Lord Ormont and his Aminta, v3
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George Meredith >> Lord Ormont and his Aminta, v3
Mrs. Pagnell had been quietly chewing her cud of the sullens, as was the
way with her after a snub. She now resumed her gossip of the naughty
world she knelt to and expected to see some day stricken by a bolt from
overhead; containing, as it did, such wicked members as that really
indefensible brazen Mrs. Amy May, who was only the daughter of a half-pay
naval captain, and that Marquis of Collestou, who would, they say,
decorate her with his title to-morrow, if her husband were but somewhere
else. She spread all sorts of report, about Mr. Morsfield, and he was
honour itself in his reserve about her. 'Depend upon it, Aminta--he was
not more than a boy then, and they say she aimed at her enfranchisement
by plotting the collision, for his Yorkshire revenues are immense,
and he is, you know, skilful in the use of arms, and Captain May has no
resources whatever: penury! no one cares to speculate how they contrive!
---but while that dreadful duelling--and my lord as bad as any in his
day-exists, depend upon it, an unscrupulous good-looking woman has as
many lives for her look of an eye or lift of a finger as a throned
Ottoman Turk on his divan.'
Aminta wished to dream. She gave her aunt a second dose, and the lady
relapsed again.
Power to dream had gone. She set herself to look at roadside things,
cottage gardens, old housewives in doorways, gaffer goodman meeting his
crony on the path, groups of boys and girls. She would take the girls,
Matthew Weyburn the boys. She had lessons to give to girls, she had
sympathy, pity, anticipation. That would be a life of happy service.
It might be a fruitful trial of the system he proposed, to keep the boys
and girls in company as much as possible, both at lessons and at games.
His was the larger view. Her lord's view appeared similar to that of her
aunt's 'throned Ottoman Turk on his divan.' Matthew Weyburn believed in
the bettering of the world; Lord Ormont had no belief like it.
Presently Mrs. Pagnell returned to the charge, and once more she was
nipped, and irritated to declare she had never known her niece's temper
so provoking. Aminta was launching a dream of a lass she had seen in a
field, near a white hawthorn, standing upright, her left arm aloft round
the pole of a rake, the rim of her bonnet tipped on her forehead; an
attitude of a rustic.
Britannia with helmet heeling at dignity. The girl's eyes hung to the
passing chariot, without movement of her head. It was Aminta who looked
back, and she saw the girl looking away. Among the superior dames and
damsels she had seen, there was not one to match that figure for stately
air, gallant ease, and splendour of pose. Matthew Weyburn would have
admired the girl. Aminta did better than envy, she cast off the last
vestiges of her bitter ambition to be a fine lady, and winged into the
bosom of the girl, and not shyly said 'yes' to Matthew Weyburn, and to
herself, deep in herself: 'A maid has no need to be shy.' Hardly
blushing, she walks on into the new life beside him, and hears him say:
'I in my way, you in yours; we are equals, the stronger for being
equals,' and she quite agrees, and she gives him the fuller heart for
his not requiring her to be absorbed--she is the braver mate for him.
Does not that read his meaning? Happiest of the girls of earth, she has
divined it at once, from never having had the bitter ambition to be a
slave, that she might wear rich tissues; and let herself be fettered,
that she might loll in idleness; lose a soul to win a title; escape
commonplace to discover it ghastlier under cloth of gold, and the animal
crowned, adored, fattened, utterly served, in the class called by consent
of human society the Upper.
Reason whispered a reminder of facts to her.
'But I am not the Countess of Ormont!' she said. She felt herself the
girl, her sensations were so intensely simple.
Proceeding to an argument, that the earl did not regard her as the
Countess of Ormont, or the ceremony at the British Embassy as one serious
and binding, she pushed her reason too far: sweet delusion waned. She
waited for some fresh scene to revive it.
Aminta sat unwittingly weaving her destiny.
While she was thus engaged, a carriage was rolling on the more westerly
road down to Steignton. Seated in it were Lady Charlotte Eglett and
Matthew Weyburn. They had met at Arthur Abner's office the previous day.
She went there straight from Lord Ormont's house-agent and upholsterer,
to have a queer bit of thunderous news confirmed, that her brother was
down at Steignton, refurnishing the house, and not for letting. She
was excited: she treated Arthur Abner's closed-volume reticence as a
corroboration of the house-agent's report, and hearing Weyburn speak of
his anxiety to see the earl immediately, in order to get release from his
duties, proposed a seat in her carriage; for down Steignton way she meant
to go, if only as excuse for a view of the old place. She kept asking
what Lord Ormont wanted down at Steignton refurnishing the house, and not
to let it! Her evasions of answers that, plain speculation would supply
were quaint. 'He hasn't my feeling for Steignton. He could let it--
I couldn't. Sacrilege to me to have a tenant in my old home where I was
born. He's furnishing to raise his rent. His country won't give him
anything to do, so he turns miser. That's my brother Rowsley's way of
taking on old age.'
