The Case of General Opel
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George Meredith >> The Case of General Opel
'Is she alone?' Lady Camper inquired of him.
'I fancy so,' the General replied.
'The poor child has no mother.'
'It has been a sad loss to us both, Lady Camper.'
'No doubt. She is too pretty to go out alone.'
'I can trust her.'
'Girls!'
'She has the spirit of a man.'
'That is well. She has a spirit; it will be tried.'
The General modestly furnished an instance or two of her spiritedness.
Lady Camper seemed to like this theme; she looked graciously interested.
'Still, you should not suffer her to go out alone,' she said.
'I place implicit confidence in her,' said the General; and Lady Camper
gave it up.
She proposed to walk down the lanes to the river-side, to meet Elizabeth
returning.
The General manifested alacrity checked by reluctance. Lady Camper had
told him she objected to sit in a strange room by herself; after that,
he could hardly leave her to dash upstairs to change his clothes; yet
how, attired as he was, in a fatigue jacket, that warned him not to
imagine his back view, and held him constantly a little to the rear of
Lady Camper, lest she should be troubled by it;--and he knew the habit of
the second rank to criticise the front--how consent to face the outer
world in such style side by side with the lady he admired?
'Come,' said she; and he shot forward a step, looking as if he had missed
fire.
'Are you not coming, General?'
He advanced mechanically.
Not a soul met them down the lanes, except a little one, to whom Lady
Camper gave a small silver-piece, because she was a picture.
The act of charity sank into the General's heart, as any pretty
performance will do upon a warm waxen bed.
Lady Camper surprised him by answering his thoughts. 'No; it's for my
own pleasure.'
Presently she said, 'Here they are.'
General Ople beheld his daughter by the river-side at the end of the
lane, under escort of Mr. Reginald Rolles.
It was another picture, and a pleasing one. The young lady and the young
gentleman wore boating hats, and were both dressed in white, and standing
by or just turning from the outrigger and light skiff they were about to
leave in charge of a waterman. Elizabeth stretched a finger at arm's-
length, issuing directions, which Mr. Rolles took up and worded further
to the man, for the sake of emphasis; and he, rather than Elizabeth, was
guilty of the half-start at sight of the persons who were approaching.
'My nephew, you should know, is intended for a working soldier,' said
Lady Camper; 'I like that sort of soldier best.'
General Ople drooped his shoulders at the personal compliment.
She resumed. 'His pay is a matter of importance to him. You are aware
of the smallness of a subaltern's pay.
'I,' said the General, 'I say I feel my poor half-pay, having always been
a working soldier myself, very important, I was saying, very important to
me!'
'Why did you retire?'
Her interest in him seemed promising. He replied conscientiously,
'Beyond the duties of General of Brigade, I could not, I say I could not,
dare to aspire; I can accept and execute orders; I shrink from
responsibility!'
'It is a pity,' said she, 'that you were not, like my nephew Reginald,
entirely dependent on your profession.'
She laid such stress on her remark, that the General, who had just
expressed a very modest estimate of his abilities, was unable to reject
the flattery of her assuming him to be a man of some fortune. He
coughed, and said, 'Very little.' The thought came to him that he might
have to make a statement to her in time, and he emphasized, 'Very little
indeed. Sufficient,' he assured her, 'for a gentlemanly appearance.'
'I have given you your warning,' was her inscrutable rejoinder, uttered
within earshot of the young people, to whom, especially to Elizabeth, she
was gracious. The damsel's boating uniform was praised, and her sunny
flush of exercise and exposure.
Lady Camper regretted that she could not abandon her parasol: 'I freckle
so easily.'
The General, puzzling over her strange words about a warning, gazed at
the red rose of art on her cheek with an air of profound abstraction.
'I freckle so easily,' she repeated, dropping her parasol to defend her
face from the calculating scrutiny.
'I burn brown,' said Elizabeth.
Lady Camper laid the bud of a Falcot rose against the young girl's cheek,
but fetched streams of colour, that overwhelmed the momentary comparison
of the sunswarthed skin with the rich dusky yellow of the rose in its
deepening inward to soft brown.
Reginald stretched his hand for the privileged flower, and she let him
take it; then she looked at the General; but the General was looking,
with his usual air of satisfaction, nowhere.
