One of Our Conquerors, v4
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George Meredith >> One of Our Conquerors, v4
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Her lighted mind punished her thus through her conjuring of Dudley's
words, should news of her relations with Mrs. Marsett reach him:--and she
would have to tell him. Would he not say: 'I have borne with the things
concerning your family. All the greater reason why I must insist'--he
would assuredly say he insisted (her humour caught at the word, as being
the very word one could foresee and clearly see him uttering in a fit of
vehemence) on her immediate abandonment of 'that woman.'
And with Nesta's present enlightenment by dusky beams, upon her
parentage, she listened abjectly to Dudley, or the opinion of the
majority. Would he not say or think, that her clinging to Mrs. Marsett
put them under a kind of common stamp, or gave the world its option to
class them together?
These were among the ideas chasing in a head destined to be a battle-
field for the enrichment of a harvest-field of them, while the girl's
face was hidden on Dorothea's lap, and her breast heaved and heaved.
She distressed them when she rose, by saying she must instantly see her
mother.
They saw the pain their hesitation inflicted, and Dorothea said: 'Yes,
dear; any day you like.'
'To-morrow--I must go to her to-morrow!'
A suggestion of her mother's coming down, was faintly spoken by one lady,
echoed in a quaver by the other.
Nesta shook her head. To quiet the kind souls, she entreated them to
give their promise that they would invite her again.
Imagining the Hon. Dudley to have cast her off, both ladies embraced her:
not entirely yielding-up their hearts to her, by reason of the pernicious
new ideas now in the world to sap our foundations of morality; which
warned them of their duty to uphold mentally his quite justifiable
behaviour, even when compassionating the sufferings of the guiltless
creature loved by them.
CHAPTER XXXIV
CONTAINS DEEDS UNRELATED AND EXPOSITIONS OF FEELINGS
All through the afternoon and evening Skepsey showed indifference to
meals by continuing absent: and he was the one with whom Nesta would have
felt at home; more at home than with her parents. He and the cool world
he moved in were a transparency of peace to her mind; even to his giving
of some portion of it, when she had the dear little man present to her in
a vivid image of a fish in a glass globe, wandering round and round, now
and then shooting across, just as her Skepsey did: he carried his head
semihorizontally at his arrowy pace; plain to read though he was, he
appeared, under that image created of him, animated by motives inducing
to speculation.
She thought of him till she could have reproached him for not returning
and helping her to get away from the fever of other thoughts:--this
anguish twisting about her parents, and the dreadful trammels of
gratitude to a man afflictingly generous, the frown of congregated
people.
The latter was the least of evils; she had her charges to bring against
them for injustice: uncited, unstirred charges, they were effective as a
muffled force to sustain her: and the young who are of healthy lively
blood and clean conscience have either emotion or imagination to fold
them defensively from an enemy world; whose power to drive them forth
into the wilderness they acknowledge. But in the wilderness their souls
are not beaten down by breath of mortals; they burn straight flame there
up to the parent Spirit.
She could not fancy herself flying thither;--where to be shorn and naked
and shivering is no hardship, for the solitude clothes, and the sole true
life in us resolves to that steady flame;--she was restrained by Dudley's
generosity, which held her fast to have the forgiveness for her
uncommitted sin dashed in her face. He surprised her; the unexpected
quality in him seemed suddenly to have snared her fast: and she did not
obtain release after seeing behind it;--seeing it, by the light of what
she demanded, personal, shallow, a lover's generosity. So her keen
intellect saw it; and her young blood (for the youthful are thus divided)
thrilled in thinking it must be love! The name of the sacred passion
lifted it out of the petty cabin of the individual into a quiring
cathedral universal, and subdued her. It subdued her with an unwelcome
touch of tenderness when she thought of it as involving tenderness for
her mother, some chivalrous respect for her mother. Could he love the
daughter without some little, which a more intimate knowledge of her dear
mother would enlarge? The girl's heart flew to her mother, clung to her,
vindicated her dumbly. It would not inquire, and it refused to hear,
hungering the while. She sent forth her flights of stories in
elucidation of the hidden; and they were like white bird after bird
winging to covert beneath a thundercloud; until her breast ached for the
voice of the thunder: harsh facts: sure as she was of her never losing
her filial hold of the beloved. She and her mother grew together, they
were one. Accepting the shadow, they were the closer one beneath it.
She had neither vision nor active thought of her father, in whom her
pride was.
