Lord Ormont and his Aminta, Complete

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

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He was ushered into a London house's library, looking over a niggard
enclosure of gravel and dull grass, against a wall where ivy dribbled. An
armchair was beside the fireplace. To right and left of it a floreate
company of books in high cases paraded shoulder to shoulder, without a
gap; grenadiers on the line. Weyburn read the titles on their
scarlet-and-blue facings. They were approved English classics; honoured
veterans, who have emerged from the conflict with contemporary opinion,
stamped excellent, or have been pushed by the roar of contemporaneous
applauses to wear the leather-and-gilt uniform of our Immortals, until a
more qualmish posterity disgorges them. The books had costly bindings.
Lord Ormont's treatment of Literature appeared to resemble Lady
Charlotte's, in being reverential and uninquiring. The books she bought
to read were Memoirs of her time by dead men and women once known to her.
These did fatigue duty in cloth or undress. It was high drill with all of
Lord Ormont's books, and there was not a modern or a minor name among the
regiments. They smelt strongly of the bookseller's lump lots by order;
but if a show soldiery, they were not a sham, like a certain row of
venerably-titled backs, that Lady Charlotte, without scruple, left
standing to blow an ecclesiastical trumpet of empty contents; any one
might have his battle of brains with them, for the twining of an absent
key.

The door opened. Weyburn bowed to his old star in human shape: a grey
head on square shoulders, filling the doorway. He had seen at Olmer Lady
Charlotte's treasured miniature portrait of her brother; a perfect
likeness, she said--complaining the neat instant of injustice done to the
fire of his look.

Fire was low down behind the eyes at present. They were quick to scan and
take summary of their object, as the young man felt while observing for
himself. Height and build of body were such as might be expected in the
brother of Lady Charlotte and from the tales of his prowess. Weyburn had
a glance back at Cuper's boys listening to the tales.

The soldier-lord's manner was courteously military--that of an
established superior indifferent to the deferential attitude he must
needs enact. His curt nick of the head, for a response to the visitor's
formal salutation, signified the requisite acknowledgment, like a city
creditor's busy stroke of the type-stamp receipt upon payment.

The ceremony over, he pitched a bugle voice to fit the contracted area:
"I hear from Mr. Abner that you have made acquaintance with Olmer. Good
hunting country there."

"Lady Charlotte kindly gave me a mount, my lord."

"I knew your father by name--Colonel Sidney Weyburn. You lost him at
Toulouse. We were in the Peninsula; I was at Talavera with him. Bad day
for our cavalry."

"Our officers were young at their work then."

"They taught the Emperor's troops to respect a charge of English horse.
It was teaching their fox to set traps for them."

Lord Ormont indicated a chair. He stood.

"The French had good cavalry leaders," Weyburn said, for cover to a
continued study of the face,

"Montbrun, yes: Murat, Lassalle, Bessieres. Under the Emperor they had."

"You think them not at home in the saddle, my lord?"

"Frenchmen have nerves; horses are nerves. They pile excitement too high.
When cool, they're among the best. None of them had head for command of
all the arms."

"One might say the same of Seidlitz and Ziethen?"

"Of Ziethen. Seidlitz had a wider grasp, I suppose." He pursed his month,
pondering. "No; and in the Austrian service, too; generals of cavalry are
left to whistle for an independent command. There's a jealousy of our
branch!" The injured warrior frowned and hummed. He spoke his thought
mildly: "Jealousy of the name of soldier in this country! Out of the
service, is the place to recommend. I'd have advised a son of mine to
train for a jockey rather than enter it. We deal with that to-morrow, in
my papers. You come to me? Mr. Abner has arranged the terms? So I see you
at ten in the morning. I am glad to meet a young man--Englishman--who
takes an interest in the service."

Weyburn fancied the hearing of a step; he heard the whispering dress. It
passed him; a lady went to the armchair. She took her seat, as she had
moved, with sedateness, the exchange of a toneless word with my lord. She
was a brune. He saw that when he rose to do homage.

Lord Ormont resumed: "Some are born to it, must be soldiers; and in peace
they are snubbed by the heads; in war they are abused by the country.
They don't understand in England how to treat an army; how to make one
either!

"The gentleman--Mr. Weyburn: Mr. Arthur Abner's recommendation," he added
hurriedly, with a light wave of his hand and a murmur, that might be the
lady's title; continuing: "A young man of military tastes should take
service abroad. They're in earnest about it over there. Here they play at
it; and an army's shipped to land without commissariat, ambulances,
medical stores, and march against the odds, as usual--if it can march!

