she was
plighted to Prince Marko, that she said, and clearly said, the baroness
is now relieved of a rival, and may take you! She felt it so acutely as
to feel that she said nothing else.

Severances are accomplished within the heart stroke by stroke; within the
craven's heart each new step resulting from a blow is temporarily an
absolute severance. Her letter to Alvan written, she thought not tenderly
of him but of the prince, who had always loved a young woman, and was
unhampered by an old one. The composition of the letter, and the sense
that the thing was done, made her stony to Alvan.

On the introduction of Colonel von Tresten, whose name she knew, but was
dull to it, she delivered him her letter with unaffected composure,
received from him Alvan's in exchange, left the room as if to read it,
and after giving it unopened to Marko, composedly reappeared before the
colonel to state, that the letter could make no difference, and all was
to be as she had written it.

The colonel bowed stiffly.

It would have comforted her to have been allowed to say: 'I cease to be
the rival of that execrable harridan!'

The delivery of so formidable a cat-screech not being possible, she stood
in an attitude of mild resignation, revolving thoughts of her father's
praises of his noble daughter, her mother's kiss, the caresses of her
sisters, and the dark bright eyes of Marko, the peace of the domestic
circle. This was her happiness! And still there was time, still hope for
Alvan to descend and cut the knot. She conceived it slowly, with some
flush of the brain like a remainder of fever, but no throbs of her
pulses. She had been swayed to act against him by tales which in her
heart she did not credit exactly, therefore did not take within herself,
though she let them influence her by the goad of her fears and angers;
and these she could conjure up at will for the defence of her conduct,
aware of their shallowness, and all the while trusting him to come in the
end and hear her reproaches for his delay. He seemed to her now to have
the character of a storm outside a household wrapped in comfortable
monotony. Her natural spiritedness detested the monotony, her craven soul
fawned for the comfort. After her many recent whippings the comfort was
immensely desireable, but a glance at the monotony gave it the look of a
burial, and standing in her attitude of resignation under Colonel von
Tresten's hard military stare she could have shrieked for Alvan to come,
knowing that she would have cowered and trembled at the scene following
his appearance. Yet she would have gone to him; without any doubt his
presence and the sense of his greater power declared by his coming would
have lifted her over to him. The part of her nature adoring storminess
wanted only a present champion to outweigh the other part which cuddled
security. Colonel von Tresten, however, was very far from offering
himself in such a shape to a girl that had jilted the friend he loved,
insulted the woman he esteemed; and he stood there like a figure of
soldierly complacency in marble. Her pencilled acknowledgement of the
baroness's letter, and her reply to it almost as much, was construed as
an intended insult to that lady, whose champion Tresten was. He had
departed before Clotilde heard a step.

Immediately thereupon it came: to her mind that Tresten was one of
Alvan's bosom friends. How, then, could he be of neither party? And her
father spoke of him as an upright rational man, who, although, strangely
enough, he entertained, as it appeared, something like a profound
reverence for the baroness, could see and confess the downright
impossibility of the marriage Alvan proposed. Tresten, her father said,
talked of his friend Alvan as wild and eccentric, but now becoming
convinced that such a family as hers could never tolerate
him--considering his age, his birth, his blood, his habits, his politics,
his private entanglements and moral reputation, it was partly hinted.

She shuddered at this false Tresten. He and the professor might be strung
together for examples of perfidy! His reverence of the baroness gave his
cold blue eyes the iciness of her loathed letter. Alvan, she remembered,
used to exalt him among the gallantest of the warriors dedicating their
swords to freedom. The dedication of the sword, she felt sure, was an
accident: he was a man of blood. And naturally, she must be hated by the
man reverencing the baroness. If ever man had executioner stamped on his
face, it was he! Like the professor, nay, like Alvan himself, he would
not see that she was the victim of tyranny: none of her signs would they
see. They judged of her by her inanimate frame in the hands of her
torturers breaking her on the wheel. She called to mind a fancy that she
had looked at Tresten out of her deadness earnestly for just one instant:
more than an instant she could not, beneath her father's vigilant watch
and into those repellant cold blue butcher eyes. Tresten might clearly
have understood the fleeting look. What were her words! what her deeds!

The look was the truth revealed-her soul. It begged for life like an
infant; and the man's face was an iron rock in reply! No wonder--he
worshipped the baroness! So great was Clotilde's hatred of him that it
overflooded the image of Alvan, who called him friend, and deputed him to
act as friend. Such blindness, weakness, folly, on the part of one of
Alvan's pretensions, incurred a shade of her contempt. She had not ever
thought of him coldly: hitherto it would have seemed a sacrilege; but now
she said definitely, the friend of Tresten cannot be the man I supposed
him! and she ascribed her capacity for saying it, and for perceiving and
adding up Alvan's faults of character, to the freezing she had taken from
that most antipathetic person. She confessed to sensations of spite which
would cause her to reject and spurn even his pleadings for Alvan, if they
were imaginable as actual. Their not being imaginable allowed her to
indulge her naughtiness harmlessly, for the gratification of the idea of
wounding some one, though it were her lover, connected with this Tresten.

The letter of the baroness and the visit of the woman's admirer had
vitiated Clotilde's blood. She was not only not mistress of her thoughts,
she was undirected either in thinking or wishing by any desires, except
that the people about her should caress and warm her, until, with no gaze
backward, she could say good-bye to them, full of meaning as a good-bye
to the covered grave, as unreluctantly as the swallow quits her
eaves-nest in autumn: and they were to learn that they were chargeable
with the sequel of the history. There would be a sequel, she was sure, if
it came only to punish them for the cruelty which thwarted her timid
anticipation of it by pressing on her natural instinct at all costs to
bargain for an escape from pain, and making her simulate contentment to
cheat her muffled wound and them.




CHAPTER XIII

His love meantime was the mission and the burden of Alvan, and he was not
ashamed to speak of it and plead for it; and the pleading was not done
troubadourishly, in soft flute-notes, as for easement of tuneful emotions
beseeching sympathy. He was liker to a sturdy beggar demanding his crust,
to support life, of corporations that can be talked into admitting the
rights of man; and he vollied close logical argumentation, on the basis
of the laws, in defence of his most natural hunger, thunder in his breast
and bright new heavenly morning alternating or clashing while the
electric wires and post smote him with evil tidings of Clotilde, and the
success of his efforts caught her back to him. Daily many times he
reached to her and lost her, had her in his arms and his arms withered
with emptiness. The ground he won quaked under him. All the evidence
opposed it, but he was in action, and his reason swore that he had her
fast. He had seen and felt his power over her; his reason told him by
what had been that it must be. Could he doubt? He battled for his reason.
Doubt was an extinguishing wave, and he clung to his book of the Law,
besieging Church and State with it, pointing to texts of the law which
proved her free to choose her lord and husband for herself, expressing
his passionate love by his precise interpretation of the law: and still
with the cold sentience gaining on him, against the current of his
tumultuous blood and his hurried intelligence, of her being actually what
he had named her in moments of playful vision--slippery, a serpent, a
winding hare; with the fear that she might slip from him, betray, deny
him, deliver him to ridicule, after he had won his way to her over every
barrier. During his proudest exaltations in success, when his eyes were
sparkling, there was a wry twitch inward upon his heart of hearts.

But if she was a hare, he was a hunter, little inclining to the chase now
for mere physical recreation. She had roused the sportsman's passion as
well as the man's; he meant to hunt her down, and was not more scrupulous
than our ancient hunters, who hunted for a meal and hunted to kill, with
none of the later hesitations as to circumventing, trapping, snaring by
devices, and the preservation of the animal's coat spotless. Let her be
lured from her home, or plucked from her home, and if reluctant,
disgraced, that she may be dependent utterly on the man stooping to pick
her up! He was equal to the projecting of a scheme socially infamous,
with such fanatical intensity did the thought of his losing the woman
harass him, and the torrent of his passion burst restraint to get to her
to enfold her--this in the same hour of the original wild monster's
persistent and sober exposition of the texts of the law with the voice of
a cultivated modern gentleman; and, let it be said, with a modern
gentleman's design to wed a wife in honour. All means were to be tried.
His eye burned on his prize, mindless of what she was dragged through, if
there was resistance, or whether by the hair of her head or her skirts,
or how she was obtained. His interpretation of the law was for the powers
of earth, and other plans were to propitiate the powers under the earth,
and certain distempered groanings wrenched from him at intervals he
addressed (after they were out of him, reflectively) to the powers above,
so that nothing of him should be lost which might get aid of anything
mundane, infernal, or celestial.

Thus it is when Venus bites a veritable ancient male. She puts her venom
in a magnificent beast, not a pathetic Phaedra. She does it rarely, for
though to be loved by a bitten giant is one of the dreams of woman, the
considerate Mother of Love knows how needful it is to protect the
sentiment of the passion and save them from an exhibition of the fires of
that dragon's breath. Do they not fly shrieking when they behold it?
Barely are they able to read of it. Men, too, accustomed to minor doses
of the goddess, which moderate, soften, counteract, instead of inflicting
the malady, abhor and have no brotherhood with its turbulent victim.

It was justly matter for triumph, due to an extraordinary fervour of
pleading upon a plain statement of the case, that Alvan should return
from his foray bringing with him an emissary deputed by General von
Rudiger's official chief to see that the young lady, so passionately
pursued by the foremost of his time in political genius and oratory, was
not subjected to parental tyranny, but stood free to exercise her choice.
Of the few who would ever have thought of attempting, a diminished number
would have equalled that feat. Alvan was no vain boaster; he could gain
the ears of grave men as well as mobs and women. The interview with
Clotilde was therefore assured to him, and the distracting telegrams and
letters forwarded to him by Tresten during his absence were consequently
stabs already promising to heal. They were brutal stabs--her packet of
his letters and presents on his table made them bleed afresh, and the odd
scrawl of the couple of words on the paper set him wondering at the
imbecile irony of her calling herself 'The child' in accompaniment to
such an act, for it reminded him of his epithet for her, while it dealt
him a tremendous blow; it seemed senselessly malign, perhaps flippant, as
she could be, he knew. She could be anything weak and shallow when out of
his hands; she had recently proved it still, in view of the interview,
and on the tide of his labours to come to that wished end, he struck his
breast to brave himself with a good hopeful spirit. 'Once mine!' he said.

Moreover, to the better account, Clotilde's English friend had sent him
the lines addressed to her, in which the writer dwelt on her love of him
with a whimper of the voice of love. That was previous to her perjury by
little, by a day-eighteen hours. How lurid a satire was flung on events
by the proximity of the dates! But the closeness of the time between this
love-crooning and the denying of him pointed to a tyrannous intervention.
One could detect it. Full surely the poor craven was being tyrannized and
tutored to deny him! though she was a puss of the fields too, as the
mounted sportsman was not unwilling to think.

Before visiting his Mentor, Alvan applied for an audience of General von
Rudiger, who granted it at once to a man coming so well armed to claim
the privilege. Tresten walked part of the way to the General's house with
him, and then turned aside to visit the baroness.

Lucie, Baroness von Crefeldt, was one of those persons who, after a
probationary term in the character of woman, have become men, but of whom
offended man, amazed by the flowering up of that hard rough jaw from the
tender blooming promise of a petticoat, finds it impossible to imagine
they had once on a sweet Spring time the sex's gentleness and charm of
aspect. Mistress Flanders, breeched and hatted like a man, pulling at the
man's short pipe and heartily invoking frouzy deities, committing a whole
sackful of unfeminine etcaetera, is an impenetrable wall to her maiden
past; yet was there an opening day when nothing of us moustached her. She
was a clear-faced girl and mother of young blushes before the years were
at their work of transformation upon her countenance and behind her
bosom. The years were rough artists: perhaps she was combative, and
fought them for touching her ungallantly; and that perhaps was her first
manly step. Baroness Lucie was of high birth, a wife openly maltreated, a
woman of breeding, but with a man's head, capable of inspiring man-like
friendships, and of entertaining them. She was radically-minded, strongly
of the Radical profession of faith, and a correspondent of revolutionary
chiefs; both the trusted adviser and devoted slave of him whose future
glorious career she measured by his abilities. Rumour blew out a candle
and left the wick to smoke in relation to their former intercourse. The
Philistines revenged themselves on an old aristocratic Radical and a Jew
demagogue with the weapon that scandal hands to virtue. They are virtuous
or nothing, and they must show that they are so when they can; and best
do they show it by publicly dishonouring the friendship of a man and a
woman; for to be in error in malice does not hurt them, but they
profoundly feel that they are fools if they are duped.

She was aware of the recent course of events; she had as she protested,
nothing to accuse herself of, and she could hardly part her lips without
a self-exculpation.

'It will fall on me!' she said to Tresten, in her emphatic tone. 'He will
have his interview with the girl. He will subdue the girl. He will
manacle himself in the chains he makes her wear. She will not miss her
chance! I am the object of her detestation. I am the price paid for their
reconcilement. She will seize her opportunity to vilipend me, and I shall
be condemned by the kind of court-martial which hurries over the forms of
a brial to sign the execution-warrant that makes it feel like justice.
You will see. She cannot forgive me for not pretending to enter into her
enthusiasm. She will make him believe I conspired against her. Men in
love are children with their mistresses--the greatest of them; their
heads are under the woman's feet. What have I not done to aid him! At his
instance, I went to the archbishop, to implore one of the princes of the
Church for succour. I knelt to an ecclesiastic. I did a ludicrous and a
shameful thing, knowing it in advance to be a barren farce. I obeyed his
wish. The tale will be laughable. I obeyed him. I would not have it on my
conscience that the commission of any deed ennomic, however unwonted, was
refused by me to serve Alvan. You are my witness, Tresten, that for a
young woman of common honesty I was ready to pack and march. Qualities of
mind-mind! They were out of the question. He had a taste for a wife. If
he had hit on a girl commonly honest, she might not have harmed him--the
contrary; cut his talons. What is this girl? Exactly what one might be
sure his appreciation, in woman-flesh, would lead him to fix on; a
daughter of the Philistines, naturally, and precisely the one of all on
earth likely to confound him after marriage as she has played fast and
loose with him before it. He has never understood women--cannot read
them. Could a girl like that keep a secret? She's a Cressida--a creature
of every camp! Not an idea of the cause he is vowed to! not a sentiment
in harmony with it! She is viler than any of those Berlin light o' loves
on the eve of Jena. Stable as a Viennese dancing slut home from
Mariazell! This is the girl-transparent to the whole world! But his heart
is on her, and he must have her, I suppose; and I shall have to bear her
impertinences, or sign my demission and cease to labour for the cause at
least in conjunction with Alvan. And how other wise? He is the life of
it, and I am doomed to uselessness.'

Tresten nodded a protesting assent.

'Not quite so bad,' he said, with the encouraging smile which could
persuade a friend to put away bilious visions. 'Of the two, if you two
are divisible, we could better dispense with him. She'll slip him, she's
an eel. I have seen eels twine on a prong of the fork that prods them;
but she's an actress, a slippery one through and through, with no real
embrace in her, not even a common muscular contraction. Of every camp! as
you say. She was not worth carrying off. I consented to try it to quiet
him. He sets no bounds to his own devotion to friendship, and we must
take pattern by him. It's a mad love.'

'A Titan's love!' the baroness exclaimed, groaning. 'The woman!--no
matter how or at what cost! I can admire that primal barbarism of a great
man's passion, which counts for nothing the stains and accidents fraught
with extinction for it to meaner men. It reads ill, it sounds badly, but
there is grand stuff in it. See the royalty of the man, for whom no
degradation of the woman can be, so long as it brings her to him!
He--that great he--covers all. He burns her to ashes, and takes the
flame--the pure spirit of her--to himself. Were men like him!--they would
have less to pardon. We must, as I have ever said, be morally on alpine
elevations to comprehend Alvan; he is Mont Blanc above his fellows. Do
not ask him to be considerate of her. She has planted him in a storm, and
the bigger the mountain, the more savage, monstrous, cruel--yes, but she
blew up the tourmente! That girl is the author of his madness. It is the
snake's nature of the girl which distracts him; she is in his blood. Had
she come to me, I would have helped her to cure him; or had you succeeded
in carrying her off, I would have stood by their union; or were she a
different creature, and not the shifty thing she is, I could desire him
to win her. A peasant girl, a workman's daughter, a tradesman's, a
professional singer, actress, artist--I would have given my hand to one
of these in good faith, thankful to her! As it is, I have acted in
obedience to his wishes, without idle remonstrances--I know him too well;
and with as much cordiality as I could put into an evil service. She will
drag him down, down, Tresten!'

'They are not joined yet,' said the colonel.

'She has him by the worst half of him. Her correspondence with me--her
letter to excuse her insolence, which she does like a prim chit--throws a
light on the girl she is. She will set him aiming at power to trick her
out in the decorations. She will not keep him to his labours to
consolidate the power. She will pervert the aesthetic in him, through her
hold on his material nature, his vanity, his luxuriousness. She is one of
the young women who begin timidly, and when they see that they enjoy
comparative impunity, grow intrepid in dissipation, and that palling,
they are ravenously ambitious. She will drive him at his mark before the
time is ripe--ruin-him. He is a Titan, not a god, though god-like he
seems in comparison with men. He would be fleshly enough in any hands.
This girl will drain him of all his nobler fire.'

'She shows mighty little of the inclination,' said the colonel.

'To you. But when they come together? I know his voice!'

The colonel protested his doubts of their coming together.

'Ultimately?' the baroness asked, and brooded. 'But she will have to see
him; and then will she resist him? I shall change one view of her if she
does.'

'She will shirk the interview,' Tresten remarked. 'Supposing they meet: I
don't think much will come of it, unless they meet on a field, and he has
an hour's grace to catch her up and be off with her. She's as calm as the
face of a clock, and wags her Yes and No about him just as unconcernedly
as a clock's pendulum. I've spoken to many a sentinel outpost who wasn't
deader on the subject in monosyllables than mademoiselle. She has a
military erectness, and answers you and looks you straight at the eyes,
perfectly unabashed by your seeing "the girl she is," as you say. She
looked at me downright defying me to despise her. Alvan has been tricked
by her colour: she's icy. She has no passion. She acts up to him when
they're together, and that deceives him. I doubt her having
blood--there's no heat in it, if she has.'

'And he cajoled Count Hollinger to send an envoy to see him righted!' the
baroness ejaculated. 'Hollinger is not a sentimental person, I assure
you, and not likely to have taken a step apparently hostile to the
Rudigers, if he had not been extraordinarily shaken by Alvan. What
character of man is this Dr. Storchel?'

Tresten described Count Hollinger's envoy, so quaintly deputed to act the
part of legal umpire in a family business, as a mild man of law with no
ideas or interests outside the law; spectacled, nervous, formal, a
stranger to the passions; and the baroness was amused to hear of Storchel
and Alvan's placid talk together upon themes of law, succeeded by the
little advocate's bewildered fright at one of Alvan's gentler explosions.
Tresten sketched it. The baroness realized it, and shut her lips tight
for a laugh of essential humour.




CHAPTER HIV

Late in the day Alvan was himself able to inform her that he had overcome
Clotilde's father after a struggle of hours. The General had not
consented to everything: he had granted enough, evidently in terror of
the man who had captured Count Hollinger; and it way arranged that
Tresten and Storchel were to wait on Clotilde next morning, and hear from
her mouth whether she yielded or not to Alvan's request to speak with her
alone before the official interview in the presence of the notary, when
she was publicly to state her decision and freedom of choice, according
to Count Hollinger's amicable arrangement through his envoy.

'She will see me-and the thing is done!' said Alvan. 'But I have worked
for it--I have worked! I have been talking to-day for six hours
uninterruptedly at a stretch to her father, who reminds me of a caged
bear I saw at a travelling menagerie, and the beast would perform none of
his evolutions for the edification of us lads till his keeper touched a
particular pole, and the touch of it set him to work like the, winding of
a key. Hollinger's name was my magic wand with the General. I could get
no sense from him, nor any acquiescence in sense, till I called up
Hollinger, when the General's alacrity was immediately that of the bear,
or a little boy castigated for his share of original sin. They have been
hard at her, the whole family! and I shall want the two hours I
stipulated for to the full. What do you say?--come, I wager I do it
within one hour! They have stockaded her pretty closely, and it will be
some time before I shall get her to have a clear view of me behind her
defences; but an hour's an age with a woman. Clotilde? I wager I have her
on her knees in half an hour! These notions of duty, and station, and her
fiddle-de-dee betrothal to that Danube osier with Indian-idol eyes, count
for so much mist. She was and is mine. I swear to strike to her heart in
ten minutes! But, madam, if not, you may pronounce me incapable of
conquering any woman, or of taking an absolute impression of facts. I say
I will do it! I am insane if I may not judge from antecedents that my
voice, my touch, my face, will draw her to me at one signal--at a look! I
am prepared to stake my reason on her running to me before I speak a
word:--and I will not beckon. I promise to fold my arms and simply look.'

'Your task of two hours, then, will be accomplished, I compute, in about
half a minute--but it is on the assumption that she consents to see you
alone,' said the baroness.

Alvan opened his eyes. He perceived in his deep sagaciousness woman at
the bottom of her remark, and replied: 'You will know Clotilde in time.
She points to me straight; but of course if you agitate the compass the
needle's all in a tremble: and the vessel is weak, I admit, but the
instinct's positive. To doubt it would upset my understanding. I have had
three distinct experiences of my influence over her, and each time,
curiously each time exactly in proportion to my degree of resolve--but,
baroness, I tell you it was minutely in proportion to it; weighed down to
the grain!--each time did that girl respond to me with a similar degree
of earnestness. As I waned, she waned; as I heated, so did she, and from
spark-heat to flame and to furnace-heat!'

'A refraction of the rays according to the altitude of the orb,' observed
the baroness in a tone of assent, and she smiled to herself at the
condition of the man who could accept it for that.

He did not protest beyond presently a transient frown as at a bad taste
on his tongue, and a rather petulant objection to her use of analogies,
which he called the sapping of language. She forbore to remind him in
retort of his employment of metaphor when the figure served his purpose.

'Marvellously,' cried Alvan, 'marvellously that girl answered to my lead!
and to-morrow--you'll own me right--I must double the attraction. I shall
have to hand her back to her people for twenty-four hours, and the dose
must be doubled to keep her fast and safe. You see I read her flatly. I
read and am charitable. I have a perfect philosophical tolerance. I'm in
the mood to-day of Horace hymning one of his fair Greeks.'

'No, no that is a comparison past my endurance,' interposed the baroness.
'Friend Sigismund, you have no philosophy, you never had any; and the
small crow and croon of Horace would be the last you could take up. It is
the chanted philosophy of comfortable stipendiaries, retired merchants,
gouty patients on a restricted allowance of the grape, old men who have
given over thinking, and young men who never had feeling--the philosophy
of swine grunting their carmen as they turn to fat in the sun. Horace
avaunt! You have too much poetry in you to quote that unsanguine
sensualist for your case. His love distressed his liver, and gave him a
jaundice once or twice, but where his love yields its poor ghost to his
philosophy, yours begins its labours. That everlasting Horace! He is the
versifier of the cushioned enemy, not of us who march along flinty ways:
the piper of the bourgeois in soul, poet of the conforming unbelievers!'

'Pyrrha, Lydia, Lalage, Chloe, Glycera,' Alvan murmured, amorous of the
musical names. 'Clotilde is a Greek of one of the Isles, an Ionian. I see
her in the Horatian ode as in one of those old round shield-mirrors which
give you a speck of the figure on a silver-solar beam, brilliant, not
much bigger than a dewdrop. And so should a man's heart reflect her! Take
her on the light in it, she is perfection. We won't take her in the shady
part or on your flat looking-glasses. There never was necessity for
accuracy of line in the portraiture of women. The idea of them is all we
want: it's the best of them. You will own she's Greek; she's a
Perinthian, Andrian, Olythian, Saurian, Messenian. One of those delicious
girls in the New Comedy, I remember, was called THE POSTPONER, THE
DEFERRER, or, as we might say, THE TO-MORROWER. There you have Clotilde:
she's a TO-MORROWER. You climb the peak of to-morrow, and to see her at
all you must see her on the next peak: but she leaves you her promise to
hug on every yesterday, and that keeps you going. Ay, so we have
patience! Feeding on a young woman's promises of yesterday in one's
fortieth year!--it must end to-morrow, though I kill something.'

Kill, he meant, the aerial wild spirit he could admire as her character,
when he had the prospect of extinguishing it in his grasp.

'What do you meditate killing?' said the baroness.

'The fool of the years behind me,' he replied, 'and entering on my
forty-first a sage.'

'To be the mate and equal of your companion?'

'To prove I have had good training under the wisest to act as her guide
and master.'

'If she--' the baroness checked her exclamation, saying: 'She declined to
come to me. I would have plumbed her for some solid ground, something to
rest one's faith on. Your Pyrrhas, Glyceras, and others of the like, were
not stable persons for a man of our days to bind his life to one of them.
Harness is harness, and a light yoke-fellow can make a proud career
deviate.'

'But I give her a soul!' said Alvan. 'I am the wine, and she the crystal
cup. She has avowed it again and again. You read her as she is when away
from me. Then she is a reed, a weed, what you will; she is unfit to
contend when she stands alone. But when I am beside her, when we are
together--the moment I have her at arms' length she will be part of me by
the magic I have seen each time we encountered. She knows it well.'

'She may know it too well.'

'For what?' He frowned.

'For the chances of your meeting.'

'You think it possible she will refuse?'

A blackness passing to lividness crossed his face. He fetched a big
breath.

'Then finish my history, shut up the book; I am a phantom of a man, and
everything written there is imposture! I can account for all that she has
done hitherto, but not that she should refuse to see me. Not that she
should refuse to see me now when I come armed to demand it! Refuse? But I
have done my work, done what I said I would do. I stand in my order of
battle, and she refuses? No! I stake my head on it! I have not a clod's
perception, I have not a spark of sense to distinguish me from a
flat-headed Lapp, if she refuses:--call me a mountebank who has gained
his position by clever tumbling; a lucky gamester; whatever plays blind
with chance.'

He started up in agitation. 'Lucie! I am a grinning skull without a brain
if that girl refuses! She will not.' He took his hat to leave, adding, to
seem rational to the cool understanding he addressed: 'She will not
refuse; I am bound to think so in common respect for myself; I have done
tricks to make me appear a rageing ape if she--oh! she cannot, she will
not refuse. Never! I have eyes, I have wits, I am not tottering yet on my
grave--or it's blindly, if I am. I have my clear judgement, I am not an
imbecile. It seems to me a foolish suspicion that she can possibly
refuse. Her manners are generally good; freakish, but good in the main.
Perhaps she takes a sting . . . but there is no sting here. It would be
bad manners to refuse; to say nothing of . . . she has a heart! Well,
then, good manners and right feeling forbid her to refuse. She is an
exceedingly intelligent girl, and I half fear I have helped you to a
wrong impression of her. You will really appreciate her wit; you will
indeed; believe me, you will. We pardon nonsense in a girl. Married, she
will put on the matron with becoming decency, and I am responsible for
her then; I stand surety for her then; when I have her with me I warrant
her mine and all mine, head and heels, at a whistle, like the Cossack's
horse. I fancy that at forty I am about as young as most young men. I
promise her another forty manful working years. Are you dubious of that?'

'I nod to you from the palsied summit of ninety,' said the baroness.

Alvan gave a short laugh and stammered excuses for his naked egoism,
comparing himself to a forester who has sharpened such an appetite in
toiling to slay his roe that he can think of nothing but the fire
preparing the feast.

'Hymen and things hymenaeal!' he said, laughing at himself for resuming
the offence on the apology for it. 'I could talk with interest of a
trousseau. I have debated in my mind with parliamentary acrimony about a
choice of wedding-presents. As she is legally free to bestow her hand on
me--and only a brute's horns could contest the fact--she may decide to be
married the day after to-morrow, and get the trousseau in Paris. She has
a turn for startling. I can imagine that if I proposed a run for it she
would be readier to spring to be on the road with me than in acquiescing
in a quiet arrangement about a ceremonial day; partly because, in the
first case, she would throw herself and the rest of the adventure on me,
at no other cost than the enjoyment of one of her impulses; and in the
second, because she is a girl who would require a full band of the best
Berlin orchestra in perpetual play to keep up her spirits among her
people during the preparations for espousing a democrat, demagogue, and
Jew, of a presumed inferior station by birth to her own. Give Momus a
sister, Clotilde is the lady! I know her. I would undertake to put a
spell on her and keep her contented on a frontier--not Russian, any
barbarous frontier where there is a sun. She must have sun. One might
wrap her in sables, but sun is best. She loves it best, though she looks
remarkably well in sables. Never shall I forget . . . she is frileuse,
and shivers into them! There are Frenchmen who could paint it--only
Frenchmen. Our artists, no. She is very French. Born in France she would
have been a matchless Parisienne. Oh! she's a riddle of course. I don't
pretend to spell every letter of her. The returning of my presents is
odd. No, I maintain that she is a coward acting under domination, and
there's no other way of explaining the puzzle. I was out of sight, they
bullied her, and she yielded--bewilderingly, past comprehension it
seems--cat!--until you remember what she's made of: she's a reed. Now I
reappear armed with powers to give her a free course, and she, that
abject whom you beheld recently renouncing me, is, you will see, the
young Aurora she was when she came striking at my door on the upper Alp.
That was a morning! That morning is Clotilde till my eyes turn over! She
is all young heaven and the mountains for me! She's the filmy light above
the mountains that weds white snow and sky. By the way, I dreamt last
night she was half a woman, half a tree, and her hair was like a dead
yewbough, which is as you know of a brown burnt-out colour, suitable to
the popular conception of widows. She stood, and whatever turning you
took, you struck back on her. Whether my widow, I can't say: she must
first be my wife. Oh, for tomorrow!'

'What sort of evening is it?' said the baroness.

'A Mont Blanc evening: I saw him as I came along,' Alvan replied, and
seized his hat to be out to look on the sovereign mountain again. They
touched hands. He promised to call in the forenoon next day.

'Be cool,' she counselled him.

'Oh!' He flung back his head, making light of the crisis. 'After all,
it's only a girl. But, you know, what I set myself to win! . . . The
thing's too small--I have been at such pains about it that I should be
ridiculous if I allowed myself to be beaten. There is no other reason for
the trouble we 're at, except that, as I have said a thousand times, she
suits me. No man can be cooler than I.'

'Keep so,' said the baroness.

He walked to where the strenuous blue lake, finding outlet, propels a
shoulder, like a bright-muscled athlete in action, and makes the
Rhone-stream. There he stood for an hour, disfevered by the limpid liquid
tumult, inspirited by the glancing volumes of a force that knows no
abatement, and is the skiey Alps behind, the great historic citied plains
ahead.

His meditation ended with a resolution half in the form of a prayer (to
mixed deities undefined) never to ask for a small thing any more if this
one were granted him!

He had won it, of course, having brought all his powers to bear on the
task; and he rejoiced in winning it: his heart leapt, his imagination
spun radiant webs of colour: but he was a little ashamed of his frenzies,
though he did not distinctly recall them; he fancied he had made some
noise, loud or not, because his intentions were so pure that it was
infamous to thwart them. At a certain age honest men made sacrifice of
their liberty to society, and he had been ready to perform the duty of
husbanding a woman. A man should have a wife and rear children, not to be
forgotten in the land, and to help mankind by transmitting to future
times qualities he has proved priceless: he thought of the children, and
yearned to the generations of men physically and morally through them.

This was his apology to the world for his distantly-recollected excesses
of temper.

Was she so small a thing? Not if she succumbed. She was petty, vexatious,
irritating, stinging, while she resisted: she cast an evil beam on his
reputation, strength and knowledge of himself, and roused the giants of
his nature to discharge missiles at her, justified as they were by his
pure intentions and the approbation of society. But he had a broad full
heart for the woman who would come to him, forgiving her, uplifting her,
richly endowing her. No meanness of heart was in him. He lay down at
night thinking of Clotilde in an abandonment of tenderness. 'Tomorrow!
you bird of to-morrow!' he let fly his good-night to her.




CHAPTER XV

He slept. Near upon morning he roused with his tender fit strong on him,
but speechless in the waking as it had been dreamless in sleep. It was a
happy load on his breast, a life about to be born, and he thought that a
wife beside him would give it language. She should have, for she would
call out, his thousand flitting ideas now dropped on barren ground for
want of her fair bosom to inspire, to vivify, to receive. Poetry laid a
hand on him: his desire of the wife, the children, the citizen's good
name--of these our simple civilized ambitions--was lowly of the earth,
throbbing of earth, and at the same time magnified beyond scope of speech
in vast images and emblems resembling ranges of Olympian cloud round the
blue above earth, all to be decipherable, all utterable, when she was by.
What commoner word!--yet wife seemed to him the word most reverberating
of the secret sought after by man, fullest at once of fruit and of
mystery, or of that light in the heart of mystery which makes it
magically fruitful.

He felt the presence of Clotilde behind the word; but in truth the
delicate sensations breeding these half-thoughts of his, as he lay
between sleeping and waking, shrank from conjuring up the face of the
woman who had wounded them, and a certain instinct to preserve and be
sure of his present breathing-space of luxurious tranquillity kept her
veiled. Soon he would see her as his wife, and then she would be she,
unveiled ravishingly, the only she, the only wife! He knew the cloud he
clasped for Clotilde enough to be at pains to shun a possible prospect of
his execrating it. Oh, the only she, the only wife! the wild man's
reclaimer! the sweet abundant valley and channel of his river of
existence henceforward! Doubting her in the slightest was doubting her
human. It is the brain, the satanic brain which will ever be pressing to
cast its shadows: the heart is clearer and truer.

He multiplied images, projected visions, nestled in his throbs to drug
and dance his brain. He snatched at the beauty of a day that outrolled
the whole Alpine hand-in-hand of radiant heaven-climbers for an assurance
of predestined celestial beneficence; and again, shadowily thoughtful of
the littleness of the thing he exalted and claimed, he staked his reason
on the positive blessing to come to him before nightfall, telling himself
calmly that he did so because there would be madness in expecting it
otherwise: he asked for so little! Since he asked for so little, to
suppose that it would not be granted was irrational. None but a very
coward could hesitate to stake his all on the issue.

Singularly small indeed the other aims in life appeared by comparison
with this one, but his intellect, in the act of pleading excuses for his
impatience, distinguished why it should be so. The crust, which is not
much, is everything to the starving beggar; and he was eager for the
crust that he might become sound and whole again, able to give their just
proportion to things, as at present he acknowledged himself hardly able
to do. He could not pursue two thoughts on a political question, or grasp
the idea of a salutary energy in the hosts animated by his leadership.
There would have to be an end of it speedily, else men might name him
worthless dog!

Morning swam on the lake in her beautiful nakedness, a wedding of white
and blue, of purest white and bluest blue. Alvan crossed the island
bridges when the sun had sprung on his shivering fair prey, to make the
young fresh Morning rosy, and was glittering along the smooth
lake-waters. Workmen only were abroad, and Alvan was glad to be out with
them to feel with them as one of them. Close beside him the vivid genius
of the preceding century, whose love of workmen was a salt of heaven in
his human corruptness, looked down on the lake in marble. Alvan cherished
a worship of him as of one that had first thrilled him with the feeling
of our common humanity, with the tenderness for the poor, with the
knowledge of our frailty. Him, as well as the great Englishman and a
Frenchman, his mind called Father, and his conscience replied to that
progenitor's questioning of him, but said 'You know the love of woman: He
loved indeed, but he was not an amatory trifler. He too was a worker, a
champion worker. He doated on the prospect of plunging into his work; the
vision of jolly giant labours told of peace obtained, and there could be
no peace without his prize.

He listened to the workmen's foot-falls. The solitary sound and steady
motion of their feet were eloquent of early morning in a city, not less
than the changes of light in heaven above the roofs. With the golden
light came numbers, workmen still. Their tread on the stones roused some
of his working thoughts, like an old tune in his head, and he watched the
scattered files passing on, disciplined by their daily necessities,
easily manageable if their necessities are but justly considered. These
numbers are the brute force of earth, which must have the earth in time,
as they had it in the dawn of our world, and then they entered into
bondage for not knowing how to use it. They will have it again: they have
it partially, at times, in the despot, who is only the reflex of their
brute force, and can give them only a shadow of their claim. They will
have it all, when they have illumination to see and trust to the
leadership of a greater force than they--in force of brain, in the
spiritual force of ideas; ideas founded on justice; and not the justice
of these days of the governing few whose wits are bent to steady our
column of civilized humanity by a combination of props and jugglers'
arts, but a justice coming of the recognized needs of majorities, which
will base the column on a broad plinth for safety-broad as the base of
yonder mountain's towering white immensity--and will be the guarantee for
the solid uplifting of our civilization at last. 'Right, thou!' he
apostrophized--the old Ironer, at a point of his meditation. 'And right,
thou! more largely right!' he thought, further advanced in it, of the
great Giuseppe, the Genoese. 'And right am I too, between that metal-rail
of a politician and the deep dreamer, each of them incomplete for want of
an element of the other!' Practically and in vision right was Alvan, for
those two opposites met fusing in him: like the former, he counted on the
supremacy of might; like the latter, he distinguished where it lay in
perpetuity.

During his younger years he had been like neither in the moral curb they
could put on themselves--particularly the southern-blooded man. He had
resembled the naturally impatient northerner most, though not so supple
for business as he. But now he possessed the calmness of the Genoese; he
had strong self-command now; he had the principle that life is too short
for the indulgence of public fretfulness or of private quarrels; too
valuable for fruitless risks; too sacred, one may say, for the shedding
of blood on personal grounds. Oh! he had himself well under, fear not.

He could give and take from opposition. And rightly so, seeing that he
confessed to his own bent for sarcastically stinging: he was therefore
bound to endure a retort. Speech for speech, pamphlet for pamphlet, he
could be temperate. Nay, he defied an adversary to produce in him the
sensation of intemperateness; so there would not be much danger of his
being excited to betray it. Shadowily he thought of the hard words hurled
at him by the Rudigers, and of the injury Clotilde's father did him by
plotting to rob him of his daughter. But how had an Alvan replied?--with
the arts of peaceful fence victoriously. He conceived of no temptation to
his repressed irascibility save the political. A day might come for him
and the vehement old Ironer to try their mettle in a tussle. On that day
he would have to be wary, but, as Alvan felt assured, he would be more
master of himself than his antagonist. He was for the young world, in the
brain of a new order of things; the other based his unbending system on
the visions of a feudal chief, and would win a great step perchance, but
there he would stop: he was not with the future!

This immediate prospect of a return to serenity after his recent
charioteering, had set him thinking of himself and his days to come,
which hung before him in a golden haze that was tranquillizing. He had a
name, he had a station: he wanted power and he saw it approaching.

He wanted a wife too. Colonel von Tresten took coffee with him previous
to the start with Dr. Storchel to General von Rudiger's house. Alvan
consequently was unable any longer to think of a wife in the abstract. He
wanted Clotilde. Here was a man going straight to her, going to see her,
positively to see her and hear her voice!--almost instantly to hear her
voice, and see her eyes and hair, touch her hand. Oh! and rally her,
rouse her wit; and be able to tell him the flower she wore for the day,
and where she wore it--at her temples, or sliding to the back hair, or in
her bosom, or at her waist! She had innumerable tricks of indication in
these shifty pretty ways of hers, and was full of varying speech to the
cunning reader of her.

'But keep her to seriousness,' Alvan said. 'Our meeting must be early
to-day--early in the afternoon. She is not unlikely to pretend to trifle.
She has not seen me for some time, and will probably enough play at
emancipation and speak of the "singular impatience of the seigneur
Alvan." Don't you hear her? I swear to those very words! She "loves her
liberty," and she curves her fan and taps her foot. "The seigneur Alvan
appears pressed for time:" She has "letters to write to friends to-day."
Stop that! I can't join in play: to-morrow, if she likes; not to-day. Or
not till I have her by the hand. She shall be elf and fairy, French
coquette, whatever she pleases to-morrow, and I'll be satisfied. All I
beg is for plain dealing on a business matter. This is a business matter,
a business meeting. I thoroughly know the girl's heart, and know that in
winning the interview I win her. Only'--he pressed his friend's
arm--'but, my dear Tresten, you understand. You're a luckier fellow than
I--for the time, at all events. Make it as short as you can. You'll find
me here. I shall take a book--one of the Pandects. I don't suppose I
shall work. I feel idle. Any book handy; anything will interest me. I
should walk or row on the lake, but I would rather be sure of readiness
for your return. You meet Storchel at the General's house?'

'The appointment was at the house,' Tresten said.

'I have not seen him this morning. I know of nothing to prepare him for.
You see, it was invariable with her: as soon as she met me she had twice
her spirit: and that she knows;--she was a new woman, ten times the
happier for having some grains of my courage. So she'll be glad to come
to terms and have me by to support her. Press it, if necessary; otherwise
she might be disappointed, my dear fellow. Storchel looks on, and
observes, and that 's about all he can do, or need do. Up Mont Blanc
to-day, Tresten! It's the very day for an ascent:--one of the rare
crystalline jewels coming in a Swiss August; we should see the kingdoms
of the earth--and a Republic! But I could climb with all my heart in a
snowstorm to-day. Andes on Himalayas! as high as you like. The Republic
by the way, small enough in the ring of empires and monarchies, if you
measure it geometrically! You remember the laugh at the exact elevation
of Mount Olympus? But Zeus's eagle sat on it, and top me Olympus, after
you have imagined the eagle aloft there! after Homer, is the meaning.
That will be one of the lessons for our young Republicans--to teach them
not to give themselves up to the embrace of dead materialism because, as
they fancy, they have had to depend on material weapons for carving their
way, and have had no help from other quarters. A suicidal delusion! The
spiritual weapon has done most, and always does. They are sons of an
idea. They deny their parentage when they scoff at idealism. It's a
tendency we shall have to guard against; it leads back to the old order
of things, if we do not trim our light. She is waiting for you! Go. You
will find me here. And don't forget my instructions. Appoint for the
afternoon--not late. Too near night will seem like Orpheus going below,
and I hope to meet a living woman, not a ghost--ha! coloured like a
lantern in a cavern, good Lord! Covered with lichen! Say three o'clock,
not later. The reason is, I want to have it over early and be sure of
what I am doing; I'm bothered by it; I shall have to make arrangements
. . . a thousand little matters . . . telegraph to Paris, I daresay; she's
fond of Paris, and I must learn who's there to meet her. Now start. I'll
walk a dozen steps with you. I think of her as if, since we parted, she
had been sitting on a throne in Erebus, and must be ghastly. I had a
dream of a dead tree that upset me. In fact, you see I must have it over.
The whole affair makes me feel too young.'

Tresten advised him to spend an hour with the baroness.

'I can't; she makes me feel too old,' said Alvan. 'She talks. She
listens, but I don't want to speak. Dead silence!--let it be a dash of
the pen till you return. As for these good people hurrying to their
traffic, and tourists and loungers, they have a trick for killing time
without hurting him. I wish I had. I try to smother a minute, and up the
old fellow jumps quivering all over and threatening me body and soul.
They don't appear as if they had news on their faces this morning. I've
not seen a newspaper and won't look at one. Here we separate. Be formal
in mentioning me to her but be particularly civil. I know you have the
right tone: she's a critical puss. Days like these are the days for her
to be out. There goes a parasol like one I 've seen her carry. Stay--no!
Don't forget my instructions. Paris for a time. It may be the Pyrenees.
Paris on our way back. She would like the Pyrenees. It's not too late for
society at Luchon and Cauterets. She likes mountains, she mounts well: in
any case, plenty of mules can be had. Paris to wind up with. Paris will
be fuller about the beginning of October.'

He had quitted Tresten, and was talking to himself, cheating' himself,
not discordantly at all. The poet of the company within him claimed the
word and was allowed by the others to dilate on Clotilde's likings, and
the honeymoon or post-honeymoon amusements to be provided for her in
Pyrenean valleys, and Parisian theatres and salons. She was friande of
chocolates, bon-bons: she enjoyed fine pastry, had a real relish of good
wine. She should have the best of everything; he knew the spots of the
very best that Paris could supply, in confiseurs and restaurants, and in
millinery likewise. A lively recollection of the prattle of Parisian
ladies furnished names and addresses likely to prove invaluable to
Clotilde. He knew actors and actresses, and managers of theatres, and
mighty men in letters. She should have the cream of Paris. Does she hint
at rewarding him for his trouble? The thought of her indebted lips, half
closed, asking him how to repay him, sprang his heart to his throat.




CHAPTER XVI

Then he found himself saying: 'At the age I touch!' . . .

At the age of forty, men that love love rootedly. If the love is plucked
from them, the life goes with it.

He backed on his physical pride, a stout bulwark. His forty years--the
forty, the fifty, the sixty of Alvan, matched the twenties and thirties
of other men.

Still it was true that he had reached an age when the desire to plant his
affections in a dear fair bosom fixedly was natural. Fairer, dearer than
she was never one on earth! He stood bareheaded for coolness, looking in
the direction Tresten had taken, his forehead shining and eyes charged
with the electrical activity of the mind, reading intensely all who
passed him, without a thought upon any of these objects in their passage.
The people were read, penetrated, and flung off as from a whirring of
wheels; to cut their place in memory sharp as in steel when imagination
shall by and by renew the throbbing of that hour, if the wheels be not
stilled. The world created by the furnaces of vitality inside him
absorbed his mind; and strangely, while receiving multitudinous vivid
impressions, he did not commune with one, was unaware of them. His thick
black hair waved and glistened over the fine aquiline of his face. His
throat was open to the breeze. His great breast and head were joined by a
massive column of throat that gave volume for the coursing of the blood
to fire the battery of thought, perchance in a tempest overflood it,
extinguish it. His fortieth year was written on his complexion and
presence: it was the fortieth of a giant growth that will bend at the
past eightieth as little as the rock-pine, should there come no uprooting
tempest. It said manhood, and breathed of settled strength of muscle,
nerve, and brain.

Of the people passing, many knew him not, but marked him; some knew him
by repute, one or two his person. To all of them he was a noticeable
figure; even those of sheeplike nature, having an inclination to start
upon the second impulse in the flanks of curious sheep when their first
had been arrested by the appearance of one not of their kind,
acknowledged the eminence of his bearing. There may have been a passenger
in the street who could tell the double tale of the stick he swung in his
hand, showing a gleam of metal, whereon were engraved names of the lurid
historic original owner, and of the donor and the recipient. According to
the political sentiments of the narrator would his tale be coloured, and
a simple walking-stick would be clothed in Tarquin guilt for striking off
heads of the upper ranks of Frenchmen till the blood of them topped the
handle, or else wear hues of wonder, seem very memorable; fit at least
for a museum. If the Christian aristocrat might shrink from it in terror
and loathing, the Paynim Republican of deep dye would be ready to kiss it
with veneration. But, assuming them to have a certain bond of manliness,
both agree in pronouncing the deed a right valiant and worthy one, which
caused this instrument to be presented to Alvan by a famous doctor, who,
hearing of his repudiation of the duel, and of his gallant and triumphant
defence of himself against a troop of ruffians, enemies or scum of their
city, at night, by the aid of a common stout pedestrian stick, alone in a
dark alley of the public park, sent him, duly mounted and engraved, an
illustrious fellow to the weapon of defence, as a mode of commemorating
his just abhorrence of bloodshed and his peaceful bravery.

Observers of him would probably speculate on his features and the
carriage of his person as he went by them; with a result in their minds
that can be of no import to us, men's general speculations being directed
by their individual aims and their moods, their timidities, prejudices,
envies, rivalries; but none could contest that he was a potential figure.
If to know him the rising demagogue of the time dressed him in such
terrors as to make him appear an impending Attila of the voracious hordes
which live from hand to mouth, without intervention of a banker and
property to cry truce to the wolf, he would have shone under a different
aspect enough to send them to the poets to solve their perplexity, had
the knowledge been subjoined that this terrific devastator swinging the
sanguinary stick was a slave of love, who staked his all upon his love,
loved up to his capacity desperately, loved a girl, and hung upon her
voice to hear whether his painful knocking at a door should
gain him admittance to the ranks of the orderly citizens of the
legitimately-satiated passions, or else--the voice of a girl annihilate
him.

He loved like the desert-bred Eastern, as though his blood had never
ceased to be steeped in its fountain Orient; loved barbarously, but with
a compelling resolve to control his blood and act and be the civilized
man, sober by virtue of his lady's gracious aid. In fact, it was the
civilized man in him that had originally sought the introduction to her,
with a bribe to the untameable. The former had once led, and hoped to
lead again. Alvan was a revolutionist in imagination, the workman's
friend in rational sympathy, their leader upon mathematical calculation,
but a lawyer, a reasoner in law, and therefore of necessity a cousin
germane, leaning to become an ally, of the Philistines--the founders and
main supporters of his book of the Law. And so, between the nature of his
blood, and the inclination of his mind, Alvan set his heart on a damsel
of the Philistines, endowed with their trained elegancies and governed by
some of their precepts, but suitable to his wildness in her reputation
for originality, suiting him in her cultivated liveliness and her turn
for luxury. Only the Philistines breed these choice beauties, put forth
these delicate fresh young buds of girls; and only here and there among
them is there an exquisite, eccentric, yet passably decorous Clotilde.
What his brother politicians never discovered in him, and the baroness
partly suspected, through her interpretation of things opposing her
sentiments, Clotilde uncloaks. Catching and mastering her, his wilder
animation may be appeased, but his political life is threatened with a
diversion of its current, for he will be uxorious, impassioned to gratify
the tastes and whims of a youthful wife; the Republican will be in danger
of playing prematurely for power to seat her beside him high: while at
the same time, children, perchance, and his hardening lawyer's head are
secretly Philistinizing the demagogue, blunting the fine edge of his
Radicalism, turning him into a slow-stepping Liberal, otherwise your
half-Conservative in his convictions. Can she think it much to have
married that drab-coloured unit? Power must be grasped . . . .

His watch told him that Tresten was now beholding her, or just about to.
The stillness of the heavens was remarkable. The hour held breath. She
delayed her descent from her chamber. He saw how she touched at her hair,
more distinctly than he saw the lake before his eyes. He watched her, and
the growl of a coming roar from him rebuked her tricky deliberateness.
Deciding at last, she slips down the stairs like a waterfall, and is in
the room, erect, composed--if you do not lay ear against her bosom.
Tresten stares at her, owns she is worth a struggle. Love does this,
friend Tresten! Love, that stamps out prejudice and bids inequality be
smooth. Tresten stares and owns she is worth heavier labours, worse than
his friend has endured. Love does it! Love, that hallows a stranger's
claim to the flower of a proud garden: Love has won her the freedom to
suffer herself to be chosen by the stranger. What matters which of them
toiled to bring them to so sweet an end! It was not either of them, but
Love. By and by, after acting serenest innocent, suddenly broken, she
will be copious of sad confessions. That will be in their secresy: in the
close and boundless together of clasped hands. Deep eyes, that give him
in realms of light within light all that he has dreamed of rapturousness
and blessedness, you are threatened with a blinding kiss if you look
abashed:--if her voice shall dare repeat another of those foolish
self-reproaches, it shall be construed as a petition for further kisses.
Silence! he said to her, imagining that he had been silent, and enjoying
silence with a perfect quietude beyond the trouble of a thought of her
kisses and his happiness. His full heart craved for the infinity of
silence.

Another moment and he was counting to her the days, hours, minutes, which
had been the gulf of torture between then and now--the separation and the
reunion: he was voluble, living to speak, and a pause was only for the
drawing of most blissful breath.

His watch went slowly. She was beginning to drop her eyelids in front of
Tresten. Oh! he knew her so well. He guessed the length of her acting,
and the time for her earnestness. She would have to act a coquette at
first to give herself a countenance; and who would not pardon the girl
for putting on a mask? who would fail to see the mask? But he knew her so
well: she would not trifle very long: his life on it, that she will soon
falter! her bosom will lift, lift and check: a word from Tresten then, if
he is a friend, and she melts to the truth in her. Alvan heard her
saying: 'I will see him yes, to-day. Let him appoint. He may come when he
likes--come at once'

'My life on it!' he swore by his unerring knowledge of her, the certainty
that she loved him.

He had walked into a quarter of the town strange to him, he thought; he
had no recollection of the look of the street. A friend came up and put
him in the right way, walking back with him. This was General Leczel, a
famous leader of one of the heroical risings whose passage through blood
and despair have led to the broader law men ask for when they name
freedom devotedly. Alvan stated the position of his case to Leczel with
continental frankness regarding a natural theme, and then pursued the
talk on public affairs, to the note of: 'What but knocks will ever open
the Black-Yellow Head to the fact that we are no longer in the first
years of the eighteenth century!'

Leczel left him at his hotel steps, promising to call on him before
night. Tresten had not returned, neither he nor the advocate, and he had
been absent fully an hour. He was not in sight right or left. Alvan went
to his room, looked at his watch, and out of the window, incapable of
imagining any event. He began to breathe as if an atmosphere thick as
water were pressing round him. Unconsciously he had staked his all on the
revelation the moment was to bring. So little a thing! His intellect
weighed the littleness of it, but he had become level with it; he
magnified it with the greatness of his desire, and such was his nature
that the great desire of a thing withheld from him and his own, as he
could think, made the world a whirlpool till he had it. He waited,
figureable by nothing so much as a wild horse in captivity sniffing the
breeze, when the flanks of the quivering beast are like a wind-struck
barley-field, and his nerves are cords, and his nostrils trumpet him: he
is flame kept under and straining to rise.




CHAPTER XVII

The baroness expected to see Alvan in the morning, for he kept
appointments, and he had said he would come. She conceived that she was
independent of personal wishes on the subject of Clotilde; the fury of
his passion prohibited her forming any of the wishes we send up to
destiny when matters interesting us are in suspense, whether we have
liberated minds or not. She thought the girl would grant the interview;
was sure the creature would yield in his presence; and then there was an
end to the shining of Alvan! Supposing the other possibility, he had
shown her such fierce illuminations of eye and speech that she foresaw it
would be a blazing of the insurrectionary beacon-fires of hell with him.
He was a man of angels and devils. The former had long been conquering,
but the latter were far from extinct. His passion for this shallow girl
had consigned him to the lower host. Let him be thwarted, his desperation
would be unlikely to stop at legal barriers. His lawyer's head would be
up and armed astoundingly to oppose the law; he would read, argue, and
act with hot conviction upon the reverse of every text of law. She beheld
him storming the father's house to have out Clotilde, reluctant or
conniving; and he harangued the people, he bore off his captive, he held
her firmly as he had sworn he would; he defied authority, he was a public
rebel--he with his detected little secret aim, which he nursed like a
shamed mother of an infant, fond but afraid to be proud of it! She had
seen that he aimed at standing well with the world and being one with it
honourably: holding to his principles of course: but a disposition that
way had been perceived, and the vision of him in open rebellion because
of his shy catching at the thread of an alliance with the decorous world,
carved an ironic line on her jaw.

Full surely he would not be baffled without smiting the world on the
face. And he might suffer for it; the Rudigers would suffer likewise.

She considered them very foolish people. Her survey of the little
nobility beneath her station had previously enabled her to account for
their disgust of such a suitor as Alvan, and maintain that they would
oppose him tooth and nail. Owing to his recent success, the anticipation
of a peaceful surrender to him seemed now on the whole to carry most
weight. This girl gives Alvan her hand and her family repudiate her.
Volatile, flippant, shallow as she is, she must have had some turn for
him; a physical spell was on her once, and it will be renewed when they
meet. It sometimes inspires a semblance of courage; she may determine;
she may be stedfast long enough for him to take his measures to bear her
away. And the Brocken witches congratulate him on his prize!

Almost better would it be, she thought, that circumstance should thwart
him and kindle his own demon element.

The forenoon, the noon, the afternoon, went round.

Late in the evening her door was flung wide for Colonel von Tresten.

She looked her interrogative 'Well?' His features were not used to betray
the course of events.

'How has it gone?' she said.

He replied: 'As I told you. I fancied I gauged the hussy pretty closely.'

'She will not see him?'

'Not she.'

The baroness crossed her arms.

'And Alvan?'

The colonel shrugged. It was not done to tease a tremulous woman, for she
was calm. It painted the necessary consequence of the refusal: an
explosion of AEtna, and she saw it.

'Where is he now?' said she.

'At his hotel.'

'Alone?'

'Leczel is with him.'

'That looks like war.'

Tresten shrugged again. 'It might have been foreseen by everybody
concerned in the affair. The girl does not care for him one corner of an
eye! She stood up before us cool as at a dancing-lesson, swore she had
never committed herself to an oath to him, sneered at him. She positively
sneered. Her manner to me assures me without question that if he had
stood in my place she would have insulted him:

'Scarcely. She would do in his absence what she would not do under his
eyes,' remarked the baroness. 'It's decided, then?'

'Quite.'

'Will he be here to-night?'

'I think not.'

'Was she really insolent?'

'For a girl in her position, she was.'

'Did you repeat her words to him?'

'Some of them.'

'What description of insolence?'

'She spoke of his vanity . . . .'

'Proceed.'

'It was more her manner to me, as the one of the two appearing as his
friend. She was tolerably civil to Storchel: and the difference of
behaviour must have been designed, for she not only looked at Storchel in
a way to mark the difference, she addressed him rather eagerly before we
turned on our heels, to tell him she would write to him, and let him have
her reply in a letter. He will get some coquettish rigmarole.'

'That seems monstrous!--if one could be astonished by her,' said the
baroness. 'When is she to write?'

'She may write: the letter will find no receiver,' said Tresten,
significantly raising his eyebrows. 'The legal gentleman is gone--blown
from a gun! He's off home. He informed me that he should write to the
General, throwing up his office, and an end to his share in the
business.'

'There was no rudeness to the poor man?'

'Dear me, no. But imagine a quiet little advocate, very precise and
silky--you've had a hint of him--and all of a sudden the client he has by
the ear swells into a tremendous beast--a combination of lion and
elephant--bellows and shakes the room, stops and stamps before him,
discharging an unintelligible flood of racy vernacular punctuated in
thunder. You hear him and see him! Alvan lost his head--some of his hair
too. The girl is not worth a lock. But he's past reason.'

'He takes it so,' said the baroness, musing. 'It will be the sooner over.
She never cared for him a jot. And there's the sting. He has called up
the whole world in an amphitheatre to see a girl laugh him to scorn. Hard
for any man to bear!--Alvan of all men! Why does he not come here? He
might rage at me for a day and a night, and I would rock him to sleep in
the end. However, he has done nothing?'

That was the point. The baroness perceived it to be a serious point, and
repeated the question sharply. 'Has he been to the house?--no?--writing?'

Tresten dropped a nod.

'Not to the girl, I suppose. To the father?' said she.

'He has written to the General.'

'You should have stopped it.'

'Tell a vedette to stop cavalry. You're not thinking of the man. He's in
a white frenzy.'

'I will go to him.'

'You will do wrong. Leave him to spout the stuff and get rid of his
poison. I remember a sister of poor Nuciotti's going to him after he had
let his men walk into a trap--and that was through a woman: and he was
quieted; and the chief overlooked it; and two days after, Nuciotti blew
his brains out. He'd have been alive now if he had been left alone.
Furious cursing is a natural relief to some men, like women's weeping. He
has written a savage letter to her father, sending the girl to the deuce
with the name she deserves, and challengeing the General.'

'That letter is despatched?'

'Rudiger has it by this time.'

The baroness fixed her eyes on Tresten: she struck her lap. 'Alvan! Is it
he? But the General is old, gouty, out of the lists. There can be no
fighting. He apologized to you for his daughter's insolence to me. He
will not fight, be sure.'

'Perhaps not,' Tresten said.

'As for the girl, Alvan has the fullest right to revile her: it cannot be
too widely known. I could cry: "What wisdom there is in men when they are
mad!" We must allow it to counterbalance breaches of ordinary courtesy.
"With the name--she deserves," you say?

He pitched the very name at her character plainly?--called her what she
is?'

The baroness could have borne to hear it: she had no feminine horror of
the staining epithet for that sex. But a sense of the distinction between
camps and courts restrained the soldier. He spoke of a discharge of
cuttlefish ink at the character of the girl, and added: 'The bath's a
black one for her, and they had better keep it private. Regrettable, no
doubt, but it 's probably true, and he 's out of his mind. It would be
dangerous to check him: he'd force his best friend to fight. Leczel is
with him and gives him head. It 's about time for me to go back to him,
for there may be business.'

The baroness thought it improbable. She was hoping that with Alvan's
eruption the drop-scene would fall.

Tresten spoke of the possibility. He knew the contents of the letter, and
knew further that a copy of it, with none of the pregnant syllables
expunged, had been forwarded to Prince Marko. He counselled calm waiting
for a certain number of hours. The baroness committed herself to a
promise to wait. Now that Alvan had broken off from the baleful girl, the
worst must have been passed, she thought.

He had broken with the girl: she reviewed him under the light of that
sole fact. So the edge of the cloud obscuring him was lifted, and he
would again be the man she prized and hoped much of! How thickly he had
been obscured was visible to her through a retreating sensation of scorn
of him for his mad excesses, which she had not known herself to entertain
while he was writhing in the toils, and very bluntly and dismissingly
felt now that his madness was at its climax. An outrageous lunatic fit,
that promised to release him from his fatal passion, seemed, on the
contrary, respectable in essence if not in the display. Wives he should
have by fifties and hundreds if he wanted them, she thought in her
great-heartedness, reflecting on the one whose threatened pretensions to
be his mate were slain by the title flung at her, and merited. The word
(she could guess it) was an impassable gulf, a wound beyond healing. It
pronounced in a single breath the girl's right name and his pledge of a
return to sanity. For it was the insanest he could do; it uttered
anathema on his love of her; it painted his white glow of unreason and
fierce ire at the scorn which her behaviour flung upon every part of his
character that was tenderest with him. After speaking such things a man
comes to his senses or he dies. So thought the baroness, and she was not
more than commonly curious to hear how the Rudigers had taken the insult
they had brought on themselves, and not unwilling to wait to see Alvan
till he was cool. His vanity, when threatening to bleed to the death,
would not be civil to the surgeon before the second or third dressing of
his wound.




CHAPTER XVIII

In the house of the Rudigers there was commotion. Clotilde sat apart from
it, locked in her chamber. She had performed her crowning act of
obedience to her father by declining the interview with Alvan, and as a
consequence she was full of grovelling revolt.

Two things had helped her to carry out her engagement to submit in this
final instance of dutifulness--one was the sight of that hateful rigid
face and glacier eye of Tresten; the other was the loophole she left for
subsequent insurgency by engaging to write to Count Hollinger's envoy,
Dr. Storchel. She had gazed most earnestly at him, that he might not
mistake her meaning, and the little man's pair of spectacles had, she
fancied, been dim. He was touched. Here was a friend! Here was the friend
she required, the external aid, the fresh evasion, the link with Alvan!
Now to write to him to bind him to his beautiful human emotion. By
contrast with the treacherous Tresten, whose iciness roused her to
defiance, the nervous little advocate seemed an emissary of the skies,
and she invoked her treasure-stores of the craven's craftiness in revolt
to compose a letter that should move him, melt the good angel to espouse
her cause. He was to be taught to understand--nay, angelically he would
understand at once--why she had behaved apparently so contradictorily.
Fettered, cruelly constrained by threats and wily sermons upon her duty
to her family, terrorized, a prisoner 'beside this blue lake, in sight of
the sublimest scenery of earth,' and hating his associate--hating him,
she repeated and underscored--she had belied herself; she was willing to
meet Alvan, she wished to meet him. She could open her heart to Alvan's
true friend--his only true friend. He would instantly discern her unhappy
plight. In the presence of his associate she could explain nothing, do
nothing but what she had done. He had frozen her. She had good reason to
know that man for her enemy. She could prove him a traitor to Alvan.
Certain though she was from the first moment of Dr. Storchel's integrity
and kindness of heart, she had stood petrified before him, as if affected
by some wicked spell. She owned she had utterly belied herself; she
protested she had been no free agent.

The future labours in her cause were thrown upon Dr. Storchel's
shoulders, but with such compliments to him on his mission from above as
emissary angels are presumed to be sensibly affected by.

The letter was long, involved, rather eloquent when she forgot herself
and wrote herself, and intentionally very feminine, after the manner of
supplicatory ladies appealing to lawyers, whom they would sway by the
feeble artlessness of a sex that must confide in their possession of a
heart, their heads being too awful.

She was directing the letter when Marko Romaris gave his name outside her
door. He was her intimate, her trustiest ally; he was aware of her design
to communicate with Dr. Storchel, and came to tell her it would be a
waste of labour. He stood there singularly pale and grave, unlike the
sprightly slave she petted on her search for a tyrant. 'Too late,' he
said, pointing to the letter she held. 'Dr. Storchel has gone.'

She could not believe it, for Storchel had informed her that he would
remain three days. Her powers of belief were more heavily taxed when
Marko said: 'Alvan has challenged your father to fight him.' With that he
turned on his heel; he had to assist in the deliberations of the family.

She clasped her temples. The collision of ideas driven together by Alvan
and a duel--Alvan challengeing her father--Alvan, the contemner of the
senseless appeal to arms for the settlement 'of personal
disputes!--darkened her mind. She ran about the house plying all whom she
met for news and explanations; but her young brother was absent, her
sisters were ignorant, and her parents were closeted in consultation with
the gentleman. At night Marko sent her word that she might sleep in
peace, for things would soon be arranged and her father had left the
city.

She went to her solitude to study the hard riddle of her shattered
imagination of Alvan. The fragments would not suffer joining, they
assailed her in huge heaps; and she did not ask herself whether she had
ever known him, but what disruption it was that had unsettled the reason
of the strongest man alive. At times he came flashing through the scud of
her thoughts magnificently in person, and how to stamp that splendid
figure of manhood on a madman's conduct was the task she supposed herself
to be attempting while she shrank from it, and worshipped the figure,
abhorred the deed. She could not unite them. He was like some great
cathedral organ foully handled in the night by demons. He, whose lucent
reason was an unclouded sky over every complexity of our sphere, he to
crave to fight! to seek the life-blood of the father of his beloved! More
unintelligible than this was it to reflect that he must know the
challenge to be of itself a bar to his meeting his Clotilde ever again.
She led her senses round to weep, and produced a state of mental drowning
for a truce to the bitter riddle.

Quiet reigned in the household next day, and for the length of the day.
Her father had departed, her mother treated her vixenishly, snubbing her
for a word, but the ugly business of yesterday seemed a matter settled
and dismissed. Alvan, then, had been appeased. He was not a man of blood:
he was the humanest of men. She was able to reconstruct him under the
beams of his handsome features and his kingly smile. She could
occasionally conjure them up in their vividness; but had she not in truth
been silly to yield to spite and send him back the photographs of him
with his presents, so that he should have the uttermost remnant of the
gifts he asked for? Had he really asked to have anything back? She
inclined to doubt all that had been done and said since their
separation--if only it were granted her to look on a photograph showing
him as he was actually before their misunderstanding! The sun-tracing
would not deceive, as her own tricks of imageing might do: seeing him as
he was then, the hour would be revived,--she would certainly feel him as
he lived and breathed now. Thus she fancied, on the effort to get him to
her heart after the shock he had dealt it, for he had become almost a
stranger, as a god that has taken human shape and character.

Next to the sight of Alvan her friend Marko was welcome. The youth
visited her in the evening, and with the glitter of his large black eyes
bent to her, and began talking incomprehensibly of leave-taking and
farewell, until she cried aloud that she had riddles enough: one was too
much. What had he to say? She gave him her hand to encourage him. She
listened, and soon it was her hand that mastered his in the grasp, though
she was putting questions incredulously, with an understanding duller
than her instinct. Or how if the frightful instinct while she listened
shot lightnings in her head, whose revelations were too intelligible to
be looked at? We think it devilish when our old nature is incandescent to
talk to us in this way, kindled by its vilest in hoping, hungering, and
fearing; and we call on the civilized mind to disown it. The tightened
grasp of her hand confessed her understanding of the thing she pressed to
hear repeated, for the sake of seeming to herself to repudiate it under
an accumulating horror, at the same time that the repetition doubly and
trebly confirmed it, so as to exonerate her criminal sensations by
casting the whole burden on the material fact.

Marko, with her father's consent and the approval of the friends of the
family, had taken up Alvan's challenge! That was the tale. She saw him
dead in the act of telling it.

'What?' she cried: 'what?' and then: 'You?' and her fingers were bonier
in their clutch: 'Let me hear. It can't be!' She snapped at herself for
not pitying him more but a sword had flashed to cut her gordian knot: she
her saw him dead, the obstacle removed, the man whom her parents opposed
to Alvan swept away: she saw him as a black gate breaking to a flood of
light. She had never invoked it, never wished, never dreamed it, but if
it was to be? . . . 'Oh! impossible. One of us is crazy. You to fight?
. . . they put it upon you? You fight him? But it is cruel, it is
abominable. Incredible! You have accepted the challenge, you say?'

He answered that he had, and gazed into her eyes for love.

She blinked over them, crying out against parents and friends for their
heartlessness in permitting him to fight.

'This is positive? This is really true?' she said, burning and dreading
to realize the magical change it pointed on, and touching him with her
other hand, loathing herself, loathing parents and friends who had
brought her to the plight of desiring some terrible event in sheer
necessity. Not she, it was the situation they had created which was
guilty! By dint of calling out on their heartlessness, and a spur of
conscience, she roused the feeling of compassion:

'But, Marko! Marko! poor child! you cannot fight; you have never fired a
pistol or a gun in your life. Your health was always too delicate for
these habits of men; and you could not pull a trigger taking aim, do you
not know?'

'I have been practising for a couple of hours to-day,' he said.

Compassion thrilled her. 'A couple of hours! Unhappy boy! But do you not
know that he is a dead shot? He is famous for his aim. He never misses.
He can do all the duellist's wonders both with sword and pistol, and that
is why he was respected when he refused the duel because he--before these
parents of mine drove him . . . and me! I think we are both mad--he
despised duelling. He! He! Alvan! who has challenged my father! I have
heard him speak of duelling as cowardly. But what is he? what has he
changed to? And it would be cowardly to kill you, Marko.'

'I take my chance,' Marko said.

'You have no chance. His aim is unerring.' She insisted on the deadliness
of his aim, and dwelt on it with a gloating delight that her conscience
approved, for she was persuading the youth to shun his fatal aim.

If you stood against him he would not spare you--perhaps not; I fear he
would not, as far as I know him now. He can be terrible in wrath. I think
he would warn you; but two men face to face! and he suspecting that you
cross his path! Find some way of avoiding him. Do, I entreat you. By your
love of me! Oh! no blood. I do not want to lose you. I could not bear
it.'

'Would you regret me?' said he.

Her eyes fell on his, and the beauty of those great dark eyes made her
fondness for him legible. He caused her a spasm of anguish, foreknowing
him doomed. She thought that haply this devoted heart was predestined to
be the sacrifice which should bring her round to Alvan. She murmured
phrases of dissuasion until her hollow voice broke; she wept for being
speechless, and turned upon Providence and her parents, in railing at
whom a voice of no ominous empty sound was given her; and still she felt
more warmly than railing expressed, only her voice shrank back from a
tone of feeling. She consoled herself with the reflection that utterance
was inadequate. Besides, her active good sense echoed Marko ringingly
when he cited the usages of their world and the impossibility of his
withdrawing or wishing to withdraw from the line of a challenge accepted.
It was destiny. She bowed her head lower and lower, oppressed without and
within, unwilling to look at him. She did not look when he left her.

The silence of him encouraged her head to rise. She stared about: his
phantom seemed present, and for a time she beheld him both upright in
life and stretched in death. It could not be her fault that he should
die! it was the fatality. How strange it was! Providence, after bitterly
misusing her, offered this reparation through the death of Marko.

Possibly she ought to run out and beseech Alvan to spare the innocent
youth. She stood up trembling on her legs. She called to Alvan. 'Do not
put blood between us. Oh! I love you more than ever. Why did you let that
horrible man you take for a friend come here? I hate him, and cannot feel
my love of you when I see him. He chills me to the bone. He made me say
the reverse of what was in my heart. But spare poor Marko! You have no
cause for jealousy. You would be above it, if you had. Do not aim; fire
in the air. Do not let me kiss that hand and think . . .'

She sank to her chair, exclaiming: 'I am a prisoner!' She could not walk
two steps; she was imprisoned by the interdict of the house and the
paralysis of her limbs. Providence decreed that she must abide the
result. Dread Power! To be dragged to her happiness through a river of
blood was indeed dreadful, but the devotional sense of reliance upon
hidden wisdom in the direction of human affairs when it appears
considerate of our wishes, inspirited her to be ready for what Providence
was about to do, mysterious in its beneficence that it was! It is the
dark goddess Fortune to the craven. The craven with desires will offer up
bloody sacrifices to it submissively. The craven, with desires expecting
to be blest, is a zealot of the faith which ascribes the direction of
events to the outer world. Her soul was in full song to that contriving
agency, and she with the paralyzed limbs became practically active,
darting here and there over the room, burning letters, packing a portable
bundle of clothes, in preparation for the domestic confusion of the
morrow when the body of Marko would be driven to their door, and amid the
wailing and the hubbub she would escape unnoticed to Alvan,
Providence-guided! Out of the house would then signify assuredly to
Alvan's arms.

The prospect might have seemed too heavenly to be realizable had she not
been sensible of paying heavily for it; and thus, as he would wish to be,
was Marko of double service to her; for she was truly fond of the
beautiful and chivalrous youth, and far from wishing to lose him. His
blood was on the heads of those who permitted him to face the danger! She
would have felt for him still more tenderly if it were permitted to a
woman's heart to enfold two men at a time. This, it would seem, she
cannot do: she is compelled by the painful restriction sadly to consent
that one of them should be swept away.

Night passed dragging and galloping. In the very early light she thought
of adding some ornaments to her bundle of necessaries. She learnt of the
object of her present faith to be provident on her own behalf, and
dressed in two of certain garments which would have swollen her bundle
too much.

This was the day of Providence: she had strung herself to do her part in
it and gone through the pathos of her fatalism above stairs in her
bedroom before Marko took his final farewell of her, so she could speak
her 'Heaven be with you!' unshaken, though sadly. Her father had
returned. To be away from him, and close to her bundle, she hurried to
her chamber and awaited the catastrophe, like one expecting to be raised
from the vaults. Carriage, wheels would give her the first intimation of
it. Slow, very slow, would imply badly wounded, she thought: dead, if the
carriage stopped some steps from the house and one of the seconds of the
poor boy descended to make the melancholy announcement. She could not but
apprehend the remorselessness of the decree. Death, it would probably be!
Alvan had resolved to sweep him off the earth. She could not blame Alvan
for his desperate passion, though pitying the victim of it. In any case
the instant of the arrival of the carriage was her opportunity marked by
the finger of Providence rendered visible, and she sat rocking her parcel
on her lap. Her love of Alvan now was mixed with an alluring terror of
him as an immediate death-dealer who stood against red-streaked heavens,
more grandly satanic in his angry mightiness than she had ever realized
that figure, and she, trembled and shuddered, fearing to meet him,
yearning to be taken to him, to close her eyes on his breast in blindest
happiness. She gave the very sob for the occasion.

A carriage drove at full speed to the door. Full speed could not be the
pace for a funeral load. That was a visitor to her father on business.
She waited for fresh wheels, telling herself she would be patient and
must be ready.

Her pathos ways ready and scarcely controllable. The tear thickened on
her eyelid as she projected her mind on the grief she would soon be
undergoing for Marko: or at least she would undergo it subsequently; she
would certainly mourn for him. She dared not proceed to an accumulated
enumeration of his merits, as her knowledge of the secret of pathos knew
to be most moving, in an extreme fear that she might weaken her required
energies for action at the approaching signal.

Feet came rushing up the stairs: her door was thrown open, and the living
Marko, stranger than a dead, stood present. He had in his look an
expectation that she would be glad to behold him, and he asked her, and
she said: 'Oh, yes, she was glad, of course.' She was glad that Alvan had
pardoned him for his rashness; she was vexed that her projected confusion
of the household had been thwarted: vexed, petrified with astonishment.

'But how if I tell you that Alvan is wounded?' he almost wept to say.

Clotilde informs the world that she laughed on hearing this. She was
unaware of her ground for laughing: It was the laugh of the tragic
comedian.

Could one believe in a Providence capable of letting such a sapling and
weakling strike down the most magnificent stature upon earth?

'You--him!' she said, in the tremendous compression of her contempt.

She laughed. The world is upside down--a world without light, or pointing
finger, or affection for special favourites, and therefore bereft of all
mysterious and attractive wisdom, a crazy world, a corpse of a world--if
this be true!

But it can still be disbelieved.

He stood by her dejectedly, and she sent him flying with a repulsive,
'Leave me!' The youth had too much on his conscience to let him linger.
His manner of going smote her brain.

Was it credible? Was it possible to think of Alvan wounded?--the giant
laid on his back and in the hands of the leech? Assuredly it was a
mockery of all calculations. She could not conjure up the picture of him,
and her emotions were merely struck and stunned. If this be true!

But it can be resolutely disbelieved.

We can put it before Providence to cleanse itself of this thing, or
suffer the consequence that we now and for ever quit our worship, lose
our faith in it and our secret respect. She heard Marko's tale confirmed,
whispers of leaden import, physicians' rumours, and she doubted. She
clung insanely to her incredulity. Laughter had been slain, but not her
belief in the invincibility of Alvan; she could not imagine him
overthrown in a conflict--and by a hand that she had taken and twisted in
her woman's hand subduingly! He, the unerring shot, laid low by one who
had never burnt powder till the day before the duel! It was easier to
remain incredulous notwithstanding the gradational distinctness of the
whispers. She dashed her 'Impossible!' at Providence, conceived the tale
in wilful and almost buoyant self-deception to be a conspiracy in the
family to hide from her Alvan's magnanimous dismissal of poor Marko from
the field of strife. That was the most evident fact. She ran through
delusion and delusion, exhausting each and hugging it after the false
life was out.

So violent was the opposition to reason in the idea of Alvans descending
to the duel and falling by the hand of Marko, that it cried to be
rebutted by laughter: and she could not, she could laugh no more, nor
imagine laughing, though she could say of the people of the house, 'They
act it well!' and hate them for the serious whispering air, and the
dropping of medical terms and weights of drugs, which robbed her of what
her instinct told her was the surest weapon for combating deception.
Them, however, and their acting she could have with stood enough to
silently discredit them through sheer virulence of a hatred that proved
them to be duly credited. But her savage wilfulness could not resist the
look of Marko. She had to yield up her breast to the truth, and stimulate
further unbelief lest her loaded heart should force her to run to the
wounded lion's bedside, and hear his reproaches. She had to cheat her
heart, and the weak thing consented to it, loathing her for the
imposture. Seeing Marko too, assured of it by his broken look, the
terrible mournfulness less than the horrible irony of the truth gnawed
within her. It spoke to her in metal, not in flesh. It haunted her
feelings and her faint imaginations alienly. It discoloured, it scorned
the earth, and earth's teachings, and the understanding of life. Rational
clearness at all avenues was blurred by it. The thought that Alvan lay
wounded and in danger, was one thought: that Marko had stretched him
there, was quite another, and was a livid eclipsing thought through which
her grief had to work its way to get to heat and a state of burning. She
knew not in truth what to feel: the craven's dilemma when yet feeling
much. Anger at Providence--rose uppermost. She had so shifted and wound
about, and so pulled her heart to pieces, that she could no longer sanely
and with wholeness encounter a shock: she had no sensation firm enough to
be stamped by a signet.

Even on the fatal third day, when Marko, white as his shrouded
antagonist, led her to the garden of the house, and there said the word
of death, an execrating amazement, framing the thought 'Why is it not
Alvan who speaks?' rose beside her gaping conception of her loss. She
framed it as an earnest interrogation for the half minute before misery
had possession of her, coming down like a cloud. Providence then was too
shadowy a thing to upbraid. She could not blame herself, for the
intensity of her suffering testified to the bitter realness of her love
of the dead man. Her craven's instinct to make a sacrifice of others flew
with claws of hatred at her parents. These she offered up, and the spirit
presiding in her appears to have accepted them as proper substitutes for
her conscience.




CHAPTER XIX

Alvan was dead. The shot of his adversary, accidentally well-directed,
had struck him mortally. He died on the morning of the third day after
the duel. There had been no hope that he could survive, and his agonies
made a speedy dissolution desirable by those most wishing him to live.

The baroness had her summons to hurry to him after his first swoon. She
was his nurse and late confidante a tearless woman, rigid in service.
Death relaxed his hold in her hand. He met his fate like the valiant soul
he was. Haply if he had lingered without the sweats of bodily tortures to
stay reflectiveness, he, also, in the strangeness of his prostration,
might have cast a thought on the irony of the fates felling a man like
him by a youngster's hand and for a shallow girl! He might have fathered
some jest at life, with rueful relish of the flavour: for such is our
manner of commenting on ourselves when we come to shipwreck through
unseaworthy pretensions. There was no interval on his passage from
anguish to immobility.

Silent was that house of many chambers. That mass of humanity profusely
mixed of good and evil, of generous ire and mutinous, of the passion for
the future of mankind and vanity of person, magnanimity and sensualism,
high judgement, reckless indiscipline, chivalry, savagery, solidity,
fragmentariness, was dust.

The two men composing it, the untamed and the candidate for citizenship,
in mutual dissension pulled it down. He perished of his weakness, but it
was a strong man that fell. If his end was unheroic, the blot does not
overshadow his life. His end was a derision because the animal in him ran
him unchained and bounding to it. A stormy blood made wreck of a splendid
intelligence. Yet they that pronounce over him the ordinary fatalistic
epitaph of the foregone and done, which is the wisdom of men measuring
the dead by the last word of a lamentable history, should pause to think
whether fool or madman is the title for one who was a zealous worker,
respected by great heads of his time, acknowledged the head of the
voluminous coil of the working people, and who, as we have seen,
insensibly though these wrought within him, was getting to purer fires
through his coarser when the final intemperateness drove him to ruin. As
little was he the vanished God whom his working people hailed deploringly
on the long procession of his remains from city to city under charge of
the baroness. That last word of his history ridicules the eulogy of
partisan and devotee, and to commit the excess of worshipping is to
conjure up by contrast a vulgar giant: for truth will have her just
proportions, and vindicates herself upon a figure over-idealized by
bidding it grimace, leaving appraisers to get the balance of the two
extremes. He was neither fool nor madman, nor man to be adored: his last
temptation caught him in the season before he had subdued his blood, and
amid the multitudinously simple of this world, stamped him a tragic
comedian: that is, a grand pretender, a self-deceiver, one of the lividly
ludicrous, whom we cannot laugh at, but must contemplate, to distinguish
where their character strikes the note of discord with life; for
otherwise, in the reflection of their history, life will seem a thing
demoniacally inclined by fits to antic and dive into gulfs. The
characters of the hosts of men are of the simple order of the comic; not
many are of a stature and a complexity calling for the junction of the
two Muses to name them.

While for his devotees he lay still warm in the earth, that other, the
woman, poor Clotilde, astonished her compatriots by passing comedy and
tragic comedy with the gift of her hand to the hand which had slain
Alvan. In sooth, the explanation is not so hard when we recollect our
knowledge of her. It was a gentle youth; her parents urged her to it: a
particular letter, the letter of the challenge to her father, besliming
her, was shown;--a hideous provocation pushed to the foullest. Who can
blame Prince Marko? who had ever given sign of more noble bravery than
he? He had stood to defend her name and fame. He was very love, the never
extinguished torch of love. And he hung on her for the little of life
appearing to remain to him. Before heaven he was guiltless. He was good.
Her misery had shrunk her into nothingness, and she rose out of
nothingness cold and bloodless, bearing a thought that she might make a
good youth happy, or nurse him sinking--be of that use. Besides he was a
refuge from the roof of her parents. She shut her eyes on the past, sure
of his goodness; goodness, on her return to some sense of being, she
prized above other virtues, and perhaps she had a fancy that to be allied
to it was to be doing good. After a few months she buried him. From that
day, or it may be, on her marriage day, her heart was Alvan's. Years
later she wrote her version of the story, not sparing herself so much as
she supposed. Providence and her parents were not forgiven. But as we are
in her debt for some instruction, she may now be suffered to go.

     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS

     A tragic comedian: that is, a grand pretender, a self-deceiver
     Above all things I detest the writing for money
     At the age of forty, men that love love rootedly
     Barriers are for those who cannot fly
     Be good and dull, and please everybody
     Beginning to have a movement to kiss the whip
     Centres of polished barbarism known as aristocratic societies
     Clotilde fenced, which is half a confession
     Comparisons will thrust themselves on minds disordered
     Compromise is virtual death
     Conservative, whose astounded state paralyzes his wrath
     Creatures that wait for circumstances to bring the change
     Dignitary, and he passed under the bondage of that position
     Dissent rings out finely, and approval is a feeble murmur
     Do you judge of heroes as of lesser men?
     Empanelled to deliver verdicts upon the ways of women
     Fantastical
     Finishing touches to the negligence
     Giant Vanity urged Giant Energy to make use of Giant Duplicity
     Gone to pieces with an injured lover's babble
     Gradations appear to be unknown to you
     He had to go, he must, he has to be always going
     He stormed her and consented to be beaten
     Hesitating strangeness that sometimes gathers during absences
     His violent earnestness, his imperial self-confidence
     His apparent cynicism is sheer irritability
     Hosts of men are of the simple order of the comic
     I give my self, I do not sell
     I have learnt as much from light literature as from heavy
     I would wait till he flung you off, and kneel to you
     If you have this creative soul, be the slave of your creature
     Imagination she has, for a source of strength in the future days
     Looking on him was listening
     Love the difficulty better than the woman
     Men in love are children with their mistresses
     Metaphysician's treatise on Nature: a torch to see the sunrise
     Music in Italy? Amorous and martial, brainless and monotonous
     Night has little mercy for the self-reproachful
     Not much esteem for non-professional actresses
     Not in a situation that could bear of her blaming herself
     O for yesterday!
     Pact between cowardice and comfort under the title of expediency
     Philosophy skimmed, and realistic romances deep-sounded
     Polished barbarism
     Professional widows
     Providence and her parents were not forgiven
     Scorned him for listening to the hesitations (hers)
     Self-consoled when they are not self-justified
     She ran through delusion and delusion, exhausting each
     She felt in him a maker of facts
     Strength in love is the sole sincerity
     The worst of omens is delay
     The way is clear: we have only to take the step
     The brainless in Art and in Statecraft
     Time is due to us, and the minutes are our gold slipping away
     Time and strength run to waste in retarding the inevitable
     To have no sympathy with the playful mind is not to have a mind
     Trick for killing time without hurting him
     Two wishes make a will
     Venerated by his followers, well hated by his enemies
     Want of courage is want of sense
     We shall not be rich--nor poor
     Weak souls are much moved by having the pathos on their side
     Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?
     Win you--temperately, let us hope; by storm, if need be
     Work of extravagance upon perceptibly plain matter
     World voluntarily opens a path to those who step determinedly






DIANA OF THE CROSSWAYS

By George Meredith

1897




CONTENTS

BOOK 1.
I.        OF DIARIES AND DIARISTS TOUCHING THE HEROINE
II.       AN IRISH BALL
III.      THE INTERIOR OF MR. REDWORTH AND THE EXTERIOR OF MR. SULLIVAN
          SMITH
IV.       CONTAINING HINTS OF DIANA'S EXPERIENCES AND OF WHAT THEY LED TO
V.        CONCERNING THE SCRUPULOUS GENTLEMAN WHO CAME TOO LATE
VI.       THE COUPLE
VII.      THE CRISIS
VIII.     IN WHICH IS EXHIBITED HOW A PRACTICAL MAN AND A DIVINING WOMAN
          LEARN TO RESPECT ONE ANOTHER

BOOK 2.
IX.       SHOWS HOW A POSITION OF DELICACY FOR A LADY AND GENTLEMAN WAS
          MET IN SIMPLE FASHION WITHOUT HURT TO EITHER.
X.        THE CONFLICT OF THE NIGHT
XI.       RECOUNTS THE JOURNEY IN A CHARIOT, WITH A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF
          DIALOGUE, AND A SMALL INCIDENT ON THE ROAD
XII.      BETWEEN EMMA AND DIANA
XIII.     TOUCHING THE FIRST DAYS OF HER PROBATION
XIV.      GIVING GLIMPSES OF DIANA UNDER HER CLOUD BEFORE THE WORLD AND
          OF HER FURTHER APPRENTICESHIP
XV.       INTRODUCES THE HON. PERCY DACIER
XVI.      TREATS OF A MIDNIGHT BELL, AND OF A SCENE OF EARLY MORNING
XVII.     THE PRINCESS EGERIA

BOOK 3.
XVIII.    THE AUTHORESS
XIX.      A DRIVE IN SUNLIGHT AND A DRIVE IN MOONLIGHT
XX.       DIANA'S NIGHT-WATCH IN THE CHAMBER OF DEATH
XXI.      THE YOUNG MINISTER OF STATE
XXII.     BETWEEN DIANA AND DACIER : THE WIND EAST OVER BLEAK LAND
XXIII.    RECORDS A VISIT TO DIANA FROM ONE OF THE WORLD'S GOOD WOMEN
XXIV.     INDICATES A SOUL PREPARED FOR DESPERATION
XXV.      ONCE MORE THE CROSSWAYS AND A CHANGE OF TURNINGS
XXVI.     IN WHICH A DISAPPOINTED LOVER RECEIVES A MULTITUDE OF LESSONS


BOOK 5.
XXXVI.    IS CONCLUSIVE AS TO THE HEARTLESSNESS OF WOMEN WITH BRAINS
XXXVII.   AN EXHIBITION OF SOME CHAMPIONS OF THE STRICKEN LADY
XXXVIII.  CONVALESCENCE OF A HEALTHY MIND DISTRAUGHT
XXXIX.    OF NATURE WITH ONE OF HER CULTIVATED DAUGHTERS AND A SHORT
          EXCURSION IN ANTI-CLIMAX
XL.       IN WHICH WE SEE NATURE MAKING OF A WOMAN A MAID AGAIN, AND A
          THRICE WHIMSICAL
XLI.      CONTAINS A REVELATION OF THE ORIGIN OF THE TIGRESS IN DIANA
XLII.     THE PENULTIMATE : SHOWING A FINAL STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY AND RUN
          INTO HARNESS
XLIII.    NUPTIAL CHAPTER: AND OF HOW A BARELY WILLING WOMAN WAS LED TO
          BLOOM WITH NUPTIAL SENTIMENT





        A lady of high distinction for wit and beauty,
        the daughter of an illustrious Irish House,
        came under the shadow of a calumny. It has
        latterly been examined and exposed as baseless.
        The story of Diana of the Crossways is to be read
        as fiction.




CHAPTER I

OF DIARIES AND DIARISTS TOUCHING THE HEROINE

Among the Diaries beginning with the second quarter of our century, there
is frequent mention of a lady then becoming famous for her beauty and her
wit: 'an unusual combination,' in the deliberate syllables of one of the
writers, who is, however, not disposed to personal irony when speaking of
her. It is otherwise in his case and a general fling at the sex we may
deem pardonable, for doing as little harm to womankind as the stone of an
urchin cast upon the bosom of mother Earth; though men must look some day
to have it returned to them, which is a certainty; and indeed full surely
will our idle-handed youngster too, in his riper season; be heard
complaining of a strange assault of wanton missiles, coming on him he
knows not whence; for we are all of us distinctly marked to get back what
we give, even from the thing named inanimate nature.

The 'LEAVES FROM THE DIARY OF HENRY WILMERS' are studded with examples of
the dinner-table wit of the time, not always worth quotation twice; for
smart remarks have their measured distances, many requiring to be a brule
pourpoint, or within throw of the pistol, to make it hit; in other words,
the majority of them are addressed directly to our muscular system, and
they have no effect when we stand beyond the range. On the contrary, they
reflect sombrely on the springs of hilarity in the generation preceding
us; with due reserve of credit, of course, to an animal vivaciousness
that seems to have wanted so small an incitement. Our old yeomanry
farmers--returning to their beds over ferny commons under bright
moonlight from a neighbour's harvest-home, eased their bubbling breasts
with a ready roar not unakin to it. Still the promptness to laugh is an
excellent progenitorial foundation for the wit to come in a people; and
undoubtedly the diarial record of an imputed piece of wit is witness to
the spouting of laughter. This should comfort us while we skim the
sparkling passages of the 'Leaves.' When a nation has acknowledged that
it is as yet but in the fisticuff stage of the art of condensing our
purest sense to golden sentences, a readier appreciation will be extended
to the gift: which is to strike not the dazzled eyes, the unanticipating
nose, the ribs, the sides, and stun us, twirl us, hoodwink, mystify,
tickle and twitch, by dexterities of lingual sparring and shuffling, but
to strike roots in the mind, the Hesperides of good things. We shall then
set a price on the 'unusual combination.' A witty woman is a treasure; a
witty Beauty is a power. Has she actual beauty, actual wit?--not simply a
tidal material beauty that passes current any pretty flippancy or
staggering pretentiousness? Grant. the combination, she will appear a
veritable queen of her period, fit for homage; at least meriting a
disposition to believe the best of her, in the teeth of foul rumour;
because the well of true wit is truth itself, the gathering of the
precious drops of right reason, wisdom's lightning; and no soul
possessing and dispensing it can justly be a target for the world,
however well armed the world confronting her. Our temporary world, that
Old Credulity and stone-hurling urchin in one, supposes it possible for a
woman to be mentally active up to the point of spiritual clarity and also
fleshly vile; a guide to life and a biter at the fruits of death; both
open mind and hypocrite. It has not yet been taught to appreciate a
quality certifying to sound citizenship as authoritatively as acres of
land in fee simple, or coffers of bonds, shares and stocks, and a more
imperishable guarantee. The multitudes of evil reports which it takes for
proof, are marshalled against her without question of the nature of the
victim, her temptress beauty being a sufficiently presumptive delinquent.
It does not pretend to know the whole, or naked body of the facts; it
knows enough for its furry dubiousness; and excepting the sentimental of
men, a rocket-headed horde, ever at the heels of fair faces for ignition,
and up starring away at a hint of tearfulness; excepting further by
chance a solid champion man, or some generous woman capable of faith in
the pelted solitary of her sex, our temporary world blows direct East on
her shivering person. The scandal is warrant for that; the circumstances
of the scandal emphasize the warrant. And how clever she is! Cleverness
is an attribute of the selecter missionary lieutenants of Satan. We pray
to be defended from her cleverness: she flashes bits of speech that catch
men in their unguarded corner. The wary stuff their ears, the stolid bid
her best sayings rebound on her reputation. Nevertheless the world, as
Christian, remembers its professions, and a portion of it joins the burly
in morals by extending to her a rough old charitable mercifulness; better
than sentimental ointment, but the heaviest blow she has to bear, to a
character swimming for life.

That the lady in question was much quoted, the Diaries and Memoirs
testify. Hearsay as well as hearing was at work to produce the abundance;
and it was a novelty in England, where (in company) the men are the
pointed talkers, and the women conversationally fair Circassians. They
are, or they know that they should be; it comes to the same. Happily our
civilization has not prescribed the veil to them. The mutes have here and
there a sketch or label attached to their names: they are 'strikingly
handsome'; they are 'very good-looking'; occasionally they are noted as
'extremely entertaining': in what manner, is inquired by a curious
posterity, that in so many matters is left unendingly to jump the empty
and gaping figure of interrogation over its own full stop. Great ladies
must they be, at the web of politics, for us to hear them cited
discoursing. Henry Wilmers is not content to quote the beautiful Mrs.
Warwick, he attempts a portrait. Mrs. Warwick is 'quite Grecian.' She
might 'pose for a statue.' He presents her in carpenter's lines, with a
dab of school-box colours, effective to those whom the Keepsake fashion
can stir. She has a straight nose, red lips, raven hair, black eyes, rich
complexion, a remarkably fine bust, and she walks well, and has an
agreeable voice; likewise 'delicate extremities.' The writer was created
for popularity, had he chosen to bring his art into our literary market.

Perry Wilkinson is not so elaborate: he describes her in his
'Recollections' as a splendid brune, eclipsing all the blondes coming
near her: and 'what is more, the beautiful creature can talk.' He
wondered, for she was young, new to society. Subsequently he is rather
ashamed of his wonderment, and accounts for it by 'not having known she
was Irish.' She 'turns out to be Dan Merion's daughter.'

We may assume that he would have heard if she had any whiff of a brogue.
Her sounding of the letter R a trifle scrupulously is noticed by Lady
Pennon: 'And last, not least, the lovely Mrs. Warwick, twenty minutes
behind the dinner-hour, and r-r-really fearing she was late.'

After alluding to the soft influence of her beauty and ingenuousness on
the vexed hostess, the kindly old marchioness adds, that it was no wonder
she was late, 'for just before starting from home she had broken loose
from her husband for good, and she entered the room absolutely
houseless!' She was not the less 'astonishingly brilliant.' Her
observations were often 'so unexpectedly droll I laughed till I cried.'
Lady Pennon became in consequence one of the stanch supporters of Mrs.
Warwick.

Others were not so easily won. Perry Wilkinson holds a balance when it
goes beyond a question of her wit and beauty. Henry Wilmers puts the case
aside, and takes her as he finds her. His cousin, the clever and cynical
Dorset Wilmers, whose method of conveying his opinions without stating
them was famous, repeats on two occasions when her name appears in his
pages, 'handsome, lively, witty'; and the stressed repetition of
calculated brevity while a fiery scandal was abroad concerning the lady,
implies weighty substance--the reservation of a constable's truncheon,
that could legally have knocked her character down to the pavement. We
have not to ask what he judged. But Dorset Wilmers was a political
opponent of the eminent Peer who yields the second name to the scandal,
and politics in his day flushed the conceptions of men. His short
references to 'that Warwick-Dannisburgh affair' are not verbally
malicious. He gets wind of the terms of Lord Dannisburgh's will and
testament, noting them without comment. The oddness of the instrument in
one respect may have served his turn; we have no grounds for thinking him
malignant. The death of his enemy closes his allusions to Mrs. Warwick.
He was growing ancient, and gout narrowed the circle he whirled in. Had
he known this 'handsome, lively, witty' apparition as a woman having
political and social views of her own, he would not, one fancies, have
been so stingless. Our England exposes a sorry figure in his
Reminiscences. He struck heavily, round and about him, wherever he moved;
he had by nature a tarnishing eye that cast discolouration. His unadorned
harsh substantive statements, excluding the adjectives, give his Memoirs
the appearance of a body of facts, attractive to the historic Muse, which
has learnt to esteem those brawny sturdy giants marching club on
shoulder, independent of henchman, in preference to your panoplied
knights with their puffy squires, once her favourites, and wind-filling
to her columns, ultimately found indigestible.

His exhibition of his enemy Lord Dannisburgh, is of the class of noble
portraits we see swinging over inn-portals, grossly unlike in likeness.
The possibility of the man's doing or saying this and that adumbrates the
improbability: he had something of the character capable of it, too much
good sense for the performance. We would think so, and still the shadow
is round our thoughts. Lord Dannisburgh was a man of ministerial tact,
official ability, Pagan morality; an excellent general manager, if no
genius in statecraft. But he was careless of social opinion, unbuttoned,
and a laugher. We know that he could be chivalrous toward women,
notwithstanding the perplexities he brought on them, and this the
Dorset-Diary does not show.

His chronicle is less mischievous as regards Mrs. Warwick than the
paragraphs of Perry Wilkinson, a gossip presenting an image of perpetual
chatter, like the waxen-faced street advertizements of light and easy
dentistry. He has no belief, no disbelief; names the pro-party and the
con; recites the case, and discreetly, over-discreetly; and pictures the
trial, tells the list of witnesses, records the verdict: so the case
went, and some thought one thing, some another thing: only it is reported
for positive that a miniature of the incriminated lady was cleverly
smuggled over to the jury, and juries sitting upon these eases, ever
since their bedazzlement by Phryne, as you know . . . . And then he
relates an anecdote of the husband, said to have been not a bad fellow
before he married his Diana; and the naming of the Goddess reminds him
that the second person in the indictment is now everywhere called 'The
elderly shepherd';--but immediately after the bridal bells this husband
became sour and insupportable, and either she had the trick of putting
him publicly in the wrong, or he lost all shame in playing the churlish
domestic tyrant. The instances are incredible of a gentleman. Perry
Wilkinson gives us two or three; one on the authority of a personal
friend who witnessed the scene; at the Warwick whist-table, where the
fair Diana would let loose her silvery laugh in the intervals. She was
hardly out of her teens, and should have been dancing instead of fastened
to a table. A difference of fifteen years in the ages of the wedded pair
accounts poorly for the husband's conduct, however solemn a business the
game of whist. We read that he burst out at last, with bitter mimicry,
'yang--yang--yang!' and killed the bright laugh, shot it dead. She had
outraged the decorum of the square-table only while the cards were
making. Perhaps her too-dead ensuing silence, as of one striving to bring
back the throbs to a slain bird in her bosom, allowed the gap between the
wedded pair to be visible, for it was dated back to prophecy as soon as
the trumpet proclaimed it.

But a multiplication of similar instances, which can serve no other
purpose than that of an apology, is a miserable vindication of innocence.
The more we have of them the darker the inference. In delicate situations
the chatterer is noxious. Mrs. Warwick had numerous apologists. Those
trusting to her perfect rectitude were rarer. The liberty she allowed
herself in speech and action must have been trying to her defenders in a
land like ours; for here, and able to throw its shadow on our giddy
upper-circle, the rigour of the game of life, relaxed though it may
sometimes appear, would satisfy the staidest whist-player. She did not
wish it the reverse, even when claiming a space for laughter: 'the breath
of her soul,' as she called it, and as it may be felt in the early youth
of a lively nature. She, especially, with her multitude of quick
perceptions and imaginative avenues, her rapid summaries, her sense of
the comic, demanded this aerial freedom.

We have it from Perry Wilkinson that the union of the divergent couple
was likened to another union always in a Court of Law. There was a
distinction; most analogies will furnish one; and here we see England and
Ireland changeing their parts, until later, after the breach, when the
Englishman and Irishwoman resumed a certain resemblance to the yoked
Islands.

Henry Wilmers, I have said, deals exclusively with the wit and charm of
the woman. He treats the scandal as we might do in like manner if her
story had not to be told. But these are not reporting columns; very
little of it shall trouble them. The position is faced, and that is all.
The position is one of the battles incident to women, their hardest. It
asks for more than justice from men, for generosity, our civilization not
being yet of the purest. That cry of hounds at her disrobing by Law is
instinctive. She runs, and they give tongue; she is a creature of the
chase. Let her escape unmangled, it will pass in the record that she did
once publicly run, and some old dogs will persist in thinking her
cunninger than the virtuous, which never put themselves in such
positions, but ply the distaff at home. Never should reputation of woman
trail a scent! How true! and true also that the women of waxwork never
do; and that the women of happy marriages do not; nor the women of holy
nunneries; nor the women lucky in their arts. It is a test of the
civilized to see and hear, and add no yapping to the spectacle.

Thousands have reflected on a Diarist's power to cancel our Burial
Service. Not alone the cleric's good work is upset by him; but the
sexton's as well. He howks the grave, and transforms the quiet worms,
busy on a single poor peaceable body, into winged serpents that disorder
sky and earth with a deadly flight of zig-zags, like military rockets,
among the living. And if these are given to cry too much, to have their
tender sentiments considered, it cannot be said that History requires the
flaying of them. A gouty Diarist, a sheer gossip Diarist, may thus, in
the bequest of a trail of reminiscences, explode our temples (for our
very temples have powder in store), our treasuries, our homesteads, alive
with dynamitic stuff; nay, disconcert our inherited veneration, dislocate
the intimate connexion between the tugged flaxen forelock and a title.

No similar blame is incurred by Henry Wilmers. No blame whatever, one
would say, if he had been less, copious, or not so subservient, in
recording the lady's utterances; for though the wit of a woman may be
terse, quite spontaneous, as this lady's assuredly was here and there,
she is apt to spin it out of a museful mind, at her toilette, or by the
lonely fire, and sometimes it is imitative; admirers should beware of
holding it up to the withering glare of print: she herself, quoting an
obscure maximmonger, says of these lapidary sentences, that they have
merely 'the value of chalk-eggs, which lure the thinker to sit,' and
tempt the vacuous to strain for the like, one might add; besides
flattering the world to imagine itself richer than it is in eggs that are
golden. Henry Wilmers notes a multitude of them. 'The talk fell upon our
being creatures of habit, and how far it was good: She said:--It is there
that we see ourselves crutched between love grown old and indifference
ageing to love.' Critic ears not present at the conversation catch an
echo of maxims and aphorisms overchannel, notwithstanding a feminine
thrill in the irony of 'ageing to love.' The quotation ranks rather among
the testimonies to her charm.

She is fresher when speaking of the war of the sexes. For one sentence
out of many, though we find it to be but the clever literary clothing of
a common accusation: 'Men may have rounded Seraglio Point: they have not
yet doubled Cape Turk.'

It is war, and on the male side, Ottoman war: her experience reduced her
to think so positively. Her main personal experience was in the social
class which is primitively venatorial still, canine under its polish.

She held a brief for her beloved Ireland. She closes a discussion upon
Irish agitation by saying rather neatly: 'You have taught them it is
English as well as common human nature to feel an interest in the dog
that has bitten you.'

The dog periodically puts on madness to win attention; we gather then
that England, in an angry tremour, tries him with water-gruel to prove
him sane.

Of the Irish priest (and she was not of his retinue), when he was deemed
a revolutionary, Henry Wilmers notes her saying: 'Be in tune with him; he
is in the key-note for harmony. He is shepherd, doctor, nurse, comforter,
anecdotist and fun-maker to his poor flock; and you wonder they see the
burning gateway of their heaven in him? Conciliate the priest.'

It has been partly done, done late, when the poor flock have found their
doctoring and shepherding at other hands: their 'bulb-food and fiddle,'
that she petitioned for, to keep them from a complete shaving off their
patch of bog and scrub soil, without any perception of the tremulous
transatlantic magnification of the fiddle, and the splitting discord of
its latest inspiriting jig.

And she will not have the consequences of the 'weariful old Irish duel
between Honour and Hunger judged by bread and butter juries.'

She had need to be beautiful to be tolerable in days when Englishmen
stood more openly for the strong arm to maintain the Union. Her troop of
enemies was of her summoning.

Ordinarily her topics were of wider range, and those of a woman who mixed
hearing with reading, and observation with her musings. She has no
doleful ejaculatory notes, of the kind peculiar to women at war,
containing one-third of speculative substance to two of sentimental--a
feminine plea for comprehension and a squire; and it was probably the
reason (as there is no reason to suppose an emotional cause) why she
exercised her evident sway over the mind of so plain and straightforward
an Englishman as Henry Wilmers. She told him that she read rapidly, 'a
great deal at one gulp,' and thought in flashes--a way with the makers of
phrases. She wrote, she confessed, laboriously. The desire to prune,
compress, overcharge, was a torment to the nervous woman writing under a
sharp necessity for payment. Her songs were shot off on the impulsion;
prose was the heavy task. 'To be pointedly rational,' she said, 'is a
greater difficulty for me than a fine delirium.' She did not talk as if
it would have been so, he remarks. One is not astonished at her appearing
an 'actress' to the flat-minded. But the basis of her woman's nature was
pointed flame: In the fulness of her history we perceive nothing
histrionic. Capricious or enthusiastic in her youth, she never trifled
with feeling; and if she did so with some showy phrases and occasionally
proffered commonplaces in gilt, as she was much excited to do, her moods
of reflection were direct, always large and honest, universal as well as
feminine.

Her saying that 'A woman in the pillory restores the original bark of
brotherhood to mankind,' is no more than a cry of personal anguish. She
has golden apples in her apron. She says of life: 'When I fail to cherish
it in every fibre the fires within are waning,' and that drives like rain
to the roots. She says of the world, generously, if with tapering idea:
'From the point of vision of the angels, this ugly monster, only half out
of slime, must appear our one constant hero.' It can be read maliciously,
but abstain.

She says of Romance: 'The young who avoid that region escape the title of
Fool at the cost of a celestial crown.' Of Poetry: 'Those that have souls
meet their fellows there.'

But she would have us away with sentimentalism. Sentimental people, in
her phrase, 'fiddle harmonics on the strings of sensualism,' to the
delight of a world gaping for marvels of musical execution rather than
for music. For our world is all but a sensational world at present, in
maternal travail of a soberer, a braver, a brighter-eyed. Her reflections
are thus to be interpreted, it seems to me. She says, 'The vices of the
world's nobler half in this day are feminine.' We have to guard against
'half-conceptions of wisdom, hysterical goodness, an impatient
charity'--against the elementary state of the altruistic virtues,
distinguishable as the sickness and writhings of our egoism to cast its
first slough. Idea is there. The funny part of it is our finding it in
books of fiction composed for payment. Manifestly this lady did not
'chameleon' her pen from the colour of her audience: she was not of the
uniformed rank and file marching to drum and fife as gallant interpreters
of popular appetite, and going or gone to soundlessness and the icy
shades.

Touches inward are not absent: 'To have the sense of the eternal in life
is a short flight for the soul. To have had it, is the soul's vitality.'
And also: 'Palliation of a sin is the hunted creature's refuge and final
temptation. Our battle is ever between spirit and flesh. Spirit must
brand the flesh, that it may live.'

You are entreated to repress alarm. She was by preference light-handed;
and her saying of oratory, that 'It is always the more impressive for the
spice of temper which renders it untrustworthy,' is light enough. On
Politics she is rhetorical and swings: she wrote to spur a junior
politician: 'It is the first business of men, the school to mediocrity,
to the covetously ambitious a sty, to the dullard his amphitheatre, arms
of Titans to the desperately enterprising, Olympus to the genius.' What a
woman thinks of women, is the test of her nature. She saw their existing
posture clearly, yet believed, as men disincline to do, that they grow.
She says, that 'In their judgements upon women men are females, voices of
the present (sexual) dilemma.' They desire to have 'a still woman; who
can make a constant society of her pins and needles.' They create by
stoppage a volcano, and are amazed at its eruptiveness. 'We live alone,
and do not much feel it till we are visited.' Love is presumably the
visitor. Of the greater loneliness of women, she says: 'It is due to the
prescribed circumscription of their minds, of which they become aware in
agitation. Were the walls about them beaten down, they would understand
that solitariness is a common human fate and the one chance of growth,
like space for timber.' As to the sensations of women after the beating
down of the walls, she owns that the multitude of the timorous would
yearn in shivering affright for the old prison-nest, according to the
sage prognostic of men; but the flying of a valiant few would form a
vanguard. And we are informed that the beginning of a motive life with
women must be in the head, equally with men (by no means a truism when
she wrote). Also that 'men do not so much fear to lose the hearts of
thoughtful women as their strict attention to their graces.' The present
market is what men are for preserving: an observation of still
reverberating force. Generally in her character of the feminine combatant
there is a turn of phrase, like a dimple near the lips showing her
knowledge that she was uttering but a tart measure of the truth. She had
always too much lambent humour to be the dupe of the passion wherewith,
as she says, 'we lash ourselves into the persuasive speech distinguishing
us from the animals.'

The instances of her drollery are rather hinted by the Diarists for the
benefit of those who had met her and could inhale the atmosphere at a
word. Drolleries, humours, reputed witticisms, are like odours of roast
meats, past with the picking of the joint. Idea is the only vital breath.
They have it rarely, or it eludes the chronicler. To say of the great
erratic and forsaken Lady A****, after she had accepted the consolations
of Bacchus, that her name was properly signified in asterisks 'as she was
now nightly an Ariadne in heaven through her God,' sounds to us a
roundabout, with wit somewhere and fun nowhere. Sitting at the roast we
might have thought differently. Perry Wilkinson is not happier in citing
her reply to his compliment on the reviewers' unanimous eulogy of her
humour and pathos:--the 'merry clown and poor pantaloon demanded of us in
every work of fiction,' she says, lamenting the writer's compulsion to go
on producing them for applause until it is extremest age that knocks
their knees. We are informed by Lady Pennon of 'the most amusing
description of the first impressions of a pretty English simpleton in
Paris'; and here is an opportunity for ludicrous contrast of the French
and English styles of pushing flatteries--'piping to the charmed animal,'
as Mrs. Warwick terms it in another place: but Lady Pennon was acquainted
with the silly woman of the piece, and found her amusement in the
'wonderful truth' of that representation.

Diarists of amusing passages are under an obligation to paint us a
realistic revival of the time, or we miss the relish. The odour of the
roast, and more, a slice of it is required, unless the humorous thing be
preternaturally spirited to walk the earth as one immortal among a number
less numerous than the mythic Gods. 'He gives good dinners,' a candid old
critic said, when asked how it was that he could praise a certain poet.
In an island of chills and fogs, coelum crebris imbribus ac nebulis
foedum, the comic and other perceptions are dependent on the stirring of
the gastric juices. And such a revival by any of us would be impolitic,
were it a possible attempt, before our systems shall have been fortified
by philosophy. Then may it be allowed to the Diarist simply to relate,
and we can copy from him.

Then, ah! then, moreover, will the novelist's Art, now neither blushless
infant nor executive man, have attained its majority. We can then be
veraciously historical, honestly transcriptive. Rose-pink and dirty drab
will alike have passed away. Philosophy is the foe of both, and their
silly cancelling contest, perpetually renewed in a shuffle of extremes,
as it always is where a phantasm falseness reigns, will no longer baffle
the contemplation of natural flesh, smother no longer the soul issuing
out of our incessant strife. Philosophy bids us to see that we are not so
pretty as rose-pink, not so repulsive as dirty drab; and that instead of
everlastingly shifting those barren aspects, the sight of ourselves is
wholesome, bearable, fructifying, finally a delight. Do but perceive that
we are coming to philosophy, the stride toward it will be a giant's--a
century a day. And imagine the celestial refreshment of having a pure
decency in the place of sham; real flesh; a soul born active,
wind-beaten, but ascending. Honourable will fiction then appear;
honourable, a fount of life, an aid to life, quick with our blood. Why,
when you behold it you love it--and you will not encourage it?--or only
when presented by dead hands? Worse than that alternative dirty drab,
your recurring rose-pink is rebuked by hideous revelations of the filthy
foul; for nature will force her way, and if you try to stifle her by
drowning, she comes up, not the fairest part of her uppermost! Peruse
your Realists--really your castigators for not having yet embraced
Philosophy. As she grows in the flesh when discreetly tended, nature is
unimpeachable, flower-eke, yet not too decoratively a flower; you must
have her with the stem, the thorns, the roots, and the fat bedding of
roses. In this fashion she grew, says historical fiction; thus does she
flourish now, would say the modern transcript, reading the inner as well
as exhibiting the outer.

And how may you know that you have reached to Philosophy? You touch her
skirts when you share her hatred of the sham decent, her derision of
sentimentalism. You are one with her when--but I would not have you a
thousand years older! Get to her, if in no other way, by the sentimental
route:--that very winding path, which again and again brings you round to
the point of original impetus, where you have to be unwound for another
whirl; your point of original impetus being the grossly material, not at
all the spiritual. It is most true that sentimentalism springs from the
former, merely and badly aping the latter,--fine flower, or pinnacle
flame-spire, of sensualism that it is, could it do other? and
accompanying the former it traverses tracts of desert here and there
couching in a garden, catching with one hand at fruits, with another at
colours; imagining a secret ahead, and goaded by an appetite, sustained
by sheer gratifications. Fiddle in harmonics as it may, it will have
these gratifications at all costs. Should none be discoverable, at once
you are at the Cave of Despair, beneath the funereal orb of Glaucoma, in
the thick midst of poniarded, slit-throat, rope-dependant figures,
placarded across the bosom Disillusioned, Infidel, Agnostic, Miserrimus.
That is the sentimental route to advancement. Spirituality does not light
it; evanescent dreams: are its oil-lamps, often with wick askant in the
socket.

A thousand years! You may count full many a thousand by this route before
you are one with divine Philosophy. Whereas a single flight of brains
will reach and embrace her; give you the savour of Truth, the right use
of the senses, Reality's infinite sweetness; for these things are in
philosophy; and the fiction which is the summary of actual Life, the
within and without of us, is, prose or verse, plodding or soaring,
philosophy's elect handmaiden. To such an end let us bend our aim to
work, knowing that every form of labour, even this flimsiest, as you
esteem it, should minister to growth. If in any branch of us we fail in
growth, there is, you are aware, an unfailing aboriginal democratic old
monster that waits to pull us down; certainly the branch, possibly the
tree; and for the welfare of Life we fall. You are acutely conscious of
yonder old monster when he is mouthing at you in politics. Be wary of him
in the heart; especially be wary of the disrelish of brainstuff. You must
feed on something. Matter that is not nourishing to brains can help to
constitute nothing but the bodies which are pitched on rubbish heaps.
Brainstuff is not lean stuff;--the brainstuff of fiction is internal
history, and to suppose it dull is the profoundest of errors; how deep,
you will understand when I tell you that it is the very football of the
holiday-afternoon imps below. They kick it for pastime; they are
intelligences perverted. The comic of it, the adventurous, the tragic,
they make devilish, to kindle their Ogygian hilarity. But--sharply comic,
adventurous, instructively tragic, it is in the interwinding with human
affairs, to give a flavour of the modern day reviving that of our Poet,
between whom and us yawn Time's most hollow jaws. Surely we owe a little
to Time, to cheer his progress; a little to posterity, and to our
country. Dozens of writers will be in at yonder yawning breach, if only
perusers will rally to the philosophic standard. They are sick of the
woodeny puppetry they dispense, as on a race-course to the roaring
frivolous. Well, if not dozens, half-dozens; gallant pens are alive; one
can speak of them in the plural. I venture to say that they would be
satisfied with a dozen for audience, for a commencement. They would
perish of inanition, unfed, unapplauded, amenable to the laws perchance
for an assault on their last remaining pair of ears or heels, to hold
them fast. But the example is the thing; sacrifices must be expected. The
example might, one hopes, create a taste. A great modern writer, of
clearest eye and head, now departed, capable in activity of presenting
thoughtful women, thinking men, groaned over his puppetry, that he dared
not animate them, flesh though they were, with the fires of positive
brainstuff. He could have done it, and he is of the departed! Had he
dared, he would (for he was Titan enough) have raised the Art in dignity
on a level with History; to an interest surpassing the narrative of
public deeds as vividly as man's heart and brain in their union excel his
plain lines of action to eruption. The everlasting pantomime, suggested
by Mrs. Warwick in her exclamation to Perry Wilkinson, is derided, not
unrighteously, by our graver seniors. They name this Art the pasture of
idiots, a method for idiotizing the entire population which has taken to
reading; and which soon discovers that it can write likewise, that sort
of stuff at least. The forecast may be hazarded, that if we do not
speedily embrace Philosophy in fiction, the Art is doomed to extinction,
under the shining multitude of its professors. They are fast capping the
candle. Instead, therefore, of objurgating the timid intrusions of
Philosophy, invoke her presence, I pray you. History without her is the
skeleton map of events: Fiction a picture of figures modelled on no
skeleton-anatomy. But each, with Philosophy in aid, blooms, and is
humanly shapely. To demand of us truth to nature, excluding Philosophy,
is really to bid a pumpkin caper. As much as legs are wanted for the
dance, Philosophy is required to make our human nature credible and
acceptable. Fiction implores you to heave a bigger breast and take her in
with this heavenly preservative helpmate, her inspiration and her
essence. You have to teach your imagination of the feminine image you
have set up to bend your civilized knees to, that it must temper its
fastidiousness, shun the grossness of the over-dainty. Or, to speak in
the philosophic tongue, you must turn on yourself, resolutely track and
seize that burrower, and scrub and cleanse him; by which process, during
the course of it, you will arrive at the conception of the right heroical
woman for you to worship: and if you prove to be of some spiritual
stature, you may reach to an ideal of the heroical feminine type for the
worship of mankind, an image as yet in poetic outline only, on our upper
skies.

'So well do we know ourselves, that we one and all determine to know a
purer,' says the heroine of my columns. Philosophy in fiction tells,
among various other matters, of the perils of this intimate acquaintance
with a flattering familiar in the 'purer'--a person who more than ceases
to be of else to us after his ideal shall have led up men from their
flint and arrowhead caverns to intercommunicative daylight. For when the
fictitious creature has performed that service of helping to civilize the
world, it becomes the most dangerous of delusions, causing first the
individual to despise the mass, and then to join the mass in crushing the
individual. Wherewith let us to our story, the froth being out of the
bottle.




CHAPTER II

AN IRISH BALL

In the Assembly Rooms of the capital city of the Sister Island there was
a public Ball, to celebrate the return to Erin of a British hero of Irish
blood, after his victorious Indian campaign; a mighty struggle splendidly
ended; and truly could it be said that all Erin danced to meet him; but
this was the pick of the dancing, past dispute the pick of the supping.
Outside those halls the supping was done in Lazarus fashion, mainly
through an excessive straining of the organs of hearing and vision, which
imparted the readiness for more, declared by physicians to be the state
inducing to sound digestion. Some one spied the figure of the hero at the
window and was fed; some only to hear the tale chewed the cud of it; some
told of having seen him mount the steps; and sure it was that at an hour
of the night, no matter when, and never mind a drop or two of cloud, he
would come down them again, and have an Irish cheer to freshen his
pillow. For 'tis Ireland gives England her soldiers, her generals too.
Farther away, over field and bogland, the whiskies did their excellent
ancient service of watering the dry and drying the damp, to the toast of
'Lord Larrian, God bless him! he's an honour to the old country!' and a
bit of a sigh to follow, hints of a story, and loud laughter, a drink, a
deeper sigh, settling into conversation upon the brave Lord Larrian's
deeds, and an Irish regiment he favoured--had no taste for the enemy
without the backing of his 'boys.' Not he. Why, he'd never march to
battle and they not handy; because when he struck he struck hard, he
said. And he has a wound on the right hip and two fingers off his left
hand; has bled for England, to show her what Irishmen are when they're
well treated.

The fine old warrior standing at the upper end of the long saloon, tall,
straight, grey-haired, martial in his aspect and decorations, was worthy
to be the flag-pole for enthusiasm. His large grey eyes lightened from
time to time as he ranged them over the floating couples, and dropped a
word of inquiry to his aide, Captain Sir Lukin Dunstane, a good model of
a cavalry officer, though somewhat a giant, equally happy with his chief
in passing the troops of animated ladies under review. He named as many
as were known to him. Reviewing women exquisitely attired for inspection,
all variously and charmingly smiling, is a relief after the monotonous
regiments of men. Ireland had done her best to present the hero of her
blood an agreeable change; and he too expressed a patriotic satisfaction
on hearing that the faces most admired by him were of the native isle. He
looked upon one that came whirling up to him on a young officer's arm and
swept off into the crowd of tops, for a considerable while before he put
his customary question. She was returning on the spin when he said,

'Who is she?'

Sir Lukin did not know. 'She 's a new bird; she nodded to my wife; I'll
ask.'

He manoeuvred a few steps cleverly to where his wife reposed. The
information he gathered for the behoof of his chief was, that the
handsome creature answered to the name of Miss Merion; Irish; aged
somewhere between eighteen and nineteen; a dear friend of his wife's, and
he ought to have remembered her; but she was a child when he saw her
last.

'Dan Merion died, I remember, about the day of my sailing for India,'
said the General. 'She may be his daughter.'

The bright cynosure rounded up to him in the web of the waltz, with her
dark eyes for Lady Dunstane, and vanished again among the twisting
columns.

He made his way, handsomely bumped by an apologetic pair, to Lady
Dunstane, beside whom a seat was vacated for him; and he trusted she had
not over-fatigued herself.

'Confess,' she replied, 'you are perishing to know more than Lukin has
been able to tell you. Let me hear that you admire her: it pleases me;
and you shall hear what will please you as much, I promise you, General.'

'I do. Who wouldn't?' said he frankly.

'She crossed the Channel expressly to dance here tonight at the public
Ball in honour of you.'

'Where she appears, the first person falls to second rank, and accepts it
humbly.'

'That is grandly spoken.'

'She makes everything in the room dust round a blazing jewel.'

'She makes a poet of a soldier. Well, that you may understand how pleased
I am, she is my dearest friend, though she is younger than I, as may be
seen; she is the only friend I have. I nursed her when she was an infant;
my father and Mr. Dan Merion were chums. We were parted by my marriage
and the voyage to India. We have not yet exchanged a syllable: she was
snapped up, of course, the moment she entered the room. I knew she would
be a taking girl: how lovely, I did not guess. You are right, she
extinguishes the others. She used to be the sprightliest of living
creatures, and to judge by her letters, that has not faded. She 's in the
market, General.'

Lord Larrian nodded to everything he heard, concluding with a mock
doleful shake of the head. 'My poorest subaltern!' he sighed, in the
theatrical but cordially melancholy style of green age viewing Cytherea's
market.

His poorest subaltern was richer than he in the wherewithal to bid for
such prizes.

'What is her name in addition to Merion?'

'Diana Antonia Merion. Tony to me, Diana to the world.'

'She lives over there?'

'In England, or anywhere; wherever she is taken in. She will live, I
hope, chiefly with me.'

'And honest Irish?'

'Oh, she's Irish.'

'Ah!' the General was Irish to the heels that night.

Before further could be said the fair object of the dialogue came darting
on a trip of little runs, both hands out, all her face one tender sparkle
of a smile; and her cry proved the quality of her blood: 'Emmy! Emmy! my
heart!'

'My dear Tony!

I should not have come but for the hope of seeing you here.'

Lord Larrian rose and received a hurried acknowledgement of his courtesy
from the usurper of his place.

'Emmy! we might kiss and hug; we're in Ireland. I burn to! But you're not
still ill, dear? Say no! That Indian fever must have gone. You do look a
dash pale, my own; you're tired.'

'One dance has tired me. Why were you so late?'

'To give the others a chance? To produce a greater impression by
suspense? No and no. I wrote you I was with the Pettigrews. We caught the
coach, we caught the boat, we were only two hours late for the Ball; so
we did wonders. And good Mrs. Pettigrew is, pining somewhere to complete
her adornment. I was in the crush, spying for Emmy, when Mr. Mayor
informed me it was the duty of every Irishwoman to dance her toes off, if
she 'd be known for what she is. And twirl! a man had me by the waist,
and I dying to find you.'

'Who was the man?'

'Not to save these limbs from the lighted stake could I tell you!'

'You are to perform a ceremonious bow to Lord Larrian.'

'Chatter first! a little!'

The plea for chatter was disregarded. It was visible that the hero of the
night hung listening and in expectation. He and the Beauty were named to
one another, and they chatted through a quadrille. Sir Lukin introduced a
fellow-Harrovian of old days, Mr. Thomas Redworth, to his wife.

'Our weather-prophet, meteorologist,' he remarked, to set them going;
'you remember, in India, my pointing to you his name in a
newspaper--letter on the subject. He was generally safe for the
cricketing days.'

Lady Dunstane kindly appeared to call it to mind, and she led upon the
them-queried at times by an abrupt 'Eh?' and 'I beg pardon,' for
manifestly his gaze and one of his ears, if not the pair, were given to
the young lady discoursing with Lord Larrian. Beauty is rare; luckily is
it rare, or, judging from its effect on men, and the very stoutest of
them, our world would be internally more distracted planet than we see,
to the perversion of business, courtesy, rights of property, and the
rest. She perceived an incipient victim, of the hundreds she anticipated,
and she very tolerantly talked on: 'The weather and women have some
resemblance they say. Is it true that he who reads the one can read the
other?'

Lord Larrian here burst into a brave old laugh, exclaiming, 'Oh! good!'

Mr. Redworth knitted his thick brows. 'I beg pardon? Ah! women! Weather
and women? No; the one point more variable in women makes all the
difference.'

'Can you tell me what the General laughed at?'

The honest Englishman entered the trap with promptitude. 'She said:--who
is she, may I ask you?'

Lady Dunstane mentioned her name.

Daughter of the famous Dan Merion? The young lady merited examination for
her father's sake. But when reminded of her laughter-moving speech, Mr.
Redworth bungled it; he owned he spoilt it, and candidly stated his
inability to see the fun. 'She said, St. George's Channel in a gale ought
to be called St. Patrick's--something--I missed some point. That
quadrille-tune, the Pastourelle, or something . . .'

'She had experience of the Channel last night,' Lady Dunstane pursued,
and they both, while in seeming converse, caught snatches from their
neighbours, during a pause of the dance.

The sparkling Diana said to Lord Larrian, 'You really decline to make any
of us proud women by dancing to-night?'

The General answered: 'I might do it on two stilts; I can't on one.' He
touched his veteran leg.

'But surely,' said she, 'there's always an inspiration coming to it from
its partner in motion, if one of them takes the step.'

He signified a woeful negative. 'My dear young lady, you say dark things
to grey hairs!'

She rejoined: 'If we were over in England, and you fixed on me the stigma
of saying dark things, I should never speak without being thought
obscure.'

'It's because you flash too brightly for them.'

'I think it is rather the reminiscence of the tooth that received a stone
when it expected candy.'

Again the General laughed; he looked pleased and warmed. 'Yes, that 's
their way, that 's their way!' and he repeated her words to himself,
diminishing their importance as he stamped them on his memory, but so
heartily admiring the lovely speaker, that he considered her wit an
honour to the old country, and told her so. Irish prevailed up to
boiling-point.

Lady Dunstane, not less gratified, glanced up at Mr. Redworth, whose
brows bore the knot of perplexity over a strong stare. He, too, stamped
the words on his memory, to see subsequently whether they had a vestige
of meaning. Terrifically precocious, he thought her. Lady Dunstane, in
her quick sympathy with her friend, read the adverse mind in his face.
And her reading of the mind was right, wrong altogether her deduction of
the corresponding sentiment.

Music was resumed to confuse the hearing of the eavesdroppers.

They beheld a quaint spectacle: a gentleman, obviously an Englishman,
approached, with the evident intention of reminding the Beauty of the
night of her engagement to him, and claiming her, as it were, in the
lion's jaws. He advanced a foot, withdrew it, advanced, withdrew; eager
for his prize, not over-enterprising; in awe of the illustrious General
she entertained--presumeably quite unaware of the pretender's presence;
whereupon a voice was heard: 'Oh! if it was minuetting you meant before
the lady, I'd never have disputed your right to perform, sir.' For it
seemed that there were two claimants in the field, an Irishman and an
Englishman; and the former, having a livelier sense of the situation,
hung aloof in waiting for her eye; the latter directed himself to strike
bluntly at his prey; and he continued minuetting, now rapidly blinking,
flushed, angry, conscious of awkwardness and a tangle, incapable of
extrication. He began to blink horribly under the raillery of his rival.
The General observed him, but as an object remote and minute, a fly or
gnat. The face of the brilliant Diana was entirely devoted to him she
amused.

Lady Dunstane had the faint lines of a decorous laugh on her lips, as she
said: 'How odd it is that our men show to such disadvantage in a
Ball-room. I have seen them in danger, and there they shine first of any,
and one is proud of them. They should always be facing the elements or in
action.' She glanced at the minuet, which had become a petrified figure,
still palpitating, bent forward, an interrogative reminder.

Mr. Redworth reserved his assent to the proclamation of any English
disadvantage. A whiff of Celtic hostility in the atmosphere put him on
his mettle. 'Wherever the man is tried,' he said.

'My lady!' the Irish gentleman bowed to Lady Dunstane. 'I had the honour
. . . Sullivan Smith . . . at the castle . . .'

She responded to the salute, and Mr. Sullivan Smith proceeded to tell
her, half in speech, half in dots most luminous, of a civil contention
between the English gentleman and himself, as to the possession of the
loveliest of partners for this particular ensuing dance, and that they
had simultaneously made a rush from the Lower Courts, namely, their
cards, to the Upper, being the lady; and Mr. Sullivan Smith partly
founded his preferable claim on her Irish descent, and on his
acquaintance with her eminent defunct father--one of the ever-radiating
stars of his quenchless country.

Lady Dunstane sympathized with him for his not intruding his claim when
the young lady stood pre-engaged, as well as in humorous appreciation of
his imaginative logic.

'There will be dancing enough after supper,' she said.

'If I could score one dance with her, I'd go home supperless and
feasted,' said he. 'And that's not saying much among the hordes of hungry
troopers tip-toe for the signal to the buffet. See, my lady, the
gentleman, as we call him; there he is working his gamut perpetually up
to da capo. Oh! but it's a sheep trying to be wolf; he 's sheep-eyed and
he 's wolf-fanged, pathetic and larcenous! Oh, now! who'd believe
it!--the man has dared . . . I'd as soon think of committing sacrilege in
a cathedral!'

The man was actually; to quote his indignant rival, 'breaching the
fortress,' and pointing out to Diana Merion 'her name on his dirty scrap
of paper': a shocking sight when the lady's recollection was the sole
point to be aimed at, and the only umpire. 'As if all of us couldn't have
written that, and hadn't done it!' Mr. Sullivan Smith groaned disgusted.
He hated bad manners, particularly in cases involving ladies; and the bad
manners of a Saxon fired his antagonism to the race; individual members
of which he boasted of forgiving and embracing, honouring. So the man
blackened the race for him, and the race was excused in the man. But his
hatred of bad manners was vehement, and would have extended to a
fellow-countryman. His own were of the antecedent century, therefore
venerable.

Diana turned from her pursuer with a comic woeful lifting of the brows at
her friend. Lady Dunstane motioned her fan, and Diana came, bending head.

'Are you bound in honour?'

'I don't think I am. And I do want to go on talking with the General. He
is so delightful and modest--my dream of a true soldier!--telling me of
his last big battle, bit by bit, to my fishing.'

'Put off this person for a square dance down the list, and take out Mr.
Redworth--Miss Diana Merlon, Mr. Redworth: he will bring you back to the
General, who must not totally absorb you, or he will forfeit his
popularity.'

Diana instantly struck a treaty with the pertinacious advocate of his
claims, to whom, on his relinquishing her, Mr. Sullivan Smith remarked:
'Oh! sir, the law of it, where a lady's concerned! You're one for
evictions, I should guess, and the anti-human process. It's that letter
of the law that stands between you and me and mine and yours. But you've
got your congee, and my blessing on ye!'

'It was a positive engagement,' said the enemy.

Mr. Sullivan Smith derided him. 'And a pretty partner you've pickled for
yourself when she keeps her positive engagement!'

He besought Lady Dunstane to console him with a turn. She pleaded
weariness. He proposed to sit beside her and divert her. She smiled, but
warned him that she was English in every vein. He interjected: 'Irish men
and English women! though it's putting the cart before the horse--the
copper pennies where the gold guineas should be. So here's the gentleman
who takes the oyster, like the lawyer of the fable. English is he? But we
read, the last shall be first. And English women and Irish men make the
finest coupling in the universe.'

'Well, you must submit to see an Irish woman led out by an English man,'
said Lady Dunstane, at the same time informing the obedient Diana, then
bestowing her hand on Mr. Redworth to please her friend, that he was a
schoolfellow of her husband's.

'Favour can't help coming by rotation, except in very extraordinary
circumstances, and he was ahead of me with you, and takes my due, and
'twould be hard on me if I weren't thoroughly indemnified.' Mr. Sullivan
Smith bowed. 'You gave them just the start over the frozen minute for
conversation; they were total strangers, and he doesn't appear a bad sort
of fellow for a temporary mate, though he's not perfectly sure of his
legs. And that we'll excuse to any man leading out such a fresh young
beauty of a Bright Eyes--like the stars of a winter's night in the frosty
season over Columkill, or where you will, so that's in Ireland, to be
sure of the likeness to her.'

'Her mother was half English.'

'Of course she was. And what was my observation about the coupling? Dan
Merion would make her Irish all over. And she has a vein of Spanish blood
in her; for he had; and she's got the colour.--But you spoke of their
coupling--or I did. Oh, a man can hold his own with an English roly-poly
mate: he's not stifled! But a woman hasn't his power of resistance to
dead weight. She's volatile, she's frivolous, a rattler and
gabbler--haven't I heard what they say of Irish girls over there? She
marries, and it's the end of her sparkling. She must choose at home for a
perfect harmonious partner.'

Lady Dunstane expressed her opinion that her couple danced excellently
together.

'It'd be a bitter thing to see, if the fellow couldn't dance, after
leading her out!' sighed Mr. Sullivan Smith. 'I heard of her over there.
They, call her the Black Pearl, and the Irish Lily--because she's dark.
They rack their poor brains to get the laugh of us.'

'And I listen to you,' said Lady Dunstane.

'Ah! if all England, half, a quarter, the smallest piece of the land were
like you, my lady, I'd be loyal to the finger-nails. Now, is she
engaged?--when I get a word with her?'

'She is nineteen, or nearly, and she ought to have five good years of
freedom, I think.'

'And five good years of serfdom I'd serve to win her!'

A look at him under the eyelids assured Lady Dunstane that there would be
small chance for Mr. Sullivan Smith; after a life of bondage, if she knew
her Diana, in spite of his tongue, his tact, his lively features, and
breadth of shoulders.

Up he sprang. Diana was on Mr. Redworth's arm. 'No refreshments,' she
said; and 'this is my refreshment,' taking the seat of Mr. Sullivan
Smith, who ejaculated,

'I must go and have that gentleman's name.' He wanted a foe.

'You know you are ready to coquette with the General at any moment,
Tony,' said her friend.

'Yes, with the General!'

'He is a noble old man.'

'Superb. And don't say "old man." With his uniform and his height and his
grey head, he is like a glorious October day just before the brown leaves
fall.'

Diana hummed a little of the air of Planxty Kelly, the favourite of her
childhood, as Lady Dunstane well remembered, they smiled together at the
scenes and times it recalled.

'Do you still write verses, Tony?'

'I could about him. At one part of the fight he thought he would be
beaten. He was overmatched in artillery, and it was a cavalry charge he
thundered on them, riding across the field to give the word of command to
the couple of regiments, riddled to threads, that gained the day. That is
life--when we dare death to live! I wonder at men, who are men, being
anything but soldiers! I told you, madre, my own Emmy, I forgave you for
marrying, because it was a soldier.'

'Perhaps a soldier is to be the happy man. But you have not told me a
word of yourself. What has been done with the old Crossways?'

'The house, you know, is mine. And it's all I have: ten acres and the
house, furnished, and let for less than two hundred a year. Oh! how I
long to evict the tenants! They can't have my feeling for the place where
I was born. They're people of tolerably good connections, middling
wealthy, I suppose, of the name of Warwick, and, as far as I can
understand, they stick there to be near the Sussex Downs, for a nephew,
who likes to ride on them. I've a half engagement, barely legible, to
visit them on an indefinite day, and can't bear the idea of strangers
masters in the old house. I must be driven there for shelter, for a roof,
some month. And I could make a pilgrimage in rain or snow just to doat on
the outside of it. That's your Tony.'

'She's my darling.'

'I hear myself speak! But your voice or mine, madre, it's one soul. Be
sure I am giving up the ghost when I cease to be one soul with you, dear
and dearest! No secrets, never a shadow of a deception, or else I shall
feel I am not fit to live. Was I a bad correspondent when you were in
India?'

'Pretty well. Copious letters when you did write.'

'I was shy. I knew I should be writing, to Emmy and another, and only
when I came to the flow could I forget him. He is very finely built; and
I dare say he has a head. I read of his deeds in India and quivered. But
he was just a bit in the way. Men are the barriers to perfect
naturalness, at least, with girls, I think. You wrote to me in the same
tone as ever, and at first I had a struggle to reply. And I, who have
such pride in being always myself!'

Two staring semi-circles had formed, one to front the Hero; the other the
Beauty. These half moons imperceptibly dissolved to replenish, and became
a fixed obstruction.

'Yes, they look,' Diana made answer to Lady Dunstane's comment on the
curious impertinence. She was getting used to it, and her friend had a
gratification in seeing how little this affected her perfect naturalness.

'You are often in the world--dinners, dances?' she said.

'People are kind.'

'Any proposals?'

'Nibbles.'

'Quite heart-free?'

'Absolutely.'

Diana's unshadowed bright face defied all menace of an eclipse.

The block of sturdy gazers began to melt. The General had dispersed his
group of satellites by a movement with the Mayoress on his arm, construed
as the signal for procession to the supper-table.




CHAPTER III

THE INTERIOR OF MR. REDWORTH, AND THE EXTERIOR OF MR. SULLIVAN SMITH

'It may be as well to take Mr. Redworth's arm; you will escape the crush
for you,' said Lady Dunstane to Diana. 'I don't sup. Yes! go! You must
eat, and he is handiest to conduct you.'

Diana thought of her chaperon and the lateness of the hour. She murmured,
to soften her conscience, 'Poor Mrs. Pettigrew!'

And once more Mr. Redworth, outwardly imperturbable, was in the maelstrom
of a happiness resembling tempest. He talked, and knew not what he
uttered. To give this matchless girl the best to eat and drink was his
business, and he performed it. Oddly, for a man who had no loaded design,
marshalling the troops in his active and capacious cranium, he fell upon
calculations of his income, present and prospective, while she sat at the
table and he stood behind her. Others were wrangling for places, chairs,
plates, glasses, game-pie, champagne: she had them; the lady under his
charge to a certainty would have them; so far good; and he had seven
hundred pounds per annum--seven hundred and fifty, in a favourable
aspect, at a stretch . . . .

'Yes, the pleasantest thing to me after working all day is an opera of
Carini's,' she said, in full accord with her taste, 'and Tellio for
tenor, certainly.'

--A fair enough sum for a bachelor: four hundred personal income, and a
prospect of higher dividends to increase it; three hundred odd from his
office, and no immediate prospects of an increase there; no one died
there, no elderly martyr for the advancement of his juniors could be
persuaded to die; they were too tough to think of retiring. Say, seven
hundred and fifty . . . . eight hundred, if the commerce of the country
fortified the Bank his property was embarked in; or eight-fifty or nine
ten. . . .

'I could call him my poet also,' Mr. Redworth agreed with her taste in
poets. 'His letters are among the best ever written--or ever published:
the raciest English I know. Frank, straight out: capital descriptions.
The best English letter-writers are as good as the French--

You don't think so?--in their way, of course. I dare' say we don't
sufficiently cultivate the art. We require the supple tongue a closer
intercourse of society gives.'

--Eight or ten hundred. Comfortable enough for a man in chambers. To
dream of entering as a householder on that sum, in these days, would be
stark nonsense: and a man two removes from a baronetcy has no right to
set his reckoning on deaths:--if he does, he becomes a sort of meditative
assassin. But what were the Fates about when they planted a man of the
ability of Tom Redworth in a Government office! Clearly they intended him
to remain a bachelor for life. And they sent him over to Ireland on
inspection duty for a month to have sight of an Irish Beauty . . . .

'Think war the finest subject for poets?' he exclaimed. 'Flatly no: I
don't think it. I think exactly the reverse. It brings out the noblest
traits in human character? I won't own that even. It brings out some but
under excitement, when you have not always the real man.--Pray don't
sneer at domestic life. Well, there was a suspicion of disdain.--Yes, I
can respect the hero, military or civil; with this distinction, that the
military hero aims at personal reward--'

'He braves wounds and death,' interposed Diana.

'Whereas the civilian hero--'

'Pardon me, let me deny that the soldier-hero aims at a personal reward,'
she again interposed.

'He gets it.'

'If he is not beaten.'

'And then he is no longer a hero.'

'He is to me.'

She had a woman's inveterate admiration of the profession of aims. Mr.
Redworth endeavoured to render practicable an opening in her mind to
reason. He admitted the grandeur of the poetry of Homer. We are a few
centuries in advance of Homer. We do not slay damsels for a sacrifice to
propitiate celestial wrath; nor do we revel in details of slaughter. He
reasoned with her; he repeated stories known to him of civilian heroes,
and won her assent to the heroical title for their deeds, but it was
languid, or not so bright as the deeds deserved--or as the young lady
could look; and he insisted on the civilian hero, impelled by some
unconscious motive to make her see the thing he thought, also the thing
he was--his plain mind and matter-of-fact nature. Possibly she caught a
glimpse of that. After a turn of fencing, in which he was impressed by
the vibration of her tones when speaking of military heroes, she quitted
the table, saying: 'An argument between one at supper and another handing
plates, is rather unequal if eloquence is needed. As Pat said to the
constable, when his hands were tied, You beat me with the fists, but my
spirit is towering and kicks freely.'

--Eight hundred? a thousand a year, two thousand, are as nothing in the
calculation of a householder who means that the mistress of the house
shall have the choicest of the fruits and flowers of the Four Quarters;
and Thomas Redworth had vowed at his first outlook on the world of women,
that never should one of the sisterhood coming under his charge complain
of not having them in profusion. Consequently he was a settled bachelor.
In the character of disengaged and unaspiring philosophical bachelor, he
reviewed the revelations of her character betrayed by the beautiful
virgin devoted to the sanguine coat. The thrill of her voice in speaking
of soldier-heroes shot him to the yonder side of a gulf. Not knowing why,
for he had no scheme, desperate or other, in his head, the least
affrighted of men was frightened by her tastes, and by her aplomb, her
inoffensiveness in freedom of manner and self-sufficiency--sign of purest
breeding: and by her easy, peerless vivacity, her proofs of descent from
the blood of Dan Merion--a wildish blood. The candour of the look of her
eyes in speaking, her power of looking forthright at men, and looking the
thing she spoke, and the play of her voluble lips, the significant repose
of her lips in silence, her weighing of the words he uttered, for a
moment before the prompt apposite reply, down to her simple quotation of
Pat, alarmed him; he did not ask himself why. His manly self was not
intruded on his cogitations. A mere eight hundred or thousand per annum
had no place in that midst. He beheld her quietly selecting the position
of dignity to suit her: an eminent military man, or statesman, or wealthy
nobleman: she had but to choose. A war would offer her the decorated
soldier she wanted. A war! Such are women of this kind! The thought
revolted him, and pricked his appetite for supper. He did service by Mrs.
Pettigrew, to which lady Miss Merion, as she said, promoted him, at the
table, and then began to refresh in person, standing.

'Malkin! that's the fellow's name' he heard close at his ear.

Mr. Sullivan Smith had drained a champagne-glass, bottle in hand, and was
priming the successor to it. He cocked his eye at Mr. Redworth's quick
stare. 'Malkin!' And now we'll see whether the interior of him is grey,
or black, or tabby, or tortoise-shell, or any other colour of the Malkin
breed.'

He explained to Mr. Redworth that he had summoned Mr. Malkin to answer to
him as a gentleman for calling Miss Merion a jilt. 'The man, sir, said in
my hearing, she jilted him, and that's to call the lady a jilt. There's
not a point of difference, not a shade. I overheard him. I happened by
the blessing of Providence to be by when he named her publicly jilt. And
it's enough that she's a lady to have me for her champion. The same if
she had been an Esquimaux squaw. I'll never live to hear a lady
insulted.'

'You don't mean to say you're the donkey to provoke a duel!' Mr. Redworth
burst out gruffly, through turkey and stuffing.

'And an Irish lady, the young Beauty of Erin!' Mr. Sullivan Smith was
flowing on. He became frigid, he politely bowed: 'Two, sir, if you
haven't the grace to withdraw the offensive term before it cools and
can't be obliterated.'

'Fiddle! and go to the deuce!' Mr. Redworth cried.

'Would a soft slap o' the cheek persuade you, sir?'

'Try it outside, and don't bother me with nonsense of that sort at my
supper. If I'm struck, I strike back. I keep my pistols for bandits and
law-breakers. Here,' said Mr. Redworth, better inspired as to the way of
treating an ultra of the isle; 'touch glasses: you're a gentleman, and
won't disturb good company. By-and-by.'

The pleasing prospect of by-and-by renewed in Mr. Sullivan Smith his
composure. They touched the foaming glasses: upon which, in a friendly
manner, Mr. Sullivan Smith proposed that they should go outside as soon
as Mr. Redworth had finished supper-quite finished supper: for the reason
that the term 'donkey' affixed to him was like a minster cap of
schooldays, ringing bells on his topknot, and also that it stuck in his
gizzard.

Mr. Redworth declared the term to be simply hypothetical. 'If you fight,
you're a donkey for doing it. But you won't fight.'

'But I will fight.'

'He won't fight.'

'Then for the honour of your country you must. But I'd rather have him
first, for I haven't drunk with him, and it should be a case of necessity
to put a bullet or a couple of inches of steel through the man you've
drunk with. And what's in your favour, she danced with ye. She seemed to
take to ye, and the man she has the smallest sugar-melting for is sacred
if he's not sweet to me. If he retracts!'

'Hypothetically, No.'

'But supposititiously?'

'Certainly.'

'Then we grasp hands on it. It's Malkin or nothing!' said Mr. Sullivan
Smith, swinging his heel moodily to wander in search of the foe. How one
sane man could name another a donkey for fighting to clear an innocent
young lady's reputation, passed his rational conception.

Sir Lukin hastened to Mr. Redworth to have a talk over old schooldays and
fellows.

'I'll tell you what,' said the civilian, 'There are Irishmen and
Irishmen. I've met cool heads and long heads among them, and you and I
knew Jack Derry, who was good at most things. But the burlesque Irishman
can't be caricatured. Nature strained herself in a 'fit of absurdity to
produce him, and all that Art can do is to copy.'

This was his prelude to an account of Mr. Sullivan Smith, whom, as a
specimen, he rejoiced to have met.

'There's a chance of mischief,' said Sir Lukin. 'I know nothing of the
man he calls Malkin. I'll inquire presently.'

He talked of his prospects, and of the women. Fair ones, in his opinion,
besides Miss Merion were parading; he sketched two or three of his
partners with a broad brush of epithets.

'It won't do for Miss Merion's name to be mixed up in a duel,' said
Redworth.

'Not if she's to make her fortune in England,' said Sir Lukin. 'It's
probably all smoke.'

The remark had hardly escaped him when a wreath of metaphorical smoke,
and fire, and no mean report, startled the company of supping gentlemen.
At the pitch of his voice, Mr. Sullivan Smith denounced Mr. Malkin in
presence for a cur masquerading as a cat.

'And that is not the scoundrel's prime offence. For what d' ye think? He
trumps up an engagement to dance with a beautiful lady, and because she
can't remember, binds her to an oath for a dance to come, and then,
holding her prisoner to 'm, he sulks, the dirty dogcat goes and sulks,
and he won't dance and won't do anything but screech up in corners that
he's jilted. He said the word. Dozens of gentlemen heard the word. And I
demand an apology of Misterr Malkin--or . . ! And none of your guerrier
nodding and bravado, Mister Malkin, at me, if you please. The case is for
settlement between gentlemen.'

The harassed gentleman of the name of Malkin, driven to extremity by the
worrying, stood in braced preparation for the English attitude of
defence. His tormentor drew closer to him.

'Mind, I give you warning, if you lay a finger on me I'll knock you
down,' said he.

Most joyfully Mr. Sullivan Smith uttered a low melodious cry. 'For a
specimen of manners, in an assembly of ladies and gentlemen . . . I ask
ye!' he addressed the ring about him, to put his adversary entirely in
the wrong before provoking the act of war. And then, as one intending
gently to remonstrate, he was on the point of stretching out his finger
to the shoulder of Mr. Malkin, when Redworth seized his arm, saying: 'I
'm your man: me first: you're due to me.'

Mr. Sullivan Smith beheld the vanishing of his foe in a cloud of faces.
Now was he wroth on patently reasonable grounds. He threatened Saxondom.
Man up, man down, he challenged the race of short-legged, thickset,
wooden-gated curmudgeons: and let it be pugilism if their white livers
shivered at the notion of powder and ball. Redworth, in the struggle to
haul him away, received a blow from him. 'And you've got it! you would
have it!' roared the Celt.

'Excuse yourself to the company for a misdirected effort,' Redworth said;
and he observed generally: 'No Irish gentleman strikes a blow in good
company.'

'But that's true as Writ! And I offer excuses--if you'll come along with
me and a couple of friends. The thing has been done before by
torchlight--and neatly.'

'Come along, and come alone,' said Redworth.

A way was cleared for them. Sir Lukin hurried up to Redworth, who had no
doubt of his ability to manage Mr. Sullivan Smith.

He managed that fine-hearted but purely sensational fellow so well that
Lady Dunstane and Diana, after hearing in some anxiety of the hubbub
below, beheld them entering the long saloon amicably, with the nods and
looks of gentlemen quietly accordant.

A little later, Lady Dunstane questioned Redworth, and he smoothed her
apprehensions, delivering himself, much to her comfort, thus: 'In no case
would any lady's name have been raised. The whole affair was nonsensical.
He's a capital fellow of a kind, capable of behaving like a man of the
world and a gentleman. Only he has, or thinks he has, like lots of his
countrymen, a raw wound--something that itches to be grazed. Champagne on
that! . . . Irishmen, as far as I have seen of them, are, like horses,
bundles of nerves; and you must manage them, as you do with all nervous
creatures, with firmness, but good temper. You must never get into a fury
of the nerves yourself with them. Spur and whip they don't want; they'll
be off with you in a jiffy if you try it.

They want the bridle-rein. That seems to me the secret of Irish
character. We English are not bad horsemen. It's a wonder we blunder so
in our management of such a people.'

'I wish you were in a position to put your method to the proof,' said
she.

He shrugged. 'There's little chance of it!'

To reward him for his practical discretion, she contrived that Diana
should give him a final dance; and the beautiful gill smiled quickly
responsive to his appeal. He was, moreover, sensible in her look and
speech that he had advanced in her consideration to be no longer the mere
spinning stick, a young lady's partner. By which he humbly understood
that her friend approved him. A gentle delirium enfolded his brain. A
householder's life is often begun on eight hundred a year: on less: on
much less:--sometimes on nothing but resolution to make a fitting income,
carving out a fortune. Eight hundred may stand as a superior basis. That
sum is a distinct point of vantage. If it does not mean a carriage and
Parisian millinery and a station for one of the stars of society, it
means at any rate security; and then, the heart of the man being strong
and sound . . .

'Yes,' he replied to her, 'I like my experience of Ireland and the Irish;
and better than I thought I should. St. George's Channel ought to be
crossed oftener by both of us.'

'I'm always glad of the signal,' said Diana.

He had implied the people of the two islands. He allowed her
interpretation to remain personal, for the sake of a creeping
deliciousness that it carried through his blood.

'Shall you soon be returning to England?' he ventured to ask.

'I am Lady Dunstane's guest for some months.'

'Then you will. Sir Lukin has an estate in Surrey. He talks of quitting
the Service.'

'I can't believe it!'

His thrilled blood was chilled. She entertained a sentiment amounting to
adoration for the profession of arms!

Gallantly had the veteran General and Hero held on into the night, that
the festivity might not be dashed by his departure; perhaps, to a certain
degree, to prolong his enjoyment of a flattering scene. At last Sir Lukin
had the word from him, and came to his wife. Diana slipped across the
floor to her accommodating chaperon, whom, for the sake of another five
minutes with her beloved Emma, she very agreeably persuaded to walk in the
train of Lord Larrian, and forth they trooped down a pathway of nodding
heads and curtsies, resembling oak and birch-trees under a tempered gale,
even to the shedding of leaves, for here a turban was picked up by Sir
Lukin, there a jewelled ear-ring by the self-constituted attendant, Mr.
Thomas Redworth. At the portico rang a wakening cheer, really worth
hearing. The rain it rained, and hats were formless,' as in the first
conception of the edifice, backs were damp, boots liquidly musical, the
pipe of consolation smoked with difficulty, with much pulling at the stem,
but the cheer arose magnificently, and multiplied itself, touching at the
same moment the heavens and Diana's heart-at least, drawing them together;
for she felt exalted, enraptured, as proud of her countrymen as of their
hero.

'That's the natural shamrock, after the artificial!' she heard Mr.
Redworth say, behind her.

She turned and sent one of her brilliant glances flying over him, in
gratitude for a timely word well said. And she never forgot the remark,
nor he the look.




CHAPTER IV

CONTAINING HINTS OF DIANA'S EXPERIENCES AND OF WHAT THEY LED TO

A fortnight after this memorable Ball the principal actors of both sexes
had crossed the Channel back to England, and old Ireland was left to her
rains from above and her undrained bogs below; her physical and her
mental vapours; her ailments and her bog-bred doctors; as to whom the
governing country trusted they would be silent or discourse humorously.

The residence of Sir Lukin Dunstane, in the county of Surrey, inherited
by him during his recent term of Indian services, was on the hills, where
a day of Italian sky, or better, a day of our breezy South-west, washed
from the showery night, gives distantly a tower to view, and a murky web,
not without colour: the ever-flying banner of the metropolis, the smoke
of the city's chimneys, if you prefer plain language. At a first
inspection of the house, Lady Dunstane did not like it, and it was
advertized to be let, and the auctioneer proclaimed it in his dialect.
Her taste was delicate; she had the sensitiveness of an invalid: twice
she read the stalking advertizement of the attractions of Copsley, and
hearing Diana call it 'the plush of speech,' she shuddered; she decided
that a place where her husband's family had lived ought not to stand
forth meretriciously spangled and daubed, like a show-booth at a fair,
for a bait; though the grandiloquent man of advertizing letters assured
Sir Lukin that a public agape for the big and gaudy mouthful is in no
milder way to be caught; as it is apparently the case. She withdrew the
trumpeting placard. Retract we likewise 'banner of the metropolis.' That
plush of speech haunts all efforts to swell and illuminate citizen prose
to a princely poetic.

Yet Lady Dunstane herself could name the bank of smoke, when looking
North-eastward from her summerhouse, the flag of London: and she was a
person of the critical mind, well able to distinguish between the simple
metaphor and the superobese. A year of habitation induced her to conceal
her dislike of the place in love: cat's love, she owned. Here, she
confessed to Diana, she would wish to live to her end. It seemed remote,
where an invigorating upper air gave new bloom to her cheeks; but she
kept one secret from her friend.

Copsley was an estate of nearly twelve hundred acres, extending across
the ridge of the hills to the slopes North and South. Seven counties
rolled their backs under this commanding height, and it would have tasked
a pigeon to fly within an hour the stretch of country visible at the
Copsley windows. Sunrise to right, sunset leftward, the borders of the
grounds held both flaming horizons. So much of the heavens and of earth
is rarely granted to a dwelling. The drawback was the structure, which
had no charm, scarce a face. 'It is written that I should live in
barracks,' Lady Dunstane said. The colour of it taught white to impose a
sense of gloom. Her cat's love of the familiar inside corners was never
able to embrace the outer walls. Her sensitiveness, too, was racked by
the presentation of so pitiably ugly a figure to the landscape. She
likened it to a coarse-featured country wench, whose cleaning and
decorating of her countenance makes complexion grin and ruggedness yawn.
Dirty, dilapidated, hung with weeds and parasites, it would have been
more tolerable. She tried the effect of various creepers, and they were
as a staring paint. What it was like then, she had no heart to say.

One may, however, fall on a pleasurable resignation in accepting great
indemnities, as Diana bade her believe, when the first disgust began to
ebb. 'A good hundred over there would think it a Paradise for an asylum':
she signified London. Her friend bore such reminders meekly. They were
readers of books of all sorts, political, philosophical, economical,
romantic; and they mixed the diverse readings in thought, after the
fashion of the ardently youthful. Romance affected politics, transformed
economy, irradiated philosophy. They discussed the knotty question, Why
things were not done, the things being confessedly to do; and they cut
the knot: Men, men calling themselves statesmen, declined to perform that
operation, because, forsooth, other men objected to have it performed on
them. And common humanity declared it to be for the common weal! If so,
then it is clearly indicated as a course of action: we shut our eyes
against logic and the vaunted laws of economy. They are the knot we cut;
or would cut, had we the sword. Diana did it to the tune of Garryowen or
Planxty Kelly. O for a despot! The cry was for a beneficent despot,
naturally: a large-minded benevolent despot. In short, a despot to obey
their bidding. Thoughtful young people who think through the heart soon
come to this conclusion. The heart is the beneficent despot they would
be. He cures those miseries; he creates the novel harmony. He sees all
difficulties through his own sanguine hues. He is the musical poet of the
problem, demanding merely to have it solved that he may sing: clear proof
of the necessity for solving it immediately.

Thus far in their pursuit of methods for the government of a nation, to
make it happy, Diana was leader. Her fine ardour and resonance, and more
than the convincing ring of her voice, the girl's impassioned rapidity in
rushing through any perceptible avenue of the labyrinth, or beating down
obstacles to form one, and coming swiftly to some solution, constituted
her the chief of the pair of democratic rebels in questions that
clamoured for instant solution. By dint of reading solid writers, using
the brains they possessed, it was revealed to them gradually that their
particular impatience came perhaps of the most earnest desire to get to a
comfortable termination of the inquiry: the heart aching for mankind
sought a nest for itself. At this point Lady Dunstane took the lead.
Diana had to be tugged to follow. She could not accept a 'perhaps' that
cast dubiousness on her disinterested championship. She protested a
perfect certainty of the single aim of her heart outward. But she
reflected. She discovered that her friend had gone ahead of her.

The discovery was reached, and even acknowledged, before she could
persuade herself to swallow the repulsive truth. O self! self! self! are
we eternally masking in a domino that reveals your hideous old face when
we could be most positive we had escaped you? Eternally! the desolating
answer knelled. Nevertheless the poor, the starving, the overtaxed in
labour, they have a right to the cry of Now! now! They have; and if a cry
could conduct us to the secret of aiding, healing, feeding, elevating
them, we might swell the cry. As it is, we must lay it on our wits
patiently to track and find the secret; and meantime do what the
individual with his poor pittance can. A miserable contribution! sighed
the girl. Old Self was perceived in the sigh. She was haunted.

After all, one must live one's life. Placing her on a lower pedestal in
her self-esteem, the philosophy of youth revived her; and if the
abatement of her personal pride was dispiriting, she began to see an
advantage in getting inward eyes.

'It's infinitely better I should know it, Emmy--I'm a reptile! Pleasure
here, pleasure there, I'm always thinking of pleasure. I shall give up
thinking and take to drifting. Neither of us can do more than open
purses; and mine's lean. If the old Crossways had no tenant, it would be
a purse all mouth. And charity is haunted, like everything we do. Only I
say with my whole strength yes, I am sure, in spite of the men professing
that they are practical, the rich will not move without a goad. I have
and hold--you shall hunger and covet, until you are strong enough to
force my hand:--that 's the speech of the wealthy. And they are
Christians. In name. Well, I thank heaven I'm at war, with myself.'

'You always manage to strike out a sentence worth remembering, Tony,'
said Lady Dunstane. 'At war with ourselves, means the best happiness we
can have.'

It suited her, frail as her health was, and her wisdom striving to the
spiritual of happiness. War with herself was far from happiness in the
bosom of Diana. She wanted external life, action, fields for energies, to
vary the struggle. It fretted and rendered her ill at ease. In her
solitary rides with Sir Lukin through a long winter season, she appalled
that excellent but conventionally-minded gentleman by starting, nay
supporting, theories next to profane in the consideration of a
land-owner. She spoke of Reform: of the Repeal of the Corn Laws as the
simple beginning of the grants due to the people. She had her ideas, of
course, from that fellow Redworth, an occasional visitor at Copsley; and
a man might be a donkey and think what he pleased, since he had a
vocabulary to back his opinions. A woman, Sir Lukin held, was by nature a
mute in politics. Of the thing called a Radical woman, he could not
believe that she was less than monstrous: 'with a nose,' he said; and
doubtless, horse teeth, hatchet jaws, slatternly in the gown, slipshod,
awful. As for a girl, an unmarried, handsome girl, admittedly beautiful,
her interjections, echoing a man, were ridiculous, and not a little
annoying now and them, for she could be piercingly sarcastic. Her
vocabulary in irony was a quiverful. He admired her and liked her
immensely; complaining only of her turn for unfeminine topics. He
pardoned her on the score of the petty difference rankling between them
in reference to his abandonment of his Profession, for here she was
patriotically wrong-headed. Everybody knew that he had sold out in order
to look after his estates of Copsley and Dunena, secondly: and in the
first place, to nurse and be a companion to his wife. He had left her but
four times in five months; he had spent just three weeks of that time
away from her in London. No one could doubt of his having kept his
pledge, although his wife occupied herself with books and notions and
subjects foreign to his taste--his understanding, too, he owned. And
Redworth had approved of his retirement, had a contempt for soldiering.
'Quite as great as yours for civilians, I can tell you,' Sir Lukin said,
dashing out of politics to the vexatious personal subject. Her
unexpressed disdain was ruffling.

'Mr. Redworth recommends work: he respects the working soldier,' said
Diana.

Sir Lukin exclaimed that he had been a working soldier; he was ready to
serve if his country wanted him. He directed her to anathematize Peace,
instead of scorning a fellow for doing the duties next about him: and the
mention of Peace fetched him at a bound back to politics. He quoted a
distinguished Tory orator, to the effect, that any lengthened term of
peace bred maggots in the heads of the people.

'Mr. Redworth spoke of it: he translated something from Aristophanes for
a retort,' said Diana.

'Well, we're friends, eh?' Sir Lukin put forth a hand.

She looked at him surprised at the unnecessary call for a show, of
friendship; she touched his hand with two tips of her fingers, remarking,
'I should think so, indeed.'

He deemed it prudent to hint to his wife that Diana Merion appeared to be
meditating upon Mr. Redworth.

'That is a serious misfortune, if true,' said Lady Dunstane. She thought
so for two reasons: Mr. Redworth generally disagreed in opinion with
Diana, and contradicted her so flatly as to produce the impression of his
not even sharing the popular admiration of her beauty; and, further, she
hoped for Diana to make a splendid marriage. The nibbles threatened to be
snaps and bites. There had been a proposal, in an epistle, a quaint
effusion, from a gentleman avowing that he had seen her, and had not
danced with her on the night of the Irish ball. He was rejected, but
Diana groaned over the task of replying to the unfortunate applicant, so
as not to wound him. 'Shall I have to do this often, I wonder?' she said.

'Unless you capitulate,' said her friend.

Diana's exclamation: 'May I be heart-free for another ten years!'
encouraged Lady Dunstane to suppose her husband quite mistaken.

In the Spring Diana, went on a first pilgrimage to her old home, The
Crossways, and was kindly entertained by the uncle and aunt of a
treasured nephew, Mr. Augustus Warwick. She rode with him on the Downs. A
visit of a week humanized her view of the intruders. She wrote almost
tenderly of her host and hostess to Lady Dunstane; they had but 'the one
fault--of spoiling their nephew.' Him she described as a 'gentlemanly
official,' a picture of him. His age was thirty-four. He seemed 'fond of
her scenery.' Then her pen swept over the Downs like a flying horse. Lady
Dunstane thought no more of the gentlemanly official. He was a barrister
who did not practise: in nothing the man for Diana. Letters came from the
house of the Pettigrews in Kent; from London; from Halford Manor in
Hertfordshire; from Lockton Grange in Lincolnshire: after which they
ceased to be the thrice weekly; and reading the latest of them, Lady
Dunstane imagined a flustered quill. The letter succeeding the omission
contained no excuse, and it was brief. There was a strange interjection,
as to the wearifulness of constantly wandering, like a leaf off the tree.
Diana spoke of looking for a return of the dear winter days at Copsley.
That was her station. Either she must have had some disturbing
experience, or Copsley was dear for a Redworth reason, thought the
anxious peruser; musing, dreaming, putting together divers shreds of
correspondence and testing them with her intimate knowledge of Diana's
character, Lady Dunstane conceived that the unprotected beautiful girl
had suffered a persecution, it might be an insult. She spelt over the
names of the guests at the houses. Lord Wroxeter was of evil report:
Captain Rampan, a Turf captain, had the like notoriety. And it is
impossible in a great house for the hostess to spread her aegis to cover
every dame and damsel present. She has to depend on the women being
discreet, the men civilized.

'How brutal men can be!' was one of Diana's incidental remarks, in a
subsequent letter, relating simply to masculine habits. In those days the
famous ancestral plea of 'the passion for his charmer' had not been
altogether socially quashed down among the provinces, where the bottle
maintained a sort of sway, and the beauty which inflamed the sons of men
was held to be in coy expectation of violent effects upon their boiling
blood. There were, one hears that there still are, remnants of the
pristine male, who, if resisted in their suing, conclude that they are
scorned, and it infuriates them: some also whose 'passion for the
charmer' is an instinct to pull down the standard of the sex, by a bully
imposition of sheer physical ascendancy, whenever they see it flying with
an air of gallant independence: and some who dedicate their lives to a
study of the arts of the Lord Of Reptiles, until they have worked the
crisis for a display of him in person. Assault or siege, they have
achieved their triumphs; they have dominated a frailer system of nerves,
and a young woman without father, or brother, or husband, to defend her,
is cryingly a weak one, therefore inviting to such an order of heroes.
Lady Dunstane was quick-witted and had a talkative husband; she knew a
little of the upper social world of her time. She was heartily glad to
have Diana by her side again.

Not a word of any serious experience was uttered. Only on one occasion
while they conversed, something being mentioned of her tolerance, a flush
of swarthy crimson shot over Diana, and she frowned, with the outcry 'Oh!
I have discovered that I can be a tigress!'

Her friend pressed her hand, saying, 'The cause a good one!'

'Women have to fight.'

Diana said no more. There had been a bad experience of her isolated
position in the world.

Lady Dunstane now indulged a partial hope that Mr. Redworth might see in
this unprotected beautiful girl a person worthy of his esteem. He had his
opportunities, and evidently he liked her. She appeared to take more
cordially to him. She valued the sterling nature of the man. But they
were a hopeless couple, they were so friendly. Both ladies noticed in him
an abstractedness of look, often when conversing, as of a man in
calculation; they put it down to an ambitious mind. Yet Diana said then,
and said always, that it was he who had first taught her the art of
observing. On the whole, the brilliant marriage seemed a fairer prospect
for her; how reasonable to anticipate, Lady Dunstane often thought when
admiring the advance of Diana's beauty in queenliness, for never did
woman carry her head more grandly, more thrillingly make her presence
felt; and if only she had been an actress showing herself nightly on a
London stage, she would before now have met the superb appreciation,
melancholy to reflect upon!

Diana regained her happy composure at Copsley. She had, as she imagined,
no ambition. The dulness of the place conveyed a charm to a nature
recovering from disturbance to its clear smooth flow. Air, light, books,
and her friend, these good things she had; they were all she wanted. She
rode, she walked, with Sir Lukin or Mr. Redworth, for companion; or with
Saturday and Sunday guests, Lord Larrian, her declared admirer, among
them. 'Twenty years younger!' he said to her, shrugging, with a merry
smile drawn a little at the corners to sober sourness; and she vowed to
her friend that she would not have had the heart to refuse him. 'Though,'
said she, 'speaking generally, I cannot tell you what a foreign animal a
husband would appear in my kingdom.' Her experience had wakened a sexual
aversion, of some slight kind, enough to make her feminine pride
stipulate for perfect independence, that she might have the calm out of
which imagination spreads wing. Imagination had become her broader life,
and on such an earth, under such skies, a husband who is not the fountain
of it, certainly is a foreign animal: he is a discordant note. He
contracts the ethereal world, deadens radiancy. He is gross fact, a
leash, a muzzle, harness, a hood; whatever is detestable to the free
limbs and senses. It amused Lady Dunstane to hear Diana say, one evening
when their conversation fell by hazard on her future, that the idea of a
convent was more welcome to her than the most splendid marriage. 'For,'
she added, 'as I am sure I shall never know anything of this love they
rattle about and rave about, I shall do well to keep to my good single
path; and I have a warning within me that a step out of it will be a
wrong one--for me, dearest!'

She wished her view of the yoke to be considered purely personal, drawn
from no examples and comparisons. The excellent Sir Lukin was passing a
great deal of his time in London. His wife had not a word of blame for
him; he was a respectful husband, and attentive when present; but so
uncertain, owing to the sudden pressure of engagements, that Diana, bound
on a second visit to The Crossways, doubted whether she would be able to
quit her friend, whose condition did not allow of her being left solitary
at Copsley. He came nevertheless a day before Diana's appointed departure
on her round of visits. She was pleased with him, and let him see it, for
the encouragement of a husband in the observance of his duties. One of
the horses had fallen lame, so they went out for a walk, at Lady
Dunstane's request. It was a delicious afternoon of Spring, with the full
red disk of sun dropping behind the brown beech-twigs. She remembered
long afterward the sweet simpleness of her feelings as she took in the
scent of wild flowers along the lanes and entered the woods jaws of
another monstrous and blackening experience. He fell into the sentimental
vein, and a man coming from that heated London life to these glorified
woods, might be excused for doing so, though it sounded to her just a
little ludicrous in him. She played tolerantly second to it; she quoted a
snatch of poetry, and his whole face was bent to her, with the petition
that she would repeat the verse. Much struck was this giant ex-dragoon.
Ah! how fine! grand! He would rather hear that than any opera: it was
diviner! 'Yes, the best poetry is,' she assented. 'On your lips,' he
said. She laughed. 'I am not a particularly melodious reciter.' He vowed
he could listen to her eternally, eternally. His face, on a screw of the
neck and shoulders, was now perpetually three-quarters fronting. Ah! she
was going to leave. 'Yes, and you will find my return quite early
enough,' said Diana, stepping a trifle more briskly. His fist was raised
on the length of the arm, as if in invocation. 'Not in the whole of
London is there a woman worthy to fasten your shoe-buckles! My oath on
it! I look; I can't spy one.' Such was his flattering eloquence.

She told him not to think it necessary to pay her compliments. 'And here,
of all places!' They were in the heart of the woods. She found her hand
seized--her waist. Even then, so impossible is it to conceive the
unimaginable even when the apparition of it smites us, she expected some
protesting absurdity, or that he had seen something in her path.--What
did she hear? And from her friend's husband!

If stricken idiotic, he was a gentleman; the tigress she had detected in
her composition did not require to be called forth; half-a-dozen words,
direct, sharp as fangs and teeth, with the eyes burning over them,
sufficed for the work of defence. 'The man who swore loyalty to Emma!'
Her reproachful repulsion of eyes was unmistakeable, withering; as
masterful as a superior force on his muscles.--What thing had he been
taking her for?--She asked it within: and he of himself, in a reflective
gasp. Those eyes of hers appeared as in a cloud, with the wrath above:
she had: the look of a Goddess in anger. He stammered, pleaded across her
flying shoulder--Oh! horrible, loathsome, pitiable to hear! . . . 'A
momentary aberration . . . her beauty . . . he deserved to be shot! . . .
could not help admiring . . . quite lost his head . . on his honour!
never again!'

Once in the roadway, and Copsley visible, she checked her arrowy pace for
breath, and almost commiserated the dejected wretch in her thankfulness
to him for silence. Nothing exonerated him, but at least he had the grace
not to beg secresy. That would have been an intolerable whine of a
poltroon, adding to her humiliation. He abstained; he stood at her mercy
without appealing.

She was not the woman to take poor vengeance. But, Oh! she was profoundly
humiliated, shamed through and through. The question, was I guilty of any
lightness--anything to bring this on me? would not be laid. And how she
pitied her friend! This house, her heart's home, was now a wreck to her:
nay, worse, a hostile citadel. The burden of the task of meeting Emma
with an open face, crushed her like very guilt. Yet she succeeded. After
an hour in her bedchamber she managed to lock up her heart and summon the
sprite of acting to her tongue and features: which ready attendant on the
suffering female host performed his liveliest throughout the evening, to
Emma's amusement, and to the culprit ex-dragoon's astonishment; in whom,
to tell the truth of him, her sparkle and fun kindled the sense of his
being less criminal than he had supposed, with a dim vision of himself as
the real proven donkey for not having been a harmless dash more so. But,
to be just as well as penetrating, this was only the effect of her
personal charm on his nature. So it spurred him a moment, when it struck
this doleful man that to have secured one kiss of those fresh and witty
sparkling lips he would endure forfeits, pangs, anything save the hanging
of his culprit's head before his Emma. Reflection washed him clean.
Secresy is not a medical restorative, by no means a good thing for the
baffled amorously-adventurous cavalier, unless the lady's character shall
have been firmly established in or over his hazy wagging noddle.
Reflection informed him that the honourable, generous, proud girl spared
him for the sake of the house she loved. After a night of tossing, he
rose right heartily repentant. He showed it in the best manner, not
dramatically. On her accepting his offer to drive her down to the valley
to meet the coach, a genuine illumination of pure gratitude made a better
man of him, both to look at and in feeling. She did not hesitate to
consent; and he had half expected a refusal. She talked on the way quite
as usual, cheerfully, if not altogether so spiritedly. A flash of her
matchless wit now and then reduced him to that abject state of man beside
the fair person he has treated high cavalierly, which one craves
permission to describe as pulp. He was utterly beaten.

The sight of Redworth on the valley road was a relief to them both. He
had slept in one of the houses of the valley, and spoke of having had the
intention to mount to Copsley. Sir Lukin proposed to drive him back. He
glanced at Diana, still with that calculating abstract air of his; and he
was rallied. He confessed to being absorbed in railways, the new lines of
railways projected to thread the land and fast mapping it.

'You 've not embarked money in them?' said Sir Lukin.

The answer was: 'I have; all I possess.' And Redworth for a sharp instant
set his eyes on Diana, indifferent to Sir Lukin's bellow of stupefaction
at such gambling on the part of a prudent fellow.

He asked her where she was to be met, where written to, during the
Summer, in case of his wishing to send her news.

She replied: 'Copsley will be the surest. I am always in communication
with Lady Dunstane.' She coloured deeply. The recollection of the change
of her feeling for Copsley suffused her maiden mind.

The strange blush prompted an impulse in Redworth to speak to her at once
of his venture in railways. But what would she understand of them, as
connected with the mighty stake he was playing for? He delayed. The coach
came at a trot of the horses, admired by Sir Lukin, round a corner. She
entered it, her maid followed, the door banged, the horses trotted. She
was off.

Her destiny of the Crossways tied a knot, barred a gate, and pointed to a
new direction of the road on that fine spring morning, when beech-buds
were near the burst, cowslips yellowed the meadow-flats, and skylarks
quivered upward.

For many long years Redworth had in his memory, for a comment on
procrastination and excessive scrupulousness in his calculating faculty,
the blue back of a coach.

He declined the vacated place beside Sir Lukin, promising to come and
spend a couple of days at Copsley in a fortnight--Saturday week. He
wanted, he said, to have a talk with Lady Dunstane. Evidently he had
railways on the brain, and Sir Lukin warned his wife to be guarded
against the speculative mania, and advise the man, if she could.




CHAPTER V

CONCERNING THE SCRUPULOUS GENTLEMAN WHO CAME TOO LATE

On the Saturday of his appointment Redworth arrived at Copsley, with a
shade deeper of the calculating look under his thick brows, habitual to
him latterly. He found Lady Dunstane at her desk, pen in hand, the paper
untouched; and there was an appearance of trouble about her somewhat
resembling his own, as he would have observed, had he been open-minded
enough to notice anything, except that she was writing a letter. He
begged her to continue it; he proposed to read a book till she was at
leisure.

'I have to write, and scarcely know how,' said she, clearing her face to
make the guest at home, and taking a chair by the fire, 'I would rather
chat for half an hour.'

She spoke of the weather, frosty, but tonic; bad for the last days of
hunting, good for the farmer and the country, let us hope.

Redworth nodded assent. It might be surmised that he was brooding over
those railways, in which he had embarked his fortune. Ah! those railways!
She was not long coming to the wailful exclamation upon them, both to
express her personal sorrow at the disfigurement of our dear England, and
lead to a little, modest, offering of a woman's counsel to the rash
adventurer; for thus could she serviceably put aside her perplexity
awhile. Those railways! When would there be peace in the land? Where one
single nook of shelter and escape from them! And the English, blunt as
their senses are to noise and hubbub, would be revelling in hisses,
shrieks, puffings and screeches, so that travelling would become an
intolerable affliction. 'I speak rather as an invalid,' she admitted; 'I
conjure up all sorts of horrors, the whistle in the night beneath one's
windows, and the smoke of trains defacing the landscape; hideous
accidents too. They will be wholesale and past help. Imagine a collision!
I have borne many changes with equanimity, I pretend to a certain degree
of philosophy, but this mania for cutting up the land does really cause
me to pity those who are to follow us. They will not see the England we
have seen. It will be patched and scored, disfigured . . . a sort of
barbarous Maori visage--England in a New Zealand mask. You may call it
the sentimental view. In this case, I am decidedly sentimental: I love my
country. I do love quiet, rural England. Well, and I love beauty, I love
simplicity. All that will be destroyed by the refuse of the towns
flooding the land--barring accidents, as Lukin says. There seems nothing
else to save us.'

Redworth acquiesced. 'Nothing.'

'And you do not regret it?' he was asked.

'Not a bit. We have already exchanged opinions on the subject. Simplicity
must go, and the townsman meet his equal in the countryman. As for
beauty, I would sacrifice that to circulate gumption. A bushelful of
nonsense is talked pro and con: it always is at an innovation. What we
are now doing, is to take a longer and a quicker stride, that is all.'

'And establishing a new field for the speculator.'

'Yes, and I am one, and this is the matter I wanted to discuss with you,
Lady Dunstane,' said Redworth, bending forward, the whole man devoted to
the point of business.

She declared she was complimented; she felt the compliment, and trusted
her advice might be useful, faintly remarking that she had a woman's
head: and 'not less' was implied as much as 'not more,' in order to give
strength to her prospective opposition.

All his money, she heard, was down on the railway table. He might within
a year have a tolerable fortune: and, of course, he might be ruined. He
did not expect it; still he fronted the risks. 'And now,' said he, 'I
come to you for counsel. I am not held among my acquaintances to be a
marrying man, as it's called.'

He paused. Lady Dunstane thought it an occasion to praise him for his
considerateness.

'You involve no one but yourself, you mean?' Her eyes shed approval.
'Still the day may come . . . I say only that it may: and the wish to
marry is a rosy colouring . . . equal to a flying chariot in conducting
us across difficulties and obstructions to the deed. And then one may
have to regret a previous rashness.'

These practical men are sometimes obtuse: she dwelt on that vision of the
future.

He listened, and resumed: 'My view of marriage is, that no man should ask
a woman to be his wife unless he is well able to support her in the
comforts, not to say luxuries, she is accustomed to.' His gaze had
wandered to the desk; it fixed there. 'That is Miss Merion's writing,' he
said.

'The letter?' said Lady Dunstane, and she stretched out her hand to press
down a leaf of it. 'Yes; it is from her.'

'Is she quite well?'

'I suppose she is. She does not speak of her health.'

He looked pertinaciously in the direction of the letter, and it was not
rightly mannered. That letter, of all others, was covert and sacred to
the friend. It contained the weightiest of secrets.

'I have not written to her,' said Redworth.

He was astonishing: 'To whom? To Diana? You could very well have done so,
only I fancy she knows nothing, has never given a thought to railway
stocks and shares; she has a loathing for speculation.'

'And speculators too, I dare say!'

'It is extremely probable.' Lady Dunstane spoke with an emphasis, for the
man liked Diana, and would be moved by the idea of forfeiting her esteem.

'She might blame me if I did anything dishonourable!'

'She certainly would.'

'She will have no cause.'

Lady Dunstane began to look, as at a cloud charged with remote
explosions: and still for the moment she was unsuspecting. But it was a
flitting moment. When he went on, and very singularly droning to her ear:
'The more a man loves a woman, the more he should be positive, before
asking her, that she will not have to consent to a loss of position, and
I would rather lose her than fail to give her all--not be sure, as far as
a man can be sure, of giving her all I think she's worthy of': then the
cloud shot a lightning flash, and the doors of her understanding swung
wide to the entry of a great wonderment. A shock of pain succeeded it.
Her sympathy was roused so acutely that she slipped over the reflective
rebuke she would have addressed to her silly delusion concerning his
purpose in speaking of his affairs to a woman. Though he did not mention
Diana by name, Diana was clearly the person. And why had he delayed to
speak to her?--Because of this venture of his money to make him a
fortune, for the assurance of her future comfort! Here was the best of
men for the girl, not displeasing to her; a good, strong, trustworthy
man, pleasant to hear and to see, only erring in being a trifle too
scrupulous in love: and a fortnight back she would have imagined he had
no chance; and now she knew that the chance was excellent in those days,
with this revelation in Diana's letter, which said that all chance was
over.

'The courtship of a woman,' he droned away, 'is in my mind not fair to
her until a man has to the full enough to sanction his asking her to
marry him. And if he throws all he possesses on a stake . . . to win
her--give her what she has a right to claim, he ought . . . . Only at
present the prospect seems good . . . . He ought of course to wait. Well,
the value of the stock I hold has doubled, and it increases. I am a
careful watcher of the market. I have friends--brokers and railway
Directors. I can rely on them.'

'Pray,' interposed Lady Dunstane, 'specify--I am rather in a mist--the
exact point upon which you do me the honour to consult me.' She ridiculed
herself for having imagined that such a man would come to consult her
upon a point of business.

'It is,' he replied, 'this: whether, as affairs now stand with me--I have
an income from my office, and personal property . . . say between
thirteen and fourteen hundred a year to start with--whether you think me
justified in asking a lady to share my lot?'

'Why not? But will you name the lady?'

'Then I may write at once? In your judgement. . . . Yes, the lady. I have
not named her. I had no right. Besides, the general question first, in
fairness to the petitioner. You might reasonably stipulate for more for a
friend. She could make a match, as you have said . . .' he muttered of
'brilliant,' and 'the highest'; and his humbleness of the honest man
enamoured touched Lady Dunstane. She saw him now as the man of strength
that she would have selected from a thousand suitors to guide her dear
friend.

She caught at a straw: 'Tell me, it is not Diana?'

'Diana Merion!'

As soon as he had said it he perceived pity, and he drew himself tight
for the stroke. 'She's in love with some one?'

'She is engaged.'

He bore it well. He was a big-chested fellow, and that excruciating twist
within of the revolution of the wheels of the brain snapping their course
to grind the contrary to that of the heart, was revealed in one short
lift and gasp, a compression of the tremendous change he underwent.

'Why did you not speak before?' said Lady Dunstane. Her words were
tremulous.

'I should have had no justification!'

'You might have won her!' She could have wept; her sympathy and her
self-condolence under disappointment at Diana's conduct joined to swell
the feminine flood.

The poor fellow's quick breathing and blinking reminded her of cruelty in
a retrospect. She generalized, to ease her spirit of regret, by hinting
it without hurting: 'Women really are not puppets. They are not so
excessively luxurious. It is good for young women in the early days of
marriage to rough it a little.' She found herself droning, as he had
done.

He had ears for nothing but the fact.

'Then I am too late!'

'I have heard it to-day.'

'She is engaged! Positively?'

Lady Dunstane glanced backward at the letter on her desk. She had to
answer the strangest of letters that had ever come to her, and it was
from her dear Tony, the baldest intimation of the weightiest piece of
intelligence which a woman can communicate to her heart's friend. The
task of answering it was now doubled. 'I fear so, I fancy so,' she said,
and she longed to cast eye over the letter again, to see if there might
possibly be a loophole behind the lines.

'Then I must make my mind up to it,' said Redworth. 'I think I'll take a
walk.'

She smiled kindly. 'It will be our secret.'

'I thank you with all my heart, Lady Dunstane.'

He was not a weaver of phrases in distress. His blunt reserve was
eloquent of it to her, and she liked him the better; could have thanked
him, too, for leaving her promptly.

When she was alone she took in the contents of the letter at a hasty
glimpse. It was of one paragraph, and fired its shot like a cannon with
the muzzle at her breast:--

   'MY OWN EMMY,--I have been asked in marriage by Mr. Warwick, and
   have accepted him. Signify your approval, for I have decided that
   it is the wisest thing a waif can do. We are to live at The
   Crossways for four months of the year, so I shall have Dada in his
   best days and all my youngest dreams, my sunrise and morning dew,
   surrounding me; my old home for my new one. I write in haste, to
   you first, burning to hear from you. Send your blessing to yours in
   life and death, through all transformations,
                            'TONY.'

That was all. Not a word of the lover about to be decorated with the
title of husband. No confession of love, nor a single supplicating word
to her friend, in excuse for the abrupt decision to so grave a step. Her
previous description of, him, as a 'gentlemanly official' in his
appearance, conjured him up most distastefully. True, she might have made
a more lamentable choice; a silly lordling, or a hero of scandals; but if
a gentlemanly official was of stabler mould, he failed to harmonize quite
so well with the idea of a creature like Tony. Perhaps Mr. Redworth also
failed in something. Where was the man fitly to mate her! Mr. Redworth,
however, was manly and trustworthy, of the finest Saxon type in build and
in character. He had great qualities, and his excess of scrupulousness
was most pitiable.

She read: 'The wisest thing a waif can do.' It bore a sound of
desperation. Avowedly Tony had accepted him without being in love. Or was
she masking the passion? No: had it been a case of love, she would have
written very differently to her friend.

Lady Dunstane controlled the pricking of the wound inflicted by Diana's
novel exercise in laconics where the fullest flow was due to tenderness,
and despatched felicitations upon the text of the initial line: 'Wonders
are always happening.' She wrote to hide vexation beneath surprise;
naturally betraying it. 'I must hope and pray that you have not been
precipitate.' Her curiosity to inspect the happiest of men, the most
genuine part of her letter, was expressed coldly.

When she had finished the composition she perused it, and did not
recognize herself in her language, though she had been so guarded to
cover the wound her Tony dealt their friendship--in some degree injuring
their sex. For it might now, after such an example, verily seem that
women are incapable of a translucent perfect confidence: their impulses,
caprices, desperations, tricks of concealment, trip a heart-whole
friendship. Well, to-morrow, if not to-day, the tripping may be expected!
Lady Dunstane resigned herself sadly to a lowered view of her Tony's
character. This was her unconscious act of reprisal. Her brilliant
beloved Tony, dazzling but in beauty and the gifted mind, stood as one
essentially with the common order of women. She wished to be settled, Mr.
Warwick proposed, and for the sake of living at The Crossways she
accepted him--she, the lofty scorner of loveless marriages! who had
said--how many times! that nothing save love excused it! She degraded
their mutual high standard of womankind. Diana was in eclipse, full three
parts. The bulk of the gentlemanly official she had chosen obscured her.
But I have written very carefully, thought Lady Dunstane, dropping her
answer into the post-bag. She had, indeed, been so care ful, that to
cloak her feelings, she had written as another person. Women with otiose
husbands have a task to preserve friendship.

Redworth carried his burden through the frosty air at a pace to melt
icicles in Greenland. He walked unthinkingly, right ahead, to the red
West, as he discovered when pausing to consult his watch. Time was left
to return at the same pace and dress for dinner; he swung round and
picked up remembrances of sensations he had strewn by the way. She knew
these woods; he was walking in her footprints; she was engaged to be
married. Yes, his principle, never to ask a woman to marry him, never to
court her, without bank-book assurance of his ability to support her in
cordial comfort, was right. He maintained it, and owned himself a donkey
for having stuck to it. Between him and his excellent principle there was
war, without the slightest division. Warned of the danger of losing her,
he would have done the same again, confessing himself donkey for his
pains. The principle was right, because it was due to the woman. His
rigid adherence to the principle set him belabouring his donkey-ribs, as
the proper due to himself. For he might have had a chance, all through
two Winters. The opportunities had been numberless. Here, in this beech
wood; near that thornbush; on the juniper slope; from the corner of chalk
and sand in junction, to the corner of clay and chalk; all the length of
the wooded ridge he had reminders of her presence and his priceless
chances: and still the standard of his conduct said No, while his heart
bled.

He felt that a chance had been. More sagacious than Lady Dunstane, from
his not nursing a wound, he divined in the abruptness of Diana's
resolution to accept a suitor, a sober reason, and a fitting one, for the
wish that she might be settled. And had he spoken!--If he had spoken to
her, she might have given her hand to him, to a dishonourable brute! A
blissful brute. But a worse than donkey. Yes, his principle was right,
and he lashed with it, and prodded with it, drove himself out into the
sour wilds where bachelordom crops noxious weeds without a hallowing
luminary, and clung to it, bruised and bleeding though he was.

The gentleness of Lady Dunstane soothed him during the term of a visit
that was rather like purgatory sweetened by angelical tears. He was glad
to go, wretched in having gone. She diverted the incessant conflict
between his insubordinate self and his castigating, but avowedly
sovereign, principle. Away from her, he was the victim of a flagellation
so dire that it almost drove him to revolt against the lord he served,
and somehow the many memories at Copsley kept him away. Sir Lukin, when
speaking of Diana's 'engagement to that fellow Warwick,' exalted her with
an extraordinary enthusiasm, exceedingly hard for the silly beast who had
lost her to bear. For the present the place dearest to Redworth of all
places on earth was unendurable.

Meanwhile the value of railway investments rose in the market, fast as
asparagus-heads for cutting: a circumstance that added stings to
reflection. Had he been only a little bolder, a little less the fanatical
devotee of his rule of masculine honour, less the slave to the letter of
success . . . . But why reflect at all? Here was a goodly income
approaching, perhaps a seat in Parliament; a station for the airing of
his opinions--and a social status for the wife now denied to him. The
wife was denied to him; he could conceive of no other. The tyrant-ridden,
reticent, tenacious creature had thoroughly wedded her in mind; her view
of things had a throne beside his own, even in their differences. He
perceived, agreeing or disagreeing, the motions of her brain, as he did
with none other of women; and this it is which stamps character on her,
divides her from them, upraises and enspheres. He declined to live with
any other of the sex.

Before he could hear of the sort of man Mr. Warwick was--a perpetual
object of his quest--the bridal bells had rung, and Diana Antonia Merion
lost her maiden name. She became the Mrs. Warwick of our footballing
world.

Why she married, she never told. Possibly, in amazement at herself
subsequently, she forgot the specific reason. That which weighs heavily
in youth, and commits us to desperate action, will be a trifle under
older eyes, to blunter senses, a more enlightened understanding. Her
friend Emma probed for the reason vainly. It was partly revealed to
Redworth, by guess-work and a putting together of pieces, yet quite
luminously, as it were by touch of tentacle-feelers--one evening that he
passed with Sir Lukin Dunstane, when the lachrymose ex-dragoon and son of
Idlesse, had rather more than dined.




CHAPTER VI

THE COUPLE

Six months a married woman, Diana came to Copsley to introduce her
husband. They had run over Italy: 'the Italian Peninsula,' she quoted him
in a letter to Lady Dunstane: and were furnishing their London house. Her
first letters from Italy appeared to have a little bloom of sentiment.
Augustus was mentioned as liking this and that in the land of beauty. He
patronized Art, and it was a pleasure to hear him speak upon pictures and
sculptures; he knew a great deal about them. 'He is an authority.' Her
humour soon began to play round the fortunate man, who did not seem, to
the reader's mind, to bear so well a sentimental clothing. His pride was
in being very English on the Continent, and Diana's instances of his
lofty appreciations of the garden of Art and Nature, and statuesque walk
through it, would have been more amusing if her friend could have
harmonized her idea of the couple. A description of 'a bit of a wrangle
between us' at Lucca, where an Italian post-master on a journey of
inspection, claimed a share of their carriage and audaciously attempted
entry, was laughable, but jarred. Would she some day lose her relish for
ridicule, and see him at a distance? He was generous, Diana, said she saw
fine qualities in him. It might be that he was lavish on his bridal tour.
She said he was unselfish, kind, affable with his equals; he was cordial
to the acquaintances he met. Perhaps his worst fault was an affected
superciliousness before the foreigner, not uncommon in those days. 'You
are to know, dear Emmy, that we English are the aristocracy of
Europeans.' Lady Dunstane inclined to think we were; nevertheless, in the
mouth of a 'gentlemanly official' the frigid arrogance added a stroke of
caricature to his deportment. On the other hand, the reports of him
gleaned by Sir Lukin sounded favourable. He was not taken to be
preternaturally stiff, nor bright, but a goodish sort of fellow; good
horseman, good shot, good character. In short, the average Englishman,
excelling as a cavalier, a slayer, and an orderly subject. That was a
somewhat elevated standard to the patriotic Emma. Only she would never
have stipulated for an average to espouse Diana. Would he understand her,
and value the best in her? Another and unanswered question was, how could
she have condescended to wed with an average? There was transparently
some secret not confided to her friend.

He appeared. Lady Dunstane's first impression of him recurred on his
departure. Her unanswered question drummed at her ears, though she
remembered that Tony's art in leading him out had moderated her rigidly
judicial summary of the union during a greater part of the visit. But his
requiring to be led out, was against him. Considering the subjects, his
talk was passable. The subjects treated of politics, pictures,
Continental travel, our manufactures, our wealth and the reasons for
it--excellent reasons well-weighed. He was handsome, as men go; rather
tall, not too stout, precise in the modern fashion of his dress, and the
pair of whiskers encasing a colourless depression up to a long, thin,
straight nose, and closed lips indicating an aperture. The contraction of
his mouth expressed an intelligence in the attitude of the firmly
negative.

The lips opened to smile, the teeth were faultless; an effect was
produced, if a cold one--the colder for the unparticipating northern
eyes; eyes of that half cloud and blue, which make a kind of hueless
grey, and are chiefly striking in an authoritative stage. Without
contradicting, for he was exactly polite, his look signified a person
conscious of being born to command: in fine, an aristocrat among the
'aristocracy of Europeans.' His differences of opinion were prefaced by a
'Pardon me,' and pausing smile of the teeth; then a succinctly worded
sentence or two, a perfect settlement of the dispute. He disliked
argumentation. He said so, and Diana remarked it of him, speaking as, a
wife who merely noted a characteristic. Inside his boundary, he had neat
phrases, opinions in packets. Beyond it, apparently the world was void of
any particular interest. Sir Lukin, whose boundary would have shown a
narrower limitation had it been defined, stood no chance with him. Tory
versus Whig, he tried a wrestle, and was thrown. They agreed on the topic
of Wine. Mr. Warwick had a fine taste in wine. Their after-dinner
sittings were devoted to this and the alliterative cognate theme, equally
dear to the gallant ex-dragoon, from which it resulted that Lady Dunstane
received satisfactory information in a man's judgement of him. 'Warwick
is a clever fellow, and a thorough man of the world, I can tell you,
Emmy.' Sir Lukin further observed that he was a gentlemanly fellow. 'A
gentlemanly official!' Diana's primary dash of portraiture stuck to him,
so true it was! As for her, she seemed to have forgotten it. Not only did
she strive to show him to advantage by leading him out; she played second
to him; subserviently, fondly; she quite submerged herself, content to be
dull if he might shine; and her talk of her husband in her friend's
blue-chamber boudoir of the golden stars, where they had discussed the
world and taken counsel in her maiden days, implied admiration of his
merits. He rode superbly: he knew Law: he was prepared for any position:
he could speak really eloquently; she had heard him at a local meeting.
And he loved the old Crossways almost as much as she did. 'He has
promised me he will never ask me to sell it,' she said, with a simpleness
that could hardly have been acted.

When she was gone, Lady Dunstane thought she had worn a mask, in the
natural manner of women trying to make the best of their choice; and she
excused her poor Tony for the artful presentation of him at her own cost.
But she could not excuse her for having married the man. Her first and
her final impression likened him to a house locked up and empty: a London
house conventionally furnished and decorated by the upholsterer, and
empty of inhabitants. How a brilliant and beautiful girl could have
committed this rashness, was the perplexing riddle: the knottier because
the man was idle: and Diana had ambition; she despised and dreaded
idleness in men. Empty of inhabitants even to the ghost! Both human and
spiritual were wanting. The mind contemplating him became reflectively
stagnant.

I must not be unjust! Lady Dunstane hastened to exclaim, at a whisper
that he had at least proved his appreciation of Tony; whom he preferred
to call Diana, as she gladly remembered: and the two were bound together
for a moment warmly by her recollection of her beloved Tony's touching
little petition: 'You will invite us again?' and then there had flashed
in Tony's dear dark eyes the look of their old love drowning. They were
not to be thought of separately. She admitted that the introduction to a
woman of her friend's husband is crucially trying to him: he may well
show worse than he is. Yet his appreciation of Tony in espousing her, was
rather marred by Sir Lukin's report of him as a desperate admirer of
beautiful woman. It might be for her beauty only, not for her spiritual
qualities! At present he did not seem aware of their existence. But, to
be entirely just, she had hardly exhibited them or a sign of them during
the first interview: and sitting with his hostess alone, he had seized
the occasion to say, that he was the happiest of men. He said it with the
nearest approach to fervour she had noticed. Perhaps the very fact of his
not producing a highly favourable impression, should be set to plead on
his behalf. Such as he was, he was himself, no simulator. She longed for
Mr. Redworth's report of him.

Her compassion for Redworth's feelings when beholding the woman he loved
another man's wife, did not soften the urgency of her injunction that he
should go speedily, and see as much of them as he could. 'Because,' she
gave her reason, 'I wish Diana to know she has not lost a single friend
through her marriage, and is only one the richer.'

Redworth buckled himself to the task. He belonged to the class of his
countrymen who have a dungeon-vault for feelings that should not be
suffered to cry abroad, and into this oubliette he cast them, letting
them feed as they might, or perish. It was his heart down below, and in
no voluntary musings did he listen to it, to sustain the thing. Grimly
lord of himself, he stood emotionless before the world. Some worthy
fellows resemble him, and they are called deep-hearted. He was
dungeon-deep. The prisoner underneath might clamour and leap; none heard
him or knew of him; nor did he ever view the day. Diana's frank: 'Ah, Mr.
Redworth, how glad I am to see you!' was met by the calmest formalism of
the wish for her happiness. He became a guest at her London house, and
his report of the domesticity there, and notably of the lord of the
house, pleased Lady Dunstane more than her husband's. He saw the kind of
man accurately, as far as men are to be seen on the surface; and she
could say assentingly, without anxiety: 'Yes, yes,' to his remarks upon
Mr. Warwick, indicative of a man of capable head in worldly affairs,
commonplace beside his wife. The noble gentleman for Diana was yet
unborn, they tacitly agreed. Meantime one must not put a mortal husband
to the fiery ordeal of his wife's deserts, they agreed likewise. 'You may
be sure she is a constant friend,' Lady Dunstane said for his comfort;
and she reminded herself subsequently of a shade of disappointment at his
imperturbable rejoinder: 'I could calculate on it.' For though not at all
desiring to witness the sentimental fit, she wished to see that he held
an image of Diana:--surely a woman to kindle poets and heroes, the
princes of the race; and it was a curious perversity that the two men she
had moved were merely excellent, emotionless, ordinary men, with heads
for business. Elsewhere, out of England, Diana would have been a woman
for a place in song, exalted to the skies. Here she had the destiny to
inflame Mr. Redworth and Mr. Warwick, two railway Directors, bent upon
scoring the country to the likeness of a child's lines of hop-scotch in a
gravel-yard.

As with all invalids, the pleasure of living backward was haunted by the
tortures it evoked, and two years later she recalled this outcry against
the Fates. She would then have prayed for Diana to inflame none but such
men as those two. The original error was; of course, that rash and most
inexplicable marriage, a step never alluded to by the driven victim of
it. Lady Dunstane heard rumours of dissensions. Diana did not mention
them. She spoke of her husband as unlucky in railway ventures, and of a
household necessity for money, nothing further. One day she wrote of a
Government appointment her husband had received, ending the letter: 'So
there is the end of our troubles.' Her friend rejoiced, and afterward
looking back at her satisfaction, saw the dire beginning of them.

Lord Dannisburgh's name, as one of the admirers of Mrs. Warwick, was
dropped once or twice by Sir Lukin. He had dined with the Warwicks, and
met the eminent member of the Cabinet at their table. There is no harm in
admiration, especially on the part of one of a crowd observing a star. No
harm can be imputed when the husband of a beautiful woman accepts an
appointment from the potent Minister admiring her. So Lady Dunstane
thought, for she was sure of Diana to her inmost soul. But she soon
perceived in Sir Lukin that the old Dog-world was preparing to yelp on a
scent. He of his nature belonged to the hunting pack, and with a cordial
feeling for the quarry, he was quite with his world in expecting to see
her run, and readiness to join the chase. No great scandal had occurred
for several months. The world was in want of it; and he, too, with a very
cordial feeling for the quarry, piously hoping she would escape, already
had his nose to ground, collecting testimony in the track of her. He said
little to his wife, but his world was getting so noisy that he could not
help half pursing his lips, as with the soft whistle of an innuendo at
the heels of it. Redworth was in America, engaged in carving up that
hemisphere. She had no source of information but her husband's chance
gossip; and London was death to her; and Diana, writing faithfully twice
a week, kept silence as to Lord Dannisburgh, except in naming him among
her guests. She wrote this, which might have a secret personal
signification: 'We women are the verbs passive of the alliance; we have
to learn, and if we take to activity, with the best intentions, we
conjugate a frightful disturbance. We are to run on lines, like the
steam-trains, or we come to no station, dash to fragments. I have the
misfortune to know I was born an active. I take my chance.'

Once she coupled the names of Lord Larrian and Lord Dannisburgh,
remarking that she had a fatal attraction for antiques.

The death of her husband's uncle and illness of his aunt withdrew her to
The Crossways, where she remained nursing for several months, reading
diligently, as her letters showed, and watching the approaches of the
destroyer. She wrote like her former self, subdued by meditation in the
presence of that inevitable. The world ceased barking. Lady Dunstane
could suppose Mr. Warwick to have now a reconciling experience of his
wife's noble qualities. He probably did value them more. He spoke of her
to Sir Lukin in London with commendation. 'She is an attentive nurse.' He
inherited a considerable increase of income when he and his wife were the
sole tenants of The Crossways, but disliking the house, for reasons hard
to explain by a man previously professing to share her attachment to it,
he wished to sell or let the place, and his wife would do neither. She
proposed to continue living in their small London house rather than be
cut off from The Crossways, which, he said, was ludicrous: people should
live up to their position; and he sneered at the place, and slightly
wounded her, for she was open to a wound when the cold fire of a renewed
attempt at warmth between them was crackling and showing bits of flame,
after she had given proof of her power to serve. Service to himself and
his relatives affected him. He deferred to her craze for The Crossways,
and they lived in a larger London house, 'up to their position,' which
means ever a trifle beyond it, and gave choice dinner-parties to the most
eminent. His jealousy slumbered. Having ideas of a seat in Parliament at
this period, and preferment superior to the post he held, Mr. Warwick
deemed it sagacious to court the potent patron Lord Dannisburgh could be;
and his wife had his interests at heart, the fork-tongued world said. The
cry revived. Stories of Lord D. and Mrs. W. whipped the hot pursuit. The
moral repute of the great Whig lord and the beauty of the lady composed
inflammable material.

'Are you altogether cautious?' Lady Dunstane wrote to Diana; and her
friend sent a copious reply: 'You have the fullest right to ask your Tony
anything, and I will answer as at the Judgement bar. You allude to Lord
Dannisburgh. He is near what Dada's age would have been, and is, I think
I can affirm, next to my dead father and my Emmy, my dearest friend. I
love him. I could say it in the streets without shame; and you do not
imagine me shameless. Whatever his character in his younger days, he can
be honestly a woman's friend, believe me. I see straight to his heart; he
has no disguise; and unless I am to suppose that marriage is the end of
me, I must keep him among my treasures. I see him almost daily; it is not
possible to think I can be deceived; and as long as he does me the honour
to esteem my poor portion of brains by coming to me for what he is good
enough to call my counsel, I shall let the world wag its tongue. Between
ourselves, I trust to be doing some good. I know I am of use in various
ways. No doubt there is a danger of a woman's head being turned, when she
reflects that a powerful Minister governing a kingdom has not considered
her too insignificant to advise him; and I am sensible of it. I am, I
assure you, dearest, on my guard against it. That would not attach me to
him, as his homely friendliness does. He is the most amiable, cheerful,
benignant of men; he has no feeling of an enemy, though naturally his
enemies are numerous and venomous. He is full of observation and humour.
How he would amuse you! In many respects accord with you. And I should
not have a spark of jealousy. Some day I shall beg permission to bring
him to Copsley. At present, during the Session, he is too busy, as you
know. Me--his "crystal spring of wisdom"--he can favour with no more than
an hour in the afternoon, or a few minutes at night. Or I get a pencilled
note from the benches of the House, with an anecdote, or news of a
Division. I am sure to be enlivened.

'So I have written to you fully, simply, frankly. Have perfect faith in
your Tony, who would, she vows to heaven; die rather than disturb it and
her heart's beloved.'

The letter terminated with one of Lord Dannisburgh's anecdotes, exciting
to merriment in the season of its freshness;--and a postscript of
information: 'Augustus expects a mission--about a month; uncertain
whether I accompany him.'

Mr. Warwick departed on his mission. Diana remained in London. Lady
Dunstane wrote entreating her to pass the month--her favourite time of
the violet yielding to the cowslip--at Copsley. The invitation could not
be accepted, but the next day Diana sent word that she had a surprise for
the following Sunday, and would bring a friend to lunch, if Sir Lukin
would meet them at the corner of the road in the valley leading up to the
heights, at a stated hour.

Lady Dunstane gave the listless baronet his directions, observing: 'It's
odd, she never will come alone since her marriage.'

'Queer,' said he of the serenest absence of conscience; and that there
must be something not, entirely right going on, he strongly inclined to
think.




CHAPTER VII

THE CRISIS

It was a confirmed suspicion when he beheld Lord Dannisburgh on the box
of a four-in-hand, and the peerless Diana beside him, cockaded lackeys in
plain livery and the lady's maid to the rear. But Lord Dannisburgh's
visit was a compliment, and the freak of his driving down under the beams
of Aurora on a sober Sunday morning capital fun; so with a gaiety that
was kept alive for the invalid Emma to partake of it, they rattled away
to the heights, and climbed them, and Diana rushed to the arms of her
friend, whispering and cooing for pardon if she startled her, guilty of a
little whiff of blarney:--Lord Dannisburgh wanted so much to be
introduced to her, and she so much wanted her to know him, and she hoped
to be graciously excused for thus bringing them together, 'that she might
be chorus to them!' Chorus was a pretty fiction on the part of the
thrilling and topping voice. She was the very radiant Diana of her
earliest opening day, both in look and speech, a queenly comrade, and a
spirit leaping and shining like a mountain water. She did not seduce, she
ravished. The judgement was taken captive and flowed with her. As to the
prank of the visit, Emma heartily enjoyed it and hugged it for a holiday
of her own, and doating on the beautiful, darkeyed, fresh creature, who
bore the name of the divine Huntress, she thought her a true Dian in
stature, step, and attributes, the genius of laughter superadded. None
else on earth so sweetly laughed, none so spontaneously, victoriously
provoked the healthful openness. Her delicious chatter, and her museful
sparkle in listening, equally quickened every sense of life. Adorable as
she was to her friend Emma at all times, she that day struck a new
fountain in memory. And it was pleasant to see the great lord's
admiration of this wonder. One could firmly believe in their friendship,
and his winning ideas from the abounding bubbling well. A recurrent smile
beamed on his face when hearing and observing her. Certain dishes
provided at the table were Diana's favourites, and he relished them,
asking for a second help, and remarking that her taste was good in that
as in all things. They lunched, eating like boys. They walked over the
grounds of Copsley, and into the lanes and across the meadows of the
cowslip, rattling, chatting, enlivening the frosty air, happy as children
biting to the juices of ripe apples off the tree. But Tony was the tree,
the dispenser of the rosy gifts. She had a moment of reflection, only a
moment, and Emma felt the pause as though a cloud had shadowed them and a
spirit had been shut away. Both spoke of their happiness at the kiss of
parting. That melancholy note at the top of the wave to human hearts
conscious of its enforced decline was repeated by them, and Diana's
eyelids blinked to dismiss a tear.

'You have no troubles?' Emma said.

'Only the pain of the good-bye to my beloved,' said Diana. 'I have never
been happier--never shall be! Now you know him you think with me? I knew
you would. You have seen him as he always is--except when he is armed for
battle. He is the kindest of souls. And soul I say. He is the one man
among men who gives me notions of a soul in men.'

The eulogy was exalted. Lady Dunstane made a little mouth for Oh, in
correction of the transcendental touch, though she remembered their
foregone conversations upon men--strange beings that they are!--and
understood Diana's meaning.

'Really! really! honour!' Diana emphasized her extravagant praise, to
print it fast. 'Hear him speak of Ireland.'

'Would he not speak of Ireland in a tone to catch the Irishwoman?'

'He is past thoughts of catching, dearest. At that age men are pools of
fish, or what you will: they are not anglers. Next year, if you invite
us, we will come again.'

'But you will come to stay in the Winter?'

'Certainly. But I am speaking of one of my holidays.'

They kissed fervently. The lady mounted; the grey and portly lord
followed her; Sir Lukin flourished his whip, and Emma was left to brood
over her friend's last words: 'One of my holidays.' Not a hint to the
detriment of her husband had passed. The stray beam balefully
illuminating her marriage slipped from her involuntarily. Sir Lukin was
troublesome with his ejaculations that evening, and kept speculating on
the time of the arrival of the four-in-hand in London; upon which he
thought a great deal depended. They had driven out of town early, and if
they drove back late they would not be seen, as all the cacklers were
sure then to be dressing for dinner, and he would not pass the Clubs. 'I
couldn't suggest it,' he said. 'But Dannisburgh's an old hand. But they
say he snaps his fingers at tattle, and laughs. Well, it doesn't matter
for him, perhaps, but a game of two . . . . Oh! it'll be all right. They
can't reach London before dusk. And the cat's away.'

'It's more than ever incomprehensible to me how she could have married
that man,' said his wife.

'I've long since given it up,' said he.

Diana wrote her thanks for the delightful welcome, telling of her drive
home to smoke and solitude, with a new host of romantic sensations to
keep her company. She wrote thrice in the week, and the same addition of
one to the ordinary number next week. Then for three weeks not a line.
Sir Lukin brought news from London that Warwick had returned, nothing to
explain the silence. A letter addressed to The Crossways was likewise
unnoticed. The supposition that they must be visiting on a round,
appeared rational; but many weeks elapsed, until Sir Lukin received a
printed sheet in the superscription of a former military comrade, who had
marked a paragraph. It was one of those journals, now barely credible,
dedicated to the putrid of the upper circle, wherein initials raised
sewer-lamps, and Asmodeus lifted a roof, leering hideously. Thousands
detested it, and fattened their crops on it. Domesticated beasts of
superior habits to the common will indulge themselves with a luxurious
roll in carrion, for a revival of their original instincts. Society was
largely a purchaser. The ghastly thing was dreaded as a scourge, hailed
as a refreshment, nourished as a parasite. It professed undaunted
honesty, and operated in the fashion of the worms bred of decay. Success
was its boasted justification. The animal world, when not rigorously
watched, will always crown with success the machine supplying its
appetites. The old dog-world took signal from it. The one-legged
devil-god waved his wooden hoof, and the creatures in view, the hunt was
uproarious. Why should we seem better than we are? down with hypocrisy,
cried the censor morum, spicing the lamentable derelictions of this and
that great person, male and female. The plea of corruption of blood in
the world, to excuse the public chafing of a grievous itch, is not less
old than sin; and it offers a merry day of frisky truant running to the
animal made unashamed by another and another stripped, branded, and
stretched flat. Sir Lukin read of Mr. and Mrs. W. and a distinguished
Peer of the realm. The paragraph was brief; it had a flavour. Promise of
more to come, pricked curiosity. He read it enraged, feeling for his
wife; and again indignant, feeling for Diana. His third reading found him
out: he felt for both, but as a member of the whispering world, much
behind the scenes, he had a longing for the promised insinuations, just
to know what they could say, or dared say. The paper was not shown to
Lady Dunstane. A run to London put him in the tide of the broken dam of
gossip. The names were openly spoken and swept from mouth to mouth of the
scandalmongers, gathering matter as they flew. He knocked at Diana's
door, where he was informed that the mistress of the house was absent.
More than official gravity accompanied the announcement. Her address was
unknown. Sir Lukin thought it now time to tell his wife. He began with a
hesitating circumlocution, in order to prepare her mind for bad news. She
divined immediately that it concerned Diana, and forcing him to speak to
the point, she had the story jerked out to her in a sentence. It stopped
her heart.

The chill of death was tasted in that wavering ascent from oblivion to
recollection. Why had not Diana come to her, she asked herself, and asked
her husband; who, as usual, was absolutely unable to say. Under
compulsory squeezing, he would have answered, that she did not come
because she could not fib so easily to her bosom friend: and this he
thought, notwithstanding his personal experience of Diana's generosity.
But he had other personal experiences of her sex, and her sex plucked at
the bright star and drowned it.

The happy day of Lord Dannisburgh's visit settled in Emma's belief as the
cause of Mr. Warwick's unpardonable suspicions and cruelty. Arguing from
her own sensations of a day that had been like the return of sweet health
to her frame, she could see nothing but the loveliest freakish innocence
in Diana's conduct, and she recalled her looks, her words, every fleeting
gesture, even to the ingenuousness of the noble statesman's admiration of
her, for the confusion of her unmanly and unworthy husband. And Emma was
nevertheless a thoughtful person; only her heart was at the head of her
thoughts, and led the file, whose reasoning was accurate on erratic
tracks. All night her heart went at fever pace. She brought the repentant
husband to his knees, and then doubted, strongly doubted, whether she
would, whether in consideration for her friend she could, intercede with
Diana to forgive him. In the morning she slept heavily. Sir Lukin had
gone to London early for further tidings. She awoke about midday, and
found a letter on her pillow. It was Diana's. Then while her fingers
eagerly tore it open, her heart, the champion rider over-night, sank. It
needed support of facts, and feared them: not in distrust of that dear
persecuted soul, but because the very bravest of hearts is of its nature
a shivering defender, sensitive in the presence of any hostile array,
much craving for material support, until the mind and spirit displace it,
depute it to second them instead of leading.

She read by a dull November fog-light a mixture of the dreadful and the
comforting, and dwelt upon the latter in abandonment, hugged it, though
conscious of evil and the little that there was to veritably console.

The close of the letter struck the blow. After bluntly stating that Mr.
Warwick had served her with a process, and that he had no case without
suborning witnesses, Diana said: 'But I leave the case, and him, to the
world. Ireland, or else America, it is a guiltless kind of suicide to
bury myself abroad. He has my letters. They are such as I can own to you;
and ask you to kiss me--and kiss me when you have heard all the evidence,
all that I can add to it, kiss me. You know me too well to think I would
ask you to kiss criminal lips. But I cannot face the world. In the dock,
yes. Not where I am expected to smile and sparkle, on pain of incurring
suspicion if I show a sign of oppression. I cannot do that. I see myself
wearing a false grin--your Tony! No, I do well to go. This is my
resolution; and in consequence,--my beloved! my only truly loved on
earth! I do not come to you, to grieve you, as I surely should. Nor would
it soothe me, dearest. This will be to you the best of reasons. It could
not soothe me to see myself giving pain to Emma. I am like a pestilence,
and let me swing away to the desert, for there I do no harm. I know I am
right. I have questioned myself--it is not cowardice. I do not quail. I
abhor the part of actress. I should do it well--too well; destroy my soul
in the performance. Is a good name before such a world as this worth that
sacrifice? A convent and self-quenching;--cloisters would seem to me like
holy dew. But that would be sleep, and I feel the powers of life. Never
have I felt them so mightily. If it were not for being called on to act
and mew, I would stay, fight, meet a bayonet-hedge of charges and rebut
them. I have my natural weapons and my cause. It must be confessed that I
have also more knowledge of men and the secret contempt--it must be--the
best of them entertain for us. Oh! and we confirm it if we trust them.
But they have been at a wicked school.

'I will write. From whatever place, you shall have letters, and constant.
I write no more now. In my present mood I find no alternative between
rageing and drivelling. I am henceforth dead to the world. Never dead to
Emma till my breath is gone--poor flame! I blow at a bed-room candle, by
which I write in a brown fog, and behold what I am--though not even
serving to write such a tangled scrawl as this. I am of no mortal
service. In two days I shall be out of England. Within a week you shall
hear where. I long for your heart on mine, your dear eyes. You have faith
in me, and I fly from you!--I must be mad. Yet I feel calmly reasonable.
I know that this is the thing to do. Some years hence a grey woman may
return, to hear of a butterfly Diana, that had her day and disappeared.
Better than a mewing and courtseying simulacrum of the woman--I drivel
again. Adieu. I suppose I am not liable to capture and imprisonment until
the day when my name is cited to appear. I have left London. This letter
and I quit the scene by different routes--I would they were one. My
beloved! I have an ache--I think I am wronging you. I am not mistress of
myself, and do as something within me, wiser, than I, dictates.--You will
write kindly. Write your whole heart. It is not compassion I want, I want
you. I can bear stripes from you. Let me hear Emma's voice--the true
voice. This running away merits your reproaches. It will look like--. I
have more to confess: the tigress in me wishes it were! I should then
have a reckless passion to fold me about, and the glory infernal, if you
name it so, and so it would be--of suffering for and with some one else.
As it is, I am utterly solitary, sustained neither from above nor below,
except within myself, and that is all fire and smoke, like their new
engines.--I kiss this miserable sheet of paper. Yes, I judge that I have
run off a line--and what a line! which hardly shows a trace for breathing
things to follow until they feel the transgression in wreck. How
immensely nature seems to prefer men to women!--But this paper is happier
than the writer.

                         'Your TONY.'

That was the end. Emma kissed it in tears. They had often talked of the
possibility of a classic friendship between women, the alliance of a
mutual devotedness men choose to doubt of. She caught herself accusing
Tony of the lapse from friendship. Hither should the true friend have
flown unerringly.

The blunt ending of the letter likewise dealt a wound. She reperused it,
perused and meditated. The flight of Mrs. Warwick! She heard that
cry-fatal! But she had no means of putting a hand on her. 'Your Tony.'
The coldness might be set down to exhaustion: it might, yet her not
coming to her friend for counsel and love was a positive weight in the
indifferent scale. She read the letter backwards, and by snatches here
and there; many perusals and hours passed before the scattered creature
exhibited in its pages came to her out of the flying threads of the web
as her living Tony, whom she loved and prized and was ready to defend
gainst the world. By that time the fog had lifted; she saw the sky on the
borders of milky cloudfolds. Her invalid's chill sensitiveness conceived
a sympathy in the baring heavens, and lying on her sofa in the
drawing-room she gained strength of meditative vision, weak though she
was to help, through ceasing to brood on her wound and herself. She cast
herself into her dear Tony's feelings; and thus it came, that she
imagined Tony would visit The Crossways, where she kept souvenirs of her
father, his cane, and his writing-desk, and a precious miniature of him
hanging above it, before leaving England forever. The fancy sprang to
certainty; every speculation confirmed it.

Had Sir Lukin been at home she would have despatched him to The Crossways
at once. The West wind blew, and gave her a view of the Downs beyond the
Weald from her southern window. She thought it even possible to drive
there and reach the place, on the chance of her vivid suggestion, some
time after nightfall; but a walk across the room to try her forces was
too convincing of her inability. She walked with an ebony silver-mounted
stick, a present from Mr. Redworth. She was leaning on it when the card
of Thomas Redworth was handed to her.




CHAPTER VIII

IN WHICH IS EXHIBITED HOW A PRACTICAL MAN AND A DIVINING WOMAN LEARN TO
RESPECT ONE ANOTHER

'You see, you are my crutch,' Lady Dunstane said to him,--raising the
stick in reminder of the present.

He offered his arm and hurriedly informed her, to dispose of dull
personal matter, that he had just landed. She looked at the clock. 'Lukin
is in town. You know the song: "Alas, I scarce can go or creep While
Lukin is away." I do not doubt you have succeeded in your business over
there. Ah! Now I suppose you have confidence in your success. I should
have predicted it, had you come to me.' She stood, either musing or in
weakness, and said abruptly: 'Will you object to lunching at one
o'clock?'

'The sooner the better,' said Redworth. She had sighed: her voice
betrayed some agitation, strange in so serenely-minded a person.

His partial acquaintance with the Herculean Sir Lukin's reputation in
town inspired a fear of his being about to receive admission to the
distressful confidences of the wife, and he asked if Mrs. Warwick was
well. The answer sounded ominous, with its accompaniment of evident pain:
'I think her health is good.'

Had they quarrelled? He said he had not heard a word of Mrs. Warwick for
several months.

'I--heard from her this morning,' said Lady Dunstane, and motioned him to
a chair beside the sofa, where she half reclined, closing her eyes. The
sight of tears on the eyelashes frightened him. She roused herself to
look at the clock. 'Providence or accident, you are here,' she said. 'I
could not have prayed for the coming of a truer' man. Mrs. Warwick is in
great danger . . . . You know our love. She is the best of me, heart and
soul. Her husband has chosen to act on vile suspicions--baseless, I could
hold my hand in the fire and swear. She has enemies, or the jealous fury
is on the man--I know little of him. He has commenced an action against
her. He will rue it. But she . . . you understand this of women at
least;--they are not cowards in all things!--but the horror of facing a
public scandal: my poor girl writes of the hatefulness of having to act
the complacent--put on her accustomed self! She would have to go about, a
mark for the talkers, and behave as if nothing were in the air-full of
darts! Oh, that general whisper!--it makes a coup de massue--a gale to
sink the bravest vessel: and a woman must preserve her smoothest front;
chat, smile--or else!--Well, she shrinks from it. I should too. She is
leaving the country.'

'Wrong!' cried Redworth.

'Wrong indeed. She writes, that in two days she will be out of it. Judge
her as I do, though you are a man, I pray. You have seen the hunted hare.
It is our education--we have something of the hare in us when the hounds
are full cry. Our bravest, our best, have an impulse to run. "By this,
poor Wat far off upon a hill." Shakespeare would have the divine
comprehension. I have thought all round it and come back to him. She is
one of Shakespeare's women: another character, but one of his
own:--another Hermione! I dream of him--seeing her with that eye of
steady flame. The bravest and best of us at bay in the world need an eye
like his, to read deep and not be baffled by inconsistencies.'

Insensibly Redworth blinked. His consciousness of an exalted compassion
for the lady was heated by these flights of advocacy to feel that he was
almost seated beside the sovereign poet thus eulogized, and he was of a
modest nature.

'But you are practical,' pursued Lady Dunstane, observing signs that she
took for impatience. 'You are thinking of what can be done. If Lukin were
here I would send him to The Crossways without a moment's delay, on the
chance, the mere chance:--it shines to me! If I were only a little
stronger! I fear I might break down, and it would be unfair to my
husband. He has trouble enough with my premature infirmities already. I
am certain she will go to The Crossways. Tony is one of the women who
burn to give last kisses to things they love. And she has her little
treasures hoarded there. She was born there. Her father died there. She
is three parts Irish--superstitious in affection. I know her so well. At
this moment I see her there. If not, she has grown unlike herself.'

'Have you a stout horse in the stables?' Redworth asked.

'You remember the mare Bertha; you have ridden her.'

'The mare would do, and better than a dozen horses.' He consulted his
watch. 'Let me mount Bertha, I engage to deliver a letter at The
Crossways to-night.'

Lady Dunstane half inclined to act hesitation in accepting the aid she
sought, but said: 'Will you find your way?'

He spoke of three hours of daylight and a moon to rise. 'She has often
pointed out to me from your ridges where The Crossways lies, about three
miles from the Downs, near a village named Storling, on the road to
Brasted.

The house has a small plantation of firs behind it, and a bit of
river--rare for Sussex--to the right. An old straggling red brick house
at Crossways, a stone's throw from a fingerpost on a square of green:
roads to Brasted, London, Wickford, Riddlehurst. I shall find it. Write
what you have to say, my lady, and confide it to me. She shall have it
to-night, if she's where you suppose. I 'll go, with your permission, and
take a look at the mare. Sussex roads are heavy in this damp weather, and
the frost coming on won't improve them for a tired beast. We haven't our
rails laid down there yet.'

'You make me admit some virtues in the practical,' said Lady Dunstane;
and had the poor fellow vollied forth a tale of the everlastingness of
his passion for Diana, it would have touched her far less than his exact
memory of Diana's description of her loved birthplace.

She wrote:

   'I trust my messenger to tell you how I hang on you. I see my ship
   making for the rocks. You break your Emma's heart. It will be the
   second wrong step. I shall not survive it. The threat has made me
   incapable of rushing to you, as I might have had strength to do
   yesterday. I am shattered, and I wait panting for Mr. Redworth's
   return with you. He has called, by accident, as we say. Trust to
   him. If ever heaven was active to avert a fatal mischance it is
   to-day. You will not stand against my supplication. It is my life I
   cry for. I have no more time. He starts. He leaves me to pray--
   like the mother seeing her child on the edge of the cliff. Come.
   This is your breast, my Tony? And your soul warns you it is right
   to come. Do rightly. Scorn other counsel--the coward's. Come with
   our friend--the one man known to me who can be a friend of women.

                         'Your EMMA.'

Redworth was in the room. 'The mare 'll do it well,' he said. 'She has
had her feed, and in five minutes will be saddled at the door.'

'But you must eat, dear friend,' said the hostess.

'I'll munch at a packet of sandwiches on the way. There seems a chance,
and the time for lunching may miss it.'

'You understand . . . ?'

'Everything, I fancy.'

'If she is there!'

'One break in the run will turn her back.'

The sensitive invalid felt a blow in his following up the simile of the
hunted hare for her friend, but it had a promise of hopefulness. And this
was all that could be done by earthly agents, under direction of
spiritual, as her imagination encouraged her to believe.

She saw him start, after fortifying him with a tumbler of choice
Bordeaux, thinking how Tony would have said she was like a lady arming
her knight for battle. On the back of the mare he passed her window,
after lifting his hat, and he thumped at his breast-pocket, to show her
where the letter housed safely. The packet of provision bulged on his
hip, absurdly and blessedly to her sight, not unlike the man, in his
combination of robust serviceable qualities, as she reflected during the
later hours, until the sun fell on smouldering November woods, and
sensations of the frost he foretold bade her remember that he had gone
forth riding like a huntsman. His great-coat lay on a chair in the hall,
and his travelling-bag was beside it. He had carried it up from the
valley, expecting hospitality, and she had sent him forth half naked to
weather a frosty November night! She called in the groom, whose derision
of a great-coat for any gentleman upon Bertha, meaning work for the mare,
appeased her remorsefulness. Brisby, the groom, reckoned how long the
mare would take to do the distance to Storling, with a rider like Mr.
Redworth on her back. By seven, Brisby calculated, Mr. Redworth would be
knocking at the door of the Three Ravens Inn, at Storling, when the mare
would have a decent grooming, and Mr. Redworth was not the gentleman to
let her be fed out of his eye. More than that, Brisby had some
acquaintance with the people of the inn. He begged to inform her ladyship
that he was half a Sussex man, though not exactly born in the county; his
parents had removed to Sussex after the great event; and the Downs were
his first field of horse-exercise, and no place in the world was like
them, fair weather or foul, Summer or Winter, and snow ten feet deep in
the gullies. The grandest air in England, he had heard say.

His mistress kept him to the discourse, for the comfort of hearing hard
bald matter-of-fact; and she was amused and rebuked by his assumption
that she must be entertaining an anxiety about master's favourite mare.
But, ah! that Diana had delayed in choosing a mate; had avoided her
disastrous union with perhaps a more imposing man, to see the true beauty
of masculine character in Mr. Redworth, as he showed himself to-day. How
could he have doubted succeeding? One grain more of faith in his energy,
and Diana might have been mated to the right husband for her--an
open-minded clear-faced English gentleman. Her speculative ethereal mind
clung to bald matter-of-fact to-day. She would have vowed that it was the
sole potentially heroical. Even Brisby partook of the reflected rays, and
he was very benevolently considered by her. She dismissed him only when
his recounting of the stages of Bertha's journey began to fatigue her and
deaden the medical efficacy of him and his like. Stretched on the sofa,
she watched the early sinking sun in South-western cloud, and the changes
from saffron to intensest crimson, the crown of a November evening, and
one of frost.

Redworth struck on a southward line from chalk-ridge to sand, where he
had a pleasant footing in familiar country, under beeches that browned
the ways, along beside a meadowbrook fed by the heights, through pines
and across deep sand-ruts to full view of weald and Downs. Diana had been
with him here in her maiden days. The coloured back of a coach put an end
to that dream. He lightened his pocket, surveying the land as he munched.
A favourable land for rails: and she had looked over it: and he was now
becoming a wealthy man: and she was a married woman straining the leash.
His errand would not bear examination, it seemed such a desperate long
shot. He shut his inner vision on it, and pricked forward. When the
burning sunset shot waves above the juniper and yews behind him, he was
far on the weald, trotting down an interminable road. That the people
opposing railways were not people of business, was his reflection, and it
returned persistently: for practical men, even the most devoted among
them, will think for themselves; their army, which is the rational, calls
them to its banners, in opposition to the sentimental; and Redworth
joined it in the abstract, summoning the horrible state of the roads to
testify against an enemy wanting almost in common humaneness. A slip of
his excellent stepper in one of the half-frozen pits of the highway was
the principal cause of his confusion of logic; she was half on her knees.
Beyond the market town the roads were so bad that he quitted them, and
with the indifference of an engineer, struck a line of his own
Southeastward over fields and ditches, favoured by a round horizon moon
on his left. So for a couple of hours he went ahead over rolling fallow
land to the meadow-flats and a pale shining of freshets; then hit on a
lane skirting the water, and reached an amphibious village; five miles
from Storling, he was informed, and a clear traverse of lanes, not to be
mistaken, 'if he kept a sharp eye open.' The sharpness of his eyes was
divided between the sword-belt of the starry Hunter and the shifting
lanes that zig-tagged his course below. The Downs were softly illumined;
still it amazed him to think of a woman like Diana Warwick having an
attachment to this district, so hard of yield, mucky, featureless, fit
but for the rails she sided with her friend in detesting. Reasonable
women, too! The moon, stood high on her march as he entered Storling. He
led his good beast to the stables of The Three Ravens, thanking her and
caressing her. The ostler conjectured from the look of the mare that he
had been out with the hounds and lost his way. It appeared to Redworth
singularly, that near the ending of a wild goose chase, his plight was
pretty well described by the fellow. However, he had to knock at the door
of The Crossways now, in the silent night time, a certainly empty house,
to his fancy. He fed on a snack of cold meat and tea, standing, and set
forth, clearly directed, 'if he kept a sharp eye open.' Hitherto he had
proved his capacity, and he rather smiled at the repetition of the
formula to him, of all men. A turning to the right was taken, one to the
left, and through the churchyard, out of the gate, round to the right,
and on. By this route, after an hour, he found himself passing beneath
the bare chestnuts of the churchyard wall of Storling, and the sparkle of
the edges of the dead chestnut-leaves at his feet reminded him of the
very ideas he had entertained when treading them. The loss of an hour
strung him to pursue the chase in earnest, and he had a beating of the
heart as he thought that it might be serious. He recollected thinking it
so at Copsley. The long ride, and nightfall, with nothing in view, had
obscured his mind to the possible behind the thick obstruction of the
probable; again the possible waved its marsh-light. To help in saving her
from a fatal step, supposing a dozen combinations of the conditional
mood, became his fixed object, since here he was--of that there was no
doubt; and he was not here to play the fool, though the errand were
foolish. He entered the churchyard, crossed the shadow of the tower, and
hastened along the path, fancying he beheld a couple of figures vanishing
before him. He shouted; he hoped to obtain directions from these natives:
the moon was bright, the gravestones legible; but no answer came back,
and the place appeared to belong entirely to the dead. 'I've frightened
them,' he thought. They left a queerish sensation in his frame. A ride
down to Sussex to see ghosts would be an odd experience; but an
undigested dinner of tea is the very grandmother of ghosts; and he
accused it of confusing him, sight and mind. Out of the gate, now for the
turning to the right, and on. He turned. He must have previously turned
wrongly somewhere--and where? A light in a cottage invited him to apply
for the needed directions. The door was opened by a woman, who had never
heard tell of The Crossways, nor had her husband, nor any of the children
crowding round them. A voice within ejaculated: 'Crassways!' and soon
upon the grating of a chair, an old man, whom the woman named her lodger,
by way of introduction, presented himself with his hat on, saying: 'I
knows the spot they calls Crassways,' and he led. Redworth understood the
intention that a job was to be made of it, and submitting, said: 'To the
right, I think.' He was bidden to come along, if he wanted 'they
Crassways,' and from the right they turned to the left, and further sharp
round, and on to a turn, where the old man, otherwise incommunicative,
said: 'There, down thik theer road, and a post in the middle.'

'I want a house, not a post!' roared Redworth, spying a bare space.

The old man despatched a finger travelling to his nob. 'Naw, there's
ne'er a house. But that's crassways for four roads, if it 's crassways,
you wants.'

They journeyed backward. They were in such a maze of lanes that the old
man was master, and Redworth vowed to be rid of him at the first cottage.
This, however, they were long in reaching, and the old man was promptly
through the garden-gate, hailing the people and securing 'information,
before Redworth could well hear. He smiled at the dogged astuteness of a
dense-headed old creature determined to establish a claim to his fee.
They struck a lane sharp to the left.

'You're Sussex?' Redworth asked him, and was answered: 'Naw; the Sheers.'

Emerging from deliberation, the old man said: 'Ah'm a Hampshireman.'

'A capital county!'

'Heigh!' The old man heaved his chest. 'Once!'

'Why, what has happened to it?'

'Once it were a capital county, I say. Hah! you asks me what have
happened to it. You take and go and look at it now. And down heer'll be
no better soon, I tells 'em. When ah was a boy, old Hampshire was a proud
country, wi' the old coaches and the old squires, and Harvest Homes, and
Christmas merryings.--Cutting up the land! There's no pride in livin'
theer, nor anywhere, as I sees, now.'

'You mean the railways.'

'It's the Devil come up and abroad ower all England!' exclaimed the
melancholy ancient patriot.

A little cheering was tried on him, but vainly. He saw with unerring
distinctness the triumph of the Foul Potentate, nay his personal
appearance 'in they theer puffin' engines.' The country which had
produced Andrew Hedger, as he stated his name to be, would never show the
same old cricketing commons it did when he was a boy. Old England, he
declared, was done for.

When Redworth applied to his watch under the brilliant moonbeams, he
discovered that he had been listening to this natural outcry of a
decaying and shunted class full three-quarters of an hour, and The
Crossways was not in sight. He remonstrated. The old man plodded along.
'We must do as we're directed,' he said.

Further walking brought them to a turn. Any turn seemed hopeful. Another
turn offered the welcome sight of a blazing doorway on a rise of ground
off the road. Approaching it, the old man requested him to 'bide a bit,'
and stalked the ascent at long strides. A vigorous old fellow. Redworth
waited below, observing how he joined the group at the lighted door, and,
as it was apparent, put his question of the whereabout of The Crossways.
Finally, in extreme impatience, he walked up to the group of spectators.
They were all, and Andrew Hedger among them, the most entranced and
profoundly reverent, observing the dissection of a pig.

Unable to awaken his hearing, Redworth jogged his arm, and the shake was
ineffective until it grew in force.

'I've no time to lose; have they told you the way?'

Andrew Hedger yielded his arm. He slowly withdrew his intent fond gaze
from the fair outstretched white carcase, and with drooping eyelids, he
said: 'Ah could eat hog a solid hower!'

He had forgotten to ask the way, intoxicated by the aspect of the pig;
and when he did ask it, he was hard of understanding, given wholly to his
last glimpses.

Redworth got the directions. He would have dismissed Mr. Andrew Hedger,
but there was no doing so. 'I'll show ye on to The Crossways House,' the
latter said, implying that he had already earned something by showing him
The Crossways post.

'Hog's my feed,' said Andrew Hedger. The gastric springs of eloquence
moved him to discourse, and he unburdened himself between succulent
pauses. 'They've killed him early. He 's fat; and he might ha' been
fatter. But he's fat. They've got their Christmas ready, that they have.
Lord! you should see the chitterlings, and--the sausages hung up to and
along the beams. That's a crown for any dwellin'! They runs 'em round the
top of the room--it's like a May-day wreath in old times. Home-fed hog!
They've a treat in store, they have. And snap your fingers at the world
for many a long day. And the hams! They cure their own hams at that
house. Old style! That's what I say of a hog. He's good from end to end,
and beats a Christian hollow. Everybody knows it and owns it.'

Redworth was getting tired. In sympathy with current conversation, he
said a word for the railways: they would certainly make the flesh of
swine cheaper, bring a heap of hams into the market. But Andrew Hedger
remarked with contempt that he had not much opinion of foreign hams:
nobody, knew what they fed on. Hog, he said, would feed on anything,
where there was no choice they had wonderful stomachs for food. Only,
when they had a choice, they left the worst for last, and home-fed filled
them with stuff to make good meat and fat 'what we calls prime bacon.' As
it is not right to damp a native enthusiasm, Redworth let him dilate on
his theme, and mused on his boast to eat hog a solid hour, which roused
some distant classic recollection:--an odd jumble.

They crossed the wooden bridge of a flooded stream.

'Now ye have it,' said the hog-worshipper; 'that may be the house, I
reckon.'

A dark mass of building, with the moon behind it, shining in spires
through a mound of firs, met Redworth's gaze. The windows all were blind,
no smoke rose from the chimneys. He noted the dusky square of green, and
the finger-post signalling the centre of the four roads. Andrew Hedger
repeated that it was The Crossways house, ne'er a doubt. Redworth paid
him his expected fee, whereupon Andrew, shouldering off, wished him a
hearty good night, and forthwith departed at high pedestrian pace,
manifestly to have a concluding look at the beloved anatomy.

There stood the house. Absolutely empty! thought Redworth. The sound of
the gate-bell he rang was like an echo to him. The gate was unlocked. He
felt a return of his queer churchyard sensation when walking up the
garden-path, in the shadow of the house. Here she was born: here her
father died: and this was the station of her dreams, as a girl at school
near London and in Paris. Her heart was here. He looked at the windows
facing the Downs with dead eyes. The vivid idea of her was a phantom
presence, and cold, assuring him that the bodily Diana was absent. Had
Lady Dunstane guessed rightly, he might perhaps have been of service!

Anticipating the blank silence, he rang the house-bell. It seemed to set
wagging a weariful tongue in a corpse. The bell did its duty to the last
note, and one thin revival stroke, for a finish, as in days when it
responded livingly to the guest. He pulled, and had the reply, just the
same, with the faint terminal touch, resembling exactly a 'There!' at the
close of a voluble delivery in the negative. Absolutely empty. He pulled
and pulled. The bell wagged, wagged. This had been a house of a witty
host, a merry girl, junketting guests; a house of hilarious thunders,
lightnings of fun and fancy. Death never seemed more voiceful than in
that wagging of the bell.

For conscience' sake, as became a trusty emissary, he walked round to the
back of the house, to verify the total emptiness. His apprehensive
despondency had said that it was absolutely empty, but upon consideration
he supposed the house must have some guardian: likely enough, an old
gardener and his wife, lost in deafness double-shotted by sleep! There
was no sign of them. The night air waxed sensibly crisper. He thumped the
backdoors. Blank hollowness retorted on the blow. He banged and kicked.
The violent altercation with wood and wall lasted several minutes, ending
as it had begun.

Flesh may worry, but is sure to be worsted in such an argument.

'Well, my dear lady!'--Redworth addressed Lady Dunstane aloud, while
driving his hands into his pockets for warmth--'we've done what we could.
The next best thing is to go to bed and see what morning brings us.'

The temptation to glance at the wild divinings of dreamy-witted women
from the point of view of the practical man, was aided by the intense
frigidity of the atmosphere in leading him to criticize a sex not much
used to the exercise of brains. 'And they hate railways!' He associated
them, in the matter of intelligence, with Andrew Hedger and Company. They
sank to the level of the temperature in his esteem--as regarded their
intellects. He approved their warmth of heart. The nipping of the
victim's toes and finger-tips testified powerfully to that.

Round to the front of the house at a trot, he stood in moonlight. Then,
for involuntarily he now did everything running, with a dash up the steps
he seized the sullen pendant bell-handle, and worked it pumpwise, till he
perceived a smaller bell-knob beside the door, at which he worked
piston-wise. Pump and piston, the hurly-burly and the tinkler created an
alarm to scare cat and mouse and Cardinal spider, all that run or weave
in desolate houses, with the good result of a certain degree of heat to
his frame. He ceased, panting. No stir within, nor light. That white
stare of windows at the moon was undisturbed.

The Downs were like a wavy robe of shadowy grey silk. No wonder that she
had loved to look on them!

And it was no wonder that Andrew Hedger enjoyed prime bacon. Bacon
frizzling, fat rashers of real homefed on the fire-none of your
foreign-suggested a genial refreshment and resistance to antagonistic
elements. Nor was it, granting health, granting a sharp night--the
temperature at least fifteen below zero--an excessive boast for a man to
say he could go on eating for a solid hour.

These were notions darting through a half nourished gentleman nipped in
the frame by a severely frosty night. Truly a most beautiful night! She
would have delighted to see it here. The Downs were like floating
islands, like fairy-laden vapours; solid, as Andrew Hedger's hour of
eating; visionary, as too often his desire!

Redworth muttered to himself, after taking the picture of the house and
surrounding country from the sward, that he thought it about the sharpest
night he had ever encountered in England. He was cold, hungry,
dispirited, and astoundingly stricken with an incapacity to separate any
of his thoughts from old Andrew Hedger. Nature was at her pranks upon
him.

He left the garden briskly, as to the legs, and reluctantly. He would
have liked to know whether Diana had recently visited the house, or was
expected. It could be learnt in the morning; but his mission was urgent
and he on the wings of it. He was vexed and saddened.

Scarcely had he closed the garden-gate when the noise of an opening
window arrested him, and he called. The answer was in a feminine voice,
youngish, not disagreeable, though not Diana's.

He heard none of the words, but rejoined in a bawl: 'Mrs. Warwick!--Mr.
Redworth!'

That was loud enough for the deaf or the dead.

The window closed. He went to the door and waited. It swung wide to him;
and O marvel of a woman's divination of a woman! there stood Diana.




CHAPTER IX

SHOWS HOW A POSITION OF DELICACY FOR A LADY AND GENTLEMAN WAS MET IN
SIMPLE FASHION WITHOUT HURT TO EITHER

Redworth's impulse was to laugh for very gladness of heart, as he
proffered excuses for his tremendous alarums and in doing so, the worthy
gentleman imagined he must have persisted in clamouring for admission
because he suspected, that if at home, she would require a violent
summons to betray herself. It was necessary to him to follow his abashed
sagacity up to the mark of his happy animation.

'Had I known it was you!' said Diana, bidding him enter the passage. She
wore a black silk mantilla and was warmly covered.

She called to her maid Danvers, whom Redworth remembered: a firm woman of
about forty, wrapped, like her mistress, in head-covering, cloak, scarf
and shawl. Telling her to scour the kitchen for firewood, Diana led into
a sitting-room. 'I need not ask--you have come from Lady Dunstane,' she
said. 'Is she well?'

'She is deeply anxious.'

'You are cold. Empty houses are colder than out of doors. You shall soon
have a fire.'

She begged him to be seated.

The small glow of candle-light made her dark rich colouring orange in
shadow.

'House and grounds are open to a tenant,' she resumed. 'I say good-bye to
them to-morrow morning. The old couple who are in charge sleep in the
village to-night. I did not want them here. You have quitted the
Government service, I think?'

'A year or so since.'

'When did you return from America?'

'Two days back.'

'And paid your visit to Copsley immediately?'

'As early as I could.'

'That was true friendliness. You have a letter for me?'

'I have.'

He put his hand to his pocket for the letter.

'Presently,' she said. She divined the contents, and nursed her
resolution to withstand them. Danvers had brought firewood and coal.
Orders were given to her, and in spite of the opposition of the maid and
intervention of the gentleman, Diana knelt at the grate, observing:

'Allow me to do this. I can lay and light a fire.'

He was obliged to look on: she was a woman who spoke her meaning. She
knelt, handling paper, firewood and matches, like a housemaid. Danvers
proceeded on her mission, and Redworth eyed Diana in the first fire-glow.
He could have imagined a Madonna on an old black Spanish canvas.

The act of service was beautiful in gracefulness, and her simplicity in
doing the work touched it spiritually. He thought, as she knelt there,
that never had he seen how lovely and how charged with mystery her
features were; the dark large eyes full on the brows; the proud line of a
straight nose in right measure to the bow of the lips; reposeful red
lips, shut, and their curve of the slumber-smile at the corners. Her
forehead was broad; the chin of a sufficient firmness to sustain: that
noble square; the brows marked by a soft thick brush to the temples; her
black hair plainly drawn along her head to the knot, revealed by the
mantilla fallen on her neck.

Elegant in plainness, the classic poet would have said of her hair and
dress. She was of the women whose wits are quick in everything they do.
That which was proper to her position, complexion, and the hour, surely
marked her appearance. Unaccountably this night, the fair fleshly
presence over-weighted her intellectual distinction, to an observer bent
on vindicating her innocence. Or rather, he saw the hidden in the
visible.

Owner of such a woman, and to lose her! Redworth pitied the husband.

The crackling flames reddened her whole person. Gazing, he remembered
Lady Dunstane saying of her once, that in anger she had the nostrils of a
war-horse. The nostrils now were faintly alive under some sensitive
impression of her musings. The olive cheeks, pale as she stood in the
doorway, were flushed by the fire-beams, though no longer with their
swarthy central rose, tropic flower of a pure and abounding blood, as it
had seemed. She was now beset by battle. His pity for her, and his eager
championship, overwhelmed the spirit of compassion for the foolish
wretched husband. Dolt, the man must be, Redworth thought; and he asked
inwardly, Did the miserable tyrant suppose of a woman like this, that she
would be content to shine as a candle in a grated lanthorn? The
generosity of men speculating upon other men's possessions is known. Yet
the man who loves a woman has to the full the husband's jealousy of her
good name. And a lover, that without the claims of the alliance, can be
wounded on her behalf, is less distracted in his homage by the personal
luminary, to which man's manufacture of balm and incense is mainly drawn
when his love is wounded. That contemplation of her incomparable beauty,
with the multitude of his ideas fluttering round it, did somewhat shake
the personal luminary in Redworth. He was conscious of pangs. The
question bit him: How far had she been indiscreet or wilful? and the bite
of it was a keen acid to his nerves. A woman doubted by her husband, is
always, and even to her champions in the first hours of the noxious
rumour, until they had solidified in confidence through service, a
creature of the wilds, marked for our ancient running. Nay, more than a
cynical world, these latter will be sensible of it. The doubt casts her
forth, the general yelp drags her down; she runs like the prey of the
forest under spotting branches; clear if we can think so, but it has to
be thought in devotedness: her character is abroad. Redworth bore a
strong resemblance to, his fellowmen, except for his power of faith in
this woman. Nevertheless it required the superbness of her beauty and the
contrasting charm of her humble posture of kneeling by the fire, to set
him on his right track of mind. He knew and was sure of her. He dispersed
the unhallowed fry in attendance upon any stirring of the reptile part of
us, to look at her with the eyes of a friend. And if . . . !--a little
mouse of a thought scampered out of one of the chambers of his head and
darted along the passages, fetching a sweat to his brows. Well,
whatsoever the fact, his heart was hers! He hoped he could be charitable
to women.

She rose from her knees and said: 'Now, please, give me the letter.'

He was entreated to excuse her for consigning him to firelight when she
left the room.

Danvers brought in a dismal tallow candle, remarking that her mistress
had not expected visitors: her mistress had nothing but tea and bread and
butter to offer him. Danvers uttered no complaint of her sufferings;
happy in being the picture of them. 'I'm not hungry,' said he.

A plate of Andrew Hedger's own would not have tempted him. The foolish
frizzle of bacon sang in his ears as he walked from end to end of the
room; an illusion of his fancy pricked by a frost-edged appetite. But the
anticipated contest with Diana checked and numbed the craving.

Was Warwick a man to proceed to extremities on a mad suspicion?--What
kind of proof had he?

Redworth summoned the portrait of Mr. Warwick before him, and beheld a
sweeping of close eyes in cloud, a long upper lip in cloud; the rest of
him was all cloud. As usual with these conjurations of a face, the index
of the nature conceived by him displayed itself, and no more; but he took
it for the whole physiognomy, and pronounced of the husband thus
delineated, that those close eyes of the long upper lip would both
suspect and proceed madly.

He was invited by Danvers to enter the dining-room.

There Diana joined him.

'The best of a dinner on bread and butter is, that one is ready for
supper soon after it,' she said, swimming to the tea-tray. 'You have
dined?'

'At the inn,' he replied.

'The Three Ravens! When my father's guests from London flooded The
Crossways, The Three Ravens provided the overflow with beds. On nights
like this I have got up and scraped the frost from my window-panes to see
them step into the old fly, singing some song of his. The inn had a good
reputation for hospitality in those days. I hope they treated you well?'

'Excellently,' said Redworth, taking an enormous mouthful, while his
heart sank to see that she who smiled to encourage his eating had been
weeping. But she also consumed her bread and butter.

'That poor maid of mine is an instance of a woman able to do things
against the grain,' she said. 'Danvers is a foster-child of luxury. She
loves it; great houses, plentiful meals, and the crowd of twinkling
footmen's calves. Yet you see her here in a desolate house, consenting to
cold, and I know not what, terrors of ghosts! poor soul. I have some
mysterious attraction for her. She would not let me come alone. I should
have had to hire some old Storling grannam, or retain the tattling
keepers of the house. She loves her native country too, and disdains the
foreigner. My tea you may trust.'

Redworth had not a doubt of it. He was becoming a tea-taster. The merit
of warmth pertained to the beverage. 'I think you get your tea from
Scoppin's, in the City,' he said.

That was the warehouse for Mrs. Warwick's tea. They conversed of Teas;
the black, the green, the mixtures; each thinking of the attack to come,
and the defence. Meantime, the cut bread and butter having flown,
Redwerth attacked the loaf. He apologized.

'Oh! pay me a practical compliment,' Diana said, and looked really happy
at his unfeigned relish of her simple fare.

She had given him one opportunity in speaking of her maid's love of
native country. But it came too early.

'They say that bread and butter is fattening,' he remarked.

'You preserve the mean,' said she.

He admitted that his health was good. For some little time, to his
vexation at the absurdity, she kept him talking of himself. So flowing
was she, and so sweet the motion of her mouth in utterance, that he
followed her lead, and he said odd things and corrected them. He had to
describe his ride to her.

'Yes! the view of the Downs from Dewhurst,' she exclaimed. 'Or any point
along the ridge. Emma and I once drove there in Summer, with clotted
cream from her dairy, and we bought fresh-plucked wortleberries, and
stewed them in a hollow of the furzes, and ate them with ground biscuits
and the clotted cream iced, and thought it a luncheon for seraphs. Then
you dropped to the road round under the sand-heights--and meditated
railways!'

'Just a notion or two.'

'You have been very successful in America?'

'Successful; perhaps; we exclude extremes in our calculations of the
still problematical.'

'I am sure,' said she, 'you always have faith in your calculations.'

Her innocent archness dealt him a stab sharper than any he had known
since the day of his hearing of her engagement. He muttered of his
calculations being human; he was as much of a fool as other men--more!

'Oh! no,' said she.

'Positively.'

'I cannot think it.'

'I know it.'

'Mr. Redworth, you will never persuade me to believe it.'

He knocked a rising groan on the head, and rejoined 'I hope I may not
have to say so to-night.'

Diana felt the edge of the dart. 'And meditating railways, you scored our
poor land of herds and flocks; and night fell, and the moon sprang up,
and on you came. It was clever of you to find your way by the moonbeams.'

'That's about the one thing I seem fit for!'

'But what delusion is this, in the mind of a man succeeding in everything
he does!' cried Diana, curious despite her wariness. 'Is there to be the
revelation of a hairshirt ultimately?--a Journal of Confessions? You
succeeded in everything you aimed at, and broke your heart over one
chance miss?'

'My heart is not of the stuff to break,' he said, and laughed off her
fortuitous thrust straight into it. 'Another cup, yes. I came . . .'

'By night,' said she, 'and cleverly found your way, and dined at The
Three Ravens, and walked to The Crossways, and met no ghosts.'

'On the contrary--or at least I saw a couple.'

'Tell me of them; we breed them here. We sell them periodically to the
newspapers!'

'Well, I started them in their natal locality. I saw them, going down the
churchyard, and bellowed after them with all my lungs. I wanted
directions to The Crossways; I had missed my way at some turning. In an
instant they were vapour.'

Diana smiled. 'It was indeed a voice to startle delicate apparitions! So
do roar Hyrcanean tigers. Pyramus and Thisbe--slaying lions! One of your
ghosts carried a loaf of bread, and dropped it in fright; one carried a
pound of fresh butter for home consumption. They were in the churchyard
for one in passing to kneel at her father's grave and kiss his
tombstone.'

She bowed her head, forgetful of her guard.

The pause presented an opening. Redworth left his chair and walked to the
mantelpiece. It was easier to him to speak, not facing her.

'You have read Lady Dunstane's letter,' he began.

She nodded. 'I have.'

'Can you resist her appeal to you?'

'I must.'

'She is not in a condition to bear it well. You will pardon me, Mrs.
Warwick . . .'

'Fully! Fully!'

'I venture to offer merely practical advice. You have thought of it all,
but have not felt it. In these cases, the one thing to do is to make a
stand. Lady Dunstane has a clear head. She sees what has to be endured by
you. Consider: she appeals to me to bring you her letter. Would she have
chosen me, or any man, for her messenger, if it had not appeared to her a
matter of life and death? You count me among your friends.'

'One of the truest.'

'Here are two, then, and your own good sense. For I do not believe it to
be a question of courage.'

'He has commenced. Let him carry it out,' said Diana.

Her desperation could have added the cry--And give me freedom! That was
the secret in her heart. She had struck on the hope for the detested yoke
to be broken at any cost.

'I decline to meet his charges. I despise them. If my friends have faith
in me--and they may!--I want nothing more.'

'Well, I won't talk commonplaces about the world,' said Redworth. 'We can
none of us afford to have it against us. Consider a moment: to your
friends you are the Diana Merion they knew, and they will not suffer an
injury to your good name without a struggle. But if you fly? You leave
the dearest you have to the whole brunt of it.

'They will, if they love me.'

'They will. But think of the shock to her. Lady Dunstane reads you--'

'Not quite. No, not if she even wishes me to stay!' said Diana.

He was too intent on his pleading to perceive a signification.

'She reads you as clearly in the dark as if you were present with her.'

'Oh! why am I not ten years older!' Diana cried, and tried to face round
to him, and stopped paralyzed. 'Ten years older, I could discuss my
situation, as an old woman of the world, and use my wits to defend
myself.'

'And then you would not dream of flight before it!'

'No, she does not read me: no! She saw that I might come to The
Crossways. She--no one but myself can see the wisdom of my holding aloof,
in contempt of this baseness.'

'And of allowing her to sink under that which your presence would arrest.
Her strength will not support it.'

'Emma! Oh, cruel!' Diana sprang up to give play to her limbs. She dropped
on another chair. 'Go I must, I cannot turn back. She saw my old
attachment to this place. It was not difficult to guess . . . Who but I
can see the wisest course for me!'

'It comes to this, that the blow aimed at you in your absence will strike
her, and mortally,' said Redworth.

'Then I say it is terrible to have a friend,' said Diana, with her bosom
heaving.

'Friendship, I fancy, means one heart between two.'

His unstressed observation hit a bell in her head, and set it
reverberating. She and Emma had spoken, written, the very words. She drew
forth her Emma's letter from under her left breast, and read some
half-blinded lines.

Redworth immediately prepared to leave her to her feelings--trustier
guides than her judgement in this crisis.

'Adieu, for the night, Mrs. Warwick,' he said, and was guilty of
eulogizing the judgement he thought erratic for the moment. 'Night is a
calm adviser. Let me presume to come again in the morning. I dare not go
back without you.'

She looked up. As they faced together each saw that the other had passed
through a furnace, scorching enough to him, though hers was the delicacy
exposed. The reflection had its weight with her during the night.

'Danvers is getting ready a bed for you; she is airing linen,' Diana,
said. But the bed was declined, and the hospitality was not pressed. The
offer of it seemed to him significant of an unwary cordiality and
thoughtlessness of tattlers that might account possibly for many
things--supposing a fool or madman, or malignants, to interpret them.

'Then, good night,' said she.

They joined hands. He exacted no promise that she would be present in the
morning to receive him; and it was a consolation to her desire for
freedom, until she reflected on the perfect confidence it implied, and
felt as a quivering butterfly impalpably pinned.




CHAPTER X

THE CONFLICT OF THE NIGHT

Her brain was a steam-wheel throughout the night; everything that could
be thought of was tossed, nothing grasped.

The unfriendliness of the friends who sought to retain her recurred. For
look--to fly could not be interpreted as a flight. It was but a stepping
aside, a disdain of defending herself, and a wrapping herself in her
dignity. Women would be with her. She called on the noblest of them to
justify the course she chose, and they did, in an almost audible murmur.

And O the rich reward. A black archway-gate swung open to the glittering
fields of freedom.

Emma was not of the chorus. Emma meditated as an invalid. How often had
Emma bewailed to her that the most, grievous burden of her malady was her
fatal tendency to brood sickly upon human complications! She could not
see the blessedness of the prospect of freedom to a woman abominably
yoked. What if a miserable woman were dragged through mire to reach it!
Married, the mire was her portion, whatever she might do. That man--but
pass him!

And that other--the dear, the kind, careless, high-hearted old friend. He
could honestly protest his guiltlessness, and would smilingly leave the
case to go its ways. Of this she was sure, that her decision and her
pleasure would be his. They were tied to the stake. She had already
tasted some of the mortal agony. Did it matter whether the flames
consumed her?

Reflecting on the interview with Redworth, though she had performed her
part in it placidly, her skin burned. It was the beginning of tortures if
she stayed in England.

By staying to defend herself she forfeited her attitude of dignity and
lost all chance of her reward. And name the sort of world it is, dear
friends, for which we are to sacrifice our one hope of freedom, that we
may preserve our fair fame in it!

Diana cried aloud, 'My freedom!' feeling as a butterfly flown out of a
box to stretches of sunny earth beneath spacious heavens. Her bitter
marriage, joyless in all its chapters, indefensible where the man was
right as well as where insensately wrong, had been imprisonment. She
excused him down to his last madness, if only the bonds were broken.
Here, too, in this very house of her happiness with her father, she had
bound herself to the man voluntarily, quite inexplicably. Voluntarily, as
we say. But there must be a spell upon us at times. Upon young women
there certainly is.

The wild brain of Diana, armed by her later enlightenment as to the laws
of life and nature, dashed in revolt at the laws of the world when she
thought of the forces, natural and social, urging young women to marry
and be bound to the end.

It should be a spotless world which is thus ruthless.

But were the world impeccable it would behave more generously.

The world is ruthless, dear friends, because the world is hypocrite! The
world cannot afford to be magnanimous, or even just.

Her dissensions with her husband, their differences of opinion, and puny
wranglings, hoistings of two standards, reconciliations for the sake of
decency, breaches of the truce, and his detested meanness, the man behind
the mask; and glimpses of herself too, the half-known, half-suspected,
developing creature claiming to be Diana, and unlike her dreamed Diana,
deformed by marriage, irritable, acerb, rebellious, constantly
justifiable against him, but not in her own mind, and therefore accusing
him of the double crime of provoking her and perverting her--these were
the troops defiling through her head while she did battle with the
hypocrite world.

One painful sting was caused by the feeling that she could have
loved--whom? An ideal. Had he, the imagined but unvisioned, been her
yoke-fellow, would she now lie raising caged-beast cries in execration of
the yoke? She would not now be seeing herself as hare, serpent, tigress!
The hypothesis was reviewed in negatives: she had barely a sense of
softness, just a single little heave of the bosom, quivering upward and
leadenly sinking, when she glanced at a married Diana heartily mated. The
regrets of the youthful for a life sailing away under medical sentence of
death in the sad eyes of relatives resemble it. She could have loved.
Good-bye to that!

A woman's brutallest tussle with the world was upon her. She was in the
arena of the savage claws, flung there by the man who of all others
should have protected her from them. And what had she done to deserve it?
She listened to the advocate pleading her case; she primed him to admit
the charges, to say the worst, in contempt of legal prudence, and thereby
expose her transparent honesty. The very things awakening a mad suspicion
proved her innocence. But was she this utterly simple person? Oh, no! She
was the Diana of the pride in her power of fencing with evil--by no means
of the order of those ninny young women who realize the popular
conception of the purely innocent. She had fenced and kept her guard. Of
this it was her angry glory to have the knowledge. But she had been
compelled to fence. Such are men in the world of facts, that when a woman
steps out of her domestic tangle to assert, because it is a tangle, her
rights to partial independence, they sight her for their prey, or at
least they complacently suppose her accessible. Wretched at home, a woman
ought to bury herself in her wretchedness, else may she be assured that
not the cleverest, wariest guard will cover her character.

Against the husband her cause was triumphant. Against herself she decided
not to plead it, for this reason, that the preceding Court, which was the
public and only positive one, had entirely and justly exonerated her. But
the holding of her hand by the friend half a minute too long for
friendship, and the over-friendliness of looks, letters, frequency of
visits, would speak within her. She had a darting view of her husband's
estimation of them in his present mood. She quenched it; they were
trifles, things that women of the world have to combat. The revelation to
a fair-minded young woman of the majority of men being naught other than
men, and some of the friendliest of men betraying confidence under the
excuse of temptation, is one of the shocks to simplicity which leave her
the alternative of misanthropy or philosophy. Diana had not the heart to
hate her kind, so she resigned herself to pardon, and to the recognition
of the state of duel between the sexes-active enough in her sphere of
society. The circle hummed with it; many lived for it. Could she pretend
to ignore it? Her personal experience might have instigated a less clear
and less intrepid nature to take advantage of the opportunity for playing
the popular innocent, who runs about with astonished eyes to find herself
in so hunting a world, and wins general compassion, if not shelter in
unsuspected and unlicenced places. There is perpetually the inducement to
act the hypocrite before the hypocrite world, unless a woman submits to
be the humbly knitting housewife, unquestioningly worshipful of her lord;
for the world is ever gracious to an hypocrisy that pays homage to the
mask of virtue by copying it; the world is hostile to the face of an
innocence not conventionally simpering and quite surprised; the world
prefers decorum to honesty. 'Let me be myself, whatever the martyrdom!'
she cried, in that phase of young sensation when, to the blooming woman;
the putting on of a mask appears to wither her and reduce her to the show
she parades. Yet, in common with her sisterhood, she owned she had worn a
sort of mask; the world demands it of them as the price of their station.
That she had never worn it consentingly, was the plea for now casting it
off altogether, showing herself as she was, accepting martyrdom, becoming
the first martyr of the modern woman's cause--a grand position! and one
imaginable to an excited mind in the dark, which does not conjure a
critical humour, as light does, to correct the feverish sublimity. She
was, then, this martyr, a woman capable of telling the world she knew it,
and of, confessing that she had behaved in disdain of its rigider rules,
according to her own ideas of her immunities. O brave!

But was she holding the position by flight? It involved the challenge of
consequences, not an evasion of them.

She moaned; her mental steam-wheel stopped; fatigue brought sleep.

She had sensationally led her rebellious wits to The Crossways,
distilling much poison from thoughts on the way; and there, for the
luxury of a still seeming indecision, she sank into oblivion.




CHAPTER XI

RECOUNTS THE JOURNEY IN A CHARIOT, WITH A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF DIALOGUE, AND
A SMALL INCIDENT ON THE ROAD

In the morning the fight was over. She looked at the signpost of The
Crossways whilst dressing, and submitted to follow, obediently as a
puppet, the road recommended by friends, though a voice within, that
she took for the intimations of her reason, protested that they were
wrong, that they were judging of her case in the general, and
unwisely--disastrously for her.

The mistaking of her desires for her reasons was peculiar to her
situation.

'So I suppose I shall some day see The Crossways again,' she said, to
conceive a compensation in the abandonment of freedom. The night's red
vision of martyrdom was reserved to console her secretly, among the
unopened lockers in her treasury of thoughts. It helped to sustain her;
and she was too conscious of things necessary for her sustainment to
bring it to the light of day and examine it. She had a pitiful bit of
pleasure in the gratification she imparted to Danvers, by informing her
that the journey of the day was backward to Copsley.

'If I may venture to say so, ma'am, I am very glad,' said her maid.

'You must be prepared for the questions of lawyers, Danvers.'

'Oh, ma'am! they'll get nothing out of me, and their wigs won't frighten
me.'

'It is usually their baldness that is most frightening, my poor Danvers.'

'Nor their baldness, ma'am,' said the literal maid; 'I never cared for
their heads, or them. I've been in a Case before.'

'Indeed!' exclaimed her mistress; and she had a chill.

Danvers mentioned a notorious Case, adding, 'They got nothing out of me.'

'In my Case you will please to speak the truth,' said Diana, and beheld
in the looking-glass the primming of her maid's mouth. The sight shot a
sting.

'Understand that there is to be no hesitation about telling the truth of
what you know of me,' said Diana; and the answer was, 'No, ma'am.'

For Danvers could remark to herself that she knew little, and was not a
person to hesitate. She was a maid of the world, with the quality of
faithfulness, by nature, to a good mistress.

Redworth's further difficulties were confined to the hiring of a
conveyance for the travellers, and hot-water bottles, together with a
postillion not addicted to drunkenness. He procured a posting-chariot, an
ancient and musty, of a late autumnal yellow unrefreshed by paint; the
only bottles to be had were Dutch Schiedam. His postillion, inspected at
Storling, carried the flag of habitual inebriation on his nose, and he
deemed it adviseable to ride the mare in accompaniment as far as
Riddlehurst, notwithstanding the postillion's vows upon his honour that
he was no drinker. The emphasis, to a gentleman acquainted with his
countrymen, was not reassuring. He had hopes of enlisting a trustier
fellow at Riddlehurst, but he was disappointed; and while debating upon
what to do, for he shrank from leaving two women to the conduct of that
inflamed troughsnout, Brisby, despatched to Storling by an afterthought
of Lady Dunstane's, rushed out of the Riddlehurst inn taproom, and
relieved him of the charge of the mare. He was accommodated with a seat
on a stool in the chariot. 'My triumphal car,' said his captive. She was
very amusing about her postillion; Danvers had to beg pardon for
laughing. 'You are happy,' observed her mistress. But Redworth laughed
too, and he could not boast of any happiness beyond the temporary
satisfaction, nor could she who sprang the laughter boast of that little.
She said to herself, in the midst of the hilarity, 'Wherever I go now, in
all weathers, I am perfectly naked!' And remembering her readings of a
certain wonderful old quarto book in her father's library, by an
eccentric old Scottish nobleman, wherein the wearing of garments and
sleeping in houses is accused as the cause of human degeneracy, she took
a forced merry stand on her return to the primitive healthful state of
man and woman, and affected scorn of our modern ways of dressing and
thinking. Whence it came that she had some of her wildest seizures of
iridescent humour. Danvers attributed the fun to her mistress's gladness
in not having pursued her bent to quit the country. Redworth saw deeper,
and was nevertheless amazed by the airy hawk-poise and pounce-down of her
wit, as she ranged high and low, now capriciously generalizing, now
dropping bolt upon things of passage--the postillion jogging from rum to
gin, the rustics baconly agape, the horse-kneed ostlers. She touched them
to the life in similes and phrases; and next she was aloft, derisively
philosophizing, but with a comic afflatus that dispersed the sharpness of
her irony in mocking laughter. The afternoon refreshments at the inn of
the county market-town, and the English idea of public hospitality, as to
manner and the substance provided for wayfarers, were among the themes
she made memorable to him. She spoke of everything tolerantly, just
naming it in a simple sentence, that fell with a ring and chimed: their
host's ready acquiescence in receiving, orders, his contemptuous
disclaimer of stuff he did not keep, his flat indifference to the sheep
he sheared, and the phantom half-crown flickering in one eye of the
anticipatory waiter; the pervading and confounding smell of stale beer
over all the apartments; the prevalent, notion of bread, butter, tea,
milk, sugar, as matter for the exercise of a native inventive
genius--these were reviewed in quips of metaphor.

'Come, we can do better at an inn or two known to me,' said Redworth.

'Surely this is the best that can be done for us, when we strike them
with the magic wand of a postillion?' said she.

'It depends, as elsewhere, on the individuals entertaining us.'

'Yet you admit that your railways are rapidly "polishing off" the
individual.'

'They will spread the metropolitan idea of comfort.'

'I fear they will feed us on nothing but that big word. It booms--a
curfew bell--for every poor little light that we would read by.'

Seeing their beacon-nosed postillion preparing too mount and failing in
his jump, Redworth was apprehensive, and questioned the fellow concerning
potation.

'Lord, sir, they call me half a horse, but I can't 'bids water,' was the
reply, with the assurance that he had not 'taken a pailful.'

Habit enabled him to gain his seat.

'It seems to us unnecessary to heap on coal when the chimney is afire;
but he may know the proper course,' Diana said, convulsing Danvers; and
there was discernibly to Redworth, under the influence of her phrases, a
likeness of the flaming 'half-horse,' with the animals all smoking in the
frost, to a railway engine. 'Your wrinkled centaur,' she named the man.
Of course he had to play second to her, and not unwillingly; but he
reflected passingly on the instinctive push of her rich and sparkling
voluble fancy to the initiative, which women do not like in a woman, and
men prefer to distantly admire. English women and men feel toward the
quick-witted of their species as to aliens, having the demerits of
aliens-wordiness, vanity, obscurity, shallowness, an empty glitter, the
sin of posturing. A quick-witted woman exerting her wit is both a
foreigner and potentially a criminal. She is incandescent to a breath of
rumour. It accounted for her having detractors; a heavy counterpoise to
her enthusiastic friends. It might account for her husband's
discontent-the reduction of him to a state of mere masculine antagonism.
What is the husband of a vanward woman? He feels himself but a diminished
man. The English husband of a voluble woman relapses into a dreary mute.
Ah, for the choice of places! Redworth would have yielded her the loquent
lead for the smallest of the privileges due to him who now rejected all,
except the public scourging of her. The conviction was in his mind that
the husband of this woman sought rather to punish than be rid of her. But
a part of his own emotion went to form the judgement.

Furthermore, Lady Dunstane's allusion to her 'enemies' made him set down
her growing crops of backbiters to the trick she had of ridiculing things
English. If the English do it themselves, it is in a professionally
robust, a jocose, kindly way, always with a glance at the other things,
great things, they excel in; and it is done to have the credit of doing
it. They are keen to catch an inimical tone; they will find occasion to
chastise the presumptuous individual, unless it be the leader of a party,
therefore a power; for they respect a power. Redworth knew their
quaintnesses; without overlooking them he winced at the acid of an irony
that seemed to spring from aversion, and regretted it, for her sake. He
had to recollect that she was in a sharp-strung mood, bitterly
surexcited; moreover he reminded himself of her many and memorable
phrases of enthusiasm for England--Shakespeareland, as she would
sometimes perversely term it, to sink the country in the poet. English
fortitude, English integrity, the English disposition to do justice to
dependents, adolescent English ingenuousness, she was always ready to
laud. Only her enthusiasm required rousing by circumstances; it was less
at the brim than her satire. Hence she made enemies among a placable
people.

He felt that he could have helped her under happier conditions. The
beautiful vision she had been on the night of the Irish Ball swept before
him, and he looked at her, smiling.

'Why do you smile?' she said.

'I was thinking of Mr. Sullivan Smith.'

'Ah! my dear compatriot! And think, too, of Lord Larrian.'

She caught her breath. Instead of recreation, the names brought on a fit
of sadness. It deepened; shy neither smiled nor rattled any more. She
gazed across the hedgeways at the white meadows and bare-twigged copses
showing their last leaves in the frost.

'I remember your words: "Observation is the most, enduring of the
pleasures of life"; and so I have found it,' she said. There was a
brightness along her under-eyelids that caused him to look away.

The expected catastrophe occurred on the descent of a cutting in the
sand, where their cordial postillion at a trot bumped the chariot against
the sturdy wheels of a waggon, which sent it reclining for support upon a
beech-tree's huge intertwisted serpent roots, amid strips of brown
bracken and pendant weeds, while he exhibited one short stump of leg, all
boot, in air. No one was hurt. Diana disengaged herself from the shoulder
of Danvers, and mildly said:

'That reminds me, I forgot to ask why we came in a chariot.'

Redworth was excited on her behalf, but the broken glass had done no
damage, nor had Danvers fainted. The remark was unintelligible to him,
apart from the comforting it had been designed to give. He jumped out,
and held a hand for them to do the same. 'I never foresaw an event more
positively,' said he.

'And it was nothing but a back view that inspired you all the way,' said
Diana.

A waggoner held the horses, another assisted Redworth to right the
chariot. The postillion had hastily recovered possession of his official
seat, that he might as soon as possible feel himself again where he was
most intelligent, and was gay in stupidity, indifferent to what happened
behind him. Diana heard him counselling the waggoner as to the common
sense of meeting small accidents with a cheerful soul.

'Lord!' he cried, 'I been pitched a Somerset in my time, and taken up for
dead, and that didn't beat me!'

Disasters of the present kind could hardly affect such a veteran. But he
was painfully disconcerted by Redworth's determination not to entrust the
ladies any farther to his guidance. Danvers had implored for permission
to walk the mile to the town, and thence take a fly to Copsley. Her
mistress rather sided with the postillion; who begged them to spare him
the disgrace of riding in and delivering a box at the Red Lion.

'What'll they say? And they know Arthur Dance well there,' he groaned.
'What! Arthur! chariotin' a box! And me a better man to his work now than
I been for many a long season, fit for double the journey! A bit of a
shake always braces me up. I could read a newspaper right off, small
print and all. Come along, sir, and hand the ladies in.'

Danvers vowed her thanks to Mr. Redworth for refusing. They walked ahead;
the postillion communicated his mixture of professional and human
feelings to the waggoners, and walked his horses in the rear, meditating
on the weak-heartedness of gentryfolk, and the means for escaping being
chaffed out of his boots at the Old Red Lion, where he was to eat, drink,
and sleep that night. Ladies might be fearsome after a bit of a shake; he
would not have supposed it of a gentleman. He jogged himself into an
arithmetic of the number of nips of liquor he had taken to soothe him on
the road, in spite of the gentleman. 'For some of 'em are sworn enemies
of poor men, as yonder one, ne'er a doubt.'

Diana enjoyed her walk beneath the lingering brown-red of the frosty
November sunset, with the scent of sand-earth strong in the air.

'I had to hire a chariot because there was no two-horse carriage,' said
Redworth, 'and I wished to reach Copsley as early as possible.'

She replied, smiling, that accidents were fated. As a certain marriage
had been! The comparison forced itself on her reflections.

'But this is quite an adventure,' said she, reanimated by the brisker
flow of her blood. 'We ought really to be thankful for it, in days when
nothing happens.'

Redworth accused her of getting that idea from the perusal of romances.

'Yes, our lives require compression, like romances, to be interesting,
and we object to the process,' she said. 'Real happiness is a state of
dulness. When we taste it consciously it becomes mortal--a thing of the
Seasons. But I like my walk. How long these November sunsets burn, and
what hues they have! There is a scientific reason, only don't tell it me.
Now I understand why you always used to choose your holidays in
November.'

She thrilled him with her friendly recollection of his customs.

'As to happiness, the looking forward is happiness,' he remarked.

'Oh, the looking back! back!' she cried.

'Forward! that is life.'

'And backward, death, if you will; and still at is happiness. Death, and
our postillion!'

'Ay; I wonder why the fellow hangs to the rear,' said Redworth, turning
about.

'It's his cunning strategy, poor creature, so that he may be thought to
have delivered us at the head of the town, for us to make a purchase or
two, if we go to the inn on foot,' said Diana. 'We 'll let the manoeuvre
succeed.'

Redworth declared that she had a head for everything, and she was
flattered to hear him.

So passing from the southern into the western road, they saw the
town-lights beneath an amber sky burning out sombrely over the woods of
Copsley, and entered the town, the postillion following.




CHAPTER XII

BETWEEN EMMA AND DIANA

Diana was in the arms of her friend at a late hour of the evening, and
Danvers breathed the amiable atmosphere of footmen once more, professing
herself perished. This maid of the world, who could endure hardships and
loss of society for the mistress to whom she was attached, no sooner saw
herself surrounded by the comforts befitting her station, than she
indulged in the luxury of a wailful dejectedness, the better to
appreciate them. She was unaffectedly astonished to find her outcries
against the cold and the journeyings to and fro interpreted as a
serving-woman's muffled comments on her mistress's behaviour. Lady
Dunstane's maid Bartlett, and Mrs. Bridges the housekeeper, and Foster
the butler, contrived to let her know that they could speak an if they
would; and they expressed their pity of her to assist her to begin the
speaking. She bowed in acceptance of Fosters offer of a glass of wine
after supper, but treated him and the other two immediately as though
they had been interrogating bigwigs.

'They wormed nothing out of me,' she said to her mistress at night,
undressing her. 'But what a set they are! They've got such comfortable
places, they've all their days and hours for talk of the doings of their
superiors. They read the vilest of those town papers, and they put their
two and two together of what is happening in and about. And not one of
the footmen thinks of staying, because it 's so dull; and they and the
maids object--did one ever hear?--to the three uppers retiring, when they
've done dining, to the private room to dessert.'

'That is the custom?' observed her mistress.

'Foster carries the decanter, ma'am, and Mrs. Bridges the biscuits, and
Bartlett the plate of fruit, and they march out in order.'

'The man at the head of the procession, probably.'

'Oh yes. And the others, though they have everything except the wine and
dessert, don't like it. When I was here last they were new, and hadn't a
word against it. Now they say it's invidious! Lady Dunstane will be left
without an under-servant at Copsley soon. I was asked about your boxes,
ma'am, and the moment I said they were at Dover, that instant all three
peeped. They let out a mouse to me. They do love to talk!'

Her mistress could have added, 'And you too, my good Danvers!'
trustworthy though she knew the creature to be in the main.

'Now go, and be sure you have bedclothes enough before you drop asleep,'
she said; and Danvers directed her steps to gossip with Bartlett.

Diana wrapped herself in a dressing-gown Lady Dunstane had sent her, and
sat by the fire, thinking of the powder of tattle stored in servants'
halls to explode beneath her: and but for her choice of roads she might
have been among strangers. The liking of strangers best is a curious
exemplification of innocence.

'Yes, I was in a muse,' she said, raising her head to Emma, whom she
expected and sat armed to meet, unaccountably iron-nerved. 'I was
questioning whether I could be quite as blameless as I fancy, if I sit
and shiver to be in England. You will tell me I have taken the right
road. I doubt it. But the road is taken, and here I am. But any road that
leads me to you is homeward, my darling!' She tried to melt, determining
to be at least open with her.

'I have not praised you enough for coming,' said Emma, when they had
embraced again.

'Praise a little your "truest friend of women." Your letter gave the tug.
I might have resisted it.'

'He came straight from heaven! But, cruel Tony where is your love?'

'It is unequal to yours, dear, I see. I could have wrestled with anything
abstract and distant, from being certain. But here I am.'

'But, my own dear girl, you never could have allowed this infamous charge
to be undefended?'

'I think so. I've an odd apathy as to my character; rather like death,
when one dreams of flying the soul. What does it matter? I should have
left the flies and wasps to worry a corpse. And then-good-bye gentility!
I should have worked for my bread. I had thoughts of America. I fancy I
can write; and Americans, one hears, are gentle to women.'

'Ah, Tony! there's the looking back. And, of all women, you!'

'Or else, dear-well, perhaps once on foreign soil, in a different air, I
might--might have looked back, and seen my whole self, not shattered, as
I feel it now, and come home again compassionate to the poor persecuted
animal to defend her. Perhaps that was what I was running away for. I
fled on the instinct, often a good thing to trust.'

'I saw you at The Crossways.'

'I remembered I had the dread that you would, though I did not imagine
you would reach me so swiftly. My going there was an instinct, too. I
suppose we are all instinct when we have the world at our heels. Forgive
me if I generalize without any longer the right to be included in the
common human sum. "Pariah" and "taboo" are words we borrow from barbarous
tribes; they stick to me.'

'My Tony, you look as bright as ever, and you speak despairingly.'

'Call me enigma. I am that to myself, Emmy.'

'You are not quite yourself to your friend.'

'Since the blow I have been bewildered; I see nothing upright. It came on
me suddenly; stunned me. A bolt out of a clear sky, as they say. He
spared me a scene: There had been threats, and yet the sky was clear, or
seemed. When we have a man for arbiter, he is our sky.'

Emma pressed her Tony's unresponsive hand, feeling strangely that her
friend ebbed from her.

'Has he . . . to mislead him?' she said, colouring at the breach in the
question.

'Proofs? He has the proofs he supposes.'

'Not to justify suspicion?'

'He broke open my desk and took my letters.'

'Horrible! But the letters?' Emma shook with a nervous revulsion.

'You might read them.'

'Basest of men! That is the unpardonable cowardice!', exclaimed Emma.

'The world will read them, dear,' said Diana, and struck herself to ice.
She broke from the bitter frigidity in fury. 'They are letters--none very
long--sometimes two short sentences--he wrote at any spare moment. On my
honour, as a woman, I feel for him most. The letters--I would bear any
accusation rather than that exposure. Letters of a man of his age to a
young woman he rates too highly!

The world reads them. Do you hear it saying it could have excused her for
that fiddle-faddle with a younger--a young lover? And had I thought of a
lover! . . . I had no thought of loving or being loved. I confess I was
flattered. To you, Emma, I will confess . . . . You see the public
ridicule!--and half his age, he and I would have appeared a romantic
couple! Confess, I said. Well, dear, the stake is lighted for a trial of
its effect on me. It is this: he was never a dishonourable friend; but
men appear to be capable of friendship with women only for as long as we
keep out of pulling distance of that line where friendship ceases. They
may step on it; we must hold back a league. I have learnt it. You will
judge whether he disrespects me. As for him, he is a man; at his worst,
not one of the worst; at his best, better than very many. There, now,
Emma, you have me stripped and burning; there is my full confession.
Except for this--yes, one thing further--that I do rage at the ridicule,
and could choose, but for you, to have given the world cause to revile
me, or think me romantic. Something or somebody to suffer for would
really be agreeable. It is a singular fact, I have not known what this
love is, that they talk about. And behold me marched into
Smithfield!--society's heretic, if you please. I must own I think it
hard.'

Emma chafed her cold hand softly.

'It is hard; I understand it,' she murmured. 'And is your Sunday visit to
us in the list of offences?'

'An item.'

'You gave me a happy day.'

'Then it counts for me in heaven.'

'He set spies on you?'

'So we may presume.'

Emma went through a sphere of tenuious reflections in a flash.

'He will rue it. Perhaps now . . . he may now be regretting his wretched
frenzy. And Tony could pardon; she has the power of pardoning in her
heart.'

'Oh! certainly, dear. But tell me why it is you speak to-night rather
unlike the sedate, philosophical Emma; in a tone-well, tolerably
sentimental?'

'I am unaware of it,' said Emma, who could have retorted with a like
reproach. 'I am anxious, I will not say at present for your happiness,
for your peace; and I have a hope that possibly a timely word from some
friend--Lukin or another--might induce him to consider.'

'To pardon me, do you mean?' cried Diana, flushing sternly.

'Not pardon. Suppose a case of faults on both sides.'

'You address a faulty person, my dear. But do you know that you are
hinting at a reconcilement?'

'Might it not be?'

'Open your eyes to what it involves. I trust I can pardon. Let him go his
ways, do his darkest, or repent. But return to the roof of the "basest of
men," who was guilty of "the unpardonable cowardice"? You expect me to be
superhuman. When I consent to that, I shall be out of my woman's skin,
which he has branded. Go back to him!' She was taken with a shudder of
head and limbs. 'No; I really have the power of pardoning, and I am bound
to; for among my debts to him, this present exemption, that is like
liberty dragging a chain, or, say, an escaped felon wearing his manacles,
should count. I am sensible of my obligation. The price I pay for it is
an immovable patch-attractive to male idiots, I have heard, and a mark of
scorn to females. Between the two the remainder of my days will be
lively. "Out, out, damned spot!" But it will not. And not on the hand--on
the forehead! We'll talk of it no longer. I have sent a note, with an
enclosure, to my lawyers. I sell The Crossways, if I have the married
woman's right to any scrap of property, for money to scatter fees.'

'My purse, dear Tony!' exclaimed Emma. 'My house! You will stay with me?
Why do you shake your head? With me you are safe.' She spied at the
shadows in her friend's face. 'Ever since your marriage, Tony, you have
been strange in your trick of refusing to stay with me. And you and I
made our friendship the pledge of a belief in eternity! We vowed it.
Come, I do talk sentimentally, but my heart is in it. I beg you--all the
reasons are with me--to make my house your home. You will. You know I am
rather lonely.'

Diana struggled to keep her resolution from being broken by tenderness.
And doubtless poor Sir Lukin had learnt his lesson; still, her defensive
instincts could never quite slumber under his roof; not because of any
further fear that they would have to be summoned; it was chiefly owing to
the consequences of his treacherous foolishness. For this half-home with
her friend thenceforward denied to her, she had accepted a protector,
called husband--rashly, past credence, in the retrospect; but it had been
her propelling motive; and the loathings roused by her marriage helped to
sicken her at the idea of a lengthened stay where she had suffered the
shock precipitating her to an act of insanity.

'I do not forget you were an heiress, Emmy, and I will come to you if I
need money to keep my head up. As for staying, two reasons are against
it. If I am to fight my battle, I must be seen; I must go about--wherever
I am received. So my field is London. That is obvious. And I shall rest
better in a house where my story is not known.'

Two or three questions ensued. Diana had to fortify her fictitious
objection by alluding to her maid's prattle of the household below; and
she excused the hapless, overfed, idle people of those regions.

To Emma it seemed a not unnatural sensitiveness. She came to a settled
resolve in her thoughts, as she said, 'They want a change. London is
their element.'

Feeling that she deceived this true heart, however lightly and
necessarily, Diana warmed to her, forgiving her at last for having netted
and dragged her back to front the enemy; an imposition of horrors, of
which the scene and the travelling with Redworth, the talking of her case
with her most intimate friend as well, had been a distempering foretaste.

They stood up and kissed, parting for the night.

An odd world, where for the sin we have not participated in we must fib
and continue fibbing, she reflected. She did not entirely cheat her
clearer mind, for she perceived that her step in flight had been urged
both by a weak despondency and a blind desperation; also that the world
of a fluid civilization is perforce artificial. But her mind was in the
background of her fevered senses, and when she looked in the glass and
mused on uttering the word, 'Liar!' to the lovely image, her senses were
refreshed, her mind somewhat relieved, the face appeared so sovereignly
defiant of abasement.

Thus did a nature distraught by pain obtain some short lull of repose.
Thus, moreover, by closely reading herself, whom she scourged to excess
that she might in justice be comforted, she gathered an increasing
knowledge of our human constitution, and stored matter for the brain.




CHAPTER XIII

TOUCHING THE FIRST DAYS OF HER PROBATION

The result of her sleeping was, that Diana's humour, locked up overnight,
insisted on an excursion, as she lay with half-buried head and open
eyelids, thinking of the firm of lawyers she had to see; and to whom, and
to the legal profession generally, she would be, under outward
courtesies, nothing other than 'the woman Warwick.' She pursued the woman
Warwick unmercifully through a series of interviews with her decorous and
crudely-minded defenders; accurately perusing them behind their senior
staidness. Her scorching sensitiveness sharpened her intelligence in
regard to the estimate of discarded wives entertained by men of business
and plain men of the world, and she drove the woman Warwick down their
ranks, amazed by the vision of a puppet so unlike to herself in reality,
though identical in situation. That woman, reciting her side of the case,
gained a gradual resemblance to Danvers; she spoke primly; perpetually
the creature aired her handkerchief; she was bent on softening those
sugarloaves, the hard business-men applying to her for facts. Facts were
treated as unworthy of her; mere stuff of the dustheap, mutton-bones, old
shoes; she swam above them in a cocoon of her spinning, sylphidine,
unseizable; and between perplexing and mollifying the slaves of facts,
she saw them at their heels, a tearful fry, abjectly imitative of her
melodramatic performances. The spectacle was presented of a band of legal
gentlemen vociferating mightily for swords and the onset, like the
Austrian empress's Magyars, to vindicate her just and holy cause. Our
Law-courts failing, they threatened Parliament, and for a last resort,
the country! We are not going to be the woman Warwick without a stir, my
brethren.

Emma, an early riser that morning, for the purpose of a private
consultation with Mr. Redworth, found her lying placidly wakeful, to
judge by appearances.

'You have not slept, my dear child?'

'Perfectly,' said Diana, giving her hand and offering the lips. 'I'm only
having a warm morning bath in bed,' she added, in explanation of a chill
moisture that the touch of her exposed skin betrayed; for whatever the
fun of the woman Warwick, there had been sympathetic feminine horrors in
the frame of the sentient woman.

Emma fancied she kissed a quiet sufferer. A few remarks very soon set her
wildly laughing. Both were laughing when Danvers entered the room, rather
guilty, being late; and the sight of the prim-visaged maid she had been
driving among the lawyers kindled Diana's comic imagination to such a
pitch that she ran riot in drolleries, carrying her friend headlong on
the tide.

'I have not laughed so much since you were married,' said Emma.

'Nor I, dear; proving that the bar to it was the ceremony,' said Diana.

She promised to remain at Copsley three days. 'Then for the campaign in
Mr. Redworth's metropolis. I wonder whether I may ask him to get me
lodgings: a sitting-room and two bedrooms. The Crossways has a board up
for letting. I should prefer to be my own tenant; only it would give me a
hundred pounds more to get a substitute's money. I should like to be at
work writing instantly. Ink is my opium, and the pen my nigger, and he
must dig up gold for me. It is written. Danvers, you can make ready to
dress me when I ring.'

Emma helped the beautiful woman to her dressing-gown and the step from
her bed. She had her thoughts, and went down to Redworth at the
breakfast-table, marvelling that any husband other than a madman could
cast such a jewel away. The material loveliness eclipses intellectual
qualities in such reflections.

'He must be mad,' she said, compelled to disburden herself in a congenial
atmosphere; which, however, she infrigidated by her overflow of
exclamatory wonderment--a curtain that shook voluminous folds, luring
Redworth to dreams of the treasure forfeited. He became rigidly
practical.

'Provision will have to be made for her. Lukin must see Mr. Warwick. She
will do wisely to stay with friends in town, mix in company. Women are
the best allies for such cases. Who are her solicitors?'

'They are mine: Braddock, Thorpe, and Simnel.'

'A good firm. She is in safe hands with them. I dare say they may come to
an arrangement.'

'I should wish it. She will never consent.'

Redworth shrugged. A woman's 'never' fell far short of outstripping the
sturdy pedestrian Time, to his mind.

Diana saw him drive off to catch the coach in the valley, regulated to
meet the train, and much though she liked him, she was not sorry that he
had gone. She felt the better clad for it. She would have rejoiced to
witness the departure on wings of all her friends, except Emma, to whom
her coldness overnight had bound her anew warmly in contrition. And yet
her friends were well-beloved by her; but her emotions were distraught.

Emma told her that Mr. Redworth had undertaken to hire a suite of
convenient rooms, and to these she looked forward, the nest among
strangers, where she could begin to write, earning bread: an idea that,
with the pride of independence, conjured the pleasant morning smell of a
bakery about her.

She passed three peaceable days at Copsley, at war only with the luxury
of the house. On the fourth, a letter to Lady Dunstane from Redworth gave
the address of the best lodgings he could find, and Diana started for
London.

She had during a couple of weeks, besides the first fresh exercising of
her pen, as well as the severe gratification of economy, a savage
exultation in passing through the streets on foot and unknown. Save for
the plunges into the office of her solicitors, she could seem to herself
a woman who had never submitted to the yoke. What a pleasure it was,
after finishing a number of pages, to start Eastward toward the
lawyer-regions, full of imaginary cropping incidents, and from that
churchyard Westward, against smoky sunsets, or in welcome fogs, an atom
of the crowd! She had an affection for the crowd. They clothed her. She
laughed at the gloomy forebodings of Danvers concerning the perils
environing ladies in the streets after dark alone. The lights in the
streets after dark and the quick running of her blood, combined to strike
sparks of fancy and inspirit the task of composition at night. This new,
strange, solitary life, cut off from her adulatory society, both by the
shock that made the abyss and by the utter foreignness, threw her in upon
her natural forces, recasting her, and thinning away her memory of her
past days, excepting girlhood, into the remote. She lived with her
girlhood as with a simple little sister. They were two in one, and she
corrected the dreams of the younger, protected and counselled her very
sagely, advising her to love Truth and look always to Reality for her
refreshment. She was ready to say, that no habitable spot on our planet
was healthier and pleasanter than London. As to the perils haunting the
head of Danvers, her experiences assured her of a perfect immunity from
them; and the maligned thoroughfares of a great city, she was ready to
affirm, contrasted favourably with certain hospitable halls.

The long-suffering Fates permitted her for a term to enjoy the generous
delusion. Subsequently a sweet surprise alleviated the shock she had
sustained. Emma Dunstane's carriage was at her door, and Emma entered her
sitting-room, to tell her of having hired a house in the neighbourhood,
looking on the park. She begged to have her for guest, sorrowfully
anticipating the refusal. At least they were to be near one another.

'You really like this life in lodgings?' asked Emma, to whom the stiff
furniture and narrow apartments were a dreariness, the miserably small
fire of the sitting-room an aspect of cheerless winter.

'I do,' said Diana; 'yes,' she added with some reserve, and smiled at her
damped enthusiasm, 'I can eat when I like, walk, work--and I am working!
My legs and my pen demand it. Let me be independent! Besides, I begin to
learn something of the bigger world outside the one I know, and I crush
my mincing tastes. In return for that, I get a sense of strength I had
not when I was a drawing-room exotic. Much is repulsive. But I am taken
with a passion for reality.'

They spoke of the lawyers, and the calculated period of the trial; of the
husband too, in his inciting belief in the falseness of his wife. 'That
is his excuse,' Diana said, her closed mouth meditatively dimpling the
comers over thoughts of his grounds for fury. He had them, though none
for the incriminating charge. The Sphinx mouth of the married woman at
war and at bay must be left unriddled. She and the law differed in their
interpretation of the dues of wedlock.

But matters referring to her case were secondary with Diana beside the
importance of her storing impressions. Her mind required to hunger for
something, and this Reality which frequently she was forced to loathe,
she forced herself proudly to accept, despite her youthfulness. Her
philosophy swallowed it in the lump, as the great serpent his meal; she
hoped to digest it sleeping likewise. Her visits of curiosity to the Law
Courts, where she stood spying and listening behind a veil, gave her a
great deal of tough substance to digest. There she watched the process of
the tortures to be applied to herself, and hardened her senses for the
ordeal. She saw there the ribbed and shanked old skeleton world on which
our fair fleshly is moulded. After all, your Fool's Paradise is not a
garden to grow in. Charon's ferry-boat is not thicker with phantoms. They
do not live in mind or soul. Chiefly women people it: a certain class of
limp men; women for the most part: they are sown there. And put their
garden under the magnifying glass of intimacy, what do we behold? A world
not better than the world it curtains, only foolisher.

Her conversations with Lady Dunstane brought her at last to the point of
her damped enthusiasm. She related an incident or two occurring in her
career of independence, and they discussed our state of civilization
plainly and gravely, save for the laughing peals her phrases occasionally
provoked; as when she named the intruders and disturbers of
solitarily-faring ladies, 'Cupid's footpads.' Her humour was created to
swim on waters where a prescribed and cultivated prudery should pretend
to be drowning.

'I was getting an exalted idea of English gentlemen, Emmy. "Rich and rare
were the gems she wore." I was ready to vow that one might traverse the
larger island similarly respected. I praised their chivalry. I thought it
a privilege to live in such a land. I cannot describe to you how
delightful it was to me to walk out and home generally protected. I might
have been seriously annoyed but that one of the clerks-"articled," he
called himself--of our lawyers happened to be by. He offered to guard me,
and was amusing with his modest tiptoe air. No, I trust to the English
common man more than ever. He is a man of honour. I am convinced he is
matchless in any other country, except Ireland. The English gentleman
trades on his reputation.'

He was condemned by an afflicted delicacy, the sharpest of critical
tribunals.

Emma bade her not to be too sweeping from a bad example.

'It is not a single one,' said Diana. 'What vexes me and frets me is,
that I must be a prisoner, or allow Danvers to mount guard. And I can't
see the end of it. And Danvers is no magician. She seems to know her
countrymen, though. She warded one of them off, by saying to me: "This is
the crossing, my lady." He fled.'

Lady Dunstane affixed the popular title to the latter kind of gentleman.
She was irritated on her friend's behalf, and against the worrying of her
sisterhood, thinking in her heart, nevertheless, that the passing of a
face and figure like Diana's might inspire honourable emotions, pitiable
for being hapless.

'If you were with me, dear, you would have none of these annoyances,' she
said, pleading forlornly.

Diana smiled to herself. 'No! I should relapse into softness. This life
exactly suits my present temper. My landlady is respectful and attentive;
the little housemaid is a willing slave; Danvers does not despise them
pugnaciously; they make a home for me, and I am learning daily. Do you
know, the less ignorant I become, the more considerate I am for the
ignorance of others--I love them for it.' She squeezed Emma's hand with
more meaning than her friend apprehended. 'So I win my advantage from the
trifles I have to endure. They are really trifles, and I should once have
thought them mountains!'

For the moment Diana stipulated that she might not have to encounter
friends or others at Lady Dunstane's dinner-table, and the season not
being favourable to those gatherings planned by Lady Dunstane in her
project of winning supporters, there was a respite, during which Sir
Lukin worked manfully at his three Clubs to vindicate Diana's name from
the hummers and hawers, gaining half a dozen hot adherents, and a body of
lukewarm, sufficiently stirred to be desirous to see the lady. He worked
with true champion zeal, although an interview granted him by the husband
settled his opinion as to any possibility of the two ever coming to
terms. Also it struck him that if he by misadventure had been a woman and
the wife of such a fellow, by Jove! . . .his apostrophe to the father of
the gods of pagandom signifying the amount of matter Warwick would have
had reason to complain of in earnest. By ricochet his military mind
rebounded from his knowledge of himself to an ardent, faith in Mrs.
Warwick's innocence; for, as there was no resemblance between them, there
must, he deduced, be a difference in their capacity for enduring the
perpetual company of a prig, a stick, a petrified poser. Moreover, the
novel act of advocacy, and the nature of the advocacy, had effect on him.
And then he recalled the scene in the winter beech-woods, and Diana's
wild-deer eyes; her, perfect generosity to a traitor and fool. How could
he have doubted her? Glimpses of the corrupting cause for it partly
penetrated his density: a conqueror of ladies, in mid-career, doubts them
all. Of course he had meant no harm, nothing worse than some petty
philandering with the loveliest woman of her time. And, by Jove! it was
worth the rebuff to behold the Beauty in her wrath.

The reflections of Lothario, however much tending tardily to do justice
to a particular lady, cannot terminate wholesomely. But he became a
gallant partisan. His portrayal of Mr. Warwick to his wife and his
friends was fine caricature. 'The fellow had his hand up at my first
word--stood like a sentinel under inspection. "Understand, Sir Lukin,
that I receive you simply as an acquaintance. As an intermediary, permit
me to state that you are taking superfluous trouble. The case must
proceed. It is final. She is at liberty, in the meantime, to draw on my
bankers for the provision she may need, at the rate of five hundred
pounds per annum." He spoke of "the lady now bearing my name." He was
within an inch of saying "dishonouring." I swear I heard the "dis," and
he caught himself up. He "again declined any attempt towards
reconciliation." It could "only be founded on evasion of the truth to be
made patent on the day of trial." Half his talk was lawyers' lingo. The
fellow's teeth looked like frost. If Lot's wife had a brother, his name's
Warwick. How Diana Merion, who could have had the pick of the best of us,
ever came to marry a fellow like that, passes my comprehension, queer
creatures as women are! He can ride; that's about all he can do. I told
him Mrs. Warwick had no thought of reconciliation. "Then, Sir Lukin, you
will perceive that we have no standpoint for a discussion." I told him
the point was, for a man of honour not to drag his wife before the
public, as he had no case to stand on--less than nothing. You should have
seen the fellow's face. He shot a sneer up to his eyelids, and flung his
head back. So I said, "Good-day." He marches me to the door, "with his
compliments to Lady Dunstane." I could have floored him for that. Bless
my soul, what fellows the world is made of, when here's a man, calling
himself a gentleman, who, just because he gets in a rage with his wife
for one thing or another--and past all competition the handsomest woman
of her day, and the cleverest, the nicest, the best of the whole
boiling--has her out for a public horsewhipping, and sets all the idiots
of the kingdom against her! I tried to reason with him. He made as if he
were going to sleep standing.'

Sir Lukin gratified Lady Dunstane by his honest championship of Diana.
And now, in his altered mood (the thrice indebted rogue was just cloudily
conscious of a desire to propitiate his dear wife by serving her friend),
he began a crusade against the scandal-newspapers, going with an Irish
military comrade straight to the editorial offices, and leaving his card
and a warning that the chastisement for print of the name of the lady in
their columns would be personal and condign. Captain Carew Mahony, albeit
unacquainted with Mrs. Warwick, had espoused her cause. She was a woman,
she was an Irishwoman, she was a beautiful woman. She had, therefore,
three positive claims on him as a soldier and a man. Other Irish
gentlemen, animated by the same swelling degrees, were awaking to the
intimation that they might be wanted. Some words were dropped here and
there by General Lord Larrian: he regretted his age and infirmities. A
goodly regiment for a bodyguard might have been selected to protect her
steps in the public streets; when it was bruited that the General had
sent her a present of his great Newfoundland dog, Leander, to attend on
her and impose a required respect. But as it chanced that her address was
unknown to the volunteer constabulary, they had to assuage their ardour
by thinking the dog luckier than they.

The report of the dog was a fact. He arrived one morning at Diana's
lodgings, with a soldier to lead him, and a card to introduce:--the
Hercules of dogs, a very ideal of the species, toweringly big,
benevolent, reputed a rescuer of lives, disdainful of dog-fighting,
devoted to his guardian's office, with a majestic paw to give and the
noblest satisfaction in receiving caresses ever expressed by mortal male
enfolded about the head, kissed, patted, hugged, snuggled, informed that
he was his new mistress's one love and darling.

She despatched a thrilling note of thanks to Lord Larrian, sure of her
touch upon an Irish heart.

The dog Leander soon responded to the attachment of a mistress enamoured
of him. 'He is my husband,' she said to Emma, and started a tear in the
eyes of her smiling friend; 'he promises to trust me, and never to have
the law of me, and to love my friends as his own; so we are certain to
agree.' In rain, snow, sunshine, through the parks and the streets, he
was the shadow of Diana, commanding, on the whole, apart from some
desperate attempts to make him serve as introducer, a civilized behaviour
in the legions of Cupid's footpads. But he helped, innocently enough, to
create an enemy.




CHAPTER XIV

GIVING GLIMPSES OF DIANA UNDER HER CLOUD BEFORE THE WORLD AND OF HER
FURTHER APPRENTICESHIP

As the day of her trial became more closely calculable, Diana's
anticipated alarms receded with the deadening of her heart to meet the
shock. She fancied she had put on proof-armour, unconscious that it was
the turning of the inward flutterer to steel, which supplied her cuirass
and shield. The necessity to brave society, in the character of honest
Defendant, caused but a momentary twitch of the nerves. Her heart beat
regularly, like a serviceable clock; none of her faculties abandoned her
save songfulness, and none belied her, excepting a disposition to
tartness almost venomous in the sarcastic shafts she let fly at friends
interceding with Mr. Warwick to spare his wife, when she had determined
to be tried. A strange fit of childishness overcame her powers of
thinking, and was betrayed in her manner of speaking, though--to herself
her dwindled humour allowed her to appear the towering Britomart. She
pouted contemptuously on hearing that a Mr. Sullivan Smith (a remotely
recollected figure) had besought Mr. Warwick for an interview, and gained
it, by stratagem, 'to bring the man to his senses': but an ultra-Irishman
did not compromise her battle-front, as the busybody supplications of a
personal friend like Mr. Redworth did; and that the latter, without
consulting her, should be 'one of the plaintive crew whining about the
heels of the Plaintiff for a mercy she disdained and rejected' was bitter
to her taste.

'He does not see that unless I go through the fire there is no
justification for this wretched character of mine!' she exclaimed. Truce,
treaty, withdrawal, signified publicly pardon, not exoneration by any
means; and now that she was in armour she had no dread of the public. So
she said. Redworth's being then engaged upon the canvass of a borough,
added to the absurdity of his meddling with the dilemmas of a woman.
'Dear me, Emma! think of stepping aside from the parliamentary road to
entreat a husband to relent, and arrange the domestic alliance of a
contrary couple! Quixottry is agreeable reading, a silly performance.'
Lady Dunstane pleaded his friendship. She had to quit the field where
such darts were showering.

The first dinner-party was aristocratic, easy to encounter. Lord and Lady
Crane, Lady Pennon, Lord and Lady Esquart, Lord Larrian, Mr. and Mrs.
Montvert of Halford Manor, Lady Singleby, Sir Walter Capperston friends,
admirers of Diana; patrons, in the phrase of the time, of her father,
were the guests. Lady Pennon expected to be amused, and was gratified,
for Diana had only to open her mouth to set the great lady laughing. She
petitioned to have Mrs. Warwick at her table that day week, because the
marquis was dying to make her acquaintance, and begged to have all her
sayings repeated to him; vowed she must be salt in the desert. 'And
remember, I back you through thick and thin,' said Lady Pennon. To which
Diana replied: 'If I am salt in the desert, you are the spring'; and the
old lady protested she must put that down for her book. The witty Mrs.
Warwick, of whom wit was expected, had many incitements to be guilty of
cheap wit; and the beautiful Mrs. Warwick, being able to pass anything
she uttered, gave good and bad alike, under the impulsion to give out
something, that the stripped and shivering Mrs. Warwick might find a
cover in applause. She discovered the social uses of cheap wit; she laid
ambushes for anecdotes, a telling form of it among a people of no
conversational interlocution, especially in the circles depending for
dialogue upon perpetual fresh supplies of scandal; which have plentiful
crops, yet not sufficient. The old dinner and supper tables at The
Crossways furnished her with an abundant store; and recollection failing,
she invented. Irish anecdotes are always popular in England, as
promoting, besides the wholesome shake of the sides, a kindly sense of
superiority. Anecdotes also are portable, unlike the lightning flash,
which will not go into the pocket; they can be carried home, they are
disbursable at other tables. These were Diana's weapons. She was perforce
the actress of her part.

In happier times, when light of heart and natural, her vogue had not been
so enrapturing. Doubtless Cleopatra in her simple Egyptian uniform would
hardly have won such plaudits as her stress of barbaric Oriental
splendours evoked for her on the swan and serpent Nile-barge--not from
posterity at least. It is a terrible decree, that all must act who would
prevail; and the more extended the audience, the greater need for the
mask and buskin.

From Lady Pennon's table Diana passed to Lady Crane's, Lady Esquart's,
Lady Singleby's, the Duchess of Raby's, warmly clad in the admiration she
excited. She appeared at Princess Therese Paryli's first ball of the
season, and had her circle, not of worshippers only. She did not dance.
The princess, a fair Austrian, benevolent to her sisterhood, an admirer
of Diana's contrasting complexion, would have had her dance once in a
quadrille of her forming, but yielded to the mute expression of the
refusal. Wherever Mrs. Warwick went, her arts of charming were addressed
to the women. Men may be counted on for falling bowled over by a handsome
face and pointed tongue; women require some wooing from their ensphered
and charioted sister, particularly if she is clouded; and old
women--excellent buttresses--must be suavely courted. Now, to woo the
swimming matron and court the settled dowager, she had to win forgiveness
for her beauty; and this was done, easily done, by forbearing to angle
with it in the press of nibblers. They ranged about her, individually
unnoticed. Seeming unaware of its effect where it kindled, she smote a
number of musical female chords, compassion among them. A general grave
affability of her eyes and smiles was taken for quiet pleasure in the
scene. Her fitful intentness of look when conversing with the older
ladies told of the mind within at work upon what they said, and she was
careful that plain dialogue should make her comprehensible to them.
Nature taught her these arts, through which her wit became extolled
entirely on the strength of her reputation, and her beauty did her
service by never taking aim abroad. They are the woman's arts of
self-defence, as legitimately and honourably hers as the manful use of
the fists with a coarser sex. If it had not been nature that taught her
the practice of them in extremity, the sagacious dowagers would have seen
brazenness rather than innocence--or an excuseable indiscretion--in the
part she was performing. They are not lightly duped by one of their sex.
Few tasks are more difficult than for a young woman under a cloud to
hoodwink old women of the world. They are the prey of financiers, but
Time has presented them a magic ancient glass to scan their sex in.

At Princess Paryli's Ball two young men of singular elegance were
observed by Diana, little though she concentered her attention on any
figures of the groups. She had the woman's faculty (transiently bestowed
by perfervid jealousy upon men) of distinguishing minutely in the calmest
of indifferent glances. She could see without looking; and when her eyes
were wide they had not to dwell to be detective. It did not escape her
that the Englishman of the two hurried for the chance of an introduction,
nor that he suddenly, after putting a question to a man beside him,
retired. She spoke of them to Emma as they drove home. 'The princess's
partner in the first quadrille . . . Hungarian, I suppose? He was like a
Tartar modelled by a Greek: supple as the Scythian's bow, braced as the
string! He has the air of a born horseman, and valses perfectly. I won't
say he was handsomer than a young Englishman there, but he had the
advantage of soldierly training. How different is that quick springy
figure from our young men's lounging style! It comes of military exercise
and discipline.'

'That was Count Jochany, a cousin of the princess, and a cavalry
officer,' said Emma. 'You don't know the other? I am sure the one you
mean must be Percy Dacier.'

His retiring was explained: the Hon. Percy Dacier was the nephew of Lord
Dannisburgh, often extolled to her as the promising youngster of his day,
with the reserve that he wasted his youth: for the young gentleman was
decorous and studious; ambitious, according to report; a politician
taking to politics much too seriously and exclusively to suit his uncle's
pattern for the early period of life. Uncle and nephew went their
separate ways, rarely meeting, though their exchange of esteem was
cordial.

Thinking over his abrupt retirement from the crowded semicircle, Diana
felt her position pinch her, she knew not why.

Lady Dunstane was as indefatigable by day as by night in the business of
acting goddess to her beloved Tony, whom she assured that the service,
instead of exhausting, gave her such healthfulness as she had imagined
herself to have lost for ever. The word was passed, and invitations
poured in to choice conversational breakfasts, private afternoon
concerts, all the humming season's assemblies. Mr. Warwick's treatment of
his wife was taken by implication for lunatic; wherever she was heard or
seen, he had no case; a jury of some hundreds of both sexes, ready to be
sworn, pronounced against him. Only the personal enemies of the lord in
the suit presumed to doubt, and they exercised the discretion of a
minority.

But there is an upper middle class below the aristocratic, boasting an
aristocracy of morals, and eminently persuasive of public opinion, if not
commanding it. Previous to the relaxation, by amendment, of a certain
legal process, this class was held to represent the austerity of the
country. At present a relaxed austerity is represented; and still the
bulk of the members are of fair repute, though not quite on the level of
their pretensions. They were then, while more sharply divided from the
titular superiors they are socially absorbing, very powerful to brand a
woman's character, whatever her rank might be; having innumerable
agencies and avenues for that high purpose, to say nothing of the
printing-press. Lady Dunstane's anxiety to draw them over to the cause of
her friend set her thinking of the influential Mrs. Cramborne Wathin,
with whom she was distantly connected; the wife of a potent
serjeant-at-law fast mounting to the Bench and knighthood; the centre of
a circle, and not strangely that, despite her deficiency in the arts and
graces, for she had wealth and a cook, a husband proud of his
wine-cellar, and the ambition to rule; all the rewards, together with the
expectations, of the virtuous. She was a lady of incisive features bound
in stale parchment. Complexion she had none, but she had spotlessness of
skin, and sons and daughters just resembling her, like cheaper editions
of a precious quarto of a perished type. You discerned the imitation of
the type, you acknowledged the inferior compositor. Mr. Cramborne Wathin
was by birth of a grade beneath his wife; he sprang (behind a curtain of
horror) from tradesmen. The Bench was in designation for him to wash out
the stain, but his children suffered in large hands and feet, short legs,
excess of bone, prominences misplaced. Their mother inspired them
carefully with the religion she opposed to the pretensions of a nobler
blood, while instilling into them that the blood they drew from her was
territorial, far above the vulgar. Her appearance and her principles
fitted her to stand for the Puritan rich of the period, emerging by the
aid of an extending wealth into luxurious worldliness, and retaining the
maxims of their forefathers for the discipline of the poor and erring.

Lady Dunstane called on her, ostensibly to let her know she had taken a
house in town for the season, and in the course of the chat Mrs.
Cramborne Wathin was invited to dinner. 'You will meet my dear friend,
Mrs. Warwick,' she said, and the reply was: 'Oh, I have heard of her.'

The formal consultation with Mr. Cramborne Wathin ended in an agreement
to accept Lady Dunstane's kind invitation.

Considering her husband's plenitude of old legal anecdotes, and her own
diligent perusal of the funny publications of the day, that she might be
on the level of the wits and celebrities she entertained, Mrs. Cramborne
Wathin had a right to expect the leading share in the conversation to
which she was accustomed. Every honour was paid to them; they met
aristocracy in the persons of Lord Larrian, of Lady Rockden, Colonel
Purlby, the Pettigrews, but neither of them held the table for a moment;
the topics flew, and were no sooner up than down; they were unable to get
a shot. They had to eat in silence, occasionally grinning, because a
woman labouring under a stigma would rattle-rattle, as if the laughter of
the company were her due, and decency beneath her notice. Some one
alluded to a dog of Mrs. Warwick's, whereupon she trips out a story of
her dog's amazing intelligence.

'And pray,' said Mrs. Cramborne Wathin across the table, merely to slip
in a word, 'what is the name of this wonderful dog?'

'His name is Leander,' said Diana.

'Oh, Leander. I don't think I hear myself calling to a dog in a name of
three syllables. Two at the most.'

No, so I call Hero! if I want him to come immediately,' said Diana, and
the gentlemen, to Mrs. Cramborne Wathin's astonishment, acclaimed it. Mr.
Redworth, at her elbow, explained the point, to her disgust. . .

That was Diana's offence.

If it should seem a small one, let it be remembered that a snub was
intended, and was foiled; and foiled with an apparent simplicity, enough
to exasperate, had there been no laughter of men to back the countering
stroke. A woman under a cloud, she talked, pushed to shine; she would be
heard, would be applauded. Her chronicler must likewise admit the error
of her giving way to a petty sentiment of antagonism on first beholding
Mrs. Cramborne Wathin, before whom she at once resolved to be herself,
for a holiday, instead of acting demurely to conciliate. Probably it was
an antagonism of race, the shrinking of the skin from the burr. But when
Tremendous Powers are invoked, we should treat any simple revulsion of
our blood as a vice. The Gods of this world's contests demand it of us,
in relation to them, that the mind, and not the instincts, shall be at
work. Otherwise the course of a prudent policy is never to invoke them,
but avoid.

The upper class was gained by her intrepidity, her charm, and her
elsewhere offending wit, however the case might go. It is chivalrous, but
not, alas, inflammable in support of innocence. The class below it is
governed in estimates of character by accepted patterns of conduct; yet
where innocence under persecution is believed to exist, the members
animated by that belief can be enthusiastic. Enthusiasm is a heaven-sent
steeplechaser, and takes a flying leap of the ordinary barriers; it is
more intrusive than chivalry, and has a passion to communicate its
ardour. Two letters from stranger ladies reached Diana, through her
lawyers and Lady Dunstane. Anonymous letters, not so welcome, being male
effusions, arrived at her lodgings, one of them comical almost over the
verge to pathos in its termination: 'To me you will ever be the Goddess
Diana--my faith in woman!'

He was unacquainted with her!

She had not the heart to think the writers donkeys. How they obtained her
address was a puzzle; they stole in to comfort her slightly. They
attached her to her position of Defendant by the thought of what would
have been the idea of her character if she had flown--a reflection
emanating from inexperience of the resources of sentimentalists.

If she had flown! She was borne along by the tide like a butterfly that a
fish may gobble unless a friendly hand shall intervene. And could it in
nature? She was past expectation of release. The attempt to imagine
living with any warmth of blood in her vindicated character, for the sake
of zealous friends, consigned her to a cold and empty house upon a
foreign earth. She had to set her mind upon the mysterious enshrouded
Twelve, with whom the verdict would soon be hanging, that she might
prompt her human combativeness to desire the vindication at such a price
as she would have to pay for it. When Emma Dunstane spoke to her of the
certainty of triumphing, she suggested a possible dissentient among the
fateful Twelve, merely to escape the drumming sound of that hollow big
word. The irreverent imp of her humour came to her relief by calling
forth the Twelve, in the tone of the clerk of the Court, and they
answered to their names of trades and crafts after the manner of
Titania's elves, and were questioned as to their fitness, by education,
habits, enlightenment, to pronounce decisively upon the case in dispute,
the case being plainly stated. They replied, that the long habit of
dealing with scales enabled them to weigh the value of evidence the most
delicate. Moreover, they were Englishmen, and anything short of downright
bullet facts went to favour the woman. For thus we light the balance of
legal injustice toward the sex: we conveniently wink, ma'am. A rough,
old-fashioned way for us! Is it a Breach of Promise?--She may reckon on
her damages: we have daughters of our own. Is it a suit for
Divorce?--Well, we have wives of our own, and we can lash, or we can
spare; that's as it may be; but we'll keep the couple tied, let 'em hate
as they like, if they can't furnish pork-butchers' reasons for sundering;
because the man makes the money in this country.--My goodness! what a
funny people, sir!--It 's our way of holding the balance, ma'am.--But
would it not be better to rectify the law and the social system, dear
sir?--Why, ma'am, we find it comfortabler to take cases as they come, in
the style of our fathers.--But don't you see, my good man, that you are
offering scapegoats for the comfort of the majority?--Well, ma'am, there
always were scapegoats, and always will be; we find it comes round pretty
square in the end.

'And I may be the scapegoat, Emmy! It is perfectly possible. The grocer,
the pork-butcher, drysalter, stationer, tea-merchant, et caetera--they
sit on me. I have studied the faces of the juries, and Mr. Braddock tells
me of their composition. And he admits that they do justice roughly--a
rough and tumble country! to quote him--though he says they are honest in
intention.'

'More shame to the man who drags you before them--if he persists!' Emma
rejoined.

'He will. I know him. I would not have him draw back now,' said Diana,
catching her breath. 'And, dearest, do not abuse him; for if you do, you
set me imagining guiltiness. Oh, heaven!--suppose me publicly pardoned!
No, I have kinder feelings when we stand opposed. It is odd, and rather
frets my conscience, to think of the little resentment I feel. Hardly
any! He has not cause to like his wife. I can own it, and I am sorry for
him, heartily. No two have ever come together so naturally antagonistic
as we two. We walked a dozen steps in stupefied union, and hit upon
crossways. From that moment it was tug and tug; he me, I him. By
resisting, I made him a tyrant; and he, by insisting, made me a rebel.
And he was the maddest of tyrants--a weak one. My dear, he was also a
double-dealer. Or no, perhaps not in design. He was moved at one time by
his interests; at another by his idea of his honour. He took what I could
get for him, and then turned and drubbed me for getting it.'

'This is the creature you try to excuse!' exclaimed indignant Emma.

'Yes, because--but fancy all the smart things I said being called my
"sallies"!--can a woman live with it?--because I behaved . . . I despised
him too much, and I showed it. He is not a contemptible man before the
world; he is merely a very narrow one under close inspection. I could
not--or did not--conceal my feeling. I showed it not only to him, to my
friend. Husband grew to mean to me stifler, lung-contractor, iron mask,
inquisitor, everything anti-natural. He suffered under my "sallies": and
it was the worse for him when he did not perceive their drift. He is an
upright man; I have not seen marked meanness. One might build up a
respectable figure in negatives. I could add a row of noughts to the
single number he cherishes, enough to make a millionnaire of him; but
strike away the first, the rest are wind. Which signifies, that if you do
not take his estimate of himself, you will think little of his: negative
virtues. He is not eminently, that is to say, not saliently, selfish; not
rancorous, not obtrusive--tata-ta-ta. But dull!--dull as a woollen
nightcap over eyes and ears and mouth. Oh! an executioner's black cap to
me. Dull, and suddenly staring awake to the idea of his honour. I
"rendered" him ridiculous--I had caught a trick of "using men's phrases."
Dearest, now that the day of trial draws nigh--you have never questioned
me, and it was like you to spare me pain--but now I can speak of him and
myself.' Diana dropped her voice. Here was another confession. The
proximity of the trial acted like fire on her faded recollection of
incidents. It may be that partly the shame of alluding to them had
blocked her woman's memory. For one curious operation of the charge of
guiltiness upon the nearly guiltless is to make them paint themselves
pure white, to the obliteration of minor spots, until the whiteness being
acknowledged, or the ordeal imminent, the spots recur and press upon
their consciences. She resumed, in a rapid undertone: 'You know that a
certain degree of independence had been, if not granted by him, conquered
by me. I had the habit of it. Obedience with him is imprisonment--he is a
blind wall. He received a commission, greatly to his advantage, and was
absent. He seems to have received information of some sort. He returned
unexpectedly, at a late hour, and attacked me at once, middling violent.
My friend--and that he is! was coming from the House for a ten minutes'
talk, as usual, on his way home, to refresh him after the long sitting
and bear-baiting he had nightly to endure. Now let me confess: I grew
frightened; Mr. Warwick was "off his head," as they say-crazy, and I
could not bear the thought of those two meeting. While he raged I threw
open the window and put the lamp near it, to expose the whole
interior--cunning as a veteran intriguer: horrible, but it had to be done
to keep them apart. He asked me what madness possessed me, to sit by an
open window at midnight, in view of the public, with a damp wind blowing.
I complained of want of air and fanned my forehead. I heard the steps on
the pavement; I stung him to retort loudly, and I was relieved; the steps
passed on. So the trick succeeded--the trick! It was the worst I was
guilty of, but it was a trick, and it branded me trickster. It teaches me
to see myself with an abyss in my nature full of infernal possibilities.
I think I am hewn in black rock. A woman who can do as I did by instinct,
needs to have an angel always near her, if she has not a husband she
reveres.'

'We are none of us better than you, dear Tony; only some are more
fortunate, and many are cowards,' Emma said. 'You acted prudently in a
wretched situation, partly of your own making, partly of the
circumstances. But a nature like yours could not sit still and moan. That
marriage was to blame! The English notion of women seems to be that we
are born white sheep or black; circumstances have nothing to do with our
colour. They dread to grant distinctions, and to judge of us discerningly
is beyond them. Whether the fiction, that their homes are purer than
elsewhere, helps to establish the fact, I do not know: there is a class
that does live honestly; and at any rate it springs from a liking for
purity; but I am sure that their method of impressing it on women has the
dangers of things artificial. They narrow their understanding of human
nature, and that is not the way to improve the breed.'

'I suppose we women are taken to be the second thoughts of the Creator;
human nature's fringes, mere finishing touches, not a part of the
texture,' said Diana; 'the pretty ornamentation. However, I fancy I
perceive some tolerance growing in the minds of the dominant sex. Our old
lawyer Mr. Braddock, who appears to have no distaste for conversations
with me, assures me he expects the day to come when women will be
encouraged to work at crafts and professions for their independence. That
is the secret of the opinion of us at present--our dependency. Give us
the means of independence, and we will gain it, and have a turn at
judging you, my lords! You shall behold a world reversed. Whenever I am
distracted by existing circumstances, I lay my finger on the material
conditions, and I touch the secret. Individually, it may be moral with
us; collectively, it is material-gross wrongs, gross hungers. I am a
married rebel, and thereof comes the social rebel. I was once a dancing
and singing girl: You remember the night of the Dublin Ball. A Channel
sea in uproar, stirred by witches, flows between.'

'You are as lovely as you were then--I could say, lovelier,' said Emma.

'I have unconquerable health, and I wish I could give you the half of it,
dear. I work late into the night, and I wake early and fresh in the
morning. I do not sing, that is all. A few days more, and my character
will be up before the Bull's Head to face him in the arena. The worst of
a position like mine is, that it causes me incessantly to think and talk
of myself. I believe I think less than I talk, but the subject is growing
stale; as those who are long dying feel, I dare say--if they do not take
it as the compensation for their departure.'

The Bull's Head, or British Jury of Twelve, with the wig on it, was faced
during the latter half of a week of good news. First, Mr. Thomas Redworth
was returned to Parliament by a stout majority for the Borough of
Orrybridge: the Hon. Percy Dacier delivered a brilliant speech in the
House of Commons, necessarily pleasing to his uncle: Lord Larrian
obtained the command of the Rock: the house of The Crossways was let to a
tenant approved by Mr. Braddock: Diana received the opening proof-sheets
of her little volume, and an instalment of the modest honorarium: and
finally, the Plaintiff in the suit involving her name was adjudged to
have not proved his charge.

She heard of it without a change of countenance.

She could not have wished it the reverse; she was exonerated. But she was
not free; far from that; and she revenged herself on the friends who made
much of her triumph and overlooked her plight, by showing no sign of
satisfaction. There was in her bosom a revolt at the legal consequences
of the verdict--or blunt acquiescence of the Law in the conditions
possibly to be imposed on her unless she went straight to the relieving
phial; and the burden of keeping it under, set her wildest humour alight,
somewhat as Redworth remembered of her on the journey from The Crossways
to Copsley. This ironic fury, coming of the contrast of the outer and the
inner, would have been indulged to the extent of permanent injury to her
disposition had not her beloved Emma, immediately after the tension of
the struggle ceased, required her tenderest aid. Lady Dunstane chanted
victory, and at night collapsed. By the advice of her physician she was
removed to Copsley, where Diana's labour of anxious nursing restored her
through love to a saner spirit. The hopefulness of life must bloom again
in the heart whose prayers are offered for a life dearer than its own to
be preserved. A little return of confidence in Sir Lukin also refreshed
her when she saw that the poor creature did honestly, in his shaggy rough
male fashion, reverence and cling to the flower of souls he named as his
wife. His piteous groans of self-accusation during the crisis haunted
her, and made the conduct and nature of men a bewilderment to her still
young understanding. Save for the knot of her sensations (hardly a mental
memory, but a sullen knot) which she did not disentangle to charge him
with his complicity in the blind rashness of her marriage, she might have
felt sisterly, as warmly as she compassionated him.

It was midwinter when Dame Gossip, who keeps the exotic world alive with
her fanning whispers, related that the lovely Mrs. Warwick had left
England on board the schooner-yacht Clarissa, with Lord and Lady Esquart,
for a voyage in the Mediterranean: and (behind her hand) that the reason
was urgent, inasmuch as she fled to escape the meshes of the terrific net
of the marital law brutally whirled to capture her by the man her
husband.




CHAPTER XV

INTRODUCES THE HON. PERCY DACIER

The Gods of this world's contests, against whom our poor stripped
individual is commonly in revolt, are, as we know, not miners, they are
reapers; and if we appear no longer on the surface, they cease to bruise
us: they will allow an arena character to be cleansed and made
presentable while enthusiastic friends preserve discretion. It is of
course less than magnanimity; they are not proposed to you for your
worship; they are little Gods, temporary as that great wave, their parent
human mass of the hour. But they have one worshipful element in them,
which is, the divine insistency upon there being two sides to a case--to
every case. And the People so far directed by them may boast of
healthfulness. Let the individual shriek, the innocent, triumphant, have
in honesty to admit the fact. One side is vanquished, according to decree
of Law, but the superior Council does not allow it to be extinguished.

Diana's battle was fought shadowily behind her for the space of a week or
so, with some advocates on behalf of the beaten man; then it became a
recollection of a beautiful woman, possibly erring, misvalued by a
husband, who was neither a man of the world nor a gracious yokefellow,
nor anything to match her. She, however, once out of the public flames,
had to recall her scorchings to be gentle with herself. Under a defeat,
she would have been angrily self-vindicated. The victory of the ashen
laurels drove her mind inward to gird at the hateful yoke, in compassion
for its pair of victims. Quite earnestly by such means, yet always
bearing a comical eye on her subterfuges, she escaped the extremes of
personal blame. Those advocates of her opponent in and out of court
compelled her honest heart to search within and own to faults. But were
they not natural faults? It was her marriage; it was marriage in the
abstract: her own mistake and the world's clumsy machinery of
civilization: these were the capital offenders: not the wife who would
laugh ringingly, and would have friends of the other sex, and shot her
epigrams at the helpless despot, and was at times--yes, vixenish; a
nature driven to it, but that was the word. She was too generous to
recount her charges against the vanquished. If his wretched jealousy had
ruined her, the secret high tribunal within her bosom, which judged her
guiltless for putting the sword between their marriage tie when they
stood as one, because a quarrelling couple could not in honour play the
embracing, pronounced him just pardonable. She distinguished that he
could only suppose, manlikely, one bad cause for the division.

To this extent she used her unerring brains, more openly than on her
night of debate at The Crossways. The next moment she was off in vapour,
meditating grandly on her independence of her sex and the passions. Love!
she did not know it, she was not acquainted with either the criminal or
the domestic God, and persuaded herself that she never could be. She was
a Diana of coldness, preferring friendship; she could be the friend of
men. There was another who could be the friend of women. Her heart leapt
to Redworth. Conjuring up his clear trusty face, at their grasp of hands
when parting, she thought of her visions of her future about the period
of the Dublin Ball, and acknowledged, despite the erratic step to
wedlock, a gain in having met and proved so true a friend. His face,
figure, character, lightest look, lightest word, all were loyal signs of
a man of honour, cold as she; he was the man to whom she could have
opened her heart for inspection. Rejoicing in her independence of an
emotional sex, the impulsive woman burned with a regret that at their
parting she had not broken down conventional barriers and given her cheek
to his lips in the antiinsular fashion with a brotherly friend. And why
not when both were cold? Spirit to spirit, she did, delightfully
refreshed by her capacity to do so without a throb. He had held her hands
and looked into her eyes half a minute, like a dear comrade; as little
arousing her instincts of defensiveness as the clearing heavens; and
sisterly love for it was his due, a sister's kiss. He needed a sister,
and should have one in her. Emma's recollected talk of 'Tom Redworth'
painted him from head to foot, brought the living man over the waters to
the deck of the yacht. A stout champion in the person of Tom Redworth was
left on British land; but for some reason past analysis, intermixed, that
is, among a swarm of sensations, Diana named her champion to herself with
the formal prefix: perhaps because she knew a man's Christian name to be
dangerous handling. They differed besides frequently in opinion, when the
habit of thinking of him as Mr. Redworth would be best. Women are bound
to such small observances, and especially the beautiful of the
sisterhood, whom the world soon warns that they carry explosives and must
particularly guard against the ignition of petty sparks. She was less
indiscreet in her thoughts than in her acts, as is the way with the
reflective daughter of impulse; though she had fine mental distinctions:
what she could offer to do 'spirit to spirit,' for instance, held nothing
to her mind of the intimacy of calling the gentleman plain Tom in mere
contemplation of him. Her friend and champion was a volunteer, far from a
mercenary, and he deserved the reward, if she could bestow it unalarmed.
They were to meet in Egypt. Meanwhile England loomed the home of hostile
forces ready to shock, had she been a visible planet, and ready to
secrete a virus of her past history, had she been making new.

She was happily away, borne by a whiter than swan's wing on the sapphire
Mediterranean. Her letters to Emma were peeps of splendour for the
invalid: her way of life on board the yacht, and sketches of her host and
hostess as lovers in wedlock on the other side of our perilous forties;
sketches of the bays, the towns, the people-priests, dames, cavaliers,
urchins, infants, shifting groups of supple southerners-flashed across
the page like a web of silk, and were dashed off, redolent of herself, as
lightly as the silvery spray of the blue waves she furrowed; telling,
without allusions to the land behind her, that she had dipped in the
wells of blissful oblivion. Emma Dunstane, as is usual with those who
receive exhilarating correspondence from makers of books, condemned the
authoress in comparison, and now first saw that she had the gift of
writing. Only one cry: 'Italy, Eden of exiles!' betrayed the seeming of a
moan. She wrote of her poet and others immediately. Thither had they
fled; with adieu to England!

How many have waved the adieu! And it is England nourishing, England
protecting them, England clothing them in the honours they wear. Only the
posturing lower natures, on the level of their buskins, can pluck out the
pocket-knife of sentimental spite to cut themselves loose from her at
heart in earnest. The higher, bleed as they may, too pressingly feel
their debt. Diana had the Celtic vivid sense of country. In England she
was Irish, by hereditary, and by wilful opposition. Abroad, gazing along
the waters, observing, comparing, reflecting, above all, reading of the
struggles at home, the things done and attempted, her soul of generosity
made her, though not less Irish, a daughter of Britain. It is at a
distance that striving countries should be seen if we would have them in
the pure idea; and this young woman of fervid mind, a reader of public
speeches and speculator on the tides of politics (desirous, further, to
feel herself rather more in the pure idea), began to yearn for England
long before her term of holiday exile had ended. She had been flattered
by her friend, her 'wedded martyr at the stake,' as she named him, to
believe that she could exercise a judgement in politics--could think,
even speak acutely, on public affairs. The reports of speeches delivered
by the men she knew or knew of, set her thrilling; and she fancied the
sensibility to be as independent of her sympathy with the orators as her
political notions were sovereignty above a sex devoted to trifles, and
the feelings of a woman who had gone through fire. She fancied it
confidently, notwithstanding a peculiar intuition that the plunge into
the nobler business of the world would be a haven of safety for a woman
with blood and imagination, when writing to Emma: 'Mr. Redworth's great
success in Parliament is good in itself, whatever his views of present
questions; and I do not heed them when I look to what may be done by a
man of such power in striking at unjust laws, which keep the really
numerically better-half of the population in a state of slavery. If he
had been a lawyer! It must be a lawyer's initiative--a lawyer's Bill. Mr.
Percy Dacier also spoke well, as might have been expected, and his
uncle's compliment to him was merited. Should you meet him sound him. He
has read for the Bar, and is younger than Mr. Redworth. The very young
men and the old are our hope. The middleaged are hard and fast for
existing facts. We pick our leaders on the slopes, the incline and
decline of the mountain--not on the upper table-land midway, where all
appears to men so solid, so tolerably smooth, save for a few
excrescences, roughnesses, gradually to be levelled at their leisure;
which induces one to protest that the middle-age of men is their time of
delusion. It is no paradox. They may be publicly useful in a small way. I
do not deny it at all. They must be near the gates of life--the opening
or the closing--for their minds to be accessible to the urgency of the
greater questions. Otherwise the world presents itself to them under too
settled an aspect--unless, of course, Vesuvian Revolution shakes the
land. And that touches only their nerves. I dream of some old Judge!
There is one--if having caught we could keep him. But I dread so tricksy
a pilot. You have guessed him--the ancient Puck! We have laughed all day
over the paper telling us of his worrying the Lords. Lady Esquart
congratulates her husband on being out of it. Puck 'biens ride' and
bewigged might perhaps--except that at the critical moment he would be
sure to plead allegiance to Oberon. However, the work will be performed
by some one: I am prophetic:--when maidens are grandmothers!--when your
Tony is wearing a perpetual laugh in the unhusbanded regions where there
is no institution of the wedding-tie.'

For the reason that she was not to participate in the result of the old
Judge's or young hero's happy championship of the cause of her sex, she
conceived her separateness high aloof, and actually supposed she was a
contemplative, simply speculative political spirit, impersonal albeit a
woman. This, as Emma, smiling at the lines, had not to learn, was always
her secret pride of fancy--the belief in her possession of a disengaged
intellect.

The strange illusion, so clearly exposed to her correspondent, was
maintained through a series of letters very slightly descriptive, dated
from the Piraeus, the Bosphorus, the coasts of the Crimea, all more or
less relating to the latest news of the journals received on board the
yacht, and of English visitors fresh from the country she now seemed fond
of calling 'home.' Politics, and gentle allusions to the curious
exhibition of 'love in marriage' shown by her amiable host and hostess:
'these dear Esquarts, who are never tired of one another, but courtly
courting, tempting me to think it possible that a fortunate selection and
a mutual deference may subscribe to human happiness:--filled the
paragraphs. Reviews of her first literary venture were mentioned once: 'I
was well advised by Mr. Redworth in putting ANTONIA for authoress. She is
a buff jerkin to the stripes, and I suspect that the signature of D. E.
M., written in full, would have cawed woefully to hear that her style is
affected, her characters nullities, her cleverness forced, etc., etc. As
it is, I have much the same contempt for poor Antonia's performance.
Cease penning, little fool! She writes, "with some comprehension of the
passion of love." I know her to be a stranger to the earliest cry. So you
see, dear, that utter ignorance is the mother of the Art. Dialogues
"occasionally pointed." She has a sister who may do better.--But why was
I not apprenticed to a serviceable profession or a trade? I perceive now
that a hanger-on of the market had no right to expect a happier fate than
mine has been.'

On the Nile, in the winter of the year, Diana met the Hon. Percy Dacier.
He was introduced to her at Cairo by Redworth. The two gentlemen had
struck up a House of Commons acquaintanceship, and finding themselves
bound for the same destination, had grown friendly. Redworth's arrival
had been pleasantly expected. She remarked on Dacier's presence to Emma,
without sketch or note of him as other than much esteemed by Lord and
Lady Esquart. These, with Diana, Redworth, Dacier, the German Eastern
traveller Schweizerbarth, and the French Consul and Egyptologist
Duriette, composed a voyaging party up the river, of which expedition
Redworth was Lady Dunstane's chief writer of the records. His novel
perceptiveness and shrewdness of touch made them amusing; and his
tenderness to the Beauty's coquettry between the two foreign rivals,
moved a deeper feeling. The German had a guitar, the Frenchman a voice;
Diana joined them in harmony. They complained apart severally of the
accompaniment and the singer. Our English criticized them apart; and that
is at any rate to occupy a post, though it contributes nothing to
entertainment. At home the Esquarts had sung duets; Diana had assisted
Redworth's manly chest-notes at the piano. Each of them declined to be
vocal. Diana sang alone for the credit of the country, Italian and French
songs, Irish also. She was in her mood of Planxty Kelly and Garryowen all
the way. 'Madame est Irlandaise?' Redworth heard the Frenchman say, and
he owned to what was implied in the answering tone of the question. 'We
should be dull dogs without the Irish leaven!' So Tony in exile still
managed to do something for her darling Erin. The solitary woman on her
heights at Copsley raised an exclamation of, 'Oh! that those two had been
or could be united!' She was conscious of a mystic symbolism in the
prayer.

She was not apprehensive of any ominous intervention of another. Writing
from Venice, Diana mentioned Mr. Percy Dacier as being engaged to an
heiress; 'A Miss Asper, niece of a mighty shipowner, Mr. Quintin Manx,
Lady Esquart tells me: money fabulous, and necessary to a younger son
devoured with ambition. The elder brother, Lord Creedmore, is a common
Nimrod, always absent in Hungary, Russia, America, hunting somewhere. Mr.
Dacier will be in the Cabinet with the next Ministry.' No more of him. A
new work by ANTONIA was progressing.

The Summer in South Tyrol passed like a royal procession before young
eyes for Diana, and at the close of it, descending the Stelvio, idling
through the Valtelline, Como Lake was reached, Diana full of her work,
living the double life of the author. At Bellagio one afternoon Mr. Percy
Dacier appeared. She remembered subsequently a disappointment she felt in
not beholding Mr. Redworth either with him or displacing him. If engaged
to a lady, he was not an ardent suitor; nor was he a pointedly
complimentary acquaintance. His enthusiasm was reserved for Italian
scenery. She had already formed a sort of estimate of his character, as
an indifferent observer may do, and any woman previous to the inflaming
of her imagination, if that is in store for her; and she now fell to work
resetting the puzzle it became as soon her positive conclusions had to be
shaped again. 'But women never can know young men,' she wrote to Emma,
after praising his good repute as one of the brotherhood. 'He drops
pretty sentences now and then: no compliments; milky nuts. Of course he
has a head, or he would not be where he is--and that seems always to me
the most enviable place a young man can occupy.' She observed in him a
singular conflicting of a buoyant animal nature with a curb of
studiousness, as if the fardels of age were piling on his shoulders
before youth had quitted its pastures.

His build of limbs and his features were those of the finely-bred
English; he had the English taste for sports, games, manly diversions;
and in the bloom of life, under thirty, his head was given to bend. The
head bending on a tall upright figure, where there was breadth of chest,
told of weights working. She recollected his open look, larger than
inquiring, at the introduction to her; and it recurred when she uttered
anything specially taking. What it meant was past a guess, though
comparing it with the frank directness of Redworth's eyes, she saw the
difference between a look that accepted her and one that dilated on two
opinions.

Her thought of the gentleman was of a brilliant young charioteer in the
ruck of the race, watchful for his chance to push to the front; and she
could have said that a dubious consort might spoil a promising career. It
flattered her to think that she sometimes prompted him, sometimes
illumined. He repeated sentences she had spoken. 'I shall be better able
to describe Mr. Dacier when you and I sit together, my Emmy, and a stroke
here and there completes the painting. Set descriptions are good for
puppets. Living men and women are too various in the mixture fashioning
them--even the "external presentment"--to be livingly rendered in a
formal sketch. I may tell you his eyes are pale blue, his features
regular, his hair silky, brownish, his legs long, his head rather
stooping (only the head), his mouth commonly closed; these are the facts,
and you have seen much the same in a nursery doll. Such literary craft is
of the nursery. So with landscapes. The art of the pen (we write on
darkness) is to rouse the inward vision, instead of labouring with a
Drop-scene brush, as if it were to the eye; because our flying minds
cannot contain a protracted description. That is why the poets, who
spring imagination with a word or a phrase, paint lasting pictures. The
Shakespearian, the Dantesque, are in a line, two at most. He lends an
attentive ear when I speak, agrees or has a quaint pucker of the eyebrows
dissenting inwardly. He lacks mental liveliness--cheerfulness, I should
say, and is thankful to have it imparted. One suspects he would be a dull
domestic companion. He has a veritable thirst for hopeful views of the
world, and no spiritual distillery of his own. He leans to depression.
Why! The broken reed you call your Tony carries a cargo, all of her
manufacture--she reeks of secret stills; and here is a young man--a
sapling oak--inclined to droop. His nature has an air of imploring me que
je d'arrose! I begin to perform Mrs. Dr. Pangloss on purpose to brighten
him--the mind, the views. He is not altogether deficient in
conversational gaiety, and he shines in exercise. But the world is a poor
old ball bounding down a hill--to an Irish melody in the evening
generally, by request. So far of Mr. Percy Dacier, of whom I have some
hopes--distant, perhaps delusive--that he may be of use to our cause. He
listens. It is an auspicious commencement.'

Lugano is the Italian lake most lovingly encircled by mountain arms, and
every height about it may be scaled with esce. The heights have their
nest of waters below for a home scene, the southern Swiss peaks, with
celestial Monta Rosa, in prospect. It was there that Diana reawakened,
after the trance of a deadly draught, to the glory of the earth and her
share in it. She wakened like the Princess of the Kiss; happily not to
kisses; to no sign, touch or call that she could trace backward. The
change befell her without a warning. After writing deliberately to her
friend Emma, she laid down her pen and thought of nothing; and into this
dreamfulness a wine passed, filling her veins, suffusing her mind,
quickening her soul: and coming whence? out of air, out of the yonder of
air. She could have imagined a seraphic presence in the room, that bade
her arise and live; take the cup of the wells of youth arrested at her
lips by her marriage; quit her wintry bondage for warmth, light, space,
the quick of simple being. And the strange pure ecstasy was not a
transient electrification; it came in waves on a continuous tide; looking
was living; walking flying. She hardly knew that she slept. The heights
she had seen rosy at eve were marked for her ascent in the dawn. Sleep
was one wink, and fresh as the dewy field and rockflowers on her way
upward, she sprang to more and more of heaven, insatiable, happily
chirruping over her possessions. The threading of the town among the dear
common people before others were abroad, was a pleasure and pleasant her
solitariness threading the gardens at the base of the rock, only she
astir; and the first rough steps of the winding footpath, the first
closed buds, the sharper air, the uprising of the mountain with her
ascent; and pleasant too was her hunger and the nibble at a little loaf
of bread. A linnet sang in her breast, an eagle lifted her feet. The feet
were verily winged, as they are in a season of youth when the blood leaps
to light from the pressure of the under forces, like a source at the
wellheads, and the whole creature blooms, vital in every energy as a
spirit. To be a girl again was magical. She could fancy her having risen
from the dead. And to be a girl, with a woman's broader vision and
receptiveness of soul, with knowledge of evil, and winging to ethereal
happiness, this was a revelation of our human powers.

She attributed the change to the influences of nature's beauty and
grandeur. Nor had her woman's consciousness to play the chrysalis in any
shy recesses of her heart; she was nowhere veiled or torpid; she was
illumined, like the Salvatore she saw in the evening beams and mounted in
the morning's; and she had not a spot of seeresy; all her nature flew and
bloomed; she was bird, flower, flowing river, a quivering sensibility
unweighted, enshrouded. Desires and hopes would surely have weighted and
shrouded her. She had none, save for the upper air, the eyes of the
mountain.

Which was the dream--her past life or this ethereal existence? But this
ran spontaneously, and the other had often been stimulated--her
vivaciousness on the Nile-boat, for a recent example. She had not a doubt
that her past life was the dream, or deception: and for the reason that
now she was compassionate, large of heart toward all beneath her. Let
them but leave her free, they were forgiven, even to prayers for their
well-being! The plural number in the case was an involuntary multiplying
of the single, coming of her incapacity during this elevation and rapture
of the senses to think distinctly of that One who had discoloured her
opening life. Freedom to breathe, gaze, climb, grow with the grasses, fly
with the clouds, to muse, to sing, to be an unclaimed self, dispersed
upon earth, air, sky, to find a keener transfigured self in that
radiation--she craved no more.

Bear in mind her beauty, her charm of tongue, her present state of white
simplicity in fervour: was there ever so perilous a woman for the most
guarded and clearest-eyed of young men to meet at early morn upon a
mountain side?




CHAPTER XVI

TREATS OF A MIDNIGHT BELL, AND OF A SCENE OF EARLY MORNING

On a round of the mountains rising from Osteno, South eastward of Lugano,
the Esquart party rose from the natural grotto and headed their carriages
up and down the defiles, halting for a night at Rovio, a little village
below the Generoso, lively with waterfalls and watercourses; and they
fell so in love with the place, that after roaming along the flowery
borderways by moonlight, they resolved to rest there two or three days
and try some easy ascents. In the diurnal course of nature, being
pleasantly tired, they had the avowed intention of sleeping there; so
they went early to their beds, and carelessly wished one another
good-night, none of them supposing slumber to be anywhere one of the
warlike arts, a paradoxical thing you must battle for and can only win at
last when utterly beaten. Hard by their inn, close enough for a priestly
homily to have been audible, stood a church campanile, wherein hung a
Bell, not ostensibly communicating with the demons of the pit; in
daylight rather a merry comrade. But at night, when the children of
nerves lay stretched, he threw off the mask. As soon as they had fairly
nestled, he smote their pillows a shattering blow, loud for the retold
preluding quarters, incredibly clanging the number ten. Then he waited
for neighbouring campanili to box the ears of slumber's votaries in turn;
whereupon, under pretence of excessive conscientiousness, or else
oblivious of his antecedent, damnable misconduct, or perhaps in actual
league and trapdoor conspiracy with the surging goblin hosts beneath us,
he resumed his blaring strokes, a sonorous recapitulation of the number;
all the others likewise. It was an alarum fit to warn of Attila or
Alaric; and not, simply the maniacal noise invaded the fruitful provinces
of sleep like Hun and Vandal, the irrational repetition ploughed the
minds of those unhappy somnivolents, leaving them worse than sheared by
barbarians, disrupt, as by earthquake, with the unanswerable question to
Providence, Why!--Why twice?

Designing slumberers are such infants. When they have undressed and
stretched themselves, flat, it seems that they have really gone back to
their mothers' breasts, and they fret at whatsoever does not smack of
nature, or custom. The cause of a repetition so senseless in its
violence, and so unnecessary, set them querying and kicking until the
inevitable quarters recommenced. Then arose an insurgent rabble in their
bosoms, it might be the loosened imps of darkness, urging them to
speculate whether the proximate monster about to dole out the eleventh
hour in uproar would again forget himself and repeat his dreary
arithmetic a second time; for they were unaware of his religious
obligation, following the hour of the district, to inform them of the
tardy hour of Rome. They waited in suspense, curiosity enabling them to
bear the first crash callously. His performance was the same. And now
they took him for a crazy engine whose madness had infected the whole
neighbourhood. Now was the moment to fight for sleep in contempt of him,
and they began by simulating an entry into the fortress they were to
defend, plunging on their pillows, battening down their eyelids,
breathing with a dreadful regularity. Alas! it came to their knowledge
that the Bell was in possession and they the besiegers. Every resonant
quarter was anticipated up to the blow, without averting its murderous
abruptness; and an executioner Midnight that sounded, in addition to the
reiterated quarters, four and twenty ringing hammerstrokes, with the
aching pause between the twelves, left them the prey of the legions of
torturers which are summed, though not described, in the title of a
sleepless night.

From that period the curse was milder, but the victims raged. They swam
on vasty deeps, they knocked at rusty gates, they shouldered all the
weapons of black Insomnia's armoury and became her soldiery, doing her
will upon themselves. Of her originally sprang the inspired teaching of
the doom of men to excruciation in endlessness. She is the fountain of
the infinite ocean whereon the exceedingly sensitive soul is tumbled
everlastingly, with the diversion of hot pincers to appease its appetite
for change.

Dacier was never the best of sleepers. He had taken to exercise his
brains prematurely, not only in learning, but also in reflection; and a
reflectiveness that is indulged before we have a rigid mastery of the
emotions, or have slain them, is apt to make a young man more than
commonly a child of nerves: nearly as much so as the dissipated, with the
difference that they are hilarious while wasting their treasury, which he
is not; and he may recover under favouring conditions, which is a point
of vantage denied to them. Physically he had stout reserves, for he had
not disgraced the temple. His intemperateness lay in the craving to rise
and lead: a precocious ambition. This apparently modest young man started
with an aim--and if in the distance and with but a slingstone, like the
slender shepherd fronting the Philistine, all his energies were in his
aim--at Government. He had hung on the fringe of an Administration. His
party was out, and he hoped for higher station on its return to power.
Many perplexities were therefore buzzing about his head; among them at
present one sufficiently magnified and voracious to swallow the
remainder. He added force to the interrogation as to why that Bell should
sound its inhuman strokes twice, by asking himself why he was there to
hear it! A strange suspicion of a bewitchment might have enlightened him
if he had been a man accustomed to yield to the peculiar kind of sorcery
issuing from that sex. He rather despised the power of women over men:
and nevertheless he was there, listening to that Bell, instead of having
obeyed the call of his family duties, when the latter were urgent. He had
received letters at Lugano, summoning him home, before he set forth on
his present expedition. The noisy alarum told him he floundered in quags,
like a silly creature chasing a marsh-lamp. But was it so? Was it not, on
the contrary, a serious pursuit of the secret of a woman's
character?--Oh, a woman and her character! Ordinary women and their
characters might set to work to get what relationship and likeness they
could. They had no secret to allure. This one had: she had the secret of
lake waters under rock, unfathomable in limpidness. He could not think of
her without shooting at nature, and nature's very sweetest and subtlest,
for comparison. As to her sex, his active man's contempt of the
petticoated secret attractive to boys and graylings, made him believe
that in her he hunted the mind and the spirit: perchance a double mind, a
twilighted spirit; but not a mere woman. She bore no resemblance to the
bundle of women. Well, she was worth studying; she had ideas, and could
give ear to ideas. Furthermore, a couple of the members of his family
inclined to do her injustice. At least, they judged her harshly, owing,
he thought, to an inveterate opinion they held regarding Lord
Dannisburgh's obliquity in relation to women. He shared it, and did not
concur in, their verdict upon the woman implicated. That is to say,
knowing something of her now, he could see the possibility of her
innocence in the special charm that her mere sparkle of features and
speech, and her freshness would have for a man like his uncle. The
possibility pleaded strongly on her behalf, while the darker possibility
weighted by his uncle's reputation plucked at him from below.

She was delightful to hear, delightful to see; and her friends loved her
and had faith in her. So clever a woman might be too clever for her
friends! . . .

The circle he moved in hummed of women, prompting novices as well as
veterans to suspect that the multitude of them, and notably the fairest,
yet more the cleverest, concealed the serpent somewhere.

She certainly had not directed any of her arts upon him. Besides he was
half engaged. And that was a burning perplexity; not because of abstract
scruples touching the necessity for love in marriage. The young lady,
great heiress though she was, and willing, as she allowed him to assume;
graceful too, reputed a beauty; struck him cold. He fancied her
transparent, only Arctic. Her transparency displayed to him all the
common virtues, and a serene possession of the inestimable and eminent
one outweighing all; but charm, wit, ardour, intercommunicative
quickness, and kindling beauty, airy grace, were qualities that a man, it
seemed, had to look for in women spotted by a doubt of their having the
chief and priceless.

However, he was not absolutely plighted. Nor did it matter to him whether
this or that woman concealed the tail of the serpent and trail, excepting
the singular interest this woman managed to excite, and so deeply as set
him wondering how that Resurrection Bell might be affecting her ability
to sleep. Was she sleeping?--or waking? His nervous imagination was a
torch that alternately lighted her lying asleep with the innocent, like a
babe, and tossing beneath the overflow of her dark hair, hounded by
haggard memories. She fluttered before him in either aspect; and another
perplexity now was to distinguish within himself which was the aspect he
preferred. Great Nature brought him thus to drink of her beauty, under
the delusion that the act was a speculation on her character.

The Bell, with its clash, throb and long swoon of sound, reminded him of
her name: Diana!--An attribute? or a derision?

It really mattered nothing to him, save for her being maligned; and if
most unfairly, then that face of the varying expressions, and the rich
voice, and the remembered gentle and taking words coming from her,
appealed to him with a supplicating vividness that pricked his heart to
leap.

He was dozing when the Bell burst through the thin division between
slumber and wakefulness, recounting what seemed innumerable peals, hard
on his cranium. Gray daylight blanched the window and the bed: his watch
said five of the morning. He thought of the pleasure of a bath beneath
some dashing spray-showers; and jumped up to dress, feeling a queer
sensation of skin in his clothes, the sign of a feverish night; and
yawning he went into the air. Leftward the narrow village street led to
the footway along which he could make for the mountain-wall. He cast one
look at the head of the campanile, silly as an owlish roysterer's glazed
stare at the young Aurora, and hurried his feet to check the yawns coming
alarmingly fast, in the place of ideas.

His elevation above the valley was about the kneecap of the Generoso.
Waters of past rain-clouds poured down the mountain-sides like veins of
metal, here and there flinging off a shower on the busy descent; only
dubiously animate in the lack lustre of the huge bulk piled against a
yellow East that wafted fleets of pinky cloudlets overhead. He mounted
his path to a level with inviting grassmounds where water circled,
running from scoops and cups to curves and brook-streams, and in his
fancy calling to him to hear them. To dip in them was his desire. To roll
and shiver braced by the icy flow was the spell to break that baleful
incantation of the intolerable night; so he struck across a ridge of
boulders, wreck of a landslip from the height he had hugged, to the open
space of shadowed undulations, and soon had his feet on turf. Heights to
right and to left, and between them, aloft, a sky the rosy wheelcourse of
the chariot of morn, and below, among the knolls, choice of sheltered
nooks where waters whispered of secresy to satisfy Diana herself. They
have that whisper and waving of secresy in secret scenery; they beckon to
the bath; and they conjure classic visions of the pudency of the Goddess
irate or unsighted. The semi-mythological state of mind, built of old
images and favouring haunts, was known to Dacier. The name of Diana,
playing vaguely on his consciousness, helped to it. He had no definite
thought of the mortal woman when the highest grass-roll near the rock
gave him view of a bowered source and of a pool under a chain of
cascades, bounded by polished shelves and slabs. The very spot for him,
he decided at the first peep; and at the second, with fingers
instinctively loosening his waist-coat buttons for a commencement, he
shouldered round and strolled away, though not at a rapid pace, nor far
before he halted.

That it could be no other than she, the figure he had seen standing
beside the pool, he was sure. Why had he turned? Thoughts thick and swift
as a blush in the cheeks of seventeen overcame him; and queen of all, the
thought bringing the picture of this mountain-solitude to vindicate a
woman shamefully assailed.--She who found her pleasure in these haunts of
nymph and Goddess, at the fresh cold bosom of nature, must be clear as
day. She trusted herself to the loneliness here, and to the honour of
men, from a like irreflective sincereness. She was unable to imagine
danger where her own impelling thirst was pure. . .

The thoughts, it will be discerned, were but flashes of a momentary vivid
sensibility. Where a woman's charm has won half the battle, her character
is an advancing standard and sings victory, let her do no more than take
a quiet morning walk before breakfast.

But why had he turned his back on her? There was nothing in his presence
to alarm, nothing in her appearance to forbid. The motive and the
movement were equally quaint; incomprehensible to him; for after putting
himself out of sight, he understood the absurdity of the supposition that
she would seek the secluded sylvan bath for the same purpose as he. Yet
now he was, debarred from going to meet her. She might have an impulse to
bathe her feet. Her name was Diana . . . .

Yes, and a married woman; and a proclaimed one!

And notwithstanding those brassy facts, he was ready to side with the
evidence declaring her free from stain; and further, to swear that her
blood was Diana's!

Nor had Dacier ever been particularly poetical about women. The present
Diana had wakened his curiosity, had stirred his interest in her, pricked
his admiration, but gradually, until a sleepless night with its flock of
raven-fancies under that dominant Bell, ended by colouring her, the
moment she stood in his eyes, as freshly as the morning heavens. We are
much influenced in youth by sleepless nights: they disarm, they
predispose us to submit to soft occasion; and in our youth occasion is
always coming.

He heard her voice. She had risen up the grass-mound, and he hung
brooding half-way down. She was dressed in some texture of the hue of
lavender. A violet scarf loosely knotted over the bosom opened on her
throat. The loop of her black hair curved under a hat of gray beaver.
Memorably radiant was her face.

They met, exchanged greetings, praised the beauty of the morning, and
struck together on the Bell. She laughed: 'I heard it at ten; I slept
till four. I never wake later. I was out in the air by half-past. Were
you disturbed?'

He alluded to his troubles with the Bell.

'It sounded like a felon's heart in skeleton ribs,' he said.

'Or a proser's tongue in a hollow skull,' said she.

He bowed to her conversible readiness, and at once fell into the
background, as he did only with her, to perform accordant bass in their
dialogue; for when a woman lightly caps our strained remarks, we
gallantly surrender the leadership, lest she should too cuttingly assert
her claim.

Some sweet wild cyclamen flowers were at her breast. She held in her left
hand a bunch of buds and blown cups of the pale purple meadow-crocus. He
admired them. She told him to look round. He confessed to not having
noticed them in the grass: what was the name? Colchicum, in Botany, she
said.

'These are plucked to be sent to a friend; otherwise I'm reluctant to
take the life of flowers for a whim. Wild flowers, I mean. I am not
sentimental about garden flowers: they are cultivated for decoration,
grown for clipping.'

'I suppose they don't carry the same signification,' said Dacier, in the
tone of a pupil to such themes.

'They carry no feeling,' said she. 'And that is my excuse for plucking
these, where they seem to spring like our town-dream of happiness. I
believe they are sensible of it too; but these must do service to my
invalid friend, who cannot travel. Are you ever as much interested in the
woes of great ladies as of country damsels? I am not--not unless they
have natural distinction. You have met Lady Dunstane?'

The question sounded artless. Dacier answered that he thought he had seen
her somewhere once, and Diana shut her lips on a rising under-smile.

'She is the coeur d'or of our time; the one soul I would sacrifice these
flowers to.'

'A bit of a blue-stocking, I think I have heard said.'

'She might have been admitted to the Hotel Rambouillet, without being
anything of a Precieuse. She is the woman of the largest heart now
beating.'

'Mr. Redworth talked of her.'

'As she deserved, I am sure.'

'Very warmly.'

'He would!'

'He told me you were the Damon and Pythias of women.'

'Her one fault is an extreme humility that makes her always play second
to me; and as I am apt to gabble, I take the lead; and I am froth in
comparison. I can reverence my superiors even when tried by intimacy with
them. She is the next heavenly thing to heaven that I know. Court her, if
ever you come across her. Or have you a man's horror of women with
brains?'

'Am I expressing it?' said he.

'Do not breathe London or Paris here on me.' She fanned the crocuses
under her chin. 'The early morning always has this--I wish I had a
word!--touch . . . whisper . . . gleam . . . beat of wings--I envy poets
now more than ever!--of Eden, I was going to say. Prose can paint evening
and moonlight, but poets are needed to sing the dawn. That is because
prose is equal to melancholy stuff. Gladness requires the finer language.
Otherwise we have it coarse--anything but a reproduction. You politicians
despise the little distinctions "twixt tweedledum and tweedledee," I
fancy.'

Of the poetic sort, Dacier's uncle certainly did. For himself he
confessed to not having thought much on them.

'But how divine is utterance!' she said. 'As we to the brutes, poets are
to us.'

He listened somewhat with the head of the hanged. A beautiful woman
choosing to rhapsodize has her way, and is not subjected to the critical
commentary within us. He wondered whether she had discoursed in such a
fashion to his uncle.

'I can read good poetry,' said he.

'If you would have this valley--or mountain-cleft, one should call
it--described, only verse could do it for you,' Diana pursued, and
stopped, glanced at his face, and smiled. She had spied the end of a
towel peeping out of one of his pockets. 'You came out for a bath! Go
back, by all means, and mount that rise of grass where you first saw me;
and down on the other side, a little to the right, you will find the very
place for a bath, at a corner of the rock--a natural fountain; a bubbling
pool in a ring of brushwood, with falling water, so tempting that I could
have pardoned a push: about five feet deep. Lose no time.'

He begged to assure her that he would rather stroll with her: it had been
only a notion of bathing by chance when he pocketed the towel.

'Dear me,' she cried, 'if I had been a man I should have scurried off at
a signal of release, quick as a hare I once woke up in a field with my
foot on its back.'

Dacier's eyebrows knotted a trifle over her eagerness to dismiss him: he
was not used to it, but rather to be courted by women, and to condescend.

'I shall not long, I'm afraid, have the pleasure of walking beside you
and hearing you. I had letters at Lugano. My uncle is unwell, I hear.'

'Lord Dannisburgh?'

The name sprang from her lips unhesitatingly.

His nodded affirmative altered her face and her voice.

'It is not a grave illness?'

'They rather fear it.'

'You had the news at Lugano?'

He answered the implied reproach: 'I can be of no, service.'

'But surely!'

'It's even doubtful that he would be bothered to receive me. We hold no
views in common--excepting one.'

'Could I?' she exclaimed. 'O that I might! If he is really ill! But if
it is actually serious he would perhaps have a wish . . . I can nurse. I
know I have the power to cheer him. You ought indeed to be in England.'

Dacier said he had thought it better to wait for later reports. 'I shall
drive to Lugano this afternoon, and act on the information I get there.
Probably it ends my holiday.'

'Will you do me the favour to write me word?--and especially tell me if
you think he would like to have me near him,' said Diana. 'And let him
know that if he wants nursing or cheerful companionship, I am at any
moment ready to come.'

The flattery of a beautiful young woman to wait on him would be very
agreeable to Lord Dannisburgh, Dacier conceived. Her offer to go was
possibly purely charitable. But the prudence of her occupation of the
post obscured whatever appeared admirable in her devotedness. Her choice
of a man like Lord Dannisburgh for the friend to whom she could sacrifice
her good name less falteringly than she gathered those field-flowers was
inexplicable; and she herself a darker riddle at each step of his
reading.

He promised curtly to write. 'I will do my best to hit a flying address.'

'Your Club enables me to hit a permanent one that will establish the
communication,' said Diana. 'We shall not sleep another night at Rovio.
Lady Esquart is the lightest of sleepers, and if you had a restless time,
she and her husband must have been in purgatory. Besides, permit me to
say, you should be with your party. The times are troublous--not for
holidays! Your holiday has had a haunted look, creditably to your
conscience as a politician. These Corn Law agitations!'

'Ah, but no politics here!' said Dacier.

'Politics everywhere!--in the Courts of Faery! They are not discord to
me.'

'But not the last day--the last hour!' he pleaded.

'Well! only do not forget your assurance to me that you would give some
thoughts to Ireland--and the cause of women. Has it slipped from your
memory?'

'If I see the chance of serving you, you may trust to me.'

She sent up an interjection on the misfortune of her not having been born
a man.

It was to him the one smart of sourness in her charm as a woman.

Among the boulder-stones of the ascent to the path, he ventured to
propose a little masculine assistance in a hand stretched mutely.
Although there was no great need for help, her natural kindliness checked
the inclination to refuse it. When their hands disjoined she found
herself reddening. She cast it on the exertion. Her heart was throbbing.
It might be the exertion likewise.

He walked and talked much more airily along the descending pathway, as if
he had suddenly become more intimately acquainted with her.

She listened, trying to think of the manner in which he might be taught
to serve that cause she had at heart; and the colour deepened on her
cheeks till it set fire to her underlying consciousness: blood to spirit.
A tremour of alarm ran through her.

His request for one of the crocuses to keep as a souvenir of the morning
was refused. 'They are sacred; they were all devoted to my friend when I
plucked them.'

He pointed to a half-open one, with the petals in disparting pointing to
junction, and compared it to the famous tiptoe ballet-posture, arms above
head and fingers like swallows meeting in air, of an operatic danseuse of
the time.

'I do not see it, because I will not see it,' she said, and she found a
personal cooling and consolement in the phrase.--We have this power of
resisting invasion of the poetic by the commonplace, the spirit by the
blood, if we please, though you men may not think that we have! Her
alarmed sensibilities bristled and made head against him as an enemy. She
fancied (for the aforesaid reason--because she chose) that it was on
account of the offence to her shy morning pleasure by his Londonizing. At
any other moment her natural liveliness and trained social ease would
have taken any remark on the eddies of the tide of converse; and so she
told herself, and did not the less feel wounded, adverse, armed. He
seemed somehow--to have dealt a mortal blow to the happy girl she had
become again. The woman she was protested on behalf of the girl, while
the girl in her heart bent lowered sad eyelids to the woman; and which of
them was wiser of the truth she could not have said, for she was honestly
not aware of the truth, but she knew she was divided in halves, with one
half pitying the other, one rebuking: and all because of the incongruous
comparison of a wild flower to an opera dancer! Absurd indeed. We human
creatures are the silliest on earth, most certainly.

Dacier had observed the blush, and the check to her flowing tongue did
not escape him as they walked back to the inn down the narrow street of
black rooms, where the women gossiped at the fountain and the cobbler
threaded on his doorstep. His novel excitement supplied the deficiency,
sweeping him past minor reflections. He was, however, surprised to hear
her tell Lady Esquart, as soon as they were together at the
breakfast-table, that he had the intention of starting for England; and
further surprised, and slightly stung too, when on the poor lady's,
moaning over her recollection of the midnight Bell, and vowing she could
not attempt to sleep another night in the place, Diana declared her
resolve to stay there one day longer with her maid, and explore the
neighbourhood for the wild flowers in which it abounded. Lord and Lady
Esquart agreed to anything agreeable to her, after excusing themselves
for the necessitated flight, piteously relating the story of their
sufferings. My lord could have slept, but he had remained awake to
comfort my lady.

'True knightliness!' Diana said, in praise of these long married lovers;
and she asked them what they had talked of during the night.

'You, my dear, partly,' said Lady Esquart.

'For an opiate?'

'An invocation of the morning,' said Dacier.

Lady Esquart looked at Diana and, at him. She thought it was well that
her fair friend should stay. It was then settled for Diana to rejoin them
the next evening at Lugano, thence to proceed to Luino on the Maggiore.

'I fear it is good-bye for me,' Dacier said to her, as he was about to
step into the carriage with the Esquarts.

'If you have not better news of your uncle, it must be,' she replied, and
gave him her hand promptly and formally, hardly diverting her eyes from
Lady Esquart to grace the temporary gift with a look. The last of her he
saw was a waving of her arm and finger pointing triumphantly at the Bell
in the tower. It said, to an understanding unpractised in the feminine
mysteries: 'I can sleep through anything.' What that revealed of her
state of conscience and her nature, his efforts to preserve the lovely
optical figure blocked his guessing. He was with her friends, who liked
her the more they knew her, and he was compelled to lean to their view of
the perplexing woman.

'She is a riddle to the world,' Lady Esquart said, 'but I know that she
is good. It is the best of signs when women take to her and are proud to
be her friend.'

My lord echoed his wife. She talked in this homely manner to stop any
notion of philandering that the young gentleman might be disposed to
entertain in regard to a lady so attractive to the pursuit as Diana's
beauty and delicate situation might make her seem.

'She is an exceedingly clever person, and handsomer than report, which is
uncommon,' said Dacier, becoming voluble on town-topics, Miss Asper
incidentally among them. He denied Lady Esquart's charge of an
engagement; the matter hung.

His letters at Lugano summoned him to England instantly.

'I have taken leave of Mrs. Warwick, but tell her I regret, et caetera,'
he said; 'and by the way, as my uncle's illness appears to be serious,
the longer she is absent the better, perhaps.'

'It would never do,' said Lady Esquart, understanding his drift
immediately. 'We winter in Rome. She will not abandon us--I have her word
for it. Next Easter we are in Paris; and so home, I suppose. There will
be no hurry before we are due at Cowes. We seem to have become confirmed
wanderers; for two of us at least it is likely to be our last great
tour.'

Dacier informed her that he had pledged his word to write to Mrs. Warwick
of his uncle's condition, and the several appointed halting-places of the
Esquarts between the lakes and Florence were named to him. Thus all
things were openly treated; all had an air of being on the surface; the
communications passing between Mrs. Warwick and the Hon. Percy Dacier
might have been perused by all the world. None but that portion of it,
sage in suspiciousness, which objects to such communications under any
circumstances, could have detected in their correspondence a spark of
coming fire or that there was common warmth. She did not feel it, nor did
he. The position of the two interdicted it to a couple honourably
sensible of social decencies; and who were, be it added, kept apart. The
blood is the treacherous element in the story of the nobly civilized, of
which secret Diana, a wife and no wife, a prisoner in liberty, a blooming
woman imagining herself restored to transcendent maiden ecstacies--the
highest youthful poetic--had received some faint intimation when the
blush flamed suddenly in her cheeks and her heart knelled like the towers
of a city given over to the devourer. She had no wish to meet him again.
Without telling herself why, she would have shunned the meeting.
Disturbers that thwarted her simple happiness in sublime scenery were
best avoided. She thought so the more for a fitful blur to the simplicity
of her sensations, and a task she sometimes had in restoring and toning
them, after that sweet morning time in Rovio.




CHAPTER XVII

'THE PRINCESS EGERIA'

London, say what we will of it, is after all the head of the British
giant, and if not the liveliest in bubbles, it is past competition the
largest broth-pot of brains anywhere simmering on the hob: over the
steadiest of furnaces too. And the oceans and the continents, as you
know, are perpetual and copious contributors, either to the heating
apparatus or to the contents of the pot. Let grander similes besought.
This one fits for the smoky receptacle cherishing millions, magnetic to
tens of millions more, with its caked outside of grime, and the inward
substance incessantly kicking the lid, prankish, but never casting it
off. A good stew, you perceive; not a parlous boiling. Weak as we may be
in our domestic cookery, our political has been sagaciously adjusted as
yet to catch the ardours of the furnace without being subject to their
volcanic activities.

That the social is also somewhat at fault, we have proof in occasional
outcries over the absence of these or those particular persons famous for
inspiriting. It sticks and clogs. The improvising songster is missed, the
convivial essayist, the humorous Dean, the travelled cynic, and he, the
one of his day, the iridescent Irishman, whose remembered repartees are a
feast, sharp and ringing, at divers tables descending from the upper to
the fat citizen's, where, instead of coming in the sequence of talk, they
are exposed by blasting, like fossil teeth of old Deluge sharks in
monotonous walls of our chalk-quarries. Nor are these the less welcome
for the violence of their introduction among a people glad to be set
burning rather briskly awhile by the most unexpected of digs in the ribs.
Dan Merion, to give an example. That was Dan Merion's joke with the
watchman: and he said that other thing to the Marquis of Kingsbury, when
the latter asked him if he had ever won a donkey-race. And old Dan is
dead, and we are the duller for it! which leads to the question: Is
genius hereditary? And the affirmative and negative are respectively
maintained, rather against the Yes is the dispute, until a member of the
audience speaks of Dan Merion's having left a daughter reputed for a
sparkling wit not much below the level of his own. Why, are you unaware
that the Mrs. Warwick of that scandal case of Warwick versus Dannisburgh
was old Dan Merion's girl--and his only child? It is true; for a friend
had it from a man who had it straight from Mr. Braddock, of the firm of
Braddock, Thorpe and Simnel, her solicitors in the action, who told him
he could sit listening to her for hours, and that she was as innocent as
day; a wonderful combination of a good woman and a clever woman and a
real beauty. Only her misfortune was to have a furiously jealous husband,
and they say he went mad after hearing the verdict.

Diana was talked of in the London circles. A witty woman is such salt
that where she has once been tasted she must perforce be missed more than
any of the absent, the dowering heavens not having yet showered her like
very plentifully upon us. Then it was first heard that Percy Dacier had
been travelling with her. Miss Asper heard of it. Her uncle, Mr. Quintin
Manx, the millionnaire, was an acquaintance of the new Judge and titled
dignitary, Sir Cramborne Wathin, and she visited Lady Wathin, at whose
table the report in the journals of the Nile-boat party was mentioned.
Lady Wathin's table could dispense with witty women, and, for that
matter, witty men. The intrusion of the spontaneous on the stereotyped
would have clashed. She preferred, as hostess, the old legal anecdotes
sure of their laugh, and the citations from the manufactories of fun in
the Press, which were current and instantly intelligible to all her
guests. She smiled suavely on an impromptu pun, because her experience of
the humorous appreciation of it by her guests bade her welcome the
upstart. Nothing else impromptu was acceptable. Mrs. Warwick therefore
was not missed by Lady Wathin. 'I have met her,' she said. 'I confess I
am not one of the fanatics about Mrs. Warwick. She has a sort of skill in
getting men to clamour. If you stoop to tickle them, they will applaud.
It is a way of winning a reputation.' When the ladies were separated from
the gentlemen by the stream of Claret, Miss Asper heard Lady Wathin speak
of Mrs. Warwick again. An allusion to Lord Dannisburgh's fit of illness
in the House of Lords led to her saying that there was no doubt he had
been fascinated, and that, in her opinion, Mrs. Warwick was a dangerous
woman. Sir Cramborne knew something of Mr. Warwick; 'Poor man!' she
added. A lady present put a question concerning Mrs. Warwick's beauty.
'Yes,' Lady Wathin said, 'she has good looks to aid her. Judging from
what I hear and have seen, her thirst is for notoriety. Sooner or later
we shall have her making a noise, you may be certain. Yes, she has the
secret of dressing well--in the French style.'

A simple newspaper report of the expedition of a Nileboat party could
stir the Powers to take her up and turn her on their wheel in this
manner.

But others of the sons and daughters of London were regretting her
prolonged absence. The great and exclusive Whitmonby, who had dined once
at Lady Wathin's table, and vowed never more to repeat that offence to
his patience, lamented bitterly to Henry Wilmers that the sole woman
worthy of sitting at a little Sunday evening dinner with the cream of the
choicest men of the time was away wasting herself in that insane modern
chase of the picturesque! He called her a perverted Celimene.

Redworth had less to regret than the rest of her male friends, as he was
receiving at intervals pleasant descriptive letters, besides manuscript
sheets of ANTONIA'S new piece of composition, to correct the proofs for
the press, and he read them critically, he thought. He read them with a
watchful eye to guard them from the critics. ANTONIA, whatever her faults
as a writer, was not one of the order whose Muse is the Public Taste. She
did at least draw her inspiration from herself, and there was much to be
feared in her work, if a sale was the object. Otherwise Redworth's highly
critical perusal led him flatly to admire. This was like her, and that
was like her, and here and there a phrase gave him the very play of her
mouth, the flash of her eyes. Could he possibly wish, or bear, to, have
anything altered? But she had reason to desire an extended sale of the
work. Her aim, in the teeth of her independent style, was at the means of
independence--a feminine method of attempting to conciliate contraries;
and after despatching the last sheets to the printer, he meditated upon
the several ways which might serve to, assist her; the main way running
thus in his mind:--We have a work of genius. Genius is good for the
public. What is good for the public should be recommended by the critics.
It should be. How then to come at them to, get it done? As he was not a
member of the honourable literary craft, and regarded its arcana
altogether externally, it may be confessed of him that he deemed the
Incorruptible corruptible;--not, of course, with filthy coin slid into
sticky palms. Critics are human, and exceedingly, beyond the common lot,
when touched; and they are excited by mysterious hints of loftiness in
authorship; by rumours of veiled loveliness; whispers, of a general
anticipation; and also Editors can jog them. Redworth was rising to be a
Railway King of a period soon to glitter with rails, iron in the
concrete, golden in the visionary. He had already his Court, much against
his will. The powerful magnetic attractions of those who can help the
world to fortune, was exercised by him in spite of his disgust of
sycophants. He dropped words to right and left of a coming work by
ANTONIA. And who was ANTONIA?--Ah! there hung the riddle.--An exalted
personage?--So much so that he dared not name her even in confidence to
ladies; he named the publishers. To men he said he was at liberty to
speak of her only as the most beautiful woman of her time. His courtiers
of both sexes were recommended to read the new story, THE PRINCESS
EGERIA.

Oddly, one great lady of his Court had heard a forthcoming work of this
title spoken of by Percy Dacier, not a man to read silly fiction, unless
there was meaning behind the lines: that is, rich scandal of the
aristocracy, diversified by stinging epigrams to the address of
discernible personages. She talked of THE PRINCESS EGERIA: nay, laid her
finger on the identical Princess. Others followed her. Dozens were soon
flying with the torch: a new work immediately to be published from the
pen of the Duchess of Stars!--And the Princess who lends her title to the
book is a living portrait of the Princess of Highest Eminence, the Hope
of all Civilization.--Orders for copies of THE PRINCESS EGERIA reached
the astonished publishers before the book was advertized.

Speaking to editors, Redworth complimented them with friendly intimations
of the real authorship of the remarkable work appearing. He used a
certain penetrative mildness of tone in saying that 'he hoped the book
would succeed': it deserved to; it was original; but the originality
might tell against it. All would depend upon a favourable launching of
such a book. 'Mrs. Warwick? Mrs. Warwick?' said the most influential of
editors, Mr. Marcus Tonans; 'what! that singularly handsome woman? . .
The Dannisburgh affair? . . . She's Whitmonby's heroine. If she writes as
cleverly as she talks, her work is worth trumpeting.' He promised to see
that it went into good hands for the review, and a prompt review--an
essential point; none of your long digestions of the contents.

Diana's indefatigable friend had fair assurances that her book would be
noticed before it dropped dead to the public appetite for novelty. He was
anxious next, notwithstanding his admiration of the originality of the
conception and the cleverness of the writing, lest the Literary Reviews
should fail 'to do it justice': he used the term; for if they wounded
her, they would take the pleasure out of success; and he had always
present to him that picture of the beloved woman kneeling at the
fire-grate at The Crossways, which made the thought of her suffering any
wound his personal anguish, so crucially sweet and saintly had her image
then been stamped on him. He bethought him, in consequence, while sitting
in the House of Commons; engaged upon the affairs of the nation, and
honestly engaged, for he was a vigilant worker--that the Irish Secretary,
Charles Raiser, with whom he stood in amicable relations, had an
interest, to the extent of reputed ownership, in the chief of the
Literary Reviews. He saw Raiser on the benches, and marked him to speak
for him. Looking for him shortly afterward, the man was gone. 'Off to the
Opera, if he's not too late for the drop,' a neighbour said, smiling
queerly, as though he ought to know; and then Redworth recollected
current stories of Raiser's fantastical devotion to the popular prima
donna of the angelical voice.--He hurried to the Opera and met the vomit,
and heard in the crushroom how divine she had been that night. A fellow
member of the House, tolerably intimate with Raiser, informed him,
between frightful stomachic roulades of her final aria, of the likeliest
place where Raiser might be found when the Opera was over: not at his
Club, nor at his chambers: on one of the bridges--Westminster, he
fancied.

There was no need for Redworth to run hunting the man at so late an hour,
but he was drawn on by the similarity in dissimilarity of this devotee of
a woman, who could worship her at a distance, and talk of her to
everybody. Not till he beheld Raiser's tall figure cutting the
bridge-parapet, with a star over his shoulder, did he reflect on the
views the other might entertain of the nocturnal solicitation to see
'justice done' to a lady's new book in a particular Review, and the
absurd outside of the request was immediately smothered by the natural
simplicity and pressing necessity of its inside.

He crossed the road and said, 'Ah?' in recognition. 'Were you at the
Opera this evening?'

'Oh, just at the end,' said Raiser, pacing forward. 'It's a fine night.
Did you hear her?'

'No; too late.'

Raiser pressed ahead, to meditate by himself, as was his wont. Finding
Redworth beside him, he monologuized in his depths: 'They'll kill her.
She puts her soul into it, gives her blood. There 's no failing of the
voice. You see how it wears her. She's doomed. Half a year's rest on Como
. . . somewhere . . . she might be saved! She won't refuse to work.'

'Have you spoken to her?' said Redworth.

'And next to Berlin! Vienna! A horse would be . . . .

I? I don't know her,' Raiser replied. 'Some of their women stand it.
She's delicately built. You can't treat a lute like a drum without
destroying the instrument. We look on at a murder!'

The haggard prospect from that step of the climax checked his delivery.

Redworth knew him to be a sober man in office, a man with a head for
statecraft: he had made a weighty speech in the House a couple of hours
back. This Opera cantatrice, no beauty, though gentle, thrilling,
winning, was his corner of romance.

'Do you come here often?' he asked.

'Yes, I can't sleep.'

'London at night, from the bridge, looks fine. By the way . . .'

'It 's lonely here, that's the advantage,' said Rainer; 'I keep silver in
my pocket for poor girls going to their homes, and I'm left in peace. An
hour later, there's the dawn down yonder.'

'By the way,' Redworth interposed, and was told that after these nights
of her singing she never slept till morning. He swallowed the fact,
sympathized, and resumed: 'I want a small favour.'

'No business here, please!'

'Not a bit of it. You know Mrs. Warwick. . . . You know of her. She 's
publishing a book. I want you to use your influence to get it noticed
quickly, if you can.'

'Warwick? Oh, yes, a handsome woman. Ah, yes; the Dannisburgh affair,
yes. What did I hear!--They say she 's thick with Percy Dacier at
present. Who was talking of her! Yes, old Lady Dacier. So she 's a friend
of yours?'

'She's an old friend,' said Redworth, composing himself; for the dose he
had taken was not of the sweetest, and no protestations could be uttered
by a man of the world to repel a charge of tattlers. 'The truth is, her
book is clever. I have read the proofs. She must have an income, and she
won't apply to her husband, and literature should help her, if she 's
fairly treated. She 's Irish by descent; Merion's daughter, witty as her
father. It's odd you haven't met her. The mere writing of the book is
extraordinarily good. If it 's put into capable hands for review! that's
all it requires. And full of life . . . bright dialogue . . capital
sketches. The book's a piece of literature. Only it must have competent
critics!'

So he talked while Rainer ejaculated: 'Warwick? Warwick?' in the
irritating tone of dozens of others. 'What did I hear of her husband? He
has a post . . . . Yes, yes. Some one said the verdict in that case
knocked him over--heart disease, or something.'

He glanced at the dark Thames water. 'Take my word for it, the groves of
Academe won't compare with one of our bridges at night, if you seek
philosophy. You see the London above and the London below: round us the
sleepy city, and the stars in the water looking like souls of suicides. I
caught a girl with a bad fit on her once. I had to lecture her! It's when
we become parsons we find out our cousinship with these poor
peripatetics, whose "last philosophy" is a jump across the parapet. The
bridge at night is a bath for a public man. But choose another; leave me
mine.'

Redworth took the hint. He stated the title of Mrs. Warwick's book, and
imagined from the thoughtful cast of Rainer's head, that he was
impressing THE PRINCESS EGERIA On his memory.

Rainer burst out, with clenched fists: 'He beats her! The fellow lives on
her and beats her; strikes that woman! He drags her about to every
Capital in Europe to make money for him, and the scoundrel pays her with
blows.'

In the course of a heavy tirade against the scoundrel, Redworth
apprehended that it was the cantatrice's husband. He expressed his horror
and regret; paused, and named THE PRINCESS EGERIA and a certain Critical
Review. Another outburst seemed to be in preparation. Nothing further was
to be done for the book at that hour. So, with a blunt 'Good night,' he
left Charles Rainer pacing, and thought on his walk home of the strange
effects wrought by women unwittingly upon men (Englishmen); those women,
or some of them, as little knowing it as the moon her traditional
influence upon the tides. He thought of Percy Dacier too. In his bed he
could have wished himself peregrinating a bridge.

The PRINCESS EGERIA appeared, with the reviews at her heels, a pack of
clappers, causing her to fly over editions clean as a doe the gates and
hedges--to quote Mr. Sullivan Smith, who knew not a sentence of the work
save what he gathered of it from Redworth, at their chance meeting on
Piccadilly pavement, and then immediately he knew enough to blow his
huntsman's horn in honour of the sale. His hallali rang high. 'Here's
another Irish girl to win their laurels! 'Tis one of the blazing
successes. A most enthralling work, beautifully composed. And where is
she now, Mr. Redworth, since she broke away from that husband of hers,
that wears the clothes of the worst tailor ever begotten by a thread on a
needle, as I tell every soul of 'em in my part of the country?'

'You have seen him?' said Redworth.

'Why, sir, wasn't he on show at the Court he applied to for relief and
damages? as we heard when we were watching the case daily, scarce drawing
our breath for fear the innocent--and one of our own blood, would be
crushed. Sure, there he stood; ay, and looking the very donkey for a
woman to flip off her fingers, like the dust from my great uncle's prise
of snuff! She's a glory to the old country. And better you than another,
I'd say, since it wasn't an Irishman to have her: but what induced the
dear lady to take him, is the question we 're all of us asking! And it's
mournful to think that somehow you contrive to get the pick of us in the
girls! If ever we 're united, 'twill be by a trick of circumvention of
that sort, pretty sure. There's a turn in the market when they shut their
eyes and drop to the handiest: and London's a vortex that poor dear dull
old Dublin can't compete with. I 'll beg you for the address of the lady
her friend, Lady Dunstane.'

Mr. Sullivan Smith walked with Redworth through the park to the House of
Commons, discoursing of Rails and his excellent old friend's rise to the
top rung of the ladder and Beanstalk land, so elevated that one had to
look up at him with watery eyes, as if one had flung a ball at the
meridian sun. Arrived at famed St. Stephen's, he sent in his compliments
to the noble patriot and accepted an invitation to dinner.

'And mind you read THE PRINCESS EGERIA,' said Redworth.

'Again and again, my friend. The book is bought.' Sullivan Smith slapped
his breastpocket.

'There's a bit of Erin in it.'

'It sprouts from Erin.'

'Trumpet it.'

'Loud as cavalry to the charge!'

Once with the title stamped on his memory, the zealous Irishman might be
trusted to become an ambulant advertizer. Others, personal friends,
adherents, courtiers of Redworth's, were active. Lady Pennon and Henry
Wilmers, in the upper circle; Whitmonby and Westlake, in the literary;
spread the fever for this new book. The chief interpreter of public
opinion caught the way of the wind and headed the gale.

Editions of the book did really run like fires in summer furze; and to
such an extent that a simple literary performance grew to be respected in
Great Britain, as representing Money.




CHAPTER XVIII

THE AUTHORESS

The effect of a great success upon Diana, at her second literary venture,
was shown in the transparent sedateness of a letter she wrote to Emma
Dunstane, as much as in her immediate and complacent acceptance of the
magical change of her fortunes. She spoke one thing and acted another,
but did both with a lofty calm that deceived the admiring friend who
clearly saw the authoress behind her mask, and feared lest she should be
too confidently trusting to the powers of her pen to support an
establishment.

'If the public were a perfect instrument to strike on, I should be
tempted to take the wonderful success of my PRINCESS at her first
appearance for a proof of natural aptitude in composition, and might
think myself the genius. I know it to be as little a Stradivarius as I am
a Paganini. It is an eccentric machine, in tune with me for the moment,
because I happen to have hit it in the ringing spot. The book is a new
face appealing to a mirror of the common surface emotions; and the
kitchen rather than the dairy offers an analogy for the real value of
that "top-skim." I have not seen what I consider good in the book once
mentioned among the laudatory notices--except by your dear hand, my Emmy.
Be sure I will stand on guard against the "vaporous generalizations," and
other "tricks" you fear. Now that you are studying Latin for an
occupation--how good and wise it was of Mr. Redworth to propose it!--I
look upon you with awe as a classic authority and critic. I wish I had
leisure to study with you. What I do is nothing like so solid and
durable.

'THE PRINCESS EGERIA' originally (I must have written word of it to
you--I remember the evening off Palermo!) was conceived as a sketch; by
gradations she grew into a sort of semi-Scudery romance, and swelled to
her present portliness. That was done by a great deal of piecing, not to
say puffing, of her frame. She would be healthier and have a chance of
living longer if she were reduced by a reversal of the processes. But how
would the judicious clippings and prickings affect our "pensive public"?
Now that I have furnished a house and have a fixed address, under the
paws of creditors, I feel I am in the wizard-circle of my popularity and
subscribe to its laws or waken to incubus and the desert. Have I been
rash? You do not pronounce. If I have bound myself to pipe as others
please, it need not be entirely; and I can promise you it shall not be;
but still I am sensible when I lift my "little quill" of having forced
the note of a woodland wren into the popular nightingale's--which may end
in the daw's, from straining; or worse, a toy-whistle.

'That is, in the field of literature. Otherwise, within me deep, I am not
aware of any transmutation of the celestial into coined gold. I sound
myself, and ring clear. Incessant writing is my refuge, my solace--escape
out of the personal net. I delight in it, as in my early morning walks at
Lugano, when I went threading the streets and by the lake away to "the
heavenly mount," like a dim idea worming upward in a sleepy head to
bright wakefulness.

'My anonymous critic, of whom I told you, is intoxicating with eulogy.
The signature "Apollonius" appears to be of literary-middle indication.
He marks passages approved by you. I have also had a complimentary letter
from Mr. Dacier:

'For an instance of this delight I have in writing, so strong is it that
I can read pages I have written, and tear the stuff to strips (I did
yesterday), and resume, as if nothing had happened. The waves within are
ready for any displacement. That must be a good sign. I do not doubt of
excelling my PRINCESS; and if she received compliments, the next may hope
for more. Consider, too, the novel pleasure of earning money by the
labour we delight in. It is an answer to your question whether I am
happy. Yes, as the savage islander before the ship entered the bay with
the fire-water. My blood is wine, and I have the slumbers of an infant. I
dream, wake, forget my dream, barely dress before the pen is galloping;
barely breakfast; no toilette till noon. A savage in good sooth! You see,
my Emmy, I could not house with the "companionable person" you hint at.
The poles can never come together till the earth is crushed. She would
find my habits intolerable, and I hers contemptible, though we might both
be companionable persons. My dear, I could not even live with myself. My
blessed little quill, which helps me divinely to live out of myself, is
and must continue to be my one companion. It is my mountain height,
morning light, wings, cup from the springs, my horse, my goal, my lancet
and replenisher, my key of communication with the highest, grandest,
holiest between earth and heaven-the vital air connecting them.

'In justice let me add that I have not been troubled by hearing of any of
the mysterious legal claims, et caetera. I am sorry to hear bad reports
of health. I wish him entire felicity--no step taken to bridge division!
The thought of it makes me tigrish.

'A new pianist playing his own pieces (at Lady Singleby's concert) has
given me exquisite pleasure' and set me composing songs--not to his
music, which could be rendered only by sylphs moving to "soft recorders"
in the humour of wildness, languor, bewitching caprices, giving a new
sense to melody. How I wish you had been with me to hear him! It was the
most AEolian thing ever caught from a night-breeze by the soul of a poet.

'But do not suppose me having headlong tendencies to the melting mood.
(The above, by the way, is a Pole settled in Paris, and he is to be
introduced to me at Lady Pennon's.)--What do you say to my being invited
by Mr. Whitmonby to aid him in writing leading articles for the paper he
is going to conduct! "write as you talk and it will do," he says. I am
choosing my themes. To write--of politics--as I talk, seems to me like an
effort to jump away from my shadow. The black dog of consciousness
declines to be shaken off. If some one commanded me to talk as I write! I
suspect it would be a way of winding me up to a sharp critical pitch
rapidly.

'Not good news of Lord D. I have had messages. Mr. Dacier conceals his
alarm. The PRINCESS gave great gratification. She did me her best service
there. Is it not cruel that the interdict of the censor should force me
to depend for information upon such scraps as I get from a gentleman
passing my habitation on his way to the House? And he is not, he never
has been, sympathetic in that direction. He sees my grief, and assumes an
undertakerly air, with some notion of acting in concert, one supposes
little imagining how I revolt from that crape-hatband formalism of
sorrow!

'One word of her we call our inner I. I am not drawing upon her resources
for my daily needs; not wasting her at all, I trust; certainly not
walling her up, to deafen her voice. It would be to fall away from you.
She bids me sign myself, my beloved, ever, ever your Tony.'

The letter had every outward show of sincereness in expression, and was
endowed to wear that appearance by the writer's impulse to protest with
so resolute a vigour as to delude herself. Lady Dunstane heard of Mr.
Dacier's novel attendance at concerts. The world made a note of it; for
the gentleman was notoriously without ear for music.

Diana's comparison of her hours of incessant writing to her walks under
the dawn at Lugano, her boast of the similarity of her delight in both,
deluded her uncorrupted conscience to believe that she was now
spiritually as free: as in that fair season of the new spring in her
veins. She, was not an investigating physician, nor was Lady Dunstane,
otherwise they would have examined the material points of her
conduct--indicators of the spiritual secret always. What are the
patient's acts? The patient's, mind was projected too far beyond them to
see the fore finger they stretched at her; and the friend's was not that
of a prying doctor on the look out for betraying symptoms. Lady Dunstane
did ask herself why Tony should have incurred the burden of a costly
household--a very costly: Sir Lukin had been at one of Tony's little'
dinners: but her wish to meet the world on equal terms, after a long
dependency, accounted for it in seeming to excuse. The guests on the
occasion were Lady Pennon. Lady Singleby, Mr. Whitmonby, Mr. Percy
Dacier, Mr. Tonans;--'Some other woman,' Sir Lukin said, and himself. He
reported the cookery as matching the: conversation, and that was
princely; the wines not less--an extraordinary fact to note of a woman.
But to hear Whitmonby and Diana Warwick! How he told a story, neat as a
postman's knock, and she tipped it with a remark and ran to a second,
drawing in Lady Pennon, and then Dacier, 'and me!' cried Sir Lukin; 'she
made us all toss the ball from hand to hand, and all talk up to the mark;
and none of us noticed that we all went together to the drawing-room,
where we talked for another hour, and broke up fresher than we began.'

'That break between the men and the women after dinner was Tony's
aversion, and I am glad she has instituted a change,' said Lady Dunstane.

She heard also from Redworth of the unexampled concert of the guests at
Mrs. Warwick's dinner parties. He had met on one occasion the Esquarts,
the Pettigrews, Mr. Percy Dacier, and a Miss Paynham. Redworth had not a
word to say of the expensive household. Whatever Mrs. Warwick did was
evidently good to him. On another evening the party was composed of Lady
Pennon, Lord Larrian, Miss Paynham, a clever Mrs. Wollasley, Mr. Henry
Wilmers, and again Mr. Percy Dacier.

When Diana came to Copsley, Lady Dunstane remarked on the recurrence of
the name of Miss Paynham in the list of her guests.

'And Mr. Percy Dacier's too,' said Diana, smiling. 'They are invited each
for specific reasons. It pleases Lord Dannisburgh to hear that a way has
been found to enliven his nephew; and my little dinners are effective, I
think. He wakes. Yesterday evening he capped flying jests with Mr.
Sullivan Smith. But you speak of Miss. Paynham.' Diana lowered her voice
on half a dozen syllables, till the half-tones dropped into her steady
look. 'You approve, Emmy?'

The answer was: 'I do--true or not.'

'Between us two, dear, I fear! . . . In either case, she has been badly
used. Society is big engine enough to protect itself. I incline with
British juries to do rough justice to the victims. She has neither father
nor brother. I have had no confidences: but it wears the look of a
cowardly business. With two words in his ear, I could arm an Irishman to
do some work of chastisement: he would select the rascal's necktie for a
cause of quarrel and lords have to stand their ground as well as
commoners. They measure the same number of feet when stretched their
length. However, vengeance with the heavens! though they seem tardy. Lady
Pennon has been very kind about it; and the Esquarts invite her to
Lockton. Shoulder to shoulder, the tide may be stemmed.'

'She would have gone under, but for you, dear Tony!' said Emma' folding
arms round her darling's neck anal kissing her. 'Bring her here some
day.'

Diana did not promise it. She had her vision of Sir Lukin in his fit of
lunacy.

'I am too weak for London now,' Emma resumed. 'I should like to be
useful. Is she pleasant?'

'Sprightly by nature. She has worn herself with fretting.'

'Then bring her to stay with me, if I cannot keep you. She will talk of
you to me.'

'I will bring her for a couple of days,' Diana said. 'I am too busy to
remain longer. She paints portraits to amuse herself. She ought to be
pushed, wherever she is received about London, while the season is warm.
One season will suffice to establish her. She is pretty, near upon six
and twenty: foolish, of course:--she pays for having had a romantic head.
Heavy payment, Emmy! I drive at laws, but hers is an instance of the
creatures wanting simple human kindness.'

'The good law will come with a better civilization; but before society
can be civilized it has to be debarbarized,' Emma remarked, and Diana
sighed over the task and the truism.

I should have said in younger days, because it will not look plainly on
our nature and try to reconcile it with our conditions. But now I see
that the sin is cowardice. The more I know of the world the more clearly
I perceive that its top and bottom sin is cowardice, physically and
morally alike. Lord Larrian owns to there being few heroes in an army. We
must fawn in society. What is the meaning of that dread of one example of
tolerance? O my dear! let us give it the right name. Society is the best
thing we have, but it is a crazy vessel worked by a crew that formerly
practised piracy, and now, in expiation, professes piety, fearful of a
discovered Omnipotence, which is in the image of themselves and captain.
Their old habits are not quite abandoned, and their new one is used as a
lash to whip the exposed of us for a propitiation of the capricious
potentate whom they worship in the place of the true God.'

Lady Dunstane sniffed. 'I smell the leading article.'

Diana joined with her smile, 'No, the style is rather different.'

'Have you not got into a trick of composing in speaking, at times?'

Diana confessed, 'I think I have at times. Perhaps the daily writing of
all kinds and the nightly talking . . . I may be getting strained.'

'No, Tony; but longer visits in the country to me would refresh you. I
miss your lighter touches. London is a school, but, you know it, not a
school for comedy nor for philosophy; that is gathered on my hills, with
London distantly in view, and then occasional descents on it well
digested.'

'I wonder whether it is affecting me!' said Diana, musing. 'A
metropolitan hack! and while thinking myself free, thrice harnessed; and
all my fun gone. Am I really as dull as a tract, my dear? I must be, or I
should be proving the contrary instead of asking. My pitfall is to fancy
I have powers equal to the first look-out of the eyes of the morning.
Enough of me. We talked of Mary Paynham. If only some right good man
would marry her!'

Lady Dunstane guessed at the right good man in Diana's mind. 'Do you
bring them together?'

Diana nodded, and then shook doleful negatives to signify no hope.

'None whatever--if we mean the same person,' said Lady Dunstane,
bethinking her, in the spirit of wrath she felt at such a scheme being
planned by Diana to snare the right good man, that instead of her own
true lover Redworth, it might be only Percy Dacier. So filmy of mere
sensations are these little ideas as they flit in converse, that she did
not reflect on her friend's ignorance of Redworth's love of her, or on
the unlikely choice of one in Dacier's high station to reinstate a
damsel.

They did not name the person.

'Passing the instance, which is cruel, I will be just to society thus
far,' said Diana. 'I was in a boat at Richmond last week, and Leander was
revelling along the mud-banks, and took it into his head to swim out to
me, and I was moved to take him on board. The ladies in the boat
objected, for he was not only wet but very muddy. I was forced to own
that their objections were reasonable. My sentimental humaneness had no
argument against muslin dresses, though my dear dog's eyes appealed
pathetically, and he would keep swimming after us. The analogy excuses
the world for protecting itself in extreme cases; nothing, nothing
excuses its insensibility to cases which may be pleaded. You see the
pirate crew turned pious-ferocious in sanctity.' She added, half
laughing: 'I am reminded by the boat, I have unveiled my anonymous
critic, and had a woeful disappointment. He wrote like a veteran; he is
not much more than a boy. I received a volume of verse, and a few lines
begging my acceptance. I fancied I knew the writing, and wrote asking him
whether I had not to thank him, and inviting him to call. He seems a nice
lad of about two and twenty, mad for literature; and he must have talent.
Arthur Rhodes by name. I may have a chance of helping him. He was an
articled clerk of Mr. Braddock's, the same who valiantly came to my
rescue once. He was with us in the boat.'

'Bring him to me some day,' said Lady Dunstane.

Miss Paynham's visit to Copsley was arranged, and it turned out a
failure. The poor young lady came in a flutter, thinking that the friend
of Mrs. Warwick would expect her to discourse cleverly. She attempted it,
to Diana's amazement. Lady Dunstane's opposingly corresponding stillness
provoked Miss Paynham to expatiate, for she had sprightliness and some
mental reserves of the common order. Clearly, Lady Dunstane mused while
listening amiably, Tony never could have designed this gabbler for the
mate of Thomas Redworth!

Percy Dacier seemed to her the more likely one, in that light, and she
thought so still, after Sir Lukin had introduced him at Copsley for a
couple of days of the hunting season. Tony's manner with him suggested
it; she had a dash of leadership. They were not intimate in look or
tongue.

But Percy Dacier also was too good for Miss Paynham, if that was Tony's
plan for him, Lady Dunstane thought, with the relentlessness of an
invalid and recluse's distaste. An aspect of penitence she had not
demanded, but the silly gabbier under a stigma she could not pardon.

Her opinion of Miss Paynham was diffused in her silence.

Speaking of Mr. Dacier, she remarked, 'As you say of him, Tony, he can
brighten, and when you give him a chance he is entertaining. He has fine
gifts. If I were a member of his family I should beat about for a match
for him. He strikes me as one of the young men who would do better
married.'

'He is doing very well, but the wonder is that he doesn't marry,' said
Diana. 'He ought to be engaged. Lady Esquart told me that he was. A Miss
Asper--great heiress; and the Daciers want money. However, there it is.'

Not many weeks later Diana could not have spoken of Mr. Percy Dacier with
this air of indifference without corruption of her inward guide.




CHAPTER XIX

A DRIVE IN SUNLIGHT AND A DRIVE IN MOONLIGHT

The fatal time to come for her was in the Summer of that year.

Emma had written her a letter of unwonted bright spirits, contrasting
strangely with an inexplicable oppression of her own that led her to
imagine her recent placid life the pause before thunder, and to sharp the
mood of her solitary friend she flew to Copsley, finding Sir Lukin
absent, as usual. They drove out immediately after breakfast, on one of
those high mornings of the bared bosom of June when distances are given
to our eyes, and a soft air fondles leaf and grass-blade, and beauty and
peace are overhead, reflected, if we will. Rain had fallen in the night.
Here and there hung a milk-white cloud with folded sail. The South-west
left it in its bay of blue, and breathed below. At moments the fresh
scent of herb and mould swung richly in warmth. The young beech-leaves
glittered, pools of rain-water made the roadways laugh, the grass-banks
under hedges rolled their interwoven weeds in cascades of many-shaded
green to right and left of the pair of dappled ponies, and a squirrel
crossed ahead, a lark went up a little way to ease his heart, closing his
wings when the burst was over, startled black-birds, darting with a
clamour like a broken cockcrow, looped the wayside woods from hazel to
oak-scrub; short flights, quick spirts everywhere, steady sunshine above.

Diana held the reins. The whip was an ornament, as the plume of feathers
to the general officer. Lady Dunstane's ponies were a present from
Redworth, who always chose the pick of the land for his gifts. They joyed
in their trot, and were the very love-birds of the breed for their
pleasure of going together, so like that Diana called them the Dromios.
Through an old gravel-cutting a gateway led to the turf of the down,
springy turf bordered on a long line, clear as a racecourse, by golden
gorse covers, and leftward over the gorse the dark ridge of the fir and
heath country ran companionably to the Southwest, the valley between,
with undulations of wood and meadow sunned or shaded, clumps, mounds,
promontories, away to broad spaces of tillage banked by wooded hills, and
dimmer beyond and farther, the faintest shadowiness of heights, as a veil
to the illimitable. Yews, junipers, radiant beeches, and gleams of the
service-tree or the white-beam spotted the semicircle of swelling green
Down black and silver. The sun in the valley sharpened his beams on
squares of buttercups, and made a pond a diamond.

'You see, Tony,' Emma said, for a comment on the scene, 'I could envy
Italy for having you, more than you for being in Italy.'

'Feature and colour!' said Diana. 'You have them here, and on a scale
that one can embrace. I should like to build a hut on this point, and
wait for such a day to return. It brings me to life.' She lifted her
eyelids on her friend's worn sweet face, and knowing her this friend up
to death, past it in her hopes, she said bravely, 'It is the Emma of days
and scenes to me! It helps me to forget myself, as I do when I think of
you, dearest; but the subject has latterly been haunting me, I don't know
why, and ominously, as if my nature were about to horrify my soul. But I
am not sentimentalizing, you are really this day and scene in my heart.'

Emma smiled confidingly. She spoke her reflection: 'The heart must be
troubled a little to have the thought. The flower I gather here tells me
that we may be happy in privation and suffering if simply we can accept
beauty. I won't say expel the passions, but keep passion sober, a trotter
in harness.'

Diana caressed the ponies' heads with the droop of her whip: 'I don't
think I know him!' she said.

Between sincerity and a suspicion so cloaked and dull that she did not
feel it to be the opposite of candour, she fancied she was passionless
because she could accept the visible beauty, which was Emma's
prescription and test; and she forced herself to make much of it, cling
to it, devour it; with envy of Emma's contemplative happiness, through
whose grave mind she tried to get to the peace in it, imagining that she
succeeded. The cloaked and dull suspicion weighed within her
nevertheless. She took it for a mania to speculate on herself. There are
states of the crimson blood when the keenest wits are childish, notably
in great-hearted women aiming at the majesty of their sex and fearful of
confounding it by the look direct and the downright word. Yet her nature
compelled her inwardly to phrase the sentence: 'Emma is a wife!' The
character of her husband was not considered, nor was the meaning of the
exclamation pursued.

They drove through the gorse into wild land of heath and flowering
hawthorn, and along by tracts of yew and juniper to another point,
jutting on a furzy sand-mound, rich with the mild splendour of English
scenery, which Emma stamped on her friend's mind by saying: 'A cripple
has little to envy in you who can fly when she has feasts like these at
her doors.'

They had an inclination to boast on the drive home of the solitude they
had enjoyed; and just then, as the road in the wood wound under great
beeches, they beheld a London hat. The hat was plucked from its head. A
clear-faced youth, rather flushed, dusty at the legs, addressed Diana.

'Mr. Rhodes!' she said, not discouragingly.

She was petitioned to excuse him; he thought she would wish to hear the
news in town last night as early as possible; he hesitated and murmured
it.

Diana turned to Emma: 'Lord Dannisburgh!' her paleness told the rest.

Hearing from Mr. Rhodes that he had walked the distance from town, and
had been to Copsley, Lady Dunstane invited him to follow the
pony-carriage thither, where he was fed and refreshed by a tea-breakfast,
as he preferred walking on tea, he said. 'I took the liberty to call at
Mrs. Warwick's house,' he informed her; 'the footman said she was at
Copsley. I found it on the map--I knew the directions--and started about
two in the morning. I wanted a walk.'

It was evident to her that he was one of the young squires bewitched whom
beautiful women are constantly enlisting. There was no concealment of it,
though he stirred a sad enviousness in the invalid lady by descanting on
the raptures of a walk out of London in the youngest light of day, and on
the common objects he had noticed along the roadside, and through the
woods, more sustaining, closer with nature than her compulsory feeding on
the cream of things.

'You are not fatigued?' she inquired, hoping for that confession at
least; but she pardoned his boyish vaunting to walk the distance back
without any fatigue at all.

He had a sweeter reward for his pains; and if the business of the
chronicler allowed him to become attached to pure throbbing felicity
wherever it is encountered, he might be diverted by the blissful
unexpectedness of good fortune befalling Mr. Arthur Rhodes in having the
honour to conduct Mrs. Warwick to town. No imagined happiness, even in
the heart of a young man of two and twenty, could have matched it. He was
by her side, hearing and seeing her, not less than four hours. To add to
his happiness, Lady Dunstane said she would be glad to welcome him again.
She thought him a pleasant specimen of the self-vowed squire.

Diana was sure that there would be a communication for her of some sort
at her house in London; perhaps a message of farewell from the dying
lord, now dead. Mr. Rhodes had only the news of the evening journals, to
the effect that Lord Dannisburgh had expired at his residence, the
Priory, Hallowmere, in Hampshire. A message of farewell from him, she
hoped for: knowing him as she did, it seemed a certainty; and she
hungered for that last gleam of life in her friend. She had no
anticipation of the burden of the message awaiting her.

A consultation as to the despatching of the message, had taken place
among the members of Lord Dannisburgh's family present at his death.
Percy Dacier was one of them, and he settled the disputed point, after
some time had been spent in persuading his father to take the plain view
of obligation in the matter, and in opposing the dowager countess, his
grandmother, by stating that he had already sent a special messenger to
London. Lord Dannisburgh on his death-bed had expressed a wish that Mrs.
Warwick would sit with him for an hour one night before the nails were
knocked in his coffin. He spoke of it twice, putting it the second time
to Percy as a formal request to be made to her, and Percy had promised
him that Mrs. Warwick should have the message. He had done his best to
keep his pledge, aware of the disrelish of the whole family for the
lady's name, to say nothing of her presence.

'She won't come,' said the earl.

'She'll come,' said old Lady Dacier.

'If the woman respects herself she'll hold off it,' the earl insisted
because of his desire that way. He signified in mutterings that the thing
was improper and absurd, a piece of sentiment, sickly senility, unlike
Lord Dannisburgh. Also that Percy had been guilty of excessive folly.

To which Lady Dacier nodded her assent, remarking, 'The woman is on her
mettle. From what I've heard of her, she's not a woman to stick at
trifles. She'll take it as a sort of ordeal by touch, and she 'll come.'

They joined in abusing Percy, who had driven away to another part of the
country. Lord Creedmore, the heir of the house, was absent, hunting in
America, or he might temporarily have been taken into favour by contrast.
Ultimately they agreed that the woman must be allowed to enter the house,
but could not be received. The earl was a widower; his mother managed the
family, and being hard to convince, she customarily carried her point,
save when it involved Percy's freedom of action. She was one of the
veterans of her sex that age to toughness; and the 'hysterical fuss' she
apprehended in the visit of this woman to Lord Dannisburgh's death-bed
and body, did not alarm her. For the sake of the household she determined
to remain, shut up in her room. Before night the house was empty of any
members of the family excepting old Lady Dacier and the outstretched
figure on the bed.

Dacier fled to escape the hearing of the numberless ejaculations
re-awakened in the family by his uncle's extraordinary dying request.
They were an outrage to the lady, of whom he could now speak as a
privileged champion; and the request itself had an air of proving her
stainless, a white soul and efficacious advocate at the celestial gates
(reading the mind of the dying man). So he thought at one moment: he had
thought so when charged with the message to her; had even thought it a
natural wish that she should look once on the face she would see no more,
and say farewell to it, considering that in life it could not be
requested. But the susceptibility to sentimental emotion beside a
death-bed, with a dying man's voice in the ear, requires fortification if
it is to be maintained;' and the review of his uncle's character did not
tend to make this very singular request a proof that the lady's innocence
was honoured in it. His epicurean uncle had no profound esteem for the
kind of innocence. He had always talked of Mrs. Warwick--with warm
respect for her: Dacier knew that he had bequeathed her a sum of money.
The inferences were either way. Lord Dannisburgh never spoke evilly of
any woman, and he was perhaps bound to indemnify her materially as well
as he could for what she had suffered.--On the other hand, how easy it
was to be the dupe of a woman so handsome and clever.--Unlikely too that
his uncle would consent to sit at the Platonic banquet with her.--Judging
by himself, Dacier deemed it possible for man. He was not quick to
kindle, and had lately seen much of her, had found her a Lady Egeria,
helpful in counsel, prompting, inspiriting, reviving as well-waters, and
as temperately cool: not one sign of native slipperiness. Nor did she
stir the mud in him upon which proud man is built. The shadow of the
scandal had checked a few shifty sensations rising now and then of their
own accord, and had laid them, with the lady's benign connivance. This
was good proof in her favour, seeing that she must have perceived of late
the besetting thirst he had for her company; and alone or in the medley
equally. To see her, hear, exchange ideas with her; and to talk of new
books, try to listen to music at the opera and at concerts, and admire
her playing of hostess, were novel pleasures, giving him fresh notions of
life, and strengthening rather than disturbing the course of his life's
business.

At any rate, she was capable of friendship. Why not resolutely believe
that she had been his uncle's true and simple friend! He adopted the
resolution, thanking her for one recognized fact:--he hated marriage, and
would by this time have been in the yoke, but for the agreeable deviation
of his path to her society. Since his visit to Copsley, moreover, Lady
Dunstane's idolizing, of her friend had influenced him. Reflecting on it,
he recovered from the shock which his uncle's request had caused.

Certain positive calculations were running side by side with the
speculations in vapour. His messenger would reach her house at about four
of the afternoon. If then at home, would she decide to start
immediately?--Would she come? That was a question he did not delay to
answer. Would she defer the visit? Death replied to that. She would not
delay it.

She would be sure to come at once. And what of the welcome she would
meet? Leaving the station at London at six in the evening, she might
arrive at the Priory, all impediments counted, between ten and eleven at
night. Thence, coldly greeted, or not greeted, to the chamber of death.

A pitiable and cruel reception for a woman upon such a mission!

His mingled calculations and meditations reached that exclamatory
terminus in feeling, and settled on the picture of Diana, about as clear
as light to blinking eyes, but enough for him to realize her being there
and alone, woefully alone. The supposition of an absolute loneliness was
most possible. He had intended to drive back the next day, when the
domestic storm would be over, and take the chances of her coming. It
seemed now a piece of duty to return at night, a traverse of twenty rough
up and down miles from Itchenford to the heath-land rolling on the chalk
wave of the Surrey borders, easily done after the remonstrances of his
host were stopped.

Dacier sat in an open carriage, facing a slip of bright moon. Poetical
impressions, emotions, any stirrings of his mind by the sensational stamp
on it, were new to him, and while he swam in them, both lulled and
pricked by his novel accessibility to nature's lyrical touch, he asked
himself whether, if he were near the throes of death, the thought of
having Diana Warwick to sit beside his vacant semblance for an hour at
night would be comforting. And why had his uncle specified an hour of the
night? It was a sentiment, like the request: curious in a man so little
sentimental. Yonder crescent running the shadowy round of the hoop roused
comparisons. Would one really wish to have her beside one in death? In
life--ah! But suppose her denied to us in life. Then the desire for her
companionship appears passingly comprehensible. Enter into the sentiment,
you see that the hour of darkness is naturally chosen. And would even a
grand old Pagan crave the presence beside his dead body for an hour of
the night of a woman he did not esteem? Dacier answered no. The negative
was not echoed in his mind. He repeated it, and to the same deadness.

He became aware that he had spoken for himself, and he had a fit of
sourness. For who can say he is not a fool before he has been tried by a
woman! Dacier's wretched tendency under vexation to conceive grotesque
analogies, anti-poetic, not to say cockney similes, which had slightly
chilled Diana at Rovio, set him looking at yonder crescent with the hoop,
as at the shape of a white cat climbing a wheel. Men of the northern
blood will sometimes lend their assent to poetical images, even to those
that do not stun the mind lie bludgeons and imperatively, by much
repetition, command their assent; and it is for a solid exchange and
interest in usury with soft poetical creatures when they are so
condescending; but they are seized by the grotesque. In spite of efforts
to efface or supplant it, he saw the white cat, nothing else, even to
thinking that she had jumped cleverly to catch the wheel. He was a true
descendant of practical hard-grained fighting Northerners, of gnarled
dwarf imaginations, chivalrous though they were, and heroes to have
serviceable and valiant gentlemen for issue. Without at all tracing back
to its origin his detestable image of the white cat on the dead circle,
he kicked at the links between his uncle and Diana Warwick, whatever they
had been; particularly at the present revival of them. Old Lady Dacier's
blunt speech, and his father's fixed opinion, hissed in his head.

They were ignorant of his autumnal visit to the Italian Lakes, after the
winter's Nile-boat expedition; and also of the degree of his recent
intimacy with Mrs. Warwick; or else, as he knew, he would have heard more
hissing things. Her patronage of Miss Paynham exposed her to attacks
where she was deemed vulnerable; Lady Dacier muttered old saws as to the
flocking of birds; he did not accurately understand it, thought it
indiscreet, at best. But in regard to his experience, he could tell
himself that a woman more guileless of luring never drew breath. On the
contrary, candour said it had always been he who had schemed and pressed
for the meeting. He was at liberty to do it, not being bound in honour
elsewhere. Besides, despite his acknowledgement of her beauty, Mrs.
Warwick was not quite his ideal of the perfectly beautiful woman.

Constance Asper came nearer to it. He had the English taste for red and
white, and for cold outlines: he secretly admired a statuesque demeanour
with a statue's eyes. The national approbation of a reserved haughtiness
in woman, a tempered disdain in her slightly lifted small upperlip and
drooped eyelids, was shared by him; and Constance Asper, if not exactly
aristocratic by birth, stood well for that aristocratic insular type,
which seems to promise the husband of it a casket of all the trusty
virtues, as well as the security of frigidity in the casket. Such was
Dacier's native taste; consequently the attractions of Diana Warwick for
him were, he thought, chiefly mental, those of a Lady Egeria. She might
or might not be good, in the vulgar sense. She was an agreeable woman, an
amusing companion, very suggestive, inciting, animating; and her past
history must be left as her own. Did it matter to him? What he saw was
bright, a silver crescent on the side of the shadowy ring. Were it a
question of marrying her!--That was out of the possibilities. He
remembered, moreover, having heard from a man, who professed to know,
that Mrs. Warwick had started in married life by treating her husband
cavalierly to an intolerable degree: 'Such as no Englishman could stand,'
the portly old informant thundered, describing it and her in racy
vernacular. She might be a devil of a wife. She was a pleasant friend;
just the soft bit sweeter than male friends which gave the flavour of sex
without the artful seductions. He required them strong to move him.

He looked at last on the green walls of the Priory, scarcely supposing a
fair watcher to be within; for the contrasting pale colours of dawn had
ceased to quicken the brilliancy of the crescent, and summer daylight
drowned it to fainter than a silver coin in water. It lay dispieced like
a pulled rag. Eastward, over Surrey, stood the full rose of morning. The
Priory clock struck four. When the summons of the bell had gained him
admittance, and he heard that Mrs. Warwick had come in the night, he
looked back through the doorway at the rosy colour, and congratulated
himself to think that her hour of watching was at an end. A sleepy
footman was his informant. Women were in my lord's dressing-room, he
said. Upstairs, at the death-chamber, Dacier paused. No sound came to
him. He hurried to his own room, paced about, and returned. Expecting to
see no one but the dead, he turned the handle, and the two circles of a
shaded lamp, on ceiling and on table, met his gaze.




CHAPTER XX

DIANA A NIGHT-WATCH IN THE CHAMBER OF DEATH

He stepped into the room, and thrilled to hear the quiet voice beside the
bed: 'Who is it?'

Apologies and excuses were on his tongue. The vibration of those grave
tones checked them.

'It is you,' she said.

She sat in shadow, her hands joined on her lap. An unopened book was
under the lamp.

He spoke in an underbreath: 'I have just come. I was not sure I should
find you here. Pardon.'

'There is a chair.'

He murmured thanks and entered into the stillness, observing her.

'You have been watching . . . . You must be tired.'

'No.'

'An hour was asked, only one.'

'I could not leave him.'

'Watchers are at hand to relieve you'

'It is better for him to have me.'

The chord of her voice told him of the gulf she had sunk in during the
night. The thought of her endurance became a burden.

He let fall his breath for patience, and tapped the floor with his foot.

He feared to discompose her by speaking. The silence grew more fearful,
as the very speech of Death between them.

'You came. I thought it right to let you know instantly. I hoped you
would come to-morrow'

'I could not delay.'

'You have been sitting alone here since eleven!'

'I have not found it long.'

'You must want some refreshment . . . tea?'

'I need nothing.'

'It can be made ready in a few minutes.'

'I could not eat or drink.'

He tried to brush away the impression of the tomb in the
heavily-curtained chamber by thinking of the summer-morn outside; he
spoke of it, the rosy sky, the dewy grass, the piping birds. She
listened, as one hearing of a quitted sphere.

Their breathing in common was just heard if either drew a deeper breath.
At moments his eyes wandered and shut. Alternately in his mind Death had
vaster meanings and doubtfuller; Life cowered under the shadow or
outshone it. He glanced from her to the figure in the bed, and she seemed
swallowed.

He said: 'It is time for you to have rest. You know your room. I will
stay till the servants are up.'

She replied: 'No, let this night with him be mine.'

'I am not intruding . . .?'

'If you wish to remain . . .'

No traces of weeping were on her face. The lampshade revealed it
colourless, and lustreless her eyes. She was robed in black. She held her
hands clasped.

'You have not suffered?'

'Oh, no.'

She said it without sighing: nor was her speech mournful, only brief.

'You have seen death before?'

'I sat by my father four nights. I was a girl then. I cried till I had no
more tears.'

He felt a burning pressure behind his eyeballs.

'Death is natural,' he said.

'It is natural to the aged. When they die honoured . . .'

She looked where the dead man lay. 'To sit beside the young, cut off from
their dear opening life . . . !' A little shudder swept over her. 'Oh!
that!'

'You were very good to come. We must all thank you for fulfilling his
wish.'

'He knew it would be my wish.'

Her hands pressed together.

'He lies peacefully!'

'I have raised the lamp on him, and wondered each time. So changeless he
lies. But so like a sleep that will wake. We never see peace but in the
features of the dead. Will you look? They are beautiful. They have a
heavenly sweetness.'

The desire to look was evidently recurrent with her. Dacier rose.

Their eyes fell together on the dead man, as thoughtfully as Death allows
to the creatures of sensation.

'And after?' he said in low tones.

'I trust to my Maker,' she replied. 'Do you see a change since he
breathed his last?'

'Not any.'

'You were with him?'

'Not in the room. Two minutes later.'

'Who . . .?'

'My father. His niece, Lady Cathairn.'

'If our lives are lengthened we outlive most of those we would have to
close our eyes. He had a dear sister.'

'She died some years back.'

'I helped to comfort him for that loss.'

'He told me you did.'

The lamp was replaced on the table.

'For a moment, when I withdraw the light from him, I feel sadness. As if
the light we lend to anything were of value to him now!'

She bowed her head deeply. Dacier left her meditation undisturbed. The
birds on the walls outside were audible, tweeting, chirping.

He went to the window-curtains and tried the shutter-bars. It seemed to
him that daylight would be cheerfuller for her. He had a thirst to behold
her standing bathed in daylight.

'Shall I open them?' he asked her.

'I would rather the lamp,' she said.

They sat silently until she drew her watch from her girdle. 'My train
starts at half-past six. It is a walk of thirty-five minutes to the
station. I did it last night in that time.'

'You walked here in the dark alone?'

'There was no fly to be had. The station-master sent one of his porters
with me. We had a talk on the road. I like those men.'

Dacier read the hour by the mantelpiece clock. 'If you must really go by
the early train, I will drive you.'

'No, I will walk; I prefer it.'

'I will order your breakfast at once.'

He turned on his heel. She stopped him. 'No, I have no taste for eating
or drinking.'

'Pray . . .' said he, in visible distress.

She shook her head. 'I could not. I have twenty minutes longer. I can
find my way to the station; it is almost a straight road out of the
park-gates.'

His heart swelled with anger at the household for they treatment she had
been subjected to, judging by her resolve not to break bread in the
house.

They resumed their silent sitting. The intervals for a word to pass
between them were long, and the ticking of the time-piece fronting the
death-bed ruled the chamber, scarcely varied.

The lamp was raised for the final look, the leave-taking.

Dacier buried his face, thinking many things--the common multitude in
insurrection.

'A servant should be told to come now,' she said. 'I have only to put on
my bonnet and I am ready.'

'You will take no . . . ?'

'Nothing.'

'It is not too late for a carriage to be ordered.'

'No--the walk!'

They separated.

He roused the two women in the dressing-room, asleep with heads against
the wall. Thence he sped to his own room for hat and overcoat, and a
sprinkle of cold water. Descending the stairs, he beheld his companion
issuing from the chamber of death. Her lips were shut, her eyelids
nervously tremulous.

They were soon in the warm sweet open air, and they walked without an
interchange of a syllable through the park into the white hawthorn lane,
glad to breathe. Her nostrils took long draughts of air, but of the
change of, scene she appeared scarcely sensible.

At the park-gates, she said: 'There is no necessity four your coming.'

His answer was: 'I think of myself. I gain something every step I walk
with you.'

'To-day is Thursday,' said she. 'The funeral is . . . ?'

'Monday has been fixed. According to his directions, he will lie in the
churchyard of his village--not in the family vault.'

'I know,' she said hastily. 'They are privileged who follow him and see
the coffin lowered. He spoke of this quiet little resting-place.'

'Yes, it's a good end. I do not wonder at his wish for the honour you
have done him. I could wish it too. But more living than dead--that is a
natural wish.'

'It is not to be called an honour.'

'I should feel it so-an honour to me.'

'It is a friend's duty. The word is too harsh; it was his friend's
desire. He did not ask it so much as he sanctioned it. For to him what
has my sitting beside him been!'

'He had the prospective happiness.'

'He knew well that my soul would be with him--as it was last night. But
he knew it would be my poor human happiness to see him with my eyes,
touch him with my hand, before he passed from our sight.'

Dacier exclaimed: 'How you can love!'

'Is the village church to be seen?' she asked.

'To the right of those elms; that is the spire. The black spot below is a
yew. You love with the whole heart when you love.'

'I love my friends,' she replied.

'You tempt me to envy those who are numbered among them.'

'They are not many.'

'They should be grateful!'

'You have some acquaintance with them all.'

'And an enemy? Had you ever one? Do you know of one?'

'Direct and personal designedly? I think not. We give that title to those
who are disinclined to us and add a dash of darker colour to our errors.
Foxes have enemies in the dogs; heroines of melodramas have their
persecuting villains. I suppose that conditions of life exist where one
meets the original complexities. The bad are in every rank. The
inveterately malignant I have not found. Circumstances may combine to
make a whisper as deadly as a blow, though not of such evil design.
Perhaps if we lived at a Court of a magnificent despot we should learn
that we are less highly civilized than we imagine ourselves; but that is
a fire to the passions, and the extreme is not the perfect test. Our
civilization counts positive gains--unless you take the melodrama for the
truer picture of us. It is always the most popular with the English.--And
look, what a month June is! Yesterday morning I was with Lady Dunstane on
her heights, and I feel double the age. He was fond of this wild country.
We think it a desert, a blank, whither he has gone, because we will
strain to see in the utter dark, and nothing can come of that but the
bursting of the eyeballs.'

Dacier assented: 'There's no use in peering beyond the limits.'

'No,' said she; 'the effect is like the explaining of things to a dull
head--the finishing stroke to the understanding! Better continue to
brood. We get to some unravelment if we are left to our own efforts. I
quarrel with no priest of any denomination. That they should quarrel
among themselves is comprehensible in their wisdom, for each has the
specific. But they show us their way of solving the great problem, and we
ought to thank them, though one or the other abominate us. You are
advised to talk with Lady Dunstane on these themes.

She is perpetually in the antechamber of death, and her soul is
perennially sunshine.--See the pretty cottage under the laburnum curls!
Who lives there?'

'His gamekeeper, Simon Rofe.'

'And what a playground for the children, that bit of common by their
garden-palings! and the pond, and the blue hills over the furzes. I hope
those people will not be turned out.'

Dacier could not tell. He promised to do his best for them.

'But,' said she, 'you are the lord here now.'

'Not likely to be the tenant. Incomes are wanted to support even small
estates.'

'The reason is good for courting the income.'

He disliked the remark; and when she said presently:

'Those windmills make the landscape homely,' he rejoined: 'They remind
one of our wheeling London gamins round the cab from the station.'

'They remind you,' said she, and smiled at the chance discordant trick he
had, remembering occasions when it had crossed her.

'This is homelier than Rovio,' she said; 'quite as nice in its way.'

'You do not gather flowers here.'

'Because my friend has these at her feet.'

'May one petition without a rival, then, for a souvenir?'

'Certainly, if you care to have a common buttercup.'

They reached the station, five minutes in advance of the train. His
coming manoeuvre was early detected, and she drew from her pocket the
little book he had seen lying unopened on the table, and said: 'I shall
have two good hours for reading.'

'You will not object? . . . I must accompany you to town. Permit it, I
beg. You shall not be worried to talk.'

'No; I came alone and return alone.'

'Fasting and unprotected! Are you determined to take away the worst
impression of us? Do not refuse me this favour.'

'As to fasting, I could not eat: and unprotected no woman is in England,
if she is a third-class traveller. That is my experience of the class;
and I shall return among my natural protectors--the most unselfishly
chivalrous to women in the whole world.'

He had set his heart on going with her, and he attempted eloquence in
pleading, but that exposed him to her humour; he was tripped.

'It is not denied that you belong to the knightly class,' she said; 'and
it is not necessary that you should wear armour and plumes to proclaim
it; and your appearance would be ample protection from the drunken
sailors travelling, you say, on this line; and I may be deplorably
mistaken in imagining that I could tame them. But your knightliness is
due elsewhere; and I commit myself to the fortune of war. It is a battle
for women everywhere; under the most favourable conditions among my dear
common English. I have not my maid with me, or else I should not dare.'

She paid for a third-class ticket, amused by Dacier's look of entreaty
and trouble.

'Of course I obey,' he murmured.

'I have the habit of exacting it in matters concerning my independence,'
she said; and it arrested some rumbling notions in his head as to a piece
of audacity on the starting of the train. They walked up and down the
platform till the bell rang and the train came rounding beneath an arch.

'Oh, by the way, may I ask?'--he said: 'was it your article in
Whitmonby's journal on a speech of mine last week?'

'The guilty writer is confessed.'

'Let me thank you.'

'Don't. But try to believe it written on public grounds--if the task is
not too great.'

'I may call?'

'You will be welcome.'

'To tell you of the funeral--the last of him.'

'Do not fail to come.'

She could have laughed to see him jumping on the steps of the third-class
carriages one after another to choose her company for her. In those
pre-democratic blissful days before the miry Deluge, the opinion of the
requirements of poor English travellers entertained by the Seigneur
Directors of the class above them, was that they differed from cattle in
stipulating for seats. With the exception of that provision to suit their
weakness, the accommodation extended to them resembled pens, and the
seats were emphatically seats of penitence, intended to grind the sitter
for his mean pittance payment and absence of aspiration to a higher
state. Hard angular wood, a low roof, a shabby square of window aloof,
demanding of him to quit the seat he insisted on having, if he would
indulge in views of the passing scenery,--such was the furniture of dens
where a refinement of castigation was practised on villain poverty by
denying leathers to the windows, or else buttons to the leathers, so that
the windows had either to be up or down, but refused to shelter and
freshen simultaneously.

Dacier selected a compartment occupied by two old women, a mother and
babe and little maid, and a labouring man. There he installed her, with
an eager look that she would not notice.

'You will want the window down,' he said.

She applied to her fellow-travellers for the permission; and struggling
to get the window down, he was irritated to animadvert on 'these
carriages' of the benevolent railway Company.

'Do not forget that the wealthy are well treated, or you may be unjust,'
said she, to pacify him.

His mouth sharpened its line while he tried arts and energies on the
refractory window. She told him to leave it. 'You can't breathe this
atmosphere!' he cried, and called to a porter, who did the work,
remarking that it was rather stiff.

The door was banged and fastened. Dacier had to hang on the step to see
her in the farewell. From the platform he saw the top of her bonnet; and
why she should have been guilty of this freak of riding in an unwholesome
carriage, tasked his power of guessing. He was too English even to have
taken the explanation, for he detested the distinguishing of the races in
his country, and could not therefore have comprehended her peculiar
tenacity of the sense of injury as long as enthusiasm did not arise to
obliterate it. He required a course of lessons in Irish.

Sauntering down the lane, he called at Simon Rofe's cottage, and spoke
very kindly to the gamekeeper's wife. That might please Diana. It was all
he could do at present.




CHAPTER XXI

'THE YOUNG MINISTER OF STATE'

Descriptions in the newspapers of the rural funeral of Lord Dannisburgh
had the effect of rousing flights of tattlers with a twittering of the
disused name of Warwick; our social Gods renewed their combat, and the
verdict of the jury was again overhauled, to be attacked and maintained,
the carpers replying to the champions that they held to their view of it:
as heads of bull-dogs are expected to do when they have got a grip of
one. It is a point of muscular honour with them never to relax their
hold. They will tell you why:--they formed that opinion from the first.
And but for the swearing of a particular witness, upon whom the plaintiff
had been taught to rely, the verdict would have been different--to prove
their soundness of judgement. They could speak from private positive
information of certain damnatory circumstances, derived from authentic
sources. Visits of a gentleman to the house of a married lady in the
absence of the husband? Oh!--The British Lucretia was very properly not
legally at home to the masculine world of that day. She plied her distaff
in pure seclusion, meditating on her absent lord; or else a fair
proportion of the masculine world, which had not yet, has not yet,
'doubled Cape Turk,' approved her condemnation to the sack.

There was talk in the feminine world, at Lady Wathin's assemblies. The
elevation of her husband had extended and deepened her influence on the
levels where it reigned before, but without, strange as we may think it
now, assisting to her own elevation, much aspired for, to the smooth and
lively upper pavement of Society, above its tumbled strata. She was near
that distinguished surface, not on it. Her circle was practically the
same as it was previous to the coveted nominal rank enabling her to
trample on those beneath it. And women like that Mrs. Warwick, a woman of
no birth, no money, not even honest character, enjoyed the entry
undisputed, circulated among the highest:--because people took her rattle
for wit!--and because also our nobility, Lady Wathin feared, had no due
regard for morality. Our aristocracy, brilliant and ancient though it
was, merited rebuke. She grew severe upon aristocratic scandals, whereof
were plenty among the frolicsome host just overhead, as vexatious as the
drawing-room party to the lodger in the floor below, who has not received
an invitation to partake of the festivities and is required to digest the
noise. But if ambition is oversensitive, moral indignation is ever
consolatory, for it plants us on the Judgement Seat. There indeed we may,
sitting with the very Highest, forget our personal disappointments in
dispensing reprobation for misconduct, however eminent the offenders.

She was Lady Wathin, and once on an afternoon's call to see poor Lady
Dunstane at her town-house, she had been introduced to Lady Pennon, a
patroness of Mrs. Warwick, and had met a snub--an icy check-bow of the
aristocratic head from the top of the spinal column, and not a word, not
a look; the half-turn of a head devoid of mouth and eyes! She practised
that forbidding checkbow herself to perfection, so the endurance of it
was horrible. A noli me tangere, her husband termed it, in his ridiculous
equanimity; and he might term it what he pleased--it was insulting. The
solace she had was in hearing that hideous Radical Revolutionary
things were openly spoken at Mrs. Warwick's evenings with her
friends:--impudently named 'the elect of London.' Pleasing to reflect
upon Mrs. Warwick as undermining her supporters, to bring them some day
down with a crash! Her 'elect of London' were a queer gathering, by
report of them! And Mr. Whitmonby too, no doubt a celebrity, was the
right-hand man at these dinner-parties of Mrs. Warwick. Where will not
men go to be flattered by a pretty woman! He had declined repeated,
successive invitations to Lady Wathin's table. But there of course he
would not have had 'the freedom': that is, she rejoiced in thinking
defensively and offensively, a moral wall enclosed her topics. The Hon.
Percy Dacier had been brought to her Thursday afternoon by. Mr. Quintin
Manx, and he had one day dined with her; and he knew Mrs. Warwick--a
little, he said. The opportunity was not lost to convey to him, entirely
in the interest of sweet Constance Asper, that the moral world
entertained a settled view of the very clever woman Mrs. Warwick
certainly was. He had asked Diana, on their morning walk to the station,
whether she had an enemy: so prone are men, educated by the Drama and
Fiction in the belief that the garden of civilized life must be at the
mercy of the old wild devourers, to fancy 'villain whispers' an
indication of direct animosity. Lady Wathin had no sentiment of the kind.

But she had become acquainted with the other side of the famous
Dannisburgh case--the unfortunate plaintiff; and compassion as well as
morality moved her to put on a speaking air when Mr. Warwick's name was
mentioned. She pictured him to the ladies of her circle as 'one of our
true gentlemen in his deportment and his feelings.' He was, she would
venture to say, her ideal of an English gentleman. 'But now,' she added
commiseratingly, 'ruined; ruined in his health and in his prospects.' A
lady inquired if it was the verdict that had thus affected him. Lady
Wathin's answer was reported over moral, or substratum, London: 'He is
the victim of a fatal passion for his wife; and would take her back
to-morrow were she to solicit his forgiveness.' Morality had something to
say against this active marital charity, attributable, it was to be
feared, to weakness of character on the part of the husband. Still Mrs.
Warwick undoubtedly was one of those women (of Satanic construction) who
have the art of enslaving the men unhappy enough to cross their path. The
nature of the art was hinted, with the delicacy of dainty feet which have
to tread in mire to get to safety. Men, alas! are snared in this way.
Instances too numerous for the good repute of the swinish sex, were
cited, and the question of how Morality was defensible from their
grossness passed without a tactical reply. There is no defence: Those
women come like the Cholera Morbus--and owing to similar causes. They
will prevail until the ideas of men regarding women are purified.
Nevertheless the husband who could forgive, even propose to forgive, was
deemed by consent generous, however weak. Though she might not have been
wholly guilty, she had bitterly offended. And he despatched an emissary
to her?--The theme, one may, in their language, 'fear,' was relished as a
sugared acid. It was renewed in the late Autumn of the year, when ANTONIA
published her new book, entitled THE YOUNG MINISTER of STATE. The
signature of the authoress was now known; and from this resurgence of her
name in public, suddenly a radiation of tongues from the circle of Lady
Wathin declared that the repentant Mrs. Warwick had gone back to her
husband's bosom and forgiveness! The rumour spread in spite of sturdy
denials at odd corners, counting the red-hot proposal of Mr. Sullivan
Smith to eat his head and boots for breakfast if it was proved correct.
It filled a yawn of the Clubs for the afternoon. Soon this wanton rumour
was met and stifled by another of more morbific density, heavily charged
as that which led the sad Eliza to her pyre.

ANTONIA's hero was easily identified. THE YOUNG MINISTER of STATE could
be he only who was now at all her parties, always meeting her; had been
spied walking with her daily in the park near her house, on his march
down to Westminster during the session; and who positively went to
concerts and sat under fiddlers to be near her. It accounted moreover for
his treatment of Constance Asper. What effrontery of the authoress, to
placard herself with him in a book! The likeness of the hero to Percy
Dacier once established became striking to glaringness--a proof of her
ability, and more of her audacity; still more of her intention to flatter
him up to his perdition. By the things written of him, one would imagine
the conversations going on behind the scenes. She had the wiles of a
Cleopatra, not without some of the Nilene's experiences. A youthful
Antony Dacier would be little likely to escape her toils. And so
promising a young man! The sigh, the tear for weeping over his
destruction, almost fell, such vivid realizing of the prophesy appeared
in its pathetic pronouncement.

This low rumour, or malaria, began blowing in the winter, and did not
travel fast; for strangely, there was hardly a breath of it in the
atmosphere of Dacier, none in Diana's. It rose from groups not so rapidly
and largely mixing, and less quick to kindle; whose crazy sincereness
battened on the smallest morsel of fact and collected the fictitious by
slow absorption. But as guardians of morality, often doing good duty in
their office, they are persistent. When Parliament assembled, Mr. Quintin
Manx, a punctual member of the House, if nothing else, arrived in town.
He was invited to dine with Lady Wathin. After dinner she spoke to him of
the absent Constance, and heard of her being well, and expressed a great
rejoicing at that. Whereupon the burly old shipowner frowned and puffed.
Constance, he said, had plunged into these new spangle, candle and high
singing services; was all for symbols, harps, effigies, what not. Lady
Wathin's countenance froze in hearing of it. She led Mr. Quintin to a
wall-sofa, and said: 'Surely the dear child must have had a
disappointment, for her to have taken to those foolish displays of
religion! It is generally a sign.'

'Well, ma'am-my lady--I let girls go their ways in such things. I don't
interfere. But it's that fellow, or nobody, with her. She has fixed her
girl's mind on him, and if she can't columbine as a bride, she will as a
nun. Young people must be at some harlequinade.'

'But it is very shocking. And he?'

'He plays last and loose, warm and cold. I'm ready to settle twenty times
a nobleman's dowry on my niece and she's a fine girl, a handsome girl,
educated up to the brim, fit to queen it in any drawing-room. He holds
her by some arts that don't hold him, it seems. He's all for politics.'

'Constance can scarcely be his dupe so far, I should think.'

'How do you mean?'

'Everything points to one secret of his conduct.'

'A woman?'

Lady Wathin's head shook for her sex's pained affirmative.

Mr. Quintin in the same fashion signified the downright negative. 'The
fellow's as cold as a fish.'

'Flattery will do anything. There is, I fear, one.'

'Widow? wife? maid?'

'Married, I regret to say.'

'Well, if he'd get over with it,' said Quintin, in whose notions the
seductiveness of a married woman could be only temporary, for all the
reasons pertaining to her state. At the same time his view of Percy
Dacier was changed in thinking it possible that a woman could divert him
from his political and social interests. He looked incredulous.

'You have heard of a Mrs. Warwick?' said Lady Wathin.

'Warwick! I have. I've never seen her. At my broker's in the City
yesterday I saw the name on a Memorandum of purchase of Shares in a
concern promising ten per cent., and not likely to carry the per annum
into the plural. He told me she was a grand kind of woman, past
advising.'

'For what amount'

'Some thousands, I think it was.'

'She has no money': Lady Wathin corrected her emphasis: 'or ought to have
none.'

'She can't have got it from him.'

'Did you notice her Christian name?'

'I don't recollect it, if I did. I thought the woman a donkey.'

'Would you consider me a busybody were I to try to mitigate this woman's
evil influence? I love dear Constance, and should be happy to serve her.'

'I want my girl married,' said old Quintin. 'He's one of my Parliamentary
chiefs, with first-rate prospects; good family, good sober fellow--at
least I thought so; by nature, I mean; barring your incantations. He
suits me, she liking him.'

'She admires him, I am sure.'

'She's dead on end for the fellow!'

Lady Wathin felt herself empowered by Quintin Manx to undertake the
release of sweet Constance Asper's knight from the toils of his
enchantress. For this purpose she had first an interview with Mr.
Warwick, and next she hurried to Lady Dunstane at Copsley. There, after
jumbling Mr. Warwick's connubial dispositions and Mrs. Warwick's last
book, and Mr. Percy Dacier's engagement to the great heiress in a gossipy
hotch-potch, she contrived to gather a few items of fact, as that THE
YOUNG MINISTER was probably modelled upon Mr. Percy Dacier. Lady Dunstane
made no concealment of it as soon as she grew sensible of the angling.
But she refused her help to any reconciliation between Mr. and Mrs.
Warwick. She declined to listen to Lady Wathin's entreaties. She declined
to give her reasons.--These bookworm women, whose pride it is to fancy
that they can think for themselves, have a great deal of the heathen in
them, as morality discovers when it wears the enlistment ribands and
applies yo them to win recruits for a service under the direct blessing
of Providence.

Lady Wathin left some darts behind her, in the form of moral
exclamations; and really intended morally. For though she did not like
Mrs. Warwick, she had no wish to wound, other than by stopping her
further studies of the Young Minister, and conducting him to the young
lady loving him, besides restoring a bereft husband to his own. How sadly
pale and worn poor Mr. Warwick appeared? The portrayal of his withered
visage to Lady Dunstane had quite failed to gain a show of sympathy. And
so it is ever with your book-worm women pretending to be philosophical!
You sound them vainly for a manifestation of the commonest human
sensibilities, They turn over the leaves of a Latin book on their laps
while you are supplicating them to assist in a work of charity!

Lady Wathin's interjectory notes haunted Emma's ear. Yet she had seen
nothing in Tony to let her suppose that there was trouble of her heart
below the surface; and her Tony when she came to Copsley shone in the
mood of the day of Lord Dannisburgh's drive down from London with her.
She was running on a fresh work; talked of composition as a trifle.

'I suppose the YOUNG MINISTER is Mr. Percy Dacier?' said Emma.

'Between ourselves he is,' Diana replied, smiling at a secret guessed.
'You know my model and can judge of the likeness.'

'You write admiringly of him, Tony.'

'And I do admire him. So would you, Emmy, if you knew him as well as I do
now. He pairs with Mr. Redworth; he also is the friend of women. But he
lifts us to rather a higher level of intellectual friendship. When the
ice has melted--and it is thick at first--he pours forth all his ideas
without reserve; and they are deep and noble. Ever since Lord
Dannisburgh's death and our sitting together, we have been warm
friends--intimate, I would say, if it could be said of one so
self-contained. In that respect, no young man was ever comparable with
him. And I am encouraged to flatter myself that he unbends to me more
than to others.'

'He is engaged, or partly, I hear; why does he not marry?'

'I wish he would!' Diana said, with a most brilliant candour of aspect.

Emma read in it, that it would complete her happiness, possibly by
fortifying her sense of security; and that seemed right. Her own
meditations, illumined by the beautiful face in her presence, referred to
the security of Mr. Dacier.

'So, then, life is going smoothly,' said Emma.

'Yes, at a good pace and smoothly: not a torrent--Thames-like, "without
o'erflowing full." It is not Lugano and the Salvatore. Perhaps it is
better: as action is better than musing.'

'No troubles whatever?'

'None. Well, except an "adorer" at times. I have to take him as my
portion. An impassioned Caledonian has a little bothered me. I met him at
Lady Pennon's, and have been meeting him, as soon as I put foot out of my
house, ever since. If I could impress and impound him to marry Mary
Paynham, I should be glad. By the way, I have consented to let her try at
a portrait of me. No, I have no troubles. I have friends, the choicest of
the nation; I have health, a field for labour, fairish success with it; a
mind alive, such as it is. I feel like that midsummer morning of our last
drive out together, the sun high, clearish, clouded enough to be cool.
And still I envy Emmy on her sofa, mastering Latin, biting at Greek. What
a wise recommendation that was of Mr. Redworth's! He works well in the
House. He spoke excellently the other night.'

'He runs over to Ireland this Easter.'

'He sees for himself, and speaks with authority. He sees and feels.
Englishmen mean well, but they require an extremity of misery to waken
their feelings.'

'It is coming, he says; and absit omen!'

'Mr. Dacier says he is the one Englishman who may always be sure of an
Irish hearing; and he does not cajole them, you know. But the English
defect is really not want of feeling so much as want of foresight. They
will not look ahead. A famine ceasing, a rebellion crushed, they jog on
as before, with their Dobbin trot and blinker confidence in "Saxon
energy." They should study the Irish: I think it was Mr. Redworth who
compared the governing of the Irish to the management of a horse: the
rider should not grow restive when the steed begins to kick: calmer;
firm, calm, persuasive.'

'Does Mr. Dacier agree?'

'Not always. He has the inveterate national belief that Celtic blood is
childish, and the consequently illogical disregard of its hold of
impressions. The Irish--for I have them in my heart, though I have not
been among them for long at a time--must love you to serve you, and will
hate you if you have done them injury and they have not wiped it
out--they with a treble revenge, or you with cordial benefits. I have
told him so again and again: ventured to suggest measures.'

'He listens to you, Tony?'

'He says I have brains. It ends in a compliment.'

'You have inspired Mr. Redworth.'

'If I have, I have lived for some good.'

Altogether her Tony's conversation proved to Emma that her perusal of the
model of THE YOUNG MINISTER OF STATE was an artist's, free, open, and not
discoloured by the personal tincture. Her heart plainly was free and
undisturbed. She had the same girl's love of her walks where wildflowers
grew; if possible, a keener pleasure. She hummed of her happiness in
being at Copsley, singing her Planxty Kelly and The Puritani by turns.
She stood on land: she was not on the seas. Emma thought so with good
reason.

She stood on land, it was true, but she stood on a cliff of the land, the
seas below and about her; and she was enabled to hoodwink her friend
because the assured sensation of her firm footing deceived her own soul,
even while it took short flights to the troubled waters. Of her firm
footing she was exultingly proud. She stood high, close to danger,
without giddiness. If at intervals her soul flew out like lightning from
the rift (a mere shot of involuntary fancy, it seemed to her), the
suspicion of instability made her draw on her treasury of impressions of
the mornings at Lugano--her loftiest, purest, dearest; and these
reinforced her. She did not ask herself why she should have to seek them
for aid. In other respects her mind was alert and held no sly covers, as
the fiction of a perfect ignorant innocence combined with common
intelligence would have us to suppose that the minds of women can do. She
was honest as long as she was not directly questioned, pierced to the
innermost and sanctum of the bosom. She could honestly summon bright
light to her eyes in wishing the man were married. She did not ask
herself why she called it up. The remorseless progressive interrogations
of a Jesuit Father in pursuit of the bosom's verity might have transfixed
it and shown her to herself even then a tossing vessel as to the spirit,
far away from that firm land she trod so bravely.

Descending from the woody heights upon London, Diana would have said that
her only anxiety concerned young Mr. Arthur Rhodes, whose position she
considered precarious, and who had recently taken a drubbing for
venturing to show a peep of his head, like an early crocus, in the
literary market. Her ANTONIA'S last book had been reviewed obediently to
smart taps from the then commanding baton of Mr. Tonans, and Mr.
Whitmonby's choice picking of specimens down three columns of his paper.
A Literary Review (Charles Rainer's property) had suggested that perhaps
'the talented authoress might be writing too rapidly'; and another,
actuated by the public taste of the period for our 'vigorous homely
Saxon' in one and two syllable words, had complained of a 'tendency to
polysyllabic phraseology.' The remainder, a full majority, had sounded
eulogy with all their band-instruments, drum, trumpet, fife, trombone.
Her foregoing work had raised her to Fame, which is the Court of a Queen
when the lady has beauty and social influence, and critics are her
dedicated courtiers, gaping for the royal mouth to be opened, and
reserving the kicks of their independent manhood for infamous outsiders,
whom they hoist in the style and particular service of pitchforks. They
had fallen upon a little volume of verse, 'like a body of barn-door hens
on a stranger chick,' Diana complained; and she chid herself angrily for
letting it escape her forethought to propitiate them on the author's
behalf. Young Rhodes was left with scarce a feather; and what remained to
him appeared a preposterous ornament for the decoration of a shivering
and welted poet. He laughed, or tried the mouth of laughter. ANTONIA's
literary conscience was vexed at the different treatment she had met and
so imperatively needed that the reverse of it would have threatened the
smooth sailing of her costly household. A merry-go-round of creditors
required a corresponding whirligig of receipts.

She felt mercenary, debased by comparison with the well-scourged
verse-mason, Orpheus of the untenanted city, who had done his publishing
ingenuously for glory: a good instance of the comic-pathetic. She wrote
to Emma, begging her to take him in at Copsley for a few days: 'I told
you I had no troubles. I am really troubled about this poor boy. He has
very little money and has embarked on literature. I cannot induce any of
my friends to lend him a hand. Mr. Redworth gruffly insists on his going
back to his law-clerk's office and stool, and Mr. Dacier says that no
place is vacant. The reality of Lord Dannisburgh's death is brought
before me by my helplessness. He would have made him an assistant private
Secretary, pending a Government appointment, rather than let me plead in
vain.'

Mr. Rhodes with his travelling bag was packed off to Copsley, to enjoy a
change of scene after his run of the gauntlet. He was very heartily
welcomed by Lady Dunstane, both for her Tony's sake and his own modest
worship of that luminary, which could permit of being transparent; but
chiefly she welcomed him as the living proof of Tony's disengagement from
anxiety, since he was her one spot of trouble, and could easily be
comforted by reading with her, and wandering through the Spring woods
along the heights. He had a happy time, midway in air between his
accomplished hostess and his protecting Goddess. His bruises were soon
healed. Each day was radiant to him, whether it rained or shone; and by
his looks and what he said of himself Lady Dunstane understood that he
was in the highest temper of the human creature tuned to thrilling accord
with nature. It was her generous Tony's work. She blessed it, and liked
the youth the better.

During the stay of Mr. Arthur Rhodes at Copsley, Sir Lukin came on a
visit to his wife. He mentioned reports in the scandal-papers: one, that
Mr. P. D. would shortly lead to the altar the lovely heiress Miss A.,
Percy Dacier and Constance Asper:--another, that a reconciliation was to
be expected between the beautiful authoress Mrs. W. and her husband.
'Perhaps it's the best thing she can do,' Sir Lukin added.

Lady Dunstane pronounced a woman's unforgiving: 'Never.' The revolt of
her own sensations assured her of Tony's unconquerable repugnance. In
conversation subsequently with Arthur Rhodes, she heard that he knew the
son of Mr. Warwick's attorney, a Mr. Fern; and he had gathered from him
some information of Mr. Warwick's condition of health. It had been
alarming; young Fern said it was confirmed heart-disease. His father
frequently saw Mr. Warwick, and said he was fretting himself to death.

It seemed just a possibility that Tony's natural compassionateness had
wrought on her to immolate herself and nurse to his end the man who had
wrecked her life. Lady Dunstane waited for the news. At last she wrote,
touching the report incidentally. There was no reply. The silence ensuing
after such a question responded forcibly.




CHAPTER XXII

BETWEEN DIANA AND DACIER: THE WIND EAST OVER BLEAK LAND

On the third day of the Easter recess Percy Dacier landed from the Havre
steamer at Caen and drove straightway for the sandy coast, past fields of
colza to brine-blown meadows of coarse grass, and then to the low dunes
and long stretching sands of the ebb in semicircle: a desolate place at
that season; with a dwarf fishing-village by the shore; an East wind
driving landward in streamers every object that had a scrap to fly. He
made head to the inn, where the first person he encountered in the
passage was Diana's maid Danvers, who relaxed from the dramatic
exaggeration of her surprise at the sight of a real English gentleman in
these woebegone regions, to inform him that her mistress might be found
walking somewhere along the sea-shore, and had her dog to protect her.
They were to stay here a whole week, Danvers added, for a conveyance of
her private sentiments. Second thoughts however whispered to her
shrewdness that his arrival could only be by appointment. She had been
anticipating something of the sort for some time.

Dacier butted against the stringing wind, that kept him at a rocking
incline to his left for a mile. He then discerned in what had seemed a
dredger's dot on the sands, a lady's figure, unmistakably she, without
the corroborating testimony of Leander paw-deep in the low-tide water.
She was out at a distance on the ebb-sands, hurtled, gyred, beaten to all
shapes, in rolls, twists, volumes, like a blown banner-flag, by the
pressing wind. A kerchief tied her bonnet under her chin. Bonnet and
breast-ribands rattled rapidly as drummer-sticks. She stood near the
little running ripple of the flat sea-water, as it hurried from a long
streaked back to a tiny imitation of spray. When she turned to the shore
she saw him advancing, but did not recognize; when they met she merely
looked with wide parted lips. This was no appointment.

'I had to see you,' Dacier said.

She coloured to a deeper red than the rose-conjuring wind had whipped in
her cheeks. Her quick intuition of the reason of his coming barred a
mental evasion, and she had no thought of asking either him or herself
what special urgency had brought him.

'I have been here four days.'

'Lady Esquart spoke of the place.'

'Lady Esquart should not have betrayed me.'

'She did it inadvertently, without an idea of my profiting by it.'

Diana indicated the scene in a glance. 'Dreary country, do you think?'

'Anywhere!'--said he.

They walked up the sand-heap. The roaring Easter with its shrieks and
whistles at her ribands was not favourable to speech. His 'Anywhere!' had
a penetrating significance, the fuller for the break that left it vague.

Speech between them was commanded; he could not be suffered to remain.
She descended upon a sheltered pathway running along a ditch, the border
of pastures where cattle cropped, raised heads, and resumed their one
comforting occupation.

Diana gazed on them, smarting from the buffets of the wind she had met.

'No play of their tails to-day'; she said, as she slackened her steps.
'You left Lady Esquart well?'

'Lady Esquart . . . I think was well. I had to see you. I thought you
would be with her in Berkshire. She told me of a little sea-side place
close to Caen.'

'You had to see me?'

'I miss you now if it's a day!'

'I heard a story in London . . .'

'In London there are many stories. I heard one. Is there a foundation for
it?'

'No.'

He breathed relieved. 'I wanted to see you once before . . . if it was
true. It would have made a change in my life-a gap.'

'You do me the honour to like my Sunday evenings?'

'Beyond everything London can offer.'

'A letter would have reached me.'

'I should have had to wait for the answer. There is no truth in it?'

Her choice was to treat the direct assailant frankly or imperil her
defence by the ordinary feminine evolutions, which might be taken for
inviting: poor pranks always.

'There have been overtures,' she said.

'Forgive me; I have scarcely the right to ask . . . speak of it!'

'My friends may use their right to take an interest in my fortunes.'

'I thought I might, on my way to Paris, turn aside . . . coming by this
route.'

'If you determined not to lose much of your time.'

The coolness of her fencing disconcerted a gentleman conscious of his
madness. She took instant advantage of any circuitous move; she gave him
no practicable point. He was little skilled in the arts of attack, and
felt that she checked his impetuousness; respected her for it, chafed at
it, writhed with the fervours precipitating him here, and relapsed on his
pleasure in seeing her face, hearing her voice.

'Your happiness, I hope, is the chief thought in such a case,' he said.

'I am sure you would consider it.'

'I can't quite forget my own.'

'You compliment an ambitious hostess.'

Dacier glanced across the pastures, 'What was it that tempted you to this
place?'

'A poet would say it looks like a figure in the shroud. It has no
features; it has a sort of grandeur belonging to death. I heard of it as
the place where I might be certain of not meeting an acquaintance.'

'And I am the intruder.'

'An hour or two will not give you that title.'

'Am I to count the minutes by my watch?'

'By the sun. We will supply you an omelette and piquette, and send you
back sobered and friarly--to Caen for Paris at sunset.'

'Let the fare be Spartan. I could take my black broth with philosophy
every day of the year under your auspices. What I should miss . . .'

'You bring no news of the world or the House?'

'None. You know as much as I know. The Irish agitation is chronic. The
Corn-law threatens to be the same.'

'And your Chief--in personal colloquy?'

'He keeps a calm front. I may tell you: there is nothing I would not
confide to you: he has let fall some dubious words in private. I don't
know what to think of them.'

'But if he should waver?'

'It's not wavering. It's the openness of his mind.'

'Ah! the mind. We imagine it free. The House and the country are the
sentient frame governing the mind of the politician more than his ideas.
He cannot think independently of them:--nor I of my natural anatomy. You
will test the truth of that after your omelette and piquette, and marvel
at the quitting of your line of route for Paris. As soon as the mind
attempts to think independently, it is like a kite with the cord cut, and
performs a series of darts and frisks, that have the look of wildest
liberty till you see it fall flat to earth. The openness of his mind is
most honourable to him.'

'Ominous for his party.'

'Likely to be good for his country.'

'That is the question.'

'Prepare to encounter it. In politics I am with the active minority on
behalf of the inert but suffering majority. That is my rule. It leads,
unless you have a despotism, to the conquering side. It is always the
noblest. I won't say, listen to me; only do believe my words have some
weight. This is a question of bread.'

'It involves many other questions.'

'And how clearly those leaders put their case! They are admirable
debaters. If I were asked to write against them, I should have but to
quote them to confound my argument. I tried it once, and wasted a couple
of my precious hours.'

'They are cogent debaters,' Dacier assented. 'They make me wince now and
then, without convincing me: I own it to you. The confession is not
agreeable, though it's a small matter.'

'One's pride may feel a touch with the foils as keenly as the point of a
rapier,' said Diana.

The remark drew a sharp look of pleasure from him.

'Does the Princess Egeria propose to dismiss the individual she inspires,
when he is growing most sensible of her wisdom?'

'A young Minister of State should be gleaning at large when holiday is
granted him.'

Dacier coloured. 'May I presume on what is currently reported?'

'Parts, parts; a bit here, a bit there,' she rejoined. 'Authors find
their models where they can, and generally hit on the nearest.'

'Happy the nearest!'

'If you run to interjections I shall cite you a sentence, from your
latest speech in the House.'

He asked for it, and to school him she consented to flatter with her
recollection of his commonest words:

'"Dealing with subjects of this nature emotionally does, not advance us a
calculable inch."'

'I must have said that in relation to hard matter of business.'

'It applies. There is my hostelry, and the spectral form of Danvers,
utterly depaysee. Have you spoken to the poor soul? I can never discover
the links of her attachment to my service.'

'She knows a good mistress.--I have but a few minutes, if you are
relentless. May I . . ., shall I ever be privileged to speak your
Christian name?'

'My Christian name! It is Pagan. In one sphere I am Hecate. Remember
that.'

'I am not among the people who so regard you.'

'The time may come.'

'Diana!'

'Constance!'

'I break no tie. I owe no allegiance whatever to the name.'

'Keep to the formal title with me. We are Mrs. Warwick and Mr. Dacier. I
think I am two years younger than you; socially therefore ten in
seniority; and I know how this flower of friendship is nourished and may
be withered. You see already what you have done? You have cast me on the
discretion of my maid. I suppose her trusty, but I am at her mercy, and a
breath from her to the people beholding me as Hecate queen of Witches!
. . . I have a sensation of the scirocco it would blow.'

'In that event, the least I can offer is my whole life.'

'We will not conjecture the event.'

'The best I could hope for!'

'I see I shall have to revise the next edition of THE YOUNG MINISTER, and
make an emotional curate of him. Observe Danvers. The woman is wretched;
and now she sees me coming she pretends to be using her wits in studying
the things about her, as I have directed. She is a riddle. I have the
idea that any morning she may explode; and yet I trust her and sleep
soundly. I must be free, though I vex the world's watchdogs.--So,
Danvers, you are noticing how thoroughly Frenchwomen do their work.'

Danvers replied with a slight mincing: 'They may, ma'am; but they chatter
chatter so.'

'The result proves that it is not a waste of energy. They manage their
fowls too.'

'They've no such thing as mutton, ma'am.'

Dacier patriotically laughed.

'She strikes the apology for wealthy and leisurely landlords,' Diana
said.

Danvers remarked that the poor fed meagrely in France. She was not
convinced of its being good for them by hearing that they could work on
it sixteen hours out of the four and twenty.

Mr. Percy Dacier's repast was furnished to him half an hour later. At
sunset Diana, taking Danvers beside her, walked with him to the line of
the country road bearing on Caen. The wind had sunk. A large brown disk
paused rayless on the western hills.

'A Dacier ought to feel at home in Normandy; and you may have sprung from
this neighbourhood,' said she, simply to chat. 'Here the land is poorish,
and a mile inland rich enough to bear repeated crops of colza, which
tries the soil, I hear. As for beauty, those blue hills you see, enfold
charming valleys. I meditate an expedition to Harcourt before I return.
An English professor of his native tongue at the Lycee at Caen told me on
my way here that for twenty shillings a week you may live in royal ease
round about Harcourt. So we have our bed and board in prospect if fortune
fails us, Danvers!

'I would rather die in England, ma'am,' was the maid's reply.

Dacier set foot on his carriage-step. He drew a long breath to say a
short farewell, and he and Diana parted.

They parted as the plainest of sincere good friends, each at heart
respecting the other for the repression of that which their hearts
craved; any word of which might have carried them headlong, bound
together on a Mazeppa-race, with scandal for the hounding wolves, and
social ruin for the rocks and torrents.

Dacier was the thankfuller, the most admiring of the two; at the same
time the least satisfied. He saw the abyss she had aided him in escaping;
and it was refreshful to look abroad after his desperate impulse.
Prominent as he stood before the world, he could not think without a
shudder of behaving like a young frenetic of the passion. Those whose aim
is at the leadership of the English people know, that however truly based
the charges of hypocrisy, soundness of moral fibre runs throughout the
country and is the national integrity, which may condone old sins for
present service; but will not have present sins to flout it. He was in
tune with the English character. The passion was in him nevertheless, and
the stronger for a slow growth that confirmed its union of the mind and
heart. Her counsel fortified him, her suggestions opened springs; her
phrases were golden-lettered in his memory; and more, she had worked an
extraordinary change in his views of life and aptitude for social
converse: he acknowledged it with genial candour. Through her he was
encouraged, led, excited to sparkle with the witty, feel new gifts, or a
greater breadth of nature; and thanking her, he became thirstily
susceptible to her dark beauty; he claimed to have found the key of her,
and he prized it. She was not passionless: the blood flowed warm. Proud,
chaste, she was nobly spirited; having an intellectual refuge from the
besiegings of the blood; a rockfortress. The 'wife no wife' appeared to
him, striking the higher elements of the man, the commonly masculine
also.--Would he espouse her, had he the chance?--to-morrow! this instant!
With her to back him, he would be doubled in manhood, doubled in brain
and heart-energy. To call her wife, spring from her and return, a man
might accept his fate to fight Trojan or Greek, sure of his mark on the
enemy.

But if, after all, this imputed Helen of a decayed Paris passed,
submissive to the legitimate solicitor, back to her husband?

The thought shot Dacier on his legs for a look at the blank behind him.
He vowed she had promised it should not be. Could it ever be, after the
ruin the meanly suspicious fellow had brought upon her?--Diana
voluntarily reunited to the treacherous cur?

He sat, resolving sombrely that if the debate arose he would try what
force he had to save her from such an ignominy, and dedicate his life to
her, let the world wag its tongue. So the knot would be cut.

Men unaccustomed to a knot in their system find the prospect of cutting
it an extreme relief, even when they know that the cut has an edge to
wound mortally as well as pacify. The wound was not heavy payment for the
rapture of having so incomparable a woman his own. He reflected
wonderingly on the husband, as he had previously done, and came again to
the conclusion that it was a poor creature, abjectly jealous of a wife,
he could neither master, nor equal, nor attract. And thinking of
jealousy, Dacier felt none; none of individuals, only of facts: her
marriage, her bondage. Her condemnation to perpetual widowhood angered
him, as at an unrighteous decree. The sharp sweet bloom of her beauty,
fresh in swarthiness, under the whipping Easter, cried out against that
loathed inhumanity. Or he made it cry.

Being a stranger to the jealousy of men, he took the soft assurance that
he was preferred above them all. Competitors were numerous: not any won
her eyes as he did. She revealed nothing of the same pleasures in the
shining of the others touched by her magical wand. Would she have
pardoned one of them the 'Diana!' bursting from his mouth?

She was not a woman for trifling, still less for secresy. He was as
little the kind of lover. Both would be ready to take up their burden, if
the burden was laid on them. Diana had thus far impressed him.

Meanwhile he faced the cathedral towers of the ancient Norman city,
standing up in the smoky hues of the West; and a sentence out of her book
seemed fitting to the scene and what he felt. He rolled it over
luxuriously as the next of delights to having her beside him.--She wrote
of; 'Thoughts that are bare dark outlines, coloured by some odd passion
of the soul, like towers of a distant city seen in the funeral waste of
day.'--His bluff English anti-poetic training would have caused him to
shrug at the stuff coming from another pen: he might condescendingly have
criticized it, with a sneer embalmed in humour. The words were hers; she
had written them; almost by a sort of anticipation, he imagined; for he
at once fell into the mood they suggested, and had a full crop of the
'bare dark outlines' of thoughts coloured by his particular form of
passion.

Diana had impressed him powerfully when she set him swallowing and
assimilating a sentence ethereally thin in substance of mere sentimental
significance, that he would antecedently have read aloud in a
drawing-room, picking up the book by hazard, as your modern specimen of
romantic vapouring. Mr. Dacier however was at the time in observation of
the towers of Caen, fresh from her presence, animated to some conception
of her spirit. He drove into the streets, desiring, half determining, to
risk a drive back on the morrow.

The cold light of the morrow combined with his fear of distressing her to
restrain him. Perhaps he thought it well not to risk his gains. He was a
northerner in blood. He may have thought it well not further to run the
personal risk immediately.




CHAPTER XXIII

RECORDS A VISIT TO DIANA FROM ONE OF THE WORLD'S GOOD WOMEN

Pure disengagement of contemplativeness had selected. Percy Dacier as the
model of her YOUNG MINISTER OF STATE, Diana supposed. Could she otherwise
have dared to sketch him? She certainly would not have done it now.

That was a reflection similar to what is entertained by one who has
dropped from a precipice to the midway ledge over the abyss, where
caution of the whole sensitive being is required for simple
self-preservation. How could she have been induced to study and portray
him! It seemed a form of dementia.

She thought this while imagining the world to be interrogating her. When
she interrogated herself, she flew to Lugano and her celestial Salvatore,
that she might be defended from a charge of the dreadful weakness of her
sex. Surely she there had proof of her capacity for pure disengagement.
Even in recollection the springs of spiritual happiness renewed the
bubbling crystal play. She believed that a divineness had wakened in her
there, to strengthen her to the end, ward her from any complicity in her
sex's culprit blushing.

Dacier's cry of her name was the cause, she chose to think, of the
excessive circumspection she must henceforth practise; precariously
footing, embracing hardest earth, the plainest rules, to get back to
safety. Not that she was personally endangered, or at least not
spiritually; she could always fly in soul to her heights. But she had now
to be on guard, constantly in the fencing attitude. And watchful of
herself as well. That was admitted with a ready frankness, to save it
from being a necessitated and painful confession: for the
voluntary-acquiescence, if it involved her in her sex, claimed an
individual exemption. 'Women are women, and I am a woman but I am I, and
unlike them: I see we are weak, and weakness tempts: in owning the
prudence of guarded steps, I am armed. It is by dissembling, feigning
immunity, that we are imperilled.' She would have phrased it so, with
some anger at her feminine nature as well as at the subjection forced on
her by circumstances.

Besides, her position and Percy Dacier's threw the fancied danger into
remoteness. The world was her stepmother, vigilant to become her judge;
and the world was his taskmaster, hopeful of him, yet able to strike him
down for an offence. She saw their situation as he did. The course of
folly must be bravely taken, if taken at all: Disguise degraded her to
the reptiles.

This was faced. Consequently there was no fear of it.

She had very easily proved that she had skill and self-possession to keep
him rational, and therefore they could continue to meet. A little
outburst of frenzy to a reputably handsome woman could be treated as the
froth of a passing wave. Men have the trick, infants their fevers.

Diana's days were spent in reasoning. Her nights were not so tuneable to
the superior mind. When asleep she was the sport of elves that danced her
into tangles too deliciously unravelled, and left new problems for the
wise-eyed and anxious morning. She solved them with the thought that in
sleep it was the mere ordinary woman who fell a prey to her tormentors;
awake, she dispersed the swarm, her sky was clear. Gradually the
persecution ceased, thanks to her active pen.

A letter from her legal adviser, old Mr. Braddock, informed her that no
grounds existed for apprehending marital annoyance, and late in May her
household had resumed its customary round.

She examined her accounts. The Debit and Credit sides presented much of
the appearance of male and female in our jog-trot civilization. They
matched middling well; with rather too marked a tendency to strain the
leash and run frolic on the part of friend Debit (the wanton male), which
deepened the blush of the comparison. Her father had noticed the same
funny thing in his effort to balance his tugging accounts: 'Now then for
a look at Man and Wife': except that he made Debit stand for the portly
frisky female, Credit the decorous and contracted other half, a prim
gentleman of a constitutionally lean habit of body, remonstrating with
her. 'You seem to forget that we are married, my dear, and must walk in
step or bundle into the Bench,' Dan Merion used to say.

Diana had not so much to rebuke in Mr. Debit; or not at the first
reckoning. But his ways were curious. She grew distrustful of him, after
dismissing him with a quiet admonition and discovering a series of ambush
bills, which he must have been aware of when he was allowed to pass as an
honourable citizen. His answer to her reproaches pleaded the
necessitousness of his purchases and expenditure: a capital plea; and
Mrs. Credit was requested by him, in a courteous manner, to drive her pen
the faster, so that she might wax to a corresponding size and satisfy the
world's idea of fitness in couples. She would have costly furniture,
because it pleased her taste; and a French cook, for a like reason, in
justice to her guests; and trained servants; and her tribe of pensioners;
flowers she would have profuse and fresh at her windows and over the
rooms; and the pictures and engravings on the walls were (always for the
good reason mentioned) choice ones; and she had a love of old lace, she
loved colours as she loved cheerfulness, and silks, and satin hangings,
Indian ivory carvings, countless mirrors, Oriental woods, chairs and
desks with some feature or a flourish in them, delicate tables with
antelope legs, of approved workmanship in the chronology of European
upholstery, and marble clocks of cunning device to symbol Time,
mantelpiece decorations, illustrated editions of her favourite authors;
her bed-chambers, too, gave the nest for sleep a dainty cosiness in
aerial draperies. Hence, more or less directly, the peccant bills. Credit
was reduced to reckon to a nicety the amount she could rely on
positively: her fixed income from her investments and the letting of The
Crossways: the days of half-yearly payments that would magnify her to
some proportions beside the alarming growth of her partner, who was proud
of it, and referred her to the treasures she could summon with her pen,
at a murmur of dissatisfaction. His compliments were sincere; they were
seductive. He assured her that she had struck a rich vein in an
inexhaustible mine; by writing only a very little faster she could double
her income; counting a broader popularity, treble it; and so on a tide of
success down the widening river to a sea sheer golden. Behold how it
sparkles! Are we then to stint our winged hours of youth for want of
courage to realize the riches we can command? Debit was eloquent, he was
unanswerable.

Another calculator, an accustomed and lamentably-scrupulous
arithmetician, had been at work for some time upon a speculative summing
of the outlay of Diana's establishment, as to its chances of swamping the
income. Redworth could guess pretty closely the cost of a house hold, if
his care for the holder set him venturing on aver ages. He knew nothing
of her ten per cent. investment and considered her fixed income a
beggarly regiment to marshal against the invader. He fancied however, in
his ignorance of literary profits, that a popular writer, selling several
editions, had come to an El Dorado. There was the mine. It required a
diligent worker. Diana was often struck by hearing Redworth ask her when
her next book might be expected. He appeared to have an eagerness in
hurrying her to produce, and she had to say that she was not a nimble
writer. His flattering impatience was vexatious. He admired her work, yet
he did his utmost to render it little admirable. His literary taste was
not that of young Arthur Rhodes, to whom she could read her chapters,
appearing to take counsel upon them while drinking the eulogies: she
suspected him of prosaic ally wishing her to make money, and though her
exchequer was beginning to know the need of it, the author's lofty mind
disdained such sordidness: to be excused, possibly, for a failing
productive energy. She encountered obstacles to imaginative composition.
With the pen in her hand, she would fall into heavy musings; break a
sentence to muse, and not on the subject. She slept unevenly at night,
was drowsy by day, unless the open air was about her, or animating
friends. Redworth's urgency to get her to publish was particularly
annoying when she felt how greatly THE YOUNG MINISTER OF STATE would have
been improved had she retained the work to brood over it, polish,
re-write passages, perfect it. Her musings embraced long dialogues of
that work, never printed; they sprang up, they passed from memory;
leaving a distaste for her present work: THE CANTATRICE: far more
poetical than the preceding, in the opinion of Arthur Rhodes; and the
story was more romantic; modelled on a Prima Donna she had met at the
musical parties of Henry Wilmers, after hearing Redworth tell of Charles
Rainer's quaint passion for the woman, or the idea of the woman. Diana
had courted her, studied and liked her. The picture she was drawing of
the amiable and gifted Italian, of her villain Roumanian husband, and of
the eccentric, high-minded, devoted Englishman, was good in a fashion;
but considering the theme, she had reasonable apprehension that her
CANTATRICE would not repay her for the time and labour bestowed on it. No
clever transcripts of the dialogue of the day occurred; no hair-breadth
'scapes, perils by sea and land, heroisms of the hero, fine shrieks of
the heroine; no set scenes of catching pathos and humour; no
distinguishable points of social satire--equivalent to a smacking of the
public on the chaps, which excites it to grin with keen discernment of
the author's intention. She did not appeal to the senses nor to a
superficial discernment. So she had the anticipatory sense of its
failure; and she wrote her best, in perverseness; of course she wrote
slowly; she wrote more and more realistically of the characters and the
downright human emotions, less of the wooden supernumeraries of her
story, labelled for broad guffaw or deluge tears--the grappling natural
links between our public and an author. Her feelings were aloof. They
flowed at a hint of a scene of THE YOUNG MINISTER. She could not put them
into THE CANTATRICE. And Arthur Rhodes pronounced this work poetical
beyond its predecessors, for the reason that the chief characters were
alive and the reader felt their pulses. He meant to say, they were
poetical inasmuch as they were creations.

The slow progress of a work not driven by the author's feelings
necessitated frequent consultations between Debit and Credit, resulting
in altercations, recriminations, discord of the yoked and divergent
couple. To restore them to their proper trot in harness, Diana
reluctantly went to her publisher for an advance item of the sum she was
to receive, and the act increased her distaste. An idea came that she
would soon cease to be able to write at all. What then? Perhaps by
selling her invested money, and ultimately The Crossways, she would have
enough for her term upon earth. Necessarily she had to think that short,
in order to reckon it as nearly enough. 'I am sure,' she said to herself,
'I shall not trouble the world very long.' A strange languor beset her;
scarcely melancholy, for she conceived the cheerfulness of life and added
to it in company; but a nervelessness, as though she had been left by the
stream on the banks, and saw beauty and pleasure sweep along and away,
while the sun that primed them dried her veins. At this time she was
gaining her widest reputation for brilliancy of wit. Only to welcome
guests were her evenings ever spent at home. She had no intimate
understanding of the deadly wrestle of the conventional woman with her
nature which she was undergoing below the surface. Perplexities she
acknowledged, and the prudence of guardedness. 'But as I am sure not to
live very long, we may as well meet.' Her meetings with Percy Dacier were
therefore hardly shunned; and his behaviour did not warn her to
discountenance them. It would have been cruel to exclude him from her
select little dinners of eight. Whitmonby, Westlake, Henry Wilmers and
the rest, she perhaps aiding, schooled him in the conversational art. She
heard it said of him, that the courted discarder of the sex, hitherto a
mere politician, was wonderfully humanized. Lady Pennon fell to talking
of him hopefully. She declared him to be one of the men who unfold
tardily, and only await the mastering passion. If the passion had come,
it was controlled. His command of himself melted Diana. How could she
forbid his entry to the houses she frequented? She was glad to see him.
He showed his pleasure in seeing her. Remembering his tentative
indiscretion on those foreign sands, she reflected that he had been
easily checked: and the like was not to be said of some others. Beautiful
women in her position provoke an intemperateness that contrasts
touchingly with the self-restraint of a particular admirer. Her
'impassioned Caledonian' was one of a host, to speak of whom and their
fits of lunacy even to her friend Emma, was repulsive. She bore with
them, foiled them, passed them, and recovered her equanimity; but the
contrast called to her to dwell on it, the self-restraint whispered of a
depth of passion . . . .

She was shocked at herself for a singular tremble 'she experienced,
without any beating of the heart, on hearing one day that the marriage of
Percy Dacier and Miss Asper was at last definitely fixed. Mary Paynham
brought her the news. She had it from a lady who had come across Miss
Asper at Lady Wathin's assemblies, and considered the great heiress
extraordinarily handsome.

'A golden miracle,' Diana gave her words to say. 'Good looks and gold
together are rather superhuman. The report may be this time true.' Next
afternoon the card of Lady Wathin requested Mrs. Warwick to grant her a
private interview.

Lady Wathin, as one of the order of women who can do anything in a holy
cause, advanced toward Mrs. Warwick, unabashed by the burden of her
mission, and spinally prepared, behind benevolent smilings, to repay
dignity of mien with a similar erectness of dignity. They touched fingers
and sat. The preliminaries to the matter of the interview were brief
between ladies physically sensible of antagonism and mutually too
scornful of subterfuges in one another's presence to beat the bush.

Lady Wathin began. 'I am, you are aware, Mrs. Warwick, a cousin of your
friend Lady Dunstane.'

'You come to me on business?' Diana said.

'It may be so termed. I have no personal interest in it. I come to lay
certain facts before you which I think you should know. We think it
better that an acquaintance, and one of your sex, should state the case
to you, instead of having recourse to formal intermediaries, lawyers--'

'Lawyers?'

'Well, my husband is a lawyer, it is true. In the course of his
professional vocations he became acquainted with Mr. Warwick. We have
latterly seen a good deal of him. He is, I regret to say, seriously
unwell.'

'I have heard of it.'

'He has no female relations, it appears. He needs more care than he can
receive from hirelings.'

'Are you empowered by him, Lady Wathin?'

'I am, Mrs. Warwick. We will not waste time in apologies. He is most
anxious for a reconciliation. It seems to Sir Cramborne and to me the
most desireable thing for all parties concerned, if you can be induced to
regard it in that light. Mr. Warwick may or may not live; but the
estrangement is quite undoubtedly the cause of his illness. I touch on
nothing connected with it. I simply wish that you should not be in
ignorance of his proposal and his condition.'

Diana bowed calmly. 'I grieve at his condition. His proposal has already
been made and replied to.'

'Oh, but, Mrs. Warwick, an immediate and decisive refusal of a proposal
so fraught with consequences . . . !'

'Ah, but, Lady Wathin, you are now outstepping the limits prescribed by
the office you have undertaken.'

'You will not lend ear to an intercession?'

'I will not.'

'Of course, Mrs. Warwick, it is not for me to hint at things that lawyers
could say on the subject.'

'Your forbearance is creditable, Lady Wathin.'

'Believe me, Mrs. Warwick, the step is--I speak in my husband's name as
well as my own--strongly to be advised.'

'If I hear one word more of it, I leave the country.'

'I should be sorry indeed at any piece of rashness depriving your
numerous friends of your society. We have recently become acquainted with
Mr. Redworth, and I know the loss you would be to them. I have not
attempted an appeal to your feelings, Mrs. Warwick.'

'I thank you warmly, Lady Wathin, for what you have not done.'

The aristocratic airs of Mrs. Warwick were annoying to Lady Wathin when
she considered that they were borrowed, and that a pattern morality could
regard the woman as ostracized: nor was it agreeable to be looked at
through eyelashes under partially lifted brows. She had come to appeal to
the feelings of the wife; at any rate, to discover if she had some and
was better than a wild adventuress.

'Our life below is short!' she said. To which Diana tacitly assented.

'We have our little term, Mrs. Warwick. It is soon over.'

'On the other hand, the platitudes concerning it are eternal.'

Lady Wathin closed her eyes, that the like effect might be produced on
her ears. 'Ah! they are the truths. But it is not my business to preach.
Permit me to say that I feel deeply for your husband.'

'I am glad of Mr. Warwick's having friends; and they are many, I hope.'

'They cannot behold him perishing, without an effort on his behalf.'

A chasm of silence intervened. Wifely pity was not sounded in it.

'He will question me, Mrs. Warwick.'

'You can report to him the heads of our conversation, Lady Wathin.'

'Would you--it is your husband's most earnest wish; and our house is open
to his wife and to him for the purpose; and it seems to us that . . .
indeed it might avert a catastrophe you would necessarily deplore:--would
you consent to meet him at my house?'

'It has already been asked, Lady Wathin, and refused.'

'But at my house-under our auspices!'

Diana glanced at the clock. 'Nowhere.'

'Is it not--pardon me--a wife's duty, Mrs. Warwick, at least to listen?'

'Lady Wathin, I have listened to you.'

'In the case of his extreme generosity so putting it, for the present,
Mrs. Warwick, that he asks only to be heard personally by his wife! It
may preclude so much.'

Diana felt a hot wind across her skin.

She smiled and said: 'Let me thank you for bringing to an end a mission
that must have been unpleasant to you.'

'But you will meditate on it, Mrs. Warwick, will you not? Give me that
assurance!'

'I shall not forget it,' said Diana.

Again the ladies touched fingers, with an interchange of the social
grimace of cordiality. A few words of compassion for poor Lady Dunstane's
invalided state covered Lady Wathin's retreat.

She left, it struck her ruffled sentiments, an icy libertine, whom any
husband caring for his dignity and comfort was well rid of; and if only
she could have contrived allusively to bring in the name of Mr. Percy
Dacier, just to show these arrant coquettes, or worse, that they were not
quite so privileged to pursue their intrigues obscurely as they imagined,
it would have soothed her exasperation.

She left a woman the prey of panic.

Diana thought of Emma and Redworth, and of their foolish interposition to
save her character and keep her bound. She might now have been free! The
struggle with her manacles reduced her to a state of rebelliousness, from
which issued vivid illuminations of the one means of certain escape; an
abhorrent hissing cavern, that led to a place named Liberty, her refuge,
but a hectic place.

Unable to write, hating the house which held her a fixed mark for these
attacks, she had an idea of flying straight to her beloved Lugano lake,
and there hiding, abandoning her friends, casting off the slave's name
she bore, and living free in spirit. She went so far as to reckon the
cost of a small household there, and justify the violent step by an
exposition of retrenchment upon her large London expenditure. She had but
to say farewell to Emma, no other tie to cut! One morning on the
Salvatore heights would wash her clear of the webs defacing and
entangling her.




CHAPTER XXIV

INDICATES A SOUL PREPARED FOR DESPERATION

The month was August, four days before the closing of Parliament, and
Diana fancied it good for Arthur Rhodes to run down with her to Copsley.
He came to her invitation joyfully, reminding her of Lady Dunstane's wish
to hear some chapters of THE CANTATRICE, and the MS. was packed. They
started, taking rail and fly, and winding up the distance on foot. August
is the month of sober maturity and majestic foliage, songless, but a
crowned and royal-robed queenly month; and the youngster's appreciation
of the homely scenery refreshed Diana; his delight in being with her was
also pleasant. She had no wish to exchange him for another; and that was
a strengthening thought.

At Copsley the arrival of their luggage had prepared the welcome. Warm
though it was, Diana perceived a change in Emma, an unwonted reserve, a
doubtfulness of her eyes, in spite of tenderness; and thus thrown back on
herself, thinking that if she had followed her own counsel (as she called
her impulse) in old days, there would have been no such present misery,
she at once, and unconsciously, assumed a guarded look. Based on her
knowledge of her honest footing, it was a little defiant. Secretly in her
bosom it was sharpened to a slight hostility by the knowledge that her
mind had been straying. The guilt and the innocence combined to clothe
her in mail, the innocence being positive, the guilt so vapoury. But she
was armed only if necessary, and there was no requirement for armour.
Emma did not question at all. She saw the alteration in her Tony: she was
too full of the tragic apprehensiveness, overmastering her to speak of
trifles. She had never confided to Tony the exact nature and the growth
of her malady, thinking it mortal, and fearing to alarm her dearest.

A portion of the manuscript was read out by Arthur Rhodes in the evening;
the remainder next morning. Redworth perceptibly was the model of the
English hero; and as to his person, no friend could complain of the
sketch; his clear-eyed heartiness, manliness, wholesomeness--a word of
Lady Dunstane's regarding him,--and his handsome braced figure, were well
painted. Emma forgave the: insistance on a certain bluntness of the nose,
in consideration of the fond limning of his honest and expressive eyes,
and the 'light on his temples,' which they had noticed together. She
could not so easily forgive the realistic picture of the man: an
exaggeration, she thought, of small foibles, that even if they existed,
should not have been stressed. The turn for 'calculating' was shown up
ridiculously; Mr. Cuthbert Dering was calculating in his impassioned
moods as well as in his cold. His head was a long division of ciphers. He
had statistics for spectacles, and beheld the world through them, and the
mistress he worshipped.

'I see,' said Emma, during a pause; 'he is a Saxon. You still affect to
have the race en grippe, Tony.'

'I give him every credit for what he is,' Diana replied. 'I admire the
finer qualities of the race as much as any one. You want to have them
presented to you in enamel, Emmy.'

But the worst was an indication that the mania for calculating in and out
of season would lead to the catastrophe destructive of his happiness.
Emma could not bear that. Without asking herself whether it could be
possible that Tony knew the secret, or whether she would have laid it
bare, her sympathy for Redworth revolted at the exposure. She was
chilled. She let it pass; she merely said: 'I like the writing.'

Diana understood that her story was condemned.

She put on her robes of philosophy to cloak discouragement. 'I am glad
the writing pleases you.'

'The characters are as true as life!' cried Arthur Rhodes. 'The
Cantatrice drinking porter from the pewter at the slips after harrowing
the hearts of her audience, is dearer to me than if she had tottered to a
sofa declining sustenance; and because her creatrix has infused such
blood of life into her that you accept naturally whatever she does. She
was exhausted, and required the porter, like a labourer in the
cornfield.'

Emma looked at him, and perceived the poet swamped by the admirer. Taken
in conjunction with Mr. Cuthbert Dering's frenzy for calculating, she
disliked the incident of the porter and the pewter.

'While the Cantatrice swallowed her draught, I suppose Mr. Dering counted
the cost?' she said.

'It really might be hinted,' said Diana.

The discussion closed with the accustomed pro and con upon the wart of
Cromwell's nose, Realism rejoicing in it, Idealism objecting.

Arthur Rhodes was bidden to stretch his legs on a walk along the heights
in the afternoon, and Emma was further vexed by hearing Tony complain of
Redworth's treatment of the lad, whom he would not assist to any of the
snug little posts he was notoriously able to dispense.

'He has talked of Mr. Rhodes to me,' said Emma. 'He thinks the profession
of literature a delusion, and doubts the wisdom of having poets for
clerks.'

'John-Bullish!' Diana exclaimed. 'He speaks contemptuously of the poor
boy.'

'Only inasmuch as the foolishness of the young man in throwing up the Law
provokes his practical mind to speak.'

'He might take my word for the "young man's" ability. I want him to have
the means of living, that he may write. He has genius.'

'He may have it. I like him, and have said so. If he were to go back to
his law-stool, I have no doubt that Redworth would manage to help him.'

'And make a worthy ancient Braddock of a youth of splendid promise! Have
I sketched him too Saxon?'

'It is the lens, and hot the tribe, Tony.'

THE CANTATRICE was not alluded to any more; but Emma's disapproval
blocked the current of composition, already subject to chokings in the
brain of the author. Diana stayed three days at Copsley, one longer than
she had intended, so that Arthur Rhodes might have his fill of country
air.

'I would keep him, but I should be no companion for him,' Emma said.

'I suspect the gallant squire is only to be satisfied by landing me
safely,' said Diana, and that small remark grated, though Emma saw the
simple meaning. When they parted, she kissed her Tony many times. Tears
were in her eyes. It seemed to Diana that she was anxious to make amends
for the fit of alienation, and she was kissed in return warmly, quite
forgiven, notwithstanding the deadly blank she had caused in the
imagination of the writer for pay, distracted by the squabbles of Debit
and Credit.

Diana chatted spiritedly to young Rhodes on their drive to the train. She
was profoundly discouraged by Emma's disapproval of her work. It wanted
but that one drop to make a recurrence to the work impossible. There it
must lie! And what of the aspects of her household?--Perhaps, after all,
the Redworths of the world are right, and Literature as a profession is a
delusive pursuit. She did not assent to it without hostility to the
world's Redworths.--'They have no sensitiveness, we have too much. We are
made of bubbles that a wind will burst, and as the wind is always
blowing, your practical Redworths have their crow of us.'

She suggested advice to Arthur Rhodes upon the prudence of his resuming
the yoke of the Law.

He laughed at such a notion, saying that he had some expectations of
money to come.

'But I fear,' said he, 'that Lady Dunstane is very very ill. She begged
me to keep her informed of your address.'

Diana told him he was one of those who should know it whithersoever she
went. She spoke impulsively, her sentiments of friendliness for the youth
being temporarily brightened by the strangeness of Emma's conduct in
deputing it to him to fulfil a duty she had never omitted. 'What can she
think I am going to do!'

On her table at home lay, a letter from Mr. Warwick. She read it hastily
in the presence of Arthur Rhodes, having at a glance at the handwriting
anticipated the proposal it contained and the official phrasing.

Her gallant squire was invited to dine with her that evening, costume
excused.

They conversed of Literature as a profession, of poets dead and living,
of politics, which he abhorred and shied at, and of his prospects. He
wrote many rejected pages, enjoyed an income of eighty pounds per annum,
and eked out a subsistence upon the modest sum his pen procured him; a
sum extremely insignificant; but great Nature was his own, the world was
tributary to him, the future his bejewelled and expectant bride. Diana
envied his youthfulness. Nothing is more enviable, nothing richer to the
mind, than the aspect of a cheerful poverty. How much nobler it was,
contrasted with Redworth's amassing of wealth!

When alone, she went to her bedroom and tried to write, tried to sleep.
Mr. Warwick's letter was looked at. It seemed to indicate a threat; but
for the moment it did not disturb her so much as the review of her moral
prostration. She wrote some lines to her lawyers, quoting one of Mr.
Warwick's sentences. That done, his letter was dismissed. Her intolerable
languor became alternately a defeating drowsiness and a fever. She
succeeded in the effort to smother the absolute cause: it was not
suffered to show a front; at the cost of her knowledge of a practised
self-deception. 'I wonder whether the world is as bad as a certain class
of writers tell us!' she sighed in weariness, and mused on their
soundings and probings of poor humanity, which the world accepts for the
very bottom truth if their dredge brings up sheer refuse of the
abominable. The world imagines those to be at our nature's depths who are
impudent enough to expose its muddy shallows. She was in the mood for
such a kind of writing: she could have started on it at once but that the
theme was wanting; and it may count on popularity, a great repute for
penetration. It is true of its kind, though the dredging of nature is the
miry form of art. When it flourishes we may be assured we have been
overenamelling the higher forms. She felt, and shuddered to feel, that
she could draw from dark stores. Hitherto in her works it had been a
triumph of the good. They revealed a gaping deficiency of the subtle
insight she now possessed. 'Exhibit humanity as it is, wallowing,
sensual, wicked, behind the mask,' a voice called to her; she was allured
by the contemplation of the wide-mouthed old dragon Ego, whose portrait,
decently painted, establishes an instant touch of exchange between author
and public, the latter detected and confessing. Next to the pantomime of
Humour and Pathos, a cynical surgical knife at the human bosom seems the
surest talisman for this agreeable exchange; and she could cut. She gave
herself a taste of her powers. She cut at herself mercilessly, and had to
bandage the wound in a hurry to keep in life.

Metaphors were her refuge. Metaphorically she could allow her mind to
distinguish the struggle she was undergoing, sinking under it. The
banished of Eden had to put on metaphors, and the common use of them has
helped largely to civilize us. The sluggish in intellect detest them, but
our civilization is not much indebted to that major faction. Especially
are they needed by the pedestalled woman in her conflict with the
natural. Diana saw herself through the haze she conjured up. 'Am I worse
than other women?' was a piercing twithought. Worse, would be hideous
isolation. The not worse, abased her sex. She could afford to say that
the world was bad: not that women were.

Sinking deeper, an anguish of humiliation smote her to a sense of
drowning. For what of the poetic ecstasy on her Salvatore heights had not
been of origin divine? had sprung from other than spiritual founts? had
sprung from the reddened sources she was compelled to conceal? Could it
be? She would not believe it. But there was matter to clip her wings,
quench her light, in the doubt.

She fell asleep like the wrecked flung ashore.

Danvers entered her room at an early hour for London to inform her that
Mr. Percy Dacier was below, and begged permission to wait.

Diana gave orders for breakfast to be proposed to him. She lay staring at
the wall until it became too visibly a reflection of her mind.




CHAPTER XXV

ONCE MORE THE CROSSWAYS AND A CHANGE OF TURNINGS

The suspicion of his having come to impart the news of his proximate
marriage ultimately endowed her with sovereign calmness. She had need to
think it, and she did. Tea was brought to her while she dressed; she
descended the stairs revolving phrases of happy congratulation and the
world's ordinary epigrams upon the marriage-tie, neatly mixed.

They read in one another's faces a different meaning from the empty words
of excuse and welcome. Dacier's expressed the buckling of a strong set
purpose; but, grieved by the look of her eyes, he wasted a moment to say:
'You have not slept. You have heard . . . ?'

'What?' said she, trying to speculate; and that was a sufficient answer.

'I hadn't the courage to call last night; I passed the windows. Give me
your hand, I beg.'

She gave her hand in wonderment, and more wonderingly felt it squeezed.
Her heart began the hammerthump. She spoke an unintelligible something;
saw herself melting away to utter weakness-pride, reserve, simple
prudence, all going; crumbled ruins where had stood a fortress imposing
to men. Was it love? Her heart thumped shiveringly.

He kept her hand, indifferent to the gentle tension.

'This is the point: I cannot live without you: I have gone on . . . Who
was here last night? Forgive me.'

'You know Arthur Rhodes.'

'I saw him leave the door at eleven. Why do you torture me? There's no
time to lose now. You will be claimed. Come, and let us two cut the knot.
It is the best thing in the world for me--the only thing. Be brave! I
have your hand. Give it for good, and for heaven's sake don't play the
sex. Be yourself. Dear soul of a woman! I never saw the soul in one but
in you. I have waited: nothing but the dread of losing you sets me
speaking now. And for you to be sacrificed a second time to that--! Oh,
no! You know you can trust me. On my honour, I take breath from you. You
are my better in everything--guide, goddess, dearest heart! Trust me;
make me master of your fate.'

'But my friend!' the murmur hung in her throat. He was marvellously
transformed; he allowed no space for the arts of defence and evasion.

'I wish I had the trick of courting. There's not time; and I 'm a
simpleton at the game. We can start this evening. Once away, we leave it
to them to settle the matter, and then you are free, and mine to the
death.'

'But speak, speak! What is it?' Diana said.

'That if we delay, I 'm in danger of losing you altogether.'

Her eyes lightened: 'You mean that you have heard he has determined--?'

'There's a process of the law. But stop it. Just this one step, and it
ends. Whether intended or not, it hangs over you, and you will be
perpetually tormented. Why waste your whole youth?--and mine as well! For
I am bound to you as much as if we had stood at the altar--where we will
stand together the instant you are free.'

'But where have you heard . . .?

'From an intimate friend. I will tell you--sufficiently intimate--from
Lady Wathin. Nothing of a friend, but I see this woman at times. She
chose to speak of it to me it doesn't matter why. She is in his
confidence, and pitched me a whimpering tale. Let those people chatter.
But it 's exactly for those people that you are hanging in chains, all
your youth shrivelling. Let them shout their worst! It's the bark of a
day; and you won't hear it; half a year, and it will be over, and I shall
bring you back--the husband of the noblest bride in Christendom! You
don't mistrust me?'

'It is not that,' said she. 'But now drop my hand. I am imprisoned.'

'It's asking too much. I've lost you--too many times. I have the hand and
I keep it. I take nothing but the hand. It's the hand I want. I give you
mine. I love you. Now I know what love is!--and the word carries nothing
of its weight. Tell me you do not doubt my honour.'

'Not at all. But be rational. I must think, and I cannot while you keep
my hand.'

He kissed it. 'I keep my own against the world.'

A cry of rebuke swelled to her lips at his conqueror's tone. It was not
uttered, for directness was in his character and his wooing loyal--save
for bitter circumstances, delicious to hear; and so narrow was the ring
he had wound about her senses, that her loathing of the circumstances
pushed her to acknowledge within her bell of a heart her love for him.

He was luckless enough to say: 'Diana!'

It rang horridly of her husband. She drew her hand to loosen it, with
repulsing brows. 'Not that name!'

Dacier was too full of his honest advocacy of the passionate lover to
take a rebuff. There lay his unconscious mastery, where the common arts
of attack would have tripped him with a quick-witted woman, and where a
man of passion, not allowing her to succumb in dignity, would have
alarmed her to the breaking loose from him.

'Lady Dunstane calls you Tony.'

'She is my dearest and oldest friend.'

'You and I don't count by years. You are the dearest to me on earth,
Tony!'

She debated as to forbidding that name.

The moment's pause wrapped her in a mental hurricane, out of which she
came with a heart stopped, her olive cheeks ashen-hued. She had seen that
the step was possible.

'Oh! Percy, Percy, are we mad?'

'Not mad. We take what is ours. Tell me, have I ever, ever disrespected
you? You were sacred to me; and you are, though now the change has come.
Look back on it--it is time lost, years that are dust. But look forward,
and you cannot imagine our separation. What I propose is plain sense for
us two. Since Rovio, I have been at your feet. Have I not some just claim
for recompense? Tell me! Tony!'

The sweetness of the secret name, the privileged name, in his mouth stole
through her blood, melting resistance.

She had consented. The swarthy flaming of her face avowed it even more
than the surrender of her hand. He gained much by claiming little: he
respected her, gave her no touches of fright and shame; and it was her
glory to fall with pride. An attempt at a caress would have awakened her
view of the whitherward: but she was treated as a sovereign lady
rationally advised.

'Is it since Rovio, Percy?'

'Since the morning when you refused me one little flower.'

'If I had given it, you might have been saved!'

'I fancy I was doomed from the beginning.'

'I was worth a thought?'

'Worth a life! worth ten thousand!'

'You have reckoned it all like a sane man:--family, position, the world,
the scandal?'

'All. I have long known that you were the mate for me. You have to
weather a gale, Tony. It won't last. My dearest! it won't last many
months. I regret the trial for you, but I shall be with you, burning for
the day to reinstate you and show you the queen you are.'

'Yes, we two can have no covert dealings, Percy,' said Diana. They would
be hateful--baseness! Rejecting any baseness, it seemed to her that she
stood in some brightness. The light was of a lurid sort. She called on
her heart to glory in it as the light of tried love, the love that defied
the world. Her heart rose. She and he would at a single step give proof
of their love for one another--and this kingdom of love--how different
from her recent craven languors!--this kingdom awaited her, was hers for
one word; and beset with the oceans of enemies, it was unassailable. If
only they were true to the love they vowed, no human force could subvert
it: and she doubted him as little as of herself. This new kingdom of
love, never entered by her, acclaiming her, was well-nigh unimaginable,
in spite of the many hooded messengers it had despatched to her of late.
She could hardly believe that it had come.

'But see me as I am,' she said; she faltered it through her direct gaze
on him.

'With chains to strike off? Certainly; it is done,' he replied.

'Rather heavier than those of the slave-market! I am the deadest of
burdens. It means that your enemies, personal--if you have any, and
political--you have numbers; will raise a cry . . . . Realize it. You may
still be my friend. I forgive the bit of wildness.'

She provoked a renewed kissing of her hand; for magnammity in love is an
overflowing danger; and when he said: 'The burden you have to bear
outweighs mine out of all comparison. What is it to a man--a public man
or not! The woman is always the victim. That's why I have held myself in
so long:--her strung frame softened. She half yielded to the tug on her
arm.

'Is there no talking for us without foolishness?' she murmured. The
foolishness had wafted her to sea, far from sight of land. 'Now sit, and
speak soberly. Discuss the matter.--Yes, my hand, but I must have my
wits. Leave me free to use them till we choose our path. Let it be the
brains between us, as far as it can. You ask me to join my fate to yours.
It signifies a sharp battle for you, dear friend; perhaps the blighting
of the most promising life in England. One question is, can I countervail
the burden I shall be, by such help to you as I can afford? Burden, is no
word--I rake up a buried fever. I have partially lived it down, and
instantly I am covered with spots. The old false charges and this plain
offence make a monster of me.'

'And meanwhile you are at the disposal of the man who falsely charged you
and armed the world against you,' said Dacier.

'I can fly. The world is wide.'

'Time slips. Your youth is wasted. If you escape the man, he will have
triumphed in keeping you from me. And I thirst for you; I look to you for
aid and counsel; I want my mate. You have not to be told how you inspire
me? I am really less than half myself without you. If I am to do anything
in the world, it must be with your aid, you beside me. Our hands are
joined: one leap! Do you not see that after . . . well, it cannot be
friendship. It imposes rather more on me than I can bear. You are not the
woman to trifle; nor I; Tony, the man for it with a woman like you. You
are my spring of wisdom. You interdict me altogether--can you?--or we
unite our fates, like these hands now. Try to get yours away!'

Her effort ended in a pressure. Resistance, nay, to hesitate at the
joining of her life with his after her submission to what was a scorching
fire in memory, though it was less than an embrace, accused her of worse
than foolishness.

'Well, then,' said she, 'wait three days. Deliberate. Oh! try to know
yourself, for your clear reason to guide you. Let us be something better
than the crowd abusing us, not simple creatures of impulse--as we choose
to call the animal. What if we had to confess that we took to our heels
the moment the idea struck us! Three days. We may then pretend to a
philosophical resolve. Then come to me: or write to me.'

'How long is it since the old Rovio morning, Tony?'

'An age.'

'Date my deliberations from that day.'

The thought of hers having to be dated possibly from an earlier day,
robbed her of her summit of feminine isolation, and she trembled, chilled
and flushed; she lost all anchorage.

'So it must be to-morrow,' said he, reading her closely, 'not later.
Better at once. But women are not to be hurried.'

'Oh! don't class me, Percy, pray! I think of you, not of myself.'

'You suppose that in a day or two I might vary?'

She fixed her eyes on him, expressing certainty of his unalterable
stedfastness. The look allured. It changed: her head shook. She held away
and said: 'No, leave me; leave me, dear, dear friend. Percy, my dearest!
I will not "play the sex." I am yours if . . . if it is your wish. It may
as well be to-morrow. Here I am useless; I cannot write, not screw a
thought from my head. I dread that "process of the Law" a second time.
To-morrow, if it must be. But no impulses. Fortune is blind; she may be
kind to us. The blindness of Fortune is her one merit, and fools accuse
her of it, and they profit by it! I fear we all of us have our turn of
folly: we throw the stake for good luck. I hope my sin is not very great.
I know my position is desperate. I feel a culprit. But I am sure I have
courage, perhaps brains to help. At any rate, I may say this: I bring no
burden to my lover that he does not know of.'

Dacier pressed her hand. 'Money we shall have enough. My uncle has left
me fairly supplied.'

'What would he think?' said Diana, half in a glimpse of meditation.

'Think me the luckiest of the breeched. I fancy I hear him thanking you
for "making a man" of me.'

She blushed. Some such phrase might have been spoken by Lord Dannisburgh.

'I have but a poor sum of money,' she said. 'I may be able to write
abroad. Here I cannot--if I am to be persecuted.'

'You shall write, with a new pen!' said Dacier. 'You shall live, my
darling Tony. You have been held too long in this miserable suspension,
neither maid nor wife, neither woman nor stockfish. Ah! shameful. But we
'll right it. The step, for us, is the most reasonable that could be
considered. You shake your head. But the circumstances make it so.
Courage, and we come to happiness! And that, for you and me, means work.
Look at the case of Lord and Lady Dulac. It's identical, except that she
is no match beside you: and I do not compare her antecedents with yours.
But she braved the leap, and forced the world to swallow it, and now, you
see, she's perfectly honoured. I know a place on a peak of the Maritime
Alps, exquisite in summer, cool, perfectly solitary, no English, snow
round us, pastures at our feet, and the Mediterranean below. There! my
Tony. To-morrow night we start. You will meet me-shall I call
here?--well, then at the railway station, the South-Eastern, for Paris:
say, twenty minutes to eight. I have your pledge? You will come?'

She sighed it, then said it firmly, to be worthy of him. Kind Fortune,
peeping under the edge of her bandaged eyes, appeared willing to bestow
the beginning of happiness upon one who thought she had a claim to a
small taste of it before she died. It seemed distinguishingly done, to
give a bite of happiness to the starving!

'I fancied when you were announced that you came for congratulations upon
your approaching marriage, Percy.'

'I shall expect to hear them from you to-morrow evening at the station,
dear Tony,' said he.

The time was again stated, the pledge repeated. He forbore entreaties for
privileges, and won her gratitude.

They named once more the place of meeting and the hour: more significant
to them than phrases of intensest love and passion. Pressing hands
sharply for pledge of good faith, they sundered.

She still had him in her eyes when he had gone. Her old world lay
shattered; her new world was up without a dawn, with but one figure, the
sun of it, to light the swinging strangeness.

Was ever man more marvellously transformed? or woman more wildly swept
from earth into the clouds? So she mused in the hum of her tempest of
heart and brain, forgetful of the years and the conditions preparing both
of them for this explosion.

She had much to do: the arrangements to dismiss her servants, write to
house-agents and her lawyer, and write fully to Emma, write the enigmatic
farewell to the Esquarts and Lady Pennon, Mary Paynham, Arthur Rhodes,
Whitmonby (stanch in friendship, but requiring friendly touches), Henry
Wilmers, and Redworth. He was reserved to the last, for very enigmatical
adieux: he would hear the whole story from Emma; must be left to think as
he liked.

The vague letters were excellently well composed: she was going abroad,
and knew not when she would return; bade her friends think the best they
could of her in the meantime. Whitmonby was favoured with an anecdote, to
be read as an apologue by the light of subsequent events. But the letter
to Emma tasked Diana. Intending to write fully, her pen committed the
briefest sentences: the tenderness she felt for Emma wakening her heart
to sing that she was loved, loved, and knew love at last; and Emma's
foreseen antagonism to the love and the step it involved rendered her
pleadings in exculpation a stammered confession of guiltiness,
ignominious, unworthy of the pride she felt in her lover. 'I am like a
cartridge rammed into a gun, to be discharged at a certain hour
tomorrow,' she wrote; and she sealed a letter so frigid that she could
not decide to post it. All day she imagined hearing a distant cannonade.
The light of the day following was not like earthly light. Danvers
assured her there was no fog in London.

'London is insupportable; I am going to Paris, and shall send for you in
a week or two,' said Diana.

'Allow me to say, ma'am, that you had better take me with you,' said
Danvers.

'Are you afraid of travelling by yourself, you foolish creature?'

'No, ma'am, but I don't like any hands to undress and dress my mistress
but my own.'

'I have not lost the art,' said Diana, chafing for a magic spell to
extinguish the woman, to whom, immediately pitying her, she said: 'You
are a good faithful soul. I think you have never kissed me. Kiss me on
the forehead.'

Danvers put her lips to her mistress's forehead, and was asked: 'You
still consider yourself attached to my fortunes?'

'I do, ma'am, at home or abroad; and if you will take me with you . . .'

'Not for a week or so.'

'I shall not be in the way, ma'am.'

They played at shutting eyes. The petition of Danvers was declined; which
taught her the more; and she was emboldened to say: 'Wherever my mistress
goes, she ought to have her attendant with her.' There was no answer to
it but the refusal.

The hours crumbled slowly, each with a blow at the passages of retreat.
Diana thought of herself as another person, whom she observed, not
counselling her, because it was a creature visibly pushed by the Fates.
In her own mind she could not perceive a stone of solidity anywhere, nor
a face that had the appearance of our common life. She heard the cannon
at intervals. The things she said set Danvers laughing, and she wondered
at the woman's mingled mirth and stiffness. Five o'clock struck. Her
letters were sent to the post. Her boxes were piled from stairs to door.
She read the labels, for her good-bye to the hated name of Warwick:--why
ever adopted! Emma might well have questioned why! Women are guilty of
such unreasoning acts! But this was the close to that chapter. The hour
of six went by. Between six and seven came a sound of knocker and bell at
the street-door. Danvers rushed into the sitting-room to announce that it
was Mr. Redworth. Before a word could be mustered, Redworth was in the
room. He said: 'You must come with me at once!'




CHAPTER XXVI

IN WHICH A DISAPPOINTED LOVER RECEIVES A MULTITUDE OF LESSONS

Dacier welted at the station, a good figure of a sentinel over his
luggage and a spy for one among the inpouring passengers. Tickets had
been confidently taken, the private division of the carriages happily
secured. On board the boat she would be veiled. Landed on French soil,
they threw off disguises, breasted the facts. And those? They lightened.
He smarted with his eagerness.

He had come well in advance of the appointed time, for he would not have
had her hang about there one minute alone.

Strange as this adventure was to a man of prominent station before the
world, and electrical as the turning-point of a destiny that he was given
to weigh deliberately and far-sightedly, Diana's image strung him to the
pitch of it. He looked nowhere but ahead, like an archer putting hand for
his arrow.

Presently he compared his watch and the terminus clock. She should now be
arriving. He went out to meet her and do service. Many cabs and carriages
were peered into, couples inspected, ladies and their maids, wives and
their husbands--an August exodus to the Continent. Nowhere the starry
she. But he had a fund of patience. She was now in some block of the
streets. He was sure of her, sure of her courage. Tony and recreancy
could not go together. Now that he called her Tony, she was his close
comrade, known; the name was a caress and a promise, breathing of her, as
the rose of sweetest earth. He counted it to be a month ere his family
would have wind of the altered position of his affairs, possibly a year
to the day of his making the dear woman his own in the eyes of the world.
She was dear past computation, womanly, yet quite unlike the womanish
woman, unlike the semi-males courteously called dashing, unlike the
sentimental. His present passion for her lineaments, declared her
surpassingly beautiful, though his critical taste was rather for the
white statue that gave no warmth. She had brains and ardour, she had
grace and sweetness, a playful petulancy enlivening our atmosphere, and
withal a refinement, a distinction, not to be classed; and justly might
she dislike the being classed. Her humour was a perennial refreshment, a
running well, that caught all the colours of light; her wit studded the
heavens of the recollection of her. In his heart he felt that it was a
stepping down for the brilliant woman to give him her hand; a
condescension and an act of valour. She who always led or prompted when
they conversed, had now in her generosity abandoned the lead and herself
to him, and she deserved his utmost honouring.

But where was she? He looked at his watch, looked at the clock. They said
the same: ten minutes to the moment of the train's departure.

A man may still afford to dwell on the charms and merits of his heart's
mistress while he has ten minutes to spare. The dropping minutes,
however, detract one by one from her individuality and threaten to sink
her in her sex entirely. It is the inexorable clock that says she is as
other women. Dacier began to chafe. He was unaccustomed to the part he
was performing:--and if she failed him? She would not. She would be late,
though. No, she was in time! His long legs crossed the platform to
overtake a tall lady veiled and dressed in black. He lifted his hat; he
heard an alarmed little cry and retired. The clock said, Five minutes: a
secret chiromancy in addition indicating on its face the word Fool. An
odd word to be cast at him! It rocked the icy pillar of pride in the
background of his nature. Certainly standing solos at the hour of eight
P.M., he would stand for a fool. Hitherto he had never allowed a woman to
chance to posture him in that character. He strode out, returned, scanned
every lady's shape, and for a distraction watched the veiled lady whom he
had accosted. Her figure suggested pleasant features. Either she was
disappointed or she was an adept. At the shutting of the gates she glided
through, not without a fearful look around and at him. She disappeared.
Dacier shrugged. His novel assimilation to the rat-rabble of amatory
intriguers tapped him on the shoulder unpleasantly. A luckless member of
the fraternity too! The bell, the clock and the train gave him his title.
'And I was ready to fling down everything for the woman!' The trial of a
superb London gentleman's resources in the love-passion could not have
been much keener. No sign of her.

He who stands ready to defy the world, and is baffled by the absence of
his fair assistant, is the fool doubled, so completely the fool that he
heads the universal shout; he does not spare himself. The sole
consolation he has is to revile the sex. Women! women! Whom have they not
made a fool of! His uncle as much as any--and professing to know them.
Him also! the man proud of escaping their wiles. 'For this woman . . . !'
he went on saying after he had lost sight of her in her sex's trickeries.
The nearest he could get to her was to conceive that the arrant coquette
was now laughing at her utter subjugation and befooling of the man
popularly supposed invincible. If it were known of him! The idea of his
being a puppet fixed for derision was madly distempering. He had only to
ask the affirmative of Constance Asper to-morrow! A vision of his
determination to do it, somewhat comforted him.

Dacier walked up and down the platform, passing his pile of luggage,
solitary and eloquent on the barrow. Never in his life having been made
to look a fool, he felt the red heat of the thing, as a man who has not
blessedly become acquainted with the swish in boyhood finds his
untempered blood turn to poison at a blow; he cannot healthily take a
licking. But then it had been so splendid an insanity when he urged Diana
to fly with him. Any one but a woman would have appreciated the
sacrifice.

His luggage had to be removed. He dropped his porter a lordly fee and
drove home. From that astonished solitude he strolled to his Club.
Curiosity mastering the wrath it was mixed with, he left his Club and
crossed the park southward in the direction of Diana's house, abusing her
for her inveterate attachment to the regions of Westminster. There she
used to receive Lord Dannisburgh; innocently, no doubt-assuredly quite
innocently; and her husband had quitted the district. Still it was rather
childish for a woman to-be always haunting the seats of Parliament. Her
disposition to imagine that she was able to inspire statesmen came in for
a share of ridicule; for when we know ourselves to be ridiculous, a
retort in kind, unjust upon consideration, is balm. The woman dragged him
down to the level of common men; that was the peculiar injury, and it
swept her undistinguished into the stream of women. In appearance, as he
had proved to the fellows at his Club, he was perfectly self-possessed,
mentally distracted and bitter, hating himself for it, snapping at the
cause of it. She had not merely disappointed, she had slashed his high
conceit of himself, curbed him at the first animal dash forward, and he
champed the bit with the fury of a thwarted racer.

Twice he passed her house. Of course no light was shown at her windows.
They were scanned malignly.

He held it due to her to call and inquire whether there was any truth in
the report of Mrs. Warwick's illness. Mrs. Warwick! She meant to keep the
name.

A maid-servant came to the door with a candle in her hand revealing red
eyelids. She was not aware that her mistress was unwell. Her mistress had
left home some time after six o'clock with a gentleman. She was unable to
tell him the gentleman's name. William, the footman, had opened the door
to him. Her mistress's maid Mrs. Danvers had gone to the Play--with
William. She thought that Mrs. Danvers might know who the gentleman was.
The girl's eyelids blinked, and she turned aside. Dacier consoled her
with a piece of gold, saying he would come and see Mrs. Danvers in the
morning.

His wrath was partially quieted by the new speculations offered up to it.
He could not conjure a suspicion of treachery in Diana Warwick; and a
treachery so foully cynical! She had gone with a gentleman. He guessed on
all sides; he struck at walls, as in complete obscurity.

The mystery of her conduct troubling his wits for the many hours was
explained by Danvers. With a sympathy that she was at pains to show, she
informed him that her mistress was not at all unwell, and related of how
Mr. Redworth had arrived just when her mistress was on the point of
starting for Paris and the Continent; because poor Lady Dunstane was this
very day to undergo an operation under the surgeons at Copsley, and she
did not wish her mistress to be present, but Mr. Redworth thought her
mistress ought to be there, and he had gone down thinking she was there,
and then came back in hot haste to fetch her, and was just in time, as it
happened, by two or three minutes.

Dacier rewarded the sympathetic woman for her intelligence, which
appeared to him to have shot so far as to require a bribe. Gratitude to
the person soothing his unwontedly ruffled temper was the cause of the
indiscretion in the amount he gave.

It appeared to him that he ought to proceed to Copsley for tidings of
Lady Dunstane. Thither he sped by the handy railway and a timely train.
He reached the parkgates at three in the afternoon, telling his flyman to
wait. As he advanced by short cuts over the grass, he studied the look of
the rows of windows. She was within, and strangely to his clouded senses
she was no longer Tony, no longer the deceptive woman he could in justice
abuse. He and she, so close to union, were divided. A hand resembling the
palpable interposition of Fate had swept them asunder. Having the poorest
right--not any--to reproach her, he was disarmed, he felt himself a
miserable intruder; he summoned his passion to excuse him, and gained
some unsatisfied repose of mind by contemplating its devoted sincerity;
which roused an effort to feel for the sufferer--Diana Warwick's friend.
With the pair of surgeons named, the most eminent of their day, in
attendance, the case must be serious. To vindicate the breaker of her
pledge, his present plight likewise assured him of that, and nearing the
house he adopted instinctively the funeral step and mood, just sensible
of a novel smallness. For the fortifying testimony of his passion had to
be put aside, he was obliged to disavow it for a simpler motive if he
applied at the door. He stressed the motive, produced the sentiment, and
passed thus naturally into hypocrisy, as lovers precipitated by their
blood among the crises of human conditions are often forced to do. He had
come to inquire after Lady Dunstane. He remembered that it had struck him
as a duty, on hearing of her dangerous illness.

The door opened before he touched the bell. Sir Lukin knocked against him
and stared.

'Ah!--who--?--you?' he said, and took him by the arm and pressed him on
along the gravel. 'Dacier, are you? Redworth's in there. Come on a step,
come! It's the time for us to pray. Good God! There's mercy for sinners.
If ever there was a man! . . . But, oh, good God! she's in their hands
this minute. My saint is under the knife.'

Dacier was hurried forward by a powerful hand. 'They say it lasts about
five minutes, four and a half--or more! My God! When they turned me out
of her room, she smiled to keep me calm. She said: "Dear husband": the
veriest wretch and brutallest husband ever poor woman . . . and a saint!
a saint on earth! Emmy!' Tears burst from him.

He pulled forth his watch and asked Dacier for the time.

'A minute's gone in a minute. It's three minutes and a half. Come faster.
They're at their work! It's life or death. I've had death about me. But
for a woman! and your wife! and that brave soul! She bears it so. Women
are the bravest creatures afloat. If they make her shriek, it'll be only
if she thinks I 'm out of hearing. No: I see her. She bears it!--They
mayn't have begun yet. It may all be over! Come into the wood. I must
pray. I must go on my knees.'

Two or three steps in the wood, at the mossed roots of a beech, he fell
kneeling, muttering, exclaiming.

The tempest of penitence closed with a blind look at his watch, which he
left dangling. He had to talk to drug his thoughts.

'And mind you,' said he, when he had rejoined Dacier and was pushing his
arm again, rounding beneath the trees to a view of the house, 'for a man
steeped in damnable iniquity! She bears it all for me, because I begged
her, for the chance of her living. It's my doing--this knife! Macpherson
swears there is a chance. Thomson backs him. But they're at her, cutting!
. . . The pain must be awful--the mere pain! The gentlest creature ever
drew breath! And women fear blood--and her own! And a head! She ought to
have married the best man alive, not a--! I can't remember her once
complaining of me--not once. A common donkey compared to her! All I can
do is to pray. And she knows the beast I am, and has forgiven me. There
isn't a blessed text of Scripture that doesn't cry out in praise of her.
And they cut and hack . . . !' He dropped his head. The vehement big man
heaved, shuddering. His lips worked fast.

'She is not alone with them, unsupported?' said Dacier.

Sir Lukin moaned for relief. He caught his watch swinging and stared at
it. 'What a good fellow you were to come! Now 's the time to know your
friends. There's Diana Warwick, true as steel. Redworth came on her
tiptoe for the Continent; he had only to mention . . . Emmy wanted to
spare her. She would not have sent--wanted to spare her the sight. I
offered to stand by . . . Chased me out. Diana Warwick's there:--worth
fifty of me! Dacier, I've had my sword-blade tried by Indian horsemen,
and I know what true as steel means. She's there. And I know she shrinks
from the sight of blood. My oath on it, she won't quiver a muscle! Next
to my wife, you may take my word for it, Dacier, Diana Warwick is the
pick of living women. I could prove it. They go together. I could prove
it over and over. She 's the loyallest woman anywhere. Her one error was
that marriage of hers, and how she ever pitched herself into it, none of
us can guess.' After a while, he said: 'Look at your watch.'

'Nearly twenty minutes gone.'

'Are they afraid to send out word? It's that window!' He covered his
eyes, and muttered, sighed. He became abruptly composed in appearance.
'The worst of a black sheep like me is, I'm such an infernal sinner, that
Providence! . . . But both surgeons gave me their word of honour that
there was a chance. A chance! But it's the end of me if Emmy . . . . Good
God! no! the knife's enough; don't let her be killed! It would be murder.
Here am I talking! I ought to be praying. I should have sent for the
parson to help me; I can't get the proper words--bellow like a rascal
trooper strung up for the cat. It must be twenty-five minutes now. Who's
alive now!'

Dacier thought of the Persian Queen crying for news of the slaughtered,
with her mind on her lord and husband: 'Who is not dead?' Diana exalted
poets, and here was an example of the truth of one to nature, and of the
poor husband's depth of feeling. They said not the same thing, but it was
the same cry de profundis.

He saw Redworth coming at a quick pace.

Redworth raised his hand. Sir Lukin stopped. 'He's waving!'

'It's good,' said Dacier.

'Speak! are you sure?'

'I judge by the look.'

Redworth stepped unfalteringly.

'It's over, all well,' he said. He brushed his forehead and looked
sharply cheerful.

'My dear fellow! my dear fellow!' Sir Lukin grasped his hand. 'It's more
than I deserve. Over? She has borne it! She would have gone to heaven and
left me!

Is she safe?'

'Doing well.'

'Have you seen the surgeons?'

'Mrs. Warwick.'

'What did she say?'

'A nod of the head.'

'You saw her?'

'She came to the stairs.'

'Diana Warwick never lies. She wouldn't lie, not with a nod! They've
saved Emmy--do you think?'

'It looks well.'

My girl has passed the worst of it?'

'That's over.'

Sir Lukin gazed glassily. The necessity of his agony was to lean to the
belief, at a beckoning, that Providence pardoned him, in tenderness for
what would have been his loss. He realized it, and experienced a sudden
calm: testifying to the positive pardon.

'Now, look here, you two fellows, listen half a moment,' he addressed
Redworth and Dacier; 'I've been the biggest scoundrel of a husband
unhung, and married to a saint; and if she's only saved to me; I'll swear
to serve her faithfully, or may a thunderbolt knock me to perdition! and
thank God for his justice! Prayers are answered, mind you, though a
fellow may be as black as a sweep. Take a warning from me. I've had my
lesson.'

Dacier soon after talked of going. The hope of seeing Diana had abandoned
him, the desire was almost extinct.

Sir Lukin could not let him go. He yearned to preach to him or any one
from his personal text of the sinner honourably remorseful on account of
and notwithstanding the forgiveness of Providence, and he implored Dacier
and Redworth by turns to be careful when they married of how they behaved
to--the sainted women their wives; never to lend ear to the devil, nor to
believe, as he had done, that there is no such thing as a devil, for he
had been the victim of him, and he knew. The devil, he loudly proclaimed,
has a multiplicity of lures, and none more deadly than when he baits with
a petticoat. He had been hooked, and had found the devil in person. He
begged them urgently to keep his example in memory. By following this and
that wildfire he had stuck himself in a bog--a common result with those
who would not see the devil at work upon them; and it required his dear
suffering saint to be at death's doors, cut to pieces and gasping, to
open his eyes. But, thank heaven, they were opened at last! Now he saw
the beast he was: a filthy beast! unworthy of tying his wife's
shoestring. No confessions could expose to them the beast he was. But let
them not fancy there was no such thing as an active DEVIL about the
world.

Redworth divined that the simply sensational man abased himself before
Providence and heaped his gratitude on the awful Power in order to render
it difficult for the promise of the safety of his wife to be withdrawn.

He said: 'There is good hope'; and drew an admonition upon himself.

'Ah! my dear good Redworth,' Sir Lukin sighed from his elevation of
outspoken penitence: 'you will see as I do some day. It is the devil,
think as you like of it. When you have pulled down all the Institutions
of the Country, what do you expect but ruins? That Radicalism of yours
has its day. You have to go through a wrestle like mine to understand it.
You say, the day is fine, let's have our game. Old England pays for it!
Then you'll find how you love the old land of your birth--the noblest
ever called a nation!--with your Corn Law Repeals!--eh, Dacier?--You 'll
own it was the devil tempted you. I hear you apologizing. Pray God, it
mayn't be too late!'

He looked up at the windows. 'She may be sinking!'

'Have no fears,' Redworth said; 'Mrs. Warwick would send for you.'

'She would. Diana Warwick would be sure to send. Next to my wife, Diana
Warwick's . . . she'd send, never fear. I dread that room. I'd rather go
through a regiment of sabres--though it 's over now. And Diana Warwick
stood it. The worst is over, you told me. By heaven! women are wonderful
creatures. But she hasn't a peer for courage. I could trust her--most
extraordinary thing; that marriage of hers!--not a soul has ever been
able to explain it:--trust her to the death.'

Redworth left them, and Sir Lukin ejaculated on the merits of Diana
Warwick to Dacier. He laughed scornfully: 'And that's the woman the world
attacks for want of virtue! Why, a fellow hasn't a chance with her, not a
chance. She comes out in blazing armour if you unmask a battery. I don't
know how it might be if she were in love with a fellow. I doubt her
thinking men worth the trouble. I never met the man. But if she were to
take fire, Troy 'd be nothing to it. I wonder whether we might go in: I
dread the house.'

Dacier spoke of departing.

'No, no, wait,' Sir Lukin begged him. 'I was talking about women. They
are the devil--or he makes most use of them: and you must learn to see
the cloven foot under their petticoats, if you're to escape them. There's
no protection in being in love with your wife; I married for love; I am,
I always have been, in love with her; and I went to the deuce. The music
struck up and away I waltzed. A woman like Diana Warwick might keep a
fellow straight, because she,'s all round you; she's man and woman in
brains; and legged like a deer, and breasted like a swan, and a regular
sheaf of arrows--in her eyes. Dark women--ah! But she has a contempt for
us, you know. That's the secret of her.--Redworth 's at the door. Bad? Is
it bad? I never was particularly fond of that house--hated it. I love it
now for Emmy's sake. I couldn't live in another--though I should be
haunted. Rather her ghost than nothing--though I'm an infernal coward
about the next world. But if you're right with religion you needn't fear.
What I can't comprehend in Redworth is his Radicalism, and getting richer
and richer.'

'It's not a vow of poverty,' said Dacier.

'He'll find they don't coalesce, or his children will. Once the masses
are uppermost! It's a bad day, Dacier, when we 've no more gentlemen in
the land. Emmy backs him, so I hold my tongue. To-morrow's a Sunday. I
wish you were staying here; I 'd take you to church with me-we shirk it
when we haven't a care. It couldn't do you harm. I've heard capital
sermons. I've always had the good habit of going to church, Dacier. Now
's the time for remembering them. Ah, my dear fellow, I 'm not a parson.
It would have been better for me if I had been.'

And for you too! his look added plainly. He longed to preach; he was
impelled to chatter.

Redworth reported the patient perfectly quiet, breathing calmly.

'Laudanum?' asked Sir Lukin. 'Now there's a poison we've got to bless!
And we set up in our wisdom for knowing what is good for us!'

He had talked his hearers into a stupefied assent to anything he uttered.

'Mrs. Warwick would like to see you in two or three minutes; she will
come down,' Redworth said to Dacier.

'That looks well, eh? That looks bravely,' Sir Lukin cried. 'Diana,
Warwick wouldn't leave the room without a certainty. I dread the look of
those men; I shall have to shake their hands! And so I do, with all my
heart: only--But God bless them! But we must go in, if she's coming
down.'

They entered the house, and sat in the drawing-room, where Sir Lukin took
up from the table one of his wife's Latin books, a Persius, bearing her
marginal notes. He dropped his head on it, with sobs.

The voice of Diana recalled him to the present. She counselled him to
control himself; in that case he might for one moment go to the
chamber-door and assure himself by the silence that his wife was resting.
She brought permission from the surgeons and doctor, on his promise to be
still.

Redworth supported Sir Lukin tottering out.

Dacier had risen. He was petrified by Diana's face, and thought of her as
whirled from him in a storm, bearing the marks of it. Her underlip hung
for short breaths; the big drops of her recent anguish still gathered on
her brows; her eyes were tearless, lustreless; she looked ancient in
youth, and distant by a century, like a tall woman of the vaults, issuing
white-ringed, not of our light.

She shut her mouth for strength to speak to him.

He said: 'You are not ill? You are strong?'

'I? Oh, strong. I will sit. I cannot be absent longer than two minutes.
The trial of her strength is to come. If it were courage, we might be
sure. The day is fine?'

'A perfect August day.'

'I held her through it. I am thankful to heaven it was no other hand than
mine. She wished to spare me. She was glad of her Tony when the time
came. I thought I was a coward--I could have changed with her to save
her; I am a strong woman, fit to submit to that work. I should not have
borne it as she did. She expected to sink under it. All her dispositions
were made for death-bequests to servants and to . . . to friends: every
secret liking they had, thought of!'

Diana clenched her hands.

'I hope!' Dacier said.

'You shall hear regularly. Call at Sir William's house to-morrow. He
sleeps here to-night. The suspense must last for days. It is a question
of vital power to bear the shock. She has a mind so like a flying spirit
that, just before the moment, she made Mr. Lanyan Thomson smile by
quoting some saying of her Tony's.'

'Try by-and-by to recollect it,' said Dacier.

'And you were with that poor man! How did he pass the terrible time? I
pitied him.'

'He suffered; he prayed.'

'It was the best he could do. Mr. Redworth was as he always is at the
trial, a pillar. Happy the friend who knows him for one! He never thinks
of himself in a crisis. He is sheer strength to comfort and aid. They
will drive you to the station with Mr. Thomson. He returns to relieve Sir
William to-morrow. I have learnt to admire the men of the knife! No
profession equals theirs in self-command and beneficence. Dr. Bridgenorth
is permanent here.'

'I have a fly, and go back immediately,' said Dacier.

'She shall hear of your coming. Adieu.'

Diana gave him her hand. It was gently pressed.

A wonderment at the utter change of circumstances took Dacier passingly
at the sight of her vanishing figure.

He left the house, feeling he dared have no personal wishes. It had
ceased to be the lover's hypocrisy with him.

The crisis of mortal peril in that house enveloped its inmates, and so
wrought in him as to enshroud the stripped outcrying husband, of whom he
had no clear recollection, save of the man's agony. The two women,
striving against death, devoted in friendship, were the sole living
images he brought away; they were a new vision of the world and our life.

He hoped with Diana, bled with her. She rose above him high, beyond his
transient human claims. He envied Redworth the common friendly right to
be near her. In reflection, long after, her simplicity of speech, washed
pure of the blood-emotions, for token of her great nature, during those
two minutes of their sitting together, was, dearer, sweeter to the lover
than if she had shown by touch or word that a faint allusion to their
severance was in her mind; and this despite a certain vacancy it created.

He received formal information of Lady Dunstane's progress to
convalescence. By degrees the simply official tone of Diana's letters
combined with the ceasing of them and the absence of her personal charm
to make a gentleman not remarkable for violence in the passion so calmly
reasonable as to think the dangerous presence best avoided for a time.
Subject to fits of the passion, he certainly was, but his position in the
world was a counselling spouse, jealous of his good name. He did not
regret his proposal to take the leap; he would not have regretted it if
taken. On the safe side of the abyss, however, it wore a gruesome look to
his cool blood.




CHAPTER XXVII

CONTAINS MATTER FOR SUBSEQUENT EXPLOSION

Among the various letters inundating Sir Lukin Dunstane upon the report
of the triumph of surgical skill achieved by Sir William Macpherson and
Mr. Lanyan Thomson, was one from Lady Wathin, dated Adlands, an estate of
Mr. Quintin Manx's in Warwickshire, petitioning for the shortest line of
reassurance as to the condition of her dear cousin, and an intimation of
the period when it might be deemed possible for a relative to call and
offer her sincere congratulations: a letter deserving a personal reply,
one would suppose. She received the following, in a succinct female hand
corresponding to its terseness; every 't' righteously crossed, every 'i'
punctiliously dotted, as she remarked to Constance Asper, to whom the
communication was transferred for perusal:

   'DEAR LADY WATHIN,--Lady Dunstane is gaining strength. The measure
   of her pulse indicates favourably. She shall be informed in good
   time of your solicitude for her recovery. The day cannot yet be
   named for visits of any kind. You will receive information as soon
   as the house is open.

   'I have undertaken the task of correspondence, and beg you to
   believe me,

             'Very truly yours,
                       'D. A. WARWICK.'

Miss Asper speculated on the handwriting of her rival. She obtained
permission to keep the letter, with the intention of transmitting it per
post to an advertising interpreter of character in caligraphy.

Such was the character of the fair young heiress, exhibited by her
performances much more patently than the run of a quill would reveal it.

She said, 'It is rather a pretty hand, I think.'

'Mrs. Warwick is a practised writer,' said Lady Wathin. 'Writing is her
profession, if she has any. She goes to nurse my cousin. Her husband says
she is an excellent nurse. He says what he can for her. But you must be
in the last extremity, or she is ice. His appeal to her has been totally
disregarded. Until he drops down in the street, as his doctor expects him
to do some day, she will continue her course; and even then . . .' An
adventuress desiring her freedom! Lady Wathin looked. She was too devout
a woman to say what she thought. But she knew the world to be very
wicked. Of Mrs. Warwick, her opinion was formed. She would not have
charged the individual creature with a criminal design; all she did was
to stuff the person her virtue abhorred with the wickedness of the world,
and that is a common process in antipathy.

She sympathized, moreover, with the beautiful devotedness of the wealthy
heiress to her ideal of man. It had led her to make the acquaintance of
old Lady Dacier, at the house in town, where Constance Asper had first
met Percy; Mrs. Grafton Winstanley's house, representing neutral
territory or debateable land for the occasional intercourse of the upper
class and the climbing in the professions or in commerce; Mrs. Grafton
Winstanley being on the edge of aristocracy by birth, her husband, like
Mr. Quintin Manx, a lord of fleets. Old Lady Dacier's bluntness in
speaking of her grandson would have shocked Lady Wathin as much as it
astonished, had she been less of an ardent absorber of aristocratic
manners. Percy was plainly called a donkey, for hanging off and on with a
handsome girl of such expectations as Miss Asper. 'But what you can't do
with a horse, you can't hope to do with a donkey.' She added that she had
come for the purpose of seeing the heiress, of whose points of person she
delivered a judgement critically appreciative as a horsefancier's on the
racing turf. 'If a girl like that holds to it, she's pretty sure to get
him at last. It 's no use to pull his neck down to the water.'

Lady Wathin delicately alluded to rumours of an entanglement, an
admiration he had, ahem.

'A married woman,' the veteran nodded. 'I thought that was off? She must
be a clever intriguer to keep him so long.'

'She is undoubtedly clever,' said Lady Wathin, and it was mumbled in her
hearing: 'The woman seems to have a taste for our family.'

They agreed that they could see nothing to be done. The young lady must
wither, Mrs. Warwick have her day. The veteran confided her experienced
why to Lady Wathin: 'All the tales you tell of a woman of that sort are
sharp sauce to the palates of men.'

They might be, to the men of the dreadful gilded idle class!

Mrs. Warwick's day appeared indefinitely prolonged, judging by Percy
Dacier's behaviour to Miss Asper. Lady Wathin watched them narrowly when
she had the chance, a little ashamed of her sex, or indignant rather at
his display of courtliness in exchange for her open betrayal of her
preference. It was almost to be wished that she would punish him by
sacrificing herself to one of her many brilliant proposals of marriage.
But such are women!--precisely because of his holding back he tightened
the cord attaching him to her tenacious heart. This was the truth. For
the rest, he was gracefully courteous; an observer could perceive the
charm he exercised. He talked with a ready affability, latterly with
greater social ease; evidently not acting the indifferent conqueror, or
so consummately acting it as to mask the air. And yet he was ambitious,
and he was not rich. Notoriously was he ambitious, and with wealth to
back him, a great entertaining house, troops of adherents, he would
gather influence, be propelled to leadership. The vexation of a constant
itch to speak to him on the subject, and the recognition, that he knew it
all as well as she, tormented Lady Wathin. He gave her comforting news of
her dear cousin in the Winter.

'You have heard from Mrs. Warwick?' she said.

He replied, 'I had the latest from Mr. Redworth.'

'Mrs. Warwick has relinquished her post?'

'When she does, you may be sure that Lady Dunstane is, perfectly
reestablished.'

'She is an excellent nurse.'

'The best, I believe.'

'It is a good quality in sickness.'

'Proof of good all through.'

'Her husband might have the advantage of it. His state is really
pathetic. If she has feeling, and could only be made aware, she might
perhaps be persuaded to pass from the friendly to the wifely duty.'

Mr. Dacier bent his head to listen, and he bowed.

He was fast in the toils; and though we have assurance that evil cannot
triumph in perpetuity, the aspect of it throning provokes a kind of
despair. How strange if ultimately the lawyers once busy about the uncle
were to take up the case of the nephew, and this time reverse the issue,
by proving it! For poor Mr. Warwick was emphatic on the question of his
honour. It excited him dangerously. He was long-suffering, but with the
slightest clue terrible. The unknotting of the entanglement might thus
happen--and Constance Asper would welcome her hero still.

Meanwhile there was actually nothing to be done: a deplorable absence of
motive villainy; apparently an absence of the beneficent Power directing
events to their proper termination. Lady Wathin heard of her cousin's
having been removed to Cowes in May, for light Solent and Channel voyages
on board Lord Esquart's yacht. She heard also of heavy failures and
convulsions in the City of London, quite unconscious that the Fates, or
agents of the Providence she invoked to precipitate the catastrophe, were
then beginning cavernously their performance of the part of villain in
Diana's history.

Diana and Emma enjoyed happy quiet sailings under May breezes on the
many-coloured South-western waters, heart in heart again; the physical
weakness of the one, the moral weakness of the other, creating that
mutual dependency which makes friendship a pulsating tie. Diana's
confession had come of her letter to Emma. When the latter was able to
examine her correspondence, Diana brought her the heap for perusal, her
own sealed scribble, throbbing with all the fatal might-have-been, under
her eyes. She could have concealed and destroyed it. She sat beside her
friend, awaiting her turn, hearing her say at the superscription: 'Your
writing, Tony?' and she nodded. She was asked: 'Shall I read it?' She
answered: 'Read.' They were soon locked in an embrace. Emma had no
perception of coldness through those brief dry lines; her thought was of
the matter.

'The danger is over now?' she said.

'Yes, that danger is over now.'

'You have weathered it?'

'I love him.'

Emma dropped a heavy sigh in pity of her, remotely in compassion for
Redworth, the loving and unbeloved. She was too humane and wise of our
nature to chide her Tony for having her sex's heart. She had charity to
bestow on women; in defence of them against men and the world, it was a
charity armed with the weapons of battle. The wife madly stripped before
the world by a jealous husband, and left chained to the rock, her youth
wasting, her blood arrested, her sensibilities chilled and assailing her
under their multitudinous disguises, and for whom the world is merciless,
called forth Emma's tenderest commiseration; and that wife being Tony,
and stricken with the curse of love, in other circumstances the blessing,
Emma bled for her.

'But nothing desperate?' she said.

'No; you have saved me.'

'I would knock at death's doors again, and pass them, to be sure of
that.'

'Kiss me; you may be sure. I would not put my lips to your cheek if there
were danger of my faltering.'

'But you love him.'

'I do: and because I love him I will not let him be fettered to me.'

'You will see him.'

'Do not imagine that his persuasions undermined your Tony. I am subject
to panics.'

'Was it your husband?'

'I had a visit from Lady Wathin. She knows him. She came as peacemaker.
She managed to hint at his authority. Then came a letter from him--of
supplication, interpenetrated with the hint: a suffused atmosphere. Upon
that; unexpected by me, my--let me call him so once, forgive me!--lover
came. Oh! he loves me, or did then. Percy! He had been told that I should
be claimed. I felt myself the creature I am--a wreck of marriage. But I
fancied I could serve him:--I saw golden. My vanity was the chief
traitor. Cowardice of course played a part. In few things that we do,
where self is concerned, will cowardice not be found. And the
hallucination colours it to seem a lovely heroism. That was the second
time Mr. Redworth arrived. I am always at crossways, and he rescues me;
on this occasion unknowingly.'

'There's a divinity . . .' said Emma. 'When I think of it I perceive
that Patience is our beneficent fairy godmother, who brings us our
harvest in the long result.'

'My dear, does she bring us our labourers' rations, to sustain us for the
day?' said Diana.'

'Poor fare, but enough.'

'I fear I was born godmotherless.'

'You have stores of patience, Tony; only now and then fits of
desperation.'

'My nature's frailty, the gap in it: we will give it no fine names--they
cover our pitfalls. I am open to be carried on a tide of unreasonableness
when the coward cries out. But I can say, dear, that after one rescue, a
similar temptation is unlikely to master me. I do not subscribe to the
world's decrees for love of the monster, though I am beginning to
understand the dues of allegiance. We have ceased to write letters. You
may have faith in me.'

'I have, with my whole soul,' said Emma.

So the confession closed; and in the present instance there were not any
forgotten chambers to be unlocked and ransacked for addenda confessions.

The subjects discoursed of by the two endeared the hours to them. They
were aware that the English of the period would have laughed a couple of
women to scorn for venturing on them, and they were not a little hostile
in consequence, and shot their epigrams profusely, applauding the keener
that appeared to score the giant bulk of their intolerant enemy, who
holds the day, but not the morrow. Us too he holds for the day, to punish
us if we have temporal cravings. He scatters his gifts to the abject;
tossing to us rebels bare dog-biscuit. But the life of the spirit is
beyond his region; we have our morrow in his day when we crave nought of
him. Diana and Emma delighted to discover that they were each the rebel
of their earlier and less experienced years; each a member of the
malcontent minor faction, the salt of earth, to whom their salt must
serve for nourishment, as they admitted, relishing it determinedly, not
without gratification.

Sir Lukin was busy upon his estate in Scotland. They summoned young
Arthur Rhodes to the island, that he might have a taste of the new
scenes. Diana was always wishing for his instruction and refreshment; and
Redworth came to spend a Saturday and Sunday with them, and showed his
disgust of the idle boy, as usual, at the same time consulting them on
the topic of furniture for the Berkshire mansion he had recently bought,
rather vaunting the Spanish pictures his commissioner in Madrid was
transmitting. The pair of rebels, vexed by his treatment of the
respectful junior, took him for an incarnation of their enemy, and pecked
and worried the man astonishingly. He submitted to it like the placable
giant. Yes, he was a Liberal, and furnishing and decorating the house in
the stability of which he trusted. Why not? We must accept the world as
it is, try to improve it by degrees.--Not so: humanity will not wait for
you, the victims are shrieking beneath the bricks of your enormous
edifice, behind the canvas of your pictures. 'But you may really say that
luxurious yachting is an odd kind of insurgency,' avowed Diana. 'It's the
tangle we are in.'

'It's the coat we have to wear; and why fret at it for being
comfortable?'

'I don't half enough, when I think of my shivering neighbours.'

'Money is of course a rough test of virtue,' said Redworth. 'We have no
other general test.'

Money! The ladies proclaimed it a mere material test; Diana, gazing on
sunny sea, with an especial disdain. And name us your sort of virtue.
There is more virtue in poverty, He denied that. Inflexibly British, he
declared money, and also the art of getting money, to be hereditary
virtues, deserving of their reward. The reward a superior wealth and its
fruits? Yes, the power to enjoy and spread enjoyment: and let idleness
envy both! He abused idleness, and by implication the dilettante
insurgency fostering it. However, he was compensatingly heterodox in his
view of the Law's persecution of women; their pertinacious harpings on
the theme had brought him to that; and in consideration of the fact, as
they looked from yacht to shore, of their being rebels participating
largely in the pleasures of the tyrant's court, they allowed him to
silence them, and forgave him.

Thoughts upon money and idleness were in confusion with Diana. She had a
household to support in London, and she was not working; she could not
touch THE CANTATRICE while Emma was near. Possibly, she again ejaculated,
the Redworths of the world were right: the fruitful labours were with the
mattock and hoe, or the mind directing them. It was a crushing invasion
of materialism, so she proposed a sail to the coast of France, and
thither they flew, touching Cherbourg, Alderney, Sark, Guernsey, and
sighting the low Brittany rocks. Memorable days to Arthur Rhodes. He saw
perpetually the one golden centre in new scenes. He heard her voice, he
treasured her sayings; her gestures, her play of lip and eyelid, her lift
of head, lightest movements, were imprinted on him, surely as the heavens
are mirrored in the quiet seas, firmly and richly as earth answers to the
sprinkled grain. For he was blissfully athirst, untroubled by a hope. She
gave him more than she knew of: a present that kept its beating heart
into the future; a height of sky, a belief in nobility, permanent through
manhood down to age. She was his foam-born Goddess of those leaping
waters; differently hued, crescented, a different influence. He had a
happy week, and it charmed Diana to hear him tell her so. In spite of
Redworth, she had faith in the fruit-bearing powers of a time of simple
happiness, and shared the youth's in reflecting it. Only the happiness
must be simple, that of the glass to the lovely face: no straining of
arms to retain, no heaving of the bosom in vacancy.

His poverty and capacity for pure enjoyment led her to think of him
almost clingingly when hard news reached her from the quaint old City of
London, which despises poverty and authorcraft and all mean adventurers,
and bows to the lordly merchant, the mighty financier, Redworth's
incarnation of the virtues. Happy days on board the yacht Clarissa! Diana
had to recall them with effort. They who sow their money for a promising
high percentage have built their habitations on the sides of the most
eruptive mountain in Europe. AEtna supplies more certain harvests, wrecks
fewer vineyards and peaceful dwellings. The greed of gain is our volcano.
Her wonder leapt up at the slight inducement she had received to embark
her money in this Company: a South-American mine, collapsed almost within
hearing of the trumpets of prospectus, after two punctual payments of the
half-yearly interest. A Mrs. Ferdinand Cherson, an elder sister of the
pretty Mrs. Fryar-Gunnett, had talked to her of the cost of things one
afternoon at Lady Singleby's garden-party, and spoken of the City as the
place to help to swell an income, if only you have an acquaintance with
some of the chief City men. The great mine was named, and the rush for
allotments. She knew a couple of the Directors. They vowed to her that
ten per cent. was a trifle; the fortune to be expected out of the mine
was already clearly estimable at forties and fifties. For their part they
anticipated cent. per cent. Mrs. Cherson said she wanted money, and had
therefore invested in the mine. It seemed so consequent, the cost of
things being enormous! She and her sister Mrs. Fryar-Gunnett owned
husbands who did their bidding, because of their having the brains, it
might be understood. Thus five thousand pounds invested would speedily
bring five thousand pounds per annum. Diana had often dreamed of the City
of London as the seat of magic; and taking the City's contempt for
authorcraft and the intangible as, from its point of view, justly
founded, she had mixed her dream strangely with an ancient notion of the
City's probity. Her broker's shaking head did not damp her ardour for
shares to the full amount of her ability to purchase. She remembered her
satisfaction at the allotment; the golden castle shot up from this
fountain mine. She had a frenzy for mines and fished in some English with
smaller sums. 'I am now a miner,' she had exclaimed, between dismay at
her audacity and the pride of it. Why had she not consulted Redworth? He
would peremptorily have stopped the frenzy in its first intoxicating
effervescence. She, like Mrs. Cherson, like all women who have plunged
upon the cost of things, wanted money. She naturally went to the mine.
Address him for counsel in the person of dupe, she could not; shame was a
barrier. Could she tell him that the prattle of a woman, spendthrift as
Mrs. Cherson, had induced her to risk her money? Latterly the reports of
Mrs. Fryar-Gunnett were not of the flavour to make association of their
names agreeable to his hearing.

She had to sit down in the buzz of her self-reproaches and amazement at
the behaviour of that reputable City, shrug, and recommence the labour of
her pen. Material misfortune had this one advantage; it kept her from
speculative thoughts of her lover, and the meaning of his absence and,
silence.

Diana's perusal of the incomplete CANTATRICE was done with the cold
critical eye interpreting for the public. She was forced to write on
nevertheless, and exactly in the ruts of the foregoing matter. It
propelled her. No longer perversely, of necessity she wrote her best,
convinced that the work was doomed to unpopularity, resolved that it
should be at least a victory in style. A fit of angry cynicism now and
then set her composing phrases as baits for the critics to quote,
condemnatory of the attractiveness of the work. Her mood was bad. In
addition, she found Whitmonby cool; he complained of the coolness of her
letter of adieu; complained of her leaving London so long. How could she
expect to be his Queen of the London Salon if she lost touch of the
topics? He made no other allusion. They were soon on amicable terms, at
the expense of flattering arts that she had not hitherto practised. But
Westlake revealed unimagined marvels of the odd corners of the masculine
bosom. He was the man of her circle the neatest in epigram, the widest of
survey, an Oriental traveller, a distinguished writer, and if not
personally bewitching, remarkably a gentleman of the world. He was
wounded; he said as much. It came to this: admitting that he had no
claims, he declared it to be unbearable for him to see another preferred.
The happier was unmentioned, and Diana scraped his wound by rallying him.
He repeated that he asked only to stand on equal terms with the others;
her preference of one was past his tolerance. She told him that since
leaving Lady Dunstane she had seen but Whitmonby, Wilmers, and him. He
smiled sarcastically, saying he had never had a letter from her, except
the formal one of invitation.

'Powers of blarney, have you forsaken a daughter of Erin?' cried Diana.
'Here is a friend who has a craving for you, and I talk sense to him. I
have written to none of my set since I last left London.'

She pacified him by doses of cajolery new to her tongue. She liked him,
abhorred the thought of losing any of her friends, so the cajoling
sentences ran until Westlake betrayed an inflammable composition, and had
to be put out, and smoked sullenly. Her resources were tried in restoring
him to reason. The months of absence from London appeared to have
transformed her world. Tonans was moderate. The great editor rebuked her
for her prolonged absence from London, not so much because it discrowned
her as Queen of the Salon, but candidly for its rendering her service
less to him. Everything she knew of men and affairs was to him stale.

'How do you get to the secrets?' she asked.

'By sticking to the centre of them,' he said.

'But how do you manage to be in advance and act the prophet?'

'Because I will have them at any price, and that is known.'

She hinted at the peccant City Company.

'I think I have checked the mining mania, as I did the railway,' said he;
'and so far it was a public service. There's no checking of maniacs.'

She took her whipping within and without. 'On another occasion I shall
apply to you, Mr. Tonans.'

'Ah, there was a time when you could have been a treasure to me,' he
rejoined; alluding of course to the Dannisburgh days.

In dejection, as she mused on those days, and on her foolish ambition to
have a London house where her light might burn, she advised herself, with
Redworth's voice, to quit the house, arrest expenditure, and try for
happiness by burning and shining in the spirit: devoting herself, as
Arthur Rhodes did, purely to literature. It became almost a decision.

Percy she had still neither written to nor heard from, and she dared not
hope to meet him. She fancied a wish to have tidings of his marriage: it
would be peace; if in desolation. Now that she had confessed and given
her pledge to Emma, she had so far broken with him as to render the
holding him chained a cruelty, and his reserve whispered of a rational
acceptance of the end between them. She thanked him for it; an act
whereby she was: instantly melted to such softness that a dread of him
haunted her. Coward, take up your burden for armour! she called to her
poor dungeoned self wailing to have common nourishment. She knew how
prodigiously it waxed on crumbs; nay, on the imagination of small
morsels. By way of chastizing it, she reviewed her life, her behaviour to
her husband, until she sank backward to a depth deprived of air and
light. That life with her husband was a dungeon to her nature deeper than
any imposed by present conditions. She was then a revolutionary to reach
to the breath of day. She had now to be, only not a coward, and she could
breathe as others did. 'Women who sap the moral laws pull down the
pillars of the temple on their sex,' Emma had said. Diana perceived
something of her personal debt to civilization. Her struggles passed into
the doomed CANTATRICE occupying days and nights under pressure for
immediate payment; the silencing of friend Debit, ridiculously calling
himself Credit, in contempt of sex and conduct, on the ground, that he
was he solely by virtue of being she. He had got a trick of singing
operatic solos in the form and style of the delightful tenor Tellio, and
they were touching in absurdity, most real in unreality. Exquisitely
trilled, after Tellio's manner,

          'The tradesmen all beseech ye,
          The landlord, cook and maid,
          Complete THE CANTATRICE,
          That they may soon be paid.'

provoked her to laughter in pathos. He approached, posturing himself
operatically, with perpetual new verses, rhymes to Danvers, rhymes to
Madame Sybille, the cook. Seeing Tellio at one of Henry Wilmers' private
concerts, Diana's lips twitched to dimples at the likeness her familiar
had assumed. She had to compose her countenance to talk to him; but the
moment of song was the trial. Lady Singleby sat beside her, and remarked:

'You have always fun going on in you!' She partook of the general
impression that Diana Warwick was too humorous to nurse a downright
passion.

Before leaving, she engaged Diana to her annual garden-party of the
closing season, and there the meeting with Percy occurred, not
unobserved. Had they been overheard, very little to implicate them would
have been gathered. He walked in full view across the lawn to her, and
they presented mask to mask.

'The beauty of the day tempts you at last, Mrs. Warwick.'

'I have been finishing a piece of work.'

Lovely weather, beautiful dresses: agreed. Diana wore a yellow robe with
a black bonnet, and he commented on the becoming hues; for the first
time, he noticed her dress! Lovely women? Dacier hesitated. One he saw.
But surely he must admire Mrs. Fryar-Gunnett? And who steps beside her,
transparently fascinated, with visage at three-quarters to the rays
within her bonnet? Can it be Sir Lukin Dunstane? and beholding none but
his charmer!

Dacier withdrew his eyes thoughtfully from the spectacle, and moved to
woo Diana to a stroll. She could not restrain her feet; she was out of
the ring of her courtiers for the moment. He had seized his opportunity.

'It is nearly a year!' he said.

'I have been nursing nearly all the time, doing the work I do best.'

'Unaltered?'

'A year must leave its marks.'

'Tony!'

'You speak of a madwoman, a good eleven months dead. Let her rest. Those
are the conditions.'

'Accepted, if I may see her.'

'Honestly accepted?'

'Imposed fatally, I have to own. I have felt with you: you are the wiser.
But, admitting that, surely we can meet. I may see you?'

'My house has not been shut.'

'I respected the house. I distrusted myself.'

'What restores your confidence?'

'The strength I draw from you.'

One of the Beauties at a garden-party is lucky to get as many minutes as
had passed in quietness. Diana was met and captured. But those last words
of Percy's renewed her pride in him by suddenly building a firm faith in
herself. Noblest of lovers! she thought, and brooded on the little that
had been spoken, the much conveyed, for a proof of perfect truthfulness.

The world had watched them. It pronounced them discreet if culpable;
probably cold to the passion both. Of Dacier's coldness it had no doubt,
and Diana's was presumed from her comical flights of speech. She was
given to him because of the known failure of her other adorers. He in the
front rank of politicians attracted her with the lustre of his ambition;
she him with her mingling of talent and beauty. An astute world; right in
the main, owing to perceptions based upon brute nature; utterly astray in
particulars, for the reason that it takes no count of the soul of man or
woman. Hence its glee at a catastrophe; its poor stock of mercy. And when
no catastrophe follows, the prophet, for the honour of the profession,
must decry her as cunning beyond aught yet revealed of a serpent sex.

Save for a word or two, the watchman might have overheard and trumpeted
his report of their interview at Diana's house. After the first pained
breathing, when they found themselves alone in that room where they had
plighted their fortunes, they talked allusively to define the terms
imposed on them by Reason. The thwarted step was unmentioned; it was a
past madness. But Wisdom being recognized, they could meet. It would be
hard if that were denied! They talked very little of their position; both
understood the mutual acceptance of it; and now that he had seen her and
was again under the spell, Dacier's rational mind, together with his
delight in her presence, compelled him honourably to bow to the terms.
Only, as these were severe upon lovers, the innocence of their meetings
demanded indemnification in frequency.

'Come whenever you think I can be useful,' said Diana.

They pressed hands at parting, firmly and briefly, not for the ordinary
dactylology of lovers, but in sign of the treaty of amity.

She soon learnt that she had tied herself to her costly household.




CHAPTER XXVIII

DIALOGUE ROUND THE SUBJECT OF A PORTRAIT, WITH SOME INDICATIONS OF THE
TASK FOR DIANA

An enamoured Egeria who is not a princess in her worldly state nor a
goddess by origin has to play one of those parts which strain the woman's
faculties past naturalness. She must never expose her feelings to her
lover; she must make her counsel weighty--otherwise she is little his
nymph of the pure wells, and what she soon may be, the world will say.
She has also, most imperatively, to dazzle him without the betrayal of
artifice, where simple spontaneousness is beyond conjuring. But feelings
that are constrained becloud the judgement besides arresting the fine jet
of delivery wherewith the mastered lover is taught through his ears to
think himself prompted, and submit to be controlled, by a creature
super-feminine. She must make her counsel so weighty in poignant praises
as to repress impulses that would rouse her own; and her betraying
impulsiveness was a subject of reflection to Diana after she had given
Percy Dacier, metaphorically, the key of her house. Only as true Egeria
could she receive him. She was therefore grateful, she thanked and
venerated this noblest of lovers for his not pressing to the word of
love, and so strengthening her to point his mind, freshen his moral
energies and inspirit him. His chivalrous acceptance of the conditions of
their renewed intimacy was a radiant knightliness to Diana, elevating her
with a living image for worship:--he so near once to being the absolute
lord of her destinies! How to reward him, was her sole dangerous thought.
She prayed and strove that she might give him of her best, to practically
help him; and she had reason to suppose she could do it, from the visible
effect of her phrases. He glistened in repeating them; he had fallen into
the habit; before witnesses too; in the presence of Miss Paynham, who had
taken earnestly to the art of painting, and obtained her dear Mrs.
Warwick's promise of a few sittings for the sketch of a portrait, near
the close of the season. 'A very daring thing to attempt,' Miss Paynham
said, when he was comparing her first outlines and the beautiful
breathing features. 'Even if one gets the face, the lips will seem
speechless, to those who know her.'

'If they have no recollection,' said Dacier.

'I mean, the endeavour should be to represent them at the moment of
speaking.'

'Put it into the eyes.' He looked at the eyes.

She looked at the mouth. 'But it is the mouth, more than the eyes.'

He looked at the face. 'Where there is character, you have only to study
it to be sure of a likeness.'

'That is the task, with one who utters jewels, Mr. Dacier.'

'Bright wit, I fear, is above the powers of your art.'

'Still I feel it could be done. See--now--that!'

Diana's lips had opened to say: 'Confess me a model model: I am dissected
while I sit for portrayal. I must be for a moment like the frog of the
two countrymen who were disputing as to the manner of his death, when he
stretched to yawn, upon which they agreed that he had defeated the truth
for both of them. I am not quite inanimate.'

'Irish countrymen,' said Dacier.

'The story adds, that blows were arrested; so confer the nationality as
you please.'

Diana had often to divert him from a too intent perusal of her features
with sparkles and stories current or invented to serve the immediate
purpose.

Miss Paynham was Mrs. Warwick's guest for a fortnight, and observed them
together. She sometimes charitably laid down her pencil and left them,
having forgotten this or that. They were conversing of general matters
with their usual crisp precision on her return, and she was rather like
the two countrymen, in debating whether it was excess of coolness or
discreetness; though she was convinced of their inclinations, and
expected love some day to be leaping up. Diana noticed that she had no
reminder for leaving the room when it was Mr. Redworth present. These two
had become very friendly, according to her hopes; and Miss Paynham was
extremely solicitous to draw suggestions from Mr. Redworth and win his
approval.

'Do I appear likely to catch the mouth now, do you think, Mr. Redworth?'

He remarked, smiling at Diana's expressive dimple, that the mouth was
difficult to catch. He did not gaze intently. Mr. Redworth was the genius
of friendship, 'the friend of women,' Mrs. Warwick had said of him. Miss
Paynham discovered it, as regarded herself. The portrait was his
commission to her, kindly proposed, secretly of course, to give her
occupation and the chance of winning a vogue with the face of a famous
Beauty. So many, however, were Mrs. Warwick's visitors, and so lively the
chatter she directed, that accurate sketching was difficult to an
amateurish hand. Whitmonby, Sullivan Smith, Westlake, Henry Wilmers,
Arthur Rhodes, and other gentlemen, literary and military, were almost
daily visitors when it became known that the tedium of the beautiful
sitter required beguiling and there was a certainty of finding her at
home. On Mrs. Warwick's Wednesday numerous ladies decorated the group.
Then was heard such a rillet of dialogue without scandal or politics, as
nowhere else in Britain; all vowed it subsequently; for to the
remembrance it seemed magical. Not a breath of scandal, and yet the
liveliest flow. Lady Pennon came attended by a Mr. Alexander Hepburn, a
handsome Scot, at whom Dacier shot one of his instinctive keen glances,
before seeing that the hostess had mounted a transient colour. Mr.
Hepburn, in settling himself on his chair rather too briskly, contrived
the next minute to break a precious bit of China standing by his elbow;
and Lady Pennon cried out, with sympathetic anguish: 'Oh, my dear, what a
trial for you!'

'Brittle is foredoomed,' said Diana, unruffled.

She deserved compliments, and would have had them if she had not wounded
the most jealous and petulant of her courtiers.

'Then the Turk is a sapient custodian!' said Westlake, vexed with her
flush at the entrance of the Scot.

Diana sedately took his challenge. 'We, Mr. Westlake, have the philosophy
of ownership.'

Mr. Hepburn penitentially knelt to pick up the fragments, and Westlake
murmured over his head: 'As long as it is we who are the cracked.'

'Did we not start from China?'

'We were consequently precipitated to Stamboul.'

'You try to elude the lesson.'

'I remember my first paedagogue telling me so when he rapped the book on
my cranium.'

'The mark of the book is not a disfigurement.'

It was gently worded, and the shrewder for it. The mark of the book, if
not a disfigurement, was a characteristic of Westlake's fashion of
speech. Whitmonby nodded twice, for signification of a palpable hit in
that bout; and he noted within him the foolishness of obtruding the
remotest allusion to our personality when crossing the foils with a
woman. She is down on it like the lightning, quick as she is in her
contracted circle, politeness guarding her from a riposte.

Mr. Hepburn apologized very humbly, after regaining his chair. Diana
smiled and said: 'Incidents in a drawing-room are prize-shots at
Dulness.'

'And in a dining-room too,' added Sullivan Smith. 'I was one day at a
dinner-party, apparently of undertakers hired to mourn over the joints
and the birds in the dishes, when the ceiling came down, and we all
sprang up merry as crickets. It led to a pretty encounter and a real
prize-shot.'

'Does that signify a duel?' asked Lady Pennon.

''Twould be the vulgar title, to bring it into discredit with the
populace, my lady.'

'Rank me one of the populace then! I hate duelling and rejoice that it is
discountenanced.'

'The citizens, and not the populace, I think Mr. Sullivan Smith means,'
Diana said. 'The citizen is generally right in morals. My father also was
against the practice, when it raged at its "prettiest." I have heard him
relate a story of a poor friend of his, who had to march out for a
trifle, and said, as he accepted the invitation, "It's all nonsense!" and
walking to the measured length, "It's all nonsense, you know!" and when
lying on the ground, at his last gasp, "I told you it was all nonsense!"'

Sullivan Smith leaned over to Whitmonby and Dacier amid the ejaculations,
and whispered: 'A lady's way of telling the story!--and excuseable to
her:--she had to Jonah the adjective. What the poor fellow said was--' He
murmured the sixty-pounder adjective, as in the belly of the whale, to
rightly emphasize his noun.

Whitmonby nodded to the superior relish imparted by the vigour of
masculine veracity in narration. 'A story for its native sauce piquante,'
he said.

'Nothing without it!'

They had each a dissolving grain of contempt for women compelled by their
delicacy to spoil that kind of story which demands the piquant
accompaniment to flavour it racily and make it passable. For to see
insipid mildness complacently swallowed as an excellent thing, knowing
the rich smack of savour proper to the story, is your anecdotal
gentleman's annoyance. But if the anecdote had supported him, Sullivan
Smith would have let the expletive rest.

Major Carew Mahoney capped Mrs. Warwick's tale of the unfortunate
duellist with another, that confessed the practice absurd, though he
approved of it; and he cited Lord Larrian's opinion: 'It keeps men braced
to civil conduct.'

'I would not differ with the dear old lord; but no! the pistol is the
sceptre of the bully,' said Diana.

Mr. Hepburn, with the widest of eyes on her in perpetuity, warmly agreed;
and the man was notorious among men for his contrary action.

'Most righteously our Princess Egeria distinguishes her reign by
prohibiting it,' said Lady Singleby.

'And how,' Sullivan Smith sighed heavily, 'how, I'd ask, are ladies to be
protected from the bully?'

He was beset: 'So it was all for us? all in consideration for our
benefit?'

He mournfully exclaimed: 'Why, surely!'

'That is the funeral apology of the Rod, at the close of every barbarous
chapter,' said Diana.

'Too fine in mind, too fat in body; that is a consequence with men, dear
madam. The conqueror stands to his weapons, or he loses his possessions.'

'Mr. Sullivan Smith jumps at his pleasure from the special to the
general, and will be back, if we follow him, Lady Pennon. It is the trick
men charge to women, showing that they can resemble us.'

Lady Pennon thumped her knee. 'Not a bit. There's no resemblance, and
they know nothing of us.'

'Women are a blank to them, I believe,' said Whitmonby, treacherously
bowing;--and Westlake said:

'Traces of a singular scrawl have been observed when they were held in
close proximity to the fire.'

'Once, on the top of a coach,' Whitmonby resumed, 'I heard a comely dame
of the period when summers are ceasing threatened by her husband with a
divorce, for omitting to put sandwiches in their luncheon-basket. She
made him the inscrutable answer: "Ah, poor man! you will go down ignorant
to your grave!" We laughed, and to this day I cannot tell you why.'

'That laugh was from a basket lacking provision; and I think we could
trace our separation to it,' Diana said to Lady Pennon, who replied:
'They expose themselves; they get no nearer to the riddle.'

Miss Courtney, a rising young actress, encouraged by a smile from Mrs.
Warwick, remarked: 'On the stage, we have each our parts equally.'

'And speaking parts; not personae mutae.'

'The stage has advanced in verisimilitude,' Henry Wilmers added slyly;
and Diana rejoined: 'You recognize a verisimilitude of the mirror when it
is in advance of reality. Flatter the sketch, Miss Paynham, for a
likeness to be seen. Probably there are still Old Conservatives who would
prefer the personation of us by boys.'

'I don't know,' Westlake affected dubiousness. 'I have heard that a step
to the riddle is gained by a serious contemplation of boys.'

'Serious?'

'That is the doubt.'

'The doubt throws its light on the step!'

'I advise them not to take any leap from their step,' said Lady Pennon.

'It would be a way of learning that we are no wiser than our sires; but
perhaps too painful a way,' Whitmonby observed. 'Poor Mountford Wilts
boasted of knowing women; and--he married. To jump into the mouth of the
enigma, is not to read it.'

'You are figures of conceit when you speculate on us, Mr. Whitmonby.'

'An occupation of our leisure, my lady, for your amusement.'

'The leisure of the humming-top, a thousand to the minute, with the
pretence that it sleeps!' Diana said.

'The sacrilegious hand to strip you of your mystery is withered as it
stretches,' exclaimed Westlake. 'The sage and the devout are in accord
for once.'

'And whichever of the two I may be, I'm one of them, happy to do my
homage blindfold!' Sullivan Smith waved the sign of it.

Diana sent her eyes over him and Mr. Hepburn, seeing Dacier. 'That rosy
mediaevalism seems the utmost we can expect.' An instant she saddened,
foreboding her words to be ominous, because of suddenly thirsting for a
modern cry from him, the silent. She quitted her woman's fit of
earnestness, and took to the humour that pleased him. 'Aslauga's knight,
at his blind man's buff of devotion, catches the hem of the tapestry and
is found by his lady kissing it in a trance of homage five hours long!
Sir Hilary of Agincourt, returned from the wars to his castle at
midnight, hears that the chitellaine is away dancing, and remains with
all his men mounted in the courtyard till the grey morn brings her back!
Adorable! We had a flag flying in those days. Since men began to fret the
riddle, they have hauled it down half-mast. Soon we shall behold a bare
pole and hats on around it. That is their solution.'

A smile circled at the hearing of Lady Singleby say: 'Well, I am all for
our own times, however literal the men.'

'We are two different species!' thumped Lady Pennon, swimming on the
theme. 'I am sure, I read what they write of women! And their heroines!'

Lady Esquart acquiesced: 'We are utter fools or horrid knaves.'

'Nature's original hieroglyphs--which have that appearance to the
peruser,' Westlake assented.

'And when they would decipher us, and they hit on one of our "arts," the
literary pirouette they perform is memorable.' Diana looked invitingly at
Dacier. 'But I for one discern a possible relationship and a likeness.'

'I think it exists--behind a curtain,' Dacier replied.

'Before the era of the Nursery. Liberty to grow; independence is the key
of the secret.'

'And what comes after the independence?' he inquired.

Whitmonby, musing that some distraction of an earnest incentive spoilt
Mrs. Warwick's wit, informed him: 'The two different species then break
their shallow armistice and join the shock of battle for possession of
the earth, and we are outnumbered and exterminated, to a certainty. So I
am against independence.'

'Socially a Mussulman, subject to explosions!' Diana said. 'So the
eternal duel between us is maintained, and men will protest that they are
for civilization. Dear me, I should like to write a sketch of the women
of the future--don't be afraid!--the far future. What a different earth
you will see!'

And very different creatures! the gentlemen unanimously surmised.
Westlake described the fairer portion, no longer the weaker; frightful
hosts.

Diana promised him a sweeter picture, if ever she brought her hand to
paint it.

'You would be offered up to the English national hangman, Jehoiachim
Sneer,' interposed Arthur Rhodes, evidently firing a gun too big for him,
of premeditated charging, as his patroness perceived; but she knew him to
be smarting under recent applications of the swish of Mr. Sneer, and that
he rushed to support her. She covered him by saying: 'If he has to be
encountered, he kills none but the cripple,' wherewith the dead pause
ensuing from a dose of outlandish speech in good company was bridged,
though the youth heard Westlake mutter unpleasantly: 'Jehoiachim,' and
had to endure a stare of Dacier's, who did not conceal his want of
comprehension of the place he occupied in Mrs. Warwick's gatherings.

'They know nothing of us whatever!' Lady Pennon harped on her dictum.

'They put us in a case and profoundly study the captive creature,' said
Diana: 'but would any man understand this . . . ?' She dropped her voice
and drew in the heads of Lady Pennon, Lady Singleby, Lady Esquart and
Miss Courtney: 'Real woman's nature speaks. A maid of mine had a
"follower." She was a good girl; I was anxious about her and asked her if
she could trust him. "Oh, yes, ma'am," she replied, "I can; he's quite
like a female." I longed to see the young man, to tell him he had
received the highest of eulogies.'

The ladies appreciatingly declared that such a tale was beyond the
understandings of men. Miss Paynham primmed her mouth, admitting to
herself her inability to repeat such a tale; an act that she deemed not
'quite like a lady.' She had previously come to the conclusion that Mrs.
Warwick, with all her generous qualities, was deficient in delicate
sentiment--owing perhaps to her coldness of temperament. Like Dacier
also, she failed to comprehend the patronage of Mr. Rhodes: it led to
suppositions; indefinite truly, and not calumnious at all; but a young
poet, rather good-looking and well built, is not the same kind of
wing-chick as a young actress, like Miss Courtney--Mrs. Warwick's latest
shieldling: he is hardly enrolled for the reason that was assumed to
sanction Mrs. Warwick's maid in the encouragement of her follower. Miss
Paynham sketched on, with her thoughts in her bosom: a damsel
castigatingly pursued by the idea of sex as the direct motive of every
act of every person surrounding, her; deductively therefore that a
certain form of the impelling passion, mild or terrible, or capricious,
or it might be less pardonable, was unceasingly at work among the human
couples up to decrepitude. And she too frequently hit the fact to doubt
her gift of reading into them. Mr. Dacier was plain, and the state of
young Mr. Rhodes; and the Scottish gentleman was at least a vehement
admirer. But she penetrated the breast of Mr. Thomas Redworth as well,
mentally tore his mask of friendship to shreds. He was kind indeed in
commissioning her to do the portrait. His desire for it, and his urgency
to have the features exactly given, besides the infrequency of his visits
of late, when a favoured gentleman was present, were the betraying signs.
Deductively, moreover, the lady who inspired the passion in numbers of
gentlemen and set herself to win their admiration with her lively play of
dialogue, must be coquettish; she could hold them only by coldness.
Anecdotes, epigrams, drolleries, do not bubble to the lips of a woman who
is under an emotional spell: rather they prove that she has the spell for
casting. It suited Mr. Dacier, Miss Paynham thought: it was cruel to Mr.
Redworth; at whom, of all her circle, the beautiful woman looked, when
speaking to him, sometimes tenderly.

'Beware the silent one of an assembly!' Diana had written. She did not
think of her words while Miss Paynham continued mutely sketching. The
silent ones, with much conversation around them, have their heads at
work, critically perforce; the faster if their hands are occupied; and
the point they lean to do is the pivot of their thoughts. Miss Paynham
felt for Mr. Redworth.

Diana was unaware of any other critic present than him she sought to
enliven, not unsuccessfully, notwithstanding his English objection to the
pitch of the converse she led, and a suspicion of effort to support
it:--just a doubt, with all her easy voluble run, of the possibility of
naturalness in a continuous cleverness. But he signified pleasure, and in
pleasing him she was happy: in the knowledge that she dazzled, was her
sense of safety. Percy hated scandal; he heard none. He wanted stirring,
cheering; in her house he had it. He came daily, and as it was her wish
that new themes, new flights of converse, should delight him and show her
exhaustless, to preserve her ascendancy, she welcomed him without
consulting the world. He was witness of Mr. Hepburn's presentation of a
costly China vase, to repair the breach in her array of ornaments, and
excuse a visit. Judging by the absence of any blow within, he saw not a
sign of coquettry. Some such visit had been anticipated by the prescient
woman, so there was no reddening. She brought about an exchange of
sentences between him and her furious admirer, sparing either of them a
glimpse of which was the sacrifice to the other, amusing them both.
Dacier could allow Mr. Hepburn to outsit him; and he left them, proud of
his absolute confidence in her.

She was mistaken in imagining that her social vivacity, mixed with
comradeship of the active intellect, was the charm which kept Mr. Percy
Dacier temperate when he well knew her to distinguish him above her
courtiers. Her powers of dazzling kept him tame; they did not stamp her
mark on him. He was one of the order of highly polished men, ignorant of
women, who are impressed for long terms by temporary flashes, that hold
them bound until a fresh impression comes, to confirm or obliterate the
preceding. Affairs of the world he could treat competently; he had a head
for high politics and the management of men; the feminine half of the
world was a confusion and a vexation to his intelligence, characterless;
and one woman at last appearing decipherable, he fancied it must be owing
to her possession of character, a thing prized the more in women because
of his latent doubt of its existence. Character, that was the mark he
aimed at; that moved him to homage as neither sparkling wit nor
incomparable beauty, nor the unusual combination, did. To be
distinguished by a woman of character (beauty and wit for jewellery), was
his minor ambition in life, and if Fortune now gratified it, he owned to
the flattery. It really seemed by every test that she had the quality.
Since the day when he beheld her by the bedside of his dead uncle, and
that one on the French sea-sands, and again at Copsley, ghostly white out
of her wrestle with death, bleeding holy sweat of brow for her friend,
the print of her features had been on him as an index of depth of
character, imposing respect and admiration--a sentiment imperilled by her
consent to fly with him. Her subsequent reserve until they met--by an
accident that the lady at any rate was not responsible for, proved the
quality positively. And the nature of her character, at first suspected,
vanquished him more, by comparison, than her vivid intellect, which he
originally, and still lingeringly, appreciated in condescension, as a
singular accomplishment, thrilling at times, now and then assailably
feminine. But, after her consent to a proposal that caused him
retrospective worldly shudders, and her composed recognition of the
madness, a character capable of holding him in some awe was real majesty,
and it rose to the clear heights, with her mental attributes for
satellites. His tendency to despise women was wholesomely checked by the
experience to justify him in saying, Here is a worthy one! She was health
to him, as well as trusty counsel. Furthermore, where he respected, he
was a governed man, free of the common masculine craze to scale
fortresses for the sake of lowering flags. Whilst under his impression of
her character, he submitted honourably to the ascendancy of a lady whose
conduct suited him and whose preference flattered; whose presence was
very refreshing; whose letters were a stimulant. Her letters were really
running well-waters, not a lover's delusion of the luminous mind of his
lady. They sparkled in review and preserved their integrity under
critical analysis. The reading of them hurried him in pursuit of her from
house to house during the autumn; and as she did not hint at the shadow
his coming cast on her, his conscience was easy. Regarding their future,
his political anxieties were a mountainous defile, curtaining the
outlook. They met at Lockton, where he arrived after a recent
consultation with his Chief, of whom, and the murmurs of the Cabinet, he
spoke to Diana openly, in some dejection.

'They might see he has been breaking with his party for the last four
years,' she said. 'The plunge to be taken is tremendous.'

'But will he? He appears too despondent for a header.'

'We cannot dance on a quaking floor.'

'No; it 's exactly that quake of the floor which gives "much qualms," to
me as well,' said Dacier.

'A treble Neptune's power!' she rejoined, for his particular delectation.
'Enough if he hesitates. I forgive him his nausea. He awaits the impetus,
and it will reach him, and soon. He will not wait for the mob at his
heels, I am certain. A Minister who does that, is a post, and goes down
with the first bursting of the dam. He has tried compromise and
discovered that it does not appease the Fates; is not even a
makeshift-mending at this hour. He is a man of nerves, very sensitively
built; as quick--quicker than a woman, I could almost say, to feel the
tremble of the air-forerunner of imperative changes.'

Dacier brightened fondly. 'You positively describe him; paint him to the
life, without knowing him!'

'I have seen him; and if I paint, whose are the colours?'

'Sometimes I repeat you to him, and I get all the credit,' said Dacier.

'I glow with pride to think of speaking anything that you repeat,' said
Diana, and her eyes were proudly lustreful.

Their love was nourished on these mutual flatteries. Thin food for
passion! The innocence of it sanctioned the meetings and the appointments
to meet. When separated they were interchanging letters, formally worded
in the apostrophe and the termination, but throbbingly full: or Diana
thought so of Percy's letters, with grateful justice; for his manner of
opening his heart in amatory correspondence was to confide important,
secret matters, up to which mark she sprang to reply in counsel. He
proved his affection by trusting her; his respect by his tempered style:
'A Greenland style of writing,' she had said of an unhappy gentleman's
epistolary compositions resembling it; and now the same official baldness
was to her mind Italianly rich; it called forth such volumes.

Flatteries that were thin food for passion appeared the simplest
exchanges of courtesy, and her meetings with her lover, judging by the
nature of the discourse they held, so, consequent to their joint interest
in the great crisis anticipated, as to rouse her indignant surprise and a
turn for downright rebellion when the Argus world signified the fact of
its having one eye, or more, wide open.

Debit and Credit, too, her buzzing familiars, insisted on an audience at
each ear, and at the house-door, on her return to London.




CHAPTER XXIX

SHOWS THE APPROACHES OF THE POLITICAL AND THE DOMESTIC CRISIS IN COMPANY

There was not much talk of Diana between Lady Dunstane and her customary
visitor Tom Redworth now. She was shy in speaking of the love-stricken
woman, and more was in his mind for thought than for speech. She some
times wondered how much he might know, ending with the reflection that
little passing around was unknown to him. He had to shut his mind against
thought, against all meditation upon Mrs. Warwick; it was based
scientifically when speculating and calculating, on the material
element--a talisman. Men and women crossing the high seas of life he had
found most readable under that illuminating inquiry, as to their means.
An inspector of sea worthy ships proceeds in like manner. Whence would
the money come? He could not help the bent of his mind; but he could
avoid subjecting her to the talismanic touch. The girl at the Dublin
Ball, the woman at the fire-grate of The Crossways, both in one were his
Diana. Now and then, hearing an ugly whisper, his manful sympathy with
the mere woman in her imprisoned liberty, defended her desperately from
charges not distinctly formulated within him:--'She's not made of stone.'
That was a height of self-abnegation to shake the poor fellow to his
roots; but, then, he had no hopes of his own; and he stuck to it. Her
choice of a man like Dacier, too, of whom Redworth judged highly, showed
nobility. She irradiated the man; but no baseness could be in such an
alliance. If allied, they were bound together for good. The
tie--supposing a villain world not wrong--was only not the sacred tie
because of impediments. The tie!--he deliberated, and said stoutly--No.
Men of Redworth's nature go through sharp contests, though the duration
of them is short, and the tussle of his worship of this woman with the
materialistic turn of his mind was closed by the complete shutting up of
the latter under lock and bar; so that a man, very little of an idealist,
was able to sustain her in the pure imagination--where she did almost
belong to him. She was his, in a sense, because she might have been
his--but for an incredible extreme of folly. The dark ring of the eclipse
cast by some amazing foolishness round the shining crescent perpetually
in secret claimed the whole sphere of her, by what might have been, while
admitting her lost to him in fact. To Thomas Redworth's mind the lack of
perfect sanity in his conduct at any period of manhood, was so entirely
past belief that he flew at the circumstances confirming the charge, and
had wrestles with the angel of reality, who did but set him dreaming
backward, after flinging him.

He heard at Lady Wathin's that Mrs. Warwick was in town for the winter.
'Mr. Dacier is also in town,' Lady Wathin said, with an acid indication
of the needless mention of it. 'We have not seen him.' She invited
Redworth to meet a few friends at dinner. 'I think you admire Miss Asper:
in my idea a very saint among young women;--and you know what the young
women of our day are. She will be present. She is, you are aware,
England's greatest heiress. Only yesterday, hearing of that poor man Mr.
Warwick's desperate attack of illness--heart!--and of his having no
relative or friend to soothe his pillow,--he is lying in absolute
loneliness,--she offered to go and nurse him! Of course it could not be
done. It is not her place. The beauty of the character of a dear innocent
young girl, with every gratification at command, who could make the
offer, strikes me as unparalleled. She was perfectly sincere--she is
sincerity. She asked at once, Where is he? She wished me to accompany her
on a first visit. I saw a tear.'

Redworth had called at Lady Wathin's for information of the state of Mr.
Warwick, concerning which a rumour was abroad. No stranger to the vagrant
compassionateness of sentimentalists;--rich, idle, conscience-pricked or
praise-catching;--he was unmoved by the tale that Miss Asper had proposed
to go to Mr. Warwick's sick-bed in the uniform of a Sister of
Charity.--'Speaking French!' Lady Wathin exclaimed; and his head rocked,
as he said:

'An Englishman would not be likely to know better.'

'She speaks exquisite French--all European languages, Mr. Redworth. She
does not pretend to wit. To my thinking, depth of sentiment is a far more
feminine accomplishment. It assuredly will be found a greater treasure.'

The modest man (modest in such matters) was led by degrees to fancy
himself sounded regarding Miss Asper: a piece of sculpture glacially
decorative of the domestic mansion in person, to his thinking; and as to
the nature of it--not a Diana, with all her faults!

If Diana had any faults, in a world and a position so heavily against
her! He laughed to himself, when alone, at the neatly implied bitter
reproach cast on the wife by the forsaken young lady, who proposed to
nurse the abandoned husband of the woman bereaving her of the man she
loved. Sentimentalists enjoy these tricks, the conceiving or the doing of
them--the former mainly, which are cheaper, and equally effective. Miss
Asper might be deficient in wit; this was a form of practical wit,
occasionally exhibited by creatures acting on their instincts. Warwick he
pitied, and he put compulsion on himself to go and see the poor fellow,
the subject of so sublime a generosity. Mr. Warwick sat in an arm-chair,
his legs out straight on the heels, his jaw dragging hollow cheeks, his
hands loosely joined; improving in health, he said. A demure woman of
middle age was in attendance. He did not speak of his wife. Three times
he said disconnectedly, 'I hear reports,' and his eyelids worked.
Redworth talked of general affairs, without those consolatory efforts,
useless between men, which are neither medicine nor good honest
water:--he judged by personal feelings. In consequence, he left an
invalid the sourer for his visit.

Next day he received a briefly-worded summons from Mrs. Warwick.

Crossing the park on the line to Diana's house, he met Miss Paynham, who
grieved to say that Mrs. Warwick could not give her a sitting; and in a
still mournfuller tone, imagined he would find her at home, and alone by
this time. 'I left no one but Mr. Dacier there,' she observed.

'Mrs. Warwick will be disengaged to-morrow, no doubt,' he said
consolingly.

Her head performed the negative. 'They talk politics, and she becomes
animated, loses her pose. I will persevere, though I fear I have
undertaken a task too much for me.'

'I am deeply indebted to you for the attempt.' Redworth bowed to her and
set his face to the Abbey-towers, which wore a different aspect in the
smoked grey light since his two minutes of colloquy. He had previously
noticed that meetings with Miss Paynham produced a similar effect on him,
a not so very impressionable man. And how was it done? She told him
nothing he did not know or guess.

Diana was alone. Her manner, after the greeting, seemed feverish. She had
not to excuse herself for abruptness when he heard the nature of the
subject. Her counsellor and friend was informed, in feminine style, that
she had, requested him to call, for the purpose of consulting him with
regard to a matter she had decided upon; and it was, the sale of The
Crossways. She said that it would have gone to her heart once; she
supposed she had lost her affection for the place, or had got the better
of her superstitions. She spoke lamely as well as bluntly. The place was
hers, she said; her own property. Her husband could not interdict a sale.

Redworth addressed himself to her smothered antagonism. 'Even if he had
rights, as they are termed . . . I think you might count on their not
being pressed.'

'I have been told of illness.' She tapped her foot on the floor.

'His present state of health is unequal to his ordinary duties.'

'Emma Dunstane is fully supplied with the latest intelligence, Mr.
Redworth. You know the source.'

'I mention it simply . . .'

'Yes, yes. What I have to protest is, that in this respect I am free. The
Law has me fast, but leaves me its legal view of my small property. I
have no authority over me. I can do as I please, in this, without a
collision, or the dread of one. It is the married woman's perpetual dread
when she ventures a step. Your Law originally presumed her a China-footed
animal. And more, I have a claim for maintenance.'

She crimsoned angrily.

Redworth showed a look of pleasure, hard to understand. 'The application
would be sufficient, I fancy,' he said.

'It should have been offered.'

'Did you not decline it?'

'I declined to apply for it. I thought--But, Mr. Redworth, another thing,
concerning us all: I want very much to hear your ideas of the prospects
of the League; because I know you have ideas. The leaders are terrible
men; they fascinate me. They appear to move with an army of facts. They
are certainly carrying the country. I am obliged to think them sincere.
Common agitators would not hold together, as they do. They gather
strength each year. If their statistics are not illusory--an army of
phantoms instead of one of facts; and they knock at my head without
admission, I have to confess; they must win.'

'Ultimately, it is quite calculable that they will win,' said Redworth;
and he was led to discourse of rates and duties and prohibitive tariffs
to a woman surprisingly athirst, curious for every scrap of intelligence
relating to the power, organization, and schemes of the League. 'Common
sense is the secret of every successful civil agitation,' he said. 'Rap
it unremittingly on crowds of the thickest of human heads, and the
response comes at last to sweep all before it. You may reckon that the
country will beat the landlords--for that is our question. Is it one of
your political themes?'

'I am not presumptuous to such a degree:--a poor scholar,' Diana replied.
'Women striving to lift their heads among men deserve the sarcasm.'

He denied that any sarcasm was intended, and the lesson continued. When
she had shaped in her mind some portion of his knowledge of the subject,
she reverted casually to her practical business. Would he undertake to
try to obtain a purchaser of The Crossways, at the price he might deem
reasonable? She left the price entirely to his judgement. And now she had
determined to part with the old place, the sooner the better! She said
that smiling; and Redworth smiled, outwardly and inwardly. Her talk of
her affairs was clearer to him than her curiosity for the mysteries of
the League. He gained kind looks besides warm thanks by the promise to
seek a purchaser; especially by his avoidance of prying queries. She
wanted just this excellent automaton fac-totum; and she referred him to
Mr. Braddock for the title-deeds, et caetera--the chirping phrase of
ladies happily washing their hands of the mean details of business.

'How of your last work?' he asked her.

Serenest equanimity rejoined: 'As I anticipated, it is not popular. The
critics are of one mind with the public. You may have noticed, they
rarely flower above that rocky surface. THE CANTATRICE sings them a false
note. My next will probably please them less.'

Her mobile lips and brows shot the faint upper-wreath of a smile
hovering. It was designed to display her philosophy.

'And what is the name of your next?' said he.

'I name it THE MAN OF TWO MINDS, if you can allow that to be in nature.'

'Contra-distinguished from the woman?'

'Oh! you must first believe the woman to have one.'

'You are working on it?'

'By fits. And I forgot, Mr. Redworth: I have mislaid my receipts, and
must ask you for the address of your wine-merchant;--or, will you?
Several dozen of the same wines. I can trust him to be in awe of you, and
the good repute of my table depends on his honesty.'

Redworth took the definite order for a large supply of wine.

She gave him her hand: a lost hand, dear to hold, needing to be guided,
he feared. For him, it was merely a hand, cut off from the wrist; and he
had performed that executive part! A wiser man would now have been the
lord of it . . . . So he felt, with his burning wish to protect and
cherish the beloved woman, while saying: 'If we find a speedy bidder for
The Crossways, you will have to thank our railways.'

'You!' said Diana, confident in his ability to do every-thing of the
practical kind.

Her ingenuousness tickled him. He missed her comic touches upon men and
things, but the fever shown by her manner accounted for it.

As soon as he left her, she was writing to the lover who had an hour
previously been hearing her voice; the note of her theme being Party; and
how to serve it, when to sacrifice it to the Country. She wrote,
carolling bars of the Puritani marches; and such will passion do, that
her choice of music was quite in harmony with her theme. The
martially-amorous melodies of Italian Opera in those days fostered a
passion challenged to intrepidity from the heart of softness; gliding at
the same time, and putting warm blood even into dull arithmetical figures
which might be important to her lover, her hero fronting battle. She
condensed Redworth's information skilfully, heartily giving it and
whatever she had imbibed, as her own, down to the remark: 'Common sense
in questions of justice, is a weapon that makes way into human heads and
wins the certain majority, if we strike with it incessantly.' Whether
anything she wrote was her own, mattered little: the savour of Percy's
praise, which none could share with her, made it instantly all her own.
Besides she wrote to strengthen him; she naturally laid her friends and
the world under contribution; and no other sort of writing was possible.
Percy had not a common interest in fiction; still less for high comedy.
He liked the broad laugh when he deigned to open books of that sort; puns
and strong flavours and harlequin surprises; and her work would not admit
of them, however great her willingness to force her hand for his
amusement: consequently her inventiveness deadened. She had to cease
whipping it. 'My poor old London cabhorse of a pen shall go to grass!'
she sighed, looking to the sale of The Crossways for money; looking no
farther.

Those marshalled battalions of Debit and Credit were in hostile order,
the weaker simply devoted to fighting for delay, when a winged messenger
bearing the form of old Mr. Braddock descended to her with the
reconciling news that a hermit bachelor, an acquaintance of Mr.
Redworth's--both of whom wore a gloomy hue in her mind immediately--had
offered a sum for the purchase of The Crossways. Considering the
out-of-the-way district, Mr. Braddock thought it an excellent price to
get. She thought the reverse, but confessed that double the sum would not
have altered her opinion. Double the sum scarcely counted for the service
she required of it for much more than a year. The money was paid shortly
after into her Bank, and then she enjoyed the contemptuous felicity of
tossing meat to her lions, tigers, wolves, and jackals, who, but for the
fortunate intervention, would have been feeding on her. These menagerie
beasts of prey were the lady's tradesmen, Debit's hungry-brood. She had a
rapid glimpse of a false position in regarding that legitimate band so
scornfully: another glimpse likewise of a day to come when they might not
be stopped at the door. She was running a race with something; with what?
It was unnamed; it ran in a shroud.

At times she surprised her heart violently beating when there had not
been a thought to set it in motion. She traced it once to the words,
'next year,' incidentally mentioned. 'Free,' was a word that checked her
throbs, as at a question of life or death. Her solitude, excepting the
hours of sleep, if then, was a time of irregular breathing. The something
unnamed, running beside her, became a dreadful familiar; the race between
them past contemplation for ghastliness. 'But this is your Law!' she
cried to the world, while blinding her eyes against a peep of the
shrouded features.

Singularly, she had but to abandon hope, and the shadowy figure vanished,
the tragic race was ended. How to live and think, and not to hope: the
slave of passion had this problem before her.

Other tasks were supportable, though one seemed hard at moments and was
not passive; it attacked her. The men and women of her circle derisively,
unanimously, disbelieved in an innocence that forfeited reputation. Women
were complimentarily assumed to be not such gaping idiots. And as the
weeks advanced, a change came over Percy. The gentleman had grown
restless at covert congratulations, hollow to his knowledge, however much
caressing vanity, and therefore secretly a wound to it. One day, after
sitting silent, he bluntly proposed to break 'this foolish trifling';
just in his old manner, though not so honourably; not very definitely
either. Her hand was taken.

'I feared that dumbness!' Diana said, letting her hand go, but keeping
her composure. 'My friend Percy, I am not a lion-tamer, and if you are of
those animals, we break the chapter. Plainly you think that where there
appears to be a choice of fools, the woman is distinctly designed for the
person. Drop my hand, or I shall repeat the fable of the Goose with the
Golden Eggs.'

'Fables are applicable only in the school-room,' said he; and he ventured
on 'Tony!'

'I vowed an oath to my dear Emma--as good as to the heavens! and that of
itself would stay me from being insane again.' She released herself.
'Signor Percy, you teach me to suspect you of having an idle wish to
pluck your plaything to pieces:--to boast of it? Ah! my friend, I fancied
I was of more value to you. You must come less often; even to not at all,
if you are one of those idols with feet of clay which leave the print of
their steps in a room; or fall and crush the silly idolizer.'

'But surely you know . . .' said he. 'We can't have to wait long.' He
looked full of hopeful meanings.

'A reason . . . !' She kept down her breath. A longdrawn sigh followed,
through parted lips. She had a sensation of horror. 'And I cannot propose
to nurse him--Emma will not hear of it,' she said. 'I dare not. Hypocrite
to that extreme? Oh, no! But I must hear nothing. As it is, I am haunted.
Now let this pass. Tony me no Tonies; I am stony to such whimpering
business now we are in the van of the struggle. All round us it sounds
like war. Last night I had Mr. Tonans dining here;--he wished to meet
you; and you must have a private meeting with Mr. Whitmonby: he will be
useful; others as well. You are wrong in affecting contempt of the Press.
It perches you on a rock; but the swimmer in politics knows what draws
the tides. Your own people, your set, your class, are a drag to you, like
inherited superstitions to the wakening brain. The greater the glory! For
you see the lead you take? You are saving your class. They should lead,
and will, if they prove worthy in the crisis. Their curious error is to
believe in the stability of a monumental position.'

'Perfectly true!' cried Dacier; and the next minute, heated by
approbation, was begging for her hand earnestly. She refused it.

