One of Our Conquerors, v1

G >> George Meredith >> One of Our Conquerors, v1

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Off we go to the kitchen-garden. There the admiration is genial,
practical. We admire the extent of the beds marked out for asparagus,
and the French disposition of the planting at wide intervals; and the
French system of training peach, pear, and plum trees on the walls to win
length and catch sun, we much admire. We admire the gardener. We are
induced temporarily to admire the French people. They are sagacious in
fruit-gardens. They have not the English Constitution, you think
rightly; but in fruit-gardens they grow for fruit, and not, as Victor
quotes a friend, for wood, which the valiant English achieve. We hear
and we see examples of sagacity; and we are further brought round to the
old confession, that we cannot cook; Colney Durance has us there; we have
not studied herbs and savours; and so we are shocked backward step by
step until we retreat precipitately into the nooks where waxen tapers,
carefully tended by writers on the Press, light-up mysterious images of
our national selves for admiration. Something surely we do, or we should
not be where we are. But what is it we do (excepting cricket, of course)
which others cannot do? Colney asks; and he excludes cricket and
football.

An acutely satiric man in an English circle, that does not resort to the
fist for a reply to him, may almost satiate the excessive fury roused in
his mind by an illogical people of a provocative prosperity, mainly
tongueless or of leaden tongue above the pressure of their necessities,
as he takes them to be. They give him so many opportunities. They are
angry and helpless as the log hissing to the saw. Their instinct to make
use of the downright in retort, restrained as it is by a buttoned coat of
civilization, is amusing, inviting. Colney Durance allured them to the
quag's edge and plunged them in it, to writhe patriotically; and although
it may be said, that they felt their situation less than did he the venom
they sprang in his blood, he was cruel; he caused discomfort. But these
good friends about him stood for the country, an illogical country; and
as he could not well attack his host Victor Radnor, an irrational man,
he selected the abstract entity for the discharge of his honest spite.

The irrational friend was deeper at the source of his irritation than the
illogical old motherland. This house of Lakelands, the senselessness of
his friend in building it and designing to live in it, after experiences
of an incapacity to stand in a serene contention with the world he
challenged, excited Colney's wasp. He was punished, half way to frenzy
behind his placable demeanour, by having Dr. Schlesien for chorus. And
here again, it was the unbefitting, not the person, which stirred his
wrath. A German on English soil should remember the dues of a guest.
At the same time, Colney said things to snare the acclamation of an
observant gentleman of that race, who is no longer in his first
enthusiasm for English beef and the complexion of the women. 'Ah, ya,
it is true, what you say: "The English grow as fast as odders, but they
grow to corns instead of brains." They are Bull. Quaat true.' He
bellowed on a laugh the last half of the quotation.

Colney marked him. His encounters with Fenellan were enlivening
engagements and left no malice; only a regret, when the fencing passed
his guard, that Fenellan should prefer to flash for the minute. He would
have met a pert defender of England, in the person of Miss Priscilla
Graves, if she had not been occupied with observation of the bearing of
Lady Grace Halley toward Mr. Victor Radnor; which displeased her on
behalf of Mrs. Victor; she was besides hostile by race and class to
an aristocratic assumption of licence. Sparing Colney, she with some
scorn condemned Mr. Pempton for allowing his country to be ridiculed
without a word. Mr. Pempton believed that the Vegetarian movement was
more progressive in England than in other lands, but he was at the
disadvantage with the fair Priscilla, that eulogy of his compatriots
on this account would win her coldest approval. 'Satire was never an
argument,' he said, too evasively.

The Rev. Septimus Barmby received the meed of her smile, for saying in
his many-fathom bass, with an eye on Victor: 'At least we may boast of
breeding men, who are leaders of men.'

The announcement of luncheon, by Victor's butler Arlington, opportunely
followed and freighted the remark with a happy recognition of that which
comes to us from the hands of conquerors. Dr. Schlesien himself, no
antagonist to England, but like Colney Durance, a critic, speculated in
view of the spread of pic-nic provision beneath the great glass dome, as
to whether it might be, that these English were on another start out of
the dust in vigorous commercial enterprise, under leadership of one of
their chance masterly minds-merchant, in this instance: and be debated
within, whether Genius, occasionally developed in a surprising superior
manner by these haphazard English, may not sometimes wrest the prize from
Method; albeit we count for the long run, that Method has assurance of
success, however late in the race to set forth.

Luncheon was a merry meal, with Victor and Nataly for host and hostess;
Fenellan, Colney Durance, and Lady Grace Halley for the talkers. A gusty
bosom of sleet overhung the dome, rattled on it, and rolling Westward,
became a radiant mountain-land, partly worthy of Victor's phrase: 'A
range of Swiss Alps in air.'

