Lord Ormont and his Aminta, Complete

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

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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.

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