CHAPTER III
'Lady Camper is no common enigma,' General Ople observed to his daughter.
Elizabeth inclined to be pleased with her, for at her suggestion the
General had bought a couple of horses, that she might ride in the park,
accompanied by her father or the little groom. Still, the great lady was
hard to read. She tested the resources of his income by all sorts of
instigation to expenditure, which his gallantry could not withstand; she
encouraged him to talk of his deeds in arms; she was friendly, almost
affectionate, and most bountiful in the presents of fruit, peaches,
nectarines, grapes, and hot-house wonders, that she showered on his
table; but she was an enigma in her evident dissatisfaction with him
for something he seemed to have left unsaid. And what could that be?
At their last interview she had asked him, 'Are you sure, General, you
have nothing more to tell me?'
And as he remarked, when relating it to Elizabeth, 'One might really be
tempted to misapprehend her ladyship's . . . I say one might commit
oneself beyond recovery. Now, my dear, what do you think she intended?'
Elizabeth was 'burning brown,' or darkly blushing, as her manner was.
She answered, 'I am certain you know of nothing that would interest her;
nothing, unless . . .'
'Well?' the General urged her.
'How can I speak it, papa?'
'You really can't mean . . .'
'Papa, what could I mean?'
'If I were fool enough!' he murmured. 'No, no, I am an old man. I was
saying, I am past the age of folly.'
One day Elizabeth came home from her ride in a thoughtful mood. She had
not, further than has been mentioned, incited her father to think of the
age of folly; but voluntarily or not, Lady Camper had, by an excess of
graciousness amounting to downright invitation; as thus, 'Will you
persist in withholding your confidence from me, General?' She added, 'I
am not so difficult a person.' These prompting speeches occurred on the
morning of the day when Elizabeth sat at his table, after a long ride
into the country, profoundly meditative.
A note was handed to General Ople, with the request that he would step in
to speak with Lady Camper in the course of the evening, or next morning.
Elizabeth waited till his hat was on, then said, 'Papa, on my ride to-
day, I met Mr. Rolles.'
'I am glad you had an agreeable escort, my dear.'
'I could not refuse his company.'
'Certainly not. And where did you ride?'
'To a beautiful valley; and there we met . . '
'Her ladyship?'
'Yes.'
'She always admires you on horseback.'
'So you know it, papa, if she should speak of it.'
'And I am bound to tell you, my child,' said the General, 'that this
morning Lady Camper's manner to me was . . . if I were a fool . . .
I say, this morning I beat a retreat, but apparently she . . . I see
no way out of it, supposing she . . .'
'I am sure she esteems you, dear papa,' said Elizabeth. 'You take to
her, my dear?' the General inquired anxiously; 'a little?--a little
afraid of her?'
'A little,' Elizabeth replied, 'only a little.'
'Don't be agitated about me.'
'No, papa; you are sure to do right.'
'But you are trembling.'
'Oh! no. I wish you success.'
General Ople was overjoyed to be reinforced by his daughter's good
wishes. He kissed her to thank her. He turned back to her to kiss her
again. She had greatly lightened the difficulty at least of a delicate
position.
It was just like the imperious nature of Lady Camper to summon him in the
evening to terminate the conversation of the morning, from the visible
pitfall of which he had beaten a rather precipitate retreat. But if his
daughter cordially wished him success, and Lady Camper offered him the
crown of it, why then he had only to pluck up spirit, like a good
commander who has to pass a fordable river in the enemy's presence; a
dash, a splash, a rattling volley or two, and you are over, established
on the opposite bank. But you must be positive of victory, otherwise,
with the river behind you, your new position is likely to be ticklish.
So the General entered Lady Camper's drawing-room warily, watching the
fair enemy. He knew he was captivating, his old conquests whispered in
his ears, and her reception of him all but pointed to a footstool at her
feet. He might have fallen there at once, had he not remembered a hint
that Mr. Reginald Rolles had dropped concerning Lady Camper's amazing
variability.
Lady Camper began.
'General, you ran away from me this morning. Let me speak. And, by the
way, I must reproach you; you should not have left it to me. Things have
now gone so far that I cannot pretend to be blind. I know your feelings
as a father. Your daughter's happiness . . .'
