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Lord Ormont and his Aminta, Complete

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




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.

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