Rhoda Fleming, Complete

G >> George Meredith >> Rhoda Fleming, Complete

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34

His opera-glass had been scouring the house for a sight of Mrs. Lovell,
and at last she appeared in Lord Elling's box.

"I can give you two minutes, Algy," she said, as he entered and found her
opportunely alone. "We have lost, I hear. No interjection, pray. Let it
be, fors l'honneur, with us. Come to me to-morrow. You have tossed
trinkets into my lap. They were marks of esteem, my cousin. Take them in
the same light back from me. Turn them into money, and pay what is most
pressing. Then go to Lord Suckling. He is a good boy, and won't distress
you; but you must speak openly to him at once. Perhaps he will help you.
I will do my best, though whether I can, I have yet to learn."

"Dear Mrs. Lovell!" Algernon burst out, and the corners of his mouth
played nervously.

He liked her kindness, and he was wroth at the projected return of his
gifts. A man's gifts are an exhibition of the royalty of his soul, and
they are the last things which should be mentioned to him as matters to
be blotted out when he is struggling against ruin. The lady had blunt
insight just then. She attributed his emotion to gratitude.

"The door may be opened at any minute," she warned him.

"It's not about myself," he said; "it's you. I believe I tempted you to
back the beastly horse. And he would have won--a fair race, and he would
have won easy. He was winning. He passed the stand a head ahead. He did
win. It's a scandal to the Turf. There's an end of racing in England.
It's up. They've done for themselves to-day. There's a gang. It's in the
hands of confederates."

"Think so, if it consoles you," said Mrs. Lovell, "don't mention your
thoughts, that is all."

"I do think so. Why should we submit to a robbery? It's a sold affair.
That Frenchman, Baron Vistocq, says we can't lift our heads after it."

"He conducts himself with decency, I hope."

"Why, he's won!"

"Imitate him."

Mrs. Lovell scanned the stalls.

"Always imitate the behaviour of the winners when you lose," she resumed.
"To speak of other things: I have had no letter of late from Edward. He
should be anxious to return. I went this morning to see that unhappy
girl. She consents."

"Poor creature," murmured Algernon; and added "Everybody wants money."

"She decides wisely; for it is the best she can do. She deserves pity,
for she has been basely used."

"Poor old Ned didn't mean," Algernon began pleading on his cousin's
behalf, when Mrs. Lovell's scornful eye checked the feeble attempt.

"I am a woman, and, in certain cases, I side with my sex."

"Wasn't it for you?"

"That he betrayed her? If that were so, I should be sitting in ashes."

Algernon's look plainly declared that he thought her a mystery.

The simplicity of his bewilderment made her smile.

"I think your colonies are the right place for you, Algy, if you can get
an appointment; which must be managed by-and-by. Call on me to-morrow, as
I said."

Algernon signified positively that he would not, and doggedly refused to
explain why.

"Then I will call on you," said Mrs. Lovell.

He was going to say something angrily, when Mrs. Lovell checked him:
"Hush! she is singing."

Algernon listened to the prima donna in loathing; he had so much to
inquire about, and so much to relate: such a desire to torment and be
comforted!

Before he could utter a word further, the door opened, and Major Waring
appeared, and he beheld Mrs. Lovell blush strangely. Soon after, Lord
Elling came in, and spoke the ordinary sentence or two concerning the
day's topic--the horse Templemore. Algernon quitted the box. His ears
were surcharged with sound entirely foreign to his emotions, and he
strolled out of the house and off to his dingy chambers, now tenanted by
himself alone, and there faced the sealed letters addressed to Edward,
which had, by order, not been forwarded. No less than six were in
Dahlia's handwriting. He had imagination sufficient to conceive the
lamentations they contained, and the reproach they were to his own
subserviency in not sending them. He looked at the postmarks. The last
one was dated two months back.

"How can she have cared a hang for Ned, if she's ready to go and marry a
yokel, for the sake of a home and respectability?" he thought, rather in
scorn; and, having established this contemptuous opinion of one of the
sex, he felt justified in despising all. "Just like women! They--no!
Peggy Lovell isn't. She's a trump card, and she's a coquette--can't help
being one. It's in the blood. I never saw her look so confoundedly lovely
as when that fellow came into the box. One up, one down. Ned's away, and
it's this fellow's turn. Why the deuce does she always think I'm a boy?
or else, she pretends to. But I must give my mind to business."