"Albuera, my lord?"

"Our men can spurt, for a flick o' the whip. They're expected to be
constantly ready for doing prodigies--to repair the country's omissions.
All the country cares for is to hope Dick Turpin may get to York. Our men
are good beasts; they give the best in 'em, and drop. More's the scandal
to a country that has grand material and overtasks it. A blazing disaster
ends the chapter!"

This was talk of an injured veteran. It did not deepen the hue of his
ruddied skin. He spoke in the tone of matter of fact. Weyburn had been
prepared for something of the sort by his friend, Arthur Abner. He noted
the speaker's heightened likeness under excitement to Lady Charlotte.
Excitement came at an early call of their voices to both; and both had
handsome, open features, bluntly cut, nothing of aquiline or the
supercilious; eyes bluish-grey, in arched recesses, horny between the
thick lids, lively to shoot their meaning when the trap-mouth was active;
effectively expressing promptitute for combat, pleasure in attack,
wrestle, tag, whatever pertained to strife; an absolute sense of their
right.

As there was a third person present at this dissuasion of military
topics, the silence of the lady drew Weyburn to consult her opinion in
her look.

It was on him. Strange are the woman's eyes which can unoffendingly
assume the privilege to dwell on such a living object as a man without
become gateways for his return look, and can seem in pursuit of thoughts
while they enfold. They were large dark eyes, eyes of southern night.
They sped no shot; they rolled forth an envelopment. A child among toys,
caught to think of other toys, may gaze in that way. But these were a
woman's eyes.

He gave Lord Ormont his whole face, as an auditor should. He was
interested besides, as he told a ruffled conscience. He fell upon the
study of his old hero determinedly.

The pain of a memory waking under pillows, unable to do more than strain
for breath, distracted his attention. There was a memory: that was all he
knew. Or else he would have lashed himself for hanging on the beautiful
eyes of a woman. To be seeing and hearing his old hero was wonder enough.

Recollections of Lady Charlotte's plain hints regarding the lady present
resolved to the gross retort, that her eyes were beautiful. And he knew
them--there lay the strangeness. They were known beautiful eyes, in a
foreign land of night and mist.

Lord Ormont was discoursing with racy eloquence of our hold on India: his
views in which respect were those of Cuper's boys. Weyburn ventured a
dot-running description of the famous ride, and out flew an English
soldier's grievance. But was not the unjustly-treated great soldier well
rewarded, whatever the snubs and the bitterness, with these large dark
eyes in his house, for his own? Eyes like these are the beginning of a
young man's world; they nerve, inspire, arm him, colour his life; he
would labour, fight, die for them. It seemed to Weyburn a blessedness
even to behold them. So it had been with him at the early stage; and his
heart went swifter, memory fetched a breath. Memory quivered eyelids,
when the thought returned--of his having known eyes as lustrous. First
lights of his world, they had more volume, warmth, mystery--were sweeter.
Still, these in the room were sisters to them. They quickened throbs;
they seemed a throb of the heart made visible.

That was their endowment of light and lustre simply, and the mystical
curve of the lids. For so they could look only because the heart was
disengaged from them. They were but heavenly orbs.

The lady's elbow was on an arm of her chair, her forefinger at her left
temple. Her mind was away, one might guess; she could hardly be
interested in talk of soldiering and of foreign army systems, jealous
English authorities and officials, games, field-sports. She had personal
matters to think of.

Adieu until to-morrow to the homes she inhabited! The street was a
banishment and a relief when Weyburn's first interview with Lord Ormont
was over.

He rejoiced to tell his previous anticipations that he had not been
disappointed; and he bade hero-worshippers expect no gilded figure. We
gather heroes as we go, if we are among the growing: our constancy is
shown in the not discarding of our old ones. He held to his earlier hero,
though he had seen him, and though he could fancy he saw round him.

Another, too, had been a hero-lover. How did that lady of night's eyes
come to fall into her subjection?

He put no question as to the name she bore; it hung in a black
suspense--vividly at its blackest illuminated her possessor. A man is a
hero to some effect who wins a woman like this; and, if his glory
bespells her, so that she flings all to the winds for him, burns the
world; if, for solely the desperate rapture of belonging to him, she
consents of her free will to be one of the nameless and discoloured, he
shines in a way to make the marrow of men thrill with a burning envy. For
that must be the idolatrous devotion desired by them all.