'My lady,' the General interposed, 'I have her distinct assurance that it
is, I say it is wrapt up in mine.'
'Let me speak. Young people will say anything. Well, they have a
certain excuse for selfishness; we have not. I am in some degree bound
to my nephew; he is my sister's son.'
'Assuredly, my lady. I would not stand in his light, be quite assured.
If I am, I was saying if I am not mistaken, I . . . and he is, or has
the making of an excellent soldier in him, and is likely to be a
distinguished cavalry officer.'
'He has to carve his own way in the world, General.'
'All good soldiers have, my lady. And if my position is not, after a
considerable term of service, I say if . . .'
'To continue,' said Lady Camper: 'I never have liked early marriages. I
was married in my teens before I knew men. Now I do know them, and now .
. .'
The General plunged forward: 'The honour you do us now:--a mature
experience is worth:--my dear Lady Camper, I have admired you:--and your
objection to early marriages cannot apply to . . . indeed, madam,
vigour, they say . . . though youth, of course . . . yet young
people, as you observe . . . and I have, though perhaps my reputation
is against it, I was saying I have a natural timidity with your sex, and
I am grey-headed, white-headed, but happily without a single malady.'
Lady Camper's brows showed a trifling bewilderment. 'I am speaking of
these young people, General Ople.'
'I consent to everything beforehand, my dear lady. He should be, I say
Mr. Rolles should be provided for.'
'So should she, General, so should Elizabeth.'
'She shall be, she will, dear madam. What I have, with your permission,
if--good heaven! Lady Camper, I scarcely know where I am. She would . .
. . I shall not like to lose her: you would not wish it. In time she
will . . . she has every quality of a good wife.'
'There, stay there, and be intelligible,' said Lady Camper. 'She has
every quality. Money should be one of them. Has she money?'
'Oh! my lady,' the General exclaimed, 'we shall not come upon your purse
when her time comes.'
'Has she ten thousand pounds?'
'Elizabeth? She will have, at her father's death . . . but as for my
income, it is moderate, and only sufficient to maintain a gentlemanly
appearance in proper self-respect. I make no show. I say I make no
show. A wealthy marriage is the last thing on earth I should have aimed
at. I prefer quiet and retirement. Personally, I mean. That is my
personal taste. But if the lady . . . . I say if it should happen that
the lady . . . . and indeed I am not one to press a suit: but if she who
distinguishes and honours me should chance to be wealthy, all I can do is
to leave her wealth at her disposal, and that I do: I do that
unreservedly. I feel I am very confused, alarmingly confused. Your
ladyship merits a superior . . . I trust I have not . . . I am
entirely at your ladyship's mercy.'
'Are you prepared, if your daughter is asked in marriage, to settle ten
thousand pounds on her, General Ople?'
The General collected himself. In his heart he thoroughly appreciated
the moral beauty of Lady Camper's extreme solicitude on behalf of his
daughter's provision; but he would have desired a postponement of that
and other material questions belonging to a distant future until his own
fate was decided.
So he said: 'Your ladyship's generosity is very marked. I say it is very
marked.'
'How, my good General Ople! how is it marked in any degree?' cried Lady
Camper. 'I am not generous. I don't pretend to be; and certainly I
don't want the young people to think me so. I want to be just. I have
assumed that you intend to be the same. Then will you do me the favour
to reply to me?'
The General smiled winningly and intently, to show her that he prized
her, and would not let her escape his eulogies.
'Marked, in this way, dear madam, that you think of my daughter's future
more than I. I say, more than her father himself does. I know I ought
to speak more warmly, I feel warmly. I was never an eloquent man, and
if you take me as a soldier, I am, as, I have ever been in the service,
I was saying I am Wilson Ople, of the grade of General, to be relied on
for executing orders; and, madam, you are Lady Camper, and you command
me. I cannot be more precise. In fact, it is the feeling of the
necessity for keeping close to the business that destroys what I would
say. I am in fact lamentably incompetent to conduct my own case.'
Lady Camper left her chair.
'Dear me, this is very strange, unless I am singularly in error,' she
said.
The General now faintly guessed that he might be in error, for his part.
But he had burned his ships, blown up his bridges; retreat could not be
thought of.
He stood, his head bent and appealing to her sideface, like one
pleadingly in pursuit, and very deferentially, with a courteous
vehemence, he entreated first her ladyship's pardon for his presumption,
and then the gift of her ladyship's hand.