He drew forth the betting-book which his lively fancy had lost on the
Downs. Prompted by an afterthought, he went to the letter-box, saying,--

"Who knows? Wait till the day's ended before you curse your luck."

There was a foreign letter in it from Edward, addressed to him, and
another addressed to "Mr. Blancuv," that he tore open and read with
disgusted laughter. It was signed "N. Sedgett." Algernon read it twice
over, for the enjoyment of his critical detection of the vile grammar,
with many "Oh! by Joves!" and a concluding, "This is a curiosity!"

It was a countryman's letter, ill-spelt, involved, and of a character to
give Algernon a fine scholarly sense of superiority altogether novel.
Everybody abused Algernon for his abuse of common Queen's English in his
epistles: but here was a letter in comparison with which his own were
doctorial, and accordingly he fell upon it with an acrimonious rapture of
pedantry known to dull wits that have by extraordinary hazard pounced on
a duller.

"You're 'willing to forgeit and forgeive,' are you, you dog!" he
exclaimed, half dancing. "You'd forge anything, you rascal, if you could
disguise your hand--that, I don't doubt. You 'expeck the thousand pound
to be paid down the day of my marriage,' do you, you impudent ruffian!
'acording to agremint.' What a mercenary vagabond this is!"

Algernon reflected a minute. The money was to pass through his hands. He
compressed a desire to dispute with Sedgett that latter point about the
agreement, and opened Edward's letter.

It contained an order on a firm of attorneys to sell out so much Bank
Stock and pay over one thousand pounds to Mr. A. Blancove.

The beautiful concision of style in this document gave Algernon a feeling
of profound deference toward the law and its officers.

"Now, that's the way to Write!" he said.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Accompanying this pleasant, pregnant bit of paper, possessed of such
admirable literary excellence, were the following flimsy lines from
Edward's self, to Algernon incomprehensible.

As there is a man to be seen behind these lines in the dull unconscious
process of transformation from something very like a villain to something
by a few degrees more estimable, we may as well look at the letter in
full.

It begins with a neat display of consideration for the person addressed,
common to letters that are dictated by overpowering egoism:--

"Dear Algy,--I hope you are working and attending regularly to
office business. Look to that and to your health at present.
Depend upon it, there is nothing like work. Fix your teeth in it.
Work is medicine. A truism! Truisms, whether they lie in the
depths of thought, or on the surface, are at any rate the pearls of
experience.

"I am coming home. Let me know the instant this affair is over. I
can't tell why I wait here. I fall into lethargies. I write to no
one but to you. Your supposition that I am one of the hangers-on of
the coquette of her time, and that it is for her I am seeking to get
free, is conceived with your usual discrimination. For Margaret
Lovell? Do you imagine that I desire to be all my life kicking the
beam, weighed in capricious scales, appraised to the direct nicety,
petulantly taken up, probed for my weakest point, and then flung
into the grate like a child's toy? That's the fate of the several
asses who put on the long-eared Lovell-livery.

"All women are the same. Know one, know all. Aware of this, and
too wise to let us study them successfully, Nature pretty language
this is for you, Algy! I can do nothing but write nonsense. I am
sick of life. I feel choked. After a month, Paris is sweet
biscuit.

"I have sent you the order for the money. If it were two, or
twenty, thousand pounds, it would be the same to me.

"I swear to heaven that my lowest cynical ideas of women, and the
loathing with which their simply animal vagaries inspires a
thoughtful man, are distanced and made to seem a benevolent
criticism, by the actualities of my experience. I say that you
cannot put faith in a woman. Even now, I do not--it's against
reason--I do not believe that she--this Dahlia--means to go through
with it. She is trying me. I have told her that she was my wife.
Her self-respect--everything that keeps a woman's head up--must have
induced her to think so. Why, she is not a fool! How can she mean
to give herself to an ignorant country donkey? She does not: mark
me. For her, who is a really--I may say, the most refined nature I
have ever met, to affect this, and think of deceiving me, does not
do credit to her wits--and she is not without her share.

"I did once mean that she should be honourably allied to me. It's
comforting that the act is not the wife of the intention, or I
should now be yoked to a mere thing of the seasons and the hours--a
creature whose 'No' to-day is the 'Yes' of to-morrow. Women of this
cast are sure to end comfortably for themselves, they are so
obedient to the whips of Providence.

