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Gilbert Parker - "The Seats Of The Mighty, Volume 2."

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The Amazing Marriage, Complete

G >> George Meredith >> The Amazing Marriage, Complete




He entered the situation and was possessed by the shivering delicacy of
it. Surface emotions were not seen on her. She might be a creature with a
soul. Here and there the thing has been found in women. It is priceless
when found, and she could not be acting. One might swear the creature had
no power to act.

She spoke without offence, the simplest of words, affected no
solicitudes, put on no gilt smiles, wore no reproaches: spoke to him as
if so it happened--he had necessarily a journey to perform. One could see
all the while big drops falling from the wound within. One could hear it
in her voice. Imagine a crack of the string at the bow's deep stress. Or
imagine the bow paralyzed at the moment of the deepest sounding. And yet
the voice did not waver. She had now the richness of tone carrying on a
music through silence.

Well, then, at least, he had not been the utterly duped fool he thought
himself since the consent was pledged to wed her.

More, she had beauty--of its kind. Or splendour or grandeur, was the term
for it. But it bore no name. None of her qualities--if they were
qualities--had a name. She stood with a dignity that the word did not
express. She endured meekly, when there was no meekness. Pain breathed
out of her, and not a sign of pain was visible. She had, under his
present observation of her, beauty, with the lines of her face breaking
in revolt from beauty--or requiring a superterrestrial illumination to
show the harmony. He, as he now saw, had erred grossly in supposing her
insensitive, and therefore slow of a woman's understanding. She drew the
breath of pain through the lips: red lips and well cut. Her brown eyes
were tearless, not alluring or beseeching or repelling; they did but
look, much like the skies opening high aloof on a wreck of storm. Her
reddish hair-chestnut, if you will--let fall a skein over one of the
rugged brows, and softened the ruggedness by making it wilder, as if a
great bird were winging across a shoulder of the mountain ridges.
Conceived of the mountains, built in their image, the face partook
alternately of mountain terror or splendour; wholly, he remembered, of
the splendour when her blood ran warm. No longer the chalk-quarry
face,--its paleness now was that of night Alps beneath a moon chasing the
shadows.

She might be casting her spells again.

'You remember I told you,' he said, 'I have given my word--I don't break
it--to be at a Ball. Your uncle was urgent to have the ceremony over.
These clashes occur. The people here--I have spoken of that: people of
good repute for attention to guests. I am uncertain of the time . . . we
have all to learn to wait. So then, good-bye till we meet.'

He was experiencing a novel nip of torment, of just the degree which
takes a partial appeasement from the inflicting of it, and calls up a
loathed compassion. She might have been in his arms for a step, though
she would not have been the better loved.

He was allowed his escape, bearing with him enough of husband to execrate
another enslaving pledge of his word, that begat a frenzy to wreak some
caresses on the creature's intolerably haunting image. Of course, he
could not return to her. How would she receive him? There was no salt in
the thought of it; she was too submissive.

However, there would be fun with Chummy Potts on the drive to Canleys;
fun with Rufus Abrane at Mrs. Cowper Quillett's; and with the Countess
Livia, smothered, struggling, fighting for life with the title of
Dowager. A desire for unbridled fun had hold of any amount of it, to
excess in any direction. And though this cloud as a dry tongue after much
wine craves water, glimpses of his tramp's walk with a fellow tramp on a
different road, enjoying strangely healthy vagabond sensations and vast
ideas; brought the vagrant philosopher refreshfully to his mind: chiefly
for the reason that while in Woodseer's company he had hardly suffered a
stroke of pain from the thought of Henrietta. She was now a married
woman, he was a married man by the register. Stronger proof of the
maddest of worlds could not be furnished.

Sane in so mad a world, a man is your flabby citizen among outlaws, good
for plucking. Fun, at any cost, is the one object worth a shot in such a
world. And the fun is not to stop. If it does, we are likely to be got
hold of, and lugged away to the altar--the terminus. That foul disaster
has happened, through our having temporarily yielded to a fit of the
dumps and treated a mad world's lunatic issue with some seriousness. But
fun shall be had with the aid of His Highness below. The madder the
world, the madder the fun. And the mixing in it of another element, which
it has to beguile us--romance--is not at all bad cookery. Poetic romance
is delusion--a tale of a Corsair; a poet's brain, a bottle of gin, and a
theatrical wardrobe. Comic romance is about us everywhere, alive for the
tapping.

