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Roy Rockwood - "Five Thousand Miles Underground"

Matthew Arnold - "Celtic Literature"

Nathaniel Hawthorne - "Little Annie's Ramble (From Twice Told Tales)"

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One of Our Conquerors, Complete

G >> George Meredith >> One of Our Conquerors, Complete




Nesta was happy to stay; and Victor set forth.

The visitor? plainly Dudley. Nataly's trusting the girl to the chance of
some lady being present, was unlike her. Dudley might be tugging at the
cord; and the recent conversation upon Society, rendered one of its gilt
pillars particularly estimable.--A person in the debate had declared this
modern protest on behalf of individualism to represent Society's Criminal
Trial. And it is likely to be a long one. And good for the world, that we
see such a Trial!--Well said or not, undoubtedly Society is an old
criminal: not much more advanced than the state of spiritual worship
where bloody sacrifice was offered to a hungry Lord. But it has a case
for pleading. We may liken it, as we have it now, to the bumping
lumberer's raft; suitable along torrent waters until we come to smoother.
Are we not on waters of a certain smoothness at the reflecting
level?--enough to justify demands for a vessel of finer design. If
Society is to subsist, it must have the human with the logical argument
against the cry of the free-flags, instead of presenting a block's
obtuseness. That, you need not hesitate to believe, will be rolled
downward and disintegrated, sooner than later. A Society based on the
logical concrete of humane considerateness:--a Society prohibiting to
Mrs. Burman her wielding of a life-long rod . . . .

The personal element again to confuse inquiry!--And Skepsey and Barmby
both of them bent on doing work without inquiry of any sort! They were
enviable: they were good fellows. Victor clung to the theme because it
hinted of next door to his lost Idea. He rubbed the back of his head,
fancying a throb there. Are civilized creatures incapable of abstract
thought when their social position is dubious? For if so, we never can be
quit of those we forsake.--Apparently Mrs. Burman's unfathomed power lay
in her compelling him to summon the devilish in himself and play upon the
impish in Society, that he might overcome her.

Victor's house-door stopped this current.

Nataly took his embrace.

'Nothing wrong?' he said, and saw the something. It was a favourable
moment to tell her what she might not at another time regard as a small
affair. 'News in the City to-day of that South London borough being
vacated. Quatley urges me. A death again! I saw Pempton, too. Will you
credit me when I tell you he carries his infatuation so far, that he has
been investing in Japanese and Chinese Loans, because they are less
meat-eaters than others, and vegetarians are more stable, and outlast us
all!--Dudley the visitor?' 'Mr. Sowerby has been here,' she said, in a
shaking low voice.

Victor held her hand and felt a squeeze more nervous than affectionate.

'To consult with me,' she added. 'My maid will go at ten to bring Nesta;
Mr. Durance I can count on, to see her safe home. Ah!' she wailed.

Victor nodded, saying: 'I guess. And, my love, you will receive Mrs. John
Cormyn to-morrow morning. I can't endure gaps. Gaps in our circle must
never be. Do I guess?--I spoke to Colney about bringing her home.'

Nataly sighed: 'Ah! make what provision we will! Evil--Mr. Sowerby has
had a great deal to bear.'

'A worldling may think so.'

Her breast heaved, and the wave burst: but her restraining of tears froze
her speech.

'Victor! Our Nesta! Mr. Sowerby is unable to explain. And how the Miss
Duvidneys! . . . At that Brighton!'--The voice he heard was not his
darling's deep rich note, it had dropped to toneless hoarseness: 'She has
been permitted to make acquaintance--she has been seen riding with--she
has called upon--Oh! it is one of those abandoned women. In her house!
Our girl! Our Nesta! She was insulted by a man in the woman's house. She
is talked of over Brighton. The mother!--the daughter! And grant me
this--that never was girl more carefully . . . never till she was taken
from me. Oh! do not forget. You will defend me? You will say, that her
mother did with all her soul strive . . . It is not a rumour. Mr. Sowerby
has had it confirmed.' A sob caught her voice.

Victor's hands caressed to console: 'Dudley does not propose to . . . ?'

'Nesta must promise . . . but how it happened? How! An acquaintance
with--contact with!--Oh! cruel!' Each time she ceased speaking, the
wrinkles of a shiver went over her, and the tone was of tears coming, but
she locked them in.

'An accident!' said Victor; 'some misunderstanding--there can't be harm.
Of course, she promises--hasn't to promise. How could a girl distinguish!
He does not cast blame on her?'

