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Henry James - "Greville Fane"

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Charles Dickens - "Bleak House"

One of Our Conquerors, Complete

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




He revelled in benevolent projects of gifts to the nation, which would
coat a sensitive name. Say, an ornamental City Square, flowers,
fountains, afternoon bands of music--comfortable seats in it, and a
shelter, and a ready supply of good cheap coffee or tea. Tobacco? why not
rolls of honest tobacco! nothing so much soothes the labourer. A volume
of plans for the benefit of London smoked out of each ascending pile in
his brain. London is at night a moaning outcast round the policeman's'
legs. What of an all-night-long, cosy, brightly lighted, odoriferous
coffee-saloon for rich or poor, on the model of the hospitable Paduan?
Owner of a penny, no soul among us shall be rightly an outcast . . . .

Dreams of this kind are taken at times by wealthy people as a cordial at
the bar of benevolent intentions. But Victor was not the man to steal his
refreshments in that known style. He meant to make deeds of them, as far
as he could, considering their immense extension; and except for the
sensitive social name, he was of single-minded purpose.

Turning to the steps of a chemist's shop to get a prescription made up
for his Nataly's doctoring of her domestics, he was arrested by a rap on
his elbow; and no one was near; and there could not be a doubt of the
blow--a sharp hard stroke, sparing the funny-bone, but ringing. His head,
at the punctilio bump, throbbed responsively--owing to which or
indifference to the prescription, as of no instant requirement, he
pursued his course, resembling mentally the wanderer along a misty beach,
who hears cannon across the waters.

He certainly had felt it. He remembered the shock: he could not remember
much of pain. How about intimations? His asking caused a smile.

Very soon the riddle answered itself. He had come into view of the
diminutive marble cavalier of the infantile cerebellum; recollecting a
couplet from the pen of the disrespectful Satirist Peter, he thought of a
fall: his head and his elbow responded simultaneously to the thought.

All was explained save his consequent rightabout from the chemist's shop:
and that belongs to the minor involutions of circumstances and the will.
It passed like a giver's wrinkle. He read the placards of the Opera;
reminding himself of the day when it was the single Opera-house; and now
we have two-or three. We have also a distracting couple of Clowns and
Pantaloons in our Pantomimes: though Colney says that the multiplication
of the pantaloon is a distinct advance to representative truth--and
bother Colney! Two Columbines also. We forbear to speak of men, but where
is the boy who can set his young heart upon two Columbines at once!
Victor felt the boy within him cold to both: and in his youth he had
doated on the solitary twirling spangled lovely Fairy. The tale of a
delicate lady dancer leaping as the kernel out of a nut from the arms of
Harlequin to the legalized embrace of a wealthy brewer, and thenceforth
living, by repute, with unagitated legs, as holy a matron, despite her
starry past, as any to be shown in a country breeding the like
abundantly, had always delighted him. It seemed a reconcilement of
opposing stations, a defeat of Puritanism. Ay, and poor women!--women in
the worser plight under the Puritan's eye. They may be erring and good:
yes, finding the man to lift them the one step up! Read the history of
the error. But presently we shall teach the Puritan to act by the
standards of his religion. All is coming right--must come right. Colney
shall be confounded.

Hereupon Victor hopped on to Fenellan's hint regarding the designs of
Mrs. Burman.

His Nataly might have to go through a short sharp term of
scorching--Godiva to the gossips.

She would come out of it glorified. She would be reconciled with her
family. With her story of her devotion to the man loving her, the world
would know her for the heroine she was: a born lady, in appearance and
manner an empress among women. It was a story to be pleaded in any court,
before the sternest public. Mrs. Burman had thrown her into temptation's
way. It was a story to touch the heart, as none other ever written of
over all the earth was there a woman equalling his Nataly!

And their Nesta would have a dowry to make princesses envious:--she would
inherit . . . he ran up an arithmetical column, down to a line of figures
in addition, during three paces of his feet. Dartrey Fenellan had said of
little Nesta once, that she had a nature pure and sparkling as mid-sea
foam. Happy he who wins her! But she was one of the young women who are
easily pleased and hardly enthralled. Her father strained his mind for
the shape of the man to accomplish the feat. Whether she had an ideal of
a youth in her feminine head, was beyond his guessing. She was not the
damsel to weave a fairy waistcoat for the identical prince, and try it
upon all comers to discover him: as is done by some; excuseably, if we
would be just. Nesta was of the elect, for whom excuses have not to be
made. She would probably like a flute-player best; because her father
played the flute, and she loved him--laughably a little maiden's reason!
Her father laughed at her.