'But you say things that catch me!' he pleaded. 'Remember, it was nearly
mine. It soon will be mine. I heard yesterday from Lady Wathin . . .
well, if it pains you!'

'Speak on,' said Diana, resigned to her thirsty ears.

'He is not expected to last through the autumn.'

'The calculation is hers?'

'Not exactly:--judging from the symptoms.'

Diana flashed a fiery eye into Dacier's, and rose. She was past danger of
melting, with her imagination darkened by the funeral image; but she
craved solitude, and had to act the callous, to dismiss him.

'Good. Enough for the day. Now leave me, if you please. When we meet
again, stifle that raven's croak. I am not a "Sister of Charity," but
neither am I a vulture hovering for the horse in the desert to die. A
poor simile!--when it is my own and not another's breath that I want.
Nothing in nature, only gruesome German stories will fetch comparisons
for the yoke of this Law of yours. It seems the nightmare dream following
an ogre's supper.'

She was not acting the shiver of her frame.

To-morrow was open to him, and prospect of better fortune, so he
departed, after squeezing the hand she ceremoniously extended.

But her woman's intuition warned her that she had not maintained the
sovereign impression which was her security. And hope had become a flame
in her bosom that would no longer take the common extinguisher. The race
she ran was with a shrouded figure no more, but with the figure of the
shroud; she had to summon paroxysms of a pity hard to feel, images of
sickness, helplessness, the vaults, the last human silence for the
stilling of her passionate heart. And when this was partly effected, the
question, Am I going to live? renewed her tragical struggle. Who was it
under the vaults, in the shroud, between the planks? and with human
sensibility to swell the horror! Passion whispered of a vaster sorrow
needed for herself; and the hope conjuring those frightful complexities
was needed to soothe her. She pitied the man, but she was an enamoured
woman. Often of late she had been sharply stung, relaxed as well, by the
observations of Danvers assisting at her toilette. Had she beauty and
charm, beauty and rich health in the young summer blooming of her
days?--and all doomed to waste? No insurgency of words arose in
denunciation of the wrong done to her nature. An undefined heavy feeling
of wrong there was, just perceptive enough to let her know, without
gravely shaming, that one or another must be slain for peace to come; for
it is the case in which the world of the Laws overloading her is pitiless
to women, deaf past ear-trumpets, past intercession; detesting and
reviling them for a feeble human cry, and for one apparent step of revolt
piling the pelted stones on them. It will not discriminate shades of hue,
it massacres all the shadowed. They are honoured, after a fashion, at a
certain elevation. Descending from it, and purely to breathe common air
(thus in her mind), they are scourged and outcast. And alas! the very
pleading for them excites a sort of ridicule in their advocate. How? She
was utterly, even desperately, nay personally, earnest, and her humour
closed her lips; though comical views of the scourged and outcast coming
from the opposite party--the huge bully world--she would not have
tolerated. Diana raged at a prevailing strength on the part of that huge
bully world, which seemed really to embrace the atmosphere. Emma had
said: 'The rules of Christian Society are a blessed Government for us
women. We owe it so much that there is not a brick of the fabric we
should not prop.' Emma's talk of obedience to the Laws, being Laws, was
repeated by the rebel, with an involuntary unphrased comparison of the
vessel in dock and the vessel at sea.

When Dacier next called to see Mrs. Warwick, he heard that she had gone
to Copsley for a couple of weeks. The lesson was emphasized by her not
writing:--and was it the tricky sex, or the splendid character of the
woman, which dealt him this punishment? Knowing how much Diana forfeited
for him, he was moved to some enthusiasm, despite his inclination to be
hurt.

She, on her return to London, gained a considerable increase of knowledge
as to her position in the eye of the world; and unlike the result of her
meditations derived from the clamouring tradesmen, whom she could excuse,
she was neither illuminated nor cautioned by that dubious look; she
conscientiously revolted. Lady Pennon hinted a word for her Government.
'A good deal of what you so capitally call "Green tea talk" is going on,
my dear.' Diana replied, without pretending to misunderstand.

'Gossip is a beast of prey that does not wait for the death of the
creature it devours. They are welcome to my shadow, if the liberty I
claim casts one, and it feeds them.' To which the old lady rejoined: 'Oh!
I am with you through thick and thin. I presented you at Court, and I
stand by you. Only, walk carefully. Women have to walk with a train. You
are too famous not to have your troops of watchers.'

'But I mean to prove,' said Diana, 'that a woman can walk with her train
independent of the common reserves and artifices.'

'Not on highways, my dear!'

Diana, praising the speaker, referred the whole truth in that to the
material element of her metaphor.

She was more astonished by Whitmonby's candid chiding; but with him she
could fence, and men are easily diverted. She had sent for him, to bring
him and Percy Dacier together to a conference. Unaware of the project, he
took the opportunity of their privacy to speak of the great station open
to her in London being imperilled; and he spoke of 'tongues,' and ahem! A
very little would have induced him to fill that empty vocable with a
name.

She had to pardon the critic in him for an unpleasant review of her
hapless CANTATRICE; and as a means of evasion, she mentioned the poor
book and her slaughter of the heroine, that he had complained of.

'I killed her; I could not let her live. You were unjust in accusing the
authoress of heartlessness.'

'If I did, I retract,' said he. 'She steers too evidently from the centre
of the vessel. She has the organ in excess.'

'Proof that it is not squandered.'

'The point concerns direction.'

'Have I made so bad a choice of my friends?'

'It is the common error of the sprightly to suppose that in parrying a
thrust they blind our eyes.'

'The world sees always what it desires to see, Mr. Whitmonby.'

'The world, my dear Mrs. Warwick, is a blundering machine upon its own
affairs, but a cruel sleuth-hound to rouse in pursuit.'

'So now you have me chased by sight and scent. And if I take wing?'

'Shots! volleys!--You are lawful game. The choice you have made of your
friends, should oblige you to think of them.'

'I imagine I do. Have I offended any, or one?'

'I will not say that. You know the commotion in a French kitchen when the
guests of the house declined a particular dish furnished them by command.
The cook and his crew were loyal to their master, but, for the love of
their Art, they sent him notice. It is ill serving a mad sovereign.'

Diana bowed to the compact little apologue.

'I will tell you another story, traditional in our family from my
great-grandmother, a Spanish woman,' she said. 'A cavalier serenaded his
mistress, and rascal mercenaries fell upon him before he could draw
sword. He battered his guitar on their pates till the lattice opened with
a cry, and startled them to flight. "Thrice blessed and beloved!" he
called to her above, in reference to the noise, "it was merely a
diversion of the accompaniment." Now there was loyal service to a
sovereign!'

'You are certainly an angel!' exclaimed Whitmonby. 'I swallow the story,
and leave it to digestion to discover the appositeness. Whatever tuneful
instrument one of your friends possesses shall solace your slumbers or
batter the pate of your enemy. But discourage the habitual serenader.'

'The musician you must mean is due here now, by appointment to meet you,'
said Diana, and set him momentarily agape with the name of Mr. Percy
Dacier.

That was the origin of the alliance between the young statesman and a
newspaper editor. Whitmonby, accepting proposals which suited him,
quitted the house, after an hour of political talk, no longer inclined to
hint at the 'habitual serenader,' but very ready to fall foul of those
who did, as he proved when the numbers buzzed openly. Times were
masculine; the excitement on the eve of so great a crisis, and Diana's
comprehension of it and fine heading cry, put that weak matter aside.
Moreover, he was taught to suppose himself as welcome a guest as Dacier;
and the cook could stand criticism; the wines--wonderful to say of a
lady's table--were trusty; the talk, on the political evenings and the
social and anecdotal supper-nights, ran always in perfect accord with his
ideal of the conversational orchestra: an improvized harmony, unmatched
elsewhere. She did not, he considered, so perfectly assort her
dinner-guests; that was her one fault. She had therefore to strain her
adroitness to cover their deficiencies and fuse them. But what other
woman could have done it! She led superbly. If an Irishman was present,
she kept him from overflooding, managed to extract just the flavour of
him, the smack of salt. She did even, at Whitmonby's table, on a
red-letter Sunday evening, in concert with him and the Dean, bring down
that cataract, the Bodleian, to the levels of interchanging dialogue by
seasonable touches, inimitably done, and never done before. Sullivan
Smith, unbridled in the middle of dinner, was docile to her. 'Irishmen;'
she said, pleading on their behalf to Whitmonby, who pronounced the race
too raw for an Olympian feast, 'are invaluable if you hang them up to
smoke and cure'; and the master of social converse could not deny that
they were responsive to her magic. The supper-nights were mainly devoted
to Percy's friends. He brought as many as he pleased, and as often as it
pleased him; and it was her pride to provide Cleopatra banquets for the
lover whose anxieties were soothed by them, and to whom she sacrificed
her name willingly in return for a generosity that certain chance
whispers of her heart elevated to the pitch of measureless.

So they wore through the Session and the Autumn, clouds heavier, the
League drumming, the cry of Ireland 'ominously Banshee,' as she wrote to
Emma.




CHAPTER XXX

IN WHICH THERE IS A TASTE OF A LITTLE DINNER AND AN AFTERTASTE

'But Tony lives!' Emma Dunstane cried, on her solitary height, with the
full accent of envy marking the verb; and when she wrote enviously to her
friend of the life among bright intelligences, and of talk worth hearing,
it was a happy signification that health, frail though it might be, had
grown importunate for some of the play of life. Diana sent her word to
name her day, and she would have her choicest to meet her dearest. They
were in the early days of December, not the best of times for improvized
gatherings. Emma wanted, however, to taste them as they cropped; she was
also, owing to her long isolation, timid at a notion of encountering the
pick of the London world, prepared by Tony to behold 'a wonder more than
worthy of them,' as her friend unadvisedly wrote. That was why she came
unexpectedly, and for a mixture of reasons, went to an hotel. Fatality
designed it so. She was reproached, but she said: 'You have to write or
you entertain at night; I should be a clog and fret you. My hotel is
Maitland's; excellent; I believe I am to lie on the pillow where a
crowned head reposed! You will perceive that I am proud as well as
comfortable. And I would rather meet your usual set of guests.'

'The reason why I have been entertaining at night is, that Percy is
harassed and requires enlivening,' said Diana. 'He brings his friends. My
house is open to them, if it amuses him. What the world says, is past a
thought. I owe him too much.'

Emma murmured that the world would soon be pacified.

Diana shook her head. 'The poor man is better; able to go about his
affairs; and I am honestly relieved. It lays a spectre. As for me, I do
not look ahead. I serve as a kind of secretary to Percy. I labour at
making abstracts by day, and at night preside at my suppertable. You
would think it monotonous; no incident varies the course we run. I have
no time to ask whether it is happiness. It seems to bear a resemblance.'

Emma replied: 'He may be everything you tell me. He should not have
chosen the last night of the Opera to go to your box and sit beside you
till the fall of the curtain. The presence at the Opera of a man
notoriously indifferent to music was enough in itself.'

Diana smiled with languor. 'You heard of that? But the Opera was The
Puritani, my favourite. And he saw me sitting in Lady Pennon's box alone.
We were compromised neck-deep already. I can kiss you, my own Emmy, till
I die; 'but what the world says, is what the wind says. Besides he has
his hopes.... If I am blackened ever so thickly, he can make me white.
Dear me! if the world knew that he comes here almost nightly! It will;
and does it matter? I am his in soul; the rest is waste-paper--a
half-printed sheet.'

'Provided he is worthy of such devotion!'

'He is absolute worthiness. He is the prince of men: I dread to say,
mine! for fear. But Emmy will not judge him to-morrow by contrast with
more voluble talkers.--I can do anything but read poetry now. That kills
me!--See him through me. In nature, character, intellect, he has no
rival. Whenever I despond--and it comes now and then--I rebuke myself
with this one admonition.

Simply to have known him! Admit that for a woman to find one who is
worthy among the opposite creatures, is a happy termination of her quest,
and in some sort dismisses her to the Shades, an uncomplaining
ferry-bird. If my end were at hand I should have no cause to lament it.
We women miss life only when we have to confess we have never met the man
to reverence.'

Emma had to hear a very great deal of Mr. Percy. Diana's comparison of
herself to 'the busy bee at a window-pane,' was more in her old manner;
and her friend would have hearkened to the marvels of the gentle man less
unrefreshed, had it not appeared to her that her Tony gave in excess for
what was given in return. She hinted her view. . .

'It is expected of our sex,' Diana said.

The work of busy bee at a window-pane had at any rate not spoilt her
beauty, though she had voluntarily, profitlessly, become this man's
drudge, and her sprightly fancy, her ready humour and darting look all
round in discussion, were rather deadened.

But the loss was not perceptible in the circle of her guests. Present at
a dinner little indicating the last, were Whitmonby, in lively trim for
shuffling, dealing, cutting, trumping or drawing trumps; Westlake,
polishing epigrams under his eyelids; Henry Wilmers, who timed an
anecdote to strike as the passing hour without freezing the current;
Sullivan Smith, smoked, cured and ready to flavour; Percy Dacier,
pleasant listener, measured speaker; and young Arthur Rhodes, the
neophyte of the hostess's training; of whom she had said to Emma, 'The
dear boy very kindly serves to frank an unlicenced widow'; and whom she
prompted and made her utmost of, with her natural tact. These she mixed
and leavened. The talk was on high levels and low; an enchantment to Emma
Dunstane: now a story; a question opening new routes, sharp sketches of
known personages; a paradox shot by laughter as soon as uttered; and all
so smoothly; not a shadow of the dominant holder-forth or a momentary
prospect of dead flats; the mellow ring of appositeness being the
concordant note of deliveries running linked as they flashed, and a
tolerant philosophy of the sage in the world recurrently the keynote.

Once only had Diana to protect her nurseling. He cited a funny line from
a recent popular volume of verse, in perfect A propos, looking at
Sullivan Smith; who replied, that the poets had become too many for him,
and he read none now. Diana said: 'There are many Alexanders, but
Alexander of Macedon is not dwarfed by the number.' She gave him an
opening for a smarter reply, but he lost it in a comment--against
Whitmonby's cardinal rule: 'The neatest turn of the wrist that ever swung
a hero to crack a crown!' and he bowed to young Rhodes: 'I 'll read your
versicler to-morrow morning early.' The latter expressed a fear that the
hour was too critical for poetry.

'I have taken the dose at a very early hour,' said Whitmonby, to bring
conversation to the flow again, 'and it effaced the critical mind
completely.'

'But did not silence the critical nose,' observed Westlake.

Wilmers named the owner of the longest nose in Europe.

'Potentially, indeed a critic!' said Diana.

'Nights beside it must be fearful, and good matter for a divorce, if the
poor dear lady could hale it to the doors of the Vatican!' Sullivan Smith
exclaimed. 'But there's character in noses.'

'Calculable by inches?' Dacier asked.

'More than in any other feature,' said Lady Dunstane. 'The Riffords are
all prodigiously gifted and amusing: suspendens omnia naso. It should be
prayed for in families.'

'Totum ut to faciant, Fabulle, nasum,' rejoined Whitmonby. 'Lady Isabella
was reading the tale of the German princess, who had a sentinel stationed
some hundred yards away to whisk off the flies, and she owned to me that
her hand instinctively travelled upward.'

'Candour is the best concealment, when one has to carry a saddle of
absurdity,' said Diana. 'Touchstone's "poor thing, but mine own," is
godlike in its enveloping fold.'

'The most comforting sermon ever delivered on property in poverty,' said
Arthur Rhodes.

Westlake assented. 'His choice of Audrey strikes me as an exhibition of
the sure instinct for pasture of the philosophical jester in a forest.'

'With nature's woman, if he can find her, the urban seems equally at
home,' said Lady Dunstane.

'Baron Pawle is an example,' added Whitmonby. 'His cook is a pattern wife
to him. I heard him say at table that she was responsible for all except
the wines. "I wouldn't have them on my conscience, with a Judge!" my lady
retorted.'

'When poor Madame de Jacquieres was dying,' said Wilmers, 'her confessor
sat by her bedside, prepared for his ministrations. "Pour commencer, mon
ami, jamais je n'ai fait rien hors nature."'

Lord Wadaster had uttered something tolerably similar: 'I am a sinner,
and in good society.' Sir Abraham Hartiston, a minor satellite of the
Regent, diversified this: 'I am a sinner, and go to good society.' Madame
la Comtesse de la Roche-Aigle, the cause of many deaths, declared it
unwomanly to fear anything save 'les revenants.' Yet the countess could
say the pretty thing: 'Foot on a flower, then think of me!'

'Sentimentality puts up infant hands for absolution,' said Diana.

'But tell me,' Lady Dunstane inquired generally, 'why men are so much
happier than women in laughing at their spouses?'

They are humaner, was one dictum; they are more frivolous, ironically
another.

'It warrants them for blowing the bugle-horn of masculine superiority
night and morning from the castle-walls,' Diana said.

'I should imagine it is for joy of heart that they still have cause to
laugh!' said Westlake.

On the other hand, are women really pained by having to laugh at their
lords? Curious little speeches flying about the great world, affirmed the
contrary. But the fair speakers were chartered libertines, and their
laugh admittedly had a biting acid. The parasite is concerned in the
majesty of the tree.

'We have entered Botany Bay,' Diana said to Emma; who answered: 'A
metaphor is the Deus ex machine, of an argument'; and Whitmonby, to
lighten a shadow of heaviness, related allusively an anecdote of the Law
Courts. Sullivan Smith begged permission to 'black cap' it with Judge
FitzGerald's sentence upon a convicted criminal: 'Your plot was perfect
but for One above.' Dacier cited an execrable impromptu line of the Chief
of the Opposition in Parliament. The Premier, it was remarked, played him
like an angler his fish on the hook; or say, Mr. Serjeant Rufus his
witness in the box.

'Or a French journalist an English missionary,' said Westlake; and as the
instance was recent it was relished.

The talk of Premiers offered Whitmonby occasion for a flight to the Court
of Vienna and Kaunitz. Wilmers told a droll story of Lord Busby's missing
the Embassy there. Westlake furnished a sample of the tranquil
sententiousness of Busby's brother Robert during a stormy debate in the
House of Commons.

'I remember,' Dacier was reminded, 'hearing him say, when the House
resembled a Chartist riot, "Let us stand aside and meditate on Life. If
Youth could know, in the season of its reaping of the Pleasures, that it
is but sowing Doctor's bills!"'

Latterly a malady had supervened, and Bob Busby had retired from the
universal to the special;--his mysterious case.

'Assure him, that is endemic. He may be cured of his desire for the
exposition of it,' said Lady Dunstane.

Westlake chimed with her: 'Yes, the charm in discoursing of one's case is
over when the individual appears no longer at odds with Providence.'

'But then we lose our Tragedy,' said Whitmonby.

'Our Comedy too,' added Diana. 'We must consent to be Busbied for the
sake of the instructive recreations.'

'A curious idea, though,' said Sullivan Smith, 'that some of the grand
instructive figures were in their day colossal bores!'

'So you see the marvel of the poet's craft at last?' Diana smiled on him,
and he vowed: 'I'll read nothing else for a month!' Young Rhodes bade him
beware of a deluge in proclaiming it.

They rose from table at ten, with the satisfaction of knowing that they
had not argued, had not wrangled, had never stagnated, and were
digestingly refreshed; as it should be among grown members of the
civilized world, who mean to practise philosophy, making the hour of the
feast a balanced recreation and a regeneration of body and mind.

'Evenings like these are worth a pilgrimage,' Emma said, embracing Tony
outside the drawing-room door. 'I am so glad I came: and if I am strong
enough, invite me again in the Spring. To-morrow early I start for
Copsley, to escape this London air. I shall hope to have you there soon.'

She was pleased by hearing Tony ask her whether she did not think that
Arthur Rhodes had borne himself well; for it breathed of her simply
friendly soul.

The gentlemen followed Lady Dunstane in a troop, Dacier yielding perforce
the last adieu to young Rhodes.

Five minutes later Diana was in her dressing-room, where she wrote at
night, on the rare occasions now when she was left free for composition.
Beginning to dwell on THE MAN OF TWO MINDS, she glanced at the woman
likewise divided, if not similarly; and she sat brooding. She did not
accuse her marriage of being the first fatal step: her error was the step
into Society without the wherewithal to support her position there. Girls
of her kind, airing their wings above the sphere of their birth, are
cryingly adventuresses. As adventuresses they are treated.

Vain to be shrewish with the world! Rather let us turn and scold our
nature for irreflectively rushing to the cream and honey! Had she
subsisted on her small income in a country cottage, this task of writing
would have been holiday. Or better, if, as she preached to Mary Paynham,
she had apprenticed herself to some productive craft. The simplicity of
the life of labour looked beautiful. What will not look beautiful
contrasted with the fly in the web? She had chosen to be one of the flies
of life.

Instead of running to composition, her mind was eloquent with a sermon to
Arthur Rhodes, in Redworth's vein; more sympathetically, of course. 'For
I am not one of the lecturing Mammonites!' she could say.

She was far from that. Penitentially, in the thick of her disdain of the
arrogant money-Betters, she pulled out a drawer where her bank-book lay,
and observed it contemplatively; jotting down a reflection before the
dread book of facts was opened: 'Gaze on the moral path you should have
taken, you are asked for courage to commit a sanctioned suicide, by
walking back to it stripped--a skeleton self.' She sighed forth: 'But I
have no courage: I never had!' The book revealed its tale in a small
pencilled computation of the bank-clerk's; on the peccant side. Credit
presented many pages blanks. She seemed to have withdrawn from the
struggle with such a partner.

It signified an immediate appeal to the usurers, unless the publisher
could be persuaded, with three parts of the book in his hands, to come to
the rescue. Work! roared old Debit, the sinner turned slavedriver.

Diana smoothed her wrists, compressing her lips not to laugh at the
simulation of an attitude of combat. She took up her pen.

And strange to think, she could have flowed away at once on the stuff
that Danvers delighted to read!--wicked princes, rogue noblemen, titled
wantons, daisy and lily innocents, traitorous marriages, murders, a
gallows dangling a corpse dotted by a moon, and a woman bowed beneath.
She could have written, with the certainty that in the upper and the
middle as well as in the lower classes of the country, there would be a
multitude to read that stuff, so cordially, despite the gaps between
them, are they one in their literary tastes. And why should they not read
it? Her present mood was a craving for excitement; for incident, wild
action, the primitive machinery of our species; any amount of theatrical
heroics, pathos, and clown-gabble. A panorama of scenes came sweeping
round her.

She was, however, harnessed to a different kind of vehicle, and had to
drag it. The sound of the house-door shutting, imagined perhaps, was a
fugitive distraction. Now to animate The Man of Two Minds!

He is courting, but he is burdened with the task of tasks. He has an
ideal of womanhood and of the union of couples: a delicacy extreme as his
attachment: and he must induce the lady to school herself to his ideal,
not allowing her to suspect him less devoted to her person; while she, an
exacting idol, will drink any quantity of idealization as long as he
starts it from a full acceptance of her acknowledged qualities. Diana
could once have tripped the scene along airily. She stared at the opening
sentence, a heavy bit of moralized manufacture, fit to yoke beside that
on her view of her bank-book.

'It has come to this--I have no head,' she cried.

And is our public likely to muster the slightest taste for comic analysis
that does not tumble to farce? The doubt reduced her whole MS. to a
leaden weight, composed for sinking. Percy's addiction to burlesque was a
further hindrance, for she did not perceive how her comedy could be
strained to gratify it.

There was a knock, and Danvers entered. 'You have apparently a liking for
late hours,' observed her mistress. 'I told you to go to bed.' 'It is Mr.
Dacier,' said Danvers. 'He wishes to see me?' 'Yes, ma'am. He apologized
for disturbing you.' 'He must have some good reason.' What could it be!
Diana's glass approved her appearance. She pressed the black swell of
hair above her temples, rather amazed, curious, inclined to a beating of
the heart.




CHAPTER XXXI

A CHAPTER CONTAINING GREAT POLITICAL NEWS AND THEREWITH AN INTRUSION OF
THE LOVE-GOD

Dacier was pacing about the drawing-room, as in a place too narrow for
him.

Diana stood at the door. 'Have you forgotten to tell me anything I ought
to know?'

He came up to her and shut the door softly behind her, holding her hand.
'You are near it. I returned . . But tell me first:--You were slightly
under a shadow this evening, dejected.'

'Did I show it?'

She was growing a little suspicious, but this cunning touch of lover-like
interest dispersed the shade.

'To me you did.'

'It was unpardonable to let it be seen.'

'No one else could have observed it.'

Her woman's heart was thrilled; for she had concealed the dejection from
Emma.

'It was nothing,' she said; 'a knot in the book I am writing. We poor
authors are worried now and then. But you?'

His face rippled by degrees brightly, to excite a reflection in hers.

'Shall I tune you with good news? I think it will excuse me for coming
back.'

'Very good news?'

'Brave news, as far as it goes.'

'Then it concerns you!'

'Me, you, the country.'

'Oh! do I guess?' cried Diana. 'But speak, pray; I burn.'

'What am I to have for telling it?'

'Put no price. You know my heart. I guess--or fancy. It relates to your
Chief?'

Dacier smiled in a way to show the lock without the key; and she was
insensibly drawn nearer to him, speculating on the smile.

'Try again,' said he, keenly appreciating the blindness to his motive of
her studious dark eyes, and her open-lipped breathing.

'Percy! I must be right.'

'Well, you are. He has decided!'

'Oh! that is the bravest possible. When did you hear?'

'He informed me of his final decision this afternoon.'

'And you were charged with the secret all the evening, and betrayed not a
sign! I compliment the diplomatic statesman. But when will it be public?'

'He calls Parliament together the first week of next month.'

'The proposal is--? No more compromises!'

'Total!'

Diana clapped hands; and her aspect of enthusiasm was intoxicating. 'He
is a wise man and a gallant Minister! And while you were reading me
through, I was blind to you,' she added meltingly.

'I have not made too much of it?' said he.

'Indeed you have not.'

She was radiant with her dark lightnings, yet visibly subject to him
under the spell of the news he had artfully lengthened out to excite and
overbalance her:--and her enthusiasm was all pointed to his share in the
altered situation, as he well knew and was flattered in knowing.

'So Tony is no longer dejected? I thought I could freshen you and get my
excuse.'

'Oh! a high wind will make a dead leaf fly like a bird. I soar. Now I do
feel proud. I have longed for it--to have you leading the country: not
tugged at like a waggon with a treble team uphill. We two are a month in
advance of all England. You stand by him?--only to hear it, for I am sure
of it!'

'We stand or fall together.'

Her glowing look doated on the faithful lieutenant.

'And if the henchman is my hero, I am but a waiting-woman. But I must
admire his leader.'

'Tony!'

'Ah! no,' she joined her hands, wondering whither her armed majesty had
fled; 'no softness! no payments! Flatter me by letting me think you came
to a head not a silly woman's heart, with one name on it, as it has not
to betray. I have been frank; you need no proofs . . .' The supplicating
hands left her figure an easy prey to the storm, and were crushed in a
knot on her bosom. She could only shrink. 'Ah! Percy . . you undo my
praise of you--my pride in receiving you.'

They were speechless perforce.

'You see, Tony, my dearest, I am flesh and blood after all.'

'You drive me to be ice and door-bolts!'

Her eyes broke over him reproachfully.

'It is not so much to grant,' he murmured.

'It changes everything between us.'

'Not me. It binds me the faster.'

'It makes me a loathsome hypocrite.'

'But, Tony! is it so much?'

'Not if you value it low.'

'But how long do you keep me in this rag-puppet's state of suspension?'

'Patience.'

'Dangling and swinging day and night!'

'The rag-puppet shall be animated and repaid if I have life. I wish to
respect my hero. Have a little mercy. Our day will come: perhaps as
wonderfully as this wonderful news. My friend, drop your hands. Have you
forgotten who I am? I want to think, Percy!'

'But you are mine.'

'You are abasing your own.'

'No, by heaven!'

'Worse, dear friend; you are lowering yourself to the woman who loves
you.'

'You must imagine me superhuman.'

'I worship you--or did.'

'Be reasonable, Tony. What harm! Surely a trifle of recompense? Just to
let me feel I live! You own you love me. Then I am your lover.'

'My dear friend Percy, when I have consented to be your paramour, this
kind of treatment of me will not want apologies.'

The plain speaking from the wound he dealt her was effective with a
gentleman who would never have enjoyed his privileges had he been of a
nature unsusceptible to her distinct wish and meaning.

He sighed. 'You know how my family bother me. The woman I want, the only
woman I could marry, I can't have.'

'You have her in soul.'

'Body and soul, it must be! I believe you were made without fire.'

'Perhaps. The element is omitted with some of us happily, some think. Now
we can converse. There seems to be a measurement of distances required
before men and women have a chance with their brains:--or before a man
will understand that he can be advised and seconded. When will the
Cabinet be consulted?'

'Oh, a few days. Promise me . . .'

'Any honourable promise!'

'You will not keep me waiting longer than the end of the Session?'

'Probably there will be an appeal to the country.'

'In any case, promise me: have some compassion.'

'Ah, the compassion! You do not choose your words, Percy, or forget who
is the speaker.'

'It is Tony who forgets the time she has kept her lover dangling.
Promise, and I will wait.'

'You hurt my hand, sir.'

'I could crack the knuckles. Promise!'

'Come to me to-morrow.'

'To-morrow you are in your armour-triple brass! All creation cries out
for now. We are mounted on barbs and you talk of ambling.'

'Arthur Rhodes might have spoken that.'

'Rhodes!' he shook off the name in disgust. 'Pet him as much as you like;
don't . . .' he was unable to phrase his objection.

She cooled him further with eulogies of the chevaleresque manner of
speaking which young Mr. Rhodes could assume; till for very wrath of
blood--not jealousy: he had none of any man, with her; and not passion;
the little he had was a fitful gust--he punished her coldness by taking
what hastily could be gathered.

Her shape was a pained submission; and she thought: Where is the woman
who ever knows a man!--as women do think when one of their artifices of
evasion with a lover, or the trick of imposingness, has apparently been
subduing him. But the pain was less than previously, for she was now
mistress of herself, fearing no abysses.

Dacier released her quickly, saying: 'If I come tomorrow, shall I have
the promise?'

She answered: 'Be sure I shall not lie.'

'Why not let me have it before I go?'

'My friend, to tell you the truth, you have utterly distracted me.'

'Forgive me if I did hurt your hand.'

'The hand? You might strike it off.'

'I can't be other than a mortal lover, Tony. There's the fact.'

'No; the fault is mine when I am degraded. I trust you: there's the
error.'

The trial for Dacier was the sight of her quick-lifting; bosom under the
mask of cold language: an attraction and repulsion in union; a delirium
to any lover impelled to trample on weak defences. But the evident pain
he inflicted moved his pity, which helped to restore his conception of
the beauty of her character. She stood so nobly meek. And she was never
prudish, only self-respecting. Although the great news he imparted had
roused an ardent thirst for holiday and a dash out of harness, and he
could hardly check it, he yielded her the lead.

'Trust me you may,' he said. 'But you know--we are one. The world has
given you to me, me to you. Why should we be asunder? There's no reason
in it.'

She replied: 'But still I wish to burn a little incense in honour of
myself, or else I cannot live. It is the truth. You make Death my truer
friend, and at this moment I would willingly go out. You would respect me
more dead than alive. I could better pardon you too.'

He pleaded for the red mouth's pardon, remotely irritated by the
suspicion that she swayed him overmuch: and he had deserved the small
benevolences and donations of love, crumbs and heavenly dews!

'Not a word of pardon,' said Diana. 'I shall never count an iota against
you "in the dark backward and abysm of Time." This news is great, and I
have sunk beneath it. Come tomorrow. Then we will speak upon whatever you
can prove rational. The hour is getting late.'

Dacier took a draught of her dark beauty with the crimson he had kindled
over the cheeks. Her lips were firmly closed, her eyes grave; dry, but
seeming to waver tearfully in their heavy fulness. He could not doubt her
love of him; and although chafing at the idea that she swayed him
absurdly--beyond the credible in his world of wag-tongues--he resumed his
natural soberness, as a garment, not very uneasily fitting: whence it
ensued--for so are we influenced by the garb we put on us--that his manly
sentiment of revolt in being condemned to play second, was repressed by
the refreshment breathed on him from her lofty character, the pure jewel
proffered to his, inward ownership.

'Adieu for the night,' he said, and she smiled. He pressed for a pressure
of her hand. She brightened her smile instead, and said only: 'Good
night, Percy.'




CHAPTER XXXII

WHEREIN WE BEHOLD A GIDDY TURN AT THE SPECTRAL CROSSWAYS

Danvers accompanied Mr. Dacier to the house-door. Climbing the stairs,
she found her mistress in the drawing-room still.

'You must be cold, ma'am,' she said, glancing at the fire-grate.

'Is it a frost?' said Diana.

'It's midnight and midwinter, ma'am.'

'Has it struck midnight?'

The mantel-piece clock said five minutes past.

'You had better go to bed, Danvers, or you will lose your bloom. Stop;
you are a faithful soul. Great things are happening and I am agitated.
Mr. Dacier has told me news. He came back purposely.'

'Yes, ma'am,' said Danvers. 'He had a great deal to tell?'

'Well, he had.' Diana coloured at the first tentative impertinence she
had heard from her maid. 'What is the secret of you, Danvers? What
attaches you to me?'

'I'm sure I don't know, ma'am. I'm romantic.'

'And you think me a romantic object?'

'I'm sure I can't say, ma'am. I'd rather serve you than any other lady;
and I wish you was happy.'

'Do you suppose I am unhappy?'

'I'm sure--but if I may speak, ma'am: so handsome and clever a lady! and
young! I can't bear to see it.'

'Tush, you silly woman. You read your melting tales, and imagine. I must
go and write for money: it is my profession. And I haven't an idea in my
head. This news disturbs me. Ruin if I don't write; so I must.--I can't!'

Diana beheld the ruin. She clasped the great news for succour. Great
indeed: and known but to her of all the outer world. She was ahead of
all--ahead of Mr. Tonans!

The visionary figure of Mr. Tonans petrified by the great news, drinking
it, and confessing her ahead of him in the race for secrets, arose
toweringly. She had not ever seen the Editor in his den at midnight. With
the rumble of his machinery about him, and fresh matter arriving and
flying into the printing-press, it must be like being in the very
furnace-hissing of Events: an Olympian Council held in Vulcan's smithy.
Consider the bringing to the Jove there news of such magnitude as to
stupefy him! He, too, who had admonished her rather sneeringly for
staleness in her information. But this news, great though it was, and
throbbing like a heart plucked out of a breathing body, throbbed but for
a brief term, a day or two; after which, great though it was, immense, it
relapsed into a common organ, a possession of the multitude, merely
historically curious.

'You are not afraid of the streets at night?' Diana said to her maid, as
they were going upstairs.

'Not when we're driving, ma'am,' was the answer.

THE MAN OF TWO MINDS faced his creatrix in the dressing-room, still
delivering that most ponderous of sentences--a smothering pillow!

I have mistaken my vocation, thought Diana: I am certainly the flattest
proser who ever penned a line.

She sent Dangers into the bedroom on a trifling errand, unable to bear
the woman's proximity, and oddly unwilling to dismiss her.

She pressed her hands on her eyelids. Would Percy have humiliated her so
if he had respected her? He took advantage of the sudden loss of her
habitual queenly initiative at the wonderful news to debase and stain
their intimacy. The lover's behaviour was judged by her sensations: she
felt humiliated, plucked violently from the throne where she had long
been sitting securely, very proudly. That was at an end. If she was to be
better than the loathsomest of hypocrites, she must deny him his
admission to the house. And then what was her life!

Something that was pressing her low, she knew not how, and left it
unquestioned, incited her to exaggerate the indignity her pride had
suffered. She was a dethroned woman. Deeper within, an unmasked actress,
she said. Oh, she forgave him! But clearly he took her for the same as
other women consenting to receive a privileged visitor. And sounding
herself to the soul, was she so magnificently better? Her face flamed.
She hugged her arms at her breast to quiet the beating, and dropped them
when she surprised herself embracing the memory. He had brought political
news, and treated her as--name the thing! Not designedly, it might be:
her position invited it. 'The world had given her to him.' The world is
always a prophet of the mire; but the world is no longer an utterly
mistaken world. She shook before it.

She asked herself why Percy or the world should think highly of an
adventuress, who was a denounced wife, a wretched author, and on the
verge of bankruptcy. She was an adventuress. When she held The Crossways
she had at least a bit of solid footing: now gone. An adventuress without
an idea in her head: witness her dullard, The Man of Two Minds, at his
work of sermonizing his mistress.

The tremendous pressure upon our consciousness of the material cause,
when we find ourselves cast among the breakers of moral difficulties and
endeavour to elude that mudvisaged monster, chiefly by feigning
unconsciousness, was an experience of Diana's, in the crisis to which she
was wrought. Her wits were too acute, her nature too direct, to permit of
a lengthened confusion. She laid the scourge on her flesh smartly.--I
gave him these privileges because I am weak as the weakest, base as my
enemies proclaim me. I covered my woman's vile weakness with an air of
intellectual serenity that he, choosing his moment, tore away, exposing
me to myself, as well as to him, the most ordinary of reptiles. I kept up
a costly household for the sole purpose of seeing him and having him near
me. Hence this bitter need of money!--Either it must be money or
disgrace. Money would assist her quietly to amend and complete her work.
Yes, and this want of money, in a review of the last two years, was the
material cause of her recklessness. It was, her revived and uprising
pudency declared, the principal; the only cause. Mere want of money.

And she had a secret worth thousands! The secret of a day, no more:
anybody's secret after some four and twenty hours.

She smiled at the fancied elongation and stare of the features of Mr.
Tonans in his editorial midnight den.

What if he knew it and could cap it with something novel and stranger?
Hardly. But it was an inciting suggestion.

She began to tremble as a lightning-flash made visible her fortunes
recovered, disgrace averted, hours of peace for composition stretching
before her: a summer afternoon's vista.

It seemed a duel between herself and Mr. Tonans, and she sure of her
triumph--Diana victrix!

'Danvers!' she called.

'Is it to undress, ma'am?' said the maid, entering to her.

'You are not afraid of the streets, you tell me. I have to go down to the
City, I think. It is urgent. Yes, I must go. If I were to impart the news
to you, your head would be a tolling bell for a month.'

'You will take a cab, ma'am.'

'We must walk out to find one. I must go, though I should have to go on
foot. Quick with bonnet and shawl; muffle up warmly. We have never been
out so late: but does it matter? You're a brave soul, I'm sure, and you
shall have your fee.'

'I don't care for money, ma'am.'

'When we get home you shall kiss me.'

Danvers clothed her mistress in furs and rich wrappings: Not paid for!
was Diana's desperate thought, and a wrong one; but she had to seem the
precipitated bankrupt and succeeded. She was near being it. The boiling
of her secret carried her through the streets rapidly and unobservantly
except of such small things as the glow of the lights on the pavements
and the hushed cognizance of the houses, in silence to a thoroughfare
where a willing cabman was met. The destination named, he nodded alertly
he had driven gentlemen there at night from the House of Commons, he
said.

'Our Parliament is now sitting, and you drive ladies,' Diana replied.

'I hope I know one, never mind the hour,' said he of the capes.

He was bidden to drive rapidly.

'Complexion a tulip: you do not often see a pale cabman,' she remarked to
Danvers, who began laughing, as she always expected to do on an excursion
with her mistress.

'Do you remember, ma'am, the cabman taking us to the coach, when you
thought of going to the continent?'

'And I went to The Crossways? I have forgotten him.'

'He declared you was so beautiful a lady he would drive you to the end of
England for nothing.'

'It must have been when I was paying him. Put it out of your mind,
Danvers, that there are individual cabmen. They are the painted flowers
of our metropolitan thoroughfares, and we gather them in rows.'

'They have their feelings, ma'am.'

'Brandied feelings are not pathetic to me.'

'I like to think kindly of them,' Danvers remarked, in reproof of her
inhumanity; adding: 'They may overturn us!' at which Diana laughed. Her
eyes were drawn to a brawl of women and men in the street. 'Ah! that
miserable sight!' she cried. 'It is the everlasting nightmare of London.'

Danvers humped, femininely injured by the notice of it. She wondered her
mistress should deign to.

Rolling on between the blind and darkened houses, Diana transferred her
sensations to them, and in a fit of the nerves imagined them beholding a
funeral convoy without followers.

They came in view of the domed cathedral, hearing, in a pause of the
wheels, the bell of the hour. 'Faster--faster! my dear man,' Diana
murmured, and they entered a small still square of many lighted windows.

'This must be where the morrow is manufactured,' she said. 'Tell the man
to wait.--Or rather it's the mirror of yesterday: we have to look
backward to see forward in life.'

She talked her cool philosophy to mask her excitement from herself. Her
card, marked: 'Imperative-two minutes,' was taken up to Mr. Tonans. They
ascended to the editorial ante-room. Doors opened and shut, hasty feet
traversed the corridors, a dull hum in dumbness told of mighty business
at work. Diana received the summons to the mighty head of the
establishment. Danvers was left to speculate. She heard the voice of Mr.
Tonans: 'Not more than two!' This was not a place for compliments. Men
passed her, hither and yonder, cursorily noticing the presence of a
woman. She lost, very strangely to her, the sense of her sex and became
an object--a disregarded object. Things of more importance were about.
Her feminine self-esteem was troubled; all idea of attractiveness
expired. Here was manifestly a spot where women had dropped from the
secondary to the cancelled stage of their extraordinary career in a world
either blowing them aloft like soap-bubbles or quietly shelving them as
supernumeraries. A gentleman--sweet vision!--shot by to the editor's
door, without even looking cursorily. He knocked. Mr. Tonans appeared and
took him by the arm, dictating at a great rate; perceived Danvers,
frowned at the female, and requested him to wait in the room, which the
gentleman did, not once casting eye upon a woman. At last her mistress
returned to her, escorted so far by Mr. Tonans, and he refreshingly bent
his back to bow over her hand: so we have the satisfaction of knowing
that we are not such poor creatures after all! Suffering in person,
Danvers was revived by the little show of homage to her sex.

They descended the stairs.

'You are not an Editor of a paper, but you may boast that you have been
near the nest of one,' Diana said, when they resumed their seats in the
cab. She breathed deeply from time to time, as if under a weight, or
relieved of it, but she seemed animated, and she dropped now and again a
funny observation of the kind that tickled Danvers and caused the maid to
boast of her everywhere as better than a Play.

At home, Danvers busied her hands to supply her mistress a cup of
refreshing tea and a plate of biscuits.

Diana had stunned herself with the strange weight of the expedition, and
had not a thought. In spite of tea at that hour, she slept soundly
through the remainder of the night, dreamlessly till late into the
morning.




CHAPTER XXXIII

EXHIBITS THE SPRINGING OF A MINE IN A NEWSPAPER ARTICLE

The powers of harmony would seem to be tried to their shrewdest pitch
when Politics and Love are planted together in a human breast. This
apparently opposite couple can nevertheless chant a very sweet accord, as
was shown by Dacier on his homeward walk from Diana's house. Let Love
lead, the God will make music of any chamber-comrade. He was able to
think of affairs of State while feeling the satisfied thirst of the lover
whose pride, irritated by confidential wild eulogies of the beautiful
woman, had recently clamoured for proofs of his commandership. The
impression she stamped on him at Copsley remained, but it could not
occupy the foreground for ever. He did not object to play second to her
sprightly wits in converse, if he had some warm testimony to his mastery
over her blood. For the world had given her to him, enthusiastic friends
had congratulated him: she had exalted him for true knightliness; and he
considered the proofs well earned, though he did not value them low. They
were little by comparison. They lighted, instead of staining, her
unparalleled high character.

She loved him. Full surely did she love him, or such a woman would never
have consented to brave the world; once in their project of flight, and
next, even more endearingly when contemplated, in the sacrifice of her
good name; not omitting that fervent memory of her pained submission, but
a palpitating submission, to his caress. She was in his arms again at the
thought of it. He had melted her, and won the confession of her senses by
a surprise, and he owned that never had woman been so vigilantly
self-guarded or so watchful to keep her lover amused and aloof. Such a
woman deserved long service. But then the long service deserved its time
of harvest. Her surging look of reproach in submission pointed to the
golden time, and as he was a man of honour, pledged to her for life, he
had no remorse, and no scruple in determining to exact her dated promise,
on this occasion deliberately. She was the woman to be his wife; she was
his mind's mate: they had hung apart in deference to mere scruples too
long. During the fierce battle of the Session she would be his help, his
fountain of counsel; and she would be the rosy gauze-veiled more than
cold helper and adviser, the being which would spur her womanly
intelligence to acknowledge, on this occasion deliberately, the wisdom of
the step. They had been so close to it! She might call it madness then:
now it was wisdom. Each had complete experience of the other, and each
vowed the step must be taken. As to the secret communicated, he exulted
in the pardonable cunning of the impulse turning him back to her house
after the guests had gone, and the dexterous play of his bait on the
line, tempting her to guess and quit her queenly guard. Though it had not
been distinctly schemed, the review of it in that light added to the
enjoyment. It had been dimly and richly conjectured as a hoped result.
Small favours from her were really worth, thrice worth, the utmost from
other women. They tasted the sweeter for the winning of them artfully--an
honourable thing in love. Nature, rewarding the lover's ingenuity and
enterprise, inspires him with old Greek notions of right and wrong: and
love is indeed a fluid mercurial realm, continually shifting the
principles of rectitude and larceny. As long as he means nobly, what is
there to condemn him? Not she in her heart. She was the presiding
divinity.

And she, his Tony, that splendid Diana, was the woman the world abused!
Whom will it not abuse?

The slough she would have to plunge in before he could make her his own
with the world's consent, was already up to her throat. She must, and
without further hesitation, be steeped, that he might drag her out,
washed of the imputed defilement, and radiant, as she was in character.
Reflection now said this; not impulse. Her words rang through him. At
every meeting she said things to confound his estimate of the wits of
women, or be remembered for some spirited ring they had: A high wind will
make a dead leaf fly like a bird. He murmured it and flew with her. She
quickened a vein of imagination that gave him entrance to a strangely
brilliant sphere, above his own, where, she sustaining, he too could
soar; and he did, scarce conscious of walking home, undressing, falling
asleep.

The act of waking was an instantaneous recovery of his emotional rapture
of the overnight; nor was it a bar to graver considerations. His Chief
had gone down to a house in the country; his personal business was to see
and sound the followers of their party--after another sight of his Tony.
She would be sure to counsel sagaciously; she always did. She had a
marvellous intuition of the natures of the men he worked with, solely
from his chance descriptions of them; it was as though he started the
bird and she transfixed it. And she should not have matter to rule her
smooth brows: that he swore to. She should sway him as she pleased, be
respected after her prescribed manner. The promise must be exacted;
nothing besides, promise.--You see, Tony, you cannot be less than Tony to
me now, he addressed the gentle phantom of her. Let me have your word,
and I am your servant till the Session ends.--Tony blushes her swarthy
crimson: Diana, fluttering, rebukes her; but Diana is the appeasable
Goddess; Tony is the woman, and she loves him. The glorious Goddess need
not cut them adrift; they can show her a book of honest pages.

Dacier could truthfully say he had worshipped, done knightly service to
the beloved woman, homage to the aureole encircling her. Those friends of
his, covertly congratulating him on her preference, doubtless thought him
more privileged than he was; but they did not know Diana; and they were
welcome, if they would only believe, to the knowledge that he was at the
feet of this most sovereign woman. He despised the particular Satyr-world
which, whatever the nature or station of the woman, crowns the
desecrator, and bestows the title of Fool on the worshipper. He could
have answered veraciously that she had kept him from folly.

Nevertheless the term to service must come. In the assurance of the
approaching term he stood braced against a blowing world; happy as men
are when their muscles are strung for a prize they pluck with the energy
and aim of their whole force.

Letters and morning papers were laid for him to peruse in his
dressing-room. He read his letters before the bath. Not much public news
was expected at the present season. While dressing, he turned over the
sheets of Whitmonby's journal. Dull comments on stale things. Foreign
news. Home news, with the leaders on them, identically dull. Behold the
effect of Journalism: a witty man, sparkling overnight, gets into his
pulpit and proses; because he must say something, and he really knows
nothing.

Journalists have an excessive overestimate of their influence. They
cannot, as Diana said, comparing them with men on the Parliamentary
platform, cannot feel they are aboard the big vessel; they can only
strive to raise a breeze, or find one to swell; and they cannot measure
the stoutness or the greatness of the good ship England. Dacier's
personal ambition was inferior to his desire to extend and strengthen his
England. Parliament was the field, Government the office. How many
conversations had passed between him and Diana on that patriotic dream!
She had often filled his drooping sails; he owned it proudly:--and while
the world, both the hoofed and the rectilinear portions, were biting at
her character! Had he fretted her self-respect? He blamed himself, but a
devoted service must have its term.

The paper of Mr. Tonans was reserved for perusal at breakfast. He
reserved it because Tonans was an opponent, tricksy and surprising now
and then, amusing too; unlikely to afford him serious reflections. The
recent endeavours of his journal to whip the Government-team to a
right-about-face were annoying, preposterous. Dacier had admitted to
Diana that Tonans merited the thanks of the country during 'the
discreditable Railway mania, when his articles had a fine exhortative and
prophetic twang, and had done marked good. Otherwise, as regarded the
Ministry, the veering gusts of Tonans were objectionable: he 'raised the
breeze' wantonly as well as disagreeably. Any one can whip up the
populace if he has the instruments; and Tonans frequently intruded on the
Ministry's prerogative to govern. The journalist was bidding against the
statesman. But such is the condition of a rapidly Radicalizing country!
We must take it as it is.

With a complacent, What now, Dacier fixed his indifferent eyes on the
first column of the leaders. He read, and his eyes grew horny. He jerked
back at each sentence, electrified, staring. The article was shorter than
usual. Total Repeal was named; the precise date when the Minister
intended calling Parliament together to propose it. The 'Total Repeal'
might be guess-work--an Editor's bold stroke; but the details, the date,
were significant of positive information. The Minister's definite and
immediate instructions were exactly stated.

Where could the fellow have got hold of that? Dacier asked the blank
ceiling.

He frowned at vacant corners of the room in an effort to conjure some
speculation indicative of the source.

Had his Chief confided the secret to another and a traitor? Had they been
overheard in his library when the project determined on was put in plain
speech?

The answer was no, impossible, to each question.

He glanced at Diana. She? But it was past midnight when he left her. And
she would never have betrayed him, never, never. To imagine it a moment
was an injury to her.

Where else could he look? It had been specially mentioned in the
communication as a secret by his Chief, who trusted him and no others. Up
to the consultation with the Cabinet, it was a thing to be guarded like
life itself. Not to a soul except Diana would Dacier have breathed
syllable of any secret--and one of this weight!

He ran down the article again. There were the facts; undeniable facts;
and they detonated with audible roaring and rounding echoes of them over
England. How did they come there? As well inquire how man came on the,
face of the earth.

He had to wipe his forehead perpetually. Think as he would in exaltation
of Diana to shelter himself, he was the accused. He might not be the
guilty, but he had opened his mouth; and though it was to her only, and
she, as Dunstane had sworn, true as steel, he could not escape
condemnation. He had virtually betrayed his master. Diana would never
betray her lover, but the thing was in the air as soon as uttered: and
off to the printing-press! Dacier's grotesque fancy under annoyance
pictured a stream of small printer's devils in flight from his babbling
lips.

He consumed bits of breakfast, with a sour confession that a
newspaper-article had hit him at last, and stunningly.

Hat and coat were called for. The state of aimlessness in hot perplexity
demands a show of action. Whither to go first was as obscure as what to
do. Diana said of the Englishman's hat and coat, that she supposed they
were to make him a walking presentment of the house he had shut up behind
him. A shot of the eye at the glass confirmed the likeness, but with a
ruefully wry-faced repudiation of it internally:--Not so shut up! the
reverse of that-a common babbler.

However, there was no doubt of Diana. First he would call on her. The
pleasantest dose in perturbations of the kind is instinctively taken
first. She would console, perhaps direct him to guess how the secret had
leaked. But so suddenly, immediately! It was inexplicable.

Sudden and immediate consequences were experienced. On the steps of his
house his way was blocked by the arrival of Mr. Quintin Manx, who jumped
out of a cab, bellowing interjections and interrogations in a breath. Was
there anything in that article? He had read it at breakfast, and it had
choked him. Dacier was due at a house and could not wait: he said, rather
sharply, he was not responsible for newspaper articles. Quintin Manx, a
senior gentleman and junior landowner, vowed that no Minister intending
to sell the country should treat him as a sheep. The shepherd might go;
he would not carry his flock with him. But was there a twinkle of
probability in the story? . . . that article! Dacier was unable to inform
him; he was very hurried, had to keep an appointment.

'If I let you go, will you come and lunch with me at two?' said Quintin.

To get rid of him, Dacier nodded and agreed.

'Two o'clock, mind!' was bawled at his heels as he walked off with his
long stride, unceremoniously leaving the pursy gentleman of sixty to
settle with his cabman far to the rear.




CHAPTER XXXIV

IN WHICH IT IS DARKLY SEEN HOW THE CRIMINAL'S JUDGE MAY BE LOVE'S
CRIMINAL

When we are losing balance on a precipice we do not think much of the
thing we have clutched for support. Our balance is restored and we have
not fallen; that is the comfortable reflection: we stand as others do,
and we will for the future be warned to avoid the dizzy stations which
cry for resources beyond a common equilibrium, and where a slip
precipitates us to ruin.

When, further, it is a woman planted in a burning blush, having to
idealize her feminine weakness, that she may not rebuke herself for
grovelling, the mean material acts by which she sustains a tottering
position are speedily swallowed in the one pervading flame. She sees but
an ashen curl of the path she has traversed to safety, if anything.

Knowing her lover was to come in the morning, Diana's thoughts dwelt
wholly upon the way to tell him, as tenderly as possible without danger
to herself, that her time for entertaining was over until she had
finished her book; indefinitely, therefore. The apprehension of his
complaining pricked the memory that she had something to forgive. He had
sunk her in her own esteem by compelling her to see her woman's softness.
But how high above all other men her experience of him could place him
notwithstanding! He had bowed to the figure of herself, dearer than
herself, that she set before him: and it was a true figure to the world;
a too fictitious to any but the most knightly of lovers. She forgave; and
a shudder seized her.--Snake! she rebuked the delicious run of fire
through her veins; for she was not like the idol women of imperishable
type, who are never for a twinkle the prey of the blood: statues created
by man's common desire to impress upon the sex his possessing pattern of
them as domestic decorations.

When she entered the room to Dacier and they touched hands, she rejoiced
in her coolness, without any other feeling or perception active. Not to
be unkind, not too kind: this was her task. She waited for the passage of
commonplaces.

'You slept well, Percy?'

'Yes; and you?'

'I don't think I even dreamed.'

They sat. She noticed the cloud on him and waited for his allusion to it,
anxious concerning him simply.

Dacier flung the hair off his temples. Words of Titanic formation were
hurling in his head at journals and journalists. He muttered his disgust
of them.

'Is there anything to annoy you in the papers to-day?' she asked, and
thought how handsome his face was in anger.

The paper of Mr. Tonans was named by him. 'You have not seen it?

'I have not opened it yet.'

He sprang up. 'The truth is, those fellows can now afford to buy right
and left, corrupt every soul alive! There must have been a spy at the
keyhole. I'm pretty certain--I could swear it was not breathed to any ear
but mine; and there it is this morning in black and white.'

'What is?' cried Diana, turning to him on her chair.

'The thing I told you last night.'

Her lips worked, as if to spell the thing. 'Printed, do you say?' she
rose.

'Printed. In a leading article, loud as a trumpet; a hue and cry running
from end to end of the country. And my Chief has already had the
satisfaction of seeing the secret he confided to me yesterday roared in
all the thoroughfares this morning. They've got the facts: his decision
to propose it, and the date--the whole of it! But who could have betrayed
it?'

For the first time since her midnight expedition she felt a sensation of
the full weight of the deed. She heard thunder.

She tried to disperse the growing burden by an inward summons to contempt
of the journalistic profession, but nothing would come. She tried to
minimize it, and her brain succumbed. Her views of the deed last night
and now throttled reason in two contending clutches. The enormity swelled
its dimensions, taking shape, and pointing magnetically at her. She stood
absolutely, amazedly, bare before it.

'Is it of such very great importance?' she said, like one supplicating
him to lessen it.

'A secret of State? If you ask whether it is of great importance to me,
relatively it is of course. Nothing greater. Personally my conscience is
clear. I never mentioned it--couldn't have mentioned it--to any one but
you. I'm not the man to blab secrets. He spoke to me because he knew he
could trust me. To tell you the truth, I'm brought to a dead stop. I
can't make a guess.

I'm certain, from what he said, that he trusted me only with it:
perfectly certain. I know him well. He was in his library, speaking in
his usual conversational tone, deliberately, nor overloud. He stated that
it was a secret between us.'

'Will it affect him?'

'This article? Why, naturally it will. You ask strange questions. A
Minister coming to a determination like that! It affects him vitally. The
members of the Cabinet are not so devoted . . . . It affects us all--the
whole Party; may split it to pieces! There's no reckoning the upset right
and left. If it were false, it could be refuted; we could despise it as a
trick of journalism. It's true. There's the mischief. Tonans did not
happen to call here last night?--absurd! I left later than twelve.'

'No, but let me hear,' Diana said hurriedly, for the sake of uttering the
veracious negative and to slur it over. 'Let me hear . . .' She could not
muster an idea.

Her delicious thrilling voice was a comfort to him. He lifted his breast
high and thumped it, trying to smile. 'After all, it's pleasant being
with you, Tony. Give me your hand--you may: I 'm bothered--confounded by
this morning surprise. It was like walking against the muzzle of a loaded
cannon suddenly unmasked. One can't fathom the mischief it will do. And I
shall be suspected, and can't quite protest myself the spotless innocent.
Not even to my heart's mistress! to the wife of the bosom! I suppose I'm
no Roman. You won't give me your hand? Tony, you might, seeing I am
rather . . .'

A rush of scalding tears flooded her eyes.

'Don't touch me,' she said, and forced her sight to look straight at him
through the fiery shower. 'I have done positive mischief?'

'You, my dear Tony?' He doated on her face. 'I don't blame you, I blame
myself. These things should never be breathed. Once in the air, the devil
has hold of them. Don't take it so much to heart. The thing's bad enough
to bear as it is. Tears! Let me have the hand. I came, on my honour, with
the most honest intention to submit to your orders: but if I see you
weeping in sympathy!'

'Oh! for heaven's sake,' she caught her hands away from him, 'don't be
generous. Whip me with scorpions. And don't touch me,' cried Diana. 'Do
you understand? You did not name it as a secret. I did not imagine it to
be a secret of immense, immediate importance.'

'But--what?' shouted Dacier, stiffening.

He wanted her positive meaning, as she perceived, having hoped that it
was generally taken and current, and the shock to him over.

'I had . . . I had not a suspicion of doing harm, Percy.'

'But what harm have you done? No riddles!'

His features gave sign of the break in their common ground, the widening
gulf.

'I went . . . it was a curious giddiness: I can't account for it. I
thought . . .'

'Went? You went where?'

'Last night. I would speak intelligibly: my mind has gone. Ah! you look.
It is not so bad as my feeling.'

'But where did you go last night? What!--to Tonans?'

She drooped her head: she saw the track of her route cleaving the
darkness in a demoniacal zig-zag and herself in demon's grip.

'Yes,' she confronted him. 'I went to Mr. Tonans.'

'Why?'

'I went to him--'

'You went alone?'

'I took my maid.'

'Well?'

'It was late when you left me . . .'

'Speak plainly!'

'I am trying: I will tell you all.'

'At once, if you please.'

'I went to him--why? There is no accounting for it. He sneered constantly
at my stale information.'

'You gave him constant information?'

'No: in our ordinary talk. He railed at me for being "out of it." I must
be childish: I went to show him--oh! my vanity! I think I must have been
possessed.'

She watched the hardening of her lover's eyes. They penetrated, and
through them she read herself insufferably.

But it was with hesitation still that he said: 'Then you betrayed me?'

'Percy! I had not a suspicion of mischief.'

'You went straight to this man?'

'Not thinking . . .'

'You sold me to a journalist!'

'I thought it was a secret of a day. I don't think you--no, you did not
tell me to keep it secret. A word from you would have been enough. I was
in extremity.'

Dacier threw his hands up and broke away. He had an impulse to dash from
the room, to get a breath of different air. He stood at the window,
observing tradesmen's carts, housemaids, blank doors, dogs, a beggar
fifer. Her last words recurred to him. He turned: 'You were in extremity,
you said. What is the meaning of that? What extremity?'

Her large dark eyes flashed powerlessly; her shape appeared to have
narrowed; her tongue, too, was a feeble penitent.

'You ask a creature to recall her acts of insanity.'

'There must be some signification in your words, I suppose.'

'I will tell you as clearly as I can. You have the right to be my judge.
I was in extremity--that is, I saw no means . . . I could not write: it
was ruin coming.'

'Ah?--you took payment for playing spy?'

'I fancied I could retrieve . . . Now I see the folly, the baseness. I
was blind.'

'Then you sold me to a journalist for money?'

The intolerable scourge fetched a stifled scream from her and drove her
pacing, but there was no escape; she returned to meet it.

The room was a cage to both of them, and every word of either was a
sting.

'Percy, I did not imagine he would use it--make use of it as he has
done.'

'Not? And when he paid for it?'

'I fancied it would be merely of general service--if any.'

'Distributed; I see: not leading to the exposure of the communicant!'

'You are harsh; but I would not have you milder.'

The meekness of such a mischief-doer was revolting and called for the
lash.

'Do me the favour to name the sum. I am curious to learn what my
imbecility was counted worth.'

'No sum was named.'

'Have I been bought for a song?'

'It was a suggestion--no definite . . . nothing stipulated.'

'You were to receive money!'

'Leave me a bit of veiling! No, you shall behold me the thing I am.
Listen . . . I was poor . . .'

'You might have applied to me.'

'For money! That I could not do:

'Better than betraying me, believe me.'

'I had no thought of betraying. I hope I could have died rather than
consciously betray.'

'Money! My whole fortune was at your, disposal.'

'I was beset with debts, unable to write, and, last night when you left
me, abject. It seemed to me that you disrespected me . . .'

'Last night!' Dacier cried with lashing emphasis.

'It is evident to me that I have the reptile in me, Percy. Or else I am
subject to lose my reason. I went . . . I went like a bullet: I cannot
describe it; I was mad. I need a strong arm, I want help. I am given to
think that I do my best and can be independent; I break down. I went
blindly--now I see it--for the chance of recovering my position, as the
gambler casts; and he wins or loses. With me it is the soul that is lost.
No exact sum was named; thousands were hinted.'

'You are hardly practical on points of business.'

'I was insane.'

'I think you said you slept well after it,' Dacier remarked.

'I had so little the idea of having done evilly, that I slept without a
dream.'

He shrugged:--the consciences of women are such smooth deeps, or running
shallows.

'I have often wondered how your newspaper men got their information,' he
said, and muttered: 'Money-women!' adding: 'Idiots to prime them! And I
one of the leaky vessels! Well, we learn. I have been rather astonished
at times of late at the scraps of secret knowledge displayed by Tonans.
If he flourishes his thousands! The wonder is, he doesn't corrupt the
Ministers' wives. Perhaps he does. Marriage will become a danger-sign to
Parliamentary members. Foreign women do these tricks . . . women of a
well-known stamp. It is now a full year, I think, since I began to speak
to you of secret matters--and congratulated myself, I recollect, on your
thirst for them.'

'Percy, if you suspect that I have uttered one word before last night,
you are wrong. I cannot paint my temptation or my loss of sense last
night. Previously I was blameless. I thirsted, yes; but in the hope of
helping you.'

He looked at her. She perceived how glitteringly loveless his eyes had
grown. It was her punishment; and though the enamoured woman's heart
protested it excessive, she accepted it.

'I can never trust you again,' he said.

'I fear you will not,' she replied.

His coming back to her after the departure of the guests last night shone
on him in splendid colours of single-minded loverlike devotion. 'I came
to speak to my own heart. I thought it would give you pleasure; thought I
could trust you utterly. I had not the slightest conception I was
imperilling my honour . . . !'

He stopped. Her bloodless fixed features revealed an intensity of anguish
that checked him. Only her mouth, a little open for the sharp breath,
appeared dumbly beseeching. Her large eyes met his like steel to steel,
as of one who would die fronting the weapon.

He strangled a loathsome inclination to admire.

'So good bye,' he said.

She moved her lips.

He said no more. In half a minute he was gone.

To her it was the plucking of life out of her breast.

She pressed her hands where heart had been. The pallor and cold of death
took her body.




CHAPTER XXXV

REVEALS HOW THE TRUE HEROINE OF ROMANCE COMES FINALLY TO HER, TIME OF
TRIUMPH

The shutting of her house-door closed for Dacier that woman's history in
connection with himself. He set his mind on the consequences of the act
of folly--the trusting a secret to a woman. All were possibly not so bad:
none should be trusted.

The air of the street fanned him agreeably as he revolved the horrible
project of confession to the man who had put faith in him. Particulars
might be asked. She would be unnamed, but an imagination of the effect of
naming her placarded a notorious woman in fresh paint: two members of the
same family her victims!

And last night, no later than last night, he had swung round at this very
corner of the street to give her the fullest proof of his affection. He
beheld a dupe trotting into a carefully-laid pitfall. She had him by the
generosity of his confidence in her. Moreover, the recollection of her
recent feeble phrasing, when she stood convicted of the treachery, when a
really clever woman would have developed her resources, led him to doubt
her being so finely gifted. She was just clever enough to hoodwink. He
attributed the dupery to a trick of imposing the idea of her virtue upon
men. Attracted by her good looks and sparkle, they entered the circle of
her charm, became delightfully intimate, suffered a rebuff, and were from
that time prepared to serve her purpose. How many other wretched dupes
had she dangling? He spied at Westlake, spied at Redworth, at old Lord
Larrian, at Lord Dannisburgh, at Arthur Rhodes, dozens. Old and young
were alike to her if she saw an end to be gained by keeping them hooked.
Tonans too, and Whitmonby. Newspaper editors were especially serviceable.
Perhaps 'a young Minister of State' held the foremost rank in that
respect: if completely duped and squeezeable, he produced more
substantial stuff.

The background of ice in Dacier's composition was brought to the front by
his righteous contempt of her treachery. No explanation of it would have
appeased him. She was guilty, and he condemned her. She stood condemned
by all the evil likely to ensue from her misdeed. Scarcely had he left
her house last night when she was away to betray him!--He shook her from
him without a pang. Crediting her with the one merit she had--that of not
imploring for mercy--he the more easily shook her off. Treacherous, she
had not proved theatrical. So there was no fuss in putting out her light,
and it was done. He was justified by the brute facts. Honourable,
courteous, kindly gentleman, highly civilized, an excellent citizen and a
patriot, he was icy at an outrage to his principles, and in the dominion
of Love a sultan of the bow-string and chopper period, sovereignly
endowed to stretch a finger for the scimitared Mesrour to make the erring
woman head and trunk with one blow: and away with those remnants! This
internally he did. Enough that the brute facts justified him.

St. James's park was crossed, and the grass of the Green park, to avoid
inquisitive friends. He was obliged to walk; exercise, action of any
sort, was imperative, and but for some engagement he would have gone to
his fencing-rooms for a bout with the master. He remembered his
engagement and grew doubly embittered. He had absurdly pledged himself to
lunch with Quintin Manx; that was, to pretend to eat while submitting to
be questioned by a political dullard strong on his present right to
overhaul and rail at his superiors. The house was one of a block along
the North-Western line of Hyde park. He kicked at the subjection to go
there, but a promise was binding, though he gave it when stunned. He
could have silenced Mr. Manx with the posing interrogation: Why have I so
long consented to put myself at the mercy of a bore? For him, he could
not answer it, though Manx, as leader of the Shipping interest, was
influential. The man had to be endured, like other doses in politics.

Dacier did not once think of the great ship-owner's niece till Miss
Constance Asper stepped into her drawing-room to welcome him. She was an
image of repose to his mind. The calm pure outline of her white features
refreshed him as the Alps the Londoner newly alighted at Berne; smoke,
wrangle, the wrestling city's wickedness, behind him.

'My uncle is very disturbed,' she said. 'Is the news--if I am not very
indiscreet in inquiring?'

'I have a practice of never paying attention to newspaper articles,'
Dacier replied.

'I am only affected by living with one who does,' Miss Asper observed,
and the lofty isolation of her head above politics gave her a moral
attractiveness in addition to physical beauty. Her water-colour sketches
were on her uncle's walls: the beautiful in nature claimed and absorbed
her. She dressed with a pretty rigour, a lovely simplicity, picturesque
of the nunnery. She looked indeed a high-born young lady-abbess.

'It's a dusty game for ladies,' Dacier said, abhorring the women defiled
by it.

And when one thinks of the desire of men to worship women, there is a
pathos in a man's discovery of the fair young creature undefiled by any
interest in public affairs, virginal amid her bower's environments.

The angelical beauty of a virgin mind and person captivated him, by
contrast. His natural taste was to admire it, shunning the lures and
tangles of the women on high seas, notably the married: who, by the way,
contrive to ensnare us through wonderment at a cleverness caught from
their traffic with the masculine world: often--if we did but know!--a
parrot-repetition of the last male visitor's remarks. But that which the
fair maiden speaks, though it may be simple, is her own.

She too is her own: or vowed but to one. She is on all sides impressive
in purity. The world worships her as its perfect pearl: and we are
brought refreshfully to acknowledge that the world is right.

By contrast, the white radiation of Innocence distinguished Constance
Asper celestially. As he was well aware, she had long preferred him--the
reserved among many pleading pressing suitors. Her steady faithfulness
had fed on the poorest crumbs.

He ventured to express the hope that she was well.

'Yes,' she answered, with eyelids lifted softly to thank him for his
concern in so humble a person.

'You look a little pale,' he said.

She coloured like a sea-water shell. 'I am inclined to paleness by
nature.'

Her uncle disturbed them. Lunch was ready. He apologized for the absence
of Mrs. Markland, a maternal aunt of Constance, who kept house for them.
Quintin Manx fell upon the meats, and then upon the Minister. Dacier
found himself happily surprised by the accession of an appetite. He
mentioned it, to escape from the worrying of his host, as unusual with
him at midday: and Miss Asper, supporting him in that effort, said
benevolently: 'Gentlemen should eat; they have so many fatigues and
troubles.' She herself did not like to be seen eating in public. Her lips
opened to the morsels, as with a bird's bill, though with none of the
pecking eagerness we complacently observe in poultry.

'But now, I say, positively, how about that article?' said Quintin.

Dacier visibly winced, and Constance immediately said 'Oh! spare us
politics, dear uncle.'

Her intercession was without avail, but by contrast with the woman
implicated in the horrible article, it was a carol of the seraphs.

'Come, you can say whether there's anything in it,' Dacier's host pushed
him.

'I should not say it if I could,' he replied.

The mild sweetness of Miss Asper's look encouraged him.

He was touched to the quick by hearing her say: 'You ask for Cabinet
secrets, uncle. All secrets are holy, but secrets of State are under a
seal next to divine.'

Next to divine! She was the mouthpiece of his ruling principle.

'I 'm not, prying into secrets,' Quintin persisted; 'all I want to know
is, whether there 's any foundation for that article--all London's
boiling about it, I can tell you--or it's only newspaper's humbug.'

'Clearly the oracle for you is the Editor's office,' rejoined Dacier.

'A pretty sort of answer I should get.'

'It would at least be complimentary.'

'How do you mean?'

'The net was cast for you--and the sight of a fish in it!'

Miss Asper almost laughed. 'Have you heard the choir at St. Catherine's?'
she asked.

Dacier had not. He repented of his worldliness, and drinking persuasive
claret, said he would go to hear it next Sunday.

'Do,' she murmured.

'Well, you seem to be a pair against me,' her uncle grumbled. 'Anyhow I
think it's important. People have been talking for some time, and I don't
want to be taken unawares; I won't be a yoked ox, mind you.'

'Have you been sketching lately?' Dacier asked Miss Asper.

She generally filled a book in the autumn, she said.

'May I see it?'

'If you wish.'

They had a short tussle with her uncle and escaped. He was conducted to a
room midway upstairs: an heiress's conception of a saintly little room;
and more impresive in purity, indeed it was, than a saint's, with the
many crucifixes, gold and silver emblems, velvet prie-Dieu chairs,
jewel-clasped sacred volumes: every invitation to meditate in luxury on
an ascetic religiousness.

She depreciated her sketching powers. 'I am impatient with my
imperfections. I am therefore doomed not to advance.'

'On the contrary, that is the state guaranteeing ultimate excellence,' he
said, much disposed to drone about it.

She sighed: 'I fear not.'

He turned the leaves, comparing her modesty with the performance. The
third of the leaves was a subject instantly recognized by him. It
represented the place he had inherited from Lord Dannisburgh.

He named it.

She smiled: 'You are good enough to see a likeness? My aunt and I were
passing it last October, and I waited for a day, to sketch.'

'You have taken it from my favourite point of view.'

'I am glad.'

'How much I should like a copy!'

'If you will accept that?'

'I could not rob you.'

'I can make a duplicate.'

'The look of the place pleases you?'

'Oh! yes; the pines behind it; the sweet little village church; even the
appearance of the rustics;--it is all impressively old English. I suppose
you are very seldom there?'

'Does it look like a home to you?'

'No place more!'

'I feel the loneliness.'

'Where I live I feel no loneliness!'

'You have heavenly messengers near you.'

'They do not always come.'

'Would you consent to make the place less lonely to me?'

Her bosom rose. In deference to her maidenly understanding, she gazed
inquiringly.

'If you love it!' said he.

'The place?' she said, looking soft at the possessor.

'Constance!'

'Is it true?'

'As you yourself. Could it be other than true? This hand is mine?'

'Oh! Percy.'

Borrowing the world's poetry to describe them, the long prayed-for Summer
enveloped the melting snows.

So the recollection of Diana's watch beside his uncle's death-bed was
wiped out. Ay, and the hissing of her treachery silenced. This maidenly
hand put him at peace with the world, instead of his defying it for a
worthless woman--who could not do better than accept the shelter of her
husband's house, as she ought to be told, if her friends wished her to
save her reputation.

Dacier made his way downstairs to Quintin Manx, by whom he was hotly
congratulated and informed of the extent of the young lady's fortune: on
the strength of which it was expected that he would certainly speak a
private word in elucidation of that newspaper article.

'I know nothing of it,' said Dacier, but promised to come and dine. Alone
in her happiness Constance Asper despatched various brief notes under her
gold-symbolled crest to sisterly friends; one to Lady Wathin, containing
the, single line:

'Your prophesy is confirmed.'

Dacier was comfortably able to face his Club after the excitement of a
proposal, with a bride on his hands. He was assaulted concerning the
article, and he parried capitally. Say that her lips were rather cold: at
any rate, they invigorated him. Her character was guaranteed--not the
hazy idea of a dupe. And her fortune would be enormous: a speculation
merely due to worldly prudence and prospective ambition.

At the dinner-table of four, in the evening, conversation would have
seemed dull to him, by contrast, had it not, been for the presiding grace
of his bride, whose habitually eminent feminine air of superiority to the
repast was throned by her appreciative receptiveness of his looks and
utterances. Before leaving her, he won her consent to a very early
marriage; on the plea of a possibly approaching Session, and also that
they had waited long. The consent, notwithstanding the hurry of
preparations, it involved, besides the annihilation of her desire to
meditate on so solemn a change in her life and savour the congratulations
of her friends and have the choir of St. Catherine's rigorously drilled
in her favourite anthems was beautifully yielded to the pressure of
circumstances.

There lay on his table at night a letter; a bulky letter. No need to tear
it open for sight of the signature: the superscription was redolent of
that betraying woman. He tossed it unopened into the fire.

As it was thick, it burned sullenly, discolouring his name on the
address, as she had done, and still offering him a last chance of viewing
the contents. She fought on the consuming fire to have her exculpation
heard.

But was she not a shameless traitor? She had caught him by his love of
his country and hope to serve it. She had wound into his heart to bleed
him of all he knew and sell the secrets for money. A wonderful sort of
eloquence lay there, on those coals, no doubt. He felt a slight movement
of curiosity to glance at two or three random sentences: very slight. And
why read them now? They were valueless to him, mere outcries. He judged
her by the brute facts. She and her slowly-consuming letter were of a
common blackness. Moreover, to read them when he was plighted to another
woman would be senseless. In the discovery of her baseness, she had made
a poor figure. Doubtless during the afternoon she had trimmed her
intuitive Belial art of making 'the worse appear the better cause': queer
to peruse, and instructive in an unprofitable department of knowledge-the
tricks of the sex.

He said to himself, with little intuition of the popular taste: She
wouldn't be a bad heroine of Romance! He said it derisively of the
Romantic. But the right worshipful heroine of Romance was the front-face
female picture he had won for his walls. Poor Diana was the flecked
heroine of Reality: not always the same; not impeccable; not an
ignorant-innocent, nor a guileless: good under good leading; devoted to
the death in a grave crisis; often wrestling with her terrestrial nature
nobly; and a growing soul; but not one whose purity was carved in marble
for the assurance to an Englishman that his possession of the changeless
thing defies time and his fellows, is the pillar of his home and
universally enviable. Your fair one of Romance cannot suffer a mishap
without a plotting villain, perchance many of them; to wreak the dread
iniquity: she cannot move without him; she is the marble block, and if
she is to have a feature, he is the sculptor; she depends on him for
life, and her human history at least is married to him far more than to
the rescuing lover. No wonder, then, that men should find her thrice
cherishable featureless, or with the most moderate possible indication of
a countenance. Thousands of the excellent simple creatures do; and every
reader of her tale. On the contrary, the heroine of Reality is that woman
whom you have met or heard of once in your course of years, and very
probably despised for bearing in her composition the motive principle; at
best, you say, a singular mixture of good and bad; anything but the
feminine ideal of man. Feature to some excess, you think, distinguishes
her. Yet she furnishes not any of the sweet sensual excitement pertaining
to her spotless rival pursued by villany. She knocks at the doors of the
mind, and the mind must open to be interested in her. Mind and heart must
be wide open to excuse her sheer descent from the pure ideal of man.

Dacier's wandering reflections all came back in crowds to the judicial
Bench of the Black Cap. He felt finely, apart from the treason, that her
want of money degraded her: him too, by contact. Money she might have had
to any extent: upon application for it, of course. How was he to imagine
that she wanted money! Smilingly as she welcomed him and his friends,
entertaining them royally, he was bound to think she had means. A decent
propriety bound him not to think of the matter at all. He naturally
supposed she was capable of conducting her affairs. And--money! It soiled
his memory: though the hour at Rovio was rather pretty, and the scene at
Copsley touching: other times also, short glimpses of the woman, were
taking. The flood of her treachery effaced them. And why reflect?
Constance called to him to look her way.

Diana's letter died hard. The corners were burnt to black tissue, with an
edge or two of discoloured paper. A small frayed central heap still
resisted, and in kindness to the necessity for privacy, he impressed the
fire-tongs to complete the execution. After which he went to his desk and
worked, under the presidency of Constance.




CHAPTER XXXVI

IS CONCLUSIVE AS TO THE HEARTLESSNESS OF WOMEN WITH BRAINS

Hymenaeal rumours are those which might be backed to run a victorious
race with the tale of evil fortune; and clearly for the reason that man's
livelier half is ever alert to speed them. They travel with an
astonishing celerity over the land, like flames of the dry beacon-faggots
of old time in announcement of the invader or a conquest, gathering as
they go: wherein, to say nothing of their vastly wider range, they
surpass the electric wires. Man's nuptial half is kindlingly concerned in
the launch of a new couple; it is the business of the fair sex: and man
himself (very strangely, but nature quickens him still) lends a not
unfavouring eye to the preparations of the matrimonial vessel for its
oily descent into the tides, where billows will soon be rising, captain
and mate soon discussing the fateful question of who is commander. We
consent, it appears, to hope again for mankind; here is another chance!
Or else, assuming the happiness of the pair, that pomp of ceremonial,
contrasted with the little wind-blown candle they carry between them,
catches at our weaker fibres.

After so many ships have foundered, some keel up, like poisoned fish, at
the first drink of water, it is a gallant spectacle, let us avow; and
either the world perpetuating it is heroical or nature incorrigible in
the species. Marriages are unceasing. Friends do it, and enemies; the
unknown contractors of this engagement, or armistice, inspire an
interest. It certainly is both exciting and comforting to hear that man
and woman are ready to join in a mutual affirmative, say Yes together
again. It sounds like the end of the war.

The proclamation of the proximate marriage of a young Minister of State
and the greatest heiress of her day; notoriously 'The young Minister of
State' of a famous book written by the beautiful, now writhing, woman
madly enamoured of him--and the heiress whose dowry could purchase a
Duchy; this was a note to make the gossips of England leap from their
beds at the midnight hour and wag tongues in the market-place. It did
away with the political hubbub over the Tonans article, and let it noise
abroad like nonsense. The Hon. Percy Dacier espouses Miss Asper; and she
rescues him from the snares of a siren, he her from the toils of the
Papists. She would have gone over to them, she was going when, luckily
for the Protestant Faith, Percy Dacier intervened with his proposal. Town
and country buzzed the news; and while that dreary League trumpeted about
the business of the nation, a people suddenly become Oriental chattered
of nothing but the blissful union to be celebrated in princely state,
with every musical accessory, short of Operatic.

Lady Wathin was an active agent in this excitement. The excellent woman
enjoyed marriages of High Life: which, as there is presumably wealth to
support them, are manifestly under sanction: and a marriage that she
could consider one of her own contrivance, had a delicate flavour of a
marriage in the family; not quite equal to the seeing a dear daughter of
her numerous progeny conducted to the altar, but excelling it in the pomp
that bids the heavens open. She and no other spread the tidings of Miss
Asper's debating upon the step to Rome at the very instant of Percy
Dacier's declaration of his love; and it was a beautiful struggle, that
of the half-dedicated nun and her deep-rooted earthly passion, love
prevailing! She sent word to Lady Dunstane: 'You know the interest I have
always taken in dear Constance Aspen' etc.; inviting her to come on a
visit a week before the end of the month, that she might join in the
ceremony of a wedding 'likely to be the grandest of our time.' Pitiful
though it was, to think of the bridal pair having but eight or ten days
at the outside, for a honeymoon, the beauty of their 'mutual devotion to
duty' was urged by Lady Wathin upon all hearers.

Lady Dunstane declined the invitation. She waited to hear from her
friend, and the days went by; she could only sorrow for her poor Tony,
divining her state. However little of wrong in the circumstances, they
imposed a silence on her decent mind, and no conceivable shape of writing
would transmit condolences. She waited, with a dull heartache: by no
means grieving at Dacier's engagement to the heiress; until Redworth
animated her, as the bearer of rather startling intelligence, indirectly
relating to the soul she loved. An accident in the street had befallen
Mr. Warwick. Redworth wanted to know whether Diana should be told of it,
though he had no particulars to give; and somewhat to his disappointment,
Lady Dunstane said she would write. She delayed, thinking the accident
might not be serious; and the information of it to Diana surely would be
so. Next day at noon her visitor was Lady Wathin, evidently perturbed and
anxious to say more than she dared: but she received no assistance. After
beating the air in every direction, especially dwelling on the fond
reciprocal affection of the two devoted lovers, to be united within three
days' time, Lady Wathin said at last: 'And is it not shocking! I talk of
a marriage and am appalled by a death. That poor man died last night in
the hospital. I mean poor Mr. Warwick. He was recovering, getting strong
and well, and he was knocked down at a street-crossing and died last
night. It is a warning to us!'

'Mr. Redworth happened to hear of it at his Club, near which the accident
occurred, and he called at the hospital. Mr. Warwick was then alive,'
said Lady Dunstane; adding: 'Well, if prevention is better than cure, as
we hear! Accidents are the specific for averting the maladies of age,
which are a certain crop!'

Lady Wathin's eyelids worked and her lips shut fast at the cold-hearted
remark void of meaning.

She sighed. 'So ends a life of misery, my dear!'

'You are compassionate.'

'I hope so. But . . . Indeed I must speak, if you will let me. I think of
the living.'

Lady Dunstane widened her eyes. 'Of Mrs. Warwick?'

'She has now the freedom she desired. I think of others. Forgive me, but
Constance Asper is to me as a daughter. I have perhaps no grounds for any
apprehension. Love so ardent, so sincere, was never shown by bridegroom
elect: and it is not extraordinary to those acquainted with dear
Constance. But--one may be a worshipped saint and experience defection.
The terrible stories one hears of a power of fascination almost . . . !'
Lady Wathin hung for the word.

'Infernal,' said Lady Dunstane, whose brows had been bent inquiringly.
'Have no fear. The freedom you allude to will not be used to interfere
with any entertainment in prospect. It was freedom my friend desired. Now
that her jewel is restored to her, she is not the person to throw it
away, be sure. And pray, drop the subject.'

'One may rely . . . you think?'

'Oh! Oh!'

'This release coming just before the wedding . . . !'

'I should hardly suppose the man to be the puppet you depict, or
indicate.'

'It is because men--so many--are not puppets that one is conscious of
alarm.'

'Your previous remark,' said Lady Dunstane, 'sounded superstitious. Your
present one has an antipodal basis. But, as for your alarm, check it: and
spare me further. My friend has acknowledged powers. Considering that,
she does not use them, you should learn to respect her.'

Lady Wathin bowed stiffly. She refused to partake of lunch, having, she
said, satisfied her conscience by the performance of a duty and arranged
with her flyman to catch a train. Her cousin Lady Dunstane smiled loftily
at everything she uttered, and she felt that if a woman like this Mrs.
Warwick could put division between blood-relatives, she could do worse,
and was to be dreaded up to the hour of the nuptials.

'I meant no harm in coming,' she said, at the shaking of hands.

'No, no; I understand,' said her hostess: 'you are hen-hearted over your
adopted brood. The situation is perceptible and your intention
creditable.'

As one of the good women of the world, Lady Wathin in departing was
indignant at the tone and dialect of a younger woman not modestly
concealing her possession of the larger brain. Brains in women she both
dreaded and detested; she believed them to be devilish. Here were
instances:--they had driven poor Sir Lukin to evil courses, and that poor
Mr. Warwick straight under the wheels of a cab. Sir Lukin's name was
trotting in public with a naughty Mrs. Fryar-Gunnett's: Mrs. Warwick
might still trim her arts to baffle the marriage. Women with brains,
moreover, are all heartless: they have no pity for distress, no horror of
catastrophes, no joy in the happiness of the deserving. Brains in men
advance a household to station; but brains in women divide it and are the
wrecking of society. Fortunately Lady Wathin knew she could rally a
powerful moral contingent, the aptitude of which for a one-minded
cohesion enabled it to crush those fractional daughters of mischief. She
was a really good woman of the world, heading a multitude; the same whom
you are accustomed to hear exalted; lucky in having had a guided
girlhood, a thick-curtained prudence; and in having stock in the moral
funds, shares in the sentimental tramways. Wherever the world laid its
hoards or ran its lines, she was found, and forcible enough to be
eminent; though at fixed hours of the day, even as she washed her hands,
she abjured worldliness: a performance that cleansed her. If she did not
make morality appear loveable to the objects of her dislike, it was owing
to her want of brains to see the origin, nature and right ends of
morality. But a world yet more deficient than she, esteemed her cordially
for being a bulwark of the present edifice; which looks a solid structure
when the microscope is not applied to its components.

Supposing Percy Dacier a dishonourable tattler as well as an icy lover,
and that Lady Wathin, through his bride, had become privy to the secret
between him and Diana? There is reason to think that she would have held
it in terror over the baneful woman, but not have persecuted her: for she
was by no means the active malignant of theatrical plots. No, she would
have charged it upon the possession of brains by women, and have had a
further motive for inciting the potent dignitary her husband to employ
his authority to repress the sex's exercise of those fell weapons,
hurtful alike to them and all coming near them.

So extreme was her dread of Mrs. Warwick, that she drove from the London
railway station to see Constance and be reassured by her tranquil aspect.

Sweet Constance and her betrothed Percy were together, examining a
missal.

Lady Dunstane despatched a few words of the facts to Diana. She hoped to
hear from her; rather hoped, for the moment, not to see her. No answer
came. The great day of the nuptials came and passed. She counted on her
husband's appearance the next morning, as the good gentleman made a point
of visiting her, to entertain the wife he adored, whenever he had a
wallet of gossip that would overlay the blank of his absence. He had been
to the church of the wedding--he did not say with whom: all the world was
there; and he rapturously described the ceremony, stating that it set
women weeping and caused him to behave like a fool.

'You are impressionable,' said his wife.

He murmured something in praise of the institution of marriage--when
celebrated impressively, it seemed.

'Tony calls the social world "the theatre of appetites," as we have it at
present,' she said; 'and the world at a wedding is, one may reckon, in
the second act of the hungry tragicomedy.'

'Yes, there's the breakfast,' Sir Lukin assented. Mrs. Fryar-Gunnett was
much more intelligible to him: in fact, quite so, as to her speech.

Emma's heart now yearned to her Tony: Consulting her strength, she
thought she might journey to London, and on the third morning after the
Dacier-Asper marriage, she started.

Diana's door was open to Arthur Rhodes when Emma reached it.

'Have you seen her?' she asked him.

His head shook dolefully. 'Mrs. Warwick is unwell; she has been working
too hard.'

'You also, I'm afraid.'

'No.' He could deny that, whatever the look of him.

'Come to me at Copsley soon,' said she, entering to Danvers in the
passage.

'My mistress is upstairs, my lady,' said Danvers. 'She is lying on her
bed.'

'She is ill?'

'She has been lying on her bed ever since.'

'Since what?' Lady Dunstane spoke sharply.

Danvers retrieved her indiscretion. 'Since she heard of the accident, my
lady.'

'Take my name to her. Or no: I can venture.'

'I am not allowed to go in and speak to her. You will find the room quite
dark, my lady, and very cold. It is her command. My mistress will not let
me light the fire; and she has not eaten or drunk of anything since . . .
She will die, if you do not persuade her to take nourishment: a little,
for a beginning. It wants the beginning.'

Emma went upstairs, thinking of the enigmatical maid, that she must be a
good soul after all. Diana's bedroom door was opened slowly.

'You will not be able to see at first, my lady,' Danvers whispered. 'The
bed is to the left, and a chair. I would bring in a candle, but it hurts
her eyes. She forbids it.'

Emma stepped in. The chill thick air of the unlighted London room was
cavernous. She almost forgot the beloved of her heart in the thought that
a living woman had been lying here more than two days and nights,
fasting. The proof of an uttermost misery revived the circumstances
within her to render her friend's presence in this desert of darkness
credible. She found the bed by touch, silently, and distinguished a dark
heap on the bed; she heard no breathing. She sat and listened; then she
stretched out her hand and met her Tony's. It lay open. It was the hand
of a drowned woman.

Shutters and curtains and the fireless grate gave the room an appalling
likeness to the vaults.

So like to the home of death it seemed, that in a few minutes the watcher
had lost count of time and kept but a wormy memory of the daylight. She
dared not speak, for some fear of startling; for the worse fear of never
getting answer. Tony's hand was lifeless. Her clasp of it struck no
warmth.

She stung herself with bitter reproaches for having let common mundane
sentiments, worthy of a Lady Wathin, bar her instant offer of her bosom
to the beloved who suffered in this depth of mortal agony. Tony's love of
a man, as she should have known, would be wrought of the elements of our
being: when other women named Happiness, she said Life; in division,
Death. Her body lying still upon the bed here was a soul borne onward by
the river of Death.

The darkness gave sight after a while, like a curtain lifting on a veil:
the dead light of the underworld. Tony lay with her face up, her underlip
dropped; straight from head to feet. The outline of her face, without hue
of it, could be seen: sign of the hapless women that have souls in love.
Hateful love of men! Emma thought, and was; moved to feel at the wrist
for her darling's pulse. He has, killed her! the thought flashed, as,
with pangs chilling her frame, the pressure at the wrist continued
insensible of the faintest beat. She clasped it, trembling, in pain to
stop an outcry.

'It is Emmy,' said the voice.

Emma's heart sprang to heaven on a rush of thanks.

'My Tony,' she breathed softly.

She hung for a further proof of life in the motionless body. 'Tony!' she
said.

The answer was at her hand, a thread-like return of her clasp.

'It is Emmy come to stay with you, never to leave you.'

The thin still answer was at her hand a moment; the fingers fell away. A
deep breath was taken twice to say:

'Don't talk to me.'

Emma retained the hand. She was warned not to press it by the deadness
following its effort to reply.

But Tony lived; she had given proof of life. Over this little wavering
taper in the vaults Emma cowered, cherishing the hand, silently hoping
for the voice.

It came: 'Winter.'

'It is a cold winter, Tony.'

'My dear will be cold.'

'I will light the fire.'

Emma lost no time in deciding to seek the match-box. The fire was lit and
it flamed; it seemed a revival in the room. Coming back to the bedside,
she discerned her Tony's lacklustre large dark eyes and her hollow
cheeks: her mouth open to air as to the drawing-in of a sword; rather as
to the releaser than the sustainer. Her feet were on the rug her maid had
placed to cover them. Emma leaned across the bed to put them to her
breast, beneath her fur mantle, and held them there despite the
half-animate tug of the limbs and the shaft of iciness they sent to her
very heart. When she had restored them to some warmth, she threw aside
her bonnet and lying beside Tony, took her in her arms, heaving now and
then a deep sigh.

She kissed her cheek.

'It is Emmy.'

'Kiss her.'

'I have no strength.'

Emma laid her face on the lips. They were cold; even the breath between
them cold.

'Has Emmy been long . . .?'

'Here, dear? I think so. I am with my darling.'

Tony moaned. The warmth and the love were bringing back her anguish.

She said: 'I have been happy. It is not hard to go.'

Emma strained to her. 'Tony will wait for her soul's own soul to go, the
two together.'

There was a faint convulsion in the body. 'If I cry, I shall go in pain.'

'You are in Emmy's arms, my beloved.'

Tony's eyes closed for forgetfulness under that sensation. A tear ran
down from her, but the pain was lag and neighboured sleep, like the
pleasure.

So passed the short winter day, little spoken.

Then Emma bethought her of a way of leading Tony to take food, and she
said: 'I shall stay with you; I shall send for clothes; I am rather
hungry. Don't stir, dear. I will be mistress of the house.'

She went below to the kitchen, where a few words in the ear of a
Frenchwoman were sufficient to waken immediate comprehension of what was
wanted, and smart service: within ten minutes an appetizing bouillon sent
its odour over the bedroom. Tony, days back, had said her last to the act
of eating; but Emma sipping at the spoon and expressing satisfaction, was
a pleasant picture. The bouillon smelt pleasantly.

'Your servants love you,' Emma said.

'Ah, poor good souls.'

'They crowded up to me to hear of you. Madame of course at the first word
was off to her pots. And we English have the habit of calling ourselves
the practical people!--This bouillon is consummate.--However, we have the
virtues of barbarians; we can love and serve for love. I never tasted
anything so good. I could become a glutton.'

'Do,' said Tony.

'I should be ashamed to "drain the bowl" all to myself: a solitary toper
is a horrid creature, unless he makes a song of it.'

'Emmy makes a song of it to me.'

'But "pledge me" is a noble saying, when you think of humanity's original
hunger for the whole. It is there that our civilizing commenced, and I am
particularly fond of hearing the call. It is grandly historic. So pledge
me, Tony. We two can feed from one spoon; it is a closer, bond than the
loving cup. I want you just to taste it and excuse my gluttony.'

Tony murmured, 'No.' The spoon was put to her mouth. She sighed to
resist. The stronger will compelled her to move her lips. Emma fed her as
a child, and nature sucked for life.

The first effect was a gush of tears.

Emma lay with her that night, when the patient was, the better sleeper.
But during the night at intervals she had the happiness of feeling Tony's
hand travelling to make sure of her.




CHAPTER XXXVII

AN EXHIBITION OF SOME CHAMPIONS OF THE STRICKEN LADY

Close upon the hour of ten every morning the fortuitous meeting of two
gentlemen at Mrs. Warwick's housedoor was a signal for punctiliously
stately greetings, the salutation of the raised hat and a bow of the head
from a position of military erectness, followed by the remark: 'I trust
you are well, sir': to which the reply: 'I am very well, sir, and trust
you are the same,' was deemed a complimentary fulfilment of their mutual
obligation in presence. Mr. Sullivan Smith's initiative imparted this
exercise of formal manners to Mr. Arthur Rhodes, whose renewed
appearance, at the minute of his own arrival, he viewed, as he did not
conceal, with a disappointed and a reproving eye. The inquiry after the
state of Mrs. Warwick's health having received its tolerably comforting
answer from the footman, they left their cards in turn, then descended
the doorsteps, faced for the performance of the salute, and departed
their contrary ways.

The pleasing intelligence refreshed them one morning, that they would be
welcomed by Lady Dunstane. Thereupon Mr. Sullivan Smith wheeled about to
Mr. Arthur Rhodes and observed to him: 'Sir, I might claim, by right of
seniority, to be the foremost of us two in offering my respects to the
lady, but the way is open to you.'

'Sir,' said Mr. Arthur Rhodes, 'permit me to defer to your many superior
titles to that distinction.'

'The honour, sir, lies rather in the bestowing than in the taking.'

'I venture to think, sir, that though I cannot speak pure Castilian, I
require no lesson from a Grandee of Spain in acknowledging the dues of my
betters.'

'I will avow myself conquered, sir, by your overpowering condescension;'
said Mr. Sullivan Smith; 'and I entreat you--to ascribe my acceptance of
your brief retirement to the urgent character of the business I have at
heart.'

He laid his fingers on the panting spot, and bowed.

Mr. Arthur Rhodes, likewise bowing, deferentially fell to rearward.

'If I mistake not,' said the Irish gentleman, 'I am indebted to Mr.
Rhodes; and we have been joint participators in the hospitality of Mrs.
Warwick's table.'

The English gentleman replied: 'It was there that I first had the
pleasure of an acquaintance which is graven on my memory, as the words of
the wise king on tablets of gold and silver.'

Mr. Sullivan Smith gravely smiled at the unwonted match he had found in
ceremonious humour, in Saxonland, and saying: 'I shall not long detain
you, Mr. Rhodes,' he passed through the doorway.

Arthur waited for him, pacing up and down, for a quarter of an hour, when
a totally different man reappeared in the same person, and was the
Sullivan Smith of the rosy beaming features and princely heartiness. He
was accosted: 'Now, my dear boy, it's your turn to try if you have a
chance, and good luck go with ye. I've said what I could on your behalf,
for you're one of ten thousand in this country, you are.'

Mr. Sullivan Smith had solemnified himself to proffer a sober petition
within the walls of the newly widowed lady's house; namely, for nothing
less than that sweet lady's now unfettered hand: and it had therefore
been perfectly natural to him, until his performance ended with the
destruction of his hopes, to deliver himself in the high Castilian
manner. Quite unexpected, however, was the reciprocal loftiness of tone
spontaneously adopted by the young English squire, for whom, in
consequence, he conceived a cordial relish; and as he paced in the
footsteps of Arthur, anxious to quiet his curiosity by hearing how it had
fared with one whom he had to suppose the second applicant, he kept
ejaculating: 'Not a bit! The fellow can't be Saxon! And she had a liking
for him. She's nigh coming of the age when a woman takes to the chicks.
Better he than another, if it's to be any one. For he's got fun in him;
he carries his own condiments, instead of borrowing from the popular
castors, as is their way over here. But I might have known there 's
always sure to be salt and savour in the man she covers with her wing.
Excepting, if you please, my dear lady, a bad shot you made at a rascal
cur, no more worthy of you than Beelzebub of Paradise. No matter! The
daughters' of Erin must share the fate of their mother Isle, that their
tears may shine in the burst of sun to follow. For personal and patriotic
motives, I would have cheered her and been like a wild ass combed and
groomed and tamed by the adorable creature. But her friend says there 's
not a whisk of a chance for me, and I must roam the desert, kicking up,
and worshipping the star I hail brightest. They know me not, who think I
can't worship. Why, what were I without my star? At best a pickled
porker.'

Sullivan Smith became aware of a ravishing melodiousness in the
soliloquy, as well as a clean resemblance in the simile. He would
certainly have proceeded to improvize impassioned verse, if he had not
seen Arthur Rhodes on the pavement. 'So, here's the boy. Query, the face
he wears.'

'How kind of you to wait,' said Arthur.

'We'll call it sympathy, for convenience,' rejoined Sullivan Smith.
'Well, and what next?'

'You know as much as I do. Thank heaven, she is recovering.'

'Is that all?'

'Why, what more?'

Arthur was jealously, inspected.

'You look open-hearted, my dear boy.' Sullivan Smith blew the sound of a
reflected ahem. 'Excuse me for cornemusing in your company,' he said.
'But seriously, there was only one thing to pardon your hurrying to the
lady's door at such a season, when the wind tells tales to the world.
She's down with a cold, you know.'

'An influenza,' said Arthur.

The simplicity of the acquiescence was vexatious to a champion desirous
of hostilities, to vindicate the lady, in addition to his anxiety to
cloak her sad plight.

'She caught it from contact with one of the inhabitants of this country.
'Tis the fate of us Irish, and we're condemned to it for the sin of
getting tired of our own. I begin to sneeze when I land at Holyhead.
Unbutton a waistcoat here, in the hope of meeting a heart, and you're
lucky in escaping a pulmonary attack of no common severity, while the dog
that infected you scampers off, to celebrate his honeymoon mayhap. Ah,
but call at her house in shoals, the world 'll soon be saying it's worse
than a coughing cold. If you came to lead her out of it in triumph, the
laugh 'd be with you, and the lady well covered. D' ye understand?'

The allusion to the dog's honeymoon had put Arthur Rhodes on the track of
the darting cracker-metaphor.

'I think I do,' he said. 'She will soon be at Copsley--Lady Dunstane's
house, on the hills--and there we can see her.'

'And that's next to the happiness of consoling--if only it had been
granted! She's not an ordinary widow, to be caught when the tear of
lamentation has opened a practicable path or water-way to the poor
nightcapped jewel within. So, and you're a candid admirer, Mr. Rhodes!
Well, and I'll be one with you; for there's not a star in the firmament
more deserving of homage than that lady.'

'Let's walk in the park and talk of her,' said Arthur. 'There's no
sweeter subject to me.'

His boyish frankness rejoiced Sullivan Smith. 'As long as you like!--nor
to me!' he exclaimed. 'And that ever since I first beheld her on the
night of a Ball in Dublin: before I had listened to a word of her
speaking: and she bore her father's Irish name:--none of your Warwicks
and your . . . But let the cur go barking. He can't tell what he's lost;
perhaps he doesn't care. And after inflicting his hydrophobia on her
tender fame! Pooh, sir; you call it a civilized country, where you and I
and dozens of others are ready to start up as brothers of the lady, to
defend her, and are paralyzed by the Law. 'Tis a law they've instituted
for the protection of dirty dogs--their majority!'

'I owe more to Mrs. Warwick than to any soul I know,' said Arthur.

'Let 's hear,' quoth Sullivan Smith; proceeding: 'She's the Arabian
Nights in person, that's sure; and Shakespeare's Plays, tragic and comic;
and the Book of Celtic History; and Erin incarnate--down with a cold, no
matter where; but we know where it was caught. So there's a pretty
library for who's to own her now she's enfranchized by circumstances; and
a poetical figure too!'

He subsided for his companion to rhapsodize.

Arthur was overcharged with feeling, and could say only: 'It would be
another world to me if I lost her.'

'True; but what of the lady?'

'No praise of mine could do her justice.'

'That may be, but it's negative of yourself, and not a portrait of the
object. Hasn't she the brain of Socrates--or better, say Minerva, on the
bust of Venus, and the remainder of her finished off to an exact
resemblance of her patronymic Goddess of the bow and quiver?'

'She has a wise head and is beautiful.'

'And chaste.'

Arthur reddened: he was prepared to maintain it, could not speak it.

'She is to us in this London, what the run of water was to Theocritus in
Sicily: the nearest to the visibly divine,' he said, and was applauded.

'Good, and on you go. Top me a few superlatives on that, and I 'm your
echo, my friend. Isn't the seeing and listening to her like sitting under
the silvery canopy of a fountain in high Summer?'

'All the comparisons are yours,' Arthur said enviously.

'Mr. Rhodes, you are a poet, I believe, and all you require to loosen
your tongue is a drop of Bacchus, so if you will do me the extreme honour
to dine with me at my Club this evening, we'll resume the toast that
should never be uttered dry. You reprove me justly, my friend.'

Arthur laughed and accepted. The Club was named, and the hour, and some
items of the little dinner: the birds and the year of the wines.

It surprised him to meet Mr. Redworth at the table of his host. A greater
surprise was the partial thaw in Redworth's bearing toward him. But, as
it was partial, and he a youth and poor, not even the genial influences
of Bacchus could lift him to loosen his tongue under the repressing
presence of the man he knew to be his censor, though Sullivan Smith
encouraged him with praises and opportunities. He thought of the many
occasions when Mrs. Warwick's art of management had produced a tacit
harmony between them. She had no peer. The dinner failed of the pleasure
he had expected from it. Redworth's bluntness killed the flying
metaphors, and at the end of the entertainment he and Sullivan Smith were
drumming upon politics.

'Fancies he has the key of the Irish difficulty!' said the latter,
clapping hand on his shoulder, by way of blessing, as they parted at the
Club-steps.

Redworth asked Arthur Rhodes the way he was going, and walked beside him.

'I suppose you take exercise; don't get colds and that kind of thing,' he
remarked in the old bullying fashion; and changed it abruptly. 'I am glad
to have met you this evening. I hope you'll dine with me one day next
week. Have you seen Mrs. Warwick lately?'

'She is unwell; she has been working too hard,' said Arthur.

'Seriously unwell, do you mean?'

'Lady Dunstane is at her house, and speaks of her recovering.'

'Ah. You've not seen her?'

'Not yet.'

'Well, good-night.'

Redworth left him, and only when moved by gratitude to the lad for his
mention of Mrs. Warwick's 'working too hard,' as the cause of her
illness, recollected the promised dinner and the need for having his
address.

He had met Sullivan Smith accidentally in the morning and accepted the
invitation to meet young Rhodes, because these two, of all men living,
were for the moment dearest to him, as Diana Warwick's true and simple
champions; and he had intended a perfect cordiality toward them both; the
end being a semi-wrangle with the patriot, and a patronizing bluntness
with the boy; who, by the way, would hardly think him sincere in the
offer of a seat at his table. He owned himself incomplete. He never could
do the thing he meant, in the small matters not leading to fortune. But
they led to happiness! Redworth was guilty of a sigh: for now Diana
Warwick stood free; doubly free, he was reduced to reflect in a wavering
dubiousness. Her more than inclination for Dacier, witnessed by him, and
the shot of the world, flying randomly on the subject, had struck this
cuirassier, making light of his armour, without causing any change of his
habitual fresh countenance. As for the scandal, it had never shaken his
faith in her nature. He thought of the passion. His heart struck at
Diana's, and whatever might by chance be true in the scandal affected him
little, if but her heart were at liberty. That was the prize he coveted,
having long read the nature of the woman and wedded his spirit to it. She
would complete him.

Of course, infatuated men argue likewise, and scandal does not move them.
At a glance, the lower instincts and the higher spirit appear equally to
have the philosophy of overlooking blemishes. The difference between
appetite and love is shown when a man, after years of service, can hear
and see, and admit the possible, and still desire in worship; knowing
that we of earth are begrimed and must be cleansed for presentation daily
on our passage through the miry ways, but that our souls, if flame of a
soul shall have come of the agony of flesh, are beyond the baser
mischances: partaking of them indeed, but sublimely. Now Redworth
believed in the soul of Diana. For him it burned, and it was a celestial
radiance about her, unquenched by her shifting fortunes, her wilfulnesses
and, it might be, errors. She was a woman and weak; that is, not trained
for strength. She was a soul; therefore perpetually pointing to growth in
purification. He felt it, and even discerned it of her, if he could not
have phrased it. The something sovereignty characteristic that aspired in
Diana enchained him. With her, or rather with his thought of her soul, he
understood the right union of women and men, from the roots to the
flowering heights of that rare graft. She gave him comprehension of the
meaning of love: a word in many mouths, not often explained. With her,
wound in his idea of her, he perceived it to signify a new start in our
existence, a finer shoot of the tree stoutly planted in good gross earth;
the senses running their live sap, and the minds companioned, and the
spirits made one by the whole-natured conjunction. In Booth, a happy
prospect for the sons and daughters of Earth, divinely indicating more
than happiness: the speeding of us, compact of what we are, between the
ascetic rocks and the sensual whirlpools, to the creation of certain
nobler races, now very dimly imagined.

Singularly enough, the man of these feelings was far from being a social
rebel. His Diana conjured them forth in relation to her, but was not on
his bosom to enlighten him generally. His notions of citizenship
tolerated the female Pharisees, as ladies offering us an excellent social
concrete where quicksands abound, and without quite justifying the Lady
Wathins and Constance Aspers of the world, whose virtues he could set
down to accident or to acid blood, he considered them supportable and
estimable where the Mrs. Fryar-Gunnetts were innumerable, threatening to
become a majority; as they will constantly do while the sisterhood of the
chaste are wattled in formalism and throned in sourness.

Thoughts of Diana made phantoms of the reputable and their reverse alike.
He could not choose but think of her. She was free; and he too; and they
were as distant as the horizon sail and the aft-floating castaway. Her
passion for Dacier might have burnt out her heart. And at present he had
no claim to visit her, dared not intrude. He would have nothing to say,
if he went, save to answer questions upon points of business: as to
which, Lady Dunstane would certainly summon him when he was wanted.

Riding in the park on a frosty morning, he came upon Sir Lukin, who
looked gloomy and inquired for news of Diana Warwick, saying that his
wife had forbidden him to call at her house just yet. 'She's got a cold,
you know,' said Sir Lukin; adding, 'confoundedly hard on women!--eh?
Obliged to keep up a show. And I'd swear, by all that's holy, Diana
Warwick hasn't a spot, not a spot, to reproach herself with. I fancy I
ought to know women by this time. And look here, Redworth, last
night--that is, I mean yesterday evening, I broke with a woman--a lady of
my acquaintance, you know, because she would go on scandal-mongering
about Diana Warwick. I broke with her. I told her I'd have out any man
who abused Diana Warwick, and I broke with her. By Jove! Redworth, those
women can prove spitfires. They've bags of venom under their tongues,
barley-sugar though they look--and that's her colour. But I broke with
her for good. I doubt if I shall ever call on her again. And in point of
fact, I won't.'

Mrs. Fryar-Gunnett was described in the colouring of the lady.

Sir Lukin, after some further remarks, rode on, and Redworth mused on a
moral world that allows a woman of Mrs. Fryar-Gunnett's like to hang on
to it, and to cast a stone at Diana; forgetful, in his championship, that
Diana was not disallowed a similar licence.

When he saw Emma Dunstane, some days later, she was in her carriage
driving, as she said, to Lawyerland, for an interview with old Mr.
Braddock, on her friend's affairs. He took a seat beside her. 'No, Tony
is not well,' she replied to his question, under the veil of candour.
'She is recovering, but she--you can understand--suffered a shock. She is
not able to attend to business, and certain things have to be done.'

'I used to be her man of business,' Redworth observed.

'She speaks of your kind services. This is mere matter for lawyers.'

'She is recovering?'

'You may see her at Copsley next week. You can come down on Wednesdays or
Saturdays?'

'Any day. Tell her I want her opinion upon the state of things.'

'It will please her; but you will have to describe the state of things.'

Emma feared she had said too much. She tried candour again for
concealment. 'My poor Tony has been struck down low. I suppose it is like
losing a diseased limb:--she has her freedom, at the cost of a blow to
the system.'

'She may be trusted for having strength,' said Redworth.'

'Yes.' Emma's mild monosyllable was presently followed by an exclamation:
'One has to experience the irony of Fate to comprehend how cruel it is!'
Then she remembered that such language was peculiarly abhorrent to him.

'Irony of Fate!' he echoed her. 'I thought you were above that literary
jargon.'

'And I thought I was: or thought it would be put in a dialect practically
explicable,' she answered, smiling at the lion roused.

'Upon my word,' he burst out, 'I should like to write a book of Fables,
showing how donkeys get into grinding harness, and dogs lose their bones,
and fools have their sconces cracked, and all run jabbering of the irony
of Fate, to escape the annoyance of tracing the causes. And what are
they? nine times out of ten, plain want of patience, or some debt for
indulgence. There's a subject:--let some one write, Fables in
illustration of the irony of Fate: and I'll undertake to tack-on my
grandmother's maxims for a moral to teach of 'em. We prate of that irony
when we slink away from the lesson--the rod we conjure. And you to talk
of Fate! It's the seed we sow, individually or collectively. I'm bound-up
in the prosperity of the country, and if the ship is wrecked, it ruins my
fortune, but not me, unless I'm bound-up in myself. At least I hope
that's my case.'

He apologized for intruding Mr. Thomas Redworth.

His hearer looked at him, thinking he required a more finely pointed gift
of speech for the ironical tongue, but relishing the tonic directness of
his faculty of reason while she considered that the application of the
phrase might be brought home to him so as to render 'my Grandmother's
moral' a conclusion less comfortingly, if quite intelligibly, summary.
And then she thought of Tony's piteous instance; and thinking with her
heart, the tears insisted on that bitter irony of the heavens, which
bestowed the long-withheld and coveted boon when it was empty of value or
was but as a handful of spices to a shroud.

Perceiving the moisture in her look, Redworth understood that it was
foolish to talk rationally. But on her return to her beloved, the real
quality of the man had overcome her opposing state of sentiment, and she
spoke of him with an iteration and throb in the voice that set a singular
query whirring round Diana's ears. Her senses were too heavy for a
suspicion.




CHAPTER XXXVIII

CONVALESCENCE OF A HEALTHY MIND DISTRAUGHT

From an abandonment that had the last pleasure of life in a willingness
to yield it up, Diana rose with her friend's help in some state of
fortitude, resembling the effort of her feet to bear the weight of her
body. She plucked her courage out of the dust to which her heart had been
scattered, and tasked herself to walk as the world does. But she was
indisposed to compassionate herself in the manner of the burdened world.
She lashed the creature who could not raise a head like others, and made
the endurance of torture a support, such as the pride of being is to men.
She would not have seen any similarity to pride in it; would have deemed
it the reverse. It was in fact the painful gathering of the atoms
composing pride. For she had not only suffered; she had done wrongly: and
when that was acknowledged, by the light of her sufferings the
wrong-doing appeared gigantic, chorussing eulogies of the man she had
thought her lover: and who was her lover once, before the crime against
him. In the opening of her bosom to Emma, he was painted a noble figure;
one of those that Romance delights to harass for the sake of ultimately
the more exquisitely rewarding. He hated treachery: she had been guilty
of doing what he most hated. She glorified him for the incapacity to
forgive; it was to her mind godlike. And her excuses of herself?

At the first confession, she said she had none, and sullenly maintained
that there was none to exonerate. Little by little her story was
related--her version of the story: for not even as woman to woman, friend
to great-hearted friend, pure soul to soul, could Diana tell of the state
of shivering abjection in which Dacier had left her on the fatal night;
of the many causes conducing to it, and of the chief. That was an
unutterable secret, bound by all the laws of feminine civilization not to
be betrayed. Her excessive self-abasement and exaltation of him who had
struck her down, rendered it difficult to be understood; and not till
Emma had revolved it and let it ripen in the mind some days could she
perceive with any clearness her Tony's motives, or mania. The very word
Money thickened the riddle: for Tony knew that her friend's purse was her
own to dip in at her pleasure; yet she, to escape so small an obligation,
had committed the enormity for which she held the man blameless in
spurning her.

'You see what I am, Emmy,' Diana said.

'What I do not see, is that he had grounds for striking so cruelly.'

'I proved myself unworthy of him.'

But does a man pretending to love a woman cut at one blow, for such a
cause, the ties uniting her to him? Unworthiness of that kind, is not
commonly the capital offence in love. Tony's deep prostration and her
resplendent picture of her judge and executioner, kept Emma questioning
within herself. Gradually she became enlightened enough to distinguish in
the man a known, if not common, type of the externally soft and polished,
internally hard and relentless, who are equal to the trials of love only
as long as favouring circumstances and seemings nurse the fair object of
their courtship.

Her thoughts recurred to the madness driving Tony to betray the secret;
and the ascent unhelped to get a survey of it and her and the conditions,
was mountainous. She toiled up but to enter the regions of cloud; sure
nevertheless that the obscurity was penetrable and excuses to be
discovered somewhere. Having never wanted money herself, she was unable
perfectly to realize the urgency of the need: she began however to
comprehend that the very eminent gentleman, before whom all human
creatures were to bow in humility, had for an extended term considerably
added to the expenses of Tony's household, by inciting her to give those
little dinners to his political supporters, and bringing comrades
perpetually to supper-parties, careless of how it might affect her
character and her purse. Surely an honourable man was bound to her in
honour? Tony's remark: 'I have the reptile in me, dear,' her exaggeration
of the act, in her resigned despair,--was surely no justification for his
breaking from her, even though he had discovered a vestige of the common
'reptile,' to leave her with a stain on her name?--There would not have
been a question about it if Tony had not exalted him so loftily,
refusing, in visible pain, to hear him blamed.

Danvers had dressed a bed for Lady Dunstane in her mistress's chamber,
where often during the night Emma caught a sound of stifled weeping or
the long falling breath of wakeful grief. One night she asked whether
Tony would like to have her by her side.

'No, dear,' was the answer in the dark; 'but you know my old pensioners,
the blind fifer and his wife; I've been thinking of them.'

'They were paid as they passed down the street yesterday, my love.'

'Yes, dear, I hope so. But he flourishes his tune so absurdly. I've been
thinking, that is the part I have played, instead of doing the female's
duty of handing round the tin-cup for pennies. I won't cry any more.'

She sighed and turned to sleep, leaving Emma to disburden her heart in
tears.

For it seemed to her that Tony's intellect was weakened. She not merely
abased herself and exalted Dacier preposterously, she had sunk her
intelligence in her sensations: a state that she used to decry as the sin
of mankind, the origin of error and blood.

Strangely too, the proposal came from her, or the suggestion of it,
notwithstanding her subjectedness to the nerves, that she should show her
face in public. She said: 'I shall have to run about, Emmy, when I can
fancy I am able to rattle up to the old mark. At present, I feel like a
wrestler who has had a fall. As soon as the stiffness is over, it's best
to make an appearance, for the sake of one's backers, though I shall
never be in the wrestling ring again.'

'That is a good decision--when you feel quite yourself, dear Tony,' Emma
replied.

'I dare say I have disgraced my sex, but not as they suppose. I feel my
new self already, and can make the poor brute go through fire on behalf
of the old. What is the task?--merely to drive a face!'

'It is not known.'

'It will be known.'

'But this is a sealed secret.'

'Nothing is a secret that has been spoken. It 's in the air, and I have
to breathe to live by it. And I would rather it were out. "She betrayed
him." Rather that, than have them think--anything! They will exclaim, How
could she! I have been unable to answer it to you--my own heart. How? Oh!
our weakness is the swiftest dog to hunt us; we cannot escape it. But I
have the answer for them, that I trust with my whole soul none of them
would have done the like.'

'None, my Tony, would have taken it to the soul as you do.'

'I talk, dear. If I took it honestly, I should be dumb, soon dust. The
moment we begin to speak, the guilty creature is running for cover. She
could not otherwise exist. I am sensible of evasion when I open my lips.'

'But Tony has told me all.'

'I think I have. But if you excuse my conduct, I am certain I have not.'

'Dear girl, accounting for it, is not the same as excusing.'

'Who can account for it! I was caught in a whirl--Oh! nothing
supernatural: my weakness; which it pleases me to call a madness--shift
the ninety-ninth! When I drove down that night to Mr. Tonans, I am
certain I had my clear wits, but I felt like a bolt. I saw things, but at
too swift a rate for the conscience of them. Ah! let never Necessity draw
the bow of our weakness: it is the soul that is winged to its perdition.
I remember I was writing a story, named THE MAN OF TWO MINDS. I shall
sign it, By the Woman of Two Natures. If ever it is finished. Capacity
for thinking should precede the act of writing. It should; I do not say
that it does. Capacity for assimilating the public taste and reproducing
it, is the commonest. The stuff is perishable, but it pays us for our
labour, and in so doing saves us from becoming tricksters. Now I can see
that Mr. Redworth had it in that big head of his--the authoress outliving
her income!'

'He dared not speak.'

'Why did he not dare?'

'Would it have checked you?'

'I was a shot out of a gun, and I am glad he did not stand in my way.
What power charged the gun, is another question. Dada used to say, that
it is the devil's masterstroke to get us to accuse him. "So fare ye well,
old Nickie Ben." My dear, I am a black sheep; a creature with a spotted
reputation; I must wash and wash; and not with water--with
sulphur-flames.' She sighed. 'I am down there where they burn. You should
have let me lie and die. You were not kind. I was going quietly.'

'My love!' cried Emma, overborne by a despair that she traced to the
woman's concealment of her bleeding heart, 'you live for me. Do set your
mind on that. Think of what you are bearing, as your debt to Emma. Will
you?'

Tony bowed her head mechanically.

'But I am in love with King Death, and must confess it,' she said. 'That
hideous eating you forced on me, snatched me from him. And I feel that if
I had gone, I should have been mercifully forgiven by everybody.'

'Except by me,' said Emma, embracing her. 'Tony would have left her
friend for her last voyage in mourning. And my dearest will live to know
happiness.'

'I have no more belief in it, Emmy.'

'The mistake of the world is to think happiness possible to the senses.'

'Yes; we distil that fine essence through the senses; and the act is
called the pain of life. It is the death of them. So much I understand of
what our existence must be. But I may grieve for having done so little.'

'That is the sound grief, with hope at the core--not in love with itself
and wretchedly mortal, as we find self is under every shape it takes;
especially the chief one.'

'Name it.'

'It is best named Amor.'

There was a writhing in the frame of the hearer, for she did want Love to
be respected; not shadowed by her misfortune. Her still-flushed senses
protested on behalf of the eternalness of the passion, and she was
obliged to think Emma's cold condemnatory intellect came of the no
knowledge of it.

A letter from Mr. Tonans, containing an enclosure, was a sharp trial of
Diana's endurance of the irony of Fate. She had spoken of the irony in
allusion to her freedom. Now that, according to a communication from her
lawyers, she was independent of the task of writing, the letter which
paid the price of her misery bruised her heavily.

'Read it and tear it all to strips,' she said in an abhorrence to Emma,
who rejoined: 'Shall I go at once and see him?'

'Can it serve any end? But throw it into the fire. Oh! no simulation of
virtue. There was not, I think, a stipulated return for what I did. But I
perceive clearly--I can read only by events--that there was an
understanding. You behold it. I went to him to sell it. He thanks me,
says I served the good cause well. I have not that consolation. If I had
thought of the cause--of anything high, it would have arrested me. On the
fire with it!'

The letter and square slip were consumed. Diana watched the blackening
papers.

So they cease their sinning, Emmy; and as long as I am in torment, I may
hope for grace. We talked of the irony. It means, the pain of fire.'

'I spoke of the irony to Redworth,' said Emma; 'incidentally, of course.'

'And he fumed?'

'He is really not altogether the Mr. Cuthbert Dering of your caricature.
He is never less than acceptably rational. I won't repeat his truisms;
but he said, or I deduced from what he said, that a grandmother's maxims
would expound the enigma.'

'Probably the simple is the deep, in relation to the mysteries of life,'
said Diana, whose wits had been pricked to a momentary activity by the
letter. 'He behaves wisely; so perhaps we are bound to take his words for
wisdom. Much nonsense is talked and written, and he is one of the world's
reserves, who need no more than enrolling, to make a sturdy phalanx of
common sense. It's a pity they are not enlisted and drilled to express
themselves.' She relapsed. 'But neither he nor any of them could
understand my case.'

'He puts the idea of an irony down to the guilt of impatience, Tony.'

'Could there be a keener irony than that? A friend of Dada's waited
patiently for a small fortune, and when it arrived, he was a worn-out
man, just assisted to go decently to his grave.'

'But he may have gained in spirit by his patient waiting.'

'Oh! true. We are warmer if we travel on foot sunward, but it is a
discovery that we are colder if we take to ballooning upward. The
material good reverses its benefits the more nearly we clasp it. All life
is a lesson that we live to enjoy but in the spirit. I will brood on your
saying.'

'It is your own saying, silly Tony, as the only things worth saying
always, are!' exclaimed Emma, as she smiled happily to see her friend's
mind reviving, though it was faintly and in the dark.




CHAPTER XXXIX

OF NATURE WITH ONE OF HER CULTIVATED DAUGHTERS AND A SHORT EXCURSION IN
ANTI-CLIMAX

A mind that after a long season of oblivion in pain returns to
wakefulness without a keen edge for the world, is much in danger of
souring permanently. Diana's love of nature saved her from the dire
mischance during a two months' residence at Copsley, by stupefying her
senses to a state like the barely conscious breathing on the verge of
sleep. February blew South-west for the pairing of the birds. A broad
warm wind rolled clouds of every ambiguity of form in magnitude over
peeping azure, or skimming upon lakes of blue and lightest green, or
piling the amphitheatre for majestic sunset. Or sometimes those daughters
of the wind flew linked and low, semi-purple, threatening the shower they
retained and teaching gloom to rouse a songful nest in the bosom of the
viewer. Sometimes they were April, variable to soar with rain-skirts and
sink with sunshafts. Or they drenched wood and field for a day and opened
on the high South-western star. Daughters of the wind, but shifty
daughters of this wind of the dropping sun, they have to be watched to be
loved in their transformations.

Diana had Arthur Rhodes and her faithful Leander for walking companions.
If Arthur said: 'Such a day would be considered melancholy by London
people,' she thanked him in her heart, as a benefactor who had revealed
to her things of the deepest. The simplest were her food. Thus does
Nature restore us, by drugging the brain and making her creature
confidingly animal for its new growth. She imagined herself to have lost
the power to think; certainly she had not the striving or the wish.
Exercise of her limbs to reach a point of prospect, and of her ears and
eyes to note what bird had piped, what flower was out on the banks, and
the leaf of what tree it was that lay beneath the budding, satiated her
daily desires. She gathered unknowingly a sheaf of landscapes, images,
keys of dreamed horizons, that opened a world to her at any chance breath
altering shape or hue: a different world from the one of her old
ambition. Her fall had brought her renovatingly to earth, and the saving
naturalness of the woman recreated her childlike, with shrouded
recollections of her strange taste of life behind her; with a tempered
fresh blood to enjoy aimlessly, and what would erewhile have been a
barrenness to her sensibilities.

In time the craving was evolved for positive knowledge, and shells and
stones and weeds were deposited on the library-table at Copsley,
botanical and geological books comparingly examined, Emma Dunstane always
eager to assist; for the samples wafted her into the heart of the woods.
Poor Sir Lukin tried three days of their society, and was driven away
headlong to Club-life. He sent down Redworth, with whom the walks of the
zealous inquirers were profitable, though Diana, in acknowledging it to
herself, reserved a decided preference for her foregone ethereal mood,
larger, and untroubled by the presence of a man. The suspicion Emma had
sown was not excited to an alarming activity; but she began to question:
could the best of men be simply--a woman's friend?--was not long service
rather less than a proof of friendship? She could be blind when her heart
was on fire for another. Her passion for her liberty, however, received
no ominous warning to look to the defences. He was the same blunt
speaker, and knotted his brows as queerly as ever at Arthur, in a
transparent calculation of how this fellow meant to gain his livelihood.
She wilfully put it to the credit of Arthur's tact that his elder was
amiable, without denying her debt to the good man for leaving her illness
and her appearance unmentioned. He forbore even to scan her features.
Diana's wan contemplativeness, in which the sparkle of meaning slowly
rose to flash, as we see a bubble rising from the deeps of crystal
waters, caught at his heart while he talked his matter-of-fact. But her
instinct of a present safety was true. She and Arthur discovered--and it
set her first meditating whether she did know the man so very
accurately--that he had printed, for private circulation, when at Harrow
School, a little book, a record of his observations in nature. Lady
Dunstane was the casual betrayer. He shrugged at the nonsense of a boy's
publishing; anybody's publishing he held for a doubtful proof of sanity.
His excuse was, that he had not published opinions. Let us observe, and
assist in our small sphere; not come mouthing to the footlights!

'We retire,' Diana said, for herself and Arthur.

'The wise thing, is to avoid the position that enforces publishing,' said
he, to the discomposure of his raw junior.

In the fields he was genially helpful; commending them to the study of
the South-west wind, if they wanted to forecast the weather and
understand the climate of our country. 'We have no Seasons, or only a
shuffle of them. Old calendars give seven months of the year to the
Southwest, and that's about the average. Count on it, you may generally
reckon what to expect. When you don't have the excess for a year or two,
you are drenched the year following.' He knew every bird by its flight
and its pipe, habits, tricks, hints of sagacity homely with the original
human; and his remarks on the sensitive life of trees and herbs were a
spell to his thirsty hearers. Something of astronomy he knew; but in
relation to that science, he sank his voice, touchingly to Diana, who
felt drawn to kinship with him when he had a pupil's tone. An allusion by
Arthur to the poetical work of Aratus, led to a memorably pleasant
evening's discourse upon the long reading of the stars by these our
mortal eyes. Altogether the mind of the practical man became
distinguishable to them as that of a plain brother of the poetic. Diana
said of him to Arthur: 'He does not supply me with similes; he points to
the source of them.' Arthur, with envy of the man of positive knowledge,
disguised an unstrung heart in agreeing.

Redworth alluded passingly to the condition of public affairs. Neither of
them replied. Diana was wondering how one who perused the eternal of
nature should lend a thought to the dusty temporary of the world.
Subsequently she reflected that she was asking him to confine his great
male appetite to the nibble of bread which nourished her immediate sense
of life. Her reflections were thin as mist, coming and going like the
mist, with no direction upon her brain, if they sprang from it. When he
had gone, welcome though Arthur had seen him to be, she rebounded to a
broader and cheerfuller liveliness. Arthur was flattered by an idea of
her casting off incubus--a most worthy gentleman, and a not perfectly
sympathetic associate. Her eyes had their lost light in them, her step
was brisker; she challenged him to former games of conversation,
excursions in blank verse here and there, as the mood dictated. They
amused themselves, and Emma too. She revelled in seeing Tony's younger
face and hearing some of her natural outbursts. That Dacier never could
have been the man for her, would have compressed and subjected her, and
inflicted a further taste of bondage in marriage, she was assured. She
hoped for the day when Tony would know it, and haply that another, whom
she little comprehended, was her rightful mate.

March continued South-westerly and grew rainier, as Redworth had
foretold, bidding them look for gales and storm, and then the change of
wind. It came, after wettings of a couple scorning the refuge of dainty
townsfolk under umbrellas, and proud of their likeness to dripping
wayside wildflowers. Arthur stayed at Copsley for a week of the crisp
North-easter; and what was it, when he had taken his leave, that brought
Tony home from her solitary walk in dejection? It could not be her
seriously regretting the absence of the youthful companion she had parted
with gaily, appointing a time for another meeting on the heights, and
recommending him to repair idle hours with strenuous work. The fit passed
and was not explained. The winds are sharp with memory. The hard shrill
wind crowed to her senses of an hour on the bleak sands of the French
coast; the beginning of the curtained misery, inscribed as her happiness.
She was next day prepared for her term in London with Emma, who promised
her to make an expedition at the end of it by way of holiday, to see The
Crossways, which Mr. Redworth said was not tenanted.

'You won't go through it like a captive?' said Emma.

'I don't like it, dear,' Diana put up a comic mouth. 'The debts we owe
ourselves are the hardest to pay. That is the discovery of advancing age:
and I used to imagine it was quite the other way. But they are the debts
of honour, imperative. I shall go through it grandly, you will see. If I
am stopped at my first recreancy and turned directly the contrary way, I
think I have courage.'

'You will not fear to meet . . . any one?' said Emma.

'The world and all it contains! I am robust, eager for the fray, an
Amazon, a brazen-faced hussy. Fear and I have parted. I shall not do you
discredit. Besides you intend to have me back here with you? And besides
again, I burn to make a last brave appearance. I have not outraged the
world, dear Emmy, whatever certain creatures in it may fancy.'

She had come out of her dejectedness with a shrewder view of Dacier;
equally painful, for it killed her romance, and changed the garden of
their companionship in imagination to a waste. Her clearing intellect
prompted it, whilst her nature protested, and reviled her to uplift him.
He had loved her. 'I shall die knowing that a man did love me once,' she
said to her widowed heart, and set herself blushing and blanching. But
the thought grew inveterate: 'He could not bear much.' And in her quick
brain it shot up a crop of similitudes for the quality of that man's
love. She shuddered, as at a swift cleaving of cold steel. He had not
given her a chance; he had not replied to her letter written with the pen
dipped in her heart's blood; he must have gone straight away to the woman
he married. This after almost justifying the scandalous world:--after
. . . She realized her sensations of that night when the house-door had
closed on him; her feeling of lost sovereignty, degradation, feminine
danger, friendliness: and she was unaware, and never knew, nor did the
world ever know, what cunning had inspired the frosty Cupid to return to
her and be warmed by striking a bargain for his weighty secret. She knew
too well that she was not of the snows which do not melt, however high
her conceit of herself might place her. Happily she now stood out of the
sun, in a bracing temperature, Polar; and her compassion for women was
deeply sisterly in tenderness and understanding. She spoke of it to Emma
as her gain.

'I have not seen that you required to suffer to be considerate,' Emma
said.

'It is on my conscience that I neglected Mary Paynham, among others--and
because you did not take to her, Emmy.'

'The reading of it appears to me, that she has neglected you.'

'She was not in my confidence, and so I construe it as delicacy. One
never loses by believing the best.'

'If one is not duped.'

'Expectations dupe us, not trust. The light of every soul burns upward.
Of course, most of them are candles in the wind. Let us allow for
atmospheric disturbance. Now I thank you, dear, for bringing me back to
life. I see that I was really a selfish suicide, because I feel I have
power to do some good, and belong to the army. When we are beginning to
reflect, as I do now, on a recovered basis of pure health, we have the
world at the dawn and know we are young in it, with great riches, great
things gained and greater to achieve. Personally I behold a queer little
wriggling worm for myself; but as one, of the active world I stand high
and shapely; and the very thought of doing work, is like a draught of the
desert-springs to me. Instead of which, I have once more to go about
presenting my face to vindicate my character. Mr. Redworth would admit no
irony in that! At all events, it is anti-climax.'

'I forgot to tell you, Tony, you have been proposed for,' said Emma; and
there was a rush of savage colour over Tony's cheeks.

Her apparent apprehensions were relieved by hearing the name of Mr.
Sullivan Smith.

'My poor dear countryman! And he thought me worthy, did he? Some day,
when we are past his repeating it, I'll thank him.'

The fact of her smiling happily at the narration of Sullivan Smith's
absurd proposal by mediatrix, proved to Emma how much her nature thirsted
for the smallest support in her self-esteem.

The second campaign of London was of bad augury at the commencement,
owing to the ridiculous intervention of a street-organ, that ground its
pipes in a sprawling roar of one of the Puritani marches, just as the
carriage was landing them at the door of her house. The notes were harsh,
dissonant, drunken, interlocked and horribly torn asunder, intolerable to
ears not keen to extract the tune through dreadful memories. Diana sat
startled and paralyzed. The melody crashed a revival of her days with
Dacier, as in gibes; and yet it reached to her heart. She imagined a
Providence that was trying her on the threshold, striking at her
feebleness. She had to lock herself in her room for an hour of deadly
abandonment to misery, resembling the run of poison through her blood,
before she could bear to lift eyes on her friend; to whom subsequently
she said: 'Emmy, there are wounds that cut sharp as the enchanter's
sword, and we don't know we are in halves till some rough old intimate
claps us on the back, merely to ask us how we are! I have to join myself
together again, as well as I can. It's done, dear; but don't notice the
cement.'

'You will be brave,' Emma petitioned.

'I long to show you I will.'

The meeting with those who could guess a portion of her story, did not
disconcert her. To Lady Pennon and Lady Singleby, she was the brilliant
Diana of her nominal luminary issuing from cloud. Face and tongue, she
was the same; and once in the stream, she soon gathered its current
topics and scattered her arrowy phrases. Lady Pennon ran about with them,
declaring that the beautiful speaker, if ever down, was up, and up to her
finest mark. Mrs. Fryar-Gannett had then become the blazing regnant
antisocial star; a distresser of domesticity, the magnetic attraction in
the spirituous flames of that wild snapdragon bowl, called the Upper
class; and she was angelically blonde, a straw-coloured Beauty. 'A lovely
wheat sheaf, if the head were ripe,' Diana said of her.

'Threshed, says her fame, my dear,' Lady Pennon replied, otherwise
allusive.

'A wheatsheaf of contention for the bread of wind,' said Diana, thinking
of foolish Sir Lukin; thoughtless of talking to a gossip.

She would have shot a lighter dart, had she meant it to fly and fix.

Proclaim, ye classics, what minor Goddess, or primal, Iris or Ate, sped
straight away on wing to the empty wheatsheaf-ears of the golden-visaged
Amabel Fryar-Gunnett, daughter of Demeter in the field to behold, of
Aphrodite in her rosy incendiarism for the many of men; filling that
pearly concave with a perversion of the uttered speech, such as never
lady could have repeated, nor man, if less than a reaping harvester:
which verily for women to hear, is to stamp a substantial damnatory
verification upon the delivery of the saying:--

'Mrs. Warwick says of you, that you're a bundle of straws for everybody
and bread for nobody.'

Or, stranger speculation, through what, and what number of conduits,
curious, and variously colouring, did it reach the fair Amabel of the
infant-in-cradle smile, in that deformation of the original utterance! To
pursue the thing, would be to enter the subter-sensual perfumed caverns
of a Romance of Fashionable Life, with no hope of coming back to light,
other than by tail of lynx, like the great Arabian seaman, at the last
page of the final chapter. A prospectively popular narrative indeed! and
coin to reward it, and applause. But I am reminded that a story properly
closed on the marriage of the heroine Constance and her young Minister of
State, has no time for conjuring chemists' bouquet of aristocracy to lure
the native taste. When we have satisfied English sentiment, our task is
done, in every branch of art, I hear: and it will account to posterity
for the condition of the branches. Those yet wakeful eccentrics
interested in such a person as Diana, to the extent of remaining
attentive till the curtain falls, demand of me to gather-up the threads
concerning her: which my gardener sweeping his pile of dead leaves before
the storm and night, advises me to do speedily. But it happens that her
resemblance to her sex and species of a civilized period plants the main
threads in her bosom. Rogues and a policeman, or a hurried change of
front of all the actors, are not a part of our slow machinery.

Nor is she to show herself to advantage. Only those who read her woman's
blood and character with the head, will care for Diana of the Crossways
now that the knot of her history has been unravelled. Some little love
they must have for her likewise: and how it can be quickened on behalf of
a woman who never sentimentalizes publicly, and has no dolly-dolly
compliance, and muses on actual life, and fatigues with the exercise of
brains, and is in sooth an alien: a princess of her kind and time, but a
foreign one, speaking a language distinct from the mercantile,
trafficking in ideas:--this is the problem. For to be true to her, one
cannot attempt at propitiation. She said worse things of the world than
that which was conveyed to the boxed ears of Mrs. Fryar-Gunnett.
Accepting the war declared against her a second time, she performed the
common mental trick in adversity of setting her personally known
innocence to lessen her generally unknown error--but anticipating that
this might become known, and the other not; and feeling that the motives
of the acknowledged error had served to guard her from being the culprit
of the charge she writhed under, she rushed out of a meditation
compounded of mind and nerves, with derision of the world's notion of
innocence and estimate of error. It was a mood lasting through her stay
in London, and longer, to the discomfort of one among her friends; and it
was worthy of The Anti-climax Expedition, as she called it.

For the rest, her demeanour to the old monster world exacting the
servility of her, in repayment for its tolerating countenance, was
faultless. Emma beheld the introduction to Mrs. Warwick of his bride, by
Mr. Percy Dacier. She had watched their approach up the Ball-room,
thinking, how differently would Redworth and Tony have looked.
Differently, had it been Tony and Dacier: but Emma could not persuade
herself of a possible harmony between them, save at the cost of Tony's
expiation of the sin of the greater heart in a performance equivalent to
Suttee. Perfectly an English gentleman of the higher order, he seemed the
effigy of a tombstone one, fixed upright, and civilly proud of his effigy
bride. So far, Emma considered them fitted. She perceived his quick eye
on her corner of the room; necessarily, for a man of his breeding,
without a change of expression. An emblem pertaining to her creed was on
the heroine's neck; also dependant at her waist. She was white from head
to foot; a symbol of purity. Her frail smile appeared deeply studied in
purity. Judging from her look and her reputation, Emma divined that the
man was justly mated with a devious filmy sentimentalist, likely to
'fiddle harmonics on the sensual strings' for him at a mad rate in the
years to come. Such fiddling is indeed the peculiar diversion of the
opulent of a fatly prosperous people; who take it, one may concede to
them, for an inspired elimination of the higher notes of life: the very
highest. That saying of Tony's ripened with full significance to Emma
now. Not sensualism, but sham spiritualism, was the meaning; and however
fine the notes, they come skilfully evoked of the under-brute in us.
Reasoning it so, she thought it a saying for the penetration of the most
polished and deceptive of the later human masks. She had besides, be it
owned, a triumph in conjuring a sentence of her friend's, like a sword's
edge, to meet them; for she was boiling angrily at the ironical destiny
which had given to those Two a beclouding of her beloved, whom she could
have rebuked in turn for her insane caprice of passion.

But when her beloved stood-up to greet Mrs. Percy Dacier, all idea save
tremulous admiration of the valiant woman, who had been wounded nigh to
death, passed from Emma's mind. Diana tempered her queenliness to address
the favoured lady with smiles and phrases of gentle warmth, of goodness
of nature; and it became a halo rather than a personal eclipse that she
cast.

Emma looked at Dacier. He wore the prescribed conventional air, subject
in half a minute to a rapid blinking of the eyelids. His wife could have
been inimically imagined fascinated and dwindling. A spot of colour came
to her cheeks. She likewise began to blink.

The happy couple bowed, proceeding; and Emma had Dacier's back for a
study. We score on that flat slate of man, unattractive as it is to
hostile observations, and unprotected, the device we choose. Her
harshest, was the positive thought that he had taken the woman best
suited to him. Doubtless, he was a man to prize the altar-candle above
the lamp of day. She fancied the back-view of him shrunken and
straitened: perhaps a mere hostile fancy: though it was conceivable that
he should desire as little of these meetings as possible. Eclipses are
not courted.

The specially womanly exultation of Emma Dunstane in her friend's noble
attitude, seeing how their sex had been struck to the dust for a trifling
error, easily to be overlooked by a manful lover, and had asserted its
dignity in physical and moral splendour, in self-mastery and benignness,
was unshared by Diana. As soon as the business of the expedition was
over, her orders were issued for the sale of the lease of her house and
all it contained. 'I would sell Danvers too,' she said, 'but the creature
declines to be treated as merchandize. It seems I have a faithful
servant; very much like my life, not quite to my taste; the one thing out
of the wreck!--with my dog!'

Before quitting her house for the return to Copsley, she had to grant Mr.
Alexander Hepburn, post-haste from his Caledonia, a private interview.
She came out of it noticeably shattered. Nothing was related to Emma,
beyond the remark: 'I never knew till this morning the force of No in
earnest.' The weighty little word--woman's native watchdog and guardian,
if she calls it to her aid in earnest--had encountered and withstood a
fiery ancient host, astonished at its novel power of resistance.

Emma contented herself with the result. 'Were you much supplicated?'

'An Operatic Fourth-Act,' said Diana, by no means; feeling so flippantly
as she spoke.

She received, while under the impression of this man's, honest, if
primitive, ardour of courtship, or effort to capture, a characteristic
letter from Westlake, choicely phrased, containing presumeably an
application for her hand, in the generous offer of his own. Her reply to
a pursuer of that sort was easy. Comedy, after the barbaric attack,
refreshed her wits and reliance on her natural fencing weapons. To
Westlake, the unwritten No was conveyed in a series of kindly ironic
subterfuges, that, played it like an impish flea across the pages, just
giving the bloom of the word; and rich smiles come to Emma's life in
reading the dexterous composition: which, however, proved so thoroughly
to Westlake's taste, that a second and a third exercise in the comedy of
the negative had to be despatched to him from Copsley.




CHAPTER XL

IN WHICH WE SEE NATURE MAKING OF A WOMAN A MAID AGAIN, AND A THRICE
WHIMSICAL

On their way from London, after leaving the station, the drive through
the valley led them past a field, where cricketers were at work bowling
and batting under a vertical sun: not a very comprehensible sight to
ladies, whose practical tendencies, as observers of the other sex,
incline them to question the gain of such an expenditure of energy. The
dispersal of the alphabet over a printed page is not less perplexing to
the illiterate. As soon as Emma Dunstane discovered the Copsley
head-gamekeeper at one wicket, and, actually, Thomas Redworth facing him,
bat in hand, she sat up, greatly interested. Sir Lukin stopped the
carriage at the gate, and reminded his wife that it was the day of the
year for the men of his estate to encounter a valley Eleven. Redworth,
like the good fellow he was, had come down by appointment in the morning
out of London, to fill the number required, Copsley being weak this year.
Eight of their wickets had fallen for a lament able figure of twenty-nine
runs; himself clean-bowled the first ball. But Tom Redworth had got fast
hold of his wicket, and already scored fifty to his bat. 'There! grand
hit!' Sir Lukin cried, the ball flying hard at the rails. 'Once a
cricketer, always a cricketer, if you've legs to fetch the runs. And
Pullen's not doing badly. His business is to stick. We shall mark them a
hundred yet. I do hate a score on our side without the two 00's.' He
accounted for Redworth's mixed colours by telling the ladies he had lent
him his flannel jacket; which, against black trousers, looked odd but not
ill.

Gradually the enthusiasm of the booth and bystanders converted the flying
of a leather ball into a subject of honourable excitement.

'And why are you doing nothing?' Sir Lukin was asked; and he explained:

'My stumps are down: I'm married.' He took his wife's hand prettily.

Diana had a malicious prompting. She smothered the wasp, and said: 'Oh!
look at that!'

'Grand hit again! Oh! good! good!' cried Sir Lukin, clapping to it, while
the long-hit-off ran spinning his legs into one for an impossible catch;
and the batsmen were running and stretching bats, and the ball flying
away, flying back, and others after it, and still the batsmen running,
till it seemed that the ball had escaped control and was leading the
fielders on a coltish innings of its own, defiant of bowlers.

Diana said merrily: 'Bravo our side!'

'Bravo, old Tom Redworth'; rejoined Sir Lukin. 'Four, and a three! And
capital weather, haven't we: Hope we shall have same sort day next
month--return match, my ground. I've seen Tom Redworth score--old
days--over two hundred t' his bat. And he used to bowl too. But bowling
wants practice. And, Emmy, look at the old fellows lining the booth, pipe
in mouth and cheering. They do enjoy a day like this. We'll have a supper
for fifty at Copsley's:--it's fun. By Jove! we must have reached up to
near the hundred.'

He commissioned a neighbouring boy to hie to the booth for the latest
figures, and his emissary taught lightning a lesson.

Diana praised the little fellow.

'Yes, he's a real English boy,' said Emma.

'We 've thousands of 'em, thousands, ready to your hand,' exclaimed Sir
Lukin, 'and a confounded Radicalized country . . .' he murmured gloomily
of 'lets us be kicked! . . . any amount of insult, meek as gruel! . . .
making of the finest army the world has ever seen! You saw the papers
this morning? Good heaven! how a nation with an atom of self-respect can
go on standing that sort of bullying from foreigners! We do. We're
insulted and we're threatened, and we call for a hymn!--Now then, my man,
what is it?'

The boy had flown back. 'Ninety-two marked, sir; ninety-nine runs; one
more for the hundred.'

'Well reckoned; and mind you're up at Copsley for the return match.--And
Tom Redworth says, they may bite their thumbs to the bone--they don't
hurt us. I tell him, he has no sense of national pride. He says, we're
not prepared for war: We never are! And whose the fault? Says, we're a
peaceful people, but 'ware who touches us! He doesn't feel a kick.--Oh!
clever snick! Hurrah for the hundred!--Two-three. No, don't force the
running, you fools!--though they 're wild with the ball: ha!--no?--all
right!' The wicket stood. Hurrah!

The heat of the noonday sun compelled the ladies to drive on.

'Enthusiasm has the privilege of not knowing monotony,' said Emma. 'He
looks well in flannels.'

'Yes, he does,' Diana replied, aware of the reddening despite her having
spoken so simply. 'I think the chief advantage men have over us is in
their amusements.'

'Their recreations.'

'That is the better word.' Diana fanned her cheeks and said she was warm.
'I mean, the permanent advantage. For you see that age does not affect
them.'

'Tom Redworth is not a patriarch, my dear.'

'Well, he is what would be called mature.'

'He can't be more than thirty-two or three; and that, for a man of his
constitution, means youth.'

'Well, I can imagine him a patriarch playing cricket.'

'I should imagine you imagine the possible chances. He is the father who
would play with his boys.'

'And lock up his girls in the nursery.' Diana murmured of the
extraordinary heat.

Emma begged her to remember her heterodox views of the education for
girls.

'He bats admirably,' said Diana. 'I wish I could bat half as well.'

'Your batting is with the tongue.'

'Not so good. And a solid bat, or bludgeon, to defend the poor stumps, is
surer. But there is the difference of cricket:--when your stumps are
down, you are idle, at leisure; not a miserable prisoner.'

'Supposing all marriages miserable.'

'To the mind of me,' said Diana, and observed Emma's rather saddened
eyelids for a proof that schemes to rob her of dear liberty were
certainly planned.

They conversed of expeditions to Redworth's Berkshire mansion, and to The
Crossways, untenanted at the moment, as he had informed Emma, who fancied
it would please Tony to pass a night in the house she loved; but as he
was to be of the party she coldly acquiesced.

The woman of flesh refuses pliancy when we want it of her, and will not,
until it is her good pleasure, be bent to the development called a
climax, as the puppet-woman, mother of Fiction and darling of the
multitude! ever amiably does, at a hint of the Nuptial Chapter. Diana in
addition sustained the weight of brains. Neither with waxen optics nor
with subservient jointings did she go through her pathways of the world.
Her direct individuality rejected the performance of simpleton, and her
lively blood, the warmer for its containment quickened her to penetrate
things and natures; and if as yet, in justness to the loyal male friend,
she forbore to name him conspirator, she read both him and Emma, whose
inner bosom was revealed to her, without an effort to see. But her
characteristic chasteness of mind, not coldness of the 'blood,--which had
supported an arduous conflict, past all existing rights closely to
depict, and which barbed her to pierce to the wishes threatening her
freedom, deceived her now to think her flaming blushes came of her
relentless divination on behalf of her recovered treasure: whereby the
clear reading of others distracted the view of herself. For one may be
the cleverest alive, and still hoodwinked while blood is young and warm.

The perpetuity of the contrast presented to her reflections, of
Redworth's healthy, open, practical, cheering life, and her own
freakishly interwinding, darkly penetrative, simulacrum of a life,
cheerless as well as useless, forced her humiliated consciousness by
degrees, in spite of pride, to the knowledge that she was engaged in a
struggle with him; and that he was the stronger;--it might be, the
worthier: she thought him the handsomer. He throve to the light of day,
and she spun a silly web that meshed her in her intricacies. Her
intuition of Emma's wishes led to this; he was constantly before her. She
tried to laugh at the image of the concrete cricketer, half-flannelled,
and red of face: the 'lucky calculator,' as she named him to Emma, who
shook her head, and sighed. The abstract, healthful and powerful man,
able to play besides profitably working, defied those poor efforts.
Consequently, at once she sent up a bubble to the skies, where it became
a spheral realm, of far too fine an atmosphere for men to breathe in it;
and thither she transported herself at will, whenever the contrast, with
its accompanying menace of a tyrannic subjugation, overshadowed her. In
the above, the kingdom composed of her shattered romance of life and her
present aspirings, she was free and safe. Nothing touched her
there--nothing that Redworth did. She could not have admitted there her
ideal of a hero. It was the sublimation of a virgin's conception of life,
better fortified against the enemy. She peopled it with souls of the
great and pure, gave it illimitable horizons, dreamy nooks, ravishing
landscapes, melodies of the poets of music. Higher and more-celestial
than the Salvatore, it was likewise, now she could assure herself
serenely, independent of the horrid blood-emotions. Living up there, she
had not a feeling.

The natural result of this habit of ascending to a superlunary home, was
the loss of an exact sense of how she was behaving below. At the
Berkshire mansion, she wore a supercilious air, almost as icy as she
accused the place of being. Emma knew she must have seen in the library a
row of her literary ventures, exquisitely bound; but there was no
allusion to the books. Mary Paynham's portrait of Mrs. Warwick hung
staring over the fireplace, and was criticized, as though its occupancy
of that position had no significance.

'He thinks she has a streak of genius,' Diana said to Emma.

'It may be shown in time,' Emma replied, for a comment on the work. 'He
should know, for the Spanish pictures are noble acquisitions.'

'They are, doubtless, good investments.'

He had been foolish enough to say, in Diana's hearing, that he considered
the purchase of the Berkshire estate a good investment. It had not yet a
name. She suggested various titles for Emma to propose: 'The Funds'; or
'Capital Towers'; or 'Dividend Manor'; or 'Railholm'; blind to the
evidence of inflicting pain. Emma, from what she had guess concerning the
purchaser of The Crossways, apprehended a discovery there which might
make Tony's treatment of him unkinder, seeing that she appeared actuated
contrariously; and only her invalid's new happiness in the small
excursions she was capable of taking to a definite spot, of some homely
attractiveness, moved her to follow her own proposal for the journey.
Diana pleaded urgently, childishly in tone, to have Arthur Rhodes with
them, 'so as to be sure of a sympathetic companion for a walk on the
Downs.' At The Crossways, they were soon aware that Mr. Redworth's
domestics were in attendance to serve them. Manifestly the house was his
property, and not much of an investment! The principal bed-room, her
father's once, and her own, devoted now to Emma's use, appalled her with
a resemblance to her London room. She had noticed some of her furniture
at 'Dividend Manor,' and chosen to consider it in the light of a bargain
from a purchase at the sale of her goods. Here was her bed, her
writing-table, her chair of authorship, desks, books, ornaments,
water-colour sketches. And the drawing-room was fitted with her brackets
and etageres, holding every knickknack she had possessed and scattered,
small bronzes, antiques, ivory junks, quaint ivory figures Chinese and
Japanese, bits of porcelain, silver incense-urns, dozens of dainty
sundries. She had a shamed curiosity to spy for an omission of one of
them; all were there. The Crossways had been turned into a trap.

Her reply to this blunt wooing, conspired, she felt justifled in
thinking, between him and Emma, was emphatic in muteness. She treated it
as if unobserved. At night, in bed, the scene of his mission from Emma to
her under this roof, barred her customary ascent to her planetary
kingdom. Next day she took Arthur after breakfast for a walk on the Downs
and remained absent till ten minutes before the hour of dinner. As to
that young gentleman, he was near to being caressed in public. Arthur's
opinions, his good sayings, were quoted; his excellent companionship on
really poetical walks, and perfect sympathy, praised to his face.
Challenged by her initiative to a kind of language that threw Redworth
out, he declaimed: 'We pace with some who make young morning stale.'

'Oh! stale as peel of fruit long since consumed,' she chimed.

And go they proceeded; and they laughed, Emma smiled a little, Redworth
did the same beneath one of his questioning frowns--a sort of fatherly
grimace.

A suspicion that this man, when infatuated, was able to practise the
absurdest benevolence, the burlesque of chivalry, as a man-admiring sex
esteems it, stirred very naughty depths of the woman in Diana, labouring
under her perverted mood. She put him to proof, for the chance of arming
her wickedest to despise him. Arthur was petted, consulted, cited,
flattered all round; all but caressed. She played, with a reserve, the
maturish young woman smitten by an adorable youth; and enjoyed doing it
because she hoped for a visible effect--more paternal benevolence--and
could do it so dispassionately. Coquettry, Emma thought, was most
unworthily shown; and it was of the worst description. Innocent of
conspiracy, she had seen the array of Tony's lost household treasures she
wondered at a heartlessness that would not even utter common thanks to
the friendly man for the compliment of prizing her portrait and the
things she had owned; and there seemed an effort to wound him.

The invalided woman, charitable with allowances for her erratic husband,
could offer none for the woman of a long widowhood, that had become a
trebly sensitive maidenhood; abashed by her knowledge of the world,
animated by her abounding blood; cherishing her new freedom, dreading the
menacer; feeling that though she held the citadel, she was daily less
sure of its foundations, and that her hope of some last romance in life
was going; for in him shone not a glimpse. He appeared to Diana as a
fatal power, attracting her without sympathy, benevolently overcoming:
one of those good men, strong men, who subdue and do not kindle. The
enthralment revolted a nature capable of accepting subjection only by
burning. In return for his moral excellence, she gave him the moral
sentiments: esteem, gratitude, abstract admiration, perfect faith. But
the man? She could not now say she had never been loved; and a flood of
tenderness rose in her bosom, swelling from springs that she had
previously reproved with a desperate severity: the unhappy, unsatisfied
yearning to be more than loved, to love. It was alive, out of the wreck
of its first trial. This, the secret of her natural frailty, was bitter
to her pride: chastely-minded as she was, it whelmed her. And then her
comic imagination pictured Redworth dramatically making love. And to a
widow! It proved him to be senseless of romance. Poetic men take aim at
maidens. His devotedness to a widow was charged against him by the
widow's shudder at antecedents distasteful to her soul, a discolouration
of her life. She wished to look entirely forward, as upon a world washed
clear of night, not to be cast back on her antecedents by practical
wooings or words of love; to live spiritually; free of the shower at her
eyelids attendant on any idea of her loving. The woman who talked of the
sentimentalist's 'fiddling harmonics,' herself stressed the material
chords, in her attempt to escape out of herself and away from her
pursuer.

Meanwhile she was as little conscious of what she was doing as of how she
appeared. Arthur went about with the moony air of surcharged sweetness,
and a speculation on it, alternately tiptoe and prostrate. More of her
intoxicating wine was administered to him, in utter thoughtlessness of
consequences to one who was but a boy and a friend, almost of her own
rearing. She told Emma, when leaving The Crossways, that she had no
desire to look on the place again: she wondered at Mr. Redworth's liking
such a solitude. In truth, the look back on it let her perceive that her
husband haunted it, and disfigured the man, of real generosity, as her
heart confessed, but whom she accused of a lack of prescient delicacy,
for not knowing she would and must be haunted there. Blaming him, her
fountain of colour shot up, at a murmur of her unjustness and the poor
man's hopes.

A week later, the youth she publicly named 'her Arthur' came down to
Copsley with news of his having been recommended by Mr. Redworth for the
post of secretary to an old Whig nobleman famous for his patronage of men
of letters. And besides, he expected to inherit, he said, and gazed in a
way to sharpen her instincts. The wine he had drunk of late from her
flowing vintage was in his eyes. They were on their usual rambles out
along the heights. 'Accept, by all means, and thank Mr. Redworth,' said
she, speeding her tongue to intercept him. 'Literature is a good stick
and a bad horse. Indeed, I ought to know. You can always write; I hope
you will.'

She stepped fast, hearing: 'Mrs. Warwick--Diana! May I take your hand?'

This was her pretty piece of work! 'Why should you? If you speak my
Christian name, no: you forfeit any pretext. And pray, don't loiter. We
are going at the pace of the firm of Potter and Dawdle, and you know they
never got their shutters down till it was time to put them up again.'

Nimble-footed as she was, she pressed ahead too fleetly for amorous
eloquence to have a chance. She heard 'Diana!' twice, through the
rattling of her discourse and flapping of her dress.

'Christian names are coin that seem to have an indifferent valuation of
the property they claim,' she said in the Copsley garden; 'and as for
hands, at meeting and parting, here is the friendliest you could have.
Only don't look rueful. My dear Arthur, spare me that, or I shall blame
myself horribly.'

His chance had gone, and he composed his face. No hope in speaking had
nerved him; merely the passion to speak. Diana understood the state, and
pitied the naturally modest young fellow, and chafed at herself as a
senseless incendiary, who did mischief right and left, from seeking to
shun the apparently inevitable. A sidethought intruded, that he would
have done his wooing poetically--not in the burly storm, or bull-Saxon,
she apprehended. Supposing it imperative with her to choose? She looked
up, and the bird of broader wing darkened the whole sky, bidding her know
that she had no choice.

Emma was requested to make Mr. Redworth acquainted with her story, all of
it:--'So that this exalted friendship of his may be shaken to a common
level. He has an unbearably high estimate of me, and it hurts me. Tell
him all; and more than even you have known:--but for his coming to me, on
the eve of your passing under the surgeon's hands, I should have
gone--flung the world my glove! A matter of minutes. Ten minutes later!
The train was to start for France at eight, and I was awaited. I have to
thank heaven that the man was one of those who can strike icily. Tell Mr.
Redworth what I say. You two converse upon every subject. One may be too
loftily respected--in my case. By and by--for he is a tolerant reader of
life and women, I think--we shall be humdrum friends of the lasting
order.'

Emma's cheeks were as red as Diana's. 'I fancy Tom Redworth has not much
to learn concerning any person he cares for,' she said. 'You like him? I
have lost touch of you, my dear, and ask.'

'I like him: that I can say. He is everything I am not. But now I am
free, the sense of being undeservedly over-esteemed imposes fetters, and
I don't like them. I have been called a Beauty. Rightly or other, I have
had a Beauty's career; and a curious caged beast's life I have found it.
Will you promise me to speak to him? And also, thank him for helping
Arthur Rhodes to a situation.'

At this, the tears fell from her. And so enigmatical had she grown to
Emma, that her bosom friend took them for a confessed attachment to the
youth.

Diana's wretched emotion shamed her from putting any inquiries whether
Redworth had been told. He came repeatedly, and showed no change of face,
always continuing in the form of huge hovering griffin; until an idea,
instead of the monster bird, struck her. Might she not, after all, be
cowering under imagination? The very maidenly idea wakened her
womanliness--to reproach her remainder of pride, not to see more
accurately. It was the reason why she resolved, against Emma's extreme
entreaties, to take lodgings in the South valley below the heights, where
she could be independent of fancies and perpetual visitors, but near her
beloved at any summons of urgency; which Emma would not habitually send
because of the coming of a particular gentleman. Dresses were left at
Copsley for dining and sleeping there upon occasion, and poor Danvers,
despairing over the riddle of her mistress, was condemned to the
melancholy descent.

'It's my belief,' she confided to Lady Dunstane's maid Bartlett, 'she'll
hate men all her life after that Mr. Dacier.'

If women were deceived, and the riddle deceived herself, there is excuse
for a plain man like Redworth in not having the slightest clue to the
daily shifting feminine maze he beheld. The strange thing was, that
during her maiden time she had never been shifty or flighty, invariably
limpid and direct.




CHAPTER XLI

CONTAINS A REVELATION OF THE ORIGIN OF THE TIGRESS IN DIANA

An afternoon of high summer blazed over London through the City's awning
of smoke, and the three classes of the population, relaxed by the
weariful engagement with what to them was a fruitless heat, were
severally bathing their ideas in dreams of the contrast possible to
embrace: breezy seas or moors, aerial Alps, cool beer. The latter, if
confessedly the lower comfort, is the readier at command; and Thomas
Redworth, whose perspiring frame was directing his inward vision to fly
for solace to a trim new yacht, built on his lines, beckoning from
Southampton Water, had some of the amusement proper to things plucked off
the levels, in the conversation of a couple of journeymen close ahead of
him, as he made his way from a quiet street of brokers' offices to a City
Bank. One asked the other if he had ever tried any of that cold stuff
they were now selling out of barrows, with cream. His companion answered,
that he had not got much opinion of stuff of the sort; and what was it
like?

'Well, it's cheap, it ain't bad; it's cooling. But it ain't refreshing.'

'Just what I reckoned all that newfangle rubbish.'

Without a consultation, the conservatives in beverage filed with a smart
turn about, worthy of veterans at parade on the drill-ground, into a
public-house; and a dialogue chiefly remarkable for absence of point,
furnished matter to the politician's head of the hearer. Provided that
their beer was unadulterated! Beer they would have; and why not, in
weather like this? But how to make the publican honest! And he was not
the only trickster preying on the multitudinous poor copper crowd,
rightly to be protected by the silver and the golden. Revelations of the
arts practised to plump them with raw-earth and minerals in the guise of
nourishment, had recently knocked at the door of the general conscience
and obtained a civil reply from the footman. Repulsive as the thought was
to one still holding to Whiggish Liberalism, though flying various
Radical kites, he was caught by the decisive ultratorrent, and whirled to
amid the necessity for the interference of the State, to stop the
poisoning of the poor. Upper classes have never legislated systematically
in their interests; and quid . . . rabidae tradis ovile lupae? says one
of the multitude. We may be seeing fangs of wolves where fleeces waxed.
The State that makes it a vital principle to concern itself with the
helpless poor, meets instead of waiting for Democracy; which is a
perilous flood but when it is dammed. Or else, in course of time,
luxurious yachting, my friend, will encounter other reefs and breakers
than briny ocean's! Capital, whereat Diana Warwick aimed her superbest
sneer, has its instant duties. She theorized on the side of poverty, and
might do so: he had no right to be theorizing on the side of riches.
Across St. George's Channel, the cry for humanity in Capital was an
agony. He ought to be there, doing, not cogitating. The post of Irish
Secretary must be won by real service founded on absolute local
knowledge. Yes, and sympathy, if you like; but sympathy is for proving,
not prating . . . .

These were the meditations of a man in love; veins, arteries, headpiece
in love, and constantly brooding at a solitary height over the beautiful
coveted object; only too bewildered by her multifarious evanescent
feminine evasions, as of colours on a ruffle water, to think of pouncing
for he could do nothing to soften, nothing that seemed to please her: and
all the while, the motive of her mind impelled him in reflection beyond
practicable limits: even pointing him to apt quotations! Either he
thought within her thoughts, or his own were at her disposal. Nor was it
sufficient for him to be sensible of her influence, to restrain the
impetus he took from her. He had already wedded her morally, and much
that he did, as well as whatever he debated, came of Diana; more than if
they had been coupled, when his downright practical good sense could have
spoken. She held him suspended, swaying him in that posture; and he was
not a whit ashamed of it. The beloved woman was throned on the very
highest of the man.

Furthermore, not being encouraged, he had his peculiar reason for delay,
though now he could offer her wealth. She had once in his hearing derided
the unpleasant hiss of the ungainly English matron's title of Mrs. There
was no harm in the accustomed title, to his taste; but she disliking it,
he did the same, on her special behalf; and the prospect, funereally
draped, of a title sweeter-sounding to her ears, was above his horizon.
Bear in mind, that he underwent the reverse of encouragement. Any small
thing to please her was magnified, and the anticipation of it nerved the
modest hopes of one who deemed himself and any man alive deeply her
inferior.

Such was the mood of the lover condemned to hear another malignant
scandal defiling the name of the woman he worshipped. Sir Lukin Dunstane,
extremely hurried, bumped him on the lower step of the busy Bank, and
said:

'Pardon!' and 'Ha! Redwarth! making money?'

'Why, what are you up to down here?' he was asked, and he answered: 'Down
to the Tower, to an officer quartered there. Not bad quarters, but an
infernal distance. Business.'

Having cloaked his expedition to the distance with the comprehensive
word, he repeated it; by which he feared he had rendered it too
significant, and he said: 'No, no; nothing particular'; and that caused
the secret he contained to swell in his breast rebelliously, informing
the candid creature of the fact of his hating to lie: whereupon thus he
poured himself out, in the quieter bustle of an alley, off the main
thoroughfare. 'You're a friend of hers. I 'm sure you care for her
reputation; you 're an old friend of hers, and she's my wife's dearest
friend; and I'm fond of her too; and I ought to be, and ought to know,
and do know:--pure? Strike off my fist if there's a spot on her
character! And a scoundrel like that fellow Wroxeter! Damnedest rage I
ever was in!--Swears . . . down at Lockton . . . when she was a girl.
Why, Redworth, I can tell you, when Diana Warwick was a girl!'

Redworth stopped him. 'Did he say it in your presence?'

Sir Lukin was drawn-up by the harsh question. 'Well, no; not exactly.' He
tried to hesitate, but he was in the hot vein of a confidence and he
wanted advice. 'The cur said it to a woman--hang the woman! And she hates
Diana Warwick: I can't tell why--a regular snake's hate. By Jove! how
women carp hate!'

'Who is the woman?' said Redworth.

Sir Lukin complained of the mob at his elbows. 'I don't like mentioning
names here.'

A convenient open door of offices invited him to drag his receptacle, and
possible counsellor, into the passage, where immediately he bethought him
of a postponement of the distinct communication; but the vein was too
hot. 'I say, Redworth, I wish you'd dine with me. Let's drive up to my
Club.--Very well, two words. And I warn you, I shall call him out, and
make it appear it 's about another woman, who'll like nothing so much, if
I know the Jezebel. Some women are hussies, let 'em be handsome as
houris. And she's a fire-ship; by heaven, she is! Come, you're a friend
of my wife's, but you're a man of the world and my friend, and you know
how fellows are tempted, Tom Redworth.--Cur though he is, he's likely to
step out and receive a lesson.--Well, he's the favoured cavalier for the
present . . . h'm . . . Fryar-Gannett. Swears he told her,
circumstantially; and it was down at Lockton, when Diana Warwick was a
girl. Swears she'll spit her venom at her, so that Diana Warwick shan't
hold her head up in London Society, what with that cur Wroxeter, Old
Dannisburgh, and Dacier. And it does count a list, doesn't it? confound
the handsome hag! She's jealous of a dark rival. I've been down to
Colonel Hartswood at the Tower, and he thinks Wroxeter deserves
horsewhipping, and we may manage it. I know you 're dead against
duelling; and so am I, on my honour. But you see there are cases where a
lady must be protected; and anything new, left to circulate against a
lady who has been talked of twice--Oh, by Jove! it must be stopped. If
she has a male friend on earth, it must be stopped on the spot.'

Redworth eyed Sir Lukin curiously through his wrath.

'We'll drive up to your Club,' he said.

'Hartswood dines with me this evening, to confer,' rejoined Sir Lukin.
'Will you meet him?'

'I can't,' said Redworth, 'I have to see a lady, whose affairs I have
been attending to in the City; and I 'm engaged for the evening. You
perceive, my good fellow,' he resumed, as they rolled along, 'this is a
delicate business. You have to consider your wife. Mrs. Warwick's, name
won't come up, but another woman's will.'

'I meet Wroxeter at a gambling-house he frequents, and publicly call him
cheat--slap his face, if need be.'

'Sure to!' repeated Redworth. 'No stupid pretext will quash the woman's
name. Now, such a thing as a duel would give pain enough.'

'Of course; I understand,' Sir Lukin nodded his clear comprehension. 'But
what is it you advise, to trounce the scoundrel, and silence him?'

'Leave it to me for a day. Let me have your word that you won't take a
step: positively--neither you nor Colonel Hartswood. I'll see you by
appointment at your Club.' Redworth looked up over the chimneys. 'We 're
going to have a storm and a gale, I can tell you.'

'Gale and storm!' cried Sir Lukin; 'what has that got to do with it?'

'Think of something else for, a time.'

'And that brute of a woman--deuced handsome she is!--if you care for fair
women, Redworth:--she's a Venus, jumped slap out of the waves, and the
Devil for sire--that you learn: running about, sowing her lies. She's a
yellow witch. Oh! but she's a shameless minx. And a black-leg cur like
Wroxeter! Any woman intimate with a fellow like that, stamps herself. I
loathe her. Sort of woman who swears in the morning you're the only man
on earth; and next day--that evening-engaged!--fee to Polly Hopkins--and
it's a gentleman, a nobleman, my lord!--been going on behind your back
half the season!--and she isn't hissed when she abuses a lady, a saint in
comparison! You know the world, old fellow:--Brighton, Richmond, visits
to a friend as deep in the bog. How Fryar-Gunnett--a man, after all--can
stand it! And drives of an afternoon for an airing-by heaven! You're out
of that mess, Redworth: not much taste for the sex; and you're right,
you're lucky. Upon my word, the corruption of society in the present day
is awful; it's appalling.--I rattled at her: and oh! dear me, perks on
her hind heels and defies me to prove: and she's no pretender, but hopes
she's as good as any of my "chaste Dianas." My dear old friend, it's when
you come upon women of that kind you have a sickener. And I'm bound by
the best there is in a man-honour, gratitude, all the' list--to defend
Diana Warwick.'

'So, you see, for your wife's sake, your name can't be hung on a woman of
that kind,' said Redworth. 'I'll call here the day after to-morrow at
three P.M.'

Sir Lukin descended and vainly pressed Redworth to run up into his Club
for refreshment. Said he roguishly:

'Who 's the lady?'

The tone threw Redworth on his frankness.

'The lady I 've been doing business for in the City, is Miss Paynham.'

'I saw her once at Copsley; good-looking. Cleverish?'

'She has ability.'

Entering his Club, Sir Lukin was accosted in the reading-room by a
cavalry officer, a Colonel Launay, an old Harrovian, who stood at the
window and asked him whether it was not Tom Redworth in the cab. Another,
of the same School, standing squared before a sheet of one of the evening
newspapers, heard the name and joined them, saying: 'Tom Redworth is
going to be married, some fellow told me.'

'He'll make a deuced good husband to any woman--if it's true,' said Sir
Lukin, with Miss Paynham ringing in his head. 'He's a cold-blooded old
boy, and likes women for their intellects.'

Colonel Launay hummed in meditative emphasis. He stared at vacancy with a
tranced eye, and turning a similar gaze on Sir Lukin, as if through him,
burst out: 'Oh, by George, I say, what a hugging that woman 'll get!'

The cocking of ears and queries of Sir Lukin put him to the test of his
right to the remark; for it sounded of occult acquaintance with
interesting subterranean facts; and there was a communication, in brief
syllables and the dot language, crudely masculine. Immensely surprised,
Sir Lukin exclaimed: 'Of course! when fellows live quietly and are
careful of themselves. Ah! you may think you know a man for years, and
you don't: you don't know more than an inch or two of him. Why, of
course, Tom Redworth would be uxorious--the very man! And tell us what
has become of the Firefly now? One never sees her. Didn't complain?'

'Very much the contrary.'

Both gentlemen were grave, believing their knowledge in the subterranean
world of a wealthy city to give them a positive cognizance of female
humanity; and the substance of Colonel Launay's communication had its
impressiveness for them.

'Well, it's a turn right-about-face for me,' said Sir Lukin. 'What a
world we live in! I fancy I've hit on the woman he means to marry;--had
an idea of another woman once; but he's one of your friendly fellows with
women. That's how it was I took him for a fish. Great mistake, I admit.
But Tom Redworth 's a man of morals after all; and when those men do
break loose for a plunge--ha! Have you ever boxed with him? Well, he
keeps himself in training, I can tell you.'

Sir Lukin's round of visits drew him at night to Lady Singleby's, where
he sighted the identical young lady of his thoughts, Miss Paynham,
temporarily a guest of the house; and he talked to her of Redworth, and
had the satisfaction to spy a blush, a rageing blush: which avowal
presented her to his view as an exceedingly good-looking girl; so that he
began mentally to praise Redworth for a manly superiority to small
trifles and the world's tattle.

'You saw him to-day,' he said.

She answered: 'Yes. He goes down to Copsley tomorrow.'

'I think not,' said Sir Lukin.'

'I have it from him.' She closed her eyelids in speaking.

'He and I have some rather serious business in town.'

'Serious?'

'Don't be alarmed: not concerning him.'

'Whom, then? You have told me so much--I have a right to know.'

'Not an atom of danger, I assure you?'

'It concerns Mrs. Warwick!' said she.

Sir Lukin thought the guess extraordinary. He preserved an impenetrable
air. But he had spoken enough to set that giddy head spinning.

Nowhere during the night was Mrs. Fryar-Gannett visible. Earlier than
usual, she was riding next day in the Row, alone for perhaps two minutes,
and Sir Lukin passed her, formally saluting. He could not help the look
behind him, she sat so bewitchingly on horseback! He looked, and behold,
her riding-whip was raised erect from the elbow. It was his horse that
wheeled; compulsorily he was borne at a short canter to her side.

'Your commands?'

The handsome Amabel threw him a sombre glance from the corners of her
uplifted eyelids; and snakish he felt it; but her colour and the line of
her face went well with sullenness; and, her arts of fascination cast
aside, she fascinated him more in seeming homelier, girlish. If the trial
of her beauty of a woman in a temper can bear the strain, she has
attractive lures indeed; irresistible to the amorous idler: and when, in
addition, being the guilty person, she plays the injured, her show of
temper on the taking face pitches him into perplexity with his own
emotions, creating a desire to strike and be stricken, howl and set
howling, which is of the happiest augury for tender reconcilement, on the
terms of the gentleman on his kneecap.

'You've been doing a pretty thing!' she said, and briefly she named her
house and half an hour, and flew. Sir Lukin was left to admire the figure
of the horsewoman. Really, her figure had an air of vindicating her
successfully, except for the poison she spat at Diana Warwick. And what
pretty thing had he been doing? He reviewed dozens of speculations until
the impossibility of seizing one determined him to go to Mrs.
Fryar-Gunnett at the end of the half-hour--'Just to see what these women
have to say for themselves.'

Some big advance drops of Redworth's thunderstorm drawing gloomily
overhead, warned him to be quick and get his horse into stables.
Dismounted, the sensational man was irresolute, suspecting a female trap.
But curiosity, combined with the instinctive turning of his nose in the
direction of the lady's house, led him thither, to an accompaniment of
celestial growls, which impressed him, judging by that naughty-girl face
of hers and the woman's tongue she had, as a likely prelude to the scene
to come below.




CHAPTER XLII

THE PENULTIMATE: SHOWING A FINAL STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY AND RUN INTO
HARNESS

The prophet of the storm had forgotten his prediction; which, however,
was of small concern to him, apart from the ducking he received midway
between the valley and the heights of Copsley; whither he was bound, on a
mission so serious that, according to his custom in such instances, he
chose to take counsel of his active legs: an adviseable course when the
brain wants clearing and the heart fortifying. Diana's face was clearly
before him through the deluge; now in ogle features, the dimple running
from her mouth, the dark bright eyes and cut of eyelids, and nostrils
alive under their lightning; now inkier whole radiant smile, or musefully
listening, nursing a thought. Or she was obscured, and he felt the face.
The individuality of it had him by the heart, beyond his powers of
visioning. On his arrival, he stood in the hall, adrip like one of the
trees of the lawn, laughing at Lady Dunstane's anxious exclamations. His
portmanteau had come and he was expected; she hurried out at the first
ringing of the bell, to greet and reproach him for walking in such
weather.

'Diana has left me,' she said, when he reappeared in dry clothing. 'We
are neighbours; she has taken cottage-lodgings at Selshall, about an
hour's walk:--one of her wild dreams of independence. Are you
disappointed?'

'I am,' Redworth confessed.

Emma coloured. 'She requires an immense deal of humouring at present. The
fit will wear off; only we must wait for it. Any menace to her precious
liberty makes her prickly. She is passing the day with the Pettigrews,
who have taken a place near her village for a month. She promised to dine
and sleep here, if she returned in time. What is your news?'

'Nothing; the world wags on.'

'You have nothing special to tell her?'

'Nothing'; he hummed; 'nothing, I fancy, that she does not know.'

'You said you were disappointed.'

'It's always a pleasure to see her.'

'Even in her worst moods, I find it so.'

'Oh! moods!' quoth Redworth.

'My friend, they are to be reckoned, with women.'

'Certainly; what I meant was, that I don't count them against women.'

'Good: but my meaning was . . . I think I remember your once comparing
them and the weather; and you spoke of the "one point more variable in
women." You may forestall your storms. There is no calculating the effect
of a few little words at a wrong season.'

'With women! I suppose not. I have no pretension to a knowledge of the
sex.'

Emma imagined she had spoken plainly enough, if he had immediate designs;
and she was not sure of that, and wished rather to shun his confidences
while Tony was in her young widowhood, revelling in her joy of liberty.
By and by, was her thought: perhaps next year. She dreaded Tony's refusal
of the yoke, and her iron-hardness to the dearest of men proposing it;
and moreover, her further to be apprehended holding to the refusal, for
the sake of consistency, if it was once uttered. For her own sake, she
shrank from hearing intentions, that distressing the good man, she would
have to discountenance. His candour in confessing disappointment, and his
open face, his excellent sense too, gave her some assurance of his not
being foolishly impetuous. After he had read to her for an hour, as his
habit was on evenings and wet days, their discussion of this and that in
the book lulled any doubts she had of his prudence, enough to render it
even a dubious point whether she might be speculating upon a wealthy
bachelor in the old-fashioned ultra-feminine manner; the which she so
abhorred that she rejected the idea. Consequently, Redworth's proposal to
walk down to the valley for Diana, and bring her back, struck her as
natural when a shaft of western sunshine from a whitened edge of
raincloud struck her windows. She let him go without an intimated
monition or a thought of one; thinking simply that her Tony would be more
likely to come, having him for escort. Those are silly women who are
always imagining designs and intrigues and future palpitations in the
commonest actions of either sex. Emma Dunstane leaned to the contrast
between herself and them.

Danvers was at the house about sunset, reporting her mistress to be on
her way, with Mr. Redworth. The maid's tale of the dreadful state of the
lanes, accounted for their tardiness; and besides the sunset had been
magnificent. Diana knocked at Emma's bedroom door, to say, outside,
hurriedly in passing, how splendid the sunset had been, and beg for an
extra five minutes. Taking full fifteen, she swam into the drawing-room,
lively with kisses on Emma's cheeks, and excuses, referring her
misconduct in being late to the seductions of 'Sol' in his glory.
Redworth said he had rarely seen so wonderful a sunset. The result of
their unanimity stirred Emma's bosom to match-making regrets; and the
walk of the pair together, alone under the propitious laming heavens,
appeared to her now as an opportunity lost. From sisterly sympathy, she
fancied she could understand Tony's liberty-loving reluctance: she had no
comprehension of the backwardness of the man beholding the dear woman
handsomer than in her maiden or her married time: and sprightlier as
well. She chatted deliciously, and drew Redworth to talk his best on his
choicer subjects, playing over them like a fide-wisp, determined at once
to flounder him and to make him shine. Her tender esteem for the man was
transparent through it all; and Emma, whose evening had gone happily
between them, said to her, in their privacy, before parting: 'You seemed
to have been inspired by "Sol," my dear. You do like him, don't you?'

Diana vowed she adored him; and with a face of laughter in rosy
suffusion, put Sol for Redworth, Redworth for Sol; but, watchful of
Emma's visage, said finally: 'If you mean the mortal man, I think him up
to almost all your hyperboles--as far as men go; and he departed to his
night's rest, which I hope will be good, like a king. Not to admire him,
would argue me senseless, heartless. I do; I have reason to.'

'And you make him the butt of your ridicule, Tony.'

'No; I said "like a king"; and he is one. He has, to me, morally the
grandeur of your Sol sinking, Caesar stabbed, Cato on the sword-point. He
is Roman, Spartan, Imperial; English, if you like, the pick, of the land.
It is an honour to call him friend, and I do trust he will choose the
pick among us, to make her a happy woman--if she's for running in
harness. There, I can't say more.'

Emma had to be satisfied with it, for the present.

They were astonished at breakfast by seeing Sir Lukin ride past the
windows. He entered with the veritable appetite of a cavalier who had
ridden from London fasting; and why he had come at that early hour, he
was too hungry to explain. The ladies retired to read their letters by
the morning's post; whereupon Sir Lukin called to Redworth; 'I met that
woman in the park yesterday, and had to stand a volley. I went beating
about London for you all the afternoon and evening. She swears you rated
her like a scullery wench, and threatened to ruin Wroxeter. Did you see
him? She says, the story's true in one particular, that he did snatch a
kiss, and got mauled. Not so much to pay for it! But what a ruffian--eh?'

'I saw him,' said Redworth. 'He 's one of the new set of noblemen who
take bribes to serve as baits for transactions in the City. They help to
the ruin of their order, or are signs of its decay. We won't judge it by
him. He favoured me with his "word of honour" that the thing you heard
was entirely a misstatement, and so forth:--apologized, I suppose. He
mumbled something.'

'A thorough cur!'

'He professed his readiness to fight, if either of us was not contented.'

'He spoke to the wrong man. I've half a mind to ride back and have him
out for that rascal "osculation" and the lady unwilling!--and she a young
one, a girl, under the protection of the house! By Jove! Redworth, when
you come to consider the scoundrels men can be, it stirs a fellow's bile.
There's a deal of that sort of villany going--and succeeding sometimes!
He deserves the whip or a bullet.'

'A sermon from Lukin Dunstane might punish him.'

'Oh! I'm a sinner, I know. But, go and tell one woman of another woman,
and that a lie! That's beyond me.'

'The gradations of the deeps are perhaps measurable to those who are in
them.'

'The sermon's at me--pop!' said Sir Lukin. 'By the way, I'm coming round
to think Diana Warwick was right when she used to jibe at me for throwing
up my commission. Idleness is the devil--or mother of him. I manage my
estates; but the truth is, it doesn't occupy my mind.'

'Your time.'

'My mind, I say.'

'Whichever you please.'

'You're crusty to-day, Redworth. Let me tell you, I think--and hard too,
when the fit's on me. However, you did right in stopping--I'll own--a
piece of folly, and shutting the mouths of those two; though it caused me
to come in for a regular drencher. But a pretty woman in a right-down
termagant passion is good theatre; because it can't last, at that pace;
and you're sure of your agreeable tableau. Not that I trust her ten
minutes out of sight--or any woman, except one or two; my wife and Diana
Warwick. Trust those you've tried, old boy. Diana Warwick ought to be
taught to thank you; though I don't know how it's to be done.'

'The fact of it is,' Redworth frowned and rose, 'I've done mischief. I
had no right to mix myself in it. I'm seldom caught off my feet by an
impulse; but I was. I took the fever from you.'

He squared his figure at the window, and looked up on a driving sky.

'Come, let's play open cards, Tom Redworth,' said Sir Lukin, leaving the
table and joining his friend by the window. 'You moral men are doomed to
be marrying men, always; and quite right. Not that one doesn't hear a
roundabout thing or two about you: no harm. Very much the contrary:--as
the world goes. But you're the man to marry a wife; and if I guess the
lady, she's a sensible girl and won't be jealous. I 'd swear she only
waits for asking.'

'Then you don't guess the lady,' said Redworth.

'Mary Paynham?'

The desperate half-laugh greeting the name convinced more than a dozen
denials.

Sir Lukin kept edging round for a full view of the friend who shunned
inspection. 'But is it? . . . can it be? it must be, after all! . . .
why, of course it is! But the thing staring us in the face is just what
we never see. Just the husband for her!--and she's the wife! Why, Diana
Warwick 's the very woman, of course! I remember I used to think so
before she was free to wed.'

'She is not of that opinion.' Redworth blew a heavy breath; and it should
be chronicled as a sigh; but it was hugely masculine.

'Because you didn't attack, the moment she was free; that 's what upset
my calculations,' the sagacious gentleman continued, for a vindication of
his acuteness: then seizing the reply: 'Refuses? you don't mean to say
you're the man to take a refusal? and from a green widow in the blush?
Did you see her cheeks when she was peeping at the letter in her hand?
She colours at half a word--takes the lift of a finger for Hymen coming.
And lots of fellows are after her; I know it from Emmy. But you're not
the man to be refused. You're her friend--her champion. That woman
Fryar-Gunnett would have it you were the favoured lover, and sneered at
my talk of old friendship. Women are always down dead on the facts; can't
put them off a scent!'

'There's the mischief!' Redworth blew again. 'I had no right to be
championing Mrs. Warwick's name. Or the world won't give it, at all
events. I'm a blundering donkey. Yes, she wishes to keep her liberty.
And, upon my soul, I'm in love with everything she wishes! I've got the
habit.'

'Habit be hanged!' cried Sir Lukin. 'You're in love with the woman. I
know a little more of you now, Mr. Tom. You're a fellow in earnest about
what you do. You're feeling it now, on the rack, by heaven! though you
keep a bold face. Did she speak positively?--sort of feminine of "you're
the monster, not the man"? or measured little doctor's dose of
pity?--worse sign.' You 're not going?'

'If you'll drive me down in half an hour,' said Redworth.

'Give me an hour,' Sir Lukin replied, and went straight to his wife's
blue-room.

Diana was roused from a meditation on a letter she held, by the entrance
of Emma in her bed-chamber, to whom she said: 'I have here the very
craziest bit of writing!--but what is disturbing you, dear?'

Emma sat beside her, panting and composing her lips to speak. 'Do you,
love me? I throw policy to the winds, if only, I can batter at you for
your heart and find it! Tony, do you love me? But don't answer: give me
your hand. You have rejected him!'

'He has told you?'

'No. He is not the man to cry out for a wound. He heard in London--Lukin
has had the courage to tell me, after his fashion:--Tom Redworth heard an
old story, coming from one of the baser kind of women: grossly false, he
knew. I mention only Lord Wroxeter and Lockton. He went to man and woman
both, and had it refuted, and stopped their tongues, on peril; as he of
all men is able to do when he wills it.'

Observing the quick change in Tony's eyes, Emma exclaimed: 'How you
looked disdain when you asked whether he had told me! But why are you the
handsome tigress to him, of all men living! The dear fellow, dear to me
at least! since the day he first saw you, has worshipped you and striven
to serve you:--and harder than any Scriptural service to have the beloved
woman to wife. I know nothing to compare with it, for he is a man of
warmth. He is one of those rare men of honour who can command their
passion; who venerate when they love: and those are the men that women
select for punishment! Yes, you! It is to the woman he loves that he
cannot show himself as he is, because he is at her feet. You have managed
to stamp your spirit on him; and as a consequence, he defends you now,
for flinging him off. And now his chief regret is, that he has caused his
name to be coupled with yours. I suppose he had some poor hope, seeing
you free. Or else the impulse to protect the woman of his heart and soul
was too strong. I have seen what he suffered, years back, at the news of
your engagement.'

'Oh, for God's sake, don't,' cried Tony, tears running over, and her
dream of freedom, her visions of romance, drowning.

'It was like the snapping of the branch of an oak, when the trunk stands
firm,' Emma resumed, in her desire to scourge as well as to soften. 'But
similes applied to him will strike you as incongruous.' Tony swayed her
body, for a negative, very girlishly and consciously. 'He probably did
not woo you in a poetic style, or the courtly by prescription.' Again
Tony swayed; she had to hug herself under the stripes, and felt as if
alone at sea, with her dear heavens pelting. 'You have sneered at him for
his calculating--to his face: and it was when he was comparatively poor
that he calculated--to his cost! that he dared not ask you to marry a man
who could not offer you a tithe of what he considered fit for the
peerless woman. Peerless, I admit. There he was not wrong. But if he had
valued you half a grain less, he might have won you. You talk much of
chivalry; you conceive a superhuman ideal, to which you fit a very
indifferent wooden model, while the man of all the world the most
chivalrous! . . . He is a man quite other from what you think him:
anything but a "Cuthbert Dering" or a "Man of Two Minds." He was in the
drawing-room below, on the day I received your last maiden letter from
The Crossways--now his property, in the hope of making it yours.'

'I behaved abominably there!' interposed Tony, with a gasp.

'Let it pass. At any rate, that was the prick of a needle, not the blow
of a sword.'

'But marriage, dear Emmy! marriage! Is marriage to be the end of me?'

'What amazing apotheosis have you in prospect? And are you steering so
particularly well by yourself?'

'Miserably! But I can dream. And the thought of a husband cuts me from
any dreaming. It's all dead flat earth at once!'

'Would, you lave rejected him when you were a girl?'

'I think so.'

'The superior merits of another . . .?'

'Oh, no, no, no, no! I might have accepted him: and I might not have made
him happy. I wanted a hero, and the jewelled garb and the feather did not
suit him.'

'No; he is not that description of lay-figure. You have dressed it, and
gemmed it, and--made your discovery. Here is a true man; and if you can
find me any of your heroes to match him, I will thank you. He came on the
day I speak of, to consult me as to whether, with the income he then had
. . . Well, I had to tell him you were engaged. The man has never wavered
in his love of you since that day. He has had to bear something.'

This was an electrical bolt into Tony's bosom, shaking her from self-pity
and shame to remorseful pity of the suffering lover; and the tears ran in
streams, as she said:

'He bore it, Emmy, he bore it.' She sobbed out: 'And he went on building
a fortune and batting! Whatever he undertakes he does perfectly-approve
of the pattern or not. Oh! I have no doubt he had his nest of wish piping
to him all the while: only it seems quaint, dear, quaint, and against
everything we've been reading of lovers! Love was his bread and butter!'
Her dark eyes showered. 'And to tell you what you do not know of him, his
way of making love is really,' she sobbed, 'pretty. It . . . it took me
by surprise; I was expecting a bellow and an assault of horns; and if,
dear:--you will say, what boarding-school girl have you got with you! and
I feel myself getting childish:--if Sol in his glory had not been so m
. . . majestically m . . . magnificent, nor seemed to show me the king
. . . kingdom of my dreams, I might have stammered the opposite word to the
one he heard. Last night, when he took my hand kindly before going to bed
I had a fit for dropping on my knees to him. I saw him bleed, and he held
himself right royally. I told you he did;--Sol in his moral grandeur! How
infinitely above the physical monarch--is he not, Emmy? What one
dislikes, is the devotion of all that grandeur to win a widow. It should
be a maiden princess. You feel it so, I am sure. And here am I, as if a
maiden princess were I, demanding romantic accessories of rubious vapour
in the man condescending to implore the widow to wed him. But, tell me,
does he know everything of his widow--everything? I shall not have to go
through the frightful chapter?'

'He is a man with his eyes awake; he knows as much as any husband could
require to know,' said Emma; adding: 'My darling! he trusts you. It is
the soul of the man that loves you, as it is mine. You will not tease
him? Promise me. Give yourself frankly. You see it clearly before you.'

'I see compulsion, my dear. What I see, is a regiment of Proverbs,
bearing placards instead of guns, and each one a taunt at women,
especially at widows. They march; they form square; they enclose me in
the middle, and I have their inscriptions to digest. Read that crazy
letter from Mary Paynham while I am putting on my bonnet. I perceive I
have been crying like a raw creature in her teens. I don't know myself.
An advantage of the darker complexions is our speedier concealment of the
traces.'

Emma read Miss Paynham's letter, and returned it with the comment:
'Utterly crazy.' Tony said: 'Is it not? I am to "Pause before I trifle
with a noble heart too long." She is to "have her happiness in the
constant prayer for ours"; and she is "warned by one of those intimations
never failing her, that he runs a serious danger." It reads like a
Wizard's Almanack. And here "Homogeneity of sentiment the most perfect,
is unable to contend with the fatal charm, which exercised by an
indifferent person, must be ascribed to original predestination." She
should be under the wing of Lady Wathin. There is the mother for such
chicks! But I'll own to you, Emmy, that after the perusal, I did ask
myself a question as to my likeness of late to the writer. I have
drivelled . . . I was shuddering over it when you came in. I have
sentimentalized up to thin smoke. And she tells a truth when she says I
am not to "count social cleverness"--she means volubility--"as a warrant
for domineering a capacious intelligence": because of the gentleman's
modesty. Agreed: I have done it; I am contrite. I am going into slavery
to make amends for presumption. Banality, thy name is marriage!'

'Your business is to accept life as we have it,' said Emma; and Tony
shrugged. She was precipitate in going forth to her commonplace fate, and
scarcely looked at the man requested by Emma to escort her to her
cottage. After their departure, Emma fell into laughter at the last words
with the kiss of her cheeks: 'Here goes old Ireland!' But, from her look
and from what she had said upstairs, Emma could believe that the singular
sprite of girlishness invading and governing her latterly, had yielded
place to the woman she loved.




CHAPTER XLIII

NUPTIAL CHAPTER; AND OF HOW A BARELY WILLING WOMAN WAS LED TO BLOOM WITH
THE NUPTIAL SENTIMENT

Emma watched them on their way through the park, till they rounded the
beechwood, talking, it could be surmised, of ordinary matters; the face
of the gentleman turning at times to his companion's, which steadily
fronted the gale. She left the ensuing to a prayer for their good
direction, with a chuckle at Tony's evident feeling of a ludicrous
posture, and the desperate rush of her agile limbs to have it over. But
her prayer throbbed almost to a supplication that the wrong done to her
beloved by Dacier--the wound to her own sisterly pride rankling as an
injury to her sex, might be cancelled through the union of the woman
noble in the sight of God with a more manlike man.

Meanwhile the feet of the couple were going faster than their heads to
the end of the journey. Diana knew she would have to hoist the signal-and
how? The prospect was dumb-foundering. She had to think of appeasing her
Emma. Redworth, for his part; actually supposed she had accepted his
escorting in proof of the plain friendship offered him overnight.

'What do your "birds" do in weather like this?' she said.

'Cling to their perches and wait patiently. It's the bad time with them
when you don't hear them chirp.'

'Of course you foretold the gale.'

'Oh, well, it did not require a shepherd or a skipper for that.'

'Your grand gift will be useful to a yachtsman.'

'You like yachting. When I have tried my new schooner in the Channel, she
is at your command for as long as you and Lady Dunstane please.'

'So you acknowledge that birds--things of nature--have their bad time?'

'They profit ultimately by the deluge and the wreck. Nothing on earth is
"tucked-up" in perpetuity.'

'Except the dead. But why should the schooner be at our command?'

'I shall be in Ireland.'

He could not have said sweeter to her ears or more touching.

'We shall hardly feel safe without the weatherwise on board.'

'You may count on my man Barnes; I have proved him. He is up to his work
even when he's bilious: only, in that case, occurring about once a
fortnight, you must leave him to fight it out with the elements.'

'I rather like men of action to have a temper.'

'I can't say much for a bilious temper.'

The weather to-day really seemed of that kind, she remarked. He assented,
in the shrug manner--not to dissent: she might say what she would. He
helped nowhere to a lead; and so quick are the changes of mood at such
moments that she was now far from him under the failure of an effort to
come near. But thoughts of Emma pressed.

'The name of the new schooner? Her name is her picture to me.'

'I wanted you to christen her.'

'Launched without a name?'

'I took a liberty.'

Needless to ask, but she did. 'With whom?'

'I named her Diana.'

'May the Goddess of the silver bow and crescent protect her! To me the
name is ominous of mischance.'

'I would commit my fortunes and life . . . !' He checked his tongue,
ejaculating: 'Omens!'

She had veered straight away from her romantic aspirations to the blunt
extreme of thinking that a widow should be wooed in unornamented
matter-of-fact, as she is wedded, with a 'wilt thou,' and 'I will,' and
no decorative illusions. Downright, for the unpoetic creature, if you
please! So she rejected the accompaniment of the silver Goddess and high
seas for an introduction of the crisis.

'This would be a thunderer on our coasts. I had a trial of my sailing
powers in the Mediterranean.'

As she said it, her musings on him then, with the contract of her
position toward him now, fierily brushed her cheeks; and she wished him
the man to make one snatch at her poor lost small butterfly bit of
freedom, so that she might suddenly feel in haven, at peace with her
expectant Emma. He could have seen the inviting consciousness, but he was
absurdly watchful lest the flying sprays of border trees should strike
her. He mentioned his fear, and it became an excuse for her seeking
protection of her veil. 'It is our natural guardian,' she said.

'Not much against timber,' said he.

The worthy creature's anxiety was of the pattern of cavaliers escorting
dames--an exaggeration of honest zeal; a present example of clownish
goodness, it might seem; until entering the larch and firwood along the
beaten heights, there was a rocking and straining of the shallow-rooted
trees in a tremendous gust that quite pardoned him for curving his arm in
a hoop about her and holding a shoulder in front. The veil did her
positive service.

He was honourably scrupulous not to presume. A right good unimpulsive
gentleman: the same that she had always taken him for and liked.

'These firs are not taproots,' he observed, by way of apology.

Her dress volumed and her ribands rattled and chirruped on the verge of
the slope. 'I will take your arm here,' she said.

Redworth received the little hand, saying: 'Lean to me.'

They descended upon great surges of wind piping and driving every light
surface-atom as foam; and they blinked and shook; even the man was
shaken. But their arms were interlinked and they grappled; the battering
enemy made them one. It might mean nothing, or everything: to him it
meant the sheer blissful instant.

At the foot of the hill, he said: 'It's harder to keep to, the terms of
yesterday.'

'What were they?' said she, and took his breath more than the fury of the
storm had done.

'Raise the veil, I beg.'

'Widows do not wear it.'

The look revealed to him was a fugitive of the wilds, no longer the
glittering shooter of arrows.

'Have you . . .?' changed to me, was the signification understood. 'Can
you?--for life'. Do you think you can?'

His poverty in the pleading language melted her.

'What I cannot do, my best of friends, is to submit to be seated on a
throne, with you petitioning. Yes, as far as concerns this hand of mine,
if you hold it worthy of you. We will speak of that. Now tell me the name
of the weed trailing along the hedge there!

He knew it well; a common hedgerow weed; but the placid diversion baffled
him. It was clematis, he said.

'It drags in the dust when it has no firm arm to cling to. I passed it
beside you yesterday with a flaunting mind and not a suspicion of a
likeness. How foolish I was! I could volubly sermonize; only it should be
a young maid to listen. Forgive me the yesterday.'

'You have never to ask. You withdraw your hand--was I rough?'

'No,' she smiled demurely; 'it must get used to the shackles: but my
cottage is in sight. I have a growing love for the place. We will enter
it like plain people--if you think of coming in.'

As she said it she had a slight shock of cowering under eyes tolerably
hawkish in their male glitter; but her coolness was not disturbed; and
without any apprehensions she reflected on what has been written of the
silly division and war of the sexes:--which two might surely enter on an
engagement to live together amiably, unvexed by that barbarous old fowl
and falcon interlude. Cool herself, she imagined the same of him, having
good grounds for the delusion; so they passed through the cottage-garden
and beneath the low porchway, into her little sitting-room, where she was
proceeding to speak composedly of her preference for cottages, while
untying her bonnet-strings:--'If I had begun my life in a cottage!'--when
really a big storm-wave caught her from shore and whirled her to mid-sea,
out of every sensibility but the swimming one of her loss of self in the
man.

'You would not have been here!' was all he said. She was up at his heart,
fast-locked, undergoing a change greater than the sea works; her thoughts
one blush, her brain a fire-fount. This was not like being seated on a
throne.

'There,' said he, loosening his hug, 'now you belong to me! I know you
from head to foot. After that, my darling, I could leave you for years,
and call you wife, and be sure of you. I could swear it for you--my life
on it! That 's what I think of you. Don't wonder that I took my
chance--the first:--I have waited!'

Truer word was never uttered, she owned, coming into some harmony with
man's kiss on her mouth: the man violently metamorphozed to a stranger,
acting on rights she had given him. And who was she to dream of denying
them? Not an idea in her head! Bound verily to be thankful for such love,
on hearing that it dated from the night in Ireland . . . . 'So in love
with you that, on my soul, your happiness was my marrow--whatever you
wished; anything you chose. It's reckoned a fool's part. No, it's love:
the love of a woman--the one woman! I was like the hand of a clock to the
springs. I taught this old watch-dog of a heart to keep guard and bury
the bones you tossed him.'

'Ignorantly, admit,' said she, and could have bitten her tongue for the
empty words that provoked: 'Would you have flung him nothing?' and caused
a lowering of her eyelids and shamed glimpses of recollections. 'I hear
you have again been defending me. I told you, I think, I wished I had
begun my girl's life in a cottage. All that I have had to endure! . . or
so it seems to me: it may be my way of excusing myself:--I know my
cunning in that peculiar art. I would take my chance of mixing among the
highest and the brightest.'

'Naturally.'

'Culpably.'

'It brings you to me.'

'Through a muddy channel.'

'Your husband has full faith in you, my own.'

'The faith has to be summoned and is buffeted, as we were just now on the
hill. I wish he had taken me from a cottage.'

'You pushed for the best society, like a fish to its native sea.'

'Pray say, a salmon to the riverheads.'

'Better,' Redworth laughed joyfully, between admiration of the tongue
that always outflew him, and of the face he reddened.

By degrees her apter and neater terms of speech helped her to a notion of
regaining some steps of her sunken ascendancy, under the weight of the
novel masculine pressure on her throbbing blood; and when he bent to her
to take her lord's farewell of her, after agreeing to go and delight Emma
with a message, her submission and her personal pride were not so much at
variance: perhaps because her buzzing head had no ideas. 'Tell Emma you
have undertaken to wash the blackamoor as white as she can be,' she said
perversely, in her spite at herself for not coming, as it were, out of
the dawn to the man she could consent to wed: and he replied: 'I shall
tell her my dark girl pleads for a fortnight's grace before she and I set
sail for the West coast of Ireland': conjuring a picture that checked any
protest against the shortness of time:--and Emma would surely be his
ally.

They talked of the Dublin Ball: painfully to some of her thoughts. But
Redworth kissed that distant brilliant night as freshly as if no
belabouring years rolled in the chasm: which led her to conceive partly,
and wonderingly, the nature of a strong man's passion; and it subjugated
the woman knowing of a contrast. The smart of the blow dealt her by him
who had fired the passion in her became a burning regret for the loss of
that fair fame she had sacrificed to him, and could not bring to her
truer lover: though it was but the outer view of herself--the world's
view; only she was generous and of honest conscience, and but for the
sake of her truer lover, she would mentally have allowed the world to
lash and abuse her, without a plea of material purity. Could it be named?
The naming of it in her clear mind lessened it to accidental:--By good
fortune, she was no worse!--She said to Redworth, when finally dismissing
him; 'I bring no real disgrace to you, my friend.'--To have had this
sharp spiritual battle at such a time, was proof of honest conscience,
rarer among women, as the world has fashioned them yet, than the purity
demanded of them.--His answer: 'You are my wife!' rang in her hearing.

When she sat alone at last, she was incapable, despite her nature's
imaginative leap to brightness, of choosing any single period, auspicious
or luminous or flattering, since the hour of her first meeting this man,
rather than the grey light he cast on her, promising helpfulness, and
inspiring a belief in her capacity to help. Not the Salvatore high
raptures nor the nights of social applause could appear preferable: she
strained her shattered wits to try them. As for her superlunary sphere,
it was in fragments; and she mused on the singularity, considering that
she was not deeply enamoured. Was she so at all? The question drove her
to embrace the dignity of being reasonable--under Emmy's guidance. For
she did not stand firmly alone; her story confessed it. Marriage might be
the archway to the road of good service, even as our passage through the
flesh may lead to the better state. She had thoughts of the kind, and had
them while encouraging herself to deplore the adieu to her little
musk-scented sitting-room, where a modest freedom breathed, and her
individuality had seemed pointing to a straighter growth.

She nodded subsequently to the truth of her happy Emma's remark: 'You
were created for the world, Tony.' A woman of blood and imagination in
the warring world, without a mate whom she can revere, subscribes to a
likeness with those independent minor realms between greedy mighty
neighbours, which conspire and undermine when they do not openly threaten
to devour. So, then, this union, the return to the wedding yoke, received
sanction of grey-toned reason. She was not enamoured she could say it to
herself. She had, however, been surprised, both by the man and her
unprotesting submission; surprised and warmed, unaccountably warmed.
Clearness of mind in the woman chaste by nature, however little ignorant
it allowed her to be in the general review of herself, could not compass
the immediately personal, with its acknowledgement of her subserviency to
touch and pressure--and more, stranger, her readiness to kindle. She left
it unexplained. Unconsciously the image of Dacier was effaced. Looking
backward, her heart was moved to her long-constant lover with most
pitying tender wonderment--stormy man, as her threatened senses told her
that he was. Looking at him, she had to mask her being abashed and
mastered. And looking forward, her soul fell in prayer for this true
man's never repenting of his choice. Sure of her now, Mr. Thomas Redworth
had returned to the station of the courtier, and her feminine sovereignty
was not ruffled to make her feel too feminine. Another revelation was his
playful talk when they were more closely intimate. He had his humour as
well as his hearty relish of hers.

'If all Englishmen were like him!' she chimed with Emma Dunstane's
eulogies, under the influence.

'My dear,' the latter replied, 'we should simply march over the Four
Quarters and be blessed by the nations! Only, avoid your trick of dashing
headlong to the other extreme. He has his faults.'

'Tell me of them,' Diana cooed for an answer. 'Do. I want the flavour. A
girl would be satisfied with superhuman excellence. A widow asks for
feature.'

'To my thinking, the case is, that if it is a widow who sees the
superhuman excellence in a man, she may be very well contented to cross
the bridge with him,' rejoined Emma. . . .

'Suppose the bridge to break, and for her to fall into the water, he
rescuing her--then perhaps!'

'But it has been happening!'

'But piecemeal, in extension, so slowly. I go to him a derelict, bearing
a story of the sea; empty of ideas. I remember sailing out of harbour
passably well freighted for commerce.'

'When Tom Redworth has had command of the "derelict" a week, I should
like to see her!'

The mention of that positive captaincy drowned Diana in morning colours.
She was dominated, physically and morally, submissively too. What she
craved, in the absence of the public whiteness which could have caused
her to rejoice in herself as a noble gift, was the spring of enthusiasm.
Emma touched a quivering chord of pride with her hint at the good augury,
and foreshadowing of the larger Union, in the Irishwoman's bestowal of
her hand on the open-minded Englishman she had learned to trust. The
aureole glimmered transiently: she could neither think highly of the
woman about to be wedded, nor poetically of the man; nor, therefore,
rosily of the ceremony, nor other than vacuously of life. And yet, as she
avowed to Emma, she had gathered the three rarest good things of life: a
faithful friend, a faithful lover, a faithful servant: the two latter
exposing an unimagined quality of emotion. Danvers, on the night of the
great day for Redworth, had undressed her with trembling fingers, and her
mistress was led to the knowledge that the maid had always been all eye;
and on reflection to admit that it came of a sympathy she did not share.

But when Celtic brains are reflective on their emotional vessel they
shoot direct as the arrow of logic. Diana's glance at the years behind
lighted every moving figure to a shrewd transparency, herself among them.
She was driven to the conclusion that the granting of any of her heart's
wild wishes in those days would have lowered her--or frozen. Dacier was a
coldly luminous image; still a tolling name; no longer conceivably her
mate. Recollection rocked, not she. The politician and citizen was
admired: she read the man;--more to her own discredit than to his, but
she read him, and if that is done by the one of two lovers who was true
to love, it is the God of the passion pronouncing a final release from
the shadow of his chains.

Three days antecedent to her marriage, she went down the hill over her
cottage chimneys with Redworth, after hearing him praise and cite to Emma
Dunstane sentences of a morning's report of a speech delivered by Dacier
to his constituents. She alluded to it, that she might air her power of
speaking of the man coolly to him, or else for the sake of stirring
afresh some sentiment he had roused; and he repeated his high opinion of
the orator's political wisdom: whereby was revived in her memory a
certain reprehensible view, belonging to her period of mock-girlish
naughtiness--too vile!--as to his paternal benevolence, now to clear
vision the loftiest manliness. What did she do? She was Irish; therefore
intuitively decorous in amatory challenges and interchanges. But she was
an impulsive woman, and foliage was thick around, only a few small birds
and heaven seeing; and penitence and admiration sprang the impulse. It
had to be this or a burst of weeping:--she put a kiss upon his arm.

She had omitted to think that she was dealing with a lover a man of
smothered fire, who would be electrically alive to the act through a
coat-sleeve. Redworth had his impulse. He kept it under,--she felt the
big breath he drew in. Imagination began busily building a nest for him,
and enthusiasm was not sluggish to make a home of it. The impulse of each
had wedded; in expression and repression; her sensibility told her of the
stronger.

She rose on the morning of her marriage day with his favourite Planxty
Kelly at her lips, a natural bubble of the notes. Emma drove down to the
cottage to breakfast and superintend her bride's adornment, as to which,
Diana had spoken slightingly; as well as of the ceremony, and the
institution, and this life itself:--she would be married out of her
cottage, a widow, a cottager, a woman under a cloud; yes, a sober person
taking at last a right practical step, to please her two best friends.
The change was marked. She wished to hide it, wished to confide it. Emma
was asked: 'How is he this morning?' and at the answer, describing his
fresh and spirited looks, and his kind ways with Arthur Rhodes, and his
fun with Sullivan Smith, and the satisfaction with the bridegroom
declared by Lord Larrian (invalided from his Rock and unexpectingly
informed of the wedding), Diana forgot that she had kissed her, and this
time pressed her lips, in a manner to convey the secret bridally.

'He has a lovely day.'

'And bride,' said Emma.

'If you two think so! I should like to agree with my dear old lord and
bless him for the prize he takes, though it feels itself at present
rather like a Christmas bon-bon--a piece of sugar in the wrap of a rhymed
motto. He is kind to Arthur, you say?'

'Like a cordial elder brother.'

'Dear love, I have it at heart that I was harsh upon Mary Paynham for her
letter. She meant well--and I fear she suffers. And it may have been a
bit my fault. Blind that I was! When you say "cordial elder brother," you
make him appear beautiful to me. The worst of that is, one becomes aware
of the inability to match him.'

'Read with his eyes when you meet him this morning, my Tony.'

The secret was being clearly perceived by Emma, whose pride in assisting
to dress the beautiful creature for her marriage--with the man of men had
a tinge from the hymenaeal brand, exulting over Dacier, and in the
compensation coming to her beloved for her first luckless footing on this
road.

'How does he go down to the church?' said Diana.

'He walks down. Lukin and his Chief drive. He walks, with your Arthur and
Mr. Sullivan Smith. He is on his way now.'

Diana looked through the window in the direction of the hill. 'That is so
like him, to walk to his wedding!'

Emma took the place of Danvers in the office of the robing, for the maid,
as her mistress managed to hint, was too steeped 'in the colour of the
occasion' to be exactly tasteful, and had the art, no doubt through
sympathy, of charging permissible common words with explosive
meanings:--she was in an amorous palpitation, of the reflected state.
After several knockings and enterings of the bedchamber-door, she came
hurriedly to say: 'And your pillow, ma'am? I had almost forgotten it!' A
question that caused her mistress to drop the gaze of a moan on Emma,
with patience trembling. Diana preferred a hard pillow, and usually
carried her own about. 'Take it,' she had to reply.

The friends embraced before descending to step into the fateful carriage.
'And tell me,' Emma said, 'are not your views of life brighter to-day?'

'Too dazzled to know! It may be a lamp close to the eyes or a radiance of
sun. I hope they are.'

'You are beginning to think hopefully again?'

'Who can really think, and not think hopefully? You were in my mind last
night, and you brought a little boat to sail me past despondency of life
and the fear of extinction. When we despair or discolour things, it is
our senses in revolt, and they have made the sovereign brain their
drudge. I heard you whisper; with your very breath in my ear: "There is
nothing the body suffers that the soul may not profit by." That is Emma's
history. With that I sail into the dark; it is my promise of the
immortal: teaches me to see immortality for us. It comes from you, my
Emmy.'

If not a great saying, it was in the heart of deep thoughts: proof to
Emma that her Tony's mind had resumed its old clear high-aiming activity;
therefore that her nature was working sanely, and that she accepted her
happiness, and bore love for a dower to her husband. No blushing
confession of the woman's love of the man would have told her so much as
the return to mental harmony with the laws of life shown in her darling's
pellucid little sentence.

She revolved it long after the day of the wedding. To Emma, constantly on
the dark decline of the unillumined verge, between the two worlds, those
words were a radiance and a nourishment. Had they waned she would have
trimmed them to feed her during her soul-sister's absence. They shone to
her of their vitality. She was lying along her sofa, facing her
South-western window, one afternoon of late November, expecting Tony from
her lengthened honeymoon trip, while a sunset in the van of frost, not
without celestial musical reminders of Tony's husband, began to deepen;
and as her friend was coming, she mused on the scenes of her friend's
departure, and how Tony, issuing from her cottage porch had betrayed her
feelings in the language of her sex by stooping to lift above her head
and kiss the smallest of her landlady's children ranged up the
garden-path to bid her farewell over their strewing of flowers;--and of
her murmur to Tony, entering the churchyard, among the grave-mounds: 'Old
Ireland won't repent it!' and Tony's rejoinder, at the sight of the
bridegroom advancing, beaming: 'A singular transformation of Old
England!'--and how, having numberless ready sources of laughter and tears
down the run of their heart-in-heart intimacy, all spouting up for a word
in the happy tremour of the moment, they had both bitten their lips and
blinked on a moisture of the eyelids. Now the dear woman was really
wedded, wedded and mated. Her letters breathed, in their own lively or
thoughtful flow, of the perfect mating. Emma gazed into the depths of the
waves of crimson, where brilliancy of colour came out of central heaven
preternaturally near on earth, till one shade less brilliant seemed an
ebbing away to boundless remoteness. Angelical and mortal mixed, making
the glory overhead a sign of the close union of our human conditions with
the ethereal and psychically divined. Thence it grew that one thought in
her breast became a desire for such extension of days as would give her
the blessedness to clasp in her lap--if those kind heavens would grant
it!--a child of the marriage of the two noblest of human souls, one the
dearest; and so have proof at heart that her country and our earth are
fruitful in the good, for a glowing future. She was deeply a woman,
dumbly a poet. True poets and true women have the native sense of the
divineness of what the world deems gross material substance. Emma's
exaltation in fervour had not subsided when she held her beloved in her
arms under the dusk of the withdrawing redness. They sat embraced, with
hands locked, in the unlighted room, and Tony spoke of the splendid sky.
'You watched it knowing I was on my way to you?'

'Praying, dear.'

'For me?'

'That I might live long enough to be a godmother.'

There was no reply: there was an involuntary little twitch of Tony's
fingers.




     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS

     A witty woman is a treasure; a witty Beauty is a power
     A high wind will make a dead leaf fly like a bird
     A kindly sense of superiority
     Accidents are the specific for averting the maladies of age
     Accounting for it, is not the same as excusing
     Assist in our small sphere; not come mouthing to the footlights
     At war with ourselves, means the best happiness we can have
     Avoid the position that enforces publishing
     Beautiful women in her position provoke an intemperateness
     Beauty is rare; luckily is it rare
     Between love grown old and indifference ageing to love
     Beware the silent one of an assembly!
     Brittle is foredoomed
     But they were a hopeless couple, they were so friendly
     By resisting, I made him a tyrant
     Capacity for thinking should precede the act of writing
     Capricious potentate whom they worship
     Carry explosives and must particularly guard against sparks
     Charitable mercifulness; better than sentimental ointment
     Chaste are wattled in formalism and throned in sourness
     Circumstances may combine to make a whisper as deadly as a blow
     Common sense is the secret of every successful civil agitation
     Compared the governing of the Irish to the management of a horse
     Could have designed this gabbler for the mate
     Could the best of men be simply--a woman's friend?
     Debit was eloquent, he was unanswerable
     Dedicated to the putrid of the upper circle
     Depending for dialogue upon perpetual fresh supplies of scandal
     Dose he had taken was not of the sweetest
     Dreaded as a scourge, hailed as a refreshment (Scandalsheet)
     Elderly martyr for the advancement of his juniors
     Enthusiasm has the privilege of not knowing monotony
     Envy of the man of positive knowledge
     Expectations dupe us, not trust
     Explaining of things to a dull head
     Externally soft and polished, internally hard and relentless
     Favour can't help coming by rotation
     Fiddle harmonics on the sensual strings
     Flashes bits of speech that catch men in their unguarded corner
     For 'tis Ireland gives England her soldiers, her generals too
     Friendship, I fancy, means one heart between two
     Get back what we give
     Goodish sort of fellow; good horseman, good shot, good character
     Grossly unlike in likeness (portraits)
     Happy in privation and suffering if simply we can accept beauty
     He was not a weaver of phrases in distress
     He had by nature a tarnishing eye that cast discolouration
     He gained much by claiming little
     He, by insisting, made me a rebel
     He had neat phrases, opinions in packets
     He was the maddest of tyrants--a weak one
     He's good from end to end, and beats a Christian hollow (a hog)
     Heart to keep guard and bury the bones you tossed him
     Her peculiar tenacity of the sense of injury
     Her feelings--trustier guides than her judgement in this crisis
     Her final impression likened him to a house locked up and empty
     Herself, content to be dull if he might shine
     His gaze and one of his ears, if not the pair, were given
     His ridiculous equanimity
     Holding to the refusal, for the sake of consistency
     How immensely nature seems to prefer men to women!
     Human nature to feel an interest in the dog that has bitten you
     I wanted a hero
     I do not see it, because I will not see it
     I never knew till this morning the force of No in earnest
     I have and hold--you shall hunger and covet
     I don't count them against women (moods)
     I'm in love with everything she wishes! I've got the habit
     Idea is the only vital breath
     If I'm struck, I strike back
     If he had valued you half a grain less, he might have won you
     Inclined to act hesitation in accepting the aid she sought
     Inducement to act the hypocrite before the hypocrite world
     Infatuated men argue likewise, and scandal does not move them
     Insistency upon there being two sides to a case--to every case
     Intrusion of the spontaneous on the stereotyped would clash
     Irony that seemed to spring from aversion
     It is the best of signs when women take to her
     It is the devil's masterstroke to get us to accuse him
     Its glee at a catastrophe; its poor stock of mercy
     Keep passion sober, a trotter in harness
     Lengthened term of peace bred maggots in the heads of the people
     Let never Necessity draw the bow of our weakness
     Literature is a good stick and a bad horse
     Loathing for speculation
     Mare would do, and better than a dozen horses
     Material good reverses its benefits the more nearly we clasp it
     Matter that is not nourishing to brains
     Mistake of the world is to think happiness possible to the sense
     Mistaking of her desires for her reasons
     Money is of course a rough test of virtue
     Moral indignation is ever consolatory
     Music was resumed to confuse the hearing of the eavesdroppers
     Mutual deference
     Needed support of facts, and feared them
     Never fell far short of outstripping the sturdy pedestrian Time
     Nothing the body suffers that the soul may not profit by
     Nothing is a secret that has been spoken
     Now far from him under the failure of an effort to come near
     O self! self! self!
     Observation is the most, enduring of the pleasures of life
     Omnipotence, which is in the image of themselves
     One might build up a respectable figure in negatives
     Openly treated; all had an air of being on the surface
     Or where you will, so that's in Ireland
     Our weakness is the swiftest dog to hunt us
     Our bravest, our best, have an impulse to run
     Owner of such a woman, and to lose her!
     Paint themselves pure white, to the obliteration of minor spots
     Perused it, and did not recognize herself in her language
     Pride in being always myself
     Procrastination and excessive scrupulousness
     Question the gain of such an expenditure of energy
     Quixottry is agreeable reading, a silly performance
     Rare men of honour who can command their passion
     Read with his eyes when you meet him this morning
     Read deep and not be baffled by inconsistencies
     Real happiness is a state of dulness
     Reluctant to take the life of flowers for a whim
     Rewards, together with the expectations, of the virtuous
     Salt of earth, to whom their salt must serve for nourishment
     Sentimentality puts up infant hands for absolution
     Service of watering the dry and drying the damp (Whiskey)
     Sham spiritualism
     She had sunk her intelligence in her sensations
     She marries, and it's the end of her sparkling
     She herself did not like to be seen eating in public
     She had a fatal attraction for antiques
     Sleepless night
     Slightest taste for comic analysis that does not tumble to farce
     Smart remarks have their measured distances
     Smoky receptacle cherishing millions
     Something of the hare in us when the hounds are full cry
     Strain to see in the utter dark, and nothing can come of that
     Swell and illuminate citizen prose to a princely poetic
     Sympathy is for proving, not prating
     Tendency to polysyllabic phraseology
     Terrible decree, that all must act who would prevail
     That is life--when we dare death to live!
     That's the natural shamrock, after the artificial
     The man had to be endured, like other doses in politics
     The burlesque Irishman can't be caricatured
     The greed of gain is our volcano
     The debts we owe ourselves are the hardest to pay
     The well of true wit is truth itself
     The blindness of Fortune is her one merit
     They have no sensitiveness, we have too much
     They create by stoppage a volcano
     This love they rattle about and rave about
     Tooth that received a stone when it expected candy
     Top and bottom sin is cowardice
     Touch him with my hand, before he passed from our sight
     Trial of her beauty of a woman in a temper
     Vagrant compassionateness of sentimentalists
     Vowed never more to repeat that offence to his patience
     Was not one of the order whose Muse is the Public Taste
     We live alone, and do not much feel it till we are visited
     We never see peace but in the features of the dead
     We must fawn in society
     We don't know we are in halves
     We're a peaceful people, but 'ware who touches us
     Weather and women have some resemblance they say
     Weighty little word--woman's native watchdog and guardian (No!)
     What might have been
     What the world says, is what the wind says
     What a woman thinks of women, is the test of her nature
     When we despair or discolour things, it is our senses in revolt
     Where she appears, the first person falls to second rank
     Who can really think, and not think hopefully?
     Who venerate when they love
     Wife and no wife, a prisoner in liberty
     With that I sail into the dark
     Without those consolatory efforts, useless between men
     Women are taken to be the second thoughts of the Creator
     Women with brains, moreover, are all heartless
     World is ruthless, dear friends, because the world is hypocrite
     World prefers decorum to honesty
     Yawns coming alarmingly fast, in the place of ideas
     You beat me with the fists, but my spirit is towering
     You are entreated to repress alarm






ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS, Complete

By George Meredith


1897




CONTENTS:

BOOK 1.
I.        ACROSS LONDON BRIDGE
II.       THROUGH THE VAGUE TO THE INFINITELY LITTLE
III.      OLD VEUVE
IV.       THE SECOND BOTTLE
V.        THE LONDON WALK WESTWARD
VI.       NATALY
VII.      BETWEEN A GENERAL MAN OF THE WORLD AND A PROFESSIONAL
VIII.     SOME FAMILIAR GUESTS.
IX.       AN INSPECTION OF LAKELANDS
X.        SKEPSEY IN MOTION
XI.       WHEREIN WE BEHOLD THE COUPLE JUSTIFIED OF LOVE HAVING SIGHT OF
          THEIR SCOURGE

BOOK 2.
XII.      TREATS OF THE DUMBNESS POSSIBLE WITH MEMBERS OF A HOUSEHOLD
          HAVING ONE HEART
XIII.     THE LATEST OF MRS. BURMAN
XIV.      DISCLOSES A STAGE ON THE DRIVE TO PARIS
XV.       A PATRIOT ABROAD
XVI.      ACCOUNTS FOR SKEPSEY'S MISCONDUCT, SHOWING HOW IT AFFECTED
          NATALY
XVII.     CHIEFLY UPON THE THEME OF A YOUNG MAID'S IMAGININGS
XVIII.    SUITORS FOR THE HAND OF NESTA VICTORIA

BOOK 3.
XIX.      TREATS OF NATURE AND CIRCUMSTANCE AND THE DISSENSION BETWEEN
          THEM AND OF A SATIRIST'S MALIGNITY IN THE DIRECTION OF HIS
          COUNTRY
XX.       THE GREAT ASSEMBLY AT LAKELAND
XXI.      DARTREY FENELLAN
XXII.     CONCERNS THE INTRUSION OF JARNIMAN
XXIII.    TREATS OF THE LADIES' LAPDOG TASSO FOR AN INSTANCE OF MOMENTOUS
          EFFECTS PRODUCED BY VERY MINOR CAUSES
XXIV.     NESTA'S ENGAGEMENT

BOOK 4.
XXV.      NATALY IN ACTION
XXVI.     IN WHICH WE SEE A CONVENTIONAL GENTLE MAN ENDEAVOURING TO
          EXAMINE A SPECTRE OF HIMSELF
XXVII.    CONTAINS WHAT IS A SMALL THING OR A GREAT, AS THE SOUL OF THE
          CHIEF ACTOR MAY DECIDE
XXVIII.   MRS. MARSETT
XXIX.     SHOWS ONE OF THE SHADOWS OF THE WORLD CROSSING A VIRGIN'S MIND
XXX.      THE BURDEN UPON NESTA
XXXI.     SHOWS HOW THE SQUIRES IN A CONQUEROR'S SERVICE HAVE AT TIMES TO
          DO KNIGHTLY CONQUEST OF THEMSELVES
XXXII.    SHOWS HOW TEMPER MAY KINDLE TEMPER AND AN INDIGNANT WOMAN GET
          HER WEAPON
XXXIII.   A PAIR OF WOOERS
XXXIV.    CONTAINS DEEDS UNRELATED AND EXPOSITIONS OF FEELINGS
XXXV.     IN WHICH AGAIN WE MAKE USE OF THE OLD LAMPS FOR LIGHTING AN
          ABYSMAL DARKNESS

BOOK 5.
XXXVI.    NESTA AND HER FATHER
XXXVII.   THE MOTHER--THE DAUGHTER
XXXVIII.  NATALY, NESTA, AND DARTREY FENELLAN
XXXIX.    A CHAPTER IN THE SHADOW OF MRS. MARSETT
XL.       AN EXPIATION
XLI.      THE NIGHT OF THE GREAT UNDELIVERED SPEECH
XLII.     THE LAST




CHAPTER I

ACROSS LONDON BRIDGE

A gentleman, noteworthy for a lively countenance and a waistcoat to match
it, crossing London Bridge at noon on a gusty April day, was almost
magically detached from his conflict with the gale by some sly strip of
slipperiness, abounding in that conduit of the markets, which had more or
less adroitly performed the trick upon preceding passengers, and now laid
this one flat amid the shuffle of feet, peaceful for the moment as the
uncomplaining who have gone to Sabrina beneath the tides. He was unhurt,
quite sound, merely astonished, he remarked, in reply to the inquiries of
the first kind helper at his elbow; and it appeared an acceptable
statement of his condition. He laughed, shook his coat-tails, smoothed
the back of his head rather thoughtfully, thankfully received his runaway
hat, nodded bright beams to right and left, and making light of the muddy
stigmas imprinted by the pavement, he scattered another shower of his
nods and smiles around, to signify, that as his good friends would wish,
he thoroughly felt his legs and could walk unaided. And he was in the act
of doing it, questioning his familiar behind the waistcoat amazedly, to
tell him how such a misadventure could have occurred to him of all men,
when a glance below his chin discomposed his outward face. 'Oh, confound
the fellow!' he said, with simple frankness, and was humorously ruffled,
having seen absurd blots of smutty knuckles distributed over the maiden
waistcoat.

His outcry was no more than the confidential communication of a genial
spirit with that distinctive article of his attire. At the same time, for
these friendly people about him to share the fun of the annoyance, he
looked hastily brightly back, seeming with the contraction of his brows
to frown, on the little band of observant Samaritans; in the centre of
whom a man who knew himself honourably unclean, perhaps consequently a
bit of a political jewel, hearing one of their number confounded for his
pains, and by the wearer of a superfine dashing-white waistcoat, was
moved to take notice of the total deficiency of gratitude in this kind of
gentleman's look and pocket. If we ask for nothing for helping gentlemen
to stand upright on their legs, and get it, we expect civility into the
bargain. Moreover, there are reasons in nature why we choose to give sign
of a particular surliness when our wealthy superiors would have us think
their condescending grins are cordials.

The gentleman's eyes were followed on a second hurried downward grimace,
the necessitated wrinkles of which could be stretched by malevolence to a
semblance of haughty disgust; reminding us, through our readings in
journals, of the wicked overblown Prince Regent and his Court, together
with the view taken of honest labour in the mind of supercilious luxury,
even if indebted to it freshly for a trifle; and the hoar-headed
nineteenth-century billow of democratic ire craved the word to be set
swelling.

'Am I the fellow you mean, sir?' the man said.

He was answered, not ungraciously: 'All right, my man.'

But the balance of our public equanimity is prone to violent antic
bobbings on occasions when, for example, an ostentatious garment shall
appear disdainful our class and ourself, and coin of the realm has not
usurped command of one of the scales: thus a fairly pleasant answer, cast
in persuasive features, provoked the retort:

'There you're wrong; nor wouldn't be.'

'What's that?' was the gentleman's musical inquiry.

'That's flat, as you was half a minute ago,' the man rejoined.

'Ah, well, don't be impudent,' the gentleman said, by way of amiable
remonstrance before a parting.

'And none of your dam punctilio,' said the man.

Their exchange rattled smartly, without a direct hostility, and the
gentleman stepped forward.

It was observed in the crowd, that after a few paces he put two fingers
on the back of his head.

They might suppose him to be condoling with his recent mishap. But, in
fact, a thing had occurred to vex him more than a descent upon the
pavement or damage to his waistcoat's whiteness: he abominated the
thought of an altercation with a member of the mob; he found that
enormous beat comprehensible only when it applauded him; and besides he
wished it warmly well; all that was good for it; plentiful dinners,
country excursions, stout menagerie bars, music, a dance, and to bed: he
was for patting, stroking, petting the mob, for tossing it sops, never
for irritating it to show an eye-tooth, much less for causing it to
exhibit the grinders: and in endeavouring to get at the grounds of his
dissension with that dirty-fisted fellow, the recollection of the word
punctilio shot a throb of pain to the spot where his mishap had rendered
him susceptible. Headache threatened--and to him of all men! But was
there ever such a word for drumming on a cranium? Puzzles are presented
to us now and then in the course of our days; and the smaller they are
the better for the purpose, it would seem; and they come in rattle-boxes,
they are actually children's toys, for what they contain, but not the
less do they buzz at our understandings and insist that they break or we,
and, in either case, to show a mere foolish idle rattle in hollowness. Or
does this happen to us only after a fall?

He tried a suspension of his mental efforts, and the word was like the
clapper of a disorderly bell, striking through him, with reverberations,
in the form of interrogations, as to how he, of all men living, could by
any chance have got into a wrangle, in a thoroughfare, on London Bridge,
of all places in the world!--he, so popular, renowned for his affability,
his amiability; having no dislike to common dirty dogs, entirely the
reverse, liking them and doing his best for them; and accustomed to
receive their applause. And in what way had he offered a hint to bring on
him the charge of punctilio?

'But I am treating it seriously!' he said, and jerked a dead laugh while
fixing a button of his coat.

That he should have treated it seriously, furnished next the subject of
cogitation; and here it was plainly suggested, that a degradation of his
physical system, owing to the shock of the fall, must be seen and
acknowledged; for it had become a perverted engine, to pull him down
among the puerilities, and very soon he was worrying at punctilio anew,
attempting to read the riddle of the application of it to himself, angry
that he had allowed it to be the final word, and admitting it a famous
word for the closing of a controversy:--it banged the door and rolled
drum-notes; it deafened reason. And was it a London cockney crow-word of
the day, or a word that had stuck in the fellow's head from the perusal
of his pothouse newspaper columns?

Furthermore, the plea of a fall, and the plea of a shock from a fall,
required to account for the triviality of the mind, were humiliating to
him who had never hitherto missed a step, or owned to the shortest of
collapses. This confession of deficiency in explosive repartee--using a
friend's term for the ready gift--was an old and a rueful one with Victor
Radnor. His godmother Fortune denied him that. She bestowed it on his
friend Fenellan, and little else. Simeon Fenellan could clap the halter
on a coltish mob; he had positively caught the roar of cries and stilled
it, by capping the cries in turn, until the people cheered him; and the
effect of the scene upon Victor Radnor disposed him to rank the gift of
repartee higher than a certain rosily oratorical that he was permitted to
tell himself he possessed, in bottle if not on draught. Let it only be
explosive repartee: the well-fused bomb, the bubble to the stone, echo
round the horn. Fenellan, would have discharged an extinguisher on
punctilio in emission. Victor Radnor was unable to cope with it
reflectively.

No, but one doesn't like being beaten by anything! he replied to an
admonishment of his better mind, as he touched his two fingers, more
significantly dubious than the whole hand, at the back of his head, and
checked or stemmed the current of a fear. For he was utterly unlike
himself; he was dwelling on a trifle, on a matter discernibly the
smallest, an incident of the streets; and although he refused to feel a
bump or any responsive notification of a bruise, he made a sacrifice of
his native pride to his intellectual, in granting that he must have been
shaken, so childishly did he continue thinking.

Yes, well, and if a tumble distorts our ideas of life, and an odd word
engrosses our speculations, we are poor creatures, he addressed another
friend, from whom he stood constitutionally in dissent naming him Colney;
and under pressure of the name, reviving old wrangles between them upon
man's present achievements and his probable destinies: especially upon
England's grandeur, vitality, stability, her intelligent appreciation of
her place in the universe; not to speak of the historic dignity of London
City. Colney had to be overcome afresh, and he fled, but managed, with
two or three of his bitter phrases, to make a cuttle-fish fight of it,
that oppressively shadowed his vanquisher:

The Daniel Lambert of Cities: the Female Annuitant of Nations:--and such
like, wretched stuff, proper to Colney Durance, easily dispersed and
out-laughed when we have our vigour. We have as much as we need of it in
summoning a contemptuous Pooh to our lips, with a shrug at venomous
dyspepsia.

Nevertheless, a malignant sketch of Colney's, in the which Hengist and
Horsa, our fishy Saxon originals, in modern garb of liveryman and
gaitered squire, flat-headed, paunchy, assiduously servile, are shown
blacking Ben-Israel's boots and grooming the princely stud of the Jew,
had come so near to Victor Radnor's apprehensions of a possible, if not
an impending, consummation, that the ghastly vision of the Jew Dominant
in London City, over England, over Europe, America, the world (a picture
drawn in literary sepia by Colney: with our poor hang neck population
uncertain about making a bell-rope of the forelock to the Satyr-snouty
master; and the Norman Lord de Warenne handing him for a lump sum son and
daughter, both to be Hebraized in their different ways), fastened on the
most mercurial of patriotic men, and gave him a whole-length plunge into
despondency.

It lasted nearly a minute. His recovery was not in this instance due to
the calling on himself for the rescue of an ancient and glorious country;
nor altogether to the spectacle of the shipping, over the parapet, to his
right: the hundreds of masts rising out of the merchant river; London's
unrivalled mezzotint and the City' rhetorician's inexhaustible argument:
he gained it rather from the imperious demand of an animated and thirsty
frame for novel impressions. Commonly he was too hot with his business,
and airy fancies above it when crossing the bridge, to reflect in
freshness on its wonders; though a phrase could spring him alive to them;
a suggestion of the Foreigner, jealous, condemned to admire in despair of
outstripping, like Satan worsted; or when a Premier's fine inflation
magnified the scene at City banquets--exciting while audible, if a
waggery in memory; or when England's cherished Bard, the Leading Article,
blew bellows, and wind primed the lieges.

That a phrase on any other subject was of much the same effect, in
relation to it, may be owned; he was lightly kindled. The scene, however,
had a sharp sparkle of attractiveness at the instant. Down went the
twirling horizontal pillars of a strong tide from the arches of the
bridge, breaking to wild water at a remove; and a reddish Northern cheek
of curdling pipeing East, at shrilly puffs between the Tower and the
Custom House, encountered it to whip and ridge the flood against
descending tug and long tail of stern-ajerk empty barges; with a steamer
slowly noseing round off the wharf-cranes, preparing to swirl the screw;
and half-bottom-upward boats dancing harpooner beside their whale; along
an avenue, not fabulously golden, of the deputy masts of all nations, a
wintry woodland, every rag aloft curling to volume; and here the spouts
and the mounds of steam, and rolls of brown smoke there, variously
undulated, curved to vanish; cold blue sky ashift with the whirl and dash
of a very Tartar cavalry of cloud overhead.

Surely a scene pretending to sublimity?

Gazeing along that grand highway of the voyageing forest, your London
citizen of good estate has reproached his country's poets for not pouring
out, succinctly and melodiously, his multitudinous larvae of notions
begotten by the scene. For there are times when he would, pay to have
them sung; and he feels them big; he thinks them human in their bulk;
they are Londinensian; they want but form and fire to get them scored on
the tablets of the quotable at festive boards. This he can promise to his
poets. As for otherwhere than at the festive, Commerce invoked is a
Goddess that will have the reek of those boards to fill her nostrils, and
poet and alderman alike may be dedicate to the sublime, she leads them,
after two sniffs of an idea concerning her, for the dive into the
turtle-tureen. Heels up they go, poet first--a plummet he!

And besides it is barely possible for our rounded citizen, in the mood of
meditation, to direct his gaze off the bridge along the waterway
North-eastward without beholding as an eye the glow of whitebait's
bow-window by the riverside, to the front of the summer sunset, a league
or so down stream; where he sees, in memory savours, the Elysian end of
Commerce: frontispiece of a tale to fetch us up the out-wearied spectre
of old Apicius; yea, and urge Crispinus to wheel his purse into the
market for the purchase of a costlier mullet!

But is the Jew of the usury gold becoming our despot-king of Commerce?

In that case, we do not ask our country's poets to compose a single
stanza of eulogy's rhymes--far from it. Far to the contrary, we bid
ourselves remember the sons of whom we are; instead of revelling in the
fruits of Commerce, we shoot scornfully past those blazing bellied
windows of the aromatic dinners, and beyond Thames, away to the
fishermen's deeps, Old England's native element, where the strenuous
ancestry of a race yet and ever manful at the stress of trial are heard
around and aloft whistling us back to the splendid strain of muscle, and
spray fringes cloud, and strong heart rides the briny scoops and
hillocks, and Death and Man are at grip for the haul.

There we find our nationality, our poetry, no Hebrew competing.

We do: or there at least we left it. Whether to recover it when wanted,
is not so certain. Humpy Hengist and dumpy Horsa, quitting ledger and
coronet, might recur to their sea bowlegs and red-stubble chins, might
take to their tarpaulins again; they might renew their manhood on the
capture of cod; headed by Harald and Hardiknut, they might roll surges to
whelm a Dominant Jew clean gone to the fleshpots and effeminacy. Aldermen
of our ancient conception, they may teach him that he has been
backsliding once more, and must repent in ashes, as those who are for
jewels, titles, essences, banquets, for wallowing in slimy spawn of
lucre, have ever to do. They dispossess him of his greedy gettings.

And how of the Law?

But the Law is always, and must ever be, the Law of the stronger.

--Ay, but brain beats muscle, and what if the Jew should prove to have
superior power of brain? A dreaded hypothesis! Why, then you see the
insurgent Saxon seamen (of the names in two syllables with accent on the
first), and their Danish captains, and it may be but a remnant of
high-nosed old Norman Lord de Warenne beside them, in the criminal box:
and presently the Jew smoking a giant regalia cigar on a balcony giving
view of a gallows-tree. But we will try that: on our side, to back a
native pugnacity, is morality, humanity, fraternity--nature's rights,
aha! and who withstands them? on his, a troop of mercenaries!

And that lands me in Red Republicanism, a hop and a skip from Socialism!
said Mr. Radnor, and chuckled ironically at the natural declivity he had
come to. Still, there was an idea in it . . . .

A short run or attempt at running after the idea, ended in pain to his
head near the spot where the haunting word punctilio caught at any excuse
for clamouring.

Yet we cannot relinquish an idea that was ours; we are vowed to the
pursuit of it. Mr. Radnor lighted on the tracks, by dint of a thought
flung at his partner Mr. Inchling's dread of the Jews. Inchling dreaded
Scotchmen as well, and Americans, and Armenians, and Greeks: latterly
Germans hardly less; but his dread of absorption in Jewry, signifying
subjection, had often precipitated a deplorable shrug, in which Victor
Radnor now perceived the skirts of his idea, even to a fancy that
something of the idea must have struck Inchling when he shrugged: the
idea being . . . he had lost it again. Definition seemed to be an
extirpation enemy of this idea, or she was by nature shy. She was very
feminine; coming when she willed and flying when wanted. Not until nigh
upon the close of his history did she return, full-statured and
embraceable, to Victor Radnor.




CHAPTER II

THROUGH THE VAGUE TO THE INFINITELY LITTLE

The fair dealing with readers demands of us, that a narrative shall not
proceed at slower pace than legs of a man in motion; and we are still but
little more than midway across London Bridge. But if a man's mind is to
be taken as a part of him, the likening of it, at an introduction, to an
army on the opening march of a great campaign, should plead excuses for
tardy forward movements, in consideration of the large amount of matter
you have to review before you can at all imagine yourselves to have made
his acquaintance. This it is not necessary to do when you are set astride
the enchanted horse of the Tale, which leaves the man's mind at home
while he performs the deeds befitting him: he can indeed be rapid.
Whether more active, is a question asking for your notions of the
governing element in the composition of man, and of hid present business
here. The Tale inspirits one's earlier ardours, when we sped without
baggage, when the Impossible was wings to imagination, and heroic
sculpture the simplest act of the chisel. It does not advance, 'tis true;
it drives the whirligig circle round and round the single existing
central point; but it is enriched with applause of the boys and girls of
both ages in this land; and all the English critics heap their honours on
its brave old Simplicity: our national literary flag, which signalizes us
while we float, subsequently to flap above the shallows. One may sigh for
it. An ill-fortuned minstrel who has by fateful direction been brought to
see with distinctness, that man is not as much comprised in external
features as the monkey, will be devoted to the task of the fuller
portraiture.

After his ineffectual catching at the volatile idea, Mr. Radnor found
repose in thoughts of his daughter and her dear mother. They had begged
him to put on an overcoat this day of bitter wind, or a silken kerchief
for the throat. Faithful to the Spring, it had been his habit since
boyhood to show upon his person something of the hue of the vernal month,
the white of the daisied meadow, and although he owned a light overcoat
to dangle from shoulders at the Opera crush, he declined to wear it for
protection. His gesture of shaking and expanding whenever the tender
request was urged on him, signified a physical opposition to the control
of garments. Mechanically now, while doating in fancy over the couple
beseeching him, he loosened the button across his defaced waistcoat,
exposed a large measure of chest to flaws of a wind barbed on Norwegian
peaks by the brewers of cough and catarrh--horrid women of the whistling
clouts, in the pay of our doctors. He braved them; he starved the
profession. He was that man in fifty thousand who despises hostile
elements and goes unpunished, calmly erect among a sneezing and tumbled
host, as a lighthouse overhead of breezy fleets. The coursing of his
blood was by comparison electrical; he had not the sensation of cold,
other than that of an effort of the elements to arouse him; and so quick
was he, through this fine animation, to feel, think, act, that the three
successive tributaries of conduct appeared as an irreflective flash and a
gamester's daring in the vein to men who had no deep knowledge of him and
his lightning arithmetic for measuring, sounding, and deciding.

Naturally he was among the happiest of human creatures; he willed it so,
with consent of circumstances; a boisterous consent, as when votes are
reckoned for a favourite candidate: excepting on the part of a small band
of black dissentients in a corner, a minute opaque body, devilish in
their irreconcilability, who maintain their struggle to provoke discord,
with a cry disclosing the one error of his youth, the sole bad step
chargeable upon his antecedents. But do we listen to them? Shall we not
have them turned out? He gives the sign for it; and he leaves his buoying
constituents to outroar them: and he tells a friend that it was not, as
one may say, an error, although an erratic step: but let us explain to
our bosom friend; it was a step quite unregretted, gloried in; a step
deliberately marked, to be done again, were the time renewed: it was a
step necessitated (emphatically) by a false preceding step; and having
youth to plead for it, in the first instance, youth and ignorance; and
secondly, and O how deeply truly! Love. Deep true love, proved by years,
is the advocate.

He tells himself at the same time, after lending ear to the advocate's
exordium and a favourite sentence, that, judged by the Powers (to them
only can he expose the whole skeleton-cupboard of the case), judged by
those clear-sighted Powers, he is exonerated.

To be exonerated by those awful Powers, is to be approved.

As to that, there is no doubt: whom they, all-seeing, discerning as they
do, acquit they justify.

Whom they justify, they compliment.

They, seeing all the facts, are not unintelligent of distinctions, as the
world is.

What, to them, is the spot of the error?--admitting it as an error. They
know it for a thing of convention, not of Nature. We stand forth to plead
it in proof of an adherence to Nature's laws: we affirm, that far from a
defilement, it is an illumination and stamp of nobility. On the beloved
who shares it with us, it is a stamp of the highest nobility. Our world
has many ways for signifying its displeasure, but it cannot brand an
angel.

This was another favourite sentence of Love's grand oration for the
defence. So seductive was it to the Powers who sat in judgement on the
case, that they all, when the sentence came, turned eyes upon the angel,
and they smiled.

They do not smile on the condemnable.

She, then, were he rebuked, would have strength to uplift him. And who,
calling her his own, could be placed in second rank among the blissful!

Mr. Radnor could rationally say that he was made for happiness; he flew
to it, he breathed, dispensed it. How conceive the clear-sighted
celestial Powers as opposing his claim to that estate? Not they. He knew,
for he had them safe in the locked chamber of his breast, to yield him
subservient responses. The world, or Puritanic members of it, had pushed
him to the trial once or twice--or had put on an air of doing so;
creating a temporary disturbance, ending in a merry duet with his
daughter Nesta Victoria: a glorious trio when her mother Natalia, sweet
lily that she was, shook the rainwater from her cup and followed the good
example to shine in the sun.

He had a secret for them.

Nesta's promising soprano, and her mother's contralto, and his
baritone--a true baritone, not so well trained as their accurate
notes--should be rising in spirited union with the curtain of that
secret: there was matter for song and concert, triumph and gratulation in
it. And during the whole passage of the bridge, he had not once cast
thought on a secret so palpitating, the cause of the morning's expedition
and a long year's prospect of the present day! It seemed to have been
knocked clean out of it--punctilioed out, Fenellan might say. Nor had any
combinations upon the theme of business displaced it. Just before the
fall, the whole drama of the unfolding of that secret was brilliant to
his eyes as a scene on a stage.

He refused to feel any sensible bruise on his head, with the admission
that he perhaps might think he felt one which was virtually no more than
the feeling of a thought;--what his friend Dr. Peter Yatt would define as
feeling a rotifer astir in the curative compartment of a homoeopathic
globule: and a playful fancy may do that or anything. Only, Sanity does
not allow the infinitely little to disturb us.

Mr. Radnor had a quaint experience of the effects of the infinitely
little while threading his way to a haberdasher's shop for new white
waistcoats. Under the shadow of the representative statue of City
Corporations and London's majesty, the figure of Royalty, worshipful in
its marbled redundancy, fronting the bridge, on the slope where the seas
of fish and fruit below throw up a thin line of their drift, he stood
contemplating the not unamiable, reposefully-jolly, Guelphic countenance,
from the loose jowl to the bent knee, as if it were a novelty to him;
unwilling to trust himself to the roadway he had often traversed, equally
careful that his hesitation should not be seen. A trifle more
impressible, he might have imagined the smoky figure and magnum of
pursiness barring the City against him. He could have laughed aloud at
the hypocrisy behind his quiet look of provincial wonderment at London's
sculptor's art; and he was partly tickled as well by the singular fit of
timidity enchaining him. Cart, omnibus, cab, van, barrow, donkey-tray,
went by in strings, broken here and there, and he could not induce his
legs to take advantage of the gaps; he listened to a warning that he
would be down again if he tried it, among those wheels; and his nerves
clutched him, like a troop of household women, to keep him from the
hazard of an exposure to the horrid crunch, pitiless as tiger's teeth;
and we may say truly, that once down, or once out of the rutted line, you
are food for lion and jackal--the forces of the world will have you in
their mandibles.

An idea was there too; but it would not accept pursuit.

'A pretty scud overheard?' said a voice at his ear.

'For fine!--to-day at least,' Mr. Radnor affably replied to a stranger;
and gazing on the face of his friend Fenellan, knew the voice, and
laughed: 'You?' He straightened his back immediately to cross the road,
dismissing nervousness as a vapour, asking, between a cab and a van:
'Anything doing in the City?' For Mr. Fenellan's proper station faced
Westward.

The reply was deferred until they had reached the pavement, when Mr.
Fenellan said: 'I'll tell you,' and looked a dubious preface, to his
friend's thinking.

But it was merely the mental inquiry following a glance at mud-spots on
the coat.

'We'll lunch; lunch with me, I must eat, tell me then,' said Mr. Radnor,
adding within himself: 'Emptiness! want of food!' to account for recent
ejaculations and qualms. He had not eaten for a good four hours.

Fenellan's tone signified to his feverish sensibility of the moment, that
the matter was personal; and the intimation of a touch on domestic
affairs caused sinkings in his vacuity, much as though his heart were
having a fall.

He mentioned the slip on the bridge, to explain his: need to visit a
haberdasher's shop, and pointed at the waistcoat.

Mr. Fenellan was compassionate over the 'Poor virgin of the smoky city!'

'They have their ready-made at these shops--last year's: perhaps, never
mind, do for the day,' said Mr. Radnor, impatient for eating, now that he
had spoken of it. 'A basin of turtle; I can't wait. A brush of the coat;
mud must be dry by this time. Clear turtle, I think, with a bottle of the
Old Veuve. Not bad news to tell? You like that Old Veuve?'

'Too well to tell bad news of her,' said Mr. Fenellan in a manner to
reassure his friend, as he intended. 'You wouldn't credit it for the
Spring of the year, without the spotless waistcoat?'

'Something of that, I suppose.' And so saying, Mr. Radnor entered the
shop of his quest, to be complimented by the shopkeeper, while the
attendants climbed the ladder to upper stages for white-waistcoat boxes,
on his being; the first bird of the season; which it pleased him to hear;
for the smallest of our gratifications in life could give a happy tone to
this brightly-constituted gentleman.




CHAPTER III

OLD VEUVE

They were known at the house of the turtle and the attractive Old Veuve:
a champagne of a sobered sweetness, of a great year, a great age,
counting up to the extremer maturity attained by wines of stilly depths;
and their worthy comrade, despite the wanton sparkles, for the promoting
of the state of reverential wonderment in rapture, which an ancient wine
will lead to, well you wot. The silly girly sugary crudity his given way
to womanly suavity, matronly composure, with yet the sparkles; they
ascend; but hue and flavour tell of a soul that has come to a lodgement
there. It conducts the youthful man to temples of dusky thought:
philosophers partaking of it are drawn by the arms of garlanded nymphs
about their necks into the fathomless of inquiries. It presents us with a
sphere, for the pursuit of the thing we covet most. It bubbles over
mellowness; it has, in the marriage with Time, extracted a spice of
individuality from the saccharine: by miracle, one would say, were it not
for our knowledge of the right noble issue of Time when he and good
things unite. There should be somewhere legends of him and the
wine-flask. There must be meanings to that effect in the Mythology,
awaiting unravelment. For the subject opens to deeper than cellars, and
is a tree with vast ramifications of the roots and the spreading growth,
whereon half if not all the mythic Gods, Inferior and Superior, Infernal
and Celestial, might be shown sitting in concord, performing in concert,
harmoniously receiving sacrificial offerings of the black or the white;
and the black not extinguishing the fairer fellow. Tell us of a certainty
that Time has embraced the wine-flask, then may it be asserted (assuming
the great year for the wine, i.e. combinations above) that a speck of the
white within us who drink will conquer, to rise in main ascension over
volumes of the black. It may, at a greater venture, but confidently, be
said in plain speech, that the Bacchus of auspicious birth induces ever
to the worship of the loftier Deities.

Think as you will; forbear to come hauling up examples of malarious men,
in whom these pourings of the golden rays of life breed fogs; and be
moved, since you are scarcely under an obligation to hunt the meaning, in
tolerance of some dithyrambic inebriety of narration (quiverings of the
reverent pen) when we find ourselves entering the circle of a most
magnetic polarity. Take it for not worse than accompanying choric
flourishes, in accord with Mr. Victor Radnor and Mr. Simeon Fenellan at
their sipping of the venerable wine.

Seated in a cosy corner, near the grey City window edged with a sooty
maze, they praised the wine, in the neuter and in the feminine; that for
the glass, this for the widow-branded bottle: not as poets hymning; it
was done in the City manner, briefly, part pensively, like men travelling
to the utmost bourne of flying flavour (a dell in infinite nether), and
still masters of themselves and at home.

Such a wine, in its capturing permeation of us, insists on being for a
time a theme.

'I wonder!' said Mr. Radnor, completely restored, eyeing his half-emptied
second glass and his boon-fellow.

'Low!' Mr. Fenellan shook his head.

'Half a dozen dozen left?'

'Nearer the half of that. And who's the culprit?'

'Old days! They won't let me have another dozen out of the house now.'

'They'll never hit on such another discovery in their cellar, unless they
unearth a fifth corner.'

'I don't blame them for making the price prohibitive. And sound as ever!'

Mr. Radnor watched the deliberate constant ascent of bubbles through
their rose-topaz transparency. He drank. That notion of the dish of
turtle was an inspiration of the right: he ought always to know it for
the want of replenishment when such a man as he went quaking. His latest
experiences of himself were incredible; but they passed, as the dimples
of the stream. He finished his third glass. The bottle, like the
cellar-wine, was at ebb: unlike the cellar-wine, it could be set flowing
again: He prattled, in the happy ignorance of compulsion:

'Fenellan, remember, I had a sort of right to the wine--to the best I
could get; and this Old Veuve, more than any other, is a bridal wine! We
heard of Giulia Sanfredini's marriage to come off with the Spanish Duke,
and drank it to the toast of our little Nesta's godmother. I 've told
you. We took the girl to the Opera, when quite a little one--that
high:--and I declare to you, it was marvellous! Next morning after
breakfast, she plants herself in the middle of the room, and strikes her
attitude for song, and positively, almost with the Sanfredini's
voice--illusion of it, you know,--trills us out more than I could have
believed credible to be recollected by a child. But I've told you the
story. We called her Fredi from that day. I sent the diva, with excuses
and compliments, a nuptial present-necklace, Roman goldwork,
locket-pendant, containing sunny curl, and below a fine pearl; really
pretty; telling her our grounds for the liberty. She replied, accepting
the responsible office; touching letter--we found it so; framed in
Fredi's room, under her godmother's photograph. Fredi has another heroine
now, though she worships her old one still; she never abandons her old
ones. You've heard the story over and over!'

Mr. Fenellan nodded; he had a tenderness for the garrulity of Old Veuve,
and for the damsel. Chatter on that subject ran pleasantly with their
entertainment.

Mr. Radnor meanwhile scribbled, and despatched a strip of his Note-book,
bearing a scrawl of orders, to his office. He was now fully himself,
benevolent, combative, gay, alert for amusement or the probeing of
schemes to the quick, weighing the good and the bad in them with his fine
touch on proportion.

'City dead flat? A monotonous key; but it's about the same as fetching a
breath after a run; only, true, it lasts too long--not healthy! Skepsey
will bring me my letters. I was down in the country early this morning,
looking over the house, with Taplow, my architect; and he speaks fairly
well of the contractors. Yes, down at Lakelands; and saw my first lemon
butterfly in a dell of sunshine, out of the wind, and had half a mind to
catch it for Fredi,--and should have caught it myself, if I had! The
truth is, we three are country born and bred; we pine in London. Good for
a season; you know my old feeling. They are to learn the secret of
Lakelands to-morrow. It 's great fun; they think I don't see they've had
their suspicion for some time. You said--somebody said--"the eye of a
needle for what they let slip of their secrets, and the point of it for
penetrating yours":--women. But no; my dear souls didn't prick and
bother. And they dealt with a man in armour. I carry them down to
Lakelands to-morrow, if the City's flat.'

'Keeping a secret's the lid on a boiling pot with you,' Mr. Fenellan
said; and he mused on the profoundness of the flavour at his lips.

'I do it.'

'You do: up to bursting at the breast.'

'I keep it from Colney!'

'As Vesuvius keeps it from Palmieri when shaking him.'

'Has old Colney an idea of it?'

'He has been foretelling an eruption of an edifice.'

The laugh between them subsided to pensiveness.

Mr. Fenellan's delay in the delivery of his news was eloquent to reveal
the one hateful topic; and this being seen, it waxed to such increase of
size with the passing seconds, that prudence called for it.

'Come!' said Mr. Radnor.

The appeal was understood.

'Nothing very particular. I came into the City to look at a warehouse
they want to mount double guard on. Your idea of the fireman's
night-patrol and wires has done wonders for the office.'

'I guarantee the City if all my directions are followed.'

Mr. Fenellan's remark, that he had nothing very particular to tell,
reduced it to the mere touch upon a vexatious matter, which one has to
endure in the ears at times; but it may be postponed. So Mr. Radnor
encouraged him to talk of an Insurance Office Investment. Where it is all
bog and mist, as in the City to-day, the maxim is, not to take a step,
they agreed. Whether it was attributable to an unconsumed glut of the
markets, or apprehension of a panic, had to be considered. Both gentlemen
were angry with the Birds on the flags of foreign nations, which would
not imitate a sawdust Lion to couch reposefully. Incessantly they scream
and sharpen talons.

'They crack the City bubbles and bladders, at all events,' Mr. Fenellan
said. 'But if we let our journals go on making use of them, in the shape
of sham hawks overhead, we shall pay for their one good day of the game
with our loss of the covey. An unstable London's no world's
market-place.'

'No, no; it's a niggardly national purse, not the journals,' Mr. Radnor
said. 'The journals are trading engines. Panics are grist to them; so are
wars; but they do their duty in warning the taxpayer and rousing
Parliament. Dr. Schlesien's right: we go on believing that our God
Neptune will do everything for us, and won't see that Steam has paralyzed
his Trident: good! You and Colney are hard on Schlesien--or at him, I
should say. He's right: if we won't learn that we have become
Continentals, we shall be marched over. Laziness, cowardice, he says.'

'Oh, be hanged!' interrupted Fenellan. 'As much of the former as you
like. He 's right about our "individualismus" being another name for
selfishness, and showing the usual deficiency in external features; it's
an individualism of all of a pattern, as when a mob cuts its lucky, each
fellow his own way. Well, then, conscript them, and they'll be all of a
better pattern. The only thing to do, and the cheapest. By heaven! it's
the only honourable thing to do.'

Mr. Radnor disapproved. 'No conscription here.'

'Not till you've got the drop of poison in your blood, in the form of an
army landed. That will teach you to catch at the drug.'

'No, Fenellan! Besides they've got to land. I guarantee a trusty army and
navy under a contract, at two-thirds of the present cost. We'll start a
National Defence Insurance Company after the next panic.'

'During,' said Mr. Fenellan, and there was a flutter of laughter at the
unobtrusive hint for seizing Dame England in the mood.

Both dropped a sigh.

'But you must try and run down with us to Lakelands to-morrow,' Mr.
Radnor resumed on a cheerfuller theme. 'You have not yet seen all I 've
done there. And it 's a castle with a drawbridge: no exchangeing of
visits, as we did at Craye Farm and at Creckholt; we are there for
country air; we don't court neighbours at all--perhaps the elect; it will
depend on Nataly's wishes. We can accommodate our Concert-set, and about
thirty or forty more, for as long as they like. You see, that was my
intention--to be independent of neighbouring society. Madame Callet
guarantees dinners or hot suppers for eighty--and Armandine is the last
person to be recklessly boasting.--When was it I was thinking last of
Armandine?' He asked himself that, as he rubbed at the back of his head.

Mr. Fenellan was reading his friend's character by the light of his
remarks and in opposition to them, after the critical fashion of
intimates who know as well as hear: but it was amiably and trippingly, on
the dance of the wine in his veins.

His look, however, was one that reminded; and Mr. Radnor cried: 'Now!
whatever it is!'

'I had an interview: I assure you,' Mr. Fenellan interposed to pacify:
'the smallest of trifles, and to be expected: I thought you ought to know
it:--an interview with her lawyer; office business, increase of Insurance
on one of her City warehouses.'

'Speak her name, speak the woman's name; we're talking like a pair of
conspirators,' exclaimed Mr. Radnor.

'He informed me that Mrs. Burman has heard of the new mansion.'

'My place at Lakelands?'

Mr. Radnor's clear-water eyes hardened to stony as their vision ran along
the consequences of her having heard it.

'Earlier this time!' he added, thrummed on the table, and thumped with
knuckles. 'I make my stand at Lakelands for good! Nothing mortal moves
me!'

'That butler of hers--'

'Jarniman, you mean: he's her butler, yes, the scoundrel--h'm-pah! Heaven
forgive me! she's an honest woman at least; I wouldn't rob her of her
little: fifty-nine or sixty next September, fifteenth of the month! with
the constitution of a broken drug-bottle, poor soul! She hears everything
from Jarniman: he catches wind of everything. All foreseen, Fenellan,
foreseen. I have made my stand at Lakelands, and there's my flag till
it's hauled down over Victor Radnor. London kills Nataly as well as
Fredi--and me: that is--I can use the words to you--I get back to primal
innocence in the country. We all three have the feeling. You're a man to
understand. My beasts, and the wild flowers, hedge-banks, and stars.
Fredi's poetess will tell you. Quiet waters reflecting. I should feel it
in Paris as well, though they have nightingales in their Bois. It's the
rustic I want to bathe me; and I had the feeling at school, biting at
Horace. Well, this is my Sabine Farm, rather on a larger scale, for the
sake of friends. Come, and pure air, water from the springs, walks and
rides in lanes, high sand-lanes; Nataly loves them; Fredi worships the
old roots of trees: she calls them the faces of those weedy sandy lanes.
And the two dear souls on their own estate, Fenellan! And their poultry,
cows, cream. And a certain influence one has in the country socially. I
make my stand on a home--not empty punctilio.'

Mr. Fenellan repeated, in a pause, 'Punctilio,' and not emphatically.

'Don't bawl the word,' said Mr. Radnor, at the drum of whose ears it rang
and sang. 'Here in the City the woman's harmless; and here,' he struck
his breast. 'But she can shoot and hit another through me. Ah, the
witch!--poor wretch! poor soul! Only, she's malignant. I could swear! But
Colney 's right for once in something he says about oaths--"dropping
empty buckets," or something.'

'"Empty buckets to haul up impotent demons, whom we have to pay as
heavily as the ready devil himself,"' Mr. Fenellan supplied the phrase.
'Only, the moment old Colney moralizes, he's what the critics call
sententious. We've all a parlous lot too much pulpit in us.'

'Come, Fenellan, I don't think . . .'

'Oh, yes, but it's true of me too.'

'You reserve it for your enemies.'

'I 'd like to distract it a bit from the biggest of 'em.' He pointed
finger at the region of the heart.

'Here we have Skepsey,' said Mr. Radnor, observing the rapid approach of
a lean small figure, that in about the time of a straight-aimed javelin's
cast, shot from the doorway to the table.




CHAPTER IV

THE SECOND BOTTLE

This little dart of a man came to a stop at a respectful distance from
his master, having the look of an arrested needle in mechanism. His lean
slip of face was an illumination of vivacious grey from the quickest of
prominent large eyes. He placed his master's letters legibly on the
table, and fell to his posture of attention, alert on stiff legs, the
hands like sucking-cubs at play with one another.

Skepsey waited for Mr. Fenellan to notice him.

'How about the Schools for Boxing?' that gentleman said.

Deploring in motion the announcement he had to make, Skepsey replied: 'I
have a difficulty in getting the plan treated seriously: a person of no
station:--it does not appear of national importance. Ladies are against.
They decline their signatures; and ladies have great influence; because
of the blood; which we know is very slight, rather healthy than not; and
it could be proved for the advantage of the frailer sex. They seem to be
unaware of their own interests--ladies. The contention all around us is
with ignorance. My plan is written; I have shown it, and signatures of
gentlemen, to many of our City notables favourable in most cases:
gentlemen of the Stock Exchange highly. The clergy and the medical
profession are quite with me.'

'The surgical, perhaps you mean?'

'Also, sir. The clergy strongly.'

'On the grounds of--what, Skepsey?'

'Morality. I have fully explained to them:--after his work at the desk
all day, the young City clerk wants refreshment. He needs it, must have
it. I propose to catch him on his way to his music-halls and other
places, and take him to one of our establishments. A short term of
instruction, and he would find a pleasure in the gloves; it would delight
him more than excesses-beer and tobacco. The female in her right place,
certainly.' Skepsey supplicated honest interpretation of his hearer, and
pursued,

'It would improve his physical strength, at the same time add to his
sense of personal dignity.'

'Would you teach females as well--to divert them from their frivolities?'

'That would have to be thought over, sir. It would be better for them
than using their nails.'

'I don't know, Skepsey: I'm rather a Conservative there.'

'Yes; with regard to the female, sir: I confess, my scheme does not
include them. They dance; that is a healthy exercise. One has only to
say, that it does not add to the national force, in case of emergency. I
look to that. And I am particular in proposing an exercise independent
of--I have to say--sex. Not that there is harm in sex. But we are for
training. I hope my meaning is clear?'

'Quite. You would have boxing with the gloves to be a kind of monastic
recreation.'

'Recreation is the word, sir; I have often admired it,' said Skepsey,
blinking, unsure of the signification of monastic.

'I was a bit of a boxer once,' Mr. Fenellan said, conscious of height and
breadth in measuring the wisp of a figure before him.

'Something might be done with you still, sir.'

Skepsey paid him the encomium after a respectful summary of his gifts in
a glimpse. Mr. Fenellan bowed to him.

Mr. Radnor raised head from the notes he was pencilling upon letters
perused.

'Skepsey's craze: regeneration of the English race by boxing--nucleus of
a national army?'

'To face an enemy at close quarters--it teaches that, sir. I have always
been of opinion, that courage may be taught. I do not say heroism. And
setting aside for a moment thoughts of an army, we create more valuable
citizens. Protection to the weak in streets and by-places--shocking
examples of ruffians maltreating women, in view of a crowd.'

'One strong man is an overmatch for your mob,' said Mr. Fenellan.

Skepsey toned his assent to the diminishing thinness where a suspicion of
the negative begins to wind upon a distant horn.

'Knowing his own intentions; and before an ignorant mob:--strong, you
say, sir? I venture my word that a, decent lad, with science, would beat
him. It is a question of the study and practice of first principles.'

'If you were to see a rascal giant mishandling a woman?' Skepsey conjured
the scene by bending his head and peering abstractedly, as if over
spectacles.

'I would beg him to abstain, for his own sake.'

Mr. Fenellan knew that the little fellow was not boasting.

'My brother Dartrey had a lesson or two from you in the first principles,
I think?'

'Captain Dartrey is an athlete, sir: exceedingly quick and clever; a hard
boxer to beat.'

'You will not call him captain when you see him; he has dismissed the
army.'

'I much regret it, sir, much, that we have lost him. Captain Dartrey
Fenellan was a beautiful fencer. He gave me some instruction; unhappily,
I have to acknowledge, too late. It is a beautiful art. Captain Dartrey
says, the French excel at it. But it asks for a weapon, which nature has
not given: whereas the fists . . .'

'So,' Mr. Radnor handed notes and papers to Skepsey: 'No sign of life?'

'It is not yet seen in the City, sir.'

'The first principles of commercial activity have retreated to earth's
maziest penetralia, where no tides are! is it not so, Skepsey?' said Mr.
Fenellan, whose initiative and exuberance in loquency had been restrained
by a slight oppression, known to guests; especially to the guest in the
earlier process of his magnification and illumination by virtue of a
grand old wine; and also when the news he has to communicate may be a
stir to unpleasant heaps. The shining lips and eyes of his florid face
now proclaimed speech, with his Puckish fancy jack-o'-lanterning over it.
'Business hangs to swing at every City door, like a ragshop Doll, on the
gallows of overproduction. Stocks and Shares are hollow nuts not a
squirrel of the lot would stop to crack for sight of the milky kernel
mouldered to beard.

Percentage, like a cabman without a fare, has gone to sleep inside his
vehicle. Dividend may just be seen by tiptoe: stockholders, twinkling
heels over the far horizon. Too true!--and our merchants, brokers,
bankers, projectors of Companies, parade our City to remind us of the
poor steamed fellows trooping out of the burst-boiler-room of the big
ship Leviathan, in old years; a shade or two paler than the crowd o' the
passengers, apparently alive and conversible, but corpses, all of them to
lie their length in fifteen minutes.'

'And you, Fenellan?' cried his host, inspired for a second bottle by the
lovely nonsense of a voluble friend wound up to the mark.

'Doctor of the ship! with this prescription!' Mr. Fenellan held up his
glass.

'Empty?'

Mr. Fenellan made it completely so. 'Confident!' he affirmed.

An order was tossed to the waiter, and both gentlemen screwed their lips
in relish of his heavy consent to score off another bottle from the
narrow list.

'At the office in forty minutes,' Skepsey's master nodded to him and shot
him forth, calling him back: 'By the way, in case a man named Jarniman
should ask to see me, you turn him to the rightabout.'

Skepsey repeated: 'Jarniman!' and flew.

'A good servant,' Mr. Radnor said. 'Few of us think of our country so
much, whatever may be said of the specific he offers. Colney has
impressed him somehow immensely: he studies to write too; pushes to
improve himself; altogether a worthy creature.'

The second bottle appeared. The waiter, in sincerity a reluctant
executioner, heightened his part for the edification of the admiring
couple.

'Take heart, Benjamin,' said Mr. Fenellan; 'it's only the bottle dies;
and we are the angels above to receive the spirit.'

'I'm thinking of the house,' Benjamin replied. He told them that again.

'It 's the loss of the fame of having the wine, that he mourns. But,
Benjamin,' said Mr. Fenellan, 'the fame enters into the partakers of it,
and we spread it, and perpetuate it for you.'

'That don't keep a house upright,' returned Benjamin.

Mr. Fenellan murmured to himself: 'True enough, it 's elegy--though we
perform it through a trumpet; and there's not a doubt of our being down
or having knocked the world down, if we're loudly praised.'

Benjamin waited to hear approval sounded on the lips uncertain as a woman
is a wine of ticklish age. The gentlemen nodded, and he retired.

A second bottle, just as good as the first, should, one thoughtlessly
supposes, procure us a similar reposeful and excursive enjoyment, as of
men lying on their backs and flying imagination like a kite. The effect
was quite other. Mr. Radnor drank hastily and spoke with heat: 'You told
me All? tell me that!'

Mr. Fenellan gathered himself together; he sipped, and relaxed his
bracing. But there really was a bit more to tell: not much, was it? Not
likely to puff a gale on the voluptuous indolence of a man drawn along by
Nereids over sunny sea-waves to behold the birth of the Foam-Goddess?
'According to Carling, her lawyer; that is, he hints she meditates a
blow.'

'Mrs. Burman means to strike a blow?'

'The lady.'

'Does he think I fear any--does he mean a blow with a weapon? Is it a
legal . . . ? At last? Fenellan!'

'So I fancied I understood.'

'But can the good woman dream of that as a blow to strike and hurt, for a
punishment?--that's her one aim.'

'She may have her hallucinations.'

'But a blow--what a word for it! But it's life to us life! It's the blow
we've prayed for. Why, you know it! Let her strike, we bless her. We've
never had an ill feeling to the woman; utterly the contrary--pity, pity,
pity! Let her do that, we're at her feet, my Nataly and I. If you knew
what my poor girl suffers! She 's a saint at the stake. Chiefly on behalf
of her family. Fenellan, you may have a sort of guess at my fortune: I'll
own to luck; I put in a claim to courage and calculation.'

'You've been a bulwark to your friends.'

'All, Fenellan, all-stocks, shares, mines, companies, industries at home
and--abroad--all, at a sweep, to have the woman strike that blow!
Cheerfully would I begin to build a fortune over again--singing! Ha! the
woman has threatened it before. It's probably feline play with us.'

His chin took support, he frowned.

'You may have touched her.'

'She won't be touched, and she won't be driven. What 's the secret of
her? I can't guess, I never could. She's a riddle.'

'Riddles with wigs and false teeth have to be taken and shaken for the
ardently sought secret to reveal itself,' said Mr. Fenellan.

His picture, with the skeleton issue of any shaking, smote Mr. Radnor's
eyes, they turned over. 'Oh!--her charms! She had a desperate belief in
her beauty. The woman 's undoubtedly charitable; she's not without a
mind--sort of mind: well, it shows no crack till it's put to use. Heart!
yes, against me she has plenty of it. They say she used to be courted;
she talked of it: "my courtiers, Mr. Victor!" There, heaven forgive me, I
wouldn't mock at her to another.'

'It looks as if she were only inexorably human,' said Mr. Fenellan,
crushing a delicious gulp of the wine, that foamed along the channel to
flavour. 'We read of the tester of a bandit-bed; and it flattened unwary
recumbents to pancakes. An escape from the like of that seems pleadable,
should be: none but the drowsy would fail to jump out and run, or the
insane.'

Mr. Radnor was taken with the illustration of his case. 'For the sake of
my sanity, it was! to preserve my . . . . but any word makes nonsense of
it. Could--I must ask you--could any sane man--you were abroad in those
days, horrible days! and never met her: I say, could you consent to be
tied--I admit the vow, ceremony, so forth-tied to--I was barely
twenty-one: I put it to you, Fenellan, was it in reason an
engagement--which is, I take it, a mutual plight of faith, in good faith;
that is, with capacity on both sides to keep the engagement: between the
man you know I was in youth and a more than middle-aged woman crazy up to
the edge of the cliff--as Colney says half the world is, and she
positively is when her spite is roused. No, Fenellan, I have nothing on
my conscience with regard to the woman. She had wealth: I left her not
one penny the worse for--but she was not one to reckon it, I own. She
could be generous, was, with her money. If she had struck this blow--I
know she thought of it: or if she would strike it now, I could not only
forgive her, I could beg forgiveness.'

A sight of that extremity fetched prickles to his forehead.

'You've borne your part bravely, my friend.'

'I!' Mr. Radnor shrugged at mention of his personal burdens. 'Praise my
Nataly if you like! Made for one another, if ever two in this world! You
know us both, and do you doubt it? The sin would have been for us two to
meet and--but enough when I say, that I am she, she me, till death and
beyond it: that's my firm faith. Nataly teaches me the religion of life,
and you may learn what that is when you fall in love with a woman.
Eighteen-nineteen-twenty years!'

Tears fell from him, two drops. He blinked, bugled in his throat, eyed
his watch, and smiled: 'The finishing glass! We should have had to put
Colney to bed. Few men stand their wine. You and I are not lamed by it;
we can drink and do business: my first experience in the City was, that
the power to drink--keeping a sound head--conduces to the doing of
business.'

'It's a pleasant way of instructing men to submit to their conqueror.'

'If it doubles the energies, mind.'

'Not if it fiddles inside. I confess to that effect upon me. I've a waltz
going on, like the snake with the tail in his mouth, eternal; and it
won't allow of a thought upon Investments.'

'Consult me to-morrow,' said Mr. Radnor, somewhat pained for having
inconsiderately misled the man he had hitherto helpfully guided. 'You've
looked at the warehouse?'

'That's performed.'

'Make a practice of getting over as much of your business in the early
morning as you well can.'

Mr. Radnor added hints of advice to a frail humanity he was indulgent,
the giant spoke in good fellowship. It would have been to have strained
his meaning, for purposes of sarcasm upon him, if one had taken him to
boast of a personal exemption from our common weakness.

He stopped, and laughed: 'Now I 'm pumping my pulpit-eh? You come with us
to Lakelands. I drive the ladies down to my office, ten A.M.: if it's
fine; train half-past. We take a basket. By the way, I had no letter from
Dartrey last mail.'

'He has buried his wife. It happens to some men.'

Mr. Radnor stood gazing. He asked for the name of the place of the
burial. He heard without seizing it. A simulacrum spectre-spark of
hopefulness shot up in his imagination, glowed and quivered, darkening at
the utterance of the Dutch syllables, leaving a tinge of witless envy.
Dartrey--Fenellan had buried the wife whose behaviour vexed and
dishonoured him: and it was in Africa! One would have to go to Africa to
be free of the galling. But Dartrey had gone, and he was free!--The
strange faint freaks of our sensations when struck to leap and throw off
their load after a long affliction, play these disorderly pranks on the
brain; and they are faint, but they come in numbers, they are recurring,
always in ambush. We do not speak of them: we have not words to stamp the
indefinite things; generally we should leave them unspoken if we had the
words; we know them as out of reason: they haunt us, pluck at us, fret
us, nevertheless.

Dartrey free, he was relieved of the murderous drama incessantly in the
mind of shackled men.

It seemed like one of the miracles of a divine intervention, that Dartrey
should be free, suddenly free; and free while still a youngish man. He
was in himself a wonderful fellow, the pick of his country for vigour,
gallantry, trustiness, high-mindedness; his heavenly good fortune decked
him as a prodigy.

'No harm to the head from that fall of yours?' Mr. Fenellan said.

'None.' Mr. Radnor withdrew his hand from head to hat, clapped it on and
cried cheerily: 'Now to business'; as men may, who have confidence in
their ability to concentrate an instant attention upon the substantial.
'You dine with us. The usual Quartet: Peridon, Pempton, Colney, Yatt, or
Catkin: Priscilla Graves and Nataly--the Rev. Septimus; Cormyn and his
wife: Young Dudley Sowerby and I--flutes: he has precision, as naughty
Fredi said, when some one spoke of expression. In the course of the
evening, Lady Grace, perhaps: you like her.'

'Human nature in the upper circle is particularly likeable.'

'Fenellan,' said Mr. Radnor, emboldened to judge hopefully of his
fortunes by mere pressure of the thought of Dartrey's, 'I put it to you:
would you say, that there is anything this time behind your friend
Carling's report?'

Although it had not been phrased as a report, Mr. Fenellan's answering
look and gesture, and a run of indiscriminate words, enrolled it in that
form, greatly to the inspiriting of Mr. Radnor.

Old Veuve in one, to the soul of Old Veuve in the other, they recalled a
past day or two, touched the skies; and merriment or happiness in the
times behind them held a mirror to the present: or the hour of the
reverse of happiness worked the same effect by contrast: so that notions
of the singular election of us by Dame Fortune, sprang like vinous
bubbles. For it is written, that however powerful you be, you shall not
take the Winegod on board to entertain him as a simple passenger; and you
may captain your vessel, you may pilot it, and keep to your reckonings,
and steer for all the ports you have a mind to, even to doing profitable
exchange with Armenian and Jew, and still you shall do the something
more, which proves that the Winegod is on board: he is the pilot of your
blood if not the captain of your thoughts.

Mr. Fenellan was unused to the copious outpouring of Victor Radnor's
confidences upon his domestic affairs; and the unwonted excitement of
Victor's manner of speech would have perplexed him, had there not been
such a fiddling of the waltz inside him.

Payment for the turtle and the bottles of Old Veuve was performed apart
with Benjamin, while Simeon Fenellan strolled out of the house,
questioning a tumbled mind as to what description of suitable
entertainment, which would be dancing and flirting and fal-lallery in the
season of youth, London City could provide near meridian hours for a man
of middle age carrying his bottle of champagne, like a guest of an
old-fashioned wedding-breakfast. For although he could stand his wine as
well as his friend, his friend's potent capacity martially after the
feast to buckle to business at a sign of the clock, was beyond him. It
pointed to one of the embodied elements, hot from Nature's workshop. It
told of the endurance of powers, that partly explained the successful,
astonishing career of his friend among a people making urgent, if
unequal, demands perpetually upon stomach and head.




CHAPTER V

THE LONDON WALK WESTWARD

In that nationally interesting Poem, or Dramatic Satire, once famous, THE
RAJAH IN LONDON (London, Limbo and Sons, 1889), now obliterated under the
long wash of Press-matter, the reflection--not unknown to philosophical
observers, and natural perhaps in the mind of an Oriental
Prince--produced by his observation of the march of London citizens
Eastward at morn, Westward at eve, attributes their practice to a
survival of the Zoroastrian form of worship. His Minister, favourable to
the people or for the sake of fostering an idea in his Master's head,
remarks, that they show more than the fidelity of the sunflower to her
God. The Rajah, it would appear, frowns interrogatively, in the princely
fashion, accusing him of obscureness of speech:--princes and the louder
members of the grey public are fraternally instant to spurn at the whip
of that which they do not immediately comprehend. It is explained by the
Minister: not even the flower, he says, would hold constant, as they, to
the constantly unseen--a trebly cataphractic Invisible. The Rajah
professes curiosity to know how it is that the singular people nourish
their loyalty, since they cannot attest to the continued being of the
object in which they put their faith. He is informed by his prostrate
servant of a settled habit they have of diligently seeking their
Divinity, hidden above, below; and of copiously taking inside them doses
of what is denied to their external vision: thus they fortify credence
chemically on an abundance of meats and liquors; fire they eat, and they
drink fire; they become consequently instinct with fire. Necessarily
therefore they believe in fire. Believing, they worship. Worshipping,
they march Eastward at morn, Westward at eve. For that way lies the key,
this way the cupboard, of the supplies, their fuel.

According to Stage directions, THE RAJAH AND HIS MINISTER Enter a
Gin-Palace.--It is to witness a service that they have learnt to
appreciate as Anglicanly religious.

On the step of the return to their Indian clime, they speak of the hatted
sect, which is most, or most commercially, succoured and fattened by our
rule there: they wave adieu to the conquering Islanders, as to 'Parsees
beneath a cloud.'

The two are seen last on the deck of the vessel, in perusal of a medical
pamphlet composed of statistics and sketches, traceries, horrid blots,
diagrams with numbers referring to notes, of the various maladies caused
by the prolonged prosecution of that form of worship.

'But can they suffer so and live?' exclaims the Rajah, vexed by the
physical sympathetic twinges which set him wincing.

'Science,' his Minister answers, 'took them up where Nature, in pity of
their martyrdom, dropped them. They do not live; they are engines,
insensible things of repairs and patches; insteamed to pursue their
infuriate course, to the one end of exhausting supplies for the renewing
of them, on peril of an instant suspension if they deviate a step or
stop: nor do they.'

The Rajah is of opinion, that he sails home with the key of the riddle of
their power to vanquish. In some apparent allusion to an Indian story of
a married couple who successfully made their way, he accounts for their
solid and resistless advance, resembling that of--

             The doubly-wedded man and wife,
        Pledged to each other and against the world
        With mutual union.

One would like to think of the lengthened tide-flux of pedestrian
citizens facing South-westward, as being drawn by devout attraction to
our nourishing luminary: at the hour, mark, when the Norland cloud-king,
after a day of wild invasion, sits him on his restful bank of bluefish
smack-o'-cheek red above Whitechapel, to spy where his last puff of icy
javelins pierces and dismembers the vapoury masses in cluster about the
circle of flame descending upon the greatest and most elevated of
Admirals at the head of the Strand, with illumination of smoke-plumed
chimneys, house-roofs, window-panes, weather-vanes, monument and
pedimental monsters, and omnibus umbrella. One would fair believe that
they advance admireing; they are assuredly made handsome by the beams. No
longer mere concurrent atoms of the furnace of business (from coal-dust
to sparks, rushing, as it were, on respiratory blasts of an enormous
engine's centripetal and centrifugal energy), their step is leisurely to
meet the rosy Dinner, which is ever a see-saw with the God of Light in
his fall; the mask of the noble human visage upon them is not roughened,
as at midday, by those knotted hard ridges of the scrambler's hand seen
from forehead down to jaw; when indeed they have all the appearance of
sour scientific productions. And unhappily for the national portrait, in
the Poem quoted, the Rajah's Minister chose an hour between morning and
meridian, or at least before an astonished luncheon had come to composure
inside their persons, for drawing his Master's attention to the quaint
similarity of feature in the units of the busy antish congregates they
had travelled so far to visit and to study:

               These Britons wear
        The driven and perplexed look of men
        Begotten hastily 'twixt business hours

It could not have been late afternoon.

These Orientals should have seen them, with Victor Radnor among them,
fronting the smoky splendours of the sunset. In April, the month of piled
and hurried cloud, it is a Rape of the Sabines overhead from all
quarters, either one of the winds brawnily larcenous; and London, smoking
royally to the open skies, builds images of a dusty epic fray for
possession of the portly dames. There is immensity, swinging motion,
collision, dusky richness of colouring, to the sight; and to the mind
idea. London presents it. If we can allow ourselves a moment for not
inquireing scrupulously (you will do it by inhaling the aroma of the ripe
kitchen hour), here is a noble harmony of heaven and the earth of the
works of man, speaking a grander tongue than barren sea or wood or
wilderness. Just a moment; it goes; as, when a well-attuned barrel-organ
in a street has drawn us to recollections of the Opera or Italy, another
harshly crashes, and the postman knocks at doors, and perchance a
costermonger cries his mash of fruit, a beggar woman wails her hymn. For
the pinched are here, the dinnerless, the weedy, the gutter-growths, the
forces repressing them. That grand tongue of the giant City inspires none
human to Bardic eulogy while we let those discords be. An embittered Muse
of Reason prompts her victims to the composition of the adulatory Essay
and of the Leading Article, that she may satiate an angry irony 'upon
those who pay fee for their filling with the stuff. Song of praise she
does not permit. A moment of satisfaction in a striking picture is
accorded, and no more. For this London, this England, Europe, world, but
especially this London, is rather a thing for hospital operations than
for poetic rhapsody; in aspect, too, streaked scarlet and pock-pitted
under the most cumbrous of jewelled tiaras; a Titanic work of
long-tolerated pygmies; of whom the leaders, until sorely discomforted in
body and doubtful in soul, will give gold and labour, will impose
restrictions upon activity, to maintain a conservatism of diseases. Mind
is absent, or somewhere so low down beneath material accumulations that
it is inexpressive, powerless to drive the ponderous bulk to such
excisings, purgeings, purifyings as might--as may, we will suppose,
render it acceptable, for a theme of panegyric, to the Muse of Reason;
ultimately, with her consent, to the Spirit of Song.

But first there must be the cleansing. When Night has fallen upon London,
the Rajah remarks:

        Monogamic Societies present
        A decent visage and a hideous rear.

His Minister (satirically, or in sympathetic Conservatism) would have
them not to move on, that they may preserve among beholders the
impression of their handsome frontage. Night, however, will come; and
they, adoreing the decent face, are moved on, made to expose what the
Rajah sees. Behind his courteousness, he is an antagonistic observer of
his conquerors; he pushes his questions farther than the need for them;
his Minister the same; apparently to retain the discountenanced people in
their state of exposure. Up to the time of the explanation of the puzzle
on board the departing vessel (on the road to Windsor, at the Premier's
reception, in the cell of the Police, in the presence of the
Magistrate-whose crack of a totally inverse decision upon their case,
when he becomes acquainted with the titles and station of these imputedly
peccant, refreshes them), they hold debates over the mysterious
contrarieties of a people professing in one street what they confound in
the next, and practising by day a demureness that yells with the cat of
the tiles at night.

Granting all that, it being a transient novelist's business to please the
light-winged hosts which live for the hour, and give him his only chance
of half of it, let him identify himself with them, in keeping to the
quadrille on the surface and shirking the disagreeable.

Clouds of high colour above London City are as the light of the Goddess
to lift the angry heroic head over human. They gloriously transfigure. A
Murillo beggar is not more precious than sight of London in any of the
streets admitting coloured cloud-scenes; the cunning of the sun's hand so
speaks to us. And if haply down an alley some olive mechanic of
street-organs has quickened little children's legs to rhythmic footing,
they strike on thoughts braver than pastoral. Victor Radnor, lover of the
country though he was, would have been the first to say it. He would
indeed have said it too emphatically. Open London as a theme, to a
citizen of London ardent for the clear air out of it, you have roused an
orator; you have certainly fired a magazine, and must listen to his
reminiscences of one of its paragraphs or pages.

The figures of the hurtled fair ones in sky were wreathing Nelson's
cocked hat when Victor, distinguishably bright-faced amid a crowd of the
irradiated, emerged from the tideway to cross the square, having thoughts
upon Art, which were due rather to the suggestive proximity of the
National Gallery than to the Flemish mouldings of cloud-forms under
Venetian brushes. His purchases of pictures had been his unhappiest
ventures. He had relied and reposed on the dicta of newspaper critics;
who are sometimes unanimous, and are then taken for guides, and are
fatal. He was led to the conclusion that our modern-lauded pictures do
not ripen. They have a chance of it, if abused. But who thinks of buying
the abused? Exalted by the critics, they have, during the days of
Exhibition, a glow, a significance or a fun, abandoning them where
examination is close and constant, and the critic's trumpet-note
dispersed to the thinness of the fee for his blowing. As to foreign
pictures, classic pictures, Victor had known his purse to leap for a
Raphael with a history in stages of descent from the Master, and critics
to swarm: a Raphael of the dealers, exposed to be condemned by the
critics, universally derided. A real Raphael in your house is aristocracy
to the roof-tree. But the wealthy trader will reach to title before he
may hope to get the real Raphael or a Titian. Yet he is the one who
would, it may be, after enjoyment of his prize, bequeath it to the
nation--PRESENTED TO THE NATION BY VICTOR MONTGOMERY RADNOR. There stood
the letters in gilt; and he had a thrill of his generosity; for few were
the generous acts he could not perform; and if an object haunted the
deed, it came of his trader's habit of mind.

He revelled in benevolent projects of gifts to the nation, which would
coat a sensitive name. Say, an ornamental City Square, flowers,
fountains, afternoon bands of music--comfortable seats in it, and a
shelter, and a ready supply of good cheap coffee or tea. Tobacco? why not
rolls of honest tobacco! nothing so much soothes the labourer. A volume
of plans for the benefit of London smoked out of each ascending pile in
his brain. London is at night a moaning outcast round the policeman's'
legs. What of an all-night-long, cosy, brightly lighted, odoriferous
coffee-saloon for rich or poor, on the model of the hospitable Paduan?
Owner of a penny, no soul among us shall be rightly an outcast . . . .

Dreams of this kind are taken at times by wealthy people as a cordial at
the bar of benevolent intentions. But Victor was not the man to steal his
refreshments in that known style. He meant to make deeds of them, as far
as he could, considering their immense extension; and except for the
sensitive social name, he was of single-minded purpose.

Turning to the steps of a chemist's shop to get a prescription made up
for his Nataly's doctoring of her domestics, he was arrested by a rap on
his elbow; and no one was near; and there could not be a doubt of the
blow--a sharp hard stroke, sparing the funny-bone, but ringing. His head,
at the punctilio bump, throbbed responsively--owing to which or
indifference to the prescription, as of no instant requirement, he
pursued his course, resembling mentally the wanderer along a misty beach,
who hears cannon across the waters.

He certainly had felt it. He remembered the shock: he could not remember
much of pain. How about intimations? His asking caused a smile.

Very soon the riddle answered itself. He had come into view of the
diminutive marble cavalier of the infantile cerebellum; recollecting a
couplet from the pen of the disrespectful Satirist Peter, he thought of a
fall: his head and his elbow responded simultaneously to the thought.

All was explained save his consequent rightabout from the chemist's shop:
and that belongs to the minor involutions of circumstances and the will.
It passed like a giver's wrinkle. He read the placards of the Opera;
reminding himself of the day when it was the single Opera-house; and now
we have two-or three. We have also a distracting couple of Clowns and
Pantaloons in our Pantomimes: though Colney says that the multiplication
of the pantaloon is a distinct advance to representative truth--and
bother Colney! Two Columbines also. We forbear to speak of men, but where
is the boy who can set his young heart upon two Columbines at once!
Victor felt the boy within him cold to both: and in his youth he had
doated on the solitary twirling spangled lovely Fairy. The tale of a
delicate lady dancer leaping as the kernel out of a nut from the arms of
Harlequin to the legalized embrace of a wealthy brewer, and thenceforth
living, by repute, with unagitated legs, as holy a matron, despite her
starry past, as any to be shown in a country breeding the like
abundantly, had always delighted him. It seemed a reconcilement of
opposing stations, a defeat of Puritanism. Ay, and poor women!--women in
the worser plight under the Puritan's eye. They may be erring and good:
yes, finding the man to lift them the one step up! Read the history of
the error. But presently we shall teach the Puritan to act by the
standards of his religion. All is coming right--must come right. Colney
shall be confounded.

Hereupon Victor hopped on to Fenellan's hint regarding the designs of
Mrs. Burman.

His Nataly might have to go through a short sharp term of
scorching--Godiva to the gossips.

She would come out of it glorified. She would be reconciled with her
family. With her story of her devotion to the man loving her, the world
would know her for the heroine she was: a born lady, in appearance and
manner an empress among women. It was a story to be pleaded in any court,
before the sternest public. Mrs. Burman had thrown her into temptation's
way. It was a story to touch the heart, as none other ever written of
over all the earth was there a woman equalling his Nataly!

And their Nesta would have a dowry to make princesses envious:--she would
inherit . . . he ran up an arithmetical column, down to a line of figures
in addition, during three paces of his feet. Dartrey Fenellan had said of
little Nesta once, that she had a nature pure and sparkling as mid-sea
foam. Happy he who wins her! But she was one of the young women who are
easily pleased and hardly enthralled. Her father strained his mind for
the shape of the man to accomplish the feat. Whether she had an ideal of
a youth in her feminine head, was beyond his guessing. She was not the
damsel to weave a fairy waistcoat for the identical prince, and try it
upon all comers to discover him: as is done by some; excuseably, if we
would be just. Nesta was of the elect, for whom excuses have not to be
made. She would probably like a flute-player best; because her father
played the flute, and she loved him--laughably a little maiden's reason!
Her father laughed at her.

Along the street of Clubs, where a bruised fancy may see black balls
raining, the narrow way between ducal mansions offers prospect of the
sweep of greensward, all but touching up to the sunset to draw it to the
dance.

Formerly, in his very early youth, he clasped a dream of gaining way to
an alliance with one of these great surrounding houses; and he had a
passion for the acquisition of money as a means. And it has to be
confessed, he had sacrificed in youth a slice of his youth, to gain it
without labour--usually a costly purchase. It had ended disastrously: or
say, a running of the engine off the rails, and a speedy re-establishment
of traffic. Could it be a loss, that had led to the winning of his
Nataly? Can we really loathe the first of the steps when the one in due
sequence, cousin to it, is a blessedness? If we have been righted to
health by a medical draught, we are bound to be respectful to our drug.
And so we are, in spite of Nature's wry face and shiver at a mention of
what we went through during those days, those horrible days:--hide them!

The smothering of them from sight set them sounding he had to listen.
Colney Durance accused him of entering into bonds with somebody's
grandmother for the simple sake of browsing on her thousands: a picture
of himself too abhorrent to Victor to permit of any sort of acceptance.
Consequently he struck away to the other extreme of those who have a
choice in mixed motives: he protested that compassion had been the cause
of it. Looking at the circumstance now, he could see, allowing for human
frailty-perhaps a wish to join the ranks of the wealthy compassion for
the woman as the principal motive. How often had she not in those old
days praised his generosity for allying his golden youth to her withered
age--Mrs. Burman's very words! And she was a generous woman or had been:
she was generous in saying that. Well, and she was generous in having a
well-born, well-bred beautiful young creature like Nataly for her
companion, when it was a case of need for the dear girl; and
compassionately insisting, against remonstrances: they were spoken by
him, though they were but partial. How, then, had she become--at least,
how was it that she could continue to behave as the vindictive Fury who
persecuted remorselessly, would give no peace, poisoned the wells round
every place where he and his dear one pitched their tent!

But at last she had come to charity, as he could well believe. Not too
late! Victor's feeling of gratitude to Mrs. Burman assured him it was
genuine because of his genuine conviction, that she had determined to end
her incomprehensibly lengthened days in reconcilement with him: and he
had always been ready to 'forget and forgive.' A truly beautiful old
phrase! It thrilled off the most susceptible of men.

His well-kept secret of the spacious country-house danced him behind a
sober demeanour from one park to another; and along beside the drive to
view of his townhouse--unbeloved of the inhabitants, although by
acknowledgement it had, as Fredi funnily drawled, to express her sense of
justice in depreciation, 'good accommodation.' Nataly was at home, he was
sure. Time to be dressing: sun sets at six-forty, he said, and glanced at
the stained West, with an accompanying vision of outspread primroses
flooding banks of shadowy fields near Lakelands.

He crossed the road and rang.

Upon the opening of the door, there was a cascade of muslin downstairs.
His darling Fredi stood out of it, a dramatic Undine.




CHAPTER VI

NATALY

'Il segreto!' the girl cried commandingly, with a forefinger at his
breast.

He crossed arms, toning in similar recitative, with anguish, 'Dove
volare!'

They joined in half a dozen bars of operatic duet.

She flew to him, embraced and kissed.

'I must have it, my papa! unlock. I've been spying the bird on its
hedgerow nest so long! And this morning, my own dear cunning papa,
weren't you as bare as winter twigs? "Tomorrow perhaps we will have a day
in the country." To go and see the nest? Only, please, not a big one. A
real nest; where mama and I can wear dairymaid's hat and apron all
day--the style you like; and strike roots. We've been torn away two or
three times: twice, I know.'

'Fixed, this time; nothing shall tear us up,' said her father, moving on
to the stairs, with an arm about her.

'So, it is . . . ?'

'She's amazed at her cleverness!'

'A nest for three?'

'We must have a friend or two.'

'And pretty country?'

'Trust her papa for that.'

'Nice for walking and running over fields? No rich people?'

'How escape that rabble in England! as Colney says. It's a place for
being quite independent of neighbours, free as air.'

'Oh! bravo!'

'And Fredi will have her horse, and mama her pony-carriage; and Fredi can
have a swim every Summer morning.'

'A swim?' Her note was dubious. 'A river?'

'A good long stretch--fairish, fairish. Bit of a lake; bathing-shed; the
Naiad's bower: pretty water to see.'

'Ah. And has the house a name?'

'Lakelands. I like the name.'

'Papa gave it the name!'

'There's nothing he can conceal from his girl. Only now and then a little
surprise.'

'And his girl is off her head with astonishment. But tell me, who has
been sharing the secret with you?'

'Fredi strikes home! And it is true, you dear; I must have a confidant:
Simeon Fenellan.'

'Not Mr. Durance?'

He shook out a positive negative. 'I leave Col to his guesses. He'd have
been prophesying fire the works before the completion.'

'Then it is not a dear old house, like Craye and Creckholt?'

'Wait and see to-morrow.'

He spoke of the customary guests for concert practice; the music,
instrumental and vocal; quartet, duet, solo; and advising the girl to be
quick, as she had but twenty-five minutes, he went humming and trilling
into his dressing-room.

Nesta signalled at her mother's door for permission to enter. She slipped
in, saw that the maid was absent, and said: 'Yes, mama; and prepare, I
feared it; I was sure.'

Her mother breathed a little moan: 'Not a cottage?'

'He has not mentioned it to Mr. Durance.'

'Why not?'

'Mr. Fenellan has been his confidant.'

'My darling, we did wrong to let it go on, without speaking. You don't
know for certain yet?'

'It's a large estate, mama, and a big new house.'

Nataly's bosom sank. 'Ah me! here's misery! I ought to have known. And
too late now it has gone so far! But I never imagined he would be
building.'

She caught herself languishing at her toilette-glass, as, if her beauty
were at stake; and shut her eyelids angrily. To be looking in that
manner, for a mere suspicion, was too foolish. But Nesta's divinations
were target-arrows; they flew to the mark. Could it have been expected
that Victor would ever do anything on a small scale? O the dear little
lost lost cottage! She thought of it with a strain of the arms of
womanhood's longing in the unblessed wife for a babe. For the secluded
modest cottage would not rack her with the old anxieties, beset her with
suspicions. . . .

'My child, you won't possibly have time before the dinner-hour,' she said
to Nesta, dismissing her and taking her kiss of comfort with a short and
straining look out of the depths.

Those bitter doubts of the sentiments of neighbours are an incipient
dislike, when one's own feelings to the neighbours are kind, could be
affectionate. We are distracted, perverted, made strangers to ourselves
by a false position.

She heard his voice on a carol. Men do not feel this doubtful position as
women must. They have not the same to endure; the world gives them land
to tread, where women are on breaking seas. Her Nesta knew no more than
the pain of being torn from a home she loved. But now the girl was older,
and if once she had her imagination awakened, her fearful directness
would touch the spot, question, bring on the scene to-come, necessarily
to come, dreaded much more than death by her mother. But if it might be
postponed till the girl was nearer to an age of grave understanding, with
some knowledge of our world, some comprehension of a case that could be
pleaded!

He sang: he never acknowledged a trouble, he dispersed it; and in her
present wrestle with the scheme of a large country estate involving new
intimacies, anxieties, the courtship of rival magnates, followed by the
wretched old cloud, and the imposition upon them to bear it in silence
though they knew they could plead a case, at least before charitable and
discerning creatures or before heaven, the despondent lady could have
asked whether he was perfectly sane.

Who half so brilliantly!--Depreciation of him, fetched up at a stroke the
glittering armies of her enthusiasm. He had proved it; he proved it daily
in conflicts and in victories that dwarfed emotional troubles like hers:
yet they were something to bear, hard to bear, at times unbearable.

But those were times of weakness. Let anything be doubted rather than the
good guidance of the man who was her breath of life! Whither he led, let
her go, not only submissively, exultingly.

Thus she thought, under pressure of the knowledge, that unless rushing
into conflicts bigger than conceivable, she had to do it, and should
therefore think it.

This was the prudent woman's clear deduction from the state wherein she
found herself, created by the one first great step of the mad woman. Her
surrender then might be likened to the detachment of a flower on the
river's bank by swell of flood: she had no longer root of her own; away
she sailed, through beautiful scenery, with occasionally a crashing fall,
a turmoil, emergence from a vortex, and once more the sunny whirling
surface. Strange to think, she had not since then power to grasp in her
abstract mind a notion of stedfastness without or within.

But, say not the mad, say the enamoured woman. Love is a madness, having
heaven's wisdom in it--a spark. But even when it is driving us on the
breakers, call it love: and be not unworthy of it, hold to it. She and
Victor had drunk of a cup. The philtre was in her veins, whatever the
directions of the rational mind.

Exulting or regretting, she had to do it, as one in the car with a racing
charioteer. Or up beside a more than Titanically audacious balloonist.
For the charioteer is bent on a goal; and Victor's course was an
ascension from heights to heights. He had ideas, he mastered Fortune. He
conquered Nataly and held her subject, in being above his ambition; which
was now but an occupation for his powers, while the aim of his life was
at the giving and taking of simple enjoyment. In spite of his fits of
unreasonableness in the means--and the woman loving him could trace them
to a breath of nature--his gentle good friendly innocent aim in life was
of this very simplest; so wonderful, by contrast with his powers, that
she, assured of it as she was by experience of him, was touched, in a
transfusion of her feelings through lucent globes of admiration and of
tenderness, to reverence. There had been occasions when her wish for the
whole world to have proof and exhibition of his greatness, goodness, and
simplicity amid his gifts, prompted her incitement of him to stand forth
eminently: ('lead a kingdom,' was the phrase behind the curtain within her
shy bosom;) and it revealed her to herself, upon reflection, as being
still the Nataly who drank the cup with him, to join her fate with his.

And why not? Was that regretted? Far from it. In her maturity, the woman
was unable to send forth any dwelling thought or more than a flight of
twilight fancy, that cancelled the deed of her youth, and therewith
seemed to expunge near upon the half--of her term of years. If it came to
consideration of her family and the family's opinion of her conduct, her
judgement did not side with them or with herself, it whirled, swam to a
giddiness and subsided.

Of course, if she and Victor were to inhabit a large country-house, they
might as well have remained at Craye Farm or at Creckholt; both places
dear to them in turn. Such was the plain sense of the surface question.
And how strange it was to her, that he, of the most quivering
sensitiveness on her behalf; could not see, that he threw her into
situations where hard words of men and women threatened about her head;
where one or two might on a day, some day, be heard; and where, in the
recollection of two years back, the word 'Impostor' had smacked her on
both cheeks from her own mouth.

Now once more they were to run the same round of alarms, undergo the love
of the place, with perpetual apprehensions of having to leave it: alarms,
throbbing suspicions, like those of old travellers through the haunted
forest, where whispers have intensity of meaning, and unseeing we are
seen, and unaware awaited.

Nataly shook the rolls of her thick brown hair from her forehead; she
took strength from a handsome look of resolution in the glass. She could
always honestly say, that her courage would not fail him.

Victor tapped at the door; he stepped into the room, wearing his evening
white flower over a more open white waistcoat; and she was composed and
uninquiring. Their Nesta was heard on the descent of the stairs, with a
rattle of Donizetti's Il segreto to the skylights.

He performed his never-omitted lover's homage.

Nataly enfolded him in a homely smile. 'A country-house? We go and see it
to-morrow?'

'And you've been pining for a country home, my dear soul.'

'After the summer six weeks, the house in London does not seem a home to
return to.'

'And next day, Nataly draws five thousand pounds for the first sketch of
the furniture.'

'There is the Creckholt . . .' she had a difficulty in saying.

'Part of it may do. Lakelands requires--but you will see to-morrow.'

After a close shutting of her eyes, she rejoined: 'It is not a cottage?'

'Well, dear, no: when the Slave of the Lamp takes to building, he does
not run up cottages. And we did it without magic, all in a year; which is
quite as good as a magical trick in a night.' He drew her close to him.
'When was it my dear girl guessed me at work?'

'It was the other dear girl. Nesta is the guesser.'

'You were two best of souls to keep from bothering me; and I might have
had to fib; and we neither of us like that.' He noticed a sidling of her
look. 'More than the circumstances oblige:--to be frank. But now we can
speak of them. Wait--and the change comes; and opportunely, I have found.
It's true we have waited long; my darling has had her worries. However,
it 's here at last. Prepare yourself. I speak positively. You have to
brace up for one sharp twitch--the woman's portion! as Natata says--and
it's over.' He looked into her eyes for comprehension; and not finding
inquiry, resumed: 'Just in time for the entry into Lakelands. With the
pronouncement of the decree, we present the licence . . . at an altar
we've stood before, in spirit . . . one of the ladies of your family to
support you:--why not? Not even then?'

'No, Victor; they have cast me off.'

'Count on my cousins, the Duvidney ladies. Then we can say, that those
two good old spinsters are less narrow than the Dreightons. I have to
confess I rather think I was to blame for leaving Creckholt. Only, if I
see my girl wounded, I hate the place that did the mischief. You and
Fredi will clap hands for the country about Lakelands.'

'Have you heard from her . . . of her . . . is it anything, Victor?'
Nataly asked him shyly; with not much of hope, but some readiness to be
inflated. The prospect of an entry into the big new house, among a new
society, begirt by the old nightmares and fretting devils, drew her into
staring daylight or furnace-light.

He answered: 'Mrs. Burman has definitely decided. In pity of us?--to be
free herself?--who can say! She 's a woman with a conscience--of a kind:
slow, but it brings her to the point at last. You know her, know her
well. Fenellan has it from her lawyer--her lawyer! a Mr. Carting; a
thoroughly trustworthy man--'

'Fenellan, as a reporter?'

'Thoroughly to be trusted on serious matters. I understand that Mrs.
Burman:--her health is awful: yes, yes; poor woman! poor woman! we feel
for her:--she has come to perceive her duty to those she leaves behind.
Consider: she HAS used the rod. She must be tired out--if human. And she
is. One remembers traits.'

Victor sketched one or two of the traits allusively to the hearer
acquainted with them. They received strong colouring from midday's Old
Veuve in his blood. His voice and words had a swing of conviction: they
imparted vinousness to a heart athirst.

The histrionic self-deceiver may be a persuasive deceiver of another, who
is again, though not ignorant of his character, tempted to swallow the
nostrums which have made so gallant a man of him: his imperceptible
sensible playing of the part, on a substratum of sincereness, induces
fascinatingly to the like performance on our side, that we may be armed
as he is for enjoying the coveted reality through the partial simulation
of possessing it. And this is not a task to us when we have looked our
actor in the face, and seen him bear the look, knowing that he is not
intentionally untruthful; and when we incline to be captivated by his
rare theatrical air of confidence; when it seems as an outside thought
striking us, that he may not be altogether deceived in the present
instance; when suddenly an expectation of the thing desired is born and
swims in a credible featureless vagueness on a misty scene: and when we
are being kissed and the blood is warmed. In fine, here as everywhere
along our history, when the sensations are spirited up to drown the mind,
we become drift-matter of tides, metal to magnets. And if we are women,
who commonly allow the lead to men, getting it for themselves only by
snaky cunning or desperate adventure, credulity--the continued trust in
the man--is the alternative of despair.

'But, Victor, I must ask,' Nataly said: 'you have it through Simeon
Fenellan; you have not yourself received the letter from her lawyer?'

'My knowledge of what she would do near the grave--poor soul, yes! I
shall soon be hearing.'

'You do not, propose to enter this place until--until it is over?'

'We enter this place, my love, without any sort of ceremony. We live
there independently, and we can we have quarters there for our friends.
Our one neighbour is London--there! And at Lakelands we are able to
entertain London and wife;--our friends, in short; with some, what we
have to call, satellites. You inspect the house and grounds
to-morrow--sure to be fair. Put aside all but the pleasant recollections
of Craye and Creckholt. We start on a different footing. Really nothing
can be simpler. Keeping your town-house, you are now and then in
residence at Lakelands, where you entertain your set, teach them to feel
the charm of country life: we have everything about us; could have had
our own milk and cream up to London the last two months. Was it very
naughty?--I should have exploded my surprise! You will see, you will see
to-morrow.'

Nataly nodded, as required. 'Good news from the mines?' she said.

He answered: 'Dartrey is--yes, poor fellow! Dartrey is confident, from
the yield of stones, that the value of our claim counts in a number of
millions. The same with the gold. But gold-mines are lodgeings, not
homes.'

'Oh, Victor! if money . . . ! But why did you say "poor fellow" of
Dartrey Fenellan?'

'You know how he's . . .'

'Yes, yes,' she said hastily. 'But has that woman been causing fresh
anxiety?'

'And Natata's chief hero on earth is not to be named a poor fellow,' said
he, after a negative of the head on a subject they neither of them liked
to touch.

Then he remembered that Dartrey Fenellan was actually a lucky fellow; and
he would have mentioned the circumstance confided to him by Simeon, but
for a downright dread of renewing his painful fit of envy. He had also
another, more distant, very faint idea, that it had better not be
mentioned just yet, for a reason entirely undefined.

He consulted his watch. The maid had come in for the robeing of her
mistress. Nataly's mind had turned to the little country cottage which
would have given her such great happiness. She raised her eyes to him;
she could not check their filling; they were like a river carrying
moonlight on the smooth roll of a fall.

He loved the eyes, disliked the water in them. With an impatient, 'There,
there!' and a smart affectionate look, he retired, thinking in our old
satirical vein of the hopeless endeavour to satisfy a woman's mind
without the intrusion of hard material statements, facts. Even the best
of women, even the most beautiful, and in their moments of supremest
beauty, have this gross ravenousness for facts. You must not expect to
appease them unless you administer solids. It would almost appear that
man is exclusively imaginative and poetical; and that his mate, the fair,
the graceful, the bewitching, with the sweetest and purest of natures,
cannot help being something of a groveller.

Nataly had likewise her thoughts.




CHAPTER VII

BETWEEN A GENERAL MAN OF THIN WORLD AND A PROFESSIONAL

Rather earlier in the afternoon of that day, Simeon Fenellan, thinking of
the many things which are nothing, and so melancholy for lack of
amusements properly to follow Old Veuve, that he could ask himself
whether he had not done a deed of night, to be blinking at his fellow-men
like an owl all mad for the reveller's hoots and flights and mice and
moony roundels behind his hypocritical judex air of moping composure,
chanced on Mr. Carling, the solicitor, where Lincoln's Inn pumps lawyers
into Fleet Street through the drain-pipe of Chancery Lane. He was in the
state of the wine when a shake will rouse the sluggish sparkles to foam.
Sight of Mrs. Burman's legal adviser had instantly this effect upon him:
his bubbling friendliness for Victor Radnor, and the desire of the voice
in his bosom for ears to hear, combined like the rush of two waves
together, upon which he may be figured as the boat: he caught at Mr.
Carling's hand more heartily than their acquaintanceship quite
sanctioned; but his grasp and his look of overflowing were immediately
privileged; Mr. Carling, enjoying this anecdotal gentleman's conversation
as he did, liked the warmth, and was flattered during the squeeze with a
prospect of his wife and friends partaking of the fun from time to time.

'I was telling my wife yesterday your story of the lady contrabandist: I
don't think she has done laughing since,' Mr. Calling said.

Fenellan fluted: 'Ah?' He had scent, in the eulogy of a story grown flat
as Election hats, of a good sort of man in the way of men, a step or two
behind the man of the world. He expressed profound regret at not having
heard the silvery ring of the lady's laughter.

Carling genially conceived a real gratification to be conferred on his
wife. 'Perhaps you will some day honour us?'

'You spread gold-leaf over the days to come, sir.'

'Now, if I might name the day?'

'You lump the gold and make it current coin;--says the blushing bride,
who ought not to have delivered herself so boldly, but she had forgotten
her bashful part and spoilt the scene, though, luckily for the damsel,
her swain was a lover of nature, and finding her at full charge, named
the very next day of the year, and held her to it, like the complimentary
tyrant he was.'

'To-morrow, then!' said Carling intrepidly, on a dash of enthusiasm,
through a haggard thought of his wife and the cook and the netting of
friends at short notice. He urged his eagerness to ask whether he might
indeed have the satisfaction of naming to-morrow.

'With happiness,' Fenellan responded.

Mrs. Carling was therefore in for it.

'To-morrow, half-past seven: as for company to meet you, we will do what
we can. You go Westward?'

'To bed with the sun,' said the reveller.

'Perhaps by Covent Garden? I must give orders there.'

'Orders given in Covent Garden, paint a picture for bachelors of the
domestic Paradise an angel must help them to enter! Ah, dear me! Is there
anything on earth to compare with the pride of a virtuous life?'

'I was married at four and twenty,' said Carling, as one taking up the
expository second verse of a poem; plain facts, but weighty and
necessary: 'my wife was in her twentieth year: we have five children; two
sons, three daughters, one married, with a baby. So we are grandfather
and mother, and have never regretted the first step, I may say for both
of us.'

'Think of it! Good luck and sagacity joined hands overhead on the day you
proposed to the lady: and I'd say, that all the credit is with her, but
that it would seem to be at the expense of her sex.'

'She would be the last to wish it, I assure you.'

'True of all good women! You encourage me, touching a matter of deep
interest, not unknown to you. The lady's warm heart will be with us.
Probably she sees Mrs. Burman?'

'Mrs. Burman Radnor receives no one.'

A comic severity in the tone of the correction was deferentially accepted
by Fenellan.

'Pardon. She flies her flag, with her captain wanting; and she has,
queerly, the right. So, then, the worthy dame who receives no one, might
be treated, it struck us, conversationally, as a respectable
harbour-hulk, with more history than top-honours. But she has the
indubitable legal right to fly them--to proclaim it; for it means little
else.'

'You would have her, if I follow you, divest herself of the name?'

'Pin me to no significations, if you please, O shrewdest of the legal
sort! I have wit enough to escape you there. She is no doubt an estimable
person.'

'Well, she is; she is in her way a very good woman.'

'Ah. You see, Mr. Carling, I cannot bring myself to rank her beside
another lady, who has already claimed the title of me; and you will
forgive me if I say, that your word "good" has a look of being stuck upon
the features we know of her, like a coquette's naughty patch; or it's a
jewel of an eye in an ebony idol: though I've heard tell she performs her
charities.'

'I believe she gives away three parts of her income and that is large.'

'Leaving the good lady a fine fat fourth.'

'Compare her with other wealthy people.'

'And does she outshine the majority still with her personal attractions.

Carling was instigated by the praise he had bestowed on his wife to
separate himself from a female pretender so ludicrous; he sought
Fenellan's nearest ear, emitting the sound of 'hum.'

'In other respects, unimpeachable!'

'Oh! quite!'

'There was a fishfag of classic Billingsgate, who had broken her
husband's nose with a sledgehammer fist, and swore before the magistrate,
that the man hadn't a crease to complain of in her character. We are
condemned, Mr. Carling, sometimes to suffer in the flesh for the
assurance we receive of the inviolability of those moral fortifications.'

'Character, yes, valuable--I do wish you had named to-night for doing me
the honour of dining with me!' said the lawyer impulsively, in a rapture
of the appetite for anecdotes. 'I have a ripe Pichon Longueville, '65.'

'A fine wine. Seductive to hear of. I dine with my friend Victor Radnor.
And he knows wine.--There are good women in the world, Mr. Carling, whose
characters . . .'

'Of course, of course there are; and I could name you some.
We lawyers . . . . !'

'You encounter all sorts.'

'Between ourselves,' Carling sank his tones to the indiscriminate, where
it mingled with the roar of London.

'You do?' Fenellan hazarded a guess at having heard enlightened liberal
opinions regarding the sex. 'Right!'

'Many!'

'I back you, Mr. Carling.'

The lawyer pushed to yet more confidential communication, up to the verge
of the clearly audible: he spoke of examples, experiences. Fenellan
backed him further.

'Acting on behalf of clients, you understand, Mr. Fenellan.'

'Professional, but charitable; I am with you.'

'Poor things! we--if we have to condemn--we owe them something.'

'A kind word for poor Polly Venus, with all the world against her! She
doesn't hear it often.'

'A real service,' Carling's voice deepened to the legal 'without
prejudice,'--'I am bound to say it--a service to Society.'

'Ah, poor wench! And the kind of reward she gets?'

'We can hardly examine . . . mysterious dispensations . . . here we are
to make the best we can of it.'

'For the creature Society's indebted to? True. And am I to think there's
a body of legal gentlemen to join with you, my friend, in founding an
Institution to distribute funds to preach charity over the country, and
win compassion for her, as one of the principal persons of her time, that
Society's indebted to for whatever it's indebted for?'

'Scarcely that,' said Carling, contracting.

'But you 're for great Reforms?'

'Gradual.'

'Then it's for Reformatories, mayhap.'

'They would hardly be a cure.'

'You 're in search of a cure?'

'It would be a blessed discovery.'

'But what's to become of Society?'

'It's a puzzle to the cleverest.'

'All through History, my dear Mr. Carling, we see that.

'Establishments must have their sacrifices. Beware of interfering: eh?'

'By degrees, we may hope . . . .'

'Society prudently shuns the topic; and so 'll we. For we might tell of
one another, in a fit of distraction, that t' other one talked of it, and
we should be banished for an offence against propriety. You should read
my friend Durance's Essay on Society. Lawyers are a buttress of Society.
But, come: I wager they don't know what they support until they read that
Essay.'

Carling had a pleasant sense of escape, in not being personally asked to
read the Essay, and not hearing that a copy of it should be forwarded to
him.

He said: 'Mr. Radnor is a very old friend?'

'Our fathers were friends; they served in the same regiment for years. I
was in India when Victor Radnor took the fatal!'

'Followed by a second, not less . . . ?'

'In the interpretation of a rigid morality arming you legal gentlemen to
make it so!'

'The Law must be vindicated.'

'The law is a clumsy bludgeon.'

'We think it the highest effort of human reason--the practical
instrument.'

'You may compare it to a rustic's finger on a fiddlestring, for the
murdered notes you get out of the practical instrument.

'I am bound to defend it, clumsy bludgeon or not.'

'You are one of the giants to wield it, and feel humanly, when, by
chance, down it comes on the foot an inch off the line.--Here's a peep of
Old London; if the habit of old was not to wash windows. I like these old
streets!'

'Hum,' Carling hesitated. 'I can remember when the dirt at the windows
was appalling.'

'Appealing to the same kind of stuff in the passing youngster's
green-scum eye: it was. And there your Law did good work.--You're for
Bordeaux. What is your word on Burgundy?'

'Our Falernian!'

'Victor Radnor has the oldest in the kingdom. But he will have the best
of everything. A Romanee! A Musigny! Sip, my friend, you embrace the
Goddess of your choice above. You are up beside her at a sniff of that
wine.--And lo, venerable Drury! we duck through the court, reminded a bit
by our feelings of our first love, who hadn't the cleanest of faces or
nicest of manners, but she takes her station in memory because we were
boys then, and the golden halo of youth is upon her.'

Carling, as a man of the world, acquiesced in souvenirs he did not share.
He said urgently: 'Understand me; you speak of Mr. Radnor; pray, believe
I have the greatest respect for Mr. Radnor's abilities. He is one of our
foremost men . . . proud of him. Mr. Radnor has genius; I have watched
him; it is genius; he shows it in all he does; one of the memorable men
of our times. I can admire him, independent of--well, misfortune of that
kind . . . a mistaken early step. Misfortune, it is to be named. Between
ourselves--we are men of the world--if one could see the way! She
occasionally . . . as I have told you. I have ventured suggestions. As I
have mentioned, I have received an impression . . .'

'But still, Mr. Carling, if the lady doesn't release him and will keep
his name, she might stop her cowardly persecutions.'

'Can you trace them?'

'Undisguised!'

'Mrs. Burman Radnor is devout. I should not exactly say revengeful. We
have to discriminate. I gather, that her animus is, in all honesty,
directed at the--I quote--state of sin. We are mixed, you know.'

The Winegod in the blood of Fenellan gave a leap. 'But, fifty thousand
times more mixed, she might any moment stop the state of sin, as she
calls it, if it pleased her.'

'She might try. Our Judges look suspiciously on long delayed actions. And
there are, too, women who regard the marriage-tie as indissoluble. She
has had to combat that scruple.'

'Believer in the renewing of the engagement overhead!--well. But put a
by-word to Mother Nature about the state of sin. Where, do you imagine,
she would lay it? You'll say, that Nature and Law never agreed. They
ought.'

'The latter deferring to the former?'

'Moulding itself on her swelling proportions. My dear dear sir, the state
of sin was the continuing to live in defiance of, in contempt of, in
violation of, in the total degradation of, Nature.'

'He was under no enforcement to take the oath at the altar.'

'He was a small boy tempted by a varnished widow, with pounds of barley
sugar in her pockets;--and she already serving as a test-vessel or mortar
for awful combinations in druggery! Gilt widows are equal to decrees of
Fate to us young ones. Upon my word, the cleric who unites, and the Law
that sanctions, they're the criminals. Victor Radnor is the noblest of
fellows, the very best friend a man can have. I will tell you: he saved
me, after I left the army, from living on the produce of my pen--which
means, if there is to be any produce, the prostrating of yourself to the
level of the round middle of the public: saved me from that! Yes, Mr.
Carling, I have trotted our thoroughfares a poor Polly of the pen; and it
is owing to Victor Radnor that I can order my thoughts as an individual
man again before I blacken paper. Owing to him, I have a tenderness for
mercenaries; having been one of them and knowing how little we can help
it. He is an Olympian--who thinks of them below. The lady also is an
admirable woman at all points. The pair are a mated couple, such as you
won't find in ten households over Christendom. Are you aware of the
story?'

Carling replied: 'A story under shadow of the Law, has generally two very
distinct versions.'

'Hear mine.--And, by Jove! a runaway cab. No, all right. But a crazy cab
it is, and fit to do mischief in narrow Drury. Except that it's sheer
riff-raff here to knock over.'

'Hulloa?--come!' quoth the wary lawyer.

'There's the heart I wanted to rouse to hear me! One may be sure that the
man for old Burgundy has it big and sound, in spite of his legal
practices; a dear good spherical fellow! Some day, we'll hope, you will
be sitting with us over a magnum of Victor Radnor's Romance Conti aged
thirty-one: a wine, you'll say at the second glass, High Priest for the
celebration of the uncommon nuptials between the body and the soul of
man.'

'You hit me rightly,'said Carting, tickled and touched; sensually excited
by the bouquet of Victor Radnor's hospitality and companionship, which
added flavour to Fenellan's compliments. These came home to him through
his desire to be the 'good spherical fellow'; for he, like modern
diplomatists in the track of their eminent Berlinese New Type of the
time, put on frankness as an armour over wariness, holding craft in
reserve: his aim was at the refreshment of honest fellowship: by no means
to discover that the coupling of his native bias with his professional
duty was unprofitable nowadays. Wariness, however, was not somnolent,
even when he said: 'You know, I am never the lawyer out of my office. Man
of the world to men of the world; and I have not lost by it. I am Mrs.
Barman Radnor's legal adviser: you are Mr. Victor Radnor's friend. They
are, as we see them, not on the best of terms. I would rather--at its
lowest, as a matter of business--be known for having helped them to some
kind of footing than send in a round bill to my client--or another. I
gain more in the end. Frankly, I mean to prove, that it's a lawyer's
interest to be human.'

'Because, now, see!' said Fenellan, 'here's the case. Miss Natalia
Dreighton, of a good Yorkshire family--a large one, reads an
advertisement for the post of companion to a lady, and answers it, and
engages herself, previous to the appearance of the young husband. Miss
Dreighton is one of the finest young women alive. She has a glorious
contralto voice. Victor and she are encouraged by Mrs. Barman to sing
duets together. Well?

Why, Euclid would have theorem'd it out for you at a glance at the trio.
You have only to look on them, you chatter out your three Acts of a Drama
without a stop. If Mrs. Barman cares to practise charity, she has only to
hold in her Fury-forked tongue, or her Jarniman I think 's the name.'

Carting shrugged.

'Let her keep from striking, if she's Christian,' pursued Fenetlan, 'and
if kind let her resume the name of her first lord, who did a better thing
for himself than for her, when he shook off his bars of bullion, to rise
the lighter, and left a wretched female soul below, with the devil's own
testimony to her attractions--thousands in the Funds, houses in the City.
She threw the young couple together. And my friend Victor Radnor is of a
particularly inflammable nature. Imagine one of us in such a situation,
Mr. Carting!'

'Trying!' said the lawyer.

'The dear fellow was as nigh death as a man can be and know the sweetness
of a woman's call to him to live. And here's London's garden of pines,
bananas, oranges; all the droppings of the Hesperides here! We don't
reflect on it, Mr. Carling.'

'Not enough, not enough.'

'I feel such a spout of platitudes that I could out With a Leading
Article on a sheet of paper on your back while you're bending over the
baskets. I seem to have got circularly round again to Eden when I enter a
garden. Only, here we have to pay for the fruits we pluck. Well, and just
the same there; and no end to the payment either. We're always paying! By
the way, Mrs. Victor Radnor's dinner-table's a spectacle. Her taste in
flowers equals her lord's in wine. But age improves the wine and spoils
the flowers, you'll say. Maybe you're for arguing that lovely women show
us more of the flower than the grape, in relation to the course of time.
I pray you not to forget the terrible intoxicant she is. We reconcile it,
Mr. Carling, with the notion that the grape's her spirit, the flower her
body. Or is it the reverse? Perhaps an intertwining. But look upon
bouquets and clusters, and the idea of woman springs up at once, proving
she's composed of them. I was about to remark, that with deference to the
influence of Mrs. Burman's legal adviser, an impenitent or penitent
sinner's pastor, the Reverend gentleman ministering to her spiritual
needs, would presumptively exercise it, in this instance, in a superior
degree.'

Carling murmured: 'The Rev. Groseman Buttermore'; and did so for
something of a cover, to continue a run of internal reflections: as, that
he was assuredly listening to vinous talk in the streets by day; which
impression placed him on a decorous platform above the amusing gentleman;
to whom, however, he grew cordial, in recognizing consequently, that his
exuberant flow could hardly be a mask; and that an indication here and
there of a trap in his talk, must have been due rather to excess of
wariness, habitual in the mind of a long-headed man, whose incorrigibly
impulsive fits had necessarily to be rectified by a vigilant dexterity.

'Buttermore!' ejaculated Fenellan: 'Groseman Buttermore! Mrs.
Victor's Father Confessor is the Rev. Septimus Barmby. Groseman
Buttermore--Septimus Barmby. Is there anything in names? Truly, unless
these clerical gentlemen take them up at the crossing of the roads long
after birth, the names would appear the active parts of them, and
themselves mere marching supports, like the bearers of street
placard-advertisements. Now, I know a Septimus Barmby, and you a Groseman
Buttermore, and beyond the fact that Reverend starts up before their
names without mention, I wager it's about all we do know of them. They're
Society's trusty rock-limpets, no doubt.'

'My respect for the cloth is extreme.' Carling's short cough prepared the
way for deductions. 'Between ourselves, they are men of the world.'

Fenellan eyed benevolently the worthy attorney, whose innermost imp burst
out periodically, like a Dutch clocksentry, to trot on his own small
grounds for thinking himself of the community of the man of the world.
'You lawyers dress in another closet,' he said. 'The Rev. Groseman has
the ear of the lady?'

'He has:--one ear.'

'Ah? She has the other open for a man of the world, perhaps.'

'Listens to him, listens to me, listens to Jarniman; and we neither of us
guide her. She's very curious--a study. You think you know her--next day
she has eluded you. She's emotional, she's hard; she's a woman, she's a
stone. Anything you like; but don't count on her. And another thing--I'm
bound to say it of myself,' Carling claimed close hearing of Fenellan
over a shelf of saladstuff, 'no one who comes near her has any real
weight with her in this matter.'

'Probably you mix cream in your salad of the vinegar and oil,' said
Fenellan. 'Try jelly of mutton.'--'You give me a new idea. Latterly, fond
as I am of salads, I've had rueful qualms. We'll try it.'

'You should dine with Victor Radnor.'

'French cook, of course!'

'Cordon bleu.'

'I like to be sure of my cutlet.'

'I like to be sure of a tastiness in my vegetables.'

'And good sauces!'

'And pretty pastry. I said, Cordon bleu. The miracle is, it 's a woman
that Victor Radnor has trained: French, but a woman; devoted to him, as
all who serve him are. Do I say "but" a woman? There's not a Frenchman
alive to match her. Vatel awaits her in Paradise with his arms extended;
and may he wait long!'

Carling indulged his passion for the genuine by letting a flutter of real
envy be seen. 'My wife would like to meet such a Frenchwoman. It must be
a privilege to dine with him--to know him. I know what he has done for
English Commerce, and to build a colossal fortune: genius, as I said: and
his donations to Institutions. Odd, to read his name and Mrs. Burman
Radnor's at separate places in the lists! Well, we'll hope. It's a case
for a compromise of sentiments and claims.'

'A friend of mine, spiced with cynic, declares that there's always an
amicable way out of a dissension, if we get rid of Lupus and Vulpus.'

Carling spied for a trap in the citation of Lupus and Vulpus; he saw
none, and named the square of his residence on the great Russell
property, and the number of the house, the hour of dinner next day. He
then hung silent, breaking the pause with his hand out and a sharp
'Well?' that rattled a whirligig sound in his head upward. His leave of
people was taken in this laughing falsetto, as of one affected by the
curious end things come to.

Fenellan thought of him for a moment or two, that he was a better than
the common kind of lawyer; who doubtless knew as much of the wrong side
of the world as lawyers do, and held his knowledge for the being a man of
the world:--as all do, that have not Alpine heights in the mind to mount
for a look out over their own and the world's pedestrian tracks. I could
spot the lawyer in your composition, my friend, to the exclusion of the
man he mused. But you're right in what you mean to say of yourself:
you're a good fellow, for a lawyer, and together we may manage somehow to
score a point of service to Victor Radnor.




CHAPTER VIII

SOME FAMILIAR GUESTS

Nesta read her mother's face when Mrs. Victor entered the drawing-room to
receive the guests. She saw a smooth fair surface, of the kind as much
required by her father's eyes as innocuous air by his nostrils: and it
was honest skin, not the deceptive feminine veiling, to make a dear man
happy over his volcano. Mrs. Victor was to meet the friends with whom her
feelings were at home, among whom her musical gifts gave her station:
they liked her for herself; they helped her to feel at home with herself
and be herself: a rarer condition with us all than is generally supposed.
So she could determine to be cheerful in the anticipation of an evening
that would at least be restful to the outworn sentinel nerve of her
heart, which was perpetually alert and signalling to the great organ;
often colouring the shows and seems of adverse things for an apeing of
reality with too cruel a resemblance. One of the scraps of practical
wisdom gained by hardened sufferers is, to keep from spying at horizons
when they drop into a pleasant dingle. Such is the comfort of it, that we
can dream, and lull our fears, and half think what we wish: and it is a
heavenly truce with the fretful mind divided from our wishes.

Nesta wondered at her mother's complacent questions concerning this
Lakelands: the house, the county, the kind of people about, the features
of the country. Physically unable herself to be regretful under a burden
three parts enrapturing her, the girl expected her mother to display a
shadowy vexation, with a proud word or two, that would summon her
thrilling sympathy in regard to the fourth part: namely, the aristocratic
iciness of country magnates, who took them up and cast them off; as they
had done, she thought, at Craye Farm and at Creckholt: she remembered it,
of the latter place, wincingly, insurgently, having loved the dear home
she had been expelled from by her pride of the frosty surrounding
people--or no, not all, but some of them. And what had roused their
pride?

Striking for a reason, her inexperience of our modern England,
supplemented by readings in the England of a preceding generation, had
hit on her father's profession of merchant. It accounted to her for the
behaviour of the haughty territorial and titled families. But certain of
the minor titles headed City Firms, she had heard; certain of the
families were avowedly commercial. 'They follow suit,' her father said at
Creckholt, after he had found her mother weeping, and decided instantly
to quit and fly once more. But if they followed suit in such a way, then
Mr. Durance must be right when he called the social English the most
sheepy of sheep:--and Nesta could not consent to the cruel verdict, she
adored her compatriots. Incongruities were pacified for her by the
suggestion of her quick wits, that her father, besides being a merchant,
was a successful speculator; and perhaps the speculator is not liked by
merchants; or they were jealous of him; or they did not like his being
both.

She pardoned them with some tenderness, on a suspicion that a quaint old
high-frilled bleached and puckered Puritanical rectitude (her thoughts
rose in pictures) possibly condemned the speculator as a description of
gambler. An erratic severity in ethics is easily overlooked by the
enthusiast for things old English. She was consciously ahead of them in
the knowledge that her father had been, without the taint of gambling, a
beneficent speculator. The Montgomery colony in South Africa, and his
dealings with the natives in India, and his Railways in South America,
his establishment of Insurance Offices, which were Savings Banks, and the
Stores for the dispensing of sound goods to the poor, attested it. O and
he was hospitable, the kindest, helpfullest of friends, the dearest, the
very brightest of parents: he was his girl's playmate. She could be
critic of him, for an induction to the loving of him more justly: yet if
he had an excessive desire to win the esteem of people, as these keen
young optics perceived in him, he strove to deserve it; and no one could
accuse him of laying stress on the benefits he conferred. Designedly,
frigidly to wound a man so benevolent, appeared to her as an
incomprehensible baseness. The dropping of acquaintanceship with him,
after the taste of its privileges, she ascribed, in the void of any
better elucidation, to a mania of aristocratic conceit. It drove her,
despite her youthful contempt of politics, into a Radicalism that could
find food in the epigrams of Mr. Colney Durance, even when they passed
her understanding; or when he was not too distinctly seen by her to be
shooting at all the parties of her beloved England, beneath the wicked
semblance of shielding each by turns.

The young gentleman introduced to the Radnor Concert-parties by Lady
Grace Halley as the Hon. Dudley Sowerby, had to bear the sins of his
class. Though he was tall, straight-featured, correct in costume,
appearance, deportment, second son of a religious earl and no scandal to
the parentage, he was less noticed by Nesta than the elderly and the
commoners. Her father accused her of snubbing him. She reproduced her
famous copy of the sugared acid of Mr. Dudley Sowerby's closed mouth: a
sort of sneer in meekness, as of humility under legitimate compulsion;
deploring Christianly a pride of race that stamped it for this cowled
exhibition: the wonderful mimicry was a flash thrown out by a born
mistress of the art, and her mother was constrained to laugh, and so was
her father; but he wilfully denied the likeness. He charged her with
encouraging Colney Durance to drag forth the sprig of nobility, in the
nakedness of evicted shell-fish, on themes of the peril to England,
possibly ruin, through the loss of that ruling initiative formerly
possessed, in the days of our glory, by the titular nobles of the land.
Colney spoke it effectively, and the Hon. Dudley's expressive lineaments
showed print of the heaving word Alas, as when a target is penetrated,
centrally. And he was not a particularly dull fellow 'for his class and
country,' Colney admitted; adding: 'I hit his thought and out he came.'
One has, reluctantly with Victor Radnor, to grant, that when a man's
topmost unspoken thought is hit, he must be sharp on his guard to keep
from coming out:--we have won a right to him.

'Only, it's too bad; it 's a breach of hospitality,' Victor said, both to
Nesta and to Nataly, alluding to several instances of Colney's ironic
handling of their guests, especially of this one, whom Nesta would
attack, and Nataly would not defend.

They were alive at a signal to protect the others. Miss Priscilla Graves,
an eater of meat, was ridiculous in her ant'alcoholic exclusiveness and
scorn: Mr. Pempton, a drinker of wine, would laud extravagantly the more
transparent purity of vegetarianism. Dr. Peter Yatt jeered at globules:
Dr. John Cormyn mourned over human creatures treated as cattle by big
doses. The Rev. Septimus Barmby satisfactorily smoked: Mr. Peridon traced
mortal evil to that act. Dr. Schlesien had his German views, Colney
Durance his ironic, Fenellan his fanciful and free-lance. And here was an
optimist, there a pessimist; and the rank Radical, the rigid
Conservative, were not wanting. All of them were pointedly opposed,
extraordinarily for so small an assembly: absurdly, it might be thought:
but these provoked a kind warm smile, with the exclamation: 'They are
dears!' They were the dearer for their fads and foibles.

Music harmonized them. Music, strangely, put the spell on Colney Durance,
the sayer of bitter things, manufacturer of prickly balls, in the form of
Discord's apples of whom Fenellan remarked, that he took to his music
like an angry little boy to his barley-sugar, with a growl and a grunt.
All these diverse friends could meet and mix in Victor's Concert-room
with an easy homely recognition of one another's musical qualities, at
times enthusiastic; and their natural divergencies and occasional clashes
added a salient tastiness to the group of whom Nesta could say: 'Mama,
was there ever such a collection of dear good souls with such contrary
minds?' Her mother had the deepest of reasons for loving them, so as not
to wish to see the slightest change in their minds, that the accustomed
features making her nest of homeliness and real peace might be retained,
with the humour of their funny silly antagonisms and the subsequent march
in concord; excepting solely as regarded the perverseness of Priscilla
Graves in her open contempt of Mr. Pempton's innocent two or three
wine-glasses. The vegetarian gentleman's politeness forbore to direct
attention to the gobbets of meat Priscilla consumed, though he could
express disapproval in general terms; but he entertained sentiments as
warlike to the lady's habit of 'drinking the blood of animals.' The
mockery of it was, that Priscilla liked Mr. Pempton and admired his
violoncello-playing, and he was unreserved in eulogy of her person and
her pure soprano tones. Nataly was a poetic match-maker. Mr. Peridon was
intended for Mademoiselle de Seilles, Nesta's young French governess; a
lady of a courtly bearing, with placid speculation in the eyes she cast
on a foreign people, and a voluble muteness shadowing at intervals along
the line of her closed lips.

The one person among them a little out of tune with most, was Lady Grace
Halley. Nataly's provincial gentlewoman's traditions of the manners
indicating conduct, reproved unwonted licences assumed by Lady Grace;
who, in allusion to Hymen's weaving of a cousinship between the earldom
of Southweare and that of Cantor, of which Mr. Sowerby sprang, set her
mouth and fan at work to delineate total distinctions, as it were from
the egg to the empyrean. Her stature was rather short, all of it
conversational, at the eyebrows, the shoulders, the finger-tips, the
twisting shape; a ballerina's expressiveness; and her tongue dashed half
sentences through and among these hieroglyphs, loosely and funnily
candid. Anybody might hear that she had gone gambling into the City, and
that she had got herself into a mess, and that by great good luck she had
come across Victor Radnor, who, with two turns of the wrist, had plucked
her out of the mire, the miraculous man! And she had vowed to him, never
again to run doing the like without his approval.

The cause of her having done it, was related with the accompaniments;
brows twitching, flitting smiles, shrugs, pouts, shifts of posture: she
was married to a centaur; out of the saddle a man of wood, 'an excellent
man.' For the not colloquial do not commit themselves. But one wants a
little animation in a husband. She called on bell-motion of the head to
toll forth the utter nightcap negative. He had not any: out of the
saddle, he was asleep:--'next door to the Last Trump,' Colney Durance
assisted her to describe the soundest of sleep in a husband, after wooing
her to unbosom herself. She was awake to his guileful arts, and sailed
along with him, hailing his phrases, if he shot a good one; prankishly
exposing a flexible nature, that took its holiday thus in a grinding
world, among maskers, to the horrification of the prim. So to refresh
ourselves, by having publicly a hip-bath in the truth while we shock our
hearers enough to be discredited for what we reveal, was a dexterous
merry twist, amusing to her; but it was less a cynical malice than her
nature that she indulged, 'A woman must have some excitement.' The most
innocent appeared to her the Stock Exchange. The opinions of husbands who
are not summoned to pay are hardly important; they vary.

Colney helped her now and then to step the trifle beyond her stride, but
if he was humorous, she forgave; and if together they appalled the
decorous, it was great gain. Her supple person, pretty lips, the style
she had, gave a pass to the wondrous confidings, which were for masculine
ears, whatever the sex. Nataly might share in them, but women did not
lead her to expansiveness; or not the women of the contracted class: Miss
Graves, Mrs. Cormyn, and others at the Radnor Concerts. She had a special
consideration for Mademoiselle de Seilles, owing to her exquisite French,
as she said; and she may have liked it, but it was the young
Frenchwoman's air of high breeding that won her esteem. Girls were spring
frosts to her. Fronting Nesta, she put on her noted smile, or wood-cut of
a smile, with its label of indulgence; except when the girl sang. Music
she loved. She said it was the saving of poor Dudley. It distinguished
him in the group of the noble Evangelical Cantor Family; and it gave him
a subject of assured discourse in company; and oddly, it contributed to
his comelier air. Flute [This would be the German Blockeflute or our
Recorder. D.W.] in hand, his mouth at the blow-stop was relieved of its
pained updraw by the form for puffing; he preserved a gentlemanly high
figure in his exercises on the instrument, out of ken of all likeness to
the urgent insistency of Victor Radnor's punctuating trunk of the puffing
frame at almost every bar--an Apollo brilliancy in energetic pursuit of
the nymph of sweet sound. Too methodical one, too fiery the other.

In duets of Hauptmann's, with Nesta at the piano, the contrast of dull
smoothness and overstressed significance was very noticeable beside the
fervent accuracy of her balanced fingering; and as she could also flute,
she could criticize; though latterly, the flute was boxed away from lips
that had devoted themselves wholly to song: song being one of the
damsel's present pressing ambitions. She found nothing to correct in Mr.
Sowerby, and her father was open to all the censures; but her father
could plead vitality, passion. He held his performances cheap after the
vehement display; he was a happy listener, whether to the babble of his
'dear old Corelli,' or to the majesty of the rattling heavens and swaying
forests of Beethoven.

His air of listening was a thing to see; it had a look of disembodiment;
the sparkle conjured up from deeps, and the life in the sparkle, as of a
soul at holiday. Eyes had been given this man to spy the pleasures and
reveal the joy of his pasture on them: gateways to the sunny within,
issues to all the outer Edens. Few of us possess that double significance
of the pure sparkle. It captivated Lady Grace. She said a word of it to
Fenellan: 'There is a man who can feel rapture!' He had not to follow the
line of her sight: she said so on a previous evening, in a similar tone;
and for a woman to repeat herself, using the very emphasis, was quaint.
She could feel rapture; but her features and limbs were in motion to
designate it, between simply and wilfully; she had the instinct to be
dimpling, and would not for a moment control it, and delighted in its
effectiveness: only when observing that winged sparkle of eyes did an
idea of envy, hardly a consciousness, inform her of being surpassed; and
it might be in the capacity to feel besides the gift to express. Such a
reflection relating to a man, will make women mortally sensible that they
are the feminine of him.

'His girl has the look,' Fenellan said in answer.

She cast a glance at Nesta, then at Nataly.

And it was true, that the figure of a mother, not pretending to the
father's vividness, eclipsed it somewhat in their child. The mother gave
richness of tones, hues and voice, and stature likewise, and the thick
brown locks, which in her own were threads of gold along the brush from
the temples: she gave the girl a certain degree of the composure of
manner which Victor could not have bestowed; she gave nothing to clash
with his genial temper; she might be supposed to have given various
qualities, moral if you like. But vividness was Lady Grace's admirable
meteor of the hour: she was unable to perceive, so as to compute, the
value of obscurer lights. Under the charm of Nataly's rich contralto
during a duet with Priscilla Graves, she gesticulated ecstasies, and
uttered them, and genuinely; and still, when reduced to meditations, they
would have had no weight, they would hardly have seemed an apology for
language, beside Victor's gaze of pleasure in the noble forthroll of the
notes.

Nataly heard the invitation of the guests of the evening to Lakelands
next day.

Her anxieties were at once running about to gather provisions for the
baskets. She spoke of them at night. But Victor had already put the
matter in the hands of Madame Callet; and all that could be done, would
be done by Armandine, he knew. 'If she can't muster enough at home,
she'll be off to her Piccadilly shop by seven A.M. Count on plenty for
twice the number.'

Nataly was reposing on the thought that they were her friends, when
Victor mentioned his having in the afternoon despatched a note to his
relatives, the Duvidney ladies, inviting them to join him at the station
to-morrow, for a visit of inspection to the house of his building on his
new estate. He startled her. The Duvidney ladies were, to his knowledge,
of the order of the fragile minds which hold together by the cement of a
common trepidation for the support of things established, and have it not
in them to be able to recognize the unsanctioned. Good women, unworldly
of the world, they were perforce harder than the world, from being
narrower and more timorous.

'But, Victor, you were sure they would refuse!'

He answered: 'They may have gone back to Tunbridge Wells. By the way,
they have a society down there I want for Fredi. Sure, do you say, my
dear? Perfectly sure. But the accumulation of invitations and refusals in
the end softens them, you will see. We shall and must have them for
Fredi.'

She was used to the long reaches of his forecasts, his burning activity
on a project; she found it idle to speak her thought, that his ingenuity
would have been needless in a position dictated by plain prudence, and so
much happier for them.

They talked of Mrs. Burman until she had to lift a prayer to be saved
from darker thoughts, dreadfully prolific, not to be faced. Part of her
prayer was on behalf of Mrs. Burman, for life to be extended to her, if
the poor lady clung to life--if it was really humane to wish it for her:
and heaven would know: heaven had mercy on the afflicted.

Nataly heard the snuffle of hypocrisy in her prayer. She had to cease to
pray.




CHAPTER IX

AN INSPECTION OF LAKELANDS

One may not have an intention to flourish, and may be pardoned for a
semblance of it, in exclaiming, somewhat royally, as creator and owner of
the place: 'There you see Lakelands.'

The conveyances from the railway station drew up on a rise of road
fronting an undulation, where our modern English architect's fantasia in
crimson brick swept from central gables to flying wings, over pents,
crooks, curves, peaks, cowled porches, balconies, recesses, projections,
away to a red village of stables and dependent cottages; harmonious in
irregularity; and coloured homely with the greensward about it, the pines
beside it, the clouds above it. Not many palaces would be reckoned as
larger. The folds and swells and stream of the building along the roll of
ground, had an appearance of an enormous banner on the wind. Nataly
looked. Her next look was at Colney Durance. She sent the expected nods
to Victor's carriage. She would have given the whole prospect for the
covering solitariness of her chamber. A multitude of clashing sensations,
and a throat-thickening hateful to her, compelled her to summon so as to
force herself to feel a groundless anger, directed against none, against
nothing, perfectly crazy, but her only resource for keeping down the
great wave surgent at her eyes.

Victor was like a swimmer in morning sea amid the exclamations encircling
him. He led through the straight passage of the galleried hall, offering
two fair landscapes at front door and at back, down to the lake, Fredi's
lake; a good oblong of water, notable in a district not abounding in the
commodity. He would have it a feature of the district; and it had been
deepened and extended; up rose the springs, many ran the ducts. Fredi's
pretty little bathshed or bower had a space of marble on the three-feet
shallow it overhung with a shade of carved woodwork; it had a
diving-board for an eight-feet plunge; a punt and small row-boat of
elegant build hard by. Green ran the banks about, and a beechwood fringed
with birches curtained the Northward length: morning sun and evening had
a fair face of water to paint. Saw man ever the like for pleasing a
poetical damsel? So was Miss Fredi, the coldest of the party hitherto,
and dreaming a preference of 'old places' like Creckholt and Craye Farm,
'captured to be enraptured,' quite according to man's ideal of his
beneficence to the sex. She pressed the hand of her young French
governess, Louise de Seilles. As in everything he did for his girl,
Victor pointed boastfully to his forethought of her convenience and her
tastes: the pine-panels of the interior, the shelves for her books, pegs
to hang her favourite drawings, and the couch-bunk under a window to
conceal the summerly recliner while throwing full light on her book; and
the hearth-square for logs, when she wanted fire: because Fredi bathed in
any weather: the oaken towel-coffer; the wood-carvings of doves, tits,
fishes; the rod for the flowered silken hangings she was to choose, and
have shy odalisque peeps of sunny water from her couch.

'Fredi's Naiad retreat, when she wishes to escape Herr Strauscher or
Signor Ruderi,' said Victor, having his grateful girl warm in an arm;
'and if they head after her into the water, I back her to leave them
puffing; she's a dolphin. That water has three springs and gets all the
drainage of the upland round us. I chose the place chiefly on account of
it and the pines. I do love pines!'

'But, excellent man! what do you not love?' said Lady Grace, with the
timely hit upon the obvious, which rings.

'It saves him from accumulation of tissue,' said Colney.

'What does?' was eagerly asked by the wife of the homoeopathic Dr. John
Cormyn, a sentimental lady beset with fears of stoutness.

Victor cried: 'Tush; don't listen to Colney, pray.'

But she heard Colney speak of a positive remedy; more immediately
effective than an abjuration of potatoes and sugar. She was obliged by
her malady to listen, although detesting the irreverent ruthless man, who
could direct expanding frames, in a serious tone, to love; love
everybody, everything; violently and universally love; and so without
intermission pay out the fat created by a rapid assimilation of
nutriment. Obeseness is the most sensitive of our ailments: probably as
being aware, that its legitimate appeal to pathos is ever smothered in
its pudding-bed of the grotesque. She was pained, and showed it, and was
ashamed of herself for showing it; and that very nearly fetched the tear.

'Our host is an instance in proof,' Colney said. He waved hand at the
house. His meaning was hidden; evidently he wanted victims. Sight of
Lakelands had gripped him with the fell satiric itch; and it is a passion
to sting and tear, on rational grounds. His face meanwhile, which had
points of the handsome, signified a smile asleep, as if beneath a cloth.
Only those who knew him well were aware of the claw-like alertness under
the droop of eyelids.

Admiration was the common note, in the various keys. The station selected
for the South-eastward aspect of the dark-red gabled pile on its white
shell-terrace, backed by a plantation of tall pines, a mounded and
full-plumed company, above the left wing, was admired, in files and in
volleys. Marvellous, effectively miraculous, was the tale of the vow to
have the great edifice finished within one year: and the strike of
workmen, and the friendly colloquy with them, the good reasoning, the
unanimous return to duty; and the doubling, the trebling of the number of
them; and the most glorious of sights--O the grand old English working with
a will! as Englishmen do when they come at last to heat; and they
conquer, there is then nothing that they cannot conquer. So the conqueror
said.--And admirable were the conservatories running three long lines,
one from the drawing-room, to a central dome for tropical growths. And
the parterres were admired; also the newly-planted Irish junipers
bounding the West-walk; and the three tiers of stately descent from the
three green terrace banks to the grassy slopes over the lake. Again the
lake was admired, the house admired. Admiration was evoked for great
orchid-houses 'over yonder,' soon to be set up.

Off we go to the kitchen-garden. There the admiration is genial,
practical. We admire the extent of the beds marked out for asparagus, and
the French disposition of the planting at wide intervals; and the French
system of training peach, pear, and plum trees on the walls to win length
and catch sun, we much admire. We admire the gardener. We are induced
temporarily to admire the French people. They are sagacious in
fruit-gardens. They have not the English Constitution, you think rightly;
but in fruit-gardens they grow for fruit, and not, as Victor quotes a
friend, for wood, which the valiant English achieve. We hear and we see
examples of sagacity; and we are further brought round to the old
confession, that we cannot cook; Colney Durance has us there; we have not
studied herbs and savours; and so we are shocked backward step by step
until we retreat precipitately into the nooks where waxen tapers,
carefully tended by writers on the Press, light-up mysterious images of
our national selves for admiration. Something surely we do, or we should
not be where we are. But what is it we do (excepting cricket, of course)
which others cannot do? Colney asks; and he excludes cricket and
football.

An acutely satiric man in an English circle, that does not resort to the
fist for a reply to him, may almost satiate the excessive fury roused in
his mind by an illogical people of a provocative prosperity, mainly
tongueless or of leaden tongue above the pressure of their necessities,
as he takes them to be. They give him so many opportunities. They are
angry and helpless as the log hissing to the saw. Their instinct to make
use of the downright in retort, restrained as it is by a buttoned coat of
civilization, is amusing, inviting. Colney Durance allured them to the
quag's edge and plunged them in it, to writhe patriotically; and although
it may be said, that they felt their situation less than did he the venom
they sprang in his blood, he was cruel; he caused discomfort. But these
good friends about him stood for the country, an illogical country; and
as he could not well attack his host Victor Radnor, an irrational man, he
selected the abstract entity for the discharge of his honest spite.

The irrational friend was deeper at the source of his irritation than the
illogical old motherland. This house of Lakelands, the senselessness of
his friend in building it and designing to live in it, after experiences
of an incapacity to stand in a serene contention with the world he
challenged, excited Colney's wasp. He was punished, half way to frenzy
behind his placable demeanour, by having Dr. Schlesien for chorus. And
here again, it was the unbefitting, not the person, which stirred his
wrath. A German on English soil should remember the dues of a guest. At
the same time, Colney said things to snare the acclamation of an
observant gentleman of that race, who is no longer in his first
enthusiasm for English beef and the complexion of the women. 'Ah, ya, it
is true, what you say: "The English grow as fast as odders, but they grow
to corns instead of brains." They are Bull. Quaat true.' He bellowed on a
laugh the last half of the quotation.

Colney marked him. His encounters with Fenellan were enlivening
engagements and left no malice; only a regret, when the fencing passed
his guard, that Fenellan should prefer to flash for the minute. He would
have met a pert defender of England, in the person of Miss Priscilla
Graves, if she had not been occupied with observation of the bearing of
Lady Grace Halley toward Mr. Victor Radnor; which displeased her on
behalf of Mrs. Victor; she was besides hostile by race and class to an
aristocratic assumption of licence. Sparing Colney, she with some scorn
condemned Mr. Pempton for allowing his country to be ridiculed without a
word. Mr. Pempton believed that the Vegetarian movement was more
progressive in England than in other lands, but he was at the
disadvantage with the fair Priscilla, that eulogy of his compatriots on
this account would win her coldest approval. 'Satire was never an
argument,' he said, too evasively.

The Rev. Septimus Barmby received the meed of her smile, for saying in
his many-fathom bass, with an eye on Victor: 'At least we may boast of
breeding men, who are leaders of men.'

The announcement of luncheon, by Victor's butler Arlington, opportunely
followed and freighted the remark with a happy recognition of that which
comes to us from the hands of conquerors. Dr. Schlesien himself, no
antagonist to England, but like Colney Durance, a critic, speculated in
view of the spread of pic-nic provision beneath the great glass dome, as
to whether it might be, that these English were on another start out of
the dust in vigorous commercial enterprise, under leadership of one of
their chance masterly minds-merchant, in this instance: and be debated
within, whether Genius, occasionally developed in a surprising superior
manner by these haphazard English, may not sometimes wrest the prize from
Method; albeit we count for the long run, that Method has assurance of
success, however late in the race to set forth.

Luncheon was a merry meal, with Victor and Nataly for host and hostess;
Fenellan, Colney Durance, and Lady Grace Halley for the talkers. A gusty
bosom of sleet overhung the dome, rattled on it, and rolling Westward,
became a radiant mountain-land, partly worthy of Victor's phrase: 'A
range of Swiss Alps in air.'

'With periwigs Louis Quatorze for peaks,' Colney added.

And Fenellan improved on him: 'Or a magnified Bench of Judges at the
trial of your caerulean Phryne.'

The strip of white cloud flew on a whirl from the blue, to confirm it.

But Victor and Lady Grace rejected any play of conceits upon nature.
Violent and horrid interventions of the counterfeit, such mad similes
appeared to them, when pure coin was offered. They loathed the Rev.
Septimus Barmby for proclaiming, that he had seen 'Chapters of Hebrew
History in the grouping of clouds.'

His gaze was any one of the Chapters upon Nesta. The clerical gentleman's
voice was of a depth to claim for it the profoundest which can be thought
or uttered; and Nesta's tender youth had taken so strong an impression of
sacredness from what Fenellan called 'his chafer tones,' that her looks
were often given him in gratitude, for the mere sound. Nataly also had
her sense of safety in acquiescing to such a voice coming from such a
garb. Consequently, whenever Fenellan and Colney were at him, drawing him
this way and that for utterances cathedral in sentiment and sonorousness,
these ladies shed protecting beams; insomuch that he was inspired to the
agreeable conceptions whereof frequently rash projects are an issue.

Touching the neighbours of Lakelands, they were principally enriched
merchants, it appeared; a snippet or two of the fringe of aristocracy lay
here and there among them; and one racy-of-the-soil old son of Thames,
having the manners proper to last century's yeoman. Mr. Pempton knew
something of this quaint Squire of Hefferstone, Beaves Urmsing by name; a
ruddy man, right heartily Saxon; a still glowing brand amid the ashes of
the Heptarchy hearthstone; who had a song, The Marigolds, which he would
troll out for you anywhere, on any occasion. To have so near to the
metropolis one from the centre of the venerable rotundity of the country,
was rare. Victor exclaimed 'Come!' in ravishment over the picturesqueness
of a neighbour carrying imagination away to the founts of England; and
his look at Nataly proposed. Her countenance was inapprehensive. He
perceived resistance, and said: 'I have met two or three of them in the
train: agreeable men: Gladding, the banker; a General Fanning; that man
Blathenoy, great billbroker. But the fact is, close on London, we're
independent of neighbours; we mean to be. Lakelands and London
practically join.'

'The mother city becoming the suburb,' murmured Colney, in report of the
union.

'You must expect to be invaded, sir,' said Mr. Sowerby; and Victor
shrugged: 'We are pretty safe.'

'The lock of a door seems a potent security until some one outside is
heard fingering the handle nigh midnight,' Fenellan threw out his airy
nothing of a remark.

It struck on Nataly's heart. 'So you will not let us be lonely here,' she
said to her guests.

The Rev. Septimus Barmby was mouthpiece for congregations. Sound of a
subterranean roar, with a blast at the orifice, informed her of their
'very deep happiness in the privilege.'

He comforted her. Nesta smiled on him thankfully.

'Don't imagine, Mrs. Victor, that you can be shut off from neighbours, in
a house like this; and they have a claim,' said Lady Grace, quitting the
table.

Fenellan and Colney thought so:

'Like mice at a cupboard.'

'Beetles in a kitchen.'

'No, no-no, no!' Victor shook head, pitiful over the good people likened
to things unclean, and royally upraising them: in doing which, he
scattered to vapour the leaden incubi they had been upon his flatter
moods of late. 'No, but it's a rapture to breathe the air here!' His
lifted chest and nostrils were for the encouragement of Nataly to soar
beside him.

She summoned her smile and nodded.

He spoke aside to Lady Grace: 'The dear soul wants time to compose
herself after a grand surprise.'

She replied: 'I think I could soon be reconciled. How much land?'

'In treaty for some hundred and eighty or ninety acres . . . in all at
present three hundred and seventy, including plantations, lake,
outhouses.'

'Large enough; land paying as it does--that is, not paying. We shall be
having to gamble in the City systematically for subsistence.'

'You will not so much as jest on the subject.'

Coming from such a man, that was clear sky thunder. The lady played it
off in a shadowy pout and shrug while taking a stamp of his
masterfulness, not so volatile.

She said to Nataly: 'Our place in Worcestershire is about half the size,
if as much. Large enough when we're not crowded out with gout and can
open to no one. Some day you will visit us, I hope.'

'You we count on here, Lady Grace.'

It was an over-accentuated response; unusual with this well-bred woman;
and a bit of speech that does not flow, causes us to speculate. The lady
resumed: 'I value the favour. We're in a horsey-doggy-foxy circle down
there. We want enlivening. If we had your set of musicians and talkers!'

Nataly smiled in vacuous kindness, at a loss for the retort of a
compliment to a person she measured. Lady Grace also was an amiable
hostile reviewer. Each could see, to have cited in the other, defects
common to the lower species of the race, admitting a superior personal
quality or two; which might be pleaded in extenuation; and if the apology
proved too effective, could be dispersed by insistence upon it, under an
implied appeal to benevolence. When we have not a liking for the creature
whom we have no plain cause to dislike, we are minutely just.

During the admiratory stroll along the ground-floor rooms, Colney Durance
found himself beside Dr. Schlesien; the latter smoking, striding,
emphasizing, but bearable, as the one of the party who was not
perpetually at the gape in laudation. Colney was heard to say: 'No doubt:
the German is the race the least mixed in Europe: it might challenge
aboriginals for that. Oddly, it has invented the Cyclopaedia for
knowledge, the sausage for nutrition! How would you explain it?'

Dr. Schlesien replied with an Atlas shrug under fleabite to the
insensately infantile interrogation.

He in turn was presently heard.

'But, my good sir! you quote me your English Latin. I must beg of you you
write it down. It is orally incomprehensible to Continentals.'

'We are Islanders!' Colney shrugged in languishment.

'Oh, you do great things . . .' Dr. Schlesien rejoined in kindness,
making his voice a musical intimation of the smallness of the things.

'We build great houses, to employ our bricks'

'No, Colney, to live in,' said Victor.

'Scarcely long enough to warm them.'

'What do you . . . fiddle!'

'They are not Hohenzollerns!'

'It is true,' Dr. Schlesien called. 'No, but you learn discipline; you
build. I say wid you, not Hohenzollerns you build! But you shall look
above: Eyes up. Ire necesse est. Good, but mount; you come to something.
Have ideas.'

'Good, but when do we reach your level?'

'Sir, I do not say more than that we do not want instruction from
foreigners.'

'Pupil to paedagogue indeed. You have the wreath in Music, in
Jurisprudence, Chemistry, Scholarship, Beer, Arms, Manners.'

Dr. Schlesien puffed a tempest of tobacco and strode.

'He is chiselling for wit in the Teutonic block,' Colney said, falling
back to Fenellan.

Fenellan observed: 'You might have credited him with the finished
sculpture.'

'They're ahead of us in sticking at the charge of wit.'

'They've a widening of their swallow since Versailles.'

'Manners?'

'Well, that's a tight cravat for the Teutonic thrapple! But he's off by
himself to loosen it.'

Victor came on the couple testily. 'What are you two concocting! I say,
do keep the peace, please. An excellent good fellow; better up in
politics than any man I know; understands music; means well, you can see.
You two hate a man at all serious. And he doesn't bore with his
knowledge. A scholar too.'

'If he'll bring us the atmosphere of the groves of Academe, he may swing
his ferule pickled in himself, and welcome,' said Fenellan.

'Yes!' Victor nodded at a recognized antagonism in Fenellan; 'but
Colney's always lifting the Germans high above us.'

'It's to exercise his muscles.'

Victor headed to the other apartments, thinking that the Rev. Septimus
and young Sowerby, Old England herself, were spared by the diversion of
these light skirmishing shots from their accustomed victims to the
'masculine people of our time. His friends would want a drilling to be of
aid to him in his campaign to come. For it was one, and a great one. He
remembered his complete perception of the plan, all the elements of it,
the forward whirling of it, just before the fall on London Bridge. The
greatness of his enterprise laid such hold of him that the smallest of
obstacles had a villanous aspect; and when, as anticipated, Colney and
Fenellan were sultry flies for whomsoever they could fret, he was blind
to the reading of absurdities which caused Fredi's eyes to stream and
Lady Grace beside him to stand awhile and laugh out her fit. Young
Sowerby appeared forgiving enough--he was a perfect gentleman: but
Fredi's appalling sense of fun must try him hard. And those young fellows
are often more wounded by a girl's thoughtless laughter than by a man's
contempt. Nataly should have protected him. Her face had the air of a
smiling general satisfaction; sign of a pleasure below the mark required;
sign too of a sleepy partner for a battle. Even in the wonderful kitchen,
arched and pillared (where the explanation came to Nesta of Madame
Callet's frequent leave of absence of late, when an inferior dinner
troubled her father in no degree), even there his Nataly listened to the
transports of the guests with benign indulgence.

'Mama!' said Nesta, ready to be entranced by kitchens in her bubbling
animation: she meant the recalling of instances of the conspirator her
father had been.

'You none of you guessed Armandine's business!' Victor cried, in a glee
that pushed to make the utmost of this matter and count against chagrin.
'She was off to Paris; went to test the last inventions:--French brains
are always alert:--and in fact, those kitchen-ranges, gas and coal, and
the apparatus for warming plates and dishes, the whole of the battery is
on the model of the Duc d'Ariane's--finest in Europe. Well,' he agreed
with Colney, 'to say France is enough.'

Mr. Pempton spoke to Miss Graves of the task for a woman to conduct a
command so extensive. And, as when an inoffensive wayfarer has chanced to
set foot near a wasp's nest, out on him came woman and her champions, the
worthy and the sham, like a blast of powder.

Victor ejaculated: 'Armandine!' Whoever doubted her capacity, knew not
Armandine; or not knowing Armandine, knew not the capacity in women.

With that utterance of her name, he saw the orangey spot on London
Bridge, and the sinking Tower and masts and funnels, and the rising of
them, on his return to his legs; he recollected, that at the very edge of
the fall he had Armandine strongly in his mind. She was to do her part:
Fenellan and Colney on the surface, she below: and hospitality was to do
its part, and music was impressed--the innocent Concerts; his wealth, all
his inventiveness were to serve;--and merely to attract and win the
tastes of people, for a social support to Lakelands! Merely that? Much
more:--if Nataly's coldness to the place would but allow him to form an
estimate of how much. At the same time, being in the grasp of his present
disappointment, he perceived a meanness in the result, that was
astonishing and afflicting. He had not ever previously felt imagination
starving at the vision of success. Victor had yet to learn, that the man
with a material object in aim, is the man of his object; and the nearer
to his mark, often the farther is he from a sober self; he is more the
arrow of his bow than bow to his arrow. This we pay for scheming: and
success is costly; we find we have pledged the better half of ourselves
to clutch it; not to be redeemed with the whole handful of our prize! He
was, however, learning after his leaping fashion. Nataly's defective
sympathy made him look at things through the feelings she depressed. A
shadow of his missed Idea on London Bridge seemed to cross him from the
close flapping of a wing within reach. He could say only, that it would,
if caught, have been an answer to the thought disturbing him.

Nataly drew Colney Durance with her eyes to step beside her, on the
descent to the terrace. Little Skepsey hove in sight, coming swift as the
point of an outrigger over the flood.




CHAPTER X

SKEPSEY IN MOTION

The bearer of his master's midday letters from London shot beyond Nataly
as soon as seen, with an apparent snap of his body in passing. He steamed
to the end of the terrace and delivered the packet, returning at the same
rate of speed, to do proper homage to the lady he so much respected. He
had left the railway-station on foot instead of taking a fly, because of
a calculation that he would save three minutes; which he had not lost for
having to come through the raincloud. 'Perhaps the contrary,' Skepsey
said: it might be judged to have accelerated his course: and his hat
dripped, and his coat shone, and he soaped his hands, cheerful as an
ouzel-cock when the sun is out again.

'Many cracked crowns lately, in the Manly Art?' Colney inquired of him.
And Skepsey answered with precision of statement: 'Crowns, no, sir; the
nose, it may happen; but it cannot be said to be the rule.'

'You are of opinion, that the practice of Scientific Pugilism offers us
compensation for the broken bridge of a nose?'

'In an increase of manly self-esteem: I do, sir, yes.'

Skepsey was shy of this gentleman's bite; and he fancied his defence had
been correct. Perceiving a crumple of the lips of Mr. Durance, he took
the attitude of a watchful dubiety.

'But, my goodness, you are wet through!' cried Nataly, reproaching
herself for the tardy compassion; and Nesta ran up to them and heaped a
thousand pities on her 'poor dear Skip,' and drove him in beneath the
glass-dome to the fragments of pic-nic, and poured champagne for him,
'lest his wife should have to doctor him for a cold,' and poured afresh,
when he had obeyed her: 'for the toasting of Lakelands, dear Skepsey!'
impossible to resist: so he drank, and blinked; and was then told, that
before using his knife and fork he must betake himself to some fire of
shavings and chips, where coffee was being made, for the purpose of
drying his clothes. But this he would not hear of: he was pledged to
business, to convey his master's letters, and he might have to catch a
train by the last quarter-minute, unless it was behind the time-tables;
he must hold himself ready to start. Entreated, adjured, commanded,
Skepsey commiseratingly observed to Colney Durance, 'The ladies do not
understand, sir!' For Turk of Constantinople had never a more haremed
opinion of the unfitness of women in the brave world of action. The
persistence of these ladies endeavouring to obstruct him in the course of
his duty, must have succeeded save that for one word of theirs he had
two, and twice the promptitude of motion. He explained to them, as to
good children, that the loss of five minutes might be the loss of a Post,
the loss of thousands of pounds, the loss of the character of a Firm; and
he was away to the terrace. Nesta headed him and waved him back. She and
her mother rebuked him: they called him unreasonable; wherein they
resembled the chief example of the sex to him, in a wife he had at home,
who levelled that charge against her husband when most she needed
discipline: the woman laid hand on the very word legitimately his own for
the justification of his process with her.

'But, Skips! if you are ill and we have to nurse you!' said Nesta.

She forgot the hospital, he told her cordially, and laughed at the notion
of a ducking producing a cold or a cold a fever, or anything consumption,
with him. So the ladies had to keep down their anxious minds and allow
him to stand in wet clothing to eat his cold pie and salad.

Miss Priscilla Graves entering to them, became a witness that they were
seductresses for inducing him to drink wine--and a sparkling wine.

'It is to warm him,' they pleaded; and she said: 'He must be warm from
his walk'; and they said: 'But he is wet'; and said she, without a show
of feeling: 'Warm water, then'; and Skepsey writhed, as if in the grasp
of anatomists, at being the subject of female contention or humane
consideration. Miss Graves caught signs of the possible proselyte in him;
she remarked encouragingly:

'I am sure he does not like it; he still has a natural taste.'

She distressed his native politeness, for the glass was in his hand, and
he was fully aware of her high-principled aversion; and he profoundly
bowed to principles, believing his England to be pillared on them; and
the lady looked like one who bore the standard of a principle; and if we
slap and pinch and starve our appetites, the idea of a principle seems
entering us to support. Subscribing to a principle, our energies are
refreshed; we have a faith in the country that was not with us before the
act; and of a real well-founded faith come the glowing thoughts which we
have at times: thoughts of England heading the nations; when the smell of
an English lane under showers challenges Eden, and the threading of a
London crowd tunes discords to the swell of a cathedral organ. It may be,
that by the renunciation of any description of alcohol, a man will stand
clearer-headed to serve his country. He may expect to have a clearer
memory, for certain: he will not be asking himself, unable to decide,
whether his master named a Mr. Journeyman or a Mr. Jarniman, as the
person he declined to receive. Either of the two is repulsed upon his
application, owing to the guilty similarity of sounds but what we are to
think of is, our own sad state of inefficiency in failing to remember;
which accuses our physical condition, therefore our habits.--Thus the
little man debated, scarcely requiring more than to hear the right word,
to be a convert and make him a garland of the proselyte's fetters.

Destructively for the cause she advocated, Miss Priscilla gestured the
putting forth of an abjuring hand, with the recommendation to him, so to
put aside temptation that instant; and she signified in a very ugly jerk
of her features, the vilely filthy stuff Morality thought it, however
pleasing it might be to a palate corrupted by indulgence of the sensual
appetites.

But the glass had been handed to him by the lady he respected, who looked
angelical in offering it, divinely other than ugly; and to her he could
not be discourteous; not even to pay his homage to the representative of
a principle. He bowed to Miss Graves, and drank, and rushed forth;
hearing shouts behind him.

His master had a packet of papers ready, easy for the pocket.

'By the way, Skepsey,' he said, 'if a man named Jarniman should call at
the office, I will see him.'

Skepsey's grey eyes came out.

Or was it Journeyman, that his master would not see; and Jarniman that he
would?

His habit of obedience, pride of apprehension, and the time to catch the
train, forbade inquiry. Besides he knew of himself of old, that his
puzzles were best unriddled running.

The quick of pace are soon in the quick of thoughts.

Jarniman, then, was a man whom his master, not wanting to see, one day,
and wanting to see, on another day, might wish to conciliate: a case of
policy. Let Jarniman go. Journeyman, on the other hand, was nobody at
all, a ghost of the fancy. Yet this Journeyman was as important an
individual, he was a dread reality; more important to Skepsey in the
light of patriot: and only in that light was he permitted of a scrupulous
conscience and modest mind to think upon himself when the immediate
subject was his master's interests. For this Journeyman had not an excuse
for existence in Mr. Radnor's pronunciation: he was born of the buzz of a
troubled ear, coming of a disordered brain, consequent necessarily upon a
disorderly stomach, that might protest a degree of comparative innocence,
but would be shamed utterly under inspection of the eye of a lady of
principle.

What, then, was the value to his country of a servant who could not
accurately recollect his master's words! Miss Graves within him asked the
rapid little man, whether indeed his ideas were his own after draughts of
champagne.

The ideas, excited to an urgent animation by his racing trot, were a
quiverful in flight over an England terrible to the foe and dancing on
the green. Right so: but would we keep up the dance, we must be red iron
to touch: and the fighter for conquering is the one who can last and has
the open brain;--and there you have a point against alcohol. Yes, and
Miss Graves, if she would press it, with her natural face, could be
pleasant and persuasive: and she ought to be told she ought to marry, for
the good of the country. Women taking liquor: Skepsey had a vision of his
wife with rheumy peepers and miauly mouth, as he had once beheld the
creature:--Oh! they need discipline not such would we have for the
mothers of our English young. Decidedly the women of principle are bound
to enter wedlock; they should be bound by law. Whereas, in the opposing
case--the binding of the unprincipled to a celibate state--such a law
would have saved Skepsey from the necessitated commission of deeds of
discipline with one of the female sex, and have rescued his progeny from
a likeness to the corn-stalk reverting to weed. He had but a son for
England's defence; and the frame of his boy might be set quaking by a
thump on the wind of a drum; the courage of William Barlow Skepsey would
not stand against a sheep; it would wind-up hares to have a run at him
out in the field. Offspring of a woman of principle! . . . but there is
no rubbing out in life: why dream of it? Only that one would not have
one's country the loser!

Dwell a moment on the reverse--and first remember the lesson of the
Captivity of the Jews and the outcry of their backsliding and
repentance:--see a nation of the honourably begotten; muscular men
disdaining the luxuries they will occasionally condescend to taste, like
some tribe in Greece; boxers, rowers, runners, climbers; braced,
indomitable; magnanimous, as only the strong can be; an army at word,
winning at a stroke the double battle of the hand and the heart: men who
can walk the paths through the garden of the pleasures. They receive
fitting mates, of a build to promise or aid in ensuring depth of chest
and long reach of arm for their progeny.

Down goes the world before them.

And we see how much would be due for this to a corps of ladies like Miss
Graves, not allowed to remain too long on the stalk of spinsterhood. Her
age might count twenty-eight: too long! She should be taught that men
can, though truly ordinary women cannot, walk these orderly paths through
the garden. An admission to women, hinting restrictions, on a ticket
marked 'in moderation' (meaning, that they may pluck a flower or fruit
along the pathway border to which they are confined), speedily, alas,
exhibits them at a mad scramble across the pleasure-beds. They know not
moderation. Neither for their own sakes nor for the sakes of Posterity
will they hold from excess, when they are not pledged to shun it.

The reason is, that their minds cannot conceive the abstract, as men do.

But there are grounds for supposing that the example before them of a sex
exercising self-control in freedom, would induce women to pledge
themselves to a similar abnegation, until they gain some sense of touch
upon the impalpable duty to the generations coming after us thanks to the
voluntary example we set them.

The stupendous task, which had hitherto baffled Skepsey in the course of
conversational remonstrances with his wife;--that of getting the Idea of
Posterity into the understanding of its principal agent, might then be
mastered.

Therefore clearly men have to begin the salutary movement: it manifestly
devolves upon them. Let them at once take to rigorous physical training.
Women under compulsion, as vessels: men in their magnanimity,
patriotically, voluntarily.

Miss Graves must have had an intimation for him; he guessed it; and it
plunged him into a conflict with her, that did not suffer him to escape
without ruefully feeling the feebleness of his vocabulary: and
consequently he made a reluctant appeal to figures, and it hung upon the
bolder exhibition of lists and tables as to whether he was beaten; and if
beaten, he was morally her captive; and this being the case, nothing
could be more repulsive to Skepsey; seeing that he, unable of his nature
passively or partially to undertake a line of conduct, beheld himself
wearing a detestable 'ribbon,' for sign of an oath quite needlessly sworn
(simply to satisfy the lady overcoming him with nimbler tongue), and
blocking the streets, marching in bands beneath banners, howling hymns.

Statistics, upon which his master and friends, after exchanging opinions
in argument, always fell back, frightened him. As long as they had no
opponents of their own kind, they swept the field, they were
intelligible, as the word 'principle' had become. But the appearance of
one body of Statistics invariably brought up another; and the strokes and
counterstrokes were like a play of quarter-staff on the sconce, to knock
all comprehension out of Skepsey. Otherwise he would not unwillingly have
inquired to-morrow into the Statistics of the controversy between the
waters of the wells and of the casks, prepared to walk over to the
victorious, however objectionable that proceeding. He hoped to question
his master some day except that his master would very naturally have a
tendency to sum-up in favour of wine--good wine, in moderation; just as
Miss Graves for the cup of tea--not so thoughtfully stipulating that it
should be good and not too copious. Statistics are according to their
conjurors; they are not independent bodies, with native colours; they
needs must be painted by the different hands they pass through, and they
may be multiplied; a nought or so counts for nothing with the teller.
Skepsey saw that. Yet they can overcome: even as fictitious battalions,
they can overcome. He shrank from the results of a ciphering match having
him for object, and was ashamed of feeling to Statistics as women to
giants; nevertheless he acknowledged that the badge was upon him, if Miss
Graves should beat her master in her array of figures, to insist on his
wearing it, as she would, she certainly would. And against his internal
conviction perhaps; with the knowledge that the figures were an
unfortified display, and his oath of bondage an unmanly servility, the
silliest of ceremonies! He was shockingly feminine to Statistics.

Mr. Durance despised them: he called them, arguing against Mr. Radnor,
'those emotional things,' not comprehensibly to Skepsey. But Mr. Durance,
a very clever gentleman, could not be right in everything. He made
strange remarks upon his country. Dr. Yatt attributed them to the state
of 'his digestion.

And Mr. Fenellan had said of Mr. Durance that, as 'a barrister wanting
briefs, the speech in him had been bottled too long and was an overripe
wine dripping sour drops through the rotten cork.' Mr. Fenellan said it
laughing, he meant no harm. Skepsey was sure he had the words. He heard
no more than other people hear; he remembered whole sentences, and many:
on one of his runs, this active little machine, quickened by motion to
fire, revived the audible of years back; whatever suited his turn of mind
at the moment rushed to the rapid wheels within him. His master's
business and friends, his country's welfare and advancement, these, with
records, items, anticipations, of the manlier sports to decorate, were
his current themes; all being chopped and tossed and mixed in salad
accordance by his fervour of velocity. And if you would like a further
definition of Genius, think of it as a form of swiftness. It is the
lively young great-grandson, in the brain, of the travelling force which
mathematicians put to paper, in a row of astounding ciphers, for the
motion of earth through space; to the generating of heat, whereof is
multiplication, whereof deposited matter, and so your chaos, your
half-lighted labyrinth, your, ceaseless pressure to evolvement; and then
Light, and so Creation, order, the work of Genius. What do you say?

Without having a great brain, the measure of it possessed by Skepsey was
alive under strong illumination. In his heart, while doing penance for
his presumptuousness, he believed that he could lead regiments of men. He
was not the army's General, he was the General's Lieutenant, now and then
venturing to suggest a piece of counsel to his Chief. On his own
particular drilled regiments, his Chief may rely; and on his knowledge of
the country of the campaign, roads, morasses, masking hills, dividing
rivers. He had mapped for himself mentally the battles of conquerors in
his favourite historic reading; and he understood the value of a plan,
and the danger of sticking to it, and the advantage of a big army for
flanking; and he manoeuvred a small one cunningly to make it a bolt at
the telling instant. Dartrey Fenellan had explained to him Frederick's
oblique attack, Napoleon's employment of the artillery arm preparatory to
the hurling of the cataract on the spot of weakness, Wellington's
parallel march with Marmont up to the hour of the decisive cut through
the latter at Salamanca; and Skepsey treated his enemy to the like,
deferentially reporting the engagement to a Chief whom his modesty kept
in eminence, for the receiving of the principal honours. As to his men,
of all classes and sorts, they are so supple with training that they
sustain a defeat like the sturdy pugilist a knock off his legs, and up
smiling a minute after--one of the truly beautiful sights on this earth!
They go at the double half a day, never sounding a single pair of bellows
among them. They have their appetites in full control, to eat when they
can, or cheerfully fast. They have healthy frames, you see; and as the
healthy frame is not artificially heated, it ensues that, under any title
you like, they profess the principles--into the bog we go, we have got
round to it!--the principles of those horrible marching and chanting
people!

Then, must our England, to be redoubtable to the enemy, be a detestable
country for habitation?

Here was a knot.

Skepsey's head dropped lower, he went as a ram. The sayings of Mr.
Durance about his dear England: that 'her remainder of life is in the
activity of her diseases'--that 'she has so fed upon Pap of Compromise as
to be unable any longer to conceive a muscular resolution': that 'she is
animated only as the carcase to the blow-fly'; and so forth:--charged on
him during his wrestle with his problem. And the gentlemen had said, had
permitted himself to say, that our England's recent history was a
provincial apothecary's exhibition of the battle of bane and antidote.
Mr. Durance could hardly mean it. But how could one answer him when he
spoke of the torpor of the people, and of the succeeding Governments as a
change of lacqueys--or the purse-string's lacqueys? He said, that Old
England has taken to the arm-chair for good, and thinks it her whole
business to pronounce opinions and listen to herself; and that, in the
face of an armed Europe, this great nation is living on sufferance. Oh!

Skepsey had uttered the repudiating exclamation.

'Feel quite up to it?' he was asked by his neighbour.

The mover of armed hosts for the defence of the country sat in a
third-class carriage of the train, approaching the first of the stations
on the way to town. He was instantly up to the level of an external
world, and fell into give and take with a burly broad communicative man;
located in London, but born in the North, in view of Durham cathedral, as
he thanked his Lord; who was of the order of pork-butcher; which
succulent calling had carried him down to near upon the borders of Surrey
and Sussex, some miles beyond the new big house of a Mister whose name he
had forgotten, though he had heard it mentioned by an acquaintance
interested in the gentleman's doings. But his object was to have a look
at a rare breed of swine, worth the journey; that didn't run to fat so
much as to flavour, had longer legs, sharp snouts to plump their hams;
over from Spain, it seemed; and the gentleman owning them was for selling
them, finding them wild past correction. But the acquaintance mentioned,
who was down to visit t' other gentleman's big new edifice in workmen's
hands, had a mother, who had been cook to a family, and was now widow of
a cook's shop; ham, beef, and sausages, prime pies to order; and a good
specimen herself; and if ever her son saw her spirit at his bedside,
there wouldn't be room for much else in that chamber--supposing us to
keep our shapes. But he was the right sort of son, anxious to push his
mother's shop where he saw a chance, and do it cheap; and those foreign
pigs, after a disappointment to their importer, might be had pretty
cheap, and were accounted tasty.

Skepsey's main thought was upon war: the man had discoursed of pigs.

He informed the man of his having heard from a scholar, that pigs had
been the cause of more bloody battles than any other animal.

How so? the pork-butcher asked, and said he was not much of a scholar,
and pigs might be provoking, but he had not heard they were a cause of
strife between man and man. For possession of them, Skepsey explained.
Oh! possession! Why, we've heard of bloody battles for the possession of
women! Men will fight for almost anything they care to get or call their
own, the pork-butcher said; and he praised Old England for avoiding war.
Skepsey nodded. How if war is forced on us? Then we fight. Suppose we are
not prepared?--We soon get that up. Skepsey requested him to state the
degree of resistance he might think he could bring against a pair of
skilful fists, in a place out of hearing of the police.

'Say, you!' said the pork-butcher, and sharply smiled, for he was a man
of size.

'I would give you two minutes,' rejoined Skepsey, eyeing him intently and
kindly: insomuch that it could be seen he was not in the conundrum vein.

'Rather short allowance, eh, master?' said the bigger man. 'Feel here';
he straightened out his arm and doubled it, raising a proud bridge of
muscle.

Skepsey performed the national homage to muscle.

'Twice that, would not help without the science,' he remarked, and let
his arm be gripped in turn.

The pork-butcher's throat sounded, as it were, commas and colons,
punctuations in his reflections, while he tightened fingers along the
iron lump. 'Stringy. You're a wiry one, no mistake.' It was encomium.
With the ingrained contempt of size for a smallness that has not yet
taught it the prostrating lesson, he said: 'Weight tells.'

'In a wrestle,' Skepsey admitted. 'Allow me to say, you would not touch
me.'

'And how do you know I'm not a trifle handy with the maulers myself?'

'You will pardon me for saying, it would be worse for you if you were.'

The pork-butcher was flung backward. 'Are you a Professor, may I
inquire?'

Skepsey rejected the title. 'I can engage to teach young men, upon a
proper observance of first principles.'

'They be hanged!' cried the ruffled pork-butcher. 'Our best men never got
it out of books. Now, you tell me--you've got a spiflicating style of
talk about you--no brag, you tell me--course, the best man wins, if you
mean that: now, if I was one of 'em, and I fetches you a bit of a flick,
how then? Would you be ready to step out with a real Professor?'

'I should claim a fair field,' was the answer, made in modesty.

'And you'd expect to whop me with they there principles of yours?'

'I should expect to.'

'Bang me!' was roared. After a stare at the mild little figure with the
fitfully dead-levelled large grey eyes in front of him, the pork-butcher
resumed: 'Take you for the man you say you be, you're just the man for my
friend Jam and me. He dearly loves to see a set-to, self the same. What
prettier? And if you would be so obliging some day as to favour us with a
display, we'd head a cap conformably, whether you'd the best of it,
according to your expectations, or t' other way:--For there never was
shame in a jolly good licking as the song says: that is, if you take it
and make it appear jolly good. And find you an opponent meet and fit,
never doubt. Ever had the worse of an encounter, sir?'

'Often, Sir.'

'Well, that's good. And it didn't destroy your confidence?'

'Added to it, I hope.'

At this point, it became a crying necessity for Skepsey to escape from an
area of boastfulness, into which he had fallen inadvertently; and he
hastened to apologize 'for his personal reference,' that was intended for
an illustration of our country caught unawares by a highly trained picked
soldiery, inferior in numbers to the patriotic levies, but sharp at the
edge and knowing how to strike. Measure the axe, measure the tree; and
which goes down first?

'Invasion, is it?--and you mean, we're not to hit back?' the pork-butcher
bellowed, and presently secured a murmured approbation from an audience
of three, that had begun to comprehend the dialogue, and strengthened him
in a manner to teach Skepsey the foolishness of ever urging analogies of
too extended a circle to close sharply on the mark. He had no longer a
chance, he was overborne, identified with the fated invader, rolled away
into the chops of the Channel, to be swallowed up entire, and not a rag
left of him, but John Bull tucking up his shirtsleeves on the shingle
beach, ready for a second or a third; crying to them to come on.

Warmed by his Bullish victory, and friendly to the vanquished, the
pork-butcher told Skepsey he should like to see more of him, and
introduced himself on a card Benjamin Shaplow, not far from the Bank.

They parted at the Terminus, where three shrieks of an engine, sounding
like merry messages of the damned to their congeners in the anticipatory
stench of the cab-droppings above, disconnected sane hearing; perverted
it, no doubt. Or else it was the stamp of a particular name on his mind,
which impressed Skepsey, as he bored down the street and across the
bridge, to fancy in recollection, that Mr. Shaplow, when reiterating the
wish for self and friend to witness a display of his cunning with the
fists, had spoken the name of Jarniman. An unusual name yet more than one
Jarniman might well exist. And unlikely that a friend of the pork-butcher
would be the person whom Mr. Radnor first prohibited and then desired to
receive. It hardly mattered:--considering that the Dutch Navy did really,
incredible as it seems now, come sailing a good way up the River Thames,
into the very main artery of Old England. And what thought the Tower of
it? Skepsey looked at the Tower in sympathy, wondering whether the Tower
had seen those impudent Dutch a nice people at home, he had heard. Mr.
Shaplow's Jarniman might actually be Mr. Radnor's, he inclined to think.
At any rate he was now sure of the name.




CHAPTER XI

WHEREIN WE BEHOLD THE COUPLE JUSTIFIED OF LOVE HAVING SIGHT OF THEIR
SCOURGE

Fenellan, in a musing exclamation, that was quite spontaneous, had put a
picture on the departing Skepsey, as observed from an end of the
Lakelands upper terrace-walk.

'Queer little water-wagtail it is!' And Lady Grace Halley and Miss Graves
and Mrs. Cormyn, snugly silken dry ones, were so taken with the pretty
likeness after hearing Victor call the tripping dripping creature the
happiest man in England, that they nursed it in their minds for a Bewick
tailpiece to the chapter of a pleasant rural day. It imbedded the day in
an idea that it had been rural.

We are indebted almost for construction to those who will define us
briefly: we are but scattered leaves to the general comprehension of us
until such a work of binding and labelling is done. And should the
definition be not so correct as brevity pretends to make it at one
stroke, we are at least rendered portable; thus we pass into the
conceptions of our fellows, into the records, down to posterity.
Anecdotes of England's happiest man were related, outlines of his
personal history requested. His nomination in chief among the
traditionally very merry Islanders was hardly borne out by the tale of
his enchainment with a drunken yokefellow--unless upon the Durance
version of the felicity of his countrymen; still, the water-wagtail
carried it, Skepsey trotted into memories. Heroes conducted up Fame's
temple-steps by ceremonious historians, who are studious, when the
platform is reached, of the art of setting them beneath the flambeau of a
final image, before thrusting them inside to be rivetted on their
pedestals, have an excellent chance of doing the same, let but the
provident narrators direct that image to paint the thing a moth-like
humanity desires, in the thing it shrinks from. Miss Priscilla Graves now
fastened her meditations upon Skepsey; and it was important to him.

Tobacco withdrew the haunting shadow of the Rev. Septimus Barmby from
Nesta. She strolled beside Louise de Seilles, to breathe sweet-sweet in
the dear friend's ear and tell her she loved her. The presence of the
German had, without rousing animosity, damped the young Frenchwoman, even
to a revulsion when her feelings had been touched by hearing praise of
her France, and wounded by the subjects of the praise. She bore the
national scar, which is barely skin-clothing of a gash that will not heal
since her country was overthrown and dismembered. Colney Durance could
excuse the unreasonableness in her, for it had a dignity, and she
controlled it, and quietly suffered, trusting to the steady, tireless,
concentrated aim of her France. In the Gallic mind of our time, France
appears as a prematurely buried Glory, that heaves the mound oppressing
breath and cannot cease; and calls hourly, at times keenly, to be
remembered, rescued from the pain and the mould-spots of that foul
sepulture. Mademoiselle and Colney were friends, partly divided by her
speaking once of revanche; whereupon he assumed the chair of the
Moralist, with its right to lecture, and went over to the enemy; his talk
savoured of a German. Our holding of the balance, taking two sides, is
incomprehensible to a people quivering with the double wound to body and
soul. She was of Breton blood. Cymric enough was in Nesta to catch any
thrill from her and join to her mood, if it hung out a colour sad or gay,
and was noble, as any mood of this dear Louise would surely be.

Nataly was not so sympathetic. Only the Welsh and pure Irish are quick at
the feelings of the Celtic French. Nataly came of a Yorkshire stock; she
had the bravery, humaneness and generous temper of our civilized North,
and a taste for mademoiselle's fine breeding, with a distaste for the
singular air of superiority in composure which it was granted to
mademoiselle to wear with an unassailable reserve when the roughness of
the commercial boor was obtrusive. She said of her to Colney, as they
watched the couple strolling by the lake below: 'Nesta brings her out of
her frosts. I suppose it's the presence of Dr. Schlesien. I have known it
the same after an evening of Wagner's music.'

'Richard Wagner Germanized ridicule of the French when they were down,'
said Colney. 'She comes of a blood that never forgives.'

'"Never forgives" is horrible to think of! I fancied you liked your
"Kelts," as you call them.'

Colney seized on a topic that shelved a less agreeable one that he saw
coming. 'You English won't descend to understand what does not resemble
you. The French are in a state of feverish patriotism. You refuse to
treat them for a case of fever. They are lopped of a limb: you tell them
to be at rest!'

'You know I am fond of them.'

'And the Kelts, as they are called, can't and won't forgive injuries;
look at Ireland, look at Wales, and the Keltic Scot. Have you heard them
talk? It happened in the year 1400: it's alive to them as if it were
yesterday. Old History is as dead to the English as their first father.
They beg for the privilege of pulling the forelock to the bearers of the
titles of the men who took their lands from them and turn them to the
uses of cattle. The Saxon English had, no doubt, a heavier thrashing than
any people allowed to subsist ever received: you see it to this day; the
crick of the neck at the name of a lord is now concealed and denied, but
they have it and betray the effects; and it's patent in their Journals,
all over their literature. Where it's not seen, another blood's at work.
The Kelt won't accept the form of slavery. Let him be servile, supple,
cunning, treacherous, and to appearance time-serving, he will always
remember his day of manly independence and who robbed him: he is the
poetic animal of the races of modern men.'

'You give him Pagan colours.'

'Natural colours. He does not offer the other cheek or turn his back to
be kicked after a knock to the ground. Instead of asking him to forgive,
which he cannot do, you must teach him to admire. A mercantile community
guided by Political Economy from the ledger to the banquet presided over
by its Dagon Capital, finds that difficult. However, there 's the secret
of him; that I respect in him. His admiration of an enemy or oppressor
doing great deeds, wins him entirely. He is an active spirit, not your
negative passive letter-of-Scripture Insensible. And his faults, short of
ferocity, are amusing.'

'But the fits of ferocity!'

'They are inconscient, real fits. They come of a hot nerve. He is
manageable, sober too, when his mind is charged. As to the French people,
they are the most mixed of any European nation; so they are packed with
contrasts: they are full of sentiment, they are sharply logical;
free-thinkers, devotees; affectionate, ferocious; frivolous, tenacious;
the passion of the season operating like sun or moon on these qualities;
and they can reach to ideality out of sensualism. Below your level,
they're above it: a paradox is at home with them!'

'My friend, you speak seriously--an unusual compliment,' Nataly said, and
ungratefully continued: 'You know what is occupying me. I want your
opinion. I guess it. I want to hear--a mean thirst perhaps, and you would
pay me any number of compliments to avoid the subject; but let me
hear:--this house!'

Colney shrugged in resignation. 'Victor works himself out,' he replied.

'We are to go through it all again?'

'If you have not the force to contain him.'

'How contain him?'

Up went Colney's shoulders.

'You may see it all before you,' he said, 'straight as the Seine chaussee
from the hill of La Roche Guyon.'

He looked for her recollection of the scene.

'Ah, the happy ramble that year!' she cried. 'And my Nesta just seven. We
had been six months at Craye. Every day of our life together looks happy
to me, looking back, though I know that every day had the same troubles.
I don't think I'm deficient in courage; I think I could meet .... But the
false position so cruelly weakens me. I am no woman's equal when I have
to receive or visit. It seems easier to meet the worst in life-danger,
death, anything. Pardon me for talking so. Perhaps we need not have left
Craye or Creckholt . . . ?' she hinted an interrogation. 'Though I am not
sorry; it is not good to be where one tastes poison. Here it may be as
deadly, worse. Dear friend, I am so glad you remember La Roche Guyon. He
was popular with the dear French people.'

'In spite of his accent.'

'It is not so bad?'

'And that you'll defend!'

'Consider: these neighbours we come among; they may have heard . . .'

'Act on the assumption.'

'You forget the principal character. Victor promises; he may have learnt
a lesson at Creckholt. But look at this house he has built. How can
I--any woman--contain him! He must have society.'

'Paraitre!'

'He must be in the front. He has talked of Parliament.'

Colney's liver took the thrust of a skewer through it. He spoke as in
meditative encomium: 'His entry into Parliament would promote himself and
family to a station of eminence naked over the Clock Tower of the House.'

She moaned. 'At the vilest, I cannot regret my conduct--bear what I may.
I can bear real pain: what kills me is, the suspicion. And I feel it like
a guilty wretch! And I do not feel the guilt! I should do the same again,
on reflection. I do believe it saved him. I do; oh! I do, I do. I cannot
expect my family to see with my eyes. You know them--my brother and
sisters think I have disgraced them; they put no value on my saving him.
It sounds childish; it is true. He had fallen into a terrible black
mood.'

'He had an hour of gloom.'

'An hour!'

'But an hour, with him! It means a good deal.'

'Ah, friend, I take your words. He sinks terribly when he sinks at
all.--Spare us a little while.--We have to judge of what is good in the
circumstances: I hear your reply! But the principal for me to study is
Victor. You have accused me of being the voice of the enamoured woman. I
follow him, I know; I try to advise; I find it is wisdom to submit. My
people regard my behaviour as a wickedness or a madness. I did save him.
I joined my fate with his. I am his mate, to help, and I cannot oppose
him, to distract him. I do my utmost for privacy. He must entertain.
Believe me, I feel for them--sisters and brother. And now that my sisters
are married . . . My brother has a man's hardness.'

'Colonel Dreighton did not speak harshly, at our last meeting.'

'He spoke of me?'

'He spoke in the tone of a brother.'

'Victor promises--I won't repeat it. Yes, I see the house! There appears
to be a prospect, a hope--I cannot allude to it. Craye and Creckholt may
have been some lesson to him. Selwyn spoke of me kindly? Ah, yes, it is
the way with my people to pretend that Victor has been the ruin of me,
that they may come round to family sentiments. In the same way, his
relatives, the Duvidney ladies, have their picture of the woman
misleading him. Imagine me the naughty adventuress!'--Nataly falsified
the thought insurgent at her heart, in adding: 'I do not say I am
blameless.' It was a concession to the circumambient enemy, of whom even
a good friend was apart, and not better than a respectful emissary. The
dearest of her friends belonged to that hostile world. Only Victor, no
other, stood with her against the world. Her child, yes; the love of her
child she had; but the child's destiny was an alien phantom, looking at
her with harder eyes than she had vision of in her family. She did not
say she was blameless, did not affect the thought. She would have wished
to say, for small encouragement she would have said, that her case could
be pleaded.

Colney's features were not inviting, though the expression was not
repellent. She sighed deeply; and to count on something helpful by
mentioning it, reverted to the 'prospect' which there appeared to be.
'Victor speaks of the certainty of his release.'

His release! Her language pricked a satirist's gallbladder. Colney
refrained from speaking to wound, and enjoyed a silence that did it.

'Do you see any possibility?--you knew her,' she said coldly.

'Counting the number of times he has been expecting the release, he is
bound to believe it near at hand.'

'You don't?' she asked: her bosom was up in a crisis of expectation for
the answer: and on a pause of half-a-minute, she could have uttered the
answer herself.

He perceived the insane eagerness through her mask, and despised it,
pitying the woman. 'And you don't,' he said. 'You catch at delusions, to
excuse the steps you consent to take. Or you want me to wear the
blinkers, the better to hoodwink your own eyes. You see it as well as I:
If you enter that house, you have to go through the same as at
Creckholt:--and he'll be the first to take fright.'

'He finds you in tears: he is immensely devoted; he flings up all to
protect "his Nataly."'

'No: you are unjust to him. He would fling up all:'--

'But his Nataly prefers to be dragged through fire? As you please!'

She bowed to her chastisement. One motive in her consultation with him
came of the knowledge of his capacity to inflict it and his honesty in
the act, and a thirst she had to hear the truth loud-tongued from him;
together with a feeling that he was excessive and satiric, not to be read
by the letter of his words: and in consequence, she could bear the lash
from him, and tell her soul that he overdid it, and have an
unjustly-treated self to cherish.--But in very truth she was a woman who
loved to hear the truth; she was formed to love the truth her position
reduced her to violate; she esteemed the hearing it as medical to her;
she selected for counsellor him who would apply it: so far she went on
the straight way; and the desire for a sustaining deception from the
mouth of a trustworthy man set her hanging on his utterances with an
anxious hope of the reverse of what was to come and what she herself
apprehended, such as checked her pulses and iced her feet and fingers.
The reason being, not that she was craven or absurd or paradoxical, but
that, living at an intenser strain upon her nature than she or any around
her knew, her strength snapped, she broke down by chance there where
Colney was rendered spiteful in beholding the display of her inconsequent
if not puling sex.

She might have sought his counsel on another subject, if a paralyzing
chill of her frame in the foreview of it had allowed her to speak: she
felt grave alarms in one direction, where Nesta stood in the eye of her
father; besides an unformed dread that the simplicity in generosity of
Victor's nature was doomed to show signs of dross ultimately, under the
necessity he imposed upon himself to run out his forecasts, and scheme,
and defensively compel the world to serve his ends, for the protection of
those dear to him.

At night he was particularly urgent with her for the harmonious duet in
praise of Lakelands; and plied her with questions all round and about it,
to bring out the dulcet accord. He dwelt on his choice of costly marbles,
his fireplace and mantelpiece designs, the great hall, and suggestions
for imposing and beautiful furniture; concordantly enough, for the large,
the lofty and rich of colour won her enthusiasm; but overwhelmingly to
any mood of resistance; and strangely in a man who had of late been
adopting, as if his own, a modern tone, or the social and literary hints
of it, relating to the right uses of wealth, and the duty as well as the
delight of living simply.

'Fredi was pleased.'

'Yes, she was, dear.'

'She is our girl, my love. "I could live and die here!" Live, she may.
There's room enough.'

Nataly saw the door of a covert communication pointed at in that remark.
She gathered herself for an effort to do battle.

'She's quite a child, Victor.'

'The time begins to run. We have to look forward now:--I declare, it's I
who seem the provident mother for Fredi!'

'Let our girl wait; don't hurry her mind to . . . She is happy with her
father and mother. She is in the happiest time of her life, before those
feelings distract.'

'If we see good fortune for her, we can't let it pass her.'

A pang of the resolution now to debate the case with Victor, which would
be of necessity to do the avoided thing and roll up the forbidden curtain
opening on their whole history past and prospective, was met in Nataly's
bosom by the more bitter immediate confession that she was not his match.
To speak would be to succumb; and shamefully after the effort; and
hopelessly after being overborne by him. There was not the anticipation
of a set contest to animate the woman's naturally valiant heart; he was
too strong: and his vividness in urgency overcame her in advance,
fascinated her sensibility through recollection; he fanned an
inclination, lighted it to make it a passion, a frenzied resolve--she
remembered how and when. She had quivering cause to remember the fateful
day of her step, in a letter received that morning from a married sister,
containing no word of endearment or proposal for a meeting. An
unregretted day, if Victor would think of the dues to others; that is,
would take station with the world to see his reflected position, instead
of seeing it through their self-justifying knowledge of the honourable
truth of their love, and pressing to claim and snatch at whatsoever the
world bestows on its orderly subjects.

They had done evil to no one as yet. Nataly thought that;
not-withstanding the outcry of the ancient and withered woman who bore
Victor Radnor's name: for whom, in consequence of the rod the woman had
used, this tenderest of hearts could summon no emotion. If she had it,
the thing was not to be hauled up to consciousness. Her feeling was, that
she forgave the wrinkled Malignity: pity and contrition dissolving in the
effort to produce the placable forgiveness. She was frigid because she
knew rightly of herself, that she in the place of power would never have
struck so meanly. But the mainspring of the feeling in an almost
remorseless bosom drew from certain chance expressions of retrospective
physical distaste on Victor's part;--hard to keep from a short utterance
between the nuptial two, of whom the unshamed exuberant male has found
the sweet reverse in his mate, a haven of heavenliness, to delight
in:--these conjoined with a woman's unspoken pleading ideas of her own,
on her own behalf, had armed her jealously in vindication of Nature.

Now, as long as they did no palpable wrong about them, Nataly could argue
her case in her conscience--deep down and out of hearing, where women
under scourge of the laws they have not helped decree may and do deliver
their minds. She stood in that subterranean recess for Nature against the
Institutions of Man: a woman little adapted for the post of revel; but to
this, by the agency of circumstances, it had come; she who was designed
by nature to be an ornament of those Institutions opposed them and
when thinking of the rights and the conduct of the decrepit
Legitimate--virulent in a heathen vindictiveness declaring itself
holy--she had Nature's logic, Nature's voice, for self-defence. It was
eloquent with her, to the deafening of other voices in herself, even to
the convincing of herself, when she was wrought by the fires within to
feel elementally. The other voices within her issued of the acknowledged
dues to her family and to the world--the civilization protecting women:
sentences thereanent in modern books and Journals. But the remembrance of
moods of fiery exaltation, when the Nature she called by name of Love
raised the chorus within to stop all outer buzzing, was, in a perpetual
struggle with a whirlpool, a constant support while she and Victor were
one at heart. The sense of her standing alone made her sway; and a
thought of differences with him caused frightful apprehensions of the
abyss.

Luxuriously she applied to his public life for witness that he had
governed wisely as well as affectionately so long; and he might
therefore, with the chorussing of the world of public men, expect a woman
blindfold to follow his lead. But no; we may be rebels against our time
and its Laws: if we are really for Nature, we are not lawless. Nataly's
untutored scruples, which came side by side with her ability to plead for
her acts, restrained her from complicity in the ensnaring of a young man
of social rank to espouse the daughter of a couple socially
insurgent-stained, to common thinking, should denunciation come. The
Nature upholding her fled at a vision of a stranger entangled. Pitiable
to reflect, that he was not one of the adventurer-lords of prey who hunt
and run down shadowed heiresses and are congratulated on their luck in a
tolerating country! How was the young man to be warned? How, under the
happiest of suppositions, propitiate his family! And such a family, if
consenting with knowledge, would consent only for the love of money. It
was angling with as vile a bait as the rascal lord's. Humiliation hung on
the scheme; it struck to scorching in the contemplation of it. And it
darkened her reading of Victor's character.

She did not ask for the specification of a 'good fortune that might
pass'; wishing to save him from his wonted twists of elusiveness, and
herself with him from the dread discussion it involved upon one point.

'The day was pleasant to all, except perhaps poor mademoiselle,' she
said.

'Peridon should have come?'

'Present or absent, his chances are not brilliant, I fear.'

'And Pempton and Priscy!'

'They are growing cooler!'

'With their grotesque objections to one another's habits at table!'

'Can we ever hope to get them over it?'

'When Priscy drinks Port and Pempton munches beef, Colney says.'

'I should say, when they feel warmly enough to think little of their
differences.'

'Fire smoothes the creases, yes; and fire is what they're both wanting
in. Though Priscy has Concert-pathos in her voice:--couldn't act a bit!
And Pempton's 'cello tones now and then have gone through me--simply from
his fiddle-bow, I believe. Don't talk to me of feeling in a couple,
within reach of one another and sniffing objections.--Good, then, for a
successful day to-day so far?'

He neared her, wooing her; and she assented, with a franker smile than
she had worn through the day.

The common burden on their hearts--the simple discussion to come of the
task of communicating dire actualities to their innocent Nesta--was laid
aside.




CHAPTER XII

TREATS OF THE DUMBNESS POSSIBLE WITH MEMBERS OF A HOUSEHOLD HAVING ONE
HEART

Two that live together in union are supposed to be intimate on every
leaf. Particularly when they love one another and the cause they have at
heart is common to them in equal measure, the uses of a cordial
familiarity forbid reserves upon important matters between them, as we
think; not thinking of an imposed secretiveness, beneath the false
external of submissiveness, which comes of an experience of repeated
inefficiency to maintain a case in opposition, on the part of the
loquently weaker of the pair. In Constitutional Kingdoms a powerful
Government needs not to be tyrannical to lean oppressively; it is more
serviceable to party than agreeable to country; and where the alliance of
men and women binds a loving couple, of whom one is a torrent of
persuasion, their differings are likely to make the other resemble a log
of the torrent. It is borne along; it dreams of a distant corner of the
way for a determined stand; it consents to its whirling in anticipation
of an undated hour when it will no longer be neutral.

There may be, moreover, while each has the key of the fellow breast, a
mutually sensitive nerve to protest against intrusion of light or sound.
The cloud over the name of their girl could now strike Nataly and Victor
dumb in their taking of counsel. She divined that his hint had encouraged
him to bring the crisis nearer, and he that her comprehension had become
tremblingly awake. They shrank, each of them, the more from an end
drawing closely into view. All subjects glooming off or darkening up to
it were shunned by them verbally, and if they found themselves entering
beneath that shadow, conversation passed to an involuntary gesture, more
explicit with him, significant of the prohibited, though not
acknowledging it.

All the stronger was it Victor's purpose, leaping in his fashion to the
cover of action as an escape from perplexity, to burn and scheme for the
wedding of their girl--the safe wedding of that dearest, to have her
protected, secure, with the world warm about her. And he well knew why
his Nataly had her look of a closed vault (threatening, if opened, to
thunder upon Life) when he dropped his further hints. He chose to call it
feminine inconsistency, in a woman who walked abroad with a basket of
marriage-ties for the market on her arm. He knew that she would soon have
to speak the dark words to their girl; and the idea of any doing of it,
caught at his throat. Reasonably she dreaded the mother's task;
pardonably indeed. But it is for the mother to do, with a girl. He
deputed it lightly to the mother because he could see himself stating the
facts to a son. 'And, my dear boy, you will from this day draw your five
thousand a year, and we double it on the day of your marriage, living at
Lakelands or where you will.'

His desire for his girl's protection by the name of one of our great
Families, urged him to bind Nataly to the fact, with the argument, that
it was preferable for the girl to hear their story during her green early
youth, while she reposed her beautiful blind faith in the discretion of
her parents, and as an immediate step to the placing of her hand in a
husband's. He feared that her mother required schooling to tell the story
vindicatingly and proudly, in a manner to distinguish instead of
degrading or temporarily seeming to accept degradation.

The world would weigh on her confession of the weight of the world on her
child; she would want inciting and strengthening, if one judged of her
capacity to meet the trial by her recent bearing; and how was he to do
it! He could not imagine himself encountering the startled, tremulous,
nascent intelligence in those pure brown darklashed eyes of Nesta; he
pitied the poor mother. Fancifully directing her to say this and that to
the girl, his tongue ran till it was cut from his heart and left to wag
dead colourless words.

The prospect of a similar business of exposition, certainly devolving
upon the father in treaty with the fortunate youth, gripped at his vitals
a minute, so intense was his pride in appearing woundless and scarless, a
shining surface, like pure health's, in the sight of men. Nevertheless he
skimmed the story, much as a lecturer strikes his wand on the prominent
places of a map, that is to show us how he arrived at the principal
point, which we are all agreed to find chiefly interesting. This with
Victor was the naming of Nesta's bridal endowment. He rushed to it. 'My
girl will have ten thousand a year settled on her the day of her
marriage.' Choice of living at Lakelands was offered.

It helped him over the unpleasant part of that interview. At the same
time, it moved him to a curious contempt of the youth. He had to
conjure-up an image of the young man in person, to correct the
sentiment:--and it remained as a kind of bruise only half cured.

Mr. Dudley Sowerby was not one of the youths whose presence would rectify
such an abstract estimate of the genus pursuer. He now came frequently of
an evening, to practise a duet for flutes with Victor;--a Mercadante,
honeyed and flowing; too honeyed to suit a style that, as Fenellan
characterized it to Nataly, went through the music somewhat like an
inquisitive tourist in a foreign town, conscientious to get to the end of
the work of pleasure; until the notes had become familiar, when it rather
resembled a constable's walk along the midnight streets into collision
with a garlanded roysterer; and the man of order and the man of passion,
true to the measure though they were, seeming to dissent, almost to
wrangle, in their different ways of winding out the melody, on to the
last movement; which was plainly a question between home to the strayed
reveller's quarters or off to the lockup. Victor was altogether the
younger of the two. But his vehement accompaniment was a tutorship; Mr.
Sowerby improved; it was admitted by Nesta and mademoiselle that he
gained a show of feeling; he had learnt that feeling was wanted. Passion,
he had not a notion of: otherwise he would not be delaying; the
interview, dramatized by the father of the young bud of womanhood, would
be taking place, and the entry into Lakelands calculable, for Nataly's
comfort, as under the aegis of the Cantor earldom. Gossip flies to a
wider circle round the members of a great titled family, is inaudible; or
no longer the diptherian whisper the commonalty hear of the commonalty:
and so we see the social uses of our aristocracy survive. We do not want
the shield of any family; it is the situation that wants it; Nataly ought
to be awake to the fact. One blow and we have silenced our enemy: Nesta's
wedding-day has relieved her parents.

Victor's thoughts upon the instrument for striking that, blow, led him to
suppose Mr. Sowerby might be meditating on the extent of the young lady's
fortune. He talked randomly of money, in a way to shatter Nataly's
conception of him. He talked of City affairs at table, as it had been his
practice to shun the doing; and hit the resounding note on mines, which
have risen in the market like the crest of a serpent, casting a certain
spell upon the mercantile understanding. 'Fredi's diamonds from her own
mine, or what once was--and she still reserves a share,' were to be shown
to Mr. Sowerby.

Nataly respected the young fellow for not displaying avidity at the
flourish of the bait, however it might be affecting him; and she fancied
that he did laboriously, in his way earnestly, study her girl, to sound
for harmony between them, previous to a wooing. She was a closer reader
of social character than Victor; from refraining to run on the broad
lines which are but faintly illustrative of the individual one in being
common to all--unless we have hit by chance on an example of the
downright in roguery or folly or simple goodness. Mr. Sowerby'g bearing
to Nesta was hardly warmed by the glitter of diamonds. His next visit
showed him livelier in courtliness, brighter, fresher; but that was
always his way at the commencement of every visit, as if his reflections
on the foregone had come to a satisfactory conclusion; and the labours of
the new study of the maiden ensued again in due course to deaden him.

Gentleman he was. In the recognition of his quality as a man of principle
and breeding, Nataly was condemned by thoughts of Nesta's future to
question whether word or act of hers should, if inclination on both sides
existed, stand between her girl and a true gentleman. She counselled
herself, as if the counsel were in requisition, to be passive; and so
doing, she more acutely than Victor--save in his chance
flashes--discerned the twist of her very nature caused by their false
position. And her panacea for ills, the lost little cottage, would not
have averted it: she would there have had the same coveting desire to
name a man of breeding, honour, station, for Nesta's husband. Perhaps in
the cottage, choosing at leisure, her consent to see the brilliant young
creature tied to the best of dull men would have been unready, without
the girl to push it. For the Hon. Dudley was lamentably her pupil in
liveliness; he took the second part, as it is painful for a woman with
the old-fashioned ideas upon the leading of the sexes to behold;
resembling in his look the deaf, who constantly require to have an
observation repeated; resembling the most intelligent of animals, which
we do not name, and we reprove ourselves for seeing likeness.

Yet the likeness or apparent likeness would suggest that we have not so
much to fear upon the day of the explanation to him. Some gain is there.
Shameful thought! Nataly hastened her mind to gather many instances or
indications testifying to the sterling substance in young Mr. Sowerby,
such as a mother would pray for her son-in-law to possess. She discovered
herself feeling as the burdened mother, not providently for her girl, in
the choice of a mate. The perception was clear, and not the less did she
continue working at the embroidery of Mr. Sowerby on the basis of his
excellent moral foundations, all the while hoping, praying, that he might
not be lured on to the proposal for Nesta. But her subservience to the
power of the persuasive will in Victor--which was like the rush of a
conflagration--compelled her to think realizingly of any scheme he
allowed her darkly to read.

Opposition to him, was comparable to the stand of blocks of timber before
flame. Colney Durance had done her the mischief we take from the
pessimist when we are overweighted: in darkening the vision of external
aid from man or circumstance to one who felt herself mastered. Victor
could make her treacherous to her wishes, in revolt against them, though
the heart protested. His first conquest of her was in her blood, to
weaken a spirit of resistance. For the precedent of submission is a charm
upon the faint-hearted through love: it unwinds, unwills them. Nataly
resolved fixedly, that there must be a day for speaking; and she had her
moral sustainment in the resolve; she had also a tormenting consciousness
of material support in the thought, that the day was not present, was
possibly distant, might never arrive. Would Victor's release come sooner?
And that was a prospect bearing resemblance to hopes of the cure of a
malady through a sharp operation.

These were matters going on behind the curtain; as wholly vital to her,
and with him at times almost as dominant, as the spiritual in memory,
when flesh has left but its shining track in dust of a soul outwritten;
and all their talk related to the purchase of furniture, the expeditions
to Lakelands, music, public affairs, the pardonable foibles of friends
created to amuse their fellows, operatic heroes and heroines, exhibitions
of pictures, the sorrows of Crowned Heads, so serviceable ever to mankind
as an admonition to the ambitious, a salve to the envious!--in fine,
whatsoever can entertain or affect the most social of couples,
domestically without a care to appearance. And so far they
partially--dramatically--deceived themselves by imposing on the world
while they talked and duetted; for the purchase of furniture from a
flowing purse is a cheerful occupation; also a City issuing out of
hospital, like this poor City of London, inspires good citizens to
healthy activity. But the silence upon what they were most bent on, had
the sinister effect upon Victor, of obscuring his mental hold of the
beloved woman, drifting her away from him. In communicating Fenellan's
news through the lawyer Carling of Mrs. Burman's intentions, he was aware
that there was an obstacle to his being huggingly genial, even candidly
genial with her, until he could deal out further news, corroborative and
consecutive, to show the action of things as progressive. Fenellan had
sunk into his usual apathy:--and might plead the impossibility of his
moving faster than the woman professing to transform herself into,
beneficence out of malignity;--one could hear him saying the words!
Victor had not seen him since last Concert evening, and he deemed it as
well to hear the words Fenellan's mouth had to say. He called at an early
hour of the Westward tidal flow at the Insurance Office looking over the
stormy square of the first of Seamen.




CHAPTER XIII

THE LATEST OF MRS. BURMAN

After cursory remarks about the business of the Office and his friend's
contributions to periodical literature, in which he was interested for as
long as he had assurance that the safe income depending upon official
duties was not endangered by them, Victor kicked his heels to and fro.
Fenellan waited for him to lead.

'Have you seen that man, her lawyer, again?'

'I have dined with Mr. Carling:--capital claret.'

Emptiness was in the reply.

Victor curbed himself and said: 'By the way, you're not likely to have
dealings with Blathenoy. The fellow has a screw to the back of a shifty
eye; I see it at work to fix the look for business. I shall sit on the
Board of my Bank. One hears things. He lives in style at Wrensham. By the
way, Fredi has little Mab Mountney from Creckholt staying with her. You
said of little Mabsy--"Here she comes into the room all pink and white,
like a daisy." She's the daisy still; reminds us of our girl at that
age.--So, then, we come to another dead block!'

'Well, no; it's a chemist's shop, if that helps us on,' said Fenellan,
settling to a new posture in his chair. 'She's there of an afternoon for
hours.'

'You mean it's she?'

'The lady. I 'll tell you. I have it from Carling, worthy man; and
lawyers can be brought to untruss a point over a cup of claret. He's a
bit of a "Mackenzie Man," as old aunts of mine used to say at home--a Man
of Feeling. Thinks he knows the world, from having sifted and sorted a
lot of our dustbins; as the modern Realists imagine it's an exposition of
positive human nature when they've pulled down our noses to the worst
parts--if there's a worse where all are useful: but the Realism of the
dogs is to have us by the nose:--excite it and befoul it, and you're
fearfully credible! You don't read that olfactory literature. However,
friend Carling is a conciliatory carle. Three or four days of the week
the lady, he says, drives to her chemist's, and there she sits in the
shop; round the corner, as you enter; and sees all Charing in the shop
looking-glass at the back; herself a stranger spectacle, poor lady, if
Carling's picture of her is not overdone; with her fashionable no-bonnet
striding the contribution chignon on the crown, and a huge square green
shade over her forehead. Sits hours long, and cocks her ears at orders of
applicants for drugs across the counter, and sometimes catches wind of a
prescription, and consults her chemist, and thinks she 'll try it
herself. It's a basket of medicine bottles driven to Regent's Park pretty
well every day.'

'Ha! Regent's Park!' exclaimed Victor, and shook at recollections of the
district and the number of the house, dismal to him. London buried the
woman deep until a mention of her sent her flaring over London. 'A
chemist's shop! She sits there?'

'Mrs. Burman. We pass by the shop.'

'She had always a turn for drugs.--Not far from here, did you say? And
every day! under a green shade?'

'Dear fellow, don't be suggesting ballads; we'll go now,' said Fenellan.
'It 's true it's like sitting on the banks of the Stygian waters.'

He spied at an obsequious watch, that told him it was time to quit the
office.

'You've done nothing?' Victor asked in a tone of no expectation.

'Only to hear that her latest medical man is Themison.'

'Where did you hear?'

'Across the counter of Boyle and Luckwort, the lady's chemists. I called
the day before yesterday, after you were here at our last Board Meeting.'

'The Themison?'

'The great Dr. Themison; who kills you kindlier than most, and is much in
request for it.'

'There's one of your echoes of Colney!' Victor cried. 'One gets dead sick
of that worn-out old jibeing at doctors. They don't kill, you know very
well. It 's not to their interest to kill. They may take the relish out
of life; and upon my word, I believe that helps to keep the patient
living!'

Fenellan sent an eye of discreet comic penetration travelling through his
friend.

'The City's mending; it's not the weary widow woman of the day when we
capsized the diurnal with your royal Old Veuve,' he said, as they trod
the pavement. 'Funny people, the English! They give you all the primeing
possible for amusement and jollity, and devil a sentry-box for the
exercise of it; and if you shake a leg publicly, partner or not, you're
marched off to penitence. I complain, that they have no philosophical
appreciation of human nature.'

'We pass the shop?' Victor interrupted him.

'You're in view of it in a minute. And what a square, for recreative
dancing! And what a people, to be turning it into a place of political
agitation! And what a country, where from morning to night it's an
endless wrangle about the first conditions of existence! Old Colney seems
right now and then: they 're the offspring of pirates, and they 've got
the manners and tastes of their progenitors, and the trick of quarrelling
everlastingly over the booty. I 'd have band-music here for a couple of
hours, three days of the week at the least; and down in the East; and
that forsaken North quarter of London; and the Baptist South too. But
just as those omnibus-wheels are the miserable music of this London of
ours, it 's only too sadly true that the people are in the first rumble
of the notion of the proper way to spend their lives. Now you see the
shop: Boyle and Luckwort: there.'

Victor looked. He threw his coat open, and pulled the waistcoat, and
swelled it, ahemming. 'That shop?' said he. And presently: 'Fenellan, I'm
not superstitious, I think. Now listen; I declare to you, on the day of
our drinking Old Veuve together last--you remember it,--I walked home up
this way across the square, and I was about to step into that identical
shop, for some household prescription in my pocket, having forgotten
Nataly's favourite City chemists Fenbird and Jay, when--I'm stating a
fact--I distinctly--I 'm sure of the shop--felt myself plucked back by
the elbow; pulled back the kind of pull when you have to put a foot
backward to keep your equilibrium.'

So does memory inspired by the sensations contribute an additional item
for the colouring of history.

He touched the elbow, showed a flitting face of crazed amazement in
amusement, and shrugged and half-laughed, dismissing the incident, as
being perhaps, if his hearer chose to have it so, a gem of the rubbish
tumbled into the dustcart out of a rather exceptional householder's
experience.

Fenellan smiled indulgently. 'Queer things happen. I recollect reading in
my green youth of a clergyman, who mounted a pulpit of the port where he
was landed after his almost solitary rescue from a burning ship at
midnight in mid-sea, to inform his congregation, that he had overnight of
the catastrophe a personal Warning right in his ear from a Voice, when at
his bed or bunk-side, about to perform the beautiful ceremony of
undressing: and the Rev. gentleman was to lie down in his full uniform,
not so much as to relieve himself of his boots, the Voice insisted twice;
and he obeyed it, despite the discomfort to his poor feet; and he jumped
up in his boots to the cry of Fire, and he got them providentially over
the scuffling deck straight at the first rush into the boat awaiting
them, and had them safe on and polished the day he preached the sermon of
gratitude for the special deliverance. There was a Warning! and it might
well be called, as he called it, from within. We're cared for, never
doubt. Aide-toi. Be ready dressed to help yourself in a calamity, or
you'll not stand in boots at your next Sermon, contrasting with the
burnt. That sounds like the moral.'

'She could have seen me,' Victor threw out an irritable suggestion. The
idea of the recent propinquity set hatred in motion.

'Scarcely likely. I'm told she sits looking on her lap, under the
beetling shade, until she hears an order for tinctures or powders, or a
mixture that strikes her fancy. It's possible to do more suicidal things
than sit the afternoons in a chemist's shop and see poor creatures get
their different passports to Orcus.'

Victor stepped mutely beneath the windows of the bellied glass-urns of
chemical wash. The woman might be inside there now! She might have seen
his figure in the shop-mirror! And she there! The wonder of it all seemed
to be, that his private history was not walking the streets. The thinness
of the partition concealing it, hardly guaranteed a day's immunity:
because this woman would live in London, in order to have her choice of a
central chemist's shop, where she could feed a ghastly imagination on the
various recipes . . . and while it would have been so much healthier for
her to be living in a recess of the country!

He muttered: 'Diseases--drugs!'

Those were the corresponding two strokes of the pendulum which kept the
woman going.

'And deadly spite.' That was the emanation of the monotonous horrible
conflict, for which, and by which, the woman lived.

In the neighbourhood of the shop, he could not but think of her through
the feelings of a man scorched by a furnace.

A little further on, he said: 'Poor soul!' He confessed to himself, that
latterly he had, he knew not why, been impatient with her, rancorous in
thought, as never before. He had hitherto aimed at a picturesque
tolerance of her vindictiveness; under suffering, both at Craye and
Creckholt; and he had been really forgiving. He accused her of dragging
him down to humanity's lowest.

But if she did that, it argued the possession of a power of a sort.

Her station in the chemist's shop he passed almost daily, appeared to him
as a sudden and a terrific rush to the front; though it was only a short
drive from the house in Regent's Park; but having shaken-off that house,
he had pushed it back into mists, obliterated it. The woman certainly had
a power.

He shot away to the power he knew of in himself; his capacity for winning
men in bodies, the host of them, when it came to an effort of his
energies: men and, individually, women. Individually, the women were to
be counted on as well; warm supporters.

It was the admission of a doubt that he might expect to enroll them
collectively. Eyeing the men, he felt his command of them. Glancing at
congregated women, he had a chill. The Wives and Spinsters in ghostly
judicial assembly: that is, the phantom of the offended collective woman:
that is, the regnant Queen Idea issuing from our concourse of civilized
life to govern Society, and pronounce on the orderly, the tolerable, the
legal, and banish the rebellious: these maintained an aspect of the stand
against him.

Did Nataly read the case: namely, that the crowned collective woman is
not to be subdued? And what are we to say of the indefinite but forcible
Authority, when we see it upholding Mrs. Burman to crush a woman like
Nataly!

Victor's novel exercises in reflection were bringing him by hard degrees
to conceive it to be the impalpable which has prevailing weight. Not many
of our conquerors have scored their victories on the road of that index:
nor has duration been granted them to behold the minute measure of value
left even tangible after the dust of the conquest subsides. The passing
by a shop where a broken old woman might be supposed to sit beneath her
green forehead-shade--Venetian-blind of a henbane-visage!--had
precipitated him into his first real grasp of the abstract verity: and it
opens on to new realms, which are a new world to the practical mind. But
he made no advance. He stopped in a fever of sensibility, to contemplate
the powerful formless vapour rolling from a source that was nothing other
than yonder weak lonely woman.

In other words, the human nature of the man was dragged to the school of
its truancy by circumstances, for him to learn the commonest of sums done
on a slate, in regard to payment of debts and the unrelaxing grip of the
creditor on the defaulter. Debtors are always paying like those who are
guilty of the easiest thing in life, the violation of Truth, they have
made themselves bondmen to pay, if not in substance, then in soul; and
the nipping of the soul goes on for as long as the concrete burden is
undischarged. You know the Liar; you must have seen him diminishing,
until he has become a face without features, withdrawn to humanity's
preliminary sketch (some half-dozen frayed threads of woeful outline on
our original tapestry-web); and he who did the easiest of things, he must
from such time sweat in being the prodigy of inventive nimbleness, up to
the day when he propitiates Truth by telling it again. There is a
repentance that does reconstitute! It may help to the traceing to springs
of a fable whereby men have been guided thus far out of the wood.

Victor would have said truly that he loved Truth; that he paid every debt
with a scrupulous exactitude: money, of course; and prompt apologies for
a short brush of his temper. Nay, he had such a conscience for the
smallest eruptions of a transient irritability, that the wish to say a
friendly mending word to the Punctilio donkey of London Bridge, softened
his retrospective view of the fall there, more than once. Although this
man was a presentation to mankind of the force in Nature which drives to
unresting speed, which is the vitality of the heart seen at its beating
after a plucking of it from the body, he knew himself for the reverse of
lawless; he inclined altogether to good citizenship. So social a man
could not otherwise incline. But when it came to the examination of
accounts between Mrs. Burman and himself, spasms of physical revulsion,
loathings, his excessive human nature, put her out of Court. To men, it
was impossible for him to speak the torments of those days of the
monstrous alliance. The heavens were cognizant. He pleaded his case in
their accustomed hearing:--a youngster tempted by wealth, attracted,
besought, snared, revolted, etc. And Mrs. Burman, when roused to
jealousy, had shown it by teazing him for a confession of his admiration
of splendid points in the beautiful Nataly, the priceless fair woman
living under their roof, a contrast of very life, with the corpse and
shroud; and she seen by him daily, singing with him, her breath about
him, her voice incessantly upon every chord of his being!

He pleaded successfully. But the silence following the verdict was heavy;
the silence contained an unheard thunder. It was the sound, as when out
of Court the public is dissatisfied with a verdict. Are we expected to
commit a social outrage in exposing our whole case to the
public?--Imagine it for a moment as done. Men are ours at a word--or at
least a word of invitation. Women we woo; fluent smooth versions of our
tortures, mixed with permissible courtship, win the individual woman. And
that unreasoning collective woman, icy, deadly, condemns the poor racked
wretch who so much as remembers them! She is the enemy of Nature.--Tell
us how? She is the slave of existing conventions.--And from what cause?
She is the artificial production of a state that exalts her so long as
she sacrifices daily and hourly to the artificial.

Therefore she sides with Mrs. Burman--the foe of Nature: who, with her
arts and gold lures, has now possession of the Law (the brass idol
worshipped by the collective) to drive Nature into desolation.

He placed himself to the right of Mrs. Burman, for the world to behold
the couple: and he lent the world a sigh of disgust.

What he could not do, as in other matters he did, was to rise above the
situation, in a splendid survey and rapid view of the means of reversing
it. He was too social to be a captain of the socially insurgent;
imagination expired.

But having a courageous Nataly to second him!--how then? It was the
succour needed. Then he would have been ready to teach the world that
Nature--honest Nature--is more to be prized than Convention: a new Era
might begin.

The thought was tonic for an instant and illuminated him springingly. It
sank, excused for the flaccidity by Nataly's want of common adventurous
daring. She had not taken to Lakelands; she was purchasing furniture from
a flowing purse with a heavy heart--unfeminine, one might say; she
preferred to live obscurely; she did not, one had to think--but it was
unjust: and yet the accusation, that she did not cheerfully make a strain
and spurt on behalf of her child, pressed to be repeated.

These short glimpses at reflection in Victor were like the verberant
twang of a musical instrument that has had a smart blow, and wails away
independent of the player's cunning hand. He would have said, that he was
more his natural self when the cunning hand played on him, to make him
praise and uplift his beloved: mightily would it have astonished him to
contemplate with assured perception in his own person the Nature he
invoked. But men invoking Nature, do not find in her the Holy Mother she
in such case becomes to her daughters, whom she so persecutes. Men call
on her for their defence, as a favourable witness: she is a note of their
rhetoric. They are not bettered by her sustainment; they have not, as
women may have, her enaemic aid at a trying hour. It is not an effort at
epigram to say, that whom she scourges most she most supports.

An Opera-placard drew his next remark to Fenellan.

'How Wagner seems to have stricken the Italians! Well, now, the Germans
have their Emperor to head their armies, and I say that the German
emperor has done less for their lasting fame and influence than Wagner
has done. He has affected the French too; I trace him in Gounod's Romeo
et Juliette--and we don't gain by it; we have a poor remuneration for the
melody gone; think of the little shepherd's pipeing in Mireille; and
there's another in Sapho-delicious. I held out against Wagner as long as
I could. The Italians don't much more than Wagnerize in exchange for the
loss of melody. They would be wiser in going back to Pergolese,
Campagnole. The Mefistofole was good--of the school of the foreign
master. Aida and Otello, no. I confess to a weakness for the old
barleysugar of Bellini or a Donizetti-Serenade. Aren't you seduced by
cadences? Never mind Wagner's tap of his paedagogue's baton--a cadence
catches me still. Early taste for barley-sugar, perhaps! There's a march
in Verdi's Attila and I Lombardi, I declare I'm in military step when I
hear them, as in the old days, after leaving the Opera. Fredi takes
little Mab Mountney to her first Opera to-night. Enough to make us old
ones envious! You remember your first Opera, Fenellan? Sonnambula, with
me. I tell you, it would task the highest poetry--say, require, if you
like--showing all that's noblest, splendidest, in a young man, to
describe its effect on me. I was dreaming of my box at the Opera for a
year after. The Huguenots to-night. Not the best suited for little Mabsy;
but she'll catch at the Rataplan. Capital Opera; we used to think it the
best, before we had Tannhauser and Lohengrin and the Meistersinger.'

Victor hinted notes of the Conspiration Scene closing the Third Act of
the Huguenots. That sombre Chorus brought Mrs. Burman before him. He
drummed the Rataplan, which sent her flying. The return of a lively
disposition for dinner and music completed his emancipation from the yoke
of the baleful creature sitting half her days in the chemist's shop; save
that a thought of drugs brought the smell, and the smell the picture; she
threatened to be an apparition at any moment pervading him through his
nostrils. He spoke to Fenellan of hunger for dinner, a need for it;
singular in one whose appetite ran to the stroke of the hour abreast with
Armandine's kitchen-clock. Fenellan proposed a glass of sherry and
bitters at his Club over the way. He had forgotten a shower of
black-balls (attributable to the conjurations of old Ate) on a certain
past day. Without word of refusal, Victor entered a wine-merchant's
office, where he was unknown, and stating his wish for bitters and dry
sherry, presently received the glass, drank, nodded to the administering
clerk, named the person whom he had obliged and refreshed, and passed
out, remarking to Fenellan: 'Colney on Clubs! he's right; they're the
mediaeval in modern times, our Baron's castles, minus the Baron; dead
against public life and social duties. Business excuses my City Clubs;
but I shall take my name off my Club up West.'

'More like monasteries, with a Committee for Abbot, and Whist for the
services,' Fenellan said. 'Or tabernacles for the Chosen, and Grangousier
playing Divinity behind the veil. Well, they're social.'

'Sectionally social, means anything but social, my friend. However--and
the monastery had a bell for the wanderer! Say, I'm penniless or
poundless, up and down this walled desert of a street, I feel, I must
feel, these palaces--if we're Christian, not Jews: not that the Jews are
uncharitable; they set an: example, in fact . . . . '

He rambled, amusingly to the complacent hearing of Fenellan, who thought
of his pursuit of wealth and grand expenditure.

Victor talked as a man having his mind at leaps beyond the subject. He
was nearing to the Idea he had seized and lost on London Bridge.

The desire for some good news wherewith to inspirit Nataly, withdrew him
from his ineffectual chase. He had nought to deliver; on the contrary, a
meditation concerning her comfort pledged him to concealment which was
the no step, or passive state, most abhorrent to him.

He snatched at the name of Themison.

With Dr. Themison fast in his grasp, there was a report of progress to be
made to Nataly; and not at all an empty report.

Themison, then: he leaned on Themison. The woman's doctor should have an
influence approaching to authority with her.

Land-values in the developing Colonies, formed his theme of discourse to
Fenellan: let Banks beware.

Fenellan saw him shudder and rub the back of his head. 'Feel the wind?'
he said.

Victor answered him with that humane thrill of the deep tones, which at
times he had: 'No: don't be alarmed; I feel the devil. If one has wealth
and a desperate wish, he will speak. All he does, is to make me more
charitable to those who give way to him. I believe in a devil.'

'Horns and tail?'

'Bait and hook.'

'I haven't wealth, and I wish only for dinner,' Fenellan said.

'You know that Armandine is never two minutes late. By the way, you
haven't wealth--you have me.'

'And I thank God for you!' said Fenellan, acutely reminiscent of his
having marked the spiritual adviser of Mrs. Burman, the Rev. Groseman
Buttermore, as a man who might be useful to his friend.




CHAPTER XIV

DISCLOSES A STAGE ON THE DRIVE TO PARIS

A fortnight later, an extremely disconcerting circumstance occurred:
Armandine was ten minutes behind the hour with her dinner. But the
surprise and stupefaction expressed by Victor, after glances at his
watch, were not so profound as Fenellan's, on finding himself exchangeing
the bow with a gentleman bearing the name of Dr. Themison. His friend's
rapidity in pushing the combinations he conceived, was known: Fenellan's
wonder was not so much that Victor had astonished him again, as that he
should be called upon again to wonder at his astonishment. He did; and he
observed the doctor and Victor and Nataly: aided by dropping remarks.
Before the evening was over, he gathered enough of the facts, and had to
speculate only on the designs. Dr. Themison had received a visit from the
husband of Mrs. Victor Radnor concerning her state of health. At an
interview with the lady, laughter greeted him; he was confused by her
denial of the imputation of a single ailment: but she, to recompose him,
let it be understood, that she was anxious about her husband's condition,
he being certainly overworked; and the husband's visit passed for a
device on the part of the wife. She admitted a willingness to try a
change of air, if it was deemed good for her husband. Change of air was
prescribed to each for both. 'Why not drive to Paris?' the doctor said,
and Victor was taken with the phrase.

He told Fenellan at night that Mrs. Burman, he had heard, was by the sea,
on the South coast. Which of her maladies might be in the ascendant, he
did not know. He knew little. He fancied that Dr. Themison was
unsuspicious of the existence of a relationship between him and Mrs.
Burman: and Fenellan opined, that there had been no communication upon
private affairs. What, then, was the object in going to Dr. Themison? He
treated her body merely; whereas the Rev. Groseman Buttermore could be
expected to impose upon her conduct. Fenellan appreciated his own
discernment of the superior uses to which a spiritual adviser may be put,
and he too agreeably flattered himself for the corrective reflection to
ensue, that he had not done anything. It disposed him to think a happy
passivity more sagacious than a restless activity. We should let Fortune
perform her part at the wheel in working out her ends, should we
not?--for, ten to one, nine times out of ten we are thwarting her if we
stretch out a hand. And with the range of enjoyments possessed by Victor,
why this unceasing restlessness? Why, when we are not near drowning,
catch at apparent straws, which may be instruments having sharp edges?
Themison, as Mrs. Burman's medical man, might tell the lady tales that
would irritate her bag of venom.

Rarely though Fenellan was the critic on his friend, the shadow cast over
his negligent hedonism by Victor's boiling pressure, drove him into the
seat of judgement. As a consequence, he was rather a dull table-guest in
the presence of Dr. Themison, whom their host had pricked to anticipate
high entertainment from him. He did nothing to bridge the crevasse and
warm the glacier air at table when the doctor, anecdotal intentionally to
draw him out, related a decorous but pungent story of one fair member of
a sweet new sisterhood in agitation against the fixed establishment of
our chain-mail marriage-tie. An anecdote of immediate diversion was
wanted, expected: and Fenellan sat stupidly speculating upon whether the
doctor knew of a cupboard locked. So that Dr. Themison was carried on by
Lady Grace Halley's humourous enthusiasm for the subject to dilate and
discuss and specify, all in the irony of a judicial leaning to the side
of the single-minded social adventurers, under an assumed accord with his
audience; concluding: 'So there's an end of Divorce.'

'By the trick of multiplication,' Fenellan, now reassured, was content to
say. And that did not extinguish the cracker of a theme; handled very
carefully, as a thing of fire, it need scarce be remarked, three young
women being present.

Nataly had eyes on her girl, and was pleased at an alertness shown by Mr.
Sowerby to second her by crossing the dialogue. As regarded her personal
feelings, she was hardened, so long as the curtains were about her to
keep the world from bending black brows of inquisition upon one of its
culprits. But her anxiety was vigilant to guard her girl from an infusion
of any of the dread facts of life not coming through the mother's lips:
and she was a woman having the feminine mind's pudency in that direction,
which does not consent to the revealing of much. Here was the mother's
dilemma: her girl--Victor's girl, as she had to think in this
instance,--the most cloudless of the young women of earth, seemed, and
might be figured as really, at the falling of a crumb off the table of
knowledge, taken by the brain to shoot up to terrific heights of
surveyal; and there she rocked; and only her youthful healthiness brought
her down to grass and flowers. She had once or twice received the
electrical stimulus, to feel and be as lightning, from a seizure of facts
in infinitesimal doses, guesses caught off maternal evasions or the
circuitous explanation of matters touching sex in here and there a
newspaper, harder to repress completely than sewer-gas in great cities:
and her mother had seen, with an apprehensive pang of anguish, how
witheringly the scared young intelligence of the innocent creature
shocked her sensibility. She foresaw the need to such a flameful soul, as
bride, wife, woman across the world, of the very princeliest of men in
gifts of strength, for her sustainer and guide. And the provident mother
knew this peerless gentleman: but he had his wife.

Delusions and the pain of the disillusioning were to be feared for the
imaginative Nesta; though not so much as that on some future day of a
perchance miserable yokemating--a subjection or an entanglement--the
nobler passions might be summoned to rise for freedom, and strike a line
to make their logically estimable sequence from a source not honourable
before the public. Constantly it had to be thought, that the girl was her
father's child.

At present she had no passions; and her bent to the happiness she could
so richly give, had drawn her sailing smoothly over the harbour-bar of
maidenhood; where many of her sisters are disconcerted to the loss of
simplicity. If Nataly with her sleepless watchfulness and forecasts
partook of the French mother, Nesta's Arcadian independence likened her
somewhat in manner to the Transatlantic version of the English girl. Her
high physical animation and the burden of themes it plucked for delivery
carried her flowing over impediments of virginal self-consciousness, to
set her at her ease in the talk with men; she had not gone through the
various Nursery exercises in dissimulation; she had no appearance of
praying forgiveness of men for the original sin of being woman; and no
tricks of lips or lids, or traitor scarlet on the cheeks, or assumptions
of the frigid mask, or indicated reserve-cajoleries. Neither ignorantly
nor advisedly did she play on these or other bewitching strings of her
sex, after the fashion of the stamped innocents, who are the boast of
Englishmen and matrons, and thrill societies with their winsome
ingenuousness; and who sometimes when unguarded meet an artful serenader,
that is a cloaked bandit, and is provoked by their performances, and
knows anthropologically the nature behind the devious show; a sciential
rascal; as little to be excluded from our modern circles as Eve's own old
deuce from Eden's garden whereupon, opportunity inviting, both the fool
and the cunning, the pure donkey princess of insular eulogy, and the sham
one, are in a perilous pass.

Damsels of the swiftness of mind of Nesta cannot be ignorant utterly amid
a world where the hints are hourly scattering seed of the inklings; when
vileness is not at work up and down our thoroughfares, proclaiming its
existence with tableau and trumpet. Nataly encountered her girl's
questions, much as one seeks to quiet an enemy. The questions had soon
ceased. Excepting repulsive and rejected details, there is little to be
learnt when a little is known: in populous communities, density only will
keep the little out. Only stupidity will suppose that it can be done for
the livelier young. English mothers forethoughtful for their girls, have
to take choice of how to do battle with a rough-and-tumble Old England,
that lumbers bumping along, craving the precious things, which can be had
but in semblance under the conditions allowed by laziness to subsist, and
so curst of its shifty inconsequence as to worship in the concrete an
hypocrisy it abhors in the abstract. Nataly could smuggle or confiscate
here and there a newspaper; she could not interdict or withhold every one
of them, from a girl ardent to be in the race on all topics of popular
interest: and the newspapers are occasionally naked savages; the streets
are imperfectly garmented even by day; and we have our stumbling social
anecdotist, our spot-mouthed young man, our eminently silly woman; our
slippery one; our slimy one, the Rahab of Society; not to speak of Mary
the maid and the footman William. A vigilant mother has to contend with
these and the like in an increasing degree. How best?

There is a method: one that Colney Durance advocated. The girl's
intelligence and sweet blood invited a trial of it. Since, as he argued,
we cannot keep the poisonous matter out, mothers should prepare and
strengthen young women for the encounter with it, by lifting the veil,
baring the world, giving them knowledge to arm them for the fight they
have to sustain; and thereby preserve them further from the spiritual
collapse which follows the nursing of a false ideal of our life in
youth:--this being, Colney said, the prominent feminine disease of the
time, common to all our women; that is, all having leisure to shine in
the sun or wave in the wind as flowers of the garden.

Whatever there was of wisdom in his view, he spoilt it for English
hearing, by making use of his dry compressed sentences. Besides he was a
bachelor; therefore but a theorist. And his illustrations of his theory
were grotesque; meditation on them extracted a corrosive acid to consume,
in horrid derision, the sex, the nation, the race of man. The satirist
too devotedly loves his lash to be a persuasive teacher. Nataly had
excuses to cover her reasons for not listening to him.

One reason was, as she discerned through her confusion at the thought,
that the day drew near for her speaking fully to Nesta; when, between
what she then said and what she said now, a cruel contrast might strike
the girl and in toneing revelations now, to be more consonant with them
then;--in softening and shading the edges of social misconduct, it seemed
painfully possible to be sowing in the girl's mind something like the
reverse of moral precepts, even to smoothing the way to a rebelliousness
partly or wholly similar to her own. But Nataly's chief and her appeasing
reason for pursuing the conventional system with this exceptional young
creature, referred to the sentiments on that subject of the kind of young
man whom a mother elects from among those present and eligible, as
perhaps next to worthy to wed the girl, by virtue of good promise in the
moral department. She had Mr. Dudley Sowerby under view; far from the man
of her choice and still the practice of decorum, discretion, a pardonable
fastidiousness, appears, if women may make any forecast of the behaviour
of young men or may trust the faces they see, to, promise a future
stability in the husband. Assuredly a Dudley Sowerby would be immensely
startled to find in his bride a young woman more than babily aware of the
existence of one particular form of naughtiness on earth.

Victor was of no help: he had not an idea upon the right education of the
young of the sex. Repression and mystery, he considered wholesome for
girls; and he considered the enlightening of them--to some extent--a
prudential measure for their defence; and premature instruction is a
fire-water to their wild-in-woods understanding; and histrionic innocence
is no doubt the bloom on corruption; also the facts of current human
life, in the crude of the reports or the cooked of the sermon in the
newspapers, are a noxious diet for our daughters; whom nevertheless we
cannot hope to be feeding always on milk: and there is a time when their
adorable pretty ignorance, if credibly it exists out of noodledom, is
harmful:--but how beautiful the shining simplicity of our dear young
English girls! He was one of the many men to whose minds women come in
pictures and are accepted much as they paint themselves. Like his
numerous fellows, too, he required a conflict with them, and a worsting
at it, to be taught, that they are not the mere live stock we scheme to
dispose of for their good: unless Love should interpose, he would have
exclaimed. He broke from his fellows in his holy horror of a father's
running counter to love. Nesta had only to say, that she loved another,
for Dudley Sowerby to be withdrawn into the background of aspirants. But
love was unknown to the girl.

Outwardly, the plan of the Drive to Paris had the look of Victor's
traditional hospitality. Nataly smiled at her incorrigibly lagging
intelligence of him, on hearing that he had invited a company: 'Lady
Grace, for gaiety; Peridon and Catkin, fiddles; Dudley Sowerby and
myself, flutes; Barmby, intonation; in all, nine of us; and by the dear
old Normandy route, for the sake of the voyage, as in old times; towers
of Dieppe in the morning-light; and the lovely road to the capital! Just
three days in Paris, and home by any of the other routes. It's the drive
we want. Boredom in wet weather, we defy; we have our Concert--an hour at
night and we're sure of sleep.' It had a sweet simple air, befitting him;
as when in bygone days they travelled with the joy of children. For
travelling shook Nataly out of her troubles and gave her something of the
child's inheritance of the wisdom of life--the living ever so little
ahead of ourselves; about as far as the fox in view of the hunt. That is
the soul of us out for novelty, devouring as it runs, an endless feast;
and the body is eagerly after it, recording the pleasures, a daily chase.
Remembrance of them is almost a renewal, anticipation a revival. She
enraptured Victor with glimpses of the domestic fun she had ceased to
show sign of since the revelation of Lakelands. Her only regret was on
account of the exclusion of Colney Durance from the party, because of
happy memories associating him with the Seine-land, and also that his
bilious criticism of his countrymen was moderated by a trip to the
Continent. Fenellan reported Colney to be 'busy in the act of distilling
one of his Prussic acid essays.' Fenellan would have jumped to go. He
informed Victor, as a probe, that the business of the Life Insurance was
at periods 'fearfully necrological! Inexplicably, he was not invited. Did
it mean, that he was growing dull? He looked inside instead of out, and
lost the clue.

His behaviour on the evening of the departure showed plainly what would
have befallen Mr. Sowerby on the expedition, had not he as well as Colney
been excluded. Two carriages and a cab conveyed the excursionists, as
they merrily called themselves, to the terminus. They were Victor's
guests; they had no trouble, no expense, none of the nipper reckonings
which dog our pleasures; the state of pure bliss. Fenellan's enviousness
drove him at the Rev. Mr. Barmby until the latter jumped to the seat
beside Nesta in her carriage, Mademoiselle de Seilles and Mr. Sowerby
facing them. Lady Grace Halley, in the carriage behind, heard Nesta's
laugh; which Mr. Barmby had thought vacuous, beseeming little girls, that
laugh at nothings. She questioned Fenellan.

'Oh,' said he, 'I merely mentioned that the Rev. gentleman carries his
musical instrument at the bottom of his trunk.'

She smiled: 'And who are in the cab?'

'Your fiddles are in the cab, in charge of Peridon and Catkin. Those two
would have writhed like head and tail of a worm, at a division on the way
to the station. Point a finger at Peridon, you run Catkin through the
body. They're a fabulous couple.'

Victor cut him short. 'I deny that those two are absurd.'

'And Catkin's toothache is a galvanic battery upon Peridon.'

Nataly strongly denied it. Peridon and Catkin pertained to their genial
picture of the dear sweet nest in life; a dale never traversed by the
withering breath they dreaded.

Fenellan then, to prove that he could be as bad in his way as Colney,
fell to work on the absent Miss Priscilla Graves and Mr. Pempton, with a
pitchfork's exaltation of the sacred attachment of the divergently
meritorious couple, and a melancholy reference to implacable obstacles in
the principles of each. The pair were offending the amatory corner in the
generous good sense of Nataly and Victor; they were not to be hotly
protected, though they were well enough liked for their qualities, except
by Lady Grace, who revelled in the horrifying and scandalizing of Miss
Graves. Such a specimen of the Puritan middle English as Priscilla
Graves, was eastwind on her skin, nausea to her gorge. She wondered at
having drifted into the neighbourhood of a person resembling in her
repellent formal chill virtuousness a windy belfry tower, down among
those districts of suburban London or appalling provincial towns passed
now and then with a shudder, where the funereal square bricks-up the
Church, that Arctic hen-mother sits on the square, and the moving dead
are summoned to their round of penitential exercise by a monosyllabic
tribulation-bell. Fenellan's graphic sketch of the teetotaller woman
seeing her admirer pursued by Eumenides flagons--abominations of
emptiness--to the banks of the black river of suicides, where the one
most wretched light is Inebriation's nose; and of the vegetarian
violoncello's horror at his vision of the long procession of the flocks
and herds into his lady's melodious Ark of a mouth, excited and delighted
her antipathy. She was amused to transports at the station, on hearing
Mr. Barmby, in a voice all ophicleide, remark: 'No, I carry no
instrument.' The habitation of it at the bottom of his trunk, was not
forgotten when it sounded.

Reclining in warmth on the deck of the vessel at night, she said, just
under Victor's ear: 'Where are those two?'

'Bid me select the couple,' said he.

She rejoined: 'Silly man'; and sleepily gave him her hand for good night,
and so paralyzed his arm, that he had to cover the continued junction by
saying more than he intended: 'If they come to an understanding!'

'Plain enough on one side.'

'You think it suitable?'

'Perfection; and well-planned to let them discover it.' 'This is really
my favourite route; I love the saltwater and the night on deck.'

'Go on.'

'How?'

'Number your loves. It would tax your arithmetic.'

'I can hate.'

'Not me?'

Positively the contrary, an impulsive squeeze of fingers declared it; and
they broke the link, neither of them sensibly hurt; though a leaf or two
of the ingenuities, which were her thoughts, turned over in the
phantasies of the lady; and the gentleman was taught to feel that a never
so slightly lengthened compression of the hand female shoots within us
both straight and far and round the corners. There you have Nature, if
you want her naked in her elements, for a text. He loved his Nataly
truly, even fervently, after the twenty years of union; he looked about
at no other woman; it happened only that the touch of one, the chance
warm touch, put to motion the blind forces of our mother so remarkably
surcharging him. But it was without kindling. The lady, the much cooler
person, did nurse a bit of flame. She had a whimsical liking for the man
who enjoyed simple things when commanding the luxuries; and it became a
fascination, by extreme contrast, at the reminder of his adventurous
enterprises in progress while he could so childishly enjoy. Women who
dance with the warrior-winner of battles, and hear him talk his ball-room
trifles to amuse, have similarly a smell of gunpowder to intoxicate them.

For him, a turn on the deck brought him into new skies. Nataly lay in the
cabin. She used to be where Lady Grace was lying. A sort of pleadable,
transparent, harmless hallucination of the renewal of old service induced
him to refresh and settle the fair semi-slumberer's pillow, and fix the
tarpaulin over her silks and wraps; and bend his head to the soft mouth
murmuring thanks. The women who can dare the nuit blanche, and under
stars; and have a taste for holiday larks after their thirtieth, are
rare; they are precious. Nataly nevertheless was approved for guarding
her throat from the nightwind. And a softer southerly breath never
crossed Channel! The very breeze he had wished for! Luck was with him.

Nesta sat by the rails of the vessel beside her Louise. Mr. Sowerby in
passing, exchanged a description of printed agreement with her, upon the
beauty of the night--a good neutral topic for the encounter of the sexes
not that he wanted it neutral; it furnished him with a vocabulary. Once
he perceptibly washed his hands of dutiful politeness, in addressing
Mademoiselle de Seilles, likewise upon the beauty of the night; and the
French lady, thinking--too conclusively from the breath on the glass at
the moment, as it is the Gallic habit--that if her dear Nesta must
espouse one of the uninteresting creatures called men in her native land,
it might as well be this as another, agreed that the night was very
beautiful.

'He speaks grammatical French,' Nesta commented on his achievement. 'He
contrives in his walking not to wet his boots,' mademoiselle rejoined.

Mr. Peridon was a more welcome sample of the islanders, despite an
inferior pretension to accent. He burned to be near these ladies, and he
passed them but once. His enthusiasm for Mademoiselle de Seilles was
notorious. Gratefully the compliment was acknowledged by her, in her
demure fashion; with a reserve of comic intellectual contempt for the man
who could not see that women, or Frenchwomen, or eminently she among
them, must have their enthusiasm set springing in the breast before they
can be swayed by the most violent of outer gales. And say, that she is
uprooted;--he does but roll a log. Mr. Peridon's efforts to perfect
himself in the French tongue touched her.

A night of May leaning on June, is little more than a deliberate wink of
the eye of light. Mr. Barmby, an exile from the ladies by reason of an
addiction to tobacco, quitted the forepart of the vessel at the first
greying. Now was the cloak of night worn threadbare, and grey astir for
the heralding of gold, day visibly ready to show its warmer throbs. The
gentle waves were just a stronger grey than the sky, perforce of an
interfusion that shifted gradations; they were silken, in places oily
grey; cold to drive the sight across their playful monotonousness for
refuge on any far fisher-sail.

Miss Radnor was asleep, eyelids benignly down, lips mildly closed. The
girl's cheeks held colour to match a dawn yet unawakened though born.
They were in a nest shading amid silks of pale blue, and there was a
languid flutter beneath her chin to the catch of the morn-breeze.
Bacchanal threads astray from a disorderly front-lock of rich brown hair
were alive over an eyebrow showing like a seal upon the lightest and
securest of slumbers.

Mr. Barmby gazed, and devoutly. Both the ladies were in their oblivion;
the younger quite saintly; but the couple inseparably framed, elevating
to behold; a reproach to the reminiscence of pipes. He was near; and
quietly the eyelids of mademoiselle lifted on him. Her look was grave,
straight, uninquiring, soon accurately perusing; an arrow of Artemis for
penetration. He went by, with the sound in the throat of a startled
bush-bird taking to wing; he limped off some nail of the deck, as if that
young Frenchwoman had turned the foot to a hoof. Man could not be more
guiltless, yet her look had perturbed him; nails conspired; in his
vexation, he execrated tobacco. And ask not why, where reason never was.

Nesta woke babbling on the subject she had relinquished for sleep.
Mademoiselle touched a feathery finger at her hair and hood during their
silvery French chimes.

Mr. Sowerby presented the risen morning to them, with encomiums, after
they had been observing every variation in it. He spoke happily of the
pleasant passage, and of the agreeable night; particularly of the
excellent idea of the expedition by this long route at night; the
prospect of which had disfigured him with his grimace of
speculation--apparently a sourness that did not exist. Nesta had a
singular notion, coming of a girl's mingled observation and intuition,
that the impressions upon this gentleman were in arrear, did not strike
him till late. Mademoiselle confirmed it when it was mentioned; she
remembered to have noticed the same in many small things. And it was a
pointed perception.

Victor sent his girl down to Nataly, with a summons to hurry up and see
sunlight over the waters. Nataly came; she looked, and the outer wakened
the inner, she let the light look in on her, her old feelings danced to
her eyes like a, string of bubbles in ascent. 'Victor, Victor, it seems
only yesterday that we crossed, twelve years back--was it?--and in May,
and saw the shoal of porpoises, and five minutes after, Dieppe in view.
Dear French people! I share your love for France.'

'Home of our holidays!--the "drives"; and they may be the happiest. And
fifty minutes later we were off the harbour; and Natata landed, a
stranger; and at night she was the heroine of the town.'

Victor turned to a stately gentleman and passed his name to Nataly: 'Sir
Rodwell Balchington, a neighbour of Lakelands! She understood that Lady
Grace Halley was acquainted with Sir Rodwell:--hence this dash of brine
to her lips while she was drinking of happy memories, and Victor
evidently was pluming himself upon his usual luck in the fortuitous
encounter with an influential neighbour of Lakelands. He told Sir Rodwell
the story of how they had met in the salle a manger of the hotel the
impresario of a Concert in the town, who had in his hand the doctor's
certificate of the incapacity of the chief cantatrice to appear, and
waved it, within a step of suicide. 'Well, to be brief, my wife--"noble
dame Anglaise," as the man announced her on the Concert platform,
undertook one of the songs, and sang another of her own-pure contralto
voice, as you will say; with the result that there was a perfect tumult
of enthusiasm. Next day, the waiters of the hotel presented her with a
bouquet of Spring flowers, white, and central violets. It was in the
Paris papers, under the heading: Une amie d'outre Manche--I think that
was it?' he asked Nataly.

'I forget,' said she.

He glanced at her: a cloud had risen. He rallied her, spoke of the old
Norman silver cross which the manager of the Concert had sent, humbly
imploring her to accept the small memento of his gratitude. She nodded an
excellent artificial brightness.

And there was the coast of France under young sunlight over the waters.
Once more her oft-petitioning wish through the years, that she had
entered the ranks of professional singers, upon whom the moral scrutiny
is not so microscopic, invaded her, resembling a tide-swell into
rock-caves, which have been filled before and left to emptiness, and will
be left to emptiness again. Nataly had the intimation visiting us when,
in a decline of physical power, the mind's ready vivacity to conjure
illusions forsakes us; and it was, of a wall ahead, and a force impelling
her against it, and no hope of deviation. And this is the featureless
thing, Destiny; not without eyes, if we have a conscience to throw them
into it to look at us.

Counsel to her to live in the hour, came, as upon others on the vessel,
from an active breath of the salt prompting to healthy hunger; and hardly
less from the splendour of the low full sunlight on the waters, the
skimming and dancing of the thousands of golden shells away from under
the globe of fire.




CHAPTER XV

A PATRIOT ABROAD

Nine days after his master's departure, Daniel Skepsey, a man of some
renown of late, as a subject of reports and comments in the newspapers,
obtained a passport, for the identification, if need were, of his missing
or misapprehended person in a foreign country, of the language of which
three unpronounceable words were knocking about his head to render the
thought of the passport a staff of safety; and on the morning that
followed he was at speed through Normandy, to meet his master rounding
homeward from Paris, at a town not to be spoken as it is written, by
reason of the custom of the good people of the country, with whom we
would fain live on neighbourly terms:--yes, and they had proof of it, not
so very many years back, when they were enduring the worst which can
befall us--though Mr. Durance, to whom he was indebted for the writing of
the place of his destination large on a card, and the wording of the
French sound beside it, besides the jotting down of trains and the
station for the change of railways, Mr. Durance could say, that the
active form of our sympathy consisted in the pouring of cheeses upon them
when they were prostrate and unable to resist!

A kind gentleman, Mr. Durance, as Daniel Skepsey had recent cause to
know, but often exceedingly dark; not so patriotic as desireable, it was
to be feared; and yet, strangely indeed, Mr. Durance had said cogent
things on the art of boxing and on manly exercises, and he hoped--he was
emphatic in saying he hoped--we should be regenerated. He must have
meant, that boxing--on a grand scale would contribute to it. He said,
that a blow now and then was wholesome for us all. He recommended a
monthly private whipping for old gentlemen who decline the use of the
gloves, to disperse their humours; not excluding Judges and Magistrates:
he could hardly be in earnest. He spoke in a clergyman's voice, and said
it would be payment of good assurance money, beneficial to their souls:
he seemed to mean it. He said, that old gentlemen were bottled vapours,
and it was good for them to uncork them periodically. He said, they
should be excused half the strokes if they danced nightly--they resented
motion. He seemed sadly wanting in veneration.

But he might not positively intend what he said. Skepsey could overlook
everything he said, except the girding at England. For where is a braver
people, notwithstanding appearances! Skepsey knew of dozens of gallant
bruisers, ready for the cry to strip to the belt; worthy, with a little
public encouragement, to rank beside their grandfathers of the Ring, in
the brilliant times when royalty and nobility countenanced the manly art,
our nursery of heroes, and there was not the existing unhappy division of
classes. He still trusted to convince Mr. Durance, by means of argument
and happy instances, historical and immediate, that the English may
justly consider themselves the elect of nations, for reasons better than
their accumulation of the piles of gold-better than 'usurers' reasons,'
as Mr. Durance called them. Much that Mr. Durance had said at intervals
was, although remembered almost to the letter of the phrase, beyond his
comprehension, and he put it aside, with penitent blinking at his
deficiency.

All the while, he was hearing a rattle of voluble tongues around him, and
a shout of stations, intelligible as a wash of pebbles, and blocks in a
torrent. Generally the men slouched when they were not running. At Dieppe
he had noticed muscular fellows; he admitted them to be nimbler on the
legs than ours; and that may count both ways, he consoled a patriotic
vanity by thinking; instantly rebuking the thought; for he had read
chapters of Military History. He sat eyeing the front row of figures in
his third-class carriage, musing on the kind of soldiers we might, heaven
designing it, have to face, and how to beat them; until he gazed on
Rouen, knowing by the size of it and by what Mr. Durance had informed him
of the city on the river, that it must be the very city of Rouen, not so
many years back a violated place, at the mercy of a foreign foe. Strong
pity laid hold of Skepsey. He fortified the heights for defence, but saw
at a glance that it was the city for modern artillery to command, crush
and enter. He lost idea of these afflicted people as foes, merely
complaining of their attacks on England, and their menaces in their
Journals and pamphlets; and he renounced certain views of the country to
be marched over on the road by this route to Paris, for the dictation of
terms of peace at the gates of the French capital, sparing them the
shameful entry; and this after the rout of their attempt at an invasion
of the Island!

A man opposite him was looking amicably on his lively grey eyes. Skepsey
handed a card from his pocket. The man perused it, and crying: 'Dreux?'
waved out of the carriage-window at a westerly distance, naming Rouen as
not the place, not at all, totally other. Thus we are taught, that a
foreign General, ignorant of the language, must confine himself to
defensive operations at home; he would be a child in the hands of the
commonest man he meets. Brilliant with thanks in signs, Skepsey drew from
his friend a course of instruction in French names, for our necessities
on a line of march. The roads to Great Britain's metropolis, and the
supplies of forage and provision at every stage of a march on London, are
marked in the military offices of these people; and that, with their
barking Journals, is a piece of knowledge to justify a belligerent return
for it. Only we pray to be let live peacefully.

Fervently we pray it when this good man, a total stranger to us, conducts
an ignorant foreigner from one station to another through the streets of
Rouen, after a short stoppage at the buffet and assistance in the
identification of coins; then, lifting his cap to us, retires.

And why be dealing wounds and death? It is a more blessed thing to keep
the Commandments. But how is it possible to keep the Commandments if you
have a vexatious wife?

Martha Skepsey had given him a son to show the hereditary energy in his
crying and coughing; and it was owing, he could plead, to her habits and
her tongue, that he sometimes, that he might avoid the doing of
worse--for she wanted correction and was improved by it--courted the
excitement of a short exhibition of skill, man to man, on publicans'
first floors. He could have told the magistrates so, in part apology for
the circumstances dragging him the other day, so recently, before his
Worship; and he might have told it, if he had not remembered Captain
Dartrey Fenellan's words about treating women chivalrously which was
interpreted by Skepsey as correcting them, when called upon to do it, but
never exposing them only, if allowed to account for the circumstances
pushing us into the newspapers, we should not present so guilty a look
before the public.

Furthermore, as to how far it is the duty of a man to serve his master,
there is likewise question: whether is he, while receiving reproof and
punishment for excess of zeal in the service of his master, not to
mention the welfare of the country, morally--without establishing it as a
principle--exonerated? Miss Graves might be asked save that one would not
voluntarily trouble a lady on such subjects. But supposing, says the
opposing counsel, now at work in Skepsey's conscience, supposing this
act, for which, contraveneing the law of the land, you are reproved and
punished, to be agreeable to you, how then? We answer, supposing it--and
we take uncomplainingly the magistrate's reproof and punishment--morally
justified can it be expected of us to have the sense of guilt, although
we wear and know we wear a guilty look before the public?

His master and the dear ladies would hear of it; perhaps they knew of it
now; with them would rest the settlement of the distressing inquiry. The
ladies would be shocked ladies cannot bear any semblance of roughness,
not even with the gloves:--and knowing, as they must, that our practise
of the manly art is for their protection.

Skepsey's grievous prospect of the hour to come under judgement of a sex
that was ever a riddle unread, clouded him on the approach to Dreux. He
studied the country and the people eagerly; he forbore to conduct great
military operations. Mr. Durance had spoken of big battles round about
the town of Dreux; also of a wonderful Mausoleum there, not equally
interesting. The little man was in deeper gloom than a day sobering on
crimson dusk when the train stopped and his quick ear caught the sound of
the station, as pronounced by his friend at Rouen.

He handed his card to the station-master. A glance, and the latter
signalled to a porter, saying: 'Paradis'; and the porter laid hold of
Skepsey's bag. Skepsey's grasp was firm; he pulled, the porter pulled.
Skepsey heard explanatory speech accompanying a wrench. He wrenched back
with vigour, and in his own tongue exclaimed, that he held to the bag
because his master's letters were in the bag, all the way from England.
For a minute, there was a downright trial of muscle and will: the porter
appeared furiously excited, Skepsey had a look of cooled steel. Then the
Frenchman, requiring to shrug, gave way to the Englishman's eccentric
obstinacy, and signified that he was his guide. Quite so, and Skepsey
showed alacrity and confidence in following; he carried his bag. But with
the remembrance of the kindly serviceable man at Rouen, he sought to
convey to the porter, that the terms of their association were cordial. A
waving of the right hand to the heavens ratified the treaty on the French
side. Nods and smiles and gesticulations, with across-Channel vocables,
as it were Dover cliffs to Calais sands and back, pleasantly beguiled the
way down to the Hotel du Paradis, under the Mausoleum heights, where
Skepsey fumbled at his pocket for coin current; but the Frenchman, all
shaken by a tornado of negation, clapped him on the shoulder, and sang
him a quatrain. Skepsey had in politeness to stand listening, and
blinking, plunged in the contrition of ignorance, eclipsed. He took it to
signify something to the effect, that money should not pass between
friends. It was the amatory farewell address of Henri IV. to his
Charmante Gabrielle; and with

            'Perce de mille lords,
             L'honneur m'appelle
             Au champ de Mars,'

the Frenchman, in a backing of measured steps, apologized for his
enforced withdrawal from the stranger who had captured his heart.

Skepsey's card was taken in the passage of the hotel. A clean-capped
maid, brave on the legs, like all he had seen of these people, preceded
him at quick march to an upper chamber. When he descended, bag in hand,
she flung open the salon-door of a table d'hote, where a goodly number
were dining and chattering; waiters drew him along to the section
occupied by his master's party. A chair had been kept vacant for him; his
master waved a hand, his dear ladies graciously smiled; he struck the bag
in front of a guardian foot, growing happy. He could fancy they had not
seen the English newspapers. And his next observation of the table showed
him wrecked and lost: Miss Nesta's face was the oval of a woeful O at his
wild behaviour in England during their absence. She smiled. Skepsey had
nevertheless to consume his food--excellent, very tasty soup-with the
sour sauce of the thought that he must be tongue-tied in his defence for
the time of the dinner.

'No, dear Skips, please! you are to enjoy yourself,' said Nesta.

He answered confusedly, trying to assure her that he was doing so, and he
choked.

His master had fixed his arrival for twenty minutes earlier. Skepsey
spoke through a cough of long delays at stations. The Rev. Septimus
Barmby, officially peacemaker, sounded the consequent excuse for a
belated comer. It was final; such is the power of sound. Looks were cast
from the French section of the table at the owner of the prodigious
organ. Some of the younger men, intent on the charms of Albion's
daughters, expressed in a, sign and a word or two alarm at what might be
beneath the flooring: and 'Pas encore Lui!' and 'Son avant-courrier!' and
other flies of speech passed on a whiff, under politest of cover, not to
give offence. But prodigies, claim attention.

Our English, at the close of the dinner, consented to say it was good,
without specifying a dish, because a selection of this or that would have
seemed to italicize, and commit, them, in the presence of ladies, to a
notice of the matter of-course, beneath us, or the confession of a low
sensual enjoyment; until Lady Grace Halley named the particular dressing
of a tete de veau approvingly to Victor; and he stating, that he had
offered a suggestion for the menu of the day, Nataly exclaimed, that she
had suspected it: upon which Mr. Sowerby praised the menu, Mr. Barmby,
Peridon and Catkin named other dishes, there was the right after-dinner
ring in Victor's ears, thanks to the woman of the world who had travelled
round to nature and led the shackled men to deliver themselves heartily.
One tap, and they are free. That is, in the moments after dinner, when
nature is at the gates with them. Only, it must be a lady and a
prevailing lady to give the tap. They need (our English) and will for the
ages of the process of their transformation need a queen.

Skepsey, bag in hand, obeyed the motion of his master's head and followed
him.

He was presently back, to remain with the ladies during his master's
perusal of letters. Nataly had decreed that he was not to be troubled; so
Nesta and mademoiselle besought him for a recital of his French
adventures; and strange to say, he had nothing to tell. The journey,
pregnant at the start, exciting in the course of it, was absolutely blank
at the termination. French people had been very kind; he could not say
more. But there was more; there was a remarkable fulness, if only he
could subordinate it to narrative. The little man did not know, that time
was wanted for imagination to make the roadway or riverway of a true
story, unless we press to invent; his mind had been too busy on the way
for him to clothe in speech his impressions of the passage of incidents
at the call for them. Things had happened, numbers of interesting minor
things, but they all slipped as water through the fingers; and he being
of the band of honest creatures who will not accept a lift from fiction,
drearily he sat before the ladies, confessing to an emptiness he was far
from feeling.

Nesta professed excessive disappointment. 'Now, if it had been in
England, Skips!' she said, under her mother's gentle gloom of brows.

He made show of melancholy submission.

'There, Skepsey, you have a good excuse, we are sure,' Nataly said.

And women, when they are such ladies as these, are sent to prove to us
that they can be a blessing; instead of the dreadful cry to Providence
for the reason of the spread of the race of man by their means! He
declared his readiness, rejecting excuses, to state his case to them, but
for his fear of having it interpreted as an appeal for their kind aid in
obtaining his master's forgiveness. Mr. Durance had very considerately
promised to intercede. Skepsey dropped a hint or two of his naughty
proceedings drily aware that their untutored antipathy to the manly art
would not permit of warmth.

Nesta said: 'Do you know, Skips, we saw a grand exhibition of fencing in
Paris.'

He sighed. 'Ladies can look on at fencing! foils and masks! Captain
Dartrey Fenellan has shown me, and says, the French are our masters at
it.' He bowed constrainedly to mademoiselle.

'You box, M. Skepsey!' she said.

His melancholy increased: 'Much discouragement from Government, Society!
If ladies . . . but I do not venture. They are not against Games. But
these are not a protection . . . to them, when needed; to the country.
The country seems asleep to its position. Mr. Durance has remarked on
it:--though I would not always quote Mr. Durance . . . indeed, he says,
that England has invested an Old Maid's All in the Millennium, and is
ruined if it delays to come. "Old Maid," I do not see. I do not--if I may
presume to speak of myself in the same breath with so clever a gentleman,
agree with Mr. Durance in everything. But the chest-measurement of
recruits, the stature of the men enlisted, prove that we are losing the
nursery of our soldiers.'

'We are taking them out of the nursery, Skips, if you 're for quoting
Captain Dartrey,' said Nesta. 'We'll never haul down our flag, though,
while we have him!'

'Ah! Captain Dartrey!' Skepsey was refreshed by the invocation of the
name.

A summons to his master's presence cut short something he was beginning
to say about Captain Dartrey.




CHAPTER XVI

ACCOUNTS FOR SKEPSEY'S MISCONDUCT, SHOWING HOW IT AFFECTED NATALY

His master opened on the bristling business.

'What's this, of your name in the papers, your appearing before a
magistrate, and a fine? Tell the tale shortly.'

Skepsey fell upon his attitude for dialectical defence the modest form of
the two hands at rolling play and the head deferentially sidecast. But
knowing that he had gratified his personal tastes in the act of serving
his master's interests, an interfusion of sentiments plunged him into
self-consciousness; an unwonted state with him, clogging to a simple
story.

'First, sir, I would beg you to pardon the printing of your name beside
mine . . .'

'Tush: on with you.'

'Only to say, necessitated by the circumstances of the case. I read, that
there was laughter in the court at my exculpation of my conduct--as I
have to call it; and there may have been. I may have expressed myself
. . . . I have a strong feeling for the welfare of the country.'

'So, it seems, you said to the magistrate. Do you tell me, that the cause
of your gross breach of the law, was a consideration for the welfare of
the country? Run on the facts.'

'The facts--I must have begun badly, sir.' Skepsey rattled the dry facts
in his head to right them. From his not having begun well, they had
become dry as things underfoot. It was an error to have led off with the
sentiments. 'Two very, two very respectable persons--respectable--were
desirous to witness a short display of my, my system, I would say; of my
science, they call it.'

'Don't be nervous. To the point; you went into a field five miles out of
London, in broad day, and stood in a ring, the usual Tiff-raff about
you!'

'With the gloves: and not for money, Sir: for the trial of skill; not
very many people. I cannot quite see the breach of the law.'

'So you told the magistrate. You were fined for your inability to quite
see. And you had to give security.'

'Mr. Durance was kindly responsible for me, sir: an acquaintance of the
magistrate.'

'This boxing of yours is a positive mania, Skepsey. You must try to get
the better of it--must! And my name too! I'm to be proclaimed, as having
in my service an inveterate pugilist--who breaks the law from patriotism!
Male or female, these very respectable persons--the people your show was
meant for?'

'Male, sir. Females! . . . that is, not the respectable ones.'

'Take the opinion of the respectable ones for your standard of behaviour
in future.'

'It was a mere trial of skill, sir, to prove to one of the spectators,
that I could be as good as my word. I wished I may say, to conciliate
him, partly. He would not--he judged by size--credit me with . . . he
backed my adversary Jerry Scroom--a sturdy boxer, without the knowledge
of the first principles.'

'You beat him?'

'I think I taught the man that I could instruct, sir; he was
complimentary before we parted. He thought I could not have lasted. After
the second round, the police appeared.'

'And you ran!'

'No, sir; I had nothing on my conscience.'

'Why not have had your pugilistic display in a publican's room in town,
where you could have hammer-nailed and ding-donged to your heart's
content for as long as you liked!'

'That would have been preferable, from the point of view of safety from
intrusion, I can admit-speaking humbly. But one of the parties--I had a
wish to gratify him--is a lover of old English times and habits and our
country scenes. He wanted it to take place on green grass. We drove over
Hampstead in three carts and a gig, as a company of pleasure--as it was.
A very beautiful morning. There was a rest at a public-house. Mr. Shaplow
traces the misfortune to that. Mr. Jarniman, I hear, thinks it what he
calls a traitor in the camp. I saw no sign; we were all merry and
friendly.'

'Jarniman?' said Victor sharply. 'Who is the Jarniman?'

'Mr. Jarniman is, I am to understand from the acquaintance introducing
us--a Mr. Shaplow I met in the train from Lakelands one day, and again at
the corner of a street near Drury Lane, a ham and beef shop kept by a
Mrs. Jarniman, a very stout lady, who does the chief carving in the shop,
and is the mother of Mr. Jarniman: he is in a confidential place, highly
trusted.' Skepsey looked up from the hands he soaped: 'He is a curious
mixture; he has true enthusiasm for boxing, he believes in ghosts. He
mourns for the lost days of prize-fighting, he thinks that spectres are
on the increase. He has a very large appetite, depressed spirits. Mr.
Shaplow informs me he is a man of substance, in the service of a wealthy
lady in poor health, expecting a legacy and her appearance to him. He has
the look--Mr. Shaplow assures me he does not drink to excess: he is a
slow drinker.'

Victor straightened: 'Bad way of health, you said?'

'Mr. Jarniman spoke of his expectations, as being immediate: he put it,
that he expected her spirit to be out for him to meet it any day--or
night. He desires it. He says, she has promised it--on oath, he says, and
must feel that she must do her duty to him before she goes, if she is to
appear to him with any countenance after. But he is anxious for her in
any case to show herself, and says, he should not have the heart to
reproach her. He has principles, a tear for suffering; he likes to be
made to cry. Mrs. Jarniman, his mother, he is not married, is much the
same so far, except ghosts; she will not have them; except after strong
tea, they come, she says, come to her bed. She is foolish enough to sleep
in a close-curtained bed. But the poor lady is so exceedingly stout that
a puff of cold would carry her off, she fears.'

Victor stamped his foot. 'This man Jarniman serves a lady now in
a--serious, does he say? Was he precise?'

'Mr. Jarniman spoke of a remarkable number of diseases; very complicated,
he says. He has no opinion of doctors. He says, that the lady's doctor
and the chemist--she sits in a chemist's shop and swallows other people's
prescriptions that take her fancy. He says, her continuing to live is
wonderful. He has no reason to hurry her, only for the satisfaction of a
natural curiosity.'

'He mentioned her name?'

'No name, sir.'

Skepsey's limpid grey eyes confirmed the negative to Victor, who was
assured that the little man stood clean of any falsity.

'You are not on equal terms. You and the magistrate have helped him to
know who it is you serve, Skepsey.'

'Would you please to direct me, sir.'

'Another time. Now go and ease your feet with a run over the town. We
have music in half an hour. That you like, I know. See chiefly to amusing
yourself.'

Skepsey turned to go; he murmured, that he had enjoyed his trip.

Victor checked him: it was to ask whether this Jarniman had specified
one, any one of the numerous diseases afflicting his aged mistress.

Now Jarniman had shocked Skepsey with his blunt titles for a couple of
the foremost maladies assailing the poor lady's decayed constitution: not
to be mentioned, Skepsey's thought, in relation to ladies; whose organs
and functions we, who pay them a proper homage by restricting them to the
sphere so worthily occupied by their mothers up to the very oldest date,
respectfully curtain; their accepted masters are chivalrous to them,
deploring their need at times for the doctors and drugs. He stood looking
most unhappy. 'She was to appear, sir, in a few--perhaps a week, a
month.'

A nod dismissed him.

The fun of the expedition (and Dudley Sowerby had wound himself up to
relish it) was at night in the towns, when the sound of instrumental and
vocal music attracted crowds beneath the windows of the hotel, and they
heard zon, zon, violon, fete et basse; not bad fluting, excellent
fiddling, such singing as a maestro, conducting his own Opera, would have
approved. So Victor said of his darlings' voices. Nesta's and her
mother's were a perfect combination; Mr. Barmby's trompe in union,
sufficiently confirmed the popular impression, that they were artistes.
They had been ceremoniously ushered to their carriages, with expressions
of gratitude, at the departure from Rouen; and the Boniface at Gisors had
entreated them to stay another night, to give an entertainment. Victor
took his pleasure in letting it be known, that they were a quiet English
family, simply keeping-up the habits they practiced in Old England: all
were welcome to hear them while they were doing it; but they did not give
entertainments.

The pride of the pleasure of reversing the general idea of English
dulness among our neighbours, was perceived to have laid fast hold of
Dudley Sowerby at Dreux. He was at the window from time to time, counting
heads below. For this reason or a better, he begged Nesta to supplant the
flute duet with the soprano and contralto of the Helena section of the
Mefistofele, called the Serenade: La Luna immobile. She consulted her
mother, and they sang it. The crowds below, swollen to a block of the
street, were dead still, showing the instinctive good manners of the
people. Then mademoiselle astonished them with a Provencal or Cevennes
air, Huguenot, though she was Catholic; but it suited her mezzo-soprano
tones; and it rang massively of the martial-religious. To what heights of
spiritual grandeur might not a Huguenot France have marched! Dudley
Sowerby, heedlessly, under an emotion that could be stirred in him with
force, by the soul of religion issuing through music, addressed his
ejaculation to Lady Grace Halley. She did nor shrug or snub him, but
rejoined: 'I could go to battle with that song in the ears.' She liked
seeing him so happily transformed; and liked the effect of it on Nesta
when his face shone in talking. He was at home with the girl's eyes, as
he had never been. A song expressing in one of the combative and
devotional, went to the springs of his blood; for he was of an old
warrior race, beneath the thick crust of imposed peaceful maxims and
commercial pursuits and habitual stiff correctness. As much as wine, will
music bring out the native bent of the civilized man: endow him with
language too. He was as if unlocked; he met Nesta's eyes and ran in a
voluble interchange, that gave him flattering after-thoughts; and at the
moment sensibly a new and assured, or to some extent assured, station
beside a girl so vivid; by which the young lady would be helped to
perceive his unvoiced solider gifts.

Nataly observed them, thinking of Victor's mastering subtlety. She had
hoped (having clearly seen the sheep's eye in the shepherd) that Mr.
Barmby would be watchful to act as a block between them; and therefore
she had stipulated for his presence on the journey. She remembered
Victor's rapid look of readiness to consent:--he reckoned how naturally
Mr. Barmby would serve as a foil to any younger man. Mr. Barmby had tried
all along to perform his part: he had always been thwarted; notably once
at Gisors, where by some cunning management he and mademoiselle found
themselves in the cell of the prisoner's Nail-wrought work while Nesta
had to take Sowerby's hand for help at a passage here and there along the
narrow outer castle-walls. And Mr. Barmby, upon occasions, had set that
dimple in Nesta's cheek quivering, though Simeon Fenellan was not at
hand, and there was no telling how it was done, beyond the evidence that
Victor willed it so.

From the day of the announcement of Lakelands, she had been brought more
into contact with his genius of dexterity and foresight than ever
previously: she had bent to the burden of it more; had seen herself and
everybody else outstripped--herself, of course; she did not count in a
struggle with him. But since that red dawn of Lakelands, it was almost as
if he had descended to earth from the skies. She now saw his mortality in
the miraculous things he did. The reason of it was, that through the
perceptible various arts and shifts on her level, an opposing spirit had
plainer view of his aim, to judge it. She thought it a mean one.

The power it had to hurry her with the strength of a torrent to an end
she dreaded, impressed her physically; so far subduing her mind, in
consequence, as to keep the idea of absolute resistance obscure, though
her bosom heaved with the breath; but what was her own of a mind hung
hovering above him, criticizing; and involuntarily, discomfortingly. She
could have prayed to be led blindly or blindly dashed on: she could trust
him for success; and her critical mind seemed at times a treachery. Still
she was compelled to judge.

When he said to her at night, pressing both her hands: 'This is the news
of the day, my love! It's death at last. We shall soon be thanking heaven
for freedom'; her fingers writhed upon his and gripped them in a torture
of remorse on his behalf. A shattering throb of her heart gave her sight
of herself as well. For so it is with the woman who loves in subjection,
she may be a critic of the man, she is his accomplice.'

'You have a letter, Victor?'

'Confirmation all round: Fenellan, Themison, and now Skepsey.'

He told her the tale of Skepsey and Jarniman, colouring it, as any
interested animated conduit necessarily will. Neither of them smiled.

The effort to think soberly exhausted and rolled her back on credulity.

It might not be to-day or next week or month: but so much testimony
pointed to a day within the horizon, surely!

She bowed her head to heaven for forgiveness. The murderous hope stood
up, stood out in forms and pictures. There was one of a woman at her ease
at last in the reception of guests; contrasting with an ironic haunting
figure of the woman of queenly air and stature under a finger of scorn
for a bold-faced impostor. Nataly's lips twitched at the remembrance of
quaint whimpers of complaint to the Fates, for directing that a large
instead of a rather diminutive woman should be the social offender
fearing exposure. Majesty in the criminal's dock, is a confounding
spectacle. To the bosom of the majestic creature, all her glorious
attributes have become the executioner's implements. She must for her
soul's health believe that a day of release and exoneration approaches.

'Barmby!--if my dear girl would like him best,' Victor said, in tenderest
undertones, observing the shadowing variations of her face; and pierced
her cruelly, past explanation or understanding;--not that she would have
objected to the Rev. Septimus as officiating clergyman.

She nodded. Down rolled the first big tear.

We cry to women; Land, ho!--a land of palms after storms at sea; and at
once they inundate us with a deluge of eye-water.

'Half a minute, dear Victor, not longer,' Nataly said, weeping, near on
laughing over his look of wanton abandonment to despair at sight of her
tears. 'Don't mind me. I am rather like Fenellan's laundress, the tearful
woman whose professional apparatus was her soft heart and a cake of soap.
Skepsey has made his peace with you?'

Victor answered: 'Yes, yes; I see what he has been about. We're a mixed
lot, all of us-the best! You've noticed, Skepsey has no laugh: however
absurd the thing he tells you, not a smile!'

'But you trust his eyes; you look fathoms into them. Captain Dartrey
thinks him one of the men most in earnest of any of his country.'

'So Nataly of course thinks the same. And he's a worthy little
velocipede, as Fenellan calls him. One wishes Colney had been with us.
Only Colney!--pity one can't cut his talons for the space before they
grow again.'

Ay, and in the presence of Colney Durance, Victor would not have been so
encouraging, half boyishly caressing, with Dudley Sowerby! It was the
very manner to sow seed of imitativeness in the girl, devoted as she was
to her father. Nataly sighed, foreseeing evil, owning it a superstition,
feeling it a certainty. We are easily prophets, sure of being justified,
when the cleverness of schemes devoted to material ends appears most
delicately perfect. History, the tales of households, the tombstone, are
with us to inspire. In Nataly's bosom, the reproof of her inefficiency
for offering counsel where Victor for his soul's sake needed it, was
beginning to thunder at whiles as a reproach of unfittingness in his
mate, worse than a public denunciation of the sin against Society.

It might be decreed that she and Society were to come to reconcilement. A
pain previously thought of, never previously so realized, seized her at
her next sight of Nesta. She had not taken in her front mind the contrast
of the innocent one condemned to endure the shadow from which the guilty
was by a transient ceremony released. Nature could at a push be eloquent
to defend the guilty. Not a word of vindicating eloquence rose up to
clear the innocent. Nothing that she could do; no devotedness, not any
sacrifice, and no treaty of peace, no possible joy to come, nothing could
remove the shadow from her child. She dreamed of the succour in
eloquence, to charm the ears of chosen juries while a fact spoke over the
population, with a relentless rolling out of its one hard word. But
eloquence, powerful on her behalf, was dumb when referred to Nesta. It
seemed a cruel mystery. How was it permitted by the Merciful Disposer!
. . . . Nataly's intellect and her reverence clashed. They clash to the end
of time if we persist in regarding the Spirit of Life as a remote
Externe, who plays the human figures, to bring about this or that issue,
instead of being beside us, within us, our breath, if we will; marking on
us where at each step we sink to the animal, mount to the divine, we and
ours who follow, offspring of body or mind. She was in her error, from
judgeing of the destiny of man by the fate of individuals. Chiefly her
error was, to try to be thinking at all amid the fevered tangle of her
sensations.

A darkness fell upon the troubled woman, and was thicker overhead when
her warm blood had drawn her to some acceptance of the philosophy of
existence, in a savour of gratification at the prospect of her equal
footing with the world while yet she lived. She hated herself for taking
pleasure in anything to be bestowed by a world so hap-hazard,
ill-balanced, unjust; she took it bitterly, with such naturalness as not
to be aware that it was irony and a poisonous irony moving her to welcome
the restorative ceremony because her largeness of person had a greater
than common need of the protection.




CHAPTER XVII

CHIEFLY UPON THE THEME OF A YOUNG MAID'S IMAGININGS

That Mausoleum at Dreux may touch to lift us. History, pleads for the
pride of the great discrowned Family giving her illumination there. The
pride is reverently postured, the princely mourning-cloak it wears
becomingly braided at the hem with fair designs of our mortal humility in
the presence of the vanquisher; against whom, acknowledgeing a visible
conquest of the dust, it sustains a placid contention in coloured glass
and marbles.

Mademoiselle de Seilles, a fervid Orleanist, was thanked for having
advised the curvature of the route homeward to visit 'the spot of so
impressive a monument': as it, was phrased by the Rev. Septimus Barmby;
whose exposition to Nesta of the beautiful stained-glass pictures of
incidents in the life of the crusading St. Louis, was toned to be
likewise impressive:--Colney Durance not being at hand to bewail the
pathos of his exhaustless 'whacking of the platitudes'; which still
retain their tender parts, but cry unheard when there is no cynic near.
Mr. Barmby laid-on solemnly.

Professional devoutness is deemed more righteous on such occasions than
poetic fire. It robes us in the cloak of the place, as at a funeral.
Generally, Mr. Barmby found, and justly, that it is in superior
estimation among his countrymen of all classes. They are shown by example
how to look, think, speak; what to do. Poets are disturbing; they cannot
be comfortably imitated, they are unsafe, not certainly the metal, unless
you have Laureates, entitled to speak by their pay and decorations; and
these are but one at a time-and a quotation may remind us of a parody, to
convulse the sacred dome! Established plain prose officials do better for
our English. The audience moved round with heads of undertakers.

Victor called to recollection Fenellan's 'Rev. Glendoveer' while Mr.
Barmby pursued his discourse, uninterrupted by tripping wags. And those
who have schemes, as well as those who are startled by the criticism in
laughter to discover that they have cause for shunning it, rejoice when
wits are absent. Mr. Sowerby and Nesta interchanged a comment on Mr.
Barmby's remarks: The Fate of Princes! The Paths of Glory! St. Louis was
a very distant Roman Catholic monarch; and the young gentleman of
Evangelical education could admire him as a Crusader. St. Louis was for
Nesta a figure in the rich hues of royal Saintship softened to homeliness
by tears. She doated on a royalty crowned with the Saint's halo, that
swam down to us to lift us through holy human showers. She listened to
Mr. Barmby, hearing few sentences, lending his eloquence all she felt: he
rolled forth notes of a minster organ, accordant with the devotional
service she was holding mutely. Mademoiselle upon St. Louis: 'Worthy to
be named King of Kings!' swept her to a fount of thoughts, where the
thoughts are not yet shaped, are yet in the breast of the mother
emotions. Louise de Seilles had prepared her to be strangely and deeply
moved. The girl had a heart of many strings, of high pitch, open to be
musical to simplest wandering airs or to the gales. This crypt of the
recumbent sculptured figures and the coloured series of acts in the
passage of the crowned Saint thrilled her as with sight of flame on an
altar-piece of History. But this King in the lines of the Crucifixion
leading, gave her a lesson of life, not a message from death. With such a
King, there would be union of the old order and the new, cessation to
political turmoil: Radicalism, Socialism, all the monster names of things
with heads agape in these our days to gobble-up the venerable, obliterate
the beautiful, leave a stoniness of floods where field and garden were,
would be appeased, transfigured. She hoped, she prayed for that glorious
leader's advent.

On one subject, conceived by her only of late, and not intelligibly, not
communicably: a subject thickly veiled; one which struck at her through
her sex and must, she thought, ever be unnamed (the ardent young creature
saw it as a very thing torn by the winds to show hideous gleams of a body
rageing with fire behind the veil): on this one subject, her hopes and
prayers were dumb in her bosom. It signified shame. She knew not the how,
for she had no power to contemplate it: there was a torment of earth and
a writhing of lurid dust-clouds about it at a glimpse. But if the new
crusading Hero were to come attacking that--if some born prince nobly man
would head the world to take away the withering scarlet from the face of
women, she felt she could kiss the print of his feet upon the ground.
Meanwhile she had enjoyment of her plunge into the inmost forest-well of
mediaeval imaginativeness, where youthful minds of good aspiration
through their obscurities find much akin to them.

She had an eye for little Skepsey too: unaware that these French Princes
had hurried him off to Agincourt, for another encounter with them and the
old result--poor dear gentlemen, with whom we do so wish to be friendly!
What amused her was, his evident fatigue in undergoing the slow parade,
and sheer deference to his betters, as to the signification of a holiday
on arrested legs. Dudley Sowerby's attention to him, in elucidating the
scenes with historical scraps, greatly pleased her. The Rev. Septimus of
course occupied her chiefly.

Mademoiselle was always near, to receive his repeated expressions of
gratitude for the route she had counselled. Without personal objections
to a well-meaning orderly man, whose pardonable error it was to be aiming
too considerably higher than his head, she did but show him the voluble
muteness of a Frenchwoman's closed lips; not a smile at all, and
certainly no sign of hostility; when bowing to his reiterated compliment
in the sentence of French. Mr. Barmby had noticed (and a strong sentiment
rendered him observant, unwontedly) a similar alert immobility of her
lips, indicating foreign notions of this kind or that, in England: an all
but imperceptible shortening or loss of corners at the mouth, upon
mention of marriages of his clergy: particularly once, at his reading of
a lengthy report in a newspaper of a Wedding Ceremony involving his
favourite Bishop for bridegroom: a report to make one glow like Hymen
rollicking the Torch after draining the bumper to the flying slipper. He
remembered the look, and how it seemed to intensify on the slumbering
features, at a statement, that his Bishop was a widower, entering into
nuptials in his fifty-fourth year. Why not? But we ask it of Heaven and
Man, why not? Mademoiselle was pleasant: she was young or youngish; her
own clergy were celibates, and--no, he could not argue the matter with a
young or youngish person of her sex. Could it be a reasonable woman--a
woman!--who, disapproved the holy nuptials of the pastors of the flocks?
But we are forbidden to imagine the conducting of an argument thereon
with a lady.

Luther . . . but we are not in Luther's time:--Nature . . . no, nor can
there possibly be allusions to Nature. Mr. Barmby wondered at Protestant
parents taking a Papistical governess for their young flower of English
womanhood. However, she venerated St. Louis; he cordially also; there
they met; and he admitted, that she had, for a Frenchwoman, a handsome
face, and besides an agreeably artificial ingenuousness in the looks
which could be so politely dubious as to appear only dubiously adverse.

The spell upon Nesta was not blown away on English ground; and when her
father and mother were comparing their impressions, she could not but
keep guard over the deeper among her own. At the Chateau de Gisors,
leftward off Vernon on Seine, it had been one of romance and wonderment,
with inquisitive historic soundings of her knowledge and mademoiselle's,
a reverence for the prisoner's patient holy work, and picturings of his
watchful waiting daily, Nail in hand, for the heaven-sent sunlight on the
circular dungeon-wall through the slits of the meurtrieres. But the
Mausoleum at Dreux spake religiously; it enfolded Mr. Barmby, his voice
re-edified it. The fact that he had discoursed there, though not a word
of the discourse was remembered, allied him to the spirit of a day rather
increasing in sacredness as it receded and left her less the possessor of
it, more the worshipper.

Mademoiselle had to say to herself: 'Impossible!' after seeing the drift
of her dear Nesta's eyes in the wake of the colossal English clergyman.
She fed her incredulousness indignantly on the evidence confounding it.
Nataly was aware of unusual intonations, treble-stressed, in the Bethesda
and the Galilee of Mr. Barmby on Concert evenings: as it were, the
towering wood-work of the cathedral organ in quake under emission of its
multitudinous outroar. The 'Which?' of the Rev. Septimus, addressed to
Nesta, when song was demanded of him; and her 'Either'; and his gentle
hesitation, upon a gaze at her for the directing choice, could not be
unnoticed by women.

Did he know a certain thing?--and dream of urging the suit, as an
indulgent skipper of parental pages?

Such haunting interrogations were the conspirators' daggers out at any
instant, or leaping in sheath, against Nataly's peace of mind. But she
trusted her girl's laughing side to rectify any little sentimental
overbalancing. She left the ground where maternal meditations are
serious, at an image of Mr. Barmby knocking at Nesta's heart as a lover.
Was it worth inquiry?

A feminine look was trailed across the eyes of mademoiselle, with mention
of Mr. Barmby's name.

Mademoiselle rippled her shoulders. 'We are at present much enamoured of
Bethesda.'

That watchfullest showing no alarm, the absurdity of the suspicion
smothered it.

Nataly had moreover to receive startling new guests:

Lady Rodwell Blachington: Mrs. Fanning, wife of the General: young Mrs.
Blathenoy, wife of the great bill-broker: ladies of Wrensham and about.
And it was a tasking of her energies equal to the buffeting of recurrent
waves on deep sea. The ladies were eager for her entry into Lakelands.
She heard that Victor had appointed Lady Blachington's third son to the
coveted post of clerk in the Indian house of Inchling and Radnor. These
are the deluge days when even aristocracy will cry blessings on the man
who procures a commercial appointment for one of its younger sons
offended and rebutted by the barrier of Examinations for the Civil
Service. 'To have our Adolphus under Mr. Victor Radnor's protection, is a
step!' Lady Blachington said. Nataly was in an atmosphere of hints and
revealings. There were City Dinners, to which one or other of the
residents about Lakelands had been taken before he sat at Victor's London
table. He was already winning his way, apparently without effort, to be
the popular man of that neighbourhood. A subterranean tide or a slipping
of earth itself seemed bearing her on. She had his promise indeed, that
he would not ask of her to enter Lakelands until the day of his freedom
had risen; but though she could trust to his word, the heart of the word
went out of it when she heard herself thanked by Lady Blachington (who
could so well excuse her at such a time of occupation for not returning
her call, that she called in a friendly way a second time, warmly to
thank her) for throwing open the Concert room at Lakelands in August, to
an Entertainment in assistance of the funds for the purpose of erecting
an East of London Clubhouse, where the children of the poor by day could
play, and their parents pass a disengaged evening. Doubtless a worthy
Charity. Nataly was alive to the duties of wealth. Had it been simply a
demand for a donation, she would not have shown that momentary pucker of
the brows, which Lady Blachington read as a contrast with the generous
vivacity of the husband.

Nataly read a leaf of her fate in this announcement. Nay, she beheld
herself as the outer world wexedly beholds a creature swung along to the
doing of things against the better mind. An outer world is thoughtless of
situations which prepare us to meet the objectionable with a will
benumbed;--if we do not, as does that outer world, belong to the party of
the readily heroical. She scourged her weakness: and the intimation of
the truth stood over her, more than ever manifest, that the deficiency
affecting her character lay in her want of language. A tongue to speak
and contend, would have helped her to carve a clearer way. But then
again, the tongue to speak must be one which could reproach, and strike
at errors; fence, and continually summon resources to engage the
electrical vitality of a man like Victor. It was an exultation of their
life together, a mark of his holiness for them both, that they had never
breathed a reproach upon one another.

She dropped away from ideas of remonstrance; faintly seeing, in her sigh
of submission, that the deficiency affecting her character would have
been supplied by a greater force of character, pressing either to speech
or acts. The confession of a fated inevitable in the mind, is weakness
prostrate. She knew it: but she could point to the manner of man she was
matched with; and it was not a poor excuse.

Mr. Barmby, she thought, deserved her gratitude in some degree for
stepping between Mr. Sowerby and Nesta. The girl not having inclinations,
and the young gentleman being devoid of stratagem, they were easily kept
from the dangerous count of two.

Mademoiselle would have said, that the shepherd also had rarely if ever a
minute quite alone with her lamb. Incredulously she perceived signs of a
shock. The secret following the signs was betrayed by Nesta in return for
a tender grasp of hands and a droll flutter of eyelids. Out it came, on a
nod first; then a dreary mention of a date, and an incident, to bring it
nearer to comprehension. Mr. Barmby--and decide who will whether it is
that Love was made to elude or that curates impelled by his fires are
subtle as nether--had outwitted French watchfulness by stealing minutes
enough on a day at Lakelands to declare himself. And no wonder the girl
looked so forlorn: he had shivered her mediaeval forest-palace of
illuminated glass, to leave her standing like a mountain hind, that
sniffs the tainted gale off the crag of her first quick leap from hounds;
her instincts alarmed, instead of rich imagination colouring and
fostering.

She had no memory for his words; so, and truly, she told her Louise:
meaning that she had only a spiceless memory; especially for the word
love in her ears from the mouth of a man.

There had been a dream of it; with the life-awakening marvel it would be,
the humbleness it would bring to her soul beneath the golden clothing of
her body: one of those faint formless dreams, which are as the bend of
grasses to the breath of a still twilight. She lived too spiritedly to
hang on any dream; and had moreover a muffled dread-shadow-sister to the
virginal desire--of this one, as of a fateful power that might drag her
down, disorder, discolour. But now she had heard it: the word, the very
word itself! in her own ears! addressed to her! in a man's voice! The
first utterance had been heard, and it was over; the chapter of the book
of bulky promise of the splendours and mysteries;--the shimmering woods
and bushy glades, and the descent of the shape celestial, and the
recognition--the mutual cry of affinity; and overhead the crimson
outrolling of the flag of beneficent enterprises hand in hand, all was at
an end. These, then, are the deceptions our elders tell of! That
masculine voice should herald a new world to the maiden. The voice she
had heard did but rock to ruin the world she had been living in.

Mademoiselle prudently forbore from satirical remarks on his person or on
his conduct. Nesta had nothing to defend: she walked in a bald waste.

'Can I have been guilty of leading him to think . . .?' she said, in a
tone that writhed, at a second discussion of this hapless affair.

'They choose to think,' mademoiselle replied. 'It is he or another. My
dear and dearest, you have entered the field where shots fly thick, as
they do to soldiers in battle; and it is neither your fault nor any
one's, if you are hit.'

Nesta gazed at her, with a shy supplicating cry of 'Louise.'

Mademoiselle immediately answered the tone of entreaty. 'Has it happened
to me? I am of the age of eight and twenty; passable, to look at: yes, my
dear, I have gone through it. To spare you the questions tormenting you,
I will tell you, that perhaps our experience of our feelings comes nigh
on a kind of resemblance. The first gentleman who did me the honour to
inform me of his passion, was a hunchback.'

Nesta cried 'Oh!' in a veritable pang of sympathy, and clapped hands to
her ears, to shut out Mr. Barmby's boom of the terrific word attacking
Louise from that deformed one.

Her disillusionment became of the sort which hears derision. A girl of
quick blood and active though unregulated intellect, she caught at the
comic of young women's hopes and experiences, in her fear of it.

'My own precious poor dear Louise! what injustice there is in the world
for one like my Louise to have a hunchback to be the first . . . !'

'But, my dear, it did me no harm.'

'But if it had been known!'

'But it was known!'

Nesta controlled a shuddering: 'It is the knowledge of it in
ourselves--that it has ever happened;--you dear Louise, who deserve so
much better! And one asks--Oh, why are we not left in peace! And do look
at the objects it makes of us!' Mademoiselle: could see, that the girl's
desperation had got hold of her humour for a life-buoy. 'It is really
worse to have it unknown--when you are compelled to be his partner in
sharing the secret, and feel as if it were a dreadful doll you conceal
for fear that everybody will laugh at its face.'

She resumed her seriousness: 'I find it so hard to be vexed with him and
really really like him. For he is a good man; but he will not let one
shake him off. He distresses: because we can't quite meet as we did. Last
Wednesday Concert evening, he kept away; and I am annoyed that I was
glad.'

'Moths have to pass through showers, and keep their pretty patterns from
damage as best they can,' said mademoiselle.

Nesta transformed herself into a disciple of Philosophy on the spot.
'Yes, all these feelings of ours are moth-dust! One feels them. I suppose
they pass. They must. But tell me, Louise, dear soul, was your poor dear
good little afflicted suitor--was he kindly pitied?'

'Conformably with the regulations prescribed to young damsels who are in
request to surrender the custody of their hands. It is easy to commit a
dangerous excess in the dispensing of that article they call pity of
them.'

'And he--did he?--vowed to you he could not take No for an answer?'

At this ingenuous question, woefully uttered, mademoiselle was pricked,
to smile pointedly. Nesta had a tooth on her under-lip. Then, shaking
vapours to the winds, she said: 'It is an honour, to be asked; and we
cannot be expected to consent. So I shall wear through it.--Only I do
wish that Mr. Fenellan would not call him The Inchcape Bell!' She
murmured this to herself.

Mr. Barmby was absent for two weeks. 'Can anything have offended him?'
Victor inquired, in some consternation, appreciating the man's worth, and
the grand basso he was; together with the need for him at the Lakelands
Concert in August.

Nataly wrote Mr. Barmby a direct invitation. She had no reply. Her
speculations were cut short by Victor, who handed her a brief note
addressed to him and signed by the Rev. Septimus, petitioning for a
private interview.

The formality of the request incensed Victor. 'Now, dear love, you see
Colney's meaning, when he says, there are people who have no intimacy in
them. Here's a man who visits me regularly once a week or more, has been
familiar for years--four, at least; and he wants to speak to me, and must
obtain the "privilege" by special appointment! What can be the meaning of
it?'

'You will hear to-morrow afternoon,' Nataly said, seeing one paved way to
the meaning--a too likely meaning. . . 'He hasn't been . . . nothing
about Fredi, surely!'

'I have had no information.'

'Impossible! Barmby has good sense; Bottesini can't intend to come
scraping on that string. But we won't lose him; he's one of us. Barmby
counts for more at a Charity Concert than all the catalogue, and
particularly in the country. But he's an excellent fellow--eh?'

'That he is,' Nataly agreed.

Victor despatched a cheerful curt consent to see Mr. Barmby privately on
the late afternoon of the day to follow.

Nesta, returning home from the park at that hour of the interview,
ignorant of Mr. Barmby's purpose though she was, had her fires
extinguished by the rolling roar of curfew along the hall-passage, out of
the library.




CHAPTER XVIII

SUITORS FOR THE HAND OF NESTA VICTORIA

When, upon the well-known quest, the delightful singer Orpheus took that
downward way, coming in sight of old Cerberus centiceps, he astutely
feigned inattention to the hostile appearances of the multiple beast, and
with a wave of his plectrum over the responsive lyre, he at the stroke
raised voice. This much you know. It may be communicated to you, that
there was then beheld the most singular spectacle ever exhibited on the
dizzy line of division between the living and the dead. For those
unaccustomed musical tones in the last thin whiff of our sustaining air
were so smartingly persuasive as to pierce to the vitals of the faithful
Old Dog before his offended sentiments had leisure to rouse their heads
against a beggar of a mortal. The terrible sugariness which poured into
him worked like venom to cause an encounter and a wrestling: his battery
of jaws expressed it. They gaped. At the same time, his eyeballs gave up.
All the Dog, that would have barked the breathing intruder an hundredfold
back to earth, was one compulsory centurion yawn. Tears, issue of the
frightful internal wedding of the dulcet and the sour (a ravishing rather
of the latter by the former), rolled off his muzzles.

Now, if you are not for insisting that a magnificent simile shall be
composed of exactly the like notes in another octave, you will catch the
fine flavour of analogy and be wafted in a beat of wings across the scene
of the application of the Rev. Septimus Barmby to Mr. Victor Radnor, that
he might enter the house in the guise of suitor for the hand of Nesta
Victoria. It is the excelling merit of similes and metaphors to spring us
to vault over gaps and thickets and dreary places. But, as with the
visits of Immortals, we must be ready to receive them. Beware, moreover,
of examining them too scrupulously: they have a trick of wearing to
vapour if closely scanned. Let it be gratefully for their aid.

So far the comparison is absolute, that Mr. Barmby passed: he was at
liberty to pursue his quest.

Victor could not explain how he had been brought to grant it. He was at
pains to conceal the bewilderment Mr. Barmby had cast on him, and make
Nataly see the smallness of the grant:--both of them were unwilling to
lose Barmby; there was not the slightest fear about Fredi, he said; and
why should not poor Barmby have his chance with the others in the
race!--and his Nataly knew that he hated to speak unkindly: he could cry
the negative like a crack of thunder in the City. But such matters as
these! and a man pleading merely for the right to see the girl!--and
pleading in a tone . . . 'I assure you, my love, he touched chords.'

'Did he allude to advantages in the alliance with him?' Nataly asked
smoothly.

'His passion--nothing else. Candid enough. And he had a tone--he has a
tone, you know. It 's not what he said. Some allusion to belief in a
favourable opinion of him . . . encouragement . . . on the part of the
mama. She would have him travelling with us! I foresaw it.'

'You were astonished when it came.'

'We always are.'

Victor taunted her softly with having encouraged Mr. Barmby.

She had thought in her heart--not seriously; on a sigh of
despondency--that Mr. Barmby espousing the girl would smooth a troubled
prospect: and a present resentment at her weakness rendered her shrewd to
detect Victor's cunning to cover his own: a thing imaginable of him
previously in sentimental matters, yet never accurately and so legibly
printed on her mind. It did not draw her to read him with a novel
familiarity; it drew her to be more sensible of foregone intimations of
the man he was--irresistible in attack, not impregnably defensive. Nor
did he seem in this instance humanely considerate: if mademoiselle's
estimate of the mind of the girl was not wrong, then Mr. Barmby's
position would be both a ridiculous and a cruel one. She had some silly
final idea that the poor man might now serve permanently to check the
more dreaded applicant: a proof that her ordinary reflectiveness was
blunted.

Nataly acknowledged, after rallying Victor for coming to have his
weakness condoned, a justice in his counter-accusation, of a loss of her
natural cheerfulness, and promised amendment, with a steely smile, that
his lips mimicked fondly; and her smile softened. To strengthen the dear
soul's hopes, he spoke, as one who had received the latest information,
of Dr. Themison and surgeons; little conscious of the tragic depths he
struck or of the burden he gave her heart to bear. Her look alarmed him.
She seemed to be hugging herself up to the tingling scalp, and was in a
moment marble to sight and touch. She looked like the old engravings of
martyrs taking the bite of the jaws of flame at the stake.

He held her embraced, feeling her body as if it were in the awful grip of
fingers from the outside of life.

The seizure was over before it could be called ominous. When it was once
over, and she had smiled again and rebuked him for excessive anxiety, his
apprehensions no longer troubled him, but subsided sensationally in wrath
at the crippled woman who would not obey the dictate of her ailments
instantly to perish and spare this dear one annoyance.

Subsequently, later than usual, he performed his usual mental penance for
it. In consequence, the wrath, and the wish, and the penitence, haunted
him, each swelling to possession of him in turn; until they united to
head a plunge into retrospects; which led to his reviewing the army of
charges against Mrs. Burman.

And of this he grew ashamed, attributing it to the morbid indulgence in
reflection: a disease never afflicting him anterior to the stupid fall on
London Bridge. He rubbed instinctively for the punctilio-bump, and could
cheat his fancy to think a remainder of it there, just below, half an
inch to the right of, the spot where a phrenologist, invited by Nataly in
old days, had marked philo-progenitiveness on his capacious and enviable
cerebrum. He knew well it was a fancy. But it was a fact also, that since
the day of the fall (never, save in merest glimpses, before that day), he
had taken to look behind him, as though an eye had been knocked in the
back of his head.

Then, was that day of the announcement of Lakelands to Nataly, to be
accounted a gloomy day? He would not have it so.

She was happily occupied with her purchases of furniture, Fredi with her
singing lessons, and he with his business; a grasp of many ribands,
reining-in or letting loose; always enjoyable in the act. Recently only
had he known when at home, a relaxation, a positive pleasure in looking
forward to the hours of the City office. This was odd, but so it was; and
looking homeward from the City, he had a sense of disappointment when it
was not Concert evening. The Cormyns, the Yatts, and Priscilla Graves,
and Pempton, foolish fellow, and that bothering Barmby, and Peridon and
Catkin, were the lineing of his nest. Well, and so they had been before
Lakelands rose. What had induced! . . . he suddenly felt foreign to
himself. The shrouded figure of his lost Idea on London Bridge went by.

A peep into the folds of the shroud was granted him:--Is it a truth, that
if we are great owners of money, we are so swollen with a force not
native to us, as to be precipitated into acts the downright contrary of
our tastes?

He inquired it of his tastes, which have the bad habit of unmeasured
phrasing when they are displeased, and so they yield no rational answer.
Still he gave heed to violent extraneous harpings against money. Epigrams
of Colney's; abuse of it and the owners of it by Socialist orators
reported in some newspaper corner; had him by the ears.

They ceased in the presence of Lady Grace Halley, who entered his office
to tell him she was leaving town for Whinfold, her husband's family-seat,
where the dear man lay in evil case. She signified her resignation to the
decrees from above, saying generously:

'You look troubled, my friend. Any bad City news?'

'I look troubled?' Victor said laughing, and bethought him of what the
trouble might be. 'City news would not cause the look. Ah, yes;--I was
talking in the street to a friend of mine on horseback the other day, and
he kept noticing his horse's queer starts. We spied half a dozen children
in the gutter, at the tail of the horse, one of them plucking at a hair.
"Please, sir, may I have a hair out of your horse's tail?" said the mite.
We patted the poor horse that grew a tail for urchins to pluck at. Men
come to the fathers about their girls. It's my belief that mothers more
easily say no. If they learn the word as maids, you'll say! However,
there's no fear about my girl. Fredi's hard to snare. And what brings you
Cityward?'

'I want to know whether I shall do right in selling out of the Tiddler
mine.'

'You have multiplied your investment by ten.'

'If it had been thousands!'

'Clearly, you sell; always jump out of a mounted mine, unless you're at
the bottom of it.'

'There are City-articles against the mine this morning--or I should have
been on my way to Whinfold at this moment. The shares are lower.'

'The merry boys are at work to bring your balloon to the ground, that you
may quit it for them to ascend. Tiddler has enemies, like the best of
mines: or they may be named lovers, if you like. And mines that have gone
up, go down for a while before they rise again; it's an affair of
undulations; rocket mines are not so healthy. The stories are false, for
the time. I had the latest from Dartrey Fenellan yesterday. He's here
next month; some time in August.'

'He is married, is he not?'

'Was.'

Victor's brevity sounded oddly to Lady Grace.

'Is he not a soldier?' she said.

'Soldiers and parsons!' Victor interjected.

Now she saw. She understood the portent of Mr. Barmby's hovering offer of
the choice of songs, and the recent tremulousness of the welling
Bethesda.

But she had come about her own business; and after remarking, that when
there is a prize there must be competition, or England will have to lower
her flag, she declared her resolve to stick to Tiddler, exclaiming: 'It's
only in mines that twenty times the stake is not a dream of the past!'

'The Riviera green field on the rock is always open to you,' said Victor.

She put out her hand to be taken. 'Not if you back me here. It really is
not gambling when yours is the counsel I follow. And if I'm to be a
widow, I shall have to lean on a friend, gifted like you. I love
adventure, danger;--well, if we two are in it; just to see my captain in
a storm. And if the worst happens, we go down together. It 's the
detestation of our deadly humdrum of modern life; some inherited love of
fighting.'

'Say, brandy.'

'Does not Mr. Durance accuse you of an addiction to the brandy novel?'

'Colney may call it what he pleases. If I read fiction, let it be
fiction; airier than hard fact. If I see a ballet, my troop of short
skirts must not go stepping like pavement policemen. I can't read dull
analytical stuff or "stylists" when I want action--if I'm to give my mind
to a story. I can supply the reflections. I'm English--if Colney 's right
in saying we always come round to the story with the streak of
supernaturalism.

I don't ask for bloodshed: that's what his "brandy" means.'

'But Mr. Durance is right, we require a shedding; I confess I expect it
where there's love; it's part of the balance, and justifies one's
excitement. How otherwise do you get any real crisis? I must read and
live something unlike this flat life around us.'

'There's the Adam life and the Macadam life, Fenellan says. Pass it in
books, but in life we can have quite enough excitement coming out of our
thoughts. No brandy there! And no fine name for personal predilections or
things done in domino!' Victor said, with his very pleasant face,
pressing her hand, to keep the act of long holding it in countenance and
bring it to a well-punctuated conclusion: thinking involuntarily of the
other fair woman, whose hand was his, and who betrayed a beaten visage
despite--or with that poor kind of--trust in her captain. But the thought
was not guilty of drawing comparisons. 'This is one that I could trust,
as captain or mate,' he pressed the hand again before dropping it.

'You judge entirely by the surface, if you take me for a shifty person at
the trial,' said Lady Grace.

Skepsey entered the room with one of his packets, and she was reminded of
trains and husbands.

She left Victor uncomfortably rufed: and how? for she had none of the
physical charms appealing peculiarly to the man who was taken with
grandeur of shape. She belonged rather to the description physically
distasteful to him.

It is a critical comment on a civilization carelessly distilled from the
jealous East, when visits of fair women to City offices can have this
effect. If the sexes are separated for an hour, the place where one is
excluded or not common to see, becomes inflammable to that appearing
spark. He does outrage to a bona Dea: she to the monasticism of the Court
of Law: and he and she awaken unhallowed emotions. Supposing, however,
that western men were to de-orientalize their gleeful notions of her, and
dis-Turk themselves by inviting the woman's voluble tongue to sisterly
occupation there in the midst of the pleading Court, as in the domestic
circle: very soon would her eyes be harmless: unless directed upon us
with intent.

That is the burning core of the great Question, our Armageddon in
Morality: Is she moral? Does she mean to be harmless? Is she not
untamable Old Nature? And when once on an equal footing with her lordly
half, would not the spangled beauty, in a turn, like the realistic
transformation-trick of a pantomime, show herself to be that wanton old
thing--the empress of disorderliness? You have to recollect, as the
Conservative acutely suggests, that her timidities, at present urging her
to support Establishments, pertain to her state of dependence. The party
views of Conservatism are, must be, founded, we should remember, on an
intimate acquaintance with her in the situations where she is almost
unrestrictedly free and her laughter rings to confirm the sentences of
classical authors and Eastern sages. Conservatives know what they are
about when they refuse to fling the last lattice of an ancient harem open
to air and sun-the brutal dispersers of mystery, which would despoil an
ankle of its flying wink.

Victor's opinions were those of the entrenched majority; objecting to the
occult power of women, as we have the women now, while legislating to
maintain them so; and forbidding a step to a desperately wicked female
world lest the step should be to wickeder. His opinions were in the
background, rarely stirred; but the lady had brought them forward; and he
fretted at his restlessness, vexed that it should be due to the intrusion
of the sex instead of to the charms of the individual. No sting of the
sort had bothered him, he called to mind, on board the Channel
boat-nothing to speak of. 'Why does she come here! Why didn't she go to
her husband! She gets into the City scramble blindfold, and catches at
the nearest hand to help her out! Nice woman enough.' Yes, but he was
annoyed with her for springing sensations that ran altogether heartless
to the object, at the same time that they were disloyal to the dear woman
their natural divinity. And between him and that dear woman, since the
communication made by Skepsey in the town of Dreux, nightly the dividing
spirit of Mrs. Burman lay cold as a corpse. They both felt her there.
They kissed coldly, pressed a hand, said good night.

Next afternoon the announcement by Skepsey of the Hon. Dudley Sowerby,
surprised Victor's eyebrows at least, and caused him genially to review
the visit of Lady Grace.

Whether or not Colney Durance drew his description of a sunken nobility
from the 'sick falcon' distinguishing the handsome features of Mr.
Sowerby, that beaked invalid was particularly noticeable to Victor during
the statement of his case, although the young gentleman was far from
being one, in Colney's words, to enliven the condition of domestic fowl
with an hereditary turn for 'preying'; eminently the reverse; he was of
good moral repute, a worker, a commendable citizen. But there was the
obligation upon him to speak--it is expected in such cases, if only as a
formality--of his 'love': hard to do even in view and near to the
damsel's reddening cheeks: it perplexed him. He dropped a veil on the
bashful topic; his tone was the same as when he reverted to the material
points; his present income, his position in the great Bank of Shotts and
Co., his prospects, the health of the heir to the Cantor earldom. He
considered that he spoke to a member of the City merchants, whose
preference for the plain positive, upon the question of an alliance
between families by marriage, lends them for once a resemblance to lords.
When a person is not read by character, the position or profession is
called on to supply raised print for the finger-ends to spell.

Hard on poor Fredi! was Victor's thought behind the smile he bent on this
bald Cupid. She deserved a more poetical lover! His paternal sympathies
for the girl besought in love, revived his past feelings as a wooer;
nothing but a dread of the influence of Mr. Barmby's toned eloquence upon
the girl, after her listening to Dudley Sowerby's addresses, checked his
contempt for the latter. He could not despise the suitor he sided with
against another and seemingly now a more dangerous. Unable quite to
repress the sentiment, he proceeded immediately to put it to his uses.
For we have no need to be scrupulously formal and precise in the
exposition of circumstances to a fellow who may thank the stars if such a
girl condescends to give him a hearing. He had this idea through the
conception of his girl's generosity. And furthermore, the cognizant eye
of a Lucretian Alma Mater having seat so strongly in Victor, demanded as
a right an effusion of the promising amorous graces on the part of the
acceptable applicant to the post of husband of that peerless. These being
absent, evidently non-existent, it seemed sufficient for the present,
after the fashion of the young gentleman, to capitulate the few material
matters briefly.

They were dotted along with a fine disregard of the stateliness of the
sum to be settled on Nesta Victoria, and with a distant but burning wish
all the while, that the suitor had been one to touch his heart and open
it, inspiriting it--as could have been done--to disclose for good and all
the things utterable. Victor loved clear honesty, as he loved light: and
though he hated to be accused of not showing a clean face in the light,
he would have been moved and lifted to confess to a spot by the touch at
his heart. Dudley Sowerby's deficiencies, however, were outweighed by the
palpable advantages of his birth, his prospects, and his good repute for
conduct; add thereto his gentlemanly manners. Victor sighed again over
his poor Fredi; and in telling Mr. Sowerby that the choice must be left
to her, he had the regrets of a man aware of his persuasive arts and how
they would be used, to think that he was actually making the choice.

Observe how fatefully he who has a scheme is the engine of it; he is no
longer the man of his tastes or of his principles; he is on a line of
rails for a terminus; and he may cast languishing eyes across waysides to
right and left, he has doomed himself to proceed, with a self-devouring
hunger for the half desired; probably manhood gone at the embrace of it.
This may be or not, but Nature has decreed to him the forfeit of
pleasure. She bids us count the passage of a sober day for the service of
the morrow; that is her system; and she would have us adopt it, to keep
in us the keen edge for cutting, which is the guarantee of enjoyment:
doing otherwise, we lose ourselves in one or other of the furious matrix
instincts; we are blunt to all else.

Young Dudley fully agreed that the choice must be with Miss Radnor; he
alluded to her virtues, her accomplishments. He was waxing to fervidness.
He said he must expect competitors; adding, on a start, that he was to
say, from his mother, she, in the case of an intention to present Miss
Radnor at Court . . . .

Victor waved hand for a finish, looking as though, his head had come out
of hot water. He sacrificed Royalty to his necessities, under a kind of
sneer at its functions: 'Court! my girl? But the arduous duties are over
for the season. We are a democratic people retaining the seductions of
monarchy, as a friend says; and of course a girl may like to count among
the flowers of the kingdom for a day, in the list of Court presentations;
no harm. Only there's plenty of time . . . very young girls have their
heads turned--though I don't say, don't imagine, my girl would. By and by
perhaps.'

Dudley was ushered into Mr. Inchling's room and introduced to the
figure-head of the Firm of Inchling, Pennergate, and Radnor: a
respectable City merchant indeed, whom Dudley could read-off in a glimpse
of the downright contrast to his partner. He had heard casual remarks on
the respectable City of London merchant from Colney Durance. A short
analytical gaze at him, helped to an estimate of the powers of the man
who kept him up. Mr. Inchling was a florid City-feaster, descendant of a
line of City merchants, having features for a wife to identify; as
drovers, they tell us, can single one from another of their round-bellied
beasts. Formerly the leader of the Firm, he was now, after dreary fits of
restiveness, kickings, false prophecies of ruin, Victor's obedient
cart-horse. He sighed in set terms for the old days of the Firm, when,
like trouts in the current, the Firm had only to gape for shoals of good
things to fatten it: a tale of English prosperity in quiescence; narrated
interjectorily among the by-ways of the City, and wanting only metre to
make it our national Poem.

Mr. Inchling did not deny that grand mangers of golden oats were still
somehow constantly allotted to him. His wife believed in Victor, and
deemed the loss of the balancing Pennergate a gain. Since that lamentable
loss, Mr. Inchling, under the irony of circumstances the Tory of
Commerce, had trotted and gallopped whither driven, racing like mad
against his will and the rival nations now in the field to force the
pace; a name for enterprise; the close commercial connection of a man who
speculated--who, to put it plainly, lived on his wits; hurried onward and
onward; always doubting, munching, grumbling at satisfaction, in
perplexity of the gratitude which is apprehensive of black Nemesis at a
turn of the road,--to confound so wild a whip as Victor Radnor. He had
never forgiven the youth's venture in India of an enormous purchase of
Cotton many years back, and which he had repudiated, though not his share
of the hundreds of thousands realized before the refusal to ratify the
bargain had come to Victor. Mr. Inchling dated his first indigestion from
that disquieting period. He assented to the praise of Victor's genius,
admitting benefits; his heart refused to pardon, and consequently his
head wholly to trust, the man who robbed him of his quondam comfortable
feeling of security. And if you will imagine the sprite of the aggregate
English Taxpayer personifying Steam as the malignant who has despoiled
him of the blessed Safety-Assurance he once had from his God Neptune
against invaders, you will comprehend the state of Mr. Inchling's mind in
regard to his terrific and bountiful, but very disturbing partner.

He thanked heaven to his wife often, that he had nothing to do with North
American or South American mines and pastures or with South Africa and,
gold and diamonds: and a wife must sometimes listen, mastering her inward
comparisons. Dr. Schlesien had met and meditated on this example of the
island energy. Mr. Inchling was not permitted by his wife to be much the
guest of the Radnor household, because of the frequent meeting there with
Colney Durance; Colney's humour for satire being instantly in bristle at
sight of his representative of English City merchants: 'over whom,' as he
wrote of the venerable body, 'the disciplined and instructed Germans not
deviously march; whom acute and adventurous Americans, with half a cock
of the eye in passing, compassionately outstrip.' He and Dr. Schlesien
agreed upon Mr. Inchling. Meantime the latter gentleman did his part at
the tables of the wealthier City Companies, and retained his appearance
of health; he was beginning to think, upon a calculation of the increased
treasures of those Companies and the country, that we, the Taxpayer,
ought not to leave it altogether to Providence to defend them;
notwithstanding the watchful care of us hitherto shown by our briny
Providence, to save us from anxiety and expense. But there are, he said,
'difficulties'; and the very word could stop him, as commonly when our
difficulty lies in the exercise of thinking.

Victor's African room, containing large wall-maps of auriferous regions,
was inspected; and another, where clerks were busy over miscellaneous
Continents. Dudley Sowerby hoped he might win the maiden.

He and Victor walked in company Westward. The shop of Boyle and Luckwort,
chemists, was not passed on this occasion. Dudley grieved that he had to
be absent from the next Concert for practise, owing to his engagement to
his mother to go down to the family seat near Tunbridge Wells. Victor
mentioned his relatives, the Duvidney maiden ladies, residing near the
Wells. They measured the distance between Cronidge and Moorsedge, the two
houses, as for half an hour on horseback.

Nesta told her father at home that the pair of them had been observed
confidentially arm in arm, and conversing so profoundly.

'Who, do you think, was the topic?' Victor asked.

She would not chase the little blue butterfly of a guess.




CHAPTER XIX

TREATS OF NATURE AND CIRCUMSTANCE AND THE DISSENSION BETWEEN THEM AND OF
A SATIRIST'S MALIGNITY IN THE DIRECTION OF HIS COUNTRY

There is at times in the hearts of all men of active life a vivid wild
moment or two of dramatic dialogue between the veteran antagonists,
Nature and Circumstance, when they, whose business it should be to be
joyfully one, furiously split; and the Dame is up with her shrillest
querulousness to inquire of her offspring, for the distinct original
motive of his conduct. Why did he bring her to such a pass! And what is
the gain? If he be not an alienated issue of the great Mother, he will
strongly incline to her view, that he put himself into harness to join
with a machine going the dead contrary way of her welfare; and thereby
wrote himself donkey, for his present reading. Soldiers, heroes, even the
braided, even the wearers of the gay cock's feathers, who get the honours
and the pocket-pieces, know the moment of her electrical eloquence. They
have no answer for her, save an index at the machine pushing them on yet
farther under the enemy's line of fire, where they pluck the golden
wreath or the livid, and in either case listen no more. They glorify her
topping wisdom while on the march to confound it. She is wise in her way.
But, it is asked by the disputant, If we had followed her exclusively,
how far should we have travelled from our starting-point? We of the world
and its prizes and duties must do her an injury to make her tongue
musical to us, and her argument worthy of attention. So it seems. How to
keep the proper balance between those two testy old wranglers, that
rarely pull the right way together, is as much the task for men in the
grip of the world, as for the wanton youthful fry under dominion of their
instincts; and probably, when it is done, man will have attained the
golden age of his retirement from service.

Why be scheming? Victor asked. Unlike the gallant soldiery, his question
was raised in the blush of a success, from an examination of the quality
of the thing won; although it had not changed since it was first coveted;
it was demonstrably the same: and an astonishing dry stick he held, as a
reward for perpetual agitations and perversions of his natural tastes.
Here was a Dudley Sowerby, the direct issue of the conception of
Lakelands; if indeed they were not conceived together in one; and the
young gentleman had moral character, good citizen substance, and station,
rank, prospect of a title; and the grasp of him was firm. Yet so far was
it from hearty, that when hearing a professed satirist like Colney
Durance remark on the decorous manner of Dudley's transparent courtship
of the girl, under his look of an awakened approval of himself, that he
appeared to be asking everybody:--Do you not think I bid fair for an
excellent father of Philistines?--Victor had a nip of spite at the
thought of Dudley's dragging him bodily to be the grandfather. Poor
Fredi, too!--necessarily the mother: condemned by her hard fate to feel
proud of Philistine babies! Though women soon get reconciled to it! Or do
they? They did once. What if his Fredi turned out one of the modern young
women, who have drunk of ideas? He caught himself speculating on that, as
on a danger. The alliance with Dudley really seemed to set him facing
backward.

Colney might not have been under prompting of Nataly when he derided
Dudley; but Victor was at war with the picture of her, in her compression
of a cruel laugh, while her eyelids were hard shut, as if to exclude the
young patriarch of Philistines' ridiculous image.

He hearkened to the Nature interrogating him, why had he stepped on a
path to put division between himself and his beloved?--the smallest of
gaps; and still the very smallest between nuptial lovers is a
division--and that may become a mortal wound to their one-life. Why had
he roused a slumbering world? Glimpses of the world's nurse-like,
old-fashioned, mother-nightcap benevolence to its kicking favourites; its
long-suffering tolerance for the heroic breakers of its rough-cast laws,
while the decent curtain continues dropped, or lifted only ankle-high;
together with many scenes, lively suggestions, of the choice of ways he
liked best, told of things, which were better things, incomprehensibly
forfeited. So that the plain sense of value insisted on more than one
weighing of the gain in hand: a dubious measure.

He was as little disposed to reject it as to stop his course at a goal of
his aim. Nevertheless, a gain thus poorly estimated, could not command
him to do a deed of humiliation on account of it. The speaking to this
dry young Dudley was not imperative at present. A word would do in the
day to come.

Nataly was busy with her purchases of furniture, and the practise for the
great August Concert. He dealt her liberal encouragements, up to the
verge of Dr. Themison's latest hummed words touching Mrs. Burman, from
which he jumped in alarm lest he should paralyze her again: the dear
soul's dreaded aspect of an earthy pallor was a spectre behind her
cheeks, ready to rush forth. Fenellan brought Carling to dine with him;
and Themison was confirmed by Carting, with incidents in proof; Caning by
Jarniman, also with incidents; one very odd one--or so it seemed, in the
fury of the first savour of it:--she informed Jarniman, Skepsey said his
friend Jarniman said, that she had dreamed of making her appearance to
him on the night of the 23rd August, and of setting the date on the
calendar over his desk, when she entered his room: 'Sitting-room, not
bedroom; she was always quite the lady,' Skepsey reported his Jarniman.
Mrs. Burman, as a ghost, would respect herself; she would keep to her
character. Jarniman quite expected the dream to be verified; she was a
woman of her word: he believed she had received a revelation of the
approaching fact: he was preparing for the scene.

Victor had to keep silent and discourse of general prosperity. His happy
vivaciousness assisted him to feel it by day. Nataly heard him at night,
on a moan: 'Poor soul!' and loudly once while performing an abrupt
demi-vault from back to side: 'Perhaps now!' in a voice through doors.
She schooled herself to breathe equably.

Not being allowed to impart the distressing dose of comfort he was
charged with, he swallowed it himself; and these were the consequences.
And an uneasy sleep was traditionally a matter for grave debate in the
Radnor family. The Duvidney ladies, Dorothea and Virginia, would have
cited ancestral names, showing it to be the worst of intimations. At
night, lying on his back beneath a weight of darkness, one heavily craped
figure, distinguishable through the gloom, as a blot on a black pad,
accused the answering darkness within him, until his mind was dragged to
go through the whole case by morning light; and the compassionate man
appealed to common sense, to stamp and pass his delectable sophistries;
as, that it was his intense humaneness, which exposed him to an
accusation of inhumanity; his prayer for the truly best to happen, which
anticipated Mrs. Burman's expiry. They were simple sophistries,
fabricated to suit his needs, readily taking and bearing the imprimatur
of common sense. They refreshed him, as a chemical scent a crowded room.

All because he could not open his breast to Nataly, by reason of her
feebleness; or feel enthusiasm in the possession of young Dudley! A dry
stick indeed beside him on the walk Westward. Good quality wood, no
doubt, but dry, varnished for conventional uses. Poor dear Fredi would
have to crown it like the May-day posy of the urchins of Craye Farm and
Creckholt!

Dudley wished the great City-merchant to appreciate him as a diligent
student of commercial matters: rivalries of Banks; Foreign and Municipal
Loans, American Rails, and Argentine; new Companies of wholesome
appearance or sinister; or starting with a dram in the stomach, or born
to bleat prostrate, like sheep on their backs in a ditch; Trusts and
Founders; Breweries bursting vats upon the markets, and England prone
along the gutters, gobbling, drunk for shares, and sober in the
possession of certain of them. But when, as Colney says, a grateful
England has conferred the Lordship on her Brewer, he gratefully
hands-over the establishment to his country; and both may disregard the
howls of a Salvation Army of shareholders.--Beaten by the Germans in
Brewery, too! Dr. Schlesien has his right to crow. We were ahead of them,
and they came and studied us, and they studied Chemistry as well; while
we went on down our happy-go-lucky old road; and then had to hire their
young Professors, and then to import their beer.

Have the Germans more brains than we English? Victor's blood up to the
dome of his cranium knocked the patriotic negative. But, as old Colney
says (and bother him, for constantly intruding!), the comfortably
successful have the habit of sitting, and that dulls the brain yet more
than it eases the person: hence are we outpaced; we have now to know we
are racing. Victor scored a mark for one of his projects. A
well-conducted Journal of the sharpest pens in the land might, at a
sacrifice of money grandly sunk, expose to his English how and to what
degree their sports, and their fierce feastings, and their opposition to
ideas, and their timidity in regard to change, and their execration of
criticism applied to themselves, and their unanimous adoption of it for a
weapon against others, are signs of a prolonged indulgence in the
cushioned seat. Victor saw it. But would the people he loved? He agreed
with Colney, forgetting the satirist's venom: to-wit; that the
journalists should be close under their editor's rod to put it in sound
bold English;--no metaphors, no similes, nor flowery insubstantiality:
but honest Saxon manger stuff: and put it repeatedly, in contempt of the
disgust of iteration; hammering so a soft place on the Anglican skull,
which is rubbed in consequence, and taught at last through soreness to
reflect.--A Journal?--with Colney Durance for Editor?--and called
conformably THE WHIPPING-TOP? Why not, if it exactly hits the
signification of the Journal and that which it would have the country do
to itself, to keep it going and truly topping? For there is no vulgarity
in a title strongly signifying the intent. Victor wrote it at night,
naming Colney for Editor, with a sum of his money to be devoted to the
publication, in a form of memorandum; and threw it among the papers in
his desk.

Young Dudley had a funny inquisitiveness about Dartrey Fenellan; owing to
Fredi's reproduction or imitation of her mother's romantic sentiment for
Dartrey, doubtless: a bit of jealousy, indicating that the dry fellow had
his feelings. Victor touched--off an outline of Dartrey's history and
character:--the half-brother of Simeon, considerably younger, and totally
different. 'Dartrey's mother was Lady Charlotte Kiltorne, one of the
Clanconans; better mother than wife, perhaps; and no reproach on her, not
a shadow; only she made the General's Bank-notes fly black paper. And--if
you 're for heredity--the queer point is, that Simeon, whose mother was a
sober-minded woman, has always been the spendthrift. Dartrey married one
of the Hennen women, all an odd lot, all handsome. I met her once. Colney
said, she came up here with a special commission from the Prince of
Darkness. There are women who stir the unholy in men--whether they mean
it or not, you know.'

Dudley pursed to remark, that he could not say he did know. And good for
Fredi if he did not know, and had his objections to the knowledge! But he
was like the men who escape colds by wrapping in comforters instead of
trusting to the spin of the blood.

'She played poor Dartrey pranks before he buried--he, behaved well to
her; and that says much for him; he has: a devil of a temper. I 've seen
the blood in his veins, mount to cracking. But there's the man: because
she was a woman, he never let it break out with her. And, by heaven, he
had cause. She couldn't be left. She tricked him, and she loved
him-passionately, I believe. You don't understand women loving the
husband they drag through the mire?'

Dudley did not. He sharpened his mouth.

'Buried, you said, sir?--a widower?'

'I've no positive information; we shall hear when he: comes back,' Victor
replied hurriedly. 'He got a drenching of all the damns in the British
service from his. Generalissimo one day at a Review, for a trooper's
negligence-button or stock missing, or something; and off goes Dartrey to
his hut, and breaks his sword, and sends in his resignation. Good soldier
lost. And I can't complain; he has been a right-hand man to me over in
Africa. But a man ought to have some control of his temper, especially a
soldier.'

Dudley put emphasis into his acquiescence.

'Worse than that temper of Dartrey's, he can't forgive an injury. He
bears a grudge against his country. You've heard Colney Durance abuse old
England. It's three parts factitious-literary exercise. It 's milk beside
the contempt of Dartrey's shrug. He thinks we're a dead people, if a
people; "subsisting on our fat," as Colney says.'

'I am not of opinion that we show it,' observed Dudley.

'We don't,' Victor agreed. He disrelished his companion's mincing tone of
a monumental security, and yearned for Dartrey or Simeon or Colney to be
at his elbow rather than this most commendable of orderly citizens, who
little imagined the treacherous revolt from him in the bosom of the
gentleman cordially signifying full agreement. But Dudley was not gifted
to read behind words and looks.

They were in the Park of the dwindling press of carriages, and here was
this young Dudley saying, quite commendably: 'It's a pity we seem to have
no means of keeping our parks select.'

Victor flung Simeon Fenellan at him in thought. He remembered a fable of
Fenellan's, about a Society of the Blest, and the salt it was to them to
discover an intruder from below, and the consequent accelerated measure
in their hymning.

'Have you seen anything offensive to you?' he asked.

'One sees notorious persons.'

Dudley spoke aloof from them--'out of his cold attics,' Fenellan would
have said.

Victor approved: with the deadened feeling common to us when first in sad
earnest we consent to take life as it is.

He perceived, too, the comicality of his having to resign himself to the
fatherly embrace of goodness.

Lakelands had him fast, and this young Dudley was the kernel of
Lakelands. If he had only been intellectually a little flexible in his
morality! But no; he wore it cap a pie, like a mediaeval knight his
armour. One had to approve. And there was no getting away from him. He
was good enough to stay in town for the practise of the opening overture
of the amateurs, and the flute-duet, when his family were looking for him
at Tunbridge Wells; and almost every day Victor was waylaid by him at a
corner of the Strand.

Occasionally, Victor appeared at the point of interception armed with
Colney Durance, for whom he had called in the Temple, bent on
self-defence, although Colney was often as bitter to his taste as to
Dudley's. Latterly the bitter had become a tonic. We rejoice in the
presence of goodness, let us hope; and still an impersonation of
conventional, goodness perpetually about us depresses. Dudley drove him
to Colney for relief. Besides it pleased Nataly that he should be
bringing Colney home; it looked to her as if he were subjecting Dudley to
critical inspection before he decided a certain question much, and
foolishly, dreaded by the dear soul. That quieted her. And another thing,
she liked him to be with Colney, for a clog on him; as it were, a
tuning-fork for the wild airs he started. A little pessimism, also, she
seemed to like; probably as an appeasement after hearing, and having to
share, high flights. And she was, in her queer woman's way, always
reassured by his endurance of Colney's company:--she read it to mean,
that he could bear Colney's perusal of him, and satiric stings. Victor
had seen these petty matters among the various which were made to serve
his double and treble purposes; now, thanks to the operation of young
Dudley within him, he felt them. Preferring Fenellan's easy humour to
Colney's acid, he was nevertheless braced by the latter's antidote to
Dudley, while reserving his entire opposition in the abstract.

For Victor Radnor and Colney Durance were the Optimist and Pessimist of
their society. They might have headed those tribes in the country. At a
period when the omnibus of the world appears to its quaint occupants to
be going faster, men are shaken into the acceptation, if not performance,
of one part or the other as it is dictated to them by their temperaments.
Compose the parts, and you come nigh to the meaning of the Nineteenth
Century: the mother of these gosling affirmatives and negatives divorced
from harmony and awakened by the slight increase of incubating motion to
vitality. Victor and Colney had been champion duellists for the rosy and
the saturnine since the former cheerfully slaved for a small stipend in
the City of his affection, and the latter entered on an inheritance
counted in niggard hundreds, that withdrew a briefless barrister disposed
for scholarship from the forlornest of seats in the Courts. They had
foretold of one another each the unfulfilled; each claimed the actual as
the child of his prediction. Victor was to have been ruined long back;
Colney the prey of independent bachelors. Colney had escaped his harpy,
and Victor could be called a millionaire and more. Prophesy was crowned
by Colney's dyspepsia, by Victor's ticklish domestic position. Their pity
for one another, their warm regard, was genuine; only, they were of
different temperaments; and we have to distinguish, that in many
estimable and some gifted human creatures, it is the quality of the blood
which directs the current of opinion.

Victor played-off Colney upon Dudley, for his internal satisfaction, and
to lull Nataly and make her laugh; but he could not, as she hoped he was
doing, take Colney into his confidence; inasmuch as the Optimist,
impelled by his exuberant anticipatory trustfulness, is an author, and
does things; whereas the Pessimist is your chaired critic, with the
delivery of a censor, generally an undoer of things. Our Optimy has his
instinct to tell him of the cast of Pessimy's countenance at the
confession of a dilemma-foreseen! He hands himself to Pessimy, as it were
a sugar-cane, for the sour brute to suck the sugar and whack with the
wood. But he cannot perform his part in return; he gets no compensation:
Pessimy is invulnerable. You waste your time in hurling a common
'tu-quoque' at one who hugs the worst.

The three walking in the park, with their bright view, and black view,
and neutral view of life, were a comical trio. They had come upon the
days of the unfanned electric furnace, proper to London's early August
when it is not pipeing March. Victor complacently bore heat as well as
cold: but young Dudley was a drought, and Colney a drug to refresh it;
and why was he stewing in London? It was for this young Dudley, who
resembled a London of the sparrowy roadways and wearisome pavements and
blocks of fortress mansions, by chance a water-cart spirting a stale
water: or a London of the farewell dinner-parties, where London's
professed anecdotist lays the dust with his ten times told: Why was not
Nataly relieved of her dreary round of the purchases of furniture! They
ought all now to be in Switzerland or Tyrol. Nesta had of late been
turning over leaves of an Illustrated book of Tyrol, dear to her after a
run through the Innthal to the Dolomites one splendid August; and she and
Nataly had read there of Hofer, Speckbacker, Haspinger; and wrath had
filled them at the meanness of the Corsican, who posed after it as victim
on St. Helena's rock; the scene in grey dawn on Mantua's fortress-walls
blasting him in the Courts of History, when he strikes for his pathetic
sublime.

Victor remembered how he had been rhetorical, as the mouthpiece of his
darlings. But he had in memory prominently now the many glorious pictures
of that mountain-land beckoning to him, waving him to fly forth from the
London oven:--lo, the Tyrolese limestone crags with livid peaks and snow
lining shelves and veins of the crevices; and folds of pinewood
undulations closed by a shoulder of snow large on the blue; and a
dazzling pinnacle rising over green pasture-Alps, the head of it shooting
aloft as the blown billow, high off a broken ridge, and wide-armed in its
pure white shroud beneath; tranced, but all motion in immobility, to the
heart in the eye; a splendid image of striving, up to crowned victory.
And see the long valley-sweeps of the hanging meadows and maize, and
lower vineyards and central tall green spires! Walking beside young
Dudley, conversing, observing too, Victor followed the trips and twists
of a rill, that was lured a little further down through scoops, ducts,
and scaffolded channels to serve a wainwright.

He heard the mountain-song of the joyful water: a wren-robin-thrush on
the dance down of a faun; till it was caught and muted, and the silver
foot slid along the channel, swift as moonbeams through a cloud, with an
air of 'Whither you will, so it be on'; happy for service as in freedom.
Then the yard of the inn below, and the rillwater twirling rounded
through the trout-trough, subdued, still lively for its beloved onward:
dues to business, dues to pleasure; a wedding of the two, and the wisest
on earth:-eh? like some one we know, and Nataly has made the comparison.
Fresh forellen for lunch: rhyming to Fenellan, he had said to her; and
that recollection struck the day to blaze; for his friend was a ruined
military captain living on a literary quill at the time; and Nataly's
tender pleading, 'Could you not help to give him another chance, dear
Victor?'--signifying her absolute trust in his ability to do that or more
or anything, had actually set him thinking of the Insurance Office; which
he started to prosperity, and Fenellan in it, previously an untutored
rill of the mountains, if ever was one.

Useless to be dwelling on holiday pictures: Lakelands had hold of him!

Colney or somebody says, that the greater our successes, the greater the
slaves we become.--But we must have an aim, my friend, and success must
be the aim of any aim!--Yes, and, says Colney, you are to rejoice in the
disappointing miss, which saved you from being damned by your bullet on
the centre.--You're dead against Nature, old Colney.--That is to carry
the flag of Liberty.--By clipping a limb!

Victor overcame the Pessimist in his own royal cranium-Court. He
entertained a pronounced dissension with bachelors pretending to
independence. It could not be argued publicly, and the more the
pity:--for a slight encouragement, he would have done it: his outlook
over the waves of bachelors and (by present conditions mostly
constrained) spinsters--and another outlook, midnight upon Phlegethon to
the thoughts of men, made him deem it urgent. And it helped the plea in
his own excuse, as Colney pointed out to the son of Nature. That, he had
to admit, was true. He charged it upon Mrs. Burman, for twisting the most
unselfish and noblest of his thoughts; and he promised himself it was to
cease on the instant when the circumstance, which Nature was remiss in
not bringing about to-day or to-morrow, had come to pass. He could see
his Nataly's pained endurance beneath her habitual submission. Her effort
was a poor one, to conceal her dread of the day of the gathering at
Lakelands.

On the Sunday previous to the day, Dr. Themison accompanied the amateurs
by rail to Wrensham, to hear 'trial of the acoustics' of the
Concert-hall. They were a goodly company; and there was fun in the
railway-carriage over Colney's description of Fashionable London's vast
octopus Malady-monster, who was letting the doctor fly to the tether of
its longest filament for an hour, plying suckers on him the while. He had
the look, to general perception, of a man but half-escaped: and as when
the notes of things taken by the vision in front are being set down upon
tablets in the head behind. Victor observed his look at Nataly. The look
was like a door aswing, revealing in concealing. She was not or did not
appear struck by it; perhaps, if observant, she took it for a busy
professional gentleman's holiday reckoning of the hours before the return
train to his harness, and his arrangements for catching it. She was, as
she could be on a day of trial, her enchanting majestic self
again--defying suspicions. She was his true mate for breasting a world
honoured in uplifting her.

Her singing of a duet with Nesta, called forth Dr. Themison's very warm
applause. He named the greatest of contraltos. Colney did better service
than Fenellan at the luncheon-table: he diverted Nataly and captured Dr.
Themison's ear with the narrative of his momentous expedition of European
Emissaries, to plead the cause of their several languages at the Court of
Japan: a Satiric Serial tale, that hit incidentally the follies of the
countries of Europe, and intentionally, one had to think, those of Old
England. Nesta set him going. Just when he was about to begin, she made
her father laugh by crying out in a rapture, 'Oh! Delphica!' For she was
naughtily aware of Dudley Sowerby's distaste for the story and disgust
with the damsel Delphica.

Nesta gave Dr. Themison the preliminary sketch of the grand object of the
expedition: indeed one of the eminent ones of the world; matter for an
Epic; though it is to be feared, that our part in it will not encourage a
Cis-Atlantic bard. To America the honours from beginning to end belong.

So, then, Japan has decided to renounce its language, for the adoption of
the language it may choose among the foremost famous European tongues.
Japan becomes the word for miraculous transformations of a whole people
at the stroke of a wand; and let our English enrol it as the most
precious of the powerful verbs. An envoy visits the principal Seats of
Learning in Europe. He is of a gravity to match that of his unexampled
and all but stupefying mission. A fluent linguist, yet an Englishman, the
slight American accent contracted during a lengthened residence in the
United States is no bar to the patriotism urging him to pay his visit of
exposition and invitation from the Japanese Court to the distinguished
Doctor of Divinity Dr. Bouthoin. The renown of Dr. Bouthoin among the
learned of Japan has caused the special invitation to him; a scholar
endowed by an ample knowledge and persuasive eloquence to cite and
instance as well as illustrate the superior advantages to Japan and
civilization in the filial embrace of mother English. 'For to this it
must come predestinated,' says the astonishing applicant. 'We seem to see
a fitness in it,' says the cogitative Rev. Doctor. 'And an Island England
in those waters, will do wonders for Commerce,' adds the former. 'We
think of things more pregnant,' concludes the latter, with a dry gleam of
ecclesiastical knowingness. And let the Editor of the Review upon his
recent pamphlet, and let the prelate reprimanding him, and let the
newspapers criticizing his pure Saxon, have a care!

Funds, universally the most convincing of credentials, are placed at Dr.
Bouthoin's disposal: only it is requested, that for the present the
expedition be secret. 'Better so,' says pure Saxon's champion. On a day
patented for secresy, and swearing-in the whole American Continent
through the cables to keep the secret by declaring the patent, the Rev.
Dr. Bouthoin, accompanied by his curate, the Rev. Mancate Semhians,
stumbling across portmanteaux crammed with lexicons and dictionaries and
other tubes of the voice of Hermes, takes possession of berths in the
ship Polypheme, bound, as they mutually conceive, for the biggest
adventure ever embarked on by a far-thoughted, high-thoughted, patriotic
pair speaking pure Saxon or other.

Colney, with apologies to his hearers, avoided the custom of our period
(called the Realistic) to create, when casual opportunity offers, a
belief in the narrative by promoting nausea in the audience. He passed
under veil the Rev. Doctor's acknowledgement of Neptune's power, and the
temporary collapse of Mr. Semhians. Proceeding at once to the comments of
these high-class missionaries on the really curious inquisitiveness of
certain of the foreign passengers on board, he introduced to them the
indisputably learned, the very argumentative, crashing, arrogant,
pedantic, dogmatic, philological German gentleman, Dr. Gannius, reeking
of the Teutonic Professor, as a library volume of its leather. With him
is his fairhaired artless daughter Delphica. An interesting couple for
the beguilement of a voyage: she so beautifully moderates his irascible
incisiveness! Yet there is a strange tone that they have. What, then, of
the polite, the anecdotic Gallic M. Falarique, who studiously engages the
young lady in colloquy when Mr. Semhians is agitating outside them to say
a word? What of that outpouring, explosive, equally voluble, uncontrolled
M. Bobinikine, a Mongol Russian, shaped, featured, hued like the
pot-boiled, round and tight young dumpling of our primitive boyhood,
which smokes on the dish from the pot? And what of another, hitherto
unnoticed, whose nose is of the hooked vulturine, whose name transpires
as Pisistratus Mytharete? He hears Dr. Bouthoin declaim some lines of
Homer, and beseeches him for the designation of that language. Greek, is
it? Greek of the Asiatic ancient days of the beginning of the poetic
chants? Dr. Gannius crashes cachinnation. Dr. Bouthoin caps himself with
the offended Don. Mr. Semhians opens half an eye and a whole mouth. There
must be a mystery, these two exclaim to one another in privacy. Delphica
draws Mr. Semhians aside.

Blushing over his white necktie, like the coast of Labrador at the
transient wink of its Jack-in-the-box Apollo, Mr. Semhians faintly tells
of a conversation he has had with the ingenuous fair one; and she ardent
as he for the throning of our incomparable Saxon English in the mouths of
the races of mankind. Strange!--she partly suspects the Frenchman, the
Russian, the attentive silent Greek, to be all of them bound for the
Court of Japan. Concurrents? Can it be? We are absolutely to enter on a
contention with rivals? Dr. Bouthoin speaks to Dr. Gannius. He is
astonished, he says; he could not have imagined it!

'Have you ever imagined anything?' Dr. Gannius asks him. Entomologist,
botanist, palaeontologist, philologist, and at sound of horn a ready
regimental corporal, Dr. Gannius wears good manners as a pair of
bath-slippers, to rally and kick his old infant of an Englishman; who, in
awe of his later renown and manifest might, makes it a point of
discretion to be ultra-amiable; for he certainly is not in training, he
has no alliances, and he must diplomatize; and the German is a strong
one; a relative too; he is the Saxon's cousin, to say the least. This
German has the habit of pushing past politeness to carry his
argumentative war into the enemy's country: and he presents on all sides
a solid rampart of recent great deeds done, and mailed readiness for the
doing of more, if we think of assailing him in that way. We are really
like the poor beasts which have cast their shells or cases, helpless
flesh to his beak. So we are cousinly.

Whether more amused than amazed, we know not, Dr. Gannius hears from 'our
simpleton of the pastures,' as he calls the Rev. Doctor to his daughter,
that he and Mr. Semhians have absolutely pushed forth upon this most
mighty of enterprises naked of any backing from their Government! Babes
in the Wood that they are! 'a la grace de dieu' at every turn that cries
for astutia, they show no sign or symbol of English arms behind them, to
support--and with the grandest of national prizes in view!--the pleading
oration before the Court of the elect, erudites, we will call them, of an
intelligent, yet half barbarous, people; hesitating, these, between
eloquence and rival eloquence, cunning and rival cunning. Why, in such a
case, the shadow-nimbus of Force is needed to decide the sinking of the
scale. But have these English never read their Shakespeare, that they
show so barren an acquaintance with human, to say nothing of
semi-barbaric, nature? But it is here that we Germans prove our claim to
being the sons of his mind.--Dr. Gannius, in contempt, throws off the
mask: he also is a concurrent. And not only is he the chosen by election
of the chief Universities of his land, he has behind him, as Athene
dilating Achilles, the clenched fist of the Prince of thunder and
lightning of his time. German, Japan shall be! he publicly swears before
them all. M. Falarique damascenes his sharpest smile; M. Bobinikine
double-dimples his puddingest; M. Mytharete rolls a forefinger over his
beak; Dr. Bouthoin enlarges his eye on a sunny mote. And such is the
masterful effect of a frank diplomacy, that when one party shows his
hand, the others find the reverse of concealment in hiding their own.

Dr. Bouthoin and Mr. Semhians are compelled to suspect themselves to be
encompassed with rivals, presumptively supported by their Governments.
The worthy gentlemen had hoped to tumble into good fortune, as in the
blessed old English manner. 'It has even been thus with us: unhelped we
do it!' exclaims the Rev. Doctor. He is roused from dejection by hearing
Mr. Semhians shyly (he has published verse) tell of the fairtressed
Delphica's phosphorial enthusiasm for our galaxy of British Poets.
Assisted by Mr. Semhians, he begins to imagine, that he has, in the
person of this artless devotee an ally, who will, through her worship of
our poets (by treachery to her sire-a small matter) sacrifice her
guttural tongue, by enabling him (through the exercise of her arts,
charms, intrigues--also a small matter) to obtain the first audience of
the Japanese erudites. Delphica, with each of the rivals in turn, is very
pretty Comedy. She is aware that M. Falarique is her most redoubtable
adversary, by the time that the vast fleet of steamboats (containing
newspaper reporters) is beheld from the decks of the Polypheme puffing
past Sandy Hook.

There Colney left them, for the next instalment of the serial.

Nesta glanced at Dudley Sowerby. She liked him for his pained frown at
the part his countrymen were made to play, but did wish that he would
keep from expressing it in a countenance that suggested a worried knot;
and mischievously she said: 'Do you take to Delphica?'

He replied, with an evident sincerity, 'I cannot say I do.'

Had Mr. Semhians been modelled on him?

'One bets on the German, of course--with Colney Durance,' Victor said to
Dr. Themison, leading him over the grounds of Lakelands.

'In any case, the author teaches us to feel an interest in the rivals. I
want to know what comes of it,' said the doctor.

'There's a good opportunity, one sees. But, mark me, it will all end in
satire upon poor Old England. According to Colney, we excel in nothing.'

'I do not think there is a country that could offer the entertainment for
which I am indebted to you to-day.'

'Ah, my friend, and you like their voices? The contralto?'

'Exquisite.'

Dr. Themison had not spoken the name of Radnor.

'Shall we see you at our next Concert-evening in town?' said Victor; and
hearing 'the privilege' mentioned, his sharp bright gaze cleared to
limpid. 'You have seen how it stands with us here!' At once he related
what indeed Dr. Themison had begun speculatively to think might be the
case.

Mrs. Burman Radnor had dropped words touching a husband, and of her
desire to communicate with him, in the event of her being given over to
the surgeons: she had said, that her husband was a greatly gifted man;
setting her head in a compassionate swing. This revelation of the husband
soon after, was filling. And this Mr. Radnor's comrade's manner of it,
was winning: a not too self-justifying tone; not void of feeling for the
elder woman; with a manly eulogy of the younger, who had flung away the
world for him and borne him their one dear child. Victor took the blame
wholly upon himself. 'It is right that you should know,' he said to the
doctor's thoughtful posture; and he stressed the blame; and a flame shot
across his eyeballs. He brought home to his hearer the hurricane of a man
he was in the passion: indicating the subjection of such a temperament as
this Victor Radnor's to trials of the moral restraints beyond his human
power.

Dr. Themison said: 'Would you--we postpone that as long as we can: but
supposing the poor lady . . . ?'

Victor broke in: 'I see her wish: I will.'

The clash of his answer rang beside Dr. Themison's faltering query.

We are grateful when spared the conclusion of a sentence born to stammer.
If for that only, the doctor pressed Victor's hand warmly.

'I may, then, convey some form of assurance, that a request of the kind
will be granted?' he said.

'She has but to call me to her,' said Victor, stiffening his back.




CHAPTER XX

THE GREAT ASSEMBLY AT LAKELANDS

Round the neighbourhood of Lakelands it was known that the day of the
great gathering there had been authoritatively foretold as fine, by Mr.
Victor Radnor; and he delivered his prophecy in the teeth of the
South-western gale familiar to our yachting month; and he really inspired
belief or a kind of trust; some supposing him to draw from reserves of
observation, some choosing to confide in the singularly winged sparkle of
his eyes. Lady Rodwell Blachington did; and young Mrs. Blathenoy; and
Mrs. Fanning; they were enamoured of it. And when women stand for Hope,
and any worshipped man for Promise, nothing less than redoubled confusion
of him dissolves the union. Even then they cling to it, under an
ejaculation, that it might and should have been otherwise; fancy partly
has it otherwise, in her caerulean home above the weeping. So it is good
at all points to prophecy with the aspect of the radiant day foretold.

A storm, bearing battle overhead, tore the night to pieces. Nataly's
faith in the pleasant prognostic wavered beneath the crashes. She had not
much power of heart to desire anything save that which her bosom
disavowed. Uproar rather appeased her, calmness agitated. She wished her
beloved to be spared from a disappointment, thinking he deserved all
successes, because of the rigours inflicted by her present tonelessness
of blood and being. Her unresponsive manner with him was not due to lack
of fire in the blood or a loss of tenderness. The tender feeling, under
privations unwillingly imposed, though willingly shared, now suffused her
reflections, owing to a gratitude induced by a novel experience of him;
known, as it may chance, and as it does not always chance, to both sexes
in wedded intimacy here and there; known to women whose mates are proved
quick to compliance with delicate intuitions of their moods of nature. A
constant, almost visible, image of the dark thing she desired, and was
bound not to desire, and was remorseful for desiring, oppressed her; a
perpetual consequent warfare of her spirit and the nature subject to the
thousand sensational hypocrisies invoked for concealment of its reviled
brutish baseness, held the woman suspended from her emotions. She coldly
felt that a caress would have melted her, would have been the temporary
rapture. Coldly she had the knowledge that the considerate withholding of
it helped her spirit to escape a stain. Less coldly, she thanked at heart
her beloved, for being a gentleman in their yoke. It plighted them over
flesh.

He talked to her on the pillow, just a few sentences; and, unlike
himself, a word of City affairs: 'That fellow Blathenoy, with his
increasing multitude of bills at the Bank: must watch him there, sit
there regularly. One rather likes his wife. By the way, if you see him
near me to-morrow, praise the Spanish climate; don't forget. He heads the
subscription list of Lady Blachington's Charity.'

Victor chuckled at Colney's humping of shoulders and mouth, while the
tempest seemed echoing a sulphurous pessimist. 'If old Colney had
listened to me, when India gave proof of the metal and South Africa began
heaving, he'd have been a fairly wealthy man by now . . . ha! it would
have genialized him. A man may be a curmudgeon with money: the rule is
for him to cuddle himself and take a side, instead of dashing at his
countrymen all round and getting hated. Well, Colney popular, can't be
imagined; but entertaining guests would have diluted his acid. He has the
six hundred or so a year he started old bachelor on; add his miserable
pay for Essays. Literature! Of course, he sours. But don't let me hear of
bachelors moralists. There he sits at his Temple Chambers hatching
epigrams . . . pretends to have the office of critic! Honest old fellow,
as far as his condition permits. I tell him it will be fine to-morrow.'

'You are generally right, dear,' Nataly said.

Her dropping breath was audible.

Victor smartly commended her to slumber, with heaven's blessing on her
and a dose of soft nursery prattle.

He squeezed her hand. He kissed her lips by day. She heard him sigh
settling himself into the breast of night for milk of sleep, like one of
the world's good children. She could have turned to him, to show him she
was in harmony with the holy night and loving world, but for the fear
founded on a knowledge of the man he was; it held her frozen to the
semblance of a tombstone lady beside her lord, in the aisle where horror
kindles pitchy blackness with its legions at one movement. Verily it was
the ghost of Mrs. Burman come to the bed, between them.

Meanwhile the sun of Victor Radnor's popularity was already up over the
extended circle likely to be drenched by a falsification of his daring
augury, though the scud flew swift, and the beeches raved, and the oaks
roared and snarled, and pine-trees fell their lengths. Fine tomorrow, to
a certainty! he had been heard to say. The doubt weighed for something;
the balance inclined with the gentleman who had become so popular: for he
had done the trick so suddenly, like a stroke of the wizard; and was a
real man, not one of your spangled zodiacs selling for sixpence and
hopping to a lucky hit, laughed at nine times out of ten. The reasoning
went--and it somewhat affected the mansion as well as the cottage,--that
if he had become popular in this astonishing fashion, after making one of
the biggest fortunes of modern times, he might, he must, have secret
gifts. 'You can't foretell weather!' cried a pothouse sceptic. But the
workmen at Lakelands declared that he had foretold it. Sceptics among the
common folk were quaintly silenced by other tales of him, being a whiff
from the delirium attending any mention of his name.

How had he become suddenly so popular as to rouse in the mind of Mr.
Caddis, the sitting Member for the division of the county (said to have
the seat in his pocket), a particular inquisitiveness to know the bearing
of his politics? Mr. Radnor was rich, true: but these are days when
wealthy men, ambitious of notoriety, do not always prove faithful to
their class; some of them are cunning to bid for the suffrages of the
irresponsible, recklessly enfranchised, corruptible masses. Mr. Caddis,
if he had the seat in his pocket, had it from the support of a class
trusting him to support its interests: he could count on the landowners,
on the clergy, on the retired or retiring or comfortably cushioned
merchants resident about Wrensham, on the many obsequious among electoral
shopmen; annually he threw open his grounds, and he subscribed,
patronized, did what was expected; and he was not popular; he was
unpopular. Why? But why was the sun of this 23rd August, shining from its
rise royally upon pacified, enrolled and liveried armies of cloud, more
agreeable to earth's populations than his pinched appearance of the poor
mopped red nose and melancholic rheumy eyelets on a January day!
Undoubtedly Victor Radnor risked his repute of prophet. Yet his
popularity would have survived the continuance of the storm and deluge.
He did this:--and the mystery puzzling the suspicious was nothing
wonderful: in addition to a transparent benevolence, he spread a sort of
assurance about him, that he thought the better of the people for their
thinking well of themselves. It came first from the workmen at his house.
'The right sort, and no humbug: likes you to be men.' Such a report made
tropical soil for any new seed.

Now, it is a postulate, to strengthen all poor commoners, that not even
in comparison with the highest need we be small unless we yield to think
it of ourselves. Do but stretch a hand to the touch of earth in you, and
you spring upon combative manhood again, from the basis where all are
equal. Humanity's historians, however, tell us, that the exhilaration
bringing us consciousness of a stature, is gas which too frequently has
to be administered. Certes the cocks among men do not require the
process; they get it off the sight of the sun arising or a simple hen
submissive: but we have our hibernating bears among men, our yoked oxen,
cab horses, beaten dogs; we have on large patches of these Islands, a
Saxon population, much wanting assistance, if they are not to feel
themselves beaten, driven, caught by the neck, yoked and heavyheaded.
Blest, then, is he who gives them a sense of the pride of standing on
legs. Beer, ordinarily their solitary helper beneath the iron canopy of
wealth, is known to them as a bitter usurer; it knocks them flat in their
persons and their fortunes, for the short spell of recreative exaltation.
They send up their rough glory round the name of the gentleman--a
stranger, but their friend: and never is friend to be thought of as a
stranger--who manages to get the holiday for Wrensham and thereabout,
that they may hurl away for one jolly day the old hat of a doddered
humbleness, and trip to the strains of the internal music he has unwound.

Says he: Is it a Charity Concert? Charity begins at home, says he: and if
I welcome you gentry on behalf of the poor of London, why, it follows you
grant me the right to make a beginning with the poor of our parts down
here. He puts it so, no master nor mistress neither could refuse him.
Why, the workmen at his house were nigh pitching the contractors all
sprawling on a strike, and Mr. Radnor takes train, harangues 'em and rubs
'em smooth; ten minutes by the clock, they say; and return train to his
business in town; by reason of good sense and feeling, it was; poor men
don't ask for more. A working man, all the world over, asks but justice
and a little relaxation--just a collar of fat to his lean.

Mr. Caddis, M.P., pursuing the riddle of popularity, which irritated and
repelled as constantly as it attracted him, would have come nearer to an
instructive presentment of it, by listening to these plain fellows, than
he was in the line of equipages, at a later hour of the day. The remarks
of the comfortably cushioned and wheeled, though they be eulogistic to
extravagance, are vapourish when we court them for nourishment;
substantially, they are bones to the cynical. He heard enumerations of
Mr. Radnor's riches, eclipsing his own past compute. A merchant, a holder
of mines, Director of a mighty Bank, projector of running rails, a
princely millionaire, and determined to be popular--what was the aim of
the man? It is the curse of modern times, that we never can be sure of
our Parliamentary seat; not when we have it in our pockets! The Romans
have left us golden words with regard to the fickleness of the populace;
we have our Horace, our Juvenal, we have our Johnson; and in this vaunted
age of reason it is, that we surrender ourselves into the hands of the
populace! Panem et circenses! Mr. Caddis repeated it, after his fathers;
his fathers and he had not headed them out of that original voracity.
There they were, for moneyed legislators to bewail their appetites. And
it was an article of his legislation, to keep them there.

Pedestrian purchasers of tickets for the Charity Concert, rather openly,
in an envelope of humour, confessed to the bait of the Radnor bread with
bit of fun. Savoury rumours were sweeping across Wrensham. Mr. Radnor had
borrowed footmen of the principal houses about. Cartloads of provisions
had been seen to come. An immediate reward of a deed of benevolence, is a
thing sensibly heavenly; and the five-shilling tickets were paid for as
if for a packet on the counter. Unacquainted with Mr. Radnor, although
the reports of him struck a summons to their gastric juices, resembling
in its effect a clamorous cordiality, they were chilled, on their steps
along the halfrolled new gravel-roads to the house, by seeing three
tables of prodigious length, where very evidently a feast had raged: one
to plump the people--perhaps excessively courted by great gentlemen of
late; shopkeepers, the villagers, children. These had been at it for two
merry hours. They had risen. They were beef and pudding on legs; in some
quarters, beer amiably manifest, owing to the flourishes of a military
band. Boys, who had shaken room through their magical young corporations
for fresh stowage, darted out of a chasing circle to the crumbled
cornucopia regretfully forsaken fifteen minutes back, and buried another
tart. Plenty still reigned: it was the will of the Master that it should.

We divert our attention, resigned in stoic humour, to the bill of the
Concert music, handed us with our tickets at the park-gates: we have no
right to expect refreshment; we came for the music, to be charitable.
Signora Bianca Luciani: of whom we have read almost to the hearing her;
enough to make the mistake at times. The grand violinist Durandarte:
forcibly detained on his way to America. Mr. Radnor sent him a blank
cheque:--no!--so Mr. Radnor besought him in person: he is irresistible; a
great musician himself; it is becoming quite the modern style. We have
now English noblemen who play the horn, the fife--the drum, some say! We
may yet be Merrie England again, with our nobles taking the lead.

England's nobles as a musical band at the head of a marching and dancing
population, pictured happily an old Conservative country, that retained
its members of aristocracy in the foremost places while subjecting them
to downright uses. Their ancestors, beholding them there, would be
satisfied on the point of honour; perhaps enlivened by hearing them at
fife and drum.

But middle-class pedestrians, having paid five shillings for a ticket to
hear the music they love, and not having full assurance of refreshment,
are often, latterly, satirical upon their superiors; and, over this
country at least, require the refreshment, that the democratic sprouts in
them may be reconciled with aristocracy. Do not listen to them further on
the subject. They vote safely enough when the day comes, if there is no
praetematurally strong pull the other way.

They perceive the name of the Hon. Dudley Sowerby, fourth down the
Concert-bill; marked for a flute-duet with Mr. Victor Radnor, Miss Nesta
Victoria Radnor accompanying at the piano. It may mean? . . . do you want
a whisper to suggest to you what it may mean? The father's wealth is
enormous; the mother is a beautiful majestic woman in her prime. And see,
she sings: a wonderful voice. And lower down, a duet with her daughter:
violins and clarionet; how funny; something Hungarian. And in the Second
Part, Schubert's Ave Maria--Oh! when we hear that, we dissolve. She was a
singer before he married her, they say: a lady by birth one of the first
County families. But it was a gift, and she could not be kept from it,
and was going, when they met--and it was love! the most perfect duet. For
him she abandoned the Stage. You must remember, that in their young days
the Stage was many stages beneath the esteem entertained for it now.
Domestic Concerts are got up to gratify her: a Miss Fredericks: good old
English name. Mr. Radnor calls his daughter, Freddy; so Mr. Taplow, the
architect, says. They are for modern music and ancient. Tannhauser,
Wagner, you see. Pergolese.

Flute-duet, Mercadante. Here we have him! O--Durandarte: Air Basque,
variations--his own. Again, Senor Durandarte, Mendelssohn. Encore him,
and he plays you a national piece. A dark little creature a
Life-guardsman could hold-up on his outstretched hand for the fifteen
minutes of the performance; but he fills the hall and thrills the heart,
wafts you to heaven; and does it as though he were conversing with his
Andalusian lady-love in easy whispers about their mutual passion for
Spanish chocolate all the while: so the musical critic of the Tirra-Lirra
says. Express trains every half hour from London; all the big people of
the city. Mr. Radnor commands them, like Royalty. Totally different from
that old figure of the wealthy City merchant; young, vigorous, elegant, a
man of taste, highest culture, speaks the languages of Europe, patron of
the Arts, a perfect gentleman. His mother was one of the Montgomerys, Mr.
Taplow says.

And it was General Radnor, a most distinguished officer, dying knighted.
But Mr. Victor Radnor would not take less than a Barony--and then only
with descent of title to his daughter, in her own right.

Mr. Taplow had said as much as Victor Radnor chose that he should say.

Carriages were in flow for an hour: pedestrians formed a wavy coil.
Judgeing by numbers, the entertainment was a success; would the hall
contain them? Marvels were told of the hall. Every ticket entered and was
enfolded; almost all had a seat. Chivalry stood. It is a breeched
abstraction, sacrificeing voluntarily and genially to the Fair, for a
restoring of the balance between the sexes, that the division of good
things be rather in the fair ones' favour, as they are to think: with the
warning to them, that the establishment of their claim for equality puts
an end to the priceless privileges of petticoats. Women must be mad, to
provoke such a warning; and the majority of them submissively show their
good sense. They send up an incense of perfumery, all the bouquets of the
chemist commingled; most nourishing to the idea of woman in the nose of
man. They are a forest foliage--rustle of silks and muslins, magic
interweaving, or the mythology, if you prefer it. See, hear, smell, they
are Juno, Venus, Hebe, to you. We must have poetry with them; otherwise
they are better in the kitchen. Is there--but there is not; there is not
present one of the chivalrous breeched who could prefer the shocking
emancipated gristly female, which imposes propriety on our sensations and
inner dreams, by petrifying in the tender bud of them.

Colonel Corfe is the man to hear on such a theme. He is a colonel of
Companies. But those are his diversion, as the British Army has been to
the warrior. Puellis idoneus, he is professedly a lady's man, a
rose-beetle, and a fine specimen of a common kind: and he has been that
thing, that shining delight of the lap of ladies, for a spell of years,
necessitating a certain sparkle of the saccharine crystals preserving
him, to conceal the muster. He has to be fascinating, or he would look
outworn, forlorn. On one side of him is Lady Carmine; on the other, Lady
Swanage; dames embedded in the blooming maturity of England's
conservatory. Their lords (an Earl, a Baron) are of the lords who go down
to the City to sow a title for a repair of their poor incomes, and are to
be commended for frankly accepting the new dispensation while they retain
the many advantages of the uncancelled ancient. Thus gently does a
maternal Old England let them down. Projectors of Companies, Directors,
Founders; Railway magnates, actual kings and nobles (though one cannot
yet persuade old reverence to do homage with the ancestral spontaneity to
the uncrowned, uncoroneted, people of our sphere); holders of Shares in
gold mines, Shares in Afric's blue mud of the glittering teeth we draw
for English beauty to wear in the ear, on the neck, at the wrist; Bankers
and wives of Bankers. Victor passed among them, chatting right and left.

Lady Carmine asked him: 'Is Durandarte counted on?'

He answered: 'I made sure of the Luciani.'

She serenely understood. Artistes are licenced people, with a Bohemian
instead of the titular glitter for the bewildering of moralists; as paste
will pass for diamonds where the mirror is held up to Nature by bold
supernumeraries.

He wished to introduce Nesta. His girl was on the raised orchestral
flooring. Nataly held her fast to a music-scroll.

Mr. Peridon, sad for the absence and cause of absence of Louise de
Seilles,--summoned in the morning abruptly to Bourges, where her brother
lay with his life endangered by an accident at Artillery practise,--Mr.
Peridon was generally conductor. Victor was to lead the full force of
amateurs in the brisk overture to Zampa. He perceived a movement of
Nataly, Nesta, and Peridon. 'They have come,' he said; he jumped on the
orchestra boards and hastened to greet the Luciani with Durandarte in the
retiring-room.

His departure raised the whisper that he would wield the baton. An
opinion was unuttered. His name for the flute-duet with the Hon. Dudley
Sowerby had not provoked the reserve opinion; it seemed, on the whole, a
pretty thing in him to condescend to do: the sentiment he awakened was
not flustered by it. But the act of leading, appeared as an official
thing to do. Our soufe of sentiment will be seen subsiding under a
breath, without a repressive word to send it down. Sir Rodwell
Blachington would have preferred Radnor's not leading or playing either.
Colonel Corfe and Mr. Caddis declined to consider such conduct English,
in a man of station . . . notwithstanding Royal Highnesses, who are at
least partly English: partly, we say, under our breath, remembering our
old ideal of an English gentleman, in opposition to German tastes. It is
true, that the whole country is changeing, decomposing!

The colonel fished for Lady Carmine's view. And Lady Swanage too? Both of
the distinguished ladies approved of Mr. Radnor's leading--for a leading
off. Women are pleased to see their favourite in the place of
prominence--as long as Fortune swims him unbuffeted, or one should say,
unbattered, up the mounting wave. Besides these ladies had none of the
colonel's remainder of juvenile English sense of the manly, his
adolescent's intolerance of the eccentric, suspicion and contempt of any
supposed affectation, which was not ostentatiously, stalkingly practised
to subdue the sex. And you cannot wield a baton without looking affected.
And at one of the Colonel's Clubs in town, only five years back, an
English musical composer, who had not then made his money--now by the
mystery of events knighted!--had been (he makes now fifteen thousand a
year) black-balled. 'Fiddler? no; can't admit a Fiddler to associate on
equal terms with gentlemen.' Only five years back: and at present we are
having the Fiddler everywhere.

A sprinkling of the minor ladies also would have been glad if Mr. Radnor
had kept himself somewhat more exclusive. Dr. Schlesien heard remarks,
upon which his weighty Teutonic mind sat crushingly. Do these English
care one bit for music?--for anything finer than material stuffs?--what
that man Durance calls, 'their beef, their beer, and their pew in
eternity'? His wrath at their babble and petty brabble doubted that they
did.

But they do. Art has a hold of them. They pay for it; and the thing
purchased grapples. It will get to their bosoms to breathe from them in
time: entirely overcoming the taste for feudalism, which still a little
objects to see their born gentleman acting as leader of musicians. A
people of slow movement, developing tardily, their country is wanting in
the distincter features, from being always in the transitional state,
like certain sea-fish rolling head over-you know not head from tail.
Without the Welsh, Irish, Scot; in their composition, there would not be
much of the yeasty ferment: but it should not be forgotten that Welsh,
Irish, Scot, are now largely of their numbers; and the taste for
elegance, and for spiritual utterance, for Song, nay, for Ideas, is there
among them, though it does not everywhere cover a rocky surface to
bewitch the eyes of aliens;--like Louise de Seilles and Dr. Schlesien,
for example; aliens having no hostile disposition toward the people they
were compelled to criticize; honourably granting, that this people has a
great history. Even such has the Lion, with Homer for the transcriber of
his deeds. But the gentle aliens would image our emergence from wildness
as the unsocial spectacle presented by the drear menagerie Lion, alone or
mated; with hardly an animated moment save when the raw red joint is
beneath his paw, reminding him of the desert's pasture.

Nevertheless, where Strength is, there is hope:--it may be said more
truly than of the breath of Life; which is perhaps but the bucket of
breath, muddy with the sediment of the well: whereas we have in Strength
a hero, if a malefactor; whose muscles shall haul him up to the light he
will prove worthy of, when that divinity has shown him his uncleanness.
And when Strength is not exercising, you are sure to see Satirists jump
on his back. Dozens, foreign and domestic, are on the back of Old
England; a tribute to our quality if at the same time an irritating
scourge. The domestic are in excess; and let us own that their view of
the potentate, as an apathetic beast of power, who will neither show the
power nor woo the graces; pretending all the while to be eminently above
the beast, and posturing in an inefficient mimicry of the civilized,
excites to satire. Colney Durance had his excuses. He could point to the
chief creative minds of the country for generations, as beginning their
survey genially, ending venomously, because of an exasperating unreason
and scum in the bubble of the scenes, called social, around them. Viola
under his chin, he gazed along the crowded hall, which was to him a rich
national pudding of the sycophants, the hypocrites, the burlies, the
idiots; dregs of the depths and froth of the surface; bowing to one, that
they may scorn another; instituting a Charity, for their poorer fawning
fellows to relieve their purses and assist them in tricking the world and
their Maker: and so forth, a tiresome tirade: and as it was not on his
lips, but in the stomach of the painful creature, let him grind that
hurdy-gurdy for himself. His friend Victor set it stirring: Victor had
here what he aimed at!

How Success derides Ambition! And for this he imperilled the happiness of
the worthy woman he loved! Exposed her to our fen-fogs and foul
snakes--of whom one or more might be in the assembly now: all because of
his insane itch to be the bobbing cork on the wave of the minute!
Colney's rapid interjections condensed upon the habitual shrug at human
folly, just when Victor, fronting the glassy stare of Colonel Corfe,
tapped to start his orchestra through the lively first bars of the
overture to Zampa.

We soon perceive that the post Mr. Radnor fills he thoroughly fills,
whatever it may be. Zampa takes horse from the opening. We have no
amateur conductor riding ahead: violins, 'cellos, piano, wind-stops:
Peridon, Catkin, Pempton, Yatt, Cormyn, Colney, Mrs. Cormyn, Dudley
Sowerby: they are spirited on, patted, subdued, muted, raised, rushed
anew, away, held in hand, in both hands. Not earnestness worn as a cloak,
but issuing, we see; not simply a leader of musicians, a leader of men.
The halo of the millionaire behind, assures us of a development in the
character of England's merchant princes. The homage we pay him flatters
us. A delightful overture, masterfully executed; ended too soon; except
that the programme forbids the ordinary interpretation of prolonged
applause. Mr. Radnor is one of those who do everything consummately. And
we have a monition within, that a course of spiritual enjoyment will
rouse the call for bodily refreshment. His genial nod and laugh and word
of commendation to his troop persuade us oddly, we know not how, of
provision to come. At the door of the retiring-room, see, he is
congratulated by Luciani and Durandarte. Miss Priscilla Graves is now to
sing a Schumann. Down later, it is a duet with the Rev. Septimus Barmby.
We have nothing to be ashamed of in her, before an Italian Operatic
singer! Ices after the first part is over.




CHAPTER XXI

DARTREY FENELLAN

Had Nataly and Nesta known who was outside helping Skepsey to play ball
with the boys, they would not have worked through their share of the
performance with so graceful a composure. Even Simeon Fenellan was
unaware that his half-brother Dartrey had landed in England. Dartrey went
first to Victor's office, where he found Skepsey packing the day's
letters and circulars into the bag for the delivery of them at Lakelands.
They sprang a chatter, and they missed the last of the express trains
which did, not greatly signify, Skepsey said, 'as it was a Concert.' To
hear his hero talk, was the music for him; and he richly enjoyed the
pacing along the railway-platform.

Arrived on the grounds, they took opposite sides in a game of rounders,
at that moment tossing heads or tails for innings. These boys were
slovenly players, and were made unhappy by Skepsey's fussy instructions
to them in smartness. They had a stupid way of feeding the stick, and
they ran sprawling; it concerned Great Britain for them to learn how to
use their legs. It was pitiful for the country to see how lumpish her
younger children were. Dartrey knew his little man and laughed, after
warning him that his English would want many lessons before they
stomached the mixture of discipline and pleasure. So it appeared: the
pride of the boys in themselves, their confidence, enjoyment of the game,
were all gone; and all were speedily out but Skepsey; who ran for the
rounder, with his coat off, sharp as a porpoise, and would have got it,
he had it in his grasp, when, at the jump, just over the line of the
goal, a clever fling, if ever was, caught him a crack on that part of the
human frame where sound is best achieved. Then were these young lumps
transformed to limber, lither, merry fellows. They rejoiced Skepsey's
heart; they did everything better, ran and dodged and threw in a style to
win the nod from the future official inspector of Games and Amusements of
the common people; a deputy of the Government, proposed by Skepsey to his
hero with a deferential eagerness. Dartrey clapped him on the shoulder,
softly laughing.

'System--Mr. Durance is right--they must have system, if they are to
appreciate a holiday,' Skepsey said; and he sent a wretched gaze around,
at the justification of some of the lurid views of Mr. Durance, in signs
of the holiday wasted;--impoverishing the country's manhood in a small
degree, it may be argued, but we ask, can the country afford it, while
foreign nations are drilling their youth, teaching them to be ready to
move in squads or masses, like the fist of a pugilist. Skepsey left it to
his look to speak his thought. He saw an enemy in tobacco. The drowsiness
of beer had stretched various hulks under trees. Ponderous cricket
lumbered half-alive. Flabby fun knocked-up a yell. And it was rather
vexatious to see girls dancing in good time to the band-music. One had a
male-partner, who hopped his loutish burlesque of the thing he could not
do.

Apparently, too certainly, none but the girls had a notion of orderly
muscular exercise. Of what use are girls! Girls have their one mission on
earth; and let them be healthy by all means, for the sake of it; only,
they should not seem to prove that old England is better represented on
the female side. Skepsey heard, with a nip of spite at his bosom, a small
body of them singing in chorus as they walked in step, arm in arm,
actually marched: and to the rearward, none of these girls heeding; there
were the louts at their burlesque of jigs and fisticuffs! 'Cherry Ripe,'
was the song.

'It's delightful to hear them!' said Dartrey.

Skepsey muttered jealously of their having been trained.

The song, which drew Dartrey Fenellan to the quick of an English home,
planted him at the same time in Africa to hear it. Dewy on a parched
forehead it fell, England the shedding heaven.

He fetched a deep breath, as of gratitude for vital refreshment. He had
his thoughts upon the training of our English to be something besides the
machinery of capitalists, and upon the country as a blessed mother
instead of the most capricious of maudlin step-dames.

He flicked his leg with the stick he carried, said: 'Your master's the
man to make a change among them, old friend!' and strolled along to a
group surrounding two fellows who shammed a bout at single-stick. Vacuity
in the attack on either side, contributed to the joint success of the
defense. They paused under inspection; and Dartrey said: 'You're burning
to give them a lesson, Skepsey.'

Skepsey had no objection to his hero's doing so, though at his personal
cost.

The sticks were handed to them; the crowd increased; their rounders boys
had spied them, and came trooping to the scene. Skepsey was directed to
hit in earnest. His defensive attitude flashed, and he was at head and
right and left leg, and giving point, recovering, thrusting madly, and
again at shoulder and thigh, with bravos for reward of a man meaning
business; until a topper on his hat, a cut over the right thigh, and the
stick in his middlerib, told the spectators of a scientific adversary;
and loudly now the gentleman was cheered. An undercurrent of warm feeling
ran for the plucky little one at it hot again in spite of the strokes,
and when he fetched his master a handsome thud across the shoulder, and
the gentleman gave up and complimented him, Skepsey had applause.

He then begged his hero to put the previous couple in position, through a
few of the opening movements. They were horribly sheepish at first.
Meantime two boys had got hold of sticks, and both had gone to work in
Skepsey's gallant style; and soon one was howling. He excused himself,
because of the funny-bone, situated, in his case, higher than usual up
the arm. And now the pair of men were giving and taking cuts to make a
rhinoceros caper.

'Very well; begin that way; try what you can bear,' said Dartrey.

Skepsey watched them, in felicity for love of the fray, pained by the
disregard of science.

Comments on the pretty play, indicating a reminiscent acquaintance with
it, and the capacity for critical observations, were started. Assaults,
wonderful tricks of a slashing Life-Guardsman, one spectator had
witnessed at an exhibition in a London hall. Boxing too. You may see
displays of boxing still in places. How about a prizefight?--With money
on it?--Eh, but you don't expect men to stand up to be knocked into
rumpsteaks for nothing?--No, but it's they there bets!--Right, and that's
a game gone to ruin along of outsiders.--But it always was and it always
will be popular with Englishmen!

Great English names of young days, before the wintry shadow of the Law
had blighted them, received their withered laurels. Emulous boys were in
the heroic posture. Good! sparring does no hurt: Skepsey seized a likely
lad, Dartrey another. Nature created the Ring for them. Now then, arms
and head well up, chest hearty, shoulders down, out with the right fist,
just below the level of the chin; out with the left fist farther, right
out, except for that bit of curve; so, and draw it slightly back for
wary-pussy at the spring. Firm you stand, feeling the muscles of both
legs, left half a pace ahead, right planted, both stringy. None of your
milk-pail looks; show us jaw, you bulldogs. Now then, left from the
shoulder, straight at right of head.--Good, and alacrity called on vigour
in Skepsey's pupil; Dartrey's had the fist on his mouth before he could
parry right arm up. 'Foul blow!' Dartrey cried. Skepsey vowed to the
contrary. Dartrey reiterated his charge. Skepsey was a figure of
negation, gesticulating and protesting. Dartrey appealed tempestuously to
the Ring; Skepsey likewise, in a tone of injury. He addressed a
remonstrance to Captain Dartrey.

'Hang your captain, sir! I call you a coward; come on,' said the resolute
gentleman, already in ripe form for the attack. His blue eyes were like
the springing sunrise over ridges of the seas; and Skepsey jumped to his
meaning.

Boys and men were spectators of a real scientific set-to, a lovely show.
They were half puzzled, it seemed so deadly. And the little one got in
his blows at the gentleman, who had to be hopping. Only, the worse the
gentleman caught it, the friendlier his countenance became. That was the
wonder, and that gave them the key. But it was deliciously near to the
real thing.

Dartrey and Skepsey shook hands.

'And now, you fellows, you're to know, that this is one of the champions;
and you take your lesson from him and thank him,' Dartrey said, as he
turned on his heel to strike and greet the flow from the house.

'Dartrey come!' Victor, Fenellan, Colney, had him by the hand in turn.
Pure sweetness of suddenly awakened joy sat in Nataly's eyes as she swam
to welcome him, Nesta moved a step, seemed hesitating, and she tripped
forward. 'Dear Captain Dartrey!'

He did not say: 'But what a change in you!'

'It is blue-butterfly, all the same,' Nataly spoke to his look.

Victor hurriedly pronounced the formal introduction between the Hon.
Dudley Sowerby and Captain Dartrey Fenellan. The bronze face and the
milky bowed to one another ceremoniously; the latter faintly flushing.

'So here you are at last,' Victor said. 'You stay with us.'

'To-morrow or later, if you'll have me. I go down to my people to-night.'

'But you stay in England now?' Nataly's voice wavered on the question.

'There's a chance of my being off to Upper Burmah before the week's
ended.'

'Ah, dear, dear!' sighed Fenellan; 'and out of good comes evil!--as
grandfather Deucalion exclaimed, when he gallantly handed up his dripping
wife from the mud of the Deluge waters. Do you mean to be running and
Dewing it on for ever, with only a nod for friends, Dart?'

'Lord, Simmy, what a sound of home there is in your old nonsense!'
Dartrey said.

His eyes of strong dark blue colour and the foreign swarthiness of his
brows and cheeks and neck mixed the familiar and the strange, in the
sight of the women who knew him.

The bill-broker's fair-tressed young wife whispered of curiosity
concerning him to Nataly. He dressed like a sailor, he stood like a
soldier: and was he married? Yes, he was married.

Mrs. Blathenoy imagined a something in Mrs. Radnor's tone. She could
account for it; not by the ordinary reading of the feminine in the
feminine, but through a husband who professed to know secrets. She was
young in years and experience, ten months wedded, disappointedly
awakened, enlivened by the hour, kindled by a novel figure of man,
fretful for a dash of imprudence. This Mrs. Radnor should be the one to
second her very innocent turn for a galopade; her own position allowed of
any little diverting jig or reel, or plunge in a bath--she required it,
for the domestic Jacob Blathenoy was a dry chip: proved such, without a
day's variation during the whole of the ten wedded months. Nataly
gratified her spoken wish. Dartrey Fenellan bowed to the lady, and she
withdrew him, seeing composedly that other and greater ladies had the
wish ungratified. Their husbands were not so rich as hers, and their
complexions would hardly have pleased the handsome brown-faced officer so
well.

Banquet, equal to a blast of trumpet, was the detaining word for the
multitude. It circulated, one knows not how. Eloquent as the whiffs to
the sniffs (and nowhere is eloquence to match it, when the latter are
sharpened from within to without), the word was very soon over the field.
Mr. Carling may have helped; he had it from Fenellan; and he was among
the principal groups, claiming or making acquaintances, as a lawyer
should do. The Concert was complimentarily a topic: Durandarte
divine!--did not everybody think so? Everybody did, in default of a term
for overtopping it. Our language is poor at hyperbole; our voices are
stronger. Gestures and heaven-sent eyeballs invoke to display the
ineffable. Where was Durandarte now? Gone; already gone; off with the
Luciani for evening engagements; he came simply to oblige his dear friend
Mr. Radnor. Cheque fifty guineas: hardly more on both sides than an
exchange of smiles. Ah, these merchant-princes! What of Mr. Radnor's
amateur instrumentalists? Amateurs, they are not to be named: perfect
musicians. Mr. Radnor is the perfection of a host. Yes, yes; Mrs. Radnor;
Miss Radnor too: delicious voices; but what is it about Mr. Radnor so
captivating! He is not quite English, yet he is not at all foreign. Is he
very adventurous in business, as they say?

'Soundest head in the City of London,' Mr. Blathenoy remarked.

Sir Rodwell Blachington gave his nod.

The crowd interjected, half-sighing. We ought to be proud of such a man!
Perhaps we are a trifle exaggerating, says its heart. But that we are
wholly grateful to him, is a distinct conclusion. And he may be one of
the great men of his time: he has a quite individual style of dress.

Lady Rodwell Blachington observed to Colney Durance:

'Mr. Radnor bids fair to become the idol of the English people.'

'If he can prove himself to be sufficiently the dupe of the English
people,' said Colney.

'Idol--dupe?' interjected Sir Rodwell, and his eyebrows fixed at the
perch of Colney's famous 'national interrogation' over vacancy of
understanding, as if from the pull of a string. He had his audience with
him; and the satirist had nothing but his inner gush of acids at sight of
a planted barb.

Colney was asked to explain. He never explained. He performed a series of
astonishing leaps, like the branchy baboon above the traveller's head in
the tropical forest, and led them into the trap they assisted him to
prepare for them. 'No humour, do you say? The English have no humour?' a
nephew of Lady Blachington's inquired of him, with polite pugnacity, and
was cordially assured, that 'he vindicated them.'

'And Altruistic! another specimen of the modern coinage,' a classical
Church dignitary, in grammarian disgust, remarked to a lady, as they
passed.

Colney pricked-up his ears. It struck him that he might fish for
suggestions in aid of the Grand Argument before the Elders of the Court
of Japan. Dr. Wardan, whose recognition he could claim, stated to him,
that the lady and he were enumerating words of a doubtfully legitimate
quality now being inflicted upon the language.

'The slang from below is perhaps preferable?' said Colney.

'As little-less.'

'But a pirate-tongue, cut-off from its roots, must continue to practise
piracy, surely, or else take reinforcements in slang, otherwise it is
inexpressive of new ideas.'

'Possibly the new ideas are best expressed in slang.'

'If insular. They will consequently be incommunicable to foreigners. You
would, then, have us be trading with tokens instead of a precious
currency? Yet I cannot perceive the advantage of letting our ideas be
clothed so racy of the obscener soil; considering the pretensions of the
English language to become the universal. If we refuse additions from
above, they force themselves on us from below.'

Dr. Wardan liked the frame of the observations, disliked the substance.

'One is to understand that the English language has these pretensions?'
he said:--he minced in his manner, after the well-known mortar-board and
tassel type; the mouthing of a petrifaction: clearly useless to the
pleadings of the patriotic Dr. Bouthoin and his curate.

He gave no grip to Colney, who groaned at cheap Donnish sarcasm, and let
him go, after dealing him a hard pellet or two in a cracker-covering.

There was Victor all over the field netting his ephemerae! And he who
feeds on them, to pay a price for their congratulations and flatteries,
he is one of them himself!

Nesta came tripping from the Rev. Septimus Barmby. 'Dear Mr. Durance,
where is Captain Dartrey?'

Mrs. Blathenoy had just conducted her husband through a crowd, for an
introduction of him to Captain Dartrey. That was perceptible.

Dudley Sowerby followed Nesta closely: he struck across the path of the
Rev. Septimus: again he had the hollow of her ear at his disposal.

'Mr. Radnor was excellent. He does everything consummately: really, we
are all sensible of it. I am. He must lead us in a symphony. These light
"champagne overtures" of French composers, as Mr. Fenellan calls them, do
not bring out his whole ability:--Zampa, Le Pre aux clercs, Masaniello,
and the like.'