Her brother Rowsley might also be showing another sign of his calamitous
condition. She said to Weyburn, in the carriage, that her brother
Rowsley might like having his hair clipped by the Philistine woman; which
is one of the ways of strong men to confess themselves ageing. 'Not,'
said she, with her usual keen justness 'not that I've, a word against
Delilah. I look upon her as a patriot; she dallied and she used the
scissors on behalf of her people. She wasn't bound to Samson in honour,
--liked a strong man, probably enough. She proved she liked her country
better. The Jews wrote the story of it, so there she stands for
posterity to pelt her, poor wretch.'
'A tolerably good analogy for the story of men and women generally,' said
Weyburn.
'Ah, well, you've a right to talk; you don't run miauling about women.
It 's easy to be squashy on that subject. As for the Jews, I don't go by
their history, but now they 're down I don't side with the Philistines,
or Christians. They 're good citizens, and they 've got Samson in the
brain, too. That comes of persecution, a hard education. They beat the
world by counting in the head. That 's because they 've learnt the value
of fractions. Napoleon knew it in war, when he looked to the boots and
great-coats of his men; those were his fractions. Lord Ormont thinks he
had too hard-and-fast a system for the battle-field.'
'A greater strategist than tactician, my lady? It may be,' said Weyburn,
smiling at her skips.
'Massing his cannon to make a big hole for his cavalry, my brother says;
and weeding his infantry for the Imperial Guard he postponed the moment
to use.'
'At Moskowa?'
'Waterloo. I believe Lord Ormont would--there! his country 's lost him,
and chose it. They 'll have their day for repentance yet. What a
rapture to have a thousand horsemen following you! I suppose there never
was a man worthy of the name who roared to be a woman. I know I could
have shrieked half my life through to have been born male. It 's no
matter now. When we come to this hateful old age, we meet: no, we 're no
sex then--we 're dry sticks. I 'll tell you: my Olmer doctor--that 's an
impudent fellow who rode by staring into my carriage. The window's down.
He could see without pushing his hat in.'
Weyburn looked out after a man cantering on.
'A Mr. Morsfield,' he said. 'I thought it was he when I saw him go by.
I've met him at the fencing-rooms. He 's one of the violent fencers,
good for making his point, if one funks an attack.'
'That man Morsfield, is it? I wonder what he's doing on the road here.
He goes over London boasting--hum, nothing to me. But he 'll find Lord
Ormont's arm can protect a poor woman, whatever she is. He'd have had it
before, only Lord Ormont shuns a scandal. I was telling you, my Olmer
doctor forbade horse-riding, and my husband raised a noise like one of my
turkeycocks on the wing; so I 've given up the saddle, to quiet him. I
guessed. I went yesterday morning to my London physician. He sounded
me, pushed out his mouth and pulled down his nose, recommended avoidance
of excitement. "Is it heart?" I said. He said it was heart. That was
the best thing an old woman could hear. He said, when he saw I wasn't
afraid, it was likely to be quick; no doctors, no nurses and daily
bulletins for inquirers, but just the whites of the eyes, the laying-out,
the undertaker, and the family-vault. That's one reason why I want to
see Steignton before the blow that may fall any day, whether my brother
Rowsley's there or no. But that Olmer doctor of mine, Causitt, Peter
Causitt, shall pay me for being a liar or else an ignoramus when I told
him he was to tell me bluntly the nature of my disease.'
A horseman, in whom they recognized Mr. Morsfield, passed, clattering on
the road behind them.
'Some woman here about,' Lady Charlotte muttered. Weyburn saw him joined
by a cavalier, and the two consulted and pointed whips right and left.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
As well ask (women) how a battle-field concerns them!
Boys who can appreciate brave deeds are capable of doing them
Careful not to smell of his office
Chose to conceive that he thought abstractedly
Consign discussion to silence with the cynical closure
Convictions we store--wherewith to shape our destinies
Death is only the other side of the ditch
Didn't say a word No use in talking about feelings
Enthusiast, when not lyrical, is perilously near to boring
He took small account of the operations of the feelings
Her duel with Time
Hopeless task of defending a woman from a woman
I hate old age It changes you so
Ignorance roaring behind a mask of sarcasm
Men bore the blame, though the women were rightly punished
Never nurse an injury, great or small
No love can be without jealousy
Old age is a prison wall between us and young people
Orderliness, from which men are privately exempt
People were virtuous in past days: they counted their sinners
Professional Puritans
Regularity of the grin of dentistry
That pit of one of their dead silences
The beat of a heart with a dread like a shot in it
The good life gone lives on in the mind
The shots hit us behind you
The spending, never harvesting, world
The terrible aggregate social woman
Venus of nature was melting into a Venus of art
[The End]
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