Along the street of Clubs, where a bruised fancy may see black balls
raining, the narrow way between ducal mansions offers prospect of the
sweep of greensward, all but touching up to the sunset to draw it to the
dance.

Formerly, in his very early youth, he clasped a dream of gaining way to
an alliance with one of these great surrounding houses; and he had a
passion for the acquisition of money as a means. And it has to be
confessed, he had sacrificed in youth a slice of his youth, to gain it
without labour--usually a costly purchase. It had ended disastrously: or
say, a running of the engine off the rails, and a speedy re-establishment
of traffic. Could it be a loss, that had led to the winning of his
Nataly? Can we really loathe the first of the steps when the one in due
sequence, cousin to it, is a blessedness? If we have been righted to
health by a medical draught, we are bound to be respectful to our drug.
And so we are, in spite of Nature's wry face and shiver at a mention of
what we went through during those days, those horrible days:--hide them!

The smothering of them from sight set them sounding he had to listen.
Colney Durance accused him of entering into bonds with somebody's
grandmother for the simple sake of browsing on her thousands: a picture
of himself too abhorrent to Victor to permit of any sort of acceptance.
Consequently he struck away to the other extreme of those who have a
choice in mixed motives: he protested that compassion had been the cause
of it. Looking at the circumstance now, he could see, allowing for human
frailty-perhaps a wish to join the ranks of the wealthy compassion for
the woman as the principal motive. How often had she not in those old
days praised his generosity for allying his golden youth to her withered
age--Mrs. Burman's very words! And she was a generous woman or had been:
she was generous in saying that. Well, and she was generous in having a
well-born, well-bred beautiful young creature like Nataly for her
companion, when it was a case of need for the dear girl; and
compassionately insisting, against remonstrances: they were spoken by
him, though they were but partial. How, then, had she become--at least,
how was it that she could continue to behave as the vindictive Fury who
persecuted remorselessly, would give no peace, poisoned the wells round
every place where he and his dear one pitched their tent!

But at last she had come to charity, as he could well believe. Not too
late! Victor's feeling of gratitude to Mrs. Burman assured him it was
genuine because of his genuine conviction, that she had determined to end
her incomprehensibly lengthened days in reconcilement with him: and he
had always been ready to 'forget and forgive.' A truly beautiful old
phrase! It thrilled off the most susceptible of men.

His well-kept secret of the spacious country-house danced him behind a
sober demeanour from one park to another; and along beside the drive to
view of his townhouse--unbeloved of the inhabitants, although by
acknowledgement it had, as Fredi funnily drawled, to express her sense of
justice in depreciation, 'good accommodation.' Nataly was at home, he was
sure. Time to be dressing: sun sets at six-forty, he said, and glanced at
the stained West, with an accompanying vision of outspread primroses
flooding banks of shadowy fields near Lakelands.

He crossed the road and rang.

Upon the opening of the door, there was a cascade of muslin downstairs.
His darling Fredi stood out of it, a dramatic Undine.




CHAPTER VI

NATALY

'Il segreto!' the girl cried commandingly, with a forefinger at his
breast.

He crossed arms, toning in similar recitative, with anguish, 'Dove
volare!'

They joined in half a dozen bars of operatic duet.

She flew to him, embraced and kissed.

'I must have it, my papa! unlock. I've been spying the bird on its
hedgerow nest so long! And this morning, my own dear cunning papa,
weren't you as bare as winter twigs? "Tomorrow perhaps we will have a day
in the country." To go and see the nest? Only, please, not a big one. A
real nest; where mama and I can wear dairymaid's hat and apron all
day--the style you like; and strike roots. We've been torn away two or
three times: twice, I know.'

'Fixed, this time; nothing shall tear us up,' said her father, moving on
to the stairs, with an arm about her.

'So, it is . . . ?'

'She's amazed at her cleverness!'

'A nest for three?'

'We must have a friend or two.'

'And pretty country?'

'Trust her papa for that.'

'Nice for walking and running over fields? No rich people?'

'How escape that rabble in England! as Colney says. It's a place for
being quite independent of neighbours, free as air.'

'Oh! bravo!'

'And Fredi will have her horse, and mama her pony-carriage; and Fredi can
have a swim every Summer morning.'

'A swim?' Her note was dubious. 'A river?'