'Your duet together went well.'

'Thanks to you--to you. You kept us together.'

'Papa was the runaway or strain-the-leash, if there was one.'

'He is impetuous, he is so fervent. But, Miss Radnor, I could not be the
runaway-with you . . . with you at the piano. Indeed, I . . . shall we
stroll down? I love the lake.'

'You will hear the bell for your cold dinner very soon.'

'I am not hungry. I would so much rather talk--hear you. But you are
hungry? You have been singing twice: three times! Opera singers, they
say, eat hot suppers; they drink stout. And I never heard your voice more
effective. Yours is a voice that . . . something of the feeling one has
in hearing cathedral voices: carry one up. I remember, in Dresden, once,
a Fraulein Kuhnstreich, a prodigy, very young, considering her
accomplishments. But it was not the same.'

Nesta wondered at Dartrey Fenellan for staying so long with Mr. and Mrs.
Blathenoy.

'Ah, Mr. Sowerby, if I am to have flattery, I cannot take it as a
milliner's dumb figure wears the beautiful dress; I must point out my
view of some of my merits.'

'Oh! do, I beg, Miss . . . You have a Christian name and I too: and once
. . . not Mr. Sowerby: yes, it was Dudley!

'Quite accidentally, and a world of pardons entreated.'

'And Dudley begged Dudley might be Dudley always!'

He was deepening to the Barmby intonation--apparently Cupid's; but a
shade more airily Pagan, not so fearfully clerical.

Her father had withdrawn Dartrey Fenellan from Mr. and Mrs. Blathenoy.
Dr. Schlesien was bowing with Dartrey.

'And if Durandarte would only--but you are one with Miss Graves to
depreciate my Durandarte, in favour of the more classical Jachimo; whom
we all admire; but you shall be just,' said she, and she pouted. She had
seen her father plant Dartrey Fenellan in the midst of a group of City
gentlemen.

Simeon touched among them to pluck at his brother. He had not a chance;
he retired, and swam into the salmon-net of seductive Mrs. Blathenoy's
broad bright smile.

'It's a matter of mines, and they're hovering in the attitude of the
query, like corkscrews over a bottle, profoundly indifferent to
blood-relationships,' he said to her.

'Pray, stay and be consoled by me,' said the fair young woman. 'You are
to point me out all the distinguished people. Is it true, that your
brother has left the army?'

'Dartrey no longer wears the red. Here comes Colonel Corfe, who does.
England has her army still!'

'His wife persuaded him?'

'You see he is wearing the black.'

'For her? How very very sad! Tell me--what a funnily dressed woman
meeting that gentleman!'

'Hush--a friend of the warrior. Splendid weather, Colonel Corfe.'

'Superb toilettes!' The colonel eyed Mrs. Blathenoy dilatingly, advanced,
bowed, and opened the siege.

She decided a calculation upon his age, made a wall of it, smilingly
agreed with his encomium of the Concert, and toned her voice to
Fenellan's comprehension: 'Did it occur recently?'

'Months; in Africa; I haven't the date.'

'Such numbers of people one would wish to know! Who are those ladies
holding a Court, where Mr. Radnor is?'

'Lady Carmine, Lady Swanage--if it is your wish?' interposed the colonel.

She dealt him a forgiving smile. 'And that pleasant-looking old
gentleman?'

Colonel Corfe drew-up. Fenellan said: 'Are we veterans at forty or so?'

'Well, it 's the romance, perhaps!' She raised her shoulders.

The colonel's intelligence ran a dog's nose for a lady's interjections.
'The romance? . . . at forty, fifty? gone? Miss Julinks, the great
heiress and a beauty; has chosen him over the heads of all the young men
of his time. Cranmer Lotsdale. Most romantic history!'

'She's in love with that, I suppose.'

'Now you direct my attention to him,' said Fenellan, 'the writing of the
romantic history has made the texture look a trifle thready. You have a
terrible eye.'

It was thrown to where the person stood who had first within a few
minutes helped her to form critical estimates of men, more consciously to
read them.

'Your brother stays in England?'

'The fear is, that he's off again.'

'Annoying for you. If I had a brother, I would not let him go.'

'How would you detain him?'

'Locks and bolts, clock wrong, hands and arms, kneeling--the fourth act
of the Huguenots!'

'He went by way of the window, I think. But that was a lover.'

'Oh! well!' she flushed. She did not hear the 'neglected and astonished
colonel speak, and she sought diversion in saying to Fenellan: 'So many
people of distinction are assembled here to-day! Tell me, who is that
pompous gentleman, who holds his arms up doubled, as he walks?'

'Like flappers of a penguin: and advances in jerks: he is head of the
great Firm of Quatley Brothers: Sir Abraham: finances or farms one of the
South American Republics: we call him, Pride of Port. He consumes it and
he presents it.'

'And who is that little man, who stops everybody?'

'People of distinction indeed! That little man--is your upper lip
underrateing him? . . . When a lady's lip is erratically disdainful, it
suggests a misuse of a copious treasury, deserving to be mulcted,
punished--how?--who can say?--that little man, now that little man, with
a lift of his little finger, could convulse the Bacon Market!'

Mrs. Blathenoy shook. Hearing Colonel Corfe exclaim:

'Bacon Market!' she let fly a peal. Then she turned to a fresh satellite,
a round and a ruddy, 'at her service ever,' Mr. Beaves Urmsing, and
repeated Fenellan's words. He, in unfeigned wonderment at such
unsuspected powers, cried: 'Dear me!' and stared at the little man,
making the pretty lady's face a twinkling dew.

He had missed the Concert. Was it first-rate? Ecstasy answered in the
female voice.

'Hem'd fool I am to keep appointments!' he muttered.

She reproved him: 'Fie, Mr. Urmsing; it's the making of them, not the
keeping!'

'Ah, my dear ma'am, if I'd had Blathenoy's luck when he made a certain
appointment. And he was not so much older than me? The old ones get the
prizes!'

Mr. Beaves Urmsing prompted Colonel Corfe to laugh in triumph. The
colonel's eyebrows were up in fixity over sleepy lids. He brightened to
propose the conducting of the pretty woman to the banquet.

'We shall see them going in,' said she. 'Mr. Radnor has a French cook,
who does wonders. But I heard him asking for Mr. Beaves Urmsing. I'm sure
he expected The Marigolds at his Concert.'

'Anything to oblige the company,' said the rustic ready chorister,
clearing his throat.

The lady's feet were bent in the direction of a grassy knoll, where
sunflowers, tulips, dahlias, peonies, of the sex eclipsed at a distance
its roses and lilies. Fenellan saw Dartrey, still a centre of the
merchantmen, strolling thither.

'And do you know, your brother is good enough to dine with us next week,
Thursday, down here,' she murmured. 'I could venture to command?--if you
are not induced.'

'Whichever word applies to a faithful subject.'

'I do so wish your brother had not left the army!'

'You have one son of Mars.'

Her eyes took the colonel up to cast him down: he was not the antidote.
She said to him: 'Luciani's voice wears better than her figure.'

The colonel replied: 'I remember,' and corrected himself, 'at Eton, in
jackets: she was not so particularly slim; never knew how to dress. You
beat Italians there! She moved one as a youngster.'

'Eton boys are so susceptible!'

'Why, hulloa, don't I remember her coming out!--and do you mean to tell
me,' Mr. Beaves Urmsing brutally addressed the colonel, 'that you were at
Eton when . . . why, what age do you give the poor woman, then!' He
bellowed, 'Eh?' as it were a bull crowing.

The colonel retreated to one of his defensive corners. 'I am not aware
that I meant to tell you anything.'

Mr. Beaves Urmsing turned square-breasted on Fenellan: 'Fellow's a born
donkey!'

'And the mother lived?' said Fenellan.

Mr. Beaves Urmsing puffed with wrath at the fellow.

Five minutes later, in the midst of the group surrounding and
felicitating Victor, he had sight of Fenellan conversing with fair ones,
and it struck a light in him; he went three steps backward, with shouts.
'Dam funny fellow! eh? who is he? I must have that man at my table. Worth
fifty Colonel Jackasses! And I 've got a son in the Guards: and as much
laugh in him, he 's got, as a bladder. But we'll make a party, eh,
Radnor? with that friend o' yours. Dam funny fellow! and precious little
of it going on now among the young lot. They're for seeing ghosts and
gaping their jaws; all for the quavers instead of the capers.'

He sounded and thrummed his roguish fling-off for the capers. A second
glimpse of Fenellan agitated the anecdote, as he called it, seizing
Victor's arm, to have him out of earshot of the ladies. Delivery, not
without its throes, was accomplished, but imperfectly, owing to
sympathetic convulsions, under which Mr. Beaves Urmsing's countenance was
crinkled of many colours, as we see the Spring rhubarb-leaf. Unable to
repeat the brevity of Fenellan's rejoinder, he expatiated on it to convey
it, swearing that it was the kind of thing done in the old days, when men
were witty dogs:--'pat! and pat back! as in the pantomime.'

'Repartee!' said Victor. 'He has it. You shall know him. You're the man
for him.'

'He for me, that he is!--"Hope the mother's doing well? My card":--eh?
Grave as an owl! Look, there goes the donkey, lady to right and left, all
ears for him--ha! ha! I must have another turn with your friend. "Mother
lived, did she?" Dam funny fellow, all of the olden time! And a dinner,
bachelor dinner, six of us, at my place, next week, say Wednesday,
half-past six, for a long evening--flowing bowl--eh, shall it be?'

Nesta came looking to find her Captain Dartrey.

Mr. Beaves Urmsing grew courtly of the olden time. He spied Colonel Corfe
anew, and 'Donkey!' rose to split the roar at his mouth, and full of his
anecdote, he pursued some congenial acquaintances, crying to his host:
'Wednesday, mind! eh? by George, your friend's gizzarded me for the day!'

Plumped with the rich red stream of life, this last of the squires of old
England thumped along among the guests, a very tuning-fork to keep them
at their pitch of enthusiasm. He encountered Mr. Caddis, and it was an
encounter. Mr. Caddis represented his political opinions; but here was
this cur of a Caddis whineing his niminy note from his piminy nob, when
he was asked for his hearty echo of the praises of this jolly good fellow
come to waken the neighbourhood, to be a blessing, a blazing hearth, a
fall of manna:--and thank the Lord for him, you desertdog! 'He 's a
merchant prince, and he's a prince of a man, if you're for titles. Eh?
you "assent to my encomiums." You'll be calling me Mr. Speaker next. Hang
me, Caddis, if those Parliamentary benches of yours aren't freezing you
from your seat up, and have got to your jaw--my belief!'

Mr. Caddis was left reflecting, that we have, in the dispensations of
Providence, when we have a seat, to submit to castigations from butcherly
men unaccountably commissioned to solidify the seat. He could have
preached a discourse upon Success, to quiet the discontentment of the
unseated. And our world of seats oddly gained, quaintly occupied,
maliciously beset, insensately envied, needs the discourse. But it was
not delivered, else would it have been here written down without mercy,
as a medical prescript, one of the grand specifics. He met Victor, and,
between his dread of him and the counsels of a position subject to
stripes, he was a genial thaw. Victor beamed; for Mr. Caddis had
previously stood eminent as an iceberg of the Lakelands' party. Mr.
Inchling and Mr. Caddis were introduced. The former in Commerce, the
latter in Politics, their sustaining boast was, the being our stable
Englishmen; and at once, with cousinly minds, they fell to chatting upon
the nothings agreeably and seriously. Colney Durance forsook a set of
ladies for fatter prey, and listened to them. What he said, Victor did
not hear. The effect was always to be seen, with Inchling under Colney.
Fenellan did better service, really good service.

Nataly played the heroine she was at heart. Why think of her as having to
act a character! Twice had Carling that afternoon, indirectly and
directly, stated Mrs. Burman to be near the end we crape a natural, a
defensible, satisfaction to hear of:--not wishing it--poor woman!--but
pardonably, before man and all the angels, wishing, praying for the
beloved one to enter into her earthly peace by the agency of the other's
exit into her heavenly.

Fenellan and Colney came together, and said a word apiece of their
friend.

'In his element! The dear old boy has the look of a goldfish, king of his
globe.'

'The dear old boy has to me the look of a pot on the fire, with a loose
lid.'

I may have the summons from Themison to-morrow, Victor thought. The
success of the day, was a wine that rocked the soberest of thoughts. For,
strange to confess, ever since the fall on London Bridge, his heart,
influenced in some degree by Nataly's depression perhaps, had been
shadowed by doubts of his infallible instinct for success. Here, at a
stroke, and before entering the house, he had the whole neighbourhood
about him: he could feel that he and Nataly stood in the minds of the
worthy people variously with the brightness if not with the warmth
distinguishable in the bosom of Beaves Urmsing--the idea of whom gave
Lakelands an immediate hearth-glow.

Armandine was thirteen minutes, by his watch, behind the time she had
named. Small blame to her. He excused her to Lady Carmine, Lady Swanage,
Lady Blachington, Mrs. Fanning, Sir Abraham Quatley, Mr. Danny (of Bacon
fame) and the rest of the group surrounding Nataly on the mound leftward
of the white terraces descending to the lake; where she stood beating her
foot fretfully at the word brought by Nesta, that Dartrey Fenellan had
departed. It was her sunshine departed. But she went through her task of
conversing amiably. Colney, for a wonder, consented to be useful in
assisting Fenellan to relate stories of French Cooks; which were, like
the Royal Hanoverian oyster, of an age for offering acceptable flavour to
English hearers. Nesta drew her mother's attention to Priscilla Graves
and Skepsey; the latter bending head and assenting. Nataly spoke of the
charm of Priscilla's voice that day, in her duet with the Rev. Septimus.
Mr. Pempton looked; he saw that Priscilla was proselytizing. She was
perfection to him but for one blotting thing. With grief on his eyelids,
he said to Nataly or to himself: 'Meat!'

'Dear friend, don't ride your hobby over us,' she replied.

'But it's with that object they mount it,' said Victor.

The greater ladies of the assembly were quite ready to accuse the
sections, down to the individuals, of the social English (reserving our
elect) of an itch to be tyrants.

Colney was apologizing for them, with his lash: 'It's merely the sensible
effect of a want of polish of the surface when they rub together.'

And he heard Carling exclaim to Victor: 'How comes the fellow here!'

Skepsey had rushed across an open space to intercept a leisurely
progressive man, whose hat was of the shape Victor knew; and the man wore
the known black gaiters. In appearance, he had the likeness of a fallen
parson.

Carling and Victor crossed looks that were questions carrying their
answers.

Nataly's eyes followed Victor's. 'Who is the man?' she said; and she got
no reply beyond a perky sparkle in his gaze.

Others were noticing the man, who was trying to pass by Skepsey, now on
his right side, now on his left.

'There'll be no stopping him,' Carling said, and he slipped to the rear.'

At this juncture, Armandine's mellow bell proclaimed her readiness.

Victor rubbed the back of his head. Nataly asked him: 'Dear, is it that
man?'

He nodded scantly: 'Expected, expected. I think we have our summons from
Armandine. One moment--poor soul! poor soul! Lady Carmine--Sir Abraham
Quatley. Will you lead? Lady Blachington, I secure you. One moment.'

He directed Nataly to pair a few of the guests; he hurried down the slope
of sward.

Nataly applied to Colney Durance. 'Do you know the man?--is it that man?'

Colney rejoined: 'The man's name is Jarniman.'

Armandine's bell swung melodiously. The guests had grouped, thickening
for the stream to procession. Mrs. Blathenoy claimed Fenellan; she
requested him to tell her whether he had known Mrs. Victor Radnor many
years. She mused. 'You like her?'

'One likes one's dearest of friends among women, does one not?'

The lady nodded to his response. 'And your brother?'

'Dartrey is devoted to her.'

'I am sure,' said she, 'your brother is a chivalrous gentleman. I like
her too.' She came to her sentiment through the sentiment of the
chivalrous gentleman. Sinking from it, she remarked that Mr. Radnor was
handsome still. Fenellan commended the subject to her, as one to
discourse of when she met Dartrey. A smell of a trap-hatch, half-open,
afflicted and sharpened him. It was Blathenoy's breath: husbands of young
wives do these villanies, for the sake of showing their knowledge.
Fenellan forbore to praise Mrs. Victor: he laid his colours on Dartrey.
The lady gave ear till she reddened. He meant no harm, meant nothing but
good; and he was lighting the most destructive of our lower fires.

Visibly, that man Jarniman was disposed of with ease. As in the
street-theatres of crowing Punch, distance enlisted pantomime to do the
effective part of the speeches. Jarniman's hat was off, he stood bent, he
delivered his message. He was handed over to Skepsey's care for the
receiving of meat and drink. Victor returned; he had Lady Blachington's
hand on his arm; he was all hers, and in the heart of his company of
guests at the same time. Eyes that had read him closely for years, were
unable to spell a definite signification on his face, below the
overflowing happiness of the hospitable man among contented guests. He
had in fact something within to enliven him; and that was the more than
suspicion, amounting to an odour of certainty, that Armandine intended
one of her grand surprises for her master, and for the hundred and fifty
or so to be seated at her tables in the unwarmed house of Lakelands.




CHAPTER XXII

CONCERNS THE INTRUSION OF JARNIMAN

Armandine did her wonders. There is not in the wide range of the Muses a
more responsive instrument than man to his marvellous cook; and if his
notes were but as flowing as his pedals are zealous, we should be carried
on the tale of the enthusiasm she awakened, away from the rutted
highroad, where History now thinks of tightening her girdle for an
accelerated pace.

The wonders were done: one hundred and seventy guests plenteously fed at
tables across the great Concert Hall, down a length of the
conservatory-glass, on soups, fish, meats, and the kitchen-garden, under
play of creative sauces, all in the persuasive steam of savouriness;
every dish, one may say, advancing, curtseying, swimming to be your
partner, instead of passively submitting to the eye of appetite,
consenting to the teeth, as that rather melancholy procession of the
cold, resembling established spinsters thrice-corseted in decorum, will
appear to do. Whether Armandine had the thought or that she simply acted
in conformity with a Frenchwoman's direct good sense, we do require to
smell a sort of animation in the meats we consume. We are still perhaps
traceably related to the Adamite old-youngster just on his legs, who
betrayed at every turn his Darwinian beginnings, and relished a
palpitating unwillingness in the thing refreshing him; only we
young-oldsters cherish the milder taste for willingness, with a throb of
the vanquished in it. And a seeming of that we get from the warm roast.
The banquet to be fervently remembered, should smoke, should send out a
breath to meet us. Victor's crowded saloon-carriage was one voice of
eulogy, to raise Armandine high as the finale rockets bursting over
Wrensham Station at the start Londonward. How had she managed? We
foolishly question the arts of magicians.

Mr. Pempton was an apparent dissentient, as the man must be who is half a
century ahead of his fellows in humaneness, and saddened by the display
of slaughtered herds and their devourers. He had picked out his vegetable
and farinaceous morsels, wherever he could get them uncontaminated;
enough for sustenance; and the utmost he could show was, that he did not
complain. When mounted and ridden by the satirist, in wrath at him for
systematically feasting the pride of the martyr on the maceration of his
animal part, he put on his martyr's pride, which assumed a perfect
contentment in the critical depreciation of opposing systems: he was
drawn to state, as he had often done, that he considered our animal part
shamefully and dangerously over nourished, and that much of the
immorality of the world was due to the present excessive indulgence in
meats. 'Not in drink?' Miss Graves inquired. 'No,' he said boldly; 'not
equally; meats are more insidious. I say nothing of taking life--of
fattening for that express purpose: diseases of animals: bad blood made:
cruelty superinduced: it will be seen to be, it will be looked back on,
as a form of, a second stage of, cannibalism. Let that pass. I say, that
for excess in drinking, the penalty is paid instantly, or at least on the
morrow.'

'Paid by the drunkard's wife, you should say.'

'Whereas intemperance in eating, corrupts constitutionally, more
spiritually vitiates, we think: on the whole, gluttony is the
least-generous of the vices.'

Colney lured Mr. Pempton through a quagmire of the vices to declare, that
it brutalized; and stammeringly to adopt the suggestion, that our
breeding of English ladies--those lights of the civilized world--can
hardly go with a feeding upon flesh of beasts. Priscilla regretted that
champagne should have to be pleaded in excuse of impertinences to her
sex. They were both combative, nibbed for epigram, edged to inflict
wounds; and they were set to shudder openly at one another's practises;
they might have exposed to Colney which of the two maniacal sections of
his English had the vaster conceit of superiority in purity; they were
baring themselves, as it were with a garment flung-off at each retort. He
reproached them for undermineing their countrymen; whose Falstaff panics
demanded blood of animals to restore them; and their periods of bragging,
that they should brandify their wits to imagine themselves Vikings.

Nataly interposed. She was vexed with him. He let his eyelids drop: but
the occasion for showing the prickliness of the bristly social English,
could not be resisted. Dr. Peter Yatt was tricked to confess, that small
annoyances were, in his experience, powerful on the human frame; and Dr.
John Cormyn was very neatly brought round to assure him he was mistaken
if he supposed the homoeopathic doctor who smoked was exercising a
destructive influence on the efficacy of the infinitesimal doses he
prescribed; Dr. Yatt chuckled a laugh at globules; Dr. Cormyn at patients
treated as horses; while Mr. Catkin was brought to praise the smoke of
tobacco as our sanctuary from the sex; and Mr. Peridon quietly denied,
that the taking of it into his nostrils from the puffs of his friend
caused him sad silences: Nesta flew to protect the admirer of her beloved
Louise. Her subsiding young excitement of the day set her Boating on that
moony melancholy in Mr. Peridon.

No one could understand the grounds for Colney's more than usual
waspishness. He trotted out the fulgent and tonal Church of the Rev.
Septimus; the skeleton of worship, so truly showing the spirit, in that
of Dudley Sowerby's family; maliciously admiring both; and he had a spar
with Fenellan, ending in a snarl and a shout. Victor said to him: 'Yes,
here, as much as you like, old Colney, but I tell you, you've staggered
that poor woman Lady Blachington to-day, and her husband too; and I don't
know how many besides. What the pleasure of it can be, I can't guess.'

'Nor I,' said Fenellan, 'but I'll own I feel envious; like the girl among
a family of boys I knew, who were all of them starved in their infancy by
a miserly father, that gave them barely a bit of Graves to eat and not a
drop of Pempton to drink; and on the afternoon of his funeral, I found
them in the drawing-room, four lank fellows, heels up, walking on their
hands, from long practice; and the girl informed me, that her brothers
were able so to send the little blood they had in their bodies to their
brains, and always felt quite cheerful for it, happy, and empowered to
deal with the problems of the universe; as they couldn't on their legs;
but she, poor thing, was forbidden to do the same! And I'm like her. I
care for decorum too much to get the brain to act on Colney's behaviour;
but I see it enraptures him and may be comprehensible to the
topsy-turvy.'

Victor rubbed hands. It was he who filled Colney's bag of satiric spite.
In addition to the downright lunacy of the courting of country society,
by means of the cajolements witnessed this day, a suspicion that Victor
was wearing a false face over the signification--of Jarniman's visit and
meant to deceive the trustful and too-devoted loving woman he seemed
bound to wreck, irritated the best of his nature. He had a resolve to
pass an hour with the couple, and speak and insist on hearing plain words
before the night had ended. But Fenellan took it out of him. Victor's
show of a perfect contentment emulating Pempton's, incited Colney to some
of his cunning rapier-thrusts with his dancing adversary; and the heat
which is planted in us for the composition: of those cool epigrams, will
not allow plain words to follow. Or, handing him over to the police of
the Philistines, you may put it, that a habit of assorting spices will
render an earnest simplicity distasteful. He was invited by Nataly to
come home with them; her wish for his presence, besides personal, was
moved by an intuition, that his counsel might specially benefit them. He
shrugged; he said he had work at his chambers.

'Work!' Victor ejaculated: he never could reach to a right comprehension
of labour, in regard to the very unremunerative occupation of literature.
Colney he did not want, and he let him go, as Nataly noticed, without a
sign of the reluctance he showed when the others, including Fenellan,
excused themselves.

'So! we're alone?' he said, when the door of the hall had closed on them.
He kept Nesta talking of the success of the day until she, observing her
mother's look, simulated the setting-in of a frenzied yawn. She was
kissed, and she tripped to her bed.

'Now we are alone,' Nataly said.

'Well, dear, and the day was, you must own . . . ' he sought to trifle
with her heavy voice; but she recalled him: 'Victor!' and the naked
anguish in her cry of his name was like a foreign world threatening the
one he filled.

'Ah, yes; that man, that Jarniman. You saw him, I remember. You
recollected him?--stouter than he was. In her service ever since. Well, a
little drop of bitter, perhaps: no harm, tonic.'

'Victor, is she very ill?'

'My love, don't feel at your side: she is ill, ill, not the extreme case:
not yet: old and ill. I told Skepsey to give the man refreshment: he had
to do his errand.'

'What? why did he come?'

'Curious; he made acquaintance with Skepsey, and appears to have
outwitted poor Skepsey, as far as I see it. But if that woman thinks of
intimidating me now--!' His eyes brightened; he had sprung from evasions.
'Living in flagrant sin, she says: you and I! She will not have it; warns
me. Heard this day at noon of company at Lakelands. Jarniman off at once.
Are to live in obscurity;--you and I! if together! Dictates from her
death-bed-I suppose her death-bed.'

'Dearest,' Nataly pressed hand on her left breast, 'may we not think that
she may be right?'

'An outrageous tyranny of a decrepit woman naming herself wife when she
is only a limpet of vitality, with drugs for blood, hanging-on to blast
the healthy and vigorous! I remember old Colney's once, in old days,
calling that kind of marriage a sarcophagus. It was to me. There I
lay--see myself lying! wasting! Think what you can good of her, by all
means! From her bed! despatches that Jarniman to me from her bedside,
with the word, that she cannot in her conscience allow--what imposition
was it I practised? . . . flagrant sin?--it would have been an infinitely
viler . . . . She is the cause of suffering enough: I bear no more from
her; I've come to the limit. She has heard of Lakelands: she has taken
one of her hatreds to the place. She might have written, might have sent
me a gentleman, privately. No: it must be done in dramatic style-for
effect: her confidential--lawyer?--doctor?--butler! Perhaps to frighten
me:--the boy she knew, and--poor soul! I don't mean to abuse her: but
such conduct as this is downright brutal. I laugh at it, I snap my
fingers. I can afford to despise it. Only I do say it deserves to be
called abominable.'

'Victor, has she used a threat?'

'Am I brought to listen to any of her threats!--Funny thing, I 'm certain
that woman never can think of me except as the boy she knew. I saw her
first when she was first a widow. She would keep talking to me of the
seductions of the metropolis--kept informing me I was a young man . . .
shaking her head. I 've told you. She--well, I know we are mixtures,
women as well as men. I can, I hope, grant the same--I believe I
can--allowances to women as to men; we are poor creatures, all of using
one sense: though I won't give Colney his footing; there's a better way
of reading us. I hold fast to Nature. No violation of Nature, my good
Colney! We can live the lives of noble creatures; and I say that
happiness was meant for us:--just as, when you sit down to your dinner,
you must do it cheerfully, and you make good blood: otherwise all's
wrong. There's the right answer to Colney! But when a woman like that
. . . . and marries a boy: well, twenty-one--not quite that: and an
innocent, a positive innocent--it may seem incredible, after a term of
school-life: it was a fact: I can hardly understand it myself when I look
back. Marries him! And then sets to work to persecute him, because he has
blood in his veins, because he worships beauty; because he seeks a real
marriage, a real mate. And, I say it! let the world take its own view, the
world is wrong! because he preferred a virtuous life to the kind of life
she would, she must--why, necessarily!--have driven him to, with a mummy's
grain of nature in his body. And I am made of flesh, I admit it.'

'Victor, dearest, her threat concerns only your living at Lakelands.'

'Pray, don't speak excitedly, my love,' he replied to the woman whose
tones had been subdued to scarce more than waver. 'You see how I meet it:
water off a duck's back, or Indian solar beams on the skin of a Hindoo! I
despise it hardly worth contempt;--But, come: our day was a good one.
Fenellan worked well. Old Colney was Colney Durance, of course. He did no
real mischief.'

'And you will not determine to enter Lakelands--not yet, dear?' said
Nataly.

'My own girl, leave it all to me.'

'But, Victor, I must, must know.'

'See the case. You have lots of courage. We can't withdraw. Her intention
is mischief. I believe the woman keeps herself alive for it: we've given
her another lease!--though it can only be for a very short time; Themison
is precise; Carling too. If we hold back--I have great faith in
Themison--the woman's breath on us is confirmed. We go down, then;
complete the furnishing, quite leisurely; accept--listen--accept one or
two invitations: impossible to refuse!--but they are accepted!--and we
defy her: a crazy old creature: imagines herself the wife of the
ex-Premier, widow of Prince Le Boo, engaged to the Chinese Ambassador, et
caetera. Leave the tussle with that woman to me. No, we don't repeat the
error of Crayc Farm and Creckholt. And here we have stout friends. Not to
speak of Beaver Urmsing: a picture of Old Christmas England! You took to
him?--must have taken to Beaver Urmsing! The Marigolds! And Sir Rodwell
and Lady Blachington are altogether above the mark of Sir Humphrey and
Lady Pottil, and those half and half Mountneys. There's a warm centre of
home in Lakelands. But I know my Nataly: she is thinking of our girl.
Here is the plan: we stand our ground: my dear soul won't forsake me only
there's the thought of Fredi, in the event . . . improbable enough. I
lift Fredi out of the atmosphere awhile; she goes to my cousins the
Duvidney ladies.'

Nataly was hit by a shot. 'Can you imagine it, Victor?'

'Regard it as done.'

'They will surely decline!'

'Their feeling for General Radnor is a worship.'

'All the more . . . ?'

'The son inherits it. He goes to them personally. Have you ever known me
personally fail? Fredi stays at Moorsedge for a month or two. Dorothea
and Virginia Duvidney will give her a taste of a new society; good for
the girl. All these little shiftings can be turned to good. Meantime, I
say, we stand our ground: but you are not to be worried; for though we
have gone too far to recede, we need not and we will not make the entry
into Lakelands until--you know: that is, auspiciously, to suit you in
every way. Thus I provide to meet contingencies. What one may really
fancy is, that the woman did but threaten. There's her point of view to
be considered: silly, crazy; but one sees it. We are not sure that she
struck a blow at Craye or Creckholt. I wonder she never wrote. She was
frightened, when she came to manage her property, of signing her name to
anything. Absurd, that sending of Jarniman! However, it's her move; we
make a corresponding disposition of our chessmen.'

'And I am to lose my Nesta for a month?' Nataly said, after catching here
and there at the fitful gleams of truce or comfort dropped from his
words. And simultaneously, the reproach of her mind to her nature for
again and so constantly yielding to the domination of his initiative:
unable to find the words, even the ideas, to withstand him,--brought big
tears. Angry at herself both for the internal feebleness and the
exhibition of it, she blinked and begged excuse. There might be nothing
that should call her to resist him. She could not do much worse than she
had done to-day. The reflection, that to-day she had been actually
sustained by the expectation of a death to come, diminished her estimate
of to-morrow's burden on her endurance, in making her seem a less
criminal woman, who would have no such expectation: which was virtually a
stab at a fellow creature's future. Her head was acute to work in the
direction of the casuistries and the sensational webs and films. Facing
Victor, it was a block.

But the thought came: how could she meet those people about Lakelands,
without support of the recent guilty whispers! She said coldly, her heart
shaking her: 'You think there has been a recovery?'

'Invalids are up and down. They are--well, no; I should think she dreads
the . . .' he kept 'surgeon' out of hearing. 'Or else she means this for
the final stroke: "though I'm lying here, I can still make him feel."
That, or--poor woman--she has her notions of right and wrong.'

'Could we not now travel for a few weeks, Victor?'

'Certainly, dear; we will, after we have kept our engagements to dine--I
accepted--with the Blathenoys, the Blachingtons, Beaver Urmsing.'

Nataly's vision of the peaceful lost little dairy cottage swelled to
brilliance, like the large tear at the fall; darkening under her present
effort to comprehend the necessity it was for him to mix and be foremost
with the world. Unable to grasp it perfectly in mind, her compassionate
love embraced it: she blamed herself, for being the obstruction to him.

'Very well,' she said on a sigh. 'Then we shall not have to let our girl
go from us?'

'Just a few weeks. In the middle of dinner, I scribbled a telegram to the
Duvidneys, for Skepsey to take.'

'Speaking of Nesta?'

'Of my coming to-morrow. They won't stop me. I dine with them, sleep at
the Wells; hotel for a night. We are to be separated for a night.'

She laid her hand in his and gave him a passing view of her face: 'For
two, dear. I am . . . that man's visit--rather shaken: I shall have a
better chance of sleeping if I know I am not disturbing you.'

She was firm; and they kissed and parted. Each had an unphrased
speculation upon the power of Mrs. Burman to put division between them.




CHAPTER XXIII

TREATS OF THE LADIES' LAPDOG TASSO FOR AN INSTANCE OF MOMENTOUS EFFECTS
PRODUCED BY VERY MINOR CAUSES

The maiden ladies Dorothea and Virginia Duvidney were thin--sweet
old-fashioned grey gentlewomen, demurely conscious of their excellence
and awake to the temptation in the consciousness, who imposed a certain
reflex primness on the lips of the world when addressing them or when
alluding to them. For their appearance was picturesque of the ancestral
time, and their ideas and scrupulousness of delivery suggested the
belated in ripeness; orchard apples under a snow-storm; or any image that
will ceremoniously convey the mind's profound appreciation together with
the tooth's panic dread of tartness. They were by no means tart; only, as
you know, the tooth is apprehensively nervous; an uninviting sign will
set it on edge. Even the pen which would sketch them has a spell on it
and must don its coat of office, walk the liveried footman behind them.

Their wealth, their deeds of charity, their modesty, their built grey
locks, their high repute; a 'Chippendale elegance' in a quaintly formal
correctness, that they had, as Colney Durance called it; gave them some
queenliness, and allowed them to claim the ear as an oracle and banish
rebellious argument. Intuitive knowledge, assisted by the Rev. Stuart Rem
and the Rev. Abram Posterley, enabled them to pronounce upon men and
things; not without effect; their country owned it; the foreigner beheld
it. Nor were they corrupted by the servility of the surrounding ear. They
were good women, striving to be humbly good. They might, for all the
little errors they nightly unrolled to then perceptions, have stood
before the world for a study in the white of our humanity. And this may
be but a washed wall, it is true: revolutionary sceptics are measuring
the depths of it. But the hue refreshes, the world admires; and we know
it an object of aim to the bettermost of the wealthy. If, happily,
complacent circumstances have lifted us to the clean paved platform out
of grip of puddled clay and bespattering wheeltracks, we get our chance
of coming to it.

Possessing, for example, nine thousand pounds per annum in Consols, and
not expending the whole of it upon our luxuries, we are, without further
privation, near to kindling the world's enthusiasm for whiteness. Yet
there, too, we find, that character has its problems to solve; there are
shades in salt. We must be charitable, but we should be just; we give to
the poor of the land, but we are eminently the friends of our servants;
duty to mankind diverts us not from the love we bear to our dog; and with
a pathetic sorrow for silt, we discard it from sight and hearing. We hate
dirt. Having said so much, having shown it, by sealing the mouth of Mr.
Stuart Rem and iceing the veins of Mr. Abram Posterley, in relation to a
dreadful public case and a melancholy private, we have a pleased sense of
entry into the world's ideal.

At the same time, we protest our unworthiness. Acknowledgeing that they
were not purely spotless, these ladies genuinely took the tiny fly-spot
for a spur to purification; and they viewed it as a patch to raise in
relief their goodness. They gazed on it, saw themselves in it, and veiled
it: warned of the cunning of an oft-defeated Tempter.

To do good and sleep well, was their sowing and their reaping. Uneasy
consciences could not have slept. The sleeping served for proof of an
accurate reckoning and an expungeing of the day's debits. They differed
in opinion now and then, as we see companion waves of the river, blown by
a gust, roll a shadow between them; and almost equally transient were
their differences with a world that they condemned when they could not
feel they (as an embodiment of their principles) were leading it. The
English world at times betrayed a restiveness in the walled pathway of
virtue; for, alas, it closely neighbours the French; only a Channel,
often dangerously smooth, to divide: but it is not perverted for long;
and the English Funds are always constant and a tower. Would they be
suffered to be so, if libertinism were in the ascendant?

Colney Durance was acquainted with the Duvidney ladies. Hearing of the
journey to them and the purport of it, he said, with the mask upon glee:
'Then Victor has met his match!' Nataly had sent for him to dine with her
in Victor's absence: she was far from grieved, as to the result, by his
assurance to her, that Victor had not a chance. Colney thought so. 'Just
like him! to be off gaily to try and overcome or come over the greatest
power in England.' They were England herself; the squat old woman she has
become by reason of her overlapping numbers of the comfortable
fund-holder annuitants: a vast body of passives and negatives, living by
precept, according to rules of precedent, and supposing themselves to be
righteously guided because of their continuing undisturbed. Them he
branded, as hypocritical materialists, and the country for pride in her
sweetmeat plethora of them:--mixed with an ancient Hebrew fear of offence
to an inscrutable Lord, eccentrically appeasable through the dreary
iteration of the litany of sinfulness. He was near a truth; and he had
the heat of it on him.

Satirists in their fervours might be near it to grasp it, if they could
be moved to moral distinctness, mental intention, with a preference of
strong plain speech over the crack of their whips. Colney could not or
would not praise our modern adventurous, experimental, heroic, tramping
active, as opposed to yonder pursy passives and negatives; he had
occasions for flicking the fellow sharply: and to speak of the Lord as
our friend present with us, palpable to Reason, perceptible to natural
piety solely through the reason, which justifies punishment; that would
have stopped his mouth upon the theme of God-forsaken creatures. Our
satirist is an executioner by profession, a moralist in excuse, or at the
tail of it; though he thinks the position reversed, when he moralizes
angrily to have his angry use of the scourge condoned. Nevertheless, he
fills a serviceable place; and certainly he is not happy in his business.
Colney suffered as heavily as he struck. If he had been no more than a
mime in the motley of satire, he would have sucked compensation from the
acid of his phrases, for the failure to prick and goad, and work
amendment.

He dramatized to Nataly some of the scene going on at the Wells: Victor's
petition; his fugue in urgency of it; the brief reply of Miss Dorothea
and her muted echo Miss Virginia. He was rather their apologist for
refusing. But, as when, after himself listening to their 'views,' he had
deferentially withdrawn from the ladies of Moorsedge, and had then beheld
their strangely-hatted lieutenants and the regiments of the toneless
respectable on the pantiles and the mounts, the curse upon the satirist
impelled him to generalize. The quiet good ladies were multiplied: they
were 'the thousands of their sisters, petticoated or long-coated or
buck-skinned; comfortable annuitants under clerical shepherding, close
upon outnumbering the labourers they paralyze at home and stultify
abroad.' Colney thumped away. The country's annuitants had for type 'the
figure with the helmet of the Owl-Goddess and the trident of the
Earth-shaker, seated on a wheel, at the back of penny-pieces; in whom you
see neither the beauty of nakedness nor the charm of drapery; not the
helmet's dignity or the trident's power; but she has patently that which
stops the wheel; and poseing for representative of an imperial nation,
she helps to pass a penny.' So he passed his epigram, heedless of the
understanding or attention of his hearer; who temporarily misjudged him
for a man impelled by the vanity of literary point and finish, when
indeed it was hot satiric spite, justified of its aim, which crushed a
class to extract a drop of scathing acid, in the interests of the
country, mankind as well. Nataly wanted a picture painted, colours and
details, that she might get a vision of the scene at Moorsedge. She did
her best to feel an omen and sound it, in his question 'whether the
yearly increasing army of the orderly annuitants and their parasites does
not demonstrate the proud old country as a sheath for pith rather than of
the vital run of sap.'

Perhaps it was patriotic to inquire; and doubtless she was the weakest of
women; she could follow no thought; her heart was beating blindly beside
Victor, hopeing for the refusal painful to her through his
disappointment.

'You think me foolish,' she made answer to one of Colney's shrugs; 'and
it has come to that pitch with me, that I cannot be sensible of a merit
except in being one with him--obeying, is the word. And I have never yet
known him fail. That terrible Lakelands wears a different look to me,
when I think of what he can do; though I would give half my days to
escape it.'

She harped on the chord of feverish extravagance; the more hateful to
Colney because of his perceiving, that she simulated a blind devotedness
to stupefy her natural pride; and he was divided between stamping on her
for an imbecile and dashing at Victor for a maniac. But her situation
rendered her pitiable. 'You will learn tomorrow what Victor has done,' he
said, and thought how the simple words carried the bitterness.

That was uttered within a few minutes of midnight, when the ladies of
Moorsedge themselves, after an exhausting resistance to their dearest
relative, were at the hall-door of the house with Victor, saying the
good-night, to which he responded hurriedly, cordially, dumbly, a baffled
man. They clasped hands. Miss Dorothea said:

'You, Victor, always.' Miss Virginia said: 'You will be sure of welcome.'
He walked out upon the moonless night; and for lack of any rounded object
in the smothering darkness to look at, he could nowhere take moorings to
gather himself together and define the man who had undergone so
portentous a defeat. He was glad of quarters at an hotel, a solitary bed,
absence from his Nataly.

For their parts, the ladies were not less shattered. They had no triumph
in their victory: the weight of it bore them down. They closed, locked,
shot the bolts and fastened the chain of the door. They had to be
reminded by the shaking of their darling dog Tasso's curly silky coat,
that he had not taken his evening's trot to notify malefactors of his
watchfulness and official wrath at sound of footfall or a fancied one.
Without consultation, they unbolted the door, and Tasso went forth, to
'compose his vesper hymn,' as Mr. Posterley once remarked amusingly.

Though not pretending to the Muse's crown so far, the little dog had
qualities to entrance the spinster sex. His mistresses talked of him; of
his readiness to go forth; of the audible first line of his hymn or
sonnet; of his instinct telling him that something was wrong in the
establishment. For most of the servants at Moorsedge were prostrated by a
fashionable epidemic; a slight attack, the doctor said; but Montague, the
butler, had withdrawn for the nursing of his wife; Perrin, the footman,
was confined to his chamber; Manton, the favourite maid, had appeared in
the morning with a face that caused her banishment to bed; and the cook,
Mrs. Bannister, then sighingly agreed to send up cold meat for the
ladies' dinner. Hence their melancholy inhospitality to their cousin
Victor, who had, in spite of his errors, the right to claim his place at
their table, was 'of the blood,' they said. He was recognized as the
living prince of it. His every gesture, every word, recalled the General.
The trying scene with him had withered them, they did not speak of it;
each had to the other the look of a vessel that has come out of a gale.
Would they sleep? They scarcely dared ask it of themselves. They had done
rightly; silence upon that reflection seemed best. It was the silence of
an inward agitation; still they knew the power of good consciences to
summon sleep.

Tasso was usually timed for five minutes. They were astonished to
discover by the clock, that they had given him ten. He was very quiet: if
so, and for whatever he did, he had his reason, they said: he was a dog
endowed with reason: endowed--and how they wished that Mr. Stuart Rem
would admit it!--with, their love of the little dog believed (and Mr.
Posterley acquiesced), a soul. Do but think it of dear animals, and any
form of cruelty to them becomes an impossibility, Mr. Stuart Rem! But he
would not be convinced: ungenerously indeed he named Mr. Posterley a
courtier. The ladies could have retorted, that Mr. Posterley had not a
brother who was the celebrated surgeon Sir Nicholas Rem.

Usually Tasso came running in when the hall-door was opened to him. Not a
sound of him could be heard. The ladies blew his familiar whistle. He
trotted back to a third appeal, and was, unfortunately for them, not
caressed; he received reproaches from two forefingers directed straight
at his reason. He saw it and felt it. The hug of him was deferred to the
tender good-night to him in his basket at the foot of the ladies' beds.

On entering their spacious bed-chamber, they were so fatigued that sleep
appeared to their minds the compensating logical deduction. Miss Dorothea
suppressed a yawn, and inflicted it upon Miss Virginia, who returned it,
with an apology, and immediately had her sister's hand on her shoulder,
for, an attempted control of one of the irresistibles; a specacle
imparting bitter shudders and shots to the sympathetic jawbones of an
observer. Hand at mouth, for not in privacy would they have been guilty
of exposing a grimace, they signified, under an interim smile, their
maidenly submission to the ridiculous force of nature: after which, Miss
Virginia retired to the dressing-room, absorbed in woeful recollection of
the resolute No they had been compelled to reiterate, in response to the
most eloquent and, saving for a single instance, admirable man, their
cousin, the representative of 'the blood,' supplicating them. A recreant
thankfulness coiled within her bosom at the thought, that Dorothea, true
to her office of speaker, had tasked herself with the cruel utterance and
repetition of the word. Victor's wonderful eyes, his voice, yet more than
his urgent pleas; and also, in the midst of his fiery flood of speech,
his gentleness, his patience, pathos, and a man's tone through it all;
were present to her.

Disrobed, she knocked at the door.

'I have called to you twice,' Dorothea said; and she looked a motive for
the call.

'What is it?' said Virginia, with faltering sweetness, with a terrible
divination.

The movement of a sigh was made. 'Are you aware of anything, dear?'

Virginia was taken with the contrary movement of a sniff. But the fear
informing it prevented it from being venturesome. Doubt of the pure
atmosphere of their bed-chamber, appeared to her as too heretic even for
the positive essay. In affirming, that she was not aware of anything, her
sight fell on Tasso. His eyeballs were those of a little dog that has
been awfully questioned.

'It is more than a suspicion,' said Dorothea; and plainly now, while open
to the seductions of any pleasing infidel testimony, her nose in
repugnance convicted him absolutely.

Virginia's nose was lowered a few inches; it inhaled and stopped midway.
'You must be mistaken, dear. He never . . . '

'But are you insensible to the . . .' Dorothea's eyelids fainted.

Virginia dismissed the forlornest of efforts at incredulity. A whiff of
Tasso had smitten her. 'Ah!' she exclaimed and fell away. 'Is it Tasso!
How was it you noticed nothing before undressing, dear?'

'Thinking of what we have gone through to-night! I forgot him. At last
the very strange . . . The like of it I have not ever! . . . And upon
that thick coat! And, dear, it is late. We are in the morning hours.'

'But, my dear-Oh, dear, what is to be done with him?'

That was the crucial point for discussion. They had no servant to give
them aid; Manton, they could not dream of disturbing. And Tasso's
character was in the estimate; he hated washing; it balefully depraved
his temper; and not only, creature of habit that he was, would he decline
to lie down anywhere save in their bedroom, he would lament, plead,
insist unremittingly, if excluded; terrifying every poor invalid of the
house. Then again, were they at this late hour to dress themselves, and
take him downstairs, and light a fire in the kitchen, and boil sufficient
water to give him a bath and scrubbing? Cold water would be death to him.
Besides, he would ring out his alarum for the house to hear, pour out all
his poetry, poor dear, as Mr. Posterley called it, at a touch of cold
water. The catastrophe was one to weep over, the dilemma a trial of the
strongest intelligences.

In addition to reviews of their solitary alternative-the having of a
befouled degraded little dog in their chamber through the night, they
were subjected to a conflict of emotions when eyeing him: and there came
to them the painful, perhaps irreverent, perhaps uncharitable,
thought:--that the sinner who has rolled in the abominable, must cleanse
him and do things to polish him and perfume before again embraced even by
the mind: if indeed we can ever have our old sentiment for him again! Mr.
Stuart Rem might decide it for them. Nay, before even the heart embraces
him, he must completely purify himself. That is to say, the ordinary
human sinner--save when a relative. Contemplating Tasso, the hearts of
the ladies gushed out in pity of an innocent little dog, knowing not
evil, dependent on his friends for help to be purified;--necessarily kept
at a distance: the very look of him prescribed extreme separation, as far
as practicable. But they had proof of a love almost greater than it was
previous to the offence, in the tender precautions they took to elude
repulsion.

He was rolling on the rug, communicating contagion. Flasks of
treble-distilled lavender water, and their favourite, traditional in the
family, eau d'Arquebusade, were on the toilet-table. They sprinkled his
basket, liberally sprinkled the rug and the little dog. Perfume-pastilles
were in one of the sitting-rooms below; and Virginia would have gone down
softly to fetch a box, but Dorothea restrained her, in pity for the
servants, with the remark: 'It would give us a nightmare of a Roman
Catholic Cathedral!' A bit of the window was lifted by Dorothea,
cautiously, that prowling outsiders might not be attracted. Tasso was
wooed to his basket. He seemed inquisitive; the antidote of his
naughtiness excited him; his tail circled after his muzzle several times;
then he lay. A silken scarf steeped in eau d'Arquebusade was flung across
him.

Their customary devout observances concluded, lights were extinguished,
and the ladies kissed, and entered their beds.

Their beds were not homely to them. Dorothea thought that Virginia was
long in settling herself. Virginia did not like the sound of Dorothea's
double sigh. Both listened anxiously for the doings of Tasso. He rested.

He was uneasy; he was rounding his basket once more; unaware of the
exaggeration of his iniquitous conduct, poor innocent, he shook that
dreadful coat of his! He had displaced the prophylactic cover of the
scarf.

He drove them in a despair to speculate on the contention between the
perfume and the stench in junction, with such a doubt of the victory of
which of the two, as drags us to fear our worst. It steals into our
nostrils, possesses them. As the History of Mankind has informed us, we
were led up to our civilization by the nose. But Philosophy warns us on
that eminence; to beware of trusting exclusively to our conductor, lest
the mind of us at least be plunged back into barbarism. The ladies hated
both the cause and the consequence, they had a revulsion from the object,
of the above contention. But call it not a contention: there is nobility
in that. This was a compromise, a degrading union, with very sickening
results. Whether they came of an excess of the sprinkling, could not well
be guessed. The drenching at least was righteously intended.

Beneath their shut eyelids, they felt more and more the oppression of a
darkness not laden with slumber. They saw it insolidity; themselves as
restless billows, driven dashing to the despondent sigh. Sleep was denied
them.

Tasso slept. He had sinned unknowingly, and that is not a spiritual sin;
the chastisement confers the pardon.

But why was this ineffable blessing denied to them? Was it that they
might have a survey of all the day's deeds and examine them under the
cruel black beams of Insomnia?

Virginia said: 'You are wakeful.'

'Thoughtful,' was the answer.

A century of the midnight rolled on.

Dorothea said: 'He behaved very beautifully.'

'I looked at the General's portrait while he besought us,' Virginia
replied.

'One sees him in Victor, at Victor's age. Try to sleep.'

'I do. I pray that you may.'

Silence courted slumber. Their interchange of speech from the posture of
bodies on their backs, had been low and deliberate, in the tone of the
vaults. Dead silence recalled the strangeness of it. The night was
breathless; their open window a peril bestowing no boon. They were
mutually haunted by sound of the gloomy query at the nostrils of each
when drawing the vital breath. But for that, they thought they might have
slept.

Bed spake to bed:

'The words of Mr. Stuart Rem last Sunday!' 'He said: "Be just." Could one
but see direction!'

'In obscurity, feeling is a guide.'

'The heart.'

'It may sometimes be followed.'

'When it concerns the family.'

'He would have the living, who are seeking peace, be just.'

'Not to assume the seat of justice.'

Again they lay as tombstone effigies, that have committed the passage of
affairs to another procession of the Ages.

There was a gentle sniff, in hopeless confirmation of the experience of
its predecessors. A sister to it ensued.

'Could Victor have spoken so, without assurance in his conscience, that
his entreaty was righteously addressed to us? that we . . .'

'And no others!'

'I think of his language. He loves the child.'

'In heart as in mind, he is eminently gifted; acknowledgeing error.'

'He was very young.'

The huge funereal minutes conducted their sonorous hearse, the hour.

It struck in the bed-room: Three.

No more than three of the clock, it was the voice telling of half the
precious restorative night-hours wasted.

Now, as we close our eyelids when we would go to sleep, so must we, in
expectation of the peace of mind granting us the sweet oblivion,
preliminarily do something which invokes, that we may obtain it.

'Dear,' Dorothea said.

'I know indeed,' said Virginia.

'We may have been!'

'Not designingly.'

'Indeed not. But harsh it may be named, if the one innocent is to be the
sufferer.'

'The child can in no sense be adjudged guilty.'

'It is Victor's child.'

'He adores the child.'

Wheels were in mute motion within them; and presently the remark was
tossed-up:

'In his coming to us, it is possible to see paternal solicitude'

Thence came fruit of reflection:

'To be instrumental as guides to a tender young life!'

Reflection heated with visions:

'Once our dream!'

They had the happier feeling of composure, though Tasso possessed the
room. Not Tasso, but a sublimated offensiveness, issue of the
antagonistically combined, dispersed to be the more penetrating; insomuch
that it seemed to them they could not ever again make use of eau
d'Arquebusade without the vitiating reminder. So true were the words of
Mr. Stuart Rem: 'Half measures to purification are the most delusive of
our artifices.' Fatigue and its reflections helped to be peacefuller.
Their souls were mounting to a serenity above the nauseating degradation,
to which the poor little dog had dragged them.

'Victor gave his promise.'

'At least, concession would not imply contact with the guilty.'

Both sighed as they took up the burden of the vaporous Tasso to drop him;
with the greater satisfaction in the expelling of their breath.

'It might be said, dear, that concession to his entreaty does not in any
way countenance the sin.'

'I can see, dear, how it might be read as a reproof.'

Their exchange of sentences followed meditative pauses; Dorothea leading.

'To one so sensitive as Victor!'

'A month or two of our society for the child!'

'It is not the length of time.'

'The limitation assures against maternal claims.'

'She would not dare.'

'He used the words: "her serious respect" for us. I should not wish to
listen to him often.'

'We listen to a higher.'

'It may really be, that the child is like him.'

'Not resembling Mr. Stuart Rem's Clementina!'

'A week of that child gave us our totally sleepless night.' 'One thinks
more hopefully of a child of Victor's.'

'He would preponderate.'

'He would.'

They sighed; but it was now with the relief of a lightened oppression.

'If, dear, in truth the father's look is in the child, he has the greater
reason to desire for her a taste of our atmosphere.'

'Do not pursue it. Sleep.'

'One prayer!'

'Your mention of our atmosphere, dear, destroys my power to frame one. Do
you, for two. But I would cleanse my heart.'

'There is none purer.'

'Hush.'

Virginia spoke a more fervent word of praise of her sister, and had not
the hushing response to it. She heard the soft regular breathing. Her own
was in downy fellowship with it a moment later.

At the hour of nine, in genial daylight, sitting over the crumbs of his
hotel breakfast, Victor received a little note that bore the handwriting
of Dorothea Duvidney.

   'Dear Victor, we are prepared to receive the child for a month.
   In haste, before your train. Our love. D. and V.'

His face flashed out of cloud.

A more precious document had never been handed to him. It chased back to
midnight the doubt hovering over his belief in himself;--phrased to say,
that he was no longer the Victor Radnor known to the world. And it
extinguished a corpse-like recollection of a baleful dream in the night.
Here shone radiant witness of his being the very man; save for the spot
of his recent confusion in distinguishing his identity or in feeling that
he stood whole and solid.--Because of two mature maiden ladies? Yes,
because of two maiden ladies, my good fellow. And friend Colney, you know
the ladies, and what the getting round them for one's purposes really
means.

The sprite of Colney Durance had struck him smartly overnight. Victor's
internal crow was over Colney now. And when you have the optimist and
pessimist acutely opposed in a mixing group, they direct lively
conversations at one another across the gulf of distance, even of time.
For a principle is involved, besides the knowledge of the other's triumph
or dismay. The couple are scales of a balance; and not before last night
had Victor ever consented to think of Colney ascending while he dropped
low to graze the pebbles.

He left his hotel for the station, singing the great aria of the fourth
Act of the Favorita: neglected since that mighty German with his Rienzi,
and Tannhauser, and Tristan and Isolda, had mastered him, to the
displacement of his boyhood's beloved sugary -inis and -antes and
-zettis; had clearly mastered, not beguiled, him; had wafted him up to a
new realm, invigorating if severer. But now his youth would have its
voice. He travelled up to town with Sir Abraham Quatley and talked, and
took and gave hints upon City and Commercial affairs, while the honeyed
Italian of the conventional, gloriously animal, stress and flutter had a
revel in his veins, now and then mutedly ebullient at the mouth: honeyed,
golden, rich in visions;--having surely much more of Nature's
encouragement to her children?




CHAPTER XXIV

NESTA'S ENGAGEMENT

A word in his ear from Fenellan, touching that man Blathenoy, set the
wheels of Victor's brain at work upon his defences, for a minute, on the
walk Westward. Who knew?--who did not know! He had a torpid consciousness
that he cringed to the world, with an entreaty to the great monster to
hold off in ignorance; and the next instant, he had caught its miserable
spies by the lurcher neck and was towering. He dwelt on his contempt of
them, to curtain the power they could stir.

'The little woman, you say, took to Dartrey?'

Fenellan, with the usual apologetic moderation of a second statement,
thought 'there was the look of it.'

'Well, we must watch over her. Dartrey!--but Dartrey's an honest fellow
with women. But men are men. Very few men spare a woman when the mad fit
is on her. A little woman-pretty little woman!--wife to Jacob Blathenoy!
She mustn't at her age have any close choosing--under her hand. And
Dartrey's just the figure to strike a spark in a tinder-box head.'

'With a husband who'd reduce Minerva's to tinder, after a month of him!'

'He spent his honeymoon at his place at Wrensham; told me so.' Blathenoy
had therefore then heard of the building of Lakelands by the Victor
Radnor of the City; and had then, we guess--in the usual honeymoon
boasting of a windbag with his bride--wheezed the foul gossip, to hide
his emptiness and do duty for amusement of the pretty little caged bird.
Probably so. But Victor knew that Blathenoy needed him and feared him.
Probably the wife had been enjoined to keep silence; for the
Blachingtons, Fannings and others were, it could be sworn, blank and
unscratched folio sheets on the subject:--as yet; unless Mrs. Burman had
dropped venom.

'One pities the little woman, eh, Fenellan?'

'Dartrey won't be back for a week or so; and they're off to Switzerland,
after the dinner they give. I heard from him this morning; one of the
Clanconans is ill.

'Lucky. But wherever Blathenoy takes her, he must be the same "arid
bore," as old Colney says.'

'A domestic simoom,' said Fenellan, booming it: and Victor had a shudder.

'Awful thing, marriage, to some women! We chain them to that domestic
round; most of them haven't the means of independence or a chance of
winning it; and all that's open to them, if they've made a bad cast for a
mate--and good Lord! how are they to know before it's too late!--they
haven't a choice except to play tricks or jump to the deuce or sit and
"drape in blight," as Colney has it; though his notion of the optional
marriages, broken or renewed every seven years!--if he means it. You
never know, with him. It sounds like another squirt of savage irony. It's
donkey nonsense, eh?'

'The very hee-haw of nonsense,' Fenellan acquiesced.

'Come, come; read your Scriptures; donkeys have shown wisdom,' Victor
said, rather leaning to the theme of a fretfulness of women in the legal
yoke. 'They're donkeys till we know them for prophets. Who can tell!
Colney may be hailed for one fifty years hence.'

Fenellan was not invited to enter the house, although the loneliness of
his lodgeings was known, and also, that he played whist at his Club.
Victor had grounds for turning to him at the door and squeezing his hand
warmly, by way of dismissal. In ascribing them to a weariness at
Fenellan's perpetual acquiescence, he put the cover on them, and he
stamped it with a repudiation of the charge, that Colney's views upon the
great Marriage Question were the 'very hee-haw of nonsense.' They were
not the hee-haw; in fact, viewing the host of marriages, they were for
discussion; there was no bray about them. He could not feel them to be
absurd while Mrs. Burman's tenure of existence barred the ceremony.
Anything for a phrase! he murmured of Fenellan's talk; calling him, Dear
old boy, to soften the slight.

Nataly had not seen Fenellan or heard from Dartrey; so she continued to
be uninformed of her hero's release; and that was in the order of happy
accidents. She had hardly to look her interrogation for the news; it
radiated. But he stated such matter-of-course briefly. 'The good ladies
are ready to receive our girl.'

Her chagrin resolved to a kind of solace of her draggled pride, in the
idea, that he who tamed everybody to submission, might well have command
of her.

The note, signed D. and V., was shown.

There stood the words. And last night she had been partly of the opinion
of Colney Durance. She sank down among the unreasoning abject;--not this
time with her perfect love of him, but with a resistance and a dubiety
under compression. For she had not quite comprehended why Nesta should
go. This readiness of the Duvidney ladies to receive the girl, stopped
her mental inquiries.

She begged for a week's delay; 'before the parting'; as her dear old
silly mother's pathos whimpered it, of the separation for a month! and he
smiled and hummed pleasantly at any small petition, thinking her in error
to expect Dartrey's return to town before the close of a week; and then
wondering at women, mildly denouncing in his heart the mothers who ran
risk of disturbing their daughters' bosoms with regard to particular
heroes married or not. Dartrey attracted women: he was one of the men who
do it without effort. Victor's provident mind blamed the mother for the
indiscreetness of her wish to have him among them. But Dudley had been
making way bravely of late; he improved; he began to bloom, like a Spring
flower of the garden protected from frosts under glass; and Fredi was the
sheltering and nourishing bestower of the lessons. One could see, his
questions and other little points revealed, that he had a certain lover's
dread of Dartrey Fenellan; a sort of jealousy: Victor understood the
feeling. To love a girl, who has her ideal of a man elsewhere in another;
though she may know she never can wed the man, and has not the hope of
it; is torment to the lover quailing, as we do in this terrible season of
the priceless deliciousness, stripped against all the winds that blow;
skinless at times. One gets up a sympathy for the poor shy dependent
shivering lover. Nevertheless, here was young Dudley waking, visibly
becoming bolder. As in the flute-duets, he gained fire from concert. The
distance between Cronidge and Moorsedge was two miles and a quarter.

Instead of the delay of a whole week, Victor granted four days, which
embraced a musical evening at Mrs. John Cormyn's on the last of the days,
when Nesta was engaged to sing with her mother a duet of her own
composition, the first public fruit of her lessons in counterpoint from
rigid Herr Strauscher, who had said what he had said, in letting it pass:
eulogy, coming from him. So Victor heard, and he doated am the surprise
to come for him, in a boyish anticipation. The girl's little French
ballads under tutelage of Louise de Seilles promised, though they were
imitative. If Strauscher let this pass . . . Victor saw Grand Opera
somewhere to follow; England's claim to be a creative musical nation
vindicated; and the genius of the fair sex as well.

He heard the duet at Mrs. Cormyn's; and he imagined a hearing of his
Fredi's Opera, and her godmother's delight in it; the once famed
Sanfredini's consent to be the diva at a rehearsal, and then her
compelling her hidalgo duque to consent further: an event not
inconceivable. For here was downright genius; the flowering aloe of the
many years in formation; and Colney admitted the song to have a streak of
genius; though he would pettishly and stupidly say, that our modern
newspaper Press is able now to force genius for us twenty or so to the
month, excluding Sundays-our short pauses for the incubation of it. Real
rare genius was in that song, nothing forced; and exquisite melody; one
of those melodies which fling gold chains about us and lead us off, lead
us back into Eden. Victor hummed at bars of it on the drive homeward. His
darlings had to sing it again in the half-lighted drawing-room. The
bubble-happiness of the three was vexed only by tidings heard from Colney
during the evening of a renewed instance of Skepsey's misconduct.
Priscilla Graves had hurried away to him at the close of Mr. John
Cormyn's Concert, in consequence; in grief and in sympathy. Skepsey was
to appear before the magistrate next morning, for having administered
physical chastisement to his wife during one of her fits of drunkenness.
Colney had seen him. His version of the story was given, however, in the
objectionable humorous manner: none could gather from it of what might be
pleaded for Skepsey. His 'lesson to his wife in the art of pugilism,
before granting her Captain's rank among the Defensive Amazons of Old
England,' was the customary patent absurdity. But it was odd, that
Skepsey always preferred his appeal for help to Colney Durance. Nesta
proposed following Priscilla that night. She had hinted her wish, on the
way home; she was urgent, beseeching, when her father lifted praises of
her: she had to start with her father by the train at seven in the
morning, and she could not hear of poor Skepsey for a number of hours.
She begged a day's delay; which would enable her, she said, to join them
in dining at the Blachingtons', and seeing dear Lakelands again. 'I was
invited, you know.' She spoke in childish style, and under her eyes she
beheld her father and mother exchange looks. He had a fear that Nataly
might support the girl's petition. Nataly read him to mean, possible
dangers among the people at Wrensham. She had seemed hesitating. After
meeting Victor's look, her refusal was firm. She tried to make it one of
distress for the use of the hard word to her own dear girl. Nesta spied
beneath.

But what was it? There was a reason for her going! She had a right to
stay, and see and talk with Captain Dartrey, and she was to be deported!

So now she set herself to remember little incidents at Creckholt:
particularly a conversation in a very young girl's hearing, upon Sir
Humphrey and Lady Pottil's behaviour to the speakers, her parents. She
had then, and she now had, an extraordinary feeling, as from a wind
striking upon soft summer weather off regions of ice, that she was in her
parents' way. How? The feeling was irrational; it could give her no
reply, or only the multitudinous which are the question violently
repeated. She slept on it.

She and her father breakfasted by the London birds' first twitter. They
talked of Skepsey. She spoke of her going as exile. 'No,' said he,
'you're sure to meet friends.'

Her cheeks glowed. It came wholly through the suddenness of the
recollection, that the family-seat of one among the friends was near the
Wells.

He was allowed to fancy, as it suited him to fancy, that a vivid secret
pleasure laid the colour on those ingenuous fair cheeks.

'A solitary flute for me, for a month! I shall miss my sober comrade: got
the habit of duetting: and he's gentle, bears with me.'

Tears lined her eyelids. 'Who would not be, dearest dada! But there is
nothing to bear except the honour.'

'You like him? You and I always have the same tastes, Fredi.'

Now there was a reddening of the sun at the mount; all the sky aflame.
How could he know that it was not the heart in the face! She reddened
because she had perused his wishes; had detected a scheme striking off
from them, and knew a man to be the object of it; and because she had at
the same time the sense of a flattery in her quick divination; and she
was responsively emotional, her blood virginal; often it was a tropical
lightning.

It looked like the heart doing rich painter's work on maiden features.
Victor was naturally as deceived as he wished to be.

From his being naturally so, his remarks on Dudley had an air of
embracing him as one of the family. 'His manner to me just hits me.'

'I like to see him with you,' she said.

Her father let his tongue run: 'One of the few young men I feel perfectly
at home with! I do like dealing with a gentleman. I can confide in a
gentleman: honour, heart, whatever I hold dearest.'

There he stopped, not too soon. The girl was mute, fully agreeing,
slightly hardening. She had a painful sense of separation from her dear
Louise. And it was now to be from her mother as well: she felt the pain
when kissing her mother in bed. But this was moderated by the prospect of
a holiday away out of reach of Mr. Barmby's pursuing voice, whom her
mother favoured: and her mother was concealing something from her; so she
could not make the confidante of her mother. Nataly had no forewarnings.
Her simple regrets filled her bosom. All night she had been taking her
chastisement, and in the morning it seemed good to her, that she should
be denuded, for her girl to learn the felicity of having relatives.

For some reason, over which Nataly mused in the succeeding hours, the
girl had not spoken of any visit her mother was to pay to the Duvidney
ladies or they to her. Latterly she had not alluded to her mother's
family. It might mean, that the beloved and dreaded was laying finger on
a dark thing in the dark; reading syllables by touch; keeping silence
over the communications to a mind not yet actively speculative, as it is
a way with young women. 'With young women educated for the market, to be
timorous, consequently secretive, rather snaky,' Colney Durance had said.
Her Nesta was not one of the 'framed and glazed' description, cited by
him, for an example of the triumph of the product; 'exactly harmonious
with the ninny male's ideal of female innocence.' No; but what if the
mother had opened her heart to her girl? It had been of late her wish or
a dream, shaping hourly to a design, now positively to go through that
furnace. Her knowledge of Victor's objection, restrained an impulse that
had not won spring enough to act against his counsel or vivify an
intelligence grown dull in slavery under him, with regard to the one
seeming right course. The adoption of it would have wounded
him--therefore her. She had thought of him first; she had also thought of
herself, and she blamed herself now. She went so far as to think, that
Victor was guilty of the schemer's error of counting human creatures
arithmetically, in the sum, without the estimate of distinctive qualities
and value here and there. His return to a shivering sensitiveness on the
subject of his girl's enlightenment 'just yet,' for which Nataly pitied
and loved him, sharing it, with humiliation for doing so, became finally
her excuse. We must have some excuse, if we would keep to life.

Skepsey's case appeared in the evening papers. He confessed, 'frankly,'
he said, to the magistrate, that, 'acting under temporary exasperation,
he had lost for a moment a man's proper self-command.' He was as frank in
stating, that he 'occupied the prisoner's place before his Worship a
second time, and was a second time indebted to the gentleman, Mr. Colney
Durance, who so kindly stood by him.' There was hilarity in the Court at
his quaint sententious envelopment of the idiom of the streets, which he
delivered with solemnity: 'He could only plead, not in absolute
justification--an appeal to human sentiments--the feelings of a man of
the humbler orders, returning home in the evening, and his thoughts upon
things not without their importance, to find repeatedly the guardian of
his household beastly drunk, and destructive.' Colney made the case quite
intelligible to the magistrate; who gravely robed a strain of the
idiomatic in the officially awful, to keep in tune with his delinquent.
No serious harm had been done to the woman. Skepsey was admonished and
released. His wife expressed her willingness to forgive him, now he had
got his lesson; and she hoped he would understand, that there was no need
for a woman to learn pugilism. Skepsey would have explained; but the case
was over, he was hustled out.

However, a keen young reporter present smelt fun for copy; he followed
the couple; and in a particular evening Journal, laughable matter was
printed concerning Skepsey's view of the pugilism to be imparted to women
for their physical-protection in extremity, and the distinction of it
from the blow conveying the moral lesson to them; his wife having
objected to the former, because it annoyed her and he pestered her; and
she was never, she said, ready to stand up to him for practice, as he
called it, except when she had taken more than he thought wholesome for
her: he had no sense. There was a squabble between them, because he chose
to scour away to his master's office instead of conducting her home with
the honours. Nesta read the young reporter's version, with shrieks. She
led the ladies of Moorsedge to discover amusement in it.

At first, as her letter to her mother described them, they were like a
pair of pieces of costly China, with the settled smile, and cold. She saw
but the outside of them, and she continued reporting the variations,
which steadily determined the warmth. On the night of the third day, they
kissed her tenderly; they were human figures.

No one could be aware of the trial undergone by the good ladies in
receiving her: Victor's child; but, as their phrase would have run, had
they dared to give it utterance to one another, a child of sin. How
foreign to them, in that character, how strange, when she was looked on
as an inhabitant of their house, they hardly dared to estimate; until the
timorous estimation, from gradually swelling, suddenly sank; nature
invaded them; they could discard the alienating sense of the taint; and
not only did they no longer fear the moment when Mr. Stuart Rem or Mr.
Posterley might call for evening tea, but they consulted upon inviting
the married one of those gentlemen, to 'divert dear Nesta.' Every night
she slept well. In all she did, she proved she was 'of the blood.' She
had Victor's animated eyes; she might have, they dreaded to think, his
eloquence. They put it down to his eloquence entirely, that their
resistance to his petition had been overcome, for similarly with the
treatment of the private acts of royal personages by lacquey History,
there is, in the minds of the ultra-civilized, an insistance, that any
event having a consequence in matters personal to them, be at all hazards
recorded with the utmost nicety in decency. By such means, they preserve
the ceremonial self-respect, which is a necessity of their existence; and
so they maintain the regal elevation over the awe-struck subjects of
their interiors; who might otherwise revolt, pull down, scatter,
dishonour, expose for a shallow fiction the holiest, the most vital to
them. A democratic evil spirit is abroad, generated among congregations,
often perilously communicating its wanton laughter to the desperate
wickedness they know (not solely through the monition of Mr. Stuart Rem)
to lurk within. It has to be excluded: on certain points they must not
think. The night of Tasso was darkly clouded in the minds of the pure
ladies: a rift would have seized their half-slumbering sense of smell, to
revive the night, perhaps disorder the stately march of their
intelligences.

Victor's eloquence, Victor's influence, Victor's child he carried them as
a floodstream, insomuch, that their reception of this young creature of
the blot on her birth, was regarded by them in the unmentioned abstract,
and the child's presence upon earth seen with the indulgence (without the
naughty curiosity) of the loyal moral English for the numerous offspring
of the peccadillos of their monarchs. These things pass muster from being
'Britannically cocooned in the purple,' says our irreverent satirist; and
the maiden ladies' passion of devotion to 'the blood' helped to blind
them; but still more so did the imperious urgency to curtain closely the
night of Tasso, throwing all its consequences upon Victor's masterful
tongue. Whence it ensued (and here is the danger for illogical
individuals as well as vast communities, who continue to batten upon
fiction when the convenience of it has taken the place of pleasure), that
they had need to exalt his eloquence, for a cloak to their conduct; and
doing it, they fell into a habit of yielding to him; they disintegrated
under him; rules, principles, morality, were shaken to some confusion.
And still proceeding thus, they now and then glanced back, more
wonderingly than convicted sinners upon their days of early innocence, at
the night when successfully they withstood him. They who had doubted of
the rightness of letting Victor's girl come into collision with two
clerical gentlemen, one of whom was married, permitted him now to bring
the Hon. Dudley Sowerby to their house, and make appointments to meet Mr.
Dudley Sowerby under a roof that sheltered a young lady, evidently the
allurement to the scion of aristocracy; of whose family Mr. Stuart Rem
had spoken in the very kindling hushed tones, proper to the union of a
sacerdotal and an English citizen's veneration.

How would it end? And if some day this excellent Mr. Dudley Sowerby
reproached them! He could not have a sweeter bride, one more truly a lady
in education and manners; but the birth! the child's name! Their trouble
was emitted in a vapour of interjections. Very perplexing was it for the
good ladies of strict principles to reflect, as dimly they did, that the
concrete presence of dear Nesta silenced and overcame objections to her
being upon earth. She seemed, as it were, a draught of redoubtable Nature
inebriating morality. But would others be similarly affected? Victor
might get his release, to do justice to the mother: it would not cover
the child. Prize as they might the quality of the Radnor blood (drawn
from the most ancient of original Britain's princes), there was also the
Cantor blood for consideration; and it was old, noble, proud. Would it be
satisfied in matching itself with great wealth, a radiant health, and the
good looks of a young flower? For the sake of the dear girl, the ladies
hoped that it would; and they enlarged the outline of their wedding
present, while, in their minds, the noble English family which could be
satisfied so, was lowered, partaking of the taint they had personally
ceased to recognize.

Of one thing they were sure, and it enlisted them: the gentleman loved
the girl. Her love of him, had it been prominent to view, would have
stirred a feminine sigh; not more, except a feminine lecture to follow.
She was quite uninflamed, fresh and cool as a spring. His ardour had no
disguise. They measured him by the favourite fiction's heroes of their
youth, and found him to gaze, talk, comport himself, according to the
prescription; correct grammar, finished sentences, all that is expected
of a gentleman enamoured; and ever with the watchful intentness for his
lady's faintest first dawn of an inclining to a wish. Mr. Dudley
Sowerby's eye upon Nesta was really an apprentice. There is in Love's
young season a magnanimity in the male kind. Their superior strength and
knowledge are made subservient to the distaff of the weaker and
shallower: they crown her queen; her look is their mandate. So was it
when Sir Charles and Sir Rupert and the estimable Villiers Davenant
touched maidenly hearts to throb: so is it now, with the Hon. Dudley
Sowerby.

Very haltingly, the ladies were guilty of a suggestion to Victor. 'Oh!
Fredi?' said he; 'admires her, no doubt; and so do I, so we all do; she's
one of the nice girls; but as to Cupid's darts, she belongs to the
cucumber family, and he shoots without fireing. We shall do the mischief
if we put an interdict. Don't you remember the green days when obstacles
were the friction to light that match?' Their pretty nod of assent
displayed the virgin pride of the remembrance: they dreamed of having
once been exceedingly wilful; it refreshed their nipped natures; and
dwelling on it, they forgot to press their suggestion. Incidentally, he
named the sum his Fredi would convey to her husband; with, as was
calculable, the further amount his only child would inherit. A curious
effect was produced on them. Though they were not imaginatively
mercenary, as the creatures tainted with wealth commonly are, they talked
of the sum over and over in the solitude of their chamber. 'Dukes have
married for less.' Such an heiress, they said, might buy up a
Principality. Victor had supplied them with something of an apology to
the gentleman proposing to Nesta in their house.

The chronicle of it is, that Dudley Sowerby did this on the fifteenth day
of September; and that it was not known to the damsel's parents before
the twenty-third; as they were away on an excursion in South
Tyrol:--away, flown, with just a word of the hurried departure to their
envious, exiled girl; though they did not tell her of new constructions
at the London house partly causing them to fly. Subject to their consent,
she wrote, she had given hers. The letter was telegramic on the essential
point. She wrote of Mr. Barmby's having visited Mr. Posterley at the
Wells, and she put it just as flatly. Her principal concern, to judge by
her writing, was, to know what Mr. Durance had done, during her absence,
with the group of emissary-advocates of the various tongues of Europe on
board the steam-Liner conducting them the first stage of their journey to
the Court of Japan.

Mr. Simeon Fenellan had written his opinion, that all these delegates of
the different European nationalities were nothing other than dupes of a
New-York Syndicate of American Humorists, not without an eye on the
mainchance; and he was sure they would be set to debate publicly, before
an audience of high-priced tickets, in the principal North American
Cities, previous to the embarcation for Japan at San Francisco. Mr.
Fenellan eulogized the immense astuteness of Dr. Gannius in taking his
daughter Delphica with him. Dr. Gannius had singled forth poor Dr.
Bouthoin for the object of his attacks; but Nesta was chiefly anxious to
hear of Delphica's proceedings; she was immensely interested in Delphica,
and envied her; and the girl's funny speculations over the play of
Delphica's divers arts upon the Greek, and upon the Russian, and upon the
English curate Mr. Semhians, and upon M. Falarique--set Gallically
pluming and crowing out of an Alsace-Lorraine growl--were clever. Only,
in such a letter, they were amazing.

Nataly received it at Campiglio, when about to start for an excursion
down the Sarca Valley to Arco. Her letter of reply was delayed. One to
Victor from Dudley Sowerby, awaited them, on their return. 'Confirms
Fredi,' he said, showing it, and praising it as commendable, properly
fervid. She made pretence to read, she saw the words.

Her short beat of wings was over. She had joined herself with Victor's
leap for a change, thirsting for the scenery of the white peaks in
heaven, to enjoy through his enjoyment, if her own capacity was dead: and
she had found it revive, up to some recovery of her old songful readiness
for invocations of pleasure. Escape and beauty beckoned ahead; behind
were the chains. These two letters of the one fact plucked her back. The
chained body bore the fluttering spirit: or it was the spirit in bonds,
that dragged the body. Both were abashed before the image of her girl.
Out of the riddle of her strange Nesta, one thing was clear: she did not
love the man: and Nataly tasted gladness in that, from the cup of
poisonous regrets at the thought. Her girl's heart would not be broken.
But if he so strongly loved her, as to hold to this engagement? . . . It
might then be worse. She dropped a plumb-line into the young man,
sounding him by what she knew of him and judged. She had to revert to
Nesta's charm, for the assurance of his anchored attachment.

Her holiday took the burden of her trouble, and amid the beauty of a
disenchanted scene, she resumed the London incubus.

'You told him of her being at the Wells? in the neighbourhood, Victor?'

'Didn't you know, my dear, the family-seat is Cronidge, two miles out
from the Wells?--and particularly pretty country.'

'I had forgotten, if I ever heard. You will not let him be in ignorance?'

'My dear love, you are pale about it. This is a matter between men. I
write, thanking for the honour and so forth; and I appoint an interview;
and I show him my tablets. He must be told, necessarily. Incidents of
this kind come in their turn. If Dudley does not account himself the
luckiest young fellow in the kingdom, he's not worthy of his good
fortune. I wish they were both here now, honeymooning among these peaks,
seeing the crescent over one, as we did last night!'

'Have you an idea, in reading Nesta's letter?'

'Seems indifferent?--mere trick to hide the blushes. And I, too, I'm
interested in Delphica. Delphica and Falarique will be fine stage
business. Of course, Dr. Bouthoin and his curate!--we know what Old
England has to expect from Colney.'

'At any rate, Mr. Durance hurts no one. You will, in your letter, appoint
the day of the interview?'

'Hurts himself! Yes, dearest; appoint for--ten days homeward--eleventh
day from to-day. And you to Fredi: a bit of description--as you can, my
Nataly! Happy to be a dolomite, to be painted by Nataly's pen.'

The sign is evil, when we have a vexatious ringing in the ear of some
small piece of familiar domestic chatter, and subject it to scrutiny,
hang on it, worry and magnify it. What will not creatures under sway of
the sensational life, catch at to emphasize and strengthen distaste,
until distaste shall have a semblance of reason, in the period of the
mind's awakening to revolt! Nataly shrank from the name of dolomite,
detested the name, though the scenes regained their beauty or something
of it beneath her showery vision. Every time Victor spoke of dolomites on
the journey homeward, she had at heart an accusation of her cowardice,
her duplicity, frailty, treachery to the highest of her worship and sole
support of her endurance in the world: not much blaming him: but the
degrading view of herself sank them both. On a shifty soil, down goes the
idol. For him she could plead still, for herself she could not.

The smell of the Channel brine inspirited her sufficiently to cast off
the fit and make it seem, in the main, a bodily depression; owing to
causes, of which she was beginning to have an apprehensive knowledge: and
they were not so fearful to her as the gloom they displaced.




CHAPTER XXV

NATALY IN ACTION

A ticket of herald newspapers told the world of Victor's returning to his
London. Pretty Mrs. Blathenoy was Nataly's first afternoon visitor, and
was graciously received; no sign of inquiry for the cause of the lady's
alacrity to greet her being shown. Colney Durance came in, bringing the
rumour of an Australian cantatrice to kindle Europe; Mr. Peridon, a
seeker of tidings from the city of Bourges; Miss Priscilla Graves,
reporting of Skepsey, in a holiday Sunday tone, that his alcoholic
partner might at any moment release him; Mr. Septimus Barmby, with a
hanged heavy look, suggestive of a wharfside crane swinging the ponderous
thing he had to say. 'I have seen Miss Radnor.'

'She was well?' the mother asked, and the grand basso pitched forth an
affirmative.

'Dear sweet girl she is!' Mrs. Blathenoy exclaimed to Colney.

He bowed. 'Very sweet. And can let fly on you, like a haggis, for a
scratch.'

She laughed, glad of an escape from the conversational formalities
imposed on her by this Mrs. Victor Radnor's mighty manner. 'But what girl
worth anything! . . .

We all can do that, I hope, for a scratch!'

Mr. Barmby's Profession dissented.

Mr. Catkin appeared; ten minutes after his Peridon. He had met Victor
near the Exchange, and had left him humming the non fu sogno of ERNANI.

'Ah, when Victor takes to Verdi, it's a flat City, and wants a burst of
drum and brass,' Colney said; and he hummed a few bars of the march in
Attila, and shrugged. He and Victor had once admired that blatancy.

Mr. Pempton appeared, according to anticipation. He sat himself beside
Priscilla. Entered Mrs. John Cormyn, voluminous; Mrs. Peter Yatt,
effervescent; Nataly's own people were about her and she felt at home.

Mrs. Blathenoy pushed a small thorn into it, by speaking of Captain
Fenellan, and aside, as if sharing him with her. Nataly heard that
Dartrey had been the guest of these Blathenoys. Even Dartrey was but a
man!

Rather lower under her voice, the vain little creature asked: 'You knew
her?'

'Her?'

The cool counter-interrogation was disregarded. 'So sad! In the desert! a
cup of pure water worth more than barrow-loads of gold! Poor woman!'

'Who?'

'His wife.'

'Wife!'

'They were married?'

Nataly could have cried: Snake! Her play at brevity had certainly been
foiled. She nodded gravely. A load of dusky wonders and speculations
pressed at her bosom. She disdained to question the mouth which had
bitten her.

Mrs. Blathenoy, resolving, that despite the jealousy she excited, she
would have her friend in Captain Fenellan, whom she liked--liked, she was
sure, quite as innocently as any other woman of his acquaintance did,
departed and she hugged her innocence defiantly, with the mournful pride
which will sometimes act as a solvent.

A remark or two passed among the company upon her pretty face.

Nataly murmured to Colney: 'Is there anything of Dartrey's wife?'

'Dead,' he answered.

'When?'

'Months back. I had it from Simeon. You didn't hear?'

She shook her head. Her ears buzzed. If he had it from Simeon Fenellan,
Victor must have known it.

Her duties of hostess were conducted with the official smile.

As soon as she stood alone, she dropped on a chair, like one who has
taken a shot in the heart, and that hideous tumult of wild cries at her
ears blankly ceased. Dartrey, Victor, Nesta, were shifting figures of the
might-have-been for whom a wretched erring woman, washed clean of her
guilt by death, in a far land, had gone to her end: vainly gone: and now
another was here, a figure of wood, in man's shape, conjured up by one of
the three, to divide the two others; likely to be fatal to her or to
them: to her, she hoped, if the choice was to be: and beneath the leaden
hope, her heart set to a rapid beating, a fainter, a chill at the core.

She snatched for breath. She shut her eyes, and with open lips, lay
waiting; prepared to thank the kindness about to hurry her hence, out of
the seas of pain, without pain.

Then came sighs. The sad old servant in her bosom was resuming his
labours.

But she had been near it--very near it? A gush of pity for Victor,
overwhelmed her hardness of mind.

Unreflectingly, she tried her feet to support her, and tottered to the
door, touched along to the stairs, and descended them, thinking strangely
upon such a sudden weakness of body, when she would no longer have
thought herself the weak woman. Her aim was to reach the library. She sat
on the stairs midway, pondering over the length of her journey: and now
her head was clearer; for she was travelling to get Railway-guides, and
might have had them from the hands of a footman, and imagined that she
had considered it prudent to hide her investigation of those books:
proofs of an understanding fallen backward to the state of infant and
having to begin our drear ascent again.

A slam of the kitchen stair-door restored her. She betrayed no infirmity
of footing as she walked past Arlington in the hall; and she was alive to
the voice of Skepsey presently on the door-steps. Arlington brought her a
note.

Victor had written: 'My love, I dine with Blathenoy in the City, at the
Walworth. Business. Skepsey for clothes. Eight of us. Formal. A thousand
embraces. Late.'

Skepsey was ushered in. His wife had expired at noon, he said; and he
postured decorously the grief he could not feel, knowing that a lady
would expect it of him. His wife had fallen down stone steps; she died in
hospital. He wished to say, she was no loss to the country; but he was
advised within of the prudence of abstaining from comment and trusting to
his posture, and he squeezed a drop of conventional sensibility out of
it, and felt improved.

Nataly sent a line to Victor: 'Dearest, I go to bed early, am tired. Dine
well. Come to me in the morning.'

She reproached herself for coldness to poor Skepsey, when he had gone.
The prospect of her being alone until the morning had been so absorbing a
relief.

She found a relief also in work at the book of the trains. A walk to the
telegraph-station strengthened her. Especially after despatching a
telegram to Mr. Dudley Sowerby at Cronidge, and one to Nesta at
Moorsedge, did she become stoutly nerved. The former was requested to
meet her at Penhurst station at noon. Nesta was to be at the station for
the Wells at three o'clock.

From the time of the flying of these telegrams, up to the tap of Victor's
knuckle on her bed-room door next morning, she was not more reflectively
conscious than a packet travelling to its destination by pneumatic tube.
Nor was she acutely impressionable to the features and the voice she
loved.

'You know of Skepsey?' she said.

'Ah, poor Skepsey!' Victor frowned and heaved.

'One of us ought to stand beside him at the funeral.'

'Colney or Fenellan?'

'I will ask Mr. Durance.'

'Do, my darling.'

'Victor, you did not tell me of Dartrey's wife.'

'There again! They all get released! Yes, Dartrey! Dartrey has his luck
too.'

She closed her eyes, with the desire to be asleep.

'You should have told me, dear.'

'Well, my love! Well--poor Dartrey! I fancy I hadn't a confirmation of
the news. I remember a horrible fit of envy on hearing the hint: not much
more than a hint: serious illness, was it?--or expected event. Hardly
worth while to trouble my dear soul, till certain. Anything about wives,
forces me to think of myself--my better self!'

'I had to hear of it first from Mrs. Blathenoy.'

'You've heard of duels in dark rooms:--that was the case between
Blathenoy and me last night for an hour.'

She feigned somnolent fatigue over her feverish weariness of heart. He
kissed her on the forehead.

Her spell-bound intention to speak of Dudley Sowerby to him, was broken
by the sounding of the hall-door, thirty minutes later. She had lain in a
trance.

Life surged to her with the thought, that she could decide and take her
step. Many were the years back since she had taken a step; less
independently then than now; unregretted, if fatal. Her brain was heated
for the larger view of things and the swifter summing of them. It could
put the man at a remove from her and say, that she had lived with him and
suffered intensely. It gathered him to her breast rejoicing in their
union: the sharper the scourge, the keener the exultation. But she had
one reproach to deafen and beat down. This did not come on her from the
world: she and the world were too much foot to foot on the antagonist's
line, for her to listen humbly. It came of her quick summary survey of
him, which was unnoticed by the woman's present fiery mind as being new
or strange in any way: simply it was a fact she now read; and it directed
her to reproach herself for an abasement beneath his leadership, a blind
subserviency and surrender of her faculties to his greater powers, such
as no soul of a breathing body should yield to man: not to the highest,
not to the Titan, not to the most Godlike of men. Under cloak, they
demand it. They demand their bane.

And Victor! . . . She had seen into him.

The reproach on her was, that she, in her worship, had been slave, not
helper. Scarcely was she irreproachable in the character of slave. If it
had been utter slave! she phrased the words, for a further reproach. She
remembered having at times murmured, dissented. And it would have been a
desperate proud thought to comfort a slave, that never once had she known
even a secret opposition to the will of her lord.

But she had: she recalled instances. Up they rose; up rose everything her
mind ranged over, subsiding immediately when the service was done. She
had not conceived her beloved to be infallible, surest of guides in all
earthly-matters. Her intellect had sometimes protested.

What, then, had moved her to swamp it?

Her heart answered. And that heart also was arraigned: and the heart's
fleshly habitation acting on it besides: so flagellant of herself was
she: covertly, however, and as the chaste among women can consent to let
our animal face them. Not grossly, still perceptibly to her penetrative
hard eye on herself, she saw the senses of the woman under a charm. She
saw, and swam whirling with a pang of revolt from her personal being and
this mortal kind.

Her rational intelligence righted her speedily. She could say in truth,
by proof, she loved the man: nature's love, heart's love, soul's love.
She had given him her life.

It was a happy cross-current recollection, that the very beginning and
spring of this wild cast of her life, issued from something he said and
did (merest of airy gestures) to signify the blessing of life--how good
and fair it is. A drooping mood in her had been struck; he had a look
like the winged lyric up in blue heavens: he raised the head of the young
flower from its contemplation of grave-mould. That was when he had much
to bear: Mrs. Burman present: and when the stranger in their household
had begun to pity him and have a dread of her feelings. The lucent
splendour of his eyes was memorable, a light above the rolling oceans of
Time.

She had given him her life, little aid. She might have closely
counselled, wound in and out with his ideas. Sensible of capacity, she
confessed to the having been morally subdued, physically as well; swept
onward; and she was arrested now by an accident, like a waif of the
river-floods by the dip of a branch. Time that it should be! But was not
Mr. Durance, inveighing against the favoured system for the education of
women, right when he declared them to be unfitted to speak an opinion on
any matter external to the household or in a crisis of the household? She
had not agreed with him: he presented stinging sentences, which irritated
more than they enlightened. Now it seemed to her, that the model women of
men make pleasant slaves, not true mates: they lack the worldly training
to know themselves or take a grasp of circumstances.

There is an exotic fostering of the senses for women, not the
strengthening breath of vital common air. If good fortune is with them,
all may go well: the stake of their fates is upon the perpetual smooth
flow of good fortune. She had never joined to the cry of the women. Few
among them were having it in the breast as loudly.

Hard on herself, too, she perceived how the social rebel had reduced her
mind to propitiate a simulacrum, reflected from out, of an enthroned
Society within it, by an advocacy of the existing laws and rules and
habits. Eminently servile is the tolerated lawbreaker: none so
conservative. Not until we are driven back upon an unviolated Nature, do
we call to the intellect to think radically: and then we begin to think
of our fellows.

Or when we have set ourselves in motion direct for the doing of the right
thing: have quitted the carriage at the station, and secured the ticket,
and entered the train, counting the passage of time for a simple rapid
hour before we have eased heart in doing justice to ourself and to
another; then likewise the mind is lighted for radiation. That doing of
the right thing, after a term of paralysis, cowardice--any evil name--is
one of the mighty reliefs, equal to happiness, of longer duration.

Nataly had it. But her mind was actually radiating, and the comfort to
her heart evoked the image of Dartrey Fenellan. She saw a possible reason
for her bluntness to the coming scene with Dudley.

At once she said, No! and closed the curtain; knowing what was behind,
counting it nought. She repeated almost honestly her positive negative.
How we are mixed of the many elements! she thought, as an observer; and
self-justifyingly thought on, and with truth, that duty urged her upon
this journey; and proudly thought, that she had not a shock of the
painful great organ in her breast at the prospect at the end, or any
apprehension of its failure to carry her through.

Yet the need of peace or some solace needed to prepare her for her
interview turned her imagination burningly on Dartrey. She would not
allow herself to meditate over hopes and schemes:--Nesta free: Dartrey
free. She vowed to her soul sacredly--and she was one of those in whom
the Divinity lives, that they may do so--not to speak a word for the
influencing of Dudley save the one fact. Consequently, for a personal
indulgence, she mused; she caressed maternally the object of her musing;
of necessity, she excluded Nesta; but in tenderness she gave Dartrey a
fair one to love him.

The scene was waved away. That one so loving him, partly worthy of him,
ready to traverse the world now beside him--who could it be other than
she who knew and prized his worth? Foolish! It is one of the hatefuller
scourges upon women whenever, a little shaken themselves, they muse upon
some man's image, that they cannot put in motion the least bit of drama
without letting feminine self play a part; generally to develop into a
principal part. . . The apology makes it a melancholy part.

Dartrey's temper of the caged lion dominated by his tamer, served as
keynote for any amount of saddest colouring. He controlled the brute: but
he held the contempt of danger, the love of strife, the passion for
adventure; he had crossed the desert of human anguish. He of all men
required a devoted mate, merited her. Of all men living, he was the
hardest to match with a woman--with a woman deserving him.

The train had quitted London. Now for the country, now for free
breathing! She who two days back had come from Alps, delighted in the
look on flat green fields. It was under the hallucination of her saying
in flight adieu to them, and to England; and, that somewhere hidden, to
be found in Asia, Africa, America, was the man whose ideal of life was
higher than enjoyment. His caged brute of a temper offered opportunities
for delicious petting; the sweetest a woman can bestow: it lifts her out
of timidity into an adoration still palpitatingly fearful. Ah, but
familiarity, knowledge, confirmed assurance of his character, lift her to
another stage, above the pleasures. May she not prove to him how really
matched with him she is, to disdain the pleasures, cheerfully accept the
burdens, meet death, if need be; readily face it as the quietly grey
to-morrow: at least, show herself to her hero for a woman--the incredible
being to most men--who treads the terrors as well as the pleasures of
humanity beneath her feet, and may therefore have some pride in her
stature. Ay, but only to feel the pride of standing not so shamefully
below his level beside him.

Woods were flying past the carriage-windows. Her solitary companion was
of the class of the admiring gentlemen. Presently he spoke. She answered.
He spoke again. Her mouth smiled, and her accompanying look of abstract
benevolence arrested the tentative allurement to conversation.

New ideas were set revolving in her. Dartrey and Victor grew to a
likeness; they became hazily one man, and the mingled phantom
complimented her on her preserving a good share of the beauty of her
youth. The face perhaps: the figure rather too well suits the years! she
replied. To reassure her, this Dartrey-Victor drew her close and kissed
her; and she was confused and passed into the breast of Mrs. Burman
expecting an operation at the hands of the surgeons. The train had
stopped. 'Penhurst?' she said.

'Penhurst is the next station,' said the gentleman. Here was a theme for
him! The stately mansion, the noble grounds, and Sidney! He discoursed of
them.

The handsome lady appeared interested. She was interested also by his
description of a neighbouring village, likely one hundred years hence to
be a place of pilgrimage for Americans and for Australians. Age, he said,
improves true beauty; and his eyelids indicated a levelling to perform
the soft intentness. Mechanically, a ball rose in her throat; the remark
was illuminated by a saying of Colney's, with regard to his countrymen at
the play of courtship. No laughter came. The gentleman talked on.

All fancies and internal communications left her. Slowness of motion
brought her to the plain piece of work she had to do, on a colourless
earth, that seemed foggy; but one could see one's way. Resolution is a
form of light, our native light in this dubious world.

Dudley Sowerby opened her carriage-door. They greeted.

'You have seen Nesta?' she said.

'Not for two days. You have not heard? The Miss Duvidneys have gone to
Brighton.'

'They are rather in advance of the Season.'

She thanked him for meeting her. He was grateful for the summons.

Informing the mother of his betrothed, that he had ridden over from
Cronidge, he speculated on the place to select for her luncheon, and he
spoke of his horse being led up and down outside the station. Nataly
inquired for the hour of the next train to London. He called to one of
the porters, obtained and imparted the time; evidently now, as shown by
an unevenness of his lifted brows, expecting news of some little weight.

'Your husband is quite well?' he said, in affection for the name of
husband.

'Mr. Radnor is well; I have to speak to you; I have more than time.'

'You will lunch at the inn?'

'I shall not eat. We will walk.'

They crossed the road and passed under trees.

'My mother was to have called on the Miss Duvidneys. They left hurriedly;
I think it was unanticipated by Nesta. I venture . . . you pardon the
liberty . . . she allows me to entertain hopes. Mr. Radnor, I am hardly
too bold in thinking . . . I trust, in appealing to you . . . at least I
can promise!

'Mr. Sowerby, you have done my daughter the honour to ask her hand in
marriage.'

He said: 'I have,' and had much to say besides, but deferred: a blow was
visible. The father had been more encouraging to him than the mother.

'You have not known of any circumstance that might cause hesitation in
asking?'

'Miss Radnor?'

'My daughter:--you have to think of your family.'

'Indeed, Mrs. Radnor, I was coming to London tomorrow, with the consent
of my family.'

'You address me as Mrs. Radnor. I have not the legal right to the name.'

'Not legal!' said he, with a catch at the word.

He spun round in her sight, though his demeanour was manfully rigid.

'Have I understood, madam . . . ?'

'You would not request me to repeat it. Is that your horse the man is
leading?'

'My horse: it must be my horse.'

'Mount and ride back. Leave me: I shall not eat. Reflect, by yourself.
You are in a position of one who is not allowed to decide by his
feelings. Mr. Radnor you know where to find.'

'But surely, some food? I cannot have misapprehended?'

'I cannot eat. I think you have understood me clearly.'

'You wish me to go?'

'I beg.'

'It pains me, dear madam.'

'It relieves me, if you will. Here is your horse.'

She gave her hand. He touched it and bent. He looked at her. A surge of
impossible questions rolled to his mouth and rolled back, with the
thought of an incredible thing, that her manner, more than her words,
held him from doubting.

'I obey you,' he said.

'You are kind.'

He mounted horse, raised hat, paced on, and again bowing, to one of the
wayside trees, cantered. The man was gone; but not from Nataly's vision
that face of wet chalk under one of the shades of fire.




CHAPTER XXVI

IN WHICH WE SEE A CONVENTIONAL GENTLEMAN ENDEAVOURING TO EXAMINE A
SPECTRE OF HIMSELF

Dudley rode back to Cronidge with his thunderstroke. It filled him, as in
those halls of political clamour, where explanatory speech is not
accepted, because of a drowning tide of hot blood on both sides. He
sought to win attention by submitting a resolution, to the effect, that
he would the next morning enter into the presence of Mr. Victor Radnor,
bearing his family's feelings, for a discussion upon them. But the
brutish tumult, in addition to surcharging, encased him: he could not
rightly conceive the nature of feelings: men were driving shoals; he had
lost hearing and touch of individual men; had become a house of angrily
opposing parties.

He was hurt, he knew; and therefore he supposed himself injured, though
there were contrary outcries, and he admitted that he stood free; he had
not been inextricably deceived.

The girl was caught away to the thinnest of wisps in a dust-whirl.
Reverting to the father and mother, his idea of a positive injury, that
was not without its congratulations, sank him down among his disordered
deeper sentiments; which were a diver's wreck, where an armoured livid
subtermarine, a monstrous puff-ball of man, wandered seriously light in
heaviness; trembling his hundredweights to keep him from dancing like a
bladder-block of elastic lumber; thinking occasionally, amid the mournful
spectacle, of the atmospheric pipe of communication with the world above,
whereby he was deafened yet sustained. One tug at it, and he was up on
the surface, disengaged from the hideous harness, joyfully no more that
burly phantom cleaving green slime, free! and the roaring stopped; the
world looked flat, foreign, a place of crusty promise. His wreck,
animated by the dim strange fish below, appeared fairer; it winked
lurefully when abandoned.

The internal state of a gentleman who detested intangible metaphor as
heartily as the vulgarest of our gobblegobbets hate it, metaphor only can
describe; and for the reason, that he had in him just something more than
is within the compass of the language of the meat-markets. He had--and
had it not the less because he fain would not have had--sufficient stuff
to furnish forth a soul's epic encounter between Nature and Circumstance:
and metaphor, simile, analysis, all the fraternity of old lamps for
lighting our abysmal darkness, have to be rubbed, that we may get a
glimpse of the fray.

Free, and rejoicing; without the wish to be free; at the same time humbly
and sadly acquiescing in the stronger claim of his family to pronounce
the decision: such was the second stage of Dudley's perturbation after
the blow. A letter of Nesta's writing was in his pocket: he knew her
address. He could not reply to her until he had seen her father: and that
interview remained necessarily prospective until he had come to his exact
resolve, not omitting his critical approval of the sentences giving it
shape, stamp, dignity--a noble's crest, as it were.

Nesta wrote briefly. The apostrophe was, 'Dear Mr. Sowerby.' She had
engaged to send her address. Her father had just gone. The Miss Duvidneys
had left the hotel yesterday for the furnished house facing the sea.
According to arrangements, she had a livery-stable hack, and had that
morning trotted out to the downs with a riding-master and company, one of
whom was 'an agreeable lady.'

He noticed approvingly her avoidance of an allusion to the 'Delphica' of
Mr. Durance's incomprehensible serial story, or whatever it was; which,
as he had shown her, annoyed him, for its being neither fact nor fun; and
she had insisted on the fun; and he had painfully tried to see it or
anything of a meaning; and it seemed to him now, that he had been
humiliated by the obedience to her lead: she had offended by her harping
upon Delphica. However, here it was unmentioned. He held the letter out
to seize it in the large, entire.

Her handwriting was good, as good as the writing of the most agreeable
lady on earth. Dudley did not blame her for letting the lady be deceived
in her--if she knew her position. She might be ignorant of it. And to
strangers, to chance acquaintances, even to friends, the position, of the
loathsome name, was not materially important. Marriage altered the view.
He sided with his family.

He sided, edgeing away, against his family. But a vision of the earldom
coming to him, stirred reverential objections, composed of all which his
unstained family could protest in religion, to repudiate an alliance with
a stained house, and the guilty of a condonation of immorality. Who would
have imagined Mr. Radnor a private sinner flaunting for one of the
righteous? And she, the mother, a lady--quite a lady; having really a
sense of duty, sense of honour! That she must be a lady, Dudley was
convinced. He beheld through a porous crape, woven of formal
respectfulness, with threads of personal disgust, the scene, striking him
drearly like a distant great mansion's conflagration across moorland at
midnight, of a lady's breach of bonds and plunge of all for love. How had
it been concealed? In Dudley's upper sphere, everything was exposed:
Scandal walked naked and unashamed-figurante of the polite world. But
still this lady was of the mint and coin, a true lady. Handsome now, she
must have been beautiful. And a comprehensible pride (for so would Dudley
have borne it) keeps the forsaken man silent up to death: . . . grandly
silent; but the loss of such a woman is enough to kill a man! Not in
time, though! Legitimacy evidently, by the mother's confession, cannot
protect where it is wanted. Dudley was optically affected by a round spot
of the world swinging its shadow over Nesta.

He pitied, and strove to be sensible of her. The effort succeeded so
well, that he was presently striving to be insensible. The former state,
was the mounting of a wall; the latter, was a sinking through a chasm.
There would be family consultations, abhorrent; his father's agonized
amazement at the problem presented to a family of scrupulous principles
and pecuniary requirements; his mother's blunt mention of the abominable
name--mediaevally vindicated in champions of certain princely families
indeed, but morally condemned; always under condemnation of the Church: a
blot: and handed down: Posterity, and it might be a titled posterity,
crying out. A man in the situation of Dudley could not think solely of
himself. The nobles of the land are bound in honour to their posterity.
There you have one of the prominent permanent distinctions between them
and the commonalty.

His mother would again propose her chosen bride for him: Edith Averst,
with the dowry of a present one thousand pounds per annum, and prospect
of six or so, excluding Sir John's estate, Carping, in Leicestershire; a
fair estate, likely to fall to Edith; consumption seized her brothers as
they ripened. A fair girl too; only Dudley did not love her; he wanted to
love. He was learning the trick from this other one, who had become
obscured and diminished, tainted, to the thought of her; yet not extinct.
Sight of her was to be dreaded.

Unguiltily tainted, in herself she was innocent. That constituted the
unhappy invitation to him to swallow one half of his feelings, which had
his world's blessing on it, for the beneficial enlargement and
enthronement of the baser unblest half, which he hugged and distrusted.
Can innocence issue of the guilty? He asked it, hopeing it might be
possible: he had been educated in his family to believe, that the laws
governing human institutions are divine--until History has altered them.
They are altered, to present a fresh bulwark against the infidel. His
conservative mind, retiring in good order, occupied the next rearward
post of resistance. Secretly behind it, the man was proud of having a
heart to beat for the cause of the besiegeing enemy, in the present
instance. When this was blabbed to him, and he had owned it, he
attributed his weakness to excess of nature, the liking for a fair
face.--Oh, but more! spirit was in the sweet eyes. She led him--she did
lead him in spiritual things; led him out of common circles of thought,
into refreshing new spheres; he had reminiscences of his having relished
the juices of the not quite obviously comic, through her indications: and
really, in spite of her inferior flimsy girl's education, she could boast
her acquirements; she was quick, startlingly; modest, too, in commerce
with a slower mind that carried more; though she laughed and was a needle
for humour: she taught him at times to put away his contempt of the
romantic; she had actually shown him, that his expressed contempt of it
disguised a dread: as it did, and he was conscious of the foolishness of
it now while pursuing her image, while his intelligence and senses gave
her the form and glory of young morning.

Wariness counselled him to think it might be merely the play of her
youth; and also the disposition of a man in harness of business,
exaggeratingly to prize an imagined finding of the complementary feminine
of himself. Venerating purity as he did, the question, whether the very
sweetest of pure young women, having such an origin, must not at some
time or other show trace of the origin, surged up. If he could only have
been sure of her moral exemption from taint, a generous ardour, in
reserve behind his anxious dubieties, would have precipitated Dudley to
quench disapprobation and brave the world under a buckler of those
monetary advantages, which he had but stoutly to plead with the House of
Cantor, for the speedy overcoming of a reluctance to receive the nameless
girl and prodigious heiress. His family's instruction of him, and his
inherited tastes, rendered the aspect of a Nature stripped of the
clothing of the laws offensive down to devilish: we grant her certain
steps, upon certain conditions accompanied by ceremonies; and when she
violates them, she becomes visibly again the revolutionary wicked old
beast bent on levelling our sacredest edifices. An alliance with any of
her votaries, appeared to Dudley as an act of treason to his house, his
class, and his tenets. And nevertheless he was haunted by a cry of
criminal happiness for and at the commission of the act.

He would not decide to be 'precipitate,' and the days ran their course,
until Lady Grace Halley arrived at Cronidge, a widow. Lady Cantor spoke
to her of Dudley's unfathomable gloom. Lady Grace took him aside.

She said, without preface: 'You've heard, have you!'

'You were aware of it?' said he, and his tone was irritable with a
rebuke.

'Coming through town, for the first time yesterday. I had it--of all
men!--from a Sir Abraham Quatley, to whom I was recommended to go, about
my husband's shares in a South American Railway; and we talked, and it
came out. He knows; he says, it is not generally known; and he likes,
respects Mr. Victor Radnor; we are to keep the secret. Hum? He had heard
of your pretensions; and our relationship, etc.: "esteemed" it--you know
the City dialect--his duty to mention, etc. That was after I had spied on
his forehead the something I wormed out of his mouth. What are you going
to do?'

'What can I do!'

'Are you fond of the girl?'

An attachment was indicated, as belonging to the case. She was not a
woman to whom the breathing of pastoral passion would be suitable; yet he
saw that she despised him for a lover; and still she professed to
understand his dilemma. Perplexity at the injustice of fate and persons
universally, put a wrinkled mask on his features and the expression of
his feelings. They were torn, and the world was torn; and what he wanted,
was delay, time for him to define his feelings and behold a recomposed
picture of the world. He had already taken six days. He pleaded the shock
to his family.

'You won't have such a chance again,' she said. Shrugs had set in.

They agreed as to the behaviour of the girl's mother. It reflected on the
father, he thought.

'Difficult thing to proclaim, before an engagement!' Her shoulders were
restless.

'When a man's feelings get entangled!'

'Oh! a man's feelings! I'm your British Jury for, a woman's.'

'He has married her?'

She declared to not knowing particulars. She could fib smoothly.

The next day she was on the line to London, armed with the proposal of an
appointment for the Hon. Dudley to meet 'the girl's father.'




CHAPTER XXVII

CONTAINS WHAT IS A SMALL THING OR A GREAT, AS THE SOUL OF THE CHIEF ACTOR
MAY DECIDE

Skepsey ushered Lady Grace into his master's private room, and
entertained her during his master's absence. He had buried his wife, he
said: she feared, seeing his posture of the soaping of hands at one
shoulder, that he was about to bewail it; and he did wish to talk of it,
to show his modest companionship with her in loss, and how a consolation
for our sorrows may be obtained: but he won her approval, by taking the
acceptable course between the dues to the subject and those to his
hearer, as a model cab should drive considerate equally of horse and
fare.

A day of holiday at Hampstead, after the lowering of the poor woman's
bones into earth, had been followed by a descent upon London; and at
night he had found himself in the immediate neighbourhood of a public
house, noted for sparring exhibitions and instructions on the first
floor; and he was melancholy, unable quite to disperse 'the ravens'
flocking to us on such days: though, if we ask why we have to go out of
the world, there is a corresponding inquiry, of what good was our coming
into it; and unless we are doing good work for our country, the answer is
not satisfactory--except, that we are as well gone. Thinking which, he
was accosted by a young woman: perfectly respectable, in every way: who
inquired if he had seen a young man enter the door. She described him,
and reviled the temptations of those houses; and ultimately, as she
insisted upon going in to look for the young man and use her persuasions
to withdraw him from 'that snare of Satan,' he had accompanied her, and
he had gone upstairs and brought the young man down. But friends, or the
acquaintances they call friends, were with him, and they were 'in drink,'
and abused the young woman; and she had her hand on the young man's arm,
quoting Scripture. Sad to relate of men bearing the name of
Englishmen--and it was hardly much better if they pleaded
intoxication!--they were not content to tear the young man from her
grasp, they hustled her, pushed her out, dragged her in the street.

'It became me to step to her defence: she was meek,' said Skepsey. 'She
had a great opinion of the efficacy of quotations from Scripture; she did
not recriminate. I was able to release her and the young man she
protected, on condition of my going upstairs to give a display of my
proficiency. I had assured them, that the poor fellows who stood against
me were not a proper match. And of course, they jeered, but they had the
evidence, on the pavement. So I went up with them. I was heavily
oppressed, I wanted relief, I put on the gloves. He was a bigger man;
they laughed at the little one. I told them, it depended upon a knowledge
of first principles, and the power to apply them. I will not boast, my
lady: my junior by ten years, the man went down; he went down a second
time; and the men seemed surprised; I told them, it was nothing but first
principles put into action. I mention the incident, for the extreme
relief it afforded me at the close of a dark day.'

'So you cured your grief!' said Lady Grace; and Skepsey made way for his
master.

Victor's festival-lights were kindled, beholding her; cressets on the
window-sill, lamps inside.

'Am I so welcome?' There was a pull of emotion at her smile. 'What with
your little factotum and you, we are flattered to perdition when we come
here. He has been proposing, by suggestion, like a Court-physician, the
putting on of his boxing-gloves, for the consolation of the
widowed:--meant most kindly! and it's a thousand pities women haven't
their padded gloves.'

'Oh! but our boxing-gloves can do mischief enough. You have something to
say, I see.'

'How do you see?'

'Tusk, tush.'

The silly ring of her voice and the pathless tattle changed; she talked
to suit her laden look. 'You hit it. I come from Dudley. He knows the
facts. I wish to serve you, in every way.'

Victor's head had lifted.

'Who was it?'

'No enemy.'

'Her mother. She did rightly!

'Certainly she did,' said Victor, and he thought that instantaneously of
the thing done. 'Oh, then she spoke to him! She has kept it from me. For
now nearly a week--six days--I've seen her spying for something she
expected, like a face behind a door three inches ajar. She has not been
half alive; she refused explanations;--she was expecting to hear from
him, of him:--the decision, whatever it's to be!'

'I can't aid you there,' said Lady Grace. 'He's one of the unreadables.
He names Tuesday next week.'

'By all means.'

'She?'

'Fredi?--poor Fredi!--ah, my poor girl, yes!--No, she knows nothing. Here
is the truth of it.--she, the legitimate, lives: they say she lives.
Well, then, she lives against all rules physical or medical, lives by
sheer force of will--it's a miracle of the power of a human creature to
. . . . I have it from doctors, friends, attendants, they can't guess what
she holds on, to keep her breath. All the happiness in life!--if only it
could benefit her. But it 's the cause of death to us. Do you see, dear
friend;--you are a friend, proved friend,' he took her hand, and held and
pressed it, in great need of a sanguine response to emphasis; and having
this warm feminine hand, his ideas ran off with it. 'The friend I need!
You have courage. My Nataly, poor dear--she can endure, in her quiet way.
A woman of courage would take her place beside me and compel the world to
do her homage, help;--a bright ready smile does it! She would never be
beaten. Of course, we could have lived under a bushel--stifled next to
death! But I am for light, air-battle, if you like. I want a comrade, not
a--not that I complain. I respect, pity, love--I do love her, honour:
only, we want something else--courage--to face the enemy. Quite right,
that she should speak to Dudley Sowerby. He has to know, must know; all
who deal closely with us must know. But see a moment: I am waiting to see
the impediment dispersed, which puts her at an inequality with the world:
and then I speak to all whom it concerns--not before: for her sake. How
is it now? Dudley will ask . . . you understand. And when I am forced to
confess, that the mother, the mother of the girl he seeks in marriage, is
not yet in that state herself, probably at that very instant the obstacle
has crumbled to dust! I say, probably: I have information--doctors,
friends, attendants--they all declare it cannot last outside a week. But
you are here--true, I could swear! a touch of a hand tells me. A woman's
hand? Well, yes: I read by the touch of a woman's hand:--betrays more
than her looks or her lips!' He sank his voice. 'I don't talk of
condoling: if you are in grief, you know I share it.' He kissed her hand,
and laid it on her lap; eyed it, and met her eyes; took a header into her
eyes, and lost himself. A nip of his conscience moved his tongue to say:
'As for guilt, if it were known . . . a couple of ascetics--absolutely!'
But this was assumed to be unintelligible; and it was merely the apology
to his conscience in communion with the sprite of a petticoated fair one
who was being subjected to tender little liberties, necessarily addressed
in enigmas. He righted immediately, under a perception of the
thoroughbred's contempt for the barriers of wattled sheep; and caught the
word 'guilt,' to hide the Philistine citizen's lapse, by relating
historically, in abridgement, the honest beauty of the passionate loves
of the two whom the world proscribed for honestly loving. There was no
guilt. He harped on the word, to erase the recollection of his first use
of it.

'Fiddle,' said Lady Grace. 'The thing happened. You have now to carry it
through. You require a woman's aid in a social matter. Rely on me, for
what I can do. You will see Dudley on Tuesday? I will write. Be plain
with him; not forgetting the gilding, I need not remark. Your Nesta has
no aversion?'

'Admires, respects, likes; is quite--is willing.'

'Good enough beginning.' She rose, for the atmosphere was heated, rather
heavy. 'And if one proves to be of aid, you'll own that a woman has her
place in the battle.'

The fair black-clad widow's quick and singular interwreathing of the
evanescent pretty pouts and frowns dimpled like the brush of the wind on
a sunny pool in a shady place; and her forehead was close below his chin,
her lips not far. Her apparel was attractively mourning.

Widows in mourning, when they do not lean over extremely to the Stygian
shore, with the complexions of the drugs which expedited the defunct to
the ferry, provoke the manly arm within reach of them to pluck their
pathetic blooming persons clean away from it. What of the widow who
visibly likes the living? Compassion; sympathy, impulse; and gratitude,
impulse again, living warmth; and a spring of the blood to wrestle with
the King of Terrors for the other poor harper's half-night capped
Eurydice; and a thirst, sudden as it is overpowering; and the solicitude,
a reflective solicitude, to put the seal on a thing and call it a fact,
to the astonishment of history; and a kick of our naughty youth in its
coffin; all the insurgencies of Nature, with her colonel of the regiment
absent, and her veering trick to drive two vessels at the cross of a
track into collision, combine for doing that, which is very much more,
and which affects us at times so much less than did the pressure of a
soft wedded hand by our own elsewhere pledged one. On the contrary, we
triumph, we have the rich flavour of the fruit for our pains; we
commission the historian to write in hieroglyphs a round big fact.

The lady passed through the trial submitting, stiffening her shoulders,
and at the close, shutting her eyes. She stood cool in her blush, and
eyed him, like one gravely awakened. Having been embraced and kissed, she
had to consider her taste for the man, and acknowledge a neatness of
impetuosity in the deed; and he was neither apologizing culprit nor
glorying-bandit when it was done, but something of the lyric God
tempering his fervours to a pleased sereneness, not offering a renewal of
them. He glowed transparently. He said: 'You are the woman to take a
front place in the battle!' With this woman beside him, it was a
conquered world.

Comparisons, in the jotting souvenirs of a woman of her class and set,
favoured him; for she disliked enterprising libertines and despised
stumbling youths; and the genial simple glow of his look assured her,
that the vanished fiery moment would not be built on by a dating master.
She owned herself. Or did she? Some understanding of how the other woman
had been won to the leap with him, was drawing in about her. She would
have liked to beg for the story; and she could as little do that as bring
her tongue to reproach. If we come to the den! she said to her thought of
reproach. Our semi-civilization makes it a den, where a scent in his
nostrils will spring the half-tamed animal away to wildness. And she had
come unanticipatingly, without design, except perhaps to get a superior
being to direct and restrain a gambler's hand perhaps for the fee of a
temporary pressure.

'I may be able to help a little--I hope!' she fetched a breath to say,
while her eyelids mildly sermonized; and immediately she talked of her
inheritance of property in stocks and shares.

Victor commented passingly on the soundness of them, and talked of
projects he entertained:--Parliament! 'But I have only to mention it at
home, and my poor girl will set in for shrinking.'

He doated on the diverse aspect of the gallant woman of the world.

'You succeed in everything you do,' said she, and she cordially believed
it; and that belief set the neighbour memory palpitating. Success folded
her waist, was warm upon her lips: she worshipped the figure of Success.

'I can't consent to fail, it's true, when my mind is on a thing,' Victor
rejoined.

He looked his mind on Lady Grace. The shiver of a maid went over her.
These transparent visages, where the thought which is half design is
perceived as a lightning, strike lightning into the physically feebler.
Her hand begged, with the open palm, her head shook thrice; and though
she did not step back, he bowed to the negation, and then she gave him a
grateful shadow of a smile, relieved, with a startled view of how greatly
relieved, by that sympathetic deference in the wake of the capturing
intrepidity.

'I am to name Tuesday for Dudley?' she suggested.

'At any hour he pleases to appoint.'

'A visit signifies . . .'

'Whatever it signifies!'

'I'm thinking of the bit of annoyance.'

'To me? Anything appointed, finds me ready the next minute.'

Her smile was flatteringly bright. 'By the way, keep your City people
close about you: entertain as much as possible; dine them,' she said.

'At home?'

'Better. Sir Rodwell Blachington, Sir Abraham Quatley: and their wives.
There's no drawing back now. And I will meet them.'

She received a compliment. She was on the foot to go.

But she had forgotten the Tiddler mine.

The Tiddler mine was leisurely mounting. Victor stated the figures; he
saluted her hand, and Lady Grace passed out, with her heart on the top of
them, and a buzz about it of the unexpected having occurred She had her
experiences to match new patterns in events; though not very many.
Compared with gambling, the game of love was an idle entertainment.
Compared with other players, this man was gifted.

Victor went in to Mr. Inchling's room, and kept Inchling from speaking,
that he might admire him for he knew not what, or knew not well what. The
good fellow was devoted to his wife. Victor in old days had called the
wife Mrs. Grundy. She gossiped, she was censorious; she knew--could not
but know--the facts; yet never by a shade was she disrespectful. He had a
curious recollection of how his knowledge of Inchling and his wife being
always in concert, entirely--whatever they might think in
private--devoted to him in action, had influenced, if it had not
originally sprung, his resolve to cast off the pestilential cloak of
obscurity shortening his days, and emerge before a world he could
illumine to give him back splendid reflections. Inchling and his wife, it
was: because the two were one: and if one, and subservient to him,
knowing all the story, why, it foreshadowed a conquered world.

They were the one pulse of the married Grundy beating in his hand. So it
had been.

He rattled his views upon Indian business, to hold Inchling silent, and
let his mind dwell almost lovingly on the good faithful spouse, who had
no phosphorescent writing of a recent throbbing event on the four walls
of his room.

Nataly was not so generously encountered in idea.

He felt and regretted this. He greeted her with a doubled
affectionateness. Her pitiable deficiency of courage, excusing a man for
this and that small matter in the thick of the conflict, made demands on
him for gentle treatment.

'You have not seen any one?' she asked.

'City people. And you, my love?'

'Mr. Barmby called. He has gone down to Tunbridge Wells for a week, to
some friend there.' She added, in pain of thought: 'I have seen Dartrey.
He has brought Lord Clanconan to town, for a consultation, and expects he
will have to take him to Brighton.'

'Brighton? What a life for a man like Dartrey, at Brighton!'

Her breast heaved. 'If I cannot see my Nesta there, he will bring her up
to me for a day:

'But, my dear, I will bring her up to you, if it is your wish to see
her.'

'It is becoming imperative that I should.'

'No hurry, no hurry: wait till the end of next week. And I must see
Dartrey, on business, at once!'

She gave the address in a neighbouring square. He had minutes to spare
before dinner, and flew. She was not inquisitive.

Colney Durance had told Dartrey that Victor was killing her. She had
little animation; her smiles were ready, but faint. After her interview
with Dudley, there had been a swoon at home; and her maid, sworn to
secrecy, willingly spared a tender-hearted husband--so good a master.




CHAPTER XXVIII

MRS. MARSETT

Little acts of kindness were not beyond the range of Colney Durance, and
he ran down to Brighton, to give the exiled Nesta some taste of her
friendly London circle. The Duvidney ladies knew that the dreaded
gentleman had a regard for the girl. Their own, which was becoming warmer
than they liked to think, was impressed by his manner of conversing with
her. 'Child though she was,' he paid her the compliment of a sober as
well as a satirical review of the day's political matter and recent
publications; and the ladies were introduced, in a wonderment, to the
damsel Delphica. They listened placidly to a discourse upon her
performances, Japanese to their understandings.

At New York, behold, another adventurous representative and advocate of
the European tongues has joined the party: Signor Jeridomani: a
philologer, of course; a politician in addition; Macchiavelli redivivus,
it seems to fair Delphica. The speech he delivers at the Syndicate
Delmonico Dinner, is justly applauded by the New York Press as a
masterpiece of astuteness. He appears to be the only one of the party who
has an eye for the dark. She fancies she may know a more widely awake in
the abstract. But now, thanks to jubilant Journals and Homeric laughter
over the Continent, the secret is out, in so far as the concurrents are
all unmasked and exposed for the edification of the American public. Dr.
Bouthoin's eyebrows are up, Mr. Semhians disfigures his name by greatly
gaping. Shall they return to their Great Britain indignant? Patriotism,
with the sauce of a luxurious expedition at no cost to the private purse,
restrains them. Moreover, there is no sign of any one of the others
intending to quit the expedition; and Mr. Semhians has done a marvel or
two in the cricket-field: Old England looks up where she can. What is
painfully extraordinary to our couple, they find in the frigid attitude
of the Americans toward their 'common tongue'; together with the rumour
of a design to despatch an American rival emissary to Japan.

Nesta listened, inquired, commented, laughed; the ladies could not have a
doubt that she was interested and understood. She would have sketches of
scenes between Delphica and M. Falarique, with whom the young Germania
was cleverly ingenuous indeed--a seminary Celimene; and between Delphica
and M. Mytharete, with whom she was archaeological, ravishingly amoebaean
of Homer. Dr. Gannius holds a trump card in his artless daughter,
conjecturally, for the establishment of the language of the gutturals in
the far East. He has now a suspicion, that the inventive M. Falarique,
melted down to sobriety by misfortune, may some day startle their camp by
the cast of more than a crow into it, and he is bent on establishing
alliances; frightens the supple Signor Jeridomani to lingual fixity;
eulogizes Football, with Dr. Bouthoin; and retracts, or modifies, his
dictum upon the English, that, 'masculine brawn they have in their
bodies, but muscle they have not in their feminine minds'; to exalt them,
for a signally clean, if a dense, people: 'Amousia, not Alousia, is their
enemy:'--How, when we have the noblest crop of poets? 'You have never
heartily embraced those aliens among you until you learnt from us, that
you might brag of them.'--Have they not endowed us with the richest of
languages? 'The words of which are used by you, as old slippers, for
puns.' Mr. Semhians has been superciliously and ineffectively punning in
foreign presences: he and his chief are inwardly shocked by a new
perception; What if, now that we have the populace for paymaster,
subservience to the literary tastes of the populace should reduce the
nation to its lowest mental level, and render us not only unable to
compete with the foreigner, but unintelligible to him, although so
proudly paid at home! Is it not thus that nations are seen of the Highest
to be devouring themselves?

'For,' says Dr. Gannius, as if divining them, 'this excessive and
applauded productiveness, both of your juvenile and your senile, in your
modern literature, is it ever a crop? Is it even the restorative
perishable stuff of the markets? Is it not rather your street-pavement's
patter of raindrops, incessantly in motion, and as fruitful?' Mr.
Semhians appeals to Delphica. 'Genius you have,' says she, stiffening his
neck-band, 'genius in superabundance':--he throttles to the complexion of
the peony:--'perhaps criticism is wanting.' Dr. Gannius adds: 'Perhaps it
is the drill-sergeant everywhere wanting for an unrivalled splendid
rabble!'

Colney left the whole body of concurrents on the raised flooring of a
famous New York Hall, clearly entrapped, and incited to debate before an
enormous audience, as to the merits of their respective languages. 'I
hear,' says Dr. Bouthoin to Mr. Semhians (whose gape is daily extending),
'that the tickets cost ten dollars!'

There was not enough of Delphicafor Nests.

Colney asked: 'Have you seen any of our band?'

'No,' she said, with good cheer, and became thoughtful, conscious of a
funny reason for the wish to hear of the fictitious creature disliked by
Dudley. A funny and a naughty reason, was it? Not so very naughty: but it
was funny; for it was a spirit of opposition to Dudley, without an
inferior feeling at all, such as girls should have.

Colney brought his viola for a duet; they had a pleasant musical evening,
as in old days at Creckholt; and Nesta, going upstairs with the ladies to
bed, made them share her father's amused view of the lamb of the flock
this bitter gentleman became when he had the melodious instrument tucked
under his chin. He was a guest for the night. Dressing in the early hour,
Nests saw him from her window on the parade, and soon joined him, to hear
him at his bitterest, in the flush of the brine. 'These lengths of
blank-faced terraces fronting sea!' were the satirist's present black
beast. 'So these moneyed English shoulder to the front place; and that is
the appearance they offer to their commercial God!' He gazed along the
miles of 'English countenance,' drearily laughing. Changeful ocean seemed
to laugh at the spectacle. Some Orphic joke inspired his exclamation:
'Capital!'

'Come where the shops are,' said Nesta.

'And how many thousand parsons have you here?'

'Ten, I think,' she answered in his vein, and warmed him; leading him
contemplatively to scrutinize her admirers: the Rev. Septimus; Mr.
Sowerby.

'News of our friend of the whimpering flute?'

'Here? no. I have to understand you!'

Colney cast a weariful look backward on the 'regiments of Anglo-Chinese'
represented to him by the moneyed terraces, and said: 'The face of a
stopped watch!--the only meaning it has is past date.'

He had no liking for Dudley Sowerby. But it might have been an allusion
to the general view of the houses. But again, 'the meaning of it past
date,' stuck in her memory. A certain face close on handsome, had a fatal
susceptibility to caricature.

She spoke of her 'exile': wanted Skepsey to come down to her; moaned over
the loss of her Louise. The puzzle of the reason for the long separation
from her parents, was evident in her mind, and unmentioned.

They turned on to the pier.

Nesta reminded him of certain verses he had written to celebrate her
visit to the place when she was a child:

         '"And then along the pier we sped,
          And there we saw a Whale
          He seemed to have a Normous Head,
          And not a bit of Tail!"'

'Manifestly a foreigner to our shores, where the exactly inverse
condition rules,' Colney said.

         '"And then we scampered on the beach,
          To chase the foaming wave;
          And when we ran beyond its reach
          We all became more brave."'

Colney remarked: 'I was a poet--for once.'

A neat-legged Parisianly-booted lady, having the sea, winds very
enterprising with her dark wavy, locks and jacket and skirts, gave a cry
of pleasure and--a silvery 'You dear!' at sight of Nesta; then at sight
of one of us, moderated her tone to a propriety equalling the most
conventional. 'We ride to-day?'

'I shall be one,' said Nesta.

'It would not be the commonest pleasure to me, if you were absent.'

'Till eleven, then!'

'After my morning letter to Ned.'

She sprinkled silvery sound on that name or on the adieu, blushed,
blinked, frowned, sweetened her lip-lines, bit at the underone, and
passed in a discomposure.

'The lady?' Colney asked.

'She is--I meet her in the troop conducted by the riding-master: Mrs.
Marsett.'

'And who is Ned?'

'It is her husband, to whom she writes every morning. He is a captain in
the army, or was. He is in Norway, fishing.'

'Then the probability is, that the English officer continues his military
studies.'

'Do you not think her handsome, Mr. Durance?'

'Ned may boast of his possession, when he has trimmed it and toned it a
little!

'She is different, if you are alone with her.'

'It is not unusual,' said Colney.

At eleven o'clock he was in London, and Nesta rode beside Mrs. Marsett
amid the troop.

A South-easterly wind blew the waters to shifty goldleaf prints of
brilliance under the sun.

'I took a liberty this morning, I called you "Dear" this morning,' the
lady said. 'It's what I feel, only I have no right to blurt out
everything I feel, and I was ashamed. I am sure I must have appeared
ridiculous. I got quite nervous.'

'You would not be ridiculous to me.'

'I remember I spoke of Ned!

'You have spoken of him before.'

'Oh! I know: to you alone. I should like to pluck out my heart and pitch
it on the waves, to see whether it would sink or swim. That's a funny
idea, isn't it! I tell you everything that comes up. What shall I do when
I lose you! You always make me feel you've a lot of poetry ready-made in
you.'

'We will write. And you will have your husband then.'

'When I had finished my letter to Ned, I dropped my head on it and
behaved like a fool for several minutes. I can't bear the thought of
losing you!'

'But you don't lose me,' said Nesta; 'there is no ground for your
supposing that you will. And your wish not to lose me, binds me to you
more closely.'

'If you knew!' Mrs. Marsett caught at her slippery tongue, and she
carolled: 'If we all knew everything, we should be wiser, and what a
naked lot of people we should be!'

They were crossing the passage of a cavalcade of gentlemen, at the end of
the East Cliff. One among them, large and dominant, with a playful voice
of brass, cried out:

'And how do you do, Mrs. Judith Marsett--ha? Beautiful morning?'

Mrs. Marsett's figure tightened; she rode stonily erect, looked level
ahead. Her woman's red mouth was shut fast on a fighting underlip.

'He did not salute you,' Nesta remarked, to justify her for not having
responded.

The lady breathed a low thunder: 'Coward!'

'He cannot have intended to insult you,' said Nesta.

'That man knows I will not notice him. He is a beast. He will learn that
I carry a horsewhip.'

'Are you not taking a little incident too much to heart?'

The sigh of the heavily laden came from Mrs. Marsett.

'Am I pale? I dare say. I shall go on my knees tonight hating myself that
I was born "one of the frail sex." We are, or we should ride at the
coward and strike him to the ground. Pray, pray do not look distressed!
Now you know my Christian name. That dog of a man barks it out on the
roads. It doesn't matter.'

'He has offended you before?'

'You are near me. They can't hurt me, can't touch me, when I think that I
'm talking with you. How I envy those who call you by your Christian
name!'

'Nesta,' said smiling Nesta. The smile was forced, that she might show
kindness, for the lady was jarring on her.

Mrs. Marsett opened her lips: 'Oh, my God, I shall be crying!--let's
gallop. No, wait, I'll tell you. I wish I could! I will tell you of that
man. That man is Major Worrell. One of the majors who manage to get to
their grade. A retired warrior. He married a handsome woman, above him in
rank, with money; a good woman. She was a good woman, or she would have
had her vengeance, and there was never a word against her. She must have
loved that--Ned calls him, full-blooded ox. He spent her money and he
deceived her.--You innocent! Oh, you dear! I'd give the world to have
your eyes. I've heard tell of "crystal clear," but eyes like yours have
to tell me how deep and clear. Such a world for them to be in! I did
pray, and used your name last night on my knees, that you--I said
Nesta--might never have to go through other women's miseries. Ah me! I
have to tell you he deceived her. You don't quite understand.'

'I do understand,' said Nesta.

'God help you!--I am excited to-day. That man is poison to me. His wife
forgave him three times. On three occasions, that unhappy woman forgave
him. He is great at his oaths, and a big breaker of them. She walked out
one November afternoon and met him riding along with a notorious
creature. You know there are bad women. They passed her, laughing. And
look there, Nesta, see that groyne; that very one.' Mrs. Marsett pointed
her whip hard out. 'The poor lady went down from the height here; she
walked into that rough water look!--steadying herself along it, and she
plunged; she never came out alive. A week after her burial, Major
Worrell--I 've told you enough.'

'We 'll gallop now,' said Nesta.

Mrs. Marsett's talk, her presence hardly less, affected the girl with
those intimations of tumult shown upon smooth waters when the great
elements are conspiring. She felt that there was a cause why she had to
pity, did pity her. It might be, that Captain Marsett wedded one who was
of inferior station,' and his wife had to bear blows from cruel people.
The supposition seemed probable. The girl accepted it; for beyond it, as
the gathering of the gale masked by hills, lay a brewing silence. What?
She did not reflect. Her quick physical sensibility curled to some breath
of heated atmosphere brought about her by this new acquaintance: not
pleasant, if she had thought of pleasure: intensely suggestive of our
life at the consuming tragic core, round which the furnace pants. But she
was unreflecting, feeling only a beyond and hidden.

Besides, she was an exile. Spelling at dark things in the dark, getting
to have the sight which peruses darkness, she touched the door of a
mystery that denied her its key, but showed the lock; and her life was
beginning to know of hours that fretted her to recklessness. Her friend
Louise was absent: she had so few friends--owing to that unsolved reason:
she wanted one, of any kind, if only gentle: and this lady seemed to need
her: and she flattered; Nesta was in the mood for swallowing and
digesting and making sweet blood of flattery.

At one time, she liked Mrs. Marsett best absent: in musing on her,
wishing her well, having said the adieu. For it was wearisome to hear
praises of 'innocence'; and women can do so little to cure that
'wickedness of men,' among the lady's conversational themes; and 'love'
too: it may be a 'plague,' and it may be 'heaven': it is better left
unspoken of. But there were times when Mrs. Marsett's looks and tones
touched compassion to press her hand: an act that had a pledgeing
signification in the girl's bosom: and when, by the simple avoidance of
ejaculatory fervours, Mrs. Marsett's quieted good looks had a shadow of a
tender charm, more pathetic than her outcries were.

These had not always the sanction of polite usage: and her English was
guilty of sudden lapses to the Thameswater English of commerce and
drainage instead of the upper wells. But there are many uneducated ladies
in the land. Many, too, whose tastes in romantic literature betray now
and then by peeps a similarity to Nesta's maid Mary's. Mrs. Marsett liked
love, blood, and adventure. She had, moreover, a favourite noble poet,
and she begged Nesta's pardon for naming him, and she would not name him,
and told her she must not read him until she was a married woman, because
he did mischief to girls. Thereupon she fell into one of her silences,
emerging with a cry of hate of herself for having ever read him. She did
not blame the bard. And, ah, poor bard! he fought his battle: he shall
not be named for the brand on the name. He has lit a sulphur match for
the lover of nature through many a generation; and to be forgiven by sad
frail souls who could accuse him of pipeing devil's agent to them at the
perilous instant--poor girls too!--is chastisement enough. This it is to
be the author of unholy sweets: a Posterity sitting in judgement will
grant, that they were part of his honest battle with the hypocrite
English Philistine, without being dupe of the plea or at all the thirsty
swallower of his sugary brandy. Mrs. Marsett expressed aloud her gladness
of escape in never having met a man like him; followed by her regret that
'Ned' was so utterly unlike; except 'perhaps'--and she hummed; she was
off on the fraternity in wickedness.

Nesta's ears were fatigued. 'My mother writes of you,' she said, to vary
the subject.

Mrs. Marsett looked. She sighed downright: 'I have had my dream of a
friend!--It was that gentleman with you on the pier! Your mother
objects?'

'She has inquired, nothing more.'

'I am not twenty-three: not as old as I should be, for a guide to you. I
know I would never do you harm. That I know. I would walk into that water
first, and take Mrs. Worrell's plunge:--the last bath; a thorough
cleanser for a woman! Only, she was a good woman and didn't want it, as
we--as lots of us do:--to wash off all recollection of having met a man!
Your mother would not like me to call you Nesta! I have never begged you
to call me Judith. Damnable name!' Mrs. Marsett revelled in the heat of
the curse on it, as a relief to torture of the breast, until a sense of
the girl's alarmed hearing sent the word reverberating along her nerves
and shocked her with such an exposure of our Shaggy wild one on a lady's
lips. She murmured: 'Forgive me,' and had the passion to repeat the
epithet in shrieks, and scratch up male speech for a hatefuller; but the
twitch of Nesta's brows made her say: 'Do pardon me. I did something in
Scripture. Judith could again. Since that brute Worrell crossed me riding
with you, I loathe my name; I want to do things. I have offended you.'

'We have been taught differently. I do not use those words. Nothing
else.'

'They frighten you.'

'They make me shut; that is all.'

'Supposing you were some day to discover . . . ta-tata, all the things
there are in the world.' Mrs. Marsett let fly an artificial chirrup. 'You
must have some ideas of me.'

'I think you have had unhappy experiences.'

'Nesta . . . just now and then! the first time we rode out together,
coming back from the downs, I remember, I spoke, without thinking--I was
enraged--of a case in the newspapers; and you had seen it, and you were
not afraid to talk of it. I remember I thought, Well, for a girl, she's
bold! I thought you knew more than a girl ought to know: until--you
did--you set my heart going. You spoke of the poor women like an angel of
compassion. You said, we were all mixed up with their fate--I forget the
words. But no one ever heard in Church anything that touched me so. I
worshipped you. You said, you thought of them often, and longed to find
out what you could do to help. And I thought, if they could hear you, and
only come near you, as I was--ah, my heaven! Unhappy experiences? Yes.
But when men get women on the slope to their perdition, they have no
mercy, none. They deceive, and they lie; they are false in acts and
words; they do as much as murder. They're never hanged for it. They make
the Laws! And then they become fathers of families, and point the finger
at the "wretched creatures." They have a dozen names against women, for
one at themselves.'

'It maddens me at times to think . . . !' said Nesta, burning with the
sting of vile names.

Oh, there are bad women as well as bad men: but men have the power and
the lead, and they take advantage of it; and then they turn round and
execrate us for not having what they have robbed us of!'

'I blame women--if I may dare, at my age,' said Nesta, and her bosom
heaved. 'Women should feel for their sex; they should not allow the
names; they should go among their unhappier sisters. At the worst, they
are sisters! I am sure, that fallen cannot mean--Christ shows it does
not. He changes the tone of Scripture. The women who are made outcasts,
must be hopeless and go to utter ruin. We should, if we pretend to be
better, step between them and that. There cannot be any goodness unless
it is a practiced goodness. Otherwise it is nothing more than paint on
canvas. You speak to me of my innocence. What is it worth, if it is only
a picture and does no work to help to rescue? I fear I think most of the
dreadful names that redden and sicken us.--The Old Testament!--I have a
French friend, a Mademoiselle Louise de Seines--you should hear her: she
is intensely French, and a Roman Catholic, everything which we are not:
but so human, so wise, and so full of the pride of her sex! I love her.
It is love. She will never marry until she meets a man who has the
respect for women, for all women. We both think we cannot separate
ourselves from our sisters. She seems to me to wither men, when she
speaks of their injustice, their snares to mislead and their cruelty when
they have succeeded. She is right, it is the--brute: there is no other
word.'

'And French and good!' Mrs. Marsett ejaculated. 'My Ned reads French
novels, and he says, their women . . . . But your mademoiselle is a real
one. If she says all that, I could kneel to her, French or not. Does she
talk much about men and women?'

'Not often: we lose our tempers. She wants women to have professions; at
present they have not much choice to avoid being penniless. Poverty, and
the sight of luxury! It seems as if we produced the situation, to create
an envious thirst, and cause the misery. Things are improving for them;
but we groan at the slowness of it.'

Mrs. Marsett now declared a belief, that women were nearly quite as bad
as men. 'I don't think I could take up with a profession. Unless to be a
singer. Ah! Do you sing?'

Nesta smiled: 'Yes, I sing.'

'How I should like to hear you! My Ned's a thorough
Englishman--gentleman, you know: he cares only for sport; Shooting,
Fishing, Hunting; and Football, Cricket, Rowing, and matches. He's
immensely proud of England in those things. And such muscle he has!
though he begins to fancy his heart's rather weak. It's digestion, I tell
him. But he takes me to the Opera sometimes--Italian Opera; he can't
stand German. Down at his place in Leicestershire, he tells me, when
there 's company, he has--I'm sure you sing beautifully. When I hear
beautiful singing, even from a woman they tell tales of, upon my word,
it's true, I feel my sins all melting out of me and I'm new-made: I can't
bear Ned to speak. Would you one day, one afternoon, before the end of
next week?--it would do me such real good, you can't guess how much; if I
could persuade you! I know I'm asking something out of rules. For just
half an hour: I judge by your voice in talking. Oh! it would do me
good-good-good to hear you sing. There is a tuned piano--a cottage; I
don't think it sounds badly. You would not see any great harm in calling
on me? once!'

'No,' said Nesta. And it was her nature that projected the word. Her
awakened wits were travelling to her from a distance, and she had an
intimation of their tidings; and she could not have said what they were;
or why, for a moment, she hesitated to promise she would come. Her vision
of the reality of things was without written titles, to put the stamp of
the world on it. She felt this lady to be one encompassed and in the hug
of the elementary forces, which are the terrors to inexperienced pure
young women. But she looked at her, and dared trust those lips, those
eyes. She saw, through whatever might be the vessel, the spirit of the
woman; as the upper nobility of our brood are enabled to do in a crisis
mixed of moral aversion and sisterly sympathy, when nature cries to them,
and the scales of convention, the mud-spots of accident, even
naughtiness, even wickedness, all misfortune's issue, if we but see the
one look upward, fall away. Reason is not excluded from these blind
throbs of a blood that strikes to right the doings of the Fates. Nesta
did not err in her divination of the good and the bad incarnate beside
her, though both good and bad were behind a curtain; the latter sparing
her delicate senses, appealing to chivalry, to the simply feminine claim
on her. Reason, acting in her heart as a tongue of the flames of the
forge where we all are wrought, told her surely that the good
predominated. She had the heart which is at our primal fires when nature
speaks.

She gave the promise to call on Mrs. Marsett and sing to her.

'An afternoon? Oh! what afternoon?' she was asked, and she said: 'This
afternoon, if you like.'

So it was agreed: Mrs. Marsett acted violently the thrill of delight she
felt in the prospect.

The ladies Dorothea and Virginia, consulted, and pronounced the name of
Marsett to be a reputable County name. 'There was a Leicestershire
baronet of the name of Marsett.' They arranged to send their
button-blazing boy at Nesta's heels. Mrs. Marsett resided in a
side-street not very distant from the featureless but washed and orderly
terrace of the glassy stare at sea.




CHAPTER XXIX

SHOWS ONE OF THE SHADOWS OF THE WORLD CROSSING A VIRGIN'S MIND

Nasta and her maid were brought back safely through the dusk by their
constellation of a boy, to whom the provident ladies had entrusted her.
They could not but note how short her syllables were. Her face was only
partly seen. They had returned refreshed from their drive on the populous
and orderly parade---so fair a pattern of their England!--after
discoursing of 'the dear child,' approving her manners, instancing proofs
of her intelligence, nay, her possession of 'character.' They did so,
notwithstanding that these admissions were worse than their growing love
for the girl, to confound established ideas. And now, in thoughtfulness
on her behalf, Dorothea said, 'We have considered, Nesta, that you may be
lonely; and if it is your wish, we will leave our card on your new
acquaintance.' Nesta took her hand and kissed it; she declined, saying,
'No,' without voice.

They had two surprises at the dinner-hour. One was the card of Dartrey
Fenellan, naming an early time next day for his visit; and the other was
the appearance of the Rev. Stuart Rem, a welcome guest. He had come to
meet his Bishop.

He had come also with serious information for the ladies, regarding the
Rev. Abram Posterley. No sooner was this out of his mouth than both
ladies exclaimed:

'Again!' So serious was it, that there had been a consultation at the
Wells; Mr. Posterley's friend, the Rev. Septimus Barmby, and his own
friend, the Rev. Groseman Buttermore, had journeyed from London to sit
upon the case: and, 'One hoped,' Mr. Stuart Rem said, 'poor Posterley
would be restored to the senses he periodically abandoned.' He laid a
hand on Tasso's curls, and withdrew it at a menace of teeth. Tasso would
submit to rough caresses from Mr. Posterley; he would not allow Mr.
Stuart Rem to touch him. Why was that? Perhaps for the reason of Mr.
Posterley's being so emotional as perpetually to fall a victim to some
bright glance and require the rescue of his friends; the slave of woman
had a magnet for animals!

Dorothea and Virginia were drawn to compassionate sentiments, in spite of
the provokeing recurrence of Mr. Posterley's malady. He had not an income
to support a wife. Always was this unfortunate gentleman entangling
himself in a passion for maid or widow of the Wells and it was desperate,
a fever. Mr. Stuart Rem charitably remarked on his taking it so severely
because of his very scrupulous good conduct. They pardoned a little wound
to their delicacy, and asked: 'On this occasion?' Mr. Stuart Rem named a
linendraper's establishment near the pantiles, where a fair young woman
served. 'And her reputation?' That was an article less presentable
through plate-glass, it seemed: Mr. Stuart Rem drew a prolonged breath
into his nose.

'It is most melancholy!' they said in unison. 'Nothing positive,' said
he. 'But the suspicion of a shadow, Mr. Stuart Rem! You will not permit
it?' He stated, that his friend Buttermore might have influence. Dorothea
said: 'When I think of Mr. Posterley's addiction to ceremonial
observances, and to matrimony, I cannot but think of a sentence that fell
from Mr. Durance one day, with reference to that division of our Church:
he called it:--you frown! and I would only quote Mr. Durance to you in
support of your purer form, as we hold it to be--with the candles, the
vestments, Confession, alas! he called it, "Rome and a wife."'

Mr. Stuart Rem nodded an enforced assent: he testily dismissed mention of
Mr. Durance, and resumed on Mr. Posterley.

The good ladies now, with some of their curiosity appeased, considerately
signified to him, that a young maiden was present.

The young maiden had in heart stuff to render such small gossip a hum of
summer midges. She did not imagine the dialogue concerned her in any way.
She noticed Mr. Stuart Rem's attentive scrutiny of her from time to time.
She had no sensitiveness, hardly a mind for things about her. To-morrow
she was to see Captain Dartrey. She dwelt on that prospect, for an escape
from the meshes of a painful hour--the most woeful of the hours she had
yet known-passed with Judith Marsett: which dragged her soul through a
weltering of the deeps, tossed her over and over, still did it with her
ideas. It shocked her nevertheless to perceive how much of the world's
flayed life and harsh anatomy she had apprehended, and so coldly,
previous to Mrs. Marsett's lift of the veil in her story of herself: a
skipping revelation, terrible enough to the girl; whose comparison of the
previously suspected things with the things now revealed imposed the
thought of her having been both a precocious and a callous young woman: a
kind of 'Delphica without the erudition,' her mind phrased it airily over
her chagrin.--And the silence of Dudley proved him to have discovered his
error in choosing such a person--he was wise, and she thanked him. She
had an envy of the ignorant-innocents adored by the young man she
cordially thanked for quitting her. She admired the white coat of armour
they wore, whether bestowed on them by their constitution or by prudence.
For while combating mankind now on Judith Marsett's behalf, personally
she ran like a hare from the mere breath of an association with the very
minor sort of similar charges; ardently she desired the esteem of
mankind; she was at moments abject. But had she actually been aware of
the facts now known?

Those wits of the virgin young, quickened to shrewdness by their budding
senses--and however vividly--require enlightenment of the audible and
visible before their sterner feelings can be heated to break them away
from a blushful dread and force the mind to know. As much as the wilfully
or naturally blunted, the intelligently honest have to learn by touch:
only, their understandings cannot meanwhile be so wholly obtuse as our
society's matron, acting to please the tastes of the civilized man--a
creature that is not clean-washed of the Turk in him--barbarously exacts.
The signor aforesaid is puzzled to read the woman, who is after all in
his language; but when it comes to reading the maiden, she appears as a
phosphorescent hieroglyph to some speculative Egyptologer; and he insists
upon distinct lines and characters; no variations, if he is to have sense
of surety. Many a young girl is misread by the amount she seems to know
of our construction, history, and dealings, when it is not more than her
sincere ripeness of nature, that has gathered the facts of life profuse
about her, and prompts her through one or other of the instincts, often
vanity, to show them to be not entirely strange to her; or haply her
filly nature is having a fling at the social harness of hypocrisy. If you
(it is usually through the length of ears of your Novelist that the
privilege is yours) have overheard queer communications passing between
girls, and you must act the traitor eavesdropper or Achilles masquerader
to overhear so clearly, these, be assured, are not specially the signs of
their corruptness. Even the exceptionally cynical are chiefly to be
accused of bad manners. Your Moralist is a myopic preacher, when he
stamps infamy, on them, or on our later generation, for the kick they
have at grandmother decorum, because you do not or cannot conceal from
them the grinning skeleton behind it.

Nesta once had dreams of her being loved: and she was to love in return
for a love that excused her for loving double, treble; as not her lover
could love, she thought with grateful pride in the treasure she was to
pour out at his feet; as only one or two (and they were women) in the
world had ever loved. Her notion of the passion was parasitic: man the
tree, woman the bine: but the bine was flame to enwind and to soar,
serpent to defend, immortal flowers to crown. The choice her parents had
made for her in Dudley, behind the mystery she had scent of, nipped her
dream, and prepared her to meet, as it were, the fireside of a November
day instead of springing up and into the dawn's blue of full summer with
swallows on wing. Her station in exile at the Wells of the weariful rich,
under the weight of the sullen secret, unenlivened by Dudley's courtship,
subdued her to the world's decrees; phrased thus: 'I am not to be a
heroine.' The one golden edge to the view was, that she would greatly
please her father.

Her dream of a love was put away like a botanist's pressed weed. But
after hearing Judith Marsett's wild sobs, it had no place in her
cherishing. For, above all, the unhappy woman protested love to have been
the cause of her misery. She moaned of 'her Ned'; of his goodness, his
deceitfulness, her trustfulness; his pride and the vileness of his
friends; her longsuffering and her break down of patience. It was done
for the proof of her unworthiness of Nesta's friendship: that she might
be renounced, and embraced. She told the pathetic half of her story, to
suit the gentle ear, whose critical keenness was lost in compassion. How
deep the compassion, mixed with the girl's native respect for the
evil-fortuned, may be judged by her inaccessibility to a vulgar tang that
she was aware of in the deluge of the torrent, where Innocence and Ned
and Love and a proud Family and that beast Worrell rolled together in
leaping and shifting involutions.

A darkness of thunder was on the girl. Although she was not one to shrink
beneath it like the small bird of the woods, she had to say within
herself many times, 'I shall see Captain Dartrey to-morrow,' for a
recovery and a nerving. And with her thought of him, her tooth was at her
underlip, she struggled abashed, in hesitation over men's views of her
sex, and how to bring a frank mind to meet him; to be sure of his not at
heart despising; until his character swam defined and bright across her
scope. 'He is good to women.' Fragments of conversation, principally her
father's, had pictured Captain Dartrey to her most manfully tolerant
toward a frivolous wife.

He came early in the morning, instantly after breakfast.

Not two minutes had passed before she was at home with him. His words,
his looks, revived her spirit of romance, gave her the very landscapes,
and new ones. Yes, he was her hero. But his manner made him also an
adored big brother, stamped splendid by the perils of life. He sat
square, as if alert to rise, with an elbow on a knee, and the readiest
turn of head to speakers, the promptest of answers, eyes that were a
brighter accent to the mouth, so vividly did look accompany tone. He
rallied her, chatted and laughed; pleased the ladies by laughing at
Colney Durance, and inspired her with happiness when he spoke of
England:--that 'One has to be in exile awhile, to see the place she
takes.'

'Oh, Captain Dartrey, I do like to hear you say so,' she cried; his voice
was reassuring also in other directions: it rang of true man.

He volunteered, however, a sad admission, that England had certainly lost
something of the great nation's proper conception of Force: the meaning
of it, virtue of it, and need for it. 'She bleats for a lesson, and will
get her lesson.'

But if we have Captain Dartrey, we shall come through! So said the
sparkle of Nesta's eyes.

'She is very like her father,' he said to the ladies.

'We think so,' they remarked.

'There's the mother too,' said he; and Nesta saw that the ladies
shadowed.

They retired. Then she begged him to 'tell her of her own dear mother.'
The news gave comfort, except for the suspicion, that the dear mother was
being worn by her entertaining so largely. 'Papa is to blame,' said
Nesta.

'A momentary strain. Your father has an idea of Parliament; one of the
London Boroughs.'

'And I, Captain Dartrey, when do I go back to them?'

'Your mother comes down to consult with you. And now, do we ride
together?'

'You are free?'

'My uncle, Lord Clan, lets me out.'

'To-day?'

'Why, yes!'

'This morning?'

'In an hour's time.'

'I will be ready.'

Nesta sent a line of excuse to Mrs. Marsett, throwing in a fervent
adjective for balm.

That fair person rode out with the troop under conduct of the hallowing
squire of the stables, and passed by Nesta on horseback beside Dartrey
Fenellan at the steps of a huge hotel; issuing from which, pretty Mrs.
Blathenoy was about to mount. Mrs. Marsett looked ahead and coloured, but
she could not restrain one look at Nesta, that embraced her cavalier.
Nesta waved hand to her, and nodded. Mrs. Marsett withdrew her eyes; her
doing so, silent though it was, resembled the drag back to sea of the
shingle-wave below her, such a screaming of tattle she heard in the
questions discernible through the attitude of the cavalier and of the
lady, who paused to stare, before the leap up in the saddle. 'Who is
she?--what is she?--how did you know her?--where does she come
from?--wears her hat on her brows!--huge gauntlets out of style!--shady!
shady! shady!' And as always during her nervous tumults, the name of
Worrell made diapason of that execrable uproar. Her hat on her brows had
an air of dash, defying a world it could win, as Ned well knew. But she
scanned her gauntlets disapprovingly. This town, we are glad to think,
has a bright repute for glove-shops. And Mrs. Marsett could applaud
herself for sparing Ned's money; she had mended her gloves, if they were
in the fashion.--But how does the money come? Hark at that lady and that
gentleman questioning Miss Radnor of everything, everything in the world
about her! Not a word do they get from Miss Radnor. And it makes them the
more inquisitive. Idle rich people, comfortably fenced round, are so
inquisitive! And Mrs. Marsett, loving Nesta for the notice of her,
maddened by the sting of tongues it was causing, heard the wash of the
beach, without consciousness of analogies, but with a body ready to jump
out of skin, out of life, in desperation at the sound.

She was all impulse; a shifty piece of unmercenary stratagem occasionally
directing it. Arrived at her lodgings, she wrote to Nesta: 'I entreat you
not to notice me, if you pass me on the road again. Let me drop, never
mind how low I go. I was born to be wretched. A line from you, just a
line now and then, only to show me I am not forgotten. I have had a
beautiful dream. I am not bad in reality; I love goodness, I know. I
cling to the thought of you, as my rescue, I declare. Please, let me
hear: if it's not more than "good day" and your initials on a post-card.'

The letter brought Nesta in person to her.




CHAPTER XXX

THE BURDEN UPON NESTA

Could there be confidences on the subject of Mrs. Marsett with Captain
Dartrey?--Nesta timidly questioned her heart: she knocked at an iron door
shut upon a thing alive. The very asking froze her, almost to stopping
her throbs of pity for the woman. With Captain Dartrey, if with any one;
but with no one. Not with her mother even. Toward her mother, she felt
guilty of knowing. Her mother had a horror of that curtain. Nesta had
seen it, and had taken her impressions; she, too, shrank from it; the
more when impelled to draw near it. Louise de Seilles would have been
another self; Louise was away; when to return, the dear friend could not
state. Speaking in her ear, would have been possible; the theme precluded
writing.

It was ponderous combustible new knowledge of life for a girl to hold
unaided. In the presence of the simple silvery ladies Dorothea and
Virginia, she had qualms, as if she were breaking out in spots before
them. The ladies fancied, that Mr. Stuart Rem had hinted to them oddly of
the girl; and that he might have meant, she appeared a little too
cognizant of poor Mr. Abram Posterley's malady--as girls in these
terrible days, only too frequently, too brazenly, are. They discoursed to
her of the degeneracy of the manners, nay, the morals of young
Englishwomen, once patterns! They sketched the young English gentlewoman
of their time; indeed a beauty; with round red cheeks, and rounded open
eyes, and a demure shut mouth, a puppet's divine ignorance; inoffensive
in the highest degree, rightly worshipped. They were earnest, and Nesta
struck at herself. She wished to be as they had been, reserving her
painful independence.

They were good: they were the ideal women of our country; which demands
if it be but the semblance of the sureness of stationary excellence; such
as we have in Sevres and Dresden, polished bright and smooth as
ever by the morning's flick of a duster; perhaps in danger of
accidents--accidents must be kept away; but enviable, admirable, we
think, when we are not thinking of seed sown or help given to the
generations to follow. Nesta both envied and admired; she revered them;
yet her sharp intelligence, larger in the extended boundary of thought
coming of strange crimson-lighted new knowledge, discerned in a dimness
what blest conditions had fixed them on their beautiful barren eminence.
Without challengeing it, she had a rebellious rush of sympathy for our
evil-fortuned of the world; the creatures in the battle, the wounded,
trodden, mud-stained: and it alarmed her lest she should be at heart one
out of the fold.

She had the sympathy, nevertheless, and renewing and increasing with the
pulsations of a compassion that she took for her reflective survey. The
next time she saw Dartrey Fenellan, she was assured of him, as being the
man who might be spoken to; and by a woman: though not by a girl; not
spoken to by her. The throb of the impulse precipitating speech subsided
to a dumb yearning. He noticed her look: he was unaware of the human sun
in the girl's eyes taking an image of him for permanent habitation in her
breast. That face of his, so clearly lined, quick, firm, with the blue
smile on it like the gleam of a sword coming out of sheath, did not mean
hardness, she could have vowed. O that some woman, other than the unhappy
woman herself, would speak the words denied to a girl! He was the man who
would hearken and help. Essential immediate help was to be given besides
the noble benevolence of mind. Novel ideas of manliness and the world's
need for it were printed on her understanding. For what could women do in
aid of a good cause! She fawned: she deemed herself very despicably her
hero's inferior. The thought of him enclosed her. In a prison, the gaoler
is a demi-God-hued bright or black, as it may be; and, by the present
arrangement between the sexes, she, whom the world allowed not to have an
intimation from eye or ear, or from nature's blood-ripeness in commune
with them, of certain matters, which it suffers to be notorious,
necessarily directed her appeal almost in worship to the man, who was the
one man endowed to relieve, and who locked her mouth for shame.

Thus was she, too, being put into her woman's harness of the bit and the
blinkers, and taught to know herself for the weak thing, the gentle
parasite, which the fiction of our civilization expects her, caressingly
and contemptuously, to become in the active, while it is exacted of hero
Comedy of Clowns!--that in the passive she be a rockfortress impregnable,
not to speak of magically encircled. She must also have her feelings; she
must not be an unnatural creature. And she must have a sufficient
intelligence; for her stupidity does not flatter the possessing man. It
is not an organic growth that he desires in his mate, but a happy
composition. You see the world which comes of the pair.

This burning Nesta, Victor's daughter, tempered by Nataly's milder blood,
was a girl in whom the hard shocks of the knowledge of life, perforce of
the hardness upon pure metal, left a strengthening for generous
imagination. She did not sit to brood on her injured senses or set them
through speculation touching heat; they were taken up and consumed by the
fire of her mind. Nor had she leisure for the abhorrences, in a heart all
flowing to give aid, and uplift and restore. Self was as urgent in her as
in most of the young; but the gift of humour, which had previously
diverted it, was now the quick feeling for her sisterhood, through the
one piteous example she knew; and broadening it, through her insurgent
abasement on their behalf, which was her scourged pride of sex. She but
faintly thought of blaming the men whom her soul besought for justice,
for common kindness, to women. There was the danger, that her aroused
young ignorance would charge the whole of the misery about and abroad
upon the stronger of those two: and another danger, that the vision of
the facts below the surface would discolour and disorder her views of
existence. But she loved, she sprang to, the lighted world; and she had
figures of male friends, to which to cling; and they helped in animating
glorious historical figures on the world's library-shelves or under yet
palpitating earth. Promise of a steady balance of her nature, too, was
shown in the absence of any irritable urgency to be doing, when her bosom
bled to help. Beyond the resolve, that she would not abandon the woman
who had made confession to her, she formed no conscious resolutions. Far
ahead down her journey of the years to come, she did see muffled things
she might hope and would strive to do. They were chrysalis shapes. Above
all, she flew her blind quickened heart on the wings of an imaginative
force; and those of the young who can do that, are in their blood
incorruptible by dark knowledge, irradiated under darkness in the mind.
Let but the throb be kept for others. That is the one secret, for
redemption; if not for preservation.

Victor descended on his marine London to embrace his girl, full of
regrets at Fredi's absence from the great whirl 'overhead,' as places of
multitudinous assembly, where he shone, always appeared to him. But it
was not to last long; she would soon be on the surface again! At the
first clasp of her, he chirped some bars of her song. He challenged her
to duet before the good ladies, and she kindled, she was caught up by his
gaiety, wondering at herself; faintly aware of her not being spontaneous.
And she made her father laugh, just in the old way; and looked at herself
in his laughter, with the thought, that she could not have become so
changed; by which the girl was helped to jump to her humour. Victor
turned his full front to Dorothea and Virginia, one sunny beam of delight
and although it was Mr. Stuart Rem who was naughty Nesta's victim, and
although it seemed a trespass on her part to speak in such a manner of a
clerical gentleman, they were seized; they were the opposite partners of
a laughing quadrille, lasting till they were tired out.

Victor had asked his girl, if she sang on a Sunday. The ladies
remembered, that she had put the question for permission to Mr. Stuart
Rem, who was opposed to secular singing.

'And what did he say?' said Victor.

Nesta shook her head: 'It was not what he said, papa; it was his look.
His duty compelled him, though he loves music. He had the look of a
Patriarch putting his handmaiden away into the desert.'

Dorothea and Virginia, in spite of protests within, laughed to streams.
They recollected the look; she had given the portrait of Mr. Stuart Rem
in the act of repudiating secular song.

'Victor conjured up a day when this darling Fredi, a child, stood before
a famous picture in the Brera, at Milan; when he and her mother noticed
the child's very studious graveness; and they had talked of it; he
remarking, that she disapproved of the Patriarch; and Nataly, that she
was taken with Hagar's face.

He seemed surprised at her not having heard from Dudley.

'How is that?' said he.

'Most probably because he has not written, papa.'

He paused after the cool reply. She had no mournful gaze at all; but in
the depths of the clear eyes he knew so well, there was a coil of
something animate, whatever it might be. And twice she drew a heavy
breath.

He mentioned it in London. Nataly telegraphed at night for her girl to
meet her next day at Dartrey's hotel.

Their meeting was incomprehensibly joyless to the hearts of each, though
it was desired, and had long been desired, and mother was mother,
daughter daughter, without diminution of love between them. They held
hands, they kissed and clasped, they showered their tender phrases with
full warm truth, and looked into eyes and surely saw one another. But the
heart of each was in a battle of its own, taking wounds or crying for
supports. Whether to speak to her girl at once, despite the now vehement
contrary counsel of Victor, was Nataly's deliberation, under the thought
of the young creature's perplexity in not seeing her at the house of the
Duvidney ladies: while Nesta conjured in a flash the past impressions of
her mother's shrinking distaste from any such hectic themes as this which
burdened and absorbed her; and she was almost joining to it, through
sympathy with any thought or feeling of one in whom she had such pride;
she had the shudder of revulsion. Further, Nataly put on, rather cravenly
an air, of distress, or she half designingly permitted her trouble to be
seen, by way of affecting her girl's recollection when the confession was
to come, that Nesta might then understand her to have been restrained
from speaking, not evasive of her duty. The look was interpreted by Nesta
as belonging to the social annoyances dating, in her calendar, from
Creckholt, apprehensively dreaded at Lakelands. She hinted asking, and
her mother nodded; not untruthfully; but she put on a briskness after the
nod; and a doubt was driven into Nesta's bosom.

Her dear Skepsey was coming down to her for a holiday, she was glad to
hear. Of Dudley, there was no word. Nataly shunned his name, with a
superstitious dread lest any mention of him should renew pretensions that
she hoped, and now supposed, were quite withdrawn. So she had told poor
Mr. Barmby only yesterday, at his humble request to know. He had seen
Dudley on the pantiles, walking with a young lady, he said. And 'he
feared,' he said; using, a pardonable commonplace of deceit. Her
compassion accounted for the 'fear' which was the wish, and caused her
not to think it particularly strange, that he should imagine Dudley to
have quitted the field. Now that a disengaged Dartrey Fenellan was at
hand, poor Mr. Barmby could have no chance.

Dartrey came to her room by appointment. She wanted to see him alone, and
he informed her, that Mrs. Blathenoy was in the hotel, and would
certainly receive and amuse Nesta for any length of time.

'I will take her up,' said Nataly, and rose, and she sat immediately, and
fluttered a hand at her breast. She laughed: 'Perhaps I'm tired!'

Dartrey took Nesta.

He returned, saying: 'There's a lift in the hotel. Do the stairs affect
you at all?'

She fenced his sharp look. 'Laziness, I fancy; age is coming on. How is
it Mrs. Blathenoy is here?'

'Well! how?' 'Foolish curiosity?' 'I think I have made her of service. I
did not bring the lady here.' 'Of service to whom?' 'Why, to Victor!'
'Has Victor commissioned you?' 'You can bear to hear it. Her husband
knows the story.  He has a grudge . . . commercial reasons. I fancy it
is, that Victor stood against his paper at the table of the Bank.
Blathenoy vowed blow for blow. But I think the little woman holds him in.
She says she does.' 'Victor prompted you?' 'It occurred as it occurred.'
'She does it for love of us?--Oh! I can't trifle. Dartrey!' 'Tell me.'
'First, you haven't let me know what you think of my Nesta.' 'She's a
dear good girl.' 'Not so interesting to you as a flighty little woman!'
'She has a speck of some sort on her mind.' Nataly spied at Dudley's
behaviour, and said: 'That will wear away. Is Mr. Blathenoy much here?'
'As often as he can come, I believe.' 'That is . . . ?' 'I have seen him
twice.' 'His wife remains?' 'Fixed here for the season.' 'My friend!' 'No
harm, no harm!' 'But-to her!' 'You have my word of honour.' 'Yes: and she
is doing you a service, at your request; you occasionally reward her with
thanks; and she sees you are a man of honour. Do you not know women?'

Dartrey blew his pooh-pooh on feminine suspicions. 'There's very little
left of the Don Amoroso in me. Women don't worship stone figures.'

'They do: like the sea-birds. And what do you say to me, Dartrey?--I can
confess it: I am one of them: I love you. When last you left England, I
kissed your hand. It was because of your manly heart in that stone
figure. I kept from crying: you used to scorn us English for the
"whimpering fits" you said we enjoy and must have in books, if we can't
get them up for ourselves. I could have prayed to have you as brother or
son. I love my Victor the better for his love of you. Oh!--poor soul--how
he is perverted since that building of Lakelands! He cannot take
soundings of the things he does. Formerly he confided in me, in all
things: now not one;--I am the chief person to deceive. If only he had
waited! We are in a network of intrigues and schemes, every artifice in
London--tempting one to hate simple worthy people, who naturally have
their views, and see me an impostor, and tolerate me, fascinated by
him:--or bribed--it has to be said. There are ways of bribeing. I trust
he may not have in the end to pay too heavily for succeeding. He seems a
man pushed by Destiny; not irresponsible, but less responsible than most.
He is desperately tempted by his never failing. Whatever he does! . . it
is true! And it sets me thinking of those who have never had an ailment,
up to a certain age, when the killing blow comes. Latterly I have seen
into him: I never did before. Had I been stronger, I might have saved, or
averted . . . . But, you will say, the stronger woman would not have
occupied my place. I must have been blind too. I did not see, that his
nature shrinks from the thing it calls up. He dreads the exposure he
courts--or has to combat with all his powers. It has been a revelation to
me of him life as well. Nothing stops him. Now it is Parliament--a vacant
London Borough. He counts on a death: Ah! terrible! I have it like a
snake's bite night and day.'

Nataly concluded: 'There: it has done me some good to speak. I feel so
base.' She breathed heavily.

Dartrey took her hand and bent his lips to it. 'Happy the woman who has
not more to speak! How long will Nesta stay here?'

'You will watch over her, Dartrey? She stays-her father wishes--up
to--ah! We can hardly be in such extreme peril. He has her doctor, her
lawyer, and her butler--a favourite servant--to check, and influence,
her: She--you know who it is!--does not, I am now convinced, mean
persecution. She was never a mean-minded woman. Oh! I could wish she
were. They say she is going. Then I am to be made an "honest woman of."
Victor wants Nesta, now that she is away, to stay until . . . You
understand. He feels she is safe from any possible kind of harm with
those good ladies. And I feel she is the safer for having you near.
Otherwise, how I should pray to have you with us! Daily I have to pass
through, well, something like the ordeal of the red-hot ploughshares--and
without the innocence, dear friend! But it's best that my girl should not
have to be doing the same; though she would have the innocence. But she
writhes under any shadow of a blot. And for her to learn the things that
are in the world, through her mother's history!--and led to know it by
the falling away of friends, or say, acquaintances! However ignorant at
present, she learns from a mere nothing. I dread! . . . . In a moment,
she is a blaze of light. There have been occurrences. Only Victor could
have overcome them! I had to think it better for my girl, that she was
absent. We are in such a whirl up there! So I work round again to "how
long?" and the picture of myself counting the breaths of a dying woman.
The other day I was told I was envied!'

'Battle, battle, battle; for all of us, in every position!' said Dartrey
sharply, to clip a softness: 'except when one's attending on an invalid
uncle. Then it's peace; rather like extinction. And I can't be crying for
the end either. I bite my moustache and tap foot on the floor, out of his
hearing; make believe I'm patient. Now I 'll fetch Nesta.'

Mrs. Blathenoy came down with an arm on Nesta's shoulder. She held a
telegram, and said to Nataly--

'What can this mean? It's from my husband; he puts "Jacob": my husband's
Christian name:--so like my husband, where there's no concealment!
There--he says:

"Down to-night else pack ready start to-morrow." Can it signify, affairs
are bad with my husband in the city?'

It had that signification to Nataly's understanding. At the same time,
the pretty little woman's absurd lisping repetition of 'my husband' did
not seem without design to inflict the wound it caused.

In reality, it was not malicious; it came of the bewitchment of a silly
tongue by her knowledge of the secret to be controlled: and after
contrasting her fortunes with Nataly's, on her way downstairs, she had
comforted herself by saying, that at least she had a husband. She was not
aware that she dealt a hurt until she had found a small consolation in
the indulgence: for Captain Dartrey Fenellan admired this commanding
figure of a woman, who could not legally say that which the woman he
admired less, if at all, legally could say.

'I must leave you to interpret,' Nataly remarked.

Mrs. Blathenoy resented her unbefitting queenly style. For this reason,
she abstained from an intended leading up to mention of the
'singular-looking lady' seen riding with Miss Radnor more than once; and
as to whom, Miss Radnor (for one gives her the name) had not just now,
when questioned, spoken very clearly. So the mother's alarms were not
raised.

And really it was a pity, Mrs. Blathenoy said to Dartrey subsequently;
finding him colder than before Mrs. Radnor's visit; it was a pity,
because a young woman in Miss Radnor's position should not by any
possibility be seen in association with a person of commonly doubtful
appearance.

She was denied the petulant satisfaction of rousing the championship
bitter to her. Dartrey would not deliver an opinion on Miss Radnor's
conduct. He declined, moreover, to assist in elucidating the telegram by
'looking here,' and poring over the lines beside a bloomy cheek. He was
petulantly whipped on the arm with her glove, and pouted at. And it was
then--and then only or chiefly through Nataly's recent allusion--that the
man of honour had his quakings in view of the quagmire, where he was
planted on an exceedingly narrow causeway, not of the firmest. For she
was a pretty little woman, one of the prize gifts of the present
education of women to the men who are for having them quiescent domestic
patterns; and her artificial ingenuousness or candid frivolities came to
her by nature to kindle the nature of the gentleman on the other bank of
the stream, and witch him to the plunge, so greatly mutually regretted
after taken: an old duet to the moon.

Dartrey escaped to the Club, where he had a friend. The friend was
Colonel Sudley, one of the modern studious officers, not in good esteem
with the authorities. He had not forgiven Dartrey for the intemperateness
which cut off a brilliant soldier from the service. He was reduced to
acknowledge, however, that there was a sparkling defence for him to reply
with, in the shape of a fortune gained and where we have a Society
forcing us to live up to an expensive level, very trying to a soldier's
income, a fortune gained will offer excuses for misconduct short of
disloyal or illegal. They talked of the state of the Army: we are moving.
True, and at the last Review, the 'march past' was performed before a
mounted generalissimo profoundly asleep, head on breast. Our English
military 'moving' may now be likened to Somnolency on Horseback. 'Oh,
come, no rancour,' said the colonel; 'you know he's a kind old boy at
heart; nowhere a more affectionate man alive!'

'So the sycophants are sure of posts!'

'Come, I say! He's devoted to the Service.'

'Invalid him, and he shall have a good epitaph.'

'He's not so responsible as the taxpayer.'

'There you touch home. Mother Goose can't imagine the need for defence
until a hand's at her feathers.'

'What about her shrieks now and then?'

'Indigestion of a surfeit?'

They were in a laughing wrangle when two acquaintances of the colonel's
came near. One of them recognized Dartrey. He changed a prickly subject
to one that is generally as acceptable to the servants of Mars. His
companion said: 'Who is the girl out with Judith Marsett?' He flavoured
eulogies of the girl's good looks in easy garrison English. She was
praised for sitting her horse well. One had met her on the parade, in the
afternoon, walking with Mrs. Marsett. Colonel Sudley had seen them on
horseback. He remarked to Dartrey:

'And by the way, you're a clean stretch ahead of us. I've seen you go by
these windows, with the young lady on one side, and a rather pretty woman
on the other too.'

'Nothing is unseen in this town!' Dartrey rejoined.

Strolling to his quarters along the breezy parade at night, he proposed
to himself, that he would breathe an immediate caution to Nesta. How had
she come to know this Mrs. Marsett? But he was more seriously thinking of
what Colney Durance called 'The Mustard Plaster'; the satirist's phrase
for warm relations with a married fair one: and Dartrey, clear of any
design to have it at his breast, was beginning to take intimations of
pricks and burns. They are an almost positive cure of inflammatory
internal conditions. They were really hard on him, who had none to be
cured.

The hour was nigh midnight. As he entered his hotel, the porter ran off
to the desk in his box, and brought him a note, saying, that a lady had
left it at half-past nine. Left it?--Then the lady could not be the
alarming lady. He was relieved. The words of the letter were cabalistic;
these, beneath underlined address:

'I beg you to call on me, if I do not see you this evening. It is urgent;
you will excuse me when I explain. Not late to-morrow. I am sure you will
not fail to come. I could write what would be certain to bring you. I
dare not trust any names to paper.'

The signature was, Judith Marsett.




CHAPTER XXXI

SHOWS HOW THE SQUIRES IN A CONQUEROR'S SERVICE HAVE AT TIMES TO DO
KNIGHTLY CONQUEST OF THEMSELVES

By the very earliest of the trains shot away to light and briny air from
London's November gloom, which knows the morning through increase of
gasjets, little Skepsey was hurried over suburban chimneys, in his
friendly third-class carriage; where we have reminders of ancient
pastoral times peculiar to our country, as it may chance; but where a man
may speak to his neighbour right off without being deemed offensive. That
is homely. A social fellow knitting closely to his fellows when he meets
them, enjoys it, even at the cost of uncushioned seats he can, if imps
are in him, merryandrew as much as he pleases; detested punctilio does
not reign there; he can proselytize for the soul's welfare; decry or
uphold the national drink; advertize a commercial Firm deriving
prosperity from the favour of the multitude; exhort to patriotism. All is
accepted. Politeness is the rule, according to Skepsey's experience of
the Southern part of the third-class kingdom. And it is as well to mark
the divisions, for the better knowledge of our countrymen. The North
requires volumes to itself.

The hard-grained old pirate-stock Northward has built the land, and is to
the front when we are at our epic work. Meanwhile it gets us a blowzy
character, by shouldering roughly among the children of civilization.
Skepsey, journeying one late afternoon up a Kentish line, had, in both
senses of the word, encountered a long-limbed navvy; an intoxicated, he
was compelled by his manly modesty to desire to think; whose loathly
talk, forced upon the hearing of a decent old woman opposite him, passed
baboonish behaviour; so much so, that Skepsey civilly intervened;
subsequently inviting him to leave the carriage and receive a lesson at
the station they were nearing. Upon his promising faithfully, that it
should be a true and telling lesson, the navvy requested this pygmy spark
to flick his cheek, merely to show he meant war in due sincerity; and he
as faithfully, all honour, promising not to let it bring about a breakage
of the laws of the Company, Skepsey promptly did the deed. So they went
forth.

Skepsey alluded to the incident, for an example of the lamentable
deficiency in science betrayed by most of our strong men when put to it;
and the bitter thought, that he could count well nigh to a certainty on
the total absence of science in the long-armed navvy, whose fist on his
nose might have been as the magnet of a pin, was chief among his
reminiscences after the bout, destroying pleasure for the lover of Old
England's might. One blow would have sent Skepsey travelling. He was not
seriously struck once. They parted, shaking hands; the navvy confessing
himself to have 'drunk a drop'; and that perhaps accounted for his having
been 'topped by a dot on him.'

He declined to make oath never to repeat his offence; but said, sending
his vanquisher to the deuce, with an amicable push at his shoulder,
'Damned if I ever forget five foot five stretched six foot flat!'

Skepsey counted his feet some small amount higher; but our hearty rovers'
sons have their ballad moods when giving or taking a thrashing. One of
the third-class passengers, a lad of twenty, became Skepsey's pupil, and
turned out clever with the gloves, and was persuaded to enter the
militia, and grew soon to be a corporal. Thus there was profit of the
affair, though the navvy sank out of sight. Let us hope and pray he will
not insult the hearing of females again. If only females knew how
necessary it is, for their sakes, to be able to give a lesson now and
then! Ladies are positively opposed. And Judges too, who dress so like
them. The manhood of our country is kept down, in consequence. Mr.
Durance was right, when he said something about the state of war being
wanted to weld our races together: and yet we are always praying for the
state of peace, which causes cracks and gaps among us! Was that what he
meant by illogical? It seemed to Skepsey--oddly, considering his inferior
estimate of the value of the fair sex--that a young woman with whom he
had recently made acquaintance; and who was in Brighton now, upon
missionary work; a member of the 'Army,' an officer of advancing rank,
Matilda Pridden, by name; was nearer to the secret of the right course of
conduct for individual citizens and the entire country than any gentleman
he knew.

Yes, nearer to it than his master was! Thinking of Mr. Victor Radnor,
Skepsey fetched a sigh. He had knocked at his master's door at the office
one day, and imagining the call to enter, had done so, and had seen a
thing he could not expunge. Lady Grace Halley was there. From matters he
gathered, Skepsey guessed her to be working for his master among the
great folks, as he did with Jarniman, and Mr. Fenellan with Mr. Carling.
But is it usual; he asked himself--his natural veneration framing the
rebuke to his master thus--to repay the services of a lady so warmly?--We
have all of us an ermined owl within us to sit in judgement of our
superiors as well as our equals; and the little man, notwithstanding a
servant's bounden submissiveness, was forced to hear the judicial
pronouncement upon his master's behaviour. His master had, at the same
time, been saying most weighty kind words more and more of late: one
thing:--that, if he gave all he had to his fellows, and did all he could,
he should still be in their debt. And he was a very wealthy gentleman.
What are we to think? The ways of our superiors are wonderful. We do them
homage: still we feel, we painfully feel, we are beginning to worship
elsewhere. It is the pain of a detachment of the very roots of our
sea-weed heart from a rock. Mr. Victor Radnor was an honour to his
country. Skepsey did not place the name of Matilda Pridden beside it or
in any way compare two such entirely different persons. At the same time
and most earnestly, while dreading to hear, he desired to have Matilda
Pridden's opinion of the case distressing him. He never could hear it,
because he could never be allowed to expound the case to her. Skepsey
sighed again: he as much as uttered: Oh, if we had a few thousands like
her!--But what if we do have them? They won't marry! There they are, all
that the country requires in wives and mothers; and like Miss Priscilla
Graves, they won't marry!

He looked through sad thoughts across the benches of the compartments to
the farther end of the carriage, where sat the Rev. Septimus Barmby,
looking at him through a meditation as obscure if not so mournful. Few
are the third-class passengers outward at that early hour in the winter
season, and Skepsey's gymnastics to get beside the Rev. Septimus were
unimpeded; though a tight-packed carriage of us poor journaliers would
not have obstructed them with as much as a sneer. Mr. Barmby and Skepsey
greeted. The latter said, he had a holiday, to pay a visit to Miss Nesta.
The former said, he hoped he should see Miss Nesta. Skepsey then rapidly
brought the conversation to a point where Matilda Pridden was comprised.
He discoursed of the 'Army' and her position in the Army, giving
instances of her bravery, the devotion shown by her to the cause of
morality, in all its forms. Mr. Barmby had his fortunes on his hands at
the moment, he could not lend an attentive ear; and he disliked this
Army, the title it had taken, and the mixing of women and men in its
ranks; not to speak of a presumption in its proceedings, and the public
marching and singing. Moreover, he enjoyed his one or two permissible
glasses: he doubted that the Chiefs of the Army had common benevolence
for the inoffensive pipe. But the cause of morality was precious to him;
morality and a fit of softness, and the union of the happiest contrast of
voices, had set him for a short while, before the dawn of Nesta's day,
hankering after Priscilla Graves. Skepsey's narrative of Matilda
Pridden's work down at the East of London; was effective; it had the ring
to thrill a responsive chord in Mr. Barmby, who mused on London's East,
and martyrly service there. His present expectations were of a very
different sort; but a beautiful bride, bringing us wealth, is no
misleading beam, if we direct the riches rightly. Septimus, a solitary
minister in those grisly haunts of the misery breeding vice, must needs
accomplish less than a Septimus the husband of one of England's chief
heiresses:--only not the most brilliant, owing to circumstances known to
the Rev. Groseman Buttermore: strangely, and opportunely, revealed: for
her exceeding benefit, it may be hoped. She is no longer the ignorant
girl, to reject the protecting hand of one whose cloth is the best of
cloaking. A glance at Dudley Sowerby's defection, assures our worldly
wisdom too, that now is the time to sue.

Several times while Mr. Barmby made thus his pudding of the desires of
the flesh and the spirit, Skepsey's tales of Matilda Pridden's heroism
caught his attention. He liked her deeds; he disliked the position in
which the young woman placed herself to perform them; and he said so.
Women are to be women, he said.

Skepsey agreed: 'If we could get men to do the work, sir!'

Mr. Barmby was launching forth: Plenty of men!--His mouth was blocked by
the reflection, that we count the men on our fingers; often are we, as it
were, an episcopal thumb surveying scarce that number of followers! He
diverged to censure of the marchings and the street-singing: the
impediment to traffic, the annoyance to a finely musical ear. He
disapproved altogether of Matilda Pridden's military display, pronouncing
her to be, 'Doubtless a worthy young person.'

'Her age is twenty-seven,' said Skepsey, spying at the number of his own.

'You have known her long?' Mr. Barmby asked.

'Not long, sir. She has gone through trouble. She believes very strongly
in the will:--If I will this, if I will that, and it is the right will,
not wickedness, it is done--as good as done; and force is quite
superfluous. In her sermons, she exhorts to prayer before action.'

'Preaches?'

'She moves a large assembly, sir.'

'It would seem, that England is becoming Americanized!' exclaimed the
Conservative in Mr. Barmby. Almost he groaned; and his gaze was fish-like
in vacancy, on hearing the little man speak of the present intrepid
forwardness of the sex to be publicly doing. It is for men the most
indigestible fact of our century: one that--by contrast throws an
overearthly holiness on our decorous dutiful mothers, who contentedly
worked below the surface while men unremittingly attended to their
interests above.

Skepsey drew forth a paper-covered shilling-book: a translation from the
French, under a yelling title of savage hate of Old England and cannibal
glee at her doom. Mr. Barmby dropped his eyelashes on it, without
comment; nor did he reply to Skepsey's forlorn remark: 'We let them think
they could do it!'

Behold the downs. Breakfast is behind them. Miss Radnor likewise: if the
poor child has a name. We propose to supply the deficiency. She does not
declare war upon tobacco. She has a cultured and a beautiful voice. We
abstain from enlargeing on the charms of her person. She has resources,
which representatives of a rival creed would plot to secure.

'Skepsey, you have your quarters at the house of Miss Radnor's
relatives?' said Mr. Barmby, as they emerged from tunnelled chalk.

'Mention, that I think of calling in the course of the day.'

A biscuit had been their breakfast without a name.

They parted at the station, roused by the smell of salt to bestow a more
legitimate title on the day's restorative beginning. Down the hill, along
by the shops, and Skepsey, in sight of Miss Nesta's terrace, considered
it still an early hour for a visitor; so, to have the sea about him, he
paid pier-money, and hurried against the briny wings of a South-wester;
green waves, curls of foam, flecks of silver, under low-flying grey-dark
cloud-curtains shaken to a rift, where at one shot the sun had a line of
Nereids nodding, laughing, sparkling to him. Skepsey enjoyed it, at the
back of thoughts military and naval. Visible sea, this girdle of Britain,
inspired him to exultations in reverence. He wished Mr. Durance could
behold it now and have such a breastful. He was wishing he knew a song of
Britain and sea, rather fancying Mr. Durance to be in some way a bar to
patriotic poetical recollection, when he saw his Captain Dartrey mounting
steps out of an iron anatomy of the pier, and looking like a razor off a
strap.

'Why, sir!' cried Skepsey.

'Just a plunge and a dozen strokes,' Dartrey said; 'and you'll come to my
hotel and give me ten minutes of the "recreation"; and if you don't come
willingly, I shall insult your country.'

'Ah! I wish Mr. Durance were here,' Skepsey rejoined.

'It would upset his bumboat of epigrams. He rises at ten o'clock to a
queasy breakfast by candlelight, and proceeds to composition. His picture
of the country is a portrait of himself by the artist.'

'But, sir, Captain Dartrey, you don't think as Mr. Durance does of
England!'

'There are lots to flatter her, Skepsey! A drilling can't do her harm.
You're down to see Miss Nesta. Ladies don't receive quite so early. And
have you breakfasted? Come on with me quick.' Dartrey led him on, saying:
'You have an eye at my stick. It was a legacy to me, by word of mouth,
from a seaman of a ship I sailed in, who thought I had done him a
service; and he died after all. He fell overboard drunk. He perished of
the villain stuff. One of his messmates handed me the stick in Cape Town,
sworn to deliver it. A good knot to grasp; and it 's flexible and strong;
stick or rattan, whichever you please; it gives point or caresses the
shoulder; there's no break in it, whack as you may. They call it a
Demerara supple-jack. I'll leave it to you.'

Skepsey declared his intention to be the first to depart. He tried the
temper of the stick, bent it a bit, and admired the prompt straightening.

'It would give a good blow, sir.'

'Does its business without braining.'

Perhaps for the reason, that it was not a handsome instrument for display
on fashionable promenades, Dartrey chose it among his collection by
preference; as ugly dogs of a known fidelity are chosen for companions.
The Demerara supple-jack surpasses bull-dogs in its fashion of assisting
the master; for when once at it, the clownish-looking thing reflects upon
him creditably, by developing a refined courtliness of style, while in no
way showing a diminution of jolly ardour for the fray. It will deal you
the stroke of a bludgeon with the playfulness of a cane. It bears
resemblance to those accomplished natural actors, who conversationally
present a dramatic situation in two or three spontaneous flourishes, and
are themselves again, men of the world, the next minute.

Skepsey handed it back. He spoke of a new French rifle. He mentioned, in
the form of query for no answer, the translation of the barking little
volume he had shown to Mr. Barmby: he slapped at his breast-pocket, where
it was. Not a ship was on the sea-line; and he seemed to deplore that
vacancy.

'But it tells both ways,' Dartrey said. 'We don't want to be hectoring in
the Channel. All we want, is to be sure of our power, so as not to go
hunting and fawning for alliances. Up along that terrace Miss Nesta
lives. Brighton would be a choice place for a landing.'

Skepsey temporized, to get his national defences, by pleading the
country's love of peace.

'Then you give-up your portion of the gains of war--an awful
disgorgement,' said Dartrey. 'If you are really for peace, you toss all
your spare bones to the war-dogs. Otherwise, Quakerly preaching is taken
for hypocrisy.'

'I 'm afraid we are illogical, sir,' said Skepsey, adopting one of the
charges of Mr. Durance, to elude the abominable word.

'In you run, my friend.' Dartrey sped him up the steps of the hotel.

A little note lay on his breakfast-table. His invalid uncle's valet gave
the morning's report of the night.

The note was from Mrs. Blathenoy: she begged Captain Dartrey, in double
underlinings of her brief words, to mount the stairs. He debated, and he
went.

She was excited, and showed a bosom compressed to explode: she had been
weeping. 'My husband is off. He bids me follow him. What would you have
me do?'

'Go.'

'You don't care what may happen to your friends, the Radnors?'

'Not at the cost of your separation from your husband.'

'You have seen him!'

'Be serious.'

'Oh, you cold creature! You know--you see: I can't conceal. And you tell
me to go. "Go!" Gracious heavens! I've no claim on you; I haven't been
able to do much; I would have--never mind! believe me or not. And now I'm
to go: on the spot, I suppose. You've seen the man I 'm to go to, too. I
would bear it, if it were not away from . . . out of sight of I'm a fool
of a woman, I know. There's frankness for you! and I could declare you're
saying "impudence" in your heart--or what you have for one. Have you
one?'

'My dear soul, it 's a flint. So just think of your duty.' Dartrey played
the horrid part of executioner with some skill.

Her bosom sprang to descend into abysses.

'And never a greater fool than when I sent for you to see such a face as
I'm showing!' she cried, with lips that twitched and fingers that plucked
at her belt. 'But you might feel my hatred of being tied to--dragged
about over the Continent by that . . . perhaps you think a woman is not
sensible of vulgarity in her husband! I 'm bothering you? I don't say I
have the slightest claim. You never made love to me, never! Never so much
as pressed my hand or looked. Others have--as much as I let them. And
before I saw you, I had not an idea of another man but that man. So you
advise me to go?'

'There's no other course.'

'No other course. I don't see one. What have I been dreaming of! Usually
a woman feeling . . .' she struck at her breast, 'has had a soft word in
her ear. "Go!" I don't blame you, Captain Dartrey. At least, you 're not
the man to punish a woman for stripping herself, as I 've done. I call
myself a fool--I'm a lunatic. Trust me with your hand.'

'There you are.'

She grasped the hand, and shut her eyes to make a long age of the holding
on to him. 'Oh, you dear dear fellow!--don't think me unwomanly; I must
tell you now: I am naked and can't disguise. I see you are ice--feel: and
if you were different, I might be. You won't be hurt by hearing you've
made yourself dear to me--without meaning to, I know! It began that day
at Lakelands; I fell in love with you the very first minute I set eyes on
you! There's a confession for a woman to make! and a married woman! I'm
married, and I no more feel allegiance, as they call it, than if there
never had been a ceremony and no Jacob Blathenoy was in existence. And
why I should go to him! But you shan't be troubled. I did not begin to
live, as a woman, before I met you. I can speak all this to you
because--we women can't be deceived in that--you are one of the men who
can be counted on for a friend.'

'I hope so,' Dartrey said, and his mouth hardened as nature's electricity
shot sparks into him from the touch and rocked him.

'No, not yet: I will soon let it drop,' said she, and she was just then
thrillingly pretty; she caressed the hand, placing it at her throat and
moving her chin on it, as women fondle birds. 'I am positively to go,
then?'

'Positively, you are to go; and it's my command.'

'Not in love with any one at all?'

'Not with a soul.'

'Not with a woman?'

'With no woman.'

'Nor maid?'

'No! and no to everything. And an end to the catechism!'

'It is really a flint that beats here?' she said, and with a shyness in
adventurousness, she struck the point of her forefinger on the rib.
'Fancy me in love with a flint! And running to be dutiful to a Jacob
Blathenoy, at my flint's command. I'm half in love with doing what I
hate, because this cold thing here bids me do it. I believe I married for
money, and now it looks as if I were to have my bargain with poverty to
bless it.'

'There I may help,' said Dartrey, relieved at sight of a loophole, to
spring to some initiative out of the paralysis cast on him by a pretty
little woman's rending of her veil. A man of honour alone with a woman
who has tossed concealment to the winds, is a riddled target indeed: he
is tempted to the peril of cajoleing, that he may escape from the torment
and the ridicule; he is tempted to sigh for the gallant spirit of his
naughty adolescence. 'Come to me--will you?--apply to me, if there's ever
any need. I happen to have money. And forgive me for naming it.'

She groaned: 'Don't! I'm, sure, and I thought it from the first, you're
one of the good men, and the woman who meets you is lucky, and wretched,
and so she ought to be! Only to you should I! . . . do believe that! I
won't speak of what excuses I've got. You've seen.'

'Don't think of them: there'll be danger in it.

'Shall you think of me in danger?'

'Silly, silly! Don't you see you have to do with a flint! I've gone
through fire. And if I were in love with you, I should start you off to
your husband this blessed day.'

'And you're not the slightest wee wee bit in love with me!'

'Perfectly true; but I like you; and if we're to be hand in hand, in the
time to come, you must walk firm at present.'

'I'm to go to-day?'

'You are.'

'Without again.'

The riddled target kicked. Dartrey contrasted Jacob Blathenoy with the
fair wife, and commiseratingly exonerated her; he lashed at himself for
continuing to be in this absurdest of postures, and not absolutely secure
for all that. His head shook. 'Friends, you'll find best.'

'Well!' she sighed, 'I feel I'm doomed to go famished through life.
There's never to be such a thing as, love, for me! I can't tell you no
woman could: though you'll say I've told enough. I shall burn with shame
when I think of it. I could go on my knees to have your arms round me
once. I could kill myself for saying it!--I should feel that I had one
moment of real life.--I know I ought to admire you. They say a woman
hates if she's refused. I can't: I wish I were able to. I could have
helped the Radnors better by staying here and threatening never to go to
him unless he swore not to do them injury. He's revengeful. Just as you
like. You say "Go," and I go. There. I may kiss your hand?'

'Give me yours.'

Dartrey kissed the hand. She kissed the mark of his lips. He got himself
away, by promising to see her to the train for Paris. Outside her door,
he was met by the reflection, coming as a thing external, that he might
veraciously and successfully have pleaded a passionate hunger for
breakfast: nay, that he would have done so, if he had been downright in
earnest. For she had the prettiness to cast a spell; a certain curve at
the lips, a fluttering droop of the eyelids, a corner of the eye, that
led long distances away to forests and nests. This little woman had the
rosy-peeping June bud's plumpness. What of the man who refused to kiss
her once? Cold antecedent immersion had to be thanked; and stringent
vacuity; perhaps a spotting ogre-image of her possessor. Some sense of
right-doing also, we hope. Dartrey angrily attributed his good conduct to
the lowest motives. He went so far as to accuse himself of having
forborne to speak of breakfast, from a sort of fascinated respect for the
pitch of a situation that he despised and detested. Then again, when
beginning to eat, his good conduct drew on him a chorus of the jeers of
all the martial comrades he had known. But he owned he would have had
less excuse than they, had he taken advantage of a woman's inability, at
a weak moment, to protect herself: or rather, if he had not behaved in a
manner to protect her from herself. He thought of his buried wife, and
the noble in the base of that poor soul; needing constantly a present
helper, for the nobler to conquer. Be true man with a woman, she must be
viler than the devil has yet made one, if she does not follow a strong
right lead:--but be patient, of course. And the word patience here means
more than most men contain. Certainly a man like Jacob Blathenoy was a
mouthful for any woman: and he had bought his wife, he deserved no pity.
Not? Probably not. That view, however, is unwholesome and opens on
slides. Pity of his wife, too, gets to be fervidly active with her
portrait, fetches her breath about us. As for condemnation of the poor
little woman, her case was not unexampled, though the sudden flare of it
startled rather. Mrs. Victor could read men and women closely. Yes, and
Victor, when he schemed--but Dartrey declined to be throwing blame right
or left. More than by his breakfast, and in a preferable direction, he
was refreshed by Skepsey's narrative of the deeds of Matilda Pridden.

'The right sort of girl for you to know, Skepsey,' he said. 'The best in
life is a good woman.'

Skepsey exhibited his book of the Gallic howl.

'They have their fits now and then, and they're soon over and forgotten,'
Dartrey said. 'The worst of it is, that we remember.'

After the morning's visit to his uncle, he peered at half a dozen sticks
in the corner of the room, grasped their handles, and selected the
Demerara supple-jack, for no particular reason; the curved knot was easy
to the grasp. It was in his mind, that this person signing herself Judith
Marsett, might have something to say, which intimately concerned Nesta.
He fell to brooding on it, until he wondered why he had not been made a
trifle anxious by the reading of the note overnight. Skepsey was left at
Nesta's house.

Dartrey found himself expected by the servant waiting on Mrs. Marsett.




CHAPTER XXXII

SHOWS HOW TEMPER MAY KINDLE TEMPER AND AN INDIGNANT WOMAN GET HER WEAPON

Judith Marsett stood in her room to receive Nesta's hero. She was
flushed, and had thinned her lips for utterance of a desperate thing,
after the first severe formalities.

Her aim was to preserve an impressive decorum. She was at the same time
burning to speak out furious wrath, in words of savage rawness, if they
should come, as a manner of slapping the world's cheek for the state to
which it reduces its women; whom one of the superior creatures can
insult, and laugh.

Men complaining of the 'peace which is near their extinction,' have but
to shuffle with the sex; they will experience as remarkable a change as
if they had passed off land on to sea.

Dartrey had some flitting notion of the untamed original elements women
can bring about us, in his short observant bow to Mrs. Marsett, following
so closely upon the scene with Mrs. Blathenoy.

But this handsome woman's look of the dull red line of a sombre fire,
that needed only stir of a breath to shoot the blaze, did not at all
alarm him. He felt refreshingly strung by it.

She was discerned at a glance to be an aristocratic member of regions
where the senses perpetually simmer when they are not boiling. The talk
at the Club recurred to him. How could Nesta have come to know the woman?
His questioning of the chapter of marvellous accidents, touched Nesta
simply, as a young girl to be protected, without abhorrently involving
the woman. He had his ideas of the Spirit of Woman stating her case to
the One Judge, for lack of an earthly just one: a story different from
that which is proclaimed pestilential by the body of censors under
conservatory glass; where flesh is delicately nurtured, highly prized;
spirit not so much so; and where the pretty tricking of the flesh is
taken for a spiritual ascendancy.

In spite of her turbulent breast's burden to deliver, Mrs. Marsett's
feminine acuteness was alive upon Dartrey, confirming here and there
Nesta's praises of him. She liked his build and easy carriage of a
muscular frame: her Ned was a heavy man. More than Dartrey's figure, as
she would have said, though the estimate came second, she liked his
manner with her. Not a doubt was there, that he read her position. She
could impose upon some: not upon masculine eyes like these. They did not
scrutinize, nor ruffle a smooth surface with a snap at petty impressions;
and they were not cynically intimate or dominating or tentatively
amorous: clear good fellowship was in them. And it was a blessedness
(whatever might be her feeling later, when she came to thank him at
heart) to be in the presence of a man whose appearance breathed of
offering her common ground, whereon to meet and speak together,
unburdened by the hunting world, and by the stoneing world. Such common
ground seems a kind of celestial to the better order of those excluded
from it.

Dartrey relieved her midway in a rigid practice of the formalities: 'I
think I may guess that you have something to tell me relating to Miss
Radnor?'

'It is.' Mrs. Marsett gathered up for an immediate plunge, and deferred
it. 'I met her--we went out with the riding-master. She took to me. I
like her--I could say' (the woman's voice dropped dead low, in a
tremble), 'I love her. She is young: I could kneel to her. Do you know a
Major Worrell?'

'Worrell? no.'

'He is a-calls himself a friend of my--of Captain Marsett's. He met us
out one day.'

'He permitted himself to speak to Miss Radnor?'

She rejoiced in Dartrey's look. 'Not then. First let me tell you. I can
hardly tell you. But Miss Radnor tells me you are not like other men. You
have made your conclusions already. Are you asking what right I had to be
knowing her? It is her goodness. Accident began it; I did not deceive
her; as soon as ever I could I--I have Captain Marsett's promise to me:
at present he's situated, he--but I opened my heart to her: as much as a
woman can. It came! Did I do very wrong?'

'I'm not here to decide: continue, pray.'

Mrs. Marsett aimed at formal speech, and was driving upon her natural in
anger. 'I swear I did it for the best. She is an innocent girl . . .
young lady: only she has a head; she soon reads things. I saw the kind of
cloud in her. I spoke. I felt bound to: she said she would not forsake
me.--I was bound to! And it was enough to break my heart, to think of her
despising me. No, she forgave, pitied;--she was kind. Those are the
angels who cause us to think of changeing. I don't care for sermons, but
when I meet charity: I won't bore you!'

'You don't.'

'My . . . Captain Marsett can't bear--he calls it Psalmody. He thinks
things ought always to be as they are, with women and men; and women
preachers he does detest. She is not one to preach. You are waiting to
hear what I have to tell. That man Major Worrell has tried to rob me of
everything I ever had to set a value on:--love, I 'd say;--he laughs at a
woman like me loving.'

Dartrey nodded, to signify a known sort of fellow.

'She came here.' Mrs. Marsett's tears had risen. 'I ought not to have let
her come. I invited her--for once: I am lonely. None of my sex--none I
could respect! I meant it for only once. She promised to sing to me. And,
Oh! how she sings! You have heard her. My whole heart came out. I declare
I believe girls exist who can hear our way of life--and I'm not so bad
except compared with that angel, who heard me, and was and is, I could
take oath, no worse for it. Some girls can; she is one. I am all for
bringing them up in complete innocence. If I was a great lady, my
daughters should never know anything of the world until they were
married. But Miss Radnor is a young lady who cannot be hurt. She is above
us. Oh! what a treasure for a man!--and my God! for any man born of woman
to insult a saint, as she is!--He is a beast!'

'Major Worrell met her here?'

'Blame me as much as you like: I do myself. Half my rage with him is at
myself for putting her in the way of such a beast to annoy. Each time she
came, I said it was to be the last. I let her see what a mercy from
heaven she was to me. She would come. It has not been many times. She
wishes me either to . . . Captain Marsett has promised. And nothing seems
hard--to me when my own God's angel is by. She is! I'm not such a bad
woman, but I never before I knew her knew the meaning of the word virtue.
There is the young lady that man worried with his insulting remarks!
though he must have known she was a lady:--because he found her in my
rooms.'

'You were present when, as you say, he insulted her?'

'I was. Here it commenced; and he would see her downstairs.'

'You heard?'

'Of course, I never left her.'

'Give me a notion . . .'

'To get her to make an appointment: to let him conduct her home.'

'She was alone?'

'Her maid was below.'

'And this happened . . .?'

'Yesterday, after dark. My Ned--Captain Marsett encourages him to be
familiar. I should be the lowest of women if I feared the threats of such
a reptile of a man. I could tell you more. I can't always refuse his
visits, though if Ned knew the cur he is! Captain Marsett is easy-going.'

'I should like to know where he lives.'

She went straight to the mantelpiece, and faced about with a card,
handing it, quite aware that it was a charge of powder.

Desperate things to be done excused the desperate said; and especially
they seemed a cover to the bald and often spotty language leaping out of
her, against her better taste, when her temper was up.

'Somewhere not very distant,' said Dartrey perusing. 'Is he in the town
to-day, do you know?'

'I am not sure; he may be. Her name . . .'

'Have no fear. Ladies' names are safe.'

'I am anxious that she may not be insulted again.'

'Did she show herself conscious of it?'

'She stopped speaking: she looked at the door. She may come again--or
never! through that man!'

'You receive him, at his pleasure?'

'Captain Marsett wishes me to. He is on his way home. He calls Major
Worrell my pet spite. All I want is; not to hear of the man. I swear he
came yesterday on the chance of seeing--for he forced his way up past my
servant; he must have seen Miss Radnor's maid below.'

'You don't mean, that he insulted her hearing?'

'Oh! Captain Fenellan, you know the style.'

'Well, I thank you,' Dartrey said. 'The young lady is the daughter of my
dearest friends. She's one of the precious--you're quite right. Keep the
tears back.'

'I will.' She heaved open-mouthed to get physical control of the tide.
'When you say that of her!--how can I help it? It's I fear, because I
fear . . . and I've no right to expect ever . . . but if I'm never again
to look on that dear face, tell her I shall--I shall pray for her in my
grave. Tell her she has done all a woman can, an angel can, to save my
soul. I speak truth: my very soul! I could never go to the utter bad
after knowing her. I don't--you know the world--I'm a poor helpless
woman!--don't swear to give up my Ned if he does break the word he
promised once; I can't see how I could. I haven't her courage. I
haven't--what it is! You know her: it's in her eyes and her voice. If I
had her beside me, then I could starve or go to execution--I could, I am
certain. Here I am, going to do what you men hate. Let me sit.'

'Here's a chair,' said Dartrey. 'I've no time to spare; good day, for the
present. You will permit me to call.'

'Oh! come'; she cried, out of her sobs, for excuse. They were genuine, or
she would better have been able to second her efforts to catch a distinct
vision of his retreating figure.

She beheld him, when he was in the street, turn for the district where
Major Worrell had his lodgeings. That set her mind moving, and her tears
fell no longer.

Major Worrell was not at home. Dartrey was informed that he might be at
his Club.

At the Club he heard of the major as having gone to London and being
expected down in the afternoon. Colonel Sudley named the train: an early
train; the major was engaged to dine at the Club. Dartrey had information
supplied to him concerning Major Worrell and Captain Marsett, also Mrs.
Marsett. She had a history. Worthy citizens read the description of
history with interest when the halo of Royalty is round it. They may, if
their reading extends, perceive, that it has been the main turbid stream
in old Mammon's train since he threw his bait for flesh. They might ask,
too, whether it is likely to cease to flow while he remains potent. The
lady's history was brief, and bore recital in a Club; came off quite
honourably there. Regarding Major Worrell, the tale of him showed him to
have a pass among men. He managed cleverly to get his pleasures out of a
small income and a 'fund of anecdote.' His reputation indicated an
anecdotist of the table, prevailing in the primitive societies, where the
art of conversing does not come by nature, and is exercised in
monosyllabic undertones or grunts until the narrator's well-masticated
popular anecdote loosens a digestive laughter, and some talk ensues. He
was Marsett's friend, and he boasted of not letting Ned Marsett make a
fool of himself.

Dartrey was not long in shaping the man's character: Worrell belonged to
the male birds of upper air, who mangle what female prey they are
forbidden to devour. And he had Miss Radnor's name: he had spoken her
name at the Club overnight. He had roused a sensation, because of a man
being present, Percy Southweare, who was related to a man as good as
engaged to marry her. The major never fell into a quarrel with sons of
nobles, if he could help it, or there might have been a pretty one.

So Colonel Sudley said.

Dartrey spoke musing: 'I don't know how he may class me; I have an
account to square with him.'

'It won't do in these days, my good friend. Come and cool yourself; and
we'll lunch here. I shan't leave you.'

'By all means. We'll lunch, and walk up to the station, and you will
point him out to me.'

Dartrey stated Major Worrell's offence. The colonel was not astonished;
but evidently he thought less of Worrell's behaviour to Miss Radnor in
Mrs. Marsett's presence than of the mention of her name at the Club: and
that, he seemed to think, had a shade of excuse against the charge of
monstrous. He blamed the young lady who could go twice to visit a Mrs.
Marsett; partly exposed a suspicion of her. Dartrey let him talk. They
strolled along the parade, and were near the pier.

Suddenly saying: 'There, beside our friend in clerical garb: here she
comes; judge if that is the girl for the foulest of curs to worry, no
matter where she's found.' Dartrey directed the colonel's attention to
Nesta and Mr. Barmby turning off the pier and advancing.

He saluted. She bowed. There was no contraction of her eyelids; and her
face was white. The mortal life appeared to be deadened in her cold wide
look; as when the storm-wind banks a leaden remoteness, leaving blown
space of sky.

The colonel said: 'No, that's not the girl a gentleman would offend.'

'What man!' cried Dartrey. 'If we had a Society for the trial of your
gentleman!--but he has only to call himself gentleman to get grant of
licence: and your Society protects him. It won't punish, and it won't let
you. But you saw her: ask yourself--what man could offend that girl!'

'Still, my friend, she ought to keep clear of the Marsetts.'

'When I meet him, I shall treat him as one out of the law.'

'You lead on to an ultimate argument with the hangman.'

We 'll dare it, to waken the old country. Old England will count none but
Worrells in time. As for discreet, if you like!--the young lady might
have been more discreet. She's a girl with a big heart. If we were all
everlastingly discreet!'

Dartrey may have meant, that the consequence of a prolonged conformity
would be the generation of stenches to shock to purgeing tempests the
tolerant heavens over such smooth stagnancy. He had his ideas about
movement; about the good of women, and the health of his England. The
feeling of the hopelessness of pleading Nesta's conduct, for the perfect
justification of it to son or daughter of our impressing conventional
world--even to a friend, that friend a true man, a really chivalrous
man--drove him back in a silence upon his natural brotherhood with souls
that dare do. It was a wonder, to think of his finding this kinship in a
woman. In a girl?--and the world holding that virgin spirit to be unclean
or shadowed because its rays were shed on foul places? He clasped the
girl. Her smitten clear face, the face of the second sigh after torture,
bent him in devotion to her image.

The clasping and the worshipping were independent of personal ardours:
quaintly mixed with semi-paternal recollections of the little 'blue
butterfly' of the days at Craye. Farm and Creckholt; and he had heard of
Dudley Sowerby's pretensions to; her hand. Nesta's youthfulness cast
double age on him from the child's past. He pictured the child; pictured
the girl, with her look of solitariness of sight; as in the desolate wide
world, where her noble compassion for a woman had unexpectedly,
painfully, almost by transubstantiation, rack-screwed her to woman's
mind. And above sorrowful, holy were those eyes.

They held sway over Dartrey, and lost it some steps on; his demon temper
urgeing him to strike at Major Worrell, as the cause of her dismayed
expression. He was not the happier for dropping to his nature; but we
proceed more easily, all of us, when the strain which lifts us a foot or
two off our native level is relaxed.




CHAPTER XXXIII

A PAIR OF WOOERS

That ashen look of the rise out of death from one of our mortal wounds,
was caused by deeper convulsions in Nesta's bosom than Dartrey could
imagine.

She had gone for the walk with Mr. Barmby, reading the omen of his tones
in the request. Dorothea and Virginia would have her go. The clerical
gentleman, a friend of the Rev. Abram Posterley; and one who deplored
poor Mr. Posterley's infatuation; and one besides who belonged to Nesta's
musical choir in London: seemed a safe companion for the child. The grand
organ of Mr. Barmby's voice, too, assured them of a devout seriousness in
him, that arrested any scrupulous little questions. They could not
conceive his uttering the nonsensical empty stuff, compliments to their
beauty and what not, which girls hear sometimes from inconsiderate
gentlemen, to the having of their heads turned. Moreover, Nesta had
rashly promised her father's faithful servant Skepsey to walk, out with
him in the afternoon; and the ladies hoped she would find the morning's
walk to have been enough; good little man though Skepsey was, they were
sure. But there is the incongruous for young women of station on a
promenade.

Mr. Barmby headed to the pier. After pacing up and down between the briny
gulls and a polka-band, he made his way forethoughtfully to the
glass-sheltered seats fronting East: where, as his enthusiasm for the
solemnity of the occasion excited him to say, 'We have a view of the
terraces and the cliffs'; and where not more than two enwrapped invalid
figures were ensconsed. Then it was, that Nesta recalled her anticipation
of his possible design; forgotten by her during their talk of her dear
people: Priscilla Graves and Mr. Pempton, and the Yatts, and Simeon
Fenellan, Peridon and Catkin, and Skepsey likewise; and the very latest
news of her mother. She wished she could have run before him, to spare
him. He would not notice a sign. Girls must wait and hear.

It was an oratorio. She watched the long wave roll on to the sinking into
its fellow; and onward again for the swell and the weariful lapse; and up
at last bursting to the sheet of white. The far-heard roar and the near
commingled, giving Mr. Barmby a semblance to the powers of ocean.

At the first direct note, the burden of which necessitated a pause, she
petitioned him to be her friend, to think of himself as her friend.

But a vessel laden with merchandize, that has crossed wild seas for this
particular port, is hardly to be debarred from discharging its goods on
the quay by simple intimations of their not being wanted. We are
precipitated both by the aim and the tedium of the lengthened voyage to
insist that they be seen. We believe perforce in their temptingness; and
should allurement fail, we fall back to the belief in our eloquence. An
eloquence to expose the qualities they possess, is the testification in
the promise of their excellence. She is to be induced by feeling to see
it. We are asking a young lady for the precious gift of her hand. We
respect her; and because of our continued respect, despite an
obstruction, we have come to think we have a claim upon her gratitude;
could she but be led to understand how different we are from some other
man!--from one hitherto favoured among them, unworthy of this prize,
however personally exalted and meritorious.

The wave of wide extension rolled and sank and rose, heaving lifeless
variations of the sickly streaks on its dull green back.

Dudley Sowerby's defection was hinted at and accounted for, by the
worldly test of worldly considerations.

What were they?--Nesta glanced.

An indistinct comparison was modestly presented, of one unmoved by
worldly considerations.

But what were they? She was wakened by a lamp, and her darkness was all
inflammable to it.

'Oh! Mr. Barmby, you have done me the honour to speak before; you know my
answer,' she said.

'You were then subject to an influence. A false, I may say wicked,
sentiment upholding celibacy.'

'My poor Louise? She never thought of influencing me. She has her views,
I mine. Our friendship does not depend on a "treaty of reciprocity." We
are one at heart, each free to judge and act, as it should be in
friendship. I heard from her this morning. Her brother will be able to
resume his military duties next month. Then she will return to me.'

'We propose!' rejoined Mr. Barmby.

Beholding the involuntary mercurial rogue-dimple he had started from a
twitch at the corner, of her lips, the good gentleman pursued: 'Can we
dare write our designs for the month to come? Ah!--I will say--Nesta!
give me the hope I beg to have. See the seriousness. You are at liberty.
That other has withdrawn his pretensions. We will not blame him. He is in
expectation of exalted rank. Where there is any shadow . . . !' Mr.
Barmby paused on his outroll of the word; but immediately, not intending
to weigh down his gentle hearer with the significance in it, resumed at a
yet more sonorous depth: 'He is under the obligation to his family; an
old, a venerable family. In the full blaze of public opinion! His conduct
can be palliated by us, too. There is a right and wrong in minor things,
independent of the higher rectitude. We pardon, we can partly support,
the worldly view.'

'There is a shadow?' said Nesta; and her voice was lurefully encouraging.

He was on the footing where men are precipitated by what is within them
to blunder. 'On you--no. On you personally, not at all. No. It could not
be deemed so. Not by those knowing, esteeming--not by him who loves you,
and would, with his name, would, with his whole strength, envelop, shield
. . . certainly, certainly not.'

'It is on my parents?' she said.

'But to me nothing, nothing, quite nought! To confound the innocent with
the guilty! . . . and excuses may exist. We know but how little we know!'

'It is on both my parents?' she said; with a simplicity that induced him
to reply: 'Before the world. But not, I repeat . . .'

The band-instruments behind the sheltering glass flourished on their
termination of a waltz.

She had not heeded their playing. Now she said:

'The music is over; we must not be late at lunch'; and she stood up and
moved.

He sprang to his legs and obediently stepped out:

'I shall have your answer to-day, this evening? Nesta!'

'Mr. Barmby, it will be the same. You will be kind to me in not asking me
again.'

He spoke further. She was dumb.

Had he done ill or well for himself and for her when he named the shadow
on her parents? He dwelt more on her than on himself: he would not have
wounded her to win the blest affirmative. Could she have been entirely
ignorant?--and after Dudley Sowerby's defection? For such it was: the
Rev. Stuart Rem had declared the union between the almost designated head
of the Cantor family and a young person of no name, of worse than no
birth, impossible: 'absolutely and totally impossible,' he, had said, in
his impressive fashion, speaking from his knowledge of the family, and an
acquaintance with Dudley. She must necessarily have learnt why Dudley
Sowerby withdrew. No parents of an attractive daughter should allow her
to remain unaware of her actual position in the world. It is criminal, a
reduplication of the criminality! Yet she had not spoken as one
astonished. She was mysterious. Women are so: young women most of all. It
is undecided still whether they do of themselves conceive principles, or
should submit to an imposition of the same upon them in terrorem.
Mysterious truly, but most attractive! As Lady Bountiful of a district,
she would have in her maturity the majestic stature to suit a
dispensation of earthly good things. And, strangely, here she was, at
this moment, rivalling to excelling all others of her sex (he verified it
in the crowd of female faces passing), when they, if they but knew the
facts, would visit her very appearance beside them on a common footing as
an intrusion and a scandal. To us who know, such matters are indeed
wonderful!

Moved by reflective compassion, Mr. Barmby resumed the wooer's note, some
few steps after he had responded to the salutation of Dartrey Fenellan
and Colonel Sudley. She did not speak. She turned her forehead to him;
and the absence of the world from her eyes chilled his tongue.

He declined the pleasure of the lunch with the Duvidney ladies. He
desired to be alone, to question himself fasting, to sound the deed he
had done; for he had struck on a suspicion of selfishness in it: and
though Love must needs be an egoism, Love is no warrant for the doing of
a hurt to the creature beloved. Thoughts upon Skepsey and the tale of his
Matilda Pridden's labours in poor neighbourhoods, to which he had been
inattentive during the journey down to the sea, invaded him; they were
persistent. He was a worthy man, having within him the spiritual impulse
curiously ready to take the place where a material disappointment left
vacancy. The vulgar sort embrace the devil at that stage. Before the day
had sunk, Mr. Barmby's lowest wish was, to be a light, as the instrument
of his Church in her ministrations amid the haunts of sin and slime, to
such plain souls as Daniel Skepsey and Matilda Pridden. And he could
still be that, if Nesta, in the chapters of the future, changed her mind.
She might; for her good she would; he reserved the hope. His light was
one to burn beneath an extinguisher.

At the luncheon table of the Duvidney ladies, it was a pain to Dorothea
and Virginia to witness how poor the appetite their Nesta brought in from
the briny blowy walk. They prophesied against her chances of a good sleep
at night, if she did not eat heartily. Virginia timidly remarked on her
paleness. Both of them put their simple arts in motion to let her know,
that she was dear to them: so dear as to make them dread the hour of
parting. They named their dread of it. They had consulted in private and
owned to one another, that they did really love the child, and dared not
look forward to what they would do without her. The dear child's paleness
and want of appetite (they remembered they were observing a weak innocent
girl) suggested to them mutually the idea of a young female heart
sickening, for the old unhappy maiden reason. But, if only she might
return with them to the Wells, the Rev. Stuart Rem would assure her to
convince her of her not being quite, quite forsaken. He, or some one
having sanction from Victor, might ultimately (the ladies waiting
anxiously in the next room, to fold her on the warmth of their bosoms
when she had heard) impart to her the knowledge of circumstances, which
would, under their further tuition concerning the particular sentiments
of great families and the strict duties of the scions of the race, help
to account for and excuse the Hon. Dudley Sowerby's behaviour.

They went up to the drawing-room, talking of Skepsey and his tale of Miss
Pridden, for Nesta's amusement. Any talk of her Skepsey usually quickened
her lips to reminiscent smiles and speech. Now she held on to gazeing;
and sadly, it seemed; as if some object were not present.

For a vague encouragement, Dorothea said: 'One week, and we are back home
at Moorsedge!'--not so far from Cronidge, was implied, for the
administering of some foolish temporary comfort. And it was as when a
fish on land springs its hollow sides in alien air for the sustaining
element; the girl panted; she clasped Dorothea's hand and looked at
Virginia: 'My mother--I must see her!' she said. They were slightly
stupefied by the unwonted mention of her mother. They made no reply. They
never had done so when there was allusion to her mother. Their silence
now struck a gong at the girl's bosom.

Dorothea had it in mind to say, that if she thirsted for any special
comfort, the friends about her would offer consolation for confidence.

Before she could speak, Perrin the footman entered, bearing the card of
the Hon. Dudley Sowerby.

Mr. Dudley Sowerby begged for an immediate interview with Miss Radnor.

The ladies were somewhat agitated, but no longer perplexed as to their
duties. They had quitted Moorsedge to avoid the visit of his family. If
he followed, it signified that which they could not withstand:--The
'Tivoli falls!' as they named the fateful tremendous human passion, from
the reminiscences of an impressive day on their travels in youth; when
the leaping torrent had struck upon a tale of love they were reading.
They hurriedly entreated Nesta to command her nerves; peremptorily
requested her to stay where she was; showed her spontaneously, by way of
histrionic adjuration, the face to be worn by young ladies at greetings
on these occasions; kissed her and left her; Virginia whispering: 'He is
true!'

Dudley entered the drawing-room, charged with his happy burden of a love
that had passed through the furnace. She stood near a window, well in the
light; she hardly gave him welcome. His address to her was hurried,
rather uncertain, coherent enough between the drop and the catch of
articulate syllables. He found himself holding his hat. He placed it on
the table, and it rolled foolishly; but soon he was by her side, having
two free hands to claim her one.

'You are thinking, you have not heard from me! I have been much
occupied,' he said. 'My brother is ill, very ill. I have your pardon?'

'Indeed you have--if it has to be asked.'

'I have it?'

'Have I to grant it?'

'I own to remissness!

'I did not blame you.'

'Nesta . . . !'

Her coldness was unshaken.

He repeated the call of her name. 'I should have written--I ought to have
written!--I could not have expressed . . . You do forgive? So many
things!'

'You come from Cronidge to-day?'

'From my family--to you.'

She seemed resentful. His omissions as a correspondent were explicable in
a sentence. It had to be deferred.

Reviewing for a moment the enormous internal conflict undergone by him
during the period of the silence between them, he wondered at the
vastness of the love which had conquered objections, to him so poignant.

There was at least no seeing of the public blot on her birth when looking
on her face. Nor when thinking of the beauty of her character, in absence
or in presence, was there any. He had mastered distaste to such a degree,
that he forgot the assistance he had received from the heiress for
enabling him to appreciate the fair young girl. Money is the imperious
requirement of superior station; and more money and more: in these our
modern days of the merchant's wealth, and the miner's, and the gigantic
American and Australian millionaires, high rank is of necessity vowed, in
peril of utter eclipse; to the possession of money. Still it is, when
assured, a consideration far to the rear with a gentleman in whose bosom
love and the buzzing world have fought their battle out. He could believe
it thoroughly fought out, by the prolonged endurance of a contest lasting
many days and nights; in the midst of which, at one time, the task of
writing to tell her of his withdrawal from the engagement, was the cause
of his omission to write.

As to her character, he dwelt on the charm of her recovered features, to
repress an indicative dread of some intrepid force behind it, that might
be unfeminine, however gentle the external lineaments. Her features, her
present aristocratic deficiency of colour, greatly pleased him; her
character would submit to moulding. Of all young ladies in the world, she
should be the one to shrink from a mental independence and hold to the
guidance of the man ennobling her. Did she? Her eyes were reading him.
She had her father's limpid eyes, and when they concentrated rays, they
shot.

'Have you seen my parents, Mr. Sowerby?'

He answered smilingly, for reassuringly: 'I have seen them.'

'My mother?'

'From your mother first. But am I not to be Dudley?'

'She spoke to you? She told you?'

'And yesterday your father--a second time.'

Some remainder of suspicion in the dealing with members of this family,
urged Dudley to say: 'I understood from them, you were not? . . . that
you were quite . . .?'

'I have heard: I have guessed: it was recently--this morning, as it
happened. I wish to go to my mother to-day. I shall go to her to-morrow.'

'I might offer to conduct you-now!'

'You are kind; I have Skepsey.' She relieved the situation of its
cold-toned strain in adding: 'He is a host.'

'But I may come?--now! Have I not the right? You do not deny it me?'

'You are very generous.'

'I claim the right, then. Always. And subsequently, soon after, my mother
hopes to welcome you at Cronidge. She will be glad to hear of your naming
of a day. My father bids me . . . he and all our family.'

'They are very generous.'

'I may send them word this evening of a day you name?'

'No, Mr. Sowerby.

'Dudley?'

'I cannot say it. I have to see my parents.'

'Between us, surely?'

'My whole heart thanks you for your goodness to me. I am unable to say
more.'

He had again observed and he slightly crisped under the speculative look
she directed on him: a simple unstrained look, that had an air of reading
right in, and was worse to bear with than when the spark leaped upon some
thought from her eyes: though he had no imagination of anything he
concealed--or exposed, and he would have set it down to her temporary
incredulousness of his perfect generosity or power to overcome the
world's opinion of certain circumstances. That had been a struggle! The
peculiar look was not renewed. She spoke warmly of her gratitude. She
stated, that she must of necessity see her parents at once. She submitted
to his entreaty to conduct her to them on the morrow. It was in the
manner of one who yielded step by step, from inability to contend.

Her attitude continuing unchanged, he became sensible of a monotony in
the speech with which he assailed it, and he rose to leave, not
dissatisfied. She, at his urgent request, named her train for London in
the early morning. He said it was not too early. He would have desired to
be warmed; yet he liked her the better for the moral sentiment
controlling the physical. He had appointments with relatives or
connections in the town, and on that pretext he departed, hoping for the
speedy dawn of the morrow as soon as he had turned his back on the house.

No, not he the man to have pity of women underfoot! That was the thought,
unrevolved, unphrased, all but unconscious, in Nesta: and while her heart
was exalting him for his generosity. Under her present sense of the
chilling shadow, she felt the comfort there was in being grateful to him
for the golden beams which his generosity cast about her. But she had an
intelligence sharp to pierce, virgin though she was; and with the mark in
sight, however distant, she struck it, unerring as an Artemis for blood
of beasts: those shrewd young wits, on the lookout to find a champion,
athirst for help upon a desolate road, were hard as any judicial to
pronounce the sentence upon Dudley in that respect. She raised him high;
she placed herself low; she had a glimpse of the struggle he had gone
through; love of her had helped him, she believed. And she was melted;
and not the less did the girl's implacable intuition read with the
keenness of eye of a man of the world the blunt division in him, where
warm humanity stopped short at the wall of social concrete forming a part
of this rightly esteemed young citizen. She, too, was divided: she was at
his feet; and she rebuked herself for daring to judge--or rather, it was,
for having a reserve in her mind upon a man proving so generous with her.
She was pulled this way and that by sensibilities both inspiring to blind
gratitude and quickening her penetrative view. The certainty of an
unerring perception remained.

Dorothea and Virginia were seated in the room below, waiting for their
carriage, when the hall-door spoke of the Hon. Dudley's departure; soon
after, Nesta entered to them. She swam up to Dorothea's lap, and dropped
her head on it, kneeling.

The ladies feared she might be weeping. Dorothea patted her thick brown
twisted locks of hair. Unhappiness following such an interview, struck
them as an ill sign.

Virginia bent to the girl's ear, and murmured: 'All well?'

She replied: 'He has been very generous.'

Her speaking of the words renewed an oppression, that had darkened her on
the descent of stairs. For sensibilities sharp as Nesta's, are not to be
had without their penalties: and she who had gone nigh to summing in a
flash the nature of Dudley, sank suddenly under that affliction often
besetting the young adventurous mind, crushing to young women:--the
fascination exercised upon them by a positive adverse masculine attitude
and opinion. Young men know well what it is: and if young women have by
chance overcome their timidity, to the taking of any step out of the trim
pathway, they shrink, with a sense of forlornest isolation. It becomes a
subjugation; inciting to revolt, but a heavy weight to cast off. Soon it
assumed its material form for the contention between her and Dudley, in
the figure of Mrs. Marsett. The Nesta who had been instructed to know
herself to be under a shadow, heard, she almost justified Dudley's
reproaches to her, for having made the acquaintance of the unhappy woman,
for having visited her, for having been, though but for a minute, at the
mercy of a coarse gentleman's pursuit. The recollection was a smart
buffet.

Her lighted mind punished her thus through her conjuring of Dudley's
words, should news of her relations with Mrs. Marsett reach him:--and she
would have to tell him. Would he not say: 'I have borne with the things
concerning your family. All the greater reason why I must insist'--he
would assuredly say he insisted (her humour caught at the word, as being
the very word one could foresee and clearly see him uttering in a fit of
vehemence) on her immediate abandonment of 'that woman.'

And with Nesta's present enlightenment by dusky beams, upon her
parentage, she listened abjectly to Dudley, or the opinion of the
majority. Would he not say or think, that her clinging to Mrs. Marsett
put them under a kind of common stamp, or gave the world its option to
class them together?

These were among the ideas chasing in a head destined to be a
battle-field for the enrichment of a harvest-field of them, while the
girl's face was hidden on Dorothea's lap, and her breast heaved and
heaved.

She distressed them when she rose, by saying she must instantly see her
mother.

They saw the pain their hesitation inflicted, and Dorothea said: 'Yes,
dear; any day you like.'

'To-morrow--I must go to her to-morrow!'

A suggestion of her mother's coming down, was faintly spoken by one lady,
echoed in a quaver by the other.

Nesta shook her head. To quiet the kind souls, she entreated them to give
their promise that they would invite her again.

Imagining the Hon. Dudley to have cast her off, both ladies embraced her:
not entirely yielding-up their hearts to her, by reason of the pernicious
new ideas now in the world to sap our foundations of morality; which
warned them of their duty to uphold mentally his quite justifiable
behaviour, even when compassionating the sufferings of the guiltless
creature loved by them.




CHAPTER XXXIV

CONTAINS DEEDS UNRELATED AND EXPOSITIONS OF FEELINGS

All through the afternoon and evening Skepsey showed indifference to
meals by continuing absent: and he was the one with whom Nesta would have
felt at home; more at home than with her parents. He and the cool world
he moved in were a transparency of peace to her mind; even to his giving
of some portion of it, when she had the dear little man present to her in
a vivid image of a fish in a glass globe, wandering round and round, now
and then shooting across, just as her Skepsey did: he carried his head
semihorizontally at his arrowy pace; plain to read though he was, he
appeared, under that image created of him, animated by motives inducing
to speculation.

She thought of him till she could have reproached him for not returning
and helping her to get away from the fever of other thoughts:--this
anguish twisting about her parents, and the dreadful trammels of
gratitude to a man afflictingly generous, the frown of congregated
people.

The latter was the least of evils; she had her charges to bring against
them for injustice: uncited, unstirred charges, they were effective as a
muffled force to sustain her: and the young who are of healthy lively
blood and clean conscience have either emotion or imagination to fold
them defensively from an enemy world; whose power to drive them forth
into the wilderness they acknowledge. But in the wilderness their souls
are not beaten down by breath of mortals; they burn straight flame there
up to the parent Spirit.

She could not fancy herself flying thither;--where to be shorn and naked
and shivering is no hardship, for the solitude clothes, and the sole true
life in us resolves to that steady flame;--she was restrained by Dudley's
generosity, which held her fast to have the forgiveness for her
uncommitted sin dashed in her face. He surprised her; the unexpected
quality in him seemed suddenly to have snared her fast: and she did not
obtain release after seeing behind it;--seeing it, by the light of what
she demanded, personal, shallow, a lover's generosity. So her keen
intellect saw it; and her young blood (for the youthful are thus divided)
thrilled in thinking it must be love! The name of the sacred passion
lifted it out of the petty cabin of the individual into a quiring
cathedral universal, and subdued her. It subdued her with an unwelcome
touch of tenderness when she thought of it as involving tenderness for
her mother, some chivalrous respect for her mother. Could he love the
daughter without some little, which a more intimate knowledge of her dear
mother would enlarge? The girl's heart flew to her mother, clung to her,
vindicated her dumbly. It would not inquire, and it refused to hear,
hungering the while. She sent forth her flights of stories in elucidation
of the hidden; and they were like white bird after bird winging to covert
beneath a thundercloud; until her breast ached for the voice of the
thunder: harsh facts: sure as she was of her never losing her filial hold
of the beloved. She and her mother grew together, they were one.
Accepting the shadow, they were the closer one beneath it. She had
neither vision nor active thought of her father, in whom her pride was.

At the hour of ten, the ladies retired for the enjoyment of their sweet
reward. Manton, their maid, came down to sit with Nesta on the watch for
Skepsey. Perrin, the footman, returning, as late as twenty minutes to
eleven, from his tobacco promenade along the terrace, reported to Manton
'a row in town'; and he repeated to Nesta the policeman's opinion and his
own of the 'Army' fellows, and the way to treat them. Both were for
rigour.

'The name of "Army" attracts poor Skepsey so, I am sure he would join it,
if they would admit him,' Nesta said.

'He has an immense respect for a young woman, who belongs to his "Army";
and one doesn't know what may have come,' said Manton.

Two or three minutes after eleven, a feeble ring at the bell gained
admission for some person: whispering was heard in the passage.

Manton played eavesdropper, and suddenly bursting on Skepsey, arrested
him when about to dash upstairs. His young mistress's voice was a
sufficient command; he yielded; he pitched a smart sigh and stepped into
her presence for his countenance to be seen, or the show of a
countenance, that it presented.

'Skepsey wanted to rush to bed without saying good night to me?' said
she; leaving unnoticed, except for woefulness of tone, his hurried
shuffle of remarks on 'his appearance,' and 'little accidents'; ending
with an inclination of his disgraceful person to the doorway, and a
petition: 'If I might, Miss Nesta?' The implied pathetic reference to a
surgically-treated nose under a cross of strips of plaster, could not
obtain dismissal for him. And he had one eye of sinister hue, showing
beside its lighted-grey fellow as if a sullen punished dragonwhelp had
couched near some quick wood-pigeon. The two eyes blinked rapidly. He was
a picture of Guilt in the nude, imploring to be sent into concealment.

The cruelty of detaining him was evident.

'Yes, if you must,' Nesta said. 'But, dear Skepsey, will it be the
magistrate again to-morrow?'

He feared it would be; he fancied it would needs be. He concluded by
stating, that he was bound to appear before the magistrate in the
morning; and he begged assistance to keep it from the knowledge of the
Miss Duvidneys, who had been so kind to him.

'Has there been bailing of you again, Skepsey?'

'A good gentleman, a resident,' he replied; 'a military gentleman;
indeed, a colonel of the cavalry; but, it may so be, retired; and anxious
about our vast possessions; though he thinks a translation of a French
attack on England unimportant. He says, the Germans despise us most.'

'Then this gentleman thinks you have a good case?'

'He is a friend of Captain Dartrey's.'

Hearing that name, Nesta said: 'Now, Skepsey, you must tell me
everything. You are not to mind your looks. I believe, I do always
believe you mean well.'

'Miss Nesta, it depends upon the magistrate's not being prejudiced
against the street-processionists!

'But you may expect justice from the magistrate, if your case is good?'

'I would not say no, Miss Nesta. But we find, the opinion of the public
has its effect with magistrates--their sentences. They are severe on
boxing. They have latterly treated the "Army" with more consideration,
owing to the change in the public view. I myself have changed.'

'Have you joined it?'

'I cannot say I am a member of it.'

'You walked in the ranks to-day, and you were maltreated? Your friend was
there?'

'I walked with Matilda Pridden; that is, parallel, along the pavement.'

'I hope she came out of it unhurt?'

'It is thanks to Captain Dartrey, Miss Nesta?'

This time Nesta looked her question.

Manton interposed: 'You are to speak, Mr. Skepsey'; and she stopped a
flood of narrative, that was knocking in his mind to feel its head and to
leap--an uninterrupted half-minute more would have shaped the story for
the proper flow.

He began, after attending to the throb of his bruises in a manner to
correct them rather than solace; and the beginning was the end: 'Captain
Dartrey rescued us, before Matilda Pridden suffered harm, to mention--the
chin, slight, teeth unshaken; a beautiful set. She is angry with Captain
Dartrey, for having recourse to violence in her defence: it is against
her principles. "Then you die," she says; and our principles are to gain
more by death. She says, we are alive in them; but worse if we abandon
them for the sake of living.--I am a little confused; she is very
abstruse.--Because, that is the corruptible life, she says. I have found
it quite impossible to argue with her; she has always a complete answer;
wonderful. In case of Invasion, we are to lift our voices to the Lord;
and the Lord's will shall be manifested. If we are robbed, we ask, How
came we by the goods? It is unreasonable; it strikes at rights of
property. But I have to go on thinking. When in danger, she sings without
excitement. When the blow struck her, she stopped singing only an
instant. She says, no one fears, who has real faith. She will not let me
call her brave. She cannot admire Captain Dartrey. Her principles are
opposed. She said to him, "Sir, you did what seemed to you right." She
thinks every blow struck sends us back to the state of the beasts. Her
principles . . .'

'How was it Captain Dartrey happened to be present, Skepsey?'

'She is very firm. You cannot move her.--Captain Dartrey was on his way
to the station, to meet a gentleman from London, Miss Nesta. He carried a
stick--a remarkable stick--he had shown to me in the morning, and he has
given it me now. He says, he has done his last with it. He seems to have
some of Matilda Pridden's ideas about fighting, when it's over. He was
glad to be rid of the stick, he said.'

'But who attacked you? What were the people?'

'Captain Dartrey says, England may hold up her head while she breeds
young women like Matilda Pridden: right or wrong, he says: it is the
substance.'

Hereupon Manton, sick of Miss Pridden, shook the little man with a
snappish word, to bring him to attention. She got him together
sufficiently for him to give a lame version of the story; flat until he
came to his heroine's behaviour, when he brightened a moment, and he sank
back absorbed in her principles and theories of life. It was understood
by Nesta, that the processionists, going at a smart pace, found their way
blocked and were assaulted in one of the sidestreets; and that Skepsey
rushed to the defence of Matilda Pridden; and that, while they were
engaged, Captain Dartrey was passing at the end of the street, and
recognized one he knew in the thick of it and getting the worst of it,
owing to numbers. 'I will show you the stick he did it with, Miss Nests';
said Skepsey, regardless of narrative; and darted out of the room to
bring in the Demerara supple-jack; holding which, he became inspired to
relate something of Captain Dartrey's deeds.

They gave no pleasure to his young lady, as he sadly perceived:--thus it
is with the fair sex ever, so fond of heroes! She shut her eyes from the
sight of the Demerara supple-jack descending right and left upon the
skulls of a couple of bully lads. 'That will do--you were rescued. And
now go to bed, Skepsey; and be up at seven to breakfast with me,' Nesta
said, for his battle-damaged face would be more endurable to behold after
an interval, she hoped; and she might in the morning dissociate its evil
look from the deeds of Captain Dartrey.

The thought of her hero taking active part in a streetfray, was repulsive
to her; it swamped his brilliancy. And this distressed her, by
withdrawing the support which the thought of him had been to her since
mid-day. She lay for sleepless hours, while nursing a deeper pain, under
oppression of repugnance to battle-dealing, bloodshedding men. It was
long before she grew mindful of the absurdity of the moan recurring
whenever reflection wearied. Translated into speech, it would have run:

'In a street of the town! with a stick!'--The vulgar picture pursued her
to humiliation; it robbed her or dimmed her possession of the one bright
thing she had remaining to her. So she deemed it during the heavy sighs
of night; partly conscious, that in some strange way it was as much as
tossing her to the man who never could have condescended to the
pugnacious using of a stick in a street. He, on the contrary, was a cover
to the shamefaced.

Her heart was weak that night. She hovered above it, but not so detached
as to scorn it for fawning to one--any one--who would offer her and her
mother a cover from scorn. And now she exalted Dudley's generosity, now
clung to a low idea of a haven in her father's wealth; and she was
unaware, that the second mood was deduced from the first. She did know
herself cowardly: she had, too, a critic in her clear head, to spurn at
the creature who could think of purchasing the world's respect. Dudley's
generosity sprang up to silence the voice. She could praise him, on a
review of it, for delicacy, moreover; and the delicacy laid her under a
more positive obligation. Her sense of it was not without a toneless
quaint faint savour of the romantic, that her humour little humorously
caught at, to paint her a picture of former heroes of fiction, who win
their trying lady by their perfection of good conduct on a background of
high birth; and who are not seen to be wooden before the volume closes.
Her fatigue of sleeplessness plunged her into the period of poke-bonnets
and peaky hats to admire him; giving her the kind of sweetness we may
imagine ourselves to get in the state of tired horse munching hay. If she
had gone to her bed with a noble or simply estimable plain image of one
of her friends in her heart, to sustain it, she would not have been thus
abject. Skepsey's discoloured eye, and Captain Dartrey's behaviour behind
it, threw her upon Dudley's generosity, as being the shield for an
outcast. Girls, who see at a time of need their ideal extinguished in its
appearing tarnished, are very much at the disposal of the pressing
suitor. Nesta rose in the black winter morn, summoning the best she could
think of to glorify Dudley, that she might not feel so doomed.

According to an agreement overnight, she went to the bedroom of Dorothea
and Virginia, to assure them of her having slept well, and say the
good-bye to them and their Tasso. The little dog was the growl of a
silken ball in a basket. His mistresses excused him, because of his being
unused to the appearance of any person save Manton in their bedroom.
Dorothea, kissing her, said: 'Adieu, dear child; and there is home with
us always, remember. And, after breakfast, however it may be,
you will, for our greater feeling of security, have--she has our
orders--Manton--your own maid we consider too young for a guardian--to
accompany you. We will not have it on our consciences, that by any
possibility harm came to you while you were under our charge. The good
innocent girl we received from the hands of your father, we return to
him; we are sure of that.'

Nesta said: 'Mr. Sowerby promised he would come.'

'However it may be,' Dorothea repeated her curtaining phrase.

Virginia put in a word of apology for Tasso's temper he enjoyed
ordinarily a slumber of half an hour's longer duration. He was, Dorothea
feelingly added, regularity itself. Virginia murmured: 'Except once!' and
both were appalled by the recollection of that night. It had,
nevertheless, caused them to reperuse the Rev. Stuart Rem's published
beautiful sermon ON DIRT; the words of which were an antidote to the
night of Tasso in the nostrils of Mnemosyne; so that Dorothea could reply
to her sister, slightly by way of a reproval, quoting Mr. Stuart Rem at
his loftiest: '"Let us not bring into the sacred precincts Dirt from the
roads, but have a care to spread it where it is a fructification."'
Virginia produced the sequent sentence, likewise weighty. Nesta stood
between the thin division of their beds, her right hand given to one, her
left to the other. They had the semblance of a haven out of storms.

She reflected, after shutting the door of their room, that the residing
with them had been a means of casting her--it was an effort to remember
how--upon the world where the tree of knowledge grows. She had eaten; and
she might be the worse for it; but she was raised to a height that would
not let her look with envy upon peace and comfort. Luxurious quiet people
were as ripening glass-house fruits. Her bitter gathering of the
knowledge of life had sharpened her intellect; and the intellect, even in
the young, is, and not less usefully, hard metal rather than fallow soil.
But for the fountain of human warmth at her breast, she might have been
snared by the conceit of intellect, to despise the simple and
conventional, or shed the pity which is charity's contempt. She had only
to think of the kindness of the dear good ladies; her heart jumped to
them at once. And when she fancied hearing those innocent souls of women
embracing her and reproaching her for the knowledge of life she now bore,
her words down deep in her bosom were: It has helped me to bear the shock
of other knowledge! How would she have borne it before she knew of the
infinitely evil? Saving for the tender compassion weeping over her
mother, she had not much acute personal grief.

For this world condemning her birth, was the world tolerant of that
infinitely evil! Her intellect fortified her to be combative by day,
after the night of imagination; which splendid power is not so
serviceable as the logical mind in painful seasons: for night revealed
the world snorting Dragon's breath at a girl guilty of knowing its
vilest. More than she liked to recall, it had driven her scorched, half
withered, to the shelter of Dudley. The daylight, spreading thin at the
windows, restored her from that weakness. 'We will quit England,' she
said, thinking of her mother and herself, and then of her father's surely
following them. She sighed thankfully, half way through the breakfast
with Skepsey, at sight of the hour by the clock; she was hurriedly
sentient of the puzzle of her feelings, when she guessed at a chance that
Dudley would be delayed. She supposed herself as possibly feeling not so
well able to keep every thought of her head brooding on her mother in
Dudley's company.

Skepsey's face was just sufferable by light of day, if one pitied
reflecting on his honest intentions; it ceased to discolour another. He
dropped a few particulars of his hero in action; but the heroine
eclipsed. He was heavier than ever with his Matilda Pridden. At the hour
for departure, Perrin had a conveyance at the door. Nesta sent off
Skepsey with a complimentary message to Captain Dartrey. Her maid Mary
begged her to finish her breakfast; Manton suggested the waiting a
further two or three minutes. 'We must not be late,' Nesta said; and when
the minute-hand of the clock marked ample time for the drive to the
station, she took her seat and started, keeping her face resolutely set
seaward, having at her ears the ring of a cry that was to come from
Manton. But Manton was dumb; she spied no one on the pavement who
signalled to stop them. And no one was at the station to greet them. They
stepped into a carriage where they were alone. Dudley with his dreaded
generosity melted out of Nesta's thoughts, like the vanishing
steam-wreath on the dip between the line and the downs.

She passed into music, as she always did under motion of carriages and
trains, whether in happiness or sadness: and the day being one that had a
sky, the scenic of music swung her up to soar. None of her heavy burdens
enchained, though she knew the weight of them, with those of other
painful souls. The pipeing at her breast gave wings to large and small of
the visible; and along the downs went stateliest of flowing dances; a
copse lengthened to forest; a pool of cattle-water caught grey for
flights through enchantment. Cottage-children, wherever seen in groups,
she wreathed above with angels to watch them. Her mind all the while was
busy upon earth, embracing her mother, eyeing her father. Imagination and
our earthly met midway, and still she flew, until she was brought to the
ground by a shot. She struggled to rise, uplifting Judith Marsett: a
woman not so very much older than her own teens, in the count of years,
and ages older; and the world pulling at her heels to keep her low. That
unhappiest had no one but a sisterly girl to help her: and how she clung
to the slender help! Who else was there?

The good and the bad in the woman struck separate blows upon the girl's
resonant nature. She perceived the good, and took it into her
reflections. The bad she divined: it approached like some threat of
inflammation. Natures resonant as that which animated this girl, are
quick at the wells of understanding: and she had her intimations of the
world's wisdom in withholding contagious presences from the very mangy of
the young, who may not have an, aim, or ideal or strong human compassion,
for a preservative. She was assured of her possessing it. She asked
herself in her mother's voice, and answered mutely. She had the
certainty: for she rebuked the slavish feverishness of the passion, as
betrayed by Mrs. Marsett; and the woman's tone, as of strung wires
ringing on a rage of the wind. Then followed her cry for the man who
could speak to Captain Marsett of his duty in honour. An image of one,
accompanying the faster beats of her heart, beguiled her to think away
from the cause. He, the one man known to her, would act the brother's
part on behalf of the hapless creature.

Nesta just imagined her having supplicated him, and at once imagination
came to dust. She had to thank him she knelt to him. For the first time
of her life she found herself seized with her sex's shudder in the blood.




CHAPTER XXXV

IN WHICH AGAIN WE MAKE USE OF THE OLD LAMPS FOR LIGHTING AN ABYSMAL
DARKNESS

And if Nesta had looked out of her carriage-window soon after the train
began to glide, her eagle of imagination would have reeled from the
heights, with very different feelings, earlier, perhaps a captive, at
sight of the tardy gentleman rushing along the platform, and bending ear
to the footman Perrin, and staring for one lost.

The snaky tail of the train imparted to Dudley an apprehension of the
ominous in his having missed her. It wound away, and left regrets, which
raised a chorus of harsh congratulations from the opposite party of his
internal parliament.

Neither party could express an opinion without rousing the other to an
uproar.

He had met his cousin Southweare overnight. He had heard, that there was
talk of Miss Radnor. Her name was in the mouth of Major Worrell. It was
coupled with the name of Mrs. Marsett. A military captain, in the
succession to be Sir Edward Marsett, bestowed on her the shadow of his
name.

It could be certified, that Miss Radnor visited the woman at her house.
What are we to think of Miss Radnor, save that daughters of depraved
parents! . . . A torture undeserved is the Centaur's shirt for driving us
to lay about in all directions. He who had swallowed so much--a
thunderbolt: a still undigested discharge from the perplexing heavens
jumped frantic under the pressure upon him of more, and worse. A girl
getting herself talked of at a Club! And she of all young ladies should
have been the last to draw round her that buzz of tongues. On such a
subject!--The parents pursuing their career of cynical ostentation in
London, threw an evil eye of heredity on their offspring in the egg;
making anything credible, pointing at tendencies.

An alliance with her was impossible. So said disgust. Anger came like a
stronger beast, and extinguished the safety there was in the thing it
consumed, by growing so excessive as to require tempering with drops of
compassion; which prepared the way for a formal act of cold forgiveness;
and the moment that was conceived, he had a passion to commit the
horrible magnanimity, and did it on a grand scale, and dissolved his
Heart in the grandeur, and slaved himself again.

Far from expungeing the doubt of her, forgiveness gave it a stamp and an
edge. His renewed enslavement set him perusing his tyrant keenly, as
nauseated captives do; and he saw, that forgiveness was beside the case.
For this Nesta Victoria Radnor would not crave it or accept it. He had
mentally played the woman to her superior vivaciousness too long for him
to see her taking a culprit's attitude. What she did, she intended to do.
The mother would not have encouraged her. The father idolized her; and
the father was a frank hedonist, whose blood . . . speculation on
horseback gallops to barren extremes. Eyes like hers--if there had not
been the miserable dupes of girls! Conduct is the sole guide to female
character. That likewise may be the hypocrite's mask.

Popular artists, intent to gratify the national taste for effects called
realistic, have figured in scenes of battle the raying fragments of a man
from impact of a cannon-ball on his person. Truly thus it may be when
flesh contends. But an image of the stricken and scattered mind of the
man should, though deficient in the attraction, have a greater
significance, forasmuch as it does not exhibit him entirely liquefied and
showered into space; it leaves him his legs for the taking of further
steps. Dudley, standing on the platform of Nesta's train, one half minute
too late, according to his desire before he put himself in motion, was as
wildly torn as the vapour shredded streaming to fingers and threads off
the upright columnar shot of the shriek from the boiler. He wished every
mad antagonism to his wishes: that he might see her, be blind to her;
embrace, discard; heal his wound, and tear it wider. He thanked her for
the grossness of an offence precluding excuses. He was aware of a glimmer
of advocacy in the very grossness. He conjured-up her features, and they
said, her innocence was the sinner; they scoffed at him for the dupe he
was willing to be. She had enigma's mouth, with the eyes of morning.

More than most girls, she was the girl-Sphinx to him because of her
having ideas--or what he deemed ideas. She struck a toneing warmth
through his intelligence, not dissimilar to the livelier circulation of
the blood in the frame breathing mountain air. She really helped him,
incited him to go along with this windy wild modern time more cheerfully,
if not quite hopefully. For she had been the book of Romance he despised
when it appeared as a printed volume: and which might have educated the
young man to read some among our riddles in the book of humanity. The
white he was ready to take for silver the black were all black; the
spotted had received corruption's label. Her youthful French governess
Mademoiselle de Seilles was also peculiarly enigmatic at the mouth
conversant, one might expect, with the disintegrating literature of her
country. In public, the two talked of St. Louis. One of them in secret
visits a Mrs. Marsett. The Southweare women, the Hennen women, and Lady
Evelina Reddish, were artless candid creatures in their early days, not
transgressing in a glance. Lady Grace Halley had her fit of the
devotional previous to marriage. No girl known to Dudley by report or
acquaintance had committed so scandalous an indiscretion as Miss
Radnor's: it pertained to the insolently vile.

And on that ground, it started the voluble defence. For certain suspected
things will dash suspicion to the rebound, when they are very dark. As
soon as the charge against her was moderated, the defence expired. He
heard the world delivering its judgement upon her; and he sorrowfully
acquiesced. She passed from him.

When she was cut off, she sang him in the distance a remembered saying of
hers, with the full melody of her voice. One day, treating of modern
pessimism, he had draped a cadaverous view of our mortal being in a
quotation of the wisdom of the Philosopher Emperor: 'To set one's love
upon the swallow is a futility.' And she, weighing it, nodded, and
replied: 'May not the pleasure for us remain if we set our love upon the
beauty of the swallow's flight?'

There was, for a girl, a bit of idea, real idea, in that meaning, of
course, the picture we are to have of the bird's wings in motion, it has
often been admired. Oh! not much of an idea in itself: feminine and
vague. But it was pertinent, opportune; in this way she stimulated. And
the girl who could think it, and call on a Mrs. Marsett, was of the class
of mixtures properly to be handed over to chemical experts for analysis!

She had her aspirations on behalf of her sex: she and Mademoiselle de
Seilles discussed them; women were to do this, do that:--necessarily a
means of instructing a girl to learn what they did do. If the lower part
of her face had been as reassuring to him as the upper, he might have put
a reluctant faith in the pure-mindedness of these aspirations, without
reverting to her origin, and also to recent rumours of her father and
Lady Grace Halley. As it was, he inquired of the cognizant, whether an
intellectual precocity, devoted by preference to questions affecting the
state of women, did not rather more than suggest the existence of urgent
senses likewise. She, a girl under twenty, had an interest in public
matters, and she called on a Mrs. Marsett. To plead her simplicity, was
to be absolutely ignorant of her.

He neighboured sagacity when he pointed that interrogation relating to
Nesta's precociousness of the intelligence. For, as they say in
dactylomancy, the 'psychical' of women are not disposed in their
sensitive early days to dwell upon the fortunes of their sex: a thought
or two turns them facing away, with the repugnant shiver. They worship at
a niche in the wall. They cannot avoid imputing some share of foulness to
them that are for scouring the chamber; and the civilized male, keeping
his own chamber locked, quite shares their pale taper's view. The
full-blooded to the finger-tips, on the other hand, are likely to be
drawn to the subject, by noble inducement as often as by base: Nature at
flood being the cause in either instance. This young Nature of the good
and the bad, is the blood which runs to power of heart as well as to
thirsts of the flesh. Then have men to sound themselves, to discover how
much of Nature their abstract honourable conception or representative
eidolon of young women will bear without going to pieces; and it will not
be much, unless they shall have taken instruction from the poet's pen:
for a view possibly of Nature at work to cast the slough, when they see
her writhing as in her ugliest old throes. If they have learnt of
Nature's priest to respect her, they will less distrust those rare
daughters of hers who are moved by her warmth to lift her out of slime.
It is by her own live warmth that it has to be done: cold worship at a
niche in the wall will not do it.--Well, there is an index, for the
enlargement of your charity.

But facts were Dudley's teachers. Physically, morally, mentally, he read
the world through facts; that is to say, through the facts he
encountered: and he was in consequence foredoomed to a succession of
bumps; all the heavier from his being, unlike the horned kind, not
unimpressible by the hazy things outside his experience. Even at his
darkest over Nesta, it was his indigestion of the misconduct of her
parents, which denied to a certain still small advocate within him the
right to raise a voice: that good fellow struck the attitude for
pleading, and had to be silent; for he was Instinct; at best a stammering
speaker in the Court of the wigged Facts. Instinct of this Nesta Radnor's
character would have said a brave word, but for her deeds bearing witness
to her inheritance of a lawlessly adventurous temperament.

What to do? He was no nearer to an answer when the wintry dusk had fallen
on the promenading crowds. To do nothing, is the wisdom of those who have
seen fools perish. Facts had not taught him, that the doing nothing, for
a length of days after the first shock he sustained, was the reason of
how it came that Nesta knitted closer her acquaintance with the
'agreeable lady' she mentioned in her letter to Cronidge. Those excellent
counsellors of a mercantile community gave him no warnings, that the
'masterly inactive' part, so greatly esteemed by him for the conduct of
public affairs, might be perilous in dealings with a vivid girl: nor a
hint, that when facts continue undigested, it is because the sensations
are as violent as hysterical females to block them from the
understanding. His Robin Goodfellow instinct tried to be serviceable at a
crux of his meditations, where Edith Averst's consumptive brothers waved
faded hands at her chances of inheriting largely. Superb for the chances:
but what of her offspring? And the other was a girl such as the lusty
Dame Dowager of fighting ancestors would have signalled to the heir of
the House's honours for the perpetuation of his race. No doubt: and the
venerable Dame (beautiful in her old-lace frame, or say foliage) of the
Ages backward, temp: Ed: III. inflated him with a thought of her: and his
readings in modern books on heredity, pure blood, physical regeneration,
pronounced approval of Nesta Radnor: and thereupon instinct opened mouth
to speak; and a lockjaw seized it under that scowl of his presiding
mistrust of Nature.

He clung to his mistrust the more because of a warning he had from the
silenced natural voice: somewhat as we may behold how the Conservatism of
a Class, in a world of all the evidences showing that there is no stay to
things, comes of the intuitive discernment of its finality. His mistrust
was his own; and Nesta was not; not yet; though a step would make her his
own. Instinct prompting to the step, was a worthless adviser. It spurred
him, nevertheless.

He called at the Club for his cousin Southweare, with whom he was not in
sympathy; and had information that, Southweare said, 'made the girl out
all right.' Girls in these days do things which the sainted stay-at-homes
preceding them would not have dreamed of doing. Something had occurred,
relating to Major Worrell: he withdrew Miss Radnor's name, acknowledged
himself mistaken or amended his report of her, in some way, not quite
intelligible. Dudley was accosted by Simeon Fenellan; subsequently by
Dartrey. There was gossip over the latter gentleman's having been up
before the magistrate, talk of a queer kind of stick, and Dartrey said,
laughing, to Simeon: 'Rather lucky I bled the rascal';--whatever the
meaning. She nursed one of her adorations for this man, who had
yesterday, apparently, joined in a street-fray; so she partook of the
stain of the turbid defacing all these disorderly people.

At his hotel at breakfast the next morning, a newspaper furnished an
account of Captain Dartrey Fenellan's participation in the strife, after
mention of him as nephew of the Earl of Clanconan, 'now a visitor to our
town'; and his deeds were accordant with his birth. Such writing was
enough to send Dudley an eager listener to Colney Durance. What a people!

Mr. Dartrey Fenellan's card compelled Dudley presently to receive him.

Dartrey, not debarred by considerations, that an allusion to Miss Radnor
could be conveyed only in the most delicately obscure manner, spared him
no more than the plain English of his relations with her. Requested to
come to the Club, at a certain hour of the afternoon, that he might hear
Major Worrell's personal contradiction of scandal involving the young
lady's name, together with his apology, etc., Dudley declined: and he was
obliged to do it curtly; words were wanting. They are hard to find for
wounded sentiments rendered complex by an infusion of policy. His present
mood, with the something new to digest, held the going to Major Worrell a
wrong step; he behaved as if the speaking to Dartrey Fenellan pledged him
hardly less. And besides he had a physical abhorrence, under dictate of
moral reprobation, of the broad-shouldered sinewy man, whose look of wiry
alertness pictured the previous day's gory gutters.

Dartrey set sharp eyes on him for an instant, bowed; and went.




CHAPTER XXXVI

NESTA AND HER FATHER

The day of Nesta's return was one of a number of late when Victor was
robbed of his walk Westward by Lady Grace Halley, who seduced his
politeness with her various forms of blandishment to take a seat in her
carriage; and she was a practical speaker upon her quarter of the world
when she had him there. Perhaps she was right in saying--though she had
no right to say--that he and she together might have the world under
their feet. It was one of those irritating suggestions which expedite us
up to a bald ceiling, only to make us feel the gas-bladder's tight
extension upon emptiness: It moved him to examine the poor value of his
aim, by tying him to the contemptible means: One estimate involved the
other, whichever came first. Somewhere he had an idea, that would lift
and cleanse all degradations. But it did seem as if he were not enjoying:
things pleasant enough in the passage of them were barren, if not
prickly, in the retrospect.

He sprang out at the head of the park, for a tramp round it, in the gloom
of the girdle of lights, to recover his deadened relish of the thin
phantasmal strife to win an intangible prize. His dulled physical system
asked, as with the sensations of a man at the start from sleep in the
hurrying grip of steam, what on earth he wanted to get, and what was the
substance of his gains: what! if other than a precipitous intimacy, a
deep crumbling over deeper, with a little woman amusing him in remarks of
a whimsical nudity; hardly more. Nay, not more! he said; and at the end
of twenty paces, he saw much more; the campaign gathered a circling
suggestive brilliancy, like the lamps about the winter park; the Society,
lured with glitter, hooked by greed, composed a ravishing picture; the
little woman was esteemed as a serviceable lieutenant; and her hand was a
small soft one, agreeable to fondle--and avaunt! But so it is in war: we
must pay for our allies. What if it had been, that he and she together,
with their united powers . . . ? He dashed the silly vision aside, as
vainer than one of the bubble-empires blown by boys; and it broke,
showing no heart in it. His heart was Nataly's.

Let Colney hint his worst; Nataly bore the strain, always did bear any
strain coming in the round of her duties: and if she would but walk, or
if she danced at parties, she would scatter the fits of despondency
besetting the phlegmatic, like this day's breeze the morning fog; or as
he did with two minutes of the stretch of legs.

Full of the grandeur of that black pit of the benighted London, with its
ocean-voice of the heart at beat along the lighted outer ring, Victor
entered at his old door of the two houses he had knocked into one: a
surprise for Fredi!--and heard that his girl had arrived in the morning.

'And could no more endure her absence from her Mammy O!' The songful
satirical line spouted in him, to be flung at his girl, as he ran
upstairs to the boudoir off the drawing-room.

He peeped in. It was dark. Sensible of presences, he gradually discerned
a thick blot along the couch to the right of the door, and he drew near.
Two were lying folded together; mother and daughter. He bent over them.
His hand was taken and pressed by Fredi's; she spoke; she said tenderly:
'Father.' Neither of the two made a movement. He heard the shivering rise
of a sob, that fell. The dry sob going to the waste breath was Nataly's.
His girl did not speak again.

He left them. He had no thought until he stood in his dressing-room, when
he said 'Good!' For those two must have been lying folded together during
the greater part of the day: and it meant, that the mother's heart had
opened; the girl knew. Her tone: 'Father,' sweet, was heavy, too, with
the darkness it came out of.

So she knew. Good. He clasped them both in his heart; tempering his pity
of those dear ones with the thought, that they were of the sex which
finds enjoyment in a day of the mutual tear; and envying them; he
strained at a richness appearing in the sobs of their close union.

All of his girl's loving soul flew to her mother; and naturally: She
would not be harsh on her father. She would say he loved! And true: he
did love, he does love; loves no woman but the dear mother.

He flicked a short wring of the hand having taken pressure from an alien
woman's before Fredi pressed it, and absolved himself in the act;
thinking, How little does a woman know how true we can be to her when we
smell at a flower here and there!--There they are, stationary; women the
flowers, we the bee; and we are faithful in our seeming volatility;
faithful to the hive!--And if women are to be stationary, the reasoning
is not so bad. Funny, however, if they here and there imitatively spread
a wing, and treat men in that way? It is a breach of the convention; we
pay them our homage, that they may serve as flowers, not to be volatile
tempters. Nataly never had been one of the sort: Lady Grace was. No
necessity existed for compelling the world to bow to Lady Grace, while on
behalf of his Nataly he had to . . . Victor closed the curtain over a
gulf-revealed by an invocation of Nature, and showing the tremendous
force he partook of so largely, in her motive elements of the devourer.
Horrid to behold, when we need a gracious presentation of the
circumstances. She is a splendid power for as long as we confine her
between the banks: but she has a passion to discover cracks; and if we
give her headway, she will find one, and drive at it, and be through,
uproarious in her primitive licentiousness, unless we labour body and
soul like Dutchmen at the dam. Here she was, and not desired, almost
detested! Nature detested! It had come about through the battle for
Nataly; chiefly through Mrs. Burman's tenacious hold of the filmy thread
she took for life and was enabled to use as a means for the perversion
besides bar to the happiness of creatures really living. We may well
marvel at the Fates, and tell them they are not moral agents!

Victor's reflections came across Colney Durance, who tripped and stopped
them.

Dressed with his customary celerity, he waited for Nesta, to show her the
lighted grand double drawing-room: a further proof of how Fortune
favoured him: she was to be told, how he one day expressed a wish for
greater space, and was informed on the next, that the neighbour house was
being vacated, and the day following he was in treaty for the purchase of
it; returning from Tyrol, he found his place habitable.

Nesta came. Her short look at him was fond, her voice not faltering; she
laid her hand under his arm and walked round the spacious room, praising
the general design, admiring the porcelain, the ferns, friezes, hangings,
and the grand piano, the ebony inlaid music-stands, the firegrates and
plaques, the ottomans, the tone of neutral colour that, as in sound,
muted splendour. He told her it was a reception night, with music: and
added: 'I miss my . . . seen anybody lately?'

'Mr. Sowerby?' said she. 'He was to have escorted me back. He may have
overslept himself.'

She spoke it plainly; when speaking of the dear good ladies, she set a
gentle humour at play, and comforted him, as she intended, with a
souvenir of her lively spirit, wanting only in the manner of gaiety.

He allowed, that she could not be quite gay.

More deeply touched the next minute, he felt in her voice, in her look,
in her phrasing of speech, an older, much older daughter than the Fredi
whom he had conducted to Moorsedge. 'Kiss me,' he said.

She turned to him full-front, and kissed his right cheek and left, and
his forehead, saying: 'My love! my papa! my own dear dada!' all the words
of her girlhood in her new sedateness; and smiling: like the moral
crepuscular of a sunlighted day down a not totally inanimate Sunday
Londen street.

He strained her to his breast. 'Mama soon be here?'

'Soon.'

That was well. And possibly at the present moment applying, with her
cunning hand, the cosmetics and powders he could excuse for a concealment
of the traces of grief.

Satisfied in being a superficial observer, he did not spy to see more
than the world would when Nataly entered the dining-room at the quiet
family dinner. She performed her part for his comfort, though not
prattling; and he missed his Fredi's delicious warble of the prattle
running rill-like over our daily humdrum. Simeon Fenellan would have
helped. Then suddenly came enlivenment: a recollection of news in the
morning's paper. 'No harm before Fredi, my dear. She's a young woman now.
And no harm, so to speak-at least, not against the Sanfredini. She has
donned her name again, and a villa on Como, leaving her
'duque';--paragraph from a Milanese musical Journal; no particulars. Now,
mark me, we shall have her at Lakelands in the Summer. If only we could
have her now!'

'It would be a pleasure,' said Nataly. Her heart had a blow in the
thought, that a lady of this kind would create the pleasure by not
bringing criticism.

'The godmother?' he glistened upon Nesta.

She gave him low half-notes of the little blue butterfly's imitation of
the superb contralto; and her hand and head at turn to hint the
theatrical operatic attitude.

'Delicious!' he cried, his eyelids were bedewed at the vision of the
three of them planted in the past; and here again, out of the dark wood,
where something had required to be said, and had been said; and all was
happily over, owing to the goodness and sweetness of the two dear
innocents;--whom heaven bless! Jealousy of their naturally closer
heart-at-heart, had not a whisper for him; part of their goodness and
sweetness was felt to be in the not excluding him.

Nesta engaged to sing one of the 'old duets with her mother. She saw her
mother's breast lift in a mechanical effort to try imaginary notes, as if
doubtful of her capacity, more at home in the dumb deep sigh they fell
to. Her mother's heroism made her a sacred woman to the thoughts of the
girl, overcoming wonderment at the extreme submissiveness.

She put a screw on her mind to perceive the rational object there might
be for causing her mother to go through tortures in receiving and
visiting; and she was arrested by the louder question, whether she could
think such a man as her father irrational.

People with resounding names, waves of a steady stream, were announced by
Arlington, just as in the days, that seemed remote, before she went to
Moorsedge; only they were more numerous, and some of the titles had
ascended a stage. There were great lords, there were many great ladies;
and Lady Grace Halley shuffling amid them, like a silken shimmer in
voluminous robes.

They crowded about their host where he stood. 'He, is their Law!' Colney
said, speaking unintelligibly, in the absence of the Simeon Fenellan
regretted so loudly by Mr. Beaves Urmsing. They had an air of
worshipping, and he of swimming.

There were also City magnates, and Lakelands' neighbours: the gentleman
representing Pride of Port, Sir Abraham Quatley; and Colonel Corfe; Sir
Rodwell and Lady Blachington; Mrs. Fanning; Mr. Caddis. Few young men and
maids were seen. Dr. John Cormyn came without his wife, not mentioning
her. Mrs. Peter Yatt touched the notes for voices at the piano. Priscilla
Graves was a vacancy, and likewise the Rev. Septimus Barmby. Peridon and
Catkin, and Mr. Pempton took their usual places. There was no fluting. A
famous Canadian lady was the principal singer. A Galician violinist,
zig-zagging extreme extensions and contractions of his corporeal frame in
execution, and described by Colney as 'Paganini on wall,' failed to
supplant Durandarte in Nesta's memory. She was asked by Lady Grace for
the latest of Dudley. Sir Abraham Quatley named him with handsome
emphasis. Great dames caressed her; openly approved; shadowed the future
place among them.

Victor alluded at night to Mrs. John Cormyn's absence. He said: 'A
homoeopathic doctor's wife!' nothing more; and by that little, he
prepared Nesta for her mother's explanation. The great London people,
ignorant or not, were caught by the strong tide he created, and carried
on it. But there was a bruiting of the secret among their set; and the
one to fall away from her, Nataly marvellingly named Mrs. John Cormyn;
whose marriage was of her making. She did not disapprove Priscilla's
behaviour. Priscilla had come to her and, protesting affection, had
openly stated, that she required time and retirement to recover her
proper feelings. Nataly smiled a melancholy criticism of an inconsequent
or capricious woman, in relating to Nesta certain observations Priscilla
had dropped upon poor faithful Mr. Pempton, because of his concealment
from her of his knowledge of things for this faithful gentleman had been
one of the few not ignorant. The rumour was traceable to the City.

'Mother, we walk on planks,' Nesta said.

Nataly answered: 'You will grow used to it.'

Her mother's habitual serenity in martyrdom was deceiving. Nesta had a
transient suspicion, that she had grown, from use, to like the whirl of
company, for oblivion in the excitement; and as her remembrance of her
own station among the crowding people was a hot flush, the difference of
their feelings chilled her.

Nataly said: 'It is to-morrow night again; we do not rest.' She smiled;
and at once the girl read woman's armour on the dear face, and asked
herself, Could I be so brave? The question following was a speechless
wave, that surged at her father. She tried to fathom the scheme he
entertained. The attempt obscured her conception of the man he was. She
could not grasp him, being too young for knowing, that young heads cannot
obtain a critical hold upon one whom they see grandly succeeding it is
the sun's brilliance to their eyes.

Mother and daughter slept together that night, and their embrace was
their world.

Nesta delighted her father the next day by walking beside him into the,
City, as far as the end of the Embankment, where the carriage was in
waiting with her maid to bring her back; and at his mere ejaculation of a
wish, the hardy girl drove down in the afternoon for the walk home with
him. Lady Grace Halley was at the office. 'I'm an incorrigible Stock
Exchange gambler,' she said.

'Only,' Victor bade her beware, 'Mines are undulating in movement, and
their heights are a preparation for their going down.'

She said she 'liked a swing.'

Nesta looked at them in turn.

The day after and the day after, Lady Grace was present. She made play
with Dudley's name.

This coming into the City daily of a girl, for the sake of walking back
in winter weather with her father, struck her as ambiguous: either a
jealous foolish mother's device, or that of a weak man beating about for
protection. But the woman of the positive world soon read to the
contrary; helped a little by the man, no doubt. She read rather too much
to the contrary, and took the pedestrian girl for perfect simplicity in
her tastes, when Nesta had so far grown watchful as to feel relieved by
the lady's departure. Her mother, without sympathy for the lady, was too
great of soul for jealousy. Victor had his Nataly before him at a hint
from Lady Grace: and he went somewhat further than the exact degree when
affirming, that Nataly could not scheme, and was incapable of
suspecting.--Nataly could perceive things with a certain accuracy: she
would not stoop to a meanness. 'Plot? Nataly?' said he, and shrugged. In
fact, the void of plot, drama, shuffle of excitement, reflected upon
Nataly. He might have seen as tragic as ever dripped on Stage, had he
looked.

But the walk Westward with his girl, together with pride in a daughter
who clove her way through all weathers, won his heart to exultation. He
told her: 'Fredi does her dada so much good'; not telling her in what, or
opening any passage to the mystery of the man he was. She was trying to
be a student of life, with her eyes down upon hard earth, despite of her
winged young head; she would have compassed him better had he dilated in
sublime fashion; but he baffled her perusal of a man of power by the
simpleness of his enjoyment of small things coming in his way;--the
lighted shops, the crowd, emergence from the crowd, or the meeting near
midwinter of a soft warm wind along the Embankment, and dark Thames
magnificently coroneted over his grimy flow. There is no grasping of one
who quickens us.

His flattery of his girl, too, restored her broken feeling of personal
value; it permeated her nourishingly from the natural breath of him that
it was.

At times he touched deep in humaneness; and he set her heart leaping on
the flash of a thought to lay it bare, with the secret it held, for his
help. That was a dream. She could more easily have uttered the words to
Captain Dartrey, after her remembered abashing holy tremour of the vision
of doing it and casting herself on noblest man's compassionateness; and
her imagined thousand emotions;--a rolling music within her, a wreath of
cloudglory in her sky;--which had, as with virgins it may be, plighted
her body to him for sheer urgency of soul; drawn her by a single
unwitting-to-brain, conscious-in-blood, shy curl outward of the sheathing
leaf to the flowering of woman to him; even to the shore of that strange
sea, where the maid stands choosing this one man for her destiny, as in a
trance. So are these young ones unfolded, shade by shade; and a shade is
all the difference with them; they can teach the poet to marvel at the
immensity of vitality in 'the shadow of a shade.'

Her father shut the glimpse of a possible speaking to him of Mrs.
Marsett, with a renewal of his eulogistic allusions to Dudley Sowerby:
the 'perfect gentleman, good citizen'; prospective heir to an earldom
besides. She bowed to Dudley's merits; she read off the honorific
pedimental letters of a handsome statue, for a sign to herself that she
passed it.

She was unjust, as Victor could feel, though he did not know how coldly
unjust. For among the exorbitant requisitions upon their fellow-creatures
made by the young, is the demand, that they be definite: no mercy is in
them for the transitional. And Dudley--and it was under her influence,
and painfully, not ignobly--was in process of development: interesting to
philosophers, if not to maidens.

Victor accused her of paying too much heed to Colney Durance's epigrams
upon their friends. He quite joined with his English world in its
opinion, that epigrams are poor squibs when they do not come out of great
guns. Epigrams fired at a venerable nation, are surely the poorest of
popgun paper pellets. The English kick at the insolence, when they are
not in the mood for pelleting themselves, or when the armed Foreigner is
overshadowing and braceing. Colney's pretentious and laboured Satiric
Prose Epic of 'THE RIVAL TONGUES,' particularly offended him, as being a
clever aim at no hitting; and sustained him, inasmuch as it was an acid
friend's collapse. How could Colney expect his English to tolerate such a
spiteful diatribe! The suicide of Dr. Bouthoin at San Francisco was the
finishing stroke to the chances of success of the Serial;--although we
are promised splendid evolutions on the part of Mr. Semhians; who, after
brilliant achievements with bat and ball, abandons those weapons of Old
England's modern renown, for a determined wrestle with our English
pronunciation of words, and rescue of the spelling of them from the
printer. His headache over the present treatment of the verb 'To bid,'
was a quaint beginning for one who had soon to plead before Japanese, and
who acknowledged now 'in contrition of spirit,' that in formerly opposing
the scheme for an Academy, he helped to the handing of our noble language
to the rapid reporter of news for an apathetic public. Further, he
discovered in astonishment the subordination of all literary Americans to
the decrees of their literary authorities; marking a Transatlantic point
of departure, and contrasting ominously with the unruly Islanders
'grunting the higgledy-piggledy of their various ways, in all the
porker's gut-gamut at the rush to the trough.' After a week's privation
of bat and ball, he is, lighted or not, a gas-jet of satire upon his
countrymen. As for the 'pathetic sublimity of the Funeral of Dr.
Bouthoin,' Victor inveighed against an impious irony in the over dose of
the pathos; and the same might be suspected in Britannia's elegy upon
him, a strain of hot eulogy throughout. Mr. Semhians, all but
treasonably, calls it, Papboat and Brandy:--'our English literary diet of
the day': stimulating and not nourishing. Britannia's mournful
anticipation, that 'The shroud enwinding this my son is mine!'--should
the modern generation depart from the track of him who proved himself the
giant in mainly supporting her glory--was, no doubt, a high pitch of the
note of Conservatism. But considering, that Dr. Bouthoin 'committed
suicide under a depression of mind produced by a surfeit of unaccustomed
dishes, upon a physical system inspired by the traditions of exercise,
and no longer relieved by the practice'--to translate from Dr. Gannius:
we are again at war with the writer's reverential tone, and we know not
what to think: except, that Mr. Durance was a Saturday meat market's
butcher in the Satiric Art.

Nesta found it pleasanter to see him than to hear of his work: which, to
her present feeling, was inhuman. As little as our native public, had she
then any sympathy for the working in the idea: she wanted throbs, visible
aims, the Christian incarnate; she would have preferred the tale of
slaughter--periodically invading all English classes as a flush from the
undrained lower, Vikings all--to frigid sterile Satire. And truly it is
not a fruit-bearing rod. Colney had to stand on the defence of it against
the damsel's charges. He thought the use of the rod, while expressing
profound regret at a difference of opinion between him and those noble
heathens, beneficial for boys; but in relation to their seniors, and
particularly for old gentlemen, he thought that the sharpest rod to cut
the skin was the sole saving of them. Insensibility to Satire, he likened
to the hard-mouthed horse; which is doomed to the worser thing in
consequence. And consequently upon the lack of it, and of training to
appreciate it, he described his country's male venerables as being
distinguishable from annuitant spinsters only in presenting themselves
forked.

'He is unsuccessful and embittered, Victor said to Nesta. 'Colney will
find in the end, that he has lost his game and soured himself by never
making concessions. Here's this absurd Serial--it fails, of course; and
then he has to say, it's because he won't tickle his English, won't enter
into a "frowzy complicity" with their tastes.'

'But--I think of Skepsey honest creatures respect Mr. Durance, and he is
always ready to help them,' said Nesta.

'If he can patronize.'

'Does he patronize me, dada?'

'You are one of his exceptions. Marry a title and live in state--and then
hear him! I am successful, and the result of it is, that he won't
acknowledge wisdom in anything I say or do; he will hardly acknowledge
the success. It is "a dirty road to success," he says. So that, if
successful, I must have rolled myself in mire. I compelled him to admit
he was wrong about your being received at Moorsedge: a bit of a triumph!'

Nesta's walks with her father were no loss of her to Nataly; the girl
came back to her bearing so fresh and so full a heart; and her father was
ever prouder of her: he presented new features of her in his quotations
of her sayings, thoughtful sayings. 'I declare she helps one to think,'
he said. 'It 's not precocity; it 's healthy inquiry. She brings me
nearer ideas of my own, not yet examined, than any one else does. I say,
what a wife for a man!'

'She takes my place beside you, dear, now I am not quite strong,' said
Nataly. 'You have not seen . . .?'

'Dudley Sowerby? He's at Cronidge, I believe. His elder brother's in a
bad way. Bad business, this looking to a death.'

Nataly eyes revealed a similar gulf.

Let it be cast on Society, then! A Society opposing Nature forces us to
these murderous looks upon impediments. But what of a Society in the
dance with Nature? Victor did not approve of that. He began, under the
influence of Nesta's companionship, to see the Goddess Nature there is in
a chastened nature. And this view shook the curtain covering his lost
Idea. He felt sure he should grasp it soon and enter into its daylight: a
muffled voice within him said, that he was kept waiting to do so by the
inexplicable tardiness of a certain one to rise ascending to her
spiritual roost. She was now harmless to strike: Themison, Carling,
Jarniman, even the Rev. Groseman Buttermore, had been won to the cause of
humanity. Her ascent, considering her inability to do further harm below,
was most mysteriously delayed. Owing to it, in a manner almost as
mysterious, he was kept crossing a bridge having a slippery bit on it.
Thanks to his gallant Fredi, he had found his feet again. But there was a
bruise where, to his honour, he felt tenderest. And Fredi away, he might
be down again--for no love of a slippery bit, proved slippery, one might
guess, by a predecessor or two. Ta-ta-ta-to and mum! Still, in justice to
the little woman, she had been serviceable.

She would be still more so, if a member of Parliament now on his back
here we are with the murder-eye again!

Nesta's never speaking of Lakelands clouded him a little, as an
intimation of her bent of mind.

'And does my girl come to her dada to-day?' he said, on the fifth morning
since her return; prepared with a villanous resignation to hear, that
this day she abstained, though he had the wish for her coming.

'Why, don't you know,' said she, 'we all meet to have tea in Mr.
Durance's chambers; and I walk back with you, and there we are joined by
mama; and we are to have a feast of literary celebrities.'

'Colney's selection of them! And Simeon Fenellan, I hope. Perhaps
Dartrey. Perhaps . . . eh?'

She reddened. So Dudley Sowerby's unspoken name could bring the blush to
her cheeks. Dudley had his excuses in his brother's condition. His
father's health, too, was--but this was Dudley calculating. Where there
are coronets, calculations of this sort must needs occur; just as where
there are complications. Odd, one fancies it, that we walking along the
pavement of civilized life, should be perpetually summoning Orcus to our
aid, for the sake of getting a clear course.

'And supposing a fog, my dearie?' he said.

'The daughter in search of her father carries a lamp to light her to him
through densest fogs as well as over deserts,' etc. She declaimed a long
sentence, to set the ripple running in his features; and when he left the
room for a last word with Armandine, she flung arms round her mother's
neck, murmuring: 'Mother! mother!' a cry equal to 'I am sure I do right,'
and understood so by Nataly approving it; she too on the line of her
instinct, without an object in sight.




CHAPTER XXXVII

THE MOTHER-THE DAUGHTER

Taking Nesta's hand, on her entry into his chambers with her father,
Colney Durance bowed over it and kissed it. The unusual performance had a
meaning; she felt she was praised. It might be because she made herself
her father's companion. 'I can't persuade him to put on a great-coat,'
she said. 'You would defeat his aim at the particular waistcoat of his
ambition,' said Colney, goaded to speak, not anxious to be heard.

He kept her beside him, leading her about for introductions to multiform
celebrities of both sexes; among them the gentleman editing the Magazine
which gave out serially THE RIVAL TONGUES: and there was talk of a
dragon-throated public's queer appetite in Letters. The pained Editor
deferentially smiled at her cheerful mention of Delphica. 'In, book form,
perhaps!' he remarked, with plaintive' resignation; adding: 'You read
it?' And a lady exclaimed: 'We all read it!'

But we are the elect, who see signification and catch flavour; and we are
reminded of an insatiable monster how sometimes capricious is his gorge.
'He may happen to be in the humour for a shaking!' Colney's poor
consolation it was to say of the prospects of his published book: for the
funny monster has been known to like a shaking.

'He takes it kinder tickled,' said Fenellan, joining the group and
grasping Nesta's hand with a warmth that thrilled her and set her
guessing. 'A taste of his favourite Cayenne lollypop, Colney; it fetches
the tear he loves to shed, or it gives him digestive heat in the bag of
his literary receptacle-fearfully relaxed and enormous! And no wonder;
his is to lie him down on notion of the attitude for reading, his back;
and he has in a jiffy the funnel of the Libraries inserted into his
mouth, and he feels the publishers pouring their gallons through it
unlimitedly; never crying out, which he can't; only swelling, which he's
obliged to do, with a non-nutritious inflation; and that's his
intellectual enjoyment; bearing a likeness to the horrible old torture of
the baillir d'eau; and he's doomed to perish in the worst book-form of
dropsy. You, my dear Colney, have offended his police or excise, who
stand by the funnel, in touch with his palate, to make sure that nothing
above proof is poured in; and there's your misfortune. He's not half a
bad fellow, you find when you haven't got to serve him.'

'Superior to his official parasites, one supposes!' Colney murmured.

The celebrities were unaffectedly interested in a literary failure having
certain merits; they discussed it, to compliment the crownless author;
and the fervider they, the more was he endowed to read the meanness
prompting the generosity. Publication of a book, is the philosopher's
lantern upon one's fellows.

Colney was caught away from his private manufactory of acids by hearing
Simeon Fenellan relate to Victor some of the recent occurrences at
Brighton. Simeon's tone was unsatisfying; Colney would have the word; he
was like steel on the grindstone for such a theme of our national
grotesque-sublime.

'That Demerara Supple-jack, Victor! Don't listen to Simeon; he's a man of
lean narrative, fit to chronicle political party wrangles and such like
crop of carcase prose: this is epical. In DRINK we have Old England's
organic Epic; Greeks and Trojans; Parliamentary Olympus, ennobled
brewers, nasal fanatics, all the machinery to hand. Keep a straight eye
on the primary motives of man, you'll own the English produce the
material for proud verse; they're alive there! Dartrey's Demerara makes a
pretty episode of the battle. I haven't seen it--if it's possible to look
on it: but I hear it is flexible, of a vulgar appearance in repose,
Jove's lightning at one time, the thong of AEacus at another. Observe
Dartrey marching off to the Station, for the purpose of laying his
miraculous weapon across the shoulders of a son of Mars, who had
offended. But we have his name, my dear Victor! His name,
Simeon?--Worrell; a Major Worrell: his offence being probably, that he
obtained military instruction in the Service, and left it at his
convenience, for our poor patch and tatter British Army to take in his
place another young student, who'll grow up to do similarly. And Dartrey,
we assume, is off to stop that system. You behold Sir Dartrey twirling
the weapon in preparatory fashion; because he is determined we shall have
an army of trained officers instead of infant amateurs heading heroic
louts. Not a thought of Beer in Dartrey!--always unpatriotic, you 'll
say. Plato entreats his absent mistress to fix eyes on a star: eyes on
Beer for the uniting of you English! I tell you no poetic fiction. Seeing
him on his way, thus terribly armed, and knowing his intent, Venus, to
shield a former favourite servant of Mars, conjured the most diverting of
interventions, in the shape of a young woman in a poke-bonnet, and
Skepsey, her squire, marching with a dozen or so, informing bedevilled
mankind of the hideousness of our hymnification when it is not under
secluding sanction of the Edifice, and challengeing criticism; and that
was hard by, and real English, in the form of bludgeons, wielded by a
battalion of the national idol Bungay Beervat's boys; and they fell upon
the hymners. Here you fill in with pastoral similes. They struck the maid
adored by Skepsey. And that was the blow which slew them! Our little man
drove into the press with a pair of fists able to do their work. A
valiant skiff upon a sea of enemies, he was having it on the nob, and
suddenly the Demerara lightened. It flailed to thresh. Enough. to say,
brains would have come. The Bungays made a show of fight. No lack of
blood in them, to stock a raw shilling's worth or gush before Achilles
rageing. You perceive the picture, you can almost sing the ballad. We
want only a few names of the fallen. It was the carving of a maitre chef,
according to Skepsey: right-left-and point, with supreme precision: they
fell, accurately sliced from the joint. Having done with them, Dartrey
tossed the Demerara to Skepsey, and washed his hands of battle; and he
let his major go unscathed. Phlebotomy sufficient for the day!'

Nesta's ears hummed with the name of Major Worrell.

'Skepsey did come back to London with a rather damaged frontispiece,'
Victor said. 'He can't have joined those people?'

'They may suit one of your militant peacemakers,' interposed Fenellan.
'The most placable creatures alive, and the surest for getting-up a
shindy.'

'Suit him! They're the scandal of our streets.' Victor was pricked with a
jealousy of them for beguiling him of his trusty servant.

'Look at your country, see where it shows its vitality,' said Colney.
'You don't see elsewhere any vein in movement-movement,' he harped on the
word Victor constantly employed to express the thing he wanted to see.
'Think of that, when the procession sets your teeth on edge. They're
honest foes of vice, and they move:--in England! Pulpit-preaching has no
effect. For gross maladies, gross remedies. You may judge of what you are
by the quality of the cure. Puritanism, I won't attempt to paint--it
would barely be decent; but compare it with the spectacle of English
frivolity, and you'll admit it to be the best show you make. It may still
be the saving of you--on the level of the orderly ox: I 've not observed
that it aims at higher. And talking of the pulpit, Barmby is off to the
East, has accepted a Shoreditch curacy, Skepsey tells me.'

'So there's the reason for our not seeing him!' Victor turned to Nesta.

'Papa, you won't be angry with Skepsey if he has joined those people,'
said Nesta. 'I'm sure he thinks of serving his country, Mr. Durance.'

Colney smiled on her. 'And you too?'

'If women knew how!'

'They're hitting on more ways at present than the men--in England.'

'But, Mr. Durance, it speaks well for England when they're allowed the
chance here.'

'Good!' Fenellan exclaimed. 'And that upsets his placement of the modern
national genders: Germany masculine, France feminine, Old England what
remains.'

Victor ruffled and reddened on his shout of 'Neuter?'

Their circle widened. Nesta knew she was on promotion, by her being led
about and introduced to ladies. They were encouraging with her. One of
them, a Mrs. Marina Floyer, had recently raised a standard of feminine
insurrection. She said: 'I hear your praises from Mr. Durance. He rarely
praises. You have shown capacity to meditate on the condition of women,
he says.'

Nesta drew a shorter breath, with a hope at heart. She speculated in the
dark, as to whether her aim to serve and help was not so friendless. And
did Mr. Durance approve? But surely she stood in a glorious England if
there were men and women to welcome a girl to their councils. Oh! that is
the broad free England where gentlemen and gentlewomen accept of the
meanest aid to cleanse the land of its iniquities, and do not suffer
shame to smite a young face for touching upon horrors with a pure design.

She cried in her bosom: I feel! She had no other expression for that
which is as near as great natures may come to the conceiving of the
celestial spirit from an emissary angel; and she trembled, the fire ran
through her. It seemed to her, that she would be called to help or that
certainly they were nearing to an effacement of the woefullest of evils;
and if not helping, it would still be a blessedness for her to kneel
thanking heaven.

Society was being attacked and defended. She could but studiously listen.
Her father was listening. The assailant was a lady; and she had a
hearing, although she treated Society as a discrowned monarch on trial
for an offence against a more precious: viz., the individual cramped by
brutish laws: the individual with the ideas of our time, righteously
claiming expansion out of the clutches of a narrow old-world
disciplinarian-that giant hypocrite! She flung the gauntlet at externally
venerable Institutions; and she had a hearing, where horrification,
execration, the foul Furies of Conservatism would in a shortly antecedent
day have been hissing and snakily lashing, hounding her to expulsion.
Mrs. Marina Floyer gravely seconded her. Colney did the same. Victor
turned sharp on him. 'Yes,' Colney said; 'we unfold the standard of
extremes in this country, to get a single step taken: that's how we move:
we threaten death to get footway. Now, mark: Society's errors will be
admitted.'

A gentleman spoke. He began by admitting Society's errors. Nevertheless,
it so distinctly exists for the common good, that we may say of Society
in relation to the individual, it is the body to the soul. We may wash,
trim, purify, but we must not maim it. The assertion of our individuality
in opposition to the Government of Society--this existing Society--is a
toss of the cap for the erasure of our civilization, et caetera.

Platitudes can be of intense interest if they approach our case.--But, if
you please, we ask permission to wash, trim, purify, and we do not get
it.--But you have it! Because we take it at our peril; and you, who are
too cowardly to grant or withhold, call-up the revolutionary from the
pits by your slackness:--etc. There was a pretty hot debate. Both
assailant and defendant, to Victor's thinking, spoke well, and each the
right thing and he could have made use of both, but he could answer
neither. He beat about for the cause of this deficiency, and discovered
it in his position. Mentally, he was on the side of Society. Yet he was
annoyed to find the attack was so easily answerable when the defence
unfolded. But it was absurd to expect it would not be. And in fact, a
position secretly rebellious is equal to water on the brain for
stultifying us.

Before the controversy was over, a note in Nataly's handwriting called
him home. She wrote: 'Make my excuses. C. D. will give Nesta and some
lady dinner. A visitor here. Come alone, and without delay. Quite well,
robust. Impatient to consult with you, nothing else.'

Nesta was happy to stay; and Victor set forth.

The visitor? plainly Dudley. Nataly's trusting the girl to the chance of
some lady being present, was unlike her. Dudley might be tugging at the
cord; and the recent conversation upon Society, rendered one of its gilt
pillars particularly estimable.--A person in the debate had declared this
modern protest on behalf of individualism to represent Society's Criminal
Trial. And it is likely to be a long one. And good for the world, that we
see such a Trial!--Well said or not, undoubtedly Society is an old
criminal: not much more advanced than the state of spiritual worship
where bloody sacrifice was offered to a hungry Lord. But it has a case
for pleading. We may liken it, as we have it now, to the bumping
lumberer's raft; suitable along torrent waters until we come to smoother.
Are we not on waters of a certain smoothness at the reflecting
level?--enough to justify demands for a vessel of finer design. If
Society is to subsist, it must have the human with the logical argument
against the cry of the free-flags, instead of presenting a block's
obtuseness. That, you need not hesitate to believe, will be rolled
downward and disintegrated, sooner than later. A Society based on the
logical concrete of humane considerateness:--a Society prohibiting to
Mrs. Burman her wielding of a life-long rod . . . .

The personal element again to confuse inquiry!--And Skepsey and Barmby
both of them bent on doing work without inquiry of any sort! They were
enviable: they were good fellows. Victor clung to the theme because it
hinted of next door to his lost Idea. He rubbed the back of his head,
fancying a throb there. Are civilized creatures incapable of abstract
thought when their social position is dubious? For if so, we never can be
quit of those we forsake.--Apparently Mrs. Burman's unfathomed power lay
in her compelling him to summon the devilish in himself and play upon the
impish in Society, that he might overcome her.

Victor's house-door stopped this current.

Nataly took his embrace.

'Nothing wrong?' he said, and saw the something. It was a favourable
moment to tell her what she might not at another time regard as a small
affair. 'News in the City to-day of that South London borough being
vacated. Quatley urges me. A death again! I saw Pempton, too. Will you
credit me when I tell you he carries his infatuation so far, that he has
been investing in Japanese and Chinese Loans, because they are less
meat-eaters than others, and vegetarians are more stable, and outlast us
all!--Dudley the visitor?' 'Mr. Sowerby has been here,' she said, in a
shaking low voice.

Victor held her hand and felt a squeeze more nervous than affectionate.

'To consult with me,' she added. 'My maid will go at ten to bring Nesta;
Mr. Durance I can count on, to see her safe home. Ah!' she wailed.

Victor nodded, saying: 'I guess. And, my love, you will receive Mrs. John
Cormyn to-morrow morning. I can't endure gaps. Gaps in our circle must
never be. Do I guess?--I spoke to Colney about bringing her home.'

Nataly sighed: 'Ah! make what provision we will! Evil--Mr. Sowerby has
had a great deal to bear.'

'A worldling may think so.'

Her breast heaved, and the wave burst: but her restraining of tears froze
her speech.

'Victor! Our Nesta! Mr. Sowerby is unable to explain. And how the Miss
Duvidneys! . . . At that Brighton!'--The voice he heard was not his
darling's deep rich note, it had dropped to toneless hoarseness: 'She has
been permitted to make acquaintance--she has been seen riding with--she
has called upon--Oh! it is one of those abandoned women. In her house!
Our girl! Our Nesta! She was insulted by a man in the woman's house. She
is talked of over Brighton. The mother!--the daughter! And grant me
this--that never was girl more carefully . . . never till she was taken
from me. Oh! do not forget. You will defend me? You will say, that her
mother did with all her soul strive . . . It is not a rumour. Mr. Sowerby
has had it confirmed.' A sob caught her voice.

Victor's hands caressed to console: 'Dudley does not propose to . . ?'

'Nesta must promise . . . But how it happened? How! An acquaintance
with--contact with!--Oh! cruel!' Each time she ceased speaking, the
wrinkles of a shiver went over her, and the tone was of tears coming, but
she locked them in.

'An accident!' said Victor; 'some misunderstanding--there can't be harm.
Of course, she promises--hasn't to promise. How could a girl distinguish!
He does not cast blame on her?'

'Dear, if you would go down to Dartrey to-morrow. He knows:--it is over
the Clubs there; he will tell you, before a word to Nesta. Innocent, yes!
Mr. Sowerby has not to be assured of that. Ignorant of the character of
the dreadful woman? Ah, if I could ever in anything think her ignorant!
She frightens me. Mr. Sowerby is indulgent. He does me justice. My duty
to her--I must defend myself--has been my first thought. I said in my
prayers--she at least! . . . We have to see the more than common reasons
why she, of all girls, should--he did not hint it, he was delicate: her
name must not be public.'

'Yes, yes, Dudley is without parallel as a gentleman,' said Victor. 'It
does not suit me to hear the word "indulgent." My dear, if you were down
there, you would discover that the talk was the talk of two or three men
seeing our girl ride by--and she did ride with a troop: why, we've
watched them along the parade, often. Clear as day how it happened! I'll
go down early to-morrow.'

He fancied Nataly was appeased. And even out of this annoyance, there was
the gain of her being won to favour Dudley's hitherto but tolerated suit.

Nataly also had the fancy, that the calm following on her anguish, was a
moderation of it. She was kept strung to confide in her girl by the
recent indebtedness to her for words heavenly in the strengthening
comfort they gave. But no sooner was she alone than her torturing
perplexities and her abasement of the hours previous to Victor's coming
returned.

For a girl of Nesta's head could not be deceived; she had come home with
a woman's intelligence of the world, hard knowledge of it--a knowledge
drawn from foul wells, the unhappy mother imagined: she dreaded to probe
to the depth of it. She had in her wounded breast the world's idea, that
corruption must come of the contact with impurity.

Nataly renewed her cry of despair: 'The mother!--the daughter!'--her sole
revelation of the heart's hollows in her stammered speaking to Victor.

She thanked heaven for the loneliness of her bed, where she could repeat:
'The mother!--the daughter!' hearing the world's words:--the daughter
excused, by reason of her having such a mother; the mother unpitied for
the bruiting of her brazen daughter's name: but both alike consigned to
the corners of the world's dust-heaps. She cried out, that her pride was
broken. Her pride, her last support of life, had gone to pieces. The
tears she restrained in Victor's presence, were called on to come now,
and she had none. It might be, that she had not strength for weeping. She
was very weak. Rising from bed to lock her door against Nesta's entry to
the room on her return at night, she could hardly stand: a chill and a
clouding overcame her. The quitted bed seemed the haven of a drifted
wreck to reach.

Victor tried the handle of a locked door in the dark of the early winter
morning. 'The mother!--the daughter!' had swung a pendulum for some time
during the night in him, too. He would rather have been subjected to the
spectacle of tears than have heard that toneless voice, as it were the
dry torrent-bed rolling blocks instead of melodious, if afflicting,
waters.

He told Nesta not to disturb her mother, and murmured of a headache:
'Though, upon my word, the best cure for mama would be a look into
Fredi's eyes!' he said, embracing his girl, quite believing in her, just
a little afraid of her.




CHAPTER XXXVIII

NATALY, NESTA, AND DARTREY FENELLAN

Pleasant things, that come to us too late for our savour of the sweetness
in them, toll ominously of life on the last walk to its end. Yesterday,
before Dudley Sowerby's visit, Nataly would have been stirred where the
tears we shed for happiness or repress at a flattery dwell when seeing
her friend Mrs. John Cormyn enter her boudoir and hearing her speak
repentantly, most tenderly. Mrs. John said: 'You will believe I have
suffered, dear; I am half my weight, I do think': and she did not set the
smile of responsive humour moving; although these two ladies had a key of
laughter between them. Nataly took her kiss; held her hand, and at the
parting kissed her. She would rather have seen her friend than not: so
far she differed from a corpse; but she was near the likeness to the dead
in the insensibility to any change of light shining on one who best loved
darkness and silence. She cried to herself wilfully, that her pride was
broken: as women do when they spurn at the wounding of a dignity they
cannot protect and die to see bleeding; for in it they live.

The cry came of her pride unbroken, sore bruised, and after a certain
space for recovery combative. She said:

Any expiation I could offer where I did injury, I would not refuse; I
would humble myself and bless heaven for being able to pay my debt--what
I can of it. All I contend against is, injustice. And she sank into
sensational protests of her anxious care of her daughter, too proud to
phrase them.

Her one great affliction, the scourging affliction of her utter
loneliness;--an outcast from her family; daily, and she knew not how,
more shut away from the man she loved; now shut away from her
girl;--seemed under the hand of the angel of God. The abandonment of her
by friends, was merely the light to show it.

Midday's post brought her a letter from Priscilla Graves, entreating to
be allowed to call on her next day.--We are not so easily cast off!
Nataly said, bitterly, in relation to the lady whose offending had not
been so great. She wrote: 'Come, if sure that you sincerely wish to.'

Having fasted, she ate at lunch in her dressing-room, with some taste of
the food, haunted by an accusation of gluttony because of her eating at
all, and a vile confession, that she was enabled to eat, owing to the
receipt of Priscilla's empty letter: for her soul's desire was to be
doing a deed of expiation, and the macerated flesh seemed her assurance
to herself of the courage to make amends.--I must have some strength, she
said wearifully, in apology for the morsel consumed.

Nesta's being in the house with her, became an excessive irritation.
Doubts of the girl's possible honesty to speak a reptile truth under
question; amazement at her boldness to speak it; hatred of, the mouth
that could: and loathing of the words, the theme; and abomination of
herself for conjuring fictitious images to rouse real emotions; all ran
counterthreads, that produced a mad pattern in the mind, affrighting to
reason: and then, for its preservation, reason took a superrational leap,
and ascribed the terrible injustice of this last cruel stroke to the
divine scourge, recognized divine by the selection of the mortal spot for
chastisement. She clasped her breast, and said: It is mortal. And that
calmed her.

She said, smiling: I never felt my sin until this blow came! Therefore
the blow was proved divine. Ought it not to be welcomed?--and she
appearing no better than one of those, the leprous of the sex! And
brought to acknowledgement of the likeness by her daughter!

Nataly drank the poison distilled from her exclamations and was ice. She
had denied herself to Nesta's redoubled petition. Nesta knocking at the
door a third time and calling, tore the mother two ways: to have her girl
on her breast or snap their union in a word with an edge. She heard the
voice of Dartrey Fenellan.

He was admitted. 'No, dear,' she said to Nesta; and Nesta's, 'My own
mother,' consentingly said, in tender resignation, as she retired, sprang
a stinging tear to the mother's eyelids.

Dartrey looked at the door closing on the girl.

'Is it a very low woman?' Nataly asked him in a Church whisper, with a
face abashed.

'It is not,' said he, quick to meet any abruptness.

'She must be cunning.'

'In the ordinary way. We say it of Puss before the hounds.'

'To deceive a girl like Nesta!'

'She has done no harm.'

'Dartrey, you speak to a mother. You have seen the woman? She is?--ah!'

'She is womanly, womanly.'

'Quite one of those . . . ?'

'My dear soul! You can't shake them off in that way. She is one of us. If
we have the class, we can't escape from it. They are not to bear all the
burden because they exist. We are the bigger debtors. I tell you she is
womanly.'

'It sounds like horrid cynicism.'

'Friends of mine would abuse it for the reverse.'

'Do not make me hate your chivalry. This woman is a rod on my back.
Provided only she has not dropped venom into Nesta's mind!'

'Don't fear!'

'Can you tell me you think she has done no harm to my girl?'

'To Nesta herself?--not any: not to a girl like your girl.'

'To my girl's name? Speak at once. But I know she has. She induced Nesta
to go to her house. My girl was insulted in this woman's house.'

Dartrey's forehead ridged with his old fury and a gust of present
contempt. 'I can tell you this, that the fellow who would think harm of
it, knowing the facts 's not worthy of touching the tips of the fingers
of your girl.'

'She is talked of!'

'A good-looking girl out riding with a handsome woman on a parade of
idlers!'

'The woman is notorious.' Nataly said it shivering.

He shook his head. 'Not true.'

'She has an air of a lady?'

'She sits a horse well.'

'Would she to any extent deceive me--impose on me here?'

'No.'

'Ah!' Nataly moaned. . . .

'But what?' said Dartrey. 'There was no pretence. Her style is not worse
than that of some we have seen. There was no effort to deceive. The
woman's plain for you and me to read, she has few of the arts; one or two
tricks, if you like: and these were not needed for use. There are women
who have them, and have not been driven or let slip into the wilderness.'

'Yes; I know!--those ideas of yours!' Nataly had once admired him for his
knightliness toward the weakest women and the women underfoot. 'You have
spoken to this woman? She boasted of acquaintance with Nesta?'

'She thanked God for having met her.'

'Is it one of the hysterical creatures?'

Mrs. Marsett appeared fronting Dartrey.

He laughed to himself. 'A clever question. There is a leaning to
excitement of manner at times. It 's not hysteria. Allow for her
position.'

Nataly took the unintended blow, and bowed to it; and still more harshly
said: 'What rank of life does the woman come from?'

'The class educated for a skittish career by your popular Stage and your
Book-stalls. I am not precise?'

'Leave Mr. Durance. Is she in any degree commonly well bred? . . .
behaviour, talk-her English.'

'I trench on Mr. Durance in replying. Her English is passable. You may
hear . . .'

'Everywhere, of course! And this woman of slipshod English and excited
manners imposed upon Nesta!'

'It would not be my opinion.'

'Did not impose on her!'

'Not many would impose on Nesta Radnor for long.'

'Think what that says, Dartrey!'

'You have had a detestable version of the story.'

'Because an excited creature thanks God to you for having met her!'

'She may. She's a better woman for having met her. Don't suppose we're
for supernatural conversions. The woman makes no show of that. But she
has found a good soul among her sex--her better self in youth, as one
guesses; and she is grateful--feels farther from exile in consequence.
She has found a lady to take her by the hand!--not a common case. She can
never go to the utterly bad after knowing Nesta. I forget if she says it;
I say it. You have heard the story from one of your conventional
gentlemen.'

'A true gentleman. I have reason to thank him. He has not your ideas on
these matters, Dartrey. He is very sensitive . . . on Nesta's behalf.'

'With reference to marriage. I'll own I prefer another kind of gentleman.
I 've had my experience of that kind of gentleman. Many of the kind have
added their spot to the outcasts abominated for uncleanness--in holy
unction. Many?--I won't say all; but men who consent to hear black words
pitched at them, and help to set good women facing away from them, are
pious dolts or rascal dogs of hypocrites. They, if you'll let me quote
Colney Durance to you to-day--and how is it he is not in favour?--they
are tempting the Lord to turn the pillars of Society into pillars of
salt. Down comes the house. And priests can rest in sight of it!--They
ought to be dead against the sanctimony that believes it excommunicates
when it curses. The relationship is not dissolved so cheaply, though our
Society affects to think it is. Barmby's off to the East End of this
London, Victor informs me:--good fellow! And there he'll be groaning over
our vicious nature. Nature is not more responsible for vice than she is
for inhumanity. Both bad, but the latter's the worse of the two.'

Nataly interposed: 'I see the contrast, and see whom it's to strike.'

Dartrey sent a thought after his meaning. 'Hardly that. Let it stand. He
's only one with the world: but he shares the criminal infamy for
crushing hope out of its frailest victims. They're that--no sentiment.
What a world, too, look behind it!--brutal because brutish. The world may
go hang: we expect more of your gentleman. To hear of Nesta down there,
and doubt that she was about good work; and come complaining! He had the
privilege of speaking to her, remonstrating, if he wished. There are men
who think--men!--the plucking of sinners out of the mire a dirty
business. They depute it to certain officials. And your women--it's the
taste of the world to have them educated so, that they can as little take
the humane as the enlightened view. Except, by the way, sometimes, in
secret;--they have a sisterly breast. In secret, they do occasionally
think as they feel. In public, the brass mask of the Idol they call
Propriety commands or supplies their feelings and thoughts. I won't
repeat my reasons for educating them differently. At present we have but
half the woman to go through life with--and thank you.'

Dartrey stopped. 'Don't be disturbed,' he added. 'There's no ground for
alarm. Not of any sort.'

Nataly said: 'What name?'

'Her name is Mrs. Marsett.'

'The name is . . . ?'

'Captain Marsett: will be Sir Edward. He came back from the Continent
yesterday.'

A fit of shuddering seized Nataly. It grew in violence, and speaking out
of it, with a pause of sickly empty chatter of the jaws, she said:
'Always that name?'

'Before the maiden name? May have been or not.'

'Not, you say?'

'I don't accurately know.'

Dartrey sprang to his legs. 'My dear soul! dear friend--one of the best!
if we go on fencing in the dark, there'll be wounds. Your way of taking
this affair disappointed me. Now I understand. It's the disease of a
trouble, to fly at comparisons. No real one exists. I wished to protect
the woman from a happier sister's judgement, to save you from alarm
concerning Nesta:--quite groundless, if you'll believe me. Come, there's
plenty of benevolent writing abroad on these topics now: facts are more
looked at, and a good woman may join us in taking them without the
horrors and loathings of angels rather too much given to claim
distinction from the luckless. A girl who's unprotected may go through
adventures before she fixes, and be a creature of honest intentions.
Better if protected, we all agree. Better also if the world did not
favour the girl's multitude of enemies. Your system of not dealing with
facts openly is everyway favourable to them. I am glad to say, Victor
recognizes what corruption that spread of wealth is accountable for. And
now I must go and have a talk with the--what a change from the blue
butterfly! Eaglet, I ought to have said. I dine with you, for Victor may
bring news.'

'Would anything down there be news to you, Dartrey?'

'He makes it wherever he steps.'

'He would reproach me for not detaining you. Tell Nesta I have to lie
down after talking. She has a child's confidence in you.'

A man of middle age! he said to himself. It is the particular ejaculation
which tames the senior whose heart is for a dash of holiday. He resolved,
that the mother might trust to the discretion of a man of his age; and he
went down to Nesta, grave with the weight his count of years should give
him. Seeing her, the light of what he now knew of her was an ennobling
equal to celestial. For this fair girl was one of the active souls of the
world--his dream to discover in woman's form. She, the little Nesta, the
tall pure-eyed girl before him, was, young though she was, already in the
fight with evil: a volunteer of the army of the simply Christian. The
worse for it? Sowerby would think so. She was not of the order of young
women who, in sheer ignorance or in voluntary, consent to the peace with
evil, and are kept externally safe from the smirch of evil, and are the
ornaments of their country, glory of a country prizing ornaments higher
than qualities.

Dartrey could have been momentarily incredulous of things revealed by
Mrs. Marsett--not incredulous of the girl's heroism: that capacity he
caught and gauged in her shape of head, cut of mouth, and the
measurements he was accustomed to make at a glance:--but her beauty, or
the form of beauty which was hers, argued against her having set foot of
thought in our fens. Here and far there we meet a young saint vowed to
service along by those dismal swamps: and saintly she looks; not of this
earth. Nesta was of the blooming earth. Where do we meet girl or woman
comparable to garden-flowers, who can dare to touch to lift the spotted
of her sex? He was puzzled by Nesta's unlikeness in deeds and in aspect.
He remembered her eyes, on the day when he and Colonel Sudley beheld her;
presently he was at quiet grapple with her mind. His doubts cleared off.
Then the question came, How could a girl of heroical character be
attached to the man Sowerby? That entirely passed belief.

And was it possible his wishes beguiled his hearing? Her tones were
singularly vibrating.

They talked for a while before, drawing a deep breath, she said: 'I fancy
I am in disgrace with my mother.'

'You have a suspicion why?' said he.

'I have.'

She would have told him why: the words were at her lips. Previous to her
emotion on the journey home, the words would have come out. They were
arrested by the thunder of the knowledge, that the nobleness in him
drawing her to be able to speak of scarlet matter, was personally
worshipped.

He attributed the full rose upon her cheeks to the forbidding subject.

To spare pain, he said: 'No misunderstanding with the dear mother will
last the day through. Can I help?'

'Oh, Captain Dartrey!'

'Drop the captain. Dartrey will do.'

'How could I!'

'You're not wanting in courage, Nesta.'

'Hardly for that!'

'By-and-by, then.'

'Though I could not say Mr. Fenellan.'

'You see; Dartrey, it must be.'

'If I could!'

'But the fellow is not a captain: and he is a friend, an old friend, very
old friend: he'll be tipped with grey in a year or two.'

'I might be bolder then.'

'Imagine it now. There is no disloyalty in your calling your friends by
their names.'

Her nature rang to the implication. 'I am not bound.' Dartrey hung fast,
speculating on her visibly: 'I heard you were?'

'No. I must be free.'

'It is not an engagement?'

'Will you laugh?--I have never quite known. My father desired it: and my
desire is to please him. I think I am vain enough to think I read through
blinds and shutters. The engagement--what there was--has been, to my
reading, broken more than once. I have not considered it, to settle my
thoughts on it, until lately: and now I may suspect it to be broken. I
have given cause--if it is known. There is no blame elsewhere. I am not
unhappy, Captain Dartrey.'

'Captain by courtesy. Very well. Tell me how Nesta judges the engagement
to be broken?'

She was mentally phrasing before she said: 'Absence.'

'He was here yesterday.'

All that the visit embraced was in her expressive look, as of sight
drawing inward, like our breath in a spell of wonderment. 'Then I
understand; it enlightens me.

My own mother!--my poor mother! he should have come to me. I was the
guilty person, not she; and she is the sufferer. That, if in life were
direct retribution! but the very meaning of having a heart, is to suffer
through others or for them.'

'You have soon seen that, dear girl,' said Dartrey.

'So, my own mother, and loving me as she does, blames me!' Nesta sighed;
she took a sharp breath. 'You? do you blame me too?'

He pressed her hand, enamoured of her instantaneous divination and
heavenly candour.

But he was admonished, that to speak high approval would not be
honourable advantage taken of the rival condemning; and he said: 'Blame?
Some think it is not always the right thing to do the right thing. I've
made mistakes, with no bad design. A good mother's view is not often
wrong.'

'You pressed my hand,' she murmured.

That certainly had said more.

'Glad to again,' he responded. It was uttered airily and was meant to be
as lightly done.

Nesta did not draw back her hand. 'I feel strong when you press it.' Her
voice wavered, and as when we hear a flask sing thin at the filling,
ceased upon evidence of a heart surcharged. How was he to relax the
pressure!--he had to give her the strength she craved: and he vowed it
should be but for half a minute, half a minute longer.

Her tears fell; she eyed him steadily; she had the look of sunlight in
shower.

'Oldish men are the best friends for you, I suppose,' he said; and her
gaze turned elusive phrases to vapour.

He was compelled to see the fiery core of the raincloud lighting it for a
revealment, that allowed as little as it retained of a shadow of
obscurity.

The sight was keener than touch and the run of blood with blood to
quicken slumbering seeds of passion.

But here is the place of broken ground and tangle, which calls to
honourable men, not bent on sport, to be wary to guard the gunlock. He
stopped the word at his mouth. It was not in him to stop or moderate the
force of his eyes. She met them with the slender unbendingness that was
her own; a feminine of inspirited manhood. There was no soft expression,
only the direct shot of light, on both sides; conveying as much as is
borne from sun to earth, from earth to sun. And when such an exchange has
come between the two, they are past plighting, they are the wedded one.

Nesta felt it, without asking whether she was loved. She was his. She had
not a thought of the word of love or the being beloved. Showers of
painful blissfulness went through her, as the tremours of a shocked
frame, while she sat quietly, showing scarce a sign; and after he had let
her hand go, she had the pressure on it. The quivering intense of the
moment of his eyes and grasp was lord of her, lord of the day and of all
days coming. That is how Love slays Death. Never did girl so give her
soul.

She would have been the last to yield it unreservedly to a man untrusted
for the character she worshipped. But she could have given it to Dartrey,
despite his love of another, because it was her soul, without any of the
cravings, except to bestow.

He perceived, that he had been carried on for the number of steps which
are countless miles and do not permit the retreat across the desert
behind; and he was in some amazement at himself, remindful of the
different nature of our restraining power when we have a couple playing
on it. Yet here was this girl, who called him up to the heights of young
life again: and a brave girl; and she bled for the weak, had no shrinking
from the women underfoot: for the reason, that she was a girl sovereignly
pure, angelically tender. Was there a point of honour to hold him back?

Nataly entered the room. She kissed Nesta, and sat silent.

'Mother, will you speak of me to him, if I go out?' Nesta said.

'We have spoken,' her mother replied, vexed by the unmaidenly allusion to
that theme.

She would have asked, How did you guess I knew of it?--but that the, Why
should I speak of you to him? struck the louder note in her bosom: and
then, What is there that this girl cannot guess!--filled the mother's
heart with apprehensive dread: and an inward cry, What things will she
not set going, to have them discussed. And the appalling theme, sitting
offensive though draped in their midst, was taken for a proof of the
girl's unblushingness. After standing as one woman against the world so
long, Nataly was relieved to be on the side of a world now convictedly
unjust to her in the confounding of her with the shameless. Her mind had
taken the brand of that thought:--And Nesta had brought her to it:--And
Dudley Sowerby, a generous representative of the world, had kindly,
having the deputed power to do so, sustained her, only partially blaming
Nesta, not casting them off; as the world, with which Nataly felt, under
a sense of the protection calling up all her gratitude to young Dudley,
would have approved his doing.

She was passing through a fit of the cowardice peculiar to the tediously
strained, who are being more than commonly tried--persecuted, as they say
when they are not supplicating their tyrannical Authority for aid. The
world will continue to be indifferent to their view of it and behaviour
toward it until it ceases to encourage the growth of hypocrites.

These are moments when the faces we are observing drop their charm,
showing us our perversion internal, if we could but reflect, to see it.
Very many thousand times above Dudley Sowerby, Nataly ranked Dartrey
Fenellan; and still she looked at him, where he sat beside Nesta,
ungenially, critical of the very features, jealously in the interests of
Dudley; and recollecting, too, that she had once prayed for one exactly
resembling Dartrey Fenellan to be her Nesta's husband. But, as she would
have said, that was before the indiscretion of her girl had shown her to
require for her husband a man whose character and station guaranteed
protection instead of inciting to rebellion. And Dartrey, the loved and
prized, was often in the rebel ranks; he was dissatisfied with matters as
they are; was restless for action, angry with a country denying it to
him; he made enemies, he would surely bring down inquiries about Nesta's
head, and cause the forgotten or quiescent to be stirred; he would
scarcely be the needed hand for such a quiver of the lightnings as Nesta
was.

Dartrey read Nataly's brows. This unwonted uncomeliness of hers was an
indication to one or other of our dusky pits, not a revealing.




CHAPTER XXXIX

A CHAPTER IN THE SHADOW OF MRS. MARSETT

He read her more closely when Arlington brought in the brown paper
envelope of the wires--to which the mate of Victor ought to have become
accustomed. She took it; her eyelids closed, and her features were driven
to whiteness. 'Only these telegrams,' she said, in apology.

'Lakelands on fire?' Dartrey murmured to Nesta; and she answered: 'I
should not be sorry.'

Nataly coldly asked her why she would not be sorry.

Dartrey interposed: 'I'm sure she thinks Lakelands worries her mother.'

'That ranks low among the worries,' Nataly sighed, opening the envelope.

Nesta touched her arm: 'Mother! even before Captain Dartrey, if you will
let me!'--she turned to him: 'before . . .' at the end of her breath she
said: 'Dartrey Fenellan. You shall see my whole heart, mother.'

Her mother looked from her at him.

'Victor returns by the last train.  He telegraphs, that he dines with--'
She handed the paper to Dartrey.

'Marsett,' he read aloud; and she flushed; she was angry with him for not
knowing, that the name was a term of opprobrium flung at her.

'It's to tell you he has done what he thought good,' said Dartrey. 'In
other words, as I interpret, he has completed his daughter's work. So we
won't talk about it till he comes. You have no company this evening?'

'Oh! there is a pause to-night! It's nearly as unceasing as your brother
Simeon's old French lady in the ronde with her young bridegroom, till
they danced her to pieces. I do get now and then an hour's repose,'
Nataly added, with a vision springing up of the person to whom the story
had applied.

'My dear, you are a good girl to call me Dartrey,' the owner of the name
said to Nesta.

Nataly saw them both alert, in the terrible manner peculiar to both, for
the directest of the bare statements. She could have protested, that her
love of truth was on an equality with theirs; and certainly, that her
regard for decency was livelier. Pass the deficiency in a man. But a girl
who could speak, by allusion, of Mrs. Marsett--of the existence of a Mrs.
Marsett--in the presence of a man: and he excusing, encouraging: and this
girl her own girl;--it seemed to her, that the world reeled; she could
hardly acknowledge the girl; save under the penitential admission of her
sin's having found her out.

She sent Nesta to her room when they went upstairs to dress, unable to
endure her presence after seeing her show a placid satisfaction at
Dartrey's nod to the request for him to sleep in the house that night. It
was not at all a gleam of pleasure, hardly an expression; it was a manner
of saying, One drop more in my cup of good fortune! an absurd and an
offensive exhibition of silly optimism of the young, blind that they are!

For were it known, and surely the happening of it would be known, that
Dudley Sowerby had shaken off the Nesta of no name, who was the
abominable Mrs. Marsett's friend, a whirlwind with a trumpet would sweep
them into the wilderness on a blast frightfuller than any ever heard.

Nataly had a fit of weeping for want of the girl's embrace, against whom
her door was jealously locked. She hoped those two would talk much, madly
if they liked, during dinner, that she might not be sensible, through any
short silence, of the ardour animating them: especially glowing in Nesta,
ready behind her quiet mask to come brazenly forth. But both of them were
mercilessly ardent; and a sickness of the fear, that they might fall on
her to capture her and hurry her along with them perforce of the allayed,
once fatal, inflammable element in herself, shook the warmth from her
limbs: causing her to say to herself aloud in a ragged hoarseness, very
strangely: Every thought of mine now has a physical effect on me!

They had not been two minutes together when she descended to them. Yet
she saw the girl's heart brimming, either with some word spoken to her or
for joy of an unmaidenly confession. During dinner they talked, without
distressful pauses. Whatever said, whatever done, was manifestly another
drop in Nesta's foolish happy cup. Could it be all because Dartrey
Fenellan countenanced her acquaintance with that woman? The mother had
lost hold of her. The tortured mother had lost hold of herself.

Dartrey in the course of the evening, begged to hear the contralto; and
Nataly, refusing, was astounded by the admission in her blank mind of the
truth of man's list of charges against her sex, starting from their
capriciousness for she could have sung in a crowded room, and she had now
a desire for company, for stolid company or giddy, an ocean of it. This
led to her thinking, that the world of serious money-getters, and feasts,
and the dance, the luxurious displays, and the reverential Sunday
service, will always ultimately prove itself right in opposition to
critics and rebels, and to any one vainly trying to stand alone: and the
thought annihilated her; for she was past the age of the beginning again,
and no footing was left for an outsider not self-justified in being where
she stood. She heard Dartrey's praise of Nesta's voice for tearing her
mother's bosom with notes of intolerable sweetness; and it was haphazard
irony, no doubt; we do not the less bleed for the accident of a shot.

At last, after midnight Victor arrived.

Nesta most impudently expected to be allowed to remain. 'Pray, go, dear,'
her mother said. Victor kissed his Fredi. 'Some time to-morrow,' said he;
and she forbore to beseech him.

He stared, though mildly, at sight of her taking Dartrey's hand for the
good-night and deliberately putting her lips to it.

Was she a girl whose notion of rectifying one wrong thing done, was to do
another? Nataly could merely observe. A voice pertaining to no one
present, said in her ear:--Mothers have publicly slapped their daughter's
faces for less than that!--It was the voice of her incapacity to cope
with the girl. She watched Nesta's passage from the room, somewhat
affected by the simple bearing for which she was reproaching her.

'And our poor darling has not seen a mountain this year!' Victor
exclaimed, to have mentionable grounds for pitying his girl. 'I promised
Fredi she should never count a year without Highlands or Alps. You
remember, mama?--down in the West Highlands. Fancy the dear bit of
bundle, Dartrey!--we had laid her in her bed; she was about seven or
eight; and there she lay wide awake. "What 's Fredi thinking of?"--"I'm
thinking of the tops of the mountains at night, dada."--She could climb
them now; she has the legs.'

Nataly said: 'You have some report to make. You dined with those people?'

'The Marsetts: yes:--well-suited couple enough. It's to happen before
Winter ends--at once; before Christmas; positively before next Spring.
Fredi's doing! He has to manage, arrange.--She's a good-looking woman,
good height, well-rounded; well-behaved, too: she won't make a bad Lady
Marsett. Every time that woman spoke of our girl, the tears jumped to her
eyelids.'

'Come to me before you go to bed,' Nataly said, rising, her voice
foundering; 'Good-night, Dartrey.'

She turned to the door; she could not trust herself to shake hands with
composure. Not only was it a nauseous mixture she was forced to gulp from
Victor, it burned like a poison.

'Really Fredi's doing--chiefly,' said Victor, as soon as Dartrey and he
were alone, comfortably settled in the smoking-room. 'I played the man of
pomp with Marsett--good heavy kind of creature: attached to the woman.
She's the better horse, as far as brains go. Good enough Lady Marsett. I
harped on Major Worrell: my daughter insulted. He knew of it--spoke of
you properly. The man offered all apologies; he has told the Major he is
no gentleman, not a fit associate for gentlemen:--quite so--and has cut
him dead. Will marry her, as I said, make her as worthy as he can of the
honour of my daughter's acquaintance. Rather comical grimace, when he
vowed he'd fasten the tie. He doesn't like marriage. But, he can't give
her up. And she's for patronizing the institution. But she is ready to
say good-bye to him "rather than see the truest lady in the world
insulted"--her words. And so he swallows his dose for health, and looks a
trifle sourish. Antecedents, I suppose: has to stomach them. But if a
man's fond of a woman--if he knows he saves her from slipping lower--and
it's an awful world, for us to let a woman be under its wheels:--I say, a
woman who has a man to lean on, unless she's as downright corrupt as two
or three of the men we've known:--upon my word, Dartrey, I come round to
some of your ideas on these matters. It's this girl of mine, this wee bit
of girl in her little nightshirt with the frill, astonishes me
most:--"thinking of the tops of the mountains at night!" She has
positively done the whole of this work-main part. I smiled when I left
the house, to have to own our little Fredi starting us all on the road.
It seems, Marsett had sworn he would; amorous vow, you know; he never
came nearer to doing it. I hope it's his better mind now; I do hope the
man won't have cause to regret it. He speaks of Nesta--sort of rustic
tone of awe. Mrs. Marsett has impressed him. He expects the title soon,
will leave the army--the poor plucked British army, as you call it!--and
lead the life of a country squire: hunting! Well, it's not only the army,
it's over Great Britain, with this infernal wealth of ours!--and all for
pleasure--eh?--or Paradise lost for a sugar plum! Eh, Dartrey? Upon my
word, it appears to me, Esau's the Englishman, Jacob the German, of these
times. I wonder old Colney hasn't said it. If we're not plucked, as your
regiments are of the officers who have learnt their work, we're
emasculated:--the nation's half made-up of the idle and the servants of
the idle.'

'Ay, and your country squires and your manufacturers contrive to give the
army a body of consumptive louts fit for nothing else than to take the
shilling--and not worth it,' said Dartrey.

'Sounds like old Colney,' Victor remarked to himself. 'But, believe me,
I'm ashamed of the number of servants who wait on me. It wouldn't so much
matter, as Skepsey says, if they were trained to arms and self-respect.
That little fellow Skepsey's closer to the right notion, and the right
practice, too, than any of us. With his Matilda Pridden! He has jumped
out of himself to the proper idea of women, too. And there's a man who
has been up three times before the magistrates, and is considered a
disorderly subject--one among the best of English citizens, I declare! I
never think of Skepsey without the most extraordinary, witless kind of
envy--as if he were putting in action an idea I once had and never quite
got hold of again. The match for him is Fredi. She threatens to be just
as devoted, just as simple, as he. I positively doubt whether any of us
could stop her, if she had set herself to do a thing she thought right.'

'I should not like to think our trying it possible,' said Dartrey.

'All very well, but it's a rock ahead. We shall have to alter our course,
my friend. You know, I dined with that couple, after the private twenty
minutes with Marsett: he formally propounded the invitation, as we were
close on his hour, rather late: and I wanted to make the woman happy,
besides putting a seal of cordiality on his good intentions--politic! And
subsequently I heard from her, that--you'll think nothing of it!--Fredi
promised to stand by her at the altar.'

Dartrey said, shrugging: 'She needn't do that.'

'So we may say. You're dealing with Nesta Victoria. Spare me a contest
with that girl, I undertake to manage any man or woman living.'

'When the thing to be done is thought right by her.'

'But can we always trust her judgement, my dear Dartrey?'

'In this case, she would argue, that her resolution to keep her promise
would bind or help to bind Marsett to fulfil his engagement.'

'Odd, her mother has turned dead round in favour of that fellow Dudley
Sowerby! I don't complain; it suits; but one thinks--eh?--women!'

'Well, yes, one thinks or should think, that if you insist on having
women rooted to the bed of the river, they'll veer with the tides, like
water-weeds, and no wonder.'

'Your heterodoxy on that subject is a mania, Dartrey. We can't have women
independent.'

'Then don't be exclaiming about their vagaries.'

Victor mused: 'It's wonderful: that little girl of mine!--good height
now: but what a head she has! Oh, she'll listen to reason: only mark what
I say:--with that quiet air of hers, the husband, if a young fellow, will
imagine she's the most docile of wives in the world. And as to wife, I'm
not of the contrary opinion. But qua individual female, supposing her to
have laid fast hold of an idea of duty, it's he who'll have to turn the
corner second, if they're to trot in the yoke together. Or it may be an
idea of service to a friend--or to her sex! That Mrs. Marsett says she
feels for--"bleeds" for her sex. The poor woman didn't show to advantage
with me, because she was in a fever to please:--talks in jerks, hot
phrases. She holds herself well. At the end of the dinner she behaved
better. Odd, you can teach women with hints and a lead. But Marsett 's
Marsett to the end. Rather touching!--the poor fellow said: Deuce of a
bad look-out for me if Judith doesn't have a child! First-rate sportsman,
I hear. He should have thought of his family earlier. You know, Dartrey,
the case is to be argued for the family as well. You won't listen. And
for Society too! Off you go.'

A battery was opened on that wall of composite.

'Ah, well,' said Victor. 'But I may have to beg your help, as to the
so-called promise to stand at the altar. I don't mention it upstairs.'

He went to Nataly's room.

She was considerately treated, and was aware of being dandled, that she
might have sleep.

She consented to it, in a loathing of the topic.--Those women invade
us--we cannot keep them out! was her inward cry: with a reverberation of
the unfailing accompaniment: The world holds you for one of them!

Victor tasked her too much when his perpetual readiness to doat upon his
girl for whatever she did, set him exalting Nesta's conduct. She thought:
Was Nesta so sympathetic with her mother of late by reason of a moral
insensibility to the offence?

This was her torture through the night of a labouring heart, that
travelled to one dull shock, again and again repeated:--the apprehended
sound, in fact, of Dudley Sowerby's knock at the street door. Or
sometimes a footman handed her his letter, courteously phrased to
withdraw from the alliance. Or else he came to a scene with Nesta, and
her mother was dragged into it, and the intolerable subject steamed about
her. The girl was visioned as deadly. She might be indifferent to the
protection of Dudley's name. Robust, sanguine, Victor's child, she
might--her mother listened to a devil's whisper--but no; Nesta's aim was
at the heights; she was pure in mind as in body. No, but the world would
bring the accusation; and the world would trace the cause: Heredity, it
would say. Would it say falsely? Nataly harped on the interrogation until
she felt her existence dissolving to a dark stain of the earth, and she
found herself wondering at the breath she drew, doubting that another
would follow, speculating on the cruel force which keeps us to the act of
breathing.--Though I could draw wild blissful breath if I were galloping
across the moors! her worn heart said to her youth: and out of ken of the
world, I could regain a portion of my self-esteem. Nature thereat renewed
her old sustainment with gentle murmurs, that were supported by Dr.
Themison's account of the virtuous married lady who chafed at the yoke on
behalf of her sex, and deemed the independent union the ideal. Nataly's
brain had a short gallop over moorland. It brought her face to face with
Victor's girl, and she dropped once more to her remorse in herself and
her reproaches of Nesta. The girl had inherited from her father something
of the cataract's force which won its way by catching or by mastering,
uprooting, ruining!

In the morning she was heavily asleep. Victor left word with Nesta, that
the dear mother was not to be disturbed. Consequently, when Dudley called
to see Mrs. Victor Radnor, he was informed that Miss Radnor would receive
him.

Their interview lasted an hour.

Dudley came to Victor in the City about luncheon time.

His perplexity of countenance was eloquent. He had, before seeing the
young lady, digested an immense deal more, as it seemed to him, than any
English gentleman should be asked to consume. She now referred him to her
father, who had spent a day in Brighton, and would, she said, explain
whatever there was to be explained. But she added, that if she was
expected to abandon a friend, she could not. Dudley had argued with her
upon the nature of friendship, the measurement of its various dues; he
had lectured on the choice of friends, the impossibility for young
ladies, necessarily inexperienced, to distinguish the right class of
friends, the dangers they ran in selecting friends unwarranted by the
stamp of honourable families.

'And what did Fredi say to that?' Victor inquired.

'Miss Radnor said--I may be dense, I cannot comprehend--that the precepts
were suitable for seminaries of Pharisees. When it is a question of a
young lady associating with a notorious woman!'

'Not notorious. You spoil your case if you "speak extremely," as a friend
says. I saw her yesterday. She worships "Miss Radnor."'

Nesta will know when she is older; she will thank me,' said Dudley
hurriedly. 'As it is at present, I may reckon, I hope, that the
association ceases. Her name: I have to consider my family.'

'Good anchorage! You must fight it out with the girl. And depend upon
this--you're not the poorer for being the husband of a girl of character;
unless you try to bridle her. She belongs to her time. I don't mind
owning to you, she has given me a lead.--Fredi 'll be merry to-night.
Here's a letter I have from the Sanfredini, dated Milan, fresh this
morning; invitation to bring the god-child to her villa on Como in May;
desirous to embrace her. She wrote to the office. Not a word of her
duque. She has pitched him to the winds. You may like to carry it off to
Fredi and please her.'

'I have business,' Dudley replied.

'Away to it, then!' said Victor. 'You stand by me?--we expect our South
London borough to be open in January; early next year, at least; may be
February. You have family interest there.'

'Personally, I will do my best,' Dudley said; and he escaped, feeling,
with the universal censor's angry spite, that the revolutions of the
world had made one of the wealthiest of City men the head of a set of
Bohemians. And there are eulogists of the modern time! And the man's
daughter was declared to belong to it! A visit in May to the Italian
cantatrice separated from her husband, would render the maiden an
accomplished flinger of caps over the windmills.

At home Victor discovered, that there was not much more than a truce
between Nesta and Nataly. He had a medical hint from Dr. Themison, and he
counselled his girl to humour her mother as far as could be: particularly
in relation to Dudley, whom Nataly now, womanlike, after opposing,
strongly favoured. How are we ever to get a clue to the labyrinthine
convolutions and changeful motives of the sex! Dartrey's theories were
absurd. Did Nataly think them dangerous for a young woman? The guess
hinted at a clue of some sort to the secret of her veering.

'Mr. Sowerby left me with an adieu,' said Nesta.

'Mr. Sowerby! My dear, he is bound, bound in honour, bound at heart. You
did not dismiss him?'

'I repeated the word he used. I thought of mother. The blood leaves her
cheeks at a disappointment now. She has taken to like him.'

'Why, you like him!'

'I could not vow.'

'Tush.'

'Ah, don't press me, dada. But you will see, he has disengaged himself.'

He had done it, though not in formal speech. Slow digestion of his native
antagonism to these Bohemians, to say nothing of his judicial
condemnation of them, brought him painfully round to the writing of a
letter to Nataly; cunningly addressed to the person on whom his instinct
told him he had the strongest hold.

She schooled herself to discuss the detested matter forming Dudley's
grievance and her own with Nesta; and it was a woeful half-hour for them.
But Nataly was not the weeper.

Another interview ensued between Nesta and her suitor. Dudley bore no
resemblance to Mr. Barmby, who refused to take the word no from her, and
had taken it, and had gone to do holy work, for which she revered him.
Dudley took the word, leaving her to imagine freedom, until once more her
mother or her father, inspired by him, came interceding, her mother
actually supplicating. So that the reality of Dudley's love rose to
conception like a London dawn over Nesta; and how, honourably, decently,
positively, to sever herself from it, grew to be an ill-visaged problem.
She glanced in soul at Dartrey Fenellan for help; she had her wild
thoughts. Having once called him Dartrey, the virginal barrier to
thoughts was broken; and but for love of her father, for love and pity of
her mother, she would have ventured the step to make the man who had her
whole being in charge accept or reject her. Nothing else appeared in
prospect. Her father and mother were urgently one to favour Dudley; and
the sensitive gentleman presented himself to receive his wound and to
depart with it. But always he returned. At last, as if under tuition, he
refrained from provoking a wound; he stood there to win her upon any
terms; and he was a handsome figure, acknowledged by the damsel to be
increasing in good looks as more and more his pretensions became
distasteful to her. The slight cast of sourness on his lower features had
almost vanished, his nature seemed to have enlarged. He complimented her
for her 'generous benevolence,' vaguely, yet with evident sincereness; he
admitted, that the modern world is 'attempting difficulties with at least
commendable intentions'; and that the position of women demands
improvement, consideration for them also. He said feelingly: 'They have
to bear extraordinary burdens!' There he stopped.

The sharp intelligence fronting him understood, that this compassionate
ejaculation was the point where she, too, must cry halt. He had,
however--still under tuition, perhaps--withdrawn his voice from the
pursuit of her; and so she in gratitude silenced her critical mind
beneath a smooth conceit of her having led him two steps to a broader
tolerance. Susceptible as she was, she did not influence him without
being affected herself in other things than her vanity: his prudishness
affected her. Only when her heart flamed did she disdain that real haven
of refuge, with its visionary mount of superiority, offered by Society to
its effect, in the habit of ignoring the sins it fosters under
cloak;--not less than did the naked barbaric time, and far more to the
vitiation of the soul. He fancied he was moulding her; therefore winning
her. It followed, that he had the lover's desire for assurance of
exclusive possession; and reflecting, that he had greatly pardoned, he
grew exacting. He mentioned his objections to some of Mr. Dartrey
Fenellan's ideas.

Nesta replied: 'I have this morning had two letters to make me happy.'

A provoking evasion. He would rather have seen antagonism bridle and
stiffen her figure. 'Is one of them from that gentleman?'

'One is from my dear friend Louise de Seilles. She comes to me early next
month.'

'The other?'

'The other is also from a friend.'

'A dear friend?'

'Not so dear. Her letter gives me happiness.'

'She writes--not from France: from . . .? you tempt me to guess.'

'She writes to tell me, that Mr. Dartrey Fenellan has helped her in a way
to make her eternally thankful.'

'The place she writes from is . . . ?'

The drag of his lips betrayed his enlightenment insisted on doubting. He
demanded assurance.

'It matters in no degree,' she said.

Dudley 'thought himself excusable for inquiring.'

She bowed gently.

The stings and scorpions and degrading itches of this nest of wealthy
Bohemians enraged him.

'Are you--I beg to ask--are you still:--I can hardly think it--Nesta!--I
surely have a claim to advise:--it cannot be with your mother's
consent:--in communication, in correspondence with . . . ?'

Again she bowed her head; saying: 'It is true.'

'With that person?'

He could not but look the withering disgust of the modern world in a
conservative gentleman who has been lured to go with it a little way,
only to be bitten. 'I decline to believe it,' he said with forcible
sound.

'She is married,' was the rather shameless, exasperating answer.

'Married or not!' he cried, and murmured: 'I have borne--. These may be
Mr. Dartrey Fenellan's ideas; they are not mine. I have--Something at
least is due to me: Ask any lady:--there are clergymen, I know, clergymen
who are for uplifting--quite right, but not associating:--to call one of
them a friend! Ask any lady, any! Your mother . . .'

'I beg you will not distress my mother,' said Nesta.

'I beg to know whether this correspondence is to continue?' said Dudley.

'All my life, if I do not feel dishonoured by it.'

'You are.' He added hastily: 'Counsels of prudence--there is not a lady
living who would tell you otherwise. At all events, in public opinion, if
it were known--and it would certainly be known,--a lady, wife or
spinster, would suffer--would not escape the--at least shadow of
defilement from relationship, any degree of intimacy with . . . hard
words are wholesome in such a case: "touch pitch," yes! My sense is
coherent.'

'Quite,' said Nesta.

'And you do not agree with me?'

'I do not.'

'Do you pretend to be as able to judge as I?'

'In this instance, better.'

'Then I retire. I cannot retain my place here. You may depend upon it,
the world is not wrong when it forbids young ladies to have cognizance of
women leading disorderly lives.'

'Only the women, Mr. Sowerby?'

'Men, too, of course.'

'You do not exclude the men from Society.'

'Oh! one reads that kind of argument in books.'

'Oh! the worthy books, then. I would read them, if I could find them.'

'They are banned by self-respecting readers.'

'It grieves me to think differently.'

Dudley looked on this fair girl, as yet innocent girl; and contrasting
her with the foulness of the subject she dared discuss, it seemed to him,
that a world which did not puff at her and silence, if not extinguish,
was in a state of liquefaction.

Remembering his renewed repentances his absence, he said: 'I do hope you
may come to see, that the views shared by your mother and me are not
erroneous.'

'But do not distress her,' Nesta implored him. 'She is not well. When she
has grown stronger, her kind heart will move her to receive the lady, so
that she may not be deprived of the society of good women. I shall hope
she will not disapprove of me. I cannot forsake a friend.'

'I beg to say good-bye,' said Dudley.

She had seen a rigidity smite him as she spoke; and so little startling
was it, that she might have fancied it expected, save for her knowing
herself too serious to have played at wiles to gain her ends.

He 'wished her prudent advisers.'

She thanked him. 'In a few days, Louise de Seilles will be here.'

A Frenchwoman and Papist! was the interjection of his twist of brows.

Surely I must now be free? she thought when he had covered his farewell
under a salutation regretful in frostiness.

A week later, she had the embrace of her Louise, and Armandine was made
happy with a piece of Parisian riband.

Winter was rapidly in passage: changes were visible everywhere; Earth and
House of Commons and the South London borough exhibited them; Mrs. Burman
was the sole exception. To the stupefaction of physicians, in a manner to
make a sane man ask whether she was not being retained as an instrument
for one of the darker purposes of Providence--and where are we standing
if we ask such things?--she held on to her thread of life.

February went by. And not a word from Themison; nor from Carling, nor
from the Rev. Groseman Buttermore, nor from Jarniman. That is to say, the
two former accepted invitations to grand dinners; the two latter
acknowledged contributions to funds in which they were interested; but
they had apparently grown to consider Mrs. Burman as an establishment,
one of our fixtures. On the other hand, there was nothing to be feared
from her. Lakelands feared nothing: the entry into Lakelands was decreed
for the middle of April. Those good creatures enclosed the poor woman and
nourished her on comfortable fiction. So the death of the member for the
South London borough (fifteen years younger than the veteran in maladies)
was not to be called premature, and could by no possibility lead to an
exposure of the private history of the candidate for his vacant seat.




CHAPTER XL

AN EXPIATION

Nataly had fallen to be one of the solitary who have no companionship
save with the wound they nurse, to chafe it rather than try at healing.
So rational a mind as she had was not long in outliving mistaken
impressions; she could distinguish her girl's feeling, and her aim; she
could speak on the subject with Dartrey; and still her wound bled on.
Louise de Seilles comforted her partly, through an exaltation of Nesta.
Mademoiselle, however, by means of a change of tone and look when Dudley
Sowerby and Dartrey Fenellan were the themes, showed a too pronounced
preference of the more unstable one:--or rather, the man adventurous out
of the world's highways, whose image, as husband of such a daughter as
hers, smote the wounded mother with a chillness. Mademoiselle's
occasional thrill of fervency in an allusion to Dartrey, might have
tempted a suspicious woman to indulge suppositions, accounting for the
young Frenchwoman's novel tenderness to England, of which Nesta proudly,
very happily boasted. The suspicion proposed itself, and was rejected:
for not even the fever of an insane body could influence Nataly's
generous character, to let her moods divert and command her thoughts of
persons.

Her thoughts were at this time singularly lucid upon everything about
her; with the one exception of the reason why she had come to favour
Dudley, and how it was she had been smitten by that woman at Brighton to
see herself in her position altogether with the world's relentless,
unexamining hard eyes. Bitterness added, of Mrs. Marsett: She is made an
honest woman!--And there was a strain of the lower in Nataly, to reproach
the girl for causing the reflection to be cast on the unwedded. Otherwise
her mind was open; she was of aid to Victor in his confusion over some
lost Idea he had often touched on latterly. And she was the one who sent
him ahead at a trot under a light, by saying: 'You would found a new and
more stable aristocracy of the contempt of luxury' when he talked of
combatting the Jews with a superior weapon. That being, in fact, as
Colney Durance had pointed out to him, the weapon of self-conquest used
by them 'before they fell away to flesh-pottery.' Was it his Idea? He
fancied an aching at the back of his head when he speculated. But his
Idea had been surpassingly luminous, alive, a creation; and this came
before him with the yellow skin of a Theory, bred, born of books. Though
Nataly's mention of the aristocracy of self-denying discipline struck a
Lucifer in his darkness.

Nesta likewise helped: but more in what she did than in what she said:
she spoke intelligently enough to make him feel a certain increase of
alarm, amounting to a cursory secret acknowledgement of it, both at her
dealings with Dudley and with himself. She so quietly displaced the lady
visiting him at the City offices. His girl's disregard of hostile
weather, and her company, her talk, delighted him: still he remonstrated,
at her coming daily. She came: nor was there an instigation on the part
of her mother, clearly none: her mother asked him once whether he thought
she met the dreadful Brighton woman. His Fredi drove constantly to walk
back beside him Westward, as he loved to do whenever it was practicable;
and exceeding the flattery of his possession of the gallant daughter, her
conversation charmed him to forget a disappointment caused by the defeat
and entire exclusion of the lady visiting him so complimentarily for his
advice on stocks, shares, mines, et caetera. The lady resisted; she was
vanquished, as the shades are displaced by simple apparition of daylight.

His Fredi was like the daylight to him; she was the very daylight to his
mind, whatsoever their theme of converse for by stimulating that ready
but vagrant mind to quit the leash of the powerful senses and be a
ethereally excursive, she gave him a new enjoyment; which led to
reflections--a sounding of Nature, almost a question to her, on the verge
of a doubt. Are we, in fact, harmonious with the Great Mother when we
yield to the pressure of our natures for indulgence? Is she, when
translated into us, solely the imperious appetite? Here was Fredi, his
little Fredi--stately girl that she had grown, and grave, too, for all
her fun and her sail on wings--lifting him to pleasures not followed by
clamorous, and perfectly satisfactory, yet discomposingly violent,
appeals to Nature. They could be vindicated. Or could they, when they
would not bear a statement of the case? He could not imagine himself
stating it namelessly to his closest friend--not to Simeon Fenellan. As
for speaking to Dartrey, the notion took him with shivers:--Young Dudley
would have seemed a more possible confidant:--and he represented the
Puritan world.--And young Dudley was getting over Fredi's infatuation for
the woman she had rescued: he was beginning to fancy he saw a right
enthusiasm in it;--in the abstract; if only the fair maid would drop an
unseemly acquaintance. He had called at the office to say so. Victor
stammered the plea for him.

'Never, dear father,' came the smooth answer: a shocking answer in
contrast with the tones. Her English was as lucid as her eyes when she
continued up to the shock she dealt: 'Do not encourage a good man to
waste his thoughts upon me. I have chosen my mate, and I may never marry
him. I do not know whether he would marry me. He has my soul. I have no
shame in saying I love him. It is to love goodness, greatness of heart.
He is a respecter of women--of all women; not only the fortunate. He is
the friend of the weaker everywhere. He has been proved in fire. He does
not sentimentalize over poor women, as we know who scorns people for
doing:--and that is better than hardness, meaning kindly. He is not one
of the unwise advocates. He measures the forces against them. He reads
their breasts. He likes me. He is with me in my plans. He has not said,
has not shown, he loves me. It is too high a thought for me until I hear
it.'

'Has your soul!' was all that Victor could reply, while the whole
conception of Lakelands quaked under the crumbling structure.

Remonstrance, argument, a word for Dudley, swelled to his lips and sank
in dumbness. Her seeming intuition--if it was not a perception--of the
point where submission to the moods of his nature had weakened his
character, and required her defence of him, struck Victor with a serious
fear of his girl: and it was the more illuminatingly damnatory for being
recognized as the sentiment which no father should feel. He tried to
think she ought not to be so wise of the things of the world. An effort
to imagine a reproof, showed him her spirit through her eyes: in her
deeds too: she had already done work on the road:--Colney Durance,
Dartrey Fenellan, anything but sentimentalists either of them, strongly
backing her, upholding her. Victor could no longer so naturally name her
Fredi.

He spoke it hastily, under plea of some humorous tenderness, when he
ventured. When Dudley, calling on him in the City to discuss the
candidature for the South London borough, named her Fredi, that he might
regain a vantage of familiarity by imitating her father, it struck Victor
as audacious. It jarred in his recollection, though the heir of the
earldom spoke in the tone of a lover, was really at high pitch. He
appeared to be appreciating her, to have suffered stings of pain; he
offered himself; he made but one stipulation. Victor regretfully assured
him, he feared he could do nothing. The thought of his entry into
Lakelands, with Nesta Victoria refusing the foundation stone of the
place, grew dim.

But he was now canvassing for the Borough, hearty at the new business as
the braced swimmer on seas, which instantly he became, with an end in
view to be gained.

Late one April night, expecting Nataly to have gone to bed, and Nesta to
be waiting for him, he reached home, and found Nataly in her sitting-room
alone. 'Nesta was tired,' she said: 'we have had a scene; she refuses Mr.
Sowerby; I am sick of pressing it; he is very much in earnest, painfully;
she blames him for disturbing me; she will not see the right course:--a
mother reads her daughter! If my girl has not guidance!--she means
rightly, she is rash.'

Nataly could not utter all that her insaneness of feeling made her think
with regard to Victor's daughter--daughter also of the woman whom her
hard conscience accused of inflammability. 'Here is a note from Dr.
Themison, dear.'

Victor seized it, perused, and drew the big breath.

'From Themison,' he said; he coughed.

'Don't think to deceive me,' said she. 'I have not read the contents, I
know them.'

'The invitation at last, for to-morrow, Sunday, four P.M. Odd, that next
day at eight of the evening I shall be addressing our meeting in the
Theatre. Simeon speaks. Beaves Urmsing insists on coming, Tory though he
is. Those Tories are jollier fellows than--well, no wonder! There will be
no surgical . . . the poor woman is very low. A couple of days at the
outside. Of course, I go.'

'Hand me the note, dear.'

It had to be given up, out of the pocket.

'But,' said Victor, 'the mention of you is merely formal.'

She needed sleep: she bowed her head.

Nataly was the first at the breakfast-table in the morning, a fair Sunday
morning. She was going to Mrs. John Cormyn's Church, and she asked Nesta
to come with her.

She returned five minutes before the hour of lunch, having left Nesta
with Mrs. John. Louise de Seilles undertook to bring Nesta home at the
time she might choose. Fenellan, Mr. Pempton, Peridon and Catkin, lunched
and chatted. Nataly chatted. At a quarter to three o'clock Victor's
carriage was at the door. He rose: he had to keep an appointment. Nataly
said to him publicly: 'I come too.' He stared and nodded. In the
carriage, he said: 'I'm driving to the Gardens, for a stroll, to have a
look at the beasts. Sort of relief. Poor crazy woman! However, it 's a
comfort to her: so . . . !'

'I like to see them,' said Nataly. 'I shall see her. I have to do it.'

Up to the gate of the Gardens Victor was arguing to dissuade his dear
soul from this very foolish, totally unnecessary, step. Alighting, he put
the matter aside, for good angels to support his counsel at the final
moment.

Bears, lions, tigers, eagles, monkeys: they suggested no more than he
would have had from prints; they sprang no reflection, except, that the
coming hour was a matter of indifference to them. They were about him,
and exercised so far a distraction. He took very kindly to an old mother
monkey, relinquishing her society at sight of Nataly's heave of the
bosom. Southward, across the park, the dread house rose. He began quoting
Colney Durance with relish while sarcastically confuting the cynic, who
found much pasture in these Gardens. Over Southward, too, he would be
addressing a popular assembly to-morrow evening. Between now and then
there was a ditch to jump. He put on the sympathetic face of grief.
'After all, a caged wild beast hasn't so bad a life,' he said.--To be
well fed while they live, and welcome death as a release from the
maladies they develop in idleness, is the condition of wealthy
people:--creatures of prey? horrible thought! yet allied to his Idea, it
seemed. Yes, but these good caged beasts here set them an example, in not
troubling relatives and friends when they come to the gasp! Mrs. Burman's
invitation loomed as monstrous--a final act of her cruelty. His skin
pricked with dews. He thought of Nataly beside him, jumping the ditch
with him, as a relief--if she insisted on doing it. He hoped she would
not, for the sake of her composure.

It was a ditch void of bottom. But it was a mere matter of an hour, less.
The state of health of the invalid could bear only a few minutes. In any
case, we are sure that the hour will pass. Our own arrive? Certainly.

'Capital place for children,' he exclaimed. And here startlingly before
him in the clusters of boys and girls, was the difference between young
ones and their elders feeling quite as young: the careless youngsters
have not to go and sit in the room with a virulent old woman, and express
penitence and what not, and hear words of pardon, after their holiday
scamper and stare at the caged beasts.

Attention to the children precipitated him upon acquaintances, hitherto
cleverly shunned. He nodded them off, after the brightest of greetings.

Such anodyne as he could squeeze from the incarcerated wild creatures,
was exhausted. He fell to work at Nataly's 'aristocracy of the contempt
of luxury'; signifying, that we the wealthy will not exist to pamper
flesh, but we live for the promotion of brotherhood:--ay, and that our
England must make some great moral stand, if she is not to fall to the
rear and down. Unuttered, it caught the skirts of the Idea: it evaporated
when spoken. Still, this theme was almost an exorcism of Mrs. Burman. He
consulted his watch. 'Thirteen minutes to four. I must be punctual,' he
said. Nataly stepped faster.

Seated in the carriage, he told her he had never felt the horror of that
place before. 'Put me down at the corner of the terrace, dear: I won't
drive to the door.'

'I come with you, Victor,' she replied.

After entreaties and reasons intermixed, to melt her resolve, he saw she
was firm: and he asked himself, whether he might not be constitutionally
better adapted to persuade than to dissuade. The question thumped. Having
that house of drugs in view, he breathed more freely for the prospect of
feeling his Nataly near him beneath the roof.

'You really insist, dear love?' he appealed to her: and her answer: 'It
must be,' left no doubt: though he chose to say: 'Not because of standing
by me?' And she said: 'For my peace, Victor.' They stepped to the
pavement. The carriage was dismissed.

Seventeen houses of the terrace fronting the park led to the funereal
one: and the bell was tolled in the breast of each of the couple
advancing with an air of calmness to the inevitable black door.

Jarniman opened it. 'His mistress was prepared to see them.'--Not like
one near death.--They were met in the hall by the Rev. Groseman
Buttermore. 'You will find a welcome,' was his reassurance to them:
gently delivered, on the stoop of a large person. His whispered tones
were more agreeably deadening than his words.

Mr. Buttermore ushered them upstairs.

'Can she bear it?' Victor said, and heard: 'Her wish ten minutes.'

'Soon over,' he murmured to Nataly, with a compassionate exclamation for
the invalid.

They rounded the open door. They were in the drawing-room. It was
furnished as in the old time, gold and white, looking new; all the same
as of old, save for a division of silken hangings; and these were pale
blue: the colour preferred by Victor for a bedroom. He glanced at the
ceiling, to bathe in a blank space out of memory. Here she lived,--here
she slept, behind the hangings. There was refreshingly that little
difference in the arrangement of the room. The corner Northward was
occupied by the grand piano; and Victor had an inquiry in him:--tuned? He
sighed, expecting a sight to come through the hangings. Sensible that
Nataly trembled, he perceived the Rev. Groseman Buttermore half across a
heap of shawl-swathe on the sofa.

Mrs. Burman was present; seated. People may die seated; she had always
disliked the extended posture; except for the night's rest, she used to
say; imagining herself to be not inviting the bolt of sudden death, in
her attitude when seated by day:--and often at night the poor woman had
to sit up for the qualms of her dyspepsia!--But I 'm bound to think
humanely, be Christian, be kind, benignant, he thought, and he fetched
the spirit required, to behold her face emerge from a pale blue silk
veiling; as it were, the inanimate wasted led up from the mould by
morning.

Mr. Buttermore signalled to them to draw near.

Wasted though it was, the face of the wide orbits for sunken eyes was
distinguishable as the one once known. If the world could see it and
hear, that it called itself a man's wife! She looked burnt out.

Two chairs had been sent to front the sofa. Execution there! Victor
thought, and he garrotted the unruly mind of a man really feeling
devoutness in the presence of the shadow thrown by the dread Shade.

'Ten minutes,' Mr. Buttermore said low, after obligingly placing them on
the chairs.

He went. They were alone with Mrs. Burman.

No voice came. They were unsure of being seen by the floating grey of
eyes patient to gaze from their vast distance. Big drops fell from
Nataly's. Victor heard the French timepiece on the mantel-shelf, where a
familiar gilt Cupid swung for the seconds: his own purchase. The time of
day on the clock was wrong; the Cupid swung.

Nataly's mouth was taking breath of anguish at moments. More than a
minute of the terrible length of the period of torture must have gone:
two, if not three.

A quaver sounded. 'You have come.' The voice was articulate, thinner than
the telephonic, trans-Atlantic by deep-sea cable.

Victor answered: 'We have.'

Another minute must have gone in the silence. And when we get to five
minutes we are on the descent, rapidly counting our way out of the house,
into the fresh air, where we were half an hour back, among those happy
beasts in the pleasant Gardens!

Mrs. Burman's eyelids shut. 'I said you would come.'

Victor started to the fire-screen. 'Your sight requires protection.'

She dozed. 'And Natalia Dreighton!' she next said.

They were certainly now on the five minutes. Now for the slide downward
and outward! Nataly should never have been allowed to come.

'The white waistcoat!' struck his ears.

'Old customs with me, always!' he responded. 'The first of April, always.
White is a favourite. Pale blue, too. But I fear--I hope you have not
distressing nights? In my family we lay great stress on the nights we
pass. My cousins, the Miss Duvidneys, go so far as to judge of the
condition of health by the nightly record.'

'Your daughter was in their house.'

She knew everything!

'Very fond of my daughter--the ladies,' he remarked.

'I wish her well.'

'You are very kind.'

Mrs. Burman communed within or slept. 'Victor, Natalia, we will pray,'
she said.

Her trembling hands crossed their fingers. Nataly slipped to her knees.

The two women mutely praying, pulled Victor into the devotional hush. It
acted on him like the silent spell of service in a Church. He forgot his
estimate of the minutes, he formed a prayer, he refused to hear the Cupid
swinging, he droned a sound of sentences to deaden his ears. Ideas of
eternity rolled in semblance of enormous clouds. Death was a black bird
among them. The piano rang to Nataly's young voice and his. The gold and
white of the chairs welcomed a youth suddenly enrolled among the wealthy
by an enamoured old lady on his arm. Cupid tick-ticked.--Poor soul! poor
woman! How little we mean to do harm when we do an injury! An
incomprehensible world indeed at the bottom and at the top. We get on
fairly at the centre. Yet it is there that we do the mischief making such
a riddle of the bottom and the top. What is to be said! Prayer quiets
one. Victor peered at Nataly fervently on her knees and Mrs. Burman bowed
over her knotted fingers. The earnestness of both enforced an effort at a
phrased prayer in him. Plungeing through a wave of the scent of
Marechale, that was a tremendous memory to haul him backward and forward,
he beheld his prayer dancing across the furniture; a diminutive thin
black figure, elvish, irreverent, appallingly unlike his proper emotion;
and he brought his hands just to touch, and got to the edge of his chair,
with split knees. At once the figure vanished. By merely looking at
Nataly, he passed into her prayer. A look at Mrs. Burman made it
personal, his own. He heard the cluck of a horrible sob coming from him.
After a repetition of his short form of prayer deeply stressed, he
thanked himself with the word 'sincere,' and a queer side-thought on our
human susceptibility to the influence of posture. We are such creatures.

Nataly resumed her seat. Mrs. Burman had raised her head. She said: 'We
are at peace.' She presently said, with effort: 'It cannot last with me.
I die in nature's way. I would bear forgiveness with me, that I may have
it above. I give it here, to you, to all. My soul is cleansed, I trust.
Much was to say. My strength will not. Unto God, you both!'

The Rev. Groseman Buttermore was moving on slippered step to the back of
the sofa. Nataly dropped before the unseeing, scarce breathing, lady for
an instant. Victor murmured an adieu, grateful for being spared the
ceremonial shake of hands. He turned away, then turned back, praying for
power to speak, to say that he had found his heart, was grateful, would
hold her in memory. He fell on a knee before her, and forgot he had done
so when he had risen. They were conducted by the Rev. gentleman to the
hall-door: he was not speechless. Jarniman uttered something.

That black door closed behind them.




CHAPTER XLI

THE NIGHT OF THE GREAT UNDELIVERED SPEECH

To a man issuing from a mortuary where a skull had voice, London may be
restorative as air of Summer Alps. It is by contrast blooming life.
Observe the fellowship of the houses shoulder to shoulder; and that
straight ascending smoke of the preparation for dinner; and the good
policeman yonder, blessedly idle on an orderly Sabbath evening; and the
families of the minor people trotting homeward from the park to tea; here
and again an amiable carriage of the superimposed people driving to pay
visits; they are so social, friendly, inviting to him; they strip him of
the shroud, sing of the sweet old world. He cannot but be moved to the
extremity of the charitableness neighbouring on tears.

A stupefaction at the shock of the positive reminder, echo of the fact
still shouting in his breast, that he had seen Mrs. Burman, and that the
interview was over--the leaf turned and the book shut held Victor in a
silence until his gratefulness to London City was borne down by the more
human burst of gratitude to the dying woman, who had spared him, as much
as she could, a scene of the convulsive pathetic, and had not called on
him for any utterance of penitence. That worm-like thread of voice came
up to him still from sexton-depths: it sounded a larger forgiveness
without the word. He felt the sorrow of it all, as he told Nataly; at the
same time bidding her smell 'the marvellous oxygen of the park.' He
declared it to be quite equal to Lakelands.

She slightly pressed his arm for answer. Perhaps she did not feel so
deeply? She was free of the horrid associations with the scent of
Marechale. At any rate, she had comported herself admirably!

Victor fancied he must have shuddered when he passed by Jarniman at the
door, who was almost now seeing his mistress's ghost--would have the
privilege to-morrow. He called a cab and drove to Mrs. John Cormyn's, at
Nataly's request, for Nesta and mademoiselle: enjoying the Londonized
odour of the cab. Nataly did not respond to his warm and continued
eulogies of Mrs. Burman; she rather disappointed him. He talked of the
gold and white furniture, he just alluded to the Cupid: reserving his
mental comment, that the time-piece was all astray, the Cupid regular on
the swing:--strange, touching, terrible, if really the silly gilt figure
symbolized! . . . And we are a silly figure to be sitting in a cab
imagining such things!--When Nesta and mademoiselle were opposite, he had
the pleasure to see Nataly take Nesta's hand and hold it until they
reached home. Those two talking together in the brief words of their deep
feeling, had tones that were singularly alike: the mezzo-soprano filial
to the divine maternal contralto. Those two dear ones mounted to Nataly's
room.

The two dear ones showed themselves heart in heart together once more;
each looked the happier for it. Dartrey was among their dinner-guests,
and Nataly took him to her little blue-room before she went to bed. He
did not speak of their conversation to Victor, but counselled him to keep
her from excitement. 'My dear fellow, if you had seen her with Mrs.
Burman!' Victor said, and loudly praised her coolness. She was never
below a situation, he affirmed.

He followed his own counsel to humour his Nataly. She began panting at a
word about Mr. Barmby's ready services. When, however, she related the
state of affairs between Dartrey and Nesta, by the avowal of each of them
to her, he said, embracing her: 'Your wisdom shall guide us, my love,'
and almost extinguished a vexation by concealing it.

She sighed: 'If one could think, that a girl with Nesta's revolutionary
ideas of the duties of women, and their powers, would be safe--or at all
rightly guided by a man who is both one of the noblest and the wildest in
the ideas he entertains!'

Victor sighed too. He saw the earldom, which was to dazzle the gossips,
crack on the sky in a futile rocket-bouquet.

She was distressed; she moaned: 'My girl! my girl: I should wish to leave
her with one who is more fixed--the old-fashioned husband. New ideas must
come in politics, but in Society!--and for women! And the young having
heads, are the most endangered. Nesta vows her life to it! Dartrey
supports her!'

'See Colney,' said Victor. 'Odd, Colney does you good; some queer way he
has. Though you don't care for his RIVAL TONGUES,--and the last number
was funny, with Semhians on the Pacific, impressively addressing a
farewell to his cricket-bat, before he whirls it away to Neptune--and the
blue hand of his nation's protecting God observed to seize it!--Dead
failure with the public, of course! However, he seems to seem wise with
you. The poor old fellow gets his trouncing from the critics monthly. See
Colney to-morrow, my love. Now go to sleep. We have got over the worst. I
speak at my Meeting to-morrow and am a champagne-bottle of notes and
points for them.'

His lost Idea drew close to him in sleep: or he thought so, when awaking
to the conception of a people solidified, rich and poor, by the common
pride of simple manhood. But it was not coloured, not a luminous globe:
and the people were in drab, not a shining army on the march to meet the
Future. It looked like a paragraph in a newspaper, upon which a Leading
Article sits, dutifully arousing the fat worm of sarcastic humour under
the ribs of cradled citizens, with an exposure of its excellent folly. He
would not have it laughed at; still he could not admit it as more than a
skirt of the robe of his Idea. For let none think him a mere City
merchant, millionnaire, boon-fellow, or music-loving man of the world. He
had ideas to shoot across future Ages;--provide against the shrinkage of
our Coal-beds; against, and for, if you like, the thickening, jumbling,
threatening excess of population in these Islands, in Europe, America,
all over our habitable sphere. Now that Mrs. Burman, on her way to bliss,
was no longer the dungeon-cell for the man he would show himself to be,
this name for successes, corporate nucleus of the enjoyments, this Victor
Montgomery Radnor, intended impressing himself upon the world as a
factory of ideas. Colney's insolent charge, that the English have no
imagination--a doomed race, if it be true!--would be confuted. For our
English require but the lighted leadership to come into cohesion, and
step ranked, and chant harmoniously the song of their benevolent aim. And
that astral head giving, as a commencement, example of the right use of
riches, the nation is one, part of the riddle of the future solved.

Surely he had here the Idea? He had it so warmly, that his bath-water
heated. Only the vision was wanted.

On London Bridge he had seen it--a great thing done to the flash of
brilliant results. That was after a fall.

There had been a fall also of the scheme of Lakelands.

Come to us with no superstitious whispers of indications and
significations in the fall!--But there had certainly been a moral fall,
fully to the level of the physical, in the maintaining of that scheme of
Lakelands, now ruined by his incomprehensible Nesta--who had saved him
from falling further. His bath-water chilled. He jumped out and rubbed
furiously with his towels and flesh-brushes, chasing the Idea for simple
warmth, to have Something inside him, to feel just that sustainment; with
the cry: But no one can say I do not love my Nataly! And he tested it to
prove it by his readiness to die for her: which is heroically easier than
the devotedly living, and has a weight of evidence in our internal Courts
for surpassing the latter tedious performance.

His Nesta had knocked Lakelands to pieces. Except for the making of
money, the whole year of an erected Lakelands, notwithstanding
uninterrupted successes, was a blank. Or rather we have to wish it were a
blank. The scheme departs: payment for the enlisted servants of it is in
prospect. A black agent, not willingly enlisted, yet pointing to proofs
of service, refuses payment in ordinary coin; and we tell him we owe him
nothing, that he is not a man of the world, has no understanding of
Nature: and still the fellow thumps and alarums at a midnight door we are
astonished to find we have in our daylight house. How is it? Would other
men be so sensitive to him? Victor was appeased by the assurance of his
possession of an exceptionally scrupulous conscience; and he settled the
debate by thinking: 'After all, for a man like me, battling incessantly,
a kind of Vesuvius, I must have--can't be starved, must be fed--though,
pah! But I'm not to be questioned like other men.--But how about an
aristocracy of the contempt of distinctions?--But there is no escaping
distinctions! my aristocracy despises indulgence.--And indulges?--Say, an
exceptional nature! Supposing a certain beloved woman to pronounce on the
case?--She cannot: no woman can be a just judge of it.'---He cried: My
love of her is testified by my having Barmby handy to right her to-day,
tomorrow, the very instant the clock strikes the hour of my release!

Mention of the clock swung that silly gilt figure. Victor entered into
it, condemned to swing, and be a thrall. His intensity of sensation
launched him on an eternity of the swinging in ridiculous nakedness to
the measure of time gone crazy. He had to correct a reproof of Mrs.
Burman, as the cause of the nonsense. He ran down to breakfast, hopeing
he might hear of that clock stopped, and that sickening motion with it.

Another letter from the Sanfredini in Milan, warmly inviting to her villa
over Como, acted on him at breakfast like the waving of a banner. 'We
go,' Victor said to Nataly, and flattered-up a smile about her lips--too
much a resurrection smile. There was talk of the Meeting at the theatre:
Simeon Fenellan had spoken there in the cause of the deceased Member, was
known, and was likely to have a good reception. Fun and enthusiasm might
be expected.

'And my darling will hear her husband speak to-night,' he whispered as he
was departing; and did a mischief, he had to fear, for a shadowy knot
crossed Nataly's forehead, she seemed paler. He sent back Nesta and
mademoiselle, in consequence, at the end of the Green Park.

Their dinner-hour was early; Simeon Fenellan, Colney Durance, and Mr.
Peridon--pleasing to Nataly for his faithful siege of the French
fortress--were the only guests. When they rose, Nataly drew Victor aside.
He came dismayed to Nesta. She ran to her mother. 'Not hear papa speak?
Oh, mother, mother! Then I stay with her. But can't she come? He is going
to unfold ideas to us. There!'

'My naughty girl is not to poke her fun at orators,' Nataly said. 'No,
dearest; it would agitate me to go. I'm better here. I shall be at peace
when the night is over.'

'But you will be all alone here, dear mother.'

Nataly's eyes wandered to fall on Colney. He proposed to give her his
company. She declined it. Nesta ventured another entreaty, either that
she might be allowed to stay or have her mother with her at the Meeting.

'My love,' Nataly said, 'the thought of the Meeting--' She clasped at her
breast; and she murmured: 'I shall be comforted by your being with him.
There is no danger there. But I shall be happy, I shall be at peace when
this night is over.'

Colney persuaded her to have him for companion. Mr. Peridon, who was to
have driven with Nesta and mademoiselle, won admiration by proposing to
stay for an hour and play some of Mrs. Radnor's favourite pieces. Nesta
and Victor overbore Nataly's objections to the lover's generosity. So Mr.
Peridon was left. Nesta came hurrying back from the step of the carriage
to kiss her mother again, saying: 'Just one last kiss, my own! And she's
not to look troubled. I shall remember everything to tell my own mother.
It will soon be over.'

Her mother nodded; but the embrace was passionate.

Nesta called her father into the passage, bidding him prohibit any
delivery to her mother of news at the door. 'She is easily startled now
by trifles--you have noticed?'

Victor summoned his recollections and assured her he had noticed, as he
believed he had 'The dear heart of her is fretting for the night to be
over! And think! seven days, and she is in Lakelands. A fortnight, and we
have our first Concert. Durandarte! Oh, the dear heart 'll be at peace
when I tell her of a triumphant Meeting. Not a doubt of that, even though
Colney turns the shadow of his back on us.'

'One critic the less for you!' said Nesta. Skepsey was to meet her
carriage at the theatre.

Ten minutes later, Victor and Simeon Fenellan were proceeding thitherward
on foot.

'I have my speech,' said Victor. 'You prepare the way for me, following
our influential friend Dubbleson; Colewort winds up; any one else they
shout for. We shall have a great evening. I suspect I shall find Themison
or Jarniman when I get home. You don't believe in intimations? I've had
crapy processions all day before my eyes. No wonder, after yesterday!'

'Dubbleson mustn't drawl it out too long,' said Fenellan.

'We 'll drop a hint. Where's Dartrey?'

'He'll come. He's in one of his black moods: not temper. He's got a
notion he killed his wife by dragging her to Africa with him. She was not
only ready to go, she was glad to go. She had a bit of the heroine in her
and a certainty of tripping to the deuce if she was left to herself.'

'Tell Nataly that,' said Victor. 'And tell her about Dartrey. Harp on it.
Once she was all for him and our girl. But it's a woman--though the
dearest! I defy any one to hit on the cause of their changes. We must
make the best of things, if we're for swimming. The task for me to-night
will be, to keep from rolling out all I've got in my head. And I'm not
revolutionary, I'm for stability. Only I do see, that the firm
stepping-place asks for a long stride to be taken. One can't get the
English to take a stride--unless it's for a foot behind them: bother old
Colney! Too timid, or too scrupulous, down we go into the mire.
There!--But I want to say it! I want to save the existing order. I want,
Christianity, instead of the Mammonism we 're threatened with. Great
fortunes now are becoming the giants of old to stalk the land: or
mediaeval Barons. Dispersion of wealth, is the secret. Nataly's of that
mind with me. A decent poverty! She's rather wearying, wants a change.
I've a steam-yacht in my eye, for next month on the Mediterranean. All
our set. She likes quiet. I believe in my political recipe for it.'

He thumped on a method he had for preserving aristocracy--true
aristocracy, amid a positively democratic flood of riches.

'It appears to me, you're on the road of Priscilla Graves and Pempton,'
observed Simeon. 'Strike off Priscilla's viands and friend Pempton's
couple of glasses, and there's your aristocracy established; but with
rather a dispersed recognition of itself.'

'Upon my word, you talk like old Colney, except for a twang of your own,'
said Victor. 'Colney sours at every fresh number of that Serial. The
last, with Delphica detecting the plot of Falarique, is really not so
bad. The four disguised members of the Comedie Francaise on board the
vessel from San Francisco, to declaim and prove the superior merits of
the Gallic tongue, jumped me to bravo the cleverness. And Bobinikine
turning to the complexion of the remainder of cupboard dumplings
discovered in an emigrant's house-to-let! And Semhians--I forget what and
Mytharete's forefinger over the bridge of his nose, like a pensive
vulture on the skull of a desert camel! But, I complain, there's nothing
to make the English love the author; and it's wasted, he's basted, and
the book 'll have no sale. I hate satire.'

'Rough soap for a thin skin, Victor. Does it hurt our people much?'

'Not a bit; doesn't touch them. But I want my friends to succeed!'

Their coming upon Westminster Bridge changed the theme. Victor wished the
Houses of Parliament to catch the beams of sunset. He deferred to the
suggestion, that the Hospital's doing so seemed appropriate.

'I'm always pleased to find a decent reason for what is,' he said. Then
he queried: 'But what is, if we look at it, and while we look, Simeon?
She may be going--or she's gone already, poor woman! I shall have that
scene of yesterday everlastingly before my eyes, like a drop-curtain.
Only, you know, Simeon, they don't feel the end, as we in health imagine.
Colney would say, we have the spasms and they the peace. I 've a mind to
send up to Regent's Park with inquiries. It would look respectful. God
forgive me!--the poor woman perverts me at every turn. Though I will say,
a certain horror of death I had--she whisked me out of it yesterday. I
don't feel it any longer. What are you jerking at?'

'Only to remark, that if the thing's done for us, we haven't it so much
on our sensations.'

'More, if we're sympathetic. But that compels us to be philosophic--or
who could live! Poor woman!'

'Waft her gently, Victor!'

'Tush! Now for the South side of the Bridges; and I tell you, Simeon,
what I can't mention to-night: I mean to enliven these poor dear people
on their forsaken South of the City. I 've my scheme. Elected or not, I
shall hardly be accused of bribery when I put down my first instalment.'

Fenellan went to work with that remark in his brain for the speech he was
to deliver. He could not but reflect on the genial man's willingness and
capacity to do deeds of benevolence, constantly thwarted by the position
into which he had plunged himself.

They were received at the verge of the crowd outside the theatre-doors by
Skepsey, who wriggled, tore and clove a way for them, where all were
obedient, but the numbers lumped and clogged. When finally they reached
the stage, they spied at Nesta's box, during the thunder of the rounds of
applause, after shaking hands with Mr. Dubbleson, Sir Abraham Quatley,
Dudley Sowerby, and others; and with Beaves Urmsing--a politician 'never
of the opposite party to a deuce of a funny fellow!--go anywhere to hear
him,' he vowed.

'Miss Radnor and Mademoiselle de Seilles arrived quite safely,' said
Dudley, feasting on the box which contained them and no Dartrey Fenellan
in it.

Nesta was wondering at Dartrey's absence. Not before Mr. Dubbleson, the
chairman, the 'gentleman of local influence,' had animated the drowsed
wits and respiratory organs of a packed audience by yielding place to
Simeon, did Dartrey appear. Simeon's name was shouted, in proof of the
happy explosion of his first anecdote, as Dartrey took seat behind Nesta.
'Half an hour with the dear mother,' he said.

Nesta's eyes thanked him. She pressed the hand of a demure young woman
sitting close behind. Louise de Seilles. 'You know Matilda Pridden.'

Dartrey held his hand out. 'Has she forgiven me?'

Matilda bowed gravely, enfolding her affirmative in an outline of the no
need for it, with perfect good breeding. Dartrey was moved to think
Skepsey's choice of a woman to worship did him honour. He glanced at
Louise. Her manner toward Matilda Pridden showed her sisterly with Nesta.
He said: 'I left Mr. Peridon playing.--A little anxiety to hear that the
great speech of the evening is done; it's nothing else. I'll run to her
as soon as it's over.'

'Oh, good of you! And kind of Mr. Peridon!' She turned to Louise, who
smiled at the simple art of the exclamation, assenting.

Victor below, on the stage platform, indicated the waving of a hand to
them, and his delight at Simeon's ringing points: which were, to
Dartrey's mind, vacuously clever and crafty. Dartrey despised effects of
oratory, save when soldiers had to be hurled on a mark--or citizens
nerved to stand for their country.

Nesta dived into her father's brilliancy of appreciation, a trifle pained
by Dartrey's aristocratic air when he surveyed the herd of heads agape
and another cheer rang round. He smiled with her, to be with her, at a
hit here and there; he would not pretend an approval of this manner of
winning electors to consider the country's interests and their own. One
fellow in the crowded pit, affecting a familiarity with Simeon, that
permitted the taking of liberties with the orator's Christian name,
mildly amused him. He had no objection to hear 'Simmy' shouted, as Louise
de Seilles observed. She was of his mind, in regard to the rough
machinery of Freedom.

Skepsey entered the box.

'We shall soon be serious, Miss Nesta,' he said, after a look at Matilda
Pridden.

There was a prolonged roaring--on the cheerful side.

'And another word about security that your candidate will keep his
promises,' continued Simeon: 'You have his word, my friends!' And he told
the story of the old Governor of Goa, who wanted money and summoned the
usurers, and they wanted security; whereupon he laid his Hidalgo hand on
a cataract of Kronos-beard across his breast, and pulled forth three
white hairs, and presented them: 'And as honourably to the usurious Jews
as to the noble gentleman himself, that security was accepted!'

Emerging from hearty clamours, the illustrative orator fell upon the
question of political specifics:--Mr. Victor Radnor trusted to English
good sense too profoundly to be offering them positive cures, as they
would hear the enemy say he did. Yet a bit of a cure may be offered, if
we 're not for pushing it too far, in pursuit of the science of
specifics, in the style of the foreign physician, probably Spanish, who
had no practice, and wished for leisure to let him prosecute his
anatomical and other investigations to discover his grand medical
nostrum. So to get him fees meanwhile he advertised a cure for
dyspepsia--the resource of starving doctors. And sure enough his patient
came, showing the grand fat fellow we may be when we carry more of the
deciduously mortal than of the scraggy vital upon our persons. Any one at
a glance would have prescribed water-cresses to him: water-cresses
exclusively to eat for a fortnight. And that the good physician did. Away
went his patient, returning at the end of the fortnight, lean, and with
the appetite of a Toledo blade for succulent slices. He vowed he was the
man. Our estimable doctor eyed him, tapped at him, pinched his tender
parts; and making him swear he was really the man, and had eaten nothing
whatever but unadulterated water-cresses in the interval, seized on him
in an ecstasy by the collar of his coat, pushed him into the surgery,
knocked him over, killed him, cut him up, and enjoyed the felicity of
exposing to view the very healthiest patient ever seen under dissecting
hand, by favour of the fortunate discovery of the specific for him. All
to further science!--to which, in spite of the petitions of all the
scientific bodies of the civilized world, he fell a martyr on the
scaffold, poor gentleman! But we know politics to be no such empirical
science.

Simeon ingeniously interwove his analogy. He brought it home to Beaves
Urmsing, whose laugh drove any tone of apology out of it. Yet the orator
was asked: 'Do you take politics for a joke, Simmy?'

He countered his questioner: 'Just to liberate you from your moribund
state, my friend.' And he told the story of the wrecked sailor, found
lying on the sands, flung up from the foundered ship of a Salvation
captain, and how, that nothing could waken him, and there he lay fit for
interment; until presently a something of a voice grew down into his
ears; and it was his old chum Polly, whom he had tied to a board to give
her a last chance in the surges; and Polly shaking the wet from her
feathers, and shouting: 'Polly tho dram dry!'--which struck on the nob of
Jack's memory, to revive all the liquorly tricks of the cabin under
Salvationism, and he began heaving, and at last he shook in a lazy way,
and then from sputter to sputter got his laugh loose; and he sat up, and
cried; 'That did it! Now to business!' for he was hungry. 'And when I
catch the ring of this world's laugh from you, my friend . . . !'
Simeon's application of the story was drowned.

After the outburst, they heard his friend again interruptingly: 'You keep
that tongue of yours from wagging, as it did when you got round the old
widow woman for her money, Simmy!'

Victor leaned forward. Simeon towered. He bellowed

'And you keep that tongue of yours from committing incest on a lie!'

It was like a lightning-flash in the theatre. The man went under. Simeon
flowed. Conscience reproached him with the little he had done for Victor,
and he had now his congenial opportunity.

Up in the box, the powers of the orator were not so cordially esteemed.
To Matilda Pridden, his tales were barely decently the flesh and the
devil smothering a holy occasion to penetrate and exhort. Dartrey sat
rigid, as with the checked impatience for a leap. Nesta looked at Louise
when some one was perceived on the stage bending to her father: It was
Mr. Peridon; he never once raised his face. Apparently he was not
intelligible or audible but the next moment Victor sprang erect. Dartrey
quitted the box. Nesta beheld her father uttering hurried words to right
and left. He passed from sight, Mr. Peridon with him; and Dartrey did not
return.

Nesta felt her father's absence as light gone: his eyes rayed light.
Besides she had the anticipation of a speech from him, that would win
Matilda Pridden. She fancied Simeon Fenellan to be rather under the spell
of the hilarity he roused. A gentleman behind him spoke in his ear; and
Simeon, instead of ceasing, resumed his flow. Matilda Pridden's gaze on
him and the people was painful to behold: Nesta saw her mind. She set
herself to study a popular assembly. It could be serious to the call of
better leadership, she believed. Her father had been telling her of late
of a faith he had in the English, that they (or so her intelligence
translated his remarks) had power to rise to spiritual ascendancy, and be
once more the Islanders heading the world of a new epoch abjuring
materialism--some such idea; very quickening to her, as it would be to
this earnest young woman worshipped by Skepsey. Her father's absence and
the continued shouts of laughter, the insatiable thirst for fun, darkened
her in her desire to have the soul of the good working sister refreshed.
They had talked together; not much: enough for each to see at either's
breast the wells from the founts of life.

The box-door opened, Dartrey came in. He took her hand. She stood-up to
his look. He said to Matilda Pridden: 'Come with us; she will need you.'

'Speak it,' said Nesta.

He said to the other: 'She has courage.'

'I could trust to her,' Matilda Pridden replied.

Nesta read his eyes. 'Mother?'

His answer was in the pressure.

'Ill?'

'No longer.'

'Oh! Dartrey.' Matilda Pridden caught her fast.

'I can walk, dear,' Nesta said.

Dartrey mentioned her father.

She understood: 'I am thinking of him.'

The words of her mother: 'At peace when the night is over,' rang. Along
the gassy passages of the back of the theatre, the sound coming from an
applausive audience was as much a thunder as rage would have been. It was
as void of human meaning as a sea.




CHAPTER XLII

THE LAST

In the still dark hour of that April morning, the Rev. Septimus Barmby
was roused by Mr. Peridon, with a scribbled message from Victor, which he
deciphered by candlelight held close to the sheet of paper, between short
inquiries and communications, losing more and more the sense of it as his
intelligence became aware of what dread blow had befallen the stricken
man. He was bidden come to fulfil his promise instantly. He remembered
the bearing of the promise. Mr. Peridon's hurried explanatory narrative
made the request terrific, out of tragically lamentable. A semblance of
obedience had to be put on, and the act of dressing aided it. Mr. Barmby
prayed at heart for guidance further.

The two gentlemen drove Westward, speaking little; they had the dry sob
in the throat.

'Miss Radnor?' Mr. Barmby asked.

'She is shattered; she holds up; she would not break down.'

'I can conceive her to possess high courage.'

'She has her friend Mademoiselle de Seilles.'

Mr. Barmby remained humbly silent. Affectionate deep regrets moved him to
say: 'A loss irreparable. We have but one voice of sorrow. And how
sudden! The dear lady had no suffering, I trust.'

'She fell into the arms of Mr. Durance. She died in his arms. She was
unconscious, he says. I left her straining for breath. She said "Victor";
she tried to smile:--I understood I was not to alarm him.'

'And he too late!'

'He was too late, by some minutes.'

'At least I may comfort. Miss Radnor must be a blessing to him.'

'They cannot meet. Her presence excites him.'

That radiant home of all hospitality seemed opening on from darker
chambers to the deadly dark. The immorality in the moral situation could
not be forgotten by one who was professionally a moralist. But an
incorruptible beauty in the woman's character claimed to plead for her
memory. Even the rigorous in defence of righteous laws are softened by a
sinner's death to hear excuses, and may own a relationship, haply
perceive the faint nimbus of the saint. Death among us proves us to be
still not so far from the Nature saying at every avenue to the mind:
'Earth makes all sweet.'

Mr. Durance had prophesied a wailful end ever to the carol of Optimists!
Yet it is not the black view which is the right view. There is one
between: the path adopted by Septimus Barmby:--if he could but induce his
brethren to enter on it! The dreadful teaching of circumstances might
help to the persuading of a fair young woman, under his direction . . .
having her hand disengaged. Mr. Barmby started himself in the dream of
his uninterred passion for the maiden: he chased it, seized it, hurled it
hence, as a present sacrilege:--constantly, and at the pitch of our
highest devotion to serve, are we assailed by the tempter! Is it, that
the love of woman is our weakness? For if so, then would a celibate
clergy have grant of immunity. But, alas, it is not so with them! We have
to deplore the hearing of reports too credible. Again we are pushed to
contemplate woman as the mysterious obstruction to the perfect purity of
soul. Nor is there a refuge in asceticism. No more devilish nourisher of
pride do we find than in pain voluntarily embraced. And strangely, at the
time when our hearts are pledged to thoughts upon others, they are led by
woman to glance revolving upon ourself, our vile self! Mr. Barmby
clutched it by the neck.

Light now, as of a strong memory of day along the street, assisted him to
forget himself at the sight of the inanimate houses of this London, all
revealed in a quietness not less immobile than tombstones of an unending
cemetery, with its last ghost laid. Did men but know it!--The habitual
necessity to amass matter for the weekly sermon, set him noting his
meditative exclamations, the noble army of platitudes under haloes, of
good use to men: justifiably turned over in his mind for their good. He
had to think, that this act of the justifying of the act reproached him
with a lack of due emotion, in sympathy with agonized friends truly dear.
Drawing near the hospitable house, his official and a cordial emotion
united, as we see sorrowful crape-wreathed countenances. His heart struck
heavily when the house was visible.

Could it be the very house? The look of it belied the tale inside. But
that threw a ghostliness on the look.

Some one was pacing up and down. They greeted Dudley Sowerby. His ability
to speak was tasked. They gathered, that mademoiselle and 'a Miss
Pridden' were sitting with Nesta, and that their services in a crisis had
been precious. At such times, one of them reflected, woman has indeed her
place: when life's battle waxes red. Her soul must be capable of mounting
to the level of the man's, then? It is a lesson!

Dudley said he was waiting for Dr. Themison to come forth. He could not
tear himself from sight of the house.

The door opened to Dr. Themison departing, Colney Durance and Simeon
Fenellan bare-headed. Colney showed a face with stains of the lashing of
tears.

Dr. Themison gave his final counsels. 'Her father must not see her. For
him, it may have to be a specialist. We will hope the best. Mr. Dartrey
Fenellan stays beside him:--good. As to the ceremony he calls for, a form
of it might soothe:--any soothing possible! No music. I will return in a
few hours.'

He went on foot.

Mr. Barmby begged advice from Colney and Simeon concerning the message he
had received--the ceremony requiring his official presidency. Neither of
them replied. They breathed the morning air, they gave out long-drawn
sighs of relief, looking on the trees of the park.

A man came along the pavement, working slow legs hurriedly. Simeon ran
down to him.

'Humour, as much as you can,' Colney said to Mr. Barmby. 'Let him
imagine.'

'Miss Radnor?'

'Not to speak of her.'

'The daughter he so loves?'

Mr. Barmby's tender inquisitiveness was unanswered. Were they inducing
him to mollify a madman? But was it possible to associate the idea of
madness with Mr. Radnor?

Simeon ran back. 'Jarniman,' he remarked. 'It's over!'

'Now!' Colney's shoulders expressed the comment. 'Well, now, Mr. Barmby,
you can do the part desired. Come in. It's morning!' He stared at the
sky.

All except Dudley passed in.

Mr. Barmby wanted more advice, his dilemma being acute. It was moderated,
though not more than moderated, when he was informed of the death of Mrs.
Burman Radnor; an event that occurred, according to Jarniman's report,
forty-five minutes after Skepsey had a second time called for information
of it at the house in Regent's Park--five hours and a half, as Colney
made his calculation, after the death of Nataly. He was urged by some
spur of senseless irony to verify the calculation and correct it in the
minutes.

Dudley crossed the road. No sign of the awful interior was on any of the
windows of the house either to deepen awe or relieve. They were blank as
eyeballs of the mindless. He shivered. Death is our common cloak; but
Calamity individualizes, to set the unwounded speculating whether indeed
a stricken man, who has become the cause of woeful trouble, may not be
pointing a moral. Pacing on the Park side of the house, he saw Skepsey
drive up and leap out with a gentleman, Mr. Radnor's lawyer. Could it be,
that there was no Will written? Could a Will be executed now? The moral
was more forcibly suggested. Dudley beheld this Mr. Victor Radnor
successful up all the main steps, persuasive, popular, brightest of the
elect of Fortune, felled to the ground within an hour, he and all his
house! And if at once to pass beneath the ground, the blow would have
seemed merciful for him. Or if, instead of chattering a mixture of the
rational and the monstrous, he had been heard to rave like the utterly
distraught. Recollection of some of the things he shouted, was an
anguish: A notion came into the poor man, that he was the dead one of the
two, and he cried out: 'Cremation? No, Colney's right, it robs us of our
last laugh. I lie as I fall.' He 'had a confession for his Nataly, for
her only, for no one else.' He had 'an Idea.' His begging of Dudley to
listen without any punctilio (putting a vulgar oath before it), was the
sole piece of unreasonableness in the explanation of the idea: and that
was not much wilder than the stuff Dudley had read from reports of
Radical speeches. He told Dudley he thought him too young to be 'best man
to a widower about to be married,' and that Barmby was 'coming all haste
to do the business, because of no time to spare.'

Dudley knew but the half, and he did not envy Dartrey Fenellan his task
of watching over the wreck of a splendid intelligence, humouring and
restraining. According to the rumours, Mr. Radnor had not shown the
symptoms before the appearance of his daughter. For awhile he hung, and
then fell, like an icicle. Nesta came with a cry for her father. He rose:
Dartrey was by. Hugged fast in iron muscles, the unhappy creature raved
of his being a caged lion. These things Dudley had heard in the house.

There are scenes of life proper to the grave-cloth.

Nataly's dead body was her advocate with her family, with friends, with
the world. Victor had more need of a covering shroud to keep calamity
respected. Earth makes all sweet: and we, when the privilege is granted
us, do well to treat the terribly stricken as if they had entered to the
bosom of earth.

That night's infinite sadness was concentrated upon Nesta. She had need
of her strength of mind and body.

The night went past as a year. The year followed it as a refreshing
night. Slowly lifting her from our abysses, it was a good angel to the
girl. Permission could not be given for her to see her father. She had a
home in the modest home of Louise de Seilles on the borders of Dauphins;
and with French hearts at their best in winningness around her, she
learned again, as an art, the natural act of breathing calmly; she had by
degrees a longing for the snow-heights. When her imagination could perch
on them with love and pride, she began to recover the throb for a part in
human action. It set her nature flowing to the mate she had chosen, who
was her counsellor, her supporter, and her sword. She had awakened to new
life, not to sink back upon a breast of love, though thoughts of the
lover were as blows upon strung musical chords of her bosom. Her union
with Dartrey was for the having an ally and the being an ally, in
resolute vision of strife ahead, through the veiled dreams that bear the
blush. This was behind a maidenly demureness. Are not young women
hypocrites? Who shall fathom their guile! A girl with a pretty smile, a
gentle manner, a liking for wild flowers up on the rocks; and graceful
with resemblances to the swelling proportions of garden-fruits approved
in young women by the connoisseur eye of man; distinctly designed to
embrace the state of marriage, that she might (a girl of singularly lucid
and receptive eyes) the better give battle to men touching matters which
they howl at an eccentric matron for naming. So it was. And the yielding
of her hand to Dartrey, would have appeared at that period of her
revival, as among the baser compliances of the fleshly, if she had not
seen in him, whom she owned for leader, her fellow soldier, warrior
friend, hero, of her own heart's mould, but a greater.

She was on Como, at the villa of the Signora Giulia Sanfredini, when
Dudley's letter reached her, with the supplicating offer of the share of
his earldom. An English home meanwhile was proposed to her at the house
of his mother the Countess. He knew that he did not write to a brilliant
heiress. The generosity she had always felt that he possessed, he thus
proved in figures. They are convincing and not melting. But she was moved
to tears by his goodness in visiting her father, as well as by the
hopeful news he sent. He wrote delicately, withholding the title of her
father's place of abode. There were expectations of her father's perfect
recovery; the signs were auspicious; he appeared to be restored to the
'likeness to himself' in the instances Dudley furnished:--his appointment
with him for the flute-duet next day; and particularly his enthusiastic
satisfaction with the largeness and easy excellent service of the
residence 'in which he so happily found himself established.' He held it
to be, 'on the whole, superior to Lakelands.' The smile and the tear
rolled together in Nesta reading these words. And her father spoke
repeatedly of longing to embrace his Fredi, of the joy her last letter
had given him, of his intention to send an immediate answer: and he
showed Dudley a pile of manuscript ready for the post. He talked of
public affairs, was humorous over any extravagance or eccentricity in the
views he took; notably when he alluded to his envy of little Skepsey. He
said he really did envy; and his daughter believed it and saw fair
prospects in it.

Her grateful reply to the young earl conveyed all that was perforce
ungentle, in the signature of the name of Nesta Victoria Fenellan:--a
name he was to hear cited among the cushioned conservatives, and plead
for as he best could under a pressure of disapprobation, and compelled
esteem, and regrets.

The day following the report of her father's wish to see her, she and her
husband started for England. On that day, Victor breathed his last.
Dudley had seen the not hopeful but an ominous illumination of the
stricken man; for whom came the peace his Nataly had in earth. Often did
Nesta conjure up to vision the palpitating form of the beloved mother
with her hand at her mortal wound in secret through long years of the
wearing of the mask to keep her mate inspirited. Her gathered knowledge
of things and her ruthless penetrativeness made it sometimes hard for her
to be tolerant of a world, whose tolerance of the infinitely evil stamped
blotches on its face and shrieked in stains across the skin beneath its
gallant garb. That was only when she thought of it as the world
condemning her mother. She had a husband able and ready, in return for
corrections of his demon temper, to trim an ardent young woman's
fanatical overflow of the sisterly sentiments; scholarly friends, too,
for such restrainings from excess as the mind obtains in a lamp of
History exhibiting man's original sprouts to growth and fitful
continuation of them. Her first experience of the grief that is in
pleasure, for those who have passed a season, was when the old
Concert-set assembled round her. When she heard from the mouth of a
living woman, that she had saved her from going under the world's
waggon-wheels, and taught her to know what is actually meant by the good
living of a shapely life, Nesta had the taste of a harvest happiness
richer than her recollection of the bride's, though never was bride in
fuller flower to her lord than she who brought the dower of an equal
valiancy to Dartrey Fenellan. You are aware of the reasons, the many, why
a courageous young woman requires of high heaven, far more than the
commendably timid, a doughty husband. She had him; otherwise would that
puzzled old world, which beheld her step out of the ranks to challenge
it, and could not blast her personal reputation, have commissioned a paw
to maul her character, perhaps instructing the gossips to murmur of her
parentage. Nesta Victoria Fenellan had the husband who would have the
world respectful to any brave woman. This one was his wife.

Daniel Skepsey rejoices in service to his new master, owing to the
scientific opinion he can at any moment of the day apply for, as to the
military defences of the country; instead of our attempting to arrest the
enemy by vociferations of persistent prayer:--the sole point of
difference between him and his Matilda; and it might have been fatal but
that Nesta's intervention was persuasive. The two members of the Army
first in the field to enrol and give rank according to the merits of
either, to both sexes, were made one. Colney Durance (practically cynical
when not fancifully, men said) stood by Skepsey at the altar. His
published exercises in Satire produce a flush of the article in the
Reviews of his books. Meat and wine in turn fence the Hymen beckoning
Priscilla and Mr. Pempton. The forms of Religion more than the Channel's
division of races keep Louise de Seilles and Mr. Peridon asunder: and in
the uniting of them Colney is interested, because it would have so
pleased the woman of the loyal heart no longer beating. He let Victor's
end be his expiation and did not phrase blame of him. He considered the
shallowness of the abstract Optimist exposed enough in Victor's history.
He was reconciled to it when, looking on their child, he discerned, that
for a cancelling of the errors chargeable to them, the father and mother
had kept faith with Nature.




     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS

     Admiration of an enemy or oppressor doing great deeds
     All of us an ermined owl within us to sit in judgement
     An incomprehensible world indeed at the bottom and at the top
     Aristocratic assumption of licence
     Arrest the enemy by vociferations of persistent prayer
     Ask not why, where reason never was
     Belief in the narrative by promoting nausea in the audience
     But what is it we do (excepting cricket, of course)
     Cannot be any goodness unless it is a practiced goodness
     Claim for equality puts an end to the priceless privileges
     Consent of circumstances
     Consent to take life as it is
     Continued trust in the man--is the alternative of despair
     Country prizing ornaments higher than qualities
     Cover of action as an escape from perplexity
     Critical fashion of intimates who know as well as hear
     Death is our common cloak; but Calamity individualizes
     Despises hostile elements and goes unpunished
     Dialogue between Nature and Circumstance
     Dithyrambic inebriety of narration
     Dudley was not gifted to read behind words and looks
     Eminently servile is the tolerated lawbreaker
     Exuberant anticipatory trustfulness
     Fell to chatting upon the nothings agreeably and seriously
     Feminine; coming when she willed and flying when wanted
     Fire smoothes the creases
     Frankness as an armour over wariness
     Greater our successes, the greater the slaves we become
     Half designingly permitted her trouble to be seen
     Half a dozen dozen left
     Happy the woman who has not more to speak
     Hard to bear, at times unbearable
     Haremed opinion of the unfitness of women
     He sinks terribly when he sinks at all
     He never acknowledged a trouble, he dispersed it
     He never explained
     He neared her, wooing her; and she assented
     He prattled, in the happy ignorance of compulsion
     Heathen vindictiveness declaring itself holy
     Honest creatures who will not accept a lift from fiction
     How little we mean to do harm when we do an injury
     How Success derides Ambition!
     If only been intellectually a little flexible in his morality
     If we are robbed, we ask, How came we by the goods?
     If we are really for Nature, we are not lawless
     In the pay of our doctors
     In bottle if not on draught (oratory)
     Intrusion of hard material statements, facts
     Judgeing of the destiny of man by the fate of individuals
     Kelts, as they are called, can't and won't forgive injuries
     Let but the throb be kept for others--That is the one secret
     Love must needs be an egoism
     Man with a material object in aim, is the man of his object
     Memory inspired by the sensations
     Nation's half made-up of the idle and the servants of the idle
     Naturally as deceived as he wished to be
     Nature and Law never agreed
     Nature could at a push be eloquent to defend the guilty
     Nature's logic, Nature's voice, for self-defence
     Next door to the Last Trump
     No companionship save with the wound they nurse
     Not to go hunting and fawning for alliances
     Not always the right thing to do the right thing
     Obeseness is the most sensitive of our ailments
     Official wrath at sound of footfall or a fancied one
     Once out of the rutted line, you are food for lion and jackal
     One wants a little animation in a husband
     Optional marriages, broken or renewed every seven years
     People of a provocative prosperity
     Pessimy is invulnerable
     Portrait of himself by the artist
     Put into her woman's harness of the bit and the blinkers
     Repeatedly, in contempt of the disgust of iteration
     Satirist is an executioner by profession
     Satirist too devotedly loves his lash to be a persuasive teacher
     Self-deceiver may be a persuasive deceiver of another
     Semblance of a tombstone lady beside her lord
     Share of foulness to them that are for scouring the chamber
     She was not his match--To speak would be to succumb
     She disdained to question the mouth which had bitten her
     Slap and pinch and starve our appetites
     Slave of existing conventions
     Smallest of our gratifications in life could give a happy tone
     Smothered in its pudding-bed of the grotesque (obesity)
     Snuffle of hypocrisy in her prayer
     Startled by the criticism in laughter
     State of feverish patriotism
     Statistics are according to their conjurors
     Subterranean recess for Nature against the Institutions of Man
     Tale, which leaves the man's mind at home
     The banquet to be fervently remembered, should smoke
     The homage we pay him flatters us
     The effects of the infinitely little
     The night went past as a year
     The old confession, that we cannot cook (The English)
     The worst of it is, that we remember
     The face of a stopped watch
     The impalpable which has prevailing weight
     There is little to be learnt when a little is known
     They helped her to feel at home with herself
     They kissed coldly, pressed a hand, said good night
     They do not live; they are engines
     Thought of differences with him caused frightful apprehensions
     To do nothing, is the wisdom of those who have seen fools perish
     Universal censor's angry spite
     Unshamed exuberant male has found the sweet reverse in his mate
     We have come to think we have a claim upon her gratitude
     We must have some excuse, if we would keep to life
     We cannot relinquish an idea that was ours
     We've all a parlous lot too much pulpit in us
     Whimpering fits you said we enjoy and must have in books
     Who enjoyed simple things when commanding the luxuries






LORD ORMONT AND HIS AMINTA, Complete


By George Meredith




CONTENTS.

BOOK 1.
I.        LOVE AT A SCHOOL
II.       LADY CHARLOTTE
III.      THE TUTOR
IV.       RECOGNITION
V.        IN WHICH THE SHADES OF BROWNY AND MATEY ADVANCE AND RETIRE

BOOK 2.
VI.       IN A MOOD OF LANGUOR
VII.      EXHIBITS EFFECTS OF A PRATTLER'S DOSES
VIII.     MRS. LAWRENCE FINCHLEY
IX.       A FLASH OF THE BRUISED WARRIOR
X.        A SHORT PASSAGE IN THE GAME PLAYED BY TWO
XI.       THE SECRETARY TAKEN AS AN ANTIDOTE

BOOK 3.
XII.      MORE OF CUPER'S BOYS
XIII.     WAR AT OLMER
XIV.      OLD LOVERS NEW FRIENDS
XV.       SHOWING A SECRET FISHED WITHOUT ANGLING
XVI.      ALONG TWO ROADS TO STEIGNTON

BOOK 4.
XVII.     LADY CHARLOTTE'S TRIUMPH
XVIII.    A SCENE ON THE ROAD BACK
XIX.      THE PURSUERS
XX.       AT THE SIGN OF THE JOLLY CRICKETERS
XXI.      UNDER-CURRENTS IN THE MINDS OF LADY CHARLOTTE AND LORD ORMONT
XXII.     TREATS OF THE FIRST DAY OF THE CONTENTION OF BROTHER AND SISTER
XXIII.    THE ORMONT JEWELS

BOOK 5.
XXIV.     LOVERS MATED
XXXV.     PREPARATIONS FOR A RESOLVE
XXVI.     VISITS OF FAREWELL
XXVII.    A MARINE DUET
XXVIII.   THE PLIGHTING
XXIX.     AMINTA TO HER LORD
XXX.      CONCLUSION




CHAPTER I.

LOVE AT A SCHOOL

A procession of schoolboys having to meet a procession of schoolgirls on
the Sunday's dead march, called a walk, round the park, could hardly go
by without dropping to a hum in its chatter, and the shot of incurious
half-eyes the petticoated creatures--all so much of a swarm unless you
stare at them like lanterns. The boys cast glance because it relieved
their heaviness; things were lumpish and gloomy that day of the week. The
girls, who sped their peep of inquisition before the moment of transit,
let it be seen that they had minds occupied with thoughts of their own.

Our gallant fellows forgot the intrusion of the foreign as soon as it had
passed. A sarcastic discharge was jerked by chance at the usher and the
governess--at the old game, it seemed; or why did they keep steering
columns to meet? There was no fun in meeting; it would never be happening
every other Sunday, and oftener, by sheer toss-penny accident. They were
moved like pieces for the pleasure of these two.

Sometimes the meeting occurred twice during the stupid march-out, when it
became so nearly vexatious to boys almost biliously oppressed by the
tedium of a day merely allowing them to shove the legs along, ironically
naming it animal excise, that some among them pronounced the sham
variation of monotony to be a bothering nuisance if it was going to
happen every Sunday, though Sunday required diversions. They hated the
absurdity in this meeting and meeting; for they were obliged to
anticipate it, as a part of their ignominious weekly performance; and
they could not avoid reflecting on it, as a thing done over again: it had
them in front and in rear; and it was a kind of broadside mirror,
flashing at them the exact opposite of themselves in an identically
similar situation, that forced a resemblance.

Touching the old game, Cuper's fold was a healthy school, owing to the
good lead of the head boy, Matey Weyburn, a lad with a heart for games to
bring renown, and no thought about girls. His emulation, the fellows
fancied, was for getting the school into a journal of the Sports. He used
to read one sent him by a sporting officer of his name, and talk
enviously of public schools, printed whatever they did--a privilege and
dignity of which, they had unrivalled enjoyment in the past, days, when
wealth was more jealously exclusive; and he was always prompting for
challenges and saving up to pay expenses; and the fellows were to laugh
at kicks and learn the art of self-defence--train to rejoice in whipcord
muscles. The son of a tradesman, if a boy fell under the imputation, was
worthy of honour with him, let the fellow but show grip and toughness. He
loathed a skulker, and his face was known for any boy who would own to
fatigue or confess himself beaten. "Go to bed," was one of his terrible
stings. Matey was good at lessons, too--liked them; liked Latin and
Greek; would help a poor stumbler.

Where he did such good work was in sharpening the fellows to excel. He
kept them to the grindstone, so that they had no time for rusty brooding;
and it was fit done by exhortations off a pedestal, like St. Paul at the
Athenians, it breathed out of him every day of the week. He carried a
light for followers. Whatever he demanded of them, he himself did it
easily. He would say to boys, "You're going to be men," meaning something
better than women. There was a notion that Matey despised girls.
Consequently, never much esteemed, they were in disfavour. The old game
was mentioned only because of a tradition of an usher and governess
leering sick eyes until they slunk away round a corner and married, and
set up a school for themselves--an emasculate ending. Comment on it came
of a design to show that the whole game had been examined dismissed as
uninteresting and profitless.

One of the boys alluded in Matey's presence to their general view upon
the part played by womankind on the stage, confident of a backing; and he
had it, in a way: their noble chief whisked the subject, as not worth a
discussion; but he turned to a younger chap, who said he detested girls,
and asked him how about a sister at home; and the youngster coloured, and
Matey took him and spun him round, with a friendly tap on the shoulder.

Odd remarks at intervals caused it to be suspected that he had ideas
concerning girls. They were high as his head above the school; and there
they were left, with Algebra and Homer, for they were not of a sort to
inflame; until the boys noticed how he gave up speaking, and fell to hard
looking, though she was dark enough to get herself named Browny. In the
absence of a fair girl of equal height to set beside her, Browny shone.

She had a nice mouth, ready for a smile at the corners, or so it was
before Matey let her see that she was his mark. Now she kept her mouth
asleep and her eyes half down, up to the moment of her nearing to pass,
when the girl opened on him, as if lifting her eyelids from sleep to the
window, a full side--look, like a throb, and no disguise--no slyness or
boldness either, not a bit of languishing. You might think her heart came
quietly out.

The look was like the fall of light on the hills from the first of
morning. It lasted half a minute, and left a ruffle for a good half-hour.
Even the younger fellows, without knowing what affected them, were moved
by the new picture of a girl, as if it had been a frontispiece of a
romantic story some day to be read. She looked compelled to look, but
consenting and unashamed; at home in submission; just the look that wins
observant boys, shrewd as dogs to read by signs, if they are interested
in the persons. They read Browny's meaning: that Matey had only to come
and snatch her; he was her master, and she was a brave girl, ready to go
all over the world with him; had taken to him as he to her, shot for
shot. Her taking to the pick of the school was a capital proof that she
was of the right sort. To be sure, she could not much help herself.

Some of the boys regretted her not being fair. But, as they felt, and
sought to explain, in the manner of the wag of a tail, with elbows and
eyebrows to one another's understanding, fair girls could never have let
fly such look; fair girls are softer, woollier, and when they mean to
look serious, overdo it by craping solemn; or they pinafore a jigging
eagerness, or hoist propriety on a chubby flaxen grin; or else they dart
an eye, or they mince and prim and pout, and are sigh-away and
dying-ducky, given to girls' tricks. Browny, after all, was the girl for
Matey.

She won a victory right away and out of hand, on behalf of her
cloud-and-moon sisters, as against the sunny-meadowy; for slanting
intermediates are not espied of boys in anything: conquered by Browny;
they went over to her colour, equal to arguing, that Venus at her
mightiest must have been dark, or she would not have stood a comparison
with the forest Goddess of the Crescent, swanning it through a lake--on
the leap for run of the chase--watching the dart, with her humming bow at
breast. The fair are simple sugary thing's, prone to fat, like broad-sops
in milk; but the others are milky nuts, good to bite, Lacedaemonian
virgins, hard to beat, putting us on our mettle; and they are for heroes,
and they can be brave. So these boys felt, conquered by Browny. A
sneaking native taste for the forsaken side, known to renegades, hauled
at them if her image waned during the week; and it waned a little, but
Sunday restored and stamped it.

By a sudden turn the whole upper-school had fallen to thinking of girls,
and the meeting on the Sunday was a prospect. One of the day-boarders had
a sister in the seminary of Miss Vincent. He was plied to obtain
information concerning Browny's name and her parents. He had it pat to
hand in answer. No parents came to see her; an aunt came now and then.
Her aunt's name was not wanted. Browny's name was Aminta Farrell.

Farrell might pass; Aminta was debated. This female Christian name had a
foreign twang; it gave dissatisfaction. Boy after boy had a try at it,
with the same effect: you could not speak the name without a pursing of
the month and a puckering of the nose, beastly to see, as one little
fellow reminded them on a day when Matey was in more than common favour,
topping a pitch of rapture, for clean bowling, first ball, middle stump
on the kick, the best bat of the other eleven in a match; and, says this
youngster, drawling, soon after the cheers and claps had subsided to
business, "Aminta."

He made it funny by saying it as if to himself and the ground, in a
subdued way, while he swung his leg on a half-circle, like a skater,
hands in pockets. He was a sly young rascal, innocently precocious
enough, and he meant no disrespect either to Browny or to Matey; but he
had to run for it, his delivery of the name being so like what was in the
breasts of the senior fellows, as to the inferiority of any Aminta to old
Matey, that he set them laughing; and Browny was on the field, to reprove
them, left of the tea-booth, with her school-mates, part of her head
under a scarlet parasol.

A girl with such a name as Aminta might not be exactly up to the standard
of old Matey, still, if he thought her so and she had spirit, the school
was bound to subscribe; and that look of hers warranted her for taking
her share in the story, like the brigand's wife loading gnus for him
while he knocks over the foremost carabineer on the mountain-ledge below,
who drops on his back with a hellish expression.

Browny was then clearly seen all round, instead of only front-face, as on
the Sunday in the park, when fellows could not spy backward after
passing. The pleasure they had in seeing her all round involved no fresh
stores of observation, for none could tell how she tied her back-hair,
which was the question put to them by a cynic of a boy, said to be queasy
with excess of sisters. They could tell that she was tall for a girl, or
tallish--not a maypole. She drank a cup of tea, and ate a slice of
bread-and-butter; no cake.

She appeared undisturbed when Matey, wearing his holiday white ducks, and
all aglow, entered the booth. She was not expected to faint, only she
stood for the foreign Aminta more than for their familiar Browny in his
presence. Not a sign of the look which had fired the school did she throw
at him. Change the colour and you might compare her to a lobster fixed on
end, with a chin and no eyes. Matey talked to Miss Vincent up to the
instant of his running to bat. She would have liked to guess how he knew
she had a brother on the medical staff of one of the regiments in India:
she asked him twice, and his cheeks were redder than cricket in the sun.
He said he read all the reports from India, and asked her whether she did
not admire Lord Ormont, our general of cavalry, whose charge at the head
of fifteen hundred horse in the last great battle shattered the enemy's
right wing, and gave us the victory--rolled him up and stretched him out
like a carpet for dusting. Miss Vincent exclaimed that it was really
strange, now, he should speak of Lord Ormont, for she had been speaking
of him herself in morning to one of her young ladies, whose mind was bent
on his heroic deeds. Matey turned his face to the group of young ladies,
quite pleased that one of them loved his hero; and he met a smile here
and there--not from Miss Aminta Farrell. She was a complete
disappointment to the boys that day. "Aminta" was mouthed at any
allusions to her.

So, she not being a match for Matey, they let her drop. The flush that
had swept across the school withered to a dry recollection, except when
on one of their Sunday afternoons she fanned the desert. Lord Ormont
became the subject of inquiry and conversation; and for his own sake--not
altogether to gratify Matey. The Saturday autumn evening's walk home,
after the race out to tea at a distant village, too late in the year for
cricket, too early for regular football, suited Matey, going at long
strides, for the story of his hero's adventures; and it was nicer than
talk about girls, and puzzling. Here lay a clear field; for he had the
right to speak of a cavalry officer: his father died of wounds in the
service, and Matey naturally intended to join the Dragoons; if he could
get enough money to pay for mess, he said, laughing. Lord Ormont was his
pattern of a warrior. We had in him a lord who cast off luxury to live
like a Spartan when under arms, with a passion to serve his country and
sustain the glory of our military annals. He revived respect for the
noble class in the hearts of Englishmen. He was as good an authority on
horseflesh as any Englishman alive; the best for the management of
cavalry: there never was a better cavalry leader. The boys had come to
know that Browny admired Lord Ormont, so they saw a double reason why
Matey should; and walking home at his grand swing in the October dusk,
their school hero drew their national hero closer to them.

Every fellow present was dead against the usher, Mr. Shalders, when he
took advantage of a pause to strike in with his "Murat!"

He harped on Murat whenever he had a chance. Now he did it for the
purpose of casting eclipse upon Major-General Lord Ormont, the son and
grandson of English earls; for he was an earl by his title, and Murat was
the son of an innkeeper. Shalders had to admit that Murat might have
served in the stables when a boy. Honour to Murat, of course, for
climbing the peaks! Shalders, too, might interest him in military affairs
and Murat; he did no harm, and could be amusing. It rather added to his
amount of dignity. It was rather absurd, at the same time, for an English
usher to be spouting and glowing about a French general, who had been a
stable-boy and became a king, with his Murat this, Murat that, and hurrah
Murat in red and white and green uniform, tunic and breeches, and a
chimney-afire of feathers; and how the giant he was charged at the head
of ten thousand horse, all going like a cataract under a rainbow over the
rocks, right into the middle of the enemy and through; and he a spark
ahead, and the enemy streaming on all sides flat away, as you see puffed
smoke and flame of a bonfire. That was fun to set boys jigging. No wonder
how in Russia the Cossacks feared him, and scampered from the shadow of
his plumes--were clouds flying off his breath! That was a fine warm
picture for the boys on late autumn or early winter evenings, Shalders
warming his back at the grate, describing bivouacs in the snow. They
liked well enough to hear him when he was not opposing Matey and Lord
Ormont. He perked on his toes, and fetched his hand from behind him to
flourish it when his Murat came out. The speaking of his name clapped him
on horseback--the only horseback he ever knew. He was as fond of giving
out the name Murat as you see in old engravings of tobacco-shops men
enjoying the emission of their whiff of smoke.

Matey was not inclined to class Lord Ormont alongside Murat, a first-rate
horseman and an eagle-eye, as Shalders rightly said; and Matey agreed
that forty thousand cavalry under your orders is a toss above fifteen
hundred; but the claim for a Frenchman of a superlative merit to swallow
and make nothing of the mention of our best cavalry generals irritated
him to call Murat a mountebank.

Shalders retorted, that Lord Ormont was a reprobate.

Matey hoped he would some day write us an essay on the morale of
illustrious generals of cavalry; and Shalders told him he did not advance
his case by talking nonsense.

Each then repeated to the boys a famous exploit of his hero. Their
verdict was favourable to Lord Ormont. Our English General learnt riding
before he was ten years old, on the Pampas, where you ride all day, and
cook your steak for your dinner between your seat and your saddle. He
rode with his father and his uncle, Muncastle, the famous traveller, into
Paraguay. He saw fighting before he was twelve. Before he was twenty he
was learning outpost duty in the Austrian frontier cavalry. He served in
the Peninsula, served in Canada, served in India, volunteered for any
chance of distinction. No need to say much of his mastering the picked
Indian swordsmen in single combat: he knew their trick, and was quick to
save his reins when they made a dash threatening the headstroke--about
the same as disabling sails in old naval engagements.

That was the part for the officer; we are speaking of the General. For
that matter, he had as keen an eye for the field and the moment for his
arm to strike as any Murat. One world have liked to see Murat matched
against the sabre of a wily Rajpoot! As to campaigns and strategy, Lord
Ormont's head was a map. What of Murat and Lord Ormont horse to horse and
sword to sword? Come, imagine that, if you are for comparisons. And if
Lord Ormont never headed a lot of thousands, it does not prove he was
unable. Lord Ormont was as big as Murat. More, he was a Christian to his
horses. How about Murat in that respect? Lord Ormont cared for his men:
did Murat so particularly much? And he was as cunning fronting odds, and
a thunderbolt at the charge. Why speak of him in the past? He is an
English lord, a lord by birth, and he is alive; things may be expected of
him to-morrow or next day.

Shalders here cut Matey short by meanly objecting to that.

"Men are mortal," he said, with a lot of pretended stuff, deploring our
human condition in the elegy strain; and he fell to reckoning the English
hero's age--as that he, Lord Ormont, had been a name in the world for the
last twenty-five years or more. The noble lord could be no chicken. We
are justified in calculating, by the course of nature, that his term of
activity is approaching, or has approached, or, in fact, has drawn to its
close.

"If your estimate, sir, approaches to correctness," rejoined
Matey--tellingly, his comrades thought.

"Sixty, as you may learn some day, is a serious age, Matthew Weyburn."

Matey said he should be happy to reach it with half the honours Lord
Ormont had won.

"Excepting the duels," Shalders had the impudence to say.

"If the cause is a good one!" cried Matey.

"The cause, or Lord Ormont has been maligned, was reprehensible in the
extremest degree." Shalders cockhorsed on his heels to his toes and back
with a bang.

"What was the cause, if you please, sir?" a boy, probably naughty,
inquired; and as Shalders did not vouchsafe a reply, the bigger boys
knew.

They revelled in the devilish halo of skirts on the whirl encircling Lord
Ormont's laurelled head.

That was a spark in their blood struck from a dislike of the tone assumed
by Mr. Shalders to sustain his argument; with his "men are mortal," and
talk of a true living champion as "no chicken," and the wordy drawl over
"justification for calculating the approach of a close to a term of
activity"--in the case of a proved hero!

Guardians of boys should make sure that the boys are on their side before
they raise the standard of virtue. Nor ought they to summon morality for
support of a polemic. Matey Weyburn's object of worship rode superior to
a morality puffing its phrasy trumpet. And, somehow, the sacrifice of an
enormous number of women to Lord Ormont's glory seemed natural; the very
thing that should be, in the case of a first-rate military hero and
commander--Scipio notwithstanding. It brightens his flame, and it is
agreeable to them. That is how they come to distinction: they have no
other chance; they are only women; they are mad to be singed, and they
rush pelf-mall, all for the honour of the candle.

Shortly after this discussion Matey was heard informing some of the
bigger fellows he could tell them positively that Lord Ormont's age was
under fifty-four--the prime of manhood, and a jolly long way off death!
The greater credit to him, therefore, if he bad been a name in the world
for anything like the period Shalders insinuated, "to get himself out of
a sad quandary." Matey sounded the queer word so as to fix it sticking to
the usher, calling him Mr. Peter Bell Shalders, at which the boys roared,
and there was a question or two about names, which belonged to verses,
for people caring to read poems.

To the joy of the school he displayed a greater knowledge of Murat than
Shalders had: named the different places in Europe where Lord Ormont and
Murat were both springing to the saddle at the same time--one a Marshal,
the other a lieutenant; one a king, to be off his throne any day, the
other a born English nobleman, seated firm as fate. And he accused Murat
of carelessness of his horses, ingratitude to his benefactor, circussy
style. Shalders went so far as to defend Murat for attending to the
affairs of his kingdom, instead of galloping over hedges and ditches to
swell Napoleon's ranks in distress. Matey listened to him there; he
became grave; he nodded like a man saying, "I suppose we must examine it
in earnest." The school was damped to hear him calling it a nice
question. Still, he said he thought he should have gone; and that settled
it.

The boys inclined to speak contemptuously of Shalders. Matey world not
let them; he contrasted Shalders with the other ushers, who had no
enthusiasms. He said enthusiasms were salt to a man; and he liked
Shalders for spelling at his battles and thinking he understood them, and
admiring Murat, and leading Virgil and parts of Lucan for his recreation.
He said he liked the French because they could be splendidly
enthusiastic. He almost lost his English flavour when he spoke in
downright approval of a small French fellow, coming from Orthez, near the
Pyrenees, for senselessly dashing and kicking at a couple of English who
jeered to hear Orthez named--a place trampled under Wellington's heels,
on his march across conquered France. The foreign little cockerel was a
clever lad, learning English fast, and anxious to show he had got hold of
the English trick of not knowing when he was beaten. His French vanity
insisted on his engaging the two, though one of them stood aside, and the
other let him drive his nose all the compass round at a poker fist. What
was worse, Matey examined these two, in the interests of fair play, as if
he doubted.

Little Emile Grenat set matters right with his boast to vindicate his
country against double the number, and Matey praised him, though he knew
Emile had been floored without effort by the extension of a single fist.
He would not hear the French abused; he said they were chivalrous, they
were fine fellows, topping the world in some things; his father had
fought them and learnt to respect them. Perhaps his father had learnt to
respect Jews, for there was a boy named Abner, he protected, who smelt
Jewish; he said they ran us Gentiles hard, and carried big guns.

Only a reputation like Matey's could have kept his leadership from a
challenge. Joseph Masner, formerly a rival, went about hinting and
shrugging; all to no purpose, you find boys born to be chiefs. On the day
of the snow-fight Matey won the toss, and chose J. Masner first pick; and
Masner, aged seventeen and some months, big as a navvy, lumbered across
to him and took his directions, proud to stand in the front centre, at
the head of the attack, and bear the brunt--just what he was fit for,
Matey gave no offence by choosing, half-way down the list, his little
French friend, whom he stationed beside himself, rather off his
battle-front, as at point at cricket, not quite so far removed. Two boys
at his heels piled ammunition. The sides met midway of a marshy ground,
where a couple of flat and shelving banks, formed for a broad new road,
good for ten abreast--counting a step of the slopes--ran transverse; and
the order of the game was to clear the bank and drive the enemy on to the
frozen ditch-water. Miss Vincent heard in the morning from the sister of
little Collett of the great engagement coming off; she was moved by
curiosity, and so the young ladies of her establishment beheld the young
gentlemen of Mr. Cuper's in furious division, and Matey's sore aim and
hard fling, equal to a slinger's, relieving J. Masner of a foremost
assailant with a spanker on the nob. They may have fancied him clever for
selecting a position rather comfortable, as things went, until they had
sight of him with his little French ally and two others, ammunition boys
to rear, descending one bank and scaling another right into the flank of
the enemy, when his old tower of a Masner was being heavily pressed by
numbers. Then came a fight hand to hand, but the enemy stood in a clamp;
not to split like a nut between crackers, they gave way and rolled,
backing in lumps from bank to ditch.

The battle was over before the young ladies knew. They wondered to see
Matey shuffling on his coat and hopping along at easy bounds to pay his
respects to Miss Vincent, near whom was Browny; and this time he and
Browny talked together. He then introduced little Emile to her. She spoke
of Napoleon at Brienne, and complimented Matey. He said he was cavalry,
not artillery, that day. They talked to hear one another's voices. By
constantly appealing to Miss Vincent he made their conversation together
seem as under her conduct; and she took a slide on some French phrases
with little Emile. Her young ladies looked shrinking and envious to see
the fellows wet to the skin, laughing, wrestling, linking arms; and some,
who were clown-faced with a wipe of scarlet, getting friends to rub their
cheeks with snow, all of them happy as larks in air, a big tea steaming
for them at the school. Those girls had a leap and a fail of the heart,
glad to hug themselves in their dry clothes, and not so warm as the
dripping boys were, nor so madly fond of their dress-circle seats to look
on at a play they were not allowed even to desire to share. They looked
on at blows given and taken in good temper, hardship sharpening jollity.
The thought of the difference between themselves and the boys must have
been something like the tight band--call it corset--over the chest,
trying to lift and stretch for draughts of air. But Browny's feeling
naturally was, that all this advantage for the boys came of Matey
Weyburn's lead.

Miss Vincent with her young ladies walked off in couples, orderly chicks,
the usual Sunday march of their every day. The school was coolish to
them; one of the fellows hummed bars of some hymn tune, rather faster
than church. And next day there was a murmur of letters passing between
Matey and Browny regularly, little Collett for postman. Anybody might
have guessed it, but the report spread a feeling that girls are not the
entirely artificial beings or flat targets we suppose. The school began
to brood, like air deadening on oven-heat. Winter is hen-mother to the
idea of love in schools, if the idea has fairly entered. Various girls of
different colours were selected by boys for animated correspondence, that
never existed and was vigorously prosecuted, with efforts to repress
contempt of them in courtship for their affections. They found their part
of it by no means difficult when they imagined the lines without the
words, or, better still, the letter without the lines. A holy
satisfaction belonged to the sealed thing; the breaking of the seal and
inspection of the contents imposed perplexity on that sentiment. They
thought of certain possible sentences Matey and Browny would exchange;
but the plain, conceivable, almost visible, outside of the letter had a
stronger spell for them than the visionary inside. This fancied
contemplation of the love-letter was reversed in them at once by the
startling news of Miss Vincent's discovery and seizure of the sealed
thing, and her examination of the burden it contained. Then their thirst
was for drama--to see, to drink every wonderful syllable those lovers had
written.

Miss Vincent's hand was upon one of Matey's letters. She had come across
the sister of little Collett, Selina her name was, carrying it. She saw
nothing of the others. Aminta was not the girl to let her. Nor did Mr.
Cuper dare demand from Matey a sight or restitution of the young lady's
half of the correspondence. He preached heavily at Matey; deplored that
the boy he most trusted, etc.--the school could have repeated it without
hearing. We know the master's lecture in tones--it sings up to sing down,
and touches nobody. As soon as he dropped to natural talk, and spoke of
his responsibility and Miss Vincent's, Matey gave the word of a man of
honour that he would not seek to communicate farther with Miss Farrell at
the school.

Now there was a regular thunder-hash among the boys on the rare occasions
when they met the girls. All that Matey and Browny were forbidden to
write they looked--much like what it had been before the discovery; and
they dragged the boys back from promised instant events. It was,
nevertheless, a heaving picture, like the sea in the background of a
marine piece at the theatre, which rouses anticipations of storm, and
shows readiness. Browny's full eyebrow sat on her dark eye like a cloud
of winter noons over the vanishing sun. Matey was the prisoner gazing at
light of a barred window and measuring the strength of the bars. She
looked unhappy, but looked unbeaten more. Her look at him fed the school
on thoughts of what love really is, when it is not fished out of books
and poetry. For though she was pale, starved and pale, they could see she
was never the one to be sighing; and as for him, he looked ground dower
all to edge. However much they puzzled over things, she made them feel
they were sure, as to her, that she drove straight and meant blood, the
life or death of it: all her own, if need be, and confidence in the
captain she had chosen. She could have been imagined saying, There is a
storm, but I am ready to embark with you this minute.

That sign of courage in real danger ennobled her among girls. The name
Browny was put aside for a respectful Aminta. Big and bright events to
come out in the world were hinted, from the love of such a couple. The
boys were not ashamed to speak the very word love. How he does love that
girl! Well, and how she loves him! She did, but the boys had to be seeing
her look at Matey if they were to put the girl on some balanced equality
with a fellow she was compelled to love. It seemed to them that he gave,
and that she was a creature carried to him, like driftwood along the
current of the flood, given, in spite of herself. When they saw those
eyes of hers they were impressed with an idea of her as a voluntary giver
too; pretty well the half to the bargain; and it confused their notion of
feminine inferiority. They resolved to think her an exceptional girl,
which, in truth, they could easily do, for none but an exceptional girl
could win Matey to love her.

Since nothing appeared likely to happen at the school, they speculated
upon what would occur out in the world, and were assisted to conjecture,
by a rumour, telling of Aminta Farrell's aunt as a resident at Dover.
Those were days when the benevolently international M. de Porquet had
begun to act as interpreter to English schools in the portico of the
French language; and under his guidance it was asked, in contempt of the
answer, Combien de postes d'ici a Douvres? But, accepting the rumour as a
piece of information, the answer became important. Ici was twenty miles
to the north-west of London. How long would it take Matey to reach
Donvres? Or at which of the combien did he intend to waylay and away with
Aminta? The boys went about pounding at the interrogative French phrase
in due sincerity, behind the burlesque of traveller bothering coachman.
Matey's designs could be finessed only by a knowledge of his character:
that he was not the fellow to give up the girl he had taken to; and
impediments might multiply, but he would bear them down. Three days
before the break-up of the school another rumour came tearing through it:
Aminta's aunt had withdrawn her from Miss Vincent's. And now rose the
question, two-dozen-mouthed, Did Matey know her address at Douvres? His
face grew stringy and his voice harder, and his eyes ready to burst from
a smother of fire. All the same, he did his work: he was the good old
fellow at games, considerate in school affairs, kind to the youngsters;
he was heard to laugh. He liked best the company of his little French
friend from Orthez, over whose shoulder his hand was laid sometimes as
they strolled and chatted in two languages. He really went a long way to
make French fellows popular, and the boys were sorry that little Emile
was off to finish his foreign education in Germany. His English was
pretty good, thanks to Matey. He went away, promising to remember Old
England, saying he was French first, and a Briton next. He had lots of
plunk; which accounted for Matey's choice of him as a friend among the
juniors.




CHAPTER II.

LADY CHARLOTTE

Love-passages at a school must produce a ringing crisis if they are to
leave the rosy impression which spans the gap of holidays. Neither Matey
nor Browny returned to their yoke, and Cuper's boys recollected the
couple chiefly on Sundays. They remembered several of Matey's doings and
sayings: his running and high leaping, his bowling, a maxim or two of
his, and the tight strong fellow he was; also that the damsel's colour
distinctly counted for dark. She became nearly black in their minds.
Well, and Englishmen have been known to marry Indian princesses: some
have a liking for negresses. There are Nubians rather pretty in pictures,
if you can stand thick lips. Her colour does not matter, provided the
girl is of the right sort. The exchange of letters between the lovers was
mentioned. The discovery by Miss Vincent of their cool habit of
corresponding passed for an incident; and there it remained, stiff as a
poet, not being heated by a story to run. So the foregone excitement lost
warmth, and went out like a winter sun at noon or a match lighted before
the candle is handy.

Lord Ormont continued to be a subject of discussion from time to time,
for he was a name in the newspapers; and Mr. Shalders had been worked by
Matey Weyburn into a state of raw antagonism at the mention of the
gallant General; he could not avoid sitting in judgement on him.

According to Mr. Shalders, the opinion of all thoughtful people in
England was with John Company and the better part of the Press to condemn
Lord Ormont in his quarrel with the Commissioner of one of the Indian
provinces, who had the support of the Governor of his Presidency and of
the Viceroy; the latter not unreservedly, yet ostensibly inclined to
condemn a too prompt military hand. The Gordian knot of a difficulty cut
is agreeable in the contemplation of an official chief hesitating to use
the sword and benefiting by having it done for him. Lord Ormont certainly
cut the knot.

Mr. Shalders was cornered by the boys, coming at him one after another
without a stop, vowing it was the exercise of a military judgement upon a
military question at a period of urgency, which had brought about the
quarrel with the Commissioner and the reproof of the Governor. He
betrayed the man completely cornered by generalizing. He said--

"We are a civilian people; we pride ourselves on having civilian
methods."

"How can that be if we have won India with guns and swords?"

"But that splendid jewel for England's tiara won," said he (and he might
as well have said crown), "we are bound to sheathe the sword and govern
by the Book of the Law."

"But if they won't have the Book of the Law!"

"They knew the power behind it."

"Not if we knock nothing harder than the Book of the Law upon their
skulls."

"Happily for the country, England's councils are not directed by boys!"

"Ah, but we're speaking of India, Mr. Shalders."

"You are presuming to speak of an act of insubordination committed by a
military officer under civilian command."

"What if we find an influential prince engaged in conspiracy?"

"We look for proof."

"Suppose we have good proof?"

"We summon him to exonerate himself."

"No; we mount and ride straight away into his territory, spot the
treason, deport him, and rule in his place!"

It was all very well for Mr. Shalders to say he talked to boys; he was
cornered again, as his shrug confessed.

The boys asked among themselves whether he would have taken the same view
if his Murat had done it!

These illogical boys fought for Matey Weyburn in their defence of Lord
Ormont. Somewhere, they wee sure, old Matey was hammering to the same
end--they could hear him. Thought of him inspired them to unwonted
argumentative energy, that they might support his cause; and scatter the
gloomy prediction of the school, as going to the dogs now Matey had left.

The subject provoked everywhere in Great Britain a division similar to
that between master and boys at Cuper's establishment: one party for our
modern English magisterial methods with Indians, the other for the
decisive Oriental at the early time, to suit their native tastes; and the
Book of the Law is to be conciliatingly addressed to their sentiments by
a benign civilizing Power, or the sword is out smartly at the hint of a
warning to protect the sword's conquests. Under one aspect we appear
potteringly European; under another, drunk of the East.

Lord Ormont's ride at the head of two hundred horsemen across a stretch
of country including hill and forest, to fall like a bolt from the blue
on the suspected Prince in the midst of his gathering warriors, was a
handsome piece of daring, and the high-handed treatment of the Prince was
held by his advocates to be justified by the provocation, and the result.
He scattered an unprepared body of many hundreds, who might have
enveloped him, and who would presumptively have stood their ground, had
they not taken his handful to be the advance of regiments. These are the
deeds that win empires! the argument in his favour ran. Are they of a
character to maintain empires? the counter-question was urged. Men of a
deliberative aspect were not wanting in approval of the sharp and summary
of the sword in air when we have to deal with Indians. They chose to
regard it as a matter of the dealing with Indians, and put aside the
question of the contempt of civil authority.

Counting the cries, Lord Ormont won his case. Festival aldermen, smoking
clubmen, buckskin squires, obsequious yet privately excitable tradesmen,
sedentary coachmen and cabmen, of Viking descent, were set to think like
boys about him: and the boys, the women, and the poets formed a tipsy
chorea. Journalists, on the whole, were fairly halved, as regarded
numbers. In relation to weight, they were with the burgess and the
presbyter; they preponderated heavily in the direction of England's
burgess view of all cases disputed between civilian and soldier. But that
was when the peril was over.

Admirers of Lord Ormont enjoyed a perusal of a letter addressed by him to
the burgess's journal; and so did his detractors. The printing of it was
an act of editorial ruthlessness. The noble soldier had no mould in his
intellectual or educational foundry for the casting of sentences; and the
editor's leading type to the letter, without further notice of the
writer--who was given a prominent place or scaffolding for the execution
of himself publicly, if it pleased him to do that thing--tickled the
critical mind. Lord Ormont wrote intemperately.

His Titanic hurling of blocks against critics did no harm to an enemy
skilled in the use of trimmer weapons, notably the fine one of letting
big missiles rebound. He wrote from India, with Indian heat--"curry and
capsicums," it was remarked. He dared to claim the countenance of the
Commander-in-chief of the Army of India for an act disapproved by the
India House. Other letters might be on their way, curryer than the
preceding, his friends feared; and might also be malevolently printed,
similarly commissioning the reverberation of them to belabour his name
before the public. Admirers were still prepared to admire; but aldermen
not at the feast, squire-archs not in the saddle or at the bottle, some
few of the juvenile and female fervent, were becoming susceptible to a
frosty critical tone in the public pronunciation of Lord Ormont's name
since the printing of his letter and the letters it called forth. None of
them doubted that his case was good. The doubt concerned the effect on it
of his manner of pleading it. And if he damaged his case, he compromised
his admirers. Why, the case of a man who has cleverly won a bold stroke
for his country must be good, as long as he holds his tongue. A grateful
country will right him in the end: he has only to wait, and not so very
long. "This I did: now examine it." Nothing more needed to be said by
him, if that.

True, he has a temper. It is owned that he is a hero. We take him with
his qualities, impetuosity being one, and not unsuited to his arm of the
service, as he has shown. If his temper is high, it is an element of a
character proved heroical. So has the sun his blotches, and we believe
that they go to nourish the luminary, rather than that they are a disease
of the photosphere.

Lord Ormont's apologists had to contend with anecdotes and dicta now
pouring in from offended Britons, for illustration of an impetuosity fit
to make another Charley XII. of Sweden--a gratuitous Coriolanus
haughtiness as well, new among a people accustomed socially to bow the
head to their nobles, and not, of late, expecting a kick for their pains.
Newspapers wrote of him that, "a martinet to subordinates, he was known
for the most unruly of lieutenants." They alluded to current sayings, as
that he "habitually took counsel of his horse on the field when a
movement was entrusted to his discretion." Numerous were the journalistic
sentences running under an air of eulogy of the lordly warrior purposely
to be tripped, and producing their damnable effect, despite the obvious
artifice. The writer of the letter from Bombay, signed Ormont, was a born
subject for the antithetical craftsmen's tricky springes.

He was, additionally, of infamous repute for morale in burgess
estimation, from his having a keen appreciation of female beauty and a
prickly sense of masculine honour. The stir to his name roused
pestilential domestic stories. In those days the aristocrat still claimed
licence, and eminent soldier-nobles, comporting themselves as imitative
servants of their god Mars, on the fields of love and war, stood
necessarily prepared to vindicate their conduct as the field of the
measured paces, without deeming themselves bounden to defend the course
they took. Our burgess, who bowed head to his aristocrat, and hired the
soldier to fight for him, could not see that such mis-behaviour
necessarily ensued. Lord Ormont had fought duels at home and abroad. His
readiness to fight again, and against odds, and with a totally unused
weapon, was exhibited by his attack on the Press in the columns of the
Press. It wore the comical face to the friends deploring it, which
belongs to things we do that are so very like us. They agreed with his
devoted sister, Lady Charlotte Eglett, as to the prudence of keeping him
out of England for a time, if possible.

At the first perusal of the letter, Lady Charlotte quitted her place in
Leicestershire, husband, horses, guests, the hunt, to scour across a
vacant London and pick up acquaintances under stress to be spots there in
the hunting season, with them to gossip for counsel on the subject of
"Ormont's hand-grenade," and how to stop and extinguish a second. She was
a person given to plain speech. "Stinkpot" she called it, when
acknowledging foul elements in the composition and the harm it did to the
unskilful balist. Her view of the burgess English imaged a mighty monster
behind bars, to whom we offer anything but our hand. As soon as he gets
held of that he has you; he won't let it loose with flesh on the bones.
We must offend him--we can't be man or woman without offending his tastes
and his worships; but while we keep from contact (i.e. intercommunication)
he may growl, he is harmless. Witness the many occasions when her brother
offended worse, and had been unworried, only growled at, and distantly,
not in a way to rouse concern; and at the neat review, or procession into
the City, or public display of any sort, Ormont had but to show himself,
he was the popular favourite immediately. He had not committed the folly
of writing a letter to a newspaper then.

Lady Charlotte paid an early visit to the office of the great London
solicitor, Arthur Abner, who wielded the law as an instrument of
protection for countless illustrious people afflicted by what they stir
or attract in a wealthy metropolis. She went simply to gossip of her
brother's affairs with a refreshing man of the world, not given to
circumlocutions, and not afraid of her: she had no deeper object; but
fancying she heard the clerk, on his jump from the stool, inform her that
Mr. Abner was out, "Out?" she cried, and rattled the room, thumping,
under knitted brows. "Out of town?" For a man of business taking
holidays, when a lady craves for gossip, disappointed her faith in him as
cruelly as the shut-up, empty inn the broken hunter knocking at a hollow
door miles off home.

Mr. Abner, hatted and gloved and smiling, came forth. "Going out, the man
meant, Lady Charlotte. At your service for five minutes."

She complimented his acuteness, in the remark, "You see I've only come to
chat," and entered his room.

He led her to her theme: "The excitement is pretty well over."

"My brother's my chief care--always was. I'm afraid he'll be pitchforking
at it again, and we shall have another blast. That letter ought never to
have been printed. That editor deserves the horsewhip for letting it
appear. If he prints a second one I shall treat him as a personal enemy."

"Better make a friend of him."

"How?"

"Meet him at my table."

She jumped an illumined half-about on her chair. "So I will, then. What
are the creature's tastes?"

"Hunts, does he?" The editor rose in her mind from the state of neuter to
something of a man. "I recollect an article in that paper on the Ormont
duel. I hate duelling, but I side with my brother. I had to laugh,
though. Luckily, there's no woman on hand at present, as far as I know.
Ormont's not likely to be hooked by garrison women or blacks. Those
coloured women--some of ours too--send the nose to the clouds; not a bad
sign for health. And there are men like that old Cardinal Guicciardini
tells of...hum! Ormont's not one of them. I hope he'll stay in India till
this blows over, or I shall be hearing of provocations."

"You have seen the Duke?"

She nodded. Her reserve was a summary of the interview. "Kind, as he
always is," she said. "Ormont has no chance of employment unless there's
a European war. They can't overlook him in case of war. He'll have to
pray for that."

"Let us hope we shan't get it."

"My wish; but I have to think of my brother. If he's in England with no
employment, he's in a mess with women and men both. He kicks if he's laid
aside to rust. He has a big heart. That's what I said: all he wants is to
serve his country. If you won't have war, give him Gibraltar or Malta, or
command of one of our military districts. The South-eastern 'll be vacant
soon. He'd like to be Constable of the Castle, and have an eye on
France."

"I think he's fond of the French?"

"Loves the French. Expects to have to fight them all the same. He loves
his country best. Here's the man everybody's abusing!"

"I demur, my lady. I was dining the other day with a client of mine, and
a youngster was present who spoke of Lord Ormont in a way I should like
you to have heard. He seemed to know the whole of Lord Ormont's career,
from the time of the ride to Paraguay up to the capture of the plotting
Rajah. He carried the table."

"Good boy! We must turn to the boys for justice, then. Name your day for
this man, this editor."

"I will see him. You shall have the day to-night."

Lady Charlotte and the editor met. She was racy, he anecdotal. Stag, fox,
and hare ran before them, over fields and through drawing-rooms: the
scent was rich. They found that they could talk to one another as they
thought; that he was not the Isle-bound burgess, nor she the postured
English great lady; and they exchanged salt, without which your current
scandal is of exhausted savour. They enjoyed the peculiar novel relish of
it, coming from a social pressman and a dame of high society. The
different hemispheres became known as one sphere to these birds of broad
wing convening in the upper blue above a quartered carcase earth.

A week later a letter, the envelope of a bulky letter in Lord Ormont's
handwriting, reached Lady Charlotte. There was a line from the editor:

   "Would it please your ladyship to have this printed?"

She read the letter, and replied:

   "Come to me for six days; you shall have the best mount in the
   county."

An editor devoid of malice might probably have forborne to print a letter
that appealed to Lady Charlotte, or touched her sensations, as if a
glimpse of the moon, on the homeward ride in winter on a nodding horse,
had suddenly bared to view a precipitous quarry within two steps. There
is no knowing: few men can forbear to tell a spicy story of their
friends; and an editor, to whom an exhibition of the immensely
preposterous on the part of one writing arrogantly must be provocative,
would feel the interests of his Journal, not to speak of the claims of
readers, pluck at him when he meditated the consignment of such a
precious composition to extinction. Lady Charlotte withheld a sight of
the letter from Mr. Eglett. She laid it in her desk, understanding well
that it was a laugh lost to the world. Poets could reasonably feign it to
shake the desk inclosing it. She had a strong sense of humour; her mind
reverted to the desk in a way to make her lips shut grimly. She sided
with her brother.

Only pen in hand did he lay himself open to the enemy. In his personal
intercourse he was the last of men to be taken at a disadvantage. Lady
Charlotte was brought round to the distasteful idea of some help coming
from a legitimate adjunct at his elbow: a restraining woman--wife, it had
to be said. And to name the word wife for Thomas Rowsley, Earl of Ormont,
put up the porcupine quills she bristled with at the survey of a sex
thirsting, and likely to continue thirsting, for such honour. What woman
had she known fit to bear the name? She had assumed the judicial seat
upon the pretensions of several, and dismissed them to their limbo, after
testifying against them. Who is to know the fit one in these mines of
deception? Women of the class offering wives decline to be taken on
trial; they are boxes of puzzles--often dire surprises. Her brother knew
them well enough to shy at the box. Her brother Rowsley had a funny
pride, like a boy at a game, at the never having been caught by one among
the many he made captive. She let him have it all to himself.

He boasted it to a sister sharing the pride exultant in the cry of the
hawk, scornful of ambitions poultry, a passed finger-post to the plucked,
and really regretful that no woman had been created fit for him. When she
was not aiding with her brother, women, however contemptible for their
weakness, appeared to her as better than barn-door fowl, or vermin in
their multitudes gnawing to get at the cheese-trap. She could be humane,
even sisterly, with women whose conduct or prattle did not outrage plain
sense, just as the stickler for the privileges of her class was
large-heartedly charitable to the classes flowing in oily orderliness
round about below it--if they did so flow. Unable to read woman's
character, except upon the broadest lines as it were the spider's main
threads of its web, she read men minutely, from the fact that they were
neither mysteries nor terrors to her; but creatures of importunate
appetites, humorous objects; very manageable, if we leave the road to
their muscles, dress their wounds, smoothe their creases, plume their
vanity; and she had an unerring eye for the man to be used when a blow
was needed, methods for setting him in action likewise. She knew how much
stronger than ordinary men the woman who can put them in motion. They can
be set to serve as pieces of cannon, under compliments on their superior
powers, which were not all undervalued by her on their own merits, for
she worshipped strength. But the said, with a certain amount of truth,
that the women unaware of the advantage Society gave them (as to
mastering men) were fools.

Tender, is not a word coming near to Lady Charlotte. Thoughtful on behalf
of the poor foolish victims of men she was. She had saved some, avenged
others. It should be stated, that her notion of saving was the saving of
them from the public: she had thrown up a screen. The saving of them from
themselves was another matter--hopeless, to her thinking. How preach at a
creature on the bend of passion's rapids! One might as well read a
chapter from the Bible to delirious patients. When once a woman is taken
with the love-passion, we must treat her as bitten; hide her antics from
the public: that is the principal business. If she recovers, she resumes
her place, and horrid old Nature, who drove her to the frenzy, is
unlikely to bother or, at least, overthrow her again, unless she is one
of the detestable wantons, past compassion or consideration. In the case
reviewed, the woman has gone through fire, and is none the worse for her
experiences: worth ten times what she was, to an honest man, if men could
be got to see it. Some do. Of those men who do not, Lady Charlotte spoke
with the old family-nurse humour, which is familiar with the tricks and
frailties of the infants; and it is a knife to probe the male, while
seemingly it does the part of the napkin--pities and pats. They expect a
return of much for the little that is next to nothing. They are fall of
expectations: and of what else? They are hard bargainers.

She thought this of men; and she liked men by choice. She had old nurse's
preference for the lustier male child. The others are puling things,
easier to rear, because they bend better; and less esteemed, though they
give less trouble, rouse less care. But when it came to the duel between
the man and the woman, her sense of justice was moved to join her with
the party of her unfairly handled sisters--a strong party, if it were not
so cowardly, she had to think.

Mr. Eglett, her husband, accepted her--accepted the position into which
he naturally fell beside her, and the ideas she imposed on him; for she
never went counter to his principles. These were the fixed principles of
a very wealthy man, who abhorred debt, and was punctilious in veracity,
scrupulous in cleanliness of mind and body, devoted to the honour of his
country, the interests of his class. She respected the high landmark
possessing such principles; and she was therefore enabled to lead without
the wish to rule. As it had been between them at the beginning, so it was
now, when they were grandparents running on three lines of progeny from
two daughters and a son: they were excellent friends. Few couples can say
more. The union was good English grey--that of a prolonged November, to
which we are reconciled by occasions for the hunt and the gun. She was,
nevertheless, an impassioned woman. The feeling for her brother helped to
satisfy her heart's fires, though as little with her brother as with her
husband was she demonstrative. Lord Ormont disrelished the caresses of
relatives.

She, for her part, had so strong a sympathy on behalf of poor gentlemen
reduced to submit to any but a young woman's hug, that when, bronzed from
India, he quitted the carriage and mounted her steps at Olmer, the desire
to fling herself on his neck and breast took form in the words: "Here you
are home again, Rowsley; glad to have you." They shook hands firmly.

He remained three days at Olmer. His temper was mild, his frame of mind
bad as could be. Angry evaporations had left a residuum of solid scorn
for these "English," who rewarded soldierly services as though it were a
question of damaged packages of calico. He threatened to take the first
offer of a foreign State "not in insurrection." But clear sky was
overhead. He was the Rowsley of the old boyish delight in field sports,
reminiscences of prowlings and trappings in the woods, gropings along
water-banks, enjoyment of racy gossip. He spoke wrathfully of "one of
their newspapers" which steadily persisted in withholding from
publication every letter he wrote to it, after printing the first. And if
it printed one, why not the others?

Lady Charlotte put it on the quaintness of editors.

He had found in London, perhaps, reason for saying that he should do well
to be "out of this country" as early as he could; adding, presently, that
he meant to go, though "it broke his heart to keep away from a six
months' rest at Steignton," his Wiltshire estate.

No woman was in the field. Lady Charlotte could have submitted to the
intrusion of one of those at times wholesome victims, for the sake of the
mollification the unhappy proud thing might bring to a hero smarting
under injustice at the hands of chiefs and authorities.

He passed on to Steignton, returned to London, and left England for
Spain, as he wrote word, saying he hoped to settle at Steignton neat
year. He was absent the next year, and longer. Lady Charlotte had the
surprising news that Steignton was let, shooting and all, for five years;
and he had no appointment out of England or at home. When he came to
Olmer again he was under one of his fits of reserve, best undisturbed.
Her sympathy with a great soldier snubbed, an active man rusting, kept
her from remonstrance.

Three years later she was made meditative by the discovery of a woman's
being absolutely in the field, mistress of the field; and having been
there for a considerable period, dating from about the time when he
turned his back on England to visit a comrade-in-arms condemned by the
doctors to pass the winter in Malaga; and it was a young woman, a girl in
her teens, a handsome girl. Handsome was to be expected; Ormont bargained
for beauty. But report said the girl was very handsome, and showed
breeding: she seemed a foreigner, walked like a Goddess, sat her horse
the perfect Amazon. Rumour called her a Spaniard.

"Not if she rides!" Lady Charlotte cut that short.

Rumour had subsequently more to say. The reporter in her ear did not
confirm it, and she was resolutely deaf to a story incredible of her
brother--the man, of all men living, proudest of his name, blood,
station. So proud was he by nature, too, that he disdained to complain of
rank injustice; he maintained a cheerful front against adversity and
obloquy. And this man of complete self-command, who has every form of
noble pride, gets cajoled like a twenty-year-old yahoo at college! Do you
imagine it? To suppose of a man cherishing the name of Ormont, that he
would bestow it legally on a woman, a stranger, and imperil his race by
mixing blood with a creature of unknown lineage, was--why, of course, it
was to suppose him struck mad, and there never had been madness among the
Ormonts: they were too careful of the purity of the strain. Lady
Charlotte talked. She was excited, and ran her sentences to blanks, a
cunning way for ministering consolation to her hearing, where the
sentence intended a question, and the blank ending caught up the query
tone and carried it dwindling away to the most distant of throttled
interrogatives. She had, in this manner, only to ask,--her hearing
received the comforting answer it desired; for she could take that thin
far sound as a travelling laughter of incredulity, triumphant derision.

This meant to her--though she scarcely knew it, though the most wilful of
women declined to know it--a state of alarm. She had said of her brother
in past days that he would have his time of danger after striking sixty.
The dangerous person was to be young.

But, then, Ormont had high principles with regard to the dues to his
family. His principles could always be trusted. The dangerous young
person would have to be a person of lineage, of a certain station at
least: no need for a titled woman, only for warranted good blood. Is that
to be found certificated out of the rolls of Society? It may just
possibly be found, without certificate, however, in those muddled caverns
where the excluded intermingle. Here and there, in a peasant family, or a
small country tradesman's just raised above a peasant, honest
regenerating blood will be found. Nobles wanting refreshment from the
soil might do worse than try a slip of one of those juicy weeds;
ill-fated, sickly Royalties would be set-up striding through another
half-century with such invigoration, if it could be done for them! There
are tales. The tales are honourably discredited by the crazy
constitutions of the heirs to the diadem.

Yes, but we are speculating on the matter seriously, as though it were
one of intimate concern to the family. What is there to make us think
that Ormont would marry? Impossible to imagine him intimidated. Unlikely
that he, a practised reader of women, having so little of the woman in
him, would be melted by a wily girl; as women in the twilight situation
have often played the trick to come into the bright beams. How? They do a
desperate thing, and call it generosity, and then they appeal from it to
my lord's generosity; and so the two generosities drive off in a close
carriage with a friend and a professional landlady for the blessing of
the parson, and are legitimately united. Women have won round fools to
give way in that way. And quite right too! thought Lady Charlotte, siding
with nature and justice, as she reflected that no woman created would win
round her brother to give way in that way. He was too acute. The moment
the woman showed sign of becoming an actress, her doom was written. "Poor
idiot!" was not uncharitably inscribed by the sisterly lady on the
tombstone of hopes aimed with scarce pardonable ambition at her brother.

She blew away the rumour. Ormont, she vowed, had not entitled any woman
to share and bear his title. And this was her interpretation of the
report: he permitted (if he did permit) the woman to take his name, that
he might have a scornful fling at the world maltreating him. Besides, the
name was not published, it was not to be seen in the papers; it passed
merely among male friends, tradesmen, servants: no great harm in that.

Listen further. Here is an unknown girl: why should he marry her? A girl
consenting to the place beside a man of his handsome ripe age, is either
bought, or she is madly enamoured; she does not dictate terms. Ormont is
not of the brute buyers in that market. One sees it is the girl who leads
the dance. A girl is rarely so madly enamoured as when she falls in love
with her grandfather; she pitches herself at his head. This had not
happened for the first time in Ormont's case; and he had never proposed
marriage. Why should he do it now?

But again, if the girl has breeding to some extent, he might think it her
due that she should pass under the safeguard of his name, out of sight.

Then, so far the report is trustworthy. We blow the rumour out of belief.
A young woman there is: she is not a wife. Lady Charlotte allowed her the
fairly respectable post of Hecate of the Shades, as long as the girl was
no pretender to the place and name in the upper sphere. Her deductions
were plausible, convincing to friends shaken by her vehement manner of
coming at them. She convinced herself by means of her multitude of
reasons for not pursuing inquiry. Her brother said nothing. There was no
need for him to speak. He seemed on one or two occasions in the act of
getting himself together for the communication of a secret; and she made
ready to listen hard, with ears, eyebrows, shut month, and a gleam at the
back of her eyes, for a signification of something she would refer him to
after he had spoken. He looked at her and held his peace, or virtually
held it,--that is, he said not one word on the subject she was to have
told him she had anticipated. Lady Charlotte ascribed it to his
recollection of the quick blusher, the pained blusher, she was in her
girlhood at mention or print of the story of men and women. Who, not
having known her, could conceive it! But who could conceive that, behind
the positive, plain-dealing, downright woman of the world, there was at
times, when a nerve was touched or an old blocked path of imagination
thrown open, a sensitive youthfulness; still quick to blush as far as the
skin of a grandmother matron might show it!




CHAPTER III.

THE TUTOR

There was no counting now on Lord Ormont's presence in the British
gathering seasons, when wheatears wing across our fields or swallows
return to their eaves. He forsook the hunt to roam the Continent, one of
the vulgar band of tourists, honouring town only when Mayflies had flown,
and London's indiscriminate people went about without their volatile
heads.

Lady Charlotte put these changed conditions upon the behaviour of the
military authorities to her brother, saying that the wonder was he did
not shake the dust of his country from his feet. In her wise head she
rejoiced to think he was not the donkey she sketched for admiration; and
she was partly consoled, or played at the taking of a comfort needed in
her perpetual struggle with a phantom of a fact, by the reflection that a
young woman on his arm would tense him to feel himself more at home
abroad. Her mind's habit of living warmly beside him in separation was
vexed by the fixed intrusion of a female third person, who checked the
run of intimate chatter, especially damped the fancied talk over early
days--of which the creature was ignorant; and her propinquity to him
arrested or broke the dialogue Lady Charlotte invented and pressed to
renew. But a wife, while letting him be seen, would have insisted on
appropriating the thought of him--all his days, past as well as present.
An impassioned sister's jealousy preferred that it should not be a wife
reigning to dispute her share of her brother in imagination.

Then came a rumour, telling of him as engaged upon the composition of his
Memoirs.

Lady Charlotte's impulsive outcry: "Writing them?" signified her grounds
for alarm.

Happily, Memoirs are not among the silly deeds done in a moment; they
were somewhere ahead and over the hills: a band of brigands rather than a
homely shining mansion, it was true; but distant; and a principal
question shrieked to know whether he was composing them for publication.
She could look forward with a girl's pleasure to the perusal of them in
manuscript, in a woody nook, in a fervour of partizanship, easily
avoiding sight of errors, grammatical or moral. She chafed at the
possible printing and publishing of them. That would be equivalent to an
exhibition of him clean-stripped for a run across London--brilliant in
himself, spotty in the offence. Published Memoirs indicate the end of a
man's activity, and that he acknowledges the end; and at a period of Lord
Ormont's life when the denial of it should thunder. They are his final
chapter, making mummy of the grand figure they wrap in the printed stuff.
They are virtually his apology. Can those knowing Lord Ormont hear him
apologize? But it is a craven apology if we stoop to expound: we are seen
as pleading our case before the public. Call it by any name you please,
and under any attitude, it is that. And set aside the writing: it may be
perfect; the act is the degradation. It is a rousing of swarms. His
friends and the public will see the proudest nobleman of his day,
pleading his case in mangled English, in the headlong of an out-poured,
undrilled, rabble vocabulary, doubling the ridicule by his
imperturbability over the ridicule he excites: he who is no more
ridiculous, cried the partizan sister, conjuring up the scene, not an ace
more ridiculous, than a judge of assize calling himself miserable sinner
on Sunday before the parson, after he has very properly condemned half a
score of weekday miserable sinners to penal servitude or the rope. Nobody
laughs at the judge. Everybody will be laughing at the scornful man down
half-way to his knee-cape with a stutter of an apology for having done
his duty to his country, after stigmatizing numbers for inability or
ill-will to do it. But Ormont's weapon is the sword, not a pen! Lady
Charlotte hunted her simile till the dogs had it or it ran to earth.

She struck at the conclusion, that the young woman had been persuading
him. An adoring young woman is the person to imagine and induce to the
commission of such folly. "What do you think? You have seen her, you
say?" she asked of a man she welcomed for his flavour of the worldling's
fine bile.

Lord Adderwood made answer: "She may be having a hand in it. She
worships, and that is your way of pulling gods to the ground."

"Does she understand good English?"

"Speaks it."

"Can she write?"

"I have never had a letter from her."

"You tell me Morsfield admires the woman--would marry her to-morrow, if
he could get her."

"He would go through the ceremony Ormont has performed, I do not doubt."

"I don't doubt all of you are ready. She doesn't encourage one?"

"On the contrary, all."

"She's clever. This has been going on for now seven years, and, as far as
I know, she has my brother fast."

"She may have done the clever trick of having him fast from the
beginning."

"She'd like people to think it."

"She has an aunt to advertise it."

"Ormont can't swallow the woman, I'm told."

"Trying, if one is bound to get her down!"

"Boasts of the connection everywhere she's admitted, Randeller says."

"Randeller procures the admission to various parti-coloured places."

"She must be a blinking moll-owl! And I ask any sane Christian or
Pagan--proof enough!--would my brother Rowsley let his wife visit those
places, those people? Monstrous to have the suspicion that he would, you
know him! Mrs. Lawrence Finchley, for example. I say nothing to hurt the
poor woman; I back her against her imbecile of a husband. He brings a
charge he can't support; she punishes him by taking three years' lease of
independence and kicks up the grass all over the paddock, and then comes
cuckoo, barking his name abroad to have her home again. You can win the
shyest filly to corn at last. She goes, and he digests ruefully the
hotch-potch of a dish the woman brings him. Only the world spies a
side-head at her, husbanded or not, though the main fault was his, and
she had a right to insist that he should be sure of his charge before he
smacked her in the face with it before the world. In dealing with a
woman, a man commonly prudent--put aside chivalry, justice, and the
rest--should bind himself to disbelieve what he can't prove. Otherwise,
let him expect his whipping, with or without ornament. My opinion is,
Lawrence Finchley had no solid foundation for his charge, except his
being an imbecile. She wasn't one of the adventurous women to jump the
bars,--the gate had to be pushed open, and he did it. There she is; and I
ask you, would my brother Rowsley let his wife be intimate with her? And
there are others. And, sauf votre respect, the men--Morsfield for one,
Randeller another!"

"They have a wholesome dread of the lion."

"If they smell a chance with the lion's bone--it's the sweeter for being
the lion's. These metaphors carry us off our ground. I must let these
Ormont Memoirs run and upset him, if they get to print. I've only to
oppose, printed they'll be. The same if I say a word of this woman, he
marries her to-morrow morning. You speak of my driving men. Why can't I
drive Ormont? Because I'm too fond of him. There you have the secret of
the subjection of women: they can hold their own, and a bit more, when
they've no enemy beating inside."

"Hearts!--ah, well, it's possible. I don't say no; I've not discovered
them," Lord Adderwood observed.

They are rarely discovered in the haunts he frequented.

Her allusion to Mrs. Lawrence Finchley rapped him smartly, and she
admired his impassiveness under the stroke. Such a spectacle was one of
her pleasures.

Lady Charlotte mentioned incidentally her want of a tutor for her
grandson Leo during the winter holidays. He suggested an application to
the clergyman of her parish. She was at feud with the Rev. Stephen
Hampton-Evey, and would not take, she said, a man to be a bootblack in
her backyard or a woman a scullery-wench in her kitchen upon his
recommendation. She described the person of Mr. Hampton-Evey, his manner
of speech, general opinions, professional doctrines; rolled him into a
ball and bowled him, with a shrug for lamentation, over the decay of the
good old order of manly English Protestant clergymen, who drank their
port, bothered nobody about belief, abstained from preaching their
sermon, if requested; were capital fellows in the hunting-field, too; for
if they came, they had the spur to hunt in the devil's despite. Now we
are going to have a kind of bitter, clawed, forked female, in vestments
over breeches. "How do you like that bundling of the sexes?"

Lord Adderwood liked the lines of division to be strictly and invitingly
definite. He was thinking, as he reviewed the frittered appearance of the
Rev. Stephen Hampton-Evey in Lady Charlotte's hinds, of the possibility
that Lord Ormont, who was reputed to fear nobody, feared her. In which
case, the handsome young woman passing among his associates as the pseudo
Lady Ormont might be the real one after all, and Isabella Lawrence
Finchley prove right in the warning she gave to dogs of chase.

The tutor required by Lady Charlotte was found for her by Mr. Abner.
Their correspondence on the subject filled the space of a week, and then
the gentleman hired to drive a creaky wheel came down from London to
Olmer, arriving late in the evening.

Lady Charlotte's blunt "Oh!" when he entered her room and bowed upon the
announcement of his name, was caused by an instantaneous perception and
refection that it would be prudent to keep her grand-daughter Philippa,
aged between seventeen and eighteen, out of his way.

"You are friend of Mr. Abner's, are you?"

He was not disconcerted. He replied, in an assured and pleasant voice, "I
have hardly the pretension to be called a friend, madam."

"Are you a Jew?"

Her abruptness knocked something like a laugh almost out of him, but he
restrained the signs of it.

"I am not."

"You wouldn't be ashamed to tell me you were one if you were?"

"Not at all."

"You like the Jews?"

"Those I know I like."

"Not many Christians have the good sense and the good heart of Arthur
Abner. Now go and eat. Come back to me when you've done. I hope you are
hungry. Ask the butler for the wine you prefer."

She had not anticipated the enrolment in her household of a man so young
and good-looking. These were qualifications for Cupid's business, which
his unstrained self-possession accentuated to a note of danger to her
chicks, because she liked the taste of him. Her grand-daughter Philippa
was in the girl's waxen age; another, Beatrice, was coming to it. Both
were under her care; and she was a vigilant woman, with an intuition and
a knowledge of sex. She did not blame Arthur Abner for sending her a
good-looking young man; she had only a general idea that tutors in a
house, and even visiting tutors, should smell of dust and wear a snuffy
appearance. The conditions will not always insure the tutors from
foolishness, as her girl's experience reminded her, but they protect the
girl.

"Your name is Weyburn; your father was an officer in the army, killed on
the battle-field, Arthur Abner tells me," was her somewhat severely-toned
greeting to the young tutor on his presenting himself the second time.

It had the sound of the preliminary of an indictment read in a Court of
Law.

"My father died of his wounds in hospital," he said.

"Why did you not enter the service?"

"Want of an income, my lady."

"Bad look-out. Army or Navy for gentlemen, if they stick to the school of
honour. The sedentary professions corrupt men: bad for the blood. Those
monastery monks found that out. They had to birch the devil out of them
three times a day and half the night, howling like full-moon dogs all
through their lives, till the flesh was off them. That was their
exercise, if they were for holiness. My brother, Lord Ormont, has never
been still in his youth or his manhood. See him now. He counts his years
by scores; and he has about as many wrinkles as you when you're smiling.
His cheeks are as red as yours now you're blushing. You ought to have
left off that trick by this time. It's well enough in a boy."

Against her will she was drawn to the young man, and her consciousness of
it plucked her back to caution with occasional jerks--quaint alternations
of the familiar and the harshly formal, in the stranger's experience.

"If I have your permission, Lady Charlotte," said he, "the reason why I
mount red a little--if I do it--is, you mention Lord Ormont, and I have
followed his career since I was the youngest of boys."

"Good to begin with the worship of a hero. He can't sham, can't
deceive--not even a woman; and you're old enough to understand the
temptation: they're so silly. All the more, it's a point of honour with a
man of honour to shield her from herself. When it's a girl--"

The young man's eyebrows bent.

"Chapters of stories, if you want to hear them," she resumed; "and I can
vouch some of them true. Lord Ormont was never one of the wolves in a
hood. Whatever you hear of him; you may be sure he laid no trap. He's
just the opposite to the hypocrite; so hypocrites date him. I've heard
them called high-priests of decency. Then we choose to be indecent and
honest, if there's a God to worship. Fear, they're in the habit of
saying--we are to fear God. A man here, a Rev. Hampton-Evey, you'll hear
him harp on 'fear God.' Hypocrites may: honest sinners have no fear. And
see the cause: they don't deceive themselves--that is why. Do you think
we call love what we fear? They love God, or they disbelieve. And if they
believe in Him, they know they can't conceal anything from Him. Honesty
means piety: we can't be one without the other. And here are
people--parsons--who talk of dying as going into the presence of our
Maker, as if He had been all the while outside the world He created.
Those parsons, I told the Rev. Hampton-Evey here, make infidels--they
make a puzzle of their God. I'm for a rational Deity. They preach up a
supernatural eccentric. I don't say all: I've heard good sermons, and met
sound-headed clergymen--not like that gaping Hampton-Evey, when a woman
tells him she thinks for herself. We have him sitting on our pariah. A
free-thinker startles him as a kind of demon; but a female free-thinker
is one of Satan's concubines. He took it upon himself to reproach
me--flung his glove at my feet, because I sent a cheque to a poor man
punished for blasphemy. The man had the right to his opinions, and he had
the courage of his opinions. I doubt whether the Rev. Hampton-Evey would
go with a willing heart to prison for his. All the better for him if he
comes head-up out of a trial. But now see: all these parsons and judges
and mobcaps insist upon conformity. A man with common manly courage comes
before them, and he's cast in penalties. Yet we know from history, in
England, France, Germany, that the time of nonconformity brought out the
manhood of the nation. Now, I say, a nation, to be a nation, must have
men--I mean brave men. That's what those hosts of female men combine to
try to stifle. They won't succeed, but we shall want a war to teach the
country the value of courage. You catch what I am driving at? They accuse
my brother of immorality because he makes no pretence to be better than
the men of his class."

Weyburn's eyelids fluttered. Her kite-like ascent into the general, with
the sudden drop on her choice morsel, switched his humour at the moment
when he was respectfully considering that her dartings and gyrations had
motive as mach as the flight of the swallow for food. They had meaning;
and here was one of the great ladies of the land who thought for herself,
and was thoughtful for the country. If she came down like a bird winged,
it was her love of her brother that did it. His look at Lady Charlotte
glistened.

She raised her defences against the basilisk fascinating Philippa; and
with a vow to keep them apart and deprive him of his chance, she relapsed
upon the stiff frigidity which was not natural to her. It lasted long
enough to put him on his guard under the seductions of a noble dame's
condescension to a familiar tone. But, as he was too well bred to show
the change in his mind for her change of manner, and as she was the
sister of his boyhood's hero, and could be full of flavour, his eyes
retained something of their sparkle. They were ready to lighten again, in
the way peculiar to him, when she, quite forgetting her defence of
Philippa, disburdened herself of her antagonisms and enthusiasms, her
hates and her loves all round the neighbourhood and over the world, won
to confidential communication by this young man's face. She confessed as
much, had he been guided to perceive it. She said, "Arthur Abner's a
reader of men: I can trust his word about them."

Presently, it is true, she added: "No man's to be relied upon where
there's a woman." She refused her implicit trust to saints--"if ever a
man really was a saint before he was canonized!"

Her penetrative instinct of sex kindled the scepticism. Sex she saw at
play everywhere, dogging the conduct of affairs, directing them at times;
she saw it as the animation of nature, senselessly stigmatized,
hypocritically concealed, active in our thoughts where not in our deeds;
and the declining of the decorous to see it, or admit the sight, got them
abhorred bad names from her, after a touch at the deadly poison coming of
that blindness, or blindfoldedness, and a grimly melancholy shrug over
the cruelties resulting--cruelties chiefly affecting women.

"You're too young to have thought upon such matters," she said, for a
finish to them.

That was hardly true.

"I have thought," said Weyburn, and his head fell to reckoning of the
small sum of his thoughts upon them.

He was pulled up instantly for close inspection by the judge. "What is
your age?"

"I am in my twenty-sixth year."

"You have been among men: have you studied women?"

"Not largely, Lady Charlotte. Opportunity has been wanting at French and
German colleges."

"It's only a large and a close and a pretty long study of them that can
teach you anything; and you must get rid of the poetry about them, and be
sure you haven't lost it altogether. That's what is called the golden
mean. I'm not for the golden mean in every instance; it's a way of
exhorting to brutal selfishness. I grant it's the right way in those
questions. You'll learn in time." Her scanning gaze at the young man's
face drove him along an avenue of his very possible chances of learning.
"Certain to. But don't tell me that at your age you have thought about
women. You may say you have felt. A young man's feelings about women are
better reading for him six or a dozen chapters farther on. Then he can
sift and strain. It won't be perfectly clear, but it will do."

Mr. Eglett hereupon threw the door open, and ushered in Master Leo.

Lady Charlotte noticed that the tutor shook the boy's hand offhandedly,
with not a whit of the usual obtrusive geniality, and merely dropped him
a word. Soon after, he was talking to Mr. Eglett of games at home and
games abroad. Poor fun over there! We head the world in field games, at
all events. He drew a picture of a foreigner of his acquaintance looking
on at football. On the other hand, French boys and German, having passed
a year or two at an English school, get the liking for our games, and do
a lot of good when they go home. The things we learn from them are to
dance, to sing, and to study:--they are more in earnest than we about
study. They teach us at fencing too. The tutor praised fencing as an
exercise and an accomplishment. He had large reserves of eulogy for
boxing. He knew the qualities of the famous bruisers of the time, cited
fisty names, whose owners were then to be seen all over an admiring land
in prints; in the glorious defensive-offensive attitude, England's
own--Touch me, if you dare! with bullish, or bull-dog, or oak-bole fronts
for the blow, handsome to pugilistic eyes.

The young tutor had lighted on a pet theme of Mr. Eglett's--the excelling
virtues of the practice of pugilism in Old England, and the school of
honour that it is to our lower population. "Fifty times better for them
than cock-fighting," he exclaimed, admitting that he could be an
interested spectator at a ring or the pit cock-fighting or ratting.

"Ratting seems to have more excuse," the tutor said, and made no sign of
a liking for either of those popular pastimes. As he disapproved without
squeamishness, the impulsive but sharply critical woman close by nodded;
and she gave him his dues for being no courtier.

Leo had to be off to bed. The tutor spared him any struggle over the
shaking of hands, and saying, "Goodnight, Leo," continued the
conversation. The boy went away, visibly relieved of the cramp that
seizes on a youngster at the formalities pertaining to these chilly and
fateful introductions.

"What do you think of the look of him?" Mr. Eglett asked.

The tutor had not appeared to inspect the boy. "Big head," he remarked.
"Yes, Leo won't want pushing at books when he's once in harness. He will
have six weeks of me. It's more than the yeomanry get for drill per
annum, and they're expected to know something of a soldier's duties.
There's a chance of putting him on the right road in certain matters.
We'll walk, or ride, or skate, if the frost holds to-morrow: no lessons
the first day."

"Do as you think fit," said lady Charlotte.

The one defect she saw in the tutor did not concern his pupil. And a
girl, if hit, would be unable to see that this tutor, judged as a man,
was to some extent despicable for accepting tutorships, and, one might
say, dishonouring the family of a soldier of rank and distinction, by
coming into houses at the back way, with footing enough to air his graces
when once established there. He ought to have knocked at every door in
the kingdom for help, rather than accept tutorships, and disturb
households (or providently-minded mistresses of them) with all sorts of
probably groundless apprehensions, founded naturally enough on the good
looks he intrudes.

This tutor committed the offence next day of showing he had a firm and
easy seat in the saddle, which increased Lady Charlotte's liking for him
and irritated her watchful forecasts. She rode with the young man after
lunch, "to show him the country," and gave him a taste of what he took
for her variable moods. He misjudged her. Like a swimmer going through
warm and cold springs of certain lake waters, he thought her a capricious
ladyship, dangerous for intimacy, alluring to the deeps and gripping with
cramps.

She pushed him to defend his choice of the tutor's profession.

"Think you understand boys?" she caught up his words; "you can't. You can
humour them, as you humour women. They're just as hard to read. And don't
tell me a young man can read women. Boys and women go on their instincts.
Egyptologists can spell you hieroglyphs; they'd be stumped, as Leo would
say, to read a spider out of an ink-pot over a sheet of paper."

"One gets to interpret by degrees, by observing their habits," the tutor
said, and vexed her with a towering complacency under provocation that
went some way further to melt the woman she was, while her knowledge of
the softness warned her still more of the duty of playing dragon round
such a young man in her house. The despot is alert at every issue, to
every chance; and she was one, the wakefuller for being benevolent; her
mind had no sleep by day.

For a month she subjected Mr. Matthew Weyburn to the microscope of her
observation and the probe of her instinct. He proved that he could manage
without cajoling a boy. The practical fact established, by agreement
between herself and the unobservant gentleman who was her husband, Lady
Charlotte allowed her meditations to drop an indifferent glance at the
speculative views upon education entertained by this young tutor. To her
mind they were flighty; but she liked him, and as her feelings dictated
to her mind when she had not to think for others, she spoke of his views
toleratingly, almost with an implied approval, after passing them through
the form of burlesque to which she customarily treated things failing to
waft her enthusiasm. In regard to Philippa, he behaved well: he bestowed
more of his attention on Beatrice, nearer Leo's age, in talk about games
and story-books and battles; nothing that he did when the girls were
present betrayed the strutting plumed cock, bent to attract, or the
sickly reptile, thirsty for a prize above him and meaning to have it,
like Satan in Eden. Still, of course, he could not help his being a
handsome fellow, having a vivid face and eyes transparent, whether blue
or green, to flame of the brain exciting them; and that becomes a picture
in the dream of girls--a picture creating the dream often. And Philippa
had asked her grandmother, very ingenuously indeed, with a most natural
candour, why "they saw so little of Leo's hero." Simple female child!

However, there was no harm done, and Lady Charlotte liked him. She liked
few. Forthwith, in the manner of her particular head, a restless head,
she fell to work at combinations.

Thus:--he is a nice young fellow, well bred, no cringing courtier,
accomplished, good at classics, fairish at mathematics, a scholar in
French, German, Italian, with a shrewd knowledge of the different races,
and with sound English sentiment too, and the capacity for writing good
English, although in those views of his the ideas are unusual, therefore
un-English, profoundly so. But his intentions are patriotic; they would
not displease Lord Ormont. He has a worship of Lord Ormont. All we can
say on behalf of an untried inferior is in that,--only the valiant admire
devotedly. Well, he can write grammatical, readable English. What if Lord
Ormont were to take him as a secretary while the Memoirs are in hand? He
might help to chasten the sentences laughed at by those newspapers. Or he
might, being a terrible critic of writing, and funny about styles, put it
in an absurd light, that would cause the Memoirs to be tossed into the
fire. He was made for the post of secretary! The young man's good looks
would be out of harm's way then. If any sprig of womankind come across
him there, it will, at any rate, not be a girl. Women must take care of
themselves. Only the fools among them run to mischief in the case of a
handsome young fellow.

Supposing a certain woman to be one of the fools? Lady Charlotte merely
suggested it in the dashing current of her meditations--did not strike it
out interrogatively. The woman would be a fine specimen among her class;
that was all. For the favourite of Lord Ormont to stoop from her place
beside him--ay, but women do; heroes have had the woeful experience of
that fact. First we see them aiming themselves at their hero; next they
are shooting an eye at the handsome man. The thirst of nature comes after
that of their fancy, in conventional women. Sick of the hero tried, tired
of their place in the market, no longer ashamed to acknowledge it, they
begin to consult their own taste for beauty--they have it quite as much
as the men have it; and when their worshipped figure of manliness, in a
romantic sombrero, is a threadbare giant, showing bruises, they sink on
their inherent desire for a dance with the handsome man. And the really
handsome man is the most extraordinary of the rarities. No wonder that
when he appears he slays them, walks over them like a pestilence!

This young Weyburn would touch the fancy of a woman of a romantic turn.
Supposing her enthusiastic in her worship of the hero, after a number of
years--for anything may be imagined where a woman is concerned--why,
another enthusiasm for the same object, and on the part of a stranger, a
stranger with effective eyes, rapidly leads to sympathy. Suppose the
reverse--the enthusiasm gone to dust, or become a wheezy old bellows, as
it does where there's disparity of age, or it frequently does--then the
sympathy with a good-looking stranger comes more rapidly still.

These were Lady Charlotte's glances right and left--idle flights of the
eye of a mounted Amazon across hedges at the canter along the main road
of her scheme; which was to do a service to the young man she liked and
to the brother she loved, for the marked advantage of both equally;
perhaps for the chance of a little gossip to follow about that tenacious
woman by whom her brother was held hard and fast, kept away from friends
and relatives, isolated, insomuch as to have given up living on his
estate--the old home!--because he would not disgrace it or incur odium by
taking her there.

In consequence of Lord Ormont's resistance to pressure from her on two or
three occasions, she chose to nurse and be governed by the maxim for
herself: Never propose a plan to him, if you want it adopted. That was
her way of harmlessly solacing love's vindictiveness for an injury.

She sent Arthur Abner a letter, thanking him for his recommendation of
young Mr. Weyburn, stating her benevolent wishes as regarded the young
man and "those hateful Memoirs," requesting that her name should not be
mentioned in the affair, because she was anxious on all grounds to have
the proposal accepted by her brother. She could have vowed to herself
that she wrote sincerely.

"He must want a secretary. He would be shy at an offer of one from me. Do
you hint it, if you get a chance. You gave us Mr. Weyburn, and Mr. Eglett
and I like him. Ormont would too, I am certain. You have obliged him
before; this will be better than anything you have done for us. It will
stop the Memoirs, or else give them a polish. Your young friend has made
me laugh over stuff taken for literature until we put on our spectacles.
Leo jogs along in harness now, and may do some work at school yet."

Having posted her letter, she left the issue to chance, as we may when
conscience is easy. An answer came the day before Weyburn's departure.
Arthur Abner had met Lord Ormont in the street, had spoken of the rumour
of Memoirs promised to the world, hinted at the possible need for a
secretary; "Lord Ormont would appoint a day to see Mr. Weyburn."

Lady Charlotte considered that to be as good as the engagement.

"So we keep you in the family," she said. "And now look here: you ought
to know my brother's ways, if you're going to serve him. You'll have to
guess at half of everything he tells you; he'll expect you to know the
whole. There's no man so secret. Why? He fears nothing; I can't tell why.
And what his mouth shuts on, he exposes as if in his hand. Of course he's
proud, and good reason. You'll see when you mustn't offend. A lady's in
the house--I hear of it. She takes his name, they say. She may be a
respectable woman--I've heard no scandal. We have to hear of a Lady
Ormont out of Society! We have to suppose it means there's not to be a
real one. He can't marry if he has allowed her to go about bearing his
name. She has a fool of an aunt, I'm told; as often in the house as not.
Good proof of his fondness for the woman, if he swallows half a year of
the aunt! Well, you won't, unless you've mere man's eyes, be able to help
seeing him trying to hide what he suffers from that aunt. He bears it,
like the man he is; but woe to another betraying it! She has a tongue
that goes like the reel of a rod, with a pike bolting out of the shallows
to the snag he knows--to wind round it and defy you to pull. Often my
brother Rowsley and I have fished the day long, and in hard weather, and
brought home a basket; and he boasted of it more than of anything he has
ever done since. That woman holds him away from me now. I say no harm of
her. She may be right enough from her point of view; or it mayn't be
owing to her. I wouldn't blame a woman. Well, but my point with you is,
you swallow the woman's aunt--the lady's aunt--without betraying you
suffer at all. Lord Ormont has eyes of an eagle for a speck above the
surface. All the more because the aunt is a gabbling idiot does he--I say
it seeing it--fire up to defend her from the sneer of the lip or half a
sign of it! No, you would be an your guard; I can trust you. Of course
you'd behave like the gentleman you are where any kind of woman's
concerned; but you mustn't let a shadow be seen, think what you may. The
woman--lady--calling herself Lady Ormont,--poor woman, I should do the
same in her place,--she has a hard game to play; I have to be for my
family: she has manners, I'm told; holds herself properly. She fancies
she brings him up to the altar, in the end, by decent behaviour. That's a
delusion. It's creditable to her, only she can't understand the claims of
the family upon a man like my brother. When you have spare
time--'kick-ups,' he need to call it, writing to me from school--come
here; you're welcome, after three days' notice. I shall be glad to see
you again. You've gone some way to make a man of Leo."

He liked her well: he promised to come. She was a sinewy bite of the
gentle sex, but she had much flavour, and she gave nourishment.

"Let me have three days' notice," she repeated.

"Not less, Lady Charlotte," said he.

Weyburn received intimation from Arthur Abner of the likely day Lord
Ormont would appoint, and he left Olmer for London to hold himself in
readiness. Lady Charlotte and Leo drove him to meet the coach. Philippa,
so strangely baffled in her natural curiosity, begged for a seat; she
begged to be allowed to ride. Petitions were rejected. She stood at the
window seeing "Grandmama's tutor," as she named him, carried off by
grandmama. Her nature was avenged on her tyrant grandmama: it brought up
almost to her tongue thoughts which would have remained subterranean,
under control of her habit of mind, or the nursery's modesty, if she had
been less tyrannically treated. They were subterranean thoughts, Nature's
original, such as the sense of injustice will rouse in young women; and
they are better unstirred, for they ripen girls over-rapidly when they
are made to revolve near the surface. It flashed on the girl why she had
been treated tyrannically.

"Grandmama has good taste in tutors," was all that she said while the
thoughts rolled over.




CHAPTER IV.

RECOGNITION

Our applicant for the post of secretary entered the street of Lord
Ormont's London house, to present himself to his boyhood's hero by
appointment.

He was to see, perhaps to serve, the great soldier. Things had come to
this; and he thought it singular. But for the previous introduction to
Lady Charlotte, he would have thought it passing wonderful. He ascribed
it to the whirligig.

The young man was not yet of an age to gather knowledge of himself and of
life from his present experience of the fact, that passionate devotion to
an object strikes a vein through circumstances, as a travelling run of
flame darts the seeming haphazard zigzags to catch at the dry of dead
wood amid the damp; and when passion has become quiescent in the admirer,
there is often the unsubsided first impulsion carrying it on. He will
almost sorely embrace his idol with one or other of the senses.

Weyburn still read the world as it came to him, by bite, marvelling at
this and that, after the fashion of most of us. He had not deserted his
adolescent's hero, or fallen upon analysis of a past season. But he was
now a young man, stoutly and cognizantly on the climb, with a good aim
overhead, axed green youth's enthusiasms a step below his heels: one of
the lovers of life, beautiful to behold, when we spy into them; generally
their aspect is an enlivenment, whatever may be the carving of their
features. For the sake of holy unity, this lover of life, whose gaze was
to the front in hungry animation, held fast to his young dreams,
perceiving a soul of meaning in them, though the fire might have gone
out; and he confessed to a past pursuit of delusions. Young men of this
kind will have, for the like reason, a similar rational sentiment on
behalf of our world's historic forward march, while admitting that
history has to be taken from far backward if we would gain assurance of
man's advance. It nerves an admonished ambition.

He was ushered into a London house's library, looking over a niggard
enclosure of gravel and dull grass, against a wall where ivy dribbled. An
armchair was beside the fireplace. To right and left of it a floreate
company of books in high cases paraded shoulder to shoulder, without a
gap; grenadiers on the line. Weyburn read the titles on their
scarlet-and-blue facings. They were approved English classics; honoured
veterans, who have emerged from the conflict with contemporary opinion,
stamped excellent, or have been pushed by the roar of contemporaneous
applauses to wear the leather-and-gilt uniform of our Immortals, until a
more qualmish posterity disgorges them. The books had costly bindings.
Lord Ormont's treatment of Literature appeared to resemble Lady
Charlotte's, in being reverential and uninquiring. The books she bought
to read were Memoirs of her time by dead men and women once known to her.
These did fatigue duty in cloth or undress. It was high drill with all of
Lord Ormont's books, and there was not a modern or a minor name among the
regiments. They smelt strongly of the bookseller's lump lots by order;
but if a show soldiery, they were not a sham, like a certain row of
venerably-titled backs, that Lady Charlotte, without scruple, left
standing to blow an ecclesiastical trumpet of empty contents; any one
might have his battle of brains with them, for the twining of an absent
key.

The door opened. Weyburn bowed to his old star in human shape: a grey
head on square shoulders, filling the doorway. He had seen at Olmer Lady
Charlotte's treasured miniature portrait of her brother; a perfect
likeness, she said--complaining the neat instant of injustice done to the
fire of his look.

Fire was low down behind the eyes at present. They were quick to scan and
take summary of their object, as the young man felt while observing for
himself. Height and build of body were such as might be expected in the
brother of Lady Charlotte and from the tales of his prowess. Weyburn had
a glance back at Cuper's boys listening to the tales.

The soldier-lord's manner was courteously military--that of an
established superior indifferent to the deferential attitude he must
needs enact. His curt nick of the head, for a response to the visitor's
formal salutation, signified the requisite acknowledgment, like a city
creditor's busy stroke of the type-stamp receipt upon payment.

The ceremony over, he pitched a bugle voice to fit the contracted area:
"I hear from Mr. Abner that you have made acquaintance with Olmer. Good
hunting country there."

"Lady Charlotte kindly gave me a mount, my lord."

"I knew your father by name--Colonel Sidney Weyburn. You lost him at
Toulouse. We were in the Peninsula; I was at Talavera with him. Bad day
for our cavalry."

"Our officers were young at their work then."

"They taught the Emperor's troops to respect a charge of English horse.
It was teaching their fox to set traps for them."

Lord Ormont indicated a chair. He stood.

"The French had good cavalry leaders," Weyburn said, for cover to a
continued study of the face,

"Montbrun, yes: Murat, Lassalle, Bessieres. Under the Emperor they had."

"You think them not at home in the saddle, my lord?"

"Frenchmen have nerves; horses are nerves. They pile excitement too high.
When cool, they're among the best. None of them had head for command of
all the arms."

"One might say the same of Seidlitz and Ziethen?"

"Of Ziethen. Seidlitz had a wider grasp, I suppose." He pursed his month,
pondering. "No; and in the Austrian service, too; generals of cavalry are
left to whistle for an independent command. There's a jealousy of our
branch!" The injured warrior frowned and hummed. He spoke his thought
mildly: "Jealousy of the name of soldier in this country! Out of the
service, is the place to recommend. I'd have advised a son of mine to
train for a jockey rather than enter it. We deal with that to-morrow, in
my papers. You come to me? Mr. Abner has arranged the terms? So I see you
at ten in the morning. I am glad to meet a young man--Englishman--who
takes an interest in the service."

Weyburn fancied the hearing of a step; he heard the whispering dress. It
passed him; a lady went to the armchair.  She took her seat, as she had
moved, with sedateness, the exchange of a toneless word with my lord. She
was a brune. He saw that when he rose to do homage.

Lord Ormont resumed: "Some are born to it, must be soldiers; and in peace
they are snubbed by the heads; in war they are abused by the country.
They don't understand in England how to treat an army; how to make one
either!

"The gentleman--Mr. Weyburn: Mr. Arthur Abner's recommendation," he added
hurriedly, with a light wave of his hand and a murmur, that might be the
lady's title; continuing: "A young man of military tastes should take
service abroad. They're in earnest about it over there. Here they play at
it; and an army's shipped to land without commissariat, ambulances,
medical stores, and march against the odds, as usual--if it can march!

"Albuera, my lord?"

"Our men can spurt, for a flick o' the whip. They're expected to be
constantly ready for doing prodigies--to repair the country's omissions.
All the country cares for is to hope Dick Turpin may get to York. Our men
are good beasts; they give the best in 'em, and drop. More's the scandal
to a country that has grand material and overtasks it. A blazing disaster
ends the chapter!"

This was talk of an injured veteran. It did not deepen the hue of his
ruddied skin. He spoke in the tone of matter of fact. Weyburn had been
prepared for something of the sort by his friend, Arthur Abner. He noted
the speaker's heightened likeness under excitement to Lady Charlotte.
Excitement came at an early call of their voices to both; and both had
handsome, open features, bluntly cut, nothing of aquiline or the
supercilious; eyes bluish-grey, in arched recesses, horny between the
thick lids, lively to shoot their meaning when the trap-mouth was active;
effectively expressing promptitute for combat, pleasure in attack,
wrestle, tag, whatever pertained to strife; an absolute sense of their
right.

As there was a third person present at this dissuasion of military
topics, the silence of the lady drew Weyburn to consult her opinion in
her look.

It was on him. Strange are the woman's eyes which can unoffendingly
assume the privilege to dwell on such a living object as a man without
become gateways for his return look, and can seem in pursuit of thoughts
while they enfold. They were large dark eyes, eyes of southern night.
They sped no shot; they rolled forth an envelopment. A child among toys,
caught to think of other toys, may gaze in that way. But these were a
woman's eyes.

He gave Lord Ormont his whole face, as an auditor should. He was
interested besides, as he told a ruffled conscience. He fell upon the
study of his old hero determinedly.

The pain of a memory waking under pillows, unable to do more than strain
for breath, distracted his attention. There was a memory: that was all he
knew. Or else he would have lashed himself for hanging on the beautiful
eyes of a woman. To be seeing and hearing his old hero was wonder enough.

Recollections of Lady Charlotte's plain hints regarding the lady present
resolved to the gross retort, that her eyes were beautiful. And he knew
them--there lay the strangeness. They were known beautiful eyes, in a
foreign land of night and mist.

Lord Ormont was discoursing with racy eloquence of our hold on India: his
views in which respect were those of Cuper's boys. Weyburn ventured a
dot-running description of the famous ride, and out flew an English
soldier's grievance. But was not the unjustly-treated great soldier well
rewarded, whatever the snubs and the bitterness, with these large dark
eyes in his house, for his own? Eyes like these are the beginning of a
young man's world; they nerve, inspire, arm him, colour his life; he
would labour, fight, die for them. It seemed to Weyburn a blessedness
even to behold them. So it had been with him at the early stage; and his
heart went swifter, memory fetched a breath. Memory quivered eyelids,
when the thought returned--of his having known eyes as lustrous. First
lights of his world, they had more volume, warmth, mystery--were sweeter.
Still, these in the room were sisters to them. They quickened throbs;
they seemed a throb of the heart made visible.

That was their endowment of light and lustre simply, and the mystical
curve of the lids. For so they could look only because the heart was
disengaged from them. They were but heavenly orbs.

The lady's elbow was on an arm of her chair, her forefinger at her left
temple. Her mind was away, one might guess; she could hardly be
interested in talk of soldiering and of foreign army systems, jealous
English authorities and officials, games, field-sports. She had personal
matters to think of.

Adieu until to-morrow to the homes she inhabited! The street was a
banishment and a relief when Weyburn's first interview with Lord Ormont
was over.

He rejoiced to tell his previous anticipations that he had not been
disappointed; and he bade hero-worshippers expect no gilded figure. We
gather heroes as we go, if we are among the growing: our constancy is
shown in the not discarding of our old ones. He held to his earlier hero,
though he had seen him, and though he could fancy he saw round him.

Another, too, had been a hero-lover. How did that lady of night's eyes
come to fall into her subjection?

He put no question as to the name she bore; it hung in a black
suspense--vividly at its blackest illuminated her possessor. A man is a
hero to some effect who wins a woman like this; and, if his glory
bespells her, so that she flings all to the winds for him, burns the
world; if, for solely the desperate rapture of belonging to him, she
consents of her free will to be one of the nameless and discoloured, he
shines in a way to make the marrow of men thrill with a burning envy. For
that must be the idolatrous devotion desired by them all.

Weyburn struck down upon his man's nature--the bad in us, when beauty of
woman is viewed; or say, the old original revolutionary, best kept
untouched; for a touch or a meditative pause above him, fetches him up to
roam the civilized world devouringly and lawlessly. It is the special
peril of the young lover of life, that an inflammability to beauty in
women is in a breath intense with him. He is, in truth, a thinly-sealed
volcano of our imperishable ancient father; and has it in him to be the
multitudinously-amorous of the mythologic Jove. Give him head, he can be
civilization's devil. Is she fair and under a shade?--then is she doubly
fair. The shadow about her secretes mystery, just as the forest breeds
romance: and mystery is a measureless realm. If we conceive it, we have a
mysterious claim on her who is the heart of it.

He marched on that road to the music of sonorous brass for some drunken
minutes.

The question came, What of the man who takes advantage of her
self-sacrifice?

It soon righted him, and he did Lord Ormont justice, and argued the case
against Lady Charlotte's naked hints.

This dark-eyed heroine's bearing was assured, beyond an air of
dependency. Her deliberate short nod to him at his leave-taking, and the
toneless few words she threw to my lord, signified sufficiently that she
did not stand defying the world or dreading it.

She had by miracle the eyes which had once charmed him--could
again--would always charm. She reminded him of Aminta Farrell's very eyes
under the couchant-dove brows--something of her mouth, the dimple running
from a corner. She had, as Aminta had, the self-collected and
self-cancelled look, a realm in a look, that was neither depth nor
fervour, nor a bestowal, nor an allurement; nor was it an exposure,
though there seemed no reserve. One would be near the meaning in
declaring it to bewilder men with the riddle of openhandedness. We read
it--all may read it--as we read inexplicable plain life; in which let us
have a confiding mind, despite the blows at our heart, and some
understanding will enter us.

He shut the door upon picture and speculations, returning to them by
another door.  The lady had not Aminta's freshness: she might be taken
for an elder sister of Aminta. But Weyburn wanted to have her position
defined before he set her beside Aminta. He writhed under Lady
Charlotte's tolerating scorn of "the young woman." It roused an uneasy
sentiment of semi-hostility in the direction of my lord; and he had no
personal complaint to make.

Lord Ormont was cordial on the day of the secretary's installation; as
if--if one might dare to guess it--some one had helped him to a friendly
judgement.

The lady of Aminta's eyes was absent at the luncheon table. She came into
the room a step, to speak to Lord Ormont, dressed for a drive to pay a
visit.

The secretary was unnoticed.

Lord Ormont put inquiries to him at table, for the why of his having
avoided the profession of arms; and apparently considered that the
secretary had made a mistake, and that he would have committed a greater
error in becoming a soldier--"in this country." A man with a grievance is
illogical under his burden. He mentioned the name "Lady Ormont"
distinctly during some remarks on travel. Lady Ormont preferred the
Continent.

Two days later she came to the armchair, as before, met Weyburn's eyes
when he raised them; gave him no home in hers--not a temporary shelter
from the pelting of interrogations. She hardly spoke. Why did she come?

But how was it that he was drawn to think of her? Absent or present, she
was round him, like the hills of a valley. She was round his
thoughts--caged them; however high, however far they flew, they were
conscious of her.

She took her place at the midday meal. She had Aminta's voice in some
tones; a mellower than Aminta's--the voice of one of Aminta's family. She
had the trick of Aminta's upper lip in speaking. Her look on him was
foreign; a civil smile as they conversed. She was very much at home with
my lord, whom she rallied for his addiction to his Club at a particular
hour of the afternoon. She conversed readily. She reminded him,
incidentally that her aunt would arrive early next day. He informed her,
some time after, of an engagement "to tiffin with a brother officer," and
she nodded.

They drove away together while the secretary was at his labour of sorting
the heap of autobiographical scraps in a worn dispatch-box, pen and
pencil jottings tossed to swell the mess when they had relieved an angry
reminiscence. He noticed, heedlessly at the moment, feminine handwriting
on some few clear sheets among them.

Next day he was alone in the library. He sat before the box, opened it
and searched, merely to quiet his annoyance for having left those sheets
of the fair amanuensis unexamined. They were not discoverable. They had
gone.

He stood up at the stir of the door. It was she, and she acknowledged his
bow; she took her steps to her chair.

He was informed that Lord Ormont had an engagement, and he remarked, "I
can do the work very well." She sat quite silent.

He read first lines of the scraps, laid them in various places, as in a
preparation for conjurer's tricks at cards; refraining from a glance,
lest he should disconcert the eyes he felt to be on him fitfully.

At last she spoke, and he knew Aminta in his hearing and sight.

"Is Emile Grenat still anglomane?"

An instant before her voice was heard he had been persuading himself that
the points of unlikeness between his young Aminta and this tall and
stately lady of the proud reserve in her bearing flouted the resemblance.




CHAPTER V.

IN WHICH THE SHADES OF BROWNY AND MATEY ADVANCE AND RETIRE

"Emile is as anglomane as ever, and not a bit less a Frenchman," Weyburn
said, in a tone of one who muffles a shock at the heart.

"It would be the poorer compliment to us," she rejoined.

They looked at one another; she dropped her eyelids, he looked away.

She had the grand manner by nature. She was the woman of the girl once
known.

"A soldier, is he?"

"Emile's profession and mine are much alike, or will be."

"A secretary?"

Her deadness of accent was not designed to carry her opinion of the post
of secretary.

It brought the reply: "We hope to be schoolmasters."

She drew in a breath; there was a thin short voice, hardly voice, as when
one of the unschooled minor feelings has been bruised. After a while she
said--

"Does he think it a career?"

"Not brilliant."

"He was formed for a soldier."

"He had to go as the road led."

"A young man renouncing ambition!"

"Considering what we can do best."

"It signifies the taste for what he does."

"Certainly that."

Weyburn had senses to read the word "schoolmaster" in repetition behind
her shut mouth. He was sharply sensible of a fall.

The task with his papers occupied him. If he had a wish, it was to sink
so low in her esteem as to be spurned. A kick would have been a
refreshment. Yet he was unashamed of the cause invoking it. We are
instruments to the touch of certain women, and made to play strange
tunes.

"Mr. Cuper flourishes?"

"The school exists. I have not been down there. I met Mr. Shalders
yesterday. He has left the school."

"You come up from Olmer?"

"I was at Olmer last week, Lady Ormont."

An involuntary beam from her eyes thanked him for her title at that
juncture of the dialogue. She grew more spirited.

"Mr. Shalders has joined the Dragoons, has he?"

"The worthy man has a happy imagination. He goes through a campaign
daily."

"It seems to one to dignify his calling."

"I like his enthusiasm."

The lady withdrew into her thoughts; Weyburn fell upon his work.

Mention of the military cloak of enthusiasm covering Shalders, brought
the scarce credible old time to smite at his breast, in the presence of
these eyes. A ringing of her title of Lady Ormont rendered the present
time the incredible.

"I can hardly understand a young Frenchman's not entering the army," she
said.

"The Napoleonic legend is weaker now," said he.

"The son of an officer!"

"Grandson."

"It was his choice to be,--he gave it up without reluctance?"

"Emile obeyed the command of his parents," Weyburn answered; and he was
obedient to the veiled direction of her remark, in speaking of himself:
"I had a reason, too."

"One wonders!"

"It would have impoverished my mother's income to put aside a small
allowance for me for years. She would not have hesitated. I then set my
mind on the profession of schoolmaster."

"Emile Grenat was a brave boy. Has he no regrets?"

"Neither of us has a regret."

"He began ambitiously."

"It's the way at the beginning."

"It is not usually abjured."

"I'm afraid we neither of us 'dignify our calling' by discontent with
it!"

A dusky flash, worth seeing, came on her cheeks. "I respect enthusiasms,"
she said; and it was as good to him to hear as the begging pardon, though
clearly she could not understand enthusiasm for the schoolmaster's
career.

Light of evidence was before him, that she had a friendly curiosity to
know what things had led to their new meeting under these conditions. He
sketched them cursorily; there was little to tell--little, that is;
appealing to a romantic mind for interest. Aware of it, by sympathy, he
degraded the narrative to a flatness about as cheering as a suburban
London Sunday's promenade. Sympathy caused the perverseness. He felt her
disillusionment; felt with it and spread a feast of it. She had to hear
of studies at Caen and at a Paris Lycee; French fairly mastered; German,
the same; Italian, the same; after studies at Heidelberg, Asti, and
Florence; between four and five months at Athens (he was needlessly
precise), in tutorship with a young nobleman: no events, nor a spot of
colour. Thus did he wilfully, with pain to himself, put an extinguisher
on the youth painted brilliant and eminent in a maiden's imagination.

"So there can no longer be thought of the army," she remarked; and the
remark had a sort of sigh, though her breathing was equable.

"Unless a big war knocks over all rules and the country comes praying us
to serve," he said.

"You would not refuse then?"

"Not in case of need. One may imagine a crisis when they would give
commissions to men of my age or older for the cavalry--heavy losses of
officers."

She spoke, as if urged by a sting to revert to the distasteful: "That
profession--must you not take...enter into orders if you aim at any
distinction?"

"And a member of the Anglican Church would not be allowed to exchange his
frock for a cavalry sabre," said he. "That is true. I do not propose to
settle as a schoolmaster in England."

"Where?"

"On the Continent."

"Would not America be better?"

"It would not so well suit the purpose in view for us."

"There are others besides?"

"Besides Emile, there is a German and an Italian and a Swiss."

"It is a Company?"

"A Company of schoolmasters! Companies of all kinds are forming. Colleges
are Companies. And they have their collegians. Our aim is at pupils; we
have no ambition for any title higher than School and Schoolmaster; it is
not a Company."

So, like Nature parading her skeleton to youthful adorers of her face, he
insisted on reducing to hideous material wreck the fair illusion, which
had once arrayed him in alluring promise.

She explained; "I said, America. You would be among Protestants in
America."

"Catholics and Protestants are both welcome to us, according to our
scheme. And Germans, French, English, Americans, Italians, if they will
come; Spaniards and Portuguese, and Scandinavians, Russians as well. And
Jews; Mahommedans too, if only they will come! The more mixed, the more
it hits our object."

"You have not stated where on the Continent it is to be."

"The spot fixed on is in Switzerland."

"You will have scenery."

"I hold to that, as an influence."

A cool vision of the Bernese Alps encircled the young schoolmaster; and
she said, "It would influence girls; I dare say."

"A harder matter with boys, of course--at first. We think we may make it
serve."

"And where is the spot? Is that fixed on?"

"Fifteen miles from Berne, on elevated land, neighbouring a water, not
quite to be called a lake, unless in an auctioneer's advertisement."

"I am glad of the lake. I could not look on a country home where there
was no swimming. You will be head of the school."

"There must be a head."

"Is the school likely to be established soon?"

He fell into her dead tone: "Money is required for establishments. I have
a Reversion coming some day; I don't dabble in post obits."

He waited for farther questions. They were at an end.

"You have your work to do, Mr. Weyburn."

Saying that, she bowed an implied apology for having kept him from it,
and rose. She bowed again as she passed through the doorway, in
acknowledgment of his politeness.

Here; then, was the end of the story of Browny and Matey. Such was his
thought under the truncheon-stroke of their colloquy. Lines of Browny's
letters were fiery waving ribands about him, while the coldly gracious
bow of the Lady wrote Finis.

The gulf between the two writings remained unsounded. It gave a heave to
the old passion; but stirred no new one; he had himself in hand now, and
he shut himself up when the questions bred of amazement buzzed and
threatened to storm. After all, what is not curious in this world? The
curious thing would be if curious things should fail to happen. Men have
been saying it since they began to count and turn corners. And let us
hold off from speculating when there is or but seems a shadow of
unholiness over that mole-like business. There shall be no questions; and
as to feelings, the same. They, if petted for a moment beneath the
shadow, corrupt our blood. Weyburn was a man to have them by the throat
at the birth.

Still they thronged; heavy work of strangling had to be done. Her tone of
disappointment with the schoolmaster bit him, and it flattered him. The
feelings leapt alive, equally venomous from the wound and the caress.
They pushed to see, had to be repelled from seeing, the girl Browny in
the splendid woman; they had lightning memories: not the pain of his grip
could check their voice on the theme touching her happiness or the
reverse. And this was an infernal cunning. He paused perforce to inquire,
giving them space for the breeding of their multitudes. Was she happy?
Did she not seem too meditative, enclosed, toneless, at her age? Vainly
the persecuted fellow said to himself: "But what is it to me now?"--The
Browny days were over. The passion for the younger Aminta was
over--buried; and a dream of power belonging to those days was not yet
more than visionary. It had moved her once, when it was a young
soldier's. She treated the schoolmaster's dream as vapour, and the old
days as dead and ghostless. She did rightly. How could they or she or he
be other than they were!

With that sage exclamation, he headed into the Browny days and breasted
them; and he had about him the living foamy sparkle of the very time,
until the Countess of Ormont breathed the word "Schoolmaster"; when, at
once, it was dusty land where buoyant waters had been, and the armies of
the facts, in uniform drab, with some feathers and laces, and a
significant surpliced figure, decorously covering the wildest of Cupids,
marched the standard of the winking gold-piece, which is their nourishing
sun and eclipser of all suns that foster dreams.

As you perceive, he was drawing swiftly to the vortex of the fools, and
round and round he went, lucky to float.

His view of the business of the schoolmaster plucked him from the whirl.
She despised it; he upheld it. He stuck to his view, finding their
antagonism on the subject wholesome for him. All that she succeeded in
doing was to rob it of the aurora colour clothing everything on which
Matey Weyburn set his aim. Her contempt of it, whether as a profession in
itself or as one suitable to the former young enthusiast for arms,
dwarfed it to appear like the starved plants under Greenland skies. But
those are of a sturdy genus; they mean to live; they live, perforce, of
the right to live; they will prove their right in a coming season, when
some one steps near and wonders at them, and from more closely observing;
gets to understand, learning that the significance and the charm of earth
will be as well shown by them as by her tropical fair flaunters or the
tenderly-nurtured exotics.

An unopened coffer of things to be said in defence of--no, on behalf
of--no, in honour of the Profession of Schoolmaster, perhaps to the
convincing of Aminta, Lady Ormont, was glanced at; a sentence or two
leapt out and stepped forward, and had to retire. He preferred to the
fathering of tricky, windy phrases, the being undervalued--even by her.
He was taught to see again how Rhetoric haunts, and Rhetoric bedevils,
the vindication of the clouded, especially in the case of a disesteemed
Profession requiring one to raise it and impose it upon the antagonistic
senses for the bewildering of the mind. One has to sound it loudly; there
is no treating it, as in the advocacy of the cases of flesh and blood,
with the masterly pathos of designed simplicity. And Weyburn was Cuper's
Matey Weyburn still in his loathing of artifice to raise emotion,
loathing of the affected, the stilted, the trumpet of speech--always
excepting school-exercises in the tongues, the unmasking of a Catiline,
the address of a General, Athenian or other, to troops.

He kept his coffer shut; and, for a consequence, he saw the contents as
an avenue of blossom leading to vistas of infinite harvest.

She was Lady Ormont: Aminta shared the title of his old hero! He refused
to speculate upon how it had come to pass, and let the curtain hang,
though dramas and romances, with the miracles involved in them, were
agitated by a transient glimpse at the curtain.

Well! and he hoped to be a member of the Profession she despised: hoped
it with all his heart. And one good effect of his giving his heart to the
hope was, that he could hold from speculating and from feeling, even from
pausing to wonder at the most wonderful turn of events. Blessed
antagonism drove him to be braced by thoughts upon the hardest of the
schoolmaster's tasks--bright winter thoughts, prescribing to him
satisfaction with a faith in the sowing, which may be his only reaping.
Away fly the boys in sheaves. After his toil with them, to instruct,
restrain, animate, point their minds, they leave him, they plunge into
the world and are gone. Will he see them again? It is a flickering
perhaps. To sustain his belief that he has done serviceable work, he must
be sore of his having charged them with good matter. How can the man do
it, if, during his term of apprenticeship, he has allowed himself to
dally here and there, down to moony dreamings over inscrutable beautiful
eyes of a married lady; for the sole reason that he meets her
unexpectedly, after an exchange of letters with her in long-past days at
school, when she was an inexperienced girl, who knew not what she vowed,
and he a flighty-headed youngster, crying out to be the arrow of any bow
that was handy? Yea, she was once that girl, named Browny by the boys.

Temptation threw warm light on the memory, and very artfully, by
conjuring up the faces, cries, characters, all the fun of the boys. There
was no possibility of forgetting her image in those days; he had,
therefore, to live with it and to live near the grown woman--Time's
present answer to the old riddle. It seemed to him, that instead of
sorting Lord Ormont's papers, he ought to be at sharp exercise. According
to his prescript, sharp exercise of lungs and limbs is a man's moral aid
against temptation. He knew it as the one trusty antidote for him, who
was otherwise the vessel of a temperament pushing to mutiny. Certainly it
is the best philosophy youth can pretend to practise; and Lord Ormont
kept him from it! Worse than that, the slips and sheets of paper in the
dispatch-box were not an exercise of the mind even; there was nothing to
grapple with--no diversion; criticism passed by them indulgently, if not
benevolently.

Quite apart from the subject inscribed on them, Weyburn had now and again
a blow at the breast, of untraceable origin. For he was well enough aware
that the old days when Browny imagined him a hero, in drinking his
praises of a brighter, were drowned. They were dead; but here was she the
bride of the proved hero. His praises might have helped in causing her
willingness--devotional readiness, he could fancy--to yield her hand.
Perhaps at the moment when the hero was penning some of the Indian slips
here, the boy at school was preparing Aminta; but he could not be
responsible for a sacrifice of the kind suggested by Lady Charlotte. And
no, there had been no such sacrifice, although Lord Ormont's inexplicable
treatment of his young countess, under cover of his notorious reputation
with women, conduced to the suspicion.

While the vagrant in Weyburn was thus engaged, his criticism of the
soldier-lord's field-English on paper let the stuff go tolerantly
unexamined, but with a degree of literary contempt at heart for the
writer who had that woman-scented reputation and expressed himself so
poorly. The sentiment was outside of reason. We do, nevertheless, expect
our Don Juans to deliver their minds a trifle elegantly; if not in
classic English, on paper; and when we find one of them inflicting
cruelty, as it appears, and the victim is a young woman, a beautiful
young woman, she pleads to us poetically against the bearish sentences of
his composition. We acknowledge, however, that a mere sentiment,
entertained possibly by us alone, should not be permitted to condemn him
unheard.

Lady Ormont was not seen again. After luncheon at a solitary table, the
secretary worked till winter's lamps were lit; and then shone freedom,
with assurance to him that he would escape from the miry mental ditch he
had been floundering in since Aminta revealed herself. Sunday was the
glorious day to follow, with a cleansing bath of a walk along the
southern hills; homely English scenery to show to a German friend, one of
his "Company." Half a dozen good lads were pledged to the walk; bearing
which in view, it could be felt that this nonsensical puzzlement over his
relations to the moods and tenses of a married woman would be bounced out
of recollection before nightfall. The landscape given off any of the airy
hills of Surrey would suffice to do it.

A lady stood among her boxes below, as he descended the stairs to cross
the hall. He knew her for the person Lady Charlotte called "the woman's
aunt," whom Lord Ormont could not endure--a forgiven old enemy, Mrs.
Nargett Pagnell.

He saluted. She stared, and corrected her incivility with "Ah, yes," and
a formal smile.

If not accidentally delayed on her journey, she had been needlessly the
cause why Lord Ormont hugged his Club during the morning and afternoon.
Weyburn was pushed to think of the matter by remembrance of his foregone
resentment at her having withdrawn Aminta from Miss Vincent's three days
earlier than the holiday time. The resentment was over; but a germ of it
must have sprang from the dust to prompt the kindling leap his memory
took, out of all due connection; like a lightning among the crags. It
struck Aminta smartly. He called to mind the conversation at table
yesterday. Had she played on Lord Ormont's dislike of the aunt to drive
him forth for some purpose of her own? If so, the little trick had been
done with deplorable spontaneity or adeptness of usage. What was the
purpose?--to converse with an old acquaintance, undisturbed by Lord
Ormont and her aunt? Neatly done, supposing the surmise correct.

But what was there in the purpose? He sifted rapidly for the gist of the
conversation; reviewed the manner of it, the words, the sound they had,
the feelings they touched; then owned that the question could not be
answered. Owning, further, that the recurrence of these idiotic
speculations, feelings, questions, wrote him down as both dull fellow and
impertinent, he was unabled to restore Aminta to the queenly place she
took above the schoolmaster, who was very soon laughing at his fever or
flash of the afternoon. The day had brought a great surprise, nothing
more. Twenty minutes of fencing in the a salle d'armes of an Italian
captain braced him to health, and shifted scenes of other loves, lighter
loves, following the Browny days--not to be called loves; in fact; hardly
beyond inclinations. Nevertheless, inclinations are an infidelity. To
meet a married woman, and be mooning over her because she gave him her
eyes and her handwriting when a girl, was enough to rouse an honest
fellow's laugh at himself, in the contemplation of his intermediate
amorous vagabondage. Had he ever known the veritable passion after Browny
sank from his ken? Let it be confessed, never. His first love was his
only true love, despite one shuddering episode, oddly humiliating to
recollect, though he had not behaved badly. So, then, by right of his
passion, thus did eternal justice rule it: that Browny belonged, to Matey
Weyburn, Aminta to Lord Ormont. Aminta was a lady blooming in the flesh,
Browny was the past's pale phantom; for which reason he could call her
his own, without harm done to any one, and with his usual appetite for
dinner, breakfast, lunch, whatever the meal supplied by the hour.

It would somewhat alarmingly have got to Mr. Weyburn's conscience through
a disturbance of his balance, telling him that he was on a perilous road,
if his relish for food had been blunted. He had his axiom on the subject,
and he was wrong in the general instance, for the appetites of rogues and
ogres are not known to fail. As regarded himself, he was eminently right;
and he could apply it to boys also, to all young people--the unlaunched,
he called them. He counted himself among the launched, no doubt, and had
breasted seas; but the boy was alive, a trencherman lad, in the coming
schoolmaster, and told him profitable facts concerning his condition;
besides throwing a luminous ray on the arcane of our elusive youthful. If
they have no stout zest for eating, put Query against them.

His customary enjoyment of dinner convinced Mr. Weyburn that he had not
brooded morbidly over his phantom Browny, and could meet Aminta, Countess
of Ormont, on the next occasion with the sentiments proper to a common
official. Did she not set him a commendable example? He admired her for
not concealing her disdain of the aspirant schoolmaster, quite
comprehending, by sympathy, why the woman should reproach the girl who
had worshipped heroes, if this was a full-grown specimen; and the reply
of the shamed girl, that in her ignorance she could not know better. He
spared the girl, but he laughed at the woman he commended, laughed at
himself.

Aminta's humour was being stirred about the same time. She and her aunt
were at the dinner-table in the absence of my lord. The dinner had passed
with the stiff dialogue peculiar to couples under supervision of their
inferiors; and, as soon as the room was clear, she had asked her aunt,
touching the secretary: "Have you seen him?"

Mrs. Nargett Pagnell's answer could have been amusing only to one whose
intimate knowledge of her found it characteristically salt; for she was a
lady of speech addressed ever directly or roundabout to the chief point
of business between herself and her hearer, and the more she was brief,
oblique, far-shooting, the more comically intelligible she was to her
niece. She bent her head to signify that she had seen the secretary, and
struck the table with both hands, exclaiming:

"Well, to be sure, Lord Ormont!"

Their discussion, before they descended the stairs to dinner, concerned
his lordship's extraordinary indifference to the thronging of handsome
young men around his young countess.

Here, the implication ran, is one established in the house.

Aminta's thoughts could be phrased: "Yes, that is true, for one part of
it."

As for the other part, the ascent of a Phoebus Apollo, with his golden
bow and quiver off the fairest of Eastern horizon skies, followed
suddenly by the sight of him toppling over in Mr. Cuper's long-skirted
brown coat, with spectacles and cane, is an image that hardly exceeds the
degradation she conceived. It was past ludicrous; yet admitted of no
woefulness, nothing soothingly pathetic. It smothered and barked at the
dreams of her blooming spring of life, to which her mind had latterly
been turning back, for an escape from sour, one may say cynical,
reflections, the present issue of a beautiful young woman's first savour
of battle with the world.




CHAPTER VI.

IN A MOOD OF LANGUOR

Up in Aminta's amber dressing-room; Mrs. Nargett Pagnell alluded sadly to
the long month of separation, and begged her niece to let her have in
plain words an exact statement of the present situation; adding, "Items
will do." Thereupon she slipped into prattle and held the field.

She was the known, worthy, good, intolerable woman whom the burgess turns
out for his world in regiments, that do and look and all but step alike;
and they mean well, and have conventional worships and material
aspirations, and very peculiar occult refinements, with a blind head and
a haphazard gleam of acuteness, impressive to acquaintances, convincing
themselves that they impersonate sagacity. She had said this, done that;
and it was, by proof, Providence consenting, the right thing. A niece,
written down in her girlhood, because of her eyes and her striking air
and excellent deportment, as mate for a nobleman, marries, him before she
is out of her teens. "I said, She shall be a countess." A countess she
is. Providence does not comply with our predictions in order to stultify
us. Admitting the position of affairs for the moment as extraordinary, we
are bound by what has happened to expect they will be conformable in the
end. Temporarily warped, we should say of them.

She could point to the reason: it was Lord Ormont's blunt
misunderstanding of her character. The burgess's daughter was refining to
an appreciation of the exquisite so rapidly that she could criticize
patricians. My lord had never forgiven her for correcting him in his
pronunciation of her name by marriage. Singular indeed; but men, even
great men, men of title, are so, some of them, whom you could least
suspect of their being so. He would speak the "g" in Nargett, and he,
declined--after a remonstrance he declined--to pass Pagnell under the
cedilla. Lord Ormont spoke the name like a man hating it, or an English
rustic: "Nargett Pagnell," instead, of the soft and elegant "Naryett
Pagnell," the only true way of speaking it; and she had always taken that
pronunciation of her name for a test of people's breeding. The expression
of his lordship's countenance under correction was memorable. Naturally,
in those honeymoony days, the young Countess of Ormont sided with her
husband the earl; she declared that her aunt had never dreamed of the
cedilla before the expedition to Spain. When, for example, Alfred Nargett
Pagnell had a laughing remark, which Aminta in her childhood must have
heard: "We rhyme with spaniel!"

That was the secret of Lord Ormont's prepossession against Aminta's aunt;
and who can tell? perhaps of much of his behaviour to the beautiful young
wife he at least admired, sincerely admired, though he caused her to hang
her head--cast a cloud on the head so dear to him!

Otherwise there was no interpreting his lordship. To think of herself as
personally disliked by a nobleman stupefied Mrs. Pagnell, from her just
expectation of reciprocal dealings in high society; for she confessed
herself a fly to a title. Where is the shame, if titles are created to
attract? Elsewhere than in that upper circle, we may anticipate hard
bargains; the widow of a solicitor had not to learn it. But when a
distinguished member and ornament of the chosen seats above blew cold
upon their gesticulatory devotee, and was besides ungrateful; she was
more than commonly assured of his being, as she called him, "a sphinx."
His behaviour to his legally wedded wife confirmed the charge.

She checked her flow to resume the question. "So, then, where are we now?
He allows you liberally for pin-money in addition to your own small
independent income. Satisfaction with that would warrant him to suppose
his whole duty done by you."

"We are where we were, aunty; the month has made no change," said Aminta
in languor.

"And you as patient as ever?"

"I am supposed to have everything a woman can require."

"Can he possibly think it? And I have to warn you, child, that lawyers
are not so absolving as the world is with some of the ladies Lord Ormont
allows you to call your friends. I have been hearing--it is not mere airy
tales one hears from lawyers about cases in Courts of Law. Tighten your
lips as you like; I say nothing to condemn or reflect on Mrs. Lawrence
Finchley. I have had my eyes a little opened, that is all. Oh, I know my
niece Aminta, when it's a friend to stand by; but our position--thanks to
your inscrutable lord and master--demands of us the utmost
scrupulousness, or it soon becomes a whirl and scandal flying about, and
those lawyers picking up and putting together. I have had a difficulty to
persuade them!... and my own niece! whom I saw married at the British
Embassy in Madrid, as I take good care to tell everybody; for it was my
doing; I am the responsible person! and by an English Protestant
clergyman, to all appearance able to walk erect in and out of any of
these excellent new Life Assurance offices they are starting for the
benefit of widows and orphans, and deceased within six days of the
ceremony--if ceremony one may call the hasty affair in those foreign
places. My dear, the instant I heard it I had a presentiment, 'All has
gone well up to now.' I remember murmuring the words. Then your letter,
received in that smelly Barcelona: Lord Ormont was carrying you off to
Granada--a dream of my infancy! It may not have been his manoeuvre, but
it was the beginning of his manoeuvres."

Aminta shuddered. "And tra-la-la, and castanets, and my Cid! my Cid! and
the Alhambra, the Sierra Nevada, and ay di me, Alhama; and Boabdil el
Chico and el Zagal and Fray Antonio Agapida!" She flung out the rattle,
yawning, with her arms up and her head back, in the posture of a woman
wounded. One of her aunt's chance shots had traversed her breast,
flashing at her the time, the scene, the husband, intensest sunniness on
sword-edges of shade,--and now the wedded riddle; illusion dropping mask,
romance in its anatomy, cold English mist. Ah, what a background is the
present when we have the past to the fore! That filmy past is diaphanous
on heaving ribs.

She smiled at the wide-eyed little gossip. "Don't speak of manaoeuvres,
dear aunt. And we'll leave Granada to the poets. I'm tired. Talk of our
own people, on your side and my father's, and as much as you please of
the Pagnell-Pagnells, they refresh me. Do they go on marrying?"

"Why, my child, how could they go on without it?"

Aminta pressed her hands at her eyelids. "Oh, me!" she sighed, feeling
the tear come with a sting from checked laughter. "But there are
marriages, aunty, that don't go on, though Protestant clergymen
officiated. Leave them unnoticed, I have really nothing to tell."

"You have not heard anything of Lady Eglett?"

"Lady Charlotte Eglett? No syllable. Or wait--my lord's secretary was
with her at Olmer; approved by her, I have to suppose."

"There, my dear, I say again I do dread that woman, if she can make a man
like Lord Ormont afraid of her. And no doubt she is of our old
aristocracy. And they tell me she is coarse in her conversation--like a
man. Lawyers tell me she is never happy but in litigation. Years back, I
am given to understand, she did not set so particularly good an example.
Lawyers hear next to everything. I am told she lifted her horsewhip on a
gentleman once, and then put her horse at him and rode him down. You will
say, the sister of your husband. No; not to make my niece a countess,
would I, if I had known the kind of family! Then one asks, Is she half as
much afraid of him? In that case, no wonder they have given up meeting.
Was formerly one of the Keepsake Beauties. Well, Lady Eglett, and Aminta,
Countess of Ormont, will be in that Peerage, as they call it, let her
only have her dues. My dear, I would--if I ever did--swear the woman is
jealous."

"Of me, aunty!"

"I say more; I say again, it would be a good thing for somebody if
somebody had his twitch of jealousy. Wives may be too meek. Cases and
cases my poor Alfred read to me, where an ill-behaving man was brought to
his senses by a clever little shuffle of the cards, and by the most
innocent of wives. A kind of poison to him, of course; but there are
poisons that cure. It might come into the courts; and the nearer the
proofs the happier he in withdrawing from his charge and effecting a
reconciliation. Short of guilt, of course. Men are so strange. Imagine
now, if a handsome young woman were known to be admired rather more than
enough by a good-looking gentleman near about her own age. Oh, I've no
patience with, the man for causing us to think and scheme! Only there are
men who won't be set right unless we do. My husband used to say, change
is such a capital thing in life's jogtrot; that men find it refreshing if
we now and then, reverse the order of our pillion-riding for them. A
spiritless woman in a wife is what they bear least of all. Anything
rather. Is Mr. Morsfield haunting Mrs. Lawrence Finchley's house as
usual?"

Aminta's cheeks unrolled their deep damask rose at the abrupt intrusion
of the name. "I meet him there."

"Lord Adderwood, Sir John Randeller; and the rest?"

"Two or three times a week."

"And the lady, wife of the captain, really a Lady Fair--Mrs.... month of
May: so I have to get at it."

"She may be seen there."

"Really a contrast, when you two are together! As to reputation, there is
an exchange of colours. Those lawyers hold the keys of the great world,
and a naughty world it is, I fear--with exceptions, who are the salt, but
don't taste so much. I can't help enjoying the people at Mrs. Lawrence
Finchley's. I like to feel I can amuse them, as they do me. One puzzles
for what they say--in somebody's absence, I mean. They must take Lord
Ormont for a perfect sphinx; unless they are so silly as to think they
may despise him, or suppose him indifferent. Oh, that upper class! It's a
garden, and we can't help pushing to enter it; and fair flowers, indeed,
but serpents too, like the tropics. It tries us more than anything else
in the world--well, just as good eating tries the constitution. He ought
to know it and feel it, and give his wife all the protection of his name,
instead of--not that he denies: I have brought him to that point; he
cannot deny it with me. But not to present her--to shun the Court; not to
introduce her to his family, to appear ashamed of her! My darling Aminta,
a month of absence for reflection on your legally-wedded husband's
conduct increases my astonishment. For usually men old enough to be the
grandfathers of their wives--"

"Oh, pray, aunty, pray, pray!" Aminta cried, and her body writhed. "No
more to-night. You mean well, I am sure. Let us wait. I shall sleep,
perhaps, if I go to bed early. I dare say I am spiritless--not worth more
than I get. I gave him the lead altogether; he keeps it. In everything
else he is kind; I have all the luxuries--enough to loathe them. Kiss me
and say good night."

Aminta made it imperative by rising. Her aunt stood up, kissed, and
exclaimed, "I tell you you are a queenly creature, not to be treated as
any puny trollop of a handmaid. And although he is a great nobleman, he
is not to presume to behave any longer, my dear, as if your family had no
claim on his consideration. My husband, Alfred Pagnell, would have laid
that before him pretty quick. You are the child of the Farrells and the
Solers, both old families; on your father's side you are linked with the
oldest nobility in Europe. It flushes one to think of it! Your
grandmother, marrying Captain Algernon Farrell, was the legitimate
daughter of a Grandee of Spain; as I have told Lord Ormont often, and I
defy him to equal that for a romantic marriage in the annals of his
house, or boast of bluer blood. Again, the Solers--"

"We take the Solers for granted, aunty, good night."

"Commoners, if you like; but established since the Conquest. That is, we
trace the pedigree. And to be treated, even by a great nobleman, as if we
were stuff picked up out of the ditch! I declare, there are times when I
sit and think and boil. Is it chivalrous, is it generous--is it, I say,
decent--is it what Alfred would have called a fair fulfilment of a pact,
for your wedded husband--? You may close my mouth! But he pretends to be
chivalrous and generous, and he has won a queen any wealthy gentleman in
England--I know of one, if not two--would be proud to have beside him in
equal state; and what is he to her? He is an extinguisher. Or is it the
very meanest miserliness, that he may keep you all to himself? There we
are again! I say he is an unreadable sphinx."

Aminta had rung the bell for her maid. Mrs. Pagnell could be counted on
for drawing in her tongue when the domestics were near.

A languor past delivery in sighs was on the young woman's breast. She
could have heard without a regret that the heart was to cease beating.
Had it been downright misery she would have looked about her with less of
her exanimate glassiness. The unhappy have a form of life: until they are
worn out, they feel keenly. She felt nothing. The blow to her pride of
station and womanhood struck on numbed sensations. She could complain
that the blow was not heavier.

A letter lying in her jewel-box called her to read it, for the chance of
some slight stir. The contents were known. The signature of Adolphus
Morsfield had a new meaning for her eyes, and dashed her at her husband
in a spasm of revolt and wrath against the man exposing her to these
letters, which a motion of her hand could turn to blood, and abstention
from any sign maintained in a Satanic whisper, saying, "Here lies one way
of solving the riddle." It was her husband who drove her to look that
way.

The look was transient, and the wrath: she could not burn. A small
portion of contempt lodged in her mind to shadow husbands precipitating
women on their armoury for a taste of vengeance. Women can always be
revenged--so speedily, so completely: they have but to dip. Husbands
driving wives to taste their power execrate the creature for her fall
deep downward. They are forgetful of causes.

Does it matter? Aminta's languor asked. The letter had not won a reply.
Thought of the briefest of replies was a mountain of effort, and she
moaned at her nervelessness in body and mind. To reply, to reproach the
man, to be flame--an image of herself under the form she desired--gave
her a momentary false energy, wherein the daring of the man, whose life
was at a loss for the writing of this letter, hung lighted. She had
therewith a sharp vision of his features, repellent in correctness, Greek
in lines, with close eyes, hollow temples, pressed lips--a face
indicating the man who can fling himself on a die. She had heard tales of
women and the man. Some had loved him, report said. Here were words to
say that he loved her. They might, poor man, be true. Otherwise she had
never been loved.

Memory had of late been paying visits to a droopy plant in the golden
summer drought on a gorgeous mid-sea island, and had taken her on board
to refresh her with voyages, always bearing down full sail on a couple of
blissful schools, abodes of bloom and briny vigour, sweet merriment,
innocent longings, dreams the shyest, dreams the mightiest. At night
before sleep, at morn before rising, often during day, and when vexed or
when dispirited, she had issued her command for the voyage. Sheer
refreshment followed, as is ever the case if our vessel carries no
freight of hopes. There could be no hopes. It was forgotten that they had
ever been seriously alive. But it carried an admiration. Now, an
admiration may endure, and this one had been justified all round. The
figure heroical, the splendid, active youth, hallowed Aminta's past. The
past of a bitterly humiliated Aminta was a garden in the coming kiss of
sunset, with that godlike figure of young manhood to hallow it. There he
stayed, perpetually assuring her of his triumphs to come.

She could have no further voyages. Ridicule convulsed her home of refuge.
For the young soldier-hero, to be unhorsed by misfortune, was one thing;
but the meanness of the ambition he had taken in exchange for the thirst
of glory, accused his nature. He so certainly involved her in the
burlesque of the transformation that she had to quench memory.

She was, therefore, having smothered a good part of herself, accountably
languid--a condition alternating with fire in Aminta; and as Mr.
Morsfield's letter supplied the absent element, her needy instinct pushed
her to read his letter through. She had not yet done that with attention.

Whether a woman loves a man or not, he is her lover if he dare tell her
he loves her, and is heard with attention. Aware that the sentences were
poison, she summoned her constitutional antagonism to the mad step
proposed, so far nullifying the virus as to make her shrink from the
madness. Even then her soul cried out to her husband, Who drives me to
read? or rather, to brood upon what she read. The brooding ensued, was
the thirst of her malady. The best antidote she could hit on was the
writer's face. Yet it expressed him, his fire and his courage--gifts she
respected in him, found wanting in herself. Read by Lord Ormont, this
letter would mean a deadly thing.

Aminta did her lord the justice to feel sure of him, that with her name
bearing the superscription, it might be left on her table, and world not
have him to peruse it. If he manoeuvred, it was never basely. Despite
resentment, her deepest heart denied his being indifferent either to her
honour or his own in relation to it. He would vindicate both at a stroke,
for a sign. Nevertheless, he had been behaving cruelly. She charged on
him the guilt of the small preludes, archeries, anglings, veilings,
evasions, all done with the eyelids and the mute of the lips, or a
skirmisher word or a fan's flourish, and which, intended to pique the
husband rather than incite the lover, had led Mrs. Lawrence Finchley to
murmur at her ear, in close assembly, without a distinct designation of
Mr. Morsfield, "Dangerous man to play little games with!" It had brought
upon her this letter of declaration, proposal, entreaty.

This letter was the man's life in her hands, and safe, of course. But
surely it was a proof that the man loved her?

Aminta was in her five-and-twentieth year; when the woman who is
uncertain of the having been loved, and she reputed beautiful, desirable,
is impelled by a sombre necessity to muse on a declaration, and nibble at
an idea of a test. If "a dangerous man to play little games with," he
could scarcely be dangerous to a woman having no love for him at all. It
meant merely that he would soon fall to writing letters like this, and he
could not expect an answer to it. But her heart really thanked him, and
wished the poor gentleman to take its dumb response as his reward, for
being the one sole one who had loved her.

Aminta dwelt on "the one sole one." Lord Ormont's treatment had detached
her from any belief in love on his part; and the schoolboy, now ambitions
to become a schoolmaster, was behind the screen unlikely to be lifted
again by a woman valuing her pride of youth, though he had--behold our
deceptions!--the sympathetic face entirely absent from that of Mr.
Adolphus Morsfield, whom the world would count quite as handsome--nay, it
boasted him. He enjoyed the reputation of a killer of ladies. Women have
odd tastes, Aminta thought, and examined the gentleman's handwriting. It
pleased her better. She studied it till the conventional phrases took a
fiery hue, and came at her with an invasive rush.

The letter was cast back into the box, locked up; there an end to it, or
no interdiction of sleep.

Sleep was a triumph. Aminta's healthy frame rode her over petty
agitations of a blood uninflamed, as lightly as she swam the troubled
sea-waters her body gloried to cleave. She woke in the morning peaceful
and mildly reflective, like one who walks across green meadows. Only by
degrees, by glimpses, was she drawn to remember the trotting, cantering,
galloping, leaping of an active heart during night. We cannot, men or
woman, control the heart in sleep at night. There had been wild leapings.
Night will lead an unsatisfied heart of a woman, by way of sleep, to
scale black mountains, jump jagged chasms. Sleep is a horse that laughs
at precipices and abysses. We bid women, moreover, be all heart. They are
to cultivate their hearts, pay much heed to their hearts. The vast realm
of feeling is open to these appointed keepers of the sanctuary household,
who may be withering virgins, may be childless matrons, may be
unhusbanded wives. Wandering in the vast realm which they are exhorted to
call their own, for the additional attractiveness it gives them, an
unsatisfied heart of woman will somewhat audaciously cross the borderland
a single step into the public road of the vast realm of thinking. Once
there, and but a single step on the road, she is a rebel against man's
law for her sex. Nor is it urgent on her that she should think defiantly
in order to feel herself the rebel. She may think submissively; with a
heart (the enlarged, the scientifically plumped, the pasture of epicurean
man), with her coveted heart in revolt, and from the mere act of thinking
at all.

Aminta reviewed perforce, dead against her will, certain of the
near-to-happiness ratings over-night. She thinned her lips, and her
cheeks glowed. An arm, on the plea of rescuing, had been round her. The
choice now offered her was, to yield to softness or to think. She took
the latter step, the single step of an unaccustomed foot, which women
educated simply to feet, will, upon extreme impulsion, take; and it held
a candle in a windy darkness. She saw no Justice there. The sensational
immensity touched sublime, short of that spirit of Justice required for
the true sublime. And void of Justice; what a sunless place is any realm!
Infants, the male and the female alike, first begin to know they feel
when it is refused them. When they know they feel, they have begun to
reflect. The void of Justice is a godless region. Women, to whom the
solitary thought has come as a blown candle, illumining the fringes of
their storm, ask themselves whether they are God's creatures or man's.
The question deals a sword-stroke of division between them and their
human masters. Young women, animated by the passions their feeling bosoms
of necessity breed, and under terror discover, do not distinguish an
abstract justice from a concrete. They are of the tribe too long
hereditarily enslaved to conceive an abstract. So it is with them, that
their God is the God of the slave, as it is with all but the bravest of
boys. He is a Thing to cry to, a Punisher, not much of a Supporter--the
Biblical Hebrew's right reading of Nature, favouring man, yet prompt to
confound him, and with woman for the instrument of vengeance. By such a
maze the blindfolded, are brought round to see Justice on earth. If women
can only believe in some soul of justice, they will feel they belong to
God--of the two; and the peril for them then is, that they will set the
one incomprehensible Power in opposition to the other, urging them
unsatisfied natures to make secret appeal away from man and his laws
altogether, at the cost of losing clear sight of the God who shines in
thought. It is a manner whereby the desperately harried among these
creatures of the petted heart arrive upon occasion at an agreeable,
almost reposeful, contemplation of the reverse of God.

There is little pleasure to be on the lecture-rostrum for a narrator
sensible to the pulses of his audience. Justice compels at times. In
truth, there are times when the foggy obscurities of the preacher are by
comparison broad daylight beside the whirling loose tissues of a woman
unexplained. Aminta was one born to prize rectitude, to walk on the
traced line uprightly; and while the dark rose overflowed the soft brown
of her cheeks, under musings upon her unlicenced heart's doings
overnight, she not only pleaded for woeful creatures of her sex burdened
as she and erring, she weighed them in the scales with men, and put her
heart where Justice pointed, sending men to kick aloft.

Her husband, the man-riddle: she was unable to rede or read him. Her will
could not turn him; nor her tongue combat; nor was it granted her to
pique the mailed veteran. Every poor innocent little bit of an art had
been exhausted. Her title was Lady Ormont her condition actually slave. A
luxuriously established slave, consorting with a singularly enfranchised
set,--as, for instance, Mrs. Lawrence Finchley and Lord Adderwood; Sir
John Randeller and Lady Staines; Mrs. May, Amy May, notorious wife of a
fighting captain, the loneliest of blondes; and other ladies, other
gentlemen, Mr. Morsfield in the list, paired or not yet paired: gossip
raged. Aminta was of a disposition too generously cordial to let her be
the rigorous critic of people with whom she was in touch. But her mind
knew relief when she recollected that her humble little school-mate,
Selina Collect, who had suffered on her behalf in old days, was coming up
to her from the Suffolk coast on a visit for a week. However much a slave
and an unloved woman, she could be a constant and protecting friend.
Besides, Lord Ormont was gracious to little Selina. She thought of his
remarks about the modest-minded girl after first seeing her. From that
she struck upon a notion of reserves of humaneness being in him, if she
might find the path to them: and thence, fortified by the repose her
picture of little Selina's merit had bestowed, she sprang to the idea of
valiancy, that she would woo him to listen to her, without inflicting a
scene. He had been a listening lover, seeming lover, once, later than the
Granada sunsets. The letter in her jewel-box urged Aminta to clear her
conscience by some means, for leaving it unburnt.




CHAPTER VII.

EXHIBITS EFFECTS OF A PRATTLER'S DOSES

The rules in Lord Ormont's household assisted to shelter him for some
hours of the day from the lady who was like a blast of sirocco under his
roof. He had his breakfast alone, as Lady Charlotte had it at Olmer; a
dislike of a common table in the morning was a family trait with both. At
ten o'clock the secretary arrived, and they were shut up together. At the
luncheon table Aminta usually presided. If my lord dined at home, he had
by that time established an equanimity rendering, his constant civility
to Mrs. Pagnell less arduous. The presence of a woman of tongue,
perpetually on the spring to gratify him and win him, was among the
burdens he bore for his Aminta.

Mrs. Pagnell soon perceived that the secretary was in favour. My lord and
this Mr. Weyburn had their pet themes of conversation, upon which the
wary aunt of her niece did not gaze like the wintry sun with the distant
smile her niece displayed over discussions concerning military
biographies, Hannibal's use of his elephants and his Numidian horse, the
Little St. Bernard, modern artillery, ancient slingers, English and
Genoese bowmen, Napoleon's tactics, his command to the troopers to "give
point," and English officers' neglect of sword exercise, and the "devil
of a day" Old England is to have on a day to come. My lord connected our
day of trial with India. Mrs. Pagnell assumed an air of studious
interest; she struck in to give her niece a lead, that Lord Ormont might
know his countess capable of joining the driest of subjects occupying
exalted minds. Aminta did not follow her; and she was extricated
gallantly by the gentlemen in turn.

The secretary behaved with a pretty civility. Aminta shook herself to
think tolerantly of him when he, after listening to the suggestion, put
interrogatively, that we should profit by Hannibal's example and train
elephants to serve as a special army corps for the perfect security of
our priceless Indian Empire, instanced the danger likely to result from
their panic fear of cannon, and forbore to consult Lord Ormont's eye.

Mrs. Pagnell knew that she had put her foot into it; but women advised of
being fools in what they say, are generally sustained by their sense of
the excellent motive which impelled them. Even to the Countess of Ormont,
she could have replied, "We might have given them a higher idea of
us"--if, that meant, the Countess of Ormont had entered the field beside
her, to the exclusion of a shrinking Aminta. She hinted as much
subsequently, and Aminta's consciousness of the troth was touched. The
young schoolmaster's company sat on her spirits, deadened her vocabulary.
Her aunt spoke of passing the library door and hearing the two gentlemen
loudly laughing. It seemed subserviency on the fallen young hero's part.
His tastes were low. He frequented the haunts of boxing men; her lord
informed her of his having made, or of his making, matches to run or swim
or walk certain distances against competitors or within a given time. He
had also half a dozen boys or more in tow, whom he raced out of town on
Sundays; a nucleus of the school he intended to form.

But will not Achilles become by comparison a common rushlight where was a
blazing torch, if we see him clap a clown's cap on the head whose golden
helm was fired by Pallas?

Nay, and let him look the hero still: all the more does he point finger
on his meanness of nature.

Turning to another, it is another kind of shame that a woman feels, if
she consents to an exchange of letters--shameful indeed, but not such a
feeling of deadly sickness as comes with the humiliating view of an
object of admiration degraded. Bad she may be; and she may be deceived,
vilely treated, in either case. And what is a woman's pride but the staff
and banner of her soul, beyond all gifts? He who wounds it cannot be
forgiven--never!--he has killed the best of her. Aminta found herself
sliding along into the sentiment, that the splendid idol of a girl's
worship is, if she discover him in the lapse of years as an
infinitesimally small one, responsible for the woman's possible reckless
fit of giddiness. And she could see her nonsense; she could not correct
it. Lines of the letters under signature of Adolphus were phosphorescent
about her: they would recur; and she charged their doing so on the
discovered meanness of the girl's idol. Her wicked memory was caused by
his having plunged her low.

Mrs. Pagnell performed the offices of attention to Mr. Weyburn in lieu of
the countess, who seemed to find it a task to sit at the luncheon table
with him, when Lady Ormont was absent. "Just peeped in," she said as she
entered the library, "to see if all was comfortable;" and gossip ensued,
not devoid of object. She extracted an astonishingly smooth description
of Lady Charlotte. Weyburn was brightness in speaking of the
much-misunderstood lady. "She's one of the living women of the world."

"You are sure you don't mean one of the worldly women?" Mrs. Pagnell
rejoiced.

"She has to be known to be liked," he owned.

"And you were, one hears, among the favoured?"

"I can scarcely pretend to that, ma'am."

"You were recommended."

"Lady Charlotte is devoted to her brother."

Mrs. Pagnell's bosom heaved. "How strange Lord Ormont is! One would
suppose, with his indignation at the country for its treatment of him,
admirers would be welcome. Oh dear, no! that is not the way. On board the
packet, on our voyage to Spain, my niece in her cabin, imploring mercy of
Neptune, as they say, I heard of Lord Ormont among the passengers. I
could hardly credit my ears. For I had been hearing of him from my niece
ever since her return from a select establishment for the education of
young ladies, not much more than a morning's drive out of London, though
Dover was my residence. She had got a hero! It was Lord Ormont! Lord
Ormont! all day: and when the behaviour of the country to him became
notorious, Aminta--my niece the countess--she could hardly contain
herself. A secret:--I promised her--it's not known to Lord Ormont
himself:--a printed letter in a metropolitan paper, copied into the
provincial papers, upholding him for one of the greatest of our patriot
soldiers and the saviour of India, was the work of her hands. You would,
I am sure, think it really well written. Meeting him on deck--the outline
of the coast of Portugal for an introductory subject, our Peninsular
battles and so forth--I spoke of her enthusiasm. The effect was, to cut
off all communication between us. I had only to appear, Lord Ormont
vanished. I said to myself, this is a character. However, the very
mention of him to my niece, as one of the passengers on board--medicine,
miraculous! She was up in half an hour, out pacing the deck before
evening, hardly leaning on my arm, and the colour positively beginning to
show on her cheeks again. He fled, of coarse. I had prepared her for his
eccentricities. Next morning she was out by herself. In the afternoon
Lord Ormont strode up to us his--military step--and most courteously
requested the honour of an introduction. I had broken the ice at last;
from that moment he was cordiality itself, until--I will not say, until
he had called her his own--a few little misunderstandings!--not with his
countess. You see, a resident aunt is translated mother-in-law by
husbands; though I spare them pretty frequently; I go to friends, they
travel. Here in London she must have a duenna. The marriage at Madrid, at
the Embassy:--well, perhaps it was a step for us, for commoners, though
we rank with the independent. Has her own little pin-money--an
inheritance. Perhaps Lady Eglett gives the world her version. She may
say, there was aiming at station. I reply, never was there a more
whole-hearted love-match! Absolutely the girl's heart has been his from
the period of her school-days. Oh! a little affair--she was persecuted by
a boy at a neighbouring school. Her mistress wrote me word--a very
determined Romeo young gentleman indeed--quite alarmed about him. In the
bud! I carried her off on the spot, and snapped it effectually. Warned he
meant to be desperate, I kept her away from my house at Dover four
months, place to place; and I did well. I heard on my return, that a
youth, answering to the schoolmistress's description of him, had been
calling several times, the first two months and longer. You have me
alluding to these little nonsensical nothings, because she seemed born to
create violent attachments, even at that early day; and Lady Eglett--Lady
Charlotte Eglett may hear; for there is no end to them, and impute them
to her, when really!--can she be made responsible for eyes innocent of
the mischief they appear destined to do? But I am disturbing you in your
work."

"You are very good, ma'am," said the ghost of the determined young
gentleman.

"A slight cold, have you?" Mrs. Pagnell asked solicitously.

"Dear me, no!" he gave answer with a cleared throat.

In charging him with more than he wanted to carry, she supplied him with
particulars he had wanted to know; and now he asked himself what could be
the gain of any amount of satisfied curiosity regarding a married Aminta.
She slew my lord on board a packet-boat; she bears the arrows that slay.
My lord married her where the first English chaplain was to be found;
that is not wonderful either. British Embassy, Madrid! Weyburn believed
the ceremony to have been performed there: at the same time, he could
hear Lady Charlotte's voice repeating with her varied intonation Mrs.
Pagnell's impressive utterances; and he could imagine how the somewhat
silly duenna aunt, so penetrable in her transparent artifices, struck
emphasis on the incredulity of people inclined to judge of the reported
ceremony by Lord Ormont's behaviour to his captive.

How explain that strange matter? But can there be a gain in trying to
sound it? Weyburn shuffled it away. Before the fit of passion seized him,
he could turn his eager mind from anything which had not a perceptible
point of gain, either for bodily strength or mental acquisition, or for
money, too, now that the school was growing palpable as an infant in arms
and agape for the breast. Thought of gain, and the bent to pursue it, is
the shield of Athene over young men in the press of the seductions. He
had to confess his having lost some bits of himself by reason of his
meditations latterly; and that loss, if we let it continue a space, will
show in cramp at the wrist, logs on the legs, a wheezy wind, for any
fellow vowed to physical trials of strength and skill. It will show
likewise in the brain beating broken wings--inability to shoot a thought
up out of the body for half a minute. And, good Lord! how quickly the
tight-strong fellow crumbles, when once the fragmentary disintegration
has begun! Weyburn cried out on a heart that bounded off at prodigal
gallops, and had to be nipped with reminders of the place of good leader
he was for taking among the young. Hang superexcellence! but we know
those moanings over the troubles of a married woman; we know their
sources, know their goal, or else we are the fiction-puppet or the
Bedlamite; and she is a married woman, married at the British Embassy,
Madrid, if you please! after a few weeks' acquaintance with her husband,
who doubtless wrote his name intelligibly in the registrar's book, but
does not prove himself much the hero when he drives a pen, even for so
little as the signing of his name! He signed his name, apparently not
more than partly pledging himself to the bond. Lord Ormont's
autobiographical scraps combined with Lady Charlotte's hints and Mrs.
Pagnell's communications, to provoke the secretary's literary contempt of
his behaviour to his wife. However, the former might be mended, and he
resumed the task.

It had the restorative effect of touching him to see his old hero in
action; whereby he was brought about to a proper modesty, so that he
really craved no more than for the mistress of this house to breathe the
liberal air of a public acknowledgment of her rightful position. Things
constituted by their buoyancy to float are remarkable for lively bobbings
when they are cast upon the waters; and such was the case with Weyburn,
until the agitation produced by Mrs. Pagnell left him free to sail away
in the society of the steadiest.

He decided that by not observing, not thinking, not feeling, about the
circumstances of the household into which Fate had thrown him, he would
best be able--probably it was the one way--to keep himself together; and
his resolution being honest all round, he succeeded in it as long as he
abstained from a very wakeful vigilance over simple eyesight. For if one
is nervously on guard to not-see, the matter starts up winged, and enters
us, and kindles the mind, and tingles through the blood; it has us as a
foe. The art of blind vision requires not only practice, but an intimate
knowledge of the arts of the traitor we carry within. Safest for him,
after all, was to lay fast hold of the particularly unimportant person he
was, both there and anywhere else. The Countess of Ormont's manner toward
him was to be read as a standing index of the course he should follow;
and he thanked her. He could not quite so sincerely thank her aunt. His
ingratitude for the sickly dose she had administered to him sprang a
doubt whether Lady Ormont now thanked her aunt on account of services
performed at the British Embassy, Madrid.

Certain looks of those eyes recently, when in colloquy with my lord,
removed the towering nobleman to a shadowed landscape.

Was it solely an effect of eyes commanding light, and having every shaft
of the quiver of the rays at her disposal? Or was it a shot from a
powerful individuality issuing out of bondage to some physical oppressor
no longer master of the soul, in peril of the slipping away of the body?
Her look on him was not hate: it was larger, more terribly divine. Those
eyes had elsewhere once looked love: they had planted their object in a
throbbing Eden. The man on whom they had looked shivered over the thought
of it after years of blank division.

Rather than have those eyes to look on him their displacing unintentness,
the man on whom they had once looked love would have chosen looks of
wrath, the darts that kill--blest darts of the celestial Huntress, giving
sweet sudden cessation of pain, in the one everlasting last flash of life
with thought that the shot was hers. Oh for the 'ayava behea' of the
Merciful in splendour!

These were the outcries of the man deciding simultaneously not to
observe, not to think, not to feel, and husbanding calculations upon
storage of gain for the future. Softness held the song below. It came of
the fact that his enforced resolution, for the sake of sanity, drove his
whole reflective mind backward upon his younger days, when an Evening and
a Morning star in him greeted the bright Goddess Browny or sang adieu,
and adored beyond all golden beams the underworld whither she had sunk,
where she was hidden.

Meanwhile, the worthy dame who had dosed him was out in her carriage,
busy paying visits to distinguished ladies of the great world, with the
best of excuses for an early call, which was gossip to impart, such as
the Countess of Ormont had not yet thought of mentioning; and two or
three of them were rather amusedly interested to hear that Lord Ormont
had engaged a handsome young secretary, "under the patronage of Lady
Charlotte Eglett, devoted to sports of all kinds, immensely favoured by
both." Gossip must often have been likened to the winged insect bearing
pollen to the flowers; it fertilizes many a vacuous reverie. Those
flowers of the upper garden are not, indeed, stationary and in need of
the missionary buzzer, but if they have been in one place unmoved for one
hour, they are open to take animation from their visitors. Aminta was
pleasantly surprised next day by the receipt of a note from Mrs. Lawrence
Finchley, begging to be invited to lunch if she came, as she had a
purpose in the wish to meet my lord.




[NOTE: The remainder of 'Lord Ormont and His Aminta' is taken from an
older edition which uses single rather than double quotation marks. D.W.]


CHAPTER VIII

MRS. LAWRENCE FINCHLEY

My lord had one of his wilful likings for Isabella Lawrence Finchley, and
he consented to the torture of an hour of Mrs. Nargett Pagnell in the
middle of the day, just to taste the favourite he welcomed at home as he
championed her abroad. The reasons were numerous and intimate why she
pleased him. He liked the woman, enjoyed the cause for battle that she
gave. Weyburn, on coming to the luncheon table, beheld a lady with the
head of a comely boy, the manner, softened in delicate feminine, of a
capital comrade. Her air of candour was her nature in her face; and it
carried a guileless roguery, a placid daring, a supersensual naughtiness,
a simplicity of repose amid the smoky reputation she created, that led
one to think the vapour calumnious or the creature privileged. That young
boy's look opened him at once; he had not to warm to her,--he flew.
Ordinarily the sweetest ladies will make us pass through cold mist and
cross a stile or two, or a broken bridge, before the formalities are
cleared away to grant us rights of citizenship. She was like those frank
lands where we have not to hand out a passport at the frontier and wait
for dubious inspection of it.

She prevailed with cognizant men and with the frivolous. Women were
capable of appreciating her, too: as Aminta did, despite some hinted
qualifications addressed shyly to her husband. But these were the very
matters exciting his particular esteem. He was of Lady Charlotte's mind,
in her hot zeal against injustice done to the creatures she despised; and
yet more than she applauded a woman who took up her idiot husband's
challenge to defend her good name, and cleared it, right or wrong, and
beat him down on his knees, and then started for her spell of the merry
canter over turf: an example to the English of the punishment they get
for their stupid Puritanic tyranny--sure to be followed by a national
helter-skelter down-hill headlong. And Mrs. Lawrence was not one of the
corrupt, he argued; she concealed what it was decent to conceal, without
pouting hypocritical pretences; she had merely dispensed with idle legal
formalities, in the prettiest curvetting airy wanton way, to divorce the
man who tried to divorce her, and 'whined to be forgiven when he found he
couldn't. Adderwood was ready to marry her to-morrow, if the donkey
husband would but go and bray his last. Half a dozen others were heads
off on the same course to that goal.'

That was her champion's perusal of a lady candidly asserting her right to
have breeched comrades, and paying for it in the advocacy which
compromises. She was taken to be and she was used as a weapon wherewith
to strike at our Pharisees. Women pushing out into the world for
independence, bleed heavy payments all round.

The earl's double-edged defence of her was partly a vindication of
another husband, who allowed his wife to call her friend; he was
nevertheless assured of her not being corrupt, both by his personal
knowledge of the lady, and his perception of her image in the bosom of
his wife. She did no harm there, he knew well. Although he was not a man
to put his trust in faces, as his young secretary inclined to do, Mrs.
Lawrence's look of honest boy did count among the pleadings. And somewhat
so might a government cruiser observe the intrusion of a white-sailed
yacht in protected sea-waters, where licenced trawlers are at the haul.

Talk over the table coursed as fluently as might be, with Mrs. Pagnell
for a boulder in the stream. Uninformed by malice, she led up to Lord
Adderwood's name, and perhaps more designedly spoke of Mr. Morsfield, on
whom her profound reading into the female heart of the class above her
caused her to harp, as 'a real Antinous,' that the ladies might discuss
him and Lord Ormont wax meditative.

Mrs. Lawrence pitied the patient gentleman, while asking him in her mind
who was the author of the domestic burden he had to bear.

'It reminds me I have a mission,' she said. 'There's a fencing match down
at a hall in the West, near the barracks; private and select: Soldier and
Civilian; I forget who challenged--Civilian, one judges; Soldiers are the
peaceful party. They want you to act "umpire," as they call it, on the
military side, my dear lord; and you will?--I have given my word you will
bring Lady Ormont. You will?--and not let me be confounded! Yes, and we
shall make a party. I see consent. Aminta will enjoy the switch of steel.
I love to see fencing. It rouses all that is diabolical in me.'

She sent a skimming look at the opposite.

'And I,' said he, much freshened.

'You fence?'

'Handle the foils.'

'If you must speak modestly! Are you in practice?'

'I spend in hour in Captain Chiallo's fencing rooms generally every
evening before dinner. I heard there the first outlines of the match
proposed. You are right; it was the civilian.'

'Mr. Morsfield, as I suspected.'

She smiled to herself, like one saying, Not badly managed, Mr. Morsfield!

'Italian school?' Lord Ormont inquired, with a screw of the eyelids.

'French, my lord.'

'The only school for teaching.'

'The simplest--has the most rational method. Italians are apt to be
tricky. But they were masters once, and now and then they send out a
fencer the French can't touch.'

'How would you account for it?'

'If I had to account for it, I should say, hotter blood, cool nerve,
quick brain.'

'Hum. Where are we, then?'

'We don't shine with the small sword.'

'We had men neatly pinked for their slashings in the Peninsula.'

'We've had clever Irishmen.'

'Hot enough blood! This man Morsfield--have you crossed the foils with
him?'

'Goes at it like a Spaniard; though Spaniards in Paris have been found
wary enough.'

My lord hummed. 'Fellow looks as if he would easily lose his head over
steel.'

'He can be dangerous.'

The word struck on something, and rang.

Mrs. Lawrence had a further murmur within her lips. Her travelling eye
met Aminta's and passed it.

'But not dangerous, surely, if the breast is padded?' said Mrs. Pagnell.

'Oh no, oh no; not in that case!' Mrs. Lawrence ran out her voluble
assent, and her eyelids blinked; her fair boy's face was mischief at
school under shadow of the master.

She said to Weyburn: 'Are you one in the list--to give our military a
lesson? They want it.'

His answer was unheard by Aminta. She gathered from Mrs. Lawrence's
pleased sparkle that he had been invited to stand in the list; and the
strange, the absurd spectacle of a young schoolmaster taking the heroic
attitude for attack and defence wrestled behind her eyes with a suddenly
vivid first-of-May cricketing field, a scene of snowballs flying, the
vision of a strenuous lighted figure scaling to noble young manhood.
Isabella Lawrence's look at him spirited the bright past out of the
wretched long-brown-coat shroud of the present, prompting her to grieve
that some woman's hand had not smoothed a small tuft of hair, disorderly
on his head a little above the left parting, because Isabella Lawrence
Finchley could have no recollection of how it used to toss feathery--wild
at his games.

My lord hummed again. 'I suspect we 're going to get a drubbing. This
fellow here has had his French maitre d'armes. Show me your hand, sir.'

Weyburn smiled, and extended his right hand, saying: 'The wrist wants
exercise.'

'Ha! square thumb, flesh full at the nails' ends; you were a bowler at
cricket.'

'Now examine the palms, my lord; I judge by the lines on the palms,' Mrs.
Pagnell remarked.

He nodded to her and rose.

Coffee had not been served, she reminded him; it was coming in, so down
he sat a yard from the table; outwardly equable, inwardly cursing coffee;
though he refused to finish a meal without his cup.

'I think the palms do betray something,' said Mrs. Lawrence; and Aminta
said: 'Everything betrays.'

'No, my dear,' Mrs. Pagnell corrected her; 'the extremities betray, and
we cannot read the centre. Is it not so, my lord?'

'It may be as you say, ma'am.'

She was disappointed in her scheme to induce a general examination of
palms, and especially his sphinx lordship's.

Weyburn controlled the tongue she so frequently tickled to an elvish
gavotte, but the humour on his face touched Mrs. Lawrence's to a subdued
good-fellow roguishness, and he felt himself invited to chat with her on
the walk for a reposeful ten minutes in Aminta's drawing-room.

Mrs. Pagnell, 'quite enjoying the company,' as she told her niece, was
dismayed to hear her niece tell her of a milliner's appointment, positive
for three o'clock; and she had written it in her head 'p.m., four
o'clock,' and she had mislaid or destroyed the milliner's note; and she
still had designs upon his lordship's palms, things to read and hint
around her off the lines. She departed.

Lord Ormont became genial; and there was no one present who did not
marvel that he should continue to decree a state of circumstances more or
less necessitating the infliction he groaned under. He was too lofty to
be questioned, even by his favourites. Mrs. Lawrence conjured the ghost
of Lady Charlotte for an answer: this being Lord Adderwood's idea.
Weyburn let his thoughts go on fermenting. Pride froze a beginning stir
in the bosom of Aminta.

Her lord could captivate a reluctant woman's bosom when he was genial. He
melted her and made her call up her bitterest pride to perform its recent
office. That might have failed; but it had support in a second letter
received from the man accounted both by Mrs. Lawrence and by Mr. Weyburn
'dangerous'; and the thought of who it was that had precipitated her to
'play little games' for the sole sake of rousing him through jealousy to
a sense of righteous duty, armed her desperately against him. She could
exult in having read the second letter right through on receipt of it,
and in remembering certain phrases; and notably in a reflection shot
across her bewildered brain by one of the dangerous man's queer mad
sentences: 'Be as iron as you like, I will strike you to heat'; and her
thought: Is there assurance of safety in a perpetual defence?--all while
she smiled on her genial lord, and signified agreement, with a smiting of
wonderment at her heart, when he alluded to a panic shout of the country
for defence, and said: 'Much crying of that kind weakens the power to
defend when the real attack comes.' Was it true?

'But say what you propose?' she asked.

Lord Ormont proposed vigilance and drill; a small degree of
self-sacrifice on the part of the population, and a look-out head in the
War Department. He proposed to have a nation of stout-braced men laughing
at the foreign bully or bandit, instead of being a pack of whimpering
women; whom he likened to the randomly protestant geese of our country
roadside, heads out a yard in a gabble of defence while they go backing.

So thereupon Aminta's notion of a resemblance in the mutual thought
subsided; she relapsed on the cushioning sentiment that she was a woman.
And--only a woman! he might exclaim, if it pleased him; though he would
never be able to say she was one of the whimpering. She, too, had the
choice to indulge in scorn of the superior man stone blind to proceedings
intimately affecting him--if he cared! One might doubt it.

Mrs. Lawrence listened to him with a mind more disengaged, and a flitting
disapproval of Aminta's unsympathetic ear, or reluctance to stimulate the
devout attention a bruised warrior should have in his tent. She did not
press on him the post of umpire. He consented--at her request, he
said--to visit the show; but refused any official position that would, it
was clearly enough implied, bring his name in any capacity whatever
before the country which had unpardonably maltreated him.

Feminine wits will be set working, when a point has been gained; and as
Mrs. Lawrence could now say she had persuaded Lord Ormont to gratify her
specially, she warmed to fancy she read him, and that she might have
managed the wounded and angry giant. Her minor intelligence, caracoling
unhampered by harassing emotions, rebuked Aminta's for not perceiving
that to win him round to whatever a woman may desire, she must be with
him, outstrip him even, along the line he chooses for himself; abuse the
country, rail at the Government, ridicule the title of English Army,
proscribe the name of India in his hearing. Little stings of jealousy are
small insect bites, and do not pique a wounded giant hardly sensible of
irritation under his huge, and as we assume for our purpose, justifiable
wrath. We have to speculate which way does the giant incline to go? and
turn him according to the indication.

Mrs. Lawrence was driven by her critic mood to think Aminta
relied--erroneously, after woman's old fashion--on the might of superb
dark eyes after having been captured. It seemed to her worse than a
beautiful woman's vanity, a childishness. But her boy's head held boy's
brains; and Lord Ormont's praise of the splendid creature's nerve when
she had to smell powder in Spain, and at bull-fights, and once at a
wrecking of their carriage down a gully on the road over the Alpujarras,
sent her away subdued, envious, happy to have kissed the cheek of the
woman who could inspire it.




CHAPTER IX.

A FLASH OF THE BRUISED WARRIOR

The winning of Lord Ormont's consent to look on at the little bout of
arms was counted an achievement; for even in his own rarefied upper
circle, where the fervid sentiments are not allowed to be seen plunging,
he had his troop of enthusiasts; and they were anxious that he should
make an appearance in public, to take what consolation a misunderstood
and injured man could get from evidence of the grateful esteem
entertained for him by a party of his countrymen, who might reasonably
expect at the same time to set eyes, at rather close quarters, on the
wonderful dark beauty, supposed a Spaniard, occasionally beheld riding
beside him. If it is possible to connect a woman with the devoutest of
their anticipations, the sons of leisure up there will do it. But, in
truth, an English world was having cause to ransack the dust-heaps for
neglected men of mettle. Our intermittent ague, known as dread of
invasion, was over the land. Twice down the columns of panic newspaper
correspondence Lord Ormont saw his name cited, with the effect on him
that such signs of national repentance approaching lodged a crabbed
sourness in his consulting-room, whether of head or breast.

He was assailed by a gusty appeal from Lady Charlotte, bidding him seize
the moment to proclaim his views while the secretary had a private
missive from her, wherein, between insistency and supplication, she
directed him to bring the subject before my lord every day, and be sure
to write out a fair copy of the epistle previous to the transmission of
it. 'Capua' was mentioned; she brought in 'a siren,' too. Her brother was
to be the soldier again--fling off silken bonds. The world might prate of
his morality; now was the hour for showing his patriotism, casting aside
his just anger, and backing his chief's opinion. 'A good chance to get
their names together.' To her brother she declared that the columns of
the leading journal were open to him--'in large type'; he was to take her
word for it; he had only to 'dictate away,' quite at his ease, just as he
talked at Olmer, and leave the bother of the scribe's business to his
aide. 'Lose no time,' she concluded; 'the country wants your ideas; let
us have your plan.'

The earl raised his shoulders, and kept his aide exclusively at the
Memoirs. Weyburn, however, read out to him, with accentuation, foolish
stuff in the recurrent correspondence of the daily sheets, and a
complacent burgess article, meant to be a summary of the controversy and
a recommendation to the country to bask in the sun of its wealth again.

'Ay, be the porker sow it's getting liker and liker to every year!' Lord
Ormont exclaimed, and sprang on his feet. 'Take a pen. Shut up that box.
We'll give 'em digestive biscuits for their weak stomachs. Invasion can't
be done, they say! I tell the doddered asses Napoleon would have been
over if Villeneuve had obeyed him to the letter. Villeneuve had a fit of
paralysis, owing to the prestige of Nelson--that 's as it happened. And
they swear at prestige, won't believe in it, because it's not fat bacon.
I tell them, after Napoleon's first battles, prestige did half his work
for him. It saved him at Essling from a plunge into the Danube; it saved
him at Moskowa; it would have marched him half over England at his first
jump on our shingle beach. But that squelch of fat citizens should be
told--to the devil with them! will they ever learn? short of a second
William!--there were eight-and-forty hours when the liberty of this
country hung wavering in the balance with those Boulogne boats. Now look
at Ulm and Austerlitz. Essling, Wagram; put the victors in those little
affairs to front our awkward squads. The French could boast a regimental
system, and chiefs who held them as the whist-player his hand of cards.
Had we a better general than the Archduke Charles? or cavalry and
artillery equal to the Hungarian? or drilled infantry numbering within
eighty thousand of the Boulogne-Wimereux camps? We had nothing but the
raw material of courage--pluck, and no science. Ask any boxing man what
he thinks of the chances. The French might have sacrificed a fleet to
land fifty thousand. Our fleet was our one chance. Any foreign General at
the head of fifty thousand trained, picked troops would risk it, and cut
an 'entrechat' for joy of the chance. We should have fought and bled and
been marched over--a field of Anglo-Saxon stubble! and Nelson riding the
Channel, undisputed lord of the waters. Heigh! by the Lord, this country
would have been like a man free to rub his skin with his hand and a
mortal disease in his blood. Are you ready? How anticipate a hostile
march on the capital, is our business.'

Striding up and down the library, Lord Ormont dropped his wrath to
dictate the practical measures for defence--detesting the cat's-cry
'defence,' he said; but the foe would bring his old growlers, and we
should have to season our handful of regulars and mob of levies, turn the
mass into troops. With plenty of food, and blows daily, Englishmen soon
get stomachs for the right way to play the game; bowl as well as bat; and
the sooner they give up the idea of shamming sturdy on a stiff hind leg,
the better for their chances. Only, it's a beastly thing to see that for
their favourite attitude;--like some dog of a fellow weak in the fists,
weaker in the midriff, at a fair, who cries, Come on, and prays his gods
you won't. All for peace, the rascal boasts himself, and he beats his
wife and kicks his curs at home. Is there any one to help him now, he
vomits gold and honours on the man he yesterday treated as a felon. Ha!

Bull the bumpkin disposed of, my lord drew leisurely back from the
foeman's landing-place, at the head of a body of serious Englishmen;
teaching them to be manageable as chess-pieces, ready as bow-strings to
let fly. Weyburn rejoiced to find himself transcribing crisp sentences,
hard on the matter, without garnish of scorn. Kent, Sussex, Surrey, all
the southern heights about London, round away to the south-western of the
Hampshire heathland, were accurately mapped in the old warrior's brain.
He knew his points of vantage by name; there were no references to
gazetteer or atlas. A chain of forts and earthworks enables us to choose
our ground, not for clinging to them, but for choice of time and place to
give battle. If we have not been playing double-dyed traitor to
ourselves, we have a preponderating field artillery; our yeomanry and
volunteer horsemen are becoming a serviceable cavalry arm; our infantry
prove that their heterogeneous composition can be welded to a handy mass,
and can stand fire and return it, and not be beaten by an acknowledged
defeat.

'That's English! yes, that's English! when they're at it,' my lord sang
out.

'To know how to take a licking, that wins in the end,' cried Weyburn; his
former enthusiasm for the hero mounting, enlightened by a reminiscence of
the precept he had hammered on the boys at Cuper's.

'They fall well. Yes, the English fall like men,' said my lord, pardoning
and embracing the cuffed nation. 'Bodies knocked over, hearts upright.
That's example; we breed Ironsides out of a sight like that. If it
weren't for a cursed feeble Government scraping 'conges' to the
taxpayer--well, so many of our good fellows would not have to fall. That
I say; for this thing is going to happen some day, mind you, sir! And I
don't want to have puncheons and hogsheads of our English blood poured
out merely to water the soil of a conquered country because English
Governments are a craven lot, not daring risk of office by offending the
taxpayer. But, on!'

Weyburn sent Lady Charlotte glowing words of the composition in progress.

They worked through a day, and a second day--talked of nothing else in
the intervals. Explanatory answers were vouchsafed to Aminta's modest
inquiries at Finch, as she pictured scenes of smoke, dust and blood from
the overpowering plain masculine lines they drew, terrible in bluntness.
The third morning Lord Ormont had map and book to verify distances and
attempt a scale of heights, take names of estates, farms, parishes,
commons, patches of woodland. Weyburn wrote his fair copy on folio paper,
seven-and-thirty pages. He read it aloud to the author on the afternoon
of the fourth day, with the satisfaction in his voice that he felt. My
lord listened and nodded. The plan for the defence of England's heart was
a good plan.

He signed to have the manuscript handed to him. A fortified London secure
of the Thames for abundant supplies, well able to breathe within
earthworks extending along the southern hills, was clearly shown to stand
the loss of two big battles on the Sussex weald or more East to
North-east, if fortune willed it.

He rose from his chair, paced some steps, with bent head, came back
thoughtfully, lifted the manuscript sheets for another examination. Then
he stooped to the fire, spreading the edges unevenly, so that they caught
flame. Weyburn spied at him. It was to all appearance the doing of a man
who had intended it and brought it to the predetermined conclusion.

'About time for you to be off for your turn at Chiallo's,' our country's
defender remarked, after tossing the last half-burnt lump under the grate
and shovelling at it.

'I will go, my lord,' said Weyburn--and he was glad to go.

He went, calculated his term of service under Lord Ormont. He was young,
not a philosopher. Waste of anything was abhorrent to a nature pointed at
store of daily gain, if it were only the gain in a new or a freshened
idea; and time lost, work lost, good counsel to the nation lost,
represented horrid vacuity to him, and called up the counter
demonstration of a dance down the halls of madness, for proof that we
should, at least, have jolly motion of limbs there before Perdition
struck the great gong. Ay, and we should be twirling with a fair form on
the arm: woman and man; as it ought to be; twirling downward, true, but
together. Such a companionship has a wisdom to raise it above the title
of madness. Name it, heartily, pleasure; and in contempt of the moralist
burgess, praise the dance of a woman and the man together high over a
curmudgeonly humping solitariness, that won't forgive an injury, nurses
rancour, smacks itself in the face, because it can't--to use the old
schoolboy words--take a licking!

These were the huddled, drunken sensations and thoughts entertained by
Weyburn, without his reflecting on the detachment from his old hero, of
which they were the sign. He criticized impulsively, and fancied he did
no more, and was not doing much though, in fact, criticism is the end of
worship; the Brutus blow at that Imperial but mortal bosom.

The person criticized was manifest. Who was the woman he twirled with?
She was unfeatured, undistinguished, one of the sex, or all the sex: the
sex to be shunned as our deadly sapper of gain, unless we find the chosen
one to super-terrestrialize it and us, and trebly outdo our gift of our
whole self for her.

She was indistinguishable, absolutely unknown; yet she murmured, or
seemed to murmur--for there was no sound--a complaint of Lord Ormont. And
she, or some soundless mouth of woman, said he was a splendid military
hero, a chivalrous man, a man of inflexible honour; but had no
understanding of how to treat a woman, or belief in her having equal life
with him on earth.

She was put aside rather petulantly, and she took her seat out of the
whirl with submission. Thinking she certainly was not Browny, whom he
would have known among a million, he tried to quit the hall, and he
twirled afresh, necessarily not alone; it is the unpardonable offence
both to the Graces and the Great Mother for man to valse alone. She
twirled on his arm, uninvited; accepted, as in the course of nature;
hugged, under dictate of the nature of the man steeled against her by the
counting of gain, and going now at desperation's pace, by very means of
those defensive locked steam-valves meant to preserve him from this
madness,--for the words of the red-lipped mate, where there were no
words, went through him like a music when the bow is over the viol,
sweeping imagination, and they said her life was wasting.

Was not she a priceless manuscript cast to the flames? Her lord had been
at some trouble to win her. Or his great fame and his shadowed fortunes
had won her. He took her for his own, and he would not call her his own.
He comported himself with absolute, with kindly deference to the lady
whose more than vital spark he let the gossips puff at and blur. He
praised her courage, visibly admired her person, admitted her in private
to be his equal, degraded her in public. Could anything account for the
behaviour of so manly and noble a gentleman?--Rhetoric made the attempt,
and Weyburn gave up the windy business.

Discovering that his fair partner of the wasting life was--he struggled
to quench the revelation--Aminta, he stopped the dance. If there was no
gain in whirling fancifully with one of the sex, a spin of a minute with
her was downright bankruptcy.

He was young, full of blood; his heart led him away from the door Lord
Ormont had exposed; at which a little patient unemotional watchfulness
might have intimated to him something besides the simple source of the
old hero's complex chapter of conduct. As it was, Weyburn did see the
rancour of a raw wound in operation. But he moralized and disapproved;
telling himself, truly enough, that so it would not have been with him;
instead of sounding at my lord's character, and his condition of the
unjustly neglected great soldier, for the purpose of asking how that raw
wound would affect an injured veteran, who compressed, almost repressed,
the roar of Achilles, though his military bright name was to him his
Briseis.




CHAPTER X

A SHORT PASSAGE IN THE GAME PLAYED BY TWO

Politest of men in the domestic circle and everywhere among women, Lord
Ormont was annoyed to find himself often gruffish behind the tie of his
cravat. Indeed, the temper of our eminently serene will feel the strain
of a doldrum-dulness that is goaded to activity by a nettle. The
forbearance he carried farther than most could do was tempted to kick,
under pressure of Mrs. Nargett Pagnell. Without much blaming Aminta, on
whose behalf he submitted to it, and whose resolution to fix in England
had brought it to this crisis, he magnanimously proposed to the Fair
Enemy he forced her to be, and liked to picture her as being, a month in
Paris.

Aminta declined it for herself; after six or more years of travelling,
she wished to settle, and know her country, she said: a repetition
remark, wide of the point, and indicatory to the game of Pull she was
again playing beneath her smooth visage, unaware that she had the wariest
of partners at the game.

'But go you--do, I beg,' she entreated. 'It will give you new
impressions; and I cannot bear to tie you down here.'

'How you can consent to be tied down here, is the wonder to me!' said he.
'When we travelled through the year, just visited England and were off
again, we were driving on our own road. Vienna in April and May--what do
you say? You like the reviews there, and the dances, concerts, Zigeuner
bands, military Bohemian bands. Or Egypt to-morrow, if you like--though
you can't be permitted to swim in the Nile, as you wanted. Come, Xarifa,
speak it. I go to exile without you. Say you come.'

She smiled firmly. The name of her honeymoon days was not a cajolery to
her.

His name had been that of the Christian Romancero Knight Durandarte, and
she gave it to him, to be on the proper level with him, while she still
declined.

'Well, but just a month in Paris! There's nothing doing here. And we both
like the French theatre.'

'London will soon be filling.'

'Well, but--' He stopped; for the filling of London did really concern
her, in the game of Pull she was covertly playing with him. 'You seem to
have caught the fever of this London; . . . no bands . . . . no reviews
. . . . Low comedy acting.' He muttered his objections to London.

'The society of people speaking one's own tongue, add that,' she ventured
to say.

'You know you are ten times more Spanish than English. Moorish, if you
like.'

'The slave of the gallant Christian Knight, converted, baptized, and
blissful. Oh, I know. But now we are settled in England, I have a wish to
study English society.'

'Disappointing, I assure you;--dinners heavy, dancing boorish, intrigue a
blind-man's-buff. We've been over it all before!'

'We have.'

'Admired, I dare say. You won't be understood.'

'I like my countrymen.'

'The women have good looks--of the ungarnished kind. The men are louts.'

'They are brave.'

'You're to see their fencing. You'll own a little goes a long way.'

'I think it will amuse me.'

'So I thought when I gave the nod to Isabella your friend.'

'You like her?'

'You, too.'

'One fancies she would make an encouraging second in a duel.'

'I will remember . . . when I call you out.'

'Oh, my dear lord, you have dozens to choose from leave me my one if we
are to enter the lists.'

'We are, it seems; unless you consent to take the run to Paris. You are
to say Tom or Rowsley.'

'The former, I can never feel at home in saying; Rowsley is Lady
Charlotte's name for you.'

The name of Lady Charlotte was an invitation to the conflict between
them. He passed it, and said 'Durandarte runs a mile on the mouth, and
the Coriolanus of their newspapers helps a stage-player to make lantern
jaws. Neither of them comes well from the lips of my girl. After seven
years she should have hit on a nickname, of none of the Christian suit. I
am not "at home" either with "my lord." However, you send me off to Paris
alone; and you'll be alone and dull here in this London. Incomprehensible
to me why!'

'We are both wondering?' said Aminta.

'You 're handsomer than when I met you first--by heaven you are!'

She flushed her dark brown-red late-sunset. 'Brunes are exceptional in
England.'

'Thousands admiring you, of course! I know, my love, I have a jewel.'

She asked him: 'What are jewels for?' and he replied, 'To excite
cupidity.'

'When they 're shut in a box?'

'Ware burglars! But this one is not shut up. She shuts herself up. And up
go her shoulders! Decide to be out of it, and come to Paris for some life
for a month. No? It's positive? When do you expect your little school
friend?'

'After Easter. Aunt will be away.'

'Your little friend likes the country. I'll go to my house agents. If
there 's a country house open on the upper Thames, you can have swimming,
boating, botanizing . . .'

He saw her throat swallow. But as he was offering agreeable things he
chose to not understand how he was to be compassionate.

'Steignton?' she said, and did her cause no good by saying it feebly.

His look of a bygone awake-in-sleep old look, drearily known to her, was
like a strip of sunlight on a fortress wall. It signified, Is the poor
soul pushing me back to that again?

She compelled herself to say: 'Your tenant there?'

'Matter of business . . . me and my tenant,' he remarked. 'The man pays
punctually.'

'The lease has expired.'

'Not quite. You are misinformed.'

'At Easter.'

'Ah! Question of renewing.'

'You were fond of the place.'

'I was fond of the place? Thank Blazes, I'm not what I was!' He paced
about. 'There's not a corner of the place that doesn't screw an eye at
me, because I had a dream there. La gloire!'

The rest he muttered. 'These English!' was heard. Aminta said: 'Am I
never to see Steignton?'

Lord Ormont invoked the Powers. He could not really give answer to this
female talk of the eternities.

'Beaten I can never be,' he said, with instinctive indulgence to the
greater creature. 'But down there at Steignton, I should be haunted by a
young donkey swearing himself the fellow I grew up out of. No doubt of
that. I don't like him the better for it. Steignton grimaces at a cavalry
officer fool enough at his own risks and penalties to help save India for
the English. Maunderers! You can't tell--they don't know themselves--what
they mean. Except that they 're ready to take anything you hand 'em, and
then pipe to your swinging. I served them well--and at my age, in full
activity, they condemn me to sit and gape!'

He stopped his pacing and gazed on the glass of the window.

'Would you wish me not to be present at this fencing?' said Aminta.

'Dear me! by all means, go, my love,' he replied.

Any step his Fair Enemy won in the secret game Pull between them, she was
undisputedly to keep.

She suggested: 'It might lead to unpleasantness.'

'Of what sort?'

'You ask?'

He emphasized: 'Have you forgotten? Something happened after that last
ball at Challis's Rooms. Their women as well as their men must be careful
not to cross me.'

Aminta had confused notions of her being planted in hostile territory,
and torn and knitted, trumpeted to the world as mended, but not
honourably mended in a way to stop corridor scandal. The ball at
Challis's Rooms had been one of her steps won: it had necessitated a
requirement for the lion in her lord to exhibit himself, and she had
gained nothing with Society by the step, owing to her poor performance of
the lion's mate. She had, in other words, shunned the countenance of some
scattered people pityingly ready to support her against the deadly
passive party known to be Lady Charlotte's.

She let her lord go; thinking that once more had she striven and gained
nothing: which was true of all their direct engagements. And she had
failed because of her being only a woman! Mr. Morsfield was foolishly
wrong in declaring that she, as a woman, had reserves of strength. He was
perhaps of Lady Charlotte's mind with regard to the existence of a
Countess of Ormont, or he would know her to be incredibly cowardly.
Cowardly under the boast of pride, too; well, then, say, if you like, a
woman!

Yet this mere shallow woman would not hesitate to meet the terrible Lady
Charlotte at any instant, on any terms: and what are we to think of a
soldier, hero, lion, dreading to tell her to her face that the persecuted
woman is his wife!

'Am I a woman they can be ashamed of?' she asked, and did not seek the
answer at her mirror. She was in her bedroom, and she put out a hand to
her jewel-box, fingered it, found it locked, and abandoned her idle
project. A gentleman was 'dangerous.' She had not found him so. He had
the reputation, perhaps, because he was earnest. Not so very many men are
earnest. She called to recollection how ludicrously practical he was in
the thick of his passion. His third letter (addressed to the Countess of
Ormont--whom he manifestly did not or would not take to be the veritable
Countess--and there was much to plead for his error), or was it his
fourth?--the letters were a tropical hail-storm: third or fourth, he
broke off a streaked thunderpeal, to capitulate his worldly possessions,
give the names and degrees of kinship of his relatives, the exact amount
of the rent-roll of his Yorkshire estates, of his funded property.

Silly man! but not contemptible. He proposed everything in honour, from
his view of it.

Whether in his third, fourth, or fifth letter. . . . How many had come?
She drew the key from her purse, and opened a drawer. The key of the
jewel-box was applied to the lock.

Mr. Morsfield had sent her six flaming letters. He not only took no
precautions, he boasted that he hailed the consequences of discovery.
Six!

She lifted a pen: it had to be done.

He was briefly informed that he disturbed her peace. She begged he would
abstain from any further writing to her.

The severity was in the brevity. The contrast of her style and his
appeared harsh. But it belonged to the position.

Having with one dash of the pen scribbled her three lines, she slipped
the letter into her pocket. That was done, and it had to be done; it
ought to have been done before. How simple it was when one contemplated
it as actually done! Aminta made the motion of a hand along the paper,
just a flourish. Soon after, her head dropped back on the chair, and her
eyes shut, she took in breath through parted lips. The brief lines of
writing had cut away a lump of her vitality.




CHAPTER XI

THE SECRETARY TAKEN AS AN ANTIDOTE

Dusty wayfarers along a white high-road who know of a bubbling little
spring across a stile, on the woodland borders of deep grass, are hailed
to sit aside it awhile: and Aminta's feverishness was cooled by now and
then a quiet conversation with the secretary ambitious to become a
school-master. Lady Charlotte liked him, so did her lord; Mrs. Lawrence
had chatted with him freshly, as it was refreshing to recollect; nobody
thought him a stunted growth.

In Aminta's realized recollections, amid the existing troubles of her
mind, the charge against him grew paler, and she could no longer quite
think that the young hero transformed into a Mr. Cuper had deceived her,
though he had done it--much as if she had assisted at the planting and
watched aforetime the promise of a noble tree, to find it, after an
interval of years, pollarded--a short trunk shooting out a shock of
small, slim, stiff branches; dwarfed and disgraced; serviceable perhaps;
not ludicrous or ugly, certainly, taking it for a pollard. And he was a
cool well-spring to talk with. He, supposed once to be a passionate
nature, scorned passion as a madness; he smiled in his merciful
executioner's way at the high society, of which her aim was to pass for
one among the butterflies or dragonflies; he had lost his patriotism; he
labelled our English classes the skimmers, the gorgers, the grubbers, and
stigmatized them with a friendly air; and uttered words of tolerance only
for farmers and surgeons and schoolmasters. But that was quite incidental
in the humorous run of his talk, diverting to hear while it lasted. He
had, of course, a right to his ideas.

No longer concerned in contesting them, she drank at the water of this
plain earth-well, and hoped she preferred it to fiery draughts, though it
was flattish, or, say, flavourless. In the other there was excess of
flavour--or, no, spice it had to be called. The young schoolmaster's
world seemed a sunless place, the world of traders bargaining for gain,
without a glimmer of the rich generosity to venture life, give it, dare
all for native land--or for the one beloved. Love pressed its claim on
heroical generosity, and instantly it suffused her, as an earth under
flush of sky. The one beloved! She had not known love; she was in her
five-and-twentieth year, and love was not only unknown to her, it was
shut away from her by the lock of a key that opened on no estimable
worldly advantage in exchange, but opened on a dreary, clouded round,
such as she had used to fancy it must be to the beautiful creamy
circus-horse of the tossing mane and flowing tail and superb step. She
was admired; she was just as much doomed to a round of paces, denied the
glorious fling afield, her nature's food. Hitherto she would have been
shamefaced as a boy in forming the word 'love': now, believing it denied
to her for good and all--for ever and ever--her bosom held and uttered
the word. She saw the word, the nothing but the word that it was, and she
envisaged it, for the purpose of saying adieu to it--good-bye even to the
poor empty word.

This condition was attributable to a gentleman's wild rageing with the
word, into which he had not infused the mystic spirit. He poured hot wine
and spiced. If not the spirit of love, it was really the passion of the
man. Her tremors now and again in the reading of his later letters
humiliated her, in the knowledge that they came of no response to him,
but from the temporary base acquiescence; which is, with women, a
terrible perception of the gulf of their unsatisfied nature.

The secretary, cheerful at his work, was found for just the opening of a
door. Sometimes she hesitated--to disturb him, she said to herself,--and
went up-stairs or out visiting. He protested that he could work on and
talk too. She was able to amuse her lord with some of his ideas. He had a
stock of them, all his own.

Ideas, new-born and naked original ideas, are acceptable at no time to
the humanity they visit to help uplift, it from the state of beast. In
the England of that, period original or unknown ideas were a smoking
brimstone to the nose, dread Arabian afrites, invisible in the air,
jumping out of vases, armed for the slaughter of the venerable and the
cherished, the ivy-clad and celestially haloed. They carried the
dishevelled Maenad's torch. A step with them, and we were on the
Phlegethon waters of the French Revolution. For a publication of simple
ideas men were seized, tried at law, mulcted, imprisoned, and not
pardoned after the term of punishment; their names were branded: the
horned elect butted at them; he who alluded to them offered them up,
wittingly or not, to be damned in the nose of the public for an execrable
brimstone stench.

Lord Ormont broke through his shouts or grunts at Aminta's report of the
secretary's ideas on various topics, particularly the proposal that the
lords of the land should head the land in a revolutionary effort to make
law of his crazy, top-heavy notions, with a self-satisfied ejaculation:
'He has not favoured me with any of these puffballs of his.'

The deduction was, that the author sagaciously considered them adapted
for the ear of a woman; they were womanish--i.e. flighty, gossamer. To
the host of males, all ideas are female until they are made facts.

This idea, proposing it to our aristocracy to take up his other ideas, or
reject them on pain of the forfeiture of their caste and headship with
the generations to follow, and a total displacing of them in history by
certain notorious, frowzy, scrubby pamphleteers and publishers, Lord
Ormont thought amazingly comical. English nobles heading the weavers,
cobblers, and barbers of England! He laughed, but he said, 'Charlotte
would listen to that.'

The dread, high-sitting Lady Charlotte was, in his lofty thinking, a
woman, and would therefore listen to nonsense, if it happened to strike a
particular set of bells hanging in her cranium. She patronized
blasphemous and traitorous law-breakers, just to keep up the pluck of the
people, not with a notion of maintaining our English aristocracy eminent
in history.

Lady Charlotte, however, would be the foremost to swoop down on the
secretary's ideas about the education of women.

On that subject, Aminta said she did not know what to think.

Now, if a man states the matter he thinks, and a woman does but listen,
whether inclining to agree or not, a perceptible stamp is left on soft
wax. Lord Ormont told her so, with cavalier kindness.

She confessed 'she did not know what to think,' when the secretary
proposed the education and collocation of boys and girls in one group,
never separated, declaring it the only way for them to learn to know and
to respect one another. They were to learn together, play together, have
matches together, as a scheme for stopping the mischief between them.

'But, my dear girl, don't you see, the devilry was intended by Nature.
Life would be the coldest of dishes without it.' And as for mixing the
breeched and petticoated in those young days--'I can't enter into it,' my
lord considerately said. 'All I can tell you is, I know boys.'

Aminta persisted in looking thoughtful. 'Things are bad, as they are
now,' she said.

'Always were--always will be. They were intended to be, if we are to call
them bad. Botched mendings will only make them worse.'

'Which side suffers?'

'Both; and both like it. One side must be beaten at any game. It's off
and on, pretty equal--except in the sets where one side wears thick
boots. Is this fellow for starting a mixed sexes school? Funny mothers!'

'I suppose--' Aminta said, and checked the supposition. 'The mothers
would not leave their girls unless they were confident . . . ?'

'There's to be a female head of the female department? He reckons on
finding a woman as big a fool as himself? A fair bit of reckoning enough.
He's clever at the pen. He doesn't bother me with his ideas; now and then
I 've caught a sound of his bee buzzing.'

The secretary was left undisturbed at his labours for several days.

He would have been gladdened by a brighter look of her eyes at her next
coming. They were introspective and beamless. She had an odd leaning to
the talk upon Cuper's boys. He was puzzled by what he might have classed,
in any other woman, as a want of delicacy, when she recurred to incidents
which were red patches of the school time, and had clearly lost their
glow for her.

A letter once written by him, in his early days at Cuper's, addressed to
J. Masner, containing a provocation to fight with any weapons, and
signed, 'Your Antagonist,' had been read out to the whole school, under
strong denunciation of the immorality, the unchristian-like conduct of
the writer, by Mr. Cuper; creating a sensation that had travelled to Miss
Vincent's establishment, where some of the naughtiest of the girls had
taken part with the audacious challenger, dreadful though the
contemplation of a possible duel so close to them was. And then the girls
heard that the anonymous 'Your Antagonist,' on being cited to proclaim
himself in public assembly of school-mates and masters, had jumped on his
legs and into the name of--one who was previously thought by Miss
Vincent's good girls incapable of the 'appalling wickedness,' as Mr.
Cuper called it, of signing 'Your Antagonist' to a Christian
school-fellow, having the design to provoke a breach of the law of the
land and shed Christian blood. Mr. Cuper delivered an impressive sermon
from his desk to the standing up boarders and day-scholars alike,
vilifying the infidel Greek word 'antagonist.'

'Do you remember the offender's name?' the Countess of Ormont said; and
Weyburn said--

'Oh yes, I 've not forgotten the incident.'

Her eyes, wherein the dead time hung just above the underlids, lingered,
as with the wish for him to name the name.

She said: 'I am curious to hear how you would treat a case of that sort.
Would you preach to the boys?

'Ten words at most. The right assumption is that both fellows were to
blame. I fancy the proper way would be to appeal to the naughty girls for
their opinion as to how the dispute should be decided.'

'You impose too much on them. And you are not speaking seriously.'

'Pardon me, I am. I should throw myself into the mind of a naughty
girl--supposing none of these at hand--and I should let it be known that
my eyes were shut to proceedings, always provided the weapons were not
such as would cause a shock of alarm in female bosoms.'

'You would at your school allow it to be fought out?'

'Judging by the characters of the boys. If they had heads to understand,
I would try them at their heads. Otherwise they are the better, they come
round quicker to good blood, at their age--I speak of English boys--for a
little hostile exercise of their fists. Well, for one thing, it teaches
them the value of sparring.'

'I must imagine I am not one of the naughty sisterhood,--for I cannot
think I should ever give consent to fighting of any description, unless
for the very best of reasons,' said the countess.

His eyes were at the trick of the quarter-minute's poising. Her lids
fluttered. 'Oh, I don't mean to say I was one of the good,' she added.

At the same time her enlivened memory made her conscious of a warning,
that she might, as any woman might, so talk on of past days as to take,
rather more than was required of the antidote she had come for.

The antidote was excellent; cooling, fortifying; 'quite a chalybeate,'
her aunt would say, and she was thankful. Her heart rose on a quiet wave
of the thanks, and pitched down to a depth of uncounted fathoms. Aminta
was unable to tell herself why.

Mrs. Lawrence Finchley had been announced. On her way to the drawing room
Aminta's brain fell upon a series of dots, that wound along a track to
the point where she accused herself of a repented coquettry--cause of the
burning letters she was doomed to receive and could not stop without
rousing her lion. She dotted backwards; there was no sign that she had
been guilty of any weakness other than the almost--at least, in
design--innocent first move, which had failed to touch Lord Ormont in the
smallest degree. Never failure more absolute!

She was about to inquire of her bosom's oracle whether she greatly cared
now. For an answer, her brain went dotting along from Mr. Cuper's school,
and a boy named Abner there, and a boy named Matey Weyburn, who protected
the little Jew-boy, up to Mr. Abner in London, who recommended him in due
season to various acquaintances; among them to Lady Charlotte Eglett.
Hence the introduction to Lord Ormont. How little extraordinary
circumstances are, if only we trace them to the source!

But if only it had appeared marvellous, the throbbing woman might have
seized on it, as a thing fateful, an intervention distinctly designed to
waken the best in her, which was, after all, the strongest. Yea, she
could hope and pray and believe it was the strongest.

She was listening to Isabella Lawrence Finchley, wishing she might have
followed to some end the above line of her meditations.

Mrs. Lawrence was changed, much warmer, pressing to be more than merely
friendly. Aminta twice gave her cheek for kisses. The secretary had
spoken of Mrs. Lawrence as having the look of a handsome boy; and
Aminta's view of her now underwent a change likewise. Compunction,
together with a sisterly taste for the boyish fair one flying her sail
independently, and gallantly braving the winds, induced her to kiss in
return.