'With periwigs Louis Quatorze for peaks,' Colney added.

And Fenellan improved on him: 'Or a magnified Bench of Judges at the
trial of your caerulean Phryne.'

The strip of white cloud flew on a whirl from the blue, to confirm it.

But Victor and Lady Grace rejected any play of conceits upon nature.
Violent and horrid interventions of the counterfeit, such mad similes
appeared to them, when pure coin was offered. They loathed the Rev.
Septimus Barmby for proclaiming, that he had seen 'Chapters of Hebrew
History in the grouping of clouds.'

His gaze was any one of the Chapters upon Nesta. The clerical
gentleman's voice was of a depth to claim for it the profoundest which
can be thought or uttered; and Nesta's tender youth had taken so strong
an impression of sacredness from what Fenellan called 'his chafer tones,'
that her looks were often given him in gratitude, for the mere sound.
Nataly also had her sense of safety in acquiescing to such a voice coming
from such a garb. Consequently, whenever Fenellan and Colney were at
him, drawing him this way and that for utterances cathedral in sentiment
and sonorousness, these ladies shed protecting beams; insomuch that he
was inspired to the agreeable conceptions whereof frequently rash
projects are an issue.

Touching the neighbours of Lakelands, they were principally enriched
merchants, it appeared; a snippet or two of the fringe of aristocracy lay
here and there among them; and one racy-of-the-soil old son of Thames,
having the manners proper to last century's yeoman. Mr. Pempton knew
something of this quaint Squire of Hefferstone, Beaves Urmsing by name;
a ruddy man, right heartily Saxon; a still glowing brand amid the ashes
of the Heptarchy hearthstone; who had a song, The Marigolds, which he
would troll out for you anywhere, on any occasion. To have so near to
the metropolis one from the centre of the venerable rotundity of the
country, was rare. Victor exclaimed 'Come!' in ravishment over the
picturesqueness of a neighbour carrying imagination away to the founts
of England; and his look at Nataly proposed. Her countenance was
inapprehensive. He perceived resistance, and said: 'I have met two or
three of them in the train: agreeable men: Gladding, the banker;
a General Fanning; that man Blathenoy, great billbroker. But the fact
is, close on London, we're independent of neighbours; we mean to be.
Lakelands and London practically join.'

'The mother city becoming the suburb,' murmured Colney, in report of the
union.

'You must expect to be invaded, sir,' said Mr. Sowerby; and Victor
shrugged: 'We are pretty safe.'

'The lock of a door seems a potent security until some one outside is
heard fingering the handle nigh midnight,' Fenellan threw out his airy
nothing of a remark.

It struck on Nataly's heart. 'So you will not let us be lonely here,'
she said to her guests.

The Rev. Septimus Barmby was mouthpiece for congregations. Sound of a
subterranean roar, with a blast at the orifice, informed her of their
'very deep happiness in the privilege.'

He comforted her. Nesta smiled on him thankfully.

'Don't imagine, Mrs. Victor, that you can be shut off from neighbours,
in a house like this; and they have a claim,' said Lady Grace, quitting
the table.

Fenellan and Colney thought so:

'Like mice at a cupboard.'

'Beetles in a kitchen.'

'No, no-no, no !' Victor shook head, pitiful over the good people likened
to things unclean, and royally upraising them: in doing which, he
scattered to vapour the leaden incubi they had been upon his flatter
moods of late. 'No, but it's a rapture to breathe the air here!' His
lifted chest and nostrils were for the encouragement of Nataly to soar
beside him.

She summoned her smile and nodded.

He spoke aside to Lady Grace: 'The dear soul wants time to compose
herself after a grand surprise.'

She replied: 'I think I could soon be reconciled. How much land?'

'In treaty for some hundred and eighty or ninety acres . . . in all
at present three hundred and seventy, including plantations, lake,
outhouses.'

'Large enough; land paying as it does--that is, not paying. We shall be
having to gamble in the City systematically for subsistence.'

'You will not so much as jest on the subject.'

Coming from such a man, that was clear sky thunder. The lady played
it off in a shadowy pout and shrug while taking a stamp of his
masterfulness, not so volatile.

She said to Nataly: 'Our place in Worcestershire is about half the size,
if as much. Large enough when we're not crowded out with gout and can
open to no one. Some day you will visit us, I hope.'

'You we count on here, Lady Grace.'