Weyburn struck down upon his man's nature--the bad in us, when beauty of
woman is viewed; or say, the old original revolutionary, best kept
untouched; for a touch or a meditative pause above him, fetches him up to
roam the civilized world devouringly and lawlessly. It is the special
peril of the young lover of life, that an inflammability to beauty in
women is in a breath intense with him. He is, in truth, a thinly-sealed
volcano of our imperishable ancient father; and has it in him to be the
multitudinously-amorous of the mythologic Jove. Give him head, he can be
civilization's devil. Is she fair and under a shade?--then is she doubly
fair. The shadow about her secretes mystery, just as the forest breeds
romance: and mystery is a measureless realm. If we conceive it, we have a
mysterious claim on her who is the heart of it.

He marched on that road to the music of sonorous brass for some drunken
minutes.

The question came, What of the man who takes advantage of her
self-sacrifice?

It soon righted him, and he did Lord Ormont justice, and argued the case
against Lady Charlotte's naked hints.

This dark-eyed heroine's bearing was assured, beyond an air of
dependency. Her deliberate short nod to him at his leave-taking, and the
toneless few words she threw to my lord, signified sufficiently that she
did not stand defying the world or dreading it.

She had by miracle the eyes which had once charmed him--could
again--would always charm. She reminded him of Aminta Farrell's very eyes
under the couchant-dove brows--something of her mouth, the dimple running
from a corner. She had, as Aminta had, the self-collected and
self-cancelled look, a realm in a look, that was neither depth nor
fervour, nor a bestowal, nor an allurement; nor was it an exposure,
though there seemed no reserve. One would be near the meaning in
declaring it to bewilder men with the riddle of openhandedness. We read
it--all may read it--as we read inexplicable plain life; in which let us
have a confiding mind, despite the blows at our heart, and some
understanding will enter us.

He shut the door upon picture and speculations, returning to them by
another door. The lady had not Aminta's freshness: she might be taken
for an elder sister of Aminta. But Weyburn wanted to have her position
defined before he set her beside Aminta. He writhed under Lady
Charlotte's tolerating scorn of "the young woman." It roused an uneasy
sentiment of semi-hostility in the direction of my lord; and he had no
personal complaint to make.

Lord Ormont was cordial on the day of the secretary's installation; as
if--if one might dare to guess it--some one had helped him to a friendly
judgement.

The lady of Aminta's eyes was absent at the luncheon table. She came into
the room a step, to speak to Lord Ormont, dressed for a drive to pay a
visit.

The secretary was unnoticed.

Lord Ormont put inquiries to him at table, for the why of his having
avoided the profession of arms; and apparently considered that the
secretary had made a mistake, and that he would have committed a greater
error in becoming a soldier--"in this country." A man with a grievance is
illogical under his burden. He mentioned the name "Lady Ormont"
distinctly during some remarks on travel. Lady Ormont preferred the
Continent.

Two days later she came to the armchair, as before, met Weyburn's eyes
when he raised them; gave him no home in hers--not a temporary shelter
from the pelting of interrogations. She hardly spoke. Why did she come?

But how was it that he was drawn to think of her? Absent or present, she
was round him, like the hills of a valley. She was round his
thoughts--caged them; however high, however far they flew, they were
conscious of her.

She took her place at the midday meal. She had Aminta's voice in some
tones; a mellower than Aminta's--the voice of one of Aminta's family. She
had the trick of Aminta's upper lip in speaking. Her look on him was
foreign; a civil smile as they conversed. She was very much at home with
my lord, whom she rallied for his addiction to his Club at a particular
hour of the afternoon. She conversed readily. She reminded him,
incidentally that her aunt would arrive early next day. He informed her,
some time after, of an engagement "to tiffin with a brother officer," and
she nodded.

They drove away together while the secretary was at his labour of sorting
the heap of autobiographical scraps in a worn dispatch-box, pen and
pencil jottings tossed to swell the mess when they had relieved an angry
reminiscence. He noticed, heedlessly at the moment, feminine handwriting
on some few clear sheets among them.

Next day he was alone in the library. He sat before the box, opened it
and searched, merely to quiet his annoyance for having left those sheets
of the fair amanuensis unexamined. They were not discoverable. They had
gone.

He stood up at the stir of the door. It was she, and she acknowledged his
bow; she took her steps to her chair.

He was informed that Lord Ormont had an engagement, and he remarked, "I
can do the work very well." She sat quite silent.

He read first lines of the scraps, laid them in various places, as in a
preparation for conjurer's tricks at cards; refraining from a glance,
lest he should disconcert the eyes he felt to be on him fitfully.