At the hour of ten, the ladies retired for the enjoyment of their sweet
reward. Manton, their maid, came down to sit with Nesta on the watch for
Skepsey. Perrin, the footman, returning, as late as twenty minutes to
eleven, from his tobacco promenade along the terrace, reported to Manton
'a row in town'; and he repeated to Nesta the policeman's opinion and his
own of the 'Army' fellows, and the way to treat them. Both were for
rigour.
'The name of "Army" attracts poor Skepsey so, I am sure he would join it,
if they would admit him,' Nesta said.
'He has an immense respect for a young woman, who belongs to his "Army";
and one doesn't know what may have come,' said Manton.
Two or three minutes after eleven, a feeble ring at the bell gained
admission for some person: whispering was heard in the passage.
Manton played eavesdropper, and suddenly bursting on Skepsey, arrested
him when about to dash upstairs. His young mistress's voice was a
sufficient command; he yielded; he pitched a smart sigh and stepped
into her presence for his countenance to be seen, or the show of a
countenance, that it presented.
'Skepsey wanted to rush to bed without saying good night to me?' said
she; leaving unnoticed, except for woefulness of tone, his hurried
shuffle of remarks on 'his appearance,' and 'little accidents'; ending
with an inclination of his disgraceful person to the doorway, and a
petition: 'If I might, Miss Nesta?' The implied pathetic reference to a
surgically-treated nose under a cross of strips of plaster, could not
obtain dismissal for him. And he had one eye of sinister hue, showing
beside its lighted-grey fellow as if a sullen punished dragonwhelp had
couched near some quick wood-pigeon. The two eyes blinked rapidly. He
was a picture of Guilt in the nude, imploring to be sent into
concealment.
The cruelty of detaining him was evident.
'Yes, if you must,' Nesta said. 'But, dear Skepsey, will it be the
magistrate again to-morrow?'
He feared it would be; he fancied it would needs be. He concluded
by stating, that he was bound to appear before the magistrate in the
morning; and he begged assistance to keep it from the knowledge of the
Miss Duvidneys, who had been so kind to him.
'Has there been bailing of you again, Skepsey?'
'A good gentleman, a resident,' he replied; 'a military gentleman;
indeed, a colonel of the cavalry; but, it may so be, retired; and anxious
about our vast possessions; though he thinks a translation of a French
attack on England unimportant. He says, the Germans despise us most.'
'Then this gentleman thinks you have a good case?'
'He is a friend of Captain Dartrey's.'
Hearing that name, Nesta said: 'Now, Skepsey, you must tell me
everything. You are not to mind your looks. I believe, I do always
believe you mean well.'
'Miss Nesta, it depends upon the magistrate's not being prejudiced
against the street-processionists!
'But you may expect justice from the magistrate, if your case is good?'
'I would not say no, Miss Nesta. But we find, the opinion of the public
has its effect with magistrates--their sentences. They are severe on
boxing. They have latterly treated the "Army" with more consideration,
owing to the change in the public view. I myself have changed.'
'Have you joined it?'
'I cannot say I am a member of it.'
'You walked in the ranks to-day, and you were maltreated? Your friend
was there?'
'I walked with Matilda Pridden; that is, parallel, along the pavement.'
'I hope she came out of it unhurt?'
'It is thanks to Captain Dartrey, Miss Nesta?'
This time Nesta looked her question.
Manton interposed: 'You are to speak, Mr. Skepsey'; and she stopped a
flood of narrative, that was knocking in his mind to feel its head and to
leap--an uninterrupted half-minute more would have shaped the story for
the proper flow.
He began, after attending to the throb of his bruises in a manner to
correct them rather than solace; and the beginning was the end: 'Captain
Dartrey rescued us, before Matilda Pridden suffered harm, to mention--the
chin, slight, teeth unshaken; a beautiful set. She is angry with Captain
Dartrey, for having recourse to violence in her defence: it is against
her principles. "Then you die," she says; and our principles are to gain
more by death. She says, we are alive in them; but worse if we abandon
them for the sake of living.--I am a little confused; she is very
abstruse.--Because, that is the corruptible life, she says. I have found
it quite impossible to argue with her; she has always a complete answer;
wonderful. In case of Invasion, we are to lift our voices to the Lord;
and the Lord's will shall be manifested. If we are robbed, we ask, How
came we by the goods? It is unreasonable; it strikes at rights of
property. But I have to go on thinking. When in danger, she sings
without excitement. When the blow struck her, she stopped singing only
an instant. She says, no one fears, who has real faith. She will not
let me call her brave. She cannot admire Captain Dartrey. Her
principles are opposed. She said to him, "Sir, you did what seemed to
you right." She thinks every blow struck sends us back to the state of
the beasts. Her principles . . .'