It was an over-accentuated response; unusual with this well-bred woman;
and a bit of speech that does not flow, causes us to speculate. The lady
resumed: 'I value the favour. We're in a horsey-doggy-foxy circle down
there. We want enlivening. If we had your set of musicians and
talkers!'

Nataly smiled in vacuous kindness, at a loss for the retort of a
compliment to a person she measured. Lady Grace also was an amiable
hostile reviewer. Each could see, to have cited in the other, defects
common to the lower species of the race, admitting a superior personal
quality or two; which might be pleaded in extenuation; and if the apology
proved too effective, could be dispersed by insistence upon it, under an
implied appeal to benevolence. When we have not a liking for the
creature whom we have no plain cause to dislike, we are minutely just.

During the admiratory stroll along the ground-floor rooms, Colney
Durance found himself beside Dr. Schlesien; the latter smoking, striding,
emphasizing, but bearable, as the one of the party who was not
perpetually at the gape in laudation. Colney was heard to say: 'No
doubt: the German is the race the least mixed in Europe: it might
challenge aboriginals for that. Oddly, it has invented the Cyclopaedia
for knowledge, the sausage for nutrition! How would you explain it?'

Dr. Schlesien replied with an Atlas shrug under fleabite to the
insensately infantile interrogation.

He in turn was presently heard.

'But, my good sir! you quote me your English Latin. I must beg of you
you write it down. It is orally incomprehensible to Continentals.'

'We are Islanders!' Colney shrugged in languishment.

'Oh, you do great things . . .' Dr. Schlesien rejoined in kindness,
making his voice a musical intimation of the smallness of the things.

'We build great houses, to employ our bricks'

'No, Colney, to live in,' said Victor.

'Scarcely long enough to warm them.'

'What do you . . . fiddle!'

'They are not Hohenzollerns !'

'It is true,' Dr. Schlesien called. 'No, but you learn discipline; you
build. I say wid you, not Hohenzollerns you build! But you shall look
above: Eyes up. Ire necesse est. Good, but mount; you come to
something. Have ideas.'

'Good, but when do we reach your level?'

'Sir, I do not say more than that we do not want instruction from
foreigners.'

'Pupil to paedagogue indeed. You have the wreath in Music, in
Jurisprudence, Chemistry, Scholarship, Beer, Arms, Manners.'

Dr. Schlesien puffed a tempest of tobacco and strode.

'He is chiselling for wit in the Teutonic block,' Colney said, falling
back to Fenellan.

Fenellan observed: 'You might have credited him with the finished
sculpture.'

'They're ahead of us in sticking at the charge of wit.'

'They've a widening of their swallow since Versailles.'

'Manners?'

'Well, that's a tight cravat for the Teutonic thrapple! But he's off by
himself to loosen it.'

Victor came on the couple testily. 'What are you two concocting!
I say, do keep the peace, please. An excellent good fellow; better up
in politics than any man I know; understands music; means well, you can
see. You two hate a man at all serious. And he doesn't bore with his
knowledge. A scholar too.'

'If he'll bring us the atmosphere of the groves of Academe, he may swing
his ferule pickled in himself, and welcome,' said Fenellan.

'Yes!' Victor nodded at a recognized antagonism in Fenellan; 'but
Colney's always lifting the Germans high above us.'

'It's to exercise his muscles.'

Victor headed to the other apartments, thinking that the Rev. Septimus
and young Sowerby, Old England herself, were spared by the diversion of
these light skirmishing shots from their accustomed victims to the
'masculine people of our time. His friends would want a drilling to be
of aid to him in his campaign to come. For it was one, and a great one.
He remembered his complete perception of the plan, all the elements of
it, the forward whirling of it, just before the fall on London Bridge.
The greatness of his enterprise laid such hold of him that the smallest
of obstacles had a villanous aspect; and when, as anticipated, Colney and
Fenellan were sultry flies for whomsoever they could fret, he was blind
to the reading of absurdities which caused Fredi's eyes to stream and
Lady Grace beside him to stand awhile and laugh out her fit. Young
Sowerby appeared forgiving enough--he was a perfect gentleman: but
Fredi's appalling sense of fun must try him hard. And those young
fellows are often more wounded by a girl's thoughtless laughter than
by a man's contempt. Nataly should have protected him. Her face had
the air of a smiling general satisfaction; sign of a pleasure below the
mark required; sign too of a sleepy partner for a battle. Even in the
wonderful kitchen, arched and pillared (where the explanation came to
Nesta of Madame Callet's frequent leave of absence of late, when an
inferior dinner troubled her father in no degree), even there his Nataly
listened to the transports of the guests with benign indulgence.