'You do like me a morsel?' said Mrs. Lawrence. 'I fell in love with you
the last time I was here. I came to see Mr. Secretary--it's avowed; and I
have been thinking of you ever since, of no one else. Oh yes, for a man;
but you caught me. I've been hearing of him from Captain May. They fence
at those rooms. And it 's funny, Mr. Morsfield practises there, you know;
and there was a time when the lovely innocent Amy, Queen of Blondes, held
the seat of the Queen of Brunes. Ah, my dear, the infidelity of men
doesn't count. They are affected by the changeing moons. As long as the
captain is civil to him, we may be sure beautiful Amy has not complained.
Her husband is the pistol she carries in her pocket, and she has fired
him twice, with effect. Through love of you I have learnt the different
opinion the world of the good has of her and of me; I thought we ran
under a common brand. There are gradations. I went to throw myself at the
feet of my great-aunt; good old great-aunt Lady de Culme, who is a power
in the land. I let her suppose I came for myself, and she reproached me
with Lord Adder. I confessed to him and ten others. She is a dear, she's
ticklish, and at eighty-four she laughed! She looked into my eyes and saw
a field with never a man in it--just the shadow of a man. She admitted
the ten cancelled the one, and exactly named to me, by comparison with
the erring Amy, the sinner I am and must be, if I 'm to live. So, dear,
the end of it is,' and Mrs. Lawrence put her fingers to a silken amber
bow at Aminta's throat, and squared it and flattened it with dainty
precision, speaking on under dropped eyelids, intent upon her work, 'Lady
de Culme will be happy to welcome you whenever it shall suit the Countess
of Ormont to accompany her disreputable friend. But what can I do, dear?'
She raised her lids and looked beseechingly. 'I was born with this taste
for the ways and games and style of men. I hope I don't get on badly with
women; but if I 'm not allowed to indulge my natural taste, I kick the
stable-boards and bite the manger.'

Aminta threw her arms round her, and they laughed their mutual peal.

Caressing her still, Aminta said: 'I don't know whether I embrace a boy.'

'That idea comes from a man!' said Mrs. Lawrence. It was admitted. The
secretary was discussed.

Mrs. Lawrence remarked: 'Yes, I like talking with him; he's bright. You
drove him out of me the day I saw him. Doesn't he give you the idea of a
man who insists on capturing you and lets it be seen he doesn't care two
snaps of a finger?'

Aminta petitioned on his behalf indifferently: 'He 's well bred.'

She was inattentive to Mrs. Lawrence's answer. The allusion of the Queen
of Blondes had stung her in the unacknowledged regions where women
discard themselves and are most sensitive.

'Decide on coming soon to Lady de Culme,' said Mrs. Lawrence. 'Now that
her arms are open to you, she would like to have you in them. She is
old--. You won't be rigorous? no standing on small punctilios?

She would call, but she does not--h'm, it is M. le Comte that she does
not choose to--h'm. But her arms are open to the countess. It ought to be
a grand step. You may be assured that Lady Charlotte Eglett would not be
taken into them. My great-aunt has a great-aunt's memory. The Ormonts are
the only explanation--if it 's an apology--she can offer for the
behaviour of the husband of the Countess of Ormont. You know I like him.
I can't help liking a man who likes me. Is that the way with a boy, Mr.
Secretary? I must have another talk with the gentleman, my dear. You are
Aminta to me.'

'Always Aminta to you,' was the reply, tenderly given.

'But as for comprehending him, I'm as far off that as Lady de Culme, who
hasn't the liking for him I have.'

'The earl?' said Aminta, showing by her look that she was in the same
position.

Mrs. Lawrence shrugged: 'I believe men and women marry in order that they
should never be able to understand one another. The riddle's best read at
a moderate distance. It 's what they call the golden mean; too close, too
far, we're strangers. I begin to understand that husband of mine, now
we're on bowing terms. Now, I must meet the earl to-morrow. You will
arrange? His hand wants forcing. Upon my word, I don't believe it 's
more.'

Mrs. Lawrence contrasted him in her mind with the husband she knew, and
was invigorated by the thought that a placable impenetrable giant may
often be more pliable in a woman's hands than an irascible dwarf--until,
perchance, the latter has been soundly cuffed, and then he is docile to
trot like a squire, as near your heels as he can get. She rejoiced to be
working for the woman she had fallen in love with.

Aminta promised herself to show the friend a livelier affection at their
next meeting.

A seventh letter, signed 'Adolphus,' came by post, was read and locked up
in her jewel-box. They were all nigh destruction for a wavering minute or
so. They were placed where they lay because the first of them had been
laid there, the box being a strong one, under a patent key, and discovery
would mean the terrible. They had not been destroyed because they had, or
seemed to her to have, the language of passion. She could read them
unmoved, and appease a wicked craving she owned to having, and reproached
herself with having, for that language.

Was she not colour in the sight of men? Here was one, a mouthpiece of
numbers, who vowed that homage was her due, and devotion, the pouring
forth of the soul to her. What was the reproach if she read the stuff
unmoved?

But peruse and reperuse it, and ask impressions to tell our deepest
instinct of truthfulness whether language of this character can have been
written to two women by one hand! Men are cunning. Can they catch a tone?
Not that tone!

She, too, Mrs. Amy May, was colour in the sight of men. Yet it seemed
that he could not have written so to the Queen of Blondes. And she, by
repute, was as dangerous to slight as he to attract. Her indifference
exonerated him. Besides, a Queen of Blondes would not draw the hearts out
of men in England, as in Italy and in Spain. Aminta had got thus far when
she found 'Queen of Brunes' expunged by a mist: she imagined hearing the
secretary's laugh. She thought he was right to laugh at her. She retorted
simply: 'These are feelings that are poetry.'

A man may know nothing about them, and be an excellent schoolmaster.

Suggestions touching the prudence of taking Mrs. Lawrence into her
confidence, as regarded these troublesome letters of the man with the
dart in his breast, were shuffled aside for various reasons: her modesty
shrank; and a sense of honour toward the man forbade it. She would have
found it easier to do if she had conspired against her heart in doing it.
And yet, cold-bloodedly to expose him and pluck the clothing from a
passion--dear to think of only when it is profoundly secret--struck her
as an extreme baseness, of which not even the woman who perused and
reperused his letters could be guilty.

Her head rang with some of the lines, and she accused her head of the
crime of childishness, seeing that her heart was not an accomplice. At
the same time, her heart cried out violently against the business of a
visit to Lady de Culme, and all the steps it involved. Justly she accused
her heart of treason. Heart and head were severed. This, as she partly
apprehended, is the state of the woman who is already on the slope of her
nature's mine-shaft, dreading the rush downwards, powerless to break away
from the light.

Letters perused and reperused, coming from a man never fervently noticed
in person, conjure features one would wish to put beside the actual, to
make sure that the fiery lines he writes are not practising a
beguilement. Aminta had lost grasp of the semblance of the impassioned
man. She just remembered enough of his eyes to think there might be
healing in a sight of him.

Latterly she had refused to be exhibited to a tattling world as the great
nobleman's conquest:--The 'Beautiful Lady Doubtful' of a report that had
scorched her cars. Theatres, rides, pleasure-drives, even such houses as
she saw standing open to her had been shunned. Now she asked the earl to
ride in the park.

He complied, and sent to the stables immediately, just noted another of
her veerings. The whimsy creatures we are matched to contrast with, shift
as the very winds or feather-grasses in the wind. Possibly a fine day did
it. Possibly, too, her not being requested to do it.

He was proud of her bearing on horseback. She rode well and looked well.
A finer weapon wherewith to strike at a churlish world was never given
into the hands of man. These English may see in her, if they like, that
they and their laws and customs are defied. It does her no hurt, and it
hits them a ringing buffet.

Among the cavaliers they passed was Mr. Morsfield. He rode by slowly. The
earl stiffened his back in returning the salute. Both that and the
gentleman were observed by Aminta.

'He sees to having good blood under him,' said the earl. 'I admired his
mount,' she replied.

Interpreted by the fire of his writing, his features expressed character:
insomuch that a woman could say of another woman, that she admired him
and might reasonably do so. His gaze at her in the presence of her lord
was audacious.

He had the defect of his virtue of courage. Yet a man indisputably
possessing courage cannot but have an interesting face--though one may
continue saying, Pity that the eyes are not a little wider apart! He
dresses tastefully; the best English style. A portrait by a master hand
might hand him down to generations as an ancestor to be proud of. But
with passion and with courage, and a bent for snatching at the lion's
own, does he not look foredoomed to an early close? Her imagination
called up a portrait of Elizabeth's Earl of Essex to set beside him; and
without thinking that the two were fraternally alike, she sent him riding
away with the face of the Earl of Essex and the shadow of the unhappy
nobleman's grievous fortunes over his head.

But it is inexcuseable to let the mind be occupied recurrently by a man
who has not moved the feelings, wicked though it be to have the feelings
moved by him. Aminta rebuked her silly wits, and proceeded to speculate
from an altitude, seeing the man's projects in a singularly definite
minuteness, as if the crisis he invoked, the perils he braved, the mute
participation he implored of her for the short space until their fate
should be decided, were a story sharply cut on metal. Several times she
surprised herself in an interesting pursuit of the story; abominably
cold, abominably interested. She fell upon a review of small duties of
the day, to get relief; and among them a device for spiriting away her
aunt from the table where Mrs. Lawrence wished to meet Lord Ormont. It
sprang up to her call like an imp of the burning pit. She saw it
ingenious and of natural aspect. I must be a born intriguer! she said in
her breast. That was hateful; but it seemed worse when she thought of a
woman commanding the faculty and consenting to be duped and foiled. That
might be termed despicable; but what if she had not any longer the wish
to gain her way with her lord?

Those letters are acting like a kind of poison in me! her heart cried:
and it was only her head that dwelt on the antidote.




CHAPTER XII

MORE OF CUPER'S BOYS

Entering the dining-room at the appointed minute in a punctual household,
Mrs. Lawrence informed the company that she had seen a Horse Guards
orderly at the trot up the street. Weyburn said he was directing a boy to
ring the bell of the house for him. Lord Ormont went to the window.

'Amends and honours?' Mrs. Lawrence hummed and added an operatic flourish
of an arm. Something like it might really be imagined. A large square
missive was handed to the footman. Thereupon the orderly trotted off.

My lord took seat at table, telling the footman to lay 'that parcel'
beside the clock on the mantelpiece. Aminta and Mrs. Lawrence gave out a
little cry of bird or mouse, pitiable to hear: they could not wait, they
must know, they pished at sight of plates. His look deferred to their
good pleasure, like the dead hand of a clock under key; and Weyburn
placed the missive before him, seeing by the superscription that it was
not official.

It was addressed, in the Roman hand of a boy's copybook writing, to

     General the Earl of Ormont, I.C.B., etc.,
                  Horse Guards,
                       London.'

The earl's eyebrows creased up over the address; they came down low on
the contents.

He resumed his daily countenance. 'Nothing of importance,' he said to the
ladies.

Mrs. Lawrence knocked the table with her knuckles. Aminta put out a hand,
in sign of her wish.

'Pray let me see it.'

'After lunch will do.'

'No, no, no! We are women--we are women,' cried Mrs. Lawrence.

'How can it concern women?'

'As well ask how a battle-field concerns them!'

'Yes, the shots hit us behind you,' said Aminta; and she, too, struck the
table.

He did not prolong their torture. Weyburn received the folio sheet and
passed it on. Aminta read. Mrs. Lawrence jumped from her chair and ran to
the countess's shoulder; her red lips formed the petitioning word to the
earl for the liberty she was bent to take.

'Peep? if you like,' my lord said, jesting at the blank she would find,
and soft to the pretty play of her mouth.

When the ladies had run to the end of it, he asked them: 'Well; now
then?'

'But it's capital--the dear laddies!' Mrs. Lawrence exclaimed.

Aminta's eyes met Weyburn's.

She handed him the sheet of paper; upon the transmission of which empty
thing from the Horse Guards my lord commented: 'An orderly!'

Weyburn scanned it rapidly, for the table had been served.

The contents were these:

          'HIGH BRENT NEAR ARTSWELL.
                       'April 7th.

   'To GENERAL THE EARL OF ORMONT
             'Cavalry.

   'May it please your Lordship, we, the boys of Mr. Cuper's school,
   are desirous to bring to the notice of the bravest officer England
   possesses now living, a Deed of Heroism by a little boy and girl,
   children of our school laundress, aged respectively eight and six,
   who, seeing a little fellow in the water out of depth, and sinking
   twice, before the third time jumped in to save him, though unable to
   swim themselves; the girl aged six first, we are sorry to say; but
   the brother, Robert Coop, followed her example, and together they
   made a line, and she caught hold of the drowning boy, and he held
   her petycoats, and so they pulled. We have seen the place: it is
   not a nice one. They got him ashore at last. The park-keeper here
   going along found them dripping, rubbing his hands, and blowing into
   his nostrils. Name, T. Shellen, son of a small cobbler here, and
   recovered.

   'May it please your Lordship, we make bold to apply, because you
   have been for a number of years, as far as the oldest can recollect,
   the Hero of our school, and we are so bold as to ask the favour of
   General Lord Ormont's name to head a subscription we are making to
   circulate for the support of their sick mother, who has fallen ill.
   We think her a good woman. Gentlemen and ladies of the
   neighbourhood are willing to subscribe. If we have a great name to
   head the list, we think we shall make a good subscription. Names:--

        'Martha Mary Coop, mother.
        'Robert Coop.
        'Jane Coop, the girl, aged six.

   'If we are not taking too great a liberty, a subscription paper will
   follow. We are sure General the Earl of Ormont's name will help to
   make them comfortable.
        'We are obediently and respectfully,
               'DAVID GOWEN,
               'WALTER BENCH,
               'JAMES PANNERS PARSONS,
               'And seven others.'

Weyburn spared Aminta an answering look, that would have been a begging
of Browny to remember Matey.

'It 's genuine,' he said to Mrs. Lawrence, as he attacked his plate with
the gusto for the repast previously and benignly observed by her. 'It
ought to be the work of some of the younger fellows.'

'They spell correctly, on the whole.'

'Excepting,' said my lord, 'an article they don't know much about yet.'

Weyburn had noticed the word, and he smiled. 'Said to be the happy state!
The three signing their names are probably what we called bellman and
beemen, collector, and heads of the swarm-enthusiasts. If it is not the
work of some of the younger hands, the school has levelled on minors. In
any case it shows the school is healthy.'

'I subscribe,' said Mrs. Lawrence.

'The little girl aged six shall have something done for her,' said
Aminta, and turned her eyes on the earl.

He was familiar with her thrilled voice at a story of bravery. He said--

'The boys don't say the girl's brother turned tail.'

'Only that the girl's brother aged eight followed the lead of the little
girl aged six,' Mrs. Lawrence remarked. 'Well, I like the schoolboys,
too--"we are sorry to say!" But they 're good lads. Boys who can
appreciate brave deeds are capable of doing them.'

'Speak to me about it on Monday,' the earl said to Weyburn.

He bowed, and replied--

'I shall have the day to-morrow. I 'll walk it and call on Messrs.' (he
glanced at the paper) 'Gowen, Bench, and Parsons. I have a German friend
in London anxious to wear his legs down stumpier.'

'The name of the school?'

'It is called Cuper's.'

Aminta, on hearing the name of Cuper a second time, congratulated herself
on the happy invention of her pretext to keep Mrs. Pagnell from the table
at midday. Her aunt had a memory for names: what might she not have
exclaimed! There would have been little in it, but it was as well that
the 'boy of the name of Weyburn' at Cuper's should be unmentioned. By an
exaggeration peculiar to a disgust in fancy, she could hear her aunt
vociferating 'Weyburn!' and then staring at Mr. Weyburn opposite--perhaps
not satisfied with staring.

He withdrew after his usual hearty meal, during which his talk of boys
and their monkey tricks, and what we can train them to, had been pleasant
generally, especially to Mrs. Lawrence. Aminta was carried back to the
minute early years at High Brent. A line or two of a smile touched her
cheek.

'Yes, my dear countess, that is the face I want for Lady de Culme
to-day,' said Mrs. Lawrence.' She likes a smiling face. Aunty--aunty has
always been good; she has never been prim. I was too much for her, until
I reflected that she was very old, and deserved to know the truth before
she left us; and so I went to her; and then she said she wished to see
the Countess of Ormont, because of her being my dearest friend. I fancy
she entertains an 'arriere' idea of proposing her flawless niece Gracey,
Marchioness of Fencaster, to present you. She 's quite equal to the
fatigue herself. You 'll rejoice in her anecdotes. People were virtuous
in past days: they counted their sinners. In those days, too, as I have
to understand, the men chivalrously bore the blame, though the women were
rightly punished. Now, alas! the initiative is with the women, and men
are not asked for chivalry. Hence it languishes. Lady de Culme won't hear
of the Queen of Blondes; has forbidden her these many years!'

Lord Ormont, to whom the lady's prattle was addressed, kept his visage
moveless, except in slight jerks of the brows.

'What queen?'

'You insist upon renewing my old, old pangs of jealousy, my dear lord!
The Queen of Cyprus, they called her, in the last generation; she fights
our great duellist handsomely.'

'My dear Mrs. Lawrence!'

'He triumphs finally, we know, but she beats him every round.'

'It 's only tattle that says the duel has begun.'

'May is the month of everlasting beauty! There 's a widower marquis now
who claims the right to cast the glove to any who dispute it.'

'Mrs. May is too good-looking to escape from scandal.'

'Amy May has the good looks of the Immortals.'

'She can't be thirty.'

'In the calendar of women she counts thirty-four.'

'Malignity! Her husband's a lucky man.'

'The shots have proved it.'

Lord Ormont nodded his head over the hopeless task of defending a woman
from a woman, and their sharp interchange ceased. But the sight of his
complacency in defeat told Aminta that he did not respect his fair
client: it drew a sketch of the position he allotted his wife before the
world side by side with this Mrs. Amy May, though a Lady de Culme was
persuaded to draw distinctions.

He had, however, quite complacently taken the dose intended for him by
Mrs. Lawrence, who believed that the system of gently forcing him was the
good one.

The ladies drove away in the afternoon. The earl turned his back on
manuscript. He sent for a couple of walking sticks, and commanded Weyburn
to go through his parades. He was no tyro, merely out of practice, and
unacquainted with the later, simpler form of the great master of the
French school, by which, at serious issues, the guarding of the line can
be more quickly done: as, for instance, the 'parade de septime'
supplanting the slower 'parade de prime;' the 'parade de quarte' having
advantage over the 'parade de quince;' the 'parade de tierce' being
readier and stronger than the 'parade de sixte;' the same said for the
'parade de seconde' instead of the weak 'parade d'octave.'

These were then new points of instruction. Weyburn demonstrated them as
neatly as he could do with his weapon.

'Yes, the French think,' Lord Ormont said, grasping the stick to get
conviction of thumb-strength and finger-strength from the parades
advocated; 'their steel would thread the ribs of our louts before: they
could raise a cry of parry; so here they 're pleased to sneer at fencing,
as if it served no purpose but the duel. Fencing, for one thing, means,
that with a good stick in his hand, a clever fencer can double up a giant
or two, grant him choice of ground. Some of our men box; but the sword's
the weapon for an officer, and precious few of 'em are fit for more than
to kick the scabbard. Slashing comes easier to them: a plaguey cut, if it
does cut--say, one in six. Navy too. Their cutlass-drill is like a
woman's fling of the arm to fetch a slap from behind her shoulder.
Pinking beats chopping. These English 'll have their lesson. It 's like
what you call good writing: the simple way does the business, and that's
the most difficult to learn, because you must give your head to it, as
those French fellows do. 'Trop de finesse' is rather their fault.
Anything's better than loutishness. Well! the lesson 'll come.'

He continued. He spoke as he thought: he was not speaking what he was
thinking. His mind was directed on the visit of Aminta to Lady de Culme,
and the tolerably wonderful twist whereby Mrs. Lawrence Finchley had
vowed herself to his girl's interests. And he blamed neither of them;
only he could not understand how it had been effected, for Aminta and
Mrs. Lawrence had not been on such particularly intimate terms last week
or yesterday. His ejaculation, 'Women!' was, as he knew, merely ignorance
roaring behind a mask of sarcasm. But it allied him with all previous
generations on the male side, and that was its virtue. His view of the
shifty turns of women got no further, for the reason that he took small
account of the operations of the feelings, to the sole exercise of which
he by system condemned the sex.

He was also insensibly half a grain more soured by the homage of those
poor schoolboys, who called to him to take it for his reward in a country
whose authorities had snubbed, whose Parliament had ignored, whose Press
had abused him. The ridiculous balance made him wilfully oblivious that
he had seen his name of late eulogized in articles and in books for the
right martial qualities. Can a country treating a good soldier--not
serving it for pay--in so scurvy a fashion, be struck too hard with our
disdain? One cannot tell it in too plain a language how one despises its
laws, its moralities, its sham of society. The Club, some choice
anecdotists, two or three listeners to his dolences clothed as diatribes;
a rubber, and the sight of his girl at home, composed, with a week's
shooting now and then, his round of life now that she refused to travel.
What a life for a soldier in his vigour. Weyburn was honoured by the
earl's company on the walk to Chiallo's. In the street of elegant shops
they met Lord Adderwood, and he, as usual, appeared in the act of
strangling one of his flock of yawns, with gentlemanly consideration for
the public. Exercise was ever his temporary specific for these
incurables. Flinging off his coat, he cast away the cynic style
engendering or engendered by them. He and Weyburn were for a bout. Sir
John Randeller and Mr. Morsfield were at it, like Bull in training and
desperado foiled. A French 'maitre d'armes,' famed in 'escrime,' standing
near Captain Chiallo, looked amused in the eyes, behind a mask of
professional correctness. He had come on an excursion for the display of
his art. Sir John's very sturdy defence was pierced. Weyburn saluted the
Frenchman as an acquaintance, and they shook hands, chatted, criticized,
nodded. Presently he and his adversary engaged, vizored and in their
buckram, and he soon proved to be too strong for Adderwood, as the latter
expected and had notified to Lord Ormont before they crossed the steel.
My lord had a pleasant pricking excitement in the sound. There was a
pretty display between Weyburn and the 'escrimeur,' who neatly and kindly
trifled, took a point and returned one, and at the finish complimented
him. The earl could see that he had to be sufficiently alert.

Age mouthed an ugly word to the veteran insensible of it in his body,
when a desire to be one with these pairs of nimble wrists and legs was
like an old gamecock shown the pit and put back into the basket. He left
the place, carrying away an image of the coxcombical attitudinizing of
the man Morsfield at the salut, upon which he brought down his powers of
burlesque.

My lord sketched the scene he had just quitted to a lady who had stopped
her carriage. She was the still beautiful Mrs. Amy May, wife of the
famous fighting captain. Her hair was radiant in a shady street; her
eyelids tenderly toned round the almond enclosure of blue pebbles, bright
as if shining from the seawash. The lips of the fair woman could be seen
to say that they were sweet when, laughing or discoursing, they gave
sight of teeth proudly her own, rivalling the regularity of the grin of
dentistry. A Venus of nature was melting into a Venus of art, and there
was a decorous concealment of the contest and the anguish in the process,
for which Lord Ormont liked her well enough to wink benevolently at her
efforts to cheat the world at various issues, and maintain her duel with
Time. The world deserved that she should beat it, even if she had been
all deception.

She let the subject of Mr. Morsfield pass without remark from her, until
the exhaustion of open-air topics hinted an end of their conversation,
and she said--

'We shall learn next week what to think if the civilians. I have heard
Mr. Morsfield tell that he is 'de premiere force.' Be on your guard. You
are to know that I never forget a service, and you did me one once.' 'You
have reason . . . ?' said the earl.

'If anybody is the dragon to the treasure he covets he is a spadassin who
won't hesitate at provocations. Adieu.'

Lord Ormont's eye had been on Mr. Morsfield. He had seen what Mrs.
Pagnell counselled her niece to let, him see. He thanked Mr. Morsfield
for a tonic that made him young with anticipations of bracing; and he set
his head to work upon an advance half-way to meet the gentleman, and
safely exclude his wife's name.

Monday brought an account of Cuper's boys. Aminta received it while the
earl was at his papers for the morning's news of the weightier deeds of
men.

They were the right boys, Weyburn said; his interview with Gowen, Bench,
Parsons, and the others assured him that the school was breathing big
lungs. Mr. Cuper, too, had spoken well of them.

'You walked the twenty miles?' Aminta interrupted him.

'With my German friend: out and home: plenty of time in the day. He has
taken to English boys, but asks why enthusiasm and worship of great deeds
don't grow upward from them to their elders. And I, in turn, ask why
Germans insist on that point more even than the French do.'

'Germans are sentimental. But the English boys he saw belonged to a
school with traditions of enthusiasm sown by some one. The school
remembered?'

'Curiously, Mr. Cuper tells me, the hero of the school has dropped and
sprung up, stout as ever, twice--it tells me what I wish to
believe--since Lord Ormont led their young heads to glory. He can't say
how it comes. The tradition's there, and it 's kindled by some flying
spark.'

'They remember who taught the school to think of Lord Ormont?'

'I 'm a minor personage. I certainly did some good, and that 's a push
forward.'

'They speak of you?'

It was Aminta more than the Countess of Ormont speaking to him.

'You take an interest in the boys,' he said, glowing. 'Yes, well, they
have their talks. I happened to be a cricketer, counting wickets and
scores. I don't fancy it's remembered that it was I preached my lord. A
day of nine wickets and one catch doesn't die out of a school. The boy
Gowen was the prime spirit in getting up the subscription for the
laundress. But Bench and Parsons are good boys, too.'

He described them, dwelt on them. The enthusiast, when not lyrical, is
perilously near to boring. Aminta was glad of Mrs. Lawrence's absence.
She had that feeling because Matthew Weyburn would shun talk of himself
to her, not from a personal sense of tedium in hearing of the boys; and
she was quaintly reminded by suggestions, coming she knew not whence, of
a dim likeness between her and these boys of the school when their hero
dropped to nothing and sprang up again brilliantly--a kind of distant
cousinship, in her susceptibility to be kindled by so small a flying
spark as this one on its travels out of High Brent. Moreover, the dear
boys tied her to her girlhood, and netted her fleeting youth for the
moth-box. She pressed to hear more and more of them, and of the
school-laundress Weyburn had called to see, and particularly of the
child, little Jane, aged six. Weyburn went to look at the sheet of water
to which little Jane had given celebrity over the county. The girl stood
up to her shoulders when she slid off the bank and made the line for her
brother to hold, he in the water as well. Altogether, Cuper's boys were
justified in promoting a subscription, the mother being helpless.

'Modest little woman,' he said of Jane. 'We'll hope people won't spoil
her. Don't forget, Lady Ormont, that the brother did his part; he had
more knowledge of the danger than she.'

'You will undertake to convey our subscriptions? Lord Ormont spoke of the
little ones and the schoolboys yesterday.'

'I'll be down again among them next Sunday, Lady Ormont. On the Monday I
go to Olmer.'

'The girls of High Brent subscribe?'

There was a ripple under Weyburn's gravity.

'Messrs. Gowen, Bench, and Parsons thought proper to stop Miss Vincent at
the head of her detachment in the park.'

'On the Sunday?'

'And one of them handed her a paper containing a report of their
interview with Mrs. Coop and a neat eulogy of little Jane. But don't
suspect them, I beg. I believe them to be good, honest fellows. Bench,
they say, is religious; Gowen has written verses; Parsons generally
harum-scarum. They're boyish in one way or another, and that'll do. The
cricket of the school has been low: seems to be reviving.'

'Mr. Weyburn,' said the countess, after a short delay--and Aminta broke
through--'it pleases me to hear of them, and think they have not
forgotten you, or, at least, they follow the lead you gave. I should like
to know whether an idea I have is true: Is much, I mean constant, looking
down on young people likely to pull one's mind down to their level?'

'Likely enough to betray our level, if there 's danger,' he murmured.
'Society offers an example that your conjecture is not unfounded, Lady
Ormont. But if we have great literature and an interest in the world's
affairs, can there be any fear of it? The schoolmaster ploughs to make a
richer world, I hope. He must live with them, join with them in their
games, accustom them to have their heads knocked with what he wants to
get into them, leading them all the while, as the bigger schoolfellow
does, if he is a good fellow. He has to be careful not to smell of his
office. Doing positive good is the business of his every day--on a small
scale, but it 's positive, if he likes his boys. 'Avaunt favouritism!' he
must like all boys. And it 's human nature not so far removed from the
dog; only it's a supple human nature: there 's the beauty of it. We train
it. Nothing is more certain than that it will grow upward. I have the
belief that I shall succeed, because I like boys, and they like me. It
always was the case.'

'I know,' said Aminta.

Their eyes met. She looked moved at heart behind that deep forest of her
chestnut eyes.

'And I think I can inspire confidence in fathers and mothers,' he
resumed.' I have my boys already waiting for me to found the school. I
was pleased the other day: an English friend brought an Italian gentleman
to see me and discuss my system, up at Norwood, at my mother's--a Signor
Calliani. He has a nephew; the parents dote on him. The uncle confesses
that the boy wants--he has got hold of our word--"pluck." We had a talk.
He has promised to send me the lad when I am established in Switzerland.'

'When?' said Aminta.

'A relative from whom a Reversion comes is near the end. It won't be
later than September that I shall go. My Swiss friend has the school, and
would take me at once before he retires.'

'You make friends wherever you go,' said Aminta.

'Why shouldn't everybody? I'm convinced it's because I show people I mean
well, and I never nurse an injury, great or small. And besides, they see
I look forward. I do hope good for the world. If at my school we have all
nationalities--French boys and German, Italian, Russian,
Spaniard--without distinction of race and religion and station, and with
English intermixing--English games, English sense of honour and
conception of gentleman--we shall help to nationalize Europe. Emile
Grenat, Adolf Fleischer, and an Italian, Vincentino Chiuse, are prepared
to start with me: and they are men of attainments; they will throw up
their positions; they will do me the honour to trust to my leadership.
It's not scaling Alps or commanding armies, true.'

'It may be better,' said Aminta, and thought as she spoke.

'Slow work, if we have a taste for the work, doesn't dispirit. Otherwise,
one may say that an African or South American traveller has a more
exciting time. I shall manage to keep my head on its travels.'

'You have ideas about the education of girls?'

'They can't be carried out unaided.'

'Aid will come.'

Weyburn's confidence, high though it was, had not mounted to that pitch.

'One may find a mate,' he said. The woman to share and practically to aid
in developing such ideas is not easily found: that he left as implied.

Aminta was in need of poetry; but the young schoolmaster's plain,
well-directed prose of the view of a business in life was welcome to her.

Lord Ormont entered the room. She reminded him of the boys of High Brent
and the heroine Jane. He was ready to subscribe his five-and-twenty
guineas, he said. The amount of the sum gratified Weyburn, she could see.
She was proud of her lord, and of the boys and the little girl; and she
would have been happy to make the ardent young schoolmaster aware of her
growing interest in the young.

The night before the earl's departure on the solitary expedition to which
she condemned him, he surprised her with a visit of farewell, so that he
need not disturb her in the early morning, he said. She was reading
beside her open jewel-box, and she closed it with the delicate touch of a
hand turned backward while listening to him, with no sign of nervousness.




CHAPTER XIII

WAR AT OLMER

Lively doings were on the leap to animate Weyburn at Olmer during Easter
week. The Rev. Mr. Hampton-Evey, rector of Barborough, on hearing that
Lady Charlotte Eglett was engaged in knocking at the doors of litigation
with certain acts that constituted distinct breaches of the law and the
peace, and were a violation of the rights of her neighbour, Mr. Gilbert
Addicote, might hope that the troublesome parishioner whom he did not
often number among his congregation would grant him a term of repose.
Therein he was deceived. Alterations and enlargements of the church, much
required, had necessitated the bricking up of a door regarded by the lady
as the private entrance to the Olmer pew. She sent him notice of her
intention to batter at the new brickwork; so there was the prospect of a
pew-fight before him. But now she came to sit under him every Sunday; and
he could have wished her absent; for she diverted his thoughts from piety
to the selections of texts applicable in the case of a woman who sat with
arms knotted, and the frown of an intemperate schoolgirl forbidden
speech; while her pew's firelight startlingly at intervals danced her
sinister person into view, as from below. The lady's inaccessible and
unconquerable obtuseness to exhortation informed the picture with an evil
spirit that cried for wrestlings.

Regularly every week-day she headed the war now rageing between Olmer and
Addicotes, on the borders of the estates. It was open war, and herself to
head the cavalry. Weyburn, driving up a lane in the gig she had sent to
meet the coach, beheld a thicket of countrymen and boys along a ridge;
and it swayed and broke, and through it burst the figure of a mounted
warrior woman at the gallop, followed by what bore an appearance of horse
and gun, minus carriage, drivers at the flanks cracking whips on foot.
Off went the train, across a small gorse common, through a gate.

'That's another down,' said his whip. 'Sound good wood it is, not made to
fall. Her ladyship's at it hard to-day. She 'll teach Mr. Addicote a
thing or two about things females can do. That is, when they stand for
their rights.'

He explained to Weyburn that Mr. Addicote, a yeoman farmer and a good
hunting man, but a rare obstinate one, now learning his lesson from her
ladyship, was in dispute with her over rights of property on a stretch of
fir-trees lining the ridge where the estates of Olmer and Addicotes met.
Her ladyship had sworn that if he did not yield to her claim she would
cut down every tree of the ridge and sell the lot for timber under his
nose. She acted according to her oath, in the teeth of his men two feet
across the border. All the world knew the roots of those trees were for
the most part in Olmer soil, though Addicote shared the shade. All the
people about mourned for the felling of those trees. All blamed Mr.
Gilbert Addicote for provoking her ladyship, good hunting man though he
was. But as to the merits of the question, under the magnifier of the
gentlemen of the law, there were as many different opinions as wigs in
the land.

'And your opinion?' said Weyburn.

To which the young groom answered: 'Oh, I don't form an opinion, sir. I
'm of my mistress's opinion; and if she says, Do it, think as we like,
done it has to be.'

Lady Charlotte came at a trot through the gate, to supervise the
limbering-up of another felled tree. She headed it as before. The log
dragged bounding and twirling, rattling its chains; the crowd along the
ridge, forbidden to cheer, watching it with intense repression of the
roar. We have not often in England sight of a great lady challengeing an
unpopular man to battle and smacking him in the face like this to provoke
him. Weyburn was driven on a half-circle of the lane to the gate, where
he jumped out to greet Lady Charlotte trotting back for another smack in
the face of her enemy,--a third rounding of her Troy with the vanquished
dead at her heels, as Weyburn let a flimsy suggestion beguile his fancy,
until the Homeric was overwhelming even to a playful mind, and he put her
in a mediaeval frame. She really had the heroical aspect in a
grandiose-grotesque, fitted to some lines of Ariosto. Her head wore a
close hood, disclosing a fringe of grey locks, owlish to see about
features hooked for action.

'Ah, you! there you are: good--I'll join you in three minutes,' she sang
out to him, and cantered to the ridge.

Hardly beyond the stated number she was beside him again, ranging her
steed for the victim log to dance a gyration on its branches across the
lane and enter a field among the fallen compeers. One of her men had run
behind her. She slid from her saddle and tossed him the reins, catching
up her skirts.

'That means war, as much as they'll have it in England,' she said, seeing
his glance at the logs. 'My husband's wise enough to leave it to me, so I
save him trouble with neighbours. An ass of a Mr. Gilbert Addicote dares
us to make good our claim on our property, our timber, because half a
score of fir-tree roots go stretching on to his ground.'

She swished her whip. Mr. Gilbert Addicote received the stroke and
retired, a buried subject. They walked on at an even pace. 'You 'll see
Leo to-morrow. He worships you. You may as well give him a couple of
hours' coaching a day for the week. He'll be hanging about you, and you
won't escape him. Well, and my brother Rowsley: how is Lord Ormont? He
never comes to me now, since--Well, it 's nothing to me; but I like to
see my brother. She can't make any change here. Olmer and Lady Charlotte
's bosom were both implied. 'What do you think?--you 've noticed: is he
in good health? It 's the last thing he 'll be got to speak of.'

Weyburn gave the proper assurances.

'Not he!' said she. 'He's never ill. Men beat women in the long race, if
they haven't overdone it when young. My doctor wants me to renounce the
saddle. He says it 's time. Not if I 've got work for horseback!' she
nicked her head emphatically: 'I hate old age. They sha'nt dismount me
till a blow comes. Hate it! But I should despise myself if I showed
signs, like a worm under heel. Let Nature do her worst; she can't conquer
us as long as we keep up heart. You won't have to think of that for a
good time yet. Now tell me why Lord Ormont didn't publish the "Plan for
the Defence" you said he was writing; and he was, I know. He wrote it and
he finished it; you made the fair copy. Well, and he read it,--there!
see!' She took the invisible sheets in her hands and tore them. 'That's
my brother. He's so proud. It would have looked like asking the country,
that injured him, to forgive him. I wish it had been printed. But
whatever he does I admire. That--she might have advised, if she 'd been a
woman of public spirit or cared for his reputation. He never comes near
me. Did she read your copy?'

The question was meant for an answer.

Weyburn replied: 'Lady Ormont had no sight of it.'

'Ah! she's Lady Ormont to the servants, I know. She has an aunt living in
the house. If my brother's a sinner, and there's punishment for him, he
has it from that aunt. Pag . . . something. He bears with her. He 's a
Spartan. She 's his pack on his back, for what she covers and the game he
plays. It looks just tolerably decent with her in the house. She goes
gabbling a story about our Embassy at Madrid. To preserve propriety, as
they call it. Her niece doesn't stoop to any of those tricks, I 'm told.
I like her for that.'

Weyburn was roused: 'I think you would like Lady Ormont, if you knew her,
my lady.'

'The chances of my liking the young woman are not in the dice-box. You
call her Lady Ormont: you are not one of the servants. Don't call her
Lady Ormont to me.'

'It is her title, Lady Charlotte.' She let fly a broadside at him.

'You are one of the woman's dupes. I thought you had brains. How can you
be the donkey not to see that my brother Rowsley, Lord Ormont, would
never let a woman, lawfully bearing his name, go running the quadrille
over London in couples with a Lady Staines and a Mrs. Lawrence Finchley,
Lord Adderwood, and that man Morsfield, who boasts of your Lady Ormont,
and does it unwhipped--tell me why? Pooh, you must be the poorest fool
born to suppose it possible my brother would allow a man like that man
Morsfield to take his wife's name in his mouth a second time. Have you
talked much with this young person?'

'With Lady Ormont? I have had the honour occasionally.'

'Stick to the title and write yourself plush-breech. Can't you be more
than a footman? Try to be a man of the world; you're old enough for that
by now. I know she 's good-looking; the whole tale hangs on that. You
needn't be singing me mooncalf hymn tunes of "Lady Ormont, Lady Ormont,"
solemn as a parson's clerk; the young woman brought good looks to market;
and she got the exchange she had a right to expect. But it 's not my
brother Rowsley's title she has got--except for footmen and tradesmen.
When there's a true Countess of Ormont!..... Unless my brother has cut
himself from his family. Not he. He's not mad.'

They passed through Olmer park-gates. Lady Charlotte preceded him, and
she turned, waiting for him to rejoin her. He had taken his flagellation
in the right style, neither abashed nor at sham crow: he was easy, ready
to converse on any topic; he kept the line between supple courtier and
sturdy independent; and he was a pleasant figure of a young fellow.
Thinking which, a reminder that she liked him drew her by the road of
personal feeling, as usual with her, to reflect upon another, and a
younger, woman's observing and necessarily liking him too.

'You say you fancy I should like the person you call Lady Ormont?'

'I believe you would, my lady.'

'Are her manners agreeable?'

'Perfect; no pretension.'

'Ah! she sings, plays--all that?

'She plays the harp and sings.'

'You have heard her?'

'Twice.'

'She didn't set you mewing?'

'I don't remember the impulse; at all events, it was restrained.'

'She would me; but I'm an old woman. I detest their squalling and
strumming. I can stand it with Italians on the boards: they don't, stop
conversation. She was present at that fencing match where you plucked a
laurel? I had an account of it. I can't see the use of fencing in this
country. Younger women can, I dare say. Now, look. If we're to speak of
her, I can't call her Lady Ormont, and I don't want to hear you. Give me
her Christian name.'

'It is'--Weyburn found himself on a slope without a stay--'Aminta.'

Lady Charlotte's eye was on him. He felt intolerably hot; his vexation at
the betrayal of the senseless feeling made it worse, a conscious crimson.

'Aminta,' said she, rather in the style of Cuper's boys, when the name
was a strange one to them. 'I remember my Italian master reading out a
poem when I was a girl. I read poetry then. You wouldn't have imagined
that. I did, and liked it. I hate old age. It changes you so. None of my
children know me as I was when I had life in me and was myself, and my
brother Rowsley called me Cooey. They think me a hard old woman. I was
Cooey through the woods and over the meadows and down stream to Rowsley.
Old age is a prison wall between us and young people. They see a
miniature head and bust, and think it a flattery--won't believe it. After
I married I came to understand that the world we are in is a world to
fight in, or under we go. But I pity the young who have to cast
themselves off and take up arms. Young women above all.'

Why had she no pity for Aminta? Weyburn asked it of his feelings, and he
had the customary insurgent reply from them.

'You haven't seen Steignton yet,' she continued. 'No place on earth is
equal to Steignton for me. It 's got the charm. Here at Olmer I'm a
mother and a grandmother--the "devil of an old-woman" my neighbours take
me to be. She hasn't been to Steignton, either. No, and won't go there,
though she's working her way round, she supposes. He'll do everything for
his "Aminta," but he won't take her to Steignton. I'm told now she's won
Lady de Culme. That Mrs. Lawrence Finchley has dropped the curtsey to
her great-aunt and sworn to be a good girl, for a change, if Lady de
Culme will do the chaperon, and force Lord Ormont's hand. My brother
shrugs. There'll be a nice explosion one day soon. Presented? The Court
won't have her. That I know for positive. If she's pushed forward, she
'll be bitterly snubbed. It 's on the heads of those women--silly women!
I can't see the game Mrs. Lawrence Finchley's playing. She'd play for
fun. If they'd come to me, I 'd tell them I 've proof she 's not the
Countess of Ormont: positive proof. You look? I have it. I hold
something; and not before,--(he may take his Aminta to Steignton, he may
let her be presented, she may wear his name publicly, I say he's laughing
at them, snapping his fingers at them louder and louder the more they
seem to be pushing him into a corner, until--I know my brother
Rowsley!--and, poor dear fellow! a man like that, the best cavalry
general England ever had:--they'll remember it when there comes a cry for
a general from India: that's the way with the English; only their
necessities teach them to be just!)--he to be reduced to be
out-manoeuvring a swarm of women,--I tell them, not before my brother
Rowsley comes to me for what he handed to my care and I keep safe for
him, will I believe he has made or means to make his Aminta Countess of
Ormont.'

They were at the steps of the house. Turning to Weyburn there, the
inexhaustible Lady Charlotte remarked that their conversation had given
her pleasure. Leo was hanging on to one of his hands the next minute. A
small girl took the other. Philippa and Beatrice were banished damsels.

Lady Charlotte's breath had withered the aspect of Aminta's fortunes.
Weyburn could forgive her, for he was beginning to understand her. He
could not pardon 'her brother Rowsley,' who loomed in his mind
incomprehensible, and therefore black. Once he had thought the great
General a great man. He now regarded him as a mere soldier, a soured
veteran; socially as a masker and a trifler, virtually a callous angler
playing his cleverly-hooked fish for pastime.

What could be the meaning of Lady Charlotte's 'that, man Morsfield, who
boasts of your Lady Ormont, and does it unwhipped'?

Weyburn stopped his questioning, with the reflection that he had no right
to recollect her words thus accurately. The words, however, stamped
Morsfield's doings and sayings and postures in the presence of Aminta
with significance. When the ladies were looking on at the fencers,
Morsfield's perfect coxcombry had been noticeable. He knew the art of
airing a fine figure. Mrs. Lawrence Finchley had spoken of it, and Aminta
had acquiesced; in the gravely simple manner of women who may be thinking
of it much more intently than the vivacious prattler. Aminta confessed to
an admiration of masculine physical beauty; the picador, matador, of the
Spanish ring called up an undisguised glow that English ladies show
coldly when they condescend to let it be seen; as it were, a line or two
of colour on the wintriest of skies. She might, after all, at heart be
one of the leisured, jewelled, pretty-winged; the spending, never
harvesting, world she claimed and sought to enter. And what a primitive
world it was!--world of the glittering beast and the not too swiftly
flying prey, the savage passions clothed in silk. Surely desire to belong
to it writes us poor creatures. Mentally, she could hardly be maturer
than the hero-worshipping girl in the procession of Miss Vincent's young
seminarists. Probably so, but she carried magic. She was of the order of
women who walk as the goddesses of old, bearing the gift divine. And, by
the way, she had the step of the goddess. Weyburn repeated to himself the
favourite familiar line expressive of the glorious walk, and accused Lord
Ormont of being in cacophonous accordance with the perpetual wrong of
circumstance, he her possessor, the sole person of her sphere insensible
to the magic she bore! So ran his thought.

The young man chose to conceive that he thought abstractedly. He was, in
truth, often casting about for the chances of his meeting on some
fortunate day the predestined schoolmaster's wife: a lady altogether
praiseworthy for carrying principles of sound government instead of
magic. Consequently, susceptible to woman's graces though he knew himself
to be, Lady Ormont's share of them hung in the abstract for him. His
hopes were bent on an early escape to Switzerland and his life's work.

Lady Charlotte mounted to ride to the battle daily. She talked of her
brother Rowsley, and of 'Aminta,' and provoked an advocacy of the
Countess of Ormont, and trampled the pleas and defences to dust, much in
the same tone as on the first day; sometimes showing a peep of sweet
humaneness, like the ripe berry of a bramble, and at others rattling
thunder at the wretch of a woman audacious enough to pretend to a part in
her brother's title.

Not that she had veneration for titles. She considered them a tinsel, and
the devotee on his knee-caps to them a lump for a kick. Adding: 'Of
course I stand for my class; and if we can't have a manlier people--and
it 's not likely in a country treating my brother so badly--well, then,
let things go on as they are.' But it was the pretension to a part in the
name of Ormont which so violently offended the democratic aristocrat, and
caused her to resent it as an assault on the family honour, by 'a woman
springing up out of nothing'--a woman of no distinctive birth.

She was rational in her fashion; or Weyburn could at least see where and
how the reason in her took a twist. The Rev. Mr. Hampton-Evey would not
see it; he was, in charity to her ladyship, of a totally contrary
opinion, he informed Weyburn. The laborious pastor and much-enduring
Churchman met my lady's apologist as he was having a swing of the legs
down the lanes before breakfast, and he fell upon a series of complaints,
which were introduced by a declaration that 'he much feared' her ladyship
would have a heavy legal bill to pay for taking the law into her hands up
at Addicotes.

Her ladyship might, if she pleased, he said, encourage her domestics and
her husband's tenants and farm-labourers to abandon the church for the
chapel, and go, as she had done and threatened to do habitually, to the
chapel herself; but to denounce the ritual of the Orthodox Church under
the denomination of 'barbarous,' to say of the invoking supplications of
the service, that they were--she had been heard to state it more or less
publicly and repeatedly--suitable to abject ministers and throngs at the
court of an Indian rajah, that he did not hesitate to term highly
unbecoming in a lady of her station, subversive and unchristian. The
personal burdens inflicted on him by her ladyship he prayed for patience
to endure. He surprised Weyburn in speaking of Lady Charlotte as
'educated and accomplished.' She was rather more so than Weyburn knew,
and more so than was common among the great ladies of her time.

Weyburn strongly advised the reverend gentleman on having it out with
Lady Charlotte in a personal interview. He sketched the great lady's
combative character on a foundation of benevolence, and stressed her
tolerance for open dealing, and the advantage gained by personal dealings
with her--after a mauling or two. His language and his illustrations
touched an old-school chord in the Rev. Mr. Hampton-Evey, who hummed over
the project, profoundly disrelishing the introductory portion.

'Do me the honour to call and see me to-morrow, after breakfast, before
her ladyship starts for the fray on Addicote heights,' Weyburn said; 'and
I will ask your permission to stand by you. Her bark is terrific, we
know; and she can bite, but there's no venom.'

Finally, on a heave of his chest, Mr. Hampton-Evey consented to call, in
the interests of peace.

Weyburn had said it must be 'man to man with her, facing her and taking
steps'; and, although the prospect was unpleasant to repulsiveness, it
was a cheerful alternative beside Mr. Hampton-Evey's experiences and
anticipations of the malignant black power her ladyship could be when she
was not faced.

'Let the man come,' said Lady Charlotte. Her shoulders intimated
readiness for him.

She told Weyburn he might be present--insisted to have him present.
During the day Weyburn managed to slide in observations on the favourable
reports of Mr. Hampton-Evey's work among the poor--emollient doses that
irritated her to fret and paw, as at a checking of her onset.

In the afternoon the last disputed tree on the Addicotes' ridge was
felled and laid on Olmer ground. Riding with Weyburn and the joyful Leo,
she encountered Mr. Eglett and called out the news. He remarked, in the
tone of philosophy proper to a placable country gentleman obedient to
government on foreign affairs: 'Now for the next act. But no more
horseback now, mind!'

She muttered of not recollecting a promise. He repeated the interdict.
Weyburn could fancy seeing her lips form words of how she hated old age.

He had been four days at Olmer, always facing her, 'man to man,' in the
matter of Lady Ormont, not making way at all, but holding firm, and
winning respectful treatment. They sat alone in her private room, where,
without prelude, she discharged a fiery squib at impudent hussies caught
up to the saddle-bow of a hero for just a canter, and pretending to a
permanent seat beside him.

'You have only to see Lady Ormont; you will admit the justice of her
claim, my lady,' said he; and as evidently he wanted a fight, she let him
have it.

'You try to provoke me; you take liberties. You may call the woman
Aminta, I've told you; you insult me when you call the woman by my family
name.'

'Pardon me, my lady: I have no right to call Lady Ormont Aminta.'

'You've never done so, eh? Say!'

She had him at the edge of the precipice. He escaped by saying, 'Her
Christian name was asked the other day, and I mentioned it. She is
addressed by me as Lady Ormont.'

'And by her groom and her footman. They all do; it 's the indemnity to
that class of young woman. Her linendraper is Lady-Ormonting as you do. I
took you for a gentleman. Let me hear you give her that title again, you
shall hear her true one, that the world fits her with, from me.'

The time was near the half-hour bell before dinner, the situation between
them that of the fall of the breath to fetch words electrical. She left
it to him to begin the fight, and was not sorry that she had pricked him
for it.

A footman entered the room, bearer of a missive for Mr. Weyburn. Lord
Ormont's groom had brought it from London.

'Send in the man,' said Lady Charlotte.

Weyburn read

'The Countess of Ormont begs Mr. Weyburn to return instantly. There has
been an accident in his home. It may not be very serious. An arm--a shock
to the system from a fall. Messenger informs her, fear of internal
hemorrhage. Best doctors in attendance.'

He handed Lady Charlotte the letter. She humped at the first line,
flashed across the remainder, and in a lowered voice asked--

'Sister in the house?'

'My mother,' Weyburn said.

The groom appeared. He knew nothing. The Countess had given him orders to
spare no expense on the road to Olmer, without a minute's delay. He had
ridden and driven.

He looked worn. Lady Charlotte rang the bell for her butler. To him she
said--

'See that this man has a good feed of meat, any pastry you have, and a
bottle of port wine. He has earned a pipe of tobacco; make up a bed for
him. Despatch at once any one of the stable-boys to Loughton--the
Dolphin. Mr. Leeman there will have a chariot, fly, gig, anything,
ready-horsed in three hours from now. See Empson yourself; he will put my
stepper Mab to the light trap; no delay. Have his feed at Loughton. Tell
Mrs. Maples to send up now, here, a tray, whatever she has, within five
minutes--not later. A bottle of the Peace of Amiens Chambertin--Mr.
Eglett's. You understand. Mrs. Maples will pack a basket for the journey;
she will judge. Add a bottle of the Waterloo Bordeaux. Wait: a dozen of
Mr. Eglett's cigars. Brisk with all the orders. Go.'

She turned to Weyburn. 'You pack your portmanteau faster than a servant
will do it.'

He ran up-stairs.

She was beside the tray to welcome and inspirit his eating, and she
performed the busy butler's duty in pouring out wine for him. It was a
toned old Burgundy, happy in the year of its birth, the grandest of
instruments to roll the gambol-march of the Dionysiaca through the blood
of this frame and sound it to the spirit. She spoke no word of his cause
for departure. He drank, and he felt what earth can do to cheer one of
her stricken children and strengthen the beat of a heart with a dread
like a shot in it.

She, while he flew supporting the body of his most beloved to the sun of
Life in brighter hope, reckoned the stages of his journey.

'Leeman at Loughton will post you through the night to Mersley. Wherever
you bait, it is made known that you come from Olmer, and are one of us.
That passes you on up to London. Where can Lord Ormont be now?'

'In Paris.'

'Still in Paris? He leaves her. She did well to send as she did. You will
not pay for the posting along the road.'

'I will pay for myself--I have a 'purse,' Weyburn said; and continued,
'Oh, my lady; there is Mr. Hampton-Evey to-morrow morning: I promised to
stand by him.'

'I'll explain,' said Lady Charlotte. 'He shall not miss you. If he strips
the parson and comes as a man and a servant of the poor, he has nothing
to fear. You've done? The night before my brother Rowsley's first duel I
sat with him at supper and poured his wine out, and knew what was going
to happen, didn't say a word. No use in talking about feelings. Besides,
death is only the other side of the ditch, and one or other of us must go
foremost. Now then, good-bye. Empson's waiting by this time. Mr. Eglett
and Leo shall hear the excuses from me. Think of anything you may want,
while I count ten.'

She held his hand. He wanted her to be friendly to Lady Ormont, but could
not vex her at the last moment, touched as he was by her practical
kindness.

She pressed his hand and let it go.




CHAPTER XIV

OLD LOVERS NEW FRIENDS

The cottage inhabited by Weyburn's mother was on the southern hills over
London. He reached it late in the afternoon. His mother's old servant,
Martha, spied the roadway at the gate of the small square of garden. Her
steady look without welcome told him the scene he would meet beyond the
door, and was the dead in her eyes. He dropped from no height; he stood
on a level with the blow. His apprehensions on the road had lowered him
to meet it.

'Too late, Martha?'

'She's in heaven, my dear.'

'She is lying alone?'

'The London doctor left half an hour back. She's gone. Slipped, and fell,
coming from her room, all the way down. She prayed for grace to see her
son. She 'll watch over him, be sure. You 'll not find it lone and cold.
A lady sits with it--Lady Ormont, they call her--a very kind lady. My
mistress liked her voice. Ever since news of the accident, up to ten at
night; and never eats or drinks more than a poor tiny bit of
bread-and-butter, with a teacup.'

'Weyburn went up-stairs.

Aminta sat close to the bedside in a darkened room. They greeted
silently. He saw the white shell of the life that had flown; he took his
mother's hand and kissed it, and knelt, clasping it.

Fear of disturbing his prayer kept Aminta seated. Death was a stranger to
him. The still warm, half-cold, nerveless hand smote the fact of things
as they were through the prayer for things as we would have them. The
vitality of his prayer was the sole light he had. It drew sustainment
from the dead hand in his grasp, and cowered down to the earth claiming
all we touch. He tried to summon vision of a soaring spirituality; he
could not; his understanding and senses were too stricken. He prayed on.
His prayer was as a little fountain, not rising high out of earth, and in
the clutch of death; but its being it had from death, his love gave it
food.

Prayer is power within us to communicate with the desired beyond our
thirsts. The goodness of the dear good mother gone was in him for
assurance of a breast of goodness to receive her, whatever the nature of
the eternal secret may be. The good life gone lives on in the mind; the
bad has but a life in the body, and that not lasting,--it extends,
dispreads, it worms away, it perishes. Need we more to bid the mind
perceive through obstructive flesh the God who reigns, a devil
vanquished? Be certain that it is the pure mind we set to perceive. The
God discerned in thought is another than he of the senses. And let the
prayer be as a little fountain. Rising on a spout, from dread of the
hollow below, the prayer may be prolonged in words begetting words, and
have a pulse of fervour: the spirit of it has fallen after the first jet.
That is the delirious energy of our craving, which has no life in our
souls. We do not get to any heaven by renouncing the Mother we spring
from; and when there is an eternal secret for us, it is befit to believe
that Earth knows, to keep near her, even in our utmost aspirations.

Weyburn still knelt. He was warned to quit the formal posture of an
exhausted act by the thought, that he had come to reflect upon how he
might be useful to his boys in a like calamity.

Having risen, he became aware, that for some time of his kneeling
Aminta's hand had been on his head, and they had raised their souls in
unison. It was a soul's link. They gazed together on the calm, rapt
features. They passed from the room.

'I cannot thank you,' he said.

'Oh no; I have the reason for gratitude,' said she. 'I have learnt to
know and love her, and hope I may imitate when my time is near.'

"She . . . . at the last?'

'Peacefully; no pain. The breath had not left her very long before you
came.'

'I said I cannot; but I must--

'Do not.'

'Not in speech, then.'

They went into the tasteful little sitting-room below, where the
stillness closed upon them as a consciousness of loss.

'You have comforted her each day,' he said.

'It has been my one happiness.'

'I could not wish for better than for her to have known you.'

'Say that for me. I have gained. She left her last words for you with me.
They were love, love . . . pride in her son: thanks to God for having
been thought worthy to give him birth.'

'She was one of the noble women of earth.'

'She was your mother. Let me not speak any more. I think I will now go. I
am rarely given to these--'

The big drops were falling.

'You have not ordered your carriage?'

'It brings me here. I find my way home.'

'Alone?'

'I like the independence.'

'At night, too!'

'Nothing harmed me. Now it is daylight. A letter arrived for you from
High Brent this morning. I forgot to bring it. Yesterday two of your
pupils called here. Martha saw them.'

Her naming of the old servant familiarly melted him. 'You will not bear
to hear praise or thanks.'

'If I deserved them. I should like you to call on Dr. Buxton; he will
tell you more than we can. He drove with me the first day, after I had
sent you the local doctor's report. I had it from the messenger, his
assistant.'

Weyburn knew Dr. Buxton's address. He begged her to stay and take some
nourishment; ventured a remark on her wasted look.

'It is poor fare in cottages.'

'I have been feeding on better than bread and meat,' she said.' I should
have eaten if I had felt appetite. My looks will recover, such as they
are. I hope I have grown out of them; they are a large part of the
bondage of women. You would like to see me safe into some conveyance. Go
up-stairs for a few minutes; I will wait here.'

He obeyed her. Passing from the living to the dead, from the dead to the
living, they were united in his heart.

Her brevity of tone, and her speech, so practical upon a point of need,
under a crisis of distress, reminded him of Lady Charlotte at the time of
the groom's arrival with her letter.

Aminta was in no hurry to drive. She liked walking and looking down on
London, she said.

'My friend and schoolmate, Selina Collett, comes to me at Whitsuntide. We
have taken a house on the Upper Thames, above Marlow. You will come and
see us, if you can be persuaded to leave your boys. We have a boathouse,
and a bathing-plank for divers. The stream is quiet there between rich
meadows. It seems to flow as if it thought. I am not poetical; I tell you
only my impression. You shall be a great deal by yourself, as men prefer
to be.'

'As men are forced to be--I beg!' said he. 'Division is against my
theories.'

'We might help, if we understood one another, I have often fancied. I
know something of your theories. I should much like to hear you some day
on the scheme of the school in Switzerland, and also on the
schoolmaster's profession. She whom we have lost was full of it, and
spoke of it to me as much as her weakness would permit. The subject
seemed to give her strength.'

'She has always encouraged me,' said Weyburn.' I have lost her, but I
shall feel that she is not absent. She had ideas of her own about men and
women.'

'Some she mentioned.'

'And about marriage?'

'That too.'

Aminta shook herself out of a sudden stupor.

'Her mind was very clear up to the last hour upon all the subjects
interesting her son. She at one time regretted his not being a soldier,
for the sake of his father's memory. Then she learned to think he could
do more for the world as the schoolmaster. She said you can persuade.'

'We had our talks. She would have the reason, if she was to be won. I
like no other kind of persuasion.'

'I long to talk over the future school with you. That is, to hear your
plans.'

They were at the foot of the hill, in view of an inn announcing livery
stables. She wished to walk the whole distance. He shook his head.

The fly was ready for her soon, and he begged to see her safe home. She
refused, after taking her seat, but said: 'At any other time. We are old
friends. You will really go through the ceremony of consulting me about
the school?'

He replied: 'I am honoured.'

'Ah, not to me,' said Aminta. 'We will be the friends we--You will not be
formal with me?--not from this day?'

She put out her hand. He took it gently. The dead who had drawn them
together withheld a pressure. Holding the hand, he said: 'I shall crave
leave of absence for some days.'

'I shall see you on the day,' said she. 'If it is your desire: I will
send word.'

'We both mourn at heart. We should be in company. Adieu.'

Their hands fell apart. They looked. The old school time was in each
mind. They saw it as a shore-bank in grey outline across morning mist.
Years were between; and there was a division of circumstance, more
repelling than an abyss or the rush of deep wild waters.

Neither of them had regrets. Under their cloud, and with the grief they
shared, they were as happy as two could be in recovering one another as
friends.

On the day of the funeral Aminta drove to the spot where they had
parted--she walked to the churchyard.

She followed the coffin to its gravel-heap, wishing neither to see nor be
seen, only that she might be so far attached to the remains of the dead;
and the sense of blessedness she had in her bowed simplicity of feeling
was as if the sainted dead had cleansed and anointed her.

When the sods had been cast on, the last word spoken, she walked her way
back, happy in being alone, unnoticed. She was grateful to the chief
mourner for letting her go as she had come. That helped her to her sense
of purification, the haven out of the passions, hardly less quiet than
the repose into which the dear dead woman, his mother, had entered.

London lay beneath her. The might of the great hive hummed at the verge
of her haven of peace without disturbing. There she had been what none
had known of her: an ambitious girl, modest merely for lack of
intrepidity; paralyzed by her masterful lord; aiming her highest at a
gilt weathercock; and a disappointed creature, her breast a home of
serpents; never herself. She thought and hoped she was herself now. Alarm
lest this might be another of her moods, victim of moods as she had
latterly been, was a shadow armed with a dart playing round her to find
the weak spot. It sprang from her acknowledged weakness of nature; and
she cast about for how to keep it outside her and lean on a true though a
small internal support. She struck at her desires, to sound them.

They were yesterday for love; partly for distinction, for a woman having
beauty to shine in the sphere of beauty; but chiefly to love and be
loved, therefore to live. She had yesterday read letters of a man who
broke a music from the word--about as much music as there is in a
tuning--fork, yet it rang and lingered; and he was not the magical
musician. Now those letters were as dust of the road. The sphere of
beauty was a glass lamp-globe for delirious moths. She had changed.
Belief in the real change gave her full view of the compliant coward she
had been.

Her heart assured her she had natural courage. She felt that it could be
stubborn to resist a softness. Now she cared no more for the hackneyed
musical word; friendship was her desire. If it is not life's poetry, it
is a credible prose; a land of low undulations instead of Alps; beyond
the terrors and the deceptions. And she could trust her friend: he who
was a singular constancy. His mother had told her of his preserving
letters of a girl he loved when at school; and of his journeys to an
empty house at Dover. That was past; but, as the boy, so the man would be
in sincerity of feeling trustworthy to the uttermost.

She mused on the friend. He was brave. She had seen how he took his blow,
and sorrow as a sister, conquering emotion. It was not to be expected of
him by one who knew him when at school. Had he faults? He must have
faults. She, curiously, could see none. After consenting to his career as
a schoolmaster, and seeing nothing ludicrous in it, she endowed him with
the young school-hero's reputation, beheld him with the eyes of the girl
who had loved him--and burnt his old letters!--bitterly regretted that
she burnt his letters!--and who had applauded his contempt of ushers and
master opposing his individual will and the thing he thought it right to
do.

Musing thus, she turned a corner, on a sudden, in her mind, and ran
against a mirror, wherein a small figure running up to meet her, grew
large and nodded, with the laugh and eyes of Browny. So little had she
changed! The stedfast experienced woman rebuked that volatile, and some
might say, faithless girl. But the girl had her answer: she declared they
were one and the same, affirmed that the years between were a bad night's
dream, that her heart had been faithful, that he who conjures visions of
romance in a young girl's bosom must always have her heart, as a crisis
will reveal it to her. She had the volubility of the mettled Browny of
old, and was lectured. When she insisted on shouting 'Matey! Matey!' she
was angrily spurned and silenced.

Aminta ceased to recline in her carriage. An idea that an indolent
posture fostered vapourish meditations, counselled her sitting rigidly
upright and interestedly observing the cottages and merry gutter-children
along the squat straight streets of a London suburb. Her dominant
ultimate thought was, 'I, too, can work!' Like her courage, the plea of a
capacity to work appealed for confirmation to the belief which exists
without demonstrated example; and as she refrained from probing to the
inner sources of that mental outcry, it was allowed to stand and remain
among the convictions we store--wherewith to shape our destinies.

Childishly indeed, quite witlessly, she fell into a trick of repeating
the name of Matthew Weyburn in her breast and on her lips, after the
manner of Isabella Lawrence Finchley, when she had inquired for his
Christian name, and went on murmuring it, as if sucking a new bonbon,
with the remark: 'It sounds nice, it suits the mouth.' Little Selina
Collett had told, Aminta remembered, how those funny boys at Cuper's
could not at first get the name 'Aminta' to suit the mouth, but went
about making hideous faces in uttering it. She smiled at the
recollection, and thought, up to a movement of her lips, one is not
tempted to do that in saying Matthew Weyburn!




CHAPTER XV

SHOWING A SECRET FISHED WITHOUT ANGLING

That great couchant dragon of the devouring jaws and the withering
breath, known as our London world, was in expectation of an excitement
above yawns on the subject of a beautiful Lady Doubtful proposing
herself, through a group of infatuated influential friends, to a decorous
Court, as one among the ladies acceptable. The popular version of it
sharpened the sauce by mingling romance and cynicism very happily; for
the numerous cooks, when out of the kitchen, will furnish a piquant dish.
Thus, a jewel-eyed girl of half English origin (a wounded British officer
is amiably nursed in a castle near the famous Peninsula battlefield,
etc.), running wild down the streets of Seville, is picked up by Lord
Ormont, made to discard her tambourine, brought over to our shores, and
allowed the decoration of his name, without the legitimate adornment of
his title. Discontented with her position after a time, she now pushes
boldly to claim the place which will be most effective in serving her as
a bath. She has, by general consent, beauty; she must, seeing that she
counts influential friends, have witchery. Those who have seen her riding
and driving beside her lord, speak of Andalusian grace, Oriental lustre,
fit qualification for the fair slave of a notoriously susceptible old
warrior.

She won a party in the widening gossip world; and enough of a party in
the regent world to make a stream. Pretending to be the actual Countess
of Ormont, though not publicly acknowledged as his countess by the earl,
she had on her side the strenuous few who knew and liked her, some who
were pleased compassionately to patronize, all idle admirers of a
shadowed beautiful woman at bay, the devotees of any beauty in distress,
and such as had seen, such as imagined they had seen, such as could paint
a mental picture of a lady of imposing stature, persuasive appearance,
pathetic history, and pronounce her to be unjustly treated, with a
general belief that she was visible and breathing. She had the ready
enthusiasts, the responsive sentimentalists, and an honest active minor
number, of whom not every one could be declared perfectly unspotted in
public estimation, however innocent under verdict of the courts of law.

Against her was the livid cloud-bank over a flowery field, that has not
yet spoken audible thunder: the terrible aggregate social woman, of man's
creation, hated by him, dreaded, scorned, satirized, and nevertheless,
upheld, esteemed, applauded: a mark of civilization, on to which our
human society must hold as long as we have nothing humaner. She exhibits
virtue, with face of waxen angel, with paw of desert beast, and blood of
victims on it. Her fold is a genial climate and the material pleasures
for the world's sheepy: worshipping herself, she claims the
sanctification of a performed religion. She is gentle when unassailed,
going her way serenely, with her malady in the blood. When the skin bears
witness to it, she swallows an apothecary, and there is a short
convulsion. She is refreshed by cutting off diseased inferior members:
the superior betraying foul symptoms, she covers up and retains;
rationally, too, for they minister to her present existence, and she
lives all in the present. Her subjects are the mixed Subservient; among
her rebellious are earth's advanced, who have cold a morning on their
foreheads, and these would not dethrone her, they would but shame and
purify by other methods than the druggist. She loves nothing.
Undoubtedly, she dislikes the vicious. On that merit she subsists.

The vexatious thing in speaking of her is, that she compels to the use of
the rhetorician's brass instrument. As she is one of the Powers giving
life and death, one may be excused. This tremendous queen of the
congregation has brought discredit on her sex for the scourge laid on
quivering female flesh, and for the flippant indifference shown to misery
and to fine distinctions between right and wrong, good and bad; and
particularly for the undiscriminating hardness upon the starved of women.
We forget her having been conceived in the fear of men, shaped to gratify
them. She is their fiction of the state they would fain beguile
themselves to suppose her sex has reached, for their benefit; where she
may be queen of it in a corner, certain of a loyal support, if she will
only give men her half-the-world's assistance to uplift the fabric
comfortable to them; together with assurance of paternity, case of mind
in absence, exclusive possession, enormous and minutest, etc.; not by any
means omitting a regimental orderliness, from which men are privately
exempt, because they are men, or because they are grown boys--the brisker
at lessons after a vacation or a truancy, says the fiction.

In those days the world had oscillated, under higher leading than its
royal laxity, to rigidity. Tiny peccadilloes were no longer matter of
jest, and the sinner exposed stood 'sola' to receive the brand. A
beautiful Lady Doubtful needed her husband's countenance if she was to
take one of the permanent steps in public places. The party of Lady
Charlotte Eglett called on the livid cloud-bank aforesaid to discharge
celestial bolts and sulphur oil on the head of an impudent, underbred,
ambitious young slut, whose arts had bewitched a distinguished nobleman
not young in years at least, and ensnared the remainder wits of some
principal ancient ladies of the land. Professional Puritans, born
conservatives, malicious tattlers, made up a goodly tail to Lady
Charlotte's party. The epithet 'unbred' was accredited upon the quoted
sayings and doings of the pretentious young person's aunt, repeated
abroad by noblemen and gentlemen present when she committed herself; and
the same were absurd. They carried a laugh, and so they lived and
circulated. Lord Ormont submitted to the infliction of that horrid female
in his household! It was no wonder he stopped short of allying himself
with the family.

Nor was it a wonder that the naturally enamoured old warrior or invalided
Mars (for she had the gift of beauty) should deem it prudent to be out of
England when she and her crazy friends determined on the audacious move.
Or put it the other way--for it is just as confounding right side or
left--she and her friends take advantage of his absence to make the
clever push for an establishment, and socially force him to legalize
their union on his return. The deeds of the preceding reign had
bequeathed a sort of legendary credence to the wildest tales gossip could
invent under a demurrer.

But there was the fact, the earl was away. Lady Charlotte's party buzzed
everywhere. Her ladyship had come to town to head it. Her ladyship laid
trains of powder from dinner-parties, balls, routs, park-processions,
into the Lord Chamberlain's ear, and fired and exploded them, deafening
the grand official. Do you consider that virulent Pagan Goddesses and the
flying torch-furies are extinct? Error of Christians! We have
relinquished the old names and have no new ones for them; but they are
here, inextinguishable, threading the day and night air with their dire
squib-trail, if we would but see. Hissing they go, and we do not hear. We
feel the effects.

Upon the counsel of Mrs. Lawrence, Aminta sent a letter to Lord Ormont at
his hotel in Paris, informing him of the position of affairs. He had
delayed his return, and there had been none of his brief communications.

She wrote, as she knew, as she felt, coldly. She was guided by others,
and her name was up before the world, owing to some half-remembered
impulsion of past wishes, but her heart was numbed; she was not a woman
to have a wish without a beat of the heart in it. For her name she had a
feeling, to be likened rather to the losing gambler's contemplation of a
big stake he has flung, and sees it gone while fortune is undecided; and
he catches at a philosophy nothing other than his hug of a modest little
background pleasure, that he has always preferred to this accursed bad
habit of gambling with the luck against him. Reckless in the cast, she
was reckless of success.

Her letter was unanswered.

Then, and day by day more strongly, she felt for her name. She put a
false heart into it. She called herself to her hearing the Countess of
Ormont, and deigned to consult the most foolish friend she could have
chosen--her aunt; and even listened to her advice, that she should run
about knocking at all the doors open to her, and state her case against
the earl. It seemed the course to take, the moment for taking it. Was she
not asked if she could now at last show she had pride? Her pride ran
stinging through her veins, like a band of freed prisoners who head the
rout to fire a city. She charged her lord with having designedly--oh!
cunningly indeed left her to be the prey of her enemies at the hour when
he knew it behoved him to be her great defender. There had been no
disguise of the things in progress: they had been spoken of allusively,
quite comprehensibly, after the fashion common with two entertaining a
secret semi-hostility on a particular subject; one of them being the
creature that blushes and is educated to be delicate, reserved, and
timorous. He was not ignorant, and he had left her, and he would not
reply to her letter!

So fell was her mood, that an endeavour to conjure up the scene of her
sitting beside the death-bed of Matthew Weyburn's mother, failed to sober
and smooth it, holy though that time was. The false heart she had put
into the pride of her name was powerfuller than the heart in her bosom.
But to what end had the true heart counselled her of late? It had been a
home of humours and languors, an impotent insurgent, the sapper of her
character; and as we see in certain disorderly States a curative
incendiarism usurp the functions of the sluggish citizen, and the work of
re-establishment done by destruction, in peril of a total extinction,
Aminta's feverish anger on behalf of her name went a stretch to vivify
and give her dulled character a novel edge. She said good-bye to
cowardice. 'I have no husband to defend me--I must do it for myself.' The
peril of a too complete exercise of independence was just intimated to
her perceptions. On whom the blame? And let the motively guilty go mourn
over consequences! That Institution of Marriage was eyed. Is it not a
halting step to happiness? It is the step of a cripple,--and one leg or
the other poses for the feebler sex,--small is the matter which! And is
happiness our cry? Our cry is rather for circumstance and occasion to use
our functions, and the conditions are denied to women by Marriage--denied
to the luckless of women, who are many, very many: denied to Aminta,
calling herself Countess of Ormont, for one, denied to Mrs. Lawrence
Finchley for another, and in a base bad manner. She had defended her good
name triumphantly, only to enslave herself for life or snatch at the
liberty which besmirches.

Reviewing Mrs. Lawrence, Aminta's real heart pressed forward at the beat,
in tender pity of the woman for whom a yielding to love was to sin; and
unwomanly is the woman who does not love: men will say it. Aminta found
herself phrasing. 'Why was she unable to love her husband?--he is not
old.' She hurried in flight from the remark to confidences imparted by
other ladies, showing strange veins in an earthy world; after which, her
mind was bent to rebuke Mrs. Pagnell for the silly soul's perpetual
allusions to Lord Ormont's age. She did not think of his age. But she was
vividly thinking that she was young. Young, married, loveless, cramped in
her energies, publicly dishonoured--a Lady Doubtful, courting one friend
whom she liked among women, one friend whom she respected among men; that
was the sketch of her.

That was in truth the outline, as much as Aminta dared sketch of herself
without dragging her down lower than her trained instinct would bear to
look. Our civilization shuns nature; and most shuns it in the most
artificially civilized, to suit the market. They, however, are always
close to their mother nature, beneath their second nature's mask of
custom; and Aminta's unconscious concluding touch to the sketch: 'My
husband might have helped me to a footing in Society,' would complete it
as a coloured picture, if writ in tones.

She said it, and for the footing in Society she had lost her taste.

Mrs. Lawrence brought the final word from high quarters: that the
application must be deferred until Lord Ormont returned to town. It was
known before, that such would be the decision. She had it from the
eminent official himself, and she kicked about the room, setting her
pretty mouth and nose to pout and sniff, exactly like a boy whose chum
has been mishandled by a bully.

'Your dear good man is too much for us. I thought we should drive him.
'C'est un ruse homme de guerre.' I like him, but I could slap him. He
stops the way. Upon my word, he seems tolerably careless of his treasure.
Does he suppose Mrs. Paggy is a protection? Do you know she's devoted to
that man Morsfield? He listens to her stories. To judge by what he shouts
aloud, he intends carrying you off the first opportunity, divorcing, and
installing you in Cobeck Hall. All he fears is, that your lord won't
divorce. You should have seen him the other day; he marched up and down
the room, smacking his head and crying out: "Legal measures or any
weapons her husband pleases!" For he has come to believe that the lady
would have been off with him long before, if her lord had no claim to the
marital title. "It 's that husband I can't get over! that husband!" He
reminded me, to the life, of Lawrence Finchley with a headache the
morning after a supper, striding, with his hand on the shining middle of
his head: "It's that Welsh rabbit! that Welsh rabbit!" He has a poor
digestion, and he will eat cheese. The Welsh rabbit chased him into his
bed. But listen to me, dear, about your Morsfield. I told you he was
dangerous.'

'He is not my Morsfield,' said Aminta.

'Beware of his having a tool in Paggy. He boasts of letters.'

'Mine? Two: and written to request him to cease writing to me.'

'He stops at nothing. And, oh, my Simplicity! don't you see you gave him
a step in begging him to retire? Morsfield has lived a good deal among
our neighbours, who expound the physiology of women. He anatomizes us;
pulls us to pieces, puts us together, and then animates us with a breath
of his "passion"--sincere upon every occasion, I don't doubt. He spared
me, although he saw I was engaged. Perhaps it was because I 'm of no
definite colour. Or he thought I was not a receptacle for "passion." And
quite true,--Adder, the dear good fellow, has none. Or where should we
be? On a Swiss Alp, in a chalet, he shooting chamois, and I milking cows,
with 'ah-ahio, ah-ahio,' all day long, and a quarrel at night over curds
and whey. Well, and that 's a better old pensioner's limp to his end for
"passion" than the foreign hotel bell rung mightily, and one of the two
discovered with a dagger in the breast, and the other a don't-look lying
on the pavement under the window. Yes, and that's better than "passion"
splitting and dispersing upon new adventures, from habit, with two sparks
remaining of the fire.'

Aminta took Mrs. Lawrence's hands. 'Is it a lecture?'

She was kissed. 'Frothy gabble. I'm really near to "passion" when I
embrace you. You're the only one I could run away with; live with all
alone, I believe. I wonder men can see you while that silly lord of yours
is absent, and not begin Morsfielding. They're virtuous if they resist.
Paggy tells the world . . . well?' Aminta had reddened.

'What does my aunt tell the world?'

Mrs. Lawrence laid her smoothing hand absently on a frill of lace fichu
above a sternly disciplined bosom at half-heave. 'I think I can judge now
that you're not much hurt by this wretched business of the presentation.
The little service I could do was a moral lesson to me on the subject of
deuce-may-care antecedents. My brother Tom, too, was always playing
truant, as a boy. It 's in the blood.'

She seemed to be teasing, and Aminta cried: 'My aunt! Let me hear. She
tells the world--?'

'Paggy? ah, yes. Only that she says the countess has an exalted opinion
of Mr. Secretary's handwriting--as witnessed by his fair copy of the
Memoirs, of course.'

'Poor woman! How can she talk such foolishness! I guessed it.'

'You wear a dark red rose when you're guessing, 'ma mie,'--French for, my
Aminta.'

'But consider, Isabella, Mr. Weyburn has just had the heaviest of losses.
My aunt should spare mention of him.'

'Matthew Weyburn! we both like the name.' Mrs. Lawrence touched at her
friend and gazed. 'I've seen it on certain evenings--crimson over an
olive sky. What it forebodes, I can't imagine; but it's the end of a
lovely day. They say it threatens rain, if it begins one. It 's an
ominous herald.'

'You make me,' said Aminta. 'I must redden if you keep looking at me so
closely.'

'Now frown one little bit, please. I love to see you. I love to see a
secret disclose itself ingenuously.'

'But what secret, my dear?' cried Aminta's defence of her innocence; and
she gave a short frown.

'Have no fear. Mr. Secretary is not the man to be Morsfielding. And he
can enjoy his repast; a very good sign. But is he remaining long?'

'He is going soon, I hear.'

'He's a good boy. I could have taken to him myself, and not dreaded a
worrying. There 's this difference between you and me, though, my Aminta;
one of us has the fireplace prepared for what's-his-name--"passion." Kiss
me. How could you fancy you were going to have a woman for your friend
and keep hidden from her any one of the secrets that blush! and with
Paggy to aid! I am sure it means very little. Admiration for good
handwriting is--' a smile broke the sentence.

'You're astray, Isabella.'

'Not I, dear, I'm too fond of you.'

'You read what is not.'

'What is not yet written, you mean.'

'What never could be written.'

'I read what is in the blood, and comes out to me when I look. That lord
of yours should take to study you as I have done ever since I fell in
love with you. He 's not counselling himself well in keeping away.'

'Now you speak wisely,' said Aminta.

'Not a particle more wisely. And the reason is close at hand--see. You
are young, you attract--how could it be otherwise?--and you have
"passion" sleeping, and likely to wake with a spring whether roused or
not. In my observation good-man t'other fellow--the poet's friend--is
never long absent when the time is ripe--at least, not in places where we
gather together. Well, one is a buckler against the other: I don't say
with lovely Amy May,--with an honourable woman. But Aminta can smell
powder and grow more mettlesome. Who can look at you and be blind to
passion sleeping! The sight of you makes me dream of it--me, a woman,
cool as a wine-cellar or a well. So there's to help you to know yourself
and be on your guard. I know I'm not deceived, because I've fallen in
love with you, and no love can be without jealousy, so I have the needle
in my breast, that points at any one who holds a bit of you. Kind of
sympathetic needle to the magnet behind anything. You'll know it, if you
don't now. I should have felt the thing without the aid of Paggy. So,
then, imagine all my nonsense unsaid, and squeeze a drop or two of 'sirop
de bon conseil' out of it, as if it were your own wise meditations.' The
rest of Mrs. Lawrence's discourse was a swallow's wing skimming the city
stream. She departed, and Aminta was left to beat at her heart and ask
whether it had a secret.

But if there was one, the secret was out, and must have another name. It
had been a secret for her until she heard her friend speak those
pin-points that pricked her heart, and sent the blood coursing over her
face, like a betrayal, so like as to resemble a burning confession.

But if this confessed the truth, she was the insanest of women. No woman
could be surer that she had her wits. She had come to see things,
previously mysteries, with surprising clearness. As, for example, that
passion was part of her nature; therefore her very life, lying tranced.
She certainly could not love without passion such an abandonment was the
sole justification of love in a woman standing where she stood. And now
for the first time she saw her exact position before the world; and she
saw some way into her lord: saw that he nursed a wound, extracted balm
from anything enabling him to show the world how he despised it, and
undesigningly immolated her for the petty gratification.

It could not, in consequence, be the truth. To bear what she had borne
she must be a passionless woman; and she was glad of her present safety
in thinking it. Once it was absolutely true. She swam away to the
golden-circled Island of Once; landed, and dwelt there solitarily and
blissfully, looking forward to Sunday's walk round the park, looking back
on it. Proudly she could tell herself that her dreams of the Prince of
the island had not been illusions as far as he was concerned; for he had
a great soul. He did not aim at a tawdry glory. He was a loss to our
army--no loss to his country or the world. A woman might clasp her
feeling of pride in having foreseen distinction for him; and a little,
too, in distinguishing now the true individual distinction from the
feathered uniform vulgar. Where the girl's dreams had proved illusions,
she beheld in a title and luxuries, in a loveless marriage.

That was perilous ground. Still it taught her to see that the substantial
is the dust; and passion not being active, she could reflect. After a
series of penetrative flashes, flattering to her intelligence the more
startling they were, reflection was exhausted. She sank on her nature's
desire to join or witness agonistic incidents, shocks, wrestlings, the
adventures which are brilliant air to sanguine energies. Imagination shot
tap, and whirled the circle of a succession of them; and she had a
companion and leader, unfeatured, reverently obeyed, accepted as not to
be known, not to be guessed at, in the deepest hooded inmost of her being
speechlessly divined.

The sudden result of Aminta's turmoil was a determination that she must
look on Steignton. And what was to be gained by that? She had no idea.
And how had she stopped her imaginative flight with the thought of
looking on Steignton? All she could tell was, that it would close a
volume. She could not say why the volume must be closed.

Her orders for the journey down to Steignton were prompt. Mrs. Pagnell
had an engagement at the house of Lady Staines for the next day to meet
titles and celebrities, and it precluded her comprehension of the
project. She begged to have the journey postponed. She had pledged her
word, she said.

'To Mr. Morsfield?' said Aminta.

Her aunt was astounded.

'I did tell him we should be there, my dear.' 'He appears to have a
pleasure in meeting you.' 'He is one of the real gentlemen of the land.'

'You correspond with him?'

'I may not be the only one.'

'Foolish aunty! How can you speak to me in that senseless way?' cried
Aminta. 'You know the schemer he is, and that I have no protection from
his advances unless I run the risk of bloodshed.'

'My dear Aminta, whenever I go into society, and he is present, I know I
shall not be laughed at, or fall into that pit of one of their dead
silences, worse for me to bear than titters and faces. It is their way of
letting one feel they are of birth above us. Mr. Morsfield--purer blood
than many of their highest titles--is always polite, always deferential;
he helps me to feel I am not quite out of my element in the sphere I
prefer. We shall be travelling alone?'

'Have you any fear?'

'Not if nothing happens. Might we not ask that Mr. Weyburn?'

'He has much work to do. He will not long be here. He is absent to-day.'

Mrs. Pagnell remarked: 'I must say he earns his money easily.'

Aminta had softened herself with the allusion to the shortness of his
time with them. Her aunt's coarse hint, and the thought of his loss, and
the banishment it would be to her all the way to Steignton, checked a
sharp retort she could have uttered, but made it necessary to hide her
eyes from sight. She went to her bedroom, and flung herself on the bed.
Even so little as an unspoken defence of him shook her to floods of
tears.




CHAPTER XVI

ALONG TWO ROADS TO STEIGNTON

Unaccountable resolutions, if impromptu and springing from the female
breast, are popularly taken for caprices; and even when they divert the
current of a history, and all the more when they are very small matters
producing a memorable crisis. In this way does a lazy world consign
discussion to silence with the cynical closure. Man's hoary shrug at a
whimsy sex is the reading of his enigma still.

But ask if she has the ordinary pumping heart in that riddle of a breast:
and then, as the organ cannot avoid pursuit, we may get hold of it, and
succeed in spelling out that she is consequent, in her fashion. She is a
creature of the apparent moods and shifts and tempers only because she is
kept in narrow confines, resembling, if you like, a wild cat caged.
Aminta's journey down to Steignton turned the course of other fortunes
besides her own; and she disdained the minor adventure it was, while
dreaming it important; and she determined eagerly on going, without
wanting to go; and it was neither from a sense of duty nor in a spirit of
contrariety that she went. Nevertheless, with her heart in hand, her
movements are traceably as rational as a soldier's before the enemy or a
trader's matching his customer.

The wish to look on Steignton had been spoken or sighed for during long
years between Aminta and her aunt, until finally shame and anger clinched
the subject. To look on Steignton for once was now Aminta's phrasing of
her sudden resolve; it appeared as a holiday relief from recent worries,
and it was an expedition with an aim, though she had but the coldest
curiosity to see the place, and felt alien to it. Yet the thought, never
to have seen Steignton! roused phantoms of dead wishes to drive the
strange engine she was, faster than the living would have done. Her
reason for haste was rationally founded on the suddenness of her resolve,
which, seeing that she could not say she desired to go, seemed to come of
an external admonition; and it counselled quick movements, lest her
inspired obedience to the prompting should as abruptly breathe itself
out. 'And in that case I shall never have seen Steignton at all,' she
said, with perfect calmness, and did not attempt to sound her meaning.

She did know that she was a magazine of a great storage of powder. It
banked inoffensively dry. She had forgiven her lord, owning the real
nobleman he was in courtesy to women, whom his inherited ideas of them so
quaintly minimized and reduced to pretty insect or tricky reptile. They,
too, had the choice of being ultimately the one or the other in fact; the
latter most likely.

If, however, she had forgiven her lord, the shattering of their union was
the cost of forgiveness. In letting him stand high, as the lofty man she
had originally worshipped, she separated herself from him, to feel that
the humble she was of a different element, as a running water at a
mountain's base. They are one in the landscape; they are far from one in
reality. Aminta's pride of being chafed at the yoke of marriage.

Her aunt was directed to prepare for a start at an early hour the next
morning. Mrs. Pagnell wrote at her desk, and fussed, and ordered the
posting chariot, and bewailed herself submissively; for it was the
Countess of Ormont speaking when Aminta delivered commands, and the only
grievance she dared to mutter was 'the unexpectedness.' Her letters
having been despatched, she was amazed in the late evening to hear Aminta
give the footman orders for the chariot to be ready at the door an hour
earlier than the hour previously appointed. She remonstrated. Aminta
simply observed that it would cause less inconvenience to all parties. A
suspicion of her aunt's proceedings was confirmed by the good woman's
flustered state. She refrained from smiling.

She would have mustered courage to invite Matthew Weyburn as her escort,
if he had been at hand. He was attending to his affairs with
lawyers--mainly with his friend Mr. Abner. She studied map and gazetteer
till late into the night. Giving her orders to the postillion on the
pavement in the morning, she named a South-westerly direction out of
London, and after entering the chariot, she received a case from one of
the footmen.

'What is that, my dear?' said Mrs. Pagnell.

Aminta unlocked and laid it open. A pair of pistols met Mrs. Pagnell's
gaze.

'We shan't be in need of those things?' the lady said anxiously.

'One never knows, on the road, aunt.'

'Loaded? You wouldn't hesitate to fire; I'm sure.'

'At Mr. Morsfield himself, if he attempted to stop me.'

Mrs. Pagnell withdrew into her astonishment, and presently asked, in a
tone of some indignation: 'Why did you mention Mr. Morsfield, Aminta?'

'Did you not write to him yesterday afternoon, aunt?'

'You read the addresses on my letters!'

'Did you not supply him with our proposed route and the time for
starting?'

'Pistols!' exclaimed Mrs. Pagnell. 'One would fancy you think we are in
the middle of the last century. Mr. Morsfield is a gentleman, not a
highwayman.'

'He gives the impression of his being a madman.'

'The real madman is your wedded husband, Aminta, if wedding it was!'

It was too surely so, in Aminta's mind. She tried, by looking out of the
window, to forget her companion. The dullness of the roads and streets
opening away to flat fields combined with the postillion's unvarying jog
to sicken her thoughts over the exile from London she was undergoing, and
the chance that Matthew Weyburn might call at a vacant house next day, to
announce his term of service to the earl, whom he had said he much wanted
to see. He said it in his sharp manner when there was decision behind it.
Several times after contemplating the end of her journey, and not
perceiving any spot of pleasure ahead, an emotion urged her to turn back;
for the young are acutely reasoning when their breasts advise them to
quit a road where no pleasure beckons.

Unlike Matthew Weyburn, the tiptoe sparkle of a happy mind did not leap
from her at wayside scenes, a sweep of grass, distant hills, clouds in
flight. She required, since she suffered, the positive of events or
blessings to kindle her glow.

Matthew Weyburn might call at the house. Would he be disappointed? He had
preserved her letters of the old school-days. She had burnt his. But she
had not burnt the letters of Mr. Morsfield; and she cared nothing for
that man. Assuredly she merited the stigma branding women as
crack-brained. Yet she was not one of the fools; she could govern a
household, and she liked work, she had the capacity for devotedness. So,
therefore, she was a woman perverted by her position, and she shook her
bonds in revolt from marriage. Imagining a fall down some suddenly spied
chasm of her nature, she had a sisterly feeling for the women named
sinful. At the same time, reflecting that they are sinful only with the
sinful, she knelt thankfully at the feet of the man who had saved her
from such danger. Tears threatened. They were a poor atonement for the
burning of his younger letters. But not he--she was the sufferer, and she
whipped up a sensation of wincing at the flames they fell to, and at
their void of existence, committing sentimental idiocies worthy of a
lovesick girl, consciously to escape the ominous thought, which her
woman's perception had sown in her, that he too chafed at a marriage no
marriage: was true in fidelity, not true through infidelity, as she had
come to be. The thought implied misery for both. She entered a black
desolation, with the prayer that he might not be involved, for his own
sake: partly also on behalf of the sustaining picture the young
schoolmaster at his task, merry among his dear boys, to trim and point
them body and mind for their business in the world, painted for her a
weariful prospect of the life she must henceforth drag along.

Is a woman of the plain wits common to numbers ever deceived in her
perception of a man's feelings for her? Let her first question herself
whether she respects him. If she does not, her judgement will go easily
astray, intuition and observation are equally at fault, she has no key;
he has charmed her blood, that is all. But if she respects him, she
cannot be deceived; respect is her embrace of a man's character. Aminta's
vision was clear. She had therefore to juggle with the fact revealed,
that she might keep her heart from rushing out; and the process was a
disintegration of her feminine principle of docility under the world's
decrees. At each pause of her mental activity she was hurled against the
state of marriage. Compassion for her blameless fellow in misery brought
a deluge to sweep away institutions and landmarks.

But supposing the blest worst to happen, what exchange had she to bestow?
Her beauty? She was reputed beautiful. It had made a madman of one man;
and in her poverty of endowments to be generous with, she hovered over
Mr. Morsfield like a cruel vampire, for the certification that she had a
much-prized gift to bestow upon his rival.

But supposing it: she would then be no longer in the shiny garden of the
flowers of wealth; and how little does beauty weigh as all aid to an
active worker in the serious fighting world! She would be a kind of
potted rose-tree under his arm, of which he must eventually tire.

A very cold moment came, when it seemed that even the above supposition,
in the case of a woman who has been married, is shameful to her, a sin
against her lover, and should be obliterated under floods of scarlet.
For, if she has pride, she withers to think of pushing the most noble of
men upon his generosity. And, further, if he is not delicately
scrupulous, is there not something wanting in him? The very cold wave
passed, leaving the sentence: better dream of being plain friends.

Mrs. Pagnell had been quietly chewing her cud of the sullens, as was the
way with her after a snub. She now resumed her gossip of the naughty
world she knelt to and expected to see some day stricken by a bolt from
overhead; containing, as it did, such wicked members as that really
indefensible brazen Mrs. Amy May, who was only the daughter of a half-pay
naval captain, and that Marquis of Collestou, who would, they say,
decorate her with his title to-morrow, if her husband were but somewhere
else. She spread all sorts of report, about Mr. Morsfield, and he was
honour itself in his reserve about her. 'Depend upon it, Aminta--he was
not more than a boy then, and they say she aimed at her enfranchisement
by plotting the collision, for his Yorkshire revenues are immense, and he
is, you know, skilful in the use of arms, and Captain May has no
resources whatever: penury! no one cares to speculate how they
contrive!--but while that dreadful duelling--and my lord as bad as any in
his day-exists, depend upon it, an unscrupulous good-looking woman has as
many lives for her look of an eye or lift of a finger as a throned
Ottoman Turk on his divan.'

Aminta wished to dream. She gave her aunt a second dose, and the lady
relapsed again.

Power to dream had gone. She set herself to look at roadside things,
cottage gardens, old housewives in doorways, gaffer goodman meeting his
crony on the path, groups of boys and girls. She would take the girls,
Matthew Weyburn the boys. She had lessons to give to girls, she had
sympathy, pity, anticipation. That would be a life of happy service. It
might be a fruitful trial of the system he proposed, to keep the boys and
girls in company as much as possible, both at lessons and at games. His
was the larger view. Her lord's view appeared similar to that of her
aunt's 'throned Ottoman Turk on his divan.' Matthew Weyburn believed in
the bettering of the world; Lord Ormont had no belief like it.

Presently Mrs. Pagnell returned to the charge, and once more she was
nipped, and irritated to declare she had never known her niece's temper
so provoking. Aminta was launching a dream of a lass she had seen in a
field, near a white hawthorn, standing upright, her left arm aloft round
the pole of a rake, the rim of her bonnet tipped on her forehead; an
attitude of a rustic.

Britannia with helmet heeling at dignity. The girl's eyes hung to the
passing chariot, without movement of her head. It was Aminta who looked
back, and she saw the girl looking away. Among the superior dames and
damsels she had seen, there was not one to match that figure for stately
air, gallant ease, and splendour of pose. Matthew Weyburn would have
admired the girl. Aminta did better than envy, she cast off the last
vestiges of her bitter ambition to be a fine lady, and winged into the
bosom of the girl, and not shyly said 'yes' to Matthew Weyburn, and to
herself, deep in herself: 'A maid has no need to be shy.' Hardly
blushing, she walks on into the new life beside him, and hears him say:
'I in my way, you in yours; we are equals, the stronger for being
equals,' and she quite agrees, and she gives him the fuller heart for his
not requiring her to be absorbed--she is the braver mate for him. Does
not that read his meaning? Happiest of the girls of earth, she has
divined it at once, from never having had the bitter ambition to be a
slave, that she might wear rich tissues; and let herself be fettered,
that she might loll in idleness; lose a soul to win a title; escape
commonplace to discover it ghastlier under cloth of gold, and the animal
crowned, adored, fattened, utterly served, in the class called by consent
of human society the Upper.

Reason whispered a reminder of facts to her.

'But I am not the Countess of Ormont!' she said. She felt herself the
girl, her sensations were so intensely simple.

Proceeding to an argument, that the earl did not regard her as the
Countess of Ormont, or the ceremony at the British Embassy as one serious
and binding, she pushed her reason too far: sweet delusion waned. She
waited for some fresh scene to revive it.

Aminta sat unwittingly weaving her destiny.

While she was thus engaged, a carriage was rolling on the more westerly
road down to Steignton. Seated in it were Lady Charlotte Eglett and
Matthew Weyburn. They had met at Arthur Abner's office the previous day.
She went there straight from Lord Ormont's house-agent and upholsterer,
to have a queer bit of thunderous news confirmed, that her brother was
down at Steignton, refurnishing the house, and not for letting. She was
excited: she treated Arthur Abner's closed-volume reticence as a
corroboration of the house-agent's report, and hearing Weyburn speak of
his anxiety to see the earl immediately, in order to get release from his
duties, proposed a seat in her carriage; for down Steignton way she meant
to go, if only as excuse for a view of the old place. She kept asking
what Lord Ormont wanted down at Steignton refurnishing the house, and not
to let it! Her evasions of answers that, plain speculation would supply
were quaint. 'He hasn't my feeling for Steignton. He could let it--I
couldn't. Sacrilege to me to have a tenant in my old home where I was
born. He's furnishing to raise his rent. His country won't give him
anything to do, so he turns miser. That's my brother Rowsley's way of
taking on old age.'

Her brother Rowsley might also be showing another sign of his calamitous
condition. She said to Weyburn, in the carriage, that her brother Rowsley
might like having his hair clipped by the Philistine woman; which is one
of the ways of strong men to confess themselves ageing. 'Not,' said she,
with her usual keen justness 'not that I've, a word against Delilah. I
look upon her as a patriot; she dallied and she used the scissors on
behalf of her people. She wasn't bound to Samson in honour,--liked a
strong man, probably enough. She proved she liked her country better. The
Jews wrote the story of it, so there she stands for posterity to pelt
her, poor wretch.'

'A tolerably good analogy for the story of men and women generally,' said
Weyburn.

'Ah, well, you've a right to talk; you don't run miauling about women. It
's easy to be squashy on that subject. As for the Jews, I don't go by
their history, but now they 're down I don't side with the Philistines,
or Christians. They 're good citizens, and they 've got Samson in the
brain, too. That comes of persecution, a hard education. They beat the
world by counting in the head. That 's because they 've learnt the value
of fractions. Napoleon knew it in war, when he looked to the boots and
great-coats of his men; those were his fractions. Lord Ormont thinks he
had too hard-and-fast a system for the battle-field.'

'A greater strategist than tactician, my lady? It may be,' said Weyburn,
smiling at her skips.

'Massing his cannon to make a big hole for his cavalry, my brother says;
and weeding his infantry for the Imperial Guard he postponed the moment
to use.'

'At Moskowa?'

'Waterloo. I believe Lord Ormont would--there! his country 's lost him,
and chose it. They 'll have their day for repentance yet. What a rapture
to have a thousand horsemen following you! I suppose there never was a
man worthy of the name who roared to be a woman. I know I could have
shrieked half my life through to have been born male. It 's no matter
now. When we come to this hateful old age, we meet: no, we 're no sex
then--we 're dry sticks. I 'll tell you: my Olmer doctor--that 's an
impudent fellow who rode by staring into my carriage. The window's down.
He could see without pushing his hat in.'

Weyburn looked out after a man cantering on.

'A Mr. Morsfield,' he said. 'I thought it was he when I saw him go by.
I've met him at the fencing-rooms. He 's one of the violent fencers, good
for making his point, if one funks an attack.'

'That man Morsfield, is it? I wonder what he's doing on the road here. He
goes over London boasting--hum, nothing to me. But he 'll find Lord
Ormont's arm can protect a poor woman, whatever she is. He'd have had it
before, only Lord Ormont shuns a scandal. I was telling you, my Olmer
doctor forbade horse-riding, and my husband raised a noise like one of my
turkeycocks on the wing; so I 've given up the saddle, to quiet him. I
guessed. I went yesterday morning to my London physician. He sounded me,
pushed out his mouth and pulled down his nose, recommended avoidance of
excitement. "Is it heart?" I said. He said it was heart. That was the
best thing an old woman could hear. He said, when he saw I wasn't afraid,
it was likely to be quick; no doctors, no nurses and daily bulletins for
inquirers, but just the whites of the eyes, the laying-out, the
undertaker, and the family-vault. That's one reason why I want to see
Steignton before the blow that may fall any day, whether my brother
Rowsley's there or no. But that Olmer doctor of mine, Causitt, Peter
Causitt, shall pay me for being a liar or else an ignoramus when I told
him he was to tell me bluntly the nature of my disease.'

A horseman, in whom they recognized Mr. Morsfield, passed, clattering on
the road behind them.

'Some woman here about,' Lady Charlotte muttered. Weyburn saw him joined
by a cavalier, and the two consulted and pointed whips right and left.




CHAPTER XVII

LADY CHARLOTTE'S TRIUMPH

One of the days of sovereign splendour in England was riding down the
heavens, and drawing the royal mantle of the gold-fringed shadows over
plain and wavy turf, blue water and woods of the country round Steignton.
A white mansion shone to a length of oblong lake that held the sun-ball
suffused in mild yellow.

'There's the place,' Lady Charlotte said to Weyburn, as they had view of
it at a turn of the park. She said to herself--where I was born and bred!
and her sight gloated momentarily on the house and side avenues, a great
plane standing to the right of the house, the sparkle of a little river
running near; all the scenes she knew, all young and lively. She sprang
on her seat for a horse beneath her, and said, 'But this is healthy
excitement,' as in reply to her London physician's remonstrances. 'And
there's my brother Rowsley, talking to one of the keepers,' she cried.
'You see Lord Ormont? I can see a mile. Sight doesn't fail with me. He 's
insisting. 'Ware poachers when Rowsley's on his ground! You smell the air
here? Nobody dies round about Steignton. Their legs wear out and they lie
down to rest them. It 's the finest air in the world. Now look, the third
window left of the porch, first floor. That was my room before I married.
Strangers have been here and called the place home. It can never be home
to any but me and Rowsley. He sees the carriage. He little thinks! He's
dressed in his white corduroy and knee-breeches. Age! he won't know age
till he's ninety. Here he comes marching. He can't bear surprises. I'll
wave my hand and call.'

She called his name.

In a few strides he was at the carriage window. 'You, Charlotte?'

'Home again, Rowsley! Bring down your eyebrows, and let me hear you're
glad I 've come.'

'What made you expect you would find me here?'

'Anything-cats on the tiles at night. You can't keep a secret from me.
Here's Mr. Weyburn, good enough to be my escort. I 'll get out.'

She alighted, scorning help; Weyburn at her heels. The earl nodded to him
politely and not cordially. He was hardly cordial to Lady Charlotte.

That had no effect on her. 'A glorious day for Steignton,' she said. 'Ah,
there's the Buridon group of beeches; grander trees than grow at Buridon.
Old timber now. I knew them slim as demoiselles. Where 's the ash? We had
a splendid ash on the west side.'

'Dead and cut down long since,' replied the earl.

'So we go!'

She bent her steps to the spot: a grass-covered heave of the soil.

'Dear old tree!' she said, in a music of elegy: and to Weyburn: 'Looks
like a stump of an arm lopped off a shoulder in bandages. Nature does it
so. All the tenants doing well, Rowsley?'

'About the same amount of trouble with them.'

'Ours at Olmer get worse.'

'It's a process for the extirpation of the landlords.'

'Then down goes the country.'

'They 've got their case, their papers tell us.'

'I know they have; but we've got the soil, and we'll make a, fight of
it.'

'They can fight too, they say.'

'I should be sorry to think they couldn't if they're Englishmen.'

She spoke so like his old Charlotte of the younger days that her brother
partly laughed.

'Parliamentary fighting 's not much to your taste or mine. They 've lost
their stomach for any other. The battle they enjoy is the battle that
goes for the majority. Gauge their valour by that.'

'To be sure,' said his responsive sister. She changed her note. 'But what
I say is, let the nobles keep together and stick to their class. There's
nothing to fear then. They must marry among themselves, think of the
blood: it's their first duty. Or better a peasant girl! Middle courses
dilute it to the stuff in a publican's tankard. It 's an adulterous beast
who thinks of mixing old wine with anything.'

'Hulloa!' said the earl; and she drew up.

'You'll have me here till over to-morrow, Rowsley, so that I may have one
clear day at Steignton?'

He bowed. 'You will choose your room. Mr. Weyburn is welcome.'

Weyburn stated the purport of his visit, and was allowed to name an early
day for the end of his term of service.

Entering the house, Lady Charlotte glanced at the armour and stag
branches decorating corners of the hall, and straightway laid her head
forward, pushing after it in the direction of the drawing room. She went
in, stood for a minute, and came out. Her mouth was hard shut.

At dinner she had tales of uxorious men, of men who married mistresses,
of the fearful incubus the vulgar family of a woman of the inferior
classes ever must be; and her animadversions were strong in the matter of
gew-gaw modern furniture. The earl submitted to hear.

She was, however, keenly attentive whenever he proffered any item of
information touching Steignton. After dinner Weyburn strolled to the
points of view she cited as excellent for different aspects of her old
home.

He found her waiting to hear his laudation when he came back; and in the
early morning she was on the terrace, impatient to lead him down to the
lake. There, at the boat-house, she commanded him to loosen a skiff and
give her a paddle. Between exclamations, designed to waken louder from
him, and not so successful as her cormorant hunger for praise of
Steignton required, she plied him to confirm with his opinion an opinion
that her reasoning mind had almost formed in the close neighbourhood of
the beloved and honoured person providing it; for abstract ideas were
unknown to her. She put it, however, as in the abstract:--

'How is it we meet people brave as lions before an enemy, and rank
cowards where there's a botheration among their friends at home? And tell
me, too, if you've thought the thing over, what's the meaning of this? I
've met men in high places, and they've risen to distinction by their own
efforts, and they head the nation. Right enough, you'd say. Well, I talk
with them, and I find they've left their brains on the ladder that led
them up; they've only the ideas of their grandfather on general subjects.
I come across a common peasant or craftsman, and he down there has a mind
more open--he's wiser in his intelligence than his rulers and lawgivers
up above him. He understands what I say, and I learn from him. I don't
learn much from our senators, or great lawyers, great doctors,
professors, members of governing bodies--that lot. Policy seems to
petrify their minds when they 've got on an eminence. Now explain it, if
you can.'

'Responsibility has a certain effect on them, no doubt,' said Weyburn.
'Eminent station among men doesn't give a larger outlook. Most of them
confine their observation to their supports. It happens to be one of the
questions I have thought over. Here in England, and particularly on a
fortnight's run in the lowlands of Scotland once, I have, like you, my
lady, come now and then across the people we call common, men and women,
old wayside men especially; slow-minded, but hard in their grasp of
facts, and ready to learn, and logical, large in their ideas, though
going a roundabout way to express them. They were at the bottom of
wisdom, for they had in their heads the delicate sense of justice, upon
which wisdom is founded. That is what their rulers lack. Unless we have
the sense of justice abroad like a common air, there 's no peace, and no
steady advance. But these humble people had it. They reasoned from it,
and came to sound conclusions. I felt them to be my superiors. On the
other hand, I have not felt the same with "our senators, rulers, and
lawgivers." They are for the most part deficient in the liberal mind.'

'Ha! good, so far. How do you account for it?' said Lady Charlotte.

'I read it in this way: that the world being such as it is at present,
demanding and rewarding with honours and pay special services, the men
called great, who have risen to distinction, are not men of brains, but
the men of aptitudes. These men of aptitudes have a poor conception of
the facts of life to meet the necessities of modern expansion. They are
serviceable in departments. They go as they are driven, or they resist.
In either case, they explain how it is that we have a world moving so
sluggishly. They are not the men of brains, the men of insight and
outlook. Often enough they are foes of the men of brains.'

'Aptitudes; yes, that flashes a light into me,' said Lady Charlotte. 'I
see it better. It helps to some comprehension of their muddle. A man may
be a first-rate soldier, doctor, banker--as we call the usurer
now-a-days--or brewer, orator, anything that leads up to a figure-head,
and prove a foolish fellow if you sound him. I 've thought something like
it, but wanted the word. They say themselves, "Get to know, and you see
with what little wisdom the world is governed!" You explain how it is. I
shall carry "aptitudes" away.'

She looked straight at Weyburn. 'If I were a younger woman I could kiss
you for it.'

He bowed to her very gratefully.

'Remember, my lady, there's a good deal of the Reformer in that
definition.'

'I stick to my class. But they shall hear a true word when there's one
abroad, I can tell them. That reminds me--you ought to have asked; let me
tell you I'm friendly with the Rev. Mr. Hampton-Evey. We had a wrestle
for half an hour, and I threw him and helped him up, and he apologized
for tumbling, and I subscribed to one of his charities, and gave up about
the pew, but had an excuse for not sitting under the sermon. A poor good
creature. He 's got the aptitudes for his office. He won't do much to
save his Church. I knew another who had his aptitude for the classics,
and he has mounted. He was my tutor when I was a girl. He was fond of
declaiming passages from Lucian and Longus and Ovid. One day he was at it
with a piece out of Daphnis and Chloe, and I said, "Now translate." He
fetched a gurgle to say he couldn't, and I slapped his check. Will you
believe it? the man was indignant. I told him, if he would like to know
why I behaved in "that unmaidenly way," he had better apply at home. I
had no further intimations of his classical aptitudes; but he took me for
a cleverer pupil than I was. I hadn't a notion of the stuff he recited. I
read by his face. That was my aptitude--always has been. But think of the
donkeys parents are when they let a man have a chance of pouring his
barley-sugar and sulphur into the ears of a girl. Lots of girls have no
latent heckles and prickles to match his villany.--There's my brother
come back to breakfast from a round. You and I 'll have a drive before
lunch, and a ride or a stroll in the afternoon. There's a lot to see. I
mean you to get the whole place into your head. I 've ordered the
phaeton, and you shall take the whip, with me beside you. That's how my
husband and I spent three-quarters of our honeymoon.'

Each of the three breakfasted alone.

They met on the terrace. It was easily perceived that Lord Ormont stood
expecting an assault at any instant; prepared also to encounter and do
battle with his redoubtable sister. Only he wished to defer the
engagement. And he was magnanimous: he was in the right, she in the
wrong; he had no desire to grapple with her, fling and humiliate. The
Sphinx of Mrs. Pagnell had been communing with himself unwontedly during
the recent weeks.

What was the riddle of him? That, he did not read. But, expecting an
assault, and relieved by his sister Charlotte's departure with Weyburn,
he went to the drawing-room, where he had seen her sniff her strong
suspicions of a lady coming to throne it. Charlotte could believe that he
flouted the world with a beautiful young woman on his arm; she would not
believe him capable of doing that in his family home and native county;
so, then, her shrewd wits had nothing or little to learn. But her
vehement fighting against facts; her obstinate aristocratic prejudices,
which he shared; her stinger of a tongue: these in ebullition formed a
discomforting prospect. The battle might as well be conducted through the
post. Come it must!

Even her writing of the pointed truths she would deliver was an
unpleasant anticipation. His ears heated. Undoubtedly he could crush her.
Yet, supposing her to speak to his ears, she would say: 'You married a
young woman, and have been foiling and fooling her ever since, giving her
half a title to the name of wife, and allowing her in consequence to be
wholly disfigured before the world--your family naturally her chief
enemies, who would otherwise (Charlotte would proclaim it) have been her
friends. What! your intention was (one could hear Charlotte's voice) to
smack the world in the face, and you smacked your young wife's instead!'

His intention had been nothing of the sort. He had married, in a foreign
city, a young woman who adored him, whose features, manners, and carriage
of her person satisfied his exacting taste in the sex; and he had
intended to cast gossipy England over the rail and be a traveller for the
remainder of his days. And at the first she had acquiesced, tacitly
accepted it as part of the contract. He bore with the burden of an
intolerable aunt of hers for her sake. The two fell to work to conspire.
Aminta 'tired of travelling,' Aminta must have a London house. She
continually expressed a hope that 'she might set her eyes on Steignton
some early day.' In fact, she as good as confessed her scheme to plot for
the acknowledged position of Countess of Ormont in the English social
world. That was a distinct breach of the contract.

As to the babble of the London world about a 'very young wife,' he
scorned it completely, but it belonged to the calculation. 'A very
handsome young wife,' would lay commands on a sexagenarian vigilance
while adding to his physical glory. The latter he could forego among a
people he despised. It would, however, be an annoyance to stand
constantly hand upon sword-hilt. There was, besides, the conflict with
his redoubtable sister. He had no dread of it, in contemplation of the
necessity; he could crush his Charlotte. The objection was, that his
Aminta should be pressing him to do it. Examine the situation at present.
Aminta has all she needs--every luxury. Her title as Countess of Ormont
is not denied. Her husband justly refuses to put foot into English
society. She, choosing to go where she may be received, dissociates
herself from him, and he does not complain. She does complain. There is a
difference between the two.

He had always shunned the closer yoke with a woman because of these
vexatious dissensions. For not only are women incapable of practising,
they cannot comprehend magnanimity.

Lord Ormont's argumentative reverie to the above effect had been pursued
over and over. He knew that the country which broke his military career
and ridiculed his newspaper controversy was unforgiven by him. He did not
reflect on the consequences of such an unpardoning spirit in its
operation on his mind.

If he could but have passed the injury, he would ultimately--for his
claims of service were admitted--have had employment of some kind.
Inoccupation was poison to him; travel juggled with his malady of
restlessness; really, a compression of the warrior's natural forces. His
Aminta, pushed to it by the woman Pagnell, declined to help him in
softening the virulence of the disease. She would not travel; she would
fix in this London of theirs, and scheme to be hailed the accepted
Countess of Ormont. She manoeuvred; she threw him on the veteran
soldier's instinct, and it resulted spontaneously that he manoeuvred.

Hence their game of Pull, which occupied him a little, tickled him and
amused. The watching of her pretty infantile tactics amused him too much
to permit of a sidethought on the cruelty of the part he played. She had
every luxury, more than her station by right of birth would have
supplied.

But he was astonished to find that his Aminta proved herself clever,
though she had now and then said something pointed. She was in awe of
him: notwithstanding which, clearly she meant to win and pull him over.
He did not dislike her for it; she might use her weapons to play her
game; and that she should bewitch men--a, man like Morsfield--was not
wonderful. On the other hand, her conquest of Mrs. Lawrence Finchley
scored tellingly: that was unaccountably queer. What did Mrs. Lawrence
expect to gain? the sage lord asked. He had not known women devoid of a
positive practical object of their own when they bestirred themselves to
do a friendly deed.

Thanks to her conquest of Mrs. Lawrence, his Aminta was gaining
ground--daily she made an advance; insomuch that he had heard of himself
as harshly blamed in London for not having countenanced her recent and
rather imprudent move. In other words, whenever she gave a violent tug at
their game of Pull, he was expected to second it. But the world of these
English is too monstrously stupid in what it expects, for any of its
extravagances to be followed by interjections.

All the while he was trimming and rolling a field of armistice at
Steignton, where they could discuss the terms he had a right to dictate,
having yielded so far. Would she be satisfied with the rule of his
ancestral hall, and the dispensing of hospitalities to the county? No,
one may guess: no woman is ever satisfied. But she would have to
relinquish her game, counting her good round half of the honours.
Somewhat more, on the whole. Without beating, she certainly had
accomplished the miracle of bending him. To time and a wife it is no
disgrace for a man to bend. It is the form of submission of the bulrush
to the wind, of courtesy in the cavalier to a lady.

'Oh, here you are, Rowsley,' Lady Charlotte exclaimed at the drawing room
door. 'Well, and I don't like those Louis Quinze cabinets; and that
modern French mantelpiece clock is hideous. You seem to furnish in
downright contempt of the women you invite to sit in the room. Lord help
the wretched woman playing hostess in such a pinchbeck bric-a-brac shop,
if there were one! She 's spared, at all events.'

He stepped at slow march to one of the five windows. Lady Charlotte went
to another near by. She called to Weyburn--

'We had a regatta on that water when Lord Ormont came of age. I took an
oar in one of the boats, and we won a prize; and when I was landing I
didn't stride enough to the spring-plank, and plumped in.'

Some labourers of the estate passed in front.

Lord Ormont gave out a broken laugh. 'See those fellows walk! That 's the
raw material of the famous English infantry. They bend their knees
five-and-forty degrees for every stride; and when you drill them out of
that, they 're stiff as ramrods. I gymnasticized them in my regiment. I'd
have challenged any French regiment to out-walk or out-jump us, or any
crack Tyrolese Jagers to out-climb, though we were cavalry.'

'Yes, my lord, and exercised crack corps are wanted with us,' Weyburn
replied. 'The English authorities are adverse to it, but it 's against
nature--on the supposition that all Englishmen might enrol untrained in
Caesar's pet legion. Virgil shows knowledge of men when he says of the
row-boat straining in emulation, 'Possunt quia posse videntur.''

He talked on rapidly; he wondered that he did not hear Lady Charlotte
exclaim at what she must be seeing. From the nearest avenue a lady had
issued. She stood gazing at the house, erect--a gallant figure of a
woman--one hand holding her parasol, the other at her hip. He knew her.
She was a few paces ahead of Mrs. Pagnell, beside whom a gentleman
walked.

The cry came: 'It's that man Morsfield! Who brings that man Morsfield
here? He hunted me on the road; he seemed to be on the wrong scent. Who
are those women? Rowsley, are your grounds open every day of the week?
She threatens to come in!'

Lady Charlotte had noted that the foremost and younger of 'those women'
understood how to walk and how to dress to her shape and colour. She
inclined to think she was having to do with an intrepid foreign-bred
minx.

Aminta had been addressed by one of her companions, and had hastened
forward. It looked like the beginning of a run to enter the house.

Mrs. Pagnell ran after her. She ran cow-like.

The earl's gorge rose at the spectacle Charlotte was observing.

With Morsfield he could have settled accounts at any moment, despatching
Aminta to her chamber for an hour. He had, though he was offended, an
honourable guess that she had not of her free will travelled with the man
and brought him into the grounds. It was the presence of the intolerable
Pagnell under Charlotte's eyes which irritated him beyond the common
anger he felt at Aminta's pursuit of him right into Steignton. His mouth
locked. Lady Charlotte needed no speech from him for sign of the boiling;
she was too wary to speak while that went on.

He said to Weyburn, loud enough for his Charlotte to heir. 'Do me the
favour to go to the Countess of Ormont. Conduct her back to London. You
will say it is my command. Inform Mr. Morsfield, with my compliments, I
regret I have no weapons here. I understand him to complain of having to
wait. I shall be in town three days from this date.'

'My lord,' said Mr. Weyburn; and actually he did mean to supplicate. He
could imagine seeing Lord Ormont's eyebrows rising to alpine heights.

Lady Charlotte seized his arm.

'Go at once. Do as you are told. I'll have your portmanteau packed and
sent after you--the phaeton's out in the yard--to Rowsley, or Ashead, or
Dornton, wherever they put up. Now go, or we shall have hot work. Keep
your head on, and go.'

He went, without bowing.

Lady Charlotte rang for the footman.

The earl and she watched the scene on the sward below the terrace.

Aminta listened to Weyburn. Evidently there was no expostulation.

But it was otherwise with Mrs. Pagnell. She flung wild arms of a
semaphore signalling national events. She sprang before Aminta to stop
her retreat, and stamped and gibbed, for sign that she would not be
driven. She fell away to Mr. Morsfield, for simple hearing of her plaint.
He appeared emphatic. There was a passage between him and Weyburn.

'I suspect you've more than your match in young Weyburn, Mr. Morsfield,'
Lady Charlotte said, measuring them as they stood together. They turned
at last.

'You shall drive back to town with me, Rowsley,' said the fighting dame.

She breathed no hint of her triumph.




CHAPTER XVIII

A SCENE ON THE ROAD BACK

After refusing to quit the grounds of Steignton, in spite of the
proprietor, Mrs. Pagnell burst into an agitation to have them be at
speed, that they might 'shake the dust of the place from the soles of
their feet'; and she hurried past Aminta and Lord Ormont's insolent
emissary, carrying Mr. Morsfield beside her, perforce of a series of
imperiously-toned vacuous questions, to which he listened in rigid
politeness, with the ejaculation steaming off from time to time, 'A
scandal!'

He shot glances behind him.

Mrs. Pagnell was going too fast. She, however, world not hear of a halt,
and she was his main apology for being present; he was excruciatingly
attached to the horrid woman.

Weyburn spoke the commonplaces about regrets to Aminta.

'Believe me, it's long since I have been so happy,' she said.

She had come out of her stupefaction, and she wore no theatrical looks of
cheerfulness.

'I regret that you should be dragged away. But, if you say you do not
mind, it will be pleasant to me. I can excuse Lord Ormont's anger. I was
ignorant of his presence here. I thought him in Paris. I supposed the
place empty. I wished to see it once. I travelled as the niece of Mrs.
Pagnell. She is a little infatuated. . . . Mr. Morsfield heard of our
expedition through her. I changed the route. I was not in want of a
defender. I could have defended myself in case of need. We slept at
Ashead, two hours from Steignton. He and a friend accompanied us, not
with my consent. Lord Ormont could not have been aware of that. These
accidental circumstances happen. There may be pardonable intentions on
all sides.'

She smiled. Her looks were open, and her voice light and spirited; though
the natural dark rose-glow was absent from her olive cheeks.

Weyburn puzzled over the mystery of so volatile a treatment of a serious
matter, on the part of a woman whose feelings he had reason to know were
quick and deep. She might be acting, as women so cleverly do.

It could hardly be acting when she pointed to peeps of scenery, with a
just eye for landscape.

'You leave us for Switzerland very soon?' she said.

'The Reversion I have been expecting has fallen in, besides my
inheritance. My mother was not to see the school. But I shall not forget
her counsels. I can now make my purchase of the house and buildings, and
buy out my partner at the end of a year. My boys are jumping to start. I
had last week a letter from Emile.'

'Dear little Emile!'

'You like him?'

'I could use a warmer word. He knew me when I was a girl.'

She wound the strings of his heart suddenly tense, and they sang to their
quivering.

'You will let me hear of you, Mr. Weyburn?'

'I will write. Oh! certainly I will write, if I am told you are
interested in our doings, Lady Ormont.'

'I will let you know that I am.'

'I shall be happy in writing full reports.'

'Every detail, I beg. All concerning the school. Help me to feel I am a
boarder. I catch up an old sympathy I had for girls and boys. For boys!
any boys! the dear monkey boys! cherub monkeys! They are so funny. I am
sure I never have laughed as I did at Selina Collett's report, through
her brother, of the way the boys tried to take to my name; and their
sneezing at it, like a cat at a deceitful dish. "Aminta"--was that their
way?'

'Something--the young rascals!'

'But please repeat it as you heard them.'

'" Aminta."'

He subdued the mouthing.

'It didn't, offend me at all. It is one of my amusements to think of it.
But after a time they liked the name; and then how did they say it?'

He had the beloved Aminta on his lips.

He checked it, or the power to speak it failed. She drew in a sharp
breath.

'I hope your boys will have plenty of fun in them. They will have you for
a providence and a friend. I should wish to propose to visit your school
some day. You will keep me informed whether the school has vacancies. You
will, please, keep me regularly informed?'

She broke into sobs.

Weyburn talked on of the school, for a cover to the resuming of her
fallen mask, as he fancied it.

She soon recovered, all save a steady voice for converse, and begged him
to proceed, and spoke in the flow of the subject; but the quaver of her
tones was a cause of further melting. The tears poured, she could not
explain why, beyond assuring him that they were no sign of unhappiness.
Winds on the great waters against a strong tidal current beat up the wave
and shear and wing the spray, as in Aminta's bosom. Only she could know
that it was not her heart weeping, though she had grounds for a woman's
weeping. But she alone could be aware of her heart's running counter to
the tears.

Her agitation was untimely. Both Mrs. Pagnell and Mr. Morsfield observed
emotion at work. And who could wonder? A wife denied the admittance to
her husband's house by her husband! The most beautiful woman of her time
relentlessly humiliated, ordered to journey back the way she had come.

They had reached the gate of the park, and had turned.

'A scandal!'

Mr. Morsfield renewed his interjection vehemently, for an apology to his
politeness in breaking from Mrs. Pagnell.

Joining the lady, whose tears were of the nerves, he made offer of his
devotion in any shape; and she was again in the plight to which a
desperado can push a woman of the gentle kind. She had the fear of
provoking a collision if she reminded him, that despite her entreaties,
he had compelled her, seconded by her aunt as he had been, to submit to
his absurd protection on the walk across the park.

He seemed quite regardless of the mischief he had created; and,
reflecting upon how it served his purpose, he might well be. Intemperate
lover, of the ancient pattern, that he was, his aim to win the woman
acknowledged no obstacle in the means. Her pitiable position appealed to
the best of him; his inordinate desire of her aroused the worst. It was,
besides, an element of his coxcombry, that he should, in apeing the
utterly inconsiderate, rush swiftly to impersonate it when his passions
were cast on a die.

Weyburn he ignored as a stranger, an intruder, an inferior.

Aminta's chariot was at the gate.

She had to resign herself to the chances of a clash of men, and, as there
were two to one, she requested help of Weyburn's hand, that he might be
near her.

A mounted gentleman, smelling parasite in his bearing, held the bridle of
Morsfield's horse.

The ladies having entered the chariot, Morsfield sprang to the saddle,
and said: 'You, sir, had better stretch your legs to the inn.'

'There is room for you, Mr. Weyburn,' said Aminta.

Mrs. Pagnell puffed.

'I can't think we've room, my dear. I want that bit of seat in front for
my feet.'

Morsfield kicked at his horse's flanks, and between Weyburn and the
chariot step, cried: 'Back, sir!'

His reins were seized; the horse reared, the unexpected occurred.

Weyburn shouted 'Off!' to the postillion, and jumped in.

Morsfield was left to the shaking of a dusty coat, while the chariot
rolled its gentle course down the leafy lane into the high-road.

His friend had seized the horse's bridle-reins; and he remarked: 'I say,
Dolf, we don't prosper to-day.'

'He pays for it!' said Morsfield, foot in stirrup. 'You'll take him and
trounce him at the inn. I don't fight with servants. Better game. One
thing, Cumnock: the fellow's clever at the foils.'

'Foils to the devil! If I tackle the fellow, it won't be with the
buttons. But how has he pushed in?'

Morsfield reported 'the scandal!' in sharp headings.

'Turned her away. Won't have her enter his house--grandest woman in all
England! Sent his dog to guard. Think of it for an insult! It's insult
upon insult. I 've done my utmost to fire his marrow. I did myself a good
turn by following her up and entering that park with her. I shall
succeed; there 's a look of it. All I have--my life--is that woman's. I
never knew what this devil's torture was before I saw her.'

His friend was concerned for his veracity. 'Amy!'

'A common spotted snake. She caught me young, and she didn't carry me
off, as I mean to carry off this glory of her sex--she is: you've seen
her!--and free her, and devote every minute of the rest of my days to
her. I say I must win the woman if I stop at nothing, or I perish; and if
it 's a failure, exit 's my road. I 've watched every atom she touched in
a room, and would have heaped gold to have the chairs, tables, cups,
carpets, mine. I have two short letters written with her hand. I 'd give
two of my estates for two more. If I were a beggar, and kept them, I
should be rich. Relieve me of that dog, and I toss you a thousand-pound
note, and thank you from my soul, Cumnock. You know what hangs on it.
Spur, you dolt, or she'll be out of sight.'

They cantered upon application of the spur. Captain Cumnock was an
impecunious fearless rascal, therefore a parasite and a bully duellist; a
thick-built north-countryman; a burly ape of the ultra-elegant; hunter,
gamester, hard-drinker, man of pleasure. His known readiness to fight was
his trump-card at a period when the declining custom of the duel taxed
men's courage to brave the law and the Puritan in the interests of a
privileged and menaced aristocracy. An incident like the present was the
passion in the dice-box to Cumnock. Morsfield was of the order of men who
can be generous up to the pitch of their desires. Consequently, the world
accounted him open-handed and devoted when enamoured. Few men liked him;
he was a hero with some women. The women he trampled on; the men he
despised. To the lady of his choice he sincerely offered his fortune and
his life for the enjoyment of her favour. His ostentation and his
offensive daring combined the characteristics of the peacock and the
hawk. Always near upon madness, there were occasions when he could
eclipse the insane. He had a ringing renown in his class.

Chariot and horsemen arrived at the Roebuck Arms, at the centre of the
small town of Ashead, on the line from Steignton through Rowsley. The
pair of cavaliers dismounted and hustled Weyburn in assisting the ladies
to descend.

The ladies entered the inn; they declined refection of any sort. They had
biscuits and sweetmeats, and looked forward to tea at a farther stage.
Captain Cumnock stooped to their verdict on themselves, with marvel at
the quantity of flesh they managed to put on their bones from such
dieting.

'By your courtesy, sir, a word with you in the inn yard, if you please,'
he said to Weyburn in the inn-porch.

Weyburn answered, 'Half a minute,' and was informed that it was exactly
the amount of time the captain could afford to wait.

Weyburn had seen the Steignton phaeton and coachman in the earl's
light-blue livery. It was at his orders, he heard. He told the coachman
to expect hire shortly, and he followed the captain, with a heavy trifle
of suspicion that some brew was at work. He said to Aminta in the
passage--

'You have your settlement with the innkeeper. Don't, I beg, step into the
chariot till you see me.'

'Anything?' said she.

'Only prudence.'

'Our posting horses will be harnessed soon, I hope. I burn to get away.'

Mrs. Pagnell paid the bill at the bar of the inn. Morsfield poured out
for the injured countess or no-countess a dram of the brandy of passion,
under the breath.

'Deny that you singled me once for your esteem. Hardest-hearted of the
women of earth and dearest! deny that you gave me reason to hope--and
now! I have ridden in your track all this way for the sight of you, as
you know, and you kill me with frost. Yes, I rejoice that we were seen
together. Look on me. I swear I perish for one look of kindness. You have
been shamefully used, madam.'

'It seems to me I am being so,' said Aminta, cutting herself loose from
the man of the close eyes that wavered as they shot the dart.

Her action was too decided for him to follow her up under the observation
of the inn windows and a staring street.

Mrs. Pagnell came out. She went boldly to Morsfield and they conferred.
He was led by her to the chariot, where she pointed to a small padded
slab of a seat back to the horses. Turning to the bar, he said:--My
friend will look to my horse. Both want watering and a bucketful.
There!'--he threw silver--'I have to protect the ladies.'

Aminta was at the chariot door talking to her aunt inside.

'But I say I have been insulted--is the word--more than enough by Lord
Ormont to-day!' Mrs. Pagnell exclaimed; 'and I won't, I positively refuse
to ride up to London with any servant of his. It's quite sufficient that
it's his servant. I'm not titled, but I 'in not quite dirt. Mr. Morsfield
kindly offers his protection, and I accept. He is company.'

Nodding and smirking at Morsfield's approach, she entreated Aminta to
step up and in, for the horses were coming out of the yard.

Aminta looked round. Weyburn was perceived; and Morsfield's features
cramped at thought of a hitch in the plot.

'Possession,' Mrs. Pagnell murmured significantly. She patted the seat.
Morsfield sprang to Weyburn's place.

That was witnessed by Aminta and Weyburn. She stepped to consult him. He
said to the earl's coachman--a young fellow with a bright eye for
orders--

'Drive as fast as you can pelt for Dornton. I'm doing my lord's
commands.'

'Trust yourself to me, madam.' His hand stretched for Aminta to mount.
She took it without a word and climbed to the seat. A clatter of hoofs
rang out with the crack of the whip. They were away behind a pair of
steppers that could go the pace.




CHAPTER XIX

THE PURSUERS

For promptitude, the lady, the gentleman, and the coachman were in such
unison as to make it a reasonable deduction that the flight had been
concerted.

Never did any departure from the Roebuck leave so wide-mouthed a body of
spectators. Mrs. Pagnell's shrieks of 'Stop, oh! stop!' to the backs of
the coachman and Aminta were continued until they were far down the
street. She called to the innkeeper, called to the landlady and to
invisible constables for help. But her pangs were childish compared with
Morsfield's, who, with the rage of a conceited schemer tricked and the
fury of a lover beholding the rape of his beautiful, bellowed impotently
at Weyburn and the coachman out of hearing, 'Stop! you!' He was in the
state of men who believe that there is a virtue in imprecations, and he
shot loud oaths after them, shook his fist, cursed his friend Cumnock,
whose name he vociferated as a summons to him,--generally the baffled
plotter misconducted himself to an extreme degree, that might have
apprised Mrs. Pagnell of a more than legitimate disappointment on his
part.

Pursuit was one of the immediate ideas which rush forward to look back
woefully on impediments and fret to fever over the tardiness of
operations. A glance at the thing of wrinkles receiving orders to buckle
at his horses and pursue convinced them of the hopelessness; and
Morsfield was pricked to intensest hatred of the woman by hearing the
dire exclamation, 'One night, and her character's gone!'

'Be quiet, ma'am, if you please, or nothing can be done,' he cried.

'I tell you, Mr. Morsfield--don't you see?--he has thrown them together.
It is Lord Ormont's wicked conspiracy to rid himself of her. A secretary!
He'll beat any one alive in plots. She can't show her face in London
after this, if you don't overtake her. And she might have seen Lord
Ormont's plot to ruin her. He tired of her, and was ashamed of her
inferior birth to his own, after the first year, except on the Continent,
where she had her rights. Me he never forgave for helping make him the
happy man he might have been in spite of his age. For she is lovely! But
it's worse for a lovely woman with a damaged reputation. And that 's his
cunning. How she could be so silly as to play into it! She can't have
demeaned herself to look on that secretary! I said from the first he
seemed as if thrown into her way for a purpose. But she has pride: my
niece Aminta has pride. She might well have listened to flatterers--she
had every temptation--if it hadn't been for her pride. It may save her
yet. However good-looking, she will remember her dignity--unless he's a
villain. Runnings away! drivings together! inns oh! the story over
London! I do believe she has a true friend in you, Mr. Morsfield; and I
say, as I have said before, the sight of a devoted admirer would have
brought any husband of more than sixty to his senses, if he hadn't hoped
a catastrophe and determined on it. Catch them we can't, unless she
repents and relents; and prayers for that are our only resource. Now,
start, man, do!'

The postillion had his foot in position to spring. Morsfield bawled
Cumnock's name, and bestrode his horse. Captain Cumnock emerged from the
inn-yard with a dubitative step, pressing a handkerchief to his nose,
blinking, and scrutinizing the persistent fresh stains on it.

Stable-boys were at the rear. These, ducking and springing, surcharged
and copious exponents of the play they had seen, related, for the benefit
of the town, how that the two gentlemen had exchanged words in the yard,
which were about beastly pistols, which the slim gentleman would have
none of; and then the big one trips up, like dancing, to the other one
and flicks him a soft clap on the check--quite friendly, you may say; and
before he can square to it, the slim one he steps his hind leg half a
foot back, and he drives a straight left like lightning off the shoulder
slick on to t' other one's nob, and over he rolls, like a cart with the
shafts up down a bank; and he' a been washing his 'chops' and threatening
bullets ever since.

The exact account of the captain's framework in the process of the fall
was graphically portrayed in our blunt and racy vernacular, which a
society nourished upon Norman-English and English-Latin banishes from
print, largely to its impoverishment, some think.

By the time the primary narrative of the encounter in the inn yard had
given ground for fancy and ornament to present it in yet more luscious
dress, Lord Ormont's phaeton was a good mile on the road. Morsfield and
Captain Cumnock--the latter inquisitive of the handkerchief pressed
occasionally at his nose--trotted on tired steeds along dusty
wheel-tracks. Mrs. Pagnell was the solitary of the chariot, having a
horrid couple of loaded pistols to intimidate her for her protection, and
the provoking back view of a regularly jogging mannikin under a big white
hat with blue riband, who played the part of Time in dragging her along,
with worse than no countenance for her anxieties.

News of the fugitives was obtained at the rampant Red Lion in Dudsworth,
nine miles on along the London road, to the extent that the Earl of
Ormont's phaeton, containing a lady and a gentleman, had stopped there a
minute to send back word to Steignton of their comfortable progress, and
expectations of crossing the borders into Hampshire before sunset.
Morsfield and Cumnock shrugged at the bumpkin artifice. They left their
line of route to be communicated to the chariot, and chose, with
practised acumen, that very course, which was the main road, and rewarded
them at the end of half an hour with sight of the Steignton phaeton.

But it was returning. A nearer view showed it empty of the couple.

Morsfield bade the coachman pull up, and he was readily obeyed. Answers
came briskly.

Although provincial acting is not of the high class which conceals the
art, this man's look beside him and behind him at vacant seats had
incontestable evidence in support of his declaration, that the lady and
gentleman had gone on by themselves: the phaeton was a box of flown
birds.

'Where did you say they got out, you dog?' said Cumnock.

The coachman stood up to spy a point below. 'Down there at the bottom of
the road, to the right, where there's a stile across the meadows, making
a short cut by way of a bridge over the river to Busley and North
Tothill, on the high-road to Hocklebourne. The lady and gentleman thought
they 'd walk for a bit of exercise the remains of the journey.'

'Can't prove the rascal's a liar,' Cumnock said to Morsfield, who rallied
him savagely on his lucky escape from another knock-down blow, and tossed
silver on the seat, and said--

'We 'll see if there is a stile.'

'You'll see the stile, sir,' rejoined the man, and winked at their backs.

Both cavaliers, being famished besides baffled, were in sour tempers,
expecting to see just the dead wooden stile, and see it as a grin at
them. Cumnock called on Jove to witness that they had been donkeys enough
to forget to ask the driver how far round on the road it was to the other
end of the cross-cut.

Morsfield, entirely objecting to asinine harness with him, mocked at his
invocation and intonation of the name of Jove.

Cumnock was thereupon stung to a keen recollection of the allusion to his
knock-down blow, and he retorted that there were some men whose wit was
the parrot's.

Morsfield complimented him over the exhibition of a vastly superior and
more serviceable wit, in losing sight of his antagonist after one trial
of him.

Cumnock protested that the loss of time was caused by his friend's
dalliance with the Venus in the chariot.

Morsfield's gall seethed at a flying picture of Mrs. Pagnell, coupled
with the retarding reddened handkerchief business, and he recommended
Cumnock to pay court to the old woman, as the only chance he would have
of acquaintanceship with the mother of Love.

Upon that Cumnock confessed in humility to his not being wealthy.
Morsfield looked a willingness to do the deed he might have to pay for in
tenderer places than the pocket, and named the head as a seat of poverty
with him.

Cumnock then yawned a town fop's advice to a hustling street passenger to
apologize for his rudeness before it was too late. Whereat Morsfield,
certain that his parasitic thrasyleon apeing coxcomb would avoid
extremities, mimicked him execrably.

Now this was a second breach of the implied convention existing among the
exquisitely fine-bred silken-slender on the summits of our mundane
sphere, which demands of them all, that they respect one another's
affectations. It is commonly done, and so the costly people of a single
pattern contrive to push forth, flatteringly to themselves, luxuriant
shoots of individuality in their orchidean glass-house. A violation of
the rule is a really deadly personal attack. Captain Cumnock was
particularly sensitive regarding it, inasmuch as he knew himself not the
natural performer he strove to be, and a mimicry affected him as a
haunting check.

He burst out: 'Damned if I don't understand why you're hated by men and
women both!'

Morsfield took a shock. 'Infernal hornet!' he muttered; for his conquests
had their secret history.

'May and his wife have a balance to pay will trip you yet, you 'll find.'

'Reserve your wrath, sir, for the man who stretched you on your back.'

The batteries of the two continued exchangeing redhot shots, with the
effect, that they had to call to mind they were looking at the stile. A
path across a buttercup meadow was beyond it. They were damped to some
coolness by the sight.

'Upon my word, the trick seems neat!' said Cumnock staring at the
pastoral curtain.

'Whose trick?' he was asked sternly.

'Here or there 's not much matter; they 're off, unless they 're under a
hedge laughing.'

An ache of jealousy and spite was driven through the lover, who groaned,
and presently said--

'I ride on. That old woman can follow. I don't want to hear her
gibberish. We've lost the game--there 's no reckoning the luck. If
there's a chance, it's this way. It smells a trick. He and she--by all
the devils! It has been done in my family--might have been done again.
Tell the men on the plain they can drive home. There's a hundred-pound
weight on your tongue for silence.'

Cumnock cried: 'But we needn't be parting, Dolf! Stick together. Bad
luck's not repeated every day. Keep heart for the good.'

'My heart's shattered, Cumnock. I say it's impossible she can love a
husband twice her age, who treats her--you 've seen. Contempt of that
lady!

By heaven! once in my power, I swear she would have been sacred to me.
But she would have been compelled to face the public and take my hand. I
swear she would have been congratulated on the end of her sufferings.
Worship!--that's what I feel. No woman ever alive had eyes in her head
like that lady's. I repeat her name ten times every night before I go to
sleep. If I had her hand, no, not one kiss would I press on it without
her sanction. I could be in love with her cruelty, if only I had her near
me. I 've lost her--by the Lord, I 've lost her!'

'Pro tem.,' said the captain. 'A plate of red beef and a glass of port
wine alters the view. Too much in the breast, too little in the belly,
capsizes lovers. Old story. Horses that ought to be having a mash between
their ribs make riders despond. Say, shall we back to the town behind us,
or on? Back's the safest, if the chase is up.'

Morsfield declared himself incapable of turning and meeting that chariot.
He sighed heavily. Cumnock offered to cheer him with a song of Captain
Chanter's famous collection, if he liked; but Morsfield gesticulated
abhorrence, and set out at a trot. Song in defeat was a hiss of derision
to him.

He had failed. Having failed, he for the first time perceived the
wildness of a plot that had previously appeared to him as one of the
Yorkshire Morsfields' moves to win an object. Traditionally they stopped
at nothing. There would have been a sunburst of notoriety in the capture
and carrying off of the beautiful Countess of Ormont.

She had eluded him during the downward journey to Steignton. He came on
her track at the village at the junction of the roads above Ashead, and
thence, confiding in the half-connivance or utter stupidity of the fair
one's duenna, despatched a mounted man-servant to his coachman and
footmen, stationed ten miles behind, with orders that they should drive
forthwith to the great plain, and be ready at a point there for two
succeeding days. That was the plot, promptly devised upon receipt of Mrs.
Pagnell's communication; for the wealthy man of pleasure was a strategist
fit to be a soldier, in dexterity not far from rivalling the man by whom
he had been outdone.

An ascetic on the road to success, he dedicated himself to a term of hard
drinking under a reverse; and the question addressed to the chief towns
in the sketch counties his head contained was, which one near would be
likely to supply the port wine for floating him through garlanding dreams
of possession most tastily to blest oblivion.

He was a lover, nevertheless, honest in his fashion, and meant not worse
than to pull his lady through a mire, and wash her with Morsfield soap,
and crown her, and worship. She was in his blood, about him, above him;
he had plunged into her image, as into deeps that broke away in
phosphorescent waves on all sides, reflecting every remembered, every
imagined, aspect of the adored beautiful woman piercing him to extinction
with that last look of her at the moment of flight.

Had he been just a trifle more sincere in the respect he professed for
his lady's duenna, he would have turned on the road to Dornton and a
better fortune. Mrs. Pagnell had now become the ridiculous Paggy of Mrs.
Lawrence Finchley and her circle for the hypocritical gentleman; and he
remarked to Captain Cumnock, when their mutual trot was established:
'Paggy enough for me for a month--good Lord! I can't stand another dose
of her by herself.'

'It's a bird that won't roast or boil or stew,' said the captain.

They were observed trotting along below by Lord Ormont's groom of the
stables on promotion, as he surveyed the country from the chalk-hill rise
and brought the phaeton to a stand, Jonathan Boon, a sharp lad, whose
comprehension was a little muddled by 'the rights of it' in this
adventure. He knew, however, that he did well to follow the directions of
one who was in his lordship's pay, and stretched out the fee with the air
of a shake of the hand, and had a look of the winning side, moreover. A
born countryman could see that.

Boon watched the pair of horsemen trotting to confusion, and clicked in
his cheek. The provincial of the period when coaches were beginning to be
threatened by talk of new-fangled rails was proud to boast of his
outwitting Londoners on material points; and Boon had numerous tales of
how it had been done, to have the laugh of fellows thinking themselves
such razors. They compensated him for the slavish abasement of his whole
neighbourhood under the hectoring of the grand new manufacture of wit in
London:--the inimitable Metropolitan PUN, which came down to the country
by four-in-hand, and stopped all other conversation wherever it was
reported, and would have the roar--there was no resisting it. Indeed, to
be able to see the thing smartly was an entry into community with the
elect of the district; and when the roaring ceased and the thing was
examined, astonishment at the cleverness of it, and the wonderful
shallowness of the seeming deep hole, and the unexhausted bang it had to
go off like a patent cracker, fetched it out for telling over again; and
up went the roar, and up it went at home and in stable-yards, and at the
net puffing of churchwardens on a summer's bench, or in a cricket-booth
after a feast, or round the old inn's taproom fine. The pun, the
wonderful bo-peep of double meanings darting out to surprise and smack
one another from behind words of the same sound, sometimes the same
spelling, overwhelmed the provincial mind with awe of London's occult and
prolific genius.

Yet down yonder you may behold a pair of London gentlemen trotting along
on as fine a fool's errand as ever was undertaken by nincompoops bearing
a scaled letter, marked urgent, to a castle, and the request in it that
the steward would immediately upon perusal down with their you-know-what
and hoist them and birch them a jolly two dozen without parley.

Boon smacked his leg, and then drove ahead merrily.

For this had happened to his knowledge: the gentleman accompanying the
lady had refused to make anything of a halt at the Red Lion, and had said
he was sure there would be a small public-house at the outskirts of the
town, for there always was one; and he proved right, and the lady and he
had descended at the sign of the Jolly Cricketers, and Boon had driven on
for half an hour by order.

This, too, had happened, external to Boon's knowledge: the lady and the
gentleman had witnessed, through the small diamond window-panes of the
Jolly Cricketers' parlour, the passing-by of the two horsemen in pursuit
of them; and the gentleman had stopped the chariot coming on some fifteen
minutes later, but he did not do it at the instigation of the lady.




CHAPTER XX

AT THE SIGN OF THE JOLLY CRICKETERS

The passing by of the pair of horsemen, who so little suspected the
treasure existing behind the small inn's narrow window did homage in
Aminta's mind to her protector's adroitness. Their eyes met without a
smile, though they perceived the grisly comic of the incident. Their
thoughts were on the chariot to follow.

Aminta had barely uttered a syllable since the start of the flight from
Ashead. She had rocked in a swing between sensation and imagination,
exultant, rich with the broad valley of the plain and the high green
waves of the downs at their giant's bound in the flow of curves and sunny
creases to the final fling-off of the dip on sky. Here was a twisted
hawthorn carved clean to the way of the wind; a sheltered clump of
chestnuts holding their blossoms up, as with a thousand cresset-clasping
hands; here were grasses that nodded swept from green to grey; flowers
yellow, white, and blue, significant of a marvellous unknown through the
gates of colour; and gorse-covers giving out the bird, squares of young
wheat, a single fallow threaded by a hare, and cottage gardens, shadowy
garths, wayside flint-heap, woods of the mounds and the dells, fluttering
leaves, clouds: all were swallowed, all were the one unworried
significance. Scenery flew, shifted, returned; again the line of the
downs raced and the hollows reposed simultaneously. They were the same in
change to an eye grown older; they promised, as at the first, happiness
for recklessness. The whole woman was urged to delirious recklessness in
happiness, and she drank the flying scenery as an indication, a likeness,
an encouragement.

When her wild music of the blood had fallen to stillness with the stopped
wheels, she was in the musky, small, low room of the diamond
window-panes, at her companion's disposal for what he might deem the
best: he was her fate. But the more she leaned on a man of self-control,
the more she admired; and an admiration that may not speak itself to the
object present drops inward, stirs the founts; and if these are
repressed, the tenderness which is not allowed to weep will drown
self-pity, hardening the woman to summon scruples in relation to her
unworthiness. He might choose to forget, but the more she admired, the
less could her feminine conscience permit of an utter or of any
forgetfulness that she was not the girl Browny, whom he once
loved--perhaps loved now, under some illusion of his old passion for
her--does love now, ill-omened as he is in that! She read him by her
startled reading of her own heart, and she constrained her will to keep
from doing, saying, looking aught that would burden without gracing his
fortunes. For, as she felt, a look, a word, a touch would do the
mischief; she had no resistance behind her cold face, only the physical
scruple, which would become the moral unworthiness if in any way she
induced him to break his guard and blow hers to shreds. An honourable
conscience before the world has not the same certificate in love's pure
realm. They are different kingdoms. A girl may be of both; a married
woman, peering outside the narrow circle of her wedding-ring, should let
her eyelids fall and the unseen fires consume her.

Their common thought was now, Will the chariot follow?

What will he do if it comes? was an unformed question with Aminta.

He had formed and not answered it, holding himself, sincerely at the
moment, bound to her wishes. Near the end of Ashead main street she had
turned to him in her seat beside the driver, and conveyed silently, with
the dental play of her tongue and pouted lips, 'No title.'

Upon that sign, waxen to those lips, he had said to the driver, 'You took
your orders from Lady Charlotte?

And the reply, 'Her ladyship directed me sir, exonerated Lord Ormont so
far.

Weyburn remembered then a passage of one of her steady looks, wherein an
oracle was mute. He tried several of the diviner's shots to interpret it:
she was beyond his reach. She was in her blissful delirium of the flight,
and reproached him with giving her the little bit less to resent--she who
had no sense of resentment, except the claim on it to excuse.

Their landlady entered the room to lay the cloth for tea and eggs. She
made offer of bacon as well, homecured. She was a Hampshire woman, and
understood the rearing of pigs. Her husband had been a cricketer, and
played for his county. He didn't often beat Hampshire! They had a good
garden of vegetables, and grass-land enough for two cows. They made their
own bread, their own butter, but did not brew.

Weyburn pronounced for a plate of her home-cured. She had children, the
woman told him--two boys and a girl. Her husband wished for a girl. Her
eldest boy wished to be a sailor, and would walk miles to a pond to sail
bits of wood on it, though there had never been a sea-faring man in her
husband's family or her own. She agreed with the lady and gentleman that
it might be unwise to go contrary to the boy's bent. Going to school or
coming home, a trickle of water would stop him.

Aminta said to her companion in French, 'Have you money?'

She chased his blood. 'Some: sufficient. I think.' It stamped their
partnership.

'I have but a small amount. Aunt was our paymaster. We will buy the
little boy a boat to sail. You are pale.'

'I 've no notion of it.'

'Something happened it Ashead.'

'It would not have damaged my complexion.'

He counted his money. Aminta covertly handed him her purse. Their fingers
touched. The very minor circumstance of their landlady being in the room
dammed a flood.

Her money and his amounted to seventeen pounds. The sum-total was a
symbol of days that were a fiery wheel.

Honour and blest adventure might travel together two days or three, he
thought. If the chariot did not pass:--Lord Ormont had willed it. A man
could not be said to swerve in his duty when acting to fulfil the
master's orders, and Mrs. Pagnell was proved a hoodwinked duenna, and
Morsfield was in the air. The breathing Aminta had now a common purse
with her first lover. For three days or more they were, it would seem, to
journey together, alone together: the prosecution of his duty imposed it
on him. Sooth to say, Weyburn knew that a spice of passion added to a
bowl of reason makes a sophist's mess; but he fancied an absolute
reliance on Aminta's dignity, and his respect for her was another
barrier. He begged the landlady's acceptance of two shillings for her
boy's purchase of a boat, advising her to have him taught early to swim.
Both he and Aminta had a feeling that they could be helpful in some
little things on the road if the chariot did not pass.

Justification began to speak loudly against the stopping of the chariot
if it did pass. The fact that sweet wishes come second, and not so
loudly, assured him they were quite secondary; for the lover sunk to
sophist may be self-beguiled by the arts which render him the potent
beguiler.

'We are safe here,' he said, and thrilled her with the 'we' behind the
curtaining leaded window-panes.

'What is it you propose?' Her voice was lower than she intended. To that
she ascribed his vivid flush. It kindled the deeper of her dark hue.

He mentioned her want of luggage, and the purchase of a kit.

She said, 'Have we the means?'

'We can adjust the means to the ends.'

'We must be sparing of expenses.'

'Will you walk part of the way?'

'I should like it.'

'We shall be longer on the journey.'

'We shall not find it tiresome, I hope.'

'We can say so, if we do.'

'We are not strangers.'

The recurrence of the 'we' had an effect of wedding: it was fatalistic,
it would come; but, in truth, there was pleasure in it, and the pleasure
was close to consciousness of some guilt when vowing itself innocent.

And, no, they were not strangers; hardly a word could they utter without
cutting memory to the quick; their present breath was out of the far
past.

Love told them both that they were trembling into one another's arms, not
voluntarily, against the will with each of them; they knew it would be
for life; and Aminta's shamed reserves were matched to make an obstacle
by his consideration for her good name and her station, for his own claim
to honest citizenship also.

Weyburn acted on his instinct at sight of the postillion and the chariot;
he flung the window wide and shouted. Then he said, 'It is decided,' and
he felt the rightness of the decision, like a man who has given a
condemned limb to the surgeon.

Aminta was passive as a water-weed in the sway of the tide. Hearing it to
be decided, she was relieved. What her secret heart desired, she kept
secret, almost a secret from herself. He was not to leave her; so she had
her permitted wish, she had her companion plus her exclamatory aunt, who
was a protection, and she had learnt her need of the smallest protection.

'I can scarcely believe I see you, my dear, dear child!' Mrs. Pagnell
cried, upon entering the small inn parlour; and so genuine was her
satisfaction that for a time she paid no heed to the stuffiness of the
room, the meanness of the place, the unfitness of such a hostelry to
entertain ladies--the Countess of Ormont!

'Eat here?' Mrs. Pagnell asked, observing the preparations for the meal.
Her pride quailed, her stomach abjured appetite. But she forbore from
asking how it was that the Countess of Ormont had come to the place.

At a symptom of her intention to indulge in disgust; Aminta brought up
Mr. Morsfield by name; whereupon Mrs. Pagnell showed she had reflected on
her conduct in relation to the gentleman, and with the fear of the earl
if she were questioned.

Home-made bread and butter, fresh eggs and sparkling fat of bacon invited
her to satisfy her hunger. Aminta let her sniff at the teapot unpunished;
the tea had a rustic aroma of ground-ivy, reminding Weyburn of his
mother's curiosity to know the object of an old man's plucking of
hedgeside leaves in the environs of Bruges one day, and the simple reply
to her French, 'Tea for the English.' A hint of an anecdote interested
and enriched the stores of Mrs. Pagnell, so she capped it and partook of
the infusion ruefully.

'But the bread is really good,' she said, 'and we are unlikely to be seen
leaving the place by any person of importance.'

'Unless Mr. Morsfield should be advised to return this way,' said Aminta.

Her aunt proposed for a second cup. She was a manageable woman; the same
scourge had its instant wholesome effect on her when she snubbed the
secretary.

So she complimented his trencherman's knife, of which the remarkably fine
edge was proof enough that he had come heart-whole out of the trial of an
hour or so's intimate companionship with a beautiful woman, who had never
been loved, never could be loved by man, as poor Mr. Morsfield loved her!
He had sworn to having fasted three whole days and nights after his first
sight of Aminta. Once, he said, her eyes pierced him so that he dreamed
of a dagger in his bosom, and woke himself plucking at it. That was love,
as a born gentleman connected with a baronetcy and richer than many lords
took the dreadful passion. A secretary would have no conception of such
devoted extravagance. At the most he might have attempted to insinuate a
few absurd, sheepish soft nothings, and the Countess of Ormont would know
right well how to shrivel him with one of her looks. No lady of the land
could convey so much either way, to attract or to repel, as Aminta,
Countess of Ormont! And the man, the only man, insensible to her charm or
her scorn, was her own wedded lord and husband. Old, to be sure, and
haughty, his pride might not allow him to overlook poor Mr. Morsfield's
unintentional offence. But the presence of the countess's aunt was a
reply to any charge he might seek to establish. Unhappily, the case is
one between men on their touchiest point, when women are pushed aside,
and justice and religion as well. We might be living in a heathen land,
for aught that morality has to say.

Mrs. Pagnell fussed about being seen on her emergence from the Jolly
Cricketers. Aminta sent Weyburn to spy for the possible reappearance of
Mr. Morsfield. He reported a horseman; a butcher-boy clattered by. Aminta
took the landlady's hand, under her aunt's astonished gaze, and said: 'I
shall not forget your house and your attention to us.' She spoke with a
shake of her voice. The landlady curtseyed and smiled, curtseyed and
almost whimpered. The house was a poor one, she begged to say; they
didn't often have such guests, but whoever came to it they did their best
to give good food and drink.

Hearing from Weyburn that the chariot was bound to go through Winchester,
she spoke of a brother, a baker there, the last surviving member of her
family and, after some talk, Weyburn offered to deliver a message of
health and greeting at the baker's shop. There was a waving of hands,
much nodding and curtseying, as the postillion resumed his
demi-volts--all to the stupefaction of Mrs. Pagnell; but she dared not
speak, she had Morsfield on the mouth. Nor could she deny the excellent
quality of the bread and butter, and milk, too, at the sign of the Jolly
Cricketers. She admitted, moreover, that the food and service of the
little inn belonged in their unpretentious honesty to the, kind we call
old English: the dear old simple country English of the brotherly
interchange in sight of heaven--good stuff for good money, a matter with
a blessing on it.

'But,' said she, 'my dear Aminta, I do not and I cannot understand looks
of grateful affection at a small innkeeper's wife paid, and I don't doubt
handsomely paid, for her entertainment of you.'

'I feel it,' said Aminta; tears rushed to her eyelids, overflowing, and
her features were steady.

'Ah, poor dear! that I do understand,' her aunt observed. 'Any little
kindness moves you to-day; and well it may.'

'Yes, aunty,' said Aminta, and in relation to the cause of her tears she
was the less candid of the two.

So far did she carry her thanks for a kindness as to glance back through
her dropping tears at the sign-board of the Jolly Cricketers; where two
brave batsmen cross for the second of a certain three runs, if only the
fellow wheeling legs, face up after the ball in the clouds, does but miss
his catch: a grand suspensory moment of the game, admirably chosen by the
artist to arrest the wayfarer and promote speculation. For will he let
her slip through his fingers when she comes down? or will he have her
fast and tight? And in the former case, the bats are tearing their legs
off for just number nought. And in the latter, there 's a wicket down,
and what you may call a widower walking it bat on shoulder, parted from
his mate for that mortal innings, and likely to get more chaff than
consolation when he joins the booth.




CHAPTER XXI

UNDER-CURRENTS IN THE MINDS OF LADY CHARLOTTE AND LORD ORMONT

Another journey of travellers to London, in the rear of the chariot, was
not diversified by a single incident or refreshed by scraps of dialogue.
Lady Charlotte had her brother Rowsley with her, and he might be
taciturn,--she drove her flocks of thoughts, she was busily and
contentedly occupied. Although separation from him stirred her mind more
excitedly over their days and deeds of boy and girl, her having him near,
and having now won him to herself, struck her as that old time's harvest,
about as much as can be hoped for us from life, when we have tasted it.

The scene of the invasion of Steignton by the woman and her aunt, and
that man Morsfield, was a steel engraving among her many rapid and
featureless cogitations. She magnified the rakishness of the woman's hand
on hip in view of the house, and she magnified the woman's insolence in
bringing that man Morsfield--to share probably the hospitality of
Steignton during the master's absence! Her trick of caricature, whenever
she dealt with adversaries, was active upon the three persons under
observation of the windows. It was potent to convince her that her
brother Rowsley had cast the woman to her native obscurity. However, Lady
Charlotte could be just: the woman's figure, and as far as could be seen
of her face, accounted for Rowsley's entanglement.

Why chastize that man Morsfield at all? Calling him out would give a
further dip to the name of Ormont. A pretty idea, to be punishing a roan
for what you thank him for! He did a service; and if he's as mad about
her as he boasts, he can take her and marry her now Rowsley 's free of
her.

Morsfield says he wants to marry her--wants nothing better. Then let him.
Rowsley has shown him there 's no legal impediment. Pity that young
Weyburn had to be sent to do watch-dog duty. But Rowsley would not have
turned her back to travel alone: that is, without a man to guard. He 's
too chivalrous.

The sending of Weyburn, she now fancied, was her own doing, and Lady
Charlotte attributed it to her interpretation of her brother's heart of
chivalry; though it would have been the wiser course, tending straight
and swift to the natural end, if the two women and their Morsfield had
received the dismissal to travel as they came.

One sees it after the event. Yes, only Rowsley would not have dismissed
her without surety that she would be protected. So it was the right thing
prompted on the impulse of the moment. And young Weyburn would meet some
difficulty in protecting his 'Lady Ormont,' if she had no inclination for
it.

Analyzing her impulse of the moment, Lady Charlotte credited herself, not
unjustly, with a certain considerateness for the woman, notwithstanding
the woman's violent intrusion between brother and sister. Knowing the
world, and knowing the upper or Beanstalk world intimately, she winked at
nature's passions. But when the legitimate affection of a brother and
sister finds them interposing, they are, as little parsonically as
possible, reproved. If persistently intrusive, they are handed to the
constable.

How, supposing the case of a wife? Well, then comes the contest; and it
is with an inferior, because not a born, legitimacy of union; which may
be, which here and there is, affection; is generally the habit of
partnership. It is inferior, from not being the union of the blood; it is
a matter merely of the laws and the tastes. No love, she reasoned, is
equal to the love of brother and sister: not even the love of parents for
offspring, or of children for mother and father. Brother and sister have
the holy young days in common; they have lastingly the recollection of
their youth, the golden time when they were themselves, or the best of
themselves. A wife is a stranger from the beginning; she is necessarily
three parts a stranger up to the finish of the history. She thinks she
can absorb the husband. Not if her husband has a sister living! She may
cry and tear for what she calls her own: she will act prudently in bowing
her head to the stronger tie. Is there a wife in Europe who broods on her
husband's merits and his injuries as the sister of Thomas Rowsley, Earl
of Ormont does? or one to defend his good name, one to work for his
fortunes, as devotedly?

Over and over Lady Charlotte drove her flocks, of much the same pattern,
like billows before a piping gale. They might be similar--a puffed
iteration, and might be meaningless and wearisome; the gale was a power
in earnest.

Her brother sat locked-up. She did as a wife would not have done, and
held her peace. He spoke; she replied in a few words--blunt, to the
point, as no wife would have done.

Her dear, warm-hearted Rowsley was shaken by the blow he had been obliged
to deal to the woman--poor woman!--if she felt it. He was always the
principal sufferer where the feelings were concerned. He was never for
hurting any but the enemy.

His 'Ha, here we dine!' an exclamation of a man of imprisoned yawns at
the apparition of the turnkey, was delightful to her, for a proof of
health and sanity and enjoyment of the journey.

'Yes, and I've one bottle left, in the hamper, of the hock you like,' she
said. 'That Mr. Weyburn likes it too. He drank a couple coming down.'

She did not press for talk; his ready appetite was the flower of
conversation to her. And he slept well, he said. Her personal experience
on that head was reserved.

London enfolded them in the late evening of a day brewing storm. My lord
heard at the door of his house that Lady Ormont had not arrived. Yet she
had started a day in advance of him. He looked down, up and round at
Charlotte. He looked into an empty hall. Pagnell was not there. A sight
of Pagnell would, strange to say, have been agreeable.

Storm was in the air, and Aminta was on the road. Lightning has, before
now, frightened carriage-horses. She would not misconduct herself; she
would sit firm. No woman in England had stouter nerve--few men.

But the carriage might be smashed. He was ignorant of the road she had
chosen for her return. Out of Wiltshire there would be no cliffs,
quarries, river-banks, presenting dangers. Those dangers, however, spring
up when horses have the frenzy.

Charlotte was nodded at, for a signal to depart; and she drove off,
speculating on the bullet of a grey eye, which was her brother's adieu to
her.

The earl had apparently a curiosity to inspect vacant rooms. His Aminta's
drawing-room, her boudoir, her bed-chamber, were submissive in showing
bed, knickknacks, furniture. They told the tale of a corpse.

He washed and dressed, and went out to his club to dine, hating the faces
of the servants of the house, just able to bear with the attentions of
his valet.

Thunder was rattling at ten at night. The house was again the tomb.

She had high courage, that girl. She might be in a bed, with her
window-blind up, calmly waiting for the flashes: lightning excited her.
He had seen her lying at her length quietly, her black hair scattered on
the pillow, like shadow of twigs and sprays on moonlit grass, illuminated
intermittently; smiling to him, but her heart out and abroad, wild as any
witch's. If on the road, she would not quail. But it was necessary to be
certain of her having a trusty postillion.

He walked through the drench and scream of a burst cloud to the
posting-office. There, after some trouble, he obtained information
directing him to the neighbouring mews. He had thence to find his way to
the neighbouring pot-house.

The report of the postillion was, on the whole, favourable. The man
understood horses--was middle-aged--no sot; he was also a man with an eye
for weather, proverbially in the stables a cautious hand--slow 'Old
Slow-and-sure,' he was called; by name, Joshua Abnett.

'Oh, Joshua Abnett?' said the earl, and imprinted it on his memory, for
the service it was to do during the night.

Slow-and-sure Joshua Abnett would conduct her safely, barring accidents.
For accidents we must all be prepared. She was a heroine in an accident.
The earl recalled one and more: her calm face, brightened eyes, easy
laughter. Hysterics were not in her family.

She did wrong to let that fellow Morsfield accompany her. Possibly he had
come across her on the road, and she could not shake him off. Judging by
all he knew of her, the earl believed she would not have brought the
fellow into the grounds of Steignton of her free will. She had always a
particular regard for decency.

According to the rumour, Morsfield and the woman Pagnell were very thick
together. He barked over London of his being a bitten dog. He was near to
the mad dog's fate, as soon as a convenient apology for stopping his
career could be invented.

The thinking of the lesson to Morsfield on the one hand, and of the
slow-and-sure postillion Joshua Abriett on the other, lulled Lord Ormont
to a short repose in his desolate house. Of Weyburn he had a glancing
thought, that the young man would be a good dog to guard the countess
from a mad dog, as he had reckoned in commissioning him.

Next day was the day of sunlight Aminta loved.

It happens with the men who can strike, supposing them of the order of
civilized creatures, that when they have struck heavily, however deserved
the blow, a liking for the victim will assail them, if they discover no
support in hatred; and no sooner is the spot of softness touched than
they are invaded by hosts of the stricken person's qualities, which plead
to be taken as virtues, and are persuasive. The executioner did rightly.
But it is the turn for the victim to declare the blow excessive.

Now, a just man, who has overdone the stroke, will indemnify and console
in every way, short of humiliating himself.

He had an unusually clear vision of the scene at Steignton. Surprise and
wrath obscured it at the moment, for reflection to bring it out in sharp
outline; and he was able now to read and translate into inoffensive
English the inherited Spanish of it, which violated nothing of Aminta's
native 'donayre,' though it might look on English soil outlandish or
stagey.

Aminta stood in sunlight on the greensward. She stood hand on hip, gazing
at the house she had so long desired to see, without a notion that she
committed an offence. Implicitly upon all occasions she took her
husband's word for anything he stated, and she did not consequently
imagine him to be at Steignton. So, then, she had no thought of running
down from London to hunt and confound him, as at first it appeared. The
presence of that white-faced Morsfield vindicated her sufficiently so
far. And let that fellow hang till the time for cutting him down! Not
she, but Pagnell, seems to have been the responsible party. And, by the
way, one might prick the affair with Morsfield by telling him publicly
that his visit to inspect Steignton was waste of pains, for he would not
be accepted as a tenant in the kennels, et caetera.

Well, poor girl, she satisfied her curiosity, not aware that a few weeks
farther on would have done it to the full.

As to Morsfield, never once, either in Vienna or in Paris, had she,
warmly admired though she was, all eyes telescoping and sun-glassing on
her, given her husband an hour or half an hour or two minutes of anxiety.
Letters came. The place getting hot, she proposed to leave it.

She had been rather hardly tried. There are flowers we cannot keep
growing in pots. Her fault was, that instead of flinging down her glove
and fighting it out openly, she listened to Pagnell, and began the game
of Pull. If he had a zest for the game, it was to stump the woman
Pagnell. So the veteran fancied in his amended mind.

This intrusive sunlight chased him from the breakfast-table and out of
the house. She would be enjoying it somewhere; but the house empty of a
person it was used to contain had an atmosphere of the vaults, and inside
it the sunlight she loved had an effect of taunting him singularly.

He called on his upholsterer and heard news to please her. The house
hired for a month above Great Marlow was ready; her ladyship could enter
it to-morrow. It pleased my lord to think that she might do so, and not
bother him any more about the presentation at Court during the current
year. In spite of certain overtures from the military authorities, and
roused eulogistic citations of his name in the newspapers and magazines,
he was not on friendly terms with his country yet, having contracted the
fatal habit of irony, which, whether hitting or musing its object, stirs
old venom in our wound, twitches the feelings. Unfortunately for him,
they had not adequate expression unless he raged within; so he had to
shake up wrath over his grievances, that he might be satisfactorily
delivered; and he was judged irreconcilable when he had subsided into the
quietest contempt, from the prospective seat of a country estate, in the
society of a young wife who adored him.

An exile from the sepulchre of that house void of the consecration of
ashes, he walked the streets and became reconciled to street sunlight.
There were no carriage accidents to disturb him with apprehensions.
Besides, the slowness of the postillion Joshua Abnett, which probably
helped to the delay, was warrant of his sureness. And in an accident the
stringy fellow, young Weyburn, could be trusted for giving his attention
to the ladies--especially to the younger of the two, taking him for the
man his elders were at his age. As for Pagnell, a Providence watches over
the Pagnells! Mortals have no business to interfere.

An accident on water would be a frolic to his girl. Swimming was a gift
she had from nature. Pagnell vowed she swam out a mile at Dover when she
was twelve. He had seen her in blue water: he had seen her readiness to
jump to the rescue once when a market-woman, stepping out of a boat to
his yacht on the Tabus, plumped in. She had the two kinds of courage--the
impulsive and the reasoned. What is life to man or woman if we are not to
live it honourably? Men worthy of the name say this. The woman who says
and acts on it is--well, she is fit company for them. But only the woman
of natural courage can say it and act on it.

Would she come by Winchester, or choose the lower road by Salisbury and
Southampton, to smell the sea? perhaps-like her!--dismissing the chariot
and hiring a yacht for a voyage round the coast and up the Thames. She
had an extraordinary love of the sea, yet she preferred soldiers to
sailors. A woman? Never one of them more a woman! But it came of her
quickness to take the colour and share the tastes of the man to whom she
gave herself.

My lord was beginning to distinguish qualities in a character.

He was informed at the mews that Joshua Abnett was on the road still.
Joshua seemed to be a roadster of uncommon unprogressiveness, proper to a
framed picture.

While debating whether to lunch at his loathed club or at a home loathed
more, but open to bright enlivenment any instant, Lord Ormont beheld a
hat lifted and Captain May saluting him. They were near a famous
gambling-house in St. James's Street.

'Good! I am glad to see you,' he said. 'Tell me you know Mr. Morsfield
pretty well. I'm speaking of my affair. He has been trespassing down on
my grounds at Steignton, and I think of taking the prosecution of him
into my own hands. Is he in town?'

'I 've just left his lame devil Cumnock, my lord,' said May, after a
slight grimace. 'They generally run in tandem.'

'Will you let me know?'

'At once, when I hear.'

'You will call on me? Before noon?'

'Any service required?'

'My respects to your wife.'

'Your lordship is very good.'

Captain May bloomed at a civility paid to his wife. He was a smallish,
springy, firm-faced man, devotee of the lady bearing his name and
wielding him. In the days when duelling flourished on our land, frail
women could be powerful.

The earl turned from him to greet Lord Adderwood and a superior officer
of his Profession, on whom he dropped a frigid nod. He held that all but
the rank and file, and a few subalterns, of the service had abandoned him
to do homage to the authorities. The Club he frequented was not his
military Club. Indeed, lunching at any Club in solitariness that day,
with Aminta away from home, was bitter penance. He was rejoiced by Lord
Adderwood's invitation, and hung to him after the lunch; for a horrible
prospect of a bachelor dinner intimated astonishingly that he must have
become unawares a domesticated man.

The solitary later meal of a bachelor was consumed, if the word will suit
a rabbit's form of feeding. He fatigued his body by walking the streets
and the bridge of the Houses of Parliament, and he had some sleep under a
roof where a life like death, or death apeing life, would have seemed to
him the Joshua Abnett, if he had been one to take up images.

Next day he was under the obligation to wait at home till noon. Shortly
before noon a noise of wheels drew him to the window. A young lady, in
whom he recognized Aminta's little school friend, of some name, stepped
out of a fly. He met her in the hall.

She had expected to be welcomed by Aminta, and she was very timid on
finding herself alone with the earl. He, however, treated her as the
harbinger bird, wryneck of the nightingale, sure that Aminta would keep
her appointment unless an accident delayed. He had forgotten her name,
but not her favourite pursuit of botany; and upon that he discoursed, and
he was interested, not quite independently of the sentiment of her being
there as a guarantee of Aminta's return. Still he knew his English earth,
and the counties and soil for particular wild-flowers, grasses, mosses;
and he could instruct her and inspire a receptive pupil on the theme of
birds, beasts, fishes, insects, in England and other lands.

He remained discoursing without much weariness till four of the
afternoon. Then he had his reward. The chariot was at the door, and the
mounted figure of Joshua Abnett, on which he cast not a look or a
thought. Aminta was alone. She embraced Selina Collett warmly, and said,
in friendly tones, 'Ah! my lord, you are in advance of me.'

She had dropped Mrs. Pagnell and Mr. Weyburn at two suburban houses;
working upon her aunt's dread of the earl's interrogations as regarded
Mr. Morsfield. She had, she said, chosen to take the journey easily on
her return, and enjoyed it greatly.

My lord studied her manner more than her speech. He would have
interpreted a man's accurately enough. He read hers to signify that she
had really enjoyed her journey, 'made the best of it,' and did not intend
to be humble about her visit to Steignton without his permission; but
that, if hurt at the time, she had recovered her spirits, and was ready
for a shot or two--to be nothing like a pitched battle. And she might
fire away to her heart's content: wordy retorts would not come from him;
he had material surprises in reserve for her. His question concerning
Morsfield knew its answer, and would only be put under pressure.

Comparison of the friends Aminta and Selina was forced by their standing
together, and the representation in little Selina of the inferiority of
the world of women to his Aminta; he thought of several, and splendid
women, foreign and English. The comparison rose sharply now, with
Aminta's novel, airy, homely, unchallengeing assumption of an equal
footing beside her lord, in looks and in tones that had cast off
constraint of the adoring handmaid, to show the full-blown woman,
rightful queen of her half of the dominion. Between the Aminta of then
and now, the difference was marked as between Northern and Southern
women: the frozen-mouthed Northerner and the pearl and rose-nipped
Southerner; those who smirk in dropping congealed monosyllables, and
those who radiantly laugh out the voluble chatter.

Conceiving this to the full in a mind destitute of imagery, but
indicative of the thing as clearly as the planed, unpolished woodwork of
a cabinet in a carpenter's shop, Lord Ormont liked her the better for the
change, though she was not the woman whose absence from his house had
caused him to go mooning half a night through the streets, and though it
forewarned him of a tougher bit of battle, if battle there was to be.

He was a close reader of surfaces. But in truth, the change so notable
came of the circumstance, that some little way down below the surface he
perused, where heart weds mind, or nature joins intellect, for the two to
beget a resolution, the battle of the man and the woman had been fought,
and the man beaten.




CHAPTER XXII

TREATS OF THE FIRST DAY OF THE CONTENTION OF BROTHER AND SISTER

In the contest rageing at mid-sea still between the man and the woman, it
is the one who is hard to the attractions of the other that will make
choice of the spot and have the advantages. A short time earlier Lord
Ormont could have marked it out at his leisure. He would have been unable
to comprehend why it was denied him to do so now; for he was master of
himself, untroubled by conscience, unaware, since he was assured of his
Aminta's perfect safety and his restored sense of possession, that any
taint of softness in him had reversed the condition of their alliance. He
felt benevolently the much he had to bestow, and was about to bestow.
Meanwhile, without complicity on his part, without his knowledge, yet
absolutely involving his fate, the battle had gone against him in
Aminta's breast.

Like many of his class and kind, he was thoroughly acquainted with the
physical woman, and he took that first and very engrossing volume of the
great Book of Mulier for all the history. A powerful wing of imagination,
strong as the flappers of the great Roc of Arabian story, is needed to
lift the known physical woman even a very little way up into azure
heavens. It is far easier to take a snap-shot at the psychic, and tumble
her down from her fictitious heights to earth. The mixing of the two make
nonsense of her. She was created to attract the man, for an excellent
purpose in the main. We behold her at work incessantly. One is a fish to
her hook; another a moth to her light. By the various arts at her
disposal she will have us, unless early in life we tear away the
creature's coloured gauzes and penetrate to her absurdly simple
mechanism. That done, we may, if we please, dominate her. High priests of
every religion have successively denounced her as the chief enemy. To
subdue and bid her minister to our satisfaction is therefore a right
employment of man's unperverted superior strength. Of course, we keep to
ourselves the woman we prefer; but we have to beware of an uxorious
preference, or we are likely to resemble the Irishman with his wolf, and
dance imprisoned in the hug of our captive.

For it is the creature's characteristic to be lastingly awake, in her
moments of utmost slavishness most keenly awake to the chances of the
snaring of the stronger. Be on guard, then. Lord Ormont had been on guard
then and always: his instinct of commandership kept him on guard. He was
on guard now when his Aminta played, not the indignant and the frozen,
but the genially indifferent. She did it well, he admitted.

Had it been the indignant she played, he might have stooped to cajole the
handsome queen of gypsies she was, without acknowledgement of her right
to complain. Feeling that he was about to be generous, he shrugged. He
meant to speak in deeds.

Lady Charlotte's house was at the distance of a stroller's half-hour
across Hyde Park westward from his own. Thither he walked, a few minutes
after noon, prepared for cattishness. He could fancy that he had hitherto
postponed the visit rather on her account, considering that he would have
to crush her if she humped and spat, and he hoped to be allowed to do it
gently. There would certainly be a scene.

Lady Charlotte was at home.

'Always at home to you, Rowsley, at any hour. Mr. Eglett has driven down
to the City. There 's a doctor in a square there's got a reputation for
treating weak children, and he has taken down your grand-nephew Bobby to
be inspected. Poor boy comes of a poor stock on the father's side. Mr.
Eglett would have that marriage. Now he sees wealth isn't everything.
Those Benlews are rushlights. However, Elizabeth stood with her father to
have Robert Benlew, and this poor child 's the result. I wonder whether
they have consciences!'

My lord prolonged the sibilation of his 'Yes,' in the way of
absent-minded men. He liked little Bobby, but had to class the boy second
for the present.

'You have our family jewels in your keeping, Charlotte?'

'No, I haven't,--and you know I haven't, Rowsley.' She sprang to arms,
the perfect porcupine, at his opening words, as he had anticipated.

'Where are the jewels?'

'They're in the cellars of my bankers, and safe there, you may rely on
it.'

'I want them.'

'I want to have them safe; and there they stop.'

'You must get them and hand them over.'

'To whom?'

'To me.'

'What for?'

'They will be worn by the Countess of Ormont'

'Who 's she?'

'The lady who bears the title.'

'The only Countess of Ormont I know of is your mother and mine, Rowsley;
and she's dead.'

'The Countess of Ormont I speak of is alive.'

Lady Charlotte squared to him. 'Who gives her the title?'

'She bears it by right.'

'Do you mean to say, Rowsley, you have gone and married the woman since
we came up from Steignton?'

'She is my wife.'

'Anyhow, she won't have our family jewels.'

'If you had swallowed them, you'd have to disgorge.'

'I don't give up our family jewels to such people.'

'Do you decline to call on her?'

'I do: I respect our name and blood.'

'You will send the order to your bankers for them to deliver the jewels
over to me at my house this day.'

'Look here, Rowsley; you're gone cracked or senile. You 're in the hands
of one of those clever wenches who catch men of your age. She may catch
you; she shan't lay hold of our family jewels: they stand for the honour
of our name and blood.'

'They are to be at my house-door at four o'clock this afternoon.'

'They'll not stir.'

'Then I go down to order your bankers and give them the order.'

'My bankers won't attend to it without the order from me.'

'You will submit to the summons of my lawyers.'

'You're bent on a public scandal, are you?'

'I am bent on having the jewels.'

'They are not yours; you 've no claim to them; they are heirlooms in our
family. Things most sacred to us are attached to them. They belong to our
history. There 's the tiara worn by the first Countess of Ormont. There
's the big emerald of the necklace-pendant--you know the story of it. Two
rubies not counted second to any in England. All those diamonds! I wore
the cross and the two pins the day I was presented after my marriage.'

'The present Lady Ormont will wear them the day she is presented.'

'She won't wear them at Court.'

'She will.'

'Don't expect the Lady Ormont of tradesmen and footmen to pass the Lord
Chamberlain.'

'That matter will be arranged for next season. Now I 've done.'

'So have I; and you have my answer, Rowsley.' They quitted their chairs.

'You decline to call on my wife?' said the earl.

Lady Charlotte replied: 'Understand me, now. If the woman has won you
round to legitimize the connection, first, I've a proper claim to see her
marriage lines. I must have a certificate of her birth. I must have a
testified account of her life before you met her and got the worst of it.
Then, as the case may be, I 'll call on her.

'You will behave yourself when you call.'

'But she won't have our family jewels.'

'That affair has been settled by me.'

'I should be expecting to hear of them as decorating the person of one of
that man Morsfield's mistresses.'

The earl's brow thickened. 'Charlotte, I smacked your cheek when you were
a girl.'

'I know you did. You might again, and I wouldn't cry out. She travels
with that Morsfield; you 've seen it. He goes boasting of her. Gypsy or
not, she 's got queer ways.'

'I advise you, you had better learn at once to speak of her
respectfully.'

'I shall have enough to go through, if what you say's true, with
questions of the woman's antecedents and her people, and the date of the
day of this marriage. When was the day you did it? I shall have to give
an answer. You know cousins of ours, and the way they 'll be pressing,
and comparing ages and bawling rumours. None of them imagined my brother
such a fool as to be wheedled into marrying her. You say it's done,
Rowsley. Was it done yesterday or the day before?'

Lord Ormont found unexpectedly that she struck on a weak point. Married
from the first? Why not tell me of it? He could hear her voice as if she
had spoken the words. And how communicate the pell-mell of reasons?

'You're running vixen. The demand I make is for the jewels,' he said.

'You won't have them, Rowsley--not for her.'

'You think of compelling me to use force?'

'Try it.'

'You swear the jewels are with your bankers?'

'I left them in charge of my bankers, and they've not been moved by me.'

'Well, it must be force.'

'Nothing short of it when the honour of our family's concerned.'

It was rather worse than the anticipated struggle with this Charlotte,
though he had kept his temper. The error was in supposing that an hour's
sharp conflict would settle it, as he saw. The jewels required a siege.

'When does Eglett return?' he asked.

'Back to lunch. You stay and lunch here, Rowsley we don't often have
you.'

The earl contemplated her, measuring her powers of resistance for a
prolonged engagement. Odd that the pride which had withdrawn him from the
service of an offending country should pitch him into a series of tussles
with women, for its own confusion! He saw that, too, in his dim
reflectiveness, and held the country answerable for it.

Mr. Eglett was taken into confidence by him privately after lunch. Mr.
Eglett's position between the brother and sister was perplexing;
habitually he thought his wife had strong good sense, in spite of the
costliness of certain actions at law not invariably confirming his
opinion; he thought also that the earl's demand must needs be considered
obediently. At the same time, his wife's objections to the new Countess
of Ormont, unmasked upon the world, seemed very legitimate; though it
might be asked why the earl should not marry, marrying the lady who
pleased him. But if, in the words of his wife, the lady had no claim to
be called a lady, the marriage was deplorable. On the other hand, Lord
Ormont spoke of her in terms of esteem, and he was no fondling dotard.

How to compromise the matter for the sake of peace? The man perpetually
plunged into strife by his combative spouse, cried the familiar question
again; and at every suggestion of his on behalf of concord he heard from
Lady Charlotte that he had no principles, or else from Lord Ormont that
his head must be off his shoulders.

The man for peace had the smallest supply of language, and so, unless he
took a side and fought, his active part was football between them.

It went on through the afternoon up to five o'clock. No impression was
betrayed by Lady Charlotte.

She congratulated her brother on the recruit he had enlisted. He smiled
his grimmest of the lips drawn in. A combat, perceptibly of some
extension, would soon give him command of the man of peace; and energy to
continue attacks will break down the energies of any dogged defensive
stand.

He deferred the discussion with his unreasonable sister until the next
day at half-past twelve o'clock. Lady Charlotte nodded to the
appointment. She would have congratulated herself without irony on the
result of the first day's altercation but for her brother Rowsley's
unusual and ominous display of patience. Twice during the wrangle she had
to conceal a difficult breathing. She felt a numbness in one arm now it
was over, and mentally complimented her London physician on the
unerringness of his diagnosis. Her heart, however, complained of the
cruelty of having in the end, perhaps, if the wrangle should be
protracted, to yield, for sheer weakness, without ceasing to beat.




CHAPTER XXIII

THE ORMONT JEWELS

At half-past twelve of the noon next day Lord Ormont was at Lady
Charlotte's house door. She welcomed him affectionately, as if nothing
were in dispute; he nodded an acceptance of her greetings, with a blunt
intimation of the business to be settled; she put on her hump of the
feline defensive; then his batteries opened fire and hers barked back on
him. Each won admiration of the other's tenacity, all the more determined
to sap or split it. They had known one another's character, but they had
never seen it in such strong light. Never had their mutual and similar,
though opposed, resources been drawn out so copiously and unreservedly.
This was the shining scrawl of all that each could do to gain a fight.
They admired one another's contemptibly justifiable evasions, changes of
front, statements bordering the lie, even to meanness in the withdrawal
of admissions and the denial of the same ever having been made. That was
Charlotte! That was Rowsley! Anything to beat down the adversary.

As to will, the woman's will, of these two, equalled the man's. They were
matched in obstinacy and unscrupulousness.

Her ingenuitics of the defence eluded his attacks, and compelled him to
fall on heavy iteration of his demand for the jewels, an immediate
restitution of the jewels. 'Why immediate?' cried she.

He repeated it without replying to her.

'But, you tell me, Rowsley, why immediate? If you're in want of money for
her, you come to me, tell me, you shall have thousands. I'll drive down
to the City to-morrow and sell out stock. Mr. Eglett won't mind when he
hears the purpose. I shall call five thousand cheap, and don't ask to see
the money again.'

'Ah! double the sum to have your own way!' said he.

She protested that she valued her money. She furnished instances of her
carefulness of her money all along up to the present period of brutal old
age. Yet she would willingly part with five thousand or more to save the
family honour. Mr. Eglett would not only approve, he would probably
advance a good part of the money himself.

'Money! Who wants money?' thundered the earl, and jumped out of her trap
of the further diversion from the plain request. 'To-morrow, when I am
here, I shall expect to have the jewels delivered to me.'

'That you may hand them over to her. Where are they likely to be this
time next year? And what do you know about jewels? You may look at them
when you ask to see them, and not know imitation paste--like the stuff
Lady Beltus showed her old husband. Our mother wore them, and she prized
them. I'm not sure I wouldn't rather hear they were exhibited in a Bond
Street jeweller's shop or a Piccadilly pawnbroker's than have them on
that woman.'

'You speak of my wife.'

'For a season, perhaps; and off they're likely to go, to pay bills, if
her Adderwoods and her Morsfields are out of funds, as they call it.'

'You are aware you are speaking of my wife, Charlotte?'

'You daren't say my sister-in-law.'

He did not choose to say it; and once more she dared him. She could
imagine she scored a point.

They were summoned to lunch by Mr. Eglett; and there was an hour's
armistice; following which the earl demanded the restitution of the
jewels, and heard the singular question, childishly accentuated, 'What
for?'

Patience was his weapon and support, so he named his object with an air
of inveteracy in tranquillity they were for his wife to wear.

Lady Charlotte dared him to say they were for her sister-in-law.

He despised the transparent artifice of the challenge.

'But you have to own the difference,' she said. 'You haven't lost respect
for your family, thank God! No. It 's one thing to say she 's a wife: you
hang fire when it 's to say she 's my sister-in-law.'

'You'll have to admit the fact, Charlotte.'

'How long is it since I should have had to admit the fact?'

'From the date of my marriage.'

'Tell me the date.'

'No, you don't wear a wig, Charlotte; but you are fit to practise in the
Law-courts!' he said, exasperatedly jocular.

She had started a fresh diversion, and she pressed him for the date. 'I
'm supposed to have had a sister-in-law-how many weeks?--months?'

'Years.'

'Married years! And if you've been married years, where were you married?
Not in a church. That woman's no church-bride.'

'There are some clever women made idiots of by their trullish tempers.'

'Abuse away. I've asked you where you were married, Rowsley.'

'Go to Madrid. Go to the Embassy. Apply to the chaplain.'

'Married in Madrid! Who's ever married in Madrid! You flung her a yellow
handkerchief, and she tied it round her neck--that 's your ceremony! Now
you tell me you've been married years; and she's a young woman; you fetch
her over from Madrid, set her in a place where those Morsfields and other
fungi-fellows grow, and she has to think herself lucky to be received by
a Lady Staines and a Mrs. Lawrence Finchley, and she the talk of the
town, refused at Court, for all an honourable-enough old woman
countenanced her in pity; and I 'm asked to believe she was my brother's
wife, sister-in-law of mine, all the while! I won't.'

Lady Charlotte dilated on it for a length of time, merely to show she
declined to believe it; pouring Morsfield over him and the talk of the
town, the gypsy caught in Spain--now to be foisted on her as her
sister-in-law! She could fancy she produced an effect.

She did indeed unveil to him a portion of the sufferings his Aminta had
undergone; as visibly, too, the good argumentative reasons for his
previous avoidance of the deadly, dismal wrangle here forced on him. A
truly dismal, profitless wrangle! But the finish of it would be the
beginning of some solace to his Aminta.

The finish of it must be to-morrow. He refrained from saying so, and
simply appointed to-morrow for the resumption of the wrestle, departing
in his invincible coat of patience: which one has to wear when dealing
with a woman like Charlotte, he informed Mr. Eglett, on his way out at a
later hour than on the foregone day. Mr. Eglett was of his opinion, that
an introduction of lawyers into a family dispute was 'rats in the
pantry'; and he would have joined him in his gloomy laugh, if the thought
of Charlotte in a contention had not been so serious a matter. She might
be beaten; she could not be brought to yield.

She retired to her bedroom, and laid herself flat on her bed, immoveable,
till her maid undressed her for the night. A cup of broth and strip of
toast formed her sole nourishment. As for her doctor's possible
reproaches, the symptoms might crowd and do their worst; she fought for
the honour of her family.

At midday of the third day Lady Charlotte was reduced to the condition of
those fortresses which wave defiantly the flag, but deliver no further
shot, awaiting the assault. Her body, affected by hideous old age,
succumbed. Her will was unshaken. She would not write to her bankers. Mr.
Eglett might go to them, if he thought fit. Rowsley was to understand
that he might call himself married; she would have no flower-basket bunch
of a sister-in-law thrust upon her.

Lord Ormont and Mr. Eglett walked down to her bankers in the afternoon.
As a consequence of express injunctions given by my lady five years
previously, the assistant-manager sought an interview with her.

The jewels were lodged at her house the day ensuing. They were examined,
verified by the list in Lady Charlotte's family record-book, and then
taken away--forcibly, of course--by her brother.

He laughed in his dry manner; but the reminiscent glimpses, helping him
to see the humour of it, stirred sensations of the tug it had been with
that combative Charlotte, and excused him for having shrunk from the
encounter until he conceived it to be necessary.

Settlement of the affair with Morsfield now claimed his attention. The
ironical tolerance he practised in relation to Morsfield when Aminta had
no definite station before the world changed to an angry irritability at
the man's behaviour now that she had stepped forth under his
acknowledgement of her as the Countess of Ormont. He had come round to a
rather healthier mind regarding his country, and his introduction of the
Countess of Ormont to the world was his peace-offering.

As he returned home earlier on the third day, he found his diligent
secretary at work. The calling on Captain May and the writing to the sort
of man were acts obnoxious to his dignity; so he despatched Weyburn to
the captain's house, one in a small street of three narrow tenements
abutting on aristocracy and terminating in mews. Weyburn's mission was to
give the earl's address at Great Marlow for the succeeding days, and to
see Captain May, if the captain was at home. During his absence the
precious family jewel-box was locked in safety. Aminta and her friend,
little Miss Collett, were out driving, by the secretary's report. The
earl considered it a wholesome feature of Aminta's character that she
should have held to her modest schoolmate the fact spoke well for both of
them.

A look at the papers to serve for Memoirs was discomposing, and led him
to think the secretary could be parted with as soon as he pleased to go:
say, a week hence.

The Memoirs were no longer designed for issue. He had the impulse to
treat them on the spot as the Plan for the Defence of the Country had
been treated; and for absolutely obverse reasons. The secretary and the
Memoirs were associated: one had sprung out of the other. Moreover, the
secretary had witnessed a scene at Steignton. The young man had done his
duty, and would be thanked for that, and dismissed, with a touch of his
employer's hand. The young man would have made a good soldier--a better
soldier, good as he might be as a scribe. He ought to have been in his
father's footsteps, and he would then have disciplined or quashed his
fantastical ideas. Perhaps he was right on the point of toning the
Memoirs here and there. Since the scene at Steignton Lord Ormont's views
had changed markedly in relation to everybody about him, and most things.

Weyburn came back at the end of an hour to say that he had left the
address with Mrs. May, whom he had seen.

'A handsome person,' the earl observed.

'She must have been very handsome,' said Weyburn.

'Ah! we fall into their fictions, or life would be a bald business, upon
my word!'

Lord Ormont had not uttered it before the sentiment of his greater luck
with one of that queer world of the female lottery went through him on a
swell of satisfaction, just a wave.

An old-world eye upon women, it seemed to Weyburn. But the man who could
crown a long term of cruel injustice with the harshness to his wife at
Steignton would naturally behold women with that eye.

However, he was allowed only to generalize; he could not trust himself to
dwell on Lady Ormont and the Aminta inside the shell. Aminta and Lady
Ormont might think as one or diversely of the executioner's blow she had
undergone. She was a married woman, and she probably regarded the wedding
by law as the end a woman has to aim at, and is annihilated by hitting;
one flash of success, and then extinction, like a boy's cracker on the
pavement. Not an elevated image, but closely resembling that which her
alliance with Lord Ormont had been!

At the same time, no true lover of a woman advises her--imploring is
horrible treason--to slip the symbolic circle of the law from her finger,
and have in an instant the world for her enemy. She must consent to be
annihilated, and must have no feelings; particularly no mind. The mind is
the danger for her. If she has a mind alive, she will certainly push for
the position to exercise it, and run the risk of a classing with Nature's
created mates for reptile men.

Besides, Lady Ormont appeared, in the company of her friend Selina
Collett, not worse than rather too thoughtful; not distinctly unhappy.
And she was conversable, smiling. She might have had an explanation with
my lord, accepting excuses--or, who knows? taking the blame, and offering
them. Weakness is pliable. So pliable is it, that it has been known for a
crack of the masterly whip to fling off the victim and put on the
culprit! Ay, but let it be as it may with Lady Ormont, Aminta is of a
different composition. Aminta's eyes of the return journey to London were
haunting lights, and lured him to speculate; and for her sake he rejected
the thought that for him they meant anything warmer than the passing
thankfulness, though they were a novel assurance to him of her possession
beneath her smothering cloud of the power to resolve, and show forth a
brilliant individuality.

The departure of the ladies and my lord in the travelling carriage for
the house on the Upper Thames was passably sweetened to Weyburn by the
command to him to follow in a day or two, and continue his work there
until he left England. Aminta would not hear of an abandonment of the
Memoirs. She spoke on the subject to my lord as to a husband pardoned.

She was not less affable and pleasant with him out of Weyburn's hearing.
My lord earned her gratitude for his behaviour to Selina Collett, to whom
he talked interestedly of her favourite pursuit, as he had done on the
day when, as he was not the man to forget, her arrival relieved him of
anxiety. Aminta, noticed the box on the seat beside him.

They drove up to their country house in time to dress leisurely for
dinner. Nevertheless, the dinner-hour had struck several minutes before
she descended; and the earl, as if not expecting her, was out on the
garden path beside the river bank with Selina. She beckoned from the step
of the open French window.

He came to her at little Selina's shuffling pace, conversing upon
water-plants.

'No jewelry to-day?' he said.

And Aminta replied: 'Carstairs has shown me the box and given the key. I
have not opened it.'

'Time in the evening, or to-morrow. You guess the contents?'

'I presume I do.'

She looked feverish and shadowed.

He murmured kindly: 'Anything?'

'Not now: we will dine.'

She had missed, had lost, she feared, her own jewelbox; a casket of no
great treasure to others, but of a largely estimable importance to her.

After the heavy ceremonial entrance and exit of dishes, she begged the
earl to accompany her for an examination of the contents of the box.

As soon as her chamber-door was shut, she said, in accents of alarm:
'Mine has disappeared. Carstairs, I know, is to be trusted. She remembers
carrying the box out of my room; she believes she can remember putting it
into the fly. She had to confess that it had vanished, without her
knowing how, when my boxes were unpacked.'

'Is she very much upset?' said the earl.

'Carstairs? Why, yes, poor creature! you can imagine. I have no doubt she
feels for me; and her own reputation is concerned. What do you think is
best to be done?'

'To be done! Overhaul the baggage again in all the rooms.'

'We've not failed to do that.'

'Control yourself, my dear. If, by bad luck, they're lost, we can replace
them. The contents of this box, now, we could not replace. Open it, and
judge.'

'I have no curiosity--forgive me, I beg. And the servant's fly has been
visited, ransacked inside and out, footmen questioned; we have not left
anything we can conceive of undone. My lord, will you suggest?'

'The intrinsic value of the gems would not be worth--not worth Aminta's
one beat of the heart. Upon my word--not one!'

An amatory knightly compliment breasting her perturbation roused an
unwonted spite; and a swift reflection on it startled her with a
suspicion. She cast it behind her. He could be angler and fish, he would
not be cat and mouse.

She said, however, more temperately: 'It is not the value of the gems. We
are losing precious minutes!'

'Association of them with the giver? Is it that? If that has a value for
you, he is flattered.'

This betrayed him to the woman waxing as intensely susceptible in all her
being as powder to sparks.

'There is to be no misunderstanding, my lord,' she said. 'I like--I value
my jewels; but--I am alarmed lest the box should fall into hands--into
strange hands.'

'The box!' he exclaimed with an outline of a comic grimace; and, if
proved a voluptuary in torturing, he could instance half a dozen points
for extenuation: her charm of person, withheld from him, and to be
embraced; her innocent naughtiness; compensation coming to her in excess
for a transient infliction of pain. 'Your anxiety is about the box?'

'Yes, the box,' Aminta said firmly. 'It contains--'

'No false jewels? A thief might complain.'

'It contains letters, my lord.' 'Blackmail?'

'You would be at liberty to read them. I would rather they were burnt.'

'Ah!' The earl heaved his chest prodigiously. 'Blackmail letters are
better in a husband's hands, if they can be laid there.'

'If there is a necessity for him to read them--yes.'

'There may be a necessity, there can't be a gratification,--though there
are dogs of thick blood that like to scratch their sores,' he murmured to
himself. 'You used to show me these declaration epistles.'

'Not the names.'

'Not the names--no!'

'When we had left the country, I showed you why it had been my wish to
go.'

'Xarifa was and is female honour. Take the key, open that box; I will
make inquiries. But, my dear, you guess everything. Your little box was
removed for the bigger impression to be produced by this one.'

A flash came out of her dark eyes.

'No, you guess wrong this time, you clever shrew! I wormed nothing from
you,' said he. 'I knew you kept particular letters in that receptacle of
things of price: Aminta can't conceal. The man has worried you. Why not
have come to me?'

'Oblige me, my lord, by restoring me my box.'

'This is your box.'

Her bosom lifted with the words Oh, no! unspoken. He took the key and
opened the box. A dazzling tray of stones was revealed; underneath it the
constellations in cases, very heavens for the worldly Eve; and he doubted
that Eve could have gone completely out of her. But she had, as
observation instructed him, set her woman's mind on something else, and
must have it before letting her eyes fall on objects impossible for any
of her sex to see without coveting them.

He bowed. 'I will fetch it,' he said magnanimously. Her own box was
brought from his room. She then consented to look womanly at the Ormont
jewels, over which the battle; whereof she knew nothing, and nothing
could be told her, had been fought in her interests, for her sovereign
pleasure.

She looked and admired. They were beautiful jewels the great emerald was
wonderful, and there were two rubies to praise. She excused herself for
declining to put the circlet for the pendant round her neck, or a
glittering ring on her finger. Her remarks were encomiums, not quite so
cold as those of a provincial spinster of an ascetic turn at an
exhibition of the world's flycatcher gewgaws. He had divided Aminta from
the Countess of Ormont, and it was the wary Aminta who set a guard on
looks and tones before the spectacle of his noble bounty, lest any, the
smallest, payment of the dues of the countess should be demanded. Rightly
interpreting him to be by nature incapable of asking pardon, or
acknowledging a wrong done by him, however much he might crave exemption
from blame and seek for peace, she kept to her mask of injury, though she
hated unforgivingness; and she felt it little, she did it easily, because
her heart was dead to the man. My lord's hand touched her on her
shoulder, propitiatingly in some degree, in his dumb way.

Offended women can be emotional to a towering pride, that bends while it
assumes unbendingness: it must come to their sensations, as it were a
sign of humanity in the majestic, speechless king of beasts; and they are
pathetically melted, abjectly hypocritical; a nice confusion of
sentiments, traceable to a tender bosom's appreciation of strength and
the perceptive compassion for its mortality.

In a case of the alienated wife, whose blood is running another way, no
foul snake's bite is more poisonous than that indicatory touch, however
simple and slight. My lord's hand, lightly laid on Aminta's shoulder,
became sensible of soft warm flesh stiffening to the skeleton.




CHAPTER XXIV

LOVERS MATED

He was benevolently martial, to the extent of paternal, in thinking his
girl, of whom he deigned to think now as his countess, pardonably
foolish. Woman for woman, she was of a pattern superior to the world's
ordinary, and might run the world's elect a race. But she was pitifully
woman-like in her increase of dissatisfaction with the more she got.
Women are happier enslaved. Men, too, if their despot is an Ormont.
Colonel of his regiment, he proved that: his men would follow him
anywhere, do anything. Grand old days, before he was condemned by one
knows not what extraordinary round of circumstances to cogitate on women
as fluids, and how to cut channels for them, that they may course along
in the direction good for them, imagining it their pretty wanton will to
go that way! Napoleon's treatment of women is excellent example.
Peterborough's can be defended.

His Aminta could not reason. She nursed a rancour on account of the blow
she drew on herself at Steignton, and she declined consolation in her
being pardoned. The reconcilement evidently was proposed as a finale of
one of the detestable feminine storms enveloping men weak enough to let
themselves be dragged through a scene for the sake of domestic
tranquillity.

A remarkable exhibition of Aminta the woman was, her entire change of
front since he had taken her spousal chill. Formerly she was passive,
merely stately, the chiselled grande dame, deferential in her bearing and
speech, even when argumentative and having an opinion to plant. She had
always the independent eye and step; she now had the tongue of the
graceful and native great lady, fitted to rule her circle and hold her
place beside the proudest of the Ormonts. She bore well the small shuffle
with her jewel-box--held herself gallantly. There had been no female
feignings either, affected misapprehensions, gapy ignorances, and snaky
subterfuges, and the like, familiar to men who have the gentle twister in
grip. Straight on the line of the thing to be seen she flew, and struck
on it; and that is a woman's martial action. He would right heartily have
called her comrade, if he had been active himself. A warrior pulled off
his horse, to sit in a chair and contemplate the minute evolutions of the
sex is pettish with his part in such battle-fields at the stage beyond
amusement.

Seen swimming, she charmed him. Abstract views of a woman summon opposite
advocates: one can never say positively, That is she! But the visible
fair form of a woman is hereditary queen of us. We have none of your
pleadings and counter-pleadings and judicial summaries to obstruct a
ravenous loyalty. My lord beheld Aminta take her three quick steps on the
plank, and spring and dive and ascend, shaking the ends of her bound
black locks; and away she went with shut mouth and broad stroke of her
arms into the sunny early morning river; brave to see, although he had to
flick a bee of a question, why he enjoyed the privilege of seeing, and
was not beside her. The only answer confessed to a distaste for all
exercise once pleasurable.

She and her little friend boated or strolled through the meadows during
the day; he fished. When he and Aminta rode out for the hour before
dinner, she seemed pleased. She was amicable, conversable, all that was
agreeable as a woman, and she was the chillest of wives. My lord's
observations and reflections came to one conclusion: she pricked and
challenged him to lead up to her desired stormy scene. He met her and
meant to vanquish her with the dominating patience Charlotte had found
too much for her: women cannot stand against it.

To be patient in contention with women, however, one must have a
continuous and an exclusive occupation; and the tax it lays on us
conduces usually to impatience with men. My lord did not directly connect
Aminta's chillness and Morsfield's impudence; yet the sensation roused by
his Aminta participated in the desire to punish Morsfield speedily.
Without wishing for a duel, he was moved by the social sanction it had to
consider whether green youths and women might not think a grey head had
delayed it too long. The practice of the duel begot the peculiar animal
logic of the nobler savage, which tends to magnify an offence in the
ratio of our vanity, and hunger for a blood that is not demanded by the
appetite. Moreover, a waning practice, in disfavour with the new
generation, will be commended to the conservative barbarian, as partaking
of the wisdom of his fathers. Further, too, we may have grown slothful,
fallen to moodiness, done excess of service to Omphale, our tyrant lady
of the glow and the chill; and then undoubtedly the duel braces.

He left Aminta for London, submissive to the terms of intimacy dictated
by her demeanour, his unacknowledged seniority rendering their harshness
less hard to endure. She had not gratified him with a display of her
person in the glitter of the Ormont jewels; and since he was, under
common conditions, a speechless man, his ineptitude for amorous
remonstrances precipitated him upon deeds, that he might offer additional
proofs of his esteem and the assurance of her established position as his
countess. He proposed to engage Lady Charlotte in a conflict severer than
the foregoing, until he brought her to pay the ceremonial visit to her
sister-in-law. The count of time for this final trial of his
masterfulness he calculated at a week. It would be an occupation,
miserable occupation though it was. He hailed the prospect of chastising
Morsfield, for a proof that his tussels with women, prolonged study of
their tricks, manoeuvrings and outwittings of them, had not emasculated
him.

Aminta willingly promised to write from day to day. Her senses had his
absence insured to them by her anticipation of the task. She did not
conceive it would be so ponderous a task. What to write to him when
nothing occurred! Nothing did occur, unless the arrival of Mr. Weyburn
was to be named an event. She alluded to it: 'Mr. Weyburn has come,
expecting to find you here. The dispatch-box is here. Is he to await
you?'

That innocent little question was a day gained.

One day of boating on the upper reaches of the pastoral river, and walks
in woods and golden meadows, was felicity fallen on earth, the ripe fruit
of dreams. A dread surrounded it, as a belt, not shadowing the horizon;
and she clasped it to her heart the more passionately, like a mother her
rosy infant, which a dark world threatens and the universal fate.

Love, as it will be at her June of life, was teaching her to know the
good and bad of herself. Women, educated to embrace principles through
their timidity and their pudency, discover, amazed, that these are not
lasting qualities under love's influence. The blushes and the fears take
flight. The principles depend much on the beloved. Is he a man whose
contact with the world has given him understanding of life's laws, and
can hold him firm to the right course in the strain and whirling of a
torrent, they cling to him, deeply they worship. And if they tempt him,
it is not advisedly done. Nature and love are busy in conjunction. The
timidities and pudencies have flown; they may hover, they are not
present. You deplore it, you must not blame; you have educated them so.
Muscular principles are sown only out in the world; and, on the whole,
with all their errors, the worldly men are the truest as well as the
bravest of men. Her faith in his guidance was equal to her dependence.
The retrospect of a recent journey told her how he had been tried.

She could gaze tenderly, betray her heart, and be certain of safety. Can
wine match that for joy? She had no schemes, no hopes, but simply the
desire to bestow, the capacity to believe. Any wish to be enfolded by him
was shapeless and unlighted, unborn; though now and again for some chance
word or undefined thought she surprised the strange tenant of her breast
at an incomprehensibly faster beat, and knew it for her own and not her
own, the familiar the stranger--an utter stranger, as one who had snared
her in a wreath and was pulling her off her feet.

She was not so guileless at the thought of little Selina Collett here,
and of Selina as the letter-bearer of old; and the marvel that Matey and
Browny and Selina were together after all! Was it not a kind of summons
to her to call him Matey just once, only once, in play? She burned and
ached to do it. She might have taxed her ingenuity successfully to induce
little Selina to the boldness of calling him Matey--and she then
repeating it, as the woman who revived with a meditative effort
recollections of the girl. Ah, frightful hypocrite! Thoughts of the
pleasure of his name aloud on her lips in his hearing dissolved through
her veins, and were met by Matthew Weyburn's open face, before which
hypocrisy stood rent and stripped. She preferred the calmer, the truer
pleasure of seeing him modestly take lessons in the nomenclature of
weeds, herbs, grasses, by hedge and ditch. Selina could instruct him as
well in entomology, but he knew better the Swiss, Tyrolese, and Italian
valley-homes of beetle and butterfly species. Their simple talk was a
cool zephyr fanning Aminta.

The suggestion to unite the two came to her, of course, but their
physical disparity denied her that chance to settle her own difficulty,
and a whisper of one physically the match for him punished her. In
stature, in healthfulness, they were equals, perhaps: not morally or
intellectually. And she could claim headship of him on one little point
confided to her by his mother, who was bearing him, and startled by the
boom of guns under her pillow, when her husband fronted the enemy:
Matthew Weyburn, the fencer, boxer, cricketer, hunter, all things manly,
rather shrank from firearms--at least, one saw him put on a screw to
manipulate them. In danger--among brigands or mutineers, for example--she
could stand by him and prove herself his mate. Intellectually, morally,
she had to bow humbly. Nor had she, nor could she do more than lean on
and catch example from his prompt spiritual valiancy. It shone out from
him, and a crisis fulfilled the promise. Who could be his mate for
cheerful courage, for skill, the ready mind, easy adroitness, and for
self-command? To imitate was a woman's utmost.

Matthew Weyburn appeared the very Matey of the first of May cricketing
day among Cuper's boys the next morning, when seen pacing down the
garden-walk. He wore his white trousers of that happiest of old days--the
'white ducks' Aminta and Selina remembered. Selina beamed. 'Yes, he did;
he always wore them; but now it's a frock-coat instead of a jacket.'

'But now he will be a master instead of a schoolboy,' said Aminta. 'Let
us hope he will prosper.'

'He gives me the idea of a man who must succeed,' Selina said; and she
was patted, rallied, asked how she had the idea, and kissed; Aminta
saying she fancied it might be thought, for he looked so confident.

'Only not what the boys used to call "cocky,"' said Selina. 'He won't be
contemptuous of those he outstrips.'

'His choice of the schoolmaster's profession points to a modesty in him,
does it not, little woman?'

'He made me tell him, while you were writing your letters yesterday, all
about my brother and his prospects.'

'Yes, that is like him. And I must hear of your brother, "little
Collett." Don't forget, Sely, little Collett was our postman.'

The Countess of Ormont's humorous reference to the circumstance passed
with Selina for a sign of a poetic love of the past, and a present social
elevation that allowed her to review it impassively. She admired the
great lady and good friend who could really be interested in the fortunes
of a mere schoolmaster and a merchant's clerk. To her astonishment, by
some agency beyond her fathoming, she found herself, and hardly for her
own pleasure, pushing the young schoolmaster animatedly to have an
account of his aims in the establishment of the foreign school.

Weyburn smiled. He set a short look at Aminta; and she, conscious of her
detected diplomacy, had an inward shiver, mixed of the fascination and
repugnance felt by a woman who knows that under one man's eyes her
character is naked and anatomized. Her character?--her soul. He held it
in hand and probed it mercifully. She had felt the sweet sting again and
again, and had shrunk from him, and had crawled to him. The love of him
made it all fascination. How did he learn to read at any moment right to
the soul of a woman? Did experience teach him, or sentimental sympathy?
He was too young, he was too manly. It must be because of his being in
heart and mind the brother to the sister with women.

Thames played round them on his pastoral pipes. Bee-note and woodside
blackbird and meadow cow, and the fish of the silver rolling rings,
composed the leap of the music.

She gave her mind to his voice, following whither it went; half was in
air, higher than the swallow's, exalting him.

How is it he is the brother of women? They are sisters for him because he
is neither sentimentalist nor devourer. He will not flatter to feed on
them. The one he chooses, she will know love. There are women who go
through life not knowing love. They are inanimate automatic machines, who
lay them down at last, inquiring wherefore they were caused to move. She
is not of that sad flock. She will be mated; she will have the right to
call him Matey. A certain Browny called him Matey. She lived and died. A
certain woman apes Browny's features and inherits her passion, but has
forfeited her rights. Were she, under happiest conditions, to put her
hand in his, shame would burn her. For he is just--he is Justice; and a
woman bringing him less than his due, she must be a creature of the
slime!

This was the shadowy sentiment that made the wall of division between
them. There was no other. Lord Ormont had struck to fragments that
barrier of the conventional oath and ceremonial union. He was unjust--he
was Injustice. The weak may be wedded, they cannot be married; to
Injustice. And if we have the world for the buttress of injustice, then
is Nature the flaring rebel; there is no fixed order possible. Laws are
necessary instruments of the majority; but when they grind the sane human
being to dust for their maintenance, their enthronement is the rule of
the savage's old deity, sniffing blood-sacrifice. There cannot be a based
society upon such conditions. An immolation of the naturally constituted
individual arrests the general expansion to which we step, decivilizes
more, and is more impious to the God in man, than temporary revelries of
a licence that Nature soon checks.

Arrows of thoughts resembling these shot over the half of Aminta's mind
not listening. Her lover's head was active on the same theme while he
spoke. They converged to it from looks crossing or catching profiles, or
from tones, from a motion of hand, from a chance word. Insomuch that the
third person present was kept unobservant only by her studious and humble
speculations on the young schoolmaster's grand project to bring the
nationalities together, and teach Old England to the Continent--the
Continent to Old England: our healthy games, our scorn of the lie,
manliness; their intellectual valour, diligence, considerate manners.

'Just to name a few of the things for interchange,' said Weyburn. 'As to
method, we shall be their disciples. But I look forward to our fellows
getting the lead. No hurry. Why will they? you ask in petto. Well, they
're emulous, and they take a thrashing kindly. That 's the way to learn a
lesson. I 've seen our fellows beaten and beaten--never the courage
beaten out of them. In the end, they won and kept the field. They have a
lot to learn--principally not to be afraid of ideas. They lose heaps of
time before they can feel at home with ideas. They call themselves
practical for having an addiction to the palpable. It is a pretty wreath
they clap on their deficiencies. Practical dogs are for bones, horses for
corn. I want the practical Englishman to settle his muzzle in a nosebag
of ideas. When he has once got hold of them, he makes good stuff of them.
On the Continent ideas have wings and pay visits. Here, they're
stay-at-home. Then I want our fellows to have the habit of speaking from
the chest. They shall return to England with the whoop of the mountains
in them and ready to jump out. They shall have an Achillean roar; and
they shall sing by second nature. Don't fear: they'll give double for
anything they take. I've known Italians, to whom an Englishman's honesty
of mind and dealing was one of the dreams of a better humanity they had
put in a box. Frenchmen, too, who, when they came to know us, were
astonished at their epithet of perfide, and loved us.'

'Emile,' said Aminta. 'You remember Emile, Selina: the dear little French
boy at Mr. Cuper's?'

'Oh, I do,' Selina responded.

'He will work with Mr. Weyburn in Switzerland.'

'Oh, that will be nice!' the girl exclaimed.

Aminta squeezed Selina's hand. A shower of tears clouded her eyes. She
chose to fancy it was because of her envy of the modest, busy, peaceful
girl, who envied none. Conquers also sincerity in the sincerest. She was
vexed with her full breast, and had as little command of her thoughts as
of her feelings.

'Mr. Weyburn has ideas for the education of girls too,' she said.

'There's the task,' said he. 'It's to separate them as little as
possible. All the--passez-moi le mot--devilry between the sexes begins at
their separation. They 're foreigners when they meet; and their alliances
are not always binding. The chief object in life, if happiness be the
aim, and the growing better than we are, is to teach men and women how to
be one; for, if they 're not, then each is a morsel for the other to prey
on. Lady Charlotte Eglett's view is, that the greater number of them on
both sides hate one another.'

'Hate!' exclaimed Selina; and Aminta said: 'Is Lady Charlotte Eglett an
authority?'

'She has observed, and she thinks. She has in the abstract the justest of
minds: and that is the curious point about her. But one may say they are
trained at present to be hostile. Some of them fall in love and strike a
truce, and still they are foreigners. They have not the same standard of
honour. They might have it from an education in common.'

'But there must be also a lady to govern the girls?' Selina interposed.

'Ah, yes; she is not yet found!'

'Would it increase their mutual respect?--or show of respect, if you
like?' said Aminta, with his last remark at work as the shattering bell
of a city's insurrection in her breast.

'In time, under management; catching and grouping them young. A boy who
sees a girl do what he can't, and would like to do, won't take refuge in
his muscular superiority--which, by the way, would be lessened.'

'You suppose their capacities are equal?'

'Things are not equal. I suppose their excellencies to make a pretty
nearly equal sum in the end. But we 're not weighing them each. The
question concerns the advantage of both.'

'That seems just!'

Aminta threw no voice into the word 'just.' It was the word of the
heavens assuaging earth's thirst, and she was earth to him. Her soul
yearned to the man whose mind conceived it.

She said to Selina: 'We must plan an expedition next year or the year
after, and see how the school progresses.'

All three smiled; and Selina touched and held Aminta's hand shyly.
Visions of the unseen Switzerland awed her.

Weyburn named the Spring holiday time, the season of the flowering Alpine
robes. He promised welcome, pressed for a promise of the visit. Warmly it
was given. 'We will; we will indeed!'

'I shall look forward,' he said.

There was nothing else for him or for her, except to doat on the passing
minute that slipped when seized. The looking forward turned them to the
looking back at the point they had flown from, and yielded a momentary
pleasure, enough to stamp some section of a picture on their memories,
which was not the burning now Love lives for, in the clasp, if but of
hands. Desire of it destroyed it. They swung to the future, swung to the
present it made the past, sensible to the quick of the now they could not
hold. They were lovers. Divided lovers in presence, they thought and they
felt in pieces. Feelings and thoughts were forbidden to speech. She dared
look the very little of her heart's fulness, without the disloyalty it
would have been in him to let a small peep of his heart be seen. While
her hand was not clasped she could look tenderly, and her fettered state,
her sense of unworthiness muffled in the deeps, would keep her from the
loosening to passion.

He who read through her lustrous, transiently dwelling eyes had not that
security. His part, besides the watch over the spring of his hot blood,
was to combat a host, insidious among which was unreason calling her
Browny, urging him to take his own, to snatch her from a possessor who
forfeited by undervaluing her. This was the truth in a better-ordered
world: she belonged to the man who could help her to grow and to do her
work. But in the world we have around us, it was the distorted truth: and
keeping passion down, he was able to wish her such happiness as pertained
to safety from shipwreck, and for himself, that he might continue to walk
in the ranks of the sober citizens.

Oh, true and right, but she was gloriously beautiful! Day by day she
surpassed the wondrous Browny of old days. All women were eclipsed by
her. She was that fire in the night which lights the night and draws the
night to look at it. And more: this queen of women was beginning to have
a mind at work. One saw already the sprouting of a mind repressed. She
had a distinct ability; the good ambition to use her qualities. She
needed life and air--that is, comprehension of her, encouragement, the
companion mate. With what strength would she now endow him! The pride in
the sharp imagination of possessing her whispered a boast of the strength
her mate would have from her. His need and her need rushed together
somewhere down the skies. They could not, he argued, be separated
eternally.

He had to leave her. Selina, shocked at a boldness she could not
understand in herself, begged him to stay and tell her of Switzerland and
Alpine flowers and herbs, and the valleys for the gold beetle and the
Apollo butterfly. Aminta hinted that Lord Ormont might expect to find him
there, if he came the next morning; but she would not try to persuade,
and left the decision with him, loving him for the pain he inflicted by
going.

Why, indeed, should he stay? Both could ask; they were one in asking.
Anguish balanced pleasure in them both. The day of the pleasure was
heaven to remember, heaven to hope for; not so heavenly to pray for. The
praying for it, each knew, implored their joint will to decree the
perilous blessing. A shadowy sentiment of duty and rectitude, born of
what they had suffered, hung between them and the prayer for a renewal,
that would renew the tempting they were conscious of when the sweet, the
strained, throbbing day was over. They could hope for chance to renew it,
and then they would be irresponsible. Then they would think and wish
discreetly, so as to have it a happiness untainted. In refusing now to
take another day or pray for it, they deserved that chance should grant
it.

Aminta had said through Selina the utmost her self-defences could allow.
But the idea of a final parting cut too cruelly into her life, and she
murmured: 'I shall see you before you go for good?'

'I will come, here or in London.'

'I can trust?'

'Quite certain.'

A meeting of a few hasty minutes involved none of the dangers of a sunny,
long summer day; and if it did, the heart had its claims, the heart had
its powers of resistance. Otherwise we should be base verily.

He turned on a bow to leave her before there was a motion for the offer
of her hand.

After many musings and frettings, she reached the wisdom of that. Wisdom
was her only nourishment now. A cold, lean dietary it is; but he
dispensed it, and it fed her, or kept her alive. It became a proud
feeling that she had been his fellow in the achievement of a piece of
wisdom; though the other feeling, that his hand's kind formal touching,
without pressure of hers, would have warmed her to go through the next
interview with her lord, mocked at pure satisfaction. Did he distrust
himself? Or was it to spare her? But if so, her heart was quite bare to
him! But she knew it was.

Aminta drove her questioning heart as a vessel across blank circles of
sea, where there was nothing save the solitary heart for answer. It
answered intelligibly and comfortingly at last, telling her of proof
given that she could repose under his guidance with absolute faith. Was
ever loved woman more blest than she in such belief? She had it firmly;
and a blessedness, too, in this surety wavering beneath shadows of the
uncertainty. Her eyes knew it, her ears were empty of the words. Her
heart knew it, and it was unconfirmed by reason. As for his venturing to
love her, he feared none. And no sooner did that reflection surge than
she stood up beside him in revolt against her lion and lord. Her instinct
judged it impossible she could ever have yielded her heart to a man
lacking courage. Hence--what? when cowardice appeared as the sole
impediment to happiness now!

He had gone, and the day lived again for both of them--a day of sheer
gold in the translation from troubled earth to the mind. One another's
beauty through the visage into the character was newly perceived and
worshipped; and the beauties of pastoral Thames, the temple of peace,
hardly noticed in the passing of the day--taken as air to the breather;
until some chip of the scene, round which an emotion had curled, was
vivid foreground and gateway to shrouded romance: it might be the
stream's white face browning into willow-droopers, or a wagtail on a
water-lily leaf, or the fore-horse of an up-river barge at strain of
legs, a red-finned perch hung a foot above the pebbles in sun-veined
depths, a kingfisher on the scud under alders, the forest of the bankside
weeds.




CHAPTER XXV

PREPARATIONS FOR A RESOLVE

That day receded like a spent billow, and lapsed among the others
advancing, but it left a print deeper than events would have stamped.
Aminta's pen declined to run to her lord; and the dipping it in ink was
no acceleration of the process. A sentence, bearing likeness to an
artless infant's trot of the half-dozen steps to mother's lap, stumbled
upon the full stop midway. Desperate determination pushed it along, and
there was in consequence a dead stop at the head of the next sentence. A
woman whose nature is insurgent against the majesty of the man to whom
she must, among the singular injunctions binding her, regularly write,
sees no way between hypocrisy and rebellion. For rebellion, she, with the
pen in her hand, is avowedly not yet ripe, hypocrisy is abominable.

If she abstained from writing, he might travel down to learn the cause; a
similar danger, or worse, haunted the writing frigidly. She had to be the
hypocrite or else--leap.

But an honest woman who is a feeling woman, when she consents to play
hypocrite, cannot do it by halves. From writing a short cold letter,
Aminta wrote a short warm one, or very friendly. Length she could avoid,
because she was unable to fill a page. It seemed that she could not
compose a friendly few lines without letting her sex be felt in them.
What she had put away from her, so as not to feel it herself, the
simulation of ever so small a bit of feeling brought prominently back;
and where she had made a cast for flowing independent simplicity, she was
feminine, ultra-feminine to her reading of it.

Better take the leap than be guilty of double-dealing even on paper! The
nature of the leap she did not examine.

Her keen apprehension of the price payable for his benevolent intentions
caught scent of them in the air. Those Ormont jewels shone as emblems of
a detested subjection, the penalty for being the beautiful woman rageing
men proclaimed. Was there no scheme of some other sort, and far less
agreeable, to make amends for Steignton? She was shrewd at divination;
she guessed her lord's design. Rather than meet Lady Charlotte, she
proposed to herself the 'leap' immediately; knowing it must be a leap in
the dark, hoping it might be into a swimmer's water. She had her own
pin-money income, and she loathed the chain of her title. So the leap
would at least be honourable, as it assuredly would be unregretted,
whatever ensued.

While Aminta's heart held on to this debate, and in her bed, in her boat,
across the golden valley meadows beside her peaceful little friend, she
gathered a gradual resolution without sight of agencies or consequences,
Lord Ormont was kept from her by the struggle to master his Charlotte a
second time--compared with which the first was insignificant. And this
time it was curious: he could not subdue her physique, as he did before;
she was ready for him each day, and she was animated, much more voluble,
she was ready to jest. The reason being, that she fought now on plausibly
good grounds: on behalf of her independent action.

Previously, her intelligence of the ultimate defeat hanging over the more
stubborn defence of a weak position had harassed her to death's door. She
had no right to retain the family jewels; she had the most perfect of
established rights to refuse doing an ignominious thing. She refused to
visit the so-called Countess of Ormont, or leave her card, or take one
step to warrant the woman in speaking of her as her sister-in-law. And
no,--it did not signify that her brother Rowsley was prohibited by her
from marrying whom he pleased. It meant, that to judge of his acts as
those of a reasoning man, he would have introduced his wife to his
relatives--the relatives he had not quarrelled with--immediately upon his
marriage unless he was ashamed of the woman; and a wife he was ashamed of
was no sister-in-law for her nor aunt for her daughters. Nor should she
come playing the Black Venus among her daughters' husbands, Lady
Charlotte had it in her bosom to say additionally.

Lord Ormont was disconcerted by her manifest pleasure in receiving him
every day. Evidently she consented to the recurrence of a vexatious
dissension for the enjoyment of having him with her hourly. Her
dialectic, too, was cunning. Impetuous with meaning, she forced her way
to get her meaning out, in a manner effective to strike her blow.
Anything for a diversion or a triumph of the moment! He made no way. She
was the better fencer at the tongue.

Yet there was not any abatement of her deference to her brother; and this
little misunderstanding put aside, he was the Rowsley esteemed by her as
the chief of men. She foiled him, it might seem, to exalt him the more.
After he had left the house, visibly annoyed and somewhat stupefied, she
talked of him to her husband, of the soul of chivalry Rowsley was, the
loss to his country. Mr. Eglett was a witness to one of the altercations,
when she, having as usual the dialectical advantage, praised her brother,
to his face, for his magnanimous nature; regretting only that it could be
said he was weak on the woman side of him--which was, she affirmed, a
side proper to every man worth the name; but in his case his country
might complain. Of what?--Well, of a woman.--What had she done, for the
country to complain of her?--Why, then, arts or graces, she had bewitched
and weaned him from his public duty, his military service, his patriotic
ambition.

Lord Ormont's interrogations, heightening the effect of Charlotte's
charge, appeared to Mr. Eglett as a giving of himself over into her
hands; but the earl, after a minute of silence, proved he was a tricky
combatant. It was he who had drawn on Charlotte, that he might have his
opportunity to eulogize--'this lady, whom you continue to call the woman,
after I have told you she is my wife.' According to him, her appeals, her
entreaties, that he should not abandon his profession or let his ambition
rust, had been at one period constant.

He spoke fervently, for him eloquently; and he gained his point; he
silenced Lady Charlotte's tongue, and impressed Mr. Eglett.

When the latter and his wife were alone, he let her see that the Countess
of Ormont was becoming a personage in his consideration.

Lady Charlotte cried out: 'Hear these men where it's a good-looking woman
between the winds! Do you take anything Rowsley says for earnest? You
ought to know he stops at no trifle to get his advantage over you in a
dispute. That 's the soldier in him. It 's victory at any cost!--and I
like him for it. Do you tell me you think it possible my brother Rowsley
would keep smothered years under a bushel the woman he can sit here
magnifying because he wants to lime you and me: you to take his part, and
me to go and call the noble creature decked out in his fine fiction my
sister-in-law. Nothing 'll tempt me to believe my brother could behave in
such a way to the woman he respected!'

So Mr. Eglett opined. But he had been impressed.

He relieved his mind on the subject in a communication to Lord Adderwood;
who habitually shook out the contents of his to Mrs. Lawrence Finchley,
and she, deeming it good for Aminta to have information of the war waging
for her behoof, obtained her country address, with the resolve to drive
down, a bearer of good news to the dear woman she liked to think of, look
at, and occasionally caress; besides rather tenderly pitying her, now
that a change of fortune rendered her former trials conspicuous.

An incident, considered grave even in the days of the duel and the kicks
against a swelling public reprehension of the practice, occurred to
postpone her drive for four-and-twenty hours. London was shaken by
rumours of a tragic mishap to a socially well-known gentleman at the
Chiallo fencing rooms. The rumours passing from mouth to mouth acquired,
in the nature of them, sinister colours as they circulated. Lord Ormont
sent Aminta word of what he called 'a bad sort of accident at Chiallo's,'
without mentioning names or alluding to suspicions.

He treated it lightly. He could not have written of it with such
unconcern if it involved the secretary! Yet Aminta did seriously ask
herself whether he could; and she flew rapidly over the field of his
character, seizing points adverse, points favourably advocative,
balancing dubiously--most unjustly: she felt she was unjust. But in her
condition, the heart of a woman is instantly planted in jungle when the
spirits of the two men closest to her are made to stand opposed by a
sudden excitement of her fears for the beloved one. She cannot see
widely, and is one of the wild while the fit lasts; and, after it, that
savage narrow vision she had of the unbeloved retains its vivid print in
permanence. Was she unjust? Aminta cited corroboration of her being
accurate: such was Lord Ormont! and although his qualities of gallantry,
courtesy, integrity, honourable gentleman, presented a fair low-level
account on the other side, she had so stamped his massive selfishness and
icy inaccessibility to emotion on her conception of him that the
repulsive figure formed by it continued towering when her mood was
kinder.

Love played on love in the woman's breast. Her love had taken a fever
from her lord's communication of the accident at Chiallo's, and she
pushed her alarm to imagine the deadliest, and plead for the right of
confession to herself of her unrepented regrets. She and Matey Weyburn
had parted without any pressure of hands, without a touch. They were,
then, unplighted if now the grave divided them! No touch: mere glances!
And she sighed not, as she pleaded, for the touch, but for the plighting
it would have been. If now she had lost him, he could never tell herself
that since the dear old buried and night-walking schooldays she had said
once Matey to him, named him once to his face Matey Weyburn. A sigh like
the roll of a great wave breaking against a wall of rock came from her
for the possibly lost chance of naming him to his face Matey,--oh, and
seeing his look as she said it!

The boldness might be fancied: it could not be done. Agreeing with the
remote inner voice of her reason so far, she toned her exclamatory
foolishness to question, in Reason's plain, deep, basso-profundo
accompaniment tone, how much the most blessed of mortal women could do to
be of acceptable service to a young schoolmaster?

There was no reply to the question. But it became a nestling centre for
the skiey flock of dreams, and for really temperate soundings of her
capacities, tending to the depreciatory. She could do little. She
entertained the wish to work, not only 'for the sake of Somebody,' as her
favourite poet sang, but for the sake of working and serving--proving
that she was helpfuller than a Countess of Ormont, ranged with all the
other countesses in china and Dresden on a drawing-room mantelpiece for
show. She could organize, manage a household, manage people too, she
thought: manage a husband? The word offends. Perhaps invigorate him, here
and there perhaps inspire him, if he would let her breathe. Husbands
exist who refuse the right of breathing to their puppet wives. Above all,
as it struck her, she could assist, and be more than an echo of one
nobler, in breathing manliness, high spirit, into boys. With that idea
she grazed the shallows of reality, and her dreams whirred from the nest
and left it hungrily empty.

Selina Collett was writing under the verandah letters to her people in
Suffolk, performing the task with marvellous ease. Aminta noted it as a
mark of superior ability, and she had the envy of the complex nature
observing the simple. It accused her of some guiltiness, uncommitted and
indefensible. She had pushed her anxiety about 'the accident at
Chiallo's' to an extreme that made her the creature of her sensibilities.
In the midst of this quiet country life and landscape; these motionless
garden flowers headed by the smooth white river, and her gentle little
friend so homely here, the contemplation of herself was like a shriek in
music. Worse than discordant, she pronounced herself inferior, unfit
mentally as well as bodily for the dreams of companionship with any noble
soul who might have the dream of turning her into something better. There
are couples in the world, not coupled by priestly circumstance, who are
close to the true; union, by reason of generosity on the one part,
grateful devotion, as for the gift of life, on the other. For instance,
Mrs. Lawrence Finchley and Lord Adderwood, which was an instance without
resemblance; but Aminta's heart beat thick for what it wanted, and they
were the instance of two that did not have to snap false bonds of a
marriage-tie in order to walk together composedly outside it--in honour?
Oh yes, yes! She insisted on believing it was in honour.

She saw the couple issue from the boathouse. She had stepped into the
garden full of a presentiment; so she fancied, the moment they were seen.
She had, in fact, heard a noise in the boathouse while thinking of them,
and the effect on her was to spring an idea of mysterious interventions
at the sight.

Mrs. Lawrence rushed to her, and was embraced. 'You 're not astonished to
see me? Adder drove me down, and stopped his coach at the inn, and rowed
me the half-mile up. We will lunch, if you propose; but presently. My
dear, I have to tell you things. You have heard?'

'The accident?'

Aminta tried to read in Mrs. Lawrence's eyes whether it closely concerned
her.

Those pretty eyes, their cut of lids hinting at delicate affinities with
the rice-paper lady of the court of China, were trying to peer seriously.

'Poor man! One must be sorry for him: he--'

'Who?'

'You 've not heard, then?' Mrs. Lawrence dropped her voice: 'Morsfield.'

Aminta shivered. 'All I have heard-half a line from my lord this morning:
no name. It was at the fencing-rooms, he said.'

'Yes, he wouldn't write more;' said Mrs. Lawrence, nodding. 'You know, he
would have had to do it himself if it had not been done for him. Adder
saw him some days back in a brown consultation near his club with Captain
May. Oh, but of course it was accident! Did he call it so in his letter
to you?'

'One word of Mr. Morsfield: he is wounded?'

'Past cure: he has the thing he cried for, spoilt boy as he was from his
birth. I tell you truth, m' Aminta, I grieve to lose him. What with his
airs of the foreign-tinted, punctilious courtly gentleman covering a
survival of the ancient British forest boar or bear, he was a picture in
our modern set, and piquant. And he was devoted to our sex, we must
admit, after the style of the bears. They are for honey, and they have a
hug. If he hadn't been so much of a madman, I should have liked him for
his courage. He had plenty of that, nothing to steer it. A second cousin
comes in for his estates.'

'He is dead?' Aminta cried.

'Yes, dear, he is gone. What the women think of it I can't say. The
general feeling among the men is that some one of them would have had to
send him sooner or later. The curious point, Adder says, is his letting
it be done by steel. He was a dead shot, dangerous with the small sword,
as your Mr. Weyburn said, only soon off his head. But I used to be
anxious about the earl's meeting him with pistols. He did his best to
provoke it. Here, Adder,'--she spoke over her shoulder,--'tell Lady
Ormont all you know of the Morsfield-May affair.'

Lord Adderwood bowed compliance. His coolness was the masculine of Mrs.
Lawrence's hardly feminine in treating of a terrible matter, so that the
dull red facts had to be disengaged from his manner of speech before they
sank into Aminta's acceptance; of them as credible.

'They fought with foils, buttons off, preliminary ceremonies perfect;
salute in due order; guard, and at it.

Odd thing was, nobody at Chiallo's had a notion of the business till
Morsfield was pinked. He wouldn't be denied; went to work like a fellow
meaning to be skewered, if he couldn't do the trick: and he tried it. May
had been practising some weeks. He's well on the Continent by this time.
It'll blow over. Button off sheer accident. I wasn't lucky enough to see
the encounter: came in just when Chiallo was lashing his poll over
Morsfield flat on the ground. He had it up to the hilt. We put a buttoned
foil by the side of Morsfield, and all swore to secrecy. As it is, it 'll
go badly against poor Chiallo. Taste for fencing won't be much improved
by the affair. They quarrelled in the dressing room, and fetched the
foils and knocked off the buttons there. A big rascal toady squire of
Morsfield's did it for him. Morsfield was just up from Yorkshire. He said
he was expecting a summons elsewhere, bound to await it, declined
provocation for the present. May filliped him on the cheek.'

'Adder conveyed the information of her husband's flight to the consolable
Amy,' said Mrs. Lawrence.

'He had to catch the coach for Dover,' Adderwood explained. 'His wife was
at a dinner-party. I saw her at midnight.'

'Fair Amy was not so very greatly surprised?'

'Quite the soldier's wife!'

'She said she was used to these little catastrophes. But, Adder, what did
she say of her husband?'

'Said she was never anxious about him, for nothing would kill him.'

Mrs. Lawrence shook a doleful head at Aminta.

'You see, my dear Aminta, here's another, and probably her last, chance
of sharing the marquisate gone. Who can fail to pity her, except old
Time! And I 'm sure she likes her husband well enough. She ought: no
woman ever had such a servant. But the captain has not been known to
fight without her sanction, and the inference is--'Alas! woe! Fair Amy is
doomed to be the fighting captain's bride to the end of the chapter.
Adder says she looked handsome. A dinner-party suits her cosmetic
complexion better than a ball. The account of the inquest is in the day's
papers, and we were tolerably rejoiced we could drive out of London
without having to reply to coroner's questions.'

'He died-soon?' Aminta's voice was shaken.

Mrs. Lawrence touched at her breast, it might be for heart or lungs.
Judging by Aminta's voice and face, one could suppose she was harking
back, in woman's way, to her original sentiment for the man, now that he
lay prostrate.

Aminta read the unreproachful irony in the smile addressed to her. She
was too convulsed by her many emotions and shouting thoughts to think of
defending herself.

Selina, in the drawing-room, diligently fingered and classed brown-black
pressed weeds of her neophyte's botany-folios. The sight of her and her
occupation struck Aminta as that of a person in another world beyond this
world of blood, strangely substantial to view; and one heard her speak.

Guilty?--no. But she had wished to pique her lord. After the term of a
length of months, could it be that the unhappy man and she were punished
for the half-minute's acting of some interest in him? And Lord Ormont had
been seen consulting Captain May; or was it giving him directions?

Her head burned. All the barren interrogations were up, running and
knocking for hollow responses; and, saving a paleness of face, she
cloaked any small show of the riot. She was an amiable hostess. She had
ceased to comprehend Mrs. Lawrence, even to the degree of thinking her
unfeminine. She should have known that the 'angelical chimpanzee,' as a
friend, once told of his being a favourite with the lady, had called her,
could not simulate a feeling, and had not the slightest power of pretence
to compassion for an ill-fated person who failed to quicken her
enthusiasm. In that, too, she was a downright boy. Morsfield was a kind
of Bedlamite to her; amusing in his antics, and requiring to be
manoeuvred and eluded while he lived: once dead, just a tombstone, of
interest only to his family.

She beckoned Aminta to follow her; and, with a smirk of indulgent fun,
commended Lord Adderwood to a study of Selina Collett's botany-folios,
which the urbanest of indifferent gentlemen had slid his eyes over his
nose to inspect before the lunch.

'You ought to know what is going on in town, my dear Aminta. You have won
the earl to a sense of his duty, and he 's at work on the harder task of
winning Lady Charlotte Eglett to a sense of hers. It 's tremendous. Has
been forward some days, and no sign of yielding on either side. Mr.
Eglett, good man, is between them, catching it right and left; and he
deserves his luck for marrying her. Vows she makes him the best of wives.
If he 's content, I 've nothing to complain of. You must be ready to
receive her; my lord is sure to carry the day. You gulp. You won't be
seeing much of her. I 'm glad to say he is condescending to terms of
peace with the Horse Guards. We hear so. You may be throning it
officially somewhere next year. And all 's well that ends well! Say that
to me!'

'It is, when the end comes,' Aminta replied.

Mrs. Lawrence's cool lips were pressed to her cheek. The couple and their
waterman rowed away to the party they had left with the four-in-hand at
their inn.

A wind was rising. The trees gave their swish of leaves, the river
darkened the patch of wrinkles, the bordering flags amid the reed-blades
dipped and streamed.

Surcharged with unassimilated news of events, that made a thunder in her
head, Aminta walked down the garden path, meeting Selina and bearing her
on. She had a witch's will to rouse gales. Hers was not the woman's
nature to be driven cowering by stories of men's bloody deeds. She took
the field, revolted, dissevering herself from the class which tolerated
them--actuated by a reflective moralty, she believed; and loathed herself
for having aspired, schemed, to be a member of the class. But it was not
the class, it was against her lord as representative of the class, that
she was now the rebel, neither naming him nor imaging him. Her enveloping
mind was black on him. Such as one of those hard slaughtering men could
call her his own? She breathed short and breathed deep. Her bitter reason
had but the common pity for a madman despatched to his rest. Yet she knew
hatred of her lord in his being suspected as instigator or accomplice of
the hand that dealt the blow. He became to her thought a python whose
coils were about her person, insufferable to the gaze backward.

Moments like these are the mothers in travail of a resolve joylessly
conceived, undesired to clasp, Necessity's offspring. Thunderclouds have
as little love of the lightnings they fling.

Aminta was aware only of her torment. The trees were bending, the water
hissing, the grasses all this way and that, like hands of a delirious
people in surges of wreck. She scorned the meaningless shake of the
garments of earth, and exclaimed: 'If we were by the sea to-night!'

'I shall be to-morrow night,' said Selina. 'I shall think of you. Oh!
would you come with me?'

'Would you have me?'

'My mother will indeed be honoured by your consenting to come.'

'Write to her before the post is out.'

'We shall travel down together?'

Aminta nodded and smiled, and Selina kissed her hand in joy, saying, that
down home she would not be so shy of calling her Aminta. She was bidden
to haste.




CHAPTER XXVI

VISITS OF FAREWELL

The noise in London over Adolphus Morsfield's tragical end disturbed Lord
Ormont much less than the cessation of letters from his Aminta; and that
likewise, considering his present business on her behalf, he patiently
shrugged at and pardoned, foreseeing her penitent air. He could do it
lightly after going some way to pardon his offending country. For Aminta
had not offended, his robust observation of her was moved to the kindly
humorous by a reflective view here and there of the downright woman her
clever little shuffles exposed her to be, not worse. It was her sex that
made her one of the gliders in grasses, some of whom are venomous; but
she belonged to the order only as an innocuous blindworm. He could
pronounce her small by-play with Morsfield innocent, her efforts to climb
the stairs into Society quite innocent; judging her, of course, by her
title of woman. A woman's innocence has a rainbow skin. Set this one
beside other women, she comes out well, fairly well, well enough.

Now that the engagement with Charlotte assumed proportions of a series of
battle, properly to be entitled a campaign, he had, in his loneliness,
fallen into the habit of reflecting at the close of his day's work; and
the rubbing of that unused opaque mirror hanging inside a man of action
had helped him piecemeal to perceive bits of his conduct, entirely
approved by him, which were intimately connected, nevertheless, with a
train of circumstances that he disliked and could not charge justly upon
any other shoulders than his own. What was to be thought of it? He would
not be undergoing this botheration of the prolonged attempt to bring a
stubborn woman to a sense of her duty, if he had declared his marriage in
the ordinary style, and given his young countess her legitimate place
before the world. What impeded it? The shameful ingratitude of his
countrymen to the soldier who did it eminent service at a crisis of the
destinies of our Indian Empire! He could not condone the injury done to
him by entering among them again. Too like the kicked cur, that! He
retired--call it 'sulked in his tent,' if you like. His wife had to share
his fortunes. He being slighted, she necessarily was shadowed. For a
while she bore it contentedly enough; then began her mousy scratches to
get into the room off the wainscot, without blame from him; she behaved
according to her female nature.

Yes, but the battles with Charlotte forced on his recognition once more,
and violently, the singular consequences of his retirement and Coriolanus
quarrel with his countrymen. He had doomed himself ever since to a
contest with women. First it was his Queen of Amazons, who, if
vanquished, was not so easily vanquished, and, in fact, doubtfully,--for
now, to propitiate her, he had challenged, and must overcome or be
disgraced, the toughest Amazonian warrior man could stand against at cast
of dart or lock of arms. No day scored an advantage; and she did not
apparently suffer fatigue. He did: that is to say, he was worried and
hurried to have the wrangle settled and Charlotte at Aminta's feet. He
gained not an inch of ground. His principle in a contention of the sort
was to leave the woman to the practice of her obvious artifices, and
himself simply hammer, incessantly hammer. But Charlotte hammered as
well. The modest position of the defensive negative was not to her taste.
The moment he presented himself she flew out upon some yesterday's part
of the argument and carried the war across the borders, in attacks on his
character and qualities--his weakness regarding women, his incapacity to
forgive, and the rest. She hammered on that head. As for any prospect of
a termination of the strife, he could see none in her joyful welcome to
him and regretful parting and pleased appointment of the next meeting day
after day.

The absurdest of her devices for winding him off his aim was to harp on
some new word she had got hold of as, for example, to point out to him
his aptitudes, compliment him on his aptitudes, recommend him to study
and learn the limitations of his aptitudes! She revelled in something the
word unfolded to her.

However, here was the point: she had to be beaten. So, if she, too,
persisted in hammering, he must employ her female weapon of artifice with
her. One would gladly avoid the stooping to it in a civil dispute, in
which one is not so gloriously absolved for lying and entrapping as in
splendid war.

Weyburn's name was announced to him at an early hour on Thursday morning.
My lord nodded to the footman; he nodded to himself over a suggestion
started in a tactical intelligence by the name.

'Ah! you 're off?' he accosted the young man.

'I have come to take my leave, my lord.'

'Nothing new in the morning papers?'

'A report that Captain May intends to return and surrender.'

'Not before a month has passed, if he follows my counsel.'

'To defend his character.'

'He has none.'

'His reputation.'

'He has too much.'

'These charges against him must be intolerable.'

'Was he not a bit of a pupil of yours?'

'We practised two or three times-nothing more.'

'Morsfield was a wasp at a feast. Somebody had to crush him. I 've seen
the kind of man twice in my life and exactly the kind of man. If their
law puts down duelling, he rules the kingdom!'

'My lord, I should venture to say the kind of man can be a common
annoyance because the breach of the law is countenanced.'

'Bad laws are best broken. A society that can't get a scouring now and
then will be a dirty set.'

With a bend of the head, in apology for speaking of himself, Weyburn
said: 'I have acted on my view. I declined a challenge from a sort of
henchman of his.'

'Oh! a poacher's lurcher? You did right. Fight such fellows with
constables. You have seen Lady Charlotte?'

'I am on my way to her ladyship.'

'Do me this favour. Fourteen doors up the street of her residence, my
physician lives. I have to consult him at once. Dr. Rewkes.'

Weyburn bowed. Lady Charlotte could not receive him later than half-past
ten of the morning, he said. 'This morning she can,' said my lord. 'You
will tell Dr. Rewkes that it is immediate. I rather regret your going. I
shall be in a controversy with the Horse Guards about our cavalry
saddles. It would be regiments of raw backs the first fortnight of a
campaign.'

The earl discoursed on saddles; and passed to high eulogy of our
Hanoverian auxiliary troopers in the Peninsula; 'good husbands,' he named
them quaintly, speaking of their management of their beasts. Thence he
diverged to Frederic's cavalry, rarely matched for shrewdness and
endurance; to the deeds of the Liechtenstein Hussars; to the great things
Blucher did with his horsemen.

The subject was interesting; but Weyburn saw the clock at past the half
after ten. He gave a slight sign of restiveness, and was allowed to go
when the earl had finished his pro and con upon Arab horses and Mameluke
saddles. Lord Ormont nicked his head, just as at their first interview:
he was known to have an objection to the English shaking of hands.
'Good-morning,' he said; adding a remark or two, of which et cetera may
stand for an explicit rendering. It concerned the young man's prosperity:
my lord's conservative plain sense was in doubt of the prospering of a
giddy pate, however good a worker. His last look at the young man, who
had not served him badly, held an anticipation of possibly some day
seeing a tatterdemalion of shipwreck, a rueful exhibition of ideas put to
the business of life.

Weyburn left the message with Dr. Rewkes in person. It had not seemed to
him that Lord Ormont was one requiring the immediate attendance of a
physician. By way of accounting to Lady Charlotte for the lateness of his
call, he mentioned the summons he had delivered.

'Oh, that's why he hasn't come yet,' said she. 'We'll sit and talk till
he does come. I don't wonder if his bile has been stirred. He can't oil
me to credit what he pumps into others. His Lady Ormont! I believe in it
less than ever I did. Morsfield or no Morsfield--and now the poor wretch
has got himself pinned to the plank, like my grandson Bobby's
dragonflies, I don't want to say anything further of him--she doesn't
have much of a welcome at Steignton! If I were a woman to wager as men
do, I 'd stake a thousand pounds to five on her never stepping across the
threshold of Steignton. All very well in London, and that place he hires
up at Marlow. He respects our home. That 's how I know my brother Rowsley
still keeps a sane man. A fortune on it!--and so says Mr. Eglett. Any
reasonable person must think it. He made a fool of some Hampton-Evey at
Madrid, if he went through any ceremony--and that I doubt. But she and
old (what do they call her?) may have insisted upon the title, as much as
they could. He sixty; she under twenty, I'm told. Pagnell 's the name.
That aunt of a good-looking young woman sees a noble man of sixty
admiring her five feet seven or so--she's tall--of marketable
merchandise, and she doesn't need telling that at sixty he'll give the
world to possess the girl. But not his family honour! He stops at that.
Why? Lord Ormont 's made of pride! He'll be kind to her, he'll be
generous, he won't forsake her; she'll have her portion in his will, and
by the course of things in nature, she'll outlive him and marry, and be
happy, I hope. Only she won't enter Steignton. You remember what I say.
You 'll live when I 'm gone. It 's the thirst of her life to be mistress
of Steignton. Not she!--though Lord Ormont would have us all open our
doors to her; mine too, now he 's about it. He sets his mind on his plan,
and he forgets rights and dues--everything; he must have it as his will
dictates. That 's how he made such a capital soldier. You know the
cavalry leader he was. If they'd given him a field in Europe! His enemies
admit that. Twelve! and my clock's five minutes or more slow. What can
Rowsley be doing?'

She rattled backward on the scene at Steignton, and her brother's
handsome preservation of his dignity 'stood it like the king he is!' and
to the Morsfield-May encounter, which had prevented another; and Mrs. May
was rolled along in the tide, with a hint of her good reason for liking
Lord Ormont; also the change of opinion shown by the Press as to Lord
Ormont's grand exploit. Referring to it, she flushed and jigged on her
chair for a saddle beneath her. And that glorious Indian adventure warmed
her to the man who had celebrated it among his comrades when a boy at
school.

'You 're to teach Latin and Greek, you said. For you 're right: we
English can't understand the words we 're speaking, if we don't know a
good deal of Latin and some Greek. "Conversing in tokens, not standard
coin," you said, I remember; and there'll be a "general rabble tongue,"
unless we English are drilled in the languages we filched from. Lots of
lords and ladies want the drilling, then! I'll send some over to you for
Swiss air and roots of the English tongue. Oh, and you told me you
supported Lord Ormont on his pet argument for corps d'elite; and you
quoted Virgil to back it. Let me have that line again--in case of his
condescending to write to the papers on the subject.'

Weyburn repeated the half-line.

'Good: I won't forget now. And you said the French act on that because
they follow human nature, and the English don't. We "bully it," you said.
That was on our drive down to Steignton. I hope you 'll succeed. You 'll
be visiting England. Call on me in London or at Olmer--only mind and give
me warning. I shall be glad to see you. I 've got some ideas from you. If
I meet a man who helps me to read the world and men as they are, I 'm
grateful to him; and most people are not, you 'll find. They want you to
show them what they 'd like the world to be. We don't agree about a lady.
You 're in the lists, lance in rest, all for chivalry. You 're a man, and
a young man. Have you taken your leave of her yet? She'll expect it, as a
proper compliment.'

'I propose running down to take my leave of Lady Ormont to-morrow,'
replied Weyburn.

'She is handsome?'

She is very handsome.'

'Beautiful, do you mean?'

'Oh, my lady, it would only be a man's notion!'

'Now, that 's as good an answer as could be made! You 're sure to
succeed. I 'm not the woman's enemy. But let her keep her place. Why,
Rowsley can't be coming to-day! Did Lord Ormont look ill?'

'It did not strike me so.'

'He 's between two fires. A man gets fretted. But I shan't move a step. I
dare say she won't. Especially with that Morsfield out of the way. You do
mean you think her a beauty. Well, then, there'll soon be a successor to
Morsfield. Beauties will have their weapons, and they can hit on plenty;
and it 's nothing to me, as long as I save my brother from their arts.'

Weyburn felt he had done his penance in return for kindness. He bowed and
rose, Lady Charlotte stretched out her hand.

'We shall be sending you a pupil some day,' she said, and smiled.

'Forward your address as soon as you 're settled.' Her face gave a
glimpse of its youth in a cordial farewell smile.

Lord Ormont had no capacity to do the like, although they were strictly
brother and sister in appearance. The smallest difference in character
rendered her complex and kept him simple. She had a thirsting mind.

Weyburn fancied that a close intimacy of a few months would have enabled
him to lift her out of her smirching and depraving mean jealousies. He
speculated, as he trod the street, on little plots and surprises, which
would bring Lady Charlotte and Lady Ormont into presence, and end by
making friends of them. Supposing that could be done, Lady Ormont might
be righted by the intervention of Lady Charlotte after all.

Weyburn sent his dream flying with as dreamy an after-thought: 'Funny it
will be then for Lady Charlotte to revert to the stuff she has been
droning in my ear half an hour ago!--Look well behind, and we see spots
where we buzzed, lowed, bit and tore; and not until we have cast that
look and seen the brute are we human creatures.'

A crumb of reflection such as this could brace him, adding its modest
maravedi to his prized storehouse of gain, fortifying with assurances of
his having a concrete basis for his business in life. His great youthful
ambition had descended to it, but had sunk to climb on a firmer footing.

Arthur Abner had his next adieu. They talked of Lady Ormont, as to whose
position of rightful Countess of Ormont Mr. Abner had no doubt. He said
of Lady Charlotte: 'She has a clear head; but she loves her "brother
Rowsley" excessively; and any excess pushes to craziness.'

He spoke to Weyburn of his prospects in the usually, perhaps necessarily,
cheerless tone of men who recognize by contrast the one mouse's nibbling
at a mountain of evil. 'To harmonize the nationalities, my dear boy!
teach Christians to look fraternally on Jews! David was a harper, but the
setting of him down to roll off a fugue on one of your cathedral organs
would not impose a heavier task than you are undertaking. You have my
best wishes, whatever aid I can supply. But we 're nearer to King John's
time than to your ideal, as far as the Jews go.'

'Not in England.'

'Less in England,' Abner shrugged.

'You have beaten the Christians on the field they challenged you to enter
for a try. They feel the pinch in their interests and their vanity. That
will pass. I 'm for the two sides, under the name of Justice; and I give
the palm to whichever of the two first gets hold of the idea of Justice.
My old schoolmate's well?'

'Always asking after Matey Weyburn!'

'He shall have my address in Switzerland. You and I will be
corresponding.'

Now rose to view the visit to the lady who was Lady Ormont on the tongue,
Aminta at heart; never to be named Aminta even to himself. His heart
broke loose at a thought of it.

He might say Browny. For that was not serious with the intense present
signification the name Aminta had. Browny was queen of the old
school-time-enclosed it in her name; and that sphere enclosed her, not
excluding him. And the dear name of Browny played gently, humorously,
fervently, too, with life: not, pathetically, as that of Aminta did when
came a whisper of her situation, her isolation, her friendlessness;
hardly dissimilar to what could be imagined of a gazelle in the streets
of London city. The Morsfields were not all slain. The Weyburns would be
absent.

At the gate of his cottage garden Weyburn beheld a short unfamiliar
figure of a man with dimly remembered features. Little Collett he still
was in height. The schoolmates had not met since the old days of Cuper's.

Little Collett delivered a message of invitation from Selina, begging Mr.
Weyburn to accompany her brother on the coach to Harwich next day, and
spend two or three days by the sea. But Weyburn's mind had been set in
the opposite direction--up Thames instead of down.

He was about to refuse, but he checked his voice and hummed. Words of
Selina's letter jumped in italics. He perceived Lady Ormont's hand. For
one thing, would she be at Great Marlow alone? And he knew that hand--how
deftly it moved and moved others. Selina Collett would not have invited
him with underlinings merely to see a shoreside house and garden. Her
silence regarding a particular name showed her to be under injunction,
one might guess. At worst, it would be the loss of a couple of days;
worth the venture. They agreed to journey by coach next day.

Facing eastward in the morning, on a seat behind the coachman, Weyburn
had a seafaring man beside him, bound for the good port of Harwich, where
his family lived, and thence by his own boat to Flushing. Weyburn set him
talking of himself, as the best way of making him happy; for it is the
theme which pricks to speech, and so liberates an uncomfortably locked-up
stranger; who, if sympathetic to human proximity, is thankful. They
exchanged names, delighted to find they were both Matthews; whereupon
Matthew of the sea demanded the paw of Matthew of the land, and there was
a squeeze. The same with little Collett, after hearing of him as the old
schoolmate of the established new friend. Then there was talk. Little
Collett named Felixstowe as the village of his mother's house and garden
sloping to the sands. 'That 's it-you have it,' said the salted Matthew:
'peace is in that spot, and there I 've sworn to pitch my tent when I 'm
incapacitated for further exercise--profitable, so to speak. My eldest
girl has a bar of amber she picked up one wash of the tide at Felixstowe,
and there it had been lying sparkling, unseen, hours, the shore is that
solitary. What I like!--a quiet shore and a peopled sea. Ever been to
Brighton? There it 's t' other way.'

Not long after he had mentioned the time of early evening for their entry
into his port of Harwich, the coach turned quietly over on a bank of the
roadside, depositing outside passengers quite safely, in so
matter-of-course a way, that only the screams of an uninjured lady inside
repressed their roars of laughter. One of the wheels had come loose, half
a mile off the nearest town. Their entry into Harwich was thereby delayed
until half-past nine at night. Full of consideration for the new mates
now fast wedded to his heart by an accident. Matthew Shale proposed to
Matthew Weyburn, instead of the bother of crossing the ferry with a
portmanteau and a bag at that late hour, to sup at his house, try the
neighbouring inn for a short sleep, and ship on board his yawl, the
honest Susan, to be rowed ashore off the Swin to Felixstowe sands no
later than six o'clock of a summer's morning, in time for a bath and a
swim before breakfast. It sounded well--it sounded sweetly. Weyburn
suggested the counter proposal of supper for the three at the inn. But
the other Matthew said: 'I married a cook. She expects a big appetite,
and she always keeps warm when I 'm held away, no matter how late. Sure
to be enough.'

Beds were secured at the inn; after which came the introduction to Mrs.
Shale, the exhibition of Susan Shale's bar of amber, the dish of
fresh-fried whiting, the steak pudding, a grog, tobacco, rest at the inn,
and a rousing bang at the sleepers' doors when the unwonted supper in
them withheld an answer to the intimating knock. Young Matthew Shale, who
had slept on board the Susan, conducted them to her boat. His glance was
much drawn to the very white duck trousers Weyburn had put on, for a
souvenir of the approbation they had won at Marlow. They were on, and so
it was of no use for young Matthew to say they were likely to bear away a
token from the Susan. She was one among the damsels of colour, and free
of her tokens, especially to the spotless.

How it occurred, nobody saw; though everybody saw how naturally it must
occur for the white ducks to 'have it in the eye' by the time they had
been on board a quarter of an hour. Weyburn got some fun out of them, for
a counterbalance to a twitch of sentimental regret scarcely decipherable,
as that the last view of him should bear a likeness of Browny's
recollection of her first.

A glorious morning of flushed open sky and sun on sea chased all small
thoughts out of it. The breeze was from the west, and the Susan, lightly
laden, took the heave of smooth rollers with a flowing current-curtsey in
the motion of her speed. Fore-sail and aft were at their gentle strain;
her shadow rippled fragmentarily along to the silver rivulet and boat of
her wake. Straight she flew to the ball of fire now at spring above the
waters, and raining red gold on the line of her bows. By comparison she
was an ugly yawl, and as the creature of wind and wave beautiful.

They passed an English defensive fort, and spared its walls, in obedience
to Matthew Shale's good counsel that they should forbear from sneezing.
Little Collett pointed to the roof of his mother's house twenty paces
rearward of a belt of tamarisks, green amid the hollowed yellows of
shorebanks yet in shade, crumbling to the sands. Weyburn was attracted by
a diminutive white tent, of sentry-box shape, evidently a bather's, quite
as evidently a fair bather's. He would have to walk on some way for his
dip. He remarked to little Collett that ladies going into the water
half-dressed never have more than half a bath. His arms and legs flung
out contempt of that style of bathing, exactly in old Matey's
well-remembered way. Half a mile off shore, the Susan was put about to
flap her sails, and her boat rocked with the passengers. Turning from a
final cheer to friendly Matthew, Weyburn at the rudder espied one of
those unenfranchised ladies in marine uniform issuing through the
tent-slit. She stepped firmly, as into her element. A plain look at her,
and a curious look, and an intent look fixed her fast, and ran the shock
on his heart before he knew of a guess. She waded, she dipped; a head
across the breast of the waters was observed: this one of them could
swim. She was making for sea, a stone's throw off the direction of the
boat. Before his wits had grasped the certainty possessing them, fiery
envy and desire to be alongside her set his fingers fretting at buttons.
A grand smooth swell of the waters lifted her, and her head rose to see
her world. She sank down the valley, where another wave was mounding for
its onward roll: a gentle scene of Weyburn's favourite Sophoclean chorus.
Now she was given to him--it was she. How could it ever have been any
other! He handed his watch to little Collett, and gave him the ropes,
pitched coat and waistcoat on his knees, stood free of boots and socks,
and singing out, truly enough, the words of a popular cry, 'White ducks
want washing,' went over and in.




CHAPTER XXVII

A MARINE DUET

She soon had to know she was chased. She had seen the dive from the boat,
and received all illumination. With a chuckle of delighted surprise, like
a blackbird startled, she pushed seaward for joy of the effort, thinking
she could exult in imagination of an escape up to the moment of capture,
yielding then only to his greater will; and she meant to try it.

The swim was a holiday; all was new--nothing came to her as the same old
thing since she took her plunge; she had a sea-mind--had left her
earth-mind ashore. The swim, and Matey Weyburn pursuing her passed up,
out of happiness, through the spheres of delirium, into the region where
our life is as we would have it be a home holding the quiet of the
heavens, if but midway thither, and a home of delicious animation of the
whole frame, equal to wings.

He drew on her, but he was distant, and she waved an arm. The shout of
her glee sprang from her: 'Matey!' He waved; she heard his voice. Was it
her name? He was not so drunken of the sea as she: he had not leapt out
of bondage into buoyant waters, into a youth without a blot, without an
aim, satisfied in tasting; the dream of the long felicity.

A thought brushed by her: How if he were absent? It relaxed her stroke of
arms and legs. He had doubled the salt sea's rapture, and he had shackled
its gift of freedom. She turned to float, gathering her knees for the
funny sullen kick, until she heard him near. At once her stroke was
renewed vigorously; she had the foot of her pursuer, and she called,
'Adieu, Matey Weyburn!'

Her bravado deserved a swifter humiliation than he was able to bring down
on her: she swam bravely, and she was divine to see ahead as well as
overtake.

Darting to the close parallel, he said: 'What sea nymph sang me my name?'

She smote a pang of her ecstasy into him: 'Ask mine!'

'Browny!'

They swam; neither of them panted; their heads were water-flowers that
spoke at ease.

'We 've run from school; we won't go back.'

'We 've a kingdom.'

'Here's a big wave going to be a wall.'

'Off he rolls.'

'He's like the High Brent broad meadow under Elling Wood.'

'Don't let Miss Vincent hear you.'

'They 're not waves; they 're sighs of the deep.'

'A poet I swim with! He fell into the deep in his first of May morning
ducks. We used to expect him.'

'I never expected to owe them so much.'

Pride of the swimmer and the energy of her joy embraced Aminta, that she
might nerve all her powers to gain the half-minute for speaking at her
ease.

'Who 'd have thought of a morning like this? You were looked for last
night.'

'A lucky accident to our coach. I made friends with the skipper of the
yawl.'

'I saw the boat. Who could have dreamed--? Anything may happen now.'

For nothing further would astonish her, as he rightly understood her; but
he said: 'You 're prepared for the rites? Old Triton is ready.'

'Float, and tell me.'

They spun about to lie on their backs. Her right hand, at piano-work of
the octave-shake, was touched and taken, and she did not pull it away.
Her eyelids fell.

'Old Triton waits.'

'Why?'

'We 're going to him.'

'Yes?'

'Customs of the sea.'

'Tell me.'

'He joins hands. We say, "Browny-Matey," and it 's done.'

She splashed, crying 'Swim,' and after two strokes, 'You want to beat me,
Matey Weyburn.'

'How?'

'Not fair!'

'Say what.'

'Take my breath. But, yes! we'll be happy in our own way. We 're
sea-birds. We 've said adieu to land. Not to one another. We shall be
friends?'

'Always.'

'This is going to last?'

'Ever so long.'

They had a spell of steady swimming, companionship to inspirit it. Browny
was allowed place a little foremost, and she guessed not wherefore, in
her flattered emulation.

'I 'm bound for France.'

'Slew a point to the right: South-east by South. We shall hit Dunkerque.'

'I don't mean to be picked up by boats.'

'We'll decline.'

'You see I can swim.'

'I was sure of it.'

They stopped their talk--for the pleasure of the body to be savoured in
the mind, they thought; and so took Nature's counsel to rest their voices
awhile.

Considering that she had not been used of late to long immersions, and
had not broken her fast, and had talked much, for a sea-nymph, Weyburn
spied behind him on a shore seeming flat down, far removed.

'France next time,' he said: 'we'll face to the rear.'

'Now?' said she, big with blissful conceit of her powers and incredulous
of such a command from him.

'You may be feeling tired presently.'

The musical sincerity of her 'Oh no, not I!' sped through his limbs; he
had a willingness to go onward still some way.

But his words fastened the heavy land on her spirit, knocked at the habit
of obedience. Her stroke of the arms paused. She inclined to his example,
and he set it shoreward.

They swam silently, high, low, creatures of the smooth green roller. He
heard the water-song of her swimming. She, though breathing equably at
the nostrils, lay deep. The water shocked at her chin, and curled round
the under lip. He had a faint anxiety; and, not so sensible of a weight
in the sight of land as she was, he chattered, by snatches, rallied her,
encouraged her to continue sportive for this once, letting her feel it
was but a once and had its respected limit with him. So it was not out of
the world.

Ah, friend Matey! And that was right and good on land; but rightness and
goodness flung earth's shadow across her brilliancy here, and any stress
on 'this once' withdrew her liberty to revel in it, putting an end to
perfect holiday; and silence, too, might hint at fatigue. She began to
think her muteness lost her the bloom of the enchantment, robbing her of
her heavenly frolic lead, since friend Matey resolved to be as eminently
good in salt water as on land. Was he unaware that they were boy and girl
again?--she washed pure of the intervening years, new born, by blessing
of the sea; worthy of him here!--that is, a swimmer worthy of him, his
comrade in salt water.

'You're satisfied I swim well?' she said.

'It would go hard with me if we raced a long race.'

'I really was out for France.'

'I was ordered to keep you for England.' She gave him Browny's eyes.

'We've turned our backs on Triton.'

'The ceremony was performed.'

'When?'

'The minute I spoke of it and you splashed.'

'Matey! Matey Weyburn!'

'Browny Farrell!'

'Oh, Matey! she's gone!'

'She's here.'

'Try to beguile me, then, that our holiday's not over. You won't forget
this hour?'

'No time of mine on earth will live so brightly for me.'

'I have never had one like it. I could go under and be happy; go to old
Triton, and wait for you; teach him to speak your proper Christian name.
He hasn't heard it yet,--heard "Matey,"--never yet has been taught
"Matthew."'

'Aminta!'

'Oh, my friend! my dear!' she cried, in the voice of the wounded, like a
welling of her blood: 'my strength will leave me. I may play--not you:
you play with a weak vessel. Swim, and be quiet. How far do you count
it?'

'Under a quarter of a mile.'

'Don't imagine me tired.'

'If you are, hold on to me.'

'Matey, I'm for a dive.'

He went after the ball of silver and bubbles, and they came up together.
There is no history of events below the surface.

She shook off her briny blindness, and settled to the full sweep of the
arms, quite silent now. Some emotion, or exhaustion from the strain of
the swimmer's breath in speech, stopped her playfulness. The pleasure she
still knew was a recollection of the outward swim, when she had been
privileged to cast away sex with the push from earth, as few men will
believe that women, beautiful women, ever wish to do; and often and
ardently during the run ahead they yearn for Nature to grant them their
one short holiday truce.

But Aminta forgave him for bringing earth so close to her when there was
yet a space of salt water between her and shore; and she smiled at times,
that he might not think she was looking grave.




CHAPTER XXVIII

THE PLIGHTING

They touched sand at the first draw of the ebb, and this being earth,
Matey addressed himself to the guardian and absolving genii of
matter-of-fact, by saying; 'Did you inquire about the tides?'

Her head shook, stunned with what had passed. She waded to shore, after
motioning for him to swim on. Men, in comparison beside their fair
fellows, are so little sensationally complex, that his one feeling now,
as to what had passed, was relief at the idea of his presence having been
a warrantable protectorship.

Aminta's return from the sea-nymph to the state of woman crossed
annihiliation on the way back to sentience, and picked up meaningless
pebbles and shells of life, between the sea's verge and her tent's
shelter; hardly her own life to her understanding yet, except for the
hammer Memory became, to strike her insensible, at here and there a
recollected word or nakedness of her soul.

He swam along by the shore to where the boat was paddled, spying at her
bare feet on the sand, her woman's form. He waved, and the figure in the
striped tunic and trousers waved her response, apparently the same person
he had quitted.

Dry and clad, and decently formal under the transformation, they met at
Mrs. Collett's breakfast-table, and in each hung the doubt whether land
was the dream or sea. Both owned to a swim; both omitted mention of the
tale of white ducks. Little Collett had brought Matey's and his
portmanteau into the house, by favour of the cook, through the scullery.
He, who could have been a pictorial and suggestive narrator, carried a
spinning head off his shoulders from this wonderful Countess of Ormont to
Matey Weyburn's dark-eyed Browny at High Brent, and the Sunday walk in
Sir Peter Wensell's park. Away and back his head went. Browny was not to
be thought of as Browny; she was this grand Countess of Ormont; she had
married Matey Weyburn's hero: she would never admit she had been Browny.
Only she was handsome then, and she is handsome now; and she looks on
Matey Weyburn now just as she did then. How strange is the world! Or how
if we are the particular person destined to encounter the strange things
of the world? And fancy J. Masner, and Pinnett major, and young Oakes
(liked nothing better than a pretty girl, he strutted boasting at
thirteen), and the Frenchy, and the lot, all popping down at the table,
and asked the name of the lady sitting like Queen Esther--how they would
roar out! Boys, of course--but men, too!--very few men have a notion of
the extraordinary complications and coincidences and cracker-surprises
life contains. Here 's an instance; Matey Weyburn positively will wear
white ducks to play before Aminta Farrell on the first of May
cricketing-day. He happens to have his white ducks on when he sees the
Countess of Ormont swimming in the sea; and so he can go in just as if
they were all-right bathing-drawers. In he goes, has a good long swim
with her, and when he comes out, says, of his dripping ducks, 'tabula
votiva . . . avida vestimenta,' to remind an old schoolmate of his
hopping to the booth at the end of a showery May day, and dedicating them
to the laundry in these words. It seems marvellous. It was a quaint
revival, an hour after breakfast, for little Collett to be acting as
intermediary with Selina to request Lady Ormont's grant of a
five-minutes' interview before the church-bell summoned her. She was
writing letters, and sent the message: 'Tell Mr. Weyburn I obey.' Selina
delivered it, uttering 'obey' in a demurely comical way, as a word of
which the humour might be comprehensible to him.

Aminta stood at the drawing-room window. She was asking herself whether
her recent conduct shrieked coquette to him, or any of the abominable
titles showered on the women who take free breath of air one day after
long imprisonment.

She said: 'Does it mean you are leaving us?' the moment he was near.

'Not till evening or to-morrow, as it may happen,' he answered: 'I have
one or two things to say, if you will spare the time.'

'All my time,' said she, smiling to make less of the heart's reply; and
he stepped into the room.

They had not long back been Matey and Browny, and though that was in
another element, it would not sanction the Lady Ormont and Mr. Weyburn
now. As little could it be Aminta and Matthew. Brother and sister they
were in the spirit's world, but in this world the titles had a sound of
imposture. And with a great longing to call her by some allying name, he
rejected 'friend' for its insufficiency and commonness, notwithstanding
the entirely friendly nature of the burden to be spoken. Friend, was a
title that ran on quicksands: an excuse that tried for an excuse. He
distinguished in himself simultaneously, that the hesitation and beating
about for a name had its origin in an imperfect frankness when he sent
his message: the fretful desire to be with her, close to her, hearing
her, seeing her, besides the true wish to serve her. He sent it after
swinging round abruptly from an outlook over the bordering garden
tamarisks on a sea now featureless, desolately empty.

However, perceptibly silence was doing the work of a scourge, and he
said: 'I have been thinking I may have--and I don't mind fighting hard to
try it before I leave England on Tuesday or Wednesday--some influence
with Lady Charlotte Eglett. She is really one of the true women living,
and the heartiest of backers, if she can be taught to see her course. I
fancy I can do that. She 's narrow, but she is not one of the class who
look on the working world below them as, we'll say, the scavenger dogs on
the plains of Ilium were seen by the Achaeans. And my failure would be no
loss to you! Your name shall not be alluded to as empowering me to plead
for her help. But I want your consent, or I may be haunted and weakened
by the idea of playing the busy-body. One has to feel strong in a
delicate position. Well, you know what my position with her has been--one
among the humble; and she has taken contradictions, accepted views from
me, shown me she has warmth of heart to an extreme degree.'

Aminta slightly raised her hand. 'I will save you trouble. I have written
to Lord Ormont. I have left him.'

Their eyes engaged on the thunder of this. 'The letter has gone?'

'It was posted before my swim: posted yesterday.'

'You have fully and clearly thought it out to a determination?'

'Bit by bit--I might say, blow by blow.'

'It is no small matter to break a marriage-tie.'

'I have conversed with your mother.'

'Yes, she! and the woman happiest in marriage!'

'I know. It was hatred of injustice, noble sympathy. And she took me for
one of the blest among wives.'

'She loved God. She saw the difference between men's decrees for their
convenience, and God's laws. She felt for women. You have had a hard
trial Aminta.'

'Oh, my name! You mean it?'

'You heard it from me this morning.'

'Yes, there! I try to forget. I lost my senses. You may judge me harshly,
on reflection.'

'Judge myself worse, then. You had a thousand excuses. I had only my love
of you. There's no judgement against either of us, for us to see, if I
read rightly. We elect to be tried in the courts of the sea-god. Now we
'll sit and talk it over. The next ten minutes will decide our
destinies.'

His eyes glittered, otherwise he showed the coolness of the man
discussing business; and his blunt soberness refreshed and upheld her, as
a wild burst of passion would not have done.

Side by side, partly facing, they began their interchange.

'You have weighed what you abandon?'

'It weighs little.'

'That may be error. You have to think into the future.'

'My sufferings and experiences are not bad guides.'

'They count. How can you be sure you have all the estimates?'

'Was I ever a wife?'

'You were and are the Countess of Ormont.'

'Not to the world. An unacknowledged wife is a slave, surely.'

'You step down, if you take the step.'

'From what? Once I did desire that station--had an idea it was glorious.
I despise it: or rather the woman who had the desire.'

'But the step down is into the working world.'

'I have means to live humbly. I want no more, except to be taught to
work.'

'So says the minute. Years are before you. You have weighed well, that
you attract?'

She reddened and murmured: 'How small!' Her pout of spite at her
attractions was little simulated.

'Beauty and charm are not small matters. You have the gift, called fatal.
Then--looking right forward--you have faith in the power of resistance of
the woman living alone?'

He had struck at her breast. From her breast she replied.

'Hear this of me. I was persecuted with letters. I read them and did not
destroy them. Perhaps you saved me. Looking back, I see weakness, nothing
worse; but it is a confession.'

'Yes, you have courage. And that comes of a great heart. And therein lies
the danger.'

'Advise me of what is possible to a lonely woman.'

'You have resolved on the loneliness?'

'It means breathing to me.'

'You are able to see that Lord Ormont is a gentleman?'

'A chivalrous gentleman, up to the bounds of his intelligence.'

The bounds of his intelligence closed their four walls in a rapid
narrowing slide on Aminta's mind, and she exclaimed:

'If only to pluck flowers in fields and know their names, I must be free!
I say what one can laugh at, and you are good and don't. Is the
interrogatory exhausted?'

'Aminta, my beloved, if you are free, I claim you.'

'Have you thought--?'

The sense of a dissolving to a fountain quivered through her veins.

'Turn the tables and examine me.'

'But have you thought--oh! I am not the girl you loved. I would go
through death to feel I was, and give you one worthy of you.'

'That means what I won't ask you to speak at present but I must have
proof.'

He held out a hand, and hers was laid in his.

There was more for her to say, she knew. It came and fled, lightened and
darkened. She had yielded her hand to him here on land, not with the
licence and protection of the great holiday salt water; and she was
trembling from the run of his blood through hers at the pressure of
hands, when she said in undertones: 'Could we--we might be friends.'

'Meet and part as friends, you and I,' he replied.

His voice carried the answer for her, his intimate look had in it the
unfolding of the full flower of the woman to him, as she could not
conceal from such eyes; and feeling that, she was all avowal.

'It is for life, Matthew.'

'My own words to myself when I first thought of the chance.'

'But the school?'

'I shall not consider that we are malefactors. We have the world against
us. It will not keep us from trying to serve it. And there are hints of
humaner opinions; it's not all a huge rolling block of a Juggernaut. Our
case could be pleaded before it. I don't think the just would condemn us
heavily. I shall have to ask you to strengthen me, complete me. If you
love me, it is your leap out of prison, and without you, I am from this
time no better than one-third of a man. I trust you to weigh the position
you lose, and the place we choose to take in the world. It 's this--I
think this describes it. You know the man who builds his house below the
sea's level has a sleepless enemy always threatening. His house must be
firm and he must look to the dykes. We commit this indiscretion. With a
world against us, our love and labour are constantly on trial; we must
have great hearts, and if the world is hostile we are not to blame it. In
the nature of things it could not be otherwise. My own soul, we have to
see that we do--though not publicly, not insolently, offend good
citizenship. But we believe--I with my whole faith, and I may say it of
you--that we are not offending Divine law. You are the woman I can help
and join with; think whether you can tell yourself that I am the man. So,
then, our union gives us powers to make amends to the world, if the world
should grant us a term of peace for the effort. That is our risk;
consider it, Aminta, between now and tomorrow; deliberate. We don't go
together into a garden of roses.'

'I know. I should feel shame. I wish it to look dark,' said Aminta, her
hand in his, and yet with a fair-sailing mind on the stream of the blood.

Rationally and irrationally, the mixed passion and reason in two clear
heads and urgent hearts discussed the stand they made before a world
defied, neither of them quite perceiving what it was which coloured
reason to beauty, or what so convinced their intellects when passion
spoke the louder.

'I am to have a mate.'

'She will pray she may be one.'

'She is my first love.'

Aminta's lips formed 'mine,' without utterance.

Meanwhile his hand or a wizardry subdued her will, allured her body. She
felt herself being drawn to the sign and seal of their plighting for
life. She said, 'Matthew,' softly in protest; and he said, 'Never once
yet!' She was owing to his tenderness. Her deepened voice murmured: 'Is
this to deliberate?' Colour flooded the beautiful dark face, as of the
funeral hues of a sun suffusing all the heavens; firing earth.




CHAPTER XXIX

AMINTA TO HER LORD

On Friday, on Saturday, on Sunday, Lady Charlotte waited for her brother
Rowsley, until it was a diminished satisfaction that she had held her
ground and baffled his mighty will to subdue her. She did not sleep for
thinking of him on the Sunday night. Toward morning a fit of hazy
horrors, which others would have deemed imaginings, drove her from her
bed to sit and brood over Rowsley in a chair. What if it was a case of
heart with him too? Heart disease had been in the family. A man like
Rowsley, still feeling the world before him, as a man of his energies and
aptitudes, her humour added in the tide of his anxieties, had a right to
feel, would not fall upon resignation like a woman.

She was at the physician's door at eight o'clock. Dr. Rewkes reported
reassuringly; it was a simple disturbance in Lord Ormont's condition of
health, and he conveyed just enough of disturbance to send the impetuous
lady knocking and ringing at her brother's door upon the hour of nine.

The announcement of Lady Charlotte's early visit informed my lord that
Dr. Rewkes had done the spiriting required of him. He descended to the
library and passed under scrutiny.

'You don't look ill, Rowsley,' she said, reluctantly in the sound.

'I am the better for seeing you here, Charlotte. Shall I order breakfast
for you? I am alone.'

'I know you are. I've eaten. Rewkes tells me you've not lost appetite.'

'Have I the appearance of a man who has lost anything?' Prouder man, and
heartier and ruddier, could not be seen, she thought.

'You're winning the country to right you; that I know.'

'I don't ask it.'

'The country wants your services.'

'I have heard some talk of it. That lout comes to a knowledge of his
wants too late. If they promoted and offered me the command in India
to-morrow--'My lord struck the arm of his chair. 'I live at Steignton
henceforth; my wife is at a seaside place eastward. She left the
jewel-case when on her journey through London for safety; she is a
particularly careful person, forethoughtful. I take her down to Steignton
two days after her return. We entertain there in the autumn. You come?'

'I don't. I prefer decent society.'

'You are in her house now, ma'am.'

'If I have to meet the person, you mean, I shall be civil. The society
you've given her, I won't meet.'

'You will have to greet the Countess of Ormont if you care to meet your
brother.'

'Part, then, on the best terms we can. I say this, the woman who keeps
you from serving your country, she 's your country's enemy.'

'Hear my answer. The lady who is my wife has had to suffer for what you
call my country's treatment of me. It 's a choice between my country and
her. I give her the rest of my time.'

'That's dotage.'

'Fire away your epithets.'

'Sheer dotage. I don't deny she's a handsome young woman.'

'You'll have to admit that Lady Ormont takes her place in our family with
the best we can name.'

'You insult my ears, Rowsley.'

'The world will say it when it has the honour of her acquaintance.'

'An honour suspiciously deferred.'

'That's between the world and me.'

'Set your head to work, you'll screw the world to any pitch you
like--that I don't need telling.'

Lord Ormont's head approved the remark.

'Now,' said Lady Charlotte, 'you won't get the Danmores, the Dukerlys,
the Carminters, the Oxbridges any more than you get me.'

'You are wrong, ma'am. I had yesterday a reply from Lady Danmore to a
communication of mine.'

'It 's thickening. But while I stand, I stand for the family; and I 'm
not in it, and while I stand out of it, there 's a doubt either of your
honesty or your sanity.'

'There's a perfect comprehension of my sister!'

'I put my character in the scales against your conduct, and your Countess
of Ormont's reputation into the bargain.'

'You have called at her house; it 's a step. You 'll be running at her
heels next. She 's not obdurate.'

'When you see me running at her heels, it'll be with my head off. Stir
your hardest, and let it thicken. That man Morsfield's name mixed up with
a sham Countess of Ormont, in the stories flying abroad, can't hurt
anybody. A true Countess of Ormont--we 're cut to the quick.'

'We 're cut! Your quick, Charlotte, is known to court the knife.'

Letters of the morning's post were brought in.

The earl turned over a couple and took up a third, saying: 'I 'll attend
to you in two minutes'; and thinking once more: Queer world it is, where,
when you sheath the sword, you have to be at play with bodkins!

Lady Charlotte gazed on the carpet, effervescent with retorts to his last
observation, rightly conjecturing that the letter he selected to read was
from 'his Aminta.'

The letter apparently was interesting, or it was of inordinate length. He
seemed still to be reading. He reverted to the first page.

At the sound of the paper, she discarded her cogitations and glanced up.
His countenance had become stony. He read on some way, with a sudden drop
on the signature, a recommencement, a sound in the throat, as when men
grasp a comprehensible sentence of a muddled rigmarole and begin to have
hopes of the remainder. But the eye on the page is not the eye which
reads.

'No bad news, Rowsley?'

The earl's breath fell heavily.

Lady Charlotte left her chair, and walked about the room.

'Rowsley, I 'd like to hear if I can be of use.'

'Ma'am?' he said; and pondered on the word 'use,' staring at her.

'I don't intend to pry. I can't see my brother look like that, and not
ask.'

The letter was tossed on the table to her. She read these lines, dated
from Felixstowe:

   'MY DEAR LORD,

   'The courage I have long been wanting in has come at last, to break
   a tie that I have seen too clearly was a burden on you from the
   beginning. I will believe that I am chiefly responsible for
   inducing you to contract it. The alliance with an inexperienced
   girl of inferior birth, and a perhaps immoderate ambition, has taxed
   your generosity; and though the store may be inexhaustible, it is
   not truly the married state when a wife subjects the husband to such
   a trial. The release is yours, the sadness is for me. I have
   latterly seen or suspected a design on your part to meet my former
   wishes for a public recognition of the wife of Lord Ormont. Let me
   now say that these foolish wishes no longer exist. I rejoice to
   think that my staying or going will be alike unknown to the world.
   I have the means of a livelihood, in a modest way, and shall trouble
   no one.

   'I have said, the sadness is for me. That is truth. But I have to
   add, that I, too, am sensible of the release. My confession of a
   change of feeling to you as a wife, writes the close of all
   relations between us. I am among the dead for you; and it is a
   relief to me to reflect on the little pain I give . . .'

'Has she something on her conscience about that man Morsfield?' Lady
Charlotte cried.

Lord Ormont's prolonged Ah! of execration rolled her to a bundle.

Nevertheless her human nature and her knowledge of woman's, would out
with the words: 'There's a man!'

She allowed her brother to be correct in repudiating the name of the dead
Morsfield--chivalrous as he was on this Aminta's behalf to the last!--and
struck along several heads, Adderwood's, Weyburn's, Randeller's, for the
response to her suspicion. A man there certainly was. He would be
probably a young man. He would not necessarily be a handsome man. . . .
or a titled or a wealthy man. She might have set eyes on a gypsy
somewhere round Great Marlow--blood to blood; such things have been.
Imagining a wildish man for her, rather than a handsome one and one
devoted staidly to the founding of a school, she overlooked Weyburn, or
reserved him with others for subsequent speculation.

The remainder of Aminta's letter referred to her delivery of the Ormont
jewel-case at Lord Ormont's London house, under charge of her maid
Carstairs. The affairs of the household were stated very succinctly, the
drawer for labelled keys, whatever pertained to her management, in London
or at Great Marlow.

'She 's cool,' Lady Charlotte said, after reading out the orderly array
of items, in a tone of rasping irony, to convince her brother he was well
rid of a heartless wench.

Aminta's written statement of those items were stabs at the home she had
given him, a flashed picture of his loss. Nothing written by her touched
him to pierce him so shrewdly; nothing could have brought him so closely
the breathing image in the flesh of the woman now a phantom for him.

'Will she be expecting you to answer, Rowsley?'

'Will that forked tongue cease hissing!' he shouted, in the agony of a
strong man convulsed both to render and conceal the terrible, shameful,
unexampled gush of tears.

Lady Charlotte beheld her bleeding giant. She would rather have seen the
brother of her love grimace in woman's manner than let loose those
rolling big drops down the face of a rock. The big sob shook him, and she
was shaken to the dust by the sight. Now she was advised by her deep
affection for her brother to sit patient and dumb, behind shaded eyes:
praising in her heart the incomparable force of the man's love of the
woman contrasted with the puling inclinations of the woman for the man.

Neither opened mouth when they separated. She pressed and kissed a large
nerveless hand. Lord Ormont stood up to bow her forth. His ruddied skin
had gone to pallor resembling the berg of ice on the edge of Arctic seas,
when sunlight has fallen away from it.




CHAPTER XXX




CONCLUSION

The peaceful little home on the solitary sandy shore was assailed,
unwarned, beneath a quiet sky, some hours later, by a whirlwind, a
dust-storm, and rattling volleys. Miss Vincent's discovery, in the past
school-days, of Selina Collett's 'wicked complicity in a clandestine
correspondence' had memorably chastened the girl, who vowed at the time
when her schoolmistress, using the rod of Johnsonian English for the
purpose, exposed the depravity of her sinfulness, that she would never
again be guilty of a like offence. Her dear and lovely Countess of
Ormont, for whom she then uncomplainingly suffered, who deigned now to
call her friend, had spoken the kind good-bye, and left the house after
Mr. Weyburn's departure that same day; she, of course, to post by Harwich
to London; he to sail by packet from the port of Harwich for Flushing.
The card of an unknown lady, a great lady, the Lady Charlotte Eglett, was
handed to her mother at eight o'clock in the evening.

Lady Charlotte was introduced to the innocent country couple; the mother
knitting, the daughter studying a book of the botany of the Swiss Alps,
dreaming a distant day's journey over historic lands of various hues to
the unimaginable spectacle of earth's grandeur. Her visit lasted fifteen
minutes. From the moment of her entry, the room was in such turmoil as
may be seen where a water-mill wheel's paddles are suddenly set rounding
to pour streams of foam on the smooth pool below. A relentless catechism
bewildered their hearing. Mrs. Collett attempted an opposition of dignity
to those vehement attacks for answers. It was flooded and rolled over.
She was put upon her honour to reply positively to positive questions:
whether the Countess of Ormont was in this house at present; whether the
Countess of Ormont left the house alone or in company; whether a
gentleman had come to the house during the stay of the Countess of
Ormont; whether Lady Ormont had left the neighbourhood; the exact time of
the day when she quitted the house, and the stated point of her
destination.

Ultimately, protesting that they were incapable of telling what they did
not know--which Lady Charlotte heard with an incredulous shrug--they
related piecemeal what they did know, and Weyburn's name gave her scent.
She paid small heed to the tale of Mr. Weyburn's having come there in the
character of young Mr. Collett's old schoolmate. Mr. Weyburn had started
for the port of Harwich. This day, and not long subsequently, Lady Ormont
had started for the port of Harwich, on her way to London, if we like to
think it. Further corroboration was quite superfluous.

'Is there a night packet-boat from this port of yours?' Lady Charlotte
asked.

The household servants had to be consulted; and she, hurriedly craving
the excuse of their tedious mistress, elicited, as far as she could
understand them, that there might be and very nearly was, a night
packet-boat starting for Flushing. The cook, a native of Harwich, sent up
word of a night packet-boat starting at about eleven o'clock last year.

Lady Charlotte saw the chance as a wind-blown beacon-fire under press of
shades. Changeing her hawkish manner toward the simple pair, she gave
them view of a smile magical by contrast, really beautiful--the smile she
had in reserve for serviceable persons whom she trusted--while thanking
them and saying, that her anxiety concerned Lady Ormont's welfare.

Her brother had prophesied she would soon be 'running at his wife's
heels,' and so she was, but not 'with her head off,' as she had rejoined.
She might prove, by intercepting his Aminta, that her head was on. The
windy beacon-fire of a chance blazed at the rapid rolling of her
carriage-wheels, and sank to stifling smoke at any petty obstruction. Let
her but come to an interview with his Aminta, she would stop all that
nonsense of the woman's letter; carry her off--and her Weyburn plucking
at her other hand to keep her. Why, naturally, treated as she was by
Rowsley, she dropped soft eyes on a good-looking secretary. Any woman
would--confound the young fellow! But all 's right yet if we get to
Harwich in time; unless . . . as a certain coldfish finale tone of the
letter playing on the old string, the irrevocable, peculiar to women who
are novices in situations of the kind, appeared to indicate; they see in
their conscience-blasted minds a barrier to a return home, high as the
Archangelical gate behind Mother Eve, and they are down on their knees
blubbering gratitude and repentance if the gate swings open to them. It
is just the instant, granting the catastrophe, to have a woman back to
her duty. She has only to learn she has a magnanimous husband. If she
learns into the bargain how he suffers, how he loves her,--well, she
despises a man like that Lawrence Finchley all the more for the
'magnanimity' she has the profit of, and perceives to be feebleness. But
there 's woman in her good and her bad; she'll trick a man of age, and if
he forgives her, owning his own faults in the case, she won't scorn him
for it; the likelihood is, she 'll feel bound in honour to serve him
faithfully for the rest of their wedded days.

A sketch to her of Rowsley's deep love. . . . Lady Charlotte wandered
into an amazement at it. A sentence of her brother's recent speaking
danced in her recollection. He said of his country: That Lout comes to a
knowledge of his wants too late. True, Old England is always louting to
the rear, and has to be pricked in the rear and pulled by the neck before
she 's equal to the circumstances around her. But what if his words were
flung at him in turn! Short of 'Lout,' it rang correctly. 'Too late,' we
hope to clip from the end of the sentence likewise. We have then, if you
stress it--'comes to a knowledge of his wants;--a fair example of the
creatures men are; the greatest of men; who have to learn from the loss
of the woman--or a fear of the loss--how much they really do love her.

Well, and she may learn the same or something sufficiently like it, if
she 's caught in time, called to her face, Countess of Ormont,
sister-in-law, and smoothed, petted, made believe she 's now understood
and won't be questioned on a single particular--in fact, she marches back
in a sort of triumph; and all the past in a cupboard, locked up, without
further inquiry.

Her brother Rowsley's revealed human appearance of the stricken
man--stricken right into his big heart--precipitated Lady Charlotte's
reflections and urged her to an unavailing fever of haste during the
circuitous drive in moonlight to the port. She alighted at the principal
inn, and was there informed that the packetboat, with a favouring breeze
and tide, had started ten minutes earlier. She summoned the landlord, and
described a lady, as probably one of the passengers: 'Dark, holds herself
up high. Some such lady had dined at the inn on tea, and gone aboard the
boat soon after.

Lady Charlotte burned with the question: Alone? She repressed her
feminine hunger and asked to see the book of visitors. But the lady had
not slept at the inn, so had not been requested to write her name.

The track of the vessel could be seen from the pier, on the line of a bar
of moonlight; and thinking, that the abominable woman, if aboard she was,
had coolly provided herself with a continental passport--or had it done
for two by her accomplice, that Weyburn, before she left London--Lady
Charlotte sent a loathing gaze at the black figure of the boat on the
water, untroubled by any reminder of her share in the conspiracy of
events, which was to be her brother's chastisement to his end.

Years are the teachers of the great rocky natures, whom they round and
sap and pierce in caverns, having them on all sides, and striking deep
inward at moments. There is no resisting the years, if we have a heart,
and a common understanding. They constitute, in the sum of them, the
self-examination, whence issues, acknowledged or not, a belated
self-knowledge, to direct our final actions. She had the heart. Sight of
the high-minded, proud, speechless man suffering for the absence of a
runaway woman, not ceasing to suffer, never blaming the woman, and
consequently, it could be fancied, blaming himself, broke down Lady
Charlotte's defences and moved her to review her part in her brother
Rowsley's unhappiness. For supposing him to blame himself, her power to
cast a shadow of blame on him went from her, and therewith her
vindication of her conduct. He lived at Olmer. She read him by degrees,
as those who have become absolutely tongueless have to be read; and so
she gathered that this mortally (or lastingly) wounded brother of hers
was pleased by an allusion to his Aminta. He ran his finger on the lines
of a map of Spain, from Barcelona over to Granada; and impressed his nail
at a point appearing to be mountainous or woody. Lady Charlotte suggested
that he and his Aminta had passed by there. He told a story of a carriage
accident: added, 'She was very brave.' One day, when he had taken a
keepsake book of England's Beauties off the drawing-room table, his eyes
dwelt on a face awhile, and he handed it, with a nod, followed by a
slight depreciatory shrug. 'Like her, not so handsome,' Lady Charlotte
said.

He nodded again. She came to a knowledge of Aminta's favourite colours
through the dwelling of his look on orange and black, deepest rose, light
yellow, light blue. Her grand-daughters won the satisfied look if they
wore a combination touching his memory. The rocky are not imaginative,
and have to be struck from without for a kindling of them. Submissive
though she was to court and soothe her brother Rowsley, a spur of
jealousy burned in the composition of her sentiments, to set her going.
He liked visiting Mrs. Lawrence Finchley at her effaced good man's
country seat, Brockholm in Berkshire, and would stay there a month at a
time. Lady Charlotte learnt why. The enthusiast for Aminta, without
upholding her to her late lord, whom she liked well, talked of her openly
with him, confessed to a fondness for her. How much Mrs. Lawrence
ventured to say, Lady Charlotte could not know. But rivalry pushed her to
the extreme of making Aminta partially a topic; and so ready was he to
follow her lead in the veriest trifles recalling the handsome runaway;
that she had to excite his racy diatribes against the burgess English and
the pulp they have made of a glorious nation, in order not to think him
inclining upon dotage.

Philippa's occasional scoff in fun concerning 'grandmama's tutor,' hurt
Lady Charlotte for more reasons than one, notwithstanding the
justification of her fore-thoughtfulness. The girl, however, was
privileged; she was Bobby Benlew's dearest friend, and my lord loved the
boy; with whom nothing could be done at school, nor could a tutor at
Olmer control him. In fine, Bobby saddened the family and gained the
earl's anxious affection by giving daily proofs of his being an Ormont in
a weak frame; patently an Ormont, recurrently an invalid. His moral
qualities hurled him on his physical deficiencies. The local doctor and
Dr. Rewkes banished him twice to the seashore, where he began to bloom
the first week and sickened the next, for want of playfellows, jolly
fights and friendships. Ultimately they prescribed mountain air, Swiss
air, easy travelling to Switzerland, and several weeks of excursions at
the foot of the Alps. Bobby might possibly get an aged tutor, or find an
English clergyman taking pupils, on the way.

Thus it happened, that seven years after his bereavement, Lord Ormont and
Philippa and Bobby were on the famous Bernese Terrace, grandest of
terrestrial theatres where soul of man has fronting him earth's utmost
majesty. Sublime: but five minutes of it fetched sounds as of a plug in
an empty phial from Bobby's bosom, and his heels became electrical.

He was observed at play with a gentleman of Italian complexion. Past
guessing how it had come about, for the gentleman was an utter stranger.
He had at any rate the tongue of an Englishman. He had the style, too,
the slang and cries and tricks of an English schoolboy, though visibly a
foreigner. And he had the art of throwing his heart into that bit of
improvised game, or he would never have got hold of Bobby, shrewd to read
a masker.

Lugged-up by the boy to my lord and the young lady, he doffed and bowed.
'Forgive me, pray,' he said; 'I can't see an English boy without having a
spin with him; and I make so bold as to speak to English people wherever
I meet them, if they give me the chance. Bad manners? Better than that.
You are of the military profession, sir, I see. I am a soldier, fresh
from Monte Video. Italian, it is evident, under an Italian chief there. A
clerk on a stool, and hey presto plunged into the war a month after,
shouldering a gun and marching. Fifteen battles in eighteen months; and
Death a lady at a balcony we kiss hands to on the march below. Not a bit
more terrible! Ah, but your pardon, sir,' he hastened to say, observing
rigidity on the features of the English gentleman; 'would I boast? Not I.
Accept it as my preface for why I am moved to speak the English wherever
I meet them:--Uruguay, Buenos Ayres, La Plata, or Europe. I cannot resist
it. At least, he bent gracefully, 'I do not. We come to the grounds of my
misbehaviour. I have shown at every call I fear nothing, kiss hand of
welcome or adieu to Death. And I, a boy of the age of this youngster--he
's not like me, I can declare!--I was a sneak and a coward. It follows, I
was a liar and a traitor. Who cured me of that vileness, that scandal? I
will tell you--an Englishman and an Englishwoman: my schoolmaster and his
wife. My schoolmaster--my friend! He is the comrade of his boys: English,
French, Germans, Italians, a Spaniard in my time--a South American I have
sent him--two from Boston, Massachusetts--and clever!--all emulous to
excel, none boasting. But, to myself; I was that mean fellow. I did--I
could let you know: before this young lady--she would wither me with her
scorn, Enough, I sneaked, I lied. I let the blame fall on a schoolfellow
and a housemaid. Oh! a small thing, but I coveted it--a scarf. It
reminded me of Rome. Enough, there at the bottom of that pit, behold me.
It was not discovered, but my schoolfellow was unpunished, the housemaid
remained in service; I thought, I thought, and I thought until I could
not look in my dear friend Matthew's face. He said to me one day: "Have
you nothing to tell me, Giulio?" as if to ask the road to right or left.
Out it all came. And no sermon, no! He set me the hardest task I could
have. That was a penance!--to go to his wife, and tell it all to her.
Then I did think it an easier thing to go and face death--and death had
been my nightmare. I went, she listened, she took my hand she said: "You
will never do this again, I know, Giulio." She told me no English girl
would ever look on a man who was a coward and lied. From that day I have
made Truth my bride. And what the consequence? I know not fear! I could
laugh, knowing I was to lie down in my six-foot measure to-morrow. If I
have done my duty and look in the face of my dear Matthew and his wife!
Ah, those two! They are loved. They will be loved all over Europe. He
works for Europe and America--all civilized people--to be one country. He
is the comrade of his boys. Out of school hours, it is Christian names
all round--Matthew, Emile, Adolf, Emilio, Giulio, Robert, Marcel, Franz,
et caetera. Games or lessons, a boy can't help learning with him. He
makes happy fellows and brave soldiers of them without drill. Sir, do I
presume when I say I have your excuse for addressing you because you are
his countryman? I drive to the old school in half an hour, and next week
he and his dear wife and a good half of the boys will be on the tramp
over the Simplon, by Lago Maggiore, to my uncle's house in Milan for a
halt. I go to Matthew before I see my own people.'

He swept another bow of apology, chiefly to Philippa, as representative
of the sex claiming homage.

Lord Ormont had not greatly relished certain of the flowery phrases
employed by this young foreigner. 'Truth his bride,' was damnable: and if
a story had to be told, he liked it plain, without jerks and evolutions.
Many offences to our taste have to be overlooked in foreigners--Italians!
considered, before they were proved in fire, a people classed by nature
as operatic declaimers. Bobby had shown himself on the road out to Bern a
difficult boy, and stupefyingly ignorant. My lord had two or three ideas
working to cloudy combination in his head when he put a question,
referring to the management of the dormitories at the school. Whereupon
the young Italian introduced himself as Giulio Calliani, and proposed a
drive to inspect the old school, with its cricket and football fields,
lake for rowing and swimming, gymnastic fixtures, carpenter's shed,
bowling alley, and four European languages in the air by turns daily; and
the boys, too, all the boys rosy and jolly, according to the last report
received of them from his friend Matthew. Enthusiasm struck and tightened
the loose chord of scepticism in Lord Ormont; somewhat as if a dancing
beggar had entered a kennel-dog's yard, designing to fascinate the
faithful beast. It is a chord of one note, that is tightened to sound by
the violent summons to accept, which is a provocation to deny. At the
same time, the enthusiast's dance is rather funny; he is not an ordinary
beggar; to see him trip himself in his dance would be rather funnier.
This is to say, inspect the trumpeted school and retire politely. My lord
knew the Bern of frequent visits: the woman was needed beside him to
inspire a feeling for scenic mountains. Philippa's admiration of them was
like a new-pressed grape-juice after a draught of the ripe vintage.
Moreover, Bobby was difficult: the rejected of his English schools was a
stiff Ormont at lessons, a wheezy Benlew in the playground: exactly the
reverse of what should have been. A school of four languages in bracing
air, if a school with healthy dormitories, and a school of the trained
instincts we call gentlemanly, might suit Master Bobby for a trial. An
eye on the boys of the school would see in a minute what stuff they were
made of. Supposing this young Italianissimo with the English tongue to be
tolerably near the mark, with a deduction of two-thirds of the
enthusiasm, Bobby might stop at the school as long as his health held
out, or the master would keep him. Supposing half a dozen things and
more, the meeting with this Mr. Calliand was a lucky accident. But lucky
accidents are anticipated only by fools.

Lord Ormont consented to visit the school. He handed his card and invited
his guest; he had a carriage in waiting for the day, he said; and
obedient to Lady Charlotte's injunctions, he withheld Philippa from the
party. She and her maid were to pass the five hours of his absence in
efforts to keep their monkey Bobby out of the well of the solicitious
bears.

My lord left his carriage at the inn of the village lying below the
school-house on a green height. The young enthusiast was dancing him into
the condition of livid taciturnity, which could, if it would, flash out
pungent epigrams of the actual world at Operatic recitative.

'There's the old school-clock! Just in time for the half-hour before
dinner,' said Calliani, chattering two hundred to the minute, of the
habits and usages of the school, and how all had meals together, the
master, his wife, the teachers, the boys. 'And she--as for her!' Calliani
kissed finger up to the furthest skies: into which a self-respecting
sober Northener of the Isles could imagine himself to kick enthusiastic
gesticulators, if it were polite to do so.

The school-house faced the master's dwelling house, and these, with a
block of building, formed a three-sided enclosure, like barracks! Forth
from the school-house door burst a dozen shouting lads, as wasps from the
hole of their nest from a charge of powder. Out they poured whizzing; and
the frog he leaped, and pussy ran and doubled before the hounds, and
hockey-sticks waved, and away went a ball. Cracks at the ball anyhow, was
the game for the twenty-five minutes breather before dinner.

'French day!' said Calliani, hearing their cries. Then he bellowed
'Matthew!--Giulio!'

A lusty inversion of the order of the names and an Oberland jodel
returned his hail. The school retreating caught up the Alpine cry in the
distance. Here were lungs! Here were sprites!

Lord Ormont bethought him of the name of the master. 'Mr. Matthew, I
think you said, sir,' he was observing to Calliani, as the master came
nearer; and Calliani replied: 'His Christian name. But if the boys are
naughty boys, it is not the privilege. Mr. Weyburn.'

There was not any necessity to pronounce that name Calliani spoke it on
the rush to his friend.

Lord Ormont and Weyburn advanced the steps to the meeting. Neither of
them flinched in eye or limb.

At a corridor window of the dwelling-house a lady stood. Her colour was
the last of a summer day over western seas; her thought: 'It has come!'
Her mind was in her sight; her other powers were frozen.

The two men conversed. There was no gesture.

This is one of the lightning moments of life for the woman, at the
meeting of the two men between whom her person has been in dispute, may
still be; her soul being with one. And that one, dearer than the blood of
her body, imperilled by her.

She could ask why she exists, if a question were in her grasp. She would
ask for the meaning of the gift of beauty to the woman, making her
desireable to those two men, making her a cause of strife, a thing of
doom. An incessant clamour dinned about her: 'It has come!'

The two men walked conversing into the school-house. She was unconscious
of the seeing of a third, though she saw and at the back of her mind
believed she knew a friend in him. The two disappeared. She was
insensible stone, except for the bell-clang: 'It has come'; until they
were in view again, still conversing: and the first of her thought to
stir from petrifaction was: 'Life holds no secret.'

She tried, in shame of the inanimate creature she had become, to force
herself to think: and had, for a chastising result, a series of
geometrical figures shooting across her brain, mystically expressive of
the situation, not communicably. The most vivid and persistent was a
triangle. Interpret who may. The one beheld the two pass from view again,
still conversing.

They are on the gravel; they bow; they separate. He of the grey head
poised high has gone.

Her arm was pressed by a hand. Weyburn longed to enfold her, and she
desired it, and her soul praised him for refraining. Both had that
delicacy.

'You have seen, my darling,' Weyburn said. 'It has come, and we take our
chance. He spoke not one word, beyond the affairs of the school. He has a
grandnephew in want of a school: visited the dormitories, refectory, and
sheds: tasted the well-water, addressed me as Mr. Matthew. He had it from
Giulio. Came to look at the school of Giulio's "friend Matthew,":--you
hear him. Giulio little imagines!--Well, dear love, we stand with a squad
in front, and wait the word. It mayn't be spoken. We have counted long
before that something like it was bound to happen. And you are brave.
Ruin's an empty word for us two.'

'Yes, dear, it is: we will pay what is asked of us,' Aminta said. 'It
will be heavy, if the school . . . and I love our boys. I am fit to be
the school-housekeeper; for nothing else.'

'I will go to the boys' parents. At the worst, we can march into new
territory. Emile will stick to us. Adolf, too. The fresh flock will
come.'

Aminta cried in the voice of tears: 'I love the old so!'

'The likelihood is, we shall hear nothing further.'

'You had to bear the shock, Matthew.'

'Whatever I bore, and you saw, you shared.'

'Yes,' she said.

'Mais, n'oublions pas que c'est aujourd'hui jour francais; si, madame,
vous avez assez d'appetit pour diner avec nous?

'Je suis, comme toujours, aux ordres de Monsieur.' She was among the
bravest of women. She had a full ounce of lead in her breast when she sat
with the boys at their midday meal, showing them her familiar pleasant
face.

Shortly after the hour of the evening meal, a messenger from Bern
delivered a letter addressed to the Headmaster. Weyburn and Aminta were
strolling to the playground, thinking in common, as they usually did.
They read the letter together. These were the lines:

'Lord Ormont desires to repeat his sense of obligation to Mr. Matthew for
the inspection of the school under his charge, and will be thankful to
Mr. Calliani, if that gentleman will do him the favour to call at his
hotel at Bern to-morrow, at as early an hour as is convenient to him, for
the purpose of making arrangements, agreeable to the Head-master's rules,
for receiving his grandnephew Robert Benlew as a pupil at the school.'

The two raised eyes on one another, pained in their deep joy by the
religion of the restraint upon their hearts, to keep down the passion to
embrace.

'I thank heaven we know him to be one of the true noble men,' said
Aminta, now breathing, and thanking Lord Ormont for the free breath she
drew.

Weyburn spoke of an idea he had gathered from the earl's manner. But he
had not imagined the proud lord's great-heartedness would go so far as to
trust him with the guardianship of the boy. That moved, and that humbled
him, though it was far from humiliating.

Six months later, the brief communication arrived from Lady Charlotte

'She is a widow.

'Unlikely you will hear from me again. Death is always next door, you
said once. I look on the back of life.

'Tell Bobby, capital for him to write he has no longing for home
holidays. If any one can make a man of him, you will. That I know.

                  'CHARLOTTE EGLETT.'




     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS

     A bird that won't roast or boil or stew
     A woman, and would therefore listen to nonsense
     A free-thinker startles him as a kind of demon
     A female free-thinker is one of Satan's concubines
     Acting is not of the high class which conceals the art
     Affected misapprehensions
     Ah! we fall into their fictions
     All that Matey and Browny were forbidden to write they looked
     And not be beaten by an acknowledged defeat
     Any excess pushes to craziness
     As well ask (women) how a battle-field concerns them!
     Bad luck's not repeated every day Keep heart for the good
     Bad laws are best broken
     Began the game of Pull
     Being in heart and mind the brother to the sister with women
     Botched mendings will only make them worse
     Bounds of his intelligence closed their four walls
     Boys who can appreciate brave deeds are capable of doing them
     Boys, of course--but men, too!
     But had sunk to climb on a firmer footing
     By nature incapable of asking pardon
     Cajoled like a twenty-year-old yahoo at college
     Careful not to smell of his office
     Challenged him to lead up to her desired stormy scene
     Chose to conceive that he thought abstractedly
     Consciousness of some guilt when vowing itself innocent
     Consign discussion to silence with the cynical closure
     Convictions we store--wherewith to shape our destinies
     Convincing themselves that they impersonate sagacity
     Could not understand enthusiasm for the schoolmaster's career
     Could we--we might be friends
     Curious thing would be if curious things should fail to happen
     Death is only the other side of the ditch
     Death is always next door
     Desire of it destroyed it
     Detestable feminine storms enveloping men weak enough
     Didn't say a word No use in talking about feelings
     Distaste for all exercise once pleasurable
     Divided lovers in presence
     Enthusiasm struck and tightened the loose chord of scepticism
     Enthusiast, when not lyrical, is perilously near to boring
     Exult in imagination of an escape up to the moment of capture
     Few men can forbear to tell a spicy story of their friends
     Greatest of men; who have to learn from the loss of the woman
     Having contracted the fatal habit of irony
     He had to shake up wrath over his grievances
     He had gone, and the day lived again for both of them
     He gave a slight sign of restiveness, and was allowed to go
     He loathed a skulker
     He took small account of the operations of the feelings
     He began ambitiously--It's the way at the beginning
     Her vehement fighting against facts
     Her duel with Time
     His aim to win the woman acknowledged no obstacle in the means
     His restored sense of possession
     Hopeless task of defending a woman from a woman
     How to compromise the matter for the sake of peace?
     I have all the luxuries--enough to loathe them
     I hate old age It changes you so
     I could be in love with her cruelty, if only I had her near me
     I look on the back of life
     I want no more, except to be taught to work
     I married a cook She expects a big appetite
     I'm for a rational Deity
     If the world is hostile we are not to blame it
     Ignorance roaring behind a mask of sarcasm
     Increase of dissatisfaction with the more she got
     Lawyers hold the keys of the great world
     Learn--principally not to be afraid of ideas
     Loathing of artifice to raise emotion
     Look well behind
     Lucky accidents are anticipated only by fools
     Magnify an offence in the ratio of our vanity
     Man who helps me to read the world and men as they are
     Meant to vanquish her with the dominating patience
     Men bore the blame, though the women were rightly punished
     Men who believe that there is a virtue in imprecations
     Naked original ideas, are acceptable at no time
     Napoleon's treatment of women is excellent example
     Necessity's offspring
     Never nurse an injury, great or small
     Nevertheless, inclinations are an infidelity
     No love can be without jealousy
     Not daring risk of office by offending the taxpayer
     Not the indignant and the frozen, but the genially indifferent
     Not men of brains, but the men of aptitudes
     Old age is a prison wall between us and young people
     One has to feel strong in a delicate position
     One night, and her character's gone
     One is a fish to her hook; another a moth to her light
     Orderliness, from which men are privately exempt
     Our love and labour are constantly on trial
     Passion added to a bowl of reason makes a sophist's mess
     People were virtuous in past days: they counted their sinners
     Perhaps inspire him, if he would let her breathe
     Person in another world beyond this world of blood
     Policy seems to petrify their minds
     Practical for having an addiction to the palpable
     Professional Puritans
     Published Memoirs indicate the end of a man's activity
     Rage of a conceited schemer tricked
     Regularity of the grin of dentistry
     Respect one another's affectations
     Screams of an uninjured lady
     Selfishness and icy inaccessibility to emotion
     She had to be the hypocrite or else--leap
     She had a thirsting mind
     Silence was doing the work of a scourge
     Smile she had in reserve for serviceable persons
     Snatch her from a possessor who forfeited by undervaluing her
     So says the minute Years are before you
     That pit of one of their dead silences
     The despot is alert at every issue, to every chance
     The spending, never harvesting, world
     The shots hit us behind you
     The terrible aggregate social woman
     The next ten minutes will decide our destinies
     The woman side of him
     The good life gone lives on in the mind
     The beat of a heart with a dread like a shot in it
     There is no history of events below the surface
     There are women who go through life not knowing love
     They want you to show them what they 'd like the world to be
     Things are not equal
     Things were lumpish and gloomy that day of the week
     This female talk of the eternities
     Titles showered on the women who take free breath of air
     To males, all ideas are female until they are made facts
     To time and a wife it is no disgrace for a man to bend
     To know how to take a licking, that wins in the end
     Uncommon unprogressiveness
     Venus of nature was melting into a Venus of art
     Violent summons to accept, which is a provocation to deny
     We cannot, men or woman, control the heart in sleep at night
     We shall want a war to teach the country the value of courage
     We don't go together into a garden of roses
     When duelling flourished on our land, frail women powerful
     Where heart weds mind, or nature joins intellect
     Who cries, Come on, and prays his gods you won't
     Why he enjoyed the privilege of seeing, and was not beside her
     With what little wisdom the world is governed
     Women are happier enslaved
     World against us It will not keep us from trying to serve
     Years are the teachers of the great rocky natures
     You'll have to guess at half of everything he tells you
     You're going to be men, meaning something better than women






THE AMAZING MARRIAGE


By George Meredith


1895




CONTENTS:

BOOK 1.
I.        ENTER DAME GOSSIP AS CHORUS
II.       MISTRESS GOSSIP TELLS OF THE ELOPEMENT OF THE COUNTESS OF
          CRESSETT WITH THE OLD BUCCANEER, AND OF CHARLES DUMP THE
          POSTILLION CONDUCTING THEM, AND OF A GREAT COUNTY FAMILY
III.      CONTINUATION OF THE INTRODUCTORY MEANDERINGS OF DAME GOSSIP,
          TOGETHER WITH HER SUDDEN EXTINCTION
IV.       MORNING AND FAREWELL TO AN OLD HOME
V.        A MOUNTAIN WALK IN MIST AND SUNSHINE
VI.       THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHER
VII.      THE LADY'S LETTER
VIII.     OF THE ENCOUNTER OF TWO STRANGE YOUNG MEN AND THEIR CONSORTING:
          IN WHICH THE MALE READER IS REQUESTED TO BEAR IN MIND WHAT WILD
          CREATURE HE WAS IN HIS YOUTH, WHILE THE FEMALE SHOULD MARVEL
          CREDULOUSLY
IX.       CONCERNING THE BLACK GODDESS FORTUNE AND THE WORSHIP OF HER,
          TOGETHER WITH AN INTRODUCTION OF SOME OF HER VOTARIES

BOOK 2.
X.        SMALL CAUSES
XI.       THE PRISONER OF HIS WORD
XII.      HENRIETTA'S LETTER TREATING OF THE GREAT EVENT
XIII.     AN IRRUPTION OF MISTRESS GOSSIP IN BREACH OF THE CONVENTION
XIV.      A PENDANT OF THE FOREGOING
XV.       OPENING STAGE OF THE HONEYMOON
XVI.      IN WHICH THE BRIDE FROM FOREIGN PARTS IS GIVEN A TASTE OF OLD
          ENGLAND
XVII.     RECORDS A SHADOW CONTEST CLOSE ON THE FOREGOING
XVIII.    DOWN WHITECHAPEL WAY
XIX.      THE GIRL MADGE

BOOK 3.
XX.       STUDIES IN FOG, GOUT, AN OLD SEAMAN, A LOVELY SERPENT, AND THE
          MORAL EFFECTS THAT MAY COME OF A BORROWED SHIRT
XXI.      IN WHICH WE HAVE FURTHER GLIMPSES OF THE WONDROUS MECHANISM OF
          OUR YOUNGER MAN
XXII.     A RIGHT-MINDED GREAT LADY
XXIII.    IN DAME GOSSIP'S VEIN
XXIV.     A KIDNAPPING AND NO GREAT HARM
XXV.      THE PHILOSOPHER MAN OF ACTION
XXVI.     AFTER SOME FENCING THE DAME PASSES OUR GUARD
XXVII.    WE DESCEND INTO A STEAMER'S ENGINE-ROOM
XXVIII.   BY CONCESSIONS TO MISTRESS GOSSIP A FURTHER INTRUSION IS
          AVERTED

BOOK 4.
XXIX.     CARINTHIA IN WALES
XXX.      REBECCA WYTHAN
XXXI.     WE HAVE AGAIN TO DEAL WITH THE EXAMPLES OF OUR YOUNGER MAN
XXXII.    IN WHICH WE SEE CARINTHIA PUT IN PRACTICE ONE OF HER OLD
          FATHER'S LESSONS
XXXIII.   A FRIGHTFUL DEBATE
XXXIV.    A SURVEY OF THE RIDE OF THE WELSH CAVALIERS ESCORTING THE
          COUNTESS OF FLEETWOOD TO KENTISH ESSLEMONT
XXXV.     IN WHICH CERTAIN CHANGES MAY BE DISCERNED
XXXVI.    BELOW THE SURFACE AND ABOVE
XXXVII.   BETWEEN CARINTHIA AND HER LORD
XXXVIII.  A DIP INTO THE SPRING'S WATERS

BOOK 5.
XXXIX.    THE RED WARNING FROM A SON OF VAPOUR
XL.       A RECORD OF MINOR INCIDENTS
XLI.      IN WHICH THE FATES ARE SEEN AND A CHOICE OF THE REFUGES FROM
          THEM
XLII.     THE RETARDED COURTSHIP
XLIII.    ON THE ROAD TO THE ACT OF PENANCE
XLIV.     BETWEEN THE EARL; THE COUNTESS AND HER BROTHER, AND OF A SILVER
          CROSS
XLV.      CONTAINS A RECORD OF WHAT WAS FEARED, WHAT WAS HOPED, AND WHAT
          HAPPENED
XLVI.     A CHAPTER OF UNDERCURRENTS AND SOME SURFACE FLASHES
XLVII.    THE LAST: WITH A CONCLUDING WORD BY THE DAME




CHAPTER I

ENTER DAME GOSSIP AS CHORUS

Everybody has heard of the beautiful Countess of Cressett, who was one of
the lights of this country at the time when crowned heads were running
over Europe, crying out for charity's sake to be amused after their
tiresome work of slaughter: and you know what a dread they have of
moping. She was famous for her fun and high spirits besides her good
looks, which you may judge of for yourself on a walk down most of our
great noblemen's collections of pictures in England, where you will
behold her as the goddess Diana fitting an arrow to a bow; and elsewhere
an Amazon holding a spear; or a lady with dogs, in the costume of the
day; and in one place she is a nymph, if not Diana herself, gazing at her
naked feet before her attendants loosen her tunic for her to take the
bath, and her hounds are pricking their ears, and you see antlers of a
stag behind a block of stone. She was a wonderful swimmer, among other
things, and one early morning, when she was a girl, she did really swim,
they say, across the Shannon and back to win a bet for her brother Lord
Levellier, the colonel of cavalry, who left an arm in Egypt, and changed
his way of life to become a wizard, as the common people about his
neighbourhood supposed, because he foretold the weather and had cures for
aches and pains without a doctor's diploma. But we know now that he was
only a mathematician and astronomer, all for inventing military engines.
The brother and sister were great friends in their youth, when he had his
right arm to defend her reputation with; and she would have done anything
on earth to please him.

There is a picture of her in an immense flat white silk hat trimmed with
pale blue, like a pavilion, the broadest brim ever seen, and she simply
sits on a chair; and Venus the Queen of Beauty would have been
extinguished under that hat, I am sure; and only to look at Countess
Fanny's eye beneath the brim she has tipped ever so slightly in her
artfulness makes the absurd thing graceful and suitable. Oh! she was a
cunning one. But you must be on your guard against the scandalmongers and
collectors of anecdotes, and worst of any, the critic, of our Galleries
of Art; for she being in almost all of them (the principal painters of
the day were on their knees for the favour of a sitting), they have to
speak of her pretty frequently, and they season their dish, the coxcombs
do, by hinting a knowledge of her history.

'Here we come to another portrait of the beautiful but, we fear, naughty
Countess of Cressett.'

You are to imagine that they know everything, and they are so indulgent
when they drop their blot on a lady's character.

They can boast of nothing more than having read Nymriey's Letters and
Correspondence, published, fortunately for him, when he was no longer to
be called to account below for his malicious insinuations, pretending to
decency in initials and dashes: That man was a hater of women and the
clergy. He was one of the horrid creatures who write with a wink at you,
which sets the wicked part of us on fire: I have known it myself, and I
own it to my shame; and if I happened to be ignorant of the history of
Countess Fanny, I could not refute his wantonness. He has just the same
benevolent leer for a bishop. Give me, if we are to make a choice, the
beggar's breech for decency, I say: I like it vastly in preference to a
Nymney, who leads you up to the curtain and agitates it, and bids you to
retire on tiptoe. You cannot help being angry with the man for both
reasons. But he is the writer society delights in, to show what it is
composed of. A man brazen enough to declare that he could hold us in
suspense about the adventures of a broomstick, with the aid of a yashmak
and an ankle, may know the world; you had better not know him--that is my
remark; and do not trust him.

He tells the story of the Old Buccaneer in fear of the public, for it was
general property, but of course he finishes with a Nymney touch: 'So the
Old Buccaneer is the doubloon she takes in exchange for a handful of
silver pieces.' There is no such handful to exchange--not of the kind he
sickeningly nudges at you. I will prove to you it was not Countess
Fanny's naughtiness, though she was indeed very blamable. Women should
walk in armour as if they were born to it; for these cold sneerers will
never waste their darts on cuirasses. An independent brave young
creature, exposing herself thoughtlessly in her reckless innocence, is
the victim for them. They will bring all society down on her with one of
their explosive sly words appearing so careless, the cowards. I say
without hesitation, her conduct with regard to Kirby, the Old Buccaneer,
as he was called, however indefensible in itself, warrants her at heart
an innocent young woman, much to be pitied. Only to think of her, I could
sometimes drop into a chair for a good cry. And of him too! and their
daughter Carinthia Jane was the pair of them, as to that, and so was
Chillon John, the son.

Those critics quoting Nymney should look at the portrait of her in the
Long Saloon of Cresset Castle, where she stands in blue and white,
completely dressed, near a table supporting a couple of holster pistols,
and then let them ask themselves whether they would speak of her so if
her little hand could move.

Well, and so the tale of her swim across the Shannon river and back drove
the young Earl of Cresset straight over to Ireland to propose for her, he
saying; that she was the girl to suit his book; not allowing her time to
think of how much he might be the man to suit hers. The marriage was what
is called a good one: both full of frolic, and he wealthy and rather
handsome, and she quite lovely and spirited.

No wonder the whole town was very soon agog about the couple, until at
the end of a year people began to talk of them separately, she going her
way, and he his. She could not always be on the top of a coach, which was
his throne of happiness.

Plenty of stories are current still of his fame as a four-in-hand
coachman. They say he once drove an Emperor and a King, a Prince
Chancellor and a pair of Field Marshals, and some ladies of the day, from
the metropolis to Richmond Hill in fifty or sixty odd minutes, having the
ground cleared all the way by bell and summons, and only a donkey-cart
and man, and a deaf old woman, to pay for; and went, as you can imagine,
at such a tearing gallop, that those Grand Highnesses had to hold on for
their lives and lost their hats along the road; and a publican at Kew
exhibits one above his bar to the present hour. And Countess Fanny was up
among them, they say. She was equal to it. And some say, that was the
occasion of her meeting the Old Buccaneer.

She met him at Richmond in Surrey we know for certain. It was on Richmond
Hill, where the old King met his Lass. They say Countess Fanny was
parading the hill to behold the splendid view, always admired so much by
foreigners, with their Achs and Hechs! and surrounded by her crowned
courtiers in frogged uniforms and moustachioed like sea-horses, a little
before dinner time, when Kirby passed her, and the Emperor made a remark
on him, for Kirby was a magnificent figure of a man, and used to be
compared to a three-decker entering harbour after a victory. He stood six
feet four, and was broad-shouldered and deep-chested to match, and walked
like a king who has humbled his enemy. You have seen big dogs. And so
Countess Fanny looked round. Kirby was doing the same. But he had turned
right about, and appeared transfixed and like a royal beast angry, with
his wound. If ever there was love at first sight, and a dreadful love,
like a runaway mail-coach in a storm of wind and lightning at black
midnight by the banks of a flooded river, which was formerly our
comparison for terrible situations, it was when those two met.

And, what! you exclaim, Buccaneer Kirby full sixty-five, and Countess
Fanny no more than three and twenty, a young beauty of the world of
fashion, courted by the highest, and she in love with him! Go and gaze at
one of our big ships coming out of an engagement home with all her flags
flying and her crew manning the yards. That will give you an idea of a
young woman's feelings for an old warrior never beaten down an inch by
anything he had to endure; matching him, I dare say, in her woman's
heart, with the Mighty Highnesses who had only smelt the outside edge of
battle. She did rarely admire a valiant man. Old as Methuselah, he would
have made her kneel to him. She was all heart for a real hero.

The story goes, that Countess Fanny sent her husband to Captain Kirby, at
the emperor's request, to inquire his name; and on hearing it, she struck
her hands on her bosom, telling his Majesty he saw there the bravest man
in the king's dominions; which the emperor scarce crediting, and
observing that the man must be, then, a superhuman being to be so
distinguished in a nation of the brave, Countess Fanny related the
well-known tale of Captain Kirby and the shipful of mutineers; and how
when not a man of them stood by him, and he in the service of the first
insurgent State of Spanish America, to save his ship from being taken
over to the enemy,--he blew her up, fifteen miles from land: and so he
got to shore swimming and floating alternately, and was called Old
Sky-high by English sailors, any number of whom could always be had to
sail under Buccaneer Kirby. He fought on shore as well; and once he came
down from the tops of the Andes with a black beard turned white, and went
into action with the title of Kirby's Ghost.

But his heart was on salt water; he was never so much at home as in a
ship foundering or splitting into the clouds. We are told that he never
forgave the Admiralty for striking him off the list of English naval
captains: which is no doubt why in his old age he nursed a grudge against
his country.

Ours, I am sure, was the loss; and many have thought so since. He was a
mechanician, a master of stratagems; and would say, that brains will beat
Grim Death if we have enough of them. He was a standing example of the
lessons of his own MAXIMS FOR MEN, a very curious book, that fetches a
rare price now wherever a copy is put up for auction. I shudder at them
as if they were muzzles of firearms pointed at me; but they were not
addressed to my sex; and still they give me an interest in the writer who
would declare, that 'he had never failed in an undertaking without
stripping bare to expose to himself where he had been wanting in
Intention and Determination.'

There you may see a truly terrible man.

So the emperor being immensely taken with Kirby's method of preserving
discipline on board ship, because (as we say to the madman, 'Your
strait-waistcoat is my easy-chair') monarchs have a great love of
discipline, he begged Countess Fanny's permission that he might invite
Captain Kirby to his table; and Countess Fanny (she had the name from the
ballad

       'I am the star of Prince and Czar,
        My light is shed on many,
        But I wait here till my bold Buccaneer
        Makes prize of Countess Fanny':--

for the popular imagination was extraordinarily roused by the elopement,
and there were songs and ballads out of number), Countess Fanny
despatched her husband to Captain Kirby again, meaning no harm, though
the poor man is laughed at in the songs for going twice upon his mission.

None of the mighty people repented of having the Old Buccaneer--for that
night, at all events. He sat in the midst of them, you may believe, like
the lord of that table, with his great white beard and hair--not a lock
of it shed--and his bronze lion-face, and a resolute but a merry eye that
he had. He was no deep drinker of wine, but when he did drink, and the
wine champagne, he drank to show his disdain of its powers; and the
emperor wishing for a narrative of some of his exploits, particularly the
blowing up of his ship, Kirby paid his Majesty the compliment of giving
it him as baldly as an official report to the Admiralty. So disengaged
and calm was he, with his bottles of champagne in him, where another
would have been sparkling and laying on the colours, that he was then and
there offered Admiral's rank in the Imperial navy; and the Old Buccaneer,
like a courtier of our best days, bows to Countess Fanny, and asks her,
if he is a free man to go: and, No, says she, we cannot spare you! And
there was a pretty wrangle between Countess Fanny and the emperor, each
pulling at the Old Buccaneer to have possession of him.

He was rarely out of her sight after their first meeting, and the
ridiculous excuse she gave to her husband's family was, she feared he
would be kidnapped and made a Cossack of! And young Lord Cressett, her
husband, began to grumble concerning her intimacy with a man old enough
to be her grandfather. As if the age were the injury! He seemed to think
it so, and vowed he would shoot the old depredator dead, if he found him
on the grounds of Cressett: 'like vermin,' he said, and it was considered
that he had the right, and no jury would have convicted him. You know
what those days were.

He had his opportunity one moonlight night, not far from the castle, and
peppered Kirby with shot from a fowling-piece at, some say, five paces'
distance, if not point-blank.

But Kirby had a maxim, Steady shakes them, and he acted on it to receive
his enemy's fire; and the young lord's hand shook, and the Old Buccaneer
stood out of the smoke not much injured, except in the coat-collar, with
a pistol cocked in his hand, and he said:

'Many would take that for a declaration of war, but I know it 's only
your lordship's diplomacy'; and then he let loose to his mad fun,
astounding Lord Cressett and his gamekeeper, and vowed, as the young lord
tried to relate subsequently, as well as he could recollect the
words--here I have it in print:--'that he was a man pickled in saltpetre
when an infant, like Achilles, and proof against powder and shot not
marked with cross and key, and fetched up from the square magazine in the
central depot of the infernal factory, third turning to the right off the
grand arcade in Kingdom-come, where the night-porter has to wear wet
petticoats, like a Highland chief, to make short work of the sparks
flying about, otherwise this world and many another would not have to
wait long for combustion.'

Kirby had the wildest way of talking when he was not issuing orders under
fire, best understood by sailors. I give it you as it stands here
printed. I do not profess to understand.

So Lord Cressett said: 'Diplomacy and infernal factories be hanged! Have
your shot at me; it's only fair.' And Kirby discharged his pistol at the
top twigs of an old oak tree, and called the young lord a Briton, and
proposed to take him in hand and make a man of him, as nigh worthy of his
wife as any one not an Alexander of Macedon could be.

So they became friendly, and the young lord confessed it was his family
that had urged him to the attack; and Kirby abode at the castle, and all
three were happy, in perfect honour, I am convinced: but such was not the
opinion of the Cressetts and Levelliers. Down they trooped to Cressett
Castle with a rush and a roar, crying on the disgrace of an old desperado
like Kirby living there; Dukes, Marchionesses, Cabinet Ministers, leaders
of fashion, and fire-eating colonels of the King's body-guard, one of
whom Captain John Peter Kirby laid on his heels at ten paces on an April
morning, when the duel was fought, as early as the blessed heavens had
given them light to see to do it. Such days those were!

There was talk of shutting up the infatuated lady. If not incarcerated,
she was rigidly watched. The earl her husband fell altogether to drinking
and coaching, and other things. The ballad makes her say:

       'My family my gaolers be,
        My husband is a zany;
        Naught see I clear save my bold Buccaneer
        To rescue Countess Fanny!'

and it goes on:

       'O little lass, at play on the grass,

        Come earn a silver penny,
        And you'll be dear to my bold Buccaneer
        For news of his Countess Fanny.'

In spite of her bravery, that poor woman suffered!

We used to learn by heart the ballads and songs upon famous events in
those old days when poetry was worshipped.

But Captain Kirby gave provocation enough to both families when he went
among the taverns and clubs, and vowed before Providence over his big
fist that they should rue their interference, and he would carry off the
lady on a day he named; he named the hour as well, they say, and that was
midnight of the month of June. The Levelliers and Cressetts foamed at the
mouth in speaking of him, so enraged they were on account of his age and
his passion for a young woman. As to blood, the Kirbys of Lincolnshire
were quite equal to the Cressetts of Warwick. The Old Buccaneer seems to
have had money too. But you can see what her people had to complain of:
his insolent contempt of them was unexampled. And their tyranny had
roused my lady's high spirit not a bit less; and she said right out:
'When he comes, I am ready and will go with him.'

There was boldness for you on both sides! All the town was laughing and
betting on the event of the night in June: and the odds were in favour of
Kirby; for though, Lord Cressett was quite the popular young English
nobleman, being a capital whip and free of his coin, in those days men
who had smelt powder were often prized above titles, and the feeling, out
of society, was very strong for Kirby, even previous to the fight on the
heath. And the age of the indomitable adventurer must have contributed to
his popularity. He was the hero of every song.

       "'What's age to me!" cries Kirby;
        "Why, young and fresh let her be,
        But it 's mighty better reasoned
        For a man to be well seasoned,
        And a man she has in me," cries Kirby.'

As to his exact age:

       "'Write me down sixty-three," cries Kirby.'

I have always maintained that it was an understatement. We must remember,
it was not Kirby speaking, but the song-writer. Kirby would not, in my
opinion, have numbered years he was proud of below their due quantity. He
was more, if he died at ninety-one; and Chillon Switzer John Kirby, born
eleven months after the elopement, was, we know, twenty-three years old
when the old man gave up the ghost and bequeathed him little besides a
law-suit with the Austrian Government, and the care of Carinthia Jane,
the second child of this extraordinary union; both children born in
wedlock, as you will hear. Sixty-three, or sixty-seven, near upon
seventy, when most men are reaping and stacking their sins with groans
and weak knees, Kirby was a match for his juniors, which they discovered.

Captain John Peter Avason Kirby, son of a Lincolnshire squire of an
ancient stock, was proud of his blood, and claimed descent from a chief
of the Danish rovers.

       '"What's rank to me!" cries Kirby;
        "A titled lass let her be,
          But unless my plans miscarry,
          I'll show her when we marry;
        As brave a pedigree," cries Kirby.'

That was the song-writer's answer to the charge that the countess had
stooped to a degrading alliance.

John Peter was fourth of a family of seven children, all males, and hard
at the bottle early in life: 'for want of proper occupation,' he says in
his Memoirs, and applauds his brother Stanson, the clergyman, for being
ahead of him in renouncing strong dunks, because he found that he 'cursed
better upon water.' Water, however, helped Stanson Kirby to outlive his
brothers and inherit the Lincolnshire property, and at the period of the
great scandal in London he was palsied, and waited on by his grandson and
heir Ralph Thorkill Kirby, the hero of an adventure celebrated in our Law
courts and on the English stage; for he took possession of his coachman's
wife, and was accused of compassing the death of the husband. He was not
hanged for it, so we are bound to think him not guilty.

The stage-piece is called 'Saturday Night', and it had an astonishing
run, but is only remembered now for the song of 'Saturday,' sung by the
poor coachman and labourers at the village ale-house before he starts to
capture his wife from the clutches of her seducer and meets his fate.
Never was there a more popular song: you heard it everywhere. I recollect
one verse:

       'O Saturday money is slippery metal,
        And Saturday ale it is tipsy stuff
        At home the old woman is boiling her kettle,
        She thinks we don't know when we've tippled enough.
        We drink, and of never a man are we jealous,
        And never a man against us will he speak
        For who can be hard on a set of poor fellows
        Who only see Saturday once a week!

You chorus the last two lines.

That was the very song the unfortunate coachman of Kirby Hall joined in
singing before he went out to face his end for the woman he loved. He
believed in her virtue to the very last.

'The ravished wife of my bosom,' he calls her all through the latter half
of the play. It is a real tragedy. The songs of that day have lost their
effect now, I suppose. They will ever remain pathetic to me; and to hear
the poor coachman William Martin invoking the name of his dear stolen
wife Elizabeth, jug in hand, so tearfully, while he joins the song of
Saturday, was a most moving thing. You saw nothing but handkerchiefs out
all over the theatre. What it is that has gone from our drama, I cannot
tell: I am never affected now as I was then; and people in a low station
of life could affect me then, without being flung at me, for I dislike an
entire dish of them, I own. We were simpler in our habits and ways of
thinking. Elizabeth Martin, according to report, was a woman to make
better men than Ralph Thorkill act evilly--as to good looks, I mean. She
was not entirely guiltless, I am afraid; though in the last scene, Mrs.
Kempson, who played the part (as, alas, she could do to the very life!),
so threw herself into the pathos of it that there were few to hold out
against her, and we felt that Elizabeth had been misled. So much for
morality in those days!

And now for the elopement.




CHAPTER II

MISTRESS GOSSIP TELLS OF THE ELOPEMENT OF THE COUNTESS OF CRESSETT WITH
THE OLD BUCCANEER, AND OF CHARLES DUMP THE POSTILLION CONDUCTING THEM,
AND OF A GREAT COUNTY FAMILY

The twenty-first of June was the day appointed by Captain Kirby to carry
off Countess Fanny, and the time midnight: and ten minutes to the stroke
of twelve, Countess Fanny, as if she scorned to conceal that she was in a
conspiracy with her grey-haired lover, notwithstanding that she was
watched and guarded, left the Marchioness of Arpington's ball-room and
was escorted downstairs by her brother Lord Levellier, sworn to baffle
Kirby. Present with him in the street and witness to the shutting of the
carriage-door on Countess Fanny, were brother officers of his, General
Abrane, Colonel Jack Potts, and Sir Upton Tomber.

The door fast shut, Countess Fanny kissed her hand to them and drew up
the window, seeming merry, and as they had expected indignation and
perhaps resistance, for she could be a spitfire in a temper and had no
fear whatever of firearms, they were glad to have her safe on such good
terms; and so General Abrane jumped up on the box beside the coachman,
Jack Potts jumped up between the footmen, and Sir Upton Tomber and the
one-armed lord, as soon as the carriage was disengaged from the ruck two
deep, walked on each side of it in the road all the way to Lord
Cressett's town house. No one thought of asking where that silly young
man was--probably under some table.

Their numbers were swelled by quite a host going along, for heavy bets
were on the affair, dozens having backed Kirby; and it must have appeared
serious to them, with the lady in custody, and constables on the
look-out, and Kirby and his men nowhere in sight. They expected an
onslaught at some point of the procession, and it may be believed they
wished it, if only that they might see something for their money. A
beautiful bright moonlight night it happened to be. Arm in arm among them
were Lord Pitscrew and Russett, Earl of Fleetwood, a great friend of
Kirby's; for it was a device of the Old Buccaneer's that helped the earl
to win the great Welsh heiress who made him, even before he took to
hoarding and buying,--one of the wealthiest noblemen in England; but she
was crazed by her marriage or the wild scenes leading to it; she never
presented herself in society. She would sit on the top of Estlemont
towers--as they formerly spelt it--all day and half the night in
midwinter, often, looking for the mountains down in her native West
country, covered with an old white flannel cloak, and on her head a tall
hat of her Welsh women-folk; and she died of it, leaving a son in her
likeness, of whom you will hear. Lord Fleetwood had lost none of his
faith in Kirby, and went on booking bets giving him huge odds, thousands!

He accepted fifty to one when the carriage came to a stop at the steps of
Lord Cressett's mansion; but he was anxious, and well he might be, seeing
Countess Fanny alight and pass up between two lines of gentlemen all
bowing low before her: not a sign of the Old Buccaneer anywhere to right
or left! Heads were on the look out, and vows offered up for his
appearance.

She was at the door and about to enter the house. Then it was; that with
a shout of the name of some dreadful heathen god, Colonel Jack Potts
roared out, 'She's half a foot short o' the mark!'

He was on the pavement, and it seems he measured her as she slipped by
him, and one thing and another caused him to smell a cheat; and General
Abrane, standing beside her near the door, cried: 'Where art flying now,
Jack?' But Jack Potts grew more positive and bellowed, 'Peel her wig!
we're done!'

And she did not speak a word, but stood huddled-up and hooded; and Lord
Levellier caught her up by the arm as she was trying a dash into the
hall, and Sir Upton Tomber plucked at her veil and raised it, and
whistled:

'Phew!'--which struck the rabble below with awe of the cunning of the Old
Buccaneer; and there was no need for them to hear General Abrane say:
'Right! Jack, we've a dead one in hand,' or Jack Potts reply:

'It's ten thousand pounds clean winged away from my pocket, like a string
of wild geese!'

The excitement of the varletry in the square, they say, was fearful to
hear. So the principal noblemen and gentlemen concerned thought it
prudent to hurry the young woman into the house and bar the door; and
there she was very soon stripped of veil and blonde false wig with long
curls, the whole framing of her artificial resemblance to Countess Fanny,
and she proved to be a good-looking foreign maid, a dark one, powdered,
trembling very much, but not so frightened upon hearing that her penalty
for the share she had taken in the horrid imposture practised upon them
was to receive and return a salute from each of the gentlemen in
rotation; which the hussy did with proper submission; and Jack Potts
remarked, that 'it was an honest buss, but dear at ten thousand!'

When you have been the victim of a deceit, the explanation of the
simplicity of the trick turns all the wonder upon yourself, you know, and
the backers of the Old Buccaneer and the wagerers against him crowed and
groaned in chorus at the maid's narrative of how the moment Countess
Fanny had thrown up the window of her carriage, she sprang out to a
carriage on the off side, containing Kirby, and how she, this little
French jade, sprang in to take her place. One snap of the fingers and the
transformation was accomplished. So for another kiss all round they let
her go free, and she sat at the supper-table prepared for Countess Fanny
and the party by order of Lord Levellier, and amused the gentlemen with
stories of the ladies she had served, English and foreign. And that is
how men are taught to think they know our sex and may despise it! I could
preach them a lesson. Those men might as well not believe in the
steadfastness of the very stars because one or two are reported lost out
of the firmament, and now and then we behold a whole shower of fragments
descending. The truth is, they have taken a stain from the life they
lead, and are troubled puddles, incapable of clear reflection. To listen
to the tattle of a chatting little slut, and condemn the whole sex upon
her testimony, is a nice idea of justice. Many of the gentlemen present
became notorious as woman-scorners, whether owing to Countess Fanny or
other things. Lord Levellier was, and Lord Fleetwood, the wicked man! And
certainly the hearing of naughty stories of us by the light of a grievous
and vexatious instance of our misconduct must produce an impression.
Countess Fanny's desperate passion for a man of the age of Kirby struck
them as out of nature. They talked of it as if they could have pardoned
her a younger lover.

All that Lord Cressett said, on the announcement of the flight of his
wife, was: 'Ah! Fan! she never would run in my ribbons.'

He positively declined to persue. Lord Levellier would not attempt to
follow her up without him, as it would have cost money, and he wanted all
that he could spare for his telescopes and experiments. Who, then, was
the gentleman who stopped the chariot, with his three mounted attendants,
on the road to the sea, on the heath by the great Punch-Bowl?

That has been the question for now longer than half a century, in fact
approaching seventy mortal years. No one has ever been able to say for
certain.

It occurred at six o'clock on the summer morning. Countess Fanny must
have known him,--and not once did she open her mouth to breathe his name.
Yet she had no objection to talk of the adventure and how Simon Fettle,
Captain Kirby's old ship's steward in South America, seeing horsemen
stationed on the ascent of the high road bordering the Bowl, which is
miles round and deep, made the postillion cease jogging, and sang out to
his master for orders, and Kirby sang back to him to look to his priming,
and then the postillion was bidden proceed, and he did not like it, but
he had to deal with pistols behind, where men feel weak, and he went
bobbing on the saddle in dejection, as if upon his very heart he jogged;
and soon the fray commenced. There was very little parleying between
determined men.

Simon Fettle was a plain kindly creature without a thought of malice, who
kept his master's accounts. He fired the first shot at the foremost man,
as he related in after days, 'to reduce the odds.' Kirby said to Countess
Fanny, just to comfort her, never so much as imagining she would be
afraid, 'The worst will be a bloody shirt for Simon to mangle,' for they
had been arranging to live cheaply in a cottage on the Continent, and
Simon Fettle to do the washing. She could not help laughing outright. But
when the Old Buccaneer was down striding in the battle, she took a pistol
and descended likewise; and she used it, too, and loaded again.

She had not to use it a second time. Kirby pulled the gentleman off his
horse, wounded in the thigh, and while dragging him to Countess Fanny to
crave her pardon, a shot intended for Kirby hit the poor gentleman in the
breast, and Kirby stretched him at his length, and Simon and he disarmed
the servant who had fired. One was insensible, one flying, and those two
on the ground. All in broad daylight; but so lonely is that spot, nothing
might have been heard of it, if at the end of the week the postillion who
had been bribed and threatened with terrible threats to keep his tongue
from wagging, had not begun to talk. So the scene of the encounter was
examined, and on one spot, carefully earthed over, blood-marks were
discovered in the green sand. People in the huts on the hill-top, a
quarter of a mile distant, spoke of having heard sounds of firing while
they were at breakfast, and a little boy named Tommy Wedger said he saw a
dead body go by in an open coach that morning; all bloody and mournful.
He had to appear before the magistrates, crying terribly, but did not
know the nature of an oath, and was dismissed. Time came when the boy
learned to swear, and he did, and that he had seen a beautiful lady
firing and killing men like pigeons and partridges; but that was after
Charles Dump, the postillion, had been telling the story.

Those who credited Charles Dump's veracity speculated on dozens of great
noblemen--and gentlemen known to be dying in love with Countess Fanny.
And this brings us to another family.

I do not say I know anything; I do but lay before you the evidence we
have to fix suspicion upon a notorious character, perfectly capable of
trying to thwart a man like Kirby, and with good reason to try, if she
had bewitched him to a consuming passion, as we are told.

About eleven miles distant, as the crow flies and a bold huntsman will
ride in that heath country, from the Punch-Bowl, right across the mounds
and the broad water, lies the estate of the Fakenhams, who intermarried
with the Coplestones of the iron mines, and were the wealthiest of the
old county families until Curtis Fakenham entered upon his inheritance.
Money with him was like the farm-wife's dish of grain she tosses in
showers to her fowls. He was more than what you call a lady-killer, he
was a woman-eater. His pride was in it as well as his taste, and when men
are like that, indeed they are devourers!

Curtis was the elder brother of Commodore Baldwin Fakenham, whose
offspring, like his own, were so strangely mixed up with Captain Kirby's
children by Countess Fanny, as you will hear. And these two brothers were
sons of Geoffrey Fakenham, celebrated for his devotion to the French
Countess Jules d'Andreuze, or some such name, a courtly gentleman, who
turned Papist on his death-bed in France, in Brittany somewhere, not to
be separated from her in the next world, as he solemnly left word;
wickedly, many think.

To show the oddness of things and how opposite to one another brothers
may be, his elder, the uncle of Curtis, and Baldwin, was the renowned old
Admiral Fakenham, better known along our sea-coasts and ports among
sailors as 'Old Showery,' because of a remark he once made to his
flag-captain, when cannon-balls were coming thick on them in a
hard-fought action. 'Hot work, sir,' his captain said. 'Showery,' replied
the admiral, as his cocked-hat was knocked off by the wind of a
cannon-ball. He lost both legs before the war was over, and said merrily,
'Stumps for life'' while they were carrying him below to the cockpit. In
my girlhood the boys were always bringing home anecdotes of old Admiral
Showery: not all of them true ones, perhaps, but they fitted him. He was
a rough seaman, fond, as they say, of his glass and his girl, and utterly
despising his brother Geoffrey for the airs he gave himself, and crawling
on his knees to a female Parleyvoo; and when Geoffrey died, the admiral
drank to his rest in the grave: 'There's to my brother Jeff,' he said,
and flinging away the dregs of his glass: 'There 's to the Frog!' and
flinging away the glass to shivers: 'There's to the Turncoat!'

He salted his language in a manner I cannot repeat; no epithet ever stood
by itself. When I was young the boys relished these dreadful words
because they seemed to smell of tar and battle-smoke, when every English
boy was for being a sailor and daring the Black Gentleman below. In all
truth, the bad words came from him; though an excellent scholar has
assured me they should be taken for aspirates, and mean no harm; and so
it may be, but heartily do I rejoice that aspirates, have been dropped by
people of birth; for you might once hear titled ladies guilty of them in
polite society, I do assure you.

We have greatly improved in that respect. They say the admiral's
reputation as a British sailor of the old school made him, rather his
name, a great favourite at Court; but to Court he could not be got to go,
and if the tale be true, their Majesties paid him a visit on board his
ship, in harbour one day, and sailors tell you that Old Showery gave his
liege lord and lady a common dish of boiled beef with carrots and
turnips, and a plain dumpling, for their dinner, with ale and port wine,
the merit of which he swore to; and he became so elate, that after the
cloth was removed, he danced them a hornpipe on his pair of wooden legs,
whistling his tune, and holding his full tumbler of hot grog in his hand
all the while, without so much as the spilling of a drop!--so earnest was
he in everything he did. They say his limit was two bottles of port wine
at a sitting, with his glass of hot grog to follow, and not a soul could
induce him to go beyond that. In addition to being a great seaman, he was
a very religious man and a stout churchman.

Well, now, the Curtis Fakenham of Captain Kirby's day had a good deal of
his uncle as well as his father in him, the spirit of one and the
outside, of the other; and, favoured or not, he had been distinguished
among Countess Fanny's adorers: she certainly chose to be silent about
the name of the assailant. And it has been attested on oath that two days
and a night subsequent to the date furnished by Charles Dump, Curtis
Fakenham was brought to his house, Hollis Grange, lame of a leg, with a
shot in his breast, that he carried to the family vault; and his head
gamekeeper, John Wiltshire, a resolute fellow, was missing from that
hour. Some said they had a quarrel, and Curtis was wounded and John
Wiltshire killed. Curtis was known to have been extremely attached to the
man. Yet when Wiltshire was inquired for, he let fall a word of 'having
more of Wiltshire than was agreeable to Hampshire'--his county. People
asked what that meant. Yet, according to the tale, it was the surviving
servant, by whom he, or whoever it may have been, was accidentally shot.

We are in a perfect tangle. On the other hand, it was never denied that
Curtis and John Wiltshire were in London together at the time of Countess
Fanny's flight: and Curtis Fakenham was one of the procession of armed
gentleman conducting her in her carriage, as they supposed; and he was
known to have started off, on the discovery of the cheat, with horrible
imprecations against Frenchwomen. It became known, too; that horses of
his were standing saddled in his innyard at midnight. And more, Charles
Dump the postillion was taken secretly to set eyes on him as they wheeled
him in his garden-walk, and he vowed it was the identical gentleman. But
this coming by and by to the ear of Curtis, he had Charles Dump fetched
over to confront him; and then the man made oath that he had never seen
Mr. Curtis Fakenham anywhere but there, in his own house at Hollis! One
does not really know what, to think of it.

This postillion made a small fortune. He was everywhere in request.
People were never tired of asking him how he behaved while the fight was
going on, and he always answered that he sat as close to his horse as he
could, and did not dream of dismounting; for, he said, 'he was a figure
on a horse, and naught when off it.' His repetition of the story, with
some adornments, and that same remark, made him the popular man of the
county; people said he might enter Parliament, and I think at one time it
was possible. But a great success is full of temptations. After being
hired at inns to fill them with his account of the battle, and tipped by
travellers from London to show the spot, he set up for himself as
innkeeper, and would have flourished, only he had contracted habits on
his rounds, and he fell to contradicting himself, so that he came to be
called Lying Charley; and the people of the country said it was 'he who
drained the Punch-Bowl, for though he helped to put the capital into it,
he took all the interest out of it.'

Yet we have the doctor of the village of Ipley, Dr. Cawthorne, a noted
botanist, assuring us of the absolute credibility of Charles Dump, whom
he attended in the poor creature's last illness, when Charles Dump
confessed he had lived in mortal terror of Squire Curtis, and had got the
trick of lying, through fear of telling the truth. Hence his ruin.

So he died delirious and contrite. Cawthorne, the great Turf man,
inherited a portrait of him from his father the doctor. It was often the
occasion of the story being told over again, and used to hang in the
patients' reception room, next to an oil-painting of the Punch-Bowl, an
admired landscape picture by a local artist, highly-toned and true to
every particular of the scene, with the bright yellow road winding
uphill, and the banks of brilliant purple heath, and a white thorn in
bloom quite beautiful, and the green fir trees, and the big Bowl black as
a cauldron,--indeed a perfect feast of harmonious contrasts in colours.

And now you know how it is that the names of Captain Kirby and Curtis
Fakenham are alive to the present moment in the district.

We lived a happy domestic life in those old coaching days, when county
affairs and county people were the topics of firesides, and the country
enclosed us to make us feel snug in our own importance. My opinion is,
that men and women grow to their dimensions only where such is the case.
We had our alarms from the outside now and again, but we soon relapsed to
dwell upon our private business and our pleasant little hopes and
excitements; the courtships and the crosses and the scandals, the
tea-parties and the dances, and how the morning looked after the stormy
night had passed, and the coach coming down the hill with a box of news
and perhaps a curious passenger to drop at the inn. I do believe we had a
liking for the very highwaymen, if they had any reputation for civility.
What I call human events, things concerning you and me, instead of the
deafening catastrophes now afflicting and taking all conversation out of
us, had their natural interest then. We studied the face of each morning
as it came, and speculated upon the secret of the thing it might have in
store for us or our heroes and heroines; we thought of them more than of
ourselves. Long after the adventures of the Punch-Bowl, our county was
anxious about Countess Fanny and the Old Buccaneer, wondering where they
were and whether they were prospering, whether they were just as much in
love as ever, and which of them would bury the other, and what the
foreign people abroad thought of that strange pair.




CHAPTER III

CONTINUATION OF THE INTRODUCTORY MEANDERINGS OF DAME GOSSIP, TOGETHER
WITH HER SUDDEN EXTINCTION

I have still time before me, according to the terms of my agreement with
the person to whom I have, I fear foolishly, entrusted the letters and
documents of a story surpassing ancient as well as modern in the
wonderment it causes, that would make the Law courts bless their hearts,
judges no less than the barristers, to have it running through them day
by day, with every particular to wrangle over, and many to serve as a
text for the pulpit. So to proceed.

It should be mentioned that the postillion Charles Dump is not
represented, and I have no conception of the reason why not, sitting on
horseback, in the portrait in the possession of the Cawthorne family. I
have not seen it, I am bound to admit. We had offended Dr. Cawthorne, by
once in an urgent case calling in another doctor, who, he would have it,
was a quack, that ought to have killed us, and we ceased to visit; but a
gentleman who was an established patient of Dr. Cawthorne's and had
frequent opportunities of judging the portrait, in the course of a
chronic malady, describes Charles Dump on his legs as a small man looking
diminished from a very much longer one by shrinkage in thickish wrinkles
from the shoulders to the shanks. His hat is enormous and very gay. He is
rather of sad countenance. An elevation of his collar behind the ears,
and pointed at the neck, gives you notions of his having dropped from
some hook. He stands with his forefinger extended, like a disused
semaphore-post, that seems tumbling and desponding on the hill by the
highroad, in his attitude while telling the tale; if standing it may be
called, where the whole figure appears imploring for a seat. That was his
natural position, as one would suppose any artist must have thought, and
a horse beneath him. But it has been suggested that the artist in
question was no painter of animals. Then why did he not get a painter of
animals to put in the horse? It is vain to ask, though it is notorious
that artists combine without bickering to do these things; and one puts
his name on the animal, the other on the human being or landscape.

My informant adds, that the prominent feature, telling a melancholy tale
of its own, is of sanguine colour, and while plainly in the act of
speaking, Charles Dump might be fancied about to drop off to sleep. He
was impressed by the dreaminess of the face; and I must say I regard him
as an interesting character. During my girlhood Napoleon Bonaparte alone
would have been his rival for filling an inn along our roads. I have
known our boys go to bed obediently and get up at night to run three
miles to THE WHEATSHEAF, only to stand on the bench or traveller's-rest
outside the window and look in at Charles Dump reciting, with just room
enough in the crowd to point his finger, as his way was.

He left a child, Mary Dump, who grew up to become lady's maid to Livia
Fakenham, daughter of Curtis, the beauty of Hampshire, equalled by no one
save her cousin Henrietta Fakenham, the daughter of Commodore Baldwin;
and they were two different kinds of beauties, not to be compared, and
different were their fortunes; for this lady was likened to the sun going
down on a cloudy noon, and that lady to the moon riding through a stormy
night. Livia was the young widow of Lord Duffield when she accepted the
Earl of Fleetwood, and was his third countess, and again a widow at
eight-and-twenty, and stepmother to young Croesus, the Earl of Fleetwood
of my story. Mary Dump testifies to her kindness of heart to her
dependents. If we are to speak of goodness, I am afraid there are other
witnesses.

I resent being warned that my time is short and that I have wasted much
of it over 'the attractive Charles.' What I have done I have done with a
purpose, and it must be a storyteller devoid of the rudiments of his art
who can complain of my dwelling on Charles Dump, for the world to have a
pause and pin its faith to him, which it would not do to a grander
person--that is, as a peg. Wonderful events, however true they are, must
be attached to something common and familiar, to make them credible.
Charles Dump, I say, is like a front-page picture to a history of those
old quiet yet exciting days in England, and when once you have seized him
the whole period is alive to you, as it was to me in the delicious
dulness I loved, that made us thirsty to hear of adventures and able to
enjoy to the utmost every thing occurring. The man is no more attractive
to me than a lump of clay. How could he be? But supposing I took up the
lump and told you that there where I found it, that lump of clay had been
rolled over and flung off by the left wheel of the prophet's Chariot of
Fire before it mounted aloft and disappeared in the heavens above!--you
would examine it and cherish it and have the scene present with you, you
may be sure; and magnificent descriptions would not be one-half so
persuasive. And that is what we call, in my profession, Art, if you
please.

So to continue: the Earl of Cressett fell from his coach-box in a fit,
and died of it, a fortnight after the flight of his wife; and the people
said she might as well have waited. Kirby and Countess Fanny were at
Lucerne or Lausanne, or some such place, in Switzerland when the news
reached them, and Kirby, without losing an hour, laid hold of an English
clergyman of the Established Church and put him through the ceremony of
celebrating his lawful union with the beautiful young creature he adored.
And this he did, he said, for the world to guard his Fan in a wider
circle than his two arms could compass, if not quite so well.

So the Old Buccaneer was ever after that her lawful husband, and as his
wedded wife, not wedded to a fool, she was an example to her sex, like
many another woman who has begun badly with a light-headed mate. It is
hard enough for a man to be married to a fool, but a man is only
half-cancelled by that burden, it has been said; whereas a woman finds
herself on board a rudderless vessel, and often the desperate thing she
does is to avoid perishing! Ten months, or eleven, some say, following
the proclamation of the marriage-tie, a son was born to Countess Fanny,
close by the castle of Chillon-on-the-lake, and he had the name of
Chillon Switzer John Kirby given to him to celebrate the fact.

Two years later the girl was born, and for the reason of her first seeing
the light in that Austrian province, she was christened Carinthia Jane.
She was her old father's pet; but Countess Fanny gloried in the boy. She
had fancied she would be a childless woman before he gave sign of coming;
and they say she wrote a little volume of Meditations in Prospect of
Approaching Motherhood, for the guidance of others in a similar
situation.

I have never been able to procure the book or pamphlet, but I know she
was the best of mothers, and of wives too. And she, with her old husband,
growing like a rose out of a weather-beaten rock, proved she was that,
among those handsome foreign officers poorly remarkable for their morals.
Not once had the Old Buccaneer to teach them a lesson. Think of it and
you will know that her feet did not stray--nor did her pretty eyes. Her
heart was too full for the cravings of vanity. Innocent ladies who get
their husbands into scrapes are innocent, perhaps; but knock you next
door in their bosoms, where the soul resides, and ask for information of
how innocence and uncleanness may go together. Kirby purchased a mine in
Carinthia, on the borders of Styria, and worked it himself. His native
land displeased him, so that he would not have been unwilling to see
Chillon enter the Austrian service, which the young man was inclined for,
subsequent to his return to his parents from one of the English public
schools, notwithstanding his passionate love for Old England. But Lord
Levellier explained the mystery in a letter to his half-forgiven sister,
praising the boy for his defence of his mother's name at the school,
where a big brutal fellow sneered at her, and Chillon challenged him to
sword or pistol; and then he walked down to the boy's home in
Staffordshire to force him to fight; and the father of the boy made him
offer an apology. That was not much balm to Master Chillon's wound. He
returned to his mother quite heavy, unlike a young man; and the unhappy
lady, though she knew, him to be bitterly sensitive on the point of
honour, and especially as to everything relating to her, saw herself
compelled to tell him the history of her life, to save him, as she
thought, from these chivalrous vindications of her good name. She may
have even painted herself worse than she was, both to excuse her
brother's miserliness to her son and the world's evil speaking of her.
Wisely or not, she chose this course devotedly to protect him from the
perils she foresaw in connection with the name of the once famous
Countess Fanny in the British Isles. And thus are we stricken by the days
of our youth. It is impossible to moralize conveniently when one is being
hurried by a person at one's elbow.

So the young man heard his mother out and kissed her, and then he went
secretly to Vienna and enlisted and served for a year as a private in the
regiment of Hussars, called, my papers tell me, Liechtenstein, and what
with his good conduct and the help of Kirby's friends, he would have
obtained a commission from the emperor, when, at the right moment to keep
a sprig of Kirby's growth for his country, Lord Levellier sent word that
he was down for a cornetcy in a British regiment of dragoons. Chillon
came home from a garrison town, and there was a consultation about his
future career. Shall it be England? Shall it be Austria? Countess Fanny's
voice was for England, and she carried the vote, knowing though she did
that it signified separation, and it might be alienation--where her son
would chance to hear things he could not refute. She believed that her
son by such a man as Kirby would be of use to his country, and her voice,
against herself, was for England.

It broke her heart. If she failed to receive the regular letter, she
pined and was disconsolate. He has heard more of me! was in her mind. Her
husband sat looking at her with his old large grey glassy eyes. You would
have fancied him awaiting her death as the signal for his own release.
But she, poor mother, behind her weeping lids beheld her son's filial
love of her wounded and bleeding. When there was anything to be done for
her, old Kirby was astir. When it was nothing, either in physic or
assistance, he was like a great corner of rock. You may indeed imagine
grief in the very rock that sees its flower fading to the withered shred.
On the last night of her life this old man of past ninety carried her in
his arms up a flight of stairs to her bed.

A week after her burial, Kirby was found a corpse in the mountain forest.
His having called the death of his darling his lightning-stroke must have
been the origin of the report that he died of lightning. He touched not a
morsel of food from the hour of the dropping of the sod on her coffin of
ebony wood. An old crust of their mahogany bread, supposed at first to be
a specimen of quartz, was found in one of his coat pockets. He kissed his
girl Carinthia before going out on his last journey from home, and spoke
some wandering words. The mine had not been worked for a year. She
thought she would find him at the mouth of the shaft, where he would
sometimes be sitting and staring, already dead at heart with the death he
saw coming to the beloved woman. They had to let her down with ropes,
that she might satisfy herself he was not below. She and her great dog
and a faithful man-servant discovered the body in the forest. Chillon
arrived from England to see the common grave of both his parents.

And now good-bye to sorrow for a while. Keep your tears for the living.
And first I am going to describe to you the young Earl of Fleetwood, son
of the strange Welsh lady, the richest nobleman of his time, and how he
persued and shunned the lady who had fascinated him, Henrietta, the
daughter of Commodore Baldwin Fakenham; and how he met Carinthia Jane;
and concerning that lovely Henrietta and Chillon Kirby-Levellier; and of
the young poet of ordinary parentage, and the giant Captain Abrane, and
Livia the widowed Countess of Fleetwood, Henrietta's cousin, daughter of
Curtis Fakenham; and numbers of others; Lord Levellier, Lord Brailstone,
Lord Simon Pitscrew, Chumley Potts, young Ambrose Mallard; and the
English pugilist, such a man of honour though he drank; and the
adventures of Madge, Carinthia Jane's maid. Just a few touches. And then
the marriage dividing Great Britain into halves, taking sides. After
that, I trust you may go on, as I would carry you were we all twenty
years younger, had I but sooner been in possession of these treasured
papers. I promise you excitement enough, if justice is done to them. But
I must and will describe the wedding. This young Earl of Fleetwood, you
should know, was a very powder-magazine of ambition, and never would he
break his word: which is right, if we are properly careful; and so he--

She ceases. According to the terms of the treaty, the venerable lady's
time has passed. An extinguisher descends on her, giving her the likeness
of one under condemnation of 'the Most Holy Inqusition, in the ranks of
an 'auto da fe'; and singularly resembling that victim at the first sharp
bite of the flames she will, be when she hears the version of her story.




CHAPTER IV

MORNING AND FAREWELL TO AN OLD HOME

Brother and sister were about to leave the mountainland for England. They
had not gone to bed overnight, and from the windows of their deserted
home, a little before dawn, they saw the dwindled moon, a late riser,
break through droves of hunted cloud, directly topping their ancient
guardian height, the triple peak and giant of the range, friendlier in
his name than in aspect for the two young people clinging to the scene
they were to quit. His name recalled old-days: the apparition of his head
among the heavens drummed on their sense of banishment.

To the girl, this was a division of her life, and the dawn held the
sword. She felt herself midswing across a gulf that was the grave of one
half, without a light of promise for the other. Her passionate excess of
attachment to her buried home robbed the future of any colours it might
have worn to bid a young heart quicken. And England, though she was of
British blood, was a foreign place to her, not alluring: her brother had
twice come out of England reserved in speech; her mother's talk of
England had been unhappy; her father had suffered ill-treatment there
from a brutal institution termed the Admiralty, and had never regretted
the not seeing England again. The thought that she was bound thitherward
enfolded her like a frosty mist. But these bare walls, these loud floors,
chill rooms, dull windows, and the vault-sounding of the ghostly house,
everywhere the absence of the faces in the house told her she had no
choice, she must go. The appearance of her old friend the towering
mountain-height, up a blue night-sky, compelled her swift mind to see
herself far away, yearning to him out of exile, an exile that had no
local features; she would not imagine them to give a centre of warmth,
her wilful grief preferred the blank. It resembled death in seeming some
hollowness behind a shroud, which we shudder at.

The room was lighted by a stable-lantern on a kitchen-table. Their seat
near the window was a rickety garden-bench rejected in the headlong sale
of the furniture; and when she rose, unable to continue motionless while
the hosts of illuminated cloud flew fast, she had to warn her brother to
preserve his balance. He tacitly did so, aware of the necessity.

She walked up and down the long seven-windowed saloon, haunted by her
footfall, trying to think, chafing at his quietness and acknowledging
that he did well to be quiet. They had finished their packing of boxes
and of wearing-apparel for the journey. There was nothing to think of,
nothing further to talk of, nothing for her to do save to sit and look,
and deaden her throbs by counting them. She soon returned to her seat
beside her brother, with the marvel in her breast that the house she
desired so much to love should be cold and repel her now it was a vacant
shell. Her memories could not hang within it anywhere. She shut her eyes
to be with the images of the dead, conceiving the method as her brother's
happy secret, and imitated his posture, elbows propped on knees to
support the chin. His quietness breathed of a deeper love than her own.

Meanwhile the high wind had sunk; the moon, after pushing her withered
half to the zenith, was climbing the dusky edge, revealed fitfully;
threads and wisps of thin vapour travelled along a falling gale, and
branched from the dome of the sky in migratory broken lines, like wild
birds shifting the order of flight, north and east, where the dawn sat in
a web, but as yet had done no more than shoot up a glow along the central
heavens, in amid the waves of deepened aloud: a mirror for night to see
her dark self in her own hue. A shiver between the silent couple pricked
their wits, and she said:

'Chillon, shall we run out and call the morning?'

It was an old game of theirs, encouraged by their hearty father, to be
out in the early hour on a rise of ground near the house and 'call the
morning.' Her brother was glad of the challenge, and upon one of the
yawns following a sleepless night, replied with a return to boyishness:
'Yes, if you like. It's the last time we shall do her the service here.
Let's go.'

They sprang up together and the bench fell behind them. Swinging the
lantern he carried inconsiderately, the ring of it was left on his
finger, and the end of candle rolled out of the crazy frame to the floor
and was extinguished. Chillon had no match-box. He said to her:

'What do you think of the window?--we've done it before, Carin. Better
than groping down stairs and passages blocked with lumber.'

'I'm ready,' she said, and caught at her skirts by instinct to prove her
readiness on the spot.

A drop of a dozen feet or so from the French window to a flower--bed was
not very difficult. Her father had taught her how to jump, besides the
how of many other practical things. She leaped as lightly as her brother,
never touching earth with her hands; and rising from the proper
contraction of the legs in taking the descent, she quoted her father:
'Mean it when you're doing it.'

'For no enemy's shot is equal to a weak heart in the act,'

Chillon pursued the quotation, laying his hand on her shoulder for a sign
of approval. She looked up at him.

They passed down the garden and a sloping meadow to a brook swollen by
heavy rains; over the brook on a narrow plank, and up a steep and stony
pathway, almost a watercourse, between rocks, to another meadow, level
with the house, that led ascending through a firwood; and there the
change to thicker darkness told them light was abroad, though whether of
the clouded moon or of the first grey of the quiet revolution was
uncertain. Metallic light of a subterranean realm, it might have been
thought.

'You remember everything of father,' Carinthia said. 'We both do,' said
Chillon.

She pressed her brother's arm. 'We will. We will never forget anything.'

Beyond the firwood light was visibly the dawn's. Half-way down the
ravines it resembled the light cast off a torrent water. It lay on the
grass like a sheet of unreflecting steel, and was a face without a smile
above. Their childhood ran along the tracks to the forest by the light,
which was neither dim nor cold, but grave; presenting tree and shrub and
dwarf growth and grass austerely, not deepening or confusing them. They
wound their way by borders of crag, seeing in a dell below the mouth of
the idle mine begirt with weedy and shrub-hung rock, a dripping
semi-circle. Farther up they came on the flat juniper and crossed a wet
ground-thicket of whortleberry: their feet were in the moist moss among
sprigs of heath; and a great fir-tree stretched his length, a peeled
multitude of his dead fellows leaned and stood upright in the midst of
scattered fire-stained members, and through their skeleton limbs the
sheer precipice of slate-rock of the bulk across the chasm, nursery of
hawk and eagle; wore a thin blue tinge, the sign of warmer light abroad.

'This way, my brother!' cried Carinthia, shuddering at a path he was
about to follow.

Dawn in the mountain-land is a meeting of many friends. The pinnacle, the
forest-head, the latschen-tufted mound, rock-bastion and defiant cliff
and giant of the triple peak, were in view, clearly lined for a common
recognition, but all were figures of solid gloom, unfeatured and
bloomless. Another minute and they had flung off their mail, and changed
to various, indented, intricate, succinct in ridge, scar and channel; and
they had all a look of watchfulness that made them one company. The smell
of rock-waters and roots of herb and moss grew keen; air became a wine
that raised the breast high to breathe it; an uplifting coolness pervaded
the heights. What wonder that the mountain-bred girl should let fly her
voice. The natural carol woke an echo. She did not repeat it.

'And we will not forget our home, Chillon,' she said, touching him gently
to comfort some saddened feeling.

The plumes of cloud now slowly entered into the lofty arch of dawn and
melted from brown to purpleblack. The upper sky swam with violet; and in
a moment each stray cloud-feather was edged with rose, and then suffused.
It seemed that the heights fronted East to eye the interflooding of
colours, and it was imaginable that all turned to the giant whose
forehead first kindled to the sun: a greeting of god and king.

On the morning of a farewell we fluctuate sharply between the very
distant and the close and homely: and even in memory the fluctuation
occurs, the grander scene casting us back on the modestly nestling, and
that, when it has refreshed us, conjuring imagination to embrace the
splendour and wonder. But the wrench of an immediate division from what
we love makes the things within us reach the dearest, we put out our
hands for them, as violently-parted lovers do, though the soul in days to
come would know a craving, and imagination flap a leaden wing, if we had
not looked beyond them.

'Shall we go down?' said Carinthia, for she knew a little cascade near
the house, showering on rock and fern, and longed to have it round her.

They descended, Chillon saying that they would soon have the mists
rising, and must not delay to start on their journey.

The armies of the young sunrise in mountain-lands neighbouring the
plains, vast shadows, were marching over woods and meads, black against
the edge of golden; and great heights were cut with them, and bounding
waters took the leap in a silvery radiance to gloom; the bright and
dark-banded valleys were like night and morning taking hands down the
sweep of their rivers. Immense was the range of vision scudding the peaks
and over the illimitable Eastward plains flat to the very East and
sources of the sun.

Carinthia said: 'When I marry I shall come here to live and die.'

Her brother glanced at her. He was fond of her, and personally he liked
her face; but such a confident anticipation of marriage on the part of a
portionless girl set him thinking of the character of her charms and the
attraction they would present to the world of men. They were expressive
enough; at times he had thought them marvellous in their clear cut of the
animating mind.--No one could fancy her handsome; and just now her hair
was in some disorder, a night without sleep had an effect on her
complexion.

'It's not usually the wife who decides where to live,' said he.

Her ideas were anywhere but with the dream of a husband. 'Could we stay
on another day?--'

'My dear girl! Another night on that crazy stool! 'Besides, Mariandl is
bound to go to-day to her new place, and who's to cook for us? Do you
propose fasting as well as watching?'

'Could I cook?' she asked him humbly.

'No, you couldn't; not for a starving regiment! Your accomplishments are
of a different sort. No, it's better to get over the pain at once, if we
can't escape it.

'That I think too,' said she, 'and we should have to buy provisions.
Then, brother, instantly after breakfast. Only, let us walk it. I know
the whole way, and it is not more than a two days' walk for you and me.
Consent. Driving would be like going gladly. I could never bear to
remember that I was driven away.

And walking will save money; we are not rich, you tell me, brother.'

'A few florins more or less!' he rejoined, rather frowning. 'You have
good Styrian boots, I see. But I want to be over at the Baths there soon;
not later than to-morrow.'

'But, brother, if they know we are coming they will wait for us. And we
can be there to-morrow night or the next morning!'

He considered it. He wanted exercise and loved this mountain-land; his
inclinations melted into hers; though he had reasons for hesitating.
'Well, we'll send on my portmanteau and your boxes in the cart; we'll
walk it. You're a capital walker, you're a gallant comrade; I wouldn't
wish for a better.' He wondered, as he spoke, whether any true-hearted
gentleman besides himself would ever think the same of this lonely girl.

Her eyes looked a delighted 'No-really?' for the sweetest on earth to her
was to be prized by her brother.

She hastened forward. 'We will go down and have our last meal at home,'
she said in the dialect of the country. 'We have five eggs. No meat for
you, dear, but enough bread and butter, some honey left, and plenty of
coffee. I should like to have left old Mariandl more, but we are unable
to do very much for poor people now. Milk, I cannot say. She is just the
kind soul to be up and out to fetch us milk for an early first breakfast;
but she may have overslept herself.'

Chillon smiled. 'You were right, Janet', about not going to bed last
night; we might have missed the morning.'

'I hate sleep: I hate anything that robs me of my will,' she replied.

'You'd be glad of your doses of sleep if you had to work and study.'

'To fall down by the wayside tired out--yes, brother, a dead sleep is
good. Then you are in the hands of God. Father used to say, four hours
for a man, six for a woman.'

'And four and twenty for a lord,' added Chillon. 'I remember.'

'A lord of that Admiralty,' she appealed to his closer recollection. 'But
I mean, brother, dreaming is what I detest so.'

'Don't be detesting, my dear; reserve your strength,' said he. 'I suppose
dreams are of some use, now and then.'

'I shall never think them useful.'

'When we can't get what we want, my good Carin.'

'Then we should not waste ourselves in dreams.'

'They promise falsely sometimes. That's no reason why we should reject
the consolation when we can't get what we want, my little sister.'

'I would not be denied.'

'There's the impossible.'

'Not for you, brother.'

Perhaps a half-minute after she had spoken, he said, 'pursuing a dialogue
within himself aloud rather than revealing a secret: 'You don't know her
position.'

Carinthia's heart stopped beating. Who was this person suddenly conjured
up?

She fancied she might not have heard correctly; she feared to ask and yet
she perceived a novel softness in him that would have answered. Pain of
an unknown kind made her love of her brother conscious that if she asked
she would suffer greater pain.

The house was in sight, a long white building with blinds down at some of
the windows, and some wide open, some showing unclean glass: the three
aspects and signs of a house's emptiness when they are seen together.

Carinthia remarked on their having met nobody. It had a serious meaning
for them. Formerly they were proud of outstripping the busy population of
the mine, coming down on them with wild wavings and shouts of sunrise.
They felt the death again, a whole field laid low by one stroke, and
wintriness in the season of glad life. A wind had blown and all had
vanished.

The second green of the year shot lively sparkles off the meadows, from a
fringe of coloured glovelets to a warm silver lake of dews. The firwood
was already breathing rich and sweet in the sun. The half-moon fell
rayless and paler than the fan of fleeces pushed up Westward, high
overhead, themselves dispersing on the blue in downy feathers, like the
mottled grey of an eagle's breast: the smaller of them bluish like traces
of the beaked wood-pigeon.

She looked above, then below on the slim and straightgrown flocks of
naked purple crocuses in bud and blow abounding over the meadow that
rolled to the level of the house, and two of these she gathered.




CHAPTER V

A MOUNTAIN WALK IN MIST AND SUNSHINE

Chillon was right in his forecast of the mists. An over-moistened earth
steaming to the sun obscured it before the two had finished breakfast,
which was a finish to everything eatable in the ravaged dwelling, with
the exception of a sly store for the midday meal, that old Mariandl had
stuffed into Chillon's leather sack--the fruit of secret begging on their
behalf about the neighbourhood. He found the sack heavy and bulky as he
slung it over his shoulders; but she bade him make nothing of such a
trifle till he had it inside him. 'And you that love tea so, my pretty
one, so that you always laughed and sang after drinking a cup with your
mother,' she said to Carinthia, 'you will find one pinch of it in your
bag at the end of the left-foot slipper, to remember your home by when
you are out in the world.'

She crossed the strap of the bag on her mistress's bosom, and was
embraced by Carinthia and Chillon in turns, Carinthia telling her to dry
her eyes, for that she would certainly come back and perhaps occupy the
house one day or other. The old soul moaned of eyes that would not be
awake to behold her; she begged a visit at her grave, though it was to be
in a Catholic burial-place and the priests had used her dear master and
mistress ill, not allowing them to lie in consecrated ground; affection
made her a champion of religious tolerance and a little afraid of
retribution. Carinthia soothed her, kissed her, gave the promise, and the
parting was over.

She and Chillon had on the previous day accomplished a pilgrimage to the
resting-place of their father and mother among humble Protestants,
iron-smelters, in a valley out of the way of their present line of march
to the glacier of the great snow-mountain marking the junction of three
Alpine provinces of Austria. Josef, the cart-driver with the boxes, who
was to pass the valley, vowed of his own accord to hang a fresh day's
wreath on the rails. He would not hear of money for the purchase, and
they humoured him. The family had been beloved. There was an offer of a
home for Carinthia in the castle of Count Lebern, a friend of her
parents, much taken with her, and she would have accepted it had not
Chillon overruled her choice, determined that, as she was English, she
must come to England and live under the guardianship of her uncle, Lord
Levellier, of whose character he did not speak.

The girl's cheeks were drawn thin and her lips shut as they departed; she
was tearless. A phantom ring of mist accompanied her from her first
footing outside the house. She did not look back. The house came swimming
and plunging after her, like a spectral ship on big seas, and her father
and mother lived and died in her breast; and now they were strong,
consulting, chatting, laughing, caressing; now still and white, caught by
a vapour that dived away with them either to right or left, but always
with the same suddenness, leaving her to question herself whether she
existed, for more of life seemed to be with their mystery than with her
speculations. The phantom ring of mist enclosing for miles the invariable
low-sweeping dark spruce-fir kept her thoughts on them as close as the
shroud. She walked fast, but scarcely felt that she was moving. Near
midday the haunted circle widened; rocks were loosely folded in it, and
heads of trees, whose round intervolving roots grasped the yellow
roadside soil; the mists shook like a curtain, and partly opened and
displayed a tapestry-landscape, roughly worked, of woollen crag and
castle and suggested glen, threaded waters, very prominent foreground,
Autumn flowers on banks; a predominant atmospheric greyness. The sun
threw a shaft, liquid instead of burning, as we see his beams beneath a
wave; and then the mists narrowed again, boiled up the valleys and
streams above the mountain, curled and flew, and were Python coils
pierced by brighter arrows of the sun. A spot of blue signalled his
victory above.

To look at it was to fancy they had been walking under water and had now
risen to the surface. Carinthia's mind stepped out of the chamber of
death. The different air and scene breathed into her a timid warmth
toward the future, and between her naming of the lesser mountains on
their side of the pass, she asked questions relating to England, and
especially the ladies she was to see at the Baths beyond the
glacier-pass. She had heard of a party of his friends awaiting him there,
without much encouragement from him to ask particulars of them, and she
had hitherto abstained, as she was rather shy of meeting her
countrywomen. The ladies, Chillon said, were cousins; one was a young
widow, the Countess of Fleetwood, and the other was Miss Fakenham, a
younger lady.

Carinthia murmured in German: 'Poor soul!' Which one was she pitying? The
widow, she said, in the tone implying, naturally.

Her brother assured her the widow was used to it, for this was her second
widowhood.

'She marries again!' exclaimed the girl.

'You don't like that idea?' said he.

Carinthia betrayed a delicate shudder.

Her brother laughed to himself at her expressive present tense. 'And
marries again!' he said. 'There will certainly be a third.'

'Husband?' said she, as at the incredible.

'Husband, let's hope,' he answered.

She dropped from her contemplation of the lady, and her look at her
brother signified: It will not be you!

Chillon was engaged in spying for a place where he could spread out the
contents of his bag. Sharp hunger beset them both at the mention of
eating. A bank of sloping green shaded by a chestnut proposed the seat,
and here he relieved the bag of a bottle of wine, slices of, meat, bread,
hard eggs, and lettuce, a chipped cup to fling away after drinking the
wine, and a supply of small butler-cakes known to be favourites with
Carinthia. She reversed the order of the feast by commencing upon one of
the cakes, to do honour to Mariandl's thoughtfulness. As at their
breakfast, they shared the last morsel.

'But we would have made it enough for our dear old dog Pluto as well, if
he had lived,' said Carinthia, sighing with her thankfulness and
compassionate regrets, a mixture often inspiring a tender babbling
melancholy. 'Dogs' eyes have such a sick look of love. He might have
lived longer, though he was very old, only he could not survive the loss
of father. I know the finding of the body broke his heart. He sprang
forward, he stopped and threw up his head. It was human language to hear
him, Chillon. He lay in the yard, trying to lift his eyes when I came to
him, they were so heavy; and he had not strength to move his poor old
tail more than once. He died with his head on my lap. He seemed to beg
me, and I took him, and he breathed twice, and that was his end. Pluto!
old dog! Well, for you or for me, brother, we could not have a better
wish. As for me, death! . . . When we know we are to die! Only let my
darling live! that is my prayer, and that we two may not be separated
till I am taken to their grave. Father bought ground for four--his wife
and himself and his two children. It does not oblige us to be buried
there, but could we have any other desire?'

She stretched her hand to her brother. He kissed it spiritedly.

'Look ahead, my dear girl. Help me to finish this wine. There 's nothing
like good hard walking to give common wine of the country a flavour--and
out of broken crockery.'

'I think it so good,' Carinthia replied, after drinking from the cup. 'In
England they, do not grow wine. Are the people there kind?'

'They're civilized people, of course.'

'Kind--warm to you, Chillon?'

'Some of them, when you know them. "Warm," is hardly the word. Winter's
warm on skates. You must do a great deal for yourself. They don't boil
over. By the way, don't expect much of your uncle.'

'Will he not love me?'

'He gives you a lodging in his house, and food enough, we'll hope. You
won't see company or much of him.'

'I cannot exist without being loved. I do not care for company. He must
love me a little.'

'He is one of the warm-hearted race--he's mother's brother; but where his
heart is, I 've not discovered.

Bear with him just for the present, my dear, till I am able to support
you.'

'I will,' she said.

The dreary vision of a home with an unloving uncle was not brightened by
the alternative of her brother's having to support her. She spoke of
money. 'Have we none, Chillon?'

'We have no debts,' he answered. 'We have a claim on the Government here
for indemnification for property taken to build a fortress upon one of
the passes into Italy. Father bought the land, thinking there would be a
yield of ore thereabout; and they have seized it, rightly enough, but
they dispute our claim for the valuation we put on it. A small sum they
would consent to pay. It would be a very small sum, and I 'm father's
son, I will have justice.'

'Yes!' Carthinia joined with him to show the same stout nature.

'We have nothing else except a bit to toss up for luck.'

'And how can I help being a burden on my brother?' she inquired, in
distress.

'Marry, and be a blessing to a husband,' he said lightly.

They performed a sacrifice of the empty bottle and cracked cup on the
site of their meal, as if it had been a ceremony demanded from
travellers, and leaving them in fragments, proceeded on their journey
refreshed.

Walking was now high enjoyment, notwithstanding the force of the sun, for
they were a hardy couple, requiring no more than sufficient nourishment
to combat the elements with an exulting blood. Besides they loved
mountain air and scenery, and each step to the ridge of the pass they
climbed was an advance in splendour. Peaks of ashen hue and pale dry red
and pale sulphur pushed up, straight, forked, twisted, naked, striking
their minds with an indeterminate ghostliness of Indian, so strange they
were in shape and colouring. These sharp points were the first to greet
them between the blue and green. A depression of the pass to the left
gave sight of the points of black fir forest below, round the girths of
the barren shafts. Mountain blocks appeared pushing up in front, and a
mountain wall and woods on it, and mountains in the distance, and cliffs
riven with falls of water that were silver skeins, down lower to meadows,
villages and spires, and lower finally to the whole valley of the foaming
river, field and river seeming in imagination rolled out from the hand of
the heading mountain.

'But see this in winter, as I did with father, Chillon!' said Carinthia.

She said it upon love's instinct to halo the scene with something beyond
present vision, and to sanctify it for her brother, so that this walk of
theirs together should never be forgotten.

A smooth fold of cloud, moveless along one of the upper pastures, and
still dense enough to be luminous in sunlight, was the last of the mist.

They watched it lying in the form of a fish, leviathan diminished, as
they descended their path; and the head was lost, the tail spread
peacockwise, and evaporated slowly in that likeness; and soft to a breath
of air as gossamer down, the body became a ball, a cock, a little lizard,
nothingness.

The bluest bright day of the year was shining. Chillon led the descent.
With his trim and handsome figure before her, Carinthia remembered the
current saying, that he should have been the girl and she the boy. That
was because he resembled their mother in face. But the build of his limbs
and shoulders was not feminine.

To her admiring eyes, he had a look superior to simple strength and
grace; the look of a great sky-bird about to mount, a fountain-like
energy of stature, delightful to her contemplation. And he had the mouth
women put faith in for decision and fixedness. She did, most fully; and
reflecting how entirely she did so, the thought assailed her: some one
must be loving him!

She allowed it to surprise her, not choosing to revert to an uneasy
sensation of the morning.

That some one, her process of reasoning informed her, was necessarily an
English young lady. She reserved her questions till they should cease
this hopping and heeling down the zigzag of the slippery path-track. When
children they had been collectors of beetles and butterflies, and the
flying by of a 'royal-mantle,' the purple butterfly grandly fringed,
could still remind Carinthia of the event it was of old to spy and chase
one. Chillon himself was not above the sentiment of their "very early
days"; he stopped to ask if she had been that lustrous blue-wing, a rarer
species, prized by youngsters, shoot through the chestnut trees: and they
both paused for a moment, gazing into the fairyland of infancy, she
seeing with her brother's eyes, this prince of the realm having escaped
her. He owned he might have been mistaken, as the brilliant fellow flew
swift and high between leaves, like an ordinary fritillary. Not the less
did they get their glimpse of the wonders in the sunny eternity of a
child's afternoon.

'An Auerhahn, Chillon!' she said, picturing the maturer day when she had
scaled perilous heights with him at night to stalk the blackcock in the
prime of the morning. She wished they could have had another such
adventure to stamp the old home on his heart freshly, to the exclusion of
beautiful English faces.

On the level of the valley, where they met the torrent-river, walking
side by side with him, she ventured an inquiry: 'English girls are fair
girls, are they not?'

'There are some dark also,' he replied.

'But the best-looking are fair?'

'Perhaps they are, with us.'

'Mother was fair.'

'She was.'

'I have only seen a few of them, once at Vies and at Venice, and those
Baths we are going to; and at Meran, I think.'

'You considered them charming?'

'Not all.'

It was touching that she should be such a stranger to her countrywomen!
He drew a portrait-case from his breast-pocket, pressing the spring, and
handed it to her, saying: 'There is one.' He spoke indifferently, but as
soon as she had seen the face inside it, with a look at him and a deep
breath; she understood that he was an altered brother, and that they were
three instead of two.

She handed it back to him, saying hushedly and only 'Yes.'

He did not ask an opinion upon the beauty she had seen. His pace
increased, and she hastened her steps beside him. She had not much to
learn when some minutes later she said; 'Shall I see her, Chillon?'

'She is one of the ladies we are to meet.'

'What a pity!' Carinthia stepped faster, enlightened as to his wish to
get to the Baths without delay; and her heart softened in reflecting how
readily he had yielded to her silly preference for going on foot.

Her cry of regret was equivocal; it produced no impression on him. They
reached a village where her leader deemed it adviseable to drive for the
remainder of the distance up the valley to the barrier snow-mountain. She
assented instantly, she had no longer any active wishes of her own, save
to make amends to her brother, who was and would ever be her brother: she
could not be robbed of their relationship.

Something undefined in her feeling of possession she had been robbed of,
she knew it by her spiritlessness; and she would fain have attributed it
to the idle motion of the car, now and them stupidly jolting her on,
after the valiant exercise of her limbs. They were in a land of
waterfalls and busy mills, a narrowing vale where the runs of grass grew
short and wild, and the glacier-river roared for the leap, more foam than
water, and the savagery, naturally exciting to her, breathed of its lair
among the rocks and ice-fields.

Her brother said: 'There he is.' She saw the whitecrowned king of the
region, of whose near presence to her old home she had been accustomed to
think proudly, end she looked at him without springing to him, and
continued imaging her English home and her loveless uncle, merely
admiring the scene, as if the fire of her soul had been
extinguished.--'Marry, and be a blessing to a husband.' Chillon's words
whispered of the means of escape from the den of her uncle.

But who would marry me! she thought. An unreproved sensation of melting
pervaded her; she knew her capacity for gratitude, and conjuring it up in
her 'heart, there came with it the noble knightly gentleman who would
really stoop to take a plain girl by the hand, release her, and say: 'Be
mine!' His vizor was down, of course. She had no power of imagining the
lineaments of that prodigy. Or was he a dream? He came and went. Her
mother, not unkindly, sadly, had counted her poor girl's chances of
winning attention and a husband. Her father had doated on her face; but,
as she argued, her father had been attracted by her mother, a beautiful
woman, and this was a circumstance that reflected the greater
hopelessness on her prospects. She bore a likeness to her father, little
to her mother, though he fancied the reverse and gave her the mother's
lips and hair. Thinking of herself, however, was destructive to the form
of her mirror of knightliness: he wavered, he fled for good, as the rosy
vapour born of our sensibility must do when we relapse to coldness, and
the more completely when we try to command it. No, she thought, a plain
girl should think of work, to earn her independence.

'Women are not permitted to follow armies, Chillon?' she said.

He laughed out. 'What 's in your head?'

The laugh abashed her; she murmured of women being good nurses for
wounded soldiers, if they were good walkers to march with the army; and,
as evidently it sounded witless to him, she added, to seem reasonable:
'You have not told me the Christian names of those ladies.'

He made queer eyes over the puzzle to connect the foregoing and the
succeeding in her remarks, but answered straightforwardly: 'Livia is one,
and Henrietta!

Her ear seized on the stress of his voice. 'Henrietta!' She chose that
name for the name of the person disturbing her; it fused best, she
thought, with the new element she had been compelled to take into her
system, to absorb it if she could.

'You're not scheming to have them serve as army hospital nurses, my
dear?'

'No, Chillon.'

'You can't explain it, I suppose?'

'A sister could go too, when you go to war, Chillon.'

A sister could go, if it were permitted by the authorities, and be near
her brother to nurse him in case of wounds; others would be unable to
claim the privilege. That was her meaning, involved with the hazy project
of earning an independence; but she could not explain it, and Chillon set
her down for one of the inexplicable sex, which the simple adventurous
girl had not previously seemed to be.

She was inwardly warned of having talked foolishly, and she held her
tongue. Her humble and modest jealousy, scarce deserving the title,
passed with a sigh or two. It was her first taste of life in the world.

A fit of heavy-mindedness ensued, that heightened the contrast her recent
mood had bequeathed, between herself, ignorant as she was, and those
ladies. Their names, Livia and Henrietta, soared above her and sang the
music of the splendid spheres. Henrietta was closer to earth, for her
features had been revealed; she was therefore the dearer, and the richer
for him who loved her, being one of us, though an over-earthly one; and
Carinthia gave her to Chillon, reserving for herself a handmaiden's place
within the circle of their happiness.

This done, she sat straight in the car. It was toiling up the steep
ascent of a glen to the mountain village, the last of her native
province. Her proposal to walk was accepted, and the speeding of her
blood, now that she had mastered a new element in it, soon restored her
to her sisterly affinity with natural glories. The sunset was on yonder
side of the snows. Here there was a feast of variously-tinted sunset
shadows on snow, meadows, rock, river, serrated cliff. The peaked cap of
the rushing rock-dotted sweeps of upward snow caught a scarlet
illumination: one flank of the white in heaven was violetted wonderfully.

At nightfall, under a clear black sky, alive with wakeful fires round
head and breast of the great Alp, Chillon and Carinthia strolled out of
the village, and he told her some of his hopes. They referred to
inventions of destructive weapons, which were primarily to place his
country out of all danger from a world in arms; and also, it might be
mentioned, to bring him fortune. 'For I must have money!' he said,
sighing it out like a deliberate oath. He and his uncle were associated
in the inventions. They had an improved rocket that would force military
chiefs to change their tactics: they had a new powder, a rifle, a model
musket--the latter based on his own plans; and a scheme for fortress
artillery likely to turn the preponderance in favour of the defensive
once again. 'And that will be really doing good,' said Chillon, 'for
where it's with the offensive, there's everlasting bullying and
plundering.'

Carinthia warmly agreed with him, but begged him be sure his uncle
divided the profits equally. She discerned what his need of money
signified.

Tenderness urged her to say: 'Henrietta! Chillon.'

'Well?' he answered quickly.

'Will she wait?'

'Can she, you should ask.'

'Is she brave?'

'Who can tell, till she has been tried?'

'Is she quite free?'

'She has not yet been captured.'

'Brother, is there no one else . . . ?'

'There's a nobleman anxious to bestow his titles on her.'

'He is rich?'

'The first or second wealthiest in Great Britain, they say.'

'Is he young?'

'About the same age as mine.'

'Is he a handsome young man?'

'Handsomer than your brother, my girl.'

'No, no, no!' said she. 'And what if he is, and your Henrietta does not
choose him? Now let me think what I long to think. I have her close to
me.'

She rocked a roseate image on her heart and went to bed with it by
starlight.

By starlight they sprang to their feet and departed the next morning, in
the steps of a guide carrying, Chillon said, 'a better lantern than we
left behind us at the smithy.'

'Father!' exclaimed Carinthia on her swift inward breath, for this one of
the names he had used to give to her old home revived him to her thoughts
and senses fervently.




CHAPTER VI

THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHER

Three parts down a swift decline of shattered slate, where travelling
stones loosened from rows of scree hurl away at a bound after one roll
over, there sat a youth dusty and torn, nursing a bruised leg, not in the
easiest of postures, on a sharp tooth of rock, that might at any moment
have broken from the slanting slab at the end of which it formed a stump,
and added him a second time to the general crumble of the mountain. He
had done a portion of the descent in excellent imitation of the detached
fragments, and had parted company with his alpenstock and plaid;
preserving his hat and his knapsack. He was alone, disabled, and
cheerful; in doubt of the arrival of succour before he could trust his
left leg to do him further service unaided; but it was morning still, the
sun was hot, the air was cool; just the tempering opposition to render
existence pleasant as a piece of vegetation, especially when there has
been a question of your ceasing to exist; and the view was of a
sustaining sublimity of desolateness: crag and snow overhead; a gloomy
vale below; no life either of bird or herd; a voiceless region where
there had once been roars at the bowling of a hill from a mountain to the
deep, and the third flank of the mountain spoke of it in the silence.

He would have enjoyed the scene unremittingly, like the philosopher he
pretended to be, in a disdain of civilization and the ambitions of men,
had not a contest with earth been forced on him from time to time to keep
the heel of his right foot, dug in shallow shale, fixed and supporting.
As long as it held he was happy and maintained the attitude of a
guitar-player, thrumming the calf of the useless leg to accompany tuneful
thoughts, but the inevitable lapse and slide of the foot recurred, and
the philosopher was exhibited as an infant learning to crawl. The seat,
moreover, not having been fashioned for him or for any soft purpose,
resisted his pressure and became a thing of violence, that required to be
humiliatingly coaxed. His last resource to propitiate it was counselled
by nature turned mathematician: tenacious extension solved the problem;
he lay back at his length, and with his hat over his eyes consented to
see nothing for the sake of comfort. Thus he was perfectly rational,
though when others beheld him he appeared the insanest of mortals.

A girl's voice gave out the mountain carol ringingly above. His heart and
all his fancies were in motion at the sound. He leaned on an elbow to
listen; the slide threatened him, and he resumed his full stretch,
determined to take her for a dream. He was of the class of youths who, in
apprehension that their bright season may not be permanent, choose to
fortify it by a systematic contempt of material realities unless they
come in the fairest of shapes, and as he was quite sincere in this
feeling and election of the right way to live, disappointment and
sullenness overcame him on hearing men's shouts and steps; despite his
helpless condition he refused to stir, for they had jarred on his dream.
Perhaps his temper, unknown to himself, had been a little injured by his
mishap, and he would not have been sorry to charge them with want of
common humanity in passing him; or he did not think his plight so bad,
else he would have bawled after them had they gone by: far the youths of
his description are fools only upon system,--however earnestly they
indulge the present self-punishing sentiment. The party did not pass;
they stopped short, they consulted, and a feminine tongue more urgent
than the others, and very musical, sweet to hear anywhere, put him in
tune. She said, 'Brother! brother!' in German. Our philosopher flung off
his hat.

'You see!' said the lady's brother.

'Ask him, Anton,'she said to their guide.

'And quick!' her brother added.

The guide scrambled along to him, and at a closer glance shouted: 'The
Englishman!' wheeling his finger to indicate what had happened to the
Tomnoddy islander.

His master called to know if there were broken bones, as if he could stop
for nothing else.

The cripple was raised. The gentleman and lady made their way to him, and
he tried his hardest to keep from tottering on the slope in her presence.
No injury had been done to the leg; there was only a stiffness, and an
idiotic doubling of the knee, as though at each step his leg pronounced a
dogged negative to the act of walking. He said something equivalent to
'this donkey leg,' to divert her charitable eyes from a countenance
dancing with ugly twitches. She was the Samaritan. A sufferer discerns
his friend, though it be not the one who physically assists him: he is
inclined by nature to put material aid at a lower mark than gentleness,
and her brief words of encouragement, the tone of their delivery yet
more, were medical to his blood, better help than her brother's iron arm,
he really believed. Her brother and the guide held him on each side, and
she led to pick out the safer footing for him; she looked round and
pointed to some projection that would form a step; she drew attention to
views here and there, to win excuses for his resting; she did not omit to
soften her brother's visible impatience as well, and this was the art
which affected her keenly sensible debtor most.

'I suppose I ought to have taken a guide,' he said.

'There's not a doubt of that,' said Chillon Kirby.

Carinthia halted, leaning on her staff: 'But I had the same wish. They
told us at the inn of an Englishman who left last night to sleep on the
mountain, and would go alone; and did I not say, brother, that must be
true love of the mountains?'

'These freaks get us a bad name on the Continent,' her brother replied.
He had no sympathy with nonsense, and naturally not with a youth who
smelt of being a dreamy romancer and had caused the name of Englishman to
be shouted in his ear in derision. And the fellow might delay his arrival
at the Baths and sight of the lady of his love for hours!

They managed to get him hobbling and slipping to the first green tuft of
the base, where long black tongues of slate-rubble pouring into the
grass, like shore-waves that have spent their burden, seem about to draw
back to bring the mountain down. Thence to the level pasture was but a
few skips performed sliding.

'Well, now,' said Chillon, 'you can stand?'

'Pretty well, I think.' He tried his foot on the ground, and then
stretched his length, saying that it only wanted rest. Anton pressed a
hand at his ankle and made him wince, but the bones were sound, leg and
hip not worse than badly bruised. He was advised by Anton to plant his
foot in the first running water he came to, and he was considerate enough
to say to Chillon:

'Now you can leave me; and let me thank you. Half an hour will set me
right. My name is Woodseer, if ever we meet again.'

Chillon nodded a hurried good-bye, without a thought of giving his name
in return. But Carinthia had thrown herself on the grass. Her brother
asked her in dismay if she was tired. She murmured to him: 'I should like
to hear more English.'

'My dear girl, you'll have enough of it in two or three weeks.'

'Should we leave a good deed half done, Chillon?'

'He shall have our guide.'

'He may not be rich.'

'I'll pay Anton to stick to him.'

'Brother, he has an objection to guides.'

Chillon cast hungry eyes on his watch: 'Five minutes, then.' He addressed
Mr. Woodseer, who was reposing, indifferent to time, hard-by: 'Your
objection to guides might have taught you a sharp lesson. It 's like
declining to have a master in studying a science--trusting to instinct
for your knowledge of a bargain. One might as well refuse an oar to row
in a boat.'

'I 'd rather risk it,' the young man replied. 'These guides kick the soul
out of scenery. I came for that and not for them.'

'You might easily have been a disagreeable part of the scene.'

'Why not here as well as elsewhere?'

'You don't care for your life?'

'I try not to care for it a fraction more than Destiny does.'

'Fatalism. I suppose you care for something?'

'Besides I've a slack purse, and shun guides and inns when I can. I care
for open air, colour, flowers, weeds, birds, insects, mountains. There's
a world behind the mask. I call this life; and the town's a boiling pot,
intolerably stuffy. My one ambition is to be out of it. I thank heaven I
have not another on earth. Yes, I care for my note-book, because it's of
no use to a human being except me. I slept beside a spring last night,
and I never shall like a bedroom so well. I think I have discovered the
great secret: I may be wrong, of course.' And if so, he had his
philosophy, the admission was meant to say.

Carinthia expected the revelation of a notable secret, but none came; or
if it did it eluded her grasp:--he was praising contemplation, he was
praising tobacco. He talked of the charm of poverty upon a settled income
of a very small sum of money, the fruit of a compact he would execute
with the town to agree to his perpetual exclusion from it, and to retain
his identity, and not be the composite which every townsman was. He
talked of Buddha. He said: 'Here the brook's the brook, the mountain's
the mountain: they are as they always were.'

'You'd have men be the same,' Chillon remarked as to a nursling prattler,
and he rejoined: 'They've lost more than they've gained; though, he
admitted, 'there has been some gain, in a certain way.'

Fortunately for them, young men have not the habit of reflecting upon the
indigestion of ideas they receive from members of their community,
sometimes upon exchange. They compare a view of life with their own view,
to condemn it summarily; and he was a curious object to Chillon as the
perfect opposite of himself.

'I would advise you,' Chillon said, 'to get a pair of Styrian boots, if
you intend to stay in the Alps. Those boots of yours are London make.'

'They 're my father's make,' said Mr. Woodseer.

Chillon drew out his watch. 'Come, Carinthia, we must be off.' He
proposed his guide, and, as Anton was rejected, he pointed the route over
the head of the valley, stated the distance to an inn that way, saluted
and strode.

Mr. Woodseer, partly rising, presumed, in raising his hat and thanking
Carinthia, to touch her fingers. She smiled on him, frankly extending her
open hand, and pointing the route again, counselling him to rest at the
inn, even saying: 'You have not yet your strength to come on with us?'

He thought he would stay some time longer: he had a disposition to smoke.

She tripped away to her brother and was watched through the whiffs of a
pipe far up the valley, guiltless of any consciousness of producing an
impression. But her mind was with the stranger sufficiently to cause her
to say to Chillon, at the close of a dispute between him and Anton on the
interesting subject of the growth of the horns of chamois: 'Have we been
quite kind to that gentleman?'

Chillon looked over his shoulder. 'He's there still; he's fond of
solitude. And, Carin, my dear, don't give your hand when you are meeting
or parting with people it's not done.'

His uninstructed sister said: 'Did you not like him?'

She was answered with an 'Oh,' the tone of which balanced lightly on the
neutral line. 'Some of the ideas he has are Lord Fleetwood's, I hear, and
one can understand them in a man of enormous wealth, who doesn't know
what to do with himself and is dead-sick of flattery; though it seems odd
for an English nobleman to be raving about Nature. Perhaps it's because
none else of them does.'

'Lord Fleetwood loves our mountains, Chillon?'

'But a fellow who probably has to make his way in the world!--and he
despises ambition!' . . . Chillon dropped him. He was antipathetic to
eccentrics, and his soldierly and social training opposed the profession
of heterodox ideas: to have listened seriously to them coming from the
mouth of an unambitious bootmaker's son involved him in the absurdity. He
considered that there was no harm in the lad, rather a commendable sort
of courage and some notion of manners; allowing for his ignorance of the
convenable in putting out his hand to take a young lady's, with the plea
of thanking her. He hoped she would be more on her guard.

Carinthia was sure she had the name of the nobleman wishing to bestow his
title upon the beautiful Henrietta. Lord Fleetwood! That slender thread
given her of the character of her brother's rival who loved the mountains
was woven in her mind with her passing experience of the youth they had
left behind them, until the two became one, a highly transfigured one,
and the mountain scenery made him very threatening to her brother. A
silky haired youth, brown-eyed, unconquerable in adversity, immensely
rich, fond of solitude, curled, decorated, bejewelled by all the elves
and gnomes of inmost solitude, must have marvellous attractions, she
feared. She thought of him so much, that her humble spirit conceived the
stricken soul of the woman as of necessity the pursuer; as shamelessly,
though timidly, as she herself pursued in imagination the enchanted
secret of the mountain-land. She hoped her brother would not supplicate,
for it struck her that the lover who besieged the lady would forfeit her
roaming and hunting fancy.

'I wonder what that gentleman is doing now,' she said to Chillon.

He grimaced slightly, for her sake; he would have liked to inform her,
for the sake of educating her in the customs of the world she was going
to enter, that the word 'gentleman' conveys in English a special
signification.

Her expression of wonder whether they were to meet him again gave Chillon
the opportunity of saying:

'It 's the unlikeliest thing possible--at all events in England.'

'But I think we shall,' said she.

'My dear, you meet people of your own class; you don't meet others.'

'But we may meet anybody, Chillon!'

'In the street. I suppose you would not stop to speak to him in the
street.'

'It would be strange to see him in the street!' Carinthia said.

'Strange or not!'

. . . . Chillon thought he had said sufficient. She was under his
protectorship, otherwise he would not have alluded to the observance of
class distinctions. He felt them personally in this case because of their
seeming to stretch grotesquely by the pretentious heterodoxy of the young
fellow, whom, nevertheless, thinking him over now that he was mentioned,
he approved for his manliness in bluntly telling his origin and status.

A chalet supplied them with fresh milk, and the inn of a village on a
perch with the midday meal. Their appetites were princely and swept over
the little inn like a conflagration. Only after clearing it did they
remember the rearward pedestrian, whose probable wants Chillon was urged
by Carthinia to speak of to their host. They pushed on, clambering up,
scurrying down, tramping gaily, till by degrees the chambers of
Carinthia's imagination closed their doors and would no longer
intercommunicate. Her head refused to interest her, and left all activity
to her legs and her eyes, and the latter became unobservant, except of
foot-tracks, animal-like. She felt that she was a fine machine, and
nothing else: and she was rapidly approaching those ladies!

'You will tell them how I walked with you,' she said.

'Your friends over yonder?' said he.

'So that they may not think me so ignorant, brother.' She stumbled on the
helpless word in a hasty effort to cloak her vanity.

He laughed. Her desire to meet the critical English ladies with a
towering reputation in one department of human enterprise was
comprehensible, considering the natural apprehensiveness of the half-wild
girl before such a meeting. As it often happens with the silly phrases of
simple people, the wrong word, foolish although it was, went to the heart
of the hearer and threw a more charitable light than ridicule on her. So
that they may know I can do something they cannot do, was the
interpretation. It showed her deep knowledge of her poorness in laying
bare the fact.

Anxious to cheer her, he said: 'Come, come, you can dance. You dance
well, mother has told me, and she was a judge. You ride, you swim, you
have a voice for country songs, at all events. And you're a bit of a
botanist too. You're good at English and German; you had a French
governess for a couple of years. By the way, you understand the use of a
walking-stick in self-defence: you could handle a sword on occasion.'

'Father trained me,' said Carthinia. 'I can fire a pistol, aiming.'

'With a good aim, too. Father told me you could. How fond he was of his
girl! Well, bear in mind that father was proud of you, and hold up your
head wherever you are.'

'I will,' she said.

He assured her he had a mind to have a bugle blown at the entrance of the
Baths for a challenge to the bathers to match her in warlike
accomplishments.

She bit her lips: she could not bear much rallying on the subject just
then:

'Which is the hard one to please?' she asked.

'The one you will find the kinder of the two.'

'Henrietta?'

He nodded.

'Has she a father?'

'A gallant old admiral: Admiral Baldwin Fakenham.'

'I am glad of that!' Carinthia sighed out heartily. 'And he is with her?
And likes you, Chillon?'

'On the whole, I think he does.'

'A brave officer!' Such a father would be sure to like him.

So the domestic prospect was hopeful.

At sunset they stood on the hills overlooking the basin of the Baths, all
enfolded in swathes of pink and crimson up to the shining grey of a high
heaven that had the fresh brightness of the morning.

'We are not tired in the slightest,' said Carinthia, trifling with the
vision of a cushioned rest below. 'I could go on through the night quite
comfortably.'

'Wait till you wake up in your little bed to-morrow,' Chillon replied
stoutly, to drive a chill from his lover's heart, that had seized it at
the bare suggestion of their going on.




CHAPTER VII

THE LADY'S LETTER

Is not the lover a prophet? He that fervently desires may well be one;
his hurried nature is alive with warmth to break the possible blow: and
if his fears were not needed they were shadows; and if fulfilled, was he
not convinced of his misfortune by a dark anticipation that rarely erred?
Descending the hills, he remembered several omens: the sun had sunk when
he looked down on the villas and clustered houses, not an edge of the orb
had been seen; the admiral's quarters in the broad-faced hotel had worn
an appearance resembling the empty house of yesterday; the encounter with
the fellow on the rocks had a bad whisper of impish tripping. And what
moved Carinthia to speak of going on?

A letter was handed to Chillon in the hall of the admiral's hotel, where
his baggage had already been delivered. The manager was deploring the
circumstance that his rooms were full to the roof, when Chillon said:

'Well, we must wash and eat'; and Carinthia, from watching her brother's
forehead during his perusal of the letter, declared her readiness for
anything. He gave her the letter to read by herself while preparing to
sit at table, unwilling to ask her for a further tax on her energies--but
it was she who had spoken of going on! He thought of it as of a debt she
had contracted and might be supposed to think payable to their
misfortune.

She read off the first two sentences.

'We can have a carriage here, Chillon; order a carriage; I shall get as
much sleep in a carriage as in a bed: I shall enjoy driving at night,'
she said immediately, and strongly urged it and forced him to yield, the
manager observing that a carriage could be had.

In the privacy of her room, admiring the clear flowing hand, she read the
words, delicious in their strangeness to her, notwithstanding the heavy
news, as though they were sung out of a night-sky:

       'Most picturesque of Castles!

        May none these marks efface,
        For they appeal from Tyranny . . .'

'We start at noon to-day. Sailing orders have been issued, and I could
only have resisted them in my own person by casting myself overboard. I
go like the boat behind the vessel. You were expected yesterday, at
latest this morning. I have seen boxes in the hall, with a name on them
not foreign to me. Why does the master tarry? Sir, of your valliance you
should have held to your good vow,--quoth the damozel, for now you see me
sore perplexed and that you did not your devoir is my affliction. Where
lingers chivalry, she should have proceeded, if not with my knight? I
feast on your regrets. I would not have you less than miserable: and I
fear the reason is, that I am not so very, very sure you will be so at
all or very hugely, as I would command it of you for just time enough to
see that change over your eyebrows I know so well.

'If you had seen a certain Henrietta yesterday you would have the picture
of how you ought to look. The admiral was heard welcoming a new
arrival--you can hear him. She ran down the stairs quicker than any
cascade of this district, she would have made a bet with Livia that it
could be no one else--her hand was out, before she was aware of the
difference it was locked in Lord F.'s!

'Let the guilty absent suffer for causing such a betrayal of
disappointment. I must be avenged! But if indeed you are unhappy and
would like to chide the innocent, I am full of compassion for the poor
gentleman inheriting my legitimate feelings of wrath, and beg merely that
he will not pour them out on me with pen and paper, but from his lips and
eyes.

'Time pressing, I chatter no more. The destination is Livia's beloved
Baden. We rest a night in the city of Mozart, a night at Munich, a night
at Stuttgart. Baden will detain my cousin full a week. She has Captain
Abrane and Sir Meeson Corby in attendance--her long shadow and her short:
both devoted to Lord F., to win her smile, and how he drives them! The
captain has been paraded on the promenade, to the stupefaction of the
foreigner. Princes, counts, generals, diplomats passed under him in awe.
I am told that he is called St. Christopher.

'Why do we go thus hastily?--my friend, this letter has to be concealed.
I know some one who sees in the dark.

'Think no harm of Livia. She is bent upon my worldly advantage, and that
is plain even to the person rejecting it. How much more so must it be to
papa, though he likes you, and when you are near him would perhaps, in a
fit of unworldliness, be almost as reckless as the creature he calls
madcap and would rather call countess. No! sooner with a
Will-o'-the-wisp, my friend. Who could ever know where the man was when
he himself never knows where he is. He is the wind that bloweth as it
listeth--because it is without an aim or always with a new one. And am I
the one to direct him? I need direction. My lord and sovereign must fix
my mind. I am volatile, earthly, not to be trusted if I do not worship.
He himself said to me that--he reads our characters. "Nothing but a
proved hero will satisfy Henrietta," his words! And the hero must be
shining like a beacon-fire kept in a blaze. Quite true; I own it. Is
Chillon Kirby satisfied? He ought to be.

'But oh!--to be yoked is an insufferable thought, unless we name all the
conditions. But to be yoked to a creature of impulses! Really I could
only describe his erratic nature by commending you to the study of a
dragon-fly. It would map you an idea of what he has been in the
twenty-four hours since we had him here. They tell me a vain sort of
person is the cause. Can she be the cause of his resolving to have a
residence here, to buy up half the valley--erecting a royal palace--and
marking out the site--raving about it in the wildest language, poetical
if it had been a little reasonable--and then, after a night, suddenly,
unaccountably, hating the place, and being under the necessity of flying
from it in hot haste, tearing us all away, as if we were attached to a
kite that will neither mount nor fall, but rushes about headlong. Has he
heard, or suspected? or seen certain boxes bearing a name? Livia has no
suspicion, though she thinks me wonderfully contented in so dull a place,
where it has rained nine days in a fortnight. I ask myself whether my
manner of greeting him betrayed my expectation of another. He has brains.
It is the greatest of errors to suppose him at all like the common run of
rich young noblemen. He seems to thirst for brilliant wits and original
sayings. His ambition is to lead all England in everything! I readily
acknowledge that he has generous ideas too; but try to hold him, deny him
his liberty, and it would be seen how desperate and relentless he would
be to get loose. Of this I am convinced: he would be either the most
abject of lovers, or a woman (if it turned out not to be love) would find
him the most unscrupulous of yoke-fellows. Yoke-fellow! She would not
have her reason in consenting. A lamb and a furious bull! Papa and I have
had a serious talk. He shuts his ears to my comparisons, but admits, that
as I am the principal person concerned, etc. Rich and a nobleman is too
tempting for an anxious father; and Livia's influence is paramount. She
has not said a syllable in depreciation of you. That is to her credit.
She also admits that I must yield freely if at all, and she grants me the
use of similes; but her tactics are to contest them one by one, and the
admirable pretender is not as shifty as the mariner's breeze, he is not
like the wandering spark in burnt paper, of which you cannot say whether
it is chasing or chased: it is I who am the shifty Pole to the steadiest
of magnets. She is a princess in other things besides her superiority to
Physics. There will be wild scenes at Baden.

'My Diary of to-day is all bestowed on you. What have I to write in it
except the pair of commas under the last line of yesterday--"He has not
come!" Oh! to be caring for a he.

'O that I were with your sister now, on one side of her idol, to correct
her extravagant idolatry! I long for her. I had a number of nice little
phrases to pet her with.

'You have said (I have it written) that men who are liked by men are the
best friends for women. In which case, the earl should be worthy of our
friendship; he is liked. Captain Abrane and Sir Meeson, in spite of the
hard service he imposes on them with such comical haughtiness, incline to
speak well of him, and Methuen Rivers--here for two days on his way to
his embassy at Vienna--assured us he is the rarest of gentlemen on the
point of honour of his word. They have stories of him, to confirm Livia's
eulogies, showing him punctilious to chivalry: No man alive is like him
in that, they say. He grieves me. All that you have to fear is my pity
for one so sensitive. So speed, sir! It is not good for us to be much
alone, and I am alone when you are absent.

'I hear military music!

'How grand that music makes the dullest world appear in a minute. There
is a magic in it to bring you to me from the most dreadful of
distances.--Chillon! it would kill me!--Writing here and you perhaps
behind the hill, I can hardly bear it;--I am torn away, my hand will not
any more. This music burst out to mock me! Adieu.

          'I am yours.

                    'Your HENRIETTA.

'A kiss to the sister. It is owing to her.'

Carinthia kissed the letter on that last line. It seemed to her to end in
a celestial shower.

She was oppressed by wonder of the writer who could run like the rill of
the mountains in written speech; and her recollection of the contents
perpetually hurried to the close, which was more in her way of writing,
for there the brief sentences had a throb beneath them.

She did not speak of the letter to her brother when she returned it. A
night in the carriage, against his shoulder, was her happy prospect, in
the thought that she would be with her dearest all night, touching him
asleep, and in the sweet sense of being near to the beloved of the
fairest angel of her sex. They pursued their journey soon after Anton was
dismissed with warm shakes of the hand and appointments for a possible
year in the future.

The blast of the postillion's horn on the dark highway moved Chillon to
say: 'This is what they call posting, my dear.'

She replied: 'Tell me, brother: I do not understand, "Let none these
marks efface," at the commencement, after most "picturesque of
Castles":--that is you.'

'They are quoted from the verses of a lord who was a poet, addressed to
the castle on Lake Leman. She will read them to you.'

'Will she?'

The mention of the lord set Carinthia thinking of the lord whom that
beautiful SHE pitied because she was forced to wound him and he was very
sensitive. Wrapped in Henrietta, she slept through the joltings of the
carriage, the grinding of the wheels, the blowing of the horn, the
flashes of the late moonlight and the kindling of dawn.




CHAPTER VIII

OF THE ENCOUNTER OF TWO STRANGE YOUNG MEN AND THEIR CONSORTING: IN WHICH
THE MALE READER IS REQUESTED TO BEAR IN MIND WHAT WILD CREATURE HE WAS IN
HIS YOUTH, WHILE THE FEMALE SHOULD MARVEL CREDULOUSLY.

The young man who fancied he had robed himself in the plain homespun of a
natural philosopher at the age of twenty-three journeyed limping
leisurely in the mountain maid Carinthia's footsteps, thankful to the
Fates for having seen her; and reproving the remainder of superstition
within him, which would lay him open to smarts of evil fortune if he,
encouraged a senseless gratitude for good; seeing that we are simply to
take what happens to us. The little inn of the village on the perch
furnished him a night's lodging and a laugh of satisfaction to hear of a
young lady and gentleman, and their guide, who had devoured everything
eatable half a day in advance of him, all save the bread and butter, and
a few scraps of meat, apologetically spread for his repast by the maid of
the inn: not enough for, a bantam cock, she said, promising eggs for
breakfast. He vowed with an honest heart, that it was more than enough,
and he was nourished by sympathy with the appetites of his precursors and
the maid's description of their deeds. That name, Carinthia, went a good
way to fill him.

Farther on he had plenty, but less contentment. He was compelled to
acknowledge that he had expected to meet Carinthia again at the Baths.
Her absence dealt a violent shock to the aerial structure he dwelt in;
for though his ardour for the life of the solitudes was unfeigned, as was
his calm overlooking of social distinctions, the self-indulgent dreamer
became troubled with an alarming sentience, that for him to share the
passions of the world of men was to risk the falling lower than most.
Women are a cause of dreams, but they are dreaded enemies of his kind of
dream, deadly enemies of the immaterial dreamers; and should one of them
be taken on board a vessel of the vapourish texture young Woodseer sailed
in above the clouds lightly while he was in it alone, questions of past,
future, and present, the three weights upon humanity, bear it down, and
she must go, or the vessel sinks. And cast out of it, what was he? The
asking exposed him to the steadiest wind the civilized world is known to
blow. From merely thinking upon one of the daughters of earth, he was
made to feel his position in that world, though he refused to understand
it, and assisted by two days of hard walking he reduced Carinthia to an
abstract enthusiasm, no very serious burden. His note-book sustained it
easily. He wrote her name in simple fondness of the name; a verse, and
hints for more, and some sentences, which he thought profound. They were
composed as he sat by the roadway, on the top of hills, and in a boat
crossing a dark green lake deep under wooded mountain walls: things of
priceless value.

It happened, that midway on the lake he perceived his boatman about to
prime a pistol to murder the mild-eyed stillness, and he called to the
man in his best German to desist. During the altercation, there passed a
countryman of his in another of the punts, who said gravely: 'I thank you
for that.' It was early morning, and they had the lake to themselves,
each deeming the other an intruder; for the courtship of solitude wanes
when we are haunted by a second person in pursuit of it; he is
discolouring matter in our pure crystal cup. Such is the worship of the
picturesque; and it would appear to say, that the spirit of man finds
itself yet in the society of barbarians. The case admits of good pleading
either way, even upon the issue whether the exclusive or the vulgar be
the more barbarous. But in those days the solicitation of the picturesque
had been revived by a poet of some impassioned rhetoric, and two devotees
could hardly meet, as the two met here, and not be mutually obscurants.

They stepped ashore in turn on the same small shoot of land where a
farm-house near a chapel in the shadow of cliffs did occasional service
for an inn. Each had intended to pass a day and a night in this lonely
dwelling-place by the lake, but a rival was less to be tolerated there
than in love, and each awaited the other's departure, with an air that
said: 'You are in my sunlight'; and going deeper, more sternly: 'Sir, you
are an offence to Nature's pudency!'

Woodseer was the more placable of the two; he had taken possession of the
bench outside, and he had his note-book and much profundity to haul up
with it while fish were frying. His countryman had rushed inside to avoid
him, and remained there pacing the chamber like a lion newly caged. Their
boatmen were brotherly in the anticipation of provision and payment.

After eating his fish, Woodseer decided abruptly, that as he could not
have the spot to himself, memorable as it would have been to intermarry
with Nature in so sacred a welldepth of the mountains, he had better be
walking and climbing. Another boat paddling up the lake had been spied:
solitude was not merely shared with a rival, but violated by numbers. In
the first case, we detest the man; in the second, we fly from an outraged
scene. He wrote a line or so in his book, hurriedly paid his bill, and
started, full of the matter he had briefly committed to his pages.

At noon, sitting beside the beck that runs from the lake, he was
overtaken by the gentleman he had left behind, and accosted in the
informal English style, with all the politeness possible to a nervously
blunt manner: 'This book is yours,--I have no doubt it is yours; I am
glad to be able to restore it; I should be glad to be the owner-writer of
the contents, I mean. I have to beg your excuse; I found it lying open; I
looked at the page, I looked through the whole; I am quite at your
mercy.'

Woodseer jumped at the sight of his note-book, felt for the emptiness of
his pocket, and replied: 'Thank you, thank you. It's of use to me, though
to no one else.'

'You pardon me?'

'Certainly. I should have done it myself.'

'I cannot offer you my apologies as a stranger.' Lord Fleetwood was the
name given.

Woodseer's plebeian was exchanged for it, and he stood up.

The young lord had fair, straight, thin features, with large restless
eyes that lighted quickly, and a mouth that was winning in his present
colloquial mood.

'You could have done the same? I should find it hard to forgive the man
who pried into my secret thoughts,' he remarked.

'There they are. If one puts them to paper! . . .' Woodseer shrugged.

'Yes, yes. They never last long enough with me. So far I'm safe. One page
led to another. You can meditate. I noticed some remarks on Religions.
You think deeply.'

Woodseer was of that opinion, but modesty urged him to reply with a small
flourish. 'Just a few heads of ideas. When the wind puffs down a sooty
chimney the air is filled with little blacks that settle pretty much like
the notes in this book of mine. There they wait for another puff, or my
fingers to stamp them.'

'I could tell you were the owner of that book,' said Lord Fleetwood. He
swept his forehead feverishly. 'What a power it is to relieve one's brain
by writing! May I ask you, which one of the Universities . . . ?'

The burden of this question had a ring of irony to one whom it taught to
feel rather defiantly, that he carried the blazon of a reeking tramp. 'My
University,' Woodseer replied, 'was a merchant's office in Bremen for
some months. I learnt more Greek and Latin in Bremen than business. I was
invalided home, and then tried a merchant's office in London. I put on my
hat one day, and walked into the country. My College fellows were
hawkers, tinkers, tramps and ploughmen, choughs and crows. A volume of
our Poets and a History of Philosophy composed my library. I had scarce
any money, so I learnt how to idle inexpensively--a good first lesson.
We're at the bottom of the world when we take to the road; we see men as
they were in the beginning--not so eager for harness till they get
acquainted with hunger, as I did, and studied in myself the old animal
having his head pushed into the collar to earn a feed of corn.'

Woodseer laughed, adding, that he had been of a serious mind in those
days of the alternation of smooth indifference and sharp necessity, and
he had plucked a flower from them.

His nature prompted him to speak of himself with simple candour, as he
had done spontaneously to Chillon Kirby, yet he was now anxious to let
his companion know at once the common stuff he was made of, together with
the great stuff he contained. He grew conscious of an over-anxiety, and
was uneasy, recollecting how he had just spoken about his naturalness,
dimly if at all apprehending the cause of this disturbance within. What
is a lord to a philosopher! But the world is around us as a cloak, if not
a coat; in his ignorance he supposed it specially due to a lord seeking
acquaintance with him, that he should expose his condition: doing the
which appeared to subject him to parade his intellectual treasures and
capacity for shaping sentences; and the effect upon Lord Fleetwood was an
incentive to the display. Nevertheless he had a fretful desire to escape
from the discomposing society of a lord; he fixed his knapsack and began
to saunter.

The young lord was at his elbow. 'I can't part with you. Will you allow
me?'

Woodseer was puzzled and had to say: 'If you wish it.'

'I do wish it: an hour's walk with you. One does not meet a man like you
every day. I have to join a circle of mine in Baden, but there's no
hurry; I could be disengaged for a week. And I have things to ask you,
owing to my indiscretion--but you have excused it.'

Woodseer turned for a farewell gaze at the great Watzmann, and saluted
him.

'Splendid,' said Lord Fleetwood; 'but don't clap names on the
mountains.--I saw written in your book: "A text for Dada." You write: "A
despotism would procure a perfect solitude, but kill the ghost." That was
my thought at the place where we were at the lake. I had it. Tell
me--though I could not have written it, and "ghost" is just the word, the
exact word--tell me, are you of Welsh blood? "Dad" is good
Welsh--pronounce it hard.'

Woodseer answered: 'My mother was a Glamorganshire woman. My father, I
know, walked up from Wales, mending boots on his road for a livelihood.
He is not a bad scholar, he knows Greek enough to like it. He is a
Dissenting preacher. When I strike a truism, I 've a habit of scoring it
to give him a peg or tuning-fork for one of his discourses. He's a man of
talent; he taught himself, and he taught me more than I learnt at school.
He is a thinker in his way. He loves Nature too. I rather envy him in
some respects. He and I are hunters of Wisdom on different tracks; and
he, as he says, "waits for me." He's patient!'

Ah, and I wanted to ask you,' Lord Fleetwood observed, bursting with it,
'I was puzzled by a name you write here and there near the end, and
permit me to ask, it: Carinthia! It cannot be the country? You write
after, the name: "A beautiful Gorgon--a haggard Venus." It seized me. I
have had the face before my eyes ever since. You must mean a woman. I
can't be deceived in allusions to a woman: they have heart in them. You
met her somewhere about Carinthia, and gave her the name? You write--may
I refer to the book?'

He received the book and flew through the leaves:

'Here--"A panting look": you write again: "A look of beaten flame: a look
of one who has run and at last beholds!" But that is a living face: I see
her! Here again: "From minute to minute she is the rock that loses the
sun at night and reddens in the morning." You could not create an idea of
a woman to move you like that. No one could, I am certain of it, certain;
if so, you 're a wizard--I swear you are. But that's a face high over
beauty. Just to know there is a woman like her, is an antidote. You
compare her to a rock. Who would imagine a comparison of a woman to a
rock! But rock is the very picture of beautiful Gorgon, haggard Venus.
Tell me you met her, you saw her. I want only to hear she lives, she is
in the world. Beautiful women compared to roses may whirl away with their
handsome dragoons! A pang from them is a thing to be ashamed of. And
there are men who trot about whining with it! But a Carinthia makes pain
honourable. You have done what I thought impossible--fused a woman's face
and grand scenery, to make them inseparable. She might be wicked for me.
I should see a bright rim round hatred of her!--the rock you describe. I
could endure horrors and not annihilate her! I should think her sacred.'

Woodseer turned about to have a look at the man who was even quicker than
he at realizing a person from a hint of description, and almost insanely
extravagant in the pitch of the things he uttered to a stranger. For
himself, he was open with everybody, his philosophy not allowing that
strangers existed on earth. But the presence of a lord brought the
conventional world to his feelings, though at the same time the title
seemed to sanction the exceptional abruptness and wildness of this lord.
As for suspecting him to be mad, it would have been a common idea: no
stretching of speech or overstepping of social rules could waken a
suspicion so spiritless in Woodseer.

He said: 'I can tell you I met her and she lives. I could as soon swim in
that torrent or leap the mountain as repeat what she spoke, or sketch a
feature of her. She goes into the blood, she is a new idea of women. She
has the face that would tempt a gypsy to evil tellings. I could think of
it as a history written in a line: Carinthia, Saint and Martyr! As for
comparisons, they are flowers thrown into the fire.'

'I have had that--I have thought that,' said Lord Fleetwood. 'Go on; talk
of her, pray; without comparisons. I detest them. How did you meet her?
What made you part? Where is she now? I have no wish to find her, but I
want thoroughly to believe in her.'

Another than Woodseer would have perceived the young lord's malady. Here
was one bitten by the serpent of love, and athirst for an image of the
sex to serve for the cooling herb, as youth will be. Woodseer put it down
to a curious imaginative fellowship with himself. He forgot the lord, and
supposed he had found his own likeness, less gifted in speech. After
talking of Carinthia more and more in the abstract, he fell upon his
discovery of the Great Secret of life, against which his hearer struggled
for a time, though that was cooling to him too; but ultimately there was
no resistance, and so deep did they sink into the idea of pure
contemplation, that the idea of woman seemed to have become a part of it.
No stronger proof of their aethereal conversational earnestness could be
offered. A locality was given to the Great Secret, and of course it was
the place where the most powerful recent impression had been stamped on
the mind of the discoverer: the shadowy valley rolling from the
slate-rock. Woodseer was too artistic a dreamer to present the passing
vision of Carinthia with any associates there. She passed: the solitude
accepted her and lost her; and it was the richer for the one swift gleam:
she brought no trouble, she left no regrets; she was the ghost of the
rocky obscurity. But now remembering her mountain carol, he chanced to
speak of her as a girl.

'She is a girl?' cried Lord Fleetwood, frowning over an utter revolution
of sentiment at the thought of the beautiful Gorgon being a girl; for,
rapid as he was to imagine, he had raised a solid fabric upon his
conception of Carinthia the woman, necessarily the woman--logically. Who
but the woman could look the Gorgon! He tried to explain it to be
impossible for a girl to wear the look: and his notion evidently was,
that it had come upon a beautiful face in some staring horror of a world
that had bitten the tender woman. She touched him sympathetically through
the pathos.

Woodseer flung out vociferously for the contrary. Who but a girl could
look the beautiful Gorgon! What other could seem an emanation of the
mountain solitude? A woman would instantly breathe the world on it to
destroy it. Hers would be the dramatic and not the poetic face. It would
shriek of man, wake the echoes with the tale of man, slaughter all.
quietude. But a girl's face has no story of poisonous intrusion. She
indeed may be cast in the terrors of Nature, and yet be sweet with
Nature, beautiful because she is purely of Nature. Woodseer did his best
to present his view irresistibly. Perhaps he was not clear; it was a
piece of skiamachy, difficult to render clear to the defeated.

Lord Fleetwood had nothing to say but 'Gorgon! a girl a Gorgon!' and it
struck Woodseer as intensely unreasonable, considering that he had seen
the girl whom, in his effort to portray her, he had likened to a
beautiful Gorgon. He recounted the scene of the meeting with her,
pictured it in effective colours, but his companion gave no response, nor
a nod. They ceased to converse, and when the young lord's hired carriage
drew up on the road, Woodseer required persuasion to accompany him. They
were both in their different stations young tyrants of the world, ready
to fight the world and one another for not having their immediate view of
it such as they wanted it. They agreed, however, not to sleep in the
city. Beds were to be had near the top of a mountain on the other side of
the Salza, their driver informed them, and vowing themselves to that
particular height, in a mutual disgust of the city, they waxed
friendlier, with a reserve.

Woodseer soon had experience that he was receiving exceptional treatment
from Lord Fleetwood, whose manservant was on the steps of the hotel in
Salzburg on the lookout for his master.

'Sir Meeson has been getting impatient, my lord,' said the man.

Sir Meeson Corby appeared; Lord Fleetwood cut him short: 'You 're in a
hurry; go at once, don't wait for me; I join you in Baden.--Do me the
favour to eat with me,' he turned to Woodseer. 'And here, Corby! tell the
countess I have a friend to bear me company, and there is to be an extra
bedroom secured at her hotel. That swinery of a place she insists on
visiting is usually crammed. With you there,' he turned to Woodseer, 'I
might find it agreeable.--You can take my man, Corby; I shall not want
the fellow.'

'Positively, my dear Fleetwood, you know,' Sir Meeson expostulated, 'I am
under orders; I don't see how--I really can't go on without you.'

'Please yourself. This gentleman is my friend, Mr. Woodseer.'

Sir Meeson Corby was a plump little beau of forty, at war with his fat
and accounting his tight blue tail coat and brass buttons a victory. His
tightness made his fatness elastic; he looked wound up for a dance, and
could hardly hold on a leg; but the presentation of a creature in a
battered hat and soiled garments, carrying a tattered knapsack half
slung, lank and with disorderly locks, as the Earl of Fleetwood's
friend--the friend of the wealthiest nobleman of Great Britain!--fixed
him in a perked attitude of inquiry that exhausted interrogatives.
Woodseer passed him, slouching a bow. The circular stare of Sir Meeson
seemed unable to contract. He directed it on Lord Fleetwood, and was then
reminded that he dealt with prickles.

'Where have you been?' he said, blinking to refresh his eyeballs. 'I
missed you, I ran round and round the town after you.'

'I have been to the lake.'

'Queer fish there!' Sir Meeson dropped a glance on the capture.

Lord Fleetwood took Woodseer's arm. 'Do you eat with us?' he asked the
baronet, who had stayed his eating for an hour and was famished; so they
strode to the dining-room.

'Do you wash, sir, before eating?' Sir Meeson said to Woodseer, caressing
his hands when they had seated themselves at table. 'Appliances are to be
found in this hotel.'

'Soap?' said Lord Fleetwood.

'Soap--at least, in my chamber.'

'Fetch it, please.'

Sir Meeson, of course, could not hear that. He requested the waiter to
show the gentleman to a room.

Lord Fleetwood ordered the waiter to bring a handbasin and towel. 'We're
off directly and must eat at once,' he said.

'Soap--soap! my dear Fleetwood,' Sir Meeson knuckled on the table, to
impress it that his appetite and his gorge demanded a thorough cleansing
of those fingers, if they were to sit at one board.

'Let the waiter fetch it.'

'The soap is in my portmanteau.'

'You spoke of it as a necessity for this gentleman and me. Bring it.'

Woodseer had risen. Lord Fleetwood motioned him down. He kept an eye
dead--as marble on Corby, who muttered: 'You can't mean that you ask me
. . . ?' But the alternative was forced on Sir Meeson by too strong a power
of the implacable eye; there was thunder in it, a continuity of gaze
forcefuller than repetitions of the word. He knew Lord Fleetwood. Men
privileged to attend on him were dogs to the flinty young despot: they
were sure to be called upon to expiate the faintest offence to him. He
had hastily to consider, that he was banished beyond appeal, with the
whole torture of banishment to an adorer of the Countess Livia, or else
the mad behest must be obeyed. He protested, shrugged, sat fast, and
sprang up, remarking, that he went with all the willingness imaginable.
It could not have been the first occasion.

He was affecting the excessively obsequious when he came back bearing his
metal soap-case. The performance was checked by another look solid as
shot, and as quick. Woodseer, who would have done for Sir Meeson Corby or
Lazarus what had been done for him, thought little of the service, but so
intense a peremptoriness in the look of an eye made him uncomfortable in
his own sense of independence. The humblest citizen of a free nation has
that warning at some notable exhibition of tyranny in a neighbouring
State: it acts like a concussion of the air.

Lord Fleetwood led an easy dialogue with him and Sir Meeson, on their
different themes immediately, which was not less impressive to an
observer. He listened to Sir Meeson's entreaties that he should start at
once for Baden, and appeared to pity the poor gentleman, condemned by his
office to hang about him in terror of his liege lady's displeasure.
Presently, near the close of the meal, drawing a ring from his finger, he
handed it to the baronet, and said, 'Give her that. She knows I shall
follow that.' He added to himself:--I shall have ill-luck till I have it
back! and he asked Woodseer whether he put faith in the virtue of
talismans.

'I have never possessed one,' said Woodseer, with his natural frankness.
'It would have gone long before this for a night's lodging.'

Sir Meeson heard him, and instantly urged Lord Fleetwood not to think of
dismissing his man Francis. 'I beg it, Fleetwood! I beg you to take the
man. Her ladyship will receive me badly, ring or no ring, if she hears of
your being left alone. I really can't present myself. I shall not go, not
go. I say no.'

'Stay, then,' said Fleetwood.

He turned to Woodseer with an air of deference, and requested the
privilege of glancing at his notebook again, and scanned it closely at
one of the pages. 'I believe it true,' he cried; 'I had a half
recollection of it--I have had some such thought, but never could put it
in words. You have thought deeply.'

'That is only a surface thought, or common reflection,' said Woodseer.

Sir Meeson stared at them in turn. Judging by their talk and the effect
produced on the earl, he took Woodseer for a sort of conjuror.

It was his duty to utter a warning.

He drew Fleetwood aside. A word was whispered, and they broke asunder
with a snap. Francis was called. His master gave him his keys, and
despatched him into the town to purchase a knapsack or bag for the outfit
of a jolly beggar. The prospect delighted Lord Fleetwood. He sang notes
from the deep chest, flaunting like an opera brigand, and contemplating
his wretched satellite's indecision with brimming amusement.

'Remember, we fight for our money. I carry mine,' he said to Woodseer.

'Wouldn't it be expedient, Fleetwood . . .' Sir Meeson suggested a
treasurer in the person of himself.

'Not a florin, Corby! I should find it all gambled away at Baden.'

'But I am not Abrane, I'm not Abrane! I never play, I have no mania,
none. It would be prudent, Fleetwood.'

'The slightest bulging of a pocket would show on you, Corby; and they
would be at you, they would fall on you and pluck you to have another
fling. I 'd rather my money should go to a knight of the road than feed
that dragon's jaw. A highwayman seems an honest fellow compared with your
honourable corporation of fly-catchers. I could surrender to him with
some satisfaction after a trial of the better man. I 've tried these
tables, and couldn't stir a pulse. Have you?'

It had to be explained to Woodseer what was meant by trying the tables.
'Not I,' said he, in strong contempt of the queer allurement.

Lord Fleetwood studied him half a minute, as if measuring and discarding
a suspicion of the young philosopher's possible weakness under
temptation.

Sir Meeson Corby accompanied the oddly assorted couple through the town
and a short way along the road to the mountain, for the sake of quieting
his conscience upon the subject of his leaving them together. He could
not have sat down a second time at a table with those hands. He said
it:--he could not have done the thing. So the best he could do was to let
them go. Like many of his class, he had a mind open to the effect of
striking contrasts, and the spectacle of the wealthiest nobleman in Great
Britain tramping the road, pack on back, with a young nobody for his
comrade, a total stranger, who might be a cut-throat, and was avowedly
next to a mendicant, charged him with quantities of interjectory matter,
that he caught himself firing to the foreign people on the highway.
Hundreds of thousands a year, and tramping it like a pedlar, with a
beggar for his friend! He would have given something to have an English
ear near him as he watched them rounding under the mountain they were
about to climb.




CHAPTER IX

CONCERNING THE BLACK GODDESS FORTUNE AND THE WORSHIP OF HER, TOGETHER
WITH AN INTRODUCTION OF SOME OF HER VOTARIES

In those early days of Fortune's pregnant alternations of colour between
the Red and the Black, exhibited publicly, as it were a petroleum spring
of the ebony-fiery lake below, Black-Forest Baden was the sprightliest'
of the ante-chambers of Hades. Thither in the ripeness of the year
trooped the devotees of the sable goddess to perform sacrifice; and
annually among them the beautiful Livia, the Countess of Fleetwood; for
nowhere else had she sensation of the perfect repose which is rocked to a
slumber by gales.

She was not of the creatures who are excited by an atmosphere of
excitement; she took it as the nymph of the stream her native wave, and
swam on the flood with expansive languor, happy to have the master
passions about her; one or two of which her dainty hand caressed,
fearless of a sting; the lady petted them as her swans. It surprised her
to a gentle contempt of men and women, that they should be ruffled either
by love or play. A withholding from the scene will naturally arouse
disturbing wishes; but to be present lulls; for then we live, we are in
our element. And who could expect, what sane person can desire, perpetual
good luck? Fortune, the goddess, and young Love, too, are divine in their
mutability: and Fortune would resemble a humdrum housewife, Love a
droning husband, if constancy were practised by them. Observe the
staggering and plunging of the blindfold wretch seeking to be persuaded
of their faithfulness.

She could make for herself a quiet centre in the heart of the whirlwind,
but the whirlwind was required. The clustered lights at the corner of the
vale under forest hills, the burst of music, the blazing windows of the
saloons of the Furies, and the gamblers advancing and retreating, with
their totally opposite views of consequences, and fashions of wearing or
tearing the mask; and closer, the figures shifting up and down the
promenade, known and unknown faces, and the histories half known, half
woven, weaving fast, which flew their, threads to provoke speculation;
pleasantly embraced and diverted the cool-blooded lady surrounded by her
courtiers, who could upon occasion supply the luminous clue or anecdote.
She had an intuitive liveliness to detect interchanges of eyes, the
shuttle of intrigue; the mild hypocrisy, the clever audacity, the
suspicion confirmed, the complication threatening to become resonant and
terrible; and the old crossing the young and the young outwitting the
old, wiles of fair traitors and dark, knaves of all suits of the pack. A
more intimate acquaintance with their lineaments inspired a regard for
them, such as poets may feign the throned high moon to entertain for
objects causing her rays to flash.

The simple fools, performing in character, were a neutral people,
grotesques and arabesques wreathed about the margins of the scene. Venus
or Fortune smote them to a relievo distinguishing one from another. Here,
however, as elsewhere, the core of interest was with the serious
population, the lovers and the players in earnest, who stood round the
furnace and pitched themselves into it, not always under a miscalculation
of their chances of emerging transfigured instead of serving for fuel.
These, the tragical children of folly, were astute: they played with
lightning, and they knew the conditions of the game; victories were to be
had.

The ulterior conditions of the game, the price paid for a victory, they
thought little of: for they were feverish worshippers of the phantasmal
deity called the Present; a god reigning over the Past, appreciable only
in the Future; whose whiff of actual being is composed of the embryo idea
of the union of these two periods. Still he is occasionally a benevolent
god to the appetites; which have but to be continuous to establish him in
permanence; and as nothing in us more readily supposes perpetuity than
the appetite rushing to destroy itself, the rational nature of the most
universal worship on earth is perceived at once.

Now, the price paid for a victory is this: that having been favoured in a
single instance by the spouse of the aforesaid eminent divinity--the
Black Goddess of the golden fringes--men believe in her for ever after,
behold her everywhere, they belong to her. Their faith as to sowing and
reaping has gone; and so has their capacity to see the actual as it is:
she has the power to attach them to her skirts the more by rewarding
their impassioned devotion with cuffs and scorns. They have ceased to
have a first notion upon anything without a second haunting it, which
directs them to propitiate Fortune.

But I am reminded by the convulsions of Dame Gossip, that the wisdom of
our ancestors makes it a mere hammering of commonplace to insist on such
reflections. Many of them, indeed, took the union of the Black Goddess
and the Rosy Present for the composition of the very Arch-Fiend. Some had
a shot at the strange conjecture, figuring her as tired of men in the end
and challengeing him below--equally tired of his easy conquests of men
since the glorious old times of the duelling saints. By virtue of his one
incorrigible weakness, which we know him to have as long as we have it
ourselves: viz., the belief in her existence, she is to get the better of
him.

Upon this point the experience of Captain Abrane has a value. Livia was a
follower of the Red and Black and the rounding ball in the person of the
giant captain, through whom she received her succession of sweetly
teasing thrills and shocks, as one of the adventurous company they formed
together. The place was known to him as the fair Philistine to another
muscular hero; he had been shorn there before, and sent forth tottering,
treating the friends he met as pillars to fall with him; and when the
operation was done thoroughly, he pronounced himself refreshed by it,
like a more sensible Samson, the cooler for his clipping. Then it was
that he relapsed undistractedly upon processes of his mind and he often
said he thought Fortune would beat the devil.

Her power is shown in the moving of her solicitors to think, instantly
after they have made their cast, that the reverse of it was what they
intended. It comes as though she had withdrawn the bandage from her
forehead and dropped a leaden glance on them, like a great dame angry to
have her signal misinterpreted. Well, then, distinguished by the goddess
in such a manner, we have it proved to us how she wished to favour: for
the reverse wins, and we who are pinched blame not her cruelty but our
blind folly. This is true worship. Henceforth the pain of her nip is
mingled with the dream of her kiss; between the positive and the imagined
of her we remain confused until the purse is an empty body on a gallows,
honour too, perhaps.

Captain Abrane was one of the Countess Livia's numerous courtiers on the
border of the promenade under the lighted saloons. A colossus inactive,
he had little to say among the chattering circle; for when seated, cards
were wanted to animate him: and he looked entirely out of place and
unfitted, like a great vessel's figure-head in a shipwright's yard.

She murmured: 'Not this evening?'

Abrane quoted promptly a line of nursery song 'How shall he cut it
without e'er a knife?'

'Have we run it down so low?' said she, with no reproach in her tone.

The captain shrugged over his clean abyss, where nothing was.

Yesterday their bank presented matronly proportions. But an importuned
goddess reduces the most voluminous to bare stitches within a few winks
of an eye.

Livia turned to a French gentleman of her court, M. de St. Ombre, and
pursued a conversation. He was a stately cavalier of the Gallicized
Frankish outlines, ready, but grave in his bearing, grave in his
delivery, trimly moustached, with a Guise beard.

His profound internal question relating to this un-English beauty of the
British Isles:--had she no passion in her nature? was not convinced by
her apparent insensibility to Fortune's whips.

Sir Meeson Corby inserted a word of Bull French out of place from time to
time.

As it might be necessary to lean on the little man for weapons of war,
supposing Lord Fleetwood delayed his arrival yet another day, Livia was
indulgent. She assisted him to think that he spoke the foreign tongue.

Mention of Lord Fleetwood set Sir Meeson harping again on his alarms, in
consideration of the vagabond object of the young lord had roamed away
with.

'You forget that Russett has gypsy in him: Welsh! it's about the same,'
said Livia. 'He can take excellent care of himself and his purse.'

'Countess, he is a good six days overdue.'

'He will be in time for the ball at the Schloss.'

Sir Meeson Corby produced an aspect of the word 'if,' so perkily, that
the dejected Captain Abrane laughed outright and gave him double reason
to fret for Lord Fleetwood's arrival, by saying: 'If he hangs off much
longer, I shall have to come on you for another fifty.'

Our two pedestrians out of Salzburg were standing up in the night of
cloud and pines above the glittering pool, having made their way along
the path from the hill anciently dedicated to the god Mercury; and at the
moment when Sir Meeson put forth his frilled wrists to say: 'If you had
seen his hands--the creature Fleetwood trotted off alone with!--you'd be
a bit anxious too'; the young lord called his comrade to gaze underneath
them: 'There they are, hard at it, at their play!--it's the word used for
the filthiest gutter scramble.'

They had come to know something of one another's humours; which are taken
by young men for their characters; and should the humours please, they
are friends, until further humours develop, trying these nascent
conservatives hard to suit them to their moods as well as the accustomed.
Lord Fleetwood had discovered in his companion, besides the spirit of
independence and the powers of thought impressed on him by Woodseer's
precocious flashes, a broad playfulness, that trenched on buffoonery; it
astonished, amused, and relieved him, loosening the spell of reverence
cast over him by one who could so wonderfully illumine his brain. Prone
to admire and bend the knee where he admired, he chafed at subjection,
unless he had the particular spell constantly renewed. A tone in him once
or twice of late, different from the comrade's, had warned Woodseer to be
guarded.

Susceptible, however, of the extreme contrast between the gamblers below
and Nature's lover beside him, Fleetwood returned to his enthusiasm
without thinking it a bondage.

'I shall never forget the walk we 've had. I have to thank you for the
noblest of pleasures. You 've taught me--well, a thousand things; the
things money can't buy. What mornings they were! And the dead-tired
nights! Under the rock and up to see the snowy peak pink in a gap of
thick mist. You were right: it made a crimsoning colour shine like a new
idea. Up in those mountains one walks with the divinities, you said. It's
perfectly true. I shall remember I did. I have a treasure for life! Now I
understand where you get your ideas. The life we lead down there is
hoggish. You have chosen the right. You're right, over and over again,
when you say, the dirty sweaters are nearer the angels for cleanliness
than my Lord and Lady Sybarite out of a bath, in chemical scents. A man
who thinks, loathes their High Society. I went through Juvenal at
college. But you--to be sure, you add example--make me feel the contempt
of it more. I am everlastingly indebted to you. Yes, I won't forget: you
preach against the despising of anything.

This was pleasant in Woodseer's ears, inasmuch as it established the
young nobleman as the pupil of his philosophy for the conduct of life;
and to fortify him, he replied:

'Set your mind on the beauty, and there'll be no room for comparisons.
Most of them are unjust, precious few instructive. In this case, they
spoil both pictures: and that scene down there rather hooks me; though I
prefer the Dachstein in the wane of the afterglow. You called it
Carinthia.'

'I did: the beautiful Gorgon, haggard Venus--if she is to be a girl!'
Fleetwood rejoined. 'She looked burnt out--a spectre.'

'One of the admirably damned,' said Woodseer, and he murmured with
enjoyment: 'Between the lights--that 's the beauty and the tragedy of
Purgatory!'

His comrade fell in with the pictured idea: 'You hit it:--not what you
called the "sublimely milky," and not squalid as you'll see the faces of
the gambling women at the tables below. Oblige me--may I beg?--don't clap
names on the mountains we've seen. It stamps guide-book on them, English
tourist, horrors. We'll moralize over the crowds at the tables down
there. On the whole, it's a fairish game: you know the odds against you,
as you don't on the Turf or the Bourse. Have your fling; but don't get
bitten. There's a virus. I'm not open to it. Others are.'

Hereupon Woodseer, wishing to have his individuality recognised in the
universality it consented to, remarked on an exchequer that could not
afford to lose, and a disposition free of the craving to win.

These were, no doubt, good reasons for abstaining, and they were grand
morality. They were, at the same time, customary phrases of the unfleshed
in folly. They struck Fleetwood with a curious reminder of the puking
inexperienced, whom he had seen subsequently plunge suicidally. He had a
sharp vision of the attractive forces of the game; and his elemental
nature exulted in siding with the stronger against a pretender to the
superhuman. For Woodseer had spoken a trifle loftily, as quite above
temptation. To see a forewarned philosopher lured to try the swim on
those tides, pulled along the current, and caught by the undertug of the
lasher, would be fun.

'We'll drop down on them, find our hotel, and have a look at what they're
doing,' he said, and stepped.

Woodseer would gladly have remained. The starlit black ridges about him
and the dragon's mouth yawing underneath were an opposition of spiritual
and mundane; innocent, noxious; exciting to the youthful philosopher. He
had to follow, and so rapidly in the darkness that he stumbled and fell
on an arm; a small matter.

Bed-chambers awaited them at the hotel, none of the party: and
Fleetwood's man-servant was absent.

'Gambling, the rascal!' he said. Woodseer heard the first note of the
place in that.

His leader was washed, neatly dressed, and knocking at his door very
soon, impatient to be off, and he flung a promise of 'supper presently'
to one whose modest purse had fallen into a debate with this lordly
hostelry, counting that a supper and a night there would do for it. They
hurried on to the line of promenaders, a river of cross-currents by the
side of seated groups; and the willowy swish of silken dresses, feminine
perfumery, cigar-smoke, chatter, laughter, told of pleasure reigning.

Fleetwood scanned the groups. He had seen enough in a moment and his face
blackened. A darting waiter was called to him.

He said to Woodseer, savagely, as it sounded: 'You shall have something
to joint your bones!' What cause of wrath he had was past a guess: a wolf
at his vitals bit him, hardening his handsome features.

The waiter darted back, bearing a tray and tall glasses filled each with
piled parti-coloured liqueurs, on the top of which an egg-yolk swam.
Fleetwood gave example. Swallowing your egg, the fiery-velvet triune
behind slips after it, in an easy milky way, like a princess's train on a
state-march, and you are completely, transformed, very agreeably; you
have become a merry demon. 'Well, yes, it's next to magic,' he replied to
Woodseer's astonished snigger after the draught, and explained, that it
was a famous Viennese four-of-the-morning panacea, the revellers'
electrical restorer. 'Now you can hold on for an hour or two, and then
we'll sup. At Rome?'

'Ay! Druids to-morrow!' cried the philosopher bewitched.

He found himself bowing to a most heavenly lady, composed of day and
night in her colouring, but more of night, where the western edge has
become a pale steel blade. Men were around her, forming a semi-circle.
The world of men and women was mere timber and leafage to this flower of
her sex, glory of her kind. How he behaved in her presence, he knew not;
he was beyond self-criticism or conscious reflection; simply the engine
of the commixed three liqueurs, with parlous fine thoughts, and a sense
of steaming into the infinite.

To leave her was to have her as a moon in the heavens and to think of her
creatively. A swarm of images rushed about her and away, took lustre and
shade. She was a miracle of greyness, her eyes translucently grey, a
dark-haired queen of the twilights; and his heart sprang into his brain
to picture the novel beauty; language became a flushed Bacchanal in a
ring of dancing similes. Lying beside a bank of silvery cinquefoil
against a clear evening sky, where the planet Venus is a point of new and
warmer light, one has the vision of her. Or something of Persephone
rising to greet her mother, when our beam of day first melts through her
as she kneels to gather an early bud of the year, would be near it. Or
there is a lake in mid-forest, that curls part in shadow under the foot
of morning: there we have her.

He strained to the earthly and the skyey likenesses of his marvel of
human beauty because they bestowed her on him in passing. All the while,
he was gazing on a green gaming-table.

The gold glittered, and it heaped or it vanished. Contemptuous of money,
beyond the limited sum for his needs, he gazed; imagination was blunted
in him to the hot drama of the business. Moreover his mind was engaged in
insisting that the Evening Star is not to be called Venus, because of
certain stories; and he was vowed to defend his lady from any allusion to
them. This occupied him. By degrees, the visible asserted its authority;
his look on the coin fell to speculating. Oddly, too, he was often
right;--the money, staked on the other side, would have won. He
considered it rather a plain calculation than a guess.

Philosophy withdrew him from his temporary interest in the tricks of a
circling white marble ball. The chuck farthing of street urchins has
quite as much dignity. He compared the creatures dabbling, over the board
to summer flies on butcher's meat, periodically scared by a cloth. More
in the abstract, they were snatching at a snapdragon bowl. It struck him,
that the gamblers had thronged on an invitation to drink the round of
seed-time and harvest in a gulp. Again they were desperate gleaners,
hopping, skipping, bleeding, amid a whizz of scythe-blades, for small
wisps of booty. Nor was it long before the presidency of an ancient hoary
Goat-Satan might be perceived, with skew-eyes and pucker-mouth, nursing a
hoof on a knee.

Our mediaeval Enemy sat symbolical in his deformities, as in old Italian
and Dutch thick-line engravings of him. He rolled a ball for souls,
excited like kittens, to catch it, and tumbling into the dozens of vacant
pits. So it seemed to Woodseer, whose perceptions were discoloured by
hereditary antagonism. Had he preserved his philosopher's eye, he would
have known that the Hoofed One is too wily to show himself, owing to his
ugliness. The Black Goddess and no other presides at her own game. She
(it is good for us to know it) is the Power who challenges the
individual, it is he who spreads the net for the mass. She liquefies the
brain of man; he petrifies or ossifies the heart. From her comes
craziness, from him perversity: a more provocative and, on the whole,
more contagious disease. The gambler does not seek to lead his fellows
into perdition; the snared of the Demon have pleasure in the act. Hence
our naturally interested forecasts of the contests between them: for if
he is beaten, as all must be at the close of an extended game with her,
we have only to harden the brain against her allurements and we enter a
clearer field.

Woodseer said to Fleetwood: 'That ball has a look of a nymph running
round and round till she changes to one of the Fates.'

'We'll have a run with her,' said Fleetwood, keener for business than for
metaphors--at the moment.

He received gold for a bank-note. Captain Abrane hurriedly begged a loan.
Both of them threw. Neither of them threw on the six numbers Woodseer
would have selected, and they lost. He stated that the number of 17 had
won before. Abrane tried the transversal enclosing this favoured number.
'Of course!' he cried, with foul resignation and a hostile glare: the
ball had seated itself and was grinning at him from the lowest of the
stalls.

Fleetwood quitted the table-numbers to throw on Pair; he won, won again,
pushed his luck and lost, dragging Abrane with him. The giant varied his
tone of acquiescence in Fortune's whims: 'Of course! I 've only to fling!
Luck hangs right enough till I put down my stake.'

'If the luck has gone three times, the chances . . . .' Woodseer was
rather inquiring than pronouncing. . . . Lord Fleetwood cut him short.
'The chances are equally the contrary!' and discomposed his argumentative
mind.

As argument in such a place was impossible, he had a wild idea of
example--'just to see'--; and though he smiled, his brain was liquefying.
Upon a calculation of the chances, merely for the humour of it, he laid a
silver piece on the first six, which had been neglected. They were now
blest. He laid his winnings on the numbed 17. Who would have expected it?
why, the player, surely! Woodseer comported himself like a veteran: he
had proved that you can calculate the chances. Instead of turning in
triumph to Lord Fleetwood, he laid gold pieces to hug the number 17, and
ten in the centre. And it is the truth, he hoped then to lose and have
done with it--after proving his case. The ball whirled, kicked, tried for
seat in two, in three points, and entered 17. The usual temporary
wonderment flew round the table; and this number was courted in dread,
avoided with apprehension.

Abrane let fly a mighty breath: 'Virgin, by Jove!'

Success was a small matter to Gower Woodseer. He displayed his contempt
of fortune by letting his heap of bank-notes lie on Impair, and he won.
Abrane bade him say 'Maximum' in a furious whisper. He did so, as one at
home with the word; and winning repeatedly, observed to Fleetwood: 'Now I
can understand what historians mean, in telling us of heroes rushing into
the fray and vainly seeking death. I always thought death was to be had,
if you were in earnest.'

Fleetwood scrutinized the cast of his features and the touch of his
fingers on the crispy paper.

'Come to another of these "green fields,"' he returned briefly. 'The game
here is child's play.'

Urging Virgin Luck not to quit his initiatory table, the captain
reluctantly went at their heels. Shortly before the tables were clad in
mantles for the night, he reported to Livia one of the great cases of
Virgin Luck; described it, from the silver piece to the big heap of
notes, and drew on his envy of the fellow to sketch the indomitable
coolness shown in following or in quitting a run. 'That fellow it is,
Fleetwood's tag-rag; holds his head like a street-fiddler; Woodler or
some name. But there's nothing to be done if we don't cultivate him. He
must have pocketed a good three thousand and more. They had a quarrel
about calculations of chances, and Fleet ran the V up his forehead at a
piece of impudence. Fellow says some high-flying stuff; Fleet brightens
like a Sunday chimney-sweep. If I believed in Black Arts, upon my word!'

'Russett is not usually managed with ease,' the lady said.

Her placid observation was directed on the pair then descending the
steps.

'Be careful how you address, this gentleman,' she counselled Abrane. 'The
name is not Woodier, I know. It must be the right name or none.'

Livia's fairest smile received them. She heard the captain accosting the
child of luck as Mr. Woodier, and she made a rustle in rising to take
Fleetwood's arm.

'We haven't dined, we have to sup,' said he.

'You are released at the end of the lamps. You redeem your ring, Russett,
and I will restore it. I have to tell you, Henrietta is here to-morrow.'

'She might be in a better place.'

'The place where she is to be seen is not generally undervalued by men.
It is not her fault that she is absent. The admiral was persuaded to go
and attend those cavalry manoeuvres with the Grand Duke, to whom he had
been civil when in command of the Mediterranean squadron. You know, the
admiral believes he has military--I mean soldierly-genius; and the
delusion may have given him wholesome exercise and helped him to forget
his gout. So far, Henrietta will have been satisfied. She cannot have
found much amusement among dusty troopers or at that court at Carlsruhe.
Our French milliner there has helped in retarding her quite against her
will. She has had to choose a balldress for the raw mountain-girl they
have with them, and get her fitted, and it's a task! Why take her to the
ball? But the admiral's infatuated with this girl, and won't hear of her
exclusion--because, he says, she understands a field of battle; and the
Ducal party have taken to her. Ah, Russett, you should not have flown! No
harm, only Henrietta does require a trifle of management. She writes,
that she is sure of you for the night at the Schloss.'

'Why, ma'am?'

'You have given your word. "He never breaks his lightest word," she
says.'

'It sounds like the beginning of respect.'

'The rarest thing men teach women to feel for them!'

'A respectable love match--eh? Good Lord! You'll be civil to my friend.
You have struck him to the dust. You have your one poetical admirer in
him.'

'I am honoured, Russett.'

'Cleared out, I suppose? Abrane is a funnel for pouring into that Bank.
Have your fun as you like it! I shall get supplies to-morrow. By the way,
you have that boy Cressett here. What are you doing with him?'

Livia spoke of watching over him and guarding him:

'He was at the table beside me, bursting to have a fling; and my friend
Mr. Woodseer said, it was "Adonis come to spy the boar":--the picture!'

Prompt as bugle to the breath, Livia proposed to bet him fifty pounds
that she would keep young Cressett from gambling a single louis. The
pretty saying did not touch her.

Fleetwood moved and bowed. Sir Meeson Corby simulated a petrifaction of
his frame at seeing the Countess of Fleetwood actually partly bent with
her gracious acknowledgement of the tramp's gawky homage.




CHAPTER X

SMALL CAUSES

A clock sounded one of the later morning hours of the night as Gower
Woodseer stood at his hotel door, having left Fleetwood with a band of
revellers. The night was now clear. Stars were low over the ridge of
pines, dropped to a league of our strange world to record the doings.
Beneath this roof lay the starry She. He was elected to lie beneath it
also: and he beheld his heavenly lady floating on the lull of soft white
cloud among her sister spheres. After the way of imaginative young men,
he had her features more accurately now she was hidden, and he idealized
her more. He could escape for a time from his coil of similes and paint
for himself the irids of her large, long, grey eyes darkly rimmed; purest
water-grey, lucid within the ring, beneath an arch of lashes. He had them
fast; but then he fell to contemplating their exceeding rareness; And the
mystery of the divinely grey swung a kindled fancy to the flight with
some queen-witch of woods, of whom a youth may dream under the spell of
twilights, East or West, among forest branches.

She had these marvellous eyes and the glamour for men. She had not yet
met a man with the poetical twist in the brain to prize her elementally.
All admitted the glamour; none of her courtiers were able to name it,
even the poetical head giving it a name did not think of the witch in her
looks as a witch in her deeds, a modern daughter of the mediaeval. To her
giant squire the eyes of the lady were queer: they were unlit glass lamps
to her French suppliant; and to the others, they were attractively
uncommon; the charm for them being in her fine outlines, her stature,
carriage of her person, and unalterable composure; particularly her
latent daring. She had the effect on the general mind of a lofty
crag-castle with a history. There was a whiff of gunpowder exciting the
atmosphere in the anecdotal part of the history known.

Woodseer sat for a certain time over his note-book. He closed it with a
thrilling conceit of the right thing written down; such as entomologists
feel when they have pinned the rare insect. But what is butterfly or
beetle compared with the chiselled sentences carved out of air to
constitute us part owner of the breathing image and spirit of an adored
fair woman? We repeat them, and the act of repeating them makes her come
close on ours, by virtue of the eagle thought in the stamped gold of the
lines.

Then, though she is not ever to be absolutely ours (and it is an
impoverishing desire that she should be), we have beaten out the golden
sentence--the essential she and we in one. But is it so precious after
all? A suspicious ring of an adjective drops us on a sickening descent.

The author dashed at his book, examined, approved, keenly enjoyed, and he
murderously scratched the adjective. She stood better without it, as a
bright planet star issuing from clouds, which are perhaps an adornment to
our hackneyed moon. This done, he restored the book to his coat's
breast-pocket, smiling or sneering at the rolls of bank-notes there,
disdaining to count them. They stuffed an inner waistcoat pocket and his
trousers also. They at any rate warranted that we can form a calculation
of the chances, let Lord Fleetwood rave as he may please.

Woodseer had caught a glimpse of the elbow-point of his coat when
flinging it back to the chair. There was distinctly abrasion.
Philosophers laugh at such things. But they must be the very ancient
pallium philosophers, ensconced in tubs, if they pretend to merriment
over the spectacle of nether garments gapped at the spot where man is
most vulnerable. He got loose from them and held them up to the candle,
and the rays were admitted, neither winking nor peeping. Serviceable old
clothes, no doubt. Time had not dealt them the final kick before they
scored a good record.

They dragged him, nevertheless, to a sort of confession of some weakness,
that he could not analyze for the swirl of emotional thoughts in the way;
and they had him to the ground. An eagle of the poetic becomes a mere
squat toad through one of these pretty material strokes. Where then is
Philosophy? But who can be philosopher and the fervent admirer of a
glorious lady? Ask again, who in that frowzy garb can presume to think of
her or stand within fifty miles of her orbit?

A dreary two hours brought round daylight. Woodseer quitted his restless
bed and entered the abjured habiliments, chivalrous enough to keep from
denouncing them until he could cast the bad skin they now were to his
uneasy sensations. He remembered having stumbled and fallen on the slope
of the hill into this vale, and probably then the mischief had occurred
though a brush would have, been sufficient, the slightest collision.
Only, it was odd that the accident should have come to pass just previous
to his introduction. How long antecedent was it? He belaboured his memory
to reckon how long it was from the moment of the fall to the first sight
of that lady.

His window looked down on the hotel stable-yard. A coach-house door was
open. Odd or not--and it certainly looked like fate--that he should be
bowing to his lady so shortly after the mishap expelling him, he had to
leave the place. A groom in the yard was hailed, and cheerily informed
him he could be driven to Carlsruhe as soon as the coachman had finished
his breakfast. At Carlsruhe a decent refitting might be obtained, and he
could return from exile that very day, thanks to the praiseworthy early
hours of brave old Germany.

He had swallowed a cup of coffee with a roll of stale bread, in the best
of moods, and entered his carriage; he was calling the order to start
when a shout surprised his ear: 'The fiddler bolts!'

Captain Abrane's was the voice. About twenty paces behind, Abrane,
Fleetwood, and one whom they called Chummy Potts, were wildly waving
arms. Woodseer could hear the captain's lowered roar: 'Race you, Chummy,
couple of louis, catch him first!' The two came pelting up to the
carriage abreast.

They were belated revellers, and had been carelessly strolling under the
pinky cloudlets bedward, after a prolonged carousal with the sons and
daughters of hilarious nations, until the apparition of Virgin Luck on
the wing shocked all prospect of a dead fight with the tables that day.

'Here, come, no, by Jove, you, Mr. Woodsir! won't do, not a bit! can't
let you go,' cried Abrane, as he puffed. 'What! cut and run and leave us,
post winnings--bankers--knock your luck on the head! What a fellow! Can't
let you. Countess never forgive us. You promised--swore it--play for her.
Struck all aheap to hear of your play! You've got the trick. Her purse
for you in my pocket. Never a fellow played like you. Cool as a cook over
a-gridiron! Comme un phare! St. Ombre says--that Frenchman. You
astonished the Frenchman! And now cut and run? Can't allow it. Honour of
the country at stake.'

'Hands off!' Woodseer bellowed, feeling himself a leaky vessel in dock,
his infirmities in danger of exposure. 'If you pull!--what the deuce do
you want? Stop!'

'Out you come,' said the giant, and laughed at the fun to his friends,
who were entirely harmonious when not violently dissenting, as is the way
with Night's rollickers before their beds have reconciled them to the
day-beams.

Woodseer would have had to come and was coming; he happened to say:
'Don't knock my pipe out of my mouth,' and touched a chord in the giant.

'All--right; smoke your pipe,' was answered to his remonstrance.

During the amnesty, Fleetwood inquired: 'Where are you going?'

'Far a drive,--to be sure. Don't you see!'

'You'll return?'

'I intend to return.'

'He's beastly excited,' quoth Abrane.

Fleetwood silenced him, though indeed Woodseer appeared suspiciously
restive.

'Step down and have a talk with me before you start. You're not to go
yet.'

'I must. I'm in a hurry.'

'What 's the hurry?'

'I want to smoke and think.'

'Takes a carriage on the top of the morning to smoke and think! Hark at
that!' Abrane sang out. 'Oh, come along quietly, you fellow, there's a
good fellow! It concerns us all, every man Jack; we're all bound up in
your fortunes. Fellow with luck like yours can't pretend to behave
independently. Out of reason!'

'Do you give me your word you return?' said Fleetwood.

Woodseer replied: 'Very well, I do; there, I give my word. Hang it! now I
know what they mean by "anything for a quiet life." Just a shake brings
us down on that cane-bottomed chair!'

'You return to-day?'

'To-day, yes, yes.'

Fleetwood signified the captive's release; and Abrane immediately
suggested:

'Pop old Chummy in beside the fellow to mount guard.'

Potts was hustled and precipitated into the carriage by the pair, with
whom he partook this last glimmer of their night's humorous
extravagances, for he was an easy creature. The carriage drove off.

'Keep him company!' they shouted.

'Escort him back!' said he, nodding.

He remarked to Woodseer: 'With your permission,' concerning the seat he
took, and that 'a draught of morning air would do him good.' Then he
laughed politely, exchanged wavy distant farewells with his comrades,
touched a breast-pocket for his case of cigars, pulled forth one,
obtained 'the loan of a light,' blew clouds and fell into the anticipated
composure, quite understanding the case and his office.

Both agreed as to the fine morning it was. Woodseer briefly assented to
his keeper's reiterated encomium on the morning, justified on oath. A
fine morning, indeed. 'Damned if I think I ever saw so fine a morning!'
Potts cried. He had no other subject of conversation with this hybrid:
and being equally disposed for hot discourse or for sleep, the
deprivation of the one and the other forced him to seek amusement in his
famous reading of character; which was profound among the biped equine,
jockeys, turfmen, sharpers, pugilists, demireps. He fronted Woodseer with
square shoulders and wide knees, an elbow on one, a fist on the other,
engaged in what he termed the 'prodding of his eel,' or 'nicking of his
man,' a method of getting straight at the riddle of the fellow by the
test of how long he could endure a flat mute stare and return look for
look unblinking. The act of smoking fortifies and partly covers the
insolence. But if by chance an equable, not too narrowly focussed,
counterstare is met, our impertinent inquisitor may resemble the
fisherman pulled into deep waters by his fish. Woodseer perused his man,
he was not attempting to fathom him: he had besides other stuff in his
head. Potts had naught, and the poor particle he was wriggled under
detection.

'Tobacco before breakfast!' he said disgustedly tossing his cigar to the
road. 'Your pipe holds on. Bad thing, I can tell you, that smoking on an
empty stomach. No trainer'd allow it, not for a whole fee or double.
Kills your wind. Let me ask you, my good sir, are you going to turn?
We've sat a fairish stretch. I begin to want my bath and a shave, linen
and coffee. Thirsty' as a dog.'

He heard with stupefaction, that he could alight on the spot, if he
pleased, otherwise he would be driven into Carlsruhe. And now they had a
lingual encounter, hot against cool; but the eyes of Chummy Potts having
been beaten, his arguments and reproaches were not backed by the powerful
looks which are an essential part of such eloquence as he commanded. They
fled from his enemy's currishly, even while he was launching epithets.
His pathetic position subjected him to beg that Woodseer would direct the
driver to turn, for he had no knowledge of 'their German lingo.' And said
he: 'You've nothing to laugh at, that I can see. I'm at your mercy, you
brute; caught in a trap. I never walk;--and the sun fit to fry a mackerel
along that road! I apologize for abusing you; I can't do more. You're an
infernally clever player--there! And, upon my soul, I could drink
ditchwater! But if you're going in for transactions at Carlsruhe, mark my
words, your luck's gone. Laugh as much as you like.'

Woodseer happened to be smiling over the excellent reason for not turning
back which inflicted the wofulness. He was not without sympathy for a
thirsty wretch, and guessing, at the sight of an avenue of limes to the
left of the road, that a wayside inn was below, he said: 'You can have
coffee or beer in two minutes,' and told the driver where to pull up.

The sight of a grey-jacketed, green-collared sportsman, dog at heel,
crossing the flat land to the hills of the forest, pricked him enviously,
and caused him to ask what change had come upon him, that he should be
hurrying to a town for a change of clothes. Just as Potts was about to
jump out, a carriage, with a second behind it, left the inn door. He
rubbed a hand on his unshaven chin, tried a glance at his shirt-front,
and remarking: 'It won't be any one who knows me,' stood to let the
carriages pass. In the first were a young lady and a gentleman: the lady
brilliantly fair, an effect of auburn hair and complexion, despite the
signs of a storm that had swept them and had not cleared from her
eyelids. Apparently her maid, a damsel sitting straight up, occupied the
carriage following; and this fresh-faced young person twice quickly and
bluntly bent her head as she was driven by. Potts was unacquainted with
the maid. But he knew the lady well, or well enough for her inattention
to be the bigger puzzle. She gazed at the Black Forest hills in the
steadiest manner, with eyes betraying more than they saw; which solved
part of the puzzle, of course. Her reasons for declining to see him were
exposed by the presence of the gentleman beside her. At the same time, in
so highly bred a girl, a defenceless exposure was unaccountable. Half a
nod and the shade of a smile would have been the proper course; and her
going along on the road to the valley seemed to say it might easily have
been taken; except that there had evidently been a bit of a scene.

Potts ranked Henrietta's beauty far above her cousin Livia's. He was
therefore personally offended by her disregard of him, and her bit of a
scene with the fellow carrying her off did him injury on behalf of his
friend Fleetwood. He dismissed Woodseer curtly. Thirsting more to gossip
than to drink, he took a moody draught of beer at the inn, and by the aid
of a conveyance, hastily built of rotten planks to serve his needs, and
drawn by a horse of the old wars,' as he reported on his arrival at
Baden,--reached that home of the maltreated innocents twenty minutes
before the countess and her party were to start for lunch up the
Lichtenthal. Naturally, he was abused for letting his bird fly: but as he
was shaven, refreshed, and in clean linen, he could pull his shirt-cuffs
and take seat at his breakfast-table with equanimity while Abrane
denounced him.

'I'll bet you the fellow's luck has gone,' said Potts. 'He 's no new hand
and you don't think him so either, Fleet. I've looked into the fellow's
eye and seen a leery old badger at the bottom of it. Talks vile stuff.
However, 'perhaps I didn't drive out on that sweltering Carlsruhe road
for nothing.'

He screwed a look at the earl, who sent Abrane to carry a message and
heard the story Potts had to tell.

'Henrietta Fakenham! no mistake about her; driving out from a pothouse;
man beside her, military man; might be a German. And, if you please,
quite unacquainted with your humble servant, though we were as close as
you to me. Something went wrong in that pothouse. Red eyes. There had
been a scene, one could swear. Behind the lady another carriage, and her
maid. Never saw the girl before, and sets to bowing and smirking at me,
as if I was the-fellow of all others! Comical. I made sure they were
bound for this place. They were on the Strasburg road. No sign of them?'

'You speak to me?' said Fleetwood.

Potts muttered. He had put his foot into it.

'You have a bad habit of speaking to yourself,' Fleetwood remarked, and
left him. He suffered from the rustics he had to deal with among his
class, and it was not needed that he should thunder at them to make his
wrath felt.

Livia swam in, asking: 'What has come to Russett? He passed me in one of
his black fits.'

The tale of the Carlsruhe road was repeated by Potts. She reproved him.
'How could you choose Russett for such a report as that! The admiral was
on the road behind. Henrietta--you're sure it was she? German girls have
much the same colouring. The gentleman with her must have been one of the
Court equerries. They were driving to some chateau or battlefield the
admiral wanted to inspect. Good-looking man? Military man?'

'Oh! the man! pretty fair, I dare say,' Potts rejoined. 'If it wasn't
Henrietta Fakenham, I see with the back of my head. German girl! The maid
was a German girl.'

'That may well be,' said Livia.

She conceived the news to be of sufficient importance for her to
countermand the drive up the Lichtenthal, and take the Carlsruhe road
instead; for Henrietta was weak, and Chillon Kirby an arch-plotter, and
pleader too, one of the desperate lovers. He was outstaying his leave of
absence already, she believed; he had to be in England. If he feared to
lose Henrietta, he would not hesitate to carry her off. Livia knew him,
and knew the power of his pleading with a firmer woman than Henrietta.




CHAPTER XI

THE PRISONER OF HIS WORD

Nothing to rouse alarm was discovered at Carlsruhe. Livia's fair cousin
was there with the red-haired gaunt girl of the mountains; and it was
frankly stated by Henrietta, that she had accompanied the girl a certain
distance along the Strasburg road, for her to see the last of her brother
Chillon on his way to England. Livia was not the woman to push inquiries.
On that subject, she merely said, as soon as they were alone together:

'You seem to have had the lion's share of the parting.'

'Yes, we passed Mr. Chumley Potts,' was Henrietta's immediate answer; and
her reference to him disarmed Livia.

They smiled at his name transiently, but in agreement: the tattler-spout
of their set was, a fatal person to encounter, and each deemed the sudden
apparition of him in the very early morning along the Carlsruhe road
rather magical.

'You place particular confidence in Russett's fidelity to his word,
Riette--as you have been hearing yourself called. You should be serious
by this time. Russett won't bear much more. I counted on the night of the
Ball for the grand effect. You will extinguish every woman there--and if
he is absent?'

'I shall excuse him.'

'You are not in a position to be so charitable. You ought to know your
position, and yourself too, a little better than you do. How could you
endure poverty? Chillon Kirby stands in his uniform, and all's told. He
can manoeuvre, we know. He got the admiral away to take him to those
reviews cleverly. But is he thinking of your interests when he does it?
He requires twenty years of active service to give you a roof to your
head. I hate such allusions. But look for a moment at your character: you
must have ordinary luxuries and pleasures, and if you were to find
yourself grinding against common necessities--imagine it! Russett is
quite manageable. He is, trust me! He is a gentleman; he has more ability
than most young men: he can do anything he sets his mind to do. He has
his great estates and fortune all in his own hands. We call him
eccentric. He is only young, with a lot of power. Add, he's in love, and
some one distracts him. Not love, do you say?--you look it. He worships.
He has no chance given him to show himself at his best. Perhaps he is off
again now. Will you bet me he is not?'

'I should incline to make the bet, if I betted,' said Henrietta. 'His
pride is in his word, and supposing he's in love, it's with his pride,
which never quits him.'

'There's firmness in a man who has pride of that kind. You must let me
take you back to Baden. I hold to having you with me to-day. You must
make an appearance there. The admiral will bring us his Miss Kirby
to-morrow, if he is bound to remain here to-night. There's no harm in his
bachelor dinners. I suspect his twinges of gout come of the prospect of
affairs when he lands in England. Remember our bill with Madame Clemence.
There won't be the ghost of a bank-note for me if Russett quits the
field; we shall all be stranded.'

Henrietta inquired: 'Does it depend on my going with you to-day?'

'Consider, that he is now fancying a thousand things. We won't talk of
the road to Paris.'

A shot of colour swept over Henrietta.

'I will speak to papa:--if he can let me go. He has taken to Miss Kirby.'

'Does she taste well?'

Henrietta debated. 'It's impossible to dislike her. Oh! she is wild! She
knows absolutely nothing of the world. She can do everything we can't--or
don't dare to try.--Men would like her. Papa's beginning to doat. He says
she would have made a first-rate soldier. She fears blood as little as
her morning cup of milk. One of the orderlies fell rather badly from a
frightened horse close by our carriage. She was out in a moment and had
his head on her lap, calling to papa to keep the carriage fast and block
the way of the squadron, for the man's leg was hurt. I really thought we
were lost. At these manoeuvres anything may happen, at any instant. Papa
will follow the horse-artillery. You know his vanity to be a military
quite as much as a naval commander like the Greeks and Romans, he says.
We took the bruised man into our carriage and drove him to camp,
Carinthia nursing him on the way.'

'Carinthia! She's well fitted with her name. What with her name and her
hair and her build and her singular style of attire, one wonders at her
coming into civilized parts. She 's utterly unlike Chillon.'

Henrietta reddened at the mention of one of her own thoughts in the
contrasting of the pair.

They had their points of likeness, she said.

It did not concern Livia to hear what these were. Back to Baden, with
means to procure the pleasant shocks of the galvanic battery there, was
her thought; for she had a fear of the earl's having again departed in a
huff at Henrietta's behaviour.

The admiral consented that his daughter should go, as soon as he heard
that Miss Kirby was to stay. He had when a young man met her famous
father; he vowed she was the Old Buccaneer young again in petticoats and
had made prize of an English man-of-war by storm; all the profit,
however, being his. This he proved with a courteous clasp of the girl and
a show of the salute on her cheek, which he presumed to take at the
night's farewell. 'She's my tonic,' he proclaimed heartily. She seemed to
Livia somewhat unstrung and toneless. The separation from her brother in
the morning might account for it. And a man of the admiral's age could be
excused if he exalted the girl. Senility, like infancy, is fond of plain
outlines for the laying on of its paints. The girl had rugged brows, a
short nose, red hair; no young man would look at her twice. She was
utterly unlike Chillon! Kissing her hand to Henrietta from the steps of
the hotel, the girl's face improved.

Livia's little squire, Sir Meeson Corby, ejaculated as they were driving
down the main street, 'Fleetwood's tramp! There he goes. Now see, Miss
Fakenham, the kind of object Lord Fleetwood picks up and calls
friend!--calls that object friend! . . But, what? He has been to a tailor
and a barber!'

'Stop the coachman. Run, tell Mr. Woodseer I wish him to join us,' Livia
said, and Sir Meeson had to thank his tramp for a second indignity. He
protested, he simulated remonstrance,--he had to go, really feeling a
sickness.

The singular-looking person, whose necessities or sense of the decencies
had, unknown to himself and to the others, put them all in motion that
day, swung round listening to the challenge to arms, as the puffy little
man's delivery of the countess's message sounded. He was respectably
clad, he thought, in the relief of his escape from the suit of clothes
discarded, and he silently followed Sir Meeson's trot to the carriage.
'Should have mistaken you for a German to-day, sir,' the latter said, and
trotted on.

'A stout one,' Woodseer replied, with his happy indifference to his
exterior.

His dark lady's eyes were kindly overlooking, like the heavens. Her fair
cousin, to whom he bowed, awakened him to a perception of the spectacle
causing the slight, quick arrest of her look, in an astonishment not
unlike the hiccup in speech, while her act of courtesy proceeded. At once
he was conscious of the price he paid for respectability, and saw the
Teuton skin on the slim Cambrian, baggy at shoulders, baggy at seat,
pinched at the knees, short at the heels, showing outrageously every spot
where he ought to have been bigger or smaller. How accept or how reject
the invitation to drive in such company to Baden!

'You're decided enough, sir, in your play, they tell me,' the vindictive
little baronet commented on his hesitation, and Woodseer sprang to the
proffered vacant place. But he had to speak of his fly waiting for him at
the steps of a certain hotel.

'Best hotel in the town!' Sir Beeson exclaimed pointedly to Henrietta,
reading her constraint with this comical object before her. It was the
admiral's hotel they stopped at.

'Be so good as to step down and tell the admiral he is to bring Madame
Clemence in his carriage to-morrow; and on your way, you will dismiss Mr.
Woodseer's fly,' Livia mildly addressed her squire. He stared: again he
had to go, muttering: 'That nondescript's footman!' and his mischance in
being checked and crossed and humiliated perpetually by a dirty-fisted
vagabond impostor astounded him. He sent the flyman to the carriage for
orders.

Admiral Fakenham and Carinthia descended. Sir Meeson heard her cry out:
'Is it you!' and up stood the pretentious lout in the German sack,
affecting the graces of a born gentleman fresh from Paris,--bowing,
smirking, excusing himself for something; and he jumped down to the young
lady, he talked intimately with her, with a joker's air; he roused the
admiral to an exchange of jokes, and the countess and Miss Fakenham more
than smiled; evidently at his remarks, unobservant of the preposterous
figure he cut. Sir Meeson Corby had intimations of the disintegration of
his country if a patent tramp burlesquing in those clothes could be
permitted to amuse English ladies of high station, quite at home with
them. Among the signs of England's downfall, this was decidedly one. What
to think of the admiral's favourite when, having his arm paternally on
her shoulder, she gave the tramp her hand at parting, and then blushed!
All that the ladies had to say about it was, that a spread of colour
rather went to change the character of her face.

Carinthia had given Woodseer her hand and reddened under the recollection
of Chillon's words to her as they mounted the rise of the narrow vale,
after leaving the lame gentleman to his tobacco on the grass below the
rocks. Her brother might have counselled her wisely and was to be obeyed.
Only, the great pleasure in seeing the gentleman again inspired
gratitude: he brought the scene to her; and it was alive, it chatted and
it beckoned; it neighboured her home; she had passed it on her walk away
from her home; the gentleman was her link to the mountain paths; he was
just outside an association with her father and mother. At least, her
thinking of them led to him, he to them. Now that she had lost Chillon,
no one was near to do so much. Besides, Chillon loved Henrietta; he was
her own. His heart was hers and his mind his country's. This gentleman
loved the mountains; the sight of him breathed mountain air. To see him
next day was her anticipation: for it would be at the skirts of hilly
forest land, where pinetrees are a noble family, different from the dusty
firs of the weariful plains, which had tired her eyes of late.

Baden was her first peep at the edges of the world since she had grown to
be a young woman. She had but a faint idea of the significance of
gambling. The brilliant lights, the band music, the sitting groups and
company of promenaders were novelties; the Ball of the ensuing night at
the Schloss would be a wonder, she acknowledged in response to Henrietta,
who was trying to understand her; and she admired her ball-dress, she
said, looking unintelligently when she heard that she would be guilty of
slaying numbers of gentlemen before the night was over. Madame Clemence
thought her chances in that respect as good as any other young lady's, if
only she could be got to feel interested. But at a word of the pine
forest, and saying she intended to climb the hills early with the light
in the morning, a pointed eagerness flushed Carinthia, the cold engraving
became a picture of colour.

She was out with the earliest light. Yesterday's parting between Chillon
and Henrietta had taught her to know some little about love; and if her
voice had been heeded by Chillon's beloved, it would not have been a
parting. Her only success was to bring a flood of tears from Henrietta.
The tears at least assured her that her brother's beautiful girl had no
love for the other one,--the young nobleman of the great wealth, who was
to be at the Ball, and had 'gone flying,' Admiral Fakenham shrugged to
say; for Lord Fleetwood was nowhere seen.

The much talk of him on the promenade overnight fetched his name to her
thoughts; he scarcely touched a mind that her father filled when she was
once again breathing early morning air among the stems of climbing pines,
broken alleys of the low-sweeping spruce branches and the bare straight
shafts carrying their heads high in the march upward. Her old father was
arch-priest of such forest land, always recoverable to her there. The
suggestion of mountains was enough to make her mind play, and her old
father and she were aware of one another without conversing in speech. He
pointed at things to observe; he shared her satisfied hunger for the
solitudes of the dumb and growing and wild sweet-smelling. He would not
let a sorrowful thought backward or an apprehensive idea forward disturb
the scene. A half-uprooted pine-tree stem propped mid-fall by standing
comrades, and the downy drop to ground and muted scurry up the bark of
long-brush squirrels, cocktail on the wary watch, were noticed by him as
well as by her; even the rotting timber drift, bark and cones on the
yellow pine needles, and the tortuous dwarf chestnut pushing level out,
with a strain of the head up, from a crevice of mossed rock, among ivy
and ferns; he saw what his girl saw. Power of heart was her conjuring
magician.

She climbed to the rock-slabs above. This was too easily done. The poor
bit of effort excited her frame to desire a spice of danger, her walk was
towering in the physical contempt of a mountain girl for petty lowland
obstructions. And it was just then, by the chance of things--by the
direction of events, as Dame Gossip believes it to be--while colour,
expression, and her proud stature marked her from her sex, that a
gentleman, who was no other than Lord Fleetwood, passed Carinthia, coming
out of the deeper pine forest.

Some distance on, round a bend of the path, she was tempted to adventure
by a projected forked head of a sturdy blunted and twisted little
rock-fostered forest tree pushing horizontally for growth about thirty
feet above the lower ground. She looked on it, and took a step down to
the stem soon after.

Fleetwood had turned and followed, merely for the final curious peep at
an unexpected vision; he had noticed the singular shoot of thick timber
from the rock, and the form of the goose-neck it rose to, the sprout of
branches off the bill in the shape of a crest. And now a shameful spasm
of terror seized him at sight of a girl doing what he would have dreaded
to attempt. She footed coolly, well-balanced, upright. She seated
herself.

And there let her be. She was a German girl, apparently. She had an air
of breeding, something more than breeding. German families of the nobles
give out, here and there, as the Great War showed examples of, intrepid
young women, who have the sharp lines of character to render them
independent of the graces. But, if a young woman out alone in the woods
was hardly to be counted among the well-born, she held rank above them.
Her face and bearing might really be taken to symbolize the forest life.
She was as individual a representative as the Tragic and Comic masks, and
should be got to stand between them for sign of the naturally
straight-growing untrained, a noble daughter of the woods.

Not comparable to Henrietta in feminine beauty, she was on an upper
plateau, where questions as to beauty are answered by other than the
shallow aspect of a girl. But would Henrietta eclipse her if they were
side by side? Fleetwood recalled the strange girl's face. There was in it
a savage poignancy in serenity unexampled among women--or modern women.
One might imagine an apotheosis of a militant young princess of Goths or
Vandals, the glow of blessedness awakening her martial ardours through
the languor of the grave:--Woodseer would comprehend and hit on the exact
image to portray her in a moment, Fleetwood thought, and longed for that
fellow.

He walked hurriedly back to the stunted rock tree. The damsel had
vanished. He glanced below. She had not fallen. He longed to tell
Woodseer he had seen a sort of Carinthia sister, cousin, one of the
family. A single glimpse of her had raised him out of his grovelling
perturbations, cooled and strengthened him, more than diverting the
course of the poison Henrietta infused, and to which it disgraced him to
be so subject. He took love unmanfully; the passion struck at his
weakness; in wrath at the humiliation, if only to revenge himself for
that, he could be fiendish; he knew it, and loathed the desired fair
creature who caused and exposed to him these cracks in his nature, whence
there came a brimstone stench of the infernal pits. And he was made for
better. Of this he was right well assured. Superior to station and to
wealth, to all mundane advantages, he was the puppet of a florid puppet
girl; and he had slept at the small inn of a village hard by, because it
was intolerable to him to see the face that had been tearful over her
lover's departure, and hear her praises of the man she trusted to keep
his word, however grievously she wounded him.

He was the prisoner of his word;--rather like the donkeys known as
married men: rather more honourable than most of them. He had to be
present at the ball at the Schloss and behold his loathed Henrietta,
suffer torture of chains to the rack, by reason of his having promised
the bitter coquette he would be there. So hellish did the misery seem to
him, that he was relieved by the prospect of lying a whole day long in
loneliness with the sunshine of the woods, occasionally conjuring up the
antidote face of the wood-sprite before he was to undergo it. But, as he
was not by nature a dreamer, only dreamed of the luxury of being one, he
soon looked back with loathing on a notion of relief to come from the
state of ruminating animal, and jumped up and shook off another of men's
delusions--that they can, if they have the heart to suffer pain, deaden
it with any semi-poetical devices, similar to those which Rufus Abrane's
'fiddler fellow' practised and was able to carry out because he had no
blood. The spite of a present entire opposition to Woodseer's professed
views made him exult in the thought, that the mouther of sentences was
likely to be at work stultifying them and himself in the halls there
below during the day. An imp of mischief offered consolatory sport in
those halls of the Black Goddess; already he regarded his recent
subservience to the conceited and tripped peripatetic philosopher as
among the ignominies he had cast away on his road to a general contempt;
which is the position of a supreme elevation for particularly sensitive
young men.

Pleasure in the scenery had gone, and the wood-sprite was a flitted
vapour; he longed to be below there, observing Abrane and Potts and the
philosopher confounded, and the legible placidity of Countess Livia.
Nevertheless, he hung aloft, feeding where he could, impatient of the
solitudes, till night, when, according to his guess, the ladies were at
their robing.

Half the fun was over: but the tale of it, narrated in turn by Abrane and
his Chummy Potts on the promenade, was a very good half. The fiddler had
played for the countess and handed her back her empty purse, with a bow
and a pretty speech. Nothing had been seen of him since. He had lost all
his own money besides. 'As of course he would,' said Potts. 'A fellow
calculating the chances catches at a knife in the air.'

'Every franc-piece he had!' cried Abrane. 'And how could the jackass
expect to keep his luck! Flings off his old suit and comes back here with
a rig of German bags--you never saw such a figure!--Shoreditch Jew's
holiday!--why, of course, the luck wouldn't stand that.'

They confessed ruefully to having backed him a certain distance,
notwithstanding. 'He took it so coolly, just as if paying for goods
across a counter.'

'And he had something to bear, Braney, when you fell on him,' said Potts,
and murmured aside: 'He can be smartish. Hears me call Braney Rufus, and
says he, like a fellow-chin on his fiddle--"Captain Mountain, Rufus Mus'.
Not bad, for a counter."'

Fleetwood glanced round: he could have wrung Woodseer's hand. He saw
young Cressett instead, and hailed him: 'Here you are, my gallant! You
shall flash your maiden sword tonight. When I was under your age by a
long count, I dealt sanctimoniousness a flick o' the cheek, and you
shall, and let 'em know you're a man. Come and have your first boar-hunt
along with me. Petticoats be hanged.'

The boy showed some recollection of the lectures of his queen, but he had
not the vocables for resistance to an imperative senior at work upon
sneaking inclinations. 'Promised Lady F.'--do you hear him?' Fleetwood
called to the couple behind; and as gamblers must needs be parasites,
manly were the things they spoke to invigorate the youthful plunger and
second the whim of their paymaster.

At half-past eleven, the prisoner of his word entered under the Schloss
partico, having vowed to himself on the way, that he would satisfy the
formulas to gain release by a deferential bow to the great personages,
and straightway slip out into the heavenly starlight, thence down among
the jolly Parisian and Viennese Bacchanals.




CHAPTER XII

HENRIETTA'S LETTER TREATING OF THE GREAT EVENT

By the first light of an autumn morning, Henrietta sat at her
travelling-desk, to shoot a spark into the breast of her lover with the
story of the great event of the night. For there had been one, one of our
biggest, beyond all tongues and trumpets and possible anticipations.
Wonder at it hammered on incredulity as she wrote it for fact, and in
writing had vision of her lover's eyes over the page.

'Monsieur Du Lac!

'Grey Dawn. 'You are greeted. This, if you have been tardy on the journey
home, will follow close on the heels of the prowest, I believe truest, of
knights, and bear perhaps to his quick mind some help to the solution he
dropped a hint of seeking.

'The Ball in every way a success. Grand Duke and Duchess perfect in
courtesy, not a sign of the German morgue. Livia splendid. Compared to
Day and Night. But the Night eclipses the Day. A summer sea of dancing.
Who, think you, eclipsed those two?

'I tell you the very truth when I say your Carinthia did. If you had seen
her,--the "poor dear girl" you sigh to speak of,--with the doleful
outlook on her fortunes: "portionless, unattractive!" Chillon, she was
magical!

You cannot ever have seen her irradiated with happiness. Her pleasure in
the happiness of all around her was part of the charm. One should be a
poet to describe her. It would task an artist to paint the rose-crystal
she became when threading her way through the groups to be presented.
This is not meant to say that she looked beautiful. It was the something
above beauty--more unique and impressive--like the Alpine snow-cloak
towering up from the flowery slopes you know so well and I a little.

'You choose to think, is it Riette who noticed my simple sister so
closely before . . . ? for I suppose you to be reading this letter a
second time and reflecting as you read. In the first place, acquaintance
with her has revealed that she is not the simple person--only in her
manner. Under the beams of subsequent events, it is true I see her more
picturesquely. But I noticed also just a suspicion of the "grenadier"
stride when she was on the march to make her curtsey. But Livia had no
cause for chills and quivers. She was not the very strange bird requiring
explanatory excuses; she dances excellently, and after the first dance, I
noticed she minced her steps in the walk with her partner. She catches
the tone readily. If not the image of her mother, she has inherited her
mother's bent for the graces; she needs but a small amount of practice.

'Take my assurance of that; and you know who has critical eyes. Your
anxiety may rest; she is equal to any station.

'As expected by me, my Lord Tyrant appeared, though late, near midnight.
I saw him bowing to the Ducal party. Papa had led your "simple sister"
there. Next I saw the Tyrant and Carinthia conversing. Soon they were
dancing together, talking interestedly, like cheerful comrades. Whatever
his faults, he has the merit of being a man of his word. He said he would
come, he did not wish to come, and he came.

'His word binds him--I hope not fatally; irrevocably, it certainly does.
There is charm of character in that. His autocrat airs can be forgiven to
a man who so profoundly respects his word.

'It occurred during their third dance. Your Riette was not in the
quadrille. O but she was a snubbed young woman last night! I refrain--the
examples are too minute for quotation.

'A little later and he had vanished. Carinthia Kirby may already be
written Countess of Fleetwood! His hand was offered and hers demanded in
plain terms. Her brother would not be so astounded if he had seen the
brilliant creature she was--is, I could say; for when she left me here,
to go to her bed, she still wore the "afterglow." She tripped over to me
in the ball-room to tell me. I might doubt, she had no doubt whatever. I
fancied he had subjected her to some degree of trifling. He was in a
mood. His moods are known to me. But no, he was precise; her report of
him strikes the ear as credible, in spite of the marvel it insists on our
swallowing.

"'Lord Fleetwood had asked me to marry him." Neither assurance nor
bashfulness; newspaper print; aid an undoubting air of contentment.

'Imagine me hearing it.

'"To be his wife?"

'"He said wife."

'"And you replied?"

'"I--said I would."

'"Tell me all?"

'"He said we were plighted."

'Now, "wife" is one of the words he abhors; and he loathes the hearing of
a girl as "engaged." However, "plighted" carried a likeness.

'I pressed her: "My dear Carinthia, you thought him in earnest?"

'"He was."

'"How do you judge?"

'"By his look when he spoke."

'"Not by his words?"

"'I repeat them to you."

'She has repeated them to me here in my bedroom. There is no variation.
She remembers every syllable. He went so far as to urge her to say
whether she would as willingly utter consent if they were in a church and
a clergyman at the altar-rails.

'That was like him.

'She made answer: "Wherever it may be, I am bound, if I say yes."

'She then adds: "He told me he joined hands with me."

'"Did he repeat the word 'wife'?"

'"He said it twice."

'I transcribe verbatim scrupulously. There cannot be an error, Chillon.
It seems to show, that he has embraced the serious meaning of the
word--or seriously embraced the meaning, reads' better. I have seen his
lips form "wife."

'But why wonder so staringly? They both love the mountains. Both are
wildish. She was looking superb. And he had seen her do a daring thing on
the rocks on the heights in the early morning, when she was out by
herself, unaware of a spectator, he not knowing who she was;--the Fates
had arranged it so. That was why he took to her so rapidly. So he told
her. She likes being admired. The preparation for the meeting does really
seem "under direction." She likes him too, I do think. Between her
repetitions of his compliments, she praised his tone of voice, his
features. She is ready to have the fullest faith in the sincerity of his
offer; speaks without any impatience for the fulfilment. If it should
happen, what a change in the fortunes of a girl--of more than one,
possibly.

'Now I must rest "eyelids fall." It will be with a heart galloping. No
rest for me till this letter flies. Good morning is my good night to you,
in a world that has turned over.'

Henrietta resumes:

'Livia will not hear of it, calls up all her pretty languor to put it
aside. It is the same to-day as last night. "Why mention Russett's
nonsense to me?" Carinthia is as quietly circumstantial as at first. She
and the Tyrant talked of her native home. Very desirous to see it! means
to build a mansion there! "He said it must be the most romantic place on
earth."

'I suppose I slept. I woke with my last line to you on my lips, and the
great news thundering. He named Esslemont and his favourite--always
uninhabited--Cader Argau. She speaks them correctly. She has an unfailing
memory. The point is, that it is a memory.

'Do not forget also--Livia is affected by her distaste--that he is a
gentleman. He plays with his nobility. With his reputation of gentleman,
he has never been known to play. You will understand the slightly
hypocritical air--it is not of sufficient importance for it to be alluded
to in papa's presence--I put on with her.

'Yes, I danced nearly all the dances. One, a princeling in scarlet
uniform, appearing fresh from under earth; Prussian: a weighty young Graf
in green, between sage and bottle, who seemed to have run off a tree in
the forest, and was trimmed with silver like dew-drops: one in your
Austrian white, dragon de Boheme, if I caught his French rightly. Others
as well, a list. They have the accomplishment. They are drilled in it
young, as girls are, and so few Englishmen--even English officers. How it
may be for campaigning, you can pronounce; but for dancing, the pantalon
collant is the perfect uniform. Your critical Henrietta had not to
complain of her partners, in the absence of the one.

'I shall be haunted by visions of Chillon's amazement until I hear or we
meet. I serve for Carinthia's mouthpiece, she cannot write it, she says.
It would be related in two copybook lines, if at all.

'The amazement over London! The jewel hand of the kingdom gone in a
flash, to "a raw mountain girl," as will be said. I can hear Lady Endor,
Lady Eldritch, Lady Cowry. The reasonable woman should be Lady Arpington.
I have heard her speak of your mother, seen by her when she was in
frocks.

'Enter the "plighted." Poor Livia! to be made a dowager of by any but a
damsel of the family. She may well ridicule "that nonsense of Russett's
last night"! Carinthia kisses, embraces, her brother. I am to say: "What
Henrietta tells you is true, Chillon." She is contented though she has
not seen him again and has not the look of expecting to see him. She
still wears the kind of afterglow.

'Chillon's Viennese waltz was played by the band: played a second time,
special request, conveyed to the leader by Prince Ferdinand. True, most
true, she longs to be home across the water. But be it admitted, that to
any one loving colour, music, chivalry, the Island of Drab is an exile.
Imagine, then, the strange magnetism drawing her there! Could warmer
proof be given?

'Adieu. Livia's "arch-plotter" will weigh the letter he reads to the
smallest fraction of a fraction before he moves a step.

'I could leave it and come to it again and add and add. I foresee in
Livia's mind a dread of the aforesaid "arch," and an interdict. So the
letter must be closed, sealed and into the box, with the hand I still
call mine, though I should doubt my right if it were contested fervently.
I am singing the waltz.

     'Adieu,
          'Ever and beyond it,
               'Your obedient Queen,
                        'HENRIETTA.

'P.S.-My Lord Tyrant has departed--as on other occasions. The prisoner of
his word is sure to take his airing before he presents himself to redeem
it. His valet is left to pay bills, fortunately for Livia. She entrusted
her purse yesterday to a man picked up on the road by my lord, that he
might play for her. Captain Abrane assured her he had a star, and Mr.
Potts thought him a rush compere, an adept of those dreadful gambling
tables. Why will she continue to play! The purse was returned to her,
without so much as a piece of silver in it; the man has flown. Sir M.
Corby says, he is a man whose hands betray him--or did to Sir M.; expects
to see him one day on the wrong side of the criminal bar. He struck me as
not being worse than absurd. He was, in any case, an unfit companion, and
our C. would help to rescue the Eccentric from such complicating
associates. I see worlds of good she may do. Happily, he is no slave of
the vice of gambling; so she would not suffer that anxiety. I wish it
could be subjoined, that he has no malicious pleasure in misleading
others. Livia is inconsolable over her pet, young Lord Cressett, whom he
yesterday induced to "try his luck"--with the result. We leave, if bills
are paid, in two days. Captain Abrane and Mr. Potts left this afternoon;
just enough to carry them home. Papa and your blissful sister out
driving. Riette within her four walls and signing herself,

             'THE PRISONER OF CHILLON.'




CHAPTER XIII

AN IRRUPTION. OF MISTRESS GOSSIP IN BREACH OF THE CONVENTION

'It is a dark land,' Carinthia said, on seeing our Island's lowered
clouds in swift motion, without a break of their folds, above the sheer
white cliffs.

--She said it, we know. That poor child Carinthia Jane, when first she
beheld Old England's shores, tossing in the packet-boat on a wild Channel
sea, did say it and think it, for it is in the family that she did; and
no wonder that she should, the day being showery from the bed of the sun,
after a frosty three days, at the close of autumn. We used to have an eye
of our own for English weather before printed Meteorological Observations
and Forecasts undertook to supplant the shepherd and the poacher, and the
pilot with his worn brown leather telescope tucked beneath his arm. All
three would have told you, that the end of a three days' frost in the
late season of the year and the early, is likely to draw the warm winds
from the Atlantic over Cornish Land's End and Lizard.

Quite by chance of things, Carinthia Jane looked on the land of her
father and mother for the first time under those conditions. There can be
no harm in quoting her remark. Only--I have to say it--experience causes
apprehension, that we are again to be delayed by descriptions, and an
exposition of feelings; taken for granted,--of course, in a serious
narrative; which it really seems these moderns think designed for a
frequent arrest of the actors in the story and a searching of the
internal state of this one or that one of them: who is laid out stark
naked and probed and expounded, like as in the celebrated picture by a
great painter--and we, thirsting for events as we are, are to stop to
enjoy a lecture on Anatomy. And all the while the windows of the
lecture-room are rattling, if not the whole fabric shaking, with exterior
occurrences or impatience for them to come to pass. Every explanation is
sure to be offered by the course events may take; so do, in mercy, I say,
let us bide for them.

She thought our Island all the darker because Henrietta had induced her
to talk on the boat of her mountain home and her last morning there for
the walk away with Chillon John. Soon it was to appear supernaturally
bright, a very magician's cave for brilliancy.

Now, this had happened--and comment on it to yourselves, remembering
always, that Chillon John was a lover, and a lover has his excuses,
though they will not obviate the penalties he may incur; and dreadful
they were. After reading Henrietta's letter to him, he rode out of his
Canterbury quarters across the country to the borders of Sussex, where
his uncle Lord Levellier lived, on the ridge of ironstone, near the wild
land of a forest, Croridge the name of the place. Now, Chillon John knew
his uncle was miserly, and dreaded the prospect of having to support a
niece in the wretched establishment at Lekkatts, or, as it was popularly
called, Leancats; you can understand why. But he managed to assure
himself he must in duty consult with the senior and chief member of .his
family on a subject of such importance as the proposal of marriage to his
lordship's niece.

The consultation was short: 'You will leave it to me,' his uncle said:
and we hear of business affairs between them, involving payment of moneys
due to the young man; and how, whenever he touched on them, his uncle
immediately fell back on the honour of the family and Carinthia Jane's
reputation, her good name to be vindicated, and especially that there
must be no delays, together with as close a reckoning as he could make of
the value of Lord Fleetwood's estates in Kent and in Staffordshire and
South Wales, and his house property in London.

'He will have means to support her,' said the old lord, shrugging as if
at his own incapacity for that burden.

The two then went to the workshops beside a large pond, where there was
an island bordered with birch trees and workmen's cottages near the main
building; and that was an arsenal containing every kind of sword and
lance and musket, rifle and fowling-piece and pistol, and more gunpowder
than was, I believe, allowed by law. For they were engaged in inventing a
new powder for howitzer shells, of tremendous explosive power.

Nothing further did either of them say, concerning the marriage. Nor did
Carinthia Jane hear any mention of Lord Fleetwood from her brother on the
landingplace at Dover. She was taken to Admiral Baldwin Fakenham's house
in Hampshire; and there she remained, the delight of his life, during two
months, patiently expecting and rebuking the unmaidenliness of her
expectations, as honest young women in her position used to do. So did
they sometimes wait for years; they have waited until they withered into
their graves, like the vapours of a brief winter's day: a moving picture
of a sex restrained by modesty in those purer times from the taking of
one step forward unless inquired for.

Two months she waited in our 'dark land.' January arrived, and her
brother. Henrietta communicated the news:

'My Janey, you are asked by Lord Fleetwood whether it is your wish that
he should marry you.'

Now, usually a well-born young woman's answer, if a willing one, is an
example of weak translation. Here it was the heart's native tongue,
without any roundabout, simple but direct.

'Oh, I will, I am ready, tell him.'

Remember, she was not speaking publicly.

Henrietta knew the man enough to be glad he did not hear. She herself
would have felt a little shock on his behalf: only, that answer suited
the scheme of the pair of lovers.

How far those two were innocent in not delivering the whole of Lord
Fleetwood's message to Carinthia Jane through Lord Levellier, we are
unable to learn. We may suspect the miserly nobleman of curtailing it for
his purposes; and such is my idea. But the answer would have been the
same, I am sure.

In consequence and straight away, Chillon John betakes him to Admiral
Baldwin and informs him of Lord Fleetwood's proposal on the night at
Baden, and renewal of it through the mouth of Lord Levellier, not
communicating, however (he may really not have known), the story of how
it had been wrung from the earl by a surprise movement on the part of the
one-armed old lord, who burst out on him in the street from the ambush of
a Club-window, where he had been stationed every day for a fortnight,
indefatigably to watch for the passing of the earl, as there seemed no
other way to find him. They say, indeed, there was a scene, judging by
the result, and it would have been an excellent scene for the stage;
though the two noblemen were to all appearance politely exchanging their
remarks. But the audience hearing what passes, appreciates the courteous
restraint of an attitude so contrasting with their tempers. Behind the
ostentation of civility, their words were daggers.

For it chanced, that the young earl, after a period of refuge at his
Welsh castle, supposing, as he well might, that his latest mad freak of
the proposal of his hand and title to the strange girl in a quadrille at
a foreign castle had been forgotten by her, and the risks of annoyance on
the subject had quite blown over, returned to town, happy in having done
the penance for his impulsiveness, and got clean again--that is to say,
struck off his fetters and escaped from importunities--the very morning
of the day when Lord Levellier sprang upon him! It shows the old
campaigner's shrewdness in guessing where his prey would come, and not
putting him on his guard by a call at his house. Out of the window he
looked for all the hours of light during an entire fortnight. 'In the
service of my sister's child,' he said. 'To save him from the cost of
maintaining her,' say his enemies. At any rate he did it.

He was likely to have done the worse which I suspect.

Now, the imparting of the wonderful news to Admiral Baldwin Fakenham was,
we read, the whiff of a tropical squall to lay him on his beam ends. He
could not but doubt; and his talk was like the sails of a big ship
rattling to the first puff of wind. He had to believe; and then, we read,
he was for hours like a vessel rolling in the trough of the sea. Of
course he was a disappointed father. Naturally his glance at the loss to
Henrietta of the greatest prize of the matrimonial market of all Europe
and America was vexing and saddening. Then he woke up to think of the
fortunes of his 'other girl,' as he named her, and cried: 'Crinny catches
him!'

He cried it in glee and rubbed his hands.

So thereupon, standing before him, Chillon John, from whom he had the
news, bent to him slightly, as his elegant manner was, and lengthened the
admiral's chaps with another proposal; easy, deliberate, precise, quite
the respectful bandit, if you please, determined on having his daughter
by all means, only much preferring the legal, formal, and friendly. Upon
that, in the moment of indecision, Henrietta enters, followed by Admiral
Baldwin's heroine, his Crinny, whom he embraced and kissed, congratulated
and kissed again. One sees the contrivance to soften him.

So it was done, down in that Hampshire household on the heights near the
downs, whence you might behold, off a terra firma resembling a roll of
billows, England's big battle-ships in line fronting the island; when
they were a spectacle of beauty as well as power: which now they are no
more, but will have to be, if they are both to float and to fight. For I
have, had quoted to me by a great admirer of the Old Buccaneer, one of
the dark sayings in his MAXIMS FOR MEN, where Captain John Peter Kirby
commends his fellow-men to dissatisfaction with themselves if they have
not put an end to their enemy handsomely.. And he advises the copying of
Nature in this; whose elements have always, he says, a pretty, besides a
thorough, style of doing it, when they get the better of us; and the one
by reason of the other. He instances the horse, the yacht, and chiefly
the sword, for proof, that the handsomest is the most effective. And he
prints large: 'UGLY IS ONLY HALF WAY TO A THING.' To an invention, I
suppose he intends to say. But looking on our huge foundering
sea-monsters and the disappearance of the unwieldy in Nature, and the
countenances of criminals, who are, he bids us observe, always in the
long run beaten, I seem to see a meaning our country might meditate on.

So, as I said, it was done; for Admiral Baldwin could refuse his Crinny
nothing; as little as he would deny anything to himself, the heartiest of
kindly hosts, fathers, friends. Carinthia Jane's grand good fortune
covered that pit, the question of money, somehow, and was, we may
conceive, a champagne wine in their reasoning faculties. The admiral was
in debt, Henrietta had no heritage, Chillon John was the heir of a
miserly uncle owing him sums and evading every application for them, yet
they behaved as people who had the cup of golden wishes. Perhaps it was
because Henrietta and her lover were so handsome a match as to make it
seem to them and others they must marry; and as to character, her father
could trust her to the man of her choice more readily than to the wealthy
young nobleman; of whose discreetness he had not the highest opinion. He
reconciled this view with his warm feeling for the Countess of Fleetwood
to be, by saying: 'Crinny will tame him!' His faith was in her dauntless
bold spirit, not thinking of the animal she was to tame.

Countess Livia, after receiving Henrietta's letter of information,
descended on them and thought them each and all a crazed set. Love, as a
motive of action for a woman, she considered the female's lunacy and
suicide. Men are born subject to it, happily, and thus the balance
between the lordly half of creation and the frail is rectified. We women
dress, and smile, sigh, if you like, to excite the malady. But if we are
the fools to share it, we lose our chance; instead of the queens, we are
the slaves, and instead of a life of pleasure, we pass from fever to
fever at a tyrant's caprice: he does rightly in despising us. Ay, and
many a worthy woman thinks the same. Educated in dependency as they are,
they come to the idea of love to snatch at it for their weapon of the
man's weakness. For which my lord calls them heartless, and poets are
angry with them, rightly or wrongly.

It must, I fear, be admitted for a truth, that sorrow is the portion of
young women who give the full measure of love to the engagement, marrying
for love. At least, Countess Livia could declare subsequently she had
foretold it and warned her cousin. Not another reflection do you hear
from me, if I must pay forfeit of my privilege to hurry you on past
descriptions of places and anatomy of character and impertinent talk
about philosophy in a story. When we are startled and offended by the
insinuated tracing of principal incidents to a thread-bare spot in the
nether garments of a man of no significance, I lose patience.

Henrietta's case was a secondary affair. What with her passion--it was
nothing less--and her lover's cunning arts, and her father's consent
given, and in truth the look of the two together, the dissuasion of them
from union was as likely to keep them apart as an exhortation addressed
to magnet and needle. Countess Livia attacked Carinthia Jane and the
admiral backing her. But the admiral, having given his consent to his
daughter's marriage, in consequence of the earl's pledged word to 'his
other girl,' had become a zealot for this marriage and there was only not
a grand altercation on the subject because Livia shunned annoyances.
Alone with Carinthia Jane, as she reported to Henrietta, she spoke to a
block, that shook a head and wore a thin smile and nursed its own idea of
the better knowledge of Edward Russett, Earl of Fleetwood, gained in the
run of a silly quadrille at a ball:

What is a young man's word to his partner in a quadrille?

Livia put the question, she put it twice rather sternly, and the girl
came out with: 'Oh, he meant it!'

The nature, the pride, the shifty and furious moods of Lord Fleetwood
were painted frightful to her.

She had conceived her own image of him.

Whether to set her down as an enamoured idiot or a creature not a whit
less artful than her brother, was Countess Livia's debate. Her
inclination was to misdoubt the daughter of the Old Buccaneer: she might
be simple, at her age, and she certainly was ignorant; but she clung to
her prize. Still the promise was extracted from her, that she would not
worry the earl to fulfil the word she supposed him to mean in its full
meaning.

The promise was unreluctantly yielded. No, she would not write. Admiral
Fakenham, too, engaged to leave the matter to a man of honour.

Meanwhile, Chillon John had taken a journey to Lekkatts; following which,
his uncle went to London. Lord Fleetwood heard that Miss Kirby kept him
bound. He was again the fated prisoner of his word.

And following that, not so very long, there was the announcement of the
marriage of Chillon John Kirby Levellier, Lieutenant in the King's Own
Hussars, and Henrietta, daughter of Admiral Baldwin Fakenham. A county
newspaper paragraph was quoted for its eulogy of the Beauty of
Hampshire--not too strong, those acquainted with her thought. Interest at
Court obtained an advancement for the bridegroom: he was gazetted Captain
during his honeymoon, and his prospects under his uncle's name were
considerd fair, though certain people said at the time, it was likely to
be all he would get while old Lord Levellier of Leancats remained in the
flesh.

Now, as it is good for those to tell who intend preserving their taste
for romance and hate anatomical lectures, we never can come to the exact
motives of any extraordinary piece of conduct on the part of man or
woman. Girls are to read; and the study of a boy starts from the monkey.
But no literary surgeon or chemist shall explain positively the cause of
the behaviour of men and women in their relations together; and speaking
to rescue my story, I say we must with due submission accept the facts.
We are not a bit the worse for wondering at them. So it happened that
Lord Fleetwood's reply to Lord Levellier's hammer--hammer by post and
messenger at his door, one may call it, on the subject of the celebration
of the marriage of the young Croesus and Carinthia Jane, in which there
was demand for the fixing of a date forthwith, was despatched on the day
when London had tidings of Henrietta Pakenham's wedding.

The letter, lost for many years, turned up in the hands of a Kentish
auctioneer, selling it on behalf of a farm-serving man, who had it from
Lord Levellier's cook and housemaid, among the things she brought him as
her wifely portion after her master's death, and this she had not found
saleable in her husband's village at her price, but she had got the habit
of sticking to the scraps, being proud of hearing it said that she had
skinned Leancats to some profit: and her expectation proved correct after
her own demise, for her husband putting it up at the auction; our
relative on the mother's side, Dr. Glossop, interested in the documents
and particulars of the story as he was, had it knocked down to him, in
contest with an agent of a London gentleman, going as high as two pounds
ten shillings, for the sum of two pounds and fifteen shillings. Count the
amount that makes for each word of a letter a marvel of brevity,
considering the purport! But Dr. Glossop was right in saying he had it
cheap. The value of that letter may now be multiplied by ten: nor for
that sum would he part with it.

Thus it ran, I need not refer to it in Bundle No. 3:

   'MY LORD: I drive to your church-door on the fourteenth of the month
   at ten A.M., to keep my appointment with Miss C. J. Kirby, if I do
   not blunder the initials.
             'Your lordship's obedient servant,
                            'FLEETWOOD.'

That letter will ever be a treasured family possession with us.

That letter was dated from Lord Fleetwood's Kentish mansion, Esslemont,
the tenth of the month. He must have quitted London for Esslemont, for
change of scene, for air, the moment after the news of Henrietta's
marriage. Carinthia Jane received the summons without transmission of the
letter from her uncle on the morning of the twelfth. It was a peremptory
summons.

Unfortunately, Admiral Fakenham, a real knight and chevalier of those
past times, would not let her mount the downs to have her farewell view
of the big ships unaccompanied by him; and partly and largely in pure
chivalry, no doubt; but her young idea of England's grandeur, as shown in
her great vessels of war, thrilled him, too, and restored his youthful
enthusiasm for his noble profession or made it effervesce. However it
was, he rode beside her and rejoiced to hear the young girl's talk of her
father as a captain of one of England's thunderers, and of the cruelty of
that Admiralty to him: at which Admiral Baldwin laughed, but had not the
heart to disagree with her, for he could belabour the Admiralty in
season, cause or no cause. Altogether he much enjoyed the ride,
notwithstanding intimations of the approach of 'his visitor,' as he
called his attacks of gout.

Riding home, however, the couple passed through a heavy rainfall, and the
next day, when he was to drive with the bride to Lekkatts, gout, the
fiercest he had ever known, chained him fast to his bed. Such are the
petty accidents affecting circumstances. They are the instruments of
Destiny.

There he lay, protesting that the ceremony could not possibly be for the
fourteenth, because Countess Livia had, he now remembered, written of her
engagement to meet Russett on the night of that day at a ball at Mrs.
Cowper Quillett's place, Canleys, lying south of the Surrey hills: a
house famed for its gatherings of beautiful women; whither Lord Fleetwood
would be sure to engage to go, the admiral now said; and it racked him
like gout in his mind, and perhaps troubled his conscience about handing
the girl to such a young man. But he was lying on his back, the posture
for memory to play the fiend with us, as we read in the BOOK of MAXIMS of
the Old Buccaneer. Admiral Baldwin wished heartily to be present at his
Crinny's wedding 'to see her launched,' if wedding it was to be, and he
vowed the date of the fourteenth, in Lord Levellier's announcement of it,
must be an error and might be a month in advance, and ought to be. But it
was sheer talking and raving for a solace to his disappointment or his
anxiety. He had to let Carinthia Jane depart under the charge of his
housekeeper, Mrs. Carthew, a staid excellent lady, poorly gifted with
observation.

Her report of the performance of the ceremony at Croridge village church,
a half mile from Lekkatts, was highly reassuring to the anxious old
admiral still lying on his back with memory and gout at their fiend's
play, and livid forecasts hovering. He had recollected that there had
been no allusion in Lord Levellier's message to settlements or any
lawyer's preliminaries, and he raged at himself for having to own it
would have been the first of questions on behalf of his daughter.

'All passed off correctly,' Mrs. Carthew said. 'The responses of the
bride and bridegroom were particularly articulate.'

She was reserved upon the question of the hospitality of Lekkatts. The
place had entertained her during her necessitated residence there, and
honour forbade her to smile concordantly at the rosy admiral's mention of
Leancats. She took occasion, however, to praise the Earl of Fleetwood's
eminently provident considerateness for his bride, inasmuch as he had
packed a hamper in his vehicle, which was a four-in-hand, driven by
himself.

Admiral Baldwin inquired: 'Bride inside?'

He was informed: 'The Countess of Fleetwood sat on the box on the left of
my lord.'

She had made no moan about the absence of bridesmaids.

'She appeared too profoundly happy to meditate an instant upon
deficiencies.'

'How did the bridegroom behave?'

'Lord Fleetwood was very methodical. He is not, or was not, voluntarily a
talker.'

'Blue coat, brass buttons, hot-house flower? old style or new?'

'His lordship wore a rather low beaver and a buttoned white overcoat, not
out of harmony with the bride's plain travelling-dress.'

'Ah! he's a good whip, men say. Keeps first-rate stables, hacks, and
bloods. Esslemont hard by will be the place for their honeymoon, I guess.
And he's a lucky dog, if he knows his luck.'

So said Admiral Baldwin. He was proceeding to say more, for he had a
prodigious opinion of the young countess and the benefit of her marriage
to the British race. As it concerned a healthy constitution and
motherhood, Mrs. Carthew coughed and retired. Nor do I reprove either of
them. The speculation and the decorum are equally commendable. Masculine
ideas are one thing; but let feminine ever be feminine, or our
civilization perishes.

At Croridge village church, then, one of the smallest churches in the
kingdom, the ceremony was performed and duly witnessed, names written in
the vestry book, the clergyman's fee, the clerk, and the pew-woman, paid
by the bridegroom. And thus we see how a pair of lovers, blind with the
one object of lovers in view; and a miserly uncle, all on edge to save
himself the expense of supporting his niece; and an idolatrous old
admiral, on his back with gout; conduced in turn and together to the
marriage gradually exciting the world's wonder, till it eclipsed the
story of the Old Buccaneer and Countess Fanny, which it caused to be
discussed afresh.

Mrs. Carthew remembered Carinthia Jane's last maiden remark and her first
bridal utterance. On the way, walking to the church of Croridge from
Lekkatts, the girl said: 'Going on my feet, I feel I continue the
mountain walk with my brother when we left our home.' And after leaving
the church, about to mount the coach, she turned to Mrs. Carthew, saying,
as she embraced her:

'A happy bride's kiss should bring some good fortune.' And looking down
from her place on the top of the coach:

'Adieu, dear Mrs. Carthew. A day of glory it is to-day.' She must
actually have had it in her sight as a day of glory: and it was a day of
the clouds off our rainy quarter, similar in every way to the day of her
stepping on English soil and saying: 'It is a dark land.' For the heart
is truly declared to be our colourist. A day having the gale in its
breast, sweeping the whole country and bending the trees for the twigs to
hiss like spray of the billows around our island, was a day of golden
splendour to the young bride of the Earl of Fleetwood, though he scarcely
addressed one syllable to her, and they sat side by side all but dumb, he
like a coachman driving an unknown lady fare, on a morning after a night
when his wife's tongue may have soured him for the sex.




CHAPTER XIV

A PENDANT OF THE FOREGOING

Mention has been omitted or forgotten by the worthy Dame, in her vagrant
fowl's treatment of a story she cannot incubate, will not relinquish, and
may ultimately addle, that the bridegroom, after walking with a
disengaged arm from the little village church at Croridge to his coach
and four at the cross of the roads to Lekkatts and the lowland, abruptly,
and as one pursuing a deferential line of conduct he had prescribed to
himself, asked his bride, what seat she would prefer.

He shouted: 'Ives!'

A person inside the coach appeared to be effectually roused.

The glass of the window dropped. The head of a man emerged. It was the
head of one of the bargefaced men of the British Isles, broad, and
battered flattish, with sentinel eyes.

In an instant the heavy-headed but not ill-looking fellow was nimble and
jumped from the coach.

'Napping, my lord,' he said.

Heavy though the look of him might be, his feet were light; they flipped
a bar of a hornpipe at a touch of the ground. Perhaps they were allowed
to go with their instinct for the dance, that his master should have a
sample of his wakefulness. He quenched a smirk and stood to take orders;
clad in a flat blue cap, a brown overcoat, and knee-breeches, as the
temporary bustle of his legs had revealed.

Fleet-wood heard the young lady say: 'I would choose, if you please, to
sit beside you.'

He gave a nod of enforced assent, glancing at the vacated box.

The man inquired: 'A knee and a back for the lady to mount up, my lord?'

'In!' was the smart command to him; and he popped in with the agility of
his popping out.

Then Carinthia made reverence to the grey lean figure of her uncle and
kissed Mrs. Carthew. She needed no help to mount the coach. Fleetwood's
arm was rigidly extended, and he did not visibly wince when this foreign
girl sprang to the first hand-grip on the coach and said: 'No, my
husband, I can do it'; unaided,' was implied.

Her stride from the axle of the wheel to the step higher would have been
a graceful spectacle on Alpine crags.

Fleetwood swallowed that, too, though it conjured up a mocking
recollection of the Baden woods, and an astonished wild donkey preparing
himself for his harness. A sour relish of the irony in his present
position sharpened him to devilish enjoyment of it, as the finest form of
loathing: on the principle that if we find ourselves consigned to the
nether halls, we do well to dance drunkenly. He had cried for
Romance--here it was!

He raised his hat to Mrs. Carthew and to Lord Levellier. Previous to the
ceremony, the two noblemen had interchanged the short speech of mannered
duellists punctiliously courteous in the opening act. Their civility was
maintained at the termination of the deadly work. The old lord's bosom
thanked the young one for not requiring entertainment and a repast; the
young lord's thanked the old one for a strict military demeanour at an
execution and the abstaining from any nonsensical talk over the affair.

A couple of liveried grooms at the horses' heads ran and sprang to the
hinder seats as soon as their master had taken the reins. He sounded the
whip caressingly: off those pretty trotters went.

Mrs. Carthew watched them, waving to the bride. She was on the present
occasion less than usually an acute or a reflective observer, owing to
her admiration of lordly state and masculine commandership; and her
thought was: 'She has indeed made a brilliant marriage!'

The lady thought it, notwithstanding an eccentricity in the wedding
ceremony, such as could not but be noticeable. But very wealthy noblemen
were commonly, perhaps necessarily, eccentric, for thus they proved
themselves egregious, which the world expected them to be.

Lord Levellier sounded loud eulogies of the illustrious driver's team.
His meditation, as he subsequently stated to Chillon, was upon his
vanquished antagonist's dexterity, in so conducting matters, that he had
to be taken at once, with naught of the customary preface and apology for
taking to himself the young lady, of which a handsome settlement, is the
memorial.

We have to suppose, that the curious occupant of the coach inside aroused
no curiosity in the pair of absorbed observers.

Speculations regarding the chances of a fall of rain followed the coach
until it sank and the backs of the two liveried grooms closed the chapter
of the wedding, introductory to the honeymoon at Esslemont, seven miles
distant by road, to the right of Lekkatts. It was out of sight that the
coach turned to the left, Northwestward.




CHAPTER XV

OPENING STAGE OF THE HONEYMOON

A famous maxim in the book of the Old Buccaneer, treating of PRECAUTION,
as 'The brave man's clean conscience,' with sound counsel to the
adventurous, has it:--

'Then you sail away into the tornado, happy as a sealed bottle of ripe
wine.'

It should mean, that brave men entering the jaws of hurricanes are found
to have cheerful hearts in them when they know they have done their best.
But, touching the picture of happiness, conceive the bounteous Bacchic
spirit in the devoutness of a Sophocles, and you find comparison
neighbour closely between the sealed wine-flask and the bride, who is
being driven by her husband to the nest of the unknown on her marriage
morn.

Seated beside him, with bosom at heave and shut mouth, in a strange land,
travelling cloud-like, rushing like the shower-cloud to the vale, this
Carinthia, suddenly wedded, passionately grateful for humbleness exalted,
virginly sensible of treasures of love to give, resembled the inanimate
and most inspiring, was mindless and inexpressive, past memory, beyond
the hopes, a thing of the thrilled blood and skylark air, since she laid
her hand in this young man's. His not speaking to her was accepted. Her
blood rather than recollection revived their exchanges during the dance
at Baden, for assurance that their likings were one, their aims
rapturously one; that he was she, she he, the two hearts making one soul.

Could she give as much as he? It was hardly asked. If we feel we can give
our breath of life, the strength of the feeling fully answers. It bubbles
perpetually from the depth like a well-spring in tumult. Two hearts that
make one soul do not separately count their gifts.

For the rest, her hunger to admire disposed her to an absorbing sentience
of his acts; the trifles, gestures, manner of this and that; which were
seized as they flew, and swiftly assimilated to stamp his personality.
Driving was the piece of skill she could not do. Her husband's mastery of
the reins endowed him with the beauty of those harmonious trotters he
guided and kept to their pace; and the humming rush of the pace, the
smooth torrent of the brown heath-knolls and reddish pits and hedge-lines
and grass-flats and copses pouring the counter-way of her advance,
belonged to his wizardry. The bearing of her onward was her abandonment
to him. Delicious as mountain air, the wind sang; it had a song of many
voices. Quite as much as on the mountains, there was the keen, the
blissful, nerve-knotting catch of the presence of danger in the steep
descents, taken as if swallowed, without swerve or check. She was in her
husband's hands. At times, at the pitch of a rapid shelving, that was
like a fall, her heart went down; and at the next throb exalted before it
rose, not reasoning why;--her confidence was in him; she was his comrade
whatever chanced. Up over the mountain-peaks she had known edged moments,
little heeded in their passage, when life is poised as a crystal pitcher
on the head, in peril of a step. Then she had been dependent on herself.
Now she had the joy of trusting to her husband.

His hard leftward eye had view of her askant, if he cared to see how she
bore the trial; and so relentlessly did he take the slopes, that the man
inside pushed out an inquiring pate, the two grooms tightened arms across
their chests. Her face was calmly set, wakeful, but unwrinkled: the
creature did not count among timid girls--or among civilized. She had got
what she wanted from her madman--mad in his impulses, mad in his reading
of honour. She was the sister of Henrietta's husband. Henrietta bore the
name she had quitted. Could madness go beyond the marrying of the
creature? He chafed at her containment, at her courage, her silence, her
withholding the brazen or the fawnish look-up, either of which he would
have hated.

He, however, was dragged to look down. Neither Gorgon nor Venus, nor a
mingling of them, she had the chasm of the face, recalling the face of
his bondage, seen first that night at Baden. It recalled and it was not
the face; it was the skull of the face, or the flesh of the spirit.
Occasionally she looked, for a twinkle or two, the creature or vision she
had been, as if to mock by reminding him. She was the abhorred delusion,
who captured him by his nerves, ensnared his word--the doing of a foul
witch. How had it leapt from his mouth? She must have worked for it. The
word spoken--she must have known it--he was bound, or the detested
Henrietta would have said: Not even true to his word!

To see her now, this girl, insisting to share his name, for a slip of his
tongue, despite the warning sent her through her uncle, had that face
much as a leaden winter landscape pretends to be the country radiant in
colour. She belonged to the order of the variable animals--a woman
indeed!--womanish enough in that. There are men who love women--the idea
of woman. Woman is their shepherdess of sheep. He loved freedom, loathed
the subjection of a partnership; could undergo it only in adoration of an
ineffable splendour. He had stepped to the altar fancying she might keep
to her part of the contract by appearing the miracle that subdued him.
Seen by light of day, this bitter object beside him was a witch without
her spells; that is, the skeleton of the seductive, ghastliest among
horrors and ironies. Let her have the credit of doing her work thoroughly
before the exposure. She had done it. She might have helped--such was the
stipulation of his mad freak in consenting to the bondage--yes, she might
have helped to soften the sting of his wound. She was beside him bearing
his name, for the perpetual pouring of an acid on the wound that vile
Henrietta--poisoned honey of a girl!--had dealt.

He glanced down at his possession:--heaven and the yawning pit were the
contrast! Poisoned honey is after all honey while you eat it. Here there
was nothing but a rocky bowl of emptiness. And who was she? She was the
sister of Henrietta's husband. He was expected to embrace the sister of
Henrietta's husband. Those two were on their bridal tour.

This creature was also the daughter of an ancient impostor and desperado
called the Old Buccaneer; a distinguished member of the family of the
Lincolnshire Kirbys, boasting a present representative grimly acquitted,
men said, on a trial for murder. An eminent alliance! Society considered
the Earl of Fleetwood wildish, though he could manage his affairs. He and
his lawyers had them under strict control. How of himself? The prize of
the English marriage market had taken to his bosom for his winsome bride
the daughter of the Old Buccaneer. He was to mix his blood with the blood
of the Lincolnshire Kirbys, lying pallid under the hesitating acquittal
of a divided jury.

How had he come to this pass, which swung him round to think almost
regretfully of the scorned multitude of fair besiegers in the market,
some of whom had their unpoetic charms?

He was renowned and unrivalled as the man of stainless honour: the one
living man of his word. He had never broken it--never would. There was
his distinction among the herd. In that, a man is princely above princes.
The nobility of Edward Russett, Earl of Fleetwood, surpassed the nobility
of common nobles. But, by all that is holy, he pays for his distinction.

The creature beside him is a franked issue of her old pirate of a father
in one respect--nothing frightens her. There she sits; not a screw of her
brows or her lips; and the coach rocked, they were sharp on a spill
midway of the last descent. It rocks again. She thinks it scarce worth
while to look up to reassure him. She is looking over the country.

'Have you been used to driving?' he said.

She replied: 'No, it is new to me on a coach.'

Carinthia felt at once how wild the wish or half expectation that he
would resume the glowing communion of the night which had plighted them.

She did not this time say 'my husband,' still it flicked a whip at his
ears.

She had made it more offensive, by so richly toning the official title
just won from him as to ring it on the nerves; one had to block it or be
invaded. An anticipation that it would certainly recur haunted every
opening of her mouth.

Now that it did not, he felt the gap, relieved, and yet pricked to
imagine a mimicry of her tones, for the odd foreignness of the word and
the sound. She had a voice of her own besides her courage. At the altar,
her responses had their music. No wonder: the day was hers. 'My husband'
was a manner of saying 'my fish.'

He, spoke very civilly. 'Oblige me by telling me what name you are
accustomed to answer to.'

She seemed unaware of an Arctic husband, and replied: 'My father called
me Carin--short for Carinthia. My mother called me Janey; my second name
is Jane. My brother Chillon says both. Henrietta calls me Janey.'

The creature appeared dead flesh to goads. But the name of her
sister-in-law on her lips returned the stroke neatly. She spared him one
whip, to cut him with another.

'You have not informed me which of these names you prefer.'

'Oh, my husband, it is as you shall please.'

Fleetwood smartened the trot of his team, and there was a to-do with the
rakish leaders.

Fairies of a malignant humour in former days used to punish the
unhappiest of the naughty men who were not favourites, by suddenly
planting a hump on their backs. Off the bedevilled wretches pranced, and
they kicked, they snorted, whinnied, rolled, galloped, outflying the
wind, but not the dismal rider. Marriage is our incubus now. No
explanation is offered of why we are afflicted; we have simply offended,
or some one absent has offended, and we are handy. The spiteful hag of
power ties a wife to us; perhaps for the reason, that we behaved in the
spirit of a better time by being chivalrously honourable. Wives are just
as inexplicable curses, just as ineradicable and astonishing as humps
imposed on shapely backs.

Fleetwood lashed his horses until Carinthia's low cry of entreaty rose to
surprise. That stung him.

'Leave the coachman to his devices: we have an appointment and must keep
it,' he said.

'They go so willingly.'

'Good beasts, in their way.'

'I do not like the whip.'

'I have the same objection.'

They were on the level of the vale, going along a road between farms and
mansions, meadows and gardenplots and park-palings. A strong warm wind
drove the pack of clouds over the tree-tops and charged at the branches.
English scenery, animating air; a rouse to the blood and the mind.
Carinthia did not ask for hues. She had come to love of the dark land
with the warm lifting wind, the big trees and the hedges, and the stately
houses, and people requiring to be studied, who mean well and are warm
somewhere below, as chimneypots are, though they are so stiff.

English people dislike endearments, she had found. It might be that her
husband disliked any show of fondness. He would have to be studied very
much. He was not like others, as Henrietta had warned her. From thinking
of him fervidly, she was already past the marvel of the thought that she
called him husband. At the same time, a curious intimation, gathered she
knew not whence, of the word 'husband' on a young wife's lips as being a
foreign sound in England, advised her to withhold it. His behaviour was
instructing her.

'Are you weather-wise?--able to tell when the clouds will hold off or
pelt,' he said, to be very civil to a neighbour.

She collected her understanding, apparently; treating a conversational
run of the tongue as a question to be pondered; and the horses paid for
it. Ordinarily he was gentle with his beasts. He lashed at her in his
heart for perverting the humanest of men.

'Father was,' she replied.

'Oh! I have heard of him.'

Her face lightened. 'Father had a great name in England.'

'The Old Buccaneer, I think.'

'I do not know. He was a seaman of the navy, like Admiral Fakenham is.
Weather at sea, weather on the mountains, he could foretell it always. He
wrote a book; I have a copy you will read. It is a book of Maxims. He
often speaks of the weather. English weather and women, he says. But not
my mother. My mother he stood aside by herself--pas capricieuse du tout!
Because she would be out in the weather and brave the weather. She rode,
she swam, best of any woman. If she could have known you, what pleasure
for me! Mother learnt to read mountain weather from father. I did it too.
But sometimes on the high fields' upper snows it is very surprising.
Father has been caught. Here the cloud is down near the earth and the
strong wind keeps the rain from falling. How long the wind will blow I
cannot guess. But you love the mountains. We spoke . . . And mountains'
adventures we both love. I will talk French if you like, for, I think,
German you do not speak. I may speak English better than French; but I am
afraid of my English with you.'

'Dear me!' quoth Fleetwood, and he murmured politely and cursorily,
attentive to his coachman business. She had a voice that clove the noise
of the wheels, and she had a desire to talk--that was evident. Talk of
her father set her prattling. It became clear also to his not dishonest,
his impressionable mind, that her baby English might be natural. Or she
was mildly playing on it, to give herself an air.

He had no remembrance of such baby English at Baden. There, however, she
was in a state of enthusiasm--the sort of illuminated transparency they
show at the end of fireworks. Mention of her old scapegrace of a father
lit her up again. The girl there and the girl here were no doubt the
same. It could not be said that she had duped him; he had done it for
himself--acted on by a particular agency. This creature had not the
capacity to dupe. He had armed a bluntwitted young woman with his idiocy,
and she had dealt the stroke; different in scarce a degree by nature from
other young women of prey.

But her look at times, and now and then her voice, gave sign that she
counted on befooling him as well, to reconcile him to his bondage. The
calculation was excessive. No woman had done it yet. Idiocy plunged him
the step which reawakened understanding; and to keep his whole mind alert
on guard against any sort of satisfaction with his bargain, he frankly
referred to the cause. Not female arts, but nature's impulses, it was his
passion for the wondrous in the look of a woman's face, the new morning
of the idea of women in the look, and the peep into imaginary novel
character, did the trick of enslaving him. Call it idiocy. Such it was.
Once acknowledged, it is not likely to recur. An implacable reason sits
in its place, with a keen blade for efforts to carry the imposture
further afield or make it agreeable. Yet, after giving his word to Lord
Levellier, he had prodded himself to think the burden of this wild young
woman might be absurdly tolerable and a laugh at the world.

A solicitude for the animal was marked by his inquiry 'You are not hungry
yet?'

'Oh no, not yet,' said she, oddly enlivened.

They had a hamper and were independent of stoppages for provision, he
informed her. What more delightful? cried her look, seeing the first
mid-day's rest and meal with Chillon on the walk over the mountain from
their empty home.

She could get up enthusiasm for a stocked hamper! And when told of some
business that drew him to a meadow they were nearing, she said she would
be glad to help, if she could. 'I learn quickly, I know.'

His head acquiesced. The daughter of the Old Buccaneer might learn the
business quickly, perhaps; a singularly cutting smile was on his tight
lips, in memory of a desire he had as a boy to join hands with an
Amazonian damsel and be out over the world for adventures, comrade and
bride as one. Here the creature sat. Life is the burlesque of young
dreams; or they precipitate us on the roar and grin of a recognized beast
world.

The devil possessing him gnawed so furiously that a partial mitigation of
the pain was afforded by sight of waving hats on a hill-rise of the road.
He flourished his whip. The hats continued at wind-mill work. It
signified brisk news to him, and prospect of glee to propitiate any
number of devils.

'You will want a maid to attend on you,' he said.

She replied: 'I am not used to attendance on me. Henrietta's maid would
help. I did not want her. I had no maid at home. I can do for myself.
Father and mother liked me to be very independent.'

He supposed he would have to hear her spelling her words out next.

The hill-top was gained; twenty paces of pretty trotting brought up the
coach beside an inn porch, in the style of the finish dear to whips, and
even imperative upon them, if they love their art. Two gentlemen stood in
the road, and a young woman at the inn door; a dark-haired girl of an
anxious countenance. Her puckers vanished at some signal from inside the
coach.

'All right, Madge; nothing to fear,' Fleetwood called to her, and she
curtseyed.

He alighted, saying to her, before he spoke to his friends: 'I've brought
him safe; had him under my eye the last four and twenty hours. He'll do
the trick to-day. You don't bet?'

'Oh! my lord, no.'

'Help the lady down. Out with you, Ines!'

The light-legged barge-faced man touched ground capering. He was greeted
'Kit' by the pair of gentlemen, who shook hands with him, after he had
faintly simulated the challenge to a jig with Madge. She flounced from
him, holding her arms up to the lady. Landlord, landlady, and hostler
besought the lady to stay for the fixing of a ladder. Carinthia stepped,
leaped, and entered the inn, Fleetwood remarking:

'We are very independent, Chummy Potts.'

'Cordy bally, by Jove!' Potts cried. But the moment after this disengaged
ejaculation, he was taken with a bewilderment. 'At the Opera?' he
questioned of his perplexity.

'No, sir, not at the Opera,' Fleetwood rejoined. 'The lady's last public
appearance was at the altar.'

'Sort of a suspicion of having seen her somewhere. Left her husband
behind, has she?'

'You see: she has gone in.'

The scoring of a proposition of Euclid on the forehead of Potts amused
him and the other gentleman, who was hailed 'Mallard!' and cared nothing
for problems involving the female of man when such work was to the fore
as the pugilistic encounter of the Earl of Fleetwood's chosen Kit Ines,
with Lord Brailstone's unbeaten and well-backed Ben Todds.

Ines had done pretty things from the age of seventeen to his twenty-third
year. Remarkably clever things they were, to be called great in the
annals of the Ring. The point, however, was, that the pockets of his
backers had seriously felt his latest fight. He received a dog's licking
at the hands of Lummy Phelps, his inferior in skill, fighting two to one
of the odds; and all because of his fatal addiction to the breaking of
his trainer's imposed fast in liquids on, the night before the battle.
Right through his training, up to that hour, the rascal was devout; the
majority's money rattled all on the snug safe side. And how did he get at
the bottle? His trainers never could say. But what made him turn himself
into a headlong ass, when he had only to wait a night to sit among
friends and worshippers drinking off his tumbler upon tumbler with the
honours? It was past his wits to explain. Endurance of his privation had
snapped in him; or else, which is more likely, this Genius of the Ring
was tempted by his genius on the summit of his perfected powers to
believe the battle his own, and celebrate it, as became a victor
despising the drubbed antagonist.

In any case, he drank, and a minor man gave him the dog's licking.. 'Went
into it puffy, came out of it bunged,' the chronicle resounding over
England ran. Old England read of an 'eyeless carcase' heroically stepping
up to time for three rounds of mashing punishment. If he had won the day
after all, the country would have been electrified. It sympathized on the
side of his backers too much to do more than nod a short approval of his
fortitude. To sink with flag flying is next to sinking the enemy. There
was talk of a girl present at the fight, and of how she received the
eyeless, almost faceless, carcase of her sweetheart Kit, and carried him
away in a little donkey-cart, comfortably cushioned to meet disaster.
This petty incident drew the attention of the Earl of Fleetwood, then
beginning to be known as the diamond of uncounted facets, patron of the
pick of all departments of manly activity in England.

The devotion of the girl Madge to her sweetheart was really a fine story.
Fleetwood touched on it to Mr. Mallard, speaking of it like the gentleman
he could be, while Chumley Potts wagged impatient acquiescence in a
romantic episode of the Ring, that kept the talk from the hotter theme.

'Money's Bank of England to-day, you think?' he interposed, and had his
answer after Mallard had said:

'The girl 's rather good-looking, too.'

'You may double your bets, Chummy. I had the fellow to his tea at my
dinner-table yesterday evening; locked him in his bedroom, and had him up
and out for a morning spin at six. His trainer, Flipper's on the field,
drove from Esslemont at nine, confident as trumps.'

'Deuce of a good-looking girl,' Potts could now afford to say; and he
sang out: 'Feel fit, lucky dog?'

'Concert pitch!' was the declaration of Kit Ives.

'How about Lord Brailstone's man?'

'Female partner in a quadrille, sir.'

'Ah!' Potts doated on his limbs with a butcher's eye for prize joints.

'Cock-sure has crowed low by sunset,' Mallard observed.

Fleetwood offered him to take his bets.

'You're heavy on it with Brailstone?' said Mallard.

'Three thousand.'

'I'd back you for your luck blindfold.'

A ruffle of sourness shot over the features of the earl, and was noticed
by both eager betters, who exchanged a glance.

Potts inspected his watch, and said half aloud: 'Liver, ten to one! That
never meant bad luck--except bad to act on. We slept here last night, you
know. It 's a mile and a quarter from the Royal Sovereign to the field of
glory. Pretty well time to start. Brailstone has a drive of a couple of
miles. Coaches from London down by this time. Abrane's dead on Ben Todds,
any odds. Poor old Braney! "Steady man, Todds." Backs him because he's a
"respectable citizen,"--don't drink. A prize-fighter total abstainer has
no spurts. Old Braney's branded for the losing side. You might bet
against Braney blindfold, Mallard. How long shall you take to polish him
off, Kit Ines?'

The opponent of Ben Todds calculated.

'Well, sir, steady Benny ought to be satisfied with his dose in, say,
about forty minutes. Maybe he won't own to it before an hour and ten.
He's got a proud English stomach.'

'Shall we be late?' Potts asked.

'Jump in,' Fleetwood said to his man. 'We may be five minutes after time,
Chummy. I had a longer drive, and had to get married on the way, and--ah,
here they are!'

'Lady coming?'

'I fancy she sticks to the coach; I don't know her tastes. Madge must see
her through it, that's positive.'

Potts deferred his astonishment at the things he was hearing and seeing,
which were only Fleetwood's riddles. The fight and the bets rang every
other matter out of his head. He beheld the lady, who had come down from
the coach like a columbine, mount it like Bean-stalk Jack. Madge was not
half so clever, and required a hand at her elbow.

After, giving hurried directions to Rundles, the landlord of the Royal
Sovereign, Fleetwood took the reins, and all three gentlemen touched hats
to the curtseying figure of Mrs. Rundles.

'You have heard, I dare say--it's an English scene,' he spoke, partly
turning his face, to Carinthia; 'particularly select to-day. Their
Majesties might look on, as the Caesars did in Rome. Pity we can't
persuade them. They ought to set the fashion. Here we have the English
people at their grandest, in prime condition, if they were not drunk
overnight; and dogged, perfectly awake, magnanimous, all for fair play;
fine fellows, upon my word. A little blood, of course.'

But the daughter of the Old Buccaneer would have inherited a tenderness
for the sight of blood. She should make a natural Lady Patroness of
England's National Sports. We might turn her to that purpose; wander over
England with a tail of shouting riff-raft; have exhibitions, join in
them, display our accomplishments; issue challenges to fence, shoot,
walk, run, box, in time: the creature has muscle. It's one way of
crowning a freak; we follow the direction, since the deed done can't be
undone; and a precious poetical life, too! You may get as royally
intoxicated on swipes as on choice wine; win a name for yourself as the
husband of such a wife; a name in sporting journals and shilling
biographies: quite a revival of the Peerage they have begun to rail at!

'I would not wish to leave you,' said Carinthia.

'You have chosen,' said Fleetwood.




CHAPTER XVI

IN WHICH THE BRIDE FROM FOREIGN PARTS IS GIVEN A TASTE OF OLD ENGLAND

Cheers at an open gate of a field saluted the familiar scarlet of the
Earl of Fleetwood's coach in Kentish land. They were chorister cheers,
the spontaneous ringing out of English country hearts in homage to the
nobleman who brightened the heaviness of life on English land with a
spectacle of the noble art distinguishing their fathers. He drove along
over muffling turf; ploughboys and blue butcher-boys, and smocked old
men, with an approach to a hundred-weight on their heels, at the trot to
right and left; all hoping for an occasional sight of the jewel called
Kitty, that he carried inside. Kitty was there.

Kitty's eyes are shut. Think of that: cradled innocence and angels'
dreams and the whole of the hymn just before ding-dong-bang on noses and
jaws! That means confidence? Looks like it. But Kitty's not asleep you
try him. He's only quiet because he has got to undergo great exertion.
Last fight he was knocked out of time, because he went into it honest
drunk, they tell. And the earl took him up, to give him a chance of
recovering his good name, and that's Christian. But the earl, he knows a
man as well as a horse. He's one to follow. Go to a fayte down at
Esslemont, you won't forget your day. See there, he's brought a lady on
the top o' the coach. That seems for to signify he don't expect it's
going to be much of a bloody business. But there's no accounting. Anyhow,
Broadfield 'll have a name in the papers for Sunday reading. In comes t'
other lord's coach. They've timed it together closes they have.

They were pronounced to be both the right sort of noblemen for the
country. Lord Brailstone's blue coach rattled through an eastern gate to
the corner of the thirty-acre meadow, where Lord Fleetwood had drawn up,
a toss from the ring. The meeting of the blue and scarlet coaches drew
forth Old England's thunders; and when the costly treasures contained in
them popped out heads, the moment was delirious. Kit Ines came after his
head on a bound. Ben Todds was ostentatiously deliberate: his party said
he was no dancing-master. He stepped out, grave as a barge emerging from
a lock, though alive to the hurrahs of supporters and punctilious in
returning the formal portion of his rival's too roguish nod. Their look
was sharp into the eyes, just an instant.

Brailstone and Fleetwood jumped to the grass and met, talking and
laughing, precise upon points of business, otherwise cordial:
plenipotentiaries of great powers, whom they have set in motion and bind
to the ceremonial opening steps, according to the rules of civilized
warfare. They had a short colloquy with newspaper reporters;--an
absolutely fair, square, upright fight of Britons was to be chronicled.
Captain Abrane, a tower in the crowd, registered bets whenever he could.
Curricles, gigs, carts, pony-traps, boys on ponies, a swarm on legs,
flowed to the central point and huddled there.

Was either champion born in Kent? An audacious boy proclaimed Kit Ines a
man of Kent. Why, of course he was! and that was why the Earl of
Fleetwood backed our cocky Kitty, and means to land him on the top of his
profession. Ben Todds was shuffled aside; as one of their Londoners,
destitute of county savour.

All very well, but have a spy at Benny Todds. Who looks the square man?
And hear what that big gentleman of the other lord's party says. A
gentleman of his height and weight has a right to his opinion. He 's dead
against Kit Ines: it's fists, not feet, he says, 'll do it to-day;
stamina, he says. Benny has got the stamina.

Todds' possession of the stamina, and the grand voice of Captain Abrane,
and the Father Christmas, roast-beef-of-Old England face of the umpire
declared to be on the side of Lord Brailstone's colour blue, darkened the
star of Kit Ines till a characteristic piece of behaviour was espied. He
dashed his cap into the ring and followed it, with the lightest of vaults
across the ropes. There he was, the first in the ring: and that stands
for promise of first blow, first blood, first flat knock-down, and last
to cry for quarter. His pair of seconds were soon after him. Fleetwood
mounted his box.

'Is it to fight?' said Carinthia.

'To see which is the master.'

'They fight to see?'

'Generally until one or the other can't see. You are not obliged to see
it; you can be driven away if you wish.'

'I will be here, if you are here.'

'You choose it.'

Fleetwood leaned over to Chumley Potts on the turf. 'Abrane's ruining
himself.'

Potts frankly hoped that his friend might be doing so. 'Todds is jolly
well backed. He's in prime condition. He's the favourite of the knowing
ones.'

'You wouldn't have the odds, if he weren't.'

'No; but the odds are like ten per cent.: they conjure the gale, and be
hanged,' said Potts; he swore at his betting mania, which destroyed the
pleasure of the show he loved.

All in the ring were shaking hands. Shots of a desire to question and
comment sped through Carinthia's veins and hurt her. She had gathered
that she spoke foolishly to her husband's ear, so she kept her mouth
shut, though the unanswered of her inquisitive ignorance in the strange
land pricked painfully at her bosom. She heard the girl behind her say:
'Our colours!' when the colour scarlet unwound with Lord Brailstone's
blue was tied to the stake: and her husband nodded; he smiled; he liked
to hear the girl.

Potts climbed up, crying: 'Toilets complete! Now for paws out, and then
at it, my hearties!'

Choice of corners under the leaden low cloud counted for little. A signal
was given; a man outside the ring eyed a watch, raised a hand; the two
umpires were on foot in their places; the pair of opposing seconds
hurried out cheery or bolt-business words to their men; and the champions
advanced to the scratch. Todds first, by the courtesy of Ines, whose
decorous control of his legs at a weighty moment was rightly read by his
party.

Their hands grasped firmly: thereupon becoming fists of a hostile couple
in position. And simply to learn which of us two is the better man! Or in
other words, with four simple fists to compass a patent fact and stand it
on the historic pedestal, with a little red writing underneath: you never
can patent a fact without it. But mark the differences of this kind of
contention from all other--especially the Parliamentary: this is
positive, it has a beginning and an end; and it is good-humoured from
beginning to end; trial of skill, trial of stamina; Nature and Art; Old
English; which made us what we are; and no rancours, no vows of
vengeance; the beaten man of the two bowing to the bit of history he has
helped to make.

Kittites had need to be confident in the skill of their lither lad. His
facer looked granite. Fronting that mass, Kit you might--not to lash
about for comparisons--call a bundle of bamboo. Ay, but well knitted,
springy, alive every inch of him; crafty, too, as you will soon bear
witness. He knows he has got his task, and he's the man to do it.

There was wary sparring, and mirrors watched them.

'Bigger fellow: but have no fear,' the earl said over his shoulder to
Madge.

She said in return: 'Oh, I don't know, I'm praying.'

Kit was now on his toes, all himself, like one who has found the key. He
feinted. Quick as lightning, he landed a bolt on Ben's jib, just at the
toll-bar of the bridge, between the eyes, and was off, out of reach,
elastic; Ben's counter fell short by a couple of inches. Cheers for first
blow.

The earl clucked to Madge. Her gaze at the ring was a sullen intensity.

Will you believe it?--Ben received a second spanking cracker on the
spectacles-seat: neat indeed; and, poor payment for the compliment, he
managed to dig a drive at the ribs. As much of that game as may suit you,
sturdy Ben! But hear the shout, and behold!

First blood to Kit Ines! That tell-tale nose of old Ben's has mounted the
Earl of Fleetwood's colours, and all his party are looking
Brailstone-blue.

'So far!' said Fleetwood. His grooms took an indication: the hamper was
unfastened; sandwiches were handed. Carinthia held one; she tried to
nibble, in obedience to her husband's example. Madge refused a bite of
food.

Hearing Carinthia say to her: 'I hope he will not be beaten, I hope, I
hope,' she made answer: 'You are very good, Miss'; and the young lady
flushed.

Gentlemen below were talking up to the earl. A Kentish squire of an
estate neighbouring Esslemont introduced a Welsh squire he had driven to
see the fun, by the name of Mr. Owain Wythan, a neighbour of the earl's
down in Wales. Refreshments were offered. Carinthia submissively sipped
the sparkling wine, which stings the lips when they are indisposed to it.
The voice of the girl Madge rang on the tightened chords of her breast.
Madge had said she was praying: and to pray was all that could be done by
two women. Her husband could laugh loudly with Mr. Potts and the other
gentlemen and the strangers. He was quite sure the man he supported would
win; he might have means of knowing. Carinthia clung to his bare words,
for the sake of the girl.

A roaring peal went up from the circle of combat. Kit had it this time.
Attacking Ben's peepers, he was bent on defending his own, and he caught
a bodyblow that sent him hopping back to his pair of seconds, five clear
hops to the rear, like a smashed surge-wave off the rock. He was
respectful for the remainder of the round. But hammering at the system he
had formed, in the very next round he dropped from a tremendous
repetition of the blow, and lay flat as a turbot. The bets against him
had simultaneously a see-saw rise.

'Bellows, he appears to have none,' was the comment of Chumley Potts.

'Now for training, Chummy!' said Lord Fleetwood.

'Chummy!' signifying a crow over Potts, rang out of the hollows of
Captain Abrane on Lord Brailstone's coach.

Carinthia put a hand behind her to Madge. It was grasped, in gratitude
for sympathy or in feminine politeness. The girl murmured: 'I've seen
worse.' She was not speaking to ears.

Lord Fleetwood sat watch in hand. 'Up,' he said; and, as if hearing him,
Kit rose from the ministering second's knee. He walked stiffly, squared
after the fashion of a man taught caution. Ben made play. They rounded
the ring, giving and taking. Ben rushed, and had an emollient; spouted
again and was corked; again, and received a neat red-waxen stopper. He
would not be denied at Kit's door, found him at home and hugged him. Kit
got himself to grass, after a spell of heavy fibbing, Ben's game.

It did him no great harm; it might be taken for an enlivener; he was dead
on his favourite spot the ensuing round, played postman on it. So
cleverly, easily, dancingly did he perform the double knock and the
retreat, that Chumley Potts was moved to forget his wagers and exclaim:
'Racket-ball, by Jove!'

'If he doesn't let the fellow fib the wind out of him,' Mallard addressed
his own crab eyeballs.

Lord Fleetwood heard and said coolly: 'Tightstrung. I kept him fasting
since he earned his breakfast. You don't wind an empty rascal fit for
action. A sword through the lungs won't kill when there's no air in
them.'

That was printed in the 'Few Words before the Encounter', in the Book Of
MAXIMS FOR MEN. Carinthia, hearing everything her husband uttered, burned
to remind him of the similarity between his opinions and her father's.

She was learning, that for some reason, allusions to her father were not
acceptable. She squeezed the hand of Madge, and felt a pressure, like a
scream, telling her the girl's heart was with the fight beneath them. She
thought it natural for her. She wished she could continue looking as
intently. She looked because her husband looked. The dark hills and
clouds curtaining the run of the stretch of fields relieved her sight.

The clouds went their way; the hills were solid, but like a blue smoke;
the scene here made them very distant and strange. Those two men were
still hitting, not hating one another; only to gratify a number of
unintelligible people and win a success. But the earth and sky seemed to
say, What is the glory? They were insensible to it, as they are not--they
are never insensible to noble grounds of strife. They bless the spot,
they light lamps on it; they put it into books of history, make it holy,
if the cause was a noble one or a good one.

Or supposing both those men loved the girl, who loved one of them! Then
would Carinthia be less reluctantly interested in their blows.

Her infant logic stumbled on for a reason while she repressed the torture
the scene was becoming, as though a reason could be found by her
submissive observation of it. And she was right in believing that a
reason for the scene must or should exist. Only, like other bewildered
instinctive believers, she could not summon the great universe or a
life's experience to unfold it. Her one consolation was in squeezing the
hand of the girl from time to time.

Not stealthily done, it was not objected to by the husband whose eye was
on all. But the persistence in doing it sank her from the benignity of
her station to the girl's level: it was conduct much too raw, and grated
on the deed of the man who had given her his name.

Madge pleased him better. She had the right to be excited, and she was
very little demonstrative. She had--well, in justice, the couple of them
had, only she had it more--the tone of the women who can be screwed to
witness a spill of blood, peculiarly catching to hear;--a tone of every
string in them snapped except the silver string. Catching to hear? It is
worth a stretching of them on the rack to hear that low buzz-hum of their
inner breast . . . By heaven! we have them at their best when they sing
that note.

His watch was near an hour of the contest, and Brailstone's man had
scored first knock-down blow, a particularly clean floorer. Thinking of
that, he was cheered by hearing Chummy Potts, whose opinions he despised,
cry out to Abrane:--

'Yeast to him!' For the face of Todds was visibly swelling to the ripest
of plums from Kit's deliveries.

Down he went. He had the sturdy legs which are no legs to a clean blow.
Odds were offered against him.

'Oh! pretty play with your right, Kit!' exclaimed Mallard, as Kit fetched
his man an ugly stroke on the round of the waist behind, and the crowd
sent up the name of the great organs affected: a sickener of a stroke, if
dealt soundly. It meant more than 4 showed. Kit was now for taking
liberties. Light as ever on his pins, he now and then varied his
attentions to the yeasty part, delivering a wakener in unexpected
quarters: masterly as the skilled cook's carving of a joint with hungry
guests for admirers.

'Eh, Madge?' the earl said.

She kept her sight fixed, replying: 'Yes, I think . . .' Carinthia joined
with her: 'I must believe it that he will: but will the other man, poor
man, submit? I entreat him to put away his pride. It is his--oh, poor
man!'

Ben was having it hot and fast on a torso physiognomy.

The voices of these alien women thrilled the fray and were a Bardic harp
to Lord Fleetwood.

He dropped a pleasant word on the heads in the curricle.

Mr. Owain Wythan looked up. 'Worthy of Theocritus. It's the Boxing Twin
and the Bembrycian giant. The style of each. To the letter!'

'Kit is assiduously fastening Ben's blinkers,' Potts remarked.

He explained to the incomprehensible lady he fancied he had somewhere
seen, that the battle might be known as near the finish by the behaviour
on board Lord Brailstone's coach.

'It's like Foreign Affairs and the Stock Exchange,' he said to the more
intelligent males. 'If I want to know exactly how the country stands, I
turn to the Money Article in the papers. That's a barometrical certainty.
No use inquiring abroad. Look at old Rufus Abrane. I see the state of the
fight on the old fellow's mug. He hasn't a bet left in him!'

'Captain Mountain--Rufus Mus!' cried Lord Fleetwood, and laughed at the
penetrative portrait Woodseer's epigram sketched; he had a desire for the
presence of the singular vagabond.

The Rufus Mus in the Captain Mountain exposed his view of the encounter,
by growing stiller, apparently growing smaller, without a squeak, like
the entrapped; and profoundly contemplative, after the style of the
absolutely detached, who foresee the fatal crash, and are calculating,
far ahead of events, the means for meeting their personal losses.

The close of the battle was on the visage of Rufus Abrane fifteen minutes
before that Elgin marble under red paint in the ring sat on the knee of a
succouring seconder, mopped, rubbed, dram-primed, puppy-peeping,
inconsolably comforted, preparatory to the resumption of the great-coat
he had so hopefully cast from his shoulders. Not downcast by any means.
Like an old Roman, the man of the sheer hulk with purple eyemounds found
his legs to do the manful thing, show that there was no bad blood, stand
equal to all forms. Ben Todds, if ever man in Old England, looked the
picture you might label 'Bellyful,' it was remarked. Kit Ines had an
appearance of springy readiness to lead off again. So they faced on the
opening step of their march into English History.

Vanquisher and vanquished shook hands, engaged in a parting rally of
good-humoured banter; the beaten man said his handsome word; the best man
capped it with a compliment to him. They drink of different cups to-day.
Both will drink of one cup in the day to come. But the day went too
clearly to crown the light and the tight and the right man of the two,
for moralizing to wag its tail at the end. Oldsters and youngsters agreed
to that. Science had done it: happy the backers of Science! Not one of
them alluded to the philosophical 'hundred years hence.' For when
England, thanks to a spirited pair of our young noblemen, has exhibited
one of her characteristic performances consummately, Philosophy is bidden
fly; she is a foreign bird.




CHAPTER XVII

RECORDS A SHADOW CONTEST CLOSE ON THE FOREGOING

Kit Ines cocked an eye at Madge, in the midst of the congratulations and
the paeans pumping his arms. As he had been little mauled, he could
present a face to her, expecting a wreath of smiles for the victor.

What are we to think of the contrarious young woman who, when he lay
beaten, drove him off the field and was all tenderness and devotion? She
bobbed her head, hardly more than a trifle pleased, one might say. Just
like females. They're riddles, not worth spelling. Then, drunk I'll get
to-night, my pretty dear! the man muttered, soured by her inopportune
staidness, as an opponent's bruisings could never have rendered him.

She smiled a lively beam in answer to the earl; 'Oh yes I 'm glad. It's
your doing, my lord.' Him it was that she thanked, and for the moment
prized most. The female riddle is hard to read, because it is compounded
of sensations, and they rouse and appeal to the similar cockatrices in
us, which either hiss back or coil upon themselves. She admired Kit Ines
for his valour: she hated that ruinous and besotting drink. It flung
skeletons of a married couple on the wall of the future. Nevertheless her
love had been all maternal to him when he lay chastised and disgraced on
account of his vice. Pity had done it. Pity not being stirred, her
admiration of the hero declared victorious, whose fortunes in uncertainty
had stopped the beating of her heart, was eclipsed by gratitude toward
his preserver, and a sentiment eclipsed becomes temporarily coldish,
against our wish and our efforts, in a way to astonish; making her think
that she cannot hold two sentiments at a time; when it is but the fact
that she is unable to keep the two equally warm.

Carinthia said to her: 'He is brave.'

'Oh yes, he's brave,' Madge assented.

Lord Brailstone, flourishing his whip, cried out: 'At Canleys to-night?'

The earl nodded: 'I shall be there.'

'You, too, Chummy?' came from Abrane.

'To see you dance,' Potts rejoined, and mumbled

'But will he dance! Old Braney's down on his luck; he's a specimen of a
fellow emptier and not lighter. And won't be till supper-time. But, I
say, Fleet, how the deuce?--funny sort of proceeding!--You haven't
introduced me.'

'The lady bears my name, Mr. Chumley Potts.'

With a bow to the lady's profile and a mention of a glimpse at Baden,
Potts ejaculated: 'It happened this morning?'

'You allude to the marriage. It happened this morning.'

'How do I get to Canleys?'

'I drive you. Another team from the Esslemont stables is waiting at the
Royal.'

'You stay at Canleys?'

'No.'

'No? Oh! Funny, upon my word. Though I don't know why not--except that
people . . .'

'Count your winnings, Chummy.'

Fleetwood remarked to his bride: 'Our friend has the habit of
soliloquizing in company. I forgot to tell you of an appointment of mine
at a place called Canleys, about twenty miles or more from here. I gave
my word, so I keep it. The landlady at the inn, Mrs. Rundles, motherly
kind of woman; she will be attentive. They don't cook badly, for an
English inn, I have heard. Madge here will act as your lady's-maid for
the time. You will find her serviceable; she's a bruiser's lass and
something above it. Ines informed me, Madge, you were going to friends of
yours at the Wells. You will stay at the Royal and wait on this lady, who
bears my name. You understand?--A girl I can trust for courage, if the
article is in request,' he resumed to his bride; and talked generally of
the inn and the management of it, and its favoured position outside the
village and contiguous to the river, upon which it subsisted.

Carinthia had heard. She was more than ever the stunned young woman she
had been since her mounting of the coach, between the village church and
Lekkatts.

She said not a word. Why should she? her object was won. Give her that,
and a woman's tongue will consent to rest. The dreaded weapon rest, also
when she is kept spinning by the whip. She gives out a pleasant hum, too.
Her complexion must be pronounced dull in repose. A bride on her travels
with an aspect of wet chalk, rather helps to scare mankind from marriage:
which may be good or bad; but she reflects a sicklier hue on the captured
Chessman calling her his own. Let her shine in privacy.

Fleetwood drew up at the Royal Sovereign, whereof the reigning monarch,
in blue uniform on the signboard, curtseyed to his equally windy
subjects; and a small congregation of the aged, and some cripples and
infants, greeted the patron of Old England's manfullest display, cheering
at news of the fight, brought them by many little runners.

'Your box has been conveyed to your room,' he said to his bride.

She bowed. This time she descended the coach by the aid of the ladder.

Ines, victorious in battle, had scant notice from his love. 'Yes, I 'm
glad,' and she passed him to follow her newly constituted mistress. His
pride was dashed, all the foam of the first draw on the top of him blown
off, as he figuratively explained the cause of his gloom to the earl. 'I
drink and I gets a licking--that girl nurses and cossets me. I don't
drink and I whops my man--she shows me her back. Ain't it encouragement,
my lord?'

'You ought to know them by this time, you dolt,' returned his patron, and
complimented him on his bearing in the fight. 'You shall have your two
hundred, and something will be added. Hold handy here till I mount. I
start in ten minutes.'

Whether to speak a polite adieu to the bride, whose absurd position she
had brought on her own head, was debated for half a minute. He considered
that the wet chalk-quarry of a beauty had at all events the merit of not
being a creature to make scenes. He went up to the sitting-room. If she
was not there, he would leave his excuses.

She was there, and seated; neither crying, nor smiling, nor pointedly
serious in any way, not conventionally at her ease either. And so clearly
was he impressed by her transparency in simplicity of expression, that he
took without a spurn at it the picture of a woman half drained of her
blood, veiling the wound. And a young woman, a stranger to suffering:
perhaps--as the creatures do looking for the usual flummery tenderness,
what they call happiness; wondering at the absence of it and the shifty
ghost of a husband she has got by floundering into the bog known as
Marriage. She would have it, and here she was!

He entered the situation and was possessed by the shivering delicacy of
it. Surface emotions were not seen on her. She might be a creature with a
soul. Here and there the thing has been found in women. It is priceless
when found, and she could not be acting. One might swear the creature had
no power to act.

She spoke without offence, the simplest of words, affected no
solicitudes, put on no gilt smiles, wore no reproaches: spoke to him as
if so it happened--he had necessarily a journey to perform. One could see
all the while big drops falling from the wound within. One could hear it
in her voice. Imagine a crack of the string at the bow's deep stress. Or
imagine the bow paralyzed at the moment of the deepest sounding. And yet
the voice did not waver. She had now the richness of tone carrying on a
music through silence.

Well, then, at least, he had not been the utterly duped fool he thought
himself since the consent was pledged to wed her.

More, she had beauty--of its kind. Or splendour or grandeur, was the term
for it. But it bore no name. None of her qualities--if they were
qualities--had a name. She stood with a dignity that the word did not
express. She endured meekly, when there was no meekness. Pain breathed
out of her, and not a sign of pain was visible. She had, under his
present observation of her, beauty, with the lines of her face breaking
in revolt from beauty--or requiring a superterrestrial illumination to
show the harmony. He, as he now saw, had erred grossly in supposing her
insensitive, and therefore slow of a woman's understanding. She drew the
breath of pain through the lips: red lips and well cut. Her brown eyes
were tearless, not alluring or beseeching or repelling; they did but
look, much like the skies opening high aloof on a wreck of storm. Her
reddish hair-chestnut, if you will--let fall a skein over one of the
rugged brows, and softened the ruggedness by making it wilder, as if a
great bird were winging across a shoulder of the mountain ridges.
Conceived of the mountains, built in their image, the face partook
alternately of mountain terror or splendour; wholly, he remembered, of
the splendour when her blood ran warm. No longer the chalk-quarry
face,--its paleness now was that of night Alps beneath a moon chasing the
shadows.

She might be casting her spells again.

'You remember I told you,' he said, 'I have given my word--I don't break
it--to be at a Ball. Your uncle was urgent to have the ceremony over.
These clashes occur. The people here--I have spoken of that: people of
good repute for attention to guests. I am uncertain of the time . . . we
have all to learn to wait. So then, good-bye till we meet.'

He was experiencing a novel nip of torment, of just the degree which
takes a partial appeasement from the inflicting of it, and calls up a
loathed compassion. She might have been in his arms for a step, though
she would not have been the better loved.

He was allowed his escape, bearing with him enough of husband to execrate
another enslaving pledge of his word, that begat a frenzy to wreak some
caresses on the creature's intolerably haunting image. Of course, he
could not return to her. How would she receive him? There was no salt in
the thought of it; she was too submissive.

However, there would be fun with Chummy Potts on the drive to Canleys;
fun with Rufus Abrane at Mrs. Cowper Quillett's; and with the Countess
Livia, smothered, struggling, fighting for life with the title of
Dowager. A desire for unbridled fun had hold of any amount of it, to
excess in any direction. And though this cloud as a dry tongue after much
wine craves water, glimpses of his tramp's walk with a fellow tramp on a
different road, enjoying strangely healthy vagabond sensations and vast
ideas; brought the vagrant philosopher refreshfully to his mind: chiefly
for the reason that while in Woodseer's company he had hardly suffered a
stroke of pain from the thought of Henrietta. She was now a married
woman, he was a married man by the register. Stronger proof of the
maddest of worlds could not be furnished.

Sane in so mad a world, a man is your flabby citizen among outlaws, good
for plucking. Fun, at any cost, is the one object worth a shot in such a
world. And the fun is not to stop. If it does, we are likely to be got
hold of, and lugged away to the altar--the terminus. That foul disaster
has happened, through our having temporarily yielded to a fit of the
dumps and treated a mad world's lunatic issue with some seriousness. But
fun shall be had with the aid of His Highness below. The madder the
world, the madder the fun. And the mixing in it of another element, which
it has to beguile us--romance--is not at all bad cookery. Poetic romance
is delusion--a tale of a Corsair; a poet's brain, a bottle of gin, and a
theatrical wardrobe. Comic romance is about us everywhere, alive for the
tapping.

A daughter of the Old Buccaneer should participate in it by right of
birth: she would expect it in order to feel herself perfectly at home.
Then, be sure, she finds an English tongue and prattles away as merrily
as she does when her old scapegrace of a father is the theme. Son-in-law
to him! But the path of wisdom runs in the line of facts, and to have
wild fun and romance on this pantomime path, instead of kicking to break
away from it, we follow things conceived by the genius of the situation,
for the delectation of the fair Countess of Fleetwood and the earl, her
delighted husband, quite in the spirit of the Old Buccaneer, father of
the bride.

Carinthia sat beside the fire, seeing nothing in the room or on the road.
Up in her bedchamber, the girl Madge was at her window. She saw Lord
Fleetwood standing alone, laughing, it seemed, at some thought; he threw
up his head. Was it a newly married man leaving his bride and laughing?
The bride was a dear lady, fit for better than to be driven to look on at
a prize-fight--a terrible scene to a lady. She was left solitary: and
this her wedding day? The earl had said it, he had said she bore his
name, spoke of coming from the altar, and the lady had blushed to hear
herself called Miss. The pressure of her hand was warm with Madge: her
situation roused the fervid latent sisterhood in the breast of women.

Before he mounted the coach, Lord Fleetwood talked to Kit Ives. He
pointed at an upper window, seemed to be issuing directions. Kit nodded;
he understood it, whatever it was. You might have said, a pair of
burglars. The girl ran downstairs to bid her lover good-bye and show him
she really rejoiced in his victory. Kit came to her saying: 'Given my
word of honour I won't make a beast of myself to-night. Got to watch over
you and your lady.'

Lord Fleetwood started his fresh team, casting no glance at the windows
of the room where his bride was. He and the gentlemen on the coach were
laughing.

His leaving of his young bride to herself this day was classed among the
murky flashes which distinguished the deeds of noblemen. But his laughter
on leaving her stamped it a cruelty; of the kind that plain mortals, who
can be monsters, commit. Madge conceived a pretext for going into the
presence of her mistress, whose attitude was the same as when she first
sat in the chair. The lady smiled and said: 'He is not hurt much?' She
thought for them about her.

The girl's, heart of sympathy thumped, and her hero became a very minute
object. He had spoken previously of the making or not making a beast of
himself; without inflicting a picture of the beast. His words took shape
now, and in consequence a little self-pity began to move. It stirred to
swell the great wave of pity for the lady, that was in her bosom. 'Oh,
he!' she said, and extinguished the thought of him; and at once her
under-lip was shivering, her eyes filled and poured.

Carinthia rose anxiously. The girl dropped at her feet. 'You have been so
good to me to-day, my lady! so good to me to-day! I can't help it--I
don't often just for this moment; I've been excited. Oh, he's well, he
will do; he's nothing. You say "poor child!" But I'm not; it's only.
excitement. I do long to serve you the best I can.'

She stood up in obedience and had the arms of her young mistress pressing
her. Tears also were streaming from Carinthia's eyes. Heartily she
thanked the girl for the excuse to cry.

They were two women. On the road to Canleys, the coach conveying men
spouted with the lusty anecdote, relieved of the interdict of a
tyrannical sex.




CHAPTER XVIII

DOWN WHITECHAPEL WAY

Contention begets contention in a land of the pirate races. Gigs were at
high rival speed along the road from the battle-field to London. They
were the electrical wires of the time for an expectant population
bursting to have report of so thundering an event as the encounter of two
champion light weights, nursed and backed by a pair of gallant young
noblemen, pick of the whole row of coronets above. London panted gaping
and the gigs flew with the meat to fill it.

Chumley Potts offered Ambrose Mallard fair odds that the neat little trap
of the chief sporting journal, which had a reputation to maintain, would
be over one or other of the bridges crossing the Thames first. Mallard
had been struck by the neat little trap of an impudent new and
lower-priced journal, which had a reputation to gain. He took the
proffered odds, on the cry as of a cracker splitting. Enormous
difficulties in regard to the testimony and the verifications were
discussed; they were overcome. Potts was ready for any amount of trouble;
Mallard the same. There was clearly a race. There would consequently be a
record. Visits to the offices of those papers, perhaps half a day at the
south end of London or on Westminster bridge, examining witnesses, corner
shopmen, watermen, and the like, would or should satisfactorily establish
the disputed point.

Fleetwood had his fun; insomuch that he laughed himself into a sentiment
of humaneness toward the couple of donkeys and forgot his contempt of
them. Their gamblings and their bets increased his number of dependents;
and imbeciles were preferable to dolts or the dry gilt figures of the
circle he had to move in. Matter for some astonishment had been furnished
to the latter this day; and would cause an icy Signor stare and rather an
angry Signora flutter. A characteristic of that upper circle, as he knew
it, is, that the good are dull, the vicious very bad. They had nothing to
please him but manners. Elsewhere this land is a land of no manners. Take
it and make the most of it, then, for its quality of brute honesty: which
is found to flourish best in the British prize-ring.

His irony landed him there. It struck the country a ringing blow. But it
struck an almost effacing one at the life of the young nobleman of
boundless wealth, whose highest renown was the being a patron of
prizefighters. Husband of the daughter of the Old Buccaneer as well!
perchance as a result. That philosopher tramp named her 'beautiful
Gorgon.' She has no beauty; and as for Gorgon, the creature has a look of
timid softness in waiting behind her rocky eyes. A barbaric damsel
beginning to nibble at civilization, is nearer the mark; and ought she to
be discouraged?

Fleetwood's wrath with his position warned him against the dupery of any
such alcove thoughts. For his wrath revenged him, and he feared the being
stripped of it, lest a certain fund of his own softness, that he knew of;
though few did, should pull him to the creature's feet. She belonged to
him indeed; so he might put her to the trial of whether she had a heart
and personal charm, without the ceremony of wooing--which, in his case,
tempted to the feeling desperately earnest and becoming enslaved. He
speculated upon her eyelids and lips, and her voice, when melting, as
women do in their different ways; here and there with an
execrable--perhaps pardonable--art; one or two divinely. The vision drew
him to a headlong plunge and swim of the amorous mind, occupying a
minute, filling an era. He corrected the feebleness, and at the same time
threw a practical coachman's glance on peculiarities of the road,
requiring some knowledge of it if traversed backward at a whipping pace
on a moonless night. The drive from Canleys to the Royal Sovereign could
be done by good pacers in an hour and a half, little more--with Ives and
the stables ready, and some astonishment in a certain unseen chamber.
Fleetwood chuckled at a vision of romantic devilry--perfectly legitimate
too. Something, more to inflict than enjoy, was due to him.

He did, not phrase it, that a talk with the fellow Woodseer of his
mountains and his forests, and nature, philosophy, poetry, would have
been particularly healthy for him, almost as good as the good counsel be
needed and solicited none to give him. It swept among his ruminations
while he pricked Potts and Mallard to supply his craving for satanical
fare.

Gower Woodseer; the mention of whom is a dejection to the venerable
source of our story, was then in the act of emerging from the Eastward
into the Southward of the line of Canterbury's pilgrims when they set
forth to worship, on his homeward course, after a walk of two days out of
Dover. He descended London's borough, having exactly twopence halfpenny
for refreshment; following a term of prudent starvation, at the end of
the walk. It is not a district seductive to the wayfarer's appetite; as,
for example, one may find the Jew's fry of fish in oil, inspiriting the
Shoreditch region, to be. Nourishment is afforded, according to the laws
of England's genius in the arts of refection, at uninviting shops, to the
necessitated stomach. A penn'orth of crumb of bread, assisted on its
laborious passage by a penn'orth of the rinsings of beer, left the
natural philosopher a ha'penny for dessert at the stall of an applewoman,
where he withstood an inclination toward the juicy fruit and chose nuts.
They extend a meal, as a grimace broadens the countenance, illusorily;
but they help to cheat an emptiness in time, where it is nearly as
offensive to our sensations as within us; and that prolonged occupation
of the jaws goes a length to persuade us we are filling. All the better
when the substance is indigestible. Tramps of the philosophical order,
who are the practically sagacious, prefer tough grain for the teeth.
Woodseer's munching of his nuts awakened to fond imagination the picture
of his father's dinner, seen one day and little envied: a small slice of
cold boiled mutton-flesh in a crescent of white fat, with a lump of dry
bread beside the plate.

Thus he returned to the only home he had, not disheartened, and bearing
scenes that outvied London's print-shops for polychrome splendour, an
exultation to recall. His condition, moreover, threw his father's life
and work into colour: the lean Whitechapel house of the minister among
the poor; the joy in the saving of souls, if he could persuade himself
that such good labour advanced: and at the fall of light, the pastime
task of bootmaking--a desireable occupation for a thinker. Thought flies
best when the hands are easily busy. Cobblers have excursive minds. Their
occasional rap at the pegs diversifies the stitchings and is often
happily timed to settle an internal argument. Seek in a village for
information concerning the village or the state of mankind, you will be
less disappointed at the cobbler's than elsewhere, it has been said.

As Gower had anticipated, with lively feelings of pleasure, Mr. Woodseer
was at the wonted corner of his back room, on the stool between two
tallow candleflames, leather scented strongly, when the wanderer stood
before him, in the image of a ball that has done with circling about a
stable point.

'Back?' the minister sang out at once, and his wrinkles gleamed:

Their hands grasped.

'Hungry, sir, rather.'

'To be sure, you are. One can read it on your boots. Mrs. Jones will
spread you a table. How many miles to-day? Show the soles. They tell a
tale of wear.'

They had worn to resemble the thin-edged layers of still upper cloud
round the peep of coming sky.

'About forty odd to-day, sir. They've done their hundreds of miles and
have now come to dock. I 'll ask Mrs. Jones to bring me a plate here.'

Gower went to the housekeeper in the kitchen. His father's front door was
unfastened by day; she had not set eyes on him yet, and Mr. Woodseer
murmured:

'Now she's got the boy. There 's clasping and kissing. He's all wild
Wales to her.'

The plate of meat was brought by Mary Jones with Gower beside her, and a
sniffle of her happiness audible. She would not, although invited to stay
and burning to hear Gower, wait in the room where father and son had to
talk together after a separation, long to love's counting. She was a
Welshwoman of the pure blood, therefore delicately mannered by nature.

'Yes, dear lad, tobacco helps you on to the marrow of your story, and I
too will blow the cloud,' said Mr. Woodseer, when the plate was pushed
aside and the pipe appeared.

So Gower's recital of his wanderings began, more puffs than speech at the
commencement. He was alternately picturesque and sententious until he
reached Baden; there he became involved, from thinking of a revelation of
beauty in woman.

Mr. Woodseer rapped the leather on his block.

'A place where they have started public gambling, I am told.'

'We must look into all the corners of the world to know it, sir, and the
world has to be riddled or it riddles us.'

'Ah. Did you ever tell a lie, Gower Woodseer?'

'I played.'

'You played. The Lord be thanked you have kept your straight tongue! The
Lord can always enter a heart of truth. Sin cannot dwell with it. But you
played for gain, and that was a licenced thieving; and that was a
backsliding; and there will have to be a climbing up. And what that
means, your hold on truth will learn. Touch sin and you accommodate
yourself to its vileness. Ay, you love nature. Nature is not anchorage
for vessels like men. If you loved the Book you would float in harbour.
You played. I do trust you lost.'

'You have your wish, sir.'

'To have won their money, Gower! Rather starve.'

'I did.'

'Your reason for playing, poor lad?'

'The reason eludes reason.'

'Not in you.'

'Sight of the tables; an itch to try them--one's self as well; a notion
that the losers were playing wrong. In fine, a bit of a whirl of a medley
of atoms; I can't explain it further.'

'Ah. The tippler's fumes in his head! Spotty business, Gower Woodseer.
"Lead us not into temptation" is worldly wisdom in addition to heavenly.'

After listening to an extended homily, with a general assent and
tobacco's phlegm, Gower replied to his father's 'You starved manfully?'
nodding: 'From Baden to Nancy. An Alsatian cottager at times helped me
along, milk and bread.'

'Wholesome for body and for soul.'

'Entering Nancy I subscribed to the dictum of our first fathers, which
dogs would deliver, if they could speak: that there is no driver like
stomach: and I went head on to the College, saw the Principal: plea of
urgency. No engagement possible, to teach either French or English. But
he was inquisitive touching the urgency. That was my chance. The French
are humane when they are not suspicious of you. They are generous, if you
put a light to their minds. As I was dealing with a scholarly one, I made
use of such ornamental literary skill as I possessed, to prove urgency.
He supplied me with bread, fruit, and wine. In the end he procured me
pupils. I lodged over a baker's shop. I had food walks, and learnt
something of forestry there--a taking study. When I had saved enough to
tramp it home, I said my adieux to that good friend and tramped away,
entering London with about the same amount in small coin as when I
entered Nancy. A manner of exactly hitting the mark, that some would not
find so satisfactory as it is to me.'

The minister sighed. 'There comes in the "philosophy," I suppose. When
will you understand, that this "philosophy" is only the passive of a
religious faith? It seems to suit you gentlemen of the road while you are
young. Work among the Whitechapel poor. It would be a way for discovering
the shallows of your "philosophy" earlier.'

Gower asked him: 'Going badly here, sir?'

'Murders, robberies, misusage of women, and misconduct of women!--Drink,
in short: about the same amount. Drink is their death's river, rolling
them on helpless as corpses, on to--may they find mercy! I and a few
stand--it's in the tide we stand here, to stop them, pluck them out, make
life a bit sweet to them before the poor bodies go beneath. But come!
all's not dark, we have our gleams. I speak distressed by one of our
girls: a good girl, I believe; and the wilfullest that ever had command
of her legs. A well-favoured girl! You'll laugh, she has given her heart
to a prize-fighter. Well, you can say, she might have chosen worse. He
drinks, she hates it; she loves the man and hates his vice. He swears
amendment, is hiccupping at night; fights a match on the morrow, and gets
beaten out of formation. No matter: whenever, wherever, that man goes to
his fight, that girl follows to nurse him after it. He's her hero. Women
will have one, and it's their lottery. You read of such things; here we
have it alive and walking. I am led to think they 're an honest couple.
They come of established families. Her mother was out of Caermarthen;
died under my ministration, saintly, forgiving the drunkard. You may
remember the greengrocer, Tobias Winch? He passed away in shrieks for one
drop. I had to pitch my voice to the top notes to get hearing for the
hymn. He was a reverent man, with the craving by fits. That should have
been a lesson to Madge.'

'A little girl at the greengrocer's hard by? She sold me apples; rather
pretty,' said Gower.

'A fine grown girl now--Madge Winch; a comely wench she is. It breaks her
sister Sarah's heart. They both manage the little shop; they make it
prosper in a small way; enough, and what need they more? Then Christopher
Ines has on one of his matches. Madge drives her cart out, if it 's near
town. She's off down into Kent to-day by coach, Sarah tells me. A great
nobleman patronizes Christopher; a Lord Fleetwood, a lord of wealth. And
he must be thoughtful for these people: he sent Sarah word that
Christopher should not touch drink. You may remember a butcher Ines in
the street next to us. Christopher was a wild lad, always at "best man"
with every boy he met: went to sea--ran away. He returned a pugilist. The
girl will be nursing him now. I have spoken to her of him; and I trust to
her; but I mourn her attachment to the man who drinks.'

'The lord's name?' said Gower.

'Lord Fleetwood, Sarah named him. And so it pleases him to spend his
money!'

'He has other tastes. I know something of him, sir. He promises to be a
patron of Literature as well. His mother was a South Wales woman.'

'Could he be persuaded to publish a grand edition of the Triads?' Mr.
Woodseer said at once.

'No man more likely.'

'If you see him, suggest it.'

'Very little chance of my meeting him again. But those Triads! They're in
our blood. They spring to tie knots in the head. They push me to condense
my thoughts to a tight ball. They were good for primitive times: but
they--or the trick of the mind engendered by them--trip my steps along
the lines of composition. I produce pellets instead of flowing sheets.
It'll come right. At present I 'm so bent to pick and perfect, polish my
phrase, that I lose my survey. As a consequence, my vocabulary falters.'

'Ah,' Mr. Woodseer breathed and smote. 'This Literature is to be your
profession for the means of living?'

'Nothing else. And I'm so low down in the market way of it, that I could
not count on twenty pounds per annum. Fifty would give me standing, an
independent fifty.'

'To whom are you crying, Gower?'

'Not to gamble, you may be sure.'

'You have a home.'

'Good work of the head wants an easy conscience. I've too much of you in
me for a comfortable pensioner.'

'Or is it not, that you have been living the gentleman out there, with
just a holiday title to it?'

Gower was hit by his father's thrust. 'I shall feel myself a pieman's
chuckpenny as long as I'm unproductive, now I 've come back and have to
own to a home,' he said.

Tea brought in by Mrs. Mary Jones rather brightened him until he
considered that the enlivenment was due to a purchase by money, of which
he was incapable, and he rejected it, like an honourable man.
Simultaneously, the state of depression threw critic shades on a prized
sentence or two among his recent confections. It was rejected for the
best of reasons and the most discomforting: because it racked our
English; signifying, that he had not yet learnt the right use of his
weapons.

He was in this wrestle, under a placid demeanour, for several days,
hearing the shouts of Whitechapel Kit's victory, and hearing of Sarah
Winch's anxiety on account of her sister Madge; unaffected by sounds of
joy or grief, in his effort to produce a supple English, with Baden's
Madonna for sole illumination of his darkness. To her, to the illimitable
gold-mist of perspective and the innumerable images the thought of her
painted for him, he owed the lift which withdrew him from contemplation
of himself in a very disturbing stagnant pool of the wastes; wherein
often will strenuous youth, grown faint, behold a face beneath a scroll
inscribed Impostor. All whose aim was high have spied into that pool, and
have seen the face. His glorious lady would not let it haunt him.

The spell she cast had likewise power to raise him clean out of a
neighbourhood hinting Erebus to the young man with thirst for air,
solitudes, and colour. Scarce imaginable as she was, she reigned here, in
the idea of her, more fixedly than where she had been visible; as it
were, by right of her being celestially removed from the dismal place. He
was at the same time not insensible to his father's contented
ministrations among these homes of squalor; they pricked the curiosity,
which was in the youthful philosopher a form of admiration. For his
father, like all Welshmen, loved the mountains. Yet here he lived,
exhorting, ministering, aiding, supported up to high good cheer by some,
it seemed, superhuman backbone of uprightness;--his religious faith?
Well, if so, the thing might be studied. But things of the frozen senses,
lean and hueless things, were as repellent to Gower's imagination as his
father's dishes to an epicure. What he envied was, the worthy old man's
heart of feeling for others: his feeling at present for the girl Sarah
Winch and her sister Madge, who had not been heard of since she started
for the fight. Mr. Woodseer had written to her relatives at the Wells,
receiving no consolatory answer.

He was relieved at last; and still a little perplexed. Madge had
returned, he informed Gower. She was well, she was well in health; he had
her assurances that she was not excited about herself.

'She has brought a lady with her, a great lady to lodge with her. She has
brought the Countess of Fleetwood to lodge with her.'

Gower heard those words from his father; and his father repeated them. To
the prostrate worshipper of the Countess of Fleetwood, they were a blow
on the head; madness had set in here, was his first recovering thought,
or else a miracle had come to pass. Or was it a sham Countess of
Fleetwood imposing upon the girl? His father was to go and see the great
lady, at the greengrocer's shop; at her request, according to Madge.
Conjectures shot their perishing tracks across a darkness that deepened
and made shipwreck of philosophy. Was it the very Countess of Fleetwood
penitent for her dalliance with the gambling passion, in feminine need of
pastor's aid, having had report from Madge of this good shepherd? His
father expressed a certain surprise; his countenance was mild. He
considered it a merely strange occurrence.

Perhaps, in a crisis, a minister of religion is better armed than a
philosopher. Gower would not own that, but he acknowledged the evidences,
and owned to envy; especially when he accompanied his father to the
greengrocer's shop, and Mr. Woodseer undisturbedly said:

'Here is the place.' The small stuffed shop appeared to grow portentously
cavernous and waveringly illumined.