'How was it Captain Dartrey happened to be present, Skepsey?'
'She is very firm. You cannot move her.--Captain Dartrey was on his way
to the station, to meet a gentleman from London, Miss Nesta. He carried
a stick--a remarkable stick--he had shown to me in the morning, and he
has given it me now. He says, he has done his last with it. He seems to
have some of Matilda Pridden's ideas about fighting, when it's over. He
was glad to be rid of the stick, he said.'
'But who attacked you? What were the people?'
'Captain Dartrey says, England may hold up her head while she breeds
young women like Matilda Pridden: right or wrong, he says: it is the
substance.'
Hereupon Manton, sick of Miss Pridden, shook the little man with a
snappish word, to bring him to attention. She got him together
sufficiently for him to give a lame version of the story; flat until he
came to his heroine's behaviour, when he brightened a moment, and he sank
back absorbed in her principles and theories of life. It was understood
by Nesta, that the processionists, going at a smart pace, found their way
blocked and were assaulted in one of the sidestreets; and that Skepsey
rushed to the defence of Matilda Pridden; and that, while they were
engaged, Captain Dartrey was passing at the end of the street, and
recognized one he knew in the thick of it and getting the worst of it,
owing to numbers. 'I will show you the stick he did it with, Miss
Nests'; said Skepsey, regardless of narrative; and darted out of the room
to bring in the Demerara supple-jack; holding which, he became inspired
to relate something of Captain Dartrey's deeds.
They gave no pleasure to his young lady, as he sadly perceived:--thus it
is with the fair sex ever, so fond of heroes! She shut her eyes from the
sight of the Demerara supple-jack descending right and left upon the
skulls of a couple of bully lads. 'That will do--you were rescued. And
now go to bed, Skepsey; and be up at seven to breakfast with me,' Nesta
said, for his battle-damaged face would be more endurable to behold after
an interval, she hoped; and she might in the morning dissociate its evil
look from the deeds of Captain Dartrey.
The thought of her hero taking active part in a streetfray, was repulsive
to her; it swamped his brilliancy. And this distressed her, by
withdrawing the support which the thought of him had been to her since
mid-day. She lay for sleepless hours, while nursing a deeper pain, under
oppression of repugnance to battle-dealing, bloodshedding men. It was
long before she grew mindful of the absurdity of the moan recurring
whenever reflection wearied. Translated into speech, it would have run:
'In a street of the town! with a stick!'--The vulgar picture pursued her
to humiliation; it robbed her or dimmed her possession of the one bright
thing she had remaining to her. So she deemed it during the heavy sighs
of night; partly conscious, that in some strange way it was as much as
tossing her to the man who never could have condescended to the
pugnacious using of a stick in a street. He, on the contrary, was a
cover to the shamefaced.
Her heart was weak that night. She hovered above it, but not so detached
as to scorn it for fawning to one--any one--who would offer her and her
mother a cover from scorn. And now she exalted Dudley's generosity, now
clung to a low idea of a haven in her father's wealth; and she was
unaware, that the second mood was deduced from the first. She did know
herself cowardly: she had, too, a critic in her clear head, to spurn at
the creature who could think of purchasing the world's respect. Dudley's
generosity sprang up to silence the voice. She could praise him, on a
review of it, for delicacy, moreover; and the delicacy laid her under a
more positive obligation. Her sense of it was not without a toneless
quaint faint savour of the romantic, that her humour little humorously
caught at, to paint her a picture of former heroes of fiction, who win
their trying lady by their perfection of good conduct on a background of
high birth; and who are not seen to be wooden before the volume closes.
Her fatigue of sleeplessness plunged her into the period of poke-bonnets
and peaky hats to admire him; giving her the kind of sweetness we may
imagine ourselves to get in the state of tired horse munching hay. If
she had gone to her bed with a noble or simply estimable plain image of
one of her friends in her heart, to sustain it, she would not have been
thus abject. Skepsey's discoloured eye, and Captain Dartrey's behaviour
behind it, threw her upon Dudley's generosity, as being the shield for an
outcast. Girls, who see at a time of need their ideal extinguished in
its appearing tarnished, are very much at the disposal of the pressing
suitor. Nesta rose in the black winter morn, summoning the best she
could think of to glorify Dudley, that she might not feel so doomed.