'Mama!' said Nesta, ready to be entranced by kitchens in her bubbling
animation: she meant the recalling of instances of the conspirator her
father had been.

'You none of you guessed Armandine's business!' Victor cried, in a glee
that pushed to make the utmost of this matter and count against chagrin.
'She was off to Paris; went to test the last inventions:--French brains
are always alert:--and in fact, those kitchen-ranges, gas and coal, and
the apparatus for warming plates and dishes, the whole of the battery is
on the model of the Duc d'Ariane's--finest in Europe. Well,' he agreed
with Colney, 'to say France is enough.'

Mr. Pempton spoke to Miss Graves of the task for a woman to conduct a
command so extensive. And, as when an inoffensive wayfarer has chanced
to set foot near a wasp's nest, out on him came woman and her champions,
the worthy and the sham, like a blast of powder.

Victor ejaculated: 'Armandine !' Whoever doubted her capacity, knew not
Armandine; or not knowing Armandine, knew not the capacity in women.

With that utterance of her name, he saw the orangey spot on London
Bridge, and the sinking Tower and masts and funnels, and the rising of
them, on his return to his legs; he recollected, that at the very edge of
the fall he had Armandine strongly in his mind. She was to do her part:
Fenellan and Colney on the surface, she below: and hospitality was to do
its part, and music was impressed--the innocent Concerts; his wealth, all
his inventiveness were to serve;--and merely to attract and win the
tastes of people, for a social support to Lakelands! Merely that? Much
more:--if Nataly's coldness to the place would but allow him to form an
estimate of how much. At the same time, being in the grasp of his
present disappointment, he perceived a meanness in the result, that was
astonishing and afflicting. He had not ever previously felt imagination
starving at the vision of success. Victor had yet to learn, that the man
with a material object in aim, is the man of his object; and the nearer
to his mark, often the farther is he from a sober self; he is more the
arrow of his bow than bow to his arrow. This we pay for scheming: and
success is costly; we find we have pledged the better half of ourselves
to clutch it; not to be redeemed with the whole handful of our prize!
He was, however, learning after his leaping fashion. Nataly's defective
sympathy made him look at things through the feelings she depressed.
A shadow of his missed Idea on London Bridge seemed to cross him from the
close flapping of a wing within reach. He could say only, that it would,
if caught, have been an answer to the thought disturbing him.

Nataly drew Colney Durance with her eyes to step beside her, on the
descent to the terrace. Little Skepsey hove in sight, coming swift as
the point of an outrigger over the flood.

CHAPTER X

SKEPSEY IN MOTION

The bearer of his master's midday letters from London shot beyond Nataly
as soon as seen, with an apparent snap of his body in passing. He
steamed to the end of the terrace and delivered the packet, returning at
the same rate of speed, to do proper homage to the lady he so much
respected. He had left the railway-station on foot instead of taking a
fly, because of a calculation that he would save three minutes; which he
had not lost for having to come through the raincloud. 'Perhaps the
contrary,' Skepsey said: it might be judged to have accelerated his
course: and his hat dripped, and his coat shone, and he soaped his hands,
cheerful as an ouzel-cock when the sun is out again.

'Many cracked crowns lately, in the Manly Art?' Colney inquired of him.
And Skepsey answered with precision of statement: 'Crowns, no, sir; the
nose, it may happen; but it cannot be said to be the rule.'

'You are of opinion, that the practice of Scientific Pugilism offers us
compensation for the broken bridge of a nose?'

'In an increase of manly self-esteem: I do, sir, yes.'

Skepsey was shy of this gentleman's bite; and he fancied his defence had
been correct. Perceiving a crumple of the lips of Mr. Durance, he took
the attitude of a watchful dubiety.

'But, my goodness, you are wet through!' cried Nataly, reproaching
herself for the tardy compassion; and Nesta ran up to them and heaped a
thousand pities on her 'poor dear Skip,' and drove him in beneath the
glass-dome to the fragments of pic-nic, and poured champagne for him,
'lest his wife should have to doctor him for a cold,' and poured afresh,
when he had obeyed her: 'for the toasting of Lakelands, dear Skepsey !'
impossible to resist: so he drank, and blinked; and was then told, that
before using his knife and fork he must betake himself to some fire of
shavings and chips, where coffee was being made, for the purpose of
drying his clothes. But this he would not hear of: he was pledged to
business, to convey his master's letters, and he might have to catch a
train by the last quarter-minute, unless it was behind the time-tables;
he must hold himself ready to start. Entreated, adjured, commanded,
Skepsey commiseratingly observed to Colney Durance, 'The ladies do not
understand, sir!' For Turk of Constantinople had never a more haremed
opinion of the unfitness of women in the brave world of action. The
persistence of these ladies endeavouring to obstruct him in the course of
his duty, must have succeeded save that for one word of theirs he had
two, and twice the promptitude of motion. He explained to them, as to
good children, that the loss of five minutes might be the loss of a Post,
the loss of thousands of pounds, the loss of the character of a Firm;
and he was away to the terrace. Nesta headed him and waved him back.
She and her mother rebuked him: they called him unreasonable; wherein
they resembled the chief example of the sex to him, in a wife he had at
home, who levelled that charge against her husband when most she needed
discipline: the woman laid hand on the very word legitimately his own
for the justification of his process with her.