CHAPTER XIX

THE GIRL MADGE

Customers were at the counter of the shop, and these rational figures,
together with the piles of cabbages, the sacks of potatoes, the pale
small oranges here and there, the dominant smell of red herrings, denied
the lurking of an angelical presence behind them.

Sarah Winch and a boy served at the counter. Sarah led the Mr. Woodseers
into a corner knocked off the shop and called a room. Below the top bars
of a wizened grate was a chilly fire. London's light came piecemeal
through a smut-streaked window. If the wonderful was to occur, this was
the place to heighten it.

'My son may be an intruder,' Mr. Woodseer said. 'He is acquainted with a
Lord Fleetwood . . .'

'Madge will know, sir,' replied Sarah, and she sent up a shrill cry for
Madge from the foot of the stairs.

The girl ran down swiftly. She entered listening to Sarah, looking at
Gower; to whom, after a bob and pained smile where reverence was owing,
she said, 'Can you tell me, sir, please, where we can find Lord Fleetwood
now?'

Gower was unable to tell. Madge turned to Mr. Woodseer, saying soon
after: 'Oh, she won't mind; she'll be glad, if he knows Lord Fleetwood.
I'll fetch her.'

The moments were of the palpitating order for Gower, although his common
sense lectured the wildest of hearts for expecting such a possibility as
the presence of his lofty lady here.

And, of course, common sense proved to be right: the lady was quite
another. But she struck on a sleeping day of his travels. Her face was
not one to be forgotten, and to judge by her tremble of a smile, she
remembered him instantly.

They were soon conversing, each helping to paint the scene of the place
where they had met.

'Lord Fleetwood has married me,' she said.

Gower bent his head; all stood silent.

'May I?' said Madge to her. 'It is Lord Fleetwood's wedded wife, sir. He
drove her from her uncle's, on her wedding day, the day of a prize-fight,
where I was; he told me to wait on his lady at an inn there, as I 've
done and will. He drove away that evening, and he hasn't'--the girl's
black eyebrows worked: 'I've not seen him since. He's a great nobleman,
yes. He left his lady at the inn, expenses paid. He left her with no
money. She stayed on till her heart was breaking. She has come to London
to find him. She had to walk part of the way. She has only a change of
linen we brought in a parcel. She's a stranger to England: she knows
nobody in London. She had no place to come to but this poor hole of ours
she 's so good as let welcome her. We can't do better, and it 's no use
to be ashamed. She 's not a lady to scorn poor people.'

The girl's voice hummed through Gower.

He said: 'Lord Fleetwood may not be in London,' and chafed at himself for
such a quaver.

'It's his house we want, sir, he has not been at his house in Kent. We
want his London house.'

'My dear lady,' said Mr. Woodseer; 'it might be as well to communicate
the state of things to your family without delay. My son will call at any
address you name; or if it is a country address, I can write the items,
with my assurances of your safety under my charge, in my house, which I
beg you to make your home. My housekeeper is known to Sarah and Madge for
an excellent Christian woman.'

Carinthia replied: 'You are kind to me, sir. I am grateful. I have an
uncle; I would not disturb my uncle; he is inventing guns and he wishes
peace. It is my husband I have come to find. He did not leave me in
anger.'

She coloured. With a dimple of tenderness at one cheek, looking from
Sarah to Madge, she said: 'I would not leave my friends; they are sisters
to me.' Sarah, at these words, caught up her apron. Madge did no more
than breathe deep and fast.

An unoccupied cold parlour in Mr. Woodseer's house that would be heated
for a guest, urged him to repeat his invitation, but he took the check
from Gower, who suggested the doubt of Mary Jones being so good an
attendant upon Lady Fleetwood as Madge. 'And Madge has to help in the
shop at times.'

Madge nodded, looked into the eyes of her mistress, which sanctioned her
saying: 'She will like it best here, she is my lady and I understand her
best. My lady gives no trouble: she is hardy, she's not like other
ladies. I and Sarah sleep together in the room next. I can hear anything
she wants. She takes us as if she was used to it.'

Sarah had to go to serve a customer. Madge made pretence of pricking her
ears and followed into the shop.

'Your first visit to London is in ugly weather, Lady Fleetwood,' said
Gower.

'It is my first,' she answered.

How the marriage came about, how the separation, could not be asked and
was not related.

'Our district is not all London, my dear lady,' said Mr. Woodseer. 'Good
hearts are here, as elsewhere, and as many, if one looks behind the dirt.
I have found it since I laboured amongst them, now twenty years. Unwashed
human nature, though it is natural to us to wash, is the most human, we
find.'

Gower questioned the naturalness of human nature's desire to wash; and
they wrangled good-humouredly, Carinthia's eyes dwelling on them each in
turn; until Mr. Woodseer, pursuing the theme started by him to interest
her, spoke of consolations derived from his labours here, in exchange for
the loss of his mountains. Her face lightened.

'You love the mountains?'

'I am a son of the mountains.'

'Ah, I love them! Father called me a daughter of the mountains. I was
born in the mountains. I was leaving my mountains on the day, I think it
yesterday, when I met this gentleman who is your son.'

'A glorious day it was!' Gower exclaimed.

'It was a day of great glory for me,' said Carinthia. 'Your foot did not
pain you for long?'

'The length of two pipes. You were with your brother.'

'With my brother. My brother has married a most beautiful lady. He is now
travelling his happy time--my Chillon!'

There came a radiance on her under-eyelids. There was no weeping.

Struck by the contrast between the two simultaneous honeymoons, and a
vision of the high-spirited mountain girl, seen in this place a young
bride seeking her husband, Gower Woodseer could have performed that
unphilosophical part. He had to shake himself. She seemed really a
soaring bird brought down by the fowler.

Lord Fleetwood's manner of abandoning her was the mystery.

Gower stood waiting for her initiative, when the minister interposed:
'There are books, books of our titled people-the Peers, books of the
Peerage. They would supply the address. My son will discover where to
examine them. He will find the address. Most of the great noblemen have a
London house.'

'My husband has a house in London,' Carinthia said.

'I know him, to some degree,' said Gower.

She remarked: 'I have heard that you do.'

Her lips were shut, as to any hint at his treatment of her.

Gower went into the shop to speak with Madge. The girl was talking in the
business tone to customers; she finished her commission hurriedly and
joined him on the pavement by the doorstep. Her voice was like the change
for the swing of a door from street to temple.

'You've seen how brave she is, sir. She has things to bear. Never cries,
never frets. Her marriage day--leastways . . . I can't, no girl can tell.
A great nobleman, yes. She waited, believing in him; she does. She hasn't
spoken to me of what she's had to bear. I don't know; I guess; I'm sure
I'm right--and him a man! Girls learn to know men, call them gentlemen or
sweeps. She thinks she has only to meet him to persuade him she 's fit to
be loved by him. She thinks of love. Would he--our tongues are tied
except among ourselves to a sister. Leaves her by herself, with only me,
after--it knocks me dumb! Many a man commits a murder wouldn't do that.
She could force him to--no, it isn't a house she wants, she wants him.
He's her husband, Mr. Woodseer. You will do what you can to help; I judge
by your father. I and Sarah 'll slave for her to be as comfortable--as
we--can make her; we can't give her what she 's used to. I shall count
the hours.'

'You sold me apples when your head was just above the counter,' said
Gower.

'Did I?--you won't lose time, sir?' she rejoined. 'Her box is down at the
beastly inn in Kent. Kind people, I dare say; their bill was paid any
extent, they said. And he might do as he liked in it--enter it like a
thief, if it pleased him, and off like one, and they no wiser. She walked
to his big house Esslemont for news of him. And I'm not a snivelling
wench either; but she speaks of him a way to make a girl drink her tears,
if they ain't to be let fall.'

'But you had a victory down there,' Gower hinted congratulations.

'Ah,' said she.

'Christopher Ines is all right now?'

'I've as good as lost my good name for Kit Ines, Mr. Woodseer.'

'Not with my dad, Madge.'

'The minister reads us at the heart. Shall we hear the street of his
house in London before night?'

'I may be late.'

'I'll be up, any hour, for a rap at the shutters. I want to take her to
the house early next morning. She won't mind the distance. She lies in
bed, her eyes shut or open, never sleeping, hears any mouse. It shouldn't
go on, if we can do a thing to help.'

'I'm off,' said Gower, unwontedly vexed at his empty pocket, that could
not offer the means for conveyance to a couple of young women.

The dark-browed girl sent her straight eyes at him. They pushed him to
hasten. On second thoughts, he stopped and hailed her; he was moved to
confirm an impression of this girl's features.

His mind was directed to the business burning behind them, honestly
enough, as soon as he had them in sight again.

'I ought to have the address of some of her people, in case,' he said.

'She won't go to her uncle, I 'm sure of that,' said Madge. 'He 's a lord
and can't be worried. It 's her husband to find first.'

'If he's to be found!--he's a lord, too. Has she no other relatives or
friends?'

'She loves her brother. He's an officer. He's away on honeymoon. There 's
an admiral down Hampshire way, a place I've been near and seen. I'd not
have you go to any of them, sir, without trying all we can do to find
Lord Fleetwood. It's Admiral Fakenham she speaks of; she's fond of him.
She's not minded to bother any of her friends about herself.'

'I shall see you to-night,' said Gower, and set his face Westward,
remembering that his father had named Caermarthen as her mother's
birthplace.

Just in that tone of hers do Welshwomen talk of their country; of its
history, when at home, of its mountains, when exiled: and in a language
like hers, bare of superlatives to signify an ardour conveyed by the fire
of the breath. Her quick devotion to a lady exciting enthusiasm through
admiring pity for the grace of a much-tried quiet sweetness, was
explained; apart from other reasons, feminine or hidden, which might
exist. Only a Welsh girl would be so quick and all in it, with a voice
intimating a heated cauldron under her mouth. None but a Welsh-blooded
girl, risking her good name to follow and nurse the man she considered a
hero, would carry her head to look virgin eyes as she did. One could
swear to them, Gower thought. Contact with her spirited him out of his
mooniness.

He had the Cymric and Celtic respect of character; which puts aside the
person's environments to face the soul. He was also an impressionable
fellow among his fellows, a philosopher only at his leisure, in his
courted solitudes. Getting away some strides from this girl of the
drilling voice,--the shudder-voice, he phrased it,--the lady for whom she
pleaded came clearer into his view and gradually absorbed him; though it
was an emulation with the girl Madge, of which he was a trifle conscious,
that drove him to do his work of service in the directest manner. He then
fancied the girl had caught something of the tone of her lady: the savage
intensity or sincerity; and he brooded on Carinthia's position, the
mixture of the astounding and the woful in her misadventure. One could
almost laugh at our human fate, to think of a drop off the radiant
mountain heights upon a Whitechapel greengrocer's shop, gathering the
title of countess midway.

But nothing of the ludicrous touched her; no, and if we bring reason to
scan our laugh at pure humanity, it is we who are in the place of the
ridiculous, for doing what reason disavows. Had he not named her,
Carinthia, Saint and Martyr, from a first perusal of her face? And Lord
Fleetwood had read and repeated it. Lord Fleetwood had become the
instrument to martyrize her? That might be; there was a hoard of bad
stuff in his composition besides the precious: and this was a nobleman
owning enormous wealth, who could vitiate himself by disposing of a
multitude of men and women to serve his will, a shifty will. Wealth
creates the magician, and may breed the fiend within him. In the hands of
a young man, wealth is an invitation to devilry. Gower's idea of the
story of Carinthia inclined to charge Lord Fleetwood with every possible
false dealing. He then quashed the charge, and decided to wait for
information.

At the second of the aristocratic Clubs of London's West, into which he
stepped like an easy member, the hall-porter did not examine his clothing
from German hat to boots, and gave him Lord Fleetwood's town address. He
could tell Madge at night by the door of the shuttered shop, that Lord
Fleetwood had gone down to Wales.

'It means her having to wait,' she said. 'The minister has been to the
coach-office, to order up her box from that inn. He did it in his name;
they can't refuse; no money's owing. She must have a change. Sally has
fifteen pounds locked up in case of need.'

Sally's capacity and economy fetched the penniless philosopher a slap.

'You've taken to this lady,' he said.

'She held my hand, while Kit Ines was at his work; and I was new to her,
and a prize-fighter's lass, they call me:--upon the top of that
nobleman's coach, where he made me sit, behind her, to see the fight; and
she his wedded lady that morning. A queer groom. He may keep Kit Ines
from drink, he's one of you men, and rides over anything in his way. I
can't speak about it; I could swear it before a judge, from what I know.
Those Rundles at that inn don't hear anything it suits him to do. All the
people down in those parts are slaves to him. And I thought he was a real
St. George before,--yes, ready I was to kiss the ground his feet crossed.
If you could, it's Chinningfold near where Admiral Fakenham lives, down
Hampshire way. Her friends ought to hear what's happened to her. They'll
find her in a queer place. She might go to the minister's. I believe
she's happier with us girls.'

Gower pledged his word to start for Chinningfold early as the light next
day. He liked the girl the better, in an amicable fashion, now that his
nerves had got free of the transient spell of her kettle tone--the hardly
varied one note of a heart boiling with sisterly devotion to a misused
stranger of her sex;--and, after the way of his race, imagination sprang
up in him, at the heels of the quieted senses, releasing him from the
personal and physical to grasp the general situation and place the
protagonist foremost.

He thought of Carinthia, with full vision of her. Some wrong had been
done, or some violation of the right, to guess from the girl Madge's
molten words in avoidance of the very words. It implied--though it might
be but one of Love's shrewder discords--such suspected traitorous dealing
of a man with their sister woman as makes the world of women all woman
toward her. They can be that, and their being so illuminates their hidden
sentiments in relation to the mastering male, whom they uphold.

But our uninformed philosopher was merely picking up scraps of sheddings
outside the dark wood of the mystery they were to him, and playing
imagination upon them. This primary element of his nature soon enthroned
his chosen lady above their tangled obscurities. Beneath her tranquil
beams, with the rapture of the knowledge that her name on earth was
Livia, he threaded East London's thoroughfares,--on a morning when day
and night were made one by fog, to journey down to Chinningfold, by
coach, in the service of the younger Countess of Fleetwood, whose right
to the title he did not doubt, though it directed surprise movements at
his understanding from time to time.




CHAPTER XX

STUDIES IN FOG, GOUT, AN OLD SEAMAN, A LOVELY SERPENT, AND THE MORAL
EFFECTS THAT MAY COME OF A BORROWED SHIRT

Money of his father's enabled Gower to take the coach; and studies in
fog, from the specked brown to the woolly white, and the dripping torn,
were proposed to the traveller, whose preference of Nature's face did not
arrest his observation of her domino and petticoats; across which blank
sheets he curiously read backward, that he journeyed by the aid of his
father's hard-earned, ungrudged piece of gold. Without it, he would have
been useless in this case of need. The philosopher could starve with
equanimity, and be the stronger. But one had, it seemed here clearly, to
put on harness and trudge along a line, if the unhappy were to have one's
help. Gradual experiences of his business among his fellows were teaching
an exercised mind to learn in regions where minds unexercised were
doctorial giants beside it.

The study of gout was offered at Chinningfold. Admiral Fakenham's butler
refused at first to take a name to his master. Gower persisted, stating
the business of his mission; and in spite of the very suspicious glib
good English spoken by a man wearing such a hat and suit, the butler was
induced to consult Mrs. Carthew.

She sprang up alarmed. After having seen the young lady happily married
and off with her lordly young husband, the arrival of a messenger from
the bride gave a stir the wrong way to her flowing recollections; the
scenes and incidents she had smothered under her love of the comfortable
stood forth appallingly. The messenger, the butler said, was no
gentleman. She inspected Gower and heard him speak. An anomaly had come
to the house; for he had the language of a gentleman, the appearance of a
nondescript; he looked indifferent, he spoke sympathetically; and he was
frank as soon as the butler was out of hearing. In return for the
compliment, she invited him to her sitting-room. The story of the young
countess, whom she had seen driven away by her husband from the church in
a coach and four, as being now destitute, praying to see her friends, in
the Whitechapel of London--the noted haunt of thieves and outcasts,
bankrupts and the abandoned; set her asking for the first time, who was
the man with dreadful countenance inside the coach? A previously
disregarded horror of a man. She went trembling to the admiral, though
his health was delicate, his temper excitable. It was, she considered, an
occasion for braving the doctor's interdict.

Gower was presently summoned to the chamber where Admiral Fakenham
reclined on cushions in an edifice of an arm-chair. He told a plain tale.
Its effect was to straighten the admiral's back, and enlarge in grey
glass a pair of sea-blue eyes. And, 'What's that? Whitechapel?' the
admiral exclaimed,--at high pitch, far above his understanding. The
particulars were repeated, whereupon the sick-room shook with,
'Greengrocer?' He stunned himself with another of the monstrous points in
his pet girl's honeymoon: 'A prizefight?'

To refresh a saving incredulity, he took a closer view of the messenger.
Gower's habiliments were those of the 'queer fish,' the admiral saw. But
the meeting at Carlsruhe was recalled to him, and there was a worthy
effort to remember it. 'Prize-fight!--Greengrocer! Whitechapel!' he rang
the changes rather more moderately; till, swelling and purpling, he
cried: 'Where's the husband?'

That was the emissary's question likewise.

'If I could have found him, sir, I should not have troubled you.'

'Disappeared? Plays the man of his word, then plays the madman!
Prize-fight the first day of her honeymoon? Good Lord! Leaves her at the
inn?'

'She was left.'

'When was she left?'

'As soon as the fight was over--as far as I understand.'

The admiral showered briny masculine comments on that bridegroom.

'Her brother's travelling somewhere in the Pyrenees--married my daughter.
She has an uncle, a hermit.' He became pale. 'I must do it. The rascal
insults us all. Flings her off the day he married her! It 's a slap in
the face to all of us. You are acquainted with the lady, sir. Would you
call her a red-haired girl?'

'Red-gold of the ballads; chestnut-brown, with threads of fire.'

'She has the eyes for a man to swear by. I feel the loss of her, I can
tell you. She was wine and no penalty to me. Is she much broken under
it?--if I 'm to credit . . . I suppose I must. It floors me.'

Admiral Baldwin's frosty stare returned on him. Gower caught an image of
it, as comparable, without much straining, to an Arctic region smitten by
the beams.

'Nothing breaks her courage,' he said.

'To be sure, my poor dear! Who could have guessed when she left my house
she was on her way to a prizefight and a greengrocer's in Whitechapel.
But the dog's not mad, though his bite 's bad; he 's an eccentric
mongrel. He wants the whip; ought to have had it regularly from his first
breeching. He shall whistle for her when he repents; and he will, mark
me. This gout here will be having a snap at the vitals if I don't start
to-night. Oblige me, half a minute.'

The admiral stretched his hand for an arm to give support, stood, and
dropped into the chair, signifying a fit of giddiness in the word 'Head.'

Before the stupor had passed, Mrs. Carthew entered, anxious lest the
admittance of a messenger of evil to her invalid should have been an
error of judgement. The butler had argued it with her. She belonged to
the list of persons appointed to cut life's thread when it strains, their
general kindness being so liable to misdirection.

Gower left the room and went into the garden. He had never seen a death;
and the admiral's peculiar pallor intimated events proper to days of cold
mist and a dripping stillness. How we go, was the question among his
problems:--if we are to go! his youthful frame insistingly added.

The fog down a wet laurel-walk contracted his mind with the chilling of
his blood, and he felt that he would have to see the thing if he was to
believe in it. Of course he believed, but life throbbed rebelliously, and
a picture of a desk near a lively fire-grate, books and pen and paper,
and a piece of writing to be approved of by the Hesper of ladies, held
ground with a pathetic heroism against the inevitable. He got his wits to
the front by walking faster; and then thought of the young countess and
the friend she might be about to lose. She could number her friends on
her fingers. Admiral Fakenham's exclamations of the name of the place
where she now was, conveyed an inky idea of the fall she had undergone.
Counting her absent brother, with himself, his father, and the two
Whitechapel girls, it certainly was an unexampled fall, to say of her,
that they and those two girls had become by the twist of circumstances
the most serviceable of her friends.

Her husband was the unriddled riddle we have in the wealthy young
lord,--burning to possess, and making, tatters of all he grasped, the
moment it was his own. Glints of the devilish had shot from him at the
gamingtables,--fine haunts for the study of our lower man. He could be
magnificent in generosity; he had little humaneness. He coveted beauty in
women hungrily, and seemed to be born hostile to them; or so Gower judged
by the light of the later evidence on unconsidered antecedent
observations of him. Why marry her to cast her off instantly? The crude
philosopher asked it as helplessly as the admiral. And, further, what did
the girl Madge mean by the drop of her voice to a hum of enforced
endurance under injury, like the furnace behind an iron door? Older men
might have understood, as he was aware; he might have guessed, only he
had the habit of scattering meditation upon the game of hawk and fowl.

Dame Gossip boils. Her one idea of animation is to have her dramatis
persona in violent motion, always the biggest foremost; and, indeed, that
is the way to make them credible, for the wind they raise and the
succession of collisions. The fault of the method is, that they do not
instruct; so the breath is out of them before they are put aside; for the
uninstructive are the humanly deficient: they remain with us like the
tolerated old aristocracy, which may not govern, and is but socially
seductive. The deuteragonist or secondary person can at times tell us
more of them than circumstances at furious heat will help them to reveal;
and the Dame will have him only as an index-post. Hence her endless
ejaculations over the mystery of Life, the inscrutability of
character,--in a plain world, in the midst of such readable people! To
preserve Romance (we exchange a sky for a ceiling if we let it go), we
must be inside the heads of our people as well as the hearts, more than
shaking the kaleidoscope of hurried spectacles, in days of a growing
activity of the head.

Gower Woodseer could not know that he was drawn on to fortune and the
sight of his Hesper by Admiral Fakenham's order that the visitor was to
stay at his house until he should be able to quit his bed, and journey
with him to London, doctor or no doctor. The doctor would not hear of it.
The admiral threatened it every night for the morning, every morning for
the night; and Gower had to submit to postponements balefully affecting
his linen. Remonstrance was not to be thought of; for at a mere show of
reluctance the courtly admiral flushed, frowned, and beat the bed where
he lay, a gouty volcano. Gower's one shirt was passing through the
various complexions, and had approached the Nubian on its way to negro.
His natural candour checked the downward course. He mentioned to Mrs.
Carthew, with incidental gravity, on a morning at breakfast, that this
article of his attire 'was beginning to resemble London snow.' She was
amused; she promised him a change more resembling country snow. 'It will
save me from buttoning so high up,' he said, as he thanked her. She then
remembered the daily increase of stiffness in his figure: and a
reflection upon his patient waiting, and simpleness, and lexicographer
speech to expose his minor needs, touched her unused sense of humour on
the side where it is tender in women, from being motherly.

In consequence, she spoke of him with a pleading warmth to the Countess
Livia, who had come down to see the admiral 'concerning an absurd but
annoying rumour running over London.' Gower was out for a walk. He knew
of the affair, Mrs. Carthew said, for an introduction to her excuses of
his clothing.

'But I know the man,' said Livia. 'Lord Fleetwood picked him up
somewhere, and brought him to us. Clever: Why, is he here?'

'He is here, sent to the admiral, as I understand, my lady.'

'Sent by whom?'

Having but a weak vocabulary to defend a delicate position, Mrs. Carthew
stuttered into evasions, after the way of ill-armed persons; and naming
herself a stranger to the circumstances, she feebly suggested that the
admiral ought not to be disturbed before the doctor's next visit; Mr.
Woodseer had been allowed to sit by his bed yesterday only for ten
minutes, to divert him with his talk. She protected in this wretched
manner the poor gentleman she sacrificed and emitted such a smell of
secresy, that Livia wrote three words on her card, for it to be taken to
Admiral Baldwin at once. Mrs. Carthew supplicated faintly; she was
unheeded.

The Countess of Fleetwood mounted the stairs--to descend them with the
knowledge of her being the Dowager Countess of Fleetwood! Henrietta had
spoken of the Countess of Fleetwood's hatred of the title of Dowager. But
when Lady Fleetwood had the fact from the admiral, would she forbear to
excite him? If she repudiated it, she would provoke him to fire 'one of
his broadsides,'--as they said in the family, to assert its and that
might exhaust him; and there was peril in that. And who was guilty? Mrs.
Carthew confessed her guilt, asking how it could have been avoided. She
made appeal to Gower on his return, transfixing him.

Not only is he no philosopher who has an idol, he has to learn that he
cannot think rationally; his due sense of weight and measure is lost, the
choice of his thoughts as well. He was in the house with his devoutly,
simply worshipped, pearl of women, and his whole mind fell to work
without ado upon the extravagant height of the admiral's shirt-collar
cutting his ears. The very beating of his heart was perplexed to know
whether it was for rapture or annoyance. As a result he was but
histrionically master of himself when the Countess Livia or the nimbus of
the lady appeared in the room.

She received his bow; she directed Mrs. Carthew to have the doctor
summoned immediately. The remorseful woman flew.

'Admiral Fakenham is very ill, Mr. Woodseer, he has had distracting news.
Oh, no, the messenger is not blamed. You are Lord Fleetwood's friend and
will not allow him to be prejudged. He will be in town shortly. I know
him well, you know him; and could you hear him accused of cruelty--and to
a woman? He is the soul of chivalry. So, in his way, is the admiral. If
he were only more patient! Let us wait for Lord Fleetwood's version. I am
certain it will satisfy me. The admiral wishes you to step up to him. Be
very quiet; you will be; consent to everything. I was unaware of his
condition: the things I heard were incredible. I hope the doctor will not
delay. Now go. Beg to retire soon.'

Livia spoke under her breath; she had fears.

Admiral Baldwin lay in his bed, submitting to a nurse-woman-sign of
extreme exhaustion. He plucked strength from the sight of Gower and
bundled the woman out of the room, muttering: 'Kill myself? Not half so
quick as they'd do it. I can't rest for that Whitechapel of yours. Please
fetch pen and paper: it's a letter.'

The letter began, 'Dear Lady Arpington.'

The dictation of it came in starts. Atone moment it seemed as if life's
ending shook the curtains on our stage and were about to lift. An old
friend in the reader of the letter would need no excuse for its jerky
brevity. It said that his pet girl, Miss Kirby, was married to the Earl
of Fleetwood in the first week of last month, and was now to be found at
a shop No. 45 Longways, Whitechapel; that the writer was ill, unable to
stir; that he would be in London within eight-and-forty hours at
furthest. He begged Lady Arpington to send down to the place and have the
young countess fetched to her, and keep her until he came.

Admiral Baldwin sat up to sign the letter.

'Yes, and write "miracles happen when the devil's abroad"--done it!' he
said, sinking back. 'Now seal, you'll find wax--the ring at my
watch-chain.'

He sighed, as it were the sound of his very last; he lay like a sleeper
twitched by a dream. There had been a scene with Livia. The dictating of
the letter took his remainder of strength out of him.

Gower called in the nurse, and went downstairs. He wanted the address of
Lady Arpington's town house.

'You have a letter for her?' said Livia, and held her hand for it in a
way not to be withstood.

'There's no superscription,' he remarked.

'I will see to that, Mr. Woodseer.'

'I fancy I am bound, Lady Fleetwood.'

'By no means.' She touched his arm. 'You are Lord Fleetwood's friend.'

A slight convulsion of the frame struck the admiral's shirt-collar at his
ears; it virtually prostrated him under foot of a lady so benign in
overlooking the spectacle he presented. Still, he considered; he had wits
alive enough, just to perceive a duty.

'The letter was entrusted to me, Lady Fleetwood.'

'You are afraid to entrust it to the post?'

'I was thinking of delivering it myself in town.'

'You will entrust it to me.'

'Anything on earth of my own.'

'The treasure would be valued. This you confide to my care.'

'It is important.'

'No.'

'Indeed it is.'

'Say that it is, then. It is quite safe with me. It may be important that
it should not be delivered. Are you not Lord Fleetwood's friend? Lady
Arpington is not so very, very prominent in the list with you and me.
Besides, I don't think she has come to town yet. She generally sees out
the end of the hunting season. Leave the letter to me: it shall go. You,
with your keen observation missing nothing, have seen that my uncle has
not his whole judgement at present. There are two sides to a case. Lord
Fleetwood's friend will know that it would be unfair to offer him up to
his enemies while he is absent. Things going favourably here, I drive
back to town to-morrow, and I hope you will accept a seat in my
carriage.'

He delivered his courtliest; he was riding on cloud.

They talked of Baden. His honourable surrender of her defeated purse was
a subject for gentle humour with her, venturesome compliment with him. He
spoke well; and though his hands were clean of Sir Meeson Corby's
reproach of them, the caricature of presentable men blushed absurdly and
seemed uneasy in his monstrous collar. The touching of him again would
not be required to set him pacing to her steps. His hang of the head
testified to the unerring stamp of a likeness Captain Abrane could affix
with a stroke: he looked the fiddler over his bow, playing wonderfully to
conceal the crack of a string. The merit of being one of her army of
admirers was accorded to him. The letter to Lady Arpington was retained.

Gower deferred the further mention of the letter until a visit to the
admiral's chamber should furnish an excuse; and he had to wait for it.
Admiral Baldwin's condition was becoming ominous. He sent messages
downstairs by the doctor, forbidding his guest's departure until they two
could make the journey together next day. The tortured and blissful young
man, stripped of his borrowed philosopher's cloak, hung conscience-ridden
in this delicious bower, which was perceptibly an antechamber of the
vaults, offering him the study he thirsted for, shrank from, and mixed
with his cup of amorous worship.




CHAPTER XXI

IN WHICH WE HAVE FURTHER GLIMPSES OF THE WONDROUS MECHANISM OF OUR
YOUNGER MAN

The report of Admiral Baldwin Fakenham as having died in the arms of a
stranger visiting the house, hit nearer the mark than usual. He yielded
his last breath as Gower Woodseer was lowering him to his pillow, shortly
after a husky whisper of the letter to Lady Arpington; and that was one
of Gower's crucial trials. It condemned him, for the pacifying of a dying
man, to the murmur and shuffle, which was a lie; and the lie burnt him,
contributed to the brand on his race. He and his father upheld a solitary
bare staff, where the Cambrian flag had flown, before their people had
been trampled in mire, to do as the worms. His loathing of any shadow of
the lie was a protest on behalf of Welsh blood against an English charge,
besides the passion for spiritual cleanliness: without which was no
comprehension, therefore no enjoyment, of Nature possible to him. For
Nature is the Truth.

He begged the countess to let him have the letter; he held to the
petition, with supplications; he spoke of his pledged word, his honour;
and her countenance did not deny to such an object as she beheld the
right to a sense of honour. 'We all have the sentiment, I hope, Mr.
Woodseer,' she said, stupefying the worshipper, who did not see it
manifested. There was a look of gentle intimacy, expressive of common
grounds between them, accompanying the dead words. Mistress of the
letter, and the letter safe under lock, the admiral dead, she had not to
bestow a touch of her hand on his coatsleeve in declining to return it. A
face languidly and benevolently querulous was bent on him, when he, so
clever a man, resumed his very silly petition.

She was moon out of cloud at a change of the theme. Gower journeyed to
London without the letter, intoxicated, and conscious of poison;
enamoured of it, and straining for health. He had to reflect at the
journey's end, that he had picked up nothing on the road, neither a thing
observed nor a thing imagined; he was a troubled pool instead of a
flowing river.

The best help to health for him was a day in his father's house. We are
perpetually at our comparisons of ourselves with others; and they are
mostly profitless; but the man carrying his religious light, to light the
darkest ways of his fellows, and keeping good cheer, as though the heart
of him ran a mountain water through the grimy region, plucked at Gower
with an envy to resemble him in practice. His philosophy, too, reproached
him for being outshone. Apart from his philosophy, he stood confessed a
bankrupt; and it had dwindled to near extinction. Adoration of a woman
takes the breath out of philosophy. And if one had only to say sheer
donkey, he consenting to be driven by her! One has to say worse in this
case; for the words are, liar and traitor.

Carinthia's attitude toward his father conduced to his emulous respect
for the old man, below whom, and indeed below the roadway of ordinary
principles hedged with dull texts, he had strangely fallen. The sight of
her lashed him. She made it her business or it was her pleasure to go the
rounds beside Mr. Woodseer visiting his poor people. She spoke of the
scenes she witnessed, and threw no stress on the wretchedness, having
only the wish to assist in ministering. Probably the great wretchedness
bubbling over the place blunted her feeling of loss at the word of
Admiral Baldwin's end; her bosom sprang up: 'He was next to father,' was
all she said; and she soon reverted to this and that house of the
lodgings of poverty. She had descended on the world. There was of course
a world outside Whitechapel, but Whitechapel was hot about her; the nests
of misery, the sharp note of want in the air, tricks of an urchin who had
amused her.

As to the place itself, she had no judgement to pronounce, except that:
'They have no mornings here'; and the childish remark set her quivering
on her heights, like one seen through a tear, in Gower's memory. Scarce
anything of her hungry impatience to meet her husband was visible: she
had come to London to meet him; she hoped to meet him soon: before her
brother's return, she could have added. She mentioned the goodness of
Sarah Winch in not allowing that she was a burden to support. Money and
its uses had impressed her; the quantity possessed by some, the utter
need of it for the first of human purposes by others. Her speech was not
of so halting or foreign an English. She grew rapidly wherever she was
planted.

Speculation on the conduct of her husband, empty as it might be, was
necessitated in Gower. He pursued it, and listened to his father
similarly at work: 'A young lady fit for any station, the kindest of
souls, a born charitable human creature, void of pride, near in all
she--does and thinks to the Shaping Hand, why should her husband forsake
her on the day of their nuptials.

She is most gracious; the simplicity of an infant. Can you imagine the
doing of an injury by a man to a woman like her?'

Then it was that Gower screwed himself to say:

'Yes, I can imagine it, I'm doing it myself. I shall be doing it till
I've written a letter and paid a visit.'

He took a meditative stride or two in the room, thinking without
revulsion of the Countess Livia under a similitude of the bell of the
plant henbane, and that his father had immunity from temptation because
of the insensibility to beauty. Out of which he passed to the writing of
the letter to Lord Fleetwood, informing his lordship that he intended
immediately to deliver a message to the Marchioness of Arpington from
Admiral Baldwin Fakenham, in relation to the Countess of Fleetwood. A
duty was easily done by Gower when he had surmounted the task of
conceiving his resolution to do it; and this task, involving an offence
to the Lady Livia and intrusion of his name on a nobleman's recollection,
ranked next in severity to the chopping off of his fingers by a man
suspecting them of the bite of rabies.

An interview with Lady Arpington was granted him the following day.

She was a florid, aquiline, loud-voiced lady, evidently having no seat
for her wonderments, after his account of the origin of his acquaintance
with the admiral had quieted her suspicions. The world had only to stand
beside her, and it would hear what she had heard. She rushed to the
conclusion that Lord Fleetwood had married a person of no family.

'Really, really, that young man's freaks appear designed for the express
purpose of heightening our amazement!' she exclaimed. 'He won't easily
get beyond a wife in the east of London, at a shop; but there's no
knowing. Any wish of Admiral Baldwin Fakenham's I hold sacred. At least I
can see for myself. You can't tell me more of the facts? If Lord
Fleetwood's in town, I will call him here at once. I will drive down to
this address you give me. She is a civil person?'

'Her breeding is perfect,' said Gower.

'Perfect breeding, you say?' Lady Arpington was reduced to a murmur. She
considered the speaker: his outlandish garb, his unprotesting
self-possession. He spoke good English by habit, her ear told her. She
was of an eminence to judge of a man impartially, even to the sufferance
of an opinion from him, on a subject that lesser ladies would have denied
to his clothing. Outwardly simple, naturally frank, though a tangle of
the complexities inwardly, he was a touchstone for true aristocracy, as
the humblest who bear the main elements of it must be. Certain humorous
turns in his conversation won him an amicable smile when he bowed to
leave: they were the needed finish of a favourable impression.

One day later the earl arrived in town, read Gower Woodseer's brief
words, and received the consequently expected summons, couched in a great
lady's plain imperative. She was connected with his family on the
paternal side.

He went obediently; not unwillingly, let the deputed historian of the
Marriage, turning over documents, here say. He went to Lady Arpington
disposed for marital humaneness and jog-trot harmony, by condescension;
equivalent to a submitting to the drone of an incessant psalm at the drum
of the ear. He was, in fact, rather more than inclined that way. When
very young, at the age of thirteen, a mood of religious fervour had
spiritualized the dulness of Protestant pew and pulpit for him. Another
fit of it, in the Roman Catholic direction, had proposed, during his
latest dilemma, to relieve him of the burden of his pledged word. He had
plunged for a short space into the rapturous contemplation of a monastic
life--'the clean soul for the macerated flesh,' as that fellow Woodseer
said once: and such as his friend, the Roman Catholic Lord Feltre,
moodily talked of getting in his intervals. He had gone down to a young
and novel trial establishment of English penitents in the forest of a
Midland county, and had watched and envied, and seen the escape from a
lifelong bondage to the 'beautiful Gorgon,' under cover of a white
flannel frock. The world pulled hard, and he gave his body into chains of
a woman, to redeem his word.

But there was a plea on behalf of this woman. The life she offered might
have psalmic iteration; the dead monotony of it in prospect did,
nevertheless, exorcise a devil. Carinthia promised, it might seem to
chase and keep the black beast out of him permanently, as she could, he
now conceived: for since the day of the marriage with her, the devil
inhabiting him had at least been easier, 'up in a corner.'

He held an individual memory of his bride, rose-veiled, secret to them
both, that made them one, by subduing him. For it was a charm; an actual
feminine, an unanticipated personal, charm; past reach of tongue to name,
wordless in thought. There, among the folds of the incense vapours of our
heart's holy of holies, it hung; and it was rare, it was distinctive of
her, and alluring, if one consented to melt to it, and accepted for
compensation the exorcising of a devil.

Oh, but no mere devil by title!--a very devil. It was alert and frisky,
flushing, filling the thin cold idea of Henrietta at a thought; and in
the thought it made Carinthia's intimate charm appear as no better than a
thing to enrich a beggar, while he knew that kings could never command
the charm. Not love, only the bathing in Henrietta's incomparable beauty
and the desire to be, desire to have been, the casket of it, broke the
world to tempest and lightnings at a view of Henrietta the married
woman--married to the brother of the woman calling him husband:--'It is
my husband.' The young tyrant of wealth could have avowed that he did not
love Henrietta; but not the less was he in the swing of a whirlwind at
the hint of her loving the man she had married. Did she? It might be
tried.

She? That Henrietta is one of the creatures who love pleasure, love
flattery, love their beauty: they cannot love a man. Or the love is a
ship that will not sail a sea.

Now, if the fact were declared and attested, if her shallowness were seen
proved, one might get free of the devil she plants in the breast.
Absolutely to despise her would be release, and it would allow of his
tasting Carinthia's charm, reluctantly acknowledged; not 'money of the
country' beside that golden Henrietta's.

Yet who can say?--women are such deceptions. Often their fairest,
apparently sweetest, when brought to the keenest of the tests, are
graceless; or worse, artificially consonant; in either instance barren of
the poetic. Thousands of the confidently expectant among men have been
unbewitched; a lamentable process; and the grimly reticent and the loudly
discursive are equally eloquent of the pretty general disillusion. How
they loathe and tear the mask of the sham attraction that snatched them
to the hag yoke, and fell away to show its grisly horrors within the
round of the month, if not the second enumeration of twelve by the clock!
Fleetwood had heard certain candid seniors talk, delivering their minds
in superior appreciation of unpretentious boor wenches, nature's
products, not esteemed by him. Well, of a truth, she--'Red Hair and
Rugged Brows,' as the fellow Woodseer had called her, in alternation with
'Mountain Face to Sun'--she at the unveiling was gentle, surpassingly;
graceful in the furnace of the trial. She wore through the critic ordeal
his burning sensitiveness to grace and delicacy cast about a woman, and
was rather better than not withered by it.

On the borders between maidenly and wifely, she, a thing of flesh like
other daughters of earth, had impressed her sceptical lord, inclining to
contempt of her and detestation of his bargain, as a flitting hue,
ethereal, a transfiguration of earthliness in the core of the earthly
furnace. And how?--but that it must have been the naked shining forth of
her character, startled to show itself:--'It is my husband':--it must
have been love.

The love that they versify, and strum on guitars, and go crazy over, and
end by roaring at as the delusion; this common bloom of the ripeness of a
season; this would never have utterly captured a sceptic, to vanquish him
in his mastery, snare him in her surrender. It must have been the
veritable passion: a flame kept alive by vestal ministrants in the
yewwood of the forest of Old Romance; planted only in the breasts of very
favourite maidens. Love had eyes, love had a voice that night,-love was
the explicable magic lifting terrestrial to seraphic. Though, true, she
had not Henrietta's golden smoothness of beauty. Henrietta, illumined
with such a love, would outdo all legends, all dreams of the tale of
love. Would she? For credulous men she would be golden coin of the
currency. She would not have a particular wild flavour: charm as of the
running doe that has taken a dart and rolls an eye to burst the hunter's
heart with pity.

Fleetwood went his way to Lady Arpington almost complacently, having
fought and laid his wilder self. He might be likened to the doctor's
patient entering the chemist's shop, with a prescription for a drug of
healing virtue, upon which the palate is as little consulted as a
robustious lollypop boy in the household of ceremonial parents, who have
rung for the troop of their orderly domestics to sit in a row and hearken
the intonation of good words.




CHAPTER XXII

A RIGHT-MINDED GREAT LADY

The bow, the welcome, and the introductory remarks passed rapidly as the
pull at two sides of a curtain opening on a scene that stiffens
courtliness to hard attention.

After the names of Admiral Baldwin and 'the Mr. Woodseer,' the name of
Whitechapel was mentioned by Lady Arpington. It might have been the name
of any other place.

'Ah, so far, then, I have to instruct you,' she said, observing the young
earl. 'I drove down there yesterday. I saw the lady calling herself
Countess of Fleetwood. By right? She was a Miss Kirby.'

'She has the right,' Fleetwood said, standing well up out of a discharge
of musketry.

'Marriage not contested. You knew of her being in that place?--I can't
describe it.'

'Your ladyship will pardon me?'

London's frontier of barbarism was named for him again, and in a tone to
penetrate.

He refrained from putting the question of how she had come there.

As iron as he looked, he said: 'She stays there by choice.'

The great lady tapped her foot on the floor.

'You are not acquainted with the district.'

'One of my men comes out of it.'

'The coming out of it! . . . However, I understand her story, that she
travelled from a village inn, where she had been left-without resources.
She waited weeks; I forget how many. She has a description of maid in
attendance on her. She came to London to find her husband. You were at
the mines, we heard. Her one desire is to meet her husband. But,
goodness! Fleetwood, why do you frown? You acknowledge the marriage, she
has the name of the church; she was married out of that old Lord
Levellier's house. You drove her--I won't repeat the flighty business.
You left her, and she did her best to follow you. Will the young men of
our time not learn that life is no longer a game when they have a woman
for partner in the match!

You don't complain of her flavour of a foreign manner? She can't be so
very . . . Admiral Baldwin's daughter has married her brother; and he is
a military officer. She has germs of breeding, wants only a little rub of
the world to smooth her. Speak to the point:--do you meet her here? Do
you refuse?'

'At present? I do.'

'Something has to be done.'

'She was bound to stay where I left her.'

'You are bound to provide for her becomingly.'

'Provision shall be made, of course.'

'The story will . . . unless--and quickly, too.'

I know, I know!'

Fleetwood had the clang of all the bells of London chiming Whitechapel at
him in his head, and he betrayed the irritated tyrant ready to decree
fire and sword, for the defence or solace of his tender sensibilities.

The black flash flew.

'It 's a thing to mend as well as one can,' Lady Arpington said. 'I am
not inquisitive: you had your reasons or chose to act without any. Get
her away from that place. She won't come to me unless it 's to meet her
husband. Ah, well, temper does not solve your problem; husband you are,
if you married her. We'll leave the husband undiscussed: with this
reserve, that it seems to me men are now beginning to play the
misunderstood.'

'I hope they know themselves better,' said Fleetwood; and he begged for
the name and number of the house in the Whitechapel street, where she who
was discernibly his enemy, and the deadliest of enemies, had now her
dwelling.

Her immediate rush to that place, the fixing of herself there for an
assault on him, was a move worthy the daughter of the rascal Old
Buccaneer; it compelled to urgent measures. He, as he felt horribly in
pencilling her address, acted under compulsion; and a woman prodded the
goad. Her mask of ingenuousness was flung away for a look of craft, which
could be power; and with her changed aspect his tolerance changed to
hatred.

'A shop,' Lady Arpington explained for his better direction: 'potatoes,
vegetable stuff. Honest people, I am to believe. She is indifferent to
her food, she says. She works, helping one of their ministers--one of
their denominations: heaven knows what they call themselves! Anything to
escape from the Church! She's likely to become a Methodist. With Lord
Feltre proselytizing for his Papist creed, Lord Pitscrew a declared
Mohammedan, we shall have a pretty English aristocracy in time. Well, she
may claim to belong to it now. She would not be persuaded against
visitations to pestiferous hovels. What else is there to do in such a
place? She goes about catching diseases to avoid bilious melancholy in
the dark back room of a small greengrocer's shop in Whitechapel.
There--you have the word for the Countess of Fleetwood's present
address.'

It drenched him with ridicule.

'I am indebted to your ladyship for the information,' he said, and
maintained his rigidity.

The great lady stiffened.

'I am obliged to ask you whether you intend to act on it at once. The
admiral has gone; I am in some sort deputed as a guardian to her, and I
warn you--very well, very well. In your own interests, it will be. If she
is left there another two or three days, the name of the place will stick
to her.'

'She has baptized herself with it already, I imagine,' said Fleetwood.
'She will have Esslemont to live in.'

'There will be more than one to speak as to that. You should know her.'

'I do not know her.'

'You married her.'

'The circumstances are admitted.'

'If I may hazard a guess, she is unlikely to come to terms without a
previous interview. She is bent on meeting you.'

'I am to be subjected to further annoyance, or she will take the name of
the place she at present inhabits, and bombard me with it. Those are the
terms.'

'She has a brother living, I remind you.'

'State the deduction, if you please, my lady.'

'She is not of 'a totally inferior family.'

'She had a father famous over England as the Old Buccaneer, and is a
diligent reader of his book of MAXIMS FOR MEN.'

'Dear me! Then Kirby--Captain Kirby! I remember. That's her origin, is
it?' the great lady cried, illumined. 'My mother used to talk of the
Cressett scandal. Old Lady Arpington, too. At any rate, it ended in their
union--the formalities were properly respected, as soon as they could
be.'

'I am unaware.'

'I detest such a tone of speaking. Speaking as you do now--married to the
daughter? You are not yourself, Lord Fleetwood.'

'Quite, ma'am, let me assure you. Otherwise the Kirby-Cressetts would be
dictating to me from the muzzle of one of the old rapscallion's Maxims.
They will learn that I am myself.'

'You don't improve as you proceed. I tell you this, you'll not have me
for a friend. You have your troops of satellites; but take it as equal to
a prophecy, you won't have London with you; and you'll hear of Lord
Fleetwood and his Whitechapel Countess till your ears ache.'

The preluding box on them reddened him.

'She will have the offer of Esslemont.'

'Undertake to persuade her in person.'

'I have spoken on that head.'

'Well, I may be mistaken,--I fancied it before I knew of the pair she
springs from: you won't get her consent to anything without your
consenting to meet her. Surely it's the manlier way. It might be settled
for to-morrow, here, in this room. She prays to meet you.'

With an indicated gesture of 'Save me from it,' Fleetwood bowed.

He left no friend thinking over the riddle of his conduct. She was a
loud-voiced lady, given to strike out phrases. The 'Whitechapel Countess'
of the wealthiest nobleman of his day was heard by her on London's
wagging tongue. She considered also that he ought at least have
propitiated her; he was in the position requiring of him to do something
of the kind, and he had shown instead the dogged pride which calls for a
whip. Fool as he must have been to go and commit himself to marriage with
a girl of whom he knew nothing or little, the assumption of pride
belonged to the order of impudent disguises intolerable to behold and
not, in a modern manner, castigate.

Notwithstanding a dislike of the Dowager Countess of Fleetwood, Lady
Arpington paid Livia an afternoon visit; and added thereby to the stock
of her knowledge and the grounds of her disapprobation.

Down in Whitechapel, it was known to the Winch girls and the Woodseers
that Captain Kirby and his wife had spent the bitterest of hours in
vainly striving to break their immoveable sister's will to remain there.

At the tea-time of simple people, who make it a meal, Gower's appetite
for the home-made bread of Mary Jones was checked by the bearer of a
short note from Lord Fleetwood. The half-dozen lines were cordial,
breathing of their walk in the Austrian highlands, and naming a renowned
city hotel for dinner that day, the hour seven, the reply yes or no by
messenger.

'But we are man to man, so there's no "No" between us two,' the note
said, reviving a scene of rosy crag and pine forest, where there had been
philosophical fun over the appropriate sexes of those our most important
fighting-ultimately, we will hope, to be united-syllables, and the when
for men, the when for women, to select the one of them as their weapon.

Under the circumstances, Gower thought such a piece of writing to him
magnanimous.

'It may be the solution,' his father remarked.

Both had the desire; and Gower's reply was the yes, our brave male word,
supposed to be not so compromising to men in the employment of it as a
form of acquiescence rather than insistent pressure.




CHAPTER XXIII

IN DAME GOSSIP'S VEIN

Right soon the London pot began to bubble. There was a marriage.

'There are marriages by the thousand every day of the year that is not
consecrated to prayer for the forgiveness of our sins,' the Old
Buccaneer, writing it with simple intent, says, by way of preface to a
series of Maxims for men who contemplate acceptance of the yoke.

This was a marriage high as the firmament over common occurrences, black
as Erebus to confound; it involved the wreck of expectations, disastrous
eclipse of a sovereign luminary in the splendour of his rise, Phaethon's
descent to the Shades through a smoking and a crackling world. Asserted
here, verified there, the rumour gathered volume, and from a serpent of
vapour resolved to sturdy concrete before it was tangible. Contradiction
retired into corners, only to be swept out of them. For this marriage,
abominable to hear of, was of so wonderful a sort, that the story filled
the mind, and the discrediting of the story threatened the great world's
cranium with a vacuity yet more monstrously abominable.

For he, the planet Croesus of his time, recently, scarce later than last
night, a glorious object of the mid-heavens above the market, has been
enveloped, caught, gobbled up by one of the nameless little witches
riding after dusk the way of the wind on broomsticks-by one of them! She
caught him like a fly in the hand off a pane of glass, gobbled him with
the customary facility of a pecking pullet.

But was the planet Croesus of his time a young man to be so caught, so
gobbled?

There is the mystery of it. On his coming of age, that young man gave
sign of his having a city head. He put his guardians deliberately aside,
had his lawyers and bailiffs and stewards thoroughly under control:
managed a particularly difficult step-mother; escaped the snares of her
lovely cousin; and drove his team of sycophants exactly the road he chose
to go and no other. He had a will.

The world accounted him wildish?

Always from his own offset, to his own ends. Never for another's
dictation or beguilement. Never for a woman. He was born with a suspicion
of the sex. Poetry decorated women, he said, to lime and drag men in the
foulest ruts of prose.

We are to believe he has been effectively captured?

It is positively a marriage; he admits it.

Where celebrated?

There we are at hoodman-blind for the moment. Three counties claim the
church; two ends of London.

She is not a person of society, lineage?

Nor of beauty. She is a witch; ordinarily petticoated and not squeaking
like a shrew-mouse in her flights, but not a whit less a moon-shade
witch. The kind is famous. Fairy tales and terrible romances tell of her;
she is just as much at home in life, and springs usually from the mire to
enthral our knightliest. Is it a popular hero? She has him, sooner or
later. A planet Croesus? He falls to her.

That is, if his people fail to attach him in legal bonds to a damsel of a
corresponding birth on the day when he is breeched.

Small is her need to be young--especially if it is the man who is very
young. She is the created among women armed with the deadly instinct for
the motive force in men, and shameless to attract it. Self-respecting
women treat men as their tamed housemates. She blows the horn of the wild
old forest, irresistible to the animal. O the droop of the eyelids, the
curve of a lip, the rustle of silks, the much heart, the neat ankle; and
the sparkling agreement, the reserve--the motherly feminine petition that
she may retain her own small petted babe of an opinion, legitimate or
not, by permission of superior authority!--proof at once of her
intelligence and her appreciativeness. Her infinitesimal spells are seen;
yet, despite experience, the magnetism in their repulsive display is
barely apprehended by sedate observers until the astounding capture is
proclaimed. It is visible enough then:--and O men! O morals! If she can
but trick the smallest bit in stooping, she has the pick of men.

Our present sample shows her to be young: she is young and a foreigner.
Mr. Chumley Potts vouches for it. Speaks foreign English. He thinks her
more ninny than knave: she is the tool of a wily plotter, picked up off
the highway road by Lord Fleetwood as soon as he had her in his eye. Sir
Meeson Corby wrings his frilled hands to depict the horror of the hands
of that tramp the young lord had her from. They afflict him malariously
still. The man, he says, the man as well was an infatuation, because he
talks like a Dictionary Cheap Jack, and may have had an education and
dropped into vagrancy, owing to indiscretions. Lord Fleetwood ran about
in Germany repeating his remarks. But the man is really an accomplished
violinist, we hear. She dances the tambourine business. A sister of the
man, perhaps, if we must be charitable. They are, some say, a couple of
Hungarian gypsies Lord F. found at a show and brought over to England,
and soon had it on his conscience that he ought to marry her, like the
Quixote of honour that he is; which is equal to saying crazy, as there is
no doubt his mother was.

The marriage is no longer disputable; poor Lady Fleetwood, whatever her
faults as a step-mother, does no longer deny the celebration of a
marriage; though she might reasonably discredit any such story if he, on
the evening of the date of the wedding day, was at a Ball, seen by her at
the supper-table; though it is admitted he left the Ball-room at night.
But the next day he certainly was in his place among the Peers and voted
against the Government, and then went down to his estates in Wales, being
an excellent holder of the reins, whether on the coach box or over the
cash box.

More and more wonderful, we hear that he drove his bride straight from
the church to the field of a prizefight, arranged for her special
delectation. She doats on seeing blood-shed and drinking champagne. Young
Mr. Mallard is our authority; and he says, she enjoyed it, and cheered
the victor for being her husband's man. And after the shocking
exhibition, good-bye; the Countess of Fleetwood was left sole occupant of
a wayside inn, and may have learnt in her solitude that she would have
been wise to feign disgust; for men to the smallest degree cultivated are
unable to pardon a want of delicacy in a woman who has chosen them, as
they are taught to think by their having chosen her.

So talked, so twittered, piped and croaked the London world over the
early rumours of the marriage, this Amazing Marriage; which it got to be
called, from the number of items flocking to swell the wonder.

Ravens ravening by night, poised peregrines by day, provision-merchants
for the dispensing of dainty scraps to tickle the ears, to arm the
tongues, to explode reputations, those great ladies, the Ladies Endor,
Eldritch, and Cowry, fateful three of their period, avenged and scourged
both innocence and naughtiness; innocence, on the whole, the least, when
their withering suspicion of it had hunted the unhappy thing to the bank
of Ophelia's ditch. Mallard and Chumley Potts, Captain Abrane, Sir Meeson
Corby, Lord Brailstone, were plucked at and rattled, put to the blush, by
a pursuit of inquiries conducted with beaks. High-nosed dames will
surpass eminent judges in their temerity on the border-line where Ahem
sounds the warning note to curtained decency. The courtly M. de St. Ombre
had to stand confused. He, however, gave another version of Captain
Abrane's 'fiddler,' and precipitated the great ladies into the
reflection, that French gentlemen, since the execrable French Revolution,
have lost their proper sense of the distinctions of Class. Homme
d'esprit, applied to a roving adventurer, a scarce other than vagabond,
was either an undiscriminating epithet or else a further example of the
French deficiency in humour.

Dexterous contriver, he undoubtedly is. Lady Cowry has it from Sir Meeson
Corby, who had it from the poor dowager, that Lord Fleetwood has
installed the man in his house and sits at the opposite end of his table;
fished him up from Whitechapel, where the countess is left serving
oranges at a small fruit-shop. With her own eyes, Lady Arpington saw her
there; and she can't be got to leave the place unless her husband drives
his coach down to fetch her. That he declines to do; so she remains the
Whitechapel Countess, all on her hind heels against the offer of a
shilling of her husband's money, if she 's not to bring him to his knees;
and goes about at night with a low Methodist singing hymns along those
dreadful streets, while Lord Fleetwood gives gorgeous entertainments. One
signal from the man he has hired, and he stops drinking--he will stop
speaking as soon as the man's mouth is open. He is under a complete
fascination, attributable, some say, to passes of the hands, which the
man won't wash lest he should weaken their influence.

For it cannot be simply his violin playing. They say he was a pupil of a
master of the dark art in Germany, and can practise on us to make us
think his commonest utterances extraordinarily acute and precious. Lord
Fleetwood runs round quoting him to everybody, quite ridiculously. But
the man's influence is sufficient to induce his patron to drive down and
fetch the Whitechapel Countess home in state, as she insists--if the man
wishes it. Depend upon it he is the key of the mystery.

Totally the contrary, Lady Arpington declares! the man is a learned man,
formerly a Professor of English Literature in a German University, and no
connection of the Whitechapel Countess whatever, a chance acquaintance at
the most. He operates on Lord Fleetwood with doses of German philosophy;
otherwise, a harmless creature; and has consented to wash and dress. It
is my lord who has had the chief influence. And the Countess Livia now
backs him in maintaining that there is nowhere a more honest young man to
be found. She may have her reasons.

As for the Whitechapel Countess . . . the whole story of the Old
Buccaneer and Countess Fanny was retold, and it formed a terrific halo,
presage of rains and hurricane tempest, over the girl the young earl had
incomprehensibly espoused to discard. Those two had a son and a daughter
born aboard:--in wedlock, we trust. The girl may be as wild a one as the
mother. She has a will as determined as her husband's. She is offered
Esslemont, the earl's Kentish mansion, for a residence, and she will none
of it until she has him down in the east of London on his knees to
entreat her. The injury was deep on one side or the other. It may be
almost surely prophesied that the two will never come together. Will
either of them deal the stroke for freedom? And which is the likelier?

Meanwhile Lord Fleetwood and his Whitechapel Countess composed the laugh
of London. Straightway Invention, the violent propagator, sprang from his
shades at a call of the great world's appetite for more, and, rushing
upon stationary Fact, supplied the required. Marvel upon marvel was
recounted. The mixed origin of the singular issue could not be examined,
where all was increasingly funny.

Always the shout for more produced it. She and her band of Whitechapel
boys were about in ambush to waylay the earl wherever he went. She stood
knocking at his door through a whole night. He dared not lug her before a
magistrate for fear of exposure. Once, riding in the park with a troop of
friends he had a young woman pointed out to him, and her finger was
levelled, and she cried: 'There is the English nobleman who marries a
girl and leaves her to go selling cabbages!'

He left town for the Island, and beheld his yacht sailing the Solent:--my
lady the countess was on board! A pair of Tyrolese minstrels in the
square kindled his enthusiasm at one of his dinners; he sent them a
sovereign; their humble, hearty thanks were returned to him in the name
of Die Grafin von Fleetwood.

The Ladies Endor, Eldritch, and Cowry sifted their best. They let pass
incredible stories: among others, that she had sent cards to the nobility
and gentry of the West End of London, offering to deliver sacks of
potatoes by newly-established donkey-cart at the doors of their
residences, at so much per sack, bills quarterly; with the postscript,
Vive L'aristocratie! Their informant had seen a card, and the stamp of
the Fleetwood dragoncrest was on it.

He has enemies, was variously said of the persecuted nobleman. But it was
nothing worse than the parasite that he had. This was the parasite's
gentle treason. He found it an easy road to humour; it pricked the slug
fancy in him to stir and curl; gave him occasion to bundle and bustle his
patron kindly. Abrane, Potts, Mallard, and Sir Meeson Corby were
personages during the town's excitement, besought for having something to
say. Petrels of the sea of tattle, they were buoyed by the hubbub they
created, and felt the tipsy happiness of being certain to rouse the laugh
wherever they alighted. Sir Meeson Corby, important to himself in an
eminent degree, enjoyed the novel sense of his importance with his
fellows. They crowded round the bore who had scattered them.

He traced the miserable catastrophe in the earl's fortunes to the cunning
of the rascal now sponging on Fleetwood and trying to dress like a
gentleman: a convicted tramp, elevated by the caprice of the young
nobleman he was plotting to ruin. Sir Meeson quoted Captain Abrane's
latest effort to hit the dirty object's name, by calling him 'Fleetwood's
Mr. Woodlouse.' And was the rascal a sorcerer? Sir Meeson spoke of him in
the hearing of the Countess Livia, and she, previously echoing his
disgust, corrected him sharply, and said: 'I begin to be of Russett's
opinion, that his fault is his honesty.' The rascal had won or partly won
the empress of her sex! This Lady Livia, haughtiest and most fastidious
of our younger great dames, had become the indulgent critic of the
tramp's borrowed plumes! Nay, she would not listen to a depreciatory word
on him from her cousin Henrietta Kirby-Levellier.

Perhaps, after all, of all places for an encounter between the Earl of
Fleetwood and the countess, those vulgar Gardens across the water, long
since abandoned by the Fashion, were the most suitable. Thither one fair
June night, for the sake of showing the dowager countess and her
beautiful cousin, the French nobleman, Sir Meeson Corby, and others, what
were the pleasures of the London lower orders, my lord had the whim to
conduct them,--merely a parade of observation once round;--the ladies
veiled, the gentlemen with sticks, and two servants following, one of
whom, dressed in quiet black, like the peacefullest of parsons, was my
lord's pugilist, Christopher Ives.

Now, here we come to history: though you will remember what History is.

The party walked round the Gardens unmolested nor have we grounds for
supposing they assumed airs of state in the style of a previous
generation. Only, as it happened, a gentleman of the party was a wag; no
less than the famous, well-seasoned John Rose Mackrell, bent on amusing
Mrs. Kirby-Levellier, to hear her lovely laughter; and his wit and his
anecdotes, both inexhaustible, proved, as he said, 'that a dried fish is
no stale fish, and a smoky flavour to an old chimney story will often
render it more piquant to the taste than one jumping fresh off the
incident.' His exact meaning in 'smoky flavour' we are not to know; but
whether that M. de St. Ombre should witness the effect of English humour
upon them, or that the ladies could permit themselves to laugh, their
voices accompanied the gentlemen in silvery volleys. There had been
'Mackrell' at Fleetwood's dinner-table; which was then a way of saying
that dry throats made no count of the quantity of champagne imbibed,
owing to the fits Rose Mackrell caused. However, there was loud laughter
as they strolled, and it was noticed; and Fleetwood crying out,
'Mackrell! Mackrell!' in delighted repudiation of the wag's last sally,
the cry of 'Hooray, Mackrell!' was caught up by the crowd. They were not
the primary offenders, for loud laughter in an isolated party is bad
breeding; but they had not the plea of a copious dinner.

So this affair began; inoffensively at the start, for my lord was
good-humoured about it.

Kit Ines, of the mercurial legs, must now give impromptu display of his
dancing. He seized a partner, in the manner of a Roman the Sabine, sure
of pleasing his patron; and the maid, passing from surprise to merriment,
entered the quadrille perforce, all giggles, not without emulation, for
she likewise had the passion for the dance. Whereby it befell that the
pair footed in a way to gather observant spectators; and if it had not
been that the man from whom the maid was willy-nilly snatched, conceived
resentment, things might have passed comfortably; for Kit's quips and
cuts and high capers, and the Sunday gravity of the barge face while the
legs were at their impish trickery, double motion to the music, won the
crowd to cheer. They conjectured him to be a British sailor. But the
destituted man said, sailor or no sailor,--bos'en be hanged! he should
pay for his whistle.

Honourably at the close of the quadrille, Kit brought her back; none the
worse for it, he boldly affirmed, and he thanked the man for the short
loan of her.--The man had an itch to strike. Choosing rather to be struck
first, he vented nasty remarks. My lord spoke to Kit and moved on. At the
moment of the step, Rose Mackrell uttered something, a waggery of some
sort, heard to be forgotten, but of such instantaneous effect, that the
prompt and immoderate laugh succeeding it might reasonably be taken for a
fling of scorn at himself, by an injured man. They were a party; he
therefore proceeded to make one, appealing to English sentiment and right
feeling. The blameless and repentant maid plucked at his coat to keep him
from dogging the heels of the gentlemen. Fun was promised; consequently
the crowd waxed.

'My lord,' had been let fall by Kit Ines. Conjoined to 'Mackrell,' it
rang finely, and a trumpeting of 'Lord Mackrell' resounded. Lord Mackrell
was asked for 'more capers and not so much sauce.' Various fish took part
in his title of nobility. The wag Mackrell continuing to be discreetly
silent, and Kit Ines acting as a pacific rearguard, the crowd fell in
love with their display of English humour, disposed to the surly
satisfaction of a big street dog that has been appeased by a smaller
one's total cessation of growls.

All might have gone well but for the sudden appearance of two figures of
young women on the scene. They fronted the advance of the procession.
They wanted to have a word with Lord Mackrell. Not a bit of it--he won't
listen, turns away; and one of the pair slips round him. It's regular
imploring: 'my lord! my lord!'

O you naughty Surrey melodram villain of a Lord Mackrell! Listen to the
young woman, you Mackrell, or you'll get Billingsgate! Here's Mr.
Jig-and-Reel behind here, says she's done him! By Gosh! What's up now?

One of the young ladies of the party ahead had rushed up to the young
woman dodging to stand in Lord Mackrell's way. The crowd pressed to see.
Kit Ines and his mate shouldered them off. They performed an envelopment
of the gentlemen and ladies, including the two young women. Kit left his
mate and ran to the young woman hitherto the quieter of the two. He
rattled at her. But she had a tongue of her own and rattled it at him.
What did she say?

Merely to hear, for no other reason,' a peace-loving crowd of clerks and
tradesmen, workmen and their girls, young aspirants to the professions,
night-larks of different classes, both sexes, there in that place for
simple entertainment, animated simply by the spirit of English humour,
contracted, so closing upon the Mackrell party as to seem threatening to
the most orderly and apprehensive member of it, who was the baronet, Sir
Meeson Corby.

He was a man for the constables in town emergencies, and he shouted.
'Cock Robin crowing' provoked a jolly round of barking chaff. The noise
in a dense ring drew Fleetwood's temper. He gave the word to Kit Ines,
and immediately two men dropped; a dozen staggered unhit. The fists
worked right and left; such a clearing of ground was never seen for
sickle or scythe. And it was taken respectfully; for Science proclaimed
her venerable self in the style and the perfect sufficiency of the
strokes. A bruiser delivered them. No shame to back away before a
bruiser. There was rather an admiring envy of the party claiming the
nimble champion on their side, until the very moderate lot of the
Mackrells went stepping forward along the strewn path with sticks
pointed.

If they had walked it like gentlemen, they would have been allowed to get
through. An aggressive minority, and with Cock Robin squealing for
constables in the midst, is that insolent upstart thing which howls to
have a lesson. The sticks were fallen on; bump came the mass. Kit Ines
had to fight his way back to his mate, and the couple scoured a clearish
ring, but the gentlemen were at short thrusts, affable in tone, to cheer
the spirits of the ladies:--'All right, my friend, you're a trifle
mistaken, it 's my stick, not yours.' Therewith the wrestle for the
stick.

The one stick not pointed was wrenched from the grasp of Sir Meeson
Corby; and by a woman, the young woman who had accosted my lord; not a
common young woman either, as she appeared when beseeching him. Her
stature rose to battle heights: she made play with Sir Meeson Corby's
ebony stick, using it in one hand as a dwarf quarterstaff to flail the
sconces, then to dash the point at faces; and she being a woman, a girl,
perhaps a lady, her cool warrior method of cleaving way, without so much
as tightening her lips, was found notable; and to this degree (vouched
for by Rose Mackrell, who heard it), that a fellow, rubbing his head,
cried: 'Damn it all, she's clever, though!' She took her station beside
Lord Fleetwood.

He had been as cool as she, or almost. Now he was maddened; she defended
him, she warded and thrust for him, only for him, to save him a touch;
unasked, undesired, detested for the box on his ears of to-morrow's
public mockery, as she would be, overwhelming him with ridicule. Have you
seen the kick and tug at the straps of the mettled pony in stables that
betrays the mishandling of him by his groom? Something so did Fleetwood
plunge and dart to be free of her, and his desperate soul cried out on
her sticking to him like a plaster!

Welcome were the constables. His guineas winked at their chief, as fair
women convey their meanings, with no motion of eyelids; and the officers
of the law knew the voice habituated to command, and answered two words
of his: 'Right, my lord,' smelling my lord in the unerring manner of
those days. My lord's party were escorted to the gates, not a little
jeered; though they by no means had the worst of the tussle. But the
puffing indignation of Sir Meesan Corby over his battered hat and torn
frill and buttons plucked from his coat, and his threat of the
magistrates, excited the crowd to derisive yells.

My lord spoke something to his man, handing his purse.

The ladies were spared the hearing of bad language. They, according to
the joint testimony of M. de St. Ombre and Mr. Rose Mackrell, comported
themselves throughout as became the daughters of a warrior race. Both
gentlemen were emphatic to praise the unknown Britomart who had done such
gallant service with Sir Meeson's ebony wand. He was beginning to fuss
vociferously about the loss of the stick--a family stick, goldheaded, the
family crest on it, priceless to the family--when Mrs. Kirby-Levellier
handed it to him inside the coach.

'But where is she?' M. de St. Ombre said, and took the hint of Livia's
touch on his arm in the dark.

At the silence following the question, Mr. Rose Mackrell murmured, 'Ah!'

He and the French gentleman understood that there might have been a
manifestation of the notorious Whitechapel Countess.

They were two; and a slower-witted third was travelling to his ideas on
the subject. Three men, witnesses of a remarkable incident in connection
with a boiling topic of current scandal,--glaringly illustrative of it,
moreover,--were unlikely to keep close tongues, even if they had been
sworn to secresy. Fleetwood knew it, and he scorned to solicit them; an
exaction of their idle vows would be merely the humiliation of himself.
So he tossed his dignity to recklessness, as the ultraconvivial give the
last wink of reason to the wine-cup. Persecuted as he was, nothing
remained for him but the nether-sublime of a statuesque desperation.

That was his feeling; and his way of cloaking it under light sallies at
Sir Meeson and easy chat with Henrietta made it visible to her, from its
being the contrary of what the world might expect a proud young nobleman
to exhibit. She pitied him: she had done him some wrong. She read into
him, too, as none else could. Seeing the solitary tortures behind the
pleasant social mask, she was drawn to partake of them; and the mask
seemed pathetic. She longed to speak a word in sympathy or relieve her
bosom of tears. Carinthia had sunk herself, was unpardonable, hardly
mentionable. Any of the tales told of her might be credited after this!
The incorrigible cause of humiliation for everybody connected with her
pictured, at a word of her name, the crowd pressing and the London world
acting audience. Livia spoke the name when they had reached their house
and were alone. Henrietta responded with the imperceptible shrug which is
more eloquent than a cry to tell of the most monstrous of loads. My lord,
it was thought by the ladies, had directed his man to convey her safely
to her chosen home, whence she might be expected very soon to be issuing
and striking the gong of London again.




CHAPTER XXIV

A KIDNAPPING AND NO GREAT HARM

Ladies who have the pride of delicate breeding are not more than rather
violently hurled back on the fortress it is, when one or other of the
gross mishaps of circumstance may subject them to a shock: and this
happening in the presence of gentlemen, they are sustained by the within
and the without to keep a smooth countenance, however severe their
affliction. Men of heroic nerve decline similarly to let explosions shake
them, though earth be shaken. Dragged into the monstrous grotesque of the
scene at the Gardens, Livia and Henrietta went through the ordeal,
masking any signs that they were stripped for a flagellation. Only, the
fair cousins were unable to perceive a comic element in the scene: and if
the world was for laughing, as their instant apprehension foresaw it, the
world was an ignoble beast. They did not discuss Carinthia's latest
craziness at night, hardly alluded to it while they were in the
interjectory state.

Henrietta was Livia's guest, her husband having hurried away to Vienna:
'To get money! money!' her angry bluntness explained his absence, and
dealt its blow at the sudden astounding poverty into which they had
fallen. She was compelled to practise an excessive, an incredible
economy:--'think of the smallest trifles!' so that her Chillon travelled
unaccompanied, they were separated. Her iterations upon money were the
vile constraint of an awakened interest and wonderment at its powers.
She, the romantic Riette, banner of chivalry, reader of poetry, struck a
line between poor and rich in her talk of people, and classed herself
with the fallen and pinched; she harped on her slender means, on the
enforced calculations preceding purchases, on the living in lodgings; and
that miserly Lord Levellier's indebtedness to Chillon--large sums! and
Chillon's praiseworthy resolve to pay the creditors of her father's
estate; and of how he travelled like a common man, in consequence of the
money he had given Janey--weakly, for her obstinacy was past endurance;
but her brother would not leave her penniless, and penniless she had been
for weeks, because of her stubborn resistance to the earl--quite
unreasonably, whether right or wrong--in the foul retreat she had chosen;
apparently with a notion that the horror of it was her vantage ground
against him: and though a single sign of submission would place the
richest purse in England at her disposal. 'She refuses Esslemont! She
insists on his meeting her! No child could be so witless. Let him be the
one chiefly or entirely to blame, she might show a little tact--for her
brother's sake! She loves her brother? No: deaf to him, to me, to every
consideration except her blind will.'

Here was the skeleton of the love match, earlier than Livia had expected.

It refreshed a phlegmatic lady's disposition for prophecy. Lovers
abruptly tossed between wind and wave may still be lovers, she knew: but
they are, or the weaker of the two is, hard upon any third person who
tugs at them for subsistence or existence. The condition, if they are
much beaten about, prepares true lovers, through their mutual tenderness,
to be bitterly misanthropical.

Livia supposed the novel economic pinches to be the cause of Henrietta's
unwonted harsh judgement of her sister-in-law's misconduct, or the crude
expression of it. She could not guess that Carinthia's unhappiness in
marriage was a spectre over the married happiness of the pair fretted by
the conscience which told them they had come together by doing much to
bring it to pass. Henrietta could see herself less the culprit when she
blamed Carinthia in another's hearing.

After some repose, the cousins treated their horrible misadventure as a
piece of history. Livia was cool; she had not a husband involved in it,
as Henrietta had; and London's hoarse laugh surely coming on them, spared
her the dread Henrietta suffered, that Chillon would hear; the most
sensitive of men on any matter touching his family.

'And now a sister added to the list! Will there be names, Livia?'

'The newspapers!' Livia's shoulders rose.

'We ought to have sworn the gentlemen to silence.'

'M. de St. Ombre is a tomb until he writes his Memoirs. I hold Sir Meeson
under lock. But a spiced incident, a notorious couple,--an anecdotal
witness to the scene,--could you expect Mr. Rose Mackrell to contain it?
The sacredest of oaths, my dear!'

That relentless force impelling an anecdotist to slaughter families for
the amusement of dinner-tables, was brought home to Henrietta by her
prospect of being a victim; and Livia reminding her of the excessive
laughter at Rose Mackrell's anecdotes overnight, she bemoaned her having
consented to go to those Gardens in mourning.

'How could Janey possibly have heard of the project to go?

'You went to please Russett, he to please you, and that wild-cat to
please herself,' said Livia. 'She haunts his door, I suppose, and follows
him, like a running footman. Every step she takes widens the breach. He
keeps his temper, yes, keeps his temper as he keeps his word, and one
morning it breaks loose, and all that's done has to be undone. It will
bemust. That extravaganza, as she is called, is fatal, dogs him with
burlesque--of all men!'

'Why not consent to meet her once, Chillon asks.'

'You are asking Russett to yield an inch on demand, and to a woman.'

'My husband would yield to a woman what he would refuse to all the men in
Europe and America,' said Henrietta; and she enjoyed her thrill of
allegiance to her chivalrous lord and courtier.

'No very extraordinary specimen of a newly married man, who has won the
Beauty of England and America for his wife-at some cost to some people,'
Livia rejoined.

There came a moisture on the eyelashes of the emotional young woman, from
a touch of compassion for the wealthy man who had wished to call her
wife, and was condemned by her rejection of him to call another woman
wife, to be wifeless in wedding her, despite his wealth.

She thinks he loves her; it is pitiable, but she thinks it--after the
treatment she has had. She begs to see him once.'

'And subdue him with a fit of weeping,' Livia was moved to say by sight
of the tear she hated. 'It would harden Russett--on other eyes, too!
Salt-water drops are like the forced agony scenes in a play: they bring
down the curtain, they don't win the critics. I heard her "my husband"
and saw his face.'

'You didn't hear a whimper with it,' Henrietta said. 'She's a mountain
girl, not your city madam on the boards. Chillon and I had her by each
hand, implored her to leave that impossible Whitechapel, and she
trembled, not a drop was shed by her. I can almost fancy privation and
squalor have no terrors for Janey. She sings to the people down there,
nurses them. She might be occupying Esslemont--our dream of an English
home! She is the destruction of the idea of romantic in connection with
the name of marriage. I talk like a simpleton. Janey upsets us all. My
lord was only--a little queer before he knew her: His Mr. Woodseer may be
encouraging her. You tell me the creature has a salary from him equal to
your jointure.'

'Be civil to the man while it lasts,' Livia said, attentive to a
degradation of tone--in her cousin, formerly of supreme self-containment.

The beautiful young woman was reminded of her holiday in town. She
brightened, and the little that it was, and the meanness of the
satisfaction, darkened her. Envy of the lucky adventurer Mr. Woodseer, on
her husband's behalf, grew horridly conscious for being reproved. So she
plucked resolution to enjoy her holiday and forget the contrasts of
life-palaces running profusion, lodgings hammered by duns; the pinch of
poverty distracting every simple look inside or out. There was no end to
it; for her husband's chivalrous honour forced him to undertake the
payment of her father's heavy debts. He was right and admirable, it could
not be contested; but the prospect for them was a grinding gloom, an
unrelieved drag, as of a coach at night on an interminable uphill flinty
road.

These were her sensations, and she found it diverting to be admired;
admired by many while she knew herself to be absorbed in the possession
of her by one. It bestowed the before and after of her marriage. She felt
she was really, had rapidly become, the young woman of the world, armed
with a husband, to take the flatteries of men for the needed diversion
they brought. None moved her; none could come near to touching the happy
insensibility of a wife who adored her husband, wrote to him daily,
thought of him by the minute. Her former worshippers were numerous at
Livia's receptions; Lord Fleetwood, Lord Brailstone, and the rest. Odd to
reflect on--they were the insubstantial but coveted wealth of the woman
fallen upon poverty, ignoble poverty! She could not discard her wealth.
She wrote amusingly of them, and fully, vivacious descriptions, to
Chillon; hardly so much writing to him as entering her heart's barred
citadel, where he resided at his ease, heard everything that befell about
her. If she dwelt on Lord Fleetwood's kindness in providing
entertainments, her object was to mollify Chillon's anger in some degree.
She was doing her utmost to gratify him, 'for the purpose of paving a way
to plead Janey's case.' She was almost persuading herself she was
enjoying the remarks of his friend, confidant, secretary, or what not,
Livia's worshipper, Mr. Woodseer, 'who does as he wills with my lord;
directs his charities, his pleasures, his opinions, all because he is
believed to have wonderful ideas and be wonderfully honest.' Henrietta
wrote: 'Situation unchanged. Janey still At that place'; and before the
letter was posted, she and Livia had heard from Gower Woodseer of the
reported disappearance of the Countess of Fleetwood and her maid. Gower's
father had walked up from Whitechapel, bearing news of it to the earl,
she said.

'And the earl is much disturbed?' was Livia's inquiry.

'He has driven down with my father,' Gower said carelessly, ambiguously
in the sound.

Troubled enough to desire the show of a corresponding trouble, Henrietta
read at their faces.

'May it not be--down there--a real danger?'

The drama, he could inform her, was only too naked down there for
disappearances to be common.

'Will it be published that she is missing?'

'She has her maid with her, a stout-hearted girl. Both have courage. I
don't think we need take measures just yet.'

'Not before it is public property?'

Henrietta could have bitten her tongue for laying her open to the censure
implied in his muteness. Janey perverted her.

Women were an illegible manuscript, and ladies a closed book of the
binding, to this raw philosopher, or he would not so coldly have judged
the young wife, anxious on her husband's account, that they might escape
another scorching. He carried away his impression.

Livia listened to a remark on his want of manners.

'Russett puts it to the credit of his honesty,' she said. 'Honesty is
everything with us at present. The man has made his honesty an excellent
speculation. He puts a piece on zero and the bank hands him a sackful. We
may think we have won him to serve us, up comes his honesty. That's how
we have Lady Arpington mixed in it--too long a tale. But be guided by me;
condescend a little.'

'My dear! my whole mind is upon that unhappy girl. It would break
Chillon's heart.'

Livia pished. 'There are letters we read before we crack the seal. She is
out of that ditch, and it suits Russett that she should be. He's not
often so patient. A woman foot to foot against his will--I see him
throwing high stakes. Tyrants are brutal; and really she provokes him
enough. You needn't be alarmed about the treatment she 'll meet. He won't
let her beat him, be sure.'

Neither Livia nor Gower wondered at the clearing of the mystery, before
it went to swell the scandal. A young nobleman of ready power, quick
temper, few scruples, and a taxed forbearance, was not likely to stand
thwarted and goaded-and by a woman. Lord Fleetwood acted his part,
inscrutable as the blank of a locked door. He could not conceal that he
was behind the door.




CHAPTER XXV

THE PHILOSOPHER MAN OF ACTION

Gower's bedroom window looked over the shrubs of the square, and as his
form of revolt from a city life was to be up and out with the sparrows in
the early flutter of morning, for a stretch of the legs where grass was
green and trees were not enclosed, he rarely saw a figure below when he
stood dressing. Now there appeared a petticoated one stationary against
the rails, with her face lifted. She fronted the house, and while he
speculated abstractedly, recognition rushed on him. He was down and
across the roadway at leaps.

'It's Madge here!'

The girl panted for her voice.

'Mr. Woodseer, I'm glad; I thought I should have to wait hours. She's
safe.'

'Where?'

'Will you come, sir?'

'Step ahead.'

Madge set forth to north of the square.

He judged of the well-favoured girl that she could steer her way through
cities: mouth and brows were a warning to challenger pirate craft of a
vessel carrying guns; and the red lips kept their firm line when they
yielded to the pressure for speech.

'It's a distance. She's quite safe, no harm; she's a prisoner; she's well
fed; she's not ill treated.'

'You 're out?'

'That's as it happens. I'm lucky in seeing you early. He don't mean to
hurt her; he won't be beaten. All she asks is ten minutes with him. If he
would!--he won't. She didn't mean to do him offence t' other night in
that place--you've heard. Kit Ines told me he was on duty there--going.
She couldn't help speaking when she had eyes on her husband. She kisses
the ground of his footsoles, you may say, let him be ever so unkind. She
and I were crossing to the corner of Roper Street a rainy night, on way
to Mile End, away down to one of your father's families, Mother Davis and
her sick daughter and the little ones, and close under the public-house
Goat and Beard we were seized on and hustled into a covered carriage that
was there, and they drove sharp. She 's not one to scream. We weren't
frightened. We both made the same guess. They drove us to the house she
's locked in, and me, too, up till three o'clock this morning.'

'You've seen nobody, Madge?'

'He 's fixed she 's to leave London, Mr. Woodseer. I've seen Kit Ines.
And she 's to have one of the big houses to her use. I guessed Kit Ines
was his broom. He defends it because he has his money to make--and be a
dirty broom for a fortune! But any woman's sure of decent handling with
Kit Ines--not to speak of lady. He and a mate guard the house. An old
woman cooks.'

'He guards the house, and he gave you a pass?'

'Not he. His pride's his obedience to his "paytron"--he calls his master,
and won't hear that name abused. We are on the first floor; all the lower
doors are locked day and night. New Street, not much neighbours; she
wouldn't cry out of the window. She 's to be let free if she'll leave
London.'

'You jumped it!'

'If I'd broke a leg, Mr. Kit Ines would have had to go to his drams. It
wasn't very high; and a flower-bed underneath. My mistress wanted to be
the one. She has to be careful. She taught me how to jump down not to
hurt. She makes you feel you can do anything. I had a bother to get her
to let me and be quiet herself. She's not one to put it upon others,
you'll learn. When I was down I felt like a stick in the ground and sat
till I had my feet, she at the window waiting; and I started for you. She
kissed her hand. I was to come to you, and then your father, you nowhere
seen. I wasn't spoken to. I know empty London.'

'Kit Ines was left sleeping in the house?'

'Snoring, I dare say: He don't drink on duty.'

'He must be kept on duty.'

'Drink or that kind of duty, it's a poor choice.'

'You'll take him in charge, Madge.'

'I've got a mistress to look after.'

'You've warmed to her.'

'That's not new; Mr. Woodseer. I do trust you, and you his friend. But
you are the minister's son, and any man not a great nobleman must have
some heart for her. You'll learn. He kills her so because she's fond of
him--loves him, however he strikes. No, not like a dog, as men say of us.
She'd die for him this night, need were. Live with her, you won't find
many men match her for brave; and she's good. My Sally calls her a Bible
saint. I could tell you stories of her goodness, short the time though
she's been down our way. And better there for her than at that inn he
left her at to pine and watch the Royal Sovereign come swing come smirk
in sailor blue and star to meet the rain--would make anybody disrespect
Royalty or else go mad! He's a great nobleman, he can't buy what she's
ready to give; and if he thinks he breaks her will now, it's because she
thinks she's obeying a higher than him, or no lord alive and Kit Ines to
back him 'd hold her. Women want a priest to speak to men certain times.
I wish I dared; we have to bite our tongues. He's master now, but, as I
believe God's above, if he plays her false, he's the one to be brought to
shame. I talk.'

'Talk on, Madge,' said Gower, to whom the girl's short-syllabled run of
the lips was a mountain rill compared with London park waters.

'You won't let him hurry her off where she'll eat her heart for never
seeing him again? She prays to be near him, if she's not to see him.'

'She speaks in that way?'

'I get it by bits. I'm with her so, it's as good as if I was inside her.
She can't obey when it goes the wrong way of her heart to him.'

'Love and wisdom won't pull together, and they part company for good at
the church door,' said Gower. 'This matrimony's a bad business.'

Madge hummed a moan of assent. 'And my poor Sally 'll have to marry. I
can't leave my mistress while she wants me, and Sally can't be alone. It
seems we take a step and harm's done, though it's the right step we
take.'

'It seems to me you've engaged yourself to follow Sally's lead, Madge.'

'Girls' minds turn corners, Mr. Woodseer.'

He passed the remark. What it was that girls' minds occasionally or
habitually did, or whether they had minds to turn, or whether they took
their whims for minds, were untroubled questions with a young man
studying abstract and adoring surface nature too exclusively to be aware
of the manifestation of her spirit in the flesh, as it is not revealed so
much by men. However, she had a voice and a face that led him to be
thoughtful over her devotedness to her mistress, after nearly losing her
character for the prize-fighter, and he had to thank her for invigorating
him. His disposition was to muse and fall slack, helpless to a friend.
Here walked a creature exactly the contrary. He listened to the steps of
the dissimilar pair on the detonating pavement, and eyed a church clock
shining to the sun.

She was sure of the direction: 'Out Camden way, where the murder was.'

They walked at a brisk pace, conversing or not.

'Tired? You must be,' he said.

'Not when I'm hot to do a thing.'

'There's the word of the thoroughbred!'

'You don't tire, sir,' said she. 'Sally and I see you stalking out for
the open country in the still of the morning. She thinks you look pale
for want of food, and ought to have some one put a biscuit into your
pocket overnight.'

'Who'd have guessed I was under motherly observation!'

'You shouldn't go so long empty, if you listen to trainers.'

'Capital doctors, no doubt. But I get a fine appetite.'

'You may grind the edge too sharp.'

He was about to be astonished, and reflected that she had grounds for her
sagacity. His next thought plunged him into contempt for Kit Ines, on
account of the fellow's lapses to sottishness. But there would be no
contempt of Kit Ines in a tussle with him. Nor could one funk the tussle
and play cur, if Kit's engaged young woman were looking on. We get to our
courage or the show of it by queer screws.

Contemplative over these matters, the philosopher transformed to man of
action heard Madge say she read directions in London by churches, and
presently exclaiming disdainfully, and yet relieved, 'Spooner Villas,'
she turned down a row of small detached houses facing a brickfield, that
had just contributed to the erection of them, and threatened the big city
with further defacements.

Madge pointed to the marks of her jump, deep in flower-bed earth under an
open window.

Gower measured the height with sensational shanks.

She smote at the door. Carinthia nodded from her window. Close upon that,
Kit Ines came bounding to the parlour window; he spied and stared. Gower
was known to him as the earl's paymaster; so he went to the passage and
flung the door open, blocking the way.

'Any commands, your honour?'

'You bring the countess to my lord immediately,' said Gower.

Kit swallowed his mouthful of surprise in a second look at Madge and the
ploughed garden-bed beneath the chamber window.

'Are the orders written, sir?'

'To me?--for me to deliver to you?--for you to do my lord's bidding?
Where's your head?'

Kit's finger-nails travelled up to it. Madge pushed past him. She and her
mistress, and Kit's mate, and the old woman receiving the word for a cup
of tea, were soon in the passage. Kit's mate had a ready obedience for
his pay, nothing else,--no counsel at all, not a suggestion to a head
knocked to a pudding by Madge's jump and my lord's paymaster here upon
the scene.

'My lady was to go down Wales way, sir.'

'That may be ordered after.'

'I 'm to take my lady to my lord?' and, 'Does it mean my lady wants a
fly?' Kit asked, and harked back on whether Madge had seen my lord.

'At five in the morning?--don't sham donkey with me,' said Gower.

The business looked inclined to be leaky, but which the way for proving
himself other than a donkey puzzled Kit: so much so, that a shove made
him partly grateful. Madge's clever countermove had stunned his
judgement. He was besides acting subordinate to his patron's paymaster;
and by the luck of it, no voice of woman interposed. The countess and her
maid stood by like a disinterested couple. Why be suspicious, if he was
to keep the countess, in sight? She was a nice lady, and he preferred her
good opinion. She was brave, and he did her homage. It might be, my lord
had got himself round to the idea of thanking her for saving his nob that
night, and his way was to send and have her up, to tell her he forgave
her, after the style of lords. Gower pricked into him by saying aside:
'Mad, I suppose, in case of a noise?' And he could not answer quite
manfully, lost his eyes and coloured. Neighbours might have required an
explanation of shrieks, he confessed. Men have sometimes to do nasty work
for their patrons.

They were afoot, walking at Carinthia's pace before half-past seven. She
would not hear of any conveyance. She was cheerful, and, as it was
pitiful to see, enjoyed her walk. Hearing of her brother's departure for
the Austrian capital, she sparkled. Her snatches of speech were short
flights out of the meditation possessing her. Gower noticed her easier
English, that came home to the perpetual student he was. She made use of
some of his father's words, and had assimilated them mentally besides
appropriating them: the verbalizing of 'purpose,' then peculiar to his
father, for example. She said, in reply to a hint from him: 'If my lord
will allow me an interview, I purpose to be obedient.' No one could
imagine of her that she spoke broken-spiritedly. Her obedience was to a
higher than a mortal lord: and Gower was touched to the quick through the
use of the word.

Contrasting her with Countess Livia and her cousin, the earl might think
her inferior on the one small, square compartment called by them the
world; but she carried the promise of growth, a character in expansion,
and she had at least natural grace, a deerlike step. Although her
picturesqueness did not swarm on him with images illuminating night,
subduing day, like the Countess Livia's, it was marked, it could tower
and intermittently eclipse; and it was of the uplifting and healing kind
by comparison, not a delicious balefulness.

The bigger houses, larger shops, austere streets of private residences,
were observed by the recent inhabitant of Whitechapel.

'My lord lives in a square,' she said.

'We shall soon be there now,' he encouraged her, doubtful though the
issue appeared.

'It is a summer morning for the Ortler, the Gross-Glockner, the
Venediger,--all our Alps, Mr. Woodseer.'

'If we could fly!'

'We love them.'

'Why, then we beat a wing--yes.'

'For I have them when I want them to sight. It is the feet are so
desirous. I feel them so this morning, after prisonership. I could not
have been driven to my lord.'

'I know the feeling,' said Gower; 'any movement of us not our own
impulse, hurries the body and deadens the mind. And by the way, my dear
lady, I spoke of the earl's commands to this man behind us walking with
your Madge. My father would accuse me of Jesuitry. Ines mentioned
commands, and I took advantage of it.'

'I feared,' said Carinthia. 'I go for my chance.'

Gower had a thought of the smaller creature, greater by position, to whom
she was going for her chance. He alluded to his experience of the earl's
kindness in relation to himself, from a belief in his 'honesty'; dotted
outlines of her husband's complex character, or unmixed and violently
opposing elements.

She remarked: 'I will try and learn.'

The name of the street of beautiful shops woke a happy smile on her
mouth. 'Father talked of it; my mother, too. He has it written down in
his Book of Maxims. When I was a girl, I dreamed of one day walking up
Bond Street.'

They stepped from the pavement and crossed the roadway for a side-street
leading to the square. With the swift variation of her aspect at times,
her tone changed.

'We are near. My lord will not be troubled by me. He has only to meet me.
There has been misunderstanding. I have vexed him; I could not help it. I
will go where he pleases after I have heard him give orders. He thinks me
a frightful woman. I am peaceful.'

Gower muttered her word 'misunderstanding.' They were at the earl's house
door. One tap at it, and the two applicants for admission would probably
be shot as far away from Lord Fleetwood as when they were on the Styrian
heights last autumn. He delivered the tap, amused by the idea. It was
like a summons to a genie of doubtful service.

My lord was out riding in the park.

Only the footman appeared at that early hour, and his countenance was
blank whitewash as he stood rigid against the wall for the lady to pass.
Madge followed into the morning room; Ines remained in the hall, where he
could have the opening speech with his patron, and where he soon had
communication with the butler.

This official entered presently to Gower, presenting a loaded forehead. A
note addressed to Mrs. Kirby-Levellier at the Countess Livia's house hard
by was handed to him for instant despatch. He signified a deferential
wish to speak.

'You can speak in the presence of the Countess of Fleetwood, Mr. Waytes,'
Gower said.

Waytes checked a bend of his shoulders. He had not a word, and he turned
to send the note. He was compelled to think that he saw a well-grown
young woman in the Whitechapel Countess.

Gower's note reached Henrietta on her descent to the breakfast-table. She
was, alone, and thrown into a torture of perplexity: for she wanted
advice as to the advice to be given to Janey, and Livia was an utterly
unprofitable person to consult in the case. She thought of Lady
Arpington, not many doors distant. Drinking one hasty cup of tea, she
sent for her bonnet, and hastened away to the great lady, whom she found
rising from breakfast with the marquis.

Lady Arpington read Gower's note. She unburdened herself: 'Oh! So it 's
no longer a bachelor's household!'

Henrietta heaved the biggest of sighs. 'I fear the poor dear may have
made matters worse.'

To which Lady Arpington said: 'Worse or better, my child!' and shrugged;
for the present situation strained to snapping.

She proposed to go forthwith, and give what support she could to the
Countess of Fleetwood.

They descended the steps of the house to the garden and the Green Park's
gravel walk up to Piccadilly. There they had view of Lord Fleetwood on
horseback leisurely turning out of the main way's tide. They saw him
alight at the mews. As they entered the square, he was met some doors
from the south corner by his good or evil genius, whose influence with
him came next after the marriage in the amazement it caused, and was
perhaps to be explained by it; for the wealthiest of young noblemen
bestowing his name on an unknown girl, would be the one to make an absurd
adventurer his intimate. Lord Fleetwood bent a listening head while Mr.
Gower Woodseer, apparently a good genius for the moment, spoke at his
ear.

How do we understand laughter at such a communication as he must be
hearing from the man? Signs of a sharp laugh indicated either his cruel
levity or that his presumptuous favourite trifled--and the man's talk
could be droll, Lady Arpington knew: it had, she recollected angrily,
diverted her, and softened her to tolerate the intruder into regions from
which her class and her periods excluded the lowly born, except at the
dinner-tables of stale politics and tattered scandal. Nevertheless, Lord
Fleetwood mounted the steps to his house door, still listening. His
'Asmodeus,' on the tongue of the world, might be doing the part of Mentor
really. The house door stood open.

Fleetwood said something to Gower; he swung round, beheld the ladies and
advanced to them, saluting. 'My dear Lady Arpington! quite so, you arrive
opportunely. When the enemy occupies the citadel, it's proper to
surrender. Say, I beg, she can have the house, if she prefers it. I will
fall back on Esslemont. Arrangements for her convenience will be made. I
thank you, by anticipation.'

His bow included Henrietta loosely. Lady Arpington had exclaimed: 'Enemy,
Fleetwood?' and Gower, in his ignorance of the smoothness of aristocratic
manners, expected a remonstrance; but Fleetwood was allowed to go on,
with his air of steely geniality and a decision, that his friend imagined
he could have broken down like an old partition board under the kick of a
sarcasm sharpening an appeal.

'Lord Fleetwood was on the point of going in,' he assured the great lady.

'Lord Fleetwood may regret his change of mind,' said she. 'The Countess
of Fleetwood will have my advice to keep her footing in this house.'

She and Henrietta sat alone with Carinthia for an hour. Coming forth,
Lady Arpington ejaculated to herself: 'Villany somewhere!--You will do
well, Henrietta, to take up your quarters with her a day or two. She can
hold her position a month. Longer is past possibility.'

A shudder of the repulsion from men crept over the younger lady. But she
was a warrior's daughter, and observed: 'My husband, her brother, will be
back before the month ends.'

'No need for hostilities to lighten our darkness,' Lady Arpington
rejoined. 'You know her? trust her?'

'One cannot doubt her face. She is my husband's sister. Yes, I do trust
her. I nail my flag to her cause.'

The flag was crimson, as it appeared on her cheeks; and that intimated a
further tale, though not of so dramatic an import as the cognizant short
survey of Carinthia had been.

These young women, with the new complications obtruded by them, irritated
a benevolent great governing lady, who had married off her daughters and
embraced her grandchildren, comfortably finishing that chapter; and
beheld now the apparition of the sex's ancient tripping foe, when
circumstances in themselves were quite enough to contend against on their
behalf. It seemed to say, that nature's most burdened weaker must always
be beaten. Despite Henrietta's advocacy and Carinthia's clear face, it
raised a spectral form of a suspicion, the more effective by reason of
the much required justification it fetched from the shades to plead
apologies for Lord Fleetwood's erratic, if not mad, and in any case ugly,
conduct. What otherwise could be his excuse? Such was his need of one,
that the wife he crushed had to be proposed for sacrifice, in the mind of
a lady tending strongly to side with her and condemn her husband.

Lady Arpington had counselled Carinthia to stay where she was, the Fates
having brought her there. Henrietta was too generous to hesitate in her
choice between her husband's sister and the earl. She removed from
Livia's house to Lord Fleetwood's. My lord was at Esslemont two days;
then established his quarters at Scrope's hotel, five minutes' walk from
the wedded lady to whom the right to bear his title was granted, an
interview with him refused. Such a squaring for the battle of spouses had
never--or not in mighty London--been seen since that old fight began.




CHAPTER XXVI

AFTER SOME FENCING THE DAME PASSES OUR GUARD

Dame Gossip at this present pass bursts to give us a review of the social
world siding for the earl or for his countess; and her parrot cry of
'John Rose Mackrell!' with her head's loose shake over the smack of her
lap, to convey the contemporaneous tipsy relish of the rich good things
he said on the subject of the contest, indicates the kind of intervention
it would be.

To save the story from having its vein tied, we may accept the reminder,
that he was the countess's voluble advocate at a period when her friends
were shy to speak of her. After relating the Vauxhall Gardens episode in
burlesque Homeric during the freshness of the scandal, Rose Mackrell's
enthusiasm for the heroine of his humour set in. He tracked her to her
parentage, which was new breath blown into the sunken tradition of some
Old Buccaneer and his Countess Fanny: and, a turn of great good luck
helping him to a copy of the book of the MAXIMS FOR MEN, he would quote
certain of the racier ones, passages of Captain John Peter Kirby's
personal adveres in various lands and waters illustrating the text, to
prove that the old warrior acted by the rule of his recommendations. They
had the repulsive attraction proper to rusty lumber swords and truncehons
that have tasted brains. They wove no mild sort of halo for the head of a
shillelagh-flourishing Whitechapel Countess descended from the writer and
doer.

People were willing to believe in her jump of thirty feet or more off a
suburban house-top to escape durance, and her midnight storming of her
lord's town house, and ousting of him to go find his quarters at Scrope's
hotel. He, too, had his band of pugilists, as it was known; and he might
have heightened a rageing scandal. The nobleman forbore. A woman's blow
gracefully taken adds a score of inches to our stature, floor us as it
may: we win the world's after-thoughts. Rose Mackrell sketched the
earl;--always alert, smart, quick to meet a combination and protect a
dignity never obtruded, and in spite of himself the laugh of the town.
His humour flickered wildly round the ridiculous position of a prominent
young nobleman, whose bearing and character were foreign to a position of
ridicule.

Nevertheless, the earl's figure continuing to be classic sculpture, it
allied him with the aristocracy of martyrs, that burn and do not wince.
He propitiated none, and as he could not but suffer shrewdly, he gained
esteem enough to shine through the woman's pitiless drenching of him.
During his term at Scrope's hotel, the carousals there were quite
old-century and matter of discourse. He had proved his return to sound
sense in the dismissal of 'the fiddler,' notoriously the woman's
lieutenant, or more; and nightly the revelry closed at the great gaming
tables of St. James's Street, while Whitechapel held the coroneted
square, well on her way to the Law courts, as Abrane and Potts reported;
and positively so, 'clear case.' That was the coming development and
finale of the Marriage. London waited for it.

A rich man's easy smile over losses at play, merely taught his emulous
troop to feel themselves poor devils in the pocket. But Fleetwood's
contempt of Sleep was a marvel, superhuman, and accused them of an
inferior vigour, hard for young men to admit by the example. He never
went to bed. Issuing from Fortune's hall-doors in the bright, lively,
summer morning, he mounted horse and was away to the hills. Or he took
the arm of a Roman Catholic nobleman, Lord Feltre, and walked with him
from the green tables and the establishment's renowned dry still Sillery
to a Papist chapel. As it was not known that he had given his word to
abjure his religion, the pious gamblers did no worse than spread an alarm
and quiet it, by the citation of his character for having a try at
everything.

Henrietta despatched at this period the following letter to Chillon:

'I am with Livia to-morrow. Janey starts for Wales to-morrow morning, a
voluntary exile. She pleaded to go back to that place where you had to
leave her, promising she would not come Westward; but was persuaded. Lady
Arpington approves. The situation was getting too terribly strained. We
met and passed my lord in the park.

'He was walking his horse-elegant cavalier that he is: would not look on
his wife. A woman pulled by her collar should be passive; if she pulls
her way, she is treated as a dog. I see nothing else in the intention of
poor Janey's last offence to him. There is an opposite counsel, and he
can be eloquent, and he will be heard on her side. How could she manage
the most wayward when she has not an idea of ordinary men! But, my
husband, they have our tie between them; it may move him. It subdues
her--and nothing else would have done that. If she had been in England a
year before the marriage, she would, I think, have understood better how
to guide her steps and her tongue for his good pleasure. She learns
daily, very quickly: observes, assimilates; she reads and has her
comments--would have shot far ahead of your Riette, with my advantages.

'Your uncle--but he will bear any charge on his conscience as long as he
can get the burden off his shoulders. Do not fret, my own! Reperuse the
above--you will see we have grounds for hope.

'He should have looked down on her! No tears from her eyes, but her eyes
were tears. She does not rank among beautiful women. She has her moments
for outshining them--the loveliest of spectres! She caught at my heart. I
cannot forget her face looking up for him to look down. A great painter
would have reproduced it, a great poet have rendered the impression.
Nothing short of the greatest. That is odd to say of one so simple as
she. But when accidents call up her reserves, you see mountain heights
where mists were--she is actually glorified. Her friend--I do believe a
friend--the Mr. Woodseer you are to remember meeting somewhere--a
sprained ankle--has a dozen similes ready for what she is when pain or
happiness vivify her. Or, it may be, tender charity. She says, that if
she feels for suffering people, it is because she is the child of
Chillon's mother. In like manner Chillon is the son of Janey's father.

'Mr. Woodseer came every other evening. Our only enlivenment. Livia
followed her policy, in refusing to call. We lived luxuriously; no money,
not enough for a box at the opera, though we yearned--you can imagine.
Chapters of philosophy read out and expounded instead. Janey likes them.
He sets lessons to her queer maid--reading, writing, pronunciation of
English. An inferior language to Welsh, for poetical purposes, we are
informed. So Janey--determining to apply herself to Welsh, and a
chameleon Riette dreading that she will be taking a contrary view of the
honest souls--as she feels them to be--when again under Livia's shadow.

'The message from Janey to Scrope's hotel was despatched half-an-hour
after we had driven in from the park; fruit of a brown meditation. I
wrote it--third person--a single sentence. Arrangements are made for her
to travel comfortably. It is funny--the shops for her purchases of
clothes, necessaries, etc., are specified; she may order to any extent.
Not a shilling of money for her poor purse. What can be the secret of
that? He does nothing without an object. To me, uniformly civil, no
irony, few compliments. Livia writes, that I am commended for keeping
Janey company. What can be the secret of a man scrupulously just with one
hand, and at the same time cruel with the other? Mr. Woodseer says, his
wealth:--"More money than is required for their needs, men go into
harness to Plutus,"--if that is clever.

'I have written my husband--as Janey ceases to call her own; and it was
pretty and touching to hear her "my husband."--Oh! a dull letter. But he
is my husband though he keeps absent--to be longed for--he is my husband
still, my husband always. Chillon is Henrietta's husband, the world cries
out, and when she is flattered she does the like, for then it is not too
presumptuous that she should name Henrietta Chillon's wife. In my ears,
husband has the sweeter sound. It brings an angel from overhead. Will it
bring him one-half hour sooner? My love! My dear! If it did, I should be
lisping "husband, husband, husband" from cock-crow to owl's cry. Livia
thinks the word foolish, if not detestable. She and I have our different
opinions. She is for luxury. I choose poverty and my husband. Poverty has
its beauty, if my husband is the sun of it. Elle radote. She would not
have written so dull a letter to her husband if she had been at the opera
last night, or listened to a distant street-band. No more--the next line
would be bleeding. He should have her blood too, if that were her
husband's--it would never be; but if it were for his good in the smallest
way. Chillon's wish is to give his blood for them he loves. Never did
woman try more to write worthily to her absent lord and fall so miserably
into the state of dripping babe from bath on nurse's knee. Cover me, my
lord; and love, my cause for--no, my excuse, my refuge from myself. We
are one? Oh! we are one!--and we have been separated eight and twenty
days.

                  'HENRIETTA KIRBY-LEVELLIER.'

That was a letter for the husband and lover to receive in a foreign land
and be warmed.

The tidings of Carinthia washed him clean of the grimy district where his
waxen sister had developed her stubborn insensibility;--resembling
craziness, every perversion of the refinement demanded by young
Englishmen of their ladies; and it pacified him with the belief that she
was now at rest, the disturbed history of their father and mother at rest
as well; his conscience in relation to the marriage likewise at rest.
Chillon had a wife. Her writing of the welcome to poverty stirred his
knowledge of his wife's nature. Carinthia might bear it and harden to
flint; Henrietta was a butterfly for the golden rays. His thoughts, all
his energies, were bent on the making of money to supply her need for the
pleasure she flew in--a butterfly's grub without it. Accurately so did
the husband and lover read his wife--adoring her the more.

Her letter's embracing close was costly to them. It hurried him to the
compromise of a debateable business, and he fell into the Austrian
Government's terms for the payment of the inheritance from his father;
calculating that--his sister's share deducted-money would be in hand to
pay pressing debts and enable Henrietta to live unworried by cares until
he should have squeezed debts, long due and increasing, out of the
miserly old lord, his uncle. A prospect of supplies for twelve months,
counting the hack and carriage Henrietta had always been used to, seemed
about as far as it was required to look by the husband hastening homeward
to his wife's call. Her letter was a call in the night. Besides, there
were his yet untried Inventions. The new gunpowder testing at Croridge
promised to provide Henrietta with many of the luxuries she could have
had, and had abandoned for his sake. The new blasting powder and a
destructive shell might build her the palace she deserved. His uncle was,
no doubt, his partner. If, however, the profits were divided, sufficient
wealth was assured. But his uncle remained a dubious image. The husband
and lover could enfold no positive prospect to suit his wife's tastes
beyond the twelve months.

We have Dame Gossip upon us.

--One minute let mention be of the excitement over Protestant England
when that rumour disseminated, telling of her wealthiest nobleman's visit
to a monastery, up in the peaks and snows; and of his dwelling among the
monks, and assisting in all their services day and night, hymning and
chanting, uttering not one word for one whole week: his Papistical
friend, Lord Feltre, with him, of course, after Jesuit arts had allured
him to that place of torrents and lightnings and canticles and demon
echoes, all as though expressly contrived for the horrifying of sinners
into penitence and confession and the monkish cowl up to life's end, not
to speak of the abjuration of worldly possessions and donation of them
into the keeping of the shaven brothers; when either they would have
settled a band of them here in our very midst, or they would have
impoverished--is not too strong a word--the country by taking the money's
worth of the mines, estates, mansions, freehold streets and squares of
our metropolis out of it without scruple; rejoicing so to bleed the
Protestant faith. Underrate it now--then it was a truly justifiable
anxiety: insomuch that you heard people of station, eminent titled
persons, asking, like the commonest low Radicals, whether it was prudent
legislation to permit of the inheritance of such vast wealth by a young
man, little more than a boy, and noted for freaks. And some declared it
could not be allowed for foreign monks to have a claim to inherit English
property. There was a general consent, that if the Earl of Fleetwood went
to the extreme of making over his property to those monks, he should be
pronounced insane and incapable. Ultimately the world was a little
pacified by hearing that a portion of it was entailed, Esslemont and the
Welsh mines.

So it might be; but what if he had no child! The marriage amazing
everybody scarcely promised fruit, it was thought. Countess Livia, much
besought for her opinion, scouted the possibility. And Carinthia Jane was
proclaimed by John Rose Mackrell (to his dying day the poor gentleman
tried vainly to get the second syllable of his name accentuated) a young
woman who would outlive twice over the husband she had. He said of his
name, it was destined to pass him down a dead fish in the nose of
posterity, and would affect his best jokes; which something has done, or
the present generation has lost the sense of genuine humour.

Thanks to him, the talk of the Whitechapel Countess again sprang up,
merrily as ever; and after her having become, as he said, 'a desiccated
celebrity,' she outdid cabinet ministers and naughty wives for a living
morsel in the world's mouth. She was denounced by the patriotic party as
the cause of the earl's dalliance with Rome.

The earl, you are to know, was then coasting along the Mediterranean, on
board his beautiful schooner yacht, with his Lord Feltre, bound to make
an inspection of Syrian monasteries, and forget, if he could, the face of
all faces, another's possession by the law.

Those two lords, shut up together in a yacht, were advised by their
situation to be bosom friends, and they quarrelled violently, and were
reconciled, and they quarrelled again; they were explosive chemicals;
until the touch of dry land relieved them of what they really fancied the
spell of the Fiend. For their argumentative topic during confinement was
Woman, when it was not Theology; and even off a yacht, those are subjects
to kindle the utmost hatred of dissension, if men are not perfectly
concordant. They agreed upon land to banish any talk of Women or
Theology, where it would have been comparatively innocent; so they both
desiring to be doing the thing they had sworn they would not do, the
thoughts of both were fastened on one or the other interdicted subject.
They hardly spoke; they perceived in their longing minds, that the
imagined spell of, the Fiend was indeed the bile of the sea, secreted
thickly for want of exercise, and they both regretted the days and nights
of their angry controversies; unfit pilgrims of the Holy Land, they
owned.

To such effect, Lord Fleetwood wrote to Gower Woodseer, as though there
had been no breach between them, from Jerusalem, expressing the wish to
hear his cool wood-notes of the philosophy of Life, fresh drawn from
Nature's breast; and urgent for an answer, to be addressed to his hotel
at Southampton, that he might be greeted on his return home first by his
'friend Gower.'

He wrote in the month of January. His arrival at Southampton was on the
thirteenth day of March; and there he opened a letter some weeks old, the
bearer of news which ought by rights to make husbands proudly happy.




CHAPTER XXVII

WE DESCEND INTO A STEAMER'S ENGINE-ROOM

Fleetwood had dropped his friend Lord Feltre at Ancona; his good fortune
was to be alone when the clang of bells rang through his head in the
reading of Gower's lines. Other letters were opened: from the Countess
Livia, from Lady Arpington, from Captain Kirby-Levellier. There was one
from his lawyers, informing him of their receipt of a communication dated
South Wales, December 11th, and signed Owain Wythan; to the effect, that
the birth of a son to the Earl of Fleetwood was registered on the day of
the date, with a copy of the document forwarded.

Livia scornfully stated the tattling world's 'latest.' The captain was as
brief, in ordinary words, whose quick run to the stop could be taken for
a challenge of the eye. It stamped the adversary's frown on Fleetwood
reading. Lady Arpington was more politic; she wrote of 'a healthy boy,'
and 'the healthy mother giving him breast,' this being 'the way for the
rearing of strong men.' She condescended to the particulars, that she
might touch him.

The earl had not been so reared: his mother was not the healthy mother.
One of his multitudinous, shifty, but ineradicable ambitions was to
exhibit an excellingly vigorous, tireless constitution. He remembered the
needed refreshment of the sea-breezes aboard his yacht during the week
following the sleep-discarded nights at Scrope's and the green tables.
For a week he hung to the smell of brine, in rapturous amity with Feltre,
until they yellowed, differed, wrangled, hated.

A powerful leaven was put into him by the tidings out of Wales. Gower,
good fellow, had gone down to see the young mother three weeks after the
birth of her child. She was already renewing her bloom. She had produced
the boy in the world's early manner, lightly, without any of the tragic
modern hovering over death to give the life. Gower compared it to a
'flush of the vernal orchard after a day's drink of sunlight.' That was
well: that was how it should be. One loathes the idea of tortured women.

The good fellow was perhaps absurdly poetical. Still we must have poetry
to hallow this and other forms of energy: or say, if you like, the right
view of them impels to poetry. Otherwise we are in the breeding yards,
among the litters and the farrows. It is a question of looking down or
looking up. If we are poor creatures--as we are if we do but feast and
gamble and beget--we shall run for a time with the dogs and come to the
finish of swine. Better say, life is holy! Why, then have we to thank her
who teaches it.

He gazed at the string of visions of the woman naming him husband, making
him a father: the imagined Carinthia--beautiful Gorgon, haggard Venus;
the Carinthia of the precipice tree-shoot; Carinthia of the ducal
dancing-hall; and she at the altar rails; she on the coach box; she
alternately softest of brides, doughtiest of Amazons. A mate for the
caress, an electrical heroine, fronted him.

Yes, and she was Lord Fleetwood's wife, cracking sconces,--a demoiselle
Moll Flanders,--the world's Whitechapel Countess out for an airing,
infernally earnest about it, madly ludicrous; the schemer to catch his
word, the petticoated Shylock to bind him to the letter of it; now
persecuting, haunting him, now immoveable for obstinacy; malignant to
stay down in those vile slums and direct tons of sooty waters on his head
from its mains in the sight of London, causing the least histrionic of
men to behave as an actor. He beheld her a skull with a lamp behind the
eyeholes.

But this woman was the woman who made him a father; she was the mother of
the heir of the House; and the boy she clasped and suckled as her boy was
his boy. They met inseparably in that new life.

Truly, there could not be a woman of flesh so near to a likeness with the
beatific image of Feltre's worshipped Madonna!

The thought sparkled and darkened in Fleetwood's mind, as a star passing
into cloud. For an uproarious world claimed the woman, jeered at all
allied with her; at her husband most, of course:--the punctilious noodle!
the golden jackass, tethered and goaded! He had choice among the pick of
women: the daughter of the Old Buccaneer was preferred by the wiseacre
Coelebs. She tricked him cunningly and struck a tremendous return blow in
producing her male infant.

By the way, was she actually born in wedlock? Lord Levellier's assurances
regarding her origin were, by the calculation, a miser's shuffles to
clinch his bargain. Assuming the representative of holy motherhood to be
a woman of illegitimate birth, the history of the House to which the
spotted woman gave an heir would suffer a jolt when touching on her. And
altogether the history fumed rank vapours. Imagine her boy in his
father's name a young collegian! No commonly sensitive lad could bear the
gibes of the fellows raking at antecedents: Fleetwood would be the name
to start roars. Smarting for his name, the earl chafed at the boy's
mother. Her production of a man-child was the further and grosser
offence.

The world sat on him. His confession to some degree of weakness, even to
folly, stung his pride of individuality so that he had to soothe the pain
by tearing himself from a thought of his folly's partner, shutting
himself up and away from her. Then there was a cessation of annoyance,
flatteringly agreeable: which can come to us only of our having done the
right thing, young men will think. He felt at once warmly with the world,
enjoyed the world's kind shelter, and in return for its eulogy of his
unprecedented attachment to the pledge of his word, admitted an
understanding of its laughter at the burlesque edition of a noble lady in
the person of the Whitechapel Countess. The world sat on him heavily.

He recurred to Gower Woodseer's letter.

The pictures and images in it were not the principal matter,--the
impression had been deep. A plain transcription of the young mother's
acts and words did more to portray her: the reader could supply
reflections.

Would her boy's father be very pleased to see him? she had asked.

And she spoke of a fear that the father would try to take her boy from
her.

'Never that--you have my word!' Fleetwood said; and he nodded
consentingly over her next remark--

'Not while I live, till he must go to school!'

The stubborn wife would be the last of women to sit and weep as a rifled
mother.

A child of the Countess Carinthia (he phrased it) would not be deficient
in will, nor would the youngster lack bravery.

For his part, comparison rushing at him and searching him, he owned that
he leaned on pride. To think that he did, became a theme for pride. The
mother had the primitive virtues, the father the developed: he was the
richer mine. And besides, he was he, the unriddled, complex, individual
he; she was the plain barbarian survival, good for giving her offspring
bone, muscle, stout heart.

Shape the hypothesis of a fairer woman the mother of the heir to the
earldom.

Henrietta was analyzed in a glimpse. Courage, animal healthfulness, she,
too, might--her husband not obstructing--transmit; and good looks, eyes
of the sapphire AEgean. And therewith such pliability as the Mother of
Love requires of her servants.

Could that woman resist seductions?

Fleetwood's wrath with her for refusing him and inducing him in spite to
pledge his word elsewhere, haphazard, pricked a curiosity to know whether
the woman could be--and easily! easily! he wagered--led to make her
conduct warrant for his contempt of her. Led,--that is, misled, you might
say, if you were pleading for a doll. But it was necessary to bait the
pleasures for the woman, in order to have full view of the precious fine
fate one has escaped. Also to get well rid of a sort of hectic in the
blood, which the woman's beauty has cast on that reflecting tide: a
fever-sign, where the fever has become quite emotionless and is merely
desirous for the stain of it to be washed out. As this is not the desire
to possess or even to taste, contempt will do it. When we know that the
weaver of the fascinations is purchasable, we toss her to the market
where men buy; and we walk released from vile subjection to one of the
female heap: subjection no longer, doubtless, and yet a stain of the past
flush, often colouring our reveries, creating active phantasms of a
passion absolutely extinct, if it ever was the veritable passion.

The plot--formless plot--to get release by the sacrifice or at least a
crucial temptation of the woman, that should wash his blood clean of her
image, had a shade of the devilish, he acknowledged; and the apology
offered no improvement of its aspect. She might come out of the trial
triumphant. And benefit for himself, even a small privilege, even the
pressure of her hand, he not only shrank from the thought of winning,-he
loathed the thought. He was too delicate over the idea of the married
woman whom he fancied he loved in her maidenhood. Others might press her
hand, lead her the dance: he simply wanted his release. She had set him
on fire; he conceived a method for trampling the remaining sparks and
erasing stain and scars; that was all. Henrietta rejected her wealthy
suitor: she might some day hence be seen crawling abjectly to wealth,
glad of a drink from the cup it holds, intoxicated with the draught. An
injured pride could animate his wealth to crave solace of such a
spectacle.

Devilish, if you like. He had expiated the wickedness in Cistercian
seclusion. His wife now drove him to sin again.

She had given him a son. That fluted of home and honourable life. She had
her charm, known to him alone.

But how, supposing she did not rub him to bristle with fresh irritations,
how go to his wife while Henrietta held her throne? Consideration was due
to her until she stumbled. Enough if she wavered. Almost enough is she
stood firm as a statue in the winds, and proved that the first page of
her was a false introduction. The surprising apparition of a beautiful
woman with character; a lightly-thrilled, pleasure-loving woman devoted
to her husband or protected by her rightful self-esteem, would loosen him
creditably. It had to be witnessed, for faith in it. He reverenced our
legendary good women, and he bowed to noble deeds; and he ascribed the
former to poetical creativeness, the latter operated as a scourging to
his flesh to yield its demoniacal inmates. Nothing of the kind was doing
at present.

Or stay: a studious re-perusal of Gower Woodseer's letter enriched a
little incident. Fleetwood gave his wife her name of Carinthia when he
had read deliberately and caught the scene.

Mrs. Wythan down in Wales related it to Gower. Carinthia and Madge,
trudging over the treeless hills, came on a birchen clump round a deep
hollow or gullypit; precipitous, the earl knew, he had peeped over the
edge in his infant days. There at the bottom, in a foot or so of water,
they espied a lamb; and they rescued the poor beastie by going down to
it, one or both. It must have been the mountain-footed one. A man would
hesitate, spying below. Fleetwood wondered how she had managed to climb
up, and carrying the lamb! Down pitches Madge Winch to help--they did it
between them. We who stand aloof admire stupidly. To defend himself from
admiring, he condemned the two women for the risk they ran to save a
probably broken-legged little beast: and he escaped the melting mood by
forcing a sneer at the sort of stuff out of which popular ballads are
woven. Carinthia was accused of letting her adventurous impulses and
sentimental female compassion swamp thought of a mother's duties. If both
those women had broken their legs the child might have cried itself into
fits for the mother, there she would have remained.

Gower wrote in a language transparent of the act, addressed to a reader
whose memory was to be impregnated. His reader would have flown away from
the simple occurrence on arabesques and modulated tones; and then
envisaging them critically, would have tossed his poor little story to
the winds, as a small thing magnified: with an object, being the next
thought about it. He knew his Fleetwood so far.

His letter concluded: 'I am in a small Surrey village over a baker's
shop, rent eight shillings per week, a dame's infant school opposite my
window, miles of firwood, heath, and bracken openings, for the winged or
the nested fancies. Love Nature, she makes you a lord of her boundless,
off any ten square feet of common earth. I go through my illusions and
come always back on that good truth. It says, beware of the world's
passion for flavours and spices. Much tasted, they turn and bite the
biter. My exemplars are the lately breeched youngsters with two pence in
their pockets for the gingerbread-nut booth on a fair day. I learn more
from one of them than you can from the whole cavalcade of your attendant
Ixionides.'

Mounting the box of his coach for the drive to London, Fleetwood had the
new name for the parasitic and sham vital troop at his ears.

'My Ixionides!' he repeated, and did not scorn them so much as he
rejoiced to be enlightened by the title. He craved the presence of the
magician who dropped illumination with a single word; wholesomer to think
of than the whole body of those Ixionides--not bad fellows, here and
there, he reflected, tolerantly, half laughing at some of their clownish
fun. Gower Woodseer and he had not quarrelled? No, they had merely parted
at one of the crossways. The plebeian could teach that son of the,
genuflexions, Lord Feltre, a lesson in manners. Woodseer was the better
comrade and director of routes. Into the forest, up on the heights; and
free, not locked; and not parroting day and night, but quick for all that
the world has learnt and can tell, though two-thirds of it be composed of
Ixionides: that way lies wisdom, and his index was cut that way.

Arrived in town, he ran over the headings of his letters, in no degree
anxious for a communication from Wales. There was none. Why none?

She might as well have scrawled her announcement of an event pleasing to
her, and, by the calculation, important to him, if not particularly
interesting. The mother's wifeish lines would, perhaps, have been tested
in a furnace. He smarted at the blank of any, of even two or three formal
words. She sulked? 'I am not a fallen lamb!' he said. Evidently one had
to be a shivering beast in trouble, to excite her to move a hand.

Through so slight a fissure as this piece of discontent cracked in him,
the crowd of his grievances with the woman rushed pell-mell, deluging
young shoots of sweeter feelings. She sulked! If that woman could not get
the command, he was to know her incapable of submission. After besmutting
the name she had filched from him, she let him understand that there was
no intention to repent. Possibly she meant war. In which case a man must
fly, or stand assailed by the most intolerable of vulgar farces;--to be
compared to a pelting of one on the stage.

The time came for him to knock at doors and face his public.




CHAPTER XXVIII

BY CONCESSIONS TO MISTRESS GOSSIP A FURTHER INTRUSION IS AVERTED

Livia welcomed him, with commiserating inquiry behind her languid
eyelids. 'You have all the latest?' it said.

He struck on the burning matter.

'You wish to know the part you have to play, ma'am.' 'Tell me, Russett.'

'You will contradict nothing.'

Her eyebrows asked, 'It means?'

'You have authority from me to admit the facts.'

'They are facts?' she remarked.

'Women love teasing round certain facts, apparently; like the Law courts
over their pet cases.'

'But, Russett, will you listen?'

'Has the luck been civil of late?'

'I think of something else at present. No, it has not.'

'Abrane?'

'Pray, attend to me. No, not Abrane.'

'I believe you've all been cleared out in my absence. St. Ombre?'

Her complexion varied. 'Mr. Ambrose Mallard has once or twice . . . But
let me beg you--the town is rageing with it. My dear Russett, a bold
front now; there 's the chance of your release in view.'

'A rascal in view! Name the sum.'

'I must reckon. My head is--can you intend to submit?'

'So it's Brosey Mallard now. You choose your deputy queerly. He's as bad
as Abrane, with steam to it. Chummy Potts would have done better.'

'He wins one night; loses every pound-note he has the next; and comes
vaunting--the "dry still Sillery" of the establishment,--a perpetual
chorus to his losses!'

'His consolation to you for yours. That is the gentleman. Chummy doesn't
change. Say, why not St. Ombre? He's cool.'

'There are reasons.'

'Let them rest. And I have my reasons. Do the same for them.'

'Yours concern the honour of the family.'

'Deeply: respect them.'

'Your relatives have to be thought of, though they are few and not too
pleasant.'

'If I had thought much of them, what would our relations be? They object
to dicing, and I to leading strings.'

She turned to a brighter subject, of no visible connection with the
preceding.

'Henrietta comes in May.'

'The month of her colours.'

'Her money troubles are terrible.'

'Both of you appear unlucky in your partners,--if winning was the object.
She shall have all the distractions we can offer.'

'Your visit to the Chartreuse alarmed her.'

'She has rejoiced her husband.'

'A girl. She feared the Jesuit in your friend.'

'Feltre and she are about equally affected by music. They shall meet.'

'Russett, this once: I do entreat you to take counsel with your good
sense, and remember that you stand where you are by going against my
advice. It is a perfect storm over London. The world has not to be
informed of your generosity; but a chivalry that invites the most
horrible of sneers at a man! And what can I say? I have said it was
impossible.'

'Add the postscript: you find it was perfectly possible.'

'I have to learn more than I care to hear.'

'Your knowledge is not in request: you will speak in my name.'

'Will you consult your lawyers, Russett, before you commit yourself?'

'I am on my way to Lady Arpington.'

'You cannot be thinking how serious it is.'

'I rather value the opinion of a hard-headed woman of the world.'

'Why not listen to me?'

'You have your points, ma'am.'

'She's a torch.'

'She serves my purpose.'

Livia shrugged sadly. 'I suppose it serves your purpose to be
unintelligible to me.'

He rendered himself intelligible immediately by saying, 'Before I go--a
thousand?'

'Oh, my dear Russett!' she sighed.

'State the amount.'

She seemed to be casting unwieldly figures and he helped her with, 'Mr.
Isaacs?'

'Not less than three, I fear.'

'Has he been pressing?'

'You are always good to us, Russett.'

'You are always considerate for the honour of the family, ma'am. Order
for the money with you here to-morrow. And I thank you for your advice.
Do me the favour to follow mine.

'Commands should be the word.'

'Phrase it as you please.'

'You know I hate responsibility.'

'The chorus in classical dramas had generally that sentiment, but the
singing was the sweeter for it.'

'Whom do you not win when you condescend to the mood, you dear boy?'

He restrained a bitter reply, touching the kind of persons he had won: a
girl from the mountains, a philosophical tramp of the roads, troops of
the bought.

Livia spelt at the problem he was. She put away the task of reading it.
He departed to see Lady Arpington, and thereby rivet his chains.

As Livia had said, she was a torch. Lady Endor, Lady Eldritch, Lady
Cowry, kindled at her. Again there were flights of the burning brands
over London. The very odd marriage; the no-marriage; the
two-ends-of-the-town marriage; and the maiden marriage a fruitful
marriage; the monstrous marriage of the countess productive in
banishment, and the unreadable earl accepting paternity; this Amazing
Marriage was again the riddle in the cracker for tattlers and gapers. It
rattled upon the world's native wantonness, the world's acquired decorum:
society's irrepressible original and its powerfully resisting second
nature. All the rogues of the fine sphere ran about with it, male and
female; and there was the narrative that suggestively skipped, and that
which trod the minuet measure, dropping a curtsey to ravenous curiosity;
the apology surrendering its defensible cause in supplications to
benevolence; and the benevolence damnatory in a too eloquent urgency;
followed by the devout objection to a breath of the subject, so
blackening it as to call forth the profanely circumstantial exposition.
Smirks, blushes, dead silences, and in the lower regions roars, hung
round it.

But the lady, though absent, did not figure poorly at all. Granting
Whitechapel and the shillelagh affair, certain whispers of her good
looks, contested only to be the more violently asserted; and therewith
Rose Mackrell's tale of her being a 'young woman of birth,' having a
'romantic story to tell of herself and her parentage,' made her latest
performance the champagne event of it hitherto. Men sparkled when they
had it on their lips.

How, then, London asked, would the Earl of Fleetwood move his pieces in
reply to his countess's particularly clever indication of the check
threatening mate?

His move had no relation to the game, it was thought at first. The world
could not suppose that he moved a simple pawn on his marriage board. He
purchased a shop in Piccadilly for the sale of fruit and flowers.

Lady Arpington was entreated to deal at the shop, Countess Livia had her
orders; his friends, his parasites and satellites, were to deal there.
Intensely earnest as usual, he besought great ladies to let him have the
overflow of their hothouses; and they classing it as another of the
mystifications of a purse crazy for repleteness, inquired: 'But is it you
we are to deal with?' And he quite seriously said: 'With me, yes, at
present.' Something was behind the curtain, of course. His gravity had
the effect of the ultra-comical in concealing it.

The shop was opened. We have the assurance of Rose Mackrell, that he
entered and examined the piles and pans of fruit, and the bouquets
cunningly arranged by a hand smelling French. The shop was roomy,
splendid windows lighted the yellow, the golden, the green and
parti-coloured stores. Four doors off, a chemist's motley in bellied
glasses crashed on the sight. Passengers along the pavement had presented
to them such a contrast as might be shown if we could imagine the Lethean
ferry-boatload brought sharp against Pomona's lapful. In addition to the
plucked flowers and fruits of the shop, Rose Mackrell more attentively
examined the samples doing service at the counters. They were three,
under supervision of a watchful-eyed fourth. Dame Gossip is for quoting
his wit. But the conclusion he reached, after quitting the shop and
pacing his dozen steps, is important; for it sent a wind over the town to
set the springs of tattle going as wildly as when the herald's trumpet
blew the announcement for the world to hear out of Wales.

He had observed, that the young woman supervising was deficient in the
ease of an established superior; her brows were troubled; she was,
therefore, a lieutenant elevated from a lower grade; and, to his
thinking, conducted the business during the temporary retirement of the
mistress of the shop.

And the mistress of the shop?

The question hardly needs be put.

Rose Mackrell or his humour answered it in unfaltering terms.

London heard, with the variety of feelings which are indistinguishable
under a flooding amazement, that the beautiful new fruit and flower shop
had been purchased and stocked by the fabulously wealthy young Earl of
Fleetwood, to give his Whitechapel Countess a taste for business, an
occupation, and an honourable means of livelihood.

There was, Dame Gossip thumps to say, a general belief in this report.
Crowds were on the pavement, peering through the shop-windows. Carriages
driving by stopped to look. My lord himself had been visible, displaying
his array of provisions to friends. Nor was credulity damped appreciably
when over the shop, in gold letters, appeared the name of Sarah Winch. It
might be the countess's maiden name, if she really was a married
countess.

But, in truth, the better informed of the town, having begun to think its
Croesus capable of any eccentricity, chose to believe. They were at the
pitch of excitement which demands and will swallow a succession of wilder
extravagances. To accelerate the delirium of the fun, nothing was too
much, because any absurdity was anticipated. And the earl's readiness to
be complimented on the shop's particular merits, his gratified air at an
allusion to it, whirled the fun faster. He seemed entirely unconscious
that each step he now took wakened peals.

For such is the fate of a man who has come to be dogged by the humourist
for the provision he furnishes; and, as it happens, he is the more
laughable if not in himself a laughable object. The earl's handsome
figure, fine style, and contrasting sobriety heightened the burlesque of
his call to admiration of a shop where Whitechapel would sit in
state-according to the fiction so closely under the lee of fact that they
were not strictly divisible. Moreover, Sarah Winch, whom Chumley Potts
drew into conversation, said, he vowed, she came up West from
Whitechapel. She said it a little nervously, but without blushing. Always
on the side of the joke, he could ask: 'Who can doubt?' Indeed,
scepticism poisoned the sport.

The Old Buccaneer has written: Friends may laugh; I am not roused. My
enemy's laugh is a bugle blown in the night.

Our enemy's laugh at us rouses to wariness, he would say. He can barely
mean, that a condition of drowsihead is other than providently warned by
laughter of friends. An old warrior's tough fibre would, perhaps, be
insensible to that small crackle. In civil life, however, the friend's
laugh at us is the loudest of the danger signals to stop our course: and
the very wealthy nobleman, who is known for not a fool, is kept from
hearing it. Unless he does hear it, he can have no suspicion of its being
about him: he cannot imagine such 'lese-majeste' in the subservient
courtiers too prudent to betray a sign. So Fleetwood was unwarned; and
his child-like unconsciousness of the boiling sentiments around,
seasoned, pricked, and maddened his parasites under compression to
invent, for a faint relief. He had his title for them, they their tales
of him.

Dame Gossip would recount the tales. She is of the order of persons
inclining to suspect the tittle of truth in prodigies of scandal. She is
rustling and bustling to us of 'Carinthia Jane's run up to London to see
Sarah Winch's grand new shop,' an eclipse of all existing grand London
western shops; and of Rose Mackrell's account of her dance of proud
delight in the shop, ending with a 'lovely cheese' just as my lord
enters; and then a scene, wild beyond any conceivable 'for pathos and
humour'--her pet pair of the dissimilar twins, both banging at us for
tear-drops by different roads, through a common aperture:--and the earl
has the Whitechapel baby boy plumped into his arms; and the countess
fetches him a splendid bob-dip and rises out of a second cheese to twirl
and fandango it; and, all serious on a sudden, request, whimperingly
beseech, his thanks to her for the crowing successor she has presented
him with: my lord ultimately, but carefully, depositing the infant on a
basket of the last oranges of the season, fresh from the Azores, by
delivery off my lord's own schooner-yacht in Southampton water; and
escaping, leaving his gold-headed stick behind him--a trophy for the
countess? a weapon, it may be.

Quick she tucks up her skirts, she is after him. Dame Gossip speaks
amusingly enough of the chase, and many eye-witnesses to the earl's
flight at top speed down the right side of the way along by the Green
Park; and of a Prince of the Blood, a portly Royal Duke on foot, bumped
by one or the other of them, she cannot precisely say which, but 'thinks
it to have been Carinthia Jane,' because the exalted personage, his shock
of surprise abating, turned and watched the chase, in much merriment. And
it was called, we are informed, 'The Piccadilly Hare and Hound' from that
day.

Some tradition of an extenuated nobleman pursued by a light-footed lady
amid great excitement, there is; the Dame attaches importance also to
verses of one of the ballads beginning to gain currency at the time
(issuing ostensibly from London's poetic centre, the Seven Dials, which
had, we are to conjecture, got the story by discolouring filtration
through footmen retailing in public-houses the stock of anecdotes they
gathered when stationed behind Rose Mackrell's chair, or Captain
Abrane's, or Chumley 'Potts's), and would have the whole of it quoted:--

    "'Tho' fair I be a powdered peruke,
     And once was a gaping silly,
     Your Whitechapel Countess will prove, Lord Duke,
     She's a regular tiger-lily.
     She'll fight you with cold steel
          or she'll run you off your legs
     Down the length of Piccadilly!"

That will satisfy; and perhaps indicate the hand.

'Popular sympathy, of course, was all on the side of the Fair, as ever in
those days when women had not forfeited it by stepping from their
sanctuary seclusion.'

The Dame shall expose her confusions. She really would seem to fancy that
the ballad verifies the main lines of the story, which is an impossible
one. Carinthia had not the means to travel: she was moneyless. Every bill
of her establishment was paid without stint by Mr. Howell Edwards, the
earl's manager of mines; but she had not even the means for a journey to
the Gowerland rocks she longed to see. She had none since she forced her
brother to take the half of her share of their inheritance, L1400, and
sent him the remainder.

Accepted by Chillon John as a loan, says Dame Gossip, and no sooner
received than consumed by the pressing necessities of a husband with the
Rose Beauty of England to support in the comforts and luxuries he deemed
befitting.

Still the Dame leans to her opinion that 'Carinthia Jane' may have been
seen about London: for 'where we have much smoke there must be fire.' And
the countess never denying an imputation not brought against her in her
hearing, the ballad was unchallenged and London's wags had it their own
way. Among the reasons why they so persistently hunted the earl, his air
of a smart correctness shadowed by this new absurdity invited them, as
when a spot of mud on the trimmest of countenances arrests observation:
Humour plucked at him the more for the good faith of his handsome look
under the prolific little disfigurement. Besides, a wealthy despot, with
no conception of any hum around him, will have the wags in his track as
surely as the flexibles in front: they avenge his exactions.

Fleetwood was honestly unaware of ridicule in the condition of inventive
mania at his heels. Scheming, and hesitating to do, one-half of his mind
was absorbed with the problem of how now to treat the mother of his boy.
Her behaviour in becoming a mother was acknowledged to be good: the
production of a boy was good--considerate, he almost thought. He grew so
far reconciled to her as to have intimations of a softness coming on; a
wish to hear her speak of the trifling kindness done to the sister of
Madge in reward of kindness done to her; wishes for looks he remembered,
secret to him, more his own than any possessions. Dozens of men had
wealth, some had beautiful wives; none could claim as his own that face
of the look of sharp steel melting into the bridal flower, when she
sprang from her bed to defend herself and recognized the intruder at her
window; stood smitten:--'It is my, husband.' Moonlight gave the variation
of her features.

And that did not appease the resentment tearing him from her, so
justifiable then, as he forced himself to think, now hideous. Glimpses of
the pictures his deeds painted of him since his first meeting with this
woman had to be shunned. He threw them off; they were set down to the
mystery men are. The degrading, utterly different, back view of them
teaches that Life is an irony. If the teaching is not accepted, and we
are to take the blame, can we bear to live? Therefore, either way the
irony of Life is proved. Young men straining at thought, in the grip of
their sensations, reach this logical conclusion. They will not begin by
examining the ground they stand on, and questioning whether they have
consciences at peace with the steps to rearward.

Having established Life as the coldly malignant element, which induces to
what it chastises, a loathing of womanhood, the deputed Mother of Life,
ensues, by natural sequence. And if there be one among women who disturbs
the serenity we choose to think our due, she wears for us the sinister
aspect of a confidential messenger between Nemesis and the Parcae.
Fleetwood was thus compelled to regard Carinthia as both originally and
successively the cause of his internal as well as his exterior
discomfort; otherwise those glimpses would have burnt into perpetual
stigmas. He had also to get his mind away from her. They pleaded against
him volubly with the rising of her image into it.

His manager at the mines had sent word of ominous discontent down there.
His presence might be required. Obviously, then, the threatened place was
unfitting for the Countess of Fleetwood. He despatched a kind of order
through Mr. Howell Edwards, that she should remove to Esslemont to escape
annoyances. Esslemont was the preferable residence. She could there
entertain her friends, could spend a pleasanter time there.

He waited for the reply; Edwards deferred it.

Were they to be in a struggle with her obstinate will once more?

Henrietta was preparing to leave London for her dismal, narrow, and,
after an absence, desired love-nest. The earl called to say farewell,
cool as a loyal wife could wish him to be, admiring perforce. Marriage
and maternity withdrew nothing--added to the fair young woman's bloom.

She had gone to her room to pack and dress. Livia received him. In the
midst of the casual commonplaces her memory was enlightened.

'Oh,' said she, and idly drew a letter out of a blottingpad, 'we have
heard from Wales.' She handed it to him.

Before he knew the thing he did, he was reading:

'There is no rest foamy brother, and I cannot help; I am kept so poor I
have not the smallest of sums. I do not wish to leave Wales--the people
begin to love me; and can one be mistaken? I know if I am loved or hated.
But if my lord will give me an allowance of money of some hundreds, I
will do his bidding; I will leave England or I will go to Esslemont; I
could say--to Mr. Woodseer, in that part of London. He would not permit.
He thinks me blacked by it, like a sweepboy coming from a chimney; and
that I have done injury to his title. No, Riette, to be a true sister, I
must bargain with my lord before I submit. He has not cared to come and
see his little son. His boy has not offended him. There may be some of me
in this dear. I know whose features will soon show to defend the mother's
good name. He is early my champion. He is not christened yet, and I hear
it accuse me, and I am not to blame,--I still wait my lord's answer.'

'Don't be bothered to read the whole,' Livia had said, with her hand out,
when his eyes were halfway down the page.

Fleetwood turned it, to read the signature: 'Janey.'

She seemed servile enough to some of her friends. 'Carinthia' would have
had--a pleasanter sound. He folded the letter.

'Why give me this? Take it,'--said he.

She laid it on the open pad.

Henrietta entered and had it restored to her, Livia remarking: 'I found
it in the blotter after all.'

She left them together, having to dress for the drive to the coach office
with Henrietta.

'Poor amusement for you this time.' Fleetwood bowed, gently smiling.

'Oh!' cried Henrietta, 'balls, routs, dinners, music--as much music as I
could desire, even I! What more could be asked? I am eternally grateful.'

'The world says, you are more beautiful than ever.'

'Happiness does it, then,--happiness owing to you, Lord Fleetwood.'

'Columelli pleases you?'

'His voice is heavenly! He carries me away from earth.'

'He is a gentleman, too-rare with those fellows.'

'A pretty manner. He will speak his compliments in his English.'

'You are seasoned to endure them in all languages. Pity another of your
wounded: Brailstone has been hard hit at the tables.

'I cannot pity gamblers.--May I venture?--half a word?'

'Tomes! But just a little compassion for the devoted. He wouldn't play so
madly--if, well, say a tenth dilution of the rapt hearing Columelli
gets.'

'Signor Columelli sings divinely.'

'You don't dislike Brailstone?'

'He is one of the agreeable.'

'He must put his feelings into Italian song!'

'To put them aside will do.'

'We are not to have our feelings?'

'Yes, on the proviso that ours are respected. But, one instant, Lord
Fleetwood, pray. She is--I have to speak of her as my sister. I am sure
she regrets . . . She writes very nicely.'

'You have a letter from her?'

Henrietta sighed that it would not bear exposure to him: 'Yes.'

'Nicely worded?'

'Well, yes, it is.'

He paused, not expecting that the letter would be shown, but silence
fired shots, and he had stopped the petition. 'We are to have you for a
week's yachting. You prescribe your company. Only be merciful. Exclusion
will mean death to some. Columelli will be touring in Switzerland. You
shall have him in the house when my new bit of ground Northwest of London
is open: very handy, ten miles out. We'll have the Opera troupe there,
and you shall command the Opera.'

Her beauty sweetened to thank him.

If, as Livia said, his passion for her was unchanged, the generosity
manifested in the considerate screen it wore over any physical betrayal
of it, deserved the lustre of her eyes. It dwelt a moment, vivid with the
heart close behind and remorseful for misreading of old his fine
character. Here was a young man who could be the very kindest of friends
to the woman rejecting him to wed another. Her smile wavered. How shall a
loving wife express warmth of sentiment elsewhere, without the one beam
too much, that plunges her on a tideway? His claim of nothing called for
everything short of the proscribed. She gave him her beauty in fullest
flower.

It had the appearance of a temptation; and he was not tempted, though he
admired; his thought being, Husband of the thing!

But he admired. That condition awakened his unsatisfied past days to
desire positive proof of her worthlessness. The past days writhed in him.
The present were loveless, entirely cold. He had not even the wish to
press her hand. The market held beautiful women of a like description. He
wished simply to see her proved the thing he read her to be: and not
proved as such by himself. He was unable to summon or imagine emotion
enough for him to simulate the forms by which fair women are wooed to
their perdition. For all he cared, any man on earth might try, succeed or
fail, as long as he had visual assurance that she coveted, a slave to the
pleasures commanded by the wealth once disdained by her. Till that time,
he could not feel himself perfectly free.

Dame Gossip prefers to ejaculate. Young men are mysteries! and bowl us
onward. No one ever did comprehend the Earl of Fleetwood, she says: he
was bad, he was good; he was whimsical and stedfast; a splendid figure, a
mark for ridicule; romantic and a close arithmetician; often a devil,
sometimes the humanest of creatures.

In fine, he was a millionaire nobleman, owning to a considerable infusion
of Welsh blood in the composition of him. Now, to the Cymry and to the
pure Kelt, the past is at their elbows continually. The past of their
lives has lost neither face nor voice behind the shroud; nor are the
passions of the flesh, nor is the animate soul, wanting to it. Other
races forfeit infancy, forfeit youth and manhood with their progression
to the wisdom age may bestow. These have each stage always alive, quick
at a word, a scent, a sound, to conjure up scenes, in spirit and in
flame. Historically, they still march with Cadwallader, with Llewellyn,
with Glendower; sing with Aneurin, Taliesin, old Llywarch: individually,
they are in the heart of the injury done them thirty years back or
thrilling to the glorious deed which strikes an empty buckler for most of
the sons of Time. An old sea rises in them, rolling no phantom billows to
break to spray against existing rocks of the shore. That is why, and even
if they have a dose of the Teuton in them, they have often to feel
themselves exiles when still in amicable community among the
preponderating Saxon English.

Add to the single differentiation enormous wealth--we convulse the
excellent Dame by terming it a chained hurricane, to launch in foul
blasts or beneficent showers, according to the moods during youth--and
the composite Lord Fleetwood comes nearer into our focus. Dame Gossip,
with her jigging to be at the butterwoman's trot, when she is not
violently interrupting, would suffer just punishment were we to digress
upon the morality of a young man's legal possession of enormous wealth as
well.

Wholly Cambrian Fleetwood was not. But he had to the full the Cambrian's
reverential esteem for high qualities. His good-bye with Henrietta, and
estimate of her, left a dusky mental, void requiring an orb of some sort
for contemplation; and an idea of the totally contrary Carinthia, the
woman he had avowedly wedded, usurped her place. Qualities were admitted.
She was thrust away because she had offended: still more because he had
offended. She bore the blame for forcing him to an examination of his
conduct at this point and that, where an ancestral savage in his
lineaments cocked a strange eye. Yet at the moment of the act of the deed
he had known himself the veritable Fleetwood. He had now to vindicate
himself by extinguishing her under the load of her unwomanliness: she was
like sun-dried linen matched beside oriental silk: she was rough, crisp,
unyielding. That was now the capital charge. Henrietta could never be
guilty of the unfeminine. Which did he prefer?

It is of all questions the one causing young men to screw wry faces when
they are asked; they do so love the feminine, the ultra-feminine, whom
they hate for her inclination to the frail. His depths were sounded, and
he answered independently of his will, that he must be up to the heroical
pitch to decide. Carinthia stood near him then. The confession was a
step, and fraught with consequences. Her unacknowledged influence
expedited him to Sarah Winch's shop, for sight of one of earth's honest
souls; from whom he had the latest of the two others down in Wales, and
of an infant there.

He dined the host of his Ixionides, leaving them early for a drive at
night Eastward, and a chat with old Mr. Woodseer over his punching and
sewing of his bootleather. Another honest soul. Mr. Woodseer thankfully
consented to mount his coach-box next day, and astonish Gower with a drop
on his head from the skies about the time of the mid-day meal.

There we have our peep into Dame Gossip's young man mysterious.




CHAPTER XXIX

CARINTHIA IN WALES

An August of gales and rains drove Atlantic air over the Welsh highlands.
Carinthia's old father had impressed on her the rapture of 'smelling
salt' when by chance he stood and threw up his nostrils to sniff largely
over a bed of bracken, that reminded him of his element, and her fancy
would be at strain to catch his once proud riding of the seas. She felt
herself an elder daughter of the beloved old father, as she breathed it
in full volume from the billowy West one morning early after sunrise and
walked sisterly with the far-seen inexperienced little maid, whom she saw
trotting beside him through the mountain forest, listening, storing his
words, picturing the magnetic, veined great gloom of an untasted world.

This elder daughter had undergone a shipwreck; but clear proof that she
had not been worsted was in the unclouded liveliness of the younger one
gazing forward. Imaginative creatures who are courageous will never be
lopped of the hopeful portion of their days by personal misfortune.
Carinthia could animate both; it would have been a hurt done to a living
human soul had she suffered the younger self to run overcast. Only, the
gazing forward had become interdicted to her experienced self. Nor could
she vision a future having any horizon for her child. She saw it in bleak
squares, and snuggled him between dangers weathered and dangers
apprehended.

The conviction that her husband hated her had sunk into her nature.
Hating the mother, he would not love her boy. He was her boy, and
strangely bestowed, not beautifully to be remembered rapturously or
gratefully, and with deep love of the father. She felt the wound
recollection dealt her. But the boy was her one treasure, and no treasure
to her husband. They were burdens, and the heir of his House, child of a
hated mother, was under perpetual menace from an unscrupulous tyrannical
man. The dread and antagonism were first aroused by the birth of her
child. She had not known while bearing him her present acute sensation of
the hunted flying and at bay. Previously, she could say: I did wrong
here; I did wrong there. Distrust had brought the state of war, which
allows not of the wasting of our powers in confessions.

Her husband fed her and he clothed her; the limitation of his bounty was
sharply outlined. Sure of her rectitude, a stranger to the world, she was
not very sensible of dishonour done to her name. It happened at times
that her father inquired of her how things were going with his little
Carin; and then revolt sprang up and answered on his behalf rather
fiercely. She was, however, prepared for any treaty including
forgiveness, if she could be at peace in regard to her boy, and have an
income of some help to her brother. Chillon was harassed on all sides;
she stood incapable of aiding; so foolishly feeble in the shadow of her
immense longing to strive for him, that she could think her husband had
purposely lamed her with an infant. Her love of her brother, now the one
man she loved, laid her insufficiency on the rack and tortured imbecile
cries from it.

On the contrary, her strange husband had blest her with an infant.
Everything was pardonable to him if he left her boy untouched in the
mother's charge. Much alone as she was, she raised the dead to pet and
cherish her boy. Chillon had seen him and praised him. Mrs. Owain Wythan,
her neighbour over a hill, praised him above all babes on earth, poor
childless woman!

She was about to cross the hill and breakfast with Mrs. Wythan. The time
for the weaning of the babe approached, and had as prospect beyond it her
dull fear that her husband would say the mother's work was done, and
seize the pretext to separate them: and she could not claim a longer term
to be giving milk, because her father had said: 'Not a quarter of a month
more than nine for the milk of the mother'--or else the child would draw
an unsustaining nourishment from the strongest breast. She could have
argued her exceptional robustness against another than he. But the dead
father wanting to build a great race of men and women ruled.

Carinthia knelt at the cradle of a princeling gone from the rich repast
to his alternative kingdom.

'You will bring him over when he wakes,' she said to Madge. 'Mrs. Wythan
would like to see him every day. Martha can walk now.'

'She can walk and hold a child in her two arms, my lady,' said Madge.
'She expects miners popping up out of the bare ground when she sees no
goblins.'

'They!--they know him, they would not hurt him, they know my son,' her
mistress answered.

The population of the mines in revolt had no alarms for her. The works
were empty down below. Men sat by the wayside brooding or strolled in
groups, now and then loudly exercising their tongues; or they stood in
circle to sing hymns: melancholy chants of a melancholy time for all.

How would her father have acted by these men? He would have been among
them. Dissensions in his mine were vapours of a day. Lords behaved
differently. Carinthia fancied the people must regard their master as a
foreign wizard, whose power they felt, without the chance of making their
cry to him heard. She, too, dealt with a lord. It was now his wish for
her to leave the place where she had found some shreds of a home in the
thought of being useful. She was gathering the people's language; many of
their songs she could sing, and please them by singing to them. They were
not suspicious of her; at least, their women had open doors for her; the
men, if shy, were civil. She had only to go below, she was greeted in the
quick tones of their speech all along the street of the slate-roofs.

But none loved the castle, and she as little, saving the one room in it
where her boy lay. The grey of Welsh history knew a real castle beside
the roaring brook frequently a torrent. This was an eighteenth century
castellated habitation on the verge of a small wood midway up the height,
and it required a survey of numberless happy recollections to illumine
its walls or drape its chambers. The permanently lighted hearth of a dear
home, as in that forsaken unfavoured old white house of the wooded
Austrian crags, it had not. Rather it seemed a place waiting for an ill
deed to be done in it and stop all lighting of hearths thereafter.

Out on the turf of the shaven hills, her springy step dispersed any misty
fancies. Her short-winged hive set to work in her head as usual, building
scaffoldings of great things to be done by Chillon, present evils
escaped. The rolling big bade hills with the riding clouds excited her as
she mounted, and she was a figure of gladness on the ridge bending over
to hospitable Plas Llwyn, where the Wythans lived, entertaining rich and
poor alike.

They had led the neighbourhood to call on the discarded Countess of
Fleetwood.

A warm strain of arms about her neck was Carinthia's welcome from Mrs.
Wythan lying along the couch in her boudoir; an established invalid, who
yearned sanely to life, and caught a spark of it from the guest eyed
tenderly by her as they conversed.

'Our boy?--our Chillon Kirby till he has his baptism names; he is well? I
am to see him?'

'He follows me. He sleeps almost through the night now.'

'Ah, my dear,' Mrs. Wythan sighed, imagining: 'It would disappoint me if
he did not wake me.'

'I wake at his old time and watch him.'

Carinthia put on the baby's face in the soft mould of slumber.

'I see him!' Mrs. Wythan cried. 'He is part mine. He has taught Owain to
love babies.'

A tray of breakfast was placed before the countess. 'Mr. Wythan is down
among his men?' she said.

'Every morning, as long as this agitation lasts. I need not say good
appetite to you after your walk. You have no fear of the men, I know.
Owain's men are undisturbed; he has them in hand. Absentee masters can't
expect continued harmony. Dear, he tells me Mr. Edwards awaits the earl.'

Drinking her tea, Carinthia's eyelids shut; she set down her cup, 'If he
must come,' she said. 'He wishes me to leave. I am to go again where I
have no friends, and no language to learn, and can be of no use. It is
not for me that I dread his coming. He speaks to command. The men ask to
be heard. He will have submission first. They do not trust him. His
coming is a danger. For me, I should wish him to come. May I say . . . ?'

'Your Rebecca bids you say, my darling.'

'It is, I am with the men because I am so like them. I beg to be heard.
He commands obedience. He is a great nobleman, but I am the daughter of a
greater man, and I have to say, that if those poor miners do harm, I will
not stand by and see an anger against injustice punished. I wish his
coming, for him to agree upon the Christian names of the boy. I feel his
coming will do me, injury in making me offend him worse. I would avoid
that. Oh, dear soul! I may say it to you:--he cannot hurt me any more. I
am spared loving him when I forgive him; and I do. The loving is the
pain. That is gone by.'

Mrs. Wythan fondled and kissed Carinthia's hand.

'Let me say in my turn; I may help you, dear. You know I have my
husband's love, as he mine. Am I, have I ever been a wife to him? Here I
lie, a dead weight, to be carried up and down, all of a wife that Owain
has had for years. I lie and pray to be taken, that my good man, my
proved good man, may be free to choose a healthy young woman and be
rewarded before his end by learning what a true marriage is. The big
simpleton will otherwise be going to his grave, thinking he was married!
I see him stepping about softly in my room, so contented if he does not
disturb me, and he crushes me with a desire to laugh at him while I
worship. I tricked him into marrying the prostrate invalid I am, and he
can't discover the trick, he will think it's a wife he has, instead of a
doctor's doll. Oh! you have a strange husband, it has been a strange
marriage for you, but you have your invincible health, you have not to
lie and feel the horror of being a deception to a guileless man, whose
love blindfolds him. The bitter ache to me is, that I can give nothing.
You abound in power to give.'

Carinthia lifted her open hands for sign of their emptiness.

'My brother would not want, if I could give. He may have to sell out of.
the army, he thinks, fears; and I must look on. Our mother used to say
she had done something for her country in giving a son like Chillon to
the British army. Poor mother! Our bright opening days all seem to end in
rain. We should turn to Mr. Wythan for a guide.'

'He calls you Morgan le Fay christianized.'

'What I am!' Carinthia raised and let fall her head. 'An example makes
dwarfs of us. When Mr. Wythan does penance for temper by descending into
his mine and working among his men for a day with the pick, seated, as he
showed me down below, that is an example. If I did like that, I should
have no firedamp in the breast, and not such a task to forgive, that when
I succeed I kill my feelings.'

The entry of Madge and Martha, the nurse-girl, with the overflowing
armful of baby, changed their converse into melodious exclamations.

'Kit Ines has arrived, my lady,' Madge said. 'I saw him on the road and
stopped a minute.'

Mrs. Wythan studied Carinthia. Her sharp invalid's ears had caught the
name. She beckoned. 'The man who--the fighting man?'

'It will be my child this time,' said Carinthia; 'I have no fear for
myself.' She was trembling, though her features were hard for the war her
lord had declared, as it seemed. 'Did he tell you his business here?' she
asked of Madge.

'He says, to protect you, my lady, since you won't leave.'

'He stays at the castle?'

'He is to stay there, he says, as long as the Welsh are out.'

'The "Welsh" are misunderstood by Lord Fleetwood,'

Mrs. Wythan said to Carinthia. 'He should live among them. They will not
hurt their lady. Protecting may be his intention; but we will have our
baby safe here. Not?' she appealed. 'And baby's mother. How otherwise?'

'You read my wishes,' Carinthia rejoined. 'The man I do not think a bad
man. He has a master. While I am bound to my child I must be restful, and
with the man at the castle Martha's goblins would jump about me day and
night. My boy makes a coward of his mother.'

'We merely take a precaution, and I have the pleasure of it,' said her
hostess. 'Give orders to your maid not less than a fortnight. It will
rejoice my husband so much.'

As with the warmly hospitable, few were the words. Madge was promised by
her mistress plenty of opportunities daily for seeing Kit Ines, and her
mouth screwed to one of women's dimples at a corner. She went off in a
cart to fetch boxes, thinking: We are a hunted lot! So she was not mildly
disposed for the company of Mr. Kit on her return to the castle.

England's champion light-weight thought it hard that his, coming down to
protect the castle against the gibbering heathen Welsh should cause a
clearing out, and solitariness for his portion.

'What's the good of innocence if you 're always going to suspect a man!'
he put it, like a true son of the pirates turned traders. 'I've got a
paytron, and a man in my profession must have a paytron, or where is he?
Where's his money for a trial of skill? Say he saves and borrows and
finds the lump to clap it down, and he's knocked out o' time. There he
is, bankrup', and a devil of a licking into the bargain. That 's the
cream of our profession, if a man has got no paytron.

No prize-ring can live without one. The odds are too hard on us. My lady
ought to take into account I behaved respectful when I was obliged to do
my lord's orders and remove her from our haunts, which wasn't to his
taste. Here I'm like a cannon for defending the house, needs be, and all
inside flies off scarified.'

'It strikes me, Kit Ines, a man with a paytron is no better than a tool
of a man,' said Madge.

'And don't you go to be sneering at honest tools,' Ines retorted. 'When
will women learn a bit of the world before they're made hags of by old
Father Wear-and-Tear! A young woman in her prime, you Madge! be such a
fool as not see I serve tool to stock our shop.'

'Your paytron bid you steal off with my lady's child, Kit Ines, you'd do
it to stock your shop.'

Ines puffed. 'If you ain't a girl to wallop the wind! Fancy me at that
game! Is that why my lady--but I can't be suspected that far? You make me
break out at my pores. My paytron's a gentleman: he wouldn't ask and I
couldn't act such a part. Dear Lord! it'd have to be stealing off, for my
lady can use a stick; and put it to the choice between my lady and her
child and any paytron living, paytron be damned, I'd say, rather'n go
against my notions of honour. Have you forgot all our old talk about the
prize-ring, the nursery of honour in Old England?'

'That was before you sold yourself to a paytron, Kit Ines.'

'Ah! Women wants mast-heading off and on, for 'em to have a bit of a
look-out over life as it is. They go stewing over books of adventure and
drop into frights about awful man. Take me, now; you had a no small
admiration for my manly valour once, and you trusted yourself to me, and
did you ever repent it?--owning you're not the young woman to tempt to t'
other way.'

'You wouldn't have found me talking to you here if I had.'

'And here I'm left to defend an empty castle, am I?'

'Don't drink or you'll have your paytron on you. He's good use there.'

'I ask it, can I see my lady?'

'Drunk nor sober you won't. Serve a paytron, be a leper, you'll find,
with all honest folk.'

Ines shook out an execrating leg at the foul word. 'Leper, you say? You
say that? You say leper to me?'

'Strut your tallest, Kit Ines. It's the money rattles in your pocket says
it.'

'It's my reputation for decent treatment of a woman lets you say it,
Madge Winch.'

'Stick to that as long as your paytron consents. It's the one thing
you've got left.'

'Benefit, you hussy, and mind you don't pull too stiff.'

'Be the woman and have the last word!'

His tongue was checked. He swallowed the exceeding sourness of a retort
undelivered, together with the feeling that she beat him in the wrangle
by dint of her being an unreasonable wench.

Madge huffed away to fill her boxes.

He stood by the cart, hands deep down his pockets, when she descended.
She could have laughed at the spectacle of a champion prize-fighter out
of employ, hulking idle, because he was dog to a paytron; but her
contempt of him declined passing in small change.

'So you're off. What am I to tell my lord when he comes?' Kit growled.
'His yacht's fetching for a Welsh seaport.'

She counted it a piece of information gained, and jumped to her seat,
bidding the driver start. To have pretty well lost her character for a
hero changed into a patron's dog, was a thought that outweighed the show
of incivility. Some little distance away, she reproached herself for not
having been so civil as to inquire what day my lord was expected, by his
appointment. The girl reflected on the strangeness of a body of
discontented miners bringing my lord and my lady close, perhaps to meet.




CHAPTER XXX

REBECCA WYTHAN

The earl was looked for at the, chief office of the mines, and each day
an expectation of him closed in disappointment, leaving it to be surmised
that there were more serious reasons for his continued absence during a
crisis than any discussed; whether indeed, as when a timepiece neglects
to strike the hour which is, by the reckoning of natural impatience,
past, the capital charge of 'crazy works' must not be brought against a
nobleman hitherto precise upon business, of a just disposition, fairly
humane. For though he was an absentee sucking the earth through a tube,
in Ottoman ease, he had never omitted the duty of personally attending on
the spot to grave cases under dispute. The son of the hardheaded father
came out at a crisis; and not too highhandedly: he could hear an opposite
argument to the end. Therefore, since he refused to comply without
hearing, he was wanted on the spot imperatively, now.

Irony perusing History offers the beaten and indolent a sugary acid in
the indication of the spites and the pranks, the whims and the tastes, at
the springs of main events. It is, taken by itself, destructive
nourishment. But those who labour in the field to shovel the clods of
earth to History, would be wiser of their fellows for a minor dose of it.
Mr. Howell Edwards consulting with Mr. Owain Wythan on the necessity,
that the earl should instantly keep his promise to appear among the men
and stop the fermentation, as in our younger days a lordly owner still
might do by small concessions and the physical influence--the
nerve-charm--could suppose him to be holding aloof for his pleasure or
his pride; perhaps because of illness or inability to conceive the actual
situation at a distance. He mentioned the presence of the countess, and
Mr. Wythan mentioned it, neither of them thinking a rational man would so
play the lunatic as to let men starve, and wreck precious mines, for the
sake of avoiding her.

Sullen days went by. On these days of the slate-cloud or the
leaden-winged, Carinthia walked over the hills to her staring or
down-eyed silent people, admitted without a welcome at some doors,
rejected at some. Her baskets from the castle were for the most part
received as graciously. She continued to direct them for delivery where
they were needed, and understood why a charity that supplied the place of
justice was not thanked. She and her people here were one regarding the
master, as she had said. They could not hurt her sensitiveness, she felt
too warmly with them. And here it was not the squalid, flat, bricked
east-corner of London at the close of her daily pilgrimage. Up from the
solitary street of the slate-roofs, she mounted a big hill and had the
life of high breathing. A perpetual escape out of the smoky, grimy city
mazes was trumpeted to her in the winds up there: a recollected contrast
lightened the skyless broad spaces overhead almost to sunniness. Having
air of the hills and activity for her limbs, she made sunshine for
herself. Regrets were at no time her nestlings.

Look backward only to correct an error of conduct for the next attempt,
says one of her father's Maxims; as sharply bracing for women as for men.
She did not look back to moan. Now that her hunger for the safety of her
infant was momentarily quieted, she could see Kit Ines hanging about the
lower ground, near the alehouse, and smile at Madge's comparison of him
to a drummed-out soldier, who would like to be taken for a holiday
pensioner.

He saluted; under the suspicion of his patron's lady his legs were
hampered, he dared not approach her; though his innocence of a deed not
proposed to him yet--and all to stock that girl Madge's shop, if done!
knocked at his ribs with fury to vindicate himself before the lady and
her maid. A gentleman met them and conducted them across the hills.

And two Taffy gentlemen would hardly be sufficient for the purpose,
supposing an ill-used Englishman inclined to block their way!--What, and
play footpad, Kit Ines? No, it's just a game in the head. But a true man
hates to feel himself suspected. His refuge is the beer of the country.

Next day there were the two gentlemen to conduct the lady and her maid;
and Taffy the first walks beside the countess; and that girl Madge
trudges along with no other than my lord's Mr. Woodseer, chattering like
a watering-can on a garden-bed: deuce a glance at Kit Ines. How can she
keep it up and the gentleman no more than nodding? How does he enjoy
playing second fiddle with the maid while Mr. tall brown-face Taffy
violins it to her ladyship a stone's throw in front? Ines had less
curiosity to know the object of Mr. Woodseer's appearance on the scene.
Idle, unhandsomely treated, and a cave of the yawns, he merely commented
on his observations.

'Yes, there he is, don't look at him,' Madge said to Gower; 'and whatever
he's here for, he has a bad time of it, and rather more than it's
pleasant for him to think over, if a slave to a "paytron" thinks at all.
I won't judge him; my mistress is bitten with the fear for the child,
worse than ever. And the earl, my lord, not coming, and he wanting her to
move again, seems to her he durstn't do it here and intends to snap at
the child on the road. She-'s forced to believe anything of such a
husband and father. And why does he behave so? I can't spell it. He's
kind to my Sally--you've seen the Piccadilly shop?--because she was . . .
she did her best in love and duty for my lady. And behaves like a husband
hating his wife's life on earth! Then he went down with good Mr.
Woodseer, and called on Sally, pretending to inquire, after she was
kidnapped by that Kit Ines acting to please his paytron, he must be shown
up to the room where she slept, and stands at the door and peeps in,
Sally's letter says, and asks if he may enter the room. He went to the
window looking on the chimneys she used to see, and touched an ornament
over the fireplace, called grandfather's pigtail case--he was a sailor;
only a ridiculous piece of china, that made my lady laugh about the story
of its holding a pigtail. But he turns it over because she did--Sally
told him. He couldn't be pretending when he bought the beautiful shop and
stocked it for Sally. He gets her lots of customers; and no rent to pay
till next Michaelmas a year. She's a made woman through him. He said to
her, he had heard from Mr. Woodseer the Countess of Fleetwood called her
sister; he shook her hand.'

'The Countess of Fleetwood called both of you her sisters, I think,' said
Gower.

'I'm her servant. I'd rather serve her than have a fortune.'

'You were born with a fortune one would like to have a nibble at, Madge.'

'I can't lay hand on it, then.'

'It's the capacity for giving, my dear.'

'Please, Mr. Gower, don't say that; you'll make me cry. He keeps his wife
so poor she hasn't a shilling of her own; she wearies about her brother;
she can't help. He can spend hundreds on my Sally for having been good to
her, in our small way--it's a fairy tale; and he won't hear of money for
his wife, except that she's never to want for anything it can buy.'

'You give what it can't buy.'

'Me. I'm "a pugilist's wench"--I've heard myself called. She was the
first who gave me a lift; never mind me. Have you come to take her away?
She'd trust herself and the child to you.'

'Take her?--reason with her as to the best we can do. He holds off from a
meeting just now. I fancy he's wearing round to it. His keeping his wife
without money passes comprehension. After serving him for a few months, I
had a store invested to support me for years--as much as I need before I
join the ranks of the pen. I was at my reading and writing and drowsing,
and down he rushes: I 'm in harness again. I can't say it's dead waste of
time; besides I pick up an independence for the days ahead. But I don't
respect myself for doing the work. Here's the difference between us two
servants, Madge: I think of myself, and you don't.'

'The difference is more like between the master and mistress we serve,
Mr. Gower.'

'Well, I'd rather be the woman in this case.'

'You know the reputation I've got. And can only just read, and can't
spell. My mistress teaches me bits of German and French on her walks.'

Gower took a new observation of this girl, whom he had not regarded as
like himself, a pushing blade among the grasses. He proposed to continue
her lessons, if she cared to learn; saying it could be done in letters.

'I won't be ashamed of writing, if you mean it,' said she. 'My mistress
will have a usefuller servant. She had a strange honeymoon of a marriage,
if ever was--and told me t' other day she was glad because it brought us
together--she a born lady!'

'A fling-above born ladies. She's quick as light to hit on a jewel where
there is one, whether it shines or not. She stands among the Verities of
the world.'

'Yes,' Madge said, panting for more. 'Do speak of her. When you praise
her, I feel she's not wasted. Mistress; and friend and wife--if he'd let
her be; and mother; never mother like her. The boy 'll be a sturdy.
She'll see he has every chance. He's a lucky little one to have that
mother.'

'You think her handsome, Madge?'

Gower asked it, wishing to hear a devotee's confusion of qualities and
looks.

The question was a drop on lower spheres, and it required definitions, to
touch the exact nature of the form of beauty, and excuse a cooler tone on
the commoner plane. These demanded language. She rounded the difficulty,
saying: 'You see engravings of archery; that 's her figure--her real
figure. I think her face . . . I can't describe . . . it flashes.'

'That's it,' said Gower, delighted with his perception of a bare mind at
work and hitting the mark perforce of warmth. 'When it flashes, it's
unequalled. There's the supremacy of irregular lines. People talk of
perfect beauty: suitable for paintings and statues. Living faces, if
they're to show the soul, which is the star on the peak of beauty, must
lend themselves to commotion. Nature does it in a breezy tree or over
ruffled waters. Repose has never such splendid reach as animation--I
mean, in the living face. Artists prefer repose. Only Nature can express
the uttermost beauty with her gathering and tuning of discords. Well,
your mistress has that beauty. I remember my impression when I saw her
first on her mountains abroad. Other beautiful faces of women go pale,
grow stale. The diversified in the harmony of the flash are Nature's own,
her radiant, made of her many notes, beyond our dreams to reproduce. We
can't hope to have a true portrait of your mistress. Does Madge
understand?'

The literary dose was a strong one for her; but she saw the index, and
got a lift from the sound. Her bosom heaved. 'Oh, I do try, Mr. Gower. I
think I do a little. I do more while you're talking. You are good to talk
so to me. You should have seen her the night she went to meet my lord at
those beastly Gardens Kit Ines told me he was going to. She was defending
him. I've no words. You teach me what's meant by poetry. I couldn't
understand that once.'

Their eyes were on the countess and her escort in advance. Gower's
praises of her mistress's peculiar beauty set the girl compassionately
musing. His eloquence upon the beauty was her clue.

Carinthia and Mr. Wythan started at a sharp trot in the direction of the
pair of ponies driven by a groom along the curved decline of the narrow
roadway. His whip was up for signal.

It concerned the house and the master of it. His groom drove rapidly
down, while he hurried on the homeward way, as a man will do, with the
dread upon him that his wife's last breath may have been yielded before
he can enfold her.

Carinthia walked to be overtaken, not daring to fever her blood at a
swifter pace; 'lamed with an infant,' the thought recurred.

'She is very ill, she has fainted, she lies insensible,' Madge heard from
her of Mrs. Wythan. 'We were speaking of her when the groom appeared. It
has happened twice. They fear the third. He fears it, though he laughs at
a superstition. Now step, I know you like walking, Mr. Woodseer. Once I
left you behind.'

'I have the whole scene of the angel and the cripple,' Gower replied.

'O that day!'

They 'were soon speculating on the unimpressionable house in its clump of
wood midway below, which had no response for anxieties.

A maid-servant at the garden gate, by Mr. Wythan's orders, informed
Carinthia that her mistress had opened her eyes: There was a hope of
weathering the ominous third time. But the hope was a bird of short
flight from bush to bush until the doctor should speak to confirm it.
Even the child was under the shadow of the house. Carinthia had him in
her arms, trusting to life as she hugged him, and seeing innumerable
darts out of all regions assailing her treasure.

'She wishes to have you,' Mr. Wythan came and said to her. 'Almost her
first word. The heart is quickening. She will live for me if she can.'

He whispered it. His features shot the sparkle.

Rebecca Wythan had strength to press Carinthia's hand faintly. She made
herself heard: 'No pain.' Her husband sat upright, quite still, attentive
for any sign. His look of quiet pleasure ready to show, sprightliness
dwelt on her. She returned the look, unable to give it greeting. Past the
sense of humour, she wanted to say: 'See the poor simple fellow who will
think it a wife that he has!' She did but look.

Carinthia spoke his name, 'Mr. Wythan,' by chance, and Rebecca breathed
heavily until she formed the words: 'Owain to me.'

'To me,' Owain added.

The three formed a chain of clasped hands.

It was in the mind of the sick lady to disburden herself of more than her
weakness could utter, so far was she above earthly links. The desire in
her was to be quit of the flesh, bearing a picture of her husband as
having the dues of his merits.

Her recovered strength next day brought her nearer to our laws. 'You will
call him Owain, Carinthia?' she said. 'He is not one to presume on
familiarity. I must be going soon. I cannot leave him the wife I would
choose. I can leave him the sister. He is a sure friend. He is the
knightly man women dream of. I harp on it because I long for testimony
that I leave him to have some reward. And this may be, between two so
pure at heart as you two.'

'Dear soul friend, yes, and Owain, yes, I can say it,' Carinthia
rejoined. 'Brother? I have only my Chillon. My life is now for him. I am
punished for separating myself from the son of my father. I have no heart
for a second brother. What I can give to my friend I will. I shall love
you in him, if I am to lose you.'

'Not Owain--it was I was the wretch refused to call on the lonely lady at
the castle until I heard she had done a romantic little bit of
thing--hushed a lambkin's bleating. My loss! my loss! And I could afford
it so poorly. Since then Carinthia has filled my days. I shudder to leave
you and think of your going back to the English. Their sneer withers.
They sent you down among us as a young woman to be shunned.'

'I did wildly, I was ungoverned, I had one idea,' said Carinthia. 'One
idea is a bullet, good for the day of battle to beat the foe, father
tells us. It was a madness in me. Now it has gone, I see all round. I see
straight, too. With one idea, we see nothing--nothing but itself. Whizz!
we go. I did. I shall no longer offend in that way. Mr. Gower Woodseer is
here from my lord.'

'With him the child will be safe.'

'I am not alarmed. It is to request--they would have me gone, to prepare
the way for my lord.'

'You have done, it; he has the castle to himself. I cannot-spare you. A
tyrant ordering you to go should be defied. My Lord Fleetwood puts
lightning into my slow veins.'

'We have talked: we shall be reproved by the husband and the doctor,'
said Carinthia.

Sullen days continued and rolled over to night at the mines. Gower's
mission was rendered absurd by the countess's withdrawal from the castle.
He spoke of it to Mr. Wythan once, and the latter took a big breath and
blew such a lord to the winds. 'Persuade our guest to leave us, that the
air may not be tainted for her husband when he comes? He needn't call;
he's not obliged to see her. She's offered Esslemont to live in? I
believe her instinct's right--he has designs on the child. A little more
and we shall have a mad dog in the fellow. He doubles my work by keeping
his men out. If she were away we should hear of black doings. Twenty
dozen of his pugilists wouldn't stop the burning.'

They agreed that persuasions need not be addressed to the countess. She
was and would remain Mr. Wythan's guest. As for the earl, Gower inclined
to plead hesitatingly, still to plead, on behalf of a nobleman owning his
influence and very susceptible to his wisdom, whose echo of a pointed
saying nearly equalled the satisfaction bestowed by print. The titled man
affected the philosopher in that manner; or rather, the crude
philosopher's relish of brilliant appreciation stripped him of his robe.
For he was with Owain Wythan at heart to scorn titles which did not
distinguish practical offices. A nation bowing to them has gone to pith,
for him; he had to shake himself, that he might not similarly stick; he
had to do it often. Objects elevated even by a decayed world have their
magnetism for us unless we nerve the mind to wakeful repulsion. He
protested he had reason to think the earl was humanizing, though he might
be killing a woman in the process. 'Could she wish for better?' he asked,
with at least the gravity of the undermining humourist; and he started
Owain to course an idea when he remarked of Lord Fleetwood: 'Imagine a
devil on his back on a river, flying a cherub.'

Owain sparkled from the vision of the thing to wrath with it.

'Ay, but while he's floating, his people are edging on starvation. And
I've a personal grievance. I keep, you know, open hall, bread and cheese
and beer, for poor mates. His men are favouring us with a call. We have
to cart treble from the town. If I straighten the sticks he dies to bend,
it'll be a grievance against me--and a fig for it! But I like to be at
peace with my neighbours, and waft them "penillion" instead of dealing
the "cleddyfal" of Llewellyn.'

At last the tension ceased; they had intelligence of the earl's arrival.

His countess was little moved by it; and the reason for that lay in her
imagination being absorbed. Henrietta had posted her a journal telling of
a deed of Chillon's: no great feat, but precious for its 'likeness to
him,' as they phrased it; that is, for the light it cast on their
conception of the man. Heading a squadron in a riotous Midland town, he
stopped a charge, after fire of a shot from the mob, and galloped up the
street to catch a staggering urchin to his saddle-bow, and place the mite
in safety. Then it was a simple trot of the hussars ahead; way was made
for him.

Now, to see what banquet there is for the big of heart in the world's hot
stress, take the view of Carinthia, to whom her brother's thoughtful
little act of gentleness at the moment of the red-of-the-powder smoke was
divinest bread and wine, when calamity hung around, with the future an
unfooted wilderness, her powers untried, her husband her enemy.




CHAPTER XXXI

WE HAVE AGAIN TO DEAL WITH THE EXAMPLES OF OUR YOUNGER MAN

The most urgent of Dames is working herself up to a grey squall in her
detestation of imagerial epigrams. Otherwise Gower Woodseer's dash at the
quintessential young man of wealth would prompt to the carrying of it
further, and telling how the tethered flutterer above a 'devil on his
back on a river' was beginning to pull if not drag his withholder and
teaser.

Fleetwood had almost a desire to see the small dot of humanity which drew
the breath from him;--and was indistinguishably the bubbly grin and
gurgle of the nurses, he could swear. He kicked at the bondage to our
common fleshly nature imposed on him by the mother of the little animal.
But there had been a mother to his father: odd movements of a warmish
curiosity brushed him when the cynic was not mounting guard. They were,
it seemed, external--no part of him: like blasts of a wayside furnace
across wintry air. They were, as it chanced, Nature's woman in him
plucking at her separated partner, Custom's man; something of an oriental
voluptuary on his isolated regal seat; and he would suck the pleasures
without a descent into the stale old ruts where Life's convict couple
walk linked to one another, to their issue more.

There was also a cold curiosity to see the male infant such a mother
would have. The grandson of Old Lawless might turn out a rascal,--he
would be no mean one, no coward.

That mother, too, who must have been a touch astonished to find herself a
mother:--Fleetwood laughed a curt bark, and heard rebukes, and pleaded
the marriage-trap to the man of his word; devil and cherub were at the
tug, or say, dog and gentleman, a survival of the schoolboy--that mother,
a girl of the mountains, perhaps wanted no more than smoothing by the
world. 'It is my husband' sounded foolish, sounded freshish,--a new note.
Would she repeat it? The bit of simplicity would bear repeating once.
Gower Woodseer says the creature grows and studies to perfect herself.
She's a good way off that, and may spoil herself in the process; but she
has a certain power. Her donkey obstinacy in refusing compliance, and her
pursuit of 'my husband,' and ability to drench him with ridicule, do not
exhibit the ordinary young female. She stamps her impression on the
people she meets. Her husband is shaken to confess it likewise, despite a
disagreement between them.

He has owned he is her husband: he has not disavowed the consequence.
That fellow, Gower Woodseer, might accuse the husband of virtually lying,
if he by his conduct implied her distastefulness or worse. By heaven! as
felon a deed as could be done. Argue the case anyhow, it should be
undone. Let her but cease to madden. For whatever the rawness of the
woman, she has qualities; and experience of the facile loves of London
very sharply defines her qualities. Think of her as raw, she has the gift
of rareness: forget the donkey obstinacy, her character grasps. In the
grasp of her character, one inclines, and her husband inclines, to become
her advocate. She has only to discontinue maddening.

The wealthy young noble prized any form of rareness wherever it was
visible, having no thought of the purchase of it, except with worship. He
could listen pleased to the talk of a Methodist minister sewing
bootleather. He picked up a roadside tramp and made a friend of him, and
valued the fellow's honesty, submitted to his lectures, pardoned his
insolence. The sight of Carinthia's narrow bedroom and strip of bed over
Sarah Winch's Whitechapel shop had gone a step to drown the bobbing
Whitechapel Countess. At least, he had not been hunted by that gaunt
chalk-quarry ghost since his peep into the room. Own it! she likewise has
things to forgive. Women nurse their larvae of ideas about fair dealing.
But observe the distinction: aid if women understood justice they would
be the first to proclaim, that when two are tied together, the one who
does the other serious injury is more naturally excused than the one
who-tenfold abhorrent if a woman!--calls up the grotesque to extinguish
both.

With this apology for himself, Lord Fleetwood grew tolerant of the person
honourably avowed as his wife. So; therefore, the barrier between him and
his thoughts of her was broken. The thoughts carrying red doses were
selected. Finally, the taste to meet her sprouted. If agreeable, she
could be wooed; if barely agreeable, tormented; if disagreeable, left as
before.

Although it was the hazard of a die, he decided to follow his taste. Her
stay at the castle had kept him long from the duties of his business; and
he could imagine it a grievance if he pleased, but he put it aside.
Alighting at his chief manager's office, he passed through the heated
atmosphere of black-browed, wiry little rebels, who withheld the salute
as they lounged: a posture often preceding the spring in compulsorily
idle workers. He was aware of instinct abroad, an antagonism to the
proprietor's rights. They roused him to stand by them, and were his own
form of instinct, handsomely clothed. It behoved that he should examine
them and the claims against them, to be sure of his ground. He and Mr.
Howell Edwards debated the dispute for an hour; agreeing, partially
differing. There was a weakness on the principle in Edwards. These
fellows fixed to the spot are for compromise too much. An owner of mines
has no steady reckoning of income if the rate of wage is perpetually to
shift according to current, mostly ignorant, versions of the prosperity
of the times. Are we so prosperous? It is far from certain. And if the
rate ascends, the question of easing it down to suit the discontinuance
of prosperity agitating our exchequer--whose demand is for
fixity--perplexes us further.

However, that was preliminary. He and Howell Edwards would dine and
wrangle it out. The earl knew himself a hot disputant after dinner.
Incidentally he heard of Lady Fleetwood as a guest of Mrs. Wythan; and
the circumstance was injurious to him because he stood against Mr.
Wythan's pampering system with his men.

Ines up at the castle smelt of beer, and his eyelids were sottish.
Nothing to do tries the virtue of the best. He sought his excuse in a
heavy lamentation over my lady's unjust suspicion of him,--a known man of
honour, though he did serve his paytron.

The cause of Lady Fleetwood's absence was exposed to her outraged lord,
who had sent the man purely to protect her at this castle, where she
insisted on staying. The suspicion cast on the dreary lusher was the
wife's wild shot at her husband. One could understand a silly woman's
passing terror. Her acting under the dictate of it struck the husband's
ribbed breast as a positive clap of hostilities between them across a
chasm.

His previous placable mood was immediately conceived by him to have been
one of his fits of generosity; a step to a frightful dutiful embrace of
an almost repulsive object. He flung the thought of her back on her
Whitechapel. She returned from that place with smiles, dressed in a
laundry white with a sprinkle of smuts, appearing to him as an adversary
armed and able to strike. There was a blow, for he chewed resentments;
and these were goaded by a remembered shyness of meeting her eyes when he
rounded up the slope of the hill, in view of his castle, where he
supposed she would be awaiting 'my husband.' The silence of her absence
was lively mockery of that anticipation.

Gower came on him sauntering about the grounds.

'You're not very successful down here,' Fleetwood said, without greeting.

'The countess likes the air of this country,' said Gower, evasively,
impertinently, and pointlessly; offensively to the despot employing him
to be either subservient or smart.

'I wish her to leave it.'

'She wishes to see you first.'

'She takes queer measures. I start to-morrow for my yacht at Cardiff.'
There the matter ended; for Fleetwood fell to talking of the mines. At
dinner and after dinner it was the topic, and after Howell Edwards had
departed.

When the man who has a heart will talk of nothing but what concerns his
interests, and the heart is hurt, it may be perceived by a cognizant
friend, that this is his proud mute way of petitioning to have the
tenderer subject broached. Gower was sure of the heart, armoured or
bandaged though it was,--a haunt of evil spirits as well,--and he began:
'Now to speak of me half a minute. You cajoled me out of my Surrey room,
where I was writing, in the vein . . .'

'I've had the scene before me!' the earl interposed. 'Juniper dells and
that tree of the flashing leaf, and that dear old boy, your father, young
as you and me, and saying love of Nature gives us eternal youth. On with
you.'

'I doubted whether I should be of use to you. I told you the amount of
alloy in my motives. A year with you, I have subsistence for ten years
assured to me.'

'Don't be a prosy dog, Gower Woodseer.'

'Will you come over to the Wythans before you go?'

'I will not.'

'You would lengthen your stride across a wounded beast?'

'I see no wound to the beast.'

'You can permit yourself to kick under cover of a metaphor.'

'Tell me what you drive at, Gower.'

'The request is, for you to spare pain by taking one step--an extra
strain on the muscles of the leg. It 's only the leg wants moving.'

'The lady has legs to run away, let them bring her back.'

'Why have me with you, then? I'm useless. But you read us all, see
everything, and wait only for the mood to do the right. You read me, and
I'm not open to everybody. You read the crux of a man like me in my novel
position. You read my admiration of a beautiful woman and effort to keep
honest. You read my downright preference of what most people would call
poverty, and my enjoyment of good cookery and good company. You enlist
among the crew below as one of our tempters. You find I come round to the
thing I like best. Therefore, you have your liking for me; and that's why
you turn to me again, after your natural infidelities. So much for me.
You read this priceless lady quite as clearly. You choose to cloud her
with your moods. She was at a disadvantage, 'arriving in a strange
country, next to friendless; and each new incident bred of a luckless
beginning--I could say more.'

Fleetwood nodded. 'You are read without the words: You read in history,
too, I suppose, that there are two sides to most cases. The loudest is
not often the strongest. However, now the lady shows herself crazed.
That's reading her charitably. Else she has to be taken for a spiteful
shrew, who pretends to suspect anything that's villanous, because she can
hit on no other way of striking.'

'Crazed, is a wide shot and hits half the world,' muttered Gower. 'Lady
Fleetwood had a troubled period after her marriage. She suffered a sort
of kidnapping when she was bearing her child. There's a book by an
Edinburgh doctor might be serviceable to you. It enlightens me. She will
have a distrust of you, as regards the child, until she understands you
by living with you under one roof.'

'Such animals these women are!' Good Lord!' Fleetwood ejaculated. 'I
marry one, and I 'm to take to reading medical books!' He yawned.

'You speak that of women and pretend to love Nature,' said Gower. 'You
hate Nature unless you have it served on a dish by your own cook. That's
the way to the madhouse or the monastery. There we expiate the sin of
sins. A man finds the woman of all women fitted to stick him in the soil,
and trim and point him to grow, and she's an animal for her pains! The
secret of your malady is, you've not yet, though you're on a healthy leap
for the practices of Nature, hopped to the primary conception of what
Nature means. Women are in and of Nature. I've studied them here--had
nothing to do but study them. That most noble of ladies' whole mind was
knotted to preserve her child during her time of endurance up to her
moment of trial. Think it over. It's your one chance of keeping sane.

And expect to hear flat stuff from me while you go on playing tyrant.'

'You certainly take liberties,' Fleetwood's mildest voice remarked.

'I told you I should try you, when you plucked me out of my Surrey nest.'

Fleetwood, passed from a meditative look to a malicious half-laugh. 'You
seem to have studied the "most noble of ladies" latterly rather like a
barrister with a brief for the defendant--plaintiff, if you like!'

'As to that, I'll help you to an insight of a particular weakness of
mine,' said Gower. 'I require to have persons of even the highest value
presented to me on a stage, or else I don't grasp them at all--they 're
simply pictures. I saw the lady; admired, esteemed, sufficiently, I
supposed, until her image appeared to me in the feelings of another. Then
I saw fathoms. No doubt, it was from feeling warmer. I went through the
blood of the other for my impression.'

'Name the other,' said the earl, and his features were sharp.

You can have the name,' Gower answered. 'It was the girl, Madge Winch.'

Fleetwood's hard stare melted to surprise and contemptuous amusement.
'You see the lady to be the "most noble of ladies" through the warming
you get by passing into the feelings of Madge Winch?'

Sarcasm was in the tone, and beneath it a thrill of compassionateness
traversed him and shot a remorseful sting with the vision of those two
young women on the coach at the scene of the fight. He had sentience of
their voices, nigh to hearing them. The forlorn bride's hand given to the
anxious girl behind her gushed an image of the sisterhood binding women
under the pangs they suffer from men. He craved a scourging that he might
not be cursing himself; and he provoked it, for Gower was very sensitive
to a cold breath on the weakness he had laid bare; and when Fleetwood
said: 'You recommend a bath in the feelings of Madge Winch?' the retort
came:--'It might stop you on the road to a cowl.'

Fleetwood put on the mask of cogitation to cover a shudder, 'How?'

'A question of the man or the monk with you, as I fancy I've told you
more than once!'

'You may fancy committing any impertinence and be not much out.'

'The saving of you is that you digest it when you've stewed it down.'

'You try me!'

'I don't impose the connection.'

'No, I take the blame for that.'

They sat in dumbness, fidgeted, sprang to their feet, and lighted bedroom
candles.

Mounting the stairs, Gower was moved to let fall a benevolent look on the
worried son of fortune. 'I warned you I should try you. It ought to be
done politely. If I have to speak a truth I 'm boorish. The divinely
damnable naked truth won't wear ornaments. It's about the same as
pitching a handful of earth.'

'You dirt your hands, hit or miss. Out of this corridor! Into my room,
and spout your worst,' cried the earl.

Gower entered his dressing-room and was bidden to smoke there.

'You're a milder boor when you smoke. That day down in Surrey with the
grand old bootmaker was one of our days, Gower Woodseer! There's no smell
of the boor in him. Perhaps his religion helps him, more than
Nature-worship: not the best for manners. You won't smoke your pipe?--a
cigar? Lay on, then, as hard as you like.'

'You're asking for the debauchee's last luxury--not a correction,' said
Gower, grimly thinking of how his whip might prove effective and punish
the man who kept him fruitlessly out of his bed.

'I want stuff for a place in the memory,' said Fleetwood; and the late
hour, with the profitless talk, made it a stinging taunt.

'You want me to flick your indecision.'

'That's half a hit.'

'I 'm to talk italics, for you to store a smart word or so.'

'True, I swear! And, please, begin.'

'You hang for the Fates to settle which is to be smothered in you, the
man or the lord--and it ends in the monk, if you hang much longer.'

'A bit of a scorpion in his intention,' Fleetwood muttered on a stride.
'I'll tell you this, Gower Woodseer; when you lay on in earnest, your
diction is not so choice. Do any of your remarks apply to Lady
Fleetwood?'

'All should. I don't presume to allude to Lady Fleetwood.'

'She has not charged you to complain?'

'Lady Fleetwood is not the person to complain or condescend to speak of
injuries.'

'She insults me with her insane suspicion.'

A swollen vein on the young nobleman's forehead went to confirm the idea
at the Wythans' that he was capable of mischief. They were right; he was
as capable of villany as of nobility. But he happened to be thanking
Gower Woodseer's whip for the comfortable numbness he felt at Carinthia's
behaviour, while detesting her for causing him to desire it and endure
it, and exonerate his prosy castigator.

He was ignorant of the revenge he had on Gower, whose diction had not
been particularly estimable. In the feebleness of a man vainly courting
sleep, the disarmed philosopher tossed from one side to the other through
the remaining hours of darkness, polishing sentences that were natural
spouts of choicest diction; and still the earl's virulent small sneer
rankled. He understood why, after a time. The fervour of advocacy, which
inspires high diction, had been wanting. He had sought more to lash the
earl with his personal disgust and partly to parade his contempt of a
lucrative dependency--than he had felt for the countess. No wonder his
diction was poor. It was a sample of limp thinness; a sort of tongue of a
Master Slender:--flavourless, unsatisfactory, considering its object:
measured to be condemned by its poor achievement. He had nevertheless a
heart to feel for the dear lady, and heat the pleading for her,
especially when it ran to its object, as along a shaft of the sun-rays,
from the passionate devotedness of that girl Madge.

He brooded over it till it was like a fire beneath him to drive him from
his bed and across the turfy roller of the hill to the Wythans', in the
front of an autumnal sunrise--grand where the country is shorn of surface
decoration, as here and there we find some unadorned human creature,
whose bosom bears the ball of warmth.




CHAPTER XXXII

IN WHICH WE SEE CARINTHIA PUT IN PRACTICE ONE OF HER OLD FATHER'S LESSONS

Seated at his breakfast-table, the earl saw Gower stride in, and could
have wagered he knew the destination of the fellow's morning walk. It
concerned him little; he would be leaving the castle in less than an
hour. She might choose to come or choose to keep away. The whims of
animals do not affect men unless they are professionally tamers. Petty
domestic dissensions are besides poor webs to the man pulling
singlehanded at ropes with his revolted miners. On the topic of wages,
too, he was Gower's master, and could hold forth: by which he taught
himself to feel that practical affairs are the proper business of men,
women and infants being remotely secondary; the picturesque and poetry,
consequently, sheer nonsense.

'I suppose your waiting here is useless, to quote you,' he said. 'The
countess can decide now to remain, if she pleases. Drive with me to
Cardiff--I miss you if you 're absent a week. Or is it legs? Drop me a
line of your stages on the road, and don't loiter much.'

Gower spoke of starting his legs next day, if he had to do the journey
alone: and he clouded the yacht for Fleetwood with talk of the Wye and
the Usk, Hereford and the Malvern Hills elliptical over the plains.

'Yes,' the earl acquiesced jealously; 'we ought to have seen--tramped
every foot of our own country. That yacht of mine, there she is, and I
said I would board her and have a fly with half a dozen fellows round the
Scottish isles. We're never free to do as we like.'

'Legs are the only things that have a taste of freedom,' said Gower.

They strolled down to Howell Edwards' office at nine, Kit Ines beside the
luggage cart to the rear.

Around the office and along to the street of the cottages crowds were
chattering, gesticulating; Ines fancied the foreign jabberers inclined to
threaten. Howell Edwards at the door of his office watched them
calculatingly. The lord of their destinies passed in with him, leaving
Gower to study the features of the men, and Ines to reckon the chance of
a fray.

Fleetwood came out presently, saying to Edwards:

'That concession goes far enough. Because I have a neighbour who yields
at every step? No, stick to the principle. I've said my final word. And
here's the carriage. If the mines are closed, more's the pity: but I'm
not responsible. You can let them know if you like, before I drive off;
it doesn't matter to me.'

The carriage was ready. Gower cast a glance up the hill. Three female
figures and a pannier-donkey were visible on the descent. He nodded to
Edwards, who took the words out of his mouth. 'Her ladyship, my lord.'

She was distinctly seen, and looked formidable in definition against the
cloud. Madge and the nurse-maid Martha were the two other young women. On
they came, and the, angry man seated in the carriage could not give the
order to start. Nor could he quite shape an idea of annoyance, though he
hung to it and faced at Gower a battery of the promise to pay him for
this. Tattling observers were estimated at their small importance there,
as everywhere, by one so high above them. But the appearance of the woman
of the burlesque name and burlesque actions, and odd ascension out of the
ludicrous into a form to cast a spell, so that she commanded serious
recollections of her, disturbed him. He stepped from his carriage. Again
he had his incomprehensible fit of shyness; and a vision of the
complacent, jowled, redundant, blue-coated monarch aswing in imbecile
merriment on the signboard of the Royal Sovereign inn; constitutionally
his total opposite, yet instigating the sensation.

In that respect his countess and he had shifted characters. Carinthia
came on at her bold mountain stride to within hail of him. Met by Gower,
she talked, smiled, patted her donkey, clutched his ear, lifted a silken
covering to show the child asleep; entirely at her ease and unhurried.
These women get aid from their pride of maternity. And when they can
boast a parson behind them, they are indecorous up to insolent in their
ostentation of it.

She resumed her advance, with a slight abatement of her challengeing
match, sedately; very collectedly erect; changed in the fulness of her
figure and her poised calm bearing.

He heard her voice addressing Gower: 'Yes, they do; we noticed the
slate-roofs, looking down on them. They do look like a council of rooks
in the hollow; a parliament, you said. They look exceedingly like, when a
peep of sunshine falls. Oh, no; not clergymen!'

She laughed at the suggestion.

She might be one of the actresses by nature.

Is the man unsympathetic with women a hater of Nature deductively? Most
women are actresses. As to worshipping Nature, we go back to the state of
heathen beast, Mr. Philosopher Gower could be answered . . . .

Fleetwood drew in his argument. She stood before him. There was on his
part an insular representation of old French court salute to the lady,
and she replied to it in the exactest measure, as if an instructed
proficient.

She stood unshadowed. 'We have come to bid you adieu, my lord,' she said,
and no trouble of the bosom shook her mellow tones. Her face was not the
chalk-quarry or the rosed rock; it was oddly individual, and, in a way,
alluring, with some gentle contraction of her eyelids. But evidently she
stood in full repose, mistress of herself.

Upon him, it appeared, the whole sensibility of the situation was to be
thrown. He hardened.

'We have had to settle business here,' he said, speaking resonantly, to
cover his gazing discomposedly, all but furtively.

The child was shown, still asleep. A cunning infant not a cry in him to
excuse a father for preferring concord or silence or the bachelor's
exemption.

'He is a strong boy,' the mother said. 'Our doctor promises he will ride
over all the illnesses.'

Fleetwood's answer set off with an alarum of the throat, and dwindled to
'We 'll hope so. Seems to sleep well.'

She had her rocky brows. They were not barren crags, and her shape was
Nature's ripeness, it was acknowledged: She stood like a lance in
air-rather like an Amazon schooled by Athene, one might imagine. Hues of
some going or coming flush hinted the magical trick of her visage. She
spoke in modest manner, or it might be indifferently, without a flaunting
of either.

'I wish to consult you, my lord. He is not baptized. His Christian
names?'

'I have no choice.'

'I should wish him to bear one of my brother's names.'

'I have no knowledge of your brother's names.'

'Chillon is one.'

'Ah! Is it, should you think, suitable to our climate?'

'Another name of my brother's is John.'

'Bull.' The loutish derision passed her and rebounded on him. 'That would
be quite at home.'

'You will allow one of your own names, my lord?'

'Oh, certainly, if you desire it, choose. There are four names you will
find in a book of the Peerage or Directory or so. Up at the castle--or
you might have written:--better than these questions on the public road.
I don't demur. Let it be as you like.'

'I write empty letters to tell what I much want,' Carinthia said.

'You have only to write your plain request.'

'If, now I see you, I may speak another request, my lord.'

'Pray,' he said, with courteous patience, and stepped forward down to the
street of the miners' cottages. She could there speak out-bawl the
request, if it suited her to do so.

On the point of speaking, she gazed round.

'Perfectly safe! no harm possible,' said he, fretful under the burden of
this her maniacal maternal anxiety.

'The men are all right, they would not hurt a child. What can rationally
be suspected!'

'I know the men; they love their children,' she replied. 'I think my
child would be precious to them. Mr. Woodseer and Mr. Edwards and Madge
are there.'

'Is the one more request--I mean, a mother's anxiety does not run to the
extent of suspecting everybody?'

'Some of the children are very pretty,' said Carinthia, and eyed the
bands of them at their games in the roadway and at the cottage doors.
'Children of the poor have happy mothers.'

Her eyes were homely, morning over her face. They were open now to what
that fellow Woodseer (who could speak to the point when he was not aiming
at it) called the parlour, or social sitting-room; where we may have
converse with the tame woman's mind, seeing the door to the clawing
recesses temporarily shut.

'Forgive me if I say you talk like the bigger child,' Fleetwood said
lightly, not ungenially; for the features he looked on were museful, a
picture in their one expression.

Her answer chilled him. 'It is true, my lord. I will not detain you. I
would beg to be supplied with money.'

He was like the leaves of a frosted plant, in his crisp curling
inward:--he had been so genial.

'You have come to say good-bye, that an opportunity to--as you put
it--beg for money. I am not sure of your having learnt yet the right
disposal of money.'

'I beg, my lord, to have two thousand pounds a year allowed me.'

'Ten--and it's a task to spend the sum on a single household--shall be
alloted to your expenditure at Esslemont;--stables, bills, et caetera.
You can entertain. My steward Leddings will undertake the management. You
will not be troubled with payings.'

Her head acknowledged the graciousness.--'I would have two thousand
pounds and live where I please.'

'Pardon me: the two, for a lady living where she pleases, exceeds the
required amount.'

'I will accept a smaller sum, my lord.'

'Money!-it seems a singular demand when all supplies are furnished.'

'I would have control of some money.'

'You are thinking of charities.'

'Not charities.'

'Edwards here has a provision for the hospital needs of the people. Mr.
Woodseer applies to me in cases he can certify. Leddings will do the same
at Esslemont.'

'I am glad, I am thankful. The money I would have is for my own use. It
is for me.'

'Ah. Scarcely that, I fancy.'

The remark should have struck home. He had a thirst for the sign of her
confessing to it. He looked. Something like a petrifaction of her wildest
face was shown.

Carinthia's eyes were hard out on a scattered knot of children down the
street.

She gathered up her skirts. Without a word to him, she ran, and running
shouted to the little ones around and ahead: 'In! in! indoors, children!
"Blant, i'r ty!" Mothers, mothers, ho! get them in. See the dog! "Ci!
Ci!" In with them! "Blant, i'r ty! Vr ty!"'

A big black mongrel appeared worrying at one of two petticoated urchins
on the ground.

She scurried her swiftest, with such warning Welsh as she had on the top
of her mountain cry; and doors flew wide, there was a bang of doors when
she darted by: first gust of terrible heavens that she seemed to the
cottagers.

Other shouts behind her rent the air, gathering to a roar, from the
breasts of men and women. 'Mad dog about' had been for days the rumour,
crossing the hills over the line of village, hamlet, farm, from Cardiff
port.

Dead hush succeeded the burst. Men and women stood off. The brute was at
the lady.

Her arms were straight above her head; her figure overhanging, on a bend
of the knees. Right and left, the fury of the slavering fangs shook her
loose droop of gown; and a dull, prolonged growl, like the clamour of a
far body of insurrectionary marching men, told of the rage.

Fleetwood hovered helpless as a leaf on a bough.

'Back--', I pray,' she said to him, and motioned it, her arms at high
stretch.

He held no weapon. The sweat of his forehead half blinded him. And she
waved him behind her, beckoned to the crowd to keep wide way, used her
lifted hands as flappers; she had all her wits. There was not a wrinkle
of a grimace. Nothing but her locked lips betrayed her vision of imminent
doom. The shaking of her gown and the snarl in the undergrowl sounded
insatiate.

The brute dropped hold. With a weariful jog of the head, it pursued its
course at an awful even swinging pace: Death's own, Death's doer, his
reaper,--he, the very Death of the Terrors.

Carinthia's cry rang for clear way to be kept on either side, and that
accursed went the path through a sharp-edged mob, as it poured pell-mell
and shrank back, closing for the chase to rear of it.

'Father taught me,' she said to the earl, not more discomposed than if
she had taken a jump.

'It's over!' he groaned, savagely white, and bellowed for guns, any
weapons. 'Your father? pray?' She was entreated to speak.

'Yes, it must be shot; it will be merciful to kill it,' she said. 'They
have carried the child indoors. The others are safe. Mr. Woodseer, run to
my nurse-girl, Martha. He goes,' she murmured, and resumed to the earl:
'Father told me women have a better chance than men with a biting dog. He
put me before him and drilled me. He thought of everything. Usually the
poor beast snaps--one angry bite, not more. My dress teased it.'

Fleetwood grinned civilly in his excitement; intending to yield patient
hearing, to be interested by any mortal thing she might choose to say.

She was advised by recollection to let her father rest.

'No, dear girl, not hurt, no scratch,--only my gown torn,' she said to
Madge; and Madge heaved and whimpered, and stooped to pin the frayed
strips. 'Quite safe; you see it is easy for women to escape, Mr.
Edwards.'

Carinthia's voice hummed over the girl's head

'Father made me practise it, in case. He forethought. Madge, you heard of
this dog. I told you how to act. I was not feverish. Our babe will not
feel it.'

She bade Madge open her hands. 'A scratch would kill. Never mind the
tearings; I will hold my dress. Oh! there is that one child bitten. Mr.
Edwards, mount a man for the doctor. I will go in to the child. He was
bitten. Lose not one minute, Mr. Edwards. I see you go.'

He bowed and hastened.

The child's mother was red eyes at her door for ease of her heart to the
lady. Carinthia stepped into the room, where the little creature was
fetching sobs after the spout of screams.

'God in heaven! she can't be going to suck the bite?' Fleetwood cried to
Madge, whose answer was disquieting 'If it's to save life, my mistress
won't stop at anything.'

His heart sprang with a lighted comprehension of Gower Woodseer's
meaning. This girl's fervour opened portals to new views of her mistress,
or opened eyes.




CHAPTER XXXIII

A FRIGHTFUL DEBATE

Pushing through a swarm into the cot, Fleetwood saw Carinthia on a knee
beside a girl's lap, where the stripped child lay. Its mother held a
basin for the dabbing at raw red spots.

A sting of pain touched the memory of its fright, and brought further
screams, then the sobs. Carinthia hummed a Styrian cradle-song as the
wailing lulled.

She glanced up; she said to the earl: 'The bite was deep; it was in the
blood. We may have time. Get me an interpreter. I must ask the mother. I
know not many words.'

'What now?' said he, at the looming of new vexations.

'We have no choice. Has a man gone? Dr. Griffiths would hurry fast. An
hour may be too late. The poison travels: Father advised it:--Fifty years
for one brave minute! This child should be helped to live.'

'We 'll do our best. Why an interpreter?'

'A poker in the fire. The interpreter--whether the mother will bear to
have it done.'

'Burn, do you mean?'

'It should be burnt.'

'Not by you?'

'Quick! Quick!'

'But will you--could you? No, I say!'

'If there is no one else.'

'You forget your own child.'

'He is near the end of his mother.'

'The doctor will soon arrive.'

'The poison travels. It cannot be overtaken unless we start nearly equal,
father said.'

'Work like that wants an experienced hand.'

'A steady one. I would not quake--not tremble.'

'I cannot permit it.'

'Mr. Wythan would know!--he would know!

'Do you hear, Lady Fleetwood--the dog may not be mad!'

'Signs! He ran heavy, he foamed.'

'Foam 's no sign.'

'Go; order to me a speaker of English and Welsh.'

The earl spun round, sensible of the novelty of his being commanded, and
submitting; but no sooner had he turned than he fell into her view of the
urgency, and he went, much like the boy we see at school, with a strong
hand on his collar running him in.

Madge entered, and said: 'Mr. Woodseer has seen baby and Martha and the
donkey all safe.'

'He is kind,' said Carinthia. 'Do we right to bathe the wound? It seems
right to wash it. Little things that seem right may be exactly wrong
after all, when we are ignorant. I know burning the wound is right.'

Madge asked: 'But, my lady, who is to do it?'

'You would do it, dear, if I shrank,' her mistress replied.

'Oh, my lady, I don't know, I can't say. Burning a child! And there's our
baby.'

'He has had me nearly his time.'

'Oh, my dear lady! Would the mother consent?'

'My Madge! I have so few of their words yet. You would hold the child to
save it from a dreadful end.'

'God help me, my lady--I would, as long as I live I will . . . . Oh! poor
infant, we do need our courage now.'

Seeing that her mistress had not a tear or a tremor, the girl blinked and
schooled her quailing heart, still under the wicked hope that the mother
would not consent; in a wonderment at this lady, who was womanly, and who
could hold the red iron at living flesh, to save the poor infant from a
dreadful end. Her flow of love to this dear lady felt the slicing of a
cut; was half revulsion, half worship; uttermost worship in estrangement,
with the further throbbing of her pulses.

The cottage door was pushed open for Lord Fleetwood and Howell Edwards,
whom his master had prepared to stand against immediate operations. A
mounted messenger had been despatched. But it was true, the doctor might
not be at home. Assuming it to be a bite of rabies, minutes lost meant
the terrible: Edwards bowed his head to that. On the other hand, he
foresaw the closest of personal reasons for hesitating to be in agreement
with the lady wholly. The countess was not so much a persuasive lady as
she was, in her breath and gaze, a sweeping and a wafting power. After a
short argument, he had the sense of hanging like a bank detached to
fatality of motion by the crack of a landslip, and that he would speedily
be on his manhood to volunteer for the terrible work.

He addressed the mother. Her eyes whitened from their red at his first
word of laying hot iron on the child: she ran out with the wild woman's
howl to her neighbours.

'Poor mother!' Carinthia sighed. 'It may last a year in the child's body,
and one day he shudders at water. Father saw a bitten man die. I could
fear death with the thought of that poison in me. I pray Dr. Griffiths
may come.'

Fleetwood shuffled a step. 'He will come, he will come.'

The mother and some women now packed the room.

A gabble arose between them and Edwards. They fired sharp snatches of
speech, and they darted looks at the lady and her lord.

'They do not know!' said Carinthia.

Gower brought her news that the dog had been killed; Martha and her
precious burden were outside, a mob of men, too. He was not alarmed; but
she went to the door and took her babe in her arms, and when the women
observed the lady holding her own little one, their looks were softened.
At a hint of explanation from Edwards, the guttural gabble rattled up to
the shrill vowels.

Fleetwood's endurance broke short. The packed small room, the
caged-monkey lingo, the wailful child, and the past and apprehended
debate upon the burning of flesh, composed an intolerable torture. He
said to Edwards: 'Go to the men; settle it with them. We have to follow
that man Wythan; no peace otherwise. Tell the men the body of the dog
must be secured for analysis. Mad or not, it's the same. These Welsh
mothers and grandmothers won't allow cautery at any price. Hark at them!'

He turned to Carinthia: 'Your ladyship will let Mr. Edwards or Mr.
Woodseer conduct you to the house where you are residing. You don't know
these excitable people. I wish you to leave.'

She replied softly: 'I stay for the doctor's coming.'

'Impossible for me to wait, and I can't permit you to be here.'

'It is life and death, and I must not be commanded.'

'You may be proposing gratuitous agony.'

'I would do it to my own child.'

The earl attacked Gower: 'Add your voice to persuade Lady Fleetwood.'

Gower said: 'What if I think with Lady Fleetwood?'

'You would see her do it?'

'Do it myself, if there was no one else'

'This dog-all of you have gone mad,' the earl cried.

'Griffiths may keep his head; it's the only chance. Take my word, these
Welshwomen just listen to them won't have it. You 'll find yourself in a
nest of Furies. It may be right to do, it's folly to propose it, madness
to attempt it. And I shall be bitten if I stop here a minute longer; I'm
gone; I can neither command nor influence. I should have thought Gower
Woodseer would have kept his wits.'

Fleetwood's look fell on Madge amid the group. Gower's perception of her
mistress through the girl's devotion to her moved him. He took Madge by
the hand, and the sensation came that it was the next thing to pressing
his wife's. 'You're a loyal girl. You have a mistress it 's an honour to
serve. You bind me. By the way, Ines shall run down for a minute before I
go.'

'Let him stay where he is,'' Madge said, having bobbed her curtsey.

'Oh, if he's not to get a welcome!' said the earl; and he could now fix a
steadier look on his countess, who would have animated him with either a
hostile face or a tender. She had no expression of a feeling. He bent to
her formally.

Carinthia's words were: 'Adieu, my lord.'

'I have only to say, that Esslemont is ready to receive you,' he
remarked, bowed more curtly, and walked out. . .

Gower followed him. They might as well have been silent, for any effect
from what was uttered between them. They spoke opinions held by each of
them--adverse mainly; speaking for no other purpose than to hold their
positions.

'Oh, she has courage, no doubt; no one doubted it,' Fleetwood said, out
of all relation to the foregoing.

Courage to grapple with his pride and open his heart was wanting in him.

Had that been done, even to the hint of it, instead of the lordly
indifference shown, Gower might have ventured on a suggestion, that the
priceless woman he could call wife was fast slipping away from him and
withering in her allegiance. He did allude to his personal sentiment.
'One takes aim at Philosophy; Lady Fleetwood pulls us up to pay tribute
to our debts.' But this was vague, and his hearer needed a present
thunder and lightning to shake and pierce him.

'I pledged myself to that yacht,' said Fleetwood, by way of reply, 'or
you and I would tramp it, as we did once-jolly old days! I shall have you
in mind. Now turn back. Do the best you can.'

They parted midway up the street, Gower bearing away a sharp contrast of
the earl and his countess; for, until their senses are dulled,
impressionable young men, however precociously philosophical, are
mastered by appearances; and they have to reflect under new lights before
vision of the linked eye and mind is given them.

Fleetwood jumped into his carriage and ordered the coachman to drive
smartly. He could not have admitted the feeling small; he felt the having
been diminished, and his requiring a rapid transportation from these
parts for him to regain his proper stature. Had he misconducted himself
at the moment of danger? It is a ghastly thought, that the craven impulse
may overcome us. But no, he could reassure his repute for manliness. He
had done as much as a man could do in such a situation.

At the same time, he had done less than the woman.

Needed she to have gone so far? Why precipitate herself into the jaws of
the beast?

Now she, proposes to burn the child's wound. And she will do it if they
let her. One, sees her at the work,--pale, flinty; no faces; trebly the
terrific woman in her mild way of doing the work. All because her old
father recommended it. Because she thinks it a duty, we will say; that is
juster. This young woman is a very sword in the hand of her idea of duty.
She can be feminine, too,--there is one who knows. She can be
particularly distant, too. If in timidity, she has a modest view of
herself--or an enormous conception of the magi that married her. Will she
take the world's polish a little?

Fleetwood asked with the simplicity of the superior being who will
consequently perhaps bestow the debt he owes. . .

But his was not the surface nature which can put a question of the sort
and pass it. As soon as it had been formed, a vision of the elemental
creature calling him husband smote to shivers the shell we walk on, and
caught him down among the lower forces, up amid the higher; an infernal
and a celestial contest for the extinction of the one or the other of
them, if it was not for their union. She wrestled with him where the
darknesses roll their snake-eyed torrents over between jagged horns of
the netherworld. She stood him in the white ray of the primal vital heat,
to bear unwithering beside her the test of light. They flew, they chased,
battled, embraced, disjoined, adventured apart, brought back the count of
their deeds, compared them,--and name the one crushed! It was the one
weighted to shame, thrust into the cellar-corner of his own disgust, by
his having asked whether that starry warrior spirit in the woman's frame
would 'take polish a little.'

Why should it be a contention between them? For this reason: he was
reduced to admire her act; and if he admired, he could not admire without
respecting; if he respected, perforce he reverenced; if he reverenced, he
worshipped. Therefore she had him at her feet. At the feet of any woman,
except for the trifling object! But at the feet of 'It is my husband!'
That would be a reversal of things.

Are not things reversed when the name Carinthia sounds in the thought of
him who laughed at the name not less angelically martial than Feltre's
adored silver trumpets of his Papal procession; sweeter of the new
morning for the husband of the woman; if he will but consent to the
worshipper's posture? Yes, and when Gower Woodseer's 'Malady of the
Wealthy,' as he terms the pivotting of the whole marching and wheeling
world upon the favoured of Fortune's habits and tastes, promises to quit
its fell clutch on him?

Another voice in the young nobleman cried: Pooh, dolt and dupe! and
surrounded her for half a league with reek of burnt flesh and shrieks of
a tortured child; giving her the aspect of a sister of the Parcw. But it
was not the ascendant' voice. It growled underneath, much like the deadly
beast at Carinthia's gown while she stood:--an image of her to dominate
the princeliest of men.

The princeliest must have won his title to the place before he can yield
other than complimentary station to a woman without violation of his
dignity; and vast wealth is not the title; worldly honours are not; deeds
only are the title. Fleetwood consented to tell himself that he had not
yet performed the deeds.

Therefore, for him to be dominated was to be obscured, eclipsed. A man
may outrun us; it is the fortune of war. Eclipsed behind the skirts of a
woman waving her upraised hands, with, 'Back, pray!'--no, that ignominy
is too horribly abominable! Be sure, the situation will certainly recur
in some form; will constantly recur. She will usurp the lead; she will
play the man.

Let matters go on as they are. We know our personal worth.

Arrived at this point in the perpetual round of the conflict Carinthia
had implanted, Fleetwood entered anew the ranks of the ordinary men of
wealth and a coronet, and he hugged himself. He enjoyed repose; knowing
it might be but a truce. Matters might go on as they were. Still, he
wished her away from those Wythans, residing at Esslemont. There she
might come eventually to a better knowledge of his personal worth:--'the
gold mine we carry in our bosoms till it is threshed out of us in sweat,'
that fellow Gower Woodseex says; adding, that we are the richer for not
exploring it. Philosophical cynicism is inconclusive. Fleetwood knew his
large capacities; he had proved them and could again. In case a certain
half foreseen calamity should happen:--imagine it a fact, imagine him
seized, besides admiring her character, with a taste for her person! Why,
then, he would have to impress his own mysteriously deep character on her
portion of understanding. The battle for domination would then begin.

Anticipation of the possibility of it hewed division between the young
man's pride of being and his warmer feelings. Had he been free of the
dread of subjection, he would have sunk to kiss the feet of the
statuesque young woman, arms in air, firm-fronted over the hideous death
that tore at her skirts.




CHAPTER XXXIV

A SURVEY OF THE RIDE OF THE WELSH CAVALIERS ESCORTING THE COUNTESS OF
FLEETWOOD TO KENTISH ESSLEMONT

A formal notification from the earl, addressed to the Countess of
Fleetwood in the third person, that Esslemont stood ready to receive her,
autocratically concealed her lord's impatience to have her there; and by
the careful precision with which the stages of her journey were marked,
as places where the servants despatched to convey their lady would find
preparations for her comfort, again alarmed the disordered mother's mind
on behalf of the child she deemed an object of the father's hatred,
second to his hatred of the mother. But the mother could defend herself,
the child was prey the child of a detested wife was heir to his title
and estates. His look at the child, his hasty one look down at her
innocent, was conjured before her as resembling a kick at a stone in his
path. His indifference to the child's Christian names pointed darkly over
its future.

The distempered wilfulness of a bruised young woman directed her
thoughts. She spoke them in the tone of reason to her invalid friend
Rebecca Wythan, who saw with her, felt with her, yearned to retain her
till breath was gone. Owain Wythan had his doubts of the tyrant guilty of
maltreating this woman of women. 'But when you do leave Wales,' he said,
'you shall be guarded up to your haven.'

Carinthia was not awake to his meaning then. She sent a short letter of
reply, imitating the style of her lord; very baldly stating, that she was
unable to leave Wales because of her friend's illness and her part as
nurse. Regrets were unmentioned.

Meanwhile Rebecca Wythan was passing to death. Not cheerlessly, more and
more faintly, her thread of life ran to pause, resembling a rill of the
drought; and the thinner-it grew, the shrewder were her murmurs for
Carinthia's ears in commending 'the most real of husbands of an unreal
wife' to her friendly care of him when he would no longer see the shadow
he had wedded. She had the privilege of a soul beyond our minor rules and
restrainings to speak her wishes to the true wife of a mock husband-no
husband; less a husband than this shadow of a woman a wife, she said; and
spoke them without adjuring the bowed head beside her to record a promise
or seem to show the far willingness, but merely that the wishes should be
heard on earth in her last breath, for a good man's remaining one chance
of happiness. On the theme touching her husband Owain, it was verily to
hear a soul speak, and have knowledge of the broader range, the rich
interflowings of the tuned discords, a spirit past the flesh can find.
Her mind was at the same time alive to our worldly conventions when other
people came under its light; she sketched them and their views in her
brief words between the gasps, with perspicuous, humorous bluntness, as
vividly as her twitched eyebrows indicated the laugh. Gower Woodseer she
read startlingly, if correctly.

Carinthia could not leave her. Attendance upon this dying woman was a
drinking at the springs of life.

Rebecca Wythan under earth, the earl was briefly informed of Lady
Fleetwood's consent to quit Wales, obedient to a summons two months
old,--and that she would be properly escorted; for the which her lord had
made provision. Consequently the tyrant swallowed his wrath, little
conceiving the monstrous blow she was about to strike.

In peril of fresh floods from our Dame, who should be satisfied with the
inspiring of these pages, it is owned that her story of 'the four and
twenty squires of Glamorgan and Caermarthen in their brass-buttoned green
coats and buckskins, mounted and armed, an escort of the Countess of
Fleetwood across the swollen Severn, along midwinter roads, up to the
Kentish gates of Esslemont,' has a foundation, though the story is not
the more credible for her flourish of documentary old ballad-sheets,
printed when London's wags had ears on cock to any whisper of the doings.
of their favourite Whitechapel Countess; and indeed hardly depended on
whispers.

Enthusiasm sufficient to troop forth four and twenty and more hundreds of
Cambrian gentlemen, and still more of the common folk, as far as they
could journey afoot, was over the two halves of the Principality, to give
the countess a reputable and gallant body-guard. London had intimations
of kindling circumstances concerning her, and magnified them in the
interests of the national humour: which is the English way of exalting to
criticize, criticizing to depreciate, and depreciating to restore,
ultimately to cherish, in reward for the amusement furnished by an
eccentric person, not devoid of merit.

These little tales of her, pricking cool blood to some activity, were
furze-fires among the Welsh. But where the latter heard Bardic strings
inviting a chorus, the former as unanimously obeyed the stroke of their
humorous conductor's baton for an outburst from the ribs or below. And it
was really funny to hear of Whitechapel's titled heroine roaming
Taffyland at her old pranks.

Catching a maddened bull by the horns in the marketplace, and hanging to
the infuriate beast, a wild whirl of clouts, till he is reduced to be a
subject for steaks, that is no common feat.

Her performances down mines were things of the underworld. England
clapped hands, merely objecting to her not having changed her garb for
the picador's or matador's, before she seized the bull. Wales adopted and
was proud of her in any costume. Welshmen North and South, united for the
nonce, now propose her gallantry as a theme to the rival Bards at the
next Eisteddfod. She is to sit throned in full assembly, oak leaves and
mistletoe interwoven on her head, a white robe and green sash to clothe
her, and the vanquished beast's horns on a gilded pole behind the dais;
hearing the eulogies respectively interpreted to her by Colonel Fluellen
Wythan at one ear, and Captain Agincourt Gower at the other. A splendid
scene; she might well insist to be present.

There, however, we are at the pitch of burlesque beyond her illustrious
lord's capacity to stand. Peremptory orders from England arrive,
commanding her return. She temporizes, postpones, and supplicates to have
the period extended up to the close of the Eisteddfod. My lord's orders
are imperatively repeated, and very blunt. He will not have her 'continue
playing the fool down there.' She holds her ground from August into
February, and then sets forth, to undergo the further process of her
taming at Esslemont in England; with Llewellyn and Vaughan and
Cadwallader, and Watkyn and Shenkyn and the remains of the race of Owen
Tudor, attending her; vowed to extract a receipt from the earl her lord's
responsible servitors for the safe delivery of their heroine's person at
the gates of Esslemont; ich dien their trumpeted motto.

Counting the number at four and twenty, it wears the look of an invasion.
But the said number is a ballad number, and has been since the antique
time. There was, at a lesser number, enough of a challenge about it for
squires of England, never in those days backward to pick up a glove or
give the ringing rejoinder for a thumb-bite, to ride out and tilt
compliments with the Whitechapel Countess's green cavaliers, rally their
sprites and entertain them exactly according to their degrees of dignity,
as exhibited by their 'haviour under something of a trial; and satisfy
also such temporary appetites as might be excited in them by (among other
matters left to the luck of events) a metropolitan play upon the Saxon
tongue, hard of understanding to the leeky cocks until their ready store
of native pepper seasons it; which may require a corresponding English
condiment to rectify the flavour of the stew.

Now the number of Saxe-Normans riding out to meet and greet the Welshmen
is declared to have not exceeded nine. So much pretends to be historic,
in opposition to the poetic version. They would, we may be sure, have
made it a point of honour to meet and greet their invading guests in
precisely similar numbers a larger would have overshot the mark of
courtesy; and doubtless a smaller have fallen deplorably short of it.
Therefore, an acquaintance with her chivalrous, if less impulsive,
countrymen compels to the dismissing of the Dame's ballad authorities.
She has every right to quote them for her own good pleasure, and may
create in others an enjoyment of what has been called 'the Mackrell fry.'

Her notion of a ballad is, that it grows like mushrooms from a scuffle of
feet on grass overnight, and is a sort of forest mother of the pied
infant reared and trimmed by historians to show the world its fatherly
antecedent steps. The hand of Rose Mackrell is at least suggested in more
than one of the ballads. Here the Welsh irruption is a Chevy Chase; next
we have the countess for a disputed Helen.

The lady's lord is not a shining figure. How can an undecided one be a
dispenser of light? Poetry could never allow him to say with her:

          'Where'er I go I make a name,
          And leave a song to follow.'

Yet he was the master of her fortunes at the time; all the material power
was his. Even doggerel verse (it is worth while to brood on the fact)
denies a surviving pre-eminence to the potent moody, reverses the
position between the driven and the driver. Poetry, however erratic, is
less a servant of the bully Present, or pomlious Past, than History. The
Muse of History has neither the same divination of the intrinsic nor the
devotion to it, though truly, she has possession of all the positive
matter and holds us faster by the crediting senses.

Nine English cavaliers, then, left London early on a January or February
morning in a Southerly direction, bearing East; and they were the Earl of
Fleetwood's intimates, of the half-dependent order; so we may suppose
them to have gone at his bidding. That they met the procession of the
Welsh, and claimed to take charge of the countess's carriage, near the
Kentish border-line, is an assertion supported by testimony fairly
acceptable.

Intelligence of the advancing party had reached the earl by courier, from
the date of the first gathering on the bridge of Pont-y-pridd; and from
Gloucester, along to the Thames at Reading; thence away to the Mole, from
Mickleham, where the Surrey chalk runs its final turfy spine
North-eastward to the slope upon Kentish soil.

Greatly to the astonishment of the Welsh cavaliers, a mounted footman,
clad in the green and scarlet facings of Lord Fleetwood's livery, rode up
to them a mile outside the principal towns and named the inn where the
earl had ordered preparations for the reception of them. England's
hospitality was offered on a princely scale. Cleverer fencing could not
be.

The meeting, in no sense an encounter, occurred close by a thirty-acre
meadow, famous over the county; and was remarkable for the punctilious
exchange of ceremonial speech, danger being present; as we see
powder-magazines protected by their walls and fosses and covered alleys.
Notwithstanding which, there was a scintillation of sparks.

Lord Brailstone, spokesman of the welcoming party, expressed comic
regrets that they had not an interpreter with them.

Mr. Owain Wythan, in the name of the Cambrian chivalry, assured him of
their comprehension and appreciation of English slang.

Both gentlemen kept their heads uncovered in a suspense; they might for a
word or two more of that savour have turned into the conveniently
spacious meadow. They were induced, on the contrary, to enter the channel
of English humour, by hearing Chumley Potts exclaim: 'His nob!' and all
of them laughed at the condensed description of a good hit back, at the
English party's cost.

Laughter, let it be but genuine, is of a common nationality, indeed a
common fireside; and profound disagreement is not easy after it. The Dame
professes to believe that 'Carinthia Jane' had to intervene as
peacemaker, before the united races took the table in Esslemont's
dining-hall for a memorable night of it, and a contest nearer the mark of
veracity than that shown in another of the ballads she would have us
follow. Whatever happened, they sat down at table together, and the point
of honour for them each and every was, not to be first to rise from it.
Once more the pure Briton and the mixed if not fused English engaged,
Bacchus for instrument this time, Bacchus for arbiter of the fray.

You may imagine! says the Dame. She cites the old butler at Esslemont,
'as having been much questioned on the subject by her family relative,
Dr. Glossop, and others interested to know the smallest items of the
facts,'--and he is her authority for the declaration that the Welsh
gentlemen and the English gentlemen, 'whatever their united number,'
consumed the number of nine dozen and a half of old Esslemont wine before
they rose, or as possibly sank, at the festive board at the hour of five
of the morning.

Years later, this butler, Joshua Queeney, 'a much enfeebled old man,'
retold and enlarged the tale of the enormous consumption of his best
wine; with a sacred oath to confirm it, and a tear expressive of
elegiacal feelings.

'They bled me twelve dozen, not a bottle less,' she quotes him, after a
minute description of his countenance and scrupulously brushed black
suit, pensioner though he had become. He had grown, during the interval,
to be more communicative as to particulars. The wines were four. Sherry
led off the parade pace, Hock the trot into the merry canter, Champagne
the racing gallop, Burgundy the grand trial of constitutional endurance
for the enforced finish. All these wines, except the sparkling, had their
date of birth in the precedent century. 'They went like water.'

Questioned anxiously by Dr. Glossop, Queeney maintained an impartial
attitude, and said there was no victor, no vanquished. They did not sit
in blocks. The tactics for preserving peace intermingled them. Each
English gentleman had a Welsh gentleman beside him; they both sat firm;
both fell together. The bottles or decanters were not stationary for the
guest to fill his glass, they circulated, returning to an empty glass.
All drank equally. Often the voices were high, the talk was loud. The
gentlemen were too serious to sing.

At one moment of the evening Queeney confidently anticipated a
'fracassy,' he said. One of the foreign party--and they all spoke
English, after five dozen bottles had gone the round, as correct as the
English themselves--remarked on the seventy-years Old Brown Sherry, that
'it had a Madeira flavour.' He spoke it approvingly. Thereupon Lord Simon
Pitscrew calls to Queeney, asking him 'why Madeira had been supplied
instead of Esslemont's renowned old Sherry?' A second Welsh gentleman
gave his assurances that his friend had not said it was Madeira. But Lord
Brailstone accused them of the worse unkindness to a venerable Old Brown
Sherry, in attributing a Madeira flavour to it. Then another Welsh
gentleman briskly and emphatically stated his opinion, that the
attribution of Madeira flavour to it was a compliment. At this, which
smelt strongly, he said, of insult, Captain Abrane called on the name of
their absent host to warrant the demand of an apology to the Old Brown
Sherry, for the imputation denying it an individual distinction. Chumley
Potts offered generally to bet that he would distinguish blindfold at a
single sip any Madeira from any first-class Sherry, Old Brown or Pale.
'Single sip or smell!' Ambrose Mallard cried, either for himself or his
comrade, Queeney could not say which.

Of all Lord Fleetwood's following, Mr. Potts and Mr. Mallard were, the
Dame informs us, Queeney's favourites, because they were so genial; and
he remembered most of what they said and did, being moved to it by 'poor
young Mr. Mallard's melancholy end and Mr. Potts's grief!'

The Welsh gentlemen, after paying their devoirs to the countess next
morning, rode on in fresh health and spirits at mid-day to Barlings, the
seat of Mr. Mason Fennell, a friend of Mr. Owain Wythan's. They shouted,
in an unseemly way, Queeney thought, at their breakfast-table, to hear
that three of the English party, namely, Captain Abrane, Mr. Mallard, and
Mr. Potts, had rung for tea and toast in bed. Lord Simon Pitscrew, Lord
Brailstone, and the rest of the English were sore about it; for it
certainly wore a look of constitutional inferiority on the English side,
which could boast of indubitably stouter muscles. The frenzied spirits of
the Welsh gentlemen, when riding off, let it be known what their opinion
was. Under the protection of the countess's presence, they were so cheery
as to seem triumphantly ironical; they sent messages of condolence to the
three in bed.

With an undisguised reluctance, the countess, holding Mr. Owain Wythan's
hand longer than was publicly decent, calling him by his Christian name,
consented to their departure. As they left, they defiled before her; the
vow was uttered by each, that at the instant of her summons he would
mount and devote himself to her service, individually or collectively.
She waved her hand to them. They ranged in line and saluted. She kissed
her hand. Sweeping the cavaliers' obeisance, gallantest of bows, they
rode away.

A striking scene, Dame Gossip says; but raises a wind over the clipped
adventure, and is for recounting what London believed about it. Enough
has been conceded for the stoppage of her intrusion; she is left in the
likeness of a full-charged pistol capless to the clapping trigger.

That which London believed, or affected to believe about it, would fill
chapters. There was during many months an impression of Lord Fleetwood's
countess as of a tenacious, dread, prevailing young woman, both intrepid
and astute, who had, by an exercise of various arts, legitimate in open
war of husband and wife, gathered the pick of the Principality to storm
and carry another of her husband's houses. The certification that her
cavaliers were Welsh gentlemen of wealth and position required a broader
sneer at the Welsh than was warranted by later and more intimate
acquaintance, if it could be made to redound to her discredit. So,
therefore, added to the national liking for a plucky woman, she gained
the respect for power. Whitechapel was round her like London's one
street's length extension of smoky haze, reminder of the morning's fog
under novel sunbeams.

Simultaneously, strange to say, her connubial antagonist, far from being
overshadowed, grew to be proportionately respected, and on the strength
of his deserts, apart from his title and his wealth. He defended himself,
as he was bound to do, by welcoming the picked Welsh squires with
hospitable embrace, providing ceremonies, receptions, and most
comfortable arrangements for them, along the route. But in thus gravely
entering into the knightly burlesque of the procession, and assisting to
swell the same, he not only drew the venom from it, he stood forth as
England's deputed representative, equal to her invasive challengeing
guests at all points, comic, tragic, or cordial. He saw that it had to be
treated as a national affair; and he parried the imputation which would
have injured his country's name for courtly breeding, had they been
ill-received, while he rescued his own good name from derision by joining
the extravagance.

He was well inspired. It was popularly felt to be the supreme of
clever-nay, noble-fencing. Really noble, though the cleverness was
conspicuous. A defensive stroke, protecting him against his fair one's
violent charge of horse, warded off an implied attack upon Old England,
in Old England's best-humoured easy manner.

Supposing the earl to have acted otherwise, his countess would virtually
have ridden over him, and wild Wales have cast a shadow on the chivalry
of magisterial England. He and his country stood to meet the issue
together the moment the Countess of Fleetwood and her escort crossed the
Welsh border; when it became a question between the hot-hearted, at their
impetuous gallop, and the sedatively minded, in an unfortified camp of
arm-chairs. The earl's adroitness, averting a collision fatal or
discomforting to both, disengaged him from an incumbent odium, of which,
it need hardly be stated, neither the lady nor her attendant cavaliers
had any notion at the hour of the assembly for the start for England on
the bridge of Pont-y-pridd. The hungry mother had the safety of her babe
in thought. The hotheaded Welshmen were sworn to guard their heroine.

That is the case presented by the Dame's papers, when the incredible is
excised. She claims the being a good friend to fiction in feeding popular
voracity with all her stores. But the Old Buccaneer, no professed friend
to it, is a sounder guide in the maxim, where he says: Deliver yourself
by permit of your cheque on the 'Bank of Reason, and your account is
increased instead of lessened.

Our account with credulity, he would signify.

The Dame does not like the shaking for a sifting. Romance, however, is
not a mountain made of gold, but a vein running some way through; and it
must be engineered, else either we are filled with wind from swallowing
indigestible substance, or we consent to a debasing of the currency,
which means her to-morrow's bankruptcy; and the spectacle of Romance in
the bankruptcy court degrades us (who believe we are allied to her) as
cruelly as it appals. It gives the cynic licence to bark day and night
for an entire generation.

Surely the Countess of Fleetwood's drive from the Welsh borders to
Esslemont, accompanied by the chosen of the land, followed by the vivats
of the whole Principality, and England gaping to hear the stages of her
progress, may be held sufficiently romantic without stuffing of surprises
and conflicts, adventures at inns, alarms at midnight, windings of a horn
over hilly verges of black heaths, and the rape of the child, the
pursuit, the recovery of the child, after a new set of heroine
performances on the part of a strung-wire mother, whose outcry in a waste
country district, as she clasps her boy to her bosom again: 'There's a
farm I see for milk for him!' the Dame repeats, having begun with an
admission that the tale has been contradicted, and is not produced on
authority. The end in design is to win the ear by making a fuss, and roll
event upon event for the braining of common intelligence, until her
narrative resembles dusty troopings along a road to the races.

Carinthia and her babe reached Esslemont, no matter what impediments.
There, like a stopped runner whose pantings lengthen to the longer
breath, her alarms over the infant subsided, ceasing for as long as she
clasped it or was in the room with it. Walking behind the precious
donkey-basket round the park, she went armed, and she soon won a fearful
name at Kentish cottage-hearths, though she 'was not black to see, nor
old. No, she was very young. But she did all the things that soldiers
do,--was a bit of a foreigner;--she brought a reputation up from the
Welsh land, and it had a raven's croak and a glow-worm's drapery and a
goblin's origin.

Something was hinted of her having agitated London once. Somebody dropped
word of her and that old Lord Levellier up at Croridge. She stalked park
and country at night. Stories, one or two near the truth, were told of a
restless and a very decided lady down these parts as well; and the earl
her husband daren't come nigh in his dread of her, so that he runs as if
to save his life out of every place she enters. And he's not one to run
for a trifle. His pride is pretty well a match for princes and
princesses.

All the same, he shakes in his shoes before her, durst hardly spy at
Esslemont again while she's in occupation. His managing gentleman comes
down from him, and goes up from her; that's how they communicate. One
week she's quite solitary; another week the house is brimful as can be.
She 's the great lady entertaining then. Yet they say it 's a fact, she
has not a shilling of her own to fling at a beggar. She 'll stock a
cottage wanting it with provision for a fortnight or more, and she'll
order the doctor in, and she'll call and see the right things done for
illness. 'But no money; no one's to expect money of her. The shots you
hear in Esslemont grounds out of season are she and her maid, always
alongside her, at it before a target on a bank, trying that old Lord
Levellier's gunpowder out of his mill; and he's got no money either; not
for his workmen, they say, until they congregate, and a threatening to
blow him up brings forth half their pay, on account. But he 's a known
miser. She's not that. She's a pleasant-faced lady for the poor. She has
the voice poor people like. It's only her enemy, maybe her husband, she
can be terrible to. She'd drive a hole through a robber stopping her on
the road, as soon as look at him.

This was Esslemont's atmosphere working its way to the earl, not so very
long after the establishment of his countess there. She could lay hold of
the English, too, it seemed. Did she call any gentleman of the district
by his Christian name? Lord Simon Pitscrew reported her doing so in the
case of one of the Welshmen. Those Welshmen! Apparently they are making a
push for importance in the kingdom!




CHAPTER XXXV

IN WHICH CERTAIN CHANGES MAY BE DISCERNED

Behind his white plaster of composure, Lord Fleetwood had alternately
raged and wondered during the passage of the Welsh cavalcade up Eastward:
a gigantic burlesque, that would have swept any husband of their heroine
off the scene had he failed to encounter it deferentially, preserving his
countenance and ostensibly his temper. An idiot of a woman, incurable in
her lunacy, suspects the father of the infant as guilty of designs done
to death in romances; and so she manages to set going solemnly a bigger
blazing Tom Fool's show than any known or written romance gives word of!
And that fellow, Gower Woodseer, pleads, in apology, for her husband's
confusion, physiologically, that it comes of her having been carried off
and kept a prisoner when she was bearing the child and knitting her whole
mind to ensure the child. But what sheer animals these women are, if they
take impressions in such a manner! And Mr. Philosopher argues that the
abusing of women proves the hating of Nature; names it 'the commonest
insanity, and the deadliest,' and men are 'planted in the bog of their
unclean animal condition until they do proper homage to the animal Nature
makes the woman be.' Oh, pish, sir!--as Meeson Corby had the habit of
exclaiming when Abrane's 'fiddler' argues him into a corner. The fellow
can fiddle fine things and occasionally clear sense:--'Men hating Nature
are insane. Women and Nature are close. If it is rather general to hate
Nature and maltreat women, we begin to see why the world is a mad world.'
That is the tune of the fiddler's fiddling. As for him, something
protects him. He was the slave of Countess Livia; like Abrane, Mallard,
Corby, St. Ombre, young Cressett, and the dozens. He is now her master.
Can a man like that be foolish, in saying of the Countess Carinthia, she
is 'not only quick to understand, she is in the quick of understanding'?
Gower Woodseer said it of her in Wales, and again on the day of his walk
up to London from Esslemont, after pedestrian exercise, which may heat
the frame, but cools the mind. She stamped that idea on a thoughtful
fellow.

He's a Welshman. They are all excitable,--have heads on hound's legs for
a flying figure in front. Still, they must have an object, definitely
seen by them--definite to them if dim to their neighbours; and it will
run in the poetic direction: and the woman to win them, win all classes
of them, within so short a term, is a toss above extraordinary. She is
named Carinthia--suitable name for the Welsh pantomimic procession. Or
cry out the word in an amphitheatre of Alpine crags,--it sounds at home.

She is a daughter of the mountains,--should never have left them. She is
also a daughter of the Old Buccaneer--no poor specimen of the fighting
Englishman of his day. According to Rose Mackrell, he, this Old
Buccaneer, it was, who, by strange adventures, brought the great Welsh
mines into the family! He would not be ashamed in spying through his
nautical glass, up or down, at his daughter's doings. She has not yet
developed a taste for the mother's tricks:--the mother, said to have been
a kindler. That Countess of Cressett was a romantic little fly-away bird.
Both parents were brave: the daughter would inherit gallantry. She
inherits a kind of thwarted beauty. Or it needs the situation seen in
Wales: her arms up and her unaffrighted eyes over the unappeasable growl.
She had then the beauty coming from the fathom depths, with the torch of
Life in the jaws of Death to light her: beauty of the nether kingdom
mounting to an upper place in the higher. Her beauty recognized, the name
of the man who married her is not Longears--not to himself, is the main
point; nor will it be to the world when he shows that it is not so to
himself.

Suppose he went to her, would she be trying at domination? The woman's
pitch above woman's beauty was perceived to be no intermittent beam, but
so living as to take the stamp of permanence. More than to say it was
hers, it was she. What a deadly peril brought into view was her
character-soul, some call it: generally a thing rather distasteful in
women, or chilling to the masculine temperament. Here it attracts. Here,
strange to say, it is the decided attraction, in a woman of a splendid
figure and a known softness. By rights, she should have more
understanding than to suspect the husband as guilty of designs done to
death in romances. However, she is not a craven who compliments him by
rearing him, and he might prove that there is no need for fear. But she
would be expecting explanations before the reconcilement. The bosom of
these women will keep on at its quick heaving until they have heard
certain formal words, oaths to boot. How speak them?

His old road of the ladder appeared to Fleetwood an excellent one for
obviating explanations and effecting the reconcilement without any
temporary seeming forfeit of the native male superiority. For there she
is at Esslemont now; any night the window could be scaled. 'It is my
husband.' The soul was in her voice when she said it.

He remembered that it had not ennobled her to him then; had not endeared;
was taken for a foreign example of the childish artless, imperfectly
suited to our English clime.' The tone of adorable utterances, however
much desired, is never for repetition; nor is the cast of divine sweet
looks; nor are the particular deeds-once pardonable, fitly pleaded. A
second scaling of her window--no, night's black hills girdle the scene
with hoarse echoes; the moon rushes out of her clouds grimacing. Even
Fleetwood's devil, much addicted to cape and sword and ladder, the
vulpine and the gryphine, rejected it.

For she had, by singular transformation since, and in spite of a deluging
grotesque that was antecedently incredible, she had become a personage,
counting her adherents; she could put half the world in motion on her
side. Yell those Welshmen to scorn, they were on a plane finding native
ground with as large a body of these English. His baser mind bowed to the
fact. Her aspect was entirely different; her attitude toward him as well:
insomuch that he had to chain her to her original features by the
conjuring of recollected phrases memorable for the vivid portraiture of
her foregone simplicity and her devotion to 'my husband.'

Yes, there she was at Essleinont, securely there, near him, to be seen
any day; worth claiming, too; a combatant figure, provocative of the
fight and the capture rather than repellent. The respect enforced by her
attitude awakened in him his inherited keen old relish for our
intersexual strife and the indubitable victory of the stronger, with the
prospect of slavish charms, fawning submission, marrowy spoil. Or
perhaps, preferably, a sullen submission, reluctant charms; far more
marrowy. Or who can say?--the creature is a rocket of the shot into the
fiery garland of stars; she may personate any new marvel, be an
unimagined terror, an overwhelming bewitchment: for she carries the
unexpected in her bosom. And does it look like such indubitable victory,
when the man, the woman's husband, divided from her, toothsome to the
sex, acknowledges within himself and lets the world know his utter
dislike of other women's charms, to the degree that herbal anchorites
positively could not be colder, could not be chaster: and he no forest
bird, but having the garden of the variety of fairest flowers at nod and
blush about him! That was the truth. Even Henrietta's beauty had the
effect of a princess's birthday doll admired on show by a contemptuous
boy.

Wherefore, then, did the devil in him seek to pervert this loveliest of
young women and feed on her humiliation for one flashing minute? The
taste had gone, the desire of the vengeance was extinct, personal
gratification could not exist. He spied into himself, and set it down to
one among the many mysteries.

Men uninstructed in analysis of motives arrive at this dangerous
conclusion, which spares their pride and caresses their indolence, while
it flatters the sense of internal vastness, and invites to headlong
intoxication. It allows them to think they are of such a compound, and
must necessarily act in that manner. They are not taught at the schools
or by the books of the honoured places in the libraries, to examine and
see the simplicity of these mysteries, which it would be here and there a
saving grace for them to see; as the minstrel, dutifully inclining to the
prosy in their behalf and morality's, should exhibit; he should arrest
all the characters of his drama to spring it to vision and strike
perchance the chord primarily if not continually moving them, that
readers might learn the why and how of a germ of evil, its flourishing
under rebuke, the persistency of it after the fell creative energy has
expired and pleasure sunk to be a phlegmatic dislike, almost a loathing.

This would here be done, but for signs of a barometric dead fall in Dame
Gossip's chaps, already heavily pendent. She would be off with us on one
of her whirling cyclones or elemental mad waltzes, if a step were taken
to the lecturing-desk. We are so far in her hands that we have to keep
her quiet. She will not hear of the reasons and the change of reasons for
one thing and the other. Things were so: narrate them, and let readers do
their reflections for themselves, she says, denouncing our conscientious
method as the direct road downward to the dreadful modern appeal to the
senses and assault on them for testimony to the veracity of everything
described; to the extent that, at the mention of a vile smell, it shall
be blown into the reader's nostrils, and corking-pins attack the
comfortable seat of him simultaneously with a development of surprises.
'Thither your conscientiousness leads.'

It is not perfectly visible. And she would gain information of the
singular nature of the young of the male sex in listening to the wrangle
between Lord Fleetwood and Gower Woodseer on the subject of pocket-money
for the needs of the Countess Carinthia. For it was a long and an angry
one, and it brought out both of them, exposing, of course, the more
complex creature the most. They were near a rupture, so scathing was
Gower's tone of irate professor to shirky scholar--or it might be put,
German professor to English scuffleshoe.

She is for the scene of 'Chillon John's' attempt to restore the
respiration of his bank-book by wager; to wit, that he would walk a mile,
run a mile, ride a mile, and jump ten hurdles, then score five
rifle-shots at a three hundred yards' distant target within a count of
minutes; twenty-five, she says; and vows it to have been one of the most
exciting of scenes ever witnessed on green turf in the land of wagers;
and that he was accomplishing it quite certainly when, at the first of
the hurdles, a treacherous unfolding and waving of a white flag caused
his horse to swerve and the loss of one minute, seven and twenty seconds,
before he cleared the hurdles; after which, he had to fire his shots
hurriedly, and the last counted blank, for being outside the circle of
the stated time.

So he was beaten. But a terrific uproar over the field proclaimed the
popular dissatisfaction. Presently there was a cleavage of the mob, and
behold a chase at the heels of the fellow to rival the very captain
himself for fleetness. He escaped, leaving his pole with the sheet nailed
to it, by way of flag, in proof of foul play; or a proof, as the other
side declared, of an innocently premature signalizing of the captain's
victory.

However that might be, he ran. Seeing him spin his legs at a hound's
pace, half a mile away, four countrymen attempted to stop him. All four
were laid on their backs in turn with stupefying celerity; and on rising
to their feet, and for the remainder of their natural lives, they swore
that no man but a Champion could have floored them so. This again may
have been due to the sturdy island pride of four good men knocked over by
one. We are unable to decide. Wickedness there was, the Dame says; and
she counsels the world to 'put and put together,' for, at any rate, 'a
partial elucidation of a most mysterious incident.' As to the
wager-money, the umpires dissented; a famous quarrel, that does not
concern us here, sprang out of the dispute; which was eventually, after
great disturbance 'of the country, referred to three leading sportsmen in
the metropolitan sphere, who pronounced the wager 'off,' being two to
one. Hence arose the dissatisfied third party, and the letters of this
minority to the newspapers, exciting, if not actually dividing, all
England for several months.

Now the month of December was the month of the Dame's mysterious
incident. From the date of January, as Madge Winch knew, Christopher Ines
had ceased to be in the service of the Earl of Fleetwood. At Esslemont
Park gates, one winter afternoon of a North-east wind blowing 'rum-shrub
into men for a stand against rheumatics,' as he remarked, Ines met the
girl by appointment, and informing her that he had money, and that Lord
Fleetwood was 'a black nobleman,' he proposed immediate marriage. The
hymeneal invitation, wafted to her on the breath of rum-shrub, obtained
no response from Madge until she had received evasive answers as to why
the earl dismissed him, and whence the stock of money came.

Lord Fleetwood, he repeated, was a black nobleman. She brought him to say
of his knowledge, that Lord Fleetwood hated, and had reason to hate,
Captain Levellier. 'Shouldn't I hate the man took my sweetheart from me
and popped me into the noose with his sister instead?' Madge was now
advised to be overcome by the smell of rum-shrub:--a mere fancy drink
tossed off by heroes in their idle moments, before they settle down to
the serious business of real drinking, Kit protested. He simulated
envious admiration of known heroes, who meant business, and scorned any
of the weak stuff under brandy, and went at it till the bottles were the
first to give in. For why? They had to stomach an injury from the world
or their young woman, and half-way on they shoved that young person and
all enemies aside, trampled 'em. That was what Old O'Devy signified; and
many's the man driven to his consolation by a cat of a girl, who's like
the elements in their puffs and spits at a gallant ship, that rides the
tighter and the tighter for all they can do to capsize. 'Tighter than
ever I was tight I'll be to-night, if you can't behave.'

They fell upon the smack of words. Kit hitched and huffed away,
threatening bottles. Whatever he had done, it was to establish the
petticoated hornet in the dignity of matron of a champion light-weight's
wholesome retreat of a public-house. A spell of his larkish hilarity was
for the punishment of the girl devoted to his heroical performances, as
he still considered her to be, though women are notoriously volatile, and
her language was mounting a stage above the kitchen.

Madge had little sorrow for him. She was the girl of the fiery heart, not
the large heart; she could never be devoted to more than one at a time,
and her mistress had all her heart. In relation to Kit, the thought of
her having sacrificed her good name to him, flung her on her pride of
chastity, without the reckoning of it as a merit. It was the inward
assurance of her independence: the young spinster's planting of the,
standard of her proud secret knowledge of what she is, let it be a thing
of worth or what you will, or the world think as it may. That was her
thought.

Her feeling, the much livelier animation, was bitter grief, because her
mistress, unlike herself, had been betrayed by her ignorance of the man
into calling him husband. Just some knowledge of the man! The warning to
the rescue might be there. For nothing did the dear lady weep except for
her brother's evil fortune. The day when she had intelligence from Mrs.
Levellier of her brother's defeat, she wept over the letter on her knees
long hours. 'Me, my child, my brother!' she cried more than once. She had
her suspicion of the earl then, and instantly, as her loving servant had.
The suspicion was now no dark light, but a clear day-beam to Madge. She
adopted Kit's word of Lord Fleetwood. 'A black nobleman he is! he is!'
Her mistress had written like a creature begging him for money. He did
not deign a reply. To her! When he had seen good proof she was the
bravest woman on earth; and she rushed at death to save a child, a common
child; as people say. And who knows but she saved that husband of hers,
too, from bites might have sent him out of the world barking, and all his
wealth not able to stop him!

They were in the month of March. Her dear mistress had been begging my
lord through Mr. Woodseer constantly of late for an allowance of money;
on her knees to him, as it seemed; and Mr. Woodseer was expected at
Esslemont. Her mistress was looking for him eagerly. Something her heart
was in depended on it, and only her brother could be the object, for now
she loved only him of these men; though a gentleman coming over from
Barlings pretty often would pour mines of money into her lap for half a
word.

Carinthia had walked up to Croridge in the morning to meet her brother at
Lekkatts. Madge was left guardian of the child. She liked a stroll any
day round Esslemont Park, where her mistress was beginning to strike
roots; as she soon did wherever she was planted, despite a tone of pity
for artificial waters and gardeners' arts. Madge respected them. She knew
nothing of the grandeur of wildness. Her native English veneration for
the smoothing hand of wealth led her to think Esslemont the home of all
homes for a lady with her husband beside her. And without him, too, if he
were wafted over seas and away: if there would but come a wind to do
that!

The wild North-easter tore the budded beeches. Master John Edward Russett
lay in the cradling-basket drawn by his docile donkey, Martha and Madge
to right and left of him; a speechless rustic, graduating in footman's
livery, to rear.

At slow march round by the wrinkled water, Madge saw the park gates flung
wide. A coach drove up the road along on the farther rim of the circle,
direct for the house. It stopped, the team turned leisurely and came at a
smart pace toward the carriage-basket. Lord Fleetwood was recognized.

He alighted, bidding one of his grooms drive to stables. Madge performed
her reverence, aware that she did it in clumsy style; his presence had
startled her instincts and set them travelling.

'Coldish for the youngster,' he said. 'All well, Madge?'

'Baby sleeps in the air, my lord,' she replied. 'My lady has gone to
Croridge.'

'Sharp air for a child, isn't it?'

'My lady teaches him to breathe with his mouth shut, like her father
taught her when she was little. Our baby never catches colds.'

Madge displayed the child's face.

The father dropped a glance on it from the height of skies.

'Croridge, you said?'

'Her uncle, Lord Levellier's.'

'You say, never catches cold?'

'Not our baby, my lord.'

Probably good management on the part of the mother. But the wife's
absence disappointed the husband strung to meet her, and an obtrusion of
her practical motherhood blurred the prospect demanded by his present
step.

'When do you expect her to return, Madge?'

'Before nightfall, my lord.'

'She walks?'

'Oh yes, my lady is fond of walking.'

'I suppose she could defend herself?'

'My lady walks with a good stick.'

Fleetwood weighed the chances; beheld her figure attacked, Amazonian.

'And tell me, my dear--Kit?'

I don't see more of Kit Ines.'

'What has the fellow done?'

'I'd like him to let me know why he was dismissed.'

'Ah. He kept silent on that point.'

'He let out enough.'

'You've punished him, if he's to lose a bonny sweetheart, poor devil!
Your sister Sally sends you messages?'

'We're both of us grateful, my lord.'

He lifted the thin veil from John Edward Russett's face with a loveless
hand.

'You remember the child bitten by a dog down in Wales. I have word from
my manager there. Poor little wretch has died--died raving.'

Madge's bosom went shivering up and sank. 'My lady was right. She's not
often wrong.'

'She's looking well?' said the earl, impatient with her moral
merits:--and this communication from Wales had been the decisive motive
agent in hurrying him at last to Esslemont. The next moment he heard
coolly of the lady's looking well. He wanted fervid eulogy of his wife's
looks, if he was to hear any.




CHAPTER XXXVI

BELOW THE SURFACE AND ABOVE

The girl was counselled by the tremor of her instincts to forbear to
speak of the minor circumstance, that her mistress had, besides a good
stick, a good companion on the road to Croridge: and she rejoiced to
think her mistress had him, because it seemed an intimation of justice
returning upon earth. She was combative, a born rebel against tyranny.
She weighed the powers, she felt to the worth of the persons coming into
her range of touch: she set her mistress and my lord fronting for a
wrestle, and my lord's wealth went to thin vapour, and her mistress's
character threw him. More dimly, my lord and the Welsh gentleman were put
to the trial: a tough one for these two men. She did not proclaim the
winner, but a momentary flutter of pity in the direction of Lord
Fleetwood did as much. She pitied him; for his presence at Esslemont
betrayed an inclination; he was ignorant of his lady's character, of how
firm she could be to defy him and all the world, in her gratitude to the
gentleman she thought of as her true friend, smiled at for his open
nature,--called by his Christian name.

The idea of a piece of information stinging Lord Fleetwood, the desire to
sting, so as to be an instrument of retribution (one of female human
nature's ecstasies); and her, abstaining, that she, might not pain the
lord who had been generous to her sister Sally, made the force in Madge's
breast which urges to the gambling for the undeveloped, entitled
prophecy. She kept it low and felt it thrill.

Lord Fleetwood, chatted; Madge had him wincing. He might pull the cover
off the child's face carelessly--he looked at the child. His look at the
child was a thought of the mother. If he thought of the mother, he would
be wanting to see her. If he heard her call a gentleman by his Christian
name, and heard the gentleman say 'Carinthia' my lord would begin to
shiver at changes. Women have to do unusual things when they would bring
that outer set to human behaviour. Perhaps my lord would mount the
coach-box and whip his horses away, adieu forever. His lady would not
weep. He might, perhaps, command her to keep her mouth shut from
gentlemen's Christian names, all except his own. His lady would not obey.
He had to learn something of changes that had come to others as well as
to himself. Ah, and then would he dare hint, as base men will? He may
blow foul smoke on her, she will shine out of it. He has to learn what
she is, that is his lesson; and let him pray all night and work hard all
day for it not to be too late. Let him try to be a little like Mr.
Woodseer, who worships the countess, and is hearty with the gentleman she
treats as her best of friends. There is the real nobleman.

Fleetwood chatted on airily. His instincts were duller than those of the
black-browed girl, at whom he gazed for idle satisfaction of eye from
time to time while she replied demurely and maintained her drama of, the
featureless but well-distinguished actors within her bosom,--a round,
plump bust, good wharfage and harbourage, he was thinking. Excellent
harbourage, supposing the arms out in pure good-will. A girl to hold her
voyager fast and safe! Men of her class had really a capital choice in a
girl like this. Men of another class as well, possibly, for temporary
anchorage out midchannel. No?--possibly not. Here and there a girl is a
Tartar. Ines talked of her as if she were a kind of religious edifice and
a doubt were sacrilege. She could impress the rascal: girls have their
arts for reaching the holy end, and still they may have a welcome for a
foreign ship.

The earl said humorously: 'You will grant me permission to lunch at your
mistress's table in her absence?' And she said: 'My lord!' And he
resumed, to waken her interest with a personal question: 'You like our
quiet country round Esslemont?' She said: 'I do,' and gave him plain look
for look. Her eye was undefended: he went into it, finding neither
shallow nor depth, simply the look, always the look; whereby he knew that
no story of man was there, and not the shyest of remote responsive
invitations from Nature's wakened and detected rogue. The bed of an
unmarried young woman's eye yields her secret of past and present to the
intrepid diver, if he can get his plunge; he holds her for the tenth of a
minute, that is the revealment. Jewel or oyster-shell, it is ours. She
cannot withhold it, he knew right well. This girl, then, was, he could
believe, one of the rarely exampled innocent in knowledge. He was
practised to judge.

Invitation or challenge or response from the handsomest he would have
scorned just then. His native devilry suffered a stir at sight of an
innocent in knowledge and spotless after experiences. By a sudden
singular twist, rather unfairly, naturally, as it happened, he attributed
it to an influence issuing from her mistress, to whom the girl was
devoted, whom consequently she copied; might physically, and also
morally, at a distance, resemble.

'Well, you've been a faithful servant to your lady, my dear; I hope
you'll be comfortable here,' he said. 'She likes the mountains.'

'My lady would be quite contented if she could pass two months of the
year in the mountains,' Madge answered.

'Look at me. They say people living together get a likeness to one
another. What's your opinion? Upon my word, your eyebrows remind me,
though they're not the colour--they have a bend!'

'You've seen my lady in danger, my lord.'

'Yes; well, there 's no one to resemble her there, she has her mark--kind
of superhuman business. We're none of us "fifty feet high, with
phosphorus heads," as your friend Mr. Gower Woodseer says of the
prodigiosities. Lady Fleetwood is back--when?'

'Before dark, she should be.'

He ran up the steps to the house.

At Lekkatts beneath Croridge a lean midday meal was being finished hard
on the commencement by a silent company of three. When eating is choking
to the younger members of the repast, bread and cold mutton-bone serve
the turn as conclusively as the Frenchman's buffet-dishes. Carinthia's
face of unshed tears dashed what small appetite Chillon had. Lord
Levellier plied his fork in his right hand ruminating, his back an arch
across his plate.

Riddles to the thwarted young, these old people will not consent to be
read by sensations. Carinthia watched his jaws at their work of eating
under his victim's eye-knowing Chillon to be no longer an officer in the
English service; knowing that her beloved had sold out for the mere money
to pay debts and support his Henrietta; knowing, as he must know, that
Chillon's act struck a knife to pierce his mother's breast through her
coffin-boards! This old man could eat, and he could withhold the means
due to his dead sister's son. Could he look on Chillon and not feel that
the mother's heart was beating in her son's fortunes? Half the money due
to Chillon would have saved him from ruin.

Lord Levellier laid his fork on the plate. He munched his grievance with
his bit of meat. The nephew and niece here present feeding on him were
not so considerate as the Welsh gentleman, a total stranger, who had
walked up to Lekkatts with the Countess of Fleetwood, and expressed the
preference to feed at an inn. Relatives are cormorants.

His fork on his plate released the couple. Barely half a dozen words,
before the sitting to that niggard restoration, had informed Carinthia of
the step taken by her brother. She beckoned him to follow her.

'The worst is done now, Chillon. I am silent. Uncle is a rock. You say we
must not offend. I have given him my whole mind. Say where Riette is to
live.'

'Her headquarters will be here, at a furnished house. She's, with her
cousin, the Dowager.'

'Yes. She should be with me.'

'She wants music. She wants--poor girl! let her have what comes to her.'

Their thoughts beneath their speech were like fish darting under shadow
of the traffic bridge.

'She loves music,' said Carinthia; 'it is almost life to her, like fresh
air to me. Next month I am in London; Lady Arpington is kind. She will
give me as much of their polish as I can take. I dare say I should feel
the need of it if I were an enlightened person.'

'For instance, did I hear "Owain," when your Welsh friend was leaving?'
Chillon asked.

'It was his dying wife's wish, brother.'

'Keep to the rules, dear.'

'They have been broken, Chillon.'

'Mend them.'

'That would be a step backward.'

'"The right one for defence!" father says.'

'Father says, "The habit of the defensive paralyzes will."'

'"Womanizes," he says, Carin. You quote him falsely, to shield the sex.
Quite right. But my sister must not be tricky. Keep to the rules. You're
an exceptional woman, and it would be a good argument, if you were not in
an exceptional position.'

'Owain is the exceptional man, brother.'

'My dear, after all, you have a husband.'

'I have a brother, I have a friend, I have no--I am a man's wife and the
mother of his child; I am free, or husband would mean dungeon. Does my
brother want an oath from me? That I can give him.'

'Conduct, yes; I couldn't doubt you,' said Chillon. 'But "the world's a
flood at a dyke for women, and they must keep watch," you've read.'

'But Owain is not our enemy,' said Carinthia, in her deeper tones,
expressive of conviction, and not thereby assuring to hear. 'He is a man
with men, a child with women. His Rebecca could describe him; I laugh now
at some of her sayings of him; I see her mouth, so tenderly comical over
her big "simpleton," she called him, and loved him so.'

The gentleman appeared on the waste land above the house. His very loose
black suit and a peculiar roll of his gait likened him to a mourning
boatswain who was jolly. In Lord Levellier's workshop his remarks were to
the point. Chillon's powders for guns and blasting interested him, and he
proposed to ride over from Barlings to witness a test of them.

'You are staying at Barlings?' Chillon said.

'Yes; now Carinthia is at Esslemont,' he replied, astoundingly the
simpleton.

His conversation was practical and shrewd on the walk with Chillon and
Carinthia down to Esslemont evidently he was a man well armed to
encounter the world; social usages might be taught him. Chillon gained a
round view of the worthy simple fellow, unlikely to turn out
impracticable, for he talked such good sense upon matters of business.

Carinthia saw her brother tickled and interested. A feather moved her.
Full of tears though she was, her, heart lay open to the heavens and
their kind, small, wholesome gifts. Her happiness in the walk with her
brother and her friend--the pair of them united by her companionship,
both of them showing they counted her their comrade--was the nearest to
the radiant day before she landed on an island, and imagined happiness
grew here, and found it to be gilt thorns, loud mockery. A shaving
North-easter tore the scream from hedges and the roar from copses under a
faceless breadth of sky, and she said, as they turned into Esslemont Park
lane: 'We have had one of our old walks to-day, Chillon!'

'You used to walk together long walks over in your own country,' said Mr.
Wythan.

'Yes, Owain, we did, and my brother never knew me tired.'

'Never knew you confess to it,' said Chillon, as he swallowed the name on
her lips.

'Walking was flying over there, brother.'

'Say once or twice in Wales, too,' Mr. Wythan begged of her.

'Wales reminded. Yes, ..Owain, I shall not forget Wales, Welsh people.
Mr. Woodseer says they have the three-stringed harp in their breasts, and
one string is always humming, whether you pull it or no.'

'That 's love of country! that 's their love of wild Wales, Carinthia.'

There was a quiet interrogation in Chillon's turn of the head at this
fervent simpleton.

'I love them for that hum,' said she. 'It joins one in me.'

'Call to them any day, they are up, ready to march!'

'Oh, dear souls!' Carinthia said.

Her breath drew in.

The three were dumb. They saw Lord Fleetwood standing in the park
gateway.




CHAPTER XXXVII

BETWEEN CARINTHIA AND HER LORD

The earl's easy grace of manner was a ceremonial mantle on him as he
grasped the situation in a look. He bent with deferential familiarity to
his countess, exactly toning the degree of difference which befitted a
salute to the two gentlemen, amiable or hostile.

'There and back?' he said, and conveyed a compliment to Carinthia's
pedestrian vigour in the wary smile which can be recalled for a snub.

She replied: 'We have walked the distance, my lord.'

Her smile was the braced one of an untired stepper.

'A cold wind for you.'

'We walked fast.'

She compelled him to take her in the plural, though he addressed her
separately, but her tones had their music.

'Your brother, Captain Kirby-Levellier, I believe?'

'My brother is not of the army now, my lord.'

She waved her hand for Madge to conduct donkey and baby to the house. He
noticed. He was unruffled.

The form of amenity expected from her, in relation to her brother, was
not exhibited. She might perhaps be feeling herself awkward at
introductions, and had to be excused.

'I beg,' he said, and motioned to Chillon the way of welcome into the
park, saw the fixed figure, and passed over the unspoken refusal, with a
remark to Mr. Wythan: 'At Barlings, I presume?'

'My tent is pitched there,' was the answer.

'Good-bye, my brother,' said Carinthia.

Chillon folded his arms round her. 'God bless you, dear love. Let me see
you soon.' He murmured:

'You can protect yourself.'

'Fear nothing for me, dearest.'

She kissed her brother's cheek. The strain of her spread fingers on his
shoulder signified no dread at her being left behind.

Strangers observing their embrace would have vowed that the pair were
brother and sister, and of a notable stock.

'I will walk with you to Croridge again when you send word you are
willing to go; and so, good-bye, Owain,' she said.

She gave her hand; frankly she pressed the Welshman's, he not a whit
behind her in frankness.

Fleetwood had a skimming sense of a drop upon a funny, whirly world. He
kept from giddiness, though the whirl had lasted since he beheld the form
of a wild forest girl, dancing, as it struck him now, over an abyss, on
the plumed shoot of a stumpy tree.

Ay, and she danced at the ducal schloss;--she mounted his coach like a
witch of the Alps up crags;--she was beside him pelting to the vale under
a leaden Southwester;--she sat solitary by the fireside in the room of
the inn.

Veil it. He consented to the veil he could not lift. He had not even
power to try, and his heart thumped.

London's Whitechapel Countess glided before him like a candle in the fog.

He had accused her as the creature destroying Romance. Was it gold in
place of gilding, absolute upper human life that the ridiculous object at
his heels over London proposed instead of delirious brilliancies, drunken
gallops, poison-syrups,--puffs of a young man's vapours?

There was Madge and the donkey basket-trap ahead on the road to the
house, bearing proof of the veiled had-been: signification of a
might-have-been. Why not a possible might-be? Still the might-be might
be. Looking on this shaven earth and sky of March with the wrathful wind
at work, we know that it is not the end: a day follows for the world. But
looking on those blown black funeral sprays, and the wrinkled chill
waters, and the stare of the Esslemont house-windows, it has an
appearance of the last lines of our written volume: dead Finis. Not
death; fouler, the man alive seeing himself stretched helpless for the
altering of his deeds; a coffin carrying him; the fatal whiteheaded
sacerdotal official intoning his aims on the march to front, the drear
craped files of the liveried, salaried mourners over his failure,
trooping at his heels.

Frontward was the small lake's grey water, rearward an avenue of limes.

But the man alive, if but an inch alive, can so take his life in his
clutch, that he does alter, cleanse, recast his deeds:--it is known;
priests proclaim it, philosophers admit it.

Can he lay his clutch on another's life, and wring out the tears shed,
the stains of the bruises, recollection of the wrongs?

Contemplate the wounded creature as a woman. Then, what sort of woman is
she? She was once under a fascination--ludicrously, painfully, intensely
like a sort of tipsy poor puss, the trapped hare tossed to her serpent;
and thoroughly reassured for a few caresses, quite at home, caged and at
home; and all abloom with pretty ways, modest pranks, innocent fondlings.
Gobbled, my dear!

It is the doom of the innocents, a natural fate. Smother the creature
with kindness again, show we are a point in the scale above that old
coiler snake--which broke no bones, bit not so very deep;--she will be,
she ought to be, the woman she was. That is, if she was then sincere, a
dose of kindness should operate happily to restore the honeymoony
fancies, hopes, trusts, dreams, all back, as before the honeymoon showed
the silver crook and shadowy hag's back of a decaying crescent. And true
enough, the poor girl's young crescent of a honeymoon went down
sickly-yellow rather early. It can be renewed. She really was at that
time rather romantic. She became absurd. Romance is in her, nevertheless.
She is a woman of mettle: she is probably expecting to be wooed. One
makes a hash of yesterday's left dish, but she may know no better. 'Add a
pickle,' as Chummy Potts used to say. The dish is rendered savoury by a
slight expenditure of attentions, just a dab of intimated soft stuff.

'Pleasant to see you established here, if you find the place agreeable,'
he said.

She was kissing her hand to her brother, all her eyes for him--or for the
couple; and they were hidden by the park lodge before she replied: 'It is
an admired, beautiful place.'

'I came,' said he, 'to have your assurance that it suits you.'

'I thank you, my lord.'

'"My lord" would like a short rest, Carinthia.'

She seemed placidly acquiescing. 'You have seen the boy?'

'Twice to-day. We were having a conversation just now.'

'We think him very intelligent.'

'Lady Arpington tells me you do the honours here excellently.'

'She is good to me.'

'Praises the mother's management of the young one. John Edward: Edward
for call-name. Madge boasts his power for sleeping.'

'He gives little trouble.'

'And babes repay us! We learn from small things. Out of the mouth of
babes wisdom? Well, their habits show the wisdom of the mother. A good
mother! There's no higher title. A lady of my acquaintance bids fair to
win it, they say.'

Carinthia looked in simplicity, saw herself, and said 'If a mother may
rear her boy till he must go to school, she is rewarded for all she
does.'

'Ah,' said he, nodding over her mania of the perpetual suspicion.
'Leddings, Queeney, the servants here, run smoothly?'

'They do: they are happy in serving.'

'You see, we English are not such bad fellows when we're known. The
climate to-day, for example, is rather trying.'

'I miss colours most in England,' said Carinthia. 'I like the winds. Now
and then we have a day to remember.'

'We 're to be "the artist of the day," Gower Woodseer says, and we get an
attachment to the dreariest; we are to study "small variations of the
commonplace"--dear me! But he may be right. The "sky of lead and scraped
lead" over those lines, he points out; and it's not a bad trick for
reconciling us to gloomy English weather. You take lessons from him?'

'I can always learn from him,' said Carinthia.

Fleetwood depicted his plodding Gower at the tussle with account-books.
She was earnest in sympathy; not awake to the comical; dull as the
clouds, dull as the discourse. Yet he throbbed for being near her took
impression of her figure, the play of her features, the carriage of her
body.

He was shut from her eyes. The clear brown eyes gave exchange of looks;
less of admission than her honest maid's.

Madge and the miracle infant awaited them on the terrace. For so foreign
did the mother make herself to him, that the appearance of the child,
their own child, here between them, was next to miraculous; and the
mother, who might well have been the most astonished, had transparently
not an idea beyond the verified palpable lump of young life she lifted in
her arms out of the arms of Madge, maternally at home with its presence
on earth.

Demonstrably a fine specimen, a promising youngster. The father was
allowed to inspect him. This was his heir: a little fellow of smiles,
features, puckered brows of inquiry; seeming a thing made already, and
active on his own account.

'Do people see likenesses?' he asked.

'Some do,' said the mother.

'You?'

She was constrained to give answer. 'There is a likeness to my father, I
have thought.'

There's a dotage of idolatrous daughters, he could have retorted; and his
gaze was a polite offer to humdrum reconcilement, if it pleased her.

She sent the child up the steps.

'Do you come in, my lord?'

'The house is yours, my lady.'

'I cannot feel it mine.'

'You are the mistress to invite or exclude.'

'I am ready to go in a few hours for a small income of money, for my
child and me.'

'--Our child.'

'Yes.'

'It is our child.'

'It is.'

'Any sum you choose to name. But where would you live?'

'Near my brother I would live.'

'Three thousand a year for pin-money, or more, are at your disposal. Stay
here, I beg. You have only to notify your wants. And we'll talk
familiarly now, as we're together. Can I be of aid to your brother? Tell
me, pray. I am disposed in every way to subscribe to your wishes. Pray,
speak, speak out.'

So the earl said. He had to force his familiar tone against the rebuke of
her grandeur of stature; and he was for inducing her to deliver her mind,
that the mountain girl's feebleness in speech might reinstate him. She
rejoined unhesitatingly: 'My brother would not accept aid from you, my
lord. I will take no money more than for my needs.'

'You spoke of certain sums down in Wales.'

'I did then.' Her voice was dead.

'Ah! You must be feeling the cold North-wind here.'

'I do not. You may feel the cold, my lord. Will you enter the house?'

'Do you invite me?'

'The house is your own.'

'Will the mistress of the house honour me so far?'

'I am not the mistress of the house, my lord.'

'You refuse, Carinthia?'

'I would keep from using those words. I have no right to refuse the entry
of the house to you.'

'If I come in?'

'I guard my rooms.'

She had been awake, then, to the thrusting and parrying behind masked
language.

'Good. You are quite decided, I may suppose.'

'I will leave them when I have a little money, or when I know of how I
may earn some.'

'The Countess of Fleetwood earning a little money?'

'I can put aside your title, my lord.'

'No, you can't put it aside while the man with the title lives, not even
if you're running off in earnest, under a dozen Welsh names. Why should
you desire to do it? The title entitles you to the command of half my
possessions. As to the house; don't be alarmed; you will not have to
guard your rooms. The extraordinary wild animal you--the impression may
have been produced; I see, I see. If I were in the house, I should not be
rageing at your doors; and it is not my intention to enter the house.
That is, not by right of ownership. You have my word.'

He bowed to her, and walked to the stables.

She had the art of extracting his word from him. The word given, she went
off with it, disengaged mistress of Esslemont. And she might have the
place for residence, but a decent courtesy required that she should
remain at the portico until he was out of sight. She was the first out of
sight, rather insolently.

She returned him without comment the spell he had cast on her, and he was
left to estimate the value of a dirited piece of metal not in the
currency, stamped false coin. An odd sense of impoverishment chilled him.
Chilly weather was afflicting the whole country, he was reminded, and he
paced about hurriedly until his horses were in the shafts. After all, his
driving away would be much more expected of him than a stay at the house
where the Whitechapel Countess resided, chill, dry, talking the language
of early Exercises in English, suitable to her Welshmen. Did she 'Owain'
them every one?

As he whipped along the drive and left that glassy stare of Esslemont
behind him, there came a slap of a reflection:--here, on the box of this
coach, the bride just bursting her sheath sat, and was like warm wax to
take impressions. She was like hard stone to retain them, pretty
evidently. Like women the world over, she thinks only of her side of the
case. Men disdain to plead theirs. Now money is offered her, she declines
it. Formerly, she made it the principal subject of her conversation.

Turn the mind to something brighter. Fleetwood strung himself to do so,
and became agitated by the question whether the bride sat to left or to
right of him when the South-wester blew-a wind altogether preferable to
the chill North-east. Women, when they are no longer warm, are colder
than the deadliest catarrh wind scything across these islands. Of course
she sat to left of him. In the line of the main road, he remembered a
look he dropped on her, a look over his left shoulder.

She never had a wooing: she wanted it, had a kind of right to it, or the
show of it. How to begin? But was she worth an effort? Turn to something
brighter. Religion is the one refuge from women, Feltre says: his Roman
Catholic recipe. The old shoemaker, Mr. Woodseer, hauls women into his
religion, and purifies them by the process,--fancies he does. He gets
them to wear an air. Old Gower, too, has his Religion of Nature, with
free admission for women, whom he worships in similes, running away from
them, leering sheepishly. No, Feltre's' rigid monastic system is the sole
haven. And what a world, where we have no safety except in renouncing it!
The two sexes created to devour one another must abjure their sex before
they gain 'The Peace,' as Feltre says, impressively, if absurdly. He will
end a monk if he has the courage of his logic. A queer spectacle--an
English nobleman a shaven monk!

Fleetwood shuddered. We are twisted face about to discover our being
saved by women from that horror--the joining the ranks of the nasal
friars. By what women? Bacchante, clearly, if the wife we have is a
North-easter to wither us, blood, bone, and soul.

He was hungry; he waxed furious with the woman who had flung him out upon
the roads. He was thirsty as well. The brightest something to refresh his
thoughts grew and glowed in the form of a shiny table, bearing tasty
dishes, old wines; at an inn or anywhere. But, out of London, an English
inn to furnish the dishes and the wines for a civilized and
self-respecting man is hard to seek, as difficult to find as a perfect
skeleton of an extinct species. The earl's breast howled derision of his
pursuit when he drew up at the; sign of the Royal Sovereign, in the dusky
hour, and handed himself desperately to Mrs. Rundles' mercy.

He could not wait for a dinner, so his eating was cold meat. Warned by a
sip, that his drinking, if he drank, was to be an excursion in chemical
acids, the virtues of an abstainer served for his consolation. Tolerant
of tobacco, although he did not smoke, he fronted the fire, envying Gower
Woodseer the contemplative pipe, which for half a dozen puffs wafted him
to bracing deserts, or primaeval forests, or old highways with the
swallow thoughts above him, down the Past, into the Future. A pipe is
pleasant dreams at command. A pipe is the concrete form of philosophy.
Why, then, a pipe is the alternative of a friar's frock for an escape
from women. But if one does not smoke! . . . Here and there a man is
visibly in the eyes of all men cursed: let him be blest by Fortune; let
him be handsome, healthy, wealthy, courted, he is cursed.

Fleetwood lay that night beneath the roof of the Royal Sovereign. Sleep
is life's legitimate mate. It will treat us at times as the faithless
wife, who becomes a harrying beast, behaves to her lord. He had no sleep.
Having put out his candle, an idea took hold of him, and he jumped up to
light it again and verify the idea that this room . . . He left the bed
and strode round it, going in the guise of an urgent somnambulist, or
ghost bearing burden of an imperfectly remembered mission. This was the
room.

Reason and cold together overcame his illogical scruples to lie down on
that bed soliciting the sleep desired. He lay and groaned, lay and
rolled. All night the Naval Monarch with the loose cheeks and jelly smile
of the swinging sign-board creaked. Flaws of the North-easter swung and
banged him. He creaked high, in complaint,--low, in some partial
contentment. There was piping of his boatswain, shrill piping--shrieks of
the whistle. How many nights had that most ill-fated of brides lain
listening to the idiotic uproar! It excused a touch of craziness. But how
many? Not one, not two, ten, twenty:--count, count to the exact number of
nights the unhappy girl must have heard those mad colloquies of the
hurricane boatswain and the chirpy king. By heaven! Whitechapel, after
one night of it, beckons as a haven of grace.




CHAPTER XXXVIII

A DIP INTO THE SPRING'S WATERS

The night Lord Fleetwood had passed cured him of the wound Carinthia
dealt, with her blunt, defensive phrase and her Welshman. Seated on his
coach-box, he turned for a look the back way leading to Esslemont, and
saw rosed crag and mountain forest rather than the soft undulations of
parkland pushing green meadows or brown copse up the slopes under his
eye. She had never been courted: she deserved a siege. She was a daughter
of the racy highlands. And she, who could say to her husband, 'I guard my
rooms,' without sign of the stage-face of scorn or defiance or flinging
of the glove, she would have to be captured by siege, it was clear. She
wore an aspect of the confident fortress, which neither challenges nor
cries to treat, but commands respect. How did she accomplish this miracle
of commanding respect after such a string of somersaults before the
London world?

He had to drive North-westward: his word was pledged to one of his donkey
Ixionides--Abrane, he recollected--to be a witness at some contemptible
exhibition of the fellow's muscular skill: a match to punt against a
Thames waterman: this time. Odd how it should come about that the giving
of his word forced him now to drive away from the woman once causing him
to curse his luck as the prisoner of his word! However, there was to be
an end of it soon--a change; change as remarkable as Harry Monmouth's at
the touching of his crown. Though in these days, in our jog-trot Old
England, half a step on the road to greatness is the utmost we can hop;
and all England jeers at the man attempting it. He caps himself with this
or that one of their titles. For it is not the popular thing among
Englishmen. Their hero, when they have done their fighting, is the
wealthy patron of Sport. What sort of creatures are his comrades? But he
cannot have comrades unless he is on the level of them. Yet let him be
never so high above them, they charge him and point him as a piece of
cannon; assenting to the flatteries they puff into him, he is their
engine. 'The idol of the hour is the mob's wooden puppet, and the doing
of the popular thing seed of no harvest,' Gower Woodseer says, moderately
well, snuffing incense of his happy delivery. Not to be the idol, to have
an aim of our own, there lies the truer pride, if we intend respect of
ourselves.

The Mr. Pulpit young men have in them, until their habits have fretted
him out, was directing Lord Fleetwood's meditations upon the errors of
the general man, as a cover for lateral references to his hitherto
erratic career: not much worse than a swerving from the right line, which
now seemed the desirable road for him, and had previously seemed so
stale, so repulsive. He was, of course, only half-conscious of his
pulpitizing; he fancied the serious vein of his thoughts attributable to
a tumbled night. Nevertheless, he had the question whether that
woman--poor girl!--was influencing his thoughts. For in a moment, the
very word 'respect' pitched him upon her character; to see it a character
that emerged beneath obstacles, and overcame ridicule, won suffrages, won
a reluctant husband's admiration, pricked him from distaste to what might
really be taste for her companionship, or something more alarming to
contemplate in the possibilities,--thirst for it. He was driving away,
and he longed to turn back. He did respect her character: a character
angular as her features were, and similarly harmonious, splendid in
action.

Respect seems a coolish form of tribute from a man who admires. He had to
say that he did not vastly respect beautiful women. Have they all the
poetry? Know them well, and where is it?

The pupil of Gower Woodseer asked himself to specify the poetry of woman.
She is weak and inferior, but she has it; civilized men acknowledge it;
and it is independent, or may be beside her gift of beauty. She has more
of it than we have. Then name it.

Well, the flowers of the field are frail things. Pluck one, and you have
in your hand the frailest of things. But reach through the charm of
colour and the tale of its beneficence in frailty to the poetry of the
flower, and secret of the myriad stars will fail to tell you more than
does that poetry of your little flower. Lord Feltre, at the heels of St.
Francis, agrees in that.

Well, then, much so with the flowers of the two hands and feet. We do
homage to those ungathered, and reserve our supremacy; the gathered, no
longer courted, are the test of men. When the embraced woman breathes
respect into us, she wings a beast. We have from her the poetry of the
tasted life; excelling any garden-gate or threshold lyrics called forth
by purest early bloom. Respect for her person, for her bearing, for her
character that is in the sum a beauty plastic to the civilized young
man's needs and cravings, as queenly physical loveliness has never so
fully been to him along the walks of life, and as ideal worships cannot
be for our nerving contentment. She brings us to the union of body and
soul; as good as to say, earth and heaven. Secret of all human
aspirations, the ripeness of the creeds, is there; and the passion for
the woman desired has no poetry equalling that of the embraced respected
woman.

Something of this went reeling through Fleetwood; positively to this end;
accompanied the while with flashes of Carinthia, her figure across the
varied scenes. Ridicule vanished. Could it ever have existed? If London
had witnessed the scene down in Wales, London never again would laugh at
the Whitechapel Countess.

He laughed amicably at himself for the citizen sobriety of these views,
on the part of a nobleman whose airy pleasure it had been to flout your
sober citizens, with their toad-at-the-hop notions, their walled
conceptions, their drab propriety; and felt a petted familiar within him
dub all pulpitizing, poetizing drivellers with one of those detested
titles, invented by the English as a corrective of their maladies or the
excesses of their higher moods. But, reflection telling him that he had
done injury to Carinthia--had inflicted the sorest of the wounds a young
woman a new bride can endure, he nodded acquiescence to the charge of
misbehaviour, and muzzled the cynic.

As a consequence, the truisms flooded him and he lost his guard against
our native prosiness. Must we be prosy if we are profoundly, uncynically
sincere? Do but listen to the stuff we are maundering! Extracts of
poetry, if one could hit upon the right, would serve for a relief and a
lift when we are in this ditch of the serious vein. Gower Woodseer would
have any number handy to spout. Or Felter:--your convinced and fervent
Catholic has quotations of images and Latin hymns to his Madonna or one
of his Catherines, by the dozen, to suit an enthusiastic fit of the
worship of some fair woman, and elude the prosy in commending her. Feltre
is enviable there. As he says, it is natural to worship, and only the
Catholics can prostrate themselves with dignity. That is matter for
thought. Stir us to the depths, it will be found that we are poor soupy
stuff. For estimable language, and the preservation of self-respect in
prostration, we want ritual, ceremonial elevation of the visible object
for the soul's adoring through the eye. So may we escape our foul or
empty selves.

Lord Feltre seemed to Fleetwood at the moment a more serviceable friend
than Gower Woodseer preaching 'Nature'--an abstraction, not inspiring to
the devout poetic or giving us the tongue above our native prosy. He was
raised and refreshed by recollected lines of a Gregorian chant he and
Feltre had heard together under the roof of that Alpine monastery.

The Dame collapses. There is little doubt of her having the world to back
her in protest against all fine filmy work of the exploration of a young
man's intricacies or cavities. Let her not forget the fact she has
frequently impressed upon us, that he was 'the very wealthiest nobleman
of his time,' instructive to touch inside as well as out. He had his
share of brains, too. And also she should be mindful of an alteration of
English taste likely of occurrence in the remote posterity she vows she
is for addressing after she has exhausted our present hungry generation.
The posterity signified will, it is calculable, it is next to certain,
have studied a developed human nature so far as to know the composition
of it a not unequal mixture of the philosophic and the romantic, and that
credible realism is to be produced solely by an involvement of those two
elements. Or else, she may be sure, her story once out of the mouth, goes
off dead as the spirits of a vapour that has performed the stroke of
energy. She holds a surprising event in the history of 'the wealthiest
nobleman of his time,' and she would launch it upon readers unprepared,
with the reference to our mysterious and unfathomable nature for an
explanation of the stunning crack on the skull.

This may do now. It will not do ten centuries hence. For the English,
too, are a changeable people in the sight of ulterior Time.

One of the good pieces of work Lord Fleetwood could suppose he had
performed was recalled to him near the turning to his mews by the
handsome Piccadilly fruit-shop. He jumped to the pavement, merely to
gratify. Sarah Winch with a word of Madge; and being emotional just then,
he spoke of Lady Fleetwood's attachment to Madge; and he looked at Sarah
straight, he dropped his voice: 'She said, you remember, you were sisters
to her.'

Sarah remembered that he had spoken of it before. Two brilliant drops
from the deepest of woman's ready well stood in her eyes.

He carried the light of them away. They were such pure jewels of tribute
to the Carinthia now seen by him as worshipping souls of devotees offer
to their Madonna for her most glorious adornment.




CHAPTER XXXIX

THE RED WARNING FROM A SON OF VAPOUR

Desiring loneliness or else Lord Feltre's company, Fleetwood had to grant
a deferred audience at home to various tradesmen, absurdly fussy about
having the house of his leased estate of Calesford furnished complete and
habitable on the very day stipulated by his peremptory orders that the
place should be both habitable and hospitable. They were right, they were
excused; grand entertainments of London had been projected, and he fell
into the weariful business with them, thinking of Henrietta's insatiable
appetite for the pleasures. He had taken the lease of this burdensome
Calesford, at an eight-miles' drive from the Northwest of town, to
gratify the devouring woman's taste which was, to have all the luxuries
of the town in a framework of country scenery.

Gower Woodseer and he were dining together in the evening. The
circumstance was just endurable, but Gower would play the secretary, and
doggedly subjected him to hear a statement of the woeful plight of
Countess Livia's affairs. Gower, commissioned to examine them, remarked:
'If we have all the figures!'

'If we could stop the bleeding!' Fleetwood replied. 'Come to the Opera
to-night; I promised. I promised Abrane for to-morrow. There's no end to
it. This gambling mania's a flux. Not one of them except your old enemy,
Corby, keeps clear of it; and they're at him for subsidies, as they are
at me, and would be at you or any passenger on the suspected of a purse.
Corby shines among them.'

That was heavy judgement enough, Gower thought. No allusion to Esslemont
ensued. The earl ate sparely, and silently for the most part.

He was warmed a little at the Opera by hearing Henrietta's honest
raptures over her Columelli in the Pirata. But Lord Brailstone sat behind
her, and their exchange of ecstasies upon the tattered pathos of

          E il mio tradito amor,

was not moderately offensive.

His countenance in Henrietta's presence had to be studied and interpreted
by Livia. Why did it darken? The demurest of fuliginous intriguers argued
that Brail stone was but doing the spiriting required of him, and would
have to pay the penalty unrewarded, let him Italianize as much as he
pleased. Not many months longer, and there would be the bit of an
outburst, the whiff of scandal, perhaps a shot, and the rupture of an
improvident alliance, followed by Henrietta's free hand to the moody
young earl, who would then have possession of the only woman he could
ever love: and at no cost. Jealousy of a man like Brailstone, however
infatuated the man, was too foolish. He must perceive how matters were
tending? The die-away acid eyeballs-at-the-ceiling of a pair of fanatics
per la musica might irritate a husband, but the lover should read and
know. Giddy as the beautiful creature deprived of her natural aliment
seems in her excuseable hunger for it, she has learnt her lesson, she is
not a reeling libertine.

Brailstone peered through his eyelashes at the same shadow of a frown
where no frown sat on his friend's brows. Displeasure was manifest, and
why? Fleetwood had given him the dispossessing shrug of the man out of
the run, and the hint of the tip for winning, with the aid of operatic
arias; and though he was in Fleetwood's books ever since the prize-fight,
neither Fleetwood nor the husband nor any skittishness of a timorous wife
could stop the pursuer bent to capture the fairest and most inflaming
woman of her day.

'I prefer your stage Columelli,' Fleetwood said.

'I come from exile!' said Henrietta; and her plea in excuse of ecstatics
wrote her down as confessedly treasonable to the place quitted.

Ambrose Mallard entered the box, beholding only his goddess Livia. Their
eyebrows and inaudible lips conversed eloquently. He retired like a
trumped card on the appearance of M. de St. Ombre. The courtly Frenchman
won the ladies to join him in whipping the cream of the world for five
minutes, and passed out before his flavour was exhausted. Brailstone took
his lesson and departed, to spy at them from other boxes and heave an
inflated shirt-front. Young Cressett, the bottle of effervescence, dashed
in, and for him Livia's face was motherly. He rattled a tale of the
highway robbery of Sir Meeson Corby on one of his Yorkshire moors. The
picture of the little baronet arose upon the narration, and it amused.
Chumley Potts came to 'confirm every item,' as he said. 'Plucked Corby
clean. Pistol at his head. Quite old style. Time, ten P.M. Suspects Great
Britain, King, Lords and Commons, and buttons twenty times tighter.
Brosey Mallard down on him for a few fighting men. Perfect answer to
Brosey.'

'Mr. Mallard did not mention the robbery,' Henrietta remarked.

'Feared to shock: Corby such a favoured swain,' Potts accounted for the
omission.

'Brosey spilling last night?' Fleetwood asked.

'At the palazzo, we were,' said Potts. 'Luck pretty fair first off.
Brosey did his trick, and away and away and away went he! More old Brosey
wins, the wiser he gets. I stayed.' He swung to Gower: 'Don't drink dry
Sillery after two A.M. You read me?'

'Egyptian, but decipherable,' said Gower.

The rising of the curtain drew his habitual groan from Potts, and he fled
to collogue with the goodly number of honest fellows in the house of
music who detested 'squallery.' Most of these afflicted pilgrims to the
London conservatory were engaged upon the business of the Goddess richly
inspiring the Heliconian choir, but rendering the fountain-waters heady.
Here they had to be, if they would enjoy the spectacle of London's
biggest and choicest bouquet: and in them, too, there was an unattached
air during Potts' cooling discourse of turf and tables, except when he
tossed them a morsel of tragedy, or the latest joke, not yet past the
full gallop on its course. Their sparkle was transient; woman had them
fast. Compelled to think of them as not serious members of our group, he
assisted at the crush-room exit, and the happy riddance of the beautiful
cousins dedicated to the merry London midnights' further pastures.

Fleetwood's word was extracted, that he would visit the 'palazzo' within
a couple of hours.

Potts exclaimed: 'Good. You promise. Hang me, if I don't think it 's the
only certain thing a man can depend upon in this world.'

He left the earl and Gower Woodseer to their lunatic talk. He still had
his ideas about the association of the pair. 'Hard-headed player of his
own game, that Woodseer, spite of his Mumbo-Jumbo-oracle kind of talk.'

Mallard's turn of luck downward to the deadly drop had come under Potts'
first inspection of the table. Admiring his friend's audacity, deploring
his rashness, reproving his persistency, Potts allowed his verdict to go
by results; for it was clear that Mallard and Fortune were in opposition.
Something like real awe of the tremendous encounter kept him from a
plunge or a bet. Mallard had got the vertigo, he reported the gambler's
launch on dementedness to the earl. Gower's less experienced optics
perceived it. The plainly doomed duellist with the insensible Black
Goddess offered her all the advantages of the Immortals challenged by
flesh. His effort to smile was a line cut awry in wood; his big eyes were
those of a cat for sociability; he looked cursed, and still he wore the
smile. In this condition, the gambler runs to emptiness of everything he
has, his money, his heart, his brains, like a coal-truck on the incline
of the rails to a collier.

Mallard applied to the earl for a loan of fifty guineas. He had them and
lost them, and he came, not begging, blustering for a second supply;
quite in the wrong tone, Potts knew. Fleetwood said: 'Back it with
pistols, Brosey'; and, as Potts related subsequently, 'Old Brosey had the
look of a staked horse.'

Fortune and he having now closed the struggle, perforce of his total
disarmament, he regained the wits we forfeit when we engage her. He said
to his friend Chummy: 'Abrane tomorrow? Ah, yes, punts a Thames waterman.
Start of--how many yards? Sunbury-Walton: good reach. Course of two
miles: Braney in good training. Straight business? I mayn't be there. But
you, Chummy, you mind, old Chums, all cases of the kind, safest back the
professional. Unless--you understand!'

Fleetwood could not persuade Gower to join the party. The philosopher's
pretext of much occupation masked a bashfully sentimental dislike of the
flooding of quiet country places by the city's hordes. 'You're right,
right,' said Fleetwood, in sympathy, resigned to the prospect of
despising his associates without a handy helper. He named Esslemont once,
shot up a look at the sky, and glanced it Eastward.

Three coaches were bound for Sunbury from a common starting-point at nine
of the morning. Lord Fleetwood, Lord Brailstone, and Lord Simon Pitscrew
were the whips. Two hours in advance of them, the earl's famous purveyors
of picnic feasts bowled along to pitch the riverside tent and spread the
tables. Our upper and lower London world reported the earl as out on
another of his expeditions: and, say what we will, we must think kindly
of a wealthy nobleman ever to the front to enliven the town's dusty eyes
and increase Old England's reputation for pre-eminence in the Sports.

He is the husband of the Whitechapel Countess--got himself into that
mess; but whatever he does, he puts the stamp of style on it. He and the
thing he sets his hand to, they're neat, they're finished, they're fitted
to trot together, and they've a shining polish, natural, like a lily of
the fields; or say Nature and Art, like the coat of a thoroughbred led
into the paddock by his groom, if you're of that mind.

Present at the start in Piccadilly, Gower took note of Lord Fleetwood's
military promptitude to do the work he had no taste for, and envied the
self-compression which could assume so pleasant an air. He heard here and
there crisp comments on his lordship's coach and horses and personal
smartness; the word 'style,' which reflects handsomely on the connoisseur
conferring it, and the question whether one of the ladies up there was
the countess. His task of unearthing and disentangling the monetary
affairs of 'one of the ladies' compelled the wish to belong to the party
soon to be towering out of the grasp of bricks, and delightfully gay,
spirited, quick for fun. A fellow, he thought, may brood upon Nature, but
the real children of Nature--or she loves them best--are those who have
the careless chatter, the ready laugh, bright welcome for a holiday. In
catching the hour, we are surely the bloom of the hour? Why, yes, and no
need to lose the rosy wisdom of the children when we wrap ourselves in
the patched old cloak of the man's.

On he went to his conclusions; but the Dame will have none of them,
though here was a creature bent on masonry-work in his act of thinking,
to build a traveller's-rest for thinkers behind him; while the volatile
were simply breaking their bubbles.

He was discontented all day, both with himself and the sentences he
coined. A small street-boy at his run along the pavement nowhither,
distanced him altogether in the race for the great Secret; precipitating
the thought, that the conscious are too heavily handicapped. The
unburdened unconscious win the goal. Ay, but they leave no legacy. So we
must fret and stew, and look into ourselves, and seize the brute and
scourge him, just to make one serviceable step forward: that is, utter a
single sentence worth the pondering for guidance.

Gower imagined the fun upon middle Thames: the vulcan face of Captain
Abrane; the cries of his backers, the smiles of the ladies, Lord
Fleetwood's happy style in the teeth of tattlean Aurora's chariot for
overriding it. One might hope, might almost see, that he was coming to
his better senses on a certain subject. As for style overriding the worst
of indignities, has not Scotia given her poet to the slack dependant of
the gallows-tree, who so rantingly played his jig and wheeled it round in
the shadow of that institution? Style was his, he hit on the right style
to top the situation, and perpetually will he slip his head out of the
noose to dance the poet's verse.

In fact, style is the mantle of greatness; and say that the greatness is
beyond our reach, we may at least pray to have the mantle.

Strangest of fancies, most unphilosophically, Gower conceived a woman's
love as that which would bestow the gift upon a man so bare of it as he.
Where was the woman? He embraced the idea of the sex, and found it
resolving to a form of one. He stood humbly before the one, and she waned
into swarms of her sisters. So did she charge him with the loving of her
sex, not her. And could it be denied, if he wanted a woman's love just to
give him a style? No, not that, but to make him feel proud of himself.
That was the heart's way of telling him a secret in owning to a weakness.
Within it the one he had thought of forthwith obtained her lodgement. He
discovered this truth, in this roundabout way, and knew it a truth by the
warm fireside glow the contemplation of her cast over him.

Dining alone, as he usually had to do, he was astonished to see the earl
enter his room.

'Ah, you always make the right choice!' Fleetwood said, and requested him
to come to the library when he had done eating.

Gower imagined an accident. A metallic ring was in the earl's voice.

One further mouthful finished dinner, for Gower was anxious concerning
the ladies. He joined the earl and asked.

'Safe. Oh yes. We managed to keep it from them,' said Fleetwood. 'Nothing
particular, perhaps you'll think. Poor devil of a fellow! Father and
mother alive, too! He did it out of hearing, that 'a one merit. Mallard:
Ambrose Mallard. He has blown his brains out.'

Seated plunged in the armchair, with stretched legs and eyes at the black
fire-grate, Fleetwood told of the gathering under the tent, and Mallard
seen, seen drinking champagne; Mallard no longer seen, not missed.

'He killed himself three fields off. He must have been careful to deaden
the sound. Small pocket-pistol hardly big enough to--but anything serves.
Couple of brats came running up to Chummy Potts:--"Gentleman's body
bloody in a ditch." Chummy came to me, and we went. Clean dead;--in the
mouth, pointed up; hole through the top of the skull. We're crockery!
crockery! I had to keep Chummy standing. I couldn't bring him back to our
party. We got help at a farm; the body lies there. And that's not the
worst. We found a letter to me in his pocket pencilled his last five
minutes. I don't see what he could have done except to go. I can't tell
you more. I had to keep my face, rowing and driving back. "But where is
Mr. Potts? Where can Mr. Mallard be?" Queer sensation, to hear the ladies
ask! Give me your hand.'

The earl squeezed Gower's hand an instant; and it was an act unknown for
him to touch or bear a touch; it said a great deal.

Late at night he mounted to Gower's room. The funeral of the day's
impressions had not been skaken off. He kicked at it and sunk under it as
his talk rambled. 'Add five thousand,' he commented, on the spread of
Livia's papers over the table. 'I've been having an hour with her. Two
thousand more, she says. Better multiply by two and a half for a woman's
confession. We have to trust to her for some of the debts of honour. See
her in the morning. No one masters her but you. Mind, the first to be
clear of must be St. Ombre. I like the fellow; but these Frenchmen--they
don't spare women. Ambrose,'--the earl's eyelids quivered. 'Jealousy
fired that shot. Quite groundless. She 's cool as a marble Venus, as you
said. Go straight from her house to Esslemont. I don't plead a case. Make
the best account you can of it. Say--you may say my eyes are opened. I
respect her. If you think that says little, say more. It can't mean more.
Whatever the Countess of Fleetwood may think due to her, let her name it.
Say my view of life, way of life, everything in me, has changed. I shall
follow you. I don't expect to march over the ground. She has a heap to
forgive. Her father owns or boasts, in that book of his Rose Mackrell
lent me, he never forgave an injury.'

Gower helped the quotation, rubbing his hands over it, for cover of his
glee at the words he had been hearing. 'Never forgave an injury without a
return blow for it. The blow forgives. Good for the enemy to get it. He
called his hearty old Pagan custom "an action of the lungs" with him. And
it's not in nature for injuries to digest in us. They poison the blood,
if we try. But then, there's a manner of hitting back. It is not to go an
inch beyond the exact measure, Captain Kirby warns us.'

Fleetwood sighed down to a low groan.

'Lord Feltre would have an answer for you. She's a wife; and a wife
hitting back is not a pleasant--well, petticoats make the difference. If
she's for amends, she shall exact them; and she may be hard to satisfy,
she shall have her full revenge. Call it by any other term you like. I
did her a wrong. I don't defend myself; it 's not yet in the Law Courts.
I beg to wipe it out, rectify it--choose your phrase--to the very
fullest. I look for the alliance with her to . . .'

He sprang up and traversed the room: 'We're all guilty of mistakes at
starting: I speak of men. Women are protected; and if they're not,
there's the convent for them, Feltre says. But a man has to live it on
before the world; and this life, with these flies of fellows . . . I fell
into it in some way. Absolutely like the first bird I shot as a
youngster, and stood over the battered head and bloody feathers,
wondering! There was Ambrose Mallard--the same splintered
bones--blood--come to his end; and for a woman; that woman the lady
bearing the title of half-mother to me. God help me! What are my sins?
She feels nothing, or about as much as the mortuary paragraph of the
newspapers, for the dead man; and I have Ambrose Mallard's look at her
and St. Ombre talking together, before he left the tent to cross the
fields. Borrow, beg, or steal for money to play for her! and not a
glimpse of the winning post.

St. Ombre 's a cool player; that 's at the bottom of the story. He's cool
because play doesn't bite him, as it did Ambrose. I should say the other
passion has never bitten him. And he's alive and presentable; Ambrose
under a sheet, with Chummy Potts to watch. Chummy cried like a brat in
the street for his lost mammy. I left him crying and sobbing. They have
their feelings, these "children of vapour," as you call them. But how did
I fall into the line with a set I despised? She had my opinion of her
gamblers, and retorted that young Cressett's turn for the fling is my
doing. I can't swear it's not. There's one of my sins. What's to wipe
them out! She has a tender feeling for the boy; confessed she wanted
governing. Why; she's young, in a way. She has that particular vice of
play. She might be managed. Here's a lesson for her! Don't you think she
might? The right man,--the man she can respect, fancy incorruptible! He
must let her see he has an eye for tricks. She's not responsible for--his
mad passion was the cause, cause of everything he did. The kind of woman
to send the shaft. You called her "Diana seated." You said, "She doesn't
hunt, she sits and lets fly her arrow." Well, she showed feeling for
young Cressett, and her hit at me was an answer. It struck me on the
mouth. But she's an eternal anxiety. A man she respects! A man to govern
her!'

Fleetwood hurried his paces. 'I couldn't have allowed poor Ambrose.
Besides, he had not a chance--never had in anything. It wants a head,
wants the man who can say no to her. "The Reveller's Aurora," you called
her. She has her beauty, yes. She respects you. I should be relieved--a
load off me! Tell her, all debts paid; fifty thousand invested, in her
name and her husband's. Tell her, speak it, there's my consent--if only
the man to govern her! She has it from me, but repeat it, as from me.
That sum and her portion would make a fair income for the two. Relieved?
By heaven, what a relief! Go early. Coach to Esslemont at eleven. Do my
work there. I haven't to repeat my directions. I shall present myself two
days after. I wish Lady Fleetwood to do the part of hostess at Calesford.
Tell her I depute you to kiss my son for me. Now I leave you. Good-night.
I shan't sleep. I remember your saying, "bad visions come under the
eyelids." I shall keep mine open and read--read her father's book of the
Maxims; I generally find two or three at a dip to stimulate. No wonder
she venerates him. That sort of progenitor is your "permanent
aristocracy." Hard enemy. She must have some of her mother in her, too.
Abuse me to her, admit the justice of reproaches, but say, reason, good
feeling--I needn't grind at it. Say I respect her. Advise her to swallow
the injury--not intended for insult. I don't believe anything higher than
respect can be offered to a woman. No defence of me to her, but I'll tell
you, that when I undertook to keep my word with her, I plainly
said--never mind; good-night. If we meet in the morning, let this
business rest until it 's done. I must drive to help poor Chums and see
about the Inquest.'

Fleetwood nodded from the doorway. Gower was left with humming ears.




CHAPTER XL

RECORD OF MINOR INCIDENTS

They went to their beds doomed to lie and roam as the solitaries of a
sleepless night. They met next day like a couple emerging from sirocco
deserts, indisposed for conversation or even short companionship, much of
the night's dry turmoil in their heads. Each would have preferred the
sight of an enemy; and it was hardly concealed by them, for they inclined
to regard one another as the author of their infernal passage through the
drear night's wilderness.

Fleetwood was the civiller; his immediate prospective duties being clear,
however abhorrent. But he had inflicted a monstrous disturbance on the
man he meant in his rash, decisive way to elevate, if not benefit.
Gower's imagination, foreign to his desires and his projects, was playing
juggler's tricks with him, dramatizing upon hypotheses, which mounted in
stages and could pretend to be soberly conceivable, assuming that the
earl's wild hints overnight were a credible basis. He transported himself
to his first view of the Countess Livia, the fountain of similes born of
his prostrate adoration, close upon the invasion and capture of him by
the combined liqueurs in the giddy Batlen lights; and joining the Arabian
magic in his breast at the time with the more magical reality now
proposed as a sequel to it, he entered the land where dreams confess they
are outstripped by revelations.

Yet it startled him to hear the earl say: 'You'll get audience at ten;
I've arranged; make the most of the situation to her. I refuse to help. I
foresee it 's the only way of solving this precious puzzle. You do me and
every one of us a service past paying. Not a man of her set worth. . . .
She--but you'll stop it; no one else can. Of course, you've had your
breakfast. Off, and walk yourself into a talkative mood, as you tell me
you do.'

'One of the things I do when I've nobody to hear,' said Gower,
speculating whether the black sprite in this young nobleman was for
sending him as a rod to scourge the lady: an ingenious device, that smelt
of mediaeval Courts and tickled his humour.

'Will she listen?' he said gravely.

'She will listen; she has not to learn you admire. You admit she has
helped to trim and polish, and the rest. She declares you're
incorruptible. There's the ground open. I fling no single sovereign more
into that quicksand, and I want not one word further on the subject. I
follow you to Esslemont. Pray, go.'

Fleetwood pushed into the hall. A footman was ordered to pack and deposit
Mr. Woodseer's portmanteau at the coach-office.

'The principal point is to make sure we have all the obligations,' Gower
said.

'You know the principal point,' said the earl. 'Relieve me.'

He faced to the opening street door. Lord Feltre stood in the framing of
it--a welcome sight. The 'monastic man of fashion,' of Gower's phrase for
him, entered, crooning condolences, with a stretched waxen hand for his
friend, a partial nod for Nature's worshipper--inefficient at any serious
issue of our human affairs, as the earl would now discover.

Gower left the two young noblemen to their greetings. Happily for him,
philosophy, in the present instance, after a round of profundities,
turned her lantern upon the comic aspect of his errand. Considering the
Countess Livia, and himself, and the tyrant, who benevolently and
providentially, or sardonically, hurled them to their interview, the
situation was comic, certainly, in the sense of its being an illumination
of this life's odd developments. For thus had things come about, that if
it were possible even to think of the lady's condescending, he, thanks to
the fair one he would see before evening, was armed and proof against his
old infatuation or any renewal of it. And he had been taught to read
through the beautiful twilighted woman, as if she were burnt paper held
at the fire consuming her. His hopes hung elsewhere. Nevertheless, an
intellectual demon-imp very lively in his head urged him to speculate on
such a contest between them, and weigh the engaging forces. Difficulties
were perceived, the scornful laughter on her side was plainly heard; but
his feeling of savage mastery, far from beaten down, swelled so as to
become irritable for the trial; and when he was near her house he held a
review of every personal disadvantage he could summon, incited by an
array of limping deficiencies that flattered their arrogant leader with
ideas of the power he had in spite of them.

In fact, his emancipation from sentiment inspired the genial mood to
tease. Women, having to encounter a male adept at the weapon for the
purpose, must be either voluble or supportingly proud to keep the skin
from shrinking: which is a commencement of the retrogression; and that
has frequently been the beginning of a rout. Now the Countess Livia was a
lady of queenly pose and the servitorial conventional speech likely at a
push to prove beggarly. When once on a common platform with a man of
agile tongue instigated by his intellectual demon to pursue inquiries
into her moral resources, after a ruthless exposure of the wrecked
material, she would have to be, after the various fashions, defiant, if
she was to hold her own against pressure; and seeing, as she must, the
road of prudence point to conciliation, it was calculable that she would
take it. Hence a string of possible events, astounding to mankind, but
equally calculable, should one care to give imagination headway. Gower
looked signally Captain Abrane's 'fiddler' while he waited at Livia's
house door. A studious intimacy with such a lady was rather like the
exposure of the silver moon to the astronomer's telescope.

The Dame will have nought of an interview and colloquy not found
mentioned in her collection of ballads, concerning a person quite
secondary in Dr. Glossop's voluminous papers. She as vehemently prohibits
a narration of Gower Woodseer's proposal some hours later, for the hand
of the Countess of Fleetwood's transfixed maid Madge, because of the
insignificance of the couple; and though it was a quaint idyll of an
affection slowly formed, rationally based while seeming preposterous,
tending to bluntly funny utterances on both sides. The girl was a
creature of the enthusiasms, and had lifted that passion of her
constitution into higher than the worship of sheer physical bravery. She
had pitied Mr. Gower Woodseer for his apparently extreme, albeit
reverential, devotion to her mistress. The plainly worded terms of his
asking a young woman of her position and her reputation to marry him came
on her like an intrusion of dazzling day upon the closed eyelids of the
night, requiring time, and her mistress's consent, and his father's
expressed approval, before she could yield him an answer that might
appear a forgetfulness of her station, her ignorance, her damaged
character. Gower protested himself, with truth, a spotted pard, an
ignoramus, and an outcast of all established classes, as the worshipper
of Nature cannot well avoid being.

'But what is it you like me for, Mr. Gower?' Madge longed to know, that
she might see a way in the strange land where he had planted her after a
whirl; and he replied: 'I 've thought of you till I can say I love you
because you have naturally everything I shoot at.'

The vastness of the compliment drove her to think herself empty of
anything.

He named courage, and its offspring, honesty, and devotedness, constancy.
Her bosom rose at the word.

'Yes, constancy,' he repeated; and 'growing girls have to "turn corners,"
as you told me once.'

'I did?' said she, reddening under a memory, and abashed by his
recollection of a moment she knew to have been weak with her, or noisy of
herself.

Madge went straightway to her mistress and related her great event, in
the tone of a confession of crime. Her mistress's approbation was timidly
suggested rather than besought.

It came on a flood. Carinthia's eyes filled; she exclaimed: 'Oh, that
good man!--he chooses my Madge for wife. She said it, Rebecca said it.
Mrs. Wythan saw and said Mr. Woodseer loved my Madge. I hear her saying
it. Then yes, and yes, from me for both your sakes, dear girl. He will
have the faithfullest, he will have the kindest--Oh! and I shall know
there can be a happy marriage in England.'

She summoned Gower; she clasped his hand, to thank him for appreciating
her servant and sister, and for the happiness she had in hearing it; and
she gazed at him and the laden brows of her Madge alternately,
encouraging him to repeat his recital of his pecuniary means, for the
poetry of the fact it verified, feasting on the sketch of a four-roomed
cottage and an agricultural labourer's widow for cook and housemaid;
Madge to listen to his compositions of the day in the evening; Madge to
praise him, Madge to correct his vanity.

Love was out of the count, but Carinthia's leaping sympathy decorated the
baldness of the sketch and spied his features through the daubed mask he
chose to wear as a member of the order of husbands, without taking it for
his fun. Dry material statements presented the reality she doated to
think of. Moreover, the marriage of these two renewed her belief in true
marriages, and their intention to unite was evidence of love.

'My journey to England was worth all troubles for the meeting Madge,' she
said. 'I can look with pleasure to that day of my meeting her first--the
day, it was then!'

She stopped. Madge felt the quivering upward of a whimper to a sob in her
breast. She slipped away.

'It's a day that has come round to be repaired, Lady Fleetwood,' said
Gower. 'If you will. Will you not? He has had a blow--the death of a
friend, violent death. It has broken him. He wants a month or so in your
mountains. I have thought him hard to deal with; he is humane. His
enormous wealth has been his tempter. Madge and I will owe him our means
of livelihood, enough for cottagers, until I carve my way. His feelings
are much more independent of his rank than those of most noblemen. He
will repeat your kind words to Madge and me; I am sure of it. He has had
heavy burdens; he is young, hardly formed yet. He needs a helper; I mean,
one allied to him. You forgive me? I left him with a Catholic lord for
comforter, who regards my prescript of the study of Nature, when we're in
grief, as about the same as an offer of a dish of cold boiled greens.
Silver and ivory images are more consoling. Neither he nor I can offer
the right thing for Lord Fleetwood. It will be found here. And then your
mountains. More than I, nearly as much as you, he has a poet's ardour for
mountain land. He and Mr. Wythan would soon learn to understand one
another on that head, if not as to management of mines.'

The pleading was crafty, and it was penetrative in the avoidance of
stress. Carinthia shook herself to feel moved. The endeavour chilled her
to a notion that she was but half alive. She let the question approach
her, whether Chillon could pardon Lord Fleetwood. She, with no idea of
benignness, might speak pardon's word to him, on a late autumn evening
years hence, perhaps, or to his friends to-morrow, if he would
considerately keep distant. She was upheld by the thought of her
brother's more honourable likeness to their father, in the certainty of
his refusal to speak pardon's empty word or touch an offending hand,
without their father's warrant for the injury wiped out; and as she had
no wish for that to be done, she could anticipate his withholding of the
word.

For her brother at wrestle with his fallen fortunes was now the beating
heart of Carinthia's mind. Her husband was a shadow there. He did obscure
it, and he might annoy, he was unable to set it in motion. He sat there
somewhat like Youth's apprehension of Death:--the dark spot seen mistily
at times through people's tears, or visioned as in an ambush beyond the
hills; occasionally challenged to stimulate recklessness; oftener
overlooked, acknowledged for the undesired remote of life's conditions,
life's evil, fatal, ill-assorted yoke-fellow; and if it was in his power
to burst out of his corner and be terrible to her, she could bring up a
force unnamed and unmeasured, that being the blood of her father in her
veins. Having done her utmost to guard her babe, she said her prayers;
she stood for peace or the struggle.

'Does Lord Fleetwood speak of coming here?' she said.

'To-morrow.'

'I go to Croridge to-morrow.'

'Your ladyship returns?'

'Yes, I return Mr. Gower, you have fifty minutes before you dress for
dinner.'

He thought only of the exceeding charity of the intimation; and he may be
excused for his not seeing the feminine full answer it was, in an
implied, unmeditated contrast. He went gladly to find his new comrade,
his flower among grass-blades, the wonderful creature astonishing him and
surcharging his world by setting her face at him, opening her breast to
him, breathing a young man's word of words from a woman's mouth. His
flower among grass-blades for a head looking studiously down, she was his
fountain of wisdom as well, in the assurance she gave him of the wisdom
of his choice.

But Madge had put up the 'prize-fighter's lass,' by way of dolly defence,
to cover her amazed confusion when the proposal of this well-liked
gentleman to a girl such as she sounded churchy. He knocked it over
easily; it left, however, a bee at his ear and an itch to transfer the
buzzer's attentions and tease his darling; for she had betrayed herself
as right good game. Nor is there happier promise of life-long domestic
enlivenment for a prescient man of Letters than he has in the
contemplation of a pretty face showing the sensitiveness to the sting,
which is not allowed to poison her temper, and is short of fetching
tears. The dear innocent girl gave this pleasing promise; moreover, she
could be twisted-to laugh at herself, just a little. Now, the young woman
who can do that has already jumped the hedge into the highroad of
philosophy, and may become a philosopher's mate in its by-ways, where the
minute discoveries are the notable treasures.

They had their ramble, agreeable to both, despite the admonitory dose
administered to one of them. They might have been espied at a point or
two from across the parkpalings; their laughter would have caught an
outside pedestrian's hearing. Whatever the case, Owain Wythan, riding
down off Croridge, big with news of her brother for the countess, dined
at her table, and walking up the lane to the Esslemont Arms on a moonless
night, to mount his horse, pitched against an active and, as it was
deemed by Gower's observation of his eyes, a scientific fist. The design
to black them finely was attributable to the dyeing accuracy of the
stroke. A single blow had done it. Mr. Wythan's watch and purse were
untouched; and a second look at the swollen blind peepers led Gower to
surmise that they were, in the calculation of the striker, his own.

He walked next day to the Royal Sovereign inn. There he came upon the
earl driving his phaeton. Fleetwood jumped down, and Gower told of the
mysterious incident, as the chief thing he had to tell, not rendering it
so mysterious in his narrative style. He had the art of indicating
darkly.

'Ines, you mean?' Fleetwood cried, and he appeared as nauseated and
perplexed as he felt. Why should Ines assault Mr. Wythan? It happened
that the pugilist's patron had, within the last fifteen minutes, driven
past a certain thirty-acre meadow, sight of which on his way to Carinthia
had stirred him. He had even then an idea of his old deeds dogging him to
bind him, every one of them, the smallest.

'But you've nothing to go by,' he said. 'Why guess at this rascal more
than another?'

Gower quoted Mrs. Rundles and the ostler for witnesses to Kit's visit
yesterday to the Royal Sovereign, though Kit shunned the bar of the
Esslemont Arms.

'I guess pretty clearly, because I suspect he was hanging about and saw
me and Madge together.'

'Consolations for failures in town?--by the way, you are complimented,
and I don't think you deserved it. However, there was just the chance to
stop a run to perdition. But, Madge? Madge? I'd swear to the girl!'

'Not so hard as I,' said Gower, and spoke of the oath to come between the
girl and him.

Fleetwood's dive into the girl's eyes drew her before him. He checked a
spirt of exclamations.

'You fancy the brute had a crack for revenge and mistook his man?'

'That's what I want her ladyship to know,' said Gower.

'How could you let her hear of it?'

'Nothing can be concealed from her.'

The earl was impressionable to the remark, in his disgust at the
incident. It added a touch of a new kind of power to her image.

'She's aware of my coming?'

'To-day or to-morrow.'

They scaled the phaeton and drove.

'You undervalue Lord Feltre. You avoid your adversaries,' Fleetwood now
rebuked his hearer. 'It 's an easy way to have the pull of them in your
own mind. You might learn from him. He's willing for controversy.
Nature-worship--or "aboriginal genuflexion," he calls it; Anglicanism,
Methodism; he stands to engage them. It can't be doubted, that in days of
trouble he has a faith "stout as a rock, with an oracle in it," as he
says; and he's right, "men who go into battle require a rock to back them
or a staff to lean on." You have your "secret," you think; as far as I
can see, it's to keep you from going into any form of battle.'

The new influence at work on the young nobleman was evident, if only in
the language used.

Gower answered mildly: 'That can hardly be said of a man who's going to
marry.'

'Perhaps not. Lady Fleetwood is aware?'

'Lady Fleetwood does me the honour to approve my choice.'

'You mean, you're dead on to it with this girl?'

'For a year or more.'

'Fond of her?'

'All my heart.'

'In love!'

'Yes, in love. The proof of it is, I 've asked her now I can support her
as a cottager leaning on the Three Per Cents.'

'Well, it helps you to a human kind of talk. It carries out your
theories. I never disbelieved in your honesty. The wisdom's another
matter. Did you ever tell any one, that there's not an act of a man's
life lies dead behind him, but it is blessing or cursing him every step
he takes?'

'By that,' rejoined Gower, 'I can say Lord Feltre proves there's wisdom
in the truisms of devoutness.'

He thought the Catholic lord had gone a step or two to catch an eel.

Fleetwood was looking on the backward of his days, beholding a melancholy
sunset, with a grimace in it.

'Lord Feltre might show you the "leanness of Philosophy";--you would
learn from hearing him:--"an old gnawed bone for the dog that chooses to
be no better than a dog."'

'The vertiginous roast haunch is recommended,' Gower said.

'See a higher than your own head, good sir. But, hang the man! he manages
to hit on the thing he wants.' Fleetwood set his face at Gower with
cutting heartiness. 'In love, you say, and Madge: and mean it to be the
holy business! Well, poor old Chummy always gave you credit for knowing
how to play your game. She has given proof she 's a good girl. I don't
see why it shouldn't end well. That attack on the Welshman's the bad
lookout. Explained, if you like, but women's impressions won't get
explained away. We must down on our knees or they. Her ladyship attentive
at all to affairs of the house?'

'Every day with Queeney; at intervals with Leddings.'

'Excellent! You speak like a fellow recording the devout observances of a
great dame with her minor and superior, ecclesiastical comforters.
Regular at church?'

'Her ladyship goes.'

'A woman without religion, Gower Woodseer, is a weed on the water, or
she's hard as nails. We shall see. Generally, Madge and the youngster
parade the park at this hour. I drive round to the stables. Go in and
offer your version of that rascally dog's trick. It seems the nearest we
can come at. He's a sot, and drunken dogs 'll do anything. I've had him
on my hands, and I've got the stain of him.'

They trotted through Esslemont Park gates. 'I've got that place,
Calesford, on my hands, too,' the earl said, suddenly moved to a liking
for his Kentish home.

He and Gower were struck by a common thought of the extraordinary burdens
his indulgence in impulses drew upon him. Present circumstances pictured
to Gower the opposing weighed and matured good reason for his choosing
Madge, and he complimented himself in his pity for the earl. But
Fleetwood, as he reviewed a body of acquaintances perfectly free from the
wretched run in harness, though they had their fits and their whims, was
pushed to the conclusion that fatalism marked his particular course
through life. He could not hint at such an idea to the unsympathetic
fellow, or rather, the burly antagonist to anything of the sort, beside
him. Lord Feltre would have understood and appreciated it instantly.
Where is aid to be had if we have the Fates against us? Feltre knew the
Power, he said; was an example of 'the efficacy of supplications'; he had
been 'fatally driven to find the Power,' and had found it--on the road to
Rome, of course: not a delectable road for an English nobleman, except
that the noise of another convert in pilgrimage on it would deal our
English world a lively smack, the very stroke that heavy body wants. But
the figure of a 'monastic man of fashion' was antipathetic to the earl,
and he flouted an English Protestant mass merely because of his being
highly individual, and therefore revolutionary for the minority.

He cast his bitter cud aside. 'My man should have arrived. Lady Fleetwood
at home?'

Gower spoke of her having gone to Croridge in the morning.

'Has she taken the child?'

'She has, yes. For the air of the heights.'

'For greater security. Lady Arpington praises the thoughtful mother. I
rather expected to see the child.'

'They can't be much later,' Gower supposed.

'You don't feel your long separation from "the object"?'

Letting him have his cushion for pins, Gower said 'It needs all my
philosophy:

He was pricked and probed for the next five minutes; not bad rallying,
the earl could be smart when he smarted. Then they descended the terrace
to meet Lady Fleetwood driving her pony-trap. She gave a brief single nod
to the salute of her lord, quite in the town-lady's manner, surprisingly.




CHAPTER XLI

IN WHICH THE FATES ARE SEEN AND A CHOICE OF THE REFUGES FROM THEM

The home of husband and wife was under one roof at last. Fleetwood went,
like one deported, to his wing of the house, physically sensible, in the
back turned to his wife's along the corridor, that our ordinary
comparison for the division of a wedded twain is correct. She was Arctic,
and Antarctic he had to be, perforce of the distance she put between
them. A removal of either of them from life--or from 'the act of
breathing,' as Gower Woodseer's contempt of the talk about death would
call it--was an imaginable way of making it a wider division. Ambrose
Mallard was far enough from his fatal lady now--farther than the Poles
asunder. Ambrose, if the clergy will allow him, has found his peace. .
But the road and the means he chose were a madman's.

The blotting of our character, to close our troubles, is the final proof
of our being 'sons of vapour,' according to Gower Woodseer's heartless
term for poor Ambrose and the lot. They have their souls; and above
philosophy, 'natural' or unnatural, they may find a shelter. They can
show in their desperation that they are made of blood, as philosophers
rather fail of doing. An insignificant brainless creature like Feltre had
wits, by the aid of his religion, to help or be charitable to his
fellows, particularly the sinners, in the crisis of life, surpassing any
philosopher's.

Information of her ladyship's having inspected the apartments, to see to
the minutest of his customary luxuries, cut at him all round. His valet
had it from the footmen and maids; and their speaking of it meant a
liking for their mistress; and that liking, added to her official
solicitude on his behalf, touched a soft place in him and blew an icy
wind; he was frozen where he was warmed. Here was evidence of her
intending the division to be a fixed gap. She had entered this room and
looked about her. He was here to feel her presence in her absence.

Some one or something had schooled her, too. Her large-eyed directness of
gaze was the same as at that inn and in Wales, but her easy sedateness
was novel, her English, almost the tone of the English world: he gathered
it, at least, from the few remarks below stairs.

His desire to be with her was the desire to escape the phantasm of the
woman haunting to subjugate him when they were separate. He could kill
illusion by magnifying and clawing at her visible angles and audible
false notes; and he did it until his recollections joined to the sight of
her, when a clash of the thought of what she had been and the thought of
what she was had the effect of conjuring a bitter sweet image that was a
more seductive illusion. Strange to think, this woman once loved the man
who was not half the value of the man she no longer loved. He took a shot
at cynicism, but hit no mark. This woman protected her whole sex.

They sat at the dinner-table alone, thanks to a handsome wench's
attractions for a philosopher. Married, and parents of a lusty son, this
was their first sitting at table together. The mouth that said 'I guard
my rooms' was not obtruded; she talked passingly of her brother, much of
Lady Arpington and of old Mr. Woodseer; and, though she reserved a smile,
there was no look of a lock on her face. She seemed pleased to be treated
very courteously; she returned the stately politeness in exactest
measure; very simply, as well. Her face had now an air of homeliness,
well suited to an English household interior. She could chat. Any pauses
occurring, he was the one guilty of them; she did not allow them to be
barrier chasms, or 'strids' for the leap with effort; she crossed them
like the mountain maid over a gorge's plank--kept her tones perfectly.
Her Madge and Mr. Gower Woodseer made a conversible topic. She was
inquisitive for accounts of Spanish history and the land of Spain.

They passed into the drawing-room. She had heard of the fate of the poor
child in Wales, she said, without a comment.

'I see now, I ought to have backed your proposal,' he confessed, and was
near on shivering. She kept silent, proudly or regretfully.

Open on her workbasket was a Spanish guide-book and a map attached to it.
She listened to descriptions of Cadiz, Malaga, Seville, Granada. Her
curiosity was chiefly for detailed accounts of Catalonia and the
Pyrenees.

'Hardly the place for you; there's a perpetual heaving of Carlism in
those mountains; your own are quieter for travellers,' he remarked; and
for a moment her lips moved to some likeness of a smile; a dimple in a
flowing thought.

He remarked the come and go of it.

He regretted his inability to add to her knowledge of the Spanish
Pyrenees.

Books helped her at present, she said.

Feeling acutely that hostility would have brought them closer than her
uninviting civility, he spoke of the assault on Mr. Wythan, and Gower
Woodseer's conjecture, and of his having long since discharged the rascal
Ines.

To which her unreproachful answer, 'You made use of those men, my lord,'
sent a cry ringing through him, recalling Feltre's words, as to the grip
men progressively are held in by their deeds done.

'Oh, quite true, we change our views and ways of life,' he said, thinking
she might set her considerations on other points of his character. But
this reflection was a piece of humility not yet in his particular
estimate of his character, and he spurned it: an act of pride that drove
his mind, for occupation, to contemplate hers; which speedily became an
embrace of her character, until he was asking whether the woman he called
wife and dared not clasp was one of those rarest, who can be idealized by
virtue of their being known. For the young man embracing a character
loses grasp of his own, is plucked out of himself and passes into it, to
see the creature he is with the other's eyes, and feel for the other as a
very self. Such is the privilege and the chastisement of the young.

Gower Woodseer's engagement with the girl Madge was a happier subject for
expatiation and agreement. Her deeper tones threw a light on Gower, and
where she saw goodness, he could at least behold the natural philosopher
practically philosophizing.

'The girl shall have a dowry from me,' he said; and the sum named was
large. Her head bent acknowledgingly; money had small weight with her
now. His perception of it stripped him and lamed him.

He wished her ladyship good-night. She stood up and performed a
semi-ceremonious obeisance, neatly adapted to their mutual position. She
had a well-bred mother.

Probably she would sleep. No such expectation could soothe the friend,
and some might be thinking misleader, of Ambrose Mallard, before he had
ocular proof that the body lay underground. His promise was given to
follow it to the grave, a grave in consecrated earth. Ambrose died of the
accidental shot of a pocket-pistol he customarily carried loaded. Two
intimate associates of the dead man swore to that habit of his. They lied
to get him undisputed Christian burial. Aha! The earl laughed outright at
Chummy Potts's nursery qualms. The old fellow had to do it, and he lied
like a man for the sake of Ambrose Mallard's family. So much is owing to
our friend.

Can ecclesiastical casuists decide upon cases of conscience affecting men
of the world?

A council sat upon the case the whole night long. A committee of the
worldly held argumentation in a lower chamber.

These are nights that weaken us to below the level of women. A shuttle
worked in Fleetwood's head. He defended the men of the world. Lord Feltre
oiled them, damned them, kindled them to a terrific expiatory blaze, and
extinguishingly salved and wafted aloft the released essence of them.
Maniacal for argument, Fleetwood rejected the forgiveness of sins, if
sins they be. Prove them sins, and the suffering is of necessity
everlasting, his insomnia logic insisted. Whichever side he took, his
wife was against him; not in speech, but in her look. She was a dumb
figure among the wranglers, clouded up to the neck. Her look said she
knew more of him than they knew.

He departed next day for London, after kissing his child; and he would
have done wisely to abstain from his exhibition of the paternal. Knowing
it a step to conciliation, he checked his impulsive warmth, under the
apprehension that the mother would take it for a piece of acting to
propitiate--and his lips pecked the baby's cheek. Its mother held arms
for it immediately.

Not without reason did his heart denounce her as a mere mother, with
little of a mind to see.

The recent series of feverishly sleepless nights disposed him to snappish
irritability or the thirst for tenderness. Gower had singular experiences
of him on the drive North-westward. He scarcely spoke; he said once: 'If
you mean to marry, you'll be wanting to marry soon, of course,' and his
curt nod before the reply was formulated appeared to signify, the sooner
the better, and deliverance for both of us. Honest though he might, be
sometimes deep and sometimes picturesque, the philosopher's day had come
to an end. How can Philosophy minister to raw wounds, when we are in a
rageing gale of the vexations, battered to right and left! Religion has a
nourishing breast: Philosophy is breastless. Religion condones offences:
Philosophy has no forgiveness, is an untenanted confessional: 'wide air
to a cry in anguish,' Feltre says.

All the way to London Fleetwood endured his companion, letting him talk
when he would.

He spent the greater part of the night discussing human affairs and
spiritual with Lord Feltre, whose dialectical exhortations and
insinuations were of the feeblest, but to an isolated young man, yearning
for the tenderness of a woman thinking but of her grievances, the
ointment brought comfort.

It soothed him during his march to and away from Ambrose Mallard's grave;
where it seemed to him curious and even pitiable that Chumley Potts
should be so inconsolably shaken. Well, and if the priests have the
secret of strengthening the backbone for a bend of the knee in calamity,
why not go to the priests, Chummy? Potts's hearing was not addressed; nor
was the chief person in the meditation affected by a question that merely
jumped out of his perturbed interior.

Business at Calesford kept Fleetwood hanging about London several days
further; and his hatred of a place he wasted time and money to decorate
grew immeasurable. It distorted the features of the beautiful woman for
whose pleasure the grand entertainments to be held there had, somewhere
or other--when felon spectres were abroad over earth--been conceived.

He could then return to Esslemont. Gower was told kindly, with
intentional coldness, that he could take a seat in the phaeton if he
liked; and he liked, and took it. Anything to get to that girl of his!

Whatever the earl's inferiors did, their inferior station was not
suffered to discolour it for his judgement. But an increasing antagonism
to Woodseer's philosophy--which the fellow carried through with perpetual
scorings of satisfaction--caused him to set a hard eye on the damsel
under the grisly spotting shadow of the sottish bruiser, of whom, after
once touching the beast, he could not rub his hands clean; and he chose
to consider the winning of the prize-fighter's lass the final triumph or
flag on the apex of the now despised philosophy. Vain to ask how he had
come to be mixed up with the lot, or why the stolidly conceited,
pretentious fellow had seat here, as by right, beside him! We sow and we
reap; 'plant for sugar and taste the cane,' some one says--this Woodseer,
probably; he can, when it suits him, tickle the ears of the worldlings.
And there is worthier stuff to remember; stuff to nourish: Feltre's
'wisdom of our fathers,' rightly named Religion.

More in the country, when he traversed sweep and rise of open land,
Carinthia's image began to shine, and she threw some of her light on
Madge, who made Woodseer appear tolerable, sagacious, absurdly enviable,
as when we have the fit to wish we were some four-foot. The fellow's
philosophy wore a look of practical craft.

He was going to the girl he liked, and she was, one could swear, an
honest girl; and she was a comely girl, a girl to stick to a man. Her
throwing over a sot was creditable. Her mistress loved her. That said
much for any mortal creature. Man or woman loved by Carinthia could not
be cowardly, could not be vile, must have high qualities. Next to
Religion, she stood for a test of us. Had she any strong sense of
Religion, in addition to the formal trooping to one of their pallid
Protestant churches? Lord Feltre might prove useful to her. For merely
the comprehension of the signification of Religion steadies us. It had
done that for him, the earl owned.

He broke a prolonged silence by remarking to Gower 'You haven't much to
say to-day'; and the answer was 'Very little. When I'm walking, I'm
picking up; and when I'm driving, I'm putting together.'

Gower was rallied on the pursuit of the personal object in both cases. He
pointed at sheep, shepherd, farmer, over the hedge, all similarly
occupied; and admitted shamelessly, that he had not a thought for
company, scarce a word to fling. 'Ideas in gestation are the dullest
matter you can have.'

'There I quite agree with you,' said Fleetwood. Abrane, Chummy Potts,
Brailstone, little Corby, were brighter comrades. And these were his
Ixionides! Hitherto his carving of a way in the world had been
sufficiently ill-considered. Was it preferable to be a loutish
philosopher? Since the death of Ambrose Mallard, he felt Woodseer's title
for that crew grind harshly; and he tried to provoke a repetition of it,
that he might burst out in wrathful defence of his friends--to be named
friends when they were vilified: defence of poor Ambrose at least, the
sinner who, or one as bad, might have reached to pardon through the
priesthood.

Gower offered him no chance..

Entering Esslemont air, Fleetwood tossed his black mood to the winds. She
breathed it. She was a mountain girl, and found it hard to forgive our
lowlands. She would learn tolerance, taking her flights at seasons. The
yacht, if she is anything of a sailor, may give her a taste of England's
pleasures. She will have a special allowance for distribution among old
Mr. Woodseer's people. As to the rest of the Countess of Fleetwood's
wishes, her family ranks with her husband's in claims of any kind on him.
There would be--she would require and had a right to demand--say, a warm
half-hour of explanations: he knew the tone for them, and so little did
he revolve it apprehensively, that his mind sprang beyond, to the hearing
from her mouth of her not intending further to 'guard her rooms.' How
quietly the words were spoken! There was a charm in the retrospect of her
mouth and manner. One of the rare women who never pout or attitudinize,
she could fling her glove gracefully--one might add, capturingly under
every aspect, she was a handsome belligerent. The words he had to combat
pleased his memory. Some good friend, Lady Arpington probably, had
instructed her in the art of dressing to match her colour.

Concerning himself, he made no stipulation, but he reflected on Lord
Feltre's likely estimate of her as a bit of a heathen. And it might be to
her advantage, were she and Feltre to have some conversations. Whatever
the faith, a faith should exist, for without the sentiment of religion, a
woman, he says, is where she was when she left the gates of Eden. A man
is not much farther. Feltre might have saved Ambrose Mallard. He is,
however, right in saying, that the woman with the sentiment of religion
in her bosom is a box of holy incense distinguishing her from all other
women. Empty of it, she is devil's bait. At best, she is a creature who
cannot overlook an injury, or must be exacting God knows what
humiliations before she signs the treaty.

Informed at the house that her ladyship had been staying up on Croridge
for the last two days, Fleetwood sent his hardest shot of the eyes at
Gower. Let her be absent: it was equal to the first move of war, and
absolved him from contemplated proposals to make amends. But the enforced
solitary companionship with this ruminator of a fellow set him asking
whether the godless dog he had picked up by the wayside was not incarnate
another of the sins he had to expiate. Day after day, almost hourly, some
new stroke fell on him. Why? Was he selected for persecution because he
was wealthy? The Fates were driving him in one direction, no doubt of
that.

This further black mood evaporated, and like a cessation of English
storm-weather bequeathed him gloom. Ashamed of the mood, he was
nevertheless directed by its final shadows to see the ruminating tramp in
Gower, and in Madge the prize-fighter's jilt: and round about Esslemont a
world eyeing an Earl of Fleetwood, who painted himself the man he was, or
was held to be, by getting together such a collection, from the daughter
of the Old Buccaneer to the ghastly corpse of Ambrose Mallard. Why,
clearly, wealth was the sole origin and agent of the mischief. With
somewhat less of it, he might have walked in his place among the nation's
elect, the 'herd of the gilt horns,' untroubled by ambitions and ideas.

Arriving thus far, he chanced to behold Gower and Madge walking over the
grounds near the western plantation, and he regretted the disappearance
of them, with the fellow talking hard into the girl's ear. Those two
could think he had been of some use. The man pretending to philosophical
depth was at any rate honest; one could swear to the honesty of the girl,
though she had been a reckless hussy. Their humble little hopes and means
to come to union approached, after a fashion, hymning at his ears. Those
two were pleasanter to look on than amorous lords and great ladies, who
are interesting only when they are wicked.

Four days of desolate wanderings over the estate were occupied chiefly in
his decreeing the fall of timber that obstructed views, and was the more
imperatively doomed for his bailiff's intercession. 'Sound wood' the
trees might be: they had to assist in defraying the expense of separate
establishments. A messenger to Queeney from Croridge then announced the
Countess's return 'for a couple of hours.' Queeney said it was the day
when her ladyship examined the weekly bills of the household. That was in
the early morning. The post brought my lord a letter from Countess Livia,
a most infrequent writer. She had his word to pay her debts; what next
was she for asking? He shrugged, opened the letter, and stared at the
half dozen lines. The signification of them rapped on his consciousness
of another heavy blow before he was perfectly intelligent.

All possible anticipation seemed here outdone: insomuch that he held
palpable evidence of the Fates at work to harass and drive him. She was
married to the young Earl of Cressett!'

Fleetwood printed the lines on his eyeballs. They were the politely
flowing feminine of a statement of the fact, which might have been in one
line. They flourished wantonly: they were deadly blunt. And of all men,
this youngster, who struck at him through her lips with the reproach,
that he had sped the good-looking little beast upon his road to
ruin:--perhaps to Ambrose Mallard's end!




CHAPTER XLII

THE RETARDED COURTSHIP

Carinthia reached Esslemont near noon. She came on foot, and had come
unaccompanied, stick in hand, her dress looped for the roads. Madge
bustled her shorter steps up the park beside her; Fleetwood met her on
the terrace.

'No one can be spared at Croridge,' she said. 'I go back before dark.'
Apology was not thought of; she seemed wound to the pitch.

He bowed; he led into the morning-room. 'The boy is at Croridge?'

'With me. He has his nurse. Madge was at home here more than there.'

'Why do you go back?'

'I am of use to my brother.'

'Forgive me--in what way?'

'He has enemies about him. They are the workmen of Lord Levellier. They
attacked Lekkatts the other night, and my uncle fired at them out of a
window and wounded a man. They have sworn they will be revenged. Mr.
Wythan is with my brother to protect him.'

'Two men, very well; they don't want, if there's danger, a woman's aid in
protecting him?'

She smiled, and her smile was like the hint of the steel blade an inch
out of sheath.

'My brother does not count me a weak woman.'

'Oh no! No one would think that,' Fleetwood said hurriedly and heartily.
'Least of all men, I, Carinthia. But you might be rash.'

'My brother knows me cautious.'

'Chillon?'

'It is my brother's name.'

'You used to call him by his name.

'I love his name.'

'Ah, well! I may be pardoned for wishing to hear what part you play
there.'

'I go the rounds with my brother.'

'Armed?'

'We carry arms.'

'Queer sight to see in England. But there are rascals in this country,
too.'

She was guilty of saying, though not pointedly: 'We do not hire
defenders.'

'In civilized lands . . .' he began and stopped 'You have Mr. Wythan?'

'Yes, we are three.'

'You call him, I think, Owain?'

'I do.'

'In your brother's hearing?'

'Yes, my lord; it would be in your hearing if you were near.'

'No harm, no doubt.'

'There is none.'

'But you will not call your brother Chillon to me.'

'You dislike the name.'

'I learn to like everything you do and say; and every person you like.'

'It is by Mr. Wythan's dead wife's request that I call him by his name.
He is our friend. He is a man to trust.'

'The situation . . .' Fleetwood hung swaying between the worldly view of
it and the white light of this woman's nature flashed on his emotion into
his mind. 'You shall be trusted for judging. If he is your friend, he is
my friend. I have missed the sight of our boy. You heard I was at
Esslemont?'

'I heard from Madge!'

'It is positive you must return to Croridge?'

'I must be with my brother, yes.'

'Your ladyship will permit me to conduct you.'

Her head assented. There was nothing to complain of, but he had not
gained a step.

The rule is, that when we have yielded initiative to a woman, we are
unable to recover it without uncivil bluster. So, therefore, women
dealing with gentlemen are allowed unreasonable advantages. He had never
granted it in colloquy or act to any woman but this one. Consequently, he
was to see, that if the gentleman in him was not put aside, the lady
would continue moving on lines of the independence he had likewise
yielded, or rather flung, to her. Unless, as a result, he besieged and
wooed his wife, his wife would hold on a course inclining constantly
farther from the union he desired. Yet how could he begin to woo her if
he saw no spark of womanly tenderness? He asked himself, because the
beginning of the wooing might be checked by the call on him for words of
repentance only just possible to conceive. Imagine them uttered, and she
has the initiative for life.

She would not have it, certainly, with a downright brute. But he was not
that. In an extremity of bitterness, he fished up a drowned old thought,
of all his torments being due to the impulsive half-brute he was. And
between the good and the bad in him, the sole point of strength was a
pride likely, as the smooth simplicity of her indifference showed him,
soon to be going down prostrate beneath her feet. Wholly a brute--well?
He had to say, that playing the perfect brute with any other woman he
would have his mastery. The summoning of an idea of personal power to
match this woman in a contest was an effort exhausting the idea.

They passed out of Esslemont gates together at that hour of the late
afternoon when South-westerly breezes, after a summer gale, drive their
huge white flocks over blue fields fresh as morning, on the march to pile
the crown of the sphere, and end a troubled day with grandeur. Up the
lane by the park they had open land to the heights of Croridge.

'Splendid clouds,' Fleetwood remarked.

She looked up, thinking of the happy long day's walk with her brother to
the Styrian Baths. Pleasure in the sight made her face shine superbly. 'A
flying Switzerland, Mr. Woodseer says,' she replied. 'England is
beautiful on days like these.--For walking, I think the English climate
very good.'

He dropped a murmur: 'It should suit so good a walker,' and burned to
compliment--her spirited easy stepping, and scorned himself for the
sycophancy it would be before they were on the common ground of a
restored understanding. But an approval of any of her acts threatened him
with enthusiasm for the whole of them, her person included; and a dam in
his breast had to keep back the flood.

'You quote Woodseer to me, Carinthia. I wish you knew Lord Feltre. He can
tell you of every cathedral, convent, and monastery in Europe and Syria.
Nature is well enough; she is, as he says, a savage. Men's works, acting
under divine direction to escape from that tangle, are better worthy of
study, perhaps. If one has done wrong, for example.'

'I could listen to him,' she said.

'You would not need--except, yes, one thing. Your father's book speaks of
not forgiving an injury.'

'My father does. He thinks it weakness to forgive an injury. Women do,
and are disgraced, they are thought slavish. My brother is much stronger
than I am. He is my father alive in that.'

'It is anti-Christian, some would think.'

'Let offending people go. He would not punish them. They may go where
they will be forgiven. For them our religion is a happy retreat; we are
glad they have it. My father and my brother say that injury forbids us to
be friends again. My father was injured by the English Admiralty: he
never forgave it; but he would have fought one of their ships and offered
his blood any day, if his country called to battle.'

'You have the same feeling, you mean.'

'I am a woman. I follow my brother, whatever he decides. It is not to say
he is the enemy of persons offending him; only that they have put the
division.'

'They repent?'

'If they do, they do well for themselves.'

'You would see them in sackcloth and ashes?'

'I would pray to be spared seeing them.'

'You can entirely forget--well, other moments, other feelings?'

'They may heighten the injury.'

'Carinthia, I should wish to speak plainly, if I could, and tell you....'

'You speak quite plainly, my lord.'

'You and I cannot be strangers or enemies.'

'We cannot be, I would not be. To be friends, we should be separate.'

'You say you are a woman; you have a heart, then?'--for, if not, what
have you? was added in the tone.

'My heart is my brother's,' she said.

'All your heart?'

'My heart is my brother's until one of us drops.'

'There is not another on earth beside your brother Chillon?'

'There is my child.'

The dwarf square tower of Croridge village church fronted them against
the sky, seen of both.

'You remember it,' he said; and she answered: 'I was married there.'

'You have not forgotten that injury, Carinthia?'

'I am a mother.'

'By all the saints! you hit hard. Justly. Not you. Our deeds are the hard
hitters. We learn when they begin to flagellate, stroke upon stroke!
Suppose we hold a costly thing in the hand and dash it to the ground--no
recovery of it, none! That must be what your father meant. I can't regret
you are a mother. We have a son, a bond. How can I describe the man I
was!' he muttered,--'possessed! sort of werewolf! You are my wife?'

'I was married to you, my lord.'

'It's a tie of a kind.'

'It binds me.'

'Obey, you said.'

'Obey it. I do.'

'You consider it holy?'

'My father and my mother spoke to me of the marriage-tie. I read the
service before I stood at the altar. It is holy. It is dreadful. I will
be true to it.'

'To your husband?'

'To his name, to his honour.'

'To the vow to live with him?'

'My husband broke that for me.'

'Carinthia, if he bids you, begs you to renew it? God knows what you may
save me from!'

'Pray to God. Do not beg of me, my lord. I have my brother and my little
son. No more of husband for me! God has given me a friend, too,--a man of
humble heart, my brother's friend, my dear Rebecca's husband. He can take
them from me: no one but God. See the splendid sky we have.'

With those words she barred the gates on him; at the same time she
bestowed the frank look of an amiable face brilliant in the lively red of
her exercise, in its bent-bow curve along the forehead, out of the line
of beauty, touching, as her voice was, to make an undertone of anguish
swell an ecstasy. So he felt it, for his mood was now the lover's. A
torture smote him, to find himself transported by that voice at his ear
to the scene of the young bride in thirty-acre meadow.

'I propose to call on Captain Kirby-Levellier tomorrow, Carinthia,' he
said. 'The name of his house?'

'My brother is not now any more in the English army,' she replied. 'He
has hired a furnished house named Stoneridge.'

'He will receive me, I presume?'

'My brother is a courteous gentleman, my lord.'

'Here is the church, and here we have to part for today. Do we?'

'Good-bye to you, my lord,' she said.

He took her hand and dropped the dead thing.

'Your idea is, to return to Esslemont some day or other?'

'For the present,' was her strange answer.

She bowed, she stepped on. On she sped, leaving him at the stammered
beginning of his appeal to her.

Their parting by the graveyard of the church that had united them was
what the world would class as curious. To him it was a further and a
well-marked stroke of the fatality pursuing him. He sauntered by the
graveyard wall until her figure slipped out of sight. It went like a
puffed candle, and still it haunted the corner where last seen. Her
vanishing seemed to say, that less of her belonged to him than the
phantom his eyes retained behind them somewhere.

There was in his pocket a memento of Ambrose Mallard, that the family had
given him at his request. He felt the lump. It had an answer for all
perplexities. It had been charged and emptied since it was in his
possession; and it could be charged again. The thing was a volume as big
as the world to study. For the touch of a finger, one could have its
entirely satisfying contents, and fly and be a raven of that night
wherein poor Ambrose wanders lost, but cured of human wounds.

He leaned on the churchyard wall, having the graves to the front of eyes
bent inward. They were Protestant graves, not so impressive to him as the
wreathed and gilt of those under dedication to Feltre's Madonna. But
whatever they were, they had ceased to nurse an injury or feel the pain
for having inflicted it. Their wrinkles had gone from them, whether of
anger or suffering. Ambrose Mallard lay as peaceful in consecrated
ground: and Chumley Potts would be unlikely to think that the helping to
lay Ambrose in his quiet last home would cost him a roasting until
priestly intercession availed. So Chummy continues a Protestant; dull
consciences can! But this is incomprehensible, that she, nursing her
injury, should be perfectly civil. She is a woman without emotion. She is
a woman full of emotion, one man knows. She ties him to her, to make him
feel the lash of his remorse. He feels it because of her casting him from
her--and so civilly. If this were a Catholic church, one might go in and
give the stained soul free way to get a cleansing. As it is, here are the
graves; the dead everywhere have their sanctity, even the heathen.

Fleetwood read the name of the family of Meek on several boards at the
head of the graves. Jonathan Meek died at the age of ninety-five. A
female Meek had eighty-nine years in this life. Ezra Meek gave up the
ghost prematurely, with a couplet, at eighty-one. A healthy spot,
Croridge, or there were virtues in the Meek family, he reflected, and had
a shudder that he did not trace to its cause, beyond an acknowledgement
of a desire for the warm smell of incense.




CHAPTER XLIII

ON THE ROAD TO THE ACT OF PENANCE

His customary wrestle with the night drove Lord Fleetwood in the
stillness of the hour after matins from his hated empty Esslemont up
again to the village of the long-lived people, enjoying the moist
earthiness of the air off the ironstone. He rode fasting, a good
preparatory state for the simple pleasures, which are virtually the Great
Nourisher's teats to her young. The earl was relieved of his dejection by
a sudden filling of his nostrils. Fat Esslemont underneath had no such
air. Except on the mornings of his walk over the Salzkammergut and Black
Forest regions, he had never consciously drawn that deep breath of the
satisfied rapture, charging the whole breast with thankfulness. Huntsmen
would know it, if the chase were not urgent to pull them at the tail of
the running beast. Once or twice on board his yacht he might have known
something like it, but the salt sea-breeze could not be disconnected from
his companion Lord Feltre, and a thought of Feltre swung vapour of
incense all about him. Breathing this air of the young sun's kiss of
earth, his invigoration repelled the seductions of the burnt Oriental
gums.

Besides, as he had told his friend, it was the sincerity of the Catholic
religion, not the seductiveness, that won him to a form of homage--the
bend of the head of a foreign observer at a midnight mass. Asceticism,
though it may not justify error, is a truth in itself, it is the essence
extracted of the scourge, flesh vanquished; and it stands apart from
controversy. Those monks of the forested mountain heights, rambling for
their herbs, know the blessedness to be found in mere breathing: a
neighbour readiness to yield the breath inspires it the more. For when we
do not dread our end, the sense of a free existence comes back to us: we
have the prized gift to infancy under the piloting of manhood. But before
we taste that happiness we must perform our penance; 'No living happiness
can be for the unclean,' as the holy father preached to his flock of the
monastery dispersing at matins.

Ay, but penance? penance? Is there not such a thing as the doing of
penance out of the Church, in the manly fashion? So to regain the right
to be numbered among the captains of the world's fighting men,
incontestably the best of comrades, whether or no they led away on a
cataract leap at the gates of life. Boldly to say we did a wrong will
clear our sky for a few shattering peals.

The penitential act means, youth put behind us, and a steady course
ahead. But, for the keeping of a steady course, men made of blood in the
walks of the world must be steadied. Say it plainly-mated. There is the
humiliating point of our human condition. We must have beside us and
close beside us the woman we have learned to respect; supposing ourselves
lucky enough to have found her; 'that required other scale of the human
balance,' as Woodseer calls her now he has got her, wiser than Lord
Feltre in reference to men and women. We get no balance without her. That
is apparently the positive law; and by reason of men's wretched
enslavement, it is the dance to dissolution when we have not honourable
union with women. Feltre's view of women sees the devilish or the
angelical; and to most men women are knaves or ninnies. Hence do we
behold rascals or imbeciles in the offspring of most men.

He embraced the respected woman's character, with the usual effect:--to
see with her sight; and she beheld a speckled creature of the
intermittent whims and moods and spites; the universal Patron, whose
ambition to be leader of his world made him handle foul brutes--corrupt
and cause their damnation, they retort, with curses, in their pangs. She
was expected to pardon the husband, who had not abstained from his
revenge on her for keeping him to the pledge of his word. And what a
revenge!--he had flung the world at her. She is consequently to be the
young bride she was on the memorable morning of the drive off these
heights of Croridge down to thirty-acre meadow! It must be a saint to
forgive such offences; and she is not one, she is deliciously not one,
neither a Genevieve nor a Griselda. He handed her the rod to chastise
him. Her exchange of Christian names with the Welshman would not do it;
she was too transparently sisterly, provincially simple; she was, in
fact, respected. Any whipping from her was child's play to him, on whom,
if he was to be made to suffer, the vision of the intense felicity of
austerest asceticism brought the sensation as bracingly as the Boreal
morning animates men of high blood in ice regions. She could but gently
sting, even if vindictive.

Along the heights, outside the village, some way below a turn of the road
to Lekkatts, a gentleman waved hand. The earl saluted with his whip, and
waited for him.

'Nothing wrong, Mr. Wythan?'

'Nothing to fear, my lord.'

'I get a trifle uneasy.'

'The countess will not leave her brother.'

A glow of his countess's friendliness for this open-faced,
prompt-speaking, good fellow of the faintly inky eyelids, and possibly
sheepish inclinations, melted Fleetwood. Our downright repentance of
misconduct toward a woman binds us at least to the tolerant recognition
of what poor scraps of consolement she may have picked up between then
and now--when we can stretch fist in flame to defy it on the oath of her
being a woman of honour.

The earl alighted and said: 'Her brother, I suspect, is the key of the
position.'

'He's worth it--she loves her brother,' said Mr. Wythan, betraying a
feature of his quick race, with whom the reflection upon a statement is
its lightning in advance.

Gratified by the instant apprehension of his meaning, Fleetwood
interpreted the Welshman's. 'I have to see the brother worthy of her
love. Can you tell me the hour likely to be convenient?'. . . . .

Mr. Wythan thought an appointment unnecessary which conveyed the
sufficient assurance of audience granted.

'You know her brother well, Mr. Wythan?'

'Know him as if I had known him for years. They both come to the mind as
faith comes--no saying how; one swears by them.'

Fleetwood eyed the Welsh gentleman, with an idea that he might readily do
the same by him.

Mr. Wythan's quarters were at the small village inn, whither he was on
his way to breakfast. The earl slipped an arm through the bridle reins
and walked beside him, listening to an account of the situation at
Lekkatts. It was that extraordinary complication of moves and checks
which presents in the main a knot, for the powers above to cut. A miserly
old lord withholds arrears of wages; his workmen strike at a critical
moment; his nephew, moved by common humanity, draws upon crippled
resources to supply their extremer needs, though they are ruining his
interests. They made one night a demonstration of the terrorizing sort
round Lekkatts, to give him a chorus; and the old lord fired at them out
of window and wounded a man. For that they vowed vengeance. All the new
gunpowder milled in Surrey was, for some purpose of his own, stored by
Lord Levellier on the alder island of the pond near his workshops, a
quarter of a mile below the house. They refused, whatever their object,
to let a pound of it be moved, at a time when at last the Government had
undertaken to submit it to experiments. And there they stood on ground
too strong for 'the Captain,' as they called him, to force, because of
the quantity stored at Lekkatts being largely beyond the amount under
cover of Lord Levellier's licence. The old lord was very ill, and he
declined to see a doctor, but obstinately kept from dying. His nephew had
to guard him and at the same time support an enemy having just cause of
complaint. This, however, his narrow means would not much longer permit
him to do. The alternative was then offered him of either siding
arbitrarily against the men and his conscience or of taking a course
'imprudent on the part of a presumptive heir,' Mr. Wythan said hurriedly
at the little inn's doorsteps.

'You make one of his lordship's guard?' said Fleetwood.

'The countess, her brother, and I, yes'

'Danger at all?'

'Not so much to fear while the countess is with us.'

'Fear is not a word for Carinthia.'

Her name on the earl's lips drew a keen shot of the eye from Mr. Wythan,
and he read the signification of the spoken name. 'You know what every
Cambrian living thinks of her, my lord.'

'She shall not have one friend the less for me.'

Fleetwood's hand was out for a good-bye, and the hand was grasped by one
who looked happy in doing it. He understood and trusted the man after
that, warmed in thinking how politic his impulses could be.

His intention of riding up to Croridge at noon to request his interview
with Mr. Kirby-Levellier was then stated.

'The key of the position, as you said,' Mr. Wythan remarked, not
proffering an opinion of it more than was expressed by a hearty, rosy
countenance, that had to win its way with the earl before excuse was
found for the venturesome repetition of his phrase.

Cantering back to that home of the loves of Gower Woodseer and Madge
Winch, the thought of his first act of penance done, without his feeling
the poorer for it, reconciled Fleetwood to the aspect of the hollow
place.

He could not stay beneath the roof. His task of breakfasting done, he was
off before the morning's delivery of letters, riding round the country
under Croridge, soon up there again. And Henrietta might be at home, he
was reminded by hearing band-music as he followed the directions to the
house named Stoneridge. The band consisted of eight wind instruments;
they played astonishingly well for itinerant musicians. By curious
chance, they were playing a selection from the Pirata; presently he heard
the notes to 'il mio tradito amor.' They had hit upon Henrietta's
favourite piece!

At the close of it he dismounted, flung the reins to his groom, and,
addressing a compliment to the leader, was deferentially saluted with a
'my lord.' Henrietta stood at the window, a servant held the door open
for him to enter; he went in, and the beautiful young woman welcomed him:
'Oh, my dear lord, you have given me such true delight! How very generous
of you!' He protested ignorance. She had seen him speak to the conductor
and receive the patron's homage; and who but he knew her adored of
operas, or would have had the benevolent impulse to think of solacing her
exile from music in the manner so sure of her taste! She was at her
loveliest: her features were one sweet bloom, as of the sunny flower
garden; and, touched to the heart by the music and the kindness, she
looked the look that kisses; innocently, he felt, feeling himself on the
same good ground while he could own he admired the honey creature, much
as an amateur may admire one of the pictures belonging to the nation.

'And you have come . . . ?' she said. 'We are to believe in happy
endings?'

He shrugged, as the modest man should, who says:

'If it depends on me'; but the words were firmly spoken and could be
credited.

'Janey is with her brother down at Lekkatts. Things are at a deadlock. A
spice of danger, enough to relieve the dulness; and where there is danger
Janey's at home.' Henrietta mimicked her Janey. 'Parades with her brother
at night; old military cap on her head; firearms primed; sings her
Austrian mountain songs or the Light Cavalry call, till it rings all day
in my ears--she has a thrilling contralto. You are not to think her wild,
my lord. She's for adventure or domesticity, "whichever the Fates
decree." She really is coming to the perfect tone.'

'Speak of her,' said the earl. 'She can't yet overlook . . . ?'

'It's in the family. She will overlook anything her brother excuses.'

'I'm here to see him.'

'I heard it from Mr. Wythan.'

'"Owain," I believe?'

Henrietta sketched apologies, with a sidled head, soft pout, wavy hand.
'He belongs to the order of primitive people. His wife--the same pattern,
one supposes--pledged them to their Christian names. The man is a
simpleton, but a gentleman; and Janey holds his dying wife's wish sacred.
We are all indebted to him.'

'Whatever she thinks right!' said Fleetwood.

The fair young woman's warm nature flew out to him on a sparkle of
grateful tenderness in return for his magnanimity, oblivious of the
inflamer it was: and her heart thanked him more warmly, without the
perilous show of emotion, when she found herself secure.

She was beautiful, she was tempting, and probably the weakest of players
in the ancient game of two; and clearly she was not disposed to the
outlaw game; was only a creature of ardour. That he could see, seeing the
misinterpretation a fellow like Brailstone would put upon a temporary
flush of the feminine, and the advantage he would take of it, perhaps not
unsuccessfully--the dog! He committed the absurdity of casting a mental
imprecation at the cunning tricksters of emotional women, and yelled at
himself in the worn old surplice of the converted rake. But letting his
mind run this way, the tradito amor of the band outside the lady's window
was instantly traced to Lord Brailstone; so convincingly, that he now
became a very counsel for an injured husband in denunciation of the
seductive compliment.

Henrietta prepared to conduct him to Lekkatts; her bonnet was brought.
She drew forth a letter from a silken work-bag, and raised it,--Livia's
handwriting. 'I 've written my opinion,' he said.

'Not too severe, pray.'

'Posted.'

'Livia wanted a protector.'

'And chose--what on earth are you saying!'

Livia and her boyish lord were abandoned on the spot, though Henrietta
could have affirmed stoutly that there was much to be pleaded, if a
female advocate dared it, and a man would but hear.

His fingers were at the leaves of a Spanish dictionary.

'Oh yes, and here we have a book of Travels in Spain,' she said.
'Everything Spanish for Janey now. You are aware?--no?'

He was unaware and desired to be told.

'Janey's latest idea; only she would have conceived the notion. You solve
our puzzle, my lord.'

She renewed the thanks she persisted in offering for the military music
now just ceasing: vexatiously, considering that it was bad policy for him
to be unmasking Brailstone to her. At the same time, the blindness which
rendered her unconscious of Brailstone's hand in sending members of a
military band to play selections from the favourite opera they had
jointly drunk of to ecstasy, was creditable; touching, when one thought
of the pursuer's many devices, not omitting some treason on the part of
her present friend.

'Tell me--I solve?' he said . . . .

Henrietta spied the donkey-basket bearing the two little ones.

'Yes, I hope so--on our way down,' she made answer. 'I want you to see
the pair of love-birds in a nest.'

The boy and girl were seen lying side by side, both fast asleep;
fair-haired girl, dark-haired boy, faced to one another.

'Temper?' said Fleetwood, when he had taken observation of them.

'Very imperious--Mr. Boy!' she replied, straightening her back under a
pretty frown, to convey the humour of the infant tyrant.

The father's mind ran swiftly on a comparison of the destinies of the two
children, from his estimate of their parents; many of Gower Woodseer's
dicta converging to reawaken thoughts upon Nature's laws, which a
knowledge of his own nature blackened. He had to persuade himself that
this child of his was issue of a loving union; he had to do it violently,
conjuring a vivid picture of the mother in bud, and his recognition of
her young charm; the pain of keeping to his resolve to quit her, lest she
should subjugate him and despoil him of his wrath; the fatalism in his
coming and going; the romantic freak it had been,--a situation then so
clearly wrought, now blurred past comprehension. But there must have been
love, or some love on his part. Otherwise he was bound to pray for the
mother to predominate in the child, all but excluding its father.

Carinthia's image, as a result, ascended sovereignty, and he hung to it.

For if we are human creatures with consciences, nothing is more certain
than that we make our taskmasters of those to whom we have done a wrong,
the philosopher says. Between Lord Feltre and Gower Woodseer, influenced
pretty equally by each of them, this young nobleman was wakening to the
claims of others--Youth's infant conscience. Fleetwood now conceived the
verbal supplication for his wife's forgiveness involved in the act of
penance; and verbal meant abject; with him, going so far, it would mean
naked, precise, no slurring. That he knew, and a tremor went over him.
Women, then, are really the half of the world in power as much as in
their number, if men pretend to a step above the savage. Or, well, his
wife was a power.

He had forgotten the puzzle spoken of by Henrietta, when she used the
word again and expressed her happiness in the prospect before
them--caused by his presence, of course.

'You are aware, my dear lord, Janey worships her brother. He was
defeated, by some dastardly contrivance, in a wager to do wonderful
feats--for money! money! money! a large stake. How we come off our high
horses! I hadn't an idea of money before I was married. I think of little
else. My husband has notions of honour; he engaged himself to pay a
legacy of debts; his uncle would not pay debts long due to him. He was
reduced to the shift of wagering on his great strength and skill. He
could have done it. His enemy managed--enemy there was! He had to sell
out of the army in consequence. I shall never have Janey's face of
suffering away from my sight. He is a soldier above all things. It seems
hard on me, but I cannot blame him for snatching at an opportunity to win
military distinction. He is in treaty for the post of aide to the
Colonel--the General of the English contingent bound for Spain, for the
cause of the Queen. My husband will undertake to be at the orders of his
chief as soon as he can leave this place. Janey goes with him, according
to present arrangements.'

Passing through a turnstile, that led from the road across a meadow-slope
to the, broken land below, Henrietta had view of the earl's hard white
face, and she hastened to say: 'You have altered that, my lord. She is
devoted to her brother; and her brother running dangers . . . and danger
in itself is an attraction to her. But her husband will have the first
claim. She has her good sense. She will never insist on going, if you
oppose. She will be ready to fill her station. It will be-her pride and
her pleasure.'

Henrietta continued in the vein of these assurances; and Carinthia's
character was shooting lightnings through him, withering that of the
woman who referred to his wife's good sense and her station; and
certainly would not have betrayed herself by such drawlings if she had
been very positive that Carinthia's disposition toward wealth and luxury
resembled hers. She knew the reverse; or so his contemptuously generous
effort to frame an apology for the stuff he was hearing considered it.
His wife was lost to him. That fact smote on his breast the moment he
heard of her desire to go with her brother.

Wildest of enterprises! But a criminal saw himself guilty of a large part
in the disaster the two heroical souls were striving desperately to
repair. If her Chillon went, Carinthia would go--sure as flame is drawn
to air. The exceeding splendour in the character of a young woman,
injured as she had been, soft to love, as he knew her, and giving her
husband no other rival than a beloved brother, no ground of complaint
save her devotion to her brother, pervaded him, without illuminating or
lifting; rather with an indication of a foul contrast, that prostrated
him.

Half of our funny heathen lives we are bent double to gather things we
have tossed away! was one of the numbers of apposite sayings that hummed
about him, for a chorus of the world's old wisdom in derision, when he
descended the heathy path and had sight of Carinthia beside her Chillon.
Would it be the same thing if he had it in hand again? Did he wish it to
be the same? Was not he another man? By the leap of his heart to the
woman standing down there, he was a better man.

But recent spiritual exercises brought him to see superstitiously how by
that sign she was lost to him; for everlastingly in this life the better
pays for the worse; thus is the better a proved thing.

Both Chillon and Carinthia, it is probable, might have been stirred to
deeper than compassion, had the proud young nobleman taken them into his
breast to the scouring of it; exposing the grounds of his former
brutality, his gradual enlightenment, his ultimate acknowledgement of the
pricelessness of the woman he had won to lose her. An imploring of
forgiveness would not have been necessary with those two, however great
their--or the woman's--astonishment at the revelation of an abysmal male
humanity. A complete exposure of past meanness is the deed of present
courage certain of its reward without as well as within; for then we show
our fellows that the slough is cast. But life is a continuous fight; and
members of the social world display its degree of civilization by
fighting in armour; most of them are born in it; and their armour is more
sensitive than their skins. It was Fleetwood's instinct of his inability
to fling it off utterly which warned him of his loss of the wife, whose
enthusiasm to wait on her brother in danger might have subsided into the
channel of duty, even tenderness, had he been able resolutely to strip
himself bare. This was the further impossible to him, because of a belief
he now imposed upon himself, to cover the cowardly shrinking from so
extreme a penitential act, that such confessions are due from men to the
priest only, and that he could confess wholly and absolutely to the
priest--to heaven, therefore, under seal, and in safety, but with perfect
repentance.

So, compelled to keep his inner self unknown, he fronted Chillon;
courteously, in the somewhat lofty seeming of a guarded manner, he
requested audience for a few minutes; observing the princely figure of
the once hated man, and understanding Henrietta's sheer womanly choice of
him; Carinthia's idolatry, too, as soon as he had spoken. The man was in
his voice.

Chillon said: 'It concerns my sister, I have to think. In that case, her
wish is to be present. Your lordship will shorten the number of minutes
for the interview by permitting it.'

Fleetwood encountered Carinthia's eyes. They did not entreat or defy.
They seconded her brother, and were a civil shining naught on her
husband. He bowed his head, constrained, feeling heavily the two to one.

She replied to the look: 'My brother and I have a single mind. We save
time by speaking three together, my lord.'

He was led into the long room of the workshop, where various patterns of
muskets, rifles, pistols, and swords were stars, crosses, wedges, over
the walls, and a varnished wooden model of a piece of cannon occupied the
middle place, on a block.

Contempt of military weapons and ridicule of the art of war were common
on those days among a people beginning to sit with habitual snugness at
the festive board provided for them by the valour of their fathers.
Fleetwood had not been on the side of the banqueting citizens, though his
country's journals and her feasted popular wits made a powerful current
to whelm opposition. But the appearance of the woman, his wife, here, her
head surrounded by destructive engines in the form of trophy, and the
knowledge that this woman bearing his name designed to be out at the
heels of a foreign army or tag-rag of uniformed rascals, inspired him to
reprobate men's bad old game as heartily as good sense does in the
abstract, and as derisively as it is the way with comfortable islanders
before the midnight trumpet-notes of panic have tumbled them to their
legs. He took his chair; sickened.

He was the next moment taking Carinthia's impression of Chillon,
compelled to it by an admiration that men and women have alike for shapes
of strength in the mould of grace, over whose firm build a flicker of
agility seems to run. For the young soldier's figure was visibly in its
repose prompt to action as the mind's movement. This was her brother; her
enthusiasm for her brother was explained to him. No sooner did he have
the conception of it than it plucked at him painfully; and, feeling
himself physically eclipsed by the object of Carinthia's enthusiasm, his
pride of the rival counselled him to preserve the mask on what was going
on within, lest it should be seen that he was also morally beaten at the
outset. A trained observation told him, moreover, that her Chillon's
correctly handsome features, despite their conventional urbanity, could
knit to smite, and held less of the reserves of mercy behind them than
Carinthia's glorious barbaric ruggedness. Her eyes, each time she looked
at her brother, had, without doating, the light as of the rise of happy
tears to the underlids as they had on a certain day at the altar, when
'my lord' was 'my husband,'--more shyly then. He would have said, as
beautifully, but for envy of the frank, pellucid worship in that look on
her proved hero. It was the jewel of all the earth to win back to
himself; and it subjected him, through his desire for it, to a
measurement with her idol, in character, quality, strength, hardness. He
heard the couple pronouncing sentence of his loss by anticipation.

Why had she primed her brother to propose the council of three?
Addressing them separately, he could have been his better or truer self.
The sensation of the check imposed on him was instructive as to her craft
and the direction of her wishes. She preferred the braving of hazards and
horrors beside her brother, in scorn of the advantages he could offer;
and he yearned to her for despising by comparison the bribe he proposed
in the hope that he might win her to him. She was with religion to let
him know the meanness of wealth.

Thus, at the edge of the debate, or contest, the young lord's essential
nobility disarmed him; and the revealing of it, which would have appealed
to Carinthia and Chillon both, was forbidden by its constituent pride,
which helped him to live and stood obstructing explanatory speech.




CHAPTER XLIV

BETWEEN THE EARL, THE COUNTESS AND HER BROTHER, AND OF A SILVER CROSS

Carinthia was pleased by hearing Lord Fleetwood say to her: 'Your Madge
and my Gower are waiting to have the day named for them.'

She said: 'I respect him so much for his choice of Madge. They shall not
wait, if I am to decide.'

'Old Mr. Woodseer has undertaken to join them.'

'It is in Whitechapel they will be married.'

The blow that struck was not intended, and Fleetwood passed it, under her
brother's judicial eye. Any small chance word may carry a sting for the
neophyte in penitence.

'My lawyers will send down the settlement on her, to be read to them
to-day or to-morrow. With the interest on that and the sum he tells me he
has in the Funds, they keep the wolf from the door--a cottage door. They
have their cottage. There's an old song of love in a cottage. His liking
for it makes him seem wiser than his clever sayings. He'll work in that
cottage.'

'They have a good friend to them in you, my lord. It will not be poverty
for their simple wants. I hear of the little cottage in Surrey where they
are to lodge at first, before they take one of their own.'

'We will visit them.'

'When I am in England I shall visit them often.'

He submitted.

'The man up here wounded is recovering?'

'Yes, my lord. I am learning to nurse the wounded, with the surgeon to
direct me.'

'Matters are sobering down?--The workmen?'

'They listen to reason so willingly when we speak personally, we find.'

The earl addressed Chillon. 'Your project of a Spanish expedition reminds
me of favourable reports of your chief.'

'Thoroughly able and up to the work,' Chillon answered.

'Queer people to meddle with.'

'We 're on the right side on the dispute.'

'It counts, Napoleon says. A Spanish civil war promises bloody doings.'

'Any war does that.'

'In the Peninsula it's war to the knife, a merciless business.'

'Good schooling for the profession.'

Fleetwood glanced: she was collected and attentive. 'I hear from Mrs.
Levellier that Carinthia would like to be your companion.'

'My sister has the making of a serviceable hospital nurse.'

'You hear the chatter of London!'

'I have heard it.'

'You encourage her, Mr. Levellier?'

'She will be useful--better there than here, my lord.'

'I claim a part in the consultation.'

'There 's no consultation; she determines to go.'

'We can advise her of all the risks.'

'She has weighed them, every one.'

'In the event of accidents, the responsibility for having persuaded her
would rest on you.'

'My brother has not persuaded me,' Carinthia's belltones intervened. 'I
proposed it. The persuasion was mine. It is my happiness to be near him,
helping, if I can.'

'Lady Fleetwood, I am entitled to think that your brother yielded to a
request urged in ignorance of the nature of the risks a woman runs.'

'My brother does not yield to a request without examining it all round,
my lord, and I do not. I know the risks. An evil that we should not
endure,--life may go. There can be no fear for me.'

She spoke plain truth. The soul of this woman came out in its radiance to
subdue him, as her visage sometimes did; and her voice enlarged her
words. She was a warrior woman, Life her sword, Death her target, never
to be put to shame, unconquerable. No such symbolical image smote him,
but he had an impression, the prose of it. As in the scene of the miners'
cottares, her lord could have knelt to her: and for an unprotesting
longer space now. He choked a sigh, shrugged, and said, in the world's
patient manner with mad people: 'You have set your mind on it; you see it
rose-coloured. You would not fear, no, but your friends would have good
reason to fear. It's a menagerie in revolt over there. It is not really
the place for you. Abandon the thought, I beg.'

'I shall, if my brother does not go,' said Carinthia.

Laughter of spite at a remark either silly or slyly defiant was checked
in Fleetwood by the horror of the feeling that she had gone, was
ankle-deep in bloody mire, captive, prey of a rabble soldiery, meditating
the shot or stab of the blessed end out of woman's half of our human
muddle.

He said to Chillon: 'Pardon me, war is a detestable game. Women in the
thick of it add a touch to the brutal hideousness of the whole thing.'

Chillon said: 'We are all of that opinion. Men have to play the game;
women serving in hospital make it humaner.'

'Their hospitals are not safe.'

'Well! Safety!'

For safety is nowhere to be had. But the earl pleaded: 'At least in our
country.'

'In our country women are safe?'

'They are, we may say, protected.'

'Laws and constables are poor protection for them.'

'The women we name ladies are pretty safe, as a rule.'

'My sister, then, was the exception.'

After a burning half minute the earl said: 'I have to hear it from you,
Mr. Levellier. You see me here.'

That was handsomely spoken. But Lord Fleetwood had been judged and put
aside. His opening of an old case to hint at repentance for brutality
annoyed the man who had let him go scathless for a sister's sake.

'The grounds of your coming, my lord, are not seen; my time is short.'

'I must, I repeat, be consulted with regard to Lady Fleetwood's
movements.'

'My sister does not acknowledge your claim.'

'The Countess of Fleetwood's acts involve her husband.'

'One has to listen at times to what old sailors call Caribbee!' Chillon
exclaimed impatiently, half aloud. 'My sister received your title; she
has to support it. She did not receive the treatment of a wife:--or lady,
or woman, or domestic animal. The bond is broken, as far as it bears on
her subjection. She holds to the rite, thinks it sacred. You can be at
rest as to her behaviour. In other respects, your lordship does not exist
for her.'

'The father of her child must exist for her.'

'You raise that curtain, my lord!'

In the presence of three it would not bear a shaking.

Carinthia said, in pity of his torture:--

'I have my freedom, and am thankful for it, to follow my brother, to
share his dangers with him. That is more to me than luxury and the
married state. I take only my freedom.'

'Our boy? You take the boy?'

'My child is with my sister Henrietta!

'Where?'

'We none know yet.'

'You still mistrust me?'

Her eyes were on a man that she had put from her peaceably; and she
replied, with sweetness in his ears, with shocks to a sinking heart, 'My
lord, you may learn to be a gentle father to the child. I pray you may.
My brother and I will go. If it is death for us, I pray my child may have
his father, and God directing his father.'

Her speech had the clang of the final.

'Yes, I hope--if it be the worst happening, I pray, too,' said he, and
drooped and brightened desperately: 'But you, too, Carinthia, you could
aid by staying, by being with the boy and me. Carinthia!' he clasped her
name, the vapour left to him of her: 'I have learnt learnt what I am,
what you are; I have to climb a height to win back the wife I threw away.
She was unknown to me; I to myself nearly as much. I sent a warning of
the kind of husband for you--a poor kind; I just knew myself well enough
for that. You claimed my word--the blessing of my life, if I had known
it! We were married; I played--I see the beast I played. Money is power,
they say. I see the means it is to damn the soul, unless we--unless a man
does what I do now.'

Fleetwood stopped. He had never spoken such words--arterial words, as
they were, though the commonest, and with moist brows, dry lips, he could
have resumed, have said more, have taken this woman, this dream of the
former bride, the present stranger, into his chamber of the brave aims
and sentenced deeds. Her brother in the room was the barrier; and she sat
mute, large-eyed, expressionless. He had plunged low in the man's
hearing; the air of his lungs was thick, hard to breathe, for shame of a
degradation so extreme.

Chillon imagined him to be sighing. He had to listen further. 'Soul' had
been an uttered word. When the dishonouring and mishandling brute of a
young nobleman stuttered a compliment to Carinthia on her 'faith in God's
assistance and the efficacy of prayer,' he jumped to his legs, not to be
shouting 'Hound!' at him. He said, under control: 'God's name shall be
left to the Church. My sister need not be further troubled. She has shown
she is not persuaded by me. Matters arranged here quickly,--we start. If
I am asked whether I think she does wisely to run the risks in an
insurrectionary country rather than remain at home exposed to the honours
and amusements your lordship offers, I think so; she is acting in her
best interests. She has the choice of being abroad with me or staying
here unguarded by me. She has had her experience. She chooses rightly.
Paint the risks she runs, you lay the colours on those she escapes.' She
thanks the treatment she has undergone for her freedom to choose. I am
responsible for nothing but the not having stood against her most
wretched marriage. It might have been foreseen. Out there in the war she
is protected. Here she is with--I spare your lordship the name.'

Fleetwood would have heard harsher had he not been Carinthia's husband.
He withheld his reply. The language moved him to proud hostility: but the
speaker was Carinthia's brother.

He said to her: 'You won't forget Gower and Madge?'

She gave him a smile in saying: 'It shall be settled for a day after next
week.'

The forms of courtesy were exchanged.

At the closing of the door on him, Chillon said: 'He did send a message:
I gathered it--without the words--from our Uncle Griphard. I thought him
in honour bound to you--and it suited me that I should.'

'I was a blindfold girl, dearest; no warning would have given me sight,'
said Carinthia. 'That was my treachery to the love of my brother. . I
dream of father and mother reproaching me.'

The misery of her time in England had darkened her mind's picture of the
early hour with Chillon on the heights above the forsaken old home; and
the enthusiasm of her renewed devotion to her brother giving it again, as
no light of a lost Eden, as the brilliant step she was taking with him
from their morning Eastern Alps to smoky-crimson Pyrenees and Spanish
Sierras; she could imagine the cavernous interval her punishment for
having abandoned a sister's duties in the quest of personal happiness.

But simultaneously, the growing force of her mind's intelligence, wherein
was no enthusiasm to misdirect by overcolouring, enabled her to gather
more than a suspicion of comparative feebleness in the man stripped of
his terrors. She penetrated the discrowned tyrant's nature some distance,
deep enough to be quit of her foregoing alarms. These, combined with his
assured high style, had woven him the magical coat, threadbare to quiet
scrutiny. She matched him beside her brother. The dwarfed object was then
observed; and it was not for a woman to measure herself beside him. She
came, however, of a powerful blood, and he was pressing her back on her
resources: without the measurement or a thought of it, she did that which
is the most ordinary and the least noticed of our daily acts in civilized
intercourse, she subjected him to the trial of the elements composing
him, by collision with what she felt of her own; and it was because she
felt them strongly, aware of her feeling them, but unaware of any
conflict, that the wrestle occurred. She flung him, pitied him, and
passed on along her path elsewhere. This can be done when love is gone.
It is done more or less at any meeting of men and men; and men and women
who love not are perpetually doing it, unconsciously or sensibly. Even in
their love, a time for the trial arrives among certain of them; and the
leadership is assumed, and submission ensues, tacitly; nothing of the
contention being spoken, perhaps, nothing definitely known.

In Carinthia's case, her revived enthusiasm for her brother drove to the
penetration of the husband pleading to thwart its course. His offer was
wealth: that is, luxury, amusement, ease. The sub-audible 'himself' into
the bargain was disregarded, not counting with one who was an upward rush
of fire at the thought that she was called to share her brother's
dangers.

Chillon cordially believed the earl to be the pestilent half madman,
junction with whom is a constant trepidation for the wife, when it is not
a screaming plight. He said so, and Carinthia let him retain his opinion.
She would have said it herself to support her scheme, though 'mad'
applied to a man moving in the world with other men was not understood by
her.

With Henrietta for the earl's advocate, she was patient as the deaf
rock-wall enthusiam can be against entreaties to change its direction or
bid it disperse: The 'private band of picked musicians' at the disposal
of the Countess of Fleetwood, and Opera singers (Henrietta mentioned
resonant names) hired for wonderful nights at Esslemont and Calesford or
on board the earl's beautiful schooner yacht, were no temptation. Nor did
Henrietta's allusions to his broken appearance move his wife, except in
her saying regretfully: 'He changes.'

On the hall table at Esslemont, a letter from his bankers informed the
earl of a considerable sum of money paid in to his account in the name of
Lord Brailstone. Chumley Potts, hanging at him like a dog without a
master since the death of his friend Ambrose, had journeyed down:
'Anxious about you,' he said. Anxious about or attracted by the possessor
of Ambrose Mallard's 'clean sweeper,' the silver-mounted small pistol;
sight of which he begged to have; and to lengthened his jaw on hearing it
was loaded. A loaded pistol, this dark little one to the right of the
earl's blotting-pad and pens, had the look of a fearful link with his
fallen chaps and fishy hue. Potts maundered moralities upon 'life,'
holding the thing in his hand, weighing it, eyeing the muzzle. He
'couldn't help thinking of what is going to happen to us after it all':
and 'Brosey knows now!' was followed by a twitch of one cheek and the
ejaculation 'Forever!' Fleetwood alive and Ambrose dead were plucking
the startled worldling to a peep over the verge into our abyss; and the
young lord's evident doing of the same commanded Chumley Potts' imitation
of him under the cloud Ambrose had become for both of them.

He was recommended to see Lord Feltre, if he had a desire to be
instructed on the subject of the mitigation of our pains in the regions
below. Potts affirmed that he meant to die a Protestant Christian.
Thereupon, carrying a leaden burden of unlaughed laughable stuff in his
breast, and Chummy's concluding remark to speed him: 'Damn it, no, we'll
stick to our religion!' Fleetwood strode off to his library, and with the
names of the Ixionides of his acquaintance ringing round his head,
proceeded to strike one of them off the number privileged at the moment
to intrude on him. Others would follow; this one must be the first to go.
He wrote the famous letter to Lord Brailstone, which debarred the wily
pursuer from any pretext to be running down into Mrs. Levellier's
neighbourhood, and also precluded the chance of his meeting the fair lady
at Calesford. With the brevity equivalent to the flick of a glove on the
cheek, Lord Brailstone was given to understand by Lord Fleetwood that
relations were at an end between them. No explanation was added; a single
sentence executed the work, and in the third person. He did not once
reflect on the outcry in the ear of London coming from the receiver of
such a letter upon payment of a debt.

The letter posted and flying, Lord Fleetwood was kinder to Chumley Potts;
he had a friendly word for Gower Woodseer; though both were heathens,
after their diverse fashions, neither of them likely ever to set out upon
the grand old road of Rome: Lord Feltre's 'Appian Way of the Saints and
Comforters.'

Chummy was pardoned when they separated at night for his reiterated
allusions to the temptation of poor Ambrose Mallard's conclusive little
weapon lying on the library table within reach of a man's arm-chair: in
its case, and the case locked, yes, but easily opened, 'provoking every
damnable sort of mortal curiosity!' The soundest men among us have their
fits of the blues, Fleetwood was told. 'Not wholesome!' Chummy shook his
head resolutely, and made himself comprehensibly mysterious. He meant
well. He begged his old friend to promise he would unload and keep it
unloaded. 'For I know the infernal worry you have--deuced deal worse than
a night's bad luck!' said he; and Fleetwood smiled sourly at the world's
total ignorance of causes. His wretchedness was due now to the fact that
the aforetime huntress refused to be captured. He took a silver cross
from a table-drawer and laid it on the pistol-case. 'There, Chummy,' he
said; that was all; not sermonizing or proselytizing. He was partly
comprehended by Chumley Potts, fully a week later. The unsuspecting
fellow, soon to be despatched in the suite of Brailstone, bore away an
unwontedly affectionate dismissal to his bed, and spoke some rather
squeamish words himself, as he recollected with disgust when he ran about
over London repeating his executioner's.

The Cross on the pistol-case may have conduced to Lord Fleetwood's
thought, that his days among unrepentant ephemeral Protestant sinners
must have their immediate termination. These old friends were the
plague-infected clothes he flung off his body. But the Cross where it
lay, forbidding a movement of the hand to that box, was authoritative to
decree his passage through a present torture, by the agency of the hand
he held back from the solution of his perplexity, at the cost which his
belief in the Eternal would pay. Henrietta had mentioned her husband's
defeat, by some dastardly contrivance. He had to communicate, for the
disburdening of his soul, not only that he was guilty, but the meanest of
criminals, in being no more than half guilty. His training told him of
the contempt women entertain toward the midway or cripple sinner, when
they have no special desire to think him innocent. How write, or even how
phrase his having merely breathed in his ruffian's hearing the wish that
he might hear of her husband's defeat! And with what object? Here, too, a
woman might, years hence, if not forgive, bend her head resignedly over
the man's vile nature, supposing strong passion his motive. But the name
for the actual motive? It would not bear writing, or any phrasing round
it. An unsceptred despot bidden take a fair woman's eyes into his breast,
saw and shrank. And now the eyes were Carinthia's: he saw a savage
bridegroom, and a black ladder-climber, and the sweetest of pardoning
brides, and the devil in him still insatiate for revenge upon her who
held him to his word.

He wrote, read, tore the page, trimmed the lamp, and wrote again. He
remembered Gower Woodseer's having warned him he would finish his career
a monk. Not, like Feltre, an oily convert, but under the hood, yes, and
extracting a chartreuse from his ramble through woods richer far than the
philosopher's milk of Mother Nature's bosom. There flamed the burning
signal of release from his torments; there his absolving refuge, instead
of his writing fruitless, intricate, impossible stuff to a woman. The
letter was renounced and shredded: the dedicated ascetic contemplated a
hooded shape, washed of every earthly fleck. It proved how men may by
power of grip squeeze raptures out of pain.




CHAPTER XLV

CONTAINS A RECORD OF WHAT WAS FEARED, WHAT WAS HOPED, AND WHAT HAPPENED

The Dame is at her thumps for attention to be called to 'the strangeness
of it,' that a poor, small, sparse village, hardly above a hamlet, on the
most unproductive of Kentish heights, part of old forest land, should at
this period become 'the cynosure of a city beautifully named by the poet
Great Augusta, and truly indeed the world's metropolis.'

Put aside her artful pother to rouse excitement at stages of a narrative,
London's general eye upon little Croridge was but another instance of the
extraordinary and not so wonderful. Lady Arpington, equal to a Parliament
in herself, spoke of the place and the countess courted by her repentant
lord. Brailstone and Chumley Potts were town criers of the executioner
letter each had received from the earl; Potts with his chatter of a
suicide's pistol kept loaded in a case under a two-inch-long silver
Cross, and with sundry dramatic taps on the forehead, Jottings over the
breast, and awful grimace of devoutness. There was no mistaking him. The
young nobleman of the millions was watched; the town spyglass had him in
its orbit. Tales of the ancestral Fleetwoods ran beside rumours of a
Papist priest at the bedside of the Foredoomed to Error's dying mother.
His wealth was counted, multiplied by the ready naughts of those who know
little and dread much. Sir Meeson Corby referred to an argument Lord
Fleetwood had held on an occasion hotly against the logical consistency
of the Protestant faith; and to his alarm lest some day 'all that immense
amount of money should slip away from us to favour the machinations of
Roman Catholicism!' The Countess of Cressett, Livia, anticipated her no
surprise at anything Lord Fleetwood might do: she knew him.

So thereupon, with the whirr of a covey on wing before the fowler, our
crested three of immemorial antiquity and a presumptive immortality, the
Ladies Endor, Eldritch, and Cowry, shot up again, hooting across the
dormant chief city Old England's fell word of the scarlet shimmer above
the nether pit-flames, Rome. An ancient horror in the blood of the
population, conceiving the word to signify, beak, fang, and claw, the
fiendish ancient enemy of the roasting day of yore, heard and echoed.
Sleepless at the work of the sapper, in preparation for the tiger's leap,
Rome is keen to spy the foothold of English stability, and her clasp of a
pillar of the structure sends tremors to our foundations.

The coupling of Rome and England's wealthiest nobleman struck a match to
terrorize the Fire Insurance of Smithfield. That meteoric, intractable,
perhaps wicked, but popular, reputedly clever; manifestly evil-starred,
enormously wealthy, young Earl of Fleetwood, wedded to an adventuress,
and a target for the scandals emanating from the woman, was daily,
without omission of a day, seen walking Piccadilly pavement in company
once more with the pervert, the Jesuit agent, that crafty Catesby of a
Lord Feltre, arm in arm the pair of them, and uninterruptedly conversing,
utterly unlike Englishmen. Mr. Rose Mackrell passed them, and his breezy
salutation of the earl was unobserved in my lord's vacant glass optics,
as he sketched the scene. London had report of the sinister tempter and
the imperilled young probationer undisguisedly entering the Roman
Catholic chapel of a fashionable district-chapel erected on pervert's
legacies, down a small street at the corner of a grandee square, by
tolerance or connivance of our constabulary,--entering it linked; and
linked they issued, their heads bent; for the operation of the tonsure,
you would say. Two English noblemen! But is there no legislation to stop
the disease? Our female government asks it vixenly of our impotent male;
which pretends, beneath an air of sympathy, that we should abstain from
any compulsory action upon the law to interfere, though the situation is
confessedly grave; and the aspect men assume is correspondingly, to the
last degree provokingly, grave-half alive that they are, or void of
patriotism, or Babylonian at heart!

Lord Fleetwood's yet undocked old associates vowed he 'smelt strong' of
the fumes of the whirled silver censer-balls. His disfavour had caused a
stoppage of supplies, causing vociferous abomination of their successful
rivals, the Romish priests. Captain Abrane sniffed, loud as a horse,
condemnatory as a cat, in speaking of him. He said: 'By George, it comes
to this; we shall have to turn Catholics for a loan!' Watchdogs of the
three repeated the gigantic gambler's melancholy roar. And, see what gap,
cried the ratiocination of alarm, see the landslip it is in our body,
national and religious, when exalted personages go that way to Rome!

As you and the world have reflected in your sager moods, an ordinary
pebble may roll where it likes, for individualism of the multitudinously
obscure little affects us. Not so the costly jewel, which is a
congregation of ourselves, in our envies and longings and genuflexions
thick about its lustres. The lapses of precious things must needs carry
us, both by weight and example, and it will ceaselessly be, that we are
possessed by the treasure we possess, we hang on it. A still, small voice
of England's mind under panic sent up these truisms containing
admonitions to the governing Ladies. They, the most conservative of
earthly bodies, clamoured in return, like cloud-scud witches that have
caught fire at their skirts from the torches of marsh-fire radicals. They
cited for his arrest the titled millionaire who made a slide for the
idiots of the kingdom; they stigmatized our liberty as a sophistry,
unless we have in it the sustaining element of justice; and where is the
justice that punishes his country for any fatal course a mad young
Croesus may take! They shackled the hands of testators, who endangered
the salvation of coroneted boys by having sanction to bequeath vast
wealth in bulk. They said, in truth, that it was the liberty to be
un-Christian. Finally, they screeched a petitioning of Parliament to
devote a night to a sitting, and empower the Lord Chancellor to lay an
embargo on the personal as well as the real estate of wealthy perverts;
in common prudence depriving Rome of the coveted means to turn our
religious weapons against us.

The three guardian ladies and their strings of followers headed over the
fevered and benighted town, as the records of the period attest,
windpiping these and similar Solan notes from the undigested cropful of
alarms Lord Fleetwood's expected conduct crammed into them. They and all
the world traced his present madness to the act foregoing: that marriage!
They reviewed it to deplore it, every known incident and the numbers
imagined; yet merely to deplore: frightful comparisons of then with now
rendered the historical shock to the marriage market matter for a sick
smile. Evil genius of some sort beside him the wealthy young nobleman is
sure to have. He has got rid of one to take up with a viler. First, a
sluttish trollop of German origin is foisted on him for life; next, he is
misled to abjure the faith of his fathers for Rome. But patently,
desperation in the husband of such a wife weakened his resistance to the
Roman Catholic pervert's insinuations. There we punctuate the full stop
to our inquiries; we have the secret.

And upon that, suddenly comes a cyclonic gust; and gossip twirls, whines,
and falls to the twanging of an entirely new set of notes, that furnish a
tolerably agreeable tune, on the whole. O hear! The Marchioness of
Arpington proclaims not merely acquaintanceship with Lord Fleetwood's
countess, she professes esteem for the young person. She has been heard
to say, that if the Principality of Wales were not a royal title, a
dignity of the kind would be conferred by the people of those mountains
on the Countess of Fleetwood: such unbounded enthusiasm there was for her
character when she sojourned down there. As it is, they do speak of her
in their Welsh by some title. Their bards are offered prizes to celebrate
her deeds. You remember the regiment of mounted Welsh gentlemen escorting
her to her Kentish seat, with their band of the three-stringed harps! She
is well-born, educated, handsome, a perfectly honest woman, and a sound
Protestant. Quite the reverse of Lord Fleetwood's seeking to escape her,
it is she who flies; she cannot forgive him his cruelties and
infidelities: and that is the reason why he threatens to commit the act
of despair. Only she can save him! She has flown for refuge to her uncle,
Lord Levellier's house at a place named Croridge--not in the
gazetteer--hard of access and a home of poachers, where shooting goes on
hourly; but most picturesque and romantic, as she herself is! Lady
Arpington found her there, nursing one of the wounded, and her uncle on
his death-bed; obdurate all round against her husband, but pensive when
supplicated to consider her country endangered by Rome. She is a fervent
patriot. The tales of her Whitechapel origin, and heading mobs wielding
bludgeons, are absolutely false, traceable to scandalizing anecdotists
like Mr. Rose Mackrell. She is the beautiful example of an injured wife
doing honour to her sex in the punishment of a faithless husband, yet so
little cherishing her natural right to deal him retribution, that we dare
hope she will listen to her patriotic duty in consenting to the
reconcilement, which is Lord Fleetwood's alternative: his wife or Rome!
They say she has an incommunicable charm, accounting for the price he
puts on her now she holds aloof and he misses it. Let her but rescue him
from England's most vigilant of her deadly enemies, she will be entitled
to the nation's lasting gratitude. She has her opportunity for winning
the Anglican English, as formerly she won the Dissenter Welsh. She may
yet be the means of leading back the latter to our fold.

A notation of the cries in air at a time of surgent public excitement can
hardly yield us music; and the wording of them, by the aid of compounds
and transplants, metaphors and similes only just within range of the
arrows of Phoebus' bow (i.e. the farthest flight known), would, while it
might imitate the latent poetry, expose venturesome writers to the wrath
of a people commendably believing their language a perfected instrument
when they prefer the request for a plateful, and commissioning their
literary police to brain audacious experimenters who enlarge or wing it
beyond the downright aim at that mark. The gossip of the time must
therefore appear commonplace, in resemblance to the panting venue a terre
of the toad, instead of the fiery steed's; although we have documentary
evidence that our country's heart was moved;--in no common degree, Dr.
Glossop's lucid English has it, at the head of a broadsheet ballad
discovered by him, wherein the connubially inclined young earl and the
nation in turn beseech the countess to resume her place at Esslemont, and
so save both from a terrific dragon's jaw, scarlet as the infernal
flames; described as fascinating--

          'The classes with the crests,
          And the lining to their vests,
          Till down they jump, and empty leave
          A headless trunk that rests.'

These ballads, burlesque to present reading, mainly intended for
burlesque by the wits who dogged without much enlivening an anxious
period of our history, when corner-stones were falling the way the young
lord of the millions threatened to go, did, there is little doubt,
according to another part of their design (Rose Mackrell boasts it
indirectly in his Memoirs), interpret public opinion, that is, the
English humour of it--the half laugh in their passing and not simulated
shudder.

Carinthia had a study of the humours of English character in the person
of the wounded man she nursed on little Croridge, imagining it the most
unobserved of English homes, and herself as unimportant an object. Daniel
Charner took his wound, as he took his medicine and his posset from her
hand, kindly, and seemed to have a charitable understanding of Lord
Levellier now that the old nobleman had driven a pellet of lead into him
and laid him flat. It pleased him to assure her that his mates were men
of their word, and had promised to pay the old lord with a 'rouse' for
it, nothing worse. Her father used to speak of the 'clean hearts of the
English' as to the husbanding of revenge; that is, the 'no spot of bad
blood' to vitiate them. Captain John Peter seconded all good-humoured
fighters 'for the long account': they will surely win; and it was one of
his maxims: 'My foe can spoil my face; he beats me if he spoils my
temper.'

Recalling the scene of her bridal day--the two strong Englishmen at the
shake of hands, that had spoiled one another's faces, she was enlightened
with a comprehension of her father's love for the people; seeing the
spiritual of the gross ugly picture, as not every man can do, and but a
warrior Joan among women. Chillon shall teach the Spanish people English
heartiness, she thought. Lord Fleetwood's remarks on the expedition would
have sufficed to stamp it righteous with her; that was her logic of the
low valuation of him. She fancied herself absolutely released at his
departure. Neither her sister Riette nor her friend Owain, administering
sentiment and common sense to her by turns, could conceive how the
passion for the recovery of her brother's military name fed the hope that
she might aid in it, how the hope fed the passion. She had besides her
hunger to be at the work she could do; her Chillon's glory for morning
sky above it.

Such was the mind Lady Arpington brought the world's wisdom to bear upon;
deeming it in the end female only in its wildness and obstinacy.
Carinthia's answers were few, barely varied. Her repetition of 'my
brother' irritated the great lady, whose argument was directed to make
her see that these duties toward her brother were primarily owing to her
husband, the man she would reclaim and could guide. And the Countess of
Fleetwood's position, her duty to society, her dispensing of splendid
hospitality, the strengthening of her husband to do his duty to the
nation, the saving of him from a fatal step-from Rome; these were
considerations for a reasonable woman to weigh before she threw up all to
be off on the maddest of adventures. 'Inconceivable, my dear child!' Lady
Arpington proceeded until she heard herself as droning.

Carinthia's unmoved aspect of courteous attention appeared to invoke the
prolongation of the sermon it criticized. It had an air of reversing
their positions while she listened to the charge of folly, and
incidentally replied.

Her reason for not fearing Roman Catholic encroachments was, she said,
her having known good Catholics in the country she came from. For
herself, she should die professing the faith of her father and mother.
Behind her correct demeanour a rustic intelligence was exhibited. She
appreciated her duty to her marriage oath: 'My husband's honour is quite
safe with me.' Neither England nor religion, nor woman's proper devotion
to a husband's temporal and spiritual welfare, had claims rivalling her
devotion to her brother. She could not explain a devotion that instigated
her to an insensate course. It seemed a kind of enthusiasm; and it was
coldly spoken; in the tone referring to 'her husband's honour.' Her
brother's enterprise had her approval because 'her mother's prayer was
for him to serve in the English army.' By running over to take a side in
a Spanish squabble? she was asked and answered: 'He will learn war; my
Chillon will show his value; he will come back a tried soldier.'

She counted on his coming back? She did.

'I cannot take a step forward without counting on success. We know the
chances we are to meet. My father has written of death. We do not fear
it, so it is nothing to us. We shall go together; we shall not have to
weep for one another.'

The strange young woman's avoidance of any popular sniffle of the
pathetic had a recognized merit.

'Tell me,' Lady Arpington said abruptly; 'this maid of yours, who is to
marry the secretary, or whatever he was--you are satisfied with her?'

'She is my dear servant Madge.' A cloud opened as Carinthia spoke the
name. 'She will be a true wife to him. They will always be my friends!'

Nothing against the earl in that direction, apparently; unless his
countess was blest with the density of frigidity.

Society's emissary sketched its perils for unprotected beautiful woman;
an outline of the London quadrille Henrietta danced in; and she glanced
at Carinthia and asked: 'Have you thought of it?'

Carinthia's eyes were on the great lady's. Their meaning was, 'You hit my
chief thought.' They were read as her farthest thought. For the hint of
Henrietta's weakness deadened her feelings with a reminder of warm and
continued solicitations rebutted; the beautiful creature's tortures at
the idea of her exile from England. An outwearied hopelessness expressed
a passive sentiment very like indifference in the clear wide gaze. She
replied: 'I have. My proposal to her was Cadiz, with both our young ones.
She will not.'

And there is an end to that part of the question! Lady Arpington
interpreted it, by the gaze more than the words, under subjection of the
young woman's character. Nevertheless, she bore away Carinthia's consent
to a final meeting with the earl at her house in London, as soon as
things were settled at Croridge. Chillon, whom she saw, was just as hard,
unforgiving, careless of his country's dearest interests; brother and
sister were one heart of their one blood. She mentioned the general
impression in town, that the countess and only she could save the earl
from Rome. A flash of polite laughter was Chillon's response. But after
her inspection of the elegant athlete, she did fancy it possible for a
young wife, even for Henrietta, to bear his name proudly in his
absence--if that was worth a moment's consideration beside the serious
issues involved in her appeal to the countess; especially when the
suggestion regarding young wives left unprotected, delicately conveyed to
the husband, had failed of its purpose. The handsome husband's brows
fluttered an interrogation, as if her clear-obscure should be further
lighted; and it could not be done. He weighed the wife by the measure of
the sister, perhaps; or his military head had no room for either. His
callousness to the danger of his country's disintegration, from the
incessant, becoming overt, attacks of a foreign priesthood might--an
indignant great lady's precipitation to prophecy said would--bring
chastisement on him. She said it, and she liked Henrietta, vowing to
defeat her forecast as well as she could in a land seeming forsaken by
stable principles; its nobles breaking up its national church, going over
to Rome, embracing the faith of the impostor Mahomet.

Gossip fed to the starvation bone of Lady Arpington's report, until one
late afternoon, memorable for the breeding heat in the van of elemental
artillery, newsboys waved damp sheets of fresh print through the streets,
and society's guardians were brought to confess, in shame and gladness,
that they had been growing sceptical of the active assistance of
Providence. At first the 'Terrible explosion of gunpowder at Croridge'
alarmed them lest the timely Power should have done too much. A day later
the general agitation was pacified; Lady Arpington circulated the word
'safe,' and the world knew the disaster had not engulphed Lady
Fleetwood's valuable life. She had the news by word of mouth from the
lovely Mrs. Kirby-Levellier, sister-in-law to the countess. We are
convinced we have proof of Providence intervening when some terrific
event of the number at its disposal accomplishes the thing and no more
than the thing desired. Pitiful though it may seem for a miserly old lord
to be blown up in his bed, it is necessarily a subject of congratulation
if the life, or poor remnant of a life, sacrificed was an impediment to
our righteous wishes. But this is a theme for the Dame, who would full
surely have committed another breach of the treaty, had there not been
allusion to her sisterhood's view of the government of human affairs.

On the day preceding the catastrophe, Chillon's men returned to work. He
and Carinthia and Mr. Wythan lunched with Henrietta at Stoneridge.
Walking down to Lekkatts, they were astounded to see the figure of the
spectral old lord on the plank to the powder store, clad in his long
black cloak, erect. He was crossing, he told them, to count his barrels;
a dream had disturbed him. Chillon fell to rapid talk upon various points
of business, and dispersed Lord Levellier's memory relating to his
errand. Leaning on Carinthia's arm, he went back to the house, where he
was put to bed in peace of mind. His resuscitated physical vigour blocked
all speculation for the young people assembled at Stoneridge that night.
They hardly spoke; they strangled thoughts forming as larvae of wishes.
Henrietta would be away to Lady Arpington's next day, Mr. Wythan to
Wales. The two voyagers were sadder by sympathy than the two whom they
were leaving to the clock's round of desert sameness. About ten at night
Chillon and Mr. Wythan escorted Carinthia, for the night's watch beside
her uncle, down to Lekkatts. It was midway that the knocks on air, as of
a muffled mallet at a door and at farther doors of caverns, smote their
ears and shook the ground.

After an instant of the silence following a shock, Carinthia touched her
brother's arm; and Chillon said:

'Not my powder!'

They ran till they had Lekkatts in sight. A half moon showed the house;
it stood. Fifty paces below, a column of opal smoke had begun to wreathe
and stretch a languid flag. The 'rouse' promised to Lord Levellier by
Daniel Charner's humorous mates had hit beyond its aim. Intended to give
him a start--or 'One-er in return,' it surpassed his angry shot at the
body of them in effect.

Carinthia entered his room and saw that he was lying stretched restfully.
She whispered of this to Chillon, and began upon her watch, reading her
Spanish phrasebook; and she could have wept, if she had been a woman for
tears. Her duty to stay in England with Chillon's fair wife crossed the
beckoning pages like a black smoke. Her passion to go and share her
brother's dangers left the question of its righteousness at each fall of
the big breath.

Her uncle's grey head on his pillow was like a flintstone in chalk under
her look by light of dawn; the chin had dropped.




CHAPTER XLVI

A CHAPTER OF UNDERCURRENTS AND SOME SURFACE FLASHES

Thus a round and a good old English practical repartee, worthy a place in
England's book of her historical popular jests; conceived ingeniously, no
bit murderously, even humanely, if Englishmen are to be allowed
indulgence of a jolly hit back for an injury--more a feint than a real
stroke--gave the miserly veteran his final quake and cut Chillon's knot.

Lord Levellier dead of the joke detracted from the funny idea there had
been in the anticipation of his hearing the libertine explosion of his
grand new powder, and coming out cloaked to see what walls remained
upright. Its cleverness, however, was magnified by the shades into which
it had despatched him. The man who started the 'rouse for old Griphard'
was named: nor did he shuffle his honours off. Chillon accused him, and
he regretfully grinned; he would have owned to it eloquently, excited by
the extreme ingenuity, but humour at the criminal bar is an abject thing,
that has to borrow from metaphysics for the expository words. He lacked
them entirely, and as he could not, fronting his master, supply the
defect with oaths, he drew up and let out on the dead old lord, who
wanted a few pounds of blasting powder, like anything else in everybody's
way. Chillon expected the lowest of his countrymen to show some degree of
chivalry upon occasions like the present. He was too young to perceive
how it is, that a block of our speech in the needed direction drives it
storming in another, not the one closely expressing us. Carinthia liked
the man; she was grieved to hear of his having got the sack summarily,
when he might have had a further month of service or a month's pay. Had
not the workmen's forbearance been much tried? And they had not stolen,
they had bought the powder, only intending to startle.

She touched her brother's native sense of fairness and vexed him with his
cowardly devil of impatience, which kicked at a simply stupid common man,
and behaved to a lordly offender, smelling rascal, civilly. Just as her
father would have--treated the matter, she said: 'Are we sorry for what
has happened, Chillon?' The man had gone, the injustice was done; the
master was left to reflect on the part played by his inheritance of the
half share of ninety thousand pounds in his proper respect for Lord
Levellier's memory. Harsh to an inferior is a horrible charge. But the
position of debtor to a titled cur brings a worse for endurance. Knowing
a part of Lord Fleetwood's message to Lord Levellier suppressed, the
bride's brother, her chief guardian, had treated the omission as of no
importance, and had all the while understood that he ought to give her
his full guess at the reading of it: or so his racked mind understood it
now. His old father had said: A dumb tongue can be a heavy liar; and,
Lies are usurers' coin we pay for ten thousand per cent. His harshness in
the past hour to a workman who had suffered with him and had not intended
serious mischief was Chillon's unsounded motive for the resolution to be
out of debt to the man he loathed. There is a Muse that smiles aloft
surveying our acts from the well-springs.

Carinthia heard her brother's fuller version of the earl's communication
to her uncle before the wild day of her marriage. 'Not particularly
fitted for the married state,' Chillon phrased it, saying: 'He seems to
have known himself, he was honest so far.' She was advised to think it
over, that the man was her husband.

She had her brother's heart in her breast, she could not misread him. She
thought it over, and felt a slight drag of compassion for the reluctant
bridegroom. That was a stretch long leagues distant from love with her;
the sort of feeling one has for strange animals hurt and she had in her
childish blindness done him a hurt, and he had bitten her. He was a weak
young nobleman; he had wealth for a likeness of strength; he had no glory
about his head. Why had he not chosen a woman to sit beside him who would
have fancied his coronet a glory and his luxury a kindness? But the poor
young nobleman did not choose! The sadly comic of his keeping to the
pledge of his word--his real wife--the tyrant of the tyrant--clothed him;
the vision of him at the altar, and on the coach, and at the Royal
Sovereign Inn, and into the dimness where a placidly smiling recollection
met a curtain and lost the smile.

Suppose that her duty condemned her to stay in England on guard over
Chillon's treasure! The perpetual struggle with a weak young nobleman of
aimless tempers and rightabout changes, pretending to the part of
husband, would, she foresaw, raise another figure of duty, enchaining a
weak young woman. The world supported his pretension; and her passion to
serve as Chillon's comrade sank at a damping because it was flame.
Chillon had done that; Lady Arpington, to some extent; Henrietta more. A
little incident, pointing in no direction, had left a shadow of a cloud,
consequent upon Lady Arpington's mention of Henrietta's unprotectedness.
Stepping up the hill to meet her sister, on the morning of Henrietta's
departure for London under the convoy of Mr. Wythan, Carinthia's long
sight spied Kit Ines, or a man like him, in the meadow between Lekkatts
and Croridge. He stood before Henrietta, and vanished light-legged at a
gesture. Henrietta was descending to take her leave of her busied
husband; her cheeks were flushed; she would not speak of the fellow,
except to reply, 'oh, a beggar,' and kept asking whether she ought not to
stay at Stoneridge. And if she did she would lose the last of the Opera
in London! How could she help to investigate the cause of an explosion so
considerate to them? She sang snatches of melodies, clung to her husband,
protested her inability to leave him, and went, appearing torn away. As
well bid healthy children lie abed on a bright summer morning, as think
of holding this fair young woman bound to the circle of safety when she
has her view of pleasure sparkling like the shore-sea mermaid's mirror.

Suspicions were not of the brood Carinthia's bosom harboured. Suspicion
of Chillon's wife Carinthia could not feel. An uncaptained vessel in the
winds on high seas was imagined without a picturing of it. The apparition
of Ives, if it was he, would not fit with any conjecture. She sent a
warning to Madge, and at the same time named the girl's wedding day for
her; pained in doing it. She had given the dear girl her word that she
would be present at this of all marriages. But a day or two days or more
would have to be spent away from Chillon; and her hunger for every hour
beside her brother confessed to the war going on within her, as to which
was her holier duty, the one on the line of her inclinations, or that one
pointing to luxury-choice between a battle-horse and a cushioned-chair;
between companionship with her glorious brother facing death, and
submission to a weak young nobleman claiming his husband's rights over
her. She had submitted, had forgotten his icy strangeness, had thought
him love; and hers was a breast for love, it was owned by the sobbing
rise of her breast at the thought. And she might submit again--in honour?
scorning the husband? Chillon scorned him. Yet Chillon left the decision
to her, specified his excuses. And Henrietta and Owain, Lady Arpington,
Gower Woodseer, all the world--Carinthia shuddered at the world's blank
eye on what it directs for the acquiescence of the woman. That shred of
herself she would become, she felt herself becoming it when the view of
her career beside her brother waned. The dead Rebecca living in her heart
was the only soul among her friends whose voice was her own against the
world's.

But there came a turn where she and Rebecca separated. Rebecca's
insurgent wishes taking shape of prophecy, robbed her of her friend
Owain, to present her an impossible object, that her mind could not
compass or figure. She bade Rebecca rest and let her keep the fancy of
Owain as her good ghost of a sun in the mist of a frosty morning; sweeter
to her than an image of love, though it were the very love, the love of
maidens' dreams, bursting the bud of romance, issuing its flower.
Delusive love drove away with a credulous maiden, under an English
heaven, on a coach and four, from a windy hill-top, to a crash below, and
a stunned recovery in the street of small shops, mud, rain, gloom,
language like musket-fire and the wailing wounded.

No regrets, her father had said; they unman the heart we want for
to-morrow. She kept her look forward at the dead wall Chillon had thrown
up. He did not reject her company; his prospect of it had clouded; and
there were allusions to Henrietta's loneliness. 'His Carin could do her
service by staying, if she decided that way.' Her enthusiasm dropped to
the level of life's common ground. With her sustainment gone, she beheld
herself a titled doll, and had sternly to shut her eyes on the behind
scenes, bar any shadowy approaches of womanly softness; thinking her
father's daughter dishonoured in the submissive wife of the weak young
nobleman Chillon despised as below the title of man.

Madge and Gower came to Stoneridge on their road to London three days
before their union. Madge had no fear of Ines, but said: 'I never let Mr.
Gower out of my sight.' Perforce of studying him with the thirsty wonder
consequent upon his proposal to her, she had got fast hold of the skirts
of his character; she 'knew he was happy because he was always making her
laugh at herself.' Her manner of saying, 'She hoped to give him a
comfortable home, so that he might never be sorry for what he had done,'
was toned as in a church, beautiful to her mistress. Speaking of my
lord's great kindness, her eyes yearned for a second and fell humbly. She
said of Kit Ives, 'He's found a new "paytron," Sarah says Mr. Woodseer
tells her, my lady. It's another nobleman, Lord Brailstone, has come into
money lately and hired him for his pugilist when it's not horseracing.'
Gower spoke of thanks to Lord Fleetwood for the independence allowing him
to take a wife and settle to work in his little Surrey home. He, too,
showed he could have said more and was advised not to push at a shut
gate. My lord would attend their wedding as well as my lady, Carinthia
heard from Madge; counting it a pity that wealthy noblemen had no
professions to hinder the doing of unprofitable things.

Her sensibility was warmer on the wedding-day of these two dear ones. He
graced the scene, she admitted, when reassured by his perfect reserve
toward her personally. He was the born nobleman in his friendliness with
the bridal pair and respectfulness to Mr. Woodseer. High social breeding
is an exquisite performance on the instrument we are, and his behaviour
to her left her mind at liberty for appreciation of it. Condescension was
not seen, his voice had no false note. During the ceremony his eyelids
blinked rapidly. At the close, he congratulated the united couple,
praising them each for the wisdom of their choice. He said to his
countess:

'This is one of the hopeful marriages; chiefly of your making.'

She replied: 'My prayers will be for them always.'

'They are fortunate who have your prayers,' he said, and turned to Sarah
Winch. She was to let him know when she also had found her 'great
philosopher.' Sarah was like a fish on a bank, taking gasps at the marvel
of it all; she blushed the pale pink of her complexion, and murmured of
'happiness.' Gower had gone headlong into happiness, where philosophers
are smirkers and mouthers of ordinary stuff. His brightest remark was to
put the question to his father: 'The three good things of the Isle of
Britain?' and treble the name of Madge Woodseer for a richer triad than
the Glamorgan man could summon. Pardonably foolish; but mindful of a past
condition of indiscipline, Nature's philosopher said to the old minister:
'Your example saved me for this day at a turn of my road, sir.' Nature's
poor wild scholar paid that tribute to the regimental sectarian. Enough
for proud philosophy to have done the thing demonstrably right, Gower's
look at his Madge and the world said. That 'European rose of the
coal-black order,' as one of his numerous pictures of her painted the
girl, was a torch in a cavern for dusky redness at her cheeks. Her
responses beneath the book Mr. Woodseer held open had flashed a distant
scene through Lord Fleetwood. Quaint to notice was her reverence for the
husband she set on a towering monument, and her friendly, wifely;
whispered jogs at the unpractical creature's forgetfulness of his wraps,
his books; his writing-desk--on this tremendous occasion, his pipe. Again
the earl could have sworn, that despite her antecedents, she brought her
husband honest dower, as surely as she gave the lucky Pagan a whole
heart; and had a remarkably fine bust to house the organ, too; and a
clarionet of a voice, curiously like her, mistress's. And not a bad
fellow, but a heathen dog, a worshipper of Nature, walked off with the
girl, whose voice had the ring of Carinthia's. The Powers do not explain
their dispensations.

These two now one by united good-will for the junction Lord Fleetwood
himself drove through Loudon to the hills, where another carriage awaited
them by his orders, in the town of London's race-course. As soon as they
were seated he nodded to them curtly from his box, and drove back,
leaving them puzzled. But his countess had not so very coldly seen him
start his horses to convey the modest bridal pair. His impulses to
kindness could be politic. Before quitting Whitechapel, she went with
Sarah to look at the old shop of the fruits and vegetables. They found it
shut, untenanted; Mr. Woodseer told them that the earl was owner of it by
recent purchase, and would not lease it. He had to say why; for the
countess was dull to the notion of a sentimental desecration in the
occupying of her bedchamber by poor tradespeople. She was little
flattered. The great nobleman of her imagination when she lay there
dwindled to a whimsy infant, despot of his nursery, capricious with his
toys; likely to damage himself, if left to himself.

How it might occur, she heard hourly from her hostess, Lady Arpington;
from Henrietta as well, in different terms. He seemed to her no longer
the stationed nobleman, but one of other idle men, and the saddest of
young men. His weakness cast a net on her. Worse than that drag of
compassion, she foresaw the chance of his having experience of her own
weakness, if she was to be one among idle women: she might drop to the
love of him again. Chillon's damping of her enthusiasm sank her to a mere
breathing body, miserably an animal body, no comrade for a valiant
brother; this young man's feeble consort, perhaps: and a creature
thirsting for pleasure, disposed to sigh in the prospect of caresses.
Enthusiasm gone, her spirited imagination of active work on the field of
danger beside her brother flapped a broken wing.

She fell too low in her esteem to charge it upon Henrietta that she stood
hesitating, leaning on the hated side of the debate; though she could
almost have blamed Chillon for refusing her his positive counsel, and not
ordering his wife to follow him. Once Lady Arpington, reasoning with her
on behalf of the husband who sought reconciliation, sneered at her
brother's project, condemned it the more for his resolve to carry it out
now that he had means. The front of a shower sprang to Carinthia's
eyelids. Now that her brother had means, he from whom she might be
divided was alert to keep his engagement and study war on the field, as
his father had done in foreign service, offering England a trained
soldier, should his country subsequently need him. The contrast of her
heroic brother and a luxurious idle lord scattering blood of bird or
stag, and despising the soldier's profession, had a singular bitter
effect, consequent on her scorn of words to defend the man her heart
idolized. This last of young women for weeping wept in the lady's
presence.

The feminine trick was pardoned to her because her unaccustomed betrayal
of that form of enervation was desired. It was read as woman's act of
self-pity over her perplexity: which is a melting act with the woman when
there is no man to be dissolved by it. So far Lady Arpington judged
rightly; Carinthia's tears, shed at the thought of her brother under the
world's false judgement of him, left her spiritless to resist her
husband's advocates. Unusual as they were, almost unknown, they were
thunder-drops and shook her.

All for the vivid surface, the Dame frets at stresses laid on
undercurrents. There is no bridling her unless the tale be here told of
how Lord Brailstone in his frenzy of the disconcerted rival boasted over
town the counterstroke he had dealt Lord Fleetwood, by sending Mrs.
Levellier a statement of the latter nobleman's base plot to thwart her
husband's wager, with his foul agent, the repentant and well-paid ruffian
in person, to verify every written word. The town's conception of the
necessity for the reunion of the earl and countess was too intense to let
exciting scandal prosper. Moreover, the town's bright anticipation of its
concluding festivity on the domain of Calesford argued such tattle down
to a baffled adorer's malice. The Countess of Cressett, having her
cousin, the beautiful Mrs. Kirby-Levellier, in her house, has denied Lord
Brailstone admission at her door, we can affirm. He has written to her
vehemently, has called a second time, has vowed publicly that Mrs.
Levellier shall have her warning against Lord Fleetwood. The madness of
jealousy was exhibited. Lady Arpington pronounced him in his conduct
unworthy the name of gentleman. And how foolish the scandal he
circulates! Lord Fleetwood's one aim is to persuade his offended wife to
take her place beside him. He expresses regret everywhere, that the death
of her uncle Lord Levellier withholds her presence from Calesford during
her term of mourning; and that he has given his word for the fete on a
particular day, before London runs quite dry. His pledge of his word is
notoriously inviolate. The Countess of Cressett--an extraordinary
instance of a thrice married woman corrected in her addiction to play by
her alliance with a rakish juvenile--declares she performs the part of
hostess at the request of the Countess of Fleetwood. Perfectly
convincing. The more so (if you have the gossips' keen scent of a
deduction) since Lord Fleetwood and young Lord Cressett and the Jesuit
Lord Feltre have been seen confabulating with very sacerdotal
countenances indeed. Three English noblemen! not counting eighty years
for the whole three! And dear Lady Cressett fears she may be called on to
rescue her boy-husband from a worse enemy than the green tables, if Lady
Fleetwood should unhappily prove unyielding, as it shames the gentle sex
to imagine she will be. In fact, we know through Mrs. Levellier, the
meeting of reconciliation between the earl and the countess comes off at
Lady Arpington's, by her express arrangement, to-morrow: 'none too soon,'
the expectant world of London declared it.

The meeting came to pass three days before the great day at Calesford.
Carinthia and her lord were alone together. This had been his burning
wish at Croridge, where he could have poured his heart to her and might
have moved the wife's. But she had formed her estimate of him there: she
had, in the comparison or clash of forces with him, grown to contemplate
the young man of wealth and rank, who had once been impatient of an
allusion to her father, and sought now to part her from her brother--stop
her breathing of fresh air. Sensationally, too, her ardour for the
exercise of her inherited gifts attributed it to him that her father's
daughter had lived the mean existence in England, pursuing a husband,
hounded by a mother's terrors. The influences environing her and pressing
her to submission sharpened her perusal of the small object largely
endowed by circumstances to demand it. She stood calmly discoursing, with
a tempered smile: no longer a novice in the social manner. An equal whom
he had injured waited for his remarks, gave ready replies; and he, bowing
to the visible equality, chafed at a sense of inferiority following his
acknowledgement of it. He was alone with her, and next to dumb; she froze
a full heart. As for his heart, it could not speak at all, it was a
swinging lump. The rational view of the situation was exposed to her; and
she listened to that favourably, or at least attentively; but with an
edge to her civil smile when he hinted of entertainments, voyages,
travels, an excursion to her native mountain land. Her brother would then
be facing death. The rational view, she admitted, was one to be
considered. Yes, they were married; they had a son; they were bound to
sink misunderstandings, in the interests of their little son. He ventured
to say that the child was a link uniting them; and she looked at him. He
blinked rapidly, as she had seen him do of late, but kept his eyes on her
through the nervous flutter of the lids; his pride making a determined
stand for physical mastery, though her look was but a look. Had there
been reproach in it, he would have found the voice to speak out. Her look
was a cold sky above a hungering man. She froze his heart from the marble
of her own.

And because she was for adventuring with her brother at bloody work of
civil war in the pay of a foreign government!--he found a short refuge in
that mute sneer, and was hurled from it by an apparition of the Welsh
scene of the bitten infant, and Carinthia volunteering to do the bloody
work which would have saved it; which he had contested, ridiculed. Right
then, her insanity now conjured the wretched figure of him opposing the
martyr her splendid humaneness had offered her to be, and dominated his
reason, subjected him to admire--on to worship of the woman, whatever she
might do. Just such a feeling for a woman he had dreamed of in his
younger time, doubting that he would ever meet the fleshly woman to
impose it. His heart broke the frost she breathed. Yet, if he gave way to
the run of speech, he knew himself unmanned, and the fatal habit of
superiority stopped his tongue after he had uttered the name he loved to
speak, as nearest to the embrace of her.

'Carinthia--so I think, as I said, we both see the common sense of the
position. I regret over and over again--we'll discuss all that when we
meet after this Calesford affair. I shall have things to say. You will
overlook, I am sure--well, men are men!--or try to. Perhaps I'm not worse
than--we'll say, some. You will, I know,--I have learnt it,--be of great
service, help to me; double my value, I believe; more than double it. You
will receive me--here? Or at Croridge or Esslemont; and alone together,
as now, I beg.'

That was what he said. Having said it, his escape from high tragics in
the comfortable worldly tone rejoiced him; to some extent also the
courteous audience she gave him. And her hand was not refused. Judging by
her aspect, the plain common-sense ground of their situation was accepted
for the best opening step to their union; though she must have had her
feelings beneath it, and God knew that he had! Her hand was friendly. He
could have thanked her for yielding her hand without a stage scene; she
had fine breeding by nature. The gracefullest of trained ladies could not
have passed through such an interview so perfectly in the right key; and
this was the woman he had seen at the wrestle with hideous death to save
a muddy street-child! She touched the gentleman in him. Hard as it was
while he held the hand of the wife, his little son's mother, who might be
called his bride, and drew him by the contact of their blood to a memory,
seeming impossible, some other world's attested reality,--she the angel,
he the demon of it,--unimaginable, yet present, palpable, a fact beyond
his mind, he let her hand fall scarce pressed. Did she expect more than
the common sense of it to be said? The 'more' was due to her, and should
partly be said at their next meeting for the no further separating; or
else he would vow in his heart to spread it out over a whole life's
course of wakeful devotion, with here and there a hint of his younger
black nature. Better that except for a desire seizing him to make
sacrifice of the demon he had been, offer him up hideously naked to her
mercy. But it was a thing to be done by hints, by fits, by small doses.
She could only gradually be brought to the comprehension of how the man
or demon found indemnification under his yoke of marriage in snatching
her, to torment, perhaps betray; and solace for the hurt to his pride in
spreading a snare for the beautiful Henrietta. A confession! It could be
to none but the priest.

Knowledge of Carinthia would have urged him to the confession
straightway. In spite of horror, the task of helping to wash a black soul
white would have been her compensation for loss of companionship with her
soldier brother. She would have held hot iron to the rabid wound and come
to a love of the rescued sufferer.

It seemed to please her when he spoke of Mr. Rose Mackrell's applications
to get back his volume of her father's Book of Maxims.

'There is mine,' she said.

For the sake of winning her quick gleam at any word of the bridal couple,
he conjured a picture of her Madge and his Gower, saying: 'That
marriage--as you will learn--proves him honest from head to foot; as she
is in her way, too.'

'Oh, she is,' was the answer.

'We shall be driving down to them very soon, Carinthia.'

'It will delight them to see either of us, my lord.'

'My lady, adieu until I am over with this Calesford,' he gestured, as in
fetters.

She spared him the my lording as she said adieu, sensitive as she was,
and to his perception now.

Lady Arpington had a satisfactory two minutes with him before he left the
house. London town, on the great day at Calesford, interchanged
communications, to the comforting effect, that the Countess of Fleetwood
would reign over the next entertainment.




CHAPTER XLVII

THE LAST: WITH A CONCLUDING WORD BY THE DAME

It is of seemingly good augury for the cause of a suppliant man, however
little for the man himself, when she who has much to pardon can depict
him in a manner that almost smiles, not unlike a dandling nurse the
miniature man-child sobbing off to sleep after a frenzy; an example of a
genus framed for excuses, and he more than others. Chillon was amused up
to inquisitive surprise by Carinthia's novel idea of her formerly dreaded
riddle of a husband. As she sketched the very rational alliance proposed
to her, and his kick at the fetters of Calesford, a shadowy dash for an
image of the solicitous tyrant was added perforce to complete the scene;
following which, her head moved sharply, the subject was flung over her
shoulder.

She was developing; she might hold her ground with the husband, if the
alliance should be resumed; and she would be a companion for Henrietta in
England: she was now independent, as to money, and she could break an
intolerable yoke without suffering privation. He kept his wrath under,
determined not to use his influence either way, sure though he was of her
old father's voting for her to quit the man and enter the field where
qualities would be serviceable. The man probably feared a scandal more
than the loss of his wife in her going. He had never been thrashed--the
sole apology Chillon discovered for him, in a flushed review of the
unavenged list of injuries Carinthia had sustained. His wise old father
insisted on the value of an early thrashing to trim and shape the growth
of most young men. There was no proof of Lord Fleetwood's having schemed
to thwart his wager, so he put that accusation by: thinking for an
instant, that if the man desired to have his wife with him, and she left
the country with her brother, his own act would recoil; or if she stayed
to hear of a villany, Carinthia's show of scorn could lash. Henrietta
praised my lord's kindness. He had been one of the adorers--as what man
would not be!--and upon her at least (he could hardly love her husband)
he had not wreaked his disappointment. A young man of huge wealth, having
nothing to do but fatten his whims, is the monster a rich country breeds
under the blessing of peace. His wife, if a match for him, has her work
traced out:--mean work for the child of their father, Chillon thought.
She might be doing braver, more suitable to the blood in her veins. But
women have to be considered as women, not as possible heroines; and
supposing she held her own with this husband of hers, which meant,
judging by the view of their unfolded characters at present, a certain
command of the freakish beast; she, whatever her task, would not be the
one set trotting. He came to his opinion through the estimate he had
recently formed of Lord Fleetwood, and a study of his changed sister.

Her brows gloomed at a recurrence to that subject. Their business of the
expedition absorbed her, each detail, all the remarks he quoted of his
chief, hopeful or weariful; for difficulties with the Spanish Government,
and with the English too, started up at every turn; and the rank and file
of the contingent were mostly a rough lot, where they were rather better
than soaked weeds. A small body of trained soldiers had sprung to the
call to arms; here and there an officer could wheel a regiment.

Carinthia breasted discouragement. 'English learn from blows, Chillon.'

'He might have added, they lose half their number by having to learn from
blows, Carin.'

'He said, "Let me lead Britons!"'

'When the canteen's fifty leagues to the rear, yes!'

'Yes, it is a wine country,' she sighed. 'But would the Spaniards have
sent for us if their experience told them they could not trust us?'

Chillon brightened rigorously: 'Yes, yes; there's just a something about
our men at their best, hard to find elsewhere. We're right in thinking
that. And our chief 's the right man.'

'He is Owain's friend and countryman,' said Carinthia, and pleased, her
brother for talking like a girl, in the midst of methodical calculations
of the cost of this and that, to purchase the supplies he would need. She
had an organizing head. On her way down from London she had drawn on
instructions from a London physician of old Peninsula experience to
pencil a list of the medical and surgical stores required by a
campaigning army; she had gained information of the London shops where
they were to be procured; she had learned to read medical prescriptions
for the composition of drugs. She was at her Spanish still, not behind
him in the ordinary dialogue, and able to correct him on points of
Spanish history relating to fortresses, especially the Basque. A French
bookseller had supplied her with the Vicomte d'Eschargue's recently
published volume of a Travels in Catalonia. Chillon saw paragraphs
marked, pages dog-eared, for reference. At the same time, the question of
Henrietta touched her anxiously. Lady Arpington's hints had sunk into
them both.

'I have thought of St. Jean de Luz, Chillon, if Riette would consent to
settle there. French people are friendly. You expect most of your work in
and round the Spanish Pyrenees.'

'Riette alone there?' said he, and drew her by her love of him into his
altered mind; for he did not object to his wife's loneliness at Cadiz
when their plan was new.

London had taught her that a young woman in the giddy heyday of her
beauty has to be guarded; her belonging to us is the proud burden
involving sacrifices. But at St. Jean de Luz, if Riette would consent to
reside there, Lord Fleetwood's absence and the neighbourhood of the war
were reckoned on to preserve his yokefellow from any fit of the
abominated softness which she had felt in one premonitory tremor during
their late interview, and deemed it vile compared with the life of action
and service beside, almost beside, her brother, sharing his dangers at
least. She would have had Chillon speak peremptorily to his wife
regarding the residence on the Spanish borders, adding, in a despair:
'And me with her to protect her!'

'Unfair to Riette, if she can't decide voluntarily,' he said.

All he refrained from was, the persuading her to stay in England and live
reconciled with the gaoler of the dungeon, as her feelings pictured it.

Chillon and Carinthia journeyed to London for purchases and a visit to
lawyer, banker, and tradesmen, on their way to meet his chief and Owain
Wythan at Southampton. They lunched with Livia. The morrow was the great
Calesford day; Henrietta carolled of it. Lady Arpington had been
afllictingly demure on the theme of her presence at Calesford within her
term of mourning. 'But I don't mourn, and I'm not related to the defunct,
and I can't be denied the pleasure invented for my personal
gratification,' Henrietta's happy flippancy pouted at the prudish
objections. Moreover, the adored Columelli was to be her slave of song.
The termination of the London season had been postponed a whole week for
Calesford: the utmost possible strain; and her presence was understood to
represent the Countess of Fleetwood, temporarily in decorous retirement.
Chillon was assured by her that the earl had expressed himself satisfied
with his wife's reasonableness. 'The rest will follow.' Pleading on the
earl's behalf was a vain effort, but she had her grounds for painting
Lord Fleetwood's present mood to his countess in warm colours. 'Nothing
short of devotion, Chillon!' London's extreme anxiety to see them united,
and the cause of it, the immense good Janey could do to her country,
should certainly be considered by her, Henrietta said. She spoke
feverishly. A mention of St. Jean de Luz for a residence inflicted, it
appeared, a more violent toothache than she had suffered from the
proposal of quarters in Cadiz. And now her husband had money? . . . she
suggested his reinstatement in the English army. Chillon hushed that: his
chief had his word. Besides, he wanted schooling in war. Why had he
married! His love for her was the answer; and her beauty argued for the
love. But possessing her, he was bound to win her a name. So his
reasoning ran to an accord with his military instincts and ambition.
Nevertheless, the mournful strange fact she recalled, that they had never
waltzed together since they were made one, troubled his countenance in
the mirror of hers. Instead of the waltz, grief, low worries, dulness, an
eclipse of her, had been the beautiful creature's portion.

It established mighty claims to a young husband's indulgence. She hummed
a few bars of his favourite old Viennese waltz, with 'Chillon!'
invitingly and reproachfully. His loathing of Lord Fleetwood had to
withstand an envious jump at the legs in his vison of her partner on the
morrow. He said: 'You'll think of some one absent.'

'You really do wish me to go, my darling? It is Chillon's wish?' She
begged for the words; she had them, and then her feverishness abated to a
simple sparkling composure.

Carinthia had observed her. She was heart-sick under pressure of thoughts
the heavier for being formless. They signified in the sum her doom to see
her brother leave England for the war, and herself crumble to pieces from
the imagined figure of herself beside him on or near the field. They
could not be phrased, for they accused the beloved brother of a weakness
in the excessive sense of obligation to the beautiful woman who had
wedded him. Driving down to Southampton by the night-coach, her
tenderness toward Henrietta held other thoughts unshaped, except one,
that moved in its twilight, murmuring of how the love of pleasure keeps
us blind children. And how the innocents are pushed by it to snap at
wicked bait, which the wealthy angle with, pointed a charitable index on
some of our social story. The Countess Livia, not an innocent like
Henrietta had escaped the poisoned tongues by contracting a third
marriage--'in time!' Lady Arpington said; and the knotty question was
presented to a young mind: Why are the innocents tempted to their ruin,
and the darker natures allowed an escape? Any street-boy could have told
her of the virtue in quick wits. But her unexercised reflectiveness was
on the highroad of accepted doctrines, with their chorus of the moans of
gossips for supernatural intervention to give us justice. She had not
learnt that those innocents, pushed by an excessive love of pleasure, are
for the term lower in the scale than their wary darker cousins, and must
come to the diviner light of intelligence through suffering.

However, the result of her meditations was to show her she was directed
to be Henrietta's guardian. After that, she had no thoughts; travelling
beside Chillon, she was sheer sore feeling, as of a body aching for its
heart plucked out. The bitterness of the separation to come between them
prophesied a tragedy. She touched his hand. It was warm now.

During six days of travels from port to port along the Southern and
Western coasts, she joined in the inspection of the English contingent
about to be shipped. They and their chief and her brother were plain to
sight, like sample print of a book's first page, blank sheets for the
rest of the volume. If she might have been one among them, she would have
dared the reckless forecast. Her sensations were those of a bird that has
flown into a room, and beats wings against the ceiling and the
window-panes. A close, hard sky, a transparent prison wall, narrowed her
powers, mocked her soul. She spoke little; what she said impressed
Chillon's chief, Owain Wythan was glad to tell her. The good friend had
gone counter to the tide of her breast by showing satisfaction with the
prospect that she would take her rightful place in the world. Her
concentrated mind regarded the good friend as a phantom of a man, the
world's echo. His dead Rebecca would have understood her passion to be
her brother's comrade, her abasement in the staying at home to guard his
butterfly. Owain had never favoured her project; he could not now
perceive the special dangers Chillon would be exposed to in her
separation from him. She had no means of explaining what she felt
intensely, that dangers, death, were nothing to either of them, if they
shared the fate together.

Her rejected petition to her husband for an allowance of money, on the
day in Wales, became the vivid memory which brings out motives in its
glow. Her husband hated her brother; and why? But the answer was lighted
fierily down another avenue. A true husband, a lord of wealth, would have
rejoiced to help the brother of his wife. He was the cause of Chillon's
ruin and this adventure to restore his fortunes. Could she endure a close
alliance with the man while her brother's life was imperilled? Carinthia
rebuked her drowsy head for not having seen his reason for refusing at
the time. 'How long I am before I see anything that does not stare in my
face!' She was a married woman, whose order of mind rendered her
singularly subject to the holiness of the tie; and she was a weak woman,
she feared. Already, at intervals, now that action on a foreign field of
the thunders and lightnings was denied, imagination revealed her
dissolving to the union with her husband, and cried her comment on
herself as the world's basest of women for submitting to it while
Chillon's life ran risks; until finally she said: 'Not before I have my
brother home safe!' an exclamation equal to a vow.

That being settled, some appearance of equanimity returned; she talked of
the scarlet business as one she participated in as a distant spectator.
Chillon's chief was hurrying the embarkation of his troops; within ten
days the whole expedition would be afloat. She was to post to London for
further purchases, he following to take leave of his wife and babe.
Curiously, but hardly remarked on during the bustle of work, Livia had
been the one to send her short account of the great day at Calesford;
Henrietta, the born correspondent, pencilling a couple of lines; she was
well, dreadfully fatigued, rather a fright from a trip of her foot and
fall over a low wire fence. Her message of love thrice underlined the
repeated word.

Henrietta was the last person Carinthia would have expected to meet
midway on the London road. Her name was called from a carriage as she
drove up to the door of the Winchester hostlery, and in the lady, over
whose right eye and cheek a covering fold of silk concealed a bandage,
the voice was her sister Riette's. With her were two babes and their
nursemaids.

'Chillon is down there--you have left him there?' Henrietta greeted her,
saw the reply, and stepped out of her carriage. 'You shall kiss the
children afterwards; come into one of the rooms, Janey.'

Alone together, before an embrace, she said, in the voice of tears
hardening to the world's business, 'Chillon must not enter London. You
see the figure I am. My character's in as bad case up there--thanks to
those men! My husband has lost his "golden Riette." When you see beneath
the bandage! He will have the right to put me away. His "beauty of
beauties"! I'm fit only to dress as a page-boy and run at his heels. My
hero! my poor dear! He thinking I cared for nothing but amusement,
flattery. Was ever a punishment so cruel to the noblest of generous
husbands! Because I know he will overlook it, make light of it, never
reproach his Riette. And the rose he married comes to him a shrivelled
leaf of a potpourri heap. You haven't seen me yet. I was their "beautiful
woman." I feel for my husband most.'

She took breath. Carinthia pressed her lips on the cheek sensible to a
hiss, and Henrietta pursued, in words liker to sobs: 'Anywhere, Cadiz,
St. Jean de Luz, hospital work either, anywhere my husband likes,
anything! I want to work, or I'll sit and rock the children. I'm awake at
last. Janey, we're lambs to vultures with those men. I don't pretend I
was the perfect fool. I thought myself so safe. I let one of them squeeze
my hand one day, he swears. You know what a passion is; you have it for
mountains and battles, I for music. I do remember, one morning before
sunrise, driving back to town out of Windsor,--a dance, the officers of
the Guards,--and my lord's trumpeter at the back of the coach blowing
notes to melt a stone, I found a man's hand had mine. I remember Lord
Fleetwood looking over his shoulder and smiling hard and lashing his
horses. But listen--yes, at Calesford it happened. He--oh, hear the name,
then; Chillon must never hear it;--Lord Brailstone was denied the right
to step on Lord Fleetwood's grounds. The Opera company had finished
selections from my Pirata. I went out for cool air; little Sir Meeson
beside me. I had a folded gauze veil over my head, tied at the chin in a
bow. Some one ran up to me--Lord Brailstone. He poured forth their
poetry. They suppose it the wine for their "beautiful woman." I dare say
I laughed or told him to go, and he began a tirade against Lord
Fleetwood. There's no mighty difference between one beast of prey and
another. Let me get away from them all! Though now! they would not lift
an eyelid. This is my husband's treasure returning to him. We have to be
burnt to come to our senses. Janey--oh! you do well!--it was fiendish;
old ballads, melodrama plays, I see they were built on men's deeds.
Janey, I could not believe it, I have to believe, it is forced down my
throat;--that man, your husband, because he could not forgive my choosing
Chillon, schemed for Chillon's ruin. I could not believe it until I saw
in the glass this disfigured wretch he has made of me. Livia serves him,
she hates him for the tyrant he is; she has opened my eyes. And not for
himself, no, for his revenge on me, for my name to be as my face is. He
tossed me to his dogs; fair game for them! You do well, Janey; he is
capable of any villany. And has been calling at Livia's door twice a day,
inquiring anxiously; begs the first appointment possible. He has no
shame; he is accustomed to buy men and women; he thinks his money will
buy my pardon, give my face a new skin, perhaps. A woman swears to you,
Janey, by all she holds holy on earth, it is not the loss of her
beauty--there will be a wrinkled patch on the cheek for life, the surgeon
says; I am to bear a brown spot, like a bruised peach they sell at the
fruit-shops cheap. Chillon's Riette! I think of that, the miserable wife
I am for him without the beauty he loved so! I think of myself as guilty,
a really guilty woman, when I compare my loss with my husband's.'

'Your accident, dearest Riette--how it happened?' Carinthia said,
enfolding her.

'Because, Janey, what have I ever been to Chillon but the good-looking
thing he was proud of? It's gone. Oh, the accident. Brailstone had pushed
little Corby away; he held my hand, kept imploring, he wanted the usual
two minutes, and all to warn me against--I've told you; and he saw Lord
Fleetwood coming. I got my hand free, and stepped back, my head spinning;
and I fell. That I recollect, and a sight of flames, like the end of the
world. I fell on one of the oil-lamps bordering the grass; my veil
lighted; I had fainted; those two men saw nothing but one another; and
little Sir Meeson was no help; young Lord Cressett dashed out the flames.
They brought me to my senses for a second swoon. Livia says I woke
moaning to be taken away from that hated Calesford. It was, oh! never to
see that husband of yours again. Forgive him, if you can. Not I. I carry
the mark of him to my grave. I have called myself "Skin-deep" ever since,
day and night--the name I deserve.'

'We will return to Chillon together, my own,' said Carinthia. 'It may not
be so bad.' And in the hope that her lovely sister exaggerated a
defacement leaving not much worse than a small scar, her heart threw off
its load of the recent perplexities, daylight broke through her dark
wood. Henrietta brought her liberty. How far guilty her husband might be,
she was absolved from considering; sufficiently guilty to release her.
Upon that conclusion, pity for the awakened Riette shed purer tear-drops
through the gratitude she could not restrain, could hardly conceal, on
her sister's behalf and her own. Henrietta's prompt despatch to Croridge
to fetch the babes, her journey down out of a sick-room to stop Chillon's
visit to London, proved her an awakened woman, well paid for the stain on
her face, though the stain were lasting. Never had she loved Henrietta,
never shown her so much love, as on the road to the deepening colours of
the West. Her sisterly warmth surprised the woeful spotted beauty with a
reflection that this martial Janey was after all a woman of feeling, one
whom her husband, if he came to know it and the depth of it, the rich
sound of it, would mourn in sackcloth to have lost.

And he did, the Dame interposes for the final word, he mourned his loss
of Carinthia Jane in sackcloth and ashes, notwithstanding that he had the
world's affectionate condolences about him to comfort him, by reason of
his ungovernable countess's misbehaviour once more, according to the
report, in running away with a young officer to take part in a foreign
insurrection; and when he was most the idol of his countrymen and
countrywomen, which it was once his immoderate aim to be, he mourned her
day and night, knowing her spotless, however wild a follower of her
father's MAXIMS FOR MEN. He believed--some have said his belief was not
in error--that the woman to aid and make him man and be the star in human
form to him, was miraculously revealed on the day of his walk through the
foreign pine forest, and his proposal to her at the ducal ball was an
inspiration of his Good Genius, continuing to his marriage morn, and then
running downwards, like an overstrained reel, under the leadership of his
Bad. From turning to turning of that descent, he saw himself advised to
retrieve the fatal steps, at each point attempting it just too late;
until too late by an hour, he reached the seaport where his wife had
embarked; and her brother, Chillon John, cruelly, it was the common
opinion, refused him audience. No syllable of the place whither she fled
abroad was vouchsafed to him; and his confessions of sins and repentance
of them were breathed to empty air. The wealthiest nobleman of all
England stood on the pier, watching the regiments of that doomed
expedition mount ship, ready with the bribe of the greater part of his
possessions for a single word to tell him of his wife's destination. Lord
Feltre, his companion, has done us the service to make his emotions
known. He describes them, true, as the Papist who sees every incident
contribute to precipitate sinners into the bosom of his Church. But this,
we have warrant for saying, did not occur before the earl had visited and
strolled in the woods with his former secretary, Mr. Gower Woodseer, of
whom so much has been told, and he little better than an infidel,
declaring his aim to be at contentedness in life. Lord Fleetwood might
envy for a while, he could not be satisfied with Nature.

Within six months of Carinthia Jane's disappearance, people had begun to
talk of strange doings at Calesford; and some would have it, that it was
the rehearsal of a play, in which friars were prominent characters, for
there the frocked gentry were seen flitting across the ground. Then the
world learnt too surely that the dreaded evil had happened, its
wealthiest nobleman had gone over to the Church of Rome! carrying all his
personal and unentailed estate to squander it on images and a dogma.
Calesford was attacked by the mob;--one of the notorious riots in our
history was a result of the Amazing Marriage, and roused the talk of it
again over Great Britain. When Carinthia Jane, after two years of
adventures and perils rarely encountered by women, returned to these
shores, she was, they say, most anxious for news of her husband; and
then, indeed, it has been conjectured, they might have been united to
walk henceforward as one for life, but for the sad fact that the Earl of
Fleetwood had two months and some days previously abjured his rank, his
remaining property, and his title, to become, there is one report, the
Brother Russett of the mountain monastery he visited in simple curiosity
once with his betraying friend, Lord Feltre. Or some say, and so it may
truly be, it was an amateur monastery established by him down among his
Welsh mountains, in which he served as a simple brother, without any
authority over the priests or what not he paid to act as his superiors.
Monk of some sort he would be. He was never the man to stop at anything
half way.

Mr. Rose Mackrell, in his Memoirs, was the first who revealed to the
world, that the Mademoiselle de Levellier of the French Count fighting
with the Carlists--falsely claimed by him as a Frenchwoman--was, in very
truth, Carinthia Jane, the Countess of Fleetwood, to whom Carlists and
Legitimises alike were indebted for tender care of them on the field and
in hospital; and who rode from one camp through the other up to the tent
of the Pretender to the throne of Spain, bearing her petition for her
brother's release; which was granted, in acknowledgement of her 'renowned
humanity to both conflicting armies,' as the words translated by Dr.
Glossop run. Certain it is she brought her wounded brother safe home to
England, and prisoners in that war usually had short shrift. For three
years longer she was the Countess of Fleetwood, 'widow of a living
suicide,' Mr. Rose Mackrell describes the state of the Marriage at that
period. No whisper of divorce did she tolerate.

Six months after it was proved that Brother Russett had perished of his
austerities, or his heart, we learn she said to the beseeching applicant
for her hand, Mr. Owain Wythan, with the gift of it, in compassion:
'Rebecca could foretell events.' Carinthia Jane had ever been ashamed of
second marriages, and the union with her friend Rebecca's faithful
simpleton gave it, one supposes, a natural air, for he as little as she
had previously known the wedded state. She married him, Henrietta has
written, because of his wooing her with dog's eyes instead of words. The
once famous beauty carried a wrinkled spot on her cheek to her grave; a
saving disfigurement, and the mark of changes in the story told you
enough to make us think it a providential intervention for such ends as
were in view.

So much I can say: the facts related, with some regretted omissions, by
which my story has so skeleton a look, are those that led to the
lamentable conclusion. But the melancholy, the pathos of it, the heart of
all England stirred by it, have been--and the panting excitement it was
to every listener--sacrificed in the vain effort to render events as
consequent to your understanding as a piece of logic, through an exposure
of character! Character must ever be a mystery, only to be explained in
some degree by conduct; and that is very dependent upon accident: and
unless we have a perpetual whipping of the tender part of the reader's
mind, interest in invisible persons must needs flag. For it is an infant
we address, and the storyteller whose art excites an infant to serious
attention succeeds best; with English people assuredly, I rejoice to
think, though I have to pray their patience here while that philosophy
and exposure of character block the course along a road inviting to
traffic of the most animated kind.




     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS

     A dumb tongue can be a heavy liar
     Accounting his tight blue tail coat and brass buttons a victory
     Advised not to push at a shut gate
     Always the shout for more produced it ("News")
     Amused after their tiresome work of slaughter
     And her voice, against herself, was for England
     Anecdotist to slaughter families for the amusement
     As faith comes--no saying how; one swears by them
     As for comparisons, they are flowers thrown into the fire
     As if the age were the injury!
     Be the woman and have the last word!
     Bent double to gather things we have tossed away
     Brains will beat Grim Death if we have enough of them
     But a great success is full of temptations
     Call of the great world's appetite for more (Invented news)
     Charity that supplied the place of justice was not thanked
     Cock-sure has crowed low by sunset
     Contempt of military weapons and ridicule of the art of war
     Could affect me then, without being flung at me
     Country enclosed us to make us feel snug in our own importance
     Courage to grapple with his pride and open his heart was wanting
     Deeds only are the title
     Detested titles, invented by the English
     Did not know the nature of an oath, and was dismissed
     Dogs' eyes have such a sick look of love
     Drank to show his disdain of its powers
     Drink is their death's river, rolling them on helpless
     Earl of Cressett fell from his coach-box in a fit
     Enemy's laugh is a bugle blown in the night
     Everlastingly in this life the better pays for the worse
     Fatal habit of superiority stopped his tongue
     Father used to say, four hours for a man, six for a woman
     Father and she were aware of one another without conversing
     Festive board provided for them by the valour of their fathers
     Flung him, pitied him, and passed on
     Foe can spoil my face; he beats me if he spoils my temper
     Fond, as they say, of his glass and his girl
     Found that he 'cursed better upon water'
     Fun, at any cost, is the one object worth a shot
     Good-bye to sorrow for a while--Keep your tears for the living
     Had got the trick of lying, through fear of telling the truth
     Hard enough for a man to be married to a fool
     He did not vastly respect beautiful women
     He was a figure on a horse, and naught when off it
     He had wealth for a likeness of strength
     He wants the whip; ought to have had it regularly
     He was the prisoner of his word
     Heartily she thanked the girl for the excuse to cry
     Hearts that make one soul do not separately count their gifts
     Her intimacy with a man old enough to be her grandfather
     Himself in the worn old surplice of the converted rake
     I hate sleep: I hate anything that robs me of my will
     Ideas in gestation are the dullest matter you can have
     Injury forbids us to be friends again
     Innocence and uncleanness may go together
     It was an honest buss, but dear at ten thousand
     Lies are usurers' coin we pay for ten thousand per cent
     Life is the burlesque of young dreams
     Limit was two bottles of port wine at a sitting
     Little boy named Tommy Wedger said he saw a dead body go by
     Look backward only to correct an error of conduct in future
     Love of pleasure keeps us blind children
     Magnificent in generosity; he had little humaneness
     Make a girl drink her tears, if they ain't to be let fall
     Meditations upon the errors of the general man, as a cover
     Mighty Highnesses who had only smelt the outside edge of battle
     Never forgave an injury without a return blow for it
     No enemy's shot is equal to a weak heart in the act
     Not afford to lose, and a disposition free of the craving to win
     Not to be the idol, to have an aim of our own
     Objects elevated even by a decayed world have their magnetism
     On a morning when day and night were made one by fog
     One idea is a bullet
     Past, future, and present, the three weights upon humanity
     Pebble may roll where it likes--not so the costly jewel
     Poetic romance is delusion
     Push me to condense my thoughts to a tight ball
     Put material aid at a lower mark than gentleness
     Puzzle to connect the foregoing and the succeeding
     Quick to understand, she is in the quick of understanding
     Reflection upon a statement is its lightning in advance
     Religion condones offences: Philosophy has no forgiveness
     Religion is the one refuge from women
     Scorn titles which did not distinguish practical offices
     Sensitiveness to the sting, which is not allowed to poison
     Seventy, when most men are reaping and stacking their sins
     She seemed really a soaring bird brought down by the fowler
     She was thrust away because because he had offended
     She stood with a dignity that the word did not express
     She endured meekly, when there was no meekness
     Should we leave a good deed half done
     Showery, replied the admiral, as his cocked-hat was knocked off
     So much for morality in those days!
     So indulgent when they drop their blot on a lady's character
     Steady shakes them
     Strengthening the backbone for a bend of the knee in calamity
     Style is the mantle of greatness
     Sweetest on earth to her was to be prized by her brother
     That sort of progenitor is your "permanent aristocracy"
     The habit of the defensive paralyzes will
     The embraced respected woman
     The idol of the hour is the mob's wooden puppet
     The divinely damnable naked truth won't wear ornaments
     Their sneer withers
     There is no driver like stomach
     There's not an act of a man's life lies dead behind him
     They could have pardoned her a younger lover
     Those who have the careless chatter, the ready laugh
     Those who know little and dread much
     Thus are we stricken by the days of our youth
     Tighter than ever I was tight I'll be to-night
     To most men women are knaves or ninnies
     Touch sin and you accommodate yourself to its vileness
     Truth is, they have taken a stain from the life they lead
     Very little parleying between determined men
     Wakening to the claims of others--Youth's infant conscience
     Warm, is hardly the word--Winter's warm on skates
     We make our taskmasters of those to whom we have done a wrong
     We shall go together; we shall not have to weep for one another
     With one idea, we see nothing--nothing but itself
     Woman finds herself on board a rudderless vessel
     Women treat men as their tamed housemates
     Wooing her with dog's eyes instead of words
     Writer society delights in, to show what it is composed of
     You played for gain, and that was a licenced thieving
     You saw nothing but handkerchiefs out all over the theatre
     You are to imagine that they know everything
     You want me to flick your indecision






CELT AND SAXON


By George Meredith


1910.




CONTENTS

BOOK 1.
I.        WHEREIN AN EXCURSION IS MADE IN A CELTIC MIND
II.       MR. ADISTER
III.      CAROLINE
IV.       THE PRINCESS
V.        AT THE PIANOS CHIEFLY WITHOUT MUSIC
VI.       A CONSULTATION: WITH OPINIONS UPON WELSH WOMEN AND THE CAMBRIAN
          RACE
VII.      THE MINIATURE
VIII.     CAPTAIN CON AND MRS. ADISTER O'DONNELL
IX.       THE CAPTAIN'S CABIN
X.        THE BROTHERS
XI.       INTRODUCING A NEW CHARACTER

BOOK 2.
XII.      MISS MATTOCK
XIII.     THE DINNER-PARTY
XIV.      OF ROCKNEY
XV.       THE MATTOCK FAMILY
XVI.      OF THE GREAT MR. BULL AND THE CELTIC AND SAXON VIEW OF HIM:
          AND SOMETHING OF RICHARD ROCKNEY
XVII.     CROSSING THE RUBICON
XVIII.    CAPTAIN CON'S LETTER
X1X.      MARS CONVALESCENT




CHAPTER I

WHEREIN AN EXCURSION IS MADE IN A CELTIC MIND

A young Irish gentleman of the numerous clan O'Donnells, and a Patrick,
hardly a distinction of him until we know him, had bound himself, by
purchase of a railway-ticket, to travel direct to the borders of North
Wales, on a visit to a notable landowner of those marches, the Squire
Adister, whose family-seat was where the hills begin to lift and spy into
the heart of black mountains. Examining his ticket with an apparent
curiosity, the son of a greener island debated whether it would not be
better for him to follow his inclinations, now that he had gone so far as
to pay for the journey, and stay. But his inclinations were also subject
to question, upon his considering that he had expended pounds English for
the privilege of making the journey in this very train. He asked himself
earnestly what was the nature of the power which forced him to do it--a
bad genius or a good: and it seemed to him a sort of answer, inasmuch as
it silenced the contending parties, that he had been the victim of an
impetus. True; still his present position involved a certain outlay of
money simply, not at all his bondage to the instrument it had procured
for him, and that was true; nevertheless, to buy a ticket to shy it away
is an incident so uncommon, that if we can but pause to dwell on the
singularity of the act, we are unlikely to abjure our fellowship with
them who would not be guilty of it; and therefore, by the aid of his
reflections and a remainder of the impetus, Mr. Patrick O'Donnell stepped
into a carriage of the train like any ordinary English traveller, between
whom and his destination there is an agreement to meet if they can.

It is an experience of hesitating minds, be they Saxon or others, that
when we have submitted our persons to the charge of public companies,
immediately, as if the renouncing of our independence into their hands
had given us a taste of a will of our own, we are eager for the
performance of their contract to do what we are only half inclined to;
the train cannot go fast enough to please us, though we could excuse it
for breaking down; stoppages at stations are impertinences, and the
delivery of us at last on the platform is an astonishment, for it is not
we who have done it--we have not even desired it. To be imperfectly in
accord with the velocity precipitating us upon a certain point, is to be
going without our heads, which have so much the habit of supposing it
must be whither we intend, when we go in a determined manner, that a,
doubt of it distracts the understanding--decapitates us; suddenly to
alight, moreover, and find ourselves dropped at the heels of flying Time,
like an unconsidered bundle, is anything but a reconstruction of the
edifice. The natural revelry of the blood in speed suffers a violent
shock, not to speak of our notion of being left behind, quite isolated
and unsound. Or, if you insist, the condition shall be said to belong
exclusively to Celtic nature, seeing that it had been drawn directly from
a scion of one of those tribes.

Young Patrick jumped from the train as headless as good St. Denis. He was
a juvenile thinker, and to discover himself here, where he both wished
and wished not to be, now deeming the negative sternly in the ascendant,
flicked his imagination with awe of the influence of the railway service
upon the destinies of man. Settling a mental debate about a backward
flight, he drove across the land so foreign to his eyes and affections,
and breasted a strong tide of wishes that it were in a contrary
direction. He would rather have looked upon the desert under a
sand-storm, or upon a London suburb yet he looked thirstingly. Each
variation of landscape of the curved highway offered him in a moment
decisive features: he fitted them to a story he knew: the whole circle
was animated by a couple of pale mounted figures beneath no happy light.
For this was the air once breathed by Adiante Adister, his elder brother
Philip's love and lost love: here she had been to Philip flame along the
hill-ridges, his rose-world in the dust-world, the saintly in his
earthly. And how had she rewarded him for that reverential love of her?
She had forborne to kill him. The bitter sylph of the mountain lures men
to climb till she winds them in vapour and leaves them groping, innocent
of the red crags below. The delicate thing had not picked his bones:
Patrick admitted it; he had seen his brother hale and stout not long
back. But oh! she was merciless, she was a witch. If ever queen-witch
was, she was the crowned one!

For a personal proof, now: he had her all round him in a strange district
though he had never cast eye on her. Yonder bare hill she came racing up
with a plume in the wind: she was over the long brown moor, look where he
would: and vividly was she beside the hurrying beck where it made edges
and chattered white. He had not seen, he could not imagine her face:
angelic dashed with demon beauty, was his idea of the woman, and there is
little of a portrait in that; but he was of a world where the elemental
is more individual than the concrete, and unconceived of sight she was a
recognised presence for the green-island brain of a youth whose manner of
hating was to conjure her spirit from the air and let fly his own in
pursuit of her.

It has to be stated that the object of the youngster's expedition to
Earlsfont was perfectly simple in his mind, however much it went against
his nature to perform it. He came for the purpose of obtaining Miss
Adister's Continental address; to gather what he could of her from her
relatives, and then forthwith to proceed in search of her, that he might
plead with her on behalf of his brother Philip, after a four years'
division of the lovers. Could anything be simpler? He had familiarised
himself with the thought of his advocacy during those four years. His
reluctance to come would have been accountable to the Adisters by a
sentiment of shame at his family's dealings with theirs: in fact, a
military captain of the O'Donnells had in old days played the adventurer
and charmed a maid of a certain age into yielding her hand to him; and
the lady was the squire of Earlsfont's only sister: she possessed funded
property. Shortly after the union, as one that has achieved the goal of
enterprise, the gallant officer retired from the service nor did
north-western England put much to his credit the declaration of his
wife's pronouncing him to be the best of husbands. She naturally said it
of him in eulogy; his own relatives accepted it in some contempt, mixed
with a relish of his hospitality: his wife's were constant in citing his
gain by the marriage. Could he possibly have been less than that? they
exclaimed. An excellent husband, who might easily have been less than
that, he was the most devoted of cousins, and the liberal expenditure of
his native eloquence for the furtherance of Philip's love-suit was the
principal cause of the misfortune, if misfortune it could subsequently be
called to lose an Adiante.

The Adister family were not gifted to read into the heart of a young man
of a fanciful turn. Patrick had not a thought of shame devolving on him
from a kinsman that had shot at a mark and hit it. Who sees the shame of
taking an apple from a garden of the Hesperides? And as England
cultivates those golden, if sometimes wrinkled, fruits, it would have
seemed to him, in thinking about it, an entirely lucky thing for the
finder; while a question of blood would have fired his veins to rival
heat of self-assertion, very loftily towering: there were Kings in
Ireland: cry for one of them in Uladh and you will hear his name, and he
has descendants yet! But the youth was not disposed unnecessarily to
blazon his princeliness. He kept it in modest reserve, as common
gentlemen keep their physical strength. His reluctance to look on
Earlsfont sprang from the same source as unacknowledged craving to see
the place, which had precipitated him thus far upon his road: he had a
horror of scenes where a faithless girl had betrayed her lover. Love was
his visionary temple, and his idea of love was the solitary light in it,
painfully susceptible to coldair currents from the stories of love abroad
over the world. Faithlessness he conceived to be obnoxious to nature; it
stained the earth and was excommunicated; there could be no pardon of the
crime, barely any for repentance. He conceived it in the feminine; for
men are not those holy creatures whose conduct strikes on the soul with
direct edge: a faithless man is but a general villain or funny monster, a
subject rejected of poets, taking no hue in the flat chronicle of
history: but a faithless woman, how shall we speak of her! Women,
sacredly endowed with beauty and the wonderful vibrating note about the
very mention of them, are criminal to hideousness when they betray. Cry,
False! on them, and there is an instant echo of bleeding males in many
circles, like the poor quavering flute-howl of transformed beasts, which
at some remembering touch bewail their higher state. Those women are
sovereignly attractive, too, loathsomely. Therein you may detect the
fiend.

Our moralist had for some time been glancing at a broad, handsome old
country mansion on the top of a wooded hill backed by a swarm of mountain
heads all purple-dark under clouds flying thick to shallow, as from a
brush of sepia. The dim silver of half-lighted lakewater shot along below
the terrace. He knew the kind of sky, having oftener seen that than any
other, and he knew the house before it was named to him and he had flung
a discolouring thought across it. He contemplated it placably and
studiously, perhaps because the shower-folding armies of the fields above
likened its shadowed stillness to that of his Irish home. There had this
woman lived! At the name of Earlsfont she became this witch, snake,
deception. Earlsfont was the title and summary of her black story: the
reverberation of the word shook up all the chapters to pour out their
poison.




CHAPTER II

MR. ADISTER

Mr. Patrick O'Donnell drove up to the gates of Earlsfont notwithstanding
these emotions, upon which light matter it is the habit of men of his
blood too much to brood; though it is for our better future to have a
capacity for them, and the insensible race is the oxenish.

But if he did so when alone, the second man residing in the Celt put that
fellow by and at once assumed the social character on his being requested
to follow his card into Mr. Adister's library. He took his impression of
the hall that had heard her voice, the stairs she had descended, the door
she had passed through, and the globes she had perchance laid hand on,
and the old mappemonde, and the severely-shining orderly regiment of
books breathing of her whether she had opened them or not, as he bowed to
his host, and in reply to, 'So, sir! I am glad to see you,' said
swimmingly that Earlsfont was the first house he had visited in this
country: and the scenery reminded him of his part of Ireland: and on
landing at Holyhead he had gone off straight to the metropolis by
appointment to meet his brother Philip, just returned from Canada a full
captain, who heartily despatched his compliments and respects, and hoped
to hear of perfect health in this quarter of the world. And Captain Con
the same, and he was very flourishing.

Patrick's opening speech concluded on the sound of a short laugh coming
from Mr. Adister.

It struck the young Irishman's ear as injurious and scornful in relation
to Captain Con; but the remark ensuing calmed him:

'He has no children.'

'No, sir; Captain Con wasn't born to increase the number of our clan,'
Patrick rejoined; and thought: By heaven! I get a likeness of her out of
you, with a dash of the mother mayhap somewhere. This was his Puck-manner
of pulling a girdle round about from what was foremost in his head to the
secret of his host's quiet observation; for, guessing that such features
as he beheld would be slumped on a handsome family, he was led by the
splendid severity of their lines to perceive an illimitable pride in the
man likely to punish him in his offspring, who would inherit that as
well; so, as is the way with the livelier races, whether they seize first
or second the matter or the spirit of what they hear, the vivid
indulgence of his own ideas helped him to catch the right meaning by the
tail, and he was enlightened upon a domestic unhappiness, although Mr.
Adister had not spoken miserably. The 'dash of the mother' was thrown in
to make Adiante, softer, and leave a loophole for her relenting.

The master of Earlsfont stood for a promise of beauty in his issue,
requiring to be softened at the mouth and along the brows, even in men.
He was tall, and had clear Greek outlines: the lips were locked metal,
thin as edges of steel, and his eyes, when he directed them on the person
he addressed or the person speaking, were as little varied by motion of
the lids as eyeballs of a stone bust. If they expressed more, because
they were not sculptured eyes, it was the expression of his high and
frigid nature rather than any of the diversities pertaining to sentiment
and shades of meaning.

'You have had the bequest of an estate,' Mr. Adister said, to compliment
him by touching on his affairs.

'A small one; not a quarter of a county,' said Patrick.

'Productive, sir?'

''Tis a tramp of discovery, sir, to where bog ends and cultivation
begins.'

'Bequeathed to you exclusively over the head of your elder brother, I
understand.'

Patrick nodded assent. 'But my purse is Philip's, and my house, and my
horses.'

'Not bequeathed by a member of your family?'

'By a distant cousin, chancing to have been one of my godmothers.'

'Women do these things,' Mr. Adister said, not in perfect approbation of
their doings.

'And I think too, it might have gone to the elder,' Patrick replied to
his tone.

'It is not your intention to be an idle gentleman?'

'No, nor a vagrant Irishman, sir.'

'You propose to sit down over there?'

'When I've more brains to be of service to them and the land, I do.'

Mr. Adister pulled the arm of his chair. 'The professions are crammed. An
Irish gentleman owning land might do worse. I am in favour of some degree
of military training for all gentlemen. You hunt?'

Patrick's look was, 'Give me a chance'; and Mr. Adister continued: 'Good
runs are to be had here; you shall try them. You are something of a shot,
I suppose. We hear of gentlemen now who neither hunt nor shoot. You
fence?'

'That's to say, I've had lessons in the art.'

'I am not aware that there is now an art of fencing taught in Ireland.'

'Nor am I,' said Patrick; 'though there's no knowing what goes on in the
cabins.'

Mr. Adister appeared to acquiesce. Observations of sly import went by him
like the whispering wind.

'Your priests should know,' he said.

To this Patrick thought it well not to reply. After a pause between them,
he referred to the fencing.

'I was taught by a Parisian master of the art, sir.'

'You have been to Paris?'

'I was educated in Paris.'

'How? Ah!' Mr. Adister corrected himself in the higher notes of
recollection. 'I think I have heard something of a Jesuit seminary.'

'The Fathers did me the service to knock all I know into me, and call it
education, by courtesy,' said Patrick, basking in the unobscured frown of
his host.

'Then you are accustomed to speak French?' The interrogation was put to
extract some balm from the circumstance.

Patrick tried his art of fence with the absurdity by saying: 'All but
like a native.'

'These Jesuits taught you the use of the foils?'

'They allowed me the privilege of learning, sir.'

After meditation, Mr. Adister said: 'You don't dance?' He said it
speculating on the' kind of gentleman produced in Paris by the disciples
of Loyola.

'Pardon me, sir, you hit on another of my accomplishments.'

'These Jesuits encourage dancing?'

'The square dance--short of the embracing: the valse is under interdict.'

Mr. Adister peered into his brows profoundly for a glimpse of the devilry
in that exclusion of the valse.

What object had those people in encouraging the young fellow to be a
perfect fencer and dancer, so that he should be of the school of the
polite world, and yet subservient to them?

'Thanks to the Jesuits, then, you are almost a Parisian,' he remarked;
provoking the retort:

'Thanks to them, I've stored a little, and Paris is to me as pure a place
as four whitewashed walls:' Patrick added: 'without a shadow of a monk on
them.' Perhaps it was thrown in for the comfort of mundane ears afflicted
sorely, and no point of principle pertained to the slur on a monk.

Mr. Adister could have exclaimed, That shadow of the monk! had he been in
an exclamatory mood. He said: 'They have not made a monk of you, then.'

Patrick was minded to explain how that the Jesuits are a religious order
exercising worldly weapons. The lack of precise words admonished him of
the virtue of silence, and he retreated--with a quiet negative: 'They
have not.'

'Then, you are no Jesuit?' he was asked.

Thinking it scarcely required a response, he shrugged.

'You would not change your religion, sir?' said Mr. Adister in seeming
anger.

Patrick thought he would have to rise: he half fancied himself summoned
to change his religion or depart from the house.

'Not I,' said he.

'Not for the title of Prince?' he was further pressed, and he replied:

'I don't happen to have an ambition for the title of Prince.'

'Or any title!' interjected Mr. Adister, 'or whatever the devil can
offer!--or,' he spoke more pointedly, 'for what fools call a brilliant
marriage?'

'My religion?' Patrick now treated the question seriously and raised his
head: 'I'd not suffer myself to be asked twice.'

The sceptical northern-blue eyes of his host dwelt on him with their full
repellent stare.

The young Catholic gentleman expected he might hear a frenetic zealot
roar out: Be off!

He was not immediately reassured by the words 'Dead or alive, then, you
have a father!'

The spectacle of a state of excitement without a show of feeling was
novel to Patrick. He began to see that he was not implicated in a wrath
that referred to some great offender, and Mr. Adister soon confirmed his
view by saying: 'You are no disgrace to your begetting, sir!'

With that he quitted his chair, and hospitably proposed to conduct his
guest over the house and grounds.




CHAPTER III

CAROLINE

Men of the Adister family having taken to themselves brides of a very
dusty pedigree from the Principality, there were curious rough heirlooms
to be seen about the house, shields on the armoury walls and
hunting-horns, and drinking-horns, and spears, and chain-belts bearing
clasps of heads of beasts; old gold ornaments, torques, blue-stone
necklaces, under glass-cases, were in the library; huge rings that must
have given the wearers fearful fists; a shirt of coarse linen with a pale
brown spot on the breast, like a fallen beech-leaf; and many sealed
parchment-skins, very precious, for an inspection of which, as Patrick
was bidden to understand, History humbly knocked at the Earlsfont
hall-doors; and the proud muse made her transcripts of them kneeling. He
would have been affected by these wonders had any relic of Adiante
appeased his thirst. Or had there been one mention of her, it would have
disengaged him from the incessant speculations regarding the daughter of
the house, of whom not a word was uttered. No portrait of her was shown.
Why was she absent from her home so long? where was she? How could her
name be started? And was it she who was the sinner in her father's mind?
But the idolatrous love between Adiante and her father was once a legend:
they could not have been cut asunder. She had offered up her love of
Philip as a sacrifice to it: Patrick recollected that, and now with a
softer gloom on his brooding he released her from the burden of his grand
charge of unfaithfulness to the truest of lovers, by acknowledging that
he was in the presence of the sole rival of his brother. Glorious girl
that she was, her betrayal of Philip had nothing of a woman's base
caprice to make it infamous: she had sacrificed him to her reading of
duty; and that was duty to her father; and the point of duty was in this
instance rather a sacred one. He heard voices murmur that she might be
praised. He remonstrated with them, assuring them, as one who knew, that
a woman's first duty is her duty to her lover; her parents are her second
thought. Her lover, in the consideration of a real soul among the shifty
creatures, is her husband; and have we not the word of heaven directing
her to submit herself to him who is her husband before all others? That
peerless Adiante had previously erred in the upper sphere where she
received her condemnation, but such a sphere is ladder and ladder and
silver ladder high above your hair-splitting pates, you children of
earth, and it is not for you to act on the verdict in decrying her:
rather 'tis for you to raise hymns of worship to a saint.

Thus did the ingenious Patrick change his ground and gain his argument
with the celerity of one who wins a game by playing it without an
adversary. Mr. Adister had sprung a new sense in him on the subject of
the renunciation of the religion. No thought of a possible apostasy had
ever occurred to the youth, and as he was aware that the difference of
their faith had been the main cause of the division of Adiante and
Philip, he could at least consent to think well of her down here, that
is, on our flat surface of earth. Up there, among the immortals, he was
compelled to shake his head at her still, and more than sadly in certain
moods of exaltation, reprovingly; though she interested him beyond all
her sisterhood above, it had to be confessed.

They traversed a banqueting-hall hung with portraits, to two or three of
which the master of Earlsfont carelessly pointed, for his guest to be
interested in them or not as he might please. A reception-hall flung
folding-doors on a grand drawing-room, where the fires in the grates went
through the ceremony of warming nobody, and made a show of keeping the
house alive. A modern steel cuirass, helmet and plume at a corner of the
armoury reminded Mr. Adister to say that he had worn the uniform in his
day. He cast an odd look at the old shell containing him when he was a
brilliant youth. Patrick was marched on to Colonel Arthur's rooms, and to
Captain David's, the sailor. Their father talked of his two sons. They
appeared to satisfy him. If that was the case, they could hardly have
thrown off their religion. Already Patrick had a dread of naming the
daughter. An idea struck him that she might be the person who had been
guilty of it over there on the Continent. What if she had done it, upon a
review of her treatment of her lover, and gone into a convent to wait for
Philip to come and claim her?--saying, 'Philip, I've put the knife to my
father's love of me; love me double'; and so she just half swoons, enough
to show how the dear angel looks in her sleep: a trick of kindness these
heavenly women have, that we heathen may get a peep of their secret
rose-enfolded selves; and dream 's no word, nor drunken, for the blessed
mischief it works with us.

Supposing it so, it accounted for everything: for her absence, and her
father's abstention from a mention of her, and the pretty good sort of
welcome Patrick had received; for as yet it was unknown that she did it
all for an O'Donnell.

These being his reflections, he at once accepted a view of her that so
agreeably quieted his perplexity, and he leapt out of his tangle into the
happy open spaces where the romantic things of life are as natural as the
sun that rises and sets. There you imagine what you will; you live what
you imagine. An Adiante meets her lover another Adiante, the phantom
likeness of her, similar to the finger-tips, hovers to a meeting with
some one whose heart shakes your manful frame at but a thought of it. But
this other Adiante is altogether a secondary conception, barely descried,
and chased by you that she may interpret the mystical nature of the
happiness of those two, close-linked to eternity, in advance. You would
learn it, if she would expound it; you are ready to learn it, for the
sake of knowledge; and if you link yourself to her and do as those two
are doing, it is chiefly in a spirit of imitation, in sympathy with the
darting couple ahead . . . .

Meanwhile he conversed, and seemed, to a gentleman unaware of the
vaporous activities of his brain, a young fellow of a certain practical
sense.

'We have not much to teach you in: horseflesh,' Mr. Adister said,
quitting the stables to proceed to the gardens.

'We must look alive to keep up our breed, sir,' said Patrick. 'We're
breeding too fine: and soon we shan't be able to horse our troopers. I
call that the land for horses where the cavalry's well-mounted on a
native breed.'

'You have your brother's notions of cavalry, have you!'

'I leave it to Philip to boast what cavalry can do on the field. He
knows: but he knows that troopers must be mounted: and we're fineing more
and more from bone: with the sales to foreigners! and the only chance of
their not beating us is that they'll be so good as follow our bad
example. Prussia's well horsed, and for the work it's intended to do, the
Austrian light cavalry's a model. So I'm told. I'll see for myself. Then
we sit our horses too heavy. The Saxon trooper runs headlong to flesh.
'Tis the beer that fattens and swells him. Properly to speak, we've no
light cavalry. The French are studying it, and when they take to
studying, they come to the fore. I'll pay a visit to their breeding
establishments. We've no studying here, and not a scrap of system that I
see. All the country seems armed for bullying the facts, till the
periodical panic arrives, and then it 's for lying flat and roaring--and
we'll drop the curtain, if you please.'

'You say we,' returned Mr. Adister. 'I hear you launched at us English by
the captain, your cousin, who has apparently yet to learn that we are one
people.'

'We 're held together and a trifle intermixed; I fancy it's we with him
and with me when we're talking of army or navy,' said Patrick. 'But
Captain Con's a bit of a politician: a poor business, when there's
nothing to be done.'

'A very poor business!' Mr. Adister rejoined,

'If you'd have the goodness to kindle his enthusiasm, he'd be for the
first person plural, with his cap in the air,' said Patrick.

'I detest enthusiasm.

'You're not obliged to adore it to give it a wakener.

'Pray, what does that mean?'

Patrick cast about to reply to the formal challenge for an explanation.

He began on it as it surged up to him: 'Well, sir, the country that's got
hold of us, if we 're not to get loose. We don't count many millions in
Europe, and there's no shame in submitting to force majeure, if a stand
was once made; and we're mixed up, 'tis true, well or ill; and we're
stronger, both of us, united than tearing to strips: and so, there, for
the past! so long as we can set our eyes upon something to admire,
instead of a bundle squatting fat on a pile of possessions and vowing she
won't budge; and taking kicks from a big foot across the Atlantic, and
shaking bayonets out of her mob-cap for a little one's cock of the eye at
her: and she's all for the fleshpots, and calls the rest of mankind fools
because they're not the same: and so long as she can trim her ribands and
have her hot toast and tea, with a suspicion of a dram in it, she doesn't
mind how heavy she sits: nor that 's not the point, nor 's the land
question, nor the potato crop, if only she wore the right sort of face to
look at, with a bit of brightness about it, to show an idea inside
striking alight from the day that's not yet nodding at us, as the tops of
big mountains do: or if she were only braced and gallant, and cried,
Ready, though I haven't much outlook! We'd be satisfied with her for a
handsome figure. I don't know whether we wouldn't be satisfied with her
for politeness in her manners. We'd like her better for a spice of
devotion to alight higher up in politics and religion. But the key of the
difficulty's a sparkle of enthusiasm. It's part business, and the greater
part sentiment. We want a rousing in the heart of us; or else we'd be
pleased with her for sitting so as not to overlap us entirely: we'd feel
more at home, and behold her more respectfully. We'd see the policy of an
honourable union, and be joined to you by more than a telegraphic cable.
That's Captain Con, I think, and many like him.'

Patrick finished his airy sketch of the Irish case in a key signifying
that he might be one among the many, but unobtrusive.

'Stick to horses!' observed Mr. Adister.

It was pronounced as the termination to sheer maundering.

Patrick talked on the uppermost topic for the remainder of their stroll.

He noticed that his host occasionally allowed himself to say, 'You
Irish': and he reflected that the saying, 'You English,' had been hinted
as an offence.

He forgot to think that he had possibly provoked this alienation in a
scornfully proud spirit. The language of metaphor was to Mr. Adister
fool's froth. He conceded the use of it to the Irish and the Welsh as a
right that stamped them for what they were by adopting it; and they might
look on a country as a 'she,' if it amused them: so long as they were not
recalcitrant, they were to be tolerated, they were a part of us;
doubtless the nether part, yet not the less a part for which we are bound
to exercise a specially considerate care, or else we suffer, for we are
sensitive there: this is justice but the indications by fiddle-faddle
verbiage of anything objectionable to the whole in the part aroused an
irritability that speedily endued him with the sense of sanity opposing
lunacy; when, not having a wide command of the undecorated plain speech
which enjoyed his approval, he withdrew into the entrenchments of
contempt.

Patrick heard enough to let him understand why the lord of Earlsfont and
Captain Con were not on the best of terms. Once or twice he had a twinge
or suspicion of a sting from the tone of his host, though he was not
political and was of a mood to pity the poor gentleman's melancholy state
of solitariness, with all his children absent, his wife dead, only a
niece, a young lady of twenty, to lend an air of grace and warmth to his
home.

She was a Caroline, and as he had never taken a liking to a Caroline, he
classed her in the tribe of Carolines. To a Kathleen, an Eveleen, a Nora,
or a Bessy, or an Alicia, he would have bowed more cordially on his
introduction to her, for these were names with portraits and vistas
beyond, that shook leaves of recollection of the happiest of life--the
sweet things dreamed undesiringly in opening youth. A Caroline awakened
no soft association of fancies, no mysterious heaven and earth. The
others had variously tinted skies above them; their features wooed the
dream, led it on as the wooded glen leads the eye till we are deep in
richness. Nor would he have throbbed had one of any of his favourite
names appeared in the place of Caroline Adister. They had not moved his
heart, they had only stirred the sources of wonder. An Eveleen had
carried him farthest to imagine the splendours of an Adiante, and the
announcement of the coming of an Eveleen would perchance have sped a
little wild fire, to which what the world calls curiosity is frozenly
akin, through his veins.

Mr. Adister had spoken of his niece Caroline. A lacquey, receiving orders
from his master, mentioned Miss Adister. There was but one Miss Adister
for Patrick. Against reason, he was raised to anticipate the possible
beholding of her, and Caroline's entrance into the drawing-room brought
him to the ground. Disappointment is a poor term for the descent from an
immoderate height, but the acknowledgment that we have shot up
irrationally reconciles even unphilosophical youth to the necessity of
the fall, though we must continue sensible of a shock. She was the Miss
Adister; and how, and why? No one else accompanied them on their march to
the dinner-table. Patrick pursued his double task of hunting his thousand
speculations and conversing fluently, so that it is not astonishing if,
when he retired to his room, the impression made on him by this young
Caroline was inefficient to distinguish her from the horde of her
baptismal sisters. And she had a pleasant face: he was able to see that,
and some individuality in the look of it, the next morning; and then he
remembered the niceness of her manners. He supposed her to have been
educated where the interfusion of a natural liveliness with a veiling
retenue gives the title of lady. She had enjoyed the advantage of having
an estimable French lady for her governess, she informed him, as they
sauntered together on the terrace.

'A Protestant, of course,' Patrick spoke as he thought.

'Madame Dugue is a Catholic of Catholics, and the most honourable of
women.'

'That I'll believe; and wasn't for proselytisms,' said he.

'Oh, no: she was faithful to her trust.'

'Save for the grand example!'

'That,' said Caroline, 'one could strive to imitate without embracing her
faith.'

'There's my mind clear as print!' Patrick exclaimed. 'The Faith of my
fathers! and any pattern you like for my conduct, if it's a good one.'

Caroline hesitated before she said: 'You have noticed my Uncle Adister's
prepossession; I mean, his extreme sensitiveness on that subject.'

'He blazed on me, and he seemed to end by a sort of approval.'

She sighed. 'He has had cause for great unhappiness.'

'Is it the colonel, or the captain? Forgive me!'

Her head shook.

'Is it she? Is it his daughter? I must ask!'

'You have not heard?'

Oh! then, I guessed it,' cried Patrick, with a flash of pride in his
arrowy sagacity. 'Not a word have I heard, but I thought it out for
myself; because I love my brother, I fancy. And now, if you'll be so
good, Miss Caroline, let me beg, it's just the address, or the city, or
the country--where she is, can you tell me?--just whereabouts! You're
surprised: but I want her address, to be off, to see her; I'm anxious to
speak to her. It's anywhere she may be in a ring, only show me the ring,
I'll find her, for I've a load; and there's nothing like that for sending
you straight, though it's in the dark; it acts like an instinct. But you
know the clear address, and won't let me be running blindfold. She's on
the Continent and has been a long time, and it was the capital of
Austria, which is a Catholic country, and they've Irish blood in the
service there, or they had. I could drop on my knees to you!'

The declaration was fortunately hushed by a supplicating ardour, or Mr.
Adister would have looked more surprised than his niece. He stepped out
of the library window as they were passing, and, evidently with a mind
occupied by his own affairs, held up an opened letter for Caroline's
perusal. She took a view of the handwriting.

'Any others?' she said.

'You will consider that one enough for the day,' was his answer.

Patrick descended the terrace and strolled by the waterside, grieved at
their having bad news, and vexed with himself for being a stranger,
unable to console them.

Half an hour later they were all three riding to the market-town, where
Mr. Adister paid a fruitless call on his lawyer.

'And never is at home! never was known to be at home when wanted!' he
said, springing back to the saddle.

Caroline murmured some soothing words. They had a perverse effect.

'His partner! yes, his partner is at home, but I do not communicate upon
personal business with his partner; and by and by there will be, I
suppose, a third partner. I might as well deposit my family history in
the hands of a club. His partner is always visible. It is my belief that
Camminy has taken a partner that he may act the independent gentleman at
his leisure. I, meantime, must continue to be the mark for these letters.
I shall expect soon to hear myself abused as the positive cause of the
loss of a Crown!'

'Mr. Camminy will probably appear at the dinner hour,' said Caroline.

'Claret attracts him: I wish I could say as much of duty,' rejoined her
uncle.

Patrick managed to restrain a bubbling remark on the respective charms of
claret and duty, tempting though the occasion was for him to throw in a
conversational word or two.

He was rewarded for listening devoutly.

Mr. Adister burst out again: 'And why not come over here to settle this
transaction herself?--provided that I am spared the presence of her
Schinderhannes! She could very well come. I have now received three
letters bearing on this matter within as many months. Down to the sale of
her hereditary jewels! I profess no astonishment. The jewels may well go
too, if Crydney and Welvas are to go. Disrooted body and soul!--for a
moonshine title!--a gaming-table foreign knave!--Known for a knave!--A
young gentlewoman?--a wild Welsh . . . !'

Caroline put her horse to a canter, and the exclamations ended, leaving
Patrick to shuffle them together and read the riddle they presented, and
toss them to the wind, that they might be blown back on him by the powers
of air in an intelligible form.




CHAPTER IV

THE PRINCESS

Dinner, and a little piano-music and a song closed an evening that was
not dull to Patrick in spite of prolonged silences. The quiet course of
things within the house appeared to him to have a listening ear for big
events outside. He dreaded a single step in the wrong direction, and
therefore forbore to hang on any of his conjectures; for he might
perchance be unjust to the blessedest heroine on the surface of the
earth--a truly awful thought! Yet her name would no longer bear the
speaking of it to himself. It conjured up a smoky moon under confounding
eclipse.

Who was Schinderhannes?

Mr. Adister had said, her Schinderhannes.

Patrick merely wished to be informed who the man was, and whether he had
a title, and was much of a knave: and particularly Patrick would have
liked to be informed of the fellow's religion. But asking was not easy.

It was not possible. And there was a barrel of powder to lay a fiery head
on, for a pillow!

To confess that he had not the courage to inquire was as good as an
acknowledgment that he knew too much for an innocent questioner. And what
did he know? His brother Philip's fair angel forbade him to open the door
upon what he knew. He took a peep through fancy's keyhole, and delighted
himself to think that he had seen nothing.

After a turbulent night with Schinderhannes, who let him go no earlier
than the opening of a December day, Patrick hied away to one of the dusky
nooks by the lake for a bracing plunge. He attributed to his desire for
it the strange deadness of the atmosphere, and his incapacity to get an
idea out of anything he looked on: he had not a sensation of cold till
the stinging element gripped him. It is the finest school for the cure of
dreamers; two minutes of stout watery battle, with the enemy close all
round, laughing, but not the less inveterate, convinced him that, in
winter at least, we have only to jump out of our clothes to feel the
reality of things in a trice. The dip was sharpening; he could say that
his prescription was good for him; his craving to get an idea ceased with
it absolutely, and he stood in far better trim to meet his redoubtable
adversary of overnight; but the rascal was a bandit and had robbed him of
his purse; that was a positive fact; his vision had gone; he felt himself
poor and empty and rejoicing in the keenness of his hunger for breakfast,
singularly lean. A youth despoiled of his Vision and made sensible by the
activity of his physical state that he is a common machine, is eager for
meat, for excess of whatsoever you may offer him; he is on the highroad
of recklessness, and had it been the bottle instead of Caroline's
coffee-cup, Patrick would soon have received a priming for a delivery of
views upon the sex, and upon love, and the fools known as lovers, acrid
enough to win the applause of cynics.

Boasting was the best relief that a young man not without modesty could
find. Mr. Adister complimented him on the robustness of his habits, and
Patrick 'would like to hear of the temptation that could keep him from
his morning swim.'

Caroline's needle-thrust was provoked:

'Would not Arctic weather deter you, Mr. O'Donnell?' He hummed, and her
eyes filled with the sparkle.

'Short of Arctic,' he had to say. 'But a gallop, after an Arctic bath,
would soon spin the blood-upon an Esquimaux dog, of course,' he pursued,
to anticipate his critic's remark on the absence of horses, with a bow.

She smiled, accepting the mental alertness he fastened on her.

We must perforce be critics of these tear-away wits; which are, moreover,
so threadbare to conceal the character! Caroline led him to vaunt his
riding and his shooting, and a certain time passed before she perceived
that though he responded naturally to her first sly attacks, his gross
exaggerations upon them had not been the triumph of absurdity she
supposed herself to have evoked.

Her wish was to divert her uncle. Patrick discerned the intention and
aided her.

'As for entertainment,' he said, in answer to Mr. Adister's courteous
regrets that he would have to be a prisoner in the house until his legal
adviser thought proper to appear, 'I'll be perfectly happy if Miss
Caroline will give me as much of her company as she can spare. It 's
amusing to be shot at too, by a lady who 's a good marksman! And birds
and hares are always willing to wait for us; they keep better alive. I
forgot to say that I can sing.'

'Then I was in the presence of a connoisseur last night,' said Caroline.
Mr. Adister consulted his watch and the mantelpiece clock for a minute of
difference between them, remarking that he was a prisoner indeed, and for
the whole day, unless Camminy should decide to come. 'There is the
library,' he said, 'if you care for books; the best books on agriculture
will be found there. You can make your choice in the stables, if you
would like to explore the country. I am detained here by a man who seems
to think my business of less importance than his pleasures. And it is not
my business; it is very much the reverse but I am compelled to undertake
it as my own, when I abhor the business. It is hard for me to speak of
it, much more to act a part in it.'

'Perhaps,' Caroline interposed hurriedly, 'Mr. O'Donnell would not be
unwilling to begin the day with some duets?'

Patrick eagerly put on his shame-face to accept her invitation,
protesting that his boldness was entirely due to his delight in music.

'But I've heard,' said he, 'that the best fortification for the exercise
of the a voice is hearty eating, so I 'll pay court again to that
game-pie. I'm one with the pigs for truffles.'

His host thanked him for spreading the contagion of good appetite, and
followed his example. Robust habits and heartiness were signs with him of
a conscience at peace, and he thought the Jesuits particularly forbearing
in the amount of harm they had done to this young man. So they were still
at table when Mr. Camminy was announced and ushered in.

The man of law murmured an excuse or two; he knew his client's eye, and
how to thaw it.

'No, Miss Adister, I have not breakfasted,' he said, taking the chair
placed for him. 'I was all day yesterday at Windlemont, engaged in
assisting to settle the succession. Where estates are not entailed!'

'The expectations of the family are undisciplined and certain not to be
satisfied,' Mr. Adister carried on the broken sentence. 'That house will
fall! However, you have lost no time this morning.--Mr. Patrick
O'Donnell.'

Mr. Camminy bowed busily somewhere in the direction between Patrick and
the sideboard.

'Our lawyers have us inside out, like our physicians,' Mr. Adister
resumed, talking to blunt his impatience for a private discussion with
his own.

'Surgery's a little in their practice too, we think in Ireland,' said
Patrick.

Mr. Camminy assented: 'No doubt.' He was hungry, and enjoyed the look of
the table, but the look of his client chilled the prospect, considered in
its genial appearance as a feast of stages; having luminous extension;
so, to ease his client's mind, he ventured to say: 'I thought it might be
urgent.'

'It is urgent,' was the answer.

'Ah: foreign? domestic?'

A frown replied.

Caroline, in haste to have her duties over, that she might escape the
dreaded outburst, pressed another cup of tea on Mr. Camminy and groaned
to see him fill his plate. She tried to start a topic with Patrick.

'The princess is well, I hope?' Mr. Camminy asked in the voice of
discretion. 'It concerns her Highness?'

'It concerns my daughter and her inheritance from her mad grandmother!'
Mr. Adister rejoined loudly; and he continued like a retreating thunder:
'A princess with a title as empty as a skull! At best a princess of
swamps, and swine that fight for acorns, and men that fight for swine!'

Patrick caught a glance from Caroline, and the pair rose together.

'They did that in our mountains a couple of thousand years ago,' said Mr.
Camminy, 'and the cause was not so bad, to judge by this ham. Men must
fight: the law is only a quieter field for them.'

'And a fatter for the ravens,' Patrick joined in softly, as if carrying
on a song.

'Have at us, Mr. O'Donnell! I'm ashamed of my appetite, Miss Adister, but
the morning's drive must be my excuse, and I'm bounden to you for not
forcing me to detain you. Yes, I can finish breakfast at my leisure, and
talk of business, which is never particularly interesting to
ladies--though,' Mr. Camminy turned to her uncle, 'I know Miss Adister
has a head for it.'

Patrick hummed a bar or two of an air, to hint of his being fanatico per
la musica, as a pretext for their departure.

'If you'll deign to give me a lesson,' said he, as Caroline came away
from pressing her lips to her uncle's forehead.

'I may discover that I am about to receive one,' said she.

They quitted the room together.

Mr. Camminy had seen another Miss Adister duetting with a young Irishman
and an O'Donnell, with lamentable results to that union of voices, and he
permitted himself to be a little astonished at his respected client's
defective memory or indifference to the admonition of identical
circumstances.




CHAPTER V

AT THE PIANO, CHIEFLY WITHOUT MUSIC

Barely had the door shut behind them when Patrick let his heart out: 'The
princess?' He had a famished look, and Caroline glided along swiftly with
her head bent, like one musing; his tone alarmed her; she lent him her
ear, that she might get some understanding of his excitement, suddenly as
it seemed to have come on him; but he was all in his hungry
interrogation, and as she reached her piano and raised the lid, she saw
it on tiptoe straining for her answer.

'I thought you were aware of my cousin's marriage.'

'Was I?' said Patrick, asking it of himself, for his conscience would not
acknowledge an absolute ignorance. 'No: I fought it, I wouldn't have a
blot on her be suspected. She's married! She's married to one of their
princes!--married for a title!--and changed her religion! And Miss
Adister, you're speaking of Adiante?'

'My cousin Adiante.'

'Well did I hate the name! I heard it first over in France. Our people
wrote to me of her; and it's a name to set you thinking: Is she tender,
or nothing like a woman,--a stone? And I put it to my best friend there,
Father Clement, who's a scholar, up in everything, and he said it was a
name with a pretty sound and an ill meaning--far from tender; and a bad
history too, for she was one of the forty-nine Danaides who killed their
husbands for the sake of their father and was not likely to be the
fiftieth, considering the name she bore. It was for her father's sake she
as good as killed her lover, and the two Adiantes are like enough:
they're as like as a pair of hands with daggers. So that was my brother
Philip's luck! She's married! It's done; it's over, like death: no hope.
And this time it's against her father; it's against her faith. There's
the end of Philip! I could have prophesied it; I did; and when they
broke, from her casting him off--true to her name! thought I. She cast
him off, and she couldn't wait for him, and there's his heart broken. And
I ready to glorify her for a saint! And now she must have loved the man,
or his title, to change her religion. She gives him her soul! No praise
to her for that: but mercy! what a love it must be. Or else it's a spell.
But wasn't she rather one for flinging spells than melting? Except that
we're all of us hit at last, and generally by our own weapon. But she
loved Philip: she loved him down to shipwreck and drowning: she gave
battle for him, and against her father; all the place here and the
country's alive with their meetings and partings:--she can't have
married! She wouldn't change her religion for her lover: how can she have
done it for this prince? Why, it's to swear false oaths!--unless it's
possible for a woman to slip out of herself and be another person after a
death like that of a love like hers.'

Patrick stopped: the idea demanded a scrutiny.

'She's another person for me,' he said. 'Here's the worst I ever imagined
of her!--thousands of miles and pits of sulphur beyond the worst and the
very worst! I thought her fickle, I thought her heartless, rather a black
fairy, perched above us, not quite among the stars of heaven. I had my
ideas. But never that she was a creature to jump herself down into a gulf
and be lost for ever. She's gone, extinguished--there she is, under the
penitent's hoodcap with eyeholes, before the faggots! and that's what she
has married!--a burning torment, and none of the joys of martyrdom. Oh!
I'm not awake. But I never dreamed of such a thing as this--not the hard,
bare, lump-of-earth-fact:--and that's the only thing to tell me I'm not
dreaming now.'

He subsided again; then deeply beseeching asked:

'Have you by chance a portrait of the gentleman, Miss Adister? Is there
one anywhere?'

Caroline stood at her piano, turning over the leaves of a music-book,
with a pressure on her eyelids. She was near upon being thrilled in spite
of an astonishment almost petrifying: and she could nearly have smiled,
so strange was his fraternal adoption, amounting to a vivification--of
his brother's passion. He seemed quite naturally to impersonate Philip.
She wondered, too, in the coolness of her alien blood, whether he was a
character, or merely an Irish character. As to the unwontedness of the
scene, Ireland was chargeable with that; and Ireland also, a little at
his expense as a citizen of the polite world, relieved him of the extreme
ridicule attached to his phrases and images.

She replied: 'We have no portrait.'

'May I beg to know, have you seen him?' said Patrick. Caroline shook her
head.

'Is there no telling what he is like, Miss Adister?'

'He is not young.'

'An old man!'

She had not said that, and she wished to defend her cousin from the
charge of contracting such an alliance, but Patrick's face had brightened
out of a gloom of stupefaction; he assured her he was now ready to try
his voice with hers, only she was to excuse a touch of hoarseness; he
felt it slightly in his throat: and could he, she asked him, wonder at it
after his morning's bath?

He vindicated the saneness of the bath as well as he was able, showing
himself at least a good reader of music. On the whole, he sang
pleasantly, particularly French songs. She complimented him, with an
emphasis on the French. He said, yes, he fancied he did best in French,
and he had an idea of settling in France, if he found that he could not
live quietly in his own country.

'And becoming a Frenchman?'said Caroline.

'Why not?' said he. 'I 'm more at home with French people; they're mostly
of my creed; they're amiable, though they weren't quite kind to poor
Lally Tollendal. I like them. Yes, I love France, and when I'm called
upon to fix myself, as I suppose I shall be some day, I shan't have the
bother over there that I should find here.'

She spoke reproachfully: 'Have you no pride in the title of Englishman?'

'I 'm an Irishman.'

'We are one nation.'

'And it's one family where the dog is pulled by the collar.'

There was a retort on him: she saw, as it were, the box, but the lid
would not open to assist her to it, and she let it go by, thinking in her
patriotic derision, that to choose to be likened to the unwilling dog of
the family was evidence of a want of saving pride.

Besides, she could not trust to the glibness of her tongue in a contest
with a young gentleman to whom talking was as easy as breathing, even if
sometimes his volubility exposed him to attack. A superior position was
offered her by her being silent and critical. She stationed herself on
it: still she was grieved to think of him as a renegade from his country,
and she forced herself to say: 'Captain O'Donnell talks in that manner.'

'Captain Con is constitutionally discontented because he's a bard by
nature, and without the right theme for his harp,' said Patrick. 'He has
a notion of Erin as the unwilling bride of Mr. Bull, because her lord is
not off in heroics enough to please her, and neglects her, and won't let
her be mistress of her own household, and she can't forget that he once
had the bad trick of beating her: she sees the marks. And you mayn't
believe it, but the Captain's temper is to praise and exalt. It is. Irony
in him is only eulogy standing on its head: a sort of an upside down; a
perversion: that's our view of him at home. All he desires is to have us
on the march, and he'd be perfectly happy marching, never mind the
banner, though a bit of green in it would put him in tune, of course. The
banner of the Cid was green, Miss Adister: or else it's his pennon that
was. And there's a quantity of our blood in Spain too. We've watered many
lands.'

The poor young English lady's brain started wildly on the effort to be
with him, and to understand whether she listened to humour or emotion:
she reposed herself as well as she could in the contemplation of an
electrically-flashing maze, where every line ran losing itself in
another.

He added: 'Old Philip!' in a visible throb of pity for his brother; after
the scrupulous dubitation between the banner and the pennon of the Cid!

It would have comforted her to laugh. She was closer upon tears, and
without any reason for them in her heart.

Such a position brings the hesitancy which says that the sitting is at an
end.

She feared, as she laid aside her music-books, that there would be more
to come about Adiante, but he spared her. He bowed to her departing, and
strolled off by himself.




CHAPTER VI

A CONSULTATION: WITH OPINIONS UPON WELSHWOMEN AND THE CAMBRIAN RACE

Later in the day she heard that he was out scouring the country on one of
her uncle's horses. She had too many distressing matters to think of for
so singular a young man to have any other place than that which is given
to the fantastical in a troubled and serious mind. He danced there like
the whimsy sunbeam of a shaken water below. What would be his opinion of
Adiante if he knew of her determination to sell the two fair estates she
inherited from a grandmother whom she had venerated; that she might
furnish arms to her husband to carry out an audacious enterprise likely
to involve both of them in blood and ruin? Would he not bound up aloft
and quiver still more wildly? She respected, quaint though it was, his
imaginative heat of feeling for Adiante sufficiently to associate him
with her so far; and she lent him in fancy her own bewilderment and grief
at her cousin's conduct, for the soothing that his exaggeration of them
afforded her. She could almost hear his outcry.

The business of the hour demanded more of her than a seeking for
refreshment. She had been invited to join the consultation of her uncle
with his lawyer. Mr. Adister tossed her another letter from Vienna, of
that morning's delivery. She read it with composure. It became her task
to pay no heed to his loss of patience, and induce him to acquiesce in
his legal adviser's view which was, to temporise further, present an
array of obstacles, and by all possible suggestions induce the princess
to come over to England, where her father's influence with her would have
a chance of being established again; and it might then be hoped that she,
who had never when under sharp temptation acted disobediently to his
wishes at home, and who certainly would not have dreamed of contracting
the abhorred alliance had she been breathing the air of common sense
peculiar to her native land, would see the prudence, if not the solemn
obligation, of retaining to herself these family possessions. Caroline
was urgent with her uncle to act on such good counsel. She marvelled at
his opposition, though she detected the principal basis of it.

Mr. Adister had no ground of opposition but his own intemperateness. The
Welsh grandmother's legacy of her estates to his girl, overlooking her
brothers, Colonel Arthur and Captain David, had excessively vexed him,
despite the strong feeling he entertained for Adiante; and not simply
because of the blow he received in it unexpectedly from that old lady, as
the last and heaviest of the long and open feud between them, but also,
chiefly, that it outraged and did permanent injury to his ideas of the
proper balance of the sexes. Between himself and Mrs. Winnion Rhys the
condition of the balance had been a point of vehement disputation, she
insisting to have it finer up to equality, and he that the naturally
lighter scale should continue to kick the beam. Behold now the
consequence of the wilful Welshwoman's insanest of legacies! The estates
were left to Adiante Adister for her sole use and benefit, making almost
a man of her, and an unshackled man, owing no dues to posterity. Those
estates in the hands of a woman are in the hands of her husband; and the
husband a gambler and a knave, they are in the hands of the Jews--or gone
to smoke. Let them go. A devilish malignity bequeathed them: let them go
back to their infernal origin. And when they were gone, his girl would
soon discover that there was no better place to come to than her home;
she would come without an asking, and alone, and without much prospect of
the intrusion of her infamous Hook-nose in pursuit of her at Earlsfont.
The money wasted, the wife would be at peace. Here she would have leisure
to repent of all the steps she had taken since that fatal one of the
acceptance of the invitation to the Embassy at Vienna. Mr. Adister had
warned her both against her going and against the influence of her friend
Lady Wenchester, our Ambassadress there, another Welsh woman, with the
weathervane head of her race. But the girl would accept, and it was not
for him to hold out. It appeared to be written that the Welsh,
particularly Welsh women, were destined to worry him up to the end of his
days. Their women were a composition of wind and fire. They had no
reason, nothing solid in their whole nature. Englishmen allied to them
had to learn that they were dealing with broomstick witches and
irresponsible sprites. Irishwomen were models of propriety beside them:
indeed Irishwomen might often be patterns to their English sisterhood.
Mr. Adister described the Cambrian ladies as a kind of daughters of the
Fata Morgana, only half human, and deceptive down to treachery, unless
you had them fast by their spinning fancy. They called it being romantic.
It was the ante-chamber of madness. Mad, was the word for them. You
pleased them you knew not how, and just as little did you know how you
displeased them. And you were long hence to be taught that in a certain
past year, and a certain month, and on a certain day of the month, not
forgetting the hour of the day to the minute of the hour, and attendant
circumstances to swear loud witness to it, you had mortally offended
them. And you receive your blow: you are sure to get it: the one passion
of those women is for vengeance. They taste a wound from the lightest
touch, and they nurse the venom for you. Possibly you may in their
presence have had occasion to praise the military virtues of the builder
of Carnarvon Castle. You are by and by pierced for it as hard as they can
thrust. Or you have incidentally compared Welsh mutton with
Southdown:--you have not highly esteemed their drunken Bards:--you have
asked what the Welsh have done in the world; you are supposed to have
slighted some person of their family--a tenth cousin!--anything turns
their blood. Or you have once looked straight at them without speaking,
and you discover years after that they have chosen to foist on you their
idea of your idea at the moment; and they have the astounding presumption
to account this misreading of your look to the extent of a full
justification, nothing short of righteous, for their treachery and your
punishment! O those Welshwomen!

The much-suffering lord of Earlsfont stretched forth his open hand, palm
upward, for a testifying instrument to the plain truth of his catalogue
of charges. He closed it tight and smote the table. 'Like mother--and
grandmother too--like daughter!' he said, and generalised again to
preserve his dignity: 'They're aflame in an instant. You may see them
quiet for years, but it smoulders. You dropped the spark, and they time
the explosion.'

Caroline said to Mr. Camminy: 'You are sure you can give us the day?'

'All of it,' he replied, apologising for some show of restlessness. 'The
fact is, Miss Adister, I married a lady from over the borders, and though
I have never had to complain of her yet, she may have a finale in store.
It's true that I love wild Wales.'

'And so do I' Caroline raised her eyes to imagined mountains.

'You will pardon me, Camminy,' said Mr. Adister.

The lawyer cracked his back to bow to the great gentleman so
magnanimously humiliating himself. 'Sir! Sir!' he said. 'Yes, Welsh blood
is queer blood, I own. They find it difficult to forgive; and trifles
offend; and they are unhappily just as secretive as they are sensitive.
The pangs we cause them, without our knowing it, must be horrible. They
are born, it would seem, with more than the common allowance of kibes for
treading on: a severe misfortune for them. Now for their merits: they
have poetry in them; they are valiant; they are hospitable to teach the
Arab a lesson: I do believe their life is their friend's at
need--seriously, they would lay it down for him: or the wherewithal,
their money, their property, excepting the three-stringed harp of three
generations back, worth now in current value sixpence halfpenny as a
curiosity, or three farthings for firewood; that they'll keep against
their own desire to heap on you everything they have--if they love you,
and you at the same time have struck their imaginations. Offend them,
however, and it's war, declared or covert. And I must admit that their
best friend can too easily offend them. I have lost excellent clients, I
have never understood why; yet I respect the remains of their literature,
I study their language, I attend their gatherings and subscribe the
expenses; I consume Welsh mutton with relish; I enjoy the Triads, and can
come down on them with a quotation from Catwg the Wise: but it so chanced
that I trod on a kibe, and I had to pay the penalty. There's an Arabian
tale, Miss Adister, of a peaceful traveller who ate a date in the desert
and flung away the stone, which hit an invisible son of a genie in the
eye, and the poor traveller suffered for it. Well, you commit these
mortal injuries to the invisible among the Welsh. Some of them are hurt
if you call them Welsh. They scout it as the original Saxon title for
them. No, they are Cymry, Cambrians! They have forgiven the Romans. Saxon
and Norman are still their enemies. If you stir their hearts you find it
so. And, by the way, if King Edward had not trampled them into the mire
so thoroughly, we should hear of it at times even now. Instead of
penillions and englyns, there would be days for fiery triplets. Say the
worst of them, they are soundheaded. They have a ready comprehension for
great thoughts. The Princess Nikolas, I remember, had a special fondness
for the words of Catwg the Wise.'

'Adiante,' had murmured Caroline, to correct his indiscretion.

She was too late.

'Nikolas!' Mr. Adister thundered. 'Hold back that name in this house,
title and all, if you speak of my daughter. I refuse admission to it
here. She has given up my name, and she must be known by the one her
feather-brained grandmother proposed for her, to satisfy her pleasure in
a fine sound. English Christian names are my preference. I conceded
Arthur to her without difficulty. She had a voice in David, I recollect;
with very little profit to either of the boys. I had no voice in Adiante;
but I stood at my girl's baptism, and Adiante let her be. At least I
saved the girl from the addition of Arianrod. It was to have been Adiante
Arianrod. Can you credit it? Prince-pah! Nikolas? Have you a notion of
the sort of prince that makes an English lady of the best blood of
England his princess?'

The lawyer had a precise notion of the sort of prince appearing to Mr.
Adister in the person of his foreign son-in-law. Prince Nikolas had been
described to him before, with graphic touches upon the quality of the
reputation he bore at the courts and in the gambling-saloons of Europe.
Dreading lest his client's angry heat should precipitate him on the
prince again, to the confusion of a lady's ears, Mr. Camminy gave an
emphatic and short affirmative.

'You know what he is like?' said Mr. Adister, with a face of disgust
reflected from the bare thought of the hideous likeness.

Mr. Camminy assured him that the description of the prince's lineaments
would not be new. It was, as he was aware, derived from a miniature of
her husband, transmitted by the princess, on its flight out of her
father's loathing hand to the hearthstone and under his heel.

Assisted by Caroline, he managed to check the famous delineation of the
adventurer prince in which a not very worthy gentleman's chronic fever of
abomination made him really eloquent, quick to unburden himself in the
teeth of decorum.

'And my son-in-law! My son-in-law!' ejaculated Mr. Adister, tossing his
head higher, and so he stimulated his amazement and abhorrence of the
portrait he rather wondered at them for not desiring to have sketched for
their execration of it, alluringly foul as it was: while they in concert
drew him back to the discussion of his daughter's business, reiterating
prudent counsel, with a knowledge that they had only to wait for the
ebbing of his temper.

'Let her be informed, sir, that by coming to England she can settle the
business according to her wishes in one quarter of the time it would take
a Commission sent out to her--if we should be authorised to send out
one,' said Mr. Camminy. 'By committing the business to you, I fancy I
perceive your daughter's disposition to consider your feelings: possibly
to a reluctance to do the deed unsanctioned by her father. It would
appear so to a cool observer, notwithstanding her inattention to your
remonstrances.'

The reply was: 'Dine here and sleep here. I shall be having more of these
letters,' Mr. Adister added, profoundly sighing.

Caroline slipped away to mark a conclusion to the debate; and Mr. Camminy
saw his client redden fast and frown.

'Besides,' he spoke in a husky voice, descending upon a subject hateful,
'she tells me to-day she is not in a state to travel! Do you hear? Make
what you can of it.'

The proud and injured gentleman had the aspect of one who receives a blow
that it is impossible for him to resent. He could not speak the shame he
felt: it was literally in his flesh. But the cause had been sufficiently
hinted to set the lawyer staring as men do when they encounter situations
of grisly humour, where certain of the passions of man's developed nature
are seen armed and furious against our mild prevailing ancient mother
nature; and the contrast is between our utter wrath and her simple
exposition of the circumstances and consequences forming her laws. There
are situations which pass beyond the lightly stirred perceptive wits to
the quiet court of the intellect, to be received there as an addition to
our acquaintance with mankind. We know not of what substance to name
them. Humour in its intense strain has a seat somewhere about the mouth
of tragedy, giving it the enigmatical faint wry pull at a corner visible
at times upon the dreadful mask.

That Mr. Adister should be astonished at such a communication from the
princess, after a year of her marriage: and that he should take it for a
further outrage of his paternal sentiments, should actually redden and be
hoarse in alluding to it: the revelation of such points in our human
character set the humane old lawyer staring at the reserve space within
himself apart from his legal being, whereon he by fits compared his own
constitution with that of the individuals revealed to him by their acts
and confidential utterances. For him, he decided that he would have
rejoiced at the news.

Granting the prince a monster, however, as Mr. Adister unforcedly
considered him, it was not so cheering a piece of intelligence that
involved him yet closer with that man's rank blood: it curdled his own.
The marriage had shocked and stricken him, cleaving, in his love for his
daughter, a goodly tree and withering many flowers. Still the marriage
was but Adiante's gulf: he might be called father-in-law of her spangled
ruffian; son-in-law, the desperado-rascal would never be called by him.
But the result of the marriage dragged him bodily into the gulf: he
became one of four, numbering the beast twice among them. The subtlety of
his hatred so reckoned it; for he could not deny his daughter in the
father's child; he could not exclude its unhallowed father in the
mother's: and of this man's child he must know and own himself the
grandfather. If ever he saw the child, if drawn to it to fondle it, some
part of the little animal not his daughter's would partake of his
embrace. And if neither of his boys married, and his girl gave birth to a
son! darkness rolled upon that avenue of vision. A trespasser and
usurper-one of the demon's brood chased his very name out of Earlsfont!

'Camminy, you must try to amuse yourself,' he said briskly. 'Anything you
may be wanting at home shall be sent for. I must have you here to make
sure that I am acting under good advice. You can take one of the keepers
for an hour or two of shooting. I may join you in the afternoon. You will
find occupation for your gun in the north covers.'

He wandered about the house, looking into several rooms, and only
partially at rest when he discovered Caroline in one, engaged upon some
of her aquarelle sketches. He asked where the young Irishman was.

'Are you in search of him?' said she. 'You like him, uncle? He is out
riding, they tell me.'

'The youngster is used to south-western showers in that climate of his,'
Mr. Adister replied. 'I dare say we could find the Jesuit in him
somewhere. There's the seed. His cousin Con O'Donnell has filled him with
stuff about Ireland and England: the man has no better to do than to
train a parrot. What do you think of him, my love?'

The judgement was not easily formed for expression. 'He is not quite like
what I remember of his brother Philip. He talks much more, does he not?
He seems more Irish than his brother. He is very strange. His feelings
are strong; he has not an idea of concealing them. For a young man
educated by the Jesuits, he is remarkably open.'

'The Jesuits might be of service to me just now!' Mr. Adister addressed
his troubled soul, and spoke upon another conception of them: 'How has he
shown his feelings?'

Caroline answered quickly: 'His love of his brother. Anything that
concerns his brother moves him; it is like a touch on a musical
instrument. Perhaps I should say a native one.'

'Concerns his brother?' Mr. Adister inquired, and his look requesting
enlightenment told her she might speak.

'Adiante,' she said softly. She coloured.

Her uncle mused awhile in a half-somnolent gloom. 'He talks of this at
this present day?'

'It is not dead to him. He really appears to have hoped . . . he is
extraordinary. He had not heard before of her marriage. I was a witness
of the most singular scene this morning, at the piano. He gathered it
from what he had heard. He was overwhelmed by it. I could not exaggerate.
It was impossible to help being a little touched, though it was curious,
very strange.'

Her uncle's attentiveness incited her to describe the scene, and as it
visibly relieved his melancholy, she did it with a few vivid indications
of the quaint young Irishman's manner of speech. She concluded: 'At last
he begged to see a portrait of her husband.'

'Not of her?' said Mr. Adister abruptly.

'No; only of her husband.'

'Show him her portrait.'

A shade of surprise was on Caroline's forehead. 'Shall I?' She had a dim
momentary thought that the sight of the beautiful face would not be good
for Patrick.

'Yes; let him see the woman who could throw herself away on that branded
villain called a prince, abjuring her Church for a little fouler than
hangman to me and every gentleman alive. I desire that he should see it.
Submission to the demands of her husband's policy required it of her, she
says! Show it him when he returns; you have her miniature in your
keeping. And to-morrow take him to look at the full-length of her before
she left England and ceased to be a lady of our country. I will order it
to be placed in the armoury. Let him see the miniature of her this day.'

Mr. Adister resolved at the same time that Patrick should have his
portrait of the prince for a set-off to the face of his daughter. He
craved the relief it would be to him to lay his colours on the prince for
the sparkling amazement of one whom, according to Caroline's description,
he could expect to feel with him acutely, which neither his niece nor his
lawyer had done: they never did when he painted the prince. He was
unstrung, heavily plunged in the matter of his chagrin and grief: his
unhealed wound had been scraped and strewn with salt by his daughter's
letter; he had a thirst for the kind of sympathy he supposed he would
find in the young Irishman's horror at the husband of the incomparable
beauty now past redemption degraded by her hideous choice; lost to
England and to her father and to common respect. For none, having once
had the picture of the man, could dissociate them; they were like heaven
and its reverse, everlastingly coupled in the mind by their opposition of
characters and aspects. Her father could not, and he judged of others by
himself. He had been all but utterly solitary since her marriage, brooded
on it until it saturated him; too proud to speak of the thing in sadness,
or claim condolence for this wound inflicted on him by the daughter he
had idolised other than through the indirect method of causing people to
wonder at her chosen yoke-fellow. Their stupefaction refreshed him. Yet
he was a gentleman capable of apprehending simultaneously that he sinned
against his pride in the means he adopted to comfort his nature. But the
wound was a perpetual sickness needing soul-medicine. Proud as he was,
and unbending, he was not stronger than his malady, and he could
disguise, he could not contain, the cry of immoderate grief. Adiante had
been to him something beyond a creature beloved; she had with her
glorious beauty and great-heartedness been the sole object which had ever
inspirited his imagination. He could have thought no man, not the most
illustrious, worthy of her. And there she was, voluntarily in the hands
of a monster! 'Husband!' Mr. Adister broke away from Caroline, muttering:
'Her husband's policy!'

She was used to his interjections; she sat thinking more of the strange
request to her to show Mr. O'Donnell the miniature of Adiante. She had
often thought that her uncle regretted his rejection of Philip. It
appeared so to her now, though not by any consecutive process of
reasoning. She went to fetch the miniature, and gazing on it, she tried
to guess at Mr. O'Donnell's thoughts when doing the same; for who so
inflammable as he? And who, woman or man, could behold this lighted face,
with the dark raised eyes and abounding auburn tresses, where the
contrast of colours was in itself thrilling, and not admire, or more,
half worship, or wholly worship? She pitied the youth: she fancied that
he would not continue so ingenuously true to his brother's love of
Adiante after seeing it; unless one might hope that the light above
beauty distinguishing its noble classic lines, and the energy of
radiance, like a morning of chivalrous promise, in the eyes, would subdue
him to distant admiration. These were her flitting thoughts under the
spell of her queenly cousin's visage. She shut up the miniature-case, and
waited to hand it to young Mr. O'Donnell.




CHAPTER VII

THE MINIATURE

Patrick returned to Earlsfont very late; he had but ten minutes to dress
for dinner; a short allowance after a heated ride across miry tracks,
though he would have expended some of them, in spite of his punctilious
respect for the bell of the house entertaining him, if Miss Adister had
been anywhere on the stairs or corridors as he rushed away to his room.
He had things to tell; he had not been out over the country for nothing.

Fortunately for his good social principles, the butler at Earlsfont was a
wary supervisor of his man; great guest or little guest; Patrick's linen
was prepared for him properly studded; he had only to spring out of one
suit into another; and still more fortunately the urgency for a rapid
execution of the manoeuvre prevented his noticing a large square envelope
posted against the looking-glass of his toilette-table. He caught sight
of it first when pulling down his shirt-cuffs with an air of recovered
ease, not to say genial triumph, to think that the feat of grooming
himself, washing, dressing and stripping, the accustomed persuasive final
sweep of the brush to his hair-crop, was done before the bell had rung.
His name was on the envelope; and under his name, in smaller letters,

Adiante.

'Shall I?' said he, doing the thing he asked himself about doing tearing
open the paper cover of the portrait of her who had flitted in his head
for years unseen. And there she was, remote but present.

His underlip dropped; he had the look of those who bate breath and swarm
their wits to catch a sound. At last he remembered that the summoning
bell had been in his ears a long time back, without his having been
sensible of any meaning in it. He started to and fro. The treasure he
held declined to enter the breast-pocket of his coat, and the other
pockets he perhaps, if sentimentally, justly discarded as being beneath
the honour of serving for a temporary casket. He locked it up, with a vow
to come early to rest. Even then he had thoughts whether it might be
safe.

Who spoke, and what they uttered at the repast, and his own remarks, he
was unaware of. He turned right and left a brilliant countenance that had
the glitter of frost-light; it sparkled and was unreceptive. No wonder
Miss Adister deemed him wilder and stranger than ever. She necessarily
supposed the excess of his peculiarities to be an effect of the portrait,
and would have had him, according to her ideas of a young man of some
depth of feeling, dreamier. On the contrary, he talked sheer commonplace.
He had ridden to the spur of the mountains, and had put up the mare, and
groomed and fed her, not permitting another hand to touch her: all very
well, and his praises of the mare likewise, but he had not a syllable for
the sublime of the mountains. He might have careered over midland flats
for any susceptibility that he betrayed to the grandeur of the scenery
she loved. Ultimately she fancied the miniature had been overlooked in
his hurry to dress, and that he was now merely excited by his lively
gallop to a certain degree of hard brightness noticeable in hunting men
at their dinner.

The elixir in Patrick carried him higher than mountain crests. Adiante
illumined an expanded world for him, miraculous, yet the real one, only
wanting such light to show its riches. She lifted it out of darkness with
swift throbs of her heavenliness as she swam to his eyelids, vanished and
dazzled anew, and made these gleams of her and the dark intervals his
dream of the winged earth on her flight from splendour to splendour,
secresy to secresy;--follow you that can, the youth whose heart is an
opened mine, whose head is an irradiated sky, under the spell of imagined
magical beauty. She was bugle, banner, sunrise, of his inmost ambition
and rapture.

And without a warning, she fled; her features were lost; his power of
imagining them wrestled with vapour; the effort contracted his outlook.
But if she left him blind of her, she left him with no lessened bigness
of heart. He frankly believed in her revelation of a greater world and a
livelier earth, a flying earth and a world wealthier than grouped history
in heroic marvels: he fell back on the exultation of his having seen her,
and on the hope for the speedy coming of midnight, when the fountain of
her in the miniature would be seen and drunk of at his full leisure, and
his glorious elation of thrice man almost up to mounting spirit would be
restored to make him worthy of the vision.

Meanwhile Caroline had withdrawn and the lord of Earlsfont was fretting
at his theme. He had decided not to be a party in the sale of either of
his daughter's estates: let her choose other agents: if the iniquity was
committed, his hands would be clean of it. Mr. Adister spoke by way of
prelude to the sketch of 'this prince' whose title was a lurid delusion.
Patrick heard of a sexagenarian rake and Danube adventurer, in person a
description of falcon-Caliban, containing his shagginess in a frogged
hussar-jacket and crimson pantaloons, with hook-nose, fox-eyes, grizzled
billow of frowsy moustache, and chin of a beast of prey. This fellow,
habitually one of the dogs lining the green tables of the foreign Baths,
snapping for gold all day and half the night, to spend their winnings in
debauchery and howl threats of suicide, never fulfilled early enough,
when they lost, claimed his princedom on the strength of his father's
murder of a reigning prince and sitting in his place for six months, till
a merited shot from another pretender sent him to his account. 'What do
you say to such a nest of assassins, and one of them, an outcast and
blackleg, asking an English gentleman to acknowledge him as a member of
his family! I have,' said Mr. Adister, 'direct information that this
gibbet-bird is conspiring to dethrone--they call it--the present reigning
prince, and the proceeds of my daughter's estates are, by her desire--if
she has not written under compulsion of the scoundrel--intended to speed
their blood-mongering. There goes a Welshwoman's legacy to the sea, with
a herd of swine with devils in them!'

Mr. Camminy kept his head bent, his hand on his glass of port. Patrick
stared, and the working of his troubled brows gave the unhappy gentleman
such lean comfort as he was capable of taking. Patrick in sooth was
engaged in the hard attempt at the same time to do two of the most
difficult things which can be proposed to the ingenuity of sensational
youth: he was trying to excuse a respected senior for conduct that he
could not approve, while he did inward battle to reconcile his feelings
with the frightful addition to his hoard of knowledge: in other words, he
sought strenuously to mix the sketch of the prince with the dregs of the
elixir coming from the portrait of Adiante; and now she sank into
obscurity behind the blackest of brushes, representing her incredible
husband; and now by force of some natural light she broke through the
ugly mist and gave her adored the sweet lines and colours of the features
he had lost. There was an ebb and flow of the struggle, until, able to
say to himself that he saw her clearly as though the portrait was in the
palm of his hand, the battle of the imagination ceased and she was fairer
for him than if her foot had continued pure of its erratic step: fairer,
owing to the eyes he saw with; he had shaken himself free of the exacting
senses which consent to the worship of women upon the condition of their
possessing all the precious and the miraculous qualities; among others,
the gift of an exquisite fragility that cannot break; in short, upon
terms flattering to the individual devotee. Without knowing it he had
done it and got some of the upholding strength of those noblest of honest
men who not merely give souls to women--an extraordinary endowment of
them--but also discourse to them with their souls.

Patrick accepted Adiante's husband: the man was her husband. Hideous (for
there was no combating her father's painting of him), he was almost
interesting through his alliance:--an example of how much earth the
worshipper can swallow when he is quite sincere. Instead of his going
under eclipse, the beauty of his lady eclipsed her monster. He believed
in her right to choose according to her pleasure since her lover was
denied her. Sitting alone by his fire, he gazed at her for hours and bled
for Philip. There was a riddle to be answered in her cutting herself away
from Philip; he could not answer it; her face was the vindication and the
grief. The usual traverses besetting true lovers were suggested to him,
enemies and slanders and intercepted letters. He rejected them in the
presence of the beautiful inscrutable. Small marvel that Philip had loved
her. 'Poor fellow' Patrick cried aloud, and drooped on a fit of tears.

The sleep he had was urgently dream-ridden to goals that eluded him and
broadened to fresh races and chases waving something to be won which
never was won, albeit untiringly pursued amid a series of adventures,
tragic episodes; wild enthusiasm. The whole of it was featureless, a
shifting agitation; yet he must have been endowed to extricate a
particular meaning applied to himself out of the mass of tumbled events,
and closely in relation to realities, for he quitted his bed passionately
regretting that he had not gone through a course of drill and study of
the military art. He remembered Mr. Adister's having said that military
training was good for all gentlemen.

'I could join the French Foreign Legion,' he thought.

Adiante was as beautiful by day as by night. He looked. The riddle of her
was more burdensome in the daylight.

He sighed, and on another surging of his admiration launched the resolve
that he would serve her blindly, without one question. How, when, where,
and the means and the aim, he did not think of. There was she, and here
was he, and heaven and a great heart would show the way.

Adiante at eighteen, the full length of her, fresh in her love of Philip,
was not the same person to him, she had not the same secret; she was
beautiful differently. By right he should have loved the portrait best:
but he had not seen it first; he had already lived through a life of
emotions with the miniature, and could besides clasp the frame; and
moreover he fondled an absurd notion that the miniature would be
entrusted to him for a time, and was almost a possession. The pain of the
thought of relinquishing it was the origin of this foolishness. And
again, if it be fair to prove him so deeply, true to his brother though
he was (admiration of a woman does thus influence the tides of our blood
to render the noblest of us guilty of some unconscious wavering of our
loyalty), Patrick dedicated the full-length of Adiante to Philip, and
reserved the other, her face and neck, for himself.

Obediently to Mr. Adister's order, the portrait had been taken from one
of his private rooms and placed in the armoury, the veil covering the
canvas of late removed. Guns and spears and swords overhead and about,
the youthful figure of Adiante was ominously encompassed. Caroline stood
with Patrick before the portrait of her cousin; she expected him to show
a sign of appreciation. He asked her to tell him the Church whose forms
of faith the princess had embraced. She answered that it was the Greek
Church. 'The Greek,' said he, gazing harder at the portrait. Presently
she said: 'It was a perfect likeness.' She named the famous artist who
had painted it. Patrick's 'Ah' was unsatisfactory.

'We,' said she, 'think it a living image of her as she was then.'

He would not be instigated to speak.

'You do not admire it, Mr. O'Donnell?' she cried.

'Oh, but I do. That's how she looked when she was drawing on her gloves
with good will to go out to meet him. You can't see her there and not be
sure she had a heart. She part smiles; she keeps her mouth shut, but
there's the dimple, and it means a thought, like a bubble bursting up
from the heart in her breast. She's tall. She carries herself like a
great French lady, and nothing beats that. It's the same colour, dark
eyebrows and fair hair. And not thinking of her pride. She thinks of her
walk, and the end of it, where he's waiting. The eyes are not the same.'

'The same?' said Caroline.

'As this.' He tapped on the left side. She did not understand it at all.

'The bit of work done in Vienna,' said he.

She blushed. 'Do you admire that so much?'

'I do.'

'We consider it not to be compared to this.'

'Perhaps not. I like it better.'

'But why do you like that better?' said Caroline, deeming it his
wilfulness.

Patrick put out a finger. 'The eyes there don't seem to say, "I'm yours
to make a hero of you." But look,' he drew forth from under his waistcoat
the miniature, 'what don't they say here! It's a bright day for the
Austrian capital that has her by the river Danube. Yours has a landscape;
I've made acquaintance with the country, I caught the print of it on my
ride yesterday; and those are your mountains. But mine has her all to
herself while she's thinking undisturbed in her boudoir. I have her and
her thoughts; that's next to her soul. I've an idea it ought to be given
to Philip.' He craned his head round to woo some shadow of assent to the
daring suggestion. 'Just to break the shock 'twill be to my brother, Miss
Adister. If I could hand him this, and say, "Keep it, for you'll get
nothing more of her; and that's worth a kingdom."'

Caroline faltered: 'Your brother does not know?'

'Pity him. His blow 's to come. He can't or he 'd have spoken of it to
me. I was with him a couple of hours and he never mentioned a word of it,
nor did Captain Con. We talked of Ireland, and the service, and some
French cousins we have.'

'Ladies?' Caroline inquired by instinct.

'And charming,' said Patrick, 'real dear girls. Philip might have one, if
he would, and half my property, to make it right with her parents.
There'd be little use in proposing it. He was dead struck when the shaft
struck him. That's love! So I determined the night after I'd shaken his
hand I'd be off to Earlsfont and try my hardest for him. It's hopeless
now. Only he might have the miniature for his bride. I can tell him a
trifle to help him over his agony. She would have had him, she would,
Miss Adister, if she hadn't feared he'd be talked of as Captain Con has
been--about the neighbourhood, I mean, because he,' Patrick added
hurriedly, 'he married an heiress and sank his ambition for distinction
like a man who has finished his dinner. I'm certain she would. I have it
on authority.'

'What authority?' said Caroline coldly.

'Her own old nurse.'

'Jenny Williams?'

'The one! I had it from her. And how she loves her darling Miss Adiante!
She won't hear of "princess." She hates that marriage. She was all for my
brother Philip. She calls him "Our handsome lieutenant." She'll keep the
poor fellow a subaltern all his life.'

'You went to Jenny's inn?'

'The Earlsfont Arms, I went to. And Mrs. Jenny at the door, watching the
rain. Destiny directed me. She caught the likeness to Philip on a lift of
her eye, and very soon we sat conversing like old friends. We were soon
playing at old cronies over past times. I saw the way to bring her out,
so I set to work, and she was up in defence of her darling, ready to tell
me anything to get me to think well of her. And that was the main reason,
she said, why Miss Adiante broke with him and went abroad her dear child
wouldn't have Mr. Philip abused for fortune-hunting. As for the religion,
they could each have practised their own: her father would have consented
to the fact, when it came on him in that undeniable shape of two made
one. She says, Miss Adiante has a mighty soul; she has brave ideas. Miss
Deenly, she calls her. Ay, and so has Philip: though the worst is,
they're likely to drive him out of the army into politics and Parliament;
and an Irishman there is a barrow trolling a load of grievances. Ah, but
she would have kept him straight. Not a soldier alive knows the use of
cavalry better than my brother. He wanted just that English wife to
steady him and pour drops of universal fire into him; to keep him face to
face with the world, I mean; letting him be true to his country in a fair
degree, but not an old rainpipe and spout. She would have held him to his
profession. And, Oh dear! She's a friend worth having, lost to Ireland. I
see what she could have done there. Something bigger than an island, too,
has to be served in our days: that is, if we don't forget our duty at
home. Poor Paddy, and his pig, and his bit of earth! If you knew what we
feel for him! I'm a landlord, but I'm one with my people about evictions.
We Irish take strong root. And honest rent paid over to absentees,
through an agent, if you think of it, seems like flinging the money
that's the sweat of the brow into a stone conduit to roll away to a giant
maw hungry as the sea. It's the bleeding to death of our land!
Transactions from hand to hand of warm human flesh-nothing else will do:
I mean, for men of our blood. Ah! she would have kept my brother
temperate in his notions and his plans. And why absentees, Miss Adister?
Because we've no centre of home life: the core has been taken out of us;
our country has no hearth-fire. I'm for union; only there should be
justice, and a little knowledge to make allowance for the natural
cravings of a different kind of people. Well, then, and I suppose that
inter-marriages are good for both. But here comes a man, the boldest and
handsomest of his race, and he offers himself to the handsomest and
sweetest of yours, and she leans to him, and the family won't have him.
For he's an Irishman and a Catholic. Who is it then opposed the proper
union of the two islands? Not Philip. He did his best; and if he does
worse now he's not entirely to blame. The misfortune is, that when he
learns the total loss of her on that rock-promontory, he'll be dashing
himself upon rocks sure to shiver him. There's my fear. If I might take
him this . . . ?' Patrick pleaded with the miniature raised like the
figure of his interrogation.

Caroline's inward smile threw a soft light of humour over her features at
the simple cunning of his wind-up to the lecture on his country's case,
which led her to perceive a similar cunning simplicity in his
identification of it with Philip's. It startled her to surprise, for the
reason that she'd been reviewing his freakish hops from Philip to Ireland
and to Adiante, and wondering in a different kind of surprise, how and by
what profitless ingenuity he contrived to weave them together. Nor was
she unmoved, notwithstanding her fancied perception of his Jesuitry: his
look and his voice were persuasive; his love of his brother was deep; his
change of sentiment toward Adiante after the tale told him by her old
nurse Jenny, stood for proof of a generous manliness.

Before she had replied, her uncle entered the armoury, and Patrick was
pleading still, and she felt herself to be a piece of damask, a very
fiery dye.

To disentangle herself, she said on an impulse, desperately

'Mr. O'Donnell begs to have the miniature for his brother.'

Patrick swung instantly to Mr. Adister. 'I presumed to ask for it, sir,
to carry it to Philip. He is ignorant about the princess as yet; he would
like to have a bit of the wreck. I shan't be a pleasant messenger to him.
I should be glad to take him something. It could be returned after a
time. She was a great deal to Philip--three parts of his life. He has
nothing of her to call his own.'

'That!' said Mr. Adister. He turned to the virgin Adiante, sat down and
shut his eyes, fetching a breath. He looked vacantly at Patrick.

'When you find a man purely destructive, you think him a devil, don't
you?' he said.

'A good first cousin to one,' Patrick replied, watchful for a hint to
seize the connection.

'If you think of hunting to-day, we have not many minutes to spare before
we mount. The meet is at eleven, five miles distant. Go and choose your
horse. Caroline will drive there.'

Patrick consulted her on a glance for counsel. 'I shall be glad to join
you, sir, for to-morrow I must be off to my brother.'

'Take it,' Mr. Adister waved his hand hastily. He gazed at his idol of
untouched eighteen. 'Keep it safe,' he said, discarding the sight of the
princess. 'Old houses are doomed to burnings, and a devil in the family
may bring us to ashes. And some day . . . !' he could not continue his
thought upon what he might be destined to wish for, and ran it on to,
'Some day I shall be happy to welcome your brother, when it pleases him
to visit me.'

Patrick bowed, oppressed by the mighty gift. 'I haven't the word to thank
you with, sir.'

Mr. Adister did not wait for it.

'I owe this to you, Miss Adister,' said Patrick.

Her voice shook: 'My uncle loves those who loved her.'

He could see she was trembling. When he was alone his ardour of
gratefulness enabled him to see into her uncle's breast: the inflexible
frigidity; lasting regrets and remorse; the compassion for Philip in
kinship of grief and loss; the angry dignity; the stately generosity.

He saw too, for he was clear-eyed when his feelings were not over-active,
the narrow pedestal whereon the stiff figure of a man of iron pride must
accommodate itself to stand in despite of tempests without and within;
and how the statue rocks there, how much more pitiably than the common
sons of earth who have the broad common field to fall down on and our
good mother's milk to set them on their legs again.




CHAPTER VIII

CAPTAIN CON AND MRS. ADISTER O'DONNELL

Riding homeward from the hunt at the leisurely trot of men who have
steamed their mounts pretty well, Mr. Adister questioned Patrick
familiarly about his family, and his estate, and his brother's prospects
in the army, and whither he intended first to direct his travels:
questions which Patrick understood to be kindly put for the sake of
promoting conversation with a companion of unripe age by a gentleman who
had wholesomely excited his blood to run. They were answered, except the
last one. Patrick had no immediate destination in view.

'Leave Europe behind you,' said Mr. Adister warming, to advise him, and
checking the trot of his horse. 'Try South America.' The lordly gentleman
plotted out a scheme of colonisation and conquest in that region with the
coolness of a practised freebooter. 'No young man is worth a job,' he
said, 'who does not mean to be a leader, and as leader to have dominion.
Here we are fettered by ancestry and antecedents. Had I to recommence
without those encumbrances, I would try my fortune yonder. I stood
condemned to waste my youth in idle parades, and hunting the bear and
buffalo. The estate you have inherited is not binding on you. You can
realise it, and begin by taking over two or three hundred picked Irish
and English--have both races capable of handling spade and musket;
purchasing some thousands of acres to establish a legal footing there.

'You increase your colony from the mother country in the ratio of your
prosperity, until your power is respected, and there is a necessity for
the extension of your territory. When you are feared you will be on your
mettle. They will favour you with provocation. I should not doubt the
result, supposing myself to have under my sole command a trained body of
men of English blood--and Irish.'

'Owners of the soil,' rejoined Patrick, much marvelling.

'Undoubtedly, owners of the soil, but owing you service.'

'They fight sir'

'It is hardly to be specified in the calculation, knowing them. Soldiery
who have served their term, particularly old artillerymen, would be my
choice: young fellows and boys among them. Women would have to be taken.
Half-breeds are the ruin of colonists. Our men are born for conquest. We
were conquerors here, and it is want of action and going physically
forward that makes us a rusty people. There are--Mr. Adister's intonation
told of his proposing a wretched alternative,--'the Pacific Islands, but
they will soon be snapped up by the European and North American
Governments, and a single one of them does not offer space. It would
require money and a navy.' He mused. 'South America is the quarter I
should decide for, as a young man. You are a judge of horses; you ride
well; you would have splendid pastures over there; you might raise a
famous breed. The air is fine; it would suit our English stock. We are on
ground, Mr. O'Donnell, which my forefathers contested sharply and did not
yield.'

'The owners of the soil had to do that,' said Patrick. 'I can show the
same in my country, with a difference.'

'Considerably to your benefit.'

'Everything has been crushed there barring the contrary opinion.'

'I could expect such a remark from a rebel.'

'I'm only interpreting the people, sir.'

'Jump out of that tinder-box as soon as you can.'

'When I was in South America, it astonished me that no Englishman had
cast an eye on so inviting a land. Australia is not comparable with it.
And where colonisations have begun without system, and without hard
fighting to teach the settlers to value good leadership and respect their
chiefs, they tumble into Republics.'

Patrick would have liked to fling a word in about the Englishman's cast
of his eye upon inviting lands, but the trot was resumed, the lord of
Earlsfont having delivered his mind, and a minute made it happily too
late for the sarcastic bolt. Glad that his tongue had been kept from
wagging, he trotted along beside his host in the dusky evening over the
once contested land where the gentleman's forefathers had done their
deeds and firmly fixed their descendants. A remainder of dull red fire
prolonged the half-day above the mountain strongholds of the former
owners of the soil, upon which prince and bard and priest, and grappling
natives never wanting for fierceness, roared to-arms in the beacon-flames
from ridge to peak: and down they poured, and back they were pushed by
the inveterate coloniser--stationing at threatened points his old
'artillerymen' of those days and so it ends, that bard and priest and
prince; holy poetry, and divine prescription, and a righteous holding;
are as naught against him. They go, like yonder embers of the winter
sunset before advancing night: and to morrow the beacon-heaps are ashes,
the conqueror's foot stamps on them, the wind scatters them; strangest of
all, you hear victorious lawlessness appealing solemnly to God the law.

Patrick was too young to philosophise upon his ideas; or else the series
of pictures projected by the troops of sensations running through him
were not of a solidity to support any structure of philosophy. He
reverted, though rather in name than in spirit, to the abstractions,
justice, consistency, right. They were too hard to think of, so he
abandoned the puzzle of fitting them to men's acts and their consciences,
and he put them aside as mere titles employed for the uses of a police
and a tribunal to lend an appearance of legitimacy to the decrees of them
that have got the upper hand. An insurrectionary rising of his breast on
behalf of his country was the consequence. He kept it down by turning the
whole hubbub within him to the practical contemplation of a visionary
South America as the region for him and a fighting tenantry. With a
woman, to crown her queen there, the prospect was fair. But where dwelt
the woman possessing majesty suitable to such a dream in her heart or her
head? The best he had known in Ireland and in France, preferred the
charms of society to bold adventure.

All the same, thought he, it's queer counsel, that we should set to work
by buying a bit of land to win a clean footing to rob our neighbours: and
his brains took another shot at Mr. Adister, this time without
penetrating. He could very well have seen the matter he disliked in a man
that he disliked; but the father of Adiante had touched him with the gift
of the miniature.

Patrick was not asked to postpone his departure from Earlsfont, nor was
he invited to come again. Mr. Adister drove him to the station in the
early morning, and gave him a single nod from the phaeton-box for a
good-bye. Had not Caroline assured him at the leave-taking between them
that he had done her uncle great good by his visit, the blank of the
usual ceremonial phrases would have caused him to fancy himself an
intruder courteously dismissed, never more to enter the grand old Hall.
He was further comforted by hearing the stationmaster's exclamation of
astonishment and pleasure at the sight of the squire 'in his place'
handling the reins, which had not been witnessed for many a day and so it
appeared that the recent guest had been exceptionally complimented. 'But
why not a warm word, instead of turning me off to decipher a bit of
Egyptian on baked brick,' he thought, incurably Celtic as he was.

From the moment when he beheld Mr. Adister's phaeton mounting a hill that
took the first leap for the Cambrian highlands, up to his arrival in
London, scarcely one of his 'ideas' darted out before Patrick, as they
were in the habit of doing, like the enchanted bares of fairyland,
tempting him to pursue, and changing into the form of woman ever, at some
turn of the chase. For as he had travelled down to Earlsfont in the state
of ignorance and hopefulness, bearing the liquid brains of that young
condition, so did his acquisition of a particular fact destructive of
hope solidify them about it as he travelled back: in other words, they
were digesting what they had taken in. Imagination would not have stirred
for a thousand fleeting hares: and principally, it may be, because he was
conscious that no form of woman would anywhere come of them. Woman was
married; she had the ring on her finger! He could at his option look on
her in the miniature, he could think of her as being in the city where
she had been painted; but he could not conjure her out of space; she was
nowhere in the ambient air. Secretly she was a feeling that lay half
slumbering very deep down within him, and he kept the secret, choosing to
be poor rather than call her forth. He was in truth digesting with
difficulty, as must be the case when it is allotted to the brains to
absorb what the soul abhors.

'Poor old Philip!' was his perpetual refrain. 'Philip, the girl you loved
is married; and here's her portrait taken in her last blush; and the man
who has her hasn't a share in that!' Thus, throwing in the ghost of a
sigh for sympathy, it seemed to Patrick that the intelligence would have
to be communicated. Bang is better, thought he, for bad news than
snapping fire and feinting, when you're bound half to kill a fellow, and
a manly fellow.

Determined that bang it should be, he hurried from the terminus to
Philip's hotel, where he had left him, and was thence despatched to the
house of Captain Con O'Donnell, where he created a joyful confusion,
slightly dashed with rigour on the part of the regnant lady; which is not
to be wondered at, considering that both the gentlemen attending her,
Philip and her husband, quitted her table with shouts at the announcement
of his name, and her husband hauled him in unwashed before her, crying
that the lost was found, the errant returned, the Prodigal Pat recovered
by his kinsman! and she had to submit to the introduction of the
disturber: and a bedchamber had to be thought of for the unexpected
guest, and the dinner to be delayed in middle course, and her husband
corrected between the discussions concerning the bedchamber, and either
the guest permitted to appear at her table in sooty day-garb, or else a
great gap commanded in the service of her dishes, vexatious extreme for a
lady composed of orderliness. She acknowledged Patrick's profound salute
and his excuses with just so many degrees in the inclining of her head as
the polite deem a duty to themselves when the ruffling world has
disarranged them.

'Con!' she called to her chattering husband, 'we are in England, if you
please.'

'To be sure, madam,' said the captain, 'and so 's Patrick, thanks to the
stars. We fancied him gone, kidnapped, burned, made a meal of and
swallowed up, under the earth or the water; for he forgot to give us his
address in town; he stood before us for an hour or so, and then the
fellow vanished. We've waited for him gaping. With your permission I'll
venture an opinion that he'll go and dabble his hands and sit with us as
he is, for the once, as it happens.'

'Let it be so,' she rejoined, not pacified beneath her dignity. She named
the bedchamber to a footman.

'And I'll accompany the boy to hurry him on,' said the captain, hurrying
Patrick on as he spoke, till he had him out of the dining-room, when he
whispered: 'Out with your key, and if we can scramble you into your
evening-suit quick we shall heal the breach in the dinner. You dip your
hands and face, I'll have out the dress. You've the right style for her,
my boy: and mind, she is an excellent good woman, worthy of all respect:
but formality's the flattery she likes: a good bow and short speech. Here
we are, and the room's lighted. Off to the basin, give me the key; and
here's hot water in tripping Mary's hands. The portmanteau opens easy.
Quick! the door's shut on rosy Mary. The race is for domestic peace, my
boy. I sacrifice everything I can for it, in decency. 'Tis the secret of
my happiness.'

Patrick's transformation was rapid enough to satisfy the impatient
captain, who said: 'You'll tell her you couldn't sit down in her presence
undressed. I married her at forty, you know, when a woman has reached her
perfect development, and leans a trifle more to ceremonies than to
substance. And where have you been the while?'

'I'll tell you by and by,' said Patrick.

'Tell me now, and don't be smirking at the glass; your necktie's as neat
as a lady's company-smile, equal at both ends, and warranted not to relax
before the evening 's over. And mind you don't set me off talking
over-much downstairs. I talk in her presence like the usher of the Court
to the judge. 'Tis the secret of my happiness.'

'Where are those rascally dress-boots of mine?' cried Patrick.

Captain Con pitched the contents of the portmanteau right and left.
'Never mind the boots, my boy. Your legs will be under the table during
dinner, and we'll institute a rummage up here between that and the
procession to the drawing-room, where you'll be examined head to foot,
devil a doubt of it. But say, where have you been? She'll be asking, and
we're in a mess already, and may as well have a place to name to her,
somewhere, to excuse the gash you've made in her dinner. Here they are,
both of 'm, rolled in a dirty shirt!'

Patrick seized the boots and tugged them on, saying 'Earlsfont, then.'

'You've been visiting Earlsfont? Whack! but that's the saving of us! Talk
to her of her brother he sends her his love. Talk to her of the ancestral
hall--it stands as it was on the day of its foundation. Just wait about
five minutes to let her punish us, before you out with it. 'Twill come
best from you. What did you go down there for? But don't stand answering
questions; come along. Don't heed her countenance at the going in: we've
got the talisman. As to the dressing, it's a perfect trick of
harlequinade, and she'll own it after a dose of Earlsfont. And, by the
way, she's not Mrs. Con, remember; she's Mrs. Adister O'Donnell: and
that's best rolled out to Mistress. She's a worthy woman, but she was
married at forty, and I had to take her shaped as she was, for moulding
her at all was out of the question, and the soft parts of me had to be
the sufferers, to effect a conjunction, for where one won't and can't,
poor t' other must, or the union's a mockery. She was cast in bronze at
her birth, if she wasn't cut in bog-root. Anyhow, you'll study her.
Consider her for my sake. Madam, it should be--madam, call her,
addressing her, madam. She hasn't a taste for jokes, and she chastises
absurdities, and England's the foremost country of the globe, indirect
communication with heaven, and only to be connected with such a country
by the tail of it is a special distinction and a comfort for us; we're
that part of the kite!--but, Patrick, she's a charitable soul; she's a
virtuous woman and an affectionate wife, and doesn't frown to see me turn
off to my place of worship while she drum-majors it away to her own; she
entertains Father Boyle heartily, like the good woman she is to good men;
and unfortunate females too have a friend in her, a real friend--that
they have; and that 's a wonder in a woman chaste as ice. I do respect
her; and I'd like to see the man to favour me with an opportunity of
proving it on him! So you'll not forget, my boy; and prepare for a cold
bath the first five minutes. Out with Earlsfont early after that. All
these things are trifles to an unmarried man. I have to attend to 'm, I
have to be politic and give her elbow-room for her natural angles. 'Tis
the secret of my happiness.'

Priming his kinsman thus up to the door of the diningroom, Captain Con
thrust him in.

Mistress Adister O'Donnell's head rounded as by slow attraction to the
clock. Her disciplined husband signified an equal mixture of contrition
and astonishment at the passing of time. He fell to work upon his plate
in obedience to the immediate policy dictated to him.

The unbending English lady contrasted with her husband so signally that
the oddly united couple appeared yoked in a common harness for a
perpetual display of the opposition of the races. She resembled her
brother, the lord of Earlsfont, in her remarkable height and her calm air
of authority and self-sustainment. From beneath a head-dress built of
white curls and costly lace, half enclosing her high narrow forehead, a
pale, thin, straight bridge of nose descended prominently over her sunken
cheeks to thin locked lips. Her aspect suggested the repose of a winter
landscape, enjoyable in pictures, or on skates, otherwise nipping. . . .
Mental directness, of no greater breadth than her principal feature, was
the character it expressed; and candour of spirit shone through the
transparency she was, if that mild taper could be said to shine in proof
of a vitality rarely notified to the outer world by the opening of her
mouth; chiefly then, though not malevolently to command: as the portal of
some snow-bound monastery opens to the outcast, bidding it be known that
the light across the wolds was not deceptive and a glimmer of light
subsists among the silent within. The life sufficed to her. She was like
a marble effigy seated upright, requiring but to be laid at her length
for transport to the cover of the tomb.

Now Captain Con was by nature ruddy as an Indian summer flushed in all
its leaves. The corners of his face had everywhere a frank ambush, or
child's hiding-place, for languages and laughter. He could worm with a
smile quite his own the humour out of men possessing any; and even under
rigorous law, and it could not be disputed that there was rigour in the
beneficent laws imposed upon him by his wife, his genius for humour and
passion for sly independence came up and curled away like the smoke of
the illicit still, wherein the fanciful discern fine sprites indulging in
luxurious grimaces at a government long-nosed to no purpose. Perhaps, as
Patrick said of him to Caroline Adister, he was a bard without a theme.
He certainly was a man of speech, and the having fearfully to contain
himself for the greater number of the hours of the day, for the
preservation of the domestic felicity he had learnt to value, fathered
the sentiment of revolt in his bosom.

By this time, long after five minutes had elapsed, the frost presiding at
the table was fast withering Captain Con; and he was irritable to hear
why Patrick had gone off to Earlsfont, and what he had done there, and
the adventures he had tasted on the road; anything for warmth. His
efforts to fish the word out of Patrick produced deeper crevasses in the
conversation, and he cried to himself: Hats and crape-bands! mightily
struck by an idea that he and his cousins were a party of hired mourners
over the meat they consumed. Patrick was endeavouring to spare his
brother a mention of Earlsfont before they had private talk together. He
answered neither to a dip of the hook nor to a pull.

'The desert where you 've come from 's good,' said the captain, sharply
nodding.

Mrs. Adister O'Donnell ejaculated: 'Wine!' for a heavy comment upon one
of his topics, and crushed it.

Philip saw that Patrick had no desire to spread, and did not trouble him.

'Good horses in the stable too,' said the captain.

Patrick addressed Mrs. Adister: 'I have hardly excused myself to you,
madam.'

Her head was aloft in dumb apostrophe of wearifulness over another of her
husband's topics.

'Do not excuse yourself at all,' she said.

The captain shivered. He overhauled his plotting soul publicly: 'Why
don't you out with it yourself!' and it was wonderful why he had not done
so, save that he was prone to petty conspiracy, and had thought
reasonably that the revelation would be damp, gunpowder, coming from him.
And for when he added: 'The boy's fresh from Earlsfont; he went down to
look at the brav old house of the Adisters, and was nobly welcomed and
entertained, and made a vast impression,' his wife sedately remarked to
Patrick, 'You have seen my brother Edward.'

'And brings a message of his love to you, my dear,' the Captain bit his
nail harder.

'You have a message for me?' she asked; and Patrick replied: 'The captain
is giving a free translation. I was down there, and I took the liberty of
calling on Mr. Adister, and I had a very kind reception. We hunted, we
had a good day with the hounds. I think I remember hearing that you go
there at Christmas, madam.'

'Our last Christmas at Earlsfont was a sad meeting for the family. My
brother Edward is well?'

'I had the happiness to be told that I had been of a little service in
cheering him.'

'I can believe it,' said Mrs. Adister, letting her eyes dwell on the
young man; and he was moved by the silvery tremulousness of her voice.

She resumed: 'You have the art of dressing in a surprisingly short time.'

'There!' exclaimed Captain Con: for no man can hear the words which prove
him a prophet without showing excitement. 'Didn't I say so? Patrick's a
hero for love or war, my dear. He stood neat and trim from the silk socks
to the sprig of necktie in six minutes by my watch. And that's witness to
me that you may count on him for what the great Napoleon called
two-o'clock-in-the-morning courage; not too common even in his immortal
army:--when it's pitch black and frosty cold, and you're buried within in
a dream of home, and the trumpet springs you to your legs in a trice,
boots and trowsers, coat and sword-belt and shako, and one twirl to the
whiskers, and away before a second snap of the fingers to where the great
big bursting end of all things for you lies crouching like a
Java-Tiger--a ferocious beast painted undertaker's colour--for a leap at
you in particular out of the dark;--never waiting an instant to ask
what's the matter and pretend you don't know. That's rare, Philip; that's
bravery; Napoleon knew the thing; and Patrick has it; my hand's on the
boy's back for that.'

The captain was permitted to discourse as he pleased: his wife was wholly
given to the recent visitor to Earlsfont, whom she informed that Caroline
was the youngest daughter of General Adister, her second brother, and an
excellent maiden, her dear Edward's mainstay in his grief. At last she
rose, and was escorted to the door by all present. But Captain Con rather
shame-facedly explained to Patrick that it was a sham departure; they had
to follow without a single spin to the claretjug: he closed the door
merely to state his position; how at half-past ten he would be a free
man, according to the convention, to which his wife honourably adhered,
so he had to do likewise, as regarded his share of it. Thereupon he
apologised to the brothers, bitterly regretting that, with good wine in
the cellar, his could be no house for claret; and promising them they
should sit in their shirts and stretch their legs, and toast the old
country and open their hearts, no later than the minute pointing to the
time for his deliverance.

Mrs. Adister accepted her husband's proffered arm unhesitatingly at the
appointed stroke of the clock. She said: 'Yes,' in agreement with him, as
if she had never heard him previously enunciate the formula, upon his
pious vociferation that there should be no trifling with her hours of
rest.

'You can find your way to my cabin,' he said to Philip over his shoulder,
full of solicitude for the steps of the admirable lady now positively
departing.

As soon as the brothers were alone, Philip laid his hand on Patrick,
asking him, 'What does it mean?'

Patrick fired his cannon-shot: 'She's married!' Consulting his feelings
immediately after, he hated himself for his bluntness.

Philip tossed his head. 'But why did you go down there?'

'I went,' said Patrick, 'well, I went . . . . I thought you looked
wretched, and I went with an idea of learning where she was, and seeing
if I couldn't do something. It's too late now; all's over.'

'My dear boy, I've worse than that to think of.'

'You don't mind it?'

'That's old news, Patrick.'

'You don't care for her any more, Philip?'

'You wouldn't have me caring for a married woman?'

'She has a perfect beast for a husband.'

'I'm sorry she didn't make a better choice.'

'He's a prince.'

'So I hear.'

'Ah! And what worse, Philip, can you be having to think of?'

'Affairs,' Philip replied, and made his way to the cabin of Captain Con,
followed in wonderment by Patrick, who would hardly have been his dupe to
suppose him indifferent and his love of Adiante dead, had not the thought
flashed on him a prospect of retaining the miniature for his own, or for
long in his custody.




CHAPTER IX

THE CAPTAIN'S CABIN

Patrick left his brother at the second flight of stairs to run and fling
on a shooting-jacket, into which he stuffed his treasure, after one peep
that eclipsed his little dream of being allowed to keep it; and so he saw
through Philip.

The captain's cabin was the crown of his house-top, a builder's addition
to the roof, where the detestable deeds he revelled in, calling them
liberty, could be practised, according to the convention, and no one save
rosy Mary, in her sense of smell, when she came upon her morning business
to clean and sweep, be any the wiser of them, because, as it is known to
the whole world, smoke ascends, and he was up among the chimneys. Here,
he would say to his friends and fellow-sinners, you can unfold, unbosom,
explode, do all you like, except caper, and there 's a small square of
lead between the tiles outside for that, if the spirit of the jig comes
upon you with violence, as I have had it on me, and eased myself mightily
there, to my own music; and the capital of the British Empire below me.
Here we take our indemnity for subjection to the tyrannical female ear,
and talk like copious rivers meandering at their own sweet will. Here we
roll like dogs in carrion, and no one to sniff at our coats. Here we sing
treason, here we flout reason, night is out season at half-past ten.

This introductory ode to Freedom was his throwing off of steam, the
foretaste of what he contained. He rejoined his cousins, chirping
variations on it, and attired in a green silken suit of airy Ottoman
volume, full of incitement to the legs and arms to swing and set him up
for a Sultan. 'Now Phil, now Pat,' he cried, after tenderly pulling the
door to and making sure it was shut, 'any tale you've a mind
for--infamous and audacious! You're licensed by the gods up here, and may
laugh at them too, and their mothers and grandmothers, if the fit seizes
ye, and the heartier it is the greater the exemption. We're pots that
knock the lid and must pour out or boil over and destroy the furniture.
My praties are ready for peelin', if ever they were in this world! Chuck
wigs from sconces, and off with your buckram. Decency's a dirty petticoat
in the Garden of Innocence. Naked we stand, boys! we're not afraid of
nature. You're in the annexe of Erin, Pat, and devil a constable at the
keyhole; no rats; I'll say that for the Government, though it's a
despotism with an iron bridle on the tongue outside to a foot of the
door. Arctic to freeze the boldest bud of liberty! I'd like a French
chanson from ye, Pat, to put us in tune, with a right revolutionary
hurling chorus, that pitches Kings' heads into the basket like autumn
apples. Or one of your hymns in Gaelic sung ferociously to sound as
horrid to the Saxon, the wretch. His reign 's not for ever; he can't
enter here. You're in the stronghold defying him. And now cigars, boys,
pipes; there are the boxes, there are the bowls. I can't smoke till I
have done steaming. I'll sit awhile silently for the operation.
Christendom hasn't such a man as your cousin Con for feeling himself a
pig-possessed all the blessed day, acting the part of somebody else, till
it takes me a quarter of an hour of my enfranchisement and restoration of
my natural man to know myself again. For the moment, I'm froth, scum,
horrid boiling hissing dew of the agony of transformation; I am; I'm that
pig disgorging the spirit of wickedness from his poor stomach.'

The captain drooped to represent the state of the self-relieving victim
of the evil one; but fearful lest either of his cousins should usurp the
chair and thwart his chance of delivering himself, he rattled away
sympathetically with his posture in melancholy: 'Ay, we're poor
creatures; pigs and prophets, princes and people, victors and vanquished,
we 're waves of the sea, rolling over and over, and calling it life!
There's no life save the eternal. Father Boyle's got the truth. Flesh is
less than grass, my sons; 'tis the shadow that crosses the grass. I love
the grass. I could sit and watch grassblades for hours. I love an old
turf mound, where the grey grass nods and seems to know the wind and have
a whisper with it, of ancient times maybe and most like; about the big
chief lying underneath in the last must of his bones that a breath of air
would scatter. They just keep their skeleton shape as they are; for the
turf mound protects them from troubles: 'tis the nurse to that delicate
old infant!--Waves of the sea, did I say? We're wash in a hog-trough for
Father Saturn to devour; big chief and suckling babe, we all go into it,
calling it life! And what hope have we of reading the mystery? All we can
see is the straining of the old fellow's hams to push his old snout
deeper into the gobble, and the ridiculous curl of a tail totally devoid
of expression! You'll observe that gluttons have no feature; they're jaws
and hindquarters; which is the beginning and end of 'm; and so you may
say to Time for his dealing with us: so let it be a lesson to you not to
bother your wits, but leave the puzzle to the priest. He understands it,
and why? because he was told. There 's harmony in his elocution, and
there's none in the modern drivel about where we're going and what we
came out of. No wonder they call it an age of despair, when you see the
big wigs filing up and down the thoroughfares with a great advertisement
board on their shoulders, proclaiming no information to the multitude,
but a blank note of interrogation addressed to Providence, as if an
answer from above would be vouchsafed to their impudence! They haven't
the first principles of good manners. And some of 'm in a rage bawl the
answer for themselves. Hear that! No, Phil; No, Pat, no: devotion's good
policy.--You're not drinking! Are you both of ye asleep? why do ye leave
me to drone away like this, when it 's conversation I want, as in the
days of our first parents, before the fig-leaf?--and you might have that
for scroll and figure on the social banner of the hypocritical Saxon,
who's a gormandising animal behind his decency, and nearer to the
Arch-devourer Time than anything I can imagine: except that with a little
exertion you can elude him. The whisky you've got between you 's virgin
of the excise. I'll pay double for freepeaty any day. Or are you for
claret, my lads? No? I'm fortified up here to stand a siege in my old
round tower, like the son of Eremon that I am. Lavra Con! Con speaks at
last! I don't ask you, Pat, whether you remember Maen, who was born dumb,
and had for his tutors Ferkelne the bard and Crafting the harper, at
pleasant Dinree: he was grandson of Leary Lore who was basely murdered by
his brother Cova, and Cova spared the dumb boy, thinking a man without a
tongue harmless, as fools do: being one of their savings-bank tricks, to
be repaid them, their heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns at
compound interest, have no fear. So one day Maen had an insult put on
him; and 'twas this for certain: a ruffian fellow of the Court swore he
couldn't mention the name of his father; and in a thundering fury Maen
burst his tongue-tie, and the Court shouted Lavra Maen: and he had to go
into exile, where he married in the middle of delicious love-adventures
the beautiful Moira through the cunning of Craftine the harper. There's
been no harper in my instance but plenty of ruffians to swear I'm too
comfortable to think of my country.' The captain holloaed. 'Do they hear
that? Lord! but wouldn't our old Celtic fill the world with poetry if
only we were a free people to give our minds to 't, instead of to the
itch on our backs from the Saxon horsehair shirt we're forced to wear.
For, Pat, as you know, we're a loving people, we're a loyal people, we
burn to be enthusiastic, but when our skins are eternally irritated, how
can we sing? In a freer Erin I'd be the bard of the land, never doubt it.
What am I here but a discontented idle lout crooning over the empty
glories of our isle of Saints! You feel them, Pat. Phil's all for his
British army, his capabilities of British light cavalry. Write me the
history of the Enniskillens. I'll read it. Aha, my boy, when they 're off
at the charge! And you'll oblige me with the tale of Fontenoy. Why, Phil
has an opportunity stretching forth a hand to him now more than halfway
that comes to a young Irishman but once in a century: backed by the
entire body of the priesthood of Ireland too! and if only he was a
quarter as full of the old country as you and I, his hair would stand up
in fire for the splendid gallop at our head that's proposed to him. His
country's gathered up like a crested billow to roll him into Parliament;
and I say, let him be there, he 's the very man to hurl his gauntlet, and
tell 'm, Parliament, so long as you are parliamentary, which means the
speaking of our minds, but if you won't have it, then-and it 's on your
heads before Europe and the two Americas. We're dying like a nun that 'd
be out of her cloister, we're panting like the wife who hears of her
husband coming home to her from the field of honour, for that young man.
And there he is; or there he seems to be; but he's dead: and the
fisherman off the west coast after dreaming of a magical haul, gets more
fish than disappointment in comparison with us when we cast the net for
Philip. Bring tears of vexation at the emptiness we pull back for our
pains. Oh, Phil! and to think of your youth! We had you then. At least we
had your heart. And we should have had the length and strength of you,
only for a woman fatal to us as the daughter of Rhys ap Tudor, the
beautiful Nesta:--and beautiful she was to match the mother of the curses
trooping over to Ireland under Strongbow, that I'll grant you. But she
reined you in when you were a real warhorse ramping and snorting flame
from your nostrils, challenging any other to a race for Ireland; ay, a
Cuchullin you were, Philip, Culann's chain-bound: but she unmanned you.
She soaked the woman into you and squeezed the hero out of you. All for
Adiante! or a country left to slavery! that's the tale. And what are you
now? A paltry captain of hussars on the General's staff! One O'Donnell in
a thousand! And what is she?--you needn't frown, Phil; I'm her relative
by marriage, and she 's a lady. More than that, she shot a dart or two
into my breast in those days, she did, I'll own it: I had the catch of
the breath that warns us of convulsions. She was the morning star for
beauty, between night and day, and the best colour of both. Welshmen and
Irishmen and Englishmen tumbled into the pit, which seeing her was, and
there we jostled for a glimpse quite companionably; we were too hungry
for quarrelling; and to say, I was one of 'm, is a title to subsequent
friendship. True; only mark me, Philip, and you, Patrick: they say she
has married a prince, and I say no; she's took to herself a husband in
her cradle; she's married ambition. I tell you, and this prince of hers
is only a step she has taken, and if he chases her first mate from her
bosom, he'll prove himself cleverer than she, and I dare him to the
trial. For she's that fiery dragon, a beautiful woman with brains--which
Helen of Troy hadn't, combustible as we know her to have been: but brains
are bombshells in comparison with your old-fashioned pine-brands for
kindling men and cities. Ambition's the husband of Adiante Adister, and
all who come nigh her are steps to her aim. She never consulted her
father about Prince Nikolas; she had begun her march and she didn't mean
to be arrested. She simply announced her approaching union; and as she
couldn't have a scion of one of the Royal House of Europe, she put her
foot on Prince Nikolas. And he 's not to fancy he 's in for a peaceful
existence; he's a stone in a sling, and probably mistaken the rocking
that's to launch him through the air for a condition of remarkable ease,
perfectly remarkable in its lullaby motion; ha! well, and I've not heard
of ambition that didn't kill its votary: somehow it will; 'tis sure to.
There she lies!'

The prophetic captain pointed at the spot. He then said: 'And now I'm for
my pipe, and the blackest clay of the party, with your permission. I'll
just go to the window to see if the stars are out overhead. They're my
blessed guardian angels.'

There was a pause. Philip broke from a brown study to glance at his
brother. Patrick made a queer face.

'Fun and good-fellowship to-night, Con,' said Philip, as the captain
sadly reported no star visible.

'Have I ever flown a signal to the contrary?' retorted the captain.

'No politics, and I 'll thank you,' said Philip: 'none of your early
recollections. Be jovial.'

'You should have seen me here the other night about a month ago; I
smuggled up an old countrywoman of ours, with the connivance of rosy
Mary,' said Captain Con, suffused in the merriest of grins. 'She sells
apples at a stall at a corner of a street hard by, and I saw her sitting
pulling at her old pipe in the cold October fog morning and evening for
comfort, and was overwhelmed with compassion and fraternal sentiment; and
so I invited her to be at the door of the house at half-past ten, just to
have a roll with her in Irish mud, and mend her torn soul with a stitch
or two of rejoicing. She told me stories; and one was pretty good, of a
relative of hers, or somebody's--I should say, a century old, but she
told it with a becoming air of appropriation that made it family history,
for she's come down in the world, and this fellow had a stain of red upon
him, and wanted cleaning; and, "What!" says the good father, "Mika! you
did it in cold blood?" And says Mika, "Not I, your Riverence. I got
myself into a passion 'fore I let loose." I believe she smoked this
identical pipe. She acknowledged the merits of my whisky, as poets do
hearing fine verses, never clapping hands, but with the expressiveness of
grave absorption. That's the way to make good things a part of you. She
was a treat. I got her out and off at midnight, rosy Mary sneaking her
down, and the old girl quiet as a mouse for the fun's sake. The whole
intrigue was exquisitely managed.'

'You run great risks,' Philip observed.

'I do,' said the captain.

He called on the brothers to admire the 'martial and fumial' decorations
of his round tower, buzzing over the display of implements, while Patrick
examined guns and Philip unsheathed swords. An ancient clay pipe from the
bed of the Thames and one from the bed of the Boyne were laid side by
side, and strange to relate, the Irish pipe and English immediately, by
the mere fact of their being proximate, entered into rivalry; they all
but leapt upon one another. The captain judicially decided the case
against the English pipe, as a newer pipe of grosser manufacture, not so
curious by any means.

'This,' Philip held up the reputed Irish pipe, and scanned as he twirled
it on his thumb, 'This was dropped in Boyne Water by one of William's
troopers. It is an Orange pipe. I take it to be of English make.'

'If I thought that, I'd stamp my heel on the humbug the neighbour
minute,' said Captain Con. 'Where's the sign of English marks?'

'The pipes resemble one another,' said Philip, 'like tails of
Shannon-bred retrievers.'

'Maybe they 're both Irish, then?' the captain caught at analogy to
rescue his favourite from reproach.

'Both of them are Saxon.'

'Not a bit of it!'

'Look at the clay.'

'I look, and I tell you, Philip, it's of a piece with your lukewarmness
for the country, or you wouldn't talk like that.'

'There is no record of pipe manufactories in Ireland at the period you
name.'

'There is: and the jealousy of rulers caused them to be destroyed by
decrees, if you want historical evidence.'

'Your opposition to the Saxon would rob him of his pipe, Con!'

'Let him go to the deuce with as many pipes as he can carry; but he
shan't have this one.'

'Not a toss-up of difference is to be seen in the pair.'

'Use your eyes. The Irish bowl is broken, and the English has an inch
longer stem!'

'O the Irish bowl is broken!' Philip sang.

'You've the heart of a renegade-foreigner not to see it!' cried the
captain.

Patrick intervened saying: 'I suspect they're Dutch.'

'Well, and that 's possible.' Captain Con scrutinised them to calm his
temper: 'there's a Dutchiness in the shape.'

He offered Philip the compromise of 'Dutch' rather plaintively, but it
was not accepted, and the pipes would have mingled their fragments on the
hearthstone if Patrick had not stayed his arm, saying: 'Don't hurt them.'

'And I won't,' the captain shook his hand gratefully.

'But will Philip O'Donnell tell me that Ireland should lie down with
England on the terms of a traveller obliged to take a bedfellow? Come! He
hasn't an answer. Put it to him, and you pose him. But he 'll not stir,
though he admits the antagonism. And Ireland is asked to lie down with
England on a couch blessed by the priest! Not she. Wipe out our
grievances, and then we'll begin to talk of policy. Good Lord!--love? The
love of Ireland for the conquering country will be the celebrated
ceremony in the concluding chapter previous to the inauguration of the
millennium. Thousands of us are in a starving state at home this winter,
Patrick. And it's not the fault of England?--landlordism 's not? Who
caused the ruin of all Ireland's industries? You might as well say that
it 's the fault of the poor beggar to go limping and hungry because his
cruel master struck him a blow to cripple him. We don't want half and
half doctoring, and it's too late in the day for half and half oratory.
We want freedom, and we'll have it, and we won't leave it to the Saxon to
think about giving it. And if your brother Philip won't accept this
blazing fine offer, then I will, and you'll behold me in a new attitude.
The fellow yawns! You don't know me yet, Philip. They tell us over here
we ought to be satisfied. Fall upon our list of wrongs, and they set to
work yawning. You can only move them by popping at them over hedges and
roaring on platforms. They're incapable of understanding a complaint a
yard beyond their noses. The Englishman has an island mind, and when he's
out of it he's at sea.'

'Mad, you mean,' said Philip.

'I repeat my words, Captain Philip O'Donnell, late of the staff of the
General commanding in Canada.'

'The Irishman too has an island mind, and when he's out of it he's at
sea, and unable to manage his craft,' said Philip.

'You'll find more craft in him when he's buffeted than you reckoned on,'
his cousin flung back. 'And if that isn't the speech of a traitor sold to
the enemy, and now throwing off the mask, traitors never did mischief in
Ireland! Why, what can you discover to admire in these people? Isn't
their army such a combination of colours in the uniforms, with their
yellow facings on red jackets, I never saw out of a doll-shop, and never
saw there. And their Horse Guards, weedy to a man! fit for a doll-shop
they are, by my faith! And their Foot Guards: Have ye met the fellows
marching? with their feet turned out, flat as my laundress's irons, and
the muscles of their calves depending on the joints to get 'm along, for
elasticity never gave those bones of theirs a springing touch; and their
bearskins heeling behind on their polls; like pot-house churls daring the
dursn't to come on. Of course they can fight. Who said no? But they 're
not the only ones: and they 'll miss their ranks before they can march
like our Irish lads. The look of their men in line is for all the world
to us what lack-lustre is to the eye. The drill they 've had hasn't
driven Hodge out of them, it has only stiffened the dolt; and dolt won't
do any longer; the military machine requires intelligence in all ranks
now. Ay, the time for the Celt is dawning: I see it, and I don't often
spy a spark where there isn't soon a blaze. Solidity and stupidity have
had their innings: a precious long innings it has been; and now they're
shoved aside like clods of earth from the risin flower. Off with our
shackles! We've only to determine it to be free, and we'll bloom again;
and I'll be the first to speak the word and mount the colours. Follow me!
Will ye join in the toast to the emblem of Erin--the shamrock, Phil and
Pat?'

'Oh, certainly,' said Philip. 'What 's that row going on?' Patrick also
called attention to the singular noise in the room. 'I fancy the time for
the Celt is not dawning, but setting,' said Philip, with a sharp smile;
and Patrick wore an artful look.

A corner of the room was guilty of the incessant alarum. Captain Con
gazed in that direction incredulously and with remonstrance. 'The tinkler
it is!' he sighed. 'But it can't be midnight yet?' Watches were examined.
Time stood at half-past the midnight. He groaned: 'I must go. I haven't
heard the tinkler for months. It signifies she's cold in her bed. The
thing called circulation's unknown to her save by the aid of outward
application, and I 'm the warming pan, as legitimately I should be, I'm
her husband and her Harvey in one. Goodbye to my hop and skip. I ought by
rights to have been down beside her at midnight. She's the worthiest
woman alive, and I don't shirk my duty. Be quiet!' he bellowed at the
alarum; 'I 'm coming. Don't be in such a fright, my dear,' he admonished
it as his wife, politely. 'Your hand'll take an hour to warm if you keep
it out on the spring that sets the creature going.' He turned and
informed his company: 'Her hand'll take an hour to warm. Dear! how she
runs ahead: d' ye hear? That's the female tongue, and once off it won't
stop. And this contrivance for fetching me from my tower to her bed was
my own suggestion, in a fit of generosity! Ireland all over! I must hurry
and wash my hair, for she can't bear a perfume to kill a stink; she
carries her charitable heart that far. Good-night, I'll be thinking of ye
while I'm warming her. Sit still, I can't wait; 'tis the secret of my
happiness.' He fled. Patrick struck his knee on hearing the expected
ballad-burden recur.




CHAPTER X

THE BROTHERS

'Con has learnt one secret,' said Philip, quitting his chair.

Patrick went up to him, and, 'Give us a hug,' he said, and the hug was
given.

They were of an equal height, tall young men, alert, nervously braced
from head to foot, with the differences between soldier and civilian
marked by the succintly military bearing of the elder brother, whose
movements were precise and prompt, and whose frame was leopardlike in
indolence. Beside him Patrick seemed cubbish, though beside another he
would not have appeared so. His features were not so brilliantly regular,
but were a fanciful sketch of the same design, showing a wider pattern of
the long square head and the forehead, a wavering at the dip of the nose,
livelier nostrils: the nostrils dilated and contracted, and were
exceeding alive. His eyelids had to do with the look of his eyes, and
were often seen cutting the ball. Philip's eyes were large on the pent of
his brows, open, liquid, and quick with the fire in him. Eyes of that
quality are the visible mind, animated both to speak it and to render it
what comes within their scope. They were full, unshaded direct, the man
himself, in action. Patrick's mouth had to be studied for an additional
index to the character. To symbolise them, they were as a sword-blade
lying beside book.

Men would have thought Patrick the slippery one of the two: women would
have inclined to confide in him the more thoroughly; they bring feeling
to the test, and do not so much read a print as read the imprinting on
themselves; and the report that a certain one of us is true as steel,
must be unanimous at a propitious hour to assure them completely that the
steel is not two-edged in the fully formed nature of a man whom they have
not tried. They are more at home with the unformed, which lends itself to
feeling and imagination. Besides Patrick came nearer to them; he showed
sensibility. They have it, and they deem it auspicious of goodness, or of
the gentleness acceptable as an equivalent. Not the less was Philip the
one to inspire the deeper and the wilder passion.

'So you've been down there?' said Philip. 'Tell us of your welcome. Never
mind why you went: I think I see. You're the Patrick of fourteen, who
tramped across Connaught for young Dermot to have a sight of you before
he died, poor lad. How did Mr. Adister receive you?'

Patrick described the first interview.

Philip mused over it. 'Yes, those are some of his ideas: gentlemen are to
excel in the knightly exercises. He used to fence excellently, and he was
a good horseman. The Jesuit seminary would have been hard for him to
swallow once. The house is a fine old house: lonely, I suppose.'

Patrick spoke of Caroline Adister and pursued his narrative. Philip was
lost in thought. At the conclusion, relating to South America, he raised
his head and said: 'Not so foolish as it struck you, Patrick. You and I
might do that,--without the design upon the original owner of the soil!
Irishmen are better out of Europe, unless they enter one of the
Continental services.'

'What is it Con O'Donnell proposes to you?' Patrick asked him earnestly.

'To be a speaking trumpet in Parliament. And to put it first among the
objections, I haven't an independence; not above two hundred a year.'

'I'll make it a thousand,' said Patrick, 'that is, if my people can pay.'

'Secondly, I don't want to give up my profession. Thirdly, fourthly,
fifthly, once there, I should be boiling with the rest. I never could go
half way. This idea of a commencement gives me a view of the finish.
Would you care to try it?'

'If I'm no wiser after two or three years of the world I mean to make a
better acquaintance with,' Patrick replied. 'Over there at home one
catches the fever, you know. They have my feelings, and part of my
judgement, and whether that's the weaker part I can't at present decide.
My taste is for quiet farming and breeding.'

'Friendship, as far as possible; union, if the terms are fair,' said
Philip. 'It's only the name of union now; supposing it a concession that
is asked of them; say, sacrifice; it might be made for the sake of what
our people would do to strengthen the nation. But they won't try to
understand our people. Their laws, and their rules, their systems are
forced on a race of an opposite temper, who would get on well enough, and
thrive, if they were properly consulted. Ireland 's the sore place of
England, and I'm sorry for it. We ought to be a solid square, with Europe
in this pickle. So I say, sitting here. What should I be saying in
Parliament?'

'Is Con at all likely, do you think, Philip?'

'He might: and become the burlesque Irishman of the House. There must be
one, and the lot would be safe to fall on him.'

'Isn't he serious about it?'

'Quite, I fancy; and that will be the fun. A serious fellow talking
nonsense with lively illustrations, is just the man for House of Commons
clown. Your humorous rogue is not half so taking. Con would be the
porpoise in a fish tank there, inscrutably busy on his errand and watched
for his tumblings. Better I than he; and I should make a worse of it--at
least for myself.'

'Wouldn't the secret of his happiness interfere?'

'If he has the secret inside his common sense. The bulk of it I suspect
to be, that he enjoys his luxuries and is ashamed of his laziness; and so
the secret pulls both ways. One day a fit of pride may have him, or one
of his warm impulses, and if he's taken in the tide of it, I shall grieve
for the secret.'

'You like his wife, Philip?'

'I respect her. They came together,--I suppose, because they were near
together, like the two islands, in spite of the rolling waves between. I
would not willingly see the union disturbed. He warms her, and she houses
him. And he has to control the hot blood that does the warming, and she
to moderate the severity of her principles, which are an essential part
of the housing. Oh! shiver politics, Patrice. I wish I had been bred in
France: a couple of years with your Pere Clement, and I could have met
Irishmen and felt to them as an Irishman, whether they were disaffected
or not. I wish I did. When I landed the other day, I thought myself
passably cured, and could have said that rhetoric is the fire-water of
our country, and claptrap the springboard to send us diving into it. I
like my comrades-in-arms, I like the character of British officers, and
the men too--I get on well with them. I declare to you, Patrice, I burn
to live in brotherhood with them, not a rift of division at heart! I
never show them that there is one. But our early training has us; it
comes on us again; three or four days with Con have stirred me; I don't
let him see it, but they always do: these tales of starvations and
shootings, all the old work just as when I left, act on me like a smell
of powder. I was dipped in "Ireland for the Irish"; and a contented
Irishman scarcely seems my countryman.'

'I suppose it 's like what I hear of as digesting with difficulty,'
Patrick referred to the state described by his brother.

'And not the most agreeable of food,' Philip added.

'It would be the secret of our happiness to discover how to make the best
of it, if we had to pay penance for the discovery by living in an
Esquimaux shanty,' said Patrick.

'With a frozen fish of admirable principles for wife,' said Philip.

'Ah, you give me shudders!'

'And it's her guest who talks of her in that style! and I hope to be
thought a gentleman!' Philip pulled himself up. 'We may be all in the
wrong. The way to begin to think so, is to do them an injury and forget
it. The sensation's not unpleasant when it's other than a question of
good taste. But politics to bed, Patrice. My chief is right--soldiers
have nothing to do with them. What are you fiddling at in your coat
there?'

'Something for you, my dear Philip.' Patrick brought out the miniature.
He held it for his brother to look. 'It was the only thing I could get.
Mr. Adister sends it. The young lady, Miss Caroline, seconded me. They
think more of the big portrait: I don't. And it 's to be kept carefully,
in case of the other one getting damaged. That's only fair.'

Philip drank in the face upon a swift shot of his eyes.

'Mr. Adister sends it?' His tone implied wonder at such a change in
Adiante's father.

'And an invitation to you to visit him when you please.'

'That he might do,' said Philip: it was a lesser thing than to send her
likeness to him.

Patrick could not help dropping his voice: 'Isn't it very like?' For
answer the miniature had to be inspected closely.

Philip was a Spartan for keeping his feelings under.

'Yes,' he said, after an interval quick with fiery touches on the history
of that face and his life. 'Older, of course. They are the features, of
course. The likeness is not bad. I suppose it resembles her as she is
now, or was when it was painted. You 're an odd fellow to have asked for
it.'

'I thought you would wish to have it, Philip.'

'You're a good boy, Patrice. Light those candles we'll go to bed. I want
a cool head for such brains as I have, and bumping the pillow all night
is not exactly wholesome. We'll cross the Channel in a few days, and see
the nest, and the mother, and the girls.'

'Not St. George's Channel. Mother would rather you would go to France and
visit the De Reuils. She and the girls hope you will keep out of Ireland
for a time: it's hot. Judge if they're anxious, when it's to stop them
from seeing you, Philip!'

'Good-night, dear boy.' Philip checked the departing Patrick. 'You can
leave that.' He made a sign for the miniature to be left on the table.

Patrick laid it there. His brother had not touched it, and he could have
defended himself for having forgotten to leave it, on the plea that it
might prevent his brother from having his proper share of sleep; and
also, that Philip had no great pleasure in the possession of it. The two
pleas, however, did not make one harmonious apology, and he went straight
to the door in an odd silence, with the step of a decorous office-clerk,
keeping his shoulders turned on Philip to conceal his look of
destitution.




CHAPTER XI

INTRODUCING A NEW CHARACTER

Letters and telegrams and morning journals lay on the breakfast-table,
awaiting the members of the household with combustible matter. Bad news
from Ireland came upon ominous news from India. Philip had ten words of
mandate from his commanding officer, and they signified action, uncertain
where. He was the soldier at once, buckled tight and buttoned up over his
private sentiments. Vienna shot a line to Mrs. Adister O'Donnell. She
communicated it:'The Princess Nikolas has a son!' Captain Con tossed his
newspaper to the floor, crying:

'To-day the city'll be a chimney on fire, with the blacks in everybody's
faces; but I must go down. It's hen and chicks with the director of a
City Company. I must go.'

Did you say, madam?' Patrick inquired. 'A son,' said Mrs. Adister.

'And the military holloaing for reinforcements,' exclaimed Con. 'Pheu!
Phil!'

'That's what it comes to,' was Philip's answer. 'Precautionary measures,
eh?'

'You can make them provocative.' 'Will you beg for India?' 'I shall hear
in an hour.' 'Have we got men?'

'Always the question with us.'

'What a country!' sighed the captain. 'I'd compose ye a song of old
Drowsylid, except that it does no good to be singing it at the only time
when you can show her the consequences of her sluggery. A country of
compromise goes to pieces at the first cannon-shot of the advance, and
while she's fighting on it's her poor business to be putting herself
together again: So she makes a mess of the beginning, to a certainty. If
it weren't that she had the army of Neptune about her--'

'The worst is she may some day start awake to discover that her
protecting deity 's been napping too.--A boy or girl did you say, my
dear?'

His wife replied: 'A son.'

'Ah! more births.' The captain appeared to be computing. 'But this one's
out of England: and it's a prince I suppose they'll call him: and princes
don't count in the population for more than finishing touches, like the
crossing of t's and dotting of i's, though true they're the costliest,
like some flowers and feathers, and they add to the lump on Barney's
back. But who has any compassion for a burdened donkey? unless when you
see him standing immortal meek! Well, and a child of some sort must have
been expected? Because it's no miracle after marriage: worse luck for the
crowded earth!'

'Things may not be expected which are profoundly distasteful,' Mrs.
Adister remarked.

'True,' said her sympathetic husband. ''Tis like reading the list of the
dead after a battle where you've not had the best of it--each name 's a
startling new blow. I'd offer to run to Earlsfont, but here's my company
you would have me join for the directoring of it, you know, my dear, to
ballast me, as you pretty clearly hinted; and all 's in the city to-day
like a loaf with bad yeast, thick as lead, and sour to boot. And a howl
and growl coming off the wilds of Old Ireland! We're smitten to-day in
our hearts and our pockets, and it 's a question where we ought to feel
it most, for the sake of our families.'

'Do you not observe that your cousins are not eating?' said his wife,
adding, to Patrick: 'I entertain the opinion that a sound
breakfast-appetite testifies to the proper vigour of men.'

'Better than a doctor's pass: and to their habits likewise,' Captain Con
winked at his guests, begging them to steal ten minutes out of the fray
for the inward fortification of them.

Eggs in the shell, and masses of eggs, bacon delicately thin and curling
like Apollo's locks at his temples, and cutlets, caviar, anchovies in the
state of oil, were pressed with the captain's fervid illustrations upon
the brothers, both meditatively nibbling toast and indifferent to the
similes he drew and applied to life from the little fish which had their
sharpness corrected but not cancelled by the improved liquid they swam
in. 'Like an Irishman in clover,' he said to his wife to pay her a
compliment and coax an acknowledgement: 'just the flavour of the salt of
him.'

Her mind was on her brother Edward, and she could not look sweet-oily, as
her husband wooed her to do, with impulse to act the thing he was
imagining.

'And there is to-morrow's dinner-party to the Mattocks: I cannot travel
to Earlsfont,' she said.

'Patrick is a disengaged young verderer, and knows the route, and has a
welcome face there, and he might go, if you're for having it performed by
word of mouth. But, trust me, my dear, bad news is best communicated by
telegraph, which gives us no stupid articles and particles to quarrel
with. "Boy born Vienna doctor smiling nurse laughing." That tells it all,
straight to the understanding, without any sickly circumlocutory stuff;
and there's nothing more offensive to us when we're hurt at intelligence.
For the same reason, Colonel Arthur couldn't go, since you'll want him to
meet the Mattocks?'

Captain Con's underlip shone with a roguish thinness.

'Arthur must be here,' said Mrs. Adister. 'I cannot bring myself to write
it. I disapprove of telegrams.'

She was asking to be assisted, so her husband said:

'Take Patrick for a secretary. Dictate. He has a bold free hand and'll
supply all the fiorituri and arabesques necessary to the occasion
running.'

She gazed at Patrick as if to intimate that he might be enlisted, and
said: 'It will be to Caroline. She will break it to her uncle.'

'Right, madam, on the part of a lady I 've never known to be wrong! And
so, my dear, I must take leave of you, to hurry down to the tormented
intestines of that poor racked city, where the winds of panic are
violently engaged in occupying the vacuum created by knocking over what
the disaster left standing; and it 'll much resemble a colliery accident
there, I suspect, and a rescue of dead bodies. Adieu, my dear.' He
pressed his lips on her thin fingers.

Patrick placed himself at Mrs. Adister's disposal as her secretary. She
nodded a gracious acceptance of him.

'I recommended the telegraph because it's my wife's own style, and comes
better from wires,' said the captain, as they were putting on their
overcoats in the hall. 'You must know the family. "Deeds not words" would
serve for their motto. She hates writing, and doesn't much love talking.
Pat 'll lengthen her sentences for her. She's fond of Adiante, and she
sympathises with her brother Edward made a grandfather through the
instrumentality of that foreign hooknose; and Patrick must turn the two
dagger sentiments to a sort of love-knot and there's the task he'll have
to work out in his letter to Miss Caroline. It's fun about Colonel Arthur
not going. He's to meet the burning Miss Mattock, who has gold on her
crown and a lot on her treasury, Phil, my boy! but I'm bound in honour
not to propose it. And a nice girl, a prize; afresh healthy girl; and
brains: the very girl! But she's jotted down for the Adisters, if Colonel
Arthur can look lower than his nose and wag his tongue a bit. She's one
to be a mother of stout ones that won't run up big doctors' bills or ask
assistance in growing. Her name's plain Jane, and she 's a girl to breed
conquerors; and the same you may say of her brother John, who 's a mighty
fit man, good at most things, though he counts his fortune in millions,
which I've heard is lighter for a beggar to perform than in pounds, but
he can count seven, and beat any of us easy by showing them millions! We
might do something for them at home with a million or two, Phil. It all
came from the wedding of a railway contractor, who sprang from the
wedding of a spade and a clod--and probably called himself Mattock at his
birth, no shame to him.'

'You're for the city,' said Philip, after they had walked down the
street.

'Not I,' said Con. 'Let them play Vesuvius down there. I've got another
in me: and I can't stop their eruption, and they wouldn't relish mine. I
know a little of Dick Martin, who called on the people to resist, and
housed the man Liffey after his firing the shot, and I'm off to Peter
M'Christy, his brother-in-law. I'll see Distell too. I must know if it
signifies the trigger, or I'm agitated about nothing. Dr. Forbery'll be
able to tell how far they mean going for a patriotic song.

       "For we march in ranks to the laurelled banks,
        On the bright horizon shining,
        Though the fields between run red on the green,
        And many a wife goes pining."

Will you come, Phil?'

'I 'm under orders.'

'You won't engage yourself by coming.'

'I'm in for the pull if I join hands.'

'And why not?--inside the law, of course.'

'While your Barney skirmishes outside!'

'And when the poor fellow's cranium's cracking to fling his cap in the
air, and physician and politician are agreed it's good for him to do it,
or he'll go mad and be a dangerous lunatic! Phil, it must be a blow now
and then for these people over here, else there's no teaching their
imaginations you're in earnest; for they've got heads that open only to
hard raps, these English; and where injustice rules, and you'd spread a
light of justice, a certain lot of us must give up the ghost--naturally
on both sides. Law's law, and life's life, so long as you admit that the
law is bad; and in that case, it's big misery and chronic disease to let
it be and at worst a jump and tumble into the next world, of a score or
two of us if we have a wrestle with him. But shake the old villain; hang
on him and shake him. Bother his wig, if he calls himself Law. That 's
how we dust the corruption out of him for a bite or two in return. Such
is humanity, Phil: and you must allow for the roundabout way of moving to
get into the straight road at last. And I see what you're for saying: a
roundabout eye won't find it! You're wrong where there are dozens of
corners. Logic like yours, my boy, would have you go on picking at the
Gordian Knot till it became a jackasses' race between you and the rope
which was to fall to pieces last.--There 's my old girl at the stall,
poor soul! See her!'

Philip had signalled a cabman to stop. He stood facing his cousin with a
close-lipped smile that summarised his opinion and made it readable.

'I have no time for an introduction to her this morning,' he said.

'You won't drop in on Distell to hear the latest brewing? And, by the by,
Phil, tell us, could you give us a hint for packing five or six hundred
rifles and a couple of pieces of cannon?'

Philip stared; he bent a lowering frown on his cousin, with a twitch at
his mouth.

'Oh! easy!' Con answered the look; 'it's for another place and harder to
get at.'

He was eyed suspiciously and he vowed the military weapons were for
another destination entirely, the opposite Pole.

'No, you wouldn't be in for a crazy villainy like that!' said Philip.

'No, nor wink to it,' said Con. 'But it's a question about packing cannon
and small arms; and you might be useful in dropping a hint or two. The
matter's innocent. It's not even a substitution of one form of Government
for another: only a change of despots, I suspect. And here's Mr. John
Mattock himself, who'll corroborate me, as far as we can let you into the
secret before we've consulted together. And he's an Englishman and a
member of Parliament, and a Liberal though a landlord, a thorough stout
Briton and bulldog for the national integrity, not likely to play at arms
and ammunition where his country's prosperity 's concerned. How d' ye do,
Mr. Mattock--and opportunely, since it's my cousin, Captain Philip
O'Donnell, aide-de-camp to Sir Charles, fresh from Canada, of whom you've
heard, I'd like to make you acquainted with, previous to your meeting at
my wife's table tomorrow evening.'