'A good long stretch--fairish, fairish. Bit of a lake; bathing-shed; the
Naiad's bower: pretty water to see.'

'Ah. And has the house a name?'

'Lakelands. I like the name.'

'Papa gave it the name!'

'There's nothing he can conceal from his girl. Only now and then a little
surprise.'

'And his girl is off her head with astonishment. But tell me, who has
been sharing the secret with you?'

'Fredi strikes home! And it is true, you dear; I must have a confidant:
Simeon Fenellan.'

'Not Mr. Durance?'

He shook out a positive negative. 'I leave Col to his guesses. He'd have
been prophesying fire the works before the completion.'

'Then it is not a dear old house, like Craye and Creckholt?'

'Wait and see to-morrow.'

He spoke of the customary guests for concert practice; the music,
instrumental and vocal; quartet, duet, solo; and advising the girl to be
quick, as she had but twenty-five minutes, he went humming and trilling
into his dressing-room.

Nesta signalled at her mother's door for permission to enter. She slipped
in, saw that the maid was absent, and said: 'Yes, mama; and prepare, I
feared it; I was sure.'

Her mother breathed a little moan: 'Not a cottage?'

'He has not mentioned it to Mr. Durance.'

'Why not?'

'Mr. Fenellan has been his confidant.'

'My darling, we did wrong to let it go on, without speaking. You don't
know for certain yet?'

'It's a large estate, mama, and a big new house.'

Nataly's bosom sank. 'Ah me! here's misery! I ought to have known. And
too late now it has gone so far! But I never imagined he would be
building.'

She caught herself languishing at her toilette-glass, as, if her beauty
were at stake; and shut her eyelids angrily. To be looking in that
manner, for a mere suspicion, was too foolish. But Nesta's divinations
were target-arrows; they flew to the mark. Could it have been expected
that Victor would ever do anything on a small scale? O the dear little
lost lost cottage! She thought of it with a strain of the arms of
womanhood's longing in the unblessed wife for a babe. For the secluded
modest cottage would not rack her with the old anxieties, beset her with
suspicions. . . .

'My child, you won't possibly have time before the dinner-hour,' she said
to Nesta, dismissing her and taking her kiss of comfort with a short and
straining look out of the depths.

Those bitter doubts of the sentiments of neighbours are an incipient
dislike, when one's own feelings to the neighbours are kind, could be
affectionate. We are distracted, perverted, made strangers to ourselves
by a false position.

She heard his voice on a carol. Men do not feel this doubtful position as
women must. They have not the same to endure; the world gives them land
to tread, where women are on breaking seas. Her Nesta knew no more than
the pain of being torn from a home she loved. But now the girl was older,
and if once she had her imagination awakened, her fearful directness
would touch the spot, question, bring on the scene to-come, necessarily
to come, dreaded much more than death by her mother. But if it might be
postponed till the girl was nearer to an age of grave understanding, with
some knowledge of our world, some comprehension of a case that could be
pleaded!

He sang: he never acknowledged a trouble, he dispersed it; and in her
present wrestle with the scheme of a large country estate involving new
intimacies, anxieties, the courtship of rival magnates, followed by the
wretched old cloud, and the imposition upon them to bear it in silence
though they knew they could plead a case, at least before charitable and
discerning creatures or before heaven, the despondent lady could have
asked whether he was perfectly sane.

Who half so brilliantly!--Depreciation of him, fetched up at a stroke the
glittering armies of her enthusiasm. He had proved it; he proved it daily
in conflicts and in victories that dwarfed emotional troubles like hers:
yet they were something to bear, hard to bear, at times unbearable.

But those were times of weakness. Let anything be doubted rather than the
good guidance of the man who was her breath of life! Whither he led, let
her go, not only submissively, exultingly.

Thus she thought, under pressure of the knowledge, that unless rushing
into conflicts bigger than conceivable, she had to do it, and should
therefore think it.

This was the prudent woman's clear deduction from the state wherein she
found herself, created by the one first great step of the mad woman. Her
surrender then might be likened to the detachment of a flower on the
river's bank by swell of flood: she had no longer root of her own; away
she sailed, through beautiful scenery, with occasionally a crashing fall,
a turmoil, emergence from a vortex, and once more the sunny whirling
surface. Strange to think, she had not since then power to grasp in her
abstract mind a notion of stedfastness without or within.