'Dear, if you would go down to Dartrey to-morrow. He knows:--it is over
the Clubs there; he will tell you, before a word to Nesta. Innocent, yes!
Mr. Sowerby has not to be assured of that. Ignorant of the character of
the dreadful woman? Ah, if I could ever in anything think her ignorant!
She frightens me. Mr. Sowerby is indulgent. He does me justice. My duty
to her--I must defend myself--has been my first thought. I said in my
prayers--she at least! . . . We have to see the more than common reasons
why she, of all girls, should--he did not hint it, he was delicate: her
name must not be public.'

'Yes, yes, Dudley is without parallel as a gentleman,' said Victor. 'It
does not suit me to hear the word "indulgent." My dear, if you were down
there, you would discover that the talk was the talk of two or three men
seeing our girl ride by--and she did ride with a troop: why, we've
watched them along the parade, often. Clear as day how it happened! I'll
go down early to-morrow.'

He fancied Nataly was appeased. And even out of this annoyance, there was
the gain of her being won to favour Dudley's hitherto but tolerated suit.

Nataly also had the fancy, that the calm following on her anguish, was a
moderation of it. She was kept strung to confide in her girl by the
recent indebtedness to her for words heavenly in the strengthening
comfort they gave. But no sooner was she alone than her torturing
perplexities and her abasement of the hours previous to Victor's coming
returned.

For a girl of Nesta's head could not be deceived; she had come home with
a woman's intelligence of the world, hard knowledge of it--a knowledge
drawn from foul wells, the unhappy mother imagined: she dreaded to probe
to the depth of it. She had in her wounded breast the world's idea, that
corruption must come of the contact with impurity.

Nataly renewed her cry of despair: 'The mother!--the daughter!'--her sole
revelation of the heart's hollows in her stammered speaking to Victor.

She thanked heaven for the loneliness of her bed, where she could repeat:
'The mother!--the daughter!' hearing the world's words:--the daughter
excused, by reason of her having such a mother; the mother unpitied for
the bruiting of her brazen daughter's name: but both alike consigned to
the corners of the world's dust-heaps. She cried out, that her pride was
broken. Her pride, her last support of life, had gone to pieces. The
tears she restrained in Victor's presence, were called on to come now,
and she had none. It might be, that she had not strength for weeping. She
was very weak. Rising from bed to lock her door against Nesta's entry to
the room on her return at night, she could hardly stand: a chill and a
clouding overcame her. The quitted bed seemed the haven of a drifted
wreck to reach.

Victor tried the handle of a locked door in the dark of the early winter
morning. 'The mother!--the daughter!' had swung a pendulum for some time
during the night in him, too. He would rather have been subjected to the
spectacle of tears than have heard that toneless voice, as it were the
dry torrent-bed rolling blocks instead of melodious, if afflicting,
waters.

He told Nesta not to disturb her mother, and murmured of a headache:
'Though, upon my word, the best cure for mama would be a look into
Fredi's eyes!' he said, embracing his girl, quite believing in her, just
a little afraid of her.




CHAPTER XXXVIII

NATALY, NESTA, AND DARTREY FENELLAN

Pleasant things, that come to us too late for our savour of the sweetness
in them, toll ominously of life on the last walk to its end. Yesterday,
before Dudley Sowerby's visit, Nataly would have been stirred where the
tears we shed for happiness or repress at a flattery dwell when seeing
her friend Mrs. John Cormyn enter her boudoir and hearing her speak
repentantly, most tenderly. Mrs. John said: 'You will believe I have
suffered, dear; I am half my weight, I do think': and she did not set the
smile of responsive humour moving; although these two ladies had a key of
laughter between them. Nataly took her kiss; held her hand, and at the
parting kissed her. She would rather have seen her friend than not: so
far she differed from a corpse; but she was near the likeness to the dead
in the insensibility to any change of light shining on one who best loved
darkness and silence. She cried to herself wilfully, that her pride was
broken: as women do when they spurn at the wounding of a dignity they
cannot protect and die to see bleeding; for in it they live.

The cry came of her pride unbroken, sore bruised, and after a certain
space for recovery combative. She said:

Any expiation I could offer where I did injury, I would not refuse; I
would humble myself and bless heaven for being able to pay my debt--what
I can of it. All I contend against is, injustice. And she sank into
sensational protests of her anxious care of her daughter, too proud to
phrase them.

Her one great affliction, the scourging affliction of her utter
loneliness;--an outcast from her family; daily, and she knew not how,
more shut away from the man she loved; now shut away from her
girl;--seemed under the hand of the angel of God. The abandonment of her
by friends, was merely the light to show it.