Philip bowed to a man whose notion of the ceremony was to nod.

Con took him two steps aside and did all the talking. Mr. Mattock
listened attentively the first half-minute, after which it could be
perceived that the orator was besieging a post, or in other words a
Saxon's mind made up on a point of common sense. His appearance was
redolently marine; his pilot coat, flying necktie and wideish trowsers, a
general airiness of style on a solid frame, spoke of the element his blue
eyes had dipped their fancy in, from hereditary inclination. The colour
of a sandpit was given him by hair and whiskers of yellow-red on a ruddy
face. No one could express a negative more emphatically without wording
it, though he neither frowned nor gesticulated to that effect.

'Ah!' said Con, abruptly coming to an end after an eloquent appeal. 'And
I think I'm of your opinion: and the sea no longer dashes at the rock,
but makes itself a mirror to the same. She'll keep her money and nurse
her babe, and not be trying risky adventures to turn him into a reigning
prince. Only this: you'll have to persuade her the thing is impossible.
She'll not take it from any of us. She looks on you as Wisdom in the
uniform of a great commander, and if you say a thing can be done it 's
done.'

'The reverse too, I hope,' said Mr. Mattock, nodding and passing on his
way.

'That I am not so sure of,' Con remarked to himself. 'There's a change in
a man through a change in his position! Six months or so back, Phil, that
man came from Vienna, the devoted slave of the Princess Nikolas. He'd
been there on his father's business about one of the Danube railways, and
he was ready to fill the place of the prince at the head of his phantom
body of horse and foot and elsewhere. We talked of his selling her
estates for the purchase of arms and the enemy--as many as she had money
for. We discussed it as a matter of business. She had bewitched him: and
would again, I don't doubt, if she were here to repeat the dose. But in
the interim his father dies, he inherits; and he enters Parliament, and
now, mind you, the man who solemnly calculated her chances and speculates
on the transmission of rifled arms of the best manufacture and latest
invention by his yacht and with his loads of rails, under the noses of
the authorities, like a master rebel, and a chivalrous gentleman to boot,
pooh poohs the whole affair. You saw him. Grave as an owl, the dead
contrary of his former self!'

'I thought I heard you approve him,' said Philip.

'And I do. But the poor girl has ordered her estates to be sold to cast
the die, and I 'm taking the view of her disappointment, for she believes
he can do anything; and if I know the witch, her sole comfort lying in
the straw is the prospect of a bloody venture for a throne. The truth is,
to my thinking, it's the only thing she has to help her to stomach her
husband.'

'But it's rank idiocy to suppose she can smuggle cannon!' cried Philip.

'But that man Mattock's not an idiot and he thought she could. And it 's
proof he was under a spell. She can work one.'

'The country hasn't a port.'

'Round the Euxine and up the Danube, with the British flag at the stern.
I could rather enjoy the adventure. And her prince is called for. He's
promised a good reception when he drops down the river, they say. A bit
of a scrimmage on the landing-pier may be, and the first field or two,
and then he sits himself, and he waits his turn. The people change their
sovereigns as rapidly as a London purse. Two pieces of artillery and two
or three hundred men and a trumpet alter the face of the land there.
Sometimes a trumpet blown by impudence does it alone. They're
enthusiastic for any new prince. He's their Weekly Journal or Monthly
Magazine. Let them make acquaintance with Adiante Adister, I'd not swear
she wouldn't lay fast hold of them.'

Philip signalled to his driver, and Captain Con sang out his dinner-hour
for a reminder to punctuality, thoughtful of the feelings of his wife.




CHAPTER XII

MISS MATTOCK

Mrs. Adister O'Donnell, in common with her family, had an extreme dislike
of the task of composing epistles, due to the circumstance that she was
unable, unaided, to conceive an idea disconnected with the main theme of
her communication, and regarded, as an art of conjuring, the use of words
independent of ideas. Her native superiority caused her to despise the
art, but the necessity for employing it at intervals subjected her to
fits of admiration of the conjurer, it being then evident that a
serviceable piece of work, beyond her capacity to do, was lightly
performed by another. The lady's practical intelligence admitted the
service, and at the same time her addiction to the practical provoked
disdain of so flimsy a genius, which was identified by her with the
genius of the Irish race. If Irishmen had not been notoriously fighters,
famous for their chivalry, she would have looked on them as a kind of
footmen hired to talk and write, whose volubility might be encouraged and
their affectionateness deserved by liberal wages. The promptitude of
Irish blood to deliver the war-cry either upon a glove flung down or
taken up, raised them to a first place in her esteem: and she was a
peaceful woman abhorring sanguinary contention; but it was in her own
blood to love such a disposition against her principles.

She led Patrick to her private room, where they both took seats and he
selected a pen. Mr. Patrick supposed that his business would be to listen
and put her words to paper; a mechanical occupation permitting the
indulgence of personal phantasies; and he was flying high on them until
the extraordinary delicacy of the mind seeking to deliver itself forced
him to prick up all his apprehensiveness. She wished to convey that she
was pleased with the news from Vienna, and desired her gratification to
be imparted to her niece Caroline, yet not so as to be opposed to the
peculiar feelings of her brother Edward, which had her fullest sympathy;
and yet Caroline must by no means be requested to alter a sentence
referring to Adiante, for that would commit her and the writer jointly to
an insincerity.

'It must be the whole truth, madam,' said Patrick, and he wrote: 'My dear
Caroline,' to get the start. At once a magnificently clear course for the
complicated letter was distinguished by him. 'Can I write on and read it
to you afterward? I have the view,' he said.

Mrs. Adister waved to him to write on.

Patrick followed his 'My dear Caroline' with greetings very warm, founded
on a report of her flourishing good looks. The decision of Government to
send reinforcements to Ireland was mentioned as a prelude to the
information from Vienna of the birth of a son to the Princess Nikolas:
and then; having conjoined the two entirely heterogeneous pieces of
intelligence, the composer adroitly interfused them by a careless
transposition of the prelude and the burden that enabled him to play ad
libitum on regrets and rejoicings; by which device the lord of Earlsfont
might be offered condolences while the lady could express her strong
contentment, inasmuch as he deplored the state of affairs in the sister
island, and she was glad of a crisis concluding a term of suspense thus
the foreign-born baby was denounced and welcomed, the circumstances
lamented and the mother congratulated, in a breath, all under cover of
the happiest misunderstanding, as effective as the cabalism of Prospero's
wand among the Neapolitan mariners, by the skilful Irish development on a
grand scale of the rhetorical figure anastrophe, or a turning about and
about.

He read it out to her, enjoying his composition and pleased with his
reconcilement of differences. 'So you say what you feel yourself, madam,
and allow for the feelings on the other side,' he remarked. 'Shall I fold
it?

There was a smoothness in the letter particularly agreeable to her
troubled wits, but with an awful taste. She hesitated to assent: it
seemed like a drug that she was offered.

Patrick sketched a series of hooked noses on the blotter. He heard a
lady's name announced at the door, and glancing up from his work he
beheld a fiery vision.

Mrs. Adister addressed her affectionately: 'My dear Jane!' Patrick was
introduced to Miss Mattock.

His first impression was that the young lady could wrestle with him and
render it doubtful of his keeping his legs. He was next engaged in
imagining that she would certainly burn and be a light in the dark.
Afterwards he discovered her feelings to be delicate, her looks pleasant.
Thereupon came one of the most singular sensations he had ever known: he
felt that he was unable to see the way to please her. She confirmed it by
her remarks and manner of speaking. Apparently she was conducting a
business.

'You're right, my dear Mrs. Adister, I'm on my way to the Laundry, and I
called to get Captain Con to drive there with me and worry the manageress
about the linen they turn out: for gentlemen are complaining of their
shirt-fronts, and if we get a bad name with them it will ruin us. Women
will listen to a man. I hear he has gone down to the city. I must go and
do it alone. Our accounts are flourishing, I'm glad to say, though we
cannot yet afford to pay for a secretary, and we want one. John and I
verified them last night. We're aiming at steam, you know. In three or
four years we may found a steam laundry on our accumulated capital. If
only we can establish it on a scale to let us give employment to at least
as many women as we have working now! That is what I want to hear of. But
if we wait for a great rival steam laundry to start ahead of us, we shall
be beaten and have to depend on the charitable sentiments of rich people
to support the Institution. And that won't do. So it's a serious question
with us to think of taking the initiative: for steam must come. It 's a
scandal every day that it doesn't while we have coal. I'm for grand
measures. At the same time we must not be imprudent: turning off hands,
even temporarily, that have to feed infants, would be quite against my
policy.'

Her age struck Patrick as being about twenty-three.

'Could my nephew Arthur be of any use to you?' said Mrs. Adister.

'Colonel Adister?' Miss Mattock shook her head. 'No.'

'Arthur can be very energetic when he takes up a thing.' 'Can he? But,
Mrs. Adister, you are looking a little troubled. Sometimes you confide in
me. You are so good to us with your subscriptions that I always feel in
your debt.'

Patrick glanced at his hostess for a signal to rise and depart.

She gave none, but at once unfolded her perplexity, and requested Miss
Mattock to peruse the composition of Mr. Patrick O'Donnell and deliver an
opinion upon it.

The young lady took the letter without noticing its author. She read it
through, handed it back, and sat with her opinion evidently formed
within.

'What do you think of it?' she was asked.

'Rank jesuitry,' she replied.

'I feared so!' sighed Mrs. Adister. 'Yet it says everything I wish to
have said. It spares my brother and it does not belie me. The effect of a
letter is often most important. I cannot but consider this letter very
ingenious. But the moment I hear it is jesuitical I forswear it. But then
my dilemma remains. I cannot consent to give pain to my brother Edward:
nor will I speak an untruth, though it be to save him from a wound. I am
indeed troubled. Mr. Patrick, I cannot consent to despatch a jesuitical
letter. You are sure of your impression, my dear Jane?'

'Perfectly,' said Miss Mattock.

Patrick leaned to her. 'But if the idea in the mind of the person
supposed to be writing the letter is accurately expressed? Does it
matter, if we call it jesuitical, if the emotion at work behind it
happens to be a trifle so, according to your definition?'

She rejoined: 'I should say, distinctly it matters.'

'Then you'd not express the emotions at all?'

He flashed a comical look of astonishment as he spoke. She was not to be
diverted; she settled into antagonism.

'I should write what I felt.'

'But it might be like discharging a bullet.'

'How?'

'If your writing in that way wounded the receiver.'

'Of course I should endeavour not to wound!'

'And there the bit of jesuitry begins. And it's innocent while it 's no
worse than an effort to do a disagreeable thing as delicately as you
can.'

She shrugged as delicately as she could:

'We cannot possibly please everybody in life.'

'No: only we may spare them a shock: mayn't we?'

'Sophistries of any description, I detest.'

'But sometimes you smile to please, don't you?'

'Do you detect falseness in that?' she answered, after the demurest of
pauses.

'No: but isn't there a soupcon of sophistry in it?'

'I should say that it comes under the title of common civility.'

'And on occasion a little extra civility is permitted!'

'Perhaps: when we are not seeking a personal advantage.'

'On behalf of the Steam Laundry?'

Miss Mattock grew restless: she was too serious in defending her position
to submit to laugh, and his goodhumoured face forbade her taking offence.

'Well, perhaps, for that is in the interest of others.'

'In the interests of poor and helpless females. And I agree with you with
all my heart. But you would not be so considerate for the sore feelings
of a father hearing what he hates to hear as to write a roundabout word
to soften bad news to him?'

She sought refuge in the reply that nothing excused jesuitry.

'Except the necessities of civilisation,' said Patrick.

'Politeness is one thing,' she remarked pointedly.

'And domestic politeness is quite as needful as popular, you'll admit.
And what more have we done in the letter than to be guilty of that? And
people declare it's rarer: as if we were to be shut up in families to
tread on one another's corns! Dear me! and after a time we should be
having rank jesuitry advertised as the specific balsam for an unhappy
domesticated population treading with hard heels from desperate habit and
not the slightest intention to wound.'

'My dear Jane,' Mrs. Adister interposed while the young lady sat between
mildly staring and blinking, 'you have, though still of a tender age, so
excellent a head that I could trust to your counsel blindfolded. It is
really deep concern for my brother. I am also strongly in sympathy with
my niece, the princess, that beautiful Adiante: and my conscience
declines to let me say that I am not.'

'We might perhaps presume to beg for Miss Mattock's assistance in the
composition of a second letter more to her taste,' Patrick said slyly.

The effect was prompt: she sprang from her seat.

'Dear Mrs. Adister! I leave it to you. I am certain you and Mr. O'Donnell
know best. It's too difficult and delicate for me. I am horribly blunt.
Forgive me if I seemed to pretend to casuistry. I am sure I had no such
meaning. I said what I thought. I always do. I never meant that it was
not a very clever letter; and if it does exactly what you require it
should be satisfactory. To-morrow evening John and I dine with you, and I
look forward to plenty of controversy and amusement. At present I have
only a head for work.'

'I wish I had that,' said Patrick devoutly.

She dropped her eyes on him, but without letting him perceive that he was
a step nearer to the point of pleasing her.




CHAPTER XIII

THE DINNER-PARTY

Miss Mattock ventured on a prediction in her mind:

She was sure the letter would go. And there was not much to signify if it
did. But the curious fatality that a person of such a native uprightness
as Mrs. Adister should have been drawn in among Irishmen, set her
thoughts upon the composer of the letter, and upon the contrast of his
ingenuous look with the powerful cast of his head. She fancied a certain
danger about him; of what kind she could not quite distinguish, for it
had no reference to woman's heart, and he was too young to be much of a
politician, and he was not in the priesthood. His transparency was of a
totally different order from Captain Con's, which proclaimed itself
genuine by the inability to conceal a shoal of subterfuges. The younger
cousin's features carried a something invisible behind them, and she was
just perceptive enough to spy it, and it excited her suspicions. Irishmen
both she and her brother had to learn to like, owing to their bad repute
for stability: they are, moreover, Papists: they are not given to ideas:
that one of the working for the future has not struck them. In fine, they
are not solid, not law-supporting, not disposed to be (humbly be it said)
beneficent, like the good English. These were her views, and as she held
it a weakness to have to confess that Irishmen are socially more
fascinating than the good English, she was on her guard against them.

Of course the letter had gone. She heard of it before the commencement of
the dinner, after Mrs. Adister had introduced Captain Philip O'Donnell to
her, and while she was exchanging a word or two with Colonel Adister, who
stood ready to conduct her to the table. If he addressed any remarks to
the lady under his charge, Miss Mattock did not hear him; and she
listened--who shall say why? His unlike likeness to his brother had
struck her. Patrick opposite was flowing in speech. But Captain Philip
O'Donnell's taciturnity seemed no uncivil gloom: it wore nothing of that
look of being beneath the table, which some of our good English are
guilty of at their social festivities, or of towering aloof a Matterhorn
above it, in the style of Colonel Adister. Her discourse with the latter
amused her passing reflections. They started a subject, and he punctuated
her observations, or she his, and so they speedily ran to earth.

'I think,' says she, 'you were in Egypt this time last winter.'

He supplies her with a comma: 'Rather later.'

Then he carries on the line. 'Dull enough, if you don't have the right
sort of travelling crew in your boat.'

'Naturally,' she puts her semicolon, ominous of the full stop.

'I fancy you have never been in Egypt?'

'No'

There it is; for the tone betrays no curiosity about Egypt and her Nile,
and he is led to suppose that she has a distaste for foreign places.

Condescending to attempt to please, which he has reason to wish to
succeed in doing, the task of pursuing conversational intercourse
devolves upon him--

'I missed Parlatti last spring. What opinion have you formed of her?'

'I know her only by name at present.'

'Ah, I fancy you are indifferent to Opera.'

'Not at all; I enjoy it. I was as busy then as I am now.'

'Meetings? Dorcas, so forth.'

'Not Dorcas, I assure you. You might join if you would.'

'Your most obliged.'

A period perfectly rounded. At the same time Miss Mattock exchanged a
smile with her hostess, of whose benignant designs in handing her to the
entertaining officer she was not conscious. She felt bound to look happy
to gratify an excellent lady presiding over the duller half of a table of
eighteen. She turned slightly to Captain O'Donnell. He had committed
himself to speech at last, without tilting his shoulders to exclude the
company by devoting himself to his partner, and as he faced the table
Miss Mattock's inclination to listen attracted him. He cast his eyes on
her: a quiet look, neither languid nor frigid seeming to her both open
and uninviting. She had the oddest little shiver, due to she knew not
what. A scrutiny she could have borne, and she might have read a
signification; but the look of those mild clear eyes which appeared to
say nothing save that there was fire behind them, hit on some perplexity,
or created it; for she was aware of his unhappy passion for the beautiful
Miss Adister; the whole story had been poured into her ears; she had been
moved by it. Possibly she had expected the eyes of such a lover to betray
melancholy, and his power of containing the expression where the
sentiment is imagined to be most transparent may have surprised her,
thrilling her as melancholy orbs would not have done.

Captain Con could have thumped his platter with vexation. His wife's
diplomacy in giving the heiress to Colonel Adister for the evening had
received his cordial support while he manoeuvred cleverly to place Philip
on the other side of her; and now not a step did the senseless fellow
take, though she offered him his chance, dead sick of her man on the
right; not a word did he have in ordinary civility; he was a burning
disgrace to the chivalry of Erin. She would certainly be snapped up by a
man merely yawning to take the bite. And there's another opportunity gone
for the old country!--one's family to boot!

Those two were in the middle of the table, and it is beyond mortal,
beyond Irish, capacity, from one end of a table of eighteen to whip up
the whole body of them into a lively unanimous froth, like a dish of
cream fetched out of thickness to the airiest lightness. Politics, in the
form of a firebrand or apple of Discord, might knead them together and
cut them in batches, only he had pledged his word to his wife to shun
politics as the plague, considering Mr. Mattock's presence. And yet it
was tempting: the recent Irish news had stung him; he could say sharp
things from the heart, give neat thrusts; and they were fairly divided
and well matched. There was himself, a giant; and there was an
unrecognised bard of his country, no other than himself too; and there
was a profound politician, profoundly hidden at present, like powder in a
mine--the same person. And opposite to him was Mr. John Mattock, a worthy
antagonist, delightful to rouse, for he carried big guns and took the
noise of them for the shattering of the enemy, and this champion could be
pricked on to a point of assertion sure to fire the phlegm in Philip; and
then young Patrick might be trusted to warm to the work. Three heroes out
skirmishing on our side. Then it begins to grow hot, and seeing them at
it in earnest, Forbery glows and couches his gun, the heaviest weight of
the Irish light brigade. Gallant deeds! and now Mr. Marbury Dyke opens on
Forbery's flank to support Mattock hardpressed, and this artillery of
English Rockney resounds, with a similar object: the ladies to look on
and award the crown of victory, Saxon though they be, excepting Rockney's
wife, a sure deserter to the camp of the brave, should fortune frown on
them, for a punishment to Rockney for his carrying off to himself a
flower of the Green Island and holding inveterate against her native land
in his black ingratitude. Oh! but eloquence upon a good cause will win
you the hearts of all women, Saxon or other, never doubt of it. And Jane
Mattock there, imbibing forced doses of Arthur Adister, will find her
patriotism dissolving in the natural human current; and she and Philip
have a pretty wrangle, and like one another none the worse for not
agreeing: patriotically speaking, she's really unrooted by that
half-thawed colonel, a creature snow-bound up to his chin; and already
she's leaping to be transplanted. Jane is one of the first to give her
vote for the Irish party, in spite of her love for her brother John: in
common justice, she says, and because she hopes for complete union
between the two islands. And thereupon we debate upon union. On the
whole, yes: union, on the understanding that we have justice, before you
think of setting to work to sow the land with affection:--and that 's a
crop in a clear soil will spring up harvest-thick in a single summer
night across St. George's Channel, ladies! . . .

Indeed a goodly vision of strife and peace: but, politics forbidden, it
was entirely a dream, seeing that politics alone, and a vast amount of
blowing even on the topic of politics, will stir these English to enter
the arena and try a fall. You cannot, until you say ten times more than
you began by meaning, and have heated yourself to fancy you mean more
still, get them into any state of fluency at all. Forbery's anecdote now
and then serves its turn, but these English won't take it up as a start
for fresh pastures; they lend their ears and laugh a finale to it; you
see them dwelling on the relish, chewing the cud, by way of mental note
for their friends to-morrow, as if they were kettles come here merely for
boiling purposes, to make tea elsewhere, and putting a damper on the fire
that does the business for them. They laugh, but they laugh
extinguishingly, and not a bit to spread a general conflagration and
illumination.

The case appeared hopeless to Captain Con, bearing an eye on Philip. He
surveyed his inanimate eights right and left, and folded his combative
ardour around him, as the soldier's martial cloak when he takes his rest
on the field. Mrs. Marbury Dyke, the lady under his wing, honoured wife
of the chairman of his imagined that a sigh escaped him, and said in
sympathy: 'Is the bad news from India confirmed?'

He feared it was not bright, and called to Philip for the latest.

'Nothing that you have not had already in the newspapers,' Philip
replied, distinctly from afar, but very bluntly, as through a trumpet.

Miss Mattock was attentive. She had a look as good as handsome when she
kindled.

The captain persevered to draw his cousin out.

'Your chief has his orders?'

'There's a rumour to that effect.'

'The fellow's training for diplomacy,' Con groaned.

Philip spoke to Miss Mattock: he was questioned and he answered, and
answered dead as a newspaper telegraphic paragraph, presenting simply the
corpse of the fact, and there an end. He was a rival of Arthur Adister
for military brevity.

'Your nephew is quite the diplomatist,' said Mrs. Dyke, admiring Philip's
head.

'Cousin, ma'am. Nephews I might drive to any market to make the most of
them. Cousins pretend they're better than pigs, and diverge bounding from
the road at the hint of the stick. You can't get them to grunt more than
is exactly agreeable to them.'

'My belief is that if our cause is just our flag will triumph,' Miss
Grace Barrow, Jane Mattock's fellow-worker and particular friend,
observed to Dr. Forbery.

'You may be enjoying an original blessing that we in Ireland missed in
the cradle,' said he.

She emphasised: 'I speak of the just cause; it must succeed.'

'The stainless flag'll be in the ascendant in the long run,' he assented.

'Is it the flag of Great Britain you're speaking of, Forbery?' the
captain inquired.

'There's a harp or two in it,' he responded pacifically.

Mrs. Dyke was not pleased with the tone. 'And never will be out of it!'
she thumped her interjection.

'Or where 's your music?' said the captain, twinkling for an adversary
among the males, too distant or too dull to distinguish a note of
challenge. 'You'd be having to mount your drum and fife in their places,
ma'am.'

She saw no fear of the necessity.

'But the fife's a pretty instrument,' he suggested, and with a candour
that seduced the unwary lady to think dubiously whether she quite liked
the fife. Miss Barrow pronounced it cheerful.

'Oh, and martial!' he exclaimed, happy to have caught Rockney's
deliberate gaze. 'The effect of it, I'm told in the provinces is
astonishing for promoting enlistment. Hear it any morning in your London
parks, at the head of a marching regiment of your giant foot-Guards.
Three bangs of the drum, like the famous mountain, and the fife announces
himself to be born, and they follow him, left leg and right leg and
bearskin. And what if he's a small one and a trifle squeaky; so 's a
prince when the attendant dignitaries receive him submissively and hear
him informing the nation of his advent. It 's the idea that 's grand.'

'The idea is everything in military affairs,' a solemn dupe, a Mr.
Rumford, partly bald, of benevolent aspect, and looking more copious than
his flow, observed to the lady beside him. 'The flag is only an idea.'

She protested against the barbarism of war, and he agreed with her, but
thought it must be: it had always been: he deplored the fatality.
Nevertheless, he esteemed our soldiers, our sailors too. A city man
himself and a man of peace, he cordially esteemed and hailed the
victories of a military body whose idea was Duty instead of Ambition.

'One thing,' said Mrs. Dyke, evading the ambiguous fife, 'patriotic as I
am, I hope, one thing I confess; I never have yet brought myself to
venerate thoroughly our Royal Standard. I dare say it is because I do not
understand it.'

A strong fraternal impulse moved Mr. Rumford to lean forward and show her
the face of one who had long been harassed by the same incapacity to
digest that one thing. He guessed it at once, without a doubt of the
accuracy of the shot. Ever since he was a child the difficulty had
haunted him; and as no one hitherto had even comprehended his dilemma, he
beamed like a man preparing to embrace a recovered sister.

'The Unicorn!' he exclaimed.

'It is the Unicorn!' she sighed. 'The Lion is noble.'

'The Unicorn, if I may speak by my own feelings, certainly does not
inspire attachment, that is to say, the sense of devotion, which we
should always be led to see in national symbols,' Mr. Rumford resumed,
and he looked humorously rueful while speaking with some earnestness; to
show that he knew the subject to be of the minor sort, though it was not
enough to trip and jar a loyal enthusiasm in the strictly meditative.

'The Saxon should carry his White Horse, I suppose,' Dr. Forbery said.

'But how do we account for the horn on his forehead?' Mr. Rumford sadly
queried.

'Two would have been better for the harmony of the Unicorn's appearance,'
Captain Con remarked, desirous to play a floundering fish, and tender to
the known simple goodness of the ingenuous man. 'What do you say,
Forbery? The poor brute had a fall on his pate and his horn grew of it,
and it 's to prove that he has got something in his head, and is
dangerous both fore and aft, which is not the case with other horses,
who're usually wicked at the heels alone. That's it, be sure, or near it.
And his horn's there to file the subject nation's grievances for the Lion
to peruse at his leisure. And his colour's prophetic of the Horse to
come, that rides over all.'

'Lion and Unicorn signify the conquest of the two hemispheres, Matter and
Mind,' said Dr. Forbery. 'The Lion there's no mistake about. The Unicorn
sets you thinking. So it's a splendid Standard, and means the more for
not being perfectly intelligible at a glance.'

'But if the Lion, as they've whispered of late, Forbery, happens to be
stuffed with straw or with what's worse, with sawdust, a fellow bearing a
pointed horn at close quarters might do him mortal harm; and it must be a
situation trying to the patience of them both. The Lion seems to say "No
prancing!" as if he knew his peril; and the Unicorn to threaten a playful
dig at his flank, as if he understood where he's ticklish.'

Mr. Rumford drank some champagne and murmured with a shrug to the
acquiescent lady beside him: 'Irishmen!' implying that the race could not
be brought to treat serious themes as befitted the seriousness of the
sentiments they stir in their bosoms. He was personally a little hurt,
having unfolded a shy secret of his feelings, which were keenly patriotic
in a phlegmatic frame, and he retired within himself, assuring the lady
that he accepted our standard in its integrity; his objection was not
really an objection; it was, he explained to her, a ridiculous desire to
have a perfect comprehension of the idea in the symbol. But where there
was no seriousness everything was made absurd. He could, he said, laugh
as well as others on the proper occasion. As for the Lion being stuffed,
he warned England's enemies for their own sakes not to be deluded by any
such patent calumny. The strong can afford to be magnanimous and
forbearing. Only let not that be mistaken for weakness. A wag of his tail
would suffice.

The lady agreed. But women are volatile. She was the next moment laughing
at something she had heard with the largest part of her ear, and she
thought the worthy gentleman too simple, though she knew him for one who
had amassed wealth. Captain Con and Dr. Forbery had driven the Unicorn to
shelter, and were now baiting the Lion. The tremendous import of that wag
of his tail among the nations was burlesqued by them, and it came into
collision with Mr. Rumford's legendary forefinger threat. She excused
herself for laughing:

'They are so preposterous!'

'Yes, yes, I can laugh,' said he, soberly performing the act: and Mr.
Rumford covered the wound his delicate sensations had experienced under
an apology for Captain Con, that would redound to the credit of his
artfulness were it not notorious our sensations are the creatures and
born doctors of art in discovering unguents for healing their bruises.
'O'Donnell has a shrewd head for business. He is sound at heart. There is
not a drop of gout in his wine.'

The lady laughed again, as we do when we are fairly swung by the tide,
and underneath her convulsion she quietly mused on the preference she
would give to the simple English citizen for soundness.

'What can they be discussing down there?' Miss Mattock said to Philip,
enviously as poor Londoners in November when they receive letters from
the sapphire Riviera.

'I will venture to guess at nonsense,' he answered.

'Nothing political, then.'

'That scarcely follows; but a host at his own table may be trusted to
shelve politics.'

'I should not object.'

'To controversy?'

'Temperately conducted.'

'One would go a long way to see the exhibition.'

'But why cannot men be temperate in their political arguments?'

'The questions raised are too close about the roots of us.'

'That sounds very pessimist.'

'More duels come from politics than from any other source.'

'I fear it is true. Then women might set you an example.'

'By avoiding it?'

'I think you have been out of England for some time.'

'I have been in America.'

'We are not exactly on the pattern of the Americans.' Philip hinted a
bow. He praised the Republican people.

'Yes, but in our own way we are working out our own problems over here,'
said she. 'We have infinitely more to contend with: old institutions,
monstrous prejudices, and a slower-minded people, I dare say: much
slower, I admit. We are not shining to advantage at present. Still, that
is not the fault of English women.'

'Are they so spirited?'

Spirited was hardly the word Miss Mattock would have chosen to designate
the spirit in them. She hummed a second or two, deliberating; it flashed
through her during the pause that he had been guilty of irony, and she
reddened: and remembering a foregoing strange sensation she reddened
more. She had been in her girlhood a martyr to this malady of youth; it
had tied her to the stake and enveloped her in flames for no accountable
reason, causing her to suffer cruelly and feel humiliated. She knew the
pangs of it in public, and in private as well. And she had not conquered
it yet. She was angered to find herself such a merely physical victim of
the rushing blood: which condition of her senses did not immediately
restore her natural colour.

'They mean nobly,' she said, to fill an extending gap in the conversation
under a blush; and conscious of an ultra-swollen phrase, she snatched at
it nervously to correct it: 'They are becoming alive to the necessity for
action.' But she was talking to a soldier! 'I mean, their heads are
opening.' It sounded ludicrous. 'They are educating themselves
differently.' Were they? 'They wish to take their part in the work of the
world.' That was nearer the proper tone, though it had a ring of claptrap
rhetoric hateful to her: she had read it and shrunk from it in reports of
otherwise laudable meetings.

'Well, spirited, yes. I think they are. I believe they are. One has need
to hope so.'

Philip offered a polite affirmative, evidently formal.

Not a sign had he shown of noticing her state of scarlet. His grave
liquid eyes were unalterable. She might have been grateful, but the
reflection that she had made a step to unlock the antechamber of her
dearest deepest matters to an ordinary military officer, whose notions of
women were probably those of his professional brethren, impelled her to
transfer his polished decorousness to the burden of his masculine
antagonism-plainly visible. She brought the dialogue to a close. Colonel
Adister sidled an eye at a three-quarter view of her face. 'I fancy
you're feeling the heat of the room,' he said.

Jane acknowledged a sensibility to some degree of warmth.

The colonel was her devoted squire on the instant for any practical
service. His appeal to his aunt concerning one of the windows was
answered by her appeal to Jane's countenance for a disposition to rise
and leave the gentlemen. Captain Con, holding the door for the passage of
his wife and her train of ladies, received the injunction:

'Ten,' from her, and remarked: 'Minutes,' as he shut it. The shortness of
the period of grace proposed dejection to him on the one hand, and on the
other a stimulated activity to squeeze it for its juices without any
delay. Winding past Dr. Forbery to the vacated seat of the hostess he
frowned forbiddingly.

'It's I, is it!' cried the doctor. Was it ever he that endangered the
peace and placability of social gatherings! He sat down prepared rather
for a bout with Captain Con than with their common opponents,
notwithstanding that he had accurately read the mock thunder of his
brows.




CHAPTER XIV

OF ROCKNEY

Battles have been won and the streams of History diverted to new channels
in the space of ten minutes. Ladies have been won, a fresh posterity
founded, and grand financial schemes devised, revolts arranged, a yoke
shaken off, in less of mortal time. Excepting an inspired Epic song and
an original Theory of the Heavens, almost anything noteworthy may be
accomplished while old Father Scythe is taking a trot round a courtyard;
and those reservations should allow the splendid conception to pass for
the performance, when we bring to mind that the conception is the
essential part of it, as a bard poorly known to fame was constantly
urging. Captain Con had blown his Epic bubbles, not to speak of his
projected tuneful narrative of the adventures of the great Cuchullin, and
his Preaching of St. Patrick, and other national triumphs. He could own,
however, that the world had a right to the inspection of the Epic books
before it awarded him his crown. The celestial Theory likewise would have
to be worked out to the last figure by the illustrious astronomers to
whom he modestly ranked himself second as a benefactor of his kind,
revering him. So that, whatever we may think in our own hearts, Epic and
Theory have to remain the exception. Battles indeed have been fought, but
when you survey the field in preparation for them you are summoned to
observe the preluding courtesies of civilised warfare in a manner
becoming a chivalrous gentleman. It never was the merely flinging of your
leg across a frontier, not even with the abrupt Napoleon. You have
besides to drill your men; and you have often to rouse your foe with a
ringing slap, if he's a sleepy one or shamming sleepiness. As here, for
example: and that of itself devours more minutes than ten. Rockney and
Mattock could be roused; but these English, slow to kindle, can't subside
in a twinkling; they are for preaching on when they have once begun;
betray the past engagement, and the ladies are chilled, and your wife
puts you the pungent question: 'Did you avoid politics, Con?' in the
awful solitude of domestic life after a party. Now, if only there had
been freedom of discourse during the dinner hour, the ten disembarrassed
minutes allotted to close it would have afforded time sufficient for
hearty finishing blows and a soothing word or so to dear old innocent Mr.
Rumford, and perhaps a kindly clap of the shoulder to John Mattock, no
bad fellow at bottom. Rockney too was no bad fellow in his way. He wanted
no more than a beating and a thrashing. He was a journalist, a
hard-headed rascal, none of your good old-fashioned order of regimental
scribes who take their cue from their colonel, and march this way and
that, right about face, with as little impediment of principles to hamper
their twists and turns as the straw he tosses aloft at midnight to spy
the drift of the wind to-morrow. Quite the contrary; Rockney was his own
colonel; he pretended to think independently, and tried to be the
statesman of a leading article, and showed his intention to stem the
current of liberty, and was entirely deficient in sympathy with the
oppressed, a fanatical advocate of force; he was an inveterate Saxon,
good-hearted and in great need of a drubbing. Certain lines Rockney had
written of late about Irish affairs recurred to Captain Con, and the
political fires leaped in him; he sparkled and said: 'Let me beg you to
pass the claret over to Mr. Rockney, Mr. Rumford; I warrant it for the
circulating medium of amity, if he'll try it.'

''Tis the Comet Margaux,' said Dr. Forbery, topping anything Rockney might
have had to say, and anything would have served. The latter clasped the
decanter, poured and drank in silence.

''Tis the doctor's antidote, and best for being antedated,' Captain Con
rapped his friend's knuckles.

'As long as you're contented with not dating in double numbers,' retorted
the doctor, absolutely scattering the precious minutes to the winds, for
he hated a provocation.

'There's a golden mean, is there!'

'There is; there's a way between magnums of good wine and gout, and it's
generally discovered too late.'

'At the physician's door, then! where the golden mean is generally
discovered to be his fee. I've heard of poor souls packed off by him
without an obolus to cross the ferry. Stripped they were in all
conscience.'

'You remind me of a fellow in Dublin who called on me for medical advice,
and found he'd forgotten his purse. He offered to execute a deed to
bequeath me his body, naked and not ashamed.'

'You'd a right to cut him up at once, Forbery. Any Jury 'd have
pronounced him guilty of giving up the ghost before he called.'

'I let him go, body and all. I never saw him again.'

'The fellow was not a lunatic. As for your golden mean, there's a saying:
Prevention is better than cure: and another that caps it: Drink deep or
taste not.'

'That's the Pierian Spring.'

'And what is the wine on my table, sir?'

'Exhaustless if your verses come of it.'

'And pure, you may say of the verses and the fount.'

'And neither heady nor over-composed; with a blush like Diana confessing
her love for the young shepherd: it's one of your own comparisons.'

'Oh!' Con could have roared his own comparisons out of hearing. He was
angry with Forbery for his obstructive dulness and would not taste the
sneaking compliment. What could Forbery mean by paying compliments and
spoiling a game! The ten minutes were dancing away like harmless
wood-nymphs when the Satyr slumbers. His eyes ranged over his guests
despondently, and fixed in desperation on Mr. Rumford, whom his
magnanimous nature would have spared but for the sharp necessity to
sacrifice him.

The wine in Rumford at any rate let loose his original nature, if it
failed to unlock the animal in these other unexcitable Saxons.

'By the way, now I think of it, Mr. Rumford, the interpretation of your
Royal Standard, which perplexes you so much, strikes me as easy if you
'll examine the powerfully different colours of the two beasts in it.'

Mr. Rumford protested that he had abandoned his inquiry: it was a piece
of foolishness: he had no feeling in it whatever, none.

The man was a perfect snail's horn for coyness.

The circumstances did not permit of his being suffered to slip away: and
his complexion showed that he might already be classed among the roast.

'Your Lion:--Mr. Rumford, you should know, is discomposed, as a
thoughtful patriot, by the inexplicable presence of the Unicorn in the
Royal Standard, and would be glad to account for his one horn and the
sickly appearance of the beast. I'm prepared to say he's there to
represent the fair one half of the population.

Your Lion, my dear sir, may have nothing in his head, but his tawniness
tells us he imbibes good sound stuff, worthy of the reputation of a noble
brewery. Whereas your, Unicorn, true to the character of the numberless
hosts he stands for, is manifestly a consumer of doctor's drugs. And
there you have the symbolism of your country. Right or left of the
shield, I forget which, and it is of no importance to the point--you have
Grandgosier or Great Turk in all his majesty, mane and tail; and on the
other hand, you behold, as the showman says, Dyspepsia. And the pair are
intended to indicate that you may see yourselves complete by looking at
them separately; and so your Royal Standard is your national mirror; and
when you gaze on it fondly you're playing the part of a certain Mr.
Narcissus, who got liker to the Lion than to the Unicorn in the act. Now
will that satisfy you?'

'Quite as you please, quite as you please,' Mr. Rumford replied. 'One
loves the banner of one's country--that is all.' He rubbed his hands. 'I
for one am proud of it.'

'Far be it from me to blame you, my dear sir. Or there's the alternative
of taking him to stand for your sole great festival holiday, and
worshipping him as the personification of your Derbyshire race.'

A glittering look was in Captain Con's eye to catch Rockney if he would
but rise to it.

That doughty Saxon had been half listening, half chatting to Mr. Mattock,
and wore on his drawn eyelids and slightly drawn upper lip a look of
lambent pugnacity awake to the challenge, indifferent to the antagonist,
and disdainful of the occasion.

'We have too little of your enthusiasm for the flag,' Philip said to Mr.
Rumford to soothe him, in a form of apology for his relative.

'Surely no! not in England?' said Mr. Rumford, tempted to open his heart,
for he could be a bellicose gentleman by deputy of the flag. He
recollected that the speaker was a cousin of Captain Con's, and withdrew
into his wound for safety. 'Here and there, perhaps; not when we are
roused; we want rousing, we greatly prefer to live at peace with the
world, if the world will let us.'

'Not at any price?' Philip fancied his tone too quakerly.

'Indeed I am not one of that party!' said Mr. Rumford, beginning to glow;
but he feared a snare, and his wound drew him in again.

'When are you ever at peace!' quoth his host, shocked by the
inconsiderate punctuality of Mrs. Adister O'Donnell's household, for here
was the coffee coming round, and Mattock and Rockney escaping without a
scratch. 'There's hardly a day in the year when your scarlet mercenaries
are not popping at niggers.'

Rockney had the flick on the cheek to his manhood now, it might be hoped.

'Our what?' asked Mr. Rumford, honestly unable to digest the opprobrious
term.

'Paid soldiery, hirelings, executioners, whom you call volunteers, by a
charming euphemism, and send abroad to do the work of war while you
propound the doctrines of peace at home.'

Rockney's forehead was exquisitely eruptive, red and swelling. Mattock
lurched on his chair. The wine was in them, and the captain commended the
spiriting of it, as Prospero his Ariel.

Who should intervene at this instant but the wretched Philip, pricked on
the point of honour as a soldier! Are we inevitably to be thwarted by our
own people?

'I suppose we all work for pay,' said he. 'It seems to me a cry of the
streets to call us by hard names. The question is what we fight for.'

He spoke with a witless moderation that was most irritating, considering
the latest news from the old country.

'You fight to subjugate, to enslave,' said Con, 'that's what you're
doing, and at the same time your journals are venting their fine irony at
the Austrians and the Russians and the Prussians for tearing Poland to
strips with their bloody beaks.'

'We obey our orders, and leave you to settle the political business,'
Philip replied.

Forbery declined the fray. Patrick was eagerly watchful and dumb. Rockney
finished his coffee with a rap of the cup in the saucer, an appeal for
the close of the sitting; and as Dr. Forbery responded to it by pushing
back his chair, he did likewise, and the other made a movement.

The disappointed hero of a fight unfought had to give the signal for
rising. Double the number of the ten minutes had elapsed. He sprang up,
hearing Rockney say: 'Captain Con O'Donnell is a politician or nothing,'
and as he was the most placable of men concerning his personality, he
took it lightly, with half a groan that it had not come earlier, and
said, 'He thinks and he feels, poor fellow!'

All hope of a general action was over.

'That shall pass for the epitaph of the living,' said Rockney.

It was too late to catch at a trifle to strain it to a tussle. Con was
obliged to subjoin: 'Inscribe it on the dungeon-door of tyranny.' But the
note was peaceful.

He expressed a wish that the fog had cleared for him to see the stars of
heaven before he went to bed, informing Mr. Mattock that a long look in
among them was often his prayer at night, and winter a holy season to
him, for the reason of its showing them bigger and brighter.

'I can tell my wife with a conscience we've had a quiet evening, and
you're a witness to it,' he said to Patrick. That consolation remained.

'You know the secret of your happiness,' Patrick answered.

'Know you one of the secrets of a young man's fortune in life, and give
us a thrilling song at the piano, my son,' said Con: 'though we don't
happen to have much choice of virgins for ye to-night. Irish or French.
Irish are popular. They don't mind having us musically. And if we'd go on
joking to the end we should content them, if only by justifying their
opinion that we're born buffoons.'

His happy conscience enabled him to court his wife with assiduity and
winsomeness, and the ladies were once more elated by seeing how
chivalrously lover-like an Irish gentleman can be after years of wedlock.

Patrick was asked to sing. Miss Mattock accompanied him at the piano.
Then he took her place on the music-stool, and she sang, and with an
electrifying splendour of tone and style.

'But it's the very heart of an Italian you sing with!' he cried.

'It will surprise you perhaps to hear that I prefer German music,' said
she.

'But where--who had the honour of boasting you his pupil?'

She mentioned a famous master. Patrick had heard of him in Paris. He
begged for another song and she complied, accepting the one he selected
as the favourite of his brother Philip's, though she said: 'That one?'
with a superior air. It was a mellifluous love-song from a popular Opera
somewhat out of date. 'Well, it's in Italian!' she summed up her
impressions of the sickly words while scanning them for delivery. She had
no great admiration of the sentimental Sicilian composer, she confessed,
yet she sang as if possessed by him. Had she, Patrick thought, been bent
upon charming Philip, she could not have thrown more fire into the notes.
And when she had done, after thrilling the room, there was a gesture in
her dismissal of the leaves displaying critical loftiness. Patrick
noticed it and said, with the thrill of her voice lingering in him: 'What
is it you do like? I should so like to know.'

She was answering when Captain Con came up to the piano and remarked in
an undertone to Patrick: 'How is it you hit on the song Adiante Adister
used to sing?'

Miss Mattock glanced at Philip. He had applauded her mechanically, and it
was not that circumstance which caused the second rush of scarlet over
her face. This time she could track it definitely to its origin. A
lover's favourite song is one that has been sung by his love. She
detected herself now in the full apprehension of the fact before she had
sung a bar: it had been a very dim fancy: and she denounced herself
guilty of the knowledge that she was giving pain by singing the stuff
fervidly, in the same breath that accused her of never feeling things at
the right moment vividly. The reminiscences of those pale intuitions made
them always affectingly vivid.

But what vanity in our emotional state in a great jarring world where we
are excused for continuing to seek our individual happiness only if we
ally it and subordinate it to the well being of our fellows! The
interjection was her customary specific for the cure of these little
tricks of her blood. Leaving her friend Miss Barrow at the piano, she
took a chair in a corner and said; 'Now, Mr. O'Donnell, you will hear the
music that moves me.'

'But it's not to be singing,' said Patrick. 'And how can you sing so
gloriously what you don't care for? It puzzles me completely.'

She assured him she was no enigma: she hushed to him to hear.

He dropped his underlip, keeping on the conversation with his eyes until
he was caught by the masterly playing of a sonata by the chief of the
poets of sound.

He was caught by it, but he took the close of the introductory section,
an allegro con brio, for the end, and she had to hush at him again, and
could not resist smiling at her lullaby to the prattler. Patrick smiled
in response. Exchanges of smiles upon an early acquaintance between two
young people are peeps through the doorway of intimacy. She lost sight of
the Jesuit. Under the influence of good music, too, a not unfavourable
inclination towards the person sitting beside us and sharing that
sweetness, will soften general prejudices--if he was Irish, he was
boyishly Irish, not like his inscrutable brother; a better, or hopefuller
edition of Captain Con; one with whom something could be done to steady
him, direct him, improve him. He might be taught to appreciate Beethoven
and work for his fellows. 'Now does not that touch you more deeply than
the Italian?' said she, delicately mouthing: 'I, mio tradito amor!'

'Touch, I don't know,' he was honest enough to reply. 'It's you that
haven't given it a fair chance I'd like to hear it again. There's a
forest on fire in it.'

'There is,' she exclaimed. 'I have often felt it, but never seen it. You
exactly describe it. How true!'

'But any music I could listen to all day and all the night,' said he.

'And be as proud of yourself the next morning?'

Patrick was rather at sea. What could she mean?

Mrs. Adister O'Donnell stepped over to them, with the object of
installing Colonel Adister in Patrick's place.

The object was possibly perceived. Mrs. Adister was allowed no time to
set the manoeuvre in motion.

'Mr. O'Donnell is a great enthusiast for music, and could listen to it
all day and all night, he tells me,' said Miss Mattock. 'Would he not
sicken of it in a week, Mrs. Adister?'

'But why should I?' cried Patrick. 'It's a gift of heaven.'

'And, like other gifts of heaven, to the idle it would turn to evil.'

'I can't believe it.'

'Work, and you will believe it.'

'But, Miss Mattock, I want to work; I'm empty-handed. It 's true I want
to travel and see a bit of the world to help me in my work by and by. I'm
ready to try anything I can do, though.'

'Has it ever struck you that you might try to help the poor?'

'Arthur is really anxious, and only doubts his ability,' said Mrs.
Adister.

'The doubt throws a shadow on the wish,' said Miss Mattock. 'And can one
picture Colonel Adister the secretary of a Laundry Institution, receiving
directions from Grace and me! We should have to release him long before
the six months' term, when we have resolved to incur the expense of a
salaried secretary.'

Mrs. Adister turned her head to the colonel, who was then looking down
the features of Mrs. Rockney.

Patrick said: 'I'm ready, for a year, Miss Mattock.'

She answered him, half jocosely: 'A whole year of free service? Reflect
on what you are undertaking.'

'It's writing and accounts, no worse?'

'Writing and accounts all day, and music in the evening only now and
then.'

'I can do it: I will, if you'll have me.'

'Do you hear Mr. O'Donnell, Mrs. Adister?'

Captain Con fluttered up to his wife, and heard the story from Miss
Mattock.

He fancied he saw a thread of good luck for Philip in it. 'Our house
could be Patrick's home capitally,' he suggested to his wife. She was not
a whit less hospitable, only hinting that she thought the refusal of the
post was due to Arthur.

'And if he accepts, imagine him on a stool, my dear madam; he couldn't
sit it!'

Miss Mattock laughed. 'No, that is not to be thought of seriously. And
with Mr. O'Donnell it would be probationary for the first fortnight or
month. Does he know anything about steam?'

'The rudimentary idea,' said Patrick.

'That's good for a beginning,' said the captain; and he added: 'Miss
Mattock, I'm proud if one of my family can be reckoned worthy of
assisting in your noble work.'

She replied: 'I warn everybody that they shall be taken at their word if
they volunteer their services.'

She was bidden to know by the captain that the word of an Irish gentleman
was his bond. 'And not later than to-morrow evening I'll land him at your
office. Besides, he'll find countrywomen of his among you, and there's
that to enliven him. You say they work well, diligently, intelligently.'

She deliberated. 'Yes, on the whole; when they take to their work.
Intelligently certainly compared with our English. We do not get the best
of them in London. For that matter, we do not get the best of the
English--not the women of the north. We have to put up with the rejected
of other and better-paying departments of work. It breaks my heart
sometimes to see how near they are to doing well, but for such a little
want of ballast.'

'If they're Irish,' said Patrick, excited by the breaking of her heart,
'a whisper of cajolery in season is often the secret.'

Captain Con backed him for diplomacy. 'You'll learn he has a head, Miss
Mattock.'

'I am myself naturally blunt, and prefer the straightforward method,'
said she.

Patrick nodded. 'But where there's an obstruction in the road, it's
permissible to turn a corner.'

'Take 'em in flank when you can't break their centre,' said Con.

'Well, you shall really try whether you can endure the work for a short
time if you are in earnest,' Miss Mattock addressed the volunteer.

'But I am,' he said.

'We are too poor at present to refuse the smallest help.'

'And mine is about the smallest.'

'I did not mean that, Mr. O'Donnell.'

'But you'll have me?'

'Gladly.'

Captain Con applauded the final words between them. They had the genial
ring, though she accepted the wrong young man for but a shadow of the
right sort of engagement.

This being settled, by the sudden combination of enthusiastic Irish
impulse and benevolent English scheming, she very considerately resigned
herself to Mrs. Adister's lead and submitted herself to a further jolting
in the unprogressive conversational coach with Colonel Adister, whose
fault as a driver was not in avoiding beaten ways, but whipping wooden
horses.

Evidently those two were little adapted to make the journey of life
together, though they were remarkably fine likenesses of a pair in the
dead midway of the journey, Captain Con reflected, and he could have
jumped at the thought of Patrick's cleverness: it was the one bright
thing of the evening. There was a clear gain in it somewhere. And if
there was none, Jane Mattock was a good soul worth saving. Why not all
the benefaction on our side, and a figo for rewards! Devotees or
adventurers, he was ready in imagination to see his cousins play the part
of either, as the cross-roads offered, the heavens appeared to decree. We
turn to the right or the left, and this way we're voluntary drudges, and
that way we're lucky dogs; it's all according to the turn, the fate of
it. But never forget that old Ireland is weeping!

        O never forget that old Ireland is weeping
        The bitter salt tears of the mother bereft!

He hummed the spontaneous lines. He was accused of singing to himself,
and a song was vigorously demanded of him by the ladies.

He shook his head. 'I can't,' he sighed. 'I was plucking the drowned body
of a song out of the waters to give it decent burial. And if I sing I
shall be charged with casting a firebrand at Mr. Rockney.'

Rockney assured him that he could listen to anything in verse.

'Observe the sneer:--for our verses are smoke,' said Con.

Miss Mattock pressed him to sing.

But he had saddened his mind about old Ireland: the Irish news weighed
heavily on him, unrelieved by a tussle with Rockney. If he sang, it would
be an Irish song, and he would break down in it, he said; and he hinted
at an objection of his wife's to spirited Irish songs of the sort which
carry the sons of Erin bounding over the fences of tyranny and the brook
of tears. And perhaps Mr. Rockney might hear a tale in verse as hard to
bear as he sometimes found Irish prose!--Miss Mattock perceived that his
depression was genuine, not less than his desire to please her. 'Then it
shall be on another occasion,' she said.

'Oh! on another occasion I'm the lark to the sky, my dear lady.'

Her carriage was announced. She gave Patrick a look, with a smile, for it
was to be a curious experiment. He put on the proper gravity of a young
man commissioned, without a dimple of a smile. Philip bowed to her
stiffly, as we bow to a commanding officer who has insulted us and will
hear of it. But for that, Con would have manoeuvred against his wife to
send him downstairs at the lady's heels. The fellow was a perfect riddle,
hard to read as the zebra lines on the skin of a wild jackass--if
Providence intended any meaning when she traced them! and it's a moot
point: as it is whether some of our poets have meaning and are not
composers of zebra. 'No one knows but them above!' he said aloud,
apparently to his wife.

'What can you be signifying?' she asked him. She had deputed Colonel
Arthur to conduct Miss Mattock and Miss Barrow to their carriage, and she
supposed the sentence might have a mysterious reference to the plan she
had formed; therefore it might be a punishable offence. Her small round
eyes were wide-open, her head was up and high.

She was easily appeased, too easily.

'The question of rain, madam,' he replied to her repetition of his words.
'I dare say that was what I had in my mind, hearing Mr. Mattock and Mr.
Rockney agree to walk in company to their clubs.'

He proposed to them that they should delay the march on a visit to his
cabin near the clouds. They were forced to decline his invitation to the
gentle lion's mouth; as did Mr. Rumford, very briskly and thankfully. Mr.
Rockney was taken away by Mr. and Mrs. Marbury Dyke. So the party
separated, and the Englishmen were together, and the Irishmen together;
and hardly a syllable relating to the Englishmen did the Irishmen say,
beyond an allusion to an accident to John Mattock's yacht off the Irish
west-coast last autumn; but the Irishmen were subjected to some remarks
by the Englishmen, wherein their qualities as individuals and specimens
of a race were critically and neatly packed. Common sense is necessarily
critical in its collision with vapours, and the conscious possessors of
an exclusive common sense are called on to deliver a summary verdict, nor
is it an unjust one either, if the verdict be taken simply for an
estimate of what is presented upon the plain surface of to-day. Irishmen
are queer fellows, never satisfied, thirsting for a shindy. Some of them
get along pretty well in America. The air of their Ireland intoxicates
them. They require the strong hand: fair legislation, but no show of
weakness. Once let them imagine you are afraid of them, and they see
perfect independence in their grasp. And what would be the spectacle if
they were to cut themselves loose from England? The big ship might be
inconvenienced by the loss of the tender; the tender would fall adrift on
the Atlantic, with pilot and captain at sword and pistol, the crew
playing Donnybrook freely. Their cooler heads are shrewd enough to see
the folly, but it catches the Irish fancy to rush to the extreme, and we
have allowed it to be supposed that it frightens us. There is the capital
blunder, fons et origo.

Their leaders now pretend to work upon the Great Scale; they demand
everything on the spot upon their own interpretation of equity.
Concessions, hazy speeches, and the puling nonsense of our present
Government, have encouraged them so far and got us into the mess. Treat
them as policemen treat highwaymen: give them the law: and the law must
be tightened, like the hold on a rogue by his collar, if they kick at it.
Rockney was for sharp measures in repression, fair legislation in due
course.

'Fair legislation upon your own interpretation of fair,' said Mattock,
whose party opposed Rockney's. 'As to repression, you would have missed
that instructive scene this evening at Con O'Donnell's table, if you had
done him the kindness to pick up his glove. It 's wisest to let them
exhaust their energies upon one another. Hold off, and they're soon at
work.'

'What kind of director of a City Company does he make?' said Rockney.

Mattock bethought him that, on the whole, strange to say, Con O'Donnell
comported himself decorously as a director, generally speaking on the
reasonable side, not without shrewdness: he seemed to be sobered by the
money question.

'That wife of his is the salvation of him,' Rockney said, to account for
the Captain's shrewdness. 'She manages him cleverly. He knows the length
of his line. She's a woman of principle, and barring the marriage, good
sense too. His wife keeps him quiet, or we should be hearing of him.
Forbery 's a more dangerous man. There's no intentional mischief in Con
O'Donnell; it's only effervescence. I saw his game, and declined to
uncork him. He talks of a niece of his wife's: have you ever seen
her?--married to some Servian or Roumanian prince.'

Mattock answered: 'Yes.'

'Is she such a beauty?'

Again Mattock answered: 'Yes,' after affecting thoughtfulness.

'They seem to marry oddly in that family.'

Mattock let fly a short laugh at the remark, which had the ring of some
current phrase. 'They do,' he said.

Next morning Jane Mattock spoke to her brother of her recruit. He
entirely trusted to her discretion; the idea of a young Irish secretary
was rather comical, nevertheless. He had his joke about it, requesting to
have a sight of the secretary's books at the expiry of the week, which
was the length of time he granted this ardent volunteer for evaporating
and vanishing.

'If it releases poor Grace for a week, it will be useful to us,' Jane
said. 'Women are educated so shamefully that we have not yet found one we
can rely on as a competent person. And Mr. O'Donnell--did you notice him?
I told you I met him a day or two back--seems willing to be of use. It
cannot hurt him to try. Grace has too much on her hands.'

'She has a dozen persons.'

'They are zealous when they are led.'

'Beware of letting them suspect that they are led.'

'They are anxious to help the poor if they can discover how.'

'Good men, I don't doubt,' said John Mattock. 'Any proposals from curates
recently?'

'Not of late. Captain O'Donnell, the brother of our secretary, is
handsomer, but we do not think him so trustworthy. Did you observe him at
all?--he sat by me. He has a conspirator's head.'

'What is that?' her brother asked her.

'Only a notion of mine.'

She was directed to furnish a compendious report of the sayings, doings,
and behaviour of the Irish secretary in the evening.

'If I find him there,' she said.

Her brother was of opinion that Mr. Patrick O'Donnell would be as good as
his word, and might be expected to appear there while the novelty lasted.




CHAPTER XV

THE MATTOCK FAMILY

That evening's report of the demeanour of the young Irish secretary in
harness was not so exhilarating as John Mattock had expected, and he
inclined to think his sister guilty of casting her protecting veil over
the youth. It appeared that Mr. O'Donnell had been studious of his
duties, had spoken upon no other topic, had asked pertinent questions,
shown no flippancy, indulged in no extravagances. He seemed, Jane said,
eager to master details. A certain eagerness of her own in speaking of it
sharpened her clear features as if they were cutting through derision.
She stated it to propitiate her brother, as it might have done but for
the veracious picture of Patrick in the word 'eager,' which pricked the
scepticism of a practical man. He locked his mouth, looking at her with a
twinkle she refused to notice. 'Determined to master details' he could
have accepted. One may be determined to find a needle in a dust-heap; one
does not with any stiffness of purpose go at a dust-heap eagerly. Hungry
men have eaten husks; they have not betrayed eagerness for such dry
stuff. Patrick's voracity after details exhibited a doubtfully genuine
appetite, and John deferred his amusement until the termination of the
week or month when his dear good Jane would visit the office to behold a
vacated seat, or be assailed by the customary proposal. Irishmen were not
likely to be far behind curates in besieging an heiress. For that matter,
Jane was her own mistress and could very well take care of herself; he
had confidence in her wisdom.

He was besides of an unsuspicious and an unexacting temperament. The
things he would strongly object to he did not specify to himself because
he was untroubled by any forethought of them. Business, political,
commercial and marine, left few vacancies in his mind other than for the
pleasures he could command and enjoy. He surveyed his England with a
ruddy countenance, and saw the country in the reflection. His England saw
much of itself in him. Behind each there was more, behind the country a
great deal more, than could be displayed by a glass. The salient features
wore a resemblance. Prosperity and heartiness; a ready hand on, and over,
a full purse; a recognised ability of the second-rate order; a stout hold
of patent principles; inherited and embraced, to make the day secure and
supply a somniferous pillow for the night; occasional fits of anxiety
about affairs, followed by an illuminating conviction that the world is a
changing one and our construction not of granite, nevertheless that a
justifiable faith in the ship, joined to a constant study of the chart,
will pull us through, as it has done before, despite all assaults and
underminings of the common enemy and the particular; these, with the
humorous indifference of familiarity and constitutional annoyances,
excepting when they grew acute and called for drugs, and with
friendliness to the race of man of both colours, in the belief that our
Creator originally composed in black and white, together with a liking
for matters on their present footing in slow motion, partly under his
conductorship, were the prominent characteristics of the grandson of the
founder of the house, who had built it from a spade.

The story of the building was notorious; popular books for the inciting
of young Englishmen to dig to fortune had a place for it among the
chapters, where we read of the kind of man, and the means by which the
country has executed its later giant strides of advancement. The first
John Mattock was a representative of his time; he moved when the country
was moving, and in the right direction, finding himself at the auspicious
moment upon a line of rail. Elsewhere he would have moved, we may
suppose, for the spade-like virtues bear their fruits; persistent and
thrifty, solid and square, will fetch some sort of yield out of any soil;
but he would not have gone far. The Lord, to whom an old man of a mind
totally Hebrew ascribed the plenitude of material success, the Lord and
he would have reared a garden in the desert; in proximity to an oasis,
still on the sands, against obstacles. An accumulation of upwards of four
hundred thousand pounds required, as the moral of the popular books does
not sufficiently indicate, a moving country, an ardent sphere, to produce
the sum: and since, where so much was done, we are bound to conceive
others at work as well as he, it seems to follow that the exemplar
outstripping them vastly must have profited by situation at the start,
which is a lucky accident; and an accident is an indigestible lump in a
moral tale, real though the story be. It was not mentioned in the popular
books; nor did those worthy guides to the pursuit of wealth contain any
reminder of old John Mattock's dependence upon the conjoint labour of his
fellows to push him to his elevation. As little did they think of
foretelling a day, generations hence, when the empty heirs of his fellows
might prefer a modest claim (confused in statement) to compensation
against the estate he bequeathed: for such prophecy as that would have
hinted at a tenderness for the mass to the detriment of the individual,
and such tenderness as that is an element of our religion, not the drift
of our teaching.

He grumbled at the heavy taxation of his estate during life: yearly this
oppressed old man paid thousands of pounds to the Government. It was poor
encouragement to shoulder and elbow your way from a hovel to a mansion!

He paid the money, dying sour; a splendid example of energy on the road,
a forbidding one at the terminus. And here the moral of the popular books
turned aside from him to snatch at humanity for an instance of our
frailness and dealt in portentous shadows:--we are, it should be known,
not the great creatures we assume ourselves to be. Six months before his
death he appeared in the garb of a navvy, humbly soliciting employment at
his own house-door. There he appealed to the white calves of his footmen
for a day's work, upon the plea that he had never been a democrat.

The scene had been described with humanely-moralising pathos in the
various books of stories of Men who have come to Fortune, and it had for
a length of seasons an annual position in the foremost rank (on the line,
facing the door) in our exhibition of the chosen artists, where, as our
popular words should do, it struck the spectator's eye and his brain
simultaneously with pugilistic force: a reference to the picture in the
catalogue furnishing a recapitulation of the incident. 'I've worked a
good bit in my time, gentlemen, and I baint done yet':--SEE PROFESSOR
SUMMIT'S 'MEN WHO HAVE COME TO FORTUNE.' There is, we perceive at a
glance, a contrast in the bowed master of the Mansion applying to his
menials for a day's work at the rate of pay to able-bodied men:--which he
is not, but the deception is not disingenuous. The contrast flashed with
the rapid exchange of two prizefighters in a ring, very popularly. The
fustian suit and string below the knee, on the one side, and the purple
plush breeches and twinkling airy calves (fascinating his attention as he
makes his humble request to his own, these domestic knights) to right and
left of the doorway and in front, hit straight out of the canvas. And as
quickly as you perceive the contrast you swallow the moral. The dreaded
thing is down in a trice, to do what salutary work it may within you.
That it passed into the blood of England's middle-class population, and
set many heads philosophically shaking, and filled the sails of many a
sermon, is known to those who lived in days when Art and the classes
patronising our Native Art existed happily upon the terms of venerable
School-Dame and studious pupils, before the sickly era displacing
Exhibitions full of meaning for tricks of colour, monstrous atmospherical
vagaries that teach nothing, strange experiments on the complexion of the
human face divine--the feminine hyper-aethereally. Like the first John
Mattock, it was formerly of, and yet by dint of sturdy energy, above the
people. They learnt from it; they flocked to it thirsting and retired
from it thoughtful, with some belief of having drunk of nature in art, as
you will see the countless troops of urchins about the one cow of London,
in the Great City's Green Park.

A bequest to the nation of the best of these pictures of Old John, by a
very old Yorkshire collector, makes it milk for all time, a perpetual
contrast, and a rebuke. Compared with the portrait of Jane Mattock in her
fiery aureole of hair on the walls of the breakfast-room, it marks that
fatal period of degeneracy for us, which our critics of Literature as
well as Art are one voice in denouncing, when the complex overwhelms the
simple, and excess of signification is attempted, instead of letting
plain nature speak her uncorrupted tongue to the contemplative mind.
Degeneracy is the critical history of the Arts. Jane's hair was of a
reddish gold-inwoven cast that would, in her grandfather's epoch, have
shone unambiguously as carrots. The girl of his day thus adorned by
Nature, would have been shown wearing her ridiculous crown with some
decent sulkiness; and we should not have had her so unsparingly crowned;
the truth would have been told in a dexterous concealment--a rope of it
wound up for a bed of the tortoise-shell comb behind, and a pair of tight
cornucopias at the temples. What does our modern artist do but flare it
to right and left, lift it wavily over her forehead, revel in the
oriental superabundance, and really seem to swear we shall admire it,
against our traditions of the vegetable, as a poetical splendour. The
head of the heiress is in a Jovian shower. Marigolds are in her hand. The
whole square of canvas is like a meadow on the borders of June. It causes
blinking.

Her brother also is presented: a fine portrait of him, with clipped red
locks, in blue array, smiling, wearing the rose of briny breezes, a
telescope under his left arm, his right forefinger on a map, a view of
Spitzbergen through a cabin-window: for John had notions about the
north-west passage, he had spent a winter in the ice, and if an amateur,
was not the less a true sailor.

With his brass-buttoned blue coat, and his high coloured cheeks, and his
convict hair--a layer of brickdust--and his air of princely wealth, and
the icebergs and hummocks about him, he looks for adventure without a
thought of his heroism--the country all over.

There he stands, a lover of the sea, and a scientific seaman and engineer
to boot, practical in every line of his face, defying mankind to suspect
that he cherishes a grain of romance. On the wall, just above his
shoulder, is a sketch of a Viking putting the lighted brand to his ship
in mid sea, and you are to understand that his time is come and so should
a Viking die: further, if you will, the subject is a modern Viking, ready
for the responsibilities of the title. Sketches of our ancient wooden
walls and our iron and plated defences line the panellings. These
degenerate artists do work hard for their money.

The portrait of John's father, dated a generation back, is just the man
and little else, phantomly the man. His brown coat struggles out of the
obscurity of the background, but it is chiefly background clothing him.
His features are distinguishable and delicate: you would suppose him
appearing to you under the beams of a common candle, or cottage
coalfire--ferruginously opaque. The object of the artist (apart from the
triumph of tone on the canvas) is to introduce him as an elegant and
faded gentleman, rather retiring into darkness than emerging. He is the
ghost of the painter's impasto. Yet this is Ezra Mattock, who multipled
the inheritance of the hundreds of thousands into millions, and died,
after covering Europe, Asia, and the Americas with iron rails, one of the
few Christians that can hold up their heads beside the banking Jew as
magnates in the lists of gold. The portrait is clearly no frontispiece of
his qualities. He married an accomplished and charitable lady, and she
did not spoil the stock in refining it. His life passed quietly; his
death shook the country: for though it had been known that he had been
one of our potentates, how mightily he was one had not entered into the
calculations of the public until the will of the late Ezra Mattock, cited
in our prints, received comments from various newspaper articles. A
chuckle of collateral satisfaction ran through the empire. All England
and her dependencies felt the state of cousinship with the fruits of
energy; and it was an agreeable sentiment, coming opportunely, as it did,
at the tail of articles that had been discussing a curious manifestation
of late--to-wit, the awakening energy of the foreigner--a prodigious
apparition on our horizon. Others were energetic too! We were not, the
sermon ran, to imagine we were without rivals in the field. We were
possessed of certain positive advantages; we had coal, iron, and an
industrious population, but we were, it was to be feared, by no means a
thrifty race, and there was reason for doubt whether in the matter of
industry we were quite up to the mark of our forefathers. No
deterioration of the stock was apprehended, still the nation must be
accused of a lack of vigilance. We must look round us, and accept the
facts as they stood. So accustomed had we become to the predominance of
our position that it was difficult at first to realise a position of
rivalry that threatened our manufacturing interests in their hitherto
undisputed lead in the world's markets. The tale of our exports for the
last five years conveys at once its moral and its warning. Statistics
were then cited.

As when the gloomy pedagogue has concluded his exhortation, statistics
birched the land. They were started at our dinner-tables, and scourged
the social converse. Not less than in the articles, they were perhaps
livelier than in the preface; they were distressing nevertheless; they
led invariably to the question of our decadence. Carthage was named; a
great mercantile community absolutely obliterated! Senatorial men were
led to propose in their thoughtfullest tones that we should turn our
attention to Art. Why should we not learn to excel in Art? We excelled in
Poetry. Our Poets were cited: not that there was a notion that poems
would pay as an export but to show that if we excel in one of the Arts we
may in others of them. The poetry was not cited, nor was it necessary,
the object being to inflate the balloon of paradox with a light-flying
gas, and prove a poem-producing people to be of their nature born
artists; if they did but know it. The explosion of a particular trade
points to your taking up another. Energy is adapted to flourish equally
in every branch of labour.

It is the genius of the will, commanding all the crossroads. A country
breeding hugely must prove its energy likewise in the departments of the
mind, or it will ultimately be unable to feed its young--nay, to feast
its aldermen! Let us be up and alive.--Such was the exhortation of a
profound depression. Outside these dismal assemblies, in the streets, an
ancient song of raven recurrence croaked of 'Old England a-going down the
hill'; for there is a link of electricity between the street-boy and the
leading article in days when the Poles exchange salutations.

Mr. Ezra's legacy of his millions to son and daughter broke like a golden
evening on the borders of the raincloud. Things could not be so bad when
a plain untitled English gentleman bequeathed in the simplest manner
possible such giant heaps, a very Pelion upon Ossa, of wealth to his
children. The minds of the readers of journals were now directed to think
of the hoarded treasures of this favoured country. They might
approximately be counted, but even if counted they would be past
conception, like the sidereal system. The contemplation of a million
stupefies: consider the figures of millions and millions! Articles were
written on Lombard Street, the world's gold-mine, our granary of energy,
surpassing all actual and fabulous gold-mines ever spoken of: Aladdin's
magician would find his purse contracting and squeaking in the
comparison. Then, too, the store of jewels held by certain private
families called for remark and an allusion to Sindbad the sailor, whose
eyes were to dilate wider than they did in the valley of diamonds. Why,
we could, if we pleased, lie by and pass two or three decades as jolly
cricketers and scullers, and resume the race for wealth with the rest of
mankind, hardly sensible of the holiday in our pockets though we were the
last people to do it, we were the sole people that had the option. Our
Fortunatus' cap was put to better purposes, but to have the cap, and not
to be emasculated by the possession, might excuse a little reasonable
pride in ourselves.

Thus did Optimism and Pessimism have their turn, like the two great
parties in the State, and the subsiding see-saw restored a proper
balance, much to the nation's comfort. Unhappily, it was remembered,
there are spectators of its method of getting to an equipoise out of the
agitation of extremes. The peep at our treasures to regain composure had,
we fear, given the foreigner glimpses, and whetted the appetite of our
masses. No sooner are we at peace than these are heard uttering low
howls, and those are seen enviously glaring. The spectre, Panic, that
ever dogs the optimistic feast, warns us of a sack under our beds, and
robbers about to try a barely-bolted door. . . Then do we, who have so
sweetly sung our senses to sleep, start up, in their grip, rush to the
doctor and the blacksmith, rig alarums, proclaim ourselves intestinally
torn, defenceless, a prey to foes within and without. It is discovered to
be no worse than an alderman's dream, but the pessimist frenzy of the
night has tossed a quieting sop to the Radical, and summoned the
volunteers to a review. Laudatory articles upon the soldierly 'march
past' of our volunteers permit of a spell of soft repose, deeper than
prudent, at the end of it, India and Ireland consenting.

So much for a passing outline of John Bull--the shadow on the wall of
John Mattock. The unostentatious millionaire's legacy to his two children
affected Mr. Bull thrillingly, pretty nearly as it has here been dotted
in lining. That is historical. Could he believe in the existence of a son
of his, a master of millions, who had never sighed (and he had only to
sigh) to die a peer, or a baronet, or simple Knight? The downright
hard-nailed coffin fact was there; the wealthiest man in the country had
flown away to Shadowland a common Mr.! You see the straight deduction
from the circumstances:--we are, say what you will, a Republican people!
Newspaper articles on the watch sympathetically for Mr. Bull's latest
view of himself, preached on the theme of our peculiar Republicanism.
Soon after he was observed fondling the Crown Insignia. His bards flung
out their breezy columns, reverentially monarchial. The Republican was
informed that they were despised as a blatant minority. A maudlin fit of
worship of our nobility had hold of him next, and English aristocracy
received the paean. Lectures were addressed to democrats; our House of
Lords was pledged solemnly in reams of print. We were told that 'blood'
may always be betted on to win the race; blood that is blue will beat the
red hollow. Who could pretend to despise the honour of admission to the
ranks of the proudest peerage the world has known! Is not a great
territorial aristocracy the strongest guarantee of national stability?
The loudness of the interrogation, like the thunder of Jove, precluded
thought of an answer.

Mr. Bull, though he is not of lucid memory, kept an eye on the owner of
those millions. His bards were awake to his anxiety, and celebrated John
Mattock's doings with a trump and flourish somewhat displeasing to a
quietly-disposed commoner. John's entry into Parliament as a Liberal was
taken for a sign of steersman who knew where the tide ran. But your
Liberals are sometimes Radicals in their youth, and his choice of parties
might not be so much sagacity as an instance of unripe lightheadedness. A
young conservative millionaire is less disturbing. The very wealthy young
peer is never wanton in his politics, which seems to admonish us that the
heir of vast wealth should have it imposed on him to accept a peerage,
and be locked up as it were. A coronet steadies the brain. You may let
out your heels at the social laws, you are almost expected to do it, but
you are to shake that young pate of yours restively under such a splendid
encumbrance. Private reports of John, however, gave him credit for sound
opinions: he was moderate, merely progressive. When it was added that the
man had the habit of taking counsel with his sister, he was at once
considered as fast and safe, not because of any public knowledge of the
character of Jane Mattock. We pay this homage to the settled common sense
of women. Distinctly does she discountenance leaps in the dark, wild
driving, and the freaks of Radicalism.

John, as it happened, had not so grave a respect for the sex as for the
individual Jane. He thought women capable of acts of foolishness; his
bright-faced sister he could thoroughly trust for prudent conduct. He
gave her a good portion of his heart in confidence, and all of it in
affection. There were matters which he excluded from confidence, even
from intimate communication with himself. These he could not reveal; nor
could she perfectly open her heart to him, for the same reason. They both
had an established ideal of their personal qualities, not far above the
positive, since they were neither of them pretentious, yet it was a
trifle higher and fairer than the working pattern; and albeit they were
sincere enough, quite sincere in their mutual intercourse, they had, by
what each knew at times of the thumping organ within them, cause for
doubting that they were as transparent as the other supposed; and they
were separately aware of an inward smile at one another's partial
deception; which did not thwart their honest power of working up to the
respected ideal. The stroke of the deeper self-knowledge rarely shook
them; they were able to live with full sensations in the animated picture
they were to the eyes best loved by them. This in fact was their life.
Anything beside it was a dream, and we do not speak of our dreams--not of
every dream. Especially do we reserve our speech concerning the dream in
which we had a revelation of the proud frame deprived of a guiding will,
flung rudderless on the waves. Ah that abject! The dismantled ship has
the grandeur of the tempest about it, but the soul swayed by passion is
ignominiously bare-poled, detected, hooted by its old assumption. If
instinct plays fantastical tricks when we are sleeping, let it be ever
behind a curtain. We can be held guilty only if we court exposure. The
ideal of English gentleman and gentlewoman is closely Roman in the
self-repression it exacts, and that it should be but occasionally
difficult to them shows an affinity with the type. Do you perchance, O
continental observers of the race, call it hypocritical? It is their
nature disciplined to the regimental step of civilisation. Socially these
island men and women of a certain middle rank are veterans of an army,
and some of the latest enrolled are the stoutest defenders of the flag.

Brother and sister preserved their little secrets of character apart.
They could not be expected to unfold what they declined personally to
examine. But they were not so successful with the lady governing the
household, their widowed maternal aunt, Mrs. Lackstraw, a woman of
decisive penetration, and an insubordinate recruit of the army aforesaid.
To her they were without a mask; John was passion's slave, Jane the most
romantic of Eve's daughters. She pointed to incidents of their youth; her
vision was acutely retrospective. The wealth of her nephew and niece
caused such a view of them to be, as she remarked, anxious past
endurance. She had grounds for fearing that John, who might step to an
alliance with any one of the proudest houses in the Kingdom, would marry
a beggar-maid. As for Jane, she was the natural prey of a threadbare
poet. Mrs. Lackstraw heard of Mr. Patrick O'Donnell, and demanded the
right to inspect him. She doubted such perfect disinterestedness in any
young man as that he should slave at account-keeping to that Laundry
without a prospect of rich remuneration, and the tale of his going down
to the city for a couple of hours each day to learn the art of keeping
books was of very dubious import in a cousin of Captain Con O'Donnell.
'Let me see your prodigy,' she said, with the emphasis on each word.
Patrick was presented at her table. She had steeled herself against an
Irish tongue. He spoke little, appeared simple, professed no enthusiasm
for the Laundry. And he paid no compliments to Jane: of the two he was
more interested by the elder lady, whose farm and dairy in Surrey he
heard her tell of with a shining glance, observing that he liked thick
cream: there was a touch of home in it. The innocent sensuality in the
candid avowal of his tastes inspired confidence. Mrs. Lackstraw fished
for some account of his home. He was open to flow on the subject; he
dashed a few sketches of mother and sisters, dowerless girls, fresh as
trout in the stream, and of his own poor estate, and the peasantry, with
whom he was on friendly terms. He was an absentee for his education.
Sweet water, pure milk, potatoes and bread, were the things he coveted in
plenty for his people and himself, he said, calling forth an echo from
Mrs. Lackstraw, and an invitation to come down to her farm in the Spring.
'That is, Mr. O'Donnell, if you are still in London.'

'Oh, I'm bound apprentice for a year,' said he.

He was asked whether he did not find it tiresome work.

'A trifle so,' he confessed.

Then why did he pursue it, the question was put.

He was not alive for his own pleasure, and would like to feel he was
doing a bit of good, was the answer.

Could one, Mrs. Lackstraw asked herself, have faith in this young
Irishman? He possessed an estate. His brogue rather added to his air of
truthfulness. His easy manners and the occasional streak of correct
French in his dialogue cast a shadow on it. Yet he might be an ingenuous
creature precisely because of the suspicion roused by his quaint
unworldliness that he might be a terrible actor. Why not?--his heart was
evidently much more interested in her pursuits than in her niece's. The
juvenility of him was catching, if it was indeed the man, and not one of
the actor's properties. Mrs. Lackstraw thought it prudent to hint at the
latter idea to Jane while she decided in her generosity to embrace the
former. Oh! if all Irishmen shared his taste for sweet water, pure milk
and wholesome bread, what a true Union we should have! She had always
insisted on those three things as most to be desired on earth for the
masses, and she reminded Jane of it as a curious fact. Jane acquiesced,
having always considered it a curious fact that her aunt should combine
the relish of a country life with the intensest social ambition--a
passion so sensitive as to make the name her husband had inflicted on her
a pain and a burden. The name of Mattock gave her horrors. She spoke of
it openly to prove that Jane must marry a title and John become a peer.
Never was there such a name to smell of the soil. She declared her
incapacity to die happy until the two had buried Mattock. Her own one
fatal step condemned her, owing to the opinion she held upon the
sacredness of marriage, as Lackstraw on her tombstone, and to Lackstraw
above the earthly martyr would go bearing the designation which marked
her to be claimed by him. But for John and Jane the index of Providence
pointed a brighter passage through life. They had only to conquer the
weakness native to them--the dreadful tendency downward. They had, in the
spiritual sense, frail hearts. The girl had been secretive about the
early activity of hers, though her aunt knew of two or three adventures
wanting in nothing save boldness to have put an end to her independence
and her prospects:--hence this Laundry business! a clear sign of some
internal disappointment. The boy, however, had betrayed himself in his
mother's days, when it required all her influence and his father's
authority, with proof positive of the woman's unworthiness, to rescue him
from immediate disaster.

Mrs. Lackstraw's confidences on the theme of the family she watched over
were extended to Patrick during their strolls among the ducks and fowls
and pheasants at her farm. She dealt them out in exclamations, as much as
telling him that now they knew him they trusted him, notwithstanding the
unaccountable part he played as honorary secretary to that Laundry. The
confidences, he was aware, were common property of the visitors one after
another, but he had the knowledge of his being trusted as not every
Irishman would have been. A service of six months to the secretaryship
established his reputation as the strange bird of a queer species: not
much less quiet, honest, methodical, than an Englishman, and still
impulsive, Irish still; a very strange bird.

The disposition of the English to love the children of Erin, when not
fretted by them, was shown in the treatment Patrick received from the
Mattock family. It is a love resembling the affection of the stage-box
for a set of favourite performers, and Patrick, a Celt who had schooled
his wits to observe and meditate, understood his position with them as
one of the gallant and amusing race, as well as the reason why he had won
their private esteem. They are not willingly suspicious: it agitates
their minds to be so; and they are most easily lulled by the flattery of
seeing their special virtues grafted on an alien stock: for in this
admiration of virtues that are so necessary to the stalwart growth of
man, they become just sensible of a minor deficiency; the tree, if we
jump out of it to examine its appearance, should not be all trunk. Six
months of ungrudging unremunerated service, showing devotion to the good
cause and perfect candour from first to last, was English, and a poetic
touch beyond: so that John Mattock, if he had finished the sentence
instead of lopping it with an interjection, would have said: 'These Irish
fellows, when they're genuine and first rate!--are pretty well the pick
of the land.' Perhaps his pause on the interjection expressed a doubt of
our getting them genuine. Mr. O'Donnell was a sort of exceptional
Irishman, not devoid of practical ability in a small way--he did his
duties of secretary fairly well; apparently sincere--he had refrained
from courting Jane; an odd creature enough, what with his mixture of
impulsiveness and discretion; likeable, pleasant to entertain and talk
to; not one of your lunatics concerning his country--he could listen to
an Englishman's opinion on that head, listen composedly to Rockney,
merely seeming to take notes; and Rockney was, as Captain Con termed him,
Press Dragoon about Ireland, a trying doctor for a child of the patient.

On the whole, John Mattock could shake his hand heartily when he was
leaving our shores. Patrick was released by Miss Grace Barrow's discovery
at last of a lady capable of filling his place: a circumstance that he
did not pretend to regret. He relinquished his post and stood aside with
the air of a disciplined soldier. This was at the expiration of seven
months and two weeks of service. Only after he had gone, upon her
receiving his first letter from the Continent, did Jane distinguish in
herself the warmth of friendliness she felt for him, and know that of all
around her she, reproaching every one who had hinted a doubt, had been
the most suspicious of his pure simplicity. It was the vice of her
condition to be suspicious of the honesty of men. She thought of her
looks as less attractive than they were; of her wealth she had reason to
think that the scent transformed our sad sex into dogs under various
disguises. Remembering her chill once on hearing Patrick in a green lane
where they botanised among spring flowers call himself her Irish cousin,
as if he had advanced a step and betrayed the hoof, she called him her
Irish cousin now in good earnest. Her nation was retrospectively
enthusiastic. The cordiality of her letter of reply to the wandering
Patrick astonished him on the part of so cool a young lady; and Captain
Con, when he heard Miss Mattock speak of Patrick to his wife, came to the
conclusion that the leery lad had gone a far way toward doing the trick
for himself, though Jane said his correspondence was full of the deeds of
his brother in India. She quite sparkled in speaking of this boy.

She and the captain had an interchange of sparklings over absent Patrick,
at a discovery made by Miss Colesworth, the lady replacing him, in a nook
of the amateur secretary's official desk, under heaps of pamphlets and
slips, French and English and Irish journals, not at all bearing upon the
business of the Laundry. It was a blotting-pad stuffed with Patrick's
jottings. Jane brought it to Con as to the proper keeper of the
reliquary. He persuaded her to join him in examining it, and together
they bent their heads, turning leaf by leaf, facing, laughing, pursuing
the search for more, sometimes freely shouting.

Her inspection of the contents had previously been shy; she had just
enough to tell her they were funny. Dozens of scraps, insides of torn
envelopes, invitation-cards, ends of bills received from home, whatever
was handy to him at the moment, had done service for the overflow of Mr.
Secretary's private notes and reflections; the blotting-paper as well;
though that was devoted chiefly to sketches of the human countenance, the
same being almost entirely of the fair. Jane fancied she spied herself
among the number. Con saw the likeness, but not considering it a
complimentary one, he whisked over the leaf. Grace Barrow was
unmistakeable. Her dimpled cushion features, and very intent eyes gazing
out of the knolls and dingles, were given without caricature. Miss
Colesworth appeared on the last page, a half-length holding a big key,
demure between curls. The key was explained by a cage on a stool, and a
bird flying out. She had unlocked the cage for Patrick.

'He never seemed anxious to be released while he was at work,' said Jane,
after she and the captain had spelt the symbolling in turns.

'And never thirsted to fly till he flew, I warrant him,' said Con.

A repeated sketch of some beauty confused them both; neither of them
could guess the proud owner of those lineaments. Con proclaimed it to be
merely one of the lad's recollections, perhaps a French face. He thought
he might have seen a face rather resembling it, but could not call to
mind whose face it was.

'I dare say it's just a youngster's dream on a stool at a desk, as poets
write sonnets in their youth to nobody, till they're pierced by somebody,
and then there's a difference in their handwriting,' he said, vexed with
Patrick for squandering his opportunity to leave a compliment to the
heiress behind him.

Jane flipped the leaves back to the lady with stormy hair.

'But you'll have the whole book, and hand it to him when he returns; it
'll come best from you,' said Con. 'The man on horseback, out of uniform,
's brother Philip, of course. And man and horse are done to the life.
Pray, take it, Miss Mattock. I should lose it to a certainty; I should; I
can't be trusted. You'll take it!'

He pressed her so warmly to retain the bundle in her custody that she
carried it away.

Strange to say the things she had laughed at had been the things which
struck her feelings and sympathies. Patrick's notes here and there
recalled conversations he had more listened to than taken part in between
herself and Grace Barrow. Who could help laughing at his ideas about
women! But if they were crude, they were shrewd--or so she thought them;
and the jejuneness was, to her mind, chiefly in the dressing of them.
Grace agreed with her, for Grace had as good a right to inspect the
papers as she, and a glance had shown that there was nothing of peculiar
personal import in his notes: he did not brood on himself.

Here was one which tickled the ladies and formed a text for discussion.

'Women must take the fate of market-fruit till they earn their own
pennies, and then they 'll regulate the market. It is a tussle for money
with them as with us, meaning power. They'd do it as little by oratory as
they have done by millinery, for their oratory, just like their
millinery, appeals to a sentiment, and to a weaker; and nothing solid
comes of a sentiment. Power is built on work.'

To this was appended: 'The better for mankind in the developing process,
ay, and a bad day for us, boys, when study masks the charming eyes in
gig-lamps, and there is no pretty flying before us. Good-night to Cupid,
I fear. May be I am not seeing far enough, and am asking for the devil to
have the loveliest women as of old. Retro S. M.'

The youthful eye on their sex, the Irish voice, and the perceptible moral
earnestness in the background, made up a quaint mixture.




CHAPTER XVI

OF THE GREAT MR. BULL AND THE CELTIC AND SAXON VIEW OF HIM: AND SOMETHING
OF RICHARD ROCKNEY

Meanwhile India, our lubber giant, had ceased to kick a leg, and Ireland,
our fever-invalid, wore the aspect of an opiate slumber. The volcano we
couch on was quiet, the gritty morsel unabsorbed within us at an
armistice with the gastric juices. Once more the personification of the
country's prosperity had returned to the humming state of roundness.
Trade whipped him merrily, and he spun.

A fuller sketch of the figure of this remarkable emanation of us and
object of our worship, Bull, is required that we may breathe the
atmosphere of a story dealing with such very different views of the idol,
and learn to tolerate plain-speaking about him.

Fancy yourself delayed by stress of weather at an inn or an excursion,
and snapped up by some gossip drone of the district, who hearing whither
you are bound, recounts the history and nature of the place, to your
ultimate advantage, though you groan for the outer downpour to abate.--Of
Bull, then: our image, before the world: our lord and tyrant, ourself in
short--the lower part of us. Coldly worshipped on the whole, he can
create an enthusiasm when his roast-beef influence mounts up to peaceful
skies and the domestic English world spins with him. What he does not
like will then be the forbidding law of a most governable people, what he
does like the consenting. If it is declared that argument will be
inefficacious to move him, he is adored in the form of post. A hint of
his willingness in any direction, causes a perilous rush of his devotees.
Nor is there reason to suppose we have drawn the fanatical subserviency
from the example of our subject India. We may deem it native; perhaps of
its origin Aryan, but we have made it our own. Some have been so
venturesome as to trace the lordliness of Bull to the protecting smiles
of the good Neptune, whose arms are about him to encourage the
development of a wanton eccentricity. Certain weeds of the human bosom
are prompt to flourish where safeness would seem to be guaranteed. Men,
for instance, of stoutly independent incomes are prone to the same sort
of wilfulness as Bull's, the salve abject submission to it which we
behold in his tidal bodies of supporters. Neptune has done something. One
thinks he has done much, at a rumour of his inefficiency to do the
utmost. Spy you insecurity?--a possibility of invasion? Then indeed the
colossal creature, inaccessible to every argument, is open to any
suggestion: the oak-like is a reed, the bull a deer. But as there is no
attack on his shores, there is no proof that they are invulnerable.
Neptune is appealed to and replies by mouth of the latest passenger
across the Channel on a windy night:--Take heart, son John! They will
have poor stomachs for blows who intrude upon you. The testification to
the Sea-God's watchfulness restores his darling who is immediately as
horny to argument as before. Neptune shall have his share of the honours.

Ideal of his country Bull has none--he hates the word; it smells of
heresy, opposition to his image. It is an exercise of imagination to
accept an ideal, and his digestive organs reject it, after the manner of
the most beautiful likeness of him conjurable to the mind--that flowering
stomach, the sea-anemone, which opens to anything and speedily casts out
what it cannot consume. He is a positive shape, a practical corporation,
and the best he can see is the mirror held up to him by his bards of the
Press and his jester Frank Guffaw. There, begirt by laughing ocean-waves,
manifestly blest, he glorifies his handsome roundness, like that other
Foam-Born, whom the decorative Graces robed in vestments not so wonderful
as printed sheets. Rounder at each inspection, he preaches to mankind
from the text of a finger curved upon the pattern spectacles. Your
Frenchmen are revolutionising, wagering on tentative politics; your
Germans ploughing in philosophy, thumbing classics, composing music of a
novel order: both are marching, evolutionising, learning how to kill.
Ridiculous Germans! capricious Frenchmen! We want nothing new in musical
composition and abstract speculation of an indecent mythology, or
political contrivances and schemes of Government, and we do not want war.
Peace is the Goddess we court for the hand of her daughter Plenty, and we
have won that jolly girl, and you are welcome to the marriage-feast; but
avaunt new-fangled theories and howlings: old tunes, tried systems, for
us, my worthy friends.

Roundness admiring the growth of its globe may address majestic
invitation to the leaner kine. It can exhibit to the world that Peace is
a most desirable mother-in-law; and it is tempted to dream of capping the
pinnacle of wisdom when it squats on a fundamental truth. Bull's perusal
of the Horatian carpe diem is acute as that of the cattle in fat meads;
he walks like lusty Autumn carrying his garner to drum on, for a sign of
his diligent wisdom in seizing the day. He can read the page fronting
him; and let it be of dining, drinking, toasting, he will vociferously
confute the wiseacre bookworms who would have us believe there is no such
thing as a present hour for man.

In sad fact, the member for England is often intoxicate. Often do we have
him whirling his rotundity like a Mussulman dervish inflated by the
spirit to agitate the shanks, until pangs of a commercial crisis awaken
him to perceive an infructuous past and an unsown future, without one bit
of tracery on its black breast other than that which his apprehensions
project. As for a present hour, it swims, it vanishes, thinner than the
phantom banquets of recollection. What has he done for the growth of his
globe of brains?--the lesser, but in our rightful posture the upper, and
justly the directing globe, through whose directions we do, by feeding on
the past to sow the future, create a sensible present composed of
both--the present of the good using of our powers. What can he show in
the Arts? What in Arms? His bards--O faithless! but they are men--his
bards accuse him of sheer cattle-contentedness in the mead, of sterility
of brain, drowsihood, mid-noddyism, downright carcase-dulness. They
question him to deafen him of our defences, our intellectual eminence,
our material achievements, our poetry, our science; they sneer at his
trust in Neptune, doubt the scaly invulnerability of the God. They point
over to the foreigner, the clean-stepping, braced, self-confident
foreigner, good at arms, good at the arts, and eclipsing us in
industriousness manual and mental, and some dare to say, in splendour of
verse=-our supreme accomplishment.

Then with one big fellow, the collapse of pursiness, he abandons his
pedestal of universal critic; prostrate he falls to the foreigner; he is
down, he is roaring; he is washing his hands of English performances,
lends ear to foreign airs, patronises foreign actors, browses on reports
from camps of foreign armies. He drops his head like a smitten ox to all
great foreign names, moaning 'Shakespeare!' internally for a sustaining
apostrophe. He well-nigh loves his poets, can almost understand what
poetry means. If it does not pay, it brings him fame, respectfulness in
times of reverse. Brains, he is reduced to apprehend, brains are the
generators of the conquering energies. He is now for brains at all costs,
he has gained a conception of them. He is ready to knock knighthood on
the heads of men of brains--even literary brains. They shall be knights,
an ornamental body. To make them peers, and a legislative, has not struck
him, for he has not yet imagined them a stable body. They require
petting, to persuade them to flourish and bring him esteem.

This is Mr. Bull, our image before the world, whose pranks are passed as
though the vivid display of them had no bad effect on the nation.
Doubtless the perpetual mirror, the slavish mirror, is to blame, but his
nakedness does not shrink from the mirror, he likes it and he is proud of
it. Beneath these exhibitions the sober strong spirit of the country,
unfortunately not a prescient one, nor an attractively loveable, albeit
of a righteous benevolence, labours on, doing the hourly duties for the
sake of conscience, little for prospective security, little to win
affection. Behold it as the donkey of a tipsy costermonger, obedient to
go without the gift of expression. Its behaviour is honourable under a
discerning heaven, and there is ever something pathetic in a toilful
speechlessness; but it is of dogged attitude in the face of men. Salt is
in it to keep our fleshly grass from putrefaction; poets might proclaim
its virtues. They will not; they are averse. The only voice it has is the
Puritan bray, upon which one must philosophise asinically to unveil the
charm. So the world is pleased to let it be obscured by the paunch of
Bull. We have, however, isolated groups, individuals in all classes, by
no means delighting in his representation of them. When such is felt to
be the case among a sufficient number, his bards blow him away as a
vapour; we hear that he is a piece of our English humour--we enjoy
grotesques and never should agree to paint ourselves handsome: our subtle
conceit insists on the reverse. Nevertheless, no sooner are the hours
auspicious to fatness than Bull is back on us; he is our family goat,
ancestral ghost, the genius of our comfortable sluggishness. And he is at
times a mad Bull: a foaming, lashing, trampling, horn-driving, excessive,
very parlous Bull. It is in his history that frenzies catch him, when to
be yoked to him is to suffer frightful shakings, not to mention a
shattering of our timbers. It is but in days of the rousing of the
under-spirit of the country, days of storm imprudent to pray the advent
of, that we are well rid of him for a while. In the interim he does
mischief, serious mischief; he does worse than when, a juvenile, he paid
the Dannegelt for peace. Englishmen of feeling do not relish him. For men
with Irish and Cambrian blood in their veins the rubicund grotesque, with
his unimpressionable front and his noisy benevolence of the pocket, his
fits of horned ferocity and lapses of hardheartedness, is a shame and a
loathing. You attach small importance to images and symbols; yet if they
seem representative, and they sicken numbers of us, they are important.
The hat we wear, though it is not a part of the head, stamps the
character of our appearance and has a positive influence on our bearing.
Symbolical decorations will stimulate the vacant-minded to act up to
them, they encircle and solidify the mass; they are a sword of division
between Celts and Saxons if they are abhorrent to one section. And the
Celtic brotherhood are not invariably fools in their sensitiveness. They
serve you on the field of Mars, and on other fields to which the world
has given glory. These execrate him as the full-grown Golden Calf of
heathenish worship. And they are so restive because they are so
patriotic. Think a little upon the ideas of unpatriotic Celts regarding
him. You have heard them. You tell us they are you: accurately, they
affirm, succinctly they see you in his crescent outlines, tame bulk,
spasms of alarm and foot on the weaker; his imperviousness to whatsoever
does not confront the sensual eye of him with a cake or a fist, his
religious veneration of his habitual indulgences, his peculiar forms of
nightmare. They swear to his perfect personification of your moods, your
Saxon moods, which their inconsiderate spleen would have us take for
unmixedly Saxon. They are unjust, but many of them speak with a sense of
the foot on their necks, and they are of a blood demanding a
worshipworthy idea. And they dislike Bull's bellow of disrespect for
their religion, much bruited in the meadows during his periods of
Arcadia. They dislike it, cannot forget the sound: it hangs on the
afflicted drum of the ear when they are in another land, perhaps when the
old devotion to their priest has expired. For this, as well as for
material reasons, they hug the hatred they packed up among their bundles
of necessaries and relics, in the flight from home, and they instruct
their children to keep it burning. They transmit the sentiment of the
loathing of Bull, as assuredly they would be incapable of doing, even
with the will, were a splendid fire-eyed motherly Britannia the figure
sitting in the minds of men for our image--a palpitating figure, alive to
change, penetrable to thought, and not a stolid concrete of our
traditional old yeoman characteristic. Verily he lives for the present,
all for the present, will be taught in sorrow that there is no life for
him but of past and future: his delusion of the existence of a present
hour for man will not outlast the season of his eating and drinking
abundantly in security. He will perceive that it was no more than the
spark shot out from the clash of those two meeting forces; and penitently
will he gaze back on that misleading spark-the spectral planet it bids
wink to his unreceptive stars--acknowledging him the bare machine for
those two to drive, no instrument of enjoyment. He lives by reading
rearward and seeing vanward. He has no actual life save in power of
imagination. He has to learn this fact, the great lesson of all men.
Furthermore there may be a future closed to him if he has thrown too
extreme a task of repairing on that bare machine of his. The sight of a
broken-down plough is mournful, but the one thing to do with it is to
remove it from the field.

Among the patriotic of stout English substance, who blew in the trumpet
of the country, and were not bards of Bull to celebrate his firmness and
vindicate his shiftings, Richard Rockney takes front rank. A journalist
altogether given up to his craft, considering the audience he had gained,
he was a man of forethought besides being a trenchant writer, and he was
profoundly, not less than eminently, the lover of Great Britain. He had a
manner of utterance quite in the tone of the familiar of the antechamber
for proof of his knowing himself to be this person. He did not so much
write articles upon the health of his mistress as deliver Orphic
sentences. He was in one her physician, her spiritual director, her
man-at-arms. Public allusions to her were greeted with his emphatic
assent in a measured pitch of the voice, or an instantaneous flourish of
the rapier; and the flourish was no vain show. He meant hard steel to
defend the pill he had prescribed for her constitutional state, and the
monition for her soul's welfare. Nor did he pretend to special privileges
in assuming his militant stand, but simply that he had studied her case,
was intimate with her resources, and loved her hotly, not to say
inspiredly. Love her as well, you had his cordial hand; as wisely, then
all his weapons to back you. There were occasions when distinguished
officials and Parliamentary speakers received the impetus of Rockney's
approval and not hesitatingly he stepped behind them to bestow it. The
act, in whatever fashion it may have been esteemed by the objects
propelled, was a sign of his willingness to let the shadow of any man
adopting his course obscure him, and of the simplicity of his attachment.
If a bitter experience showed that frequently, indeed generally, they
travelled scarce a tottering stagger farther than they were precipitated,
the wretched consolation afforded by a side glance at a more enlightened
passion, solitary in its depth, was Rockney's. Others perchance might
equal his love, none the wisdom of it; actually none the vigilant
circumspection, the shaping forethought. That clear knowledge of the
right thing for the country was grasped but by fits by others. Enough to
profit them this way and yonder as one best can! You know the newspaper
Press is a mighty engine. Still he had no delight in shuffling a
puppetry; he would have preferred automatic figures. His calls for them
resounded through the wilderness of the wooden.

Any solid conviction of a capable head of a certainty impressed upon the
world, and thus his changes of view were not attributed to a fluctuating
devotion; they passed out of the range of criticism upon inconsistency,
notwithstanding that the commencement of his journalistic career smelt of
sources entirely opposed to the conclusions upon which it broadened. One
secret of the belief in his love of his country was the readiness of
Rockney's pen to support our nobler patriotic impulses, his relish of the
bluff besides. His eye was on our commerce, on our courts of Law, on our
streets and alleys, our army and navy, our colonies, the vaster than the
island England, and still he would be busy picking up needles and threads
in the island. Deeds of valour were noted by him, lapses of cowardice:
how one man stood against a host for law or humanity, how crowds looked
on at the beating of a woman, how a good fight was maintained in some sly
ring between two of equal brawn: and manufacturers were warned of the
consequences of their iniquities, Government was lashed for sleeping upon
shaky ordinances, colonists were gibbeted for the maltreating of natives:
the ring and fervour of the notes on daily events told of Rockney's hand
upon the national heart--with a faint, an enforced, reluctant indication
of our not being the men we were.

But after all, the main secret was his art of writing round English,
instead of laborious Latinised periods: and the secret of the art was his
meaning what he said. It was the personal throb. The fire of a mind was
translucent in Press columns where our public had been accustomed to the
rhetoric of primed scribes. He did away with the Biscay billow of the
leading article--Bull's favourite prose--bardic construction of sentences
that roll to the antithetical climax, whose foamy top is offered and
gulped as equivalent to an idea. Writing of such a kind as Rockney's was
new to a land where the political opinions of Joint Stock Companies had
rattled Jovian thunders obedient to the nod of Bull. Though not alone in
working the change, he was the foremost. And he was not devoid of style.
Fervidness is the core of style. He was a tough opponent for his betters
in education, struck forcibly, dexterously, was always alert for debate.
An encounter between Swift and Johnson, were it imaginable, would present
us probably the most prodigious Gigantomachy in literary polemics. It is
not imaginable among comparative pygmies. But Rockney's combat with his
fellow-politicians of the Press partook of the Swiftian against the
Johnsonian in form. He was a steam ram that drove straight at the bulky
broadside of the enemy.

Premiers of parties might be Captains of the State for Rockney: Rockney
was the premier's pilot, or woe to him. Woe to the country as well, if
Rockney's directions for steering were unheeded. He was a man of
forethought, the lover of Great Britain: he shouted his directions in the
voice of the lover of his mistress, urged to rebuke, sometimes to
command, the captain by the prophetic intimations of a holier alliance, a
more illumined prescience. Reefs here, shallows there, yonder a foul
course: this is the way for you! The refusal of the captain to go this
way caused Rockney sincerely to discredit the sobriety of his intellect.
It was a drunken captain. Or how if a traitorous? We point out the danger
to him, and if he will run the country on to it, we proclaim him guilty
either of inebriety or of treason--the alternatives are named: one or the
other has him. Simple unfitness can scarcely be conceived of a captain
having our common senses and a warranted pilot at his elbow.

Had not Rockney been given to a high expression of opinion, plain in
fervour, he would often have been exposed bare to hostile shafts. Style
cast her aegis over him. He wore an armour in which he could walk, run
and leap-a natural style. The ardour of his temperament suffused the
directness of his intelligence to produce it, and the two qualities made
his weakness and strength. Feeling the nerve of strength, the weakness
was masked to him, while his opponents were equally insensible to the
weakness under the force of his blows. Thus there was nothing to teach
him, or reveal him, except Time, whose trick is to turn corners of
unanticipated sharpness, and leave the directly seeing and ardent to dash
at walls.

How rigidly should the man of forethought govern himself, question
himself! how constantly wrestle with himself! And if he be a writer
ebullient by the hour, how snappishly suspect himself, that he may feel
in conscience worthy of a hearing and have perpetually a conscience in
his charge! For on what is his forethought founded? Does he try the ring
of it with our changed conditions? Bus a man of forethought who has to be
one of our geysers ebullient by the hour must live days of fever. His
apprehensions distemper his blood; the scrawl of them on the dark of the
undeveloped dazzles his brain. He sees in time little else; his very
sincereness twists him awry. Such a man has the stuff of the born
journalist, and journalism is the food of the age. Ask him, however,
midway in his running, what he thinks of quick breathing: he will answer
that to be a shepherd on the downs is to be more a man. As to the
gobbling age, it really thinks better of him than he of it.

After a term of prolonged preachification he is compelled to lash that he
may less despise the age. He has to do it for his own sake. O gobbling
age! swallowing all, digesting nought, us too you have swallowed, O
insensate mechanism! and we will let you know you have a stomach.
Furiously we disagree with you. We are in you to lead you or work you
pangs!

Rockney could not be a mild sermoniser commenting on events. Rather no
journalism at all for him! He thought the office of the ordinary daily
preacher cowlike. His gadfly stung him to warn, dictate, prognosticate;
he was the oracle and martyr of superior vision: and as in affairs of
business and the weighing of men he was of singularly cool sagacity, hard
on the downright, open to the humours of the distinct discrimination of
things in their roughness, the knowledge of the firmly-based materialism
of his nature caused him thoroughly to trust to his voice when he
delivered it in ardour--circumstance coming to be of daily recurrence.
Great love creates forethoughtfulness, without which incessant journalism
is a gabble. He was sure of his love, but who gave ear to his prescience?
Few: the echo of the country now and then, the Government not often. And,
dear me! those jog-trot sermonisers, mere commentators upon events,
manage somehow to keep up the sale of their journals: advertisements do
not flow and ebb with them as under the influence of a capricious moon.
Ah, what a public! Serve it honourably, you are in peril of collapsing:
show it nothing but the likeness of its dull animal face, you are
steadily inflated. These reflections within us! Might not one almost say
that the retreat for the prophet is the wilderness, far from the hustled
editor's desk; and annual should be the uplifting of his voice instead of
diurnal, if only to spare his blood the distemper? A fund of gout was in
Rockney's, and he had begun to churn it. Between gouty blood and luminous
brain the strife had set in which does not conduce to unwavering sobriety
of mind, though ideas remain closely consecutive and the utterance
resonant.

Never had he been an adulator of Bull. His defects as well as his
advantages as a politician preserved to him this virtue. Insisting on a
future, he could not do homage to the belying simulacrum of the present.
In the season of prosperity Rockney lashed the old fellow with the crisis
he was breeding for us; and when prostration ensued no English tongue was
loftier in preaching dignity and the means of recovery. Our monumental
image of the Misuse of Peace he pointed out unceasingly as at a despot
constructed by freemen out of the meanest in their natures to mock the
gift of liberty. His articles of foregone years were an extraordinary
record of events or conditions foreseen: seductive in the review of them
by a writer who has to be still foreseeing: nevertheless, that none of
them were bardic of Bull, and that our sound man would have acted wisely
in heeding some of the prescriptions, constituted their essential merit,
consolatory to think of, though painful. The country has gone the wrong
road, but it may yet cross over to the right one, when it perceives that
we were prophetic.

Compared with the bolts discharged at Bull by Rockney's artillery,
Captain Con O'Donnell's were popgun-pellets. Only Rockney fired to
chasten, Con O'Donnell for a diversion, to appease an animus. The
revolutionist in English journalism was too devoutly patriotic to
belabour even a pantomime mask that was taken as representative of us for
the disdainful fun of it. Behind the plethoric lamp, now blown with the
fleshpots, now gasping puffs of panic, he saw the well-minded valorous
people, issue of glorious grandsires; a nation under a monstrous
defacement, stupefied by the contemplation of the mask: his vision was of
the great of old, the possibly great in the graver strife ahead,
respecters of life, despisers of death, the real English whereas an
alienated Celtic satirist, through his vivid fancy and his disesteem, saw
the country incarnate in Bull, at most a roguish screw-kneed clown to be
whipped out of him. Celt and Saxon are much inmixed with us, but the
prevalence of Saxon blood is evinced by the public disregard of any
Celtic conception of the honourable and the loveable; so that the Celt
anxious to admire is rebutted, and the hatred of a Celt, quick as he is
to catch at images, has a figure of hugeous animalism supplied to his
malign contempt. Rockney's historic England, and the living heroic
England to slip from that dull hide in a time of trial, whether of war or
social suffering, he cannot see, nor a people hardening to Spartan
lineaments in the fire, iron men to meet disaster, worshippers of a
discerned God of Laws, and just men too, thinking to do justice; he has
Bull on the eye, the alternately braggart and poltroon, sweating in
labour that he may gorge the fruits, graceless to a scoffer. And this is
the creature to whose tail he is tied! Hereditary hatred is approved by
critical disgust. Some spirited brilliancy, some persistent generosity
(other than the guzzle's flash of it), might soften him; something
sweeter than the slow animal well-meaningness his placable brethren point
his attention to. It is not seen, and though he can understand the perils
of a severance, he prefers to rub the rawness of his wound and be ready
to pitch his cap in the air for it, out of sheer bloodloathing of a
connection that offers him nothing to admire, nothing to hug to his
heart. Both below and above the blind mass of discontent in his island,
the repressed sentiment of admiration-or passion of fealty and thirst to
give himself to a visible brighter--is an element of the division:
meditative young Patrick O'Donnell early in his reflections had noted
that:--and it is partly a result of our daily habit of tossing the straw
to the monetary world and doting on ourselves in the mirror, until our
habitual doings are viewed in a bemused complacency by us, and the
scum-surface of the country is flashed about as its vital being. A man of
forethought using the Press to spur Parliament to fitly represent the
people, and writing on his daily topics with strenuous original vigour,
even though, like Rockney, he sets the teeth of the Celt gnashing at him,
goes a step nearer to the bourne of pacification than Press and
Parliament reflecting the popular opinion that law must be passed to
temper Ireland's eruptiveness; for that man can be admired, and the Celt,
in combating him, will like an able and gallant enemy better than a
grudgingly just, lumbersome, dull, politic friend. The material points in
a division are always the stronger, but the sentimental are here very
strong. Pass the laws; they may put an extinguisher on the Irish
Vesuvian; yet to be loved you must be a little perceptibly admirable. You
may be so self-satisfied as to dispense with an ideal: your yoke-fellow
is not; it is his particular form of strength to require one for his
proper blooming, and he does bloom beautifully in the rays he courts.

Ah then, seek to be loved, and banish Bull. Believe in a future and
banish that gross obscuration of you. Decline to let that
old-yeoman-turned alderman stand any longer for the national man.
Speaking to the brain of the country, one is sure of the power of a
resolute sign from it to dismiss the brainless. Banish him your revels
and your debatings, prohibit him your Christmas, lend no ear either to
his panics or his testiness, especially none to his rages; do not report
him at all, and he will soon subside into his domestic, varied by
pothouse, privacy. The brain should lead, if there be a brain. Once free
of him, you will know that for half a century you have appeared bottom
upward to mankind. And you have wondered at the absence of love for you
under so astounding a presentation. Even in a Bull, beneficent as he can
dream of being, when his notions are in a similar state of inversion,
should be sheepish in hope for love.

He too, whom you call the Welshman, and deride for his delight in songful
gatherings, harps to wild Wales, his Cambrian highlands, and not to
England. You have not yet, though he is orderly and serviceable, allured
his imagination to the idea of England. Despite the passion for his
mountains and the boon of your raising of the interdict (within a hundred
years) upon his pastors to harangue him in his native tongue, he gladly
ships himself across the waters traversed by his Prince Madoc of
tradition, and becomes contentedly a transatlantic citizen, a member of
strange sects--he so inveterate in faithfulness to the hoar and the
legendary!--Anything rather than Anglican. The Cymry bear you no hatred;
their affection likewise is undefined. But there is reason to think that
America has caught the imagination of the Cambrian Celt: names of
Welshmen are numerous in the small army of the States of the Union; and
where men take soldier-service they are usually fixed, they and their
children. Here is one, not very deeply injured within a century, of
ardent temperament, given to be songful and loving; he leaves you and
forgets you. Be certain that the material grounds of division are not
all. To pronounce it his childishness provokes the retort upon your
presented shape. He cannot admire it. Gaelic Scots wind the same note of
repulsion.

And your poets are in a like predicament. Your poets are the most
persuasive of springs to a lively general patriotism. They are in the
Celtic dilemma of standing at variance with Bull; they return him his
hearty antipathy, are unable to be epical or lyrical of him, are
condemned to expend their genius upon the abstract, the quaint, the
picturesque. Nature they read spiritually or sensually, always
shrinkingly apart from him. They swell to a resemblance of their patron
if they stoop to woo his purse. He has, on hearing how that poets bring
praise to nations, as in fact he can now understand his Shakespeare to
have done, been seen to thump the midriff and rally them for their
shyness of it, telling them he doubts them true poets while they abstain
from singing him to the world-him, and the things refreshing the centre
of him. Ineffectual is that encouragement. Were he in the fire, melting
to the iron man, the backbone of him, it would be different. At his
pleasures he is anti-hymnic, repellent to song. He has perceived the
virtues of Peace, without the brother eye for the need of virtuousness to
make good use of them and inspire the poet. His own enrolled unrhythmical
bardic troops (humorous mercenaries when Celts) do his trumpeting best,
and offend not the Pierides.

This interlude, or rather inter-drone, repulsive to write, can hardly be
excluded from a theme dramatising Celtic views, and treating of a blood,
to which the idea of country must shine resplendently if we would have it
running at full tide through the arteries. Preserve your worship, if the
object fills your optics. Better worship that than nothing, as it is
better for flames to be blown out than not to ascend, otherwise it will
wreak circular mischief instead of illumining. You are requested simply
to recollect that there is another beside you who sees the object
obliquely, and then you will not be surprised by his irreverence. What
if, in the end, you were conducted to a like point of view? Self-worship,
it has been said, is preferable to no trimming of the faculty, but
worship does not necessarily cease with the extinction of this of the
voraciously carnal. An ideal of country, of Great Britain, is conceivable
that will be to the taste of Celt and Saxon in common, to wave as a
standard over their fraternal marching. Let Bull boo his drumliest at
such talk: it is, I protest, the thing we want and can have. He is the
obstruction, not the country; and against him, not against the country,
the shots are aimed which seem so malignant. Him the gay manipulators
propitiate who look at him through Literature and the Press, and across
the pulpit-cushions, like airy Macheath at Society, as carrion to batten
on. May plumpness be their portion, and they never hanged for it! But the
flattering, tickling, pleasantly pinching of Bull is one of those offices
which the simple starveling piper regards with afresh access of appetite
for the well-picked bone of his virtue. That ghastly apparition of the
fleshly present is revealed to him as a dead whale, having the harpoon of
the inevitable slayer of the merely fleshly in his oils. To humour him,
and be his piper for his gifts, is to descend to a carnival deep
underneath. While he reigns, thinks this poor starveling, Rome burns, or
the explosive powders are being secretly laid. He and his thousand
Macheaths are dancing the country the giddy pace, and there will, the
wretch dreads, be many a crater of scoria in the island, before he
stretches his inanimate length, his parasites upon him. The theme is
chosen and must be treated as a piper involved in his virtue conceives
it: that is, realistically; not with Bull's notion of the realism of the
butcher's shop and the pendent legs of mutton and blocks of beef painted
raw and glaring in their streaks, but with the realism of the active
brain and heart conjoined. The reasons for the division of Celt and
Saxon, what they think and say of one another, often without knowing that
they are divided, and the wherefore of our abusing of ourselves, brave
England, our England of the ancient fortitude and the future incarnation,
can afford to hear. Why not in a tale? It is he, your all for animal
pleasure in the holiday he devours and cannot enjoy, whose example
teaches you to shun the plaguey tale that carries fright: and so you find
him sour at business and sick of his relaxings, hating both because he
harnesses himself in turn bestially to each, growling at the smallest
admixture of them, when, if he would but chirp a little over his work,
and allow his pleasures to inspire a dose of thoughtfulness, he would be
happier, and--who knows?-become a brighter fellow, one to be rescued from
the pole-axe.

Now the rain is over, your carriage is at the door, the country smiles
and the wet highway waves a beckoning hand. We have worn through a cloud
with cloudy discourses, but we are in a land of shifting weathers,
'coelum crebris imbribus ac nebulis foedum,' not every chapter can be
sunshine.




CHAPTER XVII

CROSSING THE RUBICON

Rough weather on the Irish sea discharged a pallid file of passengers
from the boat at Holyhead just as the morning sun struck wave and
mountain with one of the sudden sparkling changes which our South-welters
have in their folds to tell us after a tumultuous night that we have only
been worried by Puck. The scene of frayed waters all rosy-golden, and
golden-banded heathery height, with the tinted sand, breaking to flights
of blue, was resplendent for those of our recent sea-farers who could
lift an eye to enjoy it. Freshness, illumination, then salt air, vivid
distances, were a bath for every sense of life. You could believe the
breast of the mountain to be heaving, the billows to be kissing fingers
to him, the rollers shattered up the cliff to have run to extinction to
scale him. He seemed in his clear-edged mass King of this brave new
boundless world built in a minute out of the wreck of the old.

An hour back the vessel was labouring through rueful chasms under
darkness, and then did the tricksy Southwest administer grisly slaps to
right and left, whizzing spray across the starboard beam, and drenching
the locks of a young lady who sat cloaked and hooded in frieze to teach
her wilfulness a lesson, because she would keep her place on deck from
beginning to end of the voyage. Her faith in the capacity of Irish frieze
to turn a deluge of the deeps driven by an Atlantic gale was shaken by
the time she sighted harbour, especially when she shed showers by
flapping a batlike wing of the cloak, and had a slight shudder to find
herself trickling within.

'Dear! and I'm wet to the skin,' she confided the fact to herself
vocally.

'You would not be advised,' a gentleman beside her said after a delicate
pause to let her impulsive naturalism of utterance fly by unwounded.

'And aren't you the same and worse? And not liking it either, I fear,
Sir!' she replied, for despite a manful smile his complexion was
tell-tale. 'But there 's no harm in salt. But you should have gone down
to the cabin with Father Boyle and you would have been sure of not
catching cold. But, Oh! the beautiful . . . look at it! And it's my first
view of England. Well, then, I'll say it's a beautiful country.'

Her companion looked up at the lighted sky, and down at the pools in
tarpaulin at his feet. He repressed a disposition to shudder, and with
the anticipated ecstasy of soon jumping out of wet clothes into dry, he
said: 'I should like to be on the top of that hill now.'

The young lady's eyes flew to the top.

'They say he looks on Ireland; I love him; and his name is Caer Gybi; and
it was one of our Saints gave him the name, I 've read in books. I'll be
there before noon.'

'You want to have a last gaze over to Erin?'

'No, it's to walk and feel the breeze. But I do, though.'

'Won't you require a little rest?'

'Sure and I've had it sitting here all night!' said she.

He laughed: the reason for the variation of exercise was conclusive.

Father Boyle came climbing up the ladder, uncertain of his legs; he
rolled and snatched and tottered on his way to them, and accepted the
gentleman's help of an arm, saying: 'Thank ye, thank ye, and good
morning, Mr. Colesworth. And my poor child! what sort of a night has it
been above, Kathleen?'

He said it rather twinkling, and she retorted:

'What sort of a night has it been below, Father Boyle?' Her twinkle was
livelier than his, compassionate in archness.

'Purgatory past is good for contemplation, my dear. 'Tis past, and
there's the comfort! You did well to be out of that herring-barrel, Mr.
Colesworth. I hadn't the courage, or I would have burst from it to take a
ducking with felicity. I haven't thrown up my soul; that's the most I can
say. I thought myself nigh on it once or twice. And an amazing kind
steward it was, or I'd have counted the man for some one else. Surely
'tis a glorious morning?'

Mr. Colesworth responded heartily in praise of the morning. He was
beginning to fancy that he felt the warmth of spring sunshine on his
back. He flung up his head and sniffed the air, and was very like a horse
fretful for the canter; so like as to give Miss Kathleen an idea of the
comparison. She could have rallied him; her laughing eyes showed the
readiness, but she forbore, she drank the scene. Her face, with the
threaded locks about forehead and cheeks, and the dark, the blue, the
rosy red of her lips, her eyes, her hair, was just such a south-western
sky as April drove above her, the same in colour and quickness; and much
of her spirit was the same, enough to stand for a resemblance. But who
describes the spirit? No one at the gates of the field of youth. When
Time goes reaping he will gather us a sheaf, out of which the picture
springs.

'There's our last lurch, glory to the breakwater!' exclaimed Father
Boyle, as the boat pitched finally outside the harbour fence, where a
soft calm swell received them with the greeting of civilised sea-nymphs.
'The captain'll have a quieter passage across. You may spy him on the
pier. We'll be meeting him on the landing.'

'If he's not in bed, from watching the stars all night,' said Miss
Kathleen.

'He must have had a fifty-lynx power of sight for that, my dear.'

'They did appear, though, and wonderfully bright,' she said. 'I saw them
come out and go in. It's not all cloud when the high wind blows.'

'You talk like a song, Kathleen.'

'Couldn't I rattle a throat if I were at home, Father!'

'Ah! we're in the enemy's country now.'

Miss Kathleen said she would go below to get the handbags from the
stewardess.

Mr. Colesworth's brows had a little darkened over the Rev. Gentleman's
last remark. He took two or three impatient steps up and down with his
head bent. 'Pardon me; I hoped we had come to a better understanding,' he
said. 'Is it quite fair to the country and to Miss O'Donnell to impress
on her before she knows us that England is the enemy?'

'Habit, Mr. Colesworth, habit! we've got accustomed to the perspective
and speak accordingly. There's a breach visible.'

'I thought you agreed with me that good efforts are being made on our
side to mend the breach.'

'Sir, you have a noble minority at work, no doubt; and I take you for one
of the noblest, as not objecting to stand next to alone.'

'I really thought, judging from our conversation at Mrs. O'Donnell's that
evening, that you were going to hold out a hand and lead your flock to
the right sort of fellowship with us.'

'To submission to the laws, Mr. Colesworth; 'tis my duty to do it as
pastor and citizen.'

'No, to more than that, sir. You spoke with friendly warmth.'

'The atmosphere was genial, if you remember the whisky and the fumes of
our tobacco at one o'clock!'

'I shall recollect the evening with the utmost pleasure. You were kind
enough to instruct me in a good many things I shall be sure to profit by.
I wish I could have spent more time in Ireland. As it is, I like Irishmen
so well that if the whole land were in revolt I should never call it the
enemy's country.'

'Excellently spoken, Mr. Colesworth,' said the priest. 'We 'll hope your
writings may do service to mend the breach. For there is one, as you
know, and more 's the pity; there's one, and it's wide and deep. As my
friend Captain Con O'Donnell says, it's plain to the naked eye as a pair
of particularly fat laundry drawers hung out to dry and ballooned in
extension--if mayhap you've ever seen the sight of them in that
state:--just held together by a narrow neck of thread or button, and
stretching away like a corpulent frog in the act of swimming on the wind.
His comparison touches the sentiment of disunion, sir.'

Mr. Colesworth had not ever seen such a pair of laundry drawers inflated
to symbolise the breach between Ireland and England; nor probably, if he
had, would the sentiment of national disunion have struck his mind: it
was difficult to him in the description. He considered his Rev. friend to
be something of a slippery fish, while Father Boyle's opinion of him
likewise referred him to an elemental substance, of slow movement-earth,
in short: for he continued to look argumentative after all had been said.

Or perhaps he threw a coveting eye on sweet Miss Kathleen and had his own
idea of mending a stitch of the breach in a quite domestic way. If so,
the Holy Father would have a word to say, let alone Kathleen. The maids
of his Church do not espouse her foes. For the men it is another matter:
that is as the case may be. Temporarily we are in cordial intercourse,
Mr. Colesworth.

Miss Kathleen returned to deck carrying her bags. The gentleman had to
descend, and subsequently an amiable dissension arose on the part of the
young lady and Mr. Colesworth. She, however, yielded one of her bags, and
he, though doubly laden, was happy. All very transparent to pastoral
observation, but why should they not be left to their chirruping
youthfulness? The captain was not in view, and Father Boyle wanted to go
to bed for refreshment, and Kathleen was an airy gossamer, with a boy
running after it, not by any means likely to catch it, or to keep it if
he did. Proceed and trip along, you young ones!

At the hotel they heard that Captain Con O'Donnell was a snug sleeper
upstairs. This, the captain himself very soon informed them, had not been
the kernel of the truth. He had fancied they would not cross the Channel
on so rattlesome a night, or Kathleen would have had an Irish kiss to
greet her landing in England. But the cousinly salute was little delayed,
news of the family in Ireland and England was exchanged, and then Mr.
Colesworth and the captain bowed to an introduction; and the captain, at
mention of his name, immediately cried out that Mr. Colesworth might
perchance be a relative of the highly intelligent admirable lady who had
undertaken the secretaryship, and by her vast ability got the entire
management, of Miss Mattock's benevolent institution, and was conducting
it with such success that it was fast becoming a grief to the generous
heart of the foundress of the same to find it not only self-paying, but
on the road to a fortune, inasmuch as it was already an article in the
decrees of fashion among the nobility and gentry of both sexes in the
metropolis to have their linen and laces washed at the Mattock laundry.

Mr. Colesworth said he was the brother of the lady in question, he had
also the pleasure of an acquaintance with Miss Mattock. He was vehemently
congratulated on the relationship, which bore witness, the captain armed,
to a certain hereditary share of brains greatly to be envied: brother of
Miss Colesworth, a title of distinction in itself! He was congratulated
not less cordially for his being so fortunate as to know Miss Mattock,
one of a million.

Captain Con retained the hand of Father Boyle and squeezed it during his
eulogies, at the same time dispensing nods and winks and sunny sparkles
upon Kathleen. Mr. Colesworth went upstairs to his room not unflattered.
The flattery enveloped him in the pleasant sense of a somehow now
established companionship for the day with a pleasant person from whom he
did not wish to separate.

'You made the gentleman's acquaintance, my dear . . . ?' said Con.

Kathleen answered: 'He made friends with our Patrick on the Continent, I
think it was in Germany, and came to us to study the old country, bearing
a letter from Patrick. He means to be one of their writers on the
newspapers. He studies everything; he has written books. He called on us
coming and called on us going and we came over together,' said Miss
Kathleen. 'But tell me: our Philip?'

'Books!' Con exclaimed. 'It's hard to discover a man in these days who
hasn't written books. Oh! Philip! Ease your heart about Philip. They're
nursing him, round. He was invalided at the right moment for him, no
fear. I gave him his chance of the last vacant seat up to the last hour,
and now the die is cast and this time I 'm off to it. Poor Philip--yes,
yes! we 're sorry to see him flat all his length, we love him; he's a
gallant soldier; alive to his duty; and that bludgeon sun of India
knocked him down, and that fall from his horse finished the business, and
there he lies. But he'll get up, and he might have accepted the seat and
spared me my probation: he's not married, I am, I have a wife, and Master
Philip divides me against my domestic self, he does. But let that be: I
serve duty too. Not a word to our friend up yonder. It's a secret with a
time-fuse warranted to explode safe enough when the minutes are up, and
make a powerful row when it does. It is all right over there, Father
Boyle, I suppose?'

'A walk over! a pure ceremonial,' said the priest, and he yawned
frightfully.

'You're for a nap to recompose you, my dear friend,' remarked the
captain.

'But you haven't confided anything of it to Mrs. Adister?'

'Not a syllable; no. That's to come. There's my contest! I had urgent
business in Ireland, and she 's a good woman, always willing to let me
go. I count on her kindness, there 's no mightier compliment to one's
wife. She'll know it when it's history. She's fond of history. Ay, she
hates fiction, and so I'm proud to tell her I offer her none. She likes a
trifling surprise too, and there she has it. Oh! we can whip up the
business to a nice little bowl of froth-flummery. But it's when the
Parliamentary voting is on comes the connubial pull. She's a good woman,
a dear good soul, but she's a savage patriot; and Philip might have saved
his kinsman if he had liked. He had only to say the word: I could have
done all the business for him, and no contest to follow by my fireside.
He's on his couch--Mars convalescent: a more dreadful attraction to the
ladies than in his crimson plumes! If the fellow doesn't let slip his
opportunity! with his points of honour and being an Irish Bayard. Why
Bayard in the nineteenth century's a Bedlamite, Irish or no. So I tell
him. There he is; you'll see him, Kathleen: and one of them as big an
heiress as any in England. Philip's no fool, you'll find.'

'Then he's coming all right, is he?' said Kathleen.

'He 's a soldier, and a good one, but he 's nothing more, and as for
patriotic inflammation, doesn't know the sensation.'

'Oh! but he's coming round, and you'll go and stroke down mother with
that,' Kathleen cried. 'Her heart's been heavy, with Patrick wandering
and Philip on his back. I'll soon be dressed for breakfast.'

Away she went.

'She's got an appetite, and looks like a strapped bit of steel after the
night's tumbling,' said the captain, seeing her trip aloft. 'I'm young as
that too, or not far off it. Stay, I'll order breakfast for four in a
quiet corner where we can converse--which, by the way, won't be possible
in the presence of that gaping oyster of a fellow, who looks as if he
were waiting the return of the tide.'

Father Boyle interposed his hand.

'Not for . . .' he tried to add 'four.' The attempt at a formation of the
word produced a cavernous yawn a volume of the distressful deep to the
beholder.

'Of course,' Captain Con assented. He proposed bed and a sedative
therein, declaring that his experience overnight could pronounce it good,
and that it should be hot. So he led his tired old friend to the bedroom,
asked dozens of questions, flurried a withdrawal of them, suggested the
answers, talked of his Rubicon, praised his wife, delivered a moan on her
behalf, and after assisting to half disrobe the scarce animate figure,
which lent itself like an artist's lay-model to the operation, departed
on his mission of the sedative.

At the breakfast for three he was able to tell Kathleen that the worthy
Father was warm, and on his way to complete restoration.

'Full fathom five the Father lies, in the ocean of sleep, by this time,'
said Con. 'And 'tis a curious fact that every man in that condition seems
enviable to men on their legs. And similarly with death; we'd rather not,
because of a qualm, but the picture of the finish of the leap across is a
taking one. These chops are done as if Nature had mellowed their
juiciness.'

'They are so nice,' Kathleen said.

'You deserve them, if ever girl in this world!'

'I sat on deck all night, and Mr. Colesworth would keep me company.'

'He could hardly do less, having the chance. But that notwithstanding,
I'm under an obligation to your cavalier. And how did you find Ireland,
sir? You've made acquaintance with my cousin, young Mr. Patrick
O'Donnell, I rejoice to hear.'

'Yes, through his hearing or seeing my name and suspecting I had a
sister,' said Mr. Colesworth, who was no longer in the resemblance of a
gaping oyster on the borders of the ebb. 'The country is not disturbed.'

'So the doctor thinks his patient is doing favourably! And you cottoned
to Patrick? And I don't wonder. Where was it?'

'We met in Trieste. He was about to start by one of the Austrian boats
for the East.'

'Not disturbed! no! with a rotten potato inside it paralysing digestion!'
exclaimed Con. 'Now Patrick had been having a peep at Vienna, hadn't he?'

'He had; he was fresh from Vienna when I met him. As to Ireland, the
harvest was only middling good last year.'

'And that's the bit of luck we depend on. A cloud too much, and it's
drowned! Had he seen, do you know, anybody in Vienna?--you were not long
together at Trieste?'

Mr. Colesworth had sufficient quickness to perceive that the two
questions could be answered as one, and saying: 'He was disappointed,'
revealed that he and Patrick had been long enough together to come to
terms of intimacy.

'To be sure, he gave you a letter of introduction to his family!' said
Con. 'And permit me to add, that Patrick's choice of a friend is mine on
trust. The lady he was for seeing, Mr. Colesworth, was just then
embarking on an adventure of a romantic character, particularly well
suited to her nature, and the end of it was a trifle sanguinary, and she
suffered a disappointment also, though not perhaps on that account.'

'I heard of it in England last year,' said Mr. Colesworth. 'Did she come
through it safely?'

'Without any personal disfigurement: and is in England now, under her
father's roof, meditating fresh adventures.'

Kathleen cried: 'Ye 're talking of the lady who was Miss Adister--I can
guess--Ah!' She humped her shoulders and sent a shudder up her neck.

'But she's a grand creature, Mr. Colesworth, and you ought to know her,'
said Con. 'That is, if you'd like to have an idea of a young Catherine or
a Semiramisminus an army and a country. There's nothing she's not capable
of aiming at. And there's pretty well nothing and nobody she wouldn't
make use of. She has great notions of the power of the British Press and
the British purse--each in turn as a key to the other. Now for an egg,
Kathleen.'

'I think I'll eat an egg,' Kathleen replied.

'Bless the honey heart of the girl! Life's in you, my dear, and calls for
fuel. I'm glad to see that Mr. Colesworth too can take a sight at the
Sea-God after a night of him. It augurs magnificently for a future
career. And let me tell you that the Pen demands it of us. The first of
the requisites is a stout stomach--before a furnished head! I'd not pass
a man to be anything of a writer who couldn't step ashore from a tempest
and consume his Titan breakfast.'

'We are qualifying for the literary craft, Miss O'Donnell,' said Mr.
Colesworth.

'It's for a walk in the wind up Caer Gybi, and along the coast I mean to
go,' said Kathleen.

'This morning?' the captain asked her.

She saw his dilemma in his doubtful look.

'When I've done. While you're discussing matters with Father Boyle.
I--know you're burning to. Sure it's yourself knows as well as anybody,
Captain Con, that I can walk a day long and take care of my steps. I've
walked the better half of Donegal alone, and this morning I'll have a
protector.'

Captain Con eyed the protector, approved of him, disapproved of himself,
thought of Kathleen as a daughter of Erin--a privileged and inviolate
order of woman in the minds of his countrymen--and wriggling internally
over a remainder scruple said: 'Mr. Colesworth mayhap has to write a bit
in the morning.'

'I'm unattached at present,' the latter said. 'I am neither a
correspondent nor a reporter, and if I were, the event would be wanting.'

'That remark, sir, shows you to be eminently a stranger to the official
duties,' observed the captain. 'Journalism is a maw, and the journalist
has to cram it, and like anything else which perpetually distends for
matter, it must be filled, for you can't leave it gaping, so when nature
and circumstance won't combine to produce the stuff, we have recourse to
the creative arts. 'Tis the necessity of the profession.'

'The profession will not impose that necessity upon me,' remarked the
young practitioner.

'Outside the wheels of the machine, sir, we indulge our hallucination of
immunity. I've been one in the whirr of them, relating what I hadn't
quite heard, and capitulating what I didn't think at all, in spite of the
cry of my conscience--a poor infant below the waters, casting up
ejaculatory bubbles of protestation. And if it is my reproach that I left
it to the perils of drowning, it's my pride that I continued to transmit
air enough to carry on the struggle. Not every journalist can say as
much. The Press is the voice of the mass, and our private opinion is
detected as a discord by the mighty beast, and won't be endured by him.'

'It's better not to think of him quite as a beast,' said Mr. Colesworth.

'Infinitely better: and I like your "guile," sir: But wait and tell me
what you think of him after tossing him his meat for a certain number of
years. There's Rockney. Do you know Rockney? He's the biggest single gun
they've got, and he's mad for this country, but ask him about the public,
you'll hear the menagerie-keeper's opinion of the brute that mauled his
loins.'

'Rockney,' said Mr. Colesworth, 'has the tone of a man disappointed of
the dictatorship.'

'Then you do know Rockney!' shouted Captain Con. 'That's the man in a
neat bit of drawing. He's a grand piece of ordnance. But wait for him
too, and tell me by and by. If it isn't a woman, you'll find, that primes
him, ay, and points him, and what's more, discharges him, I'm not Irish
born. Poor fellow! I pity him. He had a sweet Irish lady for his wife,
and lost her last year, and has been raging astray politically ever
since. I suppose it's hardly the poor creature's fault. None the less,
you know, we have to fight him. And now he 's nibbling at a bait--it 's
fun: the lady I mentioned, with a turn for adventure and enterprise: it's
rare fun: he 's nibbling, he'll be hooked. You must make her
acquaintance, Mr. Colesworth, and hold your own against her, if you can.
She's a niece of my wife's and I'll introduce you. I shall find her in
London, or at our lodgings at a Surrey farm we've taken to nurse my
cousin Captain Philip O'Donnell invalided from Indian awful climate!--on
my return, when I hope to renew the acquaintance. She has beauty, she has
brains. Resist her, and you 'll make a decent stand against Lucifer. And
supposing she rolls you up and pitches you over, her noticing you is a
pretty compliment to your pen. That 'll be consoling.'

Mr. Colesworth fancied, he said, that he was proof against feminine
blandishments in the direction of his writings.

He spoke as one indicating a thread to suggest a cable. The captain
applauded the fancy as a pleasing delusion of the young sprigs of
Journalism.

Upon this, Mr. Colesworth, with all respect for French intelligence,
denied the conclusiveness of French generalisations, which ascribed to
women universal occult dominion, and traced all great affairs to small
intrigues.

The captain's eyes twinkled on him, thinking how readily he would back
smart Miss Kathleen to do the trick, if need were.

He said to her before she started: 'Don't forget he may be a clever
fellow with that pen of his, and useful to our party.'

'I'll not forget,' said she.

For the good of his party, then, Captain Con permitted her to take the
walk up Caer Gybi alone with Mr. Colesworth: a memorable walk in the
recollections of the scribe, because of the wonderful likeness of the
young lady to the breezy weather and the sparkles over the deep, the
cloud that frowned, the cloud that glowed, the green of the earth
greening out from under wings of shadow, the mountain ranges holding
hands about an immensity of space. It was one of our giant days to his
emotions, and particularly memorable to him through the circumstance that
it insisted on a record in verse, and he was unused to the fetters of
metre: and although the verse was never seen by man, his attempt at it
confused his ideas of his expressive powers. Oddly too, while scourging
the lines with criticism, he had a fondness for them: they stamped a
radiant day in his mind, beyond the resources of rhetoric to have done it
equally.

This was the day of Captain Con's crossing the Rubicon between the secret
of his happiness and a Parliamentary career.




CHAPTER XVIII

CAPTAIN CON'S LETTER

Women may be able to tell you why the nursing of a military invalid
awakens tenderer anxieties in their bosoms than those called forth by the
drab civilian. If we are under sentence of death we are all of us
pathetic of course; but stretched upon the debateable couch of sickness
we are not so touching as the coloured coat: it has the distinction
belonging to colour. It smites a deeper nerve, or more than one; and
this, too, where there is no imaginary subjection to the charms of
military glory, in minds to which the game of war is lurid as the plumes
of the arch-slayer.

Jane Mattock assisting Mrs. Adister O'Donnell to restore Captain Philip
was very singularly affected, like a person shut off on a sudden from her
former theories and feelings. Theoretically she despised the soldier's
work as much as she shrank abhorrently from bloodshed. She regarded him
and his trappings as an ensign of our old barbarism, and could peruse
platitudes upon that theme with enthusiasm. The soldier personally, she
was accustomed to consider an inferior intelligence: a sort of schoolboy
when young, and schoolmaster when mature a visibly limited creature, not
a member of our broader world. Without dismissing any of these views she
found them put aside for the reception of others of an opposite
character; and in her soul she would have ascribed it to her cares of
nursing that she had become thoughtful, doubtful, hopeful, even
prayerful, surcharged with zeal, to help to save a good sword for the
country. If in a world still barbarous we must have soldiers, here was
one whom it would be grievous to lose. He had fallen for the country; and
there was a moving story of how he had fallen. She inclined to think more
highly of him for having courted exposure on a miserable frontier war
where but a poor sheaf of glory could be gathered. And he seemed to
estimate his professional duties apart from an aim at the laurels. A
conception of the possibility of a man's being both a soldier and morally
a hero edged its way into her understanding. It stood edgeways within,
desirous of avoiding a challenge to show every feature.

The cares of nursing were Jane's almost undividedly, except for the aid
she had from her friend Grace Barrow and from Miss Colesworth. Mrs.
Adister O'Donnell was a nurse in name only. 'She'll be seen by Philip
like as if she were a nightmare apparition of his undertaker's wraith,'
Captain Con said to Jane, when recommending his cousin to her charitable
nature, after he had taken lodgings at a farmhouse near Mrs. Lackstraw's
model farm Woodside on the hills. 'Barring the dress,' as he added, some
such impression of her frigid mournfulness might have struck a recumbent
invalid. Jane acknowledged it, and at first induced her aunt to join her
in the daily walk of half a mile to sit with him. Mrs. Lackstraw was a
very busy lady at her farm; she was often summoned to London by her
intuition of John's wish to have her presiding at table for the
entertainment of his numerous guests; she confessed that she supervised
the art of nursing better than she practised it, and supervision can be
done at a distance if the subordinate is properly attentive to the rules
we lay down, as Jane appeared to be. So Jane was left to him. She loved
the country; Springtide in the country set her singing; her walk to her
patient at Lappett's farm and homeward was an aethereal rapture for a
heart rocking easy in fulness. There was nothing to trouble it, no hint
of wild winds and heavy seas, not even the familiar insinuation from the
vigilant monitress, her aunt, to bid her be on her guard, beware of what
it is that great heiresses are courted for, steel her heart against
serpent speeches, see well to have the woman's precious word No at the
sentinel's post, and alert there. Mrs. Lackstraw, the most vigilant and
plain-spoken of her sex, had forborne to utter the usual warnings which
were to preserve Miss Mattock for her future Earl or Duke and the reason
why she forbore was a double one; a soldier and Papist could never be
thought perilous to a young woman scorning the sons of Mars and slaves of
sacerdotalism. The picture of Jane bestowing her hand on a Roman Catholic
in military uniform, refused to be raised before the mind.
Charitableness, humaneness, the fact that she was an admirable nurse and
liked to exercise her natural gift, perfectly accounted for Jane's trips
to Lappett's farm, and the jellies and fresh dairy dainties and neat
little dishes she was constantly despatching to the place. A suggestion
of possible danger might prove more dangerous than silence, by rendering
it attractive. Besides, Jane talked of poor Captain Philip as Patrick
O'Donnell's brother, whom she was bound to serve in return for Patrick's
many services to her; and of how unlike Patrick he was. Mrs. Lackstraw
had been apprehensive about her fancy for Patrick. Therefore if Captain
Philip was unlike him, and strictly a Catholic, according to report, the
suspicion of danger dispersed, and she was allowed to enjoy the pleasures
of the metropolis as frequently as she chose. The nursing of a man of
Letters, or of the neighbour to him, a beggar in rags, would not have
been so tolerated. Thus we perceive that wits actively awake inside the
ring-fence of prepossessions they have erected may lull themselves with
their wakefulness. Who would have thought!--is the cry when the strongest
bulwark of the fence is broken through.

Jane least of any would have thought what was coming to pass. The pale
square-browed young officer, so little Irish and winning in his brevity
of speech, did and said nothing to alarm her or strike the smallest
light. Grace Barrow noticed certain little changes of mood in Jane she
could scarcely have had a distinct suspicion at the time. After a recent
observation of him, on an evening stroll from Lappett's to Woodside, she
pronounced him interesting, but hard. 'He has an interesting head . . . I
should not like to offend him.' They agreed as to his unlikeness to fluid
Patrick; both eulogistic of the absent brother; and Jane, who could be
playful in privacy with friends, clapped a brogue on her tongue to
discourse of Patrick and apostrophise him: 'Oh! Pat, Pat, my dear cousin
Pat! why are you so long away from your desponding Jane? I 'll take to
poetry and write songs, if you don't come home soon. You've put seas
between us, and are behaving to me as an enemy. I know you 'll bring home
a foreign Princess to break the heart of your faithful. But I'll always
praise you for a dear boy, Pat, and wish you happy, and beg the good
gentleman your brother to give me a diploma as nurse to your first-born.
There now!'

She finished smiling brightly, and Grace was a trifle astonished, for her
friend's humour was not as a rule dramatic.

'You really have caught a twang of it from your friend Captain Con; only
you don't rattle the eighteenth letter of the alphabet in the middle of
words.'

'I've tried, and can't persuade my tongue to do it "first off," as boys
say, and my invalid has no brogue whatever to keep me in practice,' Jane
replied. 'One wonders what he thinks of as he lies there by the window.
He doesn't confide it to his hospital nurse.'

'Yes, he would treat her courteously, just in that military style,' said
Grace, realising the hospital attendance.

'It 's the style I like best:--no perpetual personal thankings and
allusions to the trouble he gives!' Jane exclaimed. 'He shows perfect
good sense, and I like that in all things, as you know. A red-haired
young woman chooses to wait on him and bring him flowers--he's brother to
Patrick in his love of wild flowers, at all events!--and he takes it
naturally and simply. These officers bear illness well. I suppose it 's
the drill.'

'Still I think it a horrid profession, dear.'

Grace felt obliged to insist on that: and her 'I think,' though it was
not stressed, tickled Jane's dormant ear to some drowsy wakefulness.

'I think too much honour is paid to it, certainly. But soldiers, of all
men, one would expect to be overwhelmed by a feeling of weakness. He has
never complained; not once. I doubt if he would have complained if Mrs.
Adister had been waiting on him all the while, or not a soul. I can
imagine him lying on the battle-field night after night quietly,
resolving not to groan.'

'Too great a power of self-repression sometimes argues the want of any
emotional nature,' said Grace.

Jane shook her head. She knew a story of him contradicting that.

The story had not recurred to her since she had undertaken her service.
It coloured the remainder of an evening walk home through the beechwoods
and over the common with Grace, and her walk across the same tracks early
in the morning, after Grace had gone to London. Miss Colesworth was
coming to her next week, with her brother if he had arrived in England.
Jane remembered having once been curious about this adventurous man of
Letters who lived by the work of his pen. She remembered comparing him to
one who was compelled to swim perpetually without a ship to give him rest
or land in view. He had made a little money by a book, and was expending
it on travels--rather imprudently, she fancied Emma Colesworth to be
thinking. He talked well, but for the present she was happier in her
prospect of nearly a week of loneliness. The day was one of sunshine,
windless, odorous: one of the rare placid days of April when the pettish
month assumes a matronly air of summer and wears it till the end of the
day. The beech twigs were strongly embrowned, the larches shot up green
spires by the borders of woods and on mounds within, deep ditchbanks
unrolled profuse tangles of new blades, and sharp eyes might light on a
late white violet overlooked by the children; primroses ran along the
banks. Jane had a maxim that flowers should be spared to live their life,
especially flowers of the wilds; she had reared herself on our poets;
hence Mrs. Lackstraw's dread of the arrival of one of the minstrel order:
and the girl, who could deliberately cut a bouquet from the garden, if
requested, would refuse to pluck a wildflower. But now they cried out to
her to be plucked in hosts, they claimed the sacrifice, and it seemed to
her no violation of her sentiment to gather handfuls making a bunch that
would have done honour to the procession of the children's May-day--a day
she excused for the slaughter because her idol and prophet among the
poets, wild nature's interpreter, was that day on the side of the
children. How like a bath of freshness would the thick faintly-fragrant
mass shine to her patient! Only to look at it was medicine! She believed,
in her lively healthfulness, that the look would give him a spring to
health, and she hurried forward to have them in water-the next sacred
obligation to the leaving of them untouched.

She had reared herself on our poets. If much brooding on them will
sometimes create a sentimentalism of the sentiment they inspire, that
also, after our manner of developing, leads to finer civilisation; and as
her very delicate feelings were not always tyrants over her clear and
accurate judgement, they rather tended to stamp her character than lead
her into foolishness. Blunt of speech, quick in sensibility, imaginative,
yet idealistic, she had the complex character of diverse brain and nerve,
and was often a problem to the chief person interested in it. She thought
so decisively, felt so shrinkingly; spoke so flatly, brooded so softly!
Such natures, in the painful effort to reconcile apparent antagonism and
read themselves, forget that they are not full grown. Longer than others
are they young: but meanwhile they are of an age when we are driven
abroad to seek and shape our destinies.

Passing through the garden-gate of Lappett's farm she made her way to the
south-western face of the house to beg a bowl of water of the farmer's
wife, and had the sweet surprise of seeing her patient lying under
swallows' eaves on a chair her brother had been commissioned to send from
London for coming uses. He was near the farm-wife's kitchen, but to
windward of the cooking-reek, pleasantly warmed, sufficiently shaded, and
alone, with open letter on the rug covering his legs. He whistled to
Jane's dog Wayland, a retriever, having Newfoundland relationships, of
smithy redness and ruggedness; it was the whistle that startled her to
turn and see him as she was in the act of handing Mrs. Lappett her
primroses.

'Out? I feared it would be a week. Is it quite prudent?' Jane said,
toning down her delight.

He answered with the half-smile that refers these questions to the
settled fact. Air had always brought him round; now he could feel he was
embarked for recovery: and he told her how the farmer and one of his men
had lent a shoulder to present him to his old and surest
physician--rather like a crippled ghost. M. Adister was upstairs in bed
with one of her headaches. Captain Con, then, was attending her, Jane
supposed: She spoke of him as the most devoted of husbands.

A slight hardening of Philip's brows, well-known to her by this time,
caused her to interrogate his eyes. They were fixed on her in his manner
of gazing with strong directness. She read the contrary opinion, and some
hieroglyphic matter besides.

'We all respect him for his single-hearted care of her,' she said. 'I
have a great liking for him. His tirades about the Saxon tyrant are not
worth mentioning, they mean nothing. He would be one of the first to rush
to the standard if there were danger; I know he would. He is truly
chivalrous, I am sure.'

Philip's broad look at her had not swerved. The bowl of primroses placed
beside him on a chair by the farmer's dame diverted it for a moment.

'You gathered them?' he said.

Jane drank his look at the flowers.

'Yes, on my way,' she replied. 'We can none of us live for ever; and
fresh water every day will keep them alive a good long time. They had it
from the clouds yesterday. Do they not seem a bath of country happiness!'
Evidently they did their service in pleasing him.

Seeing his fingers grope on the rug, she handed him his open letters.

He selected the second, passing under his inspection, and asked her to
read it.

She took the letter, wondering a little that it should be in Captain
Con's handwriting.

'I am to read it through?' she said, after a run over some lines.

He nodded. She thought it a sign of his friendliness in sharing family
secrets with her, and read:

'MY DEAR PHILIP,--Not a word of these contents, which will be delivered
seasonably to the lady chiefly concerned, by the proper person. She hears
this morning I 'm off on a hasty visit to Ireland, as I have been
preparing her of late to expect I must, and yours the blame, if any,
though I will be the last to fling it at you. I meet Father B. and pretty
Kitty before I cross. Judging by the wind this morning, the passage will
furnish good schooling for a spell of the hustings. But if I am in the
nature of things unable to command the waves, trust me for holding a mob
in leash; and they are tolerably alike. My spirits are up. Now the die is
cast. My election to the vacancy must be reckoned beforehand. I promise
you a sounding report from the Kincora Herald. They will not say of me
after that (and read only the speeches reported in the local paper) "what
is the man but an Irish adventurer!" He is a lover of his country, Philip
O'Donnell, and one of millions, we will hope. And that stigmatic title of
long standing, more than anything earthly, drove him to the step-to the
ruin of his domestic felicity perhaps. But we are past sighing.

'Think you, when he crossed the tide, Caius Julius Caesar sighed?

'No, nor thought of his life, nor his wife, but of the thing to be done.
Laugh, my boy! I know what I am about when I set my mind on a powerful
example. As the chameleon gets his colour, we get our character from the
objects we contemplate . . .'

Jane glanced over the edge of the letter sheet rosily at Philip.

His dryness in hitting the laughable point diverted her, and her mind
became suffused with a series of pictures of the chameleon captain
planted in view of the Roman to become a copy of him, so that she did not
peruse the terminating lines with her wakefullest attention:

'The liege lady of my heart will be the earliest to hail her hero
triumphant, or cherish him beaten--which is not in the prospect. Let
Ireland be true to Ireland. We will talk of the consolidation of the
Union by and by. You are for that, you say, when certain things are done;
and you are where I leave you, on the highway, though seeming to go at a
funeral pace to certain ceremonies leading to the union of the two
countries in the solidest fashion, to their mutual benefit, after a
shining example. Con sleeps with a corner of the eye open, and you are
not the only soldier who is a strategist, and a tactician too, aware of
when it is best to be out of the way. Now adieu and pax vobiscum. Reap
the rich harvest of your fall to earth. I leave you in the charge of the
kindest of nurses, next to the wife of my bosom the best of women.
Appreciate her, sir, or perish in my esteem. She is one whom not to love
is to be guilty of an offence deserving capital punishment, and a
bastinado to season the culprit for his execution. Have I not often
informed her myself that a flower from her hand means more than treasures
from the hands of others. Expect me absent for a week. The harangues will
not be closely reported. I stand by the truth, which is my love of the
land of my birth. A wife must come second to that if she would be first
in her husband's consideration. Hurrah me on, Philip, now it is action,
and let me fancy I hear you shouting it.'

The drop of the letter to the signature fluttered affectionately on a
number of cordial adjectives, like the airy bird to his home in the corn.




CHAPTER XIX

MARS CONVALESCENT

Jane's face was clear as the sky when she handed the letter back to
Philip. In doing so, it struck her that the prolonged directness of his
look was peculiar: she attributed it to some effect of the fresh Spring
atmosphere on a weakened frame. She was guessing at his reasons for
showing her the letter, and they appeared possibly serious.

'An election to Parliament! Perhaps Mrs. Adister should have a hint of
it, to soften the shock I fear it may be: but we must wait till her
headache has passed,' she said.

'You read to the end?' said Philip.

'Yes, Captain Con always amuses me, and I am bound to confess I have no
positive disrelish of his compliments. But this may prove a desperate
step. The secret of his happiness is in extreme jeopardy. Nothing would
stop him, I suppose?'

Philip signified that it was too late. He was moreover of opinion, and
stated it in his briefest, that it would be advisable to leave the
unfolding of the present secret to the captain.

Jane wondered why the letter had been shown. Her patient might be annoyed
and needing sympathy?

'After all,' she said, 'Captain Con may turn out to be a very good sort
of member of Parliament in his way.'

Philip's eyebrows lifted, and he let fall a breath, eloquent of his
thoughts.

'My brother says he is a serviceable director of the Company they are
associated in.'

'He finds himself among reasonable men, and he is a chameleon.'

'Parliament may steady him.'

'It is too much of a platform for Con's head.'

'Yes, there is more of poet than politician,' said she. 'That is a
danger. But he calls himself our friend; I think he really has a liking
for John and me.'

'For you he has a real love,' said Philip.

'Well, then, he may listen to us at times; he may be trusted not to wound
us. I am unmitigatedly for the one country--no divisions. We want all our
strength in these days of monstrous armies directed by banditti Councils.
England is the nation of the Christian example to nations. Oh! surely it
is her aim. At least she strives to be that. I think it, and I see the
many faults we have.'

Her patient's eyelids were down.

She proposed to send her name up to Mrs. Adister.

On her return from the poor lady racked with headache and lying little
conscious of her husband's powder-barrel under the bed, Jane found her
patient being worried by his official nurse, a farm-labourer's wife, a
bundle of a woman, whose lumbering assiduities he fenced with reiterated
humourous negatives to every one of her propositions, until she prefaced
the last two or three of the list with a 'Deary me!' addressed
consolatorily to herself. She went through the same forms each day, at
the usual hours of the day, and Jane, though she would have felt the
apathetic doltishness of the woman less, felt how hard it must be for him
to bear.

'Your sister will be with you soon,' she said. 'I am glad, and yet I hope
you will not allow her to put me aside altogether?'

'You shall do as you wish,' said Philip.

'Is she like Patrick? Her name is Kathleen, I know.'

'She is a raw Irish girl, of good Irish training, but Irish.'

'I hope she will be pleased with England. Like Patrick in face, I mean.'

'We think her a good-looking girl.'

'Does she play? sing?'

'Some of our ballads.'

'She will delight my brother. John loves Irish ballads.'

A silence of long duration fell between them. She fancied he would like
to sleep, and gently rose to slip away, that she might consult with Mrs.
Lappett about putting up some tentcover. He asked her if she was going.
'Not home,' she said. His hand moved, but stopped. It seemed to have
meant to detain her. She looked at a white fleece that came across the
sun, desiring to conjure it to stay and shadow him. It sailed by. She
raised her parasol.

His eyelids were shut, and she thought him asleep. Meditating on her
unanswered question of Miss Kathleen's likeness to Patrick, Jane imagined
a possibly greater likeness to her patient, and that he did not speak of
his family's exclamations on the subject because of Kathleen's being so
good-looking a girl. For if good-looking, a sister must resemble these
handsome features here, quiescent to inspection in their marble outlines
as a corse. So might he lie on the battle-field, with no one to watch
over him!

While she watched, sitting close beside him to shield his head from the
sunbeams, her heart began to throb before she well knew the secret of it.
She had sight of a tear that grew big under the lashes of each of his
eyelids, and rolled heavily. Her own eyes overflowed.

The fit of weeping was momentary, April's, a novelty with her. She
accused her silly visions of having softened her. A hasty smoothing to
right and left removed the traces; they were unseen; and when she
ventured to look at him again there was no sign of fresh drops falling.
His eyelids kept shut.

The arrival of her diurnal basket of provisions offered a refreshing
intervention of the commonplace. Bright air had sharpened his appetite:
he said he had been sure it would, and anticipated cheating the doctor of
a part of the sentence which condemned him to lie on his back up to the
middle of June, a log. Jane was hungry too, and they feasted together
gaily, talking of Kathleen on her journey, her strange impressions and
her way of proclaiming them, and of Patrick and where he might be now;
ultimately of Captain Con and Mrs. Adister.

'He has broken faith with her,' Philip said sternly. 'She will have the
right to tell him so. He never can be anything but a comic politician.
Still he was bound to consult his wife previous to stepping before the
public. He knows that he married a fortune.'

'A good fortune,' said Jane.

Philip acquiesced. 'She is an excellent woman, a model of uprightness;
she has done him all the good in the world, and here is he deceiving her,
lying--there is no other word: and one lie leads to another. When he
married a fortune he was a successful adventurer. The compact was
understood. His duty as a man of honour is to be true to his bond and
serve the lady. Falseness to his position won't wash him clean of the
title.'

Jane pleaded for Captain Con. 'He is chivalrously attentive to her.'

'You have read his letter,' Philip replied.

He crushed her charitable apologies with references to the letter.

'We are not certain that Mrs. Adister will object,' said she.

'Do you see her reading a speech of her husband's?' he remarked.
Presently with something like a moan:

'And I am her guest!'

'Oh! pray, do not think Mrs. Adister will ever allow you to feel the
lightest shadow . . .' said Jane.

'No; that makes it worse.'

Had this been the burden of his thoughts when those two solitary tears
forced their passage?

Hardly: not even in his physical weakness would he consent to weep for
such a cause.

'I forgot to mention that Mrs. Adister has a letter from her husband
telling her he has been called over to Ireland on urgent business,' she
said.

Philip answered: 'He is punctilious.'

'I wish indeed he had been more candid,' Jane assented to the sarcasm.

'In Ireland he is agreeably surprised by the flattering proposal of a
vacant seat, and not having an instant to debate on it, assumes the
consent of the heavenliest wife in Christendom.'

Philip delivered the speech with a partial imitation of Captain Con
addressing his wife on his return as the elected among the pure Irish
party. The effort wearied him.

She supposed he was regretting his cousin's public prominence in the
ranks of the malcontents. 'He will listen to you,' she said, while she
smiled at his unwonted display of mimicry.

'A bad mentor for him. Antics are harmless, though they get us laughed
at,' said Philip.

'You may restrain him from excesses.'

'Were I in that position, you would consider me guilty of greater than
any poor Con is likely to commit.'

'Surely you are not for disunion?'

'The reverse. I am for union on juster terms, that will hold it fast.'

'But what are the terms?'

He must have desired to paint himself as black to her as possible. He
stated the terms, which were hardly less than the affrighting ones blown
across the Irish sea by that fierce party. He held them to be just,
simply sensible terms. True, he spoke of the granting them as a sure
method to rally all Ireland to an ardent love of the British flag. But he
praised names of Irish leaders whom she had heard Mr. Rockney denounce
for disloyal insolence: he could find excuses for them and their
dupes--poor creatures, verily! And his utterances had a shocking
emphasis. Then she was not wrong in her idea of the conspirator's head,
her first impression of him!

She could not quit the theme: doing that would have been to be
indifferent: something urged her to it.

'Are they really your opinions?'

He seemed relieved by declaring that they were.

'Patrick is quite free of them,' said she.

'We will hope that the Irish fever will spare Patrick. He was at a Jesuit
college in France when he was wax. Now he's taking the world.'

'With so little of the Jesuit in him!'

'Little of the worst: a good deal of the best.'

'What is the best?'

'Their training to study. They train you to concentrate the brain upon
the object of study. And they train you to accept service: they fit you
for absolute service: they shape you for your duties in the world; and so
long as they don't smelt a man's private conscience, they are model
masters. Happily Patrick has held his own. Not the Jesuits would have a
chance of keeping a grasp on Patrick! He'll always be a natural boy and a
thoughtful man.'

Jane's features implied a gentle shudder.

'I shake a scarlet cloak to you?' said Philip.

She was directed by his words to think of the scarlet coat. 'I reflect a
little on the substance of things as well,' she said. 'Would not
Patrick's counsels have an influence?'

'Hitherto our Patrick has never presumed to counsel his elder brother.'

'But an officer wearing . . .'

'The uniform! That would have to be stripped off. There'd be an end to
any professional career.'

'You would not regret it?'

'No sorrow is like a soldier's bidding farewell to flag and comrades.
Happily politics and I have no business together. If the country favours
me with active service I'm satisfied for myself. You asked me for my
opinions: I was bound to give them. Generally I let them rest.'

Could she have had the temerity? Jane marvelled at herself.

She doubted that the weighty pair of tears had dropped for the country.
Captain Con would have shed them over Erin, and many of them. Captain
Philip's tone was too plain and positive: he would be a most practical
unhistrionic rebel.

'You would countenance a revolt?' she said, striking at that extreme to
elicit the favourable answer her tones angled for. And it was instantly:

'Not in arms.' He tried an explanation by likening the dissension to a
wrangle in a civilised family over an unjust division of property.

And here, as he was marking the case with some nicety and difficulty, an
itinerant barrel-organ crashed its tragic tale of music put to torture at
the gate. It yelled of London to Jane, throttled the spirits of the
woods, threw a smoke over the country sky, befouled the pure air she
loved.

The instrument was one of the number which are packed to suit all English
tastes and may be taken for a rough sample of the jumble of them, where a
danceless quadrille-tune succeeds a suicidal Operatic melody and is
followed by the weariful hymn, whose last drawl pert polka kicks aside.
Thus does the poor Savoyard compel a rich people to pay for their wealth.
Not without pathos in the abstract perhaps do the wretched machines
pursue their revolutions of their factory life, as incapable of
conceiving as of bestowing pleasure: a bald cry for pennies through the
barest pretence to be agreeable but Jane found it hard to be tolerant of
them out of London, and this one affecting her invalid and Mrs. Adister
must be dismissed. Wayland was growling; he had to be held by the collar.
He spied an objectionable animal. A jerky monkey was attached to the
organ; and his coat was red, his kepi was blue; his tailor had rigged him
as a military gentleman. Jane called to the farm-wife. Philip assured her
he was not annoyed. Jane observed him listening, and by degrees she
distinguished a maundering of the Italian song she had one day sung to
Patrick in his brother's presence.

'I remember your singing that the week before I went to India,' said
Philip, and her scarlet blush flooded her face.

'Can you endure the noise?' she asked him.

'Con would say it shrieks "murder." But I used to like it once.'

Mrs. Lappett came answering to the call. Her children were seen up the
garden setting to one another with squared aprons, responsive to a
livelier measure.

'Bless me, miss, we think it so cheerful!' cried Mrs. Lappett, and
glanced at her young ones harmonious and out of mischief.

'Very well,' said Jane, always considerate for children. She had
forgotten the racked Mrs. Adister.

Now the hymn of Puritanical gloom-the peacemaker with Providence
performing devotional exercises in black bile. The leaps of the children
were dashed. A sallow two or three minutes composed their motions, and
then they jumped again to the step for lively legs. The similarity to the
regimental band heading soldiers on the march from Church might have
struck Philip.

'I wonder when I shall see Patrick!' he said, quickened in spite of
himself by the sham sounds of music to desire changes and surprises.

Jane was wondering whether he could be a man still to brood tearfully
over his old love.

She echoed him. 'And I! Soon, I hope.'

The appearance of Mrs. Adister with features which were the acutest
critical summary of the discord caused toll to be paid instantly, and
they beheld a flashing of white teeth and heard Italian accents. The
monkey saluted militarily, but with painful suggestions of his foregone
drilling in the ceremony.

'We are safe nowhere from these intrusions,' Mrs. Adister said; 'not on
these hills!--and it must be a trial for the wretched men to climb them,
that thing on their backs.'

'They are as accustomed to it as mountain smugglers bearing packs of
contraband,' said Philip.

'Con would have argued him out of hearing before he ground a second
note,' she resumed. 'I have no idea when Con returns from his unexpected
visit to Ireland.'

'Within a fortnight, madam.'

'Let me believe it! You have heard from him? But you are in the air!
exposed! My head makes me stupid. It is now five o'clock. The air begins
to chill. Con will never forgive me if you catch a cold, and I would not
incur his blame.'

The eyes of Jane and Philip shot an exchange.

'Anything you command, madam,' said Philip.

He looked up and breathed his heaven of fresh air. Jane pitied, she could
not interpose to thwart his act of resignation. The farmer, home for tea,
and a footman, took him between them, crutched, while Mrs. Adister said
to Jane: 'The doctor's orders are positive:--if he is to be a man once
more, he must rest his back and not use his legs for months. He was near
to being a permanent cripple from that fall. My brother Edward had one
like it in his youth. Soldiers are desperate creatures.'

'I think Mr. Adister had his fall when hunting, was it not?' said Jane.

'Hunting, my dear.'

That was rather different from a fall on duty before the enemy, incurred
by severe exhaustion after sunstroke! . . .

Jane took her leave of Philip beside his couch of imprisonment in his
room, promising to return in the early morning. He embraced her old dog
Wayland tenderly. Hard men have sometimes a warm affection for dogs.

Walking homeward she likewise gave Wayland a hug. She called him 'dear
old fellow,' and questioned him of his fondness for her, warning him not
to be faithless ever to the mistress who loved him. Was not her old
Wayland as good a protector as the footman Mrs. Adister pressed her to
have at her heels? That he was!

Captain Con's behaviour grieved her. And it certainly revived an ancient
accusation against his countrymen. If he cared for her so much, why had
he not placed confidence in her and commissioned her to speak of his
election to his wife? Irishmen will never be quite sincere!--But why had
his cousin exposed him to one whom he greatly esteemed? However angry he
might be with Con O'Donnell in his disapproval of the captain's conduct,
it was not very considerate to show the poor man to her in his natural
colours. Those words: 'The consolidation of the Union:' sprang up. She
had a dim remembrance of words ensuing: 'ceremonies going at a funeral
pace . . . on the highway to the solidest kind of union:'--Yes, he wrote:
'I leave you to . . .' And Captain Philip showed her the letter:

She perceived motives beginning to stir. He must have had his intention:
and now as to his character!--Jane was of the order of young women
possessing active minds instead of figured paste-board fronts, who see
what there is to be seen about them and know what may be known instead of
decorously waiting for the astonishment of revelations. As soon as she
had asked herself the nature of the design of so honourable a man as
Captain Philip in showing her his cousin's letter, her blood spun round
and round, waving the reply as a torch; and the question of his character
confirmed it.

But could he be imagined seeking to put her on her guard? There may be
modesty in men well aware of their personal attractions: they can credit
individual women with powers of resistance. He was not vain to the degree
which stupefies the sense of there being weight or wisdom in others. And
he was honour's own. By these lights of his character she read the act.
His intention was . . . and even while she saw it accurately, the moment
of keen perception was overclouded by her innate distrust of her claim to
feminine charms. For why should he wish her to understand that he was no
fortune-hunter and treated heiresses with greater reserve than ordinary
women! How could it matter to him?

She saw the tears roll. Tears of men sink plummet-deep; they find their
level. The tears of such a man have more of blood than of water in
them.--What was she doing when they fell? She was shading his head from
the sun. What, then, if those tears came of the repressed desire to thank
her with some little warmth? He was honour's own, and warmhearted Patrick
talked of him as a friend whose heart was, his friend's. Thrilling to
kindness, and, poor soul! helpless to escape it, he felt perhaps that he
had never thanked her, and could not. He lay there, weak and tongue-tied:
hence those two bright volumes of his condition of weakness.

So the pursuit of the mystery ended, as it had commenced, in confusion,
but of a milder sort and partially transparent at one or two of the gates
she had touched. A mind capable of seeing was twisted by a nature that
would not allow of open eyes; yet the laden emotions of her nature
brought her round by another channel to the stage neighbouring sight,
where facts, dimly recognised for such--as they may be in truth, are
accepted under their disguises, because disguise of them is needed by the
bashful spirit which accuses itself of audaciousness in presuming to
speculate. Had she asked herself the reason of her extended speculation,
her foot would not have stopped more abruptly on the edge of a torrent
than she on that strange road of vapours and flying lights. She did not;
she sang, she sent her voice through the woods and took the splendid ring
of it for an assurance of her peculiarly unshackled state. She loved this
liberty. Of the men who had 'done her the honour,' not one had moved her
to regret the refusal. She lived in the hope of simply doing good, and
could only give her hand to a man able to direct and help her; one who
would bear to be matched with her brother. Who was he? Not discoverable;
not likely to be.

Therefore she had her freedom, an absolutely unflushed freedom, happier
than poor Grace Barrow's. Rumour spoke of Emma Colesworth having a wing
clipped. How is it that sensible women can be so susceptible? For,
thought Jane, the moment a woman is what is called in love, she can give
her heart no longer to the innocent things about her; she is cut away
from Nature: that pure well-water is tasteless to her. To me it is wine!

The drinking of the pure well-water as wine is among the fatal signs of
fire in the cup, showing Nature at work rather to enchain the victim than
bid her daughter go. Jane of course meant the poet's 'Nature.' She did
not reflect that the strong glow of poetic imagination is wanted to
hallow a passionate devotion to the inanimate for this evokes the
spiritual; and passionateness of any kind in narrower brains should be a
proclamation to us of sanguine freshets not coming from a spiritual
source. But the heart betraying deluded her. She fancied she had not ever
been so wedded to Nature as on that walk through the bursting beechwoods,
that sweet lonely walk, perfect in loneliness, where even a thought of a
presence was thrust away as a desecration and images of souls in thought
were shadowy.

Her lust of freedom gave her the towering holiday. She took the delirium
in her own pure fashion, in a love of the bankside flowers and the downy
edges of the young beech-buds fresh on the sprays. And it was no unreal
love, though too intent and forcible to win the spirit from the object.
She paid for this indulgence of her mood by losing the spirit entirely.
At night she was a spent rocket. What had gone she could not tell: her
very soul she almost feared. Her glorious walk through the wood seemed
burnt out. She struck a light to try her poet on the shelf of the elect
of earth by her bed, and she read, and read flatness. Not his the fault!
She revered him too deeply to lay it on him. Whose was it? She had a
vision of the gulfs of bondage.

Could it be possible that human persons were subject to the spells of
persons with tastes, aims, practices, pursuits alien to theirs? It was a
riddle taxing her to solve it for the resistance to a monstrous iniquity
of injustice, degrading her conception of our humanity. She attacked it
in the abstract, as a volunteer champion of our offended race. And Oh! it
could not be. The battle was won without a blow.

Thereupon came glimpses of the gulfs of bondage, delicious,
rose-enfolded, foreign; they were chapters of soft romance, appearing
interminable, an endless mystery, an insatiable thirst for the mystery.
She heard crashes of the opera-melody, and despising it even more than
the wretched engine of the harshness, she was led by it, tyrannically led
a captive, like the organ-monkey, until perforce she usurped the note,
sounded the cloying tune through her frame, passed into the vulgar
sugariness, lost herself.

And saying to herself: This is what moves them! she was moved. One thrill
of appreciation drew her on the tide, and once drawn from shore she
became submerged. Why am I not beautiful, was her thought. Those
voluptuous modulations of melting airs are the natural clothing of
beautiful women. Beautiful women may believe themselves beloved. They are
privileged to believe, they are born with the faith.




     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS

     A country of compromise goes to pieces at the first cannon-shot
     A lady's company-smile
     A superior position was offered her by her being silent
     A whisper of cajolery in season is often the secret
     A contented Irishman scarcely seems my countryman
     Ah! we're in the enemy's country now
     And it's one family where the dog is pulled by the collar
     Arch-devourer Time
     As secretive as they are sensitive
     As if she had never heard him previously enunciate the formula
     Be politic and give her elbow-room for her natural angles
     Beautiful women may believe themselves beloved
     Becoming air of appropriation that made it family history
     Constitutionally discontented
     Could peruse platitudes upon that theme with enthusiasm
     Decency's a dirty petticoat in the Garden of Innocence
     England's the foremost country of the globe
     Enjoys his luxuries and is ashamed of his laziness
     Fires in the grates went through the ceremony of warming nobody
     Foamy top is offered and gulped as equivalent to an idea
     Foist on you their idea of your idea at the moment
     Grimaces at a government long-nosed to no purpose
     Hard men have sometimes a warm affection for dogs
     He judged of others by himself
     He was not alive for his own pleasure
     Hear victorious lawlessness appealing solemnly to God the law
     Her aspect suggested the repose of a winter landscape
     Here, where he both wished and wished not to be
     Hug the hatred they packed up among their bundles
     I never saw out of a doll-shop, and never saw there
     I 'm the warming pan, as legitimately I should be
     I detest enthusiasm
     I baint done yet
     Indirect communication with heaven
     Ireland 's the sore place of England
     Irishman there is a barrow trolling a load of grievances
     Irishmen will never be quite sincere
     Irony in him is only eulogy standing on its head
     Lack of precise words admonished him of the virtue of silence
     Loudness of the interrogation precluded thought of an answer
     Love the children of Erin, when not fretted by them
     Loves his poets, can almost understand what poetry means
     Married at forty, and I had to take her shaped as she was
     May lull themselves with their wakefulness
     Men must fight: the law is only a quieter field for them
     Mika! you did it in cold blood?
     Never forget that old Ireland is weeping
     No man can hear the words which prove him a prophet (quietly)
     Not every chapter can be sunshine
     Not likely to be far behind curates in besieging an heiress
     Not the great creatures we assume ourselves to be
     Not so much read a print as read the imprinting on themselves
     Not to bother your wits, but leave the puzzle to the priest
     Nursing of a military invalid awakens tenderer anxieties
     Old houses are doomed to burnings
     Our lawyers have us inside out, like our physicians
     Paying compliments and spoiling a game!
     Philip was a Spartan for keeping his feelings under
     Secret of the art was his meaning what he said
     Suggestion of possible danger might more dangerous than silence
     Taste a wound from the lightest touch, and they nurse the venom
     Tears of men sink plummet-deep
     Tears of such a man have more of blood than of water in them
     That fiery dragon, a beautiful woman with brains
     The race is for domestic peace, my boy
     They laugh, but they laugh extinguishingly
     Time, whose trick is to turn corners of unanticipated sharpness
     Twisted by a nature that would not allow of open eyes
     We're all of us hit at last, and generally by our own weapon
     We're smitten to-day in our hearts and our pockets
     Welsh blood is queer blood
     Where one won't and can't, poor t' other must
     Winds of panic are violently engaged in occupying the vacuum
     With a frozen fish of admirable principles for wife
     With death; we'd rather not, because of a qualm
     Withdrew into the entrenchments of contempt
     Woman's precious word No at the sentinel's post, and alert
     Would like to feel he was doing a bit of good
     You'll tell her you couldn't sit down in her presence undressed






THE ENTIRE SHORT WORKS OF GEORGE MEREDITH


CONTENTS:
   Farina
   Case of General Ople
   The Tale of Chloe
   The House on the Beach
   The Gentleman of Fifty
   The Sentimentalists
   Miscellaneous Prose




FARINA

By George Meredith



THE WHITE ROSE CLUB

In those lusty ages when the Kaisers lifted high the golden goblet of
Aachen, and drank, elbow upward, the green-eyed wine of old romance,
there lived, a bow-shot from the bones of the Eleven Thousand Virgins and
the Three Holy Kings, a prosperous Rhinelander, by name Gottlieb
Groschen, or, as it was sometimes ennobled, Gottlieb von Groschen; than
whom no wealthier merchant bartered for the glory of his ancient
mother-city, nor more honoured burgess swallowed impartially red juice
and white under the shadow of his own fig-tree.

Vine-hills, among the hottest sun-bibbers of the Rheingau, glistened in
the roll of Gottlieb's possessions; corn-acres below Cologne;
basalt-quarries about Linz; mineral-springs in Nassau, a legacy of the
Romans to the genius and enterprise of the first of German traders. He
could have bought up every hawking crag, owner and all, from Hatto's
Tower to Rheineck. Lore-ley, combing her yellow locks against the
night-cloud, beheld old Gottlieb's rafts endlessly stealing on the
moonlight through the iron pass she peoples above St. Goar. A wailful
host were the wives of his raftsmen widowed there by her watery music!

This worthy citizen of Cologne held vasty manuscript letters of the
Kaiser addressed to him:

'Dear Well-born son and Subject of mine, Gottlieb!' and he was easy with
the proudest princes of the Holy German Realm. For Gottlieb was a
money-lender and an honest man in one body. He laid out for the plenteous
harvests of usury, not pressing the seasons with too much rigour. 'I sow
my seed in winter,' said he, 'and hope to reap good profit in autumn; but
if the crop be scanty, better let it lie and fatten the soil.'

'Old earth's the wisest creditor,' he would add; 'she never squeezes the
sun, but just takes what he can give her year by year, and so makes sure
of good annual interest.'

Therefore when people asked Gottlieb how he had risen to such a pinnacle
of fortune, the old merchant screwed his eye into its wisest corner, and
answered slyly, 'Because I 've always been a student of the heavenly
bodies'; a communication which failed not to make the orbs and systems
objects of ardent popular worship in Cologne, where the science was long
since considered alchymic, and still may be.

Seldom could the Kaiser go to war on Welschland without first taking
earnest counsel of his Well-born son and Subject Gottlieb, and lightening
his chests. Indeed the imperial pastime must have ceased, and the Kaiser
had languished but for him. Cologne counted its illustrious citizen
something more than man. The burghers doffed when he passed; and scampish
leather-draggled urchins gazed after him with praeternatural respect on
their hanging chins, as if a gold-mine of great girth had walked through
the awe-struck game.

But, for the young men of Cologne he had a higher claim to reverence as
father of the fair Margarita, the White Rose of Germany; a noble maiden,
peerless, and a jewel for princes.

The devotion of these youths should give them a name in chivalry. In her
honour, daily and nightly, they earned among themselves black bruises and
paraded discoloured countenances, with the humble hope to find it
pleasing in her sight. The tender fanatics went in bands up and down
Rhineland, challenging wayfarers and the peasantry with staff and beaker
to acknowledge the supremacy of their mistress. Whoso of them journeyed
into foreign parts, wrote home boasting how many times his head had been
broken on behalf of the fair Margarita; and if this happened very often,
a spirit of envy was created, which compelled him, when he returned, to
verify his prowess on no less than a score of his rivals. Not to possess
a beauty-scar, as the wounds received in these endless combats were
called, became the sign of inferiority, so that much voluntary maiming
was conjectured to be going on; and to obviate this piece of treachery,
minutes of fights were taken and attested, setting forth that a certain
glorious cut or crack was honourably won in fair field; on what occasion;
and from whom; every member of the White Rose Club keeping his particular
scroll, and, on days of festival and holiday, wearing it haughtily in his
helm. Strangers entering Cologne were astonished at the hideous
appearance of the striplings, and thought they never had observed so ugly
a race; but they were forced to admit the fine influence of beauty on
commerce, seeing that the consumption of beer increased almost hourly.
All Bavaria could not equal Cologne for quantity made away with.

The chief members of the White Rose Club were Berthold Schmidt, the rich
goldsmith's son; Dietrich Schill, son of the imperial saddler; Heinrich
Abt, Franz Endermann, and Ernst Geller, sons of chief burghers, each of
whom carried a yard-long scroll in his cap, and was too disfigured in
person for men to require an inspection of the document. They were
dangerous youths to meet, for the oaths, ceremonies, and recantations
they demanded from every wayfarer, under the rank of baron, were what few
might satisfactorily perform, if lovers of woman other than the fair
Margarita, or loyal husbands; and what none save trained heads and
stomachs could withstand, however naturally manful. The captain of the
Club was he who could drink most beer without intermediate sighing, and
whose face reckoned the proudest number of slices and mixture of colours.
The captaincy was most in dispute between Dietrich Schill and Berthold
Schmidt, who, in the heat and constancy of contention, were gradually
losing likeness to man. 'Good coin,' they gloried to reflect, 'needs no
stamp.'

One youth in Cologne held out against the standing tyranny, and chose to
do beauty homage in his own fashion, and at his leisure. It was Farina,
and oaths were registered against him over empty beer-barrels. An axiom
of the White Rose Club laid it down that everybody must be enamoured of
Margarita, and the conscience of the Club made them trebly suspicious of
those who were not members. They had the consolation of knowing that
Farina was poor, but then he was affirmed a student of Black Arts, and
from such a one the worst might reasonably be feared. He might bewitch
Margarita!

Dietrich Schill was deputed by the Club to sound the White Rose herself
on the subject of Farina, and one afternoon in the vintage season, when
she sat under the hot vine-poles among maiden friends, eating ripe
grapes, up sauntered Dietrich, smirking, cap in hand, with his scroll
trailed behind him.

'Wilt thou?' said Margarita, offering him a bunch.

'Unhappy villain that I am!' replied Dietrich, gesticulating fox-like
refusal; 'if I but accept a favour, I break faith with the Club.'

'Break it to pleasure me,' said Margarita, smiling wickedly.

Dietrich gasped. He stood on tiptoe to see if any of the Club were by,
and half-stretched out his hand. A mocking laugh caused him to draw it
back as if stung. The grapes fell. Farina was at Margarita's feet
offering them in return.

'Wilt thou?' said Margarita, with softer stress, and slight excess of
bloom in her cheeks.

Farina put the purple cluster to his breast, and clutched them hard on
his heart, still kneeling.

Margarita's brow and bosom seemed to be reflections of the streaming
crimson there. She shook her face to the sky, and affected laughter at
the symbol. Her companions clapped hands. Farina's eyes yearned to her
once, and then he rose and joined in the pleasantry.

Fury helped Dietrich to forget his awkwardness. He touched Farina on the
shoulder with two fingers, and muttered huskily: 'The Club never allow
that.'

Farina bowed, as to thank him deeply for the rules of the Club. 'I am not
a member, you know,' said he, and strolled to a seat close by Margarita.

Dietrich glared after him. As head of a Club he understood the use of
symbols. He had lost a splendid opportunity, and Farina had seized it.
Farina had robbed him.

'May I speak with Mistress Margarita?' inquired the White Rose chief, in
a ragged voice.

'Surely, Dietrich! do speak,' said Margarita.

'Alone?' he continued.

'Is that allowed by the Club?' said one of the young girls, with a saucy
glance.

Dietrich deigned no reply, but awaited Margarita's decision. She
hesitated a second; then stood up her full height before him; faced him
steadily, and beckoned him some steps up the vine-path. Dietrich bowed,
and passing Farina, informed him that the Club would wring satisfaction
out of him for the insult.

Farina laughed, but answered, 'Look, you of the Club! beer-swilling has
improved your manners as much as fighting has beautified your faces. Go
on; drink and fight! but remember that the Kaiser's coming, and fellows
with him who will not be bullied.'

'What mean you?' cried Dietrich, lurching round on his enemy.

'Not so loud, friend,' returned Farina. 'Or do you wish to frighten the
maidens? I mean this, that the Club had better give as little offence as
possible, and keep their eyes as wide as they can, if they want to be of
service to Mistress Margarita.'

Dietrich turned off with a grunt.

'Now!' said Margarita.

She was tapping her foot. Dietrich grew unfaithful to the Club, and
looked at her longer than his mission warranted. She was bright as the
sunset gardens of the Golden Apples. The braids of her yellow hair were
bound in wreaths, and on one side of her head a saffron crocus was stuck
with the bell downward. Sweetness, song, and wit hung like dews of
morning on her grape-stained lips. She wore a scarlet corset with bands
of black velvet across her shoulders. The girlish gown was thin blue
stuff, and fell short over her firm-set feet, neatly cased in white
leather with buckles. There was witness in her limbs and the way she
carried her neck of an amiable, but capable, dragon, ready, when aroused,
to bristle up and guard the Golden Apples against all save the rightful
claimant. Yet her nether lip and little white chin-ball had a dreamy
droop; her frank blue eyes went straight into the speaker: the dragon
slept. It was a dangerous charm. 'For,' says the minnesinger, 'what
ornament more enchants us on a young beauty than the soft slumber of a
strength never yet called forth, and that herself knows not of! It sings
double things to the heart of knighthood; lures, and warns us; woos, and
threatens. 'Tis as nature, shining peace, yet the mother of storm.'

'There is no man,' rapturously exclaims Heinrich von der Jungferweide,
'can resist the desire to win a sweet treasure before which lies a dragon
sleeping. The very danger prattles promise.'

But the dragon must really sleep, as with Margarita.

'A sham dragon, shamming sleep, has destroyed more virgins than all the
heathen emperors,' says old Hans Aepfelmann of Duesseldorf.

Margarita's foot was tapping quicker.

'Speak, Dietrich!' she said.

Dietrich declared to the Club that at this point he muttered, 'We love
you.' Margarita was glad to believe he had not spoken of himself. He then
informed her of the fears entertained by the Club, sworn to watch over
and protect her, regarding Farina's arts.

'And what fear you?' said Margarita.

'We fear, sweet mistress, he may be in league with Sathanas,' replied
Dietrich.

'Truly, then,' said Margarita, 'of all the youths in Cologne he is the
least like his confederate.'

Dietrich gulped and winked, like a patient recovering wry-faced from an
abhorred potion.

'We have warned you, Fraulein Groschen!' he exclaimed. 'It now becomes
our duty to see that you are not snared.'

Margarita reddened, and returned: 'You are kind. But I am a Christian
maiden and not a Pagan soldan, and I do not require a body of tawny
guards at my heels.'

Thereat she flung back to her companions, and began staining her pretty
mouth with grapes anew.




THE TAPESTRY WORD

Fair maids will have their hero in history. Siegfried was Margarita's
chosen. She sang of Siegfried all over the house. 'O the old days of
Germany, when such a hero walked!' she sang.

'And who wins Margarita,' mused Farina, 'happier than Siegfried, has in
his arms Brunhild and Chrimhild together!'

Crowning the young girl's breast was a cameo, and the skill of some
cunning artist out of Welschland had wrought on it the story of the
Drachenfels. Her bosom heaved the battle up and down.

This cameo was a north star to German manhood, but caused many chaste
expressions of abhorrence from Aunt Lisbeth, Gottlieb's unmarried sister,
who seemed instinctively to take part with the Dragon. She was a
frail-fashioned little lady, with a face betokening the perpetual smack
of lemon, and who reigned in her brother's household when the good wife
was gone. Margarita's robustness was beginning to alarm and shock Aunt
Lisbeth's sealed stock of virtue.

'She must be watched, such a madl as that,' said Aunt Lisbeth. 'Ursula!
what limbs she has!'

Margarita was watched; but the spy being neither foe nor friend, nothing
was discovered against her. This did not satisfy Aunt Lisbeth, whose own
suspicion was her best witness. She allowed that Margarita dissembled
well.

'But,' said she to her niece, 'though it is good in a girl not to flaunt
these naughtinesses in effrontery, I care for you too much not to say--Be
what you seem, my little one!'

'And that am I!' exclaimed Margarita, starting up and towering.

'Right good, my niece,' Lisbeth squealed; 'but now Frau Groschen lies in
God's acre, you owe your duty to me, mind! Did you confess last week?'

'From beginning to end,' replied Margarita.

Aunt Lisbeth fixed pious reproach on Margarita's cameo.

'And still you wear that thing?'

'Why not?' said Margarita.

'Girl! who would bid you set it in such a place save Satan? Oh, thou poor
lost child! that the eyes of the idle youths may be drawn there! and thou
become his snare to others, Margarita! What was that Welsh wandering
juggler but the foul fiend himself, mayhap, thou maiden of sin! They say
he has been seen in Cologne lately. He was swarthy as Satan and limped of
one leg. Good Master in heaven, protect us! it was Satan himself I could
swear!'

Aunt Lisbeth crossed brow and breast.

Margarita had commenced fingering the cameo, as if to tear it away; but
Aunt Lisbeth's finish made her laugh outright.

'Where I see no harm, aunty, I shall think the good God is,' she
answered; 'and where I see there's harm, I shall think Satan lurks.'

A simper of sour despair passed over Aunt Lisbeth. She sighed, and was
silent, being one of those very weak reeds who are easily vanquished and
never overcome.

'Let us go on with the Tapestry, child,' said she.

Now, Margarita was ambitious of completing a certain Tapestry for
presentation to Kaiser Heinrich on his entry into Cologne after his last
campaign on the turbaned Danube. The subject was again her beloved
Siegfried slaying the Dragon on Drachenfels. Whenever Aunt Lisbeth
indulged in any bitter virginity, and was overmatched by Margarita's
frank maidenhood, she hung out this tapestry as a flag of truce. They
were working it in bits, not having contrivances to do it in a piece.
Margarita took Siegfried and Aunt Lisbeth the Dragon. They shared the
crag between them. A roguish gleam of the Rhine toward Nonnenwerth could
be already made out, Roland's Corner hanging like a sentinel across the
chanting island, as one top-heavy with long watch.

Aunt Lisbeth was a great proficient in the art, and had taught Margarita.
The little lady learnt it, with many other gruesome matters, in the
Palatine of Bohemia's family. She usually talked of the spectres of
Hollenbogenblitz Castle in the passing of the threads. Those were dismal
spectres in Bohemia, smelling of murder and the charnel-breath of
midnight. They uttered noises that wintered the blood, and revealed
sights that stiffened hair three feet long; ay, and kept it stiff!

Margarita placed herself on a settle by the low-arched window, and Aunt
Lisbeth sat facing her. An evening sun blazoned the buttresses of the
Cathedral, and shadowed the workframes of the peaceful couple to a
temperate light. Margarita unrolled a sampler sheathed with twists of
divers coloured threads, and was soon busy silver-threading Siegfried's
helm and horns.

'I told you of the steward, poor Kraut, did I not, child?' inquired Aunt
Lisbeth, quietly clearing her throat.

'Many times!' said Margarita, and went on humming over her knee

             'Her love was a Baron,
              A Baron so bold;
             She loved him for love,
              He loved her for gold.'

'He must see for himself, and be satisfied,' continued Aunt Lisbeth; 'and
Holy Thomas to warn him for an example! Poor Kraut!'

'Poor Kraut!' echoed Margarita.

       'The King loved wine, and the Knight loved wine,
         And they loved the summer weather:
        They might have loved each other well,
         But for one they loved together.'

'You may say, poor Kraut, child!' said Aunt Lisbeth. 'Well! his face was
before that as red as this dragon's jaw, and ever after he went about as
white as a pullet's egg. That was something wonderful!' 'That was it!'
chimed Margarita.

          'O the King he loved his lawful wife,
            The Knight a lawless lady:
          And ten on one-made ringing strife,
            Beneath the forest shady.'

'Fifty to one, child!' said Aunt Lisbeth: 'You forget the story. They
made Kraut sit with them at the jabbering feast, the only mortal there.
The walls were full of eye-sockets without eyes, but phosphorus instead,
burning blue and damp.'

'Not to-night, aunty dear! It frightens me so,' pleaded Margarita, for
she saw the dolor coming.

'Night! when it's broad mid-day, thou timid one! Good heaven take pity on
such as thou! The dish was seven feet in length by four broad. Kraut
measured it with his eye, and never forgot it. Not he! When the
dish-cover was lifted, there he saw himself lying, boiled!

"'I did not feel uncomfortable then," Kraut told us. "It seemed natural."

'His face, as it lay there, he says, was quite calm, only a little
wrinkled, and piggish-looking-like. There was the mole on his chin, and
the pucker under his left eyelid. Well! the Baron carved. All the guests
were greedy for a piece of him. Some cried out for breast; some for toes.
It was shuddering cold to sit and hear that! The Baroness said, "Cheek!"'

'Ah!' shrieked Margarita, 'that can I not bear! I will not hear it, aunt;
I will not!'

'Cheek!' Aunt Lisbeth reiterated, nodding to the floor.

Margarita put her fingers to her ears.

'Still, Kraut says, even then he felt nothing odd. Of course he was
horrified to be sitting with spectres as you and I should be; but the
first tremble of it was over. He had plunged into the bath of horrors,
and there he was. I 've heard that you must pronounce the names of the
Virgin and Trinity, sprinkling water round you all the while for three
minutes; and if you do this without interruption, everything shall
disappear. So they say. "Oh! dear heaven of mercy!" says Kraut, "what I
felt when the Baron laid his long hunting-knife across my left cheek!"'

Here Aunt Lisbeth lifted her eyes to dote upon Margarita's fright. She
was very displeased to find her niece, with elbows on the window-sill and
hands round her head, quietly gazing into the street.

She said severely, 'Where did you learn that song you were last singing,
Margarita? Speak, thou girl!'

Margarita laughed.

       'The thrush, and the lark, and the blackbird,
         They taught me how to sing:
        And O that the hawk would lend his eye,
         And the eagle lend his wing.'

'I will not hear these shameless songs,' exclaimed Aunt Lisbeth.

       'For I would view the lands they view,
         And be where they have been:
        It is not enough to be singing
         For ever in dells unseen!'

A voice was heard applauding her. 'Good! right good! Carol again,
Gretelchen! my birdie!'

Margarita turned, and beheld her father in the doorway. She tripped
toward him, and heartily gave him their kiss of meeting. Gottlieb glanced
at the helm of Siegfried.

'Guessed the work was going well; you sing so lightsomely to-day, Grete!
Very pretty! And that's Drachenfels? Bones of the Virgins! what a bold
fellow was Siegfried, and a lucky, to have the neatest lass in
Deutschland in love with him. Well, we must marry her to Siegfried after
all, I believe! Aha? or somebody as good as Siegfried. So chirrup on, my
darling!'

'Aunt Lisbeth does not approve of my songs,' replied Margarita,
untwisting some silver threads.

'Do thy father's command, girl!' said Aunt Lisbeth.

          'And doing his command,
            Should I do a thing of ill,
          I'd rather die to his lovely face,
            Than wanton at his will.'

'There--there,' said Aunt Lisbeth, straining out her fingers; 'you see,
Gottlieb, what over-indulgence brings her to. Not another girl in blessed
Rhineland, and Bohemia to boot, dared say such words!--than--I can't
repeat them!--don't ask me!--She's becoming a Frankish girl!'

'What ballad's that?' said Gottlieb, smiling.

'The Ballad of Holy Ottilia; and her lover was sold to darkness. And she
loved him--loved him----'

'As you love Siegfried, you little one?'

'More, my father; for she saw Winkried, and I never saw Siegfried. Ah! if
I had seen Siegfried! Never mind. She loved him; but she loved Virtue
more. And Virtue is the child of God, and the good God forgave her for
loving Winkried, the Devil's son, because she loved Virtue more, and He
rescued her as she was being dragged down--down--down, and was half
fainting with the smell of brimstone--rescued her and had her carried
into His Glory, head and feet, on the wings of angels, before all men, as
a hope to little maidens.

          'And when I thought that I was lost
            I found that I was saved,
          And I was borne through blessed clouds,
            Where the banners of bliss were waved.'

'And so you think you, too, may fall in, love with Devils' sons, girl?'
was Aunt Lisbeth's comment.

'Do look at Lisbeth's Dragon, little Heart! it's so like!' said Margarita
to her father.

Old Gottlieb twitted his hose, and chuckled.

'She's my girl! that may be seen,' said he, patting her, and wheezed up
from his chair to waddle across to the Dragon. But Aunt Lisbeth tartly
turned the Dragon to the wall.

'It is not yet finished, Gottlieb, and must not be looked at,' she
interposed. 'I will call for wood, and see to a fire: these evenings of
Spring wax cold': and away whimpered Aunt Lisbeth.

Margarita sang:

          'I with my playmates,
            In riot and disorder,
          Were gathering herb and blossom
            Along the forest border.'

'Thy mother's song, child of my heart!' said Gottlieb; 'but vex not good
Lisbeth: she loves thee!'

          'And do you think she loves me?
            And will you say 'tis true?
          O, and will she have me,
            When I come up to woo?'

'Thou leaping doe! thou chattering pie!' said Gottlieb.

          'She shall have ribbons and trinkets,
            And shine like a morn of May,
          When we are off to the little hill-church,
            Our flowery bridal way.'

'That she shall; and something more!' cried Gottlieb. 'But, hark thee,
Gretelchen; the Kaiser will be here in three days. Thou dear one! had I
not stored and hoarded all for thee, I should now have my feet on a
hearthstone where even he might warm his boot. So get thy best dresses
and jewels in order, and look thyself; proud as any in the land. A simple
burgher's daughter now, Grete; but so shalt thou not end, my butterfly,
or there's neither worth nor wit in Gottlieb Groschen!'

'Three days!' Margarita exclaimed; 'and the helm not finished, and the
tapestry-pieces not sewed and joined, and the water not shaded off.--Oh!
I must work night and day.'

'Child! I'll have no working at night! Your rosy cheeks will soon be
sucked out by oil-light, and you look no better than poor tallow Court
beauties--to say nothing of the danger. This old house saw Charles the
Great embracing the chief magistrate of his liege city yonder. Some swear
he slept in it. He did not sneeze at smaller chambers than our Kaisers
abide. No gold ceilings with cornice carvings, but plain wooden beams.'

          'Know that the men of great renown,
            Were men of simple needs:
          Bare to the Lord they laid them down,
            And slept on mighty deeds.'

'God wot, there's no emptying thy store of ballads, Grete: so much shall
be said of thee. Yes; times are changeing: We're growing degenerate. Look
at the men of Linz now to what they were! Would they have let the lads of
Andernach float down cabbage-stalks to them without a shy back? And why?
All because they funk that brigand-beast Werner, who gets redemption from
Laach, hard by his hold, whenever he commits a crime worth paying for. As
for me, my timber and stuffs must come down stream, and are too good for
the nixen under Rhine, or think you I would acknowledge him with a toll,
the hell-dog? Thunder and lightning! if old scores could be rubbed out on
his hide!'

Gottlieb whirled a thong-lashing arm in air, and groaned of law and
justice. What were they coming to!

Margarita softened the theme with a verse:

          'And tho' to sting his enemy,
          Is sweetness to the angry bee,
          The angry bee must busy be,
          Ere sweet of sweetness hiveth he.

The arch thrill of his daughter's voice tickled Gottlieb. 'That's it,
birdie! You and the proverb are right. I don't know which is best,

            'Better hive
             And keep alive
             Than vengeance wake
             With that you take.'

A clatter in the cathedral square brought Gottlieb on his legs to the
window. It was a company of horsemen sparkling in harness. One trumpeter
rode at the side of the troop, and in front a standard-bearer, matted
down the chest with ochre beard, displayed aloft to the good citizens of
Cologne, three brown hawks, with birds in their beaks, on an azure
stardotted field.

'Holy Cross!' exclaimed Gottlieb, low in his throat; 'the arms of Werner!
Where got he money to mount his men? Why, this is daring all Cologne in
our very teeth! 'Fend that he visit me now! Ruin smokes in that ruffian's
track. I 've felt hot and cold by turns all day.'

The horsemen came jingling carelessly along the street in scattered twos
and threes, laughing together, and singling out the maidens at the
gable-shadowed windows with hawking eyes. The good citizens of Cologne
did not look on them favourably. Some showed their backs and gruffly
banged their doors: others scowled and pocketed their fists: not a few
slunk into the side alleys like well-licked curs, and scurried off with
forebent knees. They were in truth ferocious-looking fellows these trusty
servants of the robber Baron Werner, of Werner's Eck, behind Andernach.
Leather, steel, and dust, clad them from head to foot; big and black as
bears; wolf-eyed, fox-nosed. They glistened bravely in the falling beams
of the sun, and Margarita thrust her fair braided yellow head a little
forward over her father's shoulder to catch the whole length of the grim
cavalcade. One of the troop was not long in discerning the young beauty.
He pointed her boldly out to a comrade, who approved his appetite, and
referred her to a third. The rest followed lead, and Margarita was as one
spell-struck when she became aware that all those hungry eyes were
preying on hers. Old Gottlieb was too full of his own fears to think for
her, and when he drew in his head rather suddenly, it was with a dismal
foreboding that Werner's destination in Cologne was direct to the house
of Gottlieb Groschen, for purposes only too well to be divined.

'Devil's breeches!' muttered Gottlieb; 'look again, Grete, and see if
that hell-troop stop the way outside.'

Margarita's cheeks were overflowing with the offended rose.

'I will not look at them again, father.'

Gottlieb stared, and then patted her.

'I would I were a man, father!'

Gottlieb smiled, and stroked his beard.

'Oh! how I burn!'

And the girl shivered visibly.

'Grete! mind to be as much of a woman as you can, and soon such raff as
this you may sweep away, like cobwebs, and no harm done.'

He was startled by a violent thumping at the streetdoor, and as brazen a
blast as if the dead were being summoned. Aunt Lisbeth entered, and
flitted duskily round the room, crying:

'We are lost: they are upon us! better death with a bodkin! Never shall
it be said of me; never! the monsters!'

Then admonishing them to lock, bar, bolt, and block up every room in the
house, Aunt Lisbeth perched herself on the edge of a chair, and reversed
the habits of the screech-owl, by being silent when stationary.

'There's nothing to fear for you, Lisbeth,' said Gottlieb, with
discourteous emphasis.

'Gottlieb! do you remember what happened at the siege of Mainz? and poor
Marthe Herbstblum, who had hoped to die as she was; and Dame
Altknopfchen, and Frau Kaltblut, and the old baker, Hans Topf's sister,
all of them as holy as abbesses, and that did not save them! and nothing
will from such godless devourers.'

Gottlieb was gone, having often before heard mention of the calamity
experienced by these fated women.

'Comfort thee, good heart, on my breast,' said Margarita, taking Lisbeth
to that sweet nest of peace and fortitude.

'Margarita! 'tis your doing! have I not said--lure them not, for they
swarm too early upon us! And here they are! and, perhaps, in five minutes
all will be over!

Herr Je!--What, you are laughing! Heavens of goodness, the girl is
delighted!'

Here a mocking ha-ha! accompanied by a thundering snack at the door,
shook the whole house, and again the trumpet burst the ears with fury.

This summons, which seemed to Aunt Lisbeth final, wrought a strange
composure in her countenance. She was very pale, but spread her dress
decently, as if fear had departed, and clasped her hands on her knees.

'The will of the Lord above must be done,' said she; 'it is impious to
complain when we are given into the hand of the Philistines. Others have
been martyred, and were yet acceptable.'

To this heroic speech she added, with cold energy: 'Let them come!'

'Aunt,' cried Margarita, 'I hear my father's voice with those men. Aunty!
I will not let him be alone. I must go down to him. You will be safe
here. I shall come to you if there's cause for alarm.'

And in spite of Aunt Lisbeth's astonished shriek of remonstrance, she
hurried off to rejoin Gottlieb.




THE WAGER

Ere Margarita had reached the landing of the stairs, she repented her
haste and shrank back. Wrapt in a thunder of oaths, she distinguished:
''Tis the little maiden we want; let's salute her and begone! or cap your
skull with something thicker than you've on it now, if you want a whole
one, happy father!'

'Gottlieb von Groschen I am,' answered her father, 'and the Kaiser----'

''S as fond of a pretty girl as we are! Down with her, and no more
drivelling! It's only for a moment, old Measure and Scales!'

'I tell you, rascals, I know your master, and if you're not punished for
this, may I die a beggar!' exclaimed Gottlieb, jumping with rage.

'May you die as rich as an abbot! And so you will, if you don't bring her
down, for I've sworn to see her; there 's the end of it, man!'

'I'll see, too, if the laws allow this villany!' cried Gottlieb.
'Insulting a peaceful citizen! in his own house! a friend of your
emperor! Gottlieb von Groschen!'

'Groschen? We're cousins, then! You wouldn't shut out your nearest kin?
Devil's lightning! Don't you know me? Pfennig? Von Pfennig! This here's
Heller: that's Zwanziger: all of us Vons, every soul! You're not decided?
This'll sharpen you, my jolly King Paunch!'

And Margarita heard the ruffian step as if to get swing for a blow. She
hurried into the passage, and slipping in front of her father, said to
his assailant:

'You have asked for me! I am here!'

Her face was colourless, and her voice seemed to issue from between a
tightened cord. She stood with her left foot a little in advance, and her
whole body heaving and quivering: her arms folded and pressed hard below
her bosom: her eyes dilated to a strong blue: her mouth ashy white. A
strange lustre, as of suppressed internal fire, flickered over her.

'My name 's Schwartz Thier, and so 's my nature!' said the fellow with a
grin; 'but may I never smack lips with a pretty girl again, if I harm
such a young beauty as this! Friendly dealing's my plan o' life.'

'Clear out of my house, then, fellow, and here's money for you,' said
Gottlieb, displaying a wrathfully-trembling handful of coin.

'Pish! money! forty times that wouldn't cover my bet! And if it did?
Shouldn't I be disgraced? jeered at for a sheep-heart? No, I'm no ninny,
and not to be diddled. I'll talk to the young lady! Silence, out there!
all's going proper': this to his comrades through the door. 'So, my
beautiful maiden! thus it stands: We saw you at the window, looking like
a fresh rose with a gold crown on. Here are we poor fellows come to
welcome the Kaiser. I began to glorify you. "Schwartz Thier!" says Henker
Rothhals to me, "I'll wager you odds you don't have a kiss of that fine
girl within twenty minutes, counting from the hand-smack!" Done! was my
word, and we clapped our fists together. Now, you see, that's
straightforward! All I want is, not to lose my money and be made a fool
of--leaving alone that sugary mouth which makes mine water'; and he drew
the back of his hand along his stubbled jaws: 'So, come! don't hesitate!
no harm to you, my beauty, but a compliment, and Schwartz Thier's your
friend and anything else you like for ever after. Come, time's up, pretty
well.'

Margarita leaned to her father a moment as if mortal sickness had seized
her. Then cramping her hands and feet, she said in his ear, 'Leave me to
my own care; go, get the men to protect thee'; and ordered Schwartz Thier
to open the door wide.

Seeing Gottlieb would not leave her, she joined her hands, and begged
him. 'The good God will protect me! I will overmatch these men. Look, my
father! they dare not strike me in the street: you they would fell
without pity. Go! what they dare in a house, they dare not in the
street.'

Schwartz Thier had opened the door. At sight of Margarita, the troop gave
a shout.

'Now! on the doorstep, full in view, my beauteous one! that they may see
what a lucky devil I am--and have no doubts about the handing over.'

Margarita looked behind. Gottlieb was still there, every member of him
quaking like a bog under a heavy heel. She ran to him. 'My father! I have
a device wilt thou spoil it, and give me to this beast? You can do
nothing, nothing! protect yourself and save me!'

'Cologne! broad day!' muttered Gottlieb, as if the enormity had
prostrated his belief in facts; and moved slowly back.

Margarita strode to the door-step. Schwartz Thier was awaiting her, his
arm circled out, and his leering face ducked to a level with his
victim's. This rough show of gallantry proved costly to him. As he was
gently closing his iron hold about her, enjoying before hand with grim
mouthridges the flatteries of triumph, Margarita shot past him through
the door, and was already twenty paces beyond the troop before either of
them thought of pursuing her. At the first sound of a hoof, Henker
Rothhals seized the rider's bridle-rein, and roared: 'Fair play for a
fair bet! leave all to the Thier!' The Thier, when he had recovered from
his amazement, sought for old Gottlieb to give him a back-hit, as
Margarita foresaw that he would. Not finding him at hand, out lumbered
the fellow as swiftly as his harness would allow, and caught a glimpse of
Margarita rapidly fleeting up the cathedral square.

'Only five minutes, Schwartz Thier!' some of the troop sung out.

'The devil can do his business in one,' was the retort, and Schwartz
Thier swung himself on his broad-backed charger, and gored the fine beast
till she rattled out a blast of sparkles from the flint.

In a minute he drew up in front of Margarita.

'So! you prefer settling this business in the square.

Good! my choice sweetheart!' and he sprang to her side.

The act of flight had touched the young girl's heart with the spirit of
flight. She crouched like a winded hare under the nose of the hound, and
covered her face with her two hands. Margarita was no wisp in weight, but
Schwartz Thier had her aloft in his arm as easily as if he had tossed up
a kerchief.

'Look all, and witness!' he shouted, lifting the other arm.

Henker Rothhals and the rest of the troop looked, as they came trotting
to the scene, with the coolness of umpires: but they witnessed something
other than what Schwartz Thier proposed. This was the sight of a
formidable staff, whirling an unfriendly halo over the head of the Thier,
and descending on it with such honest intent to confound and overthrow
him, that the Thier succumbed to its force without argument, and the
square echoed blow and fall simultaneously. At the same time the wielder
of this sound piece of logic seized Margarita, and raised a shout in the
square for all true men to stand by him in rescuing a maiden from the
clutch of brigands and ravishers. A crowd was collecting, but seemed to
consider the circle now formed by the horsemen as in a manner charmed,
for only one, a fair slender youth, came forward and ranged himself
beside the stranger.

'Take thou the maiden: I'll keep to the staff,' said this latter,
stumbling over his speech as if he was in a foreign land among old roots
and wolfpits which had already shaken out a few of his teeth, and made
him cautious about the remainder.

'Can it be Margarita!' exclaimed the youth, bending to her, and calling
to her: 'Margarita! Fraulein Groschen!'

She opened her eyes, shuddered, and said: 'I was not afraid! Am I safe?'

'Safe while I have life, and this good friend.'

'Where is my father?'

'I have not seen him.'

'And you--who are you? Do I owe this to you?'

'Oh! no! no! Me you owe nothing.'

Margarita gazed hurriedly round, and at her feet there lay the Thier with
his steel-cap shining in dints, and three rivulets of blood coursing down
his mottled forehead. She looked again at the youth, and a blush of
recognition gave life to her cheeks.

'I did not know you. Pardon me. Farina! what thanks can reward such
courage! Tell me! shall we go?'

'The youth eyed her an instant, but recovering himself, took a rapid
survey, and called to the stranger to follow and help give the young
maiden safe conduct home.

'Just then Henker Rothhals bellowed, 'Time's up!' He was answered by a
chorus of agreement from the troop. They had hitherto patiently acted
their parts as spectators, immovable on their horses. The assault on the
Thier was all in the play, and a visible interference of fortune in
favour of Henker Rothhals. Now general commotion shuttled them, and the
stranger's keen hazel eyes read their intentions rightly when he lifted
his redoubtable staff in preparation for another mighty swoop, this time
defensive. Rothhals, and half a dozen others, with a war-cry of curses,
spurred their steeds at once to ride him down. They had not reckoned the
length and good-will of their antagonist's weapon. Scarce were they in
motion, when round it whizzed, grazing the nostrils of their horses with
a precision that argued practice in the feat, and unhorsing two, Rothhals
among the number. He dropped heavily on his head, and showed signs of
being as incapable of combat as the Thier. A cheer burst from the crowd,
but fell short.

The foremost of their number was struck flat to the earth by a fellow of
the troop.

Calling on St. George, his patron saint, the stranger began
systematically to make a clear ring in his path forward. Several of the
horsemen essayed a cut at his arm with their long double-handed swords,
but the horses could not be brought a second time to the edge of the
magic circle; and the blood of these warriors being thoroughly up, they
now came at him on foot. In their rage they would have made short work
with the three, in spite of the magistracy of Cologne, had they not been
arrested by cries of 'Werner! Werner!'

At the South-west end of the square, looking Rhinewards, rode the
marauder Baron, in full armour, helm and hauberk, with a single retainer
in his rear. He had apparently caught sight of the brawl, and, either
because he distinguished his own men, or was seeking his natural element,
hastened up for his share in it, which was usually that of the king of
beasts. His first call was for Schwartz Thier. The men made way, and he
beheld his man in no condition to make military responses. He shouted for
Henker Rothhals, and again the men opened their ranks mutely, exhibiting
the two stretched out in diverse directions, with their feet slanting to
a common point. The Baron glared; then caught off his mailed glove, and
thrust it between his teeth. A rasping gurgle of oaths was all they
heard, and presently surged up,

'Who was it?'

Margarita's eyes were shut. She opened them fascinated with horror. There
was an unearthly awful and comic mixture of sounds in Werner's querulous
fury, that was like the noise of a complaining bear, rolling up from
hollow-chested menace to yawning lament. Never in her life had Margarita
such a shock of fear. The half gasp of a laugh broke on her trembling
lips. She stared at Werner, and was falling; but Farina's arm clung
instantly round her waist. The stranger caught up her laugh, loud and
hearty.

'As for who did it, Sir Baron,' he cried, is a cheery tone, 'I am the
man! As you may like to know why--and that's due to you and me both of
us--all I can say is, the Black Muzzle yonder lying got his settler for
merry-making with this peaceful maiden here, without her consent--an
offence in my green island they reckon a crack o' the sconce light
basting for, I warrant all company present,' and he nodded sharply about.
'As for the other there, who looks as if a rope had been round his neck
once and shirked its duty, he counts his wages for helping the devil in
his business, as will any other lad here who likes to come on and try.'

Werner himself, probably, would have given him the work he wanted; but
his eye had sidled a moment over Margarita, and the hardly-suppressed
applause of the crowd at the stranger's speech failed to bring his ire
into action this solitary time.

'Who is the maiden?' he asked aloud.

'Fraulein von Groschen,' replied Farina.

'Von Groschen! Von Groschen! the daughter of Gottlieb
Groschen?--Rascals!' roared the Baron, turning on his men, and out poured
a mud-spring of filthy oaths and threats, which caused Henker Rothhals,
who had opened his eyes, to close them again, as if he had already gone
to the place of heat.

'Only lend me thy staff, friend,' cried Werner.

'Not I! thwack 'em with your own wood,' replied the stranger, and fell
back a leg.

Werner knotted his stringy brows, and seemed torn to pieces with the
different pulling tides of his wrath. He grasped the mane of his horse
and flung abroad handfuls, till the splendid animal reared in agony.

'You shall none of you live over this night, villains! I 'll hang you,
every hag's son! My last orders were,--Keep quiet in the city, ye devil's
brood. Take that! and that!' laying at them with his bare sword. 'Off
with you, and carry these two pigs out of sight quickly, or I'll have
their heads, and make sure o' them.'

The latter injunction sprang from policy, for at the head of the chief
street there was a glitter of the city guard, marching with shouldered
spears.

'Maiden,' said Werner, with a bull's bow, 'let me conduct thee to thy
father.'

Margarita did not reply; but gave her hand to Farina, and took a step
closer to the stranger.

Werner's brows grew black.

'Enough to have saved you, fair maid,' he muttered hoarsely. 'Gratitude
never was a woman's gift. Say to your father that I shall make excuses to
him for the conduct of my men.'

Whereupon, casting a look of leisurely scorn toward the guard coming up
in the last beams of day, the Baron shrugged his huge shoulders to an
altitude expressing the various contemptuous shades of feudal coxcombry,
stuck one leather-ruffled arm in his side, and jolted off at an easy
pace.

'Amen!' ejaculated the stranger, leaning on his staff. 'There are Barons
in my old land; but never a brute beast in harness.'

Margarita stood before him, and took his two hands.

'You will come with me to my father! He will thank you. I cannot. You
will come?'

Tears and a sob of relief started from her.

The city guard, on seeing Werner's redoubtable back turned, had adopted
double time, and now came panting up, while the stranger bent smiling
under a fresh overflow of innocent caresses. Margarita was caught to her
father's breast.

'You shall have vengeance for this, sweet chuck,' cried old Gottlieb in
the intervals of his hugs.

'Fear not, my father; they are punished': and Margarita related the story
of the stranger's prowess, elevating him into a second Siegfried. The
guard huzzaed him, but did not pursue the Baron.

Old Gottlieb, without hesitation, saluted the astonished champion with a
kiss on either cheek.

'My best friend! You have saved my daughter from indignity! Come with us
home, if you can believe that a home where the wolves come daring us,
dragging our dear ones from our very doorsteps. Come, that we may thank
you under a roof at least. My little daughter! Is she not a brave lass?'

'She's nothing less than the white rose of Germany,' said the stranger,
with a good bend of the shoulders to Margarita.

'So she's called,' exclaimed Gottlieb; 'she 's worthy to be a man!'

'Men would be the losers, then, more than they could afford,' replied the
stranger, with a ringing laugh.

'Come, good friend,' said Gottlieb; 'you must need refreshment. Prove you
are a true hero by your appetite. As Charles the Great said to Archbishop
Turpin, "I conquered the world because Nature gave me a gizzard; for
everywhere the badge of subjection is a poor stomach." Come, all! A day
well ended, notwithstanding!'




THE SILVER ARROW

At the threshold of Gottlieb's house a number of the chief burgesses of
Cologne had corporated spontaneously to condole with him. As he came
near, they raised a hubbub of gratulation. Strong were the expressions of
abhorrence and disgust of Werner's troop in which these excellent
citizens clothed their outraged feelings; for the insult to Gottlieb was
the insult of all. The Rhinestream taxes were provoking enough to endure;
but that the licence of these free-booting bands should extend to the
homes of free and peaceful men, loyal subjects of the Emperor, was a sign
that the evil had reached from pricks to pokes, as the saying went, and
must now be met as became burgesses of ancient Cologne, and by joint
action destroyed.

'In! in, all of you!' said Gottlieb, broadening his smile to suit the
many. 'We 'll talk about that in-doors. Meantime, I've got a hero to
introduce to you: flesh and blood! no old woman's coin and young girl's
dream-o'day: the honest thing, and a rarity, my masters. All that over
some good Rhine-juice from above Bacharach. In, and welcome, friends!'

Gottlieb drew the stranger along with him under the carved old oak-wood
portals, and the rest paired, and reverentially entered in his wake.
Margarita, to make up for this want of courtesy, formed herself the last
of the procession. She may have had another motive, for she took occasion
there to whisper something to Farina, bringing sun and cloud over his
countenance in rapid flushes. He seemed to remonstrate in dumb show; but
she, with an attitude of silence, signified her wish to seal the
conversation, and he drooped again. On the door step she paused a moment,
and hung her head pensively, as if moved by a reminiscence. The youth had
hurried away some strides. Margarita looked after him. His arms were
straightened to his flanks, his hands clenched, and straining out from
the wrist. He had the aspect of one tugging against the restraint of a
chain that suddenly let out link by link to his whole force.

'Farina!' she called; and wound him back with a run. 'Farina! You do not
think me ungrateful? I could not tell my father in the crowd what you did
for me. He shall know. He will thank you. He does not understand you now,
Farina. He will. Look not so sorrowful. So much I would say to you.'

So much was rushing on her mind, that her maidenly heart became unruly,
and warned her to beware.

The youth stood as if listening to a nightingale of the old woods, after
the first sweet stress of her voice was in his ear. When she ceased, he
gazed into her eyes. They were no longer deep and calm like forest lakes;
the tender-glowing blue quivered, as with a spark of the young girl's
soul, in the beams of the moon then rising.

'Oh, Margarita!' said the youth, in tones that sank to sighs: 'what am I
to win your thanks, though it were my life for such a boon!'

He took her hand, and she did not withdraw it. Twice his lips dwelt upon
those pure fingers.

'Margarita: you forgive me: I have been so long without hope. I have
kissed your hand, dearest of God's angels!'

She gently restrained the full white hand in his pressure.

'Margarita! I have thought never before death to have had this sacred
bliss. I am guerdoned in advance for every grief coming before death.'

She dropped on him one look of a confiding softness that was to the youth
like the opened gate of the innocent garden of her heart.

'You pardon me, Margarita? I may call you my beloved? strive, wait, pray,
hope, for you, my star of life?'

Her face was so sweet a charity!

'Dear love! one word!--or say nothing, but remain, and move not. So
beautiful you are! Oh, might I kneel to you here; dote on you; worship
this white hand for ever.'

The colour had passed out of her cheeks like a blissful western red
leaving rich paleness in the sky; and with her clear brows levelled at
him, her bosom lifting more and more rapidly, she struggled against the
charm that was on her, and at last released her hand.

'I must go. I cannot stay. Pardon you? Who might not be proud of your
love!--Farewell!'

She turned to move away, but lingered a step from him, hastily touching
her bosom and either hand, as if to feel for a brooch or a ring. Then she
blushed, drew the silver arrow from the gathered gold-shot braids above
her neck, held it out to him, and was gone.

Farina clutched the treasure, and reeled into the street. Half a dozen
neighbours were grouped by the door.

'What 's the matter in Master Groschen's house now?' one asked, as he
plunged into the midst of them.

'Matter?' quoth the joy-drunken youth, catching at the word, and mused
off into raptures; 'There never was such happiness! 'Tis paradise within,
exile without. But what exile! A star ever in the heavens to lighten the
road and cheer the path of the banished one'; and he loosened his vest
and hugged the cold shaft on his breast.

'What are you talking and capering at, fellow?' exclaimed another: 'Can't
you answer about those shrieks, like a Christian, you that have just come
out of the house? Why, there's shrieking now! It 's a woman. Thousand
thunders! it sounds like the Frau Lisbeth's voice. What can be happening
to her?'

'Perhaps she's on fire,' was coolly suggested between two or three.

'Pity to see the old house burnt,' remarked one.

'House! The woman, man! the woman!'

'Ah!' replied the other, an ancient inhabitant of Cologne, shaking his
head, 'the house is oldest!'

Farina, now recovering his senses, heard shrieks that he recognized as
possible in the case of Aunt Lisbeth dreading the wickedness of an
opposing sex, and alarmed by the inrush of old Gottlieb's numerous
guests. To confirm him, she soon appeared, and hung herself halfway out
of one of the upper windows, calling desperately to St. Ursula for aid.
He thanked the old lady in his heart for giving him a pretext to enter
Paradise again; but before even love could speed him, Frau Lisbeth was
seized and dragged remorselessly out of sight, and he and the rosy room
darkened together.

Farina twice strode off to the Rhine-stream; as many times he returned.
It was hard to be away from her. It was harder to be near and not close.
His heart flamed into jealousy of the stranger. Everything threatened to
overturn his slight but lofty structure of bliss so suddenly shot into
the heavens. He had but to remember that his hand was on the silver
arrow, and a radiance broke upon his countenance, and a calm fell upon
his breast. 'It was a plight of her troth to me,' mused the youth. 'She
loves me! She would not trust her frank heart to speak. Oh, generous
young girl! what am I to dare hope for such a prize? for I never can be
worthy. And she is one who, giving her heart, gives it all. Do I not know
her? How lovely she looked thanking the stranger! The blue of her eyes,
the warm-lighted blue, seemed to grow full on the closing lids, like
heaven's gratitude. Her beauty is wonderful. What wonder, then, if he
loves her? I should think him a squire in his degree. There are squires
of high birth and low.'

So mused Farina with his arms folded and his legs crossed in the shadow
of Margarita's chamber. Gradually he fell into a kind of hazy doze. The
houses became branded with silver arrows. All up the Cathedral stone was
a glitter, and dance, and quiver of them. In the sky mazed confusion of
arrowy flights and falls. Farina beheld himself in the service of the
Emperor watching these signs, and expecting on the morrow to win glory
and a name for Margarita. Glory and the name now won, old Gottlieb was
just on the point of paternally blessing them, when a rude pat aroused
him from the delicious moon-dream.

'Hero by day! house-guard by night! That tells a tale,' said a cheerful
voice.

The moon was shining down the Cathedral square and street, and Farina saw
the stranger standing solid and ruddy before him. He was at first
prompted to resent such familiar handling, but the stranger's face was of
that bland honest nature which, like the sun, wins everywhere back a
reflection of its own kindliness.

'You are right,' replied Farina; 'so it is!'

'Pretty wines inside there, and a rare young maiden. She has a throat
like a nightingale, and more ballads at command than a piper's wallet.
Now, if I hadn't a wife at home.'

'You're married?' cried Farina, seizing the stranger's hand.

'Surely; and my lass can say something for herself on the score of brave
looks, as well as the best of your German maids here, trust me.'

Farina repressed an inclination to perform a few of those antics which
violent joy excites, and after rushing away and back, determined to give
his secret to the stranger.

'Look,' said he in a whisper, that opens the private doors of a
confidence.

But the stranger repeated the same word still more earnestly, and brought
Farina's eyes on a couple of dark figures moving under the Cathedral.

'Some lamb's at stake when the wolves are prowling,' he added: ''Tis now
two hours to the midnight. I doubt if our day's work be over till we hear
the chime, friend.'

'What interest do you take in the people of this house that you watch
over them thus?' asked Farina.

The stranger muffled a laugh in his beard.

'An odd question, good sooth. Why, in the first place, we like well
whatso we have done good work for. That goes for something. In the
second, I've broken bread in this house. Put down that in the reckoning.
In the third; well! in the third, add up all together, and the sum
total's at your service, young sir.'

Farina marked him closely. There was not a spot on his face for guile to
lurk in, or suspicion to fasten on. He caught the stranger's hand.

'You called me friend just now. Make me your friend. Look, I was going to
say: I love this maiden! I would die for her. I have loved her long. This
night she has given me a witness that my love is not vain. I am poor. She
is rich. I am poor, I said, and feel richer than the Kaiser with this she
has given me! Look, it is what our German girls slide in their back-hair,
this silver arrow!'

'A very pretty piece of heathenish wear!' exclaimed the stranger.

'Then, I was going to say--tell me, friend, of a way to win honour and
wealth quickly; I care not at how rare a risk. Only to wealth, or high
baronry, will her father give her!'

The stranger buzzed on his moustache in a pause of cool pity, such as
elders assume when young men talk of conquering the world for their
mistresses: and in truth it is a calm of mind well won!

'Things look so brisk at home here in the matter of the maiden, that I
should say, wait a while and watch your chance. But you're a boy of
pluck: I serve in the Kaiser's army, under my lord: the Kaiser will be
here in three days. If you 're of that mind then, I doubt little you may
get posted well: but, look again! there's a ripe brew yonder. Marry, you
may win your spurs this night even; who knows?--'S life! there's a tall
fellow joining those two lurkers.'

'Can you see into the murk shadow, Sir Squire?'

'Ay! thanks to your Styrian dungeons, where I passed a year's
apprenticeship:

       "I learnt to watch the rats and mice
         At play, with never a candle-end.
        They play'd so well; they sang so nice;
         They dubb'd me comrade; called me friend!"

So says the ballad of our red-beard king's captivity. All evil has a
good:

       "When our toes and chins are up,
        Poison plants make sweetest cup"

as the old wives mumble to us when we're sick. Heigho! would I were in
the little island well home again, though that were just their song of
welcome to me, as I am a Christian.'

'Tell me your name, friend,' said Farina.

'Guy's my name, young man: Goshawk's my title. Guy the Goshawk! so they
called me in my merry land. The cap sticks when it no longer fits. Then I
drove the arrow, and was down on my enemy ere he could ruffle a feather.
Now, what would be my nickname?

       "A change so sad, and a change so bad,
         Might set both Christian and heathen a sighing:
        Change is a curse, for it's all for the worse:
         Age creeps up, and youth is flying!"

and so on, with the old song. But here am I, and yonder's a game that
wants harrying; so we'll just begin to nose about them a bit.'

He crossed to the other side of the street, and Farina followed out of
the moonlight. The two figures and the taller one were evidently
observing them; for they also changed their position and passed behind an
angle of the Cathedral.

'Tell me how the streets cross all round the Cathedral you know the
city,' said the stranger, holding out his hand.

Farina traced with his finger a rough map of the streets on the
stranger's hand.

'Good! that's how my lord always marks the battlefield, and makes me show
him the enemy's posts. Forward, this way!'

He turned from the Cathedral, and both slid along close under the eaves
and front hangings of the houses. Neither spoke. Farina felt that he was
in the hands of a skilful captain, and only regretted the want of a
weapon to make harvest of the intended surprise; for he judged clearly
that those were fellows of Werner's band on the look-out. They wound down
numberless intersections of narrow streets with irregular-built houses
standing or leaning wry-faced in row, here a quaint-beamed cottage, there
almost a mansion with gilt arms, brackets, and devices. Oil-lamps unlit
hung at intervals by the corners, near a pale Christ on crucifix. Across
the passages they hung alight. The passages and alleys were too dusky and
close for the moon in her brightest ardour to penetrate; down the streets
a slender lane of white beams could steal: 'In all conscience,' as the
good citizens of Cologne declared, 'enough for those heathen hounds and
sons of the sinful who are abroad when God's own blessed lamp is out.'
So, when there was a moon, the expense of oil was saved to the Cologne
treasury, thereby satisfying the virtuous.

After incessant doubling here and there, listening to footfalls, and
themselves eluding a chase which their suspicious movements aroused, they
came upon the Rhine. A full flood of moonlight burnished the knightly
river in glittering scales, and plates, and rings, as headlong it rolled
seaward on from under crag and banner of old chivalry and rapine. Both
greeted the scene with a burst of pleasure. The grey mist of flats on the
south side glimmered delightful to their sight, coming from that drowsy
crowd and press of habitations; but the solemn glory of the river,
delaying not, heedless, impassioned-pouring on in some sublime conference
between it and heaven to the great marriage of waters, deeply shook
Farina's enamoured heart. The youth could not restrain his tears, as if a
magic wand had touched him. He trembled with love; and that delicate
bliss which maiden hope first showers upon us like a silver rain when she
has taken the shape of some young beauty and plighted us her fair
fleeting hand, tenderly embraced him.

As they were emerging into the spaces of the moon, a cheer from the
stranger arrested Farina.

'Seest thou? on the wharf there! that is the very one, the tallest of the
three. Lakin! but we shall have him.'

Wrapt in a long cloak, with low pointed cap and feather, stood the person
indicated. He appeared to be meditating on the flow of the water, unaware
of hostile presences, or quite regardless of them. There was a majesty in
his height and air, which made the advance of the two upon him more wary
and respectful than their first impulse had counselled. They could not
read his features, which were mantled behind voluminous folds: all save a
pair of very strange eyes, that, even as they gazed directly downward,
seemed charged with restless fiery liquid.

The two were close behind him: Guy the Goshawk prepared for one of those
fatal pounces on the foe that had won him his title. He consulted Farina
mutely, who Nodded readiness; but the instant after, a cry of anguish
escaped from the youth:

'Lost! gone! lost! Where is it? where! the arrow! The Silver Arrow! My
Margarita!'

Ere the echoes of his voice had ceased lamenting into the distance, they
found themselves alone on the wharf.




THE LILIES OF THE VALLEY

'He opened like a bat!' said the stranger.

'His shadow was red!' said Farina.

'He was off like an arrow!' said the stranger.

'Oh! pledge of my young love, how could I lose thee!' exclaimed the
youth, and his eyes were misted with tears.

Guy the Goshawk shook his brown locks gravely.

'Bring me a man, and I 'll stand up against him, whoever he be, like a
man; but this fellow has an ill scent and foreign ways about him, that he
has! His eye boils all down my backbone and tingles at my finger-tips.
Jesu, save us!'

'Save us!' repeated Farina, with the echo of a deadened soul.

They made the sign of the Cross, and purified the place with holy
ejaculations.

'I 've seen him at last; grant it be for the last time! That's my prayer,
in the name of the Virgin and Trinity,' said Guy. 'And now let's retrace
our steps: perchance we shall hunt up that bauble of yours, but I'm not
fit for mortal work this night longer.'

Burdened by their black encounter, the two passed again behind the
Cathedral. Farina's hungry glances devoured each footmark of their track.
Where the moon held no lantern for him, he went on his knees, and groped
for his lost treasure with a miser's eager patience of agony, drawing his
hand slowly over the stony kerb and between the interstices of the
thick-sown flints, like an acute-feeling worm. Despair grew heavy in his
breast. At every turning he invoked some good new saint to aid him, and
ran over all the propitiations his fancy could suggest and his religious
lore inspire. By-and-by they reached the head of the street where
Margarita dwelt. The moon was dipping down, and paler, as if touched with
a warning of dawn. Chill sighs from the open land passed through the
spaces of the city. On certain coloured gables and wood-crossed fronts,
the white light lingered; but mostly the houses were veiled in dusk, and
Gottlieb's house was confused in the twilight with those of his
neighbours, notwithstanding its greater stateliness and the old grandeur
of its timbered bulk. They determined to take up their position there
again, and paced on, Farina with his head below his shoulders, and Guy
nostril in air, as if uneasy in his sense of smell.

On the window-ledge of a fair-fitted domicile stood a flower-pot, a rude
earthen construction in the form of a river-barge, wherein grew some
valley lilies that drooped their white bells over the sides.

The Goshawk eyed them wistfully.

'I must smell those blessed flowers if I wish to be saved!' and he
stamped resolve with his staff.

Moved by this exclamation, Farina gazed up at them.

'How like a company of maidens they look floating in the vessel of life!'
he said.

Guy curiously inspected Farina and the flower-pot, shrugged, and with his
comrade's aid, mounted to a level with it, seized the prize and
redescended.

'There,' he cried, between long luxurious sniffs, 'that chases him out of
the nostril sooner than aught else, the breath of a fresh lass-like
flower! I was tormented till now by the reek of the damned rising from
under me. This is heaven's own incense, I think!'

And Guy inhaled the flowers and spake prettily to them.

'They have a melancholy sweetness, friend,' said Farina. 'I think of
whispering Fays, and Elf, and Erl, when their odour steals through me. Do
not you?'

'Nay, nor hope to till my wits are clean gone,' was the Goshawk's reply.
'To my mind, 'tis an honest flower, and could I do good service by the
young maiden who there set it, I should be rendering back good service
done; for if that flower has not battled the devil in my nose this night,
and beaten him, my head's a medlar!'

'I scarce know whether as a devout Christian I should listen to that,
friend,' Farina mildly remonstrated. 'Lilies are indeed emblems of the
saints; but then they are not poor flowers of earth, being transfigured,
lustrous unfadingly. Oh, Cross and Passion! with what silver serenity thy
glory enwraps me, gazing on these fair bells! I look on the white sea of
the saints. I am enamoured of fleshly anguish and martyrdom. All beauty
is that worn by wan-smiling faces wherein Hope sits as a crown on Sorrow,
and the pale ebb of mortal life is the twilight of joy everlasting.
Colourless peace! Oh, my beloved! So walkest thou for my soul on the
white sea ever at night, clad in the straight fall of thy spotless virgin
linen; bearing in thy hand the lily, and leaning thy cheek to it, where
the human rose is softened to a milky bloom of red, the espousals of
heaven with earth; over thee, moving with thee, a wreath of sapphire
stars, and the solitude of purity around!'

'Ah!' sighed the Goshawk, dandling his flower-pot; 'the moon gives
strokes as well's the sun. I' faith, moon-struck and maid-struck in one!
He'll be asking for his head soon. This dash of the monk and the minstrel
is a sure sign. That 's their way of loving in this land: they all go
mad, straight off. I never heard such talk.'

Guy accompanied these remarks with a pitiful glance at his companion.

'Come, Sir Lover! lend me a help to give back what we've borrowed to its
rightful owner. 'S blood! but I feel an appetite. This night-air takes me
in the wind like a battering ram. I thought I had laid in a stout
four-and-twenty hours' stock of Westphalian Wurst at Master Groschen's
supper-table. Good stuff, washed down with superior Rhine wine; say your
Liebfrauenmilch for my taste; though, when I first tried it, I grimaced
like a Merry-Andrew, and remembered roast beef and Glo'ster ale in my
prayers.'

The Goshawk was in the act of replacing the pot of lilies, when a blow
from a short truncheon, skilfully flung, struck him on the neck and
brought him to the ground. With him fell the lilies. He glared to the
right and left, and grasped the broken flower-pot for a return missile;
but no enemy was in view to test his accuracy of aim.

The deep-arched doorways showed their empty recesses the windows slept.

'Has that youth played me false?' thought the discomfited squire, as he
leaned quietly on his arm. Farina was nowhere near.

Guy was quickly reassured.

'By my fay, now! that's a fine thing! and a fine fellow! and a fleet
foot! That lad 'll rise! He'll be a squire some day. Look at him. Bowels
of a'Becket! 'tis a sight! I'd rather see that, now, than old Groschen 's
supper-table groaning with Wurst again, and running a river of
Rudesheimer! Tussle on! I'll lend a hand if there's occasion; but you
shall have the honour, boy, an you can win it.'

This crying on of the hound was called forth by a chase up the street, in
which the Goshawk beheld Farina pursue and capture a stalwart runaway,
who refused with all his might to be brought back, striving every two and
three of his tiptoe steps to turn against the impulse Farina had got on
his neck and nether garments.

'Who 'd have thought the lad was so wiry and mettlesome, with his soft
face, blue eyes, and lank locks? but a green mead has more in it than
many a black mountain. Hail, and well done! if I could dub you knight, I
would: trust me!' and he shook Farina by the hand.

Farina modestly stood aside, and allowed the Goshawk to confront his
prisoner.

'So, Sir Shy-i'the-dark! gallant Stick-i'the-back! Squire Truncheon, and
Knight of the noble order of Quicksilver Legs! just take your stand at
the distance you were off me when you discharged this instrument at my
head. By 'r lady! I smart a scratch to pay you in coin, and it's lucky
for you the coin is small, or you might reckon on it the same, trust me.
Now, back!'

The Goshawk lunged out with the truncheon, but the prisoner displayed no
hesitation in complying, and fell back about a space of fifteen yards.

'I suppose he guesses I've never done the stupid trick before,' mused
Guy, 'or he would not be so sharp.' Observing that Farina had also fallen
back in a line as guard, Guy motioned him to edge off to the right more,
bawling, 'Never mind why!'

'Now,' thought Guy, 'if I were sure of notching him, I'd do the speech
part first; but as I'm not--throwing truncheons being no honourable
profession anywhere--I'll reserve that. The rascal don't quail. We'll see
how long he stands firm.'

The Goshawk cleared his wrist, fixed his eye, and swung the truncheon
meditatively to and fro by one end. He then launched off the shoulder a
mighty down-fling, calmly, watching it strike the prisoner to earth, like
an ox under the hammer.

'A hit!' said he, and smoothed his wrist.

Farina knelt by the body, and lifted the head on his breast. 'Berthold!
Berthold!' he cried; 'no further harm shall hap to you, man! Speak!'

'You ken the scapegrace?' said Guy, sauntering up.

''Tis Berthold Schmidt, son of old Schmidt, the great goldsmith of
Cologne.'

'St. Dunstan was not at his elbow this time!'

'A rival of mine,' whispered Farina.

'Oho!' and the Goshawk wound a low hiss at his tongue's tip. 'Well! as I
should have spoken if his ears had been open: Justice struck the blow;
and a gentle one. This comes of taking a flying shot, and not standing up
fair. And that seems all that can be said. Where lives he?'

Farina pointed to the house of the Lilies.

'Beshrew me! the dog has some right on his side. Whew! yonder he lives?
He took us for some night-prowlers. Why not come up fairly, and ask my
business?

Smelling a flower is not worth a broken neck, nor defending your premises
quite deserving a hole in the pate. Now, my lad, you see what comes of
dealing with cut and run blows; and let this be a warning to you.'

They took the body by head and feet, and laid him at the door of his
father's house. Here the colour came to his cheek, and they wiped off the
streaks of blood that stained him. Guy proved he could be tender with a
fallen foe, and Farina with an ill-fated rival. It was who could suggest
the soundest remedies, or easiest postures. One lent a kerchief and
nursed him; another ran to the city fountain and fetched him water.
Meantime the moon had dropped, and morning, grey and beamless, looked on
the house-peaks and along the streets with steadier eye. They now both
discerned a body of men, far down, fronting Gottlieb's house, and drawn
up in some degree of order. All their charity forsook them at once.

'Possess thyself of the truncheon,' said Guy: 'You see it can damage.
More work before breakfast, and a fine account I must give of myself to
my hostess of the Three Holy Kings!'

Farina recovered the destructive little instrument.

'I am ready,' said he. 'But hark! there's little work for us there, I
fancy. Those be lads of Cologne, no grunters of the wild. 'Tis the White
Rose Club. Always too late for service.'

Voices singing a hunting glee, popular in that age, swelled up the clear
morning air; and gradually the words became distinct.

             The Kaiser went a-hunting,
               A-hunting, tra-ra:
          With his bugle-horn at springing morn,
          The Kaiser trampled bud and thorn:
                    Tra-ra!

        And the dew shakes green as the horsemen rear,
        And a thousand feathers they flutter with fear;
        And a pang drives quick to the heart of the deer;
          For the Kaiser's out a-hunting,
                  Tra-ra!
             Ta, ta, ta, ta,
             Tra-ra, tra-ra,
             Ta-ta, tra-ra, tra-ra!

the owner of the truncheon awoke to these reviving tones, and uttered a
faint responsive 'Tra-ra!'

'Hark again!' said Farina, in reply to the commendation of the Goshawk,
whose face was dimpled over with the harmony.

          The wild boar lay a-grunting,
             A-grunting, tra-ra!
        And, boom! comes the Kaiser to hunt up me?
        Or, queak! the small birdie that hops on the tree?
                  Tra-ra!
        O birdie, and boar, and deer, lie tame!
        For a maiden in bloom, or a full-blown dame,
        Are the daintiest prey, and the windingest game,
          When Kaisers go a-hunting,
                  Tra-ra!
             Ha, ha, ha, ha,
               Tra-ra, tra-ra,
             Ha-ha, tra-ra, tra-ra!

The voices held long on the last note, and let it die in a forest
cadence.

''Fore Gad! well done. Hurrah! Tra-ra, ha-ha, tra-ra! That's a trick
we're not half alive to at home,' said Guy. 'I feel friendly with these
German lads.'

The Goshawk's disposition toward German lads was that moment harshly
tested by a smart rap on the shoulder from an end of German oak, and a
proclamation that he was prisoner of the hand that gave the greeting, in
the name of the White Rose Club. Following that, his staff was wrested
from him by a dozen stout young fellows, who gave him no time to get his
famous distance for defence against numbers; and he and Farina were
marched forthwith to the chorusing body in front of Gottlieb Groschen's
house.




THE MISSIVES

Of all the inmates, Gottlieb had slept most with the day on his eyelids,
for Werner hung like a nightmare over him. Margarita lay and dreamed in
rose-colour, and if she thrilled on her pillowed silken couch like a
tense-strung harp, and fretted drowsily in little leaps and starts, it
was that a bird lay in her bosom, panting and singing through the night,
and that he was not to be stilled, but would musically utter the sweetest
secret thoughts of a love-bewitched maiden. Farina's devotion she knew
his tenderness she divined: his courage she had that day witnessed. The
young girl no sooner felt that she could love worthily, than she loved
with her whole strength. Muffed and remote came the hunting-song under
her pillow, and awoke dreamy delicate curves in her fair face, as it
thinned but did not banish her dream. Aunt Lisbeth also heard the song,
and burst out of her bed to see that the door and window were secured
against the wanton Kaiser. Despite her trials, she had taken her spell of
sleep; but being possessed of some mystic maiden belief that in cases of
apprehended peril from man, bed was a rock of refuge and fortified
defence, she crept back there, and allowed the sun to rise without her.
Gottlieb's voice could not awaken her to the household duties she loved
to perform with such a doleful visage. She heard him open his window, and
parley in angry tones with the musicians below.

'Decoys!' muttered Aunt Lisbeth; 'be thou alive to them, Gottlieb!'

He went downstairs and opened the street door, whereupon the scolding and
railing commenced anew.

'Thou hast given them vantage, Gottlieb, brother mine,' she complained;
'and the good heavens only can say what may result from such
indiscreetness.'

A silence, combustible with shuffling of feet in the passage and on the
stairs, dinned horrors into Aunt Lisbeth's head.

'It was just that sound in the left wing of Hollenbogenblitz,' she said:
'only then it was night and not morning. Ursula preserve me!'

'Why, Lisbeth! Lisbeth!' cried Gottlieb from below. 'Come down! 'tis full
five o' the morning. Here's company; and what are we to do without the
woman?'

'Ah, Gottlieb! that is like men! They do not consider how different it is
for us!' which mysterious sentence being uttered to herself alone,
enjoyed a meaning it would elsewhere have been denied.

Aunt Lisbeth dressed, and met Margarita descending. They exchanged the
good-morning of young maiden and old.

'Go thou first,' said Aunt Lisbeth.

Margarita gaily tripped ahead.

'Girl!' cried Aunt Lisbeth, 'what's that thing in thy back hair?'

'I have borrowed Lieschen's arrow, aunt. Mine has had an accident.'

'Lieschen's arrow! An accident! Now I will see to that after breakfast,
Margarita.'

'Tra-ra, ta-ta, tra-ra, tra-ra,' sang Margarita.

          'The wild boar lay a-grunting,
             A-grunting, tra-ra.'

'A maiden's true and proper ornament! Look at mine, child! I have worn it
fifty years. May I deserve to wear it till I am called! O Margarita!
trifle not with that symbol.'

       '"O birdie, and boar, and deer, lie tame!"

I am so happy, aunty.'

'Nice times to be happy in, Margarita.'

       "Be happy in Spring, sweet maidens all,
        For Autumn's chill will early fall."

So sings the Minnesinger, aunty; and

       '"A maiden in the wintry leaf
        Will spread her own disease of grief."

I love the Minnesingers! Dear, sweet-mannered men they are! Such lovers!
And men of deeds as well as song: sword on one side and harp on the
other. They fight till set of sun, and then slacken their armour to waft
a ballad to their beloved by moonlight, covered with stains of battle as
they are, and weary!'

'What a girl! Minnesingers! Yes; I know stories of those Minnesingers.
They came to the castle--Margarita, a bead of thy cross is broken. I will
attend to it. Wear the pearl one till I mend this. May'st thou never fall
in the way of Minnesingers. They are not like Werner's troop. They do not
batter at doors: they slide into the house like snakes.'

'Lisbeth! Lisbeth!' they heard Gottlieb calling impatiently.

'We come, Gottlieb!' and in a low murmur Margarita heard her say: 'May
this day pass without trouble and shame to the pious and the chaste.'

Margarita knew the voice of the stranger before she had opened the door,
and on presenting herself, the hero gave her a guardian-like salute.

'One may see,' he said, 'that it requires better men than those of Werner
to drive away the rose from that cheek.'

Gottlieb pressed the rosy cheek to his shoulder and patted her.

'What do you think, Grete? You have now forty of the best lads in Cologne
enrolled to protect you, and keep guard over the house night and day.
There! What more could a Pfalzgrafin ask, now? And voluntary service; all
to be paid with a smile, which I daresay my lady won't refuse them.
Lisbeth, you know our friend. Fear him not, good Lisbeth, and give us
breakfast. Well, sweet chuck, you're to have royal honours paid you. I
warrant they've begun good work already in locking up that idle moony
vagabond, Farina--'

'Him? What for, my father? How dared they! What has he done?'

'O, start not, my fairy maid! A small matter of breakage, pet! He tried
to enter Cunigonde Schmidt's chamber, and knocked down her pot of lilies:
for which Berthold Schmidt knocked him down, and our friend here, out of
good fellowship, knocked down Berthold. However, the chief offender is
marched off to prison by your trusty guard, and there let him cool
himself. Berthold shall tell you the tale himself: he'll be here to
breakfast, and receive your orders, mistress commander-in-chief.'

The Goshawk had his eye on Margarita. Her teeth were tight down on her
nether lip, and her whole figure had a strange look of awkwardness, she
was so divided with anger.

'As witness of the affair, I think I shall make a clearer statement, fair
maiden,' he interposed. 'In the first place, I am the offender. We passed
under the window of the Fraulein Schmidt, and 'twas I mounted to greet
the lilies. One shoot of them is in my helm, and here let me present them
to a worthier holder.'

He offered the flowers with a smile, and Margarita took them, radiant
with gratitude.

'Our friend Berthold,' he continued, 'thought proper to aim a blow at me
behind my back, and then ran for his comrades. He was caught, and by my
gallant young hero, Farina; concerning whose character I regret that your
respected father and I differ: for, on the faith of a soldier and true
man, he's the finest among the fine fellows I've yet met in Germany,
trust me. So, to cut the story short, execution was done upon Berthold by
my hand, for an act of treachery. He appears to be a sort of captain of
one of the troops, and not affectionately disposed to Farina; for the
version of the affair you have heard from your father is a little
invention of Master Berthold's own. To do him justice, he seemed equally
willing to get me under the cold stone; but a word from your good father
changed the current; and as I thought I could serve our friend better
free than behind bars, I accepted liberty. Pshaw! I should have accepted
it any way, to tell the truth, for your German dungeons are mortal
shivering ratty places. So rank me no hero, fair Mistress Margarita,
though the temptation to seem one in such sweet eyes was beginning to
lead me astray. And now, as to our business in the streets at this hour,
believe the best of us.'

'I will! I do!' said Margarita.

'Lisbeth! Lisbeth!' called Gottlieb. 'Breakfast, little sister! our
champion is starving. He asks for wurst, milk-loaves, wine, and all thy
rarest conserves. Haste, then, for the honour of Cologne is at stake.'

Aunt Lisbeth jingled her keys in and out, and soon that harmony drew a
number of domestics with platters of swine flesh, rolls of white wheaten
bread, the perpetual worst, milk, wine, barley-bread, and household
stores of dainties in profusion, all sparkling on silver, relieved by
spotless white cloth. Gottlieb beheld such a sunny twinkle across the
Goshawk's face at this hospitable array, that he gave the word of onset
without waiting for Berthold, and his guest immediately fell to, and did
not relax in his exertions for a full half-hour by the Cathedral clock,
eschewing the beer with a wry look made up of scorn and ruefulness, and
drinking a well-brimmed health in Rhine wine all round. Margarita was
pensive: Aunt Lisbeth on her guard. Gottlieb remembered Charles the
Great's counsel to Archbishop Turpin, and did his best to remain on earth
one of its lords dominant.

'Poor Berthold!' said he. ''Tis a good lad, and deserves his seat at my
table oftener. I suppose the flower-pot business has detained him. We'll
drink to him: eh, Grete?'

'Drink to him, dear father!--but here he is to thank you in person.'

Margarita felt a twinge of pity as Berthold entered. The livid stains of
his bruise deepened about his eyes, and gave them a wicked light whenever
they were fixed intently; but they looked earnest; and spoke of a combat
in which he could say that he proved no coward and was used with some
cruelty. She turned on the Goshawk a mute reproach; yet smiled and loved
him well when she beheld him stretch a hand of welcome and proffer a
brotherly glass to Berthold. The rich goldsmith's son was occupied in
studying the horoscope of his fortunes in Margarita's eyes; but when
Margarita directed his attention to Guy, he turned to him with a glance
of astonishment that yielded to cordial greeting.

'Well done, Berthold, my brave boy! All are friends who sit at table,'
said Gottlieb. 'In any case, at my table:

          "'Tis a worthy foe
          Forgives the blow
          Was dealt him full and fairly,"

says the song; and the proverb takes it up with, "A generous enemy is a
friend on the wrong side"; and no one's to blame for that, save old Dame
Fortune. So now a bumper to this jovial make-up between you. Lisbeth! you
must drink it.'

The little woman bowed melancholy obedience.

'Why did you fling and run?' whispered Guy to Berthold.

'Because you were two against one.'

'Two against one, man! Why, have you no such thing as fair play in this
land of yours? Did you think I should have taken advantage of that?'

'How could I tell who you were, or what you would do?' muttered Berthold,
somewhat sullenly.

'Truly no, friend! So you ran to make yourself twenty to two? But don't
be down on the subject. I was going to say, that though I treated you in
a manner upright, 'twas perhaps a trifle severe, considering your youth:
but an example's everything; and I must let you know in confidence, that
no rascal truncheon had I flung in my life before; so, you see, I gave
you all the chances.'

Berthold moved his lips in reply; but thinking of the figure of defeat he
was exhibiting before Margarita, caused him to estimate unfavourably what
chances had stood in his favour.

The health was drunk. Aunt Lisbeth touched the smoky yellow glass with a
mincing lip, and beckoned Margarita to withdraw.

'The tapestry, child!' she said. 'Dangerous things are uttered after the
third glass, I know, Margarita.'

'Do you call my champion handsome, aunt?'

'I was going to speak to you about him, Margarita. If I remember, he has
rough, good looks, as far as they go. Yes: but thou, maiden, art thou
thinking of him? I have thrice watched him wink; and that, as we know, is
a habit of them that have sold themselves. And what is frail womankind to
expect from such a brawny animal?'

          'And oh! to lace his armour up,
          And speed him to the field;
          To pledge him in a kissing-cup,
          The knight that will not yield!

I am sure he is tender, aunt. Notice how gentle he looks now and then.'

'Thou girl! Yes, I believe she is madly in love with him. Tender, and
gentle! So is the bear when you're outside his den; but enter it, maiden,
and try! Thou good Ursula, preserve me from such a fate.'

'Fear not, dear aunt! Have not a fear of it! Besides, it is not always
the men that are bad. You must not forget Dalilah, and Lot's wife, and
Pfalzgrafin Jutta, and the Baroness who asked for a piece of poor Kraut.
But, let us work, let us work!'

Margarita sat down before Siegfried, and contemplated the hero. For the
first time, she marked a resemblance in his features to Farina: the same
long yellow hair scattered over his shoulders as that flowing from under
Siegfried's helm; the blue eyes, square brows, and regular outlines.
'This is a marvel,' thought Margarita. 'And Farina! it was to watch over
me that he roamed the street last night, my best one! Is he not
beautiful?' and she looked closer at Siegfried.

Aunt Lisbeth had begun upon the dragon with her usual method, and was
soon wandering through skeleton halls of the old palatial castle in
Bohemia. The woolly tongue of the monster suggested fresh horrors to her,
and if Margarita had listened, she might have had fair excuses to forget
her lover's condition; but her voice only did service like a piece of
clock-work, and her mind was in the prison with Farina. She was long
debating how to win his release; and meditated so deeply, and exclaimed
in so many bursts of impatience, that Aunt Lisbeth found her heart
melting to the maiden. 'Now,' said she, 'that is a well-known story about
the Electress Dowager of Bavaria, when she came on a visit to the castle;
and, my dear child, be it a warning. Terrible, too!' and the little woman
shivered pleasantly. 'She had--I may tell you this, Margarita--yes, she
had been false to her wedded husband.--You understand, maiden; or, no!
you do not understand: I understand it only partly, mind. False, I
say----'

'False--not true: go on, dear aunty,' said Margarita, catching the word.

'I believe she knows as much as I do!' ejaculated Aunt Lisbeth; 'such are
girls nowadays. When I was young-oh! for a maiden to know anything
then--oh! it was general reprobation. No one thought of confessing it. We
blushed and held down our eyes at the very idea. Well, the Electress! she
was--you must guess. So she called for her caudle at eleven o'clock at
night. What do you think that was? Well, there was spirit in it: not to
say nutmeg, and lemon, and peach kernels. She wanted me to sit with her,
but I begged my mistress to keep me from the naughty woman: and no friend
of Hilda of Bayern was Bertha of Bohmen, you may be sure. Oh! the things
she talked while she was drinking her caudle.

Isentrude sat with her,'and said it was fearful!--beyond blasphemy! and
that she looked like a Bible witch, sitting up drinking and swearing and
glaring in her nightclothes and nightcap. She was on a journey into
Hungary, and claimed the hospitality of the castle on her way there. Both
were widows. Well, it was a quarter to twelve. The Electress dropped back
on her pillow, as she always did when she had finished the candle.
Isentrude covered her over, heaped up logs on the fire, wrapped her
dressing-gown about her, and prepared to sleep. It was Winter, and the
wind howled at the doors, and rattled the windows, and shook the
arras--Lord help us! Outside was all snow, and nothing but forest; as you
saw when you came to me there, Gretelchen. Twelve struck. Isentrude was
dozing; but she says that after the last stroke she woke with cold. A
foggy chill hung in the room. She looked at the Electress, who had not
moved. The fire burned feebly, and seemed weighed upon: Herr Je!--she
thought she heard a noise. No. Quite quiet! As heaven preserve her, says
slip, the smell in that room grew like an open grave, clammily putrid.
Holy Virgin! This time she was certain she heard a noise; but it seemed
on both sides of her. There was the great door leading to the first
landing and state-room; and opposite exactly there was the panel of the
secret passage. The noises seemed to advance as if step by step, and grew
louder in each ear as she stood horrified on the marble of the hearth.
She looked at the Electress again, and her eyes were wide open; but for
all Isentrude's calling, she would not wake. Only think! Now the noise
increased, and was a regular tramp-grate, tramp-screw sound-coming nearer
and nearer: Saints of mercy! The apartment was choking with vapours.
Isentrude made a dart, and robed herself behind a curtain of the bed just
as the two doors opened. She could see through a slit in the woven work,
and winked her eyes which she had shut close on hearing the scream of the
door-hinges--winked her eyes to catch a sight for moment--we are such
sinful, curious creatures!--What she saw then, she says she shall never
forget; nor I! As she was a living woman, there she saw the two dead
princes, the Prince Palatine of Bohemia and the Elector of Bavaria,
standing front to front at the foot of the bed, all in white armour, with
drawn swords, and attendants holding pine-torches. Neither of them spoke.
Their vizors were down; but she knew them by their arms and bearing: both
tall, stately presences, good knights in their day, and had fought
against the Infidel! So one of them pointed to the bed, and then a torch
was lowered, and the fight commenced. Isentrude saw the sparks fly, and
the steel struck till it was shattered; but they fought on, not caring
for wounds, and snorting with fury as they grew hotter. They fought a
whole hour. The poor girl was so eaten up with looking on, that she let
go the curtain and stood quite exposed among them. So, to steady herself,
she rested her hand on the bed-side; and--think what she felt--a hand as
cold as ice locked hers, and get from it she could not! That instant one
of the princes fell. It was Bohmen. Bayern sheathed his sword, and waved
his hand, and the attendants took up the slaughtered ghost, feet and
shoulders, and bore him to the door of the secret passage, while Bayern
strode after--'

'Shameful!' exclaimed Margarita. 'I will speak to Berthold as he
descends. I hear him coming. He shall do what I wish.'

'Call it dreadful, Grete! Dreadful it was. If Berthold would like to sit
and hear--Ah! she is gone. A good girl! and of a levity only on the
surface.'

Aunt Lisbeth heard Margarita's voice rapidly addressing Berthold. His
reply was low and brief. 'Refuses to listen to anything of the sort,'
Aunt Lisbeth interpreted it. Then he seemed to be pleading, and Margarita
uttering short answers. 'I trust 'tis nothing a maiden should not hear,'
the little lady exclaimed with a sigh.

The door opened, and Lieschen stood at the entrance.

'For Fraulein Margarita,' she said, holding a letter halfway out.

'Give it,' Aunt Lisbeth commanded.

The woman hesitated--''Tis for the Fraulein.'

'Give it, I tell thee!' and Aunt Lisbeth eagerly seized the missive, and
subjected it to the ordeal of touch. It was heavy, and contained
something hard. Long pensive pressures revealed its shape on the paper.
It was an arrow. 'Go!' said she to the woman, and, once alone, began,
bee-like, to buzz all over it, and finally entered. It contained
Margarita's Silver Arrow. 'The art of that girl!' And the writing said:

   'SWEETEST MAIDEN!

   'By this arrow of our betrothal, I conjure thee to meet me in all
   haste without the western gate, where, burning to reveal to thee
   most urgent tidings that may not be confided to paper, now waits,
   petitioning the saints, thy

                    'FARINA.'

Aunt Lisbeth placed letter and arrow in a drawer; locked it; and 'always
thought so.' She ascended the stairs to consult with Gottlieb. Roars of
laughter greeted her just as she lifted the latch, and she retreated
abashed.

There was no time to lose. Farina must be caught in the act of waiting
for Margarita, and by Gottlieb, or herself. Gottlieb was revelling. 'May
this be a warning to thee, Gottlieb,' murmured Lisbeth, as she hooded her
little body in Margarita's fur-cloak, and determined that she would be
the one to confound Farina.

Five minutes later Margarita returned. Aunt Lisbeth was gone. The dragon
still lacked a tip to his forked tongue, and a stream of fiery threads
dangled from the jaws of the monster. Another letter was brought into the
room by Lieschen.

'For Aunt Lisbeth,' said Margarita, reading the address. 'Who can it be
from?'

'She does not stand pressing about your letters,' said the woman; and
informed Margarita of the foregoing missive.

'You say she drew an arrow from it?' said Margarita, with burning face.
'Who brought this? tell me!' and just waiting to hear it was Farina's
mother, she tore the letter open, and read:

   'DEAREST LISBETH!

   'Thy old friend writes to thee; she that has scarce left eyes to see
   the words she writes. Thou knowest we are a fallen house, through
   the displeasure of the Emperor on my dead husband. My son, Farina,
   is my only stay, and well returns to me the blessings I bestow upon
   him. Some call him idle: some think him too wise. I swear to thee,
   Lisbeth, he is only good. His hours are devoted to the extraction
   of essences--to no black magic. Now he is in trouble-in prison.
   The shadow that destroyed his dead father threatens him. Now, by
   our old friendship, beloved Lisbeth! intercede with Gottlieb, that
   he may plead for my son before the Emperor when he comes--'

Margarita read no more. She went to the window, and saw her guard
marshalled outside. She threw a kerchief over her head, and left the
house by the garden gate.




THE MONK

By this time the sun stood high over Cologne. The market-places were
crowded with buyers and sellers, mixed with a loitering swarm of
soldiery, for whose thirsty natures winestalls had been tumbled up.
Barons and knights of the empire, bravely mounted and thickly followed,
poured hourly into Cologne from South Germany and North. Here, staring
Suabians, and round-featured warriors of the East Kingdom, swaggered up
and down, patting what horses came across them, for lack of occupation
for their hands. Yonder, huge Pomeranians, with bosks of beard stiffened
out square from the chin, hurtled mountainous among the peaceable
inhabitants. Troopers dismounted went straddling, in tight hose and
loose, prepared to drink good-will to whomsoever would furnish the best
quality liquor for that solemn pledge, and equally ready to pick a
quarrel with them that would not. It was a scene of flaring feathers,
wide-flapped bonnets, flaunting hose, blue and battered steel plates,
slashed woollen haunch-bags, leather-leggings, ensigns, and imperious
boots and shoulders. Margarita was too hurried in her mind to be
conscious of an imprudence; but her limbs trembled, and she instinctively
quickened her steps. When she stood under the sign of the Three Holy
Kings, where dwelt Farina's mother, she put up a fervent prayer of
thanks, and breathed freely.

'I had expected a message from Lisbeth,' said Frau Farina; 'but thou,
good heart! thou wilt help us?'

'All that may be done by me I will do,' replied Margarita; 'but his
mother yearns to see him, and I have come to bear her company.'

The old lady clasped her hands and wept.

'Has he found so good a friend, my poor boy! And trust me, dear maiden,
he is not unworthy, for better son never lived, and good son, good all!
Surely we will go to him, but not as thou art. I will dress thee. Such
throngs are in the streets: I heard them clattering in early this
morning. Rest, dear heart, till I return.'

Margarita had time to inspect the single sitting-room in which her lover
lived. It was planted with bottles, and vases, and pipes, and cylinders,
piling on floor, chair, and table. She could not suppress a slight
surprise of fear, for this display showed a dealing with hidden things,
and a summoning of scattered spirits. It was this that made his brow so
pale, and the round of his eye darker than youth should let it be! She
dismissed the feeling, and assumed her own bright face as Dame Farina
reappeared, bearing on her arm a convent garb, and other apparel.
Margarita suffered herself to be invested in the white and black robes of
the denial of life.

'There!' said the Frau Farina, 'and to seal assurance, I have engaged a
guard to accompany us. He was sorely bruised in a street combat
yesterday, and was billeted below, where I nursed and tended him, and he
is grateful, as man should be-though I did little, doing my utmost--and
with him near us we have nought to fear.'

'Good,' said Margarita, and they kissed and departed. The guard was
awaiting them outside.

'Come, my little lady, and with thee the holy sister! 'Tis no step from
here, and I gage to bring ye safe, as sure as my name's Schwartz
Thier!--Hey? The good sister's dropping. Look, now! I'll carry her.'

Margarita recovered her self-command before he could make good this
offer.

'Only let us hasten there,' she gasped.

The Thier strode on, and gave them safe-conduct to the prison where
Farina was confined, being near one of the outer forts of the city.

'Thank and dismiss him,' whispered Margarita.

'Nay! he will wait-wilt thou not, friend! We shall not be long, though it
is my son I visit here,' said Frau Farina.

'Till to-morrow morning, my little lady! The lion thanked him that
plucked the thorn from his foot, and the Thier may be black, but he's not
ungrateful, nor a worse beast than the lion.'

They entered the walls and left him.

For the first five minutes Schwartz Thier found employment for his
faculties by staring at the shaky, small-paned windows of the
neighbourhood. He persevered in this, after all novelty had been
exhausted, from an intuitive dread of weariness. There was nothing to
see. An old woman once bobbed out of an attic, and doused the flints with
water. Harassed by increasing dread of the foul nightmare of
nothing-to-do, the Thier endeavoured to establish amorous intelligence
with her. She responded with an indignant projection of the underjaw,
evanishing rapidly. There was no resource left him but to curse her with
extreme heartiness. The Thier stamped his right leg, and then his left,
and remembered the old woman as a grievance five minutes longer. When she
was clean forgotten, he yawned. Another spouse of the moment was wanted,
to be wooed, objurgated, and regretted. The prison-gate was in a secluded
street. Few passengers went by, and those who did edged away from the
ponderous, wanton-eyed figure of lazy mischief lounging there, as neatly
as they well could. The Thier hailed two or three. One took to his legs,
another bowed, smirked, gave him a kindly good-day, and affected to hear
no more, having urgent business in prospect. The Thier was a faithful
dog, but the temptation to betray his trust and pursue them was mighty.
He began to experience an equal disposition to cry and roar. He hummed a
ballad--

       'I swore of her I'd have my will,
         And with him I'd have my way:
        I learn'd my cross-bow over the hill:
         Now what does my lady say?

Give me the good old cross-bow, after all, and none of these lumbering
puff-and-bangs that knock you down oftener than your man!

       'A cross stands in the forest still,
         And a cross in the churchyard grey:
        My curse on him who had his will,
         And on him who had his way!

Good beginning, bad ending! 'Tisn't so always. "Many a cross has the
cross-bow built," they say. I wish I had mine, now, to peg off that old
woman, or somebody. I'd swear she's peeping at me over the gable, or
behind some cranny. They're curious, the old women, curse 'em! And the
young, for that matter. Devil a young one here.

       'When I'm in for the sack of a town,
         What, think ye, I poke after, up and down?
        Silver and gold I pocket in plenty,
         But the sweet tit-bit is my lass under twenty.

I should like to be in for the sack of this Cologne. I'd nose out that
pretty girl I was cheated of yesterday. Take the gold and silver, and
give me the maiden! Her neck's silver, and her hair gold. Ah! and her
cheeks roses, and her mouth-say no more! I'm half thinking Werner, the
hungry animal, has cast wolf's eyes on her. They say he spoke of her last
night. Don't let him thwart me. Thunderblast him! I owe him a grudge.
He's beginning to forget my plan o' life.'

A flight of pigeons across the blue top of the street abstracted the
Thier from these reflections. He gaped after them in despair, and fell to
stretching and shaking himself, rattling his lungs with loud reports. As
he threw his eyes round again, they encountered those of a monk opposite
fastened on him in penetrating silence. The Thier hated monks as a wild
beast shuns fire; but now even a monk was welcome.

'Halloo!' he sung out.

The monk crossed over to him.

'Friend!' said he, 'weariness is teaching thee wantonness. Wilt thou take
service for a night's work, where the danger is little, the reward
lasting?'

'As for that,' replied the Thier, 'danger comes to me like greenwood to
the deer, and good pay never yet was given in promises. But I'm bound for
the next hour to womankind within there. They're my masters; as they've
been of tough fellows before me.'

'I will seek them, and win their consent,' said the monk, and so left
him.

'Quick dealing!' thought the Thier, and grew brisker. 'The Baron won't
want me to-night: and what if he does? Let him hang himself--though, if
he should, 'twill be a pity I'm not by to help him.'

He paced under the wall to its farthest course. Turning back, he
perceived the monk at the gateway.

'A sharp hand!' thought the Thier.

'Intrude no question on me,' the monk began; 'but hold thy peace and
follow: the women release thee, and gladly.'

'That's not my plan o' life, now! Money down, and then command me': and
Schwartz Thier stood with one foot forward, and hand stretched out.

A curl of scorn darkened the cold features of the monk.

He slid one hand into a side of his frock above the girdle, and tossed a
bag of coin.

'Take it, if 'tis in thee to forfeit the greater blessing,' he cried
contemptuously.

The Thier peeped into the bag, and appeared satisfied.

'I follow,' said he; 'lead on, good father, and I'll be in the track of
holiness for the first time since my mother was quit of me.'

The monk hurried up the street and into the marketplace, oblivious of the
postures and reverences of the people, who stopped to stare at him and
his gaunt attendant. As they crossed the square, Schwartz Thier spied
Henker Rothhals starting from a wine-stall on horseback, and could not
forbear hailing him. Before the monk had time to utter a reproach, they
were deep together in a double-shot of query and reply.

'Whirr!' cried the Thier, breaking on some communication. 'Got her, have
they? and swung her across stream? I'm one with ye for my share, or call
me sheep!'

He waved his hand to the monk, and taking hold of the horse's rein, ran
off beside his mounted confederate, heavily shod as he was.

The monk frowned after him, and swelled with a hard sigh.

'Gone!' he exclaimed, 'and the accursed gold with him! Well did a voice
warn me that such service was never to be bought!'

He did not pause to bewail or repent, but returned toward the prison with
rapid footsteps, muttering: 'I with the prison-pass for two; why was I
beguiled by that bandit? Saw I not the very youth given into my hands
there, he that was with the damsel and the aged woman?'




THE RIDE AND THE RACE

Late in the noon a horseman, in the livery of the Kaiser's body-guard,
rode dry and dusty into Cologne, with tidings that the Kaiser was at
Hammerstein Castle, and commanding all convocated knights, barons,
counts, and princes, to assemble and prepare for his coming, on a certain
bare space of ground within two leagues of Cologne, thence to swell the
train of his triumphal entry into the ancient city of his empire.

Guy the Goshawk, broad-set on a Flemish mare, and a pack-horse beside
him, shortly afterward left the hotel of the Three Holy Kings, and
trotted up to Gottlieb's door.

'Tent-pitching is now my trade,' said he, as Gottlieb came down to him.
'My lord is with the Kaiser. I must say farewell for the nonce. Is the
young lady visible?'

'Nor young, nor old, good friend,' replied Gottlieb, with a countenance
somewhat ruffled. 'I dined alone for lack of your company. Secret
missives came, I hear, to each of them, and both are gadding. Now what
think you of this, after the scene of yesterday?--Lisbeth too!'

'Preaches from the old text, Master Groschen; "Never reckon on womankind
for a wise act." But farewell! and tell Mistress Margarita that I take it
ill of her not giving me her maiden hand to salute before parting. My
gravest respects to Frau Lisbeth. I shall soon be sitting with you over
that prime vintage of yours, or fortune's dead against me.'

So, with a wring of the hand, Guy put the spur to his round-flanked
beast, and was quickly out of Cologne on the rough roadway.

He was neither the first nor the last of the men-at-arms hastening to
obey the Kaiser's mandate. A string of horse and foot in serpentine knots
stretched along the flat land, flashing colours livelier than the
spring-meadows bordering their line of passage. Guy, with a nod for all,
and a greeting for the best-disposed, pushed on toward the van, till the
gathering block compelled him to adopt the snail's pace of the advance
party, and gave him work enough to keep his two horses from being jammed
with the mass. Now and then he cast a weather-eye on the heavens, and was
soon confirmed in an opinion he had repeatedly ejaculated, that 'the
first night's camping would be a drencher.' In the West a black bank of
cloud was blotting out the sun before his time. Northeast shone bare
fields of blue lightly touched with loosefloating strips and flakes of
crimson vapour. The furrows were growing purple-dark, and gradually a low
moaning obscurity enwrapped the whole line, and mufed the noise of hoof,
oath, and waggon-wheel in one sullen murmur.

Guy felt very much like a chopped worm, as he wriggled his way onward in
the dusk, impelled from the rear, and reduced to grope after the main
body. Frequent and deep counsel he took with a trusty flask suspended at
his belt. It was no pleasant reflection that the rain would be down
before he could build up anything like shelter for horse and man. Still
sadder the necessity of selecting his post on strange ground, and in
darkness. He kept an anxious look-out for the moon, and was presently
rejoiced to behold a broad fire that twinkled branchy beams through an
east-hill orchard.

'My lord calls her Goddess,' said Guy, wistfully. 'The title's
outlandish, and more the style of these foreigners but she may have it
to-night, an she 'll just keep the storm from shrouding her bright eye a
matter of two hours.'

She rose with a boding lustre. Drifts of thin pale upper-cloud leaned
down ladders, pure as virgin silver, for her to climb to her highest seat
on the unrebellious half-circle of heaven.

'My mind's made up!' quoth Guy to the listening part of himself. 'Out of
this I'll get.'

By the clearer ray he had discerned a narrow track running a white
parallel with the general route. At the expense of dislocating a mile of
the cavalcade, he struck into it. A dyke had to be taken, some heavy
fallows crossed, and the way was straight before him. He began to sneer
at the slow jog-trot and absence of enterprise which made the fellows he
had left shine so poorly in comparison with the Goshawk, but a sight of
two cavaliers in advance checked his vanity, and now to overtake them he
tasked his fat Flemish mare with unwonted pricks of the heel, that made
her fling out and show more mettle than speed.

The objects of this fiery chase did not at first awake to a sense of
being pursued. Both rode with mantled visages, and appeared profoundly
inattentive to the world outside their meditations. But the Goshawk was
not to be denied, and by dint of alternately roaring at them and
upbraiding his two stumping beasts, he at last roused the younger of the
cavaliers, who called to his companion loudly: without effect it seemed,
for he had to repeat the warning. Guy was close up with them, when the
youth exclaimed:

'Father! holy father! 'Tis Sathanas in person!'

The other rose and pointed trembling to a dark point in the distance as
he vociferated:

'Not here! not here; but yonder!'

Guy recognized the voice of the first speaker, and cried:

'Stay! halt a second! Have you forgotten the Goshawk?'

'Never!' came the reply, 'and forget not Farina!'

Spur and fleeter steeds carried them out of hearing ere Guy could throw
in another syllable. Farina gazed back on him remorsefully, but the Monk
now rated his assistant with indignation.

'Thou weak one! nothing less than fool! to betray thy name on such an
adventure as this to soul save the saints!'

Farina tossed back his locks, and held his forehead to the moon. All the
Monk's ghostly wrath was foiled by the one little last sweet word of his
beloved, which made music in his ears whenever annoyance sounded.

'And herein,' say the old writers, 'are lovers, who love truly, truly
recompensed for their toils and pains; in that love, for which they
suffer, is ever present to ward away suffering not sprung of love: but
the disloyal, who serve not love faithfully, are a race given over to
whatso this base world can wreak upon them, without consolation or
comfort of their mistress, Love; whom sacrificing not all to, they know
not to delight in.'

The soul of a lover lives through every member of him in the joy of a
moonlight ride. Sorrow and grief are slow distempers that crouch from the
breeze, and nourish their natures far from swift-moving things. A true
lover is not one of those melancholy flies that shoot and maze over muddy
stagnant pools. He must be up in the great air. He must strike all the
strings of life. Swiftness is his rapture. In his wide arms he embraces
the whole form of beauty. Eagle-like are his instincts; dove-like his
desires. Then the fair moon is the very presence of his betrothed in
heaven. So for hours rode Farina in a silver-fleeting glory; while the
Monk as a shadow, galloped stern and silent beside him. So, crowning them
in the sky, one half was all love and light; one, blackness and fell
purpose.




THE COMBAT ON DRACHENFELS

Not to earth was vouchsafed the honour of commencing the great battle of
that night. By an expiring blue-shot beam of moonlight, Farina beheld a
vast realm of gloom filling the hollow of the West, and the moon was soon
extinguished behind sluggish scraps of iron scud detached from the
swinging bulk of ruin, as heavily it ground on the atmosphere in the
first thunder-launch of motion.

The heart of the youth was strong, but he could not view without quicker
fawning throbs this manifestation of immeasurable power, which seemed as
if with a stroke it was capable of destroying creation and the works of
man. The bare aspect of the tempest lent terrors to the adventure he was
engaged in, and of which he knew not the aim, nor might forecast the
issue. Now there was nothing to illumine their path but such forked
flashes as lightning threw them at intervals, touching here a hill with
clustered cottages, striking into day there a May-blossom, a patch of
weed, a single tree by the wayside. Suddenly a more vivid and continuous
quiver of violet fire met its reflection on the landscape, and Farina saw
the Rhine-stream beneath him.

'On such a night,' thought he, 'Siegfried fought and slew the dragon!'

A blast of light, as from the jaws of the defeated dragon in his throes,
made known to him the country he traversed. Crimsoned above the water
glimmered the monster-haunted rock itself, and mid-channel beyond, flat
and black to the stream, stretched the Nuns' Isle in cloistral peace.

'Halt!' cried the Monk, and signalled with a peculiar whistle, to which
he seemed breathlessly awaiting an answer. They were immediately
surrounded by longrobed veiled figures.

'Not too late?' the Monk hoarsely asked of them.

'Yet an hour!' was the reply, in soft clear tones of a woman's voice.

'Great strength and valour more than human be mine,' exclaimed the Monk,
dismounting.

He passed apart from them; and they drew in a circle, while he prayed,
kneeling.

Presently he returned, and led Farina to a bank, drawing from some
hiding-place a book and a bell, which he gave into the hands of the
youth.

'For thy soul, no word!' said the Monk, speaking down his throat as he
took in breath. 'Nay! not in answer to me! Be faithful, and more than
earthly fortune is thine; for I say unto thee, I shall not fail, having
grace to sustain this combat.'

Thereupon he commenced the ascent of Drachenfels.

Farina followed. He had no hint of the Monk's mission, nor of the part
himself was to play in it. Such a load of silence gathered on his
questioning spirit, that the outcry of the rageing elements alone
prevented him from arresting the Monk and demanding the end of his
service there. That outcry was enough to freeze speech on the very lips
of a mortal. For scarce had they got footing on the winding path of the
crags, when the whole vengeance of the storm was hurled against the
mountain. Huge boulders were loosened and came bowling from above: trees
torn by their roots from the fissures whizzed on the eddies of the wind:
torrents of rain foamed down the iron flanks of rock, and flew off in
hoar feathers against the short pauses of darkness: the mountain heaved,
and quaked, and yawned a succession of hideous chasms.

'There's a devil in this,' thought Farina. He looked back and marked the
river imaging lurid abysses of cloud above the mountain-summit--yea! and
on the summit a flaming shape was mirrored.

Two nervous hands stayed the cry on his mouth.

'Have I not warned thee?' said the husky voice of the Monk. 'I may well
watch, and think for thee as for a dog. Be thou as faithful!'

He handed a flask to the youth, and bade him drink. Farina drank and felt
richly invigorated. The Monk then took bell and book.

'But half an hour,' he muttered, 'for this combat that is to ring through
centuries.'

Crossing himself, he strode wildly upward. Farina saw him beckon back
once, and the next instant he was lost round an incline of the highest
peak.

The wind that had just screamed a thousand death-screams, was now awfully
dumb, albeit Farina could feel it lifting hood and hair. In the unnatural
stillness his ear received tones of a hymn chanted below; now sinking,
now swelling; as though the voices faltered between prayer and
inspiration. Farina caught on a projection of crag, and fixed his eyes on
what was passing on the height.

There was the Monk in his brown hood and wrapper, confronting--if he
might trust his balls of sight--the red-hot figure of the Prince of
Darkness.

As yet no mortal tussle had taken place between them. They were arguing:
angrily, it was true: yet with the first mutual deference of practised
logicians. Latin and German was alternately employed by both. It thrilled
Farina's fervid love of fatherland to hear the German Satan spoke: but
his Latin was good, and his command over that tongue remarkable; for,
getting the worst of the argument, as usual, he revenged himself by
parodying one of the Church canticles with a point that discomposed his
adversary, and caused him to retreat a step, claiming support against
such shrewd assault.

'The use of an unexpected weapon in warfare is in itself half a victory.
Induce your antagonist to employ it as a match for you, and reckon on
completely routing him . . .' says the old military chronicle.

'Come!' said the Demon with easy raillery. 'You know your game--I mine! I
really want the good people to be happy; dancing, kissing, propagating,
what you will. We quite agree. You can have no objection to me, but a
foolish old prejudice--not personal, but class; an antipathy of the cowl,
for which I pardon you! What I should find in you to complain of--I have
only to mention it, I am sure--is, that perhaps you do speak a little too
much through your nose.'

The Monk did not fall into the jocular trap by retorting in the same
strain.

'Laugh with the Devil, and you won't laugh longest,' says the proverb.

Keeping to his own arms, the holy man frowned.

'Avaunt, Fiend!' he cried. 'To thy kingdom below! Thou halt raged over
earth a month, causing blights, hurricanes, and epidemics of the deadly
sins. Parley no more! Begone!'

The Demon smiled: the corners of his mouth ran up to his ears, and his
eyes slid down almost into one.

'Still through the nose!' said he reproachfully.

'I give thee Five Minutes!' cried the Monk.

'I had hoped for a longer colloquy,' sighed the Demon, jogging his left
leg and trifling with his tail.

'One Minute!' exclaimed the Monk.

'Truly so!' said the Demon. 'I know old Time and his habits better than
you really can. We meet every Saturday night, and communicate our best
jokes. I keep a book of them Down There!'

And as if he had reason to remember the pavement of his Halls, he stood
tiptoe and whipped up his legs.

'Two Minutes!'

The Demon waved perfect acquiescence, and continued:

'We understand each other, he and I. All Old Ones do. As long as he
lasts, I shall. The thing that surprises me is, that you and I cannot
agree, similar as we are in temperament, and playing for the long odds,
both of us. My failure is, perhaps, too great a passion for sport, aha!
Well, 'tis a pity you won't try and live on the benevolent principle. I
am indeed kind to them who commiserate my condition. I give them all they
want, aha! Hem! Try and not believe in me now, aha! Ho! . . . Can't you?
What are eyes? Persuade yourself you're dreaming. You can do anything
with a mind like yours, Father Gregory! And consider the luxury of
getting me out of the way so easily, as many do. It is my finest
suggestion, aha! Generally I myself nudge their ribs with the capital
idea--You're above bribes? I was going to observe--'

'Three!'

'Observe, that if you care for worldly honours, I can smother you with
that kind of thing. Several of your first-rate people made a bargain with
me when they were in the fog, and owe me a trifle. Patronage they call
it. I hook the high and the low. Too-little and too-much serve me better
than Beelzebub. A weak stomach is certainly more carnally virtuous than a
full one. Consequently my kingdom is becoming too respectable. They've
all got titles, and object to being asked to poke the fire
without--Honourable-and-with-Exceeding-Brightness-Beaming Baroness This!
Admirably-Benignant-Down-looking Highness That! Interrupts business,
especially when you have to ask them to fry themselves, according to the
rules . . . Would you like Mainz and the Rheingau? . . . You don't care
for Beauty--Puella, Puellae? I have plenty of them, too, below. The
Historical Beauties warmed up at a moment's notice. Modern ones made
famous between morning and night--Fame is the sauce of Beauty. Or,
no--eh?'

'Four!'

'Not quite so fast, if you please. You want me gone. Now, where's your
charity? Do you ask me to be always raking up those poor devils
underneath? While I'm here, they've a respite. They cannot think you
kind, Father Gregory! As for the harm, you see, I'm not the more
agreeable by being face to face with you--though some fair dames do take
to my person monstrously. The secret is, the quantity of small talk I can
command: that makes them forget my smell, which is, I confess,
abominable, displeasing to myself, and my worst curse. Your sort, Father
Gregory, are somewhat unpleasant in that particular--if I may judge by
their Legate here. Well, try small talk. They would fall desperately in
love with polecats and skunks if endowed with small talk. Why, they have
become enamoured of monks before now! If skunks, why not monks? And
again--'

'Five!'

Having solemnly bellowed this tremendous number, the holy man lifted his
arms to begin the combat.

Farina felt his nerves prick with admiration of the ghostly warrior
daring the Second Power of Creation on that lonely mountain-top. He
expected, and shuddered at thought of the most awful fight ever yet
chronicled of those that have taken place between heroes and the hounds
of evil: but his astonishment was great to hear the Demon, while Bell was
in air and Book aloft, retreat, shouting, 'Hold!'

'I surrender,' said he sullenly. 'What terms?'

'Instantaneous riddance of thee from face of earth.'

'Good!--Now,' said the Demon, 'did you suppose I was to be trapped into a
fight? No doubt you wish to become a saint, and have everybody talking of
my last defeat . . . . Pictures, poems, processions, with the Devil
downmost! No. You're more than a match for me.'

'Silence, Darkness!' thundered the Monk, 'and think not to vanquish thy
victor by flatteries. Begone!'

And again he towered in his wrath.

The Demon drew his tail between his legs, and threw the forked, fleshy,
quivering end over his shoulder. He then nodded cheerfully, pointed his
feet, and finicked a few steps away, saying: 'I hope we shall meet
again.'

Upon that he shot out his wings, that were like the fins of the
wyver-fish, sharpened in venomous points.

'Commands for your people below?' he inquired, leering with chin awry.
'Desperate ruffians some of those cowls. You are right not to acknowledge
them.'

Farina beheld the holy man in no mood to let the Enemy tamper with him
longer.

The Demon was influenced by a like reflection; for, saying, 'Cologne is
the city your Holiness inhabits, I think?' he shot up rocket-like over
Rhineland, striking the entire length of the stream, and its
rough-bearded castle-crests, slate-ledges, bramble-clefts, vine-slopes,
and haunted valleys, with one brimstone flash. Frankfort and the far Main
saw him and reddened. Ancient Trier and Mosel; Heidelberg and Neckar;
Limberg and Lahn, ran guilty of him. And the swift artery of these
shining veins, Rhine, from his snow cradle to his salt decease, glimmered
Stygian horrors as the Infernal Comet, sprung over Bonn, sparkled a fiery
minute along the face of the stream, and vanished, leaving a seam of
ragged flame trailed on the midnight heavens.

Farina breathed hard through his teeth.

'The last of him was awful,' said he, coming forward to where the Monk
knelt and grasped his breviary, 'but he was vanquished easily.'

'Easily?' exclaimed the holy man, gasping satisfaction: 'thou weakling!
is it for thee to measure difficulties, or estimate powers? Easily? thou
worldling! and so are great deeds judged when the danger's past! And what
am I but the humble instrument that brought about this wondrous conquest!
the poor tool of this astounding triumph! Shall the sword say, This is
the battle I won! Yonder the enemy I overthrow! Bow to me, ye lords of
earth, and worshippers of mighty acts? Not so! Nay, but the sword is
honoured in the hero's grasp, and if it break not, it is accounted
trusty. This, then, this little I may claim, that I was trusty! Trusty in
a heroic encounter! Trusty in a battle with earth's terror! Oh! but this
must not be said. This is to think too much! This is to be more than
aught yet achieved by man!'

The holy warrior crossed his arms, and gently bowed his head.

'Take me to the Sisters,' he said. 'The spirit has gone out of me! I am
faint, and as a child!'

Farina asked, and had, his blessing.

'And with it my thanks!' said the Monk. 'Thou hast witnessed how he can
be overcome! Thou hast looked upon a scene that will be the glory of
Christendom! Thou hast beheld the discomfiture of Darkness before the
voice of Light! Yet think not much of me: account me little in this
matter! I am but an instrument! but an instrument!--and again, but an
instrument!'

Farina drew the arms of the holy combatant across his shoulders and
descended Drachenfels.

The tempest was as a forgotten anguish. Bright with maiden splendour
shone the moon; and the old rocks, cherished in her beams, put up their
horns to blue heaven once more. All the leafage of the land shook as to
shake off a wicked dream, and shuddered from time to time, whispering of
old fears quieted, and present peace. The heart of the river fondled with
the image of the moon in its depths.

'This is much to have won for earth,' murmured the Monk. 'And what is
life, or who would not risk all, to snatch such loveliness from the
talons of the Fiend, the Arch-foe? Yet, not I! not I! say not, 'twas I
did this!'

Soft praises of melody ascended to them on the moist fragrance of air. It
was the hymn of the Sisters.

'How sweet!' murmured the Monk. 'Put it from me! away with it!'

Rising on Farina's back, and stirruping his feet on the thighs of the
youth, he cried aloud: 'I charge ye, whoso ye be, sing not this deed
before the emperor! By the breath of your nostrils; pause! ere ye whisper
aught of the combat of Saint Gregory with Satan, and his victory, and the
marvel of it, while he liveth; for he would die the humble monk he is.'

He resumed his seat, and Farina brought him into the circle of the
Sisters. Those pure women took him, and smoothed him, lamenting, and
filling the night with triumphing tones.

Farina stood apart.

'The breeze tells of dawn,' said the Monk; 'we must be in Cologne before
broad day.'

They mounted horse, and the Sisters grouped and reverenced under the
blessings of the Monk.

'No word of it!' said the Monk warningly. 'We are silent, Father!' they
answered. 'Cologne-ward!' was then his cry, and away he and Farina, flew.




THE GOSHAWK LEADS

Morning was among the grey eastern clouds as they rode upon the camp
hastily formed to meet the Kaiser. All there was in a wallow of
confusion. Fierce struggles for precedence still went on in the
neighbourhood of the imperial tent ground, where, under the standard of
Germany, lounged some veterans of the Kaiser's guard, calmly watching the
scramble. Up to the edge of the cultivated land nothing was to be seen
but brawling clumps of warriors asserting the superior claims of their
respective lords. Variously and hotly disputed were these claims, as many
red coxcombs testified. Across that point where the green field
flourished, not a foot was set, for the Kaiser's care of the farmer, and
affection for good harvests, made itself respected even in the heat of
those jealous rivalries. It was said of him, that he would have camped in
a bog, or taken quarters in a cathedral, rather than trample down a green
blade of wheat, or turn over one vine-pole in the empire. Hence the
presence of Kaiser Heinrich was never hailed as Egypt's plague by the
peasantry, but welcome as the May month wherever he went.

Father Gregory and Farina found themselves in the centre of a group ere
they drew rein, and a cry rose, 'The good father shall decide, and all's
fair,' followed by, 'Agreed! Hail and tempest! he's dropped down o'
purpose.'

'Father,' said one, 'here it is! I say I saw the Devil himself fly off
Drachenfels, and flop into Cologne. Fritz here, and Frankenbauch, saw him
too. They'll swear to him: so 'll I. Hell's thunder! will we. Yonder
fellows will have it 'twas a flash o' lightning, as if I didn't see him,
horns, tail, and claws, and a mighty sight 'twas, as I'm a sinner.'

A clash of voices, for the Devil and against him, burst on this accurate
description of the Evil spirit. The Monk sank his neck into his chest.

'Gladly would I hold silence on this, my sons,' said he, in a
supplicating voice.

'Speak, Father,' cried the first spokesman, gathering courage from the
looks of the Monk.

Father Gregory appeared to commune with himself deeply. At last, lifting
his head, and murmuring, 'It must be,' he said aloud:

''Twas verily Satan, O my sons! Him this night in mortal combat I
encountered and overcame on the summit of Drachenfels, before the eyes of
this youth; and from Satan I this night deliver ye! an instrument herein
as in all other.'

Shouts, and a far-spreading buzz resounded in the camp. Hundreds had now
seen Satan flying off the Drachenstein. Father Gregory could no longer
hope to escape from the importunate crowds that beset him for
particulars. The much-contested point now was, as to the exact position
of Satan's tail during his airy circuit, before descending into Cologne.
It lashed like a lion's. 'Twas cocked, for certain! He sneaked it between
his legs like a lurcher! He made it stumpy as a brown bear's! He carried
it upright as a pike!

'O my sons! have I sown dissension? Have I not given ye peace?' exclaimed
the Monk.

But they continued to discuss it with increasing frenzy.

Farina cast a glance over the tumult, and beheld his friend Guy beckoning
earnestly. He had no difficulty in getting away to him, as the fetters of
all eyes were on the Monk alone.

The Goshawk was stamping with excitement.

'Not a moment to be lost, my lad,' said Guy, catching his arm. 'Here,
I've had half-a-dozen fights already for this bit of ground. Do you know
that fellow squatting there?'

Farina beheld the Thier at the entrance of a tumbledown tent. He was
ruefully rubbing a broken head.

'Now,' continued Guy, 'to mount him is the thing; and then after the
wolves of Werner as fast as horse-flesh can carry us. No questions!
Bound, are you? And what am I? But this is life and death, lad! Hark!'

The Goshawk whispered something that sucked the blood out of Farina's
cheek.

'Look you--what's your lockjaw name? Keep good faith with me, and you
shall have your revenge, and the shiners I promise, besides my lord's
interest for a better master: but, sharp! we won't mount till we're out
of sight o' the hell-scum you horde with.'

The Thier stood up and staggered after them through the camp. There was
no difficulty in mounting him horses were loose, and scampering about the
country, not yet delivered from their terrors of the last night's
tempest.

'Here be we, three good men!' exclaimed Guy, when they were started, and
Farina had hurriedly given him the heads of his adventure with the Monk.
'Three good men! One has helped to kick the devil: one has served an
apprenticeship to his limb: and one is ready to meet him foot to foot any
day, which last should be myself. Not a man more do we want, though it
were to fish up that treasure you talk of being under the Rhine there,
and guarded by I don't know how many tricksy little villains. Horses can
be ferried across at Linz, you say?'

'Ay, thereabout,' grunted the Thier.

'We 're on the right road, then!' said Guy. 'Thanks to you both, I've had
no sleep for two nights--not a wink, and must snatch it going--not the
first time.'

The Goshawk bent his body, and spoke no more. Farina could not get a word
further from him. By the mastery he still had over his rein, the Goshawk
alone proved that he was of the world of the living. Schwartz Thier,
rendered either sullen or stunned by the latest cracked crown he had
received, held his jaws close as if they had been nailed.

At Linz the horses were well breathed. The Goshawk, who had been snoring
an instant before, examined them keenly, and shook his calculating head.

'Punch that beast of yours in the ribs,' said he to Farina. 'Ah! not a
yard of wind in him. And there's the coming back, when we shall have more
to carry. Well: this is my lord's money; but i' faith, it's going in a
good cause, and Master Groschen will make it all right, no doubt; not a
doubt of it.'

The Goshawk had seen some excellent beasts in the stables of the Kaiser's
Krone; but the landlord would make no exchange without an advance of
silver. This done, the arrangement was prompt.

'Schwartz Thier!--I've got your name now,' said Guy, as they were
ferrying across, 'you're stiff certain they left Cologne with the maiden
yesternoon, now?'

'Ah, did they! and she's at the Eck safe enow by this time.'

'And away from the Eck this night she shall come, trust me!'

'Or there will I die with her!' cried Farina.

'Fifteen men at most, he has, you said,' continued Guy.

'Two not sound, five true as steel, and the rest shillyshally. 'Slife,
one lock loose serves us; but two saves us: five we're a match for,
throwing in bluff Baron; the remainder go with victory.'

'Can we trust this fellow?' whispered Farina.

'Trust him!' roared Guy. 'Why, I've thumped him, lad; pegged and pardoned
him. Trust him? trust me! If Werner catches a sight of that snout of his
within half-a-mile of his hold, he'll roast him alive.'

He lowered his voice: 'Trust him? We can do nothing without him. I
knocked the devil out of him early this morning. No chance for his
Highness anywhere now. This Eck of Werner's would stand a siege from the
Kaiser in person, I hear. We must into it like weasels; and out as we
can.'

Dismissing the ferry-barge with stern injunctions to be in waiting from
noon to noon, the three leapt on their fresh nags.

'Stop at the first village,' said Guy; 'we must lay in provision. As
Master Groschen says, "Nothing's to be done, Turpin, without provender."'

'Goshawk!' cried Farina; 'you have time; tell me how this business was
done.'

The only reply was a soft but decided snore, that spoke, like a
voluptuous trumpet, of dreamland and its visions.

At Sinzig, the Thier laid his hand on Guy's bridle, with the words, 'Feed
here,' a brief, but effective, form of signal, which aroused the Goshawk
completely. The sign of the Trauben received them. Here, wurst reeking
with garlic, eggs, black bread, and sour wine, was all they could
procure. Farina refused to eat, and maintained his resolution, in spite
of Guy's sarcastic chiding.

'Rub down the beasts, then, and water them,' said the latter. 'Made a
vow, I suppose,' muttered Guy.

'That's the way of those fellows. No upright manly
take-the-thing-as-it-comes; but fly-sky-high whenever there's a dash on
their heaven. What has his belly done to offend him? It will be crying
out just when we want all quiet. I wouldn't pay Werner such a compliment
as go without a breakfast for him. Not I! Would you, Schwartz Thier?'

'Henker! not I!' growled the Thier. 'He'll lose one sooner.'

'First snatch his prey, or he'll be making, God save us! a meal for a
Kaiser, the brute.'

Guy called in the landlady, clapped down the score, and abused the wine.

'Sir,' said the landlady, 'ours is but a poor inn, and we do our best.'

'So you do,' replied the Goshawk, softened; 'and I say that a civil
tongue and rosy smiles sweeten even sour wine.'

The landlady, a summer widow, blushed, and as he was stepping from the
room, called him aside.

'I thought you were one of that dreadful Werner's band, and I hate him.'

Guy undeceived her.

'He took my sister,' she went on, 'and his cruelty killed her. He
persecuted me even in the lifetime of my good man. Last night he came
here in the middle of the storm with a young creature bright as an angel,
and sorrowful--'

'He's gone, you're sure?' broke in Guy.

'Gone! Oh, yes! Soon as the storm abated he dragged her on. Oh! the way
that young thing looked at me, and I able to do nothing for her.'

'Now, the Lord bless you for a rosy Christian!' cried Guy, and, in his
admiration, he flung his arm round her and sealed a ringing kiss on each
cheek.

'No good man defrauded by that! and let me see the fellow that thinks
evil of it. If I ever told a woman a secret, I 'd tell you one now, trust
me. But I never do, so farewell! Not another?'

Hasty times keep the feelings in a ferment, and the landlady was
extremely angry with Guy and heartily forgave him, all within a minute.

'No more,' said she, laughing: 'but wait; I have something for you.'

The Goshawk lingered on a fretting heel. She was quickly under his elbow
again with two flasks leaning from her bosom to her arms.

'There! I seldom meet a man like you; and, when I do, I like to be
remembered. This is a true good wine, real Liebfrauenmilch, which I only
give to choice customers.'

'Welcome it is!' sang Guy to her arch looks; 'but I must pay for it.'

'Not a pfennig!' said the landlady.

'Not one?'

'Not one!' she repeated, with a stamp of the foot.

'In other coin, then,' quoth Guy; and folding her waist, which did not
this time back away, the favoured Goshawk registered rosy payment on a
very fresh red mouth, receiving in return such lively discount, that he
felt himself bound in conscience to make up the full sum a second time.

'What a man!' sighed the landlady, as she watched the Goshawk lead off
along the banks; 'courtly as a knight, open as a squire, and gentle as a
page!'




WERNER'S ECK

A league behind Andernach, and more in the wintry circle of the sun than
Laach, its convenient monastic neighbour, stood the castle of Werner, the
Robber Baron. Far into the South, hazy with afternoon light, a yellow
succession of sandhills stretched away, spouting fire against the blue
sky of an elder world, but now dead and barren of herbage. Around is a
dusty plain, where the green blades of spring no sooner peep than they
become grimed with sand and take an aged look, in accordance with the
ungenerous harvests they promise. The aridity of the prospect is relieved
on one side by the lofty woods of Laach, through which the sun setting
burns golden-red, and on the other by the silver sparkle of a narrow
winding stream, bordered with poplars, and seen but a glistening mile of
its length by all the thirsty hills. The Eck, or Corner, itself, is
thick-set with wood, but of a stunted growth, and lying like a dark patch
on the landscape. It served, however, entirely to conceal the castle, and
mask every movement of the wary and terrible master. A trained eye
advancing on the copse would hardly mark the glimmer of the turrets over
the topmost leaves, but to every loophole of the walls lies bare the
circuit of the land. Werner could rule with a glance the Rhine's course
down from the broad rock over Coblentz to the white tower of Andernach.
He claimed that march as his right; but the Mosel was no hard ride's
distance, and he gratified his thirst for rapine chiefly on that river,
delighting in it, consequently, as much as his robber nature boiled over
the bound of his feudal privileges.

Often had the Baron held his own against sieges and restrictions, bans
and impositions of all kinds. He boasted that there was never a knight
within twenty miles of him that he had not beaten, nor monk of the same
limit not in his pay. This braggadocio received some warrant from his
yearly increase of licence; and his craft and his castle combined, made
him a notable pest of the region, a scandal to the abbey whose
countenance he had, and a frightful infliction on the poorer farmers and
peasantry.

The sun was beginning to slope over Laach, and threw the shadows of the
abbey towers half-way across the blue lake-waters, as two men in the garb
of husbandmen emerged from the wood. Their feet plunged heavily and their
heads hung down, as they strode beside a wain mounted with straw,
whistling an air of stupid unconcern; but a close listener might have
heard that the lumbering vehicle carried a human voice giving them
directions as to the road they were to take, and what sort of behaviour
to observe under certain events. The land was solitary. A boor passing
asked whether toll or tribute they were conveying to Werner. Tribute,
they were advised to reply, which caused him to shrug and curse as he
jogged on. Hearing him, the voice in the wain chuckled grimly. Their next
speech was with a trooper, who overtook them, and wanted to know what
they had in the wain for Werner. Tribute, they replied, and won the title
of 'brave pigs' for their trouble.

'But what's the dish made of?' said the trooper, stirring the straw with
his sword-point.

'Tribute,' came the answer.

'Ha! You've not been to Werner's school,' and the trooper swung a
sword-stroke at the taller of the two, sending a tremendous shudder
throughout his frame; but he held his head to the ground, and only seemed
to betray animal consciousness in leaning his ear closer to the wain.

'Blood and storm! Will ye speak?' cried the trooper.

'Never talk much; but an ye say nothing to the Baron,'--thrusting his
hand into the straw--'here's what's better than speaking.'

'Well said!--Eh? Liebfrauenmilch? Ho, ho! a rare bleed!'

Striking the neck of the flask on a wheel, the trooper applied it to his
mouth, and ceased not deeply ingurgitating till his face was broad to the
sky and the bottle reversed. He then dashed it down, sighed, and shook
himself.

'Rare news! the Kaiser's come: he'll be in Cologne by night; but first he
must see the Baron, and I'm post with the order. That's to show you how
high he stands in the Kaiser's grace. Don't be thinking of upsetting
Werner yet, any of you; mind, now!'

'That's Blass-Gesell,' said the voice in the wain, as the trooper trotted
on: adding, ''gainst us.'

'Makes six,' responded the driver.

Within sight of the Eck, they descried another trooper coming toward
them. This time the driver was first to speak.

'Tribute! Provender! Bread and wine for the high Baron Werner from his
vassals over Tonnistein.'

'And I'm out of it! fasting like a winter wolf,' howled the fellow.

He was in the act of addressing himself to an inspection of the wain's
contents, when a second flask lifted in air, gave a sop to his curiosity.
This flask suffered the fate of the former.

'A Swabian blockhead, aren't you?'

'Ay, that country,' said the driver. 'May be, Henker Rothhals happens to
be with the Baron?'

'To hell with him! I wish he had my job, and I his, of watching the
yellow-bird in her new cage, till she's taken out to-night, and then a
jolly bumper to the Baron all round.'

The driver wished him a fortunate journey, strongly recommending him to
skirt the abbey westward, and go by the Ahr valley, as there was
something stirring that way, and mumbling, 'Makes five again,' as he put
the wheels in motion.

'Goshawk!' said his visible companion; 'what do you say now?'

'I say, bless that widow!'

'Oh! bring me face to face with this accursed Werner quickly, my God!'
gasped the youth.

'Tusk! 'tis not Werner we want--there's the Thier speaking. No, no,
Schwartz Thier! I trust you, no doubt; but the badger smells at a hole,
before he goes inside it. We're strangers, and are allowed to miss our
way.'

Leaving the wain in Farina's charge, he pushed through a dense growth of
shrub and underwood, and came crouching on a precipitous edge of shrouded
crag, which commanded a view of the stronghold, extending round it, as if
scooped clean by some natural action, about a stone'sthrow distant, and
nearly level with the look-out tower. Sheer from a deep circular basin
clothed with wood, and bottomed with grass and bubbling water, rose a
naked moss-stained rock, on whose peak the castle firmly perched, like a
spying hawk. The only means of access was by a narrow natural bridge of
rock flung from this insulated pinnacle across to the mainland. One man,
well disposed, might have held it against forty.

'Our way's the best,' thought Guy, as he meditated every mode of gaining
admission. 'A hundred men an hour might be lost cutting steps up that
steep slate; and once at the top we should only have to be shoved down
again.'

While thus engaged, he heard a summons sounded from the castle, and
scrambled back to Farina.

'The Thier leads now,' said he, 'and who leads is captain. It seems
easier to get out of that than in. There's a square tower, and a round. I
guess the maiden to be in the round. Now, lad, no crying out--You don't
come in with us; but back you go for the horses, and have them ready and
fresh in yon watered meadow under the castle. The path down winds easy.'

'Man!' cried Farina, 'what do you take me for?--go you for the horses.'

'Not for a fool,' Guy rejoined, tightening his lip; 'but now is your time
to prove yourself one.'

'With you, or without you, I enter that castle!'

'Oh! if you want to be served up hot for the Baron's supper-mess, by all
means.'

'Thunder!' growled Schwartz Thier, 'aren't ye moving?'

The Goshawk beckoned Farina aside.

'Act as I tell you, or I'm for Cologne.'

'Traitor!' muttered the youth.

'Swearing this, that if we fail, the Baron shall need a leech sooner than
a bride.'

'That stroke must be mine!'

The Goshawk griped the muscle of Farina's arm till the youth was
compelled to slacken it with pain.

'Could you drive a knife through a six-inch wood-wall? I doubt this wild
boar wants a harder hit than many a best man could give. 'Sblood! obey,
sirrah. How shall we keep yon fellow true, if he sees we're at points?'

'I yield,' exclaimed Farina with a fall of the chest; 'but hear I nothing
of you by midnight--Oh! then think not I shall leave another minute to
chance. Farewell! haste! Heaven prosper you! You will see her, and die
under her eyes. That may be denied to me. What have I done to be refused
that last boon?'

'Gone without breakfast and dinner,' said Guy in abhorrent tones.

A whistle from the wain, following a noise of the castlegates being flung
open, called the Goshawk away, and he slouched his shoulders and strode
to do his part, without another word. Farina gazed after him, and dropped
into the covert.




THE WATER-LADY

'Bird of lovers! Voice of the passion of love! Sweet, deep,
disaster-toning nightingale!' sings the old minnesinger; 'who that has
not loved, hearing thee is touched with the wand of love's mysteries, and
yearneth to he knoweth not whom, humbled by overfulness of heart; but
who, listening, already loveth, heareth the language he would speak, yet
faileth in; feeleth the great tongueless sea of his infinite desires
stirred beyond his narrow bosom; is as one stript of wings whom the
angels beckon to their silver homes: and he leaneth forward to ascend to
them, and is mocked by his effort: then is he of the fallen, and of the
fallen would he remain, but that tears lighten him, and through the tears
stream jewelled shafts dropt down to him from the sky, precious ladders
inlaid with amethyst, sapphire, blended jasper, beryl, rose-ruby, ether
of heaven flushed with softened bloom of the insufferable Presences: and
lo, the ladders dance, and quiver, and waylay his eyelids, and a second
time he is mocked, aspiring: and after the third swoon standeth Hope
before him with folded arms, and eyes dry of the delusions of tears,
saying, Thou hast seen! thou hast felt! thy strength hath reached in thee
so far! now shall I never die in thee!'

'For surely,' says the minstrel, 'Hope is not born of earth, or it were
perishable. Rather know her the offspring of that embrace strong love
straineth the heavens with. This owe we to thy music, bridal nightingale!
And the difference of this celestial spirit from the smirking phantasy of
whom all stand soon or late forsaken, is the difference between painted
day with its poor ambitious snares, and night lifting its myriad tapers
round the throne of the eternal, the prophet stars of everlasting time!
And the one dieth, and the other liveth; and the one is unregretted, and
the other walketh in thought-spun raiment of divine melancholy; her ears
crowded with the pale surges that wrap this shifting shore; in her eyes a
shape of beauty floating dimly, that she will not attain this side the
water, but broodeth on evermore.

'Therefore, hold on thy cherished four long notes, which are as the very
edge where exultation and anguish melt, meet, and are sharpened to one
ecstasy, death-dividing bird! Fill the woods with passionate chuckle and
sob, sweet chaplain of the marriage service of a soul with heaven! Pour
out thy holy wine of song upon the soft-footed darkness, till, like a
priest of the inmost temple, 'tis drunken with fair intelligences!'

Thus the old minstrels and minnesingers.

Strong and full sang the nightingales that night Farina held watch by the
guilty castle that entombed his living beloved. The castle looked itself
a denser shade among the moonthrown shadows of rock and tree. The meadow
spread like a green courtyard at the castle's foot. It was of lush deep
emerald grass, softly mixed with grey in the moon's light, and showing
like jasper. Where the shadows fell thickest, there was yet a mist of
colour. All about ran a brook, and babbled to itself. The spring crocus
lifted its head in moist midgrasses of the meadow, rejoiced with
freshness. The rugged heights seemed to clasp this one innocent spot as
their only garden-treasure; and a bank of hazels hid it from the castle
with a lover's arm.

'The moon will tell me,' mused Farina; 'the moon will signal me the hour!
When the moon hangs over the round tower, I shall know 'tis time to
strike.'

The song of the nightingales was a full unceasing throb.

It went like the outcry of one heart from branch to branch. The four long
notes, and the short fifth which leads off to that hurried gush of music,
gurgling rich with passion, came thick and constant from under the
tremulous leaves.

At first Farina had been deaf to them. His heart was in the dungeon with
Margarita, or with the Goshawk in his dangers, forming a thousand
desperate plans, among the red-hot ploughshares of desperate action.
Finally, without a sense of being wooed, it was won. The tenderness of
his love then mastered him.

'God will not suffer that fair head to come to harm!' he thought, and
with the thought a load fell off his breast.

He paced the meadows, and patted the three pasturing steeds.
Involuntarily his sight grew on the moon. She went so slowly. She seemed
not to move at all. A little wing of vapour flew toward her; it whitened,
passed, and the moon was slower than before. Oh! were the heavens
delaying their march to look on this iniquity? Again and again he cried,
'Patience, it is not time!' He flung himself on the grass. The next
moment he climbed the heights, and was peering at the mass of gloom that
fronted the sky. It reared such a mailed head of menace, that his heart
was seized with a quivering, as though it had been struck. Behind lay
scattered some small faint-winkling stars on sapphire fields, and a stain
of yellow light was in a breach of one wall.

He descended. What was the Goshawk doing? Was he betrayed? It was surely
now time? No; the moon had not yet smitten the face of the castle. He
made his way through the hazel-bank among flitting nightmoths, and
glanced up to measure the moon's distance. As he did so, a first touch of
silver fell on the hoary flint.

'Oh, young bird of heaven in that Devil's clutch!'

Sounds like the baying of boar-hounds alarmed him. They whined into
silence.

He fell back. The meadow breathed peace, and more and more the
nightingales volumed their notes. As in a charmed circle of palpitating
song, he succumbed to languor. The brook rolled beside him fresh as an
infant, toying with the moonlight. He leaned over it, and thrice
waywardly dipped his hand in the clear translucence.

Was it his own face imaged there?

Farina bent close above an eddy of the water. It whirled with a strange
tumult, breaking into lines and lights a face not his own, nor the
moon's; nor was it a reflection. The agitation increased. Now a wreath of
bubbles crowned the pool, and a pure water-lily, but larger, ascended
wavering.

He started aside; and under him a bright head, garlanded with gemmed
roses, appeared. No fairer figure of woman had Farina seen. Her visage
had the lustrous white of moonlight, and all her shape undulated in a
dress of flashing silver-white, wonderful to see. The Lady of the Water
smiled on him, and ran over with ripples and dimples of limpid beauty.
Then, as he retreated on the meadow grass, she swam toward him, and
taking his hand, pressed it to her. After her touch the youth no longer
feared. She curved her finger, and beckoned him on. All that she did was
done flowingly. The youth was a shadow in her silver track as she passed
like a harmless wave over the closed crocuses; but the crocuses shivered
and swelled their throats of streaked purple and argent as at delicious
rare sips of a wine. Breath of violet, and ladysmock, and valley-lily,
mingled and fluttered about her. Farina was as a man working the day's
intent in a dream. He could see the heart in her translucent, hanging
like a cold dingy ruby. By the purity of his nature he felt that such a
presence must have come but to help. It might be Margarita's guardian
fairy!

They passed the hazel-bank, and rounded the castlecrag, washed by the
brook and, beneath the advancing moon, standing in a ring of brawling
silver. The youth with his fervid eyes marked the old weather-stains and
scars of long defiance coming into colour. That mystery of wickedness
which the towers had worn in the dusk, was dissolved, and he endured no
more the almost abashed sensation of competing littleness that made him
think there was nought to do, save die, combating single-handed such
massive power. The moon shone calmly superior, like the prowess of maiden
knights; and now the harsh frown of the walls struck resolution to his
spirit, and nerved him with hate and the contempt true courage feels when
matched against fraud and villany.

On a fallen block of slate, cushioned with rich brown moss and rusted
weather-stains, the Water-Lady sat, and pointed to Farina the path of the
moon toward the round tower. She did not speak, and if his lips parted,
put her cold finger across them. Then she began to hum a soft sweet
monotony of song, vague and careless, very witching to hear. Farina
caught no words, nor whether the song was of days in dust or in flower,
but his mind bloomed with legends and sad splendours of story, while she
sang on the slate-block under sprinkled shadows by the water.

He had listened long in trance, when the Water-Lady hushed, and stretched
forth a slender forefinger to the moon. It stood like a dot over the
round tower. Farina rose in haste. She did not leave him to ask her aid,
but took his hand and led him up the steep ascent. Halfway to the castle,
she rested. There, concealed by bramble-tufts, she disclosed the low
portal of a secret passage, and pushed it open without effort. She paused
at the entrance, and he could see her trembling, seeming to wax taller,
till she was like a fountain glittering in the cold light. Then she
dropped, as drops a dying bet, and cowered into the passage.

Darkness, thick with earth-dews, oppressed his senses. He felt the clammy
walls scraping close on him. Not the dimmest lamp, or guiding sound, was
near; but the lady went on as one who knew her way. Passing a low-vaulted
dungeon-room, they wound up stairs hewn in the rock, and came to a door,
obedient to her touch, which displayed a chamber faintly misted by a
solitary bar of moonlight. Farina perceived they were above the
foundation of the castle. The walls gleamed pale with knightly harness,
habergeons gaping for heads, breastplates of blue steel, halbert, and
hand-axe, greaves, glaives, boar-spears, and polished spur-fixed
heel-pieces. He seized a falchion hanging apart, but the lady stayed his
arm, and led to another flight of stone ending in a kind of corridor.
Noises of laughter and high feasting beset him at this point. The Lady of
the Water sidled her head, as to note a familiar voice; and then drew him
to a looped aperture.

Farina beheld a scene that first dazzled, but, as it grew into shape,
sank him with dismay. Below, and level with the chamber he had left, a
rude banqueting-hall glowed, under the light of a dozen flambeaux, with
smoking boar's flesh, deer's flesh, stone-flagons, and horn-beakers. At
the head of this board sat Werner, scarlet with furious feasting, and on
his right hand, Margarita, bloodless as a beautiful martyr bound to the
fire. Retainers of Werner occupied the length of the hall, chorusing the
Baron's speeches, and drinking their own healths when there was no call
for another. Farina saw his beloved alone. She was dressed as when he
parted with her last. The dear cameo lay on her bosom, but not heaving
proudly as of old. Her shoulders were drooped forward, and contracted her
bosom in its heaving. She would have had a humbled look, but for the
marble sternness of her eyes. They were fixed as eyes that see the way of
death through all earthly objects.

'Now, dogs!' cried the Baron, 'the health of the night! and swell your
lungs, for I'll have no cat's cry when Werner's bride is the toast. Monk
or no monk's leave, she's mine. Ay, my pretty one! it shall be made right
in the morning, if I lead all the Laach rats here by the nose. Thunder!
no disrespect to Werner's bride from Pope or abbot. Now, sing out!--or
wait! these fellows shall drink it first.'

He stretched and threw a beaker of wine right and left behind him, and
Farina's despair stiffened his limbs as he recognized the Goshawk and
Schwartz Thier strapped to the floor. Their beards were already moist
with previous libations similarly bestowed, and they received this in
sullen stillness; but Farina thought he observed a rapid glance of
encouragement dart from beneath the Goshawk's bent brows, as Margarita
momentarily turned her head half-way on him.

'Lick your chaps, ye beasts, and don't say Werner stints vermin good
cheer his nuptial-night. Now,' continued the Baron, growing huskier as he
talked louder: 'Short and ringing, my devil's pups:--Werner and his
Bride! and may she soon give you a young baron to keep you in better
order than I can, as, if she does her duty, she will.'

The Baron stood up, and lifted his huge arm to lead the toast.

'Werner and his Bride!'

Not a voice followed him. There was a sudden intimation of the call being
echoed; but it snapped, and ended in shuffling tones, as if the hall-door
had closed on the response.

'What 's this?' roared the Baron, in that caged wild beast voice
Margarita remembered she had heard in the Cathedral Square.

No one replied.

'Speak! or I'll rot you a fathom in the rock, curs!'

'Herr Baron!' said Henker Rothhals impressively; 'the matter is, that
there's something unholy among us.'

The Baron's goblet flew at his head before the words were uttered.

'I'll make an unholy thing of him that says it,' and Werner lowered at
them one by one.

'Then I say it, Herr Baron!' pursued Henker Rothhals, wiping his
frontispiece: 'The Devil has turned against you at last. Look up
there--Ah, it's gone now; but where's the man sitting this side saw it
not?'

The Baron made one spring, and stood on the board.

'Now! will any rascal here please to say so?'

Something in the cruel hang of his threatening hatchet jaw silenced many
in the act of confirming the assertion.

'Stand out, Henker Rotthals!'

Rotthals slid a hunting-knife up his wrist, and stepped back from the
board.

'Beast!' roared the Baron, 'I said I wouldn't shed blood to-night. I
spared a traitor, and an enemy----'

'Look again!' said Rothhals; 'will any fellow say he saw nothing there.'

While all heads, including Werner's, were directed to the aperture which
surveyed them, Rothhals tossed his knife to the Goshawk unperceived.

This time answers came to his challenge, but not in confirmation. The
Baron spoke with a gasping gentleness.

'So you trifle with me? I'm dangerous for that game. Mind you of
Blass-Gesell? I made a better beast of him by sending him three-quarters
of the road to hell for trial.' Bellowing, 'Take that!' he discharged a
broad blade, hitherto concealed in his right hand, straight at Rothhals.
It fixed in his cheek and jaw, wringing an awful breath of pain from him
as he fell against the wall.

'There's a lesson for you not to cross me, children!' said Werner,
striding his stumpy legs up and down the crashing board, and puffing his
monstrous girth of chest and midriff. 'Let him stop there awhile, to show
what comes of thwarting Werner!--Fire-devils! before the baroness,
too!--Something unholy is there? Something unholy in his jaw, I
think!--Leave it sticking! He's against meat last, is he? I'll teach you
who he's for!--Who speaks?'

All hung silent. These men were animals dominated by a mightier brute.

He clasped his throat, and shook the board with a jump, as he squeaked,
rather than called, a second time 'Who spoke?'

He had not again to ask. In this pause, as the Baron glared for his
victim, a song, so softly sung that it sounded remote, but of which every
syllable was clearly rounded, swelled into his ears, and froze him in his
angry posture.

       'The blood of the barons shall turn to ice,
         And their castle fall to wreck,
        When a true lover dips in the water thrice,
         That runs round Werner's Eck.

       'Round Werner's Eck the water runs;
         The hazels shiver and shake:
        The walls that have blotted such happy suns,
         Are seized with the ruin-quake.

       'And quake with the ruin, and quake with rue,
         Thou last of Werner's race!
        The hearts of the barons were cold that knew
         The Water-Dame's embrace.

       'For a sin was done, and a shame was wrought,
         That water went to hide:
        And those who thought to make it nought,
         They did but spread it wide.

       'Hold ready, hold ready to pay the price,
         And keep thy bridal cheer:
        A hand has dipped in the water thrice,
         And the Water-Dame is here.'




THE RESCUE

The Goshawk was on his feet. 'Now, lass,' said he to Margarita, 'now is
the time!' He took her hand, and led her to the door. Schwartz Thier
closed up behind her. Not a man in the hall interposed. Werner's head
moved round after them, like a dog on the watch; but he was dumb. The
door opened, and Farina entered. He bore a sheaf of weapons under his
arm. The familiar sight relieved Werner's senses from the charm. He
shouted to bar the prisoners' passage. His men were ranged like statues
in the hall. There was a start among them, as if that terrible noise
communicated an instinct of obedience, but no more. They glanced at each
other, and remained quiet.

The Goshawk had his eye on Werner. 'Stand back, lass!' he said to
Margarita. She took a sword from Farina, and answered, with white lips
and flashing eyes, 'I can fight, Goshawk!'

'And shall, if need be; but leave it to me now, returned Guy.

His eye never left the Baron. Suddenly a shriek of steel rang. All fell
aside, and the combatants stood opposed on clear ground. Farina, took
Margarita's left hand, and placed her against the wall between the Thier
and himself. Werner's men were well content to let their master fight it
out. The words spoken by Henker Rothhals, that the Devil had forsaken
him, seemed in their minds confirmed by the weird song which every one
present could swear he heard with his ears. 'Let him take his chance, and
try his own luck,' they said, and shrugged. The battle was between Guy,
as Margarita's champion, and Werner.

In Schwartz Thier's judgement, the two were well matched, and he
estimated their diverse qualities from sharp experience. 'For short work
the Baron, and my new mate for tough standing to 't!' Farina's summary in
favour of the Goshawk was, 'A stouter heart, harder sinews, and a good
cause. The combat was generally regarded with a professional eye, and few
prayers. Margarita solely there asked aid from above, and knelt to the
Virgin; but her, too, the clash of arms and dire earnest of mortal fight
aroused to eager eyes. She had not dallied with heroes in her dreams. She
was as ready to second Siegfried on the crimson field as tend him in the
silken chamber.

It was well that a woman's heart was there to mark the grace and glory of
manhood in upright foot-to-foot encounter. For the others, it was a mere
calculation of lucky hits. Even Farina, in his anxiety for her, saw but
the brightening and darkening of the prospect of escape in every attitude
and hard-ringing blow. Margarita was possessed with a painful exaltation.
In her eyes the bestial Baron now took a nobler form and countenance; but
the Goshawk assumed the sovereign aspect of old heroes, who, whether
persecuted or favoured of heaven, still maintained their stand,
remembering of what stuff they were, and who made them.

'Never,' say the old writers, with a fervour honourable to their
knowledge of the elements that compose our being, 'never may this bright
privilege of fair fight depart from us, nor advantage of it fail to be
taken! Man against man, or beast, singly keeping his ground, is as fine
rapture to the breast as Beauty in her softest hour affordeth. For if
woman taketh loveliness to her when she languisheth, so surely doth man
in these fierce moods, when steel and iron sparkle opposed, and their
breath is fire, and their lips white with the lock of resolution; all
their faculties knotted to a point, and their energies alive as the
daylight to prove themselves superior, according to the laws and under
the blessing of chivalry.'

'For all,' they go on to improve the comparison, 'may admire and delight
in fair blossoming dales under the blue dome of peace; but 'tis the rare
lofty heart alone comprehendeth, and is heightened by, terrific
splendours of tempest, when cloud meets cloud in skies black as the
sepulchre, and Glory sits like a flame on the helm of Ruin'

For a while the combatants aired their dexterity, contenting themselves
with cunning cuts and flicks of the sword-edge, in which Werner first
drew blood by a keen sweep along the forehead of the Goshawk. Guy had
allowed him to keep his position on the board, and still fought at his
face and neck. He now jerked back his body from the hip, and swung a
round stroke at Werner's knee, sending him in retreat with a snort of
pain. Before the Baron could make good his ground, Guy was level with him
on the board.

Werner turned an upbraiding howl at his men. They were not disposed to
second him yet. They one and all approved his personal battle with Fate,
and never more admired him and felt his power; but the affair was
exciting, and they were not the pillars to prop a falling house.

Werner clenched his two hands to his ponderous glaive, and fell upon Guy
with heavier fury. He was becoming not unworth the little womanly
appreciation Margarita was brought to bestow on him. The voice of the
Water-Lady whispered at her heart that the Baron warred on his destiny,
and that ennobles all living souls.

Bare-headed the combatants engaged, and the headpiece was the chief point
of attack. No swerving from blows was possible for either: ward, or take;
a false step would have ensured defeat. This also induced caution. Many a
double stamp of the foot was heard, as each had to retire in turn.

'Not at his head so much, he'll bear battering there all night long,'
said Henker Rothhals in a breathing interval. Knocks had been pretty
equally exchanged, but the Baron's head certainly looked the least
vulnerable, whereas Guy exhibited several dints that streamed freely. Yet
he looked, eye and bearing, as fresh as when they began, and the calm,
regular heave of his chest contrasted with Werner's quick gasps. His
smile, too, renewed each time the Baron paused for breath, gave Margarita
heart. It was not a taunting smile, but one of entire confidence, and
told all the more on his adversary. As Werner led off again, and the
choice was always left him, every expression of the Goshawk's face passed
to full light in his broad eyes.

The Baron's play was a reckless fury. There was nothing to study in it.
Guy became the chief object of speculation. He was evidently trying to
wind his man.

He struck wildly, some thought. Others judged that he was a random
hitter, and had no mortal point in aim. Schwartz Thier's opinion was
frequently vented. 'Too round a stroke--down on him! Chop-not slice!'

Guy persevered in his own fashion. According to Schwartz Thier, he
brought down by his wilfulness the blow that took him on the left
shoulder, and nigh broke him. It was a weighty blow, followed by a thump
of sound. The sword-edge swerved on his shoulder-blade, or he must have
been disabled. But Werner's crow was short, and he had no time to push
success. One of the Goshawk's swooping under-hits half severed his right
wrist, and the blood spirted across the board. He gasped and seemed to
succumb, but held to it still, though with slackened force. Guy now
attacked. Holding to his round strokes, he accustomed Werner to guard the
body, and stood to it so briskly right and left, that Werner grew
bewildered, lost his caution, and gave ground. Suddenly the Goshawk's
glaive flashed in air, and chopped sheer down on Werner's head. So shrewd
a blow it was against a half-formed defence, that the Baron dropped
without a word right on the edge of the board, and there hung, feebly
grasping with his fingers.

'Who bars the way now?' sang out Guy.

No one accepted the challenge. Success clothed him with terrors, and gave
him giant size.

'Then fare you well, my merry men all,' said Guy. 'Bear me no ill-will
for this. A little doctoring will right the bold Baron.'

He strode jauntily to the verge of the board, and held his finger for
Margarita to follow. She stepped forward. The men put their beards
together, muttering. She could not advance. Farina doubled his elbow, and
presented sword-point. Three of the ruffians now disputed the way with
bare steel. Margarita looked at the Goshawk. He was smiling calmly
curious as he leaned over his sword, and gave her an encouraging nod. She
made another step in defiance. One fellow stretched his hand to arrest
her. All her maidenly pride stood up at once. 'What a glorious girl!'
murmured the Goshawk, as he saw her face suddenly flash, and she
retreated a pace and swung a sharp cut across the knuckles of her
assailant, daring him, or one of them, with hard, bright eyes,
beautifully vindictive, to lay hand on a pure maiden.

'You have it, Barenleib!' cried the others, and then to Margarita: 'Look,
young mistress! we are poor fellows, and ask a trifle of ransom, and then
part friends.'

'Not an ace!' the Goshawk pronounced from his post.

'Two to one, remember.'

'The odds are ours,' replied the Goshawk confidently.

They ranged themselves in front of the hall-door. Instead of accepting
this challenge, Guy stepped to Werner, and laid his moaning foe
length-wise in an easier posture. He then lifted Margarita on the board,
and summoned them with cry of 'Free passage!' They answered by a sullen
shrug and taunt.

'Schwartz Thier! Rothhals! Farina! buckle up, and make ready then,' sang
Guy.

He measured the length, of his sword, and raised it. The Goshawk had not
underrated his enemies. He was tempted to despise them when he marked
their gradually lengthening chaps and eyeballs.

Not one of them moved. All gazed at him as if their marrows were freezing
with horror.

'What's this?' cried Guy.

They knew as little as he, but a force was behind them irresistible
against their efforts. The groaning oak slipped open, pushing them
forward, and an apparition glided past, soft as the pallid silver of the
moon. She slid to the Baron, and put her arms about him, and sang to him.
Had the Water-Lady laid an iron hand on all those ruffians, she could not
have held them faster bound than did the fear of her presence. The
Goshawk drew his fair charge through them, followed by Farina, the Thier,
and Rothhals. A last glimpse of the hall showed them still as old
cathedral sculpture staring at white light on a fluted pillar of the
wall.




THE PASSAGE OF THE RHINE

Low among the swarthy sandhills behind the Abbey of Laach dropped the
round red moon. Soft lengths of misty yellow stole through the glens of
Rhineland. The nightingales still sang. Closer and closer the moon came
into the hushed valleys.

There is a dell behind Hammerstein Castle, a ring of basking sward,
girdled by a silver slate-brook, and guarded by four high-peaked hills
that slope down four long wooded corners to the grassy base. Here, it is
said, the elves and earthmen play, dancing in circles with laughing feet
that fatten the mushroom. They would have been fulfilling the tradition
now, but that the place was occupied by a sturdy group of mortals, armed
with staves. The intruders were sleepy, and lay about on the inclines.
Now and then two got up, and there rang hard echoes of oak. Again all
were calm as cud-chewing cattle, and the white water ran pleased with
quiet.

It may be that the elves brewed mischief among them; for the oaken blows
were becoming more frequent. One complained of a kick: another demanded
satisfaction for a pinch. 'Go to,' drawled the accused drowsily in both
cases, 'too much beer last night!' Within three minutes, the company
counted a pair of broken heads. The East was winning on the West in
heaven, and the dusk was thinning. They began to mark, each, whom he had
cudgelled. A noise of something swiftly in motion made them alert. A
roebuck rushed down one of the hills, and scampered across the sward. The
fine beast went stretching so rapidly away as to be hardly distinct.

'Sathanas once more!' they murmured, and drew together.

The name passed through them like a watchword.

'Not he this time,' cried the two new-comers, emerging from the foliage.
'He's safe under Cologne--the worse for all good men who live there! But
come! follow to the Rhine! there 's work for us on the yonder side, and
sharp work.'

'Why,' answered several, 'we 've our challenge with the lads of
Leutesdorf and Wied to-day.'

'D' ye see this?' said the foremost of the others, pointing to a carved
ivory white rose in his cap.

'Brothers!' he swelled his voice, 'follow with a will, for the White Rose
is in danger!'

Immediately they ranked, and followed zealously through the buds of young
bushes, and over heaps of damp dead leaves, a half-hour's scramble, when
they defiled under Hammerstein, and stood before the Rhine. Their leader
led up the river, and after a hasty walk, stopped, loosened his hood, and
stripped.

'Now,' said he, strapping the bundle to his back, 'let me know the hound
that refuses to follow his leader when the White Rose is in danger.'

'Long live Dietrich!' they shouted. He dropped from the bank, and waded
in. He was soon supported by the remainder of the striplings, and all
struck out boldly into mid-stream.

Never heard history of a nobler Passage of the Rhine than this made
between Andernach and Hammerstein by members of the White Rose Club,
bundle on back, to relieve the White Rose of Germany from thrall and
shame!

They were taken far down by the rapid current, and arrived panting to
land. The dressing done, they marched up the pass of Tonnistein, and took
a deep draught at the spring of pleasant waters there open to wayfarers.
Arrived at the skirts of Laach, they beheld two farmer peasants lashed
back to back against a hazel. They released them, but could gain no word
of information, as the fellows, after a yawn and a wink, started off, all
heels, to make sure of liberty. On the shores of the lake the brotherhood
descried a body of youths, whom they hailed, and were welcomed to
companionship.

'Where's Berthold?' asked Dietrich.

He was not present.

'The more glory for us, then,' Dietrich said.

It was here seriously put to the captain, whether they should not halt at
the abbey, and reflect, seeing that great work was in prospect.

'Truly,' quoth Dietrich, 'dying on an empty stomach is heathenish, and
cold blood makes a green wound gape. Kaiser Conrad should be hospitable,
and the monks honour numbers. Here be we, thirty and nine; let us go!'

The West was dark blue with fallen light. The lakewaters were growing
grey with twilight. The abbey stood muffled in shadows. Already the
youths had commenced battering at the convent doors, when they were
summoned by the voice of the Goshawk on horseback. To their confusion
they beheld the White Rose herself on his right hand. Chapfallen Dietrich
bowed to his sweet mistress.

'We were coming to the rescue,' he stammered.

A laugh broke from the Goshawk. 'You thought the lady was locked up in
the ghostly larder; eh!'

Dietrich seized his sword, and tightened his belt.

'The Club allows no jesting with the White Rose, Sir Stranger.'

Margarita made peace. 'I thank you all, good friends. But quarrel not, I
pray you, with them that save me at the risk of their lives.'

'Our service is equal,' said the Goshawk, flourishing, 'Only we happen to
be beforehand with the Club, for which Farina and myself heartily beg
pardon of the entire brotherhood.'

'Farina!' exclaimed Dietrich. 'Then we make a prisoner instead of
uncaging a captive.'

'What 's this?' said Guy.

'So much,' responded Dietrich. 'Yonder's a runaway from two masters: the
law of Cologne, and the conqueror of Satan; and all good citizens are
empowered to bring him back, dead or alive.'

'Dietrich! Dietrich! dare you talk thus of the man who saved me?' cried
Margarita.

Dietrich sullenly persisted.

'Then, look!' said the White Rose, reddening under the pale dawn; 'he
shall not, he shall not go with you.'

One of the Club was here on the point of speaking to the White Rose,--a
breach of the captain's privilege. Dietrich felled him unresisting to
earth, and resumed:

'It must be done, Beauty of Cologne! the monk, Father Gregory, is now
enduring shame and scorn for lack of this truant witness.'

'Enough! I go!' said Farina.

'You leave me?' Margarita looked tender reproach. Weariness and fierce
excitement had given a liquid flame to her eyes and an endearing darkness
round their circles that matched strangely with her plump youth. Her
features had a soft white flush. She was less radiant, but never looked
so bewitching. An aspect of sweet human languor caught at the heart of
love, and raised tumults.

'It is a duty,' said Farina.

'Then go,' she beckoned, and held her hand for him to kiss. He raised it
to his lips. This was seen of all the Club.

As they were departing with Farina, and Guy prepared to demand admittance
into the convent, Dietrich chanced to ask how fared Dame Lisbeth.
Schwartz Thier was by, and answered, with a laugh, that he had quite
forgotten the little lady.

'We took her in mistake for you, mistress! She was a one to scream! The
moment she was kissed--mum as a cloister. We kissed her, all of us, for
the fun of it. No harm--no harm! We should have dropped her when we found
we had the old bird 'stead of the young one, but reckoned ransom, ye see.
She's at the Eck, rattling, I's wager, like last year's nut in the
shell!'

'Lisbeth! Lisbeth! poor Lisbeth; we will return to her. Instantly,' cried
Margarita.

'Not you,' said Guy.

'Yes! I!'

'No!' said Guy.

'Gallant Goshawk! best of birds, let me go!'

'Without me or Farina, never! I see I shall have no chance with my lord
now. Come, then, come, fair Irresistible! come, lads. Farina can journey
back alone. You shall have the renown of rescuing Dame Lisbeth.'

'Farina! forget not to comfort my father,' said Margarita.

Between Margarita's society and Farina's, there was little dispute in the
captain's mind which choice to make. Farina was allowed to travel single
to Cologne; and Dietrich, petted by Margarita, and gently jeered by Guy,
headed the Club from Laach waters to the castle of the Robber Baron.




THE BACK-BLOWS OF SATHANAS

Monk Gregory was pacing the high road between the Imperial camp and
suffering Cologne. The sun had risen through interminable distances of
cloud that held him remote in a succession of receding mounds and thinner
veils, realm beyond realm, till he showed fireless, like a phantom king
in a phantom land. The lark was in the breast of morning. The field-mouse
ran along the furrows. Dews hung red and grey on the weedy banks and
wayside trees. At times the nostril of the good father was lifted, and he
beat his breast, relapsing into sorrowful contemplation. Passed-any
citizen of Cologne, the ghostly head sunk into its cowl. 'There's a black
raven!' said many. Monk Gregory heard them, and murmured, 'Thou hast me,
Evil one! thou hast me!'

It was noon when Farina came clattering down from the camp.

'Father,' said he, 'I have sought thee.'

'My son!' exclaimed Monk Gregory with silencing hand, 'thou didst not
well to leave me contending against the tongues of doubt. Answer me not.
The maiden! and what weighed she in such a scale?--No more! I am
punished. Well speaks the ancient proverb:

        "Beware the back-blows of Sathanas!"

I, that thought to have vanquished him! Vanity has wrecked me, in this
world and the next. I am the victim of self-incense. I hear the demons
shouting their chorus--"Here comes Monk Gregory, who called himself
Conqueror of Darkness!" In the camp I am discredited and a scoff; in the
city I am spat upon, abhorred. Satan, my son, fights not with his
fore-claws. 'Tis with his tail he fights, O Farina!--Listen, my son! he
entered to his kingdom below through Cologne, even under the stones of
the Cathedral Square, and the stench of him abominably remaineth,
challenging the nostrils of holy and unholy alike. The Kaiser cannot
approach for him; the citizens are outraged. Oh! had I held my peace in
humbleness, I had truly conquered him. But he gave me easy victory, to
inflate me. I shall not last. Now this only is left, my son; that thou
bear living testimony to the truth of my statement, as I bear it to the
folly!'

Farina promised, in the face of all, he would proclaim and witness to his
victory on Drachenfels.

'That I may not be ranked an impostor!' continued the Monk. 'And how
great must be the virtue of them that encounter that dark spirit! Valour
availeth nought. But if virtue be not in' ye, soon will ye be puffed to
bursting with that devil's poison, self-incense. Surely, my son, thou art
faithful; and for this service I can reward thee. Follow me yet again.'

On the road they met Gottlieb Groschen, hastening to the camp. Dismay
rumpled the old merchant's honest jowl. Farina drew rein before him.

'Your daughter is safe, worthy Master Groschen,' said he.

'Safe?' cried Gottlieb; 'where is she, my Grete?'

Farina briefly explained. Gottlieb spread out his arms, and was going to
thank the youth. He saw Father Gregory, and his whole frame narrowed with
disgust.

'Are you in company with that pestilent animal, that curse of Cologne!'

'The good Monk--,' said Farina.

'You are leagued with him, then, sirrah! Expect no thanks from me.
Cologne, I say, is cursed! Meddling wretches! could ye not leave Satan
alone? He hurt us not. We were free of him. Cologne, I say, is cursed!
The enemy of mankind is brought by you to be the deadly foe of Cologne.'

So saying, Gottlieb departed.

'Seest thou, my son,' quoth the Monk, 'they reason not!'

Farina was dejected. Willingly would he, for his part, have left the soul
of Evil a loose rover for the sake of some brighter horizon to his hope.

No twinge of remorse accompanied Gottlieb. The Kaiser had allotted him an
encampment and a guard of honour for his household while the foulness
raged, and there Gottlieb welcomed back Margarita and Aunt Lisbeth on the
noon after his meeting with Farina. The White Rose had rested at Laach,
and was blooming again. She and the Goshawk came trotting in advance of
the Club through the woods of Laach, startling the deer with laughter,
and sending the hare with her ears laid back all across country. In vain
Dietrich menaced Guy with the terrors of the Club: Aunt Lisbeth begged of
Margarita not to leave her with the footmen in vain. The joyous couple
galloped over the country, and sprang the ditches, and leapt the dykes,
up and down the banks, glad as morning hawks, entering Andernach at a
round pace; where they rested at a hostel as capable of producing good
Rhine and Mosel wine then as now. Here they had mid-day's meal laid out
in the garden for the angry Club, and somewhat appeased them on their
arrival with bumpers of the best Scharzhofberger. After a refreshing
halt, three boats were hired. On their passage to the river, they
encountered a procession of monks headed by the Archbishop of Andernach,
bearing a small figure of Christ carved in blackthorn and varnished: said
to work miracles, and a present to the good town from two Hungarian
pilgrims.

'Are ye for Cologne?' the monks inquired of them.

'Direct down stream!' they answered.

'Send, then, hither to us Gregory, the conqueror of Darkness, that he may
know there is gratitude on earth and gratulation for great deeds,' said
the monks.

So with genuflexions the travellers proceeded, and entered the boats by
the Archbishop's White Tower. Hammerstein Castle and Rheineck they
floated under; Salzig and the Ahr confluence; Rolandseck and Nonnenwerth;
Drachenfels and Bonn; hills green with young vines; dells waving fresh
foliage. Margarita sang as they floated. Ancient ballads she sang that
made the Goshawk sigh for home, and affected the Club with delirious love
for the grand old water that was speeding them onward. Aunt Lisbeth was
not to be moved. She alone held down her head. She looked not Gottlieb in
the face as he embraced her. Nor to any questioning would she vouchsafe
reply. From that time forth, she was charity to woman; and the exuberant
cheerfulness and familiarity of the men toward her soon grew kindly and
respectful. The dragon in Aunt Lisbeth was destroyed. She objected no
more to Margarita's cameo.

The Goshawk quickly made peace with his lord, and enjoyed the
commendation of the Kaiser. Dietrich Schill thought of challenging him;
but the Club had graver business: and this was to pass sentence on
Berthold Schmidt for the crime of betraying the White Rose into the hands
of Werner. They had found Berthold at the Eck, and there consented to let
him remain until ransom was paid for his traitorous body. Berthold in his
mad passion was tricked by Werner, and on his release, by payment of the
ransom, submitted to the judgement of the Club, which condemned him to
fight them all in turn, and then endure banishment from Rhineland; the
Goshawk, for his sister's sake, interceding before a harsher tribunal.




THE ENTRY INTO COLOGNE

Seven days Kaiser Heinrich remained camped outside Cologne. Six times in
six successive days the Kaiser attempted to enter the city, and was
foiled.

'Beard of Barbarossa!' said the Kaiser, 'this is the first stronghold
that ever resisted me.'

The warrior bishops, electors, pfalzgrafs, and knights of the Empire, all
swore it was no shame not to be a match for the Demon.

'If,' said the reflective Kaiser, 'we are to suffer below what poor
Cologne is doomed to undergo now, let us, by all that is savoury, reform
and do penance.'

The wind just then setting on them dead from Cologne made the courtiers
serious. Many thought of their souls for the first time.

This is recorded to the honour of Monk Gregory.

On the seventh morning, the Kaiser announced his determination to make a
last trial.

It was dawn, and a youth stood before the Kaiser's tent, praying an
audience.

Conducted into the presence of the Kaiser, the youth, they say, succeeded
in arousing him from his depression, for, brave as he was, Kaiser
Heinrich dreaded the issue. Forthwith order was given for the cavalcade
to set out according to the rescript, Kaiser Heinrich retaining the youth
at his right hand. But the youth had found occasion to visit Gottlieb and
Margarita, each of whom he furnished with a flash, [flask?] curiously
shaped, and charged with a distillation.

As the head of the procession reached the gates of Cologne, symptoms of
wavering were manifest.

Kaiser Heinrich commanded an advance, at all cost.

Pfalzgraf Nase, as the old chronicles call him in their humour, but
assuredly a great noble, led the van, and pushed across the draw-bridge.

Hesitation and signs of horror were manifest in the assemblage round the
Kaiser's person. The Kaiser and the youth at his right hand were cheery.
Not a whit drooped they! Several of the heroic knights begged the
Kaiser's permission to fall back.

'Follow Pfalzgraf Nase!' the Kaiser is reported to have said.

Great was the wonderment of the people of Cologne to behold Kaiser
Heinrich riding in perfect stateliness up the main street toward the
Cathedral, while right and left of him bishops and electors were dropping
incapable.

The Kaiser advanced till by his side the youth rode sole.

'Thy name?' said the Kaiser.

He answered: 'A poor youth, unconquerable Kaiser! Farina I am called.'

'Thy recompense?' said the Kaiser.

He answered: 'The hand of a maiden of Cologne, most gracious Kaiser and
master!'

'She is thine!' said the Kaiser.

Kaiser Heinrich looked behind him, and among a host grasping the pommels
of their saddles, and reeling vanquished, were but two erect, a maiden
and an old man.

'That is she, unconquerable Kaiser!' Farina continued, bowing low.

'It shall be arranged on the spot,' said the Kaiser.

A word from Kaiser Heinrich sealed Gottlieb's compliance.

Said he: 'Gracious Kaiser and master! though such a youth could of
himself never have aspired to the possession of a Groschen, yet when the
Kaiser pleads for him, objection is as the rock of Moses, and streams
consent. Truly he has done Cologne good service, and if Margarita, my
daughter, can be persuaded--'

The Kaiser addressed her with his blazing brows.

Margarita blushed a ready autumn of rosy-ripe acquiescence.

'A marriage registered yonder!' said the Kaiser, pointing upward.

'I am thine, murmured Margarita, as Farina drew near her.

'Seal it! seal it!' quoth the Kaiser, in hearty good humour; 'take no
consent from man or maid without a seal.'

Farina tossed the contents of a flask in air, and saluted his beloved on
the lips.

This scene took place near the charred round of earth where the Foulest
descended to his kingdom below.

Men now pervaded Cologne with flasks, purifying the atmosphere. It became
possible to breathe freely.

'We Germans,' said Kaiser Heinrich, when he was again surrounded by his
courtiers, 'may go wrong if we always follow Pfalzgraf Nase; but this
time we have been well led.' Whereat there was obsequious laughter.

The Pfalzgraf pleaded a susceptible nostril.

'Thou art, I fear, but a timid mortal,' said the Kaiser.

'Never have I been found so on the German Field, Imperial Majesty!'
returned the Pfalzgraf. 'I take glory to myself that this Nether reek
overcomes me.'

'Even that we must combat, you see!' exclaimed Kaiser Heinrich; 'but come
all to a marriage this night, and take brides as soon as you will, all of
you. Increase, and give us loyal subjects in plenty. I count prosperity
by the number of marriages in my empire!'

The White Rose Club were invited by Gottlieb to the wedding, and took it
in vast wrath until they saw the, Kaiser, and such excellent stout German
fare present, when immediately a battle raged as to who should do the
event most honour, and was in dispute till dawn: Dietrich Schill being
the man, he having consumed wurst the length of his arm, and wine
sufficient to have floated a St. Goar salmon; which was long proudly
chronicled in his family, and is now unearthed from among the ancient
honourable records of Cologne.

The Goshawk was Farina's bridesman, and a very spiriting bridesman was
he! Aunt Lisbeth sat in a corner, faintly smiling.

'Child!' said the little lady to Margarita when they kissed at parting,
'your courage amazes me. Do you think? Do you know? Poor, sweet bird,
delivered over hand and foot!'

'I love him! I love him, aunty! that's all I know,' said Margarita:
'love, love, love him!'

'Heaven help you!' ejaculated Aunt Lisbeth.

'Pray with me,' said Margarita.

The two knelt at the foot of the bride-bed, and prayed very different
prayers, but to the same end. That done, Aunt Lisbeth helped undress the
White Rose, and trembled, and told a sad nuptial anecdote of the Castle,
and put her little shrivelled hand on Margarita's heart, and shrieked.

'Child! it gallops!' she cried.

''Tis happiness,' said Margarita, standing in her hair.

'May it last only!' exclaimed Aunt Lisbeth.

'It will, aunty! I am humble: I am true'; and the fair girl gathered the
frill of her nightgown.

'Look not in the glass,' said Lisbeth; 'not to-night! Look, if you can,
to-morrow.'

She smoothed the White Rose in her bed, tucked her up, and kissed her,
leaving her as a bud that waits for sunshine.




CONCLUSION

The shadow of Monk Gregory was seen no more in Cologne. He entered the
Calendar, and ranks next St. Anthony. For three successive centuries the
towns of Rhineland boasted his visits in the flesh, and the conqueror of
Darkness caused dire Rhenish feuds.

The Tailed Infernal repeated his famous Back-blow on Farina. The youth
awoke one morning and beheld warehouses the exact pattern of his own,
displaying flasks shaped even as his own, and a Farina to right and left
of him. In a week, they were doubled. A month quadrupled them. They
increased.

'Fame and Fortune,' mused Farina, 'come from man and the world: Love is
from heaven. We may be worthy, and lose the first. We lose not love
unless unworthy. Would ye know the true Farina? Look for him who walks
under the seal of bliss; whose darling is for ever his young sweet bride,
leading him from snares, priming his soul with celestial freshness. There
is no hypocrisy can ape that aspect. Least of all, the creatures of the
Damned! By this I may be known.'

Seven years after, when the Goshawk came into Cologne to see old friends,
and drink some of Gottlieb's oldest Rudesheimer, he was waylaid by false
Farinas; and only discovered the true one at last, by chance, in the
music-gardens near the Rhine, where Farina sat, having on one hand
Margarita, and at his feet three boys and one girl, over whom both bent
lovingly, like the parent vine fondling its grape bunches in summer
light.

     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

     A generous enemy is a friend on the wrong side
     All are friends who sit at table
     Be what you seem, my little one
     Bed was a rock of refuge and fortified defence
     Civil tongue and rosy smiles sweeten even sour wine
     Dangerous things are uttered after the third glass
     Everywhere the badge of subjection is a poor stomach
     Face betokening the perpetual smack of lemon
     Gratitude never was a woman's gift
     It was harder to be near and not close
     Loving in this land: they all go mad, straight off
     Never reckon on womankind for a wise act
     Self-incense
     Sign that the evil had reached from pricks to pokes
     So are great deeds judged when the danger's past (as easy)
     Soft slumber of a strength never yet called forth
     Suspicion was her best witness
     Sweet treasure before which lies a dragon sleeping
     We like well whatso we have done good work for
     Weak reeds who are easily vanquished and never overcome
     Weak stomach is certainly more carnally virtuous than a full one
     Wins everywhere back a reflection of its own kindliness




THE CASE OF GENERAL OPLE AND LADY CAMPER

By George Meredith




CHAPTER I

An excursion beyond the immediate suburbs of London, projected long
before his pony-carriage was hired to conduct him, in fact ever since his
retirement from active service, led General Ople across a famous common,
with which he fell in love at once, to a lofty highway along the borders
of a park, for which he promptly exchanged his heart, and so gradually
within a stone's-throw or so of the river-side, where he determined not
solely to bestow his affections but to settle for life. It may be seen
that he was of an adventurous temperament, though he had thought fit to
loosen his sword-belt. The pony-carriage, however, had been hired for the
very special purpose of helping him to pass in review the lines of what
he called country houses, cottages, or even sites for building, not too
remote from sweet London: and as when Coelebs goes forth intending to
pursue and obtain, there is no doubt of his bringing home a wife, the
circumstance that there stood a house to let, in an airy situation, at a
certain distance in hail of the metropolis he worshipped, was enough to
kindle the General's enthusiasm. He would have taken the first he saw,
had it not been for his daughter, who accompanied him, and at the age of
eighteen was about to undertake the management of his house. Fortune,
under Elizabeth Ople's guiding restraint, directed him to an epitome of
the comforts. The place he fell upon is only to be described in the
tongue of auctioneers, and for the first week after taking it he modestly
followed them by terming it bijou. In time, when his own imagination,
instigated by a state of something more than mere contentment, had been
at work on it, he chose the happy phrase, 'a gentlemanly residence.' For
it was, he declared, a small estate. There was a lodge to it, resembling
two sentry-boxes forced into union, where in one half an old couple sat
bent, in the other half lay compressed; there was a backdrive to
discoverable stables; there was a bit of grass that would have appeared a
meadow if magnified; and there was a wall round the kitchen-garden and a
strip of wood round the flower-garden. The prying of the outside world
was impossible. Comfort, fortification; and gentlemanliness made the
place, as the General said, an ideal English home.

The compass of the estate was half an acre, and perhaps a perch or two,
just the size for the hugging love General Ople was happiest in giving.
He wisely decided to retain the old couple at the lodge, whose members
were used to restriction, and also not to purchase a cow, that would have
wanted pasture. With the old man, while the old woman attended to the
bell at the handsome front entrance with its gilt-spiked gates, he
undertook to do the gardening; a business he delighted in, so long as he
could perform it in a gentlemanly manner, that is to say, so long as he
was not overlooked. He was perfectly concealed from the road. Only one
house, and curiously indeed, only one window of the house, and further to
show the protection extended to Douro Lodge, that window an attic,
overlooked him. And the house was empty.

The house (for who can hope, and who should desire a commodious house,
with conservatories, aviaries, pond and boat-shed, and other joys of
wealth, to remain unoccupied) was taken two seasons later by a lady, of
whom Fame, rolling like a dust-cloud from the place she had left,
reported that she was eccentric. The word is uninstructive: it does not
frighten. In a lady of a certain age, it is rather a characteristic of
aristocracy in retirement. And at least it implies wealth.

General Ople was very anxious to see her. He had the sentiment of humble
respectfulness toward aristocracy, and there was that in riches which
aroused his admiration. London, for instance, he was not afraid to say he
thought the wonder of the world. He remarked, in addition, that the
sacking of London would suffice to make every common soldier of the
foreign army of occupation an independent gentleman for the term of his
natural days. But this is a nightmare! said he, startling himself with an
abhorrent dream of envy of those enriched invading officers: for Booty is
the one lovely thing which the military mind can contemplate in the
abstract. His habit was to go off in an explosion of heavy sighs when he
had delivered himself so far, like a man at war with himself.

The lady arrived in time: she received the cards of the neighbourhood,
and signalized her eccentricity by paying no attention to them, excepting
the card of a Mrs. Baerens, who had audience of her at once. By express
arrangement, the card of General Wilson Ople, as her nearest neighbour,
followed the card of the rector, the social head of the district; and the
rector was granted an interview, but Lady Camper was not at home to
General Ople. She is of superior station to me, and may not wish to
associate with me, the General modestly said. Nevertheless he was
wounded: for in spite of himself, and without the slightest wish to
obtrude his own person, as he explained the meaning that he had in him,
his rank in the British army forced him to be the representative of it,
in the absence of any one of a superior rank. So that he was
professionally hurt, and his heart being in his profession, it may be
honestly stated that he was wounded in his feelings, though he said no,
and insisted on the distinction. Once a day his walk for constitutional
exercise compelled him to pass before Lady Camper's windows, which were
not bashfully withdrawn, as he said humorously of Douro Lodge, in the
seclusion of half-pay, but bowed out imperiously, militarily, like a
generalissimo on horseback, and had full command of the road and levels
up to the swelling park-foliage. He went by at a smart stride, with a
delicate depression of his upright bearing, as though hastening to greet
a friend in view, whose hand was getting ready for the shake. This much
would have been observed by a housemaid; and considering his fine figure
and the peculiar shining silveriness of his hair, the acceleration of his
gait was noticeable. When he drove by, the pony's right ear was flicked,
to the extreme indignation of a mettlesome little animal. It ensued in
consequence that the General was borne flying under the eyes of Lady
Camper, and such pace displeasing him, he reduced it invariably at a step
or two beyond the corner of her grounds.

But neither he nor his daughter Elizabeth attached importance to so
trivial a circumstance. The General punctiliously avoided glancing at the
windows during the passage past them, whether in his wild career or on
foot. Elizabeth took a side-shot, as one looks at a wayside tree. Their
speech concerning Lady Camper was an exchange of commonplaces over her
loneliness: and this condition of hers was the more perplexing to General
Ople on his hearing from his daughter that the lady was very
fine-looking, and not so very old, as he had fancied eccentric ladies
must be. The rector's account of her, too, excited the mind. She had
informed him bluntly, that she now and then went to church to save
appearances, but was not a church-goer, finding it impossible to support
the length of the service; might, however, be reckoned in subscriptions
for all the charities, and left her pew open to poor people, and none but
the poor. She had travelled over Europe, and knew the East. Sketches in
watercolours of the scenes she had visited adorned her walls, and a pair
of pistols, that she had found useful, she affirmed, lay on the
writing-desk in her drawing-room. General Ople gathered from the rector
that she had a great contempt for men: yet it was curiously varied with
lamentations over the weakness of women. 'Really she cannot possibly be
an example of that,' said the General, thinking of the pistols.

Now, we learn from those who have studied women on the chess-board, and
know what ebony or ivory will do along particular lines, or hopping, that
men much talked about will take possession of their thoughts; and
certainly the fact may be accepted for one of their moves. But the whole
fabric of our knowledge of them, which we are taught to build on this
originally acute perception, is shattered when we hear, that it is
exactly the same, in the same degree, in proportion to the amount of work
they have to do, exactly the same with men and their thoughts in the case
of women much talked about. So it was with General Ople, and nothing is
left for me to say except, that there is broader ground than the
chessboard. I am earnest in protesting the similarity of the singular
couples on common earth, because otherwise the General is in peril of the
accusation that he is a feminine character; and not simply was he a
gallant officer, and a veteran in gunpowder strife, he was also (and it
is an extraordinary thing that a genuine humility did not prevent it, and
did survive it) a lord and conqueror of the sex. He had done his pretty
bit of mischief, all in the way of honour, of course, but hearts had
knocked. And now, with his bright white hair, his close-brushed white
whiskers on a face burnt brown, his clear-cut features, and a winning
droop of his eyelids, there was powder in him still, if not shot.

There was a lamentable susceptibility to ladies' charms. On the other
hand, for the protection of the sex, a remainder of shyness kept him from
active enterprise and in the state of suffering, so long as indications
of encouragement were wanting. He had killed the soft ones, who came to
him, attracted by the softness in him, to be killed: but clever women
alarmed and paralyzed him. Their aptness to question and require
immediate sparkling answers; their demand for fresh wit, of a kind that
is not furnished by publications which strike it into heads with a
hammer, and supply it wholesale; their various reading; their power of
ridicule too; made them awful in his contemplation.

Supposing (for the inflammable officer was now thinking, and deeply
thinking, of a clever woman), supposing that Lady Camper's pistols were
needed in her defence one night: at the first report proclaiming her
extremity, valour might gain an introduction to her upon easy terms, and
would not be expected to be witty. She would, perhaps, after the
excitement, admit his masculine superiority, in the beautiful old
fashion, by fainting in his arms. Such was the reverie he passingly
indulged, and only so could he venture to hope for an acquaintance with
the formidable lady who was his next neighbour. But the proud society of
the burglarious denied him opportunity.

Meanwhile, he learnt that Lady Camper had a nephew, and the young
gentleman was in a cavalry regiment. General Ople met him outside his
gates, received and returned a polite salute, liked his appearance and
manners and talked of him to Elizabeth, asking her if by chance she had
seen him. She replied that she believed she had, and praised his
horsemanship. The General discovered that he was an excellent sculler.
His daughter was rowing him up the river when the young gentleman shot
by, with a splendid stroke, in an outrigger, backed, and floating
alongside presumed to enter into conversation, during which he managed to
express regrets at his aunt's turn for solitariness. As they belonged to
sister branches of the same Service, the General and Mr. Reginald Roller
had a theme in common, and a passion. Elizabeth told her father that
nothing afforded her so much pleasure as to hear him talk with Mr. Roller
on military matters. General Ople assured her that it pleased him
likewise. He began to spy about for Mr. Roller, and it sometimes occurred
that they conversed across the wall; it could hardly be avoided. A hint
or two, an undefinable flying allusion, gave the General to understand
that Lady Camper had not been happy in her marriage. He was pained to
think of her misfortune; but as she was not over forty, the disaster was,
perhaps, not irremediable; that is to say, if she could be taught to
extend her forgiveness to men, and abandon her solitude. 'If,' he said to
his daughter, 'Lady Camper should by any chance be induced to contract a
second alliance, she would, one might expect, be humanized, and we should
have highly agreeable neighbours.' Elizabeth artlessly hoped for such an
event to take place.

She rarely differed with her father, up to whom, taking example from the
world around him, she looked as the pattern of a man of wise conduct.

And he was one; and though modest, he was in good humour with himself,
approved himself, and could say, that without boasting of success, he was
a satisfied man, until he met his touchstone in Lady Camper.




CHAPTER II

This is the pathetic matter of my story, and it requires pointing out,
because he never could explain what it was that seemed to him so cruel in
it, for he was no brilliant son of fortune, he was no great pretender,
none of those who are logically displaced from the heights they have been
raised to, manifestly created to show the moral in Providence. He was
modest, retiring, humbly contented; a gentlemanly residence appeased his
ambition. Popular, he could own that he was, but not meteorically; rather
by reason of his willingness to receive light than his desire to shed it.
Why, then, was the terrible test brought to bear upon him, of all men? He
was one of us; no worse, and not strikingly or perilously better; and he
could not but feel, in the bitterness of his reflections upon an
inexplicable destiny, that the punishment befalling him, unmerited as it
was, looked like absence of Design in the scheme of things, Above. It
looked as if the blow had been dealt him by reckless chance. And to
believe that, was for the mind of General Ople the having to return to
his alphabet and recommence the ascent of the laborious mountain of
understanding.

To proceed, the General's introduction to Lady Camper was owing to a
message she sent him by her gardener, with a request that he would cut
down a branch of a wychelm, obscuring her view across his grounds toward
the river. The General consulted with his daughter, and came to the
conclusion, that as he could hardly despatch a written reply to a verbal
message, yet greatly wished to subscribe to the wishes of Lady Camper,
the best thing for him to do was to apply for an interview. He sent word
that he would wait on Lady Camper immediately, and betook himself
forthwith to his toilette. She was the niece of an earl.

Elizabeth commended his appearance, 'passed him,' as he would have said;
and well she might, for his hat, surtout, trousers and boots, were worthy
of an introduction to Royalty. A touch of scarlet silk round the neck
gave him bloom, and better than that, the blooming consciousness of it.

'You are not to be nervous, papa,' Elizabeth said.

'Not at all,' replied the General. 'I say, not at all, my dear,' he
repeated, and so betrayed that he had fallen into the nervous mood. 'I
was saying, I have known worse mornings than this.' He turned to her and
smiled brightly, nodded, and set his face to meet the future.

He was absent an hour and a half.

He came back with his radiance a little subdued, by no means eclipsed;
as, when experience has afforded us matter for thought, we cease to shine
dazzlingly, yet are not clouded; the rays have merely grown serener. The
sum of his impressions was conveyed in the reflective utterance--'It only
shows, my dear, how different the reality is from our anticipation of
it!'

Lady Camper had been charming; full of condescension, neighbourly,
friendly, willing to be satisfied with the sacrifice of the smallest
branch of the wych-elm, and only requiring that much for complimentary
reasons.

Elizabeth wished to hear what they were, and she thought the request
rather singular; but the General begged her to bear in mind, that they
were dealing with a very extraordinary woman; 'highly accomplished,
really exceedingly handsome,' he said to himself, aloud.

The reasons were, her liking for air and view, and desire to see into her
neighbour's grounds without having to mount to the attic.

Elizabeth gave a slight exclamation, and blushed.

'So, my dear, we are objects of interest to her ladyship,' said the
General.

He assured her that Lady Camper's manners were delightful. Strange to
tell, she knew a great deal of his antecedent history, things he had not
supposed were known; 'little matters,' he remarked, by which his daughter
faintly conceived a reference to the conquests of his dashing days. Lady
Camper had deigned to impart some of her own, incidentally; that she was
of Welsh blood, and born among the mountains. 'She has a romantic look,'
was the General's comment; and that her husband had been an insatiable
traveller before he became an invalid, and had never cared for Art.
'Quite an extraordinary circumstance, with such a wife!' the General
said.

He fell upon the wych-elm with his own hands, under cover of the leafage,
and the next day he paid his respects to Lady Camper, to inquire if her
ladyship saw any further obstruction to the view.

'None,' she replied. 'And now we shall see what the two birds will do.'

Apparently, then, she entertained an animosity to a pair of birds in the
tree.

'Yes, yes; I say they chirp early in the morning,' said General Ople.

'At all hours.'

'The song of birds . . . ?' he pleaded softly for nature.

'If the nest is provided for them; but I don't like vagabond chirping.'

The General perfectly acquiesced. This, in an engagement with a clever
woman, is what you should do, or else you are likely to find yourself
planted unawares in a high wind, your hat blown off, and your coat-tails
anywhere; in other words, you will stand ridiculous in your bewilderment;
and General Ople ever footed with the utmost caution to avoid that
quagmire of the ridiculous. The extremer quags he had hitherto escaped;
the smaller, into which he fell in his agile evasions of the big, he had
hitherto been blest in finding none to notice.

He requested her ladyship's permission to present his daughter. Lady
Camper sent in her card.

Elizabeth Ople beheld a tall, handsomely-mannered lady, with good
features and penetrating dark eyes, an easy carriage of her person and an
agreeable voice, but (the vision of her age flashed out under the
compelling eyes of youth) fifty if a day. The rich colouring confessed to
it. But she was very pleasing, and Elizabeth's perception dwelt on it
only because her father's manly chivalry had defended the lady against
one year more than forty.

The richness of the colouring, Elizabeth feared, was artificial, and it
caused her ingenuous young blood a shudder. For we are so devoted to
nature when the dame is flattering us with her gifts, that we loathe the
substitute omitting to think how much less it is an imposition than a
form of practical adoration of the genuine.

Our young detective, however, concealed her emotion of childish horror.

Lady Camper remarked of her, 'She seems honest, and that is the most we
can hope of girls.'

'She is a jewel for an honest man,' the General sighed, 'some day!'

'Let us hope it will be a distant day.'

'Yet,' said the General, 'girls expect to marry.'

Lady Camper fixed her black eyes on him, but did not speak.

He told Elizabeth that her ladyship's eyes were exceedingly searching:
'Only,' said he, 'as I have nothing to hide, I am able to submit to
inspection'; and he laughed slightly up to an arresting cough, and made
the mantelpiece ornaments pass muster.

General Ople was the hero to champion a lady whose airs of haughtiness
caused her to be somewhat backbitten. He assured everybody, that Lady
Camper was much misunderstood; she was a most remarkable woman; she was a
most affable and highly intelligent lady. Building up her attributes on a
splendid climax, he declared she was pious, charitable, witty, and really
an extraordinary artist. He laid particular stress on her artistic
qualities, describing her power with the brush, her water-colour
sketches, and also some immensely clever caricatures. As he talked of no
one else, his friends heard enough of Lady Camper, who was anything but a
favourite. The Pollingtons, the Wilders, the Wardens, the Baerens, the
Goslings, and others of his acquaintance, talked of Lady Camper and
General Ople rather maliciously. They were all City people, and they
admired the General, but mourned that he should so abjectly have fallen
at the feet of a lady as red with rouge as a railway bill. His not seeing
it showed the state he was in. The sister of Mrs. Pollington, an amiable
widow, relict of a large City warehouse, named Barcop, was chilled by a
falling off in his attentions. His apology for not appearing at garden
parties was, that he was engaged to wait on Lady Camper.

And at one time, her not condescending to exchange visits with the
obsequious General was a topic fertile in irony. But she did condescend.
Lady Camper came to his gate unexpectedly, rang the bell, and was let in
like an ordinary visitor. It happened that the General was gardening--not
the pretty occupation of pruning--he was digging--and of necessity his
coat was off, and he was hot, dusty, unpresentable. From adoring earth as
the mother of roses, you may pass into a lady's presence without
purification; you cannot (or so the General thought) when you are caught
in the act of adoring the mother of cabbages. And though he himself loved
the cabbage equally with the rose, in his heart respected the vegetable
yet more than he esteemed the flower, for he gloried in his kitchen
garden, this was not a secret for the world to know, and he almost heeled
over on his beam ends when word was brought of the extreme honour Lady
Camper had done him. He worked his arms hurriedly into his fatigue
jacket, trusting to get away to the house and spend a couple of minutes
on his adornment; and with any other visitor it might have been
accomplished, but Lady Camper disliked sitting alone in a room. She was
on the square of lawn as the General stole along the walk. Had she kept
her back to him, he might have rounded her like the shadow of a dial,
undetected. She was frightfully acute of hearing. She turned while he was
in the agony of hesitation, in a queer attitude, one leg on the march,
projected by a frenzied tip-toe of the hinder leg, the very fatallest
moment she could possibly have selected for unveiling him.

Of course there was no choice but to surrender on the spot.

He began to squander his dizzy wits in profuse apologies. Lady Camper
simply spoke of the nice little nest of a garden, smelt the flowers,
accepted a Niel rose and a Rohan, a Cline, a Falcot, and La France.

'A beautiful rose indeed,' she said of the latter, 'only it smells of
macassar oil.'

'Really, it never struck me, I say it never struck me before,' rejoined
the General, smelling it as at a pinch of snuff. 'I was saying, I always
. . . .' And he tacitly, with the absurdest of smiles, begged permission
to leave unterminated a sentence not in itself particularly difficult

'I have a nose,' observed Lady Camper.

Like the nobly-bred person she was, according to General Ople's version
of the interview on his estate, when he stood before her in his gardening
costume, she put him at his ease, or she exerted herself to do so; and if
he underwent considerable anguish, it was the fault of his excessive
scrupulousness regarding dress, propriety, appearance.

He conducted her at her request to the kitchen garden and the handful of
paddock, the stables and coach-house, then back to the lawn.

'It is the home for a young couple,' she said.

'I am no longer young,' the General bowed, with the sigh peculiar to this
confession. 'I say, I am no longer young, but I call the place a
gentlemanly residence. I was saying, I . . .'

'Yes, yes!' Lady Camper tossed her head, half closing her eyes, with a
contraction of the brows, as if in pain.

He perceived a similar expression whenever he spoke of his residence.

Perhaps it recalled happier days to enter such a nest. Perhaps it had
been such a home for a young couple that she had entered on her marriage
with Sir Scrope Camper, before he inherited his title and estates.

The General was at a loss to conceive what it was.

It recurred at another mention of his idea of the nature of the
residence. It was almost a paroxysm. He determined not to vex her
reminiscences again; and as this resolution directed his mind to his
residence, thinking it pre-eminently gentlemanly, his tongue committed
the error of repeating it, with 'gentleman-like' for a variation.

Elizabeth was out--he knew not where. The housemaid informed him, that
Miss Elizabeth was out rowing on the water.

'Is she alone?' Lady Camper inquired of him.

'I fancy so,' the General replied.

'The poor child has no mother.'

'It has been a sad loss to us both, Lady Camper.'

'No doubt. She is too pretty to go out alone.'

'I can trust her.'

'Girls!'

'She has the spirit of a man.'

'That is well. She has a spirit; it will be tried.'

The General modestly furnished an instance or two of her spiritedness.

Lady Camper seemed to like this theme; she looked graciously interested.

'Still, you should not suffer her to go out alone,' she said.

'I place implicit confidence in her,' said the General; and Lady Camper
gave it up.

She proposed to walk down the lanes to the river-side, to meet Elizabeth
returning.

The General manifested alacrity checked by reluctance. Lady Camper had
told him she objected to sit in a strange room by herself; after that, he
could hardly leave her to dash upstairs to change his clothes; yet how,
attired as he was, in a fatigue jacket, that warned him not to imagine
his back view, and held him constantly a little to the rear of Lady
Camper, lest she should be troubled by it;--and he knew the habit of the
second rank to criticise the front--how consent to face the outer world
in such style side by side with the lady he admired?

'Come,' said she; and he shot forward a step, looking as if he had missed
fire.

'Are you not coming, General?'

He advanced mechanically.

Not a soul met them down the lanes, except a little one, to whom Lady
Camper gave a small silver-piece, because she was a picture.

The act of charity sank into the General's heart, as any pretty
performance will do upon a warm waxen bed.

Lady Camper surprised him by answering his thoughts. 'No; it's for my own
pleasure.'

Presently she said, 'Here they are.'

General Ople beheld his daughter by the river-side at the end of the
lane, under escort of Mr. Reginald Rolles.

It was another picture, and a pleasing one. The young lady and the young
gentleman wore boating hats, and were both dressed in white, and standing
by or just turning from the outrigger and light skiff they were about to
leave in charge of a waterman. Elizabeth stretched a finger at
arm's-length, issuing directions, which Mr. Rolles took up and worded
further to the man, for the sake of emphasis; and he, rather than
Elizabeth, was guilty of the half-start at sight of the persons who were
approaching.

'My nephew, you should know, is intended for a working soldier,' said
Lady Camper; 'I like that sort of soldier best.'

General Ople drooped his shoulders at the personal compliment.

She resumed. 'His pay is a matter of importance to him. You are aware of
the smallness of a subaltern's pay.

'I,' said the General, 'I say I feel my poor half-pay, having always been
a working soldier myself, very important, I was saying, very important to
me!'

'Why did you retire?'

Her interest in him seemed promising. He replied conscientiously, 'Beyond
the duties of General of Brigade, I could not, I say I could not, dare to
aspire; I can accept and execute orders; I shrink from responsibility!'

'It is a pity,' said she, 'that you were not, like my nephew Reginald,
entirely dependent on your profession.'

She laid such stress on her remark, that the General, who had just
expressed a very modest estimate of his abilities, was unable to reject
the flattery of her assuming him to be a man of some fortune. He coughed,
and said, 'Very little.' The thought came to him that he might have to
make a statement to her in time, and he emphasized, 'Very little indeed.
Sufficient,' he assured her, 'for a gentlemanly appearance.'

'I have given you your warning,' was her inscrutable rejoinder, uttered
within earshot of the young people, to whom, especially to Elizabeth, she
was gracious. The damsel's boating uniform was praised, and her sunny
flush of exercise and exposure.

Lady Camper regretted that she could not abandon her parasol: 'I freckle
so easily.'

The General, puzzling over her strange words about a warning, gazed at
the red rose of art on her cheek with an air of profound abstraction.

'I freckle so easily,' she repeated, dropping her parasol to defend her
face from the calculating scrutiny.

'I burn brown,' said Elizabeth.

Lady Camper laid the bud of a Falcot rose against the young girl's cheek,
but fetched streams of colour, that overwhelmed the momentary comparison
of the sunswarthed skin with the rich dusky yellow of the rose in its
deepening inward to soft brown.

Reginald stretched his hand for the privileged flower, and she let him
take it; then she looked at the General; but the General was looking,
with his usual air of satisfaction, nowhere.




CHAPTER III

'Lady Camper is no common enigma,' General Ople observed to his daughter.

Elizabeth inclined to be pleased with her, for at her suggestion the
General had bought a couple of horses, that she might ride in the park,
accompanied by her father or the little groom. Still, the great lady was
hard to read. She tested the resources of his income by all sorts of
instigation to expenditure, which his gallantry could not withstand; she
encouraged him to talk of his deeds in arms; she was friendly, almost
affectionate, and most bountiful in the presents of fruit, peaches,
nectarines, grapes, and hot-house wonders, that she showered on his
table; but she was an enigma in her evident dissatisfaction with him for
something he seemed to have left unsaid. And what could that be?

At their last interview she had asked him, 'Are you sure, General, you
have nothing more to tell me?'

And as he remarked, when relating it to Elizabeth, 'One might really be
tempted to misapprehend her ladyship's . . . I say one might commit
oneself beyond recovery. Now, my dear, what do you think she intended?'

Elizabeth was 'burning brown,' or darkly blushing, as her manner was.

She answered, 'I am certain you know of nothing that would interest her;
nothing, unless . . .'

'Well?' the General urged her.

'How can I speak it, papa?'

'You really can't mean . . .'

'Papa, what could I mean?'

'If I were fool enough!' he murmured. 'No, no, I am an old man. I was
saying, I am past the age of folly.'

One day Elizabeth came home from her ride in a thoughtful mood. She had
not, further than has been mentioned, incited her father to think of the
age of folly; but voluntarily or not, Lady Camper had, by an excess of
graciousness amounting to downright invitation; as thus, 'Will you
persist in withholding your confidence from me, General?' She added, 'I
am not so difficult a person.' These prompting speeches occurred on the
morning of the day when Elizabeth sat at his table, after a long ride
into the country, profoundly meditative.

A note was handed to General Ople, with the request that he would step in
to speak with Lady Camper in the course of the evening, or next morning.
Elizabeth waited till his hat was on, then said, 'Papa, on my ride
to-day, I met Mr. Rolles.'

'I am glad you had an agreeable escort, my dear.'

'I could not refuse his company.'

'Certainly not. And where did you ride?'

'To a beautiful valley; and there we met. . . . '

'Her ladyship?'

'Yes.'

'She always admires you on horseback.'

'So you know it, papa, if she should speak of it.'

'And I am bound to tell you, my child,' said the General, 'that this
morning Lady Camper's manner to me was . . . if I were a fool . . . I
say, this morning I beat a retreat, but apparently she . . . I see no way
out of it, supposing she . . .'

'I am sure she esteems you, dear papa,' said Elizabeth. 'You take to her,
my dear?' the General inquired anxiously; 'a little?--a little afraid of
her?'

'A little,' Elizabeth replied, 'only a little.'

'Don't be agitated about me.'

'No, papa; you are sure to do right.'

'But you are trembling.'

'Oh! no. I wish you success.'

General Ople was overjoyed to be reinforced by his daughter's good
wishes. He kissed her to thank her. He turned back to her to kiss her
again. She had greatly lightened the difficulty at least of a delicate
position.

It was just like the imperious nature of Lady Camper to summon him in the
evening to terminate the conversation of the morning, from the visible
pitfall of which he had beaten a rather precipitate retreat. But if his
daughter cordially wished him success, and Lady Camper offered him the
crown of it, why then he had only to pluck up spirit, like a good
commander who has to pass a fordable river in the enemy's presence; a
dash, a splash, a rattling volley or two, and you are over, established
on the opposite bank. But you must be positive of victory, otherwise,
with the river behind you, your new position is likely to be ticklish. So
the General entered Lady Camper's drawing-room warily, watching the fair
enemy. He knew he was captivating, his old conquests whispered in his
ears, and her reception of him all but pointed to a footstool at her
feet. He might have fallen there at once, had he not remembered a hint
that Mr. Reginald Rolles had dropped concerning Lady Camper's amazing
variability.

Lady Camper began.

'General, you ran away from me this morning. Let me speak. And, by the
way, I must reproach you; you should not have left it to me. Things have
now gone so far that I cannot pretend to be blind. I know your feelings
as a father. Your daughter's happiness . . .'

'My lady,' the General interposed, 'I have her distinct assurance that it
is, I say it is wrapt up in mine.'

'Let me speak. Young people will say anything. Well, they have a certain
excuse for selfishness; we have not. I am in some degree bound to my
nephew; he is my sister's son.'

'Assuredly, my lady. I would not stand in his light, be quite assured. If
I am, I was saying if I am not mistaken, I . . . and he is, or has the
making of an excellent soldier in him, and is likely to be a
distinguished cavalry officer.'

'He has to carve his own way in the world, General.'

'All good soldiers have, my lady. And if my position is not, after a
considerable term of service, I say if . . .'

'To continue,' said Lady Camper: 'I never have liked early marriages.
I was married in my teens before I knew men. Now I do know them,
and now . . . .'

The General plunged forward: 'The honour you do us now:--a mature
experience is worth:--my dear Lady Camper, I have admired you:--and your
objection to early marriages cannot apply to . . . indeed, madam, vigour,
they say . . . though youth, of course . . . yet young people, as you
observe . . . and I have, though perhaps my reputation is against it, I
was saying I have a natural timidity with your sex, and I am grey-headed,
white-headed, but happily without a single malady.'

Lady Camper's brows showed a trifling bewilderment. 'I am speaking of
these young people, General Ople.'

'I consent to everything beforehand, my dear lady. He should be, I say
Mr. Rolles should be provided for.'

'So should she, General, so should Elizabeth.'

'She shall be, she will, dear madam. What I have, with your permission,
if--good heaven! Lady Camper, I scarcely know where I am. She would
. . . . I shall not like to lose her: you would not wish it. In time
she will . . . . she has every quality of a good wife.'

'There, stay there, and be intelligible,' said Lady Camper. 'She has
every quality. Money should be one of them. Has she money?'

'Oh! my lady,' the General exclaimed, 'we shall not come upon your purse
when her time comes.'

'Has she ten thousand pounds?'

'Elizabeth? She will have, at her father's death . . . but as for my
income, it is moderate, and only sufficient to maintain a gentlemanly
appearance in proper self-respect. I make no show. I say I make no show.
A wealthy marriage is the last thing on earth I should have aimed at. I
prefer quiet and retirement. Personally, I mean. That is my personal
taste. But if the lady . . . . I say if it should happen that the lady .
. . . and indeed I am not one to press a suit: but if she who
distinguishes and honours me should chance to be wealthy, all I can do is
to leave her wealth at her disposal, and that I do: I do that
unreservedly. I feel I am very confused, alarmingly confused. Your
ladyship merits a superior . . . I trust I have not . . . I am entirely
at your ladyship's mercy.'

'Are you prepared, if your daughter is asked in marriage, to settle ten
thousand pounds on her, General Ople?'

The General collected himself. In his heart he thoroughly appreciated the
moral beauty of Lady Camper's extreme solicitude on behalf of his
daughter's provision; but he would have desired a postponement of that
and other material questions belonging to a distant future until his own
fate was decided.

So he said: 'Your ladyship's generosity is very marked. I say it is very
marked.'

'How, my good General Ople! how is it marked in any degree?' cried Lady
Camper. 'I am not generous. I don't pretend to be; and certainly I don't
want the young people to think me so. I want to be just. I have assumed
that you intend to be the same. Then will you do me the favour to reply
to me?'

The General smiled winningly and intently, to show her that he prized
her, and would not let her escape his eulogies.

'Marked, in this way, dear madam, that you think of my daughter's future
more than I. I say, more than her father himself does. I know I ought to
speak more warmly, I feel warmly. I was never an eloquent man, and if you
take me as a soldier, I am, as, I have ever been in the service, I was
saying I am Wilson Ople, of the grade of General, to be relied on for
executing orders; and, madam, you are Lady Camper, and you command me. I
cannot be more precise. In fact, it is the feeling of the necessity for
keeping close to the business that destroys what I would say. I am in
fact lamentably incompetent to conduct my own case.'

Lady Camper left her chair.

'Dear me, this is very strange, unless I am singularly in error,' she
said.

The General now faintly guessed that he might be in error, for his part.

But he had burned his ships, blown up his bridges; retreat could not be
thought of.

He stood, his head bent and appealing to her sideface, like one
pleadingly in pursuit, and very deferentially, with a courteous
vehemence, he entreated first her ladyship's pardon for his presumption,
and then the gift of her ladyship's hand.

As for his language, it was the tongue of General Ople. But his bearing
was fine. If his clipped white silken hair spoke of age, his figure
breathed manliness. He was a picture, and she loved pictures.

For his own sake, she begged him to cease. She dreaded to hear of
something 'gentlemanly.'

'This is a new idea to me, my dear General,' she said. 'You must give me
time. People at our age have to think of fitness. Of course, in a sense,
we are both free to do as we like. Perhaps I may be of some aid to you.
My preference is for absolute independence. And I wished to talk of a
different affair. Come to me tomorrow. Do not be hurt if I decide that we
had better remain as we are.'

The General bowed. His efforts, and the wavering of the fair enemy's
flag, had inspired him with a positive re-awakening of masculine passion
to gain this fortress. He said well: 'I have, then, the happiness, madam,
of being allowed to hope until to-morrrow?'

She replied, 'I would not deprive you of a moment of happiness. Bring
good sense with you when you do come.'

The General asked eagerly, 'I have your ladyship's permission to come
early?'

'Consult your happiness,' she answered; and if to his mind she seemed
returning to the state of enigma, it was on the whole deliciously. She
restored him his youth. He told Elizabeth that night; he really must
begin to think of marrying her to some worthy young fellow. 'Though,'
said he, with an air of frank intoxication, 'my opinion is, the young
ones are not so lively as the old in these days, or I should have been
besieged before now.'

The exact substance of the interview he forbore to relate to his
inquisitive daughter, with a very honourable discretion.




CHAPTER IV

Elizabeth came riding home to breakfast from a gallop round the park, and
passing Lady Camper's gates, received the salutation of her parasol. Lady
Camper talked with her through the bars. There was not a sign to tell of
a change or twist in her neighbourly affability. She remarked simply
enough, that it was her nephew's habit to take early gallops, and
possibly Elizabeth might have seen him, for his quarters were proximate;
but she did not demand an answer. She had passed a rather restless night,
she said. 'How is the General?'

'Papa must have slept soundly, for he usually calls to me through his
door when he hears I am up,' said Elizabeth.

Lady Camper nodded kindly and walked on.

Early in the morning General Ople was ready for battle. His forces were,
the anticipation of victory, a carefully arranged toilet, and an
unaccustomed spirit of enterprise in the realms of speech; for he was no
longer in such awe of Lady Camper.

'You have slept well?' she inquired.

'Excellently, my lady:

'Yes, your daughter tells me she heard you, as she went by your door in
the morning for a ride to meet my nephew. You are, I shall assume,
prepared for business.'

'Elizabeth? . . . to meet . . .?' General Ople's impression of anything
extraneous to his emotion was feeble and passed instantly. 'Prepared! Oh,
certainly'; and he struck in a compliment on her ladyship's fresh morning
bloom.

'It can hardly be visible,' she responded; 'I have not painted yet.'

'Does your ladyship proceed to your painting in the very early morning?'

'Rouge. I rouge.'

'Dear me! I should not have supposed it.'

'You have speculated on it very openly, General. I remember your trying
to see a freckle through the rouge; but the truth is, I am of a
supernatural paleness if I do not rouge, so I do. You understand,
therefore, I have a false complexion. Now to business.'

'If your ladyship insists on calling it business. I have little to
offer--myself!'

'You have a gentlemanly residence.'

'It is, my lady, it is. It is a bijou.'

'Ah!' Lady Camper sighed dejectedly.

'It is a perfect bijou!'

'Oblige me, General, by not pronouncing the French word as if you were
swearing by something in English, like a trooper.'

General Ople started, admitted that the word was French, and apologized
for his pronunciation. Her variability was now visible over a corner of
the battlefield like a thunder-cloud.

'The business we have to discuss concerns the young people, General.'

'Yes,' brightened by this, he assented: 'Yes, dear Lady Camper; it is a
part of the business; it is a secondary part; it has to be discussed; I
say I subscribe beforehand. I may say, that honouring, esteeming you as I
do, and hoping ardently for your consent . . . .

'They must have a home and an income, General.'

'I presume, dearest lady, that Elizabeth will be welcome in your home. I
certainly shall never chase Reginald out of mine.'

Lady Camper threw back her head. 'Then you are not yet awake, or you
practice the art of sleeping with open eyes! Now listen to me. I rouge, I
have told you. I like colour, and I do not like to see wrinkles or have
them seen. Therefore I rouge. I do not expect to deceive the world so
flagrantly as to my age, and you I would not deceive for a moment. I am
seventy.'

The effect of this noble frankness on the General, was to raise him from
his chair in a sitting posture as if he had been blown up.

Her countenance was inexorably imperturbable under his alternate blinking
and gazing that drew her close and shot her distant, like a mysterious
toy.

'But,' said she, 'I am an artist; I dislike the look of extreme age, so I
conceal it as well as I can. You are very kind to fall in with the
deception: an innocent and, I think, a proper one, before the world,
though not to the gentleman who does me the honour to propose to me for
my hand. You desire to settle our business first. You esteem me; I
suppose you mean as much as young people mean when they say they love. Do
you? Let us come to an understanding.'

'I can,' the melancholy General gasped, 'I say I can--I cannot--I cannot
credit your ladyship's . . .'

'You are at liberty to call me Angela.'

'Ange . . .' he tried it, and in shame relapsed. 'Madam, yes. Thanks.'

'Ah,' cried Lady Camper, 'do not use these vulgar contractions of decent
speech in my presence. I abhor the word "thanks." It is fit for
fribbles.'

'Dear me, I have used it all my life,' groaned the General.

'Then, for the remainder, be it understood that you renounce it. To
continue, my age is . . .'

'Oh, impossible, impossible,' the General almost wailed; there was really
a crack in his voice.

'Advancing to seventy. But, like you, I am happy to say I have not a
malady. I bring no invalid frame to a union that necessitates the leaving
of the front door open day and night to the doctor. My belief is, I could
follow my husband still on a campaign, if he were a warrior instead of a
pensioner.'

General Ople winced.

He was about to say humbly, 'As General of Brigade . . .'

'Yes, yes, you want a commanding officer, and that I have seen, and that
has caused me to meditate on your proposal,' she interrupted him; while
he, studying her countenance hard, with the painful aspect of a youth who
lashes a donkey memory in an examination by word of mouth, attempted to
marshal her signs of younger years against her awful confession of the
extremely ancient, the witheringly ancient. But for the manifest rouge,
manifest in spite of her declaration that she had not yet that morning
proceeded to her paintbrush, he would have thrown down his glove to
challenge her on the subject of her age. She had actually charms. Her
mouth had a charm; her eyes were lively; her figure, mature if you like,
was at least full and good; she stood upright, she had a queenly seat.
His mental ejaculation was, 'What a wonderful constitution!'

By a lapse of politeness, he repeated it to himself half aloud; he was
shockingly nervous.

'Yes, I have finer health than many a younger woman,' she said. 'An
ordinary calculation would give me twenty good years to come. I am a
widow, as you know. And, by the way, you have a leaning for widows. Have
you not? I thought I had heard of a widow Barcop in this parish. Do not
protest. I assure you I am a stranger to jealousy. My income . . .'

The General raised his hands.

'Well, then,' said the cool and self-contained lady, 'before I go
farther, I may ask you, knowing what you have forced me to confess, are
you still of the same mind as to marriage? And one moment, General. I
promise you most sincerely that your withdrawing a step shall not, as far
as it touches me, affect my neighbourly and friendly sentiments; not in
any degree. Shall we be as we were?'

Lady Camper extended her delicate hand to him.

He took it respectfully, inspected the aristocratic and unshrunken
fingers, and kissing them, said, 'I never withdraw from a position,
unless I am beaten back. Lady Camper, I . . .'

'My name is Angela.'

The General tried again: he could not utter the name.

To call a lady of seventy Angela is difficult in itself. It is, it seems,
thrice difficult in the way of courtship.

'Angela!' said she.

'Yes. I say, there is not a more beautiful female name, dear Lady
Camper.'

'Spare me that word "female" as long as you live. Address me by that
name, if you please.'

The General smiled. The smile was meant for propitiation and sweetness.
It became a brazen smile.

'Unless you wish to step back,' said she.

'Indeed, no. I am happy, Lady Camper. My life is yours. I say, my life is
devoted to you, dear madam.'

'Angela!'

General Ople was blushingly delivered of the name.

'That will do,' said she. 'And as I think it possible one may be admired
too much as an artist, I must request you to keep my number of years a
secret.'

'To the death, madam,' said the General.

'And now we will take a turn in the garden, Wilson Ople. And beware of
one thing, for a commencement, for you are full of weeds, and I mean to
pluck out a few: never call any place a gentlemanly residence in my
hearing, nor let it come to my ears that you have been using the phrase
elsewhere. Don't express astonishment. At present it is enough that I
dislike it. But this only,' Lady Camper added, 'this only if it is not
your intention to withdraw from your position.'

'Madam, my lady, I was saying--hem!--Angela, I could not wish to
withdraw.'

Lady Camper leaned with some pressure on his arm, observing, 'You have a
curious attachment to antiquities.'

'My dear lady, it is your mind; I say, it is your mind: I was saying, I
am in love with your mind,' the General endeavoured to assure her, and
himself too.

'Or is it my powers as an artist?'

'Your mind, your extraordinary powers of mind.'

'Well,' said Lady Camper, 'a veteran General of Brigade is as good a
crutch as a childless old grannam can have.'

And as a crutch, General Ople, parading her grounds with the aged woman,
found himself used and treated.

The accuracy of his perceptions might be questioned. He was like a man
stunned by some great tropical fruit, which responds to the longing of
his eyes by falling on his head; but it appeared to him, that she
increased in bitterness at every step they took, as if determined to make
him realize her wrinkles.

He was even so inconsequent, or so little recognized his position, as to
object in his heart to hear himself called Wilson.

It is true that she uttered Wilsonople as if the names formed one word.
And on a second occasion (when he inclined to feel hurt) she remarked, 'I
fear me, Wilsonople, if we are to speak plainly, thou art but a fool.'
He, perhaps, naturally objected to that. He was, however, giddy, and
barely knew.

Yet once more the magical woman changed. All semblance of harshness, and
harridan-like spike-tonguedness vanished when she said adieu.

The astronomer, looking at the crusty jag and scoria of the magnified
moon through his telescope, and again with naked eyes at the soft-beaming
moon, when the crater-ridges are faint as eyebrow-pencillings, has a
similar sharp alternation of prospect to that which mystified General
Ople.

But between watching an orb that is only variable at our caprice, and
contemplating a woman who shifts and quivers ever with her own, how vast
the difference!

And consider that this woman is about to be one's wife! He could have
believed (if he had not known full surely that such things are not) he
was in the hands of a witch.

Lady Camper's 'adieu' was perfectly beautiful--a kind, cordial, intimate,
above all, to satisfy his present craving, it was a lady-like adieu--the
adieu of a delicate and elegant woman, who had hardly left her anchorage
by forty to sail into the fifties.

Alas! he had her word for it, that she was not less than seventy. And,
worse, she had betrayed most melancholy signs of sourness and agedness as
soon as he had sworn himself to her fast and fixed.

'The road is open to you to retreat,' were her last words.

'My road,' he answered gallantly, 'is forward.'

He was drawing backward as he said it, and something provoked her to
smile.




CHAPTER V

It is a noble thing to say that your road is forward, and it befits a man
of battles. General Ople was too loyal a gentleman to think of any other
road. Still, albeit not gifted with imagination, he could not avoid the
feeling that he had set his face to Winter. He found himself suddenly
walking straight into the heart of Winter, and a nipping Winter. For her
ladyship had proved acutely nipping. His little customary phrases, to
which Lady Camper objected, he could see no harm in whatever. Conversing
with her in the privacy of domestic life would never be the flowing
business that it is for other men. It would demand perpetual vigilance,
hop, skip, jump, flounderings, and apologies.

This was not a pleasing prospect.

On the other hand, she was the niece of an earl. She was wealthy. She
might be an excellent friend to Elizabeth; and she could be, when she
liked, both commandingly and bewitchingly ladylike.

Good! But he was a General Officer of not more than fifty-five, in his
full vigour, and she a woman of seventy!

The prospect was bleak. It resembled an outlook on the steppes. In point
of the discipline he was to expect, he might be compared to a raw
recruit, and in his own home!

However, she was a woman of mind. One would be proud of her.

But did he know the worst of her? A dreadful presentiment, that he did
not know the worst of her, rolled an ocean of gloom upon General Ople,
striking out one solitary thought in the obscurity, namely, that he was
about to receive punishment for retiring from active service to a life of
ease at a comparatively early age, when still in marching trim. And the
shadow of the thought was, that he deserved the punishment!

He was in his garden with the dawn. Hard exercise is the best of opiates
for dismal reflections. The General discomposed his daughter by offering
to accompany her on her morning ride before breakfast. She considered
that it would fatigue him. 'I am not a man of eighty!' he cried. He could
have wished he had been.

He led the way to the park, where they soon had sight of young Rolles,
who checked his horse and spied them like a vedette, but, perceiving that
he had been seen, came cantering, and hailing the General with hearty
wonderment.

'And what's this the world says, General?' said he. 'But we all applaud
your taste. My aunt Angela was the handsomest woman of her time.'

The General murmured in confusion, 'Dear me!' and looked at the young
man, thinking that he could not have known the time.

'Is all arranged, my dear General?'

'Nothing is arranged, and I beg--I say I beg . . . I came out for fresh
air and pace.'..

The General rode frantically.

In spite of the fresh air, he was unable to eat at breakfast. He was
bound, of course, to present himself to Lady Camper, in common civility,
immediately after it.

And first, what were the phrases he had to avoid uttering in her
presence? He could remember only the 'gentlemanly residence.' And it was
a gentlemanly residence, he thought as he took leave of it. It was one,
neatly named to fit the place. Lady Camper is indeed a most eccentric
person! he decided from his experience of her.

He was rather astonished that young Rolles should have spoken so coolly
of his aunt's leaning to matrimony; but perhaps her exact age was unknown
to the younger members of her family.

This idea refreshed him by suggesting the extremely honourable nature of
Lady Camper's uncomfortable confession.

He himself had an uncomfortable confession to make. He would have to
speak of his income. He was living up to the edges of it.

She is an upright woman, and I must be the same! he said, fortunately not
in her hearing.

The subject was disagreeable to a man sensitive on the topic of money,
and feeling that his prudence had recently been misled to keep up
appearances.

Lady Camper was in her garden, reclining under her parasol. A chair was
beside her, to which, acknowledging the salutation of her suitor, she
waved him.

'You have met my nephew Reginald this morning, General?'

'Curiously, in the park, this morning, before breakfast, I did, yes. Hem!
I, I say I did meet him. Has your ladyship seen him?'

'No. The park is very pretty in the early morning.'

'Sweetly pretty.'

Lady Camper raised her head, and with the mildness of assured
dictatorship, pronounced: 'Never say that before me.'

'I submit, my lady,' said the poor scourged man.

'Why, naturally you do. Vulgar phrases have to be endured, except when
our intimates are guilty, and then we are not merely offended, we are
compromised by them. You are still of the mind in which you left me
yesterday? You are one day older. But I warn you, so am I.'

'Yes, my lady, we cannot, I say we cannot check time. Decidedly of the
same mind. Quite so.'

'Oblige me by never saying "Quite so." My lawyer says it. It reeks of the
City of London. And do not look so miserable.'

'I, madam? my dear lady!' the General flashed out in a radiance that
dulled instantly.

'Well,' said she cheerfully, 'and you're for the old woman?'

'For Lady Camper.'

'You are seductive in your flatteries, General. Well, then, we have to
speak of business.'

'My affairs----' General Ople was beginning, with perturbed forehead; but
Lady Camper held up her finger.

'We will touch on your affairs incidentally. Now listen to me, and do not
exclaim until I have finished. You know that these two young ones have
been whispering over the wall for some months. They have been meeting on
the river and in the park habitually, apparently with your consent.'

'My lady!'

'I did not say with your connivance.'

'You mean my daughter Elizabeth?'

'And my nephew Reginald. We have named them, if that advances us. Now,
the end of such meetings is marriage, and the sooner the better, if they
are to continue. I would rather they should not; I do not hold it good
for young soldiers to marry. But if they do, it is very certain that
their pay will not support a family; and in a marriage of two healthy
young people, we have to assume the existence of the family. You have
allowed matters to go so far that the boy is hot in love; I suppose the
girl is, too. She is a nice girl. I do not object to her personally. But
I insist that a settlement be made on her before I give my nephew one
penny. Hear me out, for I am not fond of business, and shall be glad to
have done with these explanations. Reginald has nothing of his own. He is
my sister's son, and I loved her, and rather like the boy. He has at
present four hundred a year from me. I will double it, on the condition
that you at once make over ten thousand--not less; and let it be yes or
no!--to be settled on your daughter and go to her children, independent
of the husband--cela va sans dire. Now you may speak, General.'

The General spoke, with breath fetched from the deeps:

'Ten thousand pounds! Hem! Ten! Hem, frankly--ten, my lady! One's
income--I am quite taken by surprise. I say Elizabeth's conduct--though,
poor child! it is natural to her to seek a mate, I mean, to accept a mate
and an establishment, and Reginald is a very hopeful fellow--I was
saying, they jump on me out of an ambush, and I wish them every
happiness. And she is an ardent soldier, and a soldier she must marry.
But ten thousand!'

'It is to secure the happiness of your daughter, General.'

'Pounds! my lady. It would rather cripple me.'

'You would have my house, General; you would have the moiety, as the
lawyers say, of my purse; you would have horses, carriages, servants; I
do not divine what more you would wish to have.'

'But, madam--a pensioner on the Government! I can look back on past
services, I say old services, and I accept my position. But, madam, a
pensioner on my wife, bringing next to nothing to the common estate! I
fear my self-respect would, I say would . . .'

'Well, and what would it do, General Ople?'

'I was saying, my self-respect as my wife's pensioner, my lady. I could
not come to her empty-handed.'

'Do you expect that I should be the person to settle money on your
daughter, to save her from mischances? A rakish husband, for example; for
Reginald is young, and no one can guess what will be made of him.'

'Undoubtedly your ladyship is correct. We might try absence for the poor
girl. I have no female relation, but I could send her to the sea-side to
a lady-friend.'

'General Ople, I forbid you, as you value my esteem, ever--and I repeat,
I forbid you ever--to afflict my ears with that phrase, "lady-friend!"'

The General blinked in a state of insurgent humility.

These incessant whippings could not but sting the humblest of men; and
'lady-friend,' he was sure, was a very common term, used, he was sure, in
the very best society. He had never heard Her Majesty speak at levees of
a lady-friend, but he was quite sure that she had one; and if so, what
could be the objection to her subjects mentioning it as a term to suit
their own circumstances?

He was harassed and perplexed by old Lady Camper's treatment of him, and
he resolved not to call her Angela even upon supplication--not that day,
at least.

She said, 'You will not need to bring property of any kind to the common
estate; I neither look for it nor desire it. The generous thing for you
to do would be to give your daughter all you have, and come to me.'

'But, Lady Camper, if I denude myself or curtail my income--a man at his
wife's discretion, I was saying a man at his wife's mercy . . . !'

General Ople was really forced, by his manly dignity, to make this
protest on its behalf. He did not see how he could have escaped doing so;
he was more an agent than a principal. 'My wife's mercy,' he said again,
but simply as a herald proclaiming superior orders.

Lady Camper's brows were wrathful. A deep blood-crimson overcame the
rouge, and gave her a terrible stormy look.

'The congress now ceases to sit, and the treaty is not concluded,' was
all she said.

She rose, bowed to him, 'Good morning, General,' and turned her back.

He sighed. He was a free man. But this could not be denied--whatever the
lady's age, she was a grand woman in her carriage, and when looking
angry, she had a queenlike aspect that raised her out of the reckoning of
time.

So now he knew there was a worse behind what he had previously known. He
was precipitate in calling it the worst. 'Now,' said he to himself, 'I
know the worst!'

No man should ever say it. Least of all, one who has entered into
relations with an eccentric lady.




CHAPTER VI

Politeness required that General Ople should not appear to rejoice in his
dismissal as a suitor, and should at least make some show of holding
himself at the beck of a reconsidering mind. He was guilty of running up
to London early next day, and remaining absent until nightfall; and he
did the same on the two following days. When he presented himself at Lady
Camper's lodge-gates, the astonishing intelligence, that her ladyship had
departed for the Continent and Egypt gave him qualms of remorse, which
assumed a more definite shape in something like awe of her triumphant
constitution. He forbore to mention her age, for he was the most
honourable of men, but a habit of tea-table talkativeness impelled him to
say and repeat an idea that had visited him, to the effect, that Lady
Camper was one of those wonderful women who are comparable to brilliant
generals, and defend themselves from the siege of Time by various
aggressive movements. Fearful of not being understood, owing to the
rarity of the occasions when the squat plain squad of honest Saxon
regulars at his command were called upon to explain an idea, he re-cast
the sentence. But, as it happened that the regulars of his vocabulary
were not numerous, and not accustomed to work upon thoughts and images,
his repetitions rather succeeded in exposing the piece of knowledge he
had recently acquired than in making his meaning plainer. So we need not
marvel that his acquaintances should suppose him to be secretly aware of
an extreme degree in which Lady Camper was a veteran.

General Ople entered into the gaieties of the neighbourhood once more,
and passed through the Winter cheerfully. In justice to him, however, it
should be said that to the intent dwelling of his mind upon Lady Camper,
and not to the festive life he led, was due his entire ignorance of his
daughter's unhappiness. She lived with him, and yet it was in other
houses he learnt that she was unhappy. After his last interview with Lady
Camper, he had informed Elizabeth of the ruinous and preposterous amount
of money demanded of him for a settlement upon her and Elizabeth, like
the girl of good sense that she was, had replied immediately, 'It could
not be thought of, papa.'

He had spoken to Reginald likewise. The young man fell into a dramatic
tearing-of-hair and long-stride fury, not ill becoming an enamoured
dragoon. But he maintained that his aunt, though an eccentric, was a
cordially kind woman. He seemed to feel, if he did not partly hint, that
the General might have accepted Lady Camper's terms. The young officer
could no longer be welcome at Douro Lodge, so the General paid him a
morning call at his quarters, and was distressed to find him breakfasting
very late, tapping eggs that he forgot to open--one of the surest signs
of a young man downright and deep in love, as the General knew from
experience--and surrounded by uncut sporting journals of past weeks,
which dated from the day when his blow had struck him, as accurately as
the watch of the drowned man marks his minute. Lady Camper had gone to
Italy, and was in communication with her nephew: Reginald was not further
explicit. His legs were very prominent in his despair, and his fingers
frequently performed the part of blunt combs; consequently the General
was impressed by his passion for Elizabeth. The girl who, if she was
often meditative, always met his eyes with a smile, and quietly said
'Yes, papa,' and 'No, papa,' gave him little concern as to the state of
her feelings. Yet everybody said now that she was unhappy. Mrs. Barcop,
the widow, raised her voice above the rest. So attentive was she to
Elizabeth that the General had it kindly suggested to him, that some one
was courting him through his daughter. He gazed at the widow. Now she was
not much past thirty; and it was really singular--he could have
laughed--thinking of Mrs. Barcop set him persistently thinking of Lady
Camper. That is to say, his mad fancy reverted from the lady of perhaps
thirty-five to the lady of seventy.

Such, thought he, is genius in a woman! Of his neighbours generally, Mrs.
Baerens, the wife of a German merchant, an exquisite player on the
pianoforte, was the most inclined to lead him to speak of Lady Camper.
She was a kind prattling woman, and was known to have been a governess
before her charms withdrew the gastronomic Gottfried Baerens from his
devotion to the well-served City club, where, as he exclaimed (ever
turning fondly to his wife as he vocalized the compliment), he had found
every necessity, every luxury, in life, 'as you cannot have dem out of
London--all save de female!' Mrs. Baerens, a lady of Teutonic extraction,
was distinguishable as of that sex; at least, she was not masculine. She
spoke with great respect of Lady Camper and her family, and seemed to
agree in the General's eulogies of Lady Camper's constitution. Still he
thought she eyed him strangely.

One April morning the General received a letter with the Italian
postmark. Opening it with his usual calm and happy curiosity, he
perceived that it was composed of pen-and-ink drawings. And suddenly his
heart sank like a scuttled ship. He saw himself the victim of a
caricature.

The first sketch had merely seemed picturesque, and he supposed it a
clever play of fancy by some travelling friend, or perhaps an actual
scene slightly exaggerated. Even on reading, 'A distant view of the city
of Wilsonople,' he was only slightly enlightened. His heart beat still
with befitting regularity. But the second and the third sketches betrayed
the terrible hand. The distant view of the city of Wilsonople was fair
with glittering domes, which, in the succeeding near view, proved to have
been soap-bubbles, for a place of extreme flatness, begirt with crazy
old-fashioned fortifications, was shown; and in the third view,
representing the interior, stood for sole place of habitation, a
sentry-box.

Most minutely drawn, and, alas! with fearful accuracy, a military
gentleman in undress occupied the box. Not a doubt could exist as to the
person it was meant to be.

The General tried hard to remain incredulous. He remembered too well who
had called him Wilsonople.

But here was the extraordinary thing that sent him over the neighbourhood
canvassing for exclamations: on the fourth page was the outline of a
lovely feminine hand, holding a pen, as in the act of shading, and under
it these words: 'What I say is, I say I think it exceedingly unladylike.'

Now consider the General's feelings when, turning to this fourth page,
having these very words in his mouth, as the accurate expression of his
thoughts, he discovered them written!

An enemy who anticipates the actions of our mind, has a quality of the
malignant divine that may well inspire terror. The senses of General Ople
were struck by the aspect of a lurid Goddess, who penetrated him, read
him through, and had both power and will to expose and make him
ridiculous for ever.

The loveliness of the hand, too, in a perplexing manner contested his
denunciation of her conduct. It was ladylike eminently, and it involved
him in a confused mixture of the moral and material, as great as young
people are known to feel when they make the attempt to separate them, in
one of their frenzies.

With a petty bitter laugh he folded the letter, put it in his
breast-pocket, and sallied forth for a walk, chiefly to talk to himself
about it. But as it absorbed him entirely, he showed it to the rector,
whom he met, and what the rector said is of no consequence, for General
Ople listened to no remarks, calling in succession on the Pollingtons,
the Goslings, the Baerens, and others, early though it was, and the lords
of those houses absent amassing hoards; and to the ladies everywhere he
displayed the sketches he had received, observing, that Wilsonople meant
himself; and there he was, he said, pointing at the capped fellow in the
sentry-box, done unmistakably. The likeness indeed was remarkable. 'She
is a woman of genius,' he ejaculated, with utter melancholy. Mrs.
Baerens, by the aid of a magnifying glass, assisted him to read a line
under the sentry-box, that he had taken for a mere trembling dash; it
ran, A gentlemanly residence.

'What eyes she has!' the General exclaimed; 'I say it is miraculous what
eyes she has at her time of . . . I was saying, I should never have known
it was writing.'

He sighed heavily. His shuddering sensitiveness to caricature was
increased by a certain evident dread of the hand which struck; the
knowing that he was absolutely bare to this woman, defenceless, open to
exposure in his little whims, foibles, tricks, incompetencies, in what
lay in his heart, and the words that would come to his tongue. He felt
like a man haunted.

So deeply did he feel the blow, that people asked how it was that he
could be so foolish as to dance about assisting Lady Camper in her
efforts to make him ridiculous; he acted the parts of publisher and agent
for the fearful caricaturist. In truth, there was a strangely double
reason for his conduct; he danced about for sympathy, he had the
intensest craving for sympathy, but more than this, or quite as much, he
desired to have the powers of his enemy widely appreciated; in the first
place, that he might be excused to himself for wincing under them, and
secondly, because an awful admiration of her, that should be deepened by
a corresponding sentiment around him, helped him to enjoy luxurious
recollections of an hour when he was near making her his own--his own, in
the holy abstract contemplation of marriage, without realizing their
probable relative conditions after the ceremony.

'I say, that is the very image of her ladyship's hand,' he was especially
fond of remarking, 'I say it is a beautiful hand.'

He carried the letter in his pocket-book; and beginning to fancy that she
had done her worst, for he could not imagine an inventive malignity
capable of pursuing the theme, he spoke of her treatment of him with
compassionate regret, not badly assumed from being partly sincere.

Two letters dated in France, the one Dijon, the other Fontainebleau,
arrived together; and as the General knew Lady Camper to be returning to
England, he expected that she was anxious to excuse herself to him. His
fingers were not so confident, for he tore one of the letters to open it.

The City of Wilsonople was recognizable immediately. So likewise was the
sole inhabitant.

General Ople's petty bitter laugh recurred, like a weak-chested patient's
cough in the shifting of our winds eastward.

A faceless woman's shadow kneels on the ground near the sentry-box,
weeping. A faceless shadow of a young man on horseback is beheld
galloping toward a gulf. The sole inhabitant contemplates his largely
substantial full fleshed face and figure in a glass.

Next, we see the standard of Great Britain furled; next, unfurled and
borne by a troop of shadows to the sentrybox. The officer within says, 'I
say I should be very happy to carry it, but I cannot quit this
gentlemanly residence.'

Next, the standard is shown assailed by popguns. Several of the shadows
are prostrate. 'I was saying, I assure you that nothing but this
gentlemanly residence prevents me from heading you,' says the gallant
officer.

General Ople trembled with protestant indignation when he saw himself
reclining in a magnified sentry-box, while detachments of shadows hurry
to him to show him the standard of his country trailing in the dust; and
he is maliciously made to say, 'I dislike responsibility. I say I am a
fervent patriot, and very fond of my comforts, but I shun
responsibility.'

The second letter contained scenes between Wilsonople and the Moon.

He addresses her as his neighbour, and tells her of his triumphs over the
sex.

He requests her to inform him whether she is a 'female,' that she may be
triumphed over.

He hastens past her window on foot, with his head bent, just as the
General had been in the habit of walking.

He drives a mouse-pony furiously by.

He cuts down a tree, that she may peep through.

Then, from the Moon's point of view, Wilsonople, a Silenus, is discerned
in an arm-chair winking at a couple too plainly pouting their lips for a
doubt of their intentions to be entertained.

A fourth letter arrived, bearing date of Paris. This one illustrated
Wilsonople's courtship of the Moon, and ended with his 'saying,' in his
peculiar manner, 'In spite of her paint I could not have conceived her
age to be so enormous.'

How break off his engagement with the Lady Moon? Consent to none of her
terms!

Little used as he was to read behind a veil, acuteness of suffering
sharpened the General's intelligence to a degree that sustained him in
animated dialogue with each succeeding sketch, or poisoned arrow whirring
at him from the moment his eyes rested on it; and here are a few samples:

'Wilsonople informs the Moon that she is "sweetly pretty."

'He thanks her with "thanks" for a handsome piece of lunar green cheese.

'He points to her, apparently telling some one, "my lady-friend."

'He sneezes "Bijou! bijou! bijou!"'

They were trifles, but they attacked his habits of speech; and he began
to grow more and more alarmingly absurd in each fresh caricature of his
person.

He looked at himself as the malicious woman's hand had shaped him. It was
unjust; it was no resemblance--and yet it was! There was a corner of
likeness left that leavened the lump; henceforth he must walk abroad with
this distressing image of himself before his eyes, instead of the
satisfactory reflex of the man who had, and was happy in thinking that he
had, done mischief in his time. Such an end for a conquering man was too
pathetic.

The General surprised himself talking to himself in something louder than
a hum at neighbours' dinner-tables. He looked about and noticed that
people were silently watching him.




CHAPTER VII

Lady Camper's return was the subject of speculation in the neighbourhood,
for most people thought she would cease to persecute the General with her
preposterous and unwarrantable pen-and-ink sketches when living so
closely proximate; and how he would behave was the question. Those who
made a hero of him were sure he would treat her with disdain. Others were
uncertain. He had been so severely hit that it seemed possible he would
not show much spirit.

He, for his part, had come to entertain such dread of the post, that Lady
Camper's return relieved him of his morning apprehensions; and he would
have forgiven her, though he feared to see her, if only she had promised
to leave him in peace for the future. He feared to see her, because of
the too probable furnishing of fresh matter for her ladyship's hand. Of
course he could not avoid being seen by her, and that was a particular
misery. A gentlemanly humility, or demureness of aspect, when seen,
would, he hoped, disarm his enemy. It should, he thought. He had borne
unheard-of things. No one of his friends and acquaintances knew, they
could not know, what he had endured. It has caused him fits of
stammering. It had destroyed the composure of his gait. Elizabeth had
informed him that he talked to himself incessantly, and aloud. She, poor
child, looked pale too. She was evidently anxious about him.

Young Rolles, whom he had met now and then, persisted in praising his
aunt's good heart. So, perhaps, having satiated her revenge, she might
now be inclined for peace, on the terms of distant civility.

'Yes! poor Elizabeth!' sighed the General, in pity of the poor girl's
disappointment; 'poor Elizabeth! she little guesses what her father has
gone through. Poor child! I say, she hasn't an idea of my sufferings.'

General Ople delivered his card at Lady Camper's lodgegates and escaped
to his residence in a state of prickly heat that required the brushing of
his hair with hard brushes for several minutes to comfort and
re-establish him.

He had fallen to working in his garden, when Lady Camper's card was
brought to him an hour after the delivery of his own; a pleasing
promptitude, showing signs of repentance, and suggesting to the General
instantly some sharp sarcasms upon women, which he had come upon in
quotations in the papers and the pulpit, his two main sources of
information.

Instead of handing back the card to the maid, he stuck it in his hat and
went on digging.

The first of a series of letters containing shameless realistic
caricatures was handed to him the afternoon following. They came fast and
thick. Not a day's interval of grace was allowed. Niobe under the shafts
of Diana was hardly less violently and mortally assailed. The deadliness
of the attack lay in the ridicule of the daily habits of one of the most
sensitive of men, as to his personal appearance, and the opinion of the
world. He might have concealed the sketches, but he could not have
concealed the bruises, and people were perpetually asking the unhappy
General what he was saying, for he spoke to himself as if he were
repeating something to them for the tenth time.

'I say,' said he, 'I say that for a lady, really an educated lady, to
sit, as she must--I was saying, she must have sat in an attic to have the
right view of me. And there you see--this is what she has done. This is
the last, this is the afternoon's delivery. Her ladyship has me correctly
as to costume, but I could not exhibit such a sketch to ladies.'

A back view of the General was displayed in his act of digging.

'I say I could not allow ladies to see it,' he informed the gentlemen,
who were suffered to inspect it freely.

'But you see, I have no means of escape; I am at her mercy from morning
to night,' the General said, with a quivering tongue, 'unless I stay at
home inside the house; and that is death to me, or unless I abandon the
place, and my lease; and I shall--I say, I shall find nowhere in England
for anything like the money or conveniences such a gent--a residence you
would call fit for a gentleman. I call it a bi . . . it is, in short, a
gem. But I shall have to go.'

Young Rolles offered to expostulate with his aunt Angela.

The General said, 'Tha . . . I thank you very much. I would not have her
ladyship suppose I am so susceptible. I hardly know,' he confessed
pitiably, 'what it is right to say, and what not--what not. I-I-I never
know when I am not looking a fool. I hurry from tree to tree to shun the
light. I am seriously affected in my appetite. I say, I shall have to
go.'

Reginald gave him to understand that if he flew, the shafts would follow
him, for Lady Camper would never forgive his running away, and was quite
equal to publishing a book of the adventures of Wilsonople.

Sunday afternoon, walking in the park with his daughter on his arm,
General Ople met Mr. Rolles. He saw that the young man and Elizabeth were
mortally pale, and as the very idea of wretchedness directed his
attention to himself, he addressed them conjointly on the subject of his
persecution, giving neither of them a chance of speaking until they were
constrained to part.

A sketch was the consequence, in which a withered Cupid and a fading
Psyche were seen divided by Wilsonople, who keeps them forcibly asunder
with policeman's fists, while courteously and elegantly entreating them
to hear him. 'Meet,' he tells them, 'as often as you like, in my company,
so long as you listen to me'; and the pathos of his aspect makes hungry
demand for a sympathetic audience.

Now, this, and not the series representing the martyrdom of the old
couple at Douro Lodge Gates, whose rigid frames bore witness to the close
packing of a gentlemanly residence, this was the sketch General Ople, in
his madness from the pursuing bite of the gadfly, handed about at Mrs.
Pollington's lawn-party. Some have said, that he should not have betrayed
his daughter; but it is reasonable to suppose he had no idea of his
daughter's being the Psyche. Or if he had, it was indistinct, owing to
the violence of his personal emotion. Assuming this to have been the very
sketch; he handed it to two or three ladies in turn, and was heard to
deliver himself at intervals in the following snatches: 'As you like, my
lady, as you like; strike, I say strike; I bear it; I say I bear it.
. . . If her ladyship is unforgiving, I say I am enduring. . . .
I may go, I was saying I may go mad, but while I have my reason I walk
upright, I walk upright.'

Mr. Pollington and certain City gentlemen hearing the poor General's
renewed soliloquies, were seized with disgust of Lady Camper's conduct,
and stoutly advised an application to the Law Courts.

He gave ear to them abstractedly, but after pulling out the whole chapter
of the caricatures (which it seemed that he kept in a case of morocco
leather in his breast-pocket), showing them, with comments on them, and
observing, 'There will be more, there must be more, I say I am sure there
are things I do that her ladyship will discover and expose,' he declined
to seek redress or simple protection; and the miserable spectacle was
exhibited soon after of this courtly man listening to Mrs. Barcop on the
weather, and replying in acquiescence: 'It is hot.--If your ladyship will
only abstain from colours. Very hot as you say, madam,--I do not complain
of pen and ink, but I would rather escape colours. And I dare say you
find it hot too?'

Mrs. Barcop shut her eyes and sighed over the wreck of a handsome
military officer.

She asked him: 'What is your objection to colours?'

His hand was at his breast-pocket immediately, as he said: 'Have you not
seen?'--though but a few minutes back he had shown her the contents of
the packet, including a hurried glance of the famous digging scene.

By this time the entire district was in fervid sympathy with General
Ople. The ladies did not, as their lords did, proclaim astonishment that
a man should suffer a woman to goad him to a state of semi-lunacy; but
one or two confessed to their husbands, that it required a great
admiration of General Ople not to despise him, both for his
susceptibility and his patience. As for the men, they knew him to have
faced the balls in bellowing battle-strife; they knew him to have endured
privation, not only cold but downright want of food and drink--an almost
unimaginable horror to these brave daily feasters; so they could not
quite look on him in contempt; but his want of sense was offensive, and
still more so his submission to a scourging by a woman. Not one of them
would have deigned to feel it. Would they have allowed her to see that
she could sting them? They would have laughed at her. Or they would have
dragged her before a magistrate.

It was a Sunday in early Summer when General Ople walked to morning
service, unaccompanied by Elizabeth, who was unwell. The church was of
the considerate old-fashioned order, with deaf square pews, permitting
the mind to abstract itself from the sermon, or wrestle at leisure with
the difficulties presented by the preacher, as General Ople often did,
feeling not a little in love with his sincere attentiveness for grappling
with the knotty point and partially allowing the struggle to be seen.

The Church was, besides, a sanctuary for him. Hither his enemy did not
come. He had this one place of refuge, and he almost looked a happy man
again.

He had passed into his hat and out of it, which he habitually did
standing, when who should walk up to within a couple of yards of him but
Lady Camper. Her pew was full of poor people, who made signs of retiring.
She signified to them that they were to sit, then quietly took her seat
among them, fronting the General across the aisle.

During the sermon a low voice, sharp in contradistinction to the monotone
of the preacher's, was heard to repeat these words: 'I say I am not sure
I shall survive it.' Considerable muttering in the same quarter was heard
besides.

After the customary ceremonious game, when all were free to move, of
nobody liking to move first, Lady Camper and a charity boy were the
persons who took the lead. But Lady Camper could not quit her pew, owing
to the sticking of the door. She smiled as with her pretty hand she twice
or thrice essayed to shake it open. General Ople strode to her aid. He
pulled the door, gave the shadow of a respectful bow, and no doubt he
would have withdrawn, had not Lady Camper, while acknowledging the
civility, placed her prayer-book in his hands to carry at her heels.
There was no choice for him. He made a sort of slipping dance back for
his hat, and followed her ladyship. All present being eager to witness
the spectacle, the passage of Lady Camper dragging the victim General
behind her was observed without a stir of the well-dressed members of the
congregation, until a desire overcame them to see how Lady Camper would
behave to her fish when she had him outside the sacred edifice.

None could have imagined such a scene. Lady Camper was in her carriage;
General Ople was holding her prayer-book, hat in hand, at the carriage
step, and he looked as if he were toasting before the bars of a furnace;
for while he stood there, Lady Camper was rapidly pencilling outlines in
a small pocket sketchbook. There are dogs whose shyness is put to it to
endure human observation and a direct address to them, even on the part
of their masters; and these dear simple dogs wag tail and turn their
heads aside waveringly, as though to entreat you not to eye them and talk
to them so. General Ople, in the presence of the sketchbook, was much
like the nervous animal. He would fain have run away. He glanced at it,
and round about, and again at it, and at the heavens. Her ladyship's
cruelty, and his inexplicable submission to it, were witnessed of the
multitude.

The General's friends walked very slowly. Lady Camper's carriage whirled
by, and the General came up with them, accosting them and himself
alternately. They asked him where Elizabeth was, and he replied, 'Poor
child, yes! I am told she is pale, but I cannot, believe I am so
perfectly, I say so perfectly ridiculous, when I join the responses.' He
drew forth half a dozen sheets, and showed them sketches that Lady Camper
had taken in church, caricaturing him in the sitting down and the
standing up. She had torn them out of the book, and presented them to him
when driving off. 'I was saying, worship in the ordinary sense will be
interdicted to me if her ladyship . . .,' said the General, woefully
shuffling the sketch-paper sheets in which he figured.

He made the following odd confession to Mr. and Mrs. Gosling on the
road:--that he had gone to his chest, and taken out his sword-belt to
measure his girth, and found himself thinner than when he left the
service, which had not been the case before his attendance at the last
levee of the foregoing season. So the deduction was obvious, that Lady
Camper had reduced him. She had reduced him as effectually as a harassing
siege.

'But why do you pay attention to her? Why . . . !' exclaimed Mr. Gosling,
a gentleman of the City, whose roundness would have turned a rifle-shot.

'To allow her to wound you so seriously!' exclaimed Mrs. Gosling.

'Madam, if she were my wife,' the General explained, 'I should feel it. I
say it is the fact of it; I feel it, if I appear so extremely ridiculous
to a human eye, to any one eye.'

'To Lady Camper's eye.'

He admitted it might be that. He had not thought of ascribing the
acuteness of his pain to the miserable image he presented in this
particular lady's eye. No; it really was true, curiously true: another
lady's eye might have transformed him to a pumpkin shape, exaggerated all
his foibles fifty-fold, and he, though not liking it, of course not,
would yet have preserved a certain manly equanimity. How was it Lady
Camper had such power over him?--a lady concealing seventy years with a
rouge-box or paint-pot! It was witchcraft in its worst character. He had
for six months at her bidding been actually living the life of a beast,
degraded in his own esteem; scorched by every laugh he heard; running,
pursued, overtaken, and as it were scored or branded, and then let go for
the process to be repeated.




CHAPTER VIII

Our young barbarians have it all their own way with us when they fall
into love-liking; they lead us whither they please, and interest us in
their wishings, their weepings, and that fine performance, their
kissings. But when we see our veterans tottering to their fall, we
scarcely consent to their having a wish; as for a kiss, we halloo at them
if we discover them on a byway to the sacred grove where such things are
supposed to be done by the venerable. And this piece of rank injustice,
not to say impoliteness, is entirely because of an unsound opinion that
Nature is not in it, as though it were our esteem for Nature which caused
us to disrespect them. They, in truth, show her to us discreet,
civilized, in a decent moral aspect: vistas of real life, views of the
mind's eye, are opened by their touching little emotions; whereas those
bully youngsters who come bellowing at us and catch us by the senses
plainly prove either that we are no better than they, or that we give our
attention to Nature only when she makes us afraid of her. If we cared for
her, we should be up and after her reverentially in her sedater steps,
deeply studying her in her slower paces. She teaches them nothing when
they are whirling. Our closest instructors, the true philosophers--the
story-tellers, in short-will learn in time that Nature is not of
necessity always roaring, and as soon as they do, the world may be said
to be enlightened. Meantime, in the contemplation of a pair of white
whiskers fluttering round a pair of manifestly painted cheeks, be assured
that Nature is in it: not that hectoring wanton--but let the young have
their fun. Let the superior interest of the passions of the aged be
conceded, and not a word shall be said against the young.

If, then, Nature is in it, how has she been made active? The reason of
her launch upon this last adventure is, that she has perceived the person
who can supply the virtue known to her by experience to be wanting. Thus,
in the broader instance, many who have journeyed far down the road, turn
back to the worship of youth, which they have lost. Some are for the
graceful worldliness of wit, of which they have just share enough to
admire it. Some are captivated by hands that can wield the rod, which in
earlier days they escaped to their cost. In the case of General Ople, it
was partly her whippings of him, partly her penetration; her ability,
that sat so finely on a wealthy woman, her indifference to conventional
manners, that so well beseemed a nobly-born one, and more than all, her
correction of his little weaknesses and incompetencies, in spite of his
dislike of it, won him. He began to feel a sort of nibbling pleasure in
her grotesque sketches of his person; a tendency to recur to the old ones
while dreading the arrival of new. You hear old gentlemen speak fondly of
the swish; and they are not attached to pain, but the instrument revives
their feeling of youth; and General Ople half enjoyed, while shrinking,
Lady Camper's foregone outlines of him. For in the distance, the
whip's-end may look like a clinging caress instead of a stinging flick.
But this craven melting in his heart was rebuked by a very worthy pride,
that flew for support to the injury she had done to his devotions, and
the offence to the sacred edifice. After thinking over it, he decided
that he must quit his residence; and as it appeared to him in the light
of duty, he, with an unspoken anguish, commissioned the house-agent of
his town to sell his lease or let the house furnished, without further
parley.

From the house-agent's shop he turned into the chemist's, for a tonic--a
foolish proceeding, for he had received bracing enough in the blow he had
just dealt himself, but he had been cogitating on tonics recently,
imagining certain valiant effects of them, with visions of a former
careless happiness that they were likely to restore. So he requested to
have the tonic strong, and he took one glass of it over the counter.

Fifteen minutes after the draught, he came in sight of his house, and
beholding it, he could have called it a gentlemanly residence aloud under
Lady Camper's windows, his insurgency was of such violence. He talked of
it incessantly, but forbore to tell Elizabeth, as she was looking pale,
the reason why its modest merits touched him so. He longed for the hour
of his next dose, and for a caricature to follow, that he might drink and
defy it. A caricature was really due to him, he thought; otherwise why
had he abandoned his bijou dwelling? Lady Camper, however, sent none. He
had to wait a fortnight before one came, and that was rather a likeness,
and a handsome likeness, except as regarded a certain disorderliness in
his dress, which he knew to be very unlike him. Still it despatched him
to the looking-glass, to bring that verifier of facts in evidence against
the sketch. While sitting there he heard the housemaid's knock at the
door, and the strange intelligence that his daughter was with Lady
Camper, and had left word that she hoped he would not forget his
engagement to go to Mrs. Baerens' lawn-party.

The General jumped away from the glass, shouting at the absent Elizabeth
in a fit of wrath so foreign to him, that he returned hurriedly to have
another look at himself, and exclaimed at the pitch of his voice, 'I say
I attribute it to an indigestion of that tonic. Do you hear?' The
housemaid faintly answered outside the door that she did, alarming him,
for there seemed to be confusion somewhere. His hope was that no one
would mention Lady Camper's name, for the mere thought of her caused a
rush to his head. 'I believe I am in for a touch of apoplexy,' he said to
the rector, who greeted him, in advance of the ladies, on Mr. Baerens'
lawn. He said it smilingly, but wanting some show of sympathy, instead of
the whisper and meaningless hand at his clerical band, with which the
rector responded, he cried, 'Apoplexy,' and his friend seemed then to
understand, and disappeared among the ladies.

Several of them surrounded the General, and one inquired whether the
series was being continued. He drew forth his pocket-book, handed her the
latest, and remarked on the gross injustice of it; for, as he requested
them to take note, her ladyship now sketched him as a person inattentive
to his dress, and he begged them to observe that she had drawn him with
his necktie hanging loose. 'And that, I say that has never been known of
me since I first entered society.'

The ladies exchanged looks of profound concern; for the fact was, the
General had come without any necktie and any collar, and he appeared to
be unaware of the circumstance. The rector had told them, that in answer
to a hint he had dropped on the subject of neckties, General Ople
expressed a slight apprehension of apoplexy; but his careless or merely
partial observance of the laws of buttonment could have nothing to do
with such fears. They signified rather a disorder of the intelligence.
Elizabeth was condemned for leaving him to go about alone. The situation
was really most painful, for a word to so sensitive a man would drive him
away in shame and for good; and still, to let him parade the ground in
the state, compared with his natural self, of scarecrow, and with the
dreadful habit of talking to himself quite rageing, was a horrible
alternative. Mrs. Baerens at last directed her husband upon the General,
trembling as though she watched for the operations of a fish torpedo; and
other ladies shared her excessive anxiousness, for Mr. Baerens had the
manner and the look of artillery, and on this occasion carried a
surcharge of powder.

The General bent his ear to Mr. Baerens, whose German-English and
repeated remark, 'I am to do it wid delicassy,' did not assist his
comprehension; and when he might have been enlightened, he was petrified
by seeing Lady Camper walk on the lawn with Elizabeth. The great lady
stood a moment beside Mrs. Baerens; she came straight over to him,
contemplating him in silence.

Then she said, 'Your arm, General Ople,' and she made one circuit of the
lawn with him, barely speaking.

At her request, he conducted her to her carriage. He took a seat beside
her, obediently. He felt that he was being sketched, and comported
himself like a child's flat man, that jumps at the pulling of a string.

'Where have you left your girl, General?'

Before he could rally his wits to answer the question, he was asked:

'And what have you done with your necktie and collar?'

He touched his throat.

'I am rather nervous to-day, I forgot Elizabeth,' he said, sending his
fingers in a dotting run of wonderment round his neck.

Lady Camper smiled with a triumphing humour on her close-drawn lips.

The verified absence of necktie and collar seemed to be choking him.

'Never mind, you have been abroad without them,' said Lady Camper, 'and
that is a victory for me. And you thought of Elizabeth first when I drew
your attention to it, and that is a victory for you. It is a very great
victory. Pray, do not be dismayed, General. You have a handsome
campaigning air. And no apologies, if you please; I like you well enough
as you are. There is my hand.'

General Ople understood her last remark. He pressed the lady's hand in
silence, very nervously.

'But do not shrug your head into your shoulders as if there were any
possibility of concealing the thunderingly evident,' said Lady Camper,
electrifying him, what with her cordial squeeze, her kind eyes, and her
singular language. 'You have omitted the collar. Well? The collar is the
fatal finishing touch in men's dress; it would make Apollo look
bourgeois.'

Her hand was in his: and watching the play of her features, a spark
entered General Ople's brain, causing him, in forgetfulness of collar and
caricatures, to ejaculate, 'Seventy? Did your ladyship say seventy?
Utterly impossible! You trifle with me.'

'We will talk when we are free of this accompaniment of carriage-wheels,
General,' said Lady Camper.

'I will beg permission to go and fetch Elizabeth, madam.'

'Rightly thought of. Fetch her in my carriage. And, by the way, Mrs.
Baerens was my old music-mistress, and is, I think, one year older than
I. She can tell you on which side of seventy I am.'

'I shall not require to ask, my lady,' he said, sighing.

'Then we will send the carriage for Elizabeth, and have it out
together at once. I am impatient; yes, General, impatient: for
what?--forgiveness.'

'Of me, my lady?' The General breathed profoundly.

'Of whom else? Do you know what it is?-I don't think you do. You English
have the smallest experience of humanity. I mean this: to strike so hard
that, in the end, you soften your heart to the victim. Well, that is my
weakness. And we of our blood put no restraint on the blows we strike
when we think them wanted, so we are always overdoing it.'

General Ople assisted Lady Camper to alight from the carriage, which was
forthwith despatched for Elizabeth.

He prepared to listen to her with a disconnected smile of acute
attentiveness.

She had changed. She spoke of money. Ten thousand pounds must be settled
on his daughter. 'And now,' said she, 'you will remember that you are
wanting a collar.'

He acquiesced. He craved permission to retire for ten minutes.

'Simplest of men! what will cover you?' she exclaimed, and peremptorily
bidding him sit down in the drawing-room, she took one of the famous pair
of pistols in her hand, and said, 'If I put myself in a similar position,
and make myself decodletee too, will that satisfy you? You see these
murderous weapons. Well, I am a coward. I dread fire-arms. They are laid
there to impose on the world, and I believe they do. They have imposed on
you. Now, you would never think of pretending to a moral quality you do
not possess. But, silly, simple man that you are! You can give yourself
the airs of wealth, buy horses to conceal your nakedness, and when you
are taken upon the standard of your apparent income, you would rather
seem to be beating a miserly retreat than behave frankly and honestly. I
have a little overstated it, but I am near the mark.'

'Your ladyship wanting courage!' cried the General.

'Refresh yourself by meditating on it,' said she. 'And to prove it to
you, I was glad to take this house when I knew I was to have a gallant
gentleman for a neighbour. No visitors will be admitted, General Ople, so
you are bare-throated only to me: sit quietly. One day you speculated on
the paint in my cheeks for the space of a minute and a half:--I had said
that I freckled easily. Your look signified that you really could not
detect a single freckle for the paint. I forgave you, or I did not. But
when I found you, on closer acquaintance, as indifferent to your
daughter's happiness as you had been to her reputation . . .'

'My daughter! her reputation! her happiness!'

General Ople raised his eyes under a wave, half uttering the outcries.

'So indifferent to her reputation, that you allowed a young man to talk
with her over the wall, and meet her by appointment: so reckless of the
girl's happiness, that when I tried to bring you to a treaty, on her
behalf, you could not be dragged from thinking of yourself and your own
affair. When I found that, perhaps I was predisposed to give you some of
what my sisters used to call my spice. You would not honestly state the
proportions of your income, and you affected to be faithful to the woman
of seventy. Most preposterous! Could any caricature of mine exceed in
grotesqueness your sketch of yourself? You are a brave and a generous man
all the same: and I suspect it is more hoodwinking than egotism--or
extreme egotism--that blinds you. A certain amount you must have to be a
man. You did not like my paint, still less did you like my sincerity; you
were annoyed by my corrections of your habits of speech; you were
horrified by the age of seventy, and you were credulous--General Ople,
listen to me, and remember that you have no collar on--you were credulous
of my statement of my great age, or you chose to be so, or chose to seem
so, because I had brushed your cat's coat against the fur. And then, full
of yourself, not thinking of Elizabeth, but to withdraw in the chivalrous
attitude of the man true to his word to the old woman, only stickling to
bring a certain independence to the common stock, because--I quote you!
and you have no collar on, mind--"you could not be at your wife's mercy,"
you broke from your proposal on the money question. Where was your
consideration for Elizabeth then?

'Well, General, you were fond of thinking of yourself, and I thought I
would assist you. I gave you plenty of subject matter. I will not say I
meant to work a homoeopathic cure. But if I drive you to forget your
collar, is it or is it not a triumph?

'No,' added Lady Camper, 'it is no triumph for me, but it is one for you,
if you like to make the most of it. Your fault has been to quit active
service, General, and love your ease too well. It is the fault of your
countrymen. You must get a militia regiment, or inspectorship of militia.
You are ten times the man in exercise. Why, do you mean to tell me that
you would have cared for those drawings of mine when marching?'

'I think so, I say I think so,' remarked the General seriously.

'I doubt it,' said she. 'But to the point; here comes Elizabeth. If you
have not much money to spare for her, according to your prudent
calculation, reflect how this money has enfeebled you and reduced you to
the level of the people round about us here--who are, what? Inhabitants
of gentlemanly residences, yes! But what kind of creature? They have no
mental standard, no moral aim, no native chivalry. You were rapidly
becoming one of them, only, fortunately for you, you were sensitive to
ridicule.'

'Elizabeth shall have half my money settled on her,' said the General;
'though I fear it is not much. And if I can find occupation, my lady...'

'Something worthier than that,' said Lady Camper, pencilling outlines
rapidly on the margin of a book, and he saw himself lashing a pony; 'or
that,' and he was plucking at a cabbage; 'or that,' and he was bowing to
three petticoated posts.

'The likeness is exact,' General Ople groaned.

'So you may suppose I have studied you,' said she. 'But there is no real
likeness. Slight exaggerations do more harm to truth than reckless
violations of it.

You would not have cared one bit for a caricature, if you had not nursed
the absurd idea of being one of our conquerors. It is the very tragedy of
modesty for a man like you to have such notions, my poor dear good
friend. The modest are the most easily intoxicated when they sip at
vanity. And reflect whether you have not been intoxicated, for these
young people have been wretched, and you have not observed it, though one
of them was living with you, and is the child you love. There, I have
done. Pray show a good face to Elizabeth.'

The General obeyed as well as he could. He felt very like a sheep that
has come from a shearing, and when released he wished to run away. But
hardly had he escaped before he had a desire for the renewal of the
operation. 'She sees me through, she sees me through,' he was heard
saying to himself, and in the end he taught himself, to say it with a
secret exultation, for as it was on her part an extraordinary piece of
insight to see him through, it struck him that in acknowledging the truth
of it, he made a discovery of new powers in human nature.

General Ople studied Lady Camper diligently for fresh proofs of her
penetration of the mysteries in his bosom; by which means, as it happened
that she was diligently observing the two betrothed young ones, he began
to watch them likewise, and took a pleasure in the sight. Their meetings,
their partings, their rides out and home furnished him themes of
converse. He soon had enough to talk of, and previously, as he
remembered, he had never sustained a conversation of any length with
composure and the beneficent sense of fulness. Five thousand pounds, to
which sum Lady Camper reduced her stipulation for Elizabeth's dowry, he
signed over to his dear girl gladly, and came out with the confession to
her ladyship that a well-invested twelve thousand comprised his fortune.
She shrugged she had left off pulling him this way and that, so his
chains were enjoyable, and he said to himself: 'If ever she should in the
dead of night want a man to defend her!' He mentioned it to Reginald, who
had been the repository of Elizabeth's lamentations about her father
being left alone, forsaken, and the young man conceived a scheme for
causing his aunt's great bell to be rung at midnight, which would
certainly have led to a dramatic issue and the happy re-establishment of
our masculine ascendancy at the close of this history. But he forgot it
in his bridegroom's delight, until he was making his miserable official
speech at the wedding-breakfast, and set Elizabeth winking over a tear.
As she stood in the hall ready to depart, a great van was observed in the
road at the gates of Douro Lodge; and this, the men in custody declared
to contain the goods and knick-knacks of the people who had taken the
house furnished for a year, and were coming in that very afternoon.

'I remember, I say now I remember, I had a notice,' the General said
cheerily to his troubled daughter.

'But where are you to go, papa?' the poor girl cried, close on sobbing.

'I shall get employment of some sort,' said he. 'I was saying I want it,
I need it, I require it.'

'You are saying three times what once would have sufficed for,' said Lady
Camper, and she asked him a few questions, frowned with a smile, and
offered him a lodgement in his neighbour's house.

'Really, dearest Aunt Angela?' said Elizabeth.

'What else can I do, child? I have, it seems, driven him out of a
gentlemanly residence, and I must give him a ladylike one. True, I would
rather have had him at call, but as I have always wished for a policeman
in the house, I may as well be satisfied with a soldier.'

'But if you lose your character, my lady?' said Reginald.

'Then I must look to the General to restore it.'

General Ople immediately bowed his head over Lady Camper's fingers.

'An odd thing to happen to a woman of forty-one!' she said to her great
people, and they submitted with the best grace in the world, while the
General's ears tingled till he felt younger than Reginald. This, his
reflections ran, or it would be more correct to say waltzed, this is the
result of painting!--that you can believe a woman to be any age when her
cheeks are tinted!

As for Lady Camper, she had been floated accidentally over the ridicule
of the bruit of a marriage at a time of life as terrible to her as her
fiction of seventy had been to General Ople; she resigned herself to let
things go with the tide. She had not been blissful in her first marriage,
she had abandoned the chase of an ideal man, and she had found one who
was tunable so as not to offend her ears, likely ever to be a fund of
amusement for her humour, good, impressible, and above all, very
picturesque. There is the secret of her, and of how it came to pass that
a simple man and a complex woman fell to union after the strangest
division.

     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

     Can believe a woman to be any age when her cheeks are tinted
     Modest are the most easily intoxicated when they sip at vanity
     Nature is not of necessity always roaring
     Only to be described in the tongue of auctioneers
     Respected the vegetable yet more than he esteemed the flower
     She seems honest, and that is the most we can hope of girls
     Spare me that word "female" as long as you live
     The mildness of assured dictatorship
     When we see our veterans tottering to their fall




THE TALE OF CHLOE
AN EPISODE IN THE HISTORY OF BEAU BEAMISH

By George Meredith

       'Fair Chloe, we toasted of old,
         As the Queen of our festival meeting;
        Now Chloe is lifeless and cold;
         You must go to the grave for her greeting.
        Her beauty and talents were framed
         To enkindle the proudest to win her;
        Then let not the mem'ry be blamed
         Of the purest that e'er was a sinner!'

                    Captain Chanter's Collection.




CHAPTER I

A proper tenderness for the Peerage will continue to pass current the
illustrious gentleman who was inflamed by Cupid's darts to espouse the
milkmaid, or dairymaid, under his ballad title of Duke of Dewlap: nor was
it the smallest of the services rendered him by Beau Beamish, that he
clapped the name upon her rustic Grace, the young duchess, the very first
day of her arrival at the Wells. This happy inspiration of a wit never
failing at a pinch has rescued one of our princeliest houses from the
assaults of the vulgar, who are ever too rejoiced to bespatter and
disfigure a brilliant coat-of-arms; insomuch that the ballad, to which we
are indebted for the narrative of the meeting and marriage of the ducal
pair, speaks of Dewlap in good faith--

        O the ninth Duke of Dewlap I am, Susie dear!

without a hint of a domino title. So likewise the pictorial historian is
merry over 'Dewlap alliances' in his description of the society of that
period. He has read the ballad, but disregarded the memoirs of the beau.
Writers of pretension would seem to have an animus against individuals of
the character of Mr. Beamish. They will treat of the habits and manners
of highwaymen, and quote obscure broadsheets and songs of the people to
colour their story, yet decline to bestow more than a passing remark upon
our domestic kings: because they are not hereditary, we may suppose. The
ballad of 'The Duke and the Dairymaid,' ascribed with questionable
authority to the pen of Mr. Beamish himself in a freak of his gaiety, was
once popular enough to provoke the moralist to animadversions upon an
order of composition that 'tempted every bouncing country lass to sidle
an eye in a blowsy cheek' in expectation of a coronet for her pains--and
a wet ditch as the result! We may doubt it to have been such an occasion
of mischief. But that mischief may have been done by it to a
nobility-loving people, even to the love of our nobility among the
people, must be granted; and for the particular reason, that the hero of
the ballad behaved so handsomely. We perceive a susceptibility to
adulteration in their worship at the sight of one of their number, a
young maid, suddenly snatched up to the gaping heights of Luxury and
Fashion through sheer good looks. Remembering that they are accustomed to
a totally reverse effect from that possession, it is very perceptible how
a breach in their reverence may come of the change.

Otherwise the ballad is innocent; certainly it is innocent in design. A
fresher national song of a beautiful incident of our country life has
never been written. The sentiments are natural, the imagery is apt and
redolent of the soil, the music of the verse appeals to the dullest ear.
It has no smell of the lamp, nothing foreign and far-fetched about it,
but is just what it pretends to be, the carol of the native bird. A
sample will show, for the ballad is much too long to be given entire:

     Sweet Susie she tripped on a shiny May morn,
     As blithe as the lark from the green-springing corn,
     When, hard by a stile, 'twas her luck to behold
     A wonderful gentleman covered with gold!

     There was gold on his breeches and gold on his coat,
     His shirt-frill was grand as a fifty-pound note;
     The diamonds glittered all up him so bright,
     She thought him the Milky Way clothing a Sprite!

     'Fear not, pretty maiden,' he said with a smile;
     'And, pray, let me help you in crossing the stile.
     She bobbed him a curtsey so lovely and smart,
     It shot like an arrow and fixed in his heart.

     As light as a robin she hopped to the stone,
     But fast was her hand in the gentleman's own;
     And guess how she stared, nor her senses could trust,
     When this creamy gentleman knelt in the dust!

With a rhapsody upon her beauty, he informs her of his rank, for a
flourish to the proposal of honourable and immediate marriage. He cannot
wait. This is the fatal condition of his love: apparently a
characteristic of amorous dukes. We read them in the signs extended to
us. The minds of these august and solitary men have not yet been sounded;
they are too distant. Standing upon their lofty pinnacles, they are as
legible to the rabble below as a line of cuneiform writing in a page of
old copybook roundhand. By their deeds we know them, as heathendom knows
of its gods; and it is repeatedly on record that the moment they have
taken fire they must wed, though the lady's finger be circled with
nothing closer fitting than a ring of the bed-curtain. Vainly, as becomes
a candid country lass, blue-eyed Susan tells him that she is but a poor
dairymaid. He has been a student of women at Courts, in which furnace the
sex becomes a transparency, so he recounts to her the catalogue of
material advantages he has to offer. Finally, after his assurances that
she is to be married by the parson, really by the parson, and a real
parson--

     Sweet Susie is off for her parents' consent,
     And long must the old folk debate what it meant.
     She left them the eve of that happy May morn,
     To shine like the blossom that hangs from the thorn!

Apart from its historical value, the ballad is an example to poets of our
day, who fly to mythological Greece, or a fanciful and morbid
mediaevalism, or--save the mark!--abstract ideas, for themes of song, of
what may be done to make our English life poetically interesting, if they
would but pluck the treasures presented them by the wayside; and Nature
being now as then the passport to popularity, they have themselves to
thank for their little hold on the heart of the people. A living native
duke is worth fifty Phoebus Apollos to Englishmen, and a buxom young lass
of the fields mounting from a pair of pails to the estate of duchess, a
more romantic object than troops of your visionary Yseults and
Guineveres.




CHAPTER II

A certain time after the marriage, his Grace alighted at the Wells, and
did himself the honour to call on Mr. Beamish. Addressing that gentleman,
to whom he was no stranger, he communicated the purport of his visit.

'Sir, and my very good friend,' he said, 'first let me beg you to abate
the severity of your countenance, for if I am here in breach of your
prohibition, I shall presently depart in compliance with it. I could
indeed deplore the loss of the passion for play of which you effectually
cured me. I was then armed against a crueller, that allows of no interval
for a man to make his vow to recover!'

'The disease which is all crisis, I apprehend,' Mr. Beamish remarked.

'Which, sir, when it takes hold of dry wood, burns to the last splinter.
It is now'--the duke fetched a tender groan--'three years ago that I had
a caprice to marry a grandchild!'

'Of Adam's,' Mr. Beamish said cheerfully. 'There was no legitimate bar to
the union.'

'Unhappily none. Yet you are not to suppose I regret it. A most admirable
creature, Mr. Beamish, a real divinity! And the better known, the more
adored. There is the misfortune. At my season of life, when the greater
and the minor organs are in a conspiracy to tell me I am mortal, the
passion of love must be welcomed as a calamity, though one would not be
free of it for the renewal of youth. You are to understand, that with a
little awakening taste for dissipation, she is the most innocent of
angels. Hitherto we have lived . . . To her it has been a new world. But
she is beginning to find it a narrow one. No, no, she is not tired of my
society. Very far from that. But in her present station an inclination
for such gatherings as you have here, for example, is like a desire to
take the air: and the healthy habits of my duchess have not accustomed
her to be immured. And in fine, devote ourselves as we will, a term
approaches when the enthusiasm for serving as your wife's playfellow all
day, running round tables and flying along corridors before a knotted
handkerchief, is mightily relaxed. Yet the dread of a separation from her
has kept me at these pastimes for a considerable period beyond my relish
of them. Not that I acknowledge fatigue. I have, it seems, a taste for
reflection; I am now much disposed to read and meditate, which cannot be
done without repose. I settle myself, and I receive a worsted ball in my
face, and I am expected to return it. I comply; and then you would say a
nursery in arms. It would else be the deplorable spectacle of a beautiful
young woman yawning.'

'Earthquake and saltpetre threaten us less terribly,' said Mr. Beamish.

'In fine, she has extracted a promise that 'this summer she shall visit
the Wells for a month, and I fear I cannot break my pledge of my word; I
fear I cannot.'

'Very certainly I would not,' said Mr. Beamish.

The duke heaved a sigh. 'There are reasons, family reasons, why my
company and protection must be denied to her here. I have no wish . . .
indeed my name, for the present, until such time as she shall have found
her feet . . . and there is ever a penalty to pay for that. Ah, Mr.
Beamish, pictures are ours, when we have bought them and hung them up;
but who insures us possession of a beautiful work of Nature? I have
latterly betaken me to reflect much and seriously. I am tempted to side
with the Divines in the sermons I have read; the flesh is the habitation
of a rebellious devil.'

'To whom we object in proportion as we ourselves become quit of him,' Mr.
Beamish acquiesced.

'But this mania of young people for pleasure, eternal pleasure, is one of
the wonders. It does not pall on them; they are insatiate.'

'There is the cataract, and there is the cliff. Potentate to potentate,
duke--so long as you are on my territory, be it understood. Upon my way
to a place of worship once, I passed a Puritan, who was complaining of a
butterfly that fluttered prettily abroad in desecration of the Day of
Rest. "Friend," said I to him, "conclusively you prove to me that you are
not a butterfly." Surly did no more than favour me with the anathema of
his countenance.'

'Cousin Beamish, my complaint of these young people is, that they miss
their pleasure in pursuing it. I have lectured my duchess--'

'Ha!'

'Foolish, I own,' said the duke. 'But suppose, now, you had caught your
butterfly, and you could neither let it go nor consent to follow its
vagaries. That poses you.'

'Young people,' said Mr. Beamish, 'come under my observation in this poor
realm of mine--young and old. I find them prodigiously alike in their
love of pleasure, differing mainly in their capacity to satisfy it. That
is no uncommon observation. The young, have an edge which they are
desirous of blunting; the old contrariwise. The cry of the young for
pleasure is actually--I have studied their language--a cry for burdens.
Curious! And the old ones cry for having too many on their shoulders:
which is not astonishing. Between them they make an agreeable concert
both to charm the ears and guide the steps of the philosopher, whose
wisdom it is to avoid their tracks.'

'Good. But I have asked you for practical advice, and you give me an
essay.'

'For the reason, duke, that you propose a case that suggests hanging. You
mention two things impossible to be done. The alternative is, a garter
and the bedpost. When we have come upon crossways, and we can decide
neither to take the right hand nor the left, neither forward nor back,
the index of the board which would direct us points to itself, and
emphatically says, Gallows.'

'Beamish, I am distracted. If I refuse her the visit, I foresee
dissensions, tears, games at ball, romps, not one day of rest remaining
to me. I could be of a mind with your Puritan, positively. If I allow it,
so innocent a creature in the atmosphere of a place like this must suffer
some corruption. You should know that the station I took her from was
. . . it was modest. She was absolutely a buttercup of the fields. She has
had various masters. She dances . . . she dances prettily, I could say
bewitchingly. And so she is now for airing her accomplishments: such are
women!'

'Have you heard of Chloe?' said Mr. Beamish. 'There you have an example
of a young lady uncorrupted by this place--of which I would only remark
that it is best unvisited, but better tasted than longed for.'

'Chloe? A lady who squandered her fortune to redeem some ill-requiting
rascal: I remember to have heard of her. She is here still? And ruined,
of course?'

'In purse.'

'That cannot be without the loss of reputation.'

'Chloe's champion will grant that she is exposed to the evils of
improvidence. The more brightly shine her native purity, her goodness of
heart, her trustfulness. She is a lady whose exaltation glows in her
abasement.'

'She has, I see, preserved her comeliness,' observed the duke, with a
smile.

'Despite the flying of the roses, which had not her heart's patience.
'Tis now the lily that reigns. So, then, Chloe shall be attached to the
duchess during her stay, and unless the devil himself should interfere, I
guarantee her Grace against any worse harm than experience; and that,'
Mr. Beamish added, as the duke raised his arms at the fearful word, 'that
shall be mild. Play she will; she is sure to play. Put it down at a
thousand. We map her out a course of permissible follies, and she plays
to lose the thousand by degrees, with as telling an effect upon a
connubial conscience as we can produce.'

'A thousand,' said the duke, 'will be cheap indeed. I think now I have
had a description of this fair Chloe, and from an enthusiast; a brune?
elegantly mannered and of a good landed family; though she has thought
proper to conceal her name. And that will be our difficulty, cousin
Beamish.'

'She was, under my dominion, Miss Martinsward,' Mr. Beamish pursued. 'She
came here very young, and at once her suitors were legion. In the way of
women, she chose the worst among them; and for the fellow Caseldy she
sacrificed the fortune she had inherited of a maternal uncle. To release
him from prison, she paid all his debts; a mountain of bills, with the
lawyers piled above--Pelion upon Ossa, to quote our poets. In fact,
obeying the dictates of a soul steeped in generosity, she committed the
indiscretion to strip herself, scandalizing propriety. This was
immediately on her coming of age; and it was the death-blow to her
relations with her family. Since then, honoured even by rakes, she has
lived impoverished at the Wells. I dubbed her Chloe, and man or woman
disrespectful to Chloe packs. From being the victim of her generous
disposition, I could not save her; I can protect her from the shafts of
malice.'

'She has no passion for play?' inquired the duke.

'She nourishes a passion for the man for whom she bled, to the exclusion
of the other passions. She lives, and I believe I may say that it is the
motive of her rising and dressing daily, in expectation of his advent.'

'He may be dead.'

'The dog is alive. And he has not ceased to be Handsome Caseldy, they
say. Between ourselves, duke, there is matter to break her heart. He has
been the Count Caseldy of Continental gaming tables, and he is recently
Sir Martin Caseldy, settled on the estate she made him free to take up
intact on his father's decease.'

'Pah! a villain!'

'With a blacker brand upon him every morning that he looks forth across
his property, and leaves her to languish! She still--I say it to the
redemption of our sex--has offers. Her incomparable attractions of mind
and person exercise the natural empire of beauty. But she will none of
them. I call her the Fair Suicide. She has died for love; and she is a
ghost, a good ghost, and a pleasing ghost, but an apparition, a taper.

The duke fidgeted, and expressed a hope to hear that she was not of
melancholy conversation; and again, that the subject of her discourse was
not confined to love and lovers, happy or unhappy. He wished his duchess,
he said, to be entertained upon gayer topics: love being a theme he
desired to reserve to himself. 'This month!' he said, prognostically
shaking and moaning. 'I would this month were over, and that we were well
purged of it.'

Mr. Beamish reassured him. The wit and sprightliness of Chloe were so
famous as to be considered medical, he affirmed; she was besieged for her
company; she composed and sang impromptu verses, she played harp and
harpsichord divinely, and touched the guitar, and danced, danced like the
silvery moon on the waters of the mill pool. He concluded by saying that
she was both humane and wise, humble-minded and amusing, virtuous yet not
a Tartar; the best of companions for her Grace the young duchess.
Moreover, he boldly engaged to carry the duchess through the term of her
visit under a name that should be as good as a masquerade for concealing
his Grace's, while giving her all the honours due to her rank.

'You strictly interpret my wishes,' said the duke; 'all honours, the
foremost place, and my wrath upon man or woman gainsaying them!'

'Mine! if you please, duke,' said Mr. Beamish.

'A thousand pardons! I leave it to you, cousin. I could not be in safer
hands. I am heartily bounders to you. Chloe, then. By the way, she has a
decent respect for age?'

'She is reverentially inclined.'

'Not that. She is, I would ask, no wanton prattler of the charms and
advantages of youth?'

'She has a young adorer that I have dubbed Alonzo, whom she scarce
notices.'

'Nothing could be better. Alonzo: h'm! A faithful swain?'

'Life is his tree, upon which unceasingly he carves his mistress's
initials.'

'She should not be too cruel. I recollect myself formerly: I was . . .
Young men will, when long slighted, transfer their affections, and be
warmer to the second flame than to the first. I put you on your guard. He
follows her much? These lovers' paintings and puffings in the
neighbourhood of the most innocent of women are contagious.'

'Her Grace will be running home all the sooner.'

'Or off!--may she forgive me! I am like a King John's Jew, forced to lend
his treasure without security. What a world is ours! Nothing, Beamish,
nothing desirable will you have which is not coveted! Catch a prize, and
you will find you are at war with your species. You have to be on the
defensive from that moment. There is no such thing as peaceable
procession on earth. Let it be a beautiful young woman!--Ah!'

Mr. Beamish replied bracingly, 'The champion wrestler challenges all
comers while he wears the belt.'

The duke dejectedly assented. 'True; or he is challenged, say. Is there
any tale we could tell her of this Alonzo? You could deport him for the
month, my dear Beamish.'

'I commit no injustice unless with sufficient reason. It is an estimable
youth, as shown by his devotion to a peerless woman. To endow her with
his name and fortune is his only thought.'

'I perceive; an excellent young fellow! I have an incipient liking for
this young Alonzo. You must not permit my duchess to laugh at him.
Encourage her rather to advance his suit. The silliness of a young man
will be no bad spectacle. Chloe, then. You have set my mind at rest,
Beamish, and it is but another obligation added to the heap; so, if I do
not speak of payment, the reason is that I know you would not have me
bankrupt.'

The remainder of the colloquy of the duke and Mr. Beamish referred to the
date of her Grace's coming to the Wells, the lodgement she was to
receive, and other minor arrangements bearing upon her state and comfort;
the duke perpetually observing, 'But I leave it all to you, Beamish,'
when he had laid down precise instructions in these respects, even to the
specification of the shopkeepers, the confectioner and the apothecary,
who were to balance or cancel one another in the opposite nature of their
supplies, and the haberdasher and the jeweller, with whom she was to make
her purchases. For the duke had a recollection of giddy shops, and of
giddy shopmen too; and it was by serving as one for a day that a certain
great nobleman came to victory with a jealously guarded dame beautiful as
Venus. 'I would have challenged the goddess!' he cried, and subsided from
his enthusiasm plaintively, like a weak wind instrument. 'So there you
see the prudence of a choice of shops. But I leave it to you, Beamish.'
Similarly the great military commander, having done whatsoever a careful
prevision may suggest to insure him victory, casts himself upon
Providence, with the hope of propitiating the unanticipated and darkly
possible.




CHAPTER III

The splendid equipage of a coach and six, with footmen in scarlet and
green, carried Beau Beamish five miles along the road on a sunny day to
meet the young duchess at the boundary of his territory, and conduct her
in state to the Wells. Chloe sat beside him, receiving counsel with
regard to her prospective duties. He was this day the consummate beau,
suave, but monarchical, and his manner of speech partook of his external
grandeur. 'Spy me the horizon, and apprise me if somewhere you
distinguish a chariot,' he said, as they drew up on the rise of a hill of
long descent, where the dusty roadway sank between its brown hedges, and
crawled mounting from dry rush-spotted hollows to corn fields on a
companion height directly facing them, at a remove of about
three-quarters of a mile. Chloe looked forth, while the beau passingly
raised his hat for coolness, and murmured, with a glance down the sultry
track: 'It sweats the eye to see!'

Presently Chloe said, 'Now a dust blows. Something approaches. Now I
discern horses, now a vehicle; and it is a chariot!'

Orders were issued to the outriders for horns to be sounded.

Both Chloe and Beau Beamish wrinkled their foreheads at the disorderly
notes of triple horns, whose pealing made an acid in the air instead of
sweetness.

'You would say, kennel dogs that bay the moon!' said the wincing beau.
'Yet, as you know, these fellows have been exercised. I have had them out
in a meadow for hours, baked and drenched, to get them rid of their
native cacophony. But they love it, as they love bacon and beans. The
musical taste of our people is in the stage of the primitive appetite for
noise, and for that they are gluttons.'

'It will be pleasant to hear in the distance,' Chloe replied.

'Ay, the extremer the distance, the pleasanter to hear. Are they
advancing?'

'They stop. There is a cavalier at the window. Now he doffs his hat.'

'Sweepingly?'

Chloe described a semicircle in the grand manner.

The beau's eyebrows rose. 'Powers divine!' he muttered. 'She is let
loose from hand to hand, and midway comes a cavalier. We did not count on
the hawks. So I have to deal with a cavalier! It signifies, my dear
Chloe, that I must incontinently affect the passion if I am to be his
match: nothing less.'

'He has flown,' said Chloe.

'Whom she encounters after meeting me, I care not,' quoth the beau,
snapping a finger. 'But there has been an interval for damage with a lady
innocent as Eve. Is she advancing?'

'The chariot is trotting down the hill. He has ridden back. She has no
attendant horseman.'

'They were dismissed at my injunction ten miles off particularly to the
benefit of the cavaliering horde, it would appear. In the case of a
woman, Chloe, one blink of the eyelids is an omission of watchfulness.'

'That is an axiom fit for the harem of the Grand Signior.'

'The Grand Signior might give us profitable lessons for dealing with the
sex.'

'Distrust us, and it is a declaration of war!'

'Trust you, and the stopper is out of the smelling-bottle.'

'Mr. Beamish, we are women, but we have souls.'

'The pip in the apple whose ruddy cheek allures little Tommy to rob the
orchard is as good a preservative.'

'You admit that men are our enemies?'

'I maintain that they carry the banner of virtue.'

'Oh, Mr. Beamish, I shall expire.'

'I forbid it in my lifetime, Chloe, for I wish to die believing in one
woman.'

'No flattery for me at the expense of my sisters!'

'Then fly to a hermitage; for all flattery is at somebody's expense,
child. 'Tis an essence-extract of humanity! To live on it, in the fashion
of some people, is bad--it is downright cannibal. But we may sprinkle our
handkerchiefs with it, and we should, if we would caress our noses with
an air. Society, my Chloe, is a recommencement upon an upper level of the
savage system; we must have our sacrifices. As, for instance, what say
you of myself beside our booted bumpkin squires?'

'Hundreds of them, Mr. Beamish!'

'That is a holocaust of squires reduced to make an incense for me, though
you have not performed Druid rites and packed them in gigantic osier
ribs. Be philosophical, but accept your personal dues. Grant us ours too.
I have a serious intention to preserve this young duchess, and I expect
my task to be severe. I carry the banner aforesaid; verily and
penitentially I do. It is an error of the vulgar to suppose that all is
dragon in the dragon's jaws.'

'Men are his fangs and claws.'

'Ay, but the passion for his fiery breath is in woman. She will take her
leap and have her jump, will and will! And at the point where she will
and she won't, the dragon gulps and down she goes! However, the business
is to keep our buttercup duchess from that same point. Is she near?'

'I can see her,' said Chloe.

Beau Beamish requested a sketch of her, and Chloe began: 'She is
ravishing.'

Upon which he commented, 'Every woman is ravishing at forty paces, and
still more so in imagination.'

'Beautiful auburn hair, and a dazzling red and white complexion, set in a
blue coif.'

'Her eyes?'

'Melting blue.'

''Tis an English witch!' exclaimed the beau, and he compassionately
invoked her absent lord.

Chloe's optics were no longer tasked to discern the fair lady's
lineaments, for the chariot windows came flush with those of the beau on
the broad plateau of the hill. His coach door was opened. He sat upright,
levelling his privileged stare at Duchess Susan until she blushed.

'Ay, madam,' quoth he, 'I am not the first.'

'La, sir!' said she; 'who are you?'

The beau deliberately raised his hat and bowed. 'He, madam, of whose
approach the gentleman who took his leave of you on yonder elevation
informed you.'

She looked artlessly over her shoulder, and at the beau alighting from
his carriage. 'A gentleman?'

'On horseback.'

The duchess popped her head through the window on an impulse to measure
the distance between the two hills.

'Never!' she cried.

'Why, madam, did he deliver no message to announce me?' said the beau,
ruffling.

'Goodness gracious! You must be Mr. Beamish,' she replied.

He laid his hat on his bosom, and invited her to quit her carriage for a
seat beside him. She stipulated, 'If you are really Mr. Beamish?' He
frowned, and raised his head to convince her; but she would not be
impressed, and he applied to Chloe to establish his identity. Hearing
Chloe's name, the duchess called out, 'Oh! there, now, that's enough, for
Chloe's my maid here, and I know she's a lady born, and we're going to be
friends. Hand me to Chloe. And you are Chloe?' she said, after a frank
stride from step to step of the carriages. 'And don't mind being my maid?
You do look a nice, kind creature. And I see you're a lady born; I know
in a minute. You're dark, I'm fair; we shall suit. And tell
me--hush!--what dreadful long eyes he has! I shall ask you presently what
you think of me. I was never at the Wells before. Dear me! the coach has
turned. How far off shall we hear the bells to say I'm coming? I know I'm
to have bells. Mr. Beamish, Mr. Beamish! I must have a chatter with a
woman, and I'm in awe of you, sir, that I am, but men and men I see to
talk to for a lift of my finger, by the dozen, in my duke's
palace--though they're old ones, that's true--but a woman who's a lady,
and kind enough to be my maid, I haven't met yet since I had the right to
wear a coronet. There, I'll hold Chloe's hand, and that'll do. You would
tell me at once, Chloe, if I was not dressed to your taste; now, wouldn't
you? As for talkative, that's a sign with me of my liking people. I
really don't know what to say to my duke sometimes. I sit and think it so
funny to be having a duke instead of a husband. You're off!'

The duchess laughed at Chloe's laughter. Chloe excused herself, but was
informed by her mistress that it was what she liked.

'For the first two years,' she resumed, 'I could hardly speak a syllable.
I stammered, I reddened, I longed to be up in my room brushing and
curling my hair, and was ready to curtsey to everybody. Now I'm quite at
home, for I've plenty of courage--except about death, and I'm worse about
death than I was when I was a simple body with a gawk's "lawks!" in her
round eyes and mouth for an egg. I wonder why that is? But isn't death
horrible? And skeletons!' The duchess shuddered.

'It depends upon the skeleton,' said Beau Beamish, who had joined the
conversation. 'Yours, madam, I would rather not meet, because she would
precipitate me into transports of regret for the loss of the flesh. I
have, however, met mine own and had reason for satisfaction with the
interview.'

'Your own skeleton, sir!' said the duchess wonderingly and appalled.

'Unmistakably mine. I will call you to witness by an account of him.'

Duchess Susan gaped, and, 'Oh, don't!' she cried out; but added, 'It 's
broad day, and I've got some one to sleep anigh me after dark'; with
which she smiled on Chloe, who promised her there was no matter for
alarm.

'I encountered my gentleman as I was proceeding to my room at night,'
said the beau, 'along a narrow corridor, where it was imperative that one
of us should yield the 'pas;' and, I must confess it, we are all so
amazingly alike in our bones, that I stood prepared to demand place of
him. For indubitably the fellow was an obstruction, and at the first
glance repulsive. I took him for anybody's skeleton, Death's ensign, with
his cachinnatory skull, and the numbered ribs, and the extraordinary
splay feet--in fact, the whole ungainly and shaky hobbledehoy which man
is built on, and by whose image in his weaker moments he is haunted. I
had, to be frank, been dancing on a supper with certain of our choicest
Wits and Beauties. It is a recipe for conjuring apparitions. Now, then,
thinks I, my fine fellow, I will bounce you; and without a salutation I
pressed forward. Madam, I give you my word, he behaved to the full pitch
as I myself should have done under similar circumstances. Retiring upon
an inclination of his structure, he draws up and fetches me a bow of the
exact middle nick between dignity and service. I advance, he withdraws,
and again the bow, devoid of obsequiousness, majestically condescending.
These, thinks I, be royal manners. I could have taken him for the Sable
King in person, stripped of his mantle. On my soul, he put me to the
blush.'

'And is that all?' asked the duchess, relieving herself with a sigh.

'Why, madam,' quoth the beau, 'do you not see that he could have been
none other than mine own, who could comport himself with that grand air
and gracefulness when wounded by his closest relative? Upon his opening
my door for me, and accepting the 'pas,' which I now right heartily
accorded him, I recognized at once both him and the reproof he had
designedly dealt me--or the wine supper I had danced on, perhaps I should
say' and I protest that by such a display of supreme good breeding he
managed to convey the highest compliment ever received by man, namely the
assurance, that after the withering away of this mortal garb, I shall
still be noted for urbanity and elegancy. Nay, and more, immortally,
without the slip I was guilty of when I carried the bag of wine.'

Duchess Susan fanned herself to assist her digestion of the anecdote.

'Well, it's not so frightful a story, and I know you are the great Mr.
Beamish;' she said.

He questioned her whether the gentleman had signalled him to her on the
hill.

'What can he mean about a gentleman?' she turned to Chloe. 'My duke told
me you would meet me, sir. And you are to protect me. And if anything
happens, it is to be your fault.'

'Entirely,' said the beau. 'I shall therefore maintain a vigilant guard.'

'Except leaving me free. Oof! I've been boxed up so long. I declare,
Chloe, I feel like a best dress out for a holiday, and a bit afraid of
spoiling. I'm a real child, more than I was when my duke married me. I
seemed to go in and grow up again, after I was raised to fortune. And
nobody to tell of it! Fancy that! For you can't talk to old gentlemen
about what's going on in your heart.'

'How of young gentlemen?' she was asked by the beau.

And she replied, 'They find it out.'

'Not if you do not assist them,' said he.

Duchess Susan let her eyelids and her underlie half drop, as she looked
at him with the simple shyness of one of nature's thoughts in her head at
peep on the pastures of the world. The melting blue eyes and the cherry
lip made an exceedingly quickening picture. 'Now, I wonder if that is
true?' she transferred her slyness to speech.

'Beware the middle-aged!' he exclaimed.

She appealed to Chloe. 'And I'm sure they're the nicest.'

Chloe agreed that they were.

The duchess measured Chloe and the beau together, with a mind swift in
apprehending all that it hungered for.

She would have pursued the pleasing theme had she not been directed to
gaze below upon the towers and roofs of the Wells, shining sleepily in a
siesta of afternoon Summer sunlight.

With a spread of her silken robe, she touched the edifice of her hair,
murmuring to Chloe, 'I can't abide that powder. You shall see me walk in
a hoop. I can. I've done it to slow music till my duke clapped hands. I'm
nothing sitting to what I am on my feet. That's because I haven't got
fine language yet. I shall. It seems to come last. So, there 's the
place. And whereabouts do all the great people meet and prommy--?'

'They promenade where you see the trees, madam,' said Chloe.

'And where is it where the ladies sit and eat jam tarts with whipped
cream on 'em, while the gentlemen stand and pay compliments?'

Chloe said it was at a shop near the pump room.

Duchess Susan looked out over the house-tops, beyond the dusty hedges.

'Oh, and that powder!' she cried. 'I hate to be out of the fashion and a
spectacle. But I do love my own hair, and I have such a lot, and I like
the colour, and so does my duke. Only, don't let me be fingered at. If
once I begin to blush before people, my courage is gone; my singing
inside me is choked; and I've a real lark going on in me all day long,
rain or sunshine--hush, all about love and amusement.'

Chloe smiled, and Duchess Susan said, 'Just like a bird, for I don't know
what it is.'

She looked for Chloe to say that she did.

At the moment a pair of mounted squires rode up, and the coach stopped,
while Beau Beamish gave orders for the church bells to be set ringing,
and the band to meet and precede his equipage at the head of the bath
avenue: 'in honour of the arrival of her Grace the Duchess of Dewlap.'

He delivered these words loudly to his men, and turned an effulgent gaze
upon the duchess, so that for a minute she was fascinated and did not
consult her hearing; but presently she fell into an uneasiness; the signs
increased, she bit her lip, and after breathing short once or twice, 'Was
it meaning me, Mr. Beamish?' she said.

'You, madam, are the person whom we 'delight to honour,' he replied.

'Duchess of what?' she screwed uneasy features to hear.

'Duchess of Dewlap,' said he.

'It's not my title, sir.'

'It is your title on my territory, madam.'

She made her pretty nose and upper lip ugly with a sneer of 'Dew--! And
enter that town before all those people as Duchess of . . . Oh, no, I
won't; I just won't! Call back those men now, please; now, if you please.
Pray, Mr. Beamish! You'll offend me, sir. I'm not going to be a mock.
You'll offend my duke, sir. He'd die rather than have my feelings hurt.
Here's all my pleasure spoilt. I won't and I sha'n't enter the town as
duchess of that stupid name, so call 'em back, call 'em back this
instant. I know who I am and what I am, and I know what's due to me, I
do.'

Beau Beamish rejoined, 'I too. Chloe will tell you I am lord here.'

'Then I'll go home, I will. I won't be laughed at for a great lady ninny.
I'm a real lady of high rank, and such I'll appear. What 's a Duchess of
Dewlap? One might as well be Duchess of Cowstail, Duchess of Mopsend. And
those people! But I won't be that. I won't be played with. I see them
staring! No, I can make up my mind, and I beg you to call back your men,
or I'll go back home.' She muttered, 'Be made fun of--made a fool of!'

'Your Grace's chariot is behind,' said the beau.

His despotic coolness provoked her to an outcry and weeping: she
repeated, 'Dewlap! Dewlap!' in sobs; she shook her shoulders and hid her
face.

'You are proud of your title, are you, madam?' said he.

'I am.' She came out of her hands to answer him proudly. 'That I am!' she
meant for a stronger affirmation.

'Then mark me,' he said impressively; 'I am your duke's friend, and you
are under my charge here. I am your guardian and you are my ward, and you
can enter the town only on the condition of obedience to me. Now, mark
me, madam; no one can rob you of your real name and title saving
yourself. But you are entering a place where you will encounter a
thousand temptations to tarnish, and haply forfeit it. Be warned do
nothing that will.'

'Then I'm to have my own title?' said she, clearing up.

'For the month of your visit you are Duchess of Dewlap.'

'I say I sha'n't!'

'You shall.'

'Never, sir!'

'I command it.'

She flung herself forward, with a wail, upon Chloe's bosom. 'Can't you do
something for me?' she whimpered.

'It is impossible to move Mr. Beamish,' Chloe said.

Out of a pause, composed of sobs and sighs, the duchess let loose in a
broken voice: 'Then I 'm sure I think--I think I'd rather have met--have
met his skeleton!'

Her sincerity was equal to wit.

Beau Beamish shouted. He cordially applauded her, and in the genuine
kindness of an admiration that surprised him, he permitted himself the
liberty of taking and saluting her fingers. She fancied there was another
chance for her, but he frowned at the mention of it.

Upon these proceedings the exhilarating sound of the band was heard;
simultaneously a festival peal of bells burst forth; and an admonishment
of the necessity for concealing her chagrin and exhibiting both station
and a countenance to the people, combined with the excitement of the new
scenes and the marching music to banish the acuter sense of
disappointment from Duchess Susan's mind; so she very soon held herself
erect, and wore a face open to every wonder, impressionable as the blue
lake-surface, crisped here and there by fitful breezes against a level
sun.




CHAPTER IV

It was an axiom with Mr. Beamish, our first, if not our only
philosophical beau and a gentleman of some thoughtfulness, that the
social English require tyrannical government as much as the political are
able to dispense with it: and this he explained by an exposition of the
character of a race possessed of the eminent virtue of individual
self-assertion, which causes them to insist on good elbowroom wherever
they gather together. Society, however, not being tolerable where the
smoothness of intercourse is disturbed by a perpetual punching of sides,
the merits of the free citizen in them become their demerits when a
fraternal circle is established, and they who have shown an example of
civilization too notable in one sphere to call for eulogy, are often to
be seen elbowing on the ragged edge of barbarism in the other. They must
therefore be reduced to accept laws not of their own making, and of an
extreme rigidity.

Here too is a further peril; for the gallant spirits distinguishing them
in the state of independence may (he foresaw the melancholy experience of
a later age) abandon them utterly in subjection, and the glorious
boisterousness befitting the village green forsake them even in their
haunts of liberal association, should they once be thoroughly tamed by
authority. Our 'merrie England' will then be long-faced England, an
England of fallen chaps, like a boar's head, bearing for speech a lemon
in the mouth: good to feast on, mayhap; not with!

Mr. Beamish would actually seem to have foreseen the danger of a
transition that he could watch over only in his time; and, as he said, 'I
go, as I came, on a flash'; he had neither ancestry nor descendants: he
was a genius, he knew himself a solitary, therefore, in spite of his
efforts to create his like. Within his district he did effect something,
enough to give him fame as one of the princely fathers of our domestic
civilization, though we now appear to have lost by it more than formerly
we gained. The chasing of the natural is ever fraught with dubious
hazards. If it gallops back, according to the proverb, it will do so at
the charge: commonly it gallops off, quite off; and then for any kind of
animation our precarious dependence is upon brains: we have to live on
our wits, which are ordinarily less productive than land, and cannot be
remitted in entail.

Rightly or wrongly (there are differences of opinion about it) Mr.
Beamish repressed the chthonic natural with a rod of iron beneath his
rule. The hoyden and the bumpkin had no peace until they had given public
imitations of the lady and the gentleman; nor were the lady and the
gentleman privileged to be what he called 'free flags.' He could be
charitable to the passion, but he bellowed the very word itself (hauled
up smoking from the brimstone lake) against them that pretended to be
shamelessly guilty of the peccadilloes of gallantry. His famous accost of
a lady threatening to sink, and already performing like a vessel in that
situation: 'So, madam, I hear you are preparing to enrol yourself in the
very ancient order?' . . . (he named it) was a piece of insolence that
involved him in some discord with the lady's husband and 'the rascal
steward,' as he chose to term the third party in these affairs: yet it is
reputed to have saved the lady.

Furthermore, he attacked the vulgarity of persons of quality, and he has
told a fashionable dame who was indulging herself in a marked sneer of
disdain, not improving to her features, 'that he would be pleased to have
her assurance it was her face she presented to mankind': a thing--thanks
perhaps to him chiefly--no longer possible of utterance. One of the sex
asking him why he addressed his persecutions particularly to women:
'Because I fight your battles,' says he, 'and I find you in the ranks of
the enemy.' He treated them as traitors.

He was nevertheless well supported by a sex that compensates for dislike
of its friend before a certain age by a cordial recognition of him when
it has touched the period. A phalanx of great dames gave him the terrors
of Olympus for all except the natively audacious, the truculent and the
insufferably obtuse; and from the midst of them he launched decree and
bolt to good effect: not, of course, without receiving return missiles,
and not without subsequent question whether the work of that man was
beneficial to the country, who indeed tamed the bumpkin squire and his
brood, but at the cost of their animal spirits and their gift of speech;
viz. by making petrifactions of them. In the surgical operation of
tracheotomy, a successful treatment of the patient hangs, we believe, on
the promptness and skill of the introduction of the artificial windpipe;
and it may be that our unhappy countrymen when cut off from the source of
their breath were not neatly handled; or else that there is a physical
opposition in them to anything artificial, and it must be nature or
nothing. The dispute shall be left where it stands.

Now, to venture upon parading a beautiful young Duchess of Dewlap, with
an odour of the shepherdess about her notwithstanding her acquired art of
stepping conformably in a hoop, and to demand full homage of respect for
a lady bearing such a title, who had the intoxicating attractions of the
ruddy orchard apple on the tree next the roadside wall, when the owner is
absent, was bold in Mr. Beamish, passing temerity; nor would even he have
attempted it had he not been assured of the support of his phalanx of
great ladies. They indeed, after being taken into the secret, had
stipulated that first they must have an inspection of the transformed
dairymaid; and the review was not unfavourable. Duchess Susan came out of
it more scatheless than her duke. She was tongue-tied, and her tutored
walking and really admirable stature helped her to appease, the critics
of her sex; by whom her too readily blushful innocence was praised, with
a reserve, expressed in the remark, that she was a monstrous fine toy for
a duke's second childhood, and should never have been let fly from his
nursery. Her milliner was approved. The duke was a notorious connoisseur
of female charms, and would see, of course, to the decorous adornment of
her person by the best of modistes. Her smiling was pretty, her eyes were
soft; she might turn out good, if well guarded for a time; but these
merits of the woman are not those of the great lady, and her title was
too strong a beam on her character to give it a fair chance with her
critics. They one and all recommended powder for her hair and cheeks.
That odour of the shepherdess could be exorcised by no other means, they
declared. Her blushing was indecent.

Truly the critics of the foeman sex behaved in a way to cause the blushes
to swarm rosy as the troops of young Loves round Cytherea in her
sea-birth, when, some soaring, and sinking some, they flutter like her
loosened zone, and breast the air thick as flower petals on the summer's
breath, weaving her net for the world. Duchess Susan might protest her
inability to keep her blushes down; that the wrong was done by the
insolent eyes, and not by her artless cheeks. Ay, but nature, if we are
to tame these men, must be swathed and concealed, partly stifled,
absolutely stifled upon occasion. The natural woman does not move a foot
without striking earth to conjure up the horrid apparition of the natural
man, who is not as she, but a cannibal savage. To be the light which
leads, it is her business to don the misty vesture of an idea, that she
may dwell as an idea in men's minds, very dim, very powerful, but
abstruse, unseizable. Much wisdom was imparted to her on the subject, and
she understood a little, and echoed hollow to the remainder, willing to
show entire docility as far as her intelligence consented to be awake.
She was in that stage of the dainty, faintly tinged innocence of the
amorousness of themselves when beautiful young women who have not been
caught for schooling in infancy deem it a defilement to be made to appear
other than the blessed nature has made them, which has made them
beautiful, and surely therefore deserves to be worshipped. The lectures
of the great ladies and Chloe's counsels failed to persuade her to use
the powder puff-ball. Perhaps too, as timidity quitted her, she enjoyed
her distinctiveness in their midst.

But the distinctiveness of a Duchess of Dewlap with the hair and cheeks
of our native fields, was fraught with troubles outrunning Mr. Beamish's
calculations. He had perceived that she would be attractive; he had not
reckoned on the homogeneousness of her particular English charms. A
beauty in red, white, and blue is our goddess Venus with the apple of
Paris in her hand; and after two visits to the Pump Room, and one
promenade in the walks about the Assembly House, she had as completely
divided the ordinary guests of the Wells into male and female in opinion
as her mother Nature had done in it sex. And the men would not be
silenced; they had gazed on their divinest, and it was for the women to
succumb to that unwholesome state, so full of thunder. Knights and
squires, military and rural, threw up their allegiance right and left to
devote themselves to this robust new vision, and in their peculiar
manner, with a general View-halloo, and Yoicks, Tally-ho, and away we go,
pelt ahead! Unexampled as it is in England for Beauty to kindle the
ardours of the scent of the fox, Duchess Susan did more--she turned all
her followers into hounds; they were madmen: within a very few days of
her entrance bets raged about her, and there were brawls, jolly flings at
her character in the form of lusty encomium, givings of the lie, and upon
one occasion a knock-down blow in public, as though the place had never
known the polishing touch of Mr. Beamish.

He was thrown into great perplexity by that blow. Discountenancing the
duel as much as he could, an affair of the sword was nevertheless more
tolerable than the brutal fist: and of all men to be guilty of it, who
would have anticipated the young Alonzo, Chloe's quiet, modest lover! He
it was. The case came before Mr. Beamish for his decision; he had to
pronounce an impartial judgement, and for some time, during the
examination of evidence, he suffered, as he assures us in his Memoirs, a
royal agony. To have to strike with the glaive of Justice them whom they
most esteem, is the greatest affliction known to kings. He would have
done it: he deserved to reign. Happily the evidence against the gentleman
who was tumbled, Mr. Ralph Shepster, excused Mr. Augustus Camwell,
otherwise Alonzo, for dealing with him promptly to shut his mouth.

This Shepster, a raw young squire, 'reeking,' Beau Beamish writes of him,
'one half of the soil, and t' other half of the town,' had involved Chloe
in his familiar remarks upon the Duchess of Dewlap; and the personal
respect entertained by Mr. Beamish for Chloe so strongly approved
Alonzo's championship of her, that in giving judgement he laid stress on
young Alonzo's passion for Chloe, to prove at once the disinterestedness
of the assailant, and the judicial nature of the sentence: which was,
that Mr. Ralph Shepster should undergo banishment, and had the right to
demand reparation. The latter part of this decree assisted in effecting
the execution of the former. Shepster declined cold steel, calling it
murder, and was effusive of nature's logic on the subject.

'Because a man comes and knocks me down, I'm to go up to him and ask him
to run me through!'

His shake of the head signified that he was not such a noodle. Voluble
and prolific of illustration, as is no one so much as a son of nature
inspired to speak her words of wisdom, he defied the mandate, and refused
himself satisfaction, until in the strangest manner possible flights of
white feathers beset him, and he became a mark for persecution too trying
for the friendship of his friends. He fled, repeating his tale, that he
had seen 'Beamish's Duchess,' and Chloe attending her, at an assignation
in the South Grove, where a gentleman, unknown to the Wells, presented
himself to the adventurous ladies, and they walked together--a tale
ending with nods.

Shepster's banishment was one of those victories of justice upon which
mankind might be congratulated if they left no commotion behind. But, as
when a boy has been horsed before his comrades, dread may visit them, yet
is there likewise devilry in the school; and everywhere over earth a
summary punishment that does not sweep the place clear is likely to
infect whom it leaves remaining. The great law-givers, Lycurgus, Draco,
Solon, Beamish, sorrowfully acknowledge that they have had recourse to
infernal agents, after they have thus purified their circle of an
offender. Doctors confess to the same of their physic. The expelling
agency has next to be expelled, and it is a subtle poison, affecting our
spirits. Duchess Susan had now the incense of a victim to heighten her
charms; like the treasure-laden Spanish galleon for whom, on her voyage
home from South American waters, our enterprising light-craft privateers
lay in wait, she had the double attraction of being desirable and an
enemy. To watch above her conscientiously was a harassing business.

Mr. Beamish sent for Chloe, and she came to him at once. Her look was
curious; he studied it while they conversed. So looks one who is watching
the sure flight of an arrow, or the happy combinations of an intrigue.
Saying, 'I am no inquisitor, child,' he ventured upon two or three modest
inquisitions with regard to her mistress. The title he had disguised
Duchess Susan in, he confessed to rueing as the principal cause of the
agitation of his principality. 'She is courted,' he said, 'less like a
citadel waving a flag than a hostelry where the demand is for sitting
room and a tankard! These be our manners. Yet, I must own, a Duchess of
Dewlap is a provocation, and my exclusive desire to protect the name of
my lord stands corrected by the perils environing his lady. She is other
than I supposed her; she is, we will hope, an excellent good creature,
but too attractive for most and drawbridge and the customary defences to
be neglected.

Chloe met his interrogatory with a ready report of the young duchess's
innocence and good nature that pacified Mr. Beamish.

'And you?' said he.

She smiled for answer.

That smile was not the common smile; it was one of an eager exultingness,
producing as he gazed the twitch of an inquisitive reflection of it on
his lips. Such a smile bids us guess and quickens us to guess, warns us
we burn and speeds our burning, and so, like an angel wafting us to some
heaven-feasting promontory, lifts us out of ourselves to see in the
universe of colour what the mouth has but pallid speech to tell. That is
the very heart's language; the years are in a look, as mount and vale of
the dark land spring up in lightning.

He checked himself: he scarce dared to say it.

She nodded.

'You have seen the man, Chloe?'

Her smiling broke up in the hard lines of an ecstasy neighbouring pain.
'He has come; he is here; he is faithful; he has not forgotten me. I was
right. I knew! I knew!'

'Caseldy has come?'

'He has come. Do not ask. To have him! to see him! Mr. Beamish, he is
here.'

'At last!'

'Cruel!'

'Well, Caseldy has come, then! But now, friend Chloe, you should be made
aware that the man--'

She stopped her ears. As she did so, Mr. Beamish observed a thick silken
skein dangling from one hand. Part of it was plaited, and at the upper
end there was a knot. It resembled the commencement of her manufactory of
a whip: she swayed it to and fro, allowing him to catch and lift the
threads on his fingers for the purpose of examining her work. There was
no special compliment to pay, so he dropped it without remark.

Their faces had expressed her wish to hear nothing from him of Caseldy
and his submission to say nothing. Her happiness was too big; she
appeared to beg to lie down with it on her bosom, in the manner of an
outworn, young mother who has now first received her infant in her arms
from the nurse.




CHAPTER V

Humouring Chloe with his usual considerateness, Mr. Beamish forbore to
cast a shadow on her new-born joy, and even within himself to doubt the
security of its foundation. Caseldy's return to the Wells was at least
some assurance of his constancy, seeing that here they appointed to meet
when he and Chloe last parted. All might be well, though it was
unexplained why he had not presented himself earlier. To the lightest
inquiry Chloe's reply was a shiver of happiness.

Moreover, Mr. Beamish calculated that Caseldy would be a serviceable ally
in commanding a proper respect for her Grace the Duchess of Dewlap. So he
betook himself cheerfully to Caseldy's lodgings to deliver a message of
welcome, meeting, on his way thither, Mr. Augustus Camwell, with whom he
had a short conversation, greatly to his admiration of the enamoured
young gentleman's goodness and self-compression in speaking of Caseldy
and Chloe's better fortune. Mr. Camwell seemed hurried.

Caseldy was not at home, and Mr. Beamish proceeded to the lodgings of the
duchess. Chloe had found her absent. The two consulted. Mr. Beamish put
on a serious air, until Chloe mentioned the pastrycook's shop, for
Duchess Susan had a sweet tooth; she loved a visit to the pastrycook's,
whose jam tarts were dearer to her than his more famous hot mutton pies.
The pastry cook informed Mr. Beamish that her Grace had been in his shop,
earlier than usual, as it happened, and accompanied by a foreign-looking
gentleman wearing moustachois. Her Grace, the pastrycook said, had
partaken of several tarts, in common with the gentleman, who complimented
him upon his excelling the Continental confectioner. Mr. Beamish glanced
at Chloe. He pursued his researches down at the Pump Room, while she
looked round the ladies' coffee house. Encountering again, they walked
back to the duchess's lodgings, where a band stood playing in the road,
by order of her Grace; but the duchess was away, and had not been seen
since her morning's departure.

'What sort of character would you give mistress Susan of Dewlap, from
your personal acquaintance with it?' said Mr. Beamish to Chloe, as they
stepped from the door.

Chloe mused and said, 'I would add "good" to the unkindest comparison you
could find for her.'

'But accepting the comparison!' Mr. Beamish nodded, and revolved upon the
circumstance of their being very much in nature's hands with Duchess
Susan, of whom it might be said that her character was good, yet all the
more alive to the temptations besetting the Spring season. He allied
Chloe's adjective to a number of epithets equally applicable to nature
and to women, according to current ideas, concluding: 'Count, they call
your Caseldy at his lodgings. "The Count he is out for an airing." He is
counted out. Ah! you will make him drop that "Count" when he takes you
from here.'

'Do not speak of the time beyond the month,' said Chloe, so urgently on a
rapid breath as to cause Mr. Beamish to cast an inquiring look at her.

She answered it, 'Is not one month of brightness as much as we can ask
for?'

The beau clapped his elbows complacently to his sides in philosophical
concord with her sentiment.

In the afternoon, on the parade, they were joined by Mr. Camwell, among
groups of fashionable ladies and their escorts, pacing serenely, by
medical prescription, for an appetite. As he did not comment on the
absence of the duchess, Mr. Beamish alluded to it; whereupon he was
informed that she was about the meadows, and had been there for some
hours.

'Not unguarded,' he replied to Mr. Beamish.

'Aha!' quoth the latter; 'we have an Argus!' and as the duchess was not
on the heights, and the sun's rays were mild in cloud, he agreed to his
young friend's proposal that they should advance to meet her. Chloe
walked with them, but her face was disdainful; at the stiles she gave her
hand to Mr. Beamish; she did not address a word to Mr. Camwell, and he
knew the reason. Nevertheless he maintained his air of soldierly
resignation to the performance of duty, and held his head like a
gentleman unable to conceive the ignominy of having played spy. Chloe
shrank from him.

Duchess Susan was distinguished coming across a broad uncut meadow,
tirra-lirraing beneath a lark, Caseldy in attendance on her. She stopped
short and spoke to him; then came forward, crying ingenuously. 'Oh, Mr.
Beamish, isn't this just what you wanted me to do?'

'No, madam,' said he, 'you had my injunctions to the contrary.'

'La!' she exclaimed, 'I thought I was to run about in the fields now and
then to preserve my simplicity. I know I was told so, and who told me!'

Mr. Beamish bowed effusively to the introduction of Caseldy, whose
fingers he touched in sign of the renewal of acquaintance, and with a
laugh addressed the duchess:

'Madam, you remind me of a tale of my infancy. I had a juvenile comrade
of the tenderest age, by name Tommy Plumston, and he enjoyed the
privilege of intimacy with a component urchin yclept Jimmy Clungeon, with
which adventurous roamer, in defiance of his mother's interdict against
his leaving the house for a minute during her absence from home, he
departed on a tour of the district, resulting, perhaps as a consequence
of its completeness, in this, that at a distance computed at four miles
from the maternal mansion, he perceived his beloved mama with sufficient
clearness to feel sure that she likewise had seen him. Tommy consulted
with Jimmy, and then he sprang forward on a run to his frowning mama, and
delivered himself in these artless words, which I repeat as they were
uttered, to give you the flavour of the innocent babe: he said, "I frink
I frought I hear you call me, ma! and Jimmy Clungeon, he frought he frink
so too!" So, you see, the pair of them were under the impression that
they were doing right. There is a delicate distinction in the tenses of
each frinking where the other frought, enough in itself to stamp
sincerity upon the statement.'

Caseldy said, 'The veracity of a boy possessing a friend named Clungeon
is beyond contest.'

Duchess Susan opened her eyes. 'Four miles from home! And what did his
mother do to him?'

'Tommy's mama,' said Mr. Beamish, and with the resplendent licence of the
period which continued still upon tolerable terms with nature under the
compromise of decorous 'Oh-fie!' flatly declared the thing she did.

'I fancy, sir, that I caught sight of your figure on the hill yonder
about an hour or so earlier,' said Caseldy to Mr. Camwell.

'If it was at the time when you were issuing from that wood, sir, your
surmise is correct,' said the young gentleman.

'You are long-sighted, sir!'

'I am, sir.'

'And so am I.'

'And I,' said Chloe.

'Our Chloe will distinguish you accurately at a mile, and has done it,'
observed Mr. Beamish.

'One guesses tiptoe on a suspicion, and if one is wrong it passes, and if
one is right it is a miracle,' she said, and raised her voice on a song
to quit the subject.

'Ay, ay, Chloe; so then you had a suspicion, you rogue, the day we had
the pleasure of meeting the duchess, had you?' Mr. Beamish persisted.

Duchess Susan interposed. 'Such a pretty song! and you to stop her, sir!'

Caseldy took up the air.

'Oh, you two together!' she cried. 'I do love hearing music in the
fields; it is heavenly. Bands in the town and voices in the green fields,
I say! Couldn't you join Chloe, Mr .... Count, sir, before we come among
the people, here where it 's all so nice and still. Music! and my heart
does begin so to pit-a-pat. Do you sing, Mr. Alonzo?'

'Poorly,' the young gentleman replied.

'But the Count can sing, and Chloe's a real angel when she sings; and
won't you, dear?' she implored Chloe, to whom Caseldy addressed a prelude
with a bow and a flourish of the hand.

Chloe's voice flew forth. Caseldy's rich masculine matched it. The song
was gay; he snapped his finger at intervals in foreign style, singing
big-chested, with full notes and a fine abandonment, and the quickest
susceptibility to his fair companion's cunning modulations, and an eye
for Duchess Susan's rapture.

Mr. Beamish and Mr. Camwell applauded them.

'I never can tell what to say when I'm brimming'; the duchess let fall a
sigh. 'And he can play the flute, Mr. Beamish. He promised me he would go
into the orchestra and play a bit at one of your nice evening delicious
concerts, and that will be nice--Oh!'

'He promised you, madam, did he so?' said the beau. 'Was it on your way
to the Wells that he promised you?'

'On my way to the Wells!' she exclaimed softly. 'Why, how could anybody
promise me a thing before ever he saw me? I call that a strange thing to
ask a person. No, to-day, while we were promenading; and I should hear
him sing, he said. He does admire his Chloe so. Why, no wonder, is it,
now? She can do everything; knit, sew, sing, dance--and talk! She's never
uneasy for a word. She makes whole scenes of things go round you, like a
picture peep-show, I tell her. And always cheerful. She hasn't a minute
of grumps; and I'm sometimes a dish of stale milk fit only for pigs.

With your late hours here, I'm sure I want tickling in the morning, and
Chloe carols me one of her songs, and I say, "There's my bird!"'

Mr. Beamish added, 'And you will remember she has a heart.'

'I should think so!' said the duchess.

'A heart, madam!'

'Why, what else?'

Nothing other, the beau, by his aspect, was constrained to admit.

He appeared puzzled by this daughter of nature in a coronet; and more on
her remarking, 'You know about her heart, Mr. Beamish.'

He acquiesced, for of course he knew of her life-long devotion to
Caseldy; but there was archness in her tone. However, he did not expect a
woman of her education to have the tone perfectly concordant with the
circumstances. Speaking tentatively of Caseldy's handsome face and
figure, he was pleased to hear the duchess say, 'So I tell Chloe.'

'Well,' said he, 'we must consider them united; they are one.'

Duchess Susan replied, 'That's what I tell him; she will do anything you
wish.'

He repeated these words with an interjection, and decided in his mind
that they were merely silly. She was a real shepherdess by birth and
nature, requiring a strong guard over her attractions on account of her
simplicity; such was his reading of the problem; he had conceived it at
the first sight of her, and always recurred to it under the influence of
her artless eyes, though his theories upon men and women were astute, and
that cavalier perceived by long-sighted Chloe at Duchess Susan's coach
window perturbed him at whiles. Habitually to be anticipating the
simpleton in a particular person is the sure way of being sometimes the
dupe, as he would not have been the last to warn a neophyte; but abstract
wisdom is in need of an unappeased suspicion of much keenness of edge, if
we would have it alive to cope with artless eyes and our prepossessed
fancy of their artlessness.

'You talk of Chloe to him?' he said.

She answered. 'Yes, that I do. And he does love her! I like to hear him.
He is one of the gentlemen who don't make me feel timid with them.'

She received a short lecture on the virtues of timidity in preserving the
sex from danger; after which, considering that the lady who does not feel
timid with a particular cavalier has had no sentiment awakened, he
relinquished his place to Mr. Camwell, and proceeded to administer the
probe to Caseldy.

That gentleman was communicatively candid. Chloe had left him, and he
related how, summoned home to England and compelled to settle a dispute
threatening a lawsuit, he had regretfully to abstain from visiting the
Wells for a season, not because of any fear of the attractions of
play--he had subdued the frailty of the desire to play--but because he
deemed it due to his Chloe to bring her an untroubled face, and he wished
first to be the better of the serious annoyances besetting him. For some
similar reason he had not written; he wished to feast on her surprise.
'And I had my reward,' he said, as if he had been the person principally
to suffer through that abstinence. 'I found--I may say it to you, Mr.
Beamish love in her eyes. Divine by nature, she is one of the immortals,
both in appearance and in steadfastness.'

They referred to Duchess Susan. Caseldy reluctantly owned that it would
be an unkindness to remove Chloe from attendance on her during the short
remaining term of her stay at the Wells; and so he had not proposed it,
he said, for the duchess was a child, an innocent, not stupid by any
means; but, of course, her transplanting from an inferior to an exalted
position put her under disadvantages.

Mr. Beamish spoke of the difficulties of his post as guardian, and also
of the strange cavalier seen at her carriage window by Chloe.

Caseldy smiled and said, 'If there was one--and Chloe is rather
long--sighted--we can hardly expect her to confess it.'

'Why not, sir, if she be this piece of innocence?' Mr. Beamish was led to
inquire.

'She fears you, sir,' Caseldy answered. 'You have inspired her with an
extraordinary fear of you.'

'I have?' said the beau: it had been his endeavour to inspire it, and he
swelled somewhat, rather with relief at the thought of his possessing a
power to control his delicate charge, than with our vanity; yet would it
be audacious to say that there was not a dose of the latter. He was a
very human man; and he had, as we have seen, his ideas of the effect of
the impression of fear upon the hearts of women. Something, in any case,
caused him to forget the cavalier.

They were drawn to the three preceding them, by a lively dissension
between Chloe and Mr. Camwell.

Duchess Susan explained it in her blunt style: 'She wants him to go away
home, and he says he will, if she'll give him that double skein of silk
she swings about, and she says she won't, let him ask as long as he
pleases; so he says he sha'n't go, and I'm sure I don't see why he
should; and she says he may stay, but he sha'n't have her necklace, she
calls it. So Mr. Camwell snatches, and Chloe fires up. Gracious, can't
she frown!--at him. She never frowns at anybody but him.'

Caseldy attempted persuasion on Mr. Camwell's behalf. With his mouth at
Chloe's ear, he said, 'Give it; let the poor fellow have his memento;
despatch him with it.'

'I can hear! and that is really kind,' exclaimed Duchess Susan.

'Rather a missy-missy schoolgirl sort of necklace,' Mr. Beamish observed;
'but he might have it, without the dismissal, for I cannot consent to
lose Alonzo. No, madam,' he nodded at the duchess.

Caseldy continued his whisper: 'You can't think of wearing a thing like
that about your neck?'

'Indeed,' said Chloe, 'I think of it.'

'Why, what fashion have you over here?'

'It is not yet a fashion,' she said.

'A silken circlet will not well become any precious pendant that I know
of.'

'A bag of dust is not a very precious pendant,' she said.

'Oh, a memento mori!' cried he.

And she answered, 'Yes.'

He rallied her for her superstition, pursuing, 'Surely, my love, 'tis a
cheap riddance of a pestilent, intrusive jaloux. Whip it into his hands
for a mittimus.'

'Does his presence distress you?' she asked.

'I will own that to be always having the fellow dogging us, with his
dejected leer, is not agreeable. He watches us now, because my lips are
close by your cheek. He should be absent; he is one too many. Speed him
on his voyage with the souvenir he asks for.'

'I keep it for a journey of my own, which I may have to take,' said
Chloe.

'With me?'

'You will follow; you cannot help following me, Caseldy.'

He speculated on her front. She was tenderly smiling. 'You are happy,
Chloe?'

'I have never known such happiness,' she said. The brilliancy of her eyes
confirmed it.

He glanced over at Duchess Susan, who was like a sunflower in the sun.
His glance lingered a moment. Her abundant and glowing young charms were
the richest fascination an eye like his could dwell on. 'That is right,'
said he. 'We will be perfectly happy till the month ends. And after it?
But get us rid of Monsieur le Jeune; toss him that trifle; I spare him
that. 'Twill be bliss to him, at the cost of a bit of silk thread to us.
Besides, if we keep him to cure him of his passion here, might it not
be--these boys veer suddenly, like the winds of Albion, from one fair
object to t' other--at the cost of the precious and simple lady you are
guarding? I merely hint. These two affect one another, as though it could
be. She speaks of him. It shall be as you please, but a trifle like that,
my Chloe, to be rid of a green eye!'

'You much wish him gone?' she said.

He shrugged. 'The fellow is in our way.'

'You think him a little perilous for my innocent lady?'

'Candidly, I do.'

She stretched the half-plaited silken rope in her two hands to try the
strength of it, made a second knot, and consigned it to her pocket.

At once she wore her liveliest playfellow air, in which character no one
was so enchanting as Chloe could be, for she became the comrade of men
without forfeit of her station among sage sweet ladies, and was like a
well-mannered sparkling boy, to whom his admiring seniors have given the
lead in sallies, whims, and fights; but pleasanter than a boy, the soft
hues of her sex toned her frolic spirit; she seemed her sex's deputy, to
tell the coarser where they could meet, as on a bridge above the torrent
separating them, gaily for interchange of the best of either, unfired and
untempted by fire, yet with all the elements which make fire burn to
animate their hearts.

'Lucky the man who wins for himself that life-long cordial!' Mr. Beamish
said to Duchess Susan.

She had small comprehension of metaphorical phrases, but she was quick at
reading faces; and comparing the enthusiasm on the face of the beau with
Caseldy's look of troubled wonderment and regret, she pitied the lover
conscious of not having the larger share of his mistress's affections.
When presently he looked at her, the tender-hearted woman could have
cried for very compassion, so sensible did he show himself of Chloe's
preference of the other.




CHAPTER VI

That evening Duchess Susan played at the Pharaoh table and lost eight
hundred pounds, through desperation at the loss of twenty. After
encouraging her to proceed to this extremity, Caseldy checked her. He was
conducting her out of the Play room when a couple of young squires of the
Shepster order, and primed with wine, intercepted her to present their
condolences, which they performed with exaggerated gestures, intended for
broad mimicry of the courtliness imported from the Continent, and a very
dulcet harping on the popular variations of her Christian name, not
forgetting her singular title, 'my lovely, lovely Dewlap!'

She was excited and stunned by her immediate experience in the transfer
of money, and she said, 'I 'm sure I don't know what you want.'

'Yes!' cried they, striking their bosoms as guitars, and attempting the
posture of the thrummer on the instrument; 'she knows. She does know.
Handsome Susie knows what we want.' And one ejaculated, mellifluously,
'Oh!' and the other 'Ah!' in flagrant derision of the foreign ways they
produced in boorish burlesque--a self-consolatory and a common trick of
the boor.

Caseldy was behind. He pushed forward and bowed to them. 'Sirs, will you
mention to me what you want?'

He said it with a look that meant steel. It cooled them sufficiently to
let him place the duchess under the protectorship of Mr. Beamish, then
entering from another room with Chloe; whereupon the pair of rustic bucks
retired to reinvigorate their valiant blood.

Mr. Beamish had seen that there was cause for gratitude to Caseldy, to
whom he said, 'She has lost?' and he seemed satisfied on hearing the
amount of the loss, and commissioned Caseldy to escort the ladies to
their lodgings at once, observing, 'Adieu, Count!'

'You will find my foreign title of use to you here, after a bout or two,'
was the reply.

'No bouts, if possibly to be avoided; though I perceive how the flavour
of your countship may spread a wholesome alarm among our rurals, who will
readily have at you with fists, but relish not the tricky cold weapon.'

Mr. Beamish haughtily bowed the duchess away.

Caseldy seized the opportunity while handing her into her sedan to say,
'We will try the fortune-teller for a lucky day to have our revenge.'

She answered: 'Oh, don't talk to me about playing again ever; I'm nigh on
a clean pocket, and never knew such a sinful place as this. I feel I've
tumbled into a ditch. And there's Mr. Beamish, all top when he bows to
me. You're keeping Chloe waiting, sir.'

'Where was she while we were at the table?'

'Sure she was with Mr. Beamish.'

'Ah!' he groaned.

'The poor soul is in despair over her losses to-night,' he turned from
the boxed-up duchess to remark to Chloe. 'Give her a comfortable cry and
a few moral maxims.'

'I will,' she said. 'You love me, Caseldy?'

'Love you? I? Your own? What assurance would you have?'

'None, dear friend.'

Here was a woman easily deceived.

In the hearts of certain men, owing to an intellectual contempt of easy
dupes, compunction in deceiving is diminished by the lightness of their
task; and that soft confidence which will often, if but passingly, bid
betrayers reconsider the charms of the fair soul they are abandoning,
commends these armoured knights to pursue with redoubled earnest the
fruitful ways of treachery. Their feelings are warm for their prey,
moreover; and choosing to judge their victim by the present warmth of
their feelings, they can at will be hurt, even to being scandalized, by a
coldness that does not waken one suspicion of them. Jealousy would have a
chance of arresting, for it is not impossible to tease them back to
avowed allegiance; but sheer indifference also has a stronger hold on
them than a, dull, blind trustfulness. They hate the burden it imposes;
the blind aspect is only touching enough to remind them of the burden,
and they hate if for that, and for the enormous presumption of the belief
that they are everlastingly bound to such an imbecile. She walks about
with her eyes shut, expecting not to stumble, and when she does, am I to
blame? The injured man asks it in the course of his reasoning.

He recurs to his victim's merits, but only compassionately, and the
compassion is chilled by the thought that she may in the end start across
his path to thwart him. Thereat he is drawn to think of the prize she may
rob him of; and when one woman is an obstacle, the other shines desirable
as life beyond death; he must have her; he sees her in the hue of his
desire for her, and the obstacle in that of his repulsion. Cruelty is no
more than the man's effort to win the wished object.

She should not leave it to his imagination to conceive that in the end
the blind may awaken to thwart him. Better for her to cast him hence, or
let him know that she will do battle to keep him. But the pride of a love
that has hardened in the faithfulness of love cannot always be wise on
trial.

Caseldy walked considerably in the rear of the couple of chairs. He saw
on his way what was coming. His two young squires were posted at Duchess
Susan's door when she arrived, and he received a blow from one of them in
clearing a way for her. She plucked at his hand. 'Have they hurt you?'
she asked.

'Think of me to-night thanking them and heaven for this, my darling,' he
replied, with a pressure that lit the flying moment to kindle the after
hours.

Chloe had taken help of one of her bearers to jump out. She stretched a
finger at the unruly intruders, crying sternly, 'There is blood on
you--come not nigh me!' The loftiest harangue would not have been so
cunning to touch their wits. They stared at one another in the clear
moonlight. Which of them had blood on him? As they had not been for
blood, but for rough fun, and something to boast of next day, they
gesticulated according to the first instructions of the dancing master,
by way of gallantry, and were out of Caseldy's path when he placed
himself at his liege lady's service. 'Take no notice of them, dear,' she
said.

'No, no,' said he; and 'What is it?' and his hoarse accent and shaking
clasp of her arm sickened her to the sensation of approaching death.

Upstairs Duchess Susan made a show of embracing her. Both were trembling.
The duchess ascribed her condition to those dreadful men. 'What makes
them be at me so?' she said.

And Chloe said, 'Because you are beautiful.'

'Am I?'

'You are.'

'I am?'

'Very beautiful; young and beautiful; beautiful in the bud. You will
learn to excuse them, madam.'

'But, Chloe--' The duchess shut her mouth. Out of a languid reverie, she
sighed: 'I suppose I must be! My duke--oh, don't talk of him. Dear man!
he's in bed and fast asleep long before this. I wonder how he came to let
me come here.

I did bother him, I know. Am I very, very beautiful, Chloe, so that men
can't help themselves?'

'Very, madam.'

'There, good-night. I want to be in bed, and I can't kiss you because you
keep calling me madam, and freeze me to icicles; but I do love you,
Chloe.'

'I am sure you do.'

'I'm quite certain I do. I know I never mean harm. But how are we women
expected to behave, then? Oh, I'm unhappy, I am.'

'You must abstain from playing.'

'It's that! I've lost my money--I forgot. And I shall have to confess it
to my duke, though he warned me. Old men hold their fingers up--so! One
finger: and you never forget the sight of it, never. It's a round finger,
like the handle of a jug, and won't point at you when they're lecturing,
and the skin's like an old coat on gaffer's shoulders--or, Chloe! just
like, when you look at the nail, a rumpled counterpane up to the face of
a corpse. I declare, it's just like! I feel as if I didn't a bit mind
talking of corpses tonight. And my money's gone, and I don't much mind.
I'm a wild girl again, handsomer than when that----he is a dear, kind,
good old nobleman, with his funny old finger: "Susan! Susan!" I'm no
worse than others. Everybody plays here; everybody superior. Why, you
have played, Chloe.'

'Never!'

'I've heard you say you played once, and a bigger stake it was, you said,
than anybody ever did play.'

'Not money.'

'What then?'

'My life.'

'Goodness--yes! I understand. I understand everything to-night-men too.
So you did!--They're not so shamefully wicked, Chloe. Because I can't see
the wrong of human nature--if we're discreet, I mean. Now and then a
country dance and a game, and home to bed and dreams. There's no harm in
that, I vow. And that's why you stayed at this place. You like it,
Chloe?'

'I am used to it.'

'But when you're married to Count Caseldy you'll go?'

'Yes, then.'

She uttered it so joylessly that Duchess Susan added, with intense
affectionateness, 'You're not obliged to marry him, dear Chloe.'

'Nor he me, madam.'

The duchess caught at her impulsively to kiss her, and said she would
undress herself, as she wished to be alone.

From that night she was a creature inflamed.




CHAPTER VII

The total disappearance of the pair of heroes who had been the latest in
the conspiracy to vex his delicate charge, gave Mr. Beamish a high
opinion of Caseldy as an assistant in such an office as he held. They had
gone, and nothing more was heard of them. Caseldy confined his
observations on the subject to the remark that he had employed the best
means to be rid of that kind of worthies; and whether their souls had
fled, or only their bodies, was unknown. But the duchess had quiet
promenades with Caseldy to guard her, while Mr. Beamish counted the
remaining days of her visit with the impatience of a man having cause to
cast eye on a clock. For Duchess Susan was not very manageable now; she
had fits of insurgency, and plainly said that her time was short, and she
meant to do as she liked, go where she liked, play when she liked, and be
an independent woman--if she was so soon to be taken away and boxed in a
castle that was only a bigger sedan.

Caseldy protested he was as helpless as the beau. He described the
annoyance of his incessant running about at her heels in all directions
amusingly, and suggested that she must be beating the district to recover
her 'strange cavalier,' of whom, or of one that had ridden beside her
carriage half a day on her journey to the Wells, he said she had dropped
a sort of hint. He complained of the impossibility of his getting an hour
in privacy with his Chloe.

'And I, accustomed to consult with her, see too little of her,' said Mr.
Beamish. 'I shall presently be seeing nothing, and already I am sensible
of my loss.'

He represented his case to Duchess Susan:--that she was for ever driving
out long distances and taking Chloe from him, when his occupation
precluded his accompanying them; and as Chloe soon was to be lost to him
for good, he deeply felt her absence.

The duchess flung him enigmatical rejoinders: 'You can change all that,
Mr. Beamish, if you like, and you know you can. Oh, yes, you can. But you
like being a butterfly, and when you've made ladies pale you're happy:
and there they're to stick and wither for you. Never!--I've that pride. I
may be worried, but I'll never sink to green and melancholy for a man.'

She bridled at herself in a mirror, wherein not a sign of paleness was
reflected.

Mr. Beamish meditated, and he thought it prudent to speak to Caseldy
manfully of her childish suspicions, lest she should perchance in like
manner perturb the lover's mind.

'Oh, make your mind easy, my dear sir, as far as I am concerned,' said
Caseldy. 'But, to tell you the truth, I think I can interpret her creamy
ladyship's innuendos a little differently and quite as clearly. For my
part, I prefer the pale to the blowsy, and I stake my right hand on
Chloe's fidelity. Whatever harm I may have the senseless
cruelty--misfortune, I may rather call it--to do that heavenly-minded
woman in our days to come, none shall say of me that I was ever for an
instant guilty of the baseness of doubting her purity and constancy. And,
sir, I will add that I could perfectly rely also on your honour.'

Mr. Beamish bowed. 'You do but do me justice. But, say, what
interpretation?'

'She began by fearing you,' said Caseldy, creating a stare that was
followed by a frown. 'She fancies you neglect her. Perhaps she has a
woman's suspicion that you do it to try her.'

Mr. Beamish frenetically cited his many occupations. 'How can I be ever
dancing attendance on her?' Then he said, 'Pooh,' and tenderly fingered
the ruffles of his wrist. 'Tush, tush,' said he, 'no, no: though if it
came to a struggle between us, I might in the interests of my old friend,
her lord, whom I have reasons for esteeming, interpose an influence that
would make the exercise of my authority agreeable. Hitherto I have seen
no actual need of it, and I watch keenly. Her eye has been on Colonel
Poltermore once or twice his on her. The woman is a rose in June, sir,
and I forgive the whole world for looking--and for longing too. But I
have observed nothing serious.'

'He is of our party to the beacon-head to-morrow,' said Caseldy. 'She
insisted that she would have him; and at least it will grant me furlough
for an hour.'

'Do me the service to report to me,' said Mr. Beamish.

In this fashion he engaged Caseldy to supply him with inventions, and
prepared himself to swallow them. It was Poltermore and Poltermore, the
Colonel here, the Colonel there until the chase grew so hot that Mr.
Beamish could no longer listen to young Mr. Camwell's fatiguing drone
upon his one theme of the double-dealing of Chloe's betrothed. He became
of her way of thinking, and treated the young gentleman almost as coldly
as she. In time he was ready to guess of his own acuteness that the
'strange cavalier' could have been no other than Colonel Poltermore. When
Caseldy hinted it, Mr. Beamish said, 'I have marked him.' He added, in
highly self-satisfied style, 'With all your foreign training, my friend,
you will learn that we English are not so far behind you in the art of
unravelling an intrigue in the dark.' To which Caseldy replied, that the
Continental world had little to teach Mr. Beamish.

Poor Colonel Poltermore, as he came to be called, was clearly a victim of
the sudden affability of Duchess Susan. The transformation of a stiff
military officer into a nimble Puck, a runner of errands and a sprightly
attendant, could not pass without notice. The first effect of her
discriminating condescension on this unfortunate gentleman was to make
him the champion of her claims to breeding. She had it by nature, she was
Nature's great lady, he would protest to the noble dames of the circle he
moved in; and they admitted that she was different in every way from a
bourgeoise elevated by marriage to lofty rank: she was not vulgar. But
they remained doubtful of the perfect simplicity of a young woman who
worked such changes in men as to render one of the famous conquerors of
the day her agitated humble servant. By rapid degrees the Colonel had
fallen to that. When not by her side, he was ever marching with sharp
strides, hurrying through rooms and down alleys and groves until he had
discovered and attached himself to her skirts. And, curiously, the object
of his jealousy was the devoted Alonzo! Mr. Beamish laughed when he heard
of it. The lady's excitement and giddy mien, however, accused Poltermore
of a stage of success requiring to be combated immediately. There was
mention of Duchess Susan's mighty wish to pay a visit to the popular
fortune-teller of the hut on the heath, and Mr. Beamish put his veto on
the expedition. She had obeyed him by abstaining from play of late, so he
fully expected, that his interdict would be obeyed; and besides the
fortune-teller was a rogue of a sham astrologer known to have foretold to
certain tender ladies things they were only too desirous to imagine
predestined by an extraordinary indication of the course of planets
through the zodiac, thus causing them to sin by the example of celestial
conjunctions--a piece of wanton impiety. The beau took high ground in his
objections to the adventure. Nevertheless, Duchess Susan did go. She
drove to the heath at an early hour of the morning, attended by Chloe,
Colonel Poltermore, and Caseldy. They subsequently breakfasted at an inn
where gipsy repasts were occasionally served to the fashion, and they
were back at the wells as soon as the world was abroad. Their surprise
then was prodigious when Mr. Beamish, accosting them full in assembly,
inquired whether they were satisfied with the report of their fortunes,
and yet more when he positively proved himself acquainted with the
fortunes which had been recounted to each of them in privacy.

'You, Colonel Poltermore, are to be in luck's way up to the tenth
milestone,--where your chariot will overset and you will be lamed for
life.'

'Not quite so bad,' said the Colonel cheerfully, he having been informed
of much better.

'And you, Count Caseldy, are to have it all your own way with good luck,
after committing a deed of slaughter, with the solitary penalty of
undergoing a visit every night from the corpse.'

'Ghost,' Caseldy smilingly corrected him.

'And Chloe would not have her fortune told, because she knew it!' Mr.
Beamish cast a paternal glance at her. 'And you, madam,' he bent his
brows on the duchess, 'received the communication that "All for Love"
will sink you as it raised you, put you down as it took you up, furnish
the feast to the raven gentleman which belongs of right to the golden
eagle?'

'Nothing of the sort! And I don't believe in any of their stories,' cried
the duchess, with a burning face.

'You deny it, madam?'

'I do. There was never a word of a raven or an eagle, that I'll swear,
now.'

'You deny that there was ever a word of "All for Love"? Speak, madam.'

'Their conjuror's rigmarole!' she murmured, huffing. 'As if I listened to
their nonsense!'

'Does the Duchess of Dewlap dare to give me the lie?' said Mr. Beamish.

'That's not my title, and you know it,' she retorted.

'What's this?' the angry beau sang out. 'What stuff is this you wear?' He
towered and laid hand on a border of lace of her morning dress, tore it
furiously and swung a length of it round him: and while the duchess
panted and trembled at an outrage that won for her the sympathy of every
lady present as well as the championship of the gentlemen, he tossed the
lace to the floor and trampled on it, making his big voice intelligible
over the uproar: 'Hear what she does! 'Tis a felony! She wears the stuff
with Betty Worcester's yellow starch on it for mock antique! And let who
else wears it strip it off before the town shall say we are
disgraced--when I tell you that Betty Worcester was hanged at Tyburn
yesterday morning for murder!'

There were shrieks.

Hardly had he finished speaking before the assembly began to melt; he
stood in the centre like a pole unwinding streamers, amid a confusion of
hurrying dresses, the sound and whirl and drift whereof was as that of
the autumnal strewn leaves on a wind rising in November. The troops of
ladies were off to bereave themselves of their fashionable imitation old
lace adornment, which denounced them in some sort abettors and associates
of the sanguinary loathed wretch, Mrs. Elizabeth Worcester, their
benefactress of the previous day, now hanged and dangling on the
gallows-tree.

Those ladies who wore not imitation lace or any lace in the morning, were
scarcely displeased with the beau for his exposure of them that did. The
gentlemen were confounded by his exhibition of audacious power. The two
gentlemen nighest upon violently resenting his brutality to Duchess
Susan, led her from the room in company with Chloe.

'The woman shall fear me to good purpose,' Mr. Beamish said to himself.




CHAPTER VIII

Mr. Camwell was in the ante-room as Chloe passed out behind the two
incensed supporters of Duchess Susan.

'I shall be by the fir-trees on the Mount at eight this evening,' she
said.

'I will be there,' he replied.

'Drive Mr. Beamish into the country, that these gentlemen may have time
to cool.'

He promised her it should be done.

Close on the hour of her appointment, he stood under the fir-trees,
admiring the sunset along the western line of hills, and when Chloe
joined him he spoke of the beauty of the scene.

'Though nothing seems more eloquently to say farewell,' he added, with a
sinking voice.

'We could say it now, and be friends,' she answered.

'Later than now, you think it unlikely that you could forgive me, Chloe.'

'In truth, sir, you are making it hard for me.'

'I have stayed here to keep watch; for no pleasure of my own,' said he.

'Mr. Beamish is an excellent protector of the duchess.'

'Excellent; and he is cleverly taught to suppose she fears him greatly;
and when she offends him, he makes a display of his Jupiter's awfulness,
with the effect on woman of natural spirit which you have seen, and
others had foreseen, that she is exasperated and grows reckless. Tie
another knot in your string, Chloe.'

She looked away, saying, 'Were you not the cause? You were in collusion
with that charlatan of the heath, who told them their fortunes this
morning. I see far, both in the dark and in the light.'

'But not through a curtain. I was present.'

'Hateful, hateful business of the spy! You have worked a great mischief
Mr. Camwell. And how can you reconcile it to, your conscience that you
should play so base a part?'

'I have but performed my duty, dear madam.'

'You pretend that it is your devotion to me! I might be flattered if I
saw not so abject a figure in my service. Now have I but four days of my
month of happiness remaining, and my request to you is, leave me to enjoy
them. I beseech you to go. Very humbly, most earnestly, I beg your
departure. Grant it to me, and do not stay to poison my last days here.
Leave us to-morrow. I will admit your good intentions. I give you my hand
in gratitude. Adieu, Mr. Camwell.'

He took her hand. 'Adieu. I foresee an early separation, and this dear
hand is mine while I have it in mine. Adieu. It is a word to be repeated
at a parting like ours. We do not blow out our light with one breath: we
let it fade gradually, like yonder sunset.'

'Speak so,' said she.

'Ah, Chloe, to give one's life! And it is your happiness I have sought
more than your favor.'

'I believe it; but I have not liked the means. You leave us to-morrow?'

'It seems to me that to-morrow is the term.'

Her face clouded. 'That tells me a very uncertain promise.'

'You looked forth to a month of happiness--meaning a month of delusion.
The delusion expires to-night. You will awaken to see your end of it in
the morning. You have never looked beyond the month since the day of his
arrival.'

'Let him not be named, I supplicate you.'

'Then you consent that another shall be sacrificed for you to enjoy your
state of deception an hour longer?'

'I am not deceived, sir. I wish for peace, and crave it, and that is all
I would have.'

'And you make her your peace-offering, whom you have engaged to serve!
Too surely your eyes have been open as well as mine. Knot by knot--I have
watched you--where is it?--you have marked the points in that silken
string where the confirmation of a just suspicion was too strong for
you.'

'I did it, and still I continued merry?' She subsided from her
scornfulness on an involuntary 'Ah!' that was a shudder.

'You acted Light Heart, madam, and too well to hoodwink me. Meanwhile you
allowed that mischief to proceed, rather than have your crazy lullaby
disturbed.'

'Indeed, Mr. Camwell, you presume.'

'The time, and my knowledge of what it is fraught with, demand it and
excuse it. You and I, my dear and one only love on earth, stand outside
of ordinary rules. We are between life and death.'

'We are so always.'

'Listen further to the preacher: We have them close on us, with the
question, Which it shall be to-morrow. You are for sleeping on, but I say
no; nor shall that iniquity of double treachery be committed because of
your desire to be rocked in a cradle. Hear me out. The drug you have
swallowed to cheat yourself will not bear the shock awaiting you tomorrow
with the first light. Hear these birds! When next they sing, you will be
broad awake, and of me, and the worship and service I would have
dedicated to you, I do not . . . it is a spectral sunset of a day that
was never to be!--awake, and looking on what? Back from a monstrous
villainy to the forlorn wretch who winked at it with knots in a string.
Count them then, and where will be your answer to heaven? I begged it of
you, to save you from those blows of remorse; yes, terrible!'

'Oh, no!'

'Terrible, I say!'

'You are mistaken, Mr. Camwell. It is my soother. I tell my beads on it.'

'See how a persistent residence in this place has made a Pagan of the
purest soul among us! Had you . . . but that day was not to lighten me!
More adorable in your errors that you are than others by their virtues,
you have sinned through excess of the qualities men prize. Oh, you have a
boundless generosity, unhappily enwound with a pride as great. There is
your fault, that is the cause of your misery. Too generous! too proud!
You have trusted, and you will not cease to trust; you have vowed
yourself to love, never to remonstrate, never to seem to doubt; it is too
much your religion, rare verily. But bethink you of that inexperienced
and most silly good creature who is on the rapids to her destruction. Is
she not--you will cry it aloud to-morrow--your victim? You hear it within
you now.'

'Friend, my dear, true friend,' Chloe said in her deeper voice of melody,
'set your mind at ease about to-morrow and her. Her safety is assured. I
stake my life on it. She shall not be a victim. At the worst she will but
have learnt a lesson. So, then, adieu! The West hangs like a garland of
unwatered flowers, neglected by the mistress they adorned. Remember the
scene, and that here we parted, and that Chloe wished you the happiness
it was out of her power to bestow, because she was of another world, with
her history written out to the last red streak before ever you knew her.
Adieu; this time adieu for good!

Mr. Camwell stood in her path. 'Blind eyes, if you like,' he said, 'but
you shall not hear blind language. I forfeit the poor consideration for
me that I have treasured; hate me; better hated by you than shun my duty!
Your duchess is away at the first dawn this next morning; it has come to
that. I speak with full knowledge. Question her.'

Chloe threw a faltering scorn of him into her voice, as much as her
heart's sharp throbs would allow. 'I question you, sir, how you came to
this full knowledge you boast of?'

'I have it; let that suffice. Nay, I will be particular; his coach is
ordered for the time I name to you; her maid is already at a station on
the road of the flight.'

'You have their servants in your pay?'

'For the mine--the countermine. We must grub dirt to match deceivers.
You, madam, have chosen to be delicate to excess, and have thrown it upon
me to be gross, and if you please, abominable, in my means of defending
you. It is not too late for you to save the lady, nor too late to bring
him to the sense of honour.'

'I cannot think Colonel Poltermore so dishonourable.'

'Poor Colonel Poltermore! The office he is made to fill is an old one.
Are you not ashamed, Chloe?'

'I have listened too long,' she replied.

'Then, if it is your pleasure, depart.'

He made way for her. She passed him. Taking two hurried steps in the
gloom of the twilight, she stopped, held at her heart, and painfully
turning to him, threw her arms out, and let herself be seized and kissed.

On his asking pardon of her, which his long habit of respect forced him
to do in the thick of rapture and repetitions, she said, 'You rob no
one.'

'Oh,' he cried, 'there is a reward, then, for faithful love. But am I the
man I was a minute back? I have you; I embrace you; and I doubt that I am
I. Or is it Chloe's ghost?'

'She has died and visits you.'

'And will again?'

Chloe could not speak for languor.

The intensity of the happiness she gave by resting mutely where she was,
charmed her senses. But so long had the frost been on them that their
awakening to warmth was haunted by speculations on the sweet taste of
this reward of faithfulness to him, and the strange taste of her own
unfaithfulness to her. And reflecting on the cold act of speculation
while strong arm and glowing mouth were pressing her, she thought her
senses might really be dead, and she a ghost visiting the good youth for
his comfort. So feel ghosts, she thought, and what we call happiness in
love is a match between ecstasy and compliance. Another thought flew
through her like a mortal shot: 'Not so with those two! with them it will
be ecstasy meeting ecstasy; they will take and give happiness in equal
portions.' A pang of jealousy traversed her frame. She made the
shrewdness of it help to nerve her fervour in a last strain of him to her
bosom, and gently releasing herself, she said, 'No one is robbed. And
now, dear friend, promise me that you will not disturb Mr. Beamish.'

'Chloe,' said he, 'have you bribed me?'

'I do not wish him to be troubled.'

'The duchess, I have told you--'

'I know. But you have Chloe's word that she will watch over the duchess
and die to save her. It is an oath. You have heard of some arrangements.
I say they shall lead to nothing: it shall not take place. Indeed, my
friend, I am awake; I see as much as you see. And those . . . after being
where I have been, can you suppose I have a regret? But she is my dear
and peculiar charge, and if she runs a risk, trust to me that there shall
be no catastrophe; I swear it; so, now, adieu. We sup in company
to-night. They will be expecting some of Chloe's verses, and she must
sing to herself for a few minutes to stir the bed her songs take wing
from; therefore, we will part, and for her sake avoid her; do not be
present at our table, or in the room, or anywhere there. Yes, you rob no
one,' she said, in a voice that curled through him deliciously by
wavering; but I think I may blush at recollections, and I would rather
have you absent. Adieu! I will not ask for obedience from you beyond
to-night. Your word?'

He gave it in a stupor of felicity, and she fled.




CHAPTER IX

Chloe drew the silken string from her bosom, as she descended the dim
pathway through the furies, and set her fingers travelling along it for
the number of the knots. 'I have no right to be living,' she said. Seven
was the number; seven years she had awaited her lover's return; she
counted her age and completed it in sevens. Fatalism had sustained her
during her lover's absence; it had fast hold of her now. Thereby had she
been enabled to say, 'He will come'; and saying, 'He has come,' her touch
rested on the first knot in the string. She had no power to displace her
fingers, and the cause of the tying of the knot stood across her brain
marked in dull red characters, legible neither to her eye nor to her
understanding, but a reviving of the hour that brought it on her spirit
with human distinctness, except of the light of day: she had a sense of
having forfeited light, and seeing perhaps more clearly. Everything
assured her that she saw more clearly than others; she saw too when it
was good to cease to live.

Hers was the unhappy lot of one gifted with poet-imagination to throb
with the woman supplanting her and share the fascination of the man who
deceived. At their first meeting, in her presence, she had seen that they
were not strangers; she pitied them for speaking falsely, and when she
vowed to thwart this course of evil it to save a younger creature of her
sex, not in rivalry. She treated them both with a proud generosity
surpassing gentleness. All that there was of selfishness in her bosom
resolved to the enjoyment of her one month of strongly willed delusion.

The kiss she had sunk to robbed no one, not even her body's purity, for
when this knot was tied she consigned herself to her end, and had become
a bag of dust. The other knots in the string pointed to verifications;
this first one was a suspicion, and it was the more precious, she felt it
to be more a certainty; it had come from the dark world beyond us, where
all is known. Her belief that it had come thence was nourished by
testimony, the space of blackness wherein she had lived since, exhausting
her last vitality in a simulation of infantile happiness, which was
nothing other than the carrying on of her emotion of the moment of sharp
sour sweet--such as it may be, the doomed below attain for their
knowledge of joy--when, at the first meeting with her lover, the
perception of his treachery to the soul confiding in him, told her she
had lived, and opened out the cherishable kingdom of insensibility to her
for her heritage.

She made her tragic humility speak thankfully to the wound that slew her.
'Had it not been so, I should not have seen him,' she said:--Her lover
would not have come to her but for his pursuit of another woman.

She pardoned him for being attracted by that beautiful transplant of the
fields: pardoned her likewise. 'He when I saw him first was as beautiful
to me. For him I might have done as much.'

Far away in a lighted hall of the West, her family raised hands of
reproach. They were minute objects, keenly discerned as diminished
figures cut in steel. Feeling could not be very warm for them, they were
so small, and a sea that had drowned her ran between; and looking that
way she had scarce any warmth of feeling save for a white rhaiadr leaping
out of broken cloud through branched rocks, where she had climbed and
dreamed when a child. The dream was then of the coloured days to come;
now she was more infant in her mind, and she watched the scattered water
broaden, and tasted the spray, sat there drinking the scene, untroubled
by hopes as a lamb, different only from an infant in knowing that she had
thrown off life to travel back to her home and be refreshed. She heard
her people talk; they were unending babblers in the waterfall. Truth was
with them, and wisdom. How, then, could she pretend to any right to live?
Already she had no name; she was less living than a tombstone. For who
was Chloe? Her family might pass the grave of Chloe without weeping,
without moralizing. They had foreseen her ruin, they had foretold it,
they noised it in the waters, and on they sped to the plains, telling the
world of their prophecy, and making what was untold as yet a lighter
thing to do.

The lamps in an irregularly dotted line underneath the hill beckoned her
to her task of appearing as the gayest of them that draw their breath for
the day and have pulses for the morrow.




CHAPTER X

At midnight the great supper party to celebrate the reconciliation of Mr.
Beamish and Duchess Susan broke up, and beneath a soft fair sky the
ladies, with their silvery chatter of gratitude for amusement, caught
Chloe in their arms to kiss her, rendering it natural for their cavaliers
to exclaim that Chloe was blest above mortals. The duchess preferred to
walk. Her spirits were excited, and her language smelt of her origin, but
the superb fleshly beauty of the woman was aglow, and crying, 'I declare
I should burst in one of those boxes--just as if you'd stalled me!' she
fanned a wind on her face, and sumptuously spread her spherical skirts,
attended by the vanquished and captive Colonel Poltermore, a gentleman
manifestly bent on insinuating sly slips of speech to serve for here a
pinch of powder, there a match. 'Am I?' she was heard to say. She blew
prodigious deep-chested sighs of a coquette that has taken to roaring.

Presently her voice tossed out: 'As if I would!' These vivid
illuminations of the Colonel's proceedings were a pasture to the rearward
groups, composed of two very grand ladies, Caseldy, Mr. Beamish, a lord,
and Chloe.

'You man! Oh!' sprang from the duchess. 'What do I hear? I won't listen;
I can't, I mustn't, I oughtn't.'

So she said, but her head careened, she gave him her coy reluctant ear,
with total abandonment to the seductions of his whispers, and the lord
let fly a peal of laughter. It had been a supper of copious wine, and the
songs which rise from wine. Nature was excused by our midnight
naturalists.

The two great dames, admonished by the violence of the nobleman's
laughter, laid claim on Mr. Beamish to accompany them at their parting
with Chloe and Duchess Susan.

In the momentary shuffling of couples incident to adieux among a company,
the duchess murmured to Caseldy:

'Have I done it well.'

He praised her for perfection in her acting. 'I am at your door at three,
remember.'

'My heart's in my mouth,' said she.

Colonel Poltermore still had the privilege of conducting her the few
farther steps to her lodgings.

Caseldy walked beside Chloe, and silently, until he said, 'If I have not
yet mentioned the subject--'

'If it is an allusion to money let me not hear it to-night,' she replied.

'I can only say that my lawyers have instructions. But my lawyers cannot
pay you in gratitude. Do not think me in your hardest review of my
misconduct ungrateful. I have ever esteemed you above all women; I do,
and I shall; you are too much above me. I am afraid I am a composition of
bad stuff; I did not win a very particularly good name on the Continent;
I begin to know myself, and in comparison with you, dear Catherine----'

'You speak to Chloe,' she said. 'Catherine is a buried person. She died
without pain. She is by this time dust.'

The man heaved his breast. 'Women have not an idea of our temptations.'

'You are excused by me for all your errors, Caseldy. Always remember
that.'

He sighed profoundly. 'Ay, you have a Christian's heart.'

She answered, 'I have come to the conclusion that it is a Pagan's.'

'As for me,' he rejoined, 'I am a fatalist. Through life I have seen my
destiny. What is to be, will be; we can do nothing.'

'I have heard of one who expired of a surfeit that he anticipated, nay
proclaimed, when indulging in the last desired morsel,' said Chloe.

'He was driven to it.'

'From within.'

Caseldy acquiesced; his wits were clouded, and an illustration even
coarser and more grotesque would have won a serious nod and a sigh from
him. 'Yes, we are moved by other hands!'

'It is pleasant to think so: and think it of me tomorrow. Will you!' said
Chloe.

He promised it heartily, to induce her to think the same of him.

Their separation was in no way remarkable. The pretty formalities were
executed at the door, and the pair of gentlemen departed.

'It's quite dark still,' Duchess Susan said, looking up at the sky, and
she ran upstairs, and sank, complaining of the weakness of her legs, in a
chair of the ante-chamber of her bedroom, where Chloe slept. Then she
asked the time of the night. She could not suppress her hushed 'Oh!' of
heavy throbbing from minute to minute. Suddenly she started off at a
quick stride to her own room, saying that it must be sleepiness which
affected her so.

Her bedroom had a door to the sitting-room, and thence, as also from
Chloe's room, the landing on the stairs was reached, for the room ran
parallel with both bed-chambers. She walked in it and threw the window
open, but closed it immediately; opened and shut the door, and returned
and called for Chloe. She wanted to be read to. Chloe named certain
composing books. The duchess chose a book of sermons. 'But we're all such
dreadful sinners, it's better not to bother ourselves late at night.' She
dismissed that suggestion. Chloe proposed books of poetry. 'Only I don't
understand them except about larks, and buttercups, and hayfields, and
that's no comfort to a woman burning,' was the answer.

'Are you feverish, madam?' said Chloe. And the duchess was sharp on her:
'Yes, madam, I am.'

She reproved herself in a change of tone: 'No, Chloe, not feverish, only
this air of yours here is such an exciting air, as the doctor says; and
they made me drink wine, and I played before supper--Oh! my money; I used
to say I could get more, but now!' she sighed--'but there's better in the
world than money. You know that, don't you, you dear? Tell me. And I want
you to be happy; that you'll find. I do wish we could all be!' She wept,
and spoke of requiring a little music to compose her.

Chloe stretched a hand for her guitar. Duchess Susan listened to some
notes, and cried that it went to her heart and hurt her. 'Everything we
like a lot has a fence and a board against trespassers, because of such a
lot of people in the world,' she moaned. 'Don't play, put down that
thing, please, dear. You're the cleverest creature anybody has ever met;
they all say so. I wish I----Lovely women catch men, and clever women
keep them: I've heard that said in this wretched place, and it 's a nice
prospect for me, next door to a fool! I know I am.'

'The duke adores you, madam.'

'Poor duke! Do let him be--sleeping so woebegone with his mouth so, and
that chin of a baby, like as if he dreamed of a penny whistle. He
shouldn't have let me come here. Talk of Mr. Beamish. How he will miss
you, Chloe!'

'He will,' Chloe said sadly.

'If you go, dear.'

'I am going.'

'Why should you leave him, Chloe?'

'I must.'

'And there, the thought of it makes you miserable!'

'It does.'

'You needn't, I'm sure.'

Chloe looked at her.

The duchess turned her head. 'Why can't you be gay, as you were at the
supper-table, Chloe? You're out to him like a flower when the sun jumps
over the hill; you're up like a lark in the dews; as I used to be when I
thought of nothing. Oh, the early morning; and I'm sleepy. What a beast I
feel, with my grandeur, and the time in an hour or two for the birds to
sing, and me ready to drop. I must go and undress.'

She rushed on Chloe, kissed her hastily, declaring that she was quite
dead of fatigue, and dismissed her. 'I don't want help, I can undress
myself. As if Susan Barley couldn't do that for herself! and you may shut
your door, I sha'n't have any frights to-night, I'm so tired out.'

'Another kiss,' Chloe said tenderly.

'Yes, take it'--the duchess leaned her cheek--'but I'm so tired I don't
know what I'm doing.'

'It will not be on your conscience,' Chloe answered, kissing her warmly.

Will those words she withdrew, and the duchess closed the door. She ran a
bolt in it immediately.

'I'm too tired to know anything I'm doing,' she said to herself, and
stood with shut eyes to hug certain thoughts which set her bosom heaving.

There was the bed, there was the clock. She had the option of lying down
and floating quietly into the day, all peril past. It seemed sweet for a
minute. But it soon seemed an old, a worn, an end-of-autumn life, chill,
without aim, like a something that was hungry and toothless. The bed
proposing innocent sleep repelled her and drove her to the clock. The
clock was awful: the hand at the hour, the finger following the minute,
commanded her to stir actively, and drove her to gentle meditations on
the bed. She lay down dressed, after setting her light beside the clock,
that she might see it at will, and considering it necessary for the bed
to appear to have been lain on. Considering also that she ought to be
heard moving about in the process of undressing, she rose from the bed to
make sure of her reading of the guilty clock. An hour and twenty minutes!
she had no more time than that: and it was not enough for her various
preparations, though it was true that her maid had packed and taken a box
of the things chiefly needful; but the duchess had to change her shoes
and her dress, and run at bo-peep with the changes of her mind, a
sedative preface to any fatal step among women of her complexion, for so
they invite indecision to exhaust their scruples, and they let the blood
have its way. Having so short a space of time, she thought the matter
decided, and with some relief she flung despairing on the bed, and lay
down for good with her duke. In a little while her head was at work
reviewing him sternly, estimating him not less accurately than the male
moralist charitable to her sex would do. She quitted the bed, with a
spring to escape her imagined lord; and as if she had felt him to be
there, she lay down no more. A quiet life like that was flatter to her
idea than a handsomely bound big book without any print on the pages, and
without a picture. Her contemplation of it, contrasted with the life
waved to her view by the timepiece, set her whole system rageing; she
burned to fly. Providently, nevertheless, she thumped a pillow, and threw
the bedclothes into proper disorder, to inform the world that her limbs
had warmed them, and that all had been impulse with her. She then
proceeded to disrobe, murmuring to herself that she could stop now, and
could stop now, at each stage of the advance to a fresh dressing of her
person, and moralizing on her singular fate, in the mouth of an observer.
'She was shot up suddenly over everybody's head, and suddenly down she
went.' Susan whispered to herself: 'But it was for love!' Possessed by
the rosiness of love, she finished her business, with an attention to
everything needed that was equal to perfect serenity of mind. After which
there was nothing to do, save to sit humped in a chair, cover her face
and count the clock-tickings, that said, Yes--no; do--don't; fly--stay;
fly--fly! It seemed to her she heard a moving. Well she might with that
dreadful heart of hers!

Chloe was asleep, at peace by this time, she thought; and how she envied
Chloe! She might be as happy, if she pleased. Why not? But what kind of
happiness was it? She likened it to that of the corpse underground, and
shrank distastefully.

Susan stood at her glass to have a look at the creature about whom there
was all this disturbance, and she threw up her arms high for a languid,
not unlovely yawn, that closed in blissful shuddering with the sensation
of her lover's arms having wormed round her waist and taken her while she
was defenceless. For surely they would. She took a jewelled ring, his
gift, from her purse, and kissed it, and drew it on and off her finger,
leaving it on. Now she might wear it without fear of inquiries and
virtuous eyebrows. O heavenly now--if only it were an hour hence; and
going behind galloping horses!

The clock was at the terrible moment. She hesitated internally and
hastened; once her feet stuck fast, and firmly she said, 'No'; but the
clock was her lord. The clock was her lover and her lord; and obeying it,
she managed to get into the sitting-room, on the pretext that she merely
wished to see through the front window whether daylight was coming.

How well she knew that half-light of the ebb of the wave of darkness.

Strange enough it was to see it showing houses regaining their solidity
of the foregone day, instead of still fields, black hedges, familiar
shapes of trees. The houses had no wakefulness, they were but seen to
stand, and the light was a revelation of emptiness. Susan's heart was
cunning to reproach her duke for the difference of the scene she beheld
from that of the innocent open-breasted land. Yes, it was dawn in a
wicked place that she never should have been allowed to visit. But where
was he whom she looked for? There! The cloaked figure of a man was at the
corner of the street. It was he. Her heart froze; but her limbs were
strung to throw off the house, and reach air, breathe, and (as her
thoughts ran) swoon, well-protected. To her senses the house was a house
on fire, and crying to her to escape.

Yet she stepped deliberately, to be sure-footed in a dusky room; she
touched along the wall and came to the door, where a foot-stool nearly
tripped her. Here her touch was at fault, for though she knew she must be
close by the door, she was met by an obstruction unlike wood, and the
door seemed neither shut nor open. She could not find the handle;
something hung over it. Thinking coolly, she fancied the thing must be a
gown or dressing-gown; it hung heavily. Her fingers were sensible of the
touch of silk; she distinguished a depending bulk, and she felt at it
very carefully and mechanically, saying within herself, in her anxiety to
pass it without noise, 'If I should awake poor Chloe, of all people!' Her
alarm was that the door might creak. Before any other alarm had struck
her brain, the hand she felt with was in a palsy, her mouth gaped, her
throat thickened, the dust-ball rose in her throat, and the effort to
swallow it down and get breath kept her from acute speculation while she
felt again, pinched, plucked at the thing, ready to laugh, ready to
shriek. Above her head, all on one side, the thing had a round white top.
Could it be a hand that her touch had slid across? An arm too! this was
an arm! She clutched it, imagining that it clung to her. She pulled it to
release herself from it, desperately she pulled, and a lump descended,
and a flash of all the torn nerves of her body told her that a dead human
body was upon her.

At a quarter to four o'clock of a midsummer morning, as Mr. Beamish
relates of his last share in the Tale of Chloe, a woman's voice, in
piercing notes of anguish, rang out three shrieks consecutively, which
were heard by him at the instant of his quitting his front doorstep, in
obedience to the summons of young Mr. Camwell, delivered ten minutes
previously, with great urgency, by that gentleman's lacquey. On his
reaching the street of the house inhabited by Duchess Susan, he perceived
many night-capped heads at windows, and one window of the house in
question lifted but vacant. His first impression accused the pair of
gentlemen, whom he saw bearing drawn swords in no friendly attitude of an
ugly brawl that had probably affrighted her Grace, or her personal
attendant, a woman capable of screaming, for he was well assured that it
could not have been Chloe, the least likely of her sex to abandon herself
to the use of their weapons either in terror or in jeopardy. The
antagonists were Mr. Camwell and Count Caseldy. On his approaching them,
Mr. Camwell sheathed his sword, saying that his work was done. Caseldy
was convulsed with wrath, to such a degree as to make the part of an
intermediary perilous. There had been passes between them, and Caseldy
cried aloud that he would have his enemy's blood. The night-watch was
nowhere. Soon, however, certain shopmen and their apprentices assisted
Mr. Beamish to preserve the peace, despite the fury of Caseldy and the
provocations--'not easy to withstand,' says the chronicler--offered by
him to young Camwell. The latter said to Mr. Beamish: 'I knew I should be
no match, so I sent for you,' causing his friend astonishment, inasmuch
as he was assured of the youth's natural valour.

Mr. Beamish was about to deliver an allocution of reproof to them in
equal shares, being entirely unsuspicious of any other reason for the
alarum than this palpable outbreak of a rivalry that he would have
inclined to attribute to the charms of Chloe, when the house-door swung
wide for them to enter, and the landlady of the house, holding clasped
hands at full stretch, implored them to run up to the poor lady: 'Oh,
she's dead; she's dead, dead!'

Caseldy rushed past her.

'How, dead! good woman?' Mr. Beamish questioned her most incredulously,
half-smiling.

She answered among her moans: 'Dead by the neck; off the door--Oh!'

Young Camwell pressed his forehead, with a call on his Maker's name. As
they reached the landing upstairs, Caseldy came out of the sitting-room.

'Which?' said Camwell to the speaking of his face.

'She!' said the other.

'The duchess?' Mr. Beamish exclaimed.

But Camwell walked into the room. He had nothing to ask after that reply.

The figure stretched along the floor was covered with a sheet. The young
man fell at his length beside it, and his face was downward.

Mr. Beamish relates: 'To this day, when I write at an interval of fifteen
years, I have the tragic ague of that hour in my blood, and I behold the
shrouded form of the most admirable of women, whose heart was broken by a
faithless man ere she devoted her wreck of life to arrest one weaker than
herself on the descent to perdition. Therein it was beneficently granted
her to be of the service she prayed to be through her death. She died to
save. In a last letter, found upon her pincushion, addressed to me under
seal of secrecy toward the parties principally concerned, she anticipates
the whole confession of the unhappy duchess. Nay, she prophesies: "The
duchess will tell you truly she has had enough of love!" Those actual
words were reiterated to me by the poor lady daily until her lord arrived
to head the funeral procession, and assist in nursing back the shattered
health of his wife to a state that should fit her for travelling. To me,
at least, she was constant in repeating, "No more of love!" By her
behaviour to her duke, I can judge her to have been sincere. She spoke of
feeling Chloe's eyes go through her with every word of hers that she
recollected. Nor was the end of Chloe less effective upon the traitor. He
was in the procession to her grave. He spoke to none. There is a line of
the verse bearing the superscription, "My Reasons for Dying," that shows
her to have been apprehensive to secure the safety of Mr. Camwell:

          I die because my heart is dead
          To warn a soul from sin I die:
          I die that blood may not be shed, etc.

She feared he would be somewhere on the road to mar the fugitives, and
she knew him, as indeed he knew himself, no match for one trained in the
foreign tricks of steel, ready though he was to dispute the traitor's
way. She remembers Mr. Camwell's petition for the knotted silken string
in her request that it shall be cut from her throat and given to him.'

Mr. Beamish indulges in verses above the grave of Chloe. They are of a
character to cool emotion. But when we find a man, who is commonly of the
quickest susceptibility to ridicule as well as to what is befitting,
careless of exposure, we may reflect on the truthfulness of feeling by
which he is drawn to pass his own guard and come forth in his nakedness;
something of the poet's tongue may breathe to us through his mortal
stammering, even if we have to acknowledge that a quotation would scatter
pathos.

     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

     All flattery is at somebody's expense
     Be philosophical, but accept your personal dues
     But I leave it to you
     Distrust us, and it is a declaration of war
     Happiness in love is a match between ecstasy and compliance
     If I do not speak of payment
     Intellectual contempt of easy dupes
     Invite indecision to exhaust their scruples
     Is not one month of brightness as much as we can ask for?
     No flattery for me at the expense of my sisters
     Nothing desirable will you have which is not coveted
     Primitive appetite for noise
     She might turn out good, if well guarded for a time
     The alternative is, a garter and the bedpost
     They miss their pleasure in pursuing it
     This mania of young people for pleasure, eternal pleasure
     Wits, which are ordinarily less productive than land




THE HOUSE ON THE BEACH

By George Meredith
A REALISTIC TALE




CHAPTER I

The experience of great officials who have laid down their dignities
before death, or have had the philosophic mind to review themselves while
still wielding the deputy sceptre, teaches them that in the exercise of
authority over men an eccentric behaviour in trifles has most exposed
them to hostile criticism and gone farthest to jeopardize their
popularity. It is their Achilles' heel; the place where their mother
Nature holds them as she dips them in our waters. The eccentricity of
common persons is the entertainment of the multitude, and the maternal
hand is perceived for a cherishing and endearing sign upon them; but
rarely can this be found suitable for the august in station; only,
indeed, when their sceptre is no more fearful than a grandmother's birch;
and these must learn from it sooner or later that they are uncomfortably
mortal.

When herrings are at auction on a beach, for example, the man of chief
distinction in the town should not step in among a poor fraternity to
take advantage of an occasion of cheapness, though it be done, as he may
protest, to relieve the fishermen of a burden; nor should such a
dignitary as the bailiff of a Cinque Port carry home the spoil of
victorious bargaining on his arm in a basket. It is not that his conduct
is in itself objectionable, so much as that it causes him to be popularly
weighed; and during life, until the best of all advocates can plead
before our fellow Englishmen that we are out of their way, it is prudent
to avoid the process.

Mr. Tinman, however, this high-stepping person in question, happened to
have come of a marketing mother. She had started him from a small shop to
a big one. He, by the practice of her virtues, had been enabled to start
himself as a gentleman. He was a man of this ambition, and prouder behind
it. But having started himself precipitately, he took rank among
independent incomes, as they are called, only to take fright at the
perils of starvation besetting one who has been tempted to abandon the
source of fifty per cent. So, if noble imagery were allowable in our time
in prose, might alarms and partial regrets be assumed to animate the
splendid pumpkin cut loose from the suckers. Deprived of that prodigious
nourishment of the shop in the fashionable seaport of Helmstone, he
retired upon his native town, the Cinque Port of Crikswich, where he
rented the cheapest residence he could discover for his habitation, the
House on the Beach, and lived imposingly, though not in total disaccord
with his old mother's principles. His income, as he observed to his
widowed sister and solitary companion almost daily in their privacy, was
respectable. The descent from an altitude of fifty to five per cent.
cannot but be felt. Nevertheless it was a comforting midnight bolster
reflection for a man, turning over to the other side between a dream and
a wink, that he was making no bad debts, and one must pay to be addressed
as esquire. Once an esquire, you are off the ground in England and on the
ladder. An esquire can offer his hand in marriage to a lady in her own
right; plain esquires have married duchesses; they marry baronets'
daughters every day of the week.

Thoughts of this kind were as the rise and fall of waves in the bosom of
the new esquire. How often in his Helmstone shop had he not heard titled
ladies disdaining to talk a whit more prettily than ordinary women; and
he had been a match for the subtlety of their pride--he understood it. He
knew well that at the hint of a proposal from him they would have spoken
out in a manner very different to that of ordinary women. The lightning,
only to be warded by an esquire, was in them. He quitted business at the
age of forty, that he might pretend to espousals with a born lady; or at
least it was one of the ideas in his mind.

And here, I think, is the moment for the epitaph of anticipation over
him, and the exclamation, alas! I would not be premature, but it is
necessary to create some interest in him, and no one but a foreigner
could feel it at present for the Englishman who is bursting merely to do
like the rest of his countrymen, and rise above them to shake them class
by class as the dust from his heels. Alas! then an--undertaker's pathos
is better than none at all--he was not a single-minded aspirant to our
social honours. The old marketing mother; to whom he owed his fortunes,
was in his blood to confound his ambition; and so contradictory was the
man's nature, that in revenge for disappointments, there were times when
he turned against the saving spirit of parsimony. Readers deep in Greek
dramatic writings will see the fatal Sisters behind the chair of a man
who gives frequent and bigger dinners, that he may become important in
his neighbourhood, while decreasing the price he pays for his wine, that
he may miserably indemnify himself for the outlay. A sip of his wine
fetched the breath, as when men are in the presence of the tremendous
elements of nature. It sounded the constitution more darkly-awful, and
with a profounder testimony to stubborn health, than the physician's
instruments. Most of the guests at Mr. Tinman's table were so constructed
that they admired him for its powerful quality the more at his
announcement of the price of it; the combined strength and cheapness
probably flattering them, as by another mystic instance of the national
energy. It must have been so, since his townsmen rejoiced to hail him as
head of their town. Here and there a solitary esquire, fished out of the
bathing season to dine at the house on the beach, was guilty of raising
one of those clamours concerning subsequent headaches, which spread an
evil reputation as a pall. A resident esquire or two, in whom a
reminiscence of Tinman's table may be likened to the hook which some old
trout has borne away from the angler as the most vivid of warnings to him
to beware for the future, caught up the black report and propagated it.

The Lieutenant of the Coastguard, hearing the latest conscious victim, or
hearing of him, would nod his head and say he had never dined at Tinman's
table without a headache ensuing and a visit to the chemist's shop;
which, he was assured, was good for trade, and he acquiesced, as it was
right to do in a man devoted to his country. He dined with Tinman again.
We try our best to be social. For eight months in our year he had little
choice but to dine with Tinman or be a hermit attached to a telescope.

"Where are you going, Lieutenant?" His frank reply to the question was,
"I am going to be killed;" and it grew notorious that this meant Tinman's
table. We get on together as well as we can. Perhaps if we were an
acutely calculating people we should find it preferable both for trade
and our physical prosperity to turn and kill Tinman, in contempt of
consequences. But we are not, and so he does the business gradually for
us. A generous people we must be, for Tinman was not detested. The
recollection of "next morning" caused him to be dimly feared.

Tinman, meanwhile, was awake only to the Circumstance that he made no
progress as an esquire, except on the envelopes of letters, and in his
own esteem. That broad region he began to occupy to the exclusion of
other inhabitants; and the result of such a state of princely isolation
was a plunge of his whole being into deep thoughts. From the hour of his
investiture as the town's chief man, thoughts which were long shots took
possession of him. He had his wits about him; he was alive to ridicule;
he knew he was not popular below, or on easy terms with people above him,
and he meditated a surpassing stroke as one of the Band of Esq., that had
nothing original about it to perplex and annoy the native mind, yet was
dazzling. Few members of the privileged Band dare even imagine the thing.

It will hardly be believed, but it is historical fact, that in the act of
carrying fresh herrings home on his arm, he entertained the idea of a
visit to the First Person and Head of the realm, and was indulging in
pleasing visions of the charms of a personal acquaintance. Nay, he had
already consulted with brother jurats. For you must know that one of the
princesses had recently suffered betrothal in the newspapers, and
supposing her to deign to ratify the engagement, what so reasonable on
the part of a Cinque Port chieftain as to congratulate his liege
mistress, her illustrious mother? These are thoughts and these are deeds
>which give emotional warmth and colour to the ejecter members of a
population wretchedly befogged. They are our sunlight, and our brighter
theme of conversation. They are necessary to the climate and the Saxon
mind; and it would be foolish to put them away, as it is foolish not to
do our utmost to be intimate with terrestrial splendours while we have
them--as it may be said of wardens, mayors, and bailiffs-at command.
Tinman was quite of this opinion. They are there to relieve our dulness.
We have them in the place of heavenly; and he would have argued that we
have a right to bother them too. He had a notion, up in the clouds, of a
Sailors' Convalescent Hospital at Crikswich to seduce a prince with, hand
him the trowel, make him "lay the stone," and then poor prince! refresh
him at table. But that was a matter for by and by.

His purchase of herrings completed, Mr. Tinman walked across the mound of
shingle to the house on the beach. He was rather a fresh-faced man, of
the Saxon colouring, and at a distance looking good-humoured. That he
should have been able to make such an appearance while doing daily battle
with his wine, was a proof of great physical vigour. His pace was
leisurely, as it must needs be over pebbles, where half a step is
subtracted from each whole one in passing; and, besides, he was aware of
a general breath at his departure that betokened a censorious assembly.
Why should he not market for himself? He threw dignity into his
retreating figure in response to the internal interrogation. The moment
>was one when conscious rectitude =pliers man should have a tail for its
just display. Philosophers have drawn attention to the power of the human
face to express pure virtue, but no sooner has it passed on than the
spirit erect within would seem helpless. The breadth of our shoulders is
apparently presented for our critics to write on. Poor duty is done by
the simple sense of moral worth, to supplant that absence of feature in
the plain flat back. We are below the animals in this. How charged with
language behind him is a dog! Everybody has noticed it. Let a dog turn
away from a hostile circle, and his crisp and wary tail not merely
defends him, it menaces; it is a weapon. Man has no choice but to surge
and boil, or stiffen preposterously. Knowing the popular sentiment about
his marketing--for men can see behind their backs, though they may have
nothing to speak with--Tinman resembled those persons of principle who
decline to pay for a "Bless your honour!" from a voluble beggar-woman,
and obtain the reverse of it after they have gone by. He was sufficiently
sensitive to feel that his back was chalked as on a slate. The only
remark following him was, "There he goes!"

He went to the seaward gate of the house on the beach, made practicable
in a low flint wall, where he was met by his sister Martha, to whom he
handed the basket. Apparently he named the cost of his purchase per
dozen. She touched the fish and pressed the bellies of the topmost, it
might be to question them tenderly concerning their roes. Then the couple
passed out of sight. Herrings were soon after this despatching their
odours through the chimneys of all Crikswich, and there was that much of
concord and festive union among the inhabitants.

The house on the beach had been posted where it stood, one supposes, for
the sake of the sea-view, from which it turned right about to face the
town across a patch of grass and salt scurf, looking like a square and
scornful corporal engaged in the perpetual review of an awkward squad of
recruits. Sea delighted it not, nor land either. Marine Parade fronting
it to the left, shaded sickly eyes, under a worn green verandah, from a
sun that rarely appeared, as the traducers of spinsters pretend those
virgins are ever keenly on their guard against him that cometh not. Belle
Vue Terrace stared out of lank glass panes without reserve, unashamed of
its yellow complexion. A gaping public-house, calling itself newly Hotel,
fell backward a step. Villas with the titles of royalty and bloody
battles claimed five feet of garden, and swelled in bowwindows beside
other villas which drew up firmly, commending to the attention a decent
straightness and unintrusive decorum in preference. On an elevated meadow
to the right was the Crouch. The Hall of Elba nestled among
weather-beaten dwarf woods further toward the cliff. Shavenness,
featurelessness, emptiness, clamminess scurfiness, formed the outward
expression of a town to which people were reasonably glad to come from
London in summer-time, for there was nothing in Crikswich to distract the
naked pursuit of health. The sea tossed its renovating brine to the
determinedly sniffing animal, who went to his meals with an appetite that
rendered him cordially eulogistic of the place, in spite of certain frank
whiffs of sewerage coming off an open deposit on the common to mingle
with the brine. Tradition told of a French lady and gentleman entering
the town to take lodgings for a month, and that on the morrow they took a
boat from the shore, saying in their faint English to a sailor veteran of
the coastguard, whom they had consulted about the weather, "It is better
zis zan zat," as they shrugged between rough sea and corpselike land. And
they were not seen again. Their meaning none knew. Having paid their bill
at the lodging-house, their conduct was ascribed to systematic madness.
English people came to Crikswich for the pure salt sea air, and they did
not expect it to be cooked and dressed and decorated for them. If these
things are done to nature, it is nature no longer that you have, but
something Frenchified. Those French are for trimming Neptune's beard!
Only wait, and you are sure to find variety in nature, more than you may
like. You will find it in Neptune. What say you to a breach of the
sea-wall, and an inundation of the aromatic grass-flat extending from the
house on the beach to the tottering terraces, villas, cottages: and
public-house transformed by its ensign to Hotel, along the frontage of
the town? Such an event had occurred of old, and had given the house on
the beach the serious shaking great Neptune in his wrath alone can give.
But many years had intervened. Groynes had been run down to intercept him
and divert him. He generally did his winter mischief on a mill and salt
marshes lower westward. Mr. Tinman had always been extremely zealous in
promoting the expenditure of what moneys the town had to spare upon the
protection of the shore, as it were for the propitiation or defiance of
the sea-god. There was a kindly joke against him an that subject among
brother jurats. He retorted with the joke, that the first thing for
Englishmen to look to were England's defences.

But it will not do to be dwelling too fondly on our eras of peace, for
which we make such splendid sacrifices. Peace, saving for the advent of a
German band, which troubled the repose of the town at intervals, had
imparted to the inhabitants of Crikswich, within and without, the
likeness to its most perfect image, together, it must be confessed, with
a degree of nervousness that invested common events with some of the
terrors of the Last Trump, when one night, just upon the passing of the
vernal equinox, something happened.




CHAPTER II

A carriage Stopped short in the ray of candlelight that was fitfully and
feebly capering on the windy blackness outside the open workshop of
Crickledon, the carpenter, fronting the sea-beach. Mr. Tinnnan's house
was inquired for. Crickledon left off planing; at half-sprawl over the
board, he bawled out, "Turn to the right; right ahead; can't mistake it."
He nodded to one of the cronies intent on watching his labours: "Not
unless they mean to be bait for whiting-pout. Who's that for Tinman, I
wonder?" The speculations of Crickledon's friends were lost in the scream
of the plane.

One cast an eye through the door and observed that the carriage was there
still. "Gentleman's got out and walked," said Crickledon. He was informed
that somebody was visible inside. "Gentleman's wife, mayhap," he said.
His friends indulged in their privilege of thinking what they liked, and
there was the usual silence of tongues in the shop. He furnished them
sound and motion for their amusement, and now and then a scrap of
conversation; and the sedater spirits dwelling in his immediate
neighbourhood were accustomed to step in and see him work up to
supper-time, instead of resorting to the more turbid and costly
excitement of the public-house.

Crickledon looked up from the measurement of a thumb-line. In the doorway
stood a bearded gentleman, who announced himself with the startling
exclamation, "Here's a pretty pickle!" and bustled to make way for a man
well known to them as Ned Crummins, the upholsterer's man, on whose back
hung an article of furniture, the condition of which, with a condensed
brevity of humour worthy of literary admiration, he displayed by mutely
turning himself about as he entered.

"Smashed!" was the general outcry.

"I ran slap into him," said the gentleman. "Who the deuce!--no bones
broken, that's one thing. The fellow--there, look at him: he's like a
glass tortoise."

"It's a chiwal glass," Crickledon remarked, and laid finger on the star
in the centre.

"Gentleman ran slap into me," said Crummins, depositing the frame on the
floor of the shop.

"Never had such a shock in my life," continued the gentleman. "Upon my
soul, I took him for a door: I did indeed. A kind of light flashed from
one of your houses here, and in the pitch dark I thought I was at the
door of old Mart Tinman's house, and dash me if I did n't go in--crash!
But what the deuce do you do, carrying that great big looking-glass at
night, man? And, look here tell me; how was it you happened to be going
glass foremost when you'd got the glass on your back?"

"Well, 't ain't my fault, I knows that," rejoined Crummins. "I came along
as careful as a man could. I was just going to bawl out to Master Tinman,
'I knows the way, never fear me'; for I thinks I hears him call from his
house, 'Do ye see the way?' and into me this gentleman runs all his
might, and smash goes the glass. I was just ten steps from Master
Tinman's gate, and that careful, I reckoned every foot I put down, that I
was; I knows I did, though."

"Why, it was me calling, 'I'm sure I can't see the way.'

"You heard me, you donkey!" retorted the bearded gentleman. "What was the
good of your turning that glass against me in the very nick when I dashed
on you?"

"Well, 't ain't my fault, I swear," said Crummins. "The wind catches
voices so on a pitch dark night, you never can tell whether they be on
one shoulder or the other. And if I'm to go and lose my place through no
fault of mine----"

"Have n't I told you, sir, I'm going to pay the damage? Here," said the
gentleman, fumbling at his waistcoat, "here, take this card. Read it."

For the first time during the scene in the carpenter's shop, a certain
pomposity swelled the gentleman's tone. His delivery of the card appeared
to act on him like the flourish of a trumpet before great men.

"Van Diemen Smith," he proclaimed himself for the assistance of Ned
Crummins in his task; the latter's look of sad concern on receiving the
card seeming to declare an unscholarly conscience.

An anxious feminine voice was heard close beside Mr. Van Diemen Smith.

"Oh, papa, has there been an accident? Are you hurt?"

"Not a bit, Netty; not a bit. Walked into a big looking-glass in the
dark, that's all. A matter of eight or ten pound, and that won't stump
us. But these are what I call queer doings in Old England, when you can't
take a step in the dark, on the seashore without plunging bang into a
glass. And it looks like bad luck to my visit to old Mart Tinman."

"Can you," he addressed the company, "tell me of a clean, wholesome
lodging-house? I was thinking of flinging myself, body and baggage, on
your mayor, or whatever he is--my old schoolmate; but I don't so much
like this beginning. A couple of bed-rooms and sitting-room; clean
sheets, well aired; good food, well cooked; payment per week in advance."

The pebble dropped into deep water speaks of its depth by the tardy
arrival of bubbles on the surface, and, in like manner, the very simple
question put by Mr. Van Diemen Smith pursued its course of penetration in
the assembled mind in the carpenter's shop for a considerable period,
with no sign to show that it had reached the bottom.

"Surely, papa, we can go to an inn? There must be some hotel," said his
daughter.

"There's good accommodation at the Cliff Hotel hard by," said Crickledon.

"But," said one of his friends, "if you don't want to go so far, sir,
there's Master Crickledon's own house next door, and his wife lets
lodgings, and there's not a better cook along this coast."

"Then why did n't the man mention it? Is he afraid of having me?" asked
Mr. Smith, a little thunderingly. "I may n't be known much yet in
England; but I'll tell you, you inquire the route to Mr. Van Diemen Smith
over there in Australia."

"Yes, papa," interrupted his daughter, "only you must consider that it
may not be convenient to take us in at this hour--so late."

"It's not that, miss, begging your pardon," said Crickledon. "I make a
point of never recommending my own house. That's where it is. Otherwise
you're welcome to try us."

"I was thinking of falling bounce on my old schoolmate, and putting Old
English hospitality to the proof," Mr. Smith meditated. "But it's late.
Yes, and that confounded glass! No, we'll bide with you, Mr. Carpenter.
I'll send my card across to Mart Tinman to-morrow, and set him agog at
his breakfast."

Mr. Van Diemen Smith waved his hand for Crickledon to lead the way.

Hereupon Ned Crummins looked up from the card he had been turning over
and over, more and more like one arriving at a condemnatory judgment of a
fish.

"I can't go and give my master a card instead of his glass," he remarked.

"Yes, that reminds me; and I should like to know what you meant by
bringing that glass away from Mr. Tinman's house at night," said Mr.
Smith. "If I'm to pay for it, I've a right to know. What's the meaning of
moving it at night? Eh, let's hear. Night's not the time for moving big
glasses like that. I'm not so sure I haven't got a case."

"If you'll step round to my master along o' me, sir," said Crummins,
"perhaps he'll explain."

Crummins was requested to state who his master was, and he replied,
"Phippun and Company;" but Mr. Smith positively refused to go with him.

"But here," said he, "is a crown for you, for you're a civil fellow.
You'll know where to find me in the morning; and mind, I shall expect
Phippun and Company to give me a very good account of their reason for
moving a big looking-glass on a night like this. There, be off."

The crown-piece in his hand effected a genial change in Crummins'
disposition to communicate. Crickledon spoke to him about the glass; two
or three of the others present jogged him. "What did Mr. Tinman want by
having the glass moved so late in the day, Ned? Your master wasn't
nervous about his property, was he?"

"Not he," said Crummins, and began to suck down his upper lip and agitate
his eyelids and stand uneasily, glimmering signs of the setting in of the
tide of narration.

He caught the eye of Mr. Smith, then looked abashed at Miss.

Crickledon saw his dilemma. "Say what's uppermost, Ned; never mind how
you says it. English is English. Mr. Tinman sent for you to take the
glass away, now, did n't he?"

"He did," said Crummins.

"And you went to him."

"Ay, that I did."

"And he fastened the chiwal glass upon your back"

"He did that."

"That's all plain sailing. Had he bought the glass?"

"No, he had n't bought it. He'd hired it."

As when upon an enforced visit to the dentist, people have had one tooth
out, the remaining offenders are more willingly submitted to the
operation, insomuch that a poetical licence might hazard the statement
that they shed them like leaves of the tree, so Crummins, who had shrunk
from speech, now volunteered whole sentences in succession, and how
important they were deemed by his fellow-townsman, Mr. Smith, and
especially Miss Annette Smith, could perceive in their ejaculations,
before they themselves were drawn into the strong current of interest.

And this was the matter: Tinman had hired the glass for three days.
Latish, on the very first day of the hiring, close upon dark, he had
despatched imperative orders to Phippun and Company to take the glass out
of his house on the spot. And why? Because, as he maintained, there was a
fault in the glass causing an incongruous and absurd reflection; and he
was at that moment awaiting the arrival of another chiwal-glass.

"Cut along, Ned," said Crickledon.

"What the deuce does he want with a chiwal-glass at all?" cried Mr.
Smith, endangering the flow of the story by suggesting to the narrator
that he must "hark back," which to him was equivalent to the jumping of a
chasm hindward. Happily his brain had seized a picture:

"Mr. Tinman, he's a-standin' in his best Court suit."

Mr. Tinmau's old schoolmate gave a jump; and no wonder.

"Standing?" he cried; and as the act of standing was really not
extraordinary, he fixed upon the suit: "Court?"

"So Mrs. Cavely told me, it was what he was standin' in, and as I found
'm I left 'm," said Crummins.

"He's standing in it now?" said Mr. Van Diemen Smith, with a great gape.

Crummins doggedly repeated the statement. Many would have ornamented it
in the repetition, but he was for bare flat truth.

"He must be precious proud of having a Court suit," said Mr. Smith, and
gazed at his daughter so glassily that she smiled, though she was
impatient to proceed to Mrs. Crickledon's lodgings.

"Oh! there's where it is?" interjected the carpenter, with a funny frown
at a low word from Ned Crummins. "Practicing, is he? Mr. Tinman's
practicing before the glass preparatory to his going to the palace in
London."

"He gave me a shillin'," said Crummins.

Crickledon comprehended him immediately. "We sha'n't speak about it,
Ned."

What did you see? was thus cautiously suggested.

The shilling was on Crummins' tongue to check his betrayal of the secret
scene. But remembering that he had only witnessed it by accident, and
that Mr. Tinman had not completely taken him into his confidence, he
thrust his hand down his pocket to finger the crown-piece lying in
fellowship with the coin it multiplied five times, and was inspired to
think himself at liberty to say: "All I saw was when the door opened. Not
the house-door. It was the parlour-door. I saw him walk up to the glass,
and walk back from the glass. And when he'd got up to the glass he bowed,
he did, and he went back'ards just so."

Doubtless the presence of a lady was the active agent that prevented
Crummins from doubling his body entirely, and giving more than a rapid
indication of the posture of Mr. Tinman in his retreat before the glass.
But it was a glimpse of broad burlesque, and though it was received with
becoming sobriety by the men in the carpenter's shop, Annette plucked at
her father's arm.

She could not get him to depart. That picture of his old schoolmate
Martin Tinman practicing before a chiwal glass to present himself at the
palace in his Court suit, seemed to stupefy his Australian intelligence.

"What right has he got to go to Court?" Mr. Van Diemen Smith inquired,
like the foreigner he had become through exile.

"Mr. Tinman's bailiff of the town," said Crickledon.

"And what was his objection to that glass I smashed?"

"He's rather an irritable gentleman," Crickledon murmured, and turned to
Crummins.

Crummins growled: "He said it was misty, and gave him a twist."

"What a big fool he must be! eh?" Mr. Smith glanced at Crickledon and the
other faces for the verdict of Tinman's townsmen upon his character.

They had grounds for thinking differently of Tinman.

"He's no fool," said Crickledon.

Another shook his head. "Sharp at a bargain."

"That he be," said the chorus.

Mr. Smith was informed that Mr. Tinman would probably end by buying up
half the town.

"Then," said Mr. Smith, "he can afford to pay half the money for that
glass, and pay he shall."

A serious view of the recent catastrophe was presented by his
declaration.

In the midst of a colloquy regarding the cost of the glass, during which
it began to be seen by Mr. Tinman's townsmen that there was
laughing-stuff for a year or so in the scene witnessed by Crummins, if
they postponed a bit their right to the laugh and took it in doses,
Annette induced her father to signal to Crickledon his readiness to go
and see the lodgings. No sooner had he done it than he said, "What on
earth made us wait all this time here? I'm hungry, my dear; I want
supper."

"That is because you have had a disappointment. I know you, papa," said
Annette.

"Yes, it's rather a damper about old Mart Tinman," her father assented.
"Or else I have n't recovered the shock of smashing that glass, and visit
it on him. But, upon my honour, he's my only friend in England, I have
n't a single relative that I know of, and to come and find your only
friend making a donkey of himself, is enough to make a man think of
eating and drinking."

Annette murmured reproachfully: "We can hardly say he is our only friend
in England, papa, can we?"

"Do you mean that young fellow? You'll take my appetite away if you talk
of him. He's a stranger. I don't believe he's worth a penny. He owns he's
what he calls a journalist."

These latter remarks were hurriedly exchanged at the threshold of
Crickledon's house.

"It don't look promising," said Mr. Smith.

"I didn't recommend it," said Crickledon.

"Why the deuce do you let your lodgings, then?"

"People who have come once come again."

"Oh! I am in England," Annette sighed joyfully, feeling at home in some
trait she had detected in Crickledon.




CHAPTER III

The story of the shattered chiwal-glass and the visit of Tinman's old
schoolmate fresh from Australia, was at many a breakfast-table before.
Tinman heard a word of it, and when he did he had no time to spare for
such incidents, for he was reading to his widowed sister Martha, in an
impressive tone, at a tolerably high pitch of the voice, and with a
suppressed excitement that shook away all things external from his mind
as violently as it agitated his body. Not the waves without but the
engine within it is which gives the shock and tremor to the crazy
steamer, forcing it to cut through the waves and scatter them to spray;
and so did Martin Tinman make light of the external attack of the card of
VAN DIEMEN SMITH, and its pencilled line: "An old chum of yours, eh,
matey?" Even the communication of Phippun & Co. concerning the
chiwal-glass, failed to divert him from his particular task. It was
indeed a public duty; and the chiwal-glass, though pertaining to it, was
a private business. He that has broken the glass, let that man pay for
it, he pronounced--no doubt in simpler fashion, being at his ease in his
home, but with the serenity of one uplifted. As to the name VAN DIEMEN
SMITH, he knew it not, and so he said to himself while accurately
recollecting the identity of the old chum who alone of men would have
thought of writing eh, matey?

Mr. Van Diemen Smith did not present the card in person. "At
Crickledon's," he wrote, apparently expecting the bailiff of the town to
rush over to him before knowing who he was.

Tinman was far too busy. Anybody can read plain penmanship or print, but
ask anybody not a Cabinet Minister or a Lord-in-Waiting to read out loud
and clear in a Palace, before a Throne. Oh! the nature of reading is
distorted in a trice, and as Tinman said to his worthy sister: "I can do
it, but I must lose no time in preparing myself." Again, at a reperusal,
he informed her: "I must habituate myself." For this purpose he had put
on the suit overnight.

The articulation of faultless English was his object. His sister Martha
sat vice-regally to receive his loyal congratulations on the illustrious
marriage, and she was pensive, less nervous than her brother from not
having to speak continuously, yet somewhat perturbed. She also had her
task, and it was to avoid thinking herself the Person addressed by her
suppliant brother, while at the same time she took possession of the
scholarly training and perfect knowledge of diction and rules of
pronunciation which would infallibly be brought to bear on him in the
terrible hour of the delivery of the Address. It was no small task
moreover to be compelled to listen right through to the end of the
Address, before the very gentlest word of criticism was allowed. She did
not exactly complain of the renewal of the rehearsal: a fatigue can be
endured when it is a joy. What vexed her was her failing memory for the
points of objection, as in her imagined High Seat she conceived them;
for, in painful truth, the instant her brother had finished she entirely
lost her acuteness of ear, and with that her recollection: so there was
nothing to do but to say: "Excellent! Quite unobjectionable, dear Martin,
quite:" so she said, and emphatically; but the addition of the word
"only" was printed on her contracted brow, and every faculty of Tinman's
mind and nature being at strain just then, he asked her testily: "What
now? what's the fault now?" She assured him with languor that there was
not a fault. "It's not your way of talking," said he, and what he said
was true. His discernment was extraordinary; generally he noticed
nothing.

Not only were his perceptions quickened by the preparations for the day
of great splendour: day of a great furnace to be passed through
likewise!--he, was learning English at an astonishing rate into the
bargain. A pronouncing Dictionary lay open on his table. To this he flew
at a hint of a contrary method, and disputes, verifications and triumphs
on one side and the other ensued between brother and sister. In his heart
the agitated man believed his sister to be a misleading guide. He dared
not say it, he thought it, and previous to his African travel through the
Dictionary he had thought his sister infallible on these points. He dared
not say it, because he knew no one else before whom he could practice,
and as it was confidence that he chiefly wanted--above all things,
confidence and confidence comes of practice, he preferred the going on
with his practice to an absolute certainty as to correctness.

At midday came another card from Mr. Van Diemen Smith bearing the
superscription: alias Phil R.

"Can it be possible," Tinman asked his sister, "that Philip Ribstone has
had the audacity to return to this country? I think," he added, "I am
right in treating whoever sends me this card as a counterfeit."

Martha's advice was, that he should take no notice of the card.

"I am seriously engaged," said Tinman. With a "Now then, dear," he
resumed his labours.

Messages had passed between Tinman and Phippun; and in the afternoon
Phippun appeared to broach the question of payment for the chiwal-glass.
He had seen Mr. Van Diemen Smith, had found him very strange, rather
impracticable. He was obliged to tell Tinman that he must hold him
responsible for the glass; nor could he send a second until payment was
made for the first. It really seemed as if Tinman would be compelled, by
the force of circumstances, to go and shake his old friend by the hand.
Otherwise one could clearly see the man might be off: he might be off at
any minute, leaving a legal contention behind him. On the other hand,
supposing he had come to Crikswich for assistance in money? Friendship is
a good thing, and so is hospitality, which is an essentially English
thing, and consequently one that it behoves an Englishman to think it his
duty to perform, but we do not extend it to paupers. But should a pauper
get so close to us as to lay hold of us, vowing he was once our friend,
how shake him loose? Tinman foresaw that it might be a matter of five
pounds thrown to the dogs, perhaps ten, counting the glass. He put on his
hat, full of melancholy presentiments; and it was exactly half-past five
o'clock of the spring afternoon when he knocked at Crickledon's door.

Had he looked into Crickledon's shop as he went by, he would have
perceived Van Diemen Smith astride a piece of timber, smoking a pipe. Van
Diemen saw Tinman. His eyes cocked and watered. It is a disgraceful fact
to record of him without periphrasis. In truth, the bearded fellow was
almost a woman at heart, and had come from the Antipodes throbbing to
slap Martin Tinman on the back, squeeze his hand, run over England with
him, treat him, and talk of old times in the presence of a trotting
regiment of champagne. That affair of the chiwal-glass had temporarily
damped his enthusiasm. The absence of a reply to his double transmission
of cards had wounded him; and something in the look of Tinman disgusted
his rough taste. But the well-known features recalled the days of youth.
Tinman was his one living link to the country he admired as the conqueror
of the world, and imaginatively delighted in as the seat of pleasures,
and he could not discard the feeling of some love for Tinman without
losing his grasp of the reason why, he had longed so fervently and
travelled so breathlessly to return hither. In the days of their youth,
Van Diemen had been Tinman's cordial spirit, at whom he sipped for
cheerful visions of life, and a good honest glow of emotion now and then.
Whether it was odd or not that the sipper should be oblivious, and the
cordial spirit heartily reminiscent of those times, we will not stay to
inquire.

Their meeting took place in Crickledon's shop. Tinman was led in by Mrs.
Crickledon. His voice made a sound of metal in his throat, and his air
was that of a man buttoned up to the palate, as he read from the card,
glancing over his eyelids, "Mr. Van Diemen Smith, I believe."

"Phil Ribstone, if you like," said the other, without rising.

"Oh, ah, indeed!" Tinman temperately coughed.

"Yes, dear me. So it is. It strikes you as odd?"

"The change of name," said Tinman.

"Not nature, though!"

"Ah! Have you been long in England?"

"Time to run to Helmstone, and on here. You've been lucky in business, I
hear."

"Thank you; as things go. Do you think of remaining in England?"

"I've got to settle about a glass I broke last night."

"Ah! I have heard of it. Yes, I fear there will have to be a settlement."

"I shall pay half of the damage. You'll have to stump up your part."

Van Diemen smiled roguishly.

"We must discuss that," said Tinman, smiling too, as a patient in bed may
smile at a doctor's joke; for he was, as Crickledon had said of him, no
fool on practical points, and Van Diemen's mention of the half-payment
reassured him as to his old friend's position in the world, and softly
thawed him. "Will you dine with me to-day?"

"I don't mind if I do. I've a girl. You remember little Netty? She's
walking out on the beach with a young fellow named Fellingham, whose
acquaintance we made on the voyage, and has n't left us long to
ourselves. Will you have her as well? And I suppose you must ask him.
He's a newspaper man; been round the world; seen a lot."

Tinman hesitated. An electrical idea of putting sherry at fifteen
shillings per dozen on his table instead of the ceremonial wine at
twenty-five shillings, assisted him to say hospitably, "Oh! ah! yes; any
friend of yours."

"And now perhaps you'll shake my fist," said Van Diemen.

"With pleasure," said Tinman. "It was your change of name, you know,
Philip."

"Look here, Martin. Van Diemen Smith was a convict, and my benefactor. Why
the deuce he was so fond of that name, I can't tell you; but his dying
wish was for me to take it and carry it on. He left me his fortune, for
Van Diemen Smith to enjoy life, as he never did, poor fellow, when he was
alive. The money was got honestly, by hard labour at a store. He did evil
once, and repented after. But, by Heaven!"--Van Diemen jumped up and
thundered out of a broad chest--"the man was one of the finest hearts
that ever beat. He was! and I'm proud of him. When he died, I turned my
thoughts home to Old England and you, Martin."

"Oh!" said Tinman; and reminded by Van Diemen's way of speaking, that
cordiality was expected of him, he shook his limbs to some briskness, and
continued, "Well, yes, we must all die in our native land if we can. I
hope you're comfortable in your lodgings?"

"I'll give you one of Mrs. Crickledon's dinners to try. You're as good as
mayor of this town, I hear?"

"I am the bailiff of the town," said Mr. Tinman.

"You're going to Court, I'm told."

"The appointment," replied Mr. Tinman, "will soon be made. I have not yet
an appointed day."

On the great highroad of life there is Expectation, and there is
Attainment, and also there is Envy. Mr. Tinman's posture stood for
Attainment shadowing Expectation, and sunning itself in the glass of
Envy, as he spoke of the appointed day. It was involuntary, and naturally
evanescent, a momentary view of the spirit.

He unbent, and begged to be excused for the present, that he might go and
apprise his sister of guests coming.

"All right. I daresay we shall see, enough of one another," said Van
Diemen. And almost before the creak of Tinman's heels was deadened on the
road outside the shop, he put the funny question to Crickledon, "Do you
box?"

"I make 'em," Crickledon replied.

"Because I should like to have a go in at something, my friend."

Van Diemen stretched and yawned.

Crickledon recommended the taking of a walk.

"I think I will," said the other, and turned back abruptly. "How long do
you work in the day?"

"Generally, all the hours of light," Crickledon replied; "and always up
to supper-time."

"You're healthy and happy?"

"Nothing to complain of."

"Good appetite?"

"Pretty regular."

"You never take a holiday?"

"Except Sundays."

"You'd like to be working then?"

"I won't say that."

"But you're glad to be up Monday morning?"

"It feels cheerfuller in the shop."

"And carpentering's your joy?"

"I think I may say so."

Van Diemen slapped his thigh. "There's life in Old England yet!"

Crickledon eyed him as he walked away to the beach to look for his
daughter, and conceived that there was a touch of the soldier in him.




CHAPTER IV

Annette Smith's delight in her native England made her see beauty and
kindness everywhere around her; it put a halo about the house on the
beach, and thrilled her at Tinman's table when she heard the thunder of
the waves hard by. She fancied it had been a most agreeable dinner to her
father and Mr. Herbert Fellingham--especially to the latter, who had
laughed very much; and she was astonished to hear them at breakfast both
complaining of their evening. In answer to which, she exclaimed, "Oh, I
think the situation of the house is so romantic!"

"The situation of the host is exceedingly so," said Mr. Fellingham; "but
I think his wine the most unromantic liquid I have ever tasted."

"It must be that!" cried Van Diemen, puzzled by novel pains in the head.
"Old Martin woke up a little like his old self after dinner."

"He drank sparingly," said Mr. Fellingham.

"I am sure you were satirical last night," Annette said reproachfully.

"On the contrary, I told him I thought he was in a romantic situation."

"But I have had a French mademoiselle for my governess and an Oxford
gentleman for my tutor; and I know you accepted French and English from
Mr. Tinman and his sister that I should not have approved."

"Netty," said Van Diemen, "has had the best instruction money could
procure; and if she says you were satirical, you may depend on it you
were."

"Oh, in that case, of course!" Mr. Fellingham rejoined. "Who could help
it?"

He thought himself warranted in giving the rein to his wicked satirical
spirit, and talked lightly of the accidental character of the letter H in
Tinman's pronunciation; of how, like somebody else's hat in a high wind,
it descended on somebody else's head, and of how his words walked about
asking one another who they were and what they were doing, danced
together madly, snapping their fingers at signification; and so forth. He
was flippant.

Annette glanced at her father, and dropped her eyelids.

Mr. Fellingham perceived that he was enjoined to be on his guard.

He went one step farther in his fun; upon which Van Diemen said, with a
frown, "If you please!"

Nothing could withstand that.

"Hang old Mart Tinman's wine!" Van Diemen burst out in the dead pause.
"My head's a bullet. I'm in a shocking bad temper. I can hardly see. I'm
bilious."

Mr. Fellingham counselled his lying down for an hour, and he went
grumbling, complaining of Mart Tinman's incredulity about the towering
beauty of a place in Australia called Gippsland.

Annette confided to Mr. Fellingham, as soon as they were alone, the
chivalrous nature of her father in his friendships, and his indisposition
to hear a satirical remark upon his old schoolmate, the moment he
understood it to be satire.

Fellingham pleaded: "The man's a perfect burlesque. He's as distinctly
made to be laughed at as a mask in a pantomime."

"Papa will not think so," said Annette; "and papa has been told that he
is not to be laughed at as a man of business."

"Do you prize him for that?"

"I am no judge. I am too happy to be in England to be a judge of
anything."

"You did not touch his wine!"

"You men attach so much importance to wine!"

"They do say that powders is a good thing after Mr. Tinman's wine,"
observed Mrs. Crickledon, who had come into the sitting-room to take away
the breakfast things.

Mr. Fellingham gave a peal of laughter; but Mrs Crickledon bade him be
hushed, for Mr. Van Diemen Smith had gone to lay down his poor aching
head on his pillow. Annette ran upstairs to speak to her father about a
doctor.

During her absence, Mr. Fellingham received the popular portrait of Mr.
Tinman from the lips of Mrs. Crickledon. He subsequently strolled to the
carpenter's shop, and endeavoured to get a confirmation of it.

"My wife talks too much," said Crickledon.

When questioned by a gentleman, however, he was naturally bound to answer
to the extent of his knowledge.

"What a funny old country it is!" Mr. Fellingham said to Annette, on
their walk to the beach.

She implored him not to laugh at anything English.

"I don't, I assure you," said he. "I love the country, too. But when one
comes back from abroad, and plunges into their daily life, it's difficult
to retain the real figure of the old country seen from outside, and one
has to remember half a dozen great names to right oneself. And Englishmen
are so funny! Your father comes here to see his old friend, and begins
boasting of the Gippsland he has left behind. Tinman immediately brags of
Helvellyn, and they fling mountains at one another till, on their first
evening together, there's earthquake and rupture--they were nearly at
fisticuffs at one time."

"Oh! surely no," said Annette. "I did not hear them. They were good
friends when you came to the drawingroom. Perhaps the wine did affect
poor papa, if it was bad wine. I wish men would never drink any. How much
happier they would be."

"But then there would cease to be social meetings in England. What should
we do?"

"I know that is a sneer; and you were nearly as enthusiastic as I was on
board the vessel," Annette said, sadly.

"Quite true. I was. But see what quaint creatures we have about us!
Tinman practicing in his Court suit before the chiwal-glass! And that
good fellow, the carpenter, Crickledon, who has lived with the sea
fronting him all his life, and has never been in a boat, and he confesses
he has only once gone inland, and has never seen an acorn!"

"I wish I could see one--of a real English oak," said Annette.

"And after being in England a few months you will be sighing for the
Continent."

"Never!"

"You think you will be quite contented here?"

"I am sure I shall be. May papa and I never be exiles again! I did not
feel it when I was three years old, going out to Australia; but it would
be like death to me now. Oh!" Annette shivered, as with the exile's
chill.

"On my honour," said Mr. Fellingham, as softly as he could with the wind
in his teeth, "I love the old country ten times more from your love of
it."

"That is not how I want England to be loved," returned Annette.

"The love is in your hands."

She seemed indifferent on hearing it.

He should have seen that the way to woo her was to humour her
prepossession by another passion. He could feel that it ennobled her in
the abstract, but a latent spite at Tinman on account of his wine, to
which he continued angrily to attribute as unwonted dizziness of the head
and slight irascibility, made him urgent in his desire that she should
separate herself from Tinman and his sister by the sharp division of
derision.

Annette declined to laugh at the most risible caricatures of Tinman. In
her antagonism she forced her simplicity so far as to say that she did
not think him absurd. And supposing Mr. Tinman to have proposed to the
titled widow, Lady Ray, as she had heard, and to other ladies young and
middle-aged in the neighbourhood, why should he not, if he wished to
marry? If he was economical, surely he had a right to manage his own
affairs. Her dread was lest Mr. Tinman and her father should quarrel over
the payment for the broken chiwal-glass: that she honestly admitted, and
Fellingham was so indiscreet as to roar aloud, not so very cordially.

Annette thought him unkindly satirical; and his thoughts of her reduced
her to the condition of a commonplace girl with expressive eyes.

She had to return to her father. Mr. Fellingham took a walk on the
springy turf along the cliffs; and "certainly she is a commonplace girl,"
he began by reflecting; with a side eye at the fact that his meditations
were excited by Tinman's poisoning of his bile. "A girl who can't see the
absurdity of Tinman must be destitute of common intelligence." After a
while he sniffed the fine sharp air of mingled earth and sea delightedly,
and he strode back to the town late in the afternoon, laughing at himself
in scorn of his wretched susceptibility to bilious impressions, and
really all but hating Tinman as the cause of his weakness--in the manner
of the criminal hating the detective, perhaps. He cast it altogether on
Tinman that Annette's complexion of character had become discoloured to
his mind; for, in spite of the physical freshness with which he returned
to her society, he was incapable of throwing off the idea of her being
commonplace; and it was with regret that he acknowledged he had gained
from his walk only a higher opinion of himself.

Her father was the victim of a sick headache, [Migraine--D.W.]and lay, a
groaning man, on his bed, ministered to by Mrs. Crickledon chiefly.
Annette had to conduct the business with Mr. Phippun and Mr. Tinman as to
payment for the chiwal-glass. She was commissioned to offer half the
price for the glass on her father's part; more he would not pay. Tinman
and Phippun sat with her in Crickledon's cottage, and Mrs. Crickledon
brought down two messages from her invalid, each positive, to the effect
that he would fight with all the arms of English law rather than yield
his point.

Tinman declared it to be quite out of the question that he should pay a
penny. Phippun vowed that from one or the other of them he would have the
money.

Annette naturally was in deep distress, and Fellingham postponed the
discussion to the morrow.

Even after such a taste of Tinman as that, Annette could not be induced
to join in deriding him privately. She looked pained by Mr. Fellingham's
cruel jests. It was monstrous, Fellingham considered, that he should draw
on himself a second reprimand from Van Diemen Smith, while they were
consulting in entire agreement upon the case of the chiwal-glass.

"I must tell you this, mister sir," said Van Diemen, "I like you, but
I'll be straightforward and truthful, or I'm not worthy the name of
Englishman; and I do like you, or I should n't have given you leave to
come down here after us two. You must respect my friend if you care for
my respect. That's it. There it is. Now you know my conditions."

"I 'm afraid I can't sign the treaty," said Fellingham.

"Here's more," said Van Diemen. "I'm a chilly man myself if I hear a
laugh and think I know the aim of it. I'll meet what you like except
scorn. I can't stand contempt. So I feel for another. And now you know."

"It puts a stopper on the play of fancy, and checks the throwing off of
steam," Fellingham remonstrated. "I promise to do my best, but of all the
men I've ever met in my life--Tinman!--the ridiculous! Pray pardon me;
but the donkey and his looking-glass! The glass was misty! He--as
particular about his reflection in the glass as a poet with his verses!
Advance, retire, bow; and such murder of the Queen's English in the very
presence! If I thought he was going to take his wine with him, I'd have
him arrested for high treason."

"You've chosen, and you know what you best like," said Van Diemen,
pointing his accents--by which is produced the awkward pause, the pitfall
of conversation, and sometimes of amity.

Thus it happened that Mr. Herbert Fellingham journeyed back to London a
day earlier than he had intended, and without saying what he meant to
say.




CHAPTER V

A month later, after a night of sharp frost on the verge of the warmer
days of spring, Mr. Fellingham entered Crikswich under a sky of perfect
blue that was in brilliant harmony with the green downs, the white cliffs
and sparkling sea, and no doubt it was the beauty before his eyes which
persuaded him of his delusion in having taken Annette for a commonplace
girl. He had come in a merely curious mood to discover whether she was
one or not. Who but a commonplace girl would care to reside in Crikswich,
he had asked himself; and now he was full sure that no commonplace girl
would ever have had the idea. Exquisitely simple, she certainly was; but
that may well be a distinction in a young lady whose eyes are expressive.

The sound of sawing attracted him to Crickledon's shop, and the
industrious carpenter soon put him on the tide of affairs.

Crickledon pointed to the house on the beach as the place where Mr. Van
Diemen Smith and his daughter were staying.

"Dear me! and how does he look?" said Fellingham.

"Our town seems to agree with him, sir."

"Well, I must not say any more, I suppose." Fellingham checked his
tongue. "How have they settled that dispute about the chiwal-glass?"

"Mr. Tinman had to give way."

"Really."

"But," Crickledon stopped work, "Mr. Tinman sold him a meadow."

"I see."

"Mr. Smith has been buying a goodish bit of ground here. They tell me
he's about purchasing Elba. He has bought the Crouch. He and Mr. Tinman
are always out together. They're over at Helmstone now. They've been to
London."

"Are they likely to be back to-day?"

"Certain, I should think. Mr. Tinman has to be in London to-morrow."

Crickledon looked. He was not the man to look artful, but there was a
lighted corner in his look that revived Fellingham's recollections, and
the latter burst out:

"The Address? I 'd half forgotten it. That's not over yet? Has he been
practicing much?"

"No more glasses ha' been broken."

"And how is your wife, Crickledon?"

"She's at home, sir, ready for a talk, if you've a mind to try her."