A daughter of the Old Buccaneer should participate in it by right of
birth: she would expect it in order to feel herself perfectly at home.
Then, be sure, she finds an English tongue and prattles away as merrily
as she does when her old scapegrace of a father is the theme. Son-in-law
to him! But the path of wisdom runs in the line of facts, and to have
wild fun and romance on this pantomime path, instead of kicking to break
away from it, we follow things conceived by the genius of the situation,
for the delectation of the fair Countess of Fleetwood and the earl, her
delighted husband, quite in the spirit of the Old Buccaneer, father of
the bride.

Carinthia sat beside the fire, seeing nothing in the room or on the road.
Up in her bedchamber, the girl Madge was at her window. She saw Lord
Fleetwood standing alone, laughing, it seemed, at some thought; he threw
up his head. Was it a newly married man leaving his bride and laughing?
The bride was a dear lady, fit for better than to be driven to look on at
a prize-fight--a terrible scene to a lady. She was left solitary: and
this her wedding day? The earl had said it, he had said she bore his
name, spoke of coming from the altar, and the lady had blushed to hear
herself called Miss. The pressure of her hand was warm with Madge: her
situation roused the fervid latent sisterhood in the breast of women.

Before he mounted the coach, Lord Fleetwood talked to Kit Ives. He
pointed at an upper window, seemed to be issuing directions. Kit nodded;
he understood it, whatever it was. You might have said, a pair of
burglars. The girl ran downstairs to bid her lover good-bye and show him
she really rejoiced in his victory. Kit came to her saying: 'Given my
word of honour I won't make a beast of myself to-night. Got to watch over
you and your lady.'

Lord Fleetwood started his fresh team, casting no glance at the windows
of the room where his bride was. He and the gentlemen on the coach were
laughing.

His leaving of his young bride to herself this day was classed among the
murky flashes which distinguished the deeds of noblemen. But his laughter
on leaving her stamped it a cruelty; of the kind that plain mortals, who
can be monsters, commit. Madge conceived a pretext for going into the
presence of her mistress, whose attitude was the same as when she first
sat in the chair. The lady smiled and said: 'He is not hurt much?' She
thought for them about her.

The girl's, heart of sympathy thumped, and her hero became a very minute
object. He had spoken previously of the making or not making a beast of
himself; without inflicting a picture of the beast. His words took shape
now, and in consequence a little self-pity began to move. It stirred to
swell the great wave of pity for the lady, that was in her bosom. 'Oh,
he!' she said, and extinguished the thought of him; and at once her
under-lip was shivering, her eyes filled and poured.

Carinthia rose anxiously. The girl dropped at her feet. 'You have been so
good to me to-day, my lady! so good to me to-day! I can't help it--I
don't often just for this moment; I've been excited. Oh, he's well, he
will do; he's nothing. You say "poor child!" But I'm not; it's only.
excitement. I do long to serve you the best I can.'

She stood up in obedience and had the arms of her young mistress pressing
her. Tears also were streaming from Carinthia's eyes. Heartily she
thanked the girl for the excuse to cry.

They were two women. On the road to Canleys, the coach conveying men
spouted with the lusty anecdote, relieved of the interdict of a
tyrannical sex.




CHAPTER XVIII

DOWN WHITECHAPEL WAY

Contention begets contention in a land of the pirate races. Gigs were at
high rival speed along the road from the battle-field to London. They
were the electrical wires of the time for an expectant population
bursting to have report of so thundering an event as the encounter of two
champion light weights, nursed and backed by a pair of gallant young
noblemen, pick of the whole row of coronets above. London panted gaping
and the gigs flew with the meat to fill it.

Chumley Potts offered Ambrose Mallard fair odds that the neat little trap
of the chief sporting journal, which had a reputation to maintain, would
be over one or other of the bridges crossing the Thames first. Mallard
had been struck by the neat little trap of an impudent new and
lower-priced journal, which had a reputation to gain. He took the
proffered odds, on the cry as of a cracker splitting. Enormous
difficulties in regard to the testimony and the verifications were
discussed; they were overcome. Potts was ready for any amount of trouble;
Mallard the same. There was clearly a race. There would consequently be a
record. Visits to the offices of those papers, perhaps half a day at the
south end of London or on Westminster bridge, examining witnesses, corner
shopmen, watermen, and the like, would or should satisfactorily establish
the disputed point.

Fleetwood had his fun; insomuch that he laughed himself into a sentiment
of humaneness toward the couple of donkeys and forgot his contempt of
them. Their gamblings and their bets increased his number of dependents;
and imbeciles were preferable to dolts or the dry gilt figures of the
circle he had to move in. Matter for some astonishment had been furnished
to the latter this day; and would cause an icy Signor stare and rather an
angry Signora flutter. A characteristic of that upper circle, as he knew
it, is, that the good are dull, the vicious very bad. They had nothing to
please him but manners. Elsewhere this land is a land of no manners. Take
it and make the most of it, then, for its quality of brute honesty: which
is found to flourish best in the British prize-ring.