'But, Skips! if you are ill and we have to nurse you!' said Nesta.

She forgot the hospital, he told her cordially, and laughed at the notion
of a ducking producing a cold or a cold a fever, or anything consumption,
with him. So the ladies had to keep down their anxious minds and allow
him to stand in wet clothing to eat his cold pie and salad.

Miss Priscilla Graves entering to them, became a witness that they were
seductresses for inducing him to drink wine--and a sparkling wine.

'It is to warm him,' they pleaded; and she said: 'He must be warm from
his walk'; and they said: 'But he is wet'; and said she, without a show
of feeling: 'Warm water, then'; and Skepsey writhed, as if in the grasp
of anatomists, at being the subject of female contention or humane
consideration. Miss Graves caught signs of the possible proselyte in
him; she remarked encouragingly:

'I am sure he does not like it; he still has a natural taste.'

She distressed his native politeness, for the glass was in his hand, and
he was fully aware of her high-principled aversion; and he profoundly
bowed to principles, believing his England to be pillared on them; and
the lady looked like one who bore the standard of a principle; and if we
slap and pinch and starve our appetites, the idea of a principle seems
entering us to support. Subscribing to a principle, our energies are
refreshed; we have a faith in the country that was not with us before the
act; and of a real well-founded faith come the glowing thoughts which we
have at times: thoughts of England heading the nations; when the smell of
an English lane under showers challenges Eden, and the threading of a
London crowd tunes discords to the swell of a cathedral organ. It may
be, that by the renunciation of any description of alcohol, a man will
stand clearer-headed to serve his country. He may expect to have a
clearer memory, for certain: he will not be asking himself, unable to
decide, whether his master named a Mr. Journeyman or a Mr. Jarniman, as
the person he declined to receive. Either of the two is repulsed upon
his application, owing to the guilty similarity of sounds but what we are
to think of is, our own sad state of inefficiency in failing to remember;
which accuses our physical condition, therefore our habits.--Thus the
little man debated, scarcely requiring more than to hear the right word,
to be a convert and make him a garland of the proselyte's fetters.

Destructively for the cause she advocated, Miss Priscilla gestured the
putting forth of an abjuring hand, with the recommendation to him, so to
put aside temptation that instant; and she signified in a very ugly jerk
of her features, the vilely filthy stuff Morality thought it, however
pleasing it might be to a palate corrupted by indulgence of the sensual
appetites.

But the glass had been handed to him by the lady he respected, who looked
angelical in offering it, divinely other than ugly; and to her he could
not be discourteous; not even to pay his homage to the representative of
a principle. He bowed to Miss Graves, and drank, and rushed forth;
hearing shouts behind him.

His master had a packet of papers ready, easy for the pocket.

'By the way, Skepsey,' he said, 'if a man named Jarniman should call at
the office, I will see him.'

Skepsey's grey eyes came out.

Or was it Journeyman, that his master would not see; and Jarniman that he
would?

His habit of obedience, pride of apprehension, and the time to catch the
train, forbade inquiry. Besides he knew of himself of old, that his
puzzles were best unriddled running.

The quick of pace are soon in the quick of thoughts.

Jarniman, then, was a man whom his master, not wanting to see, one day,
and wanting to see, on another day, might wish to conciliate: a case of
policy. Let Jarniman go. Journeyman, on the other hand, was nobody at
all, a ghost of the fancy. Yet this Journeyman was as important an
individual, he was a dread reality; more important to Skepsey in the
light of patriot: and only in that light was he permitted of a scrupulous
conscience and modest mind to think upon himself when the immediate
subject was his master's interests. For this Journeyman had not an
excuse for existence in Mr. Radnor's pronunciation: he was born of the
buzz of a troubled ear, coming of a disordered brain, consequent
necessarily upon a disorderly stomach, that might protest a degree of
comparative innocence, but would be shamed utterly under inspection of
the eye of a lady of principle.

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