As for his language, it was the tongue of General Ople. But his bearing
was fine. If his clipped white silken hair spoke of age, his figure
breathed manliness. He was a picture, and she loved pictures.
For his own sake, she begged him to cease. She dreaded to hear of
something 'gentlemanly.'
'This is a new idea to me, my dear General,' she said. 'You must give me
time. People at our age have to think of fitness. Of course, in a
sense, we are both free to do as we like. Perhaps I may be of some aid
to you. My preference is for absolute independence. And I wished to
talk of a different affair. Come to me tomorrow. Do not be hurt if I
decide that we had better remain as we are.'
The General bowed. His efforts, and the wavering of the fair enemy's
flag, had inspired him with a positive re-awakening of masculine passion
to gain this fortress. He said well: 'I have, then, the happiness,
madam, of being allowed to hope until to-morrrow?'
She replied, 'I would not deprive you of a moment of happiness. Bring
good sense with you when you do come.'
The General asked eagerly, 'I have your ladyship's permission to come
early?'
'Consult your happiness,' she answered; and if to his mind she seemed
returning to the state of enigma, it was on the whole deliciously. She
restored him his youth. He told Elizabeth that night; he really must
begin to think of marrying her to some worthy young fellow. 'Though,'
said he, with an air of frank intoxication, 'my opinion is, the young
ones are not so lively as the old in these days, or I should have been
besieged before now.'
The exact substance of the interview he forbore to relate to his
inquisitive daughter, with a very honourable discretion.
CHAPTER IV
Elizabeth came riding home to breakfast from a gallop round the park,
and passing Lady Camper's gates, received the salutation of her parasol.
Lady Camper talked with her through the bars. There was not a sign to
tell of a change or twist in her neighbourly affability. She remarked
simply enough, that it was her nephew's habit to take early gallops, and
possibly Elizabeth might have seen him, for his quarters were proximate;
but she did not demand an answer. She had passed a rather restless
night, she said. 'How is the General?'
'Papa must have slept soundly, for he usually calls to me through his
door when he hears I am up,' said Elizabeth.
Lady Camper nodded kindly and walked on.
Early in the morning General Ople was ready for battle. His forces were,
the anticipation of victory, a carefully arranged toilet, and an
unaccustomed spirit of enterprise in the realms of speech; for he was no
longer in such awe of Lady Camper.
'You have slept well?' she inquired.
'Excellently, my lady:
'Yes, your daughter tells me she heard you, as she went by your door in
the morning for a ride to meet my nephew. You are, I shall assume,
prepared for business.'
'Elizabeth? . . . to meet . . .?' General Ople's impression of
anything extraneous to his emotion was feeble and passed instantly.
'Prepared! Oh, certainly'; and he struck in a compliment on her
ladyship's fresh morning bloom.
'It can hardly be visible,' she responded; 'I have not painted yet.'
'Does your ladyship proceed to your painting in the very early morning?'
'Rouge. I rouge.'
'Dear me! I should not have supposed it.'
'You have speculated on it very openly, General. I remember your trying
to see a freckle through the rouge; but the truth is, I am of a
supernatural paleness if I do not rouge, so I do. You understand,
therefore, I have a false complexion. Now to business.'
'If your ladyship insists on calling it business. I have little to
offer--myself !'
'You have a gentlemanly residence.'
'It is, my lady, it is. It is a bijou.'
'Ah!' Lady Camper sighed dejectedly.
'It is a perfect bijou!'
'Oblige me, General, by not pronouncing the French word as if you were
swearing by something in English, like a trooper.'
General Ople started, admitted that the word was French, and apologized
for his pronunciation. Her variability was now visible over a corner of
the battlefield like a thunder-cloud.
'The business we have to discuss concerns the young people, General.'
'Yes,' brightened by this, he assented: 'Yes, dear Lady Camper; it is a
part of the business; it is a secondary part; it has to be discussed; I
say I subscribe beforehand. I may say, that honouring, esteeming you as
I do, and hoping ardently for your consent . . . .
'They must have a home and an income, General.'
'I presume, dearest lady, that Elizabeth will be welcome in your home.
I certainly shall never chase Reginald out of mine.'