His irony landed him there. It struck the country a ringing blow. But it
struck an almost effacing one at the life of the young nobleman of
boundless wealth, whose highest renown was the being a patron of
prizefighters. Husband of the daughter of the Old Buccaneer as well!
perchance as a result. That philosopher tramp named her 'beautiful
Gorgon.' She has no beauty; and as for Gorgon, the creature has a look of
timid softness in waiting behind her rocky eyes. A barbaric damsel
beginning to nibble at civilization, is nearer the mark; and ought she to
be discouraged?

Fleetwood's wrath with his position warned him against the dupery of any
such alcove thoughts. For his wrath revenged him, and he feared the being
stripped of it, lest a certain fund of his own softness, that he knew of;
though few did, should pull him to the creature's feet. She belonged to
him indeed; so he might put her to the trial of whether she had a heart
and personal charm, without the ceremony of wooing--which, in his case,
tempted to the feeling desperately earnest and becoming enslaved. He
speculated upon her eyelids and lips, and her voice, when melting, as
women do in their different ways; here and there with an
execrable--perhaps pardonable--art; one or two divinely. The vision drew
him to a headlong plunge and swim of the amorous mind, occupying a
minute, filling an era. He corrected the feebleness, and at the same time
threw a practical coachman's glance on peculiarities of the road,
requiring some knowledge of it if traversed backward at a whipping pace
on a moonless night. The drive from Canleys to the Royal Sovereign could
be done by good pacers in an hour and a half, little more--with Ives and
the stables ready, and some astonishment in a certain unseen chamber.
Fleetwood chuckled at a vision of romantic devilry--perfectly legitimate
too. Something, more to inflict than enjoy, was due to him.

He did, not phrase it, that a talk with the fellow Woodseer of his
mountains and his forests, and nature, philosophy, poetry, would have
been particularly healthy for him, almost as good as the good counsel be
needed and solicited none to give him. It swept among his ruminations
while he pricked Potts and Mallard to supply his craving for satanical
fare.

Gower Woodseer; the mention of whom is a dejection to the venerable
source of our story, was then in the act of emerging from the Eastward
into the Southward of the line of Canterbury's pilgrims when they set
forth to worship, on his homeward course, after a walk of two days out of
Dover. He descended London's borough, having exactly twopence halfpenny
for refreshment; following a term of prudent starvation, at the end of
the walk. It is not a district seductive to the wayfarer's appetite; as,
for example, one may find the Jew's fry of fish in oil, inspiriting the
Shoreditch region, to be. Nourishment is afforded, according to the laws
of England's genius in the arts of refection, at uninviting shops, to the
necessitated stomach. A penn'orth of crumb of bread, assisted on its
laborious passage by a penn'orth of the rinsings of beer, left the
natural philosopher a ha'penny for dessert at the stall of an applewoman,
where he withstood an inclination toward the juicy fruit and chose nuts.
They extend a meal, as a grimace broadens the countenance, illusorily;
but they help to cheat an emptiness in time, where it is nearly as
offensive to our sensations as within us; and that prolonged occupation
of the jaws goes a length to persuade us we are filling. All the better
when the substance is indigestible. Tramps of the philosophical order,
who are the practically sagacious, prefer tough grain for the teeth.
Woodseer's munching of his nuts awakened to fond imagination the picture
of his father's dinner, seen one day and little envied: a small slice of
cold boiled mutton-flesh in a crescent of white fat, with a lump of dry
bread beside the plate.

Thus he returned to the only home he had, not disheartened, and bearing
scenes that outvied London's print-shops for polychrome splendour, an
exultation to recall. His condition, moreover, threw his father's life
and work into colour: the lean Whitechapel house of the minister among
the poor; the joy in the saving of souls, if he could persuade himself
that such good labour advanced: and at the fall of light, the pastime
task of bootmaking--a desireable occupation for a thinker. Thought flies
best when the hands are easily busy. Cobblers have excursive minds. Their
occasional rap at the pegs diversifies the stitchings and is often
happily timed to settle an internal argument. Seek in a village for
information concerning the village or the state of mankind, you will be
less disappointed at the cobbler's than elsewhere, it has been said.

