Lord Ormont and his Aminta, v3
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George Meredith >> Lord Ormont and his Aminta, v3
The night before the earl's departure on the solitary expedition to which
she condemned him, he surprised her with a visit of farewell, so that he
need not disturb her in the early morning, he said. She was reading
beside her open jewel-box, and she closed it with the delicate touch of a
hand turned backward while listening to him, with no sign of nervousness.
CHAPTER XIII
WAR AT OLMER
Lively doings were on the leap to animate Weyburn at Olmer during Easter
week. The Rev. Mr. Hampton-Evey, rector of Barborough, on hearing that
Lady Charlotte Eglett was engaged in knocking at the doors of litigation
with certain acts that constituted distinct breaches of the law and the
peace, and were a violation of the rights of her neighbour, Mr. Gilbert
Addicote, might hope that the troublesome parishioner whom he did not
often number among his congregation would grant him a term of repose.
Therein he was deceived. Alterations and enlargements of the church,
much required, had necessitated the bricking up of a door regarded by the
lady as the private entrance to the Olmer pew. She sent him notice of
her intention to batter at the new brickwork; so there was the prospect
of a pew-fight before him. But now she came to sit under him every
Sunday; and he could have wished her absent; for she diverted his
thoughts from piety to the selections of texts applicable in the case of
a woman who sat with arms knotted, and the frown of an intemperate
schoolgirl forbidden speech; while her pew's firelight startlingly at
intervals danced her sinister person into view, as from below. The
lady's inaccessible and unconquerable obtuseness to exhortation informed
the picture with an evil spirit that cried for wrestlings.
Regularly every week-day she headed the war now rageing between Olmer and
Addicotes, on the borders of the estates. It was open war, and herself
to head the cavalry. Weyburn, driving up a lane in the gig she had sent
to meet the coach, beheld a thicket of countrymen and boys along a ridge;
and it swayed and broke, and through it burst the figure of a mounted
warrior woman at the gallop, followed by what bore an appearance of horse
and gun, minus carriage, drivers at the flanks cracking whips on foot.
Off went the train, across a small gorse common, through a gate.
'That's another down,' said his whip. 'Sound good wood it is, not made
to fall. Her ladyship's at it hard to-day. She 'll teach Mr. Addicote
a thing or two about things females can do. That is, when they stand
for their rights.'
He explained to Weyburn that Mr. Addicote, a yeoman farmer and a good
hunting man, but a rare obstinate one, now learning his lesson from her
ladyship, was in dispute with her over rights of property on a stretch of
fir-trees lining the ridge where the estates of Olmer and Addicotes met.
Her ladyship had sworn that if he did not yield to her claim she would
cut down every tree of the ridge and sell the lot for timber under his
nose. She acted according to her oath, in the teeth of his men two feet
across the border. All the world knew the roots of those trees were for
the most part in Olmer soil, though Addicote shared the shade. All the
people about mourned for the felling of those trees. All blamed Mr.
Gilbert Addicote for provoking her ladyship, good hunting man though he
was. But as to the merits of the question, under the magnifier of the
gentlemen of the law, there were as many different opinions as wigs in
the land.
'And your opinion?' said Weyburn.
To which the young groom answered: 'Oh, I don't form an opinion, sir.
I 'm of my mistress's opinion; and if she says, Do it, think as we like,
done it has to be.'
Lady Charlotte came at a trot through the gate, to supervise the
limbering-up of another felled tree. She headed it as before. The log
dragged bounding and twirling, rattling its chains; the crowd along the
ridge, forbidden to cheer, watching it with intense repression of the
roar. We have not often in England sight of a great lady challengeing an
unpopular man to battle and smacking him in the face like this to provoke
him. Weyburn was driven on a half-circle of the lane to the gate, where
he jumped out to greet Lady Charlotte trotting back for another smack in
the face of her enemy,--a third rounding of her Troy with the vanquished
dead at her heels, as Weyburn let a flimsy suggestion beguile his fancy,
until the Homeric was overwhelming even to a playful mind, and he put
her in a mediaeval frame. She really had the heroical aspect in a
grandiose-grotesque, fitted to some lines of Ariosto. Her head wore
a close hood, disclosing a fringe of grey locks, owlish to see about
features hooked for action.
'Ah, you! there you are: good--I'll join you in three minutes,' she sang
out to him, and cantered to the ridge.
Hardly beyond the stated number she was beside him again, ranging her
steed for the victim log to dance a gyration on its branches across the
lane and enter a field among the fallen compeers. One of her men had run
behind her. She slid from her saddle and tossed him the reins, catching
up her skirts.