"But I tell you candidly, Algy, I believe she's pushing me, that she
may see how far I will let her go. I do not permit her to play at
this game with me." The difficulty is in teaching women that we are
not constituted as they are, and that we are wilfully earnest, while
they, who never can be so save under compulsion, carry it on with
us, expecting that at a certain crisis a curtain will drop, and we
shall take a deep breath, join hands, and exclaim, 'What an exciting
play!'--weeping luxuriously. The actualities of life must be
branded on their backs--you can't get their brains to apprehend
them.

"Poor things! they need pity. I am ready to confess I did not keep
my promise to her. I am very sorry she has been ill. Of course,
having no brains--nothing but sensations wherewith to combat every
new revolution of fortune, she can't but fall ill. But I think of
her; and I wish to God I did not. She is going to enter her own
sphere--though, mark me, it will turn out as I say, that, when it
comes to the crisis, there will be shrieks and astonishment that the
curtain doesn't fall and the whole resolve itself to what they call
a dream in our language, a farce.

"I am astonished that there should be no letters for me. I can
understand her not writing at first; but apparently she cherishes
rancour. It is not like her. I can't help thinking there must be
one letter from her, and that you keep it back. I remember that I
told you when I left England I desired to have no letter forwarded
to me, but I have repeatedly asked you since if there was a letter,
and it appears to me that you have shuffled in your answer. I
merely wish to know if there is a letter; because I am at present
out in my study of her character. It seems monstrous that she
should never have written! Don't you view it in that light? To be
ready to break with me, without one good-bye!--it's gratifying, but
I am astonished; for so gentle and tender a creature, such as I knew
her, never existed to compare with her. Ce qui est bien la preuve
que je ne la connaissais pas! I thought I did, which was my error.
I have a fatal habit of trusting to my observation less than to my
divining wit; and La Rochefoucauld is right: 'on est quelquefois un
sot avec de l'esprit; mais on ne Pest jamais avec du jugement.'
Well! better be deceived in a character than doubt it.

"This will soon be over. Then back to the dear old dusky chambers,
with the pick and the axe in the mine of law, till I strike a gold
vein, and follow it to the woolsack. I want peace. I begin to hate
pleading. I hope to meet Death full-wigged. By my troth, I will
look as grimly at him as he at me. Meantime, during a vacation, I
will give you holiday (or better, in the February days, if I can
spare time and Equity is dispensed without my aid), dine you, and
put you in the whirl of Paris. You deserve a holiday. Nunc est
bibendum! You shall sing it. Tell me what you think of her
behaviour. You are a judge of women. I think I am developing
nerves. In fact, work is what I need--a file to bite. And send me
also the name of this man who has made the bargain--who is to be her
husband. Give me a description of him. It is my duty to see that
he has principle; at least we're bound to investigate his character,
if it's really to go on. I wonder whether you will ever perceive
the comedy of, life. I doubt whether a man is happier when he does
perceive it. Perhaps the fact is, that he has by that time lost his
power of laughter; except in the case of here and there a very
tremendous philosopher.

"I believe that we comic creatures suffer more than your tragic
personages. We, do you see, are always looking to be happy and
comfortable; but in a tragedy, the doomed wretches are
liver-complexioned from the opening act. Their laughter is the owl:
their broadest smile is twilight. All the menacing horrors of an
eclipse are ours, for we have a sun over us; but they are born in
shades, with the tuck of a curtain showing light, and little can be
taken from them; so that they find scarce any terrors in the
inevitable final stroke. No; the comedy is painfullest. You and I,
Algy, old bachelors, will earn the right just to chuckle. We will
take the point of view of science, be the stage carpenters, and let
the actors move on and off. By this, we shall learn to take a
certain pride in the machinery. To become stage carpenter, is to
attain to the highest rank within the reach of intellectual man.
But your own machinery must be sound, or you can't look after that
of the theatre. Don't over-tax thy stomach, O youth!

"And now, farewell, my worthy ass! You have been thinking me one
through a fair half of this my letter, so I hasten to be in advance
of you, by calling you one. You are one: I likewise am one. We are
all one. The universal language is hee-haw, done in a grievous
yawn.

"Yours,

"Edward B.

"P.S.--Don't fail to send a letter by the next post; then, go and
see her; write again exactly what she says, and let me know the
man's name. You will not lose a minute. Also, don't waste ink in
putting Mrs. Lovell's name to paper: I desire not to hear anything
of the woman."

Algernon read this letter in a profound mystification, marvelling how it
could possibly be that Edward and Mrs. Lovell had quarrelled once more,
and without meeting.