According to an agreement overnight, she went to the bedroom of Dorothea
and Virginia, to assure them of her having slept well, and say the good-
bye to them and their Tasso. The little dog was the growl of a silken
ball in a basket. His mistresses excused him, because of his being
unused to the appearance of any person save Manton in their bedroom.
Dorothea, kissing her, said: 'Adieu, dear child; and there is home with
us always, remember. And, after breakfast, however it may be, you will,
for our greater feeling of security, have--she has our orders--Manton--
your own maid we consider too young for a guardian--to accompany you.
We will not have it on our consciences, that by any possibility harm came
to you while you were under our charge. The good innocent girl we
received from the hands of your father, we return to him; we are sure of
that.'
Nesta said: 'Mr. Sowerby promised he would come.'
'However it may be,' Dorothea repeated her curtaining phrase.
Virginia put in a word of apology for Tasso's temper he enjoyed
ordinarily a slumber of half an hour's longer duration. He was, Dorothea
feelingly added, regularity itself. Virginia murmured: 'Except once!'
and both were appalled by the recollection of that night. It had,
nevertheless, caused them to reperuse the Rev. Stuart Rem's published
beautiful sermon ON DIRT; the words of which were an antidote to the
night of Tasso in the nostrils of Mnemosyne; so that Dorothea could reply
to her sister, slightly by way of a reproval, quoting Mr. Stuart Rem at
his loftiest: '"Let us not bring into the sacred precincts Dirt from the
roads, but have a care to spread it where it is a fructification."'
Virginia produced the sequent sentence, likewise weighty. Nesta stood
between the thin division of their beds, her right hand given to one, her
left to the other. They had the semblance of a haven out of storms.
She reflected, after shutting the door of their room, that the residing
with them had been a means of casting her--it was an effort to remember
how--upon the world where the tree of knowledge grows. She had eaten;
and she might be the worse for it; but she was raised to a height that
would not let her look with envy upon peace and comfort. Luxurious quiet
people were as ripening glass-house fruits. Her bitter gathering of the
knowledge of life had sharpened her intellect; and the intellect, even in
the young, is, and not less usefully, hard metal rather than fallow soil.
But for the fountain of human warmth at her breast, she might have
been snared by the conceit of intellect, to despise the simple and
conventional, or shed the pity which is charity's contempt. She had
only to think of the kindness of the dear good ladies; her heart jumped
to them at once. And when she fancied hearing those innocent souls of
women embracing her and reproaching her for the knowledge of life she now
bore, her words down deep in her bosom were: It has helped me to bear the
shock of other knowledge! How would she have borne it before she knew of
the infinitely evil? Saving for the tender compassion weeping over her
mother, she had not much acute personal grief.
For this world condemning her birth, was the world tolerant of that
infinitely evil! Her intellect fortified her to be combative by day,
after the night of imagination; which splendid power is not so
serviceable as the logical mind in painful seasons: for night revealed
the world snorting Dragon's breath at a girl guilty of knowing its
vilest. More than she liked to recall, it had driven her scorched, half
withered, to the shelter of Dudley. The daylight, spreading thin at the
windows, restored her from that weakness. 'We will quit England,' she
said, thinking of her mother and herself, and then of her father's surely
following them. She sighed thankfully, half way through the breakfast
with Skepsey, at sight of the hour by the clock; she was hurriedly
sentient of the puzzle of her feelings, when she guessed at a chance that
Dudley would be delayed. She supposed herself as possibly feeling not so
well able to keep every thought of her head brooding on her mother in
Dudley's company.
Skepsey's face was just sufferable by light of day, if one pitied
reflecting on his honest intentions; it ceased to discolour another.
He dropped a few particulars of his hero in action; but the heroine
eclipsed. He was heavier than ever with his Matilda Pridden. At the
hour for departure, Perrin had a conveyance at the door. Nesta sent off
Skepsey with a complimentary message to Captain Dartrey. Her maid Mary
begged her to finish her breakfast; Manton suggested the waiting a
further two or three minutes. 'We must not be late,' Nesta said; and
when the minute-hand of the clock marked ample time for the drive to the
station, she took her seat and started, keeping her face resolutely set
seaward, having at her ears the ring of a cry that was to come from
Manton. But Manton was dumb; she spied no one on the pavement who
signalled to stop them. And no one was at the station to greet them.