But, say not the mad, say the enamoured woman. Love is a madness, having
heaven's wisdom in it--a spark. But even when it is driving us on the
breakers, call it love: and be not unworthy of it, hold to it. She and
Victor had drunk of a cup. The philtre was in her veins, whatever the
directions of the rational mind.

Exulting or regretting, she had to do it, as one in the car with a racing
charioteer. Or up beside a more than Titanically audacious balloonist.
For the charioteer is bent on a goal; and Victor's course was an
ascension from heights to heights. He had ideas, he mastered Fortune. He
conquered Nataly and held her subject, in being above his ambition; which
was now but an occupation for his powers, while the aim of his life was
at the giving and taking of simple enjoyment. In spite of his fits of
unreasonableness in the means--and the woman loving him could trace them
to a breath of nature--his gentle good friendly innocent aim in life was
of this very simplest; so wonderful, by contrast with his powers, that
she, assured of it as she was by experience of him, was touched, in a
transfusion of her feelings through lucent globes of admiration and of
tenderness, to reverence. There had been occasions when her wish for the
whole world to have proof and exhibition of his greatness, goodness, and
simplicity amid his gifts, prompted her incitement of him to stand forth
eminently: ('lead a kingdom,' was the phrase behind the curtain within her
shy bosom;) and it revealed her to herself, upon reflection, as being
still the Nataly who drank the cup with him, to join her fate with his.

And why not? Was that regretted? Far from it. In her maturity, the woman
was unable to send forth any dwelling thought or more than a flight of
twilight fancy, that cancelled the deed of her youth, and therewith
seemed to expunge near upon the half--of her term of years. If it came to
consideration of her family and the family's opinion of her conduct, her
judgement did not side with them or with herself, it whirled, swam to a
giddiness and subsided.

Of course, if she and Victor were to inhabit a large country-house, they
might as well have remained at Craye Farm or at Creckholt; both places
dear to them in turn. Such was the plain sense of the surface question.
And how strange it was to her, that he, of the most quivering
sensitiveness on her behalf; could not see, that he threw her into
situations where hard words of men and women threatened about her head;
where one or two might on a day, some day, be heard; and where, in the
recollection of two years back, the word 'Impostor' had smacked her on
both cheeks from her own mouth.

Now once more they were to run the same round of alarms, undergo the love
of the place, with perpetual apprehensions of having to leave it: alarms,
throbbing suspicions, like those of old travellers through the haunted
forest, where whispers have intensity of meaning, and unseeing we are
seen, and unaware awaited.

Nataly shook the rolls of her thick brown hair from her forehead; she
took strength from a handsome look of resolution in the glass. She could
always honestly say, that her courage would not fail him.

Victor tapped at the door; he stepped into the room, wearing his evening
white flower over a more open white waistcoat; and she was composed and
uninquiring. Their Nesta was heard on the descent of the stairs, with a
rattle of Donizetti's Il segreto to the skylights.

He performed his never-omitted lover's homage.

Nataly enfolded him in a homely smile. 'A country-house? We go and see it
to-morrow?'

'And you've been pining for a country home, my dear soul.'

'After the summer six weeks, the house in London does not seem a home to
return to.'

'And next day, Nataly draws five thousand pounds for the first sketch of
the furniture.'

'There is the Creckholt . . .' she had a difficulty in saying.

'Part of it may do. Lakelands requires--but you will see to-morrow.'

After a close shutting of her eyes, she rejoined: 'It is not a cottage?'

'Well, dear, no: when the Slave of the Lamp takes to building, he does
not run up cottages. And we did it without magic, all in a year; which is
quite as good as a magical trick in a night.' He drew her close to him.
'When was it my dear girl guessed me at work?'

'It was the other dear girl. Nesta is the guesser.'

'You were two best of souls to keep from bothering me; and I might have
had to fib; and we neither of us like that.' He noticed a sidling of her
look. 'More than the circumstances oblige:--to be frank. But now we can
speak of them. Wait--and the change comes; and opportunely, I have found.
It's true we have waited long; my darling has had her worries. However,
it 's here at last. Prepare yourself. I speak positively. You have to
brace up for one sharp twitch--the woman's portion! as Natata says--and
it's over.' He looked into her eyes for comprehension; and not finding
inquiry, resumed: 'Just in time for the entry into Lakelands. With the
pronouncement of the decree, we present the licence . . . at an altar
we've stood before, in spirit . . . one of the ladies of your family to
support you:--why not? Not even then?'

'No, Victor; they have cast me off.'