Mrs. Crickledon proved to be very ready. "That Tinman," was her theme. He
had taken away her lodgers, and she knew his objects. Mr. Smith repented
of leaving her, she knew, though he dared not say it in plain words. She
knew Miss Smith was tired to death of constant companionship with Mrs.
Cavely, Tinman's sister. She generally came once in the day just to
escape from Mrs. Cavely, who would not, bless you! step into a cottager's
house where she was not allowed to patronize. Fortunately Miss Smith had
induced her father to get his own wine from the merchants.

"A happy resolution," said Fellingham; "and a saving one."

He heard further that Mr. Smith would take possession of the Crouch next
month, and that Mrs. Cavely hung over Miss Smith like a kite.

"And that old Tinman, old enough to be her father!" said Mrs. Crickledon.

She dealt in the flashes which connect ideas. Fellingham, though a man,
and an Englishman, was nervously wakeful enough to see the connection.

"They'll have to consult the young lady first, ma'am."

"If it's her father's nod she'll bow to it; now mark me," Mrs. Crickledon
said, with emphasis. "She's a young lady who thinks for herself, but she
takes her start from her father where it's feeling. And he's gone
stone-blind over that Tinman."

While they were speaking, Annette appeared.

"I saw you," she said to Fellingham; gladly and openly, in the most
commonplace manner.

"Are you going to give me a walk along the beach?" said he.

She proposed the country behind the town, and that was quite as much to
his taste. But it was not a happy walk. He had decided that he admired
her, and the notion of having Tinman for a rival annoyed him. He
overflowed with ridicule of Tinman, and this was distressing to Annette,
because not only did she see that he would not control himself before her
father, but he kindled her own satirical spirit in opposition to her
father's friendly sentiments toward his old schoolmate.

"Mr. Tinman has been extremely hospitable to us," she said, a little
coldly.

"May I ask you, has he consented to receive instruction in deportment and
pronunciation?"

Annette did not answer.

"If practice makes perfect, he must be near the mark by this time."

She continued silent.

"I dare say, in domestic life, he's as amiable as he is hospitable, and
it must be a daily gratification to see him in his Court suit."

"I have not seen him in his Court suit."

"That is his coyness."

"People talk of those things."

"The common people scandalize the great, about whom they know nothing,
you mean! I am sure that is true, and living in Courts one must be keenly
aware of it. But what a splendid sky and-sea!"

"Is it not?"

Annette echoed his false rapture with a candour that melted him.

He was preparing to make up for lost time, when the wild waving of a
parasol down a road to the right, coming from the town, caused Annette to
stop and say, "I think that must be Mrs. Cavely. We ought to meet her."

Fellingham asked why.

"She is so fond of walks," Anisette replied, with a tooth on her lip

Fellingham thought she seemed fond of runs.

Mrs. Cavely joined them, breathless. "My dear! the pace you go at!" she
shouted. "I saw you starting. I followed, I ran, I tore along. I feared I
never should catch you. And to lose such a morning of English scenery!

"Is it not heavenly?"

"One can't say more," Fellingham observed, bowing.

"I am sure I am very glad to see you again, sir. You enjoy Crikswich?"

"Once visited, always desired, like Venice, ma'am. May I venture to
inquire whether Mr. Tinman has presented his Address?"

"The day after to-morrow. The appointment is made with him," said Mrs.
Cavely, more officially in manner, "for the day after to-morrow. He is
excited, as you may well believe. But Mr. Smith is an immense relief to
him--the very distraction he wanted. We have become one family, you
know."

"Indeed, ma'am, I did not know it," said Fellingham.

The communication imparted such satiric venom to his further remarks,
that Annette resolved to break her walk and dismiss him for the day.

He called at the house on the beach after the dinner-hour, to see Mr. Van
Diemen Smith, when there was literally a duel between him and Tinman; for
Van Diemen's contribution to the table was champagne, and that had been
drunk, but Tinman's sherry remained. Tinman would insist on Fellingham's
taking a glass. Fellingham parried him with a sedate gravity of irony
that was painfully perceptible to Anisette. Van Diemen at last backed
Tinman's hospitable intent, and, to Fellingham's astonishment, he found
that he had been supposed by these two men to be bashfully retreating
from a seductive offer all the time that his tricks of fence and
transpiercings of one of them had been marvels of skill.

Tinman pushed the glass into his hand.

"You have spilt some," said Fellingham.

"It won't hurt the carpet," said Tinman.

"Won't it?" Fellingham gazed at the carpet, as if expecting a flame to
arise.

He then related the tale of the magnanimous Alexander drinking off the
potion, in scorn of the slanderer, to show faith in his friend.

"Alexander--Who was that?" said Tinman, foiled in his historical
recollections by the absence of the surname.

"General Alexander," said Fellingham. "Alexander Philipson, or he
declared it was Joveson; and very fond of wine. But his sherry did for
him at last."

"Ah! he drank too much, then," said Tinman.

"Of his own!"

Anisette admonished the vindictive young gentleman by saying, "How long
do you stay in Crikswich, Mr. Fellingham?"

He had grossly misconducted himself. But an adversary at once offensive
and helpless provokes brutality. Anisette prudently avoided letting her
father understand that satire was in the air; and neither he nor Tinman
was conscious of it exactly: yet both shrank within themselves under the
sensation of a devilish blast blowing. Fellingham accompanied them and
certain jurats to London next day.

Yes, if you like: when a mayor visits Majesty, it is an important
circumstance, and you are at liberty to argue at length that it means
more than a desire on his part to show his writing power and his reading
power: it is full of comfort the people, as an exhibition of their
majesty likewise; and it is an encouragement to men to strive to become
mayors, bailiffs, or prime men of any sort; but a stress in the reporting
of it--the making it appear too important a circumstance--will surely
breathe the intimation to a politically-minded people that satire is in
the air, and however dearly they cherish the privilege of knocking at the
first door of the kingdom, and walking ceremoniously in to read their
writings, they will, if they are not in one of their moods for
prostration, laugh. They will laugh at the report.

All the greater reason is it that we should not indulge them at such
periods; and I say woe's me for any brother of the pen, and one in some
esteem, who dressed the report of that presentation of the Address of
congratulation by Mr. Bailiff Tinman, of Crikswich! Herbert Fellingham
wreaked his personal spite on Tinman. He should have bethought him that
it involved another than Tinman that is to say, an office--which the
fitful beast rejoices to paw and play with contemptuously now and then,
one may think, as a solace to his pride, and an indemnification for those
caprices of abject worship so strongly recalling the days we see through
Mr. Darwin's glasses.

He should not have written the report. It sent a titter over England. He
was so unwise as to despatch a copy of the newspaper containing it to Van
Diemen Smith. Van Diemen perused it with satisfaction. So did Tinman.
Both of these praised the able young writer. But they handed the paper to
the Coastguard Lieutenant, who asked Tinman how he liked it; and visitors
were beginning to drop in to Crikswich, who made a point of asking for a
sight of the chief man; and then came a comic publication, all in the
Republican tone of the time, with Man's Dignity for the standpoint, and
the wheezy laughter residing in old puns to back it, in eulogy of the
satiric report of the famous Address of congratulation of the Bailiff of
Crikswich.

"Annette," Van Diemen said to his daughter, "you'll not encourage that
newspaper fellow to come down here any more. He had his warning."




CHAPTER VI

One of the most difficult lessons for spirited young men to learn is,
that good jokes are not always good policy. They have to be paid for,
like good dinners, though dinner and joke shall seem to have been at
somebody else's expense. Young Fellingham was treated rudely by Van
Diemen Smith, and with some cold reserve by Annette: in consequence of
which he thought her more than ever commonplace. He wrote her a letter of
playful remonstrance, followed by one that appealed to her sentiments.

But she replied to neither of them. So his visits to Crikswich came to an
end.

Shall a girl who has no appreciation of fun affect us? Her expressive
eyes, and her quaint simplicity, and her enthusiasm for England, haunted
Mr. Fellingham; being conjured up by contrast with what he met about him.
But shall a girl who would impose upon us the task of holding in our
laughter at Tinman be much regretted? There could be no companionship
between us, Fellingham thought.

On an excursion to the English Lakes he saw the name of Van Diemen Smith
in a visitors' book, and changed his ideas on the subject of
companionship. Among mountains, or on the sea, or reading history,
Annette was one in a thousand. He happened to be at a public ball at
Helmstone in the Winter season, and who but Annette herself came whirling
before him on the arm of an officer! Fellingham did not miss his chance
of talking to her. She greeted him gaily, and speaking with the
excitement of the dance upon her, appeared a stranger to the serious
emotions he was willing to cherish. She had been to the Lakes and to
Scotland. Next summer she was going to Wales. All her experiences were
delicious. She was insatiable, but satisfied.

"I wish I had been with you," said Fellingham.

"I wish you had," said she.

Mrs. Cavely was her chaperon at the ball, and he was not permitted to
enjoy a lengthened conversation sitting with Annette. What was he to
think of a girl who could be submissive to Mrs. Cavely, and danced with
any number of officers, and had no idea save of running incessantly over
England in the pursuit of pleasure? Her tone of saying, "I wish you had,"
was that of the most ordinary of wishes, distinctly, if not designedly
different from his own melodious depth.

She granted him one waltz, and he talked of her father and his whimsical
vagrancies and feeling he had a positive liking for Van Diemen, and he
sagaciously said so.

Annette's eyes brightened. "Then why do you never go to see him? He has
bought Elba. We move into the Hall after Christmas. We are at the Crouch
at present. Papa will be sure to make you welcome. Do you not know that
he never forgets a friend or breaks a friendship?"

"I do, and I love him for it," said Fellingham.

If he was not greatly mistaken a gentle pressure on the fingers of his
left hand rewarded him.

This determined him. It should here be observed that he was by birth the
superior of Annette's parentage, and such is the sentiment of a better
blood that the flattery of her warm touch was needed for him to overlook
the distinction.

Two of his visits to Crikswich resulted simply in interviews and
conversations with Mrs. Crickledon. Van Diemen and his daughter were in
London with Tinman and Mrs. Cavely, purchasing furniture for Elba Hall.
Mrs. Crickledon had no scruple in saying, that Mrs. Cavely meant her
brother to inhabit the Hall, though Mr. Smith had outbid him in the
purchase. According to her, Tinman and Mr. Smith had their differences;
for Mr. Smith was a very outspoken gentleman, and had been known to call
Tinman names that no man of spirit would bear if he was not scheming.

Fellingham returned to London, where he roamed the streets famous for
furniture warehouses, in the vain hope of encountering the new owner of
Elba.

Failing in this endeavour, he wrote a love-letter to Annette.

It was her first. She had liked him. Her manner of thinking she might
love him was through the reflection that no one stood in the way. The
letter opened a world to her, broader than Great Britain.

Fellingham begged her, if she thought favourably of him, to prepare her
father for the purport of his visit. If otherwise, she was to interdict
the visit with as little delay as possible and cut him adrift.

A decided line of conduct was imperative. Yet you have seen that she was
not in love. She was only not unwilling to be in love. And Fellingham was
just a trifle warmed. Now mark what events will do to light the fires.

Van Diemen and Tinman, old chums re-united, and both successful in life,
had nevertheless, as Mrs. Crickledon said, their differences. They
commenced with an opposition to Tinman's views regarding the expenditure
of town moneys. Tinman was ever for devoting them to the patriotic
defence of "our shores;" whereas Van Diemen, pointing in detestation of
the town sewerage reeking across the common under the beach, loudly
called on him to preserve our lives, by way of commencement. Then Van
Diemen precipitately purchased Elba at a high valuation, and Tinman had
expected by waiting to buy it at his own valuation, and sell it out of
friendly consideration to his friend afterwards, for a friendly
consideration. Van Diemen had joined the hunt. Tinman could not mount a
horse. They had not quarrelled, but they had snapped about these and
other affairs. Van Diemen fancied Tinman was jealous of his wealth.
Tinman shrewdly suspected Van Diemen to be contemptuous of his dignity.
He suffered a loss in a loan of money; and instead of pitying him, Van
Diemen had laughed him to scorn for expecting security for investments at
ten per cent. The bitterness of the pinch to Tinman made him frightfully
sensitive to strictures on his discretion. In his anguish he told his
sister he was ruined, and she advised him to marry before the crash. She
was aware that he exaggerated, but she repeated her advice. She went so
far as to name the person. This is known, because she was overheard by
her housemaid, a gossip of Mrs. Crickledon's, the subsequently famous
"Little Jane."

Now, Annette had shyly intimated to her father the nature of Herbert
Fellingham's letter, at the same time professing a perfect readiness to
submit to his directions; and her father's perplexity was very great, for
Annette had rather fervently dramatized the young man's words at the ball
at Helmstone, which had pleasantly tickled him, and, besides, he liked
the young man. On the other hand, he did not at all like the prospect of
losing his daughter; and he would have desired her to be a lady of title.
He hinted at her right to claim a high position. Annette shrank from the
prospect, saying, "Never let me marry one who might be ashamed of my
father!"

"I shouldn't stomach that," said Van Diemen, more disposed in favour of
the present suitor.

Annette was now in a tremor. She had a lover; he was coming. And if he
did not come, did it matter? Not so very much, except to her pride. And
if he did, what was she to say to him? She felt like an actress who may
in a few minutes be called on the stage, without knowing her part. This
was painfully unlike love, and the poor girl feared it would be her
conscientious duty to dismiss him--most gently, of course; and perhaps,
should he be impetuous and picturesque, relent enough to let him hope,
and so bring about a happy postponement of the question. Her father had
been to a neighbouring town on business with Mr. Tinman. He knocked at
her door at midnight; and she, in dread of she knew not what--chiefly
that the Hour of the Scene had somehow struck--stepped out to him
trembling. He was alone. She thought herself the most childish of mortals
in supposing that she could have been summoned at midnight to declare her
sentiments, and hardly noticed his gloomy depression. He asked her to
give him five minutes; then asked her for a kiss, and told her to go to
bed and sleep. But Annette had seen that a great present affliction was
on him, and she would not be sent to sleep. She promised to listen
patiently, to bear anything, to be brave. "Is it bad news from home?" she
said, speaking of the old home where she had not left her heart, and
where his money was invested.

"It's this, my dear Netty," said Van Diemen, suffering her to lead him
into her sitting-room; "we shall have to leave the shores of England."

"Then we are ruined."

"We're not; the rascal can't do that. We might be off to the Continent,
or we might go to America; we've money. But we can't stay here. I'll not
live at any man's mercy."

"The Continent! America!" exclaimed the enthusiast for England. "Oh,
papa, you love living in England so!"

"Not so much as all that, my dear. You do, that I know. But I don't see
how it's to be managed. Mart Tinman and I have been at tooth and claw
to-day and half the night; and he has thrown off the mask, or he's dashed
something from my sight, I don't know which. I knocked him down."

"Papa!"

"I picked him up."

"Oh," cried Annette, "has Mr. Tinman been hurt?"

"He called me a Deserter!"

Anisette shuddered.

She did not know what this thing was, but the name of it opened a cabinet
of horrors, and she touched her father timidly, to assure him of her
constant love, and a little to reassure herself of his substantial
identity.

"And I am one," Van Diemen made the confession at the pitch of his voice.
"I am a Deserter; I'm liable to be branded on the back. And it's in Mart
Tinman's power to have me marched away to-morrow morning in the sight of
Crikswich, and all I can say for myself, as a man and a Briton, is, I did
not desert before the enemy. That I swear I never would have done. Death,
if death's in front; but your poor mother was a handsome woman, my child,
and there--I could not go on living in barracks and leaving her
unprotected. I can't tell a young woman the tale. A hundred pounds came
on me for a legacy, as plump in my hands out of open heaven, and your
poor mother and I saw our chance; we consulted, and we determined to risk
it, and I got on board with her and you, and over the seas we went, first
to shipwreck, ultimately to fortune."

Van Diemen laughed miserably. "They noticed in the hunting-field here I
had a soldier-like seat. A soldier-like seat it'll be, with a brand on
it. I sha'n't be asked to take a soldier-like seat at any of their tables
again. I may at Mart Tinman's, out of pity, after I've undergone my
punishment. There's a year still to run out of the twenty of my term of
service due. He knows it; he's been reckoning; he has me. But the worst
cat-o'-nine-tails for me is the disgrace. To have myself pointed at,
'There goes the Deserter' He was a private in the Carbineers, and he
deserted.' No one'll say, 'Ay, but he clung to the idea of his old
schoolmate when abroad, and came back loving him, and trusted him, and
was deceived."

Van Diemen produced a spasmodic cough with a blow on his chest. Anisette
was weeping.

"There, now go to bed," said he. "I wish you might have known no more
than you did of our flight when I got you on board the ship with your
poor mother; but you're a young woman now, and you must help me to think
of another cut and run, and what baggage we can scrape together in a
jiffy, for I won't live here at Mart Tinman's mercy."

Drying her eyes to weep again, Annette said, when she could speak: "Will
nothing quiet him? I was going to bother you with all sorts of silly
questions, poor dear papa; but I see I can understand if I try. Will
nothing--Is he so very angry? Can we not do something to pacify him? He
is fond of money. He--oh, the thought of leaving England! Papa, it will
kill you; you set your whole heart on England. We could--I could--could I
not, do you not think?--step between you as a peacemaker. Mr. Tinman is
always very courteous to me."

At these words of Annette's, Van Diemen burst into a short snap of savage
laughter. "But that's far away in the background, Mr. Mart Tinman!" he
said. "You stick to your game, I know that; but you'll find me flown,
though I leave a name to stink like your common behind me. And," he
added, as a chill reminder, "that name the name of my benefactor. Poor
old Van Diemen! He thought it a safe bequest to make."

"It was; it is! We will stay; we will not be exiled," said Annette. "I
will do anything. What was the quarrel about, papa?"

"The fact is, my dear, I just wanted to show him--and take down his
pride--I'm by my Australian education a shrewder hand than his old
country. I bought the house on the beach while he was chaffering, and
then I sold it him at a rise when the town was looking up--only to make
him see. Then he burst up about something I said of Australia. I will
have the common clean. Let him live at the Crouch as my tenant if he
finds the house on the beach in danger."

"Papa, I am sure," Annette repeated--"sure I have influence with Mr.
Tinman."

"There are those lips of yours shutting tight," said her father. "Just
listen, and they make a big O. The donkey! He owns you've got influence,
and he offers he'll be silent if you'll pledge your word to marry him.
I'm not sure he didn't say, within the year. I told him to look sharp not
to be knocked down again. Mart Tinman for my son-in-law! That's an upside
down of my expectations, as good as being at the antipodes without a
second voyage back! I let him know you were engaged."

Annette gazed at her father open-mouthed, as he had predicted; now with a
little chilly dimple at one corner of the mouth, now at another--as a
breeze curves the leaden winter lake here and there. She could not get
his meaning into her sight, and she sought, by looking hard, to
understand it better; much as when some solitary maiden lady, passing
into her bedchamber in the hours of darkness, beholds--tradition telling
us she has absolutely beheld foot of burglar under bed; and lo! she
stares, and, cunningly to moderate her horror, doubts, yet cannot but
believe that there is a leg, and a trunk, and a head, and two terrible
arms, bearing pistols, to follow. Sick, she palpitates; she compresses
her trepidation; she coughs, perchance she sings a bar or two of an aria.
Glancing down again, thrice horrible to her is it to discover that there
is no foot! For had it remained, it might have been imagined a harmless,
empty boot. But the withdrawal has a deadly significance of animal
life. . . .

In like manner our stricken Annette perceived the object; so did she
gradually apprehend the fact of her being asked for Tinman's bride, and
she could not think it credible. She half scented, she devised her plan
of escape from another single mention of it. But on her father's
remarking, with a shuffle, frightened by her countenance, "Don't listen
to what I said, Netty. I won't paint him blacker than he is"--then
Annette was sure she had been proposed for by Mr. Tinman, and she fancied
her father might have revolved it in his mind that there was this means
of keeping Tinman silent, silent for ever, in his own interests.

"It was not true, when you told Mr. Tinman I was engaged, papa," she
said.

"No, I know that. Mart Tinman only half-kind of hinted. Come, I say!
Where's the unmarried man wouldn't like to have a girl like you, Netty!
They say he's been rejected all round a circuit of fifteen miles; and
he's not bad-looking, neither--he looks fresh and fair. But I thought it
as well to let him know he might get me at a disadvantage, but he
couldn't you. Now, don't think about it, my love."

"Not if it is not necessary, papa," said Annette; and employed her
familiar sweetness in persuading him to go to bed, as though he were the
afflicted one requiring to be petted.




CHAPTER VII

Round under the cliffs by the sea, facing South, are warm seats in
winter. The sun that shines there on a day of frost wraps you as in a
mantle. Here it was that Mr. Herbert Fellingham found Annette, a
chalk-block for her chair, and a mound of chalk-rubble defending her from
the keen-tipped breath of the east, now and then shadowing the smooth
blue water, faintly, like reflections of a flight of gulls.

Infants are said to have their ideas, and why not young ladies? Those who
write of their perplexities in descriptions comical in their length are
unkind to them, by making them appear the simplest of the creatures of
fiction; and most of us, I am sure, would incline to believe in them if
they were only some bit more lightly touched. Those troubled sentiments
of our young lady of the comfortable classes are quite worthy of mention.
Her poor little eye poring as little fishlike as possible upon the
intricate, which she takes for the infinite, has its place in our
history, nor should we any of us miss the pathos of it were it not that
so large a space is claimed for the exposure. As it is, one has almost to
fight a battle to persuade the world that she has downright thoughts and
feelings, and really a superhuman delicacy is required in presenting her
that she may be credible. Even then--so much being accomplished the
thousands accustomed to chapters of her when she is in the situation of
Annette will be disappointed by short sentences, just as of old the
Continental eater of oysters would have been offended at the offer of an
exchange of two live for two dozen dead ones. Annette was in the grand
crucial position of English imaginative prose. I recognize it, and that
to this the streamlets flow, thence pours the flood. But what was the
plain truth? She had brought herself to think she ought to sacrifice
herself to Tinman, and her evasions with Herbert, manifested in tricks of
coldness alternating with tones of regret, ended, as they had commenced,
in a mysterious half-sullenness. She had hardly a word to say. Let me
step in again to observe that she had at the moment no pointed intention
of marrying Tinman. To her mind the circumstances compelled her to embark
on the idea of doing so, and she saw the extremity in an extreme
distance, as those who are taking voyages may see death by drowning.
Still she had embarked.

"At all events, I have your word for it that you don't dislike me?" said
Herbert.

"Oh! no," she sighed. She liked him as emigrants the land they are
leaving.

"And you have not promised your hand?"

"No," she said, but sighed in thinking that if she could be induced to
promise it, there would not be a word of leaving England.

"Then, as you are not engaged, and don't hate me, I have a chance?" he
said, in the semi-wailful interrogative of an organ making a mere windy
conclusion.

Ocean sent up a tiny wave at their feet.

"A day like this in winter is rarer than a summer day," Herbert resumed
encouragingly.

Annette was replying, "People abuse our climate--"

But the thought of having to go out away from this climate in the
darkness of exile, with her father to suffer under it worse than herself,
overwhelmed her, and fetched the reality of her sorrow in the form of
Tinman swimming before her soul with the velocity of a telegraph-pole to
the window of the flying train. It was past as soon as seen, but it gave
her a desperate sensation of speed.

She began to feel that this was life in earnest.

And Herbert should have been more resolute, fierier. She needed a strong
will.

But he was not on the rapids of the masterful passion. For though going
at a certain pace, it was by his own impulsion; and I am afraid I must,
with many apologies, compare him to the skater--to the skater on easy,
slippery ice, be it understood; but he could perform gyrations as he
went, and he rather sailed along than dashed; he was careful of his
figuring. Some lovers, right honest lovers, never get beyond this quaint
skating-stage; and some ladies, a right goodly number in a foggy climate,
deceived by their occasional runs ahead, take them for vessels on the
very torrent of love. Let them take them, and let the race continue. Only
we perceive that they are skating; they are careering over a smooth icy
floor, and they can stop at a signal, with just half-a-yard of grating on
the heel at the outside. Ice, and not fire nor falling water, has been
their medium of progression.

Whether a man should unveil his own sex is quite another question. If we
are detected, not solely are we done for, but our love-tales too.
However, there is not much ground for anxiety on that head. Each member
of the other party is blind on her own account.

To Annette the figuring of Herbert was graceful, but it did not catch her
up and carry her; it hardly touched her: He spoke well enough to make her
sorry for him, and not warmly enough to make her forget her sorrow for
herself.

Herbert could obtain no explanation of the singularity of her conduct
from Annette, and he went straight to her father, who was nearly as
inexplicable for a time. At last he said:

"If you are ready to quit the country with us, you may have my consent."

"Why quit the country?" Herbert asked, in natural amazement.

Van Diemen declined to tell him.

But seeing the young man look stupefied and wretched he took a turn about
the room, and said: "I have n't robbed," and after more turns, "I have
n't murdered." He growled in his menagerie trot within the four walls.
"But I'm, in a man's power. Will that satisfy you? You'll tell me,
because I'm rich, to snap my fingers. I can't. I've got feelings. I'm in
his power to hurt me and disgrace me. It's the disgrace--to my disgrace I
say it--I dread most. You'd be up to my reason if you had ever served in
a regiment. I mean, discipline--if ever you'd known discipline--in the
police if you like--anything--anywhere where there's what we used to call
spiny de cor. I mean, at school. And I'm," said Van Diemen, "a rank idiot
double D. dolt, and flat as a pancake, and transparent as a pane of
glass. You see through me. Anybody could. I can't talk of my botheration
without betraying myself. What good am I among you sharp fellows in
England?"

Language of this kind, by virtue of its unintelligibility, set Mr.
Herbert Fellingham's acute speculations at work. He was obliged to lean
on Van Diemen's assertion, that he had not robbed and had not murdered,
to be comforted by the belief that he was not once a notorious
bushranger, or a defaulting manager of mines, or any other thing that is
naughtily Australian and kangarooly.

He sat at the dinner-table at Elba, eating like the rest of mankind, and
looking like a starved beggarman all the while.

Annette, in pity of his bewilderment, would have had her father take him
into their confidence. She suggested it covertly, and next she spoke of
it to him as a prudent measure, seeing that Mr. Fellingham might find out
his exact degree of liability. Van Diemen shouted; he betrayed himself in
his weakness as she could not have imagined him. He was ready to go, he
said--go on the spot, give up Elba, fly from Old England: what he could
not do was to let his countrymen know what he was, and live among them
afterwards. He declared that the fact had eternally been present to his
mind, devouring him; and Annette remembered his kindness to the
artillerymen posted along the shore westward of Crikswich, though she
could recall no sign of remorse. Van Diemen said: "We have to do with
Martin Tinman; that's one who has a hold on me, and one's enough. Leak
out my secret to a second fellow, you double my risks." He would not be
taught to see how the second might counteract the first. The singularity
of the action of his character on her position was, that though she knew
not a soul to whom she could unburden her wretchedness, and stood far
more isolated than in her Australian home, fever and chill struck her
blood in contemplation of the necessity of quitting England.

Deep, then, was her gratitude to dear good Mrs. Cavely for stepping in to
mediate between her father and Mr. Tinman. And well might she be amazed
to hear the origin of their recent dispute.

"It was," Mrs. Cavely said, "that Gippsland."

Annette cried: "What?"

"That Gippsland of yours, my dear. Your father will praise Gippsland
whenever my Martin asks him to admire the beauties of our neighbourhood.
Many a time has Martin come home to me complaining of it. We have no
doubt on earth that Gippsland is a very fine place; but my brother has
his idea's of dignity, you must know, and I only wish he had been more
used to contradiction, you may believe me. He is a lamb by nature. And,
as he says, 'Why underrate one's own country?' He cannot bear to hear
boasting. Well! I put it to you, dear Annette, is he so unimportant a
person? He asks to be respected, and especially by his dearest friend.
From that to blows! It's the way with men. They begin about trifles, they
drink, they quarrel, and one does what he is sorry for, and one says more
than he means. All my Martin desires is to shake your dear father's hand,
forgive and forget. To win your esteem, darling Annette, he would humble
himself in the dust. Will you not help me to bring these two dear old
friends together once more? It is unreasonable of your dear papa to go on
boasting of Gippsland if he is so fond of England, now is it not? My
brother is the offended party in the eye of the law. That is quite
certain. Do you suppose he dreams of taking advantage of it? He is
waiting at home to be told he may call on your father. Rank, dignity,
wounded feelings, is nothing to him in comparison with friendship."

Annette thought of the blow which had felled him, and spoke the truth of
her heart in saying, "He is very generous."

"You understand him." Mrs. Cavely pressed her hand. "We will both go to
your dear father. He may," she added, not without a gleam of feminine
archness, "praise Gippsland above the Himalayas to me. What my Martin so
much objected to was, the speaking of Gippsland at all when there was
mention of our Lake scenery. As for me, I know how men love to boast of
things nobody else has seen."

The two ladies went in company to Van Diemen, who allowed himself to be
melted. He was reserved nevertheless. His reception of Mr. Tinman
displeased his daughter. Annette attached the blackest importance to a
blow of the fist. In her mind it blazed fiendlike, and the man who
forgave it rose a step or two on the sublime. Especially did he do so
considering that he had it in his power to dismiss her father and herself
from bright beaming England before she had looked on all the cathedrals
and churches, the sea-shores and spots named in printed poetry, to say
nothing of the nobility.

"Papa, you were not so kind to Mr. Tinman as I could have hoped," said
Annette.

"Mart Tinman has me at his mercy, and he'll make me know it," her father
returned gloomily. "He may let me off with the Commander-in-chief. He'll
blast my reputation some day, though. I shall be hanging my head in
society, through him."

Van Diemen imitated the disconsolate appearance of a gallows body, in one
of those rapid flashes of spontaneous veri-similitude which spring of an
inborn horror painting itself on the outside.

"A Deserter!" he moaned.

He succeeded in impressing the terrible nature of the stigma upon
Annette's imagination.

The guest at Elba was busy in adding up the sum of his own impressions,
and dividing it by this and that new circumstance; for he was totally in
the dark. He was attracted by the mysterious interview of Mrs. Cavely and
Annette. Tinman's calling and departing set him upon new calculations.
Annette grew cold and visibly distressed by her consciousness of it.

She endeavoured to account for this variation of mood. "We have been
invited to dine at the house on the beach to-morrow. I would not have
accepted, but papa . . . we seemed to think it a duty. Of course the
invitation extends to you. We fancy you do not greatly enjoy dining
there. The table will be laid for you here, if you prefer."

Herbert preferred to try the skill of Mrs. Crickledon.

Now, for positive penetration the head prepossessed by a suspicion is
unmatched; for where there is no daylight; this one at least goes about
with a lantern. Herbert begged Mrs. Crickledon to cook a dinner for him,
and then to give the right colour to his absence from the table of Mr.
Tinman, he started for a winter day's walk over the downs as sharpening a
business as any young fellow, blunt or keen, may undertake; excellent for
men of the pen, whether they be creative, and produce, or slaughtering,
and review; good, then, for the silly sheep of letters and the butchers.
He sat down to Mrs. Crickledon's table at half-past six. She was, as she
had previously informed him, a forty-pound-a-year cook at the period of
her courting by Crickledon. That zealous and devoted husband had made his
first excursion inland to drop over the downs to the great house, and
fetch her away as his bride, on the death of her master, Sir Alfred
Pooney, who never would have parted with her in life; and every day of
that man's life he dirtied thirteen plates at dinner, nor more, nor less,
but exactly that number, as if he believed there was luck in it. And as
Crickledon said, it was odd. But it was always a pleasure to cook for
him. Mrs. Crickledon could not abide cooking for a mean eater. And when
Crickledon said he had never seen an acorn, he might have seen one had he
looked about him in the great park, under the oaks, on the day when he
came to be married.

"Then it's a standing compliment to you, Mrs. Crickledon, that he did
not," said Herbert.

He remarked with the sententiousness of enforced philosophy, that no wine
was better than bad wine.

Mrs. Crickledon spoke of a bottle left by her summer lodgers, who had
indeed left two, calling the wine invalid's wine; and she and her husband
had opened one on the anniversary of their marriage day in October. It
had the taste of doctor's shop, they both agreed; and as no friend of
theirs could be tempted beyond a sip, they were advised, because it was
called a tonic, to mix it with the pig-wash, so that it should not be
entirely lost, but benefit the constitution of the pig. Herbert sipped at
the remaining bottle, and finding himself in the superior society of an
old Manzanilla, refilled his glass.

"Nothing I knows of proves the difference between gentlefolks and poor
persons as tastes in wine," said Mrs. Crickledon, admiring him as she
brought in a dish of cutlets,--with Sir Alfred Pooney's favourite sauce
Soubise, wherein rightly onion should be delicate as the idea of love in
maidens' thoughts, albeit constituting the element of flavour. Something
of such a dictum Sir Alfred Pooney had imparted to his cook, and she
repeated it with the fresh elegance of, such sweet sayings when
transfused through the native mind:

"He said, I like as it was what you would call a young gal's blush at a
kiss round a corner."

The epicurean baronet had the habit of talking in that way.

Herbert drank to his memory. He was well-filled; he had no work to do,
and he was exuberant in spirits, as Mrs. Crickledon knew her countrymen
should and would be under those conditions. And suddenly he drew his hand
across a forehead so wrinkled and dark, that Mrs. Crickledon exclaimed,
"Heart or stomach?"

"Oh, no," said he. "I'm sound enough in both, I hope."

"That old Tinman's up to one of his games," she observed.

"Do you think so?"

"He's circumventing Miss Annette Smith."

"Pooh! Crickledon. A man of his age can't be seriously thinking of
proposing for a young lady."

He's a well-kept man. He's never racketed. He had n't the rackets in him.
And she may n't care for him. But we hear things drop."

"What things have you heard drop, Crickledon? In a profound silence you
may hear pins; in a hubbub you may hear cannon-balls. But I never believe
in eavesdropping gossip."

"He was heard to say to Mr. Smith," Crickledon pursued, and she lowered
her voice, "he was heard to say, it was when they were quarreling over
that chiwal, and they went at one another pretty hard before Mr. Smith
beat him and he sold Mr. Smith that meadow; he was heard to say, there
was worse than transportation for Mr. Smith if he but lifted his finger.
They Tinmans have awful tempers. His old mother died malignant, though
she was a saving woman, and never owed a penny to a Christian a hour
longer than it took to pay the money. And old Tinman's just such
another."

"Transportation!" Herbert ejaculated, "that's sheer nonsense, Crickledon.
I'm sure your husband would tell you so."

"It was my husband brought me the words," Mrs. Crickledon rejoined with
some triumph. "He did tell me, I own, to keep it shut: but my speaking to
you, a friend of Mr. Smith's, won't do no harm. He heard them under the
battery, over that chiwal glass: 'And you shall pay,' says Mr. Smith, and
'I sha'n't,' says old Tinman. Mr. Smith said he would have it if he had
to squeeze a deathbed confession from a sinner. Then old Tinman fires
out, 'You!' he says, 'you' and he stammered. 'Mr. Smith,' my husband said
and you never saw a man so shocked as my husband at being obliged to hear
them at one another Mr. Smith used the word damn. 'You may laugh, sir.'"

"You say it so capitally, Crickledon."

"And then old Tinman said, 'And a D. to you; and if I lift my finger,
it's Big D. on your back."

"And what did Mr. Smith say, then?"

"He said, like a man shot, my husband says he said, 'My God!'"

Herbert Fellingham jumped away from the table.

"You tell me, Crickledon, your husband actually heard that--just those
words?--the tones?"

"My husband says he heard him say, 'My God!' just like a poor man shot or
stabbed. You may speak to Crickledon, if you speaks to him alone, sir. I
say you ought to know. For I've noticed Mr. Smith since that day has
never looked to me the same easy-minded happy gentleman he was when we
first knew him. He would have had me go to cook for him at Elba, but
Crickledon thought I'd better be independent, and Mr. Smith said to me,
'Perhaps you're right, Crickledon, for who knows how long I may be among
you?'"

Herbert took the solace of tobacco in Crickledon's shop. Thence, with the
story confirmed to him, he sauntered toward the house on the beach.




CHAPTER VIII

The moon was over sea. Coasting vessels that had run into the bay for
shelter from the North wind lay with their shadows thrown shoreward on
the cold smooth water, almost to the verge of the beach, where there was
neither breath nor sound of wind, only the lisp at the pebbles.

Mrs. Crickledon's dinner and the state of his heart made young Fellingham
indifferent to a wintry atmosphere. It sufficed him that the night was
fair. He stretched himself on the shingle, thinking of the Manzanilla,
and Annette, and the fine flavour given to tobacco by a dry still air in
moonlight--thinking of his work, too, in the background, as far as mental
lassitude would allow of it. The idea of taking Annette to see his first
play at the theatre when it should be performed--was very soothing. The
beach rather looked like a stage, and the sea like a ghostly audience,
with, if you will, the broadside bulks of black sailing craft at anchor
for representatives of the newspaper piers. Annette was a nice girl; if a
little commonplace and low-born, yet sweet. What a subject he could make
of her father! "The Deserter" offered a new complication. Fellingham
rapidly sketched it in fancy--Van Diemen, as a Member of the Parliament
of Great Britain, led away from the House of Commons to be branded on the
bank! What a magnificent fall! We have so few intensely dramatic
positions in English real life that the meditative author grew enamoured
of this one, and laughed out a royal "Ha!" like a monarch reviewing his
well-appointed soldiery.

"There you are," said Van Diemen's voice; "I smelt your pipe. You're a
rum fellow, to belying out on the beach on a cold night. Lord! I don't
like you the worse for it. Twas for the romance of the moon in my young
days."

"Where is Annette?" said Fellingham, jumping to his feet.

"My daughter? She 's taking leave of her intended."

"What's that?" Fellingham gasped. "Good heavens, Mr. Smith, what do you
mean?"

"Pick up your pipe, my lad. Girls choose as they please, I suppose"

"Her intended, did you say, sir? What can that mean?"

"My dear good young fellow, don't make a fuss. We're all going to stay
here, and very glad to see you from time to time. The fact is, I oughtn't
to have quarrelled with Mart Tinman as I've done; I'm too peppery by
nature. The fact is, I struck him, and he forgave it. I could n't have
done that myself. And I believe I'm in for a headache to-morrow; upon my
soul, I do. Mart Tinman would champagne us; but, poor old boy, I struck
him, and I couldn't make amends--didn't see my way; and we joined hands
over the glass--to the deuce with the glass!--and the end of it is,
Netty--she did n't propose it, but as I'm in his--I say, as I had struck
him, she--it was rather solemn, if you had seen us--she burst into tears,
and there was Mrs. Cavely, and old Mart, and me as big a fool--if I'm not
a villain!"

Fellingham perceived a more than common effect of Tin man's wine. He
touched Van Diemen on the shoulder. "May I beg to hear exactly what has
happened?"

"Upon my soul, we're all going to live comfortably in Old England, and no
more quarreling and decamping," was the stupid rejoinder. "Except that I
did n't exactly--I think you said I exactly'?--I did n't bargain for old
Mart as my--but he's a sound man; Mart's my junior; he's rich. He's eco
. . . he's eco . . . you know--my Lord! where's my brains?--but he's
upright--'nomical!"

"An economical man," said Fellingham, with sedate impatience.

"My dear sir, I'm heartily obliged to you for your assistance," returned
Van Diemen. "Here she is."

Annette had come out of the gate in the flint wall. She started slightly
on seeing Herbert, whom she had taken for a coastguard, she said. He
bowed. He kept his head bent, peering at her intrusively.

"It's the air on champagne," Van Diemen said, calling on his lungs to
clear themselves and right him. "I was n't a bit queer in the house."

"The air on Tinman's champagne!" said Fellingham.

"It must be like the contact of two hostile chemical elements."

Annette walked faster.

They descended from the shingle to the scant-bladed grass-sweep running
round the salted town-refuse on toward Elba. Van Diemen sniffed,
ejaculating, "I'll be best man with Mart Tinman about this business!
You'll stop with us, Mr.----what's your Christian name? Stop with us as
long as you like. Old friends for me! The joke of it is that Nelson was
my man, and yet I went and enlisted in the cavalry. If you talk of
chemical substances, old Mart Tinman was a sneak who never cared a dump
for his country; and I'm not to speak a single sybbarel about that.....
over there . . . Australia . . . Gippsland! So down he went, clean over.
Very sorry for what we have done. Contrite. Penitent."

"Now we feel the wind a little," said Annette.

Fellingham murmured, "Allow me; your shawl is flying loose."

He laid his hands on her arms, and, pressing her in a tremble, said, "One
sign! It's not true? A word! Do you hate me?"

"Thank you very much, but I am not cold," she replied and linked herself
to her father.

Van Diemen immediately shouted, "For we are jolly boys! for we are jolly
boys! It's the air on the champagne. And hang me," said he, as they
entered the grounds of Elba, "if I don't walk over my property."

Annette interposed; she stood like a reed in his way.

"No! my Lord! I'll see what I sold you for!" he cried. "I'm an owner of
the soil of Old England, and care no more for the title of squire than
Napoleon Bonaparty. But I'll tell you what, Mr. Hubbard: your mother was
never so astonished at her dog as old Van Diemen would be to hear himself
called squire in Old England. And a convict he was, for he did wrong
once, but he worked his redemption. And the smell of my own property
makes me feel my legs again. And I'll tell you what, Mr. Hubbard, as
Netty calls you when she speaks of you in private: Mart Tinman's ideas of
wine are pretty much like his ideas of healthy smells, and when I'm
bailiff of Crikswich, mind, he'll find two to one against him in our town
council. I love my country, but hang me if I don't purify it--"

Saying this, with the excitement of a high resolve a upon him, Van Diemen
bored through a shrubbery-brake, and Fellingham said to Annette:

"Have I lost you?"

"I belong to my father," said she, contracting and disengaging her
feminine garments to step after him in the cold silver-spotted dusk of
the winter woods.

Van Diemen came out on a fish-pond.

"Here you are, young ones!" he said to the pair. "This way, Fellowman.
I'm clearer now, and it's my belief I've been talking nonsense. I'm
puffed up with money, and have n't the heart I once had. I say,
Fellowman, Fellowbird, Hubbard--what's your right name?--fancy an old
carp fished out of that pond and flung into the sea. That's exile! And if
the girl don't mind, what does it matter?"

"Mr. Herbert Fellingham, I think, would like to go to bed, papa," said
Annette.

"Miss Smith must be getting cold," Fellingham hinted.

"Bounce away indoors," replied Van Diemen, and he led them like a bull.

Annette was disinclined to leave them together in the smoking-room, and
under the pretext of wishing to see her father to bed she remained with
them, though there was a novel directness and heat of tone in Herbert
that alarmed her, and with reason. He divined in hideous outlines what
had happened. He was no longer figuring on easy ice, but desperate at the
prospect of a loss to himself, and a fate for Annette, that tossed him
from repulsion to incredulity, and so back.

Van Diemen begged him to light his pipe.

"I'm off to London to-morrow," said Fellingham. "I don't want to go, for
very particular reasons; I may be of more use there. I have a cousin
who's a General officer in the army, and if I have your permission--you
see, anything's better, as it seems to me, than that you should depend
for peace and comfort on one man's tongue not wagging, especially when he
is not the best of tempers if I have your permission--without mentioning
names, of course--I'll consult him."

There was a dead silence.

"You know you may trust me, sir. I love your daughter with all my heart.
Your honour and your interests are mine."

Van Diemen struggled for composure.

"Netty, what have you been at?" he said.

"It is untrue, papa!" she answered the unworded accusation.

"Annette has told me nothing, sir. I have heard it. You must brace your
mind to the fact that it is known. What is known to Mr. Tinman is pretty
sure to be known generally at the next disagreement."

"That scoundrel Mart!" Van Diemen muttered.

"I am positive Mr. Tinman did not speak of you, papa," said Annette, and
turned her eyes from the half-paralyzed figure of her father on Herbert
to put him to proof.

"No, but he made himself heard when it was being discussed. At any rate,
it's known; and the thing to do is to meet it."

"I'm off. I'll not stop a day. I'd rather live on the Continent," said
Van Diemen, shaking himself, as to prepare for the step into that desert.

"Mr. Tinman has been most generous!" Annette protested tearfully.

"I won't say no: I think you are deceived and lend him your own
generosity," said Herbert. "Can you suppose it generous, that even in the
extremest case, he should speak of the matter to your father, and talk of
denouncing him? He did it."

"He was provoked."

"A gentleman is distinguished by his not allowing himself to be
provoked."

"I am engaged to him, and I cannot hear it said that he is not a
gentleman."

The first part of her sentence Annette uttered bravely; at the conclusion
she broke down. She wished Herbert to be aware of the truth, that he
might stay his attacks on Mr. Tinman; and she believed he had only been
guessing the circumstances in which her father was placed; but the
comparison between her two suitors forced itself on her now, when the
younger one spoke in a manner so self-contained, brief, and full of
feeling.

She had to leave the room weeping.

"Has your daughter engaged herself, sir?" said Herbert.

"Talk to me to-morrow; don't give us up if she has we were trapped, it's
my opinion," said Van Diemen. "There's the devil in that wine of--Mart
Tinman's. I feel it still, and in the morning it'll be worse. What can
she see in him? I must quit the country; carry her off. How he did it, I
don't know. It was that woman, the widow, the fellow's sister. She talked
till she piped her eye--talked about our lasting union. On my soul, I
believe I egged Netty on! I was in a mollified way with that wine; all of
a sudden the woman joins their hands! And I--a man of spirit will despise
me!--what I thought of was, 'now my secret's safe!' You've sobered me,
young sir. I see myself, if that's being sober. I don't ask your opinion
of me; I am a deserter, false to my colours, a breaker of his oath. Only
mark this: I was married, and a common trooper, married to a handsome
young woman, true as steel; but she was handsome, and we were starvation
poor, and she had to endure persecution from an officer day by day. Bear
that situation in your mind. . . . Providence dropped me a hundred pounds
out of the sky. Properly speaking, it popped up out of the earth, for I
reaped it, you may say, from a relative's grave. Rich and poor 's all
right, if I'm rich and you're poor; and you may be happy though you're
poor; but where there are many poor young women, lots of rich men are a
terrible temptation to them. That's my dear good wife speaking, and had
she been spared to me I never should have come back to Old England, and
heart's delight and heartache I should not have known. She was my
backbone, she was my breast-comforter too. Why did she stick to me?
Because I had faith in her when appearances were against her. But she
never forgave this country the hurt to her woman's pride. You'll have
noticed a squarish jaw in Netty. That's her mother. And I shall have to
encounter it, supposing I find Mart Tinman has been playing me false. I'm
blown on somehow. I'll think of what course I'll take 'twixt now and
morning. Good night, young gentleman."

"Good night; sir," said Herbert, adding, "I will get information from the
Horse Guards; as for the people knowing it about here, you're not living
much in society--"

"It's not other people's feelings, it's my own," Van Diemen silenced him.
"I feel it, if it's in the wind; ever since Mart Tinman spoke the thing
out, I've felt on my skin cold and hot."

He flourished his lighted candle and went to bed, manifestly solaced by
the idea that he was the victim of his own feelings.

Herbert could not sleep. Annette's monstrous choice of Tinman in
preference to himself constantly assailed and shook his understanding.
There was the "squarish jaw" mentioned by her father to think of. It
filled him with a vague apprehension, but he was unable to imagine that a
young girl, and an English girl, and an enthusiastic young English girl,
could be devoid of sentiment; and presuming her to have it, as one must,
there was no fear, that she would persist in her loathsome choice when
she knew her father was against it.




CHAPTER IX

Annette did not shun him next morning. She did not shun the subject,
either. But she had been exact in arranging that she should not be more
than a few minutes downstairs before her father. Herbert found, that
compared with her, girls of sentiment are commonplace indeed. She had
conceived an insane idea of nobility in Tinman that blinded her to his
face, figure, and character--his manners, likewise. He had forgiven a
blow!

Silly as the delusion might be, it clothed her in whimsical
attractiveness.

It was a beauty in her to dwell so firmly upon moral quality. Overthrown
and stunned as he was, and reduced to helplessness by her brief and
positive replies, Herbert was obliged to admire the singular young lady,
who spoke, without much shyness, of her incongruous, destined mate though
his admiration had an edge cutting like irony. While in the turn for
candour, she ought to have told him, that previous to her decision she
had weighed the case of the diverse claims of himself and Tinman, and
resolved them according to her predilection for the peaceful residence of
her father and herself in England. This she had done a little
regretfully, because of the natural sympathy of the young girl
for the younger man. But the younger man had seemed to her
seriously-straightforward mind too light and airy in his wooing, like one
of her waltzing officers--very well so long as she stepped the measure
with him, and not forcible enough to take her off her feet. He had
changed, and now that he had become persuasive, she feared he would
disturb the serenity with which she desired and strove to contemplate her
decision. Tinman's magnanimity was present in her imagination to sustain
her, though she was aware that Mrs. Cavely had surprised her will, and
caused it to surrender unconsulted by her wiser intelligence.

"I cannot listen to you," she said to Herbert, after listening longer
than was prudent. "If what you say of papa is true, I do not think he
will remain in Crikswich, or even in England. But I am sure the old
friend we used, to speak of so much in Australia has not wilfully
betrayed him."

Herbert would have had to say, "Look on us two!" to proceed in his
baffled wooing; and the very ludicrousness of the contrast led him to see
the folly and shame of proposing it.

Van Diemen came down to breakfast looking haggard and restless. "I have
'nt had my morning's walk--I can't go out to be hooted," he said, calling
to his daughter for tea, and strong tea; and explaining to Herbert that
he knew it to be bad for the nerves, but it was an antidote to bad
champagne.

Mr. Herbert Fellingham had previously received an invitation on behalf of
a sister of his to Crikswich. A dull sense of genuine sagacity inspired
him to remind Annette of it. She wrote prettily to Miss Mary Fellingham,
and Herbert had some faint joy in carrying away the letter of her
handwriting.

"Fetch her soon, for we sha'n't be here long," Van Diemen said to him at
parting. He expressed a certain dread of his next meeting with Mart
Tinman.

Herbert speedily brought Mary Fellingham to Elba, and left her there. The
situation was apparently unaltered. Van Diemen looked worn, like a man
who has been feeding mainly on his reflections, which was manifest in his
few melancholy bits of speech. He said to Herbert: "How you feel a thing
when you are found out!" and, "It doesn't do for a man with a heart to do
wrong!" He designated the two principal roads by which poor sinners come
to a conscience. His own would have slumbered but for discovery; and, as
he remarked, if it had not been for his heart leading him to Tinman, he
would not have fallen into that man's power.

The arrival of a young lady of fashionable appearance at Elba was matter
of cogitation to Mrs. Cavely. She was disposed to suspect that it meant
something, and Van Diemen's behaviour to her brother would of itself have
fortified any suspicion. He did not call at the house on the beach, he
did not invite Martin to dinner, he was rarely seen, and when he appeared
at the Town Council he once or twice violently opposed his friend Martin,
who came home ruffled, deeply offended in his interests and his dignity.

"Have you noticed any difference in Annette's treatment of you, dear?"
Mrs. Cavely inquired.

"No," said Tinman; "none. She shakes hands. She asks after my health. She
offers me my cup of tea."

"I have seen all that. But does she avoid privacy with you?"

"Dear me, no! Why should she? I hope, Martha, I am a man who may be
confided in by any young lady in England."

"I am sure you may, dear Martin."

"She has an objection to name the . . . the day," said Martin. "I have
informed her that I have an objection to long engagements. I don't like
her new companion: She says she has been presented at Court. I greatly
doubt it."

"It's to give herself a style, you may depend. I don't believe her!"
exclaimed Mrs. Cavely, with sharp personal asperity.

Brother and sister examined together the Court Guide they had purchased
on the occasion at once of their largest outlay and most thrilling
gratification; in it they certainly found the name of General Fellingham.
"But he can't be related to a newspaper-writer," said Mrs. Cavely.

To which her brother rejoined, "Unless the young man turned scamp. I hate
unproductive professions."

"I hate him, Martin." Mrs. Cavely laughed in scorn, "I should say, I pity
him. It's as clear to me as the sun at noonday, he wanted Annette. That's
why I was in a hurry. How I dreaded he would come that evening to our
dinner! When I saw him absent, I could have cried out it was Providence!
And so be careful--we have had everything done for us from on High as
yet--but be careful of your temper, dear Martin. I will hasten on the
union; for it's a shame of a girl to drag a man behind her till he 's old
at the altar. Temper, dear, if you will only think of it, is the weak
point."

"Now he has begun boasting to me of his Australian wines!" Tinman
ejaculated.

"Bear it. Bear it as you do Gippsland. My dear, you have the retort in
your heart:--Yes! but have you a Court in Australia?"

"Ha! and his Australian wines cost twice the amount I pay for mine!"

"Quite true. We are not obliged to buy them, I should hope. I would,
though--a dozen--if I thought it necessary, to keep him quiet."

Tinman continued muttering angrily over the Australian wines, with a word
of irritation at Gippsland, while promising to be watchful of his temper.

"What good is Australia to us," he asked, "if it does n't bring us
money?"

"It's going to, my dear," said Mrs. Cavely. "Think of that when he begins
boasting his Australia. And though it's convict's money, as he
confesses--"

"With his convict's money!" Tinman interjected tremblingly. "How long am
I expected to wait?"

"Rely on me to hurry on the day," said Mrs. Cavely. "There is no other
annoyance?"

"Wherever I am going to buy, that man outbids me and then says it's the
old country's want of pluck and dash, and doing things large-handed! A
man who'd go on his knees to stop in England!" Tinman vociferated in a
breath; and fairly reddened by the effort: "He may have to do it yet. I
can't stand insult."

"You are less able to stand insult after Honours," his sister said, in
obedience to what she had observed of him since his famous visit to
London. "It must be so, in nature. But temper is everything just now.
Remember, it was by command of temper, and letting her father put himself
in the wrong, you got hold of Annette. And I would abstain even from
wine. For sometimes after it, you have owned it disagreed. And I have
noticed these eruptions between you and Mr. Smith--as he calls
himself--generally after wine."

"Always the poor! the poor! money for the poor!" Tinman harped on further
grievances against Van Diemen. "I say doctors have said the drain on the
common is healthy; it's a healthy smell, nourishing. We've always had it
and been a healthy town. But the sea encroaches, and I say my house and
my property is in danger. He buys my house over my head, and offers me
the Crouch to live in at an advanced rent. And then he sells me my house
at an advanced price, and I buy, and then he votes against a penny for
the protection of the shore! And we're in Winter again! As if he was not
in my power!"

"My dear Martin, to Elba we go, and soon, if you will govern your
temper," said Mrs. Cavely. "You're an angel to let me speak of it so, and
it's only that man that irritates you. I call him sinfully ostentatious."

"I could blow him from a gun if I spoke out, and he knows it! He's
wanting in common gratitude, let alone respect," Tinman snorted.

"But he has a daughter, my dear."

Tinman slowly and crackingly subsided.

His main grievance against Van Diemen was the non-recognition of his
importance by that uncultured Australian, who did not seem to be
conscious of the dignities and distinctions we come to in our country.
The moneyed daughter, the prospective marriage, for an economical man
rejected by every lady surrounding him, advised him to lock up his temper
in submission to Martha.

"Bring Annette to dine with us," he said, on Martha's proposing a visit
to the dear young creature.

Martha drank a glass of her brother's wine at lunch, and departed on the
mission.

Annette declined to be brought. Her excuse was her guest, Miss
Fellingham.

"Bring her too, by all means--if you'll condescend, I am sure," Mrs.
Cavely said to Mary.

"I am much obliged to you; I do not dine out at present," said the London
lady.

"Dear me! are you ill?"

"No."

"Nothing in the family, I hope?"

"My family?"

"I am sure, I beg pardon," said Mrs. Cavely, bridling with a spite
pardonable by the severest moralist.

"Can I speak to you alone?" she addressed Annette.

Miss Fellingham rose.

Mrs. Cavely confronted her. "I can't allow it; I can't think of it. I'm
only taking a little liberty with one I may call my future
sister-in-law."

"Shall I come out with you?" said Annette, in sheer lassitude assisting
Mary Fellingham in her scheme to show the distastefulness of this lady
and her brother.

"Not if you don't wish to."

"I have no objection."

"Another time will do."

"Will you write?"

"By post indeed!"

Mrs. Cavely delivered a laugh supposed to, be peculiar to the English
stage.

"It would be a penny thrown away," said Annette. "I thought you could
send a messenger."

Intercommunication with Miss Fellingham had done mischief to her high
moral conception of the pair inhabiting the house on the beach. Mrs.
Cavely saw it, and could not conceal that she smarted.

Her counsel to her brother, after recounting the offensive scene to him
in animated dialogue, was, to give Van Diemen a fright.

"I wish I had not drunk that glass of sherry before starting," she
exclaimed, both savagely and sagely. "It's best after business. And these
gentlemen's habits of yours of taking to dining late upset me. I'm afraid
I showed temper; but you, Martin, would not have borne one-tenth of what
I did."

"How dare you say so!" her brother rebuked her indignantly; and the house
on the beach enclosed with difficulty a storm between brother and sister,
happily not heard outside, because of loud winds raging.

Nevertheless Tinman pondered on Martha's idea of the wisdom of giving Van
Diemen a fright.




CHAPTER X

The English have been called a bad-tempered people, but this is to judge
of them by their manifestations; whereas an examination into causes might
prove them to be no worse tempered than that man is a bad sleeper who
lies in a biting bed. If a sagacious instinct directs them to
discountenance realistic tales, the realistic tale should justify its
appearance by the discovery of an apology for the tormented souls. Once
they sang madrigals, once they danced on the green, they revelled in
their lusty humours, without having recourse to the pun for fun, an
exhibition of hundreds of bare legs for jollity, a sentimental wailing
all in the throat for music. Evidence is procurable that they have been
an artificially-reared people, feeding on the genius of inventors,
transposers, adulterators, instead of the products of nature, for the
last half century; and it is unfair to affirm of them that they are
positively this or that. They are experiments. They are the sons and
victims of a desperate Energy, alluring by cheapness, satiating with
quantity, that it may mount in the social scale, at the expense of their
tissues. The land is in a state of fermentation to mount, and the shop,
which has shot half their stars to their social zenith, is what verily
they would scald themselves to wash themselves free of. Nor is it in any
degree a reprehensible sign that they should fly as from hue and cry the
title of tradesman. It is on the contrary the spot of sanity, which bids
us right cordially hope. Energy, transferred to the moral sense, may
clear them yet.

Meanwhile this beer, this wine, both are of a character to have killed
more than the tempers of a less gifted people. Martin Tinman invited Van
Diemen Smith to try the flavour of a wine that, as he said, he thought of
"laying down."

It has been hinted before of a strange effect upon the minds of men who
knew what they were going to, when they received an invitation to dine
with Tinman. For the sake of a little social meeting at any cost, they
accepted it; accepted it with a sigh, midway as by engineering
measurement between prospective and retrospective; as nearly mechanical
as things human may be, like the Mussulman's accustomed cry of Kismet.
Has it not been related of the little Jew babe sucking at its mother's
breast in Jerusalem, that this innocent, long after the Captivity, would
start convulsively, relinquishing its feast, and indulging in the purest.
Hebrew lamentation of the most tenacious of races, at the passing sound
of a Babylonian or a Ninevite voice? In some such manner did men, unable
to refuse, deep in what remained to them of nature, listen to Tinman; and
so did Van Diemen, sighing heavily under the operation of simple animal
instinct.

"You seem miserable," said Tinman, not oblivious of his design to give
his friend a fright.

"Do I? No, I'm all right," Van Diemen replied. "I'm thinking of
alterations at the Hall before Summer, to accommodate guests--if I stay
here."

"I suppose you would not like to be separated from Annette."

"Separated? No, I should think I shouldn't. Who'd do it?"

"Because I should not like to leave my good sister Martha all to herself
in a house so near the sea--"

"Why not go to the Crouch, man?"

"Thank you."

"No thanks needed if you don't take advantage of the offer."

They were at the entrance to Elba, whither Mr. Tinman was betaking
himself to see his intended. He asked if Annette was at home, and to his
great stupefaction heard that she had gone to London for a week.

Dissembling the spite aroused within him, he postponed his very strongly
fortified design, and said, "You must be lonely."

Van Diemen informed him that it would be for a night only, as young
Fellingham was coming down to keep him company.

"At six o'clock this evening, then," said Tinman. "We're not fashionable
in Winter."

"Hang me, if I know when ever we were!" Van Diemen rejoined.

"Come, though, you'd like to be. You've got your ambition, Philip, like
other men."

"Respectable and respected--that 's my ambition, Mr. Mart."

Tinman simpered: "With your wealth!"

"Ay, I 'm rich--for a contented mind."

"I 'm pretty sure you 'll approve my new vintage," said Tinman. "It's
direct from Oporto, my wine-merchant tells me, on his word."

"What's the price?"

"No, no, no. Try it first. It's rather a stiff price."

Van Diemen was partially reassured by the announcement. "What do you call
a stiff price?"

"Well!--over thirty."

"Double that, and you may have a chance."

"Now," cried Tinman, exasperated, "how can a man from Australia know
anything about prices for port? You can't divest your ideas of diggers'
prices. You're like an intoxicating drink yourself on the tradesmen of
our town. You think it fine--ha! ha! I daresay, Philip, I should be doing
the same if I were up to your mark at my banker's. We can't all of us be
lords, nor baronets."

Catching up his temper thus cleverly, he curbed that habitual runaway,
and retired from his old friend's presence to explode in the society of
the solitary Martha.

Annette's behaviour was as bitterly criticized by the sister as by the
brother.

"She has gone to those Fellingham people; and she may be thinking of
jilting us," Mrs. Cavely said.

"In that case, I have no mercy," cried her brother. "I have borne"--he
bowed with a professional spiritual humility--"as I should, but it may
get past endurance. I say I have borne enough; and if the worst comes to
the worst, and I hand him over to the authorities--I say I mean him no
harm, but he has struck me. He beat me as a boy and he has struck me as a
man, and I say I have no thought of revenge, but I cannot have him here;
and I say if I drive him out of the country back to his Gippsland!"

Martin Tinman quivered for speech, probably for that which feedeth
speech, as is the way with angry men.

"And what?--what then?" said Martha, with the tender mellifluousness of
sisterly reproach. "What good can you expect of letting temper get the
better of you, dear?"

Tinman did not enjoy her recent turn for usurping the lead in their
consultations, and he said, tartly, "This good, Martha. We shall get the
Hall at my price, and be Head People here. Which," he raised his note,
"which he, a Deserter, has no right to pretend to give himself out to be.
What your feelings may be as an old inhabitant, I don't know, but I have
always looked up to the people at Elba Hall, and I say I don't like to
have a Deserter squandering convict's money there--with his
forty-pound-a-year cook, and his champagne at seventy a dozen. It's the
luxury of Sodom and Gomorrah."

"That does not prevent its being very nice to dine there," said Mrs.
Cavely; "and it shall be our table for good if I have any management."

"You mean me, ma'am," bellowed Tinman.

"Not at all," she breathed, in dulcet contrast. "You are good-looking,
Martin, but you have not half such pretty eyes as the person I mean. I
never ventured to dream of managing you, Martin. I am thinking of the
people at Elba."

"But why this extraordinary treatment of me, Martha?"

"She's a child, having her head turned by those Fellinghams. But she's
honourable; she has sworn to me she would be honourable."

"You do think I may as well give him a fright?" Tinman inquired hungrily.

"A sort of hint; but very gentle, Martin. Do be gentle--casual like--as
if you did n't want to say it. Get him on his Gippsland. Then if he
brings you to words, you can always laugh back, and say you will go to
Kew and see the Fernery, and fancy all that, so high, on Helvellyn or the
Downs. Why"--Mrs. Cavely, at the end of her astute advices and
cautionings, as usual, gave loose to her natural character--"Why that man
came back to England at all, with his boastings of Gippsland, I can't for
the life of me find out. It 's a perfect mystery."

"It is," Tinman sounded his voice at a great depth, reflectively. Glad of
taking the part she was perpetually assuming of late, he put out his hand
and said: "But it may have been ordained for our good, Martha."

"True, dear," said she, with an earnest sentiment of thankfulness to the
Power which had led him round to her way of thinking and feeling.




CHAPTER XI

Annette had gone to the big metropolis, which burns in colonial
imaginations as the sun of cities, and was about to see something of
London, under the excellent auspices of her new friend, Mary Fellingham,
and a dense fog. She was alarmed by the darkness, a little in fear, too,
of Herbert; and these feelings caused her to chide herself for leaving
her father.

Hearing her speak of her father sadly, Herbert kindly proposed to go down
to Crikswich on the very day of her coming. She thanked him, and gave him
a taste of bitterness by smiling favourably on his offer; but as he
wished her to discern and take to heart the difference between one man
and another, in the light of a suitor, he let her perceive that it cost
him heavy pangs to depart immediately, and left her to brood on his
example. Mary Fellingham liked Annette. She thought her a sensible girl
of uncultivated sensibilities, the reverse of thousands; not commonplace,
therefore; and that the sensibilities were expanding was to be seen in
her gradual unreadiness to talk of her engagement to Mr. Tinman, though
her intimacy with Mary warmed daily. She considered she was bound to
marry the man at some distant date, and did not feel unhappiness yet. She
had only felt uneasy when she had to greet and converse with her
intended; especially when the London young lady had been present.
Herbert's departure relieved her of the pressing sense of contrast. She
praised him to Mary for his extreme kindness to her father, and down in
her unsounded heart desired that her father might appreciate it even more
than she did.

Herbert drove into Crikswich at night, and stopped at Crickledon's, where
he heard that Van Diemen was dining with Tinman.

Crickledon the carpenter permitted certain dry curves to play round his
lips like miniature shavings at the name of Tinman; but Herbert asked,
"What is it now?" in vain, and he went to Crickledon the cook.

This union of the two Crickledons, male and female; was an ideal one,
such as poor women dream of; and men would do the same, if they knew how
poor they are. Each had a profession, each was independent of the other,
each supported the fabric. Consequently there was mutual respect, as
between two pillars of a house. Each saw the other's faults with a sly
wink to the world, and an occasional interchange of sarcasm that was
tonic, very strengthening to the wits without endangering the habit of
affection. Crickledon the cook stood for her own opinions, and directed
the public conduct of Crickledon the carpenter; and if he went astray
from the line she marked out, she put it down to human nature, to which
she was tolerant. He, when she had not followed his advice, ascribed it
to the nature of women. She never said she was the equal of her husband;
but the carpenter proudly acknowledged that she was as good as a man, and
he bore with foibles derogatory to such high stature, by teaching himself
to observe a neatness of domestic and general management that told him he
certainly was not as good as a woman. Herbert delighted in them. The cook
regaled the carpenter with skilful, tasty, and economic dishes; and the
carpenter, obedient to her supplications, had promised, in the event of
his outliving her, that no hands but his should have the making of her
coffin. "It is so nice," she said, "to think one's own husband will put
together the box you are to lie in, of his own make!" Had they been even
a doubtfully united pair, the cook's anticipation of a comfortable
coffin, the work of the best carpenter in England, would have kept them
together; and that which fine cookery does for the cementing of couples
needs not to be recounted to those who have read a chapter or two of the
natural history of the male sex.

"Crickledon, my dear soul, your husband is labouring with a bit of fun,"
Herbert said to her.

"He would n't laugh loud at Punch, for fear of an action," she replied.
"He never laughs out till he gets to bed, and has locked the door; and
when he does he says 'Hush!' to me. Tinman is n't bailiff again just yet,
and where he has his bailiff's best Court suit from, you may ask. He
exercises in it off and on all the week, at night, and sometimes in the
middle of the day."

Herbert rallied her for her gossip's credulity.

"It's truth," she declared. "I have it from the maid of the house, little
Jane, whom he pays four pound a year for all the work of the house: a
clever little thing with her hands and her head she is; and can read and
write beautiful; and she's a mind to leave 'em if they don't advance her.
She knocked and went in while he was full blaze, and bowing his poll to
his glass. And now he turns the key, and a child might know he was at
it."

"He can't be such a donkey!"

"And he's been seen at the window on the seaside. 'Who's your Admiral
staying at the house on the beach?' men have inquired as they come
ashore. My husband has heard it. Tinman's got it on his brain. He might
be cured by marriage to a sound-headed woman, but he 'll soon be wanting
to walk about in silk legs if he stops a bachelor. They tell me his old
mother here had a dress value twenty pound; and pomp's inherited. Save as
he may, there's his leak."

Herbert's contempt for Tinman was intense; it was that of the young and
ignorant who live in their imaginations like spendthrifts, unaware of the
importance of them as the food of life, and of how necessary it is to
seize upon the solider one among them for perpetual sustenance when the
unsubstantial are vanishing. The great event of his bailiff's term of
office had become the sun of Tinman's system. He basked in its rays. He
meant to be again the proud official, royally distinguished; meantime,
though he knew not that his days were dull, he groaned under the dulness;
and, as cart or cab horses, uncomplaining as a rule, show their view of
the nature of harness when they have release to frisk in a field, it is
possible that existence was made tolerable to the jogging man by some
minutes of excitement in his bailiff's Court suit. Really to pasture on
our recollections we ought to dramatize them. There is, however, only the
testimony of a maid and a mariner to show that Tinman did it, and those
are witnesses coming of particularly long-bow classes, given to magnify
small items of fact.

On reaching the hall Herbert found the fire alight in the smoking-room,
and soon after settling himself there he heard Van Diemen's voice at the
hall-door saying good night to Tinman.

"Thank the Lord! there you are," said Van Diemen, entering the room. "I
couldn't have hoped so much. That rascal!" he turned round to the door.
"He has been threatening me, and then smoothing me. Hang his oil! It's
combustible. And hang the port he's for laying down, as he calls it.
'Leave it to posterity,' says I. 'Why?' says he. 'Because the young ones
'll be better able to take care of themselves,' says I, and he insists on
an explanation. I gave it to him. Out he bursts like a wasp's nest. He
may have said what he did say in temper. He seemed sorry afterwards--poor
old Mart! The scoundrel talked of Horse Guards and telegraph wires."

"Scoundrel, but more ninny," said Herbert, full of his contempt. "Dare
him to do his worst. The General tells me they 'd be glad to overlook it
at the Guards, even if they had all the facts. Branding 's out of the
question."

"I swear it was done in my time," cried Van Diemen, all on fire.

"It's out of the question. You might be advised to leave England for a
few months. As for the society here--"

"If I leave, I leave for good. My heart's broken. I'm disappointed. I'm
deceived in my friend. He and I in the old days! What's come to him? What
on earth is it changes men who stop in England so? It can't be the
climate. And did you mention my name to General Fellingham?"

"Certainly not," said Herbert. "But listen to me, sir, a moment. Why not
get together half-a-dozen friends of the neighbourhood, and make a clean
breast of it. Englishmen like that kind of manliness, and they are sure
to ring sound to it."

"I couldn't!" Van Diemen sighed. "It's not a natural feeling I have about
it--I 've brooded on the word. If I have a nightmare, I see Deserter
written in sulphur on the black wall."

"You can't remain at his mercy, and be bullied as you are. He makes you
ill, sir. He won't do anything, but he'll go on worrying you. I'd stop
him at once. I'd take the train to-morrow and get an introduction to the
Commander-in-Chief. He's the very man to be kind to you in a situation
like this. The General would get you the introduction."

"That's more to my taste; but no, I couldn't," Van Diemen moaned in his
weakness. "Money has unmanned me. I was n't this kind of man formerly;
nor more was Mart Tinman, the traitor! All the world seems changeing for
the worse, and England is n't what she used to be."

"You let that man spoil it for you, sir." Herbert related Mrs.
Crickledon's tale of Mr. Tinman, adding, "He's an utter donkey. I should
defy him. What I should do would be to let him know to-morrow morning
that you don't intend to see him again. Blow for, blow, is the thing he
requires. He'll be cringing to you in a week."

"And you'd like to marry Annette," said Van Diemen, relishing,
nevertheless, the advice, whose origin and object he perceived so
plainly.

"Of course I should," said Herbert, franker still in his colour than his
speech.

"I don't see him my girl's husband." Van Diemen eyed the red hollow in
the falling coals. "When I came first, and found him a healthy man,
good-looking enough for a trifle over forty, I 'd have given her gladly,
she nodding Yes. Now all my fear is she's in earnest. Upon my soul, I had
the notion old Mart was a sort of a boy still; playing man, you know. But
how can you understand? I fancied his airs and stiffness were put on;
thought I saw him burning true behind it. Who can tell? He seems to be
jealous of my buying property in his native town. Something frets him. I
ought never to have struck him! There's my error, and I repent it. Strike
a friend! I wonder he didn't go off to the Horse Guards at once. I might
have done it in his place, if I found I couldn't lick him. I should have
tried kicking first."

"Yes, shinning before peaching," said Herbert, astonished almost as much
as he was disgusted by the inveterate sentimental attachment of Van
Diemen to his old friend.

Martin Tinman anticipated good things of the fright he had given the man
after dinner. He had, undoubtedly, yielded to temper, forgetting pure
policy, which it is so exceeding difficult to practice. But he had
soothed the startled beast; they had shaken hands at parting, and Tinman
hoped that the week of Annette's absence would enable him to mould her
father. Young Fellingham's appointment to come to Elba had slipped Mr.
Tinman's memory. It was annoying to see this intruder. "At all events,
he's not with Annette," said Mrs. Cavely. "How long has her father to run
on?"

"Five months," Tinman replied. "He would have completed his term of
service in five months."

"And to think of his being a rich man because he deserted," Mrs. Cavely
interjected. "Oh! I do call it immoral. He ought to be apprehended and
punished, to be an example for the good of society. If you lose time, my
dear Martin, your chance is gone. He's wriggling now. And if I could
believe he talked us over to that young impudent, who has n't a penny
that he does n't get from his pen, I'd say, denounce him to-morrow. I
long for Elba. I hate this house. It will be swallowed up some day; I
know it; I have dreamt it. Elba at any cost. Depend upon it, Martin, you
have been foiled in your suits on account of the mean house you inhabit.
Enter Elba as that girl's husband, or go there to own it, and girls will
crawl to you."

"You are a ridiculous woman, Martha," said Tinman, not dissenting.

The mixture of an idea of public duty with a feeling of personal rancour
is a strong incentive to the pursuit of a stern line of conduct; and the
glimmer of self-interest superadded does not check the steps of the
moralist. Nevertheless, Tinman held himself in. He loved peace. He
preached it, he disseminated it. At a meeting in the town he strove to
win Van Diemen's voice in favour of a vote for further moneys to protect
"our shores." Van Diemen laughed at him, telling him he wanted a
battery. "No," said Tinman, "I've had enough to do with soldiers."

"How's that?"

"They might be more cautious. I say, they might learn to know their
friends from their enemies."

"That's it, that's it," said Van Diemen. "If you say much more, my
hearty, you'll find me bidding against you next week for Marine Parade
and Belle Vue Terrace. I've a cute eye for property, and this town's
looking up."

"You look about you before you speculate in land and house property
here," retorted Tinman.

Van Diemen bore so much from him that he asked himself whether he could
be an Englishman. The title of Deserter was his raw wound. He attempted
to form the habit of stigmatizing himself with it in the privacy of his
chamber, and he succeeded in establishing the habit of talking to
himself, so that he was heard by the household, and Annette, on her
return, was obliged to warn him of his indiscretion. This development of
a new weakness exasperated him. Rather to prove his courage by defiance
than to baffle Tinman's ambition to become the principal owner of houses
in Crikswich, by outbidding him at the auction for the sale of Marine
Parade and Belle Vue Terrace, Van Diemen ran the houses up at the
auction, and ultimately had Belle Vue knocked down to him. So fierce was
the quarrel that Annette, in conjunction with Mrs. Cavely; was called on
to interpose with her sweetest grace. "My native place," Tinman said to
her; "it is my native place. I have a pride in it; I desire to own
property in it, and your father opposes me. He opposes me. Then says I
may have it back at auction price, after he has gone far to double the
price! I have borne--I repeat I have borne too much."

"Are n't your properties to be equal to one?" said Mrs. Cavely, smiling
mother--like from Tinman to Annette.

He sought to produce a fondling eye in a wry face, and said, "Yes, I will
remember that."

"Annette will bless you with her dear hand in a month or two at the
outside," Mrs. Cavely murmured, cherishingly.

"She will?" Tinman cracked his body to bend to her.

"Oh, I cannot say; do not distress me. Be friendly with papa," the girl
resumed, moving to escape.

"That is the essential," said Mrs. Cavely; and continued, when Annette
had gone, "The essential is to get over the next few months, miss, and
then to snap your fingers at us. Martin, I would force that man to sell
you Belle Vue under the price he paid for it, just to try your power."

Tinman was not quite so forcible. He obtained Belle Vue at auction price,
and his passion for revenge was tipped with fire by having it accorded as
a friend's favour.

The poisoned state of his mind was increased by a December high wind that
rattled his casements, and warned him of his accession of property
exposed to the elements. Both he and his sister attributed their
nervousness to the sinister behaviour of Van Diemen. For the house on the
beach had only, in most distant times, been threatened by the sea, and no
house on earth was better protected from man,--Neptune, in the shape of a
coastguard, being paid by Government to patrol about it during the hours
of darkness. They had never had any fears before Van Diemen arrived, and
caused them to give thrice their ordinary number of dinners to guests per
annum. In fact, before Van Diemen came, the house on the beach looked on
Crikswich without a rival to challenge its anticipated lordship over the
place, and for some inexplicable reason it seemed to its inhabitants to
have been a safer as well as a happier residence.

They were consoled by Tinman's performance of a clever stroke in
privately purchasing the cottages west of the town, and including
Crickledon's shop, abutting on Marine Parade. Then from the house on the
beach they looked at an entire frontage of their property.

They entered the month of February. No further time was to be lost, "or
we shall wake up to find that man has fooled us," Mrs. Cavely said.
Tinman appeared at Elba to demand a private interview with Annette. His
hat was blown into the hall as the door opened to him, and he himself was
glad to be sheltered by the door, so violent was the gale. Annette and
her father were sitting together. They kept the betrothed gentleman
waiting a very long time. At last Van Diemen went to him, and said,
"Netty 'll see you, if you must. I suppose you have no business with me?"

"Not to-day," Tinman replied.

Van Diemen strode round the drawing-room with his hands in his pockets.
"There's a disparity of ages," he said, abruptly, as if desirous to pour
out his lesson while he remembered it. "A man upwards of forty marries a
girl under twenty, he's over sixty before she's forty; he's decaying when
she's only mellow. I ought never to have struck you, I know. And you're
such an infernal bad temper at times, and age does n't improve that, they
say; and she's been educated tip-top. She's sharp on grammar, and a man
may n't like that much when he's a husband. See her, if you must. But she
does n't take to the idea; there's the truth. Disparity of ages and
unsuitableness of dispositions--what was it Fellingham said?--like two
barrel-organs grinding different tunes all day in a house."

"I don't want to hear Mr. Fellingham's comparisons," Tinman snapped.

"Oh! he's nothing to the girl," said Van Diemen. "She doesn't stomach
leaving me."

"My dear Philip! why should she leave you? When we have interests in
common as one household--"

"She says you're such a damned bad temper."

Tinman was pursuing amicably, "When we are united--" But the frightful
charge brought against his temper drew him up. "Fiery I may be. Annette
has seen I am forgiving. I am a Christian. You have provoked me; you have
struck me."

"I 'll give you a couple of thousand pounds in hard money to be off the
bargain, and not bother the girl," said Van Diemen.

"Now," rejoined Tinman, "I am offended. I like money, like most men who
have made it. You do, Philip. But I don't come courting like a pauper.
Not for ten thousand; not for twenty. Money cannot be a compensation to
me for the loss of Annette. I say I love Annette."

"Because," Van Diemen continued his speech, "you trapped us into that
engagement, Mart. You dosed me with the stuff you buy for wine, while
your sister sat sugaring and mollifying my girl; and she did the trick in
a minute, taking Netty by surprise when I was all heart and no head; and
since that you may have seen the girl turn her head from marriage like my
woods from the wind."

"Mr. Van Diemen Smith!" Tinman panted; he mastered himself. "You shall
not provoke me. My introductions of you in this neighbourhood, my
patronage, prove my friendship."

"You'll be a good old fellow, Mart, when you get over your hopes of being
knighted."

"Mr. Fellingham may set you against my wine, Philip. Let me tell you--I
know you--you would not object to have your daughter called Lady."

"With a spindle-shanked husband capering in a Court suit before he goes
to bed every night, that he may n't forget what a fine fellow he was one
day bygone! You're growing lean on it, Mart, like a recollection fifty
years old."

"You have never forgiven me that day, Philip!"

"Jealous, am I? Take the money, give up the girl, and see what friends
we'll be. I'll back your buyings, I'll advertise your sellings. I'll pay
a painter to paint you in your Court suit, and hang up a copy of you in
my diningroom."

"Annette is here," said Tinman, who had been showing Etna's tokens of
insurgency.

He admired Annette. Not till latterly had Herbert Fellingham been so true
an admirer of Annette as Tinman was. She looked sincere and she dressed
inexpensively. For these reasons she was the best example of womankind
that he knew, and her enthusiasm for England had the sympathetic effect
on him of obscuring the rest of the world, and thrilling him with the
reassuring belief that he was blest in his blood and his
birthplace--points which her father, with his boastings of Gippsland, and
other people talking of scenes on the Continent, sometimes disturbed in
his mind.

"Annette," said he, "I come requesting to converse with you in private."

"If you wish it--I would rather not," she answered.

Tinman raised his head, as often at Helmstone when some offending
shopwoman was to hear her doom.

He bent to her. "I see. Before your father, then!"

"It isn't an agreeable bit of business, to me," Van Diemen grumbled,
frowning and shrugging.

"I have come, Annette, to ask you, to beg you, entreat--before a third
person--laughing, Philip?"

"The wrong side of my mouth, my friend. And I'll tell you what: we're in
for heavy seas, and I 'm not sorry you've taken the house on the beach
off my hands."

"Pray, Mr. Tinman, speak at once, if you please, and I will do my best.
Papa vexes you."

"No, no," replied Tinman.

He renewed his commencement. Van Diemen interrupted him again.

"Hang your power over me, as you call it. Eh, old Mart? I'm a Deserter.
I'll pay a thousand pounds to the British army, whether they punish me or
not. March me off tomorrow!"

"Papa, you are unjust, unkind." Annette turned to him in tears.

"No, no," said Tinman, "I do not feel it. Your father has misunderstood
me, Annette."

"I am sure he has," she said fervently. "And, Mr. Tinman, I will
faithfully promise that so long as you are good to my dear father, I will
not be untrue to my engagement, only do not wish me to name any day. We
shall be such very good dear friends if you consent to this. Will you?"

Pausing for a space, the enamoured man unrolled his voice in lamentation:
"Oh! Annette, how long will you keep me?"

"There; you'll set her crying!" said Van Diemen. "Now you can run
upstairs, Netty. By jingo! Mart Tinman, you've got a bass voice for love
affairs."

"Annette," Tinman called to her, and made her turn round as she was
retiring. "I must know the day before the end of winter. Please. In kind
consideration. My arrangements demand it."

"Do let the girl go," said Van Diemen. "Dine with me tonight and I'll
give you a wine to brisk your spirits, old boy"

"Thank you. When I have ordered dinner at home, I----and my wine agrees
with ME," Tinman replied.

"I doubt it."

"You shall not provoke me, Philip."

They parted stiffly.

Mrs. Cavely had unpleasant domestic news to communicate to her brother,
in return for his tale of affliction and wrath. It concerned the
ungrateful conduct of their little housemaid Jane, who, as Mrs. Cavely
said, "egged on by that woman Crickledon," had been hinting at an advance
of wages.

"She didn't dare speak, but I saw what was in her when she broke a plate,
and wouldn't say she was sorry. I know she goes to Crickledon and talks
us over. She's a willing worker, but she has no heart."

Tinman had been accustomed in his shop at Helmstone--where heaven had
blessed him with the patronage of the rich, as visibly as rays of
supernal light are seen selecting from above the heads of prophets in the
illustrations to cheap holy books--to deal with willing workers that have
no hearts. Before the application for an advance of wages--and he knew
the signs of it coming--his method was to calculate how much he might be
asked for, and divide the estimated sum by the figure 4; which, as it
seemed to come from a generous impulse, and had been unsolicited, was
often humbly accepted, and the willing worker pursued her lean and hungry
course in his service. The treatment did not always agree with his males.
Women it suited; because they do not like to lift up their voices unless
they are in a passion; and if you take from them the grounds of temper,
you take their words away--you make chickens of them. And as Tinman said,
"Gratitude I never expect!" Why not? For the reason that he knew human
nature. He could record shocking instances of the ingratitude of human
nature, as revealed to him in the term of his tenure of the shop at
Helmstone. Blest from above, human nature's wickedness had from below too
frequently besulphured and suffumigated him for his memory to be dim; and
though he was ever ready to own himself an example that heaven
prevaileth, he could cite instances of scandal-mongering shop-women
dismissed and working him mischief in the town, which pointed to him in
person for a proof that the Powers of Good and Evil were still engaged in
unhappy contention. Witness Strikes! witness Revolutions!

"Tell her, when she lays the cloth, that I advance her, on account of
general good conduct, five shillings per annum. Add," said Tinman, "that
I wish no thanks. It is for her merits--to reward her; you understand me,
Martha?"

"Quite; if you think it prudent, Martin."

"I do. She is not to breathe a syllable to cook."

"She will."

"Then keep your eye on cook."

Mrs. Cavely promised she would do so. She felt sure she was paying five
shillings for ingratitude; and, therefore, it was with humility that she
owned her error when, while her brother sipped his sugared acrid liquor
after dinner (in devotion to the doctor's decree, that he should take a
couple of glasses, rigorously as body-lashing friar), she imparted to him
the singular effect of the advance of wages upon little Jane--"Oh, ma'am!
and me never asked you for it!" She informed her brother how little Jane
had confided to her that they were called "close," and how little Jane
had vowed she would--the willing little thing!--go about letting
everybody know their kindness.

"Yes! Ah!" Tinman inhaled the praise. "No, no; I don't want to be
puffed," he said. "Remember cook. I have," he continued, meditatively,
"rarely found my plan fail. But mind, I give the Crickledons notice to
quit to-morrow. They are a pest. Besides, I shall probably think of
erecting villas."

"How dreadful the wind is!" Mrs. Cavely exclaimed. "I would give that
girl Annette one chance more. Try her by letter."

Tinman despatched a business letter to Annette, which brought back a
vague, unbusiness-like reply. Two days afterward Mrs. Cavely reported to
her brother the presence of Mr. Fellingham and Miss Mary Fellingham in
Crikswich. At her dictation he wrote a second letter. This time the reply
came from Van Diemen:

   "My DEAR MARTIN,--Please do not go on bothering my girl. She does
   not like the idea of leaving me, and my experience tells me I could
   not live in the house with you. So there it is. Take it friendly.
   I have always wanted to be, and am,
                    "Your friend,
                            "PHIL."

Tinman proceeded straight to Elba; that is, as nearly straight as the
wind would allow his legs to walk. Van Diemen was announced to be out;
Miss Annette begged to be excused, under the pretext that she was unwell;
and Tinman heard of a dinner-party at Elba that night.

He met Mr. Fellingham on the carriage drive. The young Londoner presumed
to touch upon Tinman's private affairs by pleading on behalf of the
Crikledons, who were, he said, much dejected by the notice they had
received to quit house and shop.

"Another time," bawled Tinman. "I can't hear you in this wind."

"Come in," said Fellingham.

"The master of the house is absent," was the smart retort roared at him;
and Tinman staggered away, enjoying it as he did his wine.

His house rocked. He was backed by his sister in the assurance that he
had been duped.

The process he supposed to be thinking, which was the castigation of his
brains with every sting wherewith a native touchiness could ply immediate
recollection, led him to conclude that he must bring Van Diemen to his
senses, and Annette running to him for mercy.

He sat down that night amid the howling of the storm, wind whistling,
water crashing, casements rattling, beach desperately dragging, as by the
wide-stretched star-fish fingers of the half-engulphed.

He hardly knew what he wrote. The man was in a state of personal terror,
burning with indignation at Van Diemen as the main cause of his jeopardy.
For, in order to prosecute his pursuit of Annette, he had abstained from
going to Helmstone to pay moneys into his bank there, and what was
precious to life as well as life itself, was imperilled by those
two--Annette and her father--who, had they been true, had they been
honest, to say nothing of honourable, would by this time have opened Elba
to him as a fast and safe abode.

His letter was addressed, on a large envelope,

   "To the Adjutant-General,

   "HORSE GUARDS."

But if ever consigned to the Post, that post-office must be in London;
and Tinman left the letter on his desk till the morning should bring
counsel to him as to the London friend to whom he might despatch it under
cover for posting, if he pushed it so far.

Sleep was impossible. Black night favoured the tearing fiends of
shipwreck, and looking through a back window over sea, Tinman saw with
dismay huge towering ghostwhite wreaths, that travelled up swiftly on his
level, and lit the dark as they flung themselves in ruin, with a gasp,
across the mound of shingle at his feet.

He undressed: His sister called to him to know if they were in danger.
Clothed in his dressing-gown, he slipped along to her door, to vociferate
to her hoarsely that she must not frighten the servants; and one fine
quality in the training of the couple, which had helped them to prosper,
a form of self-command, kept her quiet in her shivering fears.

For a distraction Tinman pulled open the drawers of his wardrobe. His
glittering suit lay in one. And he thought, "What wonderful changes there
are in the world!" meaning, between a man exposed to the wrath of the
elements, and the same individual reading from vellum, in that suit, in a
palace, to the Head of all of us!

The presumption is; that he must have often done it before. The fact is
established, that he did it that night. The conclusion drawn from it is,
that it must have given him a sense of stability and safety.

At any rate that he put on the suit is quite certain.

Probably it was a work of ingratiation and degrees; a feeling of the
silk, a trying on to one leg, then a matching of the fellow with it. O
you Revolutionists! who would have no state, no ceremonial, and but one
order of galligaskins! This man must have been wooed away in spirit to
forgetfulness of the tempest scourging his mighty neighbour to a bigger
and a farther leap; he must have obtained from the contemplation of
himself in his suit that which would be the saving of all men, in
especial of his countrymen--imagination, namely.

Certain it is, as I have said, that he attired himself in the suit. He
covered it with his dressing-gown, and he lay down on his bed so garbed,
to await the morrow's light, being probably surprised by sleep acting
upon fatigue and nerves appeased and soothed.




CHAPTER XII

Elba lay more sheltered from South-east winds under the slopes of down
than any other house in Crikswich. The South-caster struck off the cliff
to a martello tower and the house on the beach, leaving Elba to repose,
so that the worst wind for that coast was one of the most comfortable for
the owner of the hall, and he looked from his upper window on a sea of
crumbling grey chalk, lashed unremittingly by the featureless piping
gale, without fear that his elevated grounds and walls would be open at
high tide to the ravage of water. Van Diemen had no idea of calamity
being at work on land when he sat down to breakfast. He told Herbert that
he had prayed for poor fellows at sea last night. Mary Fellingham and
Annette were anxious to finish breakfast and mount the down to gaze on
the sea, and receiving a caution from Van Diemen not to go too near the
cliff, they were inclined to think he was needlessly timorous on their
account.

Before they were half way through the meal, word was brought in of great
breaches in the shingle, and water covering the common. Van Diemen sent
for his head gardener, whose report of the state of things outside took
the comprehensive form of prophecy; he predicted the fall of the town.

"Nonsense; what do you mean, John Scott?" said Van Diemen, eyeing his
orderly breakfast table and the man in turns. "It does n't seem like
that, yet, does it?"

"The house on the beach won't stand an hour longer, sir."

"Who says so?"

"It's cut off from land now, and waves mast-high all about it."

"Mart Tinman?" cried Van Diemen.

All started; all jumped up; and there was a scampering for hats and
cloaks. Maids and men of the house ran in and out confirming the news of
inundation. Some in terror for the fate of relatives, others pleasantly
excited, glad of catastrophe if it but killed monotony, for at any rate
it was a change of demons.

The view from the outer bank of Elba was of water covering the space of
the common up to the stones of Marine Parade and Belle Vue. But at a
distance it had not the appearance of angry water; the ladies thought it
picturesque, and the house on the beach was seen standing firm. A second
look showed the house completely isolated; and as the party led by Van
Diemen circled hurriedly toward the town, they discerned heavy cataracts
of foam pouring down the wrecked mound of shingle on either side of the
house.

"Why, the outer wall's washed away," said Van Diemen. "Are they in real
danger?" asked Annette, her teeth chattering, and the cold and other
matters at her heart precluding for the moment such warmth of sympathy as
she hoped soon to feel for them. She was glad to hear her father say:

"Oh! they're high and dry by this time. We shall find them in the town
And we'll take them in and comfort them. Ten to one they have n't
breakfasted. They sha'n't go to an inn while I'm handy."

He dashed ahead, followed closely by Herbert. The ladies beheld them
talking to townsfolk as they passed along the upper streets, and did not
augur well of their increase of speed. At the head of the town water was
visible, part of the way up the main street, and crossing it, the ladies
went swiftly under the old church, on the tower of which were spectators,
through the churchyard to a high meadow that dropped to a stone wall
fixed between the meadow and a grass bank above the level of the road,
where now salt water beat and cast some spray. Not less than a hundred
people were in this field, among them Crickledon and his wife. All were
in silent watch of the house on the beach, which was to east of the
field, at a distance of perhaps three stonethrows. The scene was wild.
Continuously the torrents poured through the shingleclefts, and momently
a thunder sounded, and high leapt a billow that topped the house and
folded it weltering.

"They tell me Mart Tinman's in the house," Van Diemen roared to Herbert.
He listened to further information, and bellowed: "There's no boat!"

Herbert answered: "It must be a mistake, I think; here's Crickledon says
he had a warning before dawn and managed to move most of his things, and
the people over there must have been awakened by the row in time to get
off"

"I can't hear a word you say;" Van Diemen tried to pitch his voice higher
than the wind. "Did you say a boat? But where?"

Crickledon the carpenter made signal to Herbert. They stepped rapidly up
the field.

"Women feels their weakness in times like these, my dear," Mrs.
Crickledon said to Annette. "What with our clothes and our cowardice it
do seem we're not the equals of men when winds is high."

Annette expressed the hope to her that she had not lost much property.
Mrs. Crickledon said she was glad to let her know she was insured in an
Accident Company. "But," said she, "I do grieve for that poor man Tinman,
if alive he be, and comes ashore to find his property wrecked by water.
Bless ye! he wouldn't insure against anything less common than fire; and
my house and Crickledon's shop are floating timbers by this time; and
Marine Parade and Belle Vue are safe to go. And it'll be a pretty welcome
for him, poor man, from his investments."

A cry at a tremendous blow of a wave on the doomed house rose from the
field. Back and front door were broken down, and the force of water drove
a round volume through the channel, shaking the walls.

"I can't stand this," Van Diemen cried.

Annette was too late to hold him back. He ran up the field. She was
preparing to run after when Mrs. Crickledon touched her arm and implored
her: "Interfere not with men, but let them follow their judgements when
it's seasons of mighty peril, my dear. If any one's guilty it's me, for
minding my husband of a boat that was launched for a life-boat here, and
wouldn't answer, and is at the shed by the Crouch--left lying there, I've
often said, as if it was a-sulking. My goodness!"

A linen sheet bad been flung out from one of the windows of the house on
the beach, and flew loose and flapping in sign of distress.

"It looks as if they had gone mad in that house, to have waited so long
for to declare theirselves, poor souls," Mrs. Crickledon said, sighing.

She was assured right and left that signals had been seen before, and
some one stated that the cook of Mr. Tinman, and also Mrs. Cavely, were
on shore.

"It's his furniture, poor man, he sticks to: and nothing gets round the
heart so!" resumed Mrs. Crickledon. "There goes his bed-linen!"

The sheet was whirled and snapped away by the wind; distended doubled,
like a flock of winter geese changeing alphabetical letters on the
clouds, darted this way and that, and finally outspread on the waters
breaking against Marine Parade.

"They cannot have thought there was positive danger in remaining," said
Annette.

"Mr. Tinman was waiting for the cheapest Insurance office," a man
remarked to Mrs. Crickledon.

"The least to pay is to the undertaker," she replied, standing on tiptoe.
"And it's to be hoped he 'll pay more to-day. If only those walls don't
fall and stop the chance of the boat to save him for more outlay, poor
man! What boats was on the beach last night, high up and over the ridge
as they was, are planks by this time and only good for carpenters."

"Half our town's done for," one old man said; and another followed him
in a pious tone: "From water we came and to water we go."

They talked of ancient inroads of the sea, none so serious as this
threatened to be for them. The gallant solidity, of the house on the
beach had withstood heavy gales: it was a brave house. Heaven be thanked,
no fishing boats were out. Chiefly well-to-do people would be the
sufferers--an exceptional case. For it is the mysterious and unexplained
dispensation that: "Mostly heaven chastises we."

A knot of excited gazers drew the rest of the field to them. Mrs.
Crickledon, on the edge of the crowd, reported what was doing to Annette
and Miss Fellingham. A boat had been launched from the town. "Praise the
Lord, there's none but coastguard in it!" she exclaimed, and excused
herself for having her heart on her husband.

Annette was as deeply thankful that her father was not in the boat.

They looked round and saw Herbert beside them. Van Diemen was in the
rear, panting, and straining his neck to catch sight of the boat now
pulling fast across a tumbled sea to where Tinman himself was perceived,
beckoning them wildly, half out of one of the windows.

"A pound apiece to those fellows, and two if they land Mart Tinman dry;
I've promised it, and they'll earn it. Look at that! Quick, you rascals!"

To the east a portion of the house had fallen, melted away. Where it
stood, just below the line of shingle, it was now like a structure
wasting on a tormented submerged reef. The whole line was given over to
the waves.

"Where is his sister?" Annette shrieked to her father.

"Safe ashore; and one of the women with her. But Mart Tinman would stop,
the fool! to-poor old boy! save his papers and things; and has n't a head
to do it, Martha Cavely tells me. They're at him now! They've got him in!
There's another? Oh! it's a girl, who would n't go and leave him. They'll
pull to the field here. Brave lads!--By jingo, why ain't Englishmen
always in danger!--eh? if you want to see them shine!"

"It's little Jane," said Mrs. Crickledon, who had been joined by her
husband, and now that she knew him to be no longer in peril, kept her
hand on him to restrain him, just for comfort's sake.

The boat held under the lee of the house-wreck a minute; then, as if
shooting a small rapid, came down on a wave crowned with foam, to hurrahs
from the townsmen.

"They're all right," said Van Diemen, puffing as at a mist before his
eyes. "They'll pull westward, with the wind, and land him among us. I
remember when old Mart and I were bathing once, he was younger than me,
and could n't swim much, and I saw him going down. It'd have been hard to
see him washed off before one's eyes thirty years afterwards. Here they
come. He's all right. He's in his dressing-gown!"

The crowd made way for Mr. Van Diemen Smith to welcome his friend. Two of
the coastguard jumped out, and handed him to the dry bank, while Herbert,
Van Diemen, and Crickledon took him by hand and arm, and hoisted him on
to the flint wall, preparatory to his descent into the field. In this
exposed situation the wind, whose pranks are endless when it is once up,
seized and blew Martin Tinman's dressing-gown wide as two violently
flapping wings on each side of him, and finally over his head.

Van Diemen turned a pair of stupefied flat eyes on Herbert, who cast a
sly look at the ladies. Tinman had sprung down. But not before the.
world, in one tempestuous glimpse, had caught sight of the Court suit.

Perfect gravity greeted him from the crowd.

"Safe, old Mart! and glad to be able to say it," said Van Diemen.

"We are so happy," said Annette.

"House, furniture, property, everything I possess!" ejaculated Tinman,
shivering.

"Fiddle, man; you want some hot breakfast in you. Your sister has gone
on--to Elba. Come you too, old Man; and where's that plucky little girl
who stood by--"

"Was there a girl?" said Tinman.

"Yes, and there was a boy wanted to help." Van Diemen pointed at Herbert.

Tinman looked, and piteously asked, "Have you examined Marine Parade and
Belle Vue? It depends on the tide!"

"Here is little Jane, sir," said Mrs. Crickledon.

"Fall in," Van Diemen said to little Jane.

The girl was bobbing curtseys to Annette, on her introduction by Mrs.
Crickledon.

"Martin, you stay at my house; you stay at Elba till you get things
comfortable about you, and then you shall have the Crouch for a year,
rent free. Eh, Netty?"

Annette chimed in: "Anything we can do, anything. Nothing can be too
much."

Van Diemen was praising little Jane for her devotion to her master.

"Master have been so kind to me," said little Jane.

"Now, march; it is cold," Van Diemen gave the word, and Herbert stood by
Mary rather dejectedly, foreseeing that his prospects at Elba were
darkened.

"Now then, Mart, left leg forward," Van Diemen linked his arm in his
friend's.

"I must have a look," Tinman broke from him, and cast a forlorn look of
farewell on the last of the house on the beach.

"You've got me left to you, old Mart; don't forget that," said Van
Diemen.

Tinman's chest fell. "Yes, yes," he responded. He was touched.

"And I told those fellows if they landed you dry they should have--I'd
give them double pay; and I do believe they've earned their money."

"I don't think I'm very wet, I'm cold," said Tinman.

"You can't help being cold, so come along."

"But, Philip!" Tinman lifted his voice; "I've lost everything. I tried to
save a little. I worked hard, I exposed my life, and all in vain."

The voice of little Jane was heard.

"What's the matter with the child?" said Van Diemen.

Annette went up to her quietly.

But little Jane was addressing her master.

"Oh! if you please, I did manage to save something the last thing when
the boat was at the window, and if you please, sir, all the bundles is
lost, but I saved you a papercutter, and a letter Horse Guards, and here
they are, sir."

The grateful little creature drew the square letter and paper-cutter from
her bosom, and held them out to Mr. Tinman.

It was a letter of the imposing size, with THE HORSE GUARDS very
distinctly inscribed on it in Tinman's best round hand, to strike his
vindictive spirit as positively intended for transmission, and give him
sight of his power to wound if it pleased him; as it might.

"What!" cried he, not clearly comprehending how much her devotion had
accomplished for him.

"A letter to the Horse Guards!" cried Van Diemen.

"Here, give it me," said little Jane's master, and grasped it nervously.

"What's in that letter?" Van Diemen asked. "Let me look at that letter.
Don't tell me it's private correspondence."

"My dear Philip, dear friend, kind thanks; it's not a letter," said
Tinman.

"Not a letter! why, I read the address, 'Horse Guards.' I read it as it
passed into your hands. Now, my man, one look at that letter, or take the
consequences."

"Kind thanks for your assistance, dear Philip, indeed! Oh! this? Oh! it's
nothing." He tore it in halves.

His face was of the winter sea-colour, with the chalk wash on it.

"Tear again, and I shall know what to think of the contents," Van Diemen
frowned. "Let me see what you've said. You've sworn you would do it, and
there it is at last, by miracle; but let me see it and I'll overlook it,
and you shall be my house-mate still. If not!----"

Tinman tore away.

"You mistake, you mistake, you're entirely wrong," he said, as he pursued
with desperation his task of rendering every word unreadable.

Van Diemen stood fronting him; the accumulation of stores of petty
injuries and meannesses which he had endured from this man, swelled under
the whip of the conclusive exhibition of treachery. He looked so black
that Annette called, "Papa!"

"Philip," said Tinman. "Philip! my best friend!"

"Pooh, you're a poor creature. Come along and breakfast at Elba, and you
can sleep at the Crouch, and goodnight to you. Crickledon," he called to
the houseless couple, "you stop at Elba till I build you a shop."

With these words, Van Diemen led the way, walking alone. Herbert was
compelled to walk with Tinman.

Mary and Annette came behind, and Mary pinched Annette's arm so sharply
that she must have cried out aloud had it been possible for her to feel
pain at that moment, instead of a personal exultation, flying wildly over
the clash of astonishment and horror, like a sea-bird over the foam.

In the first silent place they came to, Mary murmured the words: "Little
Jane."

Annette looked round at Mrs. Crickledon, who wound up the procession,
taking little Jane by the hand. Little Jane was walking demurely, with a
placid face. Annette glanced at Tinman. Her excited feelings nearly rose
to a scream of laughter. For hours after, Mary had only to say to her:
"Little Jane," to produce the same convulsion. It rolled her heart and
senses in a headlong surge, shook her to burning tears, and seemed to her
ideas the most wonderful running together of opposite things ever known
on this earth. The young lady was ashamed of her laughter; but she was
deeply indebted to it, for never was mind made so clear by that
beneficent exercise.

     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

     Adversary at once offensive and helpless provokes brutality
     Causes him to be popularly weighed
     Distinguished by his not allowing himself to be provoked
     Eccentric behaviour in trifles
     Excited, glad of catastrophe if it but killed monotony
     Generally he noticed nothing
     Good jokes are not always good policy
     I make a point of never recommending my own house
     Indulged in their privilege of thinking what they liked
     Infants are said to have their ideas, and why not young ladies?
     Lend him your own generosity
     Men love to boast of things nobody else has seen
     Naughtily Australian and kangarooly
     Not in love--She was only not unwilling to be in love
     Rich and poor 's all right, if I'm rich and you're poor
     She began to feel that this was life in earnest
     She dealt in the flashes which connect ideas
     She sought, by looking hard, to understand it better
     Sunning itself in the glass of Envy
     That which fine cookery does for the cementing of couples
     The intricate, which she takes for the infinite
     Tossed him from repulsion to incredulity, and so back
     Two principal roads by which poor sinners come to a conscience




THE GENTLEMAN OF FIFTY AND THE DAMSEL OF NINETEEN

(An early uncompleted and hitherto unpublished fragment.)

By GEORGE MEREDITH




CHAPTER I

HE

Passing over Ickleworth Bridge and rounding up the heavily-shadowed river
of our narrow valley, I perceived a commotion as of bathers in a certain
bright space immediately underneath the vicar's terrace-garden steps. My
astonishment was considerable when it became evident to me that the vicar
himself was disporting in the water, which, reaching no higher than his
waist, disclosed him in the ordinary habiliments of his cloth. I knew my
friend to be one of the most absent-minded of men, and my first effort to
explain the phenomenon of his appearance there, suggested that he might
have walked in, the victim of a fit of abstraction, and that he had not
yet fully comprehended his plight; but this idea was dispersed when I
beheld the very portly lady, his partner in joy and adversity, standing
immersed, and perfectly attired, some short distance nearer to the bank.
As I advanced along the bank opposed to them, I was further amazed to
hear them discoursing quite equably together, so that it was impossible
to say on the face of it whether a catastrophe had occurred, or the great
heat of a cloudless summer day had tempted an eccentric couple to seek
for coolness in the directest fashion, without absolute disregard to
propriety. I made a point of listening for the accentuation of the 'my
dear' which was being interchanged, but the key-note to the harmony
existing between husband and wife was neither excessively unctuous, nor
shrewd, and the connubial shuttlecock was so well kept up on both sides
that I chose to await the issue rather than speculate on the origin of
this strange exhibition. I therefore, as I could not be accused of an
outrage to modesty, permitted myself to maintain what might be
invidiously termed a satyr-like watch from behind a forward flinging
willow, whose business in life was to look at its image in a brown depth,
branches, trunk, and roots. The sole indication of discomfort displayed
by the pair was that the lady's hand worked somewhat fretfully to keep
her dress from ballooning and puffing out of all proportion round about
her person, while the vicar, who stood without his hat, employed a spongy
handkerchief from time to time in tempering the ardours of a vertical
sun. If you will consent to imagine a bald blackbird, his neck being
shrunk in apprehensively, as you may see him in the first rolling of the
thunder, you will gather an image of my friend's appearance.

He performed his capital ablutions with many loud 'poofs,' and a casting
up of dazzled eyes, an action that gave point to his recital of the
invocation of Chryses to Smintheus which brought upon the Greeks disaster
and much woe. Between the lines he replied to his wife, whose remarks
increased in quantity, and also, as I thought, in emphasis, under the
river of verse which he poured forth unbaffled, broadening his chest to
the sonorous Greek music in a singular rapture of obliviousness.

A wise man will not squander his laughter if he can help it, but will
keep the agitation of it down as long as he may. The simmering of humour
sends a lively spirit into the mind, whereas the boiling over is but a
prodigal expenditure and the disturbance of a clear current: for the
comic element is visible to you in all things, if you do but keep your
mind charged with the perception of it, as I have heard a great expounder
deliver himself on another subject; and he spoke very truly. So, I
continued to look on with the gravity of Nature herself, and I could not
but fancy, and with less than our usual wilfulness when we fancy things
about Nature's moods, that the Mother of men beheld this scene with half
a smile, differently from the simple observation of those cows whisking
the flies from their flanks at the edge of the shorn meadow and its
aspens, seen beneath the curved roof of a broad oak-branch. Save for this
happy upward curve of the branch, we are encompassed by breathless
foliage; even the gloom was hot; the little insects that are food for
fish tried a flight and fell on the water's surface, as if panting. Here
and there, a sullen fish consented to take them, and a circle spread,
telling of past excitement.

I had listened to the vicar's Homeric lowing for the space of a minute or
so--what some one has called, the great beast-like, bellow-like, roar and
roll of the Iliad hexameter: it stopped like a cut cord. One of the
numerous daughters of his house appeared in the arch of white
cluster-roses on the lower garden-terrace, and with an exclamation, stood
petrified at the extraordinary spectacle, and then she laughed outright.
I had hitherto resisted, but the young lady's frank and boisterous
laughter carried me along, and I too let loose a peal, and discovered
myself. The vicar, seeing me, acknowledged a consciousness of his absurd
position with a laugh as loud. As for the scapegrace girl, she went off
into a run of high-pitched shriekings like twenty woodpeckers, crying: I
Mama, mama, you look as if you were in Jordan!'

The vicar cleared his throat admonishingly, for it was apparent that Miss
Alice was giving offence to her mother, and I presume he thought it was
enough for one of the family to have done so.

'Wilt thou come out of Jordan?' I cried.

'I am sufficiently baptized with the water,' said the helpless man. . .

'Indeed, Mr. Amble,' observed his spouse, 'you can lecture a woman for
not making the best of circumstances; I hope you'll bear in mind that
it's you who are irreverent. I can endure this no longer. You deserve Mr.
Pollingray's ridicule.'

Upon this, I interposed: 'Pray, ma'am, don't imagine that you have
anything but sympathy from me.'--but as I was protesting, having my mouth
open, the terrible Miss Alice dragged the laughter remorselessly out of
me.

They have been trying Frank's new boat, Mr. Pollingray, and they've upset
it. Oh! oh' and again there was the woodpeckers' chorus.

'Alice, I desire you instantly to go and fetch John the gardener,' said
the angry mother.

'Mama, I can't move; wait a minute, only a minute. John's gone about the
geraniums. Oh! don't look so resigned, papa; you'll kill me! Mama, come
and take my hand. Oh! oh!'

The young lady put her hands in against her waist and rolled her body
like a possessed one.

'Why don't you come in through the boat-house?' she asked when she had
mastered her fit.

'Ah!' said the vicar. I beheld him struck by this new thought.

'How utterly absurd you are, Mr. Amble!' exclaimed his wife, 'when you
know that the boat-house is locked, and that the boat was lying under the
camshot when you persuaded me to step into it.'

Hearing this explanation of the accident, Alice gave way to an
ungovernable emotion.

'You see, my dear,' the vicar addressed his wife, she can do nothing;
it's useless. If ever patience is counselled to us, it is when accidents
befall us, for then, as we are not responsible, we know we are in other
hands, and it is our duty to be comparatively passive. Perhaps I may say
that in every difficulty, patience is a life-belt. I beg of you to be
patient still.'

'Mr. Amble, I shall think you foolish,' said the spouse, with a nod of
more than emphasis.

My dear, you have only to decide,' was the meek reply.

By this time, Miss Alice had so far conquered the fiend of laughter that
she could venture to summon her mother close up to the bank and extend a
rescuing hand. Mrs. Amble waded to within reach, her husband following.
Arrangements were made for Alice to pull, and the vicar to push; both in
accordance with Mrs. Amble's stipulations, for even in her extremity of
helplessness she affected rule and sovereignty. Unhappily, at the
decisive moment, I chanced (and I admit it was more than an inadvertence
on my part, it was a most ill-considered thing to do) I chanced, I say,
to call out--and that I refrained from quoting Voltaire is something in
my favour:

'How on earth did you manage to tumble in?'

There can be no contest of opinion that I might have kept my curiosity
waiting, and possibly it may be said with some justification that I was
the direct cause of my friend's unparalleled behaviour; but could a
mortal man guess that in the very act of assisting his wife's return to
dry land, and while she was--if I may put it so--modestly in his hands,
he would turn about with a quotation that compared him to old Palinurus,
all the while allowing his worthy and admirable burden to sink lower and
dispread in excess upon the surface of the water, until the vantage of
her daughter's help was lost to her; I beheld the consequences of my
indiscretion, dismayed. I would have checked the preposterous Virgilian,
but in contempt of my uplifted hand and averted head, and regardless of
the fact that his wife was then literally dependent upon him, the vicar
declaimed (and the drenching effect produced by Latin upon a lady at such
a season, may be thought on):

        Vix primos inopina quies laxaverat artus,
        Et super incumbens, cum puppis parte revulsa
        Cumque gubernaclo liquidas projecit in undas.'

It is not easy when you are unacquainted with the language, to retort
upon Latin, even when the attempt to do so is made in English. Very few
even of the uneducated ears can tolerate such anti-climax vituperative as
English after sounding Latin. Mrs. Amble kept down those sentiments which
her vernacular might have expressed. I heard but one groan that came from
her as she lay huddled indistinguishably in the, arms of her husband.

'Not--praecipitem! I am happy to say,' my senseless friend remarked
further, and laughed cheerfully as he fortified his statement with a run
of negatives. 'No, no'; in a way peculiar to him. 'No, no. If I plant my
grey hairs anywhere, it will be on dry land: no. But, now, my dear; he
returned to his duty; why, you're down again. Come: one, two, and up.'

He was raising a dead weight. The passion for sarcastic speech was
manifestly at war with common prudence in the bosom of Mrs. Amble;
prudence, however, overcame it. She cast on him a look of a kind that
makes matrimony terrific in the dreams of bachelors, and then wedding her
energy to the assistance given she made one of those senseless springs of
the upper half of the body, which strike the philosophic eye with the
futility of an effort that does not arise from a solid basis. Owing to
the want of concert between them, the vicar's impulsive strength was
expended when his wife's came into play. Alice clutched her mother
bravely. The vicar had force enough to stay his wife's descent; but Alice
(she boasts of her muscle) had not the force in the other direction--and
no wonder. There are few young ladies who could pull fourteen stone sheer
up a camshot.

Mrs. Amble remained in suspense between the two.

Oh, Mr. Pollingray, if you were only on this side to help us,' Miss Alice
exclaimed very piteously, though I could see that she was half mad with
the internal struggle of laughter at the parents and concern for them.

'Now, pull, Alice,' shouted the vicar.

'No, not yet,' screamed Mrs. Amble; I'm sinking.'

'Pull, Alice.'

'Now, Mama.'

'Oh!'

'Push, Papa.'

'I'm down.'

'Up, Ma'am; Jane; woman, up.'

'Gently, Papa: Abraham, I will not.'

'My dear, but you must.'

'And that man opposite.'

'What, Pollingray? He's fifty.'

I found myself walking indignantly down the path. Even now I protest my
friend was guilty of bad manners, though I make every allowance for him;
I excuse, I pass the order; but why--what justifies one man's bawling out
another man's age? What purpose does it serve? I suppose the vicar wished
to reassure his wife, on the principle (I have heard him enunciate it)
that the sexes are merged at fifty--by which he means, I must presume,
that something which may be good or bad, and is generally silly--of
course, I admire and respect modesty and pudeur as much as any
man--something has gone: a recognition of the bounds of division. There
is, if that is a lamentable matter, a loss of certain of our young tricks
at fifty. We have ceased to blush readily: and let me ask you to define a
blush. Is it an involuntary truth or an ingenuous lie? I know that this
will sound like the language of a man not a little jealous of his
youthful compeers. I can but leave it to rightly judging persons to
consider whether a healthy man in his prime, who has enough, and is not
cursed by ambition, need be jealous of any living soul.

A shriek from Miss Alice checked my retreating steps. The vicar was
staggering to support the breathing half of his partner while she
regained her footing in the bed of the river. Their effort to scale the
camshot had failed. Happily at this moment I caught sight of Master
Frank's boat, which had floated, bottom upwards, against a projecting
mud-bank of forget-me-nots. I contrived to reach it and right it, and
having secured one of the sculls, I pulled up to the rescue; though not
before I had plucked a flower, actuated by a motive that I cannot account
for. The vicar held the boat firmly against the camshot, while I, at the
imminent risk of joining them (I shall not forget the combined expression
of Miss Alice's retreating eyes and the malicious corners of her mouth)
hoisted the lady in, and the river with her. From the seat of the boat
she stood sufficiently high to project the step towards land without
peril. When she had set her foot there, we all assumed an attitude of
respectful attention, and the vicar, who could soar over calamity like a
fairweather swallow, acknowledged the return of his wife to the element
with a series of apologetic yesses and short coughings.

'That would furnish a good concert for the poets,' he remarked. 'A
parting, a separation of lovers; "even as a body from the watertorn," or
"from the water plucked"; eh? do you think--"so I weep round her, tearful
in her track," an excellent--'

But the outraged woman, dripping in grievous discomfort above him, made a
peremptory gesture.

'Mr. Amble, will you come on shore instantly, I have borne with your
stupidity long enough. I insist upon your remembering, sir, that you have
a family dependent upon you. Other men may commit these follies.'

This was a blow at myself, a bachelor whom the lady had never persuaded
to dream of relinquishing his freedom.

'My dear, I am coming,' said the vicar.

'Then, come at once, or I shall think you idiotic,' the wife retorted.

'I have been endeavouring,' the vicar now addressed me, 'to prove by a
practical demonstration that women are capable of as much philosophy as
men, under any sudden and afflicting revolution of circumstances.'

'And if you get a sunstroke, you will be rightly punished, and I shall
not be sorry, Mr. Amble.'

'I am coming, my dear Jane. Pray run into the house and change your
things.'

'Not till I see you out of the water, sir.'

'You are losing your temper, my love.'

'You would make a saint lose his temper, Mr. Amble.'

'There were female saints, my dear,' the vicar mildly responded; and
addressed me further: 'Up to this point, I assure you, Pollingray, no
conduct could have been more exemplary than Mrs. Amble's. I had got her
into the boat--a good boat, a capital boat--but getting in myself, we
overturned. The first impulse of an ordinary woman would have been to
reproach and scold; but Mrs. Amble succumbed only to the first impulse.
Discovering that all effort unaided to climb the bank was fruitless, she
agreed to wait patiently and make the best of circumstances; and she did;
and she learnt to enjoy it. There is marrow in every bone. My dear. Jane,
I have never admired you so much. I tried her, Pollingray, in
metaphysics. I talked to her of the opera we last heard, I think fifty
years ago. And as it is less endurable for a woman to be patient in
tribulation--the honour is greater, when she overcomes the fleshy trial.
Insomuch,' the vicar put on a bland air of abnegation of honour, 'that I
am disposed to consider any male philosopher our superior; when you've
found one, ha, ha--when you've found one. O sol pulcher! I am ready to
sing that the day has been glorious, so far. Pulcher ille dies.'

Mrs. Amble appealed to me. 'Would anybody not swear that he is mad to see
him standing waist-deep in the water and the sun on his bald head, I am
reduced to entreat you not to--though you have no family of your own--not
to encourage him. It is amusing to you. Pray, reflect that such folly is
too often fatal. Compel him to come on shore.'

The logic of the appeal was no doubt distinctly visible in the lady's
mind, though it was not accurately worded. I saw that I stood marked to
be the scape goat of the day, and humbly continued to deserve well,
notwithstanding. By dint of simple signs and nods of affirmative, and a
constant propulsion of my friend's arm, I drew him into the boat, and
thence projected him up to the level with his wife, who had perhaps
deigned to understand that it was best to avoid the arresting of his
divergent mind by any remark during the passage, and remained silent. No
sooner was he established on his feet, than she plucked him away.

'Your papa's hat,' she called, flashing to her daughter, and streamed up
the lawn into the rose-trellised pathways leading on aloft to the
vicarage house. Behind roses the weeping couple disappeared. The last I
saw of my friend was a smiting of his hand upon his head in a vain effort
to catch at one of the fleeting ideas sowed in him by the quick passage
of objects before his vision, and shaken out of him by abnormal hurry.
The Rev. Abraham Amble had been lord of his wife in the water, but his
innings was over. He had evidently enjoyed it vastly, and I now
understood why he had chosen to prolong it as much as possible. Your
eccentric characters are not uncommonly amateurs of petty artifice. There
are hours of vengeance even for henpecked men.

I found myself sighing over the enslaved condition of every Benedict of
my acquaintance, when the thought came like a surprise that I was alone
with Alice. The fair and pleasant damsel made a clever descent into the
boat, and having seated herself, she began to twirl the scull in the
rowlock, and said: 'Do you feel disposed to join me in looking after the
other scull and papa's hat, Mr. Pollingray?' I suggested 'Will you not
get your feet wet? I couldn't manage to empty all the water in the boat.'

'Oh' cried she, with a toss of her head; I wet feet never hurt young
people.'

There was matter for an admonitory lecture in this. Let me confess I was
about to give it, when she added: But Mr. Pollingray, I am really afraid
that your feet are wet! You had to step into the water when you righted
the boat:

My reply was to jump down by her side with as much agility as I could
combine with a proper discretion. The amateur craft rocked threateningly,
and I found myself grasped by and grasping the pretty damsel, until by
great good luck we were steadied and preserved from the same misfortune
which had befallen her parents. She laughed and blushed, and we tottered
asunder.

'Would you have talked metaphysics to me in the water, Mr. Pollingray?'

Alice was here guilty of one of those naughty sort of innocent speeches
smacking of Eve most strongly; though, of course, of Eve in her best
days.

I took the rudder lines to steer against the sculling of her single
scull, and was Adam enough to respond to temptation: 'I should perhaps
have been grateful to your charitable construction of it as being
metaphysics.'

She laughed colloquially, to fill a pause. It had not been coquetry:
merely the woman unconsciously at play. A man is bound to remember the
seniority of his years when this occurs, for a veteran of ninety and a
worn out young debauchee will equally be subject to it if they do not
shun the society of the sex. My long robust health and perfect
self-reliance apparently tend to give me unguarded moments, or lay me
open to fitful impressions. Indeed there are times when I fear I have the
heart of a boy, and certainly nothing more calamitous can be conceived,
supposing that it should ever for one instant get complete mastery of my
head. This is the peril of a man who has lived soberly. Do we never know
when we are safe? I am, in reflecting thereupon, positively prepared to
say that if there is no fool like what they call an old fool (and a man
in his prime, who can be laughed at, is the world's old fool) there is
wisdom in the wild oats theory, and I shall come round to my nephew's way
of thinking: that is, as far as Master Charles by his acting represents
his thinking. I shall at all events be more lenient in my judgement of
him, and less stern in my allocutions, for I shall have no text to preach
from.

We picked up the hat and the scull in one of the little muddy bays of our
brown river, forming an amphitheatre for water-rats and draped with great
dockleaves, nettle-flowers, ragged robins, and other weeds for which the
learned young lady gave the botanical names. It was pleasant to hear her
speak with the full authority of absolute knowledge of her subject. She
has intelligence. She is decidedly too good for Charles, unless he
changes his method of living.

'Shall we row on?' she asked, settling her arms to work the pair of
sculls.

'You have me in your power,' said I, and she struck out. Her shape is
exceedingly graceful; I was charmed by the occasional tightening in of
her lips as she exerted her muscle, while at intervals telling me of her
race with one of her boastful younger brothers, whom she had beaten. I
believe it is only when they are using physical exertion that the eyes of
young girls have entire simplicity--the simplicity of nature as opposed
to that other artificial simplicity which they learn from their
governesses, their mothers, and the admiration of witlings. Attractive
purity, or the nice glaze of no comprehension of anything which is
considered to be improper in a wicked world, and is no doubt very useful,
is not to my taste. French girls, as a rule, cannot compete with our
English in the purer graces. They are only incomparable when as women
they have resort to art.

Alice could look at me as she rowed, without thinking it necessary to
force a smile, or to speak, or to snigger and be foolish. I felt towards
the girl like a comrade.

We went no further than Hatchard's mile, where the water plumps the poor
sleepy river from a sidestream, and, as it turned the boat's head quite
round, I let the boat go. These studies of young women are very well as a
pastime; but they soon cease to be a recreation. She forms an agreeable
picture when she is rowing, and possesses a musical laugh. Now and then
she gives way to the bad trick of laughing without caring or daring to
explain the cause for it. She is moderately well-bred. I hope that she
has principle. Certain things a man of my time of life learns by
associating with very young people which are serviceable to him. What a
different matter this earth must be to that girl from what it is to me! I
knew it before. And--mark the difference--I feel it now.




CHAPTER II

SHE

Papa never will cease to meet with accidents and adventures. If he only
walks out to sit for half an hour with one of his old dames, as he calls
them, something is sure to happen to him, and it is almost as sure that
Mr. Pollingray will be passing at the time and mixed up in it.

Since Mr. Pollingray's return from his last residence on the Continent, I
have learnt to know him and like him. Charles is unjust to his uncle. He
is not at all the grave kind of man I expected from Charles's
description. He is extremely entertaining, and then he understands the
world, and I like to hear him talk, he is so unpretentious and uses just
the right words. No one would imagine his age, from his appearance, and
he has more fun than any young man I have listened to.

But, I am convinced I have discovered his weakness. It is my fatal.
peculiarity that I cannot be with people ten minutes without seeing some
point about them where they are tenderest. Mr. Pollingray wants to be
thought quite youthful. He can bear any amount of fatigue; he is always
fresh and a delightful companion; but you cannot get him to show even a
shadow of exhaustion or to admit that he ever knew what it was to lie
down beaten. This is really to pretend that he is superhuman. I like him
so much that I could wish him superior to such--it is nothing other
than--vanity. Which is worse? A young man giving himself the air of a
sage, or--but no one can call Mr. Pollingray an old man. He is a
confirmed bachelor. That puts the case. Charles, when he says of him that
he is a 'gentleman in a good state of preservation,' means to be
ironical. I doubt whether Charles at fifty would object to have the same
said of Mr. Charles Everett. Mr. Pollingray has always looked to his
health. He has not been disappointed. I am sure he was always very good.
But, whatever he was, he is now very pleasant, and he does not talk to
women as if he thought them singular, and feel timid, I mean, confused,
as some men show that they feel--the good ones. Perhaps he felt so once,
and that is why he is still free. Charles's dread that his uncle will
marry is most unworthy. He never will, but why should he not? Mama
declares that he is waiting for a woman of intellect, I can hear her:
'Depend upon it, a woman of intellect will marry Dayton Manor.' Should
that mighty event not come to pass, poor Charles will have to sink the
name of Everett in that of Pollingray. Mr. Pollingray's name is the worst
thing about him. When I think of his name I see him ten times older than
he is. My feelings are in harmony with his pedigree concerning the age of
the name. One would have to be a woman of profound intellect to see the
advantage of sharing it.

'Mrs. Pollingray!' She must be a lady with a wig.

It was when we were rowing up by Hatchard's mill that I first perceived
his weakness, he was looking at me so kindly, and speaking of his
friendship for papa, and how glad he was to be fixed at last, near to us
at Dayton. I wished to use some term of endearment in reply, and said, I
remember, 'Yes, and we are also glad, Godpapa.' I was astonished that he
should look so disconcerted, and went on: 'Have you forgotten that you
are my godpapa?'

He answered: 'Am I? Oh! yes--the name of Alice.'

Still he looked uncertain, uncomfortable, and I said, 'Do you want to
cancel the past, and cast me off?'

'No, certainly not'; he, I suppose, thought he was assuring me.

I saw his lips move at the words I cancel the past,' though he did not
speak them out. He positively blushed. I know the sort of young man he
must have been. Exactly the sort of young man mama would like for a
son-in-law, and her daughters would accept in pure obedience when reduced
to be capable of the virtue by rigorous diet, or consumption.

He let the boat go round instantly. This was enough for me. It struck me
then that when papa had said to mama (as he did in that absurd situation)
'He is fifty,' Mr. Pollingray must have heard it across the river, for he
walked away hurriedly. He came back, it is true, with the boat, but I
have my own ideas. He is always ready to do a service, but on this
occasion I think it was an afterthought. I shall not venture to call him
'Godpapa' again.

Indeed, if I have a desire, it is that I may be blind to people's
weakness. My insight is inveterate. Papa says he has heard Mr. Pollingray
boast of his age. If so, there has come a change over him. I cannot be
deceived. I see it constantly. After my unfortunate speech, Mr.
Pollingray shunned our house for two whole weeks, and scarcely bowed to
us when coming out of church. Miss Pollingray idolises him--spoils him.
She says that he is worth twenty of Charles. Nous savons ce que nous
savons, nous autres. Charles is wild, but Charles would be above these
littlenesses. How could Miss Pollingray comprehend the romance of
Charles's nature?

My sister Evelina is now Mr. Pollingray's favourite. She could not say
Godpapa to him, if she would. Persons who are very much petted at home,
are always establishing favourites abroad. For my part, let them praise
me or not, I know that I can do any thing I set my mind upon. At present
I choose to be frivolous. I know I am frivolous. What then? If there is
fun in the world am I not to laugh at it? I shall astonish them by and
by. But, I will laugh while I can. I am sure, there is so much misery in
the world, it is a mercy to be able to laugh. Mr. Pollingray may think
what he likes of me. When Charles tells me that I must do my utmost to
propitiate his uncle, he cannot mean that I am to refrain from laughing,
because that is being a hypocrite, which I may become when I have gone
through all the potential moods and not before.

It is preposterous to suppose that I am to be tied down to the views of
life of elderly people.

I dare say I did laugh a little too much the other night, but could I
help it? We had a dinner party. Present were Mr. Pollingray, Mrs.
Kershaw, the Wilbury people (three), Charles, my brother Duncan, Evelina,
mama, papa, myself, and Mr. and Mrs. (put them last for emphasis) Romer
Pattlecombe, Mrs. Pattlecombe (the same number of syllables as
Pollingray, and a 'P' to begin with) is thirty-one years her husband's
junior, and she is twenty-six; full of fun, and always making fun of him,
the mildest, kindest, goody old thing, who has never distressed himself
for anything and never will. Mrs. Romer not only makes fun, but is fun.
When you have done laughing with her, you can laugh at her. She is the
salt of society in these parts. Some one, as we were sitting on the lawn
after dinner, alluded to the mishap to papa and mama, and mama, who has
never forgiven Mr. Pollingray for having seen her in her ridiculous
plight, said that men were in her opinion greater gossips than women.
'That is indisputable, ma'am,' said Mr. Pollingray, he loves to bewilder
her; 'only, we never mention it.'

'There is an excuse for us,' said Mrs. Romer; 'our trials are so great,
we require a diversion, and so we talk of others.'

'Now really,' said Charles, 'I don't think your trials are equal to
ours.'

For which remark papa bantered him, and his uncle was sharp on him; and
Charles, I know, spoke half seriously, though he was seeking to draw Mrs.
Romer out: he has troubles.

From this, we fell upon a comparison of sufferings, and Mrs. Romer took
up the word. She is a fair, smallish, nervous woman, with delicate hands
and outlines, exceedingly sympathetic; so much so that while you are
telling her anything, she makes half a face in anticipation, and is ready
to shriek with laughter or shake her head with uttermost grief; and
sometimes, if you let her go too far in one direction, she does both. All
her narrations are with ups and downs of her hands, her eyes, her chin,
and her voice. Taking poor, good old Mr. Romer by the roll of his coat,
she made as if posing him, and said: 'There! Now, it's all very well for
you to say that there is anything equal to a woman's sufferings in this
world. I do declare you know nothing of what we unhappy women have to
endure. It's dreadful! No male creature can possibly know what tortures I
have to undergo.'

Mama neatly contrived, after interrupting her, to divert the subject. I
think that all the ladies imagined they were in jeopardy, but I knew Mrs.
Romer was perfectly to be trusted. She has wit which pleases, jusqu'aux
ongles, and her sense of humour never overrides her discretion with more
than a glance--never with preparation.

'Now,' she pursued, 'let me tell you what excruciating trials I have to
go through. This man,' she rocked the patient old gentleman to and fro,
'this man will be the death of me. He is utterly devoid of a sense of
propriety. Again and again I say to him--cannot the tailor cut down these
trowsers of yours? Yes, Mr. Amble, you preach patience to women, but this
is too much for any woman's endurance. Now, do attempt to picture to
yourself what an agony it must be to me:--he will shave, and he will wear
those enormously high trowsers that, when they are braced, reach up
behind to the nape of his neck! Only yesterday morning, as I was lying in
bed, I could see him in his dressing-room. I tell you: he will shave, and
he will choose the time for shaving early after he has braced these
immensely high trowsers that make such a placard of him. Oh, my goodness!
My dear Romer, I have said to him fifty times if I have said it once, my
goodness me! why can you not get decent trowsers such as other men wear?
He has but one answer--he has been accustomed to wear those trowsers, and
he would not feel at home in another pair. And what does he say if I
continue to complain? and I cannot but continue to complain, for it is
not only moral, it is physical torment to see the sight he makes of
himself; he says: "My dear, you should not have married an old man."
What! I say to him, must an old man wear antiquated trowsers? No! nothing
will turn him; those are his habits. But, you have not heard the worst.
The sight of those hideous trowsers totally destroying all shape in the
man, is horrible enough; but it is absolutely more than a woman can bear
to see him--for he will shave--first cover his face with white soap with
that ridiculous centre-piece to his trowsers reaching quite up to his
poll, and then, you can fancy a woman's rage and anguish! the figure
lifts its nose by the extremist tip. Oh! it's degradation! What respect
can a woman have for her husband after that sight? Imagine it! And I have
implored him to spare me. It's useless. You sneer at our hbops and say
that you are inconvenienced by them but you gentlemen are not
degraded,--Oh! unutterably!--as I am every morning of my life by that
cruel spectacle of a husband.'

I have but faintly sketched Mrs. Romer's style. Evelina, who is prudish
and thinks her vulgar, refused to laugh, but it came upon me, as the
picture of 'your own old husband,' with so irresistibly comic an effect
that I was overcome by convulsions of laughter. I do not defend myself.
It was as much a fit as any other attack. I did all I could to arrest it.
At last, I ran indoors and upstairs to my bedroom and tried hard to
become dispossessed. I am sure I was an example of the sufferings of my
sex. It could hardly have been worse for Mrs. Romer than it was for me. I
was drowned in internal laughter long after I had got a grave face. Early
in the evening Mr. Pollingray left us.




CHAPTER III

HE

I am carried by the fascination of a musical laugh. Apparently I am
doomed to hear it at my own expense. We are secure from nothing in this
life.

I have determined to stand for the county. An unoccupied man is a prey to
every hook of folly. Be dilettante all your days, and you might as fairly
hope to reap a moral harvest as if you had chased butterflies. The
activities created by a profession or determined pursuit are necessary to
the growth of the mind.

Heavens! I find myself writing like an illegitimate son of La
Rochefoucauld, or of Vauvenargues. But, it is true that I am fifty years
old, and I am not mature. I am undeveloped somewhere.

The question for me to consider is, whether this development is to be
accomplished by my being guilty of an act of egregious folly.

Dans la cinquantaine! The reflection should produce a gravity in men.
Such a number of years will not ring like bridal bells in a man's ears. I
have my books about me, my horses, my dogs, a contented household. I move
in the centre of a perfect machine, and I am dissatisfied. I rise early.
I do not digest badly. What is wrong?

The calamity of my case is that I am in danger of betraying what is wrong
with me to others, without knowing it myself. Some woman will be
suspecting and tattling, because she has nothing else to do. Girls have
wonderfully shrewd eyes for a weakness in the sex which they are
instructed to look upon as superior. But I am on my guard.

The fact is manifest: I feel I have been living more or less uselessly.
It is a fat time. There are a certain set of men in every prosperous
country who, having wherewithal, and not being compelled to toil, become
subjected to the moral ideal. Most of them in the end sit down with our
sixth Henry or second Richard and philosophise on shepherds. To be no
better than a simple hind! Am I better? Prime bacon and an occasional
draft of shrewd beer content him, and they do not me. Yet I am sound, and
can sit through the night and be ready, and on the morrow I shall stand
for the county.

I made the announcement that I had thoughts of entering Parliament,
before I had half formed the determination, at my sister's lawn party
yesterday.

'Gilbert!' she cried, and raised her hands. A woman is hurt if you do not
confide to her your plans as soon as you can conceive them. She must be
present to assist at the birth, or your plans are unblessed plans.

I had been speaking aside in a casual manner to my friend Amble, whose
idea is that the Church is not represented with sufficient strength in
the Commons, and who at once, as I perceived, grasped the notion of
getting me to promote sundry measures connected with schools and clerical
stipends, for his eyes dilated; he said: 'Well, if you do, I can put you
up to several things,' and imparting the usual chorus of yesses to his
own mind, he continued absently: 'Pollingray might be made strong on
church rates. There is much to do. He has lived abroad and requires
schooling in these things. We want a man. Yes, yes, yes. It's a good
idea; a notion.'

My sister, however, was of another opinion. She did me the honour to take
me aside.

'Gilbert, were you serious just now?'

'Quite serious. Is it not my characteristic?'

'Not on these occasions. I saw the idea come suddenly upon you. You were
looking at Charles.'

'Continue: and at what was he looking?'

'He was looking at Alice Amble.'

'And the young lady?'

'She looked at you.'

I was here attacked by a singularly pertinacious fly, and came out of the
contest with a laugh.

'Did she have that condescension towards me? And from the glance, my
resolution to enter Parliament was born? It is the French vaudevilliste's
doctrine of great events from little causes. The slipper of a soubrette
trips the heart of a king and changes the destiny of a nation-the history
of mankind. It may be true. If I were but shot into the House from a
little girl's eye!'

With this I took her arm gaily, walked with her, and had nearly
overreached myself with excess of cunning. I suppose we are reduced to
see more plainly that which we systematically endeavour to veil from
others. It is best to flutter a handkerchief, instead of nailing up a
curtain. The principal advantage is that you may thereby go on deceiving
yourself, for this reason: few sentiments are wholly matter of fact; but
when they are half so, you make them concrete by deliberately seeking
either to crush or conceal them, and you are doubly betrayed--betrayed to
the besieging eye and to yourself. When a sentiment has grown to be a
passion (mercifully may I be spared!) different tactics are required. By
that time, you will have already betrayed yourself too deeply to dare to
be flippant: the investigating eye is aware that it has been purposely
diverted: knowing some things, it makes sure of the rest from which you
turn it away. If you want to hide a very grave case, you must speak
gravely about it.--At which season, be but sure of your voice, and
simulate a certain depth of sentimental philosophy, and you may once
more, and for a long period, bewilder the investigator of the secrets of
your bosom. To sum up: in the preliminary stages of a weakness, be
careful that you do not show your own alarm, or all will be suspected.
Should the weakness turn to fever, let a little of it be seen, like a
careless man, and nothing will really be thought.

I can say this, I can do this; and is it still possible that a pin's
point has got through the joints of the armour of a man like me?

Elizabeth quitted my side with the conviction that I am as considerate an
uncle as I am an affectionate brother.

I said to her, apropos, 'I have been observing those two. It seems to me
they are deciding things for themselves.'

'I have been going to speak to you about them Gilbert,' said she.

And I: 'The girl must be studied. The family is good. While Charles is in
Wales, you must have her at Dayton. She laughs rather vacantly, don't you
think? but the sound of it has the proper wholesome ring. I will give her
what attention I can while she is here, but in the meantime I must have a
bride of my own and commence courting.'

'Parliament, you mean,' said Elizabeth with a frank and tender smile. The
hostess was summoned to welcome a new guest, and she left me, pleased
with her successful effort to reach my meaning, and absorbed by it.

I would not have challenged Machiavelli; but I should not have
encountered the Florentine ruefully. I feel the same keen delight in
intellectual dexterity. On some points my sister is not a bad match for
me. She can beat me seven games out of twelve at chess; but the five I
win sequently, for then I am awake. There is natural art and artificial
art, and the last beats the first. Fortunately for us, women are
strangers to the last. They have had to throw off a mask before they
have, got the schooling; so, when they are thus armed we know what we
meet, and what are the weapons to be used.

Alice, if she is a fine fencer at all, will expect to meet the ordinary
English squire in me. I have seen her at the baptismal font! It is
inconceivable. She will fancy that at least she is ten times more subtle
than I. When I get the mastery--it is unlikely to make me the master.
What may happen is, that the nature of the girl will declare itself,
under the hard light of intimacy, vulgar. Charles I cause to be absent
for six weeks; so there will be time enough for the probation. I do not
see him till he returns. If by chance I had come earlier to see him and
he to allude to her, he would have had my conscience on his side, and
that is what a scrupulous man takes care to prevent.

I wonder whether my friends imagine me to be the same man whom they knew
as Gilbert Pollingray a month back? I see the change, I feel the change;
but I have no retrospection, no remorse, no looking forward, no feeling:
none for others, very little, for myself. I am told that I am losing
fluency as a dinner-table talker. There is now more savour to me in a
silvery laugh than in a spiced wit. And this is the man who knows women,
and is far too modest to give a decided opinion upon any of their merits.
Search myself through as I may, I cannot tell when the change began, or
what the change consists of, or what is the matter with me, or what charm
there is in the person who does the mischief. She is the counterpart of
dozens of girls; lively, brown-eyed, brown-haired, underbred--it is not
too harsh to say so--underbred slightly; half-educated, whether
quickwitted I dare not opine. She is undoubtedly the last whom I or
another person would have fixed upon as one to work me this unmitigated
evil. I do not know her, and I believe I do not care to know her, and I
am thirsting for the hour to come when I shall study her. Is not this to
have the poison of a bite in one's blood? The wrath of Venus is not a
fable. I was a hard reader and I despised the sex in my youth, before the
family estates fell to me; since when I have playfully admired the sex; I
have dallied with a passion, and not read at all, save for diversion: her
anger is not a fable. You may interpret many a mythic tale by the facts
which lie in your own blood. My emotions have lain altogether dormant in
sentimental attachment. I have, I suppose, boasted of, Python slain, and
Cupid has touched me up with an arrow. I trust to my own skill rather
than to his mercy for avoiding a second from his quiver. I will
understand this girl if I have to submit to a close intimacy with her for
six months. There is no doubt of the elegance of her movements. Charles
might as well take his tour, and let us see him again next year. Yes, her
movements are (or will be) gracious. In a year's time she will have
acquired the fuller tones and poetry of womanliness. Perhaps then, too,
her smile will linger instead of flashing. I have known infinitely
lovelier women than she. One I have known! but let her be. Louise and I
have long since said adieu.




CHAPTER IV

SHE

Behold me installed in Dayton Manor House, and brought here for the
express purpose (so Charles has written me word) of my being studied,
that it may be seen whether I am worthy to be, on some august future
occasion--possibly--a member (Oh, so much to mumble!) of this great
family. Had I known it when I was leaving home, I should have
countermanded the cording of my boxes. If you please, I do the packing,
and not the cording. I must practise being polite, or I shall be
horrifying these good people.

I am mortally offended. I am very very angry. I shall show temper.
Indeed, I have shown it. Mr. Pollingray must and does think me a goose.
Dear sir, and I think you are justified. If any one pretends to guess
how, I have names to suit that person. I am a ninny, an ape, and mind I
call myself these bad things because I deserve worse. I am flighty, I
believe I am heartless. Charles is away, and I suffer no pangs. The truth
is, I fancied myself so exceedingly penetrating, and it was my vanity
looking in a glass. I saw something that answered to my nods and
howd'ye-do's and--but I am ashamed, and so penitent I might begin making
a collection of beetles. I cannot lift up my head.

Mr. Pollingray is such a different man from the one I had imagined! What
that one was, I have now quite forgotten. I remember too clearly what the
wretched guesser was. I have been three weeks at Dayton, and if my
sisters know me when I return to the vicarage, they are not foolish
virgins. For my part, I know that I shall always hate Mrs. Romer
Pattlecombe, and that I am unjust to the good woman, but I do hate her,
and I think the stories shocking, and wonder intensely what it was that I
could have found in them to laugh at. I shall never laugh again for many
years. Perhaps, when I am an old woman, I may. I wish the time had come.
All young people seem to me so helplessly silly. I am one of them for the
present, and have no hope that I can appear to be anything else. The
young are a crowd--a shoal of small fry. Their elders are the select of
the world.

On the morning of the day when I was to leave home for Dayton, a distance
of eight miles, I looked out of my window while dressing--as early as
halfpast seven--and I saw Mr. Pollingray's groom on horseback, leading up
and down the walk a darling little, round, plump, black cob that made my
heart leap with an immense bound of longing to be on it and away across
the downs. And then the maid came to my door with a letter:

'Mr. Pollingray, in return for her considerate good behaviour and saving
of trouble to him officially, begs his goddaughter to accept the
accompanying little animal: height 14 h., age 31 years; hunts, is
sure-footed, and likely to be the best jumper in the county.'

I flew downstairs. I rushed out of the house and up to my treasure, and
kissed his nose and stroked his mane. I could not get my fingers away
from him. Horses are so like the very best and beautifullest of women
when you caress them. They show their pleasure so at being petted. They
curve their necks, and paw, and look proud. They take your flattery like
sunshine and are lovely in it. I kissed my beauty, peering at his
black-mottled skin, which is like Allingborough Heath in the twilight.
The smell of his new saddle and bridle-leather was sweeter than a garden
to me. The man handed me a large riding-whip mounted with silver. I
longed to jump up and ride till midnight.

Then mama and papa came out and read the note and looked, at my darling
little cob, and my sisters saw him and kissed me, for they are not
envious girls. The most distressing thing was that we had not a
riding-habit in the family. I was ready to wear any sort. I would have
ridden as a guy rather than not ride at all. But mama gave me a promise
that in two days a riding-habit should be sent on to Dayton, and I had to
let my pet be led back from where he came. I had no life till I was
following him. I could have believed him to be a fairy prince who had
charmed me. I called him Prince Leboo, because he was black and good. I
forgive anybody who talks about first love after what my experience has
been with Prince Leboo.

What papa thought of the present I do not know, but I know very well what
mama thought: and for my part I thought everything, not distinctly
including that, for I could not suppose such selfishness in one so
generous as Mr. Pollingray. But I came to Dayton in a state of arrogant
pride, that gave assurance if not ease to my manners. I thanked Mr.
Pollingray warmly, but in a way to let him see it was the matter of a
horse between us. 'You give, I register thanks, and there's an end.'

'He thinks me a fool! a fool!

'My habit,' I said, 'comes after me. I hope we shall have some rides
together.'

'Many,' replied Mr. Pollingray, and his bow inflated me with ideas of my
condescension.

And because Miss Pollingray (Queen Elizabeth he calls her) looked half
sad, I read it--! I do not write what I read it to be.

Behold the uttermost fool of all female creation led over the house by
Mr. Pollingray. He showed me the family pictures.

'I am no judge of pictures, Mr. Pollingray.'

'You will learn to see the merits of these.'

'I'm afraid not, though I were to study them for years.'

'You may have that opportunity.'

'Oh! that is more than I can expect.'

'You will develop intelligence on such subjects by and by.'

A dull sort of distant blow struck me in this remark; but I paid no heed
to it.

He led me over the gardens and the grounds. The Great John Methlyn
Pollingray planted those trees, and designed the house, and the
flower-garden still speaks of his task; but he is not my master, and
consequently I could not share his three great-grandsons' veneration for
him. There are high fir-woods and beech woods, and a long ascending
narrow meadow between them, through which a brook falls in continual
cascades. It is the sort of scene I love, for it has a woodland grandeur
and seclusion that leads, me to think, and makes a better girl of me. But
what I said was: 'Yes, it is the place of all others to come and settle
in for the evening of one's days.'

'You could not take to it now?' said Mr. Pollingray.

'Now?' my expression of face must have been a picture.

'You feel called upon to decline such a residence in the morning of your
days?'

He persisted in looking at me as he spoke, and I felt like something
withering scarlet.

I am convinced he saw through me, while his face was polished brass. My
self-possession returned, for my pride was not to be dispersed
immediately.

'Please, take me to the stables,' I entreated; and there I was at home.
There I saw my Prince Leboo, and gave him a thousand caresses.'

'He knows me already,' I said.

Then he is some degrees in advance of me,' said Mr. Pollingray.

Is not cold dissection of one's character a cruel proceeding? And I
think, too, that a form of hospitality like this by which I am invited to
be analysed at leisure, is both mean and base. I have been kindly treated
and I am grateful, but I do still say (even though I may have improved
under it) it is unfair.

To proceed: the dinner hour arrived. The atmosphere of his own house
seems to favour Mr. Pollingray as certain soils and sites favour others.
He walked into the dining-room between us with his hands behind him,
talking to us both so easily and smoothly cheerfully--naturally and
pleasantly--inimitable by any young man! You hardly feel the change of
room. We were but three at table, but there was no lack of entertainment.
Mr. Pollingray is an admirable host; he talks just enough himself and
helps you to talk. What does comfort me is that it gives him real
pleasure to see a hearty appetite. Young men, I know it for a certainty,
never quite like us to be so human. Ah! which is right? I would not miss
the faith in our nobler essence which Charles has. But, if it nobler? One
who has lived longer in the world ought to know better, and Mr.
Pollingray approves of naturalness in everything. I have now seen through
Charles's eyes for several months; so implicitly that I am timid when I
dream of trusting to another's judgement. It is, however, a fact that I
am not quite natural with Charles.

Every day Mr. Pollingray puts on evening dress out of deference to his
sister. If young men had these good habits they would gain our respect,
and lose their own self-esteem less early.

After dinner I sang. Then Mr. Pollingray read an amusing essay to us, and
retired to his library. Miss Pollingray sat and talked to me of her
brother, and of her nephew--for whom it is that Mr. Pollingray is
beginning to receive company, and is going into society. Charles's
subsequently received letter explained the 'receive company.' I could not
comprehend it at the time.

'The house has been shut up for years, or rarely inhabited by us for more
than a month in the year. Mr. Pollingray prefers France. All his
associations, I may say his sympathies, are in France. Latterly he seems
to have changed a little; but from Normandy to Touraine and Dauphiny--we
had a triangular home over there. Indeed, we have it still. I am never
certain of my brother.'

While Miss Pollingray was speaking, my eyes were fixed on a Vidal crayon
drawing, faintly coloured with chalks, of a foreign lady--I could have
sworn to her being French--young, quite girlish, I doubt if her age was
more than mine.

She is pretty, is she not?' said Miss Pollingray.

She is almost beautiful,' I exclaimed, and Miss Pollingray, seeing my
curiosity, was kind enough not to keep me in suspense.

'That is the Marquise de Mazardouin--nee Louise de Riverolles. You will
see other portraits of her in the house. This is the most youthful of
them, if I except one representing a baby, and bearing her initials.'

I remembered having noticed a similarity of feature in some of the
portraits in the different rooms. My longing to look at them again was
like a sudden jet of flame within me. There was no chance of seeing them
till morning; so, promising myself to dream of the face before me, I
dozed through a conversation with my hostess, until I had got the French
lady's eyes and hair and general outline stamped accurately, as I hoped,
on my mind. I was no sooner on my way to bed than all had faded. The
torment of trying to conjure up that face was inconceivable. I lay, and
tossed, and turned to right and to left, and scattered my sleep; but by
and by my thoughts reverted to Mr. Pollingray, and then like sympathetic
ink held to the heat, I beheld her again; but vividly, as she must have
been when she was sitting to the artist. The hair was naturally crisped,
waving thrice over the forehead and brushed clean from the temples,
showing the small ears, and tied in a knot loosely behind. Her eyebrows
were thick and dark, but soft; flowing eyebrows; far lovelier, to my
thinking, than any pencilled arch. Dark eyes, and full, not prominent. I
find little expression of inward sentiment in very prominent eyes. On the
contrary they seem to have a fish-like dependency of gaze on what is
without, and show fishy depths, if any. For instance, my eyes are rather
prominent, and I am just the little fool--but the French lady is my
theme. Madame la Marquise, your eyes are sweeter to me than celestial. I
never saw such candour and unaffected innocence in eyes before. Accept
the compliment of the pauvre Anglaise. Did you do mischief with them? Did
Vidal's delicate sketch do justice to you? Your lips and chin and your
throat all repose in such girlish grace, that if ever it is my good
fortune to see you, you will not be aged to me!

I slept and dreamed of her.

In the morning, I felt certain that she had often said: 'Mon cher
Gilbert,' to Mr. Pollingray. Had he ever said: 'Ma chere Louise?' He
might have said: 'Ma bien aimee!' for it was a face to be loved.

My change of feeling towards him dates from that morning. He had
previously seemed to me a man so much older. I perceived in him now a
youthfulness beyond mere vigour of frame. I could not detach him from my
dreams of the night. He insists upon addressing me by the terms of our
'official' relationship, as if he made it a principle of our intercourse.

'Well, and is your godpapa to congratulate you on your having had a quiet
rest?' was his greeting.

I answered stupidly: 'Oh, yes, thank you,' and would have given worlds
for the courage to reply in French, but I distrusted my accent. At
breakfast, the opportunity or rather the excuse for an attempt, was
offered. His French valet, Francois, waits on him at breakfast. Mr.
Pollingray and his sister asked for things in the French tongue, and, as
if fearing some breach of civility, Mr. Pollingray asked me if I knew
French.

Yes, I know it; that is, I understand it,' I stuttered. Allons, nous
parlerons francais,' said he. But I shook my head, and remained like a
silly mute.

I was induced towards the close of the meal to come out with a few French
words. I was utterly shamefaced. Mr. Pollingray has got the French manner
of protesting that one is all but perfect in one's speaking. I know how
absurd it must have sounded. But I felt his kindness, and in my heart I
thanked him humbly. I believe now that a residence in France does not
deteriorate an Englishman. Mr. Pollingray, when in his own house, has the
best qualities of the two countries. He is gay, and, yes, while he makes
a study of me, I am making a study of him. Which of us two will know the
other first? He was papa's college friend--papa's junior, of course, and
infinitely more papa's junior now. I observe that weakness in him, I
mean, his clinging to youthfulness, less and less; but I do see it, I
cannot be quite in error. The truth is, I begin to feel that I cannot
venture to mistrust my infallible judgement, or I shall have no
confidence in myself at all.

After breakfast, I was handed over to Miss Pollingray, with the
intimation that I should not see him till dinner.

'Gilbert is anxious to cultivate the society of his English neighbours,
now that he has, as he supposes, really settled among them,' she remarked
to me. 'At his time of life, the desire to be useful is almost a malady.
But, he cherishes the poor, and that is more than an occupation, it is a
virtue.'

Her speech has become occasionally French in the construction of the
sentences.

'Mais oui,' I said shyly, and being alone with her, I was not rebuffed by
her smile, especially as she encouraged me on.

I am, she told me, to see a monde of French people here in September. So,
the story of me is to be completer, or continued in September. I could
not get Miss Pollingray to tell me distinctly whether Madame la Marquise
will be one of the guests. But I know that she is not a widow. In that
case, she has a husband. In that case, what is the story of her relations
towards Mr. Pollingray? There must be some story. He would not surely
have so many portraits of her about the house (and they travel with him
wherever he goes) if she were but a lovely face to him. I cannot
understand it. They were frequent, constant visitors to one another's
estates in France; always together. Perhaps a man of Mr. Pollingray's
age, or perhaps M. le Marquis--and here I lose myself. French habits are
so different from ours. One thing I am certain of: no charge can be
brought against my Englishman. I read perfect rectitude in his face. I
would cast anchor by him. He must have had a dreadful unhappiness.

Mama kept her promise by sending my riding habit and hat punctually, but
I had run far ahead of all the wishes I had formed when I left home, and
I half feared my ride out with Mr. Pollingray. That was before I had
received Charles's letter, letting me know the object of my invitation
here. I require at times a morbid pride to keep me up to the work. I
suppose I rode befittingly, for Mr. Pollingray praised my seat on
horseback. I know I can ride, or feel the 'blast of a horse like my
own'--as he calls it. Yet he never could have had a duller companion. My
conversation was all yes and no, as if it went on a pair of crutches like
a miserable cripple. I was humiliated and vexed. All the while I was
trying to lead up to the French lady, and I could not commence with a
single question. He appears to, have really cancelled the past in every
respect save his calling me his goddaughter. His talk was of the English
poor, and vegetation, and papa's goodness to his old dames in Ickleworth
parish, and defects in my education acknowledged by me, but not likely to
restore me in my depressed state. The ride was beautiful. We went the
length of a twelve-mile ridge between Ickleworth and Hillford, over high
commons, with immense views on both sides, and through beech-woods,
oakwoods, and furzy dells and downs spotted with juniper and
yewtrees--old picnic haunts of mine, but Mr. Pollingray's fresh delight
in the landscape made them seem new and strange. Home through the valley.

The next day Miss Pollingray joined us, wearing a feutre gris and green
plume, which looked exceedingly odd until you became accustomed to it.
Her hair has decided gray streaks, and that, and the Queen Elizabeth
nose, and the feutre gris!--but she is so kind, I could not even smile in
my heart. It is singular that Mr. Pollingray, who's but three years her
junior, should look at least twenty years younger--at the very least. His
moustache and beard are of the colour of a corn sheaf, and his blue eyes
shining over them remind me of summer. That describes him. He is summer,
and has not fallen into his autumn yet. Miss Pollingray helped me to talk
a little. She tried to check her brother's enthusiasm for our scenery,
and extolled the French paysage. He laughed at her, for when they were in
France it was she who used to say, 'There is nothing here like England!'
Miss Fool rode between them attentive to the jingling of the bells in her
cap: 'Yes' and 'No' at anybody's command, in and out of season.

Thank you, Charles, for your letter! I was beginning to think my
invitation to Dayton inexplicable, when that letter arrived. I cannot but
deem it an unworthy baseness to entrap a girl to study her without a
warning to her. I went up to my room after I had read it, and wrote in
reply till the breakfast-bell rang. I resumed my occupation an hour
later, and wrote till one o'clock. In all, fifteen pages of writing,
which I carefully folded and addressed to Charles; sealed the envelope,
stamped it, and destroyed it. I went to bed. 'No, I won't ride out
to-day, I have a headache!' I repeated this about half-a-dozen times to
nobody's knocking on the door, and when at last somebody knocked I tried
to repeat it once, but having the message that Mr. Pollingray
particularly wished to have my company in a ride, I rose submissively and
cried. This humiliation made my temper ferocious. Mr. Pollingray observed
my face, and put it down in his notebook. 'A savage disposition,' or, no,
'An untamed little rebel'; for he has hopes of me. He had the cruelty to
say so.

'What I am, I shall remain,' said I.

He informed me that it was perfectly natural for me to think it; and on
my replying that persons ought to know themselves best: 'At my age,
perhaps,' he said, and added, 'I cannot speak very confidently of my
knowledge of myself.'

'Then you make us out to be nothing better than puppets, Mr. Pollingray.'

'If we have missed an early apprenticeship to the habit of self-command,
ma filleule.'

'Merci, mon parrain.'

He laughed. My French, I suppose.

I determined that, if he wanted to study me, I would help him.

'I can command myself when I choose, but it is only when I choose.'

This seemed to me quite a reasonable speech, until I found him looking
for something to follow, in explanation, and on coming to sift my
meaning, I saw that it was temper, and getting more angry, continued:

'The sort of young people who have such wonderful command of themselves
are not the pleasantest.'

'No,' he said; 'they disappoint us. We expect folly from the young.'

I shut my lips. Prince Leboo knew that he must go, and a good gallop
reconciled me to circumstances. Then I was put to jumping little furzes
and ditches, which one cannot pretend to do without a fair appearance of
gaiety; for, while you are running the risk of a tumble, you are
compelled to look cheerful and gay, at least, I am. To fall frowning will
never do. I had no fall. My gallant Leboo made my heart leap with love of
him, though mill-stones were tied to it. I may be vexed when I begin, but
I soon ride out a bad temper. And he is mine! I am certainly inconstant
to Charles, for I think of Leboo fifty times more. Besides, there is no
engagement as yet between Charles and me. I have first to be approved
worthy by Mr. and Miss Pollingray: two pairs of eyes and ears, over which
I see a solemnly downy owl sitting, conning their reports of me. It is a
very unkind ordeal to subject any inexperienced young woman to. It was
harshly conceived and it is being remorselessly executed. I would
complain more loudly--in shrieks--if I could say I was unhappy; but every
night I look out of my window before going to bed and see the long falls
of the infant river through the meadow, and the dark woods seeming to
enclose the house from harm: I dream of the old inhabitant, his
ancestors, and the numbers and numbers of springs when the wildflowers
have flourished in those woods and the nightingales have sung there. And
I feel there will never be a home to me like Dayton.




CHAPTER V

HE

For twenty years of my life I have embraced the phantom of the fairest
woman that ever drew breath. I have submitted to her whims, I have
worshipped her feet, I have, I believe, strengthened her principle. I
have done all in my devotion but adopt her religious faith. And I have,
as I trusted some time since, awakened to perceive that those twenty
years were a period of mere sentimental pastime, perfectly useless,
fruitless, unless, as is possible, it has saved me from other follies.
But it was a folly in itself. Can one's nature be too stedfast? The
question whether a spice of frivolousness may not be a safeguard has
often risen before me. The truth, I must learn to think, is, that my
mental power is not the match for my ideal or sentimental apprehension
and native tenacity of attachment. I have fallen into one of the pits of
a well-meaning but idle man. The world discredits the existence of pure
platonism in love. I myself can barely look back on those twenty years of
amatory servility with a full comprehension of the part I have been
playing in them. And yet I would not willingly forfeit the exalted
admiration of Louise for my constancy: as little willingly as I would
have imperilled her purity. I cling to the past as to something in which
I have deserved well, though I am scarcely satisfied with it. According
to our English notions I know my name. English notions, however, are not
to be accepted in all matters, any more than the flat declaration of a
fact will develop it in alt its bearings. When our English society shall
have advanced to a high civilization, it will be less expansive in
denouncing the higher stupidities. Among us, much of the social judgement
of Bodge upon the relations of men to women is the stereotyped opinion of
the land. There is the dictum here for a man who adores a woman who is
possessed by a husband. If he has long adored her, and known himself to
be preferred by her in innocency of heart; if he has solved the problem
of being her bosom's lord, without basely seeking to degrade her to being
his mistress; the epithets to characterise him in our vernacular will
probably be all the less flattering. Politically we are the most
self-conscious people upon earth, and socially the frankest animals. The
terrorism of our social laws is eminently serviceable, for without it
such frank animals as we are might run into bad excesses. I judge rather
by the abstract evidence than by the examples our fair matrons give to
astounded foreigners when abroad.

Louise writes that her husband is paralysed. The Marquis de Mazardouin is
at last tasting of his mortality. I bear in mind the day when he married
her. She says that he has taken to priestly counsel, and, like a woman,
she praises him for that. It is the one thing which I have not done to
please her. She anticipates his decease. Should she be free--what then?
My heart does not beat the faster for the thought. There are twenty years
upon it, and they make a great load. But I have a desire that she should
come over to us. The old folly might rescue me from the new one. Not that
I am any further persecuted by the dread that I am in imminent danger
here. I have established a proper mastery over my young lady. 'Nous avons
change de role'. Alice is subdued; she laughs feebly, is becoming
conscious--a fact to be regretted, if I desired to check the creature's
growth. There is vast capacity in the girl. She has plainly not centred
her affections upon Charles, so that a man's conscience might be at ease
if--if he chose to disregard what is due to decency. But, why, when I
contest it, do I bow to the world's opinion concerning disparity of years
between husband and wife? I know innumerable cases of an old husband
making a young wife happy. My friend, Dr. Galliot, married his ward, and
he had the best wife of any man of my acquaintance. She has been
publishing his learned manuscripts ever since his death. That is an
extreme case, for he was forty-five years her senior, and stood bald at
the altar. Old General Althorpe married Julia Dahoop, and, but for his
preposterous jealousy of her, might be cited in proof that the ordinary
reckonings are not to be a yoke on the neck of one who earnestly seeks to
spouse a fitting mate, though late in life. But, what are fifty years?
They mark the prime of a healthy man's existence. He has by that time
seen the world, can decide, and settle, and is virtually more
eligible--to use the cant phrase of gossips--than a young man, even for a
young girl. And may not some fair and fresh reward be justly claimed as
the crown of a virtuous career?

I say all this, yet my real feeling is as if I were bald as Dr. Galliot
and jealous as General Althorpe. For, with my thorough knowledge of
myself, I, were I like either one of them, should not have offered myself
to the mercy of a young woman, or of the world. Nor, as I am and know
myself to be, would I offer myself to the mercy of Alice Amble. When my
filleule first drove into Dayton she had some singularly audacious ideas
of her own. Those vivid young feminine perceptions and untamed
imaginations are desperate things to encounter. There is nothing beyond
their reach. Our safety from them lies in the fact that they are always
seeing too much, and imagining too wildly; so that, with a little help
from us, they may be taught to distrust themselves; and when they have
once distrusted themselves, we need not afterwards fear them: their
supernatural vitality has vanished. I fancy my pretty Alice to be in this
state now. She leaves us to-morrow. In the autumn we shall have her with
us again, and Louise will scan her compassionately. I desire that they
should meet. It will be hardly fair to the English girl, but, if I stand
in the gap between them, I shall summon up no small quantity of dormant
compatriotic feeling. The contemplation of the contrast, too, may save me
from both: like the logic ass with the two trusses of hay on either side
of him.




CHAPTER VI

SHE

I am at home. There was never anybody who felt so strange in her home. It
is not a month since I left my sisters, and I hardly remember that I know
them. They all, and even papa, appear to be thinking about such petty
things. They complain that I tell them nothing. What have I to tell? My
Prince! my own Leboo, if I might lie in the stall with you, then I should
feel thoroughly happy! That is, if I could fall asleep. Evelina declares
we are not eight miles from Dayton. It seems to me I am eight millions of
miles distant, and shall be all my life travelling along a weary road to
get there again just for one long sunny day. And it might rain when I got
there after all! My trouble nobody knows. Nobody knows a thing!

The night before my departure, Miss Pollingray did me the honour to
accompany me up to my bedroom. She spoke to me searchingly about Charles;
but she did not demand compromising answers. She is not in favour of
early marriages, so she merely wishes to know the footing upon which we
stand: that of friends. I assured her we were simply friends. 'It is the
firmest basis of an attachment,' she said; and I did not look hurried.

But I gained my end. I led her to talk of the beautiful Marquise. This is
the tale. Mr. Pollingray, when a very young man, and comparatively poor,
went over to France with good introductions, and there saw and fell in
love with Louise de Riverolles. She reciprocated his passion. If he would
have consented to abjure his religion and worship with her, Madame de
Riverolles, her mother, would have listened to her entreaties. But
Gilbert was firm. Mr. Pollingray, I mean, refused to abandon his faith.
Her mother, consequently, did not interfere, and Monsieur de Riverolles,
her father, gave her to the Marquis de Marzardouin, a roue young
nobleman, immensely rich, and shockingly dissipated. And she married him.
No, I cannot understand French girls. Do as I will, it is quite
incomprehensible to me how Louise, loving another, could suffer herself
to be decked out in bridal finery and go to the altar and take the
marriage oaths. Not if perdition had threatened would I have submitted. I
have a feeling that Mr. Pollingray should have shown at least one year's
resentment at such conduct; and yet I admire him for his immediate
generous forgiveness of her. It was fatherly. She was married at sixteen.
His forgiveness was the fruit of his few years' seniority, said Miss
Pollingray, whose opinion of the Marquise I cannot arrive at. At any
rate, they have been true and warm friends ever since, constantly
together interchangeing visits. That is why Mr. Pollingray has been more
French than English for those long years.

Miss Pollingray concluded by asking me what I thought of the story. I
said: 'It is very strange French habits are so different from ours. I
dare say . . . I hope . . . , perhaps . . . indeed, Mr. Pollingray seems
happy now.' Her idea of my wits must be that they are of the schoolgirl
order--a perfect receptacle for indefinite impressions.

'Ah!' said she. 'Gilbert has burnt his heart to ashes by this time.'

I slept with that sentence in my brain. In the morning, I rose and
dressed, dreaming. As I was turning the handle of my door to go down to
breakfast, suddenly I swung round in a fit of tears. It was so piteous to
think that he should have waited by her twenty years in a slow anguish,
his heart burning out, without a reproach or a complaint. I saw him, I
still see him, like a martyr.

'Some people,' Miss Pollingray said, I permitted themselves to think evil
of my brother's assiduous devotion to a married woman. There is not a
spot on his character, or on that of the person whom Gilbert loved.'

I would believe it in the teeth of calumny. I would cling to my, belief
in him if I were drowning.

I consider that those twenty years are just nothing, if he chooses to
have them so. He has lived embalmed in a saintly affection. No wonder he
considers himself still youthful. He is entitled to feel that his future
is before him.

No amount of sponging would get the stains away from my horrid red
eyelids. I slunk into my seat at the breakfast-table, not knowing that
one of the maids had dropped a letter from Charles into my hand, and that
I had opened it and was holding it open. The letter, as I found
afterwards, told me that Charles has received an order from his uncle to
go over to Mr. Pollingray's estate in Dauphiny on business. I am not
sorry that they should have supposed I was silly enough to cry at the
thought of Charles's crossing the Channel. They did imagine it, I know;
for by and by Miss Pollingray whispered: 'Les absents n'auront pas tort,
cette fois, n'est-ce-pas? 'And Mr. Pollingray was cruelly gentle: an air
of 'I would not intrude on such emotions'; and I heightened their
delusions as much as I could: there was no other way of accounting for my
pantomime face. Why should he fancy I suffered so terribly? He talked
with an excited cheerfulness meant to relieve me, of course, but there
was no justification for his deeming me a love-sick kind of woe-begone
ballad girl. It caused him likewise to adopt a manner--what to call it, I
cannot think: tender respect, frigid regard, anything that accompanies
and belongs to the pressure of your hand with the finger-tips. He said
goodbye so tenderly that I would have kissed his sleeve. The effort to
restrain myself made me like an icicle. Oh! adieu, mon parrain!

     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

     A wise man will not squander his laughter if he can help it
     A woman is hurt if you do not confide to her your plans
     Gentleman in a good state of preservation
     Imparting the usual chorus of yesses to his own mind
     In every difficulty, patience is a life-belt
     Knew my friend to be one of the most absent-minded of men
     Rapture of obliviousness
     Telling her anything, she makes half a face in anticipation
     When you have done laughing with her, you can laugh at her




THE SENTIMENTALISTS

AN UNFINISHED COMEDY

By George Meredith

              DRAMATIS PERSONAE
HOMEWARE.
PROFESSOR SPIRAL.

ARDEN,............. In love with Astraea.

SWITHIN,........... Sympathetics. OSIER,

DAME DRESDEN,...... Sister to Homeware.

ASTRAEA,........... Niece to Dame Dresden and Homeware.

LYRA,.............. A Wife.
LADY OLDLACE.
VIRGINIA.
WINIFRED.

              THE SENTIMENTALISTS

              AN UNFINISHED COMEDY

The scene is a Surrey garden in early summer. The paths are shaded by
tall box-wood hedges. The--time is some sixty years ago.

                 SCENE I

       PROFESSOR SPIRAL, DAME DRESDEN, LADY OLDLACE,
         VIRGINIA, WINIFRED, SWITHIN, and OSIER

(As they slowly promenade the garden, the professor is delivering one of
his exquisite orations on Woman.)

SPIRAL: One husband! The woman consenting to marriage takes but one. For
her there is no widowhood. That punctuation of the sentence called death
is not the end of the chapter for her. It is the brilliant proof of her
having a soul. So she exalts her sex. Above the wrangle and clamour of
the passions she is a fixed star. After once recording her obedience to
the laws of our common nature--that is to say, by descending once to
wedlock--she passes on in sovereign disengagement--a dedicated widow.

   (By this time they have disappeared from view. HOMEWARE appears;
   he craftily avoids joining their party, like one who is unworthy of
   such noble oratory. He desires privacy and a book, but is disturbed
   by the arrival of ARDEN, who is painfully anxious to be polite to
   'her uncle Homeware.')

                 SCENE II

               HOMEWARE, ARDEN

ARDEN: A glorious morning, sir.

HOMEWARE: The sun is out, sir.

ARDEN: I am happy in meeting you, Mr. Homeware.

HOMEWARE: I can direct you to the ladies, Mr. Arden. You will find them
up yonder avenue.

ARDEN: They are listening, I believe, to an oration from the mouth of
Professor Spiral.

HOMEWARE: On an Alpine flower which has descended to flourish on English
soil. Professor Spiral calls it Nature's 'dedicated widow.'

ARDEN: 'Dedicated widow'?

HOMEWARE: The reference you will observe is to my niece Astraea.

ARDEN: She is dedicated to whom?

HOMEWARE: To her dead husband! You see the reverse of Astraea, says the
professor, in those world-infamous widows who marry again.

ARDEN: Bah!

HOMEWARE: Astraea, it is decided, must remain solitary, virgin cold, like
the little Alpine flower. Professor Spiral has his theme.

ARDEN: He will make much of it. May I venture to say that I prefer my
present company?

HOMEWARE: It is a singular choice. I can supply you with no weapons for
the sort of stride in which young men are usually engaged. You belong to
the camp you are avoiding.

ARDEN: Achilles was not the worse warrior, sir, for his probation in
petticoats.

HOMEWARE: His deeds proclaim it. But Alexander was the better chieftain
until he drank with Lais.

ARDEN: No, I do not plead guilty to Bacchus.

HOMEWARE: You are confessing to the madder form of drunkenness.

ARDEN: How, sir, I beg?

HOMEWARE: How, when a young man sees the index to himself in everything
spoken!

ARDEN: That might have the look. I did rightly in coming to you, sir.

HOMEWARE: 'Her uncle Homeware'?

ARDEN: You read through us all, sir.

HOMEWARE: It may interest you to learn that you are the third of the
gentlemen commissioned to consult the lady's uncle Homeware.

ARDEN: The third.

HOMEWARE: Yes, she is pursued. It could hardly be otherwise. Her
attractions are acknowledged, and the house is not a convent. Yet, Mr.
Arden, I must remind you that all of you are upon an enterprise held to
be profane by the laws of this region. Can you again forget that Astraea
is a widow?

ARDEN: She was a wife two months; she has been a widow two years.

HOMEWARE: The widow of the great and venerable Professor Towers is not to
measure her widowhood by years. His, from the altar to the tomb. As it
might be read, a one day's walk!

ARDEN: Is she, in the pride of her youth, to be sacrificed to a whimsical
feminine delicacy?

HOMEWARE: You have argued it with her?

ARDEN: I have presumed.

HOMEWARE: And still she refused her hand!

ARDEN: She commended me to you, sir. She has a sound judgement of
persons.

HOMEWARE: I should put it that she passes the Commissioners of Lunacy, on
the ground of her being a humorous damsel. Your predecessors had also
argued it with her; and they, too, discovered their enemy in a whimsical
feminine delicacy. Where is the difference between you? Evidently she
cannot perceive it, and I have to seek: You will have had many
conversations with Astraea?

ARDEN: I can say, that I am thrice the man I was before I had them.

HOMEWARE: You have gained in manhood from conversations with a widow in
her twenty-second year; and you want more of her.

ARDEN: As much as I want more wisdom.

HOMEWARE: You would call her your Muse?

ARDEN: So prosaic a creature as I would not dare to call her that.

HOMEWARE: You have the timely mantle of modesty, Mr. Arden. She has
prepared you for some of the tests with her uncle Homeware.

ARDEN: She warned me to be myself, without a spice of affectation.

HOMEWARE: No harder task could be set a young man in modern days. Oh, the
humorous damsel. You sketch me the dimple at her mouth.

ARDEN: Frankly, sir, I wish you to know me better; and I think I can bear
inspection. Astraea sent me to hear the reasons why she refuses me a
hearing.

HOMEWARE: Her reason, I repeat, is this; to her idea, a second wedlock is
unholy. Further, it passes me to explain. The young lady lands us where
we were at the beginning; such must have been her humorous intention.

ARDEN: What can I do?

HOMEWARE: Love and war have been compared. Both require strategy and
tactics, according to my recollection of the campaign.

ARDEN: I will take to heart what you say, sir.

HOMEWARE: Take it to head. There must be occasional descent of lovers'
heads from the clouds. And Professor Spiral,--But here we have a belated
breeze of skirts.

   (The reference is to the arrival of LYRA, breathless.)

                SCENE III

             HOMEWARE, ARDEN, LYRA

LYRA: My own dear uncle Homeware!

HOMEWARE: But where is Pluriel?

LYRA: Where is a woman's husband when she is away from him?

HOMEWARE: In Purgatory, by the proper reckoning. But hurry up the avenue,
or you will be late for Professor Spiral's address.

LYRA: I know it all without hearing. Their Spiral! Ah, Mr. Arden! You
have not chosen badly. The greater my experience, the more do I value my
uncle Homeware's company.

   (She is affectionate to excess but has a roguish eye withal, as of
   one who knows that uncle Homeware suspects all young men and most
   young women.)

HOMEWARE: Agree with the lady promptly, my friend.

ARDEN: I would gladly boast of so lengthened an experience, Lady Pluriel.

LYRA: I must have a talk with Astraea, my dear uncle. Her letters breed
suspicions. She writes feverishly. The last one hints at service on the
West Coast of Africa.

HOMEWARE: For the draining of a pestiferous land, or an enlightenment of
the benighted black, we could not despatch a missionary more effective
than the handsomest widow in Great Britain.

LYRA: Have you not seen signs of disturbance?

HOMEWARE: A great oration may be a sedative.

LYRA: I have my suspicions.

HOMEWARE: Mr. Arden, I could counsel you to throw yourself at Lady
Pluriel's feet, and institute her as your confessional priest.

ARDEN: Madam, I am at your feet. I am devoted to the lady.

LYRA: Devoted. There cannot be an objection. It signifies that a man asks
for nothing in return!

HOMEWARE: Have a thought upon your words with this lady, Mr. Arden!

ARDEN: Devoted, I said. I am. I would give my life for her.

LYRA: Expecting it to be taken to-morrow or next day? Accept my
encomiums. A male devotee is within an inch of a miracle. Women had been
looking for this model for ages, uncle.

HOMEWARE: You are the model, Mr Arden!

LYRA: Can you have intended to say that it is in view of marriage you are
devoted to the widow of Professor Towers?

ARDEN: My one view.

LYRA: It is a star you are beseeching to descend.

ARDEN: It is.

LYRA: You disappoint me hugely. You are of the ordinary tribe after all;
and your devotion craves an enormous exchange, infinitely surpassing the
amount you bestow.

ARDEN: It does. She is rich in gifts; I am poor. But I give all I have.

LYRA: These lovers, uncle Homeware!

HOMEWARE: A honey-bag is hung up and we have them about us. They would
persuade us that the chief business of the world is a march to the altar.

ARDEN: With the right partner, if the business of the world is to be
better done.

LYRA: Which right partner has been chosen on her part, by a veiled woman,
who marches back from the altar to discover that she has chained herself
to the skeleton of an idea, or is in charge of that devouring tyrant, an
uxorious husband. Is Mr. Arden in favour with the Dame, uncle?

HOMEWARE: My sister is an unsuspicious potentate, as you know. Pretenders
to the hand of an inviolate widow bite like waves at a rock.

LYRA: Professor Spiral advances rapidly.

HOMEWARE: Not, it would appear, when he has his audience of ladies and
their satellites.

LYRA: I am sure I hear a spring-tide of enthusiasm coming.

ARDEN: I will see.

   (He goes up the path.)

LYRA: Now! my own dear uncle, save me from Pluriel. I have given him the
slip in sheer desperation; but the man is at his shrewdest when he is
left to guess at my heels. Tell him I am anywhere but here. Tell him I
ran away to get a sense of freshness in seeing him again. Let me have one
day of liberty, or, upon my word, I shall do deeds; I shall console young
Arden: I shall fly to Paris and set my cap at presidents and foreign
princes. Anything rather than be eaten up every minute, as I am. May no
woman of my acquaintance marry a man of twenty years her senior! She
marries a gigantic limpet. At that period of his life a man becomes too
voraciously constant.

HOMEWARE: Cupid clipped of wing is a destructive parasite.

LYRA: I am in dead earnest, uncle, and I will have a respite, or else let
decorum beware!

   (Arden returns.)

ARDEN: The ladies are on their way.

LYRA: I must get Astraea to myself.

HOMEWARE: My library is a virgin fortress, Mr. Arden. Its gates are open
to you on other topics than the coupling of inebriates.

   (He enters the house--LYRA disappears in the garden--Spiral's
   audience reappear without him.)

                 SCENE IV

       DAME DRESDEN, LADY OLDLACE, VIRGINIA, WINIFRED,
             ARDEN, SWITHIN, OSIER

LADY OLDLACE: Such perfect rhythm!

WINIFRED: Such oratory!

LADY OLDLACE: A master hand. I was in a trance from the first sentence to
the impressive close.

OSIER: Such oratory is a whole orchestral symphony.

VIRGINIA: Such command of intonation and subject!

SWITHIN: That resonant voice!

LADY OLDLACE: Swithin, his flow of eloquence! He launched forth!

SWITHIN: Like an eagle from a cliff.

OSIER: The measure of the words was like a beat of wings.

SWITHIN: He makes poets of us.

DAME DRESDEN: Spiral achieved his pinnacle to-day!

VIRGINIA: How treacherous is our memory when we have most the longing to
recall great sayings!

OSIER: True, I conceive that my notes will be precious.

WINIFRED: You could take notes!

LADY OLDLACE: It seems a device for missing the quintessential.

SWITHIN: Scraps of the body to the loss of the soul of it. We can allow
that our friend performed good menial service.

WINIFRED: I could not have done the thing.

SWITHIN: In truth; it does remind one of the mess of pottage.

LADY OLDLACE: One hardly felt one breathed.

VIRGINIA: I confess it moved me to tears.

SWITHIN: There is a pathos for us in the display of perfection. Such
subtle contrast with our individual poverty affects us.

WINIFRED: Surely there were passages of a distinct and most exquisite
pathos.

LADY OLDLACE: As in all great oratory! The key of it is the pathos.

VIRGINIA: In great oratory, great poetry, great fiction; you try it by
the pathos. All our critics agree in stipulating for the pathos. My tears
were no feminine weakness, I could not be a discordant instrument.

SWITHIN: I must make confession. He played on me too.

OSIER: We shall be sensible for long of that vibration from the touch of
a master hand.

ARDEN: An accomplished player can make a toy-shop fiddle sound you a
Stradivarius.

DAME DRESDEN: Have you a right to a remark, Mr. Arden? What could have
detained you?

ARDEN: Ah, Dame. It may have been a warning that I am a discordant
instrument. I do not readily vibrate.

DAME DRESDEN: A discordant instrument is out of place in any civil
society. You have lost what cannot be recovered.

ARDEN: There are the notes.

OSIER: Yes, the notes.

SWITHIN: You can be satisfied with the dog's feast at the table, Mr.
Arden!

OSIER: Ha!

VIRGINIA: Never have I seen Astraea look sublimer in her beauty than with
her eyes uplifted to the impassioned speaker, reflecting every variation
of his tones.

ARDEN: Astraea!

LADY OLDLACE: She was entranced when he spoke of woman descending from
her ideal to the gross reality of man.

OSIER: Yes, yes. I have the words [reads]: 'Woman is to the front of man,
holding the vestal flower of a purer civilization. I see,' he says, 'the
little taper in her hands transparent round the light, against rough
winds.'

DAME DRESDEN: And of Astraea herself, what were the words? 'Nature's
dedicated widow.'

SWITHIN: Vestal widow, was it not?

VIRGINIA: Maiden widow, I think.

DAME DRESDEN: We decide for 'dedicated.'

WINIFRED: Spiral paid his most happy tribute to the memory of her late
husband, the renowned Professor Towers.

VIRGINIA: But his look was at dear Astraea.

ARDEN: At Astraea? Why?

VIRGINIA: For her sanction doubtless.

ARDEN: Ha!

WINIFRED: He said his pride would ever be in his being received as the
successor of Professor Towers.

ARDEN: Successor!

SWITHIN: Guardian was it not?

OSIER: Tutor. I think he said.

   (The three gentlemen consult Osier's notes uneasily.)

DAME DRESDEN: Our professor must by this time have received in full
Astraea's congratulations, and Lyra is hearing from her what it is to be
too late. You will join us at the luncheon table, if you do not feel
yourself a discordant instrument there, Mr. Arden?

ARDEN (going to her): The allusion to knife and fork tunes my strings
instantly, Dame.

DAME DRESDEN: You must help me to-day, for the professor will be tired,
though we dare not hint at it in his presence. No reference, ladies, to
the great speech we have been privileged to hear; we have expressed our
appreciation and he could hardly bear it.

ARDEN: Nothing is more distasteful to the orator!

VIRGINIA: As with every true genius, he is driven to feel humbly human by
the exultation of him.

SWITHIN: He breathes in a rarified air.

OSIER: I was thrilled, I caught at passing beauties. I see that here and
there I have jotted down incoherencies, lines have seduced me, so that I
missed the sequence--the precious part. Ladies, permit me to rank him
with Plato as to the equality of women and men.

WINIFRED: It is nobly said.

OSIER: And with the Stoics, in regard to celibacy.

   (By this time all the ladies have gone into the house.)

ARDEN: Successor! Was the word successor?

   (ARDEN, SWITHIN, and OSIER are excitedly searching the notes
   when SPIRAL passes and strolls into the house. His air of
   self-satisfaction increases their uneasiness they follow him.
   ASTRAEA and LYRA come down the path.)

                 SCENE V

               ASTRAEA, LYRA

LYRA: Oh! Pluriel, ask me of him! I wish I were less sure he would not be
at the next corner I turn.

ASTRAEA: You speak of your husband strangely, Lyra.

LYRA: My head is out of a sack. I managed my escape from him this morning
by renouncing bath and breakfast; and what a relief, to be in the railway
carriage alone! that is, when the engine snorted. And if I set eyes on
him within a week, he will hear some truths. His idea of marriage is, the
taking of the woman into custody. My hat is on, and on goes Pluriel's. My
foot on the stairs; I hear his boot behind me. In my boudoir I am alone
one minute, and then the door opens to the inevitable. I pay a visit, he
is passing the house as I leave it. He will not even affect surprise. I
belong to him, I am cat's mouse. And he will look doating on me in
public. And when I speak to anybody, he is that fearful picture of all
smirks. Fling off a kid glove after a round of calls; feel your
hand--there you have me now that I am out of him for my half a day, if
for as long.

ASTRAEA: This is one of the world's happy marriages!

LYRA: This is one of the world's choice dishes! And I have it planted
under my nostrils eternally. Spare me the mention of Pluriel until he
appears; that's too certain this very day. Oh! good husband! good kind of
man! whatever you please; only some peace, I do pray, for the
husband-haunted wife. I like him, I like him, of course, but I want to
breathe. Why, an English boy perpetually bowled by a Christmas pudding
would come to loathe the mess.

ASTRAEA: His is surely the excess of a merit.

LYRA: Excess is a poison. Excess of a merit is a capital offence in
morality. It disgusts, us with virtue. And you are the cunningest of
fencers, tongue, or foils. You lead me to talk of myself, and I hate the
subject. By the way, you have practised with Mr. Arden.

ASTRAEA: A tiresome instructor, who lets you pass his guard to compliment
you on a hit.

LYRA: He rather wins me.

ASTRAEA: He does at first.

LYRA: Begins Plurielizing, without the law to back him, does he?

ASTRAEA: The fencing lessons are at an end.

LYRA: The duetts with Mr. Swithin's violoncello continue?

ASTRAEA: He broke through the melody.

LYRA: There were readings in poetry with Mr. Osier, I recollect.

ASTRAEA: His own compositions became obtrusive.

LYRA: No fencing, no music, no poetry! no West Coast of Africa either, I
suppose.

ASTRAEA: Very well! I am on my defence. You at least shall not
misunderstand me, Lyra. One intense regret I have; that I did not live in
the time of the Amazons. They were free from this question of marriage;
this babble of love. Why am I so persecuted? He will not take a refusal.
There are sacred reasons. I am supported by every woman having the sense
of her dignity. I am perverted, burlesqued by the fury of wrath I feel at
their incessant pursuit. And I despise Mr. Osier and Mr. Swithin because
they have an air of pious agreement with the Dame, and are conspirators
behind their mask.

LYRA: False, false men!

ASTRAEA: They come to me. I am complimented on being the vulnerable spot.

LYRA: The object desired is usually addressed by suitors, my poor
Astraea!

ASTRAEA: With the assumption, that as I am feminine I must necessarily be
in the folds of the horrible constrictor they call Love, and that I leap
to the thoughts of their debasing marriage.

LYRA: One of them goes to Mr. Homeware.

ASTRAEA: All are sent to him in turn. He can dispose of them.

LYRA: Now that is really masterly fun, my dear; most creditable to you!
Love, marriage, a troop of suitors, and uncle Homeware. No, it would not
have occurred to me, and--I am considered to have some humour. Of course,
he disposes of them. He seemed to have a fairly favourable opinion of Mr.
Arden.

ASTRAEA: I do not share it. He is the least respectful of the sentiments
entertained by me. Pray, spare me the mention of him, as you say of your
husband. He has that pitiful conceit in men, which sets them thinking
that a woman must needs be susceptible to the declaration of the mere
existence of their passion. He is past argument. Impossible for him to
conceive a woman's having a mind above the conditions of her sex. A
woman, according to him, can have no ideal of life, except as a ball to
toss in the air and catch in a cup. Put him aside. . . . We creatures are
doomed to marriage, and if we shun it, we are a kind of cripple. He is
grossly earthy in his view of us. We are unable to move a step in thought
or act unless we submit to have a husband. That is his reasoning. Nature!
Nature! I have to hear of Nature! We must be above Nature, I tell him,
or, we shall be very much below. He is ranked among our clever young men;
and he can be amusing. So far he passes muster; and he has a pleasant
voice. I dare say he is an uncle Homeware's good sort of boy. Girls like
him. Why does he not fix his attention upon one of them; Why upon me? We
waste our time in talking of him . . . . The secret of it is, that he has
no reverence. The marriage he vaunts is a mere convenient arrangement for
two to live together under command of nature. Reverence for the state of
marriage is unknown to him. How explain my feeling? I am driven into
silence. Cease to speak of him . . . . He is the dupe of his
eloquence--his passion, he calls it. I have only to trust myself to him,
and--I shall be one of the world's married women! Words are useless. How
am I to make him see that it is I who respect the state of marriage by
refusing; not he by perpetually soliciting. Once married, married for
ever. Widow is but a term. When women hold their own against him, as I
have done, they will be more esteemed. I have resisted and conquered. I
am sorry I do not share in the opinion of your favourite.

LYRA: Mine?

ASTRAEA: You spoke warmly of him.

LYRA: Warmly, was it?

ASTRAEA: You are not blamed, my dear: he has a winning manner.

LYRA: I take him to be a manly young fellow, smart enough; handsome too.

ASTRAEA: Oh, he has good looks.

LYRA: And a head, by repute.

ASTRAEA: For the world's work, yes.

LYRA: Not romantic.

ASTRAEA: Romantic ideas are for dreamy simperers.

LYRA: Amazons repudiate them.

ASTRAEA: Laugh at me. Half my time I am laughing at myself. I should
regain my pride if I could be resolved on a step. I am strong to resist;
I have not strength to move.

LYRA: I see the sphinx of Egypt!

ASTRAEA: And all the while I am a manufactory of gunpowder in this quiet
old-world Sabbath circle of dear good souls, with their stereotyped
interjections, and orchestra of enthusiasms; their tapering delicacies:
the rejoicing they have in their common agreement on all created things.
To them it is restful. It spurs me to fly from rooms and chairs and beds
and houses. I sleep hardly a couple of hours. Then into the early morning
air, out with the birds; I know no other pleasure.

LYRA: Hospital work for a variation: civil or military. The former
involves the house-surgeon: the latter the grateful lieutenant.

ASTRAEA: Not if a woman can resist . . . I go to it proof-armoured.

LYRA: What does the Dame say?

ASTRAEA: Sighs over me! Just a little maddening to hear.

LYRA: When we feel we have the strength of giants, and are bidden to sit
and smile! You should rap out some of our old sweet-innocent garden oaths
with her--'Carnation! Dame!' That used to make her dance on her
seat.--'But, dearest Dame, it is as natural an impulse for women to have
that relief as for men; and natural will out, begonia! it will!' We ran
through the book of Botany for devilish objurgations. I do believe our
misconduct caused us to be handed to the good man at the altar as the
right corrective. And you were the worst offender.

ASTRAEA: Was I? I could be now, though I am so changed a creature.

LYRA: You enjoy the studies with your Spiral, come!

ASTRAEA: Professor Spiral is the one honest gentleman here. He does
homage to my principles. I have never been troubled by him: no silly
hints or side-looks--you know, the dog at the forbidden bone.

LYRA: A grand orator.

ASTRAEA: He is. You fix on the smallest of his gifts. He is
intellectually and morally superior.

LYRA: Praise of that kind makes me rather incline to prefer his
inferiors. He fed gobble-gobble on your puffs of incense. I coughed and
scraped the gravel; quite in vain; he tapped for more and more.

ASTRAEA: Professor Spiral is a thinker; he is a sage. He gives women
their due.

LYRA: And he is a bachelor too--or consequently.

ASTRAEA: If you like you may be as playful with me as the Lyra of our
maiden days used to be. My dear, my dear, how glad I am to have you here!
You remind me that I once had a heart. It will beat again with you beside
me, and I shall look to you for protection. A novel request from me. From
annoyance, I mean. It has entirely altered my character. Sometimes I am
afraid to think of what I was, lest I should suddenly romp, and perform
pirouettes and cry 'Carnation!' There is the bell. We must not be late
when the professor condescends to sit for meals.

LYRA: That rings healthily in the professor.

ASTRAEA: Arm in arm, my Lyra.

LYRA: No Pluriel yet!

   (They enter the house, and the time changes to evening of the same
   day. The scene is still the garden.)

                 SCENE VI

               ASTRAEA, ARDEN

ASTRAEA: Pardon me if I do not hear you well.

ARDEN: I will not even think you barbarous.

ASTRAEA: I am. I am the object of the chase.

ARDEN: The huntsman draws the wood, then, and not you.

ASTRAEA:
        At any instant I am forced to run,
        Or turn in my defence: how can I be
        Other than barbarous? You are the cause.

ARDEN: No: heaven that made you beautiful's the cause.

ASTRAEA:
        Say, earth, that gave you instincts. Bring me down
        To instincts! When by chance I speak awhile
        With our professor, you appear in haste,
        Full cry to sight again the missing hare.
        Away ideas! All that's divinest flies!
        I have to bear in mind how young you are.

ARDEN:
        You have only to look up to me four years,
        Instead of forty!

ASTRAEA: Sir?

ARDEN
          There's my misfortune!
        And worse that, young, I love as a young man.
        Could I but quench the fire, I might conceal
        The youthfulness offending you so much.

ASTRAEA: I wish you would. I wish it earnestly.

ARDEN: Impossible. I burn.

ASTRAEA: You should not burn.

ARDEN
        'Tis more than I. 'Tis fire. It masters will.
        You would not say I should not' if you knew fire.
        It seizes. It devours.

ASTRAEA: Dry wood.

ARDEN:
        Cold wit!
        How cold you can be! But be cold, for sweet
        You must be. And your eyes are mine: with them
        I see myself: unworthy to usurp
        The place I hold a moment. While I look
        I have my happiness.

ASTRAEA: You should look higher.

ARDEN:
        Through you to the highest. Only through you!
          Through you
        The mark I may attain is visible,
        And I have strength to dream of winning it.
        You are the bow that speeds the arrow: you
        The glass that brings the distance nigh. My world
        Is luminous through you, pure heavenly,
        But hangs upon the rose's outer leaf,
        Not next her heart. Astraea! my own beloved!

ASTRAEA: We may be excellent friends. And I have faults.

ARDEN: Name them: I am hungering for more to love.

ASTRAEA:
        I waver very constantly: I have
        No fixity of feeling or of sight.
        I have no courage: I can often dream
        Of daring: when I wake I am in dread.
        I am inconstant as a butterfly,
        And shallow as a brook with little fish!
        Strange little fish, that tempt the small boy's net,
        But at a touch straight dive! I am any one's,
        And no one's! I am vain.
        Praise of my beauty lodges in my ears.
        The lark reels up with it; the nightingale
        Sobs bleeding; the flowers nod; I could believe
        A poet, though he praised me to my face.

ARDEN:
        Never had poet so divine a fount
        To drink of!

ASTRAEA:
        Have I given you more to love

ARDEN:
        More! You have given me your inner mind,
        Where conscience in the robes of Justice shoots
        Light so serenely keen that in such light
        Fair infants, I newly criminal of earth,'
        As your friend Osier says, might show some blot.
        Seraphs might! More to love? Oh! these dear faults
        Lead you to me like troops of laughing girls
        With garlands. All the fear is, that you trifle,
        Feigning them.

ASTRAEA:
        For what purpose?

ARDEN:
             Can I guess?
ASTRAEA:

        I think 'tis you who have the trifler's note.
        My hearing is acute, and when you speak,
        Two voices ring, though you speak fervidly.
        Your Osier quotation jars. Beware!
        Why were you absent from our meeting-place
        This morning?


ARDEN:
          I was on the way, and met
        Your uncle Homeware

ASTRAEA: Ah!

ARDEN: He loves you.

ASTRAEA:
        He loves me: he has never understood.
        He loves me as a creature of the flock;
        A little whiter than some others.
        Yes; He loves me, as men love; not to uplift;
        Not to have faith in; not to spiritualize.
        For him I am a woman and a widow
        One of the flock, unmarked save by a brand.
        He said it!--You confess it! You have learnt
        To share his error, erring fatally.

ARDEN: By whose advice went I to him?

ASTRAEA:
               By whose?
        Pursuit that seemed incessant: persecution.
        Besides, I have changed since then: I change; I change;
        It is too true I change. I could esteem
        You better did you change. And had you heard
        The noble words this morning from the mouth
        Of our professor, changed were you, or raised
        Above love-thoughts, love-talk, and flame and flutter,
        High as eternal snows. What said he else,
        My uncle Homeware?

ARDEN:
             That you were not free:
        And that he counselled us to use our wits.

ASTRAEA:
        But I am free I free to be ever free!
        My freedom keeps me free! He counselled us?
        I am not one in a conspiracy.
        I scheme no discord with my present life.
        Who does, I cannot look on as my friend.
        Not free? You know me little. Were I chained,
        For liberty I would sell liberty
        To him who helped me to an hour's release.
        But having perfect freedom . . .

ARDEN: No.

ASTRAEA:
        Good sir,
        You check me?

ARDEN: Perfect freedom?

ASTRAEA: Perfect!

ARDEN: No!

ASTRAEA: Am I awake? What blinds me?

ARDEN:
                  Filaments
        The slenderest ever woven about a brain
        From the brain's mists, by the little sprite called
          Fancy.
        A breath would scatter them; but that one breath
        Must come of animation. When the heart
        Is as, a frozen sea the brain spins webs.

ASTRAEA:
        'Tis very singular!
        I understand.
        You translate cleverly. I hear in verse
        My uncle Homeware's prose. He has these notions.
        Old men presume to read us.

ARDEN:
        Young men may.
        You gaze on an ideal reflecting you
        Need I say beautiful? Yet it reflects
        Less beauty than the lady whom I love
        Breathes, radiates. Look on yourself in me.
        What harm in gazing? You are this flower
        You are that spirit. But the spirit fed
        With substance of the flower takes all its bloom!
        And where in spirits is the bloom of the flower?

ASTRAEA:
        'Tis very singular. You have a tone
        Quite changed.

ARDEN:
        You wished a change. To show you, how
        I read you . . .

ASTRAEA:
        Oh! no, no. It means dissection.
        I never heard of reading character
        That did not mean dissection. Spare me that.
        I am wilful, violent, capricious, weak,
        Wound in a web of my own spinning-wheel,
        A star-gazer, a riband in the wind . . .

ARDEN:
        A banner in the wind! and me you lead,
        And shall! At least, I follow till I win.

ASTRAEA:
        Forbear, I do beseech you.

ARDEN:
               I have had
        Your hand in mine.

ASTRAEA:
        Once.

ARDEN:
               Once!
        Once! 'twas; once, was the heart alive,
        Leaping to break the ice. Oh! once, was aye
        That laughed at frosty May like spring's return.
        Say you are terrorized: you dare not melt.
        You like me; you might love me; but to dare,
        Tasks more than courage. Veneration, friends,
        Self-worship, which is often self-distrust,
        Bar the good way to you, and make a dream
        A fortress and a prison.

ASTRAEA:
               Changed! you have changed
        Indeed. When you so boldly seized my hand
        It seemed a boyish freak, done boyishly.
        I wondered at Professor Spiral's choice
        Of you for an example, and our hope.
        Now you grow dangerous. You must have thought,
        And some things true you speak-save 'terrorized.'
        It may be flattering to sweet self-love
        To deem me terrorized.--'Tis my own soul,
        My heart, my mind, all that I hold most sacred,
        Not fear of others, bids me walk aloof.
        Who terrorizes me? Who could? Friends? Never!
        The world? as little. Terrorized!

ARDEN:
               Forgive me.

ASTRAEA:
        I might reply, Respect me. If I loved,
        If I could be so faithless as to love,
        Think you I would not rather noise abroad
        My shame for penitence than let friends dwell
        Deluded by an image of one vowed
        To superhuman, who the common mock
        Of things too human has at heart become.

ARDEN:
        You would declare your love?

ASTRAEA:
               I said, my shame.
        The woman that's the widow is ensnared,
        Caught in the toils! away with widows!--Oh!
        I hear men shouting it.

ARDEN:
        But shame there's none
        For me in loving: therefore I may take
        Your friends to witness? tell them that my pride
        Is in the love of you?

ASTRAEA:
               'Twill soon bring
        The silence that should be between us two,
        And sooner give me peace.

ARDEN:
        And you consent?

ASTRAEA:
        For the sake of peace and silence I consent,
        You should be warned that you will cruelly
        Disturb them. But 'tis best. You should be warned
        Your pleading will be hopeless. But 'tis best.
        You have my full consent. Weigh well your acts,
        You cannot rest where you have cast this bolt
        Lay that to heart, and you are cherished, prized,
        Among them: they are estimable ladies,
        Warmest of friends; though you may think they soar
        Too loftily for your measure of strict sense
        (And as my uncle Homeware's pupil, sir,
        In worldliness, you do), just minds they have:
        Once know them, and your banishment will fret.
        I would not run such risks. You will offend,
        Go near to outrage them; and perturbate
        As they have not deserved of you. But I,
        Considering I am nothing in the scales
        You balance, quite and of necessity
        Consent. When you have weighed it, let me hear.
        My uncle Homeware steps this way in haste.
        We have been talking long, and in full view!

                SCENE VII

             ASTRAEA, ARDEN, HOMEWARE

HOMEWARE:
        Astraea, child! You, Arden, stand aside.
        Ay, if she were a maid you might speak first,
        But being a widow she must find her tongue.
        Astraea, they await you. State the fact
        As soon as you are questioned, fearlessly.
        Open the battle with artillery.

ASTRAEA:
        What is the matter, uncle Homeware?

HOMEWARE (playing fox):
                  What?
        Why, we have watched your nice preliminaries
        From the windows half the evening. Now run in.
        Their patience has run out, and, as I said,
        Unlimber and deliver fire at once.
        Your aunts Virginia and Winifred,
        With Lady Oldlace, are the senators,
        The Dame for Dogs. They wear terrific brows,
        But be not you affrighted, my sweet chick,
        And tell them uncle Homeware backs your choice,
        By lawyer and by priests! by altar, fount,
        And testament!

ASTRAEA:
        My choice! what have I chosen?

HOMEWARE:
        She asks? You hear her, Arden?--what and whom!

ARDEN:
        Surely, sir! . . . heavens! have you . . .

HOMEWARE:
                  Surely the old fox,
        In all I have read, is wiser than the young:
        And if there is a game for fox to play,
        Old fox plays cunningest.

ASTRAEA:
        Why fox? Oh! uncle,
        You make my heart beat with your mystery;
        I never did love riddles. Why sit they
        Awaiting me, and looking terrible?

HOMEWARE:
        It is reported of an ancient folk
        Which worshipped idols, that upon a day
        Their idol pitched before them on the floor

ASTRAEA:
        Was ever so ridiculous a tale!

HOMEWARE
        To call the attendant fires to account
        Their elders forthwith sat . . .

ASTRAEA:
                  Is there no prayer
        Will move you, uncle Homeware?

HOMEWARE:
               God-daughter,
        This gentleman for you I have proposed
        As husband.

ASTRAEA:
        Arden! we are lost.

ARDEN:
                  Astraea!
        Support him! Though I knew not his design,
        It plants me in mid-heaven. Would it were
        Not you, but I to bear the shock. My love!
        We lost, you cry; you join me with you lost!
        The truth leaps from your heart: and let it shine
        To light us on our brilliant battle day
        And victory

ASTRAEA:
        Who betrayed me!

HOMEWARE:
               Who betrayed?
        Your voice, your eyes, your veil, your knife and fork;
        Your tenfold worship of your widowhood;
        As he who sees he must yield up the flag,
        Hugs it oath-swearingly! straw-drowningly.
        To be reasonable: you sent this gentleman
        Referring him to me . . . .

ASTRAEA:
                    And that is false.
        All's false. You have conspired. I am disgraced.
        But you will learn you have judged erroneously.
        I am not the frail creature you conceive.
        Between your vision of life's aim, and theirs
        Who presently will question me, I cling
        To theirs as light: and yours I deem a den
        Where souls can have no growth.

HOMEWARE:
        But when we touched
        The point of hand-pressings, 'twas rightly time
        To think of wedding ties?

ASTRAEA:
        Arden, adieu!

          (She rushes into house.)

                SCENE VIII

               ARDEN, HOMEWARE

ARDEN:
        Adieu! she said. With her that word is final.

HOMEWARE:
        Strange! how young people blowing words like clouds
        On winds, now fair, now foul, and as they please
        Should still attach the Fates to them.

ARDEN:
               She's wounded
        Wounded to the quick!

HOMEWARE:
             The quicker our success: for short
        Of that, these dames, who feel for everything,
        Feel nothing.

ARDEN:
             Your intention has been kind,
        Dear sir, but you have ruined me.

HOMEWARE:
             Good-night. (Going.)

ARDEN:
        Yet she said, we are lost, in her surprise.

HOMEWARE:
        Good morning. (Returning.)

ARDEN:
             I suppose that I am bound
        (If I could see for what I should be glad!)
        To thank you, sir.

HOMEWARE:
             Look hard but give no thanks.
        I found my girl descending on the road
        Of breakneck coquetry, and barred her way.
        Either she leaps the bar, or she must back.
        That means she marries you, or says good-bye.
                    (Going again.)

ARDEN:
        Now she's among them. (Looking at window.)

HOMEWARE:
        Now she sees her mind.

ARDEN:
        It is my destiny she now decides!

HOMEWARE:
        There's now suspense on earth and round the spheres.

ARDEN:
        She's mine now: mine! or I am doomed to go.

HOMEWARE:
        The marriage ring, or the portmanteau now!

ARDEN:
        Laugh as you like, air! I am not ashamed
        To love and own it.

HOMEWARE:
        So the symptoms show.
        Rightly, young man, and proving a good breed.
        To further it's a duty to mankind
        And I have lent my push, But recollect:
        Old Ilion was not conquered in a day.
                  (He enters house.)

ARDEN:
        Ten years! If I may win her at the end!

                 CURTAIN

     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

     A great oration may be a sedative
     A male devotee is within an inch of a miracle
     Above Nature, I tell him, or, we shall be very much below
     As in all great oratory! The key of it is the pathos
     Back from the altar to discover that she has chained herself
     Cupid clipped of wing is a destructive parasite
     Excess of a merit is a capital offence in morality
     His idea of marriage is, the taking of the woman into custody
     I am a discordant instrument I do not readily vibrate
     I like him, I like him, of course, but I want to breathe
     I who respect the state of marriage by refusing
     Love and war have been compared--Both require strategy
     Peace, I do pray, for the husband-haunted wife
     Period of his life a man becomes too voraciously constant
     Pitiful conceit in men
     Rejoicing they have in their common agreement
     Self-worship, which is often self-distrust
     Suspects all young men and most young women
     Their idol pitched before them on the floor
     Were I chained,  For liberty I would sell liberty
     Woman descending from her ideal to the gross reality of man
     Your devotion craves an enormous exchange



MISCELLANEOUS PROSE




CONTENTS:
     INTRODUCTION TO W. M. THACKERAY'S "THE FOUR GEORGES"
     A PAUSE IN THE STRIFE.
     CONCESSION TO THE CELT.
     LESLIE STEPHEN.
     CORRESPONDENCE FROM THE SEAT OF WAR IN ITALY LETTERS WRITTEN TO THE
    'MORNING POST' FROM THE SEAT OF WAR IN ITALY.




INTRODUCTION TO W. M. THACKERAY'S "THE FOUR GEORGES"


WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY was born at Calcutta, July 18, 1811, the only
child of Richmond and Anne Thackeray. He received the main part of his
education at the Charterhouse, as we know to our profit. Thence he passed
to Cambridge, remaining there from February 1829 to sometime in 1830. To
judge by quotations and allusions, his favourite of the classics was
Horace, the chosen of the eighteenth century, and generally the voice of
its philosophy in a prosperous country. His voyage from India gave him
sight of Napoleon on the rocky island. In his young manhood he made his
bow reverentially to Goethe of Weimar; which did not check his hand from
setting its mark on the sickliness of Werther.

He was built of an extremely impressionable nature and a commanding good
sense. He was in addition a calm observer, having 'the harvest of a quiet
eye.' Of this combination with the flood of subjects brought up to
judgement in his mind, came the prevalent humour, the enforced
disposition to satire, the singular critical drollery, notable in his
works. His parodies, even those pushed to burlesque, are an expression of
criticism and are more effective than the serious method, while they
rarely overstep the line of justness. The Novels by Eminent Hands do not
pervert the originals they exaggerate. 'Sieyes an abbe, now a ferocious
lifeguardsman,' stretches the face of the rollicking Irish novelist
without disfeaturing him; and the mysterious visitor to the palatial
mansion in Holywell Street indicates possibilities in the Oriental
imagination of the eminent statesman who stooped to conquer fact through
fiction. Thackeray's attitude in his great novels is that of the
composedly urbane lecturer, on a level with a select audience, assured of
interesting, above requirements to excite. The slow movement of the
narrative has a grace of style to charm like the dance of the Minuet de
la Cour: it is the limpidity of Addison flavoured with salt of a racy
vernacular; and such is the veri-similitude and the dialogue that they
might seem to be heard from the mouths of living speakers. When in this
way the characters of Vanity Fair had come to growth, their author was
rightly appreciated as one of the creators in our literature, he took at
once the place he will retain. With this great book and with Esmond and
The Newcomes, he gave a name eminent, singular, and beloved to English
fiction.

Charges of cynicism are common against all satirists, Thackeray had to
bear with them. The social world he looked at did not show him heroes,
only here and there a plain good soul to whom he was affectionate in the
unhysterical way of an English father patting a son on the head. He
described his world as an accurate observer saw it, he could not be
dishonest. Not a page of his books reveals malevolence or a sneer at
humanity. He was driven to the satirical task by the scenes about him.
There must be the moralist in the satirist if satire is to strike. The
stroke is weakened and art violated when he comes to the front. But he
will always be pressing forward, and Thackeray restrained him as much as
could be done, in the manner of a good-humoured constable. Thackeray may
have appeared cynical to the devout by keeping him from a station in the
pulpit among congregations of the many convicted sinners. That the
moralist would have occupied it and thundered had he presented us with
the Fourth of the Georges we see when we read of his rejecting the
solicitations of so seductive a personage for the satiric rod.

Himself one of the manliest, the kindliest of human creatures, it was the
love of his art that exposed him to misinterpretation. He did stout
service in his day. If the bad manners he scourged are now lessened to
some degree we pay a debt in remembering that we owe much to him, and if
what appears incurable remains with us, a continued reading of his works
will at least help to combat it.




A PAUSE IN THE STRIFE--1886

Our 'Eriniad,' or ballad epic of the enfranchisement of the sister island
is closing its first fytte for the singer, and with such result as those
Englishmen who have some knowledge of their fellows foresaw. There are
sufficient reasons why the Tories should always be able to keep together,
but let them have the credit of cohesiveness and subordination to
control. Though working for their own ends, they won the esteem of their
allies, which will count for them in the struggles to follow. Their
leaders appear to have seen what has not been distinctly perceptible to
the opposite party--that the break up of the Liberals means the defection
of the old Whigs in permanence, heralding the establishment of a powerful
force against Radicalism, with a capital cry to the country. They have
tactical astuteness. If they seem rather too proud of their victory, it
is merely because, as becomes them, they do not look ahead. To rejoice in
the gaining of a day, without having clear views of the morrow, is
puerile enough. Any Tory victory, it may be said, is little more than a
pause in the strife, unless when the Radical game is played 'to dish the
Whigs,' and the Tories are now fast bound down by their incorporation of
the latter to abstain from the violent springs and right-about-facings of
the Derby-Disraeli period. They are so heavily weighted by the new
combination that their Jack-in-the-box, Lord Randolph, will have to stand
like an ordinary sentinel on duty, and take the measurement of his
natural size. They must, on the supposition of their entry into office,
even to satisfy their own constituents, produce a scheme. Their majority
in the House will command it.

To this extent, then, Mr. Gladstone has not been defeated. The question
set on fire by him will never be extinguished until the combustible
matter has gone to ashes. But personally he meets a sharp rebuff. The
Tories may well raise hurrahs over that. Radicals have to admit it, and
point to the grounds of it. Between a man's enemies and his friends there
comes out a rough painting of his character, not without a resemblance to
the final summary, albeit wanting in the justly delicate historical touch
to particular features. On the one side he is abused as 'the one-man
power'; lauded on the other for his marvellous intuition of the popular
will. One can believe that he scarcely wishes to march dictatorially, and
full surely his Egyptian policy was from step to step a misreading of the
will of the English people. He went forth on this campaign, with the
finger of Egypt not ineffectively levelled against him a second time.
Nevertheless he does read his English; he has, too, the fatal tendency to
the bringing forth of Bills in the manner of Jove big with Minerva. He
perceived the necessity, and the issue of the necessity; clearly defined
what must come, and, with a higher motive than the vanity with which his
enemies charge him, though not with such high counsel as Wisdom at his
ear, fell to work on it alone, produced the whole Bill alone, and then
handed it to his Cabinet to digest, too much in love with the thing he
had laid and incubated to permit of any serious dismemberment of its
frame. Hence the disruption. He worked for the future, produced a Bill
for the future, and is wrecked in the present. Probably he can work in no
other way than from the impulse of his enthusiasm, solitarily. It is a
way of making men overweeningly in love with their creations. The
consequence is likely to be that Ireland will get her full measure of
justice to appease her cravings earlier than she would have had as much
from the United Liberal Cabinet, but at a cost both to her and to
England. Meanwhile we are to have a House of Commons incapable of
conducting public business; the tradesmen to whom the Times addressed
pathetic condolences on the loss of their season will lose more than one;
and we shall be made sensible that we have an enemy in our midst, until a
people, slow to think, have taken counsel of their native generosity to
put trust in the most generous race on earth.




CONCESSION TO THE CELT--1886

Things are quiet outside an ant-hill until the stick has been thrust into
it. Mr. Gladstone's Bill for helping to the wiser government of Ireland
has brought forth our busy citizens on the top-rubble in traversing
counterswarms, and whatever may be said against a Bill that deals roughly
with many sensitive interests, one asks whether anything less violently
impressive would have roused industrious England to take this question at
last into the mind, as a matter for settlement. The Liberal leader has
driven it home; and wantonly, in the way of a pedestrian demagogue, some
think; certainly to the discomposure of the comfortable and the myopely
busy, who prefer to live on with a disease in the frame rather than at
all be stirred. They can, we see, pronounce a positive electoral
negative; yet even they, after the eighty and odd years of our domestic
perplexity, in the presence of the eighty and odd members pledged for
Home Rule, have been moved to excited inquiries regarding measures--short
of the obnoxious Bill. How much we suffer from sniffing the vain incense
of that word practical, is contempt of prevision! Many of the measures
now being proposed responsively to the fretful cry for them, as a better
alternative to correction by force of arms, are sound and just. Ten years
back, or at a more recent period before Mr. Parnell's triumph in the
number of his followers, they would have formed a basis for the
appeasement of the troubled land. The institution of county boards, the
abolition of the detested Castle, something like the establishment of a
Royal residence in Dublin, would have begun the work well. Materially and
sentimentally, they were the right steps to take. They are now proposed
too late. They are regarded as petty concessions, insufficient and
vexatious. The lower and the higher elements in the population are fused
by the enthusiasm of men who find themselves marching in full body on a
road, under a flag, at the heels of a trusted leader; and they will no
longer be fed with sops. Petty concessions are signs of weakness to the
unsatisfied; they prick an appetite, they do not close breaches. If our
object is, as we hear it said, to appease the Irish, we shall have to
give them the Parliament their leader demands. It might once have been
much less; it may be worried into a raving, perhaps a desperate
wrestling, for still more. Nations pay Sibylline prices for want of
forethought. Mr. Parnell's terms are embodied in Mr. Gladstone's Bill, to
which he and his band have subscribed. The one point for him is the
statutory Parliament, so that Ireland may civilly govern herself; and
standing before the world as representative of his country, he addresses
an applausive audience when he cites the total failure of England to do
that business of government, as at least a logical reason for the claim.
England has confessedly failed; the world says it, the country admits it.
We have failed, and not because the so-called Saxon is incapable of
understanding the Celt, but owing to our system, suitable enough to us,
of rule by Party, which puts perpetually a shifting hand upon the reins,
and invites the clamour it has to allay. The Irish--the English too in
some degree--have been taught that roaring; in its various forms, is the
trick to open the ears of Ministers. We have encouraged by irritating
them to practise it, until it has become a habit, an hereditary
profession with them. Ministers in turn have defensively adopted the arts
of beguilement, varied by an exercise of the police. We grew accustomed
to periods of Irish fever. The exhaustion ensuing we named tranquillity,
and hoped that it would bear fruit. But we did not plant. The Party in
office directed its attention to what was uppermost and urgent--to that
which kicked them. Although we were living, by common consent; with a
disease in the frame, eruptive at intervals, a national disfigurement
always a danger, the Ministerial idea of arresting it for the purpose of
healing was confined, before the passing of Mr. Gladstone's well-meant
Land Bill, to the occasional despatch of commissions; and, in fine, we
behold through History the Irish malady treated as a form of British
constitutional gout. Parliament touched on the Irish only when the Irish
were active as a virus. Our later alternations of cajolery and repression
bear painful resemblance to the nervous fit of rickety riders compounding
with their destinations that they may keep their seats. The cajolery was
foolish, if an end was in view; the repression inefficient. To repress
efficiently we have to stifle a conscience accusing us of old injustice,
and forget that we are sworn to freedom. The cries that we have been
hearing for Cromwell or for Bismarck prove the existence of an impatient
faction in our midst fitter to wear the collars of those masters whom
they invoke than to drop a vote into the ballot-box. As for the prominent
politicians who have displaced their rivals partly on the strength of an
implied approbation of those cries, we shall see how they illumine the
councils of a governing people. They are wiser than the barking dogs.
Cromwell and Bismarck are great names; but the harrying of Ireland did
not settle it, and to Germanize a Posen and call it peace will find echo
only in the German tongue. Posen is the error of a master-mind too much
given to hammer at obstacles. He has, however, the hammer. Can it be
imagined in English hands? The braver exemplar for grappling with
monstrous political tasks is Cavour, and he would not have hinted at the
iron method or the bayonet for a pacification. Cavour challenged debate;
he had faith in the active intellect, and that is the thing to be prayed
for by statesmen who would register permanent successes. The Irish, it is
true, do not conduct an argument coolly. Mr. Parnell and his eighty-five
have not met the Conservative leader and his following in the Commons
with the gravity of platonic disputants. But they have a logical
position, equivalent to the best of arguments. They are representatives,
they would say, of a country admittedly ill-governed by us; and they have
accepted the Bill of the defeated Minister as final. Its provisions are
their terms of peace. They offer in return for that boon to take the
burden we have groaned under off our hands. If we answer that we think
them insincere, we accuse these thrice accredited representatives of the
Irish people of being hypocrites and crafty conspirators; and numbers in
England, affected by the weapons they have used to get to their present
strength, do think it; forgetful that our obtuseness to their constant
appeals forced them into the extremer shifts of agitation. Yet it will
hardly be denied that these men love Ireland; and they have not shown
themselves by their acts to be insane. To suppose them conspiring for
separation indicates a suspicion that they have neither hearts nor heads.
For Ireland, separation is immediate ruin. It would prove a very short
sail for these conspirators before the ship went down. The vital
necessity of the Union for both, countries, obviously for the weaker of
the two, is known to them; and unless we resume our exasperation of the
wild fellow the Celt can be made by such a process, we have not rational
grounds for treating him, or treating with him, as a Bedlamite. He has
besides his passions shrewd sense; and his passions may be rightly
directed by benevolent attraction. This is language derided by the
victorious enemy; it speaks nevertheless what the world, and even
troubled America, thinks of the Irish Celt. More of it now on our side of
the Channel would be serviceable. The notion that he hates the English
comes of his fevered chafing against the harness of England, and when
subject to his fevers, he is unrestrained in his cries and deeds. That
pertains to the nature of him. Of course, if we have no belief in the
virtues of friendliness and confidence--none in regard to the
Irishman--we show him his footing, and we challenge the issue. For the
sole alternative is distinct antagonism, a form of war. Mr. Gladstone's
Bill has brought us to that definite line. Ireland having given her
adhesion to it, swearing that she does so in good faith, and will not
accept a smaller quantity, peace is only to be had by our placing trust
in the Irish; we trust them or we crush them. Intermediate ways are but
the prosecution of our ugly flounderings in Bogland; and dubious as we
see the choice on either side, a decisive step to right or left will not
show us to the world so bemired, to ourselves so miserably inefficient,
as we appear in this session of a new Parliament. With his eighty-five,
apart from external operations lawful or not, Mr. Parnell can act as a
sort of lumbricus in the House. Let journalists watch and chronicle
events: if Mr. Gladstone has humour, they will yet note a peculiar smile
on his closed mouth from time to time when the alien body within the
House, from which, for the sake of its dignity and ability to conduct its
affairs, he would have relieved it till the day of a warmer intelligence
between Irish and English, paralyzes our machinery business. An
ably-handled coherent body in the midst of the liquid groups will make it
felt that Ireland is a nation, naturally dependent though she must be. We
have to do with forces in politics, and the great majority of the Irish
Nationalists in Ireland has made them a force.

No doubt Mr. Matthew Arnold is correct in his apprehensions of the
dangers we may fear from a Dublin House of Commons. The declarations and
novel or ultra theories might almost be written down beforehand. I
should, for my part, anticipate a greater danger in the familiar attitude
of the English metropolitan Press and public toward an experiment they
dislike and incline to dread:--the cynical comments, the quotations
between inverted commas, the commiserating shrug, cold irony, raw banter,
growl of menace, sharp snap, rounds of laughter. Frenchmen of the Young
Republic, not presently appreciated as offensive, have had some of these
careless trifles translated for them, and have been stung. We favoured
Germany with them now and then, before Germany became the first power in
Europe. Before America had displayed herself as greatest among the giants
that do not go to pieces, she had, as Americans forgivingly remember,
without mentioning, a series of flicks of the whip. It is well to learn
manners without having them imposed on us. There are various ways for
tripping the experiment. Nevertheless, when the experiment is tried,
considering that our welfare is involved in its not failing, as we have
failed, we should prepare to start it cordially, cordially assist it.
Thoughtful political minds regard the measure as a backward step; yet
conceiving but a prospect that a measure accepted by Home Rulers will
possibly enable the Irish and English to step together, it seems better
worth the venture than to pursue a course of prospectless discord!
Whatever we do or abstain from doing has now its evident dangers, and
this being imminent may appear the larger of them; but if a weighing of
the conditions dictates it, and conscience approves, the wiser proceeding
is to make trial of the untried. Our outlook was preternaturally black,
with enormous increase of dangers when the originator of our species
venturesomely arose from the posture of the 'quatre pattes'. We consider
that we have not lost by his temerity. In states of dubitation under
impelling elements, the instinct pointing to courageous action is,
besides the manlier, conjecturably the right one.




LESLIE STEPHEN--1904

When that noble body of scholarly and cheerful pedestrians, the Sunday
Tramps, were on the march, with Leslie Stephen to lead them, there was
conversation which would have made the presence of a shorthand writer a
benefaction to the country. A pause to it came at the examination of the
leader's watch and Ordnance map under the western sun, and void was given
for the strike across country to catch the tail of a train offering
dinner in London, at the cost of a run through hedges, over ditches and
fellows, past proclamation against trespassers, under suspicion of being
taken for more serious depredators in flight. The chief of the Tramps had
a wonderful calculating eye in the observation of distances and the
nature of the land, as he proved by his discovery of untried passes in
the higher Alps, and he had no mercy for pursy followers. I have often
said of this life-long student and philosophical head that he had in him
the making of a great military captain. He would not have been opposed to
the profession of arms if he had been captured early for the service,
notwithstanding his abomination of bloodshed. He had a high, calm
courage, was unperturbed in a dubious position, and would confidently
take the way out of it which he conceived to be the better. We have not
to deplore that he was diverted from the ways of a soldier, though
England, as the country has been learning of late, cannot boast of many
in uniform who have capacity for leadership. His work in literature will
be reviewed by his lieutenant of Tramps, one of the ablest of
writers!--[Frederic W. Maitland.]--The memory of it remains with us, as
being the profoundest and the most sober criticism we have had in our
time. The only sting in it was an inoffensive humorous irony that now and
then stole out for a roll over, like a furry cub, or the occasional
ripple on a lake in grey weather. We have nothing left that is like it.

One might easily fall into the pit of panegyric by an enumeration of his
qualities, personal and literary. It would not be out of harmony with the
temper and characteristics of a mind so equable. He, the equable, whether
in condemnation or eulogy. Our loss of such a man is great, for work was
in his brain, and the hand was active till close upon the time when his
breathing ceased. The loss to his friends can be replaced only by an
imagination that conjures him up beside them. That will be no task to
those who have known him well enough to see his view of things as they
are, and revive his expression of it. With them he will live despite the
word farewell.




        CORRESPONDENCE FROM THE SEAT OF WAR IN ITALY

LETTERS WRITTEN TO THE MORNING POST FROM THE SEAT OF WAR IN ITALY FROM
OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT

FERRARA, June 22, 1866.

Before this letter reaches London the guns will have awakened both the
echo of the old river Po and the classical Mincio. The whole of the
troops, about 110,000 men, with which Cialdini intends to force the
passage of the first-named river are already massed along the right bank
of the Po, anxiously waiting that the last hour of to-morrow should
strike, and that the order for action should be given. The telegraph will
have already informed your readers that, according to the intimation sent
by General Lamarmora on Tuesday evening to the Austrian headquarters, the
three days fixed by the general's message before beginning hostilities
will expire at twelve p.m. of the 23rd of June.

Cialdini's headquarters have been established in this city since
Wednesday morning, and the famous general, in whom the fourth corps he
commands, and the whole of the nation, has so much confidence, has
concentrated the whole of his forces within a comparatively narrow
compass, and is ready for action. I believe therefore that by to-morrow
the right bank of the Po will be connected with the mainland of the
Polesine by several pontoon bridges, which will enable Cialdini's corps
d'armee to cross the river, and, as everybody here hopes, to cross it in
spite of any defence the Austrians may make.

On my way to this ancient city last evening I met General Cadogan and two
superior Prussian officers, who by this time must have joined Victor
Emmanuel's headquarters at Cremona; if not, they have been by this time
transferred elsewhere, more on the front, towards the line of the Mincio,
on which, according to appearance, the first, second, and third Italian
corps d'armee seem destined to operate. The English general and the two
Prussian officers above mentioned are to follow the king's staff, the
first as English commissioner, the superior in rank of the two others in
the same capacity.

I have been told here that, before leaving Bologna, Cialdini held a
general council of the commanders of the seven divisions of which his
powerful corps d'armee is formed, and that he told them that, in spite of
the forces the enemy has massed on the left bank of the Po, between the
point which faces Stellata and Rovigo, the river must be crossed by his
troops, whatever might be the sacrifice this important operation
requires. Cialdini is a man who knows how to keep his word, and, for this
reason, I have no doubt he will do what he has already made up his mind
to accomplish. I am therefore confident that before two or three days
have elapsed, these 110,000 Italian troops, or a great part of them, will
have trod, for the Italians, the sacred land of Venetia.

Once the river Po crossed by Cialdini's corps d'armee, he will boldly
enter the Polesine and make himself master of the road which leads by
Rovigo towards Este and Padua. A glance at the map will show your readers
how, at about twenty or thirty miles from the first-mentioned town, a
chain of hills, called the Colli Euganei, stretches itself from the last
spur of the Julian Alps, in the vicinity of Vicenza, gently sloping down
towards the sea. As this line affords good positions for contesting the
advance of an army crossing the Po at Lago Scuro, or at any other point
not far from it, it is to be supposed that the Austrians will make a
stand there, and I should not be surprised at all that Cialdini's first
battle, if accepted by the enemy, should take place within that
comparatively narrow ground which is within Montagnana, Este, Terradura,
Abano, and Padua. It is impossible to suppose that Cialdini's corps
d'armee, being so large, is destined to cross the Po only at one point of
the river below its course: it is extremely likely that part of it should
cross it at some point above, between Revere and Stellata, where the
river is in two or three instances only 450 metres wide. Were the Italian
general to be successful--protected as he will be by the tremendous fire
of the powerful artillery he disposes of--in these twofold operations,
the Austrians defending the line of the Colli Euganei could be easily
outflanked by the Italian troops, who would have crossed the river below
Lago Scuro. Of course these are mere suppositions, for nobody, as you may
imagine, except the king, Cialdini himself, Lamarmora, Pettiti, and
Menabrea, is acquainted with the plan of the forthcoming campaign. There
was a rumour at Cialdini's headquarters to-day that the Austrians had
gathered in great numbers in the Polesine, and especially at Rovigo, a
small town which they have strongly fortified of late, with an apparent
design to oppose the crossing of the Po, were Cialdini to attempt it at
or near Lago Scuro. There are about Rovigo large tracts of marshes and
fields cut by ditches and brooks, which, though owing to the dryness of
the season [they] cannot be, as it was generally believed two weeks ago,
easily inundated, yet might well aid the operations the Austrians may
undertake in order to check the advance of the Italian fourth corps
d'armee. The resistance to the undertaking of Cialdini may be, on the
part of the Austrians, very stout, but I am almost certain that it will
be overcome by the ardour of Italian troops, and by the skill of their
illustrious leader.

As I told you above, the declaration of war was handed over to an
Austrian major for transmission to Count Stancowick, the Austrian
governor of Mantua, on the evening of the 19th, by Colonel Bariola,
sous-chef of the general staff, who was accompanied by the Duke Luigi of
Sant' Arpino, the husband of the amiable widow of Lord Burghersh. The
duke is the eldest son of Prince San Teodoro, one of the wealthiest
noblemen of Naples. In spite of his high position and of his family ties,
the Duke of Sant' Arpino, who is well known in London fashionable
society, entered as a volunteer in the Italian army, and was appointed
orderly officer to General Lamarmora. The choice of such a gentleman for
the mission I am speaking of was apparently made with intention, in order
to show the Austrians, that the Neapolitan nobility is as much interested
in the national movement as the middle and lower classes of the Kingdom,
once so fearfully misruled by the Bourbons. The Duke of Sant' Arpino is
not the only Neapolitan nobleman who has enlisted in the Italian army
since the war with Austria broke out. In order to show you the importance
which must be given to this pronunciamiento of the Neapolitan noblemen,
allow me to give you here a short list of the names of those of them who
have enlisted as private soldiers in the cavalry regiments of the regular
army: The Duke of Policastro; the Count of Savignano Guevara, the eldest
son of the Duke of Bovino; the Duke d'Ozia d'Angri, who had emigrated in
1860, and returned to Naples six months ago; Marquis Rivadebro Serra;
Marquis Pisicelli, whose family had left Naples in 1860 out of devotion
to Francis II.; two Carraciolos, of the historical family from which
sprung the unfortunate Neapolitan admiral of this name, whose head Lord
Nelson would have done better not to have sacrificed to the cruelty of
Queen Caroline; Prince Carini, the representative of an illustrious
family of Sicily, a nephew of the Marquis del Vasto; and Pescara, a
descendant of that great general of Charles V., to whom the proud Francis
I. of France was obliged to surrender and give up his sword at the battle
of Pavia. Besides these Neapolitan noblemen who have enlisted of late as
privates, the Italian army now encamped on the banks of the Po and of the
Mincio may boast of two Colonnas, a prince of Somma, two Barons Renzi, an
Acquaviva, of the Duke of Atri, two Capece, two Princes Buttera, etc. To
return to the mission of Colonel Bariola and the Duke of Sant' Arpino, I
will add some details which were told me this morning by a gentleman who
left Cremona yesterday evening, and who had them from a reliable source.
The messenger of General Lamarmora had been directed to proceed from
Cremona to the small village of Le Grazie, which, on the line of the
Mincio, marks the Austrian and Italian frontier.

On the right bank of the Lake of Mantua, in the year 1340, stood a small
chapel containing a miraculous painting of the Madonna, called by the
people of the locality 'Santa Maria delle Grazie.' The boatmen and
fishermen of the Mincio, who had been, as they said, often saved from
certain death by the Madonna--as famous in those days as the modern Lady
of Rimini, celebrated for the startling feat of winking her
eyes--determined to erect for her a more worthy abode.

Hence arose the Santuario delle Grazie. Here, as at Loretto and other
holy localities of Italy, a fair is held, in which, amongst a great
number of worldly things, rosaries, holy images, and other miraculous
objects are sold, and astounding boons are said to be secured at the most
trifling expense. The Santuario della Madonna delle Grazie enjoying a
far-spread reputation, the dumb, deaf, blind, and halt-in short, people
afflicted with all sorts of infirmities--flock thither during the fair,
and are not wanting even on the other days of the year. The church of Le
Grazie is one of the most curious of Italy. Not that there is anything
remarkable in its architecture, for it is an Italian Gothic structure of
the simplest style. But the ornamental part of the interior is most
peculiar. The walls of the building are covered with a double row of wax
statues, of life size, representing a host of warriors, cardinals,
bishops, kings, and popes, who--as the story runs--pretended to have
received some wonderful grace during their earthly existence. Amongst the
grand array of illustrious personages, there are not a few humbler
individuals whose history is faithfully told (if you choose to credit it)
by the painted inscriptions below. There is even a convict, who, at the
moment of being hanged, implored succour of the all-powerful Madonna,
whereupon the beam of the gibbet instantly broke, and the worthy
individual was restored to society--a very doubtful benefit after all. On
Colonel Bariola and the Duke of Sant' Arpino arriving at this place,
which is only five miles distant from Mantua, their carriage was
naturally stopped by the commissaire of the Austrian police, whose duty
was to watch the frontier. Having told him that they had a despatch to
deliver either to the military governor of Mantua or to some officer sent
by him to receive it, the commissaire at once despatched a mounted
gendarme to Mantua. Two hours had scarcely elapsed when a carriage drove
into the village of Le Grazie, from which an Austrian major of infantry
alighted and hastened to a wooden hut where the two Italian officers were
waiting. Colonel Bariola, who was trained in the Austrian military school
of Viller Nashstad, and regularly left the Austrian service in 1848,
acquainted the newly-arrived major with his mission, which was that of
delivering the sealed despatch to the general in command of Mantua and
receiving for it a regular receipt. The despatch was addressed to the
Archduke Albert, commander-in-chief of the Austrian army of the South,
care of the governor of Mantua. After the major had delivered the
receipt, the three messengers entered into a courteous conversation,
during which Colonel Bariola seized an opportunity of presenting the
duke, purposely laying stress on the fact of his belonging to one of the
most illustrious families of Naples. It happened that the Austrian major
had also been trained in the same school where Colonel Bariola was
brought up--a circumstance of which he was reminded by the Austrian
officer himself. Three hours had scarcely elapsed from the arrival of the
two Italian messengers of war at Le Grazie, on the Austrian frontier,
when they were already on their way back to the headquarters of Cremona,
where during the night the rumour was current that a telegram had been
received by Lamarmora from Verona, in which Archduke Albert accepted the
challenge. Victor Emmanuel, whom I saw at Bologna yesterday, arrived at
Cremona in the morning at two o'clock, but by this time his Majesty's
headquarters must have removed more towards the front, in the direction
of the Oglio. I should not be at all surprised were the Italian
headquarters to be established by to-morrow either at Piubega or
Gazzoldo, if not actually at Goito, a village, as you know, which marks
the Italian-Austrian frontier on the Mincio. The whole of the first,
second, and third Italian corps d'armee are by this time concentrated
within that comparatively narrow space which lies between the position of
Castiglione, Delle Stiviere, Lorrato, and Desenzano, on the Lake of
Garda, and Solferino on one side; Piubega, Gazzoldo, Sacca, Goito, and
Castellucchio on the other. Are these three corps d'armee to attack when
they hear the roar of Cialdini's artillery on the right bank of the Po?
Are they destined to force the passage of the Mincio either at Goito or
at Borghetto? or are they destined to invest Verona, storm Peschiera, and
lay siege to Mantua? This is more than I can tell you, for, I repeat it,
the intentions of the Italian leaders are enveloped in a veil which
nobody--the Austrians included--has as yet been able to penetrate. One
thing, however, is certain, and it is this, that as the clock of Victor
Emmanuel marks the last minute of the seventy-second hour fixed by the
declaration delivered at Le Grazie on Wednesday by Colonel Bariola to the
Austrian major, the fair land where Virgil was born and Tasso was
imprisoned will be enveloped by a thick cloud of the smoke of hundreds
and hundreds of cannon. Let us hope that God will be in favour of right
and justice, which, in this imminent and fierce struggle, is undoubtedly
on the Italian side.

CREMONA, June 30, 1866.

The telegraph will have already informed you of the concentration of the
Italian army, whose headquarters have since Tuesday been removed from
Redondesco to Piadena, the king having chosen the adjacent villa of
Cigognolo for his residence. The concentrating movements of the royal
army began on the morning of the 27th, i.e., three days after the bloody
fait d'armes of the 24th, which, narrated and commented on in different
manners according to the interests and passions of the narrators, still
remains for many people a mystery. At the end of this letter you will see
that I quote a short phrase with which an Austrian major, now prisoner of
war, portrayed the results of the fierce struggle fought beyond the
Mincio. This officer is one of the few survivors of a regiment of
Austrian volunteers, uhlans, two squadrons of which he himself commanded.
The declaration made by this officer was thoroughly explicit, and conveys
the exact idea of the valour displayed by the Italians in that terrible
fight. Those who incline to overrate the advantages obtained by the
Austrians on Sunday last must not forget that if Lamarmora had thought
proper to persist in holding the positions of Valeggio, Volta, and Goito,
the Austrians could not have prevented him. It seems the Austrian
general-in-chief shared this opinion, for, after his army had carried
with terrible sacrifices the positions of Monte Vento and Custozza, it
did not appear, nor indeed did the Austrians then give any signs, that
they intended to adopt a more active system of warfare. It is the
business of a commander to see that after a victory the fruit of it
should not be lost, and for this reason the enemy is pursued and
molested, and time is not left him for reorganization. Nothing of this
happened after the 24th--nothing has been done by the Austrians to secure
such results. The frontier which separates the two dominions is now the
same as it was on the eve of the declaration of war. At Goito, at
Monzambano, and in the other villages of the extreme frontier, the
Italian authorities are still discharging their duties. Nothing is
changed in those places, were we to except that now and then an Austrian
cavalry party suddenly makes its appearance, with the only object of
watching the movements of the Italian army. One of these parties, formed
by four squadrons of the Wurtemberg hussar regiment, having advanced at
six o'clock this morning on the right bank of the Mincio, met the fourth
squadron of the Italian lancers of Foggia and were beaten back, and
compelled to retire in disorder towards Goito and Rivolta. In this
unequal encounter the Italian lancers distinguished themselves very much,
made some Austrian hussars prisoners, and killed a few more, amongst whom
was an officer. The same state of thing, prevails at Rivottella, a small
village on the shores of the Lake of Garda, about four miles distant from
the most advanced fortifications of Peschiera. There, as elsewhere, some
Austrian parties advanced with the object of watching the movements of
the Garibaldians, who occupy the hilly ground, which from Castiglione,
Eseuta, and Cartel Venzago stretches to Lonato, Salo, and Desenzano, and
to the mountain passes of Caffaro. In the last-named place the
Garibaldians came to blows with the Austrians on the morning of the 28th,
and the former got the best of the fray. Had the fait d'armes of the
24th, or the battle of Custozza, as Archduke Albrecht calls it, been a
great victory for the Austrians, why should the imperial army remain in
such inaction? The only conclusion we must come to is simply this, that
the Austrian losses have been such as to induce the commander-in-chief of
the army to act prudently on the defensive. We are now informed that the
charges of cavalry which the Austrian lancers and the Hungarian hussars
had to sustain near Villafranca on the 24th with the Italian horsemen of
the Aorta and Alessandria regiments have been so fatal to the former that
a whole division of the Kaiser cavalry must be reorganised before it can
be brought into the field main.

The regiment of Haller hussars and two of volunteer uhlans were almost
destroyed in that terrible charge. To give you an idea of this cavalry
encounter, it is sufficient to say that Colonel Vandoni, at the head of
the Aorta regiment he commands, charged fourteen times during the short
period of four hours. The volunteer uhlans of the Kaiser regiment had
already given up the idea of breaking through the square formed by the
battalion, in the centre of which stood Prince Humbert of Savoy, when
they were suddenly charged and literally cut to pieces by the Alessandria
light cavalry, in spite of the long lances they carried. This weapon and
the loose uniform they wear makes them resemble the Cossacks of the Don.
There is one circumstance, which, if I am not mistaken, has not as yet
been published by the newspapers, and it is this. There was a fight on
the 25th on a place at the north of Roverbella, between the Italian
regiment of Novara cavalry and a regiment of Hungarian hussars, whose
name is not known. This regiment was so thoroughly routed by the Italians
that it was pursued as far as Villafranca, and had two squadrons put hors
de combat, whilst the Novara regiment only lost twenty-four mounted men.
I think it right to mention this, for it proves that, the day after the
bloody affair of the 24th, the Italian army had still a regiment of
cavalry operating at Villafranca, a village which lay at a distance of
fifteen kilometres from the Italian frontier. A report, which is much
accredited here, explains how the Italian army did not derive the
advantages it might have derived from the action of the 24th. It appears
that the orders issued from the Italian headquarters during the previous
night, and especially the verbal instructions given by Lamarmora and
Pettiti to the staff officers of the different army corps, were either
forgotten or misunderstood by those officers. Those sent to Durando, the
commander of the first corps, seem to have been as follows: That he
should have marched in the direction of Castelnuovo, without, however,
taking part in the action. Durando, it is generally stated, had strictly
adhered to the orders sent from the headquarters, but it seems that
General Cerale understood them too literally. Having been ordered to
march on Castelnuovo, and finding the village strongly held by the
Austrians, who received his division with a tremendous fire, he at once
engaged in the action instead of falling back on the reserve of the first
corps and waiting new instructions. If such was really the case, it is
evident that Cerale thought that the order to march which he had received
implied that he was to attack and get possession of Castelnuovo, had this
village, as it really was, already been occupied by the enemy. In
mentioning this fact I feel bound to observe that I write it under the
most complete reserve, for I should be sorry indeed to charge General
Cerale with having misunderstood such an important order.

I see that one of your leading contemporaries believes that it would be
impossible for the king or Lamarmora to say what result they expected
from their ill-conceived and worse-executed attempt. The result they
expected is, I think, clear enough; they wanted to break through the
quadrilateral and make their junction with Cialdini, who was ready to
cross the Po during the night of the 24th. That the attempt was
ill-conceived and worse-executed, neither your contemporary nor the
public at large has, for the present, the right to conclude, for no one
knows as yet but imperfectly the details of the terrible fight. What is
certain, however, is that General Durando, perceiving that the Cerale
division was lost, did all that he could to help it. Failing in this he
turned to his two aides-de-camp and coolly said to them:

'Now, gentlemen, it is time for you to retire, for I have a duty to
perform which is a strictly personal one--the duty of dying.' On saying
these words he galloped to the front and placed himself at about twenty
paces from a battalion of Austrian sharp-shooters which were ascending
the hill. In less than five minutes his horse was killed under him, and
he was wounded in the right hand. I scarcely need add that his
aides-de-camp did not flinch from sharing Durando's fate. They bravely
followed their general, and one, the Marquis Corbetta, was wounded in the
leg; the other, Count Esengrini, had his horse shot under him. I called
on Durando, who is now at Milan, the day before yesterday. Though a
stranger to him, he received me at once, and, speaking of the action of
the 24th, he only said: 'I have the satisfaction of having done my duty.
I wait tranquilly the judgement of history.'

Assuming, for argument's sake, that General Cerale misunderstood the
orders he had received, and that, by precipitating his movement, he
dragged into the same mistake the whole of Durando's corps--assuming, I
say, this to be the right version, you can easily explain the fact that
neither of the two contending parties are as yet in a position clearly to
describe the action of the 24th. Why did neither the one nor the other
display and bring into action the whole forces they could have had at
their disposal? Why so many partial engagements at a great distance one
from the other? In a word, why that want of unity, which, in my opinion,
constituted the paramount characteristic of that bloody struggle? I may
be greatly mistaken, but I am of opinion that neither the Italian
general-in-chief nor the Austrian Archduke entertained on the night of
the 23rd the idea of delivering a battle on the 24th. There, and only
there, lies the whole mystery of the affair. The total want of unity of
action on the part of the Italians assured to the Austrians, not the
victory, but the chance of rendering impossible Lamarmora's attempt to
break through the quadrilateral. This no one can deny; but, on the other
hand, if the Italian army failed in attaining its object, the
failure-owing to the bravery displayed both by the soldiers and by the
generals-was far from being a disastrous or irreparable one. The Italians
fought from three o'clock in the morning until nine in the evening like
lions, showing to their enemies and to Europe that they know how to
defend their country, and that they are worthy of the noble enterprise
they have undertaken.

But let me now register one of the striking episodes of that memorable
day. It was five o'clock p.m. when General Bixio, whose division held an
elevated position not far from Villafranca, was attacked by three strong
Austrian brigades, which had debouched at the same time from three
different roads, supported with numerous artillery. An officer of the
Austrian staff, waving a white handkerchief, was seen galloping towards
the front of Bixio's position, and, once in the presence of this general,
bade him surrender. Those who are not personally acquainted with Bixio
cannot form an idea of the impression this bold demand must have made on
him. I have been told that, on hearing the word 'surrender,' his face
turned suddenly pale, then flushed like purple, and darting at the
Austrian messenger, said, 'Major, if you dare to pronounce once more the
word surrender in my presence, I tell you--and Bixio always keeps his
word--that I will have you shot at once.' The Austrian officer had
scarcely reached the general who had sent him, than Bixio, rapidly moving
his division, fell with such impetuosity on the Austrian column, which
were ascending the hill, that they were thrown pellmell in the valley,
causing the greatest confusion amongst their reserve. Bixio himself led
his men, and with his aides-de-camp, Cavaliere Filippo Fermi, Count
Martini, and Colonel Malenchini, all Tuscans, actually charged the enemy.
I have been told that, on hearing this episode, Garibaldi said, 'I am not
at all surprised, for Bixio is the best general I have made.' Once the
enemy was repulsed, Bixio was ordered to manoeuvre so as to cover the
backward movement of the army, which was orderly and slowly retiring on
the Mincio. Assisted by the co-operation of the heavy cavalry, commanded
by General Count de Sonnaz, Bixio covered the retreat, and during the
night occupied Goito, a position which he held till the evening of the
27th.

In consequence of the concentrating movement of the Italian army which I
have mentioned at the beginning of this letter, the fourth army corps
(Cialdini's) still holds the line of the Po. If I am rightly informed,
the decree for the formation of the fourth army corps was signed by the
king yesterday. This corps is that of Garibaldi, and is about 40,000
strong. An officer who has just returned from Milan told me this morning
that he had had an opportunity of speaking with the Austrian prisoners
sent from Milan to the fortress of Finestrelle in Piedmont. Amongst them
was an officer of a uhlan regiment, who had all the appearance of
belonging to some aristocratic family of Austrian Poland. Having been
asked if he thought Austria had really gained the battle on the 24th, he
answered: 'I do not know if the illusions of the Austrian army go so far
as to induce it to believe it has obtained a victory--I do not believe
it. He who loves Austria cannot, however, wish she should obtain such
victories, for they are the victories of Pyrrhus!

There is at Verona some element in the Austrian councils of war which we
don't understand, but which gives to their operations in this present
phase of the campaign just as uncertain and as vacillating a character as
it possessed during the campaign of 1859. On Friday they are still beyond
the Mincio, and on Saturday their small fleet on the Lake of Garda steams
up to Desenzano, and opens fire against this defenceless city and her
railway station, whilst two battalions of Tyrolese sharp-shooters occupy
the building. On Sunday they retire, but early yesterday they cross the
Mincio, at Goito and Monzambano, and begin to throw two bridges over the
same river, between the last-named place and the mills of Volta. At the
same time they erect batteries at Goito, Torrione, and Valeggio, pushing
their reconnoitring parties of hussars as far as Medole, Castiglione
delle Stiviere, and Montechiara, this last-named place being only at a
distance of twenty miles from Brescia. Before this news reached me here
this morning I was rather inclined to believe that they were playing at
hide-and-seek, in the hope that the leaders of the Italian army should be
tempted by the game and repeat, for the second time, the too hasty attack
on the quadrilateral. This news, which I have from a reliable source,
has, however, changed my former opinion, and I begin to believe that the
Austrian Archduke has really made up his mind to come out from the
strongholds of the quadrilateral, and intends actually to begin war on
the very battlefields where his imperial cousin was beaten on the 24th
June 1859. It may be that the partial disasters sustained by Benedek in
Germany have determined the Austrian Government to order a more active
system of war against Italy, or, as is generally believed here, that the
organisation of the commissariat was not perfect enough with the army
Archduke Albert commands to afford a more active and offensive action. Be
that as it may, the fact is that the news received here from several
parts of Upper Lombardy seems to indicate, on the part of the Austrians,
the intention of attacking their adversaries.

Yesterday whilst the peaceable village of Gazzoldo--five Italian miles
from Goito--was still buried in the silence of night it was occupied by
400 hussars, to the great consternation of the people who were roused
from their sleep by the galloping of their unexpected visitors. The
sindaco, or mayor of the village, who is the chemist of the place, was, I
hear, forcibly taken from his house and compelled to escort the Austrians
on the road leading to Piubega and Redondesco. This worthy magistrate,
who was not apparently endowed with sufficient courage to make at least
half a hero, was so much frightened that he was taken ill, and still is
in a very precarious condition. These inroads are not always accomplished
with impunity, for last night, not far from Guidizzuolo, two squadrons of
Italian light cavalry--Cavalleggieri di Lucca, if I am rightly
informed--at a sudden turn of the road leading from the last-named
village to Cerlongo, found themselves almost face to face with four
squadrons of uhlans. The Italians, without numbering their foes, set
spurs to their horses and fell like thunder on the Austrians, who, after
a fight which lasted more than half an hour, were put to flight, leaving
on the ground fifteen men hors de combat, besides twelve prisoners.

Whilst skirmishing of this kind is going on in the flat ground of
Lombardy which lies between the Mincio and the Chiese, a more decisive
action has been adopted by the Austrian corps which is quartered in the
Italian Tyrol and Valtellina. A few days ago it was generally believed
that the mission of this corps was only to oppose Garibaldi should he try
to force those Alpine passes. But now we suddenly hear that the Austrians
are already masters of Caffaro, Bagolino, Riccomassino, and Turano, which
points they are fortifying. This fact explains the last movements made by
Garibaldi towards that direction. But whilst the Austrians are massing
their troops on the Tyrolese Alps the revolution is spreading fast in the
more southern mountains of the Friuli and Cadorre, thus threatening the
flank and rear of their army in Venetia. This revolutionary movement may
not have as yet assumed great proportions, but as it is the effect of a
plan proposed beforehand it might become really imposing, more so as the
ranks of those Italian patriots are daily swollen by numerous deserters
and refractory men of the Venetian regiments of the Austrian army.

Although the main body of the Austrians seems to be still concentrated
between Peschiera and Verona, I should not wonder if they crossed the
Mincio either to-day or to-morrow, with the object of occupying the
heights of Volta, Cavriana, and Solferino, which, both by their position
and by the nature of the ground, are in themselves so many fortresses.
Supposing that the Italian army should decide for action--and there is
every reason to believe that such will be the case--it is not unlikely
that, as we had already a second battle at Custozza, we may have a second
one at Solferino.

That at the Italian headquarters something has been decided upon which
may hasten the forward movement of the army, I infer from the fact that
the foreign military commissioners at the Italian headquarters, who,
after the 24th June had gone to pass the leisure of their camp life at
Cremona, have suddenly made their appearance at Torre Malamberti, a villa
belonging to the Marquis Araldi, where Lamarmora's staff is quartered. A
still more important event is the presence of Baron Ricasoli, whom I met
yesterday evening on coming here. The President of the Council was coming
from Florence, and, after stopping a few hours at the villa of Cicognolo,
where Victor Emmanuel and the royal household are staying, he drove to
Torre Malamberti to confer with General Lamarmora and Count Pettiti. The
presence of the baron at headquarters is too important an incident to be
overlooked by people whose business is that of watching the course of
events in this country. And it should be borne in mind that on his way to
headquarters Baron Ricasoli stopped a few hours at Bologna, where he had
a long interview with Cialdini. Nor is this all; for the most important
fact I have to report to-day is, that whilst I am writing (five o'clock
a.m.) three corps of the Italian army are crossing the Oglio at different
points--all three acting together and ready for any occurrence. This
reconnaissance en force may, as you see, be turned into a regular battle
should the Austrians have crossed the Mincio with the main body of their
army during the course of last night. You see that the air around me
smells enough of powder to justify the expectation of events which are
likely to exercise a great influence over the cause of right and
justice--the cause of Italy.

MARCARIA, July 3, Evening.

Murray's guide will save me the trouble of telling you what this little
and dirty hole of Marcaria is like. The river Oglio runs due south, not
far from the village, and cuts the road which from Bozzolo leads to
Mantua. It is about seven miles from Castellucchio, a town which, since
the peace of Villafranca, marked the Italian frontier in Lower Lombardy.
Towards this last-named place marched this morning the eleventh division
of the Italians under the command of General Angioletti, only a month ago
Minister of the Marine in Lamarmora's Cabinet. Angioletti's division of
the second corps was, in the case of an attack, to be supported by the
fourth and eighth, which had crossed the Oglio at Gazzuolo four hours
before the eleventh had started from the place from which I am now
writing. Two other divisions also moved in an oblique line from the upper
course of the above-mentioned river, crossed it on a pontoon bridge, and
were directed to maintain their communications with Angioletti's on the
left, whilst the eighth and fourth would have formed its right. These
five divisions were the avant garde of the main body of the Italian army.
I am not in a position to tell you the exact line the army thus advancing
from the Oglio has followed, but I have been told that, in order to avoid
the possibility of repeating the errors which occurred in the action of
the 24th, the three corps d'armee have been directed to march in such a
manner as to enable them to present a compact mass should they meet the
enemy. Contrary to all expectations, Angioletti's division was allowed to
enter and occupy Castellucchio without firing a shot. As its vanguard
reached the hamlet of Ospedaletto it was informed that the Austrians had
left Castellucchio during the night, leaving a few hussars, who, in their
turn, retired on Mantua as soon as they saw the cavalry Angioletti had
sent to reconnoitre both the country and the borough of Castellucchio.

News has just arrived here that General Angioletti has been able to push
his outposts as far as Rivolta on his left, and still farther forward on
his front towards Curtalone. Although the distance from Rivolta to Goito
is only five miles, Angioletti, I have been told, could not ascertain
whether the Austrians had crossed the Mincio in force.

What part both Cialdini and Garibaldi will play in the great struggle
nobody can tell. It is certain, however, that these two popular leaders
will not be idle, and that a battle, if fought, will assume the
proportions of an almost unheard of slaughter.

GENERAL HEADQUARTERS OF THE ITALIAN ARMY, TORRE MALIMBERTI, July 7, 1866.

Whilst the Austrian emperor throws himself at the feet of the ruler of
France--I was almost going to write the arbiter of Europe--Italy and its
brave army seem to reject disdainfully the idea of getting Venetia as a
gift of a neutral power. There cannot be any doubt as to the feeling in
existence since the announcement of the Austrian proposal by the Moniteur
being one of astonishment, and even indignation so far as Italy herself
is concerned. One hears nothing but expressions of this kind in whatever
Italian town he may be, and the Italian army is naturally anxious that
she should not be said to relinquish her task when Austrians speak of
having beaten her, without proving that she can beat them too. There are
high considerations of honour which no soldier or general would ever
think of putting aside for humanitarian or political reasons, and with
these considerations the Italian army is fully in accord since the 24th
June. The way, too, in which the Kaiser chose to give up the
long-contested point, by ignoring Italy and recognising France as a party
to the Venetian question, created great indignation amongst the Italians,
whose papers declare, one and all, that a fresh insult has been offered
to the country. This is the state of public opinion here, and unless the
greatest advantages are obtained by a premature armistice and a hurried
treaty of peace, it is likely to continue the same, not to the entire
security of public order in Italy. As a matter of course, all eyes are
turned towards Villa Pallavicini, two miles from here, where the king is
to decide upon either accepting or rejecting the French emperor's advice,
both of which decisions are fraught with considerable difficulties and no
little danger. The king will have sought the advice of his ministers,
besides which that of Prussia will have been asked and probably given.
The matter may be decided one way or the other in a very short time, or
may linger on for days to give time for public anxiety and fears to be
allayed and to calm down. In the meantime, it looks as if the king and
his generals had made up their mind not to accept the gift. An attack on
the Borgoforte tete-de-pont on the right side of the Po, began on 5th at
half-past three in the morning, under the immediate direction of General
Cialdini. The attacking corps was the Duke of Mignano's. All the day
yesterday the gun was heard at Torre Malamberti, as it was also this
morning between ten and eleven o'clock. Borgoforte is a fortress on the
left side of the Po, throwing a bridge across this river, the right end
of which is headed by a strong tete-de-pont, the object of the present
attack. This work may be said to belong to the quadrilateral, as it is
only an advanced part of the fortress of Mantua, which, resting upon its
rear, is connected to Borgoforte by a military road supported on the
Mantua side by the Pietolo fortress. The distance between Mantua and
Borgoforte is only eleven kilometres. The fete-de-poet is thrown upon the
Po; its structure is of recent date, and it consists of a central part
and of two wings, called Rocchetta and Bocca di Ganda respectively. The
lock here existing is enclosed in the Rocchetta work.

Since I wrote you my last letter Garibaldi has been obliged to desist
from the idea of getting possession of Bagolino, Sant' Antonio, and Monte
Suello, after a fight which lasted four hours, seeing that he had to deal
with an entire Austrian brigade, supported by uhlans, sharp-shooters
(almost a battalion) and twelve pieces of artillery. These positions were
subsequently abandoned by the enemy, and occupied by Garibaldi's
volunteers. In this affair the general received a slight wound in his
left leg, the nature of which, however, is so very trifling, that a few
days will be enough to enable him to resume active duties. It seems that
the arms of the Austrians proved to be much superior to those of the
Garibaldians, whose guns did very bad service. The loss of the latter
amounted to about 100 killed and 200 wounded, figures in which the
officers appear in great proportion, owing to their having been always at
the head of their men, fighting, charging, and encouraging their comrades
throughout. Captain Adjutant-Major Battino, formerly of the regular army,
died, struck by three bullets, while rushing on the Austrians with the
first regiment. On abandoning the Caffaro line, which they had reoccupied
after the Lodrone encounter--in consequence of which the Garibaldians had
to fall back because of the concentration following the battle of
Custozza--the Austrians have retired to the Lardara fortress, between the
Stabolfes and Tenara mountains, covering the route to Tione and Trento,
in the Italian Tyrol. The third regiment of volunteers suffered most, as
two of their companies had to bear the brunt of the terrible Austrian
fire kept up from formidable positions. Another fight was taking place
almost at the same time in the Val Camonico, i.e., north of the Caffaro,
and of Rocca d'Anfo, Garibaldi's point d'appui. This encounter was
sustained in the same proportions, the Italians losing one of their
bravest and best officers in the person of Major Castellini, a Milanese,
commander of the second battalion of Lombardian bersaglieri. Although
these and Major Caldesi's battalion had to fall back from Vezza, a strong
position was taken near Edalo, while in the rear a regiment kept Breno
safe.

Although still at headquarters only two days ago, Baron Ricasoli has been
suddenly summoned by telegram from Florence, and, as I hear, has just
arrived. This is undoubtedly brought about by the new complications,
especially as, at a council of ministers presided over by the baron, a
vote, the nature of which is as yet unknown, was taken on the present
state of affairs. As you know very well in England, Italy has great
confidence in Ricasoli, whose conduct, always far from obsequious to the
French emperor, has pleased the nation. He is thought to be at this
moment the right man in the right place, and with the great acquaintance
he possesses of Italy and the Italians, and with the co-operation of such
an honest man as General Lamarmora, Italy may be pronounced safe, both
against friends and enemies.

From what I saw this morning, coming back from the front, I presume that
something, and that something new perhaps, will be attempted to-morrow.
So far, the proposed armistice has had no effect upon the dispositions at
general headquarters, and did not stay the cannon's voice. In the middle
of rumours, of hopes and fears, Italy's wish to push on with the war has
as yet been adhered to by her trusted leaders.




HEADQUARTERS OF THE FIRST ARMY CORPS,

PIADENA, July 8, 1866.

As I begin writing you, no doubt can be entertained that some movement is
not only in contemplation at headquarters, but is actually provided to
take place to-day, and that it will probably prove to be against the
Austrian positions at Borgoforte, on the left bank of the Po. Up to this
time the tete-de-pout on the right side of the river had only been
attacked by General the Duke of Mignano's guns. It would now, on the
contrary, be a matter of cutting the communications between Borgoforte
and Mantua, by occupying the lower part of the country around the latter
fortress, advancing upon the Valli Veronesi, and getting round the
quadrilateral into Venetia. While, then, waiting for further news to tell
us whether this plan has been carried into execution, and whether it will
be pursued, mindless of the existence of Mantua and Borgoforte on its
flanks, one great fact is already ascertained, that the armistice
proposed by the Emperor Napoleon has not been accepted, and that the war
is to be continued. The Austrians may shut themselves up in their
strongholds, or may even be so obliging as to leave the king the
uncontested possession of them by retreating in the same line as their
opponents advance; the pursuit, if not the struggle, the war, if not the
battle, will be carried on by the Italians. At Torre Malamberti, where
the general headquarters are, no end of general officers were to be seen
yesterday hurrying in all directions. I met the king, Generals Brignone,
Gavone, Valfre, and Menabrea within a few minutes of one another, and
Prince Amadeus, who has entirely recovered from his wound, had been
telegraphed for, and will arrive in Cremona to-day. No precise
information is to be obtained respecting the intentions of the Austrians,
but it is to be hoped for the Italian army, and for the credit of its
generals, that more will be known about them now than was known on the
eve of the famous 24th of June, and on its very morning. The heroism of
the Italians on that memorable day surpasses any possible idea that can
be formed, as it did also surpass all expectations of the country. Let me
relate you a few out of many heroic facts which only come to light when
an occasion is had of speaking with those who have been eyewitnesses of
them, as they are no object of magnified regimental--orders or, as yet,
of well-deserved honours. Italian soldiers seem to think that the army
only did its duty, and that, wherever Italians may fight, they will
always show equal valour and firmness. Captain Biraghi, of Milan,
belonging to the general staff, having in the midst of the battle
received an order from General Lamarmora for General Durando, was
proceeding with all possible speed towards the first army corps, which
was slowly retreating before the superior forces of the enemy and before
the greatly superior number of his guns, when, while under a perfect
shower of grape and canister, he was all of a sudden confronted by, an
Austrian officer of cavalry who had been lying in wait for the Italian
orderly. The Austrian fires his revolver at Biraghi; and wounds him in
the arm. Nothing daunted, Biraghi assails him and makes him turn tail;
then, following in pursuit, unsaddles him, but has his own horse shot
down under him. Biraghi disentangles himself, kills his antagonist, and
jumps upon the latter's horse. This, however, is thrown down also in a
moment by a cannon ball, so that the gallant captain has to go back on
foot, bleeding, and almost unable to walk. Talking of heroism, of
inimitable endurance, and strength of soul, what do you think of a man
who has his arm entirely carried away by a grenade, and yet keeps on his
horse, firm as a rock, and still directs his battery until
hemorrhage--and hemorrhage alone--strikes him down at last, dead! Such
was the case with a Neapolitan--Major Abate, of the artillery--and his
name is worth the glory of a whole army, of a whole war; and may only
find a fit companion in that of an officer of the eighteenth battalion of
bersaglieri, who, dashing at an Austrian flag-bearer, wrenches the
standard out of his hands with his left one, has it clean cut away by an
Austrian officer standing near, and immediately grapples it with his
right, until his own soldiers carry him away with his trophy! Does not
this sound like Greek history repeated--does it not look as if the brave
men of old had been born again, and the old facts renewed to tell of
Italian heroism? Another bersagliere--a Tuscan, by name Orlandi Matteo,
belonging to that heroic fifth battalion which fought against entire
brigades, regiments, and battalions, losing 11 out of its 16 officers,
and about 300 out of its 600 men--Orlandi, was wounded already, when,
perceiving an Austrian flag, he makes a great effort, dashes at the
officer, kills him, takes the flag, and, almost dying, gives it over to
his lieutenant. He is now in a ward of the San Domenico Hospital in
Brescia, and all who have learnt of his bravery will earnestly hope that
he may survive to be pointed out as one of the many who covered
themselves with fame on that day. If it is sad to read of death
encountered in the field by so many a patriotic and brave soldiers, it is
sadder still to learn that not a few of them were barbarously killed by
the enemy, and killed, too, when they were harmless, for they lay wounded
on the ground. The Sicilian colonel, Stalella, a son-in-law of Senator
Castagnetto, and a courageous man amongst the most courageous of men; was
struck in the leg by a bullet, and thrown down from his horse while
exciting his men to repulse the Austrians, which in great masses were
pressing on his thinned column. Although retreating, the regiment sent
some of his men to take him away, but as soon as he had been put on a
stretcher [he] had to be put down, as ten or twelve uhlans were galloping
down, obliging the men to hide themselves in a bush. When the uhlans got
near the colonel, and when they had seen him lying down in agony, they
all planted their lances in his body.

Is not this wanton cruelty--cruelty even unheard of cruelty that no
savage possesses? Still these are facts, and no one will ever dare to
deny them from Verona and Vienna, for they are known as much as it was
known and seen that the uhlans and many of the Austrian soldiers were
drunk when they began fighting, and that alighting from the trains they
were provided with their rations and with rum, and that they fought
without their haversacks. This is the truth, and nothing beyond it has to
the honour of the Italians been asserted, whether to the disgrace or
credit of their enemies; so that while denying that they ill-treat
Austrian prisoners, they are ready to state that theirs are well treated
in Verona, without thinking of slandering and calumniating as the Vienna
papers have done.

This morning Prince Amadeus arrived in Cremona, where a most spontaneous
and hearty reception was given him by the population and the National
Guard. He proceeded at once by the shortest way to the headquarters, so
that his wish to be again at the front when something should be done has
been accomplished. This brave young man, and his worthy brother, Prince
Humbert, have won the applause of all Italy, which is justly proud of
counting her king and her princes amongst the foremost in the field.

I have just learned from a most reliable source that the Austrians have
mined the bridge of Borghetto on the Mincio, so that, should it be blown
up, the only two, those of Goito and Borghetto, would be destroyed, and
the Italians obliged to make provisional ones instead. I also hear that
the Venetian towns are without any garrison, and that most probably all
the forces are massed on two lines, one from Peschiera to Custozza and
the other behind the Adige.

You will probably know by this time that the garrison of Vienna had on
the 3rd been directed to Prague. The news we receive from Prussia is on
the whole encouraging, inasmuch as the greatly feared armistice has been
repulsed by King William. Some people here think that France will not be
too hard upon Italy for keeping her word with her ally, and that the
brunt of French anger or disapproval will have to be borne by Prussia.
This is the least she can expect, as you know!

It is probable that by to-morrow I shall be able to write you more about
the Italo-Austrian war of 1866.

GONZAGA, July 9, 1866.

I write you from a villa, only a mile distant from Gonzaga, belonging to
the family of the Counts Arrivabene of Mantua. The owners have never
reentered it since 1848, and it is only the fortune of war which has
brought them to see their beautiful seat of the Aldegatta, never, it is
to be hoped for them, to be abandoned again. It is, as you see, 'Mutatum
ab illo.' Onward have gone, then, the exiled patriots! onward will go the
nation that owns them! The wish of every one who is compelled to remain
behind is that the army, that the volunteers, that the fleet, should all
cooperate, and that they should, one and all, land on Venetian ground, to
seek for a great battle, to give the army back the fame it deserves, and
to the country the honour it possesses. The king is called upon to
maintain the word nobly given to avenge Novara, and with it the new
Austrian insulting proposal. All, it is said, is ready. The army has been
said to be numerous; if to be numerous and brave, means to deserve
victory, let the Italian generals prove what Italian soldiers are worthy
of. If they will fight, the country will support them with the boldest of
resolutions--the country will accept a discussion whenever the
Government, having dispersed all fears, will proclaim that the war is to
be continued till victory is inscribed on Italy's shield.

As I am not far from Borgoforte, I am able to learn more than the mere
cannon's voice can tell me, and so will give you some details of the
action against the tete-de-pont, which began, as I told you in one of my
former letters, on the 4th. In Gorgoforte there were about 1500
Austrians, and, on the night from the 5th to the 6th, they kept up from
their four fortified works a sufficiently well-sustained fire, the object
of which was to prevent the enemy from posting his guns. This fire,
however, did not cause any damage, and the Italians were able to plant
their batteries. Early on the 6th, the firing began all along the line,
the Italian 16-pounders having been the first to open fire. The Italian
right was commanded by Colonel Mattei, the left by Colonel Bangoni, who
did excellent work, while the other wing was not so successful. The
heaviest guns had not yet arrived owing to one of those incidents always
sure to happen when least expected, so that the 40-pounders could not be
brought to bear against the forts until later in the day. The damage done
to the works was not great for the moment, but still the advantage had
been gained of feeling the strength of the enemy's positions and finding
the right way to attack them. The artillerymen worked with great vigour,
and were only obliged to desist by an unexpected order which arrived
about two p.m. from General Cialdini. The attack was, however, resumed on
the following day, and the condition of the Monteggiana and Rochetta
forts may be pronounced precarious. As a sign of the times, and more
especially of the just impatience which prevails in Italy about the
general direction of the army movements, it may not be without importance
to notice that the Italian press has begun to cry out against the
darkness in which everything is enveloped, while the time already passed
since the 24th June tells plainly of inaction. It is remarked that the
bitter gift made by Austria of the Venetian provinces, and the suspicious
offer of mediation by France, ought to have found Italy in greatly
different condition, both as regards her political and military position.
Italy is, on the contrary, in exactly the same state as when the Archduke
Albert telegraphed to Vienna that a great success had been obtained over
the Italian army. These are facts, and, however strong and worthy of
respect may be the reasons, there is no doubt that an extraordinary delay
in the resumption of hostilities has occurred, and that at the present
moment operations projected are perfectly mysterious. Something is let
out from time to time which only serves to make the subsequent absence of
news more and more puzzling. For the present the first official relation
of the unhappy fight of the 24th June is published, and is accordingly
anxiously scanned and closely studied. It is a matter of general remark
that no great military knowledge is required to perceive that too great a
reliance was placed upon supposed facts, and that the indulgence of
speculations and ideas caused the waste of so much precious blood. The
prudence characterising the subsequent moves of the Austrians may have
been caused by the effects of their opponents' arrangements, but the
Italian commanders ought to have avoided the responsibility of giving the
enemy the option to move.

It is clear that to mend things the utterance of generous and patriotic
cries is not sufficient, and that it must be shown that the vigour of the
body is not at all surpassed by the vigour of the mind. It is also clear
that many lives might have been spared if there had been greater proofs
of intelligence on the part of those who directed the movement.

The situation is still very serious. Such an armistice as General von
Gablenz could humiliate himself enough to ask from the Prussians has been
refused, but another which the Emperor of the French has advised them to
accept might ultimately become a fact. For Italy, the purely Venetian
question could then also be settled, while the Italian, the national
question, the question of right and honour which the army prizes so much,
would still remain to be solved.

GONZAGA, July 12, 1866.

Travelling is generally said to be troublesome, but travelling with and
through brigades, divisions, and army corps, I can certify to be more so
than is usually agreeable. It is not that Italian officers or Italian
soldiers are in any way disposed to throw obstacles in your way; but
they, unhappily for you, have with them the inevitable cars with the
inevitable carmen, both of which are enough to make your blood freeze,
though the barometer stands very high. What with their indolence, what
with their number and the dust they made, I really thought they would
drive me mad before I should reach Casalmaggiore on my way from Torre
Malamberti. I started from the former place at three a.m., with beautiful
weather, which, true to tradition, accompanied me all through my journey.
Passing through San Giovanni in Croce, to which the headquarters of
General Pianell had been transferred, I turned to the right in the
direction of the Po, and began to have an idea of the wearisome sort of
journey which I would have to make up to Casalmaggiore. On both sides of
the way some regiments belonging to the rear division were still camped,
and as I passed it was most interesting to see how busy they were cooking
their 'rancio,' polishing their arms, and making the best of their time.
The officers stood leisurely about gazing and staring at me, supposing,
as I thought, that I was travelling with some part in the destiny of
their country. Here and there some soldiers who had just left the
hospitals of Brescia and Milan made their way to their corps and shook
hands with their comrades, from whom only illness or the fortune of war
had made them part. They seemed glad to see their old tent, their old
drum, their old colour-sergeant, and also the flag they had carried to
the battle and had not at any price allowed to be taken. I may state
here, en passant, that as many as six flags were taken from the enemy in
the first part of the day of Custozza, and were subsequently abandoned in
the retreat, while of the Italians only one was lost to a regiment for a
few minutes, when it was quickly retaken. This fact ought to be
sufficient by itself to establish the bravery with which the soldiers
fought on the 24th, and the bravery with which they will fight if, as
they ardently wish; a new occasion is given to them.

As long as I had only met troops, either marching or camping on the road,
all went well, but I soon found myself mixed with an interminable line of
cars and the like, forming the military and the civil train of the moving
army. Then it was that it needed as much patience to keep from jumping
out of one's carriage and from chastising the carrettieri, as they would
persist in not making room for one, and being as dumb to one's entreaties
as a stone. When you had finished with one you had to deal with another,
and you find them all as obstinate and as egotistical as they are from
one end of the world to the other, whether it be on the Casalmaggiore
road or in High Holborn. From time to time things seemed to proceed all
right, and you thought yourself free from further trouble, but you soon
found out your mistake, as an enormous ammunition car went smack into
your path, as one wheel got entangled with another, and as imperturbable
Signor Carrettiere evidently took delight at a fresh opportunity for
stoppage, inaction, indolence, and sleep. I soon came to the conclusion
that Italy would not be free when the Austrians had been driven away, for
that another and a more formidable foe--an enemy to society and comfort,
to men and horses, to mankind in general would have still to be beaten,
expelled, annihilated, in the shape of the carrettiere. If you employ
him, he robs you fifty times over; if you want him to drive quickly, he
is sure to keep the animal from going at all; if, worse than all, you
never think of him, or have just been plundered by him, he will not move
an inch to oblige you. Surely the cholera is not the only pestilence a
country may be visited with; and, should Cialdini ever go to Vienna, he
might revenge Novara and the Spielberg by taking with him the carrettieri
of the whole army.

At last Casalmaggiore hove in sight, and, when good fortune and the
carmen permitted, I reached it. It was time! No iron-plated Jacob could
ever have resisted another two miles' journey in such company. At
Casalmaggiore I branched off. There were, happily, two roads, and not the
slightest reason or smallest argument were needed to make me choose that
which my cauchemar had not chosen. They were passing the river at
Casalmaggiore. I went, of course, for the same purpose, somewhere else.
Any place was good enough--so I thought, at least, then. New adventures,
new miseries awaited me--some carrettiere, or other, guessing that I was
no friend of his, nor of the whole set of them, had thrown the jattatura
on me.

I alighted at the Colombina, after four hours' ride, to give the horses
time to rest a little. The Albergo della Colombina was a great
disappointment, for there was nothing there that could be eaten. I
decided upon waiting most patiently, but most unlike a few cavalry
officers, who, all covered with dust, and evidently as hungry and as
thirsty as they could be, began to swear to their hearts' content. In an
hour some eggs and some salame, a kind of sausage, were brought up, and
quickly disposed of. A young lieutenant of the thirtieth infantry
regiment of the Pisa brigade took his place opposite, and we were soon
engaged in conversation. He had been in the midst and worst part of the
battle of Custozza, and had escaped being taken prisoner by what seemed a
miracle. He told me how, when his regiment advanced on the Monte Croce
position, which he practically described to me as having the form of an
English pudding, they were fired upon by batteries both on their flanks
and front. The lieutenant added, however, rather contemptuously, that
they did not even bow before them, as the custom appears to be--that is,
to lie down, as the Austrians were firing very badly. The cross-fire got,
however, so tremendous that an order had to be given to keep down by the
road to avoid being annihilated. The assault was given, the whole range
of positions was taken, and kept too for hours, until the infallible rule
of three to one, backed by batteries, grape, and canister, compelled them
to retreat, which they did slowly and in order. It was then that their
brigade commander, Major General Rey de Villarey, who, though a native of
Mentone, had preferred remaining with his king from going over to the
French after the cession, turning to his son, who was also his
aide-de-camp, said in his dialect, 'Now, my son, we must die both of us,'
and with a touch of the spurs was soon in front of the line and on the
hill, where three bullets struck him almost at once dead. The horse of
his son falling while following, his life was spared. My lieutenant at
this moment was so overcome with hunger and fatigue that he fell down,
and was thought to be dead. He was not so, however, and had enough life
to hear, after the fight was over, the Austrian Jagers pass by, and again
retire to their original positions, where their infantry was lying down,
not dreaming for one moment of pursuing the Italians. Four of his
soldiers--all Neapolitans he heard coming in search of him, while the
bullets still hissed all round; and, as soon as he made a sign to them,
they approached, and took him on their shoulders back to where was what
remained of the regiment. It is highly creditable to Italian unity to
hear an old Piedmontese officer praise the levies of the new provinces,
and the lieutenant took delight in relating that another Neapolitan was
in the fight standing by him, and firing as fast as he could, when a
shell having burst near him, he disdainfully gave it a look, and did not
even seek to save himself from the jattatura.

The gallant lieutenant had unfortunately to leave at last, and I was
deprived of many an interesting tale and of a brave man's company. I
started, therefore, for Viadana, where I purposed passing the Po, the
left bank of which the road was now following parallel with the stream.
At Viadana, however, I found no bridge, as the military had demolished
what existed only the day before, and so had to look out for in
formation. As I was going about under the porticoes which one meets in
almost all the villages in this neighbourhood, I was struck by the sight
of an ancient and beautiful piece of art--for so it was--a Venetian
mirror of Murano. It hung on the wall inside the village draper's shop,
and was readily shown me by the owner, who did not conceal the pride he
had in possessing it. It was one of those mirrors one rarely meets with
now, which were once so abundant in the old princes' castles and palaces.
It looked so deep and true, and the gilt frame was so light, and of such
a purity and elegance, that it needed all my resolution to keep from
buying it, though a bargain would not have been effected very easily. The
mirror, however, had to be abandoned, as Dosalo, the nearest point for
crossing the Po, was still seven miles distant. By this time the sun was
out in all its force, and the heat was by no means agreeable. Then there
was dust, too, as if the carrettieri had been passing in hundreds, so
that the heat was almost unbearable. At last the Dosalo ferry was
reached, the road leading to it was entered, and the carriage was, I
thought, to be at once embarked, when a drove of oxen were discovered to
have the precedence; and so I had to wait. This under such a sun, on a
shadeless beach, and with the prospect of having to stay there for two
hours at least, was by no means pleasant. It took three-quarters of an
hour to put the oxen in the boat, it took half an hour to get them on the
other shore, and another hour to have the ferry boat back. The panorama
from the beach was splendid, the Po appeared in all the mighty power of
his waters, and as you looked with the glass at oxen and trees on the
other shore, they appeared to be clothed in all the colours of the
rainbow, and as if belonging to another world. Several peasants were
waiting for the boat near me, talking about the war and the Austrians,
and swearing they would, if possible, annihilate some of the latter. I
gave them the glass to look with, and I imagined that they had never seen
one before, for they thought it highly wonderful to make out what the
time was at the Luzzara Tower, three miles in a straight line on the
other side. The revolver, too, was a subject of great admiration, and
they kept turning, feeling, and staring at it, as if they could not make
out which way the cartridges were put in. One of these peasants, however,
was doing the grand with the others, and once on the subject of history
related to all who would hear how he had been to St. Helena, which was
right in the middle of Moscow, where it was so very cold that his nose
had got to be as large as his head. The poor man was evidently mixing one
night's tale with that of the next one, a tale probably heard from the
old Sindaco, who is at the same time the schoolmaster, the notary, and
the highest municipal authority in the place.

I started in the ferry boat with them at last. While crossing they got to
speak of the priests, and were all agreed, to put it in the mildest way,
in thinking extremely little of them, and only differed as to what
punishment they should like them to suffer.

On the side where we landed lay heaps of ammunition casks for the corps
besieging Borgoforte. Others were conveyed upon cars by my friends the
carrettieri, of whom it was decreed I should not be quit for some time to
come. Entering Guastalla I found only a few artillery officers, evidently
in charge of what we had seen carried along the route. Guastalla is a
neat little town very proud of its statue of Duke Ferrante Gonzaga, and
the Croce Rossa is a neat little inn, which may be proud of a smart young
waiter, who actually discovered that, as I wanted to proceed to Luzzara,
a few miles on, I had better stop till next morning, I did not take his
advice, and was soon under the gate of Luzzara, a very neat little place,
once one of the many possessions where the Gonzagas had a court, a
palace, and a castle. The arms over the archway may still be seen, and
would not be worth any notice but for a remarkable work of terracotta
representing a crown of pines and pine leaves in a wonderful state of
preservation. The whole is so artistically arranged and so natural, that
one might believe it to be one of Luca della Robbia's works. Luzzara has
also a great tower, which I had seen in the distance from Dosalo, and the
only albergo in the place gives you an excellent Italian dinner. The wine
might please one of the greatest admirers of sherry, and if you are not
given feather beds, the beds are at least clean like the rooms
themselves. Here, as it was getting too dark, I decided upon stopping, a
decision which gave me occasion to see one of the finest sunsets I ever
saw. As I looked from the albergo I could see a gradation of colours,
from the purple red to the deepest of sea blue, rising like an immense
tent from the dark green of the trees and the fields, here and there
dotted with little white houses, with their red roofs, while in front the
Luzzara Tower rose majestically in the twilight. As the hour got later
the colours deepened, and the lower end of the immense curtain gradually
disappeared, while the stars and the planets began shining high above. A
peasant was singing in a field near by, and the bells of a church were
chiming in the distance. Both seemed to harmonise wonderfully. It was a
scene of great loveliness.

At four a.m. I was up, and soon after on the road to Reggiolo, and then
to Gonzaga. Here the vegetation gets to be more luxuriant, and every inch
of ground contributes to the immense vastness of the whole. Nature is
here in full perfection, and as even the telegraphic wire hangs leisurely
down from tree to tree, instead of being stuck upon poles, you feel that
the romantic aspect of the place is too beautiful to be encroached upon.
All is peace, beauty, and happiness, all reveals to you that you are in
Italy.

In Gonzaga, which only a few days ago belonged to the Austrians, the
Italian tricolour is out of every window. As the former masters retired
the new advanced; and when a detachment of Monferrato lancers entered the
old castle town the joy of the inhabitants seemed to be almost bordering
on delirium. The lancers soon left, however. The flag only remains.

July 11.

Cialdini began passing the Po on the 8th, and crossed at three points,
i.e., Carbonara, Carbonarola, and Follonica. Beginning at three o'clock
in the morning, he had finished crossing upon the two first pontoon
bridges towards midnight on the 9th. The bridge thrown up at Follonica
was still intact up to seven in the morning on the 10th, but the troops
and the military and the civil train that remained followed the Po
without crossing to Stellata, in the supposed direction of Ponte
Lagoscura.

Yesterday guns were heard here at seven o'clock in the morning, and up to
eleven o'clock, in the direction of Legnano, towards, I think, the Adige.
The firing was lively, and of such a nature as to make one surmise that
battle had been given. Perhaps the Austrians have awaited Cialdini under
Legnano, or they have disputed the crossing of the Adige. Rovigo was
abandoned by the Austrians in the night of the 9th and 10th. They have
blown up the Rovigo and Boara fortresses, have destroyed the tete-de-pont
on the Adige, and burnt all bridges. They may now seek to keep by the
left side of this river up to Legnano, so as to get under the protection
of the quadrilateral, in which case, if Cialdini can cross the river in
time, the shock would be almost inevitable, and would be a reason for
yesterday's firing. They may also go by rail to Padua, when they would
have Cialdini between them and the quadrilateral. In any case, if this
general is quick, or if they are not too quick for him, according to
possible instructions, a collision is difficult to be avoided.

Baron Ricasoli has left Florence for the camp, and all sorts of rumours
are afloat as to the present state of negotiations as they appear
unmistakably to exist. The opinions are, I think, divided in the high
councils of the Crown, and the country is still anxious to know the
result of this state of affairs. A splendid victory by Cialdini might at
this moment solve many a difficulty. As it is, the war is prosecuted
everywhere except by sea, for Garibaldi's forces are slowly advancing in
the Italian Tyrol, while the Austrians wait for them behind the walls of
Landaro and Ampola. The Garibaldians' advanced posts were, by the latest
news, near Darso.

The news from Prussia is still contradictory; while the Italian press is
unanimous in asking with the country that Cialdini should advance, meet
the enemy, fight him, and rout him if possible. Italy's wishes are
entirely with him.

NOALE, NEAR TREVISO, July 17, 1866.

From Lusia I followed General Medici's division to Motta, where I left
it, not without regret, however, as better companions could not easily be
found, so kind were the officers and jovial the men. They are now
encamped around Padua, and will to-morrow march on Treviso, where the
Italian Light Horse have already arrived, if I judge so from their having
left Noale on the 15th. From the right I hear that the advanced posts
have proceeded as far as Mira on the Brenta, twenty kilometres from
Venice itself, and that the first army corps is to concentrate opposite
Chioggia. This corps has marched from Ferrara straight on to Rovigo,
which the forward movement of the fourth, or Cialdini's corps d'armee,
had left empty of soldiers. General Pianell has still charge of it, and
Major-General Cadalini, formerly at the head of the Siena brigade,
replaces him in the command of his former division. General Pianell has
under him the gallant Prince Amadeus, who has entirely recovered from his
chest wound, and of whom the brigade of Lombardian grenadiers is as proud
as ever. They could not wish for a more skilled commander, a better
superior officer, and a more valiant soldier. Thus the troops who fought
on the 24th June are kept in the second line, while the still fresh
divisions under Cialdini march first, as fast as they can. This, however,
is of no avail. The Italian outposts on the Piave have not yet crossed
it, for the reason that they must keep distances with their regiments,
but will do so as soon as these get nearer to the river. If it was not
that this is always done in regular warfare, they could beat the country
beyond the Piave for a good many miles without even seeing the shadow of
an Austrian. To the simple private, who does not know of diplomatic
imbroglios and of political considerations, this sudden retreat means an
almost as sudden retracing of steps, because he remembers that this
manoeuvre preceded both the attacks on Solferino and on Custozza by the
Austrians. To the officer, however, it means nothing else than a fixed
desire not to face the Italian army any more, and so it is to him a
source of disappointment and despondency. He cannot bear to think that
another battle is improbable, and may be excused if he is not in the best
of humour when on this subject. This is the case not only with the
officers but with the volunteers, who have left their homes and the
comfort of their domestic life, not to be paraded at reviews, but to be
sent against the enemy. There are hundreds of these in the regular
army-in the cavalry especially, and the Aosta Lancers and the regiment of
Guides are half composed of them. If you listen to them, there ought not
to be the slightest doubt or hesitation as to crossing the Isongo and
marching upon Vienna. May Heaven see their wishes accomplished, for,
unless crushed by sheer force, Italy is quite decided to carry war into
the enemy's country.

The decisions of the French government are looked for here with great
anxiety, and not a few men are found who predict them to be unfavourable
to Italy. Still, it is hard for every one to believe that the French
emperor will carry things to extremities, and increase the many
difficulties Europe has already to contend with.

To-day there was a rumour at the mess table that the Austrians had
abandoned Legnano, one of the four fortresses of the quadrilateral. I do
not put much faith in it at present, but it is not improbable, as we may
expect many strange things from the Vienna government. It would have been
much better for them, since Archduke Albert spoke in eulogistic terms of
the king, of his sons, and of his soldiers, while relating the action of
the 24th, to have treated with Italy direct, thus securing peace, and
perhaps friendship, from her. But the men who have ruled so despotically
for years over Italian subjects cannot reconcile themselves to the idea
that Italy has at last risen to be a nation, and they even take slyly an
opportunity to throw new insult into her face. You can easily see that
the old spirit is still struggling for empire; that the old contempt is
still trying to make light of Italians; and that the old Metternich ideas
are still fondly clung to. Does not this deserve another lesson? Does not
this need another Sadowa to quiet down for ever? Yes; and it devolves
upon Italy to do it. If so, let only Cialdini's army alone, and the day
may be nigh at hand when the king may tell the country that the task has
been accomplished.

A talk on the present state of political affairs, and on the peculiar
position of Italy, is the only subject worth notice in a letter from the
camp. Everything else is at a standstill, and the movements of the fine
army Cialdini now disposes of, about 150,000 men, are no longer full of
interest. They may, perhaps, have some as regards an attack on Venice,
because Austrian soldiers are still garrisoning it, and will be obliged
to fight if they are assailed. It is hoped, if such is the case, that the
beautiful queen of the Adriatic will be spared a scene of devastation,
and that no new Haynau will be found to renew the deeds of Brescia and
Vicenza.

The king has not yet arrived, and it seems probable he will not come for
some time, until indeed the day comes for Italian troops to make their
triumphal entry into the city of the Doges.

The heat continues intense, and this explains the slowness in advancing.
As yet no sickness has appeared, and it must be hoped that the troops
will be healthy, as sickness tries the morale much more than half-a-dozen
Custozzas.

P.S.--I had finished writing when an officer came rushing into the inn
where I am staying and told me that he had just heard that an Italian
patrol had met an Austrian one on the road out of the village, and routed
it. This may or may not be true, but it was must curious to see how
delighted every one was at the idea that they had found 'them' at last.
They did not care much about the result of the engagement, which, as I
said, was reported to have been favourable. All that they cared about was
that they were close to the enemy. One cannot despair of an army which is
animated with such spirits. You would think, from the joy which brightens
the face of the soldiers you meet now about, that a victory had been
announced for the Italian arms.

DOLO, NEAR VENICE, July 20, 1866.

I returned from Noale to Padua last evening, and late in the night I
received the intimation at my quarters that cannon was heard in the
direction of Venice. It was then black as in Dante's hell, and raining
and blowing with violence--one of those Italian storms which seem to
awake all the earthly and heavenly elements of creation. There was no
choice for it but to take to the saddle, and try to make for the front.
No one who has not tried it can fancy what work it is to find one's way
along a road on which a whole corps d'amee is marching with an enormous
materiel of war in a pitch dark night. This, however, is what your
special correspondent was obliged to do. Fortunately enough, I had
scarcely proceeded as far as Ponte di Brenta when I fell in with an
officer of Cialdini's staff, who was bound to the same destination,
namely, Dolo. As we proceeded along the road under a continuous shower of
rain, our eyes now and then dazzled by the bright serpent-like flashes of
the lightning, we fell in with some battalion or squadron, which advanced
carefully, as it was impossible for them as well as for us to
discriminate between the road and the ditches which flank it, for all the
landmarks, so familiar to our guides in the daytime, were in one dead
level of blackness. So it was that my companion and myself, after
stumbling into ditches and out of them, after knocking our horses' heads
against an ammunition car, or a party of soldiers sheltered under some
big tree, found ourselves, after three hours' ride, in this village of
Dolo. By this time the storm had greatly abated in its violence, and the
thunder was but faintly heard now and then at such a distance as to
enable us distinctly to hear the roar of the guns. Our horses could
scarcely get through the sticky black mud, into which the white
suffocating dust of the previous days had been turned by one night's
rain. We, however, made our way to the parsonage of the village, for we
had already made up our minds to ascend the steeple of the church to get
a view of the surrounding country and a better hearing of the guns if
possible. After a few words exchanged with the sexton--a staunch Italian,
as he told us he was--we went up the ladder of the church spire. Once on
the wooden platform, we could hear more distinctly the boom of the guns,
which sounded like the broadsides of a big vessel. Were they the guns of
Persano's long inactive fleet attacking some of Brondolo's or Chioggia's
advanced forts? Were the guns those of some Austrian man-of-war which had
engaged an Italian ironclad; or were they the 'Affondatore,' which left
the Thames only a month ago, pitching into Trieste? To tell the truth,
although we patiently waited two long hours on Dolo church spire, when
both I and my companion descended we were not in a position to solve
either of these problems. We, however, thought then, and still think,
they were the guns of the Italian fleet which had attacked an Austrian
fort.

CIVITA VECCHIA, July 22, 1866.

Since the departure from this port of the old hospital ship 'Gregeois'
about a year ago, no French ship of war had been stationed at Civita
Vecchia; but on Wednesday morning the steam-sloop 'Catinat,' 180 men,
cast anchor in the harbour, and the commandant immediately on
disembarking took the train for Rome and placed himself in communication
with the French ambassador. I am not aware whether the Pontifical
government had applied for this vessel, or whether the sending it was a
spontaneous attention on the part of the French emperor, but, at any
rate, its arrival has proved a source of pleasure to His Holiness, as
there is no knowing what may happen In troublous times like the present,
and it is always good to have a retreat insured.

Yesterday it was notified in this port, as well as at Naples, that
arrivals from Marseilles would be, until further notice, subjected to a
quarantine of fifteen days in consequence of cholera having made its
appearance at the latter place. A sailing vessel which arrived from
Marseilles in the course of the day had to disembark the merchandise it
brought for Civita Vecchia into barges off the lazaretto, where the
yellow flag was hoisted over them. This vessel left Marseilles five days
before the announcement of the quarantine, while the 'Prince Napoleon' of
Valery's Company, passenger and merchandise steamer, which left
Marseilles only one day before its announcement, was admitted this
morning to free pratique. Few travellers will come here by sea now.

MARSEILLES, July 24.

Accustomed as we have been of late in Italy to almost hourly bulletins of
the progress of hostilities, it is a trying condition to be suddenly
debarred of all intelligence by finding oneself on board a steamer for
thirty-six hours without touching at any port, as was my case in coming
here from Civita Vecchia on board the 'Prince Napoleon.' But, although
telegrams were wanting, discussions on the course of events were rife on
board among the passengers who had embarked at Naples and Civita Vecchia,
comprising a strong batch of French and Belgian priests returning from a
pilgrimage to Rome, well supplied with rosaries and chaplets blessed by
the Pope and facsimiles of the chains of St. Peter. Not much sympathy for
the Italian cause was shown by these gentlemen or the few French and
German travellers who, with three or four Neapolitans, formed the
quarterdeck society; and our Corsican captain took no pains to hide his
contempt at the dilatory proceedings of the Italian fleet at Ancona. We
know that the Prussian minister, M. d'Usedom, has been recently making
strenuous remonstrances at Ferrara against the slowness with which the
Italian naval and military forces were proceeding, while their allies,
the Prussians, were already near the gates of Vienna; and the
conversation of a Prussian gentleman on board our steamer, who was
connected with that embassy, plainly indicated the disappointment felt at
Berlin at the rather inefficacious nature of the diversion made in
Venetia, and on the coast of Istria by the army and navy of Victor
Emmanuel. He even attributed to his minister an expression not very
flattering either to the future prospects of Italy as resulting from her
alliance with Prussia, or to the fidelity of the latter in carrying out
the terms of it. I do not know whether this gentleman intended his
anecdote to be taken cum grano salis, but I certainly understood him to
say that he had deplored to the minister the want of vigour and the
absence of success accompanying the operations of the Italian allies of
Prussia, when His Excellency replied: 'C'est bien vrai. Ils nous ont
tromps; mais que voulez-vous y faire maintenant? Nous aurons le temps de
les faire egorger apres.'

It is difficult to suppose that there should exist a preconceived
intention on the part of Prussia to repay the sacrifices hitherto made,
although without a very brilliant accompaniment of success, by the
Italian government in support of the alliance, by making her own separate
terms with Austria and leaving Italy subsequently exposed to the
vengeance of the latter, but such would certainly be the inference to be
drawn from the conversation just quoted.

It was only on arriving in the port of Marseilles, however, that the full
enmity of most of my travelling companions towards Italy and the Italians
was manifested. A sailor, the first man who came on board before we
disembarked, was immediately pounced upon for news, and he gave it as
indeed nothing less than the destruction, more or less complete, of the
Italian fleet by that of the Austrians. At this astounding intelligence
the Prussian burst into a yell of indignation. 'Fools! blockheads!
miserables! Beaten at sea by an inferior force! Is that the way they mean
to reconquer Venice by dint of arms? If ever they do regain Venetia it
will be through the blood of our Brandenburghers and Pomeranians, and not
their own.' During this tirade a little old Belgian in black, with the
chain of St. Peter at his buttonhole by way of watchguard, capered off to
communicate the grateful news to a group of his ecclesiastical
fellow-travellers, shrieking out in ecstasy:

'Rosses, Messieurs! Ces blagueurs d'Italiens ont ete rosses par mer,
comme ils avaient ete rosses par terre.' Whereupon the reverend gentlemen
congratulated each other with nods, and winks, and smiles, and sundry
fervent squeezes of the hand. The same demonstrations would doubtless
have been made by the Neapolitan passengers had they belonged to the
Bourbonic faction, but they happened to be honest traders with cases of
coral and lava for the Paris market, and therefore they merely stood
silent and aghast at the fatal news, with their eyes and mouths as wide
open as possible. I had no sooner got to my hotel than I inquired for the
latest Paris journal, when the France was handed me, and I obtained
confirmation in a certain degree of the disaster to the Italian fleet
narrated by the sailor, although not quite in the same formidable
proportions.

Before quitting the subject of my fellow-passengers on board the 'Prince
Napoleon' I must mention an anecdote related to me, respecting the state
of brigandage, by a Russian or German gentleman, who told me he was
established at Naples. He was complaining of the dangers he had
occasionally encountered in crossing in a diligence from Naples to Foggia
on business; and then, speaking of the audacity of brigands in general,
he told me that last year he saw with his own eyes; in broad daylight,
two brigands walking about the streets of Naples with messages from
captured individuals to their relations, mentioning the sums which had
been demanded for their ransoms. They were unarmed, and in the common
peasants' dresses, and whenever they arrived at one of the houses to
which they were addressed for this purpose, they stopped and opened a
handkerchief which one of them carried in his hand, and took out an ear,
examining whether the ticket on it corresponded with the address of the
house or the name of the resident. There were six ears, all ticketed with
the names of the original owners in the handkerchief, which were
gradually dispensed to their families in Naples to stimulate: prompt
payment of the required ransoms. On my inquiring how it was that the
police took no notice of such barefaced operations, my informant told me
that, previous to the arrival of these brigand emissaries in town, the
chief always wrote to the police authorities warning them against
interfering with them, as the messengers were always followed by spies in
plain clothes belonging to the band who would immediately report any
molestation they might encounter in the discharge of their delicate
mission, and the infallible result of such molestation would be first the
putting to death of all the hostages held for ransom; and next, the
summary execution of several members of gendarmery and police force
captured in various skirmishes by the brigands, and held as prisoners of
war.

Such audacity would seem incredible if we had not heard and read of so
many similar instances of late.

     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

     A very doubtful benefit
     Americans forgivingly remember, without mentioning
     As becomes them, they do not look ahead
     Charges of cynicism are common against all satirists
     Fourth of the Georges
     Here and there a plain good soul to whom he was affectionate
     Holy images, and other miraculous objects are sold
     It is well to learn manners without having them imposed on us
     Men overweeningly in love with their creations
     Must be the moralist in the satirist if satire is to strike
     Not a page of his books reveals malevolence or a sneer
     Petty concessions are signs of weakness to the unsatisfied
     Statesman who stooped to conquer fact through fiction
     The social world he looked at did not show him heroes
     The exhaustion ensuing we named tranquillity
     Utterance of generous and patriotic cries is not sufficient
     We trust them or we crush them
     We grew accustomed to periods of Irish fever




ON THE IDEA OF COMEDY AND OF THE USES OF THE COMIC SPIRIT {1}

[This etext was prepared from the 1897 Archibald Constable and Company
edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk]

Good Comedies are such rare productions, that notwithstanding the wealth
of our literature in the Comic element, it would not occupy us long to
run over the English list. If they are brought to the test I shall
propose, very reputable Comedies will be found unworthy of their station,
like the ladies of Arthur's Court when they were reduced to the ordeal of
the mantle.

There are plain reasons why the Comic poet is not a frequent apparition;
and why the great Comic poet remains without a fellow. A society of
cultivated men and women is required, wherein ideas are current and the
perceptions quick, that he may be supplied with matter and an audience.
The semi-barbarism of merely giddy communities, and feverish emotional
periods, repel him; and also a state of marked social inequality of the
sexes; nor can he whose business is to address the mind be understood
where there is not a moderate degree of intellectual activity.

Moreover, to touch and kindle the mind through laughter, demands more
than sprightliness, a most subtle delicacy. That must be a natal gift in
the Comic poet. The substance he deals with will show him a startling
exhibition of the dyer's hand, if he is without it. People are ready to
surrender themselves to witty thumps on the back, breast, and sides; all
except the head: and it is there that he aims. He must be subtle to
penetrate. A corresponding acuteness must exist to welcome him. The
necessity for the two conditions will explain how it is that we count him
during centuries in the singular number.

'C'est une etrange entreprise que celle de faire rire les honnetes gens,'
Moliere says; and the difficulty of the undertaking cannot be
over-estimated.

Then again, he is beset with foes to right and left, of a character
unknown to the tragic and the lyric poet, or even to philosophers.

We have in this world men whom Rabelais would call agelasts; that is to
say, non-laughers; men who are in that respect as dead bodies, which if
you prick them do not bleed. The old grey boulder-stone that has finished
its peregrination from the rock to the valley, is as easily to be set
rolling up again as these men laughing. No collision of circumstances in
our mortal career strikes a light for them. It is but one step from being
agelastic to misogelastic, and the [Greek text which cannot be
reproduced], the laughter-hating, soon learns to dignify his dislike as
an objection in morality.

We have another class of men, who are pleased to consider themselves
antagonists of the foregoing, and whom we may term hypergelasts; the
excessive laughers, ever-laughing, who are as clappers of a bell, that
may be rung by a breeze, a grimace; who are so loosely put together that
a wink will shake them.

'. . . C'est n'estimer rien qu'estioner tout le monde,'

and to laugh at everything is to have no appreciation of the Comic of
Comedy.

Neither of these distinct divisions of non-laughers and over-laughers
would be entertained by reading The Rape of the Lock, or seeing a
performance of Le Tartuffe. In relation to the stage, they have taken in
our land the form and title of Puritan and Bacchanalian. For though the
stage is no longer a public offender, and Shakespeare has been revived on
it, to give it nobility, we have not yet entirely raised it above the
contention of these two parties. Our speaking on the theme of Comedy will
appear almost a libertine proceeding to one, while the other will think
that the speaking of it seriously brings us into violent contrast with
the subject.

Comedy, we have to admit, was never one of the most honoured of the
Muses. She was in her origin, short of slaughter, the loudest expression
of the little civilization of men. The light of Athene over the head of
Achilles illuminates the birth of Greek Tragedy. But Comedy rolled in
shouting under the divine protection of the Son of the Wine-jar, as
Dionysus is made to proclaim himself by Aristophanes. Our second Charles
was the patron, of like benignity, of our Comedy of Manners, which began
similarly as a combative performance, under a licence to deride and
outrage the Puritan, and was here and there Bacchanalian beyond the
Aristophanic example: worse, inasmuch as a cynical licentiousness is more
abominable than frank filth. An eminent Frenchman judges from the quality
of some of the stuff dredged up for the laughter of men and women who sat
through an Athenian Comic play, that they could have had small delicacy
in other affairs when they had so little in their choice of
entertainment. Perhaps he does not make sufficient allowance for the
regulated licence of plain speaking proper to the festival of the god,
and claimed by the Comic poet as his inalienable right, or for the fact
that it was a festival in a season of licence, in a city accustomed to
give ear to the boldest utterance of both sides of a case. However that
may be, there can be no question that the men and women who sat through
the acting of Wycherley's Country Wife were past blushing. Our tenacity
of national impressions has caused the word theatre since then to prod
the Puritan nervous system like a satanic instrument; just as one has
known Anti-Papists, for whom Smithfield was redolent of a sinister smoke,
as though they had a later recollection of the place than the lowing
herds. Hereditary Puritanism, regarding the stage, is met, to this day,
in many families quite undistinguished by arrogant piety. It has subsided
altogether as a power in the profession of morality; but it is an error
to suppose it extinct, and unjust also to forget that it had once good
reason to hate, shun, and rebuke our public shows.

We shall find ourselves about where the Comic spirit would place us, if
we stand at middle distance between the inveterate opponents and the
drum-and-fife supporters of Comedy: 'Comme un point fixe fait remarquer
l'emportement des autres,' as Pascal says. And were there more in this
position, Comic genius would flourish.

Our English idea of a Comedy of Manners might be imaged in the person of
a blowsy country girl--say Hoyden, the daughter of Sir Tunbelly Clumsy,
who, when at home, 'never disobeyed her father except in the eating of
green gooseberries'--transforming to a varnished City madam; with a loud
laugh and a mincing step; the crazy ancestress of an accountably fallen
descendant. She bustles prodigiously and is punctually smart in her
speech, always in a fluster to escape from Dulness, as they say the dogs
on the Nile-banks drink at the river running to avoid the crocodile. If
the monster catches her, as at times he does, she whips him to a froth,
so that those who know Dulness only as a thing of ponderousness, shall
fail to recognise him in that light and airy shape.

When she has frolicked through her five Acts to surprise you with the
information that Mr. Aimwell is converted by a sudden death in the world
outside the scenes into Lord Aimwell, and can marry the lady in the light
of day, it is to the credit of her vivacious nature that she does not
anticipate your calling her Farce. Five is dignity with a trailing robe;
whereas one, two, or three Acts would be short skirts, and degrading.
Advice has been given to householders, that they should follow up the
shot at a burglar in the dark by hurling the pistol after it, so that if
the bullet misses, the weapon may strike and assure the rascal he has it.
The point of her wit is in this fashion supplemented by the rattle of her
tongue, and effectively, according to the testimony of her admirers. Her
wit is at once, like steam in an engine, the motive force and the warning
whistle of her headlong course; and it vanishes like the track of steam
when she has reached her terminus, never troubling the brains afterwards;
a merit that it shares with good wine, to the joy of the Bacchanalians.
As to this wit, it is warlike. In the neatest hands it is like the sword
of the cavalier in the Mall, quick to flash out upon slight provocation,
and for a similar office--to wound. Commonly its attitude is entirely
pugilistic; two blunt fists rallying and countering. When harmless, as
when the word 'fool' occurs, or allusions to the state of husband, it has
the sound of the smack of harlequin's wand upon clown, and is to the same
extent exhilarating. Believe that idle empty laughter is the most
desirable of recreations, and significant Comedy will seem pale and
shallow in comparison. Our popular idea would be hit by the sculptured
group of Laughter holding both his sides, while Comedy pummels, by way of
tickling him. As to a meaning, she holds that it does not conduce to
making merry: you might as well carry cannon on a racing-yacht. Morality
is a duenna to be circumvented. This was the view of English Comedy of a
sagacious essayist, who said that the end of a Comedy would often be the
commencement of a Tragedy, were the curtain to rise again on the
performers. In those old days female modesty was protected by a fan,
behind which, and it was of a convenient semicircular breadth, the ladies
present in the theatre retired at a signal of decorum, to peep, covertly
askant, or with the option of so peeping, through a prettily fringed
eyelet-hole in the eclipsing arch.

'Ego limis specto sic per flabellum clanculum.'-TERENCE.

That fan is the flag and symbol of the society giving us our so-called
Comedy of Manners, or Comedy of the manners of South-sea Islanders under
city veneer; and as to Comic idea, vacuous as the mask without the face
behind it.

Elia, whose humour delighted in floating a galleon paradox and wafting it
as far as it would go, bewails the extinction of our artificial Comedy,
like a poet sighing over the vanished splendour of Cleopatra's
Nile-barge; and the sedateness of his plea for a cause condemned even in
his time to the penitentiary, is a novel effect of the ludicrous. When
the realism of those 'fictitious half-believed personages,' as he calls
them, had ceased to strike, they were objectionable company, uncaressable
as puppets. Their artifices are staringly naked, and have now the effect
of a painted face viewed, after warm hours of dancing, in the morning
light. How could the Lurewells and the Plyants ever have been praised for
ingenuity in wickedness? Critics, apparently sober, and of high
reputation, held up their shallow knaveries for the world to admire.
These Lurewells, Plyants, Pinchwifes, Fondlewifes, Miss Prue, Peggy,
Hoyden, all of them save charming Milamant, are dead as last year's
clothes in a fashionable fine lady's wardrobe, and it must be an
exceptionably abandoned Abigail of our period that would look on them
with the wish to appear in their likeness. Whether the puppet show of
Punch and Judy inspires our street-urchins to have instant recourse to
their fists in a dispute, after the fashion of every one of the actors in
that public entertainment who gets possession of the cudgel, is open to
question: it has been hinted; and angry moralists have traced the
national taste for tales of crime to the smell of blood in our
nursery-songs. It will at any rate hardly be questioned that it is
unwholesome for men and women to see themselves as they are, if they are
no better than they should be: and they will not, when they have improved
in manners, care much to see themselves as they once were. That comes of
realism in the Comic art; and it is not public caprice, but the
consequence of a bettering state. {2} The same of an immoral may be said
of realistic exhibitions of a vulgar society.

The French make a critical distinction in ce qui remue from ce qui
emeut--that which agitates from that which touches with emotion. In the
realistic comedy it is an incessant remuage--no calm, merely bustling
figures, and no thought. Excepting Congreve's Way of the World, which
failed on the stage, there was nothing to keep our comedy alive on its
merits; neither, with all its realism, true portraiture, nor much
quotable fun, nor idea; neither salt nor soul.

The French have a school of stately comedy to which they can fly for
renovation whenever they have fallen away from it; and their having such
a school is mainly the reason why, as John Stuart Mill pointed out, they
know men and women more accurately than we do. Moliere followed the
Horatian precept, to observe the manners of his age and give his
characters the colour befitting them at the time. He did not paint in raw
realism. He seized his characters firmly for the central purpose of the
play, stamped them in the idea, and by slightly raising and softening the
object of study (as in the case of the ex-Huguenot, Duke de Montausier,
{3} for the study of the Misanthrope, and, according to St. Simon, the
Abbe Roquette for Tartuffe), generalized upon it so as to make it
permanently human. Concede that it is natural for human creatures to live
in society, and Alceste is an imperishable mark of one, though he is
drawn in light outline, without any forcible human colouring. Our English
school has not clearly imagined society; and of the mind hovering above
congregated men and women, it has imagined nothing. The critics who
praise it for its downrightness, and for bringing the situations home to
us, as they admiringly say, cannot but disapprove of Moliere's comedy,
which appeals to the individual mind to perceive and participate in the
social. We have splendid tragedies, we have the most beautiful of poetic
plays, and we have literary comedies passingly pleasant to read, and
occasionally to see acted. By literary comedies, I mean comedies of
classic inspiration, drawn chiefly from Menander and the Greek New Comedy
through Terence; or else comedies of the poet's personal conception, that
have had no model in life, and are humorous exaggerations, happy or
otherwise. These are the comedies of Ben Jonson, Massinger, and Fletcher.
Massinger's Justice Greedy we can all of us refer to a type, 'with fat
capon lined' that has been and will be; and he would be comic, as Panurge
is comic, but only a Rabelais could set him moving with real animation.
Probably Justice Greedy would be comic to the audience of a country booth
and to some of our friends. If we have lost our youthful relish for the
presentation of characters put together to fit a type, we find it hard to
put together the mechanism of a civil smile at his enumeration of his
dishes. Something of the same is to be said of Bobadil, swearing 'by the
foot of Pharaoh'; with a reservation, for he is made to move faster, and
to act. The comic of Jonson is a scholar's excogitation of the comic;
that of Massinger a moralist's.

Shakespeare is a well-spring of characters which are saturated with the
comic spirit; with more of what we will call blood-life than is to be
found anywhere out of Shakespeare; and they are of this world, but they
are of the world enlarged to our embrace by imagination, and by great
poetic imagination. They are, as it were--I put it to suit my present
comparison--creatures of the woods and wilds, not in walled towns, not
grouped and toned to pursue a comic exhibition of the narrower world of
society. Jaques, Falstaff and his regiment, the varied troop of Clowns,
Malvolio, Sir Hugh Evans and Fluellen--marvellous Welshmen!--Benedict and
Beatrice, Dogberry, and the rest, are subjects of a special study in the
poetically comic.

His Comedy of incredible imbroglio belongs to the literary section. One
may conceive that there was a natural resemblance between him and
Menander, both in the scheme and style of his lighter plays. Had
Shakespeare lived in a later and less emotional, less heroical period of
our history, he might have turned to the painting of manners as well as
humanity. Euripides would probably, in the time of Menander, when Athens
was enslaved but prosperous, have lent his hand to the composition of
romantic comedy. He certainly inspired that fine genius.

Politically it is accounted a misfortune for France that her nobles
thronged to the Court of Louis Quatorze. It was a boon to the comic poet.
He had that lively quicksilver world of the animalcule passions, the huge
pretensions, the placid absurdities, under his eyes in full activity;
vociferous quacks and snapping dupes, hypocrites, posturers,
extravagants, pedants, rose-pink ladies and mad grammarians, sonneteering
marquises, high-flying mistresses, plain-minded maids, inter-threading as
in a loom, noisy as at a fair. A simply bourgeois circle will not furnish
it, for the middle class must have the brilliant, flippant, independent
upper for a spur and a pattern; otherwise it is likely to be inwardly
dull as well as outwardly correct. Yet, though the King was benevolent
toward Moliere, it is not to the French Court that we are indebted for
his unrivalled studies of mankind in society. For the amusement of the
Court the ballets and farces were written, which are dearer to the rabble
upper, as to the rabble lower, class than intellectual comedy. The French
bourgeoisie of Paris were sufficiently quick-witted and enlightened by
education to welcome great works like Le Tartuffe, Les Femmes Savantes,
and Le Misanthrope, works that were perilous ventures on the popular
intelligence, big vessels to launch on streams running to shallows. The
Tartuffe hove into view as an enemy's vessel; it offended, not Dieu mais
les devots, as the Prince de Conde explained the cabal raised against it
to the King.

The Femmes Savantes is a capital instance of the uses of comedy in
teaching the world to understand what ails it. The farce of the
Precieuses ridiculed and put a stop to the monstrous romantic jargon made
popular by certain famous novels. The comedy of the Femmes Savantes
exposed the later and less apparent but more finely comic absurdity of an
excessive purism in grammar and diction, and the tendency to be idiotic
in precision. The French had felt the burden of this new nonsense; but
they had to see the comedy several times before they were consoled in
their suffering by seeing the cause of it exposed.

The Misanthrope was yet more frigidly received. Moliere thought it dead.
'I cannot improve on it, and assuredly never shall,' he said. It is one
of the French titles to honour that this quintessential comedy of the
opposition of Alceste and Celimene was ultimately understood and
applauded. In all countries the middle class presents the public which,
fighting the world, and with a good footing in the fight, knows the world
best. It may be the most selfish, but that is a question leading us into
sophistries. Cultivated men and women, who do not skim the cream of life,
and are attached to the duties, yet escape the harsher blows, make acute
and balanced observers. Moliere is their poet.

Of this class in England, a large body, neither Puritan nor Bacchanalian,
have a sentimental objection to face the study of the actual world. They
take up disdain of it, when its truths appear humiliating: when the facts
are not immediately forced on them, they take up the pride of
incredulity. They live in a hazy atmosphere that they suppose an ideal
one. Humorous writing they will endure, perhaps approve, if it mingles
with pathos to shake and elevate the feelings. They approve of Satire,
because, like the beak of the vulture, it smells of carrion, which they
are not. But of Comedy they have a shivering dread, for Comedy enfolds
them with the wretched host of the world, huddles them with us all in an
ignoble assimilation, and cannot be used by any exalted variety as a
scourge and a broom. Nay, to be an exalted variety is to come under the
calm curious eye of the Comic spirit, and be probed for what you are. Men
are seen among them, and very many cultivated women. You may distinguish
them by a favourite phrase: 'Surely we are not so bad!' and the remark:
'If that is human nature, save us from it!' as if it could be done: but
in the peculiar Paradise of the wilful people who will not see, the
exclamation assumes the saving grace.

Yet should you ask them whether they dislike sound sense, they vow they
do not. And question cultivated women whether it pleases them to be shown
moving on an intellectual level with men, they will answer that it does;
numbers of them claim the situation. Now, Comedy is the fountain of sound
sense; not the less perfectly sound on account of the sparkle: and Comedy
lifts women to a station offering them free play for their wit, as they
usually show it, when they have it, on the side of sound sense. The
higher the Comedy, the more prominent the part they enjoy in it. Dorine
in the Tartuffe is common-sense incarnate, though palpably a
waiting-maid. Celimene is undisputed mistress of the same attribute in
the Misanthrope; wiser as a woman than Alceste as man. In Congreve's Way
of the World, Millamant overshadows Mirabel, the sprightliest male figure
of English comedy.

But those two ravishing women, so copious and so choice of speech, who
fence with men and pass their guard, are heartless! Is it not preferable
to be the pretty idiot, the passive beauty, the adorable bundle of
caprices, very feminine, very sympathetic, of romantic and sentimental
fiction? Our women are taught to think so. The Agnes of the Ecole des
Femmes should be a lesson for men. The heroines of Comedy are like women
of the world, not necessarily heartless from being clear-sighted: they
seem so to the sentimentally-reared only for the reason that they use
their wits, and are not wandering vessels crying for a captain or a
pilot. Comedy is an exhibition of their battle with men, and that of men
with them: and as the two, however divergent, both look on one object,
namely, Life, the gradual similarity of their impressions must bring them
to some resemblance. The Comic poet dares to show us men and women coming
to this mutual likeness; he is for saying that when they draw together in
social life their minds grow liker; just as the philosopher discerns the
similarity of boy and girl, until the girl is marched away to the
nursery. Philosopher and Comic poet are of a cousinship in the eye they
cast on life: and they are equally unpopular with our wilful English of
the hazy region and the ideal that is not to be disturbed.

Thus, for want of instruction in the Comic idea, we lose a large audience
among our cultivated middle class that we should expect to support
Comedy. The sentimentalist is as averse as the Puritan and as the
Bacchanalian.

Our traditions are unfortunate. The public taste is with the idle
laughers, and still inclines to follow them. It may be shown by an
analysis of Wycherley's Plain Dealer, a coarse prose adaption of the
Misanthrope, stuffed with lumps of realism in a vulgarized theme to hit
the mark of English appetite, that we have in it the keynote of the
Comedy of our stage. It is Moliere travestied, with the hoof to his foot
and hair on the pointed tip of his ear. And how difficult it is for
writers to disentangle themselves from bad traditions is noticeable when
we find Goldsmith, who had grave command of the Comic in narrative,
producing an elegant farce for a Comedy; and Fielding, who was a master
of the Comic both in narrative and in dialogue, not even approaching to
the presentable in farce.

These bad traditions of Comedy affect us not only on the stage, but in
our literature, and may be tracked into our social life. They are the
ground of the heavy moralizings by which we are outwearied, about Life as
a Comedy, and Comedy as a jade, {4} when popular writers, conscious of
fatigue in creativeness, desire to be cogent in a modish cynicism:
perversions of the idea of life, and of the proper esteem for the society
we have wrested from brutishness, and would carry higher. Stock images of
this description are accepted by the timid and the sensitive, as well as
by the saturnine, quite seriously; for not many look abroad with their
own eyes, fewer still have the habit of thinking for themselves. Life, we
know too well, is not a Comedy, but something strangely mixed; nor is
Comedy a vile mask. The corrupted importation from France was noxious; a
noble entertainment spoilt to suit the wretched taste of a villanous age;
and the later imitations of it, partly drained of its poison and made
decorous, became tiresome, notwithstanding their fun, in the perpetual
recurring of the same situations, owing to the absence of original study
and vigour of conception. Scene v. Act 2 of the Misanthrope, owing, no
doubt, to the fact of our not producing matter for original study, is
repeated in succession by Wycherley, Congreve, and Sheridan, and as it is
at second hand, we have it done cynically--or such is the tone; in the
manner of 'below stairs.' Comedy thus treated may be accepted as a
version of the ordinary worldly understanding of our social life; at
least, in accord with the current dicta concerning it. The epigrams can
be made; but it is uninstructive, rather tending to do disservice. Comedy
justly treated, as you find it in Moliere, whom we so clownishly
mishandled, the Comedy of Moliere throws no infamous reflection upon
life. It is deeply conceived, in the first place, and therefore it cannot
be impure. Meditate on that statement. Never did man wield so shrieking a
scourge upon vice, but his consummate self-mastery is not shaken while
administering it. Tartuffe and Harpagon, in fact, are made each to whip
himself and his class, the false pietists, and the insanely covetous.
Moliere has only set them in motion. He strips Folly to the skin,
displays the imposture of the creature, and is content to offer her
better clothing, with the lesson Chrysale reads to Philaminte and Belise.
He conceives purely, and he writes purely, in the simplest language, the
simplest of French verse. The source of his wit is clear reason: it is a
fountain of that soil; and it springs to vindicate reason, common-sense,
rightness and justice; for no vain purpose ever. The wit is of such
pervading spirit that it inspires a pun with meaning and interest. {5}
His moral does not hang like a tail, or preach from one character
incessantly cocking an eye at the audience, as in recent realistic French
Plays: but is in the heart of his work, throbbing with every pulsation of
an organic structure. If Life is likened to the comedy of Moliere, there
is no scandal in the comparison.

Congreve's Way of the World is an exception to our other comedies, his
own among them, by virtue of the remarkable brilliancy of the writing,
and the figure of Millamant. The comedy has no idea in it, beyond the
stale one, that so the world goes; and it concludes with the jaded
discovery of a document at a convenient season for the descent of the
curtain. A plot was an afterthought with Congreve. By the help of a
wooden villain (Maskwell) marked Gallows to the flattest eye, he gets a
sort of plot in The Double Dealer. {6} His Way of the World might be
called The Conquest of a Town Coquette, and Millamant is a perfect
portrait of a coquette, both in her resistance to Mirabel and the manner
of her surrender, and also in her tongue. The wit here is not so salient
as in certain passages of Love for Love, where Valentine feigns madness
or retorts on his father, or Mrs. Frail rejoices in the harmlessness of
wounds to a woman's virtue, if she 'keeps them from air.' In The Way of
the World, it appears less prepared in the smartness, and is more
diffused in the more characteristic style of the speakers. Here, however,
as elsewhere, his famous wit is like a bully-fencer, not ashamed to lay
traps for its exhibition, transparently petulant for the train between
certain ordinary words and the powder-magazine of the improprieties to be
fired. Contrast the wit of Congreve with Moliere's. That of the first is
a Toledo blade, sharp, and wonderfully supple for steel; cast for
duelling, restless in the scabbard, being so pretty when out of it. To
shine, it must have an adversary. Moliere's wit is like a running brook,
with innumerable fresh lights on it at every turn of the wood through
which its business is to find a way. It does not run in search of
obstructions, to be noisy over them; but when dead leaves and viler
substances are heaped along the course, its natural song is heightened.
Without effort, and with no dazzling flashes of achievement, it is full
of healing, the wit of good breeding, the wit of wisdom.

'Genuine humour and true wit,' says Landor, {7} 'require a sound and
capacious mind, which is always a grave one. Rabelais and La Fontaine are
recorded by their countrymen to have been reveurs. Few men have been
graver than Pascal. Few men have been wittier.'

To apply the citation of so great a brain as Pascal's to our countryman
would be unfair. Congreve had a certain soundness of mind; of capacity,
in the sense intended by Landor, he had little. Judging him by his wit,
he performed some happy thrusts, and taking it for genuine, it is a
surface wit, neither rising from a depth nor flowing from a spring.

'On voit qu'il se travaille e dire de bons mots.'

He drives the poor hack word, 'fool,' as cruelly to the market for wit as
any of his competitors. Here is an example, that has been held up for
eulogy:

WITWOUD: He has brought me a letter from the fool my brother, etc. etc.

MIRABEL: A fool, and your brother, Witwoud?

WITWOUD: Ay, ay, my half-brother. My half-brother he is; no nearer, upon
my honour.

MIRABEL: Then 'tis possible he may be but half a fool.

By evident preparation. This is a sort of wit one remembers to have heard
at school, of a brilliant outsider; perhaps to have been guilty of
oneself, a trifle later. It was, no doubt, a blaze of intellectual
fireworks to the bumpkin squire, who came to London to go to the theatre
and learn manners.

Where Congreve excels all his English rivals is in his literary force,
and a succinctness of style peculiar to him. He had correct judgement, a
correct ear, readiness of illustration within a narrow range, in
snapshots of the obvious at the obvious, and copious language. He hits
the mean of a fine style and a natural in dialogue. He is at once precise
and voluble. If you have ever thought upon style you will acknowledge it
to be a signal accomplishment. In this he is a classic, and is worthy of
treading a measure with Moliere. The Way of the World may be read out
currently at a first glance, so sure are the accents of the emphatic
meaning to strike the eye, perforce of the crispness and cunning polish
of the sentences. You have not to look over them before you confide
yourself to him; he will carry you safe. Sheridan imitated, but was far
from surpassing him. The flow of boudoir Billingsgate in Lady Wishfort is
unmatched for the vigour and pointedness of the tongue. It spins along
with a final ring, like the voice of Nature in a fury, and is, indeed,
racy eloquence of the elevated fishwife.

Millamant is an admirable, almost a lovable heroine. It is a piece of
genius in a writer to make a woman's manner of speech portray her. You
feel sensible of her presence in every line of her speaking. The
stipulations with her lover in view of marriage, her fine lady's
delicacy, and fine lady's easy evasions of indelicacy, coquettish airs,
and playing with irresolution, which in a common maid would be
bashfulness, until she submits to 'dwindle into a wife,' as she says,
form a picture that lives in the frame, and is in harmony with Mirabel's
description of her:

'Here she comes, i' faith, full sail, with her fan spread, and her
streamers out, and a shoal of fools for tenders.'

And, after an interview:

'Think of you! To think of a whirlwind, though 'twere in a whirlwind,
were a case of more steady contemplation, a very tranquillity of mind and
mansion.'

There is a picturesqueness, as of Millamant and no other, in her voice,
when she is encouraged to take Mirabel by Mrs. Fainall, who is 'sure she
has a mind to him':

MILLAMANT: Are you? I think I have--and the horrid man looks as if he
thought so too, etc. etc.

One hears the tones, and sees the sketch and colour of the whole scene in
reading it.

Celimene is behind Millamant in vividness. An air of bewitching
whimsicality hovers over the graces of this Comic heroine, like the
lively conversational play of a beautiful mouth.

But in wit she is no rival of Celimene. What she utters adds to her
personal witchery, and is not further memorable. She is a flashing
portrait, and a type of the superior ladies who do not think, not of
those who do. In representing a class, therefore, it is a lower class, in
the proportion that one of Gainsborough's full-length aristocratic women
is below the permanent impressiveness of a fair Venetian head.

Millamant side by side with Celimene is an example of how far the
realistic painting of a character can be carried to win our favour; and
of where it falls short. Celimene is a woman's mind in movement, armed
with an ungovernable wit; with perspicacious clear eyes for the world,
and a very distinct knowledge that she belongs to the world, and is most
at home in it. She is attracted to Alceste by her esteem for his honesty;
she cannot avoid seeing where the good sense of the man is diseased.

Rousseau, in his letter to D'Alembert on the subject of the Misanthrope,
discusses the character of Alceste, as though Moliere had put him forth
for an absolute example of misanthropy; whereas Alceste is only a
misanthrope of the circle he finds himself placed in: he has a touching
faith in the virtue residing in the country, and a critical love of sweet
simpleness. Nor is he the principal person of the comedy to which he
gives a name. He is only passively comic. Celimene is the active spirit.
While he is denouncing and railing, the trial is imposed upon her to make
the best of him, and control herself, as much as a witty woman, eagerly
courted, can do. By appreciating him she practically confesses her
faultiness, and she is better disposed to meet him half .way than he is
to bend an inch: only she is une ame de vingt ans, the world is pleasant,
and if the gilded flies of the Court are silly, uncompromising fanatics
have their ridiculous features as well. Can she abandon the life they
make agreeable to her, for a man who will not be guided by the common
sense of his class; and who insists on plunging into one extreme--equal
to suicide in her eyes--to avoid another? That is the comic question of
the Misanthrope. Why will he not continue to mix with the world smoothly,
appeased by the flattery of her secret and really sincere preference of
him, and taking his revenge in satire of it, as she does from her own not
very lofty standard, and will by and by do from his more exalted one?

Celimene is worldliness: Alceste is unworldliness. It does not quite
imply unselfishness; and that is perceived by her shrewd head. Still he
is a very uncommon figure in her circle, and she esteems him, l'homme aux
rubans verts, 'who sometimes diverts but more often horribly vexes her,'
as she can say of him when her satirical tongue is on the run. Unhappily
the soul of truth in him, which wins her esteem, refuses to be tamed, or
silent, or unsuspicious, and is the perpetual obstacle to their good
accord. He is that melancholy person, the critic of everybody save
himself; intensely sensitive to the faults of others, wounded by them; in
love with his own indubitable honesty, and with his ideal of the simpler
form of life befitting it: qualities which constitute the satirist. He is
a Jean Jacques of the Court. His proposal to Celimene when he pardons
her, that she should follow him in flying humankind, and his frenzy of
detestation of her at her refusal, are thoroughly in the mood of Jean
Jacques. He is an impracticable creature of a priceless virtue; but
Celimene may feel that to fly with him to the desert: that is from the
Court to the country

'Ou d'etre homme d'honneur on ait la liberte,'

she is likely to find herself the companion of a starving satirist, like
that poor princess who ran away with the waiting-man, and when both were
hungry in the forest, was ordered to give him flesh. She is a fieffee
coquette, rejoicing in her wit and her attractions, and distinguished by
her inclination for Alceste in the midst of her many other lovers; only
she finds it hard to cut them off--what woman with a train does not?--and
when the exposure of her naughty wit has laid her under their rebuke, she
will do the utmost she can: she will give her hand to honesty, but she
cannot quite abandon worldliness. She would be unwise if she did.

The fable is thin. Our pungent contrivers of plots would see no
indication of life in the outlines. The life of the comedy is in the
idea. As with the singing of the sky-lark out of sight, you must love the
bird to be attentive to the song, so in this highest flight of the Comic
Muse, you must love pure Comedy warmly to understand the Misanthrope: you
must be receptive of the idea of Comedy. And to love Comedy you must know
the real world, and know men and women well enough not to expect too much
of them, though you may still hope for good.

Menander wrote a comedy called Misogynes, said to have been the most
celebrated of his works. This misogynist is a married man, according to
the fragment surviving, and is a hater of women through hatred of his
wife. He generalizes upon them from the example of this lamentable
adjunct of his fortunes, and seems to have got the worst of it in the
contest with her, which is like the issue in reality, in the polite
world. He seems also to have deserved it, which may be as true to the
copy. But we are unable to say whether the wife was a good voice of her
sex: or how far Menander in this instance raised the idea of woman from
the mire it was plunged into by the comic poets, or rather satiric
dramatists, of the middle period of Greek Comedy preceding him and the
New Comedy, who devoted their wit chiefly to the abuse, and for a
diversity, to the eulogy of extra-mural ladies of conspicuous fame.
Menander idealized them without purposely elevating. He satirized a
certain Thais, and his Thais of the Eunuchus of Terence is neither
professionally attractive nor repulsive; his picture of the two Andrians,
Chrysis and her sister, is nowhere to be matched for tenderness. But the
condition of honest women in his day did not permit of the freedom of
action and fencing dialectic of a Celimene, and consequently it is below
our mark of pure Comedy.

Sainte-Beuve conjures up the ghost of Menander, saying: For the love of
me love Terence. It is through love of Terence that moderns are able to
love Menander; and what is preserved of Terence has not apparently given
us the best of the friend of Epicurus. [Greek text which cannot be
reproduced] the lover taken in horror, and [Greek text] the damsel shorn
of her locks, have a promising sound for scenes of jealousy and a too
masterful display of lordly authority, leading to regrets, of the kind
known to intemperate men who imagined they were fighting with the weaker,
as the fragments indicate.

Of the six comedies of Terence, four are derived from Menander; two, the
Hecyra and the Phormio, from Apollodorus. These two are inferior in comic
action and the peculiar sweetness of Menander to the Andria, the Adelphi,
the Heautontimorumenus, and the Eunuchus: but Phormio is a more dashing
and amusing convivial parasite than the Gnatho of the last-named comedy.
There were numerous rivals of whom we know next to nothing--except by the
quotations of Athenaeus and Plutarch, and the Greek grammarians who cited
them to support a dictum--in this as in the preceding periods of comedy
in Athens, for Menander's plays are counted by many scores, and they were
crowned by the prize only eight times. The favourite poet with critics,
in Greece as in Rome, was Menander; and if some of his rivals here and
there surpassed him in comic force, and out-stripped him in competition
by an appositeness to the occasion that had previously in the same way
deprived the genius of Aristophanes of its due reward in Clouds and
Birds, his position as chief of the comic poets of his age was
unchallenged. Plutarch very unnecessarily drags Aristophanes into a
comparison with him, to the confusion of the older poet. Their aims, the
matter they dealt in, and the times, were quite dissimilar. But it is no
wonder that Plutarch, writing when Athenian beauty of style was the
delight of his patrons, should rank Menander at the highest. In what
degree of faithfulness Terence copied Menander, whether, as he states of
the passage in the Adelphi taken from Diphilus, verbum de verbo in the
lovelier scenes--the description of the last words of the dying Andrian,
and of her funeral, for instance--remains conjectural. For us Terence
shares with his master the praise of an amenity that is like Elysian
speech, equable and ever gracious; like the face of the Andrian's young
sister:

'Adeo modesto, adeo venusto, ut nihil supra.'

The celebrated 'flens quam familiariter,' of which the closest rendering
grounds hopelessly on harsh prose, to express the sorrowful confidingness
of a young girl who has lost her sister and dearest friend, and has but
her lover left to her; 'she turned and flung herself on his bosom,
weeping as though at home there': this our instinct tells us must be
Greek, though hardly finer in Greek. Certain lines of Terence, compared
with the original fragments, show that he embellished them; but his taste
was too exquisite for him to do other than devote his genius to the
honest translation of such pieces as the above. Menander, then; with him,
through the affinity of sympathy, Terence; and Shakespeare and Moliere
have this beautiful translucency of language: and the study of the comic
poets might be recommended, if for that only.

A singular ill fate befell the writings of Menander. What we have of him
in Terence was chosen probably to please the cultivated Romans; {8} and
is a romantic play with a comic intrigue, obtained in two instances, the
Andria and the Eunuchus, by rolling a couple of his originals into one.
The titles of certain of the lost plays indicate the comic illumining
character; a Self-pitier, a Self-chastiser, an Ill-tempered man, a
Superstitious, an Incredulous, etc., point to suggestive domestic themes.

Terence forwarded manuscript translations from Greece, that suffered
shipwreck; he, who could have restored the treasure, died on the way
home. The zealots of Byzantium completed the work of destruction. So we
have the four comedies of Terence, numbering six of Menander, with a few
sketches of plots--one of them, the Thesaurus, introduces a miser, whom
we should have liked to contrast with Harpagon--and a multitude of small
fragments of a sententious cast, fitted for quotation. Enough remains to
make his greatness felt.

Without undervaluing other writers of Comedy, I think it may be said that
Menander and Moliere stand alone specially as comic poets of the feelings
and the idea. In each of them there is a conception of the Comic that
refines even to pain, as in the Menedemus of the Heautontimorumenus, and
in the Misanthrope. Menander and Moliere have given the principal types
to Comedy hitherto. The Micio and Demea of the Adelphi, with their
opposing views of the proper management of youth, are still alive; the
Sganarelles and Arnolphes of the Ecole des Maris and the Ecole des
Femmes, are not all buried. Tartuffe is the father of the hypocrites;
Orgon of the dupes; Thraso, of the braggadocios; Alceste of the 'Manlys';
Davus and Syrus of the intriguing valets, the Scapins and Figaros. Ladies
that soar in the realms of Rose-Pink, whose language wears the nodding
plumes of intellectual conceit, are traceable to Philaminte and Belise of
the Femmes Savantes: and the mordant witty women have the tongue of
Celimene. The reason is, that these two poets idealized upon life: the
foundation of their types is real and in the quick, but they painted with
spiritual strength, which is the solid in Art.

The idealistic conceptions of Comedy gives breadth and opportunities of
daring to Comic genius, and helps to solve the difficulties it creates.
How, for example, shall an audience be assured that an evident and
monstrous dupe is actually deceived without being an absolute fool? In Le
Tartuffe the note of high Comedy strikes when Orgon on his return home
hears of his idol's excellent appetite. 'Le pauvre homme!' he exclaims.
He is told that the wife of his bosom has been unwell. 'Et Tartuffe?' he
asks, impatient to hear him spoken of, his mind suffused with the thought
of Tartuffe, crazy with tenderness, and again he croons, 'Le pauvre
homme!' It is the mother's cry of pitying delight at a nurse's recital of
the feats in young animal gluttony of her cherished infant. After this
masterstroke of the Comic, you not only put faith in Orgon's roseate
prepossession, you share it with him by comic sympathy, and can listen
with no more than a tremble of the laughing muscles to the instance he
gives of the sublime humanity of Tartuffe:

'Un rien presque suffit pour le scandaliser, Jusque-le, qu'il se vint
l'autre jour accuser D'avoir pris une puce en faisant sa priere, Et de
l'avoir tuee avec trop de colere.'

And to have killed it too wrathfully! Translating Moliere is like humming
an air one has heard performed by an accomplished violinist of the pure
tones without flourish.

Orgon, awakening to find another dupe in Madame Pernelle, incredulous of
the revelations which have at last opened his own besotted eyes, is a
scene of the double Comic, vivified by the spell previously cast on the
mind. There we feel the power of the poet's creation; and in the sharp
light of that sudden turn the humanity is livelier than any realistic
work can make it.

Italian Comedy gives many hints for a Tartuffe; but they may be found in
Boccaccio, as well as in Machiavelli's Mandragola. The Frate Timoteo of
this piece is only a very oily friar, compliantly assisting an intrigue
with ecclesiastical sophisms (to use the mildest word) for payment. Frate
Timoteo has a fine Italian priestly pose.

DONNA: Credete voi, che'l Turco passi questo anno in Italia?

F. TIM.: Se voi non fate orazione, si.

Priestly arrogance and unctuousness, and trickeries and casuistries,
cannot be painted without our discovering a likeness in the long Italian
gallery. Goldoni sketched the Venetian manners of the decadence of the
Republic with a French pencil, and was an Italian Scribe in style.

The Spanish stage is richer in such Comedies as that which furnished the
idea of the Menteur to Corneille. But you must force yourself to believe
that this liar is not forcing his vein when he piles lie upon lie. There
is no preceding touch to win the mind to credulity. Spanish Comedy is
generally in sharp outline, as of skeletons; in quick movement, as of
marionnettes. The Comedy might be performed by a troop of the corps de
ballet; and in the recollection of the reading it resolves to an animated
shuffle of feet. It is, in fact, something other than the true idea of
Comedy. Where the sexes are separated, men and women grow, as the
Portuguese call it, affaimados of one another, famine-stricken; and all
the tragic elements are on the stage. Don Juan is a comic character that
sends souls flying: nor does the humour of the breaking of a dozen
women's hearts conciliate the Comic Muse with the drawing of blood.

German attempts at Comedy remind one vividly of Heine's image of his
country in the dancing of Atta Troll. Lessing tried his hand at it, with
a sobering effect upon readers. The intention to produce the reverse
effect is just visible, and therein, like the portly graces of the poor
old Pyrenean Bear poising and twirling on his right hind-leg and his
left, consists the fun. Jean Paul Richter gives the best edition of the
German Comic in the contrast of Siebenkas with his Lenette. A light of
the Comic is in Goethe; enough to complete the splendid figure of the
man, but no more.

The German literary laugh, like the timed awakenings of their Barbarossa
in the hollows of the Untersberg, is infrequent, and rather
monstrous--never a laugh of men and women in concert. It comes of
unrefined abstract fancy, grotesque or grim, or gross, like the peculiar
humours of their little earthmen. Spiritual laughter they have not yet
attained to: sentimentalism waylays them in the flight. Here and there a
Volkslied or Marchen shows a national aptitude for stout animal laughter;
and we see that the literature is built on it, which is hopeful so far;
but to enjoy it, to enter into the philosophy of the Broad Grin, that
seems to hesitate between the skull and the embryo, and reaches its
perfection in breadth from the pulling of two square fingers at the
corners of the mouth, one must have aid of 'the good Rhine wine,' and be
of German blood unmixed besides. This treble-Dutch lumbersomeness of the
Comic spirit is of itself exclusive of the idea of Comedy, and the poor
voice allowed to women in German domestic life will account for the
absence of comic dialogues reflecting upon life in that land. I shall
speak of it again in the second section of this lecture.

Eastward you have total silence of Comedy among a people intensely
susceptible to laughter, as the Arabian Nights will testify. Where the
veil is over women's-faces, you cannot have society, without which the
senses are barbarous and the Comic spirit is driven to the gutters of
grossness to slake its thirst. Arabs in this respect are worse than
Italians--much worse than Germans; just in the degree that their system
of treating women is worse.

M. Saint-Marc Girardin, the excellent French essayist and master of
critical style, tells of a conversation he had once with an Arab
gentleman on the topic of the different management of these difficult
creatures in Orient and in Occident: and the Arab spoke in praise of many
good results of the greater freedom enjoyed by Western ladies, and the
charm of conversing with them. He was questioned why his countrymen took
no measures to grant them something of that kind of liberty. He jumped
out of his individuality in a twinkling, and entered into the sentiments
of his race, replying, from the pinnacle of a splendid conceit, with
affected humility of manner: 'YOU can look on them without
perturbation--but WE!' . . . And after this profoundly comic
interjection, he added, in deep tones, 'The very face of a woman!' Our
representative of temperate notions demurely consented that the Arab's
pride of inflammability should insist on the prudery of the veil as the
civilizing medium of his race.

There has been fun in Bagdad. But there never will be civilization where
Comedy is not possible; and that comes of some degree of social equality
of the sexes. I am not quoting the Arab to exhort and disturb the
somnolent East; rather for cultivated women to recognize that the Comic
Muse is one of their best friends. They are blind to their interests in
swelling the ranks of the sentimentalists. Let them look with their
clearest vision abroad and at home. They will see that where they have no
social freedom, Comedy is absent: where they are household drudges, the
form of Comedy is primitive: where they are tolerably independent, but
uncultivated, exciting melodrama takes its place and a sentimental
version of them. Yet the Comic will out, as they would know if they
listened to some of the private conversations of men whose minds are
undirected by the Comic Muse: as the sentimental man, to his
astonishment, would know likewise, if he in similar fashion could receive
a lesson. But where women are on the road to an equal footing with men,
in attainments and in liberty--in what they have won for themselves, and
what has been granted them by a fair civilization--there, and only
waiting to be transplanted from life to the stage, or the novel, or the
poem, pure Comedy flourishes, and is, as it would help them to be, the
sweetest of diversions, the wisest of delightful companions.

Now, to look about us in the present time, I think it will be
acknowledged that in neglecting the cultivation of the Comic idea, we are
losing the aid of a powerful auxiliar. You see Folly perpetually sliding
into new shapes in a society possessed of wealth and leisure, with many
whims, many strange ailments and strange doctors. Plenty of common-sense
is in the world to thrust her back when she pretends to empire. But the
first-born of common-sense, the vigilant Comic, which is the genius of
thoughtful laughter, which would readily extinguish her at the outset, is
not serving as a public advocate.

You will have noticed the disposition of common-sense, under pressure of
some pertinacious piece of light-headedness, to grow impatient and angry.
That is a sign of the absence, or at least of the dormancy, of the Comic
idea. For Folly is the natural prey of the Comic, known to it in all her
transformations, in every disguise; and it is with the springing delight
of hawk over heron, hound after fox, that it gives her chase, never
fretting, never tiring, sure of having her, allowing her no rest.

Contempt is a sentiment that cannot be entertained by comic intelligence.
What is it but an excuse to be idly minded, or personally lofty, or
comfortably narrow, not perfectly humane? If we do not feign when we say
that we despise Folly, we shut the brain. There is a disdainful attitude
in the presence of Folly, partaking of the foolishness to Comic
perception: and anger is not much less foolish than disdain. The struggle
we have to conduct is essence against essence. Let no one doubt of the
sequel when this emanation of what is firmest in us is launched to strike
down the daughter of Unreason and Sentimentalism: such being Folly's
parentage, when it is respectable.

Our modern system of combating her is too long defensive, and carried on
too ploddingly with concrete engines of war in the attack. She has time
to get behind entrenchments. She is ready to stand a siege, before the
heavily armed man of science and the writer of the leading article or
elaborate essay have primed their big guns. It should be remembered that
she has charms for the multitude; and an English multitude seeing her
make a gallant fight of it will be half in love with her, certainly
willing to lend her a cheer. Benevolent subscriptions assist her to hire
her own man of science, her own organ in the Press. If ultimately she is
cast out and overthrown, she can stretch a finger at gaps in our ranks.
She can say that she commanded an army and seduced men, whom we thought
sober men and safe, to act as her lieutenants. We learn rather gloomily,
after she has flashed her lantern, that we have in our midst able men and
men with minds for whom there is no pole-star in intellectual navigation.
Comedy, or the Comic element, is the specific for the poison of delusion
while Folly is passing from the state of vapour to substantial form.

O for a breath of Aristophanes, Rabelais, Voltaire, Cervantes, Fielding,
Moliere! These are spirits that, if you know them well, will come when
you do call. You will find the very invocation of them act on you like a
renovating air--the South-west coming off the sea, or a cry in the Alps.

No one would presume to say that we are deficient in jokers. They abound,
and the organisation directing their machinery to shoot them in the wake
of the leading article and the popular sentiment is good.

But the Comic differs from them in addressing the wits for laughter; and
the sluggish wits want some training to respond to it, whether in public
life or private, and particularly when the feelings are excited.

The sense of the Comic is much blunted by habits of punning and of using
humouristic phrase: the trick of employing Johnsonian polysyllables to
treat of the infinitely little. And it really may be humorous, of a kind,
yet it will miss the point by going too much round about it.

A certain French Duke Pasquier died, some years back, at a very advanced
age. He had been the venerable Duke Pasquier in his later years up to the
period of his death. There was a report of Duke Pasquier that he was a
man of profound egoism. Hence an argument arose, and was warmly
sustained, upon the excessive selfishness of those who, in a world of
troubles, and calls to action, and innumerable duties, husband their
strength for the sake of living on. Can it be possible, the argument ran,
for a truly generous heart to continue beating up to the age of a
hundred? Duke Pasquier was not without his defenders, who likened him to
the oak of the forest--a venerable comparison.

The argument was conducted on both sides with spirit and earnestness,
lightened here and there by frisky touches of the polysyllabic playful,
reminding one of the serious pursuit of their fun by truant boys, that
are assured they are out of the eye of their master, and now and then
indulge in an imitation of him. And well might it be supposed that the
Comic idea was asleep, not overlooking them! It resolved at last to this,
that either Duke Pasquier was a scandal on our humanity in clinging to
life so long, or that he honoured it by so sturdy a resistance to the
enemy. As one who has entangled himself in a labyrinth is glad to get out
again at the entrance, the argument ran about to conclude with its
commencement.

Now, imagine a master of the Comic treating this theme, and particularly
the argument on it. Imagine an Aristophanic comedy of THE CENTENARIAN,
with choric praises of heroical early death, and the same of a stubborn
vitality, and the poet laughing at the chorus; and the grand question for
contention in dialogue, as to the exact age when a man should die, to the
identical minute, that he may preserve the respect of his fellows,
followed by a systematic attempt to make an accurate measurement in
parallel lines, with a tough rope-yarn by one party, and a string of
yawns by the other, of the veteran's power of enduring life, and our
capacity for enduring HIM, with tremendous pulling on both sides.

Would not the Comic view of the discussion illumine it and the disputants
like very lightning? There are questions, as well as persons, that only
the Comic can fitly touch.

Aristophanes would probably have crowned the ancient tree, with the
consolatory observation to the haggard line of long-expectant heirs of
the Centenarian, that they live to see the blessedness of coming of a
strong stock. The shafts of his ridicule would mainly have been aimed at
the disputants. For the sole ground of the argument was the old man's
character, and sophists are not needed to demonstrate that we can very
soon have too much of a bad thing. A Centenarian does not necessarily
provoke the Comic idea, nor does the corpse of a duke. It is not provoked
in the order of nature, until we draw its penetrating attentiveness to
some circumstance with which we have been mixing our private interests,
or our speculative obfuscation. Dulness, insensible to the Comic, has the
privilege of arousing it; and the laying of a dull finger on matters of
human life is the surest method of establishing electrical communications
with a battery of laughter--where the Comic idea is prevalent.

But if the Comic idea prevailed with us, and we had an Aristophanes to
barb and wing it, we should be breathing air of Athens. Prosers now
pouring forth on us like public fountains would be cut short in the
street and left blinking, dumb as pillar-posts, with letters thrust into
their mouths. We should throw off incubus, our dreadful familiar--by some
called boredom--whom it is our present humiliation to be just alive
enough to loathe, never quick enough to foil. There would be a bright and
positive, clear Hellenic perception of facts. The vapours of Unreason and
Sentimentalism would be blown away before they were productive. Where
would Pessimist and Optimist be? They would in any case have a diminished
audience. Yet possibly the change of despots, from good-natured old
obtuseness to keen-edged intelligence, which is by nature merciless,
would be more than we could bear. The rupture of the link between dull
people, consisting in the fraternal agreement that something is too
clever for them, and a shot beyond them, is not to be thought of lightly;
for, slender though the link may seem, it is equivalent to a cement
forming a concrete of dense cohesion, very desirable in the estimation of
the statesman.

A political Aristophanes, taking advantage of his lyrical Bacchic
licence, was found too much for political Athens. I would not ask to have
him revived, but that the sharp light of such a spirit as his might be
with us to strike now and then on public affairs, public themes, to make
them spin along more briskly.

He hated with the politician's fervour the sophist who corrupted
simplicity of thought, the poet who destroyed purity of style, the
demagogue, 'the saw-toothed monster,' who, as he conceived, chicaned the
mob, and he held his own against them by strength of laughter, until
fines, the curtailing of his Comic licence in the chorus, and ultimately
the ruin of Athens, which could no longer support the expense of the
chorus, threw him altogether on dialogue, and brought him under the law.
After the catastrophe, the poet, who had ever been gazing back at the men
of Marathon and Salamis, must have felt that he had foreseen it; and that
he was wise when he pleaded for peace, and derided military coxcombry,
and the captious old creature Demus, we can admit. He had the Comic
poet's gift of common-sense--which does not always include political
intelligence; yet his political tendency raised him above the Old Comedy
turn for uproarious farce. He abused Socrates, but Xenophon, the disciple
of Socrates, by his trained rhetoric saved the Ten Thousand. Aristophanes
might say that if his warnings had been followed there would have been no
such thing as a mercenary Greek expedition under Cyrus. Athens, however,
was on a landslip, falling; none could arrest it. To gaze back, to uphold
the old times, was a most natural conservatism, and fruitless. The aloe
had bloomed. Whether right or wrong in his politics and his criticisms,
and bearing in mind the instruments he played on and the audience he had
to win, there is an idea in his comedies: it is the Idea of Good
Citizenship.

He is not likely to be revived. He stands, like Shakespeare, an
unapproachable. Swift says of him, with a loving chuckle:

'But as for Comic Aristophanes, The dog too witty and too profane is.'

Aristophanes was 'profane,' under satiric direction, unlike his rivals
Cratinus, Phrynichus, Ameipsias, Eupolis, and others, if we are to
believe him, who in their extraordinary Donnybrook Fair of the day of
Comedy, thumped one another and everybody else with absolute heartiness,
as he did, but aimed at small game, and dragged forth particular women,
which he did not. He is an aggregate of many men, all of a certain
greatness. We may build up a conception of his powers if we mount
Rabelais upon Hudibras, lift him with the songfulness of Shelley, give
him a vein of Heinrich Heine, and cover him with the mantle of the
Anti-Jacobin, adding (that there may be some Irish in him) a dash of
Grattan, before he is in motion.

But such efforts at conceiving one great one by incorporation of minors
are vain, and cry for excuse. Supposing Wilkes for leading man in a
country constantly plunging into war under some plumed Lamachus, with
enemies periodically firing the land up to the gates of London, and a
Samuel Foote, of prodigious genius, attacking him with ridicule, I think
it gives a notion of the conflict engaged in by Aristophanes. This
laughing bald-pate, as he calls himself, was a Titanic pamphleteer, using
laughter for his political weapon; a laughter without scruple, the
laughter of Hercules. He was primed with wit, as with the garlic he
speaks of giving to the game-cocks, to make them fight the better. And he
was a lyric poet of aerial delicacy, with the homely song of a jolly
national poet, and a poet of such feeling that the comic mask is at times
no broader than a cloth on a face to show the serious features of our
common likeness. He is not to be revived; but if his method were studied,
some of the fire in him would come to us, and we might be revived.

Taking them generally, the English public are most in sympathy with this
primitive Aristophanic comedy, wherein the comic is capped by the
grotesque, irony tips the wit, and satire is a naked sword. They have the
basis of the Comic in them: an esteem for common-sense. They cordially
dislike the reverse of it. They have a rich laugh, though it is not the
gros rire of the Gaul tossing gros sel, nor the polished Frenchman's
mentally digestive laugh. And if they have now, like a monarch with a
troop of dwarfs, too many jesters kicking the dictionary about, to let
them reflect that they are dull, occasionally, like the pensive monarch
surprising himself with an idea of an idea of his own, they look so. And
they are given to looking in the glass. They must see that something ails
them. How much even the better order of them will endure, without a
thought of the defensive, when the person afflicting them is protected
from satire, we read in Memoirs of a Preceding Age, where the vulgarly
tyrannous hostess of a great house of reception shuffled the guests and
played them like a pack of cards, with her exact estimate of the strength
of each one printed on them: and still this house continued to be the
most popular in England; nor did the lady ever appear in print or on the
boards as the comic type that she was.

It has been suggested that they have not yet spiritually comprehended the
signification of living in society; for who are cheerfuller, brisker of
wit, in the fields, and as explorers, colonisers, backwoodsmen? They are
happy in rough exercise, and also in complete repose. The intermediate
condition, when they are called upon to talk to one another, upon other
than affairs of business or their hobbies, reveals them wearing a curious
look of vacancy, as it were the socket of an eye wanting. The Comic is
perpetually springing up in social life, and, it oppresses them from not
being perceived.

Thus, at a dinner-party, one of the guests, who happens to have enrolled
himself in a Burial Company, politely entreats the others to inscribe
their names as shareholders, expatiating on the advantages accruing to
them in the event of their very possible speedy death, the salubrity of
the site, the aptitude of the soil for a quick consumption of their
remains, etc.; and they drink sadness from the incongruous man, and
conceive indigestion, not seeing him in a sharply defined light, that
would bid them taste the comic of him. Or it is mentioned that a newly
elected member of our Parliament celebrates his arrival at eminence by
the publication of a book on cab-fares, dedicated to a beloved female
relative deceased, and the comment on it is the word 'Indeed.' But,
merely for a contrast, turn to a not uncommon scene of yesterday in the
hunting-field, where a brilliant young rider, having broken his
collar-bone, trots away very soon after, against medical interdict, half
put together in splinters, to the most distant meet of his neighbourhood,
sure of escaping his doctor, who is the first person he encounters. 'I
came here purposely to avoid you,' says the patient. 'I came here
purposely to take care of you,' says the doctor. Off they go, and come to
a swollen brook. The patient clears it handsomely: the doctor tumbles in.
All the field are alive with the heartiest relish of every incident and
every cross-light on it; and dull would the man have been thought who had
not his word to say about it when riding home.

In our prose literature we have had delightful Comic writers. Besides
Fielding and Goldsmith, there is Miss Austen, whose Emma and Mr. Elton
might walk straight into a comedy, were the plot arranged for them.
Galt's neglected novels have some characters and strokes of shrewd
comedy. In our poetic literature the comic is delicate and graceful above
the touch of Italian and French. Generally, however, the English elect
excel in satire, and they are noble humourists. The national disposition
is for hard-hitting, with a moral purpose to sanction it; or for a rosy,
sometimes a larmoyant, geniality, not unmanly in its verging upon
tenderness, and with a singular attraction for thick-headedness, to
decorate it with asses' ears and the most beautiful sylvan haloes. But
the Comic is a different spirit.

You may estimate your capacity for Comic perception by being able to
detect the ridicule of them you love, without loving them less: and more
by being able to see yourself somewhat ridiculous in dear eyes, and
accepting the correction their image of you proposes.

Each one of an affectionate couple may be willing, as we say, to die for
the other, yet unwilling to utter the agreeable word at the right moment;
but if the wits were sufficiently quick for them to perceive that they
are in a comic situation, as affectionate couples must be when they
quarrel, they would not wait for the moon or the almanac, or a Dorine, to
bring back the flood-tide of tender feelings, that they should join hands
and lips.

If you detect the ridicule, and your kindliness is chilled by it, you are
slipping into the grasp of Satire.

If instead of falling foul of the ridiculous person with a satiric rod,
to make him writhe and shriek aloud, you prefer to sting him under a
semi-caress, by which he shall in his anguish be rendered dubious whether
indeed anything has hurt him, you are an engine of Irony.

If you laugh all round him, tumble him, roll him about, deal him a smack,
and drop a tear on him, own his likeness to you and yours to your
neighbour, spare him as little as you shun, pity him as much as you
expose, it is a spirit of Humour that is moving you.

The Comic, which is the perceptive, is the governing spirit, awakening
and giving aim to these powers of laughter, but it is not to be
confounded with them: it enfolds a thinner form of them, differing from
satire, in not sharply driving into the quivering sensibilities, and from
humour, in not comforting them and tucking them up, or indicating a
broader than the range of this bustling world to them.

Fielding's Jonathan Wild presents a case of this peculiar distinction,
when that man of eminent greatness remarks upon the unfairness of a trial
in which the condemnation has been brought about by twelve men of the
opposite party; for it is not satiric, it is not humorous; yet it is
immensely comic to hear a guilty villain protesting that his own 'party'
should have a voice in the Law. It opens an avenue into villains'
ratiocination. {9} And the Comic is not cancelled though we should
suppose Jonathan to be giving play to his humour. I may have dreamed this
or had it suggested to me, for on referring to Jonathan Wild, I do not
find it.

Apply the case to the man of deep wit, who is ever certain of his
condemnation by the opposite party, and then it ceases to be comic, and
will be satiric.

The look of Fielding upon Richardson is essentially comic. His method of
correcting the sentimental writer is a mixture of the comic and the
humorous. Parson Adams is a creation of humour. But both the conception
and the presentation of Alceste and of Tartuffe, of Celimene and
Philaminte, are purely comic, addressed to the intellect: there is no
humour in them, and they refresh the intellect they quicken to detect
their comedy, by force of the contrast they offer between themselves and
the wiser world about them; that is to say, society, or that assemblage
of minds whereof the Comic spirit has its origin.

Byron had splendid powers of humour, and the most poetic satire that we
have example of, fusing at times to hard irony. He had no strong comic
sense, or he would not have taken an anti-social position, which is
directly opposed to the Comic; and in his philosophy, judged by
philosophers, he is a comic figure, by reason of this deficiency. 'So
bald er philosophirt ist er ein Kind,' Goethe says of him. Carlyle sees
him in this comic light, treats him in the humorous manner.

The Satirist is a moral agent, often a social scavenger, working on a
storage of bile.

The Ironeist is one thing or another, according to his caprice. Irony is
the humour of satire; it may be savage as in Swift, with a moral object,
or sedate, as in Gibbon, with a malicious. The foppish irony fretting to
be seen, and the irony which leers, that you shall not mistake its
intention, are failures in satiric effort pretending to the treasures of
ambiguity.

The Humourist of mean order is a refreshing laugher, giving tone to the
feelings and sometimes allowing the feelings to be too much for him. But
the humourist of high has an embrace of contrasts beyond the scope of the
Comic poet.

Heart and mind laugh out at Don Quixote, and still you brood on him. The
juxtaposition of the knight and squire is a Comic conception, the
opposition of their natures most humorous. They are as different as the
two hemispheres in the time of Columbus, yet they touch and are bound in
one by laughter. The knight's great aims and constant mishaps, his
chivalrous valiancy exercised on absurd objects, his good sense along the
highroad of the craziest of expeditions; the compassion he plucks out of
derision, and the admirable figure he preserves while stalking through
the frantically grotesque and burlesque assailing him, are in the
loftiest moods of humour, fusing the Tragic sentiment with the Comic
narrative.

The stroke of the great humourist is world-wide, with lights of Tragedy
in his laughter.

Taking a living great, though not creative, humourist to guide our
description: the skull of Yorick is in his hands in our seasons of
festival; he sees visions of primitive man capering preposterously under
the gorgeous robes of ceremonial. Our souls must be on fire when we wear
solemnity, if we would not press upon his shrewdest nerve. Finite and
infinite flash from one to the other with him, lending him a two-edged
thought that peeps out of his peacefullest lines by fits, like the
lantern of the fire-watcher at windows, going the rounds at night. The
comportment and performances of men in society are to him, by the vivid
comparison with their mortality, more grotesque than respectable. But ask
yourself, Is he always to be relied on for justness? He will fly straight
as the emissary eagle back to Jove at the true Hero. He will also make as
determined a swift descent upon the man of his wilful choice, whom we
cannot distinguish as a true one. This vast power of his, built up of the
feelings and the intellect in union, is often wanting in proportion and
in discretion. Humourists touching upon History or Society are given to
be capricious. They are, as in the case of Sterne, given to be
sentimental; for with them the feelings are primary, as with singers.
Comedy, on the other hand, is an interpretation of the general mind, and
is for that reason of necessity kept in restraint. The French lay marked
stress on mesure et gout, and they own how much they owe to Moliere for
leading them in simple justness and taste. We can teach them many things;
they can teach us in this.

The Comic poet is in the narrow field, or enclosed square, of the society
he depicts; and he addresses the still narrower enclosure of men's
intellects, with reference to the operation of the social world upon
their characters. He is not concerned with beginnings or endings or
surroundings, but with what you are now weaving. To understand his work
and value it, you must have a sober liking of your kind and a sober
estimate of our civilized qualities. The aim and business of the Comic
poet are misunderstood, his meaning is not seized nor his point of view
taken, when he is accused of dishonouring our nature and being hostile to
sentiment, tending to spitefulness and making an unfair use of laughter.
Those who detect irony in Comedy do so because they choose to see it in
life. Poverty, says the satirist, has nothing harder in itself than that
it makes men ridiculous. But poverty is never ridiculous to Comic
perception until it attempts to make its rags conceal its bareness in a
forlorn attempt at decency, or foolishly to rival ostentation. Caleb
Balderstone, in his endeavour to keep up the honour of a noble household
in a state of beggary, is an exquisitely comic character. In the case of
'poor relatives,' on the other hand, it is the rich, whom they perplex,
that are really comic; and to laugh at the former, not seeing the comedy
of the latter, is to betray dulness of vision. Humourist and Satirist
frequently hunt together as Ironeists in pursuit of the grotesque, to the
exclusion of the Comic. That was an affecting moment in the history of
the Prince Regent, when the First Gentleman of Europe burst into tears at
a sarcastic remark of Beau Brummell's on the cut of his coat. Humour,
Satire, Irony, pounce on it altogether as their common prey. The Comic
spirit eyes but does not touch it. Put into action, it would be farcical.
It is too gross for Comedy.

Incidents of a kind casting ridicule on our unfortunate nature instead of
our conventional life, provoke derisive laughter, which thwarts the Comic
idea. But derision is foiled by the play of the intellect. Most of
doubtful causes in contest are open to Comic interpretation, and any
intellectual pleading of a doubtful cause contains germs of an Idea of
Comedy.

The laughter of satire is a blow in the back or the face. The laughter of
Comedy is impersonal and of unrivalled politeness, nearer a smile; often
no more than a smile. It laughs through the mind, for the mind directs
it; and it might be called the humour of the mind.

One excellent test of the civilization of a country, as I have said, I
take to be the flourishing of the Comic idea and Comedy; and the test of
true Comedy is that it shall awaken thoughtful laughter.

If you believe that our civilization is founded in common-sense (and it
is the first condition of sanity to believe it), you will, when
contemplating men, discern a Spirit overhead; not more heavenly than the
light flashed upward from glassy surfaces, but luminous and watchful;
never shooting beyond them, nor lagging in the rear; so closely attached
to them that it may be taken for a slavish reflex, until its features are
studied. It has the sage's brows, and the sunny malice of a faun lurks at
the corners of the half-closed lips drawn in an idle wariness of half
tension. That slim feasting smile, shaped like the long-bow, was once a
big round satyr's laugh, that flung up the brows like a fortress lifted
by gunpowder. The laugh will come again, but it will be of the order of
the smile, finely tempered, showing sunlight of the mind, mental richness
rather than noisy enormity. Its common aspect is one of unsolicitous
observation, as if surveying a full field and having leisure to dart on
its chosen morsels, without any fluttering eagerness. Men's future upon
earth does not attract it; their honesty and shapeliness in the present
does; and whenever they wax out of proportion, overblown, affected,
pretentious, bombastical, hypocritical, pedantic, fantastically delicate;
whenever it sees them self-deceived or hoodwinked, given to run riot in
idolatries, drifting into vanities, congregating in absurdities, planning
short-sightedly, plotting dementedly; whenever they are at variance with
their professions, and violate the unwritten but perceptible laws binding
them in consideration one to another; whenever they offend sound reason,
fair justice; are false in humility or mined with conceit, individually,
or in the bulk--the Spirit overhead will look humanely malign and cast an
oblique light on them, followed by volleys of silvery laughter. That is
the Comic Spirit.

Not to distinguish it is to be bull-blind to the spiritual, and to deny
the existence of a mind of man where minds of men are in working
conjunction.

You must, as I have said, believe that our state of society is founded in
common-sense, otherwise you will not be struck by the contrasts the Comic
Spirit perceives, or have it to look to for your consolation. You will,
in fact, be standing in that peculiar oblique beam of light, yourself
illuminated to the general eye as the very object of chase and doomed
quarry of the thing obscure to you. But to feel its presence and to see
it is your assurance that many sane and solid minds are with you in what
you are experiencing: and this of itself spares you the pain of satirical
heat, and the bitter craving to strike heavy blows. You share the sublime
of wrath, that would not have hurt the foolish, but merely demonstrate
their foolishness. Moliere was contented to revenge himself on the
critics of the Ecole des Femmes, by writing the Critique de l'Ecole des
Femmes, one of the wisest as well as the playfullest of studies in
criticism. A perception of the comic spirit gives high fellowship. You
become a citizen of the selecter world, the highest we know of in
connection with our old world, which is not supermundane. Look there for
your unchallengeable upper class! You feel that you are one of this our
civilized community, that you cannot escape from it, and would not if you
could. Good hope sustains you; weariness does not overwhelm you; in
isolation you see no charms for vanity; personal pride is greatly
moderated. Nor shall your title of citizenship exclude you from worlds of
imagination or of devotion. The Comic spirit is not hostile to the
sweetest songfully poetic. Chaucer bubbles with it: Shakespeare
overflows: there is a mild moon's ray of it (pale with super-refinement
through distance from our flesh and blood planet) in Comus. Pope has it,
and it is the daylight side of the night half obscuring Cowper. It is
only hostile to the priestly element, when that, by baleful swelling,
transcends and overlaps the bounds of its office: and then, in extreme
cases, it is too true to itself to speak, and veils the lamp: as, for
example, the spectacle of Bossuet over the dead body of Moliere: at which
the dark angels may, but men do not laugh.

We have had comic pulpits, for a sign that the laughter-moving and the
worshipful may be in alliance: I know not how far comic, or how much
assisted in seeming so by the unexpectedness and the relief of its
appearance: at least they are popular, they are said to win the ear.
Laughter is open to perversion, like other good things; the scornful and
the brutal sorts are not unknown to us; but the laughter directed by the
Comic spirit is a harmless wine, conducing to sobriety in the degree that
it enlivens. It enters you like fresh air into a study; as when one of
the sudden contrasts of the comic idea floods the brain like reassuring
daylight. You are cognizant of the true kind by feeling that you take it
in, savour it, and have what flowers live on, natural air for food. That
which you give out--the joyful roar--is not the better part; let that go
to good fellowship and the benefit of the lungs. Aristophanes promises
his auditors that if they will retain the ideas of the comic poet
carefully, as they keep dried fruits in boxes, their garments shall smell
odoriferous of wisdom throughout the year. The boast will not be thought
an empty one by those who have choice friends that have stocked
themselves according to his directions. Such treasuries of sparkling
laughter are wells in our desert. Sensitiveness to the comic laugh is a
step in civilization. To shrink from being an object of it is a step in
cultivation. We know the degree of refinement in men by the matter they
will laugh at, and the ring of the laugh; but we know likewise that the
larger natures are distinguished by the great breadth of their power of
laughter, and no one really loving Moliere is refined by that love to
despise or be dense to Aristophanes, though it may be that the lover of
Aristophanes will not have risen to the height of Moliere. Embrace them
both, and you have the whole scale of laughter in your breast. Nothing in
the world surpasses in stormy fun the scene in The Frogs, when Bacchus
and Xanthias receive their thrashings from the hands of businesslike
OEacus, to discover which is the divinity of the two, by his
imperviousness to the mortal condition of pain, and each, under the
obligation of not crying out, makes believe that his horrible bellow--the
god's iou--iou being the lustier--means only the stopping of a sneeze, or
horseman sighted, or the prelude to an invocation to some deity: and the
slave contrives that the god shall get the bigger lot of blows. Passages
of Rabelais, one or two in Don Quixote, and the Supper in the Manner of
the Ancients, in Peregrine Pickle, are of a similar cataract of laughter.
But it is not illuminating; it is not the laughter of the mind. Moliere's
laughter, in his purest comedies, is ethereal, as light to our nature, as
colour to our thoughts. The Misanthrope and the Tartuffe have no audible
laughter; but the characters are steeped in the comic spirit. They
quicken the mind through laughter, from coming out of the mind; and the
mind accepts them because they are clear interpretations of certain
chapters of the Book lying open before us all. Between these two stand
Shakespeare and Cervantes, with the richer laugh of heart and mind in
one; with much of the Aristophanic robustness, something of Moliere's
delicacy.

The laughter heard in circles not pervaded by the Comic idea, will sound
harsh and soulless, like versified prose, if you step into them with a
sense of the distinction. You will fancy you have changed your habitation
to a planet remoter from the sun. You may be among powerful brains too.
You will not find poets--or but a stray one, over-worshipped. You will
find learned men undoubtedly, professors, reputed philosophers, and
illustrious dilettanti. They have in them, perhaps, every element
composing light, except the Comic. They read verse, they discourse of
art; but their eminent faculties are not under that vigilant sense of a
collective supervision, spiritual and present, which we have taken note
of. They build a temple of arrogance; they speak much in the voice of
oracles; their hilarity, if it does not dip in grossness, is usually a
form of pugnacity.

Insufficiency of sight in the eye looking outward has deprived them of
the eye that should look inward. They have never weighed themselves in
the delicate balance of the Comic idea so as to obtain a suspicion of the
rights and dues of the world; and they have, in consequence, an irritable
personality. A very learned English professor crushed an argument in a
political discussion, by asking his adversary angrily: 'Are you aware,
sir, that I am a philologer?'

The practice of polite society will help in training them, and the
professor on a sofa with beautiful ladies on each side of him, may become
their pupil and a scholar in manners without knowing it: he is at least a
fair and pleasing spectacle to the Comic Muse. But the society named
polite is volatile in its adorations, and to-morrow will be petting a
bronzed soldier, or a black African, or a prince, or a spiritualist:
ideas cannot take root in its ever-shifting soil. It is besides addicted
in self-defence to gabble exclusively of the affairs of its rapidly
revolving world, as children on a whirligoround bestow their attention on
the wooden horse or cradle ahead of them, to escape from giddiness and
preserve a notion of identity. The professor is better out of a circle
that often confounds by lionizing, sometimes annoys by abandoning, and
always confuses. The school that teaches gently what peril there is lest
a cultivated head should still be coxcomb's, and the collisions which may
befall high-soaring minds, empty or full, is more to be recommended than
the sphere of incessant motion supplying it with material.

Lands where the Comic spirit is obscure overhead are rank with raw crops
of matter. The traveller accustomed to smooth highways and people not
covered with burrs and prickles is amazed, amid so much that is fair and
cherishable, to come upon such curious barbarism. An Englishman paid a
visit of admiration to a professor in the Land of Culture, and was
introduced by him to another distinguished professor, to whom he took so
cordially as to walk out with him alone one afternoon. The first
professor, an erudite entirely worthy of the sentiment of scholarly
esteem prompting the visit, behaved (if we exclude the dagger) with the
vindictive jealousy of an injured Spanish beauty. After a short prelude
of gloom and obscure explosions, he discharged upon his faithless admirer
the bolts of passionate logic familiar to the ears of flighty
caballeros:--'Either I am a fit object of your admiration, or I am not.
Of these things one--either you are competent to judge, in which case I
stand condemned by you; or you are incompetent, and therefore
impertinent, and you may betake yourself to your country again,
hypocrite!' The admirer was for persuading the wounded scholar that it is
given to us to be able to admire two professors at a time. He was driven
forth.

Perhaps this might have occurred in any country, and a comedy of The
Pedant, discovering the greedy humanity within the dusty scholar, would
not bring it home to one in particular. I am mindful that it was in
Germany, when I observe that the Germans have gone through no comic
training to warn them of the sly, wise emanation eyeing them from aloft,
nor much of satirical. Heinrich Heine has not been enough to cause them
to smart and meditate. Nationally, as well as individually, when they are
excited they are in danger of the grotesque, as when, for instance, they
decline to listen to evidence, and raise a national outcry because one of
German blood has been convicted of crime in a foreign country. They are
acute critics, yet they still wield clubs in controversy. Compare them in
this respect with the people schooled in La Bruyere, La Fontaine,
Moliere; with the people who have the figures of a Trissotin and a Vadius
before them for a comic warning of the personal vanities of the caressed
professor. It is more than difference of race. It is the difference of
traditions, temper, and style, which comes of schooling.

The French controversialist is a polished swordsman, to be dreaded in his
graces and courtesies. The German is Orson, or the mob, or a marching
army, in defence of a good case or a bad--a big or a little. His irony is
a missile of terrific tonnage: sarcasm he emits like a blast from a
dragon's mouth. He must and will be Titan. He stamps his foe underfoot,
and is astonished that the creature is not dead, but stinging; for, in
truth, the Titan is contending, by comparison, with a god.

When the Germans lie on their arms, looking across the Alsatian frontier
at the crowds of Frenchmen rushing to applaud L'ami Fritz at the Theatre
Francais, looking and considering the meaning of that applause, which is
grimly comic in its political response to the domestic moral of the
play--when the Germans watch and are silent, their force of character
tells. They are kings in music, we may say princes in poetry, good
speculators in philosophy, and our leaders in scholarship. That so gifted
a race, possessed moreover of the stern good sense which collects the
waters of laughter to make the wells, should show at a disadvantage, I
hold for a proof, instructive to us, that the discipline of the comic
spirit is needful to their growth. We see what they can reach to in that
great figure of modern manhood, Goethe. They are a growing people; they
are conversable as well; and when their men, as in France, and at
intervals at Berlin tea-tables, consent to talk on equal terms with their
women, and to listen to them, their growth will be accelerated and be
shapelier. Comedy, or in any form the Comic spirit, will then come to
them to cut some figures out of the block, show them the mirror, enliven
and irradiate the social intelligence.

Modern French comedy is commendable for the directness of the study of
actual life, as far as that, which is but the early step in such a
scholarship, can be of service in composing and colouring the picture. A
consequence of this crude, though well-meant, realism is the collision of
the writers in their scenes and incidents, and in their characters. The
Muse of most of them is an Aventuriere. She is clever, and a certain
diversion exists in the united scheme for confounding her. The object of
this person is to reinstate herself in the decorous world; and either,
having accomplished this purpose through deceit, she has a nostalgie de
la boue, that eventually casts her back into it, or she is exposed in her
course of deception when she is about to gain her end. A very good,
innocent young man is her victim, or a very astute, goodish young man
obstructs her path. This latter is enabled to be the champion of the
decorous world by knowing the indecorous well. He has assisted in the
progress of Aventurieres downward; he will not help them to ascend. The
world is with him; and certainly it is not much of an ascension they
aspire to; but what sort of a figure is he? The triumph of a candid
realism is to show him no hero. You are to admire him (for it must be
supposed that realism pretends to waken some admiration) as a credibly
living young man; no better, only a little firmer and shrewder, than the
rest. If, however, you think at all, after the curtain has fallen, you
are likely to think that the Aventurieres have a case to plead against
him. True, and the author has not said anything to the contrary; he has
but painted from the life; he leaves his audience to the reflections of
unphilosophic minds upon life, from the specimen he has presented in the
bright and narrow circle of a spy-glass.

I do not know that the fly in amber is of any particular use, but the
Comic idea enclosed in a comedy makes it more generally perceptible and
portable, and that is an advantage. There is a benefit to men in taking
the lessons of Comedy in congregations, for it enlivens the wits; and to
writers it is beneficial, for they must have a clear scheme, and even if
they have no idea to present, they must prove that they have made the
public sit to them before the sitting to see the picture. And writing for
the stage would be a corrective of a too-incrusted scholarly style, into
which some great ones fall at times. It keeps minor writers to a definite
plan, and to English. Many of them now swelling a plethoric market, in
the composition of novels, in pun-manufactories and in journalism;
attached to the machinery forcing perishable matter on a public that
swallows voraciously and groans; might, with encouragement, be attending
to the study of art in literature. Our critics appear to be fascinated by
the quaintness of our public, as the world is when our beast-garden has a
new importation of magnitude, and the creatures appetite is reverently
consulted. They stipulate for a writer's popularity before they will do
much more than take the position of umpires to record his failure or
success. Now the pig supplies the most popular of dishes, but it is not
accounted the most honoured of animals, unless it be by the cottager. Our
public might surely be led to try other, perhaps finer, meat. It has good
taste in song. It might be taught as justly, on the whole, and the sooner
when the cottager's view of the feast shall cease to be the humble one of
our literary critics, to extend this capacity for delicate choosing in
the direction of the matter arousing laughter.




Footnotes:

{1} A lecture delivered at the London Institution, February 1st, 1877.

{2} Realism in the writing is carried to such a pitch in THE OLD
BACHELOR, that husband and wife use imbecile connubial epithets to one
another.

{3} Tallemant des Reaux, in his rough portrait of the Duke, shows the
foundation of the character of Alceste.

{4} See Tom Jones, book viii. chapter I, for Fielding's opinion of our
Comedy. But he puts it simply; not as an exercise in the
quasi-philosophical bathetic.

{5} Femmes Savantes:

BELISE: Veux-tu toute la vie offenser la grammaire?

MARTINE: Qui parle d'offenser grand'mere ni grand-pere?'

The pun is delivered in all sincerity, from the mouth of a rustic.

{6} Maskwell seems to have been carved on the model of Iago, as by the
hand of an enterprising urchin. He apostrophizes his 'invention'
repeatedly. 'Thanks, my invention.' He hits on an invention, to say: 'Was
it my brain or Providence? no matter which.' It is no matter which, but
it was not his brain.

{7} Imaginary Conversations: Alfieri and the Jew Salomon.

{8} Terence did not please the rough old conservative Romans; they liked
Plautus better, and the recurring mention of the vetus poeta in his
prologues, who plagued him with the crusty critical view of his
productions, has in the end a comic effect on the reader.

{9} The exclamation of Lady Booby, when Joseph defends himself: 'YOUR
VIRTUE! I shall never survive it!' etc., is another instance.--Joseph
Andrews. Also that of Miss Mathews in her narrative to Booth: 'But such
are the friendships of women.'--Amelia.




     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE PG SHORT WORKS OF MEREDITH:

     A wise man will not squander his laughter if he can help it
     A woman is hurt if you do not confide to her your plans
     A generous enemy is a friend on the wrong side
     A very doubtful benefit
     A great oration may be a sedative
     A male devotee is within an inch of a miracle
     Above Nature, I tell him, or, we shall be very much below
     Adversary at once offensive and helpless provokes brutality
     All are friends who sit at table
     All flattery is at somebody's expense
     Americans forgivingly remember, without mentioning
     As becomes them, they do not look ahead
     As in all great oratory! The key of it is the pathos
     Back from the altar to discover that she has chained herself
     Be what you seem, my little one
     Be philosophical, but accept your personal dues
     Bed was a rock of refuge and fortified defence
     But I leave it to you
     Can believe a woman to be any age when her cheeks are tinted
     Causes him to be popularly weighed
     Charges of cynicism are common against all satirists
     Civil tongue and rosy smiles sweeten even sour wine
     Cupid clipped of wing is a destructive parasite
     Dangerous things are uttered after the third glass
     Distinguished by his not allowing himself to be provoked
     Distrust us, and it is a declaration of war
     Eccentric behaviour in trifles
     Everywhere the badge of subjection is a poor stomach
     Excess of a merit is a capital offence in morality
     Excited, glad of catastrophe if it but killed monotony
     Face betokening the perpetual smack of lemon
     Fourth of the Georges
     Generally he noticed nothing
     Gentleman in a good state of preservation
     Good jokes are not always good policy
     Gratitude never was a woman's gift
     Happiness in love is a match between ecstasy and compliance
     Here and there a plain good soul to whom he was affectionate
     His idea of marriage is, the taking of the woman into custody
     Holy images, and other miraculous objects are sold
     I who respect the state of marriage by refusing
     I make a point of never recommending my own house
     I like him, I like him, of course, but I want to breathe
     I am a discordant instrument I do not readily vibrate
     If I do not speak of payment
     Imparting the usual chorus of yesses to his own mind
     In every difficulty, patience is a life-belt
     Indulged in their privilege of thinking what they liked
     Infants are said to have their ideas, and why not young ladies?
     Intellectual contempt of easy dupes
     Invite indecision to exhaust their scruples
     Is not one month of brightness as much as we can ask for?
     It was harder to be near and not close
     It is well to learn manners without having them imposed on us
     Knew my friend to be one of the most absent-minded of men
     Lend him your own generosity
     Love and war have been compared--Both require strategy
     Loving in this land: they all go mad, straight off
     Men love to boast of things nobody else has seen
     Men overweeningly in love with their creations
     Modest are the most easily intoxicated when they sip at vanity
     Must be the moralist in the satirist if satire is to strike
     Nature is not of necessity always roaring
     Naughtily Australian and kangarooly
     Never reckon on womankind for a wise act
     No flattery for me at the expense of my sisters
     Not a page of his books reveals malevolence or a sneer
     Not in love--She was only not unwilling to be in love
     Nothing desirable will you have which is not coveted
     Only to be described in the tongue of auctioneers
     Peace, I do pray, for the husband-haunted wife
     Period of his life a man becomes too voraciously constant
     Petty concessions are signs of weakness to the unsatisfied
     Pitiful conceit in men
     Primitive appetite for noise
     Rapture of obliviousness
     Rejoicing they have in their common agreement
     Respected the vegetable yet more than he esteemed the flower
     Rich and poor 's all right, if I'm rich and you're poor
     Self-incense
     Self-worship, which is often self-distrust
     She seems honest, and that is the most we can hope of girls
     She sought, by looking hard, to understand it better
     She might turn out good, if well guarded for a time
     She began to feel that this was life in earnest
     She dealt in the flashes which connect ideas
     Sign that the evil had reached from pricks to pokes
     So are great deeds judged when the danger's past (as easy)
     Soft slumber of a strength never yet called forth
     Spare me that word "female" as long as you live
     Statesman who stooped to conquer fact through fiction
     Sunning itself in the glass of Envy
     Suspects all young men and most young women
     Suspicion was her best witness
     Sweet treasure before which lies a dragon sleeping
     Telling her anything, she makes half a face in anticipation
     That which fine cookery does for the cementing of couples
     The intricate, which she takes for the infinite
     The social world he looked at did not show him heroes
     The alternative is, a garter and the bedpost
     The exhaustion ensuing we named tranquillity
     The mildness of assured dictatorship
     Their idol pitched before them on the floor
     They miss their pleasure in pursuing it
     This mania of young people for pleasure, eternal pleasure
     Tossed him from repulsion to incredulity, and so back
     Two principal roads by which poor sinners come to a conscience
     Utterance of generous and patriotic cries is not sufficient
     We grew accustomed to periods of Irish fever
     We like well whatso we have done good work for
     We trust them or we crush them
     Weak reeds who are easily vanquished and never overcome
     Weak stomach is certainly more carnally virtuous than a full one
     Were I chained, For liberty I would sell liberty
     When we see our veterans tottering to their fall
     When you have done laughing with her, you can laugh at her
     Wins everywhere back a reflection of its own kindliness
     Wits, which are ordinarily less productive than land
     Woman descending from her ideal to the gross reality of man
     Your devotion craves an enormous exchange






THE POETRY OF GEORGE MEREDITH

Contents:
     A Reading of Life, and Other Poems
     Poems, Volume 1.
     Poems, Volume 2.
     Poems, Volume 3.


A Reading Of life


[This Project Gutenberg Etext was orignally prepared from a 1901
edition by David Price]



     Contents:


     A Reading of Life - The Vital Choice
     A Reading of Life - With The Huntress
     A Reading of Life - With The Persuader
     A Reading of Life - The Test Of Manhood
     The Cageing Of Ares
     The Night-Walk
     The Hueless Love
     Song In The Songless
     Union In Disseverance
     The Burden Of Strength
     The Main Regret
     Alternation
     Hawarden
     At The Close
     Forest History
     A Garden Idyl
     Foresight And Patience
     The Invective Of Achilles
     The Invective of Achilles - V. 225.
     Marshalling Of The Achaians
     Agamemnon In The Fight
     Paris And Diomedes
     Hypnos On Ida
     Clash In Arms Of The Achaians And Trojans
     The Horses Of Achilles
     The Mares Of The Camargue



     Poem: A Reading of Life - The vital choice



     I.

     Or shall we run with Artemis
     Or yield the breast to Aphrodite?
     Both are mighty;
     Both give bliss;
     Each can torture if divided;
     Each claims worship undivided,
     In her wake would have us wallow.

     II.

     Youth must offer on bent knees
     Homage unto one or other;
     Earth, the mother,
     This decrees;
     And unto the pallid Scyther
     Either points us shun we either
     Shun or too devoutly follow.



     Poem: A Reading of Life - With The Huntress



     Through the water-eye of night,
     Midway between eve and dawn,
     See the chase, the rout, the flight
     In deep forest; oread, faun,
     Goat-foot, antlers laid on neck;
     Ravenous all the line for speed.
     See yon wavy sparkle beck
     Sign of the Virgin Lady's lead.
     Down her course a serpent star
     Coils and shatters at her heels;
     Peals the horn exulting, peals
     Plaintive, is it near or far.
     Huntress, arrowy to pursue,
     In and out of woody glen,
     Under cliffs that tear the blue,
     Over torrent, over fen,
     She and forest, where she skims
     Feathery, darken and relume:
     Those are her white-lightning limbs
     Cleaving loads of leafy gloom.
     Mountains hear her and call back,
     Shrewd with night: a frosty wail
     Distant: her the emerald vale
     Folds, and wonders in her track.
     Now her retinue is lean,
     Many rearward; streams the chase
     Eager forth of covert; seen
     One hot tide the rapturous race.
     Quiver-charged and crescent-crowned,
     Up on a flash the lighted mound
     Leaps she, bow to shoulder, shaft
     Strung to barb with archer's craft,
     Legs like plaited lyre-chords, feet
     Songs to see, past pitch of sweet.
     Fearful swiftness they outrun,
     Shaggy wildness, grey or dun,
     Challenge, charge of tusks elude:
     Theirs the dance to tame the rude;
     Beast, and beast in manhood tame,
     Follow we their silver flame.
     Pride of flesh from bondage free,
     Reaping vigour of its waste,
     Marks her servitors, and she
     Sanctifies the unembraced.
     Nought of perilous she reeks;
     Valour clothes her open breast;
     Sweet beyond the thrill of sex;
     Hallowed by the sex confessed.
     Huntress arrowy to pursue,
     Colder she than sunless dew,
     She, that breath of upper air;
     Ay, but never lyrist sang,
     Draught of Bacchus never sprang
     Blood the bliss of Gods to share,
     High o'er sweep of eagle wings,
     Like the run with her, when rings
     Clear her rally, and her dart,
     In the forest's cavern heart,
     Tells of her victorious aim.
     Then is pause and chatter, cheer,
     Laughter at some satyr lame,
     Looks upon the fallen deer,
     Measuring his noble crest;
     Here a favourite in her train,
     Foremost mid her nymphs, caressed;
     All applauded. Shall she reign
     Worshipped? O to be with her there!
     She, that breath of nimble air,
     Lifts the breast to giant power.
     Maid and man, and man and maid,
     Who each other would devour
     Elsewhere, by the chase betrayed,
     There are comrades, led by her,
     Maid-preserver, man-maker.



     Poem: A Reading of Life - With The Persuader



     Who murmurs, hither, hither: who
     Where nought is audible so fills the ear?
     Where nought is visible can make appear
     A veil with eyes that waver through,
     Like twilight's pledge of blessed night to come,
     Or day most golden? All unseen and dumb,
     She breathes, she moves, inviting flees,
     Is lost, and leaves the thrilled desire
     To clasp and strike a slackened lyre,
     Till over smiles of hyacinth seas,
     Flame in a crystal vessel sails
     Beneath a dome of jewelled spray,
     For land that drops the rosy day
     On nights of throbbing nightingales.

     Landward did the wonder flit,
     Or heart's desire of her, all earth in it.
     We saw the heavens fling down their rose;
     On rapturous waves we saw her glide;
     The pearly sea-shell half enclose;
     The shoal of sea-nymphs flush the tide;
     And we, afire to kiss her feet, no more
     Behold than tracks along a startled shore,
     With brightened edges of dark leaves that feign
     An ambush hoped, as heartless night remain.

     More closely, warmly: hither, hither! she,
     The very she called forth by ripened blood
     For its next breath of being, murmurs; she,
     Allurement; she, fulfilment; she,
     The stream within us urged to flood;
     Man's cry, earth's answer, heaven's consent; O she,
     Maid, woman and divinity;
     Our over-earthly, inner-earthly mate
     Unmated; she, our hunger and our fruit
     Untasted; she our written fate
     Unread; Life's flowering, Life's root:
     Unread, divined; unseen, beheld;
     The evanescent, ever-present she,
     Great Nature's stern necessity
     In radiance clothed, to softness quelled;
     With a sword's edge of sweetness keen to take
     Our breath for bliss, our hearts for fulness break.

     The murmur hushes down, the veil is rent.
     Man's cry, earth's answer, heaven's consent,
     Her form is given to pardoned sight,
     And lets our mortal eyes receive
     The sovereign loveliness of celestial white;
     Adored by them who solitarily pace,
     In dusk of the underworld's perpetual eve,
     The paths among the meadow asphodel,
     Remembering. Never there her face
     Is planetary; reddens to shore sea-shell
     Around such whiteness the enamoured air
     Of noon that clothes her, never there.
     Daughter of light, the joyful light,
     She stands unveiled to nuptial sight,
     Sweet in her disregard of aid
     Divine to conquer or persuade.
     A fountain jets from moss; a flower
     Bends gently where her sunset tresses shower.
     By guerdon of her brilliance may be seen
     With eyelids unabashed the passion's Queen.

     Shorn of attendant Graces she can use
     Her natural snares to make her will supreme.
     A simple nymph it is, inclined to muse
     Before the leader foot shall dip in stream:
     One arm at curve along a rounded thigh;
     Her firm new breasts each pointing its own way
     A knee half bent to shade its fellow shy,
     Where innocence, not nature, signals nay.
     The bud of fresh virginity awaits
     The wooer, and all roseate will she burst:
     She touches on the hour of happy mates;
     Still is she unaware she wakens thirst.

     And while commanding blissful sight believe
     It holds her as a body strained to breast,
     Down on the underworld's perpetual eve
     She plunges the possessor dispossessed;
     And bids believe that image, heaving warm,
     Is lost to float like torch-smoke after flame;
     The phantom any breeze blows out of form;
     A thirst's delusion, a defeated aim.

     The rapture shed the torture weaves;
     The direst blow on human heart she deals:
     The pain to know the seen deceives;
     Nought true but what insufferably feels.
     And stabs of her delicious note,
     That is as heavenly light to hearing, heard
     Through shelter leaves, the laughter from her throat,
     We answer as the midnight's morning's bird.

     She laughs, she wakens gleeful cries;
     In her delicious laughter part revealed;
     Yet mother is she more of moans and sighs,
     For longings unappeased and wounds unhealed.
     Yet would she bless, it is her task to bless:
     Yon folded couples, passing under shade,
     Are her rich harvest; bidden caress, caress,
     Consume the fruit in bloom; not disobeyed.
     We dolorous complainers had a dream,
     Wrought on the vacant air from inner fire,
     We saw stand bare of her celestial beam
     The glorious Goddess, and we dared desire.

     Thereat are shown reproachful eyes, and lips
     Of upward curl to meanings half obscure;
     And glancing where a wood-nymph lightly skips
     She nods: at once that creature wears her lure.
     Blush of our being between birth and death:
     Sob of our ripened blood for its next breath:
     Her wily semblance nought of her denies;
     Seems it the Goddess runs, the Goddess hies,
     The generous Goddess yields. And she can arm
     Her dwarfed and twisted with her secret charm;
     Benevolent as Earth to feed her own.
     Fully shall they be fed, if they beseech.
     But scorn she has for them that walk alone;
     Blanched men, starved women, whom no arts can pleach.
     The men as chief of criminals she disdains,
     And holds the reason in perceptive thought.
     More pitiable, like rivers lacking rains,
     Kissing cold stones, the women shrink for drought.
     Those faceless discords, out of nature strayed,
     Rank of the putrefaction ere decayed,
     In impious singles bear the thorny wreaths:
     Their lives are where harmonious Pleasure breathes
     For couples crowned with flowers that burn in dew.
     Comes there a tremor of night's forest horn
     Across her garden from the insaner crew,
     She darkens to malignity of scorn.
     A shiver courses through her garden-grounds:
     Grunt of the tusky boar, the baying hounds,
     The hunter's shouts, are heard afar, and bring
     Dead on her heart her crimsoned flower of Spring.
     These, the irreverent of Life's design,
     Division between natural and divine
     Would cast; these vaunting barrenness for best,
     In veins of gathered strength Life's tide arrest;
     And these because the roses flood their cheeks,
     Vow them in nature wise as when Love speaks.
     With them is war; and well the Goddess knows
     What undermines the race who mount the rose;
     How the ripe moment, lodged in slumberous hours,
     Enkindled by persuasion overpowers:
     Why weak as are her frailer trailing weeds,
     The strong when Beauty gleams o'er Nature's needs,
     And timely guile unguarded finds them lie.
     They who her sway withstand a sea defy,
     At every point of juncture must be proof;
     Nor look for mercy from the incessant surge
     Her forces mixed of craft and passion urge
     For the one whelming wave to spring aloof.
     She, tenderness, is pitiless to them
     Resisting in her godhead nature's truth.
     No flower their face shall be, but writhen stem;
     Their youth a frost, their age the dirge for youth.
     These miserably disinclined,
     The lamentably unembraced,
     Insult the Pleasures Earth designed
     To people and beflower the waste.
     Wherefore the Pleasures pass them by:
     For death they live, in life they die.

     Her head the Goddess from them turns,
     As from grey mounds of ashes in bronze urns.
     She views her quivering couples unconsoled,
     And of her beauty mirror they become,
     Like orchard blossoms, apple, pear and plum,
     Free of the cloud, beneath the flood of gold.
     Crowned with wreaths that burn in dew,
     Her couples whirl, sun-satiated,
     Athirst for shade, they sigh, they wed,
     They play the music made of two:
     Oldest of earth, earth's youngest till earth's end:
     Cunninger than the numbered strings,
     For melodies, for harmonies,
     For mastered discords, and the things
     Not vocable, whose mysteries
     Are inmost Love's, Life's reach of Life extend.

     Is it an anguish overflowing shame
     And the tongue's pudency confides to her,
     With eyes of embers, breath of incense myrrh,
     The woman's marrow in some dear youth's name,
     Then is the Goddess tenderness
     Maternal, and she has a sister's tones
     Benign to soothe intemperate distress,
     Divide despair from hope, and sighs from moans.
     Her gentleness imparts exhaling ease
     To those of her milk-bearer votaries
     As warm of bosom-earth as she; of the source
     Direct; erratic but in heart's excess;
     Being mortal and ill-matched for Love's great force;
     Like green leaves caught with flames by his impress.
     And pray they under skies less overcast,
     That swiftly may her star of eve descend,
     Her lustrous morning star fly not too fast,
     To lengthen blissful night will she befriend.

     Unfailing her reply to woman's voice
     In supplication instant. Is it man's,
     She hears, approves his words, her garden scans,
     And him: the flowers are various, he has choice.
     Perchance his wound is deep; she listens long;
     Enjoys what music fills the plaintive song;
     And marks how he, who would be hawk at poise
     Above the bird, his plaintive song enjoys.

     She reads him when his humbled manhood weeps
     To her invoked: distraction is implored.
     A smile, and he is up on godlike leaps
     Above, with his bright Goddess owned the adored.
     His tales of her declare she condescends;
     Can share his fires, not always goads and rends:
     Moreover, quits a throne, and must enclose
     A queenlier gem than woman's wayside rose.
     She bends, he quickens; she breathes low, he springs
     Enraptured; low she laughs, his woes disperse;
     Aloud she laughs and sweeps his varied strings.
     'Tis taught him how for touch of mournful verse
     Rarely the music made of two ascends,
     And Beauty's Queen some other way is won.
     Or it may solve the riddle, that she lends
     Herself to all, and yields herself to none,
     Save heavenliest: though claims by men are raised
     In hot assurance under shade of doubt:
     And numerous are the images bepraised
     As Beauty's Queen, should passion head the rout.

     Be sure the ruddy hue is Love's: to woo
     Love's Fountain we must mount the ruddy hue.
     That is her garden's precept, seen where shines
     Her blood-flower, and its unsought neighbour pines.
     Daughter of light, the joyful light,
     She bids her couples face full East,
     Reflecting radiance, even when from her feast
     Their outstretched arms brown deserts disunite,
     The lion-haunted thickets hold apart.
     In love the ruddy hue declares great heart;
     High confidence in her whose aid is lent
     To lovers lifting the tuned instrument,
     Not one of rippled strings and funeral tone.
     And doth the man pursue a tightened zone,
     Then be it as the Laurel God he runs,
     Confirmed to win, with countenance the Sun's.

     Should pity bless the tremulous voice of woe
     He lifts for pity, limp his offspring show.
     For him requiring woman's arts to please
     Infantile tastes with babe reluctances,
     No race of giants! In the woman's veins
     Persuasion ripely runs, through hers the pains.
     Her choice of him, should kind occasion nod,
     Aspiring blends the Titan with the God;
     Yet unto dwarf and mortal, she, submiss
     In her high Lady's mandate, yields the kiss;
     And is it needed that Love's daintier brute
     Be snared as hunter, she will tempt pursuit.
     She is great Nature's ever intimate
     In breast, and doth as ready handmaid wait,
     Until perverted by her senseless male,
     She plays the winding snake, the shrinking snail,
     The flying deer, all tricks of evil fame,
     Elusive to allure, since he grew tame.

     Hence has the Goddess, Nature's earliest Power,
     And greatest and most present, with her dower
     Of the transcendent beauty, gained repute
     For meditated guile. She laughs to hear
     A charge her garden's labyrinths scarce confute,
     Her garden's histories tell of to all near.
     Let it be said, But less upon her guile
     Doth she rely for her immortal smile.
     Still let the rumour spread, and terror screens
     To push her conquests by the simplest means.
     While man abjures not lustihead, nor swerves
     From earth's good labours, Beauty's Queen he serves.

     Her spacious garden and her garden's grant
     She offers in reward for handsome cheer:
     Choice of the nymphs whose looks will slant
     The secret down a dewy leer
     Of corner eyelids into haze:
     Many a fair Aphrosyne
     Like flower-bell to honey-bee:
     And here they flicker round the maze
     Bewildering him in heart and head:
     And here they wear the close demure,
     With subtle peeps to reassure:
     Others parade where love has bled,
     And of its crimson weave their mesh:
     Others to snap of fingers leap,
     As bearing breast with love asleep.
     These are her laughters in the flesh.
     Or would she fit a warrior mood,
     She lights her seeming unsubdued,
     And indicates the fortress-key.
     Or is it heart for heart that craves,
     She flecks along a run of waves
     The one to promise deeper sea.

     Bands of her limpid primitives,
     Or patterned in the curious braid,
     Are the blest man's; and whatsoever he gives,
     For what he gives is he repaid.
     Good is it if by him 'tis held
     He wins the fairest ever welled
     From Nature's founts: she whispers it: Even I
     Not fairer! and forbids him to deny,
     Else little is he lover. Those he clasps,
     Intent as tempest, worshipful as prayer, -
     And be they doves or be they asps, -
     Must seem to him the sovereignty fair;
     Else counts he soon among life's wholly tamed.
     Him whom from utter savage she reclaimed,
     Half savage must he stay, would he be crowned
     The lover. Else, past ripeness, deathward bound,
     He reasons; and the totterer Earth detests,
     Love shuns, grim logic screws in grasp, is he.
     Doth man divide divine Necessity
     From Joy, between the Queen of Beauty's breasts
     A sword is driven; for those most glorious twain
     Present her; armed to bless and to constrain.
     Of this he perishes; not she, the throned
     On rocks that spout their springs to the sacred mounts.
     A loftier Reason out of deeper founts
     Earth's chosen Goddess bears: by none disowned
     While red blood runs to swell the pulse, she boasts,
     And Beauty, like her star, descends the sky;
     Earth's answer, heaven's consent unto man's cry,
     Uplifted by the innumerable hosts.

     Quickened of Nature's eye and ear,
     When the wild sap at high tide smites
     Within us; or benignly clear
     To vision; or as the iris lights
     On fluctuant waters; she is ours
     Till set of man: the dreamed, the seen;
     Flushing the world with odorous flowers:
     A soft compulsion on terrene
     By heavenly: and the world is hers
     While hunger after Beauty spurs.

     So is it sung in any space
     She fills, with laugh at shallow laws
     Forbidding love's devised embrace,
     The music Beauty from it draws.



     Poem: A Reading of Life - The Test Of Manhood



     Like a flood river whirled at rocky banks,
     An army issues out of wilderness,
     With battle plucking round its ragged flanks;
     Obstruction in the van; insane excess
     Oft at the heart; yet hard the onward stress
     Unto more spacious, where move ordered ranks,
     And rise hushed temples built of shapely stone,
     The work of hands not pledged to grind or slay.
     They gave our earth a dress of flesh on bone;
     A tongue to speak with answering heaven gave they.
     Then was the gracious birth of man's new day;
     Divided from the haunted night it shone.

     That quiet dawn was Reverence; whereof sprang
     Ethereal Beauty in full morningtide.
     Another sun had risen to clasp his bride:
     It was another earth unto him sang.

     Came Reverence from the Huntress on her heights?
     From the Persuader came it, in those vales
     Whereunto she melodiously invites,
     Her troops of eager servitors regales?
     Not far those two great Powers of Nature speed
     Disciple steps on earth when sole they lead;
     Nor either points for us the way of flame.
     From him predestined mightier it came;
     His task to hold them both in breast, and yield
     Their dues to each, and of their war be field.

     The foes that in repulsion never ceased,
     Must he, who once has been the goodly beast
     Of one or other, at whose beck he ran,
     Constrain to make him serviceable man;
     Offending neither, nor the natural claim
     Each pressed, denying, for his true man's name.

     Ah, what a sweat of anguish in that strife
     To hold them fast conjoined within him still;
     Submissive to his will
     Along the road of life!
     And marvel not he wavered if at whiles
     The forward step met frowns, the backward smiles.
     For Pleasure witched him her sweet cup to drain;
     Repentance offered ecstasy in pain.
     Delicious licence called it Nature's cry;
     Ascetic rigours crushed the fleshly sigh;
     A tread on shingle timed his lame advance
     Flung as the die of Bacchanalian Chance,
     He of the troubled marching army leaned
     On godhead visible, on godhead screened;
     The radiant roseate, the curtained white;
     Yet sharp his battle strained through day, through night.

     He drank of fictions, till celestial aid
     Might seem accorded when he fawned and prayed;
     Sagely the generous Giver circumspect,
     To choose for grants the egregious, his elect;
     And ever that imagined succour slew
     The soul of brotherhood whence Reverence drew.

     In fellowship religion has its founts:
     The solitary his own God reveres:
     Ascend no sacred Mounts
     Our hungers or our fears.
     As only for the numbers Nature's care
     Is shown, and she the personal nothing heeds,
     So to Divinity the spring of prayer
     From brotherhood the one way upward leads.
     Like the sustaining air
     Are both for flowers and weeds.
     But he who claims in spirit to be flower,
     Will find them both an air that doth devour.

     Whereby he smelt his treason, who implored
     External gifts bestowed but on the sword;
     Beheld himself, with less and less disguise,
     Through those blood-cataracts which dimmed his eyes,
     His army's foe, condemned to strive and fail;
     See a black adversary's ghost prevail;
     Never, though triumphs hailed him, hope to win
     While still the conflict tore his breast within.

     Out of that agony, misread for those
     Imprisoned Powers warring unappeased,
     The ghost of his black adversary rose,
     To smother light, shut heaven, show earth diseased.
     And long with him was wrestling ere emerged
     A mind to read in him the reflex shade
     Of its fierce torment; this way, that way urged;
     By craven compromises hourly swayed.

     Crouched as a nestling, still its wings untried,
     The man's mind opened under weight of cloud.
     To penetrate the dark was it endowed;
     Stood day before a vision shooting wide.
     Whereat the spectral enemy lost form;
     The traversed wilderness exposed its track.
     He felt the far advance in looking back;
     Thence trust in his foot forward through the storm.

     Under the low-browed tempest's eye of ire,
     That ere it lightened smote a coward heart,
     Earth nerved her chastened son to hail athwart
     All ventures perilous his shrouded Sire;
     A stranger still, religiously divined;
     Not yet with understanding read aright.
     But when the mind, the cherishable mind,
     The multitude's grave shepherd, took full flight,
     Himself as mirror raised among his kind,
     He saw, and first of brotherhood had sight:
     Knew that his force to fly, his will to see,
     His heart enlarged beyond its ribbed domain,
     Had come of many a grip in mastery,
     Which held conjoined the hostile rival twain,
     And of his bosom made him lord, to keep
     The starry roof of his unruffled frame
     Awake to earth, to heaven, and plumb the deep
     Below, above, aye with a wistful aim.

     The mastering mind in him, by tempests blown,
     By traitor inmates baited, upward burned;
     Perforce of growth, the Master mind discerned,
     The Great Unseen, nowise the Dark Unknown.
     To whom unwittingly did he aspire
     In wilderness, where bitter was his need:
     To whom in blindness, as an earthy seed
     For light and air, he struck through crimson mire.
     But not ere he upheld a forehead lamp,
     And viewed an army, once the seeming doomed,
     All choral in its fruitful garden camp,
     The spiritual the palpable illumed.

     This gift of penetration and embrace,
     His prize from tidal battles lost or won,
     Reveals the scheme to animate his race:
     How that it is a warfare but begun;
     Unending; with no Power to interpose;
     No prayer, save for strength to keep his ground,
     Heard of the Highest; never battle's close,
     The victory complete and victor crowned:
     Nor solace in defeat, save from that sense
     Of strength well spent, which is the strength renewed.
     In manhood must he find his competence;
     In his clear mind the spiritual food:
     God being there while he his fight maintains;
     Throughout his mind the Master Mind being there,
     While he rejects the suicide despair;
     Accepts the spur of explicable pains;
     Obedient to Nature, not her slave:
     Her lord, if to her rigid laws he bows;
     Her dust, if with his conscience he plays knave,
     And bids the Passions on the Pleasures browse:-
     Whence Evil in a world unread before;
     That mystery to simple springs resolved.
     His God the Known, diviner to adore,
     Shows Nature's savage riddles kindly solved.
     Inconscient, insensitive, she reigns
     In iron laws, though rapturous fair her face.
     Back to the primal brute shall he retrace
     His path, doth he permit to force her chains
     A soft Persuader coursing through his veins,
     An icy Huntress stringing to the chase:
     What one the flash disdains;
     What one so gives it grace.

     But is he rightly manful in her eyes,
     A splendid bloodless knight to gain the skies,
     A blood-hot son of Earth by all her signs,
     Desireing and desireable he shines;
     As peaches, that have caught the sun's uprise
     And kissed warm gold till noonday, even as vines.
     Earth fills him with her juices, without fear
     That she will cast him drunken down the steeps.
     All woman is she to this man most dear;
     He sows for bread, and she in spirit reaps:
     She conscient, she sensitive, in him;
     With him enwound, his brave ambition hers:
     By him humaner made; by his keen spurs
     Pricked to race past the pride in giant limb,
     Her crazy adoration of big thews,
     Proud in her primal sons, when crags they hurled,
     Were thunder spitting lightnings on the world
     In daily deeds, and she their evening Muse.

     This man, this hero, works not to destroy;
     This godlike - as the rock in ocean stands; -
     He of the myriad eyes, the myriad hands
     Creative; in his edifice has joy.
     How strength may serve for purity is shown
     When he himself can scourge to make it clean.
     Withal his pitch of pride would not disown
     A sober world that walks the balanced mean
     Between its tempters, rarely overthrown:
     And such at times his army's march has been.

     Near is he to great Nature in the thought
     Each changing Season intimately saith,
     That nought save apparition knows the death;
     To the God-lighted mind of man 'tis nought.
     She counts not loss a word of any weight;
     It may befal his passions and his greeds
     To lose their treasures, like the vein that bleeds,
     But life gone breathless will she reinstate.

     Close on the heart of Earth his bosom beats,
     When he the mandate lodged in it obeys,
     Alive to breast a future wrapped in haze,
     Strike camp, and onward, like the wind's cloud-fleets.
     Unresting she, unresting he, from change
     To change, as rain of cloud, as fruit of rain;
     She feels her blood-tree throbbing in her grain,
     Yet skyward branched, with loftier mark and range.

     No miracle the sprout of wheat from clod,
     She knows, nor growth of man in grisly brute;
     But he, the flower at head and soil at root,
     Is miracle, guides he the brute to God.
     And that way seems he bound; that way the road,
     With his dark-lantern mind, unled, alone,
     Wearifully through forest-tracts unsown,
     He travels, urged by some internal goad.

     Dares he behold the thing he is, what thing
     He would become is in his mind its child;
     Astir, demanding birth to light and wing;
     For battle prompt, by pleasure unbeguiled.
     So moves he forth in faith, if he has made
     His mind God's temple, dedicate to truth.
     Earth's nourishing delights, no more gainsaid,
     He tastes, as doth the bridegroom rich in youth.
     Then knows he Love, that beckons and controls;
     The star of sky upon his footway cast;
     Then match in him who holds his tempters fast,
     The body's love and mind's, whereof the soul's.
     Then Earth her man for woman finds at last,
     To speed the pair unto her goal of goals.

     Or is't the widowed's dream of her new mate?
     Seen has she virulent days of heat in flood;
     The sly Persuader snaky in his blood;
     With her the barren Huntress alternate;
     His rough refractory off on kicking heels
     To rear; the man dragged rearward, shamed, amazed;
     And as a torrent stream where cattle grazed,
     His tumbled world. What, then, the faith she feels?
     May not his aspect, like her own so fair
     Reflexively, the central force belie,
     And he, the once wild ocean storming sky,
     Be rebel at the core? What hope is there?

     'Tis that in each recovery he preserves,
     Between his upper and his nether wit,
     Sense of his march ahead, more brightly lit;
     He less the shaken thing of lusts and nerves;
     With such a grasp upon his brute as tells
     Of wisdom from that vile relapsing spun.
     A Sun goes down in wasted fire, a Sun
     Resplendent springs, to faith refreshed compels.



     Poem: The Cageing Of Ares



     [Iliad, v. V. 385 - Dedicated to the Council at The Hague.]

     How big of breast our Mother Gaea laughed
     At sight of her boy Giants on the leap
     Each over other as they neighboured home,
     Fronting the day's descent across green slopes,
     And up fired mountain crags their shadows danced.
     Close with them in their fun, she scarce could guess,
     Though these two billowy urchins reeked of craft,
     It signalled some adventurous master-trick
     To set Olympians buzzing in debate,
     Lest it might be their godhead undermined,
     The Tyranny menaced. Ephialtes high
     On shoulders of his brother Otos waved
     For the bull-bellowings given to grand good news,
     Compact, complexioned in his gleeful roar
     While Otos aped the prisoner's wrists and knees,
     With doleful sniffs between recurrent howls;
     Till Gaea's lap receiving them, they stretched,
     And both upon her bosom shaken to speech,
     Burst the hot story out of throats of both,
     Like rocky head-founts, baffling in their glut
     The hurried spout. And as when drifting storm
     Disburdened loses clasp of here and yon
     A peak, a forest mound, a valley's gleam
     Of grass and the river's crooks and snaky coils,
     Signification marvellous she caught,
     Through gurglings of triumphant jollity,
     Which now engulphed and now gave eye; at last
     Subsided, and the serious naked deed,
     With mountain-cloud of laughter banked around,
     Stood in her sight confirmed: she could believe
     That these, her sprouts of promise, her most prized,
     These two made up of lion, bear and fox,
     Her sportive, suckling mammoths, her young joy,
     Still by the reckoning infants among men,
     Had done the deed to strike the Titan host
     In envy dumb, in envious heart elate:
     These two combining strength and craft had snared,
     Enmeshed, bound fast with thongs, discreetly caged
     The blood-shedder, the terrible Lord of War;
     Destroyer, ravager, superb in plumes;
     The barren furrower of anointed fields;
     The scarlet heel in towns, foul smoke to sky,
     Her hated enemy, too long her scourge:
     Great Ares. And they gagged his trumpet mouth
     When they had seized on his implacable spear,
     Hugged him to reedy helplessness despite
     His godlike fury startled from amaze.
     For he had eyed them nearing him in play,
     The giant cubs, who gambolled and who snarled,
     Unheeding his fell presence, by the mount
     Ossa, beside a brushwood cavern; there
     On Earth's original fisticuffs they called
     For ease of sharp dispute: whereat the God,
     Approving, deemed that sometime trained to arms,
     Good servitors of Ares they would be,
     And ply the pointed spear to dominate
     Their rebel restless fellows, villain brood
     Vowed to defy Immortals. So it chanced
     Amusedly he watched them, and as one
     The lusty twain were on him and they had him.
     Breath to us, Powers of air, for laughter loud!
     Cock of Olympus he, superb in plumes!
     Bound like a wheaten sheaf by those two babes!
     Because they knew our Mother Gaea loathed him,
     Knew him the famine, pestilence and waste;
     A desolating fire to blind the sight
     With splendour built of fruitful things in ashes;
     The gory chariot-wheel on cries for justice;
     Her deepest planted and her liveliest voice,
     Heard from the babe as from the broken crone.
     Behold him in his vessel of bronze encased,
     And tumbled down the cave. But rather look -
     Ah, that the woman tattler had not sought,
     Of all the Gods to let her secret fly,
     Hermes, after the thirteen songful months!
     Prompting the Dexterous to work his arts,
     And shatter earth's delirious holiday,
     Then first, as where the fountain runs a stream,
     Resolving to composure on its throbs.
     But see her in the Seasons through that year;
     That one glad year and the fair opening month.
     Had never our Great Mother such sweet face!
     War with her, gentle war with her, each day
     Her sons and daughters urged; at eve were flung,
     On the morrow stood to challenge; in their strength
     Renewed, indomitable; whereof they won,
     From hourly wrestlings up to shut of lids,
     Her ready secret: the abounding life
     Returned for valiant labour: she and they
     Defeated and victorious turn by turn;
     By loss enriched, by overthrow restored.
     Exchange of powers of this conflict came;
     Defacement none, nor ever squandered force.
     Is battle nature's mandate, here it reigned,
     As music unto the hand that smote the strings;
     And she the rosier from their showery brows,
     They fruitful from her ploughed and harrowed breast.
     Back to the primal rational of those
     Who suck the teats of milky earth, and clasp
     Stability in hatred of the insane,
     Man stepped; with wits less fearful to pronounce
     The mortal mind's concept of earth's divorced
     Above; those beautiful, those masterful,
     Those lawless. High they sit, and if descend,
     Descend to reap, not sowing. Is it just?
     Earth in her happy children asked that word,
     Whereto within their breast was her reply.
     Those beautiful, those masterful, those lawless,
     Enjoy the life prolonged, outleap the years;
     Yet they ('twas the Great Mother's voice inspired
     The audacious thought), they, glorious over dust,
     Outleap not her; disrooted from her soar,
     To meet the certain fate of earth's divorced,
     And clap lame wings across a wintry haze,
     Up to the farthest bourne: immortal still,
     Thenceforth innocuous; lovelier than when ruled
     The Tyranny. This her voice within them told,
     When softly the Great Mother chid her sons
     Not of the giant brood, who did create
     Those lawless Gods, first offspring of our brain
     Set moving by an abject blood, that waked
     To wanton under elements more benign,
     And planted aliens on Olympian heights; -
     Imagination's cradle poesy
     Become a monstrous pressure upon men; -
     Foes of good Gaea; until dispossessed
     By light from her, born of the love of her,
     Their lordship the illumined brain rejects
     For earth's beneficent, the sons of Law,
     Her other name. So spake she in their heart,
     Among the wheat-blades proud of stalk; beneath
     Young vine-leaves pushing timid fingers forth,
     Confidently to cling. And when brown corn
     Swayed armied ranks with softened cricket song,
     With gold necks bent for any zephyr's kiss;
     When vine-roots daily down a rubble soil
     Drank fire of heaven athirst to swell the grape;
     When swelled the grape, and in it held a ray,
     Rich issue of the embrace of heaven and earth;
     The very eye of passion drowsed by excess,
     And yet a burning lion for the spring;
     Then in that time of general cherishment,
     Sweet breathing balm and flutes by cool wood-side,
     He the harsh rouser of ire being absent, caged,
     Then did good Gaea's children gratefully
     Lift hymns to Gods they judged, but praised for peace,
     Delightful Peace, that answers Reason's call
     Harmoniously and images her Law;
     Reflects, and though short-lived as then, revives,
     In memories made present on the brain
     By natural yearnings, all the happy scenes;
     The picture of an earth allied to heaven;
     Between them the known smile behind black masks;
     Rightly their various moods interpreted;
     And frolic because toilful children borne
     With larger comprehension of Earth's aim
     At loftier, clearer, sweeter, by their aid.



     Poem: The Night-Walk



     Awakes for me and leaps from shroud
     All radiantly the moon's own night
     Of folded showers in streamer cloud;
     Our shadows down the highway white
     Or deep in woodland woven-boughed,
     With yon and yon a stem alight.

     I see marauder runagates
     Across us shoot their dusky wink;
     I hear the parliament of chats
     In haws beside the river's brink;
     And drops the vole off alder-banks,
     To push his arrow through the stream.
     These busy people had our thanks
     For tickling sight and sound, but theme
     They were not more than breath we drew
     Delighted with our world's embrace:
     The moss-root smell where beeches grew,
     And watered grass in breezy space;
     The silken heights, of ghostly bloom
     Among their folds, by distance draped.
     'Twas Youth, rapacious to consume,
     That cried to have its chaos shaped:
     Absorbing, little noting, still
     Enriched, and thinking it bestowed;
     With wistful looks on each far hill
     For something hidden, something owed.
     Unto his mantled sister, Day
     Had given the secret things we sought
     And she was grave and saintly gay;
     At times she fluttered, spoke her thought;
     She flew on it, then folded wings,
     In meditation passing lone,
     To breathe around the secret things,
     Which have no word, and yet are known;
     Of thirst for them are known, as air
     Is health in blood: we gained enough
     By this to feel it honest fare;
     Impalpable, not barren, stuff.

     A pride of legs in motion kept
     Our spirits to their task meanwhile,
     And what was deepest dreaming slept:
     The posts that named the swallowed mile;
     Beside the straight canal the hut
     Abandoned; near the river's source
     Its infant chirp; the shortest cut;
     The roadway missed; were our discourse;
     At times dear poets, whom some view
     Transcendent or subdued evoked
     To speak the memorable, the true,
     The luminous as a moon uncloaked;
     For proof that there, among earth's dumb,
     A soul had passed and said our best.
     Or it might be we chimed on some
     Historic favourite's astral crest,
     With part to reverence in its gleam,
     And part to rivalry the shout:
     So royal, unuttered, is youth's dream
     Of power within to strike without.
     But most the silences were sweet,
     Like mothers' breasts, to bid it feel
     It lived in such divine conceit
     As envies aught we stamp for real.

     To either then an untold tale
     Was Life, and author, hero, we.
     The chapters holding peaks to scale,
     Or depths to fathom, made our glee;
     For we were armed of inner fires,
     Unbled in us the ripe desires;
     And passion rolled a quiet sea,
     Whereon was Love the phantom sail.



     Poem: The Hueless Love



     Unto that love must we through fire attain,
     Which those two held as breath of common air;
     The hands of whom were given in bond elsewhere;
     Whom Honour was untroubled to restrain.

     Midway the road of our life's term they met,
     And one another knew without surprise;
     Nor cared that beauty stood in mutual eyes;
     Nor at their tardy meeting nursed regret.

     To them it was revealed how they had found
     The kindred nature and the needed mind;
     The mate by long conspiracy designed;
     The flower to plant in sanctuary ground.

     Avowed in vigilant solicitude
     For either, what most lived within each breast
     They let be seen: yet every human test
     Demanding righteousness approved them good.

     She leaned on a strong arm, and little feared
     Abandonment to help if heaved or sank
     Her heart at intervals while Love looked blank,
     Life rosier were she but less revered.

     An arm that never shook did not obscure
     Her woman's intuition of the bliss -
     Their tempter's moment o'er the black abyss,
     Across the narrow plank - he could abjure.

     Then came a day that clipped for him the thread,
     And their first touch of lips, as he lay cold,
     Was all of earthly in their love untold,
     Beyond all earthly known to them who wed.

     So has there come the gust at South-west flung
     By sudden volt on eves of freezing mist,
     When sister snowflake sister snowdrop kissed,
     And one passed out, and one the bell-head hung.



     Poem: Song In The Songless



     They have no song, the sedges dry,
     And still they sing.
     It is within my breast they sing,
     As I pass by.
     Within my breast they touch a string,
     They wake a sigh.
     There is but sound of sedges dry;
     In me they sing.



     Poem: Union In Disseverance



     Sunset worn to its last vermilion he;
     She that star overhead in slow descent:
     That white star with the front of angel she;
     He undone in his rays of glory spent

     Halo, fair as the bow-shot at his rise,
     He casts round her, and knows his hour of rest
     Incomplete, were the light for which he dies,
     Less like joy of the dove that wings to nest.

     Lustrous momently, near on earth she sinks;
     Life's full throb over breathless and abased:
     Yet stand they, though impalpable the links,
     One, more one than the bridally embraced.



     Poem: The Burden Of Strength



     If that thou hast the gift of strength, then know
     Thy part is to uplift the trodden low;
     Else in a giant's grasp until the end
     A hopeless wrestler shall thy soul contend.



     Poem: The Main Regret



     [Written for the Charing Cross Album]

     I.

     Seen, too clear and historic within us, our sins of omission
     Frown when the Autumn days strike us all ruthlessly bare.
     They of our mortal diseases find never healing physician;
     Errors they of the soul, past the one hope to repair.

     II.

     Sunshine might we have been unto seed under soil, or have scattered
     Seed to ascendant suns brighter than any that shone.
     Even the limp-legged beggar a sick desperado has flattered
     Back to a half-sloughed life cheered by the mere human tone.



     Poem: Alternation



     Between the fountain and the rill
     I passed, and saw the mighty will
     To leap at sky; the careless run,
     As earth would lead her little son.

     Beneath them throbs an urgent well,
     That here is play, and there is war.
     I know not which had most to tell
     Of whence we spring and what we are.



     Poem: Hawarden



     When comes the lighted day for men to read
     Life's meaning, with the work before their hands
     Till this good gift of breath from debt is freed,
     Earth will not hear her children's wailful bands
     Deplore the chieftain fall'n in sob and dirge;
     Nor they look where is darkness, but on high.
     The sun that dropped down our horizon's verge,
     Illumes his labours through the travelled sky,
     Now seen in sum, most glorious; and 'tis known
     By what our warrior wrought we hold him fast.
     A splendid image built of man has flown;
     His deeds inspired of God outstep a Past.
     Ours the great privilege to have had one
     Among us who celestial tasks has done.



     Poem: At The Close



     To Thee, dear God of Mercy, both appeal,
     Who straightway sound the call to arms. Thou know'st;
     And that black spot in each embattled host,
     Spring of the blood-stream, later wilt reveal.
     Now is it red artillery and white steel;
     Till on a day will ring the victor's boast,
     That 'tis Thy chosen towers uppermost,
     Where Thy rejected grovels under heel.
     So in all times of man's descent insane
     To brute, did strength and craft combining strike,
     Even as a God of Armies, his fell blow.
     But at the close he entered Thy domain,
     Dear God of Mercy, and if lion-like
     He tore the fall'n, the Eternal was his Foe.



     Poem: Forest History



     I.

     Beneath the vans of doom did men pass in.
     Heroic who came out; for round them hung
     A wavering phantom's red volcano tongue,
     With league-long lizard tail and fishy fin:

     II.

     Old Earth's original Dragon; there retired
     To his last fastness; overthrown by few.
     Him a laborious thrust of roadway slew.
     Then man to play devorant straight was fired.

     III.

     More intimate became the forest fear
     While pillared darkness hatched malicious life
     At either elbow, wolf or gnome or knife
     And wary slid the glance from ear to ear.

     IV.

     In chillness, like a clouded lantern-ray,
     The forest's heart of fog on mossed morass,
     On purple pool and silky cotton-grass,
     Revealed where lured the swallower byway.

     V.

     Dead outlook, flattened back with hard rebound
     Off walls of distance, left each mounted height.
     It seemed a giant hag-fiend, churning spite
     Of humble human being, held the ground.

     VI.

     Through friendless wastes, through treacherous woodland, slow
     The feet sustained by track of feet pursued
     Pained steps, and found the common brotherhood
     By sign of Heaven indifferent, Nature foe.

     VII.

     Anon a mason's work amazed the sight,
     And long-frocked men, called Brothers, there abode.
     They pointed up, bowed head, and dug and sowed;
     Whereof was shelter, loaf, and warm firelight.

     VIII.

     What words they taught were nails to scratch the head.
     Benignant works explained the chanting brood.
     Their monastery lit black solitude,
     As one might think a star that heavenward led.

     IX.

     Uprose a fairer nest for weary feet,
     Like some gold flower nightly inward curled,
     Where gentle maidens fled a roaring world,
     Or played with it, and had their white retreat.

     X.

     Into big books of metal clasps they pored.
     They governed, even as men; they welcomed lays.
     The treasures women are whose aim is praise,
     Was shown in them: the Garden half restored.

     XI.

     A deluge billow scoured the land off seas,
     With widened jaws, and slaughter was its foam.
     For food, for clothing, ambush, refuge, home,
     The lesser savage offered bogs and trees.

     XII.

     Whence reverence round grey-haired story grew:
     And inmost spots of ancient horror shone
     As temples under beams of trials bygone;
     For in them sang brave times with God in view.

     XIII.

     Till now trim homesteads bordered spaces green,
     Like night's first little stars through clearing showers.
     Was rumoured how a castle's falcon towers
     The wilderness commanded with fierce mien.

     XIV.

     Therein a serious Baron stuck his lance;
     For minstrel songs a beauteous Dame would pout.
     Gay knights and sombre, felon or devout,
     Pricked onward, bound for their unsung romance.

     XV.

     It might be that two errant lords across
     The block of each came edged, and at sharp cry
     They charged forthwith, the better man to try.
     One rode his way, one couched on quiet moss.

     XVI.

     Perchance a lady sweet, whose lord lay slain,
     The robbers into gruesome durance drew.
     Swift should her hero come, like lightning's blue!
     She prayed for him, as crackling drought for rain.

     XVII.

     As we, that ere the worst her hero haps,
     Of Angels guided, nigh that loathly den:
     A toady cave beside an ague fen,
     Where long forlorn the lone dog whines and yaps.

     XVIII.

     By daylight now the forest fear could read
     Itself, and at new wonders chuckling went.
     Straight for the roebuck's neck the bowman spent
     A dart that laughed at distance and at speed.

     XIX.

     Right loud the bugle's hallali elate
     Rang forth of merry dingles round the tors;
     And deftest hand was he from foreign wars,
     But soon he hailed the home-bred yeoman mate.

     XX.

     Before the blackbird pecked the turf they woke;
     At dawn the deer's wet nostrils blew their last.
     To forest, haunt of runs and prime repast,
     With paying blows, the yokel strained his yoke.

     XXI.

     The city urchin mooned on forest air,
     On grassy sweeps and flying arrows, thick
     As swallows o'er smooth streams, and sighed him sick
     For thinking that his dearer home was there.

     XXII.

     Familiar, still unseized, the forest sprang
     An old-world echo, like no mortal thing.
     The hunter's horn might wind a jocund ring,
     But held in ear it had a chilly clang.

     XXIII.

     Some shadow lurked aloof of ancient time;
     Some warning haunted any sound prolonged,
     As though the leagues of woodland held them wronged
     To hear an axe and see a township climb.

     XXIV.

     The forest's erewhile emperor at eve
     Had voice when lowered heavens drummed for gales.
     At midnight a small people danced the dales,
     So thin that they might dwindle through a sieve

     XXV.

     Ringed mushrooms told of them, and in their throats,
     Old wives that gathered herbs and knew too much.
     The pensioned forester beside his crutch,
     Struck showers from embers at those bodeful notes.

     XXVI.

     Came then the one, all ear, all eye, all heart;
     Devourer, and insensibly devoured;
     In whom the city over forest flowered,
     The forest wreathed the city's drama-mart.

     XXVII.

     There found he in new form that Dragon old,
     From tangled solitudes expelled; and taught
     How blindly each its antidote besought;
     For either's breath the needs of either told.

     XXVIII.

     Now deep in woods, with song no sermon's drone,
     He showed what charm the human concourse works:
     Amid the press of men, what virtue lurks
     Where bubble sacred wells of wildness lone.

     XXIX.

     Our conquest these: if haply we retain
     The reverence that ne'er will overrun
     Due boundaries of realms from Nature won,
     Nor let the poet's awe in rapture wane.



     Poem: A Garden Idyl



     With sagest craft Arachne worked
     Her web, and at a corner lurked,
     Awaiting what should plump her soon,
     To case it in the death-cocoon.
     Sagaciously her home she chose
     For visits that would never close;
     Inside my chalet-porch her feast
     Plucked all the winds but chill North-east.

     The finished structure, bar on bar,
     Had snatched from light to form a star,
     And struck on sight, when quick with dews,
     Like music of the very Muse.
     Great artists pass our single sense;
     We hear in seeing, strung to tense;
     Then haply marvel, groan mayhap,
     To think such beauty means a trap.
     But Nature's genius, even man's
     At best, is practical in plans;
     Subservient to the needy thought,
     However rare the weapon wrought.
     As long as Nature holds it good
     To urge her creatures' quest for food
     Will beauty stamp the just intent
     Of weapons upon service bent.
     For beauty is a flower of roots
     Embedded lower than our boots;
     Out of the primal strata springs,
     And shows for crown of useful things

     Arachne's dream of prey to size
     Aspired; so she could nigh despise
     The puny specks the breezes round
     Supplied, and let them shake unwound;
     Assured of her fat fly to come;
     Perhaps a blue, the spider's plum;
     Who takes the fatal odds in fight,
     And gives repast an appetite,
     By plunging, whizzing, till his wings
     Are webbed, and in the lists he swings,
     A shrouded lump, for her to see
     Her banquet in her victory.

     This matron of the unnumbered threads,
     One day of dandelions' heads
     Distributing their gray perruques
     Up every gust, I watched with looks
     Discreet beside the chalet-door;
     And gracefully a light wind bore,
     Direct upon my webster's wall,
     A monster in the form of ball;
     The mildest captive ever snared,
     That neither struggled nor despaired,
     On half the net invading hung,
     And plain as in her mother tongue,
     While low the weaver cursed her lures,
     Remarked, "You have me; I am yours."

     Thrice magnified, in phantom shape,
     Her dream of size she saw, agape.
     Midway the vast round-raying beard
     A desiccated midge appeared;
     Whose body pricked the name of meal,
     Whose hair had growth in earth's unreal;
     Provocative of dread and wrath,
     Contempt and horror, in one froth,
     Inextricable, insensible,
     His poison presence there would dwell,
     Declaring him her dream fulfilled,
     A catch to compliment the skilled;
     And she reduced to beaky skin,
     Disgraceful among kith and kin

     Against her corner, humped and aged,
     Arachne wrinkled, past enraged,
     Beyond disgust or hope in guile.
     Ridiculously volatile
     He seemed to her last spark of mind;
     And that in pallid ash declined
     Beneath the blow by knowledge dealt,
     Wherein throughout her frame she felt
     That he, the light wind's libertine,
     Without a scoff, without a grin,
     And mannered like the courtly few,
     Who merely danced when light winds blew,
     Impervious to beak and claws,
     Tradition's ruinous Whitebeard was;
     Of whom, as actors in old scenes,
     Had grannam weavers warned their weans,
     With word, that less than feather-weight,
     He smote the web like bolt of Fate.

     This muted drama, hour by hour,
     I watched amid a world in flower,
     Ere yet Autumnal threads had laid
     Their gray-blue o'er the grass's blade,
     And still along the garden-run
     The blindworm stretched him, drunk of sun.
     Arachne crouched unmoved; perchance
     Her visitor performed a dance;
     She puckered thinner; he the same
     As when on that light wind he came.

     Next day was told what deeds of night
     Were done; the web had vanished quite;
     With it the strange opposing pair;
     And listless waved on vacant air,
     For her adieu to heart's content,
     A solitary filament.



     Poem: Foresight And Patience



     Sprung of the father blood, the mother brain,
     Are they who point our pathway and sustain.
     They rarely meet; one soars, one walks retired.
     When they do meet, it is our earth inspired.

     To see Life's formless offspring and subdue
     Desire of times unripe, we have these two,
     Whose union is right reason: join they hands,
     The world shall know itself and where it stands;
     What cowering angel and what upright beast
     Make man, behold, nor count the low the least,
     Nor less the stars have round it than its flowers.
     When these two meet, a point of time is ours.

     As in a land of waterfalls, that flow
     Smooth for the leap on their great voice below,
     Some eddies near the brink borne swift along,
     Will capture hearing with the liquid song,
     So, while the headlong world's imperious force
     Resounded under, heard I these discourse.

     First words, where down my woodland walk she led,
     To her blind sister Patience, Foresight said:

     - Your faith in me appals, to shake my own,
     When still I find you in this mire alone.

     - The few steps taken at a funeral pace
     By men had slain me but for those you trace.

     - Look I once back, a broken pinion I:
     Black as the rebel angels rained from sky!

     - Needs must you drink of me while here you live,
     And make me rich in feeling I can give.

     - A brave To-be is dawn upon my brow:
     Yet must I read my sister for the How.
     My daisy better knows her God of beams
     Than doth an eagle that to mount him seems.
     She hath the secret never fieriest reach
     Of wing shall master till men hear her teach.

     - Liker the clod flaked by the driving plough,
     My semblance when I have you not as now.
     The quiet creatures who escape mishap
     Bear likeness to pure growths of the green sap:
     A picture of the settled peace desired
     By cowards shunning strife or strivers tired.
     I listen at their breasts: is there no jar
     Of wrestlings and of stranglings, dead they are,
     And such a picture as the piercing mind
     Ranks beneath vegetation. Not resigned
     Are my true pupils while the world is brute.
     What edict of the stronger keeps me mute,
     Stronger impels the motion of my heart.
     I am not Resignation's counterpart.
     If that I teach, 'tis little the dry word,
     Content, but how to savour hope deferred.
     We come of earth, and rich of earth may be;
     Soon carrion if very earth are we!
     The coursing veins, the constant breath, the use
     Of sleep, declare that strife allows short truce;
     Unless we clasp decay, accept defeat,
     And pass despised; "a-cold for lack of heat,"
     Like other corpses, but without death's plea.

     - My sister calls for battle; is it she?

     - Rather a world of pressing men in arms,
     Than stagnant, where the sensual piper charms
     Each drowsy malady and coiling vice
     With dreams of ease whereof the soul pays price!
     No home is here for peace while evil breeds,
     While error governs, none; and must the seeds
     You sow, you that for long have reaped disdain,
     Lie barren at the doorway of the brain,
     Let stout contention drive deep furrows, blood
     Moisten, and make new channels of its flood!

     - My sober little maid, when we meet first,
     Drinks of me ever with an eager thirst.
     So can I not of her till circumstance
     Drugs cravings. Here we see how men advance
     A doubtful foot, but circle if much stirred,
     Like dead weeds on whipped waters. Shout the word
     Prompting their hungers, and they grandly march,
     As to band-music under Victory's arch.
     Thus was it, and thus is it; save that then
     The beauty of frank animals had men.

     - Observe them, and down rearward for a term,
     Gaze to the primal twistings of the worm.
     Thence look this way, across the fields that show
     Men's early form of speech for Yes and No.
     My sister a bruised infant's utterance had;
     And issuing stronger, to mankind 'twas mad.
     I knew my home where I had choice to feel
     The toad beneath a harrow or a heel.

     - Speak of this Age.

     - When you it shall discern
     Bright as you are, to me the Age will turn.

     - For neither of us has it any care;
     Its learning is through Science to despair.

     - Despair lies down and grovels, grapples not
     With evil, casts the burden of its lot.
     This Age climbs earth.

     - To challenge heaven.

     - Not less
     The lower deeps. It laughs at Happiness!
     That know I, though the echoes of it wail,
     For one step upward on the crags you scale.
     Brave is the Age wherein the word will rust,
     Which means our soul asleep or body's lust,
     Until from warmth of many breasts, that beat
     A temperate common music, sunlike heat
     The happiness not predatory sheds!

     - But your fierce Yes and No of butting heads,
     Now rages to outdo a horny Past.
     Shades of a wild Destroyer on the vast
     Are thrown by every novel light upraised.
     The world's whole round smokes ominously, amazed
     And trembling as its pregnant AEtna swells.
     Combustibles on hot combustibles
     Run piling, for one spark to roll in fire
     The mountain-torrent of infernal ire
     And leave the track of devils where men built.
     Perceptive of a doom, the sinner's guilt
     Confesses in a cry for help shrill loud,
     If drops the chillness of a passing cloud,
     To conscience, reason, human love; in vain:
     None save they but the souls which them contain.
     No extramural God, the God within
     Alone gives aid to city charged with sin.
     A world that for the spur of fool and knave,
     Sweats in its laboratory, what shall save?
     But men who ply their wits in such a school,
     Must pray the mercy of the knave and fool.

     - Much have I studied hard Necessity!
     To know her Wisdom's mother, and that we
     May deem the harshness of her later cries
     In labour a sure goad to prick the wise,
     If men among the warnings which convulse,
     Can gravely dread without the craven's pulse.
     Long ere the rising of this Age of ours,
     The knave and fool were stamped as monstrous Powers.
     Of human lusts and lassitudes they spring,
     And are as lasting as the parent thing.
     Yet numbering locust hosts, bent they to drill,
     They might o'ermatch and have mankind at will.

     Behold such army gathering: ours the spur,
     No scattered foe to face, but Lucifer.
     Not fool or knave is now the enemy
     O'ershadowing men, 'tis Folly, Knavery!
     A sea; nor stays that sea the bastioned beach.
     Now must the brother soul alive in each,
     His traitorous individual devildom
     Hold subject lest the grand destruction come.
     Dimly men see it menacing apace
     To overthrow, perchance uproot the race.
     Within, without, they are a field of tares:
     Fruitfuller for them when the contest squares,
     And wherefore warrior service they must yield,
     Shines visible as life on either field.
     That is my comfort, following shock on shock,
     Which sets faith quaking on their firmest rock.
     Since with his weapons, all the arms of Night,
     Frail men have challenged Lucifer to fight,
     Have matched in hostile ranks, enrolled, erect,
     The human and Satanic intellect,
     Determined for their uses to control
     What forces on the earth and under roll,
     Their granite rock runs igneous; now they stand
     Pledged to the heavens for safety of their land.
     They cannot learn save grossly, gross that are:
     Through fear they learn whose aid is good in war.

     - My sister, as I read them in my glass,
     Their field of tares they take for pasture grass.
     How waken them that have not any bent
     Save browsing - the concrete indifferent!
     Friend Lucifer supplies them solid stuff:
     They fear not for the race when full the trough.
     They have much fear of giving up the ghost;
     And these are of mankind the unnumbered host.

     - If I could see with you, and did not faint
     In beating wing, the future I would paint.
     Those massed indifferents will learn to quake:
     Now meanwhile is another mass awake,
     Once denser than the grunters of the sty.
     If I could see with you! Could I but fly!

     - The length of days that you with them have housed,
     An outcast else, approves their cause espoused.

     - O true, they have a cause, and woe for us,
     While still they have a cause too piteous!
     Yet, happy for us when, their cause defined,
     They walk no longer with a stumbler blind,
     And quicken in the virtue of their cause,
     To think me a poor mouther of old saws!
     I wait the issue of a battling Age;
     The toilers with your "troughsters" now engage;
     Instructing them through their acutest sense,
     How close the dangers of indifference!
     Already have my people shown their worth,
     More love they light, which folds the love of Earth.
     That love to love of labour leads: thence love
     Of humankind - earth's incense flung above.

     - Admit some other features: Faithless, mean;
     Encased in matter; vowed to Gods obscene;
     Contemptuous of the impalpable, it swells
     On Doubt; for pastime swallows miracles;
     And if I bid it face what I observe,
     Declares me hoodwinked by my optic nerve!

     - Oft has your prophet, for reward of toil,
     Seen nests of seeming cockatrices coil:
     Disowned them as the unholiest of Time,
     Which were his offspring, born of flame on slime.
     Nor him, their sire, have known the filial fry:
     As little as Time's earliest knew the sky.
     Perchance among them shoots a lustrous flame
     At intervals, in proof of whom they came.
     To strengthen our foundations is the task
     Of this tough Age; not in your beams to bask,
     Though, lighted by your beams, down mining caves
     The rock it blasts, the hoarded foulness braves.
     My sister sees no round beyond her mood;
     To hawk this Age has dressed her head in hood.
     Out of the course of ancient ruts and grooves,
     It moves: O much for me to say it moves!
     About his AEthiop Highlands Nile is Nile,
     Though not the stream of the paternal smile:
     And where his tide of nourishment he drives,
     An Abyssinian wantonness revives.
     Calm as his lotus-leaf to-day he swims;
     He is the yellow crops, the rounded limbs,
     The Past yet flowing, the fair time that fills;
     Breath of all mouths and grist of many mills.

     To-morrow, warning none with tempest-showers,
     He is the vast Insensate who devours
     His golden promise over leagues of seed,
     Then sits in a smooth lake upon the deed.
     The races which on barbarous force begin,
     Inherit onward of their origin,
     And cancelled blessings will the current length
     Reveal till they know need of shaping strength.
     'Tis not in men to recognize the need
     Before they clash in hosts, in hosts they bleed.
     Then may sharp suffering their nature grind;
     Of rabble passions grow the chieftain Mind.
     Yet mark where still broad Nile boasts thousands fed,
     For tens up the safe mountains at his head.
     Few would be fed, not far his course prolong,
     Save for the troublous blood which makes him strong.

     - That rings of truth! More do your people thrive;
     Your Many are more merrily alive
     Than erewhile when I gloried in the page
     Of radiant singer and anointed sage.
     Greece was my lamp: burnt out for lack of oil;
     Rome, Python Rome, prey of its robber spoil!
     All structures built upon a narrow space
     Must fall, from having not your hosts for base.
     O thrice must one be you, to see them shift
     Along their desert flats, here dash, there drift;
     With faith, that of privations and spilt blood,
     Comes Reason armed to clear or bank the flood!
     And thrice must one be you, to wait release
     From duress in the swamp of their increase.
     At which oppressive scene, beyond arrest,
     A darkness not with stars of heaven dressed,
     Philosophers behold; desponding view.
     Your Many nourished, starved my brilliant few;
     Then flinging heels, as charioteers the reins,
     Dive down the fumy AEtna of their brains.
     Belated vessels on a rising sea,
     They seem: they pass!

     - But not Philosophy!

     - Ay, be we faithful to ourselves: despise
     Nought but the coward in us! That way lies
     The wisdom making passage through our slough.
     Am I not heard, my head to Earth shall bow;
     Like her, shall wait to see, and seeing wait.
     Philosophy is Life's one match for Fate.
     That photosphere of our high fountain One,
     Our spirit's Lord and Reason's fostering sun,
     Philosophy, shall light us in the shade,
     Warm in the frost, make Good our aim and aid.
     Companioned by the sweetest, ay renewed,
     Unconquerable, whose aim for aid is Good!
     Advantage to the Many: that we name
     God's voice; have there the surety in our aim.
     This thought unto my sister do I owe,
     And irony and satire off me throw.
     They crack a childish whip, drive puny herds,
     Where numbers crave their sustenance in words.
     Now let the perils thicken: clearer seen,
     Your Chieftain Mind mounts over them serene.
     Who never yet of scattered lamps was born
     To speed a world, a marching world to warn,
     But sunward from the vivid Many springs,
     Counts conquest but a step, and through disaster sings.




     Fragments of the Iliad in English Hexameter Verse




     Poem: The Invective Of Achilles



     [Iliad, B. I. V. 149]

     "Heigh me! brazen of front, thou glutton for plunder, how can one,
     Servant here to thy mandates, heed thee among our Achaians,
     Either the mission hie on or stoutly do fight with the foemen?
     I, not hither I fared on account of the spear-armed Trojans,
     Pledged to the combat; they unto me have in nowise a harm done;
     Never have they, of a truth, come lifting my horses or oxen;
     Never in deep-soiled Phthia, the nurser of heroes, my harvests
     Ravaged, they; for between us is numbered full many a darksome
     Mountain, ay, therewith too the stretch of the windy sea-waters.
     O hugely shameless! thee did we follow to hearten thee, justice
     Pluck from the Dardans for him, Menelaos, thee too, thou dog-eyed!
     Whereof little thy thought is, nought whatever thou reckest.
     Worse, it is thou whose threat 'tis to ravish my prize from me,
     portion
     Won with much labour, the which my gift from the sons of Achaia.
     Never, in sooth, have I known my prize equal thine when Achaians
     Gave some flourishing populous Trojan town up to pillage.
     Nay, sure, mine were the hands did most in the storm of the combat,
     Yet when came peradventure share of the booty amongst us,
     Bigger to thee went the prize, while I some small blessed thing
     bore
     Off to the ships, my share of reward for my toil in the bloodshed!
     So now go I to Phthia, for better by much it beseems me
     Homeward go with my beaked ships now, and I hold not in prospect,
     I being outraged, thou mayst gather here plunder and wealth-store."



     Poem: The Invective of Achilles - V. 225.



     "Bibber besotted, with scowl of a cur, having heart of a deer,
     thou!
     Never to join to thy warriors armed for the press of the conflict,
     Never for ambush forth with the princeliest sons of Achaia
     Dared thy soul, for to thee that thing would have looked as a
     death-stroke.
     Sooth, more easy it seems, down the lengthened array of Achaians,
     Snatch at the prize of the one whose voice has been lifted against
     thee.
     Ravening king of the folk, for that thou hast thy rule over
     abjects;
     Else, son of Atreus, now were this outrage on me thy last one.
     Nay, but I tell thee, and I do swear a big oath on it likewise:
     Yea, by the sceptre here, and it surely bears branches and leaf-
     buds
     Never again, since first it was lopped from its trunk on the
     mountains,
     No more sprouting; for round it all clean has the sharp metal
     clipped off
     Leaves and the bark; ay, verify now do the sons of Achaia,
     Guardian hands of the counsels of Zeus, pronouncing the judgement,
     Hold it aloft; so now unto thee shall the oath have its portent;
     Loud will the cry for Achilles burst from the sons of Achaia
     Throughout the army, and thou chafe powerless, though in an
     anguish,
     How to give succour when vast crops down under man-slaying Hector
     Tumble expiring; and thou deep in thee shalt tear at thy heart-
     strings,
     Rage-wrung, thou, that in nought thou didst honour the flower of
     Achaians."



     Poem: Marshalling Of The Achaians



     [Iliad, B. II V. 455]

     Like as a terrible fire feeds fast on a forest enormous,
     Up on a mountain height, and the blaze of it radiates round far,
     So on the bright blest arms of the host in their march did the
     splendour
     Gleam wide round through the circle of air right up to the sky-
     vault.
     They, now, as when swarm thick in the air multitudinous winged
     flocks,
     Be it of geese or of cranes or the long-necked troops of the wild-
     swans,
     Off that Asian mead, by the flow of the waters of Kaistros;
     Hither and yon fly they, and rejoicing in pride of their pinions,
     Clamour, shaped to their ranks, and the mead all about them
     resoundeth;
     So those numerous tribes from their ships and their shelterings
     poured forth
     On that plain of Scamander, and horrible rumbled beneath them
     Earth to the quick-paced feet of the men and the tramp of the
     horse-hooves.
     Stopped they then on the fair-flower'd field of Scamander, their
     thousands
     Many as leaves and the blossoms born of the flowerful season.
     Even as countless hot-pressed flies in their multitudes traverse,
     Clouds of them, under some herdsman's wonning, where then are the
     milk-pails
     Also, full of their milk, in the bountiful season of spring-time;
     Even so thickly the long-haired sons of Achaia the plain held,
     Prompt for the dash at the Trojan host, with the passion to crush
     them.
     Those, likewise, as the goatherds, eyeing their vast flocks of
     goats, know
     Easily one from the other when all get mixed o'er the pasture,
     So did the chieftains rank them here there in their places for
     onslaught,
     Hard on the push of the fray; and among them King Agamemnon,
     He, for his eyes and his head, as when Zeus glows glad in his
     thunder,
     He with the girdle of Ares, he with the breast of Poseidon.



     Poem: Agamemnon In The Fight



     [Iliad, B. XI. V. 148]

     These, then, he left, and away where ranks were now clashing the
     thickest,
     Onward rushed, and with him rushed all of the bright-greaved
     Achaians.
     Foot then footmen slew, that were flying from direful compulsion,
     Horse at the horsemen (up from off under them mounted the dust-
     cloud,
     Up off the plain, raised up cloud-thick by the thundering horse-
     hooves)
     Hewed with the sword's sharp edge; and so meanwhile Lord Agamemnon
     Followed, chasing and slaughtering aye, on-urgeing the Argives.

     Now, as when fire voracious catches the unclipped wood-land,
     This way bears it and that the great whirl of the wind, and the
     scrubwood
     Stretches uptorn, flung forward alength by the fire's fury rageing,
     So beneath Atreides Agamemnon heads of the scattered
     Trojans fell; and in numbers amany the horses, neck-stiffened,
     Rattled their vacant cars down the roadway gaps of the war-field,
     Missing the blameless charioteers, but, for these, they were
     outstretched
     Flat upon earth, far dearer to vultures than to their home-mates.



     Poem: Paris And Diomedes



     [Iliad; B. XI V. 378]

     So he, with a clear shout of laughter,
     Forth of his ambush leapt, and he vaunted him, uttering thiswise:
     "Hit thou art! not in vain flew the shaft; how by rights it had
     pierced thee
     Into the undermost gut, therewith to have rived thee of life-
     breath!
     Following that had the Trojans plucked a new breath from their
     direst,
     They all frighted of thee, as the goats bleat in flight from a
     lion."
     Then unto him untroubled made answer stout Diomedes:
     "Bow-puller, jiber, thy bow for thy glorying, spyer at virgins!
     If that thou dared'st face me here out in the open with weapons,
     Nothing then would avail thee thy bow and thy thick shot of arrows.
     Now thou plumest thee vainly because of a graze of my footsole;
     Reck I as were that stroke from a woman or some pettish infant.
     Aye flies blunted the dart of the man that's emasculate,
     noughtworth!
     Otherwise hits, forth flying from me, and but strikes it the
     slightest,
     My keen shaft, and it numbers a man of the dead fallen straightway.
     Torn, troth, then are the cheeks of the wife of that man fallen
     slaughtered,
     Orphans his babes, full surely he reddens the earth with his blood-
     drops,
     Rotting, round him the birds, more numerous they than the women."



     Poem: Hypnos On Ida



     [Iliad, B. XIV. V. 283]

     They then to fountain-abundant Ida, mother of wild beasts,
     Came, and they first left ocean to fare over mainland at Lektos,
     Where underneath of their feet waved loftiest growths of the
     woodland.
     There hung Hypnos fast, ere the vision of Zeus was observant,
     Mounted upon a tall pine-tree, tallest of pines that on Ida
     Lustily spring off soil for the shoot up aloft into aether.
     There did he sit well-cloaked by the wide-branched pine for
     concealment,
     That loud bird, in his form like, that perched high up in the
     mountains,
     Chalkis is named by the Gods, but of mortals known as Kymindis.



     Poem: Clash In Arms Of The Achaians And Trojans



     [Iliad, B. XIV. V. 394]

     Not the sea-wave so bellows abroad when it bursts upon shingle,
     Whipped from the sea's deeps up by the terrible blast of the
     Northwind;
     Nay, nor is ever the roar of the fierce fire's rush so arousing,
     Down along mountain-glades, when it surges to kindle a woodland;
     Nay, nor so tonant thunders the stress of the gale in the oak-
     trees'
     Foliage-tresses high, when it rages to raveing its utmost;
     As rose then stupendous the Trojan's cry and Achaians',
     Dread upshouting as one when together they clashed in the conflict.



     Poem: The Horses Of Achilles



     [Iliad, B. XVII. V. 426]

     So now the horses of Aiakides, off wide of the war-ground,
     Wept, since first they were ware of their charioteer overthrown
     there,
     Cast down low in the whirl of the dust under man-slaying Hector.
     Sooth, meanwhile, then did Automedon, brave son of Diores,
     Oft, on the one hand, urge them with flicks of the swift whip, and
     oft, too,
     Coax entreatingly, hurriedly; whiles did he angrily threaten.
     Vainly, for these would not to the ships, to the Hellespont
     spacious,
     Backward turn, nor be whipped to the battle among the Achaians.
     Nay, as a pillar remains immovable, fixed on the tombstone,
     Haply, of some dead man or it may be a woman there-under;
     Even like hard stood they there attached to the glorious war-car,
     Earthward bowed with their heads; and of them so lamenting
     incessant
     Ran the hot teardrops downward on to the earth from their eyelids,
     Mourning their charioteer; all their lustrous manes dusty-clotted,
     Right side and left of the yoke-ring tossed, to the breadth of the
     yoke-bow.
     Now when the issue of Kronos beheld that sorrow, his head shook
     Pitying them for their grief, these words then he spake in his
     bosom;
     "Why, ye hapless, gave we to Peleus you, to a mortal
     Master; ye that are ageless both, ye both of you deathless!
     Was it that ye among men most wretched should come to have heart-
     grief?
     'Tis most true, than the race of these men is there wretcheder
     nowhere
     Aught over earth's range found that is gifted with breath and has
     movement."



     Poem: The Mares Of The Camargue



     [From the MIREIO of Mistral]

     A hundred mares, all white! their manes
     Like mace-reed of the marshy plains
     Thick-tufted, wavy, free o' the shears:
     And when the fiery squadron rears
     Bursting at speed, each mane appears
     Even as the white scarf of a fay
     Floating upon their necks along the heavens away.

     O race of humankind, take shame!
     For never yet a hand could tame,
     Nor bitter spur that rips the flanks subdue
     The mares of the Camargue. I have known,
     By treason snared, some captives shown;
     Expatriate from their native Rhone,
     Led off, their saline pastures far from view:

     And on a day, with prompt rebound,
     They have flung their riders to the ground,
     And at a single gallop, scouring free,
     Wide-nostril'd to the wind, twice ten
     Of long marsh-leagues devour'd, and then,
     Back to the Vacares again,
     After ten years of slavery just to breathe salt sea

     For of this savage race unbent,
     The ocean is the element.
     Of old escaped from Neptune's car, full sure,
     Still with the white foam fleck'd are they,
     And when the sea puffs black from grey,
     And ships part cables, loudly neigh
     The stallions of Camargue, all joyful in the roar;

     And keen as a whip they lash and crack
     Their tails that drag the dust, and back
     Scratch up the earth, and feel, entering their flesh, where he,
     The God, drives deep his trident teeth,
     Who in one horror, above, beneath,
     Bids storm and watery deluge seethe,
     And shatters to their depths the abysses of the sea.

     Cant. iv.




     Poems by George Meredith--Volume 1


     [This etext was prepared from the 1912 Times Book Club "Surrey
     Edition" by David Price]



     CHILLIANWALLAH



     Chillanwallah, Chillanwallah!
     Where our brothers fought and bled,
     O thy name is natural music
     And a dirge above the dead!
     Though we have not been defeated,
     Though we can't be overcome,
     Still, whene'er thou art repeated,
     I would fain that grief were dumb.

     Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah!
     'Tis a name so sad and strange,
     Like a breeze through midnight harpstrings
     Ringing many a mournful change;
     But the wildness and the sorrow
     Have a meaning of their own -
     Oh, whereof no glad to-morrow
     Can relieve the dismal tone!

     Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah!
     'Tis a village dark and low,
     By the bloody Jhelum river
     Bridged by the foreboding foe;
     And across the wintry water
     He is ready to retreat,
     When the carnage and the slaughter
     Shall have paid for his defeat.

     Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah!
     'Tis a wild and dreary plain,
     Strewn with plots of thickest jungle,
     Matted with the gory stain.
     There the murder-mouthed artillery,
     In the deadly ambuscade,
     Wrought the thunder of its treachery
     On the skeleton brigade.

     Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah!
     When the night set in with rain,
     Came the savage plundering devils
     To their work among the slain;
     And the wounded and the dying
     In cold blood did share the doom
     Of their comrades round them lying,
     Stiff in the dead skyless gloom.

     Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah!
     Thou wilt be a doleful chord,
     And a mystic note of mourning
     That will need no chiming word;
     And that heart will leap with anguish
     Who may understand thee best;
     But the hopes of all will languish
     Till thy memory is at rest.



     THE DOE: A FRAGMENT (From 'WANDERING WILLIE')



     And--'Yonder look! yoho! yoho!
     Nancy is off!' the farmer cried,
     Advancing by the river side,
     Red-kerchieft and brown-coated;--'So,
     My girl, who else could leap like that?
     So neatly! like a lady! 'Zounds!
     Look at her how she leads the hounds!'
     And waving his dusty beaver hat,
     He cheered across the chase-filled water,
     And clapt his arm about his daughter,
     And gave to Joan a courteous hug,
     And kiss that, like a stubborn plug
     From generous vats in vastness rounded,
     The inner wealth and spirit sounded:
     Eagerly pointing South, where, lo,
     The daintiest, fleetest-footed doe
     Led o'er the fields and thro' the furze
     Beyond: her lively delicate ears
     Prickt up erect, and in her track
     A dappled lengthy-striding pack.

     Scarce had they cast eyes upon her,
     When every heart was wagered on her,
     And half in dread, and half delight,
     They watched her lovely bounding flight;
     As now across the flashing green,
     And now beneath the stately trees,
     And now far distant in the dene,
     She headed on with graceful ease:
     Hanging aloft with doubled knees,
     At times athwart some hedge or gate;
     And slackening pace by slow degrees,
     As for the foremost foe to wait.
     Renewing her outstripping rate
     Whene'er the hot pursuers neared,
     By garden wall and paled estate,
     Where clambering gazers whooped and cheered.
     Here winding under elm and oak,
     And slanting up the sunny hill:
     Splashing the water here like smoke
     Among the mill-holms round the mill.

     And--'Let her go; she shows her game,
     My Nancy girl, my pet and treasure!'
     The farmer sighed: his eyes with pleasure
     Brimming: ''Tis my daughter's name,
     My second daughter lying yonder.'
     And Willie's eye in search did wander,
     And caught at once, with moist regard,
     The white gleams of a grey churchyard.
     'Three weeks before my girl had gone,
     And while upon her pillows propped,
     She lay at eve; the weakling fawn -
     For still it seems a fawn just dropt
     A se'nnight--to my Nancy's bed
     I brought to make my girl a gift:
     The mothers of them both were dead:
     And both to bless it was my drift,
     By giving each a friend; not thinking
     How rapidly my girl was sinking.
     And I remember how, to pat
     Its neck, she stretched her hand so weak,
     And its cold nose against her cheek
     Pressed fondly: and I fetched the mat
     To make it up a couch just by her,
     Where in the lone dark hours to lie:
     For neither dear old nurse nor I
     Would any single wish deny her.
     And there unto the last it lay;
     And in the pastures cared to play
     Little or nothing: there its meals
     And milk I brought: and even now
     The creature such affection feels
     For that old room that, when and how,
     'Tis strange to mark, it slinks and steals
     To get there, and all day conceals.
     And once when nurse who, since that time,
     Keeps house for me, was very sick,
     Waking upon the midnight chime,
     And listening to the stair-clock's click,
     I heard a rustling, half uncertain,
     Close against the dark bed-curtain:
     And while I thrust my leg to kick,
     And feel the phantom with my feet,
     A loving tongue began to lick
     My left hand lying on the sheet;
     And warm sweet breath upon me blew,
     And that 'twas Nancy then I knew.
     So, for her love, I had good cause
     To have the creature "Nancy" christened.'

     He paused, and in the moment's pause,
     His eyes and Willie's strangely glistened.
     Nearer came Joan, and Bessy hung
     With face averted, near enough
     To hear, and sob unheard; the young
     And careless ones had scampered off
     Meantime, and sought the loftiest place
     To beacon the approaching chase.

     'Daily upon the meads to browse,
     Goes Nancy with those dairy cows
     You see behind the clematis:
     And such a favourite she is,
     That when fatigued, and helter skelter,
     Among them from her foes to shelter,
     She dashes when the chase is over,
     They'll close her in and give her cover,
     And bend their horns against the hounds,
     And low, and keep them out of bounds!
     From the house dogs she dreads no harm,
     And is good friends with all the farm,
     Man, and bird, and beast, howbeit
     Their natures seem so opposite.
     And she is known for many a mile,
     And noted for her splendid style,
     For her clear leap and quick slight hoof;
     Welcome she is in many a roof.
     And if I say, I love her, man!
     I say but little: her fine eyes full
     Of memories of my girl, at Yule
     And May-time, make her dearer than
     Dumb brute to men has been, I think.
     So dear I do not find her dumb.
     I know her ways, her slightest wink,
     So well; and to my hand she'll come,
     Sidelong, for food or a caress,
     Just like a loving human thing.
     Nor can I help, I do confess,
     Some touch of human sorrowing
     To think there may be such a doubt
     That from the next world she'll be shut out,
     And parted from me! And well I mind
     How, when my girl's last moments came,
     Her soft eyes very soft and kind,
     She joined her hands and prayed the same,
     That she "might meet her father, mother,
     Sister Bess, and each dear brother,
     And with them, if it might be, one
     Who was her last companion."
     Meaning the fawn--the doe you mark -
     For my bay mare was then a foal,
     And time has passed since then:- but hark!'

     For like the shrieking of a soul
     Shut in a tomb, a darkened cry
     Of inward-wailing agony
     Surprised them, and all eyes on each
     Fixed in the mute-appealing speech
     Of self-reproachful apprehension:
     Knowing not what to think or do:
     But Joan, recovering first, broke through
     The instantaneous suspension,
     And knelt upon the ground, and guessed
     The bitterness at a glance, and pressed
     Into the comfort of her breast
     The deep-throed quaking shape that drooped
     In misery's wilful aggravation,
     Before the farmer as he stooped,
     Touched with accusing consternation:
     Soothing her as she sobbed aloud:-
     'Not me! not me! Oh, no, no, no!
     Not me! God will not take me in!
     Nothing can wipe away my sin!
     I shall not see her: you will go;
     You and all that she loves so:
     Not me! not me! Oh, no, no, no!'
     Colourless, her long black hair,
     Like seaweed in a tempest tossed
     Tangling astray, to Joan's care
     She yielded like a creature lost:
     Yielded, drooping toward the ground,
     As doth a shape one half-hour drowned,
     And heaved from sea with mast and spar,
     All dark of its immortal star.
     And on that tender heart, inured
     To flatter basest grief, and fight
     Despair upon the brink of night,
     She suffered herself to sink, assured
     Of refuge; and her ear inclined
     To comfort; and her thoughts resigned
     To counsel; her wild hair let brush
     From off her weeping brows; and shook
     With many little sobs that took
     Deeper-drawn breaths, till into sighs,
     Long sighs, they sank; and to the 'hush!'
     Of Joan's gentle chide, she sought
     Childlike to check them as she ought,
     Looking up at her infantwise.
     And Willie, gazing on them both,
     Shivered with bliss through blood and brain,
     To see the darling of his troth
     Like a maternal angel strain
     The sinful and the sinless child
     At once on either breast, and there
     In peace and promise reconciled
     Unite them: nor could Nature's care
     With subtler sweet beneficence
     Have fed the springs of penitence,
     Still keeping true, though harshly tried,
     The vital prop of human pride.



     BEAUTY ROHTRAUT (From Moricke)



     What is the name of King Ringang's daughter?
     Rohtraut, Beauty Rohtraut!
     And what does she do the livelong day,
     Since she dare not knit and spin alway?
     O hunting and fishing is ever her play!
     And, heigh! that her huntsman I might be!
     I'd hunt and fish right merrily!
     Be silent, heart!

     And it chanced that, after this some time, -
     Rohtraut, Beauty Rohtraut, -
     The boy in the Castle has gained access,
     And a horse he has got and a huntsman's dress,
     To hunt and to fish with the merry Princess;
     And, O! that a king's son I might be!
     Beauty Rohtraut I love so tenderly.
     Hush! hush! my heart.

     Under a grey old oak they sat,
     Beauty, Beauty Rohtraut!
     She laughs: 'Why look you so slyly at me?
     If you have heart enough, come, kiss me.'
     Cried the breathless boy, 'kiss thee?'
     But he thinks, kind fortune has favoured my youth;
     And thrice he has kissed Beauty Rohtraut's mouth.
     Down! down! mad heart.

     Then slowly and silently they rode home, -
     Rohtraut, Beauty Rohtraut!
     The boy was lost in his delight:
     'And, wert thou Empress this very night,
     I would not heed or feel the blight;
     Ye thousand leaves of the wild wood wist
     How Beauty Rohtraut's mouth I kiss'd.
     Hush! hush! wild heart.'



     THE OLIVE BRANCH



     A dove flew with an Olive Branch;
     It crossed the sea and reached the shore,
     And on a ship about to launch
     Dropped down the happy sign it bore.

     'An omen' rang the glad acclaim!
     The Captain stooped and picked it up,
     'Be then the Olive Branch her name,'
     Cried she who flung the christening cup.

     The vessel took the laughing tides;
     It was a joyous revelry
     To see her dashing from her sides
     The rough, salt kisses of the sea.

     And forth into the bursting foam
     She spread her sail and sped away,
     The rolling surge her restless home,
     Her incense wreaths the showering spray.

     Far out, and where the riot waves
     Run mingling in tumultuous throngs,
     She danced above a thousand graves,
     And heard a thousand briny songs.

     Her mission with her manly crew,
     Her flag unfurl'd, her title told,
     She took the Old World to the New,
     And brought the New World to the Old.

     Secure of friendliest welcomings,
     She swam the havens sheening fair;
     Secure upon her glad white wings,
     She fluttered on the ocean air.

     To her no more the bastioned fort
     Shot out its swarthy tongue of fire;
     From bay to bay, from port to port,
     Her coming was the world's desire.

     And tho' the tempest lashed her oft,
     And tho' the rocks had hungry teeth,
     And lightnings split the masts aloft,
     And thunders shook the planks beneath,

     And tho' the storm, self-willed and blind,
     Made tatters of her dauntless sail,
     And all the wildness of the wind
     Was loosed on her, she did not fail;

     But gallantly she ploughed the main,
     And gloriously her welcome pealed,
     And grandly shone to sky and plain
     The goodly bales her decks revealed;

     Brought from the fruitful eastern glebes
     Where blow the gusts of balm and spice,
     Or where the black blockaded ribs
     Are jammed 'mongst ghostly fleets of ice,

     Or where upon the curling hills
     Glow clusters of the bright-eyed grape,
     Or where the hand of labour drills
     The stubbornness of earth to shape;

     Rich harvestings and wealthy germs,
     And handicrafts and shapely wares,
     And spinnings of the hermit worms,
     And fruits that bloom by lions' lairs.

     Come, read the meaning of the deep!
     The use of winds and waters learn!
     'Tis not to make the mother weep
     For sons that never will return;

     'Tis not to make the nations show
     Contempt for all whom seas divide;
     'Tis not to pamper war and woe,
     Nor feed traditionary pride;

     'Tis not to make the floating bulk
     Mask death upon its slippery deck,
     Itself in turn a shattered hulk,
     A ghastly raft, a bleeding wreck.

     It is to knit with loving lip
     The interests of land to land;
     To join in far-seen fellowship
     The tropic and the polar strand.

     It is to make that foaming Strength
     Whose rebel forces wrestle still
     Thro' all his boundaried breadth and length
     Become a vassal to our will.

     It is to make the various skies,
     And all the various fruits they vaunt,
     And all the dowers of earth we prize,
     Subservient to our household want.

     And more, for knowledge crowns the gain
     Of intercourse with other souls,
     And Wisdom travels not in vain
     The plunging spaces of the poles.

     The wild Atlantic's weltering gloom,
     Earth-clasping seas of North and South,
     The Baltic with its amber spume,
     The Caspian with its frozen mouth;

     The broad Pacific, basking bright,
     And girdling lands of lustrous growth,
     Vast continents and isles of light,
     Dumb tracts of undiscovered sloth;

     She visits these, traversing each;
     They ripen to the common sun;
     Thro' diverse forms and different speech,
     The world's humanity is one.

     O may her voice have power to say
     How soon the wrecking discords cease,
     When every wandering wave is gay
     With golden argosies of peace!

     Now when the ark of human fate,
     Long baffled by the wayward wind,
     Is drifting with its peopled freight,
     Safe haven on the heights to find;

     Safe haven from the drowning slime
     Of evil deeds and Deluge wrath; -
     To plant again the foot of Time
     Upon a purer, firmer path;

     'Tis now the hour to probe the ground,
     To watch the Heavens, to speak the word,
     The fathoms of the deep to sound,
     And send abroad the missioned bird,

     On strengthened wing for evermore,
     Let Science, swiftly as she can,
     Fly seaward on from shore to shore,
     And bind the links of man to man;

     And like that fair propitious Dove
     Bless future fleets about to launch;
     Make every freight a freight of love,
     And every ship an Olive Branch.



     SONG



     Love within the lover's breast
     Burns like Hesper in the west,
     O'er the ashes of the sun,
     Till the day and night are done;
     Then when dawn drives up her car -
     Lo! it is the morning star.

     Love! thy love pours down on mine
     As the sunlight on the vine,
     As the snow-rill on the vale,
     As the salt breeze in the sail;
     As the song unto the bird,
     On my lips thy name is heard.

     As a dewdrop on the rose
     In thy heart my passion glows,
     As a skylark to the sky
     Up into thy breast I fly;
     As a sea-shell of the sea
     Ever shall I sing of thee.



     THE WILD ROSE AND THE SNOWDROP



     The Snowdrop is the prophet of the flowers;
     It lives and dies upon its bed of snows;
     And like a thought of spring it comes and goes,
     Hanging its head beside our leafless bowers.
     The sun's betrothing kiss it never knows,
     Nor all the glowing joy of golden showers;
     But ever in a placid, pure repose,
     More like a spirit with its look serene,
     Droops its pale cheek veined thro' with infant green.

     Queen of her sisters is the sweet Wild Rose,
     Sprung from the earnest sun and ripe young June;
     The year's own darling and the Summer's Queen!
     Lustrous as the new-throned crescent moon.
     Much of that early prophet look she shows,
     Mixed with her fair espoused blush which glows,
     As if the ethereal fairy blood were seen;
     Like a soft evening over sunset snows,
     Half twilight violet shade, half crimson sheen.

     Twin-born are both in beauteousness, most fair
     In all that glads the eye and charms the air;
     In all that wakes emotions in the mind
     And sows sweet sympathies for human kind.
     Twin-born, albeit their seasons are apart,
     They bloom together in the thoughtful heart;
     Fair symbols of the marvels of our state,
     Mute speakers of the oracles of fate!

     For each, fulfilling nature's law, fulfils
     Itself and its own aspirations pure;
     Living and dying; letting faith ensure
     New life when deathless Spring shall touch the hills.
     Each perfect in its place; and each content
     With that perfection which its being meant:
     Divided not by months that intervene,
     But linked by all the flowers that bud between.
     Forever smiling thro' its season brief,
     The one in glory and the one in grief:
     Forever painting to our museful sight,
     How lowlihead and loveliness unite.

     Born from the first blind yearning of the earth
     To be a mother and give happy birth,
     Ere yet the northern sun such rapture brings,
     Lo, from her virgin breast the Snowdrop springs;
     And ere the snows have melted from the grass,
     And not a strip of greensward doth appear,
     Save the faint prophecy its cheeks declare,
     Alone, unkissed, unloved, behold it pass!
     While in the ripe enthronement of the year,
     Whispering the breeze, and wedding the rich air
     With her so sweet, delicious bridal breath, -
     Odorous and exquisite beyond compare,
     And starr'd with dews upon her forehead clear,
     Fresh-hearted as a Maiden Queen should be
     Who takes the land's devotion as her fee, -
     The Wild Rose blooms, all summer for her dower,
     Nature's most beautiful and perfect flower.



     THE DEATH OF WINTER



     When April with her wild blue eye
     Comes dancing over the grass,
     And all the crimson buds so shy
     Peep out to see her pass;
     As lightly she loosens her showery locks
     And flutters her rainy wings;
     Laughingly stoops
     To the glass of the stream,
     And loosens and loops
     Her hair by the gleam,
     While all the young villagers blithe as the flocks
     Go frolicking round in rings; -
     Then Winter, he who tamed the fly,
     Turns on his back and prepares to die,
     For he cannot live longer under the sky.

     Down the valleys glittering green,
     Down from the hills in snowy rills,
     He melts between the border sheen
     And leaps the flowery verges!
     He cannot choose but brighten their hues,
     And tho' he would creep, he fain must leap,
     For the quick Spring spirit urges.
     Down the vale and down the dale
     He leaps and lights, till his moments fail,
     Buried in blossoms red and pale,
     While the sweet birds sing his dirges!

     O Winter! I'd live that life of thine,
     With a frosty brow and an icicle tongue,
     And never a song my whole life long, -
     Were such delicious burial mine!
     To die and be buried, and so remain
     A wandering brook in April's train,
     Fixing my dying eyes for aye
     On the dawning brows of maiden May.



     SONG



     The moon is alone in the sky
     As thou in my soul;
     The sea takes her image to lie
     Where the white ripples roll
     All night in a dream,
     With the light of her beam,
     Hushedly, mournfully, mistily up to the shore.
     The pebbles speak low
     In the ebb and the flow,
     As I when thy voice came at intervals, tuned to adore:
     Nought other stirred
     Save my heart all unheard
     Beating to bliss that is past evermore.



     JOHN LACKLAND



     A wicked man is bad enough on earth;
     But O the baleful lustre of a chief
     Once pledged in tyranny! O star of dearth
     Darkly illumining a nation's grief!
     How many men have worn thee on their brows!
     Alas for them and us! God's precious gift
     Of gracious dispensation got by theft -
     The damning form of false unholy vows!
     The thief of God and man must have his fee:
     And thou, John Lackland, despicable prince -
     Basest of England's banes before or since!
     Thrice traitor, coward, thief! O thou shalt be
     The historic warning, trampled and abhorr'd
     Who dared to steal and stain the symbols of the Lord!



     THE SLEEPING CITY



     A Princess in the eastern tale
     Paced thro' a marble city pale,
     And saw in ghastly shapes of stone
     The sculptured life she breathed alone;

     Saw, where'er her eye might range,
     Herself the only child of change;
     And heard her echoed footfall chime
     Between Oblivion and Time;

     And in the squares where fountains played,
     And up the spiral balustrade,
     Along the drowsy corridors,
     Even to the inmost sleeping floors,

     Surveyed in wonder chilled with dread
     The seemingness of Death, not dead;
     Life's semblance but without its storm,
     And silence frosting every form;

     Crowned figures, cold and grouping slaves,
     Like suddenly arrested waves
     About to sink, about to rise, -
     Strange meaning in their stricken eyes;

     And cloths and couches live with flame
     Of leopards fierce and lions tame,
     And hunters in the jungle reed,
     Thrown out by sombre glowing brede;

     Dumb chambers hushed with fold on fold,
     And cumbrous gorgeousness of gold;
     White casements o'er embroidered seats,
     Looking on solitudes of streets, -

     On palaces and column'd towers,
     Unconscious of the stony hours;
     Harsh gateways startled at a sound,
     With burning lamps all burnish'd round; -

     Surveyed in awe this wealth and state,
     Touched by the finger of a Fate,
     And drew with slow-awakening fear
     The sternness of the atmosphere; -

     And gradually, with stealthier foot,
     Became herself a thing as mute,
     And listened,--while with swift alarm
     Her alien heart shrank from the charm;

     Yet as her thoughts dilating rose,
     Took glory in the great repose,
     And over every postured form
     Spread lava-like and brooded warm, -

     And fixed on every frozen face
     Beheld the record of its race,
     And in each chiselled feature knew
     The stormy life that once blushed thro'; -

     The ever-present of the past
     There written; all that lightened last,
     Love, anguish, hope, disease, despair,
     Beauty and rage, all written there; -

     Enchanted Passions! whose pale doom
     Is never flushed by blight or bloom,
     But sentinelled by silent orbs,
     Whose light the pallid scene absorbs. -

     Like such a one I pace along
     This City with its sleeping throng;
     Like her with dread and awe, that turns
     To rapture, and sublimely yearns; -

     For now the quiet stars look down
     On lights as quiet as their own;
     The streets that groaned with traffic show
     As if with silence paved below;

     The latest revellers are at peace,
     The signs of in-door tumult cease,
     From gay saloon and low resort,
     Comes not one murmur or report:

     The clattering chariot rolls not by,
     The windows show no waking eye,
     The houses smoke not, and the air
     Is clear, and all the midnight fair.

     The centre of the striving world,
     Round which the human fate is curled,
     To which the future crieth wild, -
     Is pillowed like a cradled child.

     The palace roof that guards a crown,
     The mansion swathed in dreamy down,
     Hovel, court, and alley-shed,
     Sleep in the calmness of the dead.

     Now while the many-motived heart
     Lies hushed--fireside and busy mart,
     And mortal pulses beat the tune
     That charms the calm cold ear o' the moon

     Whose yellowing crescent down the West
     Leans listening, now when every breast
     Its basest or its purest heaves,
     The soul that joys, the soul that grieves; -

     While Fame is crowning happy brows
     That day will blindly scorn, while vows
     Of anguished love, long hidden, speak
     From faltering tongue and flushing cheek

     The language only known to dreams,
     Rich eloquence of rosy themes!
     While on the Beauty's folded mouth
     Disdain just wrinkles baby youth;

     While Poverty dispenses alms
     To outcasts, bread, and healing balms;
     While old Mammon knows himself
     The greatest beggar for his pelf;

     While noble things in darkness grope,
     The Statesman's aim, the Poet's hope;
     The Patriot's impulse gathers fire,
     And germs of future fruits aspire; -

     Now while dumb nature owns its links,
     And from one common fountain drinks,
     Methinks in all around I see
     This Picture in Eternity; -

     A marbled City planted there
     With all its pageants and despair;
     A peopled hush, a Death not dead,
     But stricken with Medusa's head; -

     And in the Gorgon's glance for aye
     The lifeless immortality
     Reveals in sculptured calmness all
     Its latest life beyond recall.



     THE POETRY OF CHAUCER



     Grey with all honours of age! but fresh-featured and ruddy
     As dawn when the drowsy farm-yard has thrice heard Chaunticlere.
     Tender to tearfulness--childlike, and manly, and motherly;
     Here beats true English blood richest joyance on sweet English
     ground.



     THE POETRY OF SPENSER



     Lakes where the sunsheen is mystic with splendour and softness;
     Vales where sweet life is all Summer with golden romance:
     Forests that glimmer with twilight round revel-bright palaces;
     Here in our May-blood we wander, careering 'mongst ladies and
     knights.



     THE POETRY OF SHAKESPEARE



     Picture some Isle smiling green 'mid the white-foaming ocean; -
     Full of old woods, leafy wisdoms, and frolicsome fays;
     Passions and pageants; sweet love singing bird-like above it;
     Life in all shapes, aims, and fates, is there warm'd by one great
     human heart.



     THE POETRY OF MILTON



     Like to some deep-chested organ whose grand inspiration,
     Serenely majestic in utterance, lofty and calm,
     Interprets to mortals with melody great as its burthen
     The mystical harmonies chiming for ever throughout the bright
     spheres.



     THE POETRY OF SOUTHEY



     Keen as an eagle whose flight towards the dim empyrean
     Fearless of toil or fatigue ever royally wends!
     Vast in the cloud-coloured robes of the balm-breathing Orient
     Lo! the grand Epic advances, unfolding the humanest truth.



     THE POETRY OF COLERIDGE



     A brook glancing under green leaves, self-delighting, exulting,
     And full of a gurgling melody ever renewed -
     Renewed thro' all changes of Heaven, unceasing in sunlight,
     Unceasing in moonlight, but hushed in the beams of the holier orb.



     THE POETRY OF SHELLEY



     See'st thou a Skylark whose glistening winglets ascending
     Quiver like pulses beneath the melodious dawn?
     Deep in the heart-yearning distance of heaven it flutters -
     Wisdom and beauty and love are the treasures it brings down at eve.



     THE POETRY OF WORDSWORTH



     A breath of the mountains, fresh born in the regions majestic,
     That look with their eye-daring summits deep into the sky.
     The voice of great Nature; sublime with her lofty conceptions,
     Yet earnest and simple as any sweet child of the green lowly vale.



     THE POETRY OF KEATS



     The song of a nightingale sent thro' a slumbrous valley,
     Low-lidded with twilight, and tranced with the dolorous sound,
     Tranced with a tender enchantment; the yearning of passion
     That wins immortality even while panting delirious with death.



     VIOLETS



     Violets, shy violets!
     How many hearts with you compare!
     Who hide themselves in thickest green,
     And thence, unseen,
     Ravish the enraptured air
     With sweetness, dewy fresh and rare!

     Violets, shy violets!
     Human hearts to me shall be
     Viewless violets in the grass,
     And as I pass,
     Odours and sweet imagery
     Will wait on mine and gladden me!



     ANGELIC LOVE



     Angelic love that stoops with heavenly lips
     To meet its earthly mate;
     Heroic love that to its sphere's eclipse
     Can dare to join its fate
     With one beloved devoted human heart,
     And share with it the passion and the smart,
     The undying bliss
     Of its most fleeting kiss;
     The fading grace
     Of its most sweet embrace:-
     Angelic love, heroic love!
     Whose birth can only be above,
     Whose wandering must be on earth,
     Whose haven where it first had birth!
     Love that can part with all but its own worth,
     And joy in every sacrifice
     That beautifies its Paradise!
     And gently, like a golden-fruited vine,
     With earnest tenderness itself consign,
     And creeping up deliriously entwine
     Its dear delicious arms
     Round the beloved being!
     With fair unfolded charms,
     All-trusting, and all-seeing, -
     Grape-laden with full bunches of young wine!
     While to the panting heart's dry yearning drouth
     Buds the rich dewy mouth -
     Tenderly uplifted,
     Like two rose-leaves drifted
     Down in a long warm sigh of the sweet South!
     Such love, such love is thine,
     Such heart is mine,
     O thou of mortal visions most divine!



     TWILIGHT MUSIC



     Know you the low pervading breeze
     That softly sings
     In the trembling leaves of twilight trees,
     As if the wind were dreaming on its wings?
     And have you marked their still degrees
     Of ebbing melody, like the strings
     Of a silver harp swept by a spirit's hand
     In some strange glimmering land,
     'Mid gushing springs,
     And glistenings
     Of waters and of planets, wild and grand!
     And have you marked in that still time
     The chariots of those shining cars
     Brighten upon the hushing dark,
     And bent to hark
     That Voice, amid the poplar and the lime,
     Pause in the dilating lustre
     Of the spheral cluster;
     Pause but to renew its sweetness, deep
     As dreams of heaven to souls that sleep!
     And felt, despite earth's jarring wars,
     When day is done
     And dead the sun,
     Still a voice divine can sing,
     Still is there sympathy can bring
     A whisper from the stars!
     Ah, with this sentience quickly will you know
     How like a tree I tremble to the tones
     Of your sweet voice!
     How keenly I rejoice
     When in me with sweet motions slow
     The spiritual music ebbs and moans -
     Lives in the lustre of those heavenly eyes,
     Dies in the light of its own paradise, -
     Dies, and relives eternal from its death,
     Immortal melodies in each deep breath;
     Sweeps thro' my being, bearing up to thee
     Myself, the weight of its eternity;
     Till, nerved to life from its ordeal fire,
     It marries music with the human lyre,
     Blending divine delight with loveliest desire.



     REQUIEM



     Where faces are hueless, where eyelids are dewless,
     Where passion is silent and hearts never crave;
     Where thought hath no theme, and where sleep hath no dream,
     In patience and peace thou art gone--to thy grave!
     Gone where no warning can wake thee to morning,
     Dead tho' a thousand hands stretch'd out to save.

     Thou cam'st to us sighing, and singing and dying,
     How could it be otherwise, fair as thou wert?
     Placidly fading, and sinking and shading
     At last to that shadow, the latest desert;
     Wasting and waning, but still, still remaining.
     Alas for the hand that could deal the death-hurt!

     The Summer that brightens, the Winter that whitens,
     The world and its voices, the sea and the sky,
     The bloom of creation, the tie of relation,
     All--all is a blank to thine ear and thine eye;
     The ear may not listen, the eye may not glisten,
     Nevermore waked by a smile or a sigh.

     The tree that is rootless must ever be fruitless;
     And thou art alone in thy death and thy birth;
     No last loving token of wedded love broken,
     No sign of thy singleness, sweetness and worth;
     Lost as the flower that is drowned in the shower,
     Fall'n like a snowflake to melt in the earth.



     THE FLOWER OF THE RUINS



     Take thy lute and sing
     By the ruined castle walls,
     Where the torrent-foam falls,
     And long weeds wave:
     Take thy lute and sing,
     O'er the grey ancestral grave!
     Daughter of a King,
     Tune thy string.

     Sing of happy hours,
     In the roar of rushing time;
     Till all the echoes chime
     To the days gone by;
     Sing of passing hours
     To the ever-present sky; -
     Weep--and let the showers
     Wake thy flowers.

     Sing of glories gone:-
     No more the blazoned fold
     From the banner is unrolled;
     The gold sun is set.
     Sing his glory gone,
     For thy voice may charm him yet;
     Daughter of the dawn,
     He is gone!

     Pour forth all thy grief!
     Passionately sweep the chords,
     Wed them quivering to thy words;
     Wild words of wail!
     Shed thy withered grief -
     But hold not Autumn to thy bale;
     The eddy of the leaf
     Must be brief!

     Sing up to the night:
     Hard it is for streaming tears
     To read the calmness of the spheres;
     Coldly they shine;
     Sing up to their light;
     They have views thou may'st divine -
     Gain prophetic sight
     From their light!

     On the windy hills
     Lo, the little harebell leans
     On the spire-grass that it queens,
     With bonnet blue;
     Trusting love instils
     Love and subject reverence true;
     Learn what love instils
     On the hills!

     By the bare wayside
     Placid snowdrops hang their cheeks,
     Softly touch'd with pale green streaks,
     Soon, soon, to die;
     On the clothed hedgeside
     Bands of rosy beauties vie,
     In their prophesied
     Summer pride.

     From the snowdrop learn;
     Not in her pale life lives she,
     But in her blushing prophecy.
     Thus be thy hopes,
     Living but to yearn
     Upwards to the hidden scopes; -
     Even within the urn
     Let them burn!

     Heroes of thy race -
     Warriors with golden crowns,
     Ghostly shapes with marbled frowns
     Stare thee to stone;
     Matrons of thy race
     Pass before thee making moan;
     Full of solemn grace
     Is their pace.

     Piteous their despair!
     Piteous their looks forlorn!
     Terrible their ghostly scorn!
     Still hold thou fast; -
     Heed not their despair! -
     Thou art thy future, not thy past;
     Let them glance and glare
     Thro' the air.

     Thou the ruin's bud,
     Be not that moist rich-smelling weed
     With its arras-sembled brede,
     And ruin-haunting stalk;
     Thou the ruin's bud,
     Be still the rose that lights the walk,
     Mix thy fragrant blood
     With the flood!



     THE RAPE OF AURORA



     Never, O never,
     Since dewy sweet Flora
     Was ravished by Zephyr,
     Was such a thing heard
     In the valleys so hollow!
     Till rosy Aurora,
     Uprising as ever,
     Bright Phosphor to follow,
     Pale Phoebe to sever,
     Was caught like a bird
     To the breast of Apollo!

     Wildly she flutters,
     And flushes all over
     With passionate mutters
     Of shame to the hush
     Of his amorous whispers:
     But O such a lover
     Must win when he utters,
     Thro' rosy red lispers,
     The pains that discover
     The wishes that gush
     From the torches of Hesperus.

     One finger just touching
     The Orient chamber,
     Unflooded the gushing
     Of light that illumed
     All her lustrous unveiling.
     On clouds of glow amber,
     Her limbs richly blushing,
     She lay sweetly wailing,
     In odours that gloomed
     On the God as he bloomed
     O'er her loveliness paling.

     Great Pan in his covert
     Beheld the rare glistening,
     The cry of the love-hurt,
     The sigh and the kiss
     Of the latest close mingling;
     But love, thought he, listening,
     Will not do a dove hurt,
     I know,--and a tingling,
     Latent with bliss,
     Prickt thro' him, I wis,
     For the Nymph he was singling.



     SOUTH-WEST WIND IN THE WOODLAND



     The silence of preluded song -
     AEolian silence charms the woods;
     Each tree a harp, whose foliaged strings
     Are waiting for the master's touch
     To sweep them into storms of joy,
     Stands mute and whispers not; the birds
     Brood dumb in their foreboding nests,
     Save here and there a chirp or tweet,
     That utters fear or anxious love,
     Or when the ouzel sends a swift
     Half warble, shrinking back again
     His golden bill, or when aloud
     The storm-cock warns the dusking hills
     And villages and valleys round:
     For lo, beneath those ragged clouds
     That skirt the opening west, a stream
     Of yellow light and windy flame
     Spreads lengthening southward, and the sky
     Begins to gloom, and o'er the ground
     A moan of coming blasts creeps low
     And rustles in the crisping grass;
     Till suddenly with mighty arms
     Outspread, that reach the horizon round,
     The great South-West drives o'er the earth,
     And loosens all his roaring robes
     Behind him, over heath and moor.
     He comes upon the neck of night,
     Like one that leaps a fiery steed
     Whose keen black haunches quivering shine
     With eagerness and haste, that needs
     No spur to make the dark leagues fly!
     Whose eyes are meteors of speed;
     Whose mane is as a flashing foam;
     Whose hoofs are travelling thunder-shocks; -
     He comes, and while his growing gusts,
     Wild couriers of his reckless course,
     Are whistling from the daggered gorse,
     And hurrying over fern and broom,
     Midway, far off, he feigns to halt
     And gather in his streaming train.

     Now, whirring like an eagle's wing
     Preparing for a wide blue flight;
     Now, flapping like a sail that tacks
     And chides the wet bewildered mast;
     Now, screaming like an anguish'd thing
     Chased close by some down-breathing beak;
     Now, wailing like a breaking heart,
     That will not wholly break, but hopes
     With hope that knows itself in vain;
     Now, threatening like a storm-charged cloud;
     Now, cooing like a woodland dove;
     Now, up again in roar and wrath
     High soaring and wide sweeping; now,
     With sudden fury dashing down
     Full-force on the awaiting woods.

     Long waited there, for aspens frail
     That tinkle with a silver bell,
     To warn the Zephyr of their love,
     When danger is at hand, and wake
     The neighbouring boughs, surrendering all
     Their prophet harmony of leaves,
     Had caught his earliest windward thought,
     And told it trembling; naked birk
     Down showering her dishevelled hair,
     And like a beauty yielding up
     Her fate to all the elements,
     Had swayed in answer; hazels close,
     Thick brambles and dark brushwood tufts,
     And briared brakes that line the dells
     With shaggy beetling brows, had sung
     Shrill music, while the tattered flaws
     Tore over them, and now the whole
     Tumultuous concords, seized at once
     With savage inspiration,--pine,
     And larch, and beech, and fir, and thorn,
     And ash, and oak, and oakling, rave
     And shriek, and shout, and whirl, and toss,
     And stretch their arms, and split, and crack,
     And bend their stems, and bow their heads,
     And grind, and groan, and lion-like
     Roar to the echo-peopled hills
     And ravenous wilds, and crake-like cry
     With harsh delight, and cave-like call
     With hollow mouth, and harp-like thrill
     With mighty melodies, sublime,
     From clumps of column'd pines that wave
     A lofty anthem to the sky,
     Fit music for a prophet's soul -
     And like an ocean gathering power,
     And murmuring deep, while down below
     Reigns calm profound;--not trembling now
     The aspens, but like freshening waves
     That fall upon a shingly beach; -
     And round the oak a solemn roll
     Of organ harmony ascends,
     And in the upper foliage sounds

     A symphony of distant seas.
     The voice of nature is abroad
     This night; she fills the air with balm;
     Her mystery is o'er the land;
     And who that hears her now and yields
     His being to her yearning tones,
     And seats his soul upon her wings,
     And broadens o'er the wind-swept world
     With her, will gather in the flight
     More knowledge of her secret, more
     Delight in her beneficence,
     Than hours of musing, or the lore
     That lives with men could ever give!
     Nor will it pass away when morn
     Shall look upon the lulling leaves,
     And woodland sunshine, Eden-sweet,
     Dreams o'er the paths of peaceful shade; -
     For every elemental power
     Is kindred to our hearts, and once
     Acknowledged, wedded, once embraced,
     Once taken to the unfettered sense,
     Once claspt into the naked life,
     The union is eternal.



     WILL O' THE WISP



     Follow me, follow me,
     Over brake and under tree,
     Thro' the bosky tanglery,
     Brushwood and bramble!
     Follow me, follow me,
     Laugh and leap and scramble!
     Follow, follow,
     Hill and hollow,
     Fosse and burrow,
     Fen and furrow,
     Down into the bulrush beds,
     'Midst the reeds and osier heads,
     In the rushy soaking damps,
     Where the vapours pitch their camps,
     Follow me, follow me,
     For a midnight ramble!
     O! what a mighty fog,
     What a merry night O ho!
     Follow, follow, nigher, nigher -
     Over bank, and pond, and briar,
     Down into the croaking ditches,
     Rotten log,
     Spotted frog,
     Beetle bright
     With crawling light,
     What a joy O ho!
     Deep into the purple bog -
     What a joy O ho!
     Where like hosts of puckered witches
     All the shivering agues sit
     Warming hands and chafing feet,
     By the blue marsh-hovering oils:
     O the fools for all their moans!
     Not a forest mad with fire
     Could still their teeth, or warm their bones,
     Or loose them from their chilly coils.
     What a clatter,
     How they chatter!
     Shrink and huddle,
     All a muddle!
     What a joy O ho!
     Down we go, down we go,
     What a joy O ho!
     Soon shall I be down below,
     Plunging with a grey fat friar,
     Hither, thither, to and fro,
     Breathing mists and whisking lamps,
     Plashing in the shiny swamps;
     While my cousin Lantern Jack,
     With cook ears and cunning eyes,
     Turns him round upon his back,
     Daubs him oozy green and black,
     Sits upon his rolling size,
     Where he lies, where he lies,
     Groaning full of sack -
     Staring with his great round eyes!
     What a joy O ho!
     Sits upon him in the swamps
     Breathing mists and whisking lamps!
     What a joy O ho!
     Such a lad is Lantern Jack,
     When he rides the black nightmare
     Through the fens, and puts a glare
     In the friar's track.
     Such a frolic lad, good lack!
     To turn a friar on his back,
     Trip him, clip him, whip him, nip him.
     Lay him sprawling, smack!
     Such a lad is Lantern Jack!
     Such a tricksy lad, good lack!
     What a joy O ho!
     Follow me, follow me,
     Where he sits, and you shall see!



     SONG



     Fair and false! No dawn will greet
     Thy waking beauty as of old;
     The little flower beneath thy feet
     Is alien to thy smile so cold;
     The merry bird flown up to meet
     Young morning from his nest i' the wheat
     Scatters his joy to wood and wold,
     But scorns the arrogance of gold.

     False and fair! I scarce know why,
     But standing in the lonely air,
     And underneath the blessed sky,
     I plead for thee in my despair; -
     For thee cut off, both heart and eye
     From living truth; thy spring quite dry;
     For thee, that heaven my thought may share,
     Forget--how false! and think--how fair!



     SONG



     Two wedded lovers watched the rising moon,
     That with her strange mysterious beauty glowing,
     Over misty hills and waters flowing,
     Crowned the long twilight loveliness of June:
     And thus in me, and thus in me, they spake,
     The solemn secret of fist love did wake.

     Above the hills the blushing orb arose;
     Her shape encircled by a radiant bower,
     In which the nightingale with charmed power
     Poured forth enchantment o'er the dark repose:
     And thus in me, and thus in me, they said,
     Earth's mists did with the sweet new spirit wed.

     Far up the sky with ever purer beam,
     Upon the throne of night the moon was seated,
     And down the valley glens the shades retreated,
     And silver light was on the open stream.
     And thus in me, and thus in me, they sighed,
     Aspiring Love has hallowed Passion's tide.



     SONG



     I cannot lose thee for a day,
     But like a bird with restless wing
     My heart will find thee far away,
     And on thy bosom fall and sing,
     My nest is here, my rest is here; -
     And in the lull of wind and rain,
     Fresh voices make a sweet refrain,
     'His rest is there, his nest is there.'

     With thee the wind and sky are fair,
     But parted, both are strange and dark;
     And treacherous the quiet air
     That holds me singing like a lark,
     O shield my love, strong arm above!
     Till in the hush of wind and rain,
     Fresh voices make a rich refrain,
     'The arm above will shield thy love.'



     DAPHNE



     Musing on the fate of Daphne,
     Many feelings urged my breast,
     For the God so keen desiring,
     And the Nymph so deep distrest.

     Never flashed thro' sylvan valley
     Visions so divinely fair!
     He with early ardour glowing,
     She with rosy anguish rare.

     Only still more sweet and lovely
     For those terrors on her brows,
     Those swift glances wild and brilliant,
     Those delicious panting vows.

     Timidly the timid shoulders
     Shrinking from the fervid hand!
     Dark the tide of hair back-flowing
     From the blue-veined temples bland!

     Lovely, too, divine Apollo
     In the speed of his pursuit;
     With his eye an azure lustre,
     And his voice a summer lute!

     Looking like some burnished eagle
     Hovering o'er a fluttered bird;
     Not unseen of silver Naiad,
     And of wistful Dryad heard!

     Many a morn the naked beauty
     Saw her bright reflection drown
     In the flowing smooth-faced river,
     While the god came sheening down.

     Down from Pindus bright Peneus
     Tells its muse-melodious source;
     Sacred is its fountained birthplace,
     And the Orient floods its course.

     Many a morn the sunny darling
     Saw the rising chariot-rays,
     From the winding river-reaches,
     Mellowing in amber haze.

     Thro' the flaming mountain gorges
     Lo, the River leaps the plain;
     Like a wild god-stridden courser,
     Tossing high its foamy mane.

     Then he swims thro' laurelled sunlight,
     Full of all sensations sweet,
     Misty with his morning incense,
     To the mirrored maiden's feet!

     Wet and bright the dinting pebbles
     Shine where oft she paused and stood;
     All her dreamy warmth revolving,
     While the chilly waters wooed.

     Like to rosy-born Aurora,
     Glowing freshly into view,
     When her doubtful foot she ventures
     On the first cold morning blue.

     White as that Thessalian lily,
     Fairest Tempe's fairest flower,
     Lo, the tall Peneian virgin
     Stands beneath her bathing bower.

     There the laurell'd wreaths o'erarching
     Crown'd the dainty shuddering maid;
     There the dark prophetic laurel
     Kiss'd her with its sister shade.

     There the young green glistening leaflets
     Hush'd with love their breezy peal;
     There the little opening flowerets
     Blush'd beneath her vermeil heel!

     There among the conscious arbours
     Sounds of soft tumultuous wail,
     Mysteries of love, melodious,
     Came upon the lyric gale!

     Breathings of a deep enchantment,
     Effluence of immortal grace,
     Flitted round her faltering footstep,
     Spread a balm about her face!

     Witless of the enamour'd presence,
     Like a dreamy lotus bud
     From its drowsy stem down-drooping,
     Gazed she in the glowing flood.

     Softly sweet with fluttering presage,
     Felt she that ethereal sense,
     Drinking charms of love delirious,
     Reaping bliss of love intense!

     All the air was thrill'd with sunrise,
     Birds made music of her name,
     And the god-impregnate water
     Claspt her image ere she came.

     Richer for that glance unconscious!
     Dearer for that soft dismay!
     And the sudden self-possession!
     And the smile as bright as day!

     Plunging 'mid her scattered tresses,
     With her blue invoking eyes;
     See her like a star descending!
     Like a rosebud see her rise!

     Like a rosebud in the morning
     Dashing off its jewell'd dews,
     Ere unfolding all its fragrance
     It is gathered by the muse!

     Beauteous in the foamy laughter
     Bubbling round her shrinking waist,
     Lo! from locks and lips and eyelids
     Rain the glittering pearl-drops chaste!

     And about the maiden rapture
     Still the ruddy ripples play'd,
     Ebbing round in startled circlets
     When her arms began to wade;

     Flowing in like tides attracted
     To the glowing crescent shine!
     Clasping her ambrosial whiteness
     Like an Autumn-tinted vine!

     Sinking low with love's emotion!
     Levying with look and tone
     All love's rosy arts to mimic
     Cytherea's magic zone!

     Trembling up with adoration
     To the crimson daisy tip
     Budding from the snowy bosom -
     Fainter than the rose-red lip!

     Rising in a storm of wavelets,
     That for shelter, feigning fright,
     Prest to those twin-heaving havens,
     Harbour'd there beneath her light;

     Gleaming in a whirl of eddies
     Round her lucid throat and neck;
     Eddying in a gleam of dimples
     Up against her bloomy cheek;

     Bribing all the breezy water
     With rich warmth, the nymph to keep
     In a self-imprison'd plaisance,
     Tempting her from deep to deep.

     Till at last delirious passion
     Thrill'd the god to wild excess,
     And the fervour of a moment
     Made divinity confess;

     And he stood in all his glory!
     But so radiant, being near,
     That her eyes were frozen on him
     In a fascinated fear!

     All with orient splendour shining,
     All with roseate birth aglow,
     Gleam'd the golden god before her,
     With his golden crescent bow.

     Soon the dazzled light subsided,
     And he seem'd a beauteous youth,
     Form'd to gain the maiden's murmurs,
     And to pledge the vows of truth.

     Ah! that thus he had continued!
     O, that such for her had been!
     Graceful with all godlike beauty,
     But so humanly serene!

     Cheeks, and mouth, and mellow ringlets,
     Bounteous as the mid-day beam;
     Pleading looks and wistful tremour,
     Tender as a maiden's dream!

     Palms that like a bird's throbb'd bosom
     Palpitate with eagerness,
     Lips, the bridals of the roses,
     Dewy sweet from the caress!

     Lips and limbs, and eyes and ringlets,
     Swaying, praying to one prayer,
     Like a lyre, swept by a spirit,
     In the still, enraptur'd air.

     Like a lyre in some far valley,
     Uttering ravishments divine!
     All its strings to viewless fingers
     Yearning, modulations fine!

     Yearning with melodious fervour!
     Like a beauteous maiden flower,
     When the young beloved three paces
     Hovers from the bridal bower.

     Throbbing thro' the dawning stillness!
     As a heart within a breast,
     When the young beloved is stepping
     Radiant to the nuptial nest.

     O for Daphne! gentle Daphne
     Ever warmer by degrees
     Whispers full of hopes and visions
     Throng her ears like honey bees!

     Never yet was lonely blossom
     Woo'd with such delicious voice!
     Never since hath mortal maiden
     Dwelt on such celestial choice!

     Love-suffused she quivers, falters -
     Falters, sighs, but never speaks,
     All her rosy blood up-gushing
     Overflows her ripe young cheeks.

     Blushing, sweet with virgin blushes,
     All her loveliness a-flame,
     Stands she in the orient waters,
     Stricken o'er with speechless shame!

     Ah! but lovelier, ever lovelier,
     As more deep the colour glows,
     And the honey-laden lily
     Changes to the fragrant rose.

     While the god with meek embraces,
     Whispering all his sacred charms,
     Softly folds her, gently holds her,
     In his white encircling arms!

     But, O Dian! veil not wholly
     Thy pale crescent from the morn!
     Vanish not, O virgin goddess,
     With that look of pallid scorn!

     Still thy pure protecting influence
     Shed from those fair watchful eyes! -
     Lo! her angry orb has vanished,
     And the bright sun thrones the skies!

     Voicelessly the forest Virgin
     Vanished! but one look she gave -
     Keen as Niobean arrow
     Thro' the maiden's heart it drave.

     Thus toward that throning bosom
     Where all earth is warmed,--each spot
     Nourished with autumnal blessings -
     Icy chill was Daphne caught.

     Icy chill! but swift revulsion
     All her gentler self renewed,
     Even as icy Winter quickens
     With bud-opening warmth imbued.

     Even as a torpid brooklet,
     That to the night-gleaming moon
     Flashed in turn the frozen glances,
     Melts upon the breast of noon.

     But no more--O never, never,
     Turns she to that bosom bright,
     Swiftly all her senses counsel,
     All her nerves are strung to flight.

     O'er the brows of radiant Pindus
     Rolls a shadow dark and cold,
     And a sound of lamentation
     Issues from its mournful fold.

     Voice of the far-sighted Muses!
     Cry of keen foreboding song!
     Every cleft of startled Tempe
     Tingles with it sharp and long.

     Over bourn and bosk and dingle,
     Over rivers, over rills,
     Runs the sad subservient Echo
     Toward the dim blue distant hills!

     And another and another!
     'Tis a cry more wild than all;
     And the hills with muffled voices
     Answer 'Daphne!' to the call.

     And another and another!
     'Tis a cry so wildly sweet,
     That her charmed heart turns rebel
     To the instinct of her feet;

     And she pauses for an instant;
     But his arms have scarcely slid
     Round her waist in cestian girdles,
     And his low voluptuous lid

     Lifted pleading, and the honey
     Of his mouth for hers athirst,
     Ruby glistening, raised for moisture -
     Like a bud that waits to burst

     In the sweet espousing showers -
     And his tongue has scarce begun
     With its inarticulate burthen,
     And the clouds scarce show the sun

     As it pierces thro' a crevice
     Of the mass that closed it o'er,
     When again the horror flashes -
     And she turns to flight once more!

     And again o'er radiant Pindus
     Rolls the shadow dark and cold,
     And the sound of lamentation
     Issues from its sable fold!

     And again the light winds chide her
     As she darts from his embrace -
     And again the far-voiced echoes
     Speak their tidings of the chase.

     Loudly now as swiftly, swiftly,
     O'er the glimmering sands she speeds;
     Wildly now as in the furzes
     From the piercing spikes she bleeds.

     Deeply and with direful anguish,
     As above each crimson drop
     Passion checks the god Apollo,
     And love bids him weep and stop. -

     He above each drop of crimson
     Shadowing--like the laurel leaf
     That above himself will shadow -
     Sheds a fadeless look of grief.

     Then with love's remorseful discord,
     With its own desire at war,
     Sighing turns, while dimly fleeting
     Daphne flies the chase afar.

     But all nature is against her!
     Pan, with all his sylvan troop,
     Thro' the vista'd woodland valleys
     Blocks her course with cry and whoop!

     In the twilights of the thickets
     Trees bend down their gnarled boughs,
     Wild green leaves and low curved branches
     Hold her hair and beat her brows.

     Many a brake of brushwood covert,
     Where cold darkness slumbers mute,
     Slips a shrub to thwart her passage,
     Slides a hand to clutch her foot.

     Glens and glades of lushest verdure
     Toil her in their tawny mesh,
     Wilder-woofed ways and alleys
     Lock her struggling limbs in leash.

     Feathery grasses, flowery mosses,
     Knot themselves to make her trip;
     Sprays and stubborn sprigs outstretching
     Put a bridle on her lip;

     Many a winding lane betrays her,
     Many a sudden bosky shoot,
     And her knee makes many a stumble
     O'er some hidden damp old root,

     Whose quaint face peers green and dusky
     'Mongst the matted growth of plants,
     While she rises wild and weltering,
     Speeding on with many pants.

     Tangles of the wild red strawberry
     Spread their freckled trammels frail;
     In the pathway creeping brambles
     Catch her in their thorny trail.

     All the widely sweeping greensward
     Shifts and swims from knoll to knoll;
     Grey rough-fingered oak and elm wood
     Push her by from bole to bole.

     Groves of lemon, groves of citron,
     Tall high-foliaged plane and palm,
     Bloomy myrtle, light-blue olive,
     Wave her back with gusts of balm.

     Languid jasmine, scrambling briony,
     Walls of close-festooning braid,
     Fling themselves about her, mingling
     With her wafted looks, waylaid.

     Twisting bindweed, honey'd woodbine,
     Cling to her, while, red and blue,
     On her rounded form ripe berries
     Dash and die in gory dew.

     Running ivies dark and lingering
     Round her light limbs drag and twine;
     Round her waist with languorous tendrils
     Reels and wreathes the juicy vine;

     Reining in the flying creature
     With its arms about her mouth;
     Bursting all its mellowing bunches
     To seduce her husky drouth;

     Crowning her with amorous clusters;
     Pouring down her sloping back
     Fresh-born wines in glittering rillets,
     Following her in crimson track.

     Buried, drenched in dewy foliage,
     Thus she glimmers from the dawn,
     Watched by every forest creature,
     Fleet-foot Oread, frolic Faun.

     Silver-sandalled Arethusa
     Not more swiftly fled the sands,
     Fled the plains and fled the sunlights,
     Fled the murmuring ocean strands.

     O, that now the earth would open!
     O, that now the shades would hide!
     O, that now the gods would shelter!
     Caverns lead and seas divide!

     Not more faint soft-lowing Io
     Panted in those starry eyes,
     When the sleepless midnight meadows
     Piteously implored the skies!

     Still her breathless flight she urges
     By the sanctuary stream,
     And the god with golden swiftness
     Follows like an eastern beam.

     Her the close bewildering greenery
     Darkens with its duskiest green, -
     Him each little leaflet welcomes,
     Flushing with an orient sheen.

     Thus he nears, and now all Tempe
     Rings with his melodious cry,
     Avenues and blue expanses
     Beam in his large lustrous eye!

     All the branches start to music!
     As if from a secret spring
     Thousands of sweet bills are bubbling
     In the nest and on the wing.

     Gleams and shines the glassy river
     And rich valleys every one;
     But of all the throbbing beauty
     Brightest! singled by the sun!

     Ivy round her glimmering ancle,
     Vine about her glowing brow,
     Never sure was bride so beauteous,
     Daphne, chosen nymph, as thou!

     Thus he nears! and now she feels him
     Breathing hot on every limb;
     And he hears her own quick pantings -
     Ah! that they might be for him.

     O, that like the flower he tramples,
     Bending from his golden tread,
     Full of fair celestial ardours,
     She would bow her bridal head.

     O, that like the flower she presses,
     Nodding from her lily touch,
     Light as in the harmless breezes,
     She would know the god for such!

     See! the golden arms are round her -
     To the air she grasps and clings!
     See! his glowing arms have wound her -
     To the sky she shrieks and springs!

     See! the flushing chace of Tempe
     Trembles with Olympian air -
     See! green sprigs and buds are shooting
     From those white raised arms of prayer!

     In the earth her feet are rooting! -
     Breasts and limbs and lifted eyes,
     Hair and lips and stretching fingers,
     Fade away--and fadeless rise.

     And the god whose fervent rapture
     Clasps her finds his close embrace
     Full of palpitating branches,
     And new leaves that bud apace,

     Bound his wonder-stricken forehead; -
     While in ebbing measures slow
     Sounds of softly dying pulses
     Pause and quiver, pause and go;

     Go, and come again, and flutter
     On the verge of life,--then flee!
     All the white ambrosial beauty
     Is a lustrous Laurel Tree!

     Still with the great panting love-chase
     All its running sap is warmed; -
     But from head to foot the virgin
     Is transfigured and transformed.

     Changed!--yet the green Dryad nature
     Is instinct with human ties,
     And above its anguish'd lover
     Breathes pathetic sympathies;

     Sympathies of love and sorrow;
     Joy in her divine escape;
     Breathing through her bursting foliage
     Comfort to his bending shape.

     Vainly now the floating Naiads
     Seek to pierce the laurel maze,
     Nought but laurel meets their glances,
     Laurel glistens as they gaze.

     Nought but bright prophetic laurel!
     Laurel over eyes and brows,
     Over limbs and over bosom,
     Laurel leaves and laurel boughs!

     And in vain the listening Dryad
     Shells her hand against her ear! -
     All is silence--save the echo
     Travelling in the distance drear.



     LONDON BY LAMPLIGHT



     There stands a singer in the street,
     He has an audience motley and meet;
     Above him lowers the London night,
     And around the lamps are flaring bright.

     His minstrelsy may be unchaste -
     'Tis much unto that motley taste,
     And loud the laughter he provokes
     From those sad slaves of obscene jokes.

     But woe is many a passer by
     Who as he goes turns half an eye,
     To see the human form divine
     Thus Circe-wise changed into swine!

     Make up the sum of either sex
     That all our human hopes perplex,
     With those unhappy shapes that know
     The silent streets and pale cock-crow.

     And can I trace in such dull eyes
     Of fireside peace or country skies?
     And could those haggard cheeks presume
     To memories of a May-tide bloom?

     Those violated forms have been
     The pride of many a flowering green;
     And still the virgin bosom heaves
     With daisy meads and dewy leaves.

     But stygian darkness reigns within
     The river of death from the founts of sin;
     And one prophetic water rolls
     Its gas-lit surface for their souls.

     I will not hide the tragic sight -
     Those drown'd black locks, those dead lips white,
     Will rise from out the slimy flood,
     And cry before God's throne for blood!

     Those stiffened limbs, that swollen face, -
     Pollution's last and best embrace,
     Will call, as such a picture can,
     For retribution upon man.

     Hark! how their feeble laughter rings,
     While still the ballad-monger sings,
     And flatters their unhappy breasts
     With poisonous words and pungent jests.

     O how would every daisy blush
     To see them 'mid that earthy crush!
     O dumb would be the evening thrush,
     And hoary look the hawthorn bush!

     The meadows of their infancy
     Would shrink from them, and every tree,
     And every little laughing spot,
     Would hush itself and know them not.

     Precursor to what black despairs
     Was that child's face which once was theirs!
     And O to what a world of guile
     Was herald that young angel smile!

     That face which to a father's eye
     Was balm for all anxiety;
     That smile which to a mother's heart
     Went swifter than the swallow's dart!

     O happy homes! that still they know
     At intervals, with what a woe
     Would ye look on them, dim and strange,
     Suffering worse than winter change!

     And yet could I transplant them there,
     To breathe again the innocent air
     Of youth, and once more reconcile
     Their outcast looks with nature's smile;

     Could I but give them one clear day
     Of this delicious loving May,
     Release their souls from anguish dark,
     And stand them underneath the lark; -

     I think that Nature would have power
     To graft again her blighted flower
     Upon the broken stem, renew
     Some portion of its early hue; -

     The heavy flood of tears unlock,
     More precious than the Scriptured rock;
     At least instil a happier mood,
     And bring them back to womanhood.

     Alas! how many lost ones claim
     This refuge from despair and shame!
     How many, longing for the light,
     Sink deeper in the abyss this night!

     O, crying sin! O, blushing thought!
     Not only unto those that wrought
     The misery and deadly blight;
     But those that outcast them this night!

     O, agony of grief! for who
     Less dainty than his race, will do
     Such battle for their human right,
     As shall awake this startled night?

     Proclaim this evil human page
     Will ever blot the Golden Age
     That poets dream and saints invite,
     If it be unredeemed this night?

     This night of deep solemnity,
     And verdurous serenity,
     While over every fleecy field
     The dews descend and odours yield.

     This night of gleaming floods and falls,
     Of forest glooms and sylvan calls,
     Of starlight on the pebbly rills,
     And twilight on the circling hills.

     This night! when from the paths of men
     Grey error steams as from a fen;
     As o'er this flaring City wreathes
     The black cloud-vapour that it breathes!

     This night from which a morn will spring
     Blooming on its orient wing;
     A morn to roll with many more
     Its ghostly foam on the twilight shore.

     Morn! when the fate of all mankind
     Hangs poised in doubt, and man is blind.
     His duties of the day will seem
     The fact of life, and mine the dream:

     The destinies that bards have sung,
     Regeneration to the young,
     Reverberation of the truth,
     And virtuous culture unto youth!

     Youth! in whose season let abound
     All flowers and fruits that strew the ground,
     Voluptuous joy where love consents,
     And health and pleasure pitch their tents:

     All rapture and all pure delight;
     A garden all unknown to blight;
     But never the unnatural sight
     That throngs the shameless song this night!



     SONG



     Under boughs of breathing May,
     In the mild spring-time I lay,
     Lonely, for I had no love;
     And the sweet birds all sang for pity,
     Cuckoo, lark, and dove.

     Tell me, cuckoo, then I cried,
     Dare I woo and wed a bride?
     I, like thee, have no home-nest;
     And the twin notes thus tuned their ditty, -
     'Love can answer best.'

     Nor, warm dove with tender coo,
     Have I thy soft voice to woo,
     Even were a damsel by;
     And the deep woodland crooned its ditty, -
     'Love her first and try.'

     Nor have I, wild lark, thy wing,
     That from bluest heaven can bring
     Bliss, whatever fate befall;
     And the sky-lyrist trilled this ditty, -
     'Love will give thee all.'

     So it chanced while June was young,
     Wooing well with fervent song,
     I had won a damsel coy;
     And the sweet birds that sang for pity,
     Jubileed for joy.



     PASTORALS



     I

     How sweet on sunny afternoons,
     For those who journey light and well,
     To loiter up a hilly rise
     Which hides the prospect far beyond,
     And fancy all the landscape lying
     Beautiful and still;

     Beneath a sky of summer blue,
     Whose rounded cloudlets, folded soft,
     Gaze on the scene which we await
     And picture from their peacefulness;
     So calmly to the earth inclining
     Float those loving shapes!

     Like airy brides, each singling out
     A spot to love and bless with love,
     Their creamy bosoms glowing warm,
     Till distance weds them to the hills,
     And with its latest gleam the river
     Sinks in their embrace.

     And silverly the river runs,
     And many a graceful wind he makes,
     By fields where feed the happy flocks,
     And hedge-rows hushing pleasant lanes,
     The charms of English home reflected
     In his shining eye:

     Ancestral oak, broad-foliaged elm,
     Rich meadows sunned and starred with flowers,
     The cottage breathing tender smoke
     Against the brooding golden air,
     With glimpses of a stately mansion
     On a woodland sward;

     And circling round, as with a ring,
     The distance spreading amber haze,
     Enclosing hills and pastures sweet;
     A depth of soft and mellow light
     Which fills the heart with sudden yearning
     Aimless and serene!

     No disenchantment follows here,
     For nature's inspiration moves
     The dream which she herself fulfils;
     And he whose heart, like valley warmth,
     Steams up with joy at scenes like this
     Shall never be forlorn.

     And O for any human soul
     The rapture of a wide survey -
     A valley sweeping to the West,
     With all its wealth of loveliness,
     Is more than recompense for days
     That taught us to endure.

     II

     Yon upland slope which hides the sun
     Ascending from his eastern deeps,
     And now against the hues of dawn
     One level line of tillage rears;
     The furrowed brow of toil and time;
     To many it is but a sweep of land!

     To others 'tis an Autumn trust,
     But unto me a mystery; -
     An influence strange and swift as dreams;
     A whispering of old romance;
     A temple naked to the clouds;
     Or one of nature's bosoms fresh revealed,

     Heaving with adoration! there
     The work of husbandry is done,
     And daily bread is daily earned;
     Nor seems there ought to indicate
     The springs which move in me such thoughts,
     But from my soul a spirit calls them up.

     All day into the open sky,
     All night to the eternal stars,
     For ever both at morn and eve
     Men mellow distances draw near,
     And shadows lengthen in the dusk,
     Athwart the heavens it rolls its glimmering line!

     When twilight from the dream-hued West
     Sighs hush! and all the land is still;
     When, from the lush empurpling East,
     The twilight of the crowing cock
     Peers on the drowsy village roofs,
     Athwart the heavens that glimmering line is seen.

     And now beneath the rising sun,
     Whose shining chariot overpeers
     The irradiate ridge, while fetlock deep
     In the rich soil his coursers plunge -
     How grand in robes of light it looks!
     How glorious with rare suggestive grace!

     The ploughman mounting up the height
     Becomes a glowing shape, as though
     'Twere young Triptolemus, plough in hand,
     While Ceres in her amber scarf
     With gentle love directs him how
     To wed the willing earth and hope for fruits!

     The furrows running up are fraught
     With meanings; there the goddess walks,
     While Proserpine is young, and there -
     'Mid the late autumn sheaves, her voice
     Sobbing and choked with dumb despair -
     The nights will hear her wailing for her child!

     Whatever dim tradition tells,
     Whatever history may reveal,
     Or fancy, from her starry brows,
     Of light or dreamful lustre shed,
     Could not at this sweet time increase
     The quiet consecration of the spot.

     Blest with the sweat of labour, blest
     With the young sun's first vigorous beams,
     Village hope and harvest prayer, -
     The heart that throbs beneath it holds
     A bliss so perfect in itself
     Men's thoughts must borrow rather than bestow.

     III

     Now standing on this hedgeside path,
     Up which the evening winds are blowing
     Wildly from the lingering lines
     Of sunset o'er the hills;
     Unaided by one motive thought,
     My spirit with a strange impulsion
     Rises, like a fledgling,
     Whose wings are not mature, but still
     Supported by its strong desire
     Beats up its native air and leaves
     The tender mother's nest.

     Great music under heaven is made,
     And in the track of rushing darkness
     Comes the solemn shape of night,
     And broods above the earth.
     A thing of Nature am I now,
     Abroad, without a sense or feeling
     Born not of her bosom;
     Content with all her truths and fates;
     Ev'n as yon strip of grass that bows
     Above the new-born violet bloom,
     And sings with wood and field.

     IV

     Lo, as a tree, whose wintry twigs
     Drink in the sun with fibrous joy,
     And down into its dampest roots
     Thrills quickened with the draught of life,
     I wake unto the dawn, and leave my griefs to drowse.

     I rise and drink the fresh sweet air:
     Each draught a future bud of Spring;
     Each glance of blue a birth of green;
     I will not mimic yonder oak
     That dallies with dead leaves ev'n while the primrose peeps.

     But full of these warm-whispering beams,
     Like Memnon in his mother's eye, -
     Aurora! when the statue stone
     Moaned soft to her pathetic touch, -
     My soul shall own its parent in the founts of day!

     And ever in the recurring light,
     True to the primal joy of dawn,
     Forget its barren griefs; and aye
     Like aspens in the faintest breeze
     Turn all its silver sides and tremble into song.

     V

     Now from the meadow floods the wild duck clamours,
     Now the wood pigeon wings a rapid flight,
     Now the homeward rookery follows up its vanguard,
     And the valley mists are curling up the hills.

     Three short songs gives the clear-voiced throstle,
     Sweetening the twilight ere he fills the nest;
     While the little bird upon the leafless branches
     Tweets to its mate a tiny loving note.

     Deeper the stillness hangs on every motion;
     Calmer the silence follows every call;
     Now all is quiet save the roosting pheasant,
     The bell-wether's tinkle and the watch-dog's bark.

     Softly shine the lights from the silent kindling homestead,
     Stars of the hearth to the shepherd in the fold;
     Springs of desire to the traveller on the roadway;
     Ever breathing incense to the ever-blessing sky!

     VI

     How barren would this valley be,
     Without the golden orb that gazes
     On it, broadening to hues
     Of rose, and spreading wings of amber;
     Blessing it before it falls asleep.

     How barren would this valley be,
     Without the human lives now beating
     In it, or the throbbing hearts
     Far distant, who their flower of childhood
     Cherish here, and water it with tears!

     How barren should I be, were I
     Without above that loving splendour,
     Shedding light and warmth! without
     Some kindred natures of my kind
     To joy in me, or yearn towards me now!

     VII

     Summer glows warm on the meadows, and speedwell, and gold-cups, and
     daisies
     Darken 'mid deepening masses of sorrel, and shadowy grasses
     Show the ripe hue to the farmer, and summon the scythe and the hay-
     makers
     Down from the village; and now, even now, the air smells of the
     mowing,
     And the sharp song of the scythe whistles daily; from dawn, till the
     gloaming
     Wears its cool star, sweet and welcome to all flaming faces afield
     now;
     Heavily weighs the hot season, and drowses the darkening foliage,
     Drooping with languor; the white cloud floats, but sails not, for
     windless
     Heaven's blue tents it; no lark singing up in its fleecy white
     valleys;
     Up in its fairy white valleys, once feathered with minstrels,
     melodious
     With the invisible joy that wakes dawn o'er the green fields of
     England.
     Summer glows warm on the meadows; then come, let us roam thro' them
     gaily,
     Heedless of heat, and the hot-kissing sun, and the fear of dark
     freckles.
     Never one kiss will he give on a neck, or a lily-white forehead,
     Chin, hand, or bosom uncovered, all panting, to take the chance
     coolness,
     But full sure the fiery pressure leaves seal of espousal.
     Heed him not; come, tho' he kiss till the soft little upper-lip
     loses
     Half its pure whiteness; just speck'd where the curve of the rosy
     mouth reddens.

     Come, let him kiss, let him kiss, and his kisses shall make thee the
     sweeter.
     Thou art no nun, veiled and vowed; doomed to nourish a withering
     pallor!
     City exotics beside thee would show like bleached linen at mid-day,
     Hung upon hedges of eglantine! Thou in the freedom of nature,
     Full of her beauty and wisdom, gentleness, joyance, and kindness!
     Come, and like bees will we gather the rich golden honey of
     noontide;
     Deep in the sweet summer meadows, border'd by hillside and river,
     Lined with long trenches half-hidden, where smell of white meadow-
     sweet, sweetest,
     Blissfully hovers--O sweetest! but pluck it not! even in the
     tenderest
     Grasp it will lose breath and wither; like many, not made for a
     posy.

     See, the sun slopes down the meadows, where all the flowers are
     falling!
     Falling unhymned; for the nightingale scarce ever charms the long
     twilight:
     Mute with the cares of the nest; only known by a 'chuck, chuck,' and
     dovelike
     Call of content, but the finch and the linnet and blackcap pipe
     loudly.
     Round on the western hill-side warbles the rich-billed ouzel;
     And the shrill throstle is filling the tangled thickening copses;
     Singing o'er hyacinths hid, and most honey'd of flowers, white
     field-rose.
     Joy thus to revel all day in the grass of our own beloved country;
     Revel all day, till the lark mounts at eve with his sweet 'tirra-
     lirra':
     Trilling delightfully. See, on the river the slow-rippled surface
     Shining; the slow ripple broadens in circles; the bright surface
     smoothens;
     Now it is flat as the leaves of the yet unseen water-lily.
     There dart the lives of a day, ever-varying tactics fantastic.
     There, by the wet-mirrored osiers, the emerald wing of the
     kingfisher
     Flashes, the fish in his beak! there the dab-chick dived, and the
     motion
     Lazily undulates all thro' the tall standing army of rushes.

     Joy thus to revel all day, till the twilight turns us homeward!
     Till all the lingering deep-blooming splendour of sunset is over,
     And the one star shines mildly in mellowing hues, like a spirit
     Sent to assure us that light never dieth, tho' day is now buried.
     Saying: to-morrow, to-morrow, few hours intervening, that interval
     Tuned by the woodlark in heaven, to-morrow my semblance, far
     eastward,
     Heralds the day 'tis my mission eternal to seal and to prophecy.
     Come then, and homeward; passing down the close path of the meadows.
     Home like the bees stored with sweetness; each with a lark in the
     bosom,
     Trilling for ever, and oh! will yon lark ever cease to sing up
     there?



     TO A SKYLARK



     O skylark! I see thee and call thee joy!
     Thy wings bear thee up to the breast of the dawn;
     I see thee no more, but thy song is still
     The tongue of the heavens to me!

     Thus are the days when I was a boy;
     Sweet while I lived in them, dear now they're gone:
     I feel them no longer, but still, O still
     They tell of the heavens to me.



     SONG--SPRING



     When buds of palm do burst and spread
     Their downy feathers in the lane,
     And orchard blossoms, white and red,
     Breathe Spring delight for Autumn gain;
     And the skylark shakes his wings in the rain;

     O then is the season to look for a bride!
     Choose her warily, woo her unseen;
     For the choicest maids are those that hide
     Like dewy violets under the green.



     SONG--AUTUMN



     When nuts behind the hazel-leaf
     Are brown as the squirrel that hunts them free,
     And the fields are rich with the sun-burnt sheaf,
     'Mid the blue cornflower and the yellowing tree;
     And the farmer glows and beams in his glee;

     O then is the season to wed thee a bride!
     Ere the garners are filled and the ale-cups foam;
     For a smiling hostess is the pride
     And flower of every Harvest Home.



     SORROWS AND JOYS



     Bury thy sorrows, and they shall rise
     As souls to the immortal skies,
     And there look down like mothers' eyes.

     But let thy joys be fresh as flowers,
     That suck the honey of the showers,
     And bloom alike on huts and towers.

     So shall thy days be sweet and bright;
     Solemn and sweet thy starry night,
     Conscious of love each change of light.

     The stars will watch the flowers asleep,
     The flowers will feel the soft stars weep,
     And both will mix sensations deep.

     With these below, with those above,
     Sits evermore the brooding dove,
     Uniting both in bonds of love.

     For both by nature are akin;
     Sorrow, the ashen fruit of sin,
     And joy, the juice of life within.

     Children of earth are these; and those
     The spirits of divine repose -
     Death radiant o'er all human woes.

     O, think what then had been thy doom,
     If homeless and without a tomb
     They had been left to haunt the gloom!

     O, think again what now they are -
     Motherly love, tho' dim and far,
     Imaged in every lustrous star.

     For they, in their salvation, know
     No vestige of their former woe,
     While thro' them all the heavens do flow.

     Thus art thou wedded to the skies,
     And watched by ever-loving eyes,
     And warned by yearning sympathies.



     SONG



     The flower unfolds its dawning cup,
     And the young sun drinks the star-dews up,
     At eve it droops with the bliss of day,
     And dreams in the midnight far away.

     So am I in thy sole, sweet glance
     Pressed with a weight of utterance;
     Lovingly all my leaves unfold,
     And gleam to the beams of thirsty gold.

     At eve I droop, for then the swell
     Of feeling falters forth farewell; -
     At midnight I am dreaming deep,
     Of what has been, in blissful sleep.

     When--ah! when will love's own fight
     Wed me alike thro' day and night,
     When will the stars with their linking charms
     Wake us in each other's arms?



     SONG



     Thou to me art such a spring
     As the Arab seeks at eve,
     Thirsty from the shining sands;
     There to bathe his face and hands,
     While the sun is taking leave,
     And dewy sleep is a delicious thing.

     Thou to me art such a dream
     As he dreams upon the grass,
     While the bubbling coolness near
     Makes sweet music in his ear;
     And the stars that slowly pass
     In solitary grandeur o'er him gleam.

     Thou to me art such a dawn
     As the dawn whose ruddy kiss
     Wakes him to his darling steed;
     And again the desert speed,
     And again the desert bliss,
     Lightens thro' his veins, and he is gone!



     ANTIGONE



     The buried voice bespake Antigone.

     'O sister! couldst thou know, as thou wilt know,
     The bliss above, the reverence below,
     Enkindled by thy sacrifice for me;
     Thou wouldst at once with holy ecstasy
     Give thy warm limbs into the yearning earth.
     Sleep, Sister! for Elysium's dawning birth, -
     And faith will fill thee with what is to be!
     Sleep, for the Gods are watching over thee!
     Thy dream will steer thee to perform their will,
     As silently their influence they instil.
     O Sister! in the sweetness of thy prime,
     Thy hand has plucked the bitter flower of death;
     But this will dower thee with Elysian breath,
     That fade into a never-fading clime.
     Dear to the Gods are those that do like thee
     A solemn duty! for the tyranny
     Of kings is feeble to the soul that dares
     Defy them to fulfil its sacred cares:
     And weak against a mighty will are men.
     O, Torch between two brothers! in whose gleam
     Our slaughtered House doth shine as one again,
     Tho' severed by the sword; now may thy dream
     Kindle desire in thee for us, and thou,
     Forgetting not thy lover and his vow,
     Leaving no human memory forgot,
     Shalt cross, not unattended, the dark stream
     Which runs by thee in sleep and ripples not.
     The large stars glitter thro' the anxious night,
     And the deep sky broods low to look at thee:
     The air is hush'd and dark o'er land and sea,
     And all is waiting for the morrow light:
     So do thy kindred spirits wait for thee.
     O Sister! soft as on the downward rill,
     Will those first daybeams from the distant hill
     Fall on the smoothness of thy placid brow,
     Like this calm sweetness breathing thro' me now:
     And when the fated sounds shall wake thine eyes,
     Wilt thou, confiding in the supreme will,
     In all thy maiden steadfastness arise,
     Firm to obey and earnest to fulfil;
     Remembering the night thou didst not sleep,
     And this same brooding sky beheld thee creep,
     Defiant of unnatural decree,
     To where I lay upon the outcast land;
     Before the iron gates upon the plain;
     A wretched, graveless ghost, whose wailing chill
     Came to thy darkened door imploring thee;
     Yearning for burial like my brother slain; -
     And all was dared for love and piety!
     This thought will nerve again thy virgin hand
     To serve its purpose and its destiny.'

     She woke, they led her forth, and all was still.


     Swathed round in mist and crown'd with cloud,
     O Mountain! hid from peak to base -
     Caught up into the heavens and clasped
     In white ethereal arms that make
     Thy mystery of size sublime!
     What eye or thought can measure now
     Thy grand dilating loftiness!
     What giant crest dispute with thee
     Supremacy of air and sky!
     What fabled height with thee compare!
     Not those vine-terraced hills that seethe
     The lava in their fiery cusps;
     Nor that high-climbing robe of snow,
     Whose summits touch the morning star,
     And breathe the thinnest air of life;
     Nor crocus-couching Ida, warm
     With Juno's latest nuptial lure;
     Nor Tenedos whose dreamy eye
     Still looks upon beleaguered Troy;
     Nor yet Olympus crown'd with gods
     Can boast a majesty like thine,
     O Mountain! hid from peak to base,
     And image of the awful power
     With which the secret of all things,
     That stoops from heaven to garment earth,
     Can speak to any human soul,
     When once the earthly limits lose
     Their pointed heights and sharpened lines,
     And measureless immensity
     Is palpable to sense and sight.



     SONG



     No, no, the falling blossom is no sign
     Of loveliness destroy'd and sorrow mute;
     The blossom sheds its loveliness divine; -
     Its mission is to prophecy the fruit.

     Nor is the day of love for ever dead,
     When young enchantment and romance are gone;
     The veil is drawn, but all the future dread
     Is lightened by the finger of the dawn.

     Love moves with life along a darker way,
     They cast a shadow and they call it death:
     But rich is the fulfilment of their day;
     The purer passion and the firmer faith.



     THE TWO BLACKBIRDS



     A blackbird in a wicker cage,
     That hung and swung 'mid fruits and flowers,
     Had learnt the song-charm, to assuage
     The drearness of its wingless hours.

     And ever when the song was heard,
     From trees that shade the grassy plot
     Warbled another glossy bird,
     Whose mate not long ago was shot.

     Strange anguish in that creature's breast,
     Unwept like human grief, unsaid,
     Has quickened in its lonely nest
     A living impulse from the dead.

     Not to console its own wild smart, -
     But with a kindling instinct strong,
     The novel feeling of its heart
     Beats for the captive bird of song.

     And when those mellow notes are still,
     It hops from off its choral perch,
     O'er path and sward, with busy bill,
     All grateful gifts to peck and search.

     Store of ouzel dainties choice
     To those white swinging bars it brings;
     And with a low consoling voice
     It talks between its fluttering wings.

     Deeply in their bitter grief
     Those sufferers reciprocate,
     The one sings for its woodland life,
     The other for its murdered mate.

     But deeper doth the secret prove,
     Uniting those sad creatures so;
     Humanity's great link of love,
     The common sympathy of woe.

     Well divined from day to day
     Is the swift speech between them twain;
     For when the bird is scared away,
     The captive bursts to song again.

     Yet daily with its flattering voice,
     Talking amid its fluttering wings,
     Store of ouzel dainties choice
     With busy bill the poor bird brings.

     And shall I say, till weak with age
     Down from its drowsy branch it drops,
     It will not leave that captive cage,
     Nor cease those busy searching hops?

     Ah, no! the moral will not strain;
     Another sense will make it range,
     Another mate will soothe its pain,
     Another season work a change.

     But thro' the live-long summer, tried,
     A pure devotion we may see;
     The ebb and flow of Nature's tide;
     A self-forgetful sympathy.



     JULY



     I

     Blue July, bright July,
     Month of storms and gorgeous blue;
     Violet lightnings o'er thy sky,
     Heavy falls of drenching dew;
     Summer crown! o'er glen and glade
     Shrinking hyacinths in their shade;
     I welcome thee with all thy pride,
     I love thee like an Eastern bride.
     Though all the singing days are done
     As in those climes that clasp the sun;
     Though the cuckoo in his throat
     Leaves to the dove his last twin note;
     Come to me with thy lustrous eye,
     Golden-dawning oriently,
     Come with all thy shining blooms,
     Thy rich red rose and rolling glooms.
     Though the cuckoo doth but sing 'cuk, cuk,'
     And the dove alone doth coo;
     Though the cushat spins her coo-r-roo, r-r-roo -
     To the cuckoo's halting 'cuk.'

     II

     Sweet July, warm July!
     Month when mosses near the stream,
     Soft green mosses thick and shy,
     Are a rapture and a dream.
     Summer Queen! whose foot the fern
     Fades beneath while chestnuts burn;
     I welcome thee with thy fierce love,
     Gloom below and gleam above.
     Though all the forest trees hang dumb,
     With dense leafiness o'ercome;
     Though the nightingale and thrush,
     Pipe not from the bough or bush;
     Come to me with thy lustrous eye,
     Azure-melting westerly,
     The raptures of thy face unfold,
     And welcome in thy robes of gold!
     Tho' the nightingale broods--'sweet-chuck-sweet' -
     And the ouzel flutes so chill,
     Tho' the throstle gives but one shrilly trill
     To the nightingale's 'sweet-sweet.'



     SONG



     I would I were the drop of rain
     That falls into the dancing rill,
     For I should seek the river then,
     And roll below the wooded hill,
     Until I reached the sea.

     And O, to be the river swift
     That wrestles with the wilful tide,
     And fling the briny weeds aside
     That o'er the foamy billows drift,
     Until I came to thee!

     I would that after weary strife,
     And storm beneath the piping wind,
     The current of my true fresh life
     Might come unmingled, unimbrined,
     To where thou floatest free.

     Might find thee in some amber clime,
     Where sunlight dazzles on the sail,
     And dreaming of our plighted vale
     Might seal the dream, and bless the time,
     With maiden kisses three.



     SONG



     Come to me in any shape!
     As a victor crown'd with vine,
     In thy curls the clustering grape, -
     Or a vanquished slave:
     'Tis thy coming that I crave,
     And thy folding serpent twine,
     Close and dumb;
     Ne'er from that would I escape;
     Come to me in any shape!
     Only come!

     Only come, and in my breast
     Hide thy shame or show thy pride;
     In my bosom be caressed,
     Never more to part;
     Come into my yearning heart;
     I, the serpent, golden-eyed,
     Twine round thee;
     Twine thee with no venomed test;
     Absence makes the venomed nest;
     Come to me!

     Come to me, my lover, come!
     Violets on the tender stem
     Die and wither in their bloom,
     Under dewy grass;
     Come, my lover, or, alas!
     I shall die, shall die like them,
     Frail and lone;
     Come to me, my lover, come!
     Let thy bosom be my tomb:
     Come, my own!



     THE SHIPWRECK OF IDOMENEUS



     Swept from his fleet upon that fatal night
     When great Poseidon's sudden-veering wrath
     Scattered the happy homeward-floating Greeks
     Like foam-flakes off the waves, the King of Crete
     Held lofty commune with the dark Sea-god.
     His brows were crowned with victory, his cheeks
     Were flushed with triumph, but the mighty joy
     Of Troy's destruction and his own great deeds
     Passed, for the thoughts of home were dearer now,
     And sweet the memory of wife and child,
     And weary now the ten long, foreign years,
     And terrible the doubt of short delay -
     More terrible, O Gods! he cried, but stopped;
     Then raised his voice upon the storm and prayed.
     O thou, if injured, injured not by me,
     Poseidon! whom sea-deities obey
     And mortals worship, hear me! for indeed
     It was our oath to aid the cause of Greece,
     Not unespoused by Gods, and most of all
     By thee, if gentle currents, havens calm,
     Fair winds and prosperous voyage, and the Shape
     Impersonate in many a perilous hour,
     Both in the stately councils of the Kings,
     And when the husky battle murmured thick,
     May testify of services performed!
     But now the seas are haggard with thy wrath,
     Thy breath is tempest! never at the shores
     Of hostile Ilium did thy stormful brows
     Betray such fierce magnificence! not even
     On that wild day when, mad with torch and glare,
     The frantic crowds with eyes like starving wolves
     Burst from their ports impregnable, a stream
     Of headlong fury toward the hissing deep;
     Where then full-armed I stood in guard, compact
     Beside thee, and alone, with brand and spear,
     We held at bay the swarming brood, and poured
     Blood of choice warriors on the foot-ploughed sands!
     Thou, meantime, dark with conflict, as a cloud
     That thickens in the bosom of the West
     Over quenched sunset, circled round with flame,
     Huge as a billow running from the winds
     Long distances, till with black shipwreck swoln,
     It flings its angry mane about the sky.
     And like that billow heaving ere it burst;
     And like that cloud urged by impulsive storm
     With charge of thunder, lightning, and the drench
     Of torrents, thou in all thy majesty
     Of mightiness didst fall upon the war!
     Remember that great moment! Nor forget
     The aid I gave thee; how my ready spear
     Flew swiftly seconding thy mortal stroke,
     Where'er the press was hottest; never slacked
     My arm its duty, nor mine eye its aim,
     Though terribly they compassed us, and stood
     Thick as an Autumn forest, whose brown hair,
     Lustrous with sunlight, by the still increase
     Of heat to glowing heat conceives like zeal
     Of radiance, till at the pitch of noon
     'Tis seized with conflagration and distends
     Horridly over leagues of doom'd domain;
     Mingling the screams of birds, the cries of brutes,
     The wail of creatures in the covert pent,
     Howls, yells, and shrieks of agony, the hiss
     Of seething sap, and crash of falling boughs
     Together in its dull voracious roar.
     So closely and so fearfully they throng'd,
     Savage with phantasies of victory,
     A sea of dusky shapes; for day had passed
     And night fell on their darkened faces, red
     With fight and torchflare; shrill the resonant air
     With eager shouts, and hoarse with angry groans;
     While over all the dense and sullen boom,
     The din and murmur of the myriads,
     Rolled with its awful intervals, as though
     The battle breathed, or as against the shore
     Waves gather back to heave themselves anew.
     That night sleep dropped not from the dreary skies,
     Nor could the prowess of our chiefs oppose
     That sea of raging men. But what were they?
     Or what is man opposed to thee? Its hopes
     Are wrecks, himself the drowning, drifting weed
     That wanders on thy waters; such as I
     Who see the scattered remnants of my fleet,
     Remembering the day when first we sailed,
     Each glad ship shining like the morning star
     With promise for the world. Oh! such as I
     Thus darkly drifting on the drowning waves.
     O God of waters! 'tis a dreadful thing
     To suffer for an evil unrevealed;
     Dreadful it is to hear the perishing cry
     Of those we love; the silence that succeeds
     How dreadful! Still my trust is fixed on thee
     For those that still remain and for myself.
     And if I hear thy swift foam-snorting steeds
     Drawing thy dusky chariot, as in
     The pauses of the wind I seem to hear,
     Deaf thou art not to my entreating prayer!
     Haste then to give us help, for closely now
     Crete whispers in my ears, and all my blood
     Runs keen and warm for home, and I have yearning,
     Such yearning as I never felt before,
     To see again my wife, my little son,
     My Queen, my pretty nursling of five years,
     The darling of my hopes, our dearest pledge
     Of marriage, and our brightest prize of love,
     Whose parting cry rings clearest in my heart.
     O lay this horror, much-offended God!
     And making all as fair and firm as when
     We trusted to thy mighty depths of old, -
     I vow to sacrifice the first whom Zeus
     Shall prompt to hail us from the white seashore
     And welcome our return to royal Crete,
     An offering, Poseidon, unto thee!

     Amid the din of elemental strife,
     No voice may pierce but Deity supreme:
     And Deity supreme alone can hear,
     Above the hurricane's discordant shrieks,
     The cry of agonized humanity.

     Not unappeased was He who smites the waves,
     When to his stormy ears the warrior's vow
     Entered, and from his foamy pinnacle
     Tumultuous he beheld the prostrate form,
     And knew the mighty heart. Awhile he gazed,
     As doubtful of his purpose, and the storm,
     Conscious of that divine debate, withheld
     Its fierce emotion, in the luminous gloom
     Of those so dark irradiating eyes!
     Beneath whose wavering lustre shone revealed
     The tumult of the purpling deeps, and all
     The throbbing of the tempest, as it paused,
     Slowly subsiding, seeming to await
     The sudden signal, as a faithful hound
     Pants with the forepaws stretched before its nose,
     Athwart the greensward, after an eager chase;
     Its hot tongue thrust to cool, its foamy jaws
     Open to let the swift breath come and go,
     Its quick interrogating eyes fixed keen
     Upon the huntsman's countenance, and ever
     Lashing its sharp impatient tail with haste:
     Prompt at the slightest sign to scour away,
     And hang itself afresh by the bleeding fangs,
     Upon the neck of some death-singled stag,
     Whose royal antlers, eyes, and stumbling knees
     Will supplicate the Gods in mute despair.
     This time not mute, nor yet in vain this time!
     For still the burden of the earnest voice
     And all the vivid glories it revoked
     Sank in the God, with that absorbed suspense
     Felt only by the Olympians, whose minds
     Unbounded like our mortal brain, perceive
     All things complete, the end, the aim of all;
     To whom the crown and consequence of deeds
     Are ever present with the deed itself.

     And now the pouring surges, vast and smooth,
     Grew weary of restraint, and heaved themselves
     Headlong beneath him, breaking at his feet
     With wild importunate cries and angry wail;
     Like crowds that shout for bread and hunger more.
     And now the surface of their rolling backs
     Was ridged with foam-topt furrows, rising high
     And dashing wildly, like to fiery steeds,
     Fresh from the Thracian or Thessalian plains,
     High-blooded mares just tempering to the bit,
     Whose manes at full-speed stream upon the winds,
     And in whose delicate nostrils when the gust
     Breathes of their native plains, they ramp and rear,
     Frothing the curb, and bounding from the earth,
     As though the Sun-god's chariot alone
     Were fit to follow in their flashing track.
     Anon with gathering stature to the height
     Of those colossal giants, doomed long since
     To torturous grief and penance, that assailed
     The sky-throned courts of Zeus, and climbing, dared
     For once in a world the Olympic wrath, and braved
     The electric spirit which from his clenching hand
     Pierces the dark-veined earth, and with a touch
     Is death to mortals, fearfully they grew!
     And with like purpose of audacity
     Threatened Titanic fury to the God.
     Such was the agitation of the sea
     Beneath Poseidon's thought-revolving brows,
     Storming for signal. But no signal came.
     And as when men, who congregate to hear
     Some proclamation from the regal fount,
     With eager questioning and anxious phrase
     Betray the expectation of their hearts,
     Till after many hours of fretful sloth,
     Weary with much delay, they hold discourse
     In sullen groups and cloudy masses, stirred
     With rage irresolute and whispering plot,
     Known more by indication than by word,
     And understood alone by those whose minds
     Participate;--even so the restless waves
     Began to lose all sense of servitude,
     And worked with rebel passions, bursting, now
     To right, and now to left, but evermore
     Subdued with influence, and controlled with dread
     Of that inviolate Authority.
     Then, swiftly as he mused, the impetuous God
     Seized on the pausing reins, his coursers plunged,
     His brows resumed the grandeur of their ire;
     Throughout his vast divinity the deeps
     Concurrent thrilled with action, and away,
     As sweeps a thunder-cloud across the sky
     In harvest-time, preluded by dull blasts;
     Or some black-visaged whirlwind, whose wide folds
     Rush, wrestling on with all 'twixt heaven and earth,
     Darkling he hurried, and his distant voice,
     Not softened by delay, was heard in tones
     Distinctly terrible, still following up
     Its rapid utterance of tremendous wrath
     With hoarse reverberations; like the roar
     Of lions when they hunger, and awake
     The sullen echoes from their forest sleep,
     To speed the ravenous noise from hill to hill
     And startle victims; but more awful, He,
     Scudding across the hills that rise and sink,
     With foam, and splash, and cataracts of spray,
     Clothed in majestic splendour; girt about
     With Sea-gods and swift creatures of the sea;
     Their briny eyes blind with the showering drops;
     Their stormy locks, salt tongues, and scaly backs,
     Quivering in harmony with the tempest, fierce
     And eager with tempestuous delight; -
     He like a moving rock above them all
     Solemnly towering while fitful gleams
     Brake from his dense black forehead, which display'd
     The enduring chiefs as their distracted fleets
     Tossed, toiling with the waters, climbing high,
     And plunging downward with determined beaks,
     In lurid anguish; but the Cretan king
     And all his crew were 'ware of under-tides,
     That for the groaning vessel made a path,
     On which the impending and precipitous waves
     Fell not, nor suck'd to their abysmal gorge.

     O, happy they to feel the mighty God,
     Without his whelming presence near: to feel
     Safety and sweet relief from such despair,
     And gushing of their weary hopes once more
     Within their fond warm hearts, tired limbs, and eyes
     Heavy with much fatigue and want of sleep!
     Prayers did not lack; like mountain springs they came,
     After the earth has drunk the drenching rains,
     And throws her fresh-born jets into the sun
     With joyous sparkles;--for there needed not
     Evidence more serene of instant grace,
     Immortal mercy! and the sense which follows
     Divine interposition, when the shock
     Of danger hath been thwarted by the Gods,
     Visibly, and through supplication deep, -
     Rose in them, chiefly in the royal mind
     Of him whose interceding vow had saved.
     Tears from that great heroic soul sprang up;
     Not painful as in grief, nor smarting keen
     With shame of weeping; but calm, fresh, and sweet;
     Such as in lofty spirits rise, and wed
     The nature of the woman to the man;
     A sight most lovely to the Gods! They fell
     Like showers of starlight from his steadfast eyes,
     As ever towards the prow he gazed, nor moved
     One muscle, with firm lips and level lids,
     Motionless; while the winds sang in his ears,
     And took the length of his brown hair in streams
     Behind him. Thus the hours passed, and the oars
     Plied without pause, and nothing but the sound
     Of the dull rowlocks and still watery sough,
     Far off, the carnage of the storm, was heard.
     For nothing spake the mariners in their toil,
     And all the captains of the war were dumb:
     Too much oppressed with wonder, too much thrilled
     By their great chieftain's silence, to disturb
     Such meditation with poor human speech.
     Meantime the moon through slips of driving cloud
     Came forth, and glanced athwart the seas a path
     Of dusky splendour, like the Hadean brows,
     When with Elysian passion they behold
     Persephone's complacent hueless cheeks.
     Soon gathering strength and lustre, as a ship
     That swims into some blue and open bay
     With bright full-bosomed sails, the radiant car
     Of Artemis advanced, and on the waves
     Sparkled like arrows from her silver bow
     The keenness of her pure and tender gaze.

     Then, slowly, one by one the chiefs sought rest;
     The watches being set, and men to relieve
     The rowers at midseason. Fair it was
     To see them as they lay! Some up the prow,
     Some round the helm, in open-handed sleep;
     With casques unloosed, and bucklers put aside;
     The ten years' tale of war upon their cheeks,
     Where clung the salt wet locks, and on their breasts
     Beards, the thick growth of many a proud campaign;
     And on their brows the bright invisible crown
     Victory sheds from her own radiant form,
     As o'er her favourites' heads she sings and soars.
     But dreams came not so calmly; as around
     Turbulent shores wild waves and swamping surf
     Prevail, while seaward, on the tranquil deeps,
     Reign placid surfaces and solemn peace,
     So, from the troubled strands of memory, they
     Launched and were tossed, long ere they found the tides
     That lead to the gentle bosoms of pure rest.
     And like to one who from a ghostly watch
     In a lone house where murder hath been done,
     And secret violations, pale with stealth
     Emerges, staggering on the first chill gust
     Wherewith the morning greets him, feeling not
     Its balmy freshness on his bloodless cheek, -
     But swift to hide his midnight face afar,
     'Mongst the old woods and timid-glancing flowers
     Hastens, till on the fresh reviving breasts
     Of tender Dryads folded he forgets
     The pallid witness of those nameless things,
     In renovated senses lapt, and joins
     The full, keen joyance of the day, so they
     From sights and sounds of battle smeared with blood,
     And shrieking souls on Acheron's bleak tides,
     And wail of execrating kindred, slid
     Into oblivious slumber and a sense
     Of satiate deliciousness complete.

     Leave them, O Muse, in that so happy sleep!
     Leave them to reap the harvest of their toil,
     While fast in moonlight the glad vessel glides,
     As if instinctive to its forest home.
     O Muse, that in all sorrows and all joys,
     Rapturous bliss and suffering divine,
     Dwellest with equal fervour, in the calm
     Of thy serene philosophy, albeit
     Thy gentle nature is of joy alone,
     And loves the pipings of the happy fields,
     Better than all the great parade and pomp
     Which forms the train of heroes and of kings,
     And sows, too frequently, the tragic seeds
     That choke with sobs thy singing,--turn away
     Thy lustrous eyes back to the oath-bound man!
     For as a shepherd stands above his flock,
     The lofty figure of the king is seen,
     Standing above his warriors as they sleep:
     And still as from a rock grey waters gush,
     While still the rock is passionless and dark,
     Nor moves one feature of its giant face,
     The tears fall from his eyes, and he stirs not.

     And O, bright Muse! forget not thou to fold
     In thy prophetic sympathy the thought
     Of him whose destiny has heard its doom:
     The Sacrifice thro' whom the ship is saved.
     Haply that Sacrifice is sleeping now,
     And dreams of glad tomorrows. Haply now,
     His hopes are keenest, and his fervent blood
     Richest with youth, and love, and fond regard!
     Round him the circle of affections blooms,
     And in some happy nest of home he lives,
     One name oft uttering in delighted ears,
     Mother! at which the heart of men are kin
     With reverence and yearning. Haply, too,
     That other name, twin holy, twin revered,
     He whispers often to the passing winds
     That blow toward the Asiatic coasts;
     For Crete has sent her bravest to the war,
     And multitudes pressed forward to that rank,
     Men with sad weeping wives and little ones.
     That other name--O Father! who art thou,
     Thus doomed to lose the star of thy last days?
     It may be the sole flower of thy life,
     And that of all who now look up to thee!
     O Father, Father! unto thee even now
     Fate cries; the future with imploring voice
     Cries 'Save me,' 'Save me,' though thou hearest not.
     And O thou Sacrifice, foredoomed by Zeus;
     Even now the dark inexorable deed
     Is dealing its relentless stroke, and vain
     Are prayers, and tears, and struggles, and despair!
     The mother's tears, the nation's stormful grief,
     The people's indignation and revenge!
     Vain the last childlike pleading voice for life,
     The quick resolve, the young heroic brow,
     So like, so like, and vainly beautiful!
     Oh! whosoe'er ye are the Muse says not,
     And sees not, but the Gods look down on both.



     THE LONGEST DAY



     On yonder hills soft twilight dwells
     And Hesper burns where sunset dies,
     Moist and chill the woodland smells
     From the fern-covered hollows uprise;
     Darkness drops not from the skies,
     But shadows of darkness are flung o'er the vale
     From the boughs of the chestnut, the oak, and the elm,
     While night in yon lines of eastern pines
     Preserves alone her inviolate realm
     Against the twilight pale.

     Say, then say, what is this day,
     That it lingers thus with half-closed eyes,
     When the sunset is quenched and the orient ray
     Of the roseate moon doth rise,
     Like a midnight sun o'er the skies!
     'Tis the longest, the longest of all the glad year,
     The longest in life and the fairest in hue,
     When day and night, in bridal light,
     Mingle their beings beneath the sweet blue,
     And bless the balmy air!

     Upward to this starry height
     The culminating seasons rolled;
     On one slope green with spring delight,
     The other with harvest gold,
     And treasures of Autumn untold:
     And on this highest throne of the midsummer now
     The waning but deathless day doth dream,
     With a rapturous grace, as tho' from the face
     Of the unveiled infinity, lo, a far beam
     Had fall'n on her dim-flushed brow!

     Prolong, prolong that tide of song,
     O leafy nightingale and thrush!
     Still, earnest-throated blackcap, throng
     The woods with that emulous gush
     Of notes in tumultuous rush.
     Ye summer souls, raise up one voice!
     A charm is afloat all over the land;
     The ripe year doth fall to the Spirit of all,
     Who blesses it with outstretched hand;
     Ye summer souls, rejoice!



     TO ROBIN REDBREAST



     Merrily 'mid the faded leaves,
     O Robin of the bright red breast!
     Cheerily over the Autumn eaves,
     Thy note is heard, bonny bird;
     Sent to cheer us, and kindly endear us
     To what would be a sorrowful time
     Without thee in the weltering clime:
     Merry art thou in the boughs of the lime,
     While thy fadeless waistcoat glows on thy breast,
     In Autumn's reddest livery drest.

     A merry song, a cheery song!
     In the boughs above, on the sward below,
     Chirping and singing the live day long,
     While the maple in grief sheds its fiery leaf,
     And all the trees waning, with bitter complaining,
     Chestnut, and elm, and sycamore,
     Catch the wild gust in their arms, and roar
     Like the sea on a stormy shore,
     Till wailfully they let it go,
     And weep themselves naked and weary with woe.

     Merrily, cheerily, joyously still
     Pours out the crimson-crested tide.
     The set of the season burns bright on the hill,
     Where the foliage dead falls yellow and red,
     Picturing vainly, but foretelling plainly
     The wealth of cottage warmth that comes
     When the frost gleams and the blood numbs,
     And then, bonny Robin, I'll spread thee out crumbs
     In my garden porch for thy redbreast pride,
     The song and the ensign of dear fireside.



     SONG



     The daisy now is out upon the green;
     And in the grassy lanes
     The child of April rains,
     The sweet fresh-hearted violet, is smelt and loved unseen.

     Along the brooks and meads, the daffodil
     Its yellow richness spreads,
     And by the fountain-heads
     Of rivers, cowslips cluster round, and over every hill.

     The crocus and the primrose may have gone,
     The snowdrop may be low,
     But soon the purple glow
     Of hyacinths will fill the copse, and lilies watch the dawn.

     And in the sweetness of the budding year,
     The cuckoo's woodland call,
     The skylark over all,
     And then at eve, the nightingale, is doubly sweet and dear.

     My soul is singing with the happy birds,
     And all my human powers
     Are blooming with the flowers,
     My foot is on the fields and downs, among the flocks and herds.

     Deep in the forest where the foliage droops,
     I wander, fill'd with joy.
     Again as when a boy,
     The sunny vistas tempt me on with dim delicious hopes.

     The sunny vistas, dim with hurrying shade,
     And old romantic haze:-
     Again as in past days,
     The spirit of immortal Spring doth every sense pervade.

     Oh! do not say that this will ever cease; -
     This joy of woods and fields,
     This youth that nature yields,
     Will never speak to me in vain, tho' soundly rapt in peace.



     SUNRISE



     The clouds are withdrawn
     And their thin-rippled mist,
     That stream'd o'er the lawn
     To the drowsy-eyed west.
     Cold and grey
     They slept in the way,
     And shrank from the ray
     Of the chariot East:
     But now they are gone,
     And the bounding light
     Leaps thro' the bars
     Of doubtful dawn;
     Blinding the stars,
     And blessing the sight;
     Shedding delight
     On all below;
     Glimmering fields,
     And wakening wealds,
     And rising lark,
     And meadows dark,
     And idle rills,
     And labouring mills,
     And far-distant hills
     Of the fawn and the doe.
     The sun is cheered
     And his path is cleared,
     As he steps to the air
     From his emerald cave,
     His heel in the wave,
     Most bright and bare;
     In the tide of the sky
     His radiant hair
     From his temples fair
     Blown back on high;
     As forward he bends,
     And upward ascends,
     Timely and true,
     To the breast of the blue;
     His warm red lips
     Kissing the dew,
     Which sweetened drips
     On his flower cupholders;
     Every hue
     From his gleaming shoulders
     Shining anew
     With colour sky-born,
     As it washes and dips
     In the pride of the morn.
     Robes of azure,
     Fringed with amber,
     Fold upon fold
     Of purple and gold,
     Vine-leaf bloom,
     And the grape's ripe gloom,
     When season deep
     In noontide leisure,
     With clustering heap
     The tendrils clamber
     Full in the face
     Of his hot embrace,
     Fill'd with the gleams
     Of his firmest beams.
     Autumn flushes,
     Roseate blushes,
     Vermeil tinges,
     Violet fringes,
     Every hue
     Of his flower cupholders,
     O'er the clear ether
     Mingled together,
     Shining anew
     From his gleaming shoulders!
     Circling about
     In a coronal rout,
     And floating behind,
     The way of the wind,
     As forward he bends,
     And upward ascends,
     Timely and true,
     To the breast of the blue.
     His bright neck curved,
     His clear limbs nerved,
     Diamond keen
     On his front serene,
     While each white arm strains
     To the racing reins,
     As plunging, eyes flashing,
     Dripping, and dashing,
     His steeds triple grown
     Rear up to his throne,
     Ruffling the rest
     Of the sea's blue breast,
     From his flooding, flaming crimson crest!



     PICTURES OF THE RHINE



     I

     The spirit of Romance dies not to those
     Who hold a kindred spirit in their souls:
     Even as the odorous life within the rose
     Lives in the scattered leaflets and controls
     Mysterious adoration, so there glows
     Above dead things a thing that cannot die;
     Faint as the glimmer of a tearful eye,
     Ere the orb fills and all the sorrow flows.
     Beauty renews itself in many ways;
     The flower is fading while the new bud blows;
     And this dear land as true a symbol shows,
     While o'er it like a mellow sunset strays
     The legendary splendour of old days,
     In visible, inviolate repose.

     II

     About a mile behind the viny banks,
     How sweet it was, upon a sloping green,
     Sunspread, and shaded with a branching screen,
     To lie in peace half-murmuring words of thanks!
     To see the mountains on each other climb,
     With spaces for rich meadows flowery bright;
     The winding river freshening the sight
     At intervals, the trees in leafy prime;
     The distant village-roofs of blue and white,
     With intersections of quaint-fashioned beams
     All slanting crosswise, and the feudal gleams
     Of ruined turrets, barren in the light; -
     To watch the changing clouds, like clime in clime;
     Oh sweet to lie and bless the luxury of time.

     III

     Fresh blows the early breeze, our sail is full;
     A merry morning and a mighty tide.
     Cheerily O! and past St. Goar we glide,
     Half hid in misty dawn and mountain cool.
     The river is our own! and now the sun
     In saffron clothes the warming atmosphere;
     The sky lifts up her white veil like a nun,
     And looks upon the landscape blue and clear; -
     The lark is up; the hills, the vines in sight;
     The river broadens with his waking bliss
     And throws up islands to behold the light;
     Voices begin to rise, all hues to kiss; -
     Was ever such a happy morn as this!
     Birds sing, we shout, flowers breathe, trees shine with one delight!

     IV

     Between the two white breasts of her we love,
     A dewy blushing rose will sometimes spring;
     Thus Nonnenwerth like an enchanted thing
     Rises mid-stream the crystal depths above.
     On either side the waters heave and swell,
     But all is calm within the little Isle;
     Content it is to give its holy smile,
     And bless with peace the lives that in it dwell.
     Most dear on the dark grass beneath its bower
     Of kindred trees embracing branch and bough,
     To dream of fairy foot and sudden flower;
     Or haply with a twilight on the brow,
     To muse upon the legendary hour,
     And Roland's lonely love and Hildegard's sad vow.

     V

     Hark! how the bitter winter breezes blow
     Round the sharp rocks and o'er the half-lifted wave,
     While all the rocky woodland branches rave
     Shrill with the piercing cold, and every cave,
     Along the icy water-margin low,
     Rings bubbling with the whirling overflow;
     And sharp the echoes answer distant cries
     Of dawning daylight and the dim sunrise,
     And the gloom-coloured clouds that stain the skies
     With pictures of a warmth, and frozen glow
     Spread over endless fields of sheeted snow;
     And white untrodden mountains shining cold,
     And muffled footpaths winding thro' the wold,
     O'er which those wintry gusts cease not to howl and blow.

     VI

     Rare is the loveliness of slow decay!
     With youth and beauty all must be desired,
     But 'tis the charm of things long past away,
     They leave, alone, the light they have inspired:
     The calmness of a picture; Memory now
     Is the sole life among the ruins grey,
     And like a phantom in fantastic play
     She wanders with rank weeds stuck on her brow,
     Over grass-hidden caves and turret-tops,
     Herself almost as tottering as they;
     While, to the steps of Time, her latest props
     Fall stone by stone, and in the Sun's hot ray
     All that remains stands up in rugged pride,
     And bridal vines drink in his juices on each side.



     TO A NIGHTINGALE



     O nightingale! how hast thou learnt
     The note of the nested dove?
     While under thy bower the fern hangs burnt
     And no cloud hovers above!
     Rich July has many a sky
     With splendour dim, that thou mightst hymn,
     And make rejoice with thy wondrous voice,
     And the thrill of thy wild pervading tone!
     But instead of to woo, thou hast learnt to coo:
     Thy song is mute at the mellowing fruit,
     And the dirge of the flowers is sung by the hours
     In silence and twilight alone.

     O nightingale! 'tis this, 'tis this
     That makes thee mock the dove!
     That thou hast past thy marriage bliss,
     To know a parent's love.
     The waves of fern may fade and burn,
     The grasses may fall, the flowers and all,
     And the pine-smells o'er the oak dells
     Float on their drowsy and odorous wings,
     But thou wilt do nothing but coo,
     Brimming the nest with thy brooding breast,
     'Midst that young throng of future song,
     Round whom the Future sings!



     INVITATION TO THE COUNTRY



     Now 'tis Spring on wood and wold,
     Early Spring that shivers with cold,
     But gladdens, and gathers, day by day,
     A lovelier hue, a warmer ray,
     A sweeter song, a dearer ditty;
     Ouzel and throstle, new-mated and gay,
     Singing their bridals on every spray -
     Oh, hear them, deep in the songless City!
     Cast off the yoke of toil and smoke,
     As Spring is casting winter's grey,
     As serpents cast their skins away:
     And come, for the Country awaits thee with pity
     And longs to bathe thee in her delight,
     And take a new joy in thy kindling sight;
     And I no less, by day and night,
     Long for thy coming, and watch for, and wait thee,
     And wonder what duties can thus berate thee.

     Dry-fruited firs are dropping their cones,
     And vista'd avenues of pines
     Take richer green, give fresher tones,
     As morn after morn the glad sun shines.

     Primrose tufts peep over the brooks,
     Fair faces amid moist decay!
     The rivulets run with the dead leaves at play,
     The leafless elms are alive with the rooks.

     Over the meadows the cowslips are springing,
     The marshes are thick with king-cup gold,
     Clear is the cry of the lambs in the fold,
     The skylark is singing, and singing, and singing.

     Soon comes the cuckoo when April is fair,
     And her blue eye the brighter the more it may weep:
     The frog and the butterfly wake from their sleep,
     Each to its element, water and air.

     Mist hangs still on every hill,
     And curls up the valleys at eve; but noon
     Is fullest of Spring; and at midnight the moon
     Gives her westering throne to Orion's bright zone,
     As he slopes o'er the darkened world's repose;
     And a lustre in eastern Sirius glows.

     Come, in the season of opening buds;
     Come, and molest not the otter that whistles
     Unlit by the moon, 'mid the wet winter bristles
     Of willow, half-drowned in the fattening floods.
     Let him catch his cold fish without fear of a gun,
     And the stars shall shield him, and thou wilt shun!
     And every little bird under the sun
     Shall know that the bounty of Spring doth dwell
     In the winds that blow, in the waters that run,
     And in the breast of man as well.



     THE SWEET O' THE YEAR



     Now the frog, all lean and weak,
     Yawning from his famished sleep,
     Water in the ditch doth seek,
     Fast as he can stretch and leap:
     Marshy king-cups burning near
     Tell him 'tis the sweet o' the year.

     Now the ant works up his mound
     In the mouldered piny soil,
     And above the busy ground
     Takes the joy of earnest toil:
     Dropping pine-cones, dry and sere,
     Warn him 'tis the sweet o' the year.

     Now the chrysalis on the wall
     Cracks, and out the creature springs,
     Raptures in his body small,
     Wonders on his dusty wings:
     Bells and cups, all shining clear,
     Show him 'tis the sweet o' the year.

     Now the brown bee, wild and wise,
     Hums abroad, and roves and roams,
     Storing in his wealthy thighs
     Treasure for the golden combs:
     Dewy buds and blossoms dear
     Whisper 'tis the sweet o' the year.

     Now the merry maids so fair
     Weave the wreaths and choose the queen,
     Blooming in the open air,
     Like fresh flowers upon the green;
     Spring, in every thought sincere,
     Thrills them with the sweet o' the year.

     Now the lads, all quick and gay,
     Whistle to the browsing herds,
     Or in the twilight pastures grey
     Learn the use of whispered words:
     First a blush, and then a tear,
     And then a smile, i' the sweet o' the year.

     Now the May-fly and the fish
     Play again from noon to night;
     Every breeze begets a wish,
     Every motion means delight:
     Heaven high over heath and mere
     Crowns with blue the sweet o' the year.

     Now all Nature is alive,
     Bird and beetle, man and mole;
     Bee-like goes the human hive,
     Lark-like sings the soaring soul:
     Hearty faith and honest cheer
     Welcome in the sweet o' the year.



     AUTUMN EVEN-SONG



     The long cloud edged with streaming grey
     Soars from the West;
     The red leaf mounts with it away,
     Showing the nest
     A blot among the branches bare:
     There is a cry of outcasts in the air.

     Swift little breezes, darting chill,
     Pant down the lake;
     A crow flies from the yellow hill,
     And in its wake
     A baffled line of labouring rooks:
     Steel-surfaced to the light the river looks.

     Pale on the panes of the old hall
     Gleams the lone space
     Between the sunset and the squall;
     And on its face
     Mournfully glimmers to the last:
     Great oaks grow mighty minstrels in the blast.

     Pale the rain-rutted roadways shine
     In the green light
     Behind the cedar and the pine:
     Come, thundering night!
     Blacken broad earth with hoards of storm:
     For me yon valley-cottage beckons warm.



     THE SONG OF COURTESY



     I

     When Sir Gawain was led to his bridal-bed,
     By Arthur's knights in scorn God-sped:-
     How think you he felt?
     O the bride within
     Was yellow and dry as a snake's old skin;
     Loathly as sin!
     Scarcely faceable,
     Quite unembraceable;
     With a hog's bristle on a hag's chin! -
     Gentle Gawain felt as should we,
     Little of Love's soft fire knew he:
     But he was the Knight of Courtesy.

     II

     When that evil lady he lay beside
     Bade him turn to greet his bride,
     What think you he did?
     O, to spare her pain,
     And let not his loathing her loathliness vain
     Mirror too plain,
     Sadly, sighingly,
     Almost dyingly,
     Turned he and kissed her once and again.
     Like Sir Gawain, gentles, should we?
     SILENT, ALL! But for pattern agree
     There's none like the Knight of Courtesy.

     III

     Sir Gawain sprang up amid laces and curls:
     Kisses are not wasted pearls:-
     What clung in his arms?
     O, a maiden flower,
     Burning with blushes the sweet bride-bower,
     Beauty her dower!
     Breathing perfumingly;
     Shall I live bloomingly,
     Said she, by day, or the bridal hour?
     Thereat he clasped her, and whispered he,
     Thine, rare bride, the choice shall be.
     Said she, Twice blest is Courtesy!

     IV

     Of gentle Sir Gawain they had no sport,
     When it was morning in Arthur's court;
     What think you they cried?
     Now, life and eyes!
     This bride is the very Saint's dream of a prize,
     Fresh from the skies!
     See ye not, Courtesy
     Is the true Alchemy,
     Turning to gold all it touches and tries?
     Like the true knight, so may we
     Make the basest that there be
     Beautiful by Courtesy!



     THE THREE MAIDENS



     There were three maidens met on the highway;
     The sun was down, the night was late:
     And two sang loud with the birds of May,
     O the nightingale is merry with its mate.

     Said they to the youngest, Why walk you there so still?
     The land is dark, the night is late:
     O, but the heart in my side is ill,
     And the nightingale will languish for its mate.

     Said they to the youngest, Of lovers there is store;
     The moon mounts up, the night is late:
     O, I shall look on man no more,
     And the nightingale is dumb without its mate.

     Said they to the youngest, Uncross your arms and sing;
     The moon mounts high, the night is late:
     O my dear lover can hear no thing,
     And the nightingale sings only to its mate.

     They slew him in revenge, and his true-love was his lure;
     The moon is pale, the night is late:
     His grave is shallow on the moor;
     O the nightingale is dying for its mate.

     His blood is on his breast, and the moss-roots at his hair;
     The moon is chill, the night is late:
     But I will lie beside him there:
     O the nightingale is dying for its mate.



     OVER THE HILLS



     The old hound wags his shaggy tail,
     And I know what he would say:
     It's over the hills we'll bound, old hound,
     Over the hills, and away.

     There's nought for us here save to count the clock,
     And hang the head all day:
     But over the hills we'll bound, old hound,
     Over the hills and away.

     Here among men we're like the deer
     That yonder is our prey:
     So, over the hills we'll bound, old hound,
     Over the hills and away.

     The hypocrite is master here,
     But he's the cock of clay:
     So, over the hills we'll bound, old hound,
     Over the hills and away.

     The women, they shall sigh and smile,
     And madden whom they may:
     It's over the hills we'll bound, old hound,
     Over the hills and away.

     Let silly lads in couples run
     To pleasure, a wicked fay:
     'Tis ours on the heather to bound, old hound,
     Over the hills and away.

     The torrent glints under the rowan red,
     And shakes the bracken spray:
     What joy on the heather to bound, old hound,
     Over the hills and away.

     The sun bursts broad, and the heathery bed
     Is purple, and orange, and gray:
     Away, and away, we'll bound, old hound,
     Over the hills and away.



     JUGGLING JERRY



     I

     Pitch here the tent, while the old horse grazes:
     By the old hedge-side we'll halt a stage.
     It's nigh my last above the daisies:
     My next leaf 'll be man's blank page.
     Yes, my old girl! and it's no use crying:
     Juggler, constable, king, must bow.
     One that outjuggles all's been spying
     Long to have me, and he has me now.

     II

     We've travelled times to this old common:
     Often we've hung our pots in the gorse.
     We've had a stirring life, old woman!
     You, and I, and the old grey horse.
     Races, and fairs, and royal occasions,
     Found us coming to their call:
     Now they'll miss us at our stations:
     There's a Juggler outjuggles all!

     III

     Up goes the lark, as if all were jolly!
     Over the duck-pond the willow shakes.
     Easy to think that grieving's folly,
     When the hand's firm as driven stakes!
     Ay, when we're strong, and braced, and manful,
     Life's a sweet fiddle: but we're a batch
     Born to become the Great Juggler's han'ful:
     Balls he shies up, and is safe to catch.

     IV

     Here's where the lads of the village cricket:
     I was a lad not wide from here:
     Couldn't I whip off the bail from the wicket?
     Like an old world those days appear!
     Donkey, sheep, geese, and thatched ale-house -
     I know them!
     They are old friends of my halts, and seem,
     Somehow, as if kind thanks I owe them:
     Juggling don't hinder the heart's esteem.

     V

     Juggling's no sin, for we must have victual:
     Nature allows us to bait for the fool.
     Holding one's own makes us juggle no little;
     But, to increase it, hard juggling's the rule.
     You that are sneering at my profession,
     Haven't you juggled a vast amount?
     There's the Prime Minister, in one Session,
     Juggles more games than my sins 'll count.

     VI

     I've murdered insects with mock thunder:
     Conscience, for that, in men don't quail.
     I've made bread from the bump of wonder:
     That's my business, and there's my tale.
     Fashion and rank all praised the professor:
     Ay! and I've had my smile from the Queen:
     Bravo, Jerry! she meant: God bless her!
     Ain't this a sermon on that scene?

     VII

     I've studied men from my topsy-turvy
     Close, and, I reckon, rather true.
     Some are fine fellows: some, right scurvy:
     Most, a dash between the two.
     But it's a woman, old girl, that makes me
     Think more kindly of the race:
     And it's a woman, old girl, that shakes me
     When the Great Juggler I must face.

     VIII

     We two were married, due and legal:
     Honest we've lived since we've been one.
     Lord! I could then jump like an eagle:
     You danced bright as a bit o' the sun.
     Birds in a May-bush we were! right merry!
     All night we kiss'd, we juggled all day.
     Joy was the heart of Juggling Jerry!
     Now from his old girl he's juggled away.

     IX

     It's past parsons to console us:
     No, nor no doctor fetch for me:
     I can die without my bolus;
     Two of a trade, lass, never agree!
     Parson and Doctor!--don't they love rarely,
     Fighting the devil in other men's fields!
     Stand up yourself and match him fairly:
     Then see how the rascal yields!

     X

     I, lass, have lived no gipsy, flaunting
     Finery while his poor helpmate grubs:
     Coin I've stored, and you won't be wanting:
     You shan't beg from the troughs and tubs.
     Nobly you've stuck to me, though in his kitchen
     Many a Marquis would hail you Cook!
     Palaces you could have ruled and grown rich in,
     But our old Jerry you never forsook.

     XI

     Hand up the chirper! ripe ale winks in it;
     Let's have comfort and be at peace.
     Once a stout draught made me light as a linnet.
     Cheer up! the Lord must have his lease.
     May be--for none see in that black hollow -
     It's just a place where we're held in pawn,
     And, when the Great Juggler makes as to swallow,
     It's just the sword-trick--I ain't quite gone!

     XII

     Yonder came smells of the gorse, so nutty,
     Gold-like and warm: it's the prime of May.
     Better than mortar, brick and putty,
     Is God's house on a blowing day.
     Lean me more up the mound; now I feel it:
     All the old heath-smells! Ain't it strange?
     There's the world laughing, as if to conceal it,
     But He's by us, juggling the change.

     XIII

     I mind it well, by the sea-beach lying,
     Once--it's long gone--when two gulls we beheld,
     Which, as the moon got up, were flying
     Down a big wave that sparked and swelled.
     Crack, went a gun: one fell: the second
     Wheeled round him twice, and was off for new luck:
     There in the dark her white wing beckon'd:-
     Drop me a kiss--I'm the bird dead-struck!



     THE CROWN OF LOVE



     O might I load my arms with thee,
     Like that young lover of Romance
     Who loved and gained so gloriously
     The fair Princess of France!

     Because he dared to love so high,
     He, bearing her dear weight, shall speed
     To where the mountain touched on sky:
     So the proud king decreed.

     Unhalting he must bear her on,
     Nor pause a space to gather breath,
     And on the height she will be won;
     And she was won in death!

     Red the far summit flames with morn,
     While in the plain a glistening Court
     Surrounds the king who practised scorn
     Through such a mask of sport.

     She leans into his arms; she lets
     Her lovely shape be clasped: he fares.
     God speed him whole! The knights make bets:
     The ladies lift soft prayers.

     O have you seen the deer at chase?
     O have you seen the wounded kite?
     So boundingly he runs the race,
     So wavering grows his flight.

     - My lover! linger here, and slake
     Thy thirst, or me thou wilt not win.
     - See'st thou the tumbled heavens? they break!
     They beckon us up and in.

     - Ah, hero-love! unloose thy hold:
     O drop me like a cursed thing.
     - See'st thou the crowded swards of gold?
     They wave to us Rose and Ring.

     - O death-white mouth! O cast me down!
     Thou diest? Then with thee I die.
     - See'st thou the angels with their Crown?
     We twain have reached the sky.



     THE HEAD OF BRAN THE BLEST



     I

     When the Head of Bran
     Was firm on British shoulders,
     God made a man!
     Cried all beholders.

     Steel could not resist
     The weight his arm would rattle;
     He, with naked fist,
     Has brain'd a knight in battle.

     He marched on the foe,
     And never counted numbers;
     Foreign widows know
     The hosts he sent to slumbers.

     As a street you scan,
     That's towered by the steeple,
     So the Head of Bran
     Rose o'er his people.

     II

     'Death's my neighbour,'
     Quoth Bran the Blest;
     'Christian labour
     Brings Christian rest.
     From the trunk sever
     The Head of Bran,
     That which never
     Has bent to man!
     'That which never
     To men has bowed
     Shall live ever
     To shame the shroud:
     Shall live ever
     To face the foe;
     Sever it, sever,
     And with one blow.

     'Be it written,
     That all I wrought
     Was for Britain,
     In deed and thought:
     Be it written,
     That while I die,
     Glory to Britain!
     Is my last cry.

     'Glory to Britain!
     Death echoes me round.
     Glory to Britain!
     The world shall resound.
     Glory to Britain!
     In ruin and fall,
     Glory to Britain!
     Is heard over all.'

     IIII

     Burn, Sun, down the sea!
     Bran lies low with thee.

     Burst, Morn, from the main!
     Bran so shall rise again.

     Blow, Wind, from the field!
     Bran's Head is the Briton's shield.

     Beam, Star, in the West!
     Bright burns the Head of Bran the Blest.

     IV

     Crimson-footed, like the stork,
     From great ruts of slaughter,
     Warriors of the Golden Torque
     Cross the lifting water.
     Princes seven, enchaining hands,
     Bear the live head homeward.
     Lo! it speaks, and still commands:
     Gazing out far foamward.

     Fiery words of lightning sense
     Down the hollows thunder;
     Forest hostels know not whence
     Comes the speech, and wonder.
     City-Castles, on the steep,
     Where the faithful Seven
     House at midnight, hear, in sleep,
     Laughter under heaven.

     Lilies, swimming on the mere,
     In the castle shadow,
     Under draw their heads, and Fear
     Walks the misty meadow.
     Tremble not! it is not Death
     Pledging dark espousal:
     'Tis the Head of endless breath,
     Challenging carousal!

     Brim the horn! a health is drunk,
     Now, that shall keep going:
     Life is but the pebble sunk;
     Deeds, the circle growing!
     Fill, and pledge the Head of Bran!
     While his lead they follow,
     Long shall heads in Britain plan
     Speech Death cannot swallow!



     THE MEETING



     The old coach-road through a common of furze,
     With knolls of pine, ran white;
     Berries of autumn, with thistles, and burrs,
     And spider-threads, droop'd in the light.

     The light in a thin blue veil peered sick;
     The sheep grazed close and still;
     The smoke of a farm by a yellow rick
     Curled lazily under a hill.

     No fly shook the round of the silver net;
     No insect the swift bird chased;
     Only two travellers moved and met
     Across that hazy waste.

     One was a girl with a babe that throve,
     Her ruin and her bliss;
     One was a youth with a lawless love,
     Who clasped it the more for this.

     The girl for her babe hummed prayerful speech;
     The youth for his love did pray;
     Each cast a wistful look on each,
     And either went their way.



     THE BEGGAR'S SOLILOQUY



     I

     Now, this, to my notion, is pleasant cheer,
     To lie all alone on a ragged heath,
     Where your nose isn't sniffing for bones or beer,
     But a peat-fire smells like a garden beneath.
     The cottagers bustle about the door,
     And the girl at the window ties her strings.
     She's a dish for a man who's a mind to be poor;
     Lord! women are such expensive things.

     II

     We don't marry beggars, says she: why, no:
     It seems that to make 'em is what you do;
     And as I can cook, and scour, and sew,
     I needn't pay half my victuals for you.
     A man for himself should be able to scratch,
     But tickling's a luxury:- love, indeed!
     Love burns as long as the lucifer match,
     Wedlock's the candle! Now, that's my creed.

     III

     The church-bells sound water-like over the wheat;
     And up the long path troop pair after pair.
     The man's well-brushed, and the woman looks neat:
     It's man and woman everywhere!
     Unless, like me, you lie here flat,
     With a donkey for friend, you must have a wife:
     She pulls out your hair, but she brushes your hat.
     Appearances make the best half of life.

     IV

     You nice little madam! you know you're nice.
     I remember hearing a parson say
     You're a plateful of vanity pepper'd with vice;
     You chap at the gate thinks t' other way.
     On his waistcoat you read both his head and his heart:
     There's a whole week's wages there figured in gold!
     Yes! when you turn round you may well give a start:
     It's fun to a fellow who's getting old.

     V

     Now, that's a good craft, weaving waistcoats and flowers,
     And selling of ribbons, and scenting of lard:
     It gives you a house to get in from the showers,
     And food when your appetite jockeys you hard.
     You live a respectable man; but I ask
     If it's worth the trouble? You use your tools,
     And spend your time, and what's your task?
     Why, to make a slide for a couple of fools.

     VI

     You can't match the colour o' these heath mounds,
     Nor better that peat-fire's agreeable smell.
     I'm clothed-like with natural sights and sounds;
     To myself I'm in tune: I hope you're as well.
     You jolly old cot! though you don't own coal:
     It's a generous pot that's boiled with peat.
     Let the Lord Mayor o' London roast oxen whole:
     His smoke, at least, don't smell so sweet.

     VII

     I'm not a low Radical, hating the laws,
     Who'd the aristocracy rebuke.
     I talk o' the Lord Mayor o' London because
     I once was on intimate terms with his cook.
     I served him a turn, and got pensioned on scraps,
     And, Lord, Sir! didn't I envy his place,
     Till Death knock'd him down with the softest of taps,
     And I knew what was meant by a tallowy face!

     VIII

     On the contrary, I'm Conservative quite;
     There's beggars in Scripture 'mongst Gentiles and Jews:
     It's nonsense, trying to set things right,
     For if people will give, why, who'll refuse?
     That stopping old custom wakes my spleen:
     The poor and the rich both in giving agree:
     Your tight-fisted shopman's the Radical mean:
     There's nothing in common 'twixt him and me.

     IX

     He says I'm no use! but I won't reply.
     You're lucky not being of use to him!
     On week-days he's playing at Spider and Fly,
     And on Sundays he sings about Cherubim!
     Nailing shillings to counters is his chief work:
     He nods now and then at the name on his door:
     But judge of us two, at a bow and a smirk,
     I think I'm his match: and I'm honest--that's more.

     X

     No use! well, I mayn't be. You ring a pig's snout,
     And then call the animal glutton! Now, he,
     Mr. Shopman, he's nought but a pipe and a spout
     Who won't let the goods o' this world pass free.
     This blazing blue weather all round the brown crop,
     He can't enjoy! all but cash he hates.
     He's only a snail that crawls under his shop;
     Though he has got the ear o' the magistrates.

     XI

     Now, giving and taking's a proper exchange,
     Like question and answer: you're both content.
     But buying and selling seems always strange;
     You're hostile, and that's the thing that's meant.
     It's man against man--you're almost brutes;
     There's here no thanks, and there's there no pride.
     If Charity's Christian, don't blame my pursuits,
     I carry a touchstone by which you're tried.

     XII

     - 'Take it,' says she, 'it's all I've got':
     I remember a girl in London streets:
     She stood by a coffee-stall, nice and hot,
     My belly was like a lamb that bleats.
     Says I to myself, as her shilling I seized,
     You haven't a character here, my dear!
     But for making a rascal like me so pleased,
     I'll give you one, in a better sphere!

     XIII

     And that's where it is--she made me feel
     I was a rascal: but people who scorn,
     And tell a poor patch-breech he isn't genteel,
     Why, they make him kick up--and he treads on a corn.
     It isn't liking, it's curst ill-luck,
     Drives half of us into the begging-trade:
     If for taking to water you praise a duck,
     For taking to beer why a man upbraid?

     XIV

     The sermon's over: they're out of the porch,
     And it's time for me to move a leg;
     But in general people who come from church,
     And have called themselves sinners, hate chaps to beg.
     I'll wager they'll all of 'em dine to-day!
     I was easy half a minute ago.
     If that isn't pig that's baking away,
     May I perish!--we're never contented--heigho!



     BY THE ROSANNA--TO F. M. STANZER THAL, TYROL



     The old grey Alp has caught the cloud,
     And the torrent river sings aloud;
     The glacier-green Rosanna sings
     An organ song of its upper springs.
     Foaming under the tiers of pine,
     I see it dash down the dark ravine,
     And it tumbles the rocks in boisterous play,
     With an earnest will to find its way.
     Sharp it throws out an emerald shoulder,
     And, thundering ever of the mountain,
     Slaps in sport some giant boulder,
     And tops it in a silver fountain.
     A chain of foam from end to end,
     And a solitude so deep, my friend,
     You may forget that man abides
     Beyond the great mute mountain-sides.
     Yet to me, in this high-walled solitude
     Of river and rock and forest rude,
     The roaring voice through the long white chain
     Is the voice of the world of bubble and brain.



     PHANTASY



     I

     Within a Temple of the Toes,
     Where twirled the passionate Wili,
     I saw full many a market rose,
     And sighed for my village lily.

     II

     With cynical Adrian then I took flight
     To that old dead city whose carol
     Bursts out like a reveller's loud in the night,
     As he sits astride his barrel.

     III

     We two were bound the Alps to scale,
     Up the rock-reflecting river;
     Old times blew thro' me like a gale,
     And kept my thoughts in a quiver.

     IV

     Hawking ruin, wood-slope, and vine
     Reeled silver-laced under my vision,
     And into me passed, with the green-eyed wine
     Knocking hard at my head for admission.

     V

     I held the village lily cheap,
     And the dream around her idle:
     Lo, quietly as I lay to sleep,
     The bells led me off to a bridal.

     VI

     My bride wore the hood of a Beguine,
     And mine was the foot to falter;
     Three cowled monks, rat-eyed, were seen;
     The Cross was of bones o'er the altar.

     VII

     The Cross was of bones; the priest that read,
     A spectacled necromancer:
     But at the fourth word, the bride I led
     Changed to an Opera dancer.

     VIII

     A young ballet-beauty, who perked in her place,
     A darling of pink and spangles;
     One fair foot level with her face,
     And the hearts of men at her ankles.

     IX

     She whirled, she twirled, the mock-priest grinned,
     And quickly his mask unriddled;
     'Twas Adrian! loud his old laughter dinned;
     Then he seized a fiddle, and fiddled.

     X

     He fiddled, he glowed with the bottomless fire,
     Like Sathanas in feature:
     All through me he fiddled a wolfish desire
     To dance with that bright creature.

     XI

     And gathering courage I said to my soul,
     Throttle the thing that hinders!
     When the three cowled monks, from black as coal,
     Waxed hot as furnace-cinders.

     XII

     They caught her up, twirling: they leapt between-whiles:
     The fiddler flickered with laughter:
     Profanely they flew down the awful aisles,
     Where I went sliding after.

     XIII

     Down the awful aisles, by the fretted walls,
     Beneath the Gothic arches:-
     King Skull in the black confessionals
     Sat rub-a-dub-dubbing his marches.

     XIV

     Then the silent cold stone warriors frowned,
     The pictured saints strode forward:
     A whirlwind swept them from holy ground;
     A tempest puffed them nor'ward.

     XV

     They shot through the great cathedral door;
     Like mallards they traversed ocean:
     And gazing below, on its boiling floor,
     I marked a horrid commotion.

     XVI

     Down a forest's long alleys they spun like tops:
     It seemed that for ages and ages,
     Thro' the Book of Life bereft of stops,
     They waltzed continuous pages.

     XVII

     And ages after, scarce awake,
     And my blood with the fever fretting,
     I stood alone by a forest-lake,
     Whose shadows the moon were netting.

     XVIII

     Lilies, golden and white, by the curls
     Of their broad flat leaves hung swaying.
     A wreath of languid twining girls
     Streamed upward, long locks disarraying.

     XIX

     Their cheeks had the satin frost-glow of the moon;
     Their eyes the fire of Sirius.
     They circled, and droned a monotonous tune,
     Abandoned to love delirious.

     XX

     Like lengths of convolvulus torn from the hedge,
     And trailing the highway over,
     The dreamy-eyed mistresses circled the sedge,
     And called for a lover, a lover!

     XXI

     I sank, I rose through seas of eyes,
     In odorous swathes delicious:
     They fanned me with impetuous sighs,
     They hit me with kisses vicious.

     XXII

     My ears were spelled, my neck was coiled,
     And I with their fury was glowing,
     When the marbly waters bubbled and boiled
     At a watery noise of crowing.

     XXIII

     They dragged me low and low to the lake:
     Their kisses more stormily showered;
     On the emerald brink, in the white moon's wake,
     An earthly damsel cowered.

     XXIV

     Fresh heart-sobs shook her knitted hands
     Beneath a tiny suckling,
     As one by one of the doleful bands
     Dived like a fairy duckling.

     XXV

     And now my turn had come--O me!
     What wisdom was mine that second!
     I dropped on the adorer's knee;
     To that sweet figure I beckoned.

     XXVI

     Save me! save me! for now I know
     The powers that Nature gave me,
     And the value of honest love I know:-
     My village lily! save me!

     XXVII

     Come 'twixt me and the sisterhood,
     While the passion-born phantoms are fleeing!
     Oh, he that is true to flesh and blood
     Is true to his own being!

     XXVIII

     And he that is false to flesh and blood
     Is false to the star within him:
     And the mad and hungry sisterhood
     All under the tides shall win him!

     XXIX

     My village lily! save me! save!
     For strength is with the holy:-
     Already I shuddered to feel the wave,
     As I kept sinking slowly:-

     XXX

     I felt the cold wave and the under-tug
     Of the Brides, when--starting and shrinking -
     Lo, Adrian tilts the water-jug!
     And Bruges with morn is blinking.

     XXXI

     Merrily sparkles sunny prime
     On gabled peak and arbour:
     Merrily rattles belfry-chime
     The song of Sevilla's Barber.



     THE OLD CHARTIST



     Whate'er I be, old England is my dam!
     So there's my answer to the judges, clear.
     I'm nothing of a fox, nor of a lamb;
     I don't know how to bleat nor how to leer:
     I'm for the nation!
     That's why you see me by the wayside here,
     Returning home from transportation.

     II

     It's Summer in her bath this morn, I think.
     I'm fresh as dew, and chirpy as the birds:
     And just for joy to see old England wink
     Thro' leaves again, I could harangue the herds:
     Isn't it something
     To speak out like a man when you've got words,
     And prove you're not a stupid dumb thing?

     III

     They shipp'd me of for it; I'm here again.
     Old England is my dam, whate'er I be!
     Says I, I'll tramp it home, and see the grain:
     If you see well, you're king of what you see:
     Eyesight is having,
     If you're not given, I said, to gluttony.
     Such talk to ignorance sounds as raving.

     IV

     You dear old brook, that from his Grace's park
     Come bounding! on you run near my old town:
     My lord can't lock the water; nor the lark,
     Unless he kills him, can my lord keep down.
     Up, is the song-note!
     I've tried it, too:- for comfort and renown,
     I rather pitch'd upon the wrong note.

     V

     I'm not ashamed: Not beaten's still my boast:
     Again I'll rouse the people up to strike.
     But home's where different politics jar most.
     Respectability the women like.
     This form, or that form, -
     The Government may be hungry pike,
     But don't you mount a Chartist platform!

     VI

     Well, well! Not beaten--spite of them, I shout;
     And my estate is suffering for the Cause. -
     No,--what is yon brown water-rat about,
     Who washes his old poll with busy paws?
     What does he mean by't?
     It's like defying all our natural laws,
     For him to hope that he'll get clean by't.

     VII

     His seat is on a mud-bank, and his trade
     Is dirt:- he's quite contemptible; and yet
     The fellow's all as anxious as a maid
     To show a decent dress, and dry the wet.
     Now it's his whisker,
     And now his nose, and ear: he seems to get
     Each moment at the motion brisker!

     VIII

     To see him squat like little chaps at school,
     I could let fly a laugh with all my might.
     He peers, hangs both his fore-paws:- bless that fool,
     He's bobbing at his frill now!--what a sight!
     Licking the dish up,
     As if he thought to pass from black to white,
     Like parson into lawny bishop.

     IX

     The elms and yellow reed-flags in the sun,
     Look on quite grave:- the sunlight flecks his side;
     And links of bindweed-flowers round him run,
     And shine up doubled with him in the tide.
     I'M nearly splitting,
     But nature seems like seconding his pride,
     And thinks that his behaviour's fitting.

     X

     That isle o' mud looks baking dry with gold.
     His needle-muzzle still works out and in.
     It really is a wonder to behold,
     And makes me feel the bristles of my chin.
     Judged by appearance,
     I fancy of the two I'm nearer Sin,
     And might as well commence a clearance.

     XI

     And that's what my fine daughter said:- she meant:
     Pray, hold your tongue, and wear a Sunday face.
     Her husband, the young linendraper, spent
     Much argument thereon:- I'm their disgrace.
     Bother the couple!
     I feel superior to a chap whose place
     Commands him to be neat and supple.

     XII

     But if I go and say to my old hen:
     I'll mend the gentry's boots, and keep discreet,
     Until they grow TOO violent,--why, then,
     A warmer welcome I might chance to meet:
     Warmer and better.
     And if she fancies her old cock is beat,
     And drops upon her knees--so let her!

     XIII

     She suffered for me:- women, you'll observe,
     Don't suffer for a Cause, but for a man.
     When I was in the dock she show'd her nerve:
     I saw beneath her shawl my old tea-can
     Trembling . . . she brought it
     To screw me for my work: she loath'd my plan,
     And therefore doubly kind I thought it.

     XIV

     I've never lost the taste of that same tea:
     That liquor on my logic floats like oil,
     When I state facts, and fellows disagree.
     For human creatures all are in a coil;
     All may want pardon.
     I see a day when every pot will boil
     Harmonious in one great Tea-garden!

     XV

     We wait the setting of the Dandy's day,
     Before that time!--He's furbishing his dress, -
     He WILL be ready for it!--and I say,
     That yon old dandy rat amid the cress, -
     Thanks to hard labour! -
     If cleanliness is next to godliness,
     The old fat fellow's heaven's neighbour!

     XVI

     You teach me a fine lesson, my old boy!
     I've looked on my superiors far too long,
     And small has been my profit as my joy.
     You've done the right while I've denounced the wrong.
     Prosper me later!
     Like you I will despise the sniggering throng,
     And please myself and my Creator.

     XVII

     I'll bring the linendraper and his wife
     Some day to see you; taking off my hat.
     Should they ask why, I'll answer: in my life
     I never found so true a democrat.
     Base occupation
     Can't rob you of your own esteem, old rat!
     I'll preach you to the British nation.