'That means war, as much as they'll have it in England,' she said, seeing
his glance at the logs. 'My husband's wise enough to leave it to me, so
I save him trouble with neighbours. An ass of a Mr. Gilbert Addicote
dares us to make good our claim on our property, our timber, because half
a score of fir-tree roots go stretching on to his ground.'
She swished her whip. Mr. Gilbert Addicote received the stroke and
retired, a buried subject. They walked on at an even pace. 'You 'll see
Leo to-morrow. He worships you. You may as well give him a couple of
hours' coaching a day for the week. He'll be hanging about you, and you
won't escape him. Well, and my brother Rowsley: how is Lord Ormont?
He never comes to me now, since--Well, it 's nothing to me; but I like
to see my brother. She can't make any change here. Olmer and Lady
Charlotte 's bosom were both implied. 'What do you think?--you 've
noticed: is he in good health? It 's the last thing he 'll be got to
speak of.'
Weyburn gave the proper assurances.
'Not he!' said she. 'He's never ill. Men beat women in the long race,
if they haven't overdone it when young. My doctor wants me to renounce
the saddle. He says it 's time. Not if I 've got work for horseback!'
she nicked her head emphatically: 'I hate old age. They sha'nt dismount
me till a blow comes. Hate it! But I should despise myself if I showed
signs, like a worm under heel. Let Nature do her worst; she can't
conquer us as long as we keep up heart. You won't have to think of that
for a good time yet. Now tell me why Lord Ormont didn't publish the
"Plan for the Defence" you said he was writing; and he was, I know. He
wrote it and he finished it; you made the fair copy. Well, and he read
it,--there! see!' She took the invisible sheets in her hands and tore
them. 'That's my brother. He's so proud. It would have looked like
asking the country, that injured him, to forgive him. I wish it had been
printed. But whatever he does I admire. That--she might have advised,
if she 'd been a woman of public spirit or cared for his reputation. He
never comes near me. Did she read your copy?'
The question was meant for an answer.
Weyburn replied: 'Lady Ormont had no sight of it.'
'Ah! she's Lady Ormont to the servants, I know. She has an aunt living
in the house. If my brother's a sinner, and there's punishment for him,
he has it from that aunt. Pag . . . something. He bears with her.
He 's a Spartan. She 's his pack on his back, for what she covers and
the game he plays. It looks just tolerably decent with her in the house.
She goes gabbling a story about our Embassy at Madrid. To preserve
propriety, as they call it. Her niece doesn't stoop to any of those
tricks, I 'm told. I like her for that.'
Weyburn was roused: 'I think you would like Lady Ormont, if you knew her,
my lady.'
'The chances of my liking the young woman are not in the dice-box. You
call her Lady Ormont: you are not one of the servants. Don't call her
Lady Ormont to me.'
'It is her title, Lady Charlotte.' She let fly a broadside at him.
'You are one of the woman's dupes. I thought you had brains. How can
you be the donkey not to see that my brother Rowsley, Lord Ormont, would
never let a woman, lawfully bearing his name, go running the quadrille
over London in couples with a Lady Staines and a Mrs. Lawrence Finchley,
Lord Adderwood, and that man Morsfield, who boasts of your Lady Ormont,
and does it unwhipped---tell me why? Pooh, you must be the poorest fool
born to suppose it possible my brother would allow a man like that man
Morsfield to take his wife's name in his mouth a second time. Have you
talked much with this young person?'
'With Lady Ormont? I have had the honour occasionally.'
'Stick to the title and write yourself plush-breech. Can't you be more
than a footman? Try to be a man of the world; you're old enough for that
by now. I know she 's good-looking; the whole tale hangs on that. You
needn't be singing me mooncalf hymn tunes of "Lady Ormont, Lady Ormont,"
solemn as a parson's clerk; the young woman brought good looks to market;
and she got the exchange she had a right to expect. But it 's not my
brother Rowsley's title she has got--except for footmen and tradesmen.
When there's a true Countess of Ormont!..... Unless my brother has cut
himself from his family. Not he. He's not mad.'
They passed through Olmer park-gates. Lady Charlotte preceded him, and
she turned, waiting for him to rejoin her. He had taken his flagellation
in the right style, neither abashed nor at sham crow: he was easy, ready
to converse on any topic; he kept the line between supple courtier and
sturdy independent; and he was a pleasant figure of a young fellow.
Thinking which, a reminder that she liked him drew her by the road of
personal feeling, as usual with her, to reflect upon another, and a
younger, woman's observing and necessarily liking him too.
'You say you fancy I should like the person you call Lady Ormont?'