'Count on my cousins, the Duvidney ladies. Then we can say, that those
two good old spinsters are less narrow than the Dreightons. I have to
confess I rather think I was to blame for leaving Creckholt. Only, if I
see my girl wounded, I hate the place that did the mischief. You and
Fredi will clap hands for the country about Lakelands.'

'Have you heard from her . . . of her . . . is it anything, Victor?'
Nataly asked him shyly; with not much of hope, but some readiness to be
inflated. The prospect of an entry into the big new house, among a new
society, begirt by the old nightmares and fretting devils, drew her into
staring daylight or furnace-light.

He answered: 'Mrs. Burman has definitely decided. In pity of us?--to be
free herself?--who can say! She 's a woman with a conscience--of a kind:
slow, but it brings her to the point at last. You know her, know her
well. Fenellan has it from her lawyer--her lawyer! a Mr. Carting; a
thoroughly trustworthy man--'

'Fenellan, as a reporter?'

'Thoroughly to be trusted on serious matters. I understand that Mrs.
Burman:--her health is awful: yes, yes; poor woman! poor woman! we feel
for her:--she has come to perceive her duty to those she leaves behind.
Consider: she HAS used the rod. She must be tired out--if human. And she
is. One remembers traits.'

Victor sketched one or two of the traits allusively to the hearer
acquainted with them. They received strong colouring from midday's Old
Veuve in his blood. His voice and words had a swing of conviction: they
imparted vinousness to a heart athirst.

The histrionic self-deceiver may be a persuasive deceiver of another, who
is again, though not ignorant of his character, tempted to swallow the
nostrums which have made so gallant a man of him: his imperceptible
sensible playing of the part, on a substratum of sincereness, induces
fascinatingly to the like performance on our side, that we may be armed
as he is for enjoying the coveted reality through the partial simulation
of possessing it. And this is not a task to us when we have looked our
actor in the face, and seen him bear the look, knowing that he is not
intentionally untruthful; and when we incline to be captivated by his
rare theatrical air of confidence; when it seems as an outside thought
striking us, that he may not be altogether deceived in the present
instance; when suddenly an expectation of the thing desired is born and
swims in a credible featureless vagueness on a misty scene: and when we
are being kissed and the blood is warmed. In fine, here as everywhere
along our history, when the sensations are spirited up to drown the mind,
we become drift-matter of tides, metal to magnets. And if we are women,
who commonly allow the lead to men, getting it for themselves only by
snaky cunning or desperate adventure, credulity--the continued trust in
the man--is the alternative of despair.

'But, Victor, I must ask,' Nataly said: 'you have it through Simeon
Fenellan; you have not yourself received the letter from her lawyer?'

'My knowledge of what she would do near the grave--poor soul, yes! I
shall soon be hearing.'

'You do not, propose to enter this place until--until it is over?'

'We enter this place, my love, without any sort of ceremony. We live
there independently, and we can we have quarters there for our friends.
Our one neighbour is London--there! And at Lakelands we are able to
entertain London and wife;--our friends, in short; with some, what we
have to call, satellites. You inspect the house and grounds
to-morrow--sure to be fair. Put aside all but the pleasant recollections
of Craye and Creckholt. We start on a different footing. Really nothing
can be simpler. Keeping your town-house, you are now and then in
residence at Lakelands, where you entertain your set, teach them to feel
the charm of country life: we have everything about us; could have had
our own milk and cream up to London the last two months. Was it very
naughty?--I should have exploded my surprise! You will see, you will see
to-morrow.'

Nataly nodded, as required. 'Good news from the mines?' she said.

He answered: 'Dartrey is--yes, poor fellow! Dartrey is confident, from
the yield of stones, that the value of our claim counts in a number of
millions. The same with the gold. But gold-mines are lodgeings, not
homes.'

'Oh, Victor! if money . . . ! But why did you say "poor fellow" of
Dartrey Fenellan?'

'You know how he's . . .'

'Yes, yes,' she said hastily. 'But has that woman been causing fresh
anxiety?'

'And Natata's chief hero on earth is not to be named a poor fellow,' said
he, after a negative of the head on a subject they neither of them liked
to touch.

Then he remembered that Dartrey Fenellan was actually a lucky fellow; and
he would have mentioned the circumstance confided to him by Simeon, but
for a downright dread of renewing his painful fit of envy. He had also
another, more distant, very faint idea, that it had better not be
mentioned just yet, for a reason entirely undefined.