At last she spoke, and he knew Aminta in his hearing and sight.

"Is Emile Grenat still anglomane?"

An instant before her voice was heard he had been persuading himself that
the points of unlikeness between his young Aminta and this tall and
stately lady of the proud reserve in her bearing flouted the resemblance.

CHAPTER V.

IN WHICH THE SHADES OF BROWNY AND MATEY ADVANCE AND RETIRE

"Emile is as anglomane as ever, and not a bit less a Frenchman," Weyburn
said, in a tone of one who muffles a shock at the heart.

"It would be the poorer compliment to us," she rejoined.

They looked at one another; she dropped her eyelids, he looked away.

She had the grand manner by nature. She was the woman of the girl once
known.

"A soldier, is he?"

"Emile's profession and mine are much alike, or will be."

"A secretary?"

Her deadness of accent was not designed to carry her opinion of the post
of secretary.

It brought the reply: "We hope to be schoolmasters."

She drew in a breath; there was a thin short voice, hardly voice, as when
one of the unschooled minor feelings has been bruised. After a while she
said--

"Does he think it a career?"

"Not brilliant."

"He was formed for a soldier."

"He had to go as the road led."

"A young man renouncing ambition!"

"Considering what we can do best."

"It signifies the taste for what he does."

"Certainly that."

Weyburn had senses to read the word "schoolmaster" in repetition behind
her shut mouth. He was sharply sensible of a fall.

The task with his papers occupied him. If he had a wish, it was to sink
so low in her esteem as to be spurned. A kick would have been a
refreshment. Yet he was unashamed of the cause invoking it. We are
instruments to the touch of certain women, and made to play strange
tunes.

"Mr. Cuper flourishes?"

"The school exists. I have not been down there. I met Mr. Shalders
yesterday. He has left the school."

"You come up from Olmer?"

"I was at Olmer last week, Lady Ormont."

An involuntary beam from her eyes thanked him for her title at that
juncture of the dialogue. She grew more spirited.

"Mr. Shalders has joined the Dragoons, has he?"

"The worthy man has a happy imagination. He goes through a campaign
daily."

"It seems to one to dignify his calling."

"I like his enthusiasm."

The lady withdrew into her thoughts; Weyburn fell upon his work.

Mention of the military cloak of enthusiasm covering Shalders, brought
the scarce credible old time to smite at his breast, in the presence of
these eyes. A ringing of her title of Lady Ormont rendered the present
time the incredible.

"I can hardly understand a young Frenchman's not entering the army," she
said.

"The Napoleonic legend is weaker now," said he.

"The son of an officer!"

"Grandson."

"It was his choice to be,--he gave it up without reluctance?"

"Emile obeyed the command of his parents," Weyburn answered; and he was
obedient to the veiled direction of her remark, in speaking of himself:
"I had a reason, too."

"One wonders!"

"It would have impoverished my mother's income to put aside a small
allowance for me for years. She would not have hesitated. I then set my
mind on the profession of schoolmaster."

"Emile Grenat was a brave boy. Has he no regrets?"

"Neither of us has a regret."

"He began ambitiously."

"It's the way at the beginning."

"It is not usually abjured."

"I'm afraid we neither of us 'dignify our calling' by discontent with
it!"

A dusky flash, worth seeing, came on her cheeks. "I respect enthusiasms,"
she said; and it was as good to him to hear as the begging pardon, though
clearly she could not understand enthusiasm for the schoolmaster's
career.

Light of evidence was before him, that she had a friendly curiosity to
know what things had led to their new meeting under these conditions. He
sketched them cursorily; there was little to tell--little, that is;
appealing to a romantic mind for interest. Aware of it, by sympathy, he
degraded the narrative to a flatness about as cheering as a suburban
London Sunday's promenade. Sympathy caused the perverseness. He felt her
disillusionment; felt with it and spread a feast of it. She had to hear
of studies at Caen and at a Paris Lycee; French fairly mastered; German,
the same; Italian, the same; after studies at Heidelberg, Asti, and
Florence; between four and five months at Athens (he was needlessly
precise), in tutorship with a young nobleman: no events, nor a spot of
colour. Thus did he wilfully, with pain to himself, put an extinguisher
on the youth painted brilliant and eminent in a maiden's imagination.

"So there can no longer be thought of the army," she remarked; and the
remark had a sort of sigh, though her breathing was equable.

"Unless a big war knocks over all rules and the country comes praying us
to serve," he said.

"You would not refuse then?"