'I believe you would, my lady.'
'Are her manners agreeable?'
'Perfect; no pretension.'
'Ah! she sings, plays--all that?
'She plays the harp and sings.'
'You have heard her?'
'Twice.'
'She didn't set you mewing?'
'I don't remember the impulse; at all events, it was restrained.'
'She would me; but I'm an old woman. I detest their squalling and
strumming. I can stand it with Italians on the boards: they don't, stop
conversation. She was present at that fencing match where you plucked a
laurel? I had an account of it. I can't see the use of fencing in this
country. Younger women can, I dare say. Now, look. If we're to speak
of her, I can't call her Lady Ormont, and I don't want to hear you. Give
me her Christian name.'
'It is'--Weyburn found himself on a slope without a stay--'Aminta.'
Lady Charlotte's eye was on him. He felt intolerably hot; his vexation
at the betrayal of the senseless feeling made it worse, a conscious
crimson.
'Aminta,' said she, rather in the style of Cuper's boys, when the name
was a strange one to them. 'I remember my Italian master reading out a
poem when I was a girl. I read poetry then. You wouldn't have imagined
that. I did, and liked it. I hate old age. It changes you so. None of
my children know me as I was when I had life in me and was myself, and my
brother Rowsley called me Cooey. They think me a hard old woman. I was
Cooey through the woods and over the meadows and down stream to Rowsley.
Old age is a prison wall between us and young people. They see a
miniature head and bust, and think it a flattery--won't believe it.
After I married I came to understand that the world we are in is a world
to fight in, or under we go. But I pity the young who have to cast
themselves off and take up arms. Young women above all.'
Why had she no pity for Aminta? Weyburn asked it of his feelings, and he
had the customary insurgent reply from them.
'You haven't seen Steignton yet,' she continued. 'No place on earth is
equal to Steignton for me. It 's got the charm. Here at Olmer I'm a
mother and a grandmother--the "devil of an old-woman" my neighbours take
me to be. She hasn't been to Steignton, either. No, and won't go there,
though she's working her way round, she supposes. He'll do everything
for his "Aminta," but he won't take her to Steignton. I'm told now she's
won Lady de Culme. That Mrs. Lawrence Finclhley has dropped the curtsey
to her great-aunt and sworn to be a good girl, for a change, if Lady de
Culme will do the chaperon, and force Lord Ormont's hand. My brother
shrugs. There'll be a nice explosion one day soon. Presented? The
Court won't have her. That I know for positive. If she's pushed
forward, she 'll be bitterly snubbed. It 's on the heads of those women
--silly women! I can't see the game Mrs. Lawrence Finchley's playing.
She'd play for fun. If they'd come to me, I 'd tell them I 've proof
she 's not the Countess of Ormont: positive proof. You look? I have it.
I hold something; and not before,--(he may take his Aminta to Steignton,
he may let her be presented, she may wear his name publicly, I say he's
laughing at them, snapping his fingers at them louder and louder the more
they seem to be pushing him into a corner, until--I know my brother
Rowsley!--and, poor dear fellow! a man like that, the best cavalry
general England ever had:--they'll remember it when there comes a cry
for a general from India: that's the way with the English; only their
necessities teach them to be just!)--he to be reduced to be out-
manoeuvring a swarm of women,--I tell them, not before my brother Rowsley
comes to me for what he handed to my care and I keep safe for him, will
I believe he has made or means to make his Aminta Countess of Ormont.'
They were at the steps of the house. Turning to Weyburn there, the
inexhaustible Lady Charlotte remarked that their conversation had given
her pleasure. Leo was hanging on to one of his hands the next minute. A
small girl took the other. Philippa and Beatrice were banished damsels.
Lady Charlotte's breath had withered the aspect of Aminta's fortunes.
Weyburn could forgive her, for he was beginning to understand her. He
could not pardon 'her brother Rowsley,' who loomed in his mind
incomprehensible, and therefore black. Once he had thought the great
General a great man. He now regarded him as a mere soldier, a soured
veteran; socially as a masker and a trifler, virtually a callous angler
playing his cleverly-hooked fish for pastime.
What could be the meaning of Lady Charlotte's 'that, man Morsfield, who
boasts of your Lady Ormont, and does it unwhipped'?