Midday's post brought her a letter from Priscilla Graves, entreating to
be allowed to call on her next day.--We are not so easily cast off!
Nataly said, bitterly, in relation to the lady whose offending had not
been so great. She wrote: 'Come, if sure that you sincerely wish to.'

Having fasted, she ate at lunch in her dressing-room, with some taste of
the food, haunted by an accusation of gluttony because of her eating at
all, and a vile confession, that she was enabled to eat, owing to the
receipt of Priscilla's empty letter: for her soul's desire was to be
doing a deed of expiation, and the macerated flesh seemed her assurance
to herself of the courage to make amends.--I must have some strength, she
said wearifully, in apology for the morsel consumed.

Nesta's being in the house with her, became an excessive irritation.
Doubts of the girl's possible honesty to speak a reptile truth under
question; amazement at her boldness to speak it; hatred of, the mouth
that could: and loathing of the words, the theme; and abomination of
herself for conjuring fictitious images to rouse real emotions; all ran
counterthreads, that produced a mad pattern in the mind, affrighting to
reason: and then, for its preservation, reason took a superrational leap,
and ascribed the terrible injustice of this last cruel stroke to the
divine scourge, recognized divine by the selection of the mortal spot for
chastisement. She clasped her breast, and said: It is mortal. And that
calmed her.

She said, smiling: I never felt my sin until this blow came! Therefore
the blow was proved divine. Ought it not to be welcomed?--and she
appearing no better than one of those, the leprous of the sex! And
brought to acknowledgement of the likeness by her daughter!

Nataly drank the poison distilled from her exclamations and was ice. She
had denied herself to Nesta's redoubled petition. Nesta knocking at the
door a third time and calling, tore the mother two ways: to have her girl
on her breast or snap their union in a word with an edge. She heard the
voice of Dartrey Fenellan.

He was admitted. 'No, dear,' she said to Nesta; and Nesta's, 'My own
mother,' consentingly said, in tender resignation, as she retired, sprang
a stinging tear to the mother's eyelids.

Dartrey looked at the door closing on the girl.

'Is it a very low woman?' Nataly asked him in a Church whisper, with a
face abashed.

'It is not,' said he, quick to meet any abruptness.

'She must be cunning.'

'In the ordinary way. We say it of Puss before the hounds.'

'To deceive a girl like Nesta!'

'She has done no harm.'

'Dartrey, you speak to a mother. You have seen the woman? She is?--ah!'

'She is womanly, womanly.'

'Quite one of those . . . ?'

'My dear soul! You can't shake them off in that way. She is one of us. If
we have the class, we can't escape from it. They are not to bear all the
burden because they exist. We are the bigger debtors. I tell you she is
womanly.'

'It sounds like horrid cynicism.'

'Friends of mine would abuse it for the reverse.'

'Do not make me hate your chivalry. This woman is a rod on my back.
Provided only she has not dropped venom into Nesta's mind!'

'Don't fear!'

'Can you tell me you think she has done no harm to my girl?'

'To Nesta herself?--not any: not to a girl like your girl.'

'To my girl's name? Speak at once. But I know she has. She induced Nesta
to go to her house. My girl was insulted in this woman's house.'

Dartrey's forehead ridged with his old fury and a gust of present
contempt. 'I can tell you this, that the fellow who would think harm of
it, knowing the facts 's not worthy of touching the tips of the fingers
of your girl.'

'She is talked of!'

'A good-looking girl out riding with a handsome woman on a parade of
idlers!'

'The woman is notorious.' Nataly said it shivering.

He shook his head. 'Not true.'

'She has an air of a lady?'

'She sits a horse well.'

'Would she to any extent deceive me--impose on me here?'

'No.'

'Ah!' Nataly moaned. . . .

'But what?' said Dartrey. 'There was no pretence. Her style is not worse
than that of some we have seen. There was no effort to deceive. The
woman's plain for you and me to read, she has few of the arts; one or two
tricks, if you like: and these were not needed for use. There are women
who have them, and have not been driven or let slip into the wilderness.'

'Yes; I know!--those ideas of yours!' Nataly had once admired him for his
knightliness toward the weakest women and the women underfoot. 'You have
spoken to this woman? She boasted of acquaintance with Nesta?'

'She thanked God for having met her.'

'Is it one of the hysterical creatures?'

Mrs. Marsett appeared fronting Dartrey.

He laughed to himself. 'A clever question. There is a leaning to
excitement of manner at times. It 's not hysteria. Allow for her
position.'

Nataly took the unintended blow, and bowed to it; and still more harshly
said: 'What rank of life does the woman come from?'

'The class educated for a skittish career by your popular Stage and your
Book-stalls. I am not precise?'