They had parted, he knew or supposed that he knew, under an engagement to
arrange the preliminaries of an alliance, when Edward should return from
France; in other words, when Edward had thrown grave-dust on a naughty
portion of his past; severing an unwise connection. Such had certainly
been Edward's view of the matter. But Mrs. Lovell had never spoken to
Algernon on that subject. She had spoken willingly and in deep sympathy
of Dahlia. She had visited her, pitied her, comforted her; and Algernon
remembered that she had looked very keen and pinched about the mouth in
alluding to Dahlia; but how she and Edward had managed to arrive at
another misunderstanding was a prodigious puzzle to him; and why, if
their engagement had snapped, each consented to let Dahlia's marriage
(which was evidently distasteful to both) go on to the conclusion of the
ceremony, he could not comprehend. There were, however, so many things in
the world that he could not comprehend, and he had grown so accustomed,
after an effort to master a difficulty, to lean his head back upon downy
ignorance, that he treated this significant letter of Edward's like a
tough lesson, and quietly put it by, together with every recommendation
it contained. For all that was practical in it, it might just as well not
have been written.

The value of the letter lies in the exhibition it presents of a rather
mark-worthy young man, who has passed through the hands of a--(what I
must call her; and in doing so, I ask pardon of all the Jack Cades of
Letters, who, in the absence of a grammatical king and a government, sit
as lords upon the English tongue) a crucible woman. She may be
inexcusable herself; but you for you to be base, for you to be cowardly,
even to betray a weakness, though it be on her behalf,--though you can
plead that all you have done is for her, yea, was partly instigated by
her,--it will cause her to dismiss you with the inexorable contempt of
Nature, when she has tried one of her creatures and found him wanting.

Margaret Lovell was of this description: a woman fashioned to do both
harm and good, and more of harm than of good; but never to sanction a
scheme of evil or blink at it in alliance with another: a woman, in
contact with whom you were soon resolved to your component elements.
Separated from a certain fascination that there was for her in Edward's
acerb wit, she saw that he was doing a dastardly thing in cold blood. We
need not examine their correspondence. In a few weeks she had contrived
to put a chasm between them as lovers. Had he remained in England, boldly
facing his own evil actions, she would have been subjugated, for however
keenly she might pierce to the true character of a man, the show of an
unflinching courage dominated her; but his departure, leaving all the
brutality to be done for him behind his back, filled this woman with a
cutting spleen. It is sufficient for some men to know that they are seen
through, in order to turn away in loathing from her whom they have
desired; and when they do thus turn away, they not uncommonly turn with a
rush of old affection to those who have generously trusted them in the
days past, and blindly thought them estimable beings.

Algernon was by no means gifted to perceive whether this was the case
with his cousin in Paris.

CHAPTER XXIX

So long as the fool has his being in the world, he will be a part of
every history, nor can I keep him from his place in a narrative that is
made to revolve more or less upon its own wheels. Algernon went to bed,
completely forgetting Edward and his own misfortunes, under the influence
of the opiate of the order for one thousand pounds, to be delivered to
him upon application. The morning found him calmly cheerful, until a
little parcel was brought to his door, together with a note from Mrs.
Lovell, explaining that the parcel contained those jewels, his precious
gifts of what she had insultingly chosen to call "esteem" for her.

Algernon took it in his hand, and thought of flinging it through the
window; but as the window happened to be open, he checked the impulse,
and sent it with great force into a corner of the room: a perfectly
fool-like proceeding, for the fool is, after his fashion, prudent, and
will never, if he can help it, do himself thorough damage, that he may
learn by it and be wiser.

"I never stand insult," he uttered, self-approvingly, and felt manlier.
"No; not even from you, ma'am," he apostrophized Mrs. Lovell's portrait,
that had no rival now upon the wall, and that gave him a sharp fight for
the preservation of his anger, so bewitching she was to see. Her not
sending up word that she wished him to come to her rendered his battle
easier.

"It looks rather like a break between us," he said. "If so, you won't
find me so obedient to your caprices, Mrs. Margaret L.; though you are a
pretty woman, and know it. Smile away. I prefer a staunch, true sort of a
woman, after all. And the colonies it must be, I begin to suspect." This
set him conjuring before his eyes the image of Rhoda, until he cried,
"I'll be hanged if the girl doesn't haunt me!" and considered the matter
with some curiosity.