Weyburn stopped his questioning, with the reflection that he had no right
to recollect her words thus accurately. The words, however, stamped
Morsfield's doings and sayings and postures in the presence of Aminta
with significance. When the ladies were looking on at the fencers,
Morsfield's perfect coxcombry had been noticeable. He knew the art of
airing a fine figure. Mrs. Lawrence Finchley had spoken of it, and
Aminta had acquiesced; in the gravely simple manner of women who may be
thinking of it much more intently than the vivacious prattler. Aminta
confessed to an admiration of masculine physical beauty; the picador,
matador, of the Spanish ring called up an undisguised glow that English
ladies show coldly when they condescend to let it be seen; as it were, a
line or two of colour on the wintriest of skies. She might, after all,
at heart be one of the leisured, jewelled, pretty-winged; the spending,
never harvesting, world she claimed and sought to enter. And what a
primitive world it was!--world of the glittering beast and the not too
swiftly flying prey, the savage passions clothed in silk. Surely desire
to belong to it writes us poor creatures. Mentally, she could hardly be
maturer than the hero-worshipping girl in the procession of Miss
Vincent's young seminarists. Probably so, but she carried magic. She
was of the order of women who walk as the goddesses of old, bearing the
gift divine. And, by the way, she had the step of the goddess. Weyburn
repeated to himself the favourite familiar line expressive of the
glorious walk, and accused Lord Ormont of being in cacophonous accordance
with the perpetual wrong of circumstance, he her possessor, the sole
person of her sphere insensible to the magic she bore! So ran his
thought.
The young man chose to conceive that he thought abstractedly. He was,
in truth, often casting about for the chances of his meeting on some
fortunate day the predestined schoolmaster's wife: a lady altogether
praiseworthy for carrying principles of sound government instead of
magic. Consequently, susceptible to woman's graces though he knew
himself to be, Lady Ormont's share of them hung in the abstract for him.
His hopes were bent on an early escape to Switzerland and his life's
work.
Lady Charlotte mounted to ride to the battle daily. She talked of
her brother Rowsley, and of 'Aminta,' and provoked an advocacy of the
Countess of Ormont, and trampled the pleas and defences to dust, much in
the same tone as on the first day; sometimes showing a peep of sweet
humaneness, like the ripe berry of a bramble, and at others rattling
thunder at the wretch of a woman audacious enough to pretend to a part
in her brother's title.
Not that she had veneration for titles. She considered them a tinsel,
and the devotee on his knee-caps to them a lump for a kick. Adding:
'Of course I stand for my class; and if we can't have a manlier people--
and it 's not likely in a country treating my brother so badly--well,
then, let things go on as they are.' But it was the pretension to a part
in the name of Ormont which so violently offended the democratic
aristocrat, and caused her to resent it as an assault on the family
honour, by 'a woman springing up out of nothing'--a woman of no
distinctive birth.
She was rational in her fashion; or Weyburn could at least see where and
how the reason in her took a twist. The Rev. Mr. Hampton-Evey would not
see it; he was, in charity to her ladyship, of a totally contrary
opinion, he informed Weyburn. The laborious pastor and much-enduring
Churchman met my lady's apologist as he was having a swing of the legs
down the lanes before breakfast, and he fell upon a series of complaints,
which were introduced by a declaration that 'he much feared' her ladyship
would have a heavy legal bill to pay for taking the law into her hands up
at Addicotes.
Her ladyship might, if she pleased, he said, encourage her domestics and
her husband's tenants and farm-labourers to abandon the church for the
chapel, and go, as she had done and threatened to do habitually, to the
chapel herself; but to denounce the ritual of the Orthodox Church under
the denomination of 'barbarous,' to say of the invoking supplications of
the service, that they were--she had been heard to state it more or less
publicly and repeatedly--suitable to abject ministers and throngs at the
court of an Indian rajah, that he did not hesitate to term highly
unbecoming in a lady of her station, subversive and unchristian. The
personal burdens inflicted on him by her ladyship he prayed for patience
to endure. He surprised Weyburn in speaking of Lady Charlotte as
'educated and accomplished.' She was rather more so than Weyburn knew,
and more so than was common among the great ladies of her time.
Weyburn strongly advised the reverend gentleman on having it out with
Lady Charlotte in a personal interview. He sketched the great lady's
combative character on a foundation of benevolence, and stressed her
tolerance for open dealing, and the advantage gained by personal dealings
with her--after a mauling or two. His language and his illustrations
touched an old-school chord in the Rev. Mr. Hampton-Evey, who hummed over
the project, profoundly disrelishing the introductory portion.
'Do me the honour to call and see me to-morrow, after breakfast, before
her ladyship starts for the fray on Addicote heights,' Weyburn said; 'and
I will ask your permission to stand by you. Her bark is terrific, we
know; and she can bite, but there's no venom.'
Finally, on a heave of his chest, Mr. Hampton-Evey consented to call, in
the interests of peace.