'Leave Mr. Durance. Is she in any degree commonly well bred? . . .
behaviour, talk-her English.'

'I trench on Mr. Durance in replying. Her English is passable. You may
hear . . .'

'Everywhere, of course! And this woman of slipshod English and excited
manners imposed upon Nesta!'

'It would not be my opinion.'

'Did not impose on her!'

'Not many would impose on Nesta Radnor for long.'

'Think what that says, Dartrey!'

'You have had a detestable version of the story.'

'Because an excited creature thanks God to you for having met her!'

'She may. She's a better woman for having met her. Don't suppose we're
for supernatural conversions. The woman makes no show of that. But she
has found a good soul among her sex--her better self in youth, as one
guesses; and she is grateful--feels farther from exile in consequence.
She has found a lady to take her by the hand!--not a common case. She can
never go to the utterly bad after knowing Nesta. I forget if she says it;
I say it. You have heard the story from one of your conventional
gentlemen.'

'A true gentleman. I have reason to thank him. He has not your ideas on
these matters, Dartrey. He is very sensitive . . . on Nesta's behalf.'

'With reference to marriage. I'll own I prefer another kind of gentleman.
I 've had my experience of that kind of gentleman. Many of the kind have
added their spot to the outcasts abominated for uncleanness--in holy
unction. Many?--I won't say all; but men who consent to hear black words
pitched at them, and help to set good women facing away from them, are
pious dolts or rascal dogs of hypocrites. They, if you'll let me quote
Colney Durance to you to-day--and how is it he is not in favour?--they
are tempting the Lord to turn the pillars of Society into pillars of
salt. Down comes the house. And priests can rest in sight of it!--They
ought to be dead against the sanctimony that believes it excommunicates
when it curses. The relationship is not dissolved so cheaply, though our
Society affects to think it is. Barmby's off to the East End of this
London, Victor informs me:--good fellow! And there he'll be groaning over
our vicious nature. Nature is not more responsible for vice than she is
for inhumanity. Both bad, but the latter's the worse of the two.'

Nataly interposed: 'I see the contrast, and see whom it's to strike.'

Dartrey sent a thought after his meaning. 'Hardly that. Let it stand. He
's only one with the world: but he shares the criminal infamy for
crushing hope out of its frailest victims. They're that--no sentiment.
What a world, too, look behind it!--brutal because brutish. The world may
go hang: we expect more of your gentleman. To hear of Nesta down there,
and doubt that she was about good work; and come complaining! He had the
privilege of speaking to her, remonstrating, if he wished. There are men
who think--men!--the plucking of sinners out of the mire a dirty
business. They depute it to certain officials. And your women--it's the
taste of the world to have them educated so, that they can as little take
the humane as the enlightened view. Except, by the way, sometimes, in
secret;--they have a sisterly breast. In secret, they do occasionally
think as they feel. In public, the brass mask of the Idol they call
Propriety commands or supplies their feelings and thoughts. I won't
repeat my reasons for educating them differently. At present we have but
half the woman to go through life with--and thank you.'

Dartrey stopped. 'Don't be disturbed,' he added. 'There's no ground for
alarm. Not of any sort.'

Nataly said: 'What name?'

'Her name is Mrs. Marsett.'

'The name is . . . ?'

'Captain Marsett: will be Sir Edward. He came back from the Continent
yesterday.'

A fit of shuddering seized Nataly. It grew in violence, and speaking out
of it, with a pause of sickly empty chatter of the jaws, she said:
'Always that name?'

'Before the maiden name? May have been or not.'

'Not, you say?'

'I don't accurately know.'

Dartrey sprang to his legs. 'My dear soul! dear friend--one of the best!
if we go on fencing in the dark, there'll be wounds. Your way of taking
this affair disappointed me. Now I understand. It's the disease of a
trouble, to fly at comparisons. No real one exists. I wished to protect
the woman from a happier sister's judgement, to save you from alarm
concerning Nesta:--quite groundless, if you'll believe me. Come, there's
plenty of benevolent writing abroad on these topics now: facts are more
looked at, and a good woman may join us in taking them without the
horrors and loathings of angels rather too much given to claim
distinction from the luckless. A girl who's unprotected may go through
adventures before she fixes, and be a creature of honest intentions.
Better if protected, we all agree. Better also if the world did not
favour the girl's multitude of enemies. Your system of not dealing with
facts openly is everyway favourable to them. I am glad to say, Victor
recognizes what corruption that spread of wealth is accountable for. And
now I must go and have a talk with the--what a change from the blue
butterfly! Eaglet, I ought to have said. I dine with you, for Victor may
bring news.'

