Lord Ormont and his Aminta, Complete

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

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Her brother Rowsley's revealed human appearance of the stricken
man--stricken right into his big heart--precipitated Lady Charlotte's
reflections and urged her to an unavailing fever of haste during the
circuitous drive in moonlight to the port. She alighted at the principal
inn, and was there informed that the packetboat, with a favouring breeze
and tide, had started ten minutes earlier. She summoned the landlord, and
described a lady, as probably one of the passengers: 'Dark, holds herself
up high. Some such lady had dined at the inn on tea, and gone aboard the
boat soon after.

Lady Charlotte burned with the question: Alone? She repressed her
feminine hunger and asked to see the book of visitors. But the lady had
not slept at the inn, so had not been requested to write her name.

The track of the vessel could be seen from the pier, on the line of a bar
of moonlight; and thinking, that the abominable woman, if aboard she was,
had coolly provided herself with a continental passport--or had it done
for two by her accomplice, that Weyburn, before she left London--Lady
Charlotte sent a loathing gaze at the black figure of the boat on the
water, untroubled by any reminder of her share in the conspiracy of
events, which was to be her brother's chastisement to his end.

Years are the teachers of the great rocky natures, whom they round and
sap and pierce in caverns, having them on all sides, and striking deep
inward at moments. There is no resisting the years, if we have a heart,
and a common understanding. They constitute, in the sum of them, the
self-examination, whence issues, acknowledged or not, a belated
self-knowledge, to direct our final actions. She had the heart. Sight of
the high-minded, proud, speechless man suffering for the absence of a
runaway woman, not ceasing to suffer, never blaming the woman, and
consequently, it could be fancied, blaming himself, broke down Lady
Charlotte's defences and moved her to review her part in her brother
Rowsley's unhappiness. For supposing him to blame himself, her power to
cast a shadow of blame on him went from her, and therewith her
vindication of her conduct. He lived at Olmer. She read him by degrees,
as those who have become absolutely tongueless have to be read; and so
she gathered that this mortally (or lastingly) wounded brother of hers
was pleased by an allusion to his Aminta. He ran his finger on the lines
of a map of Spain, from Barcelona over to Granada; and impressed his nail
at a point appearing to be mountainous or woody. Lady Charlotte suggested
that he and his Aminta had passed by there. He told a story of a carriage
accident: added, 'She was very brave.' One day, when he had taken a
keepsake book of England's Beauties off the drawing-room table, his eyes
dwelt on a face awhile, and he handed it, with a nod, followed by a
slight depreciatory shrug. 'Like her, not so handsome,' Lady Charlotte
said.

He nodded again. She came to a knowledge of Aminta's favourite colours
through the dwelling of his look on orange and black, deepest rose, light
yellow, light blue. Her grand-daughters won the satisfied look if they
wore a combination touching his memory. The rocky are not imaginative,
and have to be struck from without for a kindling of them. Submissive
though she was to court and soothe her brother Rowsley, a spur of
jealousy burned in the composition of her sentiments, to set her going.
He liked visiting Mrs. Lawrence Finchley at her effaced good man's
country seat, Brockholm in Berkshire, and would stay there a month at a
time. Lady Charlotte learnt why. The enthusiast for Aminta, without
upholding her to her late lord, whom she liked well, talked of her openly
with him, confessed to a fondness for her. How much Mrs. Lawrence
ventured to say, Lady Charlotte could not know. But rivalry pushed her to
the extreme of making Aminta partially a topic; and so ready was he to
follow her lead in the veriest trifles recalling the handsome runaway;
that she had to excite his racy diatribes against the burgess English and
the pulp they have made of a glorious nation, in order not to think him
inclining upon dotage.