As Gower had anticipated, with lively feelings of pleasure, Mr. Woodseer
was at the wonted corner of his back room, on the stool between two
tallow candleflames, leather scented strongly, when the wanderer stood
before him, in the image of a ball that has done with circling about a
stable point.

'Back?' the minister sang out at once, and his wrinkles gleamed:

Their hands grasped.

'Hungry, sir, rather.'

'To be sure, you are. One can read it on your boots. Mrs. Jones will
spread you a table. How many miles to-day? Show the soles. They tell a
tale of wear.'

They had worn to resemble the thin-edged layers of still upper cloud
round the peep of coming sky.

'About forty odd to-day, sir. They've done their hundreds of miles and
have now come to dock. I 'll ask Mrs. Jones to bring me a plate here.'

Gower went to the housekeeper in the kitchen. His father's front door was
unfastened by day; she had not set eyes on him yet, and Mr. Woodseer
murmured:

'Now she's got the boy. There 's clasping and kissing. He's all wild
Wales to her.'

The plate of meat was brought by Mary Jones with Gower beside her, and a
sniffle of her happiness audible. She would not, although invited to stay
and burning to hear Gower, wait in the room where father and son had to
talk together after a separation, long to love's counting. She was a
Welshwoman of the pure blood, therefore delicately mannered by nature.

'Yes, dear lad, tobacco helps you on to the marrow of your story, and I
too will blow the cloud,' said Mr. Woodseer, when the plate was pushed
aside and the pipe appeared.

So Gower's recital of his wanderings began, more puffs than speech at the
commencement. He was alternately picturesque and sententious until he
reached Baden; there he became involved, from thinking of a revelation of
beauty in woman.

Mr. Woodseer rapped the leather on his block.

'A place where they have started public gambling, I am told.'

'We must look into all the corners of the world to know it, sir, and the
world has to be riddled or it riddles us.'

'Ah. Did you ever tell a lie, Gower Woodseer?'

'I played.'

'You played. The Lord be thanked you have kept your straight tongue! The
Lord can always enter a heart of truth. Sin cannot dwell with it. But you
played for gain, and that was a licenced thieving; and that was a
backsliding; and there will have to be a climbing up. And what that
means, your hold on truth will learn. Touch sin and you accommodate
yourself to its vileness. Ay, you love nature. Nature is not anchorage
for vessels like men. If you loved the Book you would float in harbour.
You played. I do trust you lost.'

'You have your wish, sir.'

'To have won their money, Gower! Rather starve.'

'I did.'

'Your reason for playing, poor lad?'

'The reason eludes reason.'

'Not in you.'

'Sight of the tables; an itch to try them--one's self as well; a notion
that the losers were playing wrong. In fine, a bit of a whirl of a medley
of atoms; I can't explain it further.'

'Ah. The tippler's fumes in his head! Spotty business, Gower Woodseer.
"Lead us not into temptation" is worldly wisdom in addition to heavenly.'

After listening to an extended homily, with a general assent and
tobacco's phlegm, Gower replied to his father's 'You starved manfully?'
nodding: 'From Baden to Nancy. An Alsatian cottager at times helped me
along, milk and bread.'

'Wholesome for body and for soul.'

'Entering Nancy I subscribed to the dictum of our first fathers, which
dogs would deliver, if they could speak: that there is no driver like
stomach: and I went head on to the College, saw the Principal: plea of
urgency. No engagement possible, to teach either French or English. But
he was inquisitive touching the urgency. That was my chance. The French
are humane when they are not suspicious of you. They are generous, if you
put a light to their minds. As I was dealing with a scholarly one, I made
use of such ornamental literary skill as I possessed, to prove urgency.
He supplied me with bread, fruit, and wine. In the end he procured me
pupils. I lodged over a baker's shop. I had food walks, and learnt
something of forestry there--a taking study. When I had saved enough to
tramp it home, I said my adieux to that good friend and tramped away,
entering London with about the same amount in small coin as when I
entered Nancy. A manner of exactly hitting the mark, that some would not
find so satisfactory as it is to me.'

The minister sighed. 'There comes in the "philosophy," I suppose. When
will you understand, that this "philosophy" is only the passive of a
religious faith? It seems to suit you gentlemen of the road while you are
young. Work among the Whitechapel poor. It would be a way for discovering
the shallows of your "philosophy" earlier.'

Gower asked him: 'Going badly here, sir?'