     SONG



     Should thy love die;
     O bury it not under ice-blue eyes!
     And lips that deny,
     With a scornful surprise,
     The life it once lived in thy breast when it wore no disguise.

     Should thy love die;
     O bury it where the sweet wild-flowers blow!
     And breezes go by,
     With no whisper of woe;
     And strange feet cannot guess of the anguish that slumbers below.

     Should thy love die;
     O wander once more to the haunt of the bee!
     Where the foliaged sky
     Is most sacred to see,
     And thy being first felt its wild birth like a wind-wakened tree.

     Should thy love die;
     O dissemble it! smile! let the rose hide the thorn!
     While the lark sings on high,
     And no thing looks forlorn,
     Bury it, bury it, bury it where it was born.



     TO ALEX. SMITH, THE 'GLASGOW POET,' ON HIS SONNET TO 'FAME'



     Not vainly doth the earnest voice of man
     Call for the thing that is his pure desire!
     Fame is the birthright of the living lyre!
     To noble impulse Nature puts no ban.
     Nor vainly to the Sphinx thy voice was raised!
     Tho' all thy great emotions like a sea,
     Against her stony immortality,
     Shatter themselves unheeded and amazed.
     Time moves behind her in a blind eclipse:
     Yet if in her cold eyes the end of all
     Be visible, as on her large closed lips
     Hangs dumb the awful riddle of the earth; -
     She sees, and she might speak, since that wild call,
     The mighty warning of a Poet's birth.



     GRANDFATHER BRIDGEMAN



     I

     'Heigh, boys!' cried Grandfather Bridgeman, 'it's time before dinner
     to-day.'
     He lifted the crumpled letter, and thumped a surprising 'Hurrah!'
     Up jumped all the echoing young ones, but John, with the starch in
     his throat,
     Said, 'Father, before we make noises, let's see the contents of the
     note.'
     The old man glared at him harshly, and twinkling made answer: 'Too
     bad!
     John Bridgeman, I'm always the whisky, and you are the water, my
     lad!'

     II

     But soon it was known thro' the house, and the house ran over for
     joy,
     That news, good news, great marvels, had come from the soldier boy;
     Young Tom, the luckless scapegrace, offshoot of Methodist John;
     His grandfather's evening tale, whom the old man hailed as his son.
     And the old man's shout of pride was a shout of his victory, too;
     For he called his affection a method: the neighbours' opinions he
     knew.

     III

     Meantime, from the morning table removing the stout breakfast cheer,
     The drink of the three generations, the milk, the tea, and the beer
     (Alone in its generous reading of pints stood the Grandfather's
     jug),
     The women for sight of the missive came pressing to coax and to hug.
     He scattered them quick, with a buss and a smack; thereupon he began
     Diversions with John's little Sarah: on Sunday, the naughty old
     man!

     IV

     Then messengers sped to the maltster, the auctioneer, miller, and
     all
     The seven sons of the farmer who housed in the range of his call.
     Likewise the married daughters, three plentiful ladies, prime cooks,
     Who bowed to him while they condemned, in meek hope to stand high in
     his books.
     'John's wife is a fool at a pudding,' they said, and the light carts
     up hill
     Went merrily, flouting the Sabbath: for puddings well made mend a
     will.

     V

     The day was a van-bird of summer: the robin still piped, but the
     blue,
     As a warm and dreamy palace with voices of larks ringing thro',
     Looked down as if wistfully eyeing the blossoms that fell from its
     lap:
     A day to sweeten the juices: a day to quicken the sap.
     All round the shadowy orchard sloped meadows in gold, and the dear
     Shy violets breathed their hearts out: the maiden breath of the
     year!

     VI

     Full time there was before dinner to bring fifteen of his blood,
     To sit at the old man's table: they found that the dinner was good.
     But who was she by the lilacs and pouring laburnums concealed,
     When under the blossoming apple the chair of the Grandfather
     wheeled?
     She heard one little child crying, 'Dear brave Cousin Tom!' as it
     leapt;
     Then murmured she: 'Let me spare them!' and passed round the
     walnuts, and wept.

     VII

     Yet not from sight had she slipped ere feminine eyes could detect
     The figure of Mary Charlworth. 'It's just what we all might
     expect,'
     Was uttered: and: 'Didn't I tell you?' Of Mary the rumour
     resounds,
     That she is now her own mistress, and mistress of five thousand
     pounds.
     'Twas she, they say, who cruelly sent young Tom to the war.
     Miss Mary, we thank you now! If you knew what we're thanking you
     for!

     VIII

     But, 'Have her in: let her hear it,' called Grandfather Bridgeman,
     elate,
     While Mary's black-gloved fingers hung trembling with flight on the
     gate.
     Despite the women's remonstrance, two little ones, lighter than
     deer,
     Were loosed, and Mary, imprisoned, her whole face white as a tear,
     Came forward with culprit footsteps. Her punishment was to
     commence:
     The pity in her pale visage they read in a different sense.

     IX

     'You perhaps may remember a fellow, Miss Charlworth, a sort of black
     sheep,'
     The old man turned his tongue to ironical utterance deep:
     'He came of a Methodist dad, so it wasn't his fault if he kicked.
     He earned a sad reputation, but Methodists are mortal strict.
     His name was Tom, and, dash me! but Bridgeman! I think you might
     add:
     Whatever he was, bear in mind that he came of a Methodist dad.'

     X

     This prelude dismally lengthened, till Mary, starting, exclaimed,
     'A letter, Sir, from your grandson?' 'Tom Bridgeman that rascal is
     named,'
     The old man answered, and further, the words that sent Tom to the
     ranks
     Repeated as words of a person to whom they all owed mighty thanks.
     But Mary never blushed: with her eyes on the letter, she sate,
     And twice interrupting him faltered, 'The date, may I ask, Sir, the
     date?'

     XI

     'Why, that's what I never look at in a letter,' the farmer replied:
     'Facts first! and now I'll be parson.' The Bridgeman women descried
     A quiver on Mary's eyebrows. One turned, and while shifting her
     comb,
     Said low to a sister: 'I'm certain she knows more than we about
     Tom.
     She wants him now he's a hero!' The same, resuming her place,
     Begged Mary to check them the moment she found it a tedious case.

     XII

     Then as a mastiff swallows the snarling noises of cats,
     The voice of the farmer opened. '"Three cheers, and off with your
     hats!"
     - That's Tom. "We've beaten them, Daddy, and tough work it was, to
     be sure!
     A regular stand-up combat: eight hours smelling powder and gore.
     I entered it Serjeant-Major,"--and now he commands a salute,
     And carries the flag of old England! Heigh! see him lift foes on
     his foot!

     XIII

     '--An officer! ay, Miss Charlworth, he is, or he is so to be;
     You'll own war isn't such humbug: and Glory means something, you
     see.
     "But don't say a word," he continues, "against the brave French any
     more."
     - That stopt me: we'll now march together. I couldn't read further
     before.
     That "brave French" I couldn't stomach. He can't see their cunning
     to get
     Us Britons to fight their battles, while best half the winnings they
     net!'

     XIV

     The old man sneered, and read forward. It was of that desperate
     fight; -
     The Muscovite stole thro' the mist-wreaths that wrapped the chill
     Inkermann height,
     Where stood our silent outposts: old England was in them that day!
     O sharp worked his ruddy wrinkles, as if to the breath of the fray
     They moved! He sat bareheaded: his long hair over him slow
     Swung white as the silky bog-flowers in purple heath-hollows that
     grow.

     XV

     And louder at Tom's first person: acute and in thunder the 'I'
     Invaded the ear with a whinny of triumph, that seem'd to defy
     The hosts of the world. All heated, what wonder he little could
     brook
     To catch the sight of Mary's demure puritanical look?
     And still as he led the onslaught, his treacherous side-shots he
     sent
     At her who was fighting a battle as fierce, and who sat there
     unbent.

     XVI

     '"We stood in line, and like hedgehogs the Russians rolled under us
     thick.
     They frightened me there."--He's no coward; for when, Miss, they
     came at the quick,
     The sight, he swears, was a breakfast.--"My stomach felt tight: in
     a glimpse
     I saw you snoring at home with the dear cuddled-up little imps.
     And then like the winter brickfields at midnight, hot fire
     lengthened out.
     Our fellows were just leashed bloodhounds: no heart of the lot
     faced about.

     XVII

     '"And only that grumbler, Bob Harris, remarked that we stood one to
     ten:
     'Ye fool,' says Mick Grady, 'just tell 'em they know to compliment
     men!'
     And I sang out your old words: 'If the opposite side isn't God's,
     Heigh! after you've counted a dozen, the pluckiest lads have the
     odds.'
     Ping-ping flew the enemies' pepper: the Colonel roared, Forward,
     and we
     Went at them. 'Twas first like a blanket: and then a long plunge
     in the sea.


     XVIII

     '"Well, now about me and the Frenchman: it happened I can't tell
     you how:
     And, Grandfather, hear, if you love me, and put aside prejudice
     now":
     He never says "Grandfather"--Tom don't--save it's a serious thing.
     "Well, there were some pits for the rifles, just dug on our French-
     leaning wing:
     And backwards, and forwards, and backwards we went, and at last I
     was vexed,
     And swore I would never surrender a foot when the Russians charged
     next.

     XIX

     '"I know that life's worth keeping."--Ay, so it is, lad; so it is! -
     "But my life belongs to a woman."--Does that mean Her Majesty, Miss?
     -
     "These Russians came lumping and grinning: they're fierce at it,
     though they are blocks.
     Our fellows were pretty well pumped, and looked sharp for the little
     French cocks.
     Lord, didn't we pray for their crowing! when over us, on the hill-
     top,
     Behold the first line of them skipping, like kangaroos seen on the
     hop.

     XX

     '"That sent me into a passion, to think of them spying our flight!"
     Heigh, Tom! you've Bridgeman blood, boy! And, "'Face them!' I
     shouted: 'All right;
     Sure, Serjeant, we'll take their shot dacent, like gentlemen,' Grady
     replied.
     A ball in his mouth, and the noble old Irishman dropped by my side.
     Then there was just an instant to save myself, when a short wheeze
     Of bloody lungs under the smoke, and a red-coat crawled up on his
     knees.

     XXI

     '"'Twas Ensign Baynes of our parish."--Ah, ah, Miss Charlworth, the
     one
     Our Tom fought for a young lady? Come, now we've got into the fun!
     -
     "I shouldered him: he primed his pistol, and I trailed my musket,
     prepared."
     Why, that's a fine pick-a-back for ye, to make twenty Russians look
     scared!
     "They came--never mind how many: we couldn't have run very well,
     We fought back to back: 'face to face, our last time!' he said,
     smiling, and fell.

     XXII

     '"Then I strove wild for his body: the beggars saw glittering
     rings,
     Which I vowed to send to his mother. I got some hard knocks and
     sharp stings,
     But felt them no more than angel, or devil, except in the wind.
     I know that I swore at a Russian for showing his teeth, and he
     grinned
     The harder: quick, as from heaven, a man on a horse rode between,
     And fired, and swung his bright sabre: I can't write you more of
     the scene.

     XXIII

     '"But half in his arms, and half at his stirrup, he bore me right
     forth,
     And pitched me among my old comrades: before I could tell south
     from north,
     He caught my hand up, and kissed it! Don't ever let any man speak
     A word against Frenchmen, I near him! I can't find his name, tho' I
     seek.
     But French, and a General, surely he was, and, God bless him! thro'
     him
     I've learnt to love a whole nation."' The ancient man paused,
     winking dim.

     XXIV

     A curious look, half woeful, was seen on his face as he turned
     His eyes upon each of his children, like one who but faintly
     discerned
     His old self in an old mirror. Then gathering sense in his fist,
     He sounded it hard on his knee-cap. 'Your hand, Tom, the French
     fellow kissed!
     He kissed my boy's old pounder! I say he's a gentleman!' Straight
     The letter he tossed to one daughter; bade her the remainder relate.

     XXV

     Tom properly stated his praises in facts, but the lady preferred
     To deck the narration with brackets, and drop her additional word.
     What nobler Christian natures these women could boast, who, 'twas
     known,
     Once spat at the name of their nephew, and now made his praises
     their own!
     The letter at last was finished, the hearers breathed freely, and
     sign
     Was given, 'Tom's health!'--Quoth the farmer: 'Eh, Miss? are you
     weak in the spine?'

     XXVI

     For Mary had sunk, and her body was shaking, as if in a fit.
     Tom's letter she held, and her thumb-nail the month when the letter
     was writ
     Fast-dinted, while she hung sobbing: 'O, see, Sir, the letter is
     old!
     O, do not be too happy!'--'If I understand you, I'm bowled!'
     Said Grandfather Bridgeman, 'and down go my wickets!--not happy!
     when here,
     Here's Tom like to marry his General's daughter--or widow--I'll
     swear!

     XXVII

     'I wager he knows how to strut, too! It's all on the cards that the
     Queen
     Will ask him to Buckingham Palace, to say what he's done and he's
     seen.
     Victoria's fond of her soldiers: and she's got a nose for a fight.
     If Tom tells a cleverish story--there is such a thing as a knight!
     And don't he look roguish and handsome!--To see a girl snivelling
     there -
     By George, Miss, it's clear that you're jealous'--'I love him!' she
     answered his stare.

     XXVIII

     'Yes! now!' breathed the voice of a woman.--'Ah! now!' quiver'd low
     the reply.
     'And "now"'s just a bit too late, so it's no use your piping your
     eye,'
     The farmer added bluffly: 'Old Lawyer Charlworth was rich;
     You followed his instructions in kicking Tom into the ditch.
     If you're such a dutiful daughter, that doesn't prove Tom is a fool.
     Forgive and forget's my motto! and here's my grog growing cool!'

     XXIX

     'But, Sir,' Mary faintly repeated: 'for four long weeks I have
     failed
     To come and cast on you my burden; such grief for you always
     prevailed!
     My heart has so bled for you!' The old man burst on her speech:
     'You've chosen a likely time, Miss! a pretty occasion to preach!'
     And was it not outrageous, that now, of all times, one should come
     With incomprehensible pity! Far better had Mary been dumb.

     XXX

     But when again she stammered in this bewildering way,
     The farmer no longer could bear it, and begged her to go, or to
     stay,
     But not to be whimpering nonsense at such a time. Pricked by a
     goad,
     'Twas you who sent him to glory:- you've come here to reap what you
     sowed.
     Is that it?' he asked; and the silence the elders preserved plainly
     said,
     On Mary's heaving bosom this begging-petition was read.

     XXXI

     And that it was scarcely a bargain that she who had driven him wild
     Should share now the fruits of his valour, the women expressed, as
     they smiled.
     The family pride of the Bridgemans was comforted; still, with
     contempt,
     They looked on a monied damsel of modesty quite so exempt.
     'O give me force to tell them!' cried Mary, and even as she spoke,
     A shout and a hush of the children: a vision on all of them broke.

     XXXII

     Wheeled, pale, in a chair, and shattered, the wreck of their hero
     was seen;
     The ghost of Tom drawn slow o'er the orchard's shadowy green.
     Could this be the martial darling they joyed in a moment ago?
     'He knows it?' to Mary Tom murmured, and closed his weak lids at her
     'No.'
     'Beloved!' she said, falling by him, 'I have been a coward: I
     thought
     You lay in the foreign country, and some strange good might be
     wrought.

     XXXIII

     'Each day I have come to tell him, and failed, with my hand on the
     gate.
     I bore the dreadful knowledge, and crushed my heart with its weight.
     The letter brought by your comrade--he has but just read it aloud!
     It only reached him this morning!' Her head on his shoulder she
     bowed.
     Then Tom with pity's tenderest lordliness patted her arm,
     And eyed the old white-head fondly, with something of doubt and
     alarm.

     XXXIV

     O, take to your fancy a sculptor whose fresh marble offspring
     appears
     Before him, shiningly perfect, the laurel-crown'd issue of years:
     Is heaven offended? for lightning behold from its bosom escape,
     And those are mocking fragments that made the harmonious shape!
     He cannot love the ruins, till, feeling that ruins alone
     Are left, he loves them threefold. So passed the old grandfather's
     moan.

     XXXV

     John's text for a sermon on Slaughter he heard, and he did not
     protest.
     All rigid as April snowdrifts, he stood, hard and feeble; his chest
     Just showing the swell of the fire as it melted him. Smiting a rib,
     'Heigh! what have we been about, Tom! Was this all a terrible fib?'
     He cried, and the letter forth-trembled. Tom told what the cannon
     had done.
     Few present but ached to see falling those aged tears on his heart's
     son!

     XXXVI

     Up lanes of the quiet village, and where the mill-waters rush red
     Thro' browning summer meadows to catch the sun's crimsoning head,
     You meet an old man and a maiden who has the soft ways of a wife
     With one whom they wheel, alternate; whose delicate flush of new
     life
     Is prized like the early primrose. Then shake his right hand, in
     the chair -
     The old man fails never to tell you: 'You've got the French
     General's there!'



     THE PROMISE IN DISTURBANCE



     How low when angels fall their black descent,
     Our primal thunder tells: known is the pain
     Of music, that nigh throning wisdom went,
     And one false note cast wailful to the insane.
     Now seems the language heard of Love as rain
     To make a mire where fruitfulness was meant.
     The golden harp gives out a jangled strain,
     Too like revolt from heaven's Omnipotent.
     But listen in the thought; so may there come
     Conception of a newly-added chord,
     Commanding space beyond where ear has home.
     In labour of the trouble at its fount,
     Leads Life to an intelligible Lord
     The rebel discords up the sacred mount.



     MODERN LOVE



     I

     By this he knew she wept with waking eyes:
     That, at his hand's light quiver by her head,
     The strange low sobs that shook their common bed
     Were called into her with a sharp surprise,
     And strangled mute, like little gaping snakes,
     Dreadfully venomous to him. She lay
     Stone-still, and the long darkness flowed away
     With muffled pulses. Then, as midnight makes
     Her giant heart of Memory and Tears
     Drink the pale drug of silence, and so beat
     Sleep's heavy measure, they from head to feet
     Were moveless, looking through their dead black years,
     By vain regret scrawled over the blank wall.
     Like sculptured effigies they might be seen
     Upon their marriage-tomb, the sword between;
     Each wishing for the sword that severs all.

     II

     It ended, and the morrow brought the task.
     Her eyes were guilty gates, that let him in
     By shutting all too zealous for their sin:
     Each sucked a secret, and each wore a mask.
     But, oh, the bitter taste her beauty had!
     He sickened as at breath of poison-flowers:
     A languid humour stole among the hours,
     And if their smiles encountered, he went mad,
     And raged deep inward, till the light was brown
     Before his vision, and the world, forgot,
     Looked wicked as some old dull murder-spot.
     A star with lurid beams, she seemed to crown
     The pit of infamy: and then again
     He fainted on his vengefulness, and strove
     To ape the magnanimity of love,
     And smote himself, a shuddering heap of pain.

     III

     This was the woman; what now of the man?
     But pass him. If he comes beneath a heel,
     He shall be crushed until he cannot feel,
     Or, being callous, haply till he can.
     But he is nothing:- nothing? Only mark
     The rich light striking out from her on him!
     Ha! what a sense it is when her eyes swim
     Across the man she singles, leaving dark
     All else! Lord God, who mad'st the thing so fair,
     See that I am drawn to her even now!
     It cannot be such harm on her cool brow
     To put a kiss? Yet if I meet him there!
     But she is mine! Ah, no! I know too well
     I claim a star whose light is overcast:
     I claim a phantom-woman in the Past.
     The hour has struck, though I heard not the bell!

     IV

     All other joys of life he strove to warm,
     And magnify, and catch them to his lip:
     But they had suffered shipwreck with the ship,
     And gazed upon him sallow from the storm.
     Or if Delusion came, 'twas but to show
     The coming minute mock the one that went.
     Cold as a mountain in its star-pitched tent,
     Stood high Philosophy, less friend than foe:
     Whom self-caged Passion, from its prison-bars,
     Is always watching with a wondering hate.
     Not till the fire is dying in the grate,
     Look we for any kinship with the stars.
     Oh, wisdom never comes when it is gold,
     And the great price we pay for it full worth:
     We have it only when we are half earth.
     Little avails that coinage to the old!

     V

     A message from her set his brain aflame.
     A world of household matters filled her mind,
     Wherein he saw hypocrisy designed:
     She treated him as something that is tame,
     And but at other provocation bites.
     Familiar was her shoulder in the glass,
     Through that dark rain: yet it may come to pass
     That a changed eye finds such familiar sights
     More keenly tempting than new loveliness.
     The 'What has been' a moment seemed his own:
     The splendours, mysteries, dearer because known,
     Nor less divine: Love's inmost sacredness
     Called to him, 'Come!'--In his restraining start,
     Eyes nurtured to be looked at scarce could see
     A wave of the great waves of Destiny
     Convulsed at a checked impulse of the heart.

     VI

     It chanced his lips did meet her forehead cool.
     She had no blush, but slanted down her eye.
     Shamed nature, then, confesses love can die:
     And most she punishes the tender fool
     Who will believe what honours her the most!
     Dead! is it dead? She has a pulse, and flow
     Of tears, the price of blood-drops, as I know,
     For whom the midnight sobs around Love's ghost,
     Since then I heard her, and so will sob on.
     The love is here; it has but changed its aim.
     O bitter barren woman! what's the name?
     The name, the name, the new name thou hast won?
     Behold me striking the world's coward stroke!
     That will I not do, though the sting is dire.
     - Beneath the surface this, while by the fire
     They sat, she laughing at a quiet joke.

     VII

     She issues radiant from her dressing-room,
     Like one prepared to scale an upper sphere:
     - By stirring up a lower, much I fear!
     How deftly that oiled barber lays his bloom!
     That long-shanked dapper Cupid with frisked curls
     Can make known women torturingly fair;
     The gold-eyed serpent dwelling in rich hair
     Awakes beneath his magic whisks and twirls.
     His art can take the eyes from out my head,
     Until I see with eyes of other men;
     While deeper knowledge crouches in its den,
     And sends a spark up:- is it true we are wed?
     Yea! filthiness of body is most vile,
     But faithlessness of heart I do hold worse.
     The former, it were not so great a curse
     To read on the steel-mirror of her smile.

     VIII

     Yet it was plain she struggled, and that salt
     Of righteous feeling made her pitiful.
     Poor twisting worm, so queenly beautiful!
     Where came the cleft between us? whose the fault?
     My tears are on thee, that have rarely dropped
     As balm for any bitter wound of mine:
     My breast will open for thee at a sign!
     But, no: we are two reed-pipes, coarsely stopped:
     The God once filled them with his mellow breath;
     And they were music till he flung them down,
     Used! used! Hear now the discord-loving clown
     Puff his gross spirit in them, worse than death!
     I do not know myself without thee more:
     In this unholy battle I grow base:
     If the same soul be under the same face,
     Speak, and a taste of that old time restore!

     IX

     He felt the wild beast in him betweenwhiles
     So masterfully rude, that he would grieve
     To see the helpless delicate thing receive
     His guardianship through certain dark defiles.
     Had he not teeth to rend, and hunger too?
     But still he spared her. Once: 'Have you no fear?'
     He said: 'twas dusk; she in his grasp; none near.
     She laughed: 'No, surely; am I not with you?'
     And uttering that soft starry 'you,' she leaned
     Her gentle body near him, looking up;
     And from her eyes, as from a poison-cup,
     He drank until the flittering eyelids screened.
     Devilish malignant witch! and oh, young beam
     Of heaven's circle-glory! Here thy shape
     To squeeze like an intoxicating grape -
     I might, and yet thou goest safe, supreme.

     X

     But where began the change; and what's my crime?
     The wretch condemned, who has not been arraigned,
     Chafes at his sentence. Shall I, unsustained,
     Drag on Love's nerveless body thro' all time?
     I must have slept, since now I wake. Prepare,
     You lovers, to know Love a thing of moods:
     Not, like hard life, of laws. In Love's deep woods,
     I dreamt of loyal Life:- the offence is there!
     Love's jealous woods about the sun are curled;
     At least, the sun far brighter there did beam. -
     My crime is, that the puppet of a dream,
     I plotted to be worthy of the world.
     Oh, had I with my darling helped to mince
     The facts of life, you still had seen me go
     With hindward feather and with forward toe,
     Her much-adored delightful Fairy Prince!

     XI

     Out in the yellow meadows, where the bee
     Hums by us with the honey of the Spring,
     And showers of sweet notes from the larks on wing
     Are dropping like a noon-dew, wander we.
     Or is it now? or was it then? for now,
     As then, the larks from running rings pour showers:
     The golden foot of May is on the flowers,
     And friendly shadows dance upon her brow.
     What's this, when Nature swears there is no change
     To challenge eyesight? Now, as then, the grace
     Of heaven seems holding earth in its embrace.
     Nor eyes, nor heart, has she to feel it strange?
     Look, woman, in the West. There wilt thou see
     An amber cradle near the sun's decline:
     Within it, featured even in death divine,
     Is lying a dead infant, slain by thee.

     XII

     Not solely that the Future she destroys,
     And the fair life which in the distance lies
     For all men, beckoning out from dim rich skies:
     Nor that the passing hour's supporting joys
     Have lost the keen-edged flavour, which begat
     Distinction in old times, and still should breed
     Sweet Memory, and Hope,--earth's modest seed,
     And heaven's high-prompting: not that the world is flat
     Since that soft-luring creature I embraced
     Among the children of Illusion went:
     Methinks with all this loss I were content,
     If the mad Past, on which my foot is based,
     Were firm, or might be blotted: but the whole
     Of life is mixed: the mocking Past will stay:
     And if I drink oblivion of a day,
     So shorten I the stature of my soul.

     XIII

     'I play for Seasons; not Eternities!'
     Says Nature, laughing on her way. 'So must
     All those whose stake is nothing more than dust!'
     And lo, she wins, and of her harmonies
     She is full sure! Upon her dying rose
     She drops a look of fondness, and goes by,
     Scarce any retrospection in her eye;
     For she the laws of growth most deeply knows,
     Whose hands bear, here, a seed-bag--there, an urn.
     Pledged she herself to aught, 'twould mark her end!
     This lesson of our only visible friend
     Can we not teach our foolish hearts to learn?
     Yes! yes!--but, oh, our human rose is fair
     Surpassingly! Lose calmly Love's great bliss,
     When the renewed for ever of a kiss
     Whirls life within the shower of loosened hair!

     XIV

     What soul would bargain for a cure that brings
     Contempt the nobler agony to kill?
     Rather let me bear on the bitter ill,
     And strike this rusty bosom with new stings!
     It seems there is another veering fit,
     Since on a gold-haired lady's eyeballs pure
     I looked with little prospect of a cure,
     The while her mouth's red bow loosed shafts of wit.
     Just heaven! can it be true that jealousy
     Has decked the woman thus? and does her head
     Swim somewhat for possessions forfeited?
     Madam, you teach me many things that be.
     I open an old book, and there I find
     That 'Women still may love whom they deceive.'
     Such love I prize not, madam: by your leave,
     The game you play at is not to my mind.

     XV

     I think she sleeps: it must be sleep, when low
     Hangs that abandoned arm toward the floor;
     The face turned with it. Now make fast the door.
     Sleep on: it is your husband, not your foe.
     The Poet's black stage-lion of wronged love
     Frights not our modern dames:- well if he did!
     Now will I pour new light upon that lid,
     Full-sloping like the breasts beneath. 'Sweet dove,
     Your sleep is pure. Nay, pardon: I disturb.
     I do not? good!' Her waking infant-stare
     Grows woman to the burden my hands bear:
     Her own handwriting to me when no curb
     Was left on Passion's tongue. She trembles through;
     A woman's tremble--the whole instrument:-
     I show another letter lately sent.
     The words are very like: the name is new.

     XVI

     In our old shipwrecked days there was an hour,
     When in the firelight steadily aglow,
     Joined slackly, we beheld the red chasm grow
     Among the clicking coals. Our library-bower
     That eve was left to us: and hushed we sat
     As lovers to whom Time is whispering.
     From sudden-opened doors we heard them sing:
     The nodding elders mixed good wine with chat.
     Well knew we that Life's greatest treasure lay
     With us, and of it was our talk. 'Ah, yes!
     Love dies!' I said: I never thought it less.
     She yearned to me that sentence to unsay.
     Then when the fire domed blackening, I found
     Her cheek was salt against my kiss, and swift
     Up the sharp scale of sobs her breast did lift:-
     Now am I haunted by that taste! that sound!

     XVII

     At dinner, she is hostess, I am host.
     Went the feast ever cheerfuller? She keeps
     The Topic over intellectual deeps
     In buoyancy afloat. They see no ghost.
     With sparkling surface-eyes we ply the ball:
     It is in truth a most contagious game:
     HIDING THE SKELETON, shall be its name.
     Such play as this the devils might appal!
     But here's the greater wonder; in that we,
     Enamoured of an acting nought can tire,
     Each other, like true hypocrites, admire;
     Warm-lighted looks, Love's ephemerioe,
     Shoot gaily o'er the dishes and the wine.
     We waken envy of our happy lot.
     Fast, sweet, and golden, shows the marriage-knot.
     Dear guests, you now have seen Love's corpse-light shine.

     XVIII

     Here Jack and Tom are paired with Moll and Meg.
     Curved open to the river-reach is seen
     A country merry-making on the green.
     Fair space for signal shakings of the leg.
     That little screwy fiddler from his booth,
     Whence flows one nut-brown stream, commands the joints
     Of all who caper here at various points.
     I have known rustic revels in my youth:
     The May-fly pleasures of a mind at ease.
     An early goddess was a country lass:
     A charmed Amphion-oak she tripped the grass.
     What life was that I lived? The life of these?
     Heaven keep them happy! Nature they seem near.
     They must, I think, be wiser than I am;
     They have the secret of the bull and lamb.
     'Tis true that when we trace its source, 'tis beer.

     XIX

     No state is enviable. To the luck alone
     Of some few favoured men I would put claim.
     I bleed, but her who wounds I will not blame.
     Have I not felt her heart as 'twere my own
     Beat thro' me? could I hurt her? heaven and hell!
     But I could hurt her cruelly! Can I let
     My Love's old time-piece to another set,
     Swear it can't stop, and must for ever swell?
     Sure, that's one way Love drifts into the mart
     Where goat-legged buyers throng. I see not plain:-
     My meaning is, it must not be again.
     Great God! the maddest gambler throws his heart.
     If any state be enviable on earth,
     'Tis yon born idiot's, who, as days go by,
     Still rubs his hands before him, like a fly,
     In a queer sort of meditative mirth.

     XX

     I am not of those miserable males
     Who sniff at vice and, daring not to snap,
     Do therefore hope for heaven. I take the hap
     Of all my deeds. The wind that fills my sails
     Propels; but I am helmsman. Am I wrecked,
     I know the devil has sufficient weight
     To bear: I lay it not on him, or fate.
     Besides, he's damned. That man I do suspect
     A coward, who would burden the poor deuce
     With what ensues from his own slipperiness.
     I have just found a wanton-scented tress
     In an old desk, dusty for lack of use.
     Of days and nights it is demonstrative,
     That, like some aged star, gleam luridly.
     If for those times I must ask charity,
     Have I not any charity to give?

     XXI

     We three are on the cedar-shadowed lawn;
     My friend being third. He who at love once laughed
     Is in the weak rib by a fatal shaft
     Struck through, and tells his passion's bashful dawn
     And radiant culmination, glorious crown,
     When 'this' she said: went 'thus': most wondrous she.
     Our eyes grow white, encountering: that we are three,
     Forgetful; then together we look down.
     But he demands our blessing; is convinced
     That words of wedded lovers must bring good.
     We question; if we dare! or if we should!
     And pat him, with light laugh. We have not winced.
     Next, she has fallen. Fainting points the sign
     To happy things in wedlock. When she wakes,
     She looks the star that thro' the cedar shakes:
     Her lost moist hand clings mortally to mine.

     XXII

     What may the woman labour to confess?
     There is about her mouth a nervous twitch.
     'Tis something to be told, or hidden:- which?
     I get a glimpse of hell in this mild guess.
     She has desires of touch, as if to feel
     That all the household things are things she knew.
     She stops before the glass. What sight in view?
     A face that seems the latest to reveal!
     For she turns from it hastily, and tossed
     Irresolute steals shadow-like to where
     I stand; and wavering pale before me there,
     Her tears fall still as oak-leaves after frost.
     She will not speak. I will not ask. We are
     League-sundered by the silent gulf between.
     You burly lovers on the village green,
     Yours is a lower, and a happier star!

     XXIII

     'Tis Christmas weather, and a country house
     Receives us: rooms are full: we can but get
     An attic-crib. Such lovers will not fret
     At that, it is half-said. The great carouse
     Knocks hard upon the midnight's hollow door,
     But when I knock at hers, I see the pit.
     Why did I come here in that dullard fit?
     I enter, and lie couched upon the floor.
     Passing, I caught the coverlet's quick beat:-
     Come, Shame, burn to my soul! and Pride, and Pain -
     Foul demons that have tortured me, enchain!
     Out in the freezing darkness the lambs bleat.
     The small bird stiffens in the low starlight.
     I know not how, but shuddering as I slept,
     I dreamed a banished angel to me crept:
     My feet were nourished on her breasts all night.

     XXIV

     The misery is greater, as I live!
     To know her flesh so pure, so keen her sense,
     That she does penance now for no offence,
     Save against Love. The less can I forgive!
     The less can I forgive, though I adore
     That cruel lovely pallor which surrounds
     Her footsteps; and the low vibrating sounds
     That come on me, as from a magic shore.
     Low are they, but most subtle to find out
     The shrinking soul. Madam, 'tis understood
     When women play upon their womanhood,
     It means, a Season gone. And yet I doubt
     But I am duped. That nun-like look waylays
     My fancy. Oh! I do but wait a sign!
     Pluck out the eyes of pride! thy mouth to mine!
     Never! though I die thirsting. Go thy ways!

     XXV

     You like not that French novel? Tell me why.
     You think it quite unnatural. Let us see.
     The actors are, it seems, the usual three:
     Husband, and wife, and lover. She--but fie!
     In England we'll not hear of it. Edmond,
     The lover, her devout chagrin doth share;
     Blanc-mange and absinthe are his penitent fare,
     Till his pale aspect makes her over-fond:
     So, to preclude fresh sin, he tries rosbif.
     Meantime the husband is no more abused:
     Auguste forgives her ere the tear is used.
     Then hangeth all on one tremendous IF:-
     IF she will choose between them. She does choose;
     And takes her husband, like a proper wife.
     Unnatural? My dear, these things are life:
     And life, some think, is worthy of the Muse.

     XXVI

     Love ere he bleeds, an eagle in high skies,
     Has earth beneath his wings: from reddened eve
     He views the rosy dawn. In vain they weave
     The fatal web below while far he flies.
     But when the arrow strikes him, there's a change.
     He moves but in the track of his spent pain,
     Whose red drops are the links of a harsh chain,
     Binding him to the ground, with narrow range.
     A subtle serpent then has Love become.
     I had the eagle in my bosom erst:
     Henceforward with the serpent I am cursed.
     I can interpret where the mouth is dumb.
     Speak, and I see the side-lie of a truth.
     Perchance my heart may pardon you this deed:
     But be no coward:- you that made Love bleed,
     You must bear all the venom of his tooth!

     XXVII

     Distraction is the panacea, Sir!
     I hear my oracle of Medicine say.
     Doctor! that same specific yesterday
     I tried, and the result will not deter
     A second trial. Is the devil's line
     Of golden hair, or raven black, composed?
     And does a cheek, like any sea-shell rosed,
     Or clear as widowed sky, seem most divine?
     No matter, so I taste forgetfulness.
     And if the devil snare me, body and mind,
     Here gratefully I score:- he seemed kind,
     When not a soul would comfort my distress!
     O sweet new world, in which I rise new made!
     O Lady, once I gave love: now I take!
     Lady, I must be flattered. Shouldst thou wake
     The passion of a demon, be not afraid.

     XXVIII

     I must be flattered. The imperious
     Desire speaks out. Lady, I am content
     To play with you the game of Sentiment,
     And with you enter on paths perilous;
     But if across your beauty I throw light,
     To make it threefold, it must be all mine.
     First secret; then avowed. For I must shine
     Envied,--I, lessened in my proper sight!
     Be watchful of your beauty, Lady dear!
     How much hangs on that lamp you cannot tell.
     Most earnestly I pray you, tend it well:
     And men shall see me as a burning sphere;
     And men shall mark you eyeing me, and groan
     To be the God of such a grand sunflower!
     I feel the promptings of Satanic power,
     While you do homage unto me alone.

     XXIX

     Am I failing? For no longer can I cast
     A glory round about this head of gold.
     Glory she wears, but springing from the mould;
     Not like the consecration of the Past!
     Is my soul beggared? Something more than earth
     I cry for still: I cannot be at peace
     In having Love upon a mortal lease.
     I cannot take the woman at her worth!
     Where is the ancient wealth wherewith I clothed
     Our human nakedness, and could endow
     With spiritual splendour a white brow
     That else had grinned at me the fact I loathed?
     A kiss is but a kiss now! and no wave
     Of a great flood that whirls me to the sea.
     But, as you will! we'll sit contentedly,
     And eat our pot of honey on the grave.

     XXX

     What are we first? First, animals; and next
     Intelligences at a leap; on whom
     Pale lies the distant shadow of the tomb,
     And all that draweth on the tomb for text.
     Into which state comes Love, the crowning sun:
     Beneath whose light the shadow loses form.
     We are the lords of life, and life is warm.
     Intelligence and instinct now are one.
     But nature says: 'My children most they seem
     When they least know me: therefore I decree
     That they shall suffer.' Swift doth young Love flee,
     And we stand wakened, shivering from our dream.
     Then if we study Nature we are wise.
     Thus do the few who live but with the day:
     The scientific animals are they. -
     Lady, this is my sonnet to your eyes.

     XXXI

     This golden head has wit in it. I live
     Again, and a far higher life, near her.
     Some women like a young philosopher;
     Perchance because he is diminutive.
     For woman's manly god must not exceed
     Proportions of the natural nursing size.
     Great poets and great sages draw no prize
     With women: but the little lap-dog breed,
     Who can be hugged, or on a mantel-piece
     Perched up for adoration, these obtain
     Her homage. And of this we men are vain?
     Of this! 'Tis ordered for the world's increase!
     Small flattery! Yet she has that rare gift
     To beauty, Common Sense. I am approved.
     It is not half so nice as being loved,
     And yet I do prefer it. What's my drift?

     XXXII

     Full faith I have she holds that rarest gift
     To beauty, Common Sense. To see her lie
     With her fair visage an inverted sky
     Bloom-covered, while the underlids uplift,
     Would almost wreck the faith; but when her mouth
     (Can it kiss sweetly? sweetly!) would address
     The inner me that thirsts for her no less,
     And has so long been languishing in drouth,
     I feel that I am matched; that I am man!
     One restless corner of my heart or head,
     That holds a dying something never dead,
     Still frets, though Nature giveth all she can.
     It means, that woman is not, I opine,
     Her sex's antidote. Who seeks the asp
     For serpent's bites? 'Twould calm me could I clasp
     Shrieking Bacchantes with their souls of wine!

     XXXIII

     'In Paris, at the Louvre, there have I seen
     The sumptuously-feathered angel pierce
     Prone Lucifer, descending. Looked he fierce,
     Showing the fight a fair one? Too serene!
     The young Pharsalians did not disarray
     Less willingly their locks of floating silk:
     That suckling mouth of his upon the milk
     Of heaven might still be feasting through the fray.
     Oh, Raphael! when men the Fiend do fight,
     They conquer not upon such easy terms.
     Half serpent in the struggle grow these worms.
     And does he grow half human, all is right.'
     This to my Lady in a distant spot,
     Upon the theme: WHILE MIND IS MASTERING CLAY,
     GROSS CLAY INVADES IT. If the spy you play,
     My wife, read this! Strange love talk, is it not?

     XXXIV

     Madam would speak with me. So, now it comes:
     The Deluge or else Fire! She's well; she thanks
     My husbandship. Our chain on silence clanks.
     Time leers between, above his twiddling thumbs.
     Am I quite well? Most excellent in health!
     The journals, too, I diligently peruse.
     Vesuvius is expected to give news:
     Niagara is no noisier. By stealth
     Our eyes dart scrutinizing snakes. She's glad
     I'm happy, says her quivering under-lip.
     'And are not you?' 'How can I be?' 'Take ship!
     For happiness is somewhere to be had.'
     'Nowhere for me!' Her voice is barely heard.
     I am not melted, and make no pretence.
     With commonplace I freeze her, tongue and sense.
     Niagara or Vesuvius is deferred.

     XXXV

     It is no vulgar nature I have wived.
     Secretive, sensitive, she takes a wound
     Deep to her soul, as if the sense had swooned,
     And not a thought of vengeance had survived.
     No confidences has she: but relief
     Must come to one whose suffering is acute.
     O have a care of natures that are mute!
     They punish you in acts: their steps are brief.
     What is she doing? What does she demand
     From Providence or me? She is not one
     Long to endure this torpidly, and shun
     The drugs that crowd about a woman's hand.
     At Forfeits during snow we played, and I
     Must kiss her. 'Well performed!' I said: then she:
     "Tis hardly worth the money, you agree?'
     Save her? What for? To act this wedded lie!

     XXXVI

     My Lady unto Madam makes her bow.
     The charm of women is, that even while
     You're probed by them for tears, you yet may smile,
     Nay, laugh outright, as I have done just now.
     The interview was gracious: they anoint
     (To me aside) each other with fine praise:
     Discriminating compliments they raise,
     That hit with wondrous aim on the weak point:
     My Lady's nose of Nature might complain.
     It is not fashioned aptly to express
     Her character of large-browed steadfastness.
     But Madam says: Thereof she may be vain!
     Now, Madam's faulty feature is a glazed
     And inaccessible eye, that has soft fires,
     Wide gates, at love-time, only. This admires
     My Lady. At the two I stand amazed.

     XXXVII

     Along the garden terrace, under which
     A purple valley (lighted at its edge
     By smoky torch-flame on the long cloud-ledge
     Whereunder dropped the chariot) glimmers rich,
     A quiet company we pace, and wait
     The dinner-bell in prae-digestive calm.
     So sweet up violet banks the Southern balm
     Breathes round, we care not if the bell be late:
     Though here and there grey seniors question Time
     In irritable coughings. With slow foot
     The low rosed moon, the face of Music mute,
     Begins among her silent bars to climb.
     As in and out, in silvery dusk, we thread,
     I hear the laugh of Madam, and discern
     My Lady's heel before me at each turn.
     Our tragedy, is it alive or dead?

     XXXVIII

     Give to imagination some pure light
     In human form to fix it, or you shame
     The devils with that hideous human game:-
     Imagination urging appetite!
     Thus fallen have earth's greatest Gogmagogs,
     Who dazzle us, whom we can not revere:
     Imagination is the charioteer
     That, in default of better, drives the hogs.
     So, therefore, my dear Lady, let me love!
     My soul is arrowy to the light in you.
     You know me that I never can renew
     The bond that woman broke: what would you have?
     'Tis Love, or Vileness! not a choice between,
     Save petrifaction! What does Pity here?
     She killed a thing, and now it's dead, 'tis dear.
     Oh, when you counsel me, think what you mean!

     XXXIX

     She yields: my Lady in her noblest mood
     Has yielded: she, my golden-crowned rose!
     The bride of every sense! more sweet than those
     Who breathe the violet breath of maidenhood.
     O visage of still music in the sky!
     Soft moon! I feel thy song, my fairest friend!
     True harmony within can apprehend
     Dumb harmony without. And hark! 'tis nigh!
     Belief has struck the note of sound: a gleam
     Of living silver shows me where she shook
     Her long white fingers down the shadowy brook,
     That sings her song, half waking, half in dream.
     What two come here to mar this heavenly tune?
     A man is one: the woman bears my name,
     And honour. Their hands touch! Am I still tame?
     God, what a dancing spectre seems the moon!

     XL

     I bade my Lady think what she might mean.
     Know I my meaning, I? Can I love one,
     And yet be jealous of another? None
     Commits such folly. Terrible Love, I ween,
     Has might, even dead, half sighing to upheave
     The lightless seas of selfishness amain:
     Seas that in a man's heart have no rain
     To fall and still them. Peace can I achieve,
     By turning to this fountain-source of woe,
     This woman, who's to Love as fire to wood?
     She breathed the violet breath of maidenhood
     Against my kisses once! but I say, No!
     The thing is mocked at! Helplessly afloat,
     I know not what I do, whereto I strive.
     The dread that my old love may be alive
     Has seized my nursling new love by the throat.

     XLI

     How many a thing which we cast to the ground,
     When others pick it up becomes a gem!
     We grasp at all the wealth it is to them;
     And by reflected light its worth is found.
     Yet for us still 'tis nothing! and that zeal
     Of false appreciation quickly fades.
     This truth is little known to human shades,
     How rare from their own instinct 'tis to feel!
     They waste the soul with spurious desire,
     That is not the ripe flame upon the bough.
     We two have taken up a lifeless vow
     To rob a living passion: dust for fire!
     Madam is grave, and eyes the clock that tells
     Approaching midnight. We have struck despair
     Into two hearts. O, look we like a pair
     Who for fresh nuptials joyfully yield all else?

     XLII

     I am to follow her. There is much grace
     In woman when thus bent on martyrdom.
     They think that dignity of soul may come,
     Perchance, with dignity of body. Base!
     But I was taken by that air of cold
     And statuesque sedateness, when she said
     'I'm going'; lit a taper, bowed her head,
     And went, as with the stride of Pallas bold.
     Fleshly indifference horrible! The hands
     Of Time now signal: O, she's safe from me!
     Within those secret walls what do I see?
     Where first she set the taper down she stands:
     Not Pallas: Hebe shamed! Thoughts black as death
     Like a stirred pool in sunshine break. Her wrists
     I catch: she faltering, as she half resists,
     'You love . . .? love . . .? love . . .?' all on an indrawn breath.

     XLIII

     Mark where the pressing wind shoots javelin-like
     Its skeleton shadow on the broad-backed wave!
     Here is a fitting spot to dig Love's grave;
     Here where the ponderous breakers plunge and strike,
     And dart their hissing tongues high up the sand:
     In hearing of the ocean, and in sight
     Of those ribbed wind-streaks running into white.
     If I the death of Love had deeply planned,
     I never could have made it half so sure,
     As by the unblest kisses which upbraid
     The full-waked sense; or failing that, degrade!
     'Tis morning: but no morning can restore
     What we have forfeited. I see no sin:
     The wrong is mixed. In tragic life, God wot,
     No villain need be! Passions spin the plot:
     We are betrayed by what is false within.

     XLIV

     They say, that Pity in Love's service dwells,
     A porter at the rosy temple's gate.
     I missed him going: but it is my fate
     To come upon him now beside his wells;
     Whereby I know that I Love's temple leave,
     And that the purple doors have closed behind.
     Poor soul! if, in those early days unkind,
     Thy power to sting had been but power to grieve,
     We now might with an equal spirit meet,
     And not be matched like innocence and vice.
     She for the Temple's worship has paid price,
     And takes the coin of Pity as a cheat.
     She sees through simulation to the bone:
     What's best in her impels her to the worst:
     Never, she cries, shall Pity soothe Love's thirst,
     Or foul hypocrisy for truth atone!

     XLV

     It is the season of the sweet wild rose,
     My Lady's emblem in the heart of me!
     So golden-crowned shines she gloriously,
     And with that softest dream of blood she glows;
     Mild as an evening heaven round Hesper bright!
     I pluck the flower, and smell it, and revive
     The time when in her eyes I stood alive.
     I seem to look upon it out of Night.
     Here's Madam, stepping hastily. Her whims
     Bid her demand the flower, which I let drop.
     As I proceed, I feel her sharply stop,
     And crush it under heel with trembling limbs.
     She joins me in a cat-like way, and talks
     Of company, and even condescends
     To utter laughing scandal of old friends.
     These are the summer days, and these our walks.

     XLVI

     At last we parley: we so strangely dumb
     In such a close communion! It befell
     About the sounding of the Matin-bell,
     And lo! her place was vacant, and the hum
     Of loneliness was round me. Then I rose,
     And my disordered brain did guide my foot
     To that old wood where our first love-salute
     Was interchanged: the source of many throes!
     There did I see her, not alone. I moved
     Toward her, and made proffer of my arm.
     She took it simply, with no rude alarm;
     And that disturbing shadow passed reproved.
     I felt the pained speech coming, and declared
     My firm belief in her, ere she could speak.
     A ghastly morning came into her cheek,
     While with a widening soul on me she stared.

     XLVII

     We saw the swallows gathering in the sky,
     And in the osier-isle we heard them noise.
     We had not to look back on summer joys,
     Or forward to a summer of bright dye:
     But in the largeness of the evening earth
     Our spirits grew as we went side by side.
     The hour became her husband and my bride.
     Love, that had robbed us so, thus blessed our dearth!
     The pilgrims of the year waxed very loud
     In multitudinous chatterings, as the flood
     Full brown came from the West, and like pale blood
     Expanded to the upper crimson cloud.
     Love, that had robbed us of immortal things,
     This little moment mercifully gave,
     Where I have seen across the twilight wave
     The swan sail with her young beneath her wings.

     XLVIII

     Their sense is with their senses all mixed in,
     Destroyed by subtleties these women are!
     More brain, O Lord, more brain! or we shall mar
     Utterly this fair garden we might win.
     Behold! I looked for peace, and thought it near.
     Our inmost hearts had opened, each to each.
     We drank the pure daylight of honest speech.
     Alas! that was the fatal draught, I fear.
     For when of my lost Lady came the word,
     This woman, O this agony of flesh!
     Jealous devotion bade her break the mesh,
     That I might seek that other like a bird.
     I do adore the nobleness! despise
     The act! She has gone forth, I know not where.
     Will the hard world my sentience of her share
     I feel the truth; so let the world surmise.

     XLIX

     He found her by the ocean's moaning verge,
     Nor any wicked change in her discerned;
     And she believed his old love had returned,
     Which was her exultation, and her scourge.
     She took his hand, and walked with him, and seemed
     The wife he sought, though shadow-like and dry.
     She had one terror, lest her heart should sigh,
     And tell her loudly she no longer dreamed.
     She dared not say, 'This is my breast: look in.'
     But there's a strength to help the desperate weak.
     That night he learned how silence best can speak
     The awful things when Pity pleads for Sin.
     About the middle of the night her call
     Was heard, and he came wondering to the bed.
     'Now kiss me, dear! it may be, now!' she said.
     Lethe had passed those lips, and he knew all.

     L

     Thus piteously Love closed what he begat:
     The union of this ever-diverse pair!
     These two were rapid falcons in a snare,
     Condemned to do the flitting of the bat.
     Lovers beneath the singing sky of May,
     They wandered once; clear as the dew on flowers:
     But they fed not on the advancing hours:
     Their hearts held cravings for the buried day.
     Then each applied to each that fatal knife,
     Deep questioning, which probes to endless dole.
     Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul
     When hot for certainties in this our life! -
     In tragic hints here see what evermore
     Moves dark as yonder midnight ocean's force,
     Thundering like ramping hosts of warrior horse,
     To throw that faint thin fine upon the shore!



     THE PATRIOT ENGINEER



     'Sirs! may I shake your hands?
     My countrymen, I see!
     I've lived in foreign lands
     Till England's Heaven to me.
     A hearty shake will do me good,
     And freshen up my sluggish blood.'

     Into his hard right hand we struck,
     Gave the shake, and wish'd him luck.

     '--From Austria I come,
     An English wife to win,
     And find an English home,
     And live and die therein.
     Great Lord! how many a year I've pined
     To drink old ale and speak my mind!'

     Loud rang our laughter, and the shout
     Hills round the Meuse-boat echoed about.

     '--Ay, no offence: laugh on,
     Young gentlemen: I'll join.
     Had you to exile gone,
     Where free speech is base coin,
     You'd sigh to see the jolly nose
     Where Freedom's native liquor flows!'

     He this time the laughter led,
     Dabbling his oily bullet head.

     '--Give me, to suit my moods,
     An ale-house on a heath,
     I'll hand the crags and woods
     To B'elzebub beneath.
     A fig for scenery! what scene
     Can beat a Jackass on a green?'

     Gravely he seem'd, with gaze intense,
     Putting the question to common sense.

     '--Why, there's the ale-house bench:
     The furze-flower shining round:
     And there's my waiting-wench,
     As lissome as a hound.
     With "hail Britannia!" ere I drink,
     I'll kiss her with an artful wink.'

     Fair flash'd the foreign landscape while
     We breath'd again our native Isle.

     '--The geese may swim hard-by;
     They gabble, and you talk:
     You're sure there's not a spy
     To mark your name with chalk.
     My heart's an oak, and it won't grow
     In flower-pots, foreigners must know.'

     Pensive he stood: then shook his head
     Sadly; held out his fist, and said:

     '--You've heard that Hungary's floor'd?
     They've got her on the ground.
     A traitor broke her sword:
     Two despots held her bound.
     I've seen her gasping her last hope:
     I've seen her sons strung up b' the rope.

     'Nine gallant gentlemen
     In Arad they strung up!
     I work'd in peace till then:-
     That poison'd all my cup.
     A smell of corpses haunted me:
     My nostril sniff'd like life for sea.

     'Take money for my hire
     From butchers?--not the man!
     I've got some natural fire,
     And don't flash in the pan; -
     A few ideas I reveal'd:-
     'Twas well old England stood my shield!

     'Said I, "The Lord of Hosts
     Have mercy on your land!
     I see those dangling ghosts, -
     And you may keep command,
     And hang, and shoot, and have your day:
     They hold your bill, and you must pay.

     '"You've sent them where they're strong,
     You carrion Double-Head!
     I hear them sound a gong
     In Heaven above!"--I said.
     "My God, what feathers won't you moult
     For this!" says I: and then I bolt.

     'The Bird's a beastly Bird,
     And what is more, a fool.
     I shake hands with the herd
     That flock beneath his rule.
     They're kindly; and their land is fine.
     I thought it rarer once than mine.

     'And rare would be its lot,
     But that he baulks its powers:
     It's just an earthen pot
     For hearts of oak like ours.
     Think! Think!--four days from those frontiers,
     And I'm a-head full fifty years.

     'It tingles to your scalps,
     To think of it, my boys!
     Confusion on their Alps,
     And all their baby toys!
     The mountains Britain boasts are men:
     And scale you them, my brethren!'

     Cluck, went his tongue; his fingers, snap.
     Britons were proved all heights to cap.

     And we who worshipp'd crags,
     Where purple splendours burn'd,
     Our idol saw in rags,
     And right about were turn'd.
     Horizons rich with trembling spires
     On violet twilights lost their fires.

     And heights where morning wakes
     With one cheek over snow; -
     And iron-walled lakes
     Where sits the white moon low; -
     For us on youthful travel bent,
     The robing picturesque was rent.

     Wherever Beauty show'd
     The wonders of her face,
     This man his Jackass rode,
     High despot of the place.

     Fair dreams of our enchanted life
     Fled fast from his shrill island fife.

     And yet we liked him well;
     We laugh'd with honest hearts:-
     He shock'd some inner spell,
     And rous'd discordant parts.
     We echoed what we half abjured:
     And hating, smilingly endured.

     Moreover, could we be
     To our dear land disloyal?
     And were not also we
     Of History's blood-Royal?
     We glow'd to think how donkeys graze
     In England, thrilling at their brays.

     For there a man may view
     An aspect more sublime
     Than Alps against the blue:-
     The morning eyes of Time!
     The very Ass participates
     The glory Freedom radiates!



     CASSANDRA



     I

     Captive on a foreign shore,
     Far from Ilion's hoary wave,
     Agamemnon's bridal slave
     Speaks Futurity no more:
     Death is busy with her grave.

     II

     Thick as water, bursts remote
     Round her ears the alien din,
     While her little sullen chin
     Fills the hollows of her throat:
     Silent lie her slaughter'd kin.

     III

     Once to many a pealing shriek,
     Lo, from Ilion's topmost tower,
     Ilion's fierce prophetic flower
     Cried the coming of the Greek!
     Black in Hades sits the hour.

     IV

     Eyeing phantoms of the Past,
     Folded like a prophet's scroll,
     In the deep's long shoreward roll
     Here she sees the anchor cast:
     Backward moves her sunless soul.

     V

     Chieftains, brethren of her joy,
     Shades, the white light in their eyes
     Slanting to her lips, arise,
     Crowding quick the plains of Troy:
     Now they tell her not she lies.

     VI

     O the bliss upon the plains,
     Where the joining heroes clashed
     Shield and spear, and, unabashed,
     Challenged with hot chariot-reins
     Gods!--they glimmer ocean-washed.

     VII

     Alien voices round the ships,
     Thick as water, shouting Home.
     Argives, pale as midnight foam,
     Wax before her awful lips:
     White as stars that front the gloom.

     VIII

     Like a torch-flame that by day
     Up the daylight twists, and, pale,
     Catches air in leaps that fail,
     Crushed by the inveterate ray,
     Through her shines the Ten-Years' Tale.

     IX

     Once to many a pealing shriek,
     Lo, from Ilion's topmost tower,
     Ilion's fierce prophetic flower
     Cried the coming of the Greek!
     Black in Hades sits the hour.

     X

     Still upon her sunless soul
     Gleams the narrow hidden space
     Forward, where her fiery race
     Falters on its ashen goal:
     Still the Future strikes her face.

     XI

     See toward the conqueror's car
     Step the purple Queen whose hate
     Wraps red-armed her royal mate
     With his Asian tempest-star:
     Now Cassandra views her Fate.

     XII

     King of men! the blinded host
     Shout:- she lifts her brooding chin:
     Glad along the joyous din
     Smiles the grand majestic ghost:
     Clytemnestra leads him in.

     XIII

     Lo, their smoky limbs aloof,
     Shadowing heaven and the seas,
     Fates and Furies, tangling Threes,
     Tear and mix above the roof:
     Fates and fierce Eumenides.

     XIV

     Is the prophetess with rods
     Beaten, that she writhes in air?
     With the Gods who never spare,
     Wrestling with the unsparing Gods,
     Lone, her body struggles there.

     XV

     Like the snaky torch-flame white,
     Levelled as aloft it twists,
     She, her soaring arms, and wrists
     Drooping, struggles with the light,
     Helios, bright above all mists!

     XVI

     In his orb she sees the tower,
     Dusk against its flaming rims,
     Where of old her wretched limbs
     Twisted with the stolen power:
     Ilium all the lustre dims!

     XVII

     O the bliss upon the plains,
     Where the joining heroes clashed
     Shield and spear, and, unabashed,
     Challenged with hot chariot-reins
     Gods!--they glimmer ocean-washed.

     XVIII

     Thrice the Sun-god's name she calls;
     Shrieks the deed that shames the sky;
     Like a fountain leaping high,
     Falling as a fountain falls:
     Lo, the blazing wheels go by!

     XIX

     Captive on a foreign shore,
     Far from Ilion's hoary wave,
     Agamemnon's bridal slave
     Speaks Futurity no more:
     Death is busy with her grave.



     THE YOUNG USURPER



     On my darling's bosom
     Has dropped a living rosy bud,
     Fair as brilliant Hesper
     Against the brimming flood.
     She handles him,
     She dandles him,
     She fondles him and eyes him:
     And if upon a tear he wakes,
     With many a kiss she dries him:
     She covets every move he makes,
     And never enough can prize him.
     Ah, the young Usurper!
     I yield my golden throne:
     Such angel bands attend his hands
     To claim it for his own.



     MARGARET'S BRIDAL EVE



     I

     The old grey mother she thrummed on her knee:
     There is a rose that's ready;
     And which of the handsome young men shall it be?
     There's a rose that's ready for clipping.

     My daughter, come hither, come hither to me:
     There is a rose that's ready;
     Come, point me your finger on him that you see:
     There's a rose that's ready for clipping.

     O mother, my mother, it never can be:
     There is a rose that's ready;
     For I shall bring shame on the man marries me:
     There's a rose that's ready for clipping.

     Now let your tongue be deep as the sea:
     There is a rose that's ready;
     And the man'll jump for you, right briskly will he:
     There's a rose that's ready for clipping.

     Tall Margaret wept bitterly:
     There is a rose that's ready;
     And as her parent bade did she:
     There's a rose that's ready for clipping.

     O the handsome young man dropped down on his knee:
     There is a rose that's ready;
     Pale Margaret gave him her hand, woe's me!
     There's a rose that's ready for clipping.

     II

     O mother, my mother, this thing I must say:
     There is a rose in the garden;
     Ere he lies on the breast where that other lay:
     And the bird sings over the roses.

     Now, folly, my daughter, for men are men:
     There is a rose in the garden;
     You marry them blindfold, I tell you again:
     And the bird sings over the roses.

     O mother, but when he kisses me!
     There is a rose in the garden;
     My child, 'tis which shall sweetest be!
     And the bird sings over the roses.

     O mother, but when I awake in the morn!
     There is a rose in the garden;
     My child, you are his, and the ring is worn:
     And the bird sings over the roses.

     Tall Margaret sighed and loosened a tress:
     There is a rose in the garden;
     Poor comfort she had of her comeliness
     And the bird sings over the roses.

     My mother will sink if this thing be said:
     There is a rose in the garden;
     That my first betrothed came thrice to my bed;
     And the bird sings over the roses.

     He died on my shoulder the third cold night:
     There is a rose in the garden;
     I dragged his body all through the moonlight:
     And the bird sings over the roses.

     But when I came by my father's door:
     There is a rose in the garden;
     I fell in a lump on the stiff dead floor:
     And the bird sings over the roses.

     O neither to heaven, nor yet to hell:
     There is a rose in the garden;
     Could I follow the lover I loved so well!
     And the bird sings over the roses.

     III

     The bridesmaids slept in their chambers apart:
     There is a rose that's ready;
     Tall Margaret walked with her thumping heart:
     There's a rose that's ready for clipping.

     The frill of her nightgown below the left breast:
     There is a rose that's ready;
     Had fall'n like a cloud of the moonlighted West:
     There's a rose that's ready for clipping.

     But where the West-cloud breaks to a star:
     There is a rose that's ready;
     Pale Margaret's breast showed a winding scar:
     There's a rose that's ready for clipping.

     O few are the brides with such a sign!
     There is a rose that's ready;
     Though I went mad the fault was mine:
     There's a rose that's ready for clipping.

     I must speak to him under this roof to-night:
     There is a rose that's ready;
     I shall burn to death if I speak in the light:
     There's a rose that's ready for clipping.

     O my breast! I must strike you a bloodier wound:
     There is a rose that's ready;
     Than when I scored you red and swooned:
     There's a rose that's ready for clipping.

     I will stab my honour under his eye:
     There is a rose that's ready;
     Though I bleed to the death, I shall let out the lie:
     There's a rose that's ready for clipping.

     O happy my bridesmaids! white sleep is with you!
     There is a rose that's ready;
     Had he chosen among you he might sleep too!
     There's a rose that's ready for clipping.

     O happy my bridesmaids! your breasts are clean:
     There is a rose that's ready;
     You carry no mark of what has been!
     There's a rose that's ready for clipping.

     IV

     An hour before the chilly beam:
     Red rose and white in the garden;
     The bridegroom started out of a dream:
     And the bird sings over the roses.

     He went to the door, and there espied:
     Red rose and white in the garden;
     The figure of his silent bride:
     And the bird sings over the roses.

     He went to the door, and let her in:
     Red rose and white in the garden;
     Whiter looked she than a child of sin:
     And the bird sings over the roses.

     She looked so white, she looked so sweet:
     Red rose and white in the garden;
     She looked so pure he fell at her feet:
     And the bird sings over the roses.

     He fell at her feet with love and awe:
     Red rose and white in the garden;
     A stainless body of light he saw:
     And the bird sings over the roses.

     O Margaret, say you are not of the dead!
     Red rose and white in the garden;
     My bride! by the angels at night are you led?
     And the bird sings over the roses.

     I am not led by the angels about:
     Red rose and white in the garden;
     But I have a devil within to let out:
     And the bird sings over the roses.

     O Margaret! my bride and saint!
     Red rose and white in the garden;
     There is on you no earthly taint:
     And the bird sings over the roses.

     I am no saint, and no bride can I be:
     Red rose and while in the garden;
     Until I have opened my bosom to thee:
     And the bird sings over the roses.

     To catch at her heart she laid one hand:
     Red rose and white in the garden;
     She told the tale where she did stand:
     And the bird sings over the roses.

     She stood before him pale and tall:
     Red rose and white in the garden;
     Her eyes between his, she told him all:
     And the bird sings over the roses.

     She saw how her body grow freckled and foul:
     Red rose and white in the garden;
     She heard from the woods the hooting owl:
     And the bird sings over the roses.

     With never a quiver her mouth did speak:
     Red rose and white in the garden;
     O when she had done she stood so meek!
     And the bird sings over the roses.

     The bridegroom stamped and called her vile:
     Red rose and white in the garden;
     He did but waken a little smile:
     And the bird sings over the roses.

     The bridegroom raged and called her foul:
     Red rose and white in the garden;
     She heard from the woods the hooting owl:
     And the bird sings over the roses.

     He muttered a name full bitter and sore:
     Red rose and white in the garden;
     She fell in a lump on the still dead floor:
     And the bird sings over the roses.

     O great was the wonder, and loud the wail:
     Red rose and white in the garden;
     When through the household flew the tale:
     And the bird sings over the roses.

     The old grey mother she dressed the bier:
     Red rose and white in the garden;
     With a shivering chin and never a tear:
     And the bird sings over the roses.

     O had you but done as I bade you, my child!
     Red rose and white in the garden;
     You would not have died and been reviled:
     And the bird sings over the roses.

     The bridegroom he hung at midnight by the bier:
     Red rose and white in the garden;
     He eyed the white girl thro' a dazzling tear:
     And the bird sings over the roses.

     O had you been false as the women who stray:
     Red rose and white in the garden;
     You would not be now with the Angels of Day!
     And the bird sings over the roses.



     MARIAN



     I

     She can be as wise as we,
     And wiser when she wishes;
     She can knit with cunning wit,
     And dress the homely dishes.
     She can flourish staff or pen,
     And deal a wound that lingers;
     She can talk the talk of men,
     And touch with thrilling fingers.

     II

     Match her ye across the sea,
     Natures fond and fiery;
     Ye who zest the turtle's nest
     With the eagle's eyrie.
     Soft and loving is her soul,
     Swift and lofty soaring;
     Mixing with its dove-like dole
     Passionate adoring.

     III

     Such a she who'll match with me?
     In flying or pursuing,
     Subtle wiles are in her smiles
     To set the world a-wooing.
     She is steadfast as a star,
     And yet the maddest maiden:
     She can wage a gallant war,
     And give the peace of Eden.



     BY MORNING TWILIGHT



     Night, like a dying mother,
     Eyes her young offspring, Day.
     The birds are dreamily piping.
     And O, my love, my darling!
     The night is life ebb'd away:
     Away beyond our reach!
     A sea that has cast us pale on the beach;
     Weeds with the weeds and the pebbles
     That hear the lone tamarisk rooted in sand
     Sway
     With the song of the sea to the land.



     UNKNOWN FAIR FACES



     Though I am faithful to my loves lived through,
     And place them among Memory's great stars,
     Where burns a face like Hesper: one like Mars:
     Of visages I get a moment's view,
     Sweet eyes that in the heaven of me, too,
     Ascend, tho' virgin to my life they passed.
     Lo, these within my destiny seem glassed
     At times so bright, I wish that Hope were new.
     A gracious freckled lady, tall and grave,
     Went, in a shawl voluminous and white,
     Last sunset by; and going sow'd a glance.
     Earth is too poor to hold a second chance;
     I will not ask for more than Fortune gave:
     My heart she goes from--never from my sight!



     SHEMSELNIHAR



     O my lover! the night like a broad smooth wave
     Bears us onward, and morn, a black rock, shines wet.
     How I shuddered--I knew not that I was a slave,
     Till I looked on thy face:- then I writhed in the net.
     Then I felt like a thing caught by fire, that her star
     Glowed dark on the bosom of Shemselnihar.

     And he came, whose I am: O my lover! he came:
     And his slave, still so envied of women, was I:
     And I turned as a hissing leaf spits from the flame,
     Yes, I shrivelled to dust from him, haggard and dry.
     O forgive her:- she was but as dead lilies are:
     The life of her heart fled from Shemselnihar.

     Yet with thee like a full throbbing rose how I bloom!
     Like a rose by the fountain whose showering we hear,
     As we lie, O my lover! in this rich gloom,
     Smelling faint the cool breath of the lemon-groves near.
     As we lie gazing out on that glowing great star -
     Ah! dark on the bosom of Shemselnihar.

     Yet with thee am I not as an arm of the vine,
     Firm to bind thee, to cherish thee, feed thee sweet?
     Swear an oath on my lip to let none disentwine
     The life that here fawns to give warmth to thy feet.
     I on thine, thus! no more shall that jewelled Head jar
     The music thou breathest on Shemselnihar.

     Far away, far away, where the wandering scents
     Of all flowers are sweetest, white mountains among,
     There my kindred abide in their green and blue tents:
     Bear me to them, my lover! they lost me so young.
     Let us slip down the stream and leap steed till afar
     None question thy claim upon Shemselnihar.

     O that long note the bulbul gave out--meaning love!
     O my lover, hark to him and think it my voice!
     The blue night like a great bell-flower from above
     Drooping low and gold-eyed: O, but hear him rejoice!
     Can it be? 'twas a flash! that accurst scimiter
     In thought even cuts thee from Shemselnihar.

     Yes, I would that, less generous, he would oppress,
     He would chain me, upbraid me, burn deep brands for hate,
     Than with this mask of freedom and gorgeousness
     Bespangle my slavery, mock my strange fate.
     Would, would, would, O my lover, he knew--dared debar
     Thy coming, and earn curse of Shemselnihar!



     A ROAR THROUGH THE TALL TWIN ELM-TREES



     A roar thro' the tall twin elm-trees
     The mustering storm betrayed:
     The South-wind seized the willow
     That over the water swayed.

     Then fell the steady deluge
     In which I strove to doze,
     Hearing all night at my window
     The knock of the winter rose.

     The rainy rose of winter!
     An outcast it must pine.
     And from thy bosom outcast
     Am I, dear lady mine.



     WHEN I WOULD IMAGE



     When I would image her features,
     Comes up a shrouded head:
     I touch the outlines, shrinking;
     She seems of the wandering dead.

     But when love asks for nothing,
     And lies on his bed of snow,
     The face slips under my eyelids,
     All in its living glow.

     Like a dark cathedral city,
     Whose spires, and domes, and towers
     Quiver in violet lightnings,
     My soul basks on for hours.



     THE SPIRIT OF SHAKESPEARE



     Thy greatest knew thee, Mother Earth; unsoured
     He knew thy sons. He probed from hell to hell
     Of human passions, but of love deflowered
     His wisdom was not, for he knew thee well.
     Thence came the honeyed corner at his lips,
     The conquering smile wherein his spirit sails
     Calm as the God who the white sea-wave whips,
     Yet full of speech and intershifting tales,
     Close mirrors of us: thence had he the laugh
     We feel is thine: broad as ten thousand beeves
     At pasture! thence thy songs, that winnow chaff
     From grain, bid sick Philosophy's last leaves
     Whirl, if they have no response--they enforced
     To fatten Earth when from her soul divorced.



     CONTINUED



     How smiles he at a generation ranked
     In gloomy noddings over life! They pass.
     Not he to feed upon a breast unthanked,
     Or eye a beauteous face in a cracked glass.
     But he can spy that little twist of brain
     Which moved some weighty leader of the blind,
     Unwitting 'twas the goad of personal pain,
     To view in curst eclipse our Mother's mind,
     And show us of some rigid harridan
     The wretched bondmen till the end of time.
     O lived the Master now to paint us Man,
     That little twist of brain would ring a chime
     Of whence it came and what it caused, to start
     Thunders of laughter, clearing air and heart.



     ODE TO THE SPIRIT OF EARTH IN AUTUMN



     Fair Mother Earth lay on her back last night,
     To gaze her fill on Autumn's sunset skies,
     When at a waving of the fallen light
     Sprang realms of rosy fruitage o'er her eyes.
     A lustrous heavenly orchard hung the West,
     Wherein the blood of Eden bloomed again:
     Red were the myriad cherub-mouths that pressed,
     Among the clusters, rich with song, full fain,
     But dumb, because that overmastering spell
     Of rapture held them dumb: then, here and there,
     A golden harp lost strings; a crimson shell
     Burnt grey; and sheaves of lustre fell to air.
     The illimitable eagerness of hue
     Bronzed, and the beamy winged bloom that flew
     'Mid those bunched fruits and thronging figures failed.
     A green-edged lake of saffron touched the blue,
     With isles of fireless purple lying through:
     And Fancy on that lake to seek lost treasures sailed.

     Not long the silence followed:
     The voice that issues from thy breast,
     O glorious South-west,
     Along the gloom-horizon holloa'd;
     Warning the valleys with a mellow roar
     Through flapping wings; then sharp the woodland bore
     A shudder and a noise of hands:
     A thousand horns from some far vale
     In ambush sounding on the gale.
     Forth from the cloven sky came bands
     Of revel-gathering spirits; trooping down,
     Some rode the tree-tops; some on torn cloud-strips
     Burst screaming thro' the lighted town:
     And scudding seaward, some fell on big ships:
     Or mounting the sea-horses blew
     Bright foam-flakes on the black review
     Of heaving hulls and burying beaks.

     Still on the farthest line, with outpuffed cheeks,
     'Twixt dark and utter dark, the great wind drew
     From heaven that disenchanted harmony
     To join earth's laughter in the midnight blind:
     Booming a distant chorus to the shrieks
     Preluding him: then he,
     His mantle streaming thunderingly behind,
     Across the yellow realm of stiffened Day,
     Shot thro' the woodland alleys signals three;
     And with the pressure of a sea
     Plunged broad upon the vale that under lay.

     Night on the rolling foliage fell:
     But I, who love old hymning night,
     And know the Dryad voices well,
     Discerned them as their leaves took flight,
     Like souls to wander after death:
     Great armies in imperial dyes,
     And mad to tread the air and rise,
     The savage freedom of the skies
     To taste before they rot. And here,
     Like frail white-bodied girls in fear,
     The birches swung from shrieks to sighs;
     The aspens, laughers at a breath,
     In showering spray-falls mixed their cries,
     Or raked a savage ocean-strand
     With one incessant drowning screech.
     Here stood a solitary beech,
     That gave its gold with open hand,
     And all its branches, toning chill,
     Did seem to shut their teeth right fast,
     To shriek more mercilessly shrill,
     And match the fierceness of the blast.

     But heard I a low swell that noised
     Of far-off ocean, I was 'ware
     Of pines upon their wide roots poised,
     Whom never madness in the air
     Can draw to more than loftier stress
     Of mournfulness, not mournfulness
     For melancholy, but Joy's excess,
     That singing on the lap of sorrow faints:
     And Peace, as in the hearts of saints
     Who chant unto the Lord their God;
     Deep Peace below upon the muffled sod,
     The stillness of the sea's unswaying floor,
     Could I be sole there not to see
     The life within the life awake;
     The spirit bursting from the tree,
     And rising from the troubled lake?
     Pour, let the wines of Heaven pour!
     The Golden Harp is struck once more,
     And all its music is for me!
     Pour, let the wines of Heaven pour!
     And, ho, for a night of Pagan glee!

     There is a curtain o'er us.
     For once, good souls, we'll not pretend
     To be aught better than her who bore us,
     And is our only visible friend.
     Hark to her laughter! who laughs like this,
     Can she be dead, or rooted in pain?
     She has been slain by the narrow brain,
     But for us who love her she lives again.
     Can she die? O, take her kiss!

     The crimson-footed nymph is panting up the glade,
     With the wine-jar at her arm-pit, and the drunken ivy-braid
     Round her forehead, breasts, and thighs: starts a Satyr, and they
     speed:
     Hear the crushing of the leaves: hear the cracking of the bough!
     And the whistling of the bramble, the piping of the weed!

     But the bull-voiced oak is battling now:
     The storm has seized him half-asleep,
     And round him the wild woodland throngs
     To hear the fury of his songs,
     The uproar of an outraged deep.
     He wakes to find a wrestling giant
     Trunk to trunk and limb to limb,
     And on his rooted force reliant
     He laughs and grasps the broadened giant,
     And twist and roll the Anakim;
     And multitudes, acclaiming to the cloud,
     Cry which is breaking, which is bowed.

     Away, for the cymbals clash aloft
     In the circles of pine, on the moss-floor soft.
     The nymphs of the woodland are gathering there.
     They huddle the leaves, and trample, and toss;
     They swing in the branches, they roll in the moss,
     They blow the seed on the air.
     Back to back they stand and blow
     The winged seed on the cradling air,
     A fountain of leaves over bosom and back.

     The pipe of the Faun comes on their track
     And the weltering alleys overflow
     With musical shrieks and wind-wedded hair.
     The riotous companies melt to a pair.
     Bless them, mother of kindness!

     A star has nodded through
     The depths of the flying blue.
     Time only to plant the light
     Of a memory in the blindness.
     But time to show me the sight
     Of my life thro' the curtain of night;
     Shining a moment, and mixed
     With the onward-hurrying stream,
     Whose pressure is darkness to me;
     Behind the curtain, fixed,
     Beams with endless beam
     That star on the changing sea.

     Great Mother Nature! teach me, like thee,
     To kiss the season and shun regrets.
     And am I more than the mother who bore,
     Mock me not with thy harmony!
     Teach me to blot regrets,
     Great Mother! me inspire
     With faith that forward sets
     But feeds the living fire,
     Faith that never frets
     For vagueness in the form.
     In life, O keep me warm!
     For, what is human grief?
     And what do men desire?
     Teach me to feel myself the tree,
     And not the withered leaf.
     Fixed am I and await the dark to-be
     And O, green bounteous Earth!
     Bacchante Mother! stern to those
     Who live not in thy heart of mirth;
     Death shall I shrink from, loving thee?
     Into the breast that gives the rose,
     Shall I with shuddering fall?

     Earth, the mother of all,
     Moves on her stedfast way,
     Gathering, flinging, sowing.
     Mortals, we live in her day,
     She in her children is growing.

     She can lead us, only she,
     Unto God's footstool, whither she reaches:
     Loved, enjoyed, her gifts must be,
     Reverenced the truths she teaches,
     Ere a man may hope that he
     Ever can attain the glee
     Of things without a destiny!

     She knows not loss:
     She feels but her need,
     Who the winged seed
     With the leaf doth toss.

     And may not men to this attain?
     That the joy of motion, the rapture of being,
     Shall throw strong light when our season is fleeing,
     Nor quicken aged blood in vain,
     At the gates of the vault, on the verge of the plain?
     Life thoroughly lived is a fact in the brain,
     While eyes are left for seeing.
     Behold, in yon stripped Autumn, shivering grey,
     Earth knows no desolation.
     She smells regeneration
     In the moist breath of decay.

     Prophetic of the coming joy and strife,
     Like the wild western war-chief sinking
     Calm to the end he eyes unblinking,
     Her voice is jubilant in ebbing life.

     He for his happy hunting-fields
     Forgets the droning chant, and yields
     His numbered breaths to exultation
     In the proud anticipation:
     Shouting the glories of his nation,
     Shouting the grandeur of his race,
     Shouting his own great deeds of daring:
     And when at last death grasps his face,
     And stiffened on the ground in peace
     He lies with all his painted terrors glaring;
     Hushed are the tribe to hear a threading cry:
     Not from the dead man;
     Not from the standers-by:
     The spirit of the red man
     Is welcomed by his fathers up on high.



     MARTIN'S PUZZLE



     I

     There she goes up the street with her book in her hand,
     And her Good morning, Martin! Ay, lass, how d'ye do?
     Very well, thank you, Martin!--I can't understand!
     I might just as well never have cobbled a shoe!
     I can't understand it. She talks like a song;
     Her voice takes your ear like the ring of a glass;
     She seems to give gladness while limping along,
     Yet sinner ne'er suffer'd like that little lass.

     II

     First, a fool of a boy ran her down with a cart.
     Then, her fool of a father--a blacksmith by trade -
     Why the deuce does he tell us it half broke his heart?
     His heart!--where's the leg of the poor little maid!
     Well, that's not enough; they must push her downstairs,
     To make her go crooked: but why count the list?
     If it's right to suppose that our human affairs
     Are all order'd by heaven--there, bang goes my fist!

     III

     For if angels can look on such sights--never mind!
     When you're next to blaspheming, it's best to be mum.
     The parson declares that her woes weren't designed;
     But, then, with the parson it's all kingdom-come.
     Lose a leg, save a soul--a convenient text;
     I call it Tea doctrine, not savouring of God.
     When poor little Molly wants 'chastening,' why, next
     The Archangel Michael might taste of the rod.

     IV

     But, to see the poor darling go limping for miles
     To read books to sick people!--and just of an age
     When girls learn the meaning of ribands and smiles!
     Makes me feel like a squirrel that turns in a cage.
     The more I push thinking the more I revolve:
     I never get farther:- and as to her face,
     It starts up when near on my puzzle I solve,
     And says, 'This crush'd body seems such a sad case.'

     V

     Not that she's for complaining: she reads to earn pence;
     And from those who can't pay, simple thanks are enough.
     Does she leave lamentation for chaps without sense?
     Howsoever, she's made up of wonderful stuff.
     Ay, the soul in her body must be a stout cord;
     She sings little hymns at the close of the day,
     Though she has but three fingers to lift to the Lord,
     And only one leg to kneel down with to pray.

     VI

     What I ask is, Why persecute such a poor dear,
     If there's Law above all? Answer that if you can!
     Irreligious I'm not; but I look on this sphere
     As a place where a man should just think like a man.
     It isn't fair dealing! But, contrariwise,
     Do bullets in battle the wicked select?
     Why, then it's all chance-work! And yet, in her eyes,
     She holds a fixed something by which I am checked.

     VII

     Yonder riband of sunshine aslope on the wall,
     If you eye it a minute 'll have the same look:
     So kind! and so merciful! God of us all!
     It's the very same lesson we get from the Book.
     Then, is Life but a trial? Is that what is meant?
     Some must toil, and some perish, for others below:
     The injustice to each spreads a common content;
     Ay! I've lost it again, for it can't be quite so.

     VIII

     She's the victim of fools: that seems nearer the mark.
     On earth there are engines and numerous fools.
     Why the Lord can permit them, we're still in the dark;
     He does, and in some sort of way they're His tools.
     It's a roundabout way, with respect let me add,
     If Molly goes crippled that we may be taught:
     But, perhaps, it's the only way, though it's so bad;
     In that case we'll bow down our heads,--as we ought.

     IX

     But the worst of ME is, that when I bow my head,
     I perceive a thought wriggling away in the dust,
     And I follow its tracks, quite forgetful, instead
     Of humble acceptance: for, question I must!
     Here's a creature made carefully--carefully made!
     Put together with craft, and then stamped on, and why?
     The answer seems nowhere: it's discord that's played.
     The sky's a blue dish!--an implacable sky!

     X

     Stop a moment. I seize an idea from the pit.
     They tell us that discord, though discord, alone,
     Can be harmony when the notes properly fit:
     Am I judging all things from a single false tone?
     Is the Universe one immense Organ, that rolls
     From devils to angels? I'm blind with the sight.
     It pours such a splendour on heaps of poor souls!
     I might try at kneeling with Molly to-night.





     Poems by George Meredith - Volume 2


     [This etext was prepared from the 1912 Times Book Club "Surrey" edition
     by David Price]



     TO J. M.



     Let Fate or Insufficiency provide
     Mean ends for men who what they are would be:
     Penned in their narrow day no change they see
     Save one which strikes the blow to brutes and pride.
     Our faith is ours and comes not on a tide:
     And whether Earth's great offspring, by decree,
     Must rot if they abjure rapacity,
     Not argument but effort shall decide.
     They number many heads in that hard flock:
     Trim swordsmen they push forth: yet try thy steel.
     Thou, fighting for poor humankind, wilt feel
     The strength of Roland in thy wrist to hew
     A chasm sheer into the barrier rock,
     And bring the army of the faithful through.



     LINES TO A FRIEND VISITING AMERICA



     I

     Now farewell to you! you are
     One of my dearest, whom I trust:
     Now follow you the Western star,
     And cast the old world off as dust.

     II

     From many friends adieu! adieu!
     The quick heart of the word therein.
     Much that we hope for hangs with you:
     We lose you, but we lose to win.

     III

     The beggar-king, November, frets:
     His tatters rich with Indian dyes
     Goes hugging: we our season's debts
     Pay calmly, of the Spring forewise.

     IV

     We send our worthiest; can no less,
     If we would now be read aright, -
     To that great people who may bless
     Or curse mankind: they have the might.

     V

     The proudest seasons find their graves,
     And we, who would not be wooed, must court.
     We have let the blunderers and the waves
     Divide us, and the devil had sport.

     VI

     The blunderers and the waves no more
     Shall sever kindred sending forth
     Their worthiest from shore to shore
     For welcome, bent to prove their worth.

     VII

     Go you and such as you afloat,
     Our lost kinsfellowship to revive.
     The battle of the antidote
     Is tough, though silent: may you thrive!

     VIII

     I, when in this North wind I see
     The straining red woods blown awry,
     Feel shuddering like the winter tree,
     All vein and artery on cold sky.

     IX

     The leaf that clothed me is torn away;
     My friend is as a flying seed.
     Ay, true; to bring replenished day
     Light ebbs, but I am bare, and bleed.

     X

     What husky habitations seem
     These comfortable sayings! they fell,
     In some rich year become a dream:-
     So cries my heart, the infidel! . . .

     XI

     Oh! for the strenuous mind in quest,
     Arabian visions could not vie
     With those broad wonders of the West,
     And would I bid you stay? Not I!

     XII

     The strange experimental land
     Where men continually dare take
     Niagara leaps;--unshattered stand
     'Twixt fall and fall;--for conscience' sake,

     XIII

     Drive onward like a flood's increase; -
     Fresh rapids and abysms engage; -
     (We live--we die) scorn fireside peace,
     And, as a garment, put on rage,

     XIV

     Rather than bear God's reprimand,
     By rearing on a full fat soil
     Concrete of sin and sloth;--this land,
     You will observe it coil in coil.

     XV

     The land has been discover'd long,
     The people we have yet to know;
     Themselves they know not, save that strong
     For good and evil still they grow.

     XVI

     Nor know they us. Yea, well enough
     In that inveterate machine
     Through which we speak the printed stuff
     Daily, with voice most hugeous, mien

     XVII

     Tremendous:- as a lion's show
     The grand menagerie paintings hide:
     Hear the drum beat, the trombones blow!
     The poor old Lion lies inside! . . .

     XVIII

     It is not England that they hear,
     But mighty Mammon's pipers, trained
     To trumpet out his moods, and stir
     His sluggish soul: HER voice is chained:

     XIX

     Almost her spirit seems moribund!
     O teach them, 'tis not she displays
     The panic of a purse rotund,
     Eternal dread of evil days, -

     XX

     That haunting spectre of success
     Which shows a heart sunk low in the girths:
     Not England answers nobleness, -
     'Live for thyself: thou art not earth's.'

     XXI

     Not she, when struggling manhood tries
     For freedom, air, a hopefuller fate,
     Points out the planet, Compromise,
     And shakes a mild reproving pate:

     XXII

     Says never: 'I am well at ease,
     My sneers upon the weak I shed:
     The strong have my cajoleries:
     And those beneath my feet I tread.'

     XXIII

     Nay, but 'tis said for her, great Lord!
     The misery's there! The shameless one
     Adjures mankind to sheathe the sword,
     Herself not yielding what it won:-

     XXIV

     Her sermon at cock-crow doth preach,
     On sweet Prosperity--or greed.
     'Lo! as the beasts feed, each for each,
     God's blessings let us take, and feed!'

     XXV

     Ungrateful creatures crave a part -
     She tells them firmly she is full;
     Lost sheared sheep hurt her tender heart
     With bleating, stops her ears with wool:-

     XXVI

     Seized sometimes by prodigious qualms
     (Nightmares of bankruptcy and death), -
     Showers down in lumps a load of alms,
     Then pants as one who has lost a breath;

     XXVII

     Believes high heaven, whence favours flow,
     Too kind to ask a sacrifice
     For what it specially doth bestow; -
     Gives SHE, 'tis generous, cheese to mice.

     XXVIII

     She saw the young Dominion strip
     For battle with a grievous wrong,
     And curled a noble Norman lip,
     And looked with half an eye sidelong;

     XXIX

     And in stout Saxon wrote her sneers,
     Denounced the waste of blood and coin,
     Implored the combatants, with tears,
     Never to think they could rejoin.

     XXX

     Oh! was it England that, alas!
     Turned sharp the victor to cajole?
     Behold her features in the glass:
     A monstrous semblance mocks her soul!

     XXXI

     A false majority, by stealth,
     Have got her fast, and sway the rod:
     A headless tyrant built of wealth,
     The hypocrite, the belly-God.

     XXXII

     To him the daily hymns they raise:
     His tastes are sought: his will is done:
     He sniffs the putrid steam of praise,
     Place for true England here is none!

     XXXIII

     But can a distant race discern
     The difference 'twixt her and him?
     My friend, that will you bid them learn.
     He shames and binds her, head and limb.

     XXXIV

     Old wood has blossoms of this sort.
     Though sound at core, she is old wood.
     If freemen hate her, one retort
     She has; but one!--'You are my blood.'

     XXXV

     A poet, half a prophet, rose
     In recent days, and called for power.
     I love him; but his mountain prose -
     His Alp and valley and wild flower -

     XXXVI

     Proclaimed our weakness, not its source.
     What medicine for disease had he?
     Whom summoned for a show of force?
     Our titular aristocracy!

     XXXVII

     Why, these are great at City feasts;
     From City riches mainly rise:
     'Tis well to hear them, when the beasts
     That die for us they eulogize!

     XXXVIII

     But these, of all the liveried crew
     Obeisant in Mammon's walk,
     Most deferent ply the facial screw,
     The spinal bend, submissive talk.

     XXXIX

     Small fear that they will run to books
     (At least the better form of seed)!
     I, too, have hoped from their good looks,
     And fables of their Northman breed; -

     XL

     Have hoped that they the land would head
     In acts magnanimous; but, lo,
     When fainting heroes beg for bread
     They frown: where they are driven they go.

     XLI

     Good health, my friend! and may your lot
     Be cheerful o'er the Western rounds.
     This butter-woman's market-trot
     Of verse is passing market-bounds.

     XLII

     Adieu! the sun sets; he is gone.
     On banks of fog faint lines extend:
     Adieu! bring back a braver dawn
     To England, and to me my friend.

     November 15th, 1867.



     TIME AND SENTIMENT



     I see a fair young couple in a wood,
     And as they go, one bends to take a flower,
     That so may be embalmed their happy hour,
     And in another day, a kindred mood,
     Haply together, or in solitude,
     Recovered what the teeth of Time devour,
     The joy, the bloom, and the illusive power,
     Wherewith by their young blood they are endued
     To move all enviable, framed in May,
     And of an aspect sisterly with Truth:
     Yet seek they with Time's laughing things to wed:
     Who will be prompted on some pallid day
     To lift the hueless flower and show that dead,
     Even such, and by this token, is their youth.



     LUCIFER IN STARLIGHT



     On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose.
     Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend
     Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened,
     Where sinners hugged their spectre of repose.
     Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those.
     And now upon his western wing he leaned,
     Now his huge bulk o'er Afric's sands careened,
     Now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows.
     Soaring through wider zones that pricked his scars
     With memory of the old revolt from Awe,
     He reached a middle height, and at the stars,
     Which are the brain of heaven, he looked, and sank.
     Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank,
     The army of unalterable law.



     THE STAR SIRIUS



     Bright Sirius! that when Orion pales
     To dotlings under moonlight still art keen
     With cheerful fervour of a warrior's mien
     Who holds in his great heart the battle-scales:
     Unquenched of flame though swift the flood assails,
     Reducing many lustrous to the lean:
     Be thou my star, and thou in me be seen
     To show what source divine is, and prevails.
     Long watches through, at one with godly night,
     I mark thee planting joy in constant fire;
     And thy quick beams, whose jets of life inspire
     Life to the spirit, passion for the light,
     Dark Earth since first she lost her lord from sight
     Has viewed and felt them sweep her as a lyre.



     SENSE AND SPIRIT



     The senses loving Earth or well or ill
     Ravel yet more the riddle of our lot.
     The mind is in their trammels, and lights not
     By trimming fear-bred tales; nor does the will
     To find in nature things which less may chill
     An ardour that desires, unknowing what.
     Till we conceive her living we go distraught,
     At best but circle-windsails of a mill.
     Seeing she lives, and of her joy of life
     Creatively has given us blood and breath
     For endless war and never wound unhealed,
     The gloomy Wherefore of our battle-field
     Solves in the Spirit, wrought of her through strife
     To read her own and trust her down to death.



     EARTH'S SECRET



     Not solitarily in fields we find
     Earth's secret open, though one page is there;
     Her plainest, such as children spell, and share
     With bird and beast; raised letters for the blind.
     Not where the troubled passions toss the mind,
     In turbid cities, can the key be bare.
     It hangs for those who hither thither fare,
     Close interthreading nature with our kind.
     They, hearing History speak, of what men were,
     And have become, are wise. The gain is great
     In vision and solidity; it lives.
     Yet at a thought of life apart from her,
     Solidity and vision lose their state,
     For Earth, that gives the milk, the spirit gives.



     INTERNAL HARMONY



     Assured of worthiness we do not dread
     Competitors; we rather give them hail
     And greeting in the lists where we may fail:
     Must, if we bear an aim beyond the head!
     My betters are my masters: purely fed
     By their sustainment I likewise shall scale
     Some rocky steps between the mount and vale;
     Meanwhile the mark I have and I will wed.
     So that I draw the breath of finer air,
     Station is nought, nor footways laurel-strewn,
     Nor rivals tightly belted for the race.
     Good speed to them! My place is here or there;
     My pride is that among them I have place:
     And thus I keep this instrument in tune.



     GRACE AND LOVE



     Two flower-enfolding crystal vases she
     I love fills daily, mindful but of one:
     And close behind pale morn she, like the sun
     Priming our world with light, pours, sweet to see,
     Clear water in the cup, and into me
     The image of herself: and that being done,
     Choice of what blooms round her fair garden run
     In climbers or in creepers or the tree
     She ranges with unerring fingers fine,
     To harmony so vivid that through sight
     I hear, I have her heavenliness to fold
     Beyond the senses, where such love as mine,
     Such grace as hers, should the strange Fates withhold
     Their starry more from her and me, unite.



     APPRECIATION



     Earth was not Earth before her sons appeared,
     Nor Beauty Beauty ere young Love was born:
     And thou when I lay hidden wast as morn
     At city-windows, touching eyelids bleared;
     To none by her fresh wingedness endeared;
     Unwelcome unto revellers outworn.
     I the last echoes of Diana's horn
     In woodland heard, and saw thee come, and cheered.
     No longer wast thou then mere light, fair soul!
     And more than simple duty moved thy feet.
     New colours rose in thee, from fear, from shame,
     From hope, effused: though not less pure a scroll
     May men read on the heart I taught to beat:
     That change in thee, if not thyself, I claim.



     THE DISCIPLINE OF WISDOM



     Rich labour is the struggle to be wise,
     While we make sure the struggle cannot cease.
     Else better were it in some bower of peace
     Slothful to swing, contending with the flies.
     You point at Wisdom fixed on lofty skies,
     As mid barbarian hordes a sculptured Greece:
     She falls. To live and shine, she grows her fleece,
     Is shorn, and rubs with follies and with lies.
     So following her, your hewing may attain
     The right to speak unto the mute, and shun
     That sly temptation of the illumined brain,
     Deliveries oracular, self-spun.
     Who sweats not with the flock will seek in vain
     To shed the words which are ripe fruit of sun.



     THE STATE OF AGE



     Rub thou thy battered lamp: nor claim nor beg
     Honours from aught about thee. Light the young.
     Thy frame is as a dusty mantle hung,
     O grey one! pendant on a loosened peg.
     Thou art for this our life an ancient egg,
     Or a tough bird: thou hast a rudderless tongue,
     Turning dead trifles, like the cock of dung,
     Which runs, Time's contrast to thy halting leg.
     Nature, it is most sure, not thee admires.
     But hast thou in thy season set her fires
     To burn from Self to Spirit through the lash,
     Honoured the sons of Earth shall hold thee high:
     Yea, to spread light when thy proud letter I
     Drops prone and void as any thoughtless dash.



     PROGRESS



     In Progress you have little faith, say you:
     Men will maintain dear interests, wreak base hates,
     By force, and gentle women choose their mates
     Most amorously from the gilded fighting crew:
     The human heart Bellona's mad halloo
     Will ever fire to dicing with the Fates.
     'Now at this time,' says History, 'those two States
     Stood ready their past wrestling to renew.
     They sharpened arms and showed them, like the brutes
     Whose haunches quiver. But a yellow blight
     Fell on their waxing harvests. They deferred
     The bloody settlement of their disputes
     Till God should bless them better.' They did right.
     And naming Progress, both shall have the word.



     THE WORLD'S ADVANCE



     Judge mildly the tasked world; and disincline
     To brand it, for it bears a heavy pack.
     You have perchance observed the inebriate's track
     At night when he has quitted the inn-sign:
     He plays diversions on the homeward line,
     Still that way bent albeit his legs are slack:
     A hedge may take him, but he turns not back,
     Nor turns this burdened world, of curving spine.
     'Spiral,' the memorable Lady terms
     Our mind's ascent: our world's advance presents
     That figure on a flat; the way of worms.
     Cherish the promise of its good intents,
     And warn it, not one instinct to efface
     Ere Reason ripens for the vacant place.



     A CERTAIN PEOPLE



     As Puritans they prominently wax,
     And none more kindly gives and takes hard knocks.
     Strong psalmic chanting, like to nasal cocks,
     They join to thunderings of their hearty thwacks.
     But naughtiness, with hoggery, not lacks
     When Peace another door in them unlocks,
     Where conscience shows the eyeing of an ox
     Grown dully apprehensive of an Axe.
     Graceless they are when gone to frivolousness,
     Fearing the God they flout, the God they glut.
     They need their pious exercises less
     Than schooling in the Pleasures: fair belief
     That these are devilish only to their thief,
     Charged with an Axe nigh on the occiput.



     THE GARDEN OF EPICURUS



     That Garden of sedate Philosophy
     Once flourished, fenced from passion and mishap,
     A shining spot upon a shaggy map;
     Where mind and body, in fair junction free,
     Luted their joyful concord; like the tree
     From root to flowering twigs a flowing sap.
     Clear Wisdom found in tended Nature's lap
     Of gentlemen the happy nursery.
     That Garden would on light supremest verge,
     Were the long drawing of an equal breath
     Healthful for Wisdom's head, her heart, her aims.
     Our world which for its Babels wants a scourge,
     And for its wilds a husbandman, acclaims
     The crucifix that came of Nazareth.



     A LATER ALEXANDRIAN



     An inspiration caught from dubious hues
     Filled him, and mystic wrynesses he chased;
     For they lead farther than the single-faced,
     Wave subtler promise when desire pursues.
     The moon of cloud discoloured was his Muse,
     His pipe the reed of the old moaning waste.
     Love was to him with anguish fast enlaced,
     And Beauty where she walked blood-shot the dews.
     Men railed at such a singer; women thrilled
     Responsively: he sang not Nature's own
     Divinest, but his lyric had a tone,
     As 'twere a forest-echo of her voice:
     What barrenly they yearn for seemed distilled
     From what they dread, who do through tears rejoice.



     AN ORSON OF THE MUSE



     Her son, albeit the Muse's livery
     And measured courtly paces rouse his taunts,
     Naked and hairy in his savage haunts,
     To Nature only will he bend the knee;
     Spouting the founts of her distillery
     Like rough rock-sources; and his woes and wants
     Being Nature's, civil limitation daunts
     His utterance never; the nymphs blush, not he.
     Him, when he blows of Earth, and Man, and Fate,
     The Muse will hearken to with graver ear
     Than many of her train can waken: him
     Would fain have taught what fruitful things and dear
     Must sink beneath the tidewaves, of their weight,
     If in no vessel built for sea they swim.



     THE POINT OF TASTE



     Unhappy poets of a sunken prime!
     You to reviewers are as ball to bat.
     They shadow you with Homer, knock you flat
     With Shakespeare: bludgeons brainingly sublime
     On you the excommunicates of Rhyme,
     Because you sing not in the living Fat.
     The wiry whizz of an intrusive gnat
     Is verse that shuns their self-producing time.
     Sound them their clocks, with loud alarum trump,
     Or watches ticking temporal at their fobs,
     You win their pleased attention. But, bright God
     O' the lyre, what bully-drawlers they applaud!
     Rather for us a tavern-catch, and bump
     Chorus where Lumpkin with his Giles hobnobs.



     CAMELUS SALTAT



     What say you, critic, now you have become
     An author and maternal?--in this trap
     (To quote you) of poor hollow folk who rap
     On instruments as like as drum to drum.
     You snarled tut-tut for welcome to tum-tum,
     So like the nose fly-teased in its noon's nap.
     You scratched an insect-slaughtering thunder-clap
     With that between the fingers and the thumb.
     It seemeth mad to quit the Olympian couch,
     Which bade our public gobble or reject.
     O spectacle of Peter, shrewdly pecked,
     Piper, by his own pepper from his pouch!
     What of the sneer, the jeer, the voice austere,
     You dealt?--the voice austere, the jeer, the sneer.



     CONTINUED



     Oracle of the market! thence you drew
     The taste which stamped you guide of the inept. -
     A North-sea pilot, Hildebrand yclept,
     A sturdy and a briny, once men knew.
     He loved small beer, and for that copious brew,
     To roll ingurgitation till he slept,
     Rations exchanged with flavour for the adept:
     And merrily plied him captain, mate and crew.
     At last this dancer to the Polar star
     Sank, washed out within, and overboard was pitched,
     To drink the sea and pilot him to land.
     O captain-critic! printed, neatly stitched,
     Know while the pillory-eggs fly fast, they are
     Not eggs, but the drowned soul of Hildebrand.



     MY THEME



     Of me and of my theme think what thou wilt:
     The song of gladness one straight bolt can check.
     But I have never stood at Fortune's beck:
     Were she and her light crew to run atilt
     At my poor holding little would be spilt;
     Small were the praise for singing o'er that wreck.
     Who courts her dooms to strife his bended neck;
     He grasps a blade, not always by the hilt.
     Nathless she strikes at random, can be fell
     With other than those votaries she deals
     The black or brilliant from her thunder-rift.
     I say but that this love of Earth reveals
     A soul beside our own to quicken, quell,
     Irradiate, and through ruinous floods uplift.



     CONTINUED



     'Tis true the wisdom that my mind exacts
     Through contemplation from a heart unbent
     By many tempests may be stained and rent:
     The summer flies it mightily attracts.
     Yet they seem choicer than your sons of facts,
     Which scarce give breathing of the sty's content
     For their diurnal carnal nourishment:
     Which treat with Nature in official pacts.
     The deader body Nature could proclaim.
     Much life have neither. Let the heavens of wrath
     Rattle, then both scud scattering to froth.
     But during calms the flies of idle aim
     Less put the spirit out, less baffle thirst
     For light than swinish grunters, blest or curst.



     ON THE DANGER OF WAR



     Avert, High Wisdom, never vainly wooed,
     This threat of War, that shows a land brain-sick.
     When nations gain the pitch where rhetoric
     Seems reason they are ripe for cannon's food.
     Dark looms the issue though the cause be good,
     But with the doubt 'tis our old devil's trick.
     O now the down-slope of the lunatic
     Illumine lest we redden of that brood.
     For not since man in his first view of thee
     Ascended to the heavens giving sign
     Within him of deep sky and sounded sea,
     Did he unforfeiting thy laws transgress;
     In peril of his blood his ears incline
     To drums whose loudness is their emptiness.



     TO CARDINAL MANNING



     I, wakeful for the skylark voice in men,
     Or straining for the angel of the light,
     Rebuked am I by hungry ear and sight,
     When I behold one lamp that through our fen
     Goes hourly where most noisome; hear again
     A tongue that loathsomeness will not affright
     From speaking to the soul of us forthright
     What things our craven senses keep from ken.
     This is the doing of the Christ; the way
     He went on earth; the service above guile
     To prop a tyrant creed: it sings, it shines;
     Cries to the Mammonites: Allay, allay
     Such misery as by these present signs
     Brings vengeance down; nor them who rouse revile.



     TO COLONEL CHARLES (DYING GENERAL C.B.B.)



     I

     An English heart, my commandant,
     A soldier's eye you have, awake
     To right and left; with looks askant
     On bulwarks not of adamant,
     Where white our Channel waters break.

     II

     Where Grisnez winks at Dungeness
     Across the ruffled strip of salt,
     You look, and like the prospect less.
     On men and guns would you lay stress,
     To bid the Island's foemen halt.

     III

     While loud the Year is raising cry
     At birth to know if it must bear
     In history the bloody dye,
     An English heart, a soldier's eye,
     For the old country first will care.

     IV

     And how stands she, artillerist,
     Among the vapours waxing dense,
     With cannon charged? 'Tis hist! and hist!
     And now she screws a gouty fist,
     And now she counts to clutch her pence.

     V

     With shudders chill as aconite,
     The couchant chewer of the cud
     Will start at times in pussy fright
     Before the dogs, when reads her sprite
     The streaks predicting streams of blood.

     VI

     She thinks they may mean something; thinks
     They may mean nothing: haply both.
     Where darkness all her daylight drinks,
     She fain would find a leader lynx,
     Not too much taxing mental sloth.

     VII

     Cleft like the fated house in twain,
     One half is, Arm! and one, Retrench!
     Gambetta's word on dull MacMahon:
     'The cow that sees a passing train':
     So spies she Russian, German, French.

     VIII

     She? no, her weakness: she unbraced
     Among those athletes fronting storms!
     The muscles less of steel than paste,
     Why, they of nature feel distaste
     For flash, much more for push, of arms.

     IX

     The poet sings, and well know we,
     That 'iron draws men after it.'
     But towering wealth may seem the tree
     Which bears the fruit INDEMNITY,
     And draw as fast as battle's fit,

     X

     If feeble be the hand on guard,
     Alas, alas! And nations are
     Still the mad forces, though the scarred.
     Should they once deem our emblem Pard
     Wagger of tail for all save war; -

     XI

     Mechanically screwed to flail
     His flanks by Presses conjuring fear; -
     A money-bag with head and tail; -
     Too late may valour then avail!
     As you beheld, my cannonier,

     XII

     When with the staff of Benedek,
     On the plateau of Koniggratz,
     You saw below that wedgeing speck;
     Foresaw proud Austria rammed to wreck,
     Where Chlum drove deep in smoky jets.

     February 1887.



     TO CHILDREN: FOR TYRANTS



     I

     Strike not thy dog with a stick!
     I did it yesterday:
     Not to undo though I gained
     The Paradise: heavy it rained
     On Kobold's flanks, and he lay.

     II

     Little Bruno, our long-ear pup,
     From his hunt had come back to my heel.
     I heard a sharp worrying sound,
     And Bruno foamed on the ground,
     With Koby as making a meal.

     III

     I did what I could not undo
     Were the gates of the Paradise shut
     Behind me: I deemed it was just.
     I left Koby crouched in the dust,
     Some yards from the woodman's hut.

     IV

     He bewhimpered his welting, and I
     Scarce thought it enough for him: so,
     By degrees, through the upper box-grove,
     Within me an old story hove,
     Of a man and a dog: you shall know.

     V

     The dog was of novel breed,
     The Shannon retriever, untried:
     His master, an old Irish lord,
     In an oaken armchair snored
     At midnight, whisky beside.

     VI

     Perched up a desolate tower,
     Where the black storm-wind was a whip
     To set it nigh spinning, these two
     Were alone, like the last of a crew,
     Outworn in a wave-beaten ship.

     VII

     The dog lifted muzzle, and sniffed;
     He quitted his couch on the rug,
     Nose to floor, nose aloft; whined, barked;
     And, finding the signals unmarked,
     Caught a hand in a death-grapple tug.

     VIII

     He pulled till his master jumped
     For fury of wrath, and laid on
     With the length of a tough knotted staff,
     Fit to drive the life flying like chaff,
     And leave a sheer carcase anon.

     IX

     That done, he sat, panted, and cursed
     The vile cross of this brute: nevermore
     Would he house it to rear such a cur!
     The dog dragged his legs, pained to stir,
     Eyed his master, dropped, barked at the door.

     X

     Then his master raised head too, and sniffed:
     It struck him the dog had a sense
     That honoured both dam and sire.
     You have guessed how the tower was afire.
     The Shannon retriever dates thence.

     XI

     I mused: saw the pup ease his heart
     Of his instinct for chasing, and sink
     Overwrought by excitement so new:
     A scene that for Koby to view
     Was the seizure of nerves in a link.

     XII

     And part sympathetic, and part
     Imitatively, raged my poor brute;
     And I, not thinking of ill,
     Doing eviller: nerves are still
     Our savage too quick at the root.

     XIII

     They spring us: I proved it, albeit
     I played executioner then
     For discipline, justice, the like.
     Yon stick I had handy to strike
     Should have warned of the tyrant in men.

     XIV

     You read in your History books,
     How the Prince in his youth had a mind
     For governing gently his land.
     Ah, the use of that weapon at hand,
     When the temper is other than kind!

     XV

     At home all was well; Koby's ribs
     Not so sore as my thoughts: if, beguiled,
     He forgives me, his criminal air
     Throws a shade of Llewellyn's despair
     For the hound slain for saving his child.



     THE WOODS OF WESTERMAIN



     I

     Enter these enchanted woods,
     You who dare.
     Nothing harms beneath the leaves
     More than waves a swimmer cleaves.
     Toss your heart up with the lark,
     Foot at peace with mouse and worm,
     Fair you fare.
     Only at a dread of dark
     Quaver, and they quit their form:
     Thousand eyeballs under hoods
     Have you by the hair.
     Enter these enchanted woods,
     You who dare.

     II

     Here the snake across your path
     Stretches in his golden bath:
     Mossy-footed squirrels leap
     Soft as winnowing plumes of Sleep:
     Yaffles on a chuckle skim
     Low to laugh from branches dim:
     Up the pine, where sits the star,
     Rattles deep the moth-winged jar.
     Each has business of his own;
     But should you distrust a tone,
     Then beware.
     Shudder all the haunted roods,
     All the eyeballs under hoods
     Shroud you in their glare.
     Enter these enchanted woods,
     You who dare.

     III

     Open hither, open hence,
     Scarce a bramble weaves a fence,
     Where the strawberry runs red,
     With white star-flower overhead;
     Cumbered by dry twig and cone,
     Shredded husks of seedlings flown,
     Mine of mole and spotted flint:
     Of dire wizardry no hint,
     Save mayhap the print that shows
     Hasty outward-tripping toes,
     Heels to terror on the mould.
     These, the woods of Westermain,
     Are as others to behold,
     Rich of wreathing sun and rain;
     Foliage lustreful around
     Shadowed leagues of slumbering sound.
     Wavy tree-tops, yellow whins,
     Shelter eager minikins,
     Myriads, free to peck and pipe:
     Would you better? would you worse?
     You with them may gather ripe
     Pleasures flowing not from purse.
     Quick and far as Colour flies
     Taking the delighted eyes,
     You of any well that springs
     May unfold the heaven of things;
     Have it homely and within,
     And thereof its likeness win,
     Will you so in soul's desire:
     This do sages grant t' the lyre.
     This is being bird and more,
     More than glad musician this;
     Granaries you will have a store
     Past the world of woe and bliss;
     Sharing still its bliss and woe;
     Harnessed to its hungers, no.
     On the throne Success usurps,
     You shall seat the joy you feel
     Where a race of water chirps,
     Twisting hues of flourished steel:
     Or where light is caught in hoop
     Up a clearing's leafy rise,
     Where the crossing deerherds troop
     Classic splendours, knightly dyes.
     Or, where old-eyed oxen chew
     Speculation with the cud,
     Read their pool of vision through,
     Back to hours when mind was mud;
     Nigh the knot, which did untwine
     Timelessly to drowsy suns;
     Seeing Earth a slimy spine,
     Heaven a space for winging tons.
     Farther, deeper, may you read,
     Have you sight for things afield,
     Where peeps she, the Nurse of seed,
     Cloaked, but in the peep revealed;
     Showing a kind face and sweet:
     Look you with the soul you see't.
     Glory narrowing to grace,
     Grace to glory magnified,
     Following that will you embrace
     Close in arms or aery wide.
     Banished is the white Foam-born
     Not from here, nor under ban
     Phoebus lyrist, Phoebe's horn,
     Pipings of the reedy Pan.
     Loved of Earth of old they were,
     Loving did interpret her;
     And the sterner worship bars
     None whom Song has made her stars.
     You have seen the huntress moon
     Radiantly facing dawn,
     Dusky meads between them strewn
     Glimmering like downy awn:
     Argent Westward glows the hunt,
     East the blush about to climb;
     One another fair they front,
     Transient, yet outshine the time;
     Even as dewlight off the rose
     In the mind a jewel sows.
     Thus opposing grandeurs live
     Here if Beauty be their dower:
     Doth she of her spirit give,
     Fleetingness will spare her flower.
     This is in the tune we play,
     Which no spring of strength would quell;
     In subduing does not slay;
     Guides the channel, guards the well:
     Tempered holds the young blood-heat,
     Yet through measured grave accord,
     Hears the heart of wildness beat
     Like a centaur's hoof on sward.
     Drink the sense the notes infuse,
     You a larger self will find:
     Sweetest fellowship ensues
     With the creatures of your kind.
     Ay, and Love, if Love it be
     Flaming over I and ME,
     Love meet they who do not shove
     Cravings in the van of Love.
     Courtly dames are here to woo,
     Knowing love if it be true.
     Reverence the blossom-shoot
     Fervently, they are the fruit.
     Mark them stepping, hear them talk,
     Goddess, is no myth inane,
     You will say of those who walk
     In the woods of Westermain.
     Waters that from throat and thigh
     Dart the sun his arrows back;
     Leaves that on a woodland sigh
     Chat of secret things no lack;
     Shadowy branch-leaves, waters clear,
     Bare or veiled they move sincere;
     Not by slavish terrors tripped
     Being anew in nature dipped,
     Growths of what they step on, these;
     With the roots the grace of trees.
     Casket-breasts they give, nor hide,
     For a tyrant's flattered pride,
     Mind, which nourished not by light,
     Lurks the shuffling trickster sprite:
     Whereof are strange tales to tell;
     Some in blood writ, tombed in bell.
     Here the ancient battle ends,
     Joining two astonished friends,
     Who the kiss can give and take
     With more warmth than in that world
     Where the tiger claws the snake,
     Snake her tiger clasps infurled,
     And the issue of their fight
     People lands in snarling plight.
     Here her splendid beast she leads
     Silken-leashed and decked with weeds
     Wild as he, but breathing faint
     Sweetness of unfelt constraint.
     Love, the great volcano, flings
     Fires of lower Earth to sky;
     Love, the sole permitted, sings
     Sovereignly of ME and I.
     Bowers he has of sacred shade,
     Spaces of superb parade,
     Voiceful . . . But bring you a note
     Wrangling, howsoe'er remote,
     Discords out of discord spin
     Round and round derisive din:
     Sudden will a pallor pant
     Chill at screeches miscreant;
     Owls or spectres, thick they flee;
     Nightmare upon horror broods;
     Hooded laughter, monkish glee,
     Gaps the vital air.
     Enter these enchanted woods
     You who dare.

     IV

     You must love the light so well
     That no darkness will seem fell.
     Love it so you could accost
     Fellowly a livid ghost.
     Whish! the phantom wisps away,
     Owns him smoke to cocks of day.
     In your breast the light must burn
     Fed of you, like corn in quern
     Ever plumping while the wheel
     Speeds the mill and drains the meal.
     Light to light sees little strange,
     Only features heavenly new;
     Then you touch the nerve of Change,
     Then of Earth you have the clue;
     Then her two-sexed meanings melt
     Through you, wed the thought and felt.
     Sameness locks no scurfy pond
     Here for Custom, crazy-fond:
     Change is on the wing to bud
     Rose in brain from rose in blood.
     Wisdom throbbing shall you see
     Central in complexity;
     From her pasture 'mid the beasts
     Rise to her ethereal feasts,
     Not, though lightnings track your wit
     Starward, scorning them you quit:
     For be sure the bravest wing
     Preens it in our common spring,
     Thence along the vault to soar,
     You with others, gathering more,
     Glad of more, till you reject
     Your proud title of elect,
     Perilous even here while few
     Roam the arched greenwood with you.
     Heed that snare.
     Muffled by his cavern-cowl
     Squats the scaly Dragon-fowl,
     Who was lord ere light you drank,
     And lest blood of knightly rank
     Stream, let not your fair princess
     Stray: he holds the leagues in stress,
     Watches keenly there.
     Oft has he been riven; slain
     Is no force in Westermain.
     Wait, and we shall forge him curbs,
     Put his fangs to uses, tame,
     Teach him, quick as cunning herbs,
     How to cure him sick and lame.
     Much restricted, much enringed,
     Much he frets, the hooked and winged,
     Never known to spare.
     'Tis enough: the name of Sage
     Hits no thing in nature, nought;
     Man the least, save when grave Age
     From yon Dragon guards his thought.
     Eye him when you hearken dumb
     To what words from Wisdom come.
     When she says how few are by
     Listening to her, eye his eye.
     Self, his name declare.
     Him shall Change, transforming late,
     Wonderously renovate.
     Hug himself the creature may:
     What he hugs is loathed decay.
     Crying, slip thy scales, and slough!
     Change will strip his armour off;
     Make of him who was all maw,
     Inly only thrilling-shrewd,
     Such a servant as none saw
     Through his days of dragonhood.
     Days when growling o'er his bone,
     Sharpened he for mine and thine;
     Sensitive within alone;
     Scaly as the bark of pine.
     Change, the strongest son of Life,
     Has the Spirit here to wife.
     Lo, their young of vivid breed,
     Bear the lights that onward speed,
     Threading thickets, mounting glades,
     Up the verdurous colonnades,
     Round the fluttered curves, and down,
     Out of sight of Earth's blue crown,
     Whither, in her central space,
     Spouts the Fount and Lure o' the chase.
     Fount unresting, Lure divine!
     There meet all: too late look most.
     Fire in water hued as wine,
     Springs amid a shadowy host,
     Circled: one close-headed mob,
     Breathless, scanning divers heaps,
     Where a Heart begins to throb,
     Where it ceases, slow, with leaps.
     And 'tis very strange, 'tis said,
     How you spy in each of them
     Semblance of that Dragon red,
     As the oak in bracken-stem.
     And, 'tis said, how each and each:
     Which commences, which subsides:
     First my Dragon! doth beseech
     Her who food for all provides.
     And she answers with no sign;
     Utters neither yea nor nay;
     Fires the water hued as wine;
     Kneads another spark in clay.
     Terror is about her hid;
     Silence of the thunders locked;
     Lightnings lining the shut lid;
     Fixity on quaking rocked.
     Lo, you look at Flow and Drought
     Interflashed and interwrought:
     Ended is begun, begun
     Ended, quick as torrents run.
     Young Impulsion spouts to sink;
     Luridness and lustre link;
     'Tis your come and go of breath;
     Mirrored pants the Life, the Death;
     Each of either reaped and sown:
     Rosiest rosy wanes to crone.
     See you so? your senses drift;
     'Tis a shuttle weaving swift.
     Look with spirit past the sense,
     Spirit shines in permanence.
     That is She, the view of whom
     Is the dust within the tomb,
     Is the inner blush above,
     Look to loathe, or look to love;
     Think her Lump, or know her Flame;
     Dread her scourge, or read her aim;
     Shoot your hungers from their nerve;
     Or, in her example, serve.
     Some have found her sitting grave;
     Laughing, some; or, browed with sweat,
     Hurling dust of fool and knave
     In a hissing smithy's jet.
     More it were not well to speak;
     Burn to see, you need but seek.
     Once beheld she gives the key
     Airing every doorway, she.
     Little can you stop or steer
     Ere of her you are the seer.
     On the surface she will witch,
     Rendering Beauty yours, but gaze
     Under, and the soul is rich
     Past computing, past amaze.
     Then is courage that endures
     Even her awful tremble yours.
     Then, the reflex of that Fount
     Spied below, will Reason mount
     Lordly and a quenchless force,
     Lighting Pain to its mad source,
     Scaring Fear till Fear escapes,
     Shot through all its phantom shapes.
     Then your spirit will perceive
     Fleshly seed of fleshly sins;
     Where the passions interweave,
     How the serpent tangle spins
     Of the sense of Earth misprised,
     Brainlessly unrecognized;
     She being Spirit in her clods,
     Footway to the God of Gods.
     Then for you are pleasures pure,
     Sureties as the stars are sure:
     Not the wanton beckoning flags
     Which, of flattery and delight,
     Wax to the grim Habit-Hags
     Riding souls of men to night:
     Pleasures that through blood run sane,
     Quickening spirit from the brain.
     Each of each in sequent birth,
     Blood and brain and spirit, three,
     (Say the deepest gnomes of Earth),
     Join for true felicity.
     Are they parted, then expect
     Some one sailing will be wrecked:
     Separate hunting are they sped,
     Scan the morsel coveted.
     Earth that Triad is: she hides
     Joy from him who that divides;
     Showers it when the three are one
     Glassing her in union.
     Earth your haven, Earth your helm,
     You command a double realm;
     Labouring here to pay your debt,
     Till your little sun shall set;
     Leaving her the future task:
     Loving her too well to ask.
     Eglantine that climbs the yew,
     She her darkest wreathes for those
     Knowing her the Ever-new,
     And themselves the kin o' the rose.
     Life, the chisel, axe and sword,
     Wield who have her depths explored:
     Life, the dream, shall be their robe
     Large as air about the globe;
     Life, the question, hear its cry
     Echoed with concordant Why;
     Life, the small self-dragon ramped,
     Thrill for service to be stamped.
     Ay, and over every height
     Life for them shall wave a wand:
     That, the last, where sits affright,
     Homely shows the stream beyond.
     Love the light and be its lynx,
     You will track her and attain;
     Read her as no cruel Sphinx
     In the woods of Westermain,
     Daily fresh the woods are ranged;
     Glooms which otherwhere appal,
     Sounded: here, their worths exchanged
     Urban joins with pastoral:
     Little lost, save what may drop
     Husk-like, and the mind preserves.
     Natural overgrowths they lop,
     Yet from nature neither swerves,
     Trained or savage: for this cause:
     Of our Earth they ply the laws,
     Have in Earth their feeding root,
     Mind of man and bent of brute.
     Hear that song; both wild and ruled.
     Hear it: is it wail or mirth?
     Ordered, bubbled, quite unschooled?
     None, and all: it springs of Earth.
     O but hear it! 'tis the mind;
     Mind that with deep Earth unites,
     Round the solid trunk to wind
     Rings of clasping parasites.
     Music have you there to feed
     Simplest and most soaring need.
     Free to wind, and in desire
     Winding, they to her attached
     Feel the trunk a spring of fire,
     And ascend to heights unmatched,
     Whence the tidal world is viewed
     As a sea of windy wheat,
     Momently black, barren, rude;
     Golden-brown, for harvest meet,
     Dragon-reaped from folly-sown;
     Bride-like to the sickle-blade:
     Quick it varies, while the moan,
     Moan of a sad creature strayed,
     Chiefly is its voice. So flesh
     Conjures tempest-flails to thresh
     Good from worthless. Some clear lamps
     Light it; more of dead marsh-damps.
     Monster is it still, and blind,
     Fit but to be led by Pain.
     Glance we at the paths behind,
     Fruitful sight has Westermain.
     There we laboured, and in turn
     Forward our blown lamps discern,
     As you see on the dark deep
     Far the loftier billows leap,
     Foam for beacon bear.
     Hither, hither, if you will,
     Drink instruction, or instil,
     Run the woods like vernal sap,
     Crying, hail to luminousness!
     But have care.
     In yourself may lurk the trap:
     On conditions they caress.
     Here you meet the light invoked
     Here is never secret cloaked.
     Doubt you with the monster's fry
     All his orbit may exclude;
     Are you of the stiff, the dry,
     Cursing the not understood;
     Grasp you with the monster's claws;
     Govern with his truncheon-saws;
     Hate, the shadow of a grain;
     You are lost in Westermain:
     Earthward swoops a vulture sun,
     Nighted upon carrion:
     Straightway venom wine-cups shout
     Toasts to One whose eyes are out:
     Flowers along the reeling floor
     Drip henbane and hellebore:
     Beauty, of her tresses shorn,
     Shrieks as nature's maniac:
     Hideousness on hoof and horn
     Tumbles, yapping in her track:
     Haggard Wisdom, stately once,
     Leers fantastical and trips:
     Allegory drums the sconce,
     Impiousness nibblenips.
     Imp that dances, imp that flits,
     Imp o' the demon-growing girl,
     Maddest! whirl with imp o' the pits
     Round you, and with them you whirl
     Fast where pours the fountain-rout
     Out of Him whose eyes are out:
     Multitudes on multitudes,
     Drenched in wallowing devilry:
     And you ask where you may be,
     In what reek of a lair
     Given to bones and ogre-broods:
     And they yell you Where.
     Enter these enchanted woods,
     You who dare.



     A BALLAD OF PAST MERIDIAN



     I

     Last night returning from my twilight walk
     I met the grey mist Death, whose eyeless brow
     Was bent on me, and from his hand of chalk
     He reached me flowers as from a withered bough:
     O Death, what bitter nosegays givest thou!

     II

     Death said, I gather, and pursued his way.
     Another stood by me, a shape in stone,
     Sword-hacked and iron-stained, with breasts of clay,
     And metal veins that sometimes fiery shone:
     O Life, how naked and how hard when known!

     III

     Life said, As thou hast carved me, such am I.
     Then memory, like the nightjar on the pine,
     And sightless hope, a woodlark in night sky,
     Joined notes of Death and Life till night's decline
     Of Death, of Life, those inwound notes are mine.



     THE DAY OF THE DAUGHTER OF HADES



     I

     He who has looked upon Earth
     Deeper than flower and fruit,
     Losing some hue of his mirth,
     As the tree striking rock at the root,
     Unto him shall the marvellous tale
     Of Callistes more humanly come
     With the touch on his breast than a hail
     From the markets that hum.

     II

     Now the youth footed swift to the dawn.
     'Twas the season when wintertide,
     In the higher rock-hollows updrawn,
     Leaves meadows to bud, and he spied,
     By light throwing shallow shade,
     Between the beam and the gloom,
     Sicilian Enna, whose Maid
     Such aspect wears in her bloom
     Underneath since the Charioteer
     Of Darkness whirled her away,
     On a reaped afternoon of the year,
     Nigh the poppy-droop of Day.
     O and naked of her, all dust,
     The majestic Mother and Nurse,
     Ringing cries to the God, the Just,
     Curled the land with the blight of her curse:
     Recollected of this glad isle
     Still quaking. But now more fair,
     And momently fraying the while
     The veil of the shadows there,
     Soft Enna that prostrate grief
     Sang through, and revealed round the vines,
     Bronze-orange, the crisp young leaf,
     The wheat-blades tripping in lines,
     A hue unillumined by sun
     Of the flowers flooding grass as from founts:
     All the penetrable dun
     Of the morn ere she mounts.

     III

     Nor had saffron and sapphire and red
     Waved aloft to their sisters below,
     When gaped by the rock-channel head
     Of the lake, black, a cave at one blow,
     Reverberant over the plain:
     A sound oft fearfully swung
     For the coming of wrathful rain:
     And forth, like the dragon-tongue
     Of a fire beaten flat by the gale,
     But more as the smoke to behold,
     A chariot burst. Then a wail
     Quivered high of the love that would fold
     Bliss immeasurable, bigger than heart,
     Though a God's: and the wheels were stayed,
     And the team of the chariot swart
     Reared in marble, the six, dismayed,
     Like hoofs that by night plashing sea
     Curve and ramp from the vast swan-wave:
     For, lo, the Great Mother, She!
     And Callistes gazed, he gave
     His eyeballs up to the sight:
     The embrace of the Twain, of whom
     To men are their day, their night,
     Mellow fruits and the shearing tomb:
     Our Lady of the Sheaves
     And the Lily of Hades, the Sweet
     Of Enna: he saw through leaves
     The Mother and Daughter meet.
     They stood by the chariot-wheel,
     Embraced, very tall, most like
     Fellow poplars, wind-taken, that reel
     Down their shivering columns and strike
     Head to head, crossing throats: and apart,
     For the feast of the look, they drew,
     Which Darkness no longer could thwart;
     And they broke together anew,
     Exulting to tears, flower and bud.
     But the mate of the Rayless was grave:
     She smiled like Sleep on its flood,
     That washes of all we crave:
     Like the trance of eyes awake
     And the spirit enshrouded, she cast
     The wan underworld on the lake.
     They were so, and they passed.

     IV

     He tells it, who knew the law
     Upon mortals: he stood alive
     Declaring that this he saw:
     He could see, and survive.

     V

     Now the youth was not ware of the beams
     With the grasses intertwined,
     For each thing seen, as in dreams,
     Came stepping to rear through his mind,
     Till it struck his remembered prayer
     To be witness of this which had flown
     Like a smoke melted thinner than air,
     That the vacancy doth disown.
     And viewing a maiden, he thought
     It might now be morn, and afar
     Within him the memory wrought
     Of a something that slipped from the car
     When those, the august, moved by:
     Perchance a scarf, and perchance
     This maiden. She did not fly,
     Nor started at his advance:
     She looked, as when infinite thirst
     Pants pausing to bless the springs,
     Refreshed, unsated. Then first
     He trembled with awe of the things
     He had seen; and he did transfer,
     Divining and doubting in turn,
     His reverence unto her;
     Nor asked what he crouched to learn:
     The whence of her, whither, and why
     Her presence there, and her name,
     Her parentage: under which sky
     Her birth, and how hither she came,
     So young, a virgin, alone,
     Unfriended, having no fear,
     As Oreads have; no moan,
     Like the lost upon earth; no tear;
     Not a sign of the torch in the blood,
     Though her stature had reached the height
     When mantles a tender rud
     In maids that of youths have sight,
     If maids of our seed they be:
     For he said: A glad vision art thou!
     And she answered him: Thou to me!
     As men utter a vow.

     VI

     Then said she, quick as the cries
     Of the rainy cranes: Light! light!
     And Helios rose in her eyes,
     That were full as the dew-balls bright,
     Relucent to him as dews
     Unshaded. Breathing, she sent
     Her voice to the God of the Muse,
     And along the vale it went,
     Strange to hear: not thin, not shrill:
     Sweet, but no young maid's throat:
     The echo beyond the hill
     Ran falling on half the note:
     And under the shaken ground
     Where the Hundred-headed groans
     By the roots of great AEtna bound,
     As of him were hollow tones
     Of wondering roared: a tale
     Repeated to sunless halls.
     But now off the face of the vale
     Shadows fled in a breath, and the walls
     Of the lake's rock-head were gold,
     And the breast of the lake, that swell
     Of the crestless long wave rolled
     To shore-bubble, pebble and shell.
     A morning of radiant lids
     O'er the dance of the earth opened wide:
     The bees chose their flowers, the snub kids
     Upon hindlegs went sportive, or plied,
     Nosing, hard at the dugs to be filled:
     There was milk, honey, music to make:
     Up their branches the little birds billed:
     Chirrup, drone, bleat and buzz ringed the lake.
     O shining in sunlight, chief
     After water and water's caress,
     Was the young bronze-orange leaf,
     That clung to the tree as a tress,
     Shooting lucid tendrils to wed
     With the vine-hook tree or pole,
     Like Arachne launched out on her thread.
     Then the maiden her dusky stole
     In the span of the black-starred zone,
     Gathered up for her footing fleet.
     As one that had toil of her own
     She followed the lines of wheat
     Tripping straight through the fields, green blades,
     To the groves of olive grey,
     Downy-grey, golden-tinged: and to glades
     Where the pear-blossom thickens the spray
     In a night, like the snow-packed storm:
     Pear, apple, almond, plum:
     Not wintry now: pushing, warm!
     And she touched them with finger and thumb,
     As the vine-hook closes: she smiled,
     Recounting again and again,
     Corn, wine, fruit, oil! like a child,
     With the meaning known to men.
     For hours in the track of the plough
     And the pruning-knife she stepped,
     And of how the seed works, and of how
     Yields the soil, she seemed adept.
     Then she murmured that name of the dearth,
     The Beneficent, Hers, who bade
     Our husbandmen sow for the birth
     Of the grain making earth full glad.
     She murmured that Other's: the dirge
     Of life-light: for whose dark lap
     Our locks are clipped on the verge
     Of the realm where runs no sap.
     She said: We have looked on both!
     And her eyes had a wavering beam
     Of various lights, like the froth
     Of the storm-swollen ravine stream
     In flame of the bolt. What links
     Were these which had made him her friend?
     He eyed her, as one who drinks,
     And would drink to the end.

     VII

     Now the meadows with crocus besprent,
     And the asphodel woodsides she left,
     And the lake-slopes, the ravishing scent
     Of narcissus, dark-sweet, for the cleft
     That tutors the torrent-brook,
     Delaying its forceful spleen
     With many a wind and crook
     Through rock to the broad ravine.
     By the hyacinth-bells in the brakes,
     And the shade-loved white windflower, half hid,
     And the sun-loving lizards and snakes
     On the cleft's barren ledges, that slid
     Out of sight, smooth as waterdrops, all,
     At a snap of twig or bark
     In the track of the foreign foot-fall,
     She climbed to the pineforest dark,
     Overbrowing an emerald chine
     Of the grass-billows. Thence, as a wreath,
     Running poplar and cypress to pine,
     The lake-banks are seen, and beneath,
     Vineyard, village, groves, rivers, towers, farms,
     The citadel watching the bay,
     The bay with the town in its arms,
     The town shining white as the spray
     Of the sapphire sea-wave on the rock,
     Where the rock stars the girdle of sea,
     White-ringed, as the midday flock,
     Clipped by heat, rings the round of the tree.
     That hour of the piercing shaft
     Transfixes bough-shadows, confused
     In veins of fire, and she laughed,
     With her quiet mouth amused
     To see the whole flock, adroop,
     Asleep, hug the tree-stem as one,
     Imperceptibly filling the loop
     Of its shade at a slant of sun.
     The pipes under pent of the crag,
     Where the goatherds in piping recline,
     Have whimsical stops, burst and flag
     Uncorrected as outstretched swine:
     For the fingers are slack and unsure,
     And the wind issues querulous:- thorns
     And snakes!--but she listened demure,
     Comparing day's music with morn's.
     Of the gentle spirit that slips
     From the bark of the tree she discoursed,
     And of her of the wells, whose lips
     Are coolness enchanting, rock-sourced.
     And much of the sacred loon,
     The frolic, the Goatfoot God,
     For stories of indolent noon
     In the pineforest's odorous nod,
     She questioned, not knowing: he can
     Be waspish, irascible, rude,
     He is oftener friendly to man,
     And ever to beasts and their brood.
     For the which did she love him well,
     She said, and his pipes of the reed,
     His twitched lips puffing to tell
     In music his tears and his need,
     Against the sharp catch of his hurt.
     Not as shepherds of Pan did she speak,
     Nor spake as the schools, to divert,
     But fondly, perceiving him weak
     Before Gods, and to shepherds a fear,
     A holiness, horn and heel.
     All this she had learnt in her ear
     From Callistes, and taught him to feel.
     Yea, the solemn divinity flushed
     Through the shaggy brown skin of the beast,
     And the steeps where the cataract rushed,
     And the wilds where the forest is priest,
     Were his temple to clothe him in awe,
     While she spake: 'twas a wonder: she read
     The haunts of the beak and the claw
     As plain as the land of bread,
     But Cities and martial States,
     Whither soon the youth veered his theme,
     Were impervious barrier-gates
     To her: and that ship, a trireme,
     Nearing harbour, scarce wakened her glance,
     Though he dwelt on the message it bore
     Of sceptre and sword and lance
     To the bee-swarms black on the shore,
     Which were audible almost,
     So black they were. It befel
     That he called up the warrior host
     Of the Song pouring hydromel
     In thunder, the wide-winged Song.
     And he named with his boyish pride
     The heroes, the noble throng
     Past Acheron now, foul tide!
     With his joy of the godlike band
     And the verse divine, he named
     The chiefs pressing hot on the strand,
     Seen of Gods, of Gods aided, and maimed.
     The fleetfoot and ireful; the King;
     Him, the prompter in stratagem,
     Many-shifted and masterful: Sing,
     O Muse! But she cried: Not of them
     She breathed as if breath had failed,
     And her eyes, while she bade him desist,
     Held the lost-to-light ghosts grey-mailed,
     As you see the grey river-mist
     Hold shapes on the yonder bank.
     A moment her body waned,
     The light of her sprang and sank:
     Then she looked at the sun, she regained
     Clear feature, and she breathed deep.
     She wore the wan smile he had seen,
     As the flow of the river of Sleep,
     On the mouth of the Shadow-Queen.
     In sunlight she craved to bask,
     Saying: Life! And who was she? who?
     Of what issue? He dared not ask,
     For that partly he knew.

     VIII

     A noise of the hollow ground
     Turned the eye to the ear in debate:
     Not the soft overflowing of sound
     Of the pines, ranked, lofty, straight,
     Barely swayed to some whispers remote,
     Some swarming whispers above:
     Not the pines with the faint airs afloat,
     Hush-hushing the nested dove:
     It was not the pines, or the rout
     Oft heard from mid-forest in chase,
     But the long muffled roar of a shout
     Subterranean. Sharp grew her face.
     She rose, yet not moved by affright;
     'Twas rather good haste to use
     Her holiday of delight
     In the beams of the God of the Muse.
     And the steeps of the forest she crossed,
     On its dry red sheddings and cones
     Up the paths by roots green-mossed,
     Spotted amber, and old mossed stones.
     Then out where the brook-torrent starts
     To her leap, and from bend to curve
     A hurrying elbow darts
     For the instant-glancing swerve,
     Decisive, with violent will
     In the action formed, like hers,
     The maiden's, ascending; and still
     Ascending, the bud of the furze,
     The broom, and all blue-berried shoots
     Of stubborn and prickly kind,
     The juniper flat on its roots,
     The dwarf rhododaphne, behind
     She left, and the mountain sheep
     Far behind, goat, herbage and flower.
     The island was hers, and the deep,
     All heaven, a golden hour.
     Then with wonderful voice, that rang
     Through air as the swan's nigh death,
     Of the glory of Light she sang,
     She sang of the rapture of Breath.
     Nor ever, says he who heard,
     Heard Earth in her boundaries broad,
     From bosom of singer or bird
     A sweetness thus rich of the God
     Whose harmonies always are sane.
     She sang of furrow and seed,
     The burial, birth of the grain,
     The growth, and the showers that feed,
     And the green blades waxing mature
     For the husbandman's armful brown.
     O, the song in its burden ran pure,
     And burden to song was a crown.
     Callistes, a singer, skilled
     In the gift he could measure and praise,
     By a rival's art was thrilled,
     Though she sang but a Song of Days,
     Where the husbandman's toil and strife
     Little varies to strife and toil:
     But the milky kernel of life,
     With her numbered: corn, wine, fruit, oil
     The song did give him to eat:
     Gave the first rapt vision of Good,
     And the fresh young sense of Sweet
     The grace of the battle for food,
     With the issue Earth cannot refuse
     When men to their labour are sworn.
     'Twas a song of the God of the Muse
     To the forehead of Morn.

     IX

     Him loved she. Lo, now was he veiled:
     Over sea stood a swelled cloud-rack:
     The fishing-boat heavenward sailed,
     Bent abeam, with a whitened track,
     Surprised, fast hauling the net,
     As it flew: sea dashed, earth shook.
     She said: Is it night? O not yet!
     With a travail of thoughts in her look.
     The mountain heaved up to its peak:
     Sea darkened: earth gathered her fowl;
     Of bird or of branch rose the shriek.
     Night? but never so fell a scowl
     Wore night, nor the sky since then
     When ocean ran swallowing shore,
     And the Gods looked down for men.
     Broke tempest with that stern roar
     Never yet, save when black on the whirl
     Rode wrath of a sovereign Power.
     Then the youth and the shuddering girl,
     Dim as shades in the angry shower,
     Joined hands and descended a maze
     Of the paths that were racing alive
     Round boulder and bush, cleaving ways,
     Incessant, with sound of a hive.
     The height was a fountain-urn
     Pouring streams, and the whole solid height
     Leaped, chasing at every turn
     The pair in one spirit of flight
     To the folding pineforest. Yet here,
     Like the pause to things hunted, in doubt,
     The stillness bred spectral fear
     Of the awfulness ranging without,
     And imminent. Downward they fled,
     From under the haunted roof,
     To the valley aquake with the tread
     Of an iron-resounding hoof,
     As of legions of thunderful horse
     Broken loose and in line tramping hard.
     For the rage of a hungry force
     Roamed blind of its mark over sward:
     They saw it rush dense in the cloak
     Of its travelling swathe of steam;
     All the vale through a thin thread-smoke
     Was thrown back to distance extreme:
     And dull the full breast of it blinked,
     Like a buckler of steel breathed o'er,
     Diminished, in strangeness distinct,
     Glowing cold, unearthly, hoar:
     An Enna of fields beyond sun,
     Out of light, in a lurid web;
     And the traversing fury spun
     Up and down with a wave's flow and ebb;
     As the wave breaks to grasp and to spurn,
     Retire, and in ravenous greed,
     Inveterate, swell its return.
     Up and down, as if wringing from speed
     Sights that made the unsighted appear,
     Delude and dissolve, on it scoured.
     Lo, a sea upon land held career
     Through the plain of the vale half-devoured.
     Callistes of home and escape
     Muttered swiftly, unwitting of speech.
     She gazed at the Void of shape,
     She put her white hand to his reach,
     Saying: Now have we looked on the Three.
     And divided from day, from night,
     From air that is breath, stood she,
     Like the vale, out of light.

     X

     Then again in disorderly words
     He muttered of home, and was mute,
     With the heart of the cowering birds
     Ere they burst off the fowler's foot.
     He gave her some redness that streamed
     Through her limbs in a flitting glow.
     The sigh of our life she seemed,
     The bliss of it clothing in woe.
     Frailer than flower when the round
     Of the sickle encircles it: strong
     To tell of the things profound,
     Our inmost uttering song,
     Unspoken. So stood she awhile
     In the gloom of the terror afield,
     And the silence about her smile
     Said more than of tongue is revealed.
     I have breathed: I have gazed: I have been:
     It said: and not joylessly shone
     The remembrance of light through the screen
     Of a face that seemed shadow and stone.
     She led the youth trembling, appalled,
     To the lake-banks he saw sink and rise
     Like a panic-struck breast. Then she called,
     And the hurricane blackness had eyes.
     It launched like the Thunderer's bolt.
     Pale she drooped, and the youth by her side
     Would have clasped her and dared a revolt
     Sacrilegious as ever defied
     High Olympus, but vainly for strength
     His compassionate heart shook a frame
     Stricken rigid to ice all its length.
     On amain the black traveller came.
     Lo, a chariot, cleaving the storm,
     Clove the fountaining lake with a plough,
     And the lord of the steeds was in form
     He, the God of implacable brow,
     Darkness: he: he in person: he raged
     Through the wave like a boar of the wilds
     From the hunters and hounds disengaged,
     And a name shouted hoarsely: his child's.
     Horror melted in anguish to hear.
     Lo, the wave hissed apart for the path
     Of the terrible Charioteer,
     With the foam and torn features of wrath,
     Hurled aloft on each arm in a sheet;
     And the steeds clove it, rushing at land
     Like the teeth of the famished at meat.
     Then he swept out his hand.

     XI

     This, no more, doth Callistes recall:
     He saw, ere he dropped in swoon,
     On the maiden the chariot fall,
     As a thundercloud swings on the moon.
     Forth, free of the deluge, one cry
     From the vanishing gallop rose clear:
     And: Skiegeneia! the sky
     Rang; Skiegeneia! the sphere.
     And she left him therewith, to rejoice,
     Repine, yearn, and know not his aim,
     The life of their day in her voice,
     Left her life in her name.

     XII

     Now the valley in ruin of fields
     And fair meadowland, showing at eve
     Like the spear-pitted warrior's shields
     After battle, bade men believe
     That no other than wrathfullest God
     Had been loose on her beautiful breast,
     Where the flowery grass was clod,
     Wheat and vine as a trailing nest.
     The valley, discreet in grief,
     Disclosed but the open truth,
     And Enna had hope of the sheaf:
     There was none for the desolate youth
     Devoted to mourn and to crave.
     Of the secret he had divined
     Of his friend of a day would he rave:
     How for light of our earth she pined:
     For the olive, the vine and the wheat,
     Burning through with inherited fire:
     And when Mother went Mother to meet,
     She was prompted by simple desire
     In the day-destined car to have place
     At the skirts of the Goddess, unseen,
     And be drawn to the dear earth's face.
     She was fire for the blue and the green
     Of our earth, dark fire; athirst
     As a seed of her bosom for dawn,
     White air that had robed and nursed
     Her mother. Now was she gone
     With the Silent, the God without tear,
     Like a bud peeping out of its sheath
     To be sundered and stamped with the sere.
     And Callistes to her beneath,
     As she to our beams, extinct,
     Strained arms: he was shade of her shade.
     In division so were they linked.
     But the song which had betrayed
     Her flight to the cavernous ear
     For its own keenly wakeful: that song
     Of the sowing and reaping, and cheer
     Of the husbandman's heart made strong
     Through droughts and deluging rains
     With his faith in the Great Mother's love:
     O the joy of the breath she sustains,
     And the lyre of the light above,
     And the first rapt vision of Good,
     And the fresh young sense of Sweet:
     That song the youth ever pursued
     In the track of her footing fleet.
     For men to be profited much
     By her day upon earth did he sing:
     Of her voice, and her steps, and her touch
     On the blossoms of tender Spring,
     Immortal: and how in her soul
     She is with them, and tearless abides,
     Folding grain of a love for one goal
     In patience, past flowing of tides.
     And if unto him she was tears,
     He wept not: he wasted within:
     Seeming sane in the song, to his peers,
     Only crazed where the cravings begin.
     Our Lady of Gifts prized he less
     Than her issue in darkness: the dim
     Lost Skiegencia's caress
     Of our earth made it richest for him.
     And for that was a curse on him raised,
     And he withered rathe, dry to his prime,
     Though the bounteous Giver be praised
     Through the island with rites of old time
     Exceedingly fervent, and reaped
     Veneration for teachings devout,
     Pious hymns when the corn-sheaves are heaped
     And the wine-presses ruddily spout,
     And the olive and apple are juice
     At a touch light as hers lost below.
     Whatsoever to men is of use
     Sprang his worship of them who bestow,
     In a measure of songs unexcelled:
     But that soul loving earth and the sun
     From her home of the shadows he held
     For his beacon where beam there is none:
     And to join her, or have her brought back,
     In his frenzy the singer would call,
     Till he followed where never was track,
     On the path trod of all.



     THE LARK ASCENDING



     He rises and begins to round,
     He drops the silver chain of sound,
     Of many links without a break,
     In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake,
     All intervolved and spreading wide,
     Like water-dimples down a tide
     Where ripple ripple overcurls
     And eddy into eddy whirls;
     A press of hurried notes that run
     So fleet they scarce are more than one,
     Yet changeingly the trills repeat
     And linger ringing while they fleet,
     Sweet to the quick o' the ear, and dear
     To her beyond the handmaid ear,
     Who sits beside our inner springs,
     Too often dry for this he brings,
     Which seems the very jet of earth
     At sight of sun, her music's mirth,
     As up he wings the spiral stair,
     A song of light, and pierces air
     With fountain ardour, fountain play,
     To reach the shining tops of day,
     And drink in everything discerned
     An ecstasy to music turned,
     Impelled by what his happy bill
     Disperses; drinking, showering still,
     Unthinking save that he may give
     His voice the outlet, there to live
     Renewed in endless notes of glee,
     So thirsty of his voice is he,
     For all to hear and all to know
     That he is joy, awake, aglow;
     The tumult of the heart to hear
     Through pureness filtered crystal-clear,
     And know the pleasure sprinkled bright
     By simple singing of delight;
     Shrill, irreflective, unrestrained,
     Rapt, ringing, on the jet sustained
     Without a break, without a fall,
     Sweet-silvery, sheer lyrical,
     Perennial, quavering up the chord
     Like myriad dews of sunny sward
     That trembling into fulness shine,
     And sparkle dropping argentine;
     Such wooing as the ear receives
     From zephyr caught in choric leaves
     Of aspens when their chattering net
     Is flushed to white with shivers wet;
     And such the water-spirit's chime
     On mountain heights in morning's prime,
     Too freshly sweet to seem excess,
     Too animate to need a stress;
     But wider over many heads
     The starry voice ascending spreads,
     Awakening, as it waxes thin,
     The best in us to him akin;
     And every face to watch him raised,
     Puts on the light of children praised;
     So rich our human pleasure ripes
     When sweetness on sincereness pipes,
     Though nought be promised from the seas,
     But only a soft-ruffling breeze
     Sweep glittering on a still content,
     Serenity in ravishment
     For singing till his heaven fills,
     'Tis love of earth that he instils,
     And ever winging up and up,
     Our valley is his golden cup,
     And he the wine which overflows
     To lift us with him as he goes:
     The woods and brooks, the sheep and kine,
     He is, the hills, the human line,
     The meadows green, the fallows brown,
     The dreams of labour in the town;
     He sings the sap, the quickened veins;
     The wedding song of sun and rains
     He is, the dance of children, thanks
     Of sowers, shout of primrose-banks,
     And eye of violets while they breathe;
     All these the circling song will wreathe,
     And you shall hear the herb and tree,
     The better heart of men shall see,
     Shall feel celestially, as long
     As you crave nothing save the song.

     Was never voice of ours could say
     Our inmost in the sweetest way,
     Like yonder voice aloft, and link
     All hearers in the song they drink.
     Our wisdom speaks from failing blood,
     Our passion is too full in flood,
     We want the key of his wild note
     Of truthful in a tuneful throat;
     The song seraphically free
     Of taint of personality,
     So pure that it salutes the suns
     The voice of one for millions,
     In whom the millions rejoice
     For giving their one spirit voice.
     Yet men have we, whom we revere,
     Now names, and men still housing here,
     Whose lives, by many a battle-dint
     Defaced, and grinding wheels on flint,
     Yield substance, though they sing not, sweet
     For song our highest heaven to greet:
     Whom heavenly singing gives us new,
     Enspheres them brilliant in our blue,
     From firmest base to farthest leap,
     Because their love of Earth is deep,
     And they are warriors in accord
     With life to serve, and, pass reward,
     So touching purest and so heard
     In the brain's reflex of yon bird:
     Wherefore their soul in me, or mine,
     Through self-forgetfulness divine,
     In them, that song aloft maintains,
     To fill the sky and thrill the plains
     With showerings drawn from human stores,
     As he to silence nearer soars,
     Extends the world at wings and dome,
     More spacious making more our home,
     Till lost on his aerial rings
     In light, and then the fancy sings.



     PHOEBUS WITH ADMETUS



     I

     When by Zeus relenting the mandate was revoked,
     Sentencing to exile the bright Sun-God,
     Mindful were the ploughmen of who the steer had yoked,
     Who: and what a track showed the upturned sod!
     Mindful were the shepherds, as now the noon severe
     Bent a burning eyebrow to brown evetide,
     How the rustic flute drew the silver to the sphere,
     Sister of his own, till her rays fell wide.
     God! of whom music
     And song and blood are pure,
     The day is never darkened
     That had thee here obscure.

     II

     Chirping none, the scarlet cicadas crouched in ranks:
     Slack the thistle-head piled its down-silk grey:
     Scarce the stony lizard sucked hollows in his flanks:
     Thick on spots of umbrage our drowsed flocks lay.
     Sudden bowed the chestnuts beneath a wind unheard,
     Lengthened ran the grasses, the sky grew slate:
     Then amid a swift flight of winged seed white as curd,
     Clear of limb a Youth smote the master's gate.
     God! of whom music
     And song and blood are pure,
     The day is never darkened
     That had thee here obscure.

     III

     Water, first of singers, o'er rocky mount and mead,
     First of earthly singers, the sun-loved rill,
     Sang of him, and flooded the ripples on the reed,
     Seeking whom to waken and what ear fill.
     Water, sweetest soother to kiss a wound and cool,
     Sweetest and divinest, the sky-born brook,
     Chuckled, with a whimper, and made a mirror-pool
     Round the guest we welcomed, the strange hand shook.
     God! of whom music
     And song and blood are pure,
     The day is never darkened
     That had thee here obscure.

     IV

     Many swarms of wild bees descended on our fields:
     Stately stood the wheatstalk with head bent high:
     Big of heart we laboured at storing mighty yields,
     Wool and corn, and clusters to make men cry!
     Hand-like rushed the vintage; we strung the bellied skins
     Plump, and at the sealing the Youth's voice rose:
     Maidens clung in circle, on little fists their chins;
     Gentle beasties through pushed a cold long nose.
     God! of whom music
     And song and blood are pure,
     The day is never darkened
     That had thee here obscure.

     V

     Foot to fire in snowtime we trimmed the slender shaft:
     Often down the pit spied the lean wolf's teeth
     Grin against his will, trapped by masterstrokes of craft;
     Helpless in his froth-wrath as green logs seethe!
     Safe the tender lambs tugged the teats, and winter sped
     Whirled before the crocus, the year's new gold.
     Hung the hooky beak up aloft, the arrowhead
     Reddened through his feathers for our dear fold.
     God! of whom music
     And song and blood are pure,
     The day is never darkened
     That had thee here obscure.

     VI

     Tales we drank of giants at war with Gods above:
     Rocks were they to look on, and earth climbed air!
     Tales of search for simples, and those who sought of love
     Ease because the creature was all too fair.
     Pleasant ran our thinking that while our work was good,
     Sure as fruits for sweat would the praise come fast.
     He that wrestled stoutest and tamed the billow-brood
     Danced in rings with girls, like a sail-flapped mast.
     God! of whom music
     And song and blood are pure,
     The day is never darkened
     That had thee here obscure.

     VII

     Lo, the herb of healing, when once the herb is known,
     Shines in shady woods bright as new-sprung flame.
     Ere the string was tightened we heard the mellow tone,
     After he had taught how the sweet sounds came
     Stretched about his feet, labour done, 'twas as you see
     Red pomegranates tumble and burst hard rind.
     So began contention to give delight and be
     Excellent in things aimed to make life kind.
     God! of whom music
     And song and blood are pure,
     The day is never darkened
     That had thee here obscure.

     VIII

     You with shelly horns, rams! and, promontory goats,
     You whose browsing beards dip in coldest dew!
     Bulls, that walk the pastures in kingly-flashing coats!
     Laurel, ivy, vine, wreathed for feasts not few!
     You that build the shade-roof, and you that court the rays,
     You that leap besprinkling the rock stream-rent:
     He has been our fellow, the morning of our days!
     Us he chose for housemates, and this way went.
     God! of whom music
     And song and blood are pure,
     The day is never darkened
     That had thee here obscure.



     MELAMPUS



     I

     With love exceeding a simple love of the things
     That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck;
     Or change their perch on a beat of quivering wings
     From branch to branch, only restful to pipe and peck;
     Or, bristled, curl at a touch their snouts in a ball;
     Or cast their web between bramble and thorny hook;
     The good physician Melampus, loving them all,
     Among them walked, as a scholar who reads a book.

     II

     For him the woods were a home and gave him the key
     Of knowledge, thirst for their treasures in herbs and flowers.
     The secrets held by the creatures nearer than we
     To earth he sought, and the link of their life with ours:
     And where alike we are, unlike where, and the veined
     Division, veined parallel, of a blood that flows
     In them, in us, from the source by man unattained
     Save marks he well what the mystical woods disclose.

     III

     And this he deemed might be boon of love to a breast
     Embracing tenderly each little motive shape,
     The prone, the flitting, who seek their food whither best
     Their wits direct, whither best from their foes escape.
     For closer drawn to our mother's natural milk,
     As babes they learn where her motherly help is great:
     They know the juice for the honey, juice for the silk,
     And need they medical antidotes, find them straight.

     IV

     Of earth and sun they are wise, they nourish their broods,
     Weave, build, hive, burrow and battle, take joy and pain
     Like swimmers varying billows: never in woods
     Runs white insanity fleeing itself: all sane
     The woods revolve: as the tree its shadowing limns
     To some resemblance in motion, the rooted life
     Restrains disorder: you hear the primitive hymns
     Of earth in woods issue wild of the web of strife.

     V

     Now sleeping once on a day of marvellous fire,
     A brood of snakes he had cherished in grave regret
     That death his people had dealt their dam and their sire,
     Through savage dread of them, crept to his neck, and set
     Their tongues to lick him: the swift affectionate tongue
     Of each ran licking the slumberer: then his ears
     A forked red tongue tickled shrewdly: sudden upsprung,
     He heard a voice piping: Ay, for he has no fears!

     VI

     A bird said that, in the notes of birds, and the speech
     Of men, it seemed: and another renewed: He moves
     To learn and not to pursue, he gathers to teach;
     He feeds his young as do we, and as we love loves.
     No fears have I of a man who goes with his head
     To earth, chance looking aloft at us, kind of hand:
     I feel to him as to earth of whom we are fed;
     I pipe him much for his good could he understand.

     VII

     Melampus touched at his ears, laid finger on wrist
     He was not dreaming, he sensibly felt and heard.
     Above, through leaves, where the tree-twigs inter-twist,
     He spied the birds and the bill of the speaking bird.
     His cushion mosses in shades of various green,
     The lumped, the antlered, he pressed, while the sunny snake
     Slipped under: draughts he had drunk of clear Hippocrene,
     It seemed, and sat with a gift of the Gods awake.

     VIII

     Divinely thrilled was the man, exultingly full,
     As quick well-waters that come of the heart of earth,
     Ere yet they dart in a brook are one bubble-pool
     To light and sound, wedding both at the leap of birth.
     The soul of light vivid shone, a stream within stream;
     The soul of sound from a musical shell outflew;
     Where others hear but a hum and see but a beam,
     The tongue and eye of the fountain of life he knew.

     IX

     He knew the Hours: they were round him, laden with seed
     Of hours bestrewn upon vapour, and one by one
     They winged as ripened in fruit the burden decreed
     For each to scatter; they flushed like the buds in sun,
     Bequeathing seed to successive similar rings,
     Their sisters, bearers to men of what men have earned:
     He knew them, talked with the yet unreddened; the stings,
     The sweets, they warmed at their bosoms divined, discerned.

     X

     Not unsolicited, sought by diligent feet,
     By riddling fingers expanded, oft watched in growth
     With brooding deep as the noon-ray's quickening wheat,
     Ere touch'd, the pendulous flower of the plants of sloth,
     The plants of rigidness, answered question and squeeze,
     Revealing wherefore it bloomed, uninviting, bent,
     Yet making harmony breathe of life and disease,
     The deeper chord of a wonderful instrument.

     XI

     So passed he luminous-eyed for earth and the fates
     We arm to bruise or caress us: his ears were charged
     With tones of love in a whirl of voluble hates,
     With music wrought of distraction his heart enlarged.
     Celestial-shining, though mortal, singer, though mute,
     He drew the Master of harmonies, voiced or stilled,
     To seek him; heard at the silent medicine-root
     A song, beheld in fulfilment the unfulfilled.

     XII

     Him Phoebus, lending to darkness colour and form
     Of light's excess, many lessons and counsels gave,
     Showed Wisdom lord of the human intricate swarm,
     And whence prophetic it looks on the hives that rave,
     And how acquired, of the zeal of love to acquire,
     And where it stands, in the centre of life a sphere;
     And Measure, mood of the lyre, the rapturous lyre,
     He said was Wisdom, and struck him the notes to hear.

     XIII

     Sweet, sweet: 'twas glory of vision, honey, the breeze
     In heat, the run of the river on root and stone,
     All senses joined, as the sister Pierides
     Are one, uplifting their chorus, the Nine, his own.
     In stately order, evolved of sound into sight,
     From sight to sound intershifting, the man descried
     The growths of earth, his adored, like day out of night,
     Ascend in song, seeing nature and song allied.

     XIV

     And there vitality, there, there solely in song,
     Resides, where earth and her uses to men, their needs,
     Their forceful cravings, the theme are: there is it strong,
     The Master said: and the studious eye that reads,
     (Yea, even as earth to the crown of Gods on the mount),
     In links divine with the lyrical tongue is bound.
     Pursue thy craft: it is music drawn of a fount
     To spring perennial; well-spring is common ground.

     XV

     Melampus dwelt among men: physician and sage,
     He served them, loving them, healing them; sick or maimed,
     Or them that frenzied in some delirious rage
     Outran the measure, his juice of the woods reclaimed.
     He played on men, as his master, Phoebus, on strings
     Melodious: as the God did he drive and check,
     Through love exceeding a simple love of the things
     That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck.



     LOVE IN THE VALLEY



     Under yonder beech-tree single on the greensward,
     Couched with her arms behind her golden head,
     Knees and tresses folded to slip and ripple idly,
     Lies my young love sleeping in the shade.
     Had I the heart to slide an arm beneath her,
     Press her parting lips as her waist I gather slow,
     Waking in amazement she could not but embrace me:
     Then would she hold me and never let me go?

     * * *

     Shy as the squirrel and wayward as the swallow,
     Swift as the swallow along the river's light
     Circleting the surface to meet his mirrored winglets,
     Fleeter she seems in her stay than in her flight.
     Shy as the squirrel that leaps among the pine-tops,
     Wayward as the swallow overhead at set of sun,
     She whom I love is hard to catch and conquer,
     Hard, but O the glory of the winning were she won!

     * * *

     When her mother tends her before the laughing mirror,
     Tying up her laces, looping up her hair,
     Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded,
     More love should I have, and much less care.
     When her mother tends her before the lighted mirror,
     Loosening her laces, combing down her curls,
     Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded,
     I should miss but one for the many boys and girls.

     * * *

     Heartless she is as the shadow in the meadows
     Flying to the hills on a blue and breezy noon.
     No, she is athirst and drinking up her wonder:
     Earth to her is young as the slip of the new moon.
     Deals she an unkindness, 'tis but her rapid measure,
     Even as in a dance; and her smile can heal no less:
     Like the swinging May-cloud that pelts the flowers with hailstones
     Off a sunny border, she was made to bruise and bless.

     * * *

     Lovely are the curves of the white owl sweeping
     Wavy in the dusk lit by one large star.
     Lone on the fir-branch, his rattle-note unvaried,
     Brooding o'er the gloom, spins the brown eve-jar.
     Darker grows the valley, more and more forgetting:
     So were it with me if forgetting could be willed.
     Tell the grassy hollow that holds the bubbling well-spring,
     Tell it to forget the source that keeps it filled.

     * * *

     Stepping down the hill with her fair companions,
     Arm in arm, all against the raying West,
     Boldly she sings, to the merry tune she marches,
     Brave in her shape, and sweeter unpossessed.
     Sweeter, for she is what my heart first awaking
     Whispered the world was; morning light is she.
     Love that so desires would fain keep her changeless;
     Fain would fling the net, and fain have her free.

     * * *

     Happy happy time, when the white star hovers
     Low over dim fields fresh with bloomy dew,
     Near the face of dawn, that draws athwart the darkness,
     Threading it with colour, like yewberries the yew.
     Thicker crowd the shades as the grave East deepens
     Glowing, and with crimson a long cloud swells.
     Maiden still the morn is; and strange she is, and secret;
     Strange her eyes; her cheeks are cold as cold sea-shells.

     * * *

     Sunrays, leaning on our southern hills and lighting
     Wild cloud-mountains that drag the hills along,
     Oft ends the day of your shifting brilliant laughter
     Chill as a dull face frowning on a song.
     Ay, but shows the South-west a ripple-feathered bosom
     Blown to silver while the clouds are shaken and ascend
     Scaling the mid-heavens as they stream, there comes a sunset
     Rich, deep like love in beauty without end.

     * * *

     When at dawn she sighs, and like an infant to the window
     Turns grave eyes craving light, released from dreams,
     Beautiful she looks, like a white water-lily
     Bursting out of bud in havens of the streams.
     When from bed she rises clothed from neck to ankle
     In her long nightgown sweet as boughs of May,
     Beautiful she looks, like a tall garden lily
     Pure from the night, and splendid for the day.

     * * *

     Mother of the dews, dark eye-lashed twilight,
     Low-lidded twilight, o'er the valley's brim,
     Rounding on thy breast sings the dew-delighted skylark,
     Clear as though the dewdrops had their voice in him.
     Hidden where the rose-flush drinks the rayless planet,
     Fountain-full he pours the spraying fountain-showers.
     Let me hear her laughter, I would have her ever
     Cool as dew in twilight, the lark above the flowers.

     * * *

     All the girls are out with their baskets for the primrose;
     Up lanes, woods through, they troop in joyful bands.
     My sweet leads: she knows not why, but now she loiters,
     Eyes bent anemones, and hangs her hands.
     Such a look will tell that the violets are peeping,
     Coming the rose: and unaware a cry
     Springs in her bosom for odours and for colour,
     Covert and the nightingale; she knows not why.

     * * *

     Kerchiefed head and chin, she darts between her tulips,
     Streaming like a willow grey in arrowy rain:
     Some bend beaten cheek to gravel, and their angel
     She will be; she lifts them, and on she speeds again.
     Black the driving raincloud breasts the iron gate-way:
     She is forth to cheer a neighbour lacking mirth.
     So when sky and grass met rolling dumb for thunder,
     Saw I once a white dove, sole light of earth.

     * * *

     Prim little scholars are the flowers of her garden,
     Trained to stand in rows, and asking if they please.
     I might love them well but for loving more the wild ones.
     O my wild ones! they tell me more than these.
     You, my wild one, you tell of honied field-rose,
     Violet, blushing eglantine in life; and even as they,
     They by the wayside are earnest of your goodness,
     You are of life's, on the banks that line the way.

     * * *

     Peering at her chamber the white crowns the red rose,
     Jasmine winds the porch with stars two and three.
     Parted is the window; she sleeps; the starry jasmine
     Breathes a falling breath that carries thoughts of me.
     Sweeter unpossessed, have I said of her my sweetest
     Not while she sleeps: while she sleeps the jasmine breathes,
     Luring her to love; she sleeps; the starry jasmine
     Bears me to her pillow under white rose-wreaths.

     * * *

     Yellow with birdfoot-trefoil are the grass-glades;
     Yellow with cinquefoil of the dew-grey leaf:
     Yellow with stonecrop; the moss-mounds are yellow;
     Blue-necked the wheat sways, yellowing to the sheaf.
     Green-yellow, bursts from the copse the laughing yaffle;
     Sharp as a sickle is the edge of shade and shine:
     Earth in her heart laughs looking at the heavens,
     Thinking of the harvest: I look and think of mine.

     * * *

     This I may know: her dressing and undressing
     Such a change of light shows as when the skies in sport
     Shift from cloud to moonlight; or edging over thunder
     Slips a ray of sun; or sweeping into port
     White sails furl; or on the ocean borders
     White sails lean along the waves leaping green.
     Visions of her shower before me, but from eyesight
     Guarded she would be like the sun were she seen.

     * * *

     Front door and back of the mossed old farmhouse
     Open with the morn, and in a breezy link
     Freshly sparkles garden to stripe-shadowed orchard,
     Green across a rill where on sand the minnows wink.
     Busy in the grass the early sun of summer
     Swarms, and the blackbird's mellow fluting notes
     Call my darling up with round and roguish challenge:
     Quaintest, richest carol of all the singing throats!

     * * *

     Cool was the woodside; cool as her white dairy
     Keeping sweet the cream-pan; and there the boys from school,
     Cricketing below, rushed brown and red with sunshine;
     O the dark translucence of the deep-eyed cool!
     Spying from the farm, herself she fetched a pitcher
     Full of milk, and tilted for each in turn the beak.
     Then a little fellow, mouth up and on tiptoe,
     Said, 'I will kiss you': she laughed and leaned her cheek.

     * * *

     Doves of the fir-wood walling high our red roof
     Through the long noon coo, crooning through the coo.
     Loose droop the leaves, and down the sleepy road-way
     Sometimes pipes a chaffinch; loose droops the blue.
     Cows flap a slow tail knee-deep in the river,
     Breathless, given up to sun and gnat and fly.
     Nowhere is she seen; and if I see her nowhere,
     Lightning may come, straight rains and tiger sky.

     * * *

     O the golden sheaf, the rustling treasure-armful!
     O the nutbrown tresses nodding interlaced!
     O the treasure-tresses one another over
     Nodding! O the girdle slack about the waist!
     Slain are the poppies that shot their random scarlet
     Quick amid the wheatears: wound about the waist,
     Gathered, see these brides of earth one blush of ripeness!
     O the nutbrown tresses nodding interlaced!

     * * *

     Large and smoky red the sun's cold disk drops,
     Clipped by naked hills, on violet shaded snow:
     Eastward large and still lights up a bower of moon-rise,
     Whence at her leisure steps the moon aglow.
     Nightlong on black print-branches our beech-tree
     Gazes in this whiteness: nightlong could I.
     Here may life on death or death on life be painted.
     Let me clasp her soul to know she cannot die!

     * * *

     Gossips count her faults; they scour a narrow chamber
     Where there is no window, read not heaven or her.
     'When she was a tiny,' one aged woman quavers,
     Plucks at my heart and leads me by the ear.
     Faults she had once as she learnt to run and tumbled:
     Faults of feature some see, beauty not complete.
     Yet, good gossips, beauty that makes holy
     Earth and air, may have faults from head to feet.

     * * *

     Hither she comes; she comes to me; she lingers,
     Deepens her brown eyebrows, while in new surprise
     High rise the lashes in wonder of a stranger;
     Yet am I the light and living of her eyes.
     Something friends have told her fills her heart to brimming,
     Nets her in her blushes, and wounds her, and tames. -
     Sure of her haven, O like a dove alighting,
     Arms up, she dropped: our souls were in our names.

     * * *

     Soon will she lie like a white-frost sunrise.
     Yellow oats and brown wheat, barley pale as rye,
     Long since your sheaves have yielded to the thresher,
     Felt the girdle loosened, seen the tresses fly.
     Soon will she lie like a blood-red sunset.
     Swift with the to-morrow, green-winged Spring!
     Sing from the South-west, bring her back the truants,
     Nightingale and swallow, song and dipping wing.

     * * *

     Soft new beech-leaves, up to beamy April
     Spreading bough on bough a primrose mountain, you
     Lucid in the moon, raise lilies to the skyfields,
     Youngest green transfused in silver shining through:
     Fairer than the lily, than the wild white cherry:
     Fair as in image my seraph love appears
     Borne to me by dreams when dawn is at my eye-lids:
     Fair as in the flesh she swims to me on tears.

     * * *

     Could I find a place to be alone with heaven,
     I would speak my heart out: heaven is my need.
     Every woodland tree is flushing like the dogwood,
     Flashing like the whitebeam, swaying like the reed.
     Flushing like the dogwood crimson in October;
     Streaming like the flag-reed South-west blown;
     Flashing as in gusts the sudden-lighted whitebeam:
     All seem to know what is for heaven alone.



     THE THREE SINGERS TO YOUNG BLOOD



     Carols nature, counsel men.
     Different notes as rook from wren
     Hear we when our steps begin,
     And the choice is cast within,
     Where a robber raven's tale
     Urges passion's nightingale.

     Hark to the three. Chimed they in one,
     Life were music of the sun.
     Liquid first, and then the caw,
     Then the cry that knows not law.

     I

     As the birds do, so do we,
     Bill our mate, and choose our tree.
     Swift to building work addressed,
     Any straw will help a nest.
     Mates are warm, and this is truth,
     Glad the young that come of youth.
     They have bloom i' the blood and sap
     Chilling at no thunder-clap.
     Man and woman on the thorn
     Trust not Earth, and have her scorn.
     They who in her lead confide,
     Wither me if they spread not wide!
     Look for aid to little things,
     You will get them quick as wings,
     Thick as feathers; would you feed,
     Take the leap that springs the need.

     II

     Contemplate the rutted road:
     Life is both a lure and goad.
     Each to hold in measure just,
     Trample appetite to dust.
     Mark the fool and wanton spin:
     Keep to harness as a skin.
     Ere you follow nature's lead,
     Of her powers in you have heed;
     Else a shiverer you will find
     You have challenged humankind.
     Mates are chosen marketwise:
     Coolest bargainer best buys.
     Leap not, nor let leap the heart:
     Trot your track, and drag your cart.
     So your end may be in wool,
     Honoured, and with manger full.

     III

     O the rosy light! it fleets,
     Dearer dying than all sweets.
     That is life: it waves and goes;
     Solely in that cherished Rose
     Palpitates, or else 'tis death.
     Call it love with all thy breath.
     Love! it lingers: Love! it nears:
     Love! O Love! the Rose appears,
     Blushful, magic, reddening air.
     Now the choice is on thee: dare!
     Mortal seems the touch, but makes
     Immortal the hand that takes.
     Feel what sea within thee shames
     Of its force all other claims,
     Drowns them. Clasp! the world will be
     Heavenly Rose to swelling sea.



     THE ORCHARD AND THE HEATH



     I chanced upon an early walk to spy
     A troop of children through an orchard gate:
     The boughs hung low, the grass was high;
     They had but to lift hands or wait
     For fruits to fill them; fruits were all their sky.

     They shouted, running on from tree to tree,
     And played the game the wind plays, on and round.
     'Twas visible invisible glee
     Pursuing; and a fountain's sound
     Of laughter spouted, pattering fresh on me.

     I could have watched them till the daylight fled,
     Their pretty bower made such a light of day.
     A small one tumbling sang, 'Oh! head!'
     The rest to comfort her straightway
     Seized on a branch and thumped down apples red.

     The tiny creature flashing through green grass,
     And laughing with her feet and eyes among
     Fresh apples, while a little lass
     Over as o'er breeze-ripples hung:
     That sight I saw, and passed as aliens pass.

     My footpath left the pleasant farms and lanes,
     Soft cottage-smoke, straight cocks a-crow, gay flowers;
     Beyond the wheel-ruts of the wains,
     Across a heath I walked for hours,
     And met its rival tenants, rays and rains.

     Still in my view mile-distant firs appeared,
     When, under a patched channel-bank enriched
     With foxglove whose late bells drooped seared,
     Behold, a family had pitched
     Their camp, and labouring the low tent upreared.

     Here, too, were many children, quick to scan
     A new thing coming; swarthy cheeks, white teeth:
     In many-coloured rags they ran,
     Like iron runlets of the heath.
     Dispersed lay broth-pot, sticks, and drinking-can.

     Three girls, with shoulders like a boat at sea
     Tipped sideways by the wave (their clothing slid
     From either ridge unequally),
     Lean, swift and voluble, bestrid
     A starting-point, unfrocked to the bent knee.

     They raced; their brothers yelled them on, and broke
     In act to follow, but as one they snuffed
     Wood-fumes, and by the fire that spoke
     Of provender, its pale flame puffed,
     And rolled athwart dwarf furzes grey-blue smoke.

     Soon on the dark edge of a ruddier gleam,
     The mother-pot perusing, all, stretched flat,
     Paused for its bubbling-up supreme:
     A dog upright in circle sat,
     And oft his nose went with the flying steam.

     I turned and looked on heaven awhile, where now
     The moor-faced sunset broadened with red light;
     Threw high aloft a golden bough,
     And seemed the desert of the night
     Far down with mellow orchards to endow.



     EARTH AND MAN



     I

     On her great venture, Man,
     Earth gazes while her fingers dint the breast
     Which is his well of strength, his home of rest,
     And fair to scan.

     II

     More aid than that embrace,
     That nourishment, she cannot give: his heart
     Involves his fate; and she who urged the start
     Abides the race.

     III

     For he is in the lists
     Contentious with the elements, whose dower
     First sprang him; for swift vultures to devour
     If he desists.

     IV

     His breath of instant thirst
     Is warning of a creature matched with strife,
     To meet it as a bride, or let fall life
     On life's accursed.

     V

     No longer forth he bounds
     The lusty animal, afield to roam,
     But peering in Earth's entrails, where the gnome
     Strange themes propounds.

     VI

     By hunger sharply sped
     To grasp at weapons ere he learns their use,
     In each new ring he bears a giant's thews,
     An infant's head.

     VII

     And ever that old task
     Of reading what he is and whence he came,
     Whither to go, finds wilder letters flame
     Across her mask.

     VIII

     She hears his wailful prayer,
     When now to the Invisible he raves
     To rend him from her, now of his mother craves
     Her calm, her care.

     IX

     The thing that shudders most
     Within him is the burden of his cry.
     Seen of his dread, she is to his blank eye
     The eyeless Ghost.

     X

     Or sometimes she will seem
     Heavenly, but her blush, soon wearing white,
     Veils like a gorsebush in a web of blight,
     With gold-buds dim.

     XI

     Once worshipped Prime of Powers,
     She still was the Implacable: as a beast,
     She struck him down and dragged him from the feast
     She crowned with flowers.

     XII

     Her pomp of glorious hues,
     Her revelries of ripeness, her kind smile,
     Her songs, her peeping faces, lure awhile
     With symbol-clues.

     XIII

     The mystery she holds
     For him, inveterately he strains to see,
     And sight of his obtuseness is the key
     Among those folds.

     XIV

     He may entreat, aspire,
     He may despair, and she has never heed.
     She drinking his warm sweat will soothe his need,
     Not his desire.

     XV

     She prompts him to rejoice,
     Yet scares him on the threshold with the shroud.
     He deems her cherishing of her best-endowed
     A wanton's choice.

     XVI

     Albeit thereof he has found
     Firm roadway between lustfulness and pain;
     Has half transferred the battle to his brain,
     From bloody ground;

     XVII

     He will not read her good,
     Or wise, but with the passion Self obscures;
     Through that old devil of the thousand lures,
     Through that dense hood:

     XVIII

     Through terror, through distrust;
     The greed to touch, to view, to have, to live:
     Through all that makes of him a sensitive
     Abhorring dust.

     XIX

     Behold his wormy home!
     And he the wind-whipped, anywhither wave
     Crazily tumbled on a shingle-grave
     To waste in foam.

     XX

     Therefore the wretch inclined
     Afresh to the Invisible, who, he saith,
     Can raise him high: with vows of living faith
     For little signs.

     XXI

     Some signs he must demand,
     Some proofs of slaughtered nature; some prized few,
     To satisfy the senses it is true,
     And in his hand,

     XXII

     This miracle which saves
     Himself, himself doth from extinction clutch,
     By virtue of his worth, contrasting much
     With brutes and knaves.

     XXIII

     From dust, of him abhorred,
     He would be snatched by Grace discovering worth.
     'Sever me from the hollowness of Earth!
     Me take, dear Lord!'

     XXIV

     She hears him. Him she owes
     For half her loveliness a love well won
     By work that lights the shapeless and the dun,
     Their common foes.

     XXV

     He builds the soaring spires,
     That sing his soul in stone: of her he draws,
     Though blind to her, by spelling at her laws,
     Her purest fires.

     XXVI

     Through him hath she exchanged,
     For the gold harvest-robes, the mural crown,
     Her haggard quarry-features and thick frown
     Where monsters ranged.

     XXVII

     And order, high discourse,
     And decency, than which is life less dear,
     She has of him: the lyre of language clear,
     Love's tongue and source.

     XXVIII

     She hears him, and can hear
     With glory in his gains by work achieved:
     With grief for grief that is the unperceived
     In her so near.

     XXIX

     If he aloft for aid
     Imploring storms, her essence is the spur.
     His cry to heaven is a cry to her
     He would evade.

     XXX

     Not elsewhere can he tend.
     Those are her rules which bid him wash foul sins;
     Those her revulsions from the skull that grins
     To ape his end.

     XXXI

     And her desires are those
     For happiness, for lastingness, for light.
     'Tis she who kindles in his haunting night
     The hoped dawn-rose.

     XXXII

     Fair fountains of the dark
     Daily she waves him, that his inner dream
     May clasp amid the glooms a springing beam,
     A quivering lark:

     XXIII

     This life and her to know
     For Spirit: with awakenedness of glee
     To feel stern joy her origin: not he
     The child of woe.

     XXXIV

     But that the senses still
     Usurp the station of their issue mind,
     He would have burst the chrysalis of the blind:
     As yet he will;

     XXXV

     As yet he will, she prays,
     Yet will when his distempered devil of Self; -
     The glutton for her fruits, the wily elf
     In shifting rays; -

     XXXVI

     That captain of the scorned;
     The coveter of life in soul and shell,
     The fratricide, the thief, the infidel,
     The hoofed and horned; -

     XXXVII

     He singularly doomed
     To what he execrates and writhes to shun; -
     When fire has passed him vapour to the sun,
     And sun relumed,

     XXXVIII

     Then shall the horrid pall
     Be lifted, and a spirit nigh divine,
     'Live in thy offspring as I live in mine,'
     Will hear her call.

     XXXIX

     Whence looks he on a land
     Whereon his labour is a carven page;
     And forth from heritage to heritage
     Nought writ on sand.

     XL

     His fables of the Above,
     And his gapped readings of the crown and sword,
     The hell detested and the heaven adored,
     The hate, the love,

     XLI

     The bright wing, the black hoof,
     He shall peruse, from Reason not disjoined,
     And never unfaith clamouring to be coined
     To faith by proof.

     XLII

     She her just Lord may view,
     Not he, her creature, till his soul has yearned
     With all her gifts to reach the light discerned
     Her spirit through.

     XLIIII

     Then in him time shall run
     As in the hour that to young sunlight crows;
     And--'If thou hast good faith it can repose,'
     She tells her son.

     XLIV

     Meanwhile on him, her chief
     Expression, her great word of life, looks she;
     Twi-minded of him, as the waxing tree,
     Or dated leaf.



     A BALLAD OF FAIR LADIES IN REVOLT



     I

     See the sweet women, friend, that lean beneath
     The ever-falling fountain of green leaves
     Round the white bending stem, and like a wreath
     Of our most blushful flower shine trembling through,
     To teach philosophers the thirst of thieves:
     Is one for me? is one for you?

     II

     - Fair sirs, we give you welcome, yield you place,
     And you shall choose among us which you will,
     Without the idle pastime of the chase,
     If to this treaty you can well agree:
     To wed our cause, and its high task fulfil.
     He who's for us, for him are we!

     III

     - Most gracious ladies, nigh when light has birth,
     A troop of maids, brown as burnt heather-bells,
     And rich with life as moss-roots breathe of earth
     In the first plucking of them, past us flew
     To labour, singing rustic ritornells:
     Had they a cause? are they of you?

     IV

     - Sirs, they are as unthinking armies are
     To thoughtful leaders, and our cause is theirs.
     When they know men they know the state of war:
     But now they dream like sunlight on a sea,
     And deem you hold the half of happy pairs.
     He who's for us, for him are we!

     V

     - Ladies, I listened to a ring of dames;
     Judicial in the robe and wig; secure
     As venerated portraits in their frames;
     And they denounced some insurrection new
     Against sound laws which keep you good and pure.
     Are you of them? are they of you?

     VI

     - Sirs, they are of us, as their dress denotes,
     And by as much: let them together chime:
     It is an ancient bell within their throats,
     Pulled by an aged ringer; with what glee
     Befits the yellow yesterdays of time.
     He who's for us, for him are we!

     VII

     - Sweet ladies, you with beauty, you with wit;
     Dowered of all favours and all blessed things
     Whereat the ruddy torch of Love is lit;
     Wherefore this vain and outworn strife renew,
     Which stays the tide no more than eddy-rings?
     Who is for love must be for you.

     VIII

     - The manners of the market, honest sirs,
     'Tis hard to quit when you behold the wares.
     You flatter us, or perchance our milliners
     You flatter; so this vain and outworn She
     May still be the charmed snake to your soft airs!
     A higher lord than Love claim we.

     IX

     - One day, dear lady, missing the broad track,
     I came on a wood's border, by a mead,
     Where golden May ran up to moted black:
     And there I saw Queen Beauty hold review,
     With Love before her throne in act to plead.
     Take him for me, take her for you.

     X

     - Ingenious gentleman, the tale is known.
     Love pleaded sweetly: Beauty would not melt:
     She would not melt: he turned in wrath: her throne
     The shadow of his back froze witheringly,
     And sobbing at his feet Queen Beauty knelt.
     O not such slaves of Love are we!

     XI

     - Love, lady, like the star above that lance
     Of radiance flung by sunset on ridged cloud,
     Sad as the last line of a brave romance! -
     Young Love hung dim, yet quivering round him threw
     Beams of fresh fire, while Beauty waned and bowed.
     Scorn Love, and dread the doom for you.

     XII

     - Called she not for her mirror, sir? Forth ran
     Her women: I am lost, she cried, when lo,
     Love in the form of an admiring man
     Once more in adoration bent the knee,
     And brought the faded Pagan to full blow:
     For which her throne she gave: not we!

     XIII

     - My version, madam, runs not to that end.
     A certain madness of an hour half past,
     Caught her like fever; her just lord no friend
     She fancied; aimed beyond beauty, and thence grew
     The prim acerbity, sweet Love's outcast.
     Great heaven ward off that stroke from you!

     XIV

     - Your prayer to heaven, good sir, is generous:
     How generous likewise that you do not name
     Offended nature! She from all of us
     Couched idle underneath our showering tree,
     May quite withhold her most destructive flame;
     And then what woeful women we!

     XV

     - Quite, could not be, fair lady; yet your youth
     May run to drought in visionary schemes:
     And a late waking to perceive the truth,
     When day falls shrouding her supreme adieu,
     Shows darker wastes than unaccomplished dreams:
     And that may be in store for you.

     XVI

     - O sir, the truth, the truth! is't in the skies,
     Or in the grass, or in this heart of ours?
     But O the truth, the truth! the many eyes
     That look on it! the diverse things they see,
     According to their thirst for fruit or flowers!
     Pass on: it is the truth seek we.

     XVII

     - Lady, there is a truth of settled laws
     That down the past burns like a great watch-fire.
     Let youth hail changeful mornings; but your cause,
     Whetting its edge to cut the race in two,
     Is felony: you forfeit the bright lyre,
     Much honour and much glory you!

     XVIII

     - Sir, was it glory, was it honour, pride,
     And not as cat and serpent and poor slave,
     Wherewith we walked in union by your side?
     Spare to false womanliness her delicacy,
     Or bid true manliness give ear, we crave:
     In our defence thus chained are we.

     XIX

     - Yours, madam, were the privileges of life
     Proper to man's ideal; you were the mark
     Of action, and the banner in the strife:
     Yea, of your very weakness once you drew
     The strength that sounds the wells, outflies the lark:
     Wrapped in a robe of flame were you!

     XX

     - Your friend looks thoughtful. Sir, when we were chill,
     You clothed us warmly; all in honour! when
     We starved you fed us; all in honour still:
     Oh, all in honour, ultra-honourably!
     Deep is the gratitude we owe to men,
     For privileged indeed were we!

     XXI

     - You cite exceptions, madam, that are sad,
     But come in the red struggle of our growth.
     Alas, that I should have to say it! bad
     Is two-sexed upon earth: this which you do,
     Shows animal impatience, mental sloth:
     Man monstrous! pining seraphs you!

     XXII

     - I fain would ask your friend . . . but I will ask
     You, sir, how if in place of numbers vague,
     Your sad exceptions were to break that mask
     They wear for your cool mind historically,
     And blaze like black lists of a PRESENT plague?
     But in that light behold them we.

     XXIII

     - Your spirit breathes a mist upon our world,
     Lady, and like a rain to pierce the roof
     And drench the bed where toil-tossed man lies curled
     In his hard-earned oblivion! You are few,
     Scattered, ill-counselled, blinded: for a proof,
     I have lived, and have known none like you.

     XXIV

     - We may be blind to men, sir: we embrace
     A future now beyond the fowler's nets.
     Though few, we hold a promise for the race
     That was not at our rising: you are free
     To win brave mates; you lose but marionnettes.
     He who's for us, for him are we.

     XXV

     - Ah! madam, were they puppets who withstood
     Youth's cravings for adventure to preserve
     The dedicated ways of womanhood?
     The light which leads us from the paths of rue,
     That light above us, never seen to swerve,
     Should be the home-lamp trimmed by you.

     XXVI

     - Ah! sir, our worshipped posture we perchance
     Shall not abandon, though we see not how,
     Being to that lamp-post fixed, we may advance
     Beside our lords in any real degree,
     Unless we move: and to advance is now
     A sovereign need, think more than we.

     XXVII

     - So push you out of harbour in small craft,
     With little seamanship; and comes a gale,
     The world will laugh, the world has often laughed,
     Lady, to see how bold when skies are blue,
     When black winds churn the deeps how panic-pale,
     How swift to the old nest fly you!

     XXVIII

     - What thinks your friend, kind sir? We have escaped
     But partly that old half-tamed wild beast's paw
     Whereunder woman, the weak thing, was shaped:
     Men, too, have known the cramping enemy
     In grim brute force, whom force of brain shall awe:
     Him our deliverer, await we!

     XXIX

     - Delusions are with eloquence endowed,
     And yours might pluck an angel from the spheres
     To play in this revolt whereto you are vowed,
     Deliverer, lady! but like summer dew
     O'er fields that crack for rain your friends drop tears,
     Who see the awakening for you.

     XXX

     - Is he our friend, there silent? he weeps not.
     O sir, delusion mounting like a sun
     On a mind blank as the white wife of Lot,
     Giving it warmth and movement! if this be
     Delusion, think of what thereby was won
     For men, and dream of what win we.

     XXXI

     - Lady, the destiny of minor powers,
     Who would recast us, is but to convulse:
     You enter on a strife that frets and sours;
     You can but win sick disappointment's hue;
     And simply an accelerated pulse,
     Some tonic you have drunk moves you.

     XXXII

     - Thinks your friend so? Good sir, your wit is bright;
     But wit that strives to speak the popular voice,
     Puts on its nightcap and puts out its light.
     Curfew, would seem your conqueror's decree
     To women likewise: and we have no choice
     Save darkness or rebellion, we!

     XXXIII

     - A plain safe intermediate way is cleft
     By reason foiling passion: you that rave
     Of mad alternatives to right and left
     Echo the tempter, madam: and 'tis due
     Unto your sex to shun it as the grave,
     This later apple offered you.

     XXXIV

     - This apple is not ripe, it is not sweet;
     Nor rosy, sir, nor golden: eye and mouth
     Are little wooed by it; yet we would eat.
     We are somewhat tired of Eden, is our plea.
     We have thirsted long; this apple suits our drouth:
     'Tis good for men to halve, think we.

     XXXV

     - But say, what seek you, madam? 'Tis enough
     That you should have dominion o'er the springs
     Domestic and man's heart: those ways, how rough,
     How vile, outside the stately avenue
     Where you walk sheltered by your angel's wings,
     Are happily unknown to you.

     XXXVI

     - We hear women's shrieks on them. We like your phrase,
     Dominion domestic! And that roar,
     'What seek you?' is of tyrants in all days.
     Sir, get you something of our purity
     And we will of your strength: we ask no more.
     That is the sum of what seek we.

     XXXVII

     - O for an image, madam, in one word,
     To show you as the lightning night reveals,
     Your error and your perils: you have erred
     In mind only, and the perils that ensue
     Swift heels may soften; wherefore to swift heels
     Address your hopes of safety you!

     XXXVIII

     - To err in mind, sir . . . your friend smiles: he may!
     To err in mind, if err in mind we can,
     Is grievous error you do well to stay.
     But O how different from reality
     Men's fiction is! how like you in the plan,
     Is woman, knew you her as we!

     XXXIX

     - Look, lady, where yon river winds its line
     Toward sunset, and receives on breast and face
     The splendour of fair life: to be divine,
     'Tis nature bids you be to nature true,
     Flowing with beauty, lending earth your grace,
     Reflecting heaven in clearness you.

     XL

     - Sir, you speak well: your friend no word vouchsafes.
     To flow with beauty, breeding fools and worse,
     Cowards and worse: at such fair life she chafes,
     Who is not wholly of the nursery,
     Nor of your schools: we share the primal curse;
     Together shake it off, say we!

     XLI

     - Hear, then, my friend, madam! Tongue-restrained he stands
     Till words are thoughts, and thoughts, like swords enriched
     With traceries of the artificer's hands,
     Are fire-proved steel to cut, fair flowers to view. -
     Do I hear him? Oh, he is bewitched, bewitched!
     Heed him not! Traitress beauties you!

     XLII

     - We have won a champion, sisters, and a sage!
     - Ladies, you win a guest to a good feast!
     - Sir spokesman, sneers are weakness veiling rage.
     - Of weakness, and wise men, you have the key.
     - Then are there fresher mornings mounting East
     Than ever yet have dawned, sing we!

     XLIII

     - False ends as false began, madam, be sure!
     - What lure there is the pure cause purifies!
     - Who purifies the victim of the lure?
     - That soul which bids us our high light pursue.
     - Some heights are measured down: the wary wise
     Shun Reason in the masque with you!

     XLIV

     - Sir, for the friend you bring us, take our thanks.
     Yes, Beauty was of old this barren goal;
     A thing with claws; and brute-like in her pranks!
     But could she give more loyal guarantee
     Than wooing Wisdom, that in her a soul
     Has risen? Adieu: content are we!

     XLV

     Those ladies led their captive to the flood's
     Green edge. He floating with them seemed the most
     Fool-flushed old noddy ever crowned with buds.
     Happier than I! Then, why not wiser too?
     For he that lives with Beauty, he may boast
     His comrade over me and you.

     XLVI

     Have women nursed some dream since Helen sailed
     Over the sea of blood the blushing star,
     That beauty, whom frail man as Goddess hailed,
     When not possessing her (for such is he!),
     Might in a wondering season seen afar,
     Be tamed to say not 'I,' but 'we'?

     XLVII

     And shall they make of Beauty their estate,
     The fortress and the weapon of their sex?
     Shall she in her frost-brilliancy dictate,
     More queenly than of old, how we must woo,
     Ere she will melt? The halter's on our necks,
     Kick as it likes us, I and you.

     XLVIII

     Certain it is, if Beauty has disdained
     Her ancient conquests, with an aim thus high:
     If this, if that, if more, the fight is gained.
     But can she keep her followers without fee?
     Yet ah! to hear anew those ladies cry,
     He who's for us, for him are we!



     THE TWO MASKS



     Melpomene among her livid people,
     Ere stroke of lyre, upon Thaleia looks,
     Warned by old contests that one museful ripple
     Along those lips of rose with tendril hooks
     Forebodes disturbance in the springs of pathos,
     Perchance may change of masks midway demand,
     Albeit the man rise mountainous as Athos,
     The woman wild as Cape Leucadia stand.

     II

     For this the Comic Muse exacts of creatures
     Appealing to the fount of tears: that they
     Strive never to outleap our human features,
     And do Right Reason's ordinance obey,
     In peril of the hum to laughter nighest.
     But prove they under stress of action's fire
     Nobleness, to that test of Reason highest,
     She bows: she waves them for the loftier lyre.



     ARCHDUCHESS ANNE



     1--I

     In middle age an evil thing
     Befell Archduchess Anne:
     She looked outside her wedding-ring
     Upon a princely man.

     II

     Count Louis was for horse and arms;
     And if its beacon waved,
     For love; but ladies had not charms
     To match a danger braved.

     III

     On battlefields he was the bow
     Bestrung to fly the shaft:
     In idle hours his heart would flow
     As winds on currents waft.

     IV

     His blood was of those warrior tribes
     That streamed from morning's fire,
     Whom now with traps and now with bribes
     The wily Council wire.

     V

     Archduchess Anne the Council ruled,
     Count Louis his great dame;
     And woe to both when one had cooled!
     Little was she to blame.

     VI

     Among her chiefs who spun their plots,
     Old Kraken stood the sword:
     As sharp his wits for cutting knots
     Of babble he abhorred.

     VII

     He reverenced her name and line,
     Nor other merit had
     Save soldierwise to wait her sign,
     And do the deed she bade.

     VIII

     He saw her hand jump at her side
     Ere royally she smiled
     On Louis and his fair young bride
     Where courtly ranks defiled.

     IX

     That was a moment when a shock
     Through the procession ran,
     And thrilled the plumes, and stayed the clock,
     Yet smiled Archduchess Anne.

     X

     No touch gave she to hound in leash,
     No wink to sword in sheath:
     She seemed a woman scarce of flesh;
     Above it, or beneath.

     XI

     Old Kraken spied with kennelled snarl,
     His Lady deemed disgraced.
     He footed as on burning marl,
     When out of Hall he paced.

     XII

     'Twas seen he hammered striding legs,
     And stopped, and strode again.
     Now Vengeance has a brood of eggs,
     But Patience must be hen.

     XIII

     Too slow are they for wrath to hatch,
     Too hot for time to rear.
     Old Kraken kept unwinding watch;
     He marked his day appear.

     XIV

     He neighed a laugh, though moods were rough
     With standards in revolt:
     His nostrils took the news for snuff,
     His smacking lips for salt.

     XV

     Count Louis' wavy cock's plumes led
     His troops of black-haired manes,
     A rebel; and old Kraken sped
     To front him on the plains.

     XVI

     Then camp opposed to camp did they
     Fret earth with panther claws
     For signal of a bloody day,
     Each reading from the Laws.

     XVII

     'Forefend it, heaven!' Count Louis cried,
     'And let the righteous plead:
     My country is a willing bride,
     Was never slave decreed.

     XVIII

     'Not we for thirst of blood appeal
     To sword and slaughter curst;
     We have God's blessing on our steel,
     Do we our pleading first.'

     XIX

     Count Louis, soul of chivalry,
     Put trust in plighted word;
     By starlight on the broad brown lea,
     To bar the strife he spurred.

     XX

     Across his breast a crimson spot,
     That in a quiver glowed,
     The ruddy crested camp-fires shot,
     As he to darkness rode.

     XXI

     He rode while omens called, beware
     Old Kraken's pledge of faith!
     A smile and waving hand in air,
     And outward flew the wraith.

     XXII

     Before pale morn had mixed with gold,
     His army roared, and chilled,
     As men who have a woe foretold,
     And see it red fulfilled.

     XXIII

     Away and to his young wife speed,
     And say that Honour's dead!
     Another word she will not need
     To bow a widow's head.

     XXIV

     Old Kraken roped his white moustache
     Right, left, for savage glee:
     - To swing him in his soldier's sash
     Were kind for such as he!

     XXV

     Old Kraken's look hard Winter wears
     When sweeps the wild snow-blast:
     He had the hug of Arctic bears
     For captives he held fast.

     2--I

     Archduchess Anne sat carved in frost,
     Shut off from priest and spouse.
     Her lips were locked, her arms were crossed,
     Her eyes were in her brows.

     II

     One hand enclosed a paper scroll,
     Held as a strangled asp.
     So may we see the woman's soul
     In her dire tempter's grasp.

     III

     Along that scroll Count Louis' doom
     Throbbed till the letters flamed.
     She saw him in his scornful bloom,
     She saw him chained and shamed.

     IV

     Around that scroll Count Louis' fate
     Was acted to her stare,
     And hate in love and love in hate
     Fought fell to smite or spare.

     V

     Between the day that struck her old,
     And this black star of days,
     Her heart swung like a storm-bell tolled
     Above a town ablaze.

     VI

     His beauty pressed to intercede,
     His beauty served him ill.
     - Not Vengeance, 'tis his rebel's deed,
     'Tis Justice, not our will!

     VII

     Yet who had sprung to life's full force
     A breast that loveless dried?
     But who had sapped it at the source,
     With scarlet to her pride!

     VIII

     He brought her waning heart as 'twere
     New message from the skies.
     And he betrayed, and left on her
     The burden of their sighs.

     IX

     In floods her tender memories poured;
     They foamed with waves of spite:
     She crushed them, high her heart outsoared,
     To keep her mind alight.

     X

     - The crawling creature, called in scorn
     A woman!--with this pen
     We sign a paper that may warn
     His crowing fellowmen.

     XI

     - We read them lesson of a power
     They slight who do us wrong.
     That bitter hour this bitter hour
     Provokes; by turns the strong!

     XII

     - That we were woman once is known:
     That we are Justice now,
     Above our sex, above the throne,
     Men quaking shall avow.

     XIII

     Archduchess Anne ascending flew,
     Her heart outsoared, but felt
     The demon of her sex pursue,
     Incensing or to melt.

     XIV

     Those counterfloods below at leap
     Still in her breast blew storm,
     And farther up the heavenly steep
     Wrestled in angels' form.

     XV

     To disentangle one clear wish
     Not of her sex, she sought;
     And womanish to womanish
     Discerned in lighted thought.

     XVI

     With Louis' chance it went not well
     When at herself she raged;
     A woman, of whom men might tell
     She doted, crazed and aged.

     XVII

     Or else enamoured of a sweet
     Withdrawn, a vengeful crone!
     And say, what figure at her feet
     Is this that utters moan?

     XVIII

     The Countess Louis from her head
     Drew veil: 'Great Lady, hear!
     My husband deems you Justice dread,
     I know you Mercy dear.

     XIX

     'His error upon him may fall;
     He will not breathe a nay.
     I am his helpless mate in all,
     Except for grace to pray.

     XX

     'Perchance on me his choice inclined,
     To give his House an heir:
     I had not marriage with his mind,
     His counsel could not share.

     XXI

     'I brought no portion for his weal
     But this one instinct true,
     Which bids me in my weakness kneel,
     Archduchess Anne, to you.'

     XXII

     The frowning Lady uttered, 'Forth!'
     Her look forbade delay:
     'It is not mine to weigh your worth;
     Your husband's others weigh.

     XXIII

     'Hence with the woman in your speech,'
     For nothing it avails
     In woman's fashion to beseech
     Where Justice holds the scales.'

     XXIV

     Then bent and went the lady wan,
     Whose girlishness made grey
     The thoughts that through Archduchess Anne
     Shattered like stormy spray.

     XXV

     Long sat she there, as flame that strives
     To hold on beating wind:
     - His wife must be the fool of wives,
     Or cunningly designed!

     XXVI

     She sat until the tempest-pitch
     In her torn bosom fell;
     - His wife must be a subtle witch
     Or else God loves her well!

     3--I

     Old Kraken read a missive penned
     By his great Lady's hand.
     Her condescension called him friend,
     To raise the crest she fanned.

     II

     Swiftly to where he lay encamped
     It flew, yet breathed aloof
     From woman's feeling, and he stamped
     A heel more like a hoof.

     III

     She wrote of Mercy: 'She was loth
     Too hard to goad a foe.'
     He stamped, as when men drive an oath
     Devils transcribe below.

     IV

     She wrote: 'We have him half by theft.'
     His wrinkles glistened keen:
     And see the Winter storm-cloud cleft
     To lurid skies between!

     V

     When read old Kraken: 'Christ our Guide,'
     His eyes were spikes of spar:
     And see the white snow-storm divide
     About an icy star!

     VI

     'She trusted him to understand,'
     She wrote, and further prayed
     That policy might rule the land.
     Old Kraken's laughter neighed.

     VII

     Her words he took; her nods and winks
     Treated as woman's fog.
     The man-dog for his mistress thinks,
     Not less her faithful dog.

     VIII

     She hugged a cloak old Kraken ripped;
     Disguise to him he loathed.
     - Your mercy, madam, shows you stripped,
     While mine will keep you clothed.

     IX

     A rough ill-soldered scar in haste
     He rubbed on his cheek-bone.
     - Our policy the man shall taste;
     Our mercy shall be shown.

     X

     'Count Louis, honour to your race
     Decrees the Council-hall:
     You 'scape the rope by special grace,
     And like a soldier fall.'

     XI

     - I am a man of many sins,
     Who for one virtue die,
     Count Louis said.--They play at shins,
     Who kick, was the reply.

     XII

     Uprose the day of crimson sight,
     The day without a God.
     At morn the hero said Good-night:
     See there that stain on sod!

     XIII

     At morn the Countess Louis heard
     Young light sing in the lark.
     Ere eve it was that other bird,
     Which brings the starless dark.

     XIV

     To heaven she vowed herself, and yearned
     Beside her lord to lie.
     Archduchess Anne on Kraken turned,
     All white as a dead eye.

     XV

     If I could kill thee! shrieked her look:
     If lightning sprang from Will!
     An oaken head old Kraken shook,
     And she might thank or kill.

     XVI

     The pride that fenced her heart in mail
     By mortal pain was torn.
     Forth from her bosom leaped a wail,
     As of a babe new-born.

     XVII

     She clad herself in courtly use,
     And one who heard them prate
     Had said they differed upon views
     Where statecraft raised debate.

     XVIII

     The wretch detested must she trust,
     The servant master own:
     Confide to godless cause so just,
     And for God's blessing moan.

     XIX

     Austerely she her heart kept down,
     Her woman's tongue was mute
     When voice of People, voice of Crown,
     In cannon held dispute.

     XX

     The Crown on seas of blood, like swine,
     Swam forefoot at the throat:
     It drank of its dear veins for wine,
     Enough if it might float!

     XXI

     It sank with piteous yelp, resurged
     Electrical with fear.
     O had she on old Kraken urged
     Her word of mercy clear!

     XXII

     O had they with Count Louis been
     Accordant in his plea!
     Cursed are the women vowed to screen
     A heart that all can see!

     XXIII

     The godless drove unto a goal
     Was worse than vile defeat.
     Did vengeance prick Count Louis' soul
     They dressed him luscious meat.

     XXIV

     Worms will the faithless find their lies
     In the close treasure-chest.
     Without a God no day can rise,
     Though it should slay our best.

     XXV

     The Crown it furled a draggled flag,
     It sheathed a broken blade.
     Behold its triumph in the hag
     That lives with looks decayed!

     XXVI

     And lo, the man of oaken head,
     Of soldier's honour bare,
     He fled his land, but most he fled
     His Lady's frigid stare.

     XXVII

     Judged by the issue we discern
     God's blessing, and the bane.
     Count Louis' dust would fill an urn,
     His deeds are waving grain.

     XXVIII

     And she that helped to slay, yet bade
     To spare the fated man,
     Great were her errors, but she had
     Great heart, Archduchess Anne.



     THE SONG OF THEODOLINDA



     I

     Queen Theodolind has built
     In the earth a furnace-bed:
     There the Traitor Nail that spilt
     Blood of the anointed Head,
     Red of heat, resolves in shame:
     White of heat, awakes to flame.
     Beat, beat! white of heat,
     Red of heat, beat, beat!

     II

     Mark the skeleton of fire
     Lightening from its thunder-roof:
     So comes this that saw expire
     Him we love, for our behoof!
     Red of heat, O white of heat,
     This from off the Cross we greet.

     III

     Brown-cowled hammermen around
     Nerve their naked arms to strike
     Death with Resurrection crowned,
     Each upon that cruel spike.
     Red of heat the furnace leaps,
     White of heat transfigured sleeps.

     IV

     Hard against the furnace core
     Holds the Queen her streaming eyes:
     Lo! that thing of piteous gore
     In the lap of radiance lies,
     Red of heat, as when He takes,
     White of heat, whom earth forsakes.

     V

     Forth with it, and crushing ring
     Iron hymns, for men to hear
     Echoes of the deeds that sting
     Earth into its graves, and fear!
     Red of heat, He maketh thus,
     White of heat, a crown of us.

     VI

     This that killed Thee, kissed Thee, Lord!
     Touched Thee, and we touch it: dear,
     Dark it is; adored, abhorred:
     Vilest, yet most sainted here.
     Red of heat, O white of heat,
     In it hell and heaven meet.

     VII

     I behold our morning day
     When they chased Him out with rods
     Up to where this traitor lay
     Thirsting; and the blood was God's!
     Red of heat, it shall be pressed,
     White of heat, once on my breast!

     VIII

     Quick! the reptile in me shrieks,
     Not the soul. Again; the Cross
     Burn there. Oh! this pain it wreaks
     Rapture is: pain is not loss.
     Red of heat, the tooth of Death,
     White of heat, has caught my breath.

     IX

     Brand me, bite me, bitter thing!
     Thus He felt, and thus I am
     One with Him in suffering,
     One with Him in bliss, the Lamb.
     Red of heat, O white of heat,
     Thus is bitterness made sweet.

     X

     Now am I, who bear that stamp
     Scorched in me, the living sign
     Sole on earth--the lighted lamp
     Of the dreadful Day divine.
     White of heat, beat on it fast!
     Red of heat, its shape has passed.

     XI

     Out in angry sparks they fly,
     They that sentenced Him to bleed:
     Pontius and his troop: they die,
     Damned for ever for the deed!
     White of heat in vain they soar:
     Red of heat they strew the floor.

     XII

     Fury on it! have its debt!
     Thunder on the Hill accurst,
     Golgotha, be ye! and sweat
     Blood, and thirst the Passion's thirst.
     Red of heat and white of heat,
     Champ it like fierce teeth that eat.

     XIII

     Strike it as the ages crush
     Towers! for while a shape is seen
     I am rivalled. Quench its blush,
     Devil! But it crowns me Queen,
     Red of heat, as none before,
     White of heat, the circlet wore.

     XIV

     Lowly I will be, and quail,
     Crawling, with a beggar's hand:
     On my breast the branded Nail,
     On my head the iron band.
     Red of heat, are none so base!
     White of heat, none know such grace!

     XV

     In their heaven the sainted hosts,
     Robed in violet unflecked,
     Gaze on humankind as ghosts:
     I draw down a ray direct.
     Red of heat, across my brow,
     White of heat, I touch Him now.

     XVI

     Robed in violet, robed in gold,
     Robed in pearl, they make our dawn.
     What am I to them? Behold
     What ye are to me, and fawn.
     Red of heat, be humble, ye!
     White of heat, O teach it me!

     XVII

     Martyrs! hungry peaks in air,
     Rent with lightnings, clad with snow,
     Crowned with stars! you strip me bare,
     Pierce me, shame me, stretch me low,
     Red of heat, but it may be,
     White of heat, some envy me!

     XVIII

     O poor enviers! God's own gifts
     Have a devil for the weak.
     Yea, the very force that lifts
     Finds the vessel's secret leak.
     Red of heat, I rise o'er all:
     White of heat, I faint, I fall.

     XIX

     Those old Martyrs sloughed their pride,
     Taking humbleness like mirth.
     I am to His Glory tied,
     I that witness Him on earth!
     Red of heat, my pride of dust,
     White of heat, feeds fire in trust.

     XX

     Kindle me to constant fire,
     Lest the nail be but a nail!
     Give me wings of great desire,
     Lest I look within, and fail!
     Red of heat, the furnace light,
     White of heat, fix on my sight.

     XXI

     Never for the Chosen peace!
     Know, by me tormented know,
     Never shall the wrestling cease
     Till with our outlasting Foe,
     Red of heat to white of heat,
     Roll we to the Godhead's feet!
     Beat, beat! white of heat,
     Red of heat, beat, beat!



     A PREACHING FROM A SPANISH BALLAD



     I

     Ladies who in chains of wedlock
     Chafe at an unequal yoke,
     Not to nightingales give hearing;
     Better this, the raven's croak.

     II

     Down the Prado strolled my seigneur,
     Arm at lordly bow on hip,
     Fingers trimming his moustachios,
     Eyes for pirate fellowship.

     III

     Home sat she that owned him master;
     Like the flower bent to ground
     Rain-surcharged and sun-forsaken;
     Heedless of her hair unbound.

     IV

     Sudden at her feet a lover
     Palpitating knelt and wooed;
     Seemed a very gift from heaven
     To the starved of common food.

     V

     Love me? she his vows repeated:
     Fiery vows oft sung and thrummed:
     Wondered, as on earth a stranger;
     Thirsted, trusted, and succumbed.

     VI

     O beloved youth! my lover!
     Mine! my lover! take my life
     Wholly: thine in soul and body,
     By this oath of more than wife!

     VII

     Know me for no helpless woman;
     Nay, nor coward, though I sink
     Awed beside thee, like an infant
     Learning shame ere it can think.

     VIII

     Swing me hence to do thee service,
     Be thy succour, prove thy shield;
     Heaven will hear!--in house thy handmaid,
     Squire upon the battlefield.

     IX

     At my breasts I cool thy footsoles;
     Wine I pour, I dress thy meats;
     Humbly, when my lord it pleaseth,
     Lie with him on perfumed sheets:

     X

     Pray for him, my blood's dear fountain,
     While he sleeps, and watch his yawn
     In that wakening babelike moment,
     Sweeter to my thought than dawn! -

     XI

     Thundered then her lord of thunders;
     Burst the door, and, flashing sword,
     Loud disgorged the woman's title:
     Condemnation in one word.

     XII

     Grand by righteous wrath transfigured,
     Towers the husband who provides
     In his person judge and witness,
     Death's black doorkeeper besides!

     XIII

     Round his head the ancient terrors,
     Conjured of the stronger's law,
     Circle, to abash the creature
     Daring twist beneath his paw.

     XIV

     How though he hath squandered Honour
     High of Honour let him scold:
     Gilding of the man's possession,
     'Tis the woman's coin of gold.

     XV

     She inheriting from many
     Bleeding mothers bleeding sense
     Feels 'twixt her and sharp-fanged nature
     Honour first did plant the fence.

     XVI

     Nature, that so shrieks for justice;
     Honour's thirst, that blood will slake;
     These are women's riddles, roughly
     Mixed to write them saint or snake.

     XVII

     Never nature cherished woman:
     She throughout the sexes' war
     Serves as temptress and betrayer,
     Favouring man, the muscular.

     XVIII

     Lureful is she, bent for folly;
     Doating on the child which crows:
     Yours to teach him grace in fealty,
     What the bloom is, what the rose.

     XIX

     Hard the task: your prison-chamber
     Widens not for lifted latch
     Till the giant thews and sinews
     Meet their Godlike overmatch.

     XX

     Read that riddle, scorning pity's
     Tears, of cockatrices shed:
     When the heart is vowed for freedom,
     Captaincy it yields to head.

     XXI

     Meanwhile you, freaked nature's martyrs,
     Honour's army, flower and weed,
     Gentle ladies, wedded ladies,
     See for you this fair one bleed.

     XXII

     Sole stood her offence, she faltered;
     Prayed her lord the youth to spare;
     Prayed that in the orange garden
     She might lie, and ceased her prayer.

     XXIII

     Then commanding to all women
     Chastity, her breasts she laid
     Bare unto the self-avenger.
     Man in metal was the blade.



     THE YOUNG PRINCESS--A BALLAD OF OLD LAWS OF LOVE



     1--I

     When the South sang like a nightingale
     Above a bower in May,
     The training of Love's vine of flame
     Was writ in laws, for lord and dame
     To say their yea and nay.

     II

     When the South sang like a nightingale
     Across the flowering night,
     And lord and dame held gentle sport,
     There came a young princess to Court,
     A frost of beauty white.

     III

     The South sang like a nightingale
     To thaw her glittering dream:
     No vine of Love her bosom gave,
     She drank no wine of Love, but grave
     She held them to Love's theme.

     IV

     The South grew all a nightingale
     Beneath a moon unmoved:
     Like the banner of war she led them on;
     She left them to lie, like the light that has gone
     From wine-cups overproved.

     V

     When the South was a fervid nightingale,
     And she a chilling moon,
     'Twas pity to see on the garden swards,
     Against Love's laws, those rival lords
     As willow-wands lie strewn.

     VI

     The South had throat of a nightingale
     For her, the young princess:
     She gave no vine of Love to rear,
     Love's wine drank not, yet bent her ear
     To themes of Love no less.

     2--I

     The lords of the Court they sighed heart-sick,
     Heart-free Lord Dusiote laughed:
     I prize her no more than a fling o' the dice,
     But, or shame to my manhood, a lady of ice,
     We master her by craft!

     II

     Heart-sick the lords of joyance yawned,
     Lord Dusiote laughed heart-free:
     I count her as much as a crack o' my thumb,
     But, or shame of my manhood, to me she shall come
     Like the bird to roost in the tree!

     III

     At dead of night when the palace-guard
     Had passed the measured rounds,
     The young princess awoke to feel
     A shudder of blood at the crackle of steel
     Within the garden-bounds.

     IV

     It ceased, and she thought of whom was need,
     The friar or the leech;
     When lo, stood her tirewoman breathless by:
     Lord Dusiote, madam, to death is nigh,
     Of you he would have speech.

     V

     He prays you of your gentleness,
     To light him to his dark end.
     The princess rose, and forth she went,
     For charity was her intent,
     Devoutly to befriend.

     VI

     Lord Dusiote hung on his good squire's arm,
     The priest beside him knelt:
     A weeping handkerchief was pressed
     To stay the red flood at his breast,
     And bid cold ladies melt.

     VII

     O lady, though you are ice to men,
     All pure to heaven as light
     Within the dew within the flower,
     Of you 'tis whispered that love has power
     When secret is the night.

     VIII

     I have silenced the slanderers, peace to their souls!
     Save one was too cunning for me.
     I die, whose love is late avowed,
     He lives, who boasts the lily has bowed
     To the oath of a bended knee.

     IX

     Lord Dusiote drew breath with pain,
     And she with pain drew breath:
     On him she looked, on his like above;
     She flew in the folds of a marvel of love
     Revealed to pass to death.

     X

     You are dying, O great-hearted lord,
     You are dying for me, she cried;
     O take my hand, O take my kiss,
     And take of your right for love like this,
     The vow that plights me bride.

     XI

     She bade the priest recite his words
     While hand in hand were they,
     Lord Dusiote's soul to waft to bliss;
     He had her hand, her vow, her kiss,
     And his body was borne away.

     3--I

     Lord Dusiote sprang from priest and squire;
     He gazed at her lighted room:
     The laughter in his heart grew slack;
     He knew not the force that pushed him back
     From her and the morn in bloom.

     II

     Like a drowned man's length on the strong flood-tide,
     Like the shade of a bird in the sun,
     He fled from his lady whom he might claim
     As ghost, and who made the daybeams flame
     To scare what he had done.

     III

     There was grief at Court for one so gay,
     Though he was a lord less keen
     For training the vine than at vintage-press;
     But in her soul the young princess
     Believed that love had been.

     IV

     Lord Dusiote fled the Court and land,
     He crossed the woeful seas,
     Till his traitorous doing seemed clearer to burn,
     And the lady beloved drew his heart for return,
     Like the banner of war in the breeze.

     V

     He neared the palace, he spied the Court,
     And music he heard, and they told
     Of foreign lords arrived to bring
     The nuptial gifts of a bridegroom king
     To the princess grave and cold.

     VI

     The masque and the dance were cloud on wave,
     And down the masque and the dance
     Lord Dusiote stepped from dame to dame,
     And to the young princess he came,
     With a bow and a burning glance.

     VII

     Do you take a new husband to-morrow, lady?
     She shrank as at prick of steel.
     Must the first yield place to the second, he sighed.
     Her eyes were like the grave that is wide
     For the corpse from head to heel.

     VIII

     My lady, my love, that little hand
     Has mine ringed fast in plight:
     I bear for your lips a lawful thirst,
     And as justly the second should follow the first,
     I come to your door this night.

     IX

     If a ghost should come a ghost will go:
     No more the lady said,
     Save that ever when he in wrath began
     To swear by the faith of a living man,
     She answered him, You are dead.

     4--I

     The soft night-wind went laden to death
     With smell of the orange in flower;
     The light leaves prattled to neighbour ears;
     The bird of the passion sang over his tears;
     The night named hour by hour.

     II

     Sang loud, sang low the rapturous bird
     Till the yellow hour was nigh,
     Behind the folds of a darker cloud:
     He chuckled, he sobbed, alow, aloud;
     The voice between earth and sky.

     III

     O will you, will you, women are weak;
     The proudest are yielding mates
     For a forward foot and a tongue of fire:
     So thought Lord Dusiote's trusty squire,
     At watch by the palace-gates.

     IV

     The song of the bird was wine in his blood,
     And woman the odorous bloom:
     His master's great adventure stirred
     Within him to mingle the bloom and bird,
     And morn ere its coming illume.

     V

     Beside him strangely a piece of the dark
     Had moved, and the undertones
     Of a priest in prayer, like a cavernous wave,
     He heard, as were there a soul to save
     For urgency now in the groans.

     VI

     No priest was hired for the play this night:
     And the squire tossed head like a deer
     At sniff of the tainted wind; he gazed
     Where cresset-lamps in a door were raised,
     Belike on a passing bier.

     VII

     All cloaked and masked, with naked blades,
     That flashed of a judgement done,
     The lords of the Court, from the palace-door,
     Came issuing silently, bearers four,
     And flat on their shoulders one.

     VIII

     They marched the body to squire and priest,
     They lowered it sad to earth:
     The priest they gave the burial dole,
     Bade wrestle hourly for his soul,
     Who was a lord of worth.

     IX

     One said, farewell to a gallant knight!
     And one, but a restless ghost!
     'Tis a year and a day since in this place
     He died, sped high by a lady of grace
     To join the blissful host.

     X

     Not vainly on us she charged her cause,
     The lady whom we revere
     For faith in the mask of a love untrue
     To the Love we honour, the Love her due,
     The Love we have vowed to rear.

     XI

     A trap for the sweet tooth, lures for the light,
     For the fortress defiant a mine:
     Right well! But not in the South, princess,
     Shall the lady snared of her nobleness
     Ever shamed or a captive pine.

     XII

     When the South had voice of a nightingale
     Above a Maying bower,
     On the heights of Love walked radiant peers;
     The bird of the passion sang over his tears
     To the breeze and the orange-flower.



     KING HARALD'S TRANCE



     I

     Sword in length a reaping-hook amain
     Harald sheared his field, blood up to shank:
     'Mid the swathes of slain,
     First at moonrise drank.

     II

     Thereof hunger, as for meats the knife,
     Pricked his ribs, in one sharp spur to reach
     Home and his young wife,
     Nigh the sea-ford beach.

     III

     After battle keen to feed was he:
     Smoking flesh the thresher washed down fast,
     Like an angry sea
     Ships from keel to mast.

     IV

     Name us glory, singer, name us pride
     Matching Harald's in his deeds of strength;
     Chiefs, wife, sword by side,
     Foemen stretched their length!

     V

     Half a winter night the toasts hurrahed,
     Crowned him, clothed him, trumpeted him high,
     Till awink he bade
     Wife to chamber fly.

     VI

     Twice the sun had mounted, twice had sunk,
     Ere his ears took sound; he lay for dead;
     Mountain on his trunk,
     Ocean on his head.

     VII

     Clamped to couch, his fiery hearing sucked
     Whispers that at heart made iron-clang:
     Here fool-women clucked,
     There men held harangue.

     VIII

     Burial to fit their lord of war
     They decreed him: hailed the kingling: ha!
     Hateful! but this Thor
     Failed a weak lamb's baa.

     IX

     King they hailed a branchlet, shaped to fare,
     Weighted so, like quaking shingle spume,
     When his blood's own heir
     Ripened in the womb!

     X

     Still he heard, and doglike, hoglike, ran
     Nose of hearing till his blind sight saw:
     Woman stood with man
     Mouthing low, at paw.

     XI

     Woman, man, they mouthed; they spake a thing
     Armed to split a mountain, sunder seas:
     Still the frozen king
     Lay and felt him freeze.

     XII

     Doglike, hoglike, horselike now he raced,
     Riderless, in ghost across a ground
     Flint of breast, blank-faced,
     Past the fleshly bound.

     XIII

     Smell of brine his nostrils filled with might:
     Nostrils quickened eyelids, eyelids hand:
     Hand for sword at right
     Groped, the great haft spanned.

     XIV

     Wonder struck to ice his people's eyes:
     Him they saw, the prone upon the bier,
     Sheer from backbone rise,
     Sword uplifting peer.

     XV

     Sitting did he breathe against the blade,
     Standing kiss it for that proof of life:
     Strode, as netters wade,
     Straightway to his wife.

     XVI

     Her he eyed: his judgement was one word,
     Foulbed! and she fell: the blow clove two.
     Fearful for the third,
     All their breath indrew.

     XVII

     Morning danced along the waves to beach;
     Dumb his chiefs fetched breath for what might hap:
     Glassily on each
     Stared the iron cap.

     XVIII

     Sudden, as it were a monster oak
     Split to yield a limb by stress of heat,
     Strained he, staggered, broke
     Doubled at their feet.



     WHIMPER OF SYMPATHY



     Hawk or shrike has done this deed
     Of downy feathers: rueful sight!
     Sweet sentimentalist, invite
     Your bosom's Power to intercede.

     So hard it seems that one must bleed
     Because another needs will bite!
     All round we find cold Nature slight
     The feelings of the totter-knee'd.

     O it were pleasant with you
     To fly from this tussle of foes,
     The shambles, the charnel, the wrinkle!
     To dwell in yon dribble of dew
     On the cheek of your sovereign rose,
     And live the young life of a twinkle.



     YOUNG REYNARD



     I

     Gracefullest leaper, the dappled fox-cub
     Curves over brambles with berries and buds,
     Light as a bubble that flies from the tub,
     Whisked by the laundry-wife out of her suds.
     Wavy he comes, woolly, all at his ease,
     Elegant, fashioned to foot with the deuce;
     Nature's own prince of the dance: then he sees
     Me, and retires as if making excuse.

     II

     Never closed minuet courtlier! Soon
     Cub-hunting troops were abroad, and a yelp
     Told of sure scent: ere the stroke upon noon
     Reynard the younger lay far beyond help.
     Wild, my poor friend, has the fate to be chased;
     Civil will conquer: were 't other 'twere worse;
     Fair, by the flushed early morning embraced,
     Haply you live a day longer in verse.



     MANFRED



     I

     Projected from the bilious Childe,
     This clatterjaw his foot could set
     On Alps, without a breast beguiled
     To glow in shedding rascal sweat.
     Somewhere about his grinder teeth,
     He mouthed of thoughts that grilled beneath,
     And summoned Nature to her feud
     With bile and buskin Attitude.

     II

     Considerably was the world
     Of spinsterdom and clergy racked
     While he his hinted horrors hurled,
     And she pictorially attacked.
     A duel hugeous. Tragic? Ho!
     The cities, not the mountains, blow
     Such bladders; in their shapes confessed
     An after-dinner's indigest.



     HERNANI



     Cistercians might crack their sides
     With laughter, and exemption get,
     At sight of heroes clasping brides,
     And hearing--O the horn! the horn!
     The horn of their obstructive debt!

     But quit the stage, that note applies
     For sermons cosmopolitan,
     Hernani. Have we filched our prize,
     Forgetting . . .? O the horn! the horn!
     The horn of the Old Gentleman!



     THE NUPTIALS OF ATTILA



     I

     Flat as to an eagle's eye,
     Earth hung under Attila.
     Sign for carnage gave he none.
     In the peace of his disdain,
     Sun and rain, and rain and sun,
     Cherished men to wax again,
     Crawl, and in their manner die.
     On his people stood a frost.
     Like the charger cut in stone,
     Rearing stiff, the warrior host,
     Which had life from him alone,
     Craved the trumpet's eager note,
     As the bridled earth the Spring.
     Rusty was the trumpet's throat.
     He let chief and prophet rave;
     Venturous earth around him string
     Threads of grass and slender rye,
     Wave them, and untrampled wave.
     O for the time when God did cry,
     Eye and have, my Attila!

     II

     Scorn of conquest filled like sleep
     Him that drank of havoc deep
     When the Green Cat pawed the globe:
     When the horsemen from his bow
     Shot in sheaves and made the foe
     Crimson fringes of a robe,
     Trailed o'er towns and fields in woe;
     When they streaked the rivers red,
     When the saddle was the bed.
     Attila, my Attila!

     III

     He breathed peace and pulled a flower.
     Eye and have, my Attila!
     This was the damsel Ildico,
     Rich in bloom until that hour:
     Shyer than the forest doe
     Twinkling slim through branches green.
     Yet the shyest shall be seen.
     Make the bed for Attila!

     IV

     Seen of Attila, desired,
     She was led to him straightway:
     Radiantly was she attired;
     Rifled lands were her array,
     Jewels bled from weeping crowns,
     Gold of woeful fields and towns.
     She stood pallid in the light.
     How she walked, how withered white,
     From the blessing to the board,
     She who would have proudly blushed,
     Women whispered, asking why,
     Hinting of a youth, and hushed.
     Was it terror of her lord?
     Was she childish? was she sly?
     Was it the bright mantle's dye
     Drained her blood to hues of grief
     Like the ash that shoots the spark?
     See the green tree all in leaf:
     See the green tree stripped of bark! -
     Make the bed for Attila!

     V

     Round the banquet-table's load
     Scores of iron horsemen rode;
     Chosen warriors, keen and hard;
     Grain of threshing battle-dints;
     Attila's fierce body-guard,
     Smelling war like fire in flints.
     Grant them peace be fugitive!
     Iron-capped and iron-heeled,
     Each against his fellow's shield
     Smote the spear-head, shouting, Live,
     Attila! my Attila!
     Eagle, eagle of our breed,
     Eagle, beak the lamb, and feed!
     Have her, and unleash us! live,
     Attila! my Attila!

     VI

     He was of the blood to shine
     Bronze in joy, like skies that scorch.
     Beaming with the goblet wine
     In the wavering of the torch,
     Looked he backward on his bride.
     Eye and have, my Attila!
     Fair in her wide robe was she:
     Where the robe and vest divide,
     Fair she seemed surpassingly:
     Soft, yet vivid as the stream
     Danube rolls in the moonbeam
     Through rock-barriers: but she smiled
     Never, she sat cold as salt:
     Open-mouthed as a young child
     Wondering with a mind at fault.
     Make the bed for Attila!

     VII

     Under the thin hoop of gold
     Whence in waves her hair outrolled,
     'Twixt her brows the women saw
     Shadows of a vulture's claw
     Gript in flight: strange knots that sped
     Closing and dissolving aye:
     Such as wicked dreams betray
     When pale dawn creeps o'er the bed.
     They might show the common pang
     Known to virgins, in whom dread
     Hunts their bliss like famished hounds;
     While the chiefs with roaring rounds
     Tossed her to her lord, and sang
     Praise of him whose hand was large,
     Cheers for beauty brought to yield,
     Chirrups of the trot afield,
     Hurrahs of the battle-charge.

     VIII

     Those rock-faces hung with weed
     Reddened: their great days of speed,
     Slaughter, triumph, flood and flame,
     Like a jealous frenzy wrought,
     Scoffed at them and did them shame,
     Quaffing idle, conquering nought.
     O for the time when God decreed
     Earth the prey of Attila!
     God called on thee in his wrath,
     Trample it to mire! 'Twas done.
     Swift as Danube clove our path
     Down from East to Western sun.
     Huns! behold your pasture, gaze,
     Take, our king said: heel to flank
     (Whisper it, the war-horse neighs!)
     Forth we drove, and blood we drank
     Fresh as dawn-dew: earth was ours:
     Men were flocks we lashed and spurned:
     Fast as windy flame devours,
     Flame along the wind, we burned.
     Arrow javelin, spear, and sword!
     Here the snows and there the plains;
     On! our signal: onward poured
     Torrents of the tightened reins,
     Foaming over vine and corn
     Hot against the city-wall.
     Whisper it, you sound a horn
     To the grey beast in the stall!
     Yea, he whinnies at a nod.
     O for sound of the trumpet-notes!
     O for the time when thunder-shod,
     He that scarce can munch his oats,
     Hung on the peaks, brooded aloof,
     Champed the grain of the wrath of God,
     Pressed a cloud on the cowering roof,
     Snorted out of the blackness fire!
     Scarlet broke the sky, and down,
     Hammering West with print of his hoof,
     He burst out of the bosom of ire
     Sharp as eyelight under thy frown,
     Attila, my Attila!

     IX

     Ravaged cities rolling smoke
     Thick on cornfields dry and black,
     Wave his banners, bear his yoke.
     Track the lightning, and you track
     Attila. They moan: 'tis he!
     Bleed: 'tis he! Beneath his foot
     Leagues are deserts charred and mute;
     Where he passed, there passed a sea.
     Attila, my Attila!

     X

     - Who breathed on the king cold breath?
     Said a voice amid the host,
     He is Death that weds a ghost,
     Else a ghost that weds with Death?
     Ildico's chill little hand
     Shuddering he beheld: austere
     Stared, as one who would command
     Sight of what has filled his ear:
     Plucked his thin beard, laughed disdain.
     Feast, ye Huns! His arm be raised,
     Like the warrior, battle-dazed,
     Joining to the fight amain.
     Make the bed for Attila!

     XI

     Silent Ildico stood up.
     King and chief to pledge her well,
     Shocked sword sword and cup on cup,
     Clamouring like a brazen bell.
     Silent stepped the queenly slave.
     Fair, by heaven! she was to meet
     On a midnight, near a grave,
     Flapping wide the winding-sheet.

     XII

     Death and she walked through the crowd,
     Out beyond the flush of light.
     Ceremonious women bowed
     Following her: 'twas middle night.
     Then the warriors each on each
     Spied, nor overloudly laughed;
     Like the victims of the leech,
     Who have drunk of a strange draught.

     XIII

     Attila remained. Even so
     Frowned he when he struck the blow,
     Brained his horse, that stumbled twice,
     On a bloody day in Gaul,
     Bellowing, Perish omens! All
     Marvelled at the sacrifice,
     But the battle, swinging dim,
     Rang off that axe-blow for him.
     Attila, my Attila!

     XIV

     Brightening over Danube wheeled
     Star by star; and she, most fair,
     Sweet as victory half-revealed,
     Seized to make him glad and young;
     She, O sweet as the dark sign
     Given him oft in battles gone,
     When the voice within said, Dare!
     And the trumpet-notes were sprung
     Rapturous for the charge in line:
     She lay waiting: fair as dawn
     Wrapped in folds of night she lay;
     Secret, lustrous; flaglike there,
     Waiting him to stream and ray,
     With one loosening blush outflung,
     Colours of his hordes of horse
     Ranked for combat; still he hung
     Like the fever dreading air,
     Cursed of heat; and as a corse
     Gathers vultures, in his brain
     Images of her eyes and kiss
     Plucked at the limbs that could remain
     Loitering nigh the doors of bliss.
     Make the bed for Attila!

     XV

     Passion on one hand, on one,
     Destiny led forth the Hun.
     Heard ye outcries of affright,
     Voices that through many a fray,
     In the press of flag and spear,
     Warned the king of peril near?
     Men were dumb, they gave him way,
     Eager heads to left and right,
     Like the bearded standard, thrust,
     As in battle, for a nod
     From their lord of battle-dust.
     Attila, my Attila!
     Slow between the lines he trod.
     Saw ye not the sun drop slow
     On this nuptial day, ere eve
     Pierced him on the couch aglow?
     Attila, my Attila!
     Here and there his heart would cleave
     Clotted memory for a space:
     Some stout chief's familiar face,
     Choicest of his fighting brood,
     Touched him, as 'twere one to know
     Ere he met his bride's embrace.
     Attila, my Attila!
     Twisting fingers in a beard
     Scant as winter underwood,
     With a narrowed eye he peered;
     Like the sunset's graver red
     Up old pine-stems. Grave he stood
     Eyeing them on whom was shed
     Burning light from him alone.
     Attila, my Attila!
     Red were they whose mouths recalled
     Where the slaughter mounted high,
     High on it, o'er earth appalled,
     He; heaven's finger in their sight
     Raising him on waves of dead,
     Up to heaven his trumpets blown.
     O for the time when God's delight
     Crowned the head of Attila!
     Hungry river of the crag
     Stretching hands for earth he came:
     Force and Speed astride his name
     Pointed back to spear and flag.
     He came out of miracle cloud,
     Lightning-swift and spectre-lean.
     Now those days are in a shroud:
     Have him to his ghostly queen.
     Make the bed for Attila!

     XVI

     One, with winecups overstrung,
     Cried him farewell in Rome's tongue.
     Who? for the great king turned as though
     Wrath to the shaft's head strained the bow.
     Nay, not wrath the king possessed,
     But a radiance of the breast.
     In that sound he had the key
     Of his cunning malady.
     Lo, where gleamed the sapphire lake,
     Leo, with his Rome at stake,
     Drew blank air to hues and forms;
     Whereof Two that shone distinct,
     Linked as orbed stars are linked,
     Clear among the myriad swarms,
     In a constellation, dashed
     Full on horse and rider's eyes
     Sunless light, but light it was -
     Light that blinded and abashed,
     Froze his members, bade him pause,
     Caught him mid-gallop, blazed him home.
     Attila, my Attila!
     What are streams that cease to flow?
     What was Attila, rolled thence,
     Cheated by a juggler's show?
     Like that lake of blue intense,
     Under tempest lashed to foam,
     Lurid radiance, as he passed,
     Filled him, and around was glassed,
     When deep-voiced he uttered, Rome!

     XVII

     Rome! the word was: and like meat
     Flung to dogs the word was torn.
     Soon Rome's magic priests shall bleat
     Round their magic Pope forlorn!
     Loud they swore the king had sworn
     Vengeance on the Roman cheat,
     Ere he passed, as, grave and still,
     Danube through the shouting hill:
     Sworn it by his naked life!
     Eagle, snakes these women are:
     Take them on the wing! but war,
     Smoking war's the warrior's wife!
     Then for plunder! then for brides
     Won without a winking priest! -
     Danube whirled his train of tides
     Black toward the yellow East.
     Make the bed for Attila!

     XVIII

     Chirrups of the trot afield,
     Hurrahs of the battle-charge,
     How they answered, how they pealed,
     When the morning rose and drew
     Bow and javelin, lance and targe,
     In the nuptial casement's view!
     Attila, my Attila!
     Down the hillspurs, out of tents
     Glimmering in mid-forest, through
     Mists of the cool morning scents,
     Forth from city-alley, court,
     Arch, the bounding horsemen flew,
     Joined along the plains of dew,
     Raced and gave the rein to sport,
     Closed and streamed like curtain-rents
     Fluttered by a wind, and flowed
     Into squadrons: trumpets blew,
     Chargers neighed, and trappings glowed
     Brave as the bright Orient's.
     Look on the seas that run to greet
     Sunrise: look on the leagues of wheat:
     Look on the lines and squares that fret
     Leaping to level the lance blood-wet.
     Tens of thousands, man and steed,
     Tossing like field-flowers in Spring;
     Ready to be hurled at need
     Whither their great lord may sling.
     Finger Romeward, Romeward, King!
     Attila, my Attila!
     Still the woman holds him fast
     As a night-flag round the mast.

     XIX

     Nigh upon the fiery noon,
     Out of ranks a roaring burst.
     'Ware white women like the moon!
     They are poison: they have thirst
     First for love, and next for rule.
     Jealous of the army, she?
     Ho, the little wanton fool!
     We were his before she squealed
     Blind for mother's milk, and heeled
     Kicking on her mother's knee.
     His in life and death are we:
     She but one flower of a field.
     We have given him bliss tenfold
     In an hour to match her night:
     Attila, my Attila!
     Still her arms the master hold,
     As on wounds the scarf winds tight.

     XX

     Over Danube day no more,
     Like the warrior's planted spear,
     Stood to hail the King: in fear
     Western day knocked at his door.
     Attila, my Attila!
     Sudden in the army's eyes
     Rolled a blast of lights and cries:
     Flashing through them: Dead are ye!
     Dead, ye Huns, and torn piecemeal!
     See the ordered army reel
     Stricken through the ribs: and see,
     Wild for speed to cheat despair,
     Horsemen, clutching knee to chin,
     Crouch and dart they know not where.
     Attila, my Attila!
     Faces covered, faces bare,
     Light the palace-front like jets
     Of a dreadful fire within.
     Beating hands and driving hair
     Start on roof and parapets.
     Dust rolls up; the slaughter din.
     - Death to them who call him dead!
     Death to them who doubt the tale!
     Choking in his dusty veil,
     Sank the sun on his death-bed.
     Make the bed for Attila!

     XXI

     'Tis the room where thunder sleeps.
     Frenzy, as a wave to shore
     Surging, burst the silent door,
     And drew back to awful deeps
     Breath beaten out, foam-white. Anew
     Howled and pressed the ghastly crew,
     Like storm-waters over rocks.
     Attila, my Attila!
     One long shaft of sunset red
     Laid a finger on the bed.
     Horror, with the snaky locks,
     Shocked the surge to stiffened heaps,
     Hoary as the glacier's head
     Faced to the moon. Insane they look.
     God it is in heaven who weeps
     Fallen from his hand the Scourge he shook.
     Make the bed for Attila!

     XXII

     Square along the couch, and stark,
     Like the sea-rejected thing
     Sea-sucked white, behold their King.
     Attila, my Attila!
     Beams that panted black and bright,
     Scornful lightnings danced their sight:
     Him they see an oak in bud,
     Him an oaklog stripped of bark:
     Him, their lord of day and night,
     White, and lifting up his blood
     Dumb for vengeance. Name us that,
     Huddled in the corner dark
     Humped and grinning like a cat,
     Teeth for lips!--'tis she! she stares,
     Glittering through her bristled hairs.
     Rend her! Pierce her to the hilt!
     She is Murder: have her out!
     What! this little fist, as big
     As the southern summer fig!
     She is Madness, none may doubt.
     Death, who dares deny her guilt!
     Death, who says his blood she spilt!
     Make the bed for Attila!

     XXIII

     Torch and lamp and sunset-red
     Fell three-fingered on the bed.
     In the torch the beard-hair scant
     With the great breast seemed to pant:
     In the yellow lamp the limbs
     Wavered, as the lake-flower swims:
     In the sunset red the dead
     Dead avowed him, dry blood-red.

     XXIV

     Hatred of that abject slave,
     Earth, was in each chieftain's heart.
     Earth has got him, whom God gave,
     Earth may sing, and earth shall smart!
     Attila, my Attila!

     XXV

     Thus their prayer was raved and ceased.
     Then had Vengeance of her feast
     Scent in their quick pang to smite
     Which they knew not, but huge pain
     Urged them for some victim slain
     Swift, and blotted from the sight.
     Each at each, a crouching beast,
     Glared, and quivered for the word.
     Each at each, and all on that,
     Humped and grinning like a cat,
     Head-bound with its bridal-wreath.
     Then the bitter chamber heard
     Vengeance in a cauldron seethe.
     Hurried counsel rage and craft
     Yelped to hungry men, whose teeth
     Hard the grey lip-ringlet gnawed,
     Gleaming till their fury laughed.
     With the steel-hilt in the clutch,
     Eyes were shot on her that froze
     In their blood-thirst overawed;
     Burned to rend, yet feared to touch.
     She that was his nuptial rose,
     She was of his heart's blood clad:
     Oh! the last of him she had! -
     Could a little fist as big
     As the southern summer fig,
     Push a dagger's point to pierce
     Ribs like those? Who else! They glared
     Each at each. Suspicion fierce
     Many a black remembrance bared.
     Attila, my Attila!
     Death, who dares deny her guilt!
     Death, who says his blood she spilt!
     Traitor he, who stands between!
     Swift to hell, who harms the Queen!
     She, the wild contention's cause,
     Combed her hair with quiet paws.
     Make the bed for Attila!

     XXVI

     Night was on the host in arms.
     Night, as never night before,
     Hearkened to an army's roar
     Breaking up in snaky swarms:
     Torch and steel and snorting steed,
     Hunted by the cry of blood,
     Cursed with blindness, mad for day.
     Where the torches ran a flood,
     Tales of him and of the deed
     Showered like a torrent spray.
     Fear of silence made them strive
     Loud in warrior-hymns that grew
     Hoarse for slaughter yet unwreaked.
     Ghostly Night across the hive,
     With a crimson finger drew
     Letters on her breast and shrieked.
     Night was on them like the mould
     On the buried half alive.
     Night, their bloody Queen, her fold
     Wound on them and struck them through.
     Make the bed for Attila!

     XXVII

     Earth has got him whom God gave,
     Earth may sing, and earth shall smart!
     None of earth shall know his grave.
     They that dig with Death depart.
     Attila, my Attila!

     XXVIII

     Thus their prayer was raved and passed:
     Passed in peace their red sunset:
     Hewn and earthed those men of sweat
     Who had housed him in the vast,
     Where no mortal might declare,
     There lies he--his end was there!
     Attila, my Attila!

     XXIX

     Kingless was the army left:
     Of its head the race bereft.
     Every fury of the pit
     Tortured and dismembered it.
     Lo, upon a silent hour,
     When the pitch of frost subsides,
     Danube with a shout of power
     Loosens his imprisoned tides:
     Wide around the frighted plains
     Shake to hear his riven chains,
     Dreadfuller than heaven in wrath,
     As he makes himself a path:
     High leap the ice-cracks, towering pile
     Floes to bergs, and giant peers
     Wrestle on a drifted isle;
     Island on ice-island rears;
     Dissolution battles fast:
     Big the senseless Titans loom,
     Through a mist of common doom
     Striving which shall die the last:
     Till a gentle-breathing morn
     Frees the stream from bank to bank.
     So the Empire built of scorn
     Agonized, dissolved and sank.
     Of the Queen no more was told
     Than of leaf on Danube rolled.
     Make the bed for Attila!



     ANEURIN'S HARP



     I

     Prince of Bards was old Aneurin;
     He the grand Gododin sang;
     All his numbers threw such fire in,
     Struck his harp so wild a twang; -
     Still the wakeful Briton borrows
     Wisdom from its ancient heat:
     Still it haunts our source of sorrows,
     Deep excess of liquor sweet!

     II

     Here the Briton, there the Saxon,
     Face to face, three fields apart,
     Thirst for light to lay their thwacks on
     Each the other with good heart.
     Dry the Saxon sits, 'mid dinful
     Noise of iron knits his steel:
     Fresh and roaring with a skinful,
     Britons round the hirlas reel.

     III

     Yellow flamed the meady sunset;
     Red runs up the flag of morn.
     Signal for the British onset
     Hiccups through the British horn.
     Down these hillmen pour like cattle
     Sniffing pasture: grim below,
     Showing eager teeth of battle,
     In his spear-heads lies the foe.

     IV

     - Monster of the sea! we drive him
     Back into his hungry brine.
     - You shall lodge him, feed him, wive him,
     Look on us; we stand in line.
     - Pale sea-monster! foul the waters
     Cast him; foul he leaves our land.
     - You shall yield us land and daughters:
     Stay the tongue, and try the hand.

     V

     Swift as torrent-streams our warriors,
     Tossing torrent lights, find way;
     Burst the ridges, crowd the barriers,
     Pierce them where the spear-heads play;
     Turn them as the clods in furrow,
     Top them like the leaping foam;
     Sorrow to the mother, sorrow,
     Sorrow to the wife at home!

     VI

     Stags, they butted; bulls, they bellowed;
     Hounds, we baited them; oh, brave!
     Every second man, unfellowed,
     Took the strokes of two, and gave.
     Bare as hop-stakes in November's
     Mists they met our battle-flood:
     Hoary-red as Winter's embers
     Lay their dead lines done in blood.

     VII

     Thou, my Bard, didst hang thy lyre in
     Oak-leaves, and with crimson brand
     Rhythmic fury spent, Aneurin;
     Songs the churls could understand:
     Thrumming on their Saxon sconces
     Straight, the invariable blow,
     Till they snorted true responses.
     Ever thus the Bard they know!

     VIII

     But ere nightfall, harper lusty!
     When the sun was like a ball
     Dropping on the battle dusty,
     What was yon discordant call?
     Cambria's old metheglin demon
     Breathed against our rushing tide;
     Clove us midst the threshing seamen:-
     Gashed, we saw our ranks divide!

     IX

     Britain then with valedictory
     Shriek veiled off her face and knelt.
     Full of liquor, full of victory,
     Chief on chief old vengeance dealt.
     Backward swung their hurly-burly;
     None but dead men kept the fight.
     They that drink their cup too early,
     Darkness they shall see ere night.

     X

     Loud we heard the yellow rover
     Laugh to sleep, while we raged thick,
     Thick as ants the ant-hill over,
     Asking who has thrust the stick.
     Lo, as frogs that Winter cumbers
     Meet the Spring with stiffen'd yawn,
     We from our hard night of slumbers
     Marched into the bloody dawn.

     XI

     Day on day we fought, though shattered:
     Pushed and met repulses sharp,
     Till our Raven's plumes were scattered:
     All, save old Aneurin's harp.
     Hear it wailing like a mother
     O'er the strings of children slain!
     He in one tongue, in another,
     Alien, I; one blood, yet twain.

     XII

     Old Aneurin! droop no longer.
     That squat ocean-scum, we own,
     Had fine stoutness, made us stronger,
     Brought us much-required backbone:
     Claimed of Power their dues, and granted
     Dues to Power in turn, when rose
     Mightier rovers; they that planted
     Sovereign here the Norman nose.

     XIII

     Glorious men, with heads of eagles,
     Chopping arms, and cupboard lips;
     Warriors, hunters, keen as beagles,
     Mounted aye on horse or ships.
     Active, being hungry creatures;
     Silent, having nought to say:
     High they raised the lord of features,
     Saxon-worshipped to this day.

     XIV

     Hear its deeds, the great recital!
     Stout as bergs of Arctic ice
     Once it led, and lived; a title
     Now it is, and names its price.
     This our Saxon brothers cherish:
     This, when by the worth of wits
     Lands are reared aloft, or perish,
     Sole illumes their lucre-pits.

     XV

     Know we not our wrongs, unwritten
     Though they be, Aneurin? Sword,
     Song, and subtle mind, the Briton
     Brings to market, all ignored.
     'Gainst the Saxon's bone impinging,
     Still is our Gododin played;
     Shamed we see him humbly cringing
     In a shadowy nose's shade.

     XVI

     Bitter is the weight that crushes
     Low, my Bard, thy race of fire.
     Here no fair young future blushes
     Bridal to a man's desire.
     Neither chief, nor aim, nor splendour
     Dressing distance, we perceive.
     Neither honour, nor the tender
     Bloom of promise, morn or eve.

     XVII

     Joined we are; a tide of races
     Rolled to meet a common fate;
     England clasps in her embraces
     Many: what is England's state?
     England her distended middle
     Thumps with pride as Mammon's wife;
     Says that thus she reads thy riddle,
     Heaven! 'tis heaven to plump her life.

     XVIII

     O my Bard! a yellow liquor,
     Like to that we drank of old -
     Gold is her metheglin beaker,
     She destruction drinks in gold.
     Warn her, Bard, that Power is pressing
     Hotly for his dues this hour;
     Tell her that no drunken blessing
     Stops the onward march of Power.

     XIX

     Has she ears to take forewarnings
     She will cleanse her of her stains,
     Feed and speed for braver mornings
     Valorously the growth of brains.
     Power, the hard man knit for action,
     Reads each nation on the brow.
     Cripple, fool, and petrifaction
     Fall to him--are falling now!



     MEN AND MAN



     I

     Men the Angels eyed;
     And here they were wild waves,
     And there as marsh descried;
     Men the Angels eyed,
     And liked the picture best
     Where they were greenly dressed
     In brotherhood of graves.

     II

     Man the Angels marked:
     He led a host through murk,
     On fearful seas embarked;
     Man the Angels marked;
     To think without a nay,
     That he was good as they,
     And help him at his work.

     III

     Man and Angels, ye
     A sluggish fen shall drain,
     Shall quell a warring sea.
     Man and Angels, ye,
     Whom stain of strife befouls,
     A light to kindle souls
     Bear radiant in the stain.



     THE LAST CONTENTION



     I

     Young captain of a crazy bark!
     O tameless heart in battered frame!
     Thy sailing orders have a mark,
     And hers is not the name.

     II

     For action all thine iron clanks
     In cravings for a splendid prize;
     Again to race or bump thy planks
     With any flag that flies.

     III

     Consult them; they are eloquent
     For senses not inebriate.
     They trust thee on the star intent,
     That leads to land their freight.

     IV

     And they have known thee high peruse
     The heavens, and deep the earth, till thou
     Didst into the flushed circle cruise
     Where reason quits the brow.

     V

     Thou animatest ancient tales,
     To prove our world of linear seed:
     Thy very virtue now assails,
     A tempter to mislead.

     VI

     But thou hast answer I am I;
     My passion hallows, bids command:
     And she is gracious, she is nigh:
     One motion of the hand!

     VII

     It will suffice; a whirly tune
     These winds will pipe, and thou perform
     The nodded part of pantaloon
     In thy created storm.

     VIII

     Admires thee Nature with much pride;
     She clasps thee for a gift of morn,
     Till thou art set against the tide,
     And then beware her scorn.

     IX

     Sad issue, should that strife befall
     Between thy mortal ship and thee!
     It writes the melancholy scrawl
     Of wreckage over sea.

     X

     This lady of the luting tongue,
     The flash in darkness, billow's grace,
     For thee the worship; for the young
     In muscle the embrace.

     XI

     Soar on thy manhood clear from those
     Whose toothless Winter claws at May,
     And take her as the vein of rose
     Athwart an evening grey.



     PERIANDER



     I

     How died Melissa none dares shape in words.
     A woman who is wife despotic lords
     Count faggot at the question, Shall she live!
     Her son, because his brows were black of her,
     Runs barking for his bread, a fugitive,
     And Corinth frowns on them that feed the cur.

     II

     There is no Corinth save the whip and curb
     Of Corinth, high Periander; the superb
     In magnanimity, in rule severe.
     Up on his marble fortress-tower he sits,
     The city under him: a white yoked steer,
     That bears his heart for pulse, his head for wits.

     III

     Bloom of the generous fires of his fair Spring
     Still coloured him when men forbore to sting;
     Admiring meekly where the ordered seeds
     Of his good sovereignty showed gardens trim;
     And owning that the hoe he struck at weeds
     Was author of the flowers raised face to him.

     IV

     His Corinth, to each mood subservient
     In homage, made he as an instrument
     To yield him music with scarce touch of stops.
     He breathed, it piped; he moved, it rose to fly:
     At whiles a bloodhorse racing till it drops;
     At whiles a crouching dog, on him all eye.

     V

     His wisdom men acknowledged; only one,
     The creature, issue of him, Lycophron,
     That rebel with his mother in his brows,
     Contested: such an infamous would foul
     Pirene! Little heed where he might house
     The prince gave, hearing: so the fox, the owl!

     VI

     To prove the Gods benignant to his rule,
     The years, which fasten rigid whom they cool,
     Reviewing, saw him hold the seat of power.
     A grey one asked: Who next? nor answer had:
     One greyer pointed on the pallid hour
     To come: a river dried of waters glad.

     VII

     For which of his male issue promised grip
     To stride yon people, with the curb and whip?
     This Lycophron! he sole, the father like,
     Fired prospect of a line in one strong tide,
     By right of mastery; stern will to strike;
     Pride to support the stroke: yea, Godlike pride!

     VIII

     Himself the prince beheld a failing fount.
     His line stretched back unto its holy mount:
     The thirsty onward waved for him no sign.
     Then stood before his vision that hard son.
     The seizure of a passion for his line
     Impelled him to the path of Lycophron.

     IX

     The youth was tossing pebbles in the sea;
     A figure shunned along the busy quay,
     Perforce of the harsh edict for who dared
     Address him outcast. Naming it, he crossed
     His father's look with look that proved them paired
     For stiffness, and another pebble tossed.

     X

     An exile to the Island ere nightfall
     He passed from sight, from the hushed mouths of all.
     It had resemblance to a death: and on,
     Against a coast where sapphire shattered white,
     The seasons rolled like troops of billows blown
     To spraymist. The prince gazed on capping night.

     XI

     Deaf Age spake in his ear with shouts: Thy son!
     Deep from his heart Life raved of work not done.
     He heard historic echoes moan his name,
     As of the prince in whom the race had pause;
     Till Tyranny paternity became,
     And him he hated loved he for the cause.

     XII

     Not Lycophron the exile now appeared,
     But young Periander, from the shadow cleared,
     That haunted his rebellious brows. The prince
     Grew bright for him; saw youth, if seeming loth,
     Return: and of pure pardon to convince,
     Despatched the messenger most dear with both.

     XIII

     His daughter, from the exile's Island home,
     Wrote, as a flight of halcyons o'er the foam,
     Sweet words: her brother to his father bowed;
     Accepted his peace-offering, and rejoiced.
     To bring him back a prince the father vowed,
     Commanded man the oars, the white sails hoist.

     XIV

     He waved the fleet to strain its westward way
     On to the sea-hued hills that crown the bay:
     Soil of those hospitable islanders
     Whom now his heart, for honour to his blood,
     Thanked. They should learn what boons a prince confers
     When happiness enjoins him gratitude!

     XV

     In watch upon the offing, worn with haste
     To see his youth revived, and, close embraced,
     Pardon who had subdued him, who had gained
     Surely the stoutest battle between two
     Since Titan pierced by young Apollo stained
     Earth's breast, the prince looked forth, himself looked through.

     XVI

     Errors aforetime unperceived were bared,
     To be by his young masterful repaired:
     Renewed his great ideas gone to smoke;
     His policy confirmed amid the surge
     Of States and people fretting at his yoke.
     And lo, the fleet brown-flocked on the sea-verge!

     XVII

     Oars pulled: they streamed in harbour; without cheer
     For welcome shadowed round the heaving bier.
     They, whose approach in such rare pomp and stress
     Of numbers the free islanders dismayed
     At Tyranny come masking to oppress,
     Found Lycophron this breathless, this lone-laid.

     XVIII

     Who smote the man thrown open to young joy?
     The image of the mother of his boy
     Came forth from his unwary breast in wreaths,
     With eyes. And shall a woman, that extinct,
     Smite out of dust the Powerful who breathes?
     Her loved the son; her served; they lay close-linked!

     XIX

     Dead was he, and demanding earth. Demand
     Sharper for vengeance of an instant hand,
     The Tyrant in the father heard him cry,
     And raged a plague; to prove on free Hellenes
     How prompt the Tyrant for the Persian dye;
     How black his Gods behind their marble screens.



     SOLON



     I

     The Tyrant passed, and friendlier was his eye
     On the great man of Athens, whom for foe
     He knew, than on the sycophantic fry
     That broke as waters round a galley's flow,
     Bubbles at prow and foam along the wake.
     Solidity the Thunderer could not shake,
     Beneath an adverse wind still stripping bare,
     His kinsman, of the light-in-cavern look,
     From thought drew, and a countenance could wear
     Not less at peace than fields in Attic air
     Shorn, and shown fruitful by the reaper's hook.

     II

     Most enviable so; yet much insane
     To deem of minds of men they grow! these sheep,
     By fits wild horses, need the crook and rein;
     Hot bulls by fits, pure wisdom hold they cheap,
     My Lawgiver, when fiery is the mood.
     For ones and twos and threes thy words are good;
     For thine own government are pillars: mine
     Stand acts to fit the herd; which has quick thirst,
     Rejecting elegiacs, though they shine
     On polished brass, and, worthy of the Nine,
     In showering columns from their fountain burst.

     III

     Thus museful rode the Tyrant, princely plumed,
     To his high seat upon the sacred rock:
     And Solon, blank beside his rule, resumed
     The meditation which that passing mock
     Had buffeted awhile to sallowness.
     He little loved the man, his office less,
     Yet owned him for a flower of his kind.
     Therefore the heavier curse on Athens he!
     The people grew not in themselves, but, blind,
     Accepted sight from him, to him resigned
     Their hopes of stature, rootless as at sea.

     IV

     As under sea lay Solon's work, or seemed
     By turbid shore-waves beaten day by day;
     Defaced, half formless, like an image dreamed,
     Or child that fashioned in another clay
     Appears, by strangers' hands to home returned.
     But shall the Present tyrannize us? earned
     It was in some way, justly says the sage.
     One sees not how, while husbanding regrets;
     While tossing scorn abroad from righteous rage,
     High vision is obscured; for this is age
     When robbed--more infant than the babe it frets!

     V

     Yet see Athenians treading the black path
     Laid by a prince's shadow! well content
     To wait his pleasure, shivering at his wrath:
     They bow to their accepted Orient
     With offer of the all that renders bright:
     Forgetful of the growth of men to light,
     As creatures reared on Persian milk they bow.
     Unripe! unripe! The times are overcast.
     But still may they who sowed behind the plough
     True seed fix in the mind an unborn NOW
     To make the plagues afflicting us things past.



     BELLEROPHON



     I

     Maimed, beggared, grey; seeking an alms; with nod
     Of palsy doing task of thanks for bread;
     Upon the stature of a God,
     He whom the Gods have struck bends low his head.

     II

     Weak words he has, that slip the nerveless tongue
     Deformed, like his great frame: a broken arc:
     Once radiant as the javelin flung
     Right at the centre breastplate of his mark.

     III

     Oft pausing on his white-eyed inward look,
     Some undermountain narrative he tells,
     As gapped by Lykian heat the brook
     Cut from the source that in the upland swells.

     IV

     The cottagers who dole him fruit and crust
     With patient inattention hear him prate:
     And comes the snow, and comes the dust,
     Comes the old wanderer, more bent of late.

     V

     A crazy beggar grateful for a meal
     Has ever of himself a world to say.
     For them he is an ancient wheel
     Spinning a knotted thread the livelong day.

     VI

     He cannot, nor do they, the tale connect;
     For never singer in the land had been
     Who him for theme did not reject:
     Spurned of the hoof that sprang the Hippocrene.

     VII

     Albeit a theme of flame to bring them straight
     The snorting white-winged brother of the wave,
     They hear him as a thing by fate
     Cursed in unholy babble to his grave.

     VIII

     As men that spied the wings, that heard the snort,
     Their sires have told; and of a martial prince
     Bestriding him; and old report
     Speaks of a monster slain by one long since.

     IX

     There is that story of the golden bit
     By Goddess given to tame the lightning steed:
     A mortal who could mount, and sit
     Flying, and up Olympus midway speed.

     X

     He rose like the loosed fountain's utmost leap;
     He played the star at span of heaven right o'er
     Men's heads: they saw the snowy steep,
     Saw the winged shoulders: him they saw not more.

     XI

     He fell: and says the shattered man, I fell:
     And sweeps an arm the height an eagle wins;
     And in his breast a mouthless well
     Heaves the worn patches of his coat of skins.

     XII

     Lo, this is he in whom the surgent springs
     Of recollections richer than our skies
     To feed the flow of tuneful strings,
     Show but a pool of scum for shooting flies.



     PHAETHON--ATTEMPTED IN THE GALLIAMBIC MEASURE



     At the coming up of Phoebus the all-luminous charioteer,
     Double-visaged stand the mountains in imperial multitudes,
     And with shadows dappled men sing to him, Hail, O Beneficent!
     For they shudder chill, the earth-vales, at his clouding, shudder to
     black;
     In the light of him there is music thro' the poplar and river-sedge,
     Renovation, chirp of brooks, hum of the forest--an ocean-song.
     Never pearl from ocean-hollows by the diver exultingly,
     In his breathlessness, above thrust, is as earth to Helios.
     Who usurps his place there, rashest? Aphrodite's loved one it is!
     To his son the flaming Sun-God, to the tender youth, Phaethon,
     Rule of day this day surrenders as a thing hereditary,
     Having sworn by Styx tremendous, for the proof of his parentage,
     He would grant his son's petition, whatsoever the sign thereof.
     Then, rejoiced, the stripling answered: 'Rule of day give me; give
     it me,
     Give me place that men may see me how I blaze, and transcendingly
     I, divine, proclaim my birthright.' Darkened Helios, and his
     utterance
     Choked prophetic: 'O half mortal!' he exclaimed in an agony,
     'O lost son of mine! lost son! No! put a prayer for another thing:
     Not for this: insane to wish it, and to crave the gift impious!
     Cannot other gifts my godhead shed upon thee? miraculous
     Mighty gifts to prove a blessing, that to earth thou shalt be a joy?
     Gifts of healing, wherewith men walk as the Gods beneficently;
     As a God to sway to concord hearts of men, reconciling them;
     Gifts of verse, the lyre, the laurel, therewithal that thine origin
     Shall be known even as when I strike on the string'd shell with
     melody,
     And the golden notes, like medicine, darting straight to the
     cavities,
     Fill them up, till hearts of men bound as the billows, the ships
     thereon.'
     Thus intently urged the Sun-God; but the force of his eloquence
     Was the pressing on of sea-waves scattered broad from the rocks
     away.
     What shall move a soul from madness? Lost, lost in delirium,
     Rock-fast, the adolescent to his father, irreverent,
     'By the oath! the oath! thine oath!' cried. The effulgent foreseer
     then,
     Quivering in his loins parental, on the boy's beaming countenance
     Looked and moaned, and urged him for love's sake, for sweet life's
     sake, to yield the claim,
     To abandon his mad hunger, and avert the calamity.
     But he, vehement, passionate, called out: 'Let me show I am what I
     say,
     That the taunts I hear be silenced: I am stung with their
     whispering.
     Only, Thou, my Father, Thou tell how aloft the revolving wheels,
     How aloft the cleaving horse-crests I may guide peremptorily,
     Till I drink the shadows, fire-hot, like a flower celestial,
     And my fellows see me curbing the fierce steeds, the dear dew-
     drinkers:
     Yea, for this I gaze on life's light; throw for this any sacrifice.'

     All the end foreseeing, Phoebus to his oath irrevocable
     Bowed obedient, deploring the insanity pitiless.
     Then the flame-outsnorting horses were led forth: it was so
     decreed.
     They were yoked before the glad youth by his sister-ancillaries.
     Swift the ripple ripples follow'd, as of aureate Helicon,
     Down their flanks, while they impatient pawed desire of the
     distances,
     And the bit with fury champed. Oh! unimaginable delight!
     Unimagined speed and splendour in the circle of upper air!
     Glory grander than the armed host upon earth singing victory!
     Chafed the youth with their spirit surcharged, as when blossom is
     shaken by winds,
     Marked that labour by his sister Phaethontiades finished, quick
     On the slope of the car his forefoot set assured: and the morning
     rose:
     Seeing whom, and what a day dawned, stood the God, as in harvest
     fields,
     When the reaper grasps the full sheaf and the sickle that severs it:
     Hugged the withered head with one hand, with the other, to indicate
     (If this woe might be averted, this immeasurable evil),
     Laid the kindling course in view, told how the reins to manipulate:
     Named the horses fondly, fearful, caution'd urgently betweenwhiles:
     Their diverging tempers dwelt on, and their wantonness, wickedness,
     That the voice of Gods alone held in restraint; but the voice of
     Gods;
     None but Gods can curb. He spake: vain were the words: scarcely
     listening,
     Mounted Phaethon, swinging reins loose, and, 'Behold me, companions,
     It is I here, I!' he shouted, glancing down with supremacy;
     'Not to any of you was this gift granted ever in annals of men;
     I alone what only Gods can, I alone am governing day!'
     Short the triumph, brief his rapture: see a hurricane suddenly
     Beat the lifting billow crestless, roll it broken this way and that;
     -
     At the leap on yielding ether, in despite of his reprimand,
     Swayed tumultuous the fire-steeds, plunging reckless hither and yon;
     Unto men a great amazement, all agaze at the Troubled East:-
     Pitifully for mastery striving in ascension, the charioteer,
     Reminiscent, drifts of counsel caught confused in his arid wits;
     The reins stiff ahind his shoulder madly pulled for the mastery,
     Till a thunder off the tense chords thro' his ears dinned horrible.
     Panic seized him: fled his vision of inviolability;
     Fled the dream that he of mortals rode mischances predominant;
     And he cried, 'Had I petitioned for a cup of chill aconite,
     My descent to awful Hades had been soft, for now must I go
     With the curse by father Zeus cast on ambition immoderate.
     Oh, my sisters! Thou, my Goddess, in whose love I was enviable,
     From whose arms I rushed befrenzied, what a wreck will this body be,
     That admired of thee stood rose-warm in the courts where thy
     mysteries
     Celebration had from me, me the most splendidly privileged!
     Never more shall I thy temple fill with incenses bewildering;
     Not again hear thy half-murmurs--I am lost!--never, never more.
     I am wrecked on seas of air, hurled to my death in a vessel of
     flame!
     Hither, sisters! Father, save me! Hither, succour me, Cypria!'

     Now a wail of men to Zeus rang: from Olympus the Thunderer
     Saw the rage of the havoc wide-mouthed, the bright car
     superimpending
     Over Asia, Africa, low down; ruin flaming over the vales;
     Light disastrous rising savage out of smoke inveterately;
     Beast-black, conflagration like a menacing shadow move
     With voracious roaring southward, where aslant, insufferable,
     The bright steeds careered their parched way down an arc of the
     firmament.
     For the day grew like to thick night, and the orb was its beacon-
     fire,
     And from hill to hill of darkness burst the day's apparition forth.
     Lo, a wrestler, not a God, stood in the chariot ever lowering:
     Lo, the shape of one who raced there to outstrip the legitimate
     hours:
     Lo, the ravish'd beams of Phoebus dragged in shame at the chariot-
     wheels:
     Light of days of happy pipings by the mead-singing rivulets!
     Lo, lo, increasing lustre, torrid breath to the nostrils; lo,
     Torrid brilliancies thro' the vapours lighten swifter, penetrate
     them,
     Fasten merciless, ruminant, hueless, on earth's frame crackling
     busily.
     He aloft, the frenzied driver, in the glow of the universe,
     Like the paling of the dawn-star withers visibly, he aloft:
     Bitter fury in his aspect, bitter death in the heart of him.
     Crouch the herds, contract the reptiles, crouch the lions under
     their paws.
     White as metal in the furnace are the faces of human-kind:
     Inarticulate creatures of earth dumb all await the ultimate shock.
     To the bolt he launched, 'Strike dead, thou,' uttered Zeus, very
     terrible;
     'Perish folly, else 'tis man's fate'; and the bolt flew unerringly.
     Then the kindler stooped; from the torch-car down the measureless
     altitudes
     Leaned his rayless head, relinquished rein and footing, raised not a
     cry.
     Like the flower on the river's surface when expanding it vanishes,
     Gave his limbs to right and left, quenched: and so fell he
     precipitate,
     Seen of men as a glad rain-fall, sending coolness yet ere it comes:
     So he showered above them, shadowed o'er the blue archipelagoes,
     O'er the silken-shining pastures of the continents and the isles;
     So descending brought revival to the greenery of our earth.

     Lither, noisy in the breezes now his sisters shivering weep,
     By the river flowing smooth out to the vexed sea of Adria,
     Where he fell, and where they suffered sudden change to the
     tremulous
     Ever-wailful trees bemoaning him, a bruised purple cyclamen.



     SEED-TIME



     I

     Flowers of the willow-herb are wool;
     Flowers of the briar berries red;
     Speeding their seed as the breeze may rule,
     Flowers of the thistle loosen the thread.
     Flowers of the clematis drip in beard,
     Slack from the fir-tree youngly climbed;
     Chaplets in air, flies foliage seared;
     Heeled upon earth, lie clusters rimed.

     II

     Where were skies of the mantle stained
     Orange and scarlet, a coat of frieze
     Travels from North till day has waned,
     Tattered, soaked in the ditch's dyes;
     Tumbles the rook under grey or slate;
     Else enfolding us, damps to the bone;
     Narrows the world to my neighbour's gate;
     Paints me Life as a wheezy crone.

     III

     Now seems none but the spider lord;
     Star in circle his web waits prey,
     Silvering bush-mounds, blue brushing sward;
     Slow runs the hour, swift flits the ray.
     Now to his thread-shroud is he nigh,
     Nigh to the tangle where wings are sealed,
     He who frolicked the jewelled fly;
     All is adroop on the down and the weald.

     IV

     Mists more lone for the sheep-bell enwrap
     Nights that tardily let slip a morn
     Paler than moons, and on noontide's lap
     Flame dies cold, like the rose late born.
     Rose born late, born withered in bud! -
     I, even I, for a zenith of sun
     Cry, to fulfil me, nourish my blood:
     O for a day of the long light, one!

     V

     Master the blood, nor read by chills,
     Earth admonishes: Hast thou ploughed,
     Sown, reaped, harvested grain for the mills,
     Thou hast the light over shadow of cloud.
     Steadily eyeing, before that wail
     Animal-infant, thy mind began,
     Momently nearer me: should sight fail,
     Plod in the track of the husbandman.

     VI

     Verily now is our season of seed,
     Now in our Autumn; and Earth discerns
     Them that have served her in them that can read,
     Glassing, where under the surface she burns,
     Quick at her wheel, while the fuel, decay,
     Brightens the fire of renewal: and we?
     Death is the word of a bovine day,
     Know you the breast of the springing To-be.



     HARD WEATHER



     Bursts from a rending East in flaws
     The young green leaflet's harrier, sworn
     To strew the garden, strip the shaws,
     And show our Spring with banner torn.
     Was ever such virago morn?
     The wind has teeth, the wind has claws.
     All the wind's wolves through woods are loose,
     The wild wind's falconry aloft.
     Shrill underfoot the grassblade shrews,
     At gallop, clumped, and down the croft
     Bestrid by shadows, beaten, tossed;
     It seems a scythe, it seems a rod.
     The howl is up at the howl's accost;
     The shivers greet and the shivers nod.

     Is the land ship? we are rolled, we drive
     Tritonly, cleaving hiss and hum;
     Whirl with the dead, or mount or dive,
     Or down in dregs, or on in scum.
     And drums the distant, pipes the near,
     And vale and hill are grey in grey,
     As when the surge is crumbling sheer,
     And sea-mews wing the haze of spray.
     Clouds--are they bony witches?--swarms,
     Darting swift on the robber's flight,
     Hurry an infant sky in arms:
     It peeps, it becks; 'tis day, 'tis night.
     Black while over the loop of blue
     The swathe is closed, like shroud on corse.
     Lo, as if swift the Furies flew,
     The Fates at heel at a cry to horse!

     Interpret me the savage whirr:
     And is it Nature scourged, or she,
     Her offspring's executioner,
     Reducing land to barren sea?
     But is there meaning in a day
     When this fierce angel of the air,
     Intent to throw, and haply slay,
     Can for what breath of life we bear,
     Exact the wrestle?--Call to mind
     The many meanings glistening up
     When Nature to her nurslings kind,
     Hands them the fruitage and the cup!
     And seek we rich significance
     Not otherwhere than with those tides
     Of pleasure on the sunned expanse,
     Whose flow deludes, whose ebb derides?

     Look in the face of men who fare
     Lock-mouthed, a match in lungs and thews
     For this fierce angel of the air,
     To twist with him and take his bruise.
     That is the face beloved of old
     Of Earth, young mother of her brood:
     Nor broken for us shows the mould
     When muscle is in mind renewed:
     Though farther from her nature rude,
     Yet nearer to her spirit's hold:
     And though of gentler mood serene,
     Still forceful of her fountain-jet.
     So shall her blows be shrewdly met,
     Be luminously read the scene
     Where Life is at her grindstone set,
     That she may give us edgeing keen,
     String us for battle, till as play
     The common strokes of fortune shower.
     Such meaning in a dagger-day
     Our wits may clasp to wax in power.
     Yea, feel us warmer at her breast,
     By spin of blood in lusty drill,
     Than when her honeyed hands caressed,
     And Pleasure, sapping, seemed to fill.

     Behold the life at ease; it drifts.
     The sharpened life commands its course.
     She winnows, winnows roughly; sifts,
     To dip her chosen in her source:
     Contention is the vital force,
     Whence pluck they brain, her prize of gifts,
     Sky of the senses! on which height,
     Not disconnected, yet released,
     They see how spirit comes to light,
     Through conquest of the inner beast,
     Which Measure tames to movement sane,
     In harmony with what is fair.
     Never is Earth misread by brain:
     That is the welling of her, there
     The mirror: with one step beyond,
     For likewise is it voice; and more,
     Benignest kinship bids respond,
     When wail the weak, and them restore
     Whom days as fell as this may rive,
     While Earth sits ebon in her gloom,
     Us atomies of life alive
     Unheeding, bent on life to come.
     Her children of the labouring brain,
     These are the champions of the race,
     True parents, and the sole humane,
     With understanding for their base.
     Earth yields the milk, but all her mind
     Is vowed to thresh for stouter stock.
     Her passion for old giantkind,
     That scaled the mount, uphurled the rock,
     Devolves on them who read aright
     Her meaning and devoutly serve;
     Nor in her starlessness of night
     Peruse her with the craven nerve:
     But even as she from grass to corn,
     To eagle high from grubbing mole,
     Prove in strong brain her noblest born,
     The station for the flight of soul.



     THE SOUTH-WESTER



     Day of the cloud in fleets! O day
     Of wedded white and blue, that sail
     Immingled, with a footing ray
     In shadow-sandals down our vale! -
     And swift to ravish golden meads,
     Swift up the run of turf it speeds,
     Thy bright of head and dark of heel,
     To where the hilltop flings on sky,
     As hawk from wrist or dust from wheel,
     The tiptoe sealers tossed to fly:-
     Thee the last thunder's caverned peal
     Delivered from a wailful night:
     All dusky round thy cradled light,
     Those brine-born issues, now in bloom
     Transfigured, wreathed as raven's plume
     And briony-leaf to watch thee lie:
     Dark eyebrows o'er a dreamful eye
     Nigh opening: till in the braid
     Of purpled vapours thou wert rosed:
     Till that new babe a Goddess maid
     Appeared and vividly disclosed
     Her beat of life: then crimson played
     On edges of the plume and leaf:
     Shape had they and fair feature brief,
     The wings, the smiles: they flew the breast,
     Earth's milk. But what imperial march
     Their standards led for earth, none guessed
     Ere upward of a coloured arch,
     An arrow straining eager head
     Lightened, and high for zenith sped.
     Fierier followed; followed Fire.
     Name the young lord of Earth's desire,
     Whose look her wine is, and whose mouth
     Her music! Beauteous was she seen
     Beneath her midway West of South;
     And sister was her quivered green
     To sapphire of the Nereid eyes
     On sea when sun is breeze; she winked
     As they, and waved, heaved waterwise
     Her flood of leaves and grasses linked:
     A myriad lustrous butterflies
     A moment in the fluttering sheen;
     Becapped with the slate air that throws
     The reindeer's antlers black between
     Low-frowning and wide-fallen snows,
     A minute after; hooded, stoled
     To suit a graveside Season's dirge.
     Lo, but the breaking of a surge,
     And she is in her lover's fold,
     Illumined o'er a boundless range
     Anew: and through quick morning hours
     The Tropic-Arctic countercharge
     Did seem to pant in beams and showers.

     But noon beheld a larger heaven;
     Beheld on our reflecting field
     The Sower to the Bearer given,
     And both their inner sweetest yield,
     Fresh as when dews were grey or first
     Received the flush of hues athirst.
     Heard we the woodland, eyeing sun,
     As harp and harper were they one.
     A murky cloud a fair pursued,
     Assailed, and felt the limbs elude:
     He sat him down to pipe his woe,
     And some strange beast of sky became:
     A giant's club withheld the blow;
     A milky cloud went all to flame.
     And there were groups where silvery springs
     The ethereal forest showed begirt
     By companies in choric rings,
     Whom but to see made ear alert.
     For music did each movement rouse,
     And motion was a minstrel's rage
     To have our spirits out of house,
     And bathe them on the open page.
     This was a day that knew not age.
     Since flew the vapoury twos and threes
     From western pile to eastern rack;
     As on from peaks of Pyrenees
     To Graians; youngness ruled the track.
     When songful beams were shut in caves,
     And rainy drapery swept across;
     When the ranked clouds were downy waves,
     Breast of swan, eagle, albatross,
     In ordered lines to screen the blue,
     Youngest of light was nigh, we knew.
     The silver finger of it laughed
     Along the narrow rift: it shot,
     Slew the huge gloom with golden shaft,
     Then haled on high the volumed blot,
     To build the hurling palace, cleave
     The dazzling chasm; the flying nests,
     The many glory-garlands weave,
     Whose presence not our sight attests
     Till wonder with the splendour blent,
     And passion for the beauty flown,
     Make evanescence permanent,
     The thing at heart our endless own.

     Only at gathered eve knew we
     The marvels of the day: for then
     Mount upon mountain out of sea
     Arose, and to our spacious ken
     Trebled sublime Olympus round
     In towering amphitheatre.
     Colossal on enormous mound,
     Majestic gods we saw confer.
     They wafted the Dream-messenger
     From off the loftiest, the crowned:
     That Lady of the hues of foam
     In sun-rays: who, close under dome,
     A figure on the foot's descent,
     Irradiate to vapour went,
     As one whose mission was resigned,
     Dispieced, undraped, dissolved to threads;
     Melting she passed into the mind,
     Where immortal with mortal weds.

     Whereby was known that we had viewed
     The union of our earth and skies
     Renewed: nor less alive renewed
     Than when old bards, in nature wise,
     Conceived pure beauty given to eyes,
     And with undyingness imbued.
     Pageant of man's poetic brain,
     His grand procession of the song,
     It was; the Muses and their train;
     Their God to lead the glittering throng:
     At whiles a beat of forest gong;
     At whiles a glimpse of Python slain.
     Mostly divinest harmony,
     The lyre, the dance. We could believe
     A life in orb and brook and tree,
     And cloud; and still holds Memory
     A morning in the eyes of eve.



     THE THRUSH IN FEBRUARY



     I know him, February's thrush,
     And loud at eve he valentines
     On sprays that paw the naked bush
     Where soon will sprout the thorns and bines.

     Now ere the foreign singer thrills
     Our vale his plain-song pipe he pours,
     A herald of the million bills;
     And heed him not, the loss is yours.

     My study, flanked with ivied fir
     And budded beech with dry leaves curled,
     Perched over yew and juniper,
     He neighbours, piping to his world:-

     The wooded pathways dank on brown,
     The branches on grey cloud a web,
     The long green roller of the down,
     An image of the deluge-ebb:-

     And farther, they may hear along
     The stream beneath the poplar row.
     By fits, like welling rocks, the song
     Spouts of a blushful Spring in flow.

     But most he loves to front the vale
     When waves of warm South-western rains
     Have left our heavens clear in pale,
     With faintest beck of moist red veins:

     Vermilion wings, by distance held
     To pause aflight while fleeting swift:
     And high aloft the pearl inshelled
     Her lucid glow in glow will lift;

     A little south of coloured sky;
     Directing, gravely amorous,
     The human of a tender eye
     Through pure celestial on us:

     Remote, not alien; still, not cold;
     Unraying yet, more pearl than star;
     She seems a while the vale to hold
     In trance, and homelier makes the far.

     Then Earth her sweet unscented breathes,
     An orb of lustre quits the height;
     And like blue iris-flags, in wreaths
     The sky takes darkness, long ere quite.

     His Island voice then shall you hear,
     Nor ever after separate
     From such a twilight of the year
     Advancing to the vernal gate.

     He sings me, out of Winter's throat,
     The young time with the life ahead;
     And my young time his leaping note
     Recalls to spirit-mirth from dead.

     Imbedded in a land of greed,
     Of mammon-quakings dire as Earth's,
     My care was but to soothe my need;
     At peace among the littleworths.

     To light and song my yearning aimed;
     To that deep breast of song and light
     Which men have barrenest proclaimed;
     As 'tis to senses pricked with fright.

     So mine are these new fruitings rich
     The simple to the common brings;
     I keep the youth of souls who pitch
     Their joy in this old heart of things:

     Who feel the Coming young as aye,
     Thrice hopeful on the ground we plough;
     Alive for life, awake to die;
     One voice to cheer the seedling Now.

     Full lasting is the song, though he,
     The singer, passes: lasting too,
     For souls not lent in usury,
     The rapture of the forward view.

     With that I bear my senses fraught
     Till what I am fast shoreward drives.
     They are the vessel of the Thought.
     The vessel splits, the Thought survives.

     Nought else are we when sailing brave,
     Save husks to raise and bid it burn.
     Glimpse of its livingness will wave
     A light the senses can discern

     Across the river of the death,
     Their close. Meanwhile, O twilight bird
     Of promise! bird of happy breath!
     I hear, I would the City heard.

     The City of the smoky fray;
     A prodded ox, it drags and moans:
     Its Morrow no man's child; its Day
     A vulture's morsel beaked to bones.

     It strives without a mark for strife;
     It feasts beside a famished host:
     The loose restraint of wanton life,
     That threatened penance in the ghost!

     Yet there our battle urges; there
     Spring heroes many: issuing thence,
     Names that should leave no vacant air
     For fresh delight in confidence.

     Life was to them the bag of grain,
     And Death the weedy harrow's tooth.
     Those warriors of the sighting brain
     Give worn Humanity new youth.

     Our song and star are they to lead
     The tidal multitude and blind
     From bestial to the higher breed
     By fighting souls of love divined,

     They scorned the ventral dream of peace,
     Unknown in nature. This they knew:
     That life begets with fair increase
     Beyond the flesh, if life be true.

     Just reason based on valiant blood,
     The instinct bred afield would match
     To pipe thereof a swelling flood,
     Were men of Earth made wise in watch.

     Though now the numbers count as drops
     An urn might bear, they father Time.
     She shapes anew her dusty crops;
     Her quick in their own likeness climb.

     Of their own force do they create;
     They climb to light, in her their root.
     Your brutish cry at muffled fate
     She smites with pangs of worse than brute.

     She, judged of shrinking nerves, appears
     A Mother whom no cry can melt;
     But read her past desires and fears,
     The letters on her breast are spelt.

     A slayer, yea, as when she pressed
     Her savage to the slaughter-heaps,
     To sacrifice she prompts her best:
     She reaps them as the sower reaps.

     But read her thought to speed the race,
     And stars rush forth of blackest night:
     You chill not at a cold embrace
     To come, nor dread a dubious might.

     Her double visage, double voice,
     In oneness rise to quench the doubt.
     This breath, her gift, has only choice
     Of service, breathe we in or out.

     Since Pain and Pleasure on each hand
     Led our wild steps from slimy rock
     To yonder sweeps of gardenland,
     We breathe but to be sword or block.

     The sighting brain her good decree
     Accepts; obeys those guides, in faith,
     By reason hourly fed, that she,
     To some the clod, to some the wraith,

     Is more, no mask; a flame, a stream.
     Flame, stream, are we, in mid career
     From torrent source, delirious dream,
     To heaven-reflecting currents clear.

     And why the sons of Strength have been
     Her cherished offspring ever; how
     The Spirit served by her is seen
     Through Law; perusing love will show.

     Love born of knowledge, love that gains
     Vitality as Earth it mates,
     The meaning of the Pleasures, Pains,
     The Life, the Death, illuminates.

     For love we Earth, then serve we all;
     Her mystic secret then is ours:
     We fall, or view our treasures fall,
     Unclouded, as beholds her flowers

     Earth, from a night of frosty wreck,
     Enrobed in morning's mounted fire,
     When lowly, with a broken neck,
     The crocus lays her cheek to mire.



     THE APPEASEMENT OF DEMETER



     I

     Demeter devastated our good land,
     In blackness for her daughter snatched below.
     Smoke-pillar or loose hillock was the sand,
     Where soil had been to clasp warm seed and throw
     The wheat, vine, olive, ripe to Summer's ray.
     Now whether night advancing, whether day,
     Scarce did the baldness show:
     The hand of man was a defeated hand.

     II

     Necessity, the primal goad to growth,
     Stood shrunken; Youth and Age appeared as one;
     Like Winter Summer; good as labour sloth;
     Nor was there answer wherefore beamed the sun,
     Or why men drew the breath to carry pain.
     High reared the ploughshare, broken lay the wain,
     Idly the flax-wheel spun
     Unridered: starving lords were wasp and moth.

     III

     Lean grassblades losing green on their bent flags,
     Sang chilly to themselves; lone honey-bees
     Pursued the flowers that were not with dry bags;
     Sole sound aloud the snap of sapless trees,
     More sharp than slingstones on hard breastplates hurled.
     Back to first chaos tumbled the stopped world,
     Careless to lure or please.
     A nature of gaunt ribs, an earth of crags.

     IV

     No smile Demeter cast: the gloom she saw,
     Well draped her direful musing; for in gloom,
     In thicker gloom, deep down the cavern-maw,
     Her sweet had vanished; liker unto whom,
     And whose pale place of habitation mute,
     She and all seemed where Seasons, pledged for fruit
     Anciently, gaped for bloom:
     Where hand of man was as a plucked fowl's claw.

     V

     The wrathful Queen descended on a vale,
     That ere the ravished hour for richness heaved.
     Iambe, maiden of the merry tale,
     Beside her eyed the once red-cheeked, green-leaved.
     It looked as if the Deluge had withdrawn.
     Pity caught at her throat; her jests were gone.
     More than for her who grieved,
     She could for this waste home have piped the wail.

     VI

     Iambe, her dear mountain-rivulet
     To waken laughter from cold stones, beheld
     A riven wheatfield cracking for the wet,
     And seed like infant's teeth, that never swelled,
     Apeep up flinty ridges, milkless round.
     Teeth of the giants marked she where thin ground
     Rocky in spikes rebelled
     Against the hand here slack as rotted net.

     VII

     The valley people up the ashen scoop
     She beckoned, aiming hopelessly to win
     Her Mistress in compassion of yon group
     So pinched and wizened; with their aged grin,
     For lack of warmth to smile on mouths of woe,
     White as in chalk outlining little O,
     Dumb, from a falling chin;
     Young, old, alike half-bent to make the hoop.

     VIII

     Their tongues of birds they wagged, weak-voiced as when
     Dark underwaters the recesses choke;
     With cluck and upper quiver of a hen
     In grasp, past peeking: cry before the croak.
     Relentlessly their gold-haired Heaven, their fount
     Bountiful of old days, heard them recount
     This and that cruel stroke:
     Nor eye nor ear had she for piteous men.

     IX

     A figure of black rock by sunbeams crowned
     Through stormclouds, where the volumed shades enfold
     An earth in awe before the claps resound
     And woods and dwellings are as billows rolled,
     The barren Nourisher unmelted shed
     Death from the looks that wandered with the dead
     Out of the realms of gold,
     In famine for her lost, her lost unfound.

     X

     Iambe from her Mistress tripped; she raised
     The cattle-call above the moan of prayer;
     And slowly out of fields their fancy grazed,
     Among the droves, defiled a horse and mare:
     The wrecks of horse and mare: such ribs as view
     Seas that have struck brave ships ashore, while through
     Shoots the swift foamspit: bare
     They nodded, and Demeter on them gazed.

     XI

     Howbeit the season of the dancing blood,
     Forgot was horse of mare, yea, mare of horse:
     Reversed, each head at either's flank, they stood.
     Whereat the Goddess, in a dim remorse,
     Laid hand on them, and smacked; and her touch pricked.
     Neighing within, at either's flank they licked;
     Played on a moment's force
     At courtship, withering to the crazy nod.

     XII

     The nod was that we gather for consent;
     And mournfully amid the group a dame,
     Interpreting the thing in nature meant,
     Her hands held out like bearers of the flame,
     And nodded for the negative sideways.
     Keen at her Mistress glanced Iambe: rays
     From the Great Mother came:
     Her lips were opened wide; the curse was rent.

     XIII

     She laughed: since our first harvesting heard none
     Like thunder of the song of heart: her face,
     The dreadful darkness, shook to mounted sun,
     And peal on peal across the hills held chase.
     She laughed herself to water; laughed to fire;
     Laughed the torrential laugh of dam and sire
     Full of the marrowy race.
     Her laughter, Gods! was flesh on skeleton.

     XIV

     The valley people huddled, broke, afraid,
     Assured, and taking lightning in the veins,
     They puffed, they leaped, linked hands, together swayed,
     Unwitting happiness till golden rains
     Of tears in laughter, laughter weeping, smote
     Knowledge of milky mercy from that throat
     Pouring to heal their pains:
     And one bold youth set mouth at a shy maid.

     XV

     Iambe clapped to see the kindly lusts
     Inspire the valley people, still on seas,
     Like poplar-tops relieved from stress of gusts,
     With rapture in their wonderment; but these,
     Low homage being rendered, ran to plough,
     Fed by the laugh, as by the mother cow
     Calves at the teats they tease:
     Soon drove they through the yielding furrow-crusts.

     XVI

     Uprose the blade in green, the leaf in red,
     The tree of water and the tree of wood:
     And soon among the branches overhead
     Gave beauty juicy issue sweet for food.
     O Laughter! beauty plumped and love had birth.
     Laughter! O thou reviver of sick Earth!
     Good for the spirit, good
     For body, thou! to both art wine and bread!



     EARTH AND A WEDDED WOMAN



     I

     The shepherd, with his eye on hazy South,
     Has told of rain upon the fall of day.
     But promise is there none for Susan's drouth,
     That he will come, who keeps in dry delay.
     The freshest of the village three years gone,
     She hangs as the white field-rose hangs short-lived;
     And she and Earth are one
     In withering unrevived.
     Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain!
     And welcome waterspouts, had we sweet rain!

     II

     Ah, what is Marriage, says each pouting maid,
     When she who wedded with the soldier hides
     At home as good as widowed in the shade,
     A lighthouse to the girls that would be brides:
     Nor dares to give a lad an ogle, nor
     To dream of dancing, but must hang and moan,
     Her husband in the war,
     And she to lie alone.
     Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain!
     And welcome waterspouts, had we sweet rain!

     III

     They have not known; they are not in the stream;
     Light as the flying seed-ball is their play,
     The silly maids! and happy souls they seem;
     Yet Grief would not change fates with such as they.
     They have not struck the roots which meet the fires
     Beneath, and bind us fast with Earth, to know
     The strength of her desires,
     The sternness of her woe.
     Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain!
     And welcome waterspouts, had we sweet rain!

     IV

     Now, shepherd, see thy word, where without shower
     A borderless low blotting Westward spreads.
     The hall-clock holds the valley on the hour;
     Across an inner chamber thunder treads:
     The dead leaf trips, the tree-top swings, the floor
     Of dust whirls, dropping lumped: near thunder speaks,
     And drives the dames to door,
     Their kerchiefs flapped at cheeks.
     Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain!
     And welcome waterspouts of blessed rain!

     V

     Through night, with bedroom window wide for air,
     Lay Susan tranced to hear all heaven descend:
     And gurgling voices came of Earth, and rare,
     Past flowerful, breathings, deeper than life's end,
     From her heaved breast of sacred common mould;
     Whereby this lone-laid wife was moved to feel
     Unworded things and old
     To her pained heart appeal.
     Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain!
     And down in deluges of blessed rain!

     VI

     At morn she stood to live for ear and sight,
     Love sky or cloud, or rose or grasses drenched.
     A lureful devil, that in glow-worm light
     Set languor writhing all its folds, she quenched.
     But she would muse when neighbours praised her face,
     Her services, and staunchness to her mate:
     Knowing by some dim trace,
     The change might bear a date.
     Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain!
     Thrice beauteous is our sunshine after rain!



     MOTHER TO BABE



     I

     Fleck of sky you are,
     Dropped through branches dark,
     O my little one, mine!
     Promise of the star,
     Outpour of the lark;
     Beam and song divine.

     II

     See this precious gift,
     Steeping in new birth
     All my being, for sign
     Earth to heaven can lift,
     Heaven descend on earth,
     Both in one be mine!

     III

     Life in light you glass
     When you peep and coo,
     You, my little one, mine!
     Brooklet chirps to grass,
     Daisy looks in dew
     Up to dear sunshine.



     WOODLAND PEACE



     Sweet as Eden is the air,
     And Eden-sweet the ray.
     No Paradise is lost for them
     Who foot by branching root and stem,
     And lightly with the woodland share
     The change of night and day.

     Here all say,
     We serve her, even as I:
     We brood, we strive to sky,
     We gaze upon decay,
     We wot of life through death,
     How each feeds each we spy;
     And is a tangle round,
     Are patient; what is dumb
     We question not, nor ask
     The silent to give sound,
     The hidden to unmask,
     The distant to draw near.

     And this the woodland saith:
     I know not hope or fear;
     I take whate'er may come;
     I raise my head to aspects fair,
     From foul I turn away.

     Sweet as Eden is the air,
     And Eden-sweet the ray.



     THE QUESTION WHITHER



     I

     When we have thrown off this old suit,
     So much in need of mending,
     To sink among the naked mute,
     Is that, think you, our ending?
     We follow many, more we lead,
     And you who sadly turf us,
     Believe not that all living seed
     Must flower above the surface.

     II

     Sensation is a gracious gift,
     But were it cramped to station,
     The prayer to have it cast adrift
     Would spout from all sensation.
     Enough if we have winked to sun,
     Have sped the plough a season;
     There is a soul for labour done,
     Endureth fixed as reason.

     III

     Then let our trust be firm in Good,
     Though we be of the fasting;
     Our questions are a mortal brood,
     Our work is everlasting.
     We children of Beneficence
     Are in its being sharers;
     And Whither vainer sounds than Whence,
     For word with such wayfarers.



     OUTER AND INNER



     I

     From twig to twig the spider weaves
     At noon his webbing fine.
     So near to mute the zephyrs flute
     That only leaflets dance.
     The sun draws out of hazel leaves
     A smell of woodland wine.
     I wake a swarm to sudden storm
     At any step's advance.

     II

     Along my path is bugloss blue,
     The star with fruit in moss;
     The foxgloves drop from throat to top
     A daily lesser bell.
     The blackest shadow, nurse of dew,
     Has orange skeins across;
     And keenly red is one thin thread
     That flashing seems to swell.

     III

     My world I note ere fancy comes,
     Minutest hushed observe:
     What busy bits of motioned wits
     Through antlered mosswork strive.
     But now so low the stillness hums,
     My springs of seeing swerve,
     For half a wink to thrill and think
     The woods with nymphs alive.

     IV

     I neighbour the invisible
     So close that my consent
     Is only asked for spirits masked
     To leap from trees and flowers.
     And this because with them I dwell
     In thought, while calmly bent
     To read the lines dear Earth designs
     Shall speak her life on ours.

     V

     Accept, she says; it is not hard
     In woods; but she in towns
     Repeats, accept; and have we wept,
     And have we quailed with fears,
     Or shrunk with horrors, sure reward
     We have whom knowledge crowns;
     Who see in mould the rose unfold,
     The soul through blood and tears.



     NATURE AND LIFE



     I

     Leave the uproar: at a leap
     Thou shalt strike a woodland path,
     Enter silence, not of sleep,
     Under shadows, not of wrath;
     Breath which is the spirit's bath
     In the old Beginnings find,
     And endow them with a mind,
     Seed for seedling, swathe for swathe.
     That gives Nature to us, this
     Give we her, and so we kiss.

     II

     Fruitful is it so: but hear
     How within the shell thou art,
     Music sounds; nor other near
     Can to such a tremor start.
     Of the waves our life is part;
     They our running harvests bear:
     Back to them for manful air,
     Laden with the woodland's heart!
     That gives Battle to us, this
     Give we it, and good the kiss.



     DIRGE IN WOODS



     A wind sways the pines,
     And below
     Not a breath of wild air;
     Still as the mosses that glow
     On the flooring and over the lines
     Of the roots here and there.
     The pine-tree drops its dead;
     They are quiet, as under the sea.
     Overhead, overhead
     Rushes life in a race,
     As the clouds the clouds chase;
     And we go,
     And we drop like the fruits of the tree,
     Even we,
     Even so.



     A FAITH ON TRIAL



     On the morning of May,
     Ere the children had entered my gate
     With their wreaths and mechanical lay,
     A metal ding-dong of the date!
     I mounted our hill, bearing heart
     That had little of life save its weight:
     The crowned Shadow poising dart
     Hung over her: she, my own,
     My good companion, mate,
     Pulse of me: she who had shown
     Fortitude quiet as Earth's
     At the shedding of leaves. And around
     The sky was in garlands of cloud,
     Winning scents from unnumbered new births,
     Pointed buds, where the woods were browned
     By a mouldered beechen shroud;
     Or over our meads of the vale,
     Such an answer to sun as he,
     Brave in his gold; to a sound,
     None sweeter, of woods flapping sail,
     With the first full flood of our year,
     For their voyage on lustreful sea:
     Unto what curtained haven in chief,
     Will be writ in the book of the sere.
     But surely the crew are we,
     Eager or stamped or bowed;
     Counted thinner at fall of the leaf.
     Grief heard them, and passed like a bier.
     Due Summerward, lo, they were set,
     In volumes of foliage proud,
     On the heave of their favouring tides,
     And their song broadened out to the cheer
     When a neck of the ramping surf
     Rattles thunder a boat overrides.
     All smiles ran the highways wet;
     The worm drew its links from the turf;
     The bird of felicity loud
     Spun high, and a South wind blew.
     Weak out of sheath downy leaves
     Of the beech quivered lucid as dew,
     Their radiance asking, who grieves;
     For nought of a sorrow they knew:
     No space to the dread wrestle vowed,
     No chamber in shadow of night.
     At times as the steadier breeze
     Flutter-huddled their twigs to a crowd,
     The beam of them wafted my sight
     To league-long sun upon seas:
     The golden path we had crossed
     Many years, till her birthland swung
     Recovered to vision from lost,
     A light in her filial glance.
     And sweet was her voice with the tongue,
     The speechful tongue of her France,
     Soon at ripple about us, like rills
     Ever busy with little: away
     Through her Normandy, down where the mills
     Dot at lengths a rivercourse, grey
     As its bordering poplars bent
     To gusts off the plains above.
     Old stone chateau and farms,
     Home of her birth and her love!
     On the thread of the pasture you trace,
     By the river, their milk, for miles,
     Spotted once with the English tent,
     In days of the tocsin's alarms,
     To tower of the tallest of piles,
     The country's surveyor breast-high.
     Home of her birth and her love!
     Home of a diligent race;
     Thrifty, deft-handed to ply
     Shuttle or needle, and woo
     Sun to the roots of the pear
     Frogging each mud-walled cot.
     The elders had known her in arms.
     There plucked we the bluet, her hue
     Of the deeper forget-me-not;
     Well wedding her ripe-wheat hair.

     I saw, unsighting: her heart
     I saw, and the home of her love
     There printed, mournfully rent:
     Her ebbing adieu, her adieu,
     And the stride of the Shadow athwart.
     For one of our Autumns there! . . .
     Straight as the flight of a dove
     We went, swift winging we went.
     We trod solid ground, we breathed air,
     The heavens were unbroken. Break they,
     The word of the world is adieu:
     Her word: and the torrents are round,
     The jawed wolf-waters of prey.
     We stand upon isles, who stand:
     A Shadow before us, and back,
     A phantom the habited land.
     We may cry to the Sunderer, spare
     That dearest! he loosens his pack.
     Arrows we breathe, not air.
     The memories tenderly bound
     To us are a drifting crew,
     Amid grey-gapped waters for ground.
     Alone do we stand, each one,
     Till rootless as they we strew
     Those deeps of the corse-like stare
     At a foreign and stony sun.

     Eyes had I but for the scene
     Of my circle, what neighbourly grew.
     If haply no finger lay out
     To the figures of days that had been,
     I gathered my herb, and endured;
     My old cloak wrapped me about.
     Unfooted was ground-ivy blue,
     Whose rustic shrewd odour allured
     In Spring's fresh of morning: unseen
     Her favourite wood-sorrel bell
     As yet, though the leaves' green floor
     Awaited their flower, that would tell
     Of a red-veined moist yestreen,
     With its droop and the hues it wore,
     When we two stood overnight
     One, in the dark van-glow
     On our hill-top, seeing beneath
     Our household's twinkle of light
     Through spruce-boughs, gem of a wreath.

     Budding, the service-tree, white
     Almost as whitebeam, threw,
     From the under of leaf upright,
     Flecks like a showering snow
     On the flame-shaped junipers green,
     On the sombre mounds of the yew.
     Like silvery tapers bright
     By a solemn cathedral screen,
     They glistened to closer view.
     Turf for a rooks' revel striped
     Pleased those devourers astute.
     Chorister blackbird and thrush
     Together or alternate piped;
     A free-hearted harmony large,
     With meaning for man, for brute,
     When the primitive forces are brimmed.
     Like featherings hither and yon
     Of aery tree-twigs over marge,
     To the comb of the winds, untrimmed,
     Their measure is found in the vast.
     Grief heard them, and stepped her way on.
     She has but a narrow embrace.
     Distrustful of hearing she passed.
     They piped her young Earth's Bacchic rout;
     The race, and the prize of the race;
     Earth's lustihead pressing to sprout.

     But sight holds a soberer space.
     Colourless dogwood low
     Curled up a twisted root,
     Nigh yellow-green mosses, to flush
     Redder than sun upon rocks,
     When the creeper clematis-shoot
     Shall climb, cap his branches, and show,
     Beside veteran green of the box,
     At close of the year's maple blush,
     A bleeding greybeard is he,
     Now hale in the leafage lush.
     Our parasites paint us. Hard by,
     A wet yew-trunk flashed the peel
     Of our naked forefathers in fight;
     With stains of the fray sweating free;
     And him came no parasite nigh:
     Firm on the hard knotted knee,
     He stood in the crown of his dun;
     Earth's toughest to stay her wheel:
     Under whom the full day is night;
     Whom the century-tempests call son,
     Having striven to rend him in vain.

     I walked to observe, not to feel,
     Not to fancy, if simple of eye
     One may be among images reaped
     For a shift of the glance, as grain:
     Profitless froth you espy
     Ashore after billows have leaped.
     I fled nothing, nothing pursued:
     The changeful visible face
     Of our Mother I sought for my food;
     Crumbs by the way to sustain.
     Her sentence I knew past grace.
     Myself I had lost of us twain,
     Once bound in mirroring thought.
     She had flung me to dust in her wake;
     And I, as your convict drags
     His chain, by the scourge untaught,
     Bore life for a goad, without aim.
     I champed the sensations that make
     Of a ruffled philosophy rags.
     For them was no meaning too blunt,
     Nor aspect too cutting of steel.
     This Earth of the beautiful breasts,
     Shining up in all colours aflame,
     To them had visage of hags:
     A Mother of aches and jests:
     Soulless, heading a hunt
     Aimless except for the meal.
     Hope, with the star on her front;
     Fear, with an eye in the heel;
     Our links to a Mother of grace;
     They were dead on the nerve, and dead
     For the nature divided in three;
     Gone out of heart, out of brain,
     Out of soul: I had in their place
     The calm of an empty room.
     We were joined but by that thin thread,
     My disciplined habit to see.
     And those conjure images, those,
     The puppets of loss or gain;
     Not he who is bare to his doom;
     For whom never semblance plays
     To bewitch, overcloud, illume.
     The dusty mote-images rose;
     Sheer film of the surface awag:
     They sank as they rose; their pain
     Declaring them mine of old days.

     Now gazed I where, sole upon gloom,
     As flower-bush in sun-specked crag,
     Up the spine of the double combe
     With yew-boughs heavily cloaked,
     A young apparition shone:
     Known, yet wonderful, white
     Surpassingly; doubtfully known,
     For it struck as the birth of Light:
     Even Day from the dark unyoked.
     It waved like a pilgrim flag
     O'er processional penitents flown
     When of old they broke rounding yon spine:
     O the pure wild-cherry in bloom!

     For their Eastward march to the shrine
     Of the footsore far-eyed Faith,
     Was banner so brave, so fair,
     So quick with celestial sign
     Of victorious rays over death?
     For a conquest of coward despair; -
     Division of soul from wits,
     And these made rulers;--full sure,
     More starlike never did shine
     To illumine the sinister field
     Where our life's old night-bird flits.
     I knew it: with her, my own,
     Had hailed it pure of the pure;
     Our beacon yearly: but strange
     When it strikes to within is the known;
     Richer than newness revealed.
     There was needed darkness like mine.
     Its beauty to vividness blown
     Drew the life in me forward, chased,
     From aloft on a pinnacle's range,
     That hindward spidery line,
     The length of the ways I had paced,
     A footfarer out of the dawn,
     To Youth's wild forest, where sprang,
     For the morning of May long gone,
     The forest's white virgin; she
     Seen yonder; and sheltered me, sang;
     She in me, I in her; what songs
     The fawn-eared wood-hollows revive
     To pour forth their tune-footed throngs;
     Inspire to the dreaming of good
     Illimitable to come:
     She, the white wild cherry, a tree,
     Earth-rooted, tangibly wood,
     Yet a presence throbbing alive;
     Nor she in our language dumb:
     A spirit born of a tree;
     Because earth-rooted alive:
     Huntress of things worth pursuit
     Of souls; in our naming, dreams.
     And each unto other was lute,
     By fits quick as breezy gleams.
     My quiver of aims and desires
     Had colour that she would have owned;
     And if by humaner fires
     Hued later, these held her enthroned:
     My crescent of Earth; my blood
     At the silvery early stir;
     Hour of the thrill of the bud
     About to burst, and by her
     Directed, attuned, englobed:
     My Goddess, the chaste, not chill;
     Choir over choir white-robed;
     White-bosomed fold within fold:
     For so could I dream, breast-bare,
     In my time of blooming; dream still
     Through the maze, the mesh, and the wreck,
     Despite, since manhood was bold,
     The yoke of the flesh on my neck.
     She beckoned, I gazed, unaware
     How a shaft of the blossoming tree
     Was shot from the yew-wood's core.
     I stood to the touch of a key
     Turned in a fast-shut door.

     They rounded my garden, content,
     The small fry, clutching their fee,
     Their fruit of the wreath and the pole;
     And, chatter, hop, skip, they were sent,
     In a buzz of young company glee,
     Their natural music, swift shoal
     To the next easy shedders of pence.
     Why not? for they had me in tune
     With the hungers of my kind.
     Do readings of earth draw thence,
     Then a concord deeper than cries
     Of the Whither whose echo is Whence,
     To jar unanswered, shall rise
     As a fountain-jet in the mind
     Bowed dark o'er the falling and strewn.

     * * *

     Unwitting where it might lead,
     How it came, for the anguish to cease,
     And the Questions that sow not nor spin,
     This wisdom, rough-written, and black,
     As of veins that from venom bleed,
     I had with the peace within;
     Or patience, mortal of peace,
     Compressing the surgent strife
     In a heart laid open, not mailed,
     To the last blank hour of the rack,
     When struck the dividing knife:
     When the hand that never had failed
     In its pressure to mine hung slack.

     But this in myself did I know,
     Not needing a studious brow,
     Or trust in a governing star,
     While my ears held the jangled shout
     The children were lifting afar:
     That natures at interflow
     With all of their past and the now,
     Are chords to the Nature without,
     Orbs to the greater whole:
     First then, nor utterly then
     Till our lord of sensations at war,
     The rebel, the heart, yields place
     To brain, each prompting the soul.
     Thus our dear Earth we embrace
     For the milk, her strength to men.

     And crave we her medical herb,
     We have but to see and hear,
     Though pierced by the cruel acerb,
     The troops of the memories armed
     Hostile to strike at the nest
     That nourished and flew them warmed.
     Not she gives the tear for the tear.
     Weep, bleed, rave, writhe, be distraught,
     She is moveless. Not of her breast
     Are the symbols we conjure when Fear
     Takes leaven of Hope. I caught,
     With Death in me shrinking from Death,
     As cold from cold, for a sign
     Of the life beyond ashes: I cast,
     Believing the vision divine,
     Wings of that dream of my Youth
     To the spirit beloved: 'twas unglassed
     On her breast, in her depths austere:
     A flash through the mist, mere breath,
     Breath on a buckler of steel.
     For the flesh in revolt at her laws,
     Neither song nor smile in ruth,
     Nor promise of things to reveal,
     Has she, nor a word she saith:
     We are asking her wheels to pause.
     Well knows she the cry of unfaith.
     If we strain to the farther shore,
     We are catching at comfort near.
     Assurances, symbols, saws,
     Revelations in legends, light
     To eyes rolling darkness, these
     Desired of the flesh in affright,
     For the which it will swear to adore,
     She yields not for prayers at her knees;
     The woolly beast bleating will shear.
     These are our sensual dreams;
     Of the yearning to touch, to feel
     The dark Impalpable sure,
     And have the Unveiled appear;
     Whereon ever black she beams,
     Doth of her terrible deal,
     She who dotes over ripeness at play,
     Rosiness fondles and feeds,
     Guides it with shepherding crook,
     To her sports and her pastures alway.
     Not she gives the tear for the tear:
     Harsh wisdom gives Earth, no more;
     In one the spur and the curb:
     An answer to thoughts or deeds;
     To the Legends an alien look;
     To the Questions a figure of clay.
     Yet we have but to see and hear,
     Crave we her medical herb.
     For the road to her soul is the Real:
     The root of the growth of man:
     And the senses must traverse it fresh
     With a love that no scourge shall abate,
     To reach the lone heights where we scan
     In the mind's rarer vision this flesh;
     In the charge of the Mother our fate;
     Her law as the one common weal.

     We, whom the view benumbs,
     We, quivering upward, each hour
     Know battle in air and in ground
     For the breath that goes as it comes,
     For the choice between sweet and sour,
     For the smallest grain of our worth:
     And he who the reckoning sums
     Finds nought in his hand save Earth.
     Of Earth are we stripped or crowned.
     The fleeting Present we crave,
     Barter our best to wed,
     In hope of a cushioned bower,
     What is it but Future and Past
     Like wind and tide at a wave!
     Idea of the senses, bred
     For the senses to snap and devour:
     Thin as the shell of a sound
     In delivery, withered in light.
     Cry we for permanence fast,
     Permanence hangs by the grave;
     Sits on the grave green-grassed,
     On the roll of the heaved grave-mound.
     By Death, as by Life, are we fed:
     The two are one spring; our bond
     With the numbers; with whom to unite
     Here feathers wings for beyond:
     Only they can waft us in flight.
     For they are Reality's flower.
     Of them, and the contact with them,
     Issues Earth's dearest daughter, the firm
     In footing, the stately of stem;
     Unshaken though elements lour;
     A warrior heart unquelled;
     Mirror of Earth, and guide
     To the Holies from sense withheld:
     Reason, man's germinant fruit.
     She wrestles with our old worm
     Self in the narrow and wide:
     Relentless quencher of lies,
     With laughter she pierces the brute;
     And hear we her laughter peal,
     'Tis Light in us dancing to scour
     The loathed recess of his dens;
     Scatter his monstrous bed,
     And hound him to harrow and plough.
     She is the world's one prize;
     Our champion, rightfully head;
     The vessel whose piloted prow,
     Though Folly froth round, hiss and hoot,
     Leaves legible print at the keel.
     Nor least is the service she does,
     That service to her may cleanse
     The well of the Sorrows in us;
     For a common delight will drain
     The rank individual fens
     Of a wound refusing to heal
     While the old worm slavers its root.

     I bowed as a leaf in rain;
     As a tree when the leaf is shed
     To winds in the season at wane:
     And when from my soul I said,
     May the worm be trampled: smite,
     Sacred Reality! power
     Filled me to front it aright.
     I had come of my faith's ordeal.

     It is not to stand on a tower
     And see the flat universe reel;
     Our mortal sublimities drop
     Like raiment by glisterlings worn,
     At a sweep of the scythe for the crop.
     Wisdom is won of its fight,
     The combat incessant; and dries
     To mummywrap perching a height.
     It chews the contemplative cud
     In peril of isolate scorn,
     Unfed of the onward flood.
     Nor view we a different morn
     If we gaze with the deeper sight,
     With the deeper thought forewise:
     The world is the same, seen through;
     The features of men are the same.
     But let their historian new
     In the language of nakedness write,
     Rejoice we to know not shame,
     Not a dread, not a doubt: to have done
     With the tortures of thought in the throes,
     Our animal tangle, and grasp
     Very sap of the vital in this:
     That from flesh unto spirit man grows
     Even here on the sod under sun:
     That she of the wanton's kiss,
     Broken through with the bite of an asp,
     Is Mother of simple truth,
     Relentless quencher of lies;
     Eternal in thought; discerned
     In thought mid-ferry between
     The Life and the Death, which are one,
     As our breath in and out, joy or teen.
     She gives the rich vision to youth,
     If we will, of her prompting wise;
     Or men by the lash made lean,
     Who in harness the mind subserve,
     Their title to read her have earned;
     Having mastered sensation--insane
     At a stroke of the terrified nerve;
     And out of the sensual hive
     Grown to the flower of brain;
     To know her a thing alive,
     Whose aspects mutably swerve,
     Whose laws immutably reign.
     Our sentencer, clother in mist,
     Her morn bends breast to her noon,
     Noon to the hour dark-dyed,
     If we will, of her promptings wise:
     Her light is our own if we list.
     The legends that sweep her aside,
     Crying loud for an opiate boon,
     To comfort the human want,
     From the bosom of magical skies,
     She smiles on, marking their source:
     They read her with infant eyes.
     Good ships of morality they,
     For our crude developing force;
     Granite the thought to stay,
     That she is a thing alive
     To the living, the falling and strewn.
     But the Questions, the broods that haunt
     Sensation insurgent, may drive,
     The way of the channelling mole,
     Head in a ground-vault gaunt
     As your telescope's skeleton moon.
     Barren comfort to these will she dole;
     Dead is her face to their cries.
     Intelligence pushing to taste
     A lesson from beasts might heed.
     They scatter a voice in the waste,
     Where any dry swish of a reed
     By grey-glassy water replies.

     'They see not above or below;
     Farthest are they from my soul,'
     Earth whispers: 'they scarce have the thirst,
     Except to unriddle a rune;
     And I spin none; only show,
     Would humanity soar from its worst,
     Winged above darkness and dole,
     How flesh unto spirit must grow.
     Spirit raves not for a goal.
     Shapes in man's likeness hewn
     Desires not; neither desires
     The sleep or the glory: it trusts;
     Uses my gifts, yet aspires;
     Dreams of a higher than it.
     The dream is an atmosphere;
     A scale still ascending to knit
     The clear to the loftier Clear.
     'Tis Reason herself, tiptoe
     At the ultimate bound of her wit,
     On the verges of Night and Day.
     But is it a dream of the lusts,
     To my dustiest 'tis decreed;
     And them that so shuffle astray
     I touch with no key of gold
     For the wealth of the secret nook;
     Though I dote over ripeness at play,
     Rosiness fondle and feed,
     Guide it with shepherding crook
     To my sports and my pastures alway.
     The key will shriek in the lock,
     The door will rustily hinge,
     Will open on features of mould,
     To vanish corrupt at a glimpse,
     And mock as the wild echoes mock,
     Soulless in mimic, doth Greed
     Or the passion for fruitage tinge
     That dream, for your parricide imps
     To wing through the body of Time,
     Yourselves in slaying him slay.
     Much are you shots of your prime,
     You men of the act and the dream:
     And please you to fatten a weed
     That perishes, pledged to decay,
     'Tis dearth in your season of need,
     Down the slopes of the shoreward way; -
     Nigh on the misty stream,
     Where Ferryman under his hood,
     With a call to be ready to pay
     The small coin, whitens red blood.
     But the young ethereal seed
     Shall bring you the bread no buyer
     Can have for his craving supreme;
     To my quenchless quick shall speed
     The soul at her wrestle rude
     With devil, with angel more dire;
     With the flesh, with the Fates, enringed.
     The dream of the blossom of Good
     Is your banner of battle unrolled
     In its waver and current and curve
     (Choir over choir white-winged,
     White-bosomed fold within fold):
     Hopeful of victory most
     When hard is the task to sustain
     Assaults of the fearful sense
     At a mind in desolate mood
     With the Whither, whose echo is Whence;
     And humanity's clamour, lost, lost;
     And its clasp of the staves that snap;
     And evil abroad, as a main
     Uproarious, bursting its dyke.
     For back do you look, and lo,
     Forward the harvest of grain! -
     Numbers in council, awake
     To love more than things of my lap,
     Love me; and to let the types break,
     Men be grass, rocks rivers, all flow;
     All save the dream sink alike
     To the source of my vital in sap:
     Their battle, their loss, their ache,
     For my pledge of vitality know.
     The dream is the thought in the ghost;
     The thought sent flying for food;
     Eyeless, but sprung of an aim
     Supernal of Reason, to find
     The great Over-Reason we name
     Beneficence: mind seeking Mind.
     Dream of the blossom of Good,
     In its waver and current and curve,
     With the hopes of my offspring enscrolled!
     Soon to be seen of a host
     The flag of the Master I serve!
     And life in them doubled on Life,
     As flame upon flame, to behold,
     High over Time-tumbled sea,
     The bliss of his headship of strife,
     Him through handmaiden me.'



     CHANGE IN RECURRENCE



     I

     I stood at the gate of the cot
     Where my darling, with side-glance demure,
     Would spy, on her trim garden-plot,
     The busy wild things chase and lure.
     For these with their ways were her feast;
     They had surety no enemy lurked.
     Their deftest of tricks to their least
     She gathered in watch as she worked.

     II

     When berries were red on her ash,
     The blackbird would rifle them rough,
     Till the ground underneath looked a gash,
     And her rogue grew the round of a chough.
     The squirrel cocked ear o'er his hoop,
     Up the spruce, quick as eye, trailing brush.
     She knew any tit of the troop
     All as well as the snail-tapping thrush.

     III

     I gazed: 'twas the scene of the frame,
     With the face, the dear life for me, fled.
     No window a lute to my name,
     No watcher there plying the thread.
     But the blackbird hung peeking at will;
     The squirrel from cone hopped to cone;
     The thrush had a snail in his bill,
     And tap-tapped the shell hard on a stone.



     HYMN TO COLOUR



     I

     With Life and Death I walked when Love appeared,
     And made them on each side a shadow seem.
     Through wooded vales the land of dawn we neared,
     Where down smooth rapids whirls the helmless dream
     To fall on daylight; and night puts away
     Her darker veil for grey.

     II

     In that grey veil green grassblades brushed we by;
     We came where woods breathed sharp, and overhead
     Rocks raised clear horns on a transforming sky:
     Around, save for those shapes, with him who led
     And linked them, desert varied by no sign
     Of other life than mine.

     III

     By this the dark-winged planet, raying wide,
     From the mild pearl-glow to the rose upborne,
     Drew in his fires, less faint than far descried,
     Pure-fronted on a stronger wave of morn:
     And those two shapes the splendour interweaved,
     Hung web-like, sank and heaved.

     IV

     Love took my hand when hidden stood the sun
     To fling his robe on shoulder-heights of snow.
     Then said: There lie they, Life and Death in one.
     Whichever is, the other is: but know,
     It is thy craving self that thou dost see,
     Not in them seeing me.

     V

     Shall man into the mystery of breath,
     From his quick beating pulse a pathway spy?
     Or learn the secret of the shrouded death,
     By lifting up the lid of a white eye?
     Cleave thou thy way with fathering desire
     Of fire to reach to fire.

     VI

     Look now where Colour, the soul's bridegroom, makes
     The house of heaven splendid for the bride.
     To him as leaps a fountain she awakes,
     In knotting arms, yet boundless: him beside,
     She holds the flower to heaven, and by his power
     Brings heaven to the flower.

     VII

     He gives her homeliness in desert air,
     And sovereignty in spaciousness; he leads
     Through widening chambers of surprise to where
     Throbs rapture near an end that aye recedes,
     Because his touch is infinite and lends
     A yonder to all ends.

     VIII

     Death begs of Life his blush; Life Death persuades
     To keep long day with his caresses graced.
     He is the heart of light, the wing of shades,
     The crown of beauty: never soul embraced
     Of him can harbour unfaith; soul of him
     Possessed walks never dim.

     IX

     Love eyed his rosy memories: he sang:
     O bloom of dawn, breathed up from the gold sheaf
     Held springing beneath Orient! that dost hang
     The space of dewdrops running over leaf;
     Thy fleetingness is bigger in the ghost
     Than Time with all his host!

     X

     Of thee to say behold, has said adieu:
     But love remembers how the sky was green,
     And how the grasses glimmered lightest blue;
     How saint-like grey took fervour: how the screen
     Of cloud grew violet; how thy moment came
     Between a blush and flame.

     XI

     Love saw the emissary eglantine
     Break wave round thy white feet above the gloom;
     Lay finger on thy star; thy raiment line
     With cherub wing and limb; wed thy soft bloom,
     Gold-quivering like sunrays in thistle-down,
     Earth under rolling brown.

     XII

     They do not look through love to look on thee,
     Grave heavenliness! nor know they joy of sight,
     Who deem the wave of rapt desire must be
     Its wrecking and last issue of delight.
     Dead seasons quicken in one petal-spot
     Of colour unforgot.

     XIII

     This way have men come out of brutishness
     To spell the letters of the sky and read
     A reflex upon earth else meaningless.
     With thee, O fount of the Untimed! to lead,
     Drink they of thee, thee eyeing, they unaged
     Shall on through brave wars waged.

     XIV

     More gardens will they win than any lost;
     The vile plucked out of them, the unlovely slain.
     Not forfeiting the beast with which they are crossed,
     To stature of the Gods will they attain.
     They shall uplift their Earth to meet her Lord,
     Themselves the attuning chord!

     XV

     The song had ceased; my vision with the song.
     Then of those Shadows, which one made descent
     Beside me I knew not: but Life ere long
     Came on me in the public ways and bent
     Eyes deeper than of old: Death met I too,
     And saw the dawn glow through.



     MEDITATION UNDER STARS



     What links are ours with orbs that are
     So resolutely far:
     The solitary asks, and they
     Give radiance as from a shield:
     Still at the death of day,
     The seen, the unrevealed.
     Implacable they shine
     To us who would of Life obtain
     An answer for the life we strain
     To nourish with one sign.
     Nor can imagination throw
     The penetrative shaft: we pass
     The breath of thought, who would divine
     If haply they may grow
     As Earth; have our desire to know;
     If life comes there to grain from grass,
     And flowers like ours of toil and pain;
     Has passion to beat bar,
     Win space from cleaving brain;
     The mystic link attain,
     Whereby star holds on star.

     Those visible immortals beam
     Allurement to the dream:
     Ireful at human hungers brook
     No question in the look.
     For ever virgin to our sense,
     Remote they wane to gaze intense:
     Prolong it, and in ruthlessness they smite
     The beating heart behind the ball of sight:
     Till we conceive their heavens hoar,
     Those lights they raise but sparkles frore,
     And Earth, our blood-warm Earth, a shuddering prey
     To that frigidity of brainless ray.

     Yet space is given for breath of thought
     Beyond our bounds when musing: more
     When to that musing love is brought,
     And love is asked of love's wherefore.
     'Tis Earth's, her gift; else have we nought:
     Her gift, her secret, here our tie.
     And not with her and yonder sky?
     Bethink you: were it Earth alone
     Breeds love, would not her region be
     The sole delight and throne
     Of generous Deity?

     To deeper than this ball of sight
     Appeal the lustrous people of the night.
     Fronting yon shoreless, sown with fiery sails,
     It is our ravenous that quails,
     Flesh by its craven thirsts and fears distraught.
     The spirit leaps alight,
     Doubts not in them is he,
     The binder of his sheaves, the sane, the right:
     Of magnitude to magnitude is wrought,
     To feel it large of the great life they hold:
     In them to come, or vaster intervolved,
     The issues known in us, our unsolved solved:
     That there with toil Life climbs the self-same Tree,
     Whose roots enrichment have from ripeness dropped.
     So may we read and little find them cold:
     Let it but be the lord of Mind to guide
     Our eyes; no branch of Reason's growing lopped;
     Nor dreaming on a dream; but fortified
     By day to penetrate black midnight; see,
     Hear, feel, outside the senses; even that we,
     The specks of dust upon a mound of mould,
     We who reflect those rays, though low our place,
     To them are lastingly allied.

     So may we read, and little find them cold:
     Not frosty lamps illumining dead space,
     Not distant aliens, not senseless Powers.
     The fire is in them whereof we are born;
     The music of their motion may be ours.
     Spirit shall deem them beckoning Earth and voiced
     Sisterly to her, in her beams rejoiced.
     Of love, the grand impulsion, we behold
     The love that lends her grace
     Among the starry fold.
     Then at new flood of customary morn,
     Look at her through her showers,
     Her mists, her streaming gold,
     A wonder edges the familiar face:
     She wears no more that robe of printed hours;
     Half strange seems Earth, and sweeter than her flowers.



     WOODMAN AND ECHO



     Close Echo hears the woodman's axe,
     To double on it, as in glee,
     With clap of hands, and little lacks
     Of meaning in her repartee.
     For all shall fall,
     As one has done,
     The tree of me,
     Of thee the tree;
     And unto all
     The fate we wait
     Reveals the wheels
     Whereon we run:
     We tower to flower,
     We spread the shade,
     We drop for crop,
     At length are laid;
     Are rolled in mould,
     From chop and lop:
     And are we thick in woodland tracks,
     Or tempting of our stature we,
     The end is one, we do but wax
     For service over land and sea.
     So, strike! the like
     Shall thus of us,
     My brawny woodman, claim the tax.
     Nor foe thy blow,
     Though wood be good,
     And shriekingly the timber cracks:
     The ground we crowned
     Shall speed the seed
     Of younger into swelling sacks.

     For use he hews,
     To make awake
     The spirit of what stuff we be:
     Our earth of mirth
     And tears he clears
     For braver, let our minds agree;
     And then will men
     Within them win
     An Echo clapping harmony.



     THE WISDOM OF ELD



     We spend our lives in learning pilotage,
     And grow good steersmen when the vessel's crank!
     Gap-toothed he spake, and with a tottering shank
     Sidled to gain the sunny bench of Age.
     It is the sentence which completes that stage;
     A testament of wisdom reading blank.
     The seniors of the race, on their last plank,
     Pass mumbling it as nature's final page.
     These, bent by such experience, are the band
     Who captain young enthusiasts to maintain
     What things we view, and Earth's decree withstand,
     Lest dreaded Change, long dammed by dull decay,
     Should bring the world a vessel steered by brain,
     And ancients musical at close of day.



     EARTH'S PREFERENCE



     Earth loves her young: a preference manifest:
     She prompts them to her fruits and flower-beds;
     Their beauty with her choicest interthreads,
     And makes her revel of their merry zest;
     As in our East much were it in our West,
     If men had risen to do the work of heads.
     Her gabbling grey she eyes askant, nor treads
     The ways they walk; by what they speak oppressed.
     How wrought they in their zenith? 'Tis not writ;
     Not all; yet she by one sure sign can read:
     Have they but held her laws and nature dear,
     They mouth no sentence of inverted wit.
     More prizes she her beasts than this high breed
     Wry in the shape she wastes her milk to rear.



     SOCIETY



     Historic be the survey of our kind,
     And how their brave Society took shape.
     Lion, wolf, vulture, fox, jackal and ape,
     The strong of limb, the keen of nose, we find,
     Who, with some jars in harmony, combined,
     Their primal instincts taming, to escape
     The brawl indecent, and hot passions drape.
     Convenience pricked conscience, that the mind.
     Thus entered they the field of milder beasts,
     Which in some sort of civil order graze,
     And do half-homage to the God of Laws.
     But are they still for their old ravenous feasts,
     Earth gives the edifice they build no base:
     They spring another flood of fangs and claws.



     WINTER HEAVENS



     Sharp is the night, but stars with frost alive
     Leap off the rim of earth across the dome.
     It is a night to make the heavens our home
     More than the nest whereto apace we strive.
     Lengths down our road each fir-tree seems a hive,
     In swarms outrushing from the golden comb.
     They waken waves of thoughts that burst to foam:
     The living throb in me, the dead revive.
     Yon mantle clothes us: there, past mortal breath,
     Life glistens on the river of the death.
     It folds us, flesh and dust; and have we knelt,
     Or never knelt, or eyed as kine the springs
     Of radiance, the radiance enrings:
     And this is the soul's haven to have felt.





     Poems by George Meredith--Volume 3


     [This etext was prepared from the 1912 Times Book Club "Surrey" edition
     by David Price]



     A STAVE OF ROVING TIM
     (ADDRESSED TO CERTAIN FRIENDLY TRAMPS.)



     I

     The wind is East, the wind is West,
     Blows in and out of haven;
     The wind that blows is the wind that's best,
     And croak, my jolly raven!
     If here awhile we jigged and laughed,
     The like we will do yonder;
     For he's the man who masters a craft,
     And light as a lord can wander.
     So, foot the measure, Roving Tim,
     And croak, my jolly raven!
     The wind according to its whim
     Is in and out of haven.

     II

     You live in rows of snug abodes,
     With gold, maybe, for counting;
     And mine's the beck of the rainy roads
     Against the sun a-mounting.
     I take the day as it behaves,
     Nor shiver when 'tis airy;
     But comes a breeze, all you are on waves,
     Sick chickens o' Mother Carey!
     So, now for next, cries Roving Tim,
     And croak, my jolly raven!
     The wind according to its whim
     Is in and out of haven.

     III

     Sweet lass, you screw a lovely leer,
     To make a man consider.
     If you were up with the auctioneer,
     I'd be a handsome bidder.
     But wedlock clips the rover's wing;
     She tricks him fly to spider;
     And when we get to fights in the Ring,
     It's trumps when you play outsider.
     So, wrench and split, cries Roving Tim,
     And croak, my jolly raven!
     The wind according to its whim
     Is in and out of haven.

     IV

     Along my winding way I know
     A shady dell that's winking;
     The very corner for Self and Co
     To do a world of thinking.
     And shall I this? and shall I that?
     Till Nature answers, ne'ther!
     Strike match and light your pipe in your hat,
     Rejoicing in sound shoe-leather!
     So lead along, cries Roving Tim,
     And croak, my jolly raven!
     The wind according to its whim
     Is in and out of haven.

     V

     A cunning hand 'll hand you bread,
     With freedom for your capers.
     I'm not so sure of a cunning head;
     It steers to pits or vapours.
     But as for Life, we'll bear in sight
     The lesson Nature teaches;
     Regard it in a sailoring light,
     And treat it like thirsty leeches.
     So, fly your jib, cries Roving Tim,
     And top your boom, old raven!
     The wind according to its whim
     Is in and out of haven.

     VI

     She'll take, to please her dame and dad,
     The shopman nicely shaven.
     She'll learn to think o' the marching lad
     When perchers show they're craven.
     You say the shopman piles a heap,
     While I perhaps am fasting;
     And bless your wits, it haunts him in sleep,
     His tin-kettle chance of lasting!
     So hail the road, cries Roving Tim,
     And hail the rain, old raven!
     The wind according to its whim
     Is in and out of haven.

     VII

     He's half a wife, yon pecker bill;
     A book and likewise preacher.
     With any soul, in a game of skill,
     He'll prove your over-reacher.
     The reason is, his brains are bent
     On doing things right single.
     You'd wish for them when pitching your tent
     At night in a whirly dingle!
     So, off we go, cries Roving Tim,
     And on we go, old raven!
     The wind according to its whim
     Is in and out of haven.

     VIII

     Lord, no, man's lot is not for bliss;
     To call it woe is blindness:
     It'll here a kick, and it's there a kiss,
     And here and there a kindness.
     He starts a hare and calls her joy;
     He runs her down to sorrow:
     The dogs within him bother the boy,
     But 'tis a new day to-morrow.
     So, I at helm, cries Roving Tim,
     And you at bow, old raven!
     The wind according to its whim
     Is in and out of haven.



     JUMP-TO-GLORY JANE



     I

     A revelation came on Jane,
     The widow of a labouring swain:
     And first her body trembled sharp,
     Then all the woman was a harp
     With winds along the strings; she heard,
     Though there was neither tone nor word.

     II

     For past our hearing was the air,
     Beyond our speaking what it bare,
     And she within herself had sight
     Of heaven at work to cleanse outright,
     To make of her a mansion fit
     For angel hosts inside to sit.

     III

     They entered, and forthwith entranced,
     Her body braced, her members danced;
     Surprisingly the woman leapt;
     And countenance composed she kept:
     As gossip neighbours in the lane
     Declared, who saw and pitied Jane.

     IV

     These knew she had been reading books,
     The which was witnessed by her looks
     Of late: she had a mania
     For mad folk in America,
     And said for sure they led the way,
     But meat and beer were meant to stay.

     V

     That she had visited a fair,
     Had seen a gauzy lady there,
     Alive with tricks on legs alone,
     As good as wings, was also known:
     And longwhiles in a sullen mood,
     Before her jumping, Jane would brood.

     VI

     A good knee's height, they say, she sprang;
     Her arms and feet like those who hang:
     As if afire the body sped,
     And neither pair contributed.
     She jumped in silence: she was thought
     A corpse to resurrection caught.

     VII

     The villagers were mostly dazed;
     They jeered, they wondered, and they praised.
     'Twas guessed by some she was inspired,
     And some would have it she had hired
     An engine in her petticoats,
     To turn their wits and win their votes.

     VIII

     Her first was Winny Earnes, a kind
     Of woman not to dance inclined;
     But she went up, entirely won,
     Ere Jump-to-glory Jane had done;
     And once a vixen wild for speech,
     She found the better way to preach.

     IX

     No long time after, Jane was seen
     Directing jumps at Daddy Green;
     And that old man, to watch her fly,
     Had eyebrows made of arches high;
     Till homeward he likewise did hop,
     Oft calling on himself to stop!

     X

     It was a scene when man and maid,
     Abandoning all other trade,
     And careless of the call to meals,
     Went jumping at the woman's heels.
     By dozens they were counted soon,
     Without a sound to tell their tune.

     XI

     Along the roads they came, and crossed
     The fields, and o'er the hills were lost,
     And in the evening reappeared;
     Then short like hobbled horses reared,
     And down upon the grass they plumped:
     Alone their Jane to glory jumped.

     XII

     At morn they rose, to see her spring
     All going as an engine thing;
     And lighter than the gossamer
     She led the bobbers following her,
     Past old acquaintances, and where
     They made the stranger stupid stare.

     XIII

     When turnips were a filling crop,
     In scorn they jumped a butcher's shop:
     Or, spite of threats to flog and souse,
     They jumped for shame a public-house:
     And much their legs were seized with rage
     If passing by the vicarage.

     XIV

     The tightness of a hempen rope
     Their bodies got; but laundry soap
     Not handsomer can rub the skin
     For token of the washed within.
     Occasionally coughers cast
     A leg aloft and coughed their last.

     XV

     The weaker maids and some old men,
     Requiring rafters for the pen
     On rainy nights, were those who fell.
     The rest were quite a miracle,
     Refreshed as you may search all round
     On Club-feast days and cry, Not found!

     XVI

     For these poor innocents, that slept
     Against the sky, soft women wept:
     For never did they any theft;
     'Twas known when they their camping left,
     And jumped the cold out of their rags;
     In spirit rich as money-bags.

     XVII

     They jumped the question, jumped reply;
     And whether to insist, deny,
     Reprove, persuade, they jumped in ranks
     Or singly, straight the arms to flanks,
     And straight the legs, with just a knee
     For bending in a mild degree.

     XVIII

     The villagers might call them mad;
     An endless holiday they had,
     Of pleasure in a serious work:
     They taught by leaps where perils lurk,
     And with the lambkins practised sports
     For 'scaping Satan's pounds and quarts.

     XIX

     It really seemed on certain days,
     When they bobbed up their Lord to praise,
     And bobbing up they caught the glance
     Of light, our secret is to dance,
     And hold the tongue from hindering peace;
     To dance out preacher and police.

     XX

     Those flies of boys disturbed them sore
     On Sundays and when daylight wore:
     With withies cut from hedge or copse,
     They treated them as whipping-tops,
     And flung big stones with cruel aim;
     Yet all the flock jumped on the same.

     XXI

     For what could persecution do
     To worry such a blessed crew,
     On whom it was as wind to fire,
     Which set them always jumping higher?
     The parson and the lawyer tried,
     By meek persistency defied.

     XXII

     But if they bore, they could pursue
     As well, and this the Bishop too;
     When inner warnings proved him plain
     The chase for Jump-to-glory Jane.
     She knew it by his being sent
     To bless the feasting in the tent.

     XXIII

     Not less than fifty years on end,
     The Squire had been the Bishop's friend:
     And his poor tenants, harmless ones,
     With souls to save! fed not on buns,
     But angry meats: she took her place
     Outside to show the way to grace.

     XXIV

     In apron suit the Bishop stood;
     The crowding people kindly viewed.
     A gaunt grey woman he saw rise
     On air, with most beseeching eyes:
     And evident as light in dark
     It was, she set to him for mark.

     XXV

     Her highest leap had come: with ease
     She jumped to reach the Bishop's knees:
     Compressing tight her arms and lips,
     She sought to jump the Bishop's hips:
     Her aim flew at his apron-band,
     That he might see and understand.

     XXVI

     The mild inquiry of his gaze
     Was altered to a peaked amaze,
     At sight of thirty in ascent,
     To gain his notice clearly bent:
     And greatly Jane at heart was vexed
     By his ploughed look of mind perplexed.

     XXVII

     In jumps that said, Beware the pit!
     More eloquent than speaking it -
     That said, Avoid the boiled, the roast;
     The heated nose on face of ghost,
     Which comes of drinking: up and o'er
     The flesh with me! did Jane implore.

     XXVIII

     She jumped him high as huntsmen go
     Across the gate; she jumped him low,
     To coax him to begin and feel
     His infant steps returning, peel
     His mortal pride, exposing fruit,
     And off with hat and apron suit.

     XXIX

     We need much patience, well she knew,
     And out and out, and through and through,
     When we would gentlefolk address,
     However we may seek to bless:
     At times they hide them like the beasts
     From sacred beams; and mostly priests.

     XXX

     He gave no sign of making bare,
     Nor she of faintness or despair.
     Inflamed with hope that she might win,
     If she but coaxed him to begin,
     She used all arts for making fain;
     The mother with her babe was Jane.

     XXXI

     Now stamped the Squire, and knowing not
     Her business, waved her from the spot.
     Encircled by the men of might,
     The head of Jane, like flickering light,
     As in a charger, they beheld
     Ere she was from the park expelled.

     XXXII

     Her grief, in jumps of earthly weight,
     Did Jane around communicate:
     For that the moment when began
     The holy but mistaken man,
     In view of light, to take his lift,
     They cut him from her charm adrift!

     XXXIII

     And he was lost: a banished face
     For ever from the ways of grace,
     Unless pinched hard by dreams in fright.
     They saw the Bishop's wavering sprite
     Within her look, at come and go,
     Long after he had caused her woe.

     XXXIV

     Her greying eyes (until she sank
     At Fredsham on the wayside bank,
     Like cinder heaps that whitened lie
     From coals that shot the flame to sky)
     Had glassy vacancies, which yearned
     For one in memory discerned.

     XXXV

     May those who ply the tongue that cheats,
     And those who rush to beer and meats,
     And those whose mean ambition aims
     At palaces and titled names,
     Depart in such a cheerful strain
     As did our Jump-to-glory Jane!

     XXXVI

     Her end was beautiful: one sigh.
     She jumped a foot when it was nigh.
     A lily in a linen clout
     She looked when they had laid her out.
     It is a lily-light she bears
     For England up the ladder-stairs.



     THE RIDDLE FOR MEN



     I

     This Riddle rede or die,
     Says History since our Flood,
     To warn her sons of power:-
     It can be truth, it can be lie;
     Be parasite to twist awry;
     The drouthy vampire for your blood;
     The fountain of the silver flower;
     A brand, a lure, a web, a crest;
     Supple of wax or tempered steel;
     The spur to honour, snake in nest:
     'Tis as you will with it to deal;
     To wear upon the breast,
     Or trample under heel.

     II

     And rede you not aright,
     Says Nature, still in red
     Shall History's tale be writ!
     For solely thus you lead to light
     The trailing chapters she must write,
     And pass my fiery test of dead
     Or living through the furnace-pit:
     Dislinked from who the softer hold
     In grip of brute, and brute remain:
     Of whom the woeful tale is told,
     How for one short Sultanic reign,
     Their bodies lapse to mould,
     Their souls behowl the plain.



     THE SAGE ENAMOURED AND THE HONEST LADY



     I

     One fairest of the ripe unwedded left
     Her shadow on the Sage's path; he found,
     By common signs, that she had done a theft.
     He could have made the sovereign heights resound
     With questions of the wherefore of her state:
     He on far other but an hour before
     Intent. And was it man, or was it mate,
     That she disdained? or was there haply more?

     About her mouth a placid humour slipped
     The dimple, as you see smooth lakes at eve
     Spread melting rings where late a swallow dipped.
     The surface was attentive to receive,
     The secret underneath enfolded fast.
     She had the step of the unconquered, brave,
     Not arrogant; and if the vessel's mast
     Waved liberty, no challenge did it wave.
     Her eyes were the sweet world desired of souls,
     With something of a wavering line unspelt.
     They hold the look whose tenderness condoles
     For what the sister in the look has dealt
     Of fatal beyond healing; and her tones
     A woman's honeyed amorous outvied,
     As when in a dropped viol the wood-throb moans
     Among the sobbing strings, that plain and chide
     Like infants for themselves, less deep to thrill
     Than those rich mother-notes for them breathed round.
     Those voices are not magic of the will
     To strike love's wound, but of love's wound give sound,
     Conveying it; the yearnings, pains and dreams.
     They waft to the moist tropics after storm,
     When out of passion spent thick incense steams,
     And jewel-belted clouds the wreck transform.

     Was never hand on brush or lyre to paint
     Her gracious manners, where the nuptial ring
     Of melody clasped motion in restraint:
     The reed-blade with the breeze thereof may sing.
     With such endowments armed was she and decked
     To make her spoken thoughts eclipse her kind;
     Surpassing many a giant intellect,
     The marvel of that cradled infant mind.
     It clenched the tiny fist, it curled the toe;
     Cherubic laughed, enticed, dispensed, absorbed;
     And promised in fair feminine to grow
     A Sage's match and mate, more heavenly orbed.

     II

     Across his path the spouseless Lady cast
     Her shadow, and the man that thing became.
     His youth uprising called his age the Past.
     This was the strong grey head of laurelled name,
     And in his bosom an inverted Sage
     Mistook for light of morn the light which sank.
     But who while veins run blood shall know the page
     Succeeding ere we turn upon our blank?
     Comes Beauty with her tale of moon and cloud,
     Her silvered rims of mystery pointing in
     To hollows of the half-veiled unavowed,
     Where beats her secret life, grey heads will spin
     Quick as the young, and spell those hieroglyphs
     Of phosphorescent dusk, devoutly bent;
     They drink a cup to whirl on dizzier cliffs
     For their shamed fall, which asks, why was she sent!
     Why, and of whom, and whence; and tell they truth,
     The legends of her mission to beguile?

     Hard likeness to the toilful apes of youth
     He bore at times, and tempted the sly smile;
     And not on her soft lips was it descried.
     She stepped her way benevolently grave:
     Nor sign that Beauty fed her worm of pride,
     By tossing victim to the courtier knave,
     Let peep, nor of the naughty pride gave sign.
     Rather 'twas humbleness in being pursued,
     As pilgrim to the temple of a shrine.
     Had he not wits to pierce the mask he wooed?
     All wisdom's armoury this man could wield;
     And if the cynic in the Sage it pleased
     Traverse her woman's curtain and poor shield,
     For new example of a world diseased;
     Showing her shrineless, not a temple, bare;
     A curtain ripped to tatters by the blast;
     Yet she most surely to this man stood fair:
     He worshipped like the young enthusiast,
     Named simpleton or poet. Did he read
     Right through, and with the voice she held reserved
     Amid her vacant ruins jointly plead?

     Compassion for the man thus noble nerved
     The pity for herself she felt in him,
     To wreak a deed of sacrifice, and save;
     At least, be worthy. That our soul may swim,
     We sink our heart down bubbling under wave.
     It bubbles till it drops among the wrecks.
     But, ah! confession of a woman's breast:
     She eminent, she honoured of her sex!
     Truth speaks, and takes the spots of the confessed,
     To veil them. None of women, save their vile,
     Plays traitor to an army in the field.
     The cries most vindicating most defile.
     How shall a cause to Nature be appealed,
     When, under pressure of their common foe,
     Her sisters shun the Mother and disown,
     On pain of his intolerable crow
     Above the fiction, built for him, o'erthrown?
     Irrational he is, irrational
     Must they be, though not Reason's light shall wane
     In them with ever Nature at close call,
     Behind the fiction torturing to sustain;
     Who hear her in the milk, and sometimes make
     A tongueless answer, shivered on a sigh:
     Whereat men dread their lofty structure's quake
     Once more, and in their hosts for tocsin ply
     The crazy roar of peril, leonine
     For injured majesty. That sigh of dames
     Is rare and soon suppressed. Not they combine
     To shake the structure sheltering them, which tames
     Their lustier if not wilder: fixed are they,
     In elegancy scarce denoting ease;
     And do they breathe, it is not to betray
     The martyr in the caryatides.
     Yet here and there along the graceful row
     Is one who fetches breath from deeps, who deems,
     Moved by a desperate craving, their old foe
     May yield a trustier friend than woman seems,
     And aid to bear the sculptured floral weight
     Massed upon heads not utterly of stone:
     May stamp endurance by expounding fate.
     She turned to him, and, This you seek is gone;
     Look in, she said, as pants the furnace, brief,
     Frost-white. She gave his hearing sight to view
     The silent chamber of a brown curled leaf:
     Thing that had throbbed ere shot black lightning through.
     No further sign of heart could he discern:
     The picture of her speech was winter sky;
     A headless figure folding a cleft urn,
     Where tears once at the overflow were dry.

     III

     So spake she her first utterance on the rack.
     It softened torment, in the funeral hues
     Round wan Romance at ebb, but drove her back
     To listen to herself, herself accuse
     Harshly as Love's imperial cause allowed.
     She meant to grovel, and her lover praised
     So high o'er the condemnatory crowd,
     That she perforce a fellow phoenix blazed.

     The picture was of hand fast joined to hand,
     Both pushed from angry skies, their grasp more pledged
     Under the threatened flash of a bright brand
     At arm's length up, for severing action edged.
     Why, then Love's Court of Honour contemplate;
     And two drowned shorecasts, who, for the life esteemed
     Above their lost, invoke an advocate
     In Passion's purity, thereby redeemed.

     Redeemed, uplifted, glimmering on a throne,
     The woman stricken by an arrow falls.
     His advocate she can be, not her own,
     If, Traitress to thy sex! one sister calls.
     Have we such scenes of drapery's mournfulness
     On Beauty's revelations, witched we plant,
     Over the fair shape humbled to confess,
     An angel's buckler, with loud choiric chant.

     IV

     No knightly sword to serve, nor harp of bard,
     The lady's hand in her physician's knew.
     She had not hoped for them as her award,
     When zig-zag on the tongue electric flew
     Her charge of counter-motives, none impure:
     But muteness whipped her skin. She could have said,
     Her free confession was to work his cure,
     Show proofs for why she could not love or wed.
     Were they not shown? His muteness shook in thrall
     Her body on the verge of that black pit
     Sheer from the treacherous confessional,
     Demanding further, while perusing it.

     Slave is the open mouth beneath the closed.
     She sank; she snatched at colours; they were peel
     Of fruit past savour, in derision rosed.
     For the dark downward then her soul did reel.
     A press of hideous impulse urged to speak:
     A novel dread of man enchained her dumb.
     She felt the silence thicken, heard it shriek,
     Heard Life subsiding on the eternal hum:
     Welcome to women, when, between man's laws
     And Nature's thirsts, they, soul from body torn,
     Give suck at breast to a celestial cause,
     Named by the mouth infernal, and forsworn.
     Nathless her forehead twitched a sad content,
     To think the cure so manifest, so frail
     Her charm remaining. Was the curtain's rent
     Too wide? he but a man of that herd male?
     She saw him as that herd of the forked head
     Butting the woman harrowed on her knees,
     Clothed only in life's last devouring red.
     Confession at her fearful instant sees
     Judicial Silence write the devil fact
     In letters of the skeleton: at once,
     Swayed on the supplication of her act,
     The rabble reading, roaring to denounce,
     She joins. No longer colouring, with skips
     At tangles, picture that for eyes in tears
     Might swim the sequence, she addressed her lips
     To do the scaffold's office at his ears.

     Into the bitter judgement of that herd
     On women, she, deeming it present, fell.
     Her frenzy of abasement hugged the word
     They stone with, and so pile their citadel
     To launch at outcasts the foul levin bolt.
     As had he flung it, in her breast it burned.
     Face and reflect it did her hot revolt
     From hardness, to the writhing rebel turned;
     Because the golden buckler was withheld,
     She to herself applies the powder-spark,
     For joy of one wild demon burst ere quelled,
     Perishing to astound the tyrant Dark.

     She had the Scriptural word so scored on brain,
     It rang through air to sky, and rocked a world
     That danced down shades the scarlet dance profane;
     Most women! see! by the man's view dustward hurled,
     Impenitent, submissive, torn in two.
     They sink upon their nature, the unnamed,
     And sops of nourishment may get some few,
     In place of understanding, scourged and shamed.

     Barely have seasoned women understood
     The great Irrational, who thunders power,
     Drives Nature to her primitive wild wood,
     And courts her in the covert's dewy hour;
     Returning to his fortress nigh night's end,
     With execration of her daughters' lures.
     They help him the proud fortress to defend,
     Nor see what front it wears, what life immures,
     The murder it commits; nor that its base
     Is shifty as a huckster's opening deal
     For bargain under smoothest market face,
     While Gentleness bids frigid Justice feel,
     Justice protests that Reason is her seat;
     Elect Convenience, as Reason masked,
     Hears calmly cramped Humanity entreat;
     Until a sentient world is overtasked,
     And rouses Reason's fountain-self: she calls
     On Nature; Nature answers: Share your guilt
     In common when contention cracks the walls
     Of the big house which not on me is built.

     The Lady said as much as breath will bear;
     To happier sisters inconceivable:
     Contemptible to veterans of the fair,
     Who show for a convolving pearly shell,
     A treasure of the shore, their written book.
     As much as woman's breath will bear and live
     Shaped she to words beneath a knotted look,
     That held as if for grain the summing sieve.
     Her judge now brightened without pause, as wakes
     Our homely daylight after dread of spells.
     Lips sugared to let loose the little snakes
     Of slimy lustres ringing elfin bells
     About a story of the naked flesh,
     Intending but to put some garment on,
     Should learn, that in the subject they enmesh,
     A traitor lurks and will be known anon.
     Delusion heating pricks the torpid doubt,
     Stationed for index down an ancient track:
     And ware of it was he while she poured out
     A broken moon on forest-waters black.

     Though past the stage where midway men are skilled
     To scan their senses wriggling under plough,
     When yet to the charmed seed of speech distilled,
     Their hearts are fallow, he, and witless how,
     Loathing, had yielded, like bruised limb to leech,
     Not handsomely; but now beholding bleed
     Soul of the woman in her prostrate speech,
     The valour of that rawness he could read.
     Thence flashed it, as the crimson currents ran
     From senses up to thoughts, how she had read
     Maternally the warm remainder man
     Beneath his crust, and Nature's pity shed,
     In shedding dearer than heart's blood to light
     His vision of the path mild Wisdom walks.
     Therewith he could espy Confession's fright;
     Her need of him: these flowers grow on stalks;
     They suck from soil, and have their urgencies
     Beside and with the lovely face mid leaves.
     Veins of divergencies, convergencies,
     Our botanist in womankind perceives;
     And if he hugs no wound, the man can prize
     That splendid consummation and sure proof
     Of more than heart in her, who might despise,
     Who drowns herself, for pity up aloof
     To soar and be like Nature's pity: she
     Instinctive of what virtue in young days
     Had served him for his pilot-star on sea,
     To trouble him in haven. Thus his gaze
     Came out of rust, and more than the schooled tongue
     Was gifted to encourage and assure.
     He gave her of the deep well she had sprung;
     And name it gratitude, the word is poor.
     But name it gratitude, is aught as rare
     From sex to sex? And let it have survived
     Their conflict, comes the peace between the pair,
     Unknown to thousands husbanded and wived:
     Unknown to Passion, generous for prey:
     Unknown to Love, too blissful in a truce.
     Their tenderest of self did each one slay;
     His cloak of dignity, her fleur de luce;
     Her lily flower, and his abolla cloak,
     Things living, slew they, and no artery bled.
     A moment of some sacrificial smoke
     They passed, and were the dearer for their dead.

     He learnt how much we gain who make no claims.
     A nightcap on his flicker of grey fire
     Was thought of her sharp shudder in the flames,
     Confessing; and its conjured image dire,
     Of love, the torrent on the valley dashed;
     The whirlwind swathing tremulous peaks; young force,
     Visioned to hold corrected and abashed
     Our senile emulous; which rolls its course
     Proud to the shattering end; with these few last
     Hot quintessential drops of bryony juice,
     Squeezed out in anguish: all of that once vast!
     And still, though having skin for man's abuse,
     Though no more glorying in the beauteous wreath
     Shot skyward from a blood at passionate jet,
     Repenting but in words, that stand as teeth
     Between the vivid lips; a vassal set;
     And numb, of formal value. Are we true
     In nature, never natural thing repents;
     Albeit receiving punishment for due,
     Among the group of this world's penitents;
     Albeit remorsefully regretting, oft
     Cravenly, while the scourge no shudder spares.

     Our world believes it stabler if the soft
     Are whipped to show the face repentance wears.
     Then hear it, in a moan of atheist gloom,
     Deplore the weedy growth of hypocrites;
     Count Nature devilish, and accept for doom
     The chasm between our passions and our wits!

     Affecting lunar whiteness, patent snows,
     It trembles at betrayal of a sore.
     Hers is the glacier-conscience, to expose
     Impurities for clearness at the core.

     She to her hungered thundering in breast,
     YE SHALL NOT STARVE, not feebly designates
     The world repressing as a life repressed,
     Judged by the wasted martyrs it creates.
     How Sin, amid the shades Cimmerian,
     Repents, she points for sight: and she avers,
     The hoofed half-angel in the Puritan
     Nigh reads her when no brutish wrath deters.

     Sin against immaturity, the sin
     Of ravenous excess, what deed divides
     Man from vitality; these bleed within;
     Bleed in the crippled relic that abides.
     Perpetually they bleed; a limb is lost,
     A piece of life, the very spirit maimed.
     But culprit who the law of man has crossed
     With Nature's dubiously within is blamed;
     Despite our cry at cutting of the whip,
     Our shiver in the night when numbers frown,
     We but bewail a broken fellowship,
     A sting, an isolation, a fall'n crown.

     Abject of sinners is that sensitive,
     The flesh, amenable to stripes, miscalled
     Incorrigible: such title do we give
     To the poor shrinking stuff wherewith we are walled;
     And, taking it for Nature, place in ban
     Our Mother, as a Power wanton-willed,
     The shame and baffler of the soul of man,
     The recreant, reptilious. Do thou build
     Thy mind on her foundations in earth's bed;
     Behold man's mind the child of her keen rod,
     For teaching how the wits and passions wed
     To rear that temple of the credible God;
     Sacred the letters of her laws, and plain,
     Will shine, to guide thy feet and hold thee firm:
     Then, as a pathway through a field of grain,
     Man's laws appear the blind progressive worm,
     That moves by touch, and thrust of linking rings
     The which to endow with vision, lift from mud
     To level of their nature's aims and springs,
     Must those, the twain beside our vital flood,
     Now on opposing banks, the twain at strife
     (Whom the so rosy ferryman invites
     To junction, and mid-channel over Life,
     Unmasked to the ghostly, much asunder smites)
     Instruct in deeper than Convenience,
     In higher than the harvest of a year.
     Only the rooted knowledge to high sense
     Of heavenly can mount, and feel the spur
     For fruitfullest advancement, eye a mark
     Beyond the path with grain on either hand,
     Help to the steering of our social Ark
     Over the barbarous waters unto land.

     For us the double conscience and its war,
     The serving of two masters, false to both,
     Until those twain, who spring the root and are
     The knowledge in division, plight a troth
     Of equal hands: nor longer circulate
     A pious token for their current coin,
     To growl at the exchange; they, mate and mate,
     Fair feminine and masculine shall join
     Upon an upper plane, still common mould,
     Where stamped religion and reflective pace
     A statelier measure, and the hoop of gold
     Rounds to horizon for their soul's embrace.
     Then shall those noblest of the earth and sun
     Inmix unlike to waves on savage sea.
     But not till Nature's laws and man's are one,
     Can marriage of the man and woman be.

     V

     He passed her through the sermon's dull defile.
     Down under billowy vapour-gorges heaved
     The city and the vale and mountain-pile.
     She felt strange push of shuttle-threads that weaved.

     A new land in an old beneath her lay;
     And forth to meet it did her spirit rush,
     As bride who without shame has come to say,
     Husband, in his dear face that caused her blush.

     A natural woman's heart, not more than clad
     By station and bright raiment, gathers heat
     From nakedness in trusted hands: she had
     The joy of those who feel the world's heart beat,
     After long doubt of it as fire or ice;
     Because one man had helped her to breathe free;
     Surprised to faith in something of a price
     Past the old charity in chivalry:-
     Our first wild step to right the loaded scales
     Displaying women shamefully outweighed.
     The wisdom of humaneness best avails
     For serving justice till that fraud is brayed.
     Her buried body fed the life she drank.
     And not another stripping of her wound!
     The startled thought on black delirium sank,
     While with her gentle surgeon she communed,
     And woman's prospect of the yoke repelled.
     Her buried body gave her flowers and food;
     The peace, the homely skies, the springs that welled;
     Love, the large love that folds the multitude.
     Soul's chastity in honesty, and this
     With beauty, made the dower to men refused.
     And little do they know the prize they miss;
     Which is their happy fortune! Thus he mused

     For him, the cynic in the Sage had play
     A hazy moment, by a breath dispersed;
     To think, of all alive most wedded they,
     Whom time disjoined! He needed her quick thirst
     For renovated earth: on earth she gazed,
     With humble aim to foot beside the wise.
     Lo, where the eyelashes of night are raised
     Yet lowly over morning's pure grey eyes.



     'LOVE IS WINGED FOR TWO'



     Love is winged for two,
     In the worst he weathers,
     When their hearts are tied;
     But if they divide,
     O too true!
     Cracks a globe, and feathers, feathers,
     Feathers all the ground bestrew.

     I was breast of morning sea,
     Rosy plume on forest dun,
     I the laugh in rainy fleeces,
     While with me
     She made one.
     Now must we pick up our pieces,
     For that then so winged were we.



     'ASK, IS LOVE DIVINE'



     Ask, is Love divine,
     Voices all are, ay.
     Question for the sign,
     There's a common sigh.
     Would we, through our years,
     Love forego,
     Quit of scars and tears?
     Ah, but no, no, no!



     'JOY IS FLEET'



     Joy is fleet,
     Sorrow slow.
     Love, so sweet,
     Sorrow will sow.
     Love, that has flown
     Ere day's decline,
     Love to have known,
     Sorrow, be mine!



     THE LESSON OF GRIEF



     Not ere the bitter herb we taste,
     Which ages thought of happy times,
     To plant us in a weeping waste,
     Rings with our fellows this one heart
     Accordant chimes.

     When I had shed my glad year's leaf,
     I did believe I stood alone,
     Till that great company of Grief
     Taught me to know this craving heart
     For not my own.



     WIND ON THE LYRE



     That was the chirp of Ariel
     You heard, as overhead it flew,
     The farther going more to dwell,
     And wing our green to wed our blue;
     But whether note of joy or knell,
     Not his own Father-singer knew;
     Nor yet can any mortal tell,
     Save only how it shivers through;
     The breast of us a sounded shell,
     The blood of us a lighted dew.



     THE YOUTHFUL QUEST



     His Lady queen of woods to meet,
     He wanders day and night:
     The leaves have whisperings discreet,
     The mossy ways invite.

     Across a lustrous ring of space,
     By covert hoods and caves,
     Is promise of her secret face
     In film that onward waves.

     For darkness is the light astrain,
     Astrain for light the dark.
     A grey moth down a larches' lane
     Unwinds a ghostly spark.

     Her lamp he sees, and young desire
     Is fed while cloaked she flies.
     She quivers shot of violet fire
     To ash at look of eyes.



     THE EMPTY PURSE--A SERMON TO OUR LATER PRODIGAL SON



     Thou, run to the dry on this wayside bank,
     Too plainly of all the propellers bereft!
     Quenched youth, and is that thy purse?
     Even such limp slough as the snake has left
     Slack to the gale upon spikes of whin,
     For cast-off coat of a life gone blank,
     In its frame of a grin at the seeker, is thine;
     And thine to crave and to curse
     The sweet thing once within.
     Accuse him: some devil committed the theft,
     Which leaves of the portly a skin,
     No more; of the weighty a whine.

     Pursue him: and first, to be sure of his track,
     Over devious ways that have led to this,
     In the stream's consecutive line,
     Let memory lead thee back
     To where waves Morning her fleur-de-lys,
     Unflushed at the front of the roseate door
     Unopened yet: never shadow there
     Of a Tartarus lighted by Dis
     For souls whose cry is, alack!
     An ivory cradle rocks, apeep
     Through his eyelashes' laugh, a breathing pearl.
     There the young chief of the animals wore
     A likeness to heavenly hosts, unaware
     Of his love of himself; with the hours at leap.
     In a dingle away from a rutted highroad,
     Around him the earliest throstle and merle,
     Our human smile between milk and sleep,
     Effervescent of Nature he crowed.
     Fair was that season; furl over furl
     The banners of blossom; a dancing floor
     This earth; very angels the clouds; and fair
     Thou on the tablets of forehead and breast:
     Careless, a centre of vigilant care.
     Thy mother kisses an infant curl.
     The room of the toys was a boundless nest,
     A kingdom the field of the games,
     Till entered the craving for more,
     And the worshipped small body had aims.
     A good little idol, as records attest,
     When they tell of him lightly appeased in a scream
     By sweets and caresses: he gave but sign
     That the heir of a purse-plumped dominant race,
     Accustomed to plenty, not dumb would pine.
     Almost magician, his earliest dream
     Was lord of the unpossessed
     For a look; himself and his chase,
     As on puffs of a wind at whirl,
     Made one in the wink of a gleam.
     She kisses a locket curl,
     She conjures to vision a cherub face,
     When her butterfly counted his day
     All meadow and flowers, mishap
     Derided, and taken for play
     The fling of an urchin's cap.
     When her butterfly showed him an eaglet born,
     For preying too heedlessly bred,
     What a heart clapped in thee then!
     With what fuller colours of morn!
     And high to the uttermost heavens it flew,
     Swift as on poet's pen.
     It flew to be wedded, to wed
     The mystery scented around:
     Issue of flower and dew,
     Issue of light and sound:
     Thinner than either; a thread
     Spun of the dream they threw
     To kindle, allure, evade.
     It ran the sea-wave, the garden's dance,
     To the forest's dark heart down a dappled glade;
     Led on by a perishing glance,
     By a twinkle's eternal waylaid.
     Woman, the name was, when she took form;
     Sheaf of the wonders of life. She fled,
     Close imaged; she neared, far seen. How she made
     Palpitate earth of the living and dead!
     Did she not show thee the world designed
     Solely for loveliness? Nested warm,
     The day was the morrow in flight. And for thee,
     She muted the discords, tuned, refined;
     Drowned sharp edges beneath her cloak.
     Eye of the waters, and throb of the tree,
     Sliding on radiance, winging from shade,
     With her witch-whisper o'er ruins, in reeds,
     She sang low the song of her promise delayed;
     Beckoned and died, as a finger of smoke
     Astream over woodland. And was not she
     History's heroines white on storm?
     Remember her summons to valorous deeds.
     Shone she a lure of the honey-bag swarm,
     Most was her beam on the knightly: she led
     For the honours of manhood more than the prize;
     Waved her magnetical yoke
     Whither the warrior bled,
     Ere to the bower of sighs.
     And shy of her secrets she was; under deeps
     Plunged at the breath of a thirst that woke
     The dream in the cave where the Dreaded sleeps.

     Away over heaven the young heart flew,
     And caught many lustres, till some one said
     (Or was it the thought into hearing grew?),
     NOT THOU AS COMMONER MEN!
     Thy stature puffed and it swayed,
     It stiffened to royal-erect;
     A brassy trumpet brayed;
     A whirling seized thy head;
     The vision of beauty was flecked.
     Note well the how and the when,
     The thing that prompted and sped.
     Thereanon the keen passions clapped wing,
     Fixed eye, and the world was prey.
     No simple world of thy greenblade Spring,
     Nor world of thy flowerful prime
     On the topmost Orient peak
     Above a yet vaporous day.
     Flesh was it, breast to beak:
     A four-walled windowless world without ray,
     Only darkening jets on a river of slime,
     Where harsh over music as woodland jay,
     A voice chants, Woe to the weak!
     And along an insatiate feast,
     Women and men are one
     In the cup transforming to beast.
     Magian worship they paid to their sun,
     Lord of the Purse! Behold him climb.
     Stalked ever such figure of fun
     For monarch in great-grin pantomime?
     See now the heart dwindle, the frame distend;
     The soul to its anchorite cavern retreat,
     From a life that reeks of the rotted end;
     While he--is he pictureable? replete,
     Gourd-like swells of the rank of the soil,
     Hollow, more hollow at core.
     And for him did the hundreds toil
     Despised; in the cold and heat,
     This image ridiculous bore
     On their shoulders for morsels of meat!

     Gross, with the fumes of incense full,
     With parasites tickled, with slaves begirt,
     He strutted, a cock, he bellowed, a bull,
     He rolled him, a dog, in dirt.
     And dog, bull, cook, was he, fanged, horned, plumed;
     Original man, as philosophers vouch;
     Carnivorous, cannibal; length-long exhumed,
     Frightfully living and armed to devour;
     The primitive weapons of prey in his pouch;
     The bait, the line and the hook:
     To feed on his fellows intent.
     God of the Danae shower,
     He had but to follow his bent.
     He battened on fowl not safely hutched,
     On sheep astray from the crook;
     A lure for the foolish in fold:
     To carrion turning what flesh he touched.
     And O the grace of his air,
     As he at the goblet sips,
     A centre of girdles loosed,
     With their grisly label, Sold!
     Credulous hears the fidelity swear,
     Which has roving eyes over yielded lips:
     To-morrow will fancy himself the seduced,
     The stuck in a treacherous slough,
     Because of his faith in a purchased pair,
     False to a vinous vow.

     In his glory of banquet strip him bare,
     And what is the creature we view?
     Our pursy Apollo Apollyon's tool;
     A small one, still of the crew
     By serpent Apollyon blest:
     His plea in apology, blindfold Fool.
     A fool surcharged, propelled, unwarned;
     Not viler, you hear him protest:
     Of a popular countenance not incorrect.
     But deeds are the picture in essence, deeds
     Paint him the hooved and homed,
     Despite the poor pother he pleads,
     And his look of a nation's elect.
     We have him, our quarry confessed!
     And scan him: the features inspect
     Of that bestial multiform: cry,
     Corroborate I, O Samian Sage!
     The book of thy wisdom, proved
     On me, its last hieroglyph page,
     Alive in the horned and hooved?
     Thou! will he make reply.

     Thus has the plenary purse
     Done often: to do will engage
     Anew upon all of thy like, or worse.
     And now is thy deepest regret
     To be man, clean rescued from beast:
     From the grip of the Sorcerer, Gold,
     Celestially released.

     But now from his cavernous hold,
     Free may thy soul be set,
     As a child of the Death and the Life, to learn,
     Refreshed by some bodily sweat,
     The meaning of either in turn,
     What issue may come of the two:-
     A morn beyond mornings, beyond all reach
     Of emotional arms at the stretch to enfold:
     A firmament passing our visible blue.
     To those having nought to reflect it, 'tis nought;
     To those who are misty, 'tis mist on the beach
     From the billow withdrawing; to those who see
     Earth, our mother, in thought,
     Her spirit it is, our key.

     Ay, the Life and the Death are her words to us here,
     Of one significance, pricking the blind.
     This is thy gain now the surface is clear:
     To read with a soul in the mirror of mind
     Is man's chief lesson.--Thou smilest! I preach!
     Acid smiling, my friend, reveals
     Abysses within; frigid preaching a street
     Paved unconcernedly smooth
     For the lecturer straight on his heels,
     Up and down a policeman's beat;
     Bearing tonics not labelled to soothe.
     Thou hast a disgust of the sermon in rhyme.
     It is not attractive in being too chaste.
     The popular tale of adventure and crime
     Would equally sicken an overdone taste.
     So, then, onward. Philosophy, thoughtless to soothe,
     Lifts, if thou wilt, or there leaves thee supine.

     Thy condition, good sooth, has no seeming of sweet;
     It walks our first crags, it is flint for the tooth,
     For the thirsts of our nature brine.
     But manful has met it, manful will meet.
     And think of thy privilege: supple with youth,
     To have sight of the headlong swine,
     Once fouling thee, jumping the dips!
     As the coin of thy purse poured out:
     An animal's holiday past:
     And free of them thou, to begin a new bout;
     To start a fresh hunt on a resolute blast:
     No more an imp-ridden to bournes of eclipse:
     Having knowledge to spur thee, a gift to compare;
     Rubbing shoulder to shoulder, as only the book
     Of the world can be read, by necessity urged.
     For witness, what blinkers are they who look
     From the state of the prince or the millionnaire!
     They see but the fish they attract,
     The hungers on them converged;
     And never the thought in the shell of the act,
     Nor ever life's fangless mirth.
     But first, that the poisonous of thee be purged,
     Go into thyself, strike Earth.
     She is there, she is felt in a blow struck hard.
     Thou findest a pugilist countering quick,
     Cunning at drives where thy shutters are barred;
     Not, after the studied professional trick,
     Blue-sealing; she brightens the sight. Strike Earth,
     Antaeus, young giant, whom fortune trips!
     And thou com'st on a saving fact,
     To nourish thy planted worth.

     Be it clay, flint, mud, or the rubble of chips,
     Thy roots have grasp in the stern-exact:
     The redemption of sinners deluded! the last
     Dry handful, that bruises and saves.
     To the common big heart are we bound right fast,
     When our Mother admonishing nips
     At the nakedness bare of a clout,
     And we crave what the commonest craves.

     This wealth was a fortress-wall,
     Under which grew our grim little beast-god stout;
     Self-worshipped, the foe, in division from all;
     With crowds of illogical Christians, no doubt;
     Till the rescuing earthquake cracked.
     Thus are we man made firm;
     Made warm by the numbers compact.
     We follow no longer a trumpet-snout,
     At a trot where the hog is tracked,
     Nor wriggle the way of the worm.

     Thou wilt spare us the cynical pout
     At humanity: sign of a nature bechurled.
     No stenchy anathemas cast
     Upon Providence, women, the world.
     Distinguish thy tempers and trim thy wits.
     The purchased are things of the mart, not classed
     Among resonant types that have freely grown.

     Thy knowledge of women might be surpassed:
     As any sad dog's of sweet flesh when he quits
     The wayside wandering bone!
     No revilings of comrades as ingrates: thee
     The tempter, misleader, and criminal (screened
     By laws yet barbarous) own.

     If some one performed Fiend's deputy,
     He was for awhile the Fiend.
     Still, nursing a passion to speak,
     As the punch-bowl does, in the moral vein,
     When the ladle has finished its leak,
     And the vessel is loquent of nature's inane,
     Hie where the demagogues roar
     Like a Phalaris bull, with the victim's force:
     Hurrah to their jolly attack
     On a City that smokes of the Plain;
     A city of sin's death-dyes,
     Holding revel of worms in a corse;
     A city of malady sore,
     Over-ripe for the big doom's crack:
     A city of hymnical snore;
     Connubial truths and lies
     Demanding an instant divorce,
     Clean as the bright from the black.
     It were well for thy system to sermonize.
     There are giants to slay, and they call for their Jack.

     Then up stand thou in the midst:
     Thy good grain out of thee thresh,
     Hand upon heart: relate
     What things thou legally didst
     For the Archseducer of flesh.
     Omitting the murmurs of women and fate,
     Confess thee an instrument armed
     To be snare of our wanton, our weak,
     Of all by the sensual charmed.
     For once shall repentance be done by the tongue:
     Speak, though execrate, speak
     A word on grandmotherly Laws
     Giving rivers of gold to our young,
     In the days of their hungers impure;
     To furnish them beak and claws,
     And make them a banquet's lure.

     Thou the example, saved
     Miraculously by this poor skin!
     Thereat let the Purse be waved:
     The snake-slough sick of the snaky sin:
     A devil, if devil as devil behaved
     Ever, thou knowest, look thou but in,
     Where he shivers, a culprit fettered and shaved;
     O a bird stripped of feather, a fish clipped of fin!

     And commend for a washing the torrents of wrath,
     Which hurl at the foe of the dearest men prize
     Rough-rolling boulders and froth.
     Gigantical enginery they can command,
     For the crushing of enemies not of great size:
     But hold to thy desperate stand.
     Men's right of bequeathing their all to their own
     (With little regard for the creatures they squeezed);
     Their mill and mill-water and nether mill-stone
     Tied fast to their infant; lo, this is the last
     Of their hungers, by prudent devices appeased.
     The law they decree is their ultimate slave;
     Wherein we perceive old Voracity glassed.
     It works from their dust, and it reeks of their grave.
     Point them to greener, though Journals be guns;
     To brotherly fields under fatherly skies;
     Where the savage still primitive learns of a debt
     He has owed since he drummed on his belly for war;
     And how for his giving, the more will he get;
     For trusting his fellows, leave friends round his sons:
     Till they see, with the gape of a startled surprise,
     Their adored tyrant-monster a brute to abhor,
     The sun of their system a father of flies!

     So, for such good hope, take their scourge unashamed;
     'Tis the portion of them who civilize,
     Who speak the word novel and true:
     How the brutish antique of our springs may be tamed,
     Without loss of the strength that should push us to flower;
     How the God of old time will act Satan of new,
     If we keep him not straight at the higher God aimed;
     For whose habitation within us we scour
     This house of our life; where our bitterest pains
     Are those to eject the Infernal, who heaps
     Mire on the soul. Take stripes or chains;
     Grip at thy standard reviled.
     And what if our body be dashed from the steeps?
     Our spoken in protest remains.
     A young generation reaps.

     The young generation! ah, there is the child
     Of our souls down the Ages! to bleed for it, proof
     That souls we have, with our senses filed,
     Our shuttles at thread of the woof.
     May it be braver than ours,
     To encounter the rattle of hostile bolts,
     To look on the rising of Stranger Powers.
     May it know how the mind in expansion revolts
     From a nursery Past with dead letters aloof,
     And the piping to stupor of Precedents shun,
     In a field where the forefather print of the hoof
     Is not yet overgrassed by the watering hours,
     And should prompt us to Change, as to promise of sun,
     Till brain-rule splendidly towers.
     For that large light we have laboured and tramped
     Thorough forests and bogland, still to perceive
     Our animate morning stamped
     With the lines of a sombre eve.

     A timorous thing ran the innocent hind,
     When the wolf was the hypocrite fang under hood,
     The snake a lithe lurker up sleeve,
     And the lion effulgently ramped.
     Then our forefather hoof did its work in the wood,
     By right of the better in kind.
     But now will it breed yon bestial brood
     Three-fold thrice over, if bent to bind,
     As the healthy in chains with the sick,
     Unto despot usage our issuing mind.
     It signifies battle or death's dull knell.
     Precedents icily written on high
     Challenge the Tentatives hot to rebel.
     Our Mother, who speeds her bloomful quick
     For the march, reads which the impediment well.
     She smiles when of sapience is their boast.
     O loose of the tug between blood run dry
     And blood running flame may our offspring run!
     May brain democratic be king of the host!
     Less then shall the volumes of History tell
     Of the stop in progression, the slip in relapse,
     That counts us a sand-slack inch hard won
     Beneath an oppressive incumbent perhaps.

     Let the senile lords in a parchment sky,
     And the generous turbulents drunken of morn,
     Their battle of instincts put by,
     A moment examine this field:
     On a Roman street cast thoughtful eye,
     Along to the mounts from the bog-forest weald.
     It merits a glance at our history's maps,
     To see across Britain's old shaggy unshorn,
     Through the Parties in strife internecine, foot
     The ruler's close-reckoned direct to the mark.
     From the head ran the vanquisher's orderly route,
     In the stride of his forts through the tangle and dark.
     From the head runs the paved firm way for advance,
     And we shoulder, we wrangle! The light on us shed
     Shows dense beetle blackness in swarm, lurid Chance,
     The Goddess of gamblers, above. From the head,
     Then when it worked for the birth of a star
     Fraternal with heaven's in beauty and ray,
     Sprang the Acropolis. Ask what crown
     Comes of our tides of the blood at war,
     For men to bequeath generations down!
     And ask what thou wast when the Purse was brimmed:
     What high-bounding ball for the Gods at play:
     A Conservative youth! who the cream-bowl skimmed,
     Desiring affairs to be left as they are.

     So, thou takest Youth's natural place in the fray,
     As a Tentative, combating Peace,
     Our lullaby word for decay. -
     There will come an immediate decree
     In thy mind for the opposite party's decease,
     If he bends not an instant knee.
     Expunge it: extinguishing counts poor gain.
     And accept a mild word of police:-
     Be mannerly, measured; refrain
     From the puffings of him of the bagpipe cheeks.
     Our political, even as the merchant main,
     A temperate gale requires
     For the ship that haven seeks;
     Neither God of the winds nor his bellowsy squires.

     Then observe the antagonist, con
     His reasons for rocking the lullaby word.
     You stand on a different stage of the stairs.
     He fought certain battles, yon senile lord.
     In the strength of thee, feel his bequest to his heirs.
     We are now on his inches of ground hard won,
     For a perch to a flight o'er his resting fence.

     Does it knock too hard at thy head if I say,
     That Time is both father and son?
     Tough lesson, when senses are floods over sense! -
     Discern the paternal of Now
     As the Then of thy present tense.
     You may pull as you will either way,
     You can never be other than one.
     So, be filial. Giants to slay
     Demand knowing eyes in their Jack.

     There are those whom we push from the path with respect.
     Bow to that elder, though seeing him bow
     To the backward as well, for a thunderous back
     Upon thee. In his day he was not all wrong.
     Unto some foundered zenith he strove, and was wrecked.
     He scrambled to shore with a worship of shore.
     The Future he sees as the slippery murk;
     The Past as his doctrinal library lore.
     He stands now the rock to the wave's wild wash.
     Yet thy lumpish antagonist once did work
     Heroical, one of our strong.
     His gold to retain and his dross reject,
     Engage him, but humour, not aiming to quash.
     Detest the dead squat of the Turk,
     And suffice it to move him along.
     Drink of faith in the brains a full draught
     Before the oration: beware
     Lest rhetoric moonily waft
     Whither horrid activities snare.
     Rhetoric, juice for the mob
     Despising more luminous grape,
     Oft at its fount has it laughed
     In the cataracts rolling for rape
     Of a Reason left single to sob!

     'Tis known how the permanent never is writ
     In blood of the passions: mercurial they,
     Shifty their issue: stir not that pit
     To the game our brutes best play.

     But with rhetoric loose, can we check man's brute?
     Assemblies of men on their legs invoke
     Excitement for wholesome diversion: there shoot
     Electrical sparks between their dry thatch
     And thy waved torch, more to kindle than light.
     'Tis instant between you: the trick of a catch
     (To match a Batrachian croak)
     Will thump them a frenzy or fun in their veins.
     Then may it be rather the well-worn joke
     Thou repeatest, to stop conflagration, and write
     Penance for rhetoric. Strange will it seem,
     When thou readest that form of thy homage to brains!

     For the secret why demagogues fail,
     Though they carry hot mobs to the red extreme,
     And knock out or knock in the nail
     (We will rank them as flatly sincere,
     Devoutly detesting a wrong,
     Engines o'ercharged with our human steam),
     Question thee, seething amid the throng.
     And ask, whether Wisdom is born of blood-heat;
     Or of other than Wisdom comes victory here; -
     Aught more than the banquet and roundelay,
     That is closed with a terrible terminal wail,
     A retributive black ding-dong?
     And ask of thyself: This furious Yea
     Of a speech I thump to repeat,
     In the cause I would have prevail,
     For seed of a nourishing wheat,
     IS IT ACCEPTED OF SONG?
     Does it sound to the mind through the ear,
     Right sober, pure sane? has it disciplined feet?
     Thou wilt find it a test severe;
     Unerring whatever the theme.
     Rings it for Reason a melody clear,
     We have bidden old Chaos retreat;
     We have called on Creation to hear;
     All forces that make us are one full stream.
     Simple islander! thus may the spirit in verse,
     Showing its practical value and weight,
     Pipe to thee clear from the Empty Purse,
     Lead thee aloft to that high estate. -
     The test is conclusive, I deem:
     It embraces or mortally bites.
     We have then the key-note for debate:
     A Senate that sits on the heights
     Over discords, to shape and amend.

     And no singer is needed to serve
     The musical God, my friend.
     Needs only his law on a sensible nerve:
     A law that to Measure invites,
     Forbidding the passions contend.
     Is it accepted of Song?
     And if then the blunt answer be Nay,
     Dislink thee sharp from the ramping horde,
     Slaves of the Goddess of hoar-old sway,
     The Queen of delirious rites,
     Queen of those issueless mobs, that rend
     For frenzy the strings of a fruitful accord,
     Pursuing insensate, seething in throng,
     Their wild idea to its ashen end.
     Off to their Phrygia, shriek and gong,
     Shorn from their fellows, behold them wend!

     But thou, should the answer ring Ay,
     Hast warrant of seed for thy word:
     The musical God is nigh
     To inspirit and temper, tune it, and steer
     Through the shoals: is it worthy of Song,
     There are souls all woman to hear,
     Woman to bear and renew.
     For he is the Master of Measure, and weighs,
     Broad as the arms of his blue,
     Fine as the web of his rays,
     Justice, whose voice is a melody clear,
     The one sure life for the numbered long,
     From him are the brutal and vain,
     The vile, the excessive, out-thrust:
     He points to the God on the upmost throne:
     He is the saver of grain,
     The sifter of spirit from dust.
     He, Harmony, tells how to Measure pertain
     The virilities: Measure alone
     Has votaries rich in the male:
     Fathers embracing no cloud,
     Sowing no harvestless main:
     Alike by the flesh and the spirit endowed
     To create, to perpetuate; woo, win, wed;
     Send progeny streaming, have earth for their own,
     Over-run the insensates, disperse with a puff
     Simulacra, though solid they sail,
     And seem such imperial stuff:
     Yes, the living divide off the dead.

     Then thou with thy furies outgrown,
     Not as Cybele's beast will thy head lash tail
     So praeter-determinedly thermonous,
     Nor thy cause be an Attis far fled.
     Thou under stress of the strife
     Shalt hear for sustainment supreme
     The cry of the conscience of Life:
     KEEP THE YOUNG GENERATIONS IN HAIL,
     AND BEQUEATH THEM NO TUMBLED HOUSE!

     There hast thou the sacred theme,
     Therein the inveterate spur,
     Of the Innermost. See her one blink
     In vision past eyeballs. Not thee
     She cares for, but us. Follow her.
     Follow her, and thou wilt not sink.
     With thy soul the Life espouse:
     This Life of the visible, audible, ring
     With thy love tight about; and no death will be;
     The name be an empty thing,
     And woe a forgotten old trick:
     And battle will come as a challenge to drink;
     As a warrior's wound each transient sting.
     She leads to the Uppermost link by link;
     Exacts but vision, desires not vows.
     Above us the singular number to see;
     The plural warm round us; ourself in the thick,
     A dot or a stop: that is our task;
     Her lesson in figured arithmetic,
     For the letters of Life behind its mask;
     Her flower-like look under fearful brows.

     As for thy special case, O my friend, one must think
     Massilia's victim, who held the carouse
     For the length of a carnival year,
     Knew worse: but the wretch had his opening choice.
     For thee, by our law, no alternatives were:
     Thy fall was assured ere thou camest to a voice.
     He cancelled the ravaging Plague,
     With the roll of his fat off the cliff.
     Do thou with thy lean as the weapon of ink,
     Though they call thee an angler who fishes the vague
     And catches the not too pink,
     Attack one as murderous, knowing thy cause
     Is the cause of community. Iterate,
     Iterate, iterate, harp on the trite:
     Our preacher to win is the supple in stiff:
     Yet always in measure, with bearing polite:
     The manner of one that would expiate
     His share in grandmotherly Laws,
     Which do the dark thing to destroy,
     Under aspect of water so guilelessly white
     For the general use, by the devils befouled.

     Enough, poor prodigal boy!
     Thou hast listened with patience; another had howled.
     Repentance is proved, forgiveness is earned.
     And 'tis bony: denied thee thy succulent half
     Of the parable's blessing, to swineherd returned:
     A Sermon thy slice of the Scriptural calf!
     By my faith, there is feasting to come,
     Not the less, when our Earth we have seen
     Beneath and on surface, her deeds and designs:
     Who gives us the man-loving Nazarene,
     The martyrs, the poets, the corn and the vines.
     By my faith in the head, she has wonders in loom;
     Revelations, delights. I can hear a faint crow
     Of the cock of fresh mornings, far, far, yet distinct;
     As down the new shafting of mines,
     A cry of the metally gnome.
     When our Earth we have seen, and have linked
     With the home of the Spirit to whom we unfold,
     Imprisoned humanity open will throw
     Its fortress gates, and the rivers of gold
     For the congregate friendliness flow.
     Then the meaning of Earth in her children behold:
     Glad eyes, frank hands, and a fellowship real:
     And laughter on lips, as the birds' outburst
     At the flooding of light. No robbery then
     The feast, nor a robber's abode the home,
     For a furnished model of our first den!
     Nor Life as a stationed wheel;
     Nor History written in blood or in foam,
     For vendetta of Parties in cursing accursed.
     The God in the conscience of multitudes feel,
     And we feel deep to Earth at her heart,
     We have her communion with men,
     New ground, new skies for appeal.
     Yield into harness thy best and thy worst;
     Away on the trot of thy servitude start,
     Through the rigours and joys and sustainments of air.
     If courage should falter, 'tis wholesome to kneel.
     Remember that well, for the secret with some,
     Who pray for no gift, but have cleansing in prayer,
     And free from impurities tower-like stand.
     I promise not more, save that feasting will come
     To a mind and a body no longer inversed:
     The sense of large charity over the land,
     Earth's wheaten of wisdom dispensed in the rough,
     And a bell ringing thanks for a sustenance meal
     Through the active machine: lean fare,
     But it carries a sparkle! And now enough,
     And part we as comrades part,
     To meet again never or some day or soon.

     Our season of drought is reminder rude:-
     No later than yesternoon,
     I looked on the horse of a cart,
     By the wayside water-trough.
     How at every draught of his bride of thirst
     His nostrils widened! The sight was good:
     Food for us, food, such as first
     Drew our thoughts to earth's lowly for food.



     TO THE COMIC SPIRIT



     Sword of Common Sense! -
     Our surest gift: the sacred chain
     Of man to man: firm earth for trust
     In structures vowed to permanence:-
     Thou guardian issue of the harvest brain!
     Implacable perforce of just;
     With that good treasure in defence,
     Which is our gold crushed out of joy and pain
     Since first men planted foot and hand was king:
     Bright, nimble of the marrow-nerve
     To wield thy double edge, retort
     Or hold the deadlier reserve,
     And through thy victim's weapon sting:
     Thine is the service, thine the sport
     This shifty heart of ours to hunt
     Across its webs and round the many a ring
     Where fox it is, or snake, or mingled seeds
     Occasion heats to shape, or the poor smoke
     Struck from a puff-ball, or the troughster's grunt; -
     Once lion of our desert's trodden weeds;
     And but for thy straight finger at the yoke,
     Again to be the lordly paw,
     Naming his appetites his needs,
     Behind a decorative cloak:
     Thou, of the highest, the unwritten Law
     We read upon that building's architrave
     In the mind's firmament, by men upraised
     With sweat of blood when they had quitted cave
     For fellowship, and rearward looked amazed,
     Where the prime motive gapes a lurid jaw,
     Thou, soul of wakened heads, art armed to warn,
     Restrain, lest we backslide on whence we sprang,
     Scarce better than our dwarf beginning shoot,
     Of every gathered pearl and blossom shorn;
     Through thee, in novel wiles to win disguise,
     Seen are the pits of the disruptor, seen
     His rebel agitation at our root:
     Thou hast him out of hawking eyes;
     Nor ever morning of the clang
     Young Echo sped on hill from horn
     In forest blown when scent was keen
     Off earthy dews besprinkling blades
     Of covert grass more merrily rang
     The yelp of chase down alleys green,
     Forth of the headlong-pouring glades,
     Over the dappled fallows wild away,
     Than thy fine unaccented scorn
     At sight of man's old secret brute,
     Devout for pasture on his prey,
     Advancing, yawning to devour;
     With step of deer, with voice of flute,
     Haply with visage of the lily flower.

     Let the cock crow and ruddy morn
     His handmaiden appear! Youth claims his hour.
     The generously ludicrous
     Espouses it. But see we sons of day,
     Off whom Life leans for guidance in our fight,
     Accept the throb for lord of us;
     For lord, for the main central light
     That gives direction, not the eclipse;
     Or dost thou look where niggard Age,
     Demanding reverence for wrinkles, whips
     A tumbled top to grind a wolf's worn tooth; -
     Hoar despot on our final stage,
     In dotage of a stunted Youth; -
     Or it may be some venerable sage,
     Not having thee awake in him, compact
     Of wisdom else, the breast's old tempter trips;
     Or see we ceremonial state,
     Robing the gilded beast, exact
     Abjection, while the crackskull name of Fate
     Is used to stamp and hallow printed fact;
     A cruel corner lengthens up thy lips;
     These are thy game wherever men engage:
     These and, majestic in a borrowed shape,
     The major and the minor potentate,
     Creative of their various ape; -
     The tiptoe mortals triumphing to write
     Upon a perishable page
     An inch above their fellows' height; -
     The criers of foregone wisdom, who impose
     Its slough on live conditions, much for the greed
     Of our first hungry figure wide agape; -
     Call up thy hounds of laughter to their run.
     These, that would have men still of men be foes,
     Eternal fox to prowl and pike to feed;
     Would keep our life the whirly pool
     Of turbid stuff dishonouring History;
     The herd the drover's herd, the fool the fool,
     Ourself our slavish self's infernal sun:
     These are the children of the heart untaught
     By thy quick founts to beat abroad, by thee
     Untamed to tone its passions under thought,
     The rich humaneness reading in thy fun.
     Of them a world of coltish heels for school
     We have; a world with driving wrecks bestrewn.

     'Tis written of the Gods of human mould,
     Those Nectar Gods, of glorious stature hewn
     To quicken hymns, that they did hear, incensed,
     Satiric comments overbold,
     From one whose part was by decree
     The jester's; but they boiled to feel him bite.
     Better for them had they with Reason fenced
     Or smiled corrected! They in the great Gods' might
     Their prober crushed, as fingers flea.
     Crumbled Olympus when the sovereign sire
     His fatal kick to Momus gave, albeit
     Men could behold the sacred Mount aspire,
     The Satirist pass by on limping feet.
     Those Gods who saw the ejected laugh alight
     Below had then their last of airy glee;
     They in the cup sought Laughter's drowned sprite,
     Fed to dire fatness off uncurbed conceit.
     Eyes under saw them waddle on their Mount,
     And drew them down; to flattest earth they rolled.
     This know we veritable. O Sage of Mirth!
     Can it be true, the story men recount
     Of the fall'n plight of the great Gods on earth?
     How they being deathless, though of human mould,
     With human cravings, undecaying frames,
     Must labour for subsistence; are a band
     Whom a loose-cheeked, wide-lipped gay cripple leads
     At haunts of holiday on summer sand:
     And lightly he will hint to one that heeds
     Names in pained designation of them, names
     Ensphered on blue skies and on black, which twirl
     Our hearing madly from our seeing dazed,
     Add Bacchus unto both; and he entreats
     (His baby dimples in maternal chaps
     Running wild labyrinths of line and curl)
     Compassion for his masterful Trombone,
     Whose thunder is the brass of how he blazed
     Of old: for him of the mountain-muscle feats,
     Who guts a drum to fetch a snappish groan:
     For his fierce bugler horning onset, whom
     A truncheon-battered helmet caps . . .
     The creature is of earnest mien
     To plead a sorrow darker than the tomb.
     His Harp and Triangle, in tone subdued,
     He names; they are a rayless red and white;
     The dawn-hued libertine, the gibbous prude.
     And, if we recognize his Tambourine,
     He asks; exhausted names her: she has become
     A globe in cupolas; the blowziest queen
     Of overflowing dome on dome;
     Redundancy contending with the tight,
     Leaping the dam! He fondly calls, his girl,
     The buxom tripper with the goblet-smile,
     Refreshful. O but now his brows are dun,
     Bunched are his lips, as when distilling guile,
     To drop his venomous: the Dame of dames,
     Flower of the world, that honey one,
     She of the earthly rose in the sea-pearl,
     To whom the world ran ocean for her kiss;
     He names her, as a worshipper he names,
     And indicates with a contemptuous thumb.
     The lady meanwhile lures the mob, alike
     Ogles the bursters of the horn and drum.
     Curtain her close! her open arms
     Have suckers for beholders: she to this?
     For that she could not, save in fury, hear
     A sharp corrective utterance flick
     Her idle manners, for the laugh to strike
     Beauty so breeding beauty, without peer
     Above the snows, among the flowers? She reaps
     This mouldy garner of the fatal kick?
     Gross with the sacrifice of Circe-swarms,
     Astarte of vile sweets that slay, malign,
     From Greek resplendent to Phoenician foul,
     The trader in attractions sinks, all brine
     To thoughts of taste; is 't love?--bark, dog! hoot, owl!
     And she is blushless: ancient worship weeps.
     Suicide Graces dangle down the charms
     Sprawling like gourds on outer garden-heaps.
     She stands in her unholy oily leer
     A statue losing feature, weather-sick
     Mid draggled creepers of twined ivy sere.
     The curtain cried for magnifies to see! -
     We cannot quench our one corrupting glance:
     The vision of the rumour will not flee.
     Doth the Boy own such Mother?--shoot his dart
     To bring her, countless as the crested deeps,
     Her subjects of the uncorrected heart?
     False is that vision, shrieks the devotee;
     Incredible, we echo; and anew
     Like a far growling lightning-cloud it leaps.
     Low humourist this leader seems; perchance
     Pitched from his University career,
     Adept at classic fooling. Yet of mould
     Human those Gods were: deathless too:
     On high they not as meditatives paced:
     Prodigiously they did the deeds of flesh:
     Descending, they would touch the lowest here:
     And she, that lighted form of blue and gold,
     Whom the seas gave, all earth, all earth embraced;
     Exulting in the great hauls of her mesh;
     Desired and hated, desperately dear;
     Most human of them was. No more pursue!
     Enough that the black story can be told.
     It preaches to the eminently placed:
     For whom disastrous wreckage is nigh due,
     Paints omen. Truly they our throbber had;
     The passions plumping, passions playing leech,
     Cunning to trick us for the day's good cheer.
     Our uncorrected human heart will swell
     To notions monstrous, doings mad
     As billows on a foam-lashed beach;
     Borne on the tides of alternating heats,
     Will drug the brain, will doom the soul as well;
     Call the closed mouth of that harsh final Power
     To speak in judgement: Nemesis, the fell:
     Of those bright Gods assembled, offspring sour;
     The last surviving on the upper seats;
     As with men Reason when their hearts rebel.

     Ah, what a fruitless breeder is this heart,
     Full of the mingled seeds, each eating each.
     Not wiser of our mark than at the start,
     It surges like the wrath-faced father Sea
     To countering winds; a force blind-eyed,
     On endless rounds of aimless reach;
     Emotion for the source of pride,
     The grounds of faith in fixity
     Above our flesh; its cravings urging speech,
     Inspiring prayer; by turns a lump
     Swung on a time-piece, and by turns
     A quivering energy to jump
     For seats angelical: it shrinks, it yearns,
     Loves, loathes; is flame or cinders; lastly cloud
     Capping a sullen crater: and mankind
     We see cloud-capped, an army of the dark,
     Because of thy straight leadership declined;
     At heels of this or that delusive spark:
     Now when the multitudinous races press
     Elbow to elbow hourly more,
     A thickened host; when now we hear aloud
     Life for the very life implore
     A signal of a visioned mark;
     Light of the mind, the mind's discourse,
     The rational in graciousness,
     Thee by acknowledgement enthroned,
     To tame and lead that blind-eyed force
     In harmony of harness with the crowd,
     For payment of their dues; as yet disowned,
     Save where some dutiful lone creature, vowed
     To holy work, deems it the heart's intent;
     Or where a silken circle views it cowled,
     The seeming figure of concordance, bent
     On satiating tyrant lust
     Or barren fits of sentiment.

     Thou wilt not have our paths befouled
     By simulation; are we vile to view,
     The heavens shall see us clean of our own dust,
     Beneath thy breezy flitting wing:
     They make their mirror upon faces true;
     And where they win reflection, lucid heave
     The under tides of this hot heart seen through.
     Beneficently wilt thou clip
     All oversteppings of the plumed,
     The puffed, and bid the masker strip,
     And into the crowned windbag thrust,
     Tearing the mortal from the vital thing,
     A lightning o'er the half-illumed,
     Who to base brute-dominion cleave,
     Yet mark effects, and shun the flash,
     Till their drowsed wits a beam conceive,
     To spy a wound without a gash,
     The magic in a turn of wrist,
     And how are wedded heart and head regaled
     When Wit o'er Folly blows the mort,
     And their high note of union spreads
     Wide from the timely word with conquest charged;
     Victorious laughter, of no loud report,
     If heard; derision as divinely veiled
     As terrible Immortals in rose-mist,
     Given to the vision of arrested men:
     Whereat they feel within them weave
     Community its closer threads,
     And are to our fraternal state enlarged;
     Like warm fresh blood is their enlivened ken:
     They learn that thou art not of alien sort,
     Speaking the tongue by vipers hissed,
     Or of the frosty heights unsealed,
     Or of the vain who simple speech distort,
     Or of the vapours pointing on to nought
     Along cold skies; though sharp and high thy pitch;
     As when sole homeward the belated treads,
     And hears aloft a clamour wailed,
     That once had seemed the broomstick witch
     Horridly violating cloud for drought:
     He, from the rub of minds dispersing fears,
     Hears migrants marshalling their midnight train;
     Homeliest order in black sky appears,
     Not less than in the lighted village steads.
     So do those half-illumed wax clear to share
     A cry that is our common voice; the note
     Of fellowship upon a loftier plane,
     Above embattled castle-wall and moat;
     And toning drops as from pure heaven it sheds.
     So thou for washing a phantasmal air,
     For thy sweet singing keynote of the wise,
     Laughter--the joy of Reason seeing fade
     Obstruction into Earth's renewing beds,
     Beneath the stroke of her good servant's blade -
     Thenceforth art as their earth-star hailed;
     Gain of the years, conjunction's prize.
     The greater heart in thy appeal to heads
     They see, thou Captain of our civil Fort!
     By more elusive savages assailed
     On each ascending stage; untired
     Both inner foe and outer to cut short,
     And blow to chaff pretenders void of grist:
     Showing old tiger's claws, old crocodile's
     Yard-grin of eager grinders, slim to sight,
     Like forms in running water, oft when smiles,
     When pearly tears, when fluent lips delight:
     But never with the slayer's malice fired:
     As little as informs an infant's fist
     Clenched at the sneeze! Thou wouldst but have us be
     Good sons of mother soil, whereby to grow
     Branching on fairer skies, one stately tree;
     Broad of the tilth for flowering at the Court:
     Which is the tree bound fast to wave its tress;
     Of strength controlled sheer beauty to bestow.
     Ambrosial heights of possible acquist,
     Where souls of men with soul of man consort,
     And all look higher to new loveliness
     Begotten of the look: thy mark is there;
     While on our temporal ground alive,
     Rightly though fearfully thou wieldest sword
     Of finer temper now a numbered learn
     That they resisting thee themselves resist;
     And not thy bigger joy to smite and drive,
     Prompt the dense herd to butt, and set the snare
     Witching them into pitfalls for hoarse shouts.
     More now, and hourly more, and of the Lord
     Thou lead'st to, doth this rebel heart discern,
     When pinched ascetic and red sensualist
     Alternately recurrent freeze or burn,
     And of its old religions it has doubts.
     It fears thee less when thou hast shown it bare;
     Less hates, part understands, nor much resents,
     When the prized objects it has raised for prayer,
     For fitful prayer;--repentance dreading fire,
     Impelled by aches; the blindness which repents
     Like the poor trampled worm that writhes in mire; -
     Are sounded by thee, and thou darest probe
     Old institutions and establishments,
     Once fortresses against the floods of sin,
     For what their worth; and questioningly prod
     For why they stand upon a racing globe,
     Impeding blocks, less useful than the clod;
     Their angel out of them, a demon in.

     This half-enlightened heart, still doomed to fret,
     To hurl at vanities, to drift in shame
     Of gain or loss, bewailing the sure rod,
     Shall of predestination wed thee yet.
     Something it gathers of what things should drop
     At entrance on new times; of how thrice broad
     The world of minds communicative; how
     A straggling Nature classed in school, and scored
     With stripes admonishing, may yield to plough
     Fruitfullest furrows, nor for waxing tame
     Be feeble on an Earth whose gentler crop
     Is its most living, in the mind that steers,
     By Reason led, her way of tree and flame,
     Beyond the genuflexions and the tears;
     Upon an Earth that cannot stop,
     Where upward is the visible aim,
     And ever we espy the greater God,
     For simple pointing at a good adored:
     Proof of the closer neighbourhood. Head on,
     Sword of the many, light of the few! untwist
     Or cut our tangles till fair space is won
     Beyond a briared wood of austere brow,
     Believed of discord by thy timely word
     At intervals refreshing life: for thou
     Art verify Keeper of the Muse's Key;
     Thyself no vacant melodist;
     On lower land elective even as she;
     Holding, as she, all dissonance abhorred;
     Advising to her measured steps in flow;
     And teaching how for being subjected free
     Past thought of freedom we may come to know
     The music of the meaning of Accord.



     YOUTH IN MEMORY



     Days, when the ball of our vision
     Had eagles that flew unabashed to sun;
     When the grasp on the bow was decision,
     And arrow and hand and eye were one;
     When the Pleasures, like waves to a swimmer,
     Came heaving for rapture ahead! -
     Invoke them, they dwindle, they glimmer
     As lights over mounds of the dead.

     Behold the winged Olympus, off the mead,
     With thunder of wide pinions, lightning speed,
     Wafting the shepherd-boy through ether clear,
     To bear the golden nectar-cup.
     So flies desire at view of its delight,
     When the young heart is tiptoe perched on sight.
     We meanwhile who in hues of the sick year
     The Spring-time paint to prick us for our lost,
     Mount but the fatal half way up -
     Whereon shut eyes! This is decreed,
     For Age that would to youthful heavens ascend,
     By passion for the arms' possession tossed,
     It falls the way of sighs and hath their end;
     A spark gone out to more sepulchral night.
     Good if the arrowy eagle of the height
     Be then the little bird that hops to feed.

     Lame falls the cry to kindle days
     Of radiant orb and daring gaze.
     It does but clank our mortal chain.
     For Earth reads through her felon old
     The many-numbered of her fold,
     Who forward tottering backward strain,
     And would be thieves of treasure spent,
     With their grey season soured.
     She could write out their history in their thirst
     To have again the much devoured,
     And be the bud at burst;
     In honey fancy join the flow,
     Where Youth swims on as once they went,
     All choiric for spontaneous glee
     Of active eager lungs and thews;
     They now bared roots beside the river bent;
     Whose privilege themselves to see;
     Their place in yonder tideway know;
     The current glass peruse;
     The depths intently sound;
     And sapped by each returning flood
     Accept for monitory nourishment
     Those worn roped features under crust of mud,
     Reflected in the silvery smooth around:
     Not less the branching and high singing tree,
     A home of nests, a landmark and a tent,
     Until their hour for losing hold on ground.
     Even such good harvest of the things that flee
     Earth offers her subjected, and they choose
     Rather of Bacchic Youth one beam to drink,
     And warm slow marrow with the sensual wink.
     So block they at her source the Mother of the Muse.

     Who cheerfully the little bird becomes,
     Without a fall, and pipes for peck at crumbs,
     May have her dolings to the lightest touch;
     As where some cripple muses by his crutch,
     Unwitting that the spirit in him sings:
     'When I had legs, then had I wings,
     As good as any born of eggs,
     To feed on all aerial things,
     When I had legs!'
     And if not to embrace he sighs,
     She gives him breath of Youth awhile,
     Perspective of a breezy mile,
     Companionable hedgeways, lifting skies;
     Scenes where his nested dreams upon their hoard
     Brooded, or up to empyrean soared:
     Enough to link him with a dotted line.
     But cravings for an eagle's flight,
     To top white peaks and serve wild wine
     Among the rosy undecayed,
     Bring only flash of shade
     From her full throbbing breast of day in night.
     By what they crave are they betrayed:
     And cavernous is that young dragon's jaw,
     Crimson for all the fiery reptile saw
     In time now coveted, for teeth to flay,
     Once more consume, were Life recurrent May.
     They to their moment of drawn breath,
     Which is the life that makes the death,
     The death that makes ethereal life would bind:
     The death that breeds the spectre do they find.
     Darkness is wedded and the waste regrets
     Beating as dead leaves on a fitful gust,
     By souls no longer dowered to climb
     Beneath their pack of dust,
     Whom envy of a lustrous prime,
     Eclipsed while yet invoked, besets,
     And dooms to sink and water sable flowers,
     That never gladdened eye or loaded bee.
     Strain we the arms for Memory's hours,
     We are the seized Persephone.
     Responsive never to the soft desire
     For one prized tune is this our chord of life.
     'Tis clipped to deadness with a wanton knife,
     In wishes that for ecstasies aspire.
     Yet have we glad companionship of Youth,
     Elysian meadows for the mind,
     Dare we to face deeds done, and in our tomb
     Filled with the parti-coloured bloom
     Of loved and hated, grasp all human truth
     Sowed by us down the mazy paths behind.
     To feel that heaven must we that hell sound through:
     Whence comes a line of continuity,
     That brings our middle station into view,
     Between those poles; a novel Earth we see,
     In likeness of us, made of banned and blest;
     The sower's bed, but not the reaper's rest:
     An Earth alive with meanings, wherein meet
     Buried, and breathing, and to be.
     Then of the junction of the three,
     Even as a heart in brain, full sweet
     May sense of soul, the sum of music, beat.

     Only the soul can walk the dusty track
     Where hangs our flowering under vapours black,
     And bear to see how these pervade, obscure,
     Quench recollection of a spacious pure.
     They take phantasmal forms, divide, convolve,
     Hard at each other point and gape,
     Horrible ghosts! in agony dissolve,
     To reappear with one they drape
     For criminal, and, Father! shrieking name,
     Who such distorted issue did beget.
     Accept them, them and him, though hiss thy sweat
     Off brow on breast, whose furnace flame
     Has eaten, and old Self consumes.
     Out of the purification will they leap,
     Thee renovating while new light illumes
     The dusky web of evil, known as pain,
     That heavily up healthward mounts the steep;
     Our fleshly road to beacon-fire of brain:
     Midway the tameless oceanic brute
     Below, whose heave is topped with foam for fruit,
     And the fair heaven reflecting inner peace
     On righteous warfare, that asks not to cease.

     Forth of such passage through black fire we win
     Clear hearing of the simple lute,
     Whereon, and not on other, Memory plays
     For them who can in quietness receive
     Her restorative airs: a ditty thin
     As note of hedgerow bird in ear of eve,
     Or wave at ebb, the shallow catching rays
     On a transparent sheet, where curves a glass
     To truer heavens than when the breaker neighs
     Loud at the plunge for bubbly wreck in roar.
     Solidity and bulk and martial brass,
     Once tyrants of the senses, faintly score
     A mark on pebbled sand or fluid slime,
     While present in the spirit, vital there,
     Are things that seemed the phantoms of their time;
     Eternal as the recurrent cloud, as air
     Imperative, refreshful as dawn-dew.
     Some evanescent hand on vapour scrawled
     Historic of the soul, and heats anew
     Its coloured lines where deeds of flesh stand bald.
     True of the man, and of mankind 'tis true,
     Did we stout battle with the Shade, Despair,
     Our cowardice, it blooms; or haply warred
     Against the primal beast in us, and flung;
     Or cleaving mists of Sorrow, left it starred
     Above self-pity slain: or it was Prayer
     First taken for Life's cleanser; or the tongue
     Spake for the world against this heart; or rings
     Old laughter, from the founts of wisdom sprung;
     Or clap of wing of joy, that was a throb
     From breast of Earth, and did no creature rob:
     These quickening live. But deepest at her springs,
     Most filial, is an eye to love her young.
     And had we it, to see with it, alive
     Is our lost garden, flower, bird and hive.
     Blood of her blood, aim of her aim, are then
     The green-robed and grey-crested sons of men:
     She tributary to her aged restores
     The living in the dead; she will inspire
     Faith homelier than on the Yonder shores,
     Abhorring these as mire,
     Uncertain steps, in dimness gropes,
     With mortal tremours pricking hopes,
     And, by the final Bacchic of the lusts
     Propelled, the Bacchic of the spirit trusts:
     A fervour drunk from mystic hierophants;
     Not utterly misled, though blindly led,
     Led round fermenting eddies. Faith she plants
     In her own firmness as our midway road:
     Which rightly Youth has read, though blindly read;
     Her essence reading in her toothsome goad;
     Spur of bright dreams experience disenchants.
     But love we well the young, her road midway
     The darknesses runs consecrated clay.
     Despite our feeble hold on this green home,
     And the vast outer strangeness void of dome,
     Shall we be with them, of them, taught to feel,
     Up to the moment of our prostrate fall,
     The life they deem voluptuously real
     Is more than empty echo of a call,
     Or shadow of a shade, or swing of tides;
     As brooding upon age, when veins congeal,
     Grey palsy nods to think. With us for guides,
     Another step above the animal,
     To views in Alpine thought are they helped on.
     Good if so far we live in them when gone!

     And there the arrowy eagle of the height
     Becomes the little bird that hops to feed,
     Glad of a crumb, for tempered appetite
     To make it wholesome blood and fruitful seed.
     Then Memory strikes on no slack string,
     Nor sectional will varied Life appear:
     Perforce of soul discerned in mind, we hear
     Earth with her Onward chime, with Winter Spring.
     And ours the mellow note, while sharing joys
     No more subjecting mortals who have learnt
     To build for happiness on equipoise,
     The Pleasures read in sparks of substance burnt;
     Know in our seasons an integral wheel,
     That rolls us to a mark may yet be willed.
     This, the truistic rubbish under heel
     Of all the world, we peck at and are filled.



     PENETRATION AND TRUST



     I

     Sleek as a lizard at round of a stone,
     The look of her heart slipped out and in.
     Sweet on her lord her soft eyes shone,
     As innocents clear of a shade of sin.

     II

     He laid a finger under her chin,
     His arm for her girdle at waist was thrown:
     Now, what will happen and who will win,
     With me in the fight and my lady lone?

     III

     He clasped her, clasping a shape of stone;
     Was fire on her eyes till they let him in.
     Her breast to a God of the daybeams shone,
     And never a corner for serpent sin.

     IV

     Tranced she stood, with a chattering chin;
     Her shrunken form at his feet was thrown:
     At home to the death my lord shall win,
     When it is no tyrant who leaves me lone!



     NIGHT OF FROST IN MAY



     With splendour of a silver day,
     A frosted night had opened May:
     And on that plumed and armoured night,
     As one close temple hove our wood,
     Its border leafage virgin white.
     Remote down air an owl hallooed.
     The black twig dropped without a twirl;
     The bud in jewelled grasp was nipped;
     The brown leaf cracked a scorching curl;
     A crystal off the green leaf slipped.
     Across the tracks of rimy tan,
     Some busy thread at whiles would shoot;
     A limping minnow-rillet ran,
     To hang upon an icy foot.

     In this shrill hush of quietude,
     The ear conceived a severing cry.
     Almost it let the sound elude,
     When chuckles three, a warble shy,
     From hazels of the garden came,
     Near by the crimson-windowed farm.
     They laid the trance on breath and frame,
     A prelude of the passion-charm.

     Then soon was heard, not sooner heard
     Than answered, doubled, trebled, more,
     Voice of an Eden in the bird
     Renewing with his pipe of four
     The sob: a troubled Eden, rich
     In throb of heart: unnumbered throats
     Flung upward at a fountain's pitch,
     The fervour of the four long notes,
     That on the fountain's pool subside,
     Exult and ruffle and upspring:
     Endless the crossing multiplied
     Of silver and of golden string.
     There chimed a bubbled underbrew
     With witch-wild spray of vocal dew.

     It seemed a single harper swept
     Our wild wood's inner chords and waked
     A spirit that for yearning ached
     Ere men desired and joyed or wept.
     Or now a legion ravishing
     Musician rivals did unite
     In love of sweetness high to sing
     The subtle song that rivals light;
     From breast of earth to breast of sky:
     And they were secret, they were nigh:
     A hand the magic might disperse;
     The magic swung my universe.

     Yet sharpened breath forbade to dream,
     Where all was visionary gleam;
     Where Seasons, as with cymbals, clashed;
     And feelings, passing joy and woe,
     Churned, gurgled, spouted, interflashed,
     Nor either was the one we know:
     Nor pregnant of the heart contained
     In us were they, that griefless plained,
     That plaining soared; and through the heart
     Struck to one note the wide apart:-
     A passion surgent from despair;
     A paining bliss in fervid cold;
     Off the last vital edge of air,
     Leap heavenward of the lofty-souled,
     For rapture of a wine of tears;
     As had a star among the spheres
     Caught up our earth to some mid-height
     Of double life to ear and sight,
     She giving voice to thought that shines
     Keen-brilliant of her deepest mines;
     While steely drips the rillet clinked,
     And hoar with crust the cowslip swelled.

     Then was the lyre of earth beheld,
     Then heard by me: it holds me linked;
     Across the years to dead-ebb shores
     I stand on, my blood-thrill restores.
     But would I conjure into me
     Those issue notes, I must review
     What serious breath the woodland drew;
     The low throb of expectancy;
     How the white mother-muteness pressed
     On leaf and meadow-herb; how shook,
     Nigh speech of mouth, the sparkle-crest
     Seen spinning on the bracken-crook.



     THE TEACHING OF THE NUDE



     I

     A satyr spied a Goddess in her bath,
     Unseen of her attendant nymphs; none knew.
     Forthwith the creature to his fellows drew,
     And looking backward on the curtained path,
     He strove to tell; he could but heave a breast
     Too full, and point to mouth, with failing leers:
     Vainly he danced for speech, he giggled tears,
     Made as if torn in two, as if tight pressed,
     As if cast prone; then fetching whimpered tunes
     For words, flung heel and set his hairy flight
     Through forest-hollows, over rocky height.
     The green leaves buried him three rounds of moons.
     A senatorial Satyr named what herb
     Had hurried him outrunning reason's curb.

     II

     'Tis told how when that hieaway unchecked
     To dell returned, he seemed of tempered mood:
     Even as the valley of the torrent rude,
     The torrent now a brook, the valley wrecked.
     In him, to hale him high or hurl aheap,
     Goddess and Goatfoot hourly wrestled sore;
     Hourly the immortal prevailing more:
     Till one hot noon saw Meliboeus peep
     From thicket-sprays to where his full-blown dame,
     In circle by the lusty friskers gripped,
     Laughed the showered rose-leaves while her limbs were stripped.
     She beckoned to our Satyr, and he came.
     Then twirled she mounds of ripeness, wreath of arms.
     His hoof kicked up the clothing for such charms.



     BREATH OF THE BRIAR



     I

     O briar-scents, on yon wet wing
     Of warm South-west wind brushing by,
     You mind me of the sweetest thing
     That ever mingled frank and shy:
     When she and I, by love enticed,
     Beneath the orchard-apples met,
     In equal halves a ripe one sliced,
     And smelt the juices ere we ate.

     II

     That apple of the briar-scent,
     Among our lost in Britain now,
     Was green of rind, and redolent
     Of sweetness as a milking cow.
     The briar gives it back, well nigh
     The damsel with her teeth on it;
     Her twinkle between frank and shy,
     My thirst to bite where she had bit.



     EMPEDOCLES



     I

     He leaped. With none to hinder,
     Of Aetna's fiery scoriae
     In the next vomit-shower, made he
     A more peculiar cinder.
     And this great Doctor, can it be,
     He left no saner recipe
     For men at issue with despair?
     Admiring, even his poet owns,
     While noting his fine lyric tones,
     The last of him was heels in air!

     II

     Comes Reverence, her features
     Amazed to see high Wisdom hear,
     With glimmer of a faunish leer,
     One mock her pride of creatures.
     Shall such sad incident degrade
     A stature casting sunniest shade?
     O Reverence! let Reason swim;
     Each life its critic deed reveals;
     And him reads Reason at his heels,
     If heels in air the last of him!



     ENGLAND BEFORE THE STORM



     I

     The day that is the night of days,
     With cannon-fire for sun ablaze
     We spy from any billow's lift;
     And England still this tidal drift!
     Would she to sainted forethought vow
     A space before the thunders flood,
     That martyr of its hour might now
     Spare her the tears of blood.

     II

     Asleep upon her ancient deeds,
     She hugs the vision plethora breeds,
     And counts her manifold increase
     Of treasure in the fruits of peace.
     What curse on earth's improvident,
     When the dread trumpet shatters rest,
     Is wreaked, she knows, yet smiles content
     As cradle rocked from breast.

     III

     She, impious to the Lord of Hosts,
     The valour of her offspring boasts,
     Mindless that now on land and main
     His heeded prayer is active brain.
     No more great heart may guard the home,
     Save eyed and armed and skilled to cleave
     Yon swallower wave with shroud of foam,
     We see not distant heave.

     IV

     They stand to be her sacrifice,
     The sons this mother flings like dice,
     To face the odds and brave the Fates;
     As in those days of starry dates,
     When cannon cannon's counterblast
     Awakened, muzzle muzzle bowled,
     And high in swathe of smoke the mast
     Its fighting rag outrolled.

     1891.



     TARDY SPRING



     Now the North wind ceases,
     The warm South-west awakes;
     Swift fly the fleeces,
     Thick the blossom-flakes.

     Now hill to hill has made the stride,
     And distance waves the without end:
     Now in the breast a door flings wide;
     Our farthest smiles, our next is friend.
     And song of England's rush of flowers
     Is this full breeze with mellow stops,
     That spins the lark for shine, for showers;
     He drinks his hurried flight, and drops.
     The stir in memory seem these things,
     Which out of moistened turf and clay
     Astrain for light push patient rings,
     Or leap to find the waterway.
     'Tis equal to a wonder done,
     Whatever simple lives renew
     Their tricks beneath the father sun,
     As though they caught a broken clue;
     So hard was earth an eyewink back:
     But now the common life has come,
     The blotting cloud a dappled pack,
     The grasses one vast underhum.
     A City clothed in snow and soot,
     With lamps for day in ghostly rows,
     Breaks to the scene of hosts afoot,
     The river that reflective flows:
     And there did fog down crypts of street
     Play spectre upon eye and mouth:-
     Their faces are a glass to greet
     This magic of the whirl for South.
     A burly joy each creature swells
     With sound of its own hungry quest;
     Earth has to fill her empty wells,
     And speed the service of the nest;
     The phantom of the snow-wreath melt,
     That haunts the farmer's look abroad,
     Who sees what tomb a white night built,
     Where flocks now bleat and sprouts the clod.
     For iron Winter held her firm;
     Across her sky he laid his hand;
     And bird he starved, he stiffened worm;
     A sightless heaven, a shaven land.
     Her shivering Spring feigned fast asleep,
     The bitten buds dared not unfold:
     We raced on roads and ice to keep
     Thought of the girl we love from cold.

     But now the North wind ceases,
     The warm South-west awakes,
     The heavens are out in fleeces,
     And earth's green banner shakes.



     THE LABOURER



     For a Heracles in his fighting ire there is never the glory that
     follows
     When ashen he lies and the poets arise to sing of the work he has
     done.
     But to vision alive under shallows of sight, lo, the Labourer's
     crown is Apollo's,
     While stands he yet in his grime and sweat--to wrestle for fruits of
     the Sun.

     Can an enemy wither his cheer? Not you, ye fair yellow-flowering
     ladies,
     Who join with your lords to jar the chords of a bosom heroic, and
     clog.
     'Tis the faltering friend, an inanimate land, may drag a great soul
     to their Hades,
     And plunge him far from a beam of star till he hears the deep bay of
     the Dog.

     Apparition is then of a monster-task, in a policy carving new
     fashions:
     The winninger course than the rule of force, and the springs lured
     to run in a stream:
     He would bend tough oak, he would stiffen the reed, point Reason to
     swallow the passions,
     Bid Britons awake two steps to take where one is a trouble extreme!

     Not the less is he nerved with the Labourer's resolute hope: that
     by him shall be written,
     To honour his race, this deed of grace, for the weak from the strong
     made just:
     That her sons over seas in a rally of praise may behold a thrice
     vitalised Britain,
     Ashine with the light of the doing of right: at the gates of the
     Future in trust.



     FORESIGHT AND PATIENCE



     Sprung of the father blood, the mother brain,
     Are they who point our pathway and sustain.
     They rarely meet; one soars, one walks retired.
     When they do meet, it is our earth inspired.

     To see Life's formless offspring and subdue
     Desire of times unripe, we have these two,
     Whose union is right reason: join they hands,
     The world shall know itself and where it stands;
     What cowering angel and what upright beast
     Make man, behold, nor count the low the least,
     Nor less the stars have round it than its flowers.
     When these two meet, a point of time is ours.

     As in a land of waterfalls, that flow
     Smooth for the leap on their great voice below,
     Some eddies near the brink borne swift along
     Will capture hearing with the liquid song,
     So, while the headlong world's imperious force
     Resounded under, heard I these discourse.

     First words, where down my woodland walk she led,
     To her blind sister Patience, Foresight said:

     - Your faith in me appals, to shake my own,
     When still I find you in this mire alone.

     - The few steps taken at a funeral pace
     By men had slain me but for those you trace.

     - Look I once back, a broken pinion I:
     Black as the rebel angels rained from sky!

     - Needs must you drink of me while here you live,
     And make me rich in feeling I can give.

     - A brave To-be is dawn upon my brow:
     Yet must I read my sister for the How.
     My daisy better knows her God of beams
     Than doth an eagle that to mount him seems.
     She hath the secret never fieriest reach
     Of wing shall master till men hear her teach.

     - Liker the clod flaked by the driving plough,
     My semblance when I have you not as now.
     The quiet creatures who escape mishap
     Bear likeness to pure growths of the green sap:
     A picture of the settled peace desired
     By cowards shunning strife or strivers tired.
     I listen at their breasts: is there no jar
     Of wrestlings and of stranglings, dead they are,
     And such a picture as the piercing mind
     Ranks beneath vegetation. Not resigned
     Are my true pupils while the world is brute.
     What edict of the stronger keeps me mute,
     Stronger impels the motion of my heart.
     I am not Resignation's counterpart.
     If that I teach, 'tis little the dry word,
     Content, but how to savour hope deferred.
     We come of earth, and rich of earth may be;
     Soon carrion if very earth are we!

     The coursing veins, the constant breath, the use
     Of sleep, declare that strife allows short truce;
     Unless we clasp decay, accept defeat,
     And pass despised; 'a-cold for lack of heat,'
     Like other corpses, but without death's plea.

     - My sister calls for battle; is it she?

     - Rather a world of pressing men in arms,
     Than stagnant, where the sensual piper charms
     Each drowsy malady and coiling vice
     With dreams of ease whereof the soul pays price!
     No home is here for peace while evil breeds,
     While error governs, none; and must the seeds
     You sow, you that for long have reaped disdain,
     Lie barren at the doorway of the brain,
     Let stout contention drive deep furrows, blood
     Moisten, and make new channels of its flood!

     - My sober little maid, when we meet first,
     Drinks of me ever with an eager thirst.
     So can I not of her till circumstance
     Drugs cravings. Here we see how men advance
     A doubtful foot, but circle if much stirred,
     Like dead weeds on whipped waters. Shout the word
     Prompting their hungers, and they grandly march,
     As to band-music under Victory's arch.
     Thus was it, and thus is it; save that then
     The beauty of frank animals had men.

     - Observe them, and down rearward for a term,
     Gaze to the primal twistings of the worm.
     Thence look this way, across the fields that show
     Men's early form of speech for Yes and No.

     My sister a bruised infant's utterance had;
     And issuing stronger, to mankind 'twas mad.
     I knew my home where I had choice to feel
     The toad beneath a harrow or a heel.

     - Speak of this Age.

     - When you it shall discern
     Bright as you are, to me the Age will turn.

     - For neither of us has it any care;
     Its learning is through Science to despair.

     - Despair lies down and grovels, grapples not
     With evil, casts the burden of its lot.
     This Age climbs earth.

     -To challenge heaven.

     - Not less
     The lower deeps. It laughs at Happiness!
     That know I, though the echoes of it wail,
     For one step upward on the crags you scale.
     Brave is the Age wherein the word will rust,
     Which means our soul asleep or body's lust,
     Until from warmth of many breasts, that beat
     A temperate common music, sunlike heat
     The happiness not predatory sheds!

     - But your fierce Yes and No of butting heads
     Now rages to outdo a horny Past.
     Shades of a wild Destroyer on the vast
     Are thrown by every novel light upraised.
     The world's whole round smokes ominously, amazed
     And trembling as its pregnant Aetna swells.
     Combustibles on hot combustibles
     Run piling, for one spark to roll in fire
     The mountain-torrent of infernal ire
     And leave the track of devils where men built.
     Perceptive of a doom, the sinner's guilt
     Confesses in a cry for help shrill loud,
     If drops the chillness of a passing cloud,
     To conscience, reason, human love; in vain:
     None save they but the souls which them contain.
     No extramural God, the God within
     Alone gives aid to city charged with sin.
     A world that for the spur of fool and knave
     Sweats in its laboratory what shall save?
     But men who ply their wits in such a school
     Must pray the mercy of the knave and fool.

     - Much have I studied hard Necessity!
     To know her Wisdom's mother, and that we
     May deem the harshness of her later cries
     In labour a sure goad to prick the wise,
     If men among the warnings which convulse
     Can gravely dread without the craven's pulse.
     Long ere the rising of this age of ours,
     The knave and fool were stamped as monstrous Powers.
     Of human lusts and lassitudes they spring,
     And are as lasting as the parent thing.
     Yet numbering locust hosts, bent they to drill,
     They might o'ermatch and have mankind at will.
     Behold such army gathering; ours the spur,
     No scattered foe to face, but Lucifer.
     Not fool or knave is now the enemy
     O'ershadowing men, 'tis Folly, Knavery!
     A sea; nor stays that sea the bastioned beach.
     Now must the brother soul alive in each
     His traitorous individual devildom
     Hold subject lest the grand destruction come.
     Dimly men see it menacing apace
     To overthrow, perchance uproot, the race.
     Within, without, they are a field of tares:
     Fruitfuller for them when the contest squares,
     And wherefore warrior service they must yield,
     Shines visible as life on either field.
     That is my comfort, following shock on shock,
     Which sets faith quaking on their firmest rock.
     Since with his weapons, all the arms of Night,
     Frail men have challenged Lucifer to fight,
     Have matched in hostile ranks, enrolled, erect,
     The human and Satanic intellect,
     Determined for their uses to control
     What forces on the earth and under roll,
     Their granite rock runs igneous; now they stand
     Pledged to the heavens for safety of their land.
     They cannot learn save grossly, gross that are:
     Through fear they learn whose aid is good in war.

     - My sister, as I read them in my glass,
     Their field of tares they take for pasture grass.
     How waken them that have not any bent
     Save browsing--the concrete indifferent!
     Friend Lucifer supplies them solid stuff:
     They fear not for the race when full the trough.
     They have much fear of giving up the ghost;
     And these are of mankind the unnumbered host.

     - If I could see with you, and did not faint
     In beating wing, the future I would paint.
     Those massed indifferents will learn to quake:
     Now meanwhile is another mass awake,
     Once denser than the grunters of the sty.
     If I could see with you! Could I but fly!

     - The length of days that you with them have housed,
     An outcast else, approves their cause espoused.

     - O true, they have a cause, and woe for us,
     While still they have a cause too piteous!
     Yet, happy for us when, their cause defined,
     They walk no longer with a stumbler blind,
     And quicken in the virtue of their cause,
     To think me a poor mouther of old saws!
     I wait the issue of a battling Age;
     The toilers with your 'troughsters' now engage;
     Instructing them, through their acutest sense,
     How close the dangers of indifference!
     Already have my people shown their worth,
     More love they light, which folds the love of Earth.
     That love to love of labour leads: thence love
     Of humankind--earth's incense flung above.

     - Admit some other features: Faithless, mean;
     Encased in matter; vowed to Gods obscene;
     Contemptuous of the impalpable, it swells
     On Doubt; for pastime swallows miracles;
     And if I bid it face what I observe,
     Declares me hoodwinked by my optic nerve!

     - Oft has your prophet, for reward of toil,
     Seen nests of seeming cockatrices coil:
     Disowned them as the unholiest of Time,
     Which were his offspring, born of flame on slime.
     Nor him, their sire, have known the filial fry:
     As little as Time's earliest knew the sky.
     Perchance among them shoots a lustrous flame
     At intervals, in proof of whom they came.
     To strengthen our foundations is the task
     Of this tough Age; not in your beams to bask,
     Though, lighted by your beams, down mining caves
     The rock it blasts, the hoarded foulness braves.
     My sister sees no round beyond her mood;
     To hawk this Age has dressed her head in hood.
     Out of the course of ancient ruts and grooves,
     It moves: O much for me to say it moves!
     About his AEthiop Highlands Nile is Nile,
     Though not the stream of the paternal smile:
     And where his tide of nourishment he drives,
     An Abyssinian wantonness revives.
     Calm as his lotus-leaf to-day he swims;
     He is the yellow crops, the rounded limbs,
     The Past yet flowing, the fair time that fills;
     Breath of all mouths and grist of many mills.
     To-morrow, warning none with tempest-showers,
     He is the vast Insensate who devours
     His golden promise over leagues of seed,
     Then sits in a smooth lake upon the deed.
     The races which on barbarous force begin
     Inherit onward of their origin,
     And cancelled blessings will the current length
     Reveal till they know need of shaping strength.
     'Tis not in men to recognize the need
     Before they clash in hosts, in hosts they bleed.
     Then may sharp suffering their nature grind;
     Of rabble passions grow the chieftain Mind.
     Yet mark where still broad Nile boasts thousands fed,
     For tens up the safe mountains at his head.
     Few would be fed, not far his course prolong,
     Save for the troublous blood which makes him strong.
     - That rings of truth! More do your people thrive;
     Your Many are more merrily alive
     Than erewhile when I gloried in the page
     Of radiant singer and anointed sage.
     Greece was my lamp: burnt out for lack of oil;
     Rome, Python Rome, prey of its robber spoil!
     All structures built upon a narrow space
     Must fall, from having not your hosts for base.
     O thrice must one be you, to see them shift
     Along their desert flats, here dash, there drift;
     With faith, that of privations and spilt blood,
     Comes Reason armed to clear or bank the flood!
     And thrice must one be you, to wait release
     From duress in the swamp of their increase.
     At which oppressive scene, beyond arrest,
     A darkness not with stars of heaven dressed
     Philosophers behold; desponding view
     Your Many nourished, starved my brilliant few;
     Then flinging heels, as charioteers the reins,
     Dive down the fumy AEtna of their brains.
     Belated vessels on a rising sea,
     They seem: they pass!

     - But not Philosophy!

     - Ay, be we faithful to ourselves: despise
     Nought but the coward in us! That way lies
     The wisdom making passage through our slough.
     Am I not heard, my head to Earth shall bow;
     Like her, shall wait to see, and seeing wait.
     Philosophy is Life's one match for Fate.
     That photosphere of our high fountain One,
     Our spirit's Lord and Reason's fostering sun,
     Philosophy, shall light us in the shade,
     Warm in the frost, make Good our aim and aid.
     Companioned by the sweetest, ay renewed,
     Unconquerable, whose aim for aid is Good!
     Advantage to the Many: that we name
     God's voice; have there the surety in our aim.
     This thought unto my sister do I owe,
     And irony and satire off me throw.
     They crack a childish whip, drive puny herds,
     Where numbers crave their sustenance in words.
     Now let the perils thicken: clearer seen,
     Your Chieftain Mind mounts over them serene.
     Who never yet of scattered lamps was born
     To speed a world, a marching world to warn,
     But sunward from the vivid Many springs,
     Counts conquest but a step, and through disaster sings.



     THE WARNING



     We have seen mighty men ballooning high,
     And in another moment bump the ground.
     He falls; and in his measurement is found
     To count some inches o'er the common fry.
     'Twas not enough to send him climbing sky,
     Yet 'twas enough above his fellows crowned,
     Had he less panted. Let his faithful hound
     Bark at detractors. He may walk or lie.
     Concerns it most ourselves, who with our gas -
     This little Isle's insatiable greed
     For Continents--filled to inflation burst.
     So do ripe nations into squalor pass,
     When, driven as herds by their old private thirst,
     They scorn the brain's wild search for virtuous light.



     OUTSIDE THE CROWD



     To sit on History in an easy chair,
     Still rivalling the wild hordes by whom 'twas writ!
     Sure, this beseems a race of laggard wit,
     Unwarned by those plain letters scrawled on air.
     If more than hands' and armsful be our share,
     Snatch we for substance we see vapours flit.
     Have we not heard derision infinite
     When old men play the youth to chase the snare?
     Let us be belted athletes, matched for foes,
     Or stand aloof, the great Benevolent,
     The Lord of Lands no Robber-birds annex,
     Where Justice holds the scales with pure intent;
     Armed to support her sword;--lest we compose
     That Chapter for the historic word on Wrecks.



     TRAFALGAR DAY



     He leads: we hear our Seaman's call
     In the roll of battles won;
     For he is Britain's Admiral
     Till setting of her sun.

     When Britain's life was in her ships,
     He kept the sea as his own right;
     And saved us from more fell eclipse
     Than drops on day from blackest night.
     Again his battle spat the flame!
     Again his victory flag men saw!
     At sound of Nelson's chieftain name,
     A deeper breath did Freedom draw.

     Each trusty captain knew his part:
     They served as men, not marshalled kine:
     The pulses they of his great heart,
     With heads to work his main design.
     Their Nelson's word, to beat the foe,
     And spare the fall'n, before them shone.
     Good was the hour of blow for blow,
     And clear their course while they fought on.

     Behold the Envied vanward sweep! -
     A day in mourning weeds adored!
     Then Victory was wrought to weep;
     Then sorrow crowned with laurel soared.

     A breezeless flag above a shroud
     All Britain was when wind and wave,
     To make her, passing human, proud,
     Brought his last gift from o'er the grave!

     Uprose the soul of him a star
     On that brave day of Ocean days:
     It rolled the smoke from Trafalger
     To darken Austerlitz ablaze.
     Are we the men of old, its light
     Will point us under every sky
     The path he took; and must we fight,
     Our Nelson be our battle-cry!

     He leads: we hear our Seaman's call
     In the roll of battles won;
     For he is Britain's Admiral
     Till setting of her sun.



     THE REVOLUTION



     I

     Not yet had History's Aetna smoked the skies,
     And low the Gallic Giantess lay enchained,
     While overhead in ordered set and rise
     Her kingly crowns immutably defiled;
     Effulgent on funereal piled
     Across the vacant heavens, and distrained
     Her body, mutely, even as earth, to bear;
     Despoiled the tomb of hope, her mouth of air.

     II

     Through marching scores of winters racked she lay,
     Beneath a hoar-frost's brilliant crust,
     Whereon the jewelled flies that drained
     Her breasts disported in a glistering spray;
     She, the land's fount of fruits, enclosed with dust;
     By good and evil angels fed, sustained
     In part to curse, in part to pray,
     Sucking the dubious rumours, till men saw
     The throbs of her charged heart before the Just,
     So worn the harrowed surface had become:
     And still they deemed the dance above was Law,
     Amort all passion in a rebel dumb.

     III

     Then, on the unanticipated day,
     Earth heaved, and rose a veinous mound
     To roar of the underfloods; and off it sprang,
     Ravishing as red wine in woman's form,
     A splendid Maenad, she of the delirious laugh,
     Her body twisted flames with the smoke-cap crowned;
     She of the Bacchic foot; the challenger to the fray,
     Bewitchment for the embrace; who sang, who sang
     Intoxication to her swarm,
     Revolved them, hair, voice, feet, in her carmagnole,
     As with a stroke she snapped the Royal staff,
     Dealt the awaited blow on gilt decay
     (O ripeness of the time! O Retribution sure,
     If but our vital lamp illume us to endure!)
     And, like a glad releasing of her soul,
     Sent the word Liberty up to meet the midway blue,
     Her bridegroom in descent to her; and they joined,
     In the face of men they joined: attest it true,
     The million witnesses, that she,
     For ages lying beside the mole,
     Was on the unanticipated miracle day
     Upraised to midway heaven and, as to her goal,
     Enfolded, ere the Immaculate knew
     What Lucifer of the Mint had coined
     His bride's adulterate currency
     Of burning love corrupt of an infuriate hate;
     She worthy, she unworthy; that one day his mate:
     His mate for that one day of the unwritten deed.
     Read backward on the hoar-frost's brilliant crust;
     Beneath it read.
     Athirst to kiss, athirst to slay, she stood,
     A radiance fringed with grim affright;
     For them that hungered, she was nourishing food,
     For those who sparkled, Night.
     Read in her heart, and how before the Just
     Her doings, her misdoings, plead.

     IV

     Down on her leap for him the young Angelical broke
     To husband a resurgent France:
     From whom, with her dethroning stroke,
     Dishonour passed; the dalliance,
     That is occasion's yea or nay,
     In issues for the soul to pay,
     Discarded; and the cleft 'twixt deed and word,
     The sinuous lie which warbles the sweet bird,
     Wherein we see old Darkness peer,
     Cold Dissolution beck, she had flung hence;
     And hence the talons and the beak of prey;
     Hence all the lures to silken swine
     Thronging the troughs of indolence;
     With every sleek convolvement serpentine;
     The pride in elfin arts to veil an evil leer,
     And bid a goatfoot trip it like a fay.
     He clasped in this revived, uprisen France,
     A valorous dame, of countenance
     The lightning's upon cloud: unlit as yet
     On brows and lips the lurid shine
     Of seas in the night-wind's whirl; unstirred
     Her pouch of the centuries' injuries compressed;
     The shriek that tore the world as yet unheard:
     Earth's animate full flower she looked, intense
     For worship, wholly given him, fair
     Adoring or desiring; in her bright jet,
     Earth's crystal spring to sky: Earth's warrior Best
     To win Heaven's Pure up that midway
     We vision for new ground, where sense
     And spirit are one for the further flight; breast-bare,
     Bare-limbed; nor graceless gleamed her disarray
     In scorn of the seductive insincere,
     But martially nude for hot Bellona's play,
     And amorous of the loftiest in her view.

     V

     She sprang from dust to drink of earth's cool dew,
     The breath of swaying grasses share,
     Mankind embrace, their weaklings rear,
     At wrestle with the tyrannic strong;
     Her forehead clear to her mate, virgin anew,
     As immortals may be in the mortal sphere.
     Read through her launching heart, who had lain long
     With Earth and heard till it became her own
     Our good Great Mother's eve and matin song:
     The humming burden of Earth's toil to feed
     Her creatures all, her task to speed their growth,
     Her aim to lead them up her pathways, shown
     Between the Pains and Pleasures; warned of both,
     Of either aided on their hard ascent.
     Now when she looked, with love's benign delight
     After great ecstasy, along the plains,
     What foulest impregnation of her sight
     Transformed the scene to multitudinous troops
     Of human sketches, quaver-figures, bent,
     As were they winter sedges, broken hoops,
     Dry udder, vineless poles, worm-eaten posts,
     With features like the flowers defaced by deluge rains?
     Recked she that some perverting devil had limned
     Earth's proudest to spout scorn of the Maker's hand,
     Who could a day behold these deathly hosts,
     And see, decked, graced, and delicately trimmed,
     A ribanded and gemmed elected few,
     Sanctioned, of milk and honey starve the land:-
     Like melody in flesh, its pleasant game
     Olympianwise perform, cloak but the shame:
     Beautiful statures; hideous,
     By Christian contrast; pranked with golden chains,
     And flexile where is manhood straight;
     Mortuaries where warm should beat
     The brotherhood that keeps blood sweet:
     Who dared in cantique impious
     Proclaim the Just, to whom was due
     Cathedral gratitude in the pomp of state,
     For that on those lean outcasts hung the sucker Pains,
     On these elect the swelling Pleasures grew.
     Surely a devil's land when that meant death for each!
     Fresh from the breast of Earth, not thus,
     With all the body's life to plump the leech,
     Is Nature's way, she knew. The abominable scene
     Spat at the skies; and through her veins,
     To cloud celestially sown,
     Ran venom of what nourishment
     Her dark sustainer subterrene
     Supplied her, stretched supine on the rack,
     Alive in the shrewd nerves, the seething brains,
     Under derisive revels, prone
     As one clamped fast, with the interminable senseless blent.

     VI

     Now was her face white waves in the tempest's sharp flame-blink;
     Her skies shot black.
     Now was it visioned infamy to drink
     Of earth's cool dew, and through the vines
     Frolic in pearly laughter with her young,
     Watching the healthful, natural, happy signs
     Where hands of lads and maids like tendrils clung,
     After their sly shy ventures from the leaf,
     And promised bunches. Now it seemed
     The world was one malarious mire,
     Crying for purification: chief
     This land of France. It seemed
     A duteous desire
     To drink of life's hot flood, and the crimson streamed.

     VII

     She drank what makes man demon at the draught.
     Her skies lowered black,
     Her lover flew,
     There swept a shudder over men.
     Her heavenly lover fled her, and she laughed,
     For laughter was her spirit's weapon then.
     The Infernal rose uncalled, he with his crew.

     VIII

     As mighty thews burst manacles, she went mad:
     Her heart a flaring torch usurped her wits.
     Such enemies of her next-drawn breath she had!
     To tread her down in her live grave beneath
     Their dancing floor sunned blind by the Royal wreath,
     They ringed her steps with crafty prison pits.
     Without they girdled her, made nest within.
     There ramped the lion, here entrailed the snake.
     They forced the cup to her lips when she drank blood;
     Believing it, in the mother's mind at strain,
     In the mother's fears, and in young Liberty's wail
     Alarmed, for her encompassed children's sake,
     The sole sure way to save her priceless bud.
     Wherewith, when power had gifted her to prevail,
     Vengeance appeared as logically akin.
     Insanely rational they; she rationally insane;
     And in compute of sin, was hers the appealing sin.

     IX

     Amid the plash of scarlet mud
     Stained at the mouth, drunk with our common air,
     Not lack of love was her defect;
     The Fury mourned and raged and bled for France
     Breathing from exultation to despair
     At every wild-winged hope struck by mischance
     Soaring at each faint gleam o'er her abyss.
     Heard still, to be heard while France shall stand erect,
     The frontier march she piped her sons, for where
     Her crouching outer enemy camped,
     Attendant on the deadlier inner's hiss.
     She piped her sons the frontier march, the wine
     Of martial music, History's cherished tune;
     And they, the saintliest labourers that aye
     Dropped sweat on soil for bread, took arms and tramped;
     High-breasted to match men or elements,
     Or Fortune, harsh schoolmistress with the undrilled:
     War's ragged pupils; many a wavering line,
     Torn from the dear fat soil of champaigns hopefully tilled,
     Torn from the motherly bowl, the homely spoon,
     To jest at famine, ply
     The novel scythe, and stand to it on the field;
     Lie in the furrows, rain-clouds for their tents;
     Fronting the red artillery straighten spine;
     Buckle the shiver at sight of comrades strewn;
     Over an empty platter affect the merrily filled;
     Die, if the multiple hazards around said die;
     Downward measure a foeman mightily sized;
     Laugh at the legs that would run for a life despised;
     Lyrical on into death's red roaring jaw-gape, steeled
     Gaily to take of the foe his lesson, and give reply.
     Cheerful apprentices, they shall be masters soon!

     X

     Lo, where hurricane flocks of the North-wind rattle their thunder
     Loud through a night, and at dawn comes change to the great South-
     west,
     Hounds are the hounded in clouds, waves, forests, inverted the race:
     Lo, in the day's young beams the colossal invading pursuers
     Burst upon rocks and were foam;
     Ridged up a torrent crest;
     Crumbled to ruin, still gazing a glacial wonder;
     Turned shamed feet toe to heel on their track at a panic pace.
     Yesterday's clarion cock scudded hen of the invalid comb;
     They, the triumphant tonant towering upper, were under;
     They, violators of home, dared hope an inviolate home;
     They that had stood for the stroke were the vigorous hewers;
     Quick as the trick of the wrist with the rapier, they the pursuers.
     Heavens and men amazed heard the arrogant crying for grace;
     Saw the once hearth-reek rabble the scourge of an army dispieced;
     Saw such a shift of the hunt as when Titan Olympus clomb.
     Fly! was the sportsman's word; and the note of the quarry rang,
     Chase!

     XI

     Banners from South, from East,
     Sheaves of pale banners drooping hole and shred;
     The captive brides of valour, Sabine Wives
     Plucked from the foeman's blushful bed,
     For glorious muted battle-tongues
     Of deeds along the horizon's red,
     At cost of unreluctant lives;
     Her toilful heroes homeward poured,
     To give their fevered mother air of the lungs.
     She breathed, and in the breathing craved.
     Environed as she was, at bay,
     Safety she kissed on her drawn sword,
     And waved for victory, for fresh victory waved:
     She craved for victory as her daily bread;
     For victory as her daily banquet raved.

     XII

     Now had her glut of vengeance left her grey
     Of blood, who in her entrails fiercely tore
     To clutch and squeeze her snakes; herself the more
     Devitalizing: red washer Auroral ray;
     Desired if but to paint her pallid hue.
     The passion for that young horizon red,
     Which dowered her with the flags, the blazing fame,
     Like dotage of the past-meridian dame
     For some bright Sungod adolescent, swelled
     Insatiate, to the voracious grew,
     The glutton's inward raveners bred;
     Till she, mankind's most dreaded, most abhorred,
     Witless in her demands on Fortune, asked,
     As by the weaving Fates impelled,
     To have the thing most loathed, the iron lord,
     Controller and chastiser, under Victory masked.

     XIII

     Banners from East, from South,
     She hugged him in them, feared the scourge they meant,
     Yet blindly hugged, and hungering built his throne.
     So may you see the village innocent,
     With curtsey of shut lids and open mouth,
     In act to beg for sweets expect a loathly stone:
     See furthermore the Just in his measures weigh
     Her sufferings and her sins, dispense her meed.
     False to her bridegroom lord of the miracle day,
     She fell: from his ethereal home observed
     Through love, grown alien love, not moved to plead
     Against the season's fruit for deadly Seed,
     But marking how she had aimed, and where she swerved,
     Why suffered, with a sad consenting thought.
     Nor would he shun her sullen look, nor monstrous hold
     The doer of the monstrous; she aroused,
     She, the long tortured, suddenly freed, distraught,
     More strongly the divine in him than when
     Joy of her as she sprang from mould
     Drew him the midway heavens adown
     To clasp her in his arms espoused
     Before the sight of wondering men,
     And put upon the day a deathless crown.
     The veins and arteries of her, fold in fold,
     His alien love laid open, to divide
     The martyred creature from her crimes; he knew
     What cowardice in her valour could reside;
     What strength her weakness covered; what abased
     Sublimity so illumining, and what raised
     This wallower in old slime to noblest heights,
     Up to the union on the midway blue:-
     Day that the celestial grave Recorder hangs
     Among dark History's nocturnal lights,
     With vivid beams indicative to the quick
     Of all who have felt the vaulted body's pangs
     Beneath a mind in hopeless soaring sick.
     She had forgot how, long enslaved, she yearned
     To the one helping hand above;
     Forgot her faith in the Great Undiscerned,
     Whereof she sprang aloft to her Angelical love
     That day: and he, the bright day's husband, still with love,
     Though alien, though to an upper seat retired,
     Behold a wrangling heart, as 'twere her soul
     On eddies of wild waters cast;
     In wilderness division; fired
     For domination, freedom, lust,
     The Pleasures; lo, a witch's snaky bowl
     Set at her lips; the blood-drinker's madness fast
     Upon her; and therewith mistrust,
     Most of herself: a mouth of guile.
     Compassionately could he smile,
     To hear the mouth disclaiming God,
     And clamouring for the Just!
     Her thousand impulses, like torches, coursed
     City and field; and pushed abroad
     O'er hungry waves to thirsty sands,
     Flaring at further; she had grown to be
     The headless with the fearful hands;
     To slaughter, else to suicide, enforced.
     But he, remembering how his love began,
     And of what creature, pitied when was plain
     Another measure of captivity:
     The need for strap and rod;
     The penitential prayers again;
     Again the bitter bowing down to dust;
     The burden on the flesh for who disclaims the God,
     The answer when is call upon the Just.
     Whence her lost virtue had found refuge strode
     Her master, saying, 'I only; I who can!'
     And echoed round her army, now her chain.
     So learns the nation, closing Anarch's reign,
     That she had been in travail of a Man.



     NAPOLEON



     I

     Cannon his name,
     Cannon his voice, he came.
     Who heard of him heard shaken hills,
     An earth at quake, to quiet stamped;
     Who looked on him beheld the will of wills,
     The driver of wild flocks where lions ramped:
     Beheld War's liveries flee him, like lumped grass
     Nid-nod to ground beneath the cuffing storm;
     While laurelled over his Imperial form,
     Forth from her bearded tube of lacquey brass,
     Reverberant notes and long blew volant Fame.
     Incarnate Victory, Power manifest,
     Infernal or God-given to mankind,
     On the quenched volcano's cusp did he take stand,
     A conquering army's height above the land,
     Which calls that army offspring of its breast,
     And sees it mid the starry camps enshrined;
     His eye the cannon's flame,
     The cannon's cave his mind.

     II

     To weld the nation in a name of dread,
     And scatter carrion flies off wounds unhealed,
     The Necessitated came, as comes from out
     Electric ebon lightning's javelin-head,
     Threatening agitation in the revealed
     Founts of our being; terrible with doubt,
     With radiance restorative. At one stride
     Athwart the Law he stood for sovereign sway.
     That Soliform made featureless beside
     His brilliancy who neighboured: vapour they;
     Vapour what postured statues barred his tread.
     On high in amphitheatre field on field,
     Italian, Egyptian, Austrian,
     Far heard and of the carnage discord clear,
     Bells of his escalading triumphs pealed
     In crashes on a choral chant severe,
     Heraldic of the authentic Charlemagne,
     Globe, sceptre, sword, to enfold, to rule, to smite,
     Make unity of the mass,
     Coherent or refractory, by his might.

     Forth from her bearded tube of lacquey brass,
     Fame blew, and tuned the jangles, bent the knees
     Rebellious or submissive; his decrees
     Were thunder in those heavens and compelled:
     Such as disordered earth, eclipsed of stars,
     Endures for sign of Order's calm return,
     Whereunto she is vowed; and his wreckage-spars,
     His harried ships, old riotous Ocean lifts alight,
     Subdued to splendour in his delirant churn.
     Glory suffused the accordant, quelled,
     By magic of high sovereignty, revolt:
     And he, the reader of men, himself unread;
     The name of hope, the name of dread;
     Bloom of the coming years or blight;
     An arm to hurl the bolt
     With aim Olympian; bore
     Likeness to Godhead. Whither his flashes hied
     Hosts fell; what he constructed held rock-fast.
     So did earth's abjects deem of him that built and clove.
     Torch on imagination, beams he cast,
     Whereat they hailed him deified:
     If less than an eagle-speeding Jove, than Vulcan more.
     Or it might be a Vulcan-Jove,
     Europe for smithy, Europe's floor
     Lurid with sparks in evanescent showers,
     Loud echo-clap of hammers at all hours,
     Our skies the reflex of its furnace blast.

     III

     On him the long enchained, released
     For bride of the miracle day up the midway blue;
     She from her heavenly lover fallen to serve for feast
     Of rancours and raw hungers; she, the untrue,
     Yet pitiable, not despicable, gazed.
     Fawning, her body bent, she gazed
     With eyes the moonstone portals to her heart:
     Eyes magnifying through hysteric tears
     This apparition, ghostly for belief;
     Demoniac or divine, but sole
     Over earth's mightiest written Chief;
     Earth's chosen, crowned, unchallengeable upstart:
     The trumpet word to awake, transform, renew;
     The arbiter of circumstance;
     High above limitations, as the spheres.
     Nor ever had heroical Romance,
     Never ensanguined History's lengthened scroll,
     Shown fulminant to shoot the levin dart
     Terrific as this man, by whom upraised,
     Aggrandized and begemmed, she outstripped her peers;
     Like midnight's levying brazier-beacon blazed
     Defiant to the world, a rally for her sons,
     Day of the darkness; this man's mate; by him,
     Cannon his name,
     Rescued from vivisectionist and knave,
     Her body's dominators and her shame;
     By him with the rivers of ranked battalions, brave
     Past mortal, girt: a march of swords and guns
     Incessant; his proved warriors; loaded dice
     He flung on the crested board, where chilly Fears
     Behold the Reaper's ground, Death sitting grim,
     Awatch for his predestined ones,
     Mid shrieks and torrent-hooves; but these,
     Inebriate of his inevitable device,
     Hail it their hero's wood of lustrous laurel-trees,
     Blossom and fruit of fresh Hesperides,
     The boiling life-blood in their cheers.
     Unequalled since the world was man they pour
     A spiky girdle round her; these, her sons,
     His cataracts at smooth holiday, soon to roar
     Obstruction shattered at his will or whim:
     Kind to her ear as quiring Cherubim,
     And trampling earth like scornful mastodons.

     IV

     The flood that swept her to be slave
     Adoring, under thought of being his mate,
     These were, and unto the visibly unexcelled,
     As much of heart as abjects can she gave,
     Or what of heart the body bears for freight
     When Majesty apparent overawes;
     By the flash of his ascending deeds upheld,
     Which let not feminine pride in him have pause
     To question where the nobler pride rebelled.
     She read the hieroglyphic on his brow,
     Felt his firm hand to wield the giant's mace;
     Herself whirled upward in an eagle's claws,
     Past recollection of her earthly place;
     And if cold Reason pressed her, called him Fate;
     Offering abashed the servile woman's vow.
     Delirium was her virtue when the look
     At fettered wrists and violated laws
     Faith in a rectitude Supernal shook,
     Till worship of him shone as her last rational state,
     The slave's apology for gemmed disgrace.
     Far in her mind that leap from earth to the ghost
     Midway on high; or felt as a troubled pool;
     Or as a broken sleep that hunts a dream half lost,
     Arrested and rebuked by the common school
     Of daily things for truancy. She could rejoice
     To know with wakeful eyeballs Violence
     Her crowned possessor, and, on every sense
     Incumbent, Fact, Imperial Fact, her choice,
     In scorn of barren visions, aims at a glassy void.
     Who sprang for Liberty once, found slavery sweet;
     And Tyranny, on alert subservience buoyed,
     Spurred a blood-mare immeasureably fleet
     To shoot the transient leagues in a passing wink,
     Prompt for the glorious bound at the fanged abyss's brink.
     Scarce felt she that she bled when battle scored
     On riddled flags the further conjured line;
     From off the meteor gleam of his waved sword
     Reflected bright in permanence: she bled
     As the Bacchante spills her challengeing wine
     With whirl o' the cup before the kiss to lip;
     And bade drudge History in his footprints tread,
     For pride of sword-strokes o'er slow penmanship:
     Each step of his a volume: his sharp word
     The shower of steel and lead
     Or pastoral sunshine.

     V

     Persistent through the brazen chorus round
     His thunderous footsteps on the foeman's ground,
     A broken carol of wild notes was heard,
     As when an ailing infant wails a dream.
     Strange in familiarity it rang:
     And now along the dark blue vault might seem
     Winged migratories having but heaven for home,
     Now the lone sea-bird's cry down shocks of foam,
     Beneath a ruthless paw the captive's pang.

     It sang the gift that comes from God
     To mind of man as air to lung.
     So through her days of under sod
     Her faith unto her heart had sung,
     Like bedded seed by frozen clod,
     With view of wide-armed heaven and buds at burst,
     And midway up, Earth's fluttering little lyre.
     Even for a glimpse, for even a hope in chained desire
     The vision of it watered thirst.

     VI

     But whom those errant moans accused
     As Liberty's murderous mother, cried accursed,
     France blew to deafness: for a space she mused;
     She smoothed a startled look, and sought,
     From treasuries of the adoring slave,
     Her surest way to strangle thought;
     Picturing her dread lord decree advance
     Into the enemy's land; artillery, bayonet, lance;
     His ordering fingers point the dial's to time their ranks:
     Himself the black storm-cloud, the tempest's bayonet-glaive.
     Like foam-heads of a loosened freshet bursting banks,
     By mount and fort they thread to swamp the sluggard plains.
     Shines his gold-laurel sun, or cloak connivent rains.
     They press to where the hosts in line and square throng mute;
     He watchful of their form, the Audacious, the Astute;
     Eagle to grip the field; to work his craftiest, fox.
     From his brief signal, straight the stroke of the leveller falls;
     From him those opal puffs, those arcs with the clouded balls:
     He waves and the voluble scene is a quagmire shifting blocks;
     They clash, they are knotted, and now 'tis the deed of the axe on
     the log;
     Here away moves a spiky woodland, and yon away sweep
     Rivers of horse torrent-mad to the shock, and the heap over heap
     Right through the troughed black lines turned to bunches or shreds,
     or a fog
     Rolling off sunlight's arrows. Not mightier Phoebus in ire,
     Nor deadlier Jove's avengeing right hand, than he of the brain
     Keen at an enemy's mind to encircle and pierce and constrain,
     Muffling his own for a fate-charged blow very Gods may admire.
     Sure to behold are his eagles on high where the conflict raged.
     Rightly, then, should France worship, and deafen the disaccord
     Of those who dare withstand an irresistible sword
     To thwart his predestined subjection of Europe. Let them submit!
     She said it aloud, and heard in her breast, as a singer caged,
     With the beat of wings at bars, Earth's fluttering little lyre.
     No more at midway heaven, but liker midway to the pit:
     Not singing the spirally upward of rapture, the downward of pain
     Rather, the drop sheer downward from pressure of merciless weight.

     Her strangled thought got breath, with her worship held debate;
     To yield and sink, yet eye askant the mark she had missed.
     Over the black-blue rollers of that broad Westerly main,
     Steady to sky, the light of Liberty glowed
     In a flaming pillar, that cast on the troubled waters a road
     For Europe to cross, and see the thing lost subsist.
     For there 'twas a shepherd led his people, no butcher of sheep;
     Firmly there the banner he first upreared
     Stands to rally; and nourishing grain do his children reap
     From a father beloved in life, in his death revered.
     Contemplating him and his work, shall a skyward glance
     Clearer sight of our dreamed and abandoned obtain;
     Nay, but as if seen in station above the Republic, France
     Had view of her one-day's heavenly lover again;
     Saw him amid the bright host looking down on her; knew she had
     erred,
     Knew him her judge, knew yonder the spirit preferred;
     Yonder the base of the summit she strove that day to ascend,
     Ere cannon mastered her soul, and all dreams had end.

     VII

     Soon felt she in her shivered frame
     A bodeful drain of blood illume
     Her wits with frosty fire to read
     The dazzling wizard who would have her bleed
     On fruitless marsh and snows of spectral gloom
     For victory that was victory scarce in name.
     Husky his clarions laboured, and her sighs
     O'er slaughtered sons were heavier than the prize;
     Recalling how he stood by Frederic's tomb,
     With Frederic's country underfoot and spurned:
     There meditated; till her hope might guess,
     Albeit his constant star prescribe success,
     The savage strife would sink, the civil aim
     To head a mannered world breathe zephyrous
     Of morning after storm; whereunto she yearned;
     And Labour's lovely peace, and Beauty's courtly bloom,
     The mind in strenuous tasks hilarious.
     At such great height, where hero hero topped,
     Right sanely should the Grand Ascendant think
     No further leaps at the fanged abyss's brink
     True Genius takes: be battle's dice-box dropped!

     She watched his desert features, hung to hear
     The honey words desired, and veiled her face;
     Hearing the Seaman's name recur
     Wrathfully, thick with a meaning worse
     Than call to the march: for that inveterate Purse
     Could kindle the extinct, inform a vacant place,
     Conjure a heart into the trebly felled.
     It squeezed the globe, insufferably swelled
     To feed insurgent Europe: rear and van
     Were haunted by the amphibious curse;
     Here flesh, there phantom, livelier after rout:
     The Seaman piping aye to the rightabout,
     Distracted Europe's Master, puffed remote
     Those Indies of the swift Macedonian,
     Whereon would Europe's Master somewhiles doat,
     In dreamings on a docile universe
     Beneath an immarcessible Charlemagne.

     Nor marvel France should veil a seer's face,
     And call on darkness as a blest retreat.
     Magnanimously could her iron Emperor
     Confront submission: hostile stirred to heat
     All his vast enginery, allowed no halt
     Up withered avenues of waste-blood war,
     To the pitiless red mounts of fire afume,
     As 'twere the world's arteries opened! Woe the race!
     Ask wherefore Fortune's vile caprice should balk
     His panther spring across the foaming salt,
     From martial sands to the cliffs of pallid chalk!
     There is no answer: seed of black defeat
     She then did sow, and France nigh unto death foredoom.
     See since that Seaman's epicycle sprite
     Engirdle, lure and goad him to the chase
     Along drear leagues of crimson spotting white
     With mother's tears of France, that he may meet
     Behind suborned battalions, ranked as wheat
     Where peeps the weedy poppy, him of the sea;
     Earth's power to baffle Ocean's power resume;
     Victorious army crown o'er Victory's fleet;
     And bearing low that Seaman upon knee,
     Stay the vexed question of supremacy,
     Obnoxious in the vault by Frederic's tomb.

     VIII

     Poured streams of Europe's veins the flood
     Full Rhine or Danube rolls off morning-tide
     Through shadowed reaches into crimson-dyed:
     And Rhine and Danube knew her gush of blood
     Down the plucked roots the deepest in her breast.
     He tossed her cordials, from his laurels pressed.
     She drank for dryness thirstily, praised his gifts.
     The blooded frame a powerful draught uplifts
     Writhed the devotedness her voice rang wide
     In cries ecstatic, as of the martyr-Blest,
     Their spirits issuing forth of bodies racked,
     And crazy chuckles, with life's tears at feud;
     While near her heart the sunken sentinel
     Called Critic marked, and dumb in awe reviewed
     This torture, this anointed, this untracked
     To mortal source, this alien of his kind;
     Creator, slayer, conjuror, Solon-Mars,
     The cataract of the abyss, the star of stars;
     Whose arts to lay the senses under spell
     Aroused an insurrectionary mind.

     IX

     He, did he love her? France was his weapon, shrewd
     At edge, a wind in onset: he loved well
     His tempered weapon, with the which he hewed
     Clean to the ground impediments, or hacked,
     Sure of the blade that served the great man-miracle.
     He raised her, robed her, gemmed her for his bride,
     Did but her blood in blindness given exact.
     Her blood she gave, was blind to him as guide:
     She quivered at his word, and at his touch
     Was hound or steed for any mark he espied.
     He loved her more than little, less than much.
     The fair subservient of Imperial Fact
     Next to his consanguineous was placed
     In ranked esteem; above the diurnal meal,
     Vexatious carnal appetites above,
     Above his hoards, while she Imperial Fact embraced,
     And rose but at command from under heel.
     The love devolvent, the ascension love,
     Receptive or profuse, were fires he lacked,
     Whose marrow had expelled their wasteful sparks;
     Whose mind, the vast machine of endless haste,
     Took up but solids for its glowing seal.
     The hungry love, that fish-like creatures feel,
     Impelled for prize of hooks, for prey of sharks,
     His night's first quarter sicklied to distaste,
     In warm enjoyment barely might distract.
     A head that held an Europe half devoured
     Taste in the blood's conceit of pleasure soured.
     Nought save his rounding aim, the means he plied,
     Death for his cause, to him could point appeal.
     His mistress was the thing of uses tried.
     Frigid the netting smile on whom he wooed,
     But on his Policy his eye was lewd.
     That sharp long zig-zag into distance brooked
     No foot across; a shade his ire provoked.
     The blunder or the cruelty of a deed
     His Policy imperative could plead.
     He deemed nought other precious, nor knew he
     Legitimate outside his Policy.
     Men's lives and works were due, from their birth's date,
     To the State's shield and sword, himself the State.
     He thought for them in mass, as Titan may;
     For their pronounced well-being bade obey;
     O'er each obstructive thicket thunderclapped,
     And straight their easy road to market mapped.
     Watched Argus to survey the huge preserves
     He held or coveted; Mars was armed alert
     At sign of motion; yet his brows were murk,
     His gorge would surge, to see the butcher's work,
     The Reaper's field; a sensitive in nerves.
     He rode not over men to do them hurt.
     As one who claimed to have for paramour
     Earth's fairest form, he dealt the cancelling blow;
     Impassioned, still impersonal; to ensure
     Possession; free of rivals, not their foe.

     The common Tyrant's frenzies, rancour, spites,
     He knew as little as men's claim on rights.
     A kindness for old servants, early friends,
     Was constant in him while they served his ends;
     And if irascible, 'twas the moment's reek
     From fires diverted by some gusty freak.
     His Policy the act which breeds the act
     Prevised, in issues accurately summed
     From reckonings of men's tempers, terrors, needs:-
     That universal army, which he leads
     Who builds Imperial on Imperious Fact.
     Within his hot brain's hammering workshop hummed
     A thousand furious wheels at whirr, untired
     As Nature in her reproductive throes;
     And did they grate, he spake, and cannon fired:
     The cause being aye the incendiary foes
     Proved by prostration culpable. His dispense
     Of Justice made his active conscience;
     His passive was of ceaseless labour formed.
     So found this Tyrant sanction and repose;
     Humanly just, inhumanly unwarmed.
     Preventive fencings with the foul intent
     Occult, by him observed and foiled betimes,
     Let fool historians chronicle as crimes.
     His blows were dealt to clear the way he went:
     Too busy sword and mind for needless blows.
     The mighty bird of sky minutest grains
     On ground perceived; in heaven but rays or rains;
     In humankind diversities of masks,
     For rule of men the choice of bait or goads.
     The statesman steered the despot to large tasks;
     The despot drove the statesman on short roads.
     For Order's cause he laboured, as inclined
     A soldier's training and his Euclid mind.
     His army unto men he could present
     As model of the perfect instrument.
     That creature, woman, was the sofa soft,
     When warriors their dusty armour doffed,
     And read their manuals for the making truce
     With rosy frailties framed to reproduce.
     He farmed his land, distillingly alive
     For the utmost extract he might have and hive,
     Wherewith to marshal force; and in like scheme,
     Benign shone Hymen's torch on young love's dream.
     Thus to be strong was he beneficent;
     A fount of earth, likewise a firmament.

     The disputant in words his eye dismayed:
     Opinions blocked his passage. Rent
     Were Councils with a gesture; brayed
     By hoarse camp-phrase what argument
     Dared interpose to waken spleen
     In him whose vision grasped the unseen,
     Whose counsellor was the ready blade,
     Whose argument the cannonade.
     He loathed his land's divergent parties, loth
     To grant them speech, they were such idle troops;
     The friable and the grumous, dizzards both.
     Men were good sticks his mastery wrought from hoops;
     Some serviceable, none credible on oath.
     The silly preference they nursed to die
     In beds he scorned, and led where they should lie.
     If magic made them pliable for his use,
     Magician he could be by planned surprise.
     For do they see the deuce in human guise,
     As men's acknowledged head appears the deuce,
     And they will toil with devilish craft and zeal.
     Among them certain vagrant wits that had
     Ideas buzzed; they were the feebly mad;
     Pursuers of a film they hailed ideal;
     But could be dangerous fire-flies for a brain
     Subdued by fact, still amorous of the inane.
     With a breath he blew them out, to beat their wings
     The way of such transfeminated things,
     And France had sense of vacancy in Light.

     That is the soul's dead darkness, making clutch
     Wild hands for aid at muscles within touch;
     Adding to slavery's chain the stringent twist;
     Even when it brings close surety that aright
     She reads her Tyrant through his golden mist;
     Perceives him fast to a harsher Tyrant bound;
     Self-ridden, self-hunted, captive of his aim;
     Material grandeur's ape, the Infernal's hound;
     Enormous, with no infinite around;
     No starred deep sky, no Muse, or lame
     The dusty pattering pinions,
     The voice as through the brazen tube of Fame.

     X

     Hugest of engines, a much limited man,
     She saw the Lustrous, her great lord, appear
     Through that smoked glass her last privation brought
     To point her critic eye and spur her thought:
     A heart but to propel Leviathan;
     A spirit that breathed but in earth's atmosphere.
     Amid the plumed and sceptred ones
     Irradiatingly Jovian,
     The mountain tower capped by the floating cloud;
     A nursery screamer where dialectics ruled:
     Mannerless, graceless, laughterless, unlike
     Herself in all, yet with such power to strike,
     That she the various features she could scan
     Dared not to sum, though seeing: and befooled
     By power which beamed omnipotent, she bowed,
     Subservient as roused echo round his guns.
     Invulnerable Prince of Myrmidons,
     He sparkled, by no sage Athene schooled.
     Partly she read her riddle, stricken and pained;
     But irony, her spirit's tongue, restrained.
     The Critic, last of vital in the proud
     Enslaved, when most detectively endowed,
     Admired how irony's venom off him ran,
     Like rain-drops down a statue cast in bronze:
     Whereby of her keen rapier disarmed,
     Again her chant of eulogy began,
     Protesting, but with slavish senses charmed.

     Her warrior, chief among the valorous great
     In arms he was, dispelling shades of blame,
     With radiance palpable in fruit and weight.
     Heard she reproach, his victories blared response;
     His victories bent the Critic to acclaim,
     As with fresh blows upon a ringing sconce.
     Or heard she from scarred ranks of jolly growls
     His veterans dwarf their reverence and, like owls,
     Laugh in the pitch of discord, to exalt
     Their idol for some genial trick or fault,
     She, too, became his marching veteran.
     Again she took her breath from them who bore
     His eagles through the tawny roar,
     And murmured at a peaceful state,
     That bred the title charlatan,
     As missile from the mouth of hate,
     For one the daemon fierily filled and hurled,
     Cannon his name,
     Shattering against a barrier world;
     Her supreme player of man's primaeval game.

     The daemon filled him, and he filled her sons;
     Strung them to stature over human height,
     As march the standards down the smoky fight;
     Her cherubim, her towering mastodons!
     Directed vault or breach, break through
     Earth's toughest, seasons, elements, tame;
     Dash at the bulk the sharpened few;
     Count death the smallest of their debts:
     Show that the will to do
     Is masculine and begets!

     These princes unto him the mother owed;
     These jewels of manhood that rich hand bestowed.
     What wonder, though with wits awake
     To read her riddle, for these her offspring's sake; -
     And she, before high heaven adulteress,
     The lost to honour, in his glory clothed,
     Else naked, shamed in sight of men, self-loathed; -
     That she should quench her thought, nor worship less
     Than ere she bled on sands or snows and knew
     The slave's alternative, to worship or to rue!

     XI

     Bright from the shell of that much limited man,
     Her hero, like the falchion out of sheath,
     Like soul that quits the tumbled body, soared:
     And France, impulsive, nuptial with his plan,
     Albeit the Critic fretting her, adored
     Once more. Exultingly her heart went forth,
     Submissive to his mind and mood,
     The way of those pent-eyebrows North;
     For now was he to win the wreath
     Surpassing sunniest in camp or Court;
     Next, as the blessed harvest after years of blight,
     Sit, the Great Emperor, to be known the Good!

     Now had the Seaman's volvent sprite,
     Lean from the chase that barked his contraband,
     A beggared applicant at every port,
     To strew the profitless deeps and rot beneath,
     Slung northward, for a hunted beast's retort
     On sovereign power; there his final stand,
     Among the perjured Scythian's shaggy horde,
     The hydrocephalic aerolite
     Had taken; flashing thence repellent teeth,
     Though Europe's Master Europe's Rebel banned
     To be earth's outcast, ocean's lord and sport.

     Unmoved might seem the Master's taunted sword.
     Northward his dusky legions nightly slipped,
     As on the map of that all-provident head;
     He luting Peace the while, like morning's cock
     The quiet day to round the hours for bed;
     No pastoral shepherd sweeter to his flock.
     Then Europe first beheld her Titan stripped.
     To what vast length of limb and mounds of thews,
     How trained to scale the eminences, pluck
     The hazards for new footing, how compel
     Those timely incidents by men named luck,
     Through forethought that defied the Fates to choose,
     Her grovelling admiration had not yet
     Imagined of the great man-miracle;
     And France recounted with her comic smile
     Duplicities of Court and Cabinet,
     The silky female of his male in guile,
     Wherewith her two-faced Master could amuse
     A dupe he charmed in sunny beams to bask,
     Before his feint for camisado struck
     The lightning moment of the cast-off mask.

     Splendours of earth repeating heaven's at set
     Of sun down mountain cloud in masses arched;
     Since Asia upon Europe marched,
     Unmatched the copious multitudes; unknown
     To Gallia's over-runner, Rome's inveterate foe,
     Such hosts; all one machine for overthrow,
     Coruscant from the Master's hand, compact
     As reasoned thoughts in the Master's head; were shown
     Yon lightning moment when his acme might
     Blazed o'er the stream that cuts the sandy tract
     Borussian from Sarmatia's famished flat;
     The century's flower; and off its pinnacled throne,
     Rayed servitude on Europe's ball of sight.

     XII

     Behind the Northern curtain-folds he passed.
     There heard hushed France her muffled heart beat fast
     Against the hollow ear-drum, where she sat
     In expectation's darkness, until cracked
     The straining curtain-seams: a scaly light
     Was ghost above an army under shroud.
     Imperious on Imperial Fact
     Incestuously the incredible begat.
     His veterans and auxiliaries,
     The trained, the trustful, sanguine, proud,
     Princely, scarce numerable to recite, -
     Titanic of all Titan tragedies! -
     That Northern curtain took them, as the seas
     Gulp the great ships to give back shipmen white.

     Alive in marble, she conceived in soul,
     With barren eyes and mouth, the mother's loss;
     The bolt from her abandoned heaven sped;
     The snowy army rolling knoll on knoll
     Beyond horizon, under no blest Cross:
     By the vulture dotted and engarlanded.

     Was it a necromancer lured
     To weave his tense betraying spell?
     A Titan whom our God endured
     Till he of his foul hungers fell,
     By all his craft and labour scourged?
     A deluge Europe's liberated wave,
     Paean to sky, leapt over that vast grave.
     Its shadow-points against her sacred land converged.
     And him, her yoke-fellow, her black lord, her fate,
     In doubt, in fevered hope, in chills of hate,
     That tore her old credulity to strips,
     Then pressed the auspicious relics on her lips,
     His withered slave for foregone miracles urged.
     And he, whom now his ominous halo's round,
     A three parts blank decrescent sickle, crowned,
     Prodigious in catastrophe, could wear
     The realm of Darkness with its Prince's air;
     Assume in mien the resolute pretence
     To satiate an hungered confidence,
     Proved criminal by the sceptic seen to cower
     Beside the generous face of that frail flower.

     XIII

     Desire and terror then had each of each:
     His crown and sword were staked on the magic stroke;
     Her blood she gave as one who loved her leech;
     And both did barter under union's cloak.
     An union in hot fever and fierce need
     Of either's aid, distrust in trust did breed.
     Their traffic instincts hooded their live wits
     To issues. Never human fortune throve
     On such alliance. Viewed by fits,
     From Vulcan's forge a hovering Jove
     Evolved. The slave he dragged the Tyrant drove.
     Her awe of him his dread of her invoked:
     His nature with her shivering faith ran yoked.
     What wisdom counselled, Policy declined;
     All perils dared he save the step behind.
     Ahead his grand initiative becked:
     One spark of radiance blurred, his orb was wrecked.
     Stripped to the despot upstart, for success
     He raged to clothe a perilous nakedness.
     He would not fall, while falling; would not be taught,
     While learning; would not relax his grasp on aught
     He held in hand, while losing it; pressed advance,
     Pricked for her lees the veins of wasted France;
     Who, had he stayed to husband her, had spun
     The strength he taxed unripened for his throw,
     In vengeful casts calamitous,
     On fields where palsying Pyrrhic laurels grow,
     The luminous the ruinous.
     An incalescent scorpion,
     And fierier for the mounded cirque
     That narrowed at him thick and murk,
     This gambler with his genius
     Flung lives in angry volleys, bloody lightnings, flung
     His fortunes to the hosts he stung,
     With victories clipped his eagle's wings.
     By the hands that built him up was he undone:
     By the star aloft, which was his ram's-head will
     Within; by the toppling throne the soldier won;
     By the yeasty ferment of what once had been,
     To cloud a rational mind for present things;
     By his own force, the suicide in his mill.
     Needs never God of Vengeance intervene
     When giants their last lesson have to learn.
     Fighting against an end he could discern,
     The chivalry whereof he had none
     He called from his worn slave's abundant springs:
     Not deigning spousally entreat
     That ever blinded by his martial skill,
     But harsh to have her worship counted out
     In human coin, her vital rivers drained,
     Her infant forests felled, commanded die
     The decade thousand deaths for his Imperial seat,
     Where throning he her faith in him maintained;
     Bound Reason to believe delayed defeat
     Was triumph; and what strength in her remained
     To head against the ultimate foreseen rout,
     Insensate taxed; of his impenitent will,
     Servant and sycophant: without ally,
     In Python's coils, the Master Craftsman still;
     The smiter, panther springer, trapper sly,
     The deadly wrestler at the crucial bout,
     The penetrant, the tonant, tower of towers,
     Striking from black disaster starry showers.
     Her supreme player of man's primaeval game,
     He won his harnessed victim's rapturous shout,
     When every move was mortal to her frame,
     Her prayer to life that stricken he might lie,
     She to exchange his laurels for earth's flowers.

     The innumerable whelmed him, and he fell:
     A vessel in mid-ocean under storm.
     Ere ceased the lullaby of his passing bell,
     He sprang to sight, in human form
     Revealed, from no celestial aids:
     The shades enclosed him, and he fired the shades.

     Cannon his name,
     Cannon his voice, he came.
     The fount of miracles from drought-dust arose,
     Amazing even on his Imperial stage,
     Where marvels lightened through the alternate hours
     And winged o'er human earth's heroical shone.
     Into the press of cumulative foes,
     Across the friendly fields of smoke and rage,
     A broken structure bore his furious powers;
     The man no more, the Warrior Chief the same;
     Match for all rivals; in himself but flame
     Of an outworn lamp, to illumine nought anon.
     Yet loud as when he first showed War's effete
     Their Schoolman off his eagre mounted high,
     And summoned to subject who dared compete,
     The cannon in the name Napoleon
     Discoursed of sulphur earth to curtained sky.
     So through a tropic day a regnant sun,
     Where armies of assailant vapours thronged,
     His glory's trappings laid on them: comes night,
     Enwraps him in a bosom quick of heat
     From his anterior splendours, and shall seem
     Day instant, Day's own lord in the furnace gleam,
     The virulent quiver on ravished eyes prolonged,
     When severed darkness, all flaminical bright,
     Slips vivid eagles linked in rapid flight;
     Which bring at whiles the lionly far roar,
     As wrestled he with manacles and gags,
     To speed across a cowering world once more,
     Superb in ordered floods, his lordly flags.
     His name on silence thundered, on the obscure
     Lightened; it haunted morn and even-song:
     Earth of her prodigy's extinction long,
     With shudderings and with thrillings, hung unsure.

     Snapped was the chord that made the resonant bow,
     In France, abased and like a shrunken corse;
     Amid the weakest weak, the lowest low,
     From the highest fallen, stagnant off her source;
     Condemned to hear the nations' hostile mirth;
     See curtained heavens, and smell a sulphurous earth;
     Which told how evermore shall tyrant Force
     Beget the greater for its overthrow.
     The song of Liberty in her hearing spoke
     A foreign tongue; Earth's fluttering little lyre
     Unlike, but like the raven's ravening croak.
     Not till her breath of being could aspire
     Anew, this loved and scourged of Angels found
     Our common brotherhood in sight and sound:
     When mellow rang the name Napoleon,
     And dim aloft her young Angelical waved.
     Between ethereal and gross to choose,
     She swung; her soul desired, her senses craved.
     They pricked her dreams, while oft her skies were dun
     Behind o'ershadowing foemen: on a tide
     They drew the nature having need of pride
     Among her fellows for its vital dues:
     He seen like some rare treasure-galleon,
     Hull down, with masts against the Western hues.



     FRANCE--DECEMBER 1870



     I

     We look for her that sunlike stood
     Upon the forehead of our day,
     An orb of nations, radiating food
     For body and for mind alway.
     Where is the Shape of glad array;
     The nervous hands, the front of steel,
     The clarion tongue? Where is the bold proud face?
     We see a vacant place;
     We hear an iron heel.

     II

     O she that made the brave appeal
     For manhood when our time was dark,
     And from our fetters drove the spark
     Which was as lightning to reveal
     New seasons, with the swifter play
     Of pulses, and benigner day;
     She that divinely shook the dead
     From living man; that stretched ahead
     Her resolute forefinger straight,
     And marched toward the gloomy gate
     Of earth's Untried, gave note, and in
     The good name of Humanity
     Called forth the daring vision! she,
     She likewise half corrupt of sin,
     Angel and Wanton! can it be?
     Her star has foundered in eclipse,
     The shriek of madness on her lips;
     Shreds of her, and no more, we see.
     There is horrible convulsion, smothered din,
     As of one that in a grave-cloth struggles to be free.

     III

     Look not for spreading boughs
     On the riven forest tree.
     Look down where deep in blood and mire
     Black thunder plants his feet and ploughs
     The soil for ruin: that is France:
     Still thrilling like a lyre,
     Amazed to shivering discord from a fall
     Sudden as that the lurid hosts recall
     Who met in heaven the irreparable mischance.
     O that is France!
     The brilliant eyes to kindle bliss,
     The shrewd quick lips to laugh and kiss,
     Breasts that a sighing world inspire,
     And laughter-dimpled countenance
     Where soul and senses caught desire!

     IV

     Ever invoking fire from heaven, the fire
     Has grasped her, unconsumable, but framed
     For all the ecstasies of suffering dire.
     Mother of Pride, her sanctuary shamed:
     Mother of Delicacy, and made a mark
     For outrage: Mother of Luxury, stripped stark:
     Mother of Heroes, bondsmen: thro' the rains,
     Across her boundaries, lo the league-long chains!
     Fond Mother of her martial youth; they pass,
     Are spectres in her sight, are mown as grass!
     Mother of Honour, and dishonoured: Mother
     Of Glory, she condemned to crown with bays
     Her victor, and be fountain of his praise.
     Is there another curse? There is another:
     Compassionate her madness: is she not
     Mother of Reason? she that sees them mown
     Like grass, her young ones! Yea, in the low groan
     And under the fixed thunder of this hour
     Which holds the animate world in one foul blot
     Tranced circumambient while relentless Power
     Beaks at her heart and claws her limbs down-thrown,
     She, with the plungeing lightnings overshot,
     With madness for an armour against pain,
     With milkless breasts for little ones athirst,
     And round her all her noblest dying in vain,
     Mother of Reason is she, trebly cursed,
     To feel, to see, to justify the blow;
     Chamber to chamber of her sequent brain
     Gives answer of the cause of her great woe,
     Inexorably echoing thro' the vaults,
     ''Tis thus they reap in blood, in blood who sow:
     'This is the sum of self-absolved faults.'
     Doubt not that thro' her grief, with sight supreme,
     Thro' her delirium and despair's last dream,
     Thro' pride, thro' bright illusion and the brood
     Bewildering of her various Motherhood,
     The high strong light within her, tho' she bleeds,
     Traces the letters of returned misdeeds.
     She sees what seed long sown, ripened of late,
     Bears this fierce crop; and she discerns her fate
     From origin to agony, and on
     As far as the wave washes long and wan
     Off one disastrous impulse: for of waves
     Our life is, and our deeds are pregnant graves
     Blown rolling to the sunset from the dawn.

     V

     Ah, what a dawn of splendour, when her sowers
     Went forth and bent the necks of populations
     And of their terrors and humiliations
     Wove her the starry wreath that earthward lowers
     Now in the figure of a burning yoke!
     Her legions traversed North and South and East,
     Of triumph they enjoyed the glutton's feast:
     They grafted the green sprig, they lopped the oak.
     They caught by the beard the tempests, by the scalp
     The icy precipices, and clove sheer through
     The heart of horror of the pinnacled Alp,
     Emerging not as men whom mortals knew.
     They were the earthquake and the hurricane,
     The lightnings and the locusts, plagues of blight,
     Plagues of the revel: they were Deluge rain,
     And dreaded Conflagration; lawless Might.
     Death writes a reeling line along the snows,
     Where under frozen mists they may be tracked,
     Who men and elements provoked to foes,
     And Gods: they were of god and beast compact:
     Abhorred of all. Yet, how they sucked the teats
     Of Carnage, thirsty issue of their dam,
     Whose eagles, angrier than their oriflamme,
     Flushed the vext earth with blood, green earth forgets.
     The gay young generations mask her grief;
     Where bled her children hangs the loaded sheaf.
     Forgetful is green earth; the Gods alone
     Remember everlastingly: they strike
     Remorselessly, and ever like for like.
     By their great memories the Gods are known.

     VI

     They are with her now, and in her ears, and known.
     'Tis they that cast her to the dust for Strength,
     Their slave, to feed on her fair body's length,
     That once the sweetest and the proudest shone;
     Scoring for hideous dismemberment
     Her limbs, as were the anguish-taking breath
     Gone out of her in the insufferable descent
     From her high chieftainship; as were she death,
     Who hears a voice of justice, feels the knife
     Of torture, drinks all ignominy of life.
     They are with her, and the painful Gods might weep,
     If ever rain of tears came out of heaven
     To flatter Weakness and bid conscience sleep,
     Viewing the woe of this Immortal, driven
     For the soul's life to drain the maddening cup
     Of her own children's blood implacably:
     Unsparing even as they to furrow up
     The yellow land to likeness of a sea:
     The bountiful fair land of vine and grain,
     Of wit and grace and ardour, and strong roots,
     Fruits perishable, imperishable fruits;
     Furrowed to likeness of the dim grey main
     Behind the black obliterating cyclone.

     VII

     Behold, the Gods are with her, and are known.
     Whom they abandon misery persecutes
     No more: them half-eyed apathy may loan
     The happiness of pitiable brutes.
     Whom the just Gods abandon have no light,
     No ruthless light of introspective eyes
     That in the midst of misery scrutinize
     The heart and its iniquities outright.
     They rest, they smile and rest; have earned perchance
     Of ancient service quiet for a term;
     Quiet of old men dropping to the worm;
     And so goes out the soul. But not of France.
     She cries for grief, and to the Gods she cries,
     For fearfully their loosened hands chastize,
     And icily they watch the rod's caress
     Ravage her flesh from scourges merciless,
     But she, inveterate of brain, discerns
     That Pity has as little place as Joy
     Among their roll of gifts; for Strength she yearns.
     For Strength, her idol once, too long her toy.
     Lo, Strength is of the plain root-Virtues born:
     Strength shall ye gain by service, prove in scorn,
     Train by endurance, by devotion shape.
     Strength is not won by miracle or rape.
     It is the offspring of the modest years,
     The gift of sire to son, thro' those firm laws
     Which we name Gods; which are the righteous cause,
     The cause of man, and manhood's ministers.
     Could France accept the fables of her priests,
     Who blest her banners in this game of beasts,
     And now bid hope that heaven will intercede
     To violate its laws in her sore need,
     She would find comfort in their opiates:
     Mother of Reason! can she cheat the Fates?
     Would she, the champion of the open mind,
     The Omnipotent's prime gift--the gift of growth -
     Consent even for a night-time to be blind,
     And sink her soul on the delusive sloth,
     For fruits ethereal and material, both,
     In peril of her place among mankind?
     The Mother of the many Laughters might
     Call one poor shade of laughter in the light
     Of her unwavering lamp to mark what things
     The world puts faith in, careless of the truth:
     What silly puppet-bodies danced on strings,
     Attached by credence, we appear in sooth,
     Demanding intercession, direct aid,
     When the whole tragic tale hangs on a broken blade!

     She swung the sword for centuries; in a day
     It slipped her, like a stream cut off from source.
     She struck a feeble hand, and tried to pray,
     Clamoured of treachery, and had recourse
     To drunken outcries in her dream that Force
     Needed but hear her shouting to obey.
     Was she not formed to conquer? The bright plumes
     Of crested vanity shed graceful nods:
     Transcendent in her foundries, Arts and looms,
     Had France to fear the vengeance of the Gods?
     Her faith was on her battle-roll of names
     Sheathed in the records of old war; with dance
     And song she thrilled her warriors and her dames,
     Embracing her Dishonour: gave him France
     From head to foot, France present and to come,
     So she might hear the trumpet and the drum -
     Bellona and Bacchante! rushing forth
     On yon stout marching Schoolmen of the North.

     Inveterate of brain, well knows she why
     Strength failed her, faithful to himself the first:
     Her dream is done, and she can read the sky,
     And she can take into her heart the worst
     Calamity to drug the shameful thought
     Of days that made her as the man she served
     A name of terror, but a thing unnerved:
     Buying the trickster, by the trickster bought,
     She for dominion, he to patch a throne.

     VIII

     Henceforth of her the Gods are known,
     Open to them her breast is laid.
     Inveterate of brain, heart-valiant,
     Never did fairer creature pant
     Before the altar and the blade!

     IX

     Swift fall the blows, and men upbraid,
     And friends give echo blunt and cold,
     The echo of the forest to the axe.
     Within her are the fires that wax
     For resurrection from the mould.

     X

     She snatched at heaven's flame of old,
     And kindled nations: she was weak:
     Frail sister of her heroic prototype,
     The Man; for sacrifice unripe,
     She too must fill a Vulture's beak.
     Deride the vanquished, and acclaim
     The conqueror, who stains her fame,
     Still the Gods love her, for that of high aim
     Is this good France, the bleeding thing they stripe.

     XI

     She shall rise worthier of her prototype
     Thro' her abasement deep; the pain that runs
     From nerve to nerve some victory achieves.
     They lie like circle-strewn soaked Autumn-leaves
     Which stain the forest scarlet, her fair sons!
     And of their death her life is: of their blood
     From many streams now urging to a flood,
     No more divided, France shall rise afresh.
     Of them she learns the lesson of the flesh:-
     The lesson writ in red since first Time ran,
     A hunter hunting down the beast in man:
     That till the chasing out of its last vice,
     The flesh was fashioned but for sacrifice.

     Immortal Mother of a mortal host!
     Thou suffering of the wounds that will not slay,
     Wounds that bring death but take not life away! -
     Stand fast and hearken while thy victors boast:
     Hearken, and loathe that music evermore.
     Slip loose thy garments woven of pride and shame:
     The torture lurks in them, with them the blame
     Shall pass to leave thee purer than before.
     Undo thy jewels, thinking whence they came,
     For what, and of the abominable name
     Of her who in imperial beauty wore.

     O Mother of a fated fleeting host
     Conceived in the past days of sin, and born
     Heirs of disease and arrogance and scorn,
     Surrender, yield the weight of thy great ghost,
     Like wings on air, to what the heavens proclaim
     With trumpets from the multitudinous mounds
     Where peace has filled the hearing of thy sons:
     Albeit a pang of dissolution rounds
     Each new discernment of the undying ones,
     Do thou stoop to these graves here scattered wide
     Along thy fields, as sunless billows roll;
     These ashes have the lesson for the soul.
     'Die to thy Vanity, and strain thy Pride,
     Strip off thy Luxury: that thou may'st live,
     Die to thyself,' they say, 'as we have died
     From dear existence and the foe forgive,
     Nor pray for aught save in our little space
     To warn good seed to greet the fair earth's face.'
     O Mother! take their counsel, and so shall
     The broader world breathe in on this thy home,
     Light clear for thee the counter-changing dome,
     Strength give thee, like an ocean's vast expanse
     Off mountain cliffs, the generations all,
     Not whirling in their narrow rings of foam,
     But as a river forward. Soaring France!
     Now is Humanity on trial in thee:
     Now may'st thou gather humankind in fee:
     Now prove that Reason is a quenchless scroll;
     Make of calamity thine aureole,
     And bleeding head us thro' the troubles of the sea.



     ALSACE-LORRAINE



     I

     The sister Hours in circles linked,
     Daughters of men, of men the mates,
     Are gone on flow with the day that winked,
     With the night that spanned at golden gates.
     Mothers, they leave us, quickening seed;
     They bear us grain or flower or weed,
     As we have sown; is nought extinct
     For them we fill to be our Fates.
     Life of the breath is but the loan;
     Passing death what we have sown.

     Pearly are they till the pale inherited stain
     Deepens in us, and the mirrors they form on their flow
     Darken to feature and nature: a volumed chain,
     Sequent of issue, in various eddies they show.
     Theirs is the Book of the River of Life, to read
     Leaf by leaf by reapers of long-sown seed:
     There doth our shoot up to light from a spiriting sane
     Stand as a tree whereon numberless clusters grow:
     Legible there how the heart, with its one false move
     Cast Eurydice pallor on all we love.

     Our fervid heart has filled that Book in chief;
     Our fitful heart a wild reflection views;
     Our craving heart of passion suckling grief
     Disowns the author's work it must peruse;
     Inconscient in its leap to wreak the deed,
     A round of harvests red from crimson seed,
     It marks the current Hours show leaf by leaf,
     And rails at Destiny; nor traces clues;
     Though sometimes it may think what novel light
     Will strike their faces when the mind shall write.

     II

     Succourful daughters of men are the rosed and starred
     Revolving Twelves in their fluent germinal rings,
     Despite the burden to chasten, abase, depose.
     Fallen on France, as the sweep of scythe over sward,
     They breathed in her ear their voice of the crystal springs,
     That run from a twilight rise, from a twilight close,
     Through alternate beams and glooms, rejoicingly young.
     Only to Earth's best loved, at the breathless turns
     Where Life in fold of the Shadow reclines unstrung,
     And a ghostly lamp of their moment's union burns,
     Will such pure notes from the fountain-head be sung.

     Voice of Earth's very soul to the soul she would see renewed:
     A song that sought no tears, that laid not a touch on the breast
     Sobbing aswoon and, like last foxgloves' bells upon ferns
     In sandy alleys of woodland silence, shedding to bare.
     Daughters of Earth and men, they piped of her natural brood;
     Her patient helpful four-feet; wings on the flit or in nest;
     Paws at our old-world task to scoop a defensive lair;
     Snouts at hunt through the scented grasses; enhavened scuts
     Flashing escape under show of a laugh nigh the mossed burrow-mouth.
     Sack-like droop bronze pears on the nailed branch-frontage of huts,
     To greet those wedded toilers from acres where sweat is a shower.
     Snake, cicada, lizard, on lavender slopes up South,
     Pant for joy of a sunlight driving the fielders to bower.
     Sharpened in silver by one chance breeze is the olive's grey;
     A royal-mantle floats, a red fritillary hies;
     The bee, for whom no flower of garden or wild has nay,
     Noises, heard if but named, so hot is the trade he plies.
     Processions beneath green arches of herbage, the long colonnades;
     Laboured mounds that a foot or a wanton stick may subvert;
     Homely are they for a lowly look on bedewed grass-blades,
     On citied fir-droppings, on twisted wreaths of the worm in dirt.
     Does nought so loosen our sight from the despot heart, to receive
     Balm of a sound Earth's primary heart at its active beat:
     The motive, yet servant, of energy; simple as morn and eve;
     Treasureless, fetterless; free of the bonds of a great conceit:
     Unwounded even by cruel blows on a body that writhes;
     Nor whimpering under misfortune; elusive of obstacles; prompt
     To quit any threatened familiar domain seen doomed by the scythes;
     Its day's hard business done, the score to the good accompt.
     Creatures of forest and mead, Earth's essays in being, all kinds
     Bound by the navel-knot to the Mother, never astray,
     They in the ear upon ground will pour their intuitive minds,
     Cut man's tangles for Earth's first broad rectilinear way:
     Admonishing loftier reaches, the rich adventurous shoots,
     Pushes of tentative curves, embryonic upwreathings in air;
     Not always the sprouts of Earth's root-Laws preserving her brutes;
     Oft but our primitive hungers licentious in fine and fair.

     Yet the like aerial growths may chance be the delicate sprays,
     Infant of Earth's most urgent in sap, her fierier zeal
     For entry on Life's upper fields: and soul thus flourishing pays
     The martyr's penance, mark for brutish in man to heel.

     Her, from a nerveless well among stagnant pools of the dry,
     Through her good aim at divine, shall commune with Earth remake;
     Fraternal unto sororial, her, where abashed she may lie,
     Divinest of man shall clasp; a world out of darkness awake,
     As it were with the Resurrection's eyelids uplifted, to see
     Honour in shame, in substance the spirit, in that dry fount
     Jets of the songful ascending silvery-bright water-tree
     Spout, with our Earth's unbaffled resurgent desire for the mount,
     Though broken at intervals, clipped, and barren in seeming it be.
     For this at our nature arises rejuvenescent from Earth,
     However respersive the blow and nigh on infernal the fall,
     The chastisement drawn down on us merited: are we of worth
     Amid our satanic excrescences, this, for the less than a call,
     Will Earth reprime, man cherish; the God who is in us and round,
     Consenting, the God there seen. Impiety speaks despair;
     Religion the virtue of serving as things of the furrowy ground,
     Debtors for breath while breath with our fellows in service we
     share.
     Not such of the crowned discrowned
     Can Earth or humanity spare;
     Such not the God let die.

     III

     Eastward of Paris morn is high;
     And darkness on that Eastward side
     The heart of France beholds: a thorn
     Is in her frame where shines the morn:
     A rigid wave usurps her sky,
     With eagle crest and eagle-eyed
     To scan what wormy wrinkles hint
     Her forces gathering: she the thrown
     From station, lopped of an arm, astounded, lone,
     Reading late History as a foul misprint:
     Imperial, Angelical,
     At strife commingled in her frame convulsed;
     Shame of her broken sword, a ravening gall;
     Pain of the limb where once her warm blood pulsed;
     These tortures to distract her underneath
     Her whelmed Aurora's shade. But in that space
     When lay she dumb beside her trampled wreath,
     Like an unburied body mid the tombs,
     Feeling against her heart life's bitter probe
     For life, she saw how children of her race,
     The many sober sons and daughters, plied,
     By cottage lamplight through the water-globe,
     By simmering stew-pots, by the serious looms,
     Afield, in factories, with the birds astir,
     Their nimble feet and fingers; not denied
     Refreshful chatter, laughter, galliard songs.
     So like Earth's indestructible they were,
     That wrestling with its anguish rose her pride,
     To feel where in each breast the thought of her,
     On whom the circle Hours laid leaded thongs,
     Was constant; spoken sometimes in low tone
     At lip or in a fluttered look,
     A shortened breath: and they were her loved own;
     Nor ever did they waste their strength with tears,
     For pity of the weeper, nor rebuke,
     Though mainly they were charged to pay her debt,
     The Mother having conscience in arrears;
     Ready to gush the flood of vain regret,
     Else hearken to her weaponed children's moan
     Of stifled rage invoking vengeance: hell's,
     If heaven should fail the counter-wave that swells
     In blood and brain for retribution swift.
     Those helped not: wings to her soul were these who yet
     Could welcome day for labour, night for rest,
     Enrich her treasury, built of cheerful thrift,
     Of honest heart, beyond all miracles;
     And likened to Earth's humblest were Earth's best.

     IV

     Brooding on her deep fall, the many strings
     Which formed her nature set a thought on Kings,
     As aids that might the low-laid cripple lift;
     And one among them hummed devoutly leal,
     While passed the sighing breeze along her breast.
     Of Kings by the festive vanquishers rammed down
     Her gorge since fell the Chief, she knew their crown;
     Upon her through long seasons was its grasp,
     For neither soul's nor body's weal;
     As much bestows the robber wasp,
     That in the hanging apple makes a meal,
     And carves a face of abscess where was fruit
     Ripe ruddy. They would blot
     Her radiant leap above the slopes acute,
     Of summit to celestial; impute
     The wanton's aim to her divinest shot;
     Bid her walk History backward over gaps;
     Abhor the day of Phrygian caps;
     Abjure her guerdon, execrate herself;
     The Hapsburg, Hohenzollern, Guelph,
     Admire repentant; reverently prostrate
     Her person unto the belly-god; of whom
     Is inward plenty and external bloom;
     Enough of pomp and state
     And carnival to quench
     The breast's desires of an intemperate wench,
     The head's ideas beyond legitimate.

     She flung them: she was France: nor with far frown
     Her lover from the embrace of her refrained:
     But in her voice an interwoven wire,
     The exultation of her gross renown,
     Struck deafness at her heavens, and they waned
     Over a look ill-gifted to aspire.
     Wherefore, as an abandonment, irate,
     The intemperate summoned up her trumpet days,
     Her treasure-galleon's wondrous freight.
     The cannon-name she sang and shrieked; transferred
     Her soul's allegiance; o'er the Tyrant slurred,
     Tranced with the zeal of her first fawning gaze,
     To clasp his trophy flags and hail him Saint.

     V

     She hailed him Saint:
     And her Jeanne unsainted, foully sung!
     The virgin who conceived a France when funeral glooms
     Across a land aquake with sharp disseverance hung:
     Conceived, and under stress of battle brought her forth;
     Crowned her in purification of feud and foeman's taint;
     Taught her to feel her blood her being, know her worth,
     Have joy of unity: the Jeanne bescreeched, bescoffed,
     Who flamed to ashes, flew up wreaths of faggot fumes;
     Through centuries a star in vapour-folds aloft.

     For her people to hail her Saint,
     Were no lifting of her, Earth's gem,
     Earth's chosen, Earth's throb on divine:
     In the ranks of the starred she is one,
     While man has thought on our line:
     No lifting of her, but for them,
     Breath of the mountain, beam of the sun
     Through mist, out of swamp-fires' lures release,
     Youth on the forehead, the rough right way
     Seen to be footed: for them the heart's peace,
     By the mind's war won for a permanent miracle day.

     Her arms below her sword-hilt crossed,
     The heart of that high-hallowed Jeanne
     Into the furnace-pit she tossed
     Before her body knew the flame,
     And sucked its essence: warmth for righteous work,
     An undivided power to speed her aim.
     She had no self but France: the sainted man
     No France but self. Him warrior and clerk,
     Free of his iron clutch; and him her young,
     In whirled imagination mastodonized;
     And him her penmen, him her poets; all
     For the visioned treasure-galleon astrain;
     Sent zenithward on bass and treble tongue,
     Till solely through his glory France was prized.
     She who had her Jeanne;
     The child of her industrious;
     Earth's truest, earth's pure fount from the main;
     And she who had her one day's mate,
     In the soul's view illustrious
     Past blazonry, her Immaculate,
     Those hours of slavish Empire would recall;
     Thrill to the rattling anchor-chain
     She heard upon a day in 'I who can';
     Start to the softened, tremulous bugle-blare
     Of that Caesarean Italian
     Across the storied fields of trampled grain,
     As to a Vercingetorix of old Gaul
     Blowing the rally against a Caesar's reign.
     Her soul's protesting sobs she drowned to swear
     Fidelity unto the sainted man,
     Whose nimbus was her crown; and be again
     The foreigner in Europe, known of none,
     None knowing; sight to dazzle, voice to stun.
     Rearward she stepped, with thirst for Europe's van;
     The dream she nursed a snare,
     The flag she bore a pall.

     VI

     In Nature is no rearward step allowed.
     Hard on the rock Reality do we dash
     To be shattered, if the material dream propels.
     The worship to departed splendour vowed
     Conjured a simulacrum, wove her lash,
     For the slow measure timed her peal of bells.

     Thereof was the cannon-name a mockery round her hills;
     For the will of wills,
     Its flaccid ape,
     Weak as the final echo off a giant's bawl:
     Napoleon for disdain,
     His banner steeped in crape.
     Thereof the barrier of Alsace-Lorraine;
     The frozen billow crested to its fall;
     Dismemberment; disfigurement;
     Her history blotted; her proud mantle rent;
     And ever that one word to reperuse,
     With eyes behind a veil of fiery dews;
     Knelling the spot where Gallic soil defiled
     Showed her sons' valour as a frenzied child
     In arms of the mailed man.
     Word that her mind must bear, her heart put under ban,
     Lest burst it: unto her eyes a ghost,
     Incredible though manifest: a scene
     Stamped with her new Saint's name: and all his host
     A wattled flock the foeman's dogs between!

     VII

     Mark where a credible ghost pulls bridle to view that bare
     Corpse of a field still reddening cloud, and alive in its throes
     Beneath her Purgatorial Saint's evocative stare:
     Brand on his name, the gulf of his glory, his Legend's close.
     A lustreless Phosphor heading for daybeam Night's dead-born,
     His underworld eyeballs grip the cast of the land for a fray
     Expugnant; swift up the heights, with the Victor's instinctive scorn
     Of the trapped below, he rides; he beholds, and a two-fold grey,
     Even as the misty sun growing moon that a frost enrings,
     Is shroud on the shrouded; he knows him there in the helmeted ranks.
     The golden eagles flap lame wings,
     The black double-headed are round their flanks.
     He is there in midst of the pupils he harried to brains awake, trod
     into union; lo,
     These are his Epic's tutored Dardans, yon that Rhapsode's Achaeans
     to know.
     Nor is aught of an equipollent conflict seen, nor the weaker's
     flashed device;
     Headless is offered a breast to beaks deliberate, formal, assured,
     precise.
     Ruled by the mathematician's hand, they solve their problem, as on a
     slate.
     This is the ground foremarked, and the day; their leader modestly
     hazarded date.
     His helmeted ranks might be draggers of pools or reapers of plains
     for the warrior's guile
     Displayed; they haul, they rend, as in some orderly office
     mercantile.
     And a timed artillery speaks full-mouthed on a stuttering feeble
     reduced to nought.
     Can it be France, an army of France, tricked, netted, convulsive,
     all writhen caught?
     Arterial blood of an army's heart outpoured the Grey Observer sees:
     A forest of France in thunder comes, like a landslide hurled off her
     Pyrenees.
     Torrent and forest ramp, roll, sling on for a charge against iron,
     reason, Fate;
     It is gapped through the mass midway, bare ribs and dust ere the
     helmeted feel its weight.
     So the blue billow white-plumed is plunged upon shingle to screaming
     withdrawal, but snatched,
     Waved is the laurel eternal yielded by Death o'er the waste of brave
     men outmatched.
     The France of the fury was there, the thing he had wielded, whose
     honour was dearer than life;
     The Prussia despised, the harried, the trodden, was here; his pupil,
     the scholar in strife.

     He hated to heel, in a spasm of will,
     From sleep or debate, a mannikin squire
     With head of a merlin hawk and quill
     Acrow on an ear. At him rained fire
     From a blast of eyeballs hotter than speech,
     To say what a deadly poison stuffed
     The France here laid in her bloody ditch,
     Through the Legend passing human puffed.

     Credible ghost of the field which from him descends,
     Each dark anniversary day will its father return,
     Haling his shadow to spy where the Legend ends,
     That penman trumpeter's part in the wreck discern.

     There, with the cup it presents at her lips, she stands,
     France, with her future staked on the word it may pledge.
     The vengeance urged of desire a reserve countermands;
     The patience clasped totters hard on the precipice edge.
     Lopped of an arm, mother love for her own springs quick,
     To curdle the milk in her breasts for the young they feed,
     At thought of her single hand, and the lost so nigh.
     Mother love for her own, who raised her when she lay sick
     Nigh death, and would in like fountains fruitlessly bleed,
     Withholds the fling of her heart on the further die.

     Of love is wisdom. Is it great love, then wise
     Will our wild heart be, though whipped unto madness more
     By its mentor's counselling voice than thoughtfully reined.
     Desire of the wave for the shore,
     Passion for one last agony under skies,
     To make her heavens remorseful, she restrained

     VIII

     On her lost arm love bade her look;
     On her one hand to meditate;
     The tumult of her blood abate;
     Disaster face, derision brook:
     Forbade the page of her Historic Muse,
     Until her demon his last hold forsook,
     And smoothly, with no countenance of hate,
     Her conqueror she could scan to measure. Thence
     The strange new Winter stream of ruling sense,
     Cold, comfortless, but braced to disabuse,
     Ran through the mind of this most lowly laid;
     From the top billow of victorious War,
     Down in the flagless troughs at ebb and flow;
     A wreck; her past, her future, both in shade.
     She read the things that are;
     Reality unaccepted read
     For sign of the distraught, and took her blow
     To brain; herself read through;
     Wherefore her predatory Glory paid
     Napoleon ransom knew.
     Her nature's many strings hot gusts did jar
     Against the note of reason uttered low,
     Ere passionate with duty she might wed,
     Compel the bride's embrace of her stern groom,
     Joined at an altar liker to the tomb,
     Nest of the Furies their first nuptial bed,
     They not the less were mated and proclaimed
     The rational their issue. Then she rose.

     See how the rush of southern Springtide glows
     Oceanic in the chariot-wheel's ascent,
     Illuminated with one breath. The maimed,
     Tom, tortured, winter-visaged, suddenly
     Had stature; to the world's wonderment,
     Fair features, grace of mien, nor least
     The comic dimples round her April mouth,
     Sprung of her intimate humanity.
     She stood before mankind the very South
     Rapt out of frost to flowery drapery;
     Unshadowed save when somewhiles she looked East.

     IX

     Let but the rational prevail,
     Our footing is on ground though all else fail:
     Our kiss of Earth is then a plight
     To walk within her Laws and have her light.
     Choice of the life or death lies in ourselves;
     There is no fate but when unreason lours.
     This Land the cheerful toiler delves,
     The thinker brightens with fine wit,
     The lovelier grace as lyric flowers,
     Those rosed and starred revolving Twelves
     Shall nurse for effort infinite
     While leashed to brain the heart of France the Fair
     Beats tempered music and its lead subserves.
     Washed from her eyes the Napoleonic glare,
     Divinely raised by that in her divine,
     Not the clear sight of Earth's blunt actual swerves
     When her lost look, as on a wave of wine,
     Rolls Eastward, and the mother-flag descries
     Caress with folds and curves
     The fortress over Rhine,
     Beneath the one tall spire.
     Despite her brooding thought, her nightlong sighs,
     Her anguish in desire,
     She sees, above the brutish paw
     Alert on her still quivering limb -
     As little in past time she saw,
     Nor when dispieced as prey,
     As victrix when abhorred -
     A Grand Germania, stout on soil;
     Audacious up the ethereal dim;
     The forest's Infant; the strong hand for toil;
     The patient brain in twilights when astray;
     Shrewdest of heads to foil and counterfoil;
     The sceptic and devout; the potent sword;
     With will and armed to help in hewing way
     For Europe's march; and of the most golden chord
     Of the Heliconian lyre
     Excellent mistress. Yea, she sees, and can admire;
     Still seeing in what walks the Gallia leads;
     And with what shield upon Alsace-Lorraine
     Her wary sister's doubtful look misreads
     A mother's throbs for her lost: so loved: so near:
     Magnetic. Hard the course for her to steer,
     The leap against the sharpened spikes restrain.
     For the belted Overshadower hard the course,
     On whom devolves the spirit's touchstone, Force:
     Which is the strenuous arm, to strike inclined,
     That too much adamantine makes the mind;
     Forgets it coin of Nature's rich Exchange;
     Contracts horizons within present sight:
     Amalekite to-day, across its range
     Indisputable; to-morrow Simeonite.

     X

     The mother who gave birth to Jeanne;
     Who to her young Angelical sprang;
     Who lay with Earth and heard the notes she sang,
     And heard her truest sing them; she may reach
     Heights yet unknown of nations; haply teach
     A thirsting world to learn 'tis 'she who can.'

     She that in History's Heliaea pleads
     The nation flowering conscience o'er the beast;
     With heart expurged of rancour, tame of greeds;
     With the winged mind from fang and claw released; -
     Will such a land be seen? It will be seen; -
     Shall stand adjudged our foremost and Earth's Queen.
     Acknowledgement that she of God proceeds
     The invisible makes visible, as his priest,
     To her is yielded by a world reclaimed.
     And stands she mutilated, fancy-shamed,
     Yet strong in arms, yet strong in self-control,
     Known valiant, her maternal throbs repressed,
     Discarding vengeance, Giant with a soul; -
     My faith in her when she lay low
     Was fountain; now as wave at flow
     Beneath the lights, my faith in God is best; -
     On France has come the test
     Of what she holds within
     Responsive to Life's deeper springs.
     She above the nations blest
     In fruitful and in liveliest,
     In all that servant earth to heavenly bidding brings,
     The devotee of Glory, she may win
     Glory despoiling none, enrich her kind,
     Illume her land, and take the royal seat
     Unto the strong self-conqueror assigned.
     But ah, when speaks a loaded breath the double name,
     Humanity's old Foeman winks agrin.
     Her constant Angel eyes her heart's quick beat,
     The thrill of shadow coursing through her frame.
     Like wind among the ranks of amber wheat.
     Our Europe, vowed to unity or torn,
     Observes her face, as shepherds note the morn,
     And in a ruddy beacon mark an end
     That for the flock in their grave hearing rings.
     Specked overhead the imminent vulture wings
     At poise, one fatal movement indiscreet,
     Sprung from the Aetna passions' mad revolts,
     Draws down; the midnight hovers to descend;
     And dire as Indian noons of ulcer heat
     Anticipating tempest and the bolts,
     Hangs curtained terrors round her next day's door,
     Death's emblems for the breast of Europe flings;
     The breast that waits a spark to fire her store.
     Shall, then, the great vitality, France,
     Signal the backward step once more;
     Again a Goddess Fortune trace
     Amid the Deities, and pledge to chance
     One whom we never could replace?
     Now may she tune her nature's many strings
     To noble harmony, be seen, be known.

     It was the foreign France, the unruly, feared;
     Little for all her witcheries endeared;
     Theatrical of arrogance, a sprite
     With gaseous vapours overblown,
     In her conceit of power ensphered,
     Foredoomed to violate and atone;
     Her the grim conqueror's iron might
     Avengeing clutched, distrusting rent;
     Not that sharp intellect with fire endowed
     To cleave our webs, run lightnings through our cloud;
     Not virtual France, the France benevolent,
     The chivalrous, the many-stringed, sublime
     At intervals, and oft in sweetest chime;
     Though perilously instrument,
     A breast for any having godlike gleam.
     This France could no antagonist disesteem,
     To spurn at heel and confiscate her brood.
     Albeit a waverer between heart and mind,
     And laurels won from sky or plucked from blood,
     Which wither all the wreath when intertwined,
     This cherishable France she may redeem.
     Beloved of Earth, her heart should feel at length
     How much unto Earth's offspring it doth owe.
     Obstructions are for levelling, have we strength;
     'Tis poverty of soul conceived a foe.
     Rejected be the wrath that keeps unhealed
     Her panting wound; to higher Courts appealed
     The wrongs discerned of higher: Europe waits:
     She chooses God or gambles with the Fates.
     Shines the new Helen in Alsace-Lorraine,
     A darker river severs Rhine and Rhone,
     Is heard a deadlier Epic of the twain;
     We see a Paris burn
     Or France Napoleon.

     For yet he breathes whom less her heart forswears
     While trembles its desire to thwart her mind:
     The Tyrant lives in Victory's return.
     What figure with recurrent footstep fares
     Around those memoried tracks of scarlet mud,
     To sow her future from an ashen urn
     By lantern-light, as dragons' teeth are sown?
     Of bleeding pride the piercing seer is blind.
     But, cleared her eyes of that ensanguined scud
     Distorting her true features, to be shown
     Benignly luminous, one who bears
     Humanity at breast, and she might learn
     How surely the excelling generous find
     Renouncement is possession. Sure
     As light enkindles light when heavenly earthly mates,
     The flame of pure immits the flame of pure,
     Magnanimous magnanimous creates.
     So to majestic beauty stricken rears
     Hard-visaged rock against the risen glow;
     And men are in the secret with the spheres,
     Whose glory is celestially to bestow.

     Now nation looks to nation, that may live
     Their common nurseling, like the torrent's flower,
     Shaken by foul Destruction's fast-piled heap.
     On France is laid the proud initiative
     Of sacrifice in one self-mastering hour,
     Whereby more than her lost one will she reap;
     Perchance the very lost regain,
     To count it less than her superb reward.
     Our Europe, where is debtor each to each,
     Pass measure of excess, and war is Cain,
     Fraternal from the Seaman's beach,
     From answering Rhine in grand accord,
     From Neva beneath Northern cloud,
     And from our Transatlantic Europe loud,
     Will hail the rare example for their theme;
     Give response, as rich foliage to the breeze;
     In their entrusted nurseling know them one:
     Like a brave vessel under press of steam,
     Abreast the winds and tides, on angry seas,
     Plucked by the heavens forlorn of present sun,
     Will drive through darkness, and, with faith supreme,
     Have sight of haven and the crowded quays.



     THE CAGEING OF ARES



     [Iliad, v. V. 385--Dedicated to the Council at The Hague.]

     How big of breast our Mother Gaea laughed
     At sight of her boy Giants on the leap
     Each over other as they neighboured home,
     Fronting the day's descent across green slopes,
     And up fired mountain crags their shadows danced.
     Close with them in their fun, she scarce could guess,
     Though these two billowy urchins reeked of craft,
     It signalled some adventurous master-trick
     To set Olympians buzzing in debate,
     Lest it might be their godhead undermined,
     The Tyranny menaced. Ephialtes high
     On shoulders of his brother Otos waved
     For the bull-bellowings given to grand good news,
     Compact, complexioned in his gleeful roar
     While Otos aped the prisoner's wrists and knees,
     With doleful sniffs between recurrent howls;
     Till Gaea's lap receiving them, they stretched,
     And both upon her bosom shaken to speech,
     Burst the hot story out of throats of both,
     Like rocky head-founts, baffling in their glut
     The hurried spout. And as when drifting storm
     Disburdened loses clasp of here and yon
     A peak, a forest mound, a valley's gleam
     Of grass and the river's crooks and snaky coils,
     Signification marvellous she caught,
     Through gurglings of triumphant jollity,
     Which now engulphed and now gave eye; at last
     Subsided, and the serious naked deed,
     With mountain-cloud of laughter banked around,
     Stood in her sight confirmed: she could believe
     That these, her sprouts of promise, her most prized,
     These two made up of lion, bear and fox,
     Her sportive, suckling mammoths, her young joy,
     Still by the reckoning infants among men,
     Had done the deed to strike the Titan host
     In envy dumb, in envious heart elate:
     These two combining strength and craft had snared,
     Enmeshed, bound fast with thongs, discreetly caged
     The blood-shedder, the terrible Lord of War;
     Destroyer, ravager, superb in plumes;
     The barren furrower of anointed fields;
     The scarlet heel in towns, foul smoke to sky,
     Her hated enemy, too long her scourge:
     Great Ares. And they gagged his trumpet mouth
     When they had seized on his implacable spear,
     Hugged him to reedy helplessness despite
     His godlike fury startled from amaze.
     For he had eyed them nearing him in play,
     The giant cubs, who gambolled and who snarled,
     Unheeding his fell presence, by the mount
     Ossa, beside a brushwood cavern; there
     On Earth's original fisticuffs they called
     For ease of sharp dispute: whereat the God,
     Approving, deemed that sometime trained to arms,
     Good servitors of Ares they would be,
     And ply the pointed spear to dominate
     Their rebel restless fellows, villain brood
     Vowed to defy Immortals. So it chanced
     Amusedly he watched them, and as one
     The lusty twain were on him and they had him.
     Breath to us, Powers of air, for laughter loud!
     Cock of Olympus he, superb in plumes!
     Bound like a wheaten sheaf by those two babes!
     Because they knew our Mother Gaea loathed him,
     Knew him the famine, pestilence and waste;
     A desolating fire to blind the sight
     With splendour built of fruitful things in ashes;
     The gory chariot-wheel on cries for justice;
     Her deepest planted and her liveliest voice,
     Heard from the babe as from the broken crone.
     Behold him in his vessel of bronze encased,
     And tumbled down the cave. But rather look -
     Ah, that the woman tattler had not sought,
     Of all the Gods to let her secret fly,
     Hermes, after the thirteen songful months!
     Prompting the Dexterous to work his arts,
     And shatter earth's delirious holiday,
     Then first, as where the fountain runs a stream,
     Resolving to composure on its throbs.
     But see her in the Seasons through that year;
     That one glad year and the fair opening month.
     Had never our Great Mother such sweet face!
     War with her, gentle war with her, each day
     Her sons and daughters urged; at eve were flung,
     On the morrow stood to challenge; in their strength
     Renewed, indomitable; whereof they won,
     From hourly wrestlings up to shut of lids,
     Her ready secret: the abounding life
     Returned for valiant labour: she and they
     Defeated and victorious turn by turn;
     By loss enriched, by overthrow restored.
     Exchange of powers of this conflict came;
     Defacement none, nor ever squandered force.
     Is battle nature's mandate, here it reigned,
     As music unto the hand that smote the strings;
     And she the rosier from their showery brows,
     They fruitful from her ploughed and harrowed breast.
     Back to the primal rational of those
     Who suck the teats of milky earth, and clasp
     Stability in hatred of the insane,
     Man stepped; with wits less fearful to pronounce
     The mortal mind's concept of earth's divorced
     Above; those beautiful, those masterful,
     Those lawless. High they sit, and if descend,
     Descend to reap, not sowing. Is it just?
     Earth in her happy children asked that word,
     Whereto within their breast was her reply.
     Those beautiful, those masterful, those lawless,
     Enjoy the life prolonged, outleap the years;
     Yet they ('twas the Great Mother's voice inspired
     The audacious thought), they, glorious over dust,
     Outleap not her; disrooted from her soar,
     To meet the certain fate of earth's divorced,
     And clap lame wings across a wintry haze,
     Up to the farthest bourne: immortal still,
     Thenceforth innocuous; lovelier than when ruled
     The Tyranny. This her voice within them told,
     When softly the Great Mother chid her sons
     Not of the giant brood, who did create
     Those lawless Gods, first offspring of our brain
     Set moving by an abject blood, that waked
     To wanton under elements more benign,
     And planted aliens on Olympian heights; -
     Imagination's cradle poesy
     Become a monstrous pressure upon men; -
     Foes of good Gaea; until dispossessed
     By light from her, born of the love of her,
     Their lordship the illumined brain rejects
     For earth's beneficent, the sons of Law,
     Her other name. So spake she in their heart,
     Among the wheat-blades proud of stalk; beneath
     Young vine-leaves pushing timid fingers forth,
     Confidently to cling. And when brown corn
     Swayed armied ranks with softened cricket song,
     With gold necks bent for any zephyr's kiss;
     When vine-roots daily down a rubble soil
     Drank fire of heaven athirst to swell the grape;
     When swelled the grape, and in it held a ray,
     Rich issue of the embrace of heaven and earth;
     The very eye of passion drowsed by excess,
     And yet a burning lion for the spring;
     Then in that time of general cherishment,
     Sweet breathing balm and flutes by cool wood-side,
     He the harsh rouser of ire being absent, caged,
     Then did good Gaea's children gratefully
     Lift hymns to Gods they judged, but praised for peace,
     Delightful Peace, that answers Reason's call
     Harmoniously and images her Law;
     Reflects, and though short-lived as then, revives,
     In memories made present on the brain
     By natural yearnings, all the happy scenes;
     The picture of an earth allied to heaven;
     Between them the known smile behind black masks;
     Rightly their various moods interpreted;
     And frolic because toilful children borne
     With larger comprehension of Earth's aim
     At loftier, clearer, sweeter, by their aid.



     THE NIGHT-WALK



     Awakes for me and leaps from shroud
     All radiantly the moon's own night
     Of folded showers in streamer cloud;
     Our shadows down the highway white
     Or deep in woodland woven-boughed,
     With yon and yon a stem alight.

     I see marauder runagates
     Across us shoot their dusky wink;
     I hear the parliament of chats
     In haws beside the river's brink;
     And drops the vole off alder-banks,
     To push his arrow through the stream.
     These busy people had our thanks
     For tickling sight and sound, but theme
     They were not more than breath we drew
     Delighted with our world's embrace:
     The moss-root smell where beeches grew,
     And watered grass in breezy space;
     The silken heights, of ghostly bloom
     Among their folds, by distance draped.
     'Twas Youth, rapacious to consume,
     That cried to have its chaos shaped:
     Absorbing, little noting, still
     Enriched, and thinking it bestowed;
     With wistful looks on each far hill
     For something hidden, something owed.
     Unto his mantled sister, Day
     Had given the secret things we sought
     And she was grave and saintly gay;
     At times she fluttered, spoke her thought;
     She flew on it, then folded wings,
     In meditation passing lone,
     To breathe around the secret things,
     Which have no word, and yet are known;
     Of thirst for them are known, as air
     Is health in blood: we gained enough
     By this to feel it honest fare;
     Impalpable, not barren, stuff.

     A pride of legs in motion kept
     Our spirits to their task meanwhile,
     And what was deepest dreaming slept:
     The posts that named the swallowed mile;
     Beside the straight canal the hut
     Abandoned; near the river's source
     Its infant chirp; the shortest cut;
     The roadway missed; were our discourse;
     At times dear poets, whom some view
     Transcendent or subdued evoked
     To speak the memorable, the true,
     The luminous as a moon uncloaked;
     For proof that there, among earth's dumb,
     A soul had passed and said our best.
     Or it might be we chimed on some
     Historic favourite's astral crest,
     With part to reverence in its gleam,
     And part to rivalry the shout:
     So royal, unuttered, is youth's dream
     Of power within to strike without.
     But most the silences were sweet,
     Like mothers' breasts, to bid it feel
     It lived in such divine conceit
     As envies aught we stamp for real.

     To either then an untold tale
     Was Life, and author, hero, we.
     The chapters holding peaks to scale,
     Or depths to fathom, made our glee;
     For we were armed of inner fires,
     Unbled in us the ripe desires;
     And passion rolled a quiet sea,
     Whereon was Love the phantom sail.



     AT THE CLOSE



     To Thee, dear God of Mercy, both appeal,
     Who straightway sound the call to arms. Thou know'st;
     And that black spot in each embattled host,
     Spring of the blood-stream, later wilt reveal.
     Now is it red artillery and white steel;
     Till on a day will ring the victor's boast,
     That 'tis Thy chosen towers uppermost,
     Where Thy rejected grovels under heel.
     So in all times of man's descent insane
     To brute, did strength and craft combining strike,
     Even as a God of Armies, his fell blow.
     But at the close he entered Thy domain,
     Dear God of Mercy, and if lion-like
     He tore the fall'n, the Eternal was his Foe.



     A GARDEN IDYL



     With sagest craft Arachne worked
     Her web, and at a corner lurked,
     Awaiting what should plump her soon,
     To case it in the death-cocoon.
     Sagaciously her home she chose
     For visits that would never close;
     Inside my chalet-porch her feast
     Plucked all the winds but chill North-east.

     The finished structure, bar on bar,
     Had snatched from light to form a star,
     And struck on sight, when quick with dews,
     Like music of the very Muse.
     Great artists pass our single sense;
     We hear in seeing, strung to tense;
     Then haply marvel, groan mayhap,
     To think such beauty means a trap.
     But Nature's genius, even man's
     At best, is practical in plans;
     Subservient to the needy thought,
     However rare the weapon wrought.
     As long as Nature holds it good
     To urge her creatures' quest for food
     Will beauty stamp the just intent
     Of weapons upon service bent.
     For beauty is a flower of roots
     Embedded lower than our boots;
     Out of the primal strata springs,
     And shows for crown of useful things

     Arachne's dream of prey to size
     Aspired; so she could nigh despise
     The puny specks the breezes round
     Supplied, and let them shake unwound;
     Assured of her fat fly to come;
     Perhaps a blue, the spider's plum;
     Who takes the fatal odds in fight,
     And gives repast an appetite,
     By plunging, whizzing, till his wings
     Are webbed, and in the lists he swings,
     A shrouded lump, for her to see
     Her banquet in her victory.

     This matron of the unnumbered threads,
     One day of dandelions' heads
     Distributing their gray perruques
     Up every gust, I watched with looks
     Discreet beside the chalet-door;
     And gracefully a light wind bore,
     Direct upon my webster's wall,
     A monster in the form of ball;
     The mildest captive ever snared,
     That neither struggled nor despaired,
     On half the net invading hung,
     And plain as in her mother tongue,
     While low the weaver cursed her lures,
     Remarked, "You have me; I am yours."

     Thrice magnified, in phantom shape,
     Her dream of size she saw, agape.
     Midway the vast round-raying beard
     A desiccated midge appeared;
     Whose body pricked the name of meal,
     Whose hair had growth in earth's unreal;
     Provocative of dread and wrath,
     Contempt and horror, in one froth,
     Inextricable, insensible,
     His poison presence there would dwell,
     Declaring him her dream fulfilled,
     A catch to compliment the skilled;
     And she reduced to beaky skin,
     Disgraceful among kith and kin

     Against her corner, humped and aged,
     Arachne wrinkled, past enraged,
     Beyond disgust or hope in guile.
     Ridiculously volatile
     He seemed to her last spark of mind;
     And that in pallid ash declined
     Beneath the blow by knowledge dealt,
     Wherein throughout her frame she felt
     That he, the light wind's libertine,
     Without a scoff, without a grin,
     And mannered like the courtly few,
     Who merely danced when light winds blew,
     Impervious to beak and claws,
     Tradition's ruinous Whitebeard was;
     Of whom, as actors in old scenes,
     Had grannam weavers warned their weans,
     With word, that less than feather-weight,
     He smote the web like bolt of Fate.

     This muted drama, hour by hour,
     I watched amid a world in flower,
     Ere yet Autumnal threads had laid
     Their gray-blue o'er the grass's blade,
     And still along the garden-run
     The blindworm stretched him, drunk of sun.
     Arachne crouched unmoved; perchance
     Her visitor performed a dance;
     She puckered thinner; he the same
     As when on that light wind he came.

     Next day was told what deeds of night
     Were done; the web had vanished quite;
     With it the strange opposing pair;
     And listless waved on vacant air,
     For her adieu to heart's content,
     A solitary filament.



     A READING OF LIFE--THE VITAL CHOICE



     I

     Or shall we run with Artemis
     Or yield the breast to Aphrodite?
     Both are mighty;
     Both give bliss;
     Each can torture if divided;
     Each claims worship undivided,
     In her wake would have us wallow.

     II

     Youth must offer on bent knees
     Homage unto one or other;
     Earth, the mother,
     This decrees;
     And unto the pallid Scyther
     Either points us shun we either
     Shun or too devoutly follow.



     A READING OF LIFE--WITH THE HUNTRESS



     Through the water-eye of night,
     Midway between eve and dawn,
     See the chase, the rout, the flight
     In deep forest; oread, faun,
     Goat-foot, antlers laid on neck;
     Ravenous all the line for speed.
     See yon wavy sparkle beck
     Sign of the Virgin Lady's lead.
     Down her course a serpent star
     Coils and shatters at her heels;
     Peals the horn exulting, peals
     Plaintive, is it near or far.
     Huntress, arrowy to pursue,
     In and out of woody glen,
     Under cliffs that tear the blue,
     Over torrent, over fen,
     She and forest, where she skims
     Feathery, darken and relume:
     Those are her white-lightning limbs
     Cleaving loads of leafy gloom.
     Mountains hear her and call back,
     Shrewd with night: a frosty wail
     Distant: her the emerald vale
     Folds, and wonders in her track.
     Now her retinue is lean,
     Many rearward; streams the chase
     Eager forth of covert; seen
     One hot tide the rapturous race.
     Quiver-charged and crescent-crowned,
     Up on a flash the lighted mound
     Leaps she, bow to shoulder, shaft
     Strung to barb with archer's craft,
     Legs like plaited lyre-chords, feet
     Songs to see, past pitch of sweet.
     Fearful swiftness they outrun,
     Shaggy wildness, grey or dun,
     Challenge, charge of tusks elude:
     Theirs the dance to tame the rude;
     Beast, and beast in manhood tame,
     Follow we their silver flame.
     Pride of flesh from bondage free,
     Reaping vigour of its waste,
     Marks her servitors, and she
     Sanctifies the unembraced.
     Nought of perilous she reeks;
     Valour clothes her open breast;
     Sweet beyond the thrill of sex;
     Hallowed by the sex confessed.
     Huntress arrowy to pursue,
     Colder she than sunless dew,
     She, that breath of upper air;
     Ay, but never lyrist sang,
     Draught of Bacchus never sprang
     Blood the bliss of Gods to share,
     High o'er sweep of eagle wings,
     Like the run with her, when rings
     Clear her rally, and her dart,
     In the forest's cavern heart,
     Tells of her victorious aim.
     Then is pause and chatter, cheer,
     Laughter at some satyr lame,
     Looks upon the fallen deer,
     Measuring his noble crest;
     Here a favourite in her train,
     Foremost mid her nymphs, caressed;
     All applauded. Shall she reign
     Worshipped? O to be with her there!
     She, that breath of nimble air,
     Lifts the breast to giant power.
     Maid and man, and man and maid,
     Who each other would devour
     Elsewhere, by the chase betrayed,
     There are comrades, led by her,
     Maid-preserver, man-maker.



     A READING OF LIFE--WITH THE PERSUADER



     Who murmurs, hither, hither: who
     Where nought is audible so fills the ear?
     Where nought is visible can make appear
     A veil with eyes that waver through,
     Like twilight's pledge of blessed night to come,
     Or day most golden? All unseen and dumb,
     She breathes, she moves, inviting flees,
     Is lost, and leaves the thrilled desire
     To clasp and strike a slackened lyre,
     Till over smiles of hyacinth seas,
     Flame in a crystal vessel sails
     Beneath a dome of jewelled spray,
     For land that drops the rosy day
     On nights of throbbing nightingales.

     Landward did the wonder flit,
     Or heart's desire of her, all earth in it.
     We saw the heavens fling down their rose;
     On rapturous waves we saw her glide;
     The pearly sea-shell half enclose;
     The shoal of sea-nymphs flush the tide;
     And we, afire to kiss her feet, no more
     Behold than tracks along a startled shore,
     With brightened edges of dark leaves that feign
     An ambush hoped, as heartless night remain.

     More closely, warmly: hither, hither! she,
     The very she called forth by ripened blood
     For its next breath of being, murmurs; she,
     Allurement; she, fulfilment; she,
     The stream within us urged to flood;
     Man's cry, earth's answer, heaven's consent; O she,
     Maid, woman and divinity;
     Our over-earthly, inner-earthly mate
     Unmated; she, our hunger and our fruit
     Untasted; she our written fate
     Unread; Life's flowering, Life's root:
     Unread, divined; unseen, beheld;
     The evanescent, ever-present she,
     Great Nature's stern necessity
     In radiance clothed, to softness quelled;
     With a sword's edge of sweetness keen to take
     Our breath for bliss, our hearts for fulness break.

     The murmur hushes down, the veil is rent.
     Man's cry, earth's answer, heaven's consent,
     Her form is given to pardoned sight,
     And lets our mortal eyes receive
     The sovereign loveliness of celestial white;
     Adored by them who solitarily pace,
     In dusk of the underworld's perpetual eve,
     The paths among the meadow asphodel,
     Remembering. Never there her face
     Is planetary; reddens to shore sea-shell
     Around such whiteness the enamoured air
     Of noon that clothes her, never there.
     Daughter of light, the joyful light,
     She stands unveiled to nuptial sight,
     Sweet in her disregard of aid
     Divine to conquer or persuade.
     A fountain jets from moss; a flower
     Bends gently where her sunset tresses shower.
     By guerdon of her brilliance may be seen
     With eyelids unabashed the passion's Queen.

     Shorn of attendant Graces she can use
     Her natural snares to make her will supreme.
     A simple nymph it is, inclined to muse
     Before the leader foot shall dip in stream:
     One arm at curve along a rounded thigh;
     Her firm new breasts each pointing its own way
     A knee half bent to shade its fellow shy,
     Where innocence, not nature, signals nay.
     The bud of fresh virginity awaits
     The wooer, and all roseate will she burst:
     She touches on the hour of happy mates;
     Still is she unaware she wakens thirst.

     And while commanding blissful sight believe
     It holds her as a body strained to breast,
     Down on the underworld's perpetual eve
     She plunges the possessor dispossessed;
     And bids believe that image, heaving warm,
     Is lost to float like torch-smoke after flame;
     The phantom any breeze blows out of form;
     A thirst's delusion, a defeated aim.

     The rapture shed the torture weaves;
     The direst blow on human heart she deals:
     The pain to know the seen deceives;
     Nought true but what insufferably feels.
     And stabs of her delicious note,
     That is as heavenly light to hearing, heard
     Through shelter leaves, the laughter from her throat,
     We answer as the midnight's morning's bird.

     She laughs, she wakens gleeful cries;
     In her delicious laughter part revealed;
     Yet mother is she more of moans and sighs,
     For longings unappeased and wounds unhealed.
     Yet would she bless, it is her task to bless:
     Yon folded couples, passing under shade,
     Are her rich harvest; bidden caress, caress,
     Consume the fruit in bloom; not disobeyed.
     We dolorous complainers had a dream,
     Wrought on the vacant air from inner fire,
     We saw stand bare of her celestial beam
     The glorious Goddess, and we dared desire.

     Thereat are shown reproachful eyes, and lips
     Of upward curl to meanings half obscure;
     And glancing where a wood-nymph lightly skips
     She nods: at once that creature wears her lure.
     Blush of our being between birth and death:
     Sob of our ripened blood for its next breath:
     Her wily semblance nought of her denies;
     Seems it the Goddess runs, the Goddess hies,
     The generous Goddess yields. And she can arm
     Her dwarfed and twisted with her secret charm;
     Benevolent as Earth to feed her own.
     Fully shall they be fed, if they beseech.
     But scorn she has for them that walk alone;
     Blanched men, starved women, whom no arts can pleach.
     The men as chief of criminals she disdains,
     And holds the reason in perceptive thought.
     More pitiable, like rivers lacking rains,
     Kissing cold stones, the women shrink for drought.
     Those faceless discords, out of nature strayed,
     Rank of the putrefaction ere decayed,
     In impious singles bear the thorny wreaths:
     Their lives are where harmonious Pleasure breathes
     For couples crowned with flowers that burn in dew.
     Comes there a tremor of night's forest horn
     Across her garden from the insaner crew,
     She darkens to malignity of scorn.
     A shiver courses through her garden-grounds:
     Grunt of the tusky boar, the baying hounds,
     The hunter's shouts, are heard afar, and bring
     Dead on her heart her crimsoned flower of Spring.
     These, the irreverent of Life's design,
     Division between natural and divine
     Would cast; these vaunting barrenness for best,
     In veins of gathered strength Life's tide arrest;
     And these because the roses flood their cheeks,
     Vow them in nature wise as when Love speaks.
     With them is war; and well the Goddess knows
     What undermines the race who mount the rose;
     How the ripe moment, lodged in slumberous hours,
     Enkindled by persuasion overpowers:
     Why weak as are her frailer trailing weeds,
     The strong when Beauty gleams o'er Nature's needs,
     And timely guile unguarded finds them lie.
     They who her sway withstand a sea defy,
     At every point of juncture must be proof;
     Nor look for mercy from the incessant surge
     Her forces mixed of craft and passion urge
     For the one whelming wave to spring aloof.
     She, tenderness, is pitiless to them
     Resisting in her godhead nature's truth.
     No flower their face shall be, but writhen stem;
     Their youth a frost, their age the dirge for youth.
     These miserably disinclined,
     The lamentably unembraced,
     Insult the Pleasures Earth designed
     To people and beflower the waste.
     Wherefore the Pleasures pass them by:
     For death they live, in life they die.

     Her head the Goddess from them turns,
     As from grey mounds of ashes in bronze urns.
     She views her quivering couples unconsoled,
     And of her beauty mirror they become,
     Like orchard blossoms, apple, pear and plum,
     Free of the cloud, beneath the flood of gold.
     Crowned with wreaths that burn in dew,
     Her couples whirl, sun-satiated,
     Athirst for shade, they sigh, they wed,
     They play the music made of two:
     Oldest of earth, earth's youngest till earth's end:
     Cunninger than the numbered strings,
     For melodies, for harmonies,
     For mastered discords, and the things
     Not vocable, whose mysteries
     Are inmost Love's, Life's reach of Life extend.

     Is it an anguish overflowing shame
     And the tongue's pudency confides to her,
     With eyes of embers, breath of incense myrrh,
     The woman's marrow in some dear youth's name,
     Then is the Goddess tenderness
     Maternal, and she has a sister's tones
     Benign to soothe intemperate distress,
     Divide despair from hope, and sighs from moans.
     Her gentleness imparts exhaling ease
     To those of her milk-bearer votaries
     As warm of bosom-earth as she; of the source
     Direct; erratic but in heart's excess;
     Being mortal and ill-matched for Love's great force;
     Like green leaves caught with flames by his impress.
     And pray they under skies less overcast,
     That swiftly may her star of eve descend,
     Her lustrous morning star fly not too fast,
     To lengthen blissful night will she befriend.

     Unfailing her reply to woman's voice
     In supplication instant. Is it man's,
     She hears, approves his words, her garden scans,
     And him: the flowers are various, he has choice.
     Perchance his wound is deep; she listens long;
     Enjoys what music fills the plaintive song;
     And marks how he, who would be hawk at poise
     Above the bird, his plaintive song enjoys.

     She reads him when his humbled manhood weeps
     To her invoked: distraction is implored.
     A smile, and he is up on godlike leaps
     Above, with his bright Goddess owned the adored.
     His tales of her declare she condescends;
     Can share his fires, not always goads and rends:
     Moreover, quits a throne, and must enclose
     A queenlier gem than woman's wayside rose.
     She bends, he quickens; she breathes low, he springs
     Enraptured; low she laughs, his woes disperse;
     Aloud she laughs and sweeps his varied strings.
     'Tis taught him how for touch of mournful verse
     Rarely the music made of two ascends,
     And Beauty's Queen some other way is won.
     Or it may solve the riddle, that she lends
     Herself to all, and yields herself to none,
     Save heavenliest: though claims by men are raised
     In hot assurance under shade of doubt:
     And numerous are the images bepraised
     As Beauty's Queen, should passion head the rout.

     Be sure the ruddy hue is Love's: to woo
     Love's Fountain we must mount the ruddy hue.
     That is her garden's precept, seen where shines
     Her blood-flower, and its unsought neighbour pines.
     Daughter of light, the joyful light,
     She bids her couples face full East,
     Reflecting radiance, even when from her feast
     Their outstretched arms brown deserts disunite,
     The lion-haunted thickets hold apart.
     In love the ruddy hue declares great heart;
     High confidence in her whose aid is lent
     To lovers lifting the tuned instrument,
     Not one of rippled strings and funeral tone.
     And doth the man pursue a tightened zone,
     Then be it as the Laurel God he runs,
     Confirmed to win, with countenance the Sun's.

     Should pity bless the tremulous voice of woe
     He lifts for pity, limp his offspring show.
     For him requiring woman's arts to please
     Infantile tastes with babe reluctances,
     No race of giants! In the woman's veins
     Persuasion ripely runs, through hers the pains.
     Her choice of him, should kind occasion nod,
     Aspiring blends the Titan with the God;
     Yet unto dwarf and mortal, she, submiss
     In her high Lady's mandate, yields the kiss;
     And is it needed that Love's daintier brute
     Be snared as hunter, she will tempt pursuit.
     She is great Nature's ever intimate
     In breast, and doth as ready handmaid wait,
     Until perverted by her senseless male,
     She plays the winding snake, the shrinking snail,
     The flying deer, all tricks of evil fame,
     Elusive to allure, since he grew tame.

     Hence has the Goddess, Nature's earliest Power,
     And greatest and most present, with her dower
     Of the transcendent beauty, gained repute
     For meditated guile. She laughs to hear
     A charge her garden's labyrinths scarce confute,
     Her garden's histories tell of to all near.
     Let it be said, But less upon her guile
     Doth she rely for her immortal smile.
     Still let the rumour spread, and terror screens
     To push her conquests by the simplest means.
     While man abjures not lustihead, nor swerves
     From earth's good labours, Beauty's Queen he serves.

     Her spacious garden and her garden's grant
     She offers in reward for handsome cheer:
     Choice of the nymphs whose looks will slant
     The secret down a dewy leer
     Of corner eyelids into haze:
     Many a fair Aphrosyne
     Like flower-bell to honey-bee:
     And here they flicker round the maze
     Bewildering him in heart and head:
     And here they wear the close demure,
     With subtle peeps to reassure:
     Others parade where love has bled,
     And of its crimson weave their mesh:
     Others to snap of fingers leap,
     As bearing breast with love asleep.
     These are her laughters in the flesh.
     Or would she fit a warrior mood,
     She lights her seeming unsubdued,
     And indicates the fortress-key.
     Or is it heart for heart that craves,
     She flecks along a run of waves
     The one to promise deeper sea.

     Bands of her limpid primitives,
     Or patterned in the curious braid,
     Are the blest man's; and whatsoever he gives,
     For what he gives is he repaid.
     Good is it if by him 'tis held
     He wins the fairest ever welled
     From Nature's founts: she whispers it: Even I
     Not fairer! and forbids him to deny,
     Else little is he lover. Those he clasps,
     Intent as tempest, worshipful as prayer, -
     And be they doves or be they asps, -
     Must seem to him the sovereignty fair;
     Else counts he soon among life's wholly tamed.
     Him whom from utter savage she reclaimed,
     Half savage must he stay, would he be crowned
     The lover. Else, past ripeness, deathward bound,
     He reasons; and the totterer Earth detests,
     Love shuns, grim logic screws in grasp, is he.
     Doth man divide divine Necessity
     From Joy, between the Queen of Beauty's breasts
     A sword is driven; for those most glorious twain
     Present her; armed to bless and to constrain.
     Of this he perishes; not she, the throned
     On rocks that spout their springs to the sacred mounts.
     A loftier Reason out of deeper founts
     Earth's chosen Goddess bears: by none disowned
     While red blood runs to swell the pulse, she boasts,
     And Beauty, like her star, descends the sky;
     Earth's answer, heaven's consent unto man's cry,
     Uplifted by the innumerable hosts.

     Quickened of Nature's eye and ear,
     When the wild sap at high tide smites
     Within us; or benignly clear
     To vision; or as the iris lights
     On fluctuant waters; she is ours
     Till set of man: the dreamed, the seen;
     Flushing the world with odorous flowers:
     A soft compulsion on terrene
     By heavenly: and the world is hers
     While hunger after Beauty spurs.

     So is it sung in any space
     She fills, with laugh at shallow laws
     Forbidding love's devised embrace,
     The music Beauty from it draws.



     A READING OF LIFE--THE TEST OF MANHOOD



     Like a flood river whirled at rocky banks,
     An army issues out of wilderness,
     With battle plucking round its ragged flanks;
     Obstruction in the van; insane excess
     Oft at the heart; yet hard the onward stress
     Unto more spacious, where move ordered ranks,
     And rise hushed temples built of shapely stone,
     The work of hands not pledged to grind or slay.
     They gave our earth a dress of flesh on bone;
     A tongue to speak with answering heaven gave they.
     Then was the gracious birth of man's new day;
     Divided from the haunted night it shone.

     That quiet dawn was Reverence; whereof sprang
     Ethereal Beauty in full morningtide.
     Another sun had risen to clasp his bride:
     It was another earth unto him sang.

     Came Reverence from the Huntress on her heights?
     From the Persuader came it, in those vales
     Whereunto she melodiously invites,
     Her troops of eager servitors regales?
     Not far those two great Powers of Nature speed
     Disciple steps on earth when sole they lead;
     Nor either points for us the way of flame.
     From him predestined mightier it came;
     His task to hold them both in breast, and yield
     Their dues to each, and of their war be field.

     The foes that in repulsion never ceased,
     Must he, who once has been the goodly beast
     Of one or other, at whose beck he ran,
     Constrain to make him serviceable man;
     Offending neither, nor the natural claim
     Each pressed, denying, for his true man's name.

     Ah, what a sweat of anguish in that strife
     To hold them fast conjoined within him still;
     Submissive to his will
     Along the road of life!
     And marvel not he wavered if at whiles
     The forward step met frowns, the backward smiles.
     For Pleasure witched him her sweet cup to drain;
     Repentance offered ecstasy in pain.
     Delicious licence called it Nature's cry;
     Ascetic rigours crushed the fleshly sigh;
     A tread on shingle timed his lame advance
     Flung as the die of Bacchanalian Chance,
     He of the troubled marching army leaned
     On godhead visible, on godhead screened;
     The radiant roseate, the curtained white;
     Yet sharp his battle strained through day, through night.

     He drank of fictions, till celestial aid
     Might seem accorded when he fawned and prayed;
     Sagely the generous Giver circumspect,
     To choose for grants the egregious, his elect;
     And ever that imagined succour slew
     The soul of brotherhood whence Reverence drew.

     In fellowship religion has its founts:
     The solitary his own God reveres:
     Ascend no sacred Mounts
     Our hungers or our fears.
     As only for the numbers Nature's care
     Is shown, and she the personal nothing heeds,
     So to Divinity the spring of prayer
     From brotherhood the one way upward leads.
     Like the sustaining air
     Are both for flowers and weeds.
     But he who claims in spirit to be flower,
     Will find them both an air that doth devour.

     Whereby he smelt his treason, who implored
     External gifts bestowed but on the sword;
     Beheld himself, with less and less disguise,
     Through those blood-cataracts which dimmed his eyes,
     His army's foe, condemned to strive and fail;
     See a black adversary's ghost prevail;
     Never, though triumphs hailed him, hope to win
     While still the conflict tore his breast within.

     Out of that agony, misread for those
     Imprisoned Powers warring unappeased,
     The ghost of his black adversary rose,
     To smother light, shut heaven, show earth diseased.
     And long with him was wrestling ere emerged
     A mind to read in him the reflex shade
     Of its fierce torment; this way, that way urged;
     By craven compromises hourly swayed.

     Crouched as a nestling, still its wings untried,
     The man's mind opened under weight of cloud.
     To penetrate the dark was it endowed;
     Stood day before a vision shooting wide.
     Whereat the spectral enemy lost form;
     The traversed wilderness exposed its track.
     He felt the far advance in looking back;
     Thence trust in his foot forward through the storm.

     Under the low-browed tempest's eye of ire,
     That ere it lightened smote a coward heart,
     Earth nerved her chastened son to hail athwart
     All ventures perilous his shrouded Sire;
     A stranger still, religiously divined;
     Not yet with understanding read aright.
     But when the mind, the cherishable mind,
     The multitude's grave shepherd, took full flight,
     Himself as mirror raised among his kind,
     He saw, and first of brotherhood had sight:
     Knew that his force to fly, his will to see,
     His heart enlarged beyond its ribbed domain,
     Had come of many a grip in mastery,
     Which held conjoined the hostile rival twain,
     And of his bosom made him lord, to keep
     The starry roof of his unruffled frame
     Awake to earth, to heaven, and plumb the deep
     Below, above, aye with a wistful aim.

     The mastering mind in him, by tempests blown,
     By traitor inmates baited, upward burned;
     Perforce of growth, the Master mind discerned,
     The Great Unseen, nowise the Dark Unknown.
     To whom unwittingly did he aspire
     In wilderness, where bitter was his need:
     To whom in blindness, as an earthy seed
     For light and air, he struck through crimson mire.
     But not ere he upheld a forehead lamp,
     And viewed an army, once the seeming doomed,
     All choral in its fruitful garden camp,
     The spiritual the palpable illumed.

     This gift of penetration and embrace,
     His prize from tidal battles lost or won,
     Reveals the scheme to animate his race:
     How that it is a warfare but begun;
     Unending; with no Power to interpose;
     No prayer, save for strength to keep his ground,
     Heard of the Highest; never battle's close,
     The victory complete and victor crowned:
     Nor solace in defeat, save from that sense
     Of strength well spent, which is the strength renewed.
     In manhood must he find his competence;
     In his clear mind the spiritual food:
     God being there while he his fight maintains;
     Throughout his mind the Master Mind being there,
     While he rejects the suicide despair;
     Accepts the spur of explicable pains;
     Obedient to Nature, not her slave:
     Her lord, if to her rigid laws he bows;
     Her dust, if with his conscience he plays knave,
     And bids the Passions on the Pleasures browse:-
     Whence Evil in a world unread before;
     That mystery to simple springs resolved.
     His God the Known, diviner to adore,
     Shows Nature's savage riddles kindly solved.
     Inconscient, insensitive, she reigns
     In iron laws, though rapturous fair her face.
     Back to the primal brute shall he retrace
     His path, doth he permit to force her chains
     A soft Persuader coursing through his veins,
     An icy Huntress stringing to the chase:
     What one the flash disdains;
     What one so gives it grace.

     But is he rightly manful in her eyes,
     A splendid bloodless knight to gain the skies,
     A blood-hot son of Earth by all her signs,
     Desireing and desireable he shines;
     As peaches, that have caught the sun's uprise
     And kissed warm gold till noonday, even as vines.
     Earth fills him with her juices, without fear
     That she will cast him drunken down the steeps.
     All woman is she to this man most dear;
     He sows for bread, and she in spirit reaps:
     She conscient, she sensitive, in him;
     With him enwound, his brave ambition hers:
     By him humaner made; by his keen spurs
     Pricked to race past the pride in giant limb,
     Her crazy adoration of big thews,
     Proud in her primal sons, when crags they hurled,
     Were thunder spitting lightnings on the world
     In daily deeds, and she their evening Muse.

     This man, this hero, works not to destroy;
     This godlike--as the rock in ocean stands; -
     He of the myriad eyes, the myriad hands
     Creative; in his edifice has joy.
     How strength may serve for purity is shown
     When he himself can scourge to make it clean.
     Withal his pitch of pride would not disown
     A sober world that walks the balanced mean
     Between its tempters, rarely overthrown:
     And such at times his army's march has been.

     Near is he to great Nature in the thought
     Each changing Season intimately saith,
     That nought save apparition knows the death;
     To the God-lighted mind of man 'tis nought.
     She counts not loss a word of any weight;
     It may befal his passions and his greeds
     To lose their treasures, like the vein that bleeds,
     But life gone breathless will she reinstate.

     Close on the heart of Earth his bosom beats,
     When he the mandate lodged in it obeys,
     Alive to breast a future wrapped in haze,
     Strike camp, and onward, like the wind's cloud-fleets.
     Unresting she, unresting he, from change
     To change, as rain of cloud, as fruit of rain;
     She feels her blood-tree throbbing in her grain,
     Yet skyward branched, with loftier mark and range.

     No miracle the sprout of wheat from clod,
     She knows, nor growth of man in grisly brute;
     But he, the flower at head and soil at root,
     Is miracle, guides he the brute to God.
     And that way seems he bound; that way the road,
     With his dark-lantern mind, unled, alone,
     Wearifully through forest-tracts unsown,
     He travels, urged by some internal goad.

     Dares he behold the thing he is, what thing
     He would become is in his mind its child;
     Astir, demanding birth to light and wing;
     For battle prompt, by pleasure unbeguiled.
     So moves he forth in faith, if he has made
     His mind God's temple, dedicate to truth.
     Earth's nourishing delights, no more gainsaid,
     He tastes, as doth the bridegroom rich in youth.
     Then knows he Love, that beckons and controls;
     The star of sky upon his footway cast;
     Then match in him who holds his tempters fast,
     The body's love and mind's, whereof the soul's.
     Then Earth her man for woman finds at last,
     To speed the pair unto her goal of goals.

     Or is't the widowed's dream of her new mate?
     Seen has she virulent days of heat in flood;
     The sly Persuader snaky in his blood;
     With her the barren Huntress alternate;
     His rough refractory off on kicking heels
     To rear; the man dragged rearward, shamed, amazed;
     And as a torrent stream where cattle grazed,
     His tumbled world. What, then, the faith she feels?
     May not his aspect, like her own so fair
     Reflexively, the central force belie,
     And he, the once wild ocean storming sky,
     Be rebel at the core? What hope is there?

     'Tis that in each recovery he preserves,
     Between his upper and his nether wit,
     Sense of his march ahead, more brightly lit;
     He less the shaken thing of lusts and nerves;
     With such a grasp upon his brute as tells
     Of wisdom from that vile relapsing spun.
     A Sun goes down in wasted fire, a Sun
     Resplendent springs, to faith refreshed compels.



     THE HUELESS LOVE



     Unto that love must we through fire attain,
     Which those two held as breath of common air;
     The hands of whom were given in bond elsewhere;
     Whom Honour was untroubled to restrain.

     Midway the road of our life's term they met,
     And one another knew without surprise;
     Nor cared that beauty stood in mutual eyes;
     Nor at their tardy meeting nursed regret.

     To them it was revealed how they had found
     The kindred nature and the needed mind;
     The mate by long conspiracy designed;
     The flower to plant in sanctuary ground.

     Avowed in vigilant solicitude
     For either, what most lived within each breast
     They let be seen: yet every human test
     Demanding righteousness approved them good.

     She leaned on a strong arm, and little feared
     Abandonment to help if heaved or sank
     Her heart at intervals while Love looked blank,
     Life rosier were she but less revered.

     An arm that never shook did not obscure
     Her woman's intuition of the bliss -
     Their tempter's moment o'er the black abyss,
     Across the narrow plank--he could abjure.

     Then came a day that clipped for him the thread,
     And their first touch of lips, as he lay cold,
     Was all of earthly in their love untold,
     Beyond all earthly known to them who wed.

     So has there come the gust at South-west flung
     By sudden volt on eves of freezing mist,
     When sister snowflake sister snowdrop kissed,
     And one passed out, and one the bell-head hung.



     UNION IN DISSEVERANCE



     Sunset worn to its last vermilion he;
     She that star overhead in slow descent:
     That white star with the front of angel she;
     He undone in his rays of glory spent

     Halo, fair as the bow-shot at his rise,
     He casts round her, and knows his hour of rest
     Incomplete, were the light for which he dies,
     Less like joy of the dove that wings to nest.

     Lustrous momently, near on earth she sinks;
     Life's full throb over breathless and abased:
     Yet stand they, though impalpable the links,
     One, more one than the bridally embraced.



     SONG IN THE SONGLESS



     They have no song, the sedges dry,
     And still they sing.
     It is within my breast they sing,
     As I pass by.
     Within my breast they touch a string,
     They wake a sigh.
     There is but sound of sedges dry;
     In me they sing.



     THE BURDEN OF STRENGTH



     If that thou hast the gift of strength, then know
     Thy part is to uplift the trodden low;
     Else in a giant's grasp until the end
     A hopeless wrestler shall thy soul contend.



     THE MAIN REGRET



     [Written for the Charing Cross Album]

     I

     Seen, too clear and historic within us, our sins of omission
     Frown when the Autumn days strike us all ruthlessly bare.
     They of our mortal diseases find never healing physician;
     Errors they of the soul, past the one hope to repair.

     II

     Sunshine might we have been unto seed under soil, or have scattered
     Seed to ascendant suns brighter than any that shone.
     Even the limp-legged beggar a sick desperado has flattered
     Back to a half-sloughed life cheered by the mere human tone.



     ALTERNATION



     Between the fountain and the rill
     I passed, and saw the mighty will
     To leap at sky; the careless run,
     As earth would lead her little son.

     Beneath them throbs an urgent well,
     That here is play, and there is war.
     I know not which had most to tell
     Of whence we spring and what we are.



     FOREST HISTORY



     I

     Beneath the vans of doom did men pass in.
     Heroic who came out; for round them hung
     A wavering phantom's red volcano tongue,
     With league-long lizard tail and fishy fin:

     II

     Old Earth's original Dragon; there retired
     To his last fastness; overthrown by few.
     Him a laborious thrust of roadway slew.
     Then man to play devorant straight was fired.

     III

     More intimate became the forest fear
     While pillared darkness hatched malicious life
     At either elbow, wolf or gnome or knife
     And wary slid the glance from ear to ear.

     IV

     In chillness, like a clouded lantern-ray,
     The forest's heart of fog on mossed morass,
     On purple pool and silky cotton-grass,
     Revealed where lured the swallower byway.

     V

     Dead outlook, flattened back with hard rebound
     Off walls of distance, left each mounted height.
     It seemed a giant hag-fiend, churning spite
     Of humble human being, held the ground.

     VI

     Through friendless wastes, through treacherous woodland, slow
     The feet sustained by track of feet pursued
     Pained steps, and found the common brotherhood
     By sign of Heaven indifferent, Nature foe.

     VII

     Anon a mason's work amazed the sight,
     And long-frocked men, called Brothers, there abode.
     They pointed up, bowed head, and dug and sowed;
     Whereof was shelter, loaf, and warm firelight.

     VIII

     What words they taught were nails to scratch the head.
     Benignant works explained the chanting brood.
     Their monastery lit black solitude,
     As one might think a star that heavenward led.

     IX

     Uprose a fairer nest for weary feet,
     Like some gold flower nightly inward curled,
     Where gentle maidens fled a roaring world,
     Or played with it, and had their white retreat.

     X

     Into big books of metal clasps they pored.
     They governed, even as men; they welcomed lays.
     The treasures women are whose aim is praise,
     Was shown in them: the Garden half restored.

     XI

     A deluge billow scoured the land off seas,
     With widened jaws, and slaughter was its foam.
     For food, for clothing, ambush, refuge, home,
     The lesser savage offered bogs and trees.

     XII

     Whence reverence round grey-haired story grew:
     And inmost spots of ancient horror shone
     As temples under beams of trials bygone;
     For in them sang brave times with God in view.

     XIII

     Till now trim homesteads bordered spaces green,
     Like night's first little stars through clearing showers.
     Was rumoured how a castle's falcon towers
     The wilderness commanded with fierce mien.

     XIV

     Therein a serious Baron stuck his lance;
     For minstrel songs a beauteous Dame would pout.
     Gay knights and sombre, felon or devout,
     Pricked onward, bound for their unsung romance.

     XV

     It might be that two errant lords across
     The block of each came edged, and at sharp cry
     They charged forthwith, the better man to try.
     One rode his way, one couched on quiet moss.

     XVI

     Perchance a lady sweet, whose lord lay slain,
     The robbers into gruesome durance drew.
     Swift should her hero come, like lightning's blue!
     She prayed for him, as crackling drought for rain.

     XVII

     As we, that ere the worst her hero haps,
     Of Angels guided, nigh that loathly den:
     A toady cave beside an ague fen,
     Where long forlorn the lone dog whines and yaps.

     XVIII

     By daylight now the forest fear could read
     Itself, and at new wonders chuckling went.
     Straight for the roebuck's neck the bowman spent
     A dart that laughed at distance and at speed.

     XIX

     Right loud the bugle's hallali elate
     Rang forth of merry dingles round the tors;
     And deftest hand was he from foreign wars,
     But soon he hailed the home-bred yeoman mate.

     XX

     Before the blackbird pecked the turf they woke;
     At dawn the deer's wet nostrils blew their last.
     To forest, haunt of runs and prime repast,
     With paying blows, the yokel strained his yoke.

     XXI

     The city urchin mooned on forest air,
     On grassy sweeps and flying arrows, thick
     As swallows o'er smooth streams, and sighed him sick
     For thinking that his dearer home was there.

     XXII

     Familiar, still unseized, the forest sprang
     An old-world echo, like no mortal thing.
     The hunter's horn might wind a jocund ring,
     But held in ear it had a chilly clang.

     XXIII

     Some shadow lurked aloof of ancient time;
     Some warning haunted any sound prolonged,
     As though the leagues of woodland held them wronged
     To hear an axe and see a township climb.

     XXIV

     The forest's erewhile emperor at eve
     Had voice when lowered heavens drummed for gales.
     At midnight a small people danced the dales,
     So thin that they might dwindle through a sieve

     XXV

     Ringed mushrooms told of them, and in their throats,
     Old wives that gathered herbs and knew too much.
     The pensioned forester beside his crutch,
     Struck showers from embers at those bodeful notes.

     XXVI

     Came then the one, all ear, all eye, all heart;
     Devourer, and insensibly devoured;
     In whom the city over forest flowered,
     The forest wreathed the city's drama-mart.

     XXVII

     There found he in new form that Dragon old,
     From tangled solitudes expelled; and taught
     How blindly each its antidote besought;
     For either's breath the needs of either told.

     XXVIII

     Now deep in woods, with song no sermon's drone,
     He showed what charm the human concourse works:
     Amid the press of men, what virtue lurks
     Where bubble sacred wells of wildness lone.

     XXIX

     Our conquest these: if haply we retain
     The reverence that ne'er will overrun
     Due boundaries of realms from Nature won,
     Nor let the poet's awe in rapture wane.



     THE INVECTIVE OF ACHILLES--Iliad, i. 149



     "Heigh me! brazen of front, thou glutton for plunder, how can one,
     Servant here to thy mandates, heed thee among our Achaians,
     Either the mission hie on or stoutly do fight with the foemen?
     I, not hither I fared on account of the spear-armed Trojans,
     Pledged to the combat; they unto me have in nowise a harm done;
     Never have they, of a truth, come lifting my horses or oxen;
     Never in deep-soiled Phthia, the nurser of heroes, my harvests
     Ravaged, they; for between us is numbered full many a darksome
     Mountain, ay, therewith too the stretch of the windy sea-waters.
     O hugely shameless! thee did we follow to hearten thee, justice
     Pluck from the Dardans for him, Menelaos, thee too, thou dog-eyed!
     Whereof little thy thought is, nought whatever thou reckest.
     Worse, it is thou whose threat 'tis to ravish my prize from me,
     portion
     Won with much labour, the which my gift from the sons of Achaia.
     Never, in sooth, have I known my prize equal thine when Achaians
     Gave some flourishing populous Trojan town up to pillage.
     Nay, sure, mine were the hands did most in the storm of the combat,
     Yet when came peradventure share of the booty amongst us,
     Bigger to thee went the prize, while I some small blessed thing bore
     Off to the ships, my share of reward for my toil in the bloodshed!
     So now go I to Phthia, for better by much it beseems me
     Homeward go with my beaked ships now, and I hold not in prospect,
     I being outraged, thou mayst gather here plunder and wealth-store."



     THE INVECTIVE OF ACHILLES--Iliad, i. 225



     "Bibber besotted, with scowl of a cur, having heart of a deer, thou!
     Never to join to thy warriors armed for the press of the conflict,
     Never for ambush forth with the princeliest sons of Achaia
     Dared thy soul, for to thee that thing would have looked as a death-
     stroke.
     Sooth, more easy it seems, down the lengthened array of Achaians,
     Snatch at the prize of the one whose voice has been lifted against
     thee.
     Ravening king of the folk, for that thou hast thy rule over abjects;
     Else, son of Atreus, now were this outrage on me thy last one.
     Nay, but I tell thee, and I do swear a big oath on it likewise:
     Yea, by the sceptre here, and it surely bears branches and leaf-buds
     Never again, since first it was lopped from its trunk on the
     mountains,
     No more sprouting; for round it all clean has the sharp metal
     clipped off
     Leaves and the bark; ay, verify now do the sons of Achaia,
     Guardian hands of the counsels of Zeus, pronouncing the judgement,
     Hold it aloft; so now unto thee shall the oath have its portent;
     Loud will the cry for Achilles burst from the sons of Achaia
     Throughout the army, and thou chafe powerless, though in an anguish,
     How to give succour when vast crops down under man-slaying Hector
     Tumble expiring; and thou deep in thee shalt tear at thy heart-
     strings,
     Rage-wrung, thou, that in nought thou didst honour the flower of
     Achaians."



     MARSHALLING OF THE ACHAIANS--Iliad, ii 455



     Like as a terrible fire feeds fast on a forest enormous,
     Up on a mountain height, and the blaze of it radiates round far,
     So on the bright blest arms of the host in their march did the
     splendour
     Gleam wide round through the circle of air right up to the sky-
     vault.
     They, now, as when swarm thick in the air multitudinous winged
     flocks,
     Be it of geese or of cranes or the long-necked troops of the wild-
     swans,
     Off that Asian mead, by the flow of the waters of Kaistros;
     Hither and yon fly they, and rejoicing in pride of their pinions,
     Clamour, shaped to their ranks, and the mead all about them
     resoundeth;
     So those numerous tribes from their ships and their shelterings
     poured forth
     On that plain of Scamander, and horrible rumbled beneath them
     Earth to the quick-paced feet of the men and the tramp of the horse-
     hooves.
     Stopped they then on the fair-flower'd field of Scamander, their
     thousands
     Many as leaves and the blossoms born of the flowerful season.
     Even as countless hot-pressed flies in their multitudes traverse,
     Clouds of them, under some herdsman's wonning, where then are the
     milk-pails
     Also, full of their milk, in the bountiful season of spring-time;
     Even so thickly the long-haired sons of Achaia the plain held,
     Prompt for the dash at the Trojan host, with the passion to crush
     them.
     Those, likewise, as the goatherds, eyeing their vast flocks of
     goats, know
     Easily one from the other when all get mixed o'er the pasture,
     So did the chieftains rank them here there in their places for
     onslaught,
     Hard on the push of the fray; and among them King Agamemnon,
     He, for his eyes and his head, as when Zeus glows glad in his
     thunder,
     He with the girdle of Ares, he with the breast of Poseidon.



     AGAMEMNON IN THE FIGHT--Iliad, xi, 148



     These, then, he left, and away where ranks were now clashing the
     thickest,
     Onward rushed, and with him rushed all of the bright-greaved
     Achaians.
     Foot then footmen slew, that were flying from direful compulsion,
     Horse at the horsemen (up from off under them mounted the dust-
     cloud,
     Up off the plain, raised up cloud-thick by the thundering horse-
     hooves)
     Hewed with the sword's sharp edge; and so meanwhile Lord Agamemnon
     Followed, chasing and slaughtering aye, on-urgeing the Argives.

     Now, as when fire voracious catches the unclipped wood-land,
     This way bears it and that the great whirl of the wind, and the
     scrubwood
     Stretches uptorn, flung forward alength by the fire's fury rageing,
     So beneath Atreides Agamemnon heads of the scattered
     Trojans fell; and in numbers amany the horses, neck-stiffened,
     Rattled their vacant cars down the roadway gaps of the war-field,
     Missing the blameless charioteers, but, for these, they were
     outstretched
     Flat upon earth, far dearer to vultures than to their home-mates.



     PARIS AND DIOMEDES--Iliad, xi, 378



     So he, with a clear shout of laughter,
     Forth of his ambush leapt, and he vaunted him, uttering thiswise:
     "Hit thou art! not in vain flew the shaft; how by rights it had
     pierced thee
     Into the undermost gut, therewith to have rived thee of life-breath!
     Following that had the Trojans plucked a new breath from their
     direst,
     They all frighted of thee, as the goats bleat in flight from a
     lion."
     Then unto him untroubled made answer stout Diomedes:
     "Bow-puller, jiber, thy bow for thy glorying, spyer at virgins!
     If that thou dared'st face me here out in the open with weapons,
     Nothing then would avail thee thy bow and thy thick shot of arrows.
     Now thou plumest thee vainly because of a graze of my footsole;
     Reck I as were that stroke from a woman or some pettish infant.
     Aye flies blunted the dart of the man that's emasculate,
     noughtworth!
     Otherwise hits, forth flying from me, and but strikes it the
     slightest,
     My keen shaft, and it numbers a man of the dead fallen straightway.
     Torn, troth, then are the cheeks of the wife of that man fallen
     slaughtered,
     Orphans his babes, full surely he reddens the earth with his blood-
     drops,
     Rotting, round him the birds, more numerous they than the women."



     HYPNOS ON IDA--Iliad, xiv, 283



     They then to fountain-abundant Ida, mother of wild beasts,
     Came, and they first left ocean to fare over mainland at Lektos,
     Where underneath of their feet waved loftiest growths of the
     woodland.
     There hung Hypnos fast, ere the vision of Zeus was observant,
     Mounted upon a tall pine-tree, tallest of pines that on Ida
     Lustily spring off soil for the shoot up aloft into aether.
     There did he sit well-cloaked by the wide-branched pine for
     concealment,
     That loud bird, in his form like, that perched high up in the
     mountains,
     Chalkis is named by the Gods, but of mortals known as Kymindis.



     CLASH IN ARMS OF THE ACHAIANS AND TROJANS--Iliad, xvii, 426



     Not the sea-wave so bellows abroad when it bursts upon shingle,
     Whipped from the sea's deeps up by the terrible blast of the
     Northwind;
     Nay, nor is ever the roar of the fierce fire's rush so arousing,
     Down along mountain-glades, when it surges to kindle a woodland;
     Nay, nor so tonant thunders the stress of the gale in the oak-trees'
     Foliage-tresses high, when it rages to raveing its utmost;
     As rose then stupendous the Trojan's cry and Achaians',
     Dread upshouting as one when together they clashed in the conflict.



     THE HORSES OF ACHILLES--Iliad, xvii, 426



     So now the horses of Aiakides, off wide of the war-ground,
     Wept, since first they were ware of their charioteer overthrown
     there,
     Cast down low in the whirl of the dust under man-slaying Hector.
     Sooth, meanwhile, then did Automedon, brave son of Diores,
     Oft, on the one hand, urge them with flicks of the swift whip, and
     oft, too,
     Coax entreatingly, hurriedly; whiles did he angrily threaten.
     Vainly, for these would not to the ships, to the Hellespont
     spacious,
     Backward turn, nor be whipped to the battle among the Achaians.
     Nay, as a pillar remains immovable, fixed on the tombstone,
     Haply, of some dead man or it may be a woman there-under;
     Even like hard stood they there attached to the glorious war-car,
     Earthward bowed with their heads; and of them so lamenting incessant
     Ran the hot teardrops downward on to the earth from their eyelids,
     Mourning their charioteer; all their lustrous manes dusty-clotted,
     Right side and left of the yoke-ring tossed, to the breadth of the
     yoke-bow.
     Now when the issue of Kronos beheld that sorrow, his head shook
     Pitying them for their grief, these words then he spake in his
     bosom;
     "Why, ye hapless, gave we to Peleus you, to a mortal
     Master; ye that are ageless both, ye both of you deathless!
     Was it that ye among men most wretched should come to have heart-
     grief?
     'Tis most true, than the race of these men is there wretcheder
     nowhere
     Aught over earth's range found that is gifted with breath and has
     movement."



     THE MARES OF THE CAMARGUE--From the 'Mireio' of Mistral



     A hundred mares, all white! their manes
     Like mace-reed of the marshy plains
     Thick-tufted, wavy, free o' the shears:
     And when the fiery squadron rears
     Bursting at speed, each mane appears
     Even as the white scarf of a fay
     Floating upon their necks along the heavens away.

     O race of humankind, take shame!
     For never yet a hand could tame,
     Nor bitter spur that rips the flanks subdue
     The mares of the Camargue. I have known,
     By treason snared, some captives shown;
     Expatriate from their native Rhone,
     Led off, their saline pastures far from view:

     And on a day, with prompt rebound,
     They have flung their riders to the ground,
     And at a single gallop, scouring free,
     Wide-nostril'd to the wind, twice ten
     Of long marsh-leagues devour'd, and then,
     Back to the Vacares again,
     After ten years of slavery just to breathe salt sea

     For of this savage race unbent,
     The ocean is the element.
     Of old escaped from Neptune's car, full sure,
     Still with the white foam fleck'd are they,
     And when the sea puffs black from grey,
     And ships part cables, loudly neigh
     The stallions of Camargue, all joyful in the roar;

     And keen as a whip they lash and crack
     Their tails that drag the dust, and back
     Scratch up the earth, and feel, entering their flesh, where he,
     The God, drives deep his trident teeth,
     Who in one horror, above, beneath,
     Bids storm and watery deluge seethe,
     And shatters to their depths the abysses of the sea.

     Cant. iv.



     'ATKINS'



     Yonder's the man with his life in his hand,
     Legs on the march for whatever the land,
     Or to the slaughter, or to the maiming,
     Getting the dole of a dog for pay.
     Laurels he clasps in the words 'duty done,'
     England his heart under every sun:-
     Exquisite humour! that gives him a naming
     Base to the ear as an ass's bray.



     THE VOYAGE OF THE 'OPHIR'



     Men of our race, we send you one
     Round whom Victoria's holy name
     Is halo from the sunken sun
     Of her grand Summer's day aflame.
     The heart of your loved Motherland,
     To them she loves as her own blood,
     This Flower of Ocean bears in hand,
     Assured of gift as good.

     Forth for our Southern shores the fleet
     Which crowns a nation's wisdom steams,
     That there may Briton Briton greet,
     And stamp as fact Imperial dreams.
     Across the globe, from sea to sea,
     The long smoke-pennon trails above,
     Writes over sky how wise will be
     The Power that trusts to love.

     A love that springs from heart and brain
     In union gives for ripest fruit
     The concord Kings and States in vain
     Have sought, who played the lofty brute,
     And fondly deeming they possessed,
     On force relied, and found it break:
     That truth once scored on Britain's breast
     Now keeps her mind awake.

     Australian, Canadian,
     To tone old veins with streams of youth,
     Our trust be on the best in man
     Henceforth, and we shall prove that truth.
     Prove to a world of brows down-bent
     That in the Britain thus endowed,
     Imperial means beneficent,
     And strength to service vowed.



     THE CRISIS



     Spirit of Russia, now has come
     The day when thou canst not be dumb.
     Around thee foams the torrent tide,
     Above thee its fell fountain, Pride.
     The senseless rock awaits thy word
     To crumble; shall it be unheard?
     Already, like a tempest-sun,
     That shoots the flare and shuts to dun,
     Thy land 'twixt flame and darkness heaves,
     Showing the blade wherewith Fate cleaves,
     If mortals in high courage fail
     At the one breath before the gale.
     Those rulers in all forms of lust,
     Who trod thy children down to dust
     On the red Sunday, know right well
     What word for them thy voice would spell,
     What quick perdition for them weave,
     Did they in such a voice believe.
     Not thine to raise the avenger's shriek,
     Nor turn to them a Tolstoi cheek;
     Nor menace him, the waverer still,
     Man of much heart and little will,
     The criminal of his high seat,
     Whose plea of Guiltless judges it.
     For him thy voice shall bring to hand
     Salvation, and to thy torn land,
     Seen on the breakers. Now has come
     The day when thou canst not be dumb,
     Spirit of Russia:- those who bind
     Thy limbs and iron-cap thy mind,
     Take thee for quaking flesh, misdoubt
     That thou art of the rabble rout
     Which cries and flees, with whimpering lip,
     From reckless gun and brutal whip;
     But he who has at heart the deeds
     Of thy heroic offspring reads
     In them a soul; not given to shrink
     From peril on the abyss's brink;
     With never dread of murderous power;
     With view beyond the crimson hour;
     Neither an instinct-driven might,
     Nor visionary erudite;
     A soul; that art thou. It remains
     For thee to stay thy children's veins,
     The countertides of hate arrest,
     Give to thy sons a breathing breast,
     And Him resembling, in His sight,
     Say to thy land, Let there be Light.



     OCTOBER 21, 1905



     The hundred years have passed, and he
     Whose name appeased a nation's fears,
     As with a hand laid over sea;
     To thunder through the foeman's ears
     Defeat before his blast of fire;
     Lives in the immortality
     That poets dream and noblest souls desire.

     Never did nation's need evoke
     Hero like him for aid, the while
     A Continent was cannon-smoke
     Or peace in slavery: this one Isle
     Reflecting Nature: this one man
     Her sea-hound and her mortal stroke,
     With war-worn body aye in battle's van.

     And do we love him well, as well
     As he his country, we may greet,
     With hand on steel, our passing bell
     Nigh on the swing, for prelude sweet
     To the music heard when his last breath
     Hung on its ebb beside the knell,
     And VICTORY in his ear sang gracious Death.

     Ah, day of glory! day of tears!
     Day of a people bowed as one!
     Behold across those hundred years
     The lion flash of gun at gun:
     Our bitter pride; our love bereaved;
     What pall of cloud o'ercame our sun
     That day, to bear his wreath, the end achieved.

     Joy that no more with murder's frown
     The ancient rivals bark apart.
     Now Nelson to brave France is shown
     A hero after her own heart:
     And he now scanning that quick race,
     To whom through life his glove was thrown,
     Would know a sister spirit to embrace.



     THE CENTENARY OF GARIBALDI



     We who have seen Italia in the throes,
     Half risen but to be hurled to ground, and now
     Like a ripe field of wheat where once drove plough
     All bounteous as she is fair, we think of those
     Who blew the breath of life into her frame:
     Cavour, Mazzini, Garibaldi: Three:
     Her Brain, her Soul, her Sword; and set her free
     From ruinous discords, with one lustrous aim.

     That aim, albeit they were of minds diverse,
     Conjoined them, not to strive without surcease;
     For them could be no babblement of peace
     While lay their country under Slavery's curse.

     The set of torn Italia's glorious day
     Was ever sunrise in each filial breast.
     Of eagle beaks by righteousness unblest
     They felt her pulsing body made the prey.

     Wherefore they struck, and had to count their dead.
     With bitter smile of resolution nerved
     To try new issues, holding faith unswerved,
     Promise they gathered from the rich blood shed.

     In them Italia, visible to us then
     As living, rose; for proof that huge brute Force
     Has never being from celestial source,
     And is the lord of cravens, not of men.

     Now breaking up the crust of temporal strife,
     Who reads their acts enshrined in History, sees
     That Tyrants were the Revolutionaries,
     The Rebels men heart-vowed to hallowed life.

     Pure as the Archangel's cleaving Darkness thro',
     The Sword he sees, the keen unwearied Sword,
     A single blade against a circling horde,
     And aye for Freedom and the trampled few.

     The cry of Liberty from dungeon cell,
     From exile, was his God's command to smite,
     As for a swim in sea he joined the fight,
     With radiant face, full sure that he did well.

     Behold a warrior dealing mortal strokes,
     Whose nature was a child's: amid his foes
     A wary trickster: at the battle's close,
     No gentler friend this leopard dashed with fox.

     Down the long roll of History will run
     The story of these deeds, and speed his race
     Beneath defeat more hotly to embrace
     The noble cause and trust to another sun.

     And lo, that sun is in Italia's skies
     This day, by grace of his good sword in part.
     It beckons her to keep a warrior heart
     For guard of beauty, all too sweet a prize.

     Earth gave him: blessed be the Earth that gave.
     Earth's Master crowned his honest work on earth:
     Proudly Italia names his place of birth:
     The bosom of Humanity his grave.



     THE WILD ROSE



     High climbs June's wild rose,
     Her bush all blooms in a swarm;
     And swift from the bud she blows,
     In a day when the wooer is warm;
     Frank to receive and give,
     Her bosom is open to bee and sun:
     Pride she has none,
     Nor shame she knows;
     Happy to live.

     Unlike those of the garden nigh,
     Her queenly sisters enthroned by art;
     Loosening petals one by one
     To the fiery Passion's dart
     Superbly shy.
     For them in some glory of hair,
     Or nest of the heaving mounds to lie,
     Or path of the bride bestrew.
     Ever are they the theme for song.
     But nought of that is her share.
     Hardly from wayfarers tramping along,
     A glance they care not to renew.

     And she at a word of the claims of kin
     Shrinks to the level of roads and meads:
     She is only a plain princess of the weeds,
     As an outcast witless of sin:
     Much disregarded, save by the few
     Who love her, that has not a spot of deceit,
     No promise of sweet beyond sweet,
     Often descending to sour.
     On any fair breast she would die in an hour.
     Praises she scarce could bear,
     Were any wild poet to praise.
     Her aim is to rise into light and air.
     One of the darlings of Earth, no more,
     And little it seems in the dusty ways,
     Unless to the grasses nodding beneath;
     The bird clapping wings to soar,
     The clouds of an evetide's wreath.



     THE CALL



     Under what spell are we debased
     By fears for our inviolate Isle,
     Whose record is of dangers faced
     And flung to heel with even smile?
     Is it a vaster force, a subtler guile?

     They say Exercitus designs
     To match the famed Salsipotent
     Where on her sceptre she reclines;
     Awake: but were a slumber sent
     By guilty gods, more fell his foul intent.

     The subtler web, the vaster foe,
     Well may we meet when drilled for deeds:
     But in these days of wealth at flow,
     A word of breezy warning breeds
     The pained responses seen in lakeside reeds.

     We fain would stand contemplative,
     All innocent as meadow grass;
     In human goodness fain believe,
     Believe a cloud is formed to pass;
     Its shadows chase with draughts of hippocras.

     Others have gone; the way they went
     Sweet sunny now, and safe our nest.
     Humanity, enlightenment,
     Against the warning hum protest:
     Let the world hear that we know what is best.

     So do the beatific speak;
     Yet have they ears, and eyes as well;
     And if not with a paler cheek,
     They feel the shivers in them dwell,
     That something of a dubious future tell.

     For huge possessions render slack
     The power we need to hold them fast;
     Save when a quickened heart shall make
     Our people one, to meet what blast
     May blow from temporal heavens overcast.

     Our people one! Nor they with strength
     Dependent on a single arm:
     Alert, and braced the whole land's length,
     Rejoicing in their manhood's charm
     For friend or foe; to succour, not to harm.

     Has ever weakness won esteem?
     Or counts it as a prized ally?
     They who have read in History deem
     It ranks among the slavish fry,
     Whose claim to live justiciary Fates deny.

     It can not be declared we are
     A nation till from end to end
     The land can show such front to war
     As bids a crouching foe expend
     His ire in air, and preferably be friend.

     We dreading him, we do him wrong;
     For fears discolour, fears invite.
     Like him, our task is to be strong;
     Unlike him, claiming not by might
     To snatch an envied treasure as a right.

     So may a stouter brotherhood
     At home be signalled over sea
     For righteous, and be understood,
     Nay, welcomed, when 'tis shown that we
     All duties have embraced in being free.

     This Britain slumbering, she is rich;
     Lies placid as a cradled child;
     At times with an uneasy twitch,
     That tells of dreams unduly wild.
     Shall she be with a foreign drug defiled?

     The grandeur of her deeds recall;
     Look on her face so kindly fair:
     This Britain! and were she to fall,
     Mankind would breathe a harsher air,
     The nations miss a light of leading rare.



     ON COMO



     A rainless darkness drew o'er the lake
     As we lay in our boat with oars unshipped.
     It seemed neither cloud nor water awake,
     And forth of the low black curtain slipped
     Thunderless lightning. Scoff no more
     At angels imagined in downward flight
     For the daughters of earth as fabled of yore:
     Here was beauty might well invite
     Dark heavens to gleam with the fire of a sun
     Resurgent; here the exchanged embrace
     Worthy of heaven and earth made one.

     And witness it, ye of the privileged space,
     Said the flash; and the mountains, as from an abyss
     For quivering seconds leaped up to attest
     That given, received, renewed was the kiss;
     The lips to lips and the breast to breast;
     All in a glory of ecstasy, swift
     As an eagle at prey, and pure as the prayer
     Of an infant bidden joined hands uplift
     To be guarded through darkness by spirits of air,
     Ere setting the sails of sleep till day.
     Slowly the low cloud swung, and far
     It panted along its mirrored way;
     Above loose threads one sanctioning star,
     The wonder of what had been witnessed, sealed,
     And with me still as in crystal glassed
     Are the depths alight, the heavens revealed,
     Where on to the Alps the muteness passed.



     MILTON--DECEMBER 9, 1608: DECEMBER 9, 1908



     What splendour of imperial station man,
     The Tree of Life, may reach when, rooted fast,
     His branching stem points way to upper air
     And skyward still aspires, we see in him
     Who sang for us the Archangelical host,
     Made Morning, by old Darkness urged to the abyss;
     A voice that down three centuries onward rolls;
     Onward will roll while lives our English tongue,
     In the devout of music unsurpassed
     Since Piety won Heaven's ear on Israel's harp.

     The face of Earth, the soul of Earth, her charm,
     Her dread austerity; the quavering fate
     Of mortals with blind hope by passion swayed,
     His mind embraced, the while on trodden soil,
     Defender of the Commonwealth, he joined
     Our temporal fray, whereof is vital fruit,
     And, choosing armoury of the Scholar, stood
     Beside his peers to raise the voice for Freedom:
     Nor has fair Liberty a champion armed
     To meet on heights or plains the Sophister
     Throughout the ages, equal to this man,
     Whose spirit breathed high Heaven, and drew thence
     The ethereal sword to smite.

     Were England sunk
     Beneath the shifting tides, her heart, her brain,
     The smile she wears, the faith she holds, her best,
     Would live full-toned in the grand delivery
     Of his cathedral speech: an utterance
     Almost divine, and such as Hellespont,
     Crashing its breakers under Ida's frown,
     Inspired: yet worthier he, whose instrument
     Was by comparison the coarse reed-pipe;
     Whereof have come the marvellous harmonies,
     Which, with his lofty theme, of infinite range,
     Abash, entrance, exalt.

     We need him now,
     This latest Age in repetition cries:
     For Belial, the adroit, is in our midst;
     Mammon, more swoln to squeeze the slavish sweat
     From hopeless toil: and overshadowingly
     (Aggrandized, monstrous in his grinning mask
     Of hypocritical Peace,) inveterate Moloch
     Remains the great example.

     Homage to him
     His debtor band, innumerable as waves
     Running all golden from an eastern sun,
     Joyfully render, in deep reverence
     Subscribe, and as they speak their Milton's name,
     Rays of his glory on their foreheads bear.



     IRELAND



     Fire in her ashes Ireland feels
     And in her veins a glow of heat.
     To her the lost old time, appeals
     For resurrection, good to greet:
     Not as a shape with spectral eyes,
     But humanly maternal, young
     In all that quickens pride, and wise
     To speak the best her bards have sung.

     You read her as a land distraught,
     Where bitterest rebel passions seethe.
     Look with a core of heart in thought,
     For so is known the truth beneath.
     She came to you a loathing bride,
     And it has been no happy bed.
     Believe in her as friend, allied
     By bonds as close as those who wed.

     Her speech is held for hatred's cry;
     Her silence tells of treason hid:
     Were it her aim to burst the tie,
     She sees what iron laws forbid.
     Excess of heart obscures from view
     A head as keen as yours to count.
     Trust her, that she may prove her true
     In links whereof is love the fount.

     May she not call herself her own?
     That is her cry, and thence her spits
     Of fury, thence her graceless tone
     At justice given in bits and bits.
     The limbs once raw with gnawing chains
     Will fret at silken when God's beams
     Of Freedom beckon o'er the plains
     From mounts that show it more than dreams.

     She, generous, craves your generous dole;
     That will not rouse the crack of doom.
     It ends the blundering past control
     Simply to give her elbow-room.
     Her offspring feels they are a race,
     To be a nation is their claim;
     Yet stronger bound in your embrace
     Than when the tie was but a name.

     A nation she, and formed to charm,
     With heart for heart and hands all round.
     No longer England's broken arm,
     Would England know where strength is found.
     And strength to-day is England's need;
     To-morrow it may be for both
     Salvation: heed the portents, heed
     The warnings; free the mind from sloth.

     Too long the pair have danced in mud,
     With no advance from sun to sun.
     Ah, what a bounding course of blood
     Has England with an Ireland one!
     Behold yon shadow cross the downs,
     And off away to yeasty seas.
     Lightly will fly old rancour's frowns
     When solid with high heart stand these.



     THE YEARS HAD WORN THEIR SEASONS' BELT



     The years had worn their seasons' belt,
     From bud to rosy prime,
     Since Nellie by the larch-pole knelt
     And helped the hop to climb.

     Most diligent of teachers then,
     But now with all to learn,
     She breathed beyond a thought of men,
     Though formed to make men burn.

     She dwelt where 'twixt low-beaten thorns
     Two mill-blades, like a snail,
     Enormous, with inquiring horns,
     Looked down on half the vale.

     You know the grey of dew on grass
     Ere with the young sun fired,
     And you know well the thirst one has
     For the coming and desired.

     Quick in our ring she leapt, and gave
     Her hand to left, to right.
     No claim on her had any, save
     To feed the joy of sight.

     For man and maid a laughing word
     She tossed, in notes as clear
     As when the February bird
     Sings out that Spring is near.

     Of what befell behind that scone,
     Let none who knows reveal.
     In ballad days she might have been
     A heroine rousing steel.

     On us did she bestow the hour,
     And fixed it firm in thought;
     Her spirit like a meadow flower
     That gives, and asks for nought.

     She seemed to make the sunlight stay
     And show her in its pride.
     O she was fair as a beech in May
     With the sun on the yonder side.

     There was more life than breath can give,
     In the looks in her fair form;
     For little can we say we live
     Until the heart is warm.



     FRAGMENTS



     Open horizons round,
     O mounting mind, to scenes unsung,
     Wherein shall walk a lusty Time:
     Our Earth is young;
     Of measure without bound;
     Infinite are the heights to climb,
     The depths to sound.


     A wilding little stubble flower
     The sickle scorned which cut for wheat,
     Such was our hope in that dark hour
     When nought save uses held the street,
     And daily pleasures, daily needs,
     With barren vision, looked ahead.
     And still the same result of seeds
     Gave likeness 'twixt the live and dead.


     From labours through the night, outworn,
     Above the hills the front of morn
     We see, whose eyes to heights are raised,
     And the world's wise may deem us crazed.
     While yet her lord lies under seas,
     She takes us as the wind the trees'
     Delighted leafage; all in song
     We mount to her, to her belong.


     This love of nature, that allures to take
     Irregularity for harmony
     Of larger scope than our hard measures make,
     Cherish it as thy school for when on thee
     The ills of life descend.



     IL Y A CENT ANS



     That march of the funereal Past behold;
     How Glory sat on Bondage for its throne;
     How men, like dazzled insects, through the mould
     Still worked their way, and bled to keep their own.

     We know them, as they strove and wrought and yearned;
     Their hopes, their fears; what page of Life they wist:
     At whiles their vision upon us was turned,
     Baffled by shapes limmed loosely on thick mist.

     Beneath the fortress bulk of Power they bent
     Blunt heads, adoring or in shackled hate,
     All save the rebel hymned him; and it meant
     A world submitting to incarnate Fate.

     From this he drew fresh appetite for sway,
     And of it fell: whereat was chorus raised,
     How surely shall a mad ambition pay
     Dues to Humanity, erewhile amazed.

     'Twas dreamed by some the deluge would ensue,
     So trembling was the tension long constrained;
     A spirit of faith was in the chosen few,
     That steps to the millennium had been gained.

     But mainly the rich business of the hour,
     Their sight, made blind by urgency of blood,
     Embraced; and facts, the passing sweet or sour,
     To them were solid things that nought withstood.

     Their facts are going headlong on the tides,
     Like commas on a line of History's page;
     Nor that which once they took for Truth abides,
     Save in the form of youth enlarged from age.

     Meantime give ear to woodland notes around,
     Look on our Earth full-breasted to our sun:
     So was it when their poets heard the sound,
     Beheld the scene: in them our days are one.

     What figures will be shown the century hence?
     What lands intact? We do but know that Power
     From piety divorced, though seen immense,
     Shall sink on envy of the humblest flower.

     Our cry for cradled Peace, while men are still
     The three-parts brute which smothers the divine,
     Heaven answers: Guard it with forethoughtful will,
     Or buy it; all your gains from War resign.

     A land, not indefensibly alarmed,
     May see, unwarned by hint of friendly gods,
     Between a hermit crab at all points armed,
     And one without a shell, decisive odds.



     YOUTH IN AGE



     Once I was part of the music I heard
     On the boughs or sweet between earth and sky,
     For joy of the beating of wings on high
     My heart shot into the breast of the bird.

     I hear it now and I see it fly,
     And a life in wrinkles again is stirred,
     My heart shoots into the breast of the bird,
     As it will for sheer love till the last long sigh.



     TO A FRIEND LOST (TOM TAYLOR)



     When I remember, friend, whom lost I call,
     Because a man beloved is taken hence,
     The tender humour and the fire of sense
     In your good eyes; how full of heart for all,
     And chiefly for the weaker by the wall,
     You bore that lamp of sane benevolence;
     Then see I round you Death his shadows dense
     Divide, and at your feet his emblems fall.
     For surely are you one with the white host,
     Spirits, whose memory is our vital air,
     Through the great love of Earth they had: lo, these,
     Like beams that throw the path on tossing seas,
     Can bid us feel we keep them in the ghost,
     Partakers of a strife they joyed to share.



     M. M.



     Who call her Mother and who calls her Wife
     Look on her grave and see not Death but Life.



     THE LADY C. M.



     To them that knew her, there is vital flame
     In these the simple letters of her name.
     To them that knew her not, be it but said,
     So strong a spirit is not of the dead.



     ON THE TOMBSTONE OF
     JAMES CHRISTOPHER WILSON
     (d. APRIL 11, 1884)
     IN HEADLEY CHURCHYARD, SURREY



     Thou our beloved and light of Earth hast crossed
     The sea of darkness to the yonder shore.
     There dost thou shine a light transferred, not lost,
     Through love to kindle in our souls the more.



     GORDON OF KHARTOUM



     Of men he would have raised to light he fell:
     In soul he conquered with those nerveless hands.
     His country's pride and her abasement knell
     The Man of England circled by the sands.



     J. C. M.



     A fountain of our sweetest, quick to spring
     In fellowship abounding, here subsides:
     And never passage of a cloud on wing
     To gladden blue forgets him; near he hides.



     THE EMPEROR FREDERICK OF OUR TIME



     With Alfred and St. Louis he doth win
     Grander than crowned head's mortuary dome:
     His gentle heroic manhood enters in
     The ever-flowering common heart for home.



     ISLET THE DACHS



     Our Islet out of Helgoland, dismissed
     From his quaint tenement, quits hates and loves.
     There lived with us a wagging humourist
     In that hound's arch dwarf-legged on boxing-gloves.



     ON HEARING THE NEWS FROM VENICE
     (THE DEATH OF ROBERT BROWNING)



     Now dumb is he who waked the world to speak,
     And voiceless hangs the world beside his bier.
     Our words are sobs, our cry of praise a tear:
     We are the smitten mortal, we the weak.
     We see a spirit on Earth's loftiest peak
     Shine, and wing hence the way he makes more clear:
     See a great Tree of Life that never sere
     Dropped leaf for aught that age or storms might wreak.
     Such ending is not Death: such living shows
     What wide illumination brightness sheds
     From one big heart, to conquer man's old foes:
     The coward, and the tyrant, and the force
     Of all those weedy monsters raising heads
     When Song is murk from springs of turbid source.

     December 13, 1889.



     HAWARDEN



     When comes the lighted day for men to read
     Life's meaning, with the work before their hands
     Till this good gift of breath from debt is freed,
     Earth will not hear her children's wailful bands
     Deplore the chieftain fall'n in sob and dirge;
     Nor they look where is darkness, but on high.
     The sun that dropped down our horizon's verge
     Illumes his labours through the travelled sky,
     Now seen in sum, most glorious; and 'tis known
     By what our warrior wrought we hold him fast.
     A splendid image built of man has flown;
     His deeds inspired of God outstep a Past.
     Ours the great privilege to have had one
     Among us who celestial tasks has done.



     AT THE FUNERAL
     FEBRUARY 2, 1901



     Her sacred body bear: the tenement
     Of that strong soul now ranked with God's Elect
     Her heart upon her people's heart she spent;
     Hence is she Royalty's lodestar to direct.

     The peace is hers, of whom all lands have praised
     Majestic virtues ere her day unseen.
     Aloft the name of Womanhood she raised,
     And gave new readings to the Title, Queen.



     ANGELA BURDETT-COUTTS



     Long with us, now she leaves us; she has rest
     Beneath our sacred sod:
     A woman vowed to Good, whom all attest,
     The daylight gift of God.



     THE YEAR'S SHEDDINGS



     The varied colours are a fitful heap:
     They pass in constant service though they sleep;
     The self gone out of them, therewith the pain:
     Read that, who still to spell our earth remain.