Philippa's occasional scoff in fun concerning 'grandmama's tutor,' hurt
Lady Charlotte for more reasons than one, notwithstanding the
justification of her fore-thoughtfulness. The girl, however, was
privileged; she was Bobby Benlew's dearest friend, and my lord loved the
boy; with whom nothing could be done at school, nor could a tutor at
Olmer control him. In fine, Bobby saddened the family and gained the
earl's anxious affection by giving daily proofs of his being an Ormont in
a weak frame; patently an Ormont, recurrently an invalid. His moral
qualities hurled him on his physical deficiencies. The local doctor and
Dr. Rewkes banished him twice to the seashore, where he began to bloom
the first week and sickened the next, for want of playfellows, jolly
fights and friendships. Ultimately they prescribed mountain air, Swiss
air, easy travelling to Switzerland, and several weeks of excursions at
the foot of the Alps. Bobby might possibly get an aged tutor, or find an
English clergyman taking pupils, on the way.

Thus it happened, that seven years after his bereavement, Lord Ormont and
Philippa and Bobby were on the famous Bernese Terrace, grandest of
terrestrial theatres where soul of man has fronting him earth's utmost
majesty. Sublime: but five minutes of it fetched sounds as of a plug in
an empty phial from Bobby's bosom, and his heels became electrical.

He was observed at play with a gentleman of Italian complexion. Past
guessing how it had come about, for the gentleman was an utter stranger.
He had at any rate the tongue of an Englishman. He had the style, too,
the slang and cries and tricks of an English schoolboy, though visibly a
foreigner. And he had the art of throwing his heart into that bit of
improvised game, or he would never have got hold of Bobby, shrewd to read
a masker.

Lugged-up by the boy to my lord and the young lady, he doffed and bowed.
'Forgive me, pray,' he said; 'I can't see an English boy without having a
spin with him; and I make so bold as to speak to English people wherever
I meet them, if they give me the chance. Bad manners? Better than that.
You are of the military profession, sir, I see. I am a soldier, fresh
from Monte Video. Italian, it is evident, under an Italian chief there. A
clerk on a stool, and hey presto plunged into the war a month after,
shouldering a gun and marching. Fifteen battles in eighteen months; and
Death a lady at a balcony we kiss hands to on the march below. Not a bit
more terrible! Ah, but your pardon, sir,' he hastened to say, observing
rigidity on the features of the English gentleman; 'would I boast? Not I.
Accept it as my preface for why I am moved to speak the English wherever
I meet them:--Uruguay, Buenos Ayres, La Plata, or Europe. I cannot resist
it. At least, he bent gracefully, 'I do not. We come to the grounds of my
misbehaviour. I have shown at every call I fear nothing, kiss hand of
welcome or adieu to Death. And I, a boy of the age of this youngster--he
's not like me, I can declare!--I was a sneak and a coward. It follows, I
was a liar and a traitor. Who cured me of that vileness, that scandal? I
will tell you--an Englishman and an Englishwoman: my schoolmaster and his
wife. My schoolmaster--my friend! He is the comrade of his boys: English,
French, Germans, Italians, a Spaniard in my time--a South American I have
sent him--two from Boston, Massachusetts--and clever!--all emulous to
excel, none boasting. But, to myself; I was that mean fellow. I did--I
could let you know: before this young lady--she would wither me with her
scorn, Enough, I sneaked, I lied. I let the blame fall on a schoolfellow
and a housemaid. Oh! a small thing, but I coveted it--a scarf. It
reminded me of Rome. Enough, there at the bottom of that pit, behold me.
It was not discovered, but my schoolfellow was unpunished, the housemaid
remained in service; I thought, I thought, and I thought until I could
not look in my dear friend Matthew's face. He said to me one day: "Have
you nothing to tell me, Giulio?" as if to ask the road to right or left.
Out it all came. And no sermon, no! He set me the hardest task I could
have. That was a penance!--to go to his wife, and tell it all to her.
Then I did think it an easier thing to go and face death--and death had
been my nightmare. I went, she listened, she took my hand she said: "You
will never do this again, I know, Giulio." She told me no English girl
would ever look on a man who was a coward and lied. From that day I have
made Truth my bride. And what the consequence? I know not fear! I could
laugh, knowing I was to lie down in my six-foot measure to-morrow. If I
have done my duty and look in the face of my dear Matthew and his wife!
Ah, those two! They are loved. They will be loved all over Europe. He
works for Europe and America--all civilized people--to be one country. He
is the comrade of his boys. Out of school hours, it is Christian names
all round--Matthew, Emile, Adolf, Emilio, Giulio, Robert, Marcel, Franz,
et caetera. Games or lessons, a boy can't help learning with him. He
makes happy fellows and brave soldiers of them without drill. Sir, do I
presume when I say I have your excuse for addressing you because you are
his countryman? I drive to the old school in half an hour, and next week
he and his dear wife and a good half of the boys will be on the tramp
over the Simplon, by Lago Maggiore, to my uncle's house in Milan for a
halt. I go to Matthew before I see my own people.'