'Murders, robberies, misusage of women, and misconduct of women!--Drink,
in short: about the same amount. Drink is their death's river, rolling
them on helpless as corpses, on to--may they find mercy! I and a few
stand--it's in the tide we stand here, to stop them, pluck them out, make
life a bit sweet to them before the poor bodies go beneath. But come!
all's not dark, we have our gleams. I speak distressed by one of our
girls: a good girl, I believe; and the wilfullest that ever had command
of her legs. A well-favoured girl! You'll laugh, she has given her heart
to a prize-fighter. Well, you can say, she might have chosen worse. He
drinks, she hates it; she loves the man and hates his vice. He swears
amendment, is hiccupping at night; fights a match on the morrow, and gets
beaten out of formation. No matter: whenever, wherever, that man goes to
his fight, that girl follows to nurse him after it. He's her hero. Women
will have one, and it's their lottery. You read of such things; here we
have it alive and walking. I am led to think they 're an honest couple.
They come of established families. Her mother was out of Caermarthen;
died under my ministration, saintly, forgiving the drunkard. You may
remember the greengrocer, Tobias Winch? He passed away in shrieks for one
drop. I had to pitch my voice to the top notes to get hearing for the
hymn. He was a reverent man, with the craving by fits. That should have
been a lesson to Madge.'

'A little girl at the greengrocer's hard by? She sold me apples; rather
pretty,' said Gower.

'A fine grown girl now--Madge Winch; a comely wench she is. It breaks her
sister Sarah's heart. They both manage the little shop; they make it
prosper in a small way; enough, and what need they more? Then Christopher
Ines has on one of his matches. Madge drives her cart out, if it 's near
town. She's off down into Kent to-day by coach, Sarah tells me. A great
nobleman patronizes Christopher; a Lord Fleetwood, a lord of wealth. And
he must be thoughtful for these people: he sent Sarah word that
Christopher should not touch drink. You may remember a butcher Ines in
the street next to us. Christopher was a wild lad, always at "best man"
with every boy he met: went to sea--ran away. He returned a pugilist. The
girl will be nursing him now. I have spoken to her of him; and I trust to
her; but I mourn her attachment to the man who drinks.'

'The lord's name?' said Gower.

'Lord Fleetwood, Sarah named him. And so it pleases him to spend his
money!'

'He has other tastes. I know something of him, sir. He promises to be a
patron of Literature as well. His mother was a South Wales woman.'

'Could he be persuaded to publish a grand edition of the Triads?' Mr.
Woodseer said at once.

'No man more likely.'

'If you see him, suggest it.'

'Very little chance of my meeting him again. But those Triads! They're in
our blood. They spring to tie knots in the head. They push me to condense
my thoughts to a tight ball. They were good for primitive times: but
they--or the trick of the mind engendered by them--trip my steps along
the lines of composition. I produce pellets instead of flowing sheets.
It'll come right. At present I 'm so bent to pick and perfect, polish my
phrase, that I lose my survey. As a consequence, my vocabulary falters.'

'Ah,' Mr. Woodseer breathed and smote. 'This Literature is to be your
profession for the means of living?'

'Nothing else. And I'm so low down in the market way of it, that I could
not count on twenty pounds per annum. Fifty would give me standing, an
independent fifty.'

'To whom are you crying, Gower?'

'Not to gamble, you may be sure.'

'You have a home.'

'Good work of the head wants an easy conscience. I've too much of you in
me for a comfortable pensioner.'

'Or is it not, that you have been living the gentleman out there, with
just a holiday title to it?'

Gower was hit by his father's thrust. 'I shall feel myself a pieman's
chuckpenny as long as I'm unproductive, now I 've come back and have to
own to a home,' he said.

Tea brought in by Mrs. Mary Jones rather brightened him until he
considered that the enlivenment was due to a purchase by money, of which
he was incapable, and he rejected it, like an honourable man.
Simultaneously, the state of depression threw critic shades on a prized
sentence or two among his recent confections. It was rejected for the
best of reasons and the most discomforting: because it racked our
English; signifying, that he had not yet learnt the right use of his
weapons.

He was in this wrestle, under a placid demeanour, for several days,
hearing the shouts of Whitechapel Kit's victory, and hearing of Sarah
Winch's anxiety on account of her sister Madge; unaffected by sounds of
joy or grief, in his effort to produce a supple English, with Baden's
Madonna for sole illumination of his darkness. To her, to the illimitable
gold-mist of perspective and the innumerable images the thought of her
painted for him, he owed the lift which withdrew him from contemplation
of himself in a very disturbing stagnant pool of the wastes; wherein
often will strenuous youth, grown faint, behold a face beneath a scroll
inscribed Impostor. All whose aim was high have spied into that pool, and
have seen the face. His glorious lady would not let it haunt him.

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