"Not in case of need. One may imagine a crisis when they would give
commissions to men of my age or older for the cavalry--heavy losses of
officers."

She spoke, as if urged by a sting to revert to the distasteful: "That
profession--must you not take . . . enter into orders if you aim at any
distinction?"

"And a member of the Anglican Church would not be allowed to exchange his
frock for a cavalry sabre," said he. "That is true. I do not propose to
settle as a schoolmaster in England."

"Where?"

"On the Continent."

"Would not America be better?"

"It would not so well suit the purpose in view for us."

"There are others besides?"

"Besides Emile, there is a German and an Italian and a Swiss."

"It is a Company?"

"A Company of schoolmasters! Companies of all kinds are forming. Colleges
are Companies. And they have their collegians. Our aim is at pupils; we
have no ambition for any title higher than School and Schoolmaster; it is
not a Company."

So, like Nature parading her skeleton to youthful adorers of her face, he
insisted on reducing to hideous material wreck the fair illusion, which
had once arrayed him in alluring promise.

She explained; "I said, America. You would be among Protestants in
America."

"Catholics and Protestants are both welcome to us, according to our
scheme. And Germans, French, English, Americans, Italians, if they will
come; Spaniards and Portuguese, and Scandinavians, Russians as well. And
Jews; Mahommedans too, if only they will come! The more mixed, the more
it hits our object."

"You have not stated where on the Continent it is to be."

"The spot fixed on is in Switzerland."

"You will have scenery."

"I hold to that, as an influence."

A cool vision of the Bernese Alps encircled the young schoolmaster; and
she said, "It would influence girls; I dare say."

"A harder matter with boys, of course--at first. We think we may make it
serve."

"And where is the spot? Is that fixed on?"

"Fifteen miles from Berne, on elevated land, neighbouring a water, not
quite to be called a lake, unless in an auctioneer's advertisement."

"I am glad of the lake. I could not look on a country home where there
was no swimming. You will be head of the school."

"There must be a head."

"Is the school likely to be established soon?"

He fell into her dead tone: "Money is required for establishments. I have
a Reversion coming some day; I don't dabble in post obits."

He waited for farther questions. They were at an end.

"You have your work to do, Mr. Weyburn."

Saying that, she bowed an implied apology for having kept him from it,
and rose. She bowed again as she passed through the doorway, in
acknowledgment of his politeness.

Here; then, was the end of the story of Browny and Matey. Such was his
thought under the truncheon-stroke of their colloquy. Lines of Browny's
letters were fiery waving ribands about him, while the coldly gracious
bow of the Lady wrote Finis.

The gulf between the two writings remained unsounded. It gave a heave to
the old passion; but stirred no new one; he had himself in hand now, and
he shut himself up when the questions bred of amazement buzzed and
threatened to storm. After all, what is not curious in this world? The
curious thing would be if curious things should fail to happen. Men have
been saying it since they began to count and turn corners. And let us
hold off from speculating when there is or but seems a shadow of
unholiness over that mole-like business. There shall be no questions; and
as to feelings, the same. They, if petted for a moment beneath the
shadow, corrupt our blood. Weyburn was a man to have them by the throat
at the birth.

Still they thronged; heavy work of strangling had to be done. Her tone of
disappointment with the schoolmaster bit him, and it flattered him. The
feelings leapt alive, equally venomous from the wound and the caress.
They pushed to see, had to be repelled from seeing, the girl Browny in
the splendid woman; they had lightning memories: not the pain of his grip
could check their voice on the theme touching her happiness or the
reverse. And this was an infernal cunning. He paused perforce to inquire,
giving them space for the breeding of their multitudes. Was she happy?
Did she not seem too meditative, enclosed, toneless, at her age? Vainly
the persecuted fellow said to himself: "But what is it to me now?"--The
Browny days were over. The passion for the younger Aminta was
over--buried; and a dream of power belonging to those days was not yet
more than visionary. It had moved her once, when it was a young
soldier's. She treated the schoolmaster's dream as vapour, and the old
days as dead and ghostless. She did rightly. How could they or she or he
be other than they were!

With that sage exclamation, he headed into the Browny days and breasted
them; and he had about him the living foamy sparkle of the very time,
until the Countess of Ormont breathed the word "Schoolmaster"; when, at
once, it was dusty land where buoyant waters had been, and the armies of
the facts, in uniform drab, with some feathers and laces, and a
significant surpliced figure, decorously covering the wildest of Cupids,
marched the standard of the winking gold-piece, which is their nourishing
sun and eclipser of all suns that foster dreams.

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