Weyburn had said it must be 'man to man with her, facing her and taking
steps'; and, although the prospect was unpleasant to repulsiveness, it
was a cheerful alternative beside Mr. Hampton-Evey's experiences and
anticipations of the malignant black power her ladyship could be when she
was not faced.
'Let the man come,' said Lady Charlotte. Her shoulders intimated
readiness for him.
She told Weyburn he might be present--insisted to have him present.
During the day Weyburn managed to slide in observations on the favourable
reports of Mr. Hampton-Evey's work among the poor--emollient doses that
irritated her to fret and paw, as at a checking of her onset.
In the afternoon the last disputed tree on the Addicotes' ridge was
felled and laid on Olmer ground. Riding with Weyburn and the joyful Leo,
she encountered Mr. Eglett and called out the news. He remarked, in the
tone of philosophy proper to a placable country gentleman obedient to
government on foreign affairs: 'Now for the next act. But no more
horseback now, mind!'
She muttered of not recollecting a promise. He repeated the interdict.
Weyburn could fancy seeing her lips form words of how she hated old age.
He had been four days at Olmer, always facing her, 'man to man,' in the
matter of Lady Ormont, not making way at all, but holding firm, and
winning respectful treatment. They sat alone in her private room, where,
without prelude, she discharged a fiery squib at impudent hussies caught
up to the saddle-bow of a hero for just a canter, and pretending to a
permanent seat beside him.
'You have only to see Lady Ormont; you will admit the justice of her
claim, my lady,' said he; and as evidently he wanted a fight, she let him
have it.
'You try to provoke me; you take liberties. You may call the woman
Aminta, I've told you; you insult me when you call the woman by my family
name.'
'Pardon me, my lady: I have no right to call Lady Ormont Aminta.'
'You've never done so, eh? Say!'
She had him at the edge of the precipice. He escaped by saying, 'Her
Christian name was asked the other day, and I mentioned it. She is
addressed by me as Lady Ormont.'
'And by her groom and her footman. They all do; it 's the indemnity to
that class of young woman. Her linendraper is Lady-Ormonting as you do.
I took you for a gentleman. Let me hear you give her that title again,
you shall hear her true one, that the world fits her with, from me.'
The time was near the half-hour bell before dinner, the situation between
them that of the fall of the breath to fetch words electrical. She left
it to him to begin the fight, and was not sorry that she had pricked him
for it.
A footman entered the room, bearer of a missive for Mr. Weyburn. Lord
Ormont's groom had brought it from London.
'Send in the man,' said Lady Charlotte.
Weyburn read
'The Countess of Ormont begs Mr. Weyburn to return instantly. There has
been an accident in his home. It may not be very serious. An arm--a
shock to the system from a fall. Messenger informs her, fear of internal
hemorrhage. Best doctors in attendance.'
He handed Lady Charlotte the letter. She humped at the first line,
flashed across the remainder, and in a lowered voice asked--
'Sister in the house?'
'My mother,' Weyburn said.
The groom appeared. He knew nothing. The Countess had given him orders
to spare no expense on the road to Olmer, without a minute's delay. He
had ridden and driven.
He looked worn. Lady Charlotte rang the bell for her butler. To him she
said--
'See that this man has a good feed of meat, any pastry you have, and a
bottle of port wine. He has earned a pipe of tobacco; make up a bed for
him. Despatch at once any one of the stable-boys to Loughton--the
Dolphin. Mr. Leeman there will have a chariot, fly, gig, anything,
ready-horsed in three hours from now. See Empson yourself; he will put
my stepper Mab to the light trap; no delay. Have his feed at Loughton.
Tell Mrs. Maples to send up now, here, a tray, whatever she has, within
five minutes--not later. A bottle of the Peace of Amiens Chambertin--
Mr. Eglett's. You understand. Mrs. Maples will pack a basket for the
journey; she will judge. Add a bottle of the Waterloo Bordeaux. Wait:
a dozen of Mr. Eglett's cigars. Brisk with all the orders. Go.'
She turned to Weyburn. 'You pack your portmanteau faster than a servant
will do it.'
He ran up-stairs.
She was beside the tray to welcome and inspirit his eating, and she
performed the busy butler's duty in pouring out wine for him. It was a
toned old Burgundy, happy in the year of its birth, the grandest of
instruments to roll the gambol-march of the Dionysiaca through the blood
of this frame and sound it to the spirit. She spoke no word of his cause
for departure. He drank, and he felt what earth can do to cheer one of
her stricken children and strengthen the beat of a heart with a dread
like a shot in it.