They stepped into a carriage where they were alone. Dudley with his
dreaded generosity melted out of Nesta's thoughts, like the vanishing
steam-wreath on the dip between the line and the downs.
She passed into music, as she always did under motion of carriages and
trains, whether in happiness or sadness: and the day being one that had a
sky, the scenic of music swung her up to soar. None of her heavy burdens
enchained, though she knew the weight of them, with those of other
painful souls. The pipeing at her breast gave wings to large and small
of the visible; and along the downs went stateliest of flowing dances;
a copse lengthened to forest; a pool of cattle-water caught grey for
flights through enchantment. Cottage-children, wherever seen in groups,
she wreathed above with angels to watch them. Her mind all the while was
busy upon earth, embracing her mother, eyeing her father. Imagination
and our earthly met midway, and still she flew, until she was brought to
the ground by a shot. She struggled to rise, uplifting Judith Marsett: a
woman not so very much older than her own teens, in the count of years,
and ages older; and the world pulling at her heels to keep her low. That
unhappiest had no one but a sisterly girl to help her: and how she clung
to the slender help! Who else was there?
The good and the bad in the woman struck separate blows upon the
girl's resonant nature. She perceived the good, and took it into her
reflections. The bad she divined: it approached like some threat of
inflammation. Natures resonant as that which animated this girl, are
quick at the wells of understanding: and she had her intimations of the
world's wisdom in withholding contagious presences from the very mangy of
the young, who may not have an, aim, or ideal or strong human compassion,
for a preservative. She was assured of her possessing it. She asked
herself in her mother's voice, and answered mutely. She had the
certainty: for she rebuked the slavish feverishness of the passion,
as betrayed by Mrs. Marsett; and the woman's tone, as of strung wires
ringing on a rage of the wind. Then followed her cry for the man who
could speak to Captain Marsett of his duty in honour. An image of one,
accompanying the faster beats of her heart, beguiled her to think away
from the cause. He, the one man known to her, would act the brother's
part on behalf of the hapless creature.
Nesta just imagined her having supplicated him, and at once imagination
came to dust. She had to thank him she knelt to him. For the first time
of her life she found herself seized with her sex's shudder in the blood.
CHAPTER XXXV
IN WHICH AGAIN WE MAKE USE OF THE OLD LAMPS FOR LIGHTING AN ABYSMAL
DARKNESS
And if Nesta had looked out of her carriage-window soon after the train
began to glide, her eagle of imagination would have reeled from the
heights, with very different feelings, earlier, perhaps a captive, at
sight of the tardy gentleman rushing along the platform, and bending ear
to the footman Perrin, and staring for one lost.
The snaky tail of the train imparted to Dudley an apprehension of the
ominous in his having missed her. It wound away, and left regrets, which
raised a chorus of harsh congratulations from the opposite party of his
internal parliament.
Neither party could express an opinion without rousing the other to an
uproar.
He had met his cousin Southweare overnight. He had heard, that there was
talk of Miss Radnor. Her name was in the mouth of Major Worrell. It was
coupled with the name of Mrs. Marsett. A military captain, in the
succession to be Sir Edward Marsett, bestowed on her the shadow of his
name.
It could be certified, that Miss Radnor visited the woman at her house.
What are we to think of Miss Radnor, save that daughters of depraved
parents! . . . A torture undeserved is the Centaur's shirt for
driving us to lay about in all directions. He who had swallowed so much
--a thunderbolt: a still undigested discharge from the perplexing heavens
jumped frantic under the pressure upon him of more, and worse. A girl
getting herself talked of at a Club! And she of all young ladies should
have been the last to draw round her that buzz of tongues. On such a
subject!--The parents pursuing their career of cynical ostentation in
London, threw an evil eye of heredity on their offspring in the egg;
making anything credible, pointing at tendencies.
An alliance with her was impossible. So said disgust. Anger came like a
stronger beast, and extinguished the safety there was in the thing it
consumed, by growing so excessive as to require tempering with drops of
compassion; which prepared the way for a formal act of cold forgiveness;
and the moment that was conceived, he had a passion to commit the
horrible magnanimity, and did it on a grand scale, and dissolved his
Heart in the grandeur, and slaved himself again.
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