'Would anything down there be news to you, Dartrey?'

'He makes it wherever he steps.'

'He would reproach me for not detaining you. Tell Nesta I have to lie
down after talking. She has a child's confidence in you.'

A man of middle age! he said to himself. It is the particular ejaculation
which tames the senior whose heart is for a dash of holiday. He resolved,
that the mother might trust to the discretion of a man of his age; and he
went down to Nesta, grave with the weight his count of years should give
him. Seeing her, the light of what he now knew of her was an ennobling
equal to celestial. For this fair girl was one of the active souls of the
world--his dream to discover in woman's form. She, the little Nesta, the
tall pure-eyed girl before him, was, young though she was, already in the
fight with evil: a volunteer of the army of the simply Christian. The
worse for it? Sowerby would think so. She was not of the order of young
women who, in sheer ignorance or in voluntary, consent to the peace with
evil, and are kept externally safe from the smirch of evil, and are the
ornaments of their country, glory of a country prizing ornaments higher
than qualities.

Dartrey could have been momentarily incredulous of things revealed by
Mrs. Marsett--not incredulous of the girl's heroism: that capacity he
caught and gauged in her shape of head, cut of mouth, and the
measurements he was accustomed to make at a glance:--but her beauty, or
the form of beauty which was hers, argued against her having set foot of
thought in our fens. Here and far there we meet a young saint vowed to
service along by those dismal swamps: and saintly she looks; not of this
earth. Nesta was of the blooming earth. Where do we meet girl or woman
comparable to garden-flowers, who can dare to touch to lift the spotted
of her sex? He was puzzled by Nesta's unlikeness in deeds and in aspect.
He remembered her eyes, on the day when he and Colonel Sudley beheld her;
presently he was at quiet grapple with her mind. His doubts cleared off.
Then the question came, How could a girl of heroical character be
attached to the man Sowerby? That entirely passed belief.

And was it possible his wishes beguiled his hearing? Her tones were
singularly vibrating.

They talked for a while before, drawing a deep breath, she said: 'I fancy
I am in disgrace with my mother.'

'You have a suspicion why?' said he.

'I have.'

She would have told him why: the words were at her lips. Previous to her
emotion on the journey home, the words would have come out. They were
arrested by the thunder of the knowledge, that the nobleness in him
drawing her to be able to speak of scarlet matter, was personally
worshipped.

He attributed the full rose upon her cheeks to the forbidding subject.

To spare pain, he said: 'No misunderstanding with the dear mother will
last the day through. Can I help?'

'Oh, Captain Dartrey!'

'Drop the captain. Dartrey will do.'

'How could I!'

'You're not wanting in courage, Nesta.'

'Hardly for that!'

'By-and-by, then.'

'Though I could not say Mr. Fenellan.'

'You see; Dartrey, it must be.'

'If I could!'

'But the fellow is not a captain: and he is a friend, an old friend, very
old friend: he'll be tipped with grey in a year or two.'

'I might be bolder then.'

'Imagine it now. There is no disloyalty in your calling your friends by
their names.'

Her nature rang to the implication. 'I am not bound.' Dartrey hung fast,
speculating on her visibly: 'I heard you were?'

'No. I must be free.'

'It is not an engagement?'

'Will you laugh?--I have never quite known. My father desired it: and my
desire is to please him. I think I am vain enough to think I read through
blinds and shutters. The engagement--what there was--has been, to my
reading, broken more than once. I have not considered it, to settle my
thoughts on it, until lately: and now I may suspect it to be broken. I
have given cause--if it is known. There is no blame elsewhere. I am not
unhappy, Captain Dartrey.'

'Captain by courtesy. Very well. Tell me how Nesta judges the engagement
to be broken?'

She was mentally phrasing before she said: 'Absence.'

'He was here yesterday.'

All that the visit embraced was in her expressive look, as of sight
drawing inward, like our breath in a spell of wonderment. 'Then I
understand; it enlightens me.

My own mother!--my poor mother! he should have come to me. I was the
guilty person, not she; and she is the sufferer. That, if in life were
direct retribution! but the very meaning of having a heart, is to suffer
through others or for them.'

'You have soon seen that, dear girl,' said Dartrey.

'So, my own mother, and loving me as she does, blames me!' Nesta sighed;
she took a sharp breath. 'You? do you blame me too?'

He pressed her hand, enamoured of her instantaneous divination and
heavenly candour.

But he was admonished, that to speak high approval would not be
honourable advantage taken of the rival condemning; and he said: 'Blame?
Some think it is not always the right thing to do the right thing. I've
made mistakes, with no bad design. A good mother's view is not often
wrong.'