He swept another bow of apology, chiefly to Philippa, as representative
of the sex claiming homage.

Lord Ormont had not greatly relished certain of the flowery phrases
employed by this young foreigner. 'Truth his bride,' was damnable: and if
a story had to be told, he liked it plain, without jerks and evolutions.
Many offences to our taste have to be overlooked in foreigners--Italians!
considered, before they were proved in fire, a people classed by nature
as operatic declaimers. Bobby had shown himself on the road out to Bern a
difficult boy, and stupefyingly ignorant. My lord had two or three ideas
working to cloudy combination in his head when he put a question,
referring to the management of the dormitories at the school. Whereupon
the young Italian introduced himself as Giulio Calliani, and proposed a
drive to inspect the old school, with its cricket and football fields,
lake for rowing and swimming, gymnastic fixtures, carpenter's shed,
bowling alley, and four European languages in the air by turns daily; and
the boys, too, all the boys rosy and jolly, according to the last report
received of them from his friend Matthew. Enthusiasm struck and tightened
the loose chord of scepticism in Lord Ormont; somewhat as if a dancing
beggar had entered a kennel-dog's yard, designing to fascinate the
faithful beast. It is a chord of one note, that is tightened to sound by
the violent summons to accept, which is a provocation to deny. At the
same time, the enthusiast's dance is rather funny; he is not an ordinary
beggar; to see him trip himself in his dance would be rather funnier.
This is to say, inspect the trumpeted school and retire politely. My lord
knew the Bern of frequent visits: the woman was needed beside him to
inspire a feeling for scenic mountains. Philippa's admiration of them was
like a new-pressed grape-juice after a draught of the ripe vintage.
Moreover, Bobby was difficult: the rejected of his English schools was a
stiff Ormont at lessons, a wheezy Benlew in the playground: exactly the
reverse of what should have been. A school of four languages in bracing
air, if a school with healthy dormitories, and a school of the trained
instincts we call gentlemanly, might suit Master Bobby for a trial. An
eye on the boys of the school would see in a minute what stuff they were
made of. Supposing this young Italianissimo with the English tongue to be
tolerably near the mark, with a deduction of two-thirds of the
enthusiasm, Bobby might stop at the school as long as his health held
out, or the master would keep him. Supposing half a dozen things and
more, the meeting with this Mr. Calliand was a lucky accident. But lucky
accidents are anticipated only by fools.

Lord Ormont consented to visit the school. He handed his card and invited
his guest; he had a carriage in waiting for the day, he said; and
obedient to Lady Charlotte's injunctions, he withheld Philippa from the
party. She and her maid were to pass the five hours of his absence in
efforts to keep their monkey Bobby out of the well of the solicitious
bears.

My lord left his carriage at the inn of the village lying below the
school-house on a green height. The young enthusiast was dancing him into
the condition of livid taciturnity, which could, if it would, flash out
pungent epigrams of the actual world at Operatic recitative.

