Lord Ormont and his Aminta, Complete

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

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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.

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