He was quickly away, and across the square of Lincoln's Inn Fields to the
attorney's firm, where apparently his coming was expected, and he was
told that the money would be placed in his hands on the following day. He
then communicated with Edward, in the brief Caesarian tongue of the
telegraph: "All right. Stay. Ceremony arranged." After which, he hailed a
skimming cab, and pronouncing the word "Epsom," sank back in it, and felt
in his breast-pocket for his cigar-case, without casting one glance of
interest at the deep fit of cogitation the cabman had been thrown into by
the suddenness of the order.

"Dash'd if it ain't the very thing I went and gone and dreamed last
night," said the cabman, as he made his dispositions to commence the
journey.

Certain boys advised him to whip it away as hard as he could, and he
would come in the winner.

"Where shall I grub, sir?" the cabman asked through the little door
above, to get some knowledge of the quality of his fare.

"Eat your 'grub' on the course," said Algernon.

"Ne'er a hamper to take up nowheres, is there, sir?"

"Do you like the sight of one?"

"Well, it ain't what I object to."

"Then go fast, my man, and you will soon see plenty."

"If you took to chaffin' a bit later in the day, it'd impart more
confidence to my bosom," said the cabman; but this he said to that bosom
alone.

"Ain't no particular colours you'd like me to wear, is there? I'll get a
rosette, if you like, sir, and enter in triumph. Gives ye something to
stand by. That's always my remark, founded on observation."

"Go to the deuce! Drive on," Algernon sang out. "Red, yellow, and green."

"Lobster, ale, and salad!" said the cabman, flicking his whip; "and good
colours too. Tenpenny Nail's the horse. He's the colours I stick to." And
off he drove, envied of London urchins, as mortals would have envied a
charioteer driving visibly for Olympus.

Algernon crossed his arms, with the frown of one looking all inward.

At school this youth had hated sums. All arithmetical difficulties had
confused and sickened him. But now he worked with indefatigable industry
on an imaginary slate; put his postulate, counted probabilities, allowed
for chances, added, deducted, multiplied, and unknowingly performed
algebraic feats, till his brows were stiff with frowning, and his brain
craved for stimulant.

This necessity sent his hand to his purse, for the calling of the cab had
not been a premeditated matter. He discovered therein some half-crowns
and a sixpence, the latter of which he tossed in contempt at some boys
who were cheering the vehicles on their gallant career.

There was something desperately amusing to him in the thought that he had
not even money enough to pay the cabman, or provide for a repast. He
rollicked in his present poverty. Yesterday he had run down with a party
of young guardsmen in a very royal manner; and yesterday he had lost.
To-day he journeyed to the course poorer than many of the beggars he
would find there; and by a natural deduction, to-day he was to win.

He whistled mad waltzes to the measure of the wheels. He believed that he
had a star. He pitched his half-crowns to the turnpike-men, and sought to
propitiate Fortune by displaying a signal indifference to small change;
in which method of courting her he was perfectly serious. He absolutely
rejected coppers. They "crossed his luck." Nor can we say that he is not
an authority on this point: the Goddess certainly does not deal in
coppers.

Anxious efforts at recollection perplexed him. He could not remember
whether he had "turned his money" on looking at the last new moon. When
had he seen the last new moon, and where? A cloud obscured it; he had
forgotten. He consoled himself by cursing superstition. Tenpenny Nail was
to gain the day in spite of fortune. Algernon said this, and entrenched
his fluttering spirit behind common sense, but he found it a cold corner.
The longing for Champagne stimulant increased in fervour. Arithmetic
languished.

As he was going up the hill, the wheels were still for a moment, and
hearing "Tenpenny Nail" shouted, he put forth his head, and asked what
the cry was, concerning that horse.

"Gone lame," was the answer.

It hit the centre of his nerves, without reaching his comprehension, and
all Englishmen being equal on Epsom Downs, his stare at the man who had
spoken, and his sickly colour, exposed him to pungent remarks.

"Hullos! here's another Ninepenny--a penny short!" and similar specimens
of Epsom wit, encouraged by the winks and retorts of his driver,
surrounded him; but it was empty clamour outside. A rage of emotions
drowned every idea in his head, and when he got one clear from the mass,
it took the form of a bitter sneer at Providence, for cutting off his
last chance of reforming his conduct and becoming good. What would he not
have accomplished, that was brilliant, and beautiful, and soothing, but
for this dead set against him!

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34