'There's the old school-clock! Just in time for the half-hour before
dinner,' said Calliani, chattering two hundred to the minute, of the
habits and usages of the school, and how all had meals together, the
master, his wife, the teachers, the boys. 'And she--as for her!' Calliani
kissed finger up to the furthest skies: into which a self-respecting
sober Northener of the Isles could imagine himself to kick enthusiastic
gesticulators, if it were polite to do so.

The school-house faced the master's dwelling house, and these, with a
block of building, formed a three-sided enclosure, like barracks! Forth
from the school-house door burst a dozen shouting lads, as wasps from the
hole of their nest from a charge of powder. Out they poured whizzing; and
the frog he leaped, and pussy ran and doubled before the hounds, and
hockey-sticks waved, and away went a ball. Cracks at the ball anyhow, was
the game for the twenty-five minutes breather before dinner.

'French day!' said Calliani, hearing their cries. Then he bellowed
'Matthew!--Giulio!'

A lusty inversion of the order of the names and an Oberland jodel
returned his hail. The school retreating caught up the Alpine cry in the
distance. Here were lungs! Here were sprites!

Lord Ormont bethought him of the name of the master. 'Mr. Matthew, I
think you said, sir,' he was observing to Calliani, as the master came
nearer; and Calliani replied: 'His Christian name. But if the boys are
naughty boys, it is not the privilege. Mr. Weyburn.'

There was not any necessity to pronounce that name Calliani spoke it on
the rush to his friend.

Lord Ormont and Weyburn advanced the steps to the meeting. Neither of
them flinched in eye or limb.

At a corridor window of the dwelling-house a lady stood. Her colour was
the last of a summer day over western seas; her thought: 'It has come!'
Her mind was in her sight; her other powers were frozen.

The two men conversed. There was no gesture.

This is one of the lightning moments of life for the woman, at the
meeting of the two men between whom her person has been in dispute, may
still be; her soul being with one. And that one, dearer than the blood of
her body, imperilled by her.

She could ask why she exists, if a question were in her grasp. She would
ask for the meaning of the gift of beauty to the woman, making her
desireable to those two men, making her a cause of strife, a thing of
doom. An incessant clamour dinned about her: 'It has come!'

The two men walked conversing into the school-house. She was unconscious
of the seeing of a third, though she saw and at the back of her mind
believed she knew a friend in him. The two disappeared. She was
insensible stone, except for the bell-clang: 'It has come'; until they
were in view again, still conversing: and the first of her thought to
stir from petrifaction was: 'Life holds no secret.'

She tried, in shame of the inanimate creature she had become, to force
herself to think: and had, for a chastising result, a series of
geometrical figures shooting across her brain, mystically expressive of
the situation, not communicably. The most vivid and persistent was a
triangle. Interpret who may. The one beheld the two pass from view again,
still conversing.

They are on the gravel; they bow; they separate. He of the grey head
poised high has gone.

Her arm was pressed by a hand. Weyburn longed to enfold her, and she
desired it, and her soul praised him for refraining. Both had that
delicacy.

'You have seen, my darling,' Weyburn said. 'It has come, and we take our
chance. He spoke not one word, beyond the affairs of the school. He has a
grandnephew in want of a school: visited the dormitories, refectory, and
sheds: tasted the well-water, addressed me as Mr. Matthew. He had it from
Giulio. Came to look at the school of Giulio's "friend Matthew,":--you
hear him. Giulio little imagines!--Well, dear love, we stand with a squad
in front, and wait the word. It mayn't be spoken. We have counted long
before that something like it was bound to happen. And you are brave.
Ruin's an empty word for us two.'

'Yes, dear, it is: we will pay what is asked of us,' Aminta said. 'It
will be heavy, if the school . . . and I love our boys. I am fit to be
the school-housekeeper; for nothing else.'

'I will go to the boys' parents. At the worst, we can march into new
territory. Emile will stick to us. Adolf, too. The fresh flock will
come.'

