Lord Ormont and his Aminta, Complete

G >> George Meredith >> Lord Ormont and his Aminta, Complete

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'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.'

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