Aminta cried in the voice of tears: 'I love the old so!'

'The likelihood is, we shall hear nothing further.'

'You had to bear the shock, Matthew.'

'Whatever I bore, and you saw, you shared.'

'Yes,' she said.

'Mais, n'oublions pas que c'est aujourd'hui jour francais; si, madame,
vous avez assez d'appetit pour diner avec nous?

'Je suis, comme toujours, aux ordres de Monsieur.' She was among the
bravest of women. She had a full ounce of lead in her breast when she sat
with the boys at their midday meal, showing them her familiar pleasant
face.

Shortly after the hour of the evening meal, a messenger from Bern
delivered a letter addressed to the Headmaster. Weyburn and Aminta were
strolling to the playground, thinking in common, as they usually did.
They read the letter together. These were the lines:

'Lord Ormont desires to repeat his sense of obligation to Mr. Matthew for
the inspection of the school under his charge, and will be thankful to
Mr. Calliani, if that gentleman will do him the favour to call at his
hotel at Bern to-morrow, at as early an hour as is convenient to him, for
the purpose of making arrangements, agreeable to the Head-master's rules,
for receiving his grandnephew Robert Benlew as a pupil at the school.'

The two raised eyes on one another, pained in their deep joy by the
religion of the restraint upon their hearts, to keep down the passion to
embrace.

'I thank heaven we know him to be one of the true noble men,' said
Aminta, now breathing, and thanking Lord Ormont for the free breath she
drew.

Weyburn spoke of an idea he had gathered from the earl's manner. But he
had not imagined the proud lord's great-heartedness would go so far as to
trust him with the guardianship of the boy. That moved, and that humbled
him, though it was far from humiliating.

Six months later, the brief communication arrived from Lady Charlotte

'She is a widow.

'Unlikely you will hear from me again. Death is always next door, you
said once. I look on the back of life.

'Tell Bobby, capital for him to write he has no longing for home
holidays. If any one can make a man of him, you will. That I know.

'CHARLOTTE EGLETT.'

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS

A bird that won't roast or boil or stew
A woman, and would therefore listen to nonsense
A free-thinker startles him as a kind of demon
A female free-thinker is one of Satan's concubines
Acting is not of the high class which conceals the art
Affected misapprehensions
Ah! we fall into their fictions
All that Matey and Browny were forbidden to write they looked
And not be beaten by an acknowledged defeat
Any excess pushes to craziness
As well ask (women) how a battle-field concerns them!
Bad luck's not repeated every day Keep heart for the good
Bad laws are best broken
Began the game of Pull
Being in heart and mind the brother to the sister with women
Botched mendings will only make them worse
Bounds of his intelligence closed their four walls
Boys who can appreciate brave deeds are capable of doing them
Boys, of course--but men, too!
But had sunk to climb on a firmer footing
By nature incapable of asking pardon
Cajoled like a twenty-year-old yahoo at college
Careful not to smell of his office
Challenged him to lead up to her desired stormy scene
Chose to conceive that he thought abstractedly
Consciousness of some guilt when vowing itself innocent
Consign discussion to silence with the cynical closure
Convictions we store--wherewith to shape our destinies
Convincing themselves that they impersonate sagacity
Could not understand enthusiasm for the schoolmaster's career
Could we--we might be friends
Curious thing would be if curious things should fail to happen
Death is only the other side of the ditch
Death is always next door
Desire of it destroyed it
Detestable feminine storms enveloping men weak enough
Didn't say a word No use in talking about feelings
Distaste for all exercise once pleasurable
Divided lovers in presence
Enthusiasm struck and tightened the loose chord of scepticism
Enthusiast, when not lyrical, is perilously near to boring
Exult in imagination of an escape up to the moment of capture
Few men can forbear to tell a spicy story of their friends
Greatest of men; who have to learn from the loss of the woman
Having contracted the fatal habit of irony
He had to shake up wrath over his grievances
He had gone, and the day lived again for both of them
He gave a slight sign of restiveness, and was allowed to go
He loathed a skulker
He took small account of the operations of the feelings
He began ambitiously--It's the way at the beginning
Her vehement fighting against facts
Her duel with Time
His aim to win the woman acknowledged no obstacle in the means
His restored sense of possession
Hopeless task of defending a woman from a woman
How to compromise the matter for the sake of peace?
I have all the luxuries--enough to loathe them
I hate old age It changes you so
I could be in love with her cruelty, if only I had her near me
I look on the back of life
I want no more, except to be taught to work
I married a cook She expects a big appetite
I'm for a rational Deity
If the world is hostile we are not to blame it
Ignorance roaring behind a mask of sarcasm
Increase of dissatisfaction with the more she got
Lawyers hold the keys of the great world
Learn--principally not to be afraid of ideas
Loathing of artifice to raise emotion
Look well behind
Lucky accidents are anticipated only by fools
Magnify an offence in the ratio of our vanity
Man who helps me to read the world and men as they are
Meant to vanquish her with the dominating patience
Men bore the blame, though the women were rightly punished
Men who believe that there is a virtue in imprecations
Naked original ideas, are acceptable at no time
Napoleon's treatment of women is excellent example
Necessity's offspring
Never nurse an injury, great or small
Nevertheless, inclinations are an infidelity
No love can be without jealousy
Not daring risk of office by offending the taxpayer
Not the indignant and the frozen, but the genially indifferent
Not men of brains, but the men of aptitudes
Old age is a prison wall between us and young people
One has to feel strong in a delicate position
One night, and her character's gone
One is a fish to her hook; another a moth to her light
Orderliness, from which men are privately exempt
Our love and labour are constantly on trial
Passion added to a bowl of reason makes a sophist's mess
People were virtuous in past days: they counted their sinners
Perhaps inspire him, if he would let her breathe
Person in another world beyond this world of blood
Policy seems to petrify their minds
Practical for having an addiction to the palpable
Professional Puritans
Published Memoirs indicate the end of a man's activity
Rage of a conceited schemer tricked
Regularity of the grin of dentistry
Respect one another's affectations
Screams of an uninjured lady
Selfishness and icy inaccessibility to emotion
She had to be the hypocrite or else--leap
She had a thirsting mind
Silence was doing the work of a scourge
Smile she had in reserve for serviceable persons
Snatch her from a possessor who forfeited by undervaluing her
So says the minute Years are before you
That pit of one of their dead silences
The despot is alert at every issue, to every chance
The spending, never harvesting, world
The shots hit us behind you
The terrible aggregate social woman
The next ten minutes will decide our destinies
The woman side of him
The good life gone lives on in the mind
The beat of a heart with a dread like a shot in it
There is no history of events below the surface
There are women who go through life not knowing love
They want you to show them what they 'd like the world to be
Things are not equal
Things were lumpish and gloomy that day of the week
This female talk of the eternities
Titles showered on the women who take free breath of air
To males, all ideas are female until they are made facts
To time and a wife it is no disgrace for a man to bend
To know how to take a licking, that wins in the end
Uncommon unprogressiveness
Venus of nature was melting into a Venus of art
Violent summons to accept, which is a provocation to deny
We cannot, men or woman, control the heart in sleep at night
We shall want a war to teach the country the value of courage
We don't go together into a garden of roses
When duelling flourished on our land, frail women powerful
Where heart weds mind, or nature joins intellect
Who cries, Come on, and prays his gods you won't
Why he enjoyed the privilege of seeing, and was not beside her
With what little wisdom the world is governed
Women are happier enslaved
World against us It will not keep us from trying to serve
Years are the teachers of the great rocky natures
You'll have to guess at half of everything he tells you
You're going to be men, meaning something better than women

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