Lady Camper threw back her head. 'Then you are not yet awake, or you
practice the art of sleeping with open eyes! Now listen to me. I rouge,
I have told you. I like colour, and I do not like to see wrinkles or
have them seen. Therefore I rouge. I do not expect to deceive the world
so flagrantly as to my age, and you I would not deceive for a moment. I
am seventy.'
The effect of this noble frankness on the General, was to raise him from
his chair in a sitting posture as if he had been blown up.
Her countenance was inexorably imperturbable under his alternate blinking
and gazing that drew her close and shot her distant, like a mysterious
toy.
'But,' said she, 'I am an artist; I dislike the look of extreme age, so I
conceal it as well as I can. You are very kind to fall in with the
deception: an innocent and, I think, a proper one, before the world,
though not to the gentleman who does me the honour to propose to me for
my hand. You desire to settle our business first. You esteem me; I
suppose you mean as much as young people mean when they say they love.
Do you? Let us come to an understanding.'
'I can,' the melancholy General gasped, 'I say I can--I cannot--I cannot
credit your ladyship's . . .'
'You are at liberty to call me Angela.'
'Ange . . .' he tried it, and in shame relapsed. 'Madam, yes.
Thanks.'
'Ah,' cried Lady Camper, 'do not use these vulgar contractions of decent
speech in my presence. I abhor the word "thanks." It is fit for
fribbles.'
'Dear me, I have used it all my life,' groaned the General.
'Then, for the remainder, be it understood that you renounce it. To
continue, my age is . . .'
'Oh, impossible, impossible,' the General almost wailed; there was really
a crack in his voice.
'Advancing to seventy. But, like you, I am happy to say I have not a
malady. I bring no invalid frame to a union that necessitates the
leaving of the front door open day and night to the doctor. My belief
is, I could follow my husband still on a campaign, if he were a warrior
instead of a pensioner.'
General Ople winced.
He was about to say humbly, 'As General of Brigade . . .'
'Yes, yes, you want a commanding officer, and that I have seen, and that
has caused me to meditate on your proposal,' she interrupted him; while
he, studying her countenance hard, with the painful aspect of a youth who
lashes a donkey memory in an examination by word of mouth, attempted to
marshal her signs of younger years against her awful confession of the
extremely ancient, the witheringly ancient. But for the manifest rouge,
manifest in spite of her declaration that she had not yet that morning
proceeded to her paintbrush, he would have thrown down his glove to
challenge her on the subject of her age. She had actually charms. Her
mouth had a charm; her eyes were lively; her figure, mature if you like,
was at least full and good; she stood upright, she had a queenly seat.
His mental ejaculation was, 'What a wonderful constitution!'
By a lapse of politeness, he repeated it to himself half aloud; he was
shockingly nervous.
'Yes, I have finer health than many a younger woman,' she said. 'An
ordinary calculation would give me twenty good years to come. I am a
widow, as you know. And, by the way, you have a leaning for widows.
Have you not? I thought I had heard of a widow Barcop in this parish.
Do not protest. I assure you I am a stranger to jealousy. My income
. . .'
The General raised his hands.
'Well, then,' said the cool and self-contained lady, 'before I go
farther, I may ask you, knowing what you have forced me to confess, are
you still of the same mind as to marriage? And one moment, General. I
promise you most sincerely that your withdrawing a step shall not, as far
as it touches me, affect my neighbourly and friendly sentiments; not in
any degree. Shall we be as we were?'
Lady Camper extended her delicate hand to him.
He took it respectfully, inspected the aristocratic and unshrunken
fingers, and kissing them, said, 'I never withdraw from a position,
unless I am beaten back. Lady Camper, I . . .'
'My name is Angela.'
The General tried again: he could not utter the name.
To call a lady of seventy Angela is difficult in itself. It is, it
seems, thrice difficult in the way of courtship.
'Angela!' said she.
'Yes. I say, there is not a more beautiful female name, dear Lady
Camper.'
'Spare me that word "female" as long as you live. Address me by that
name, if you please.'
The General smiled. The smile was meant for propitiation and sweetness.
It became a brazen smile.
'Unless you wish to step back,' said she.
'Indeed, no. I am happy, Lady Camper. My life is yours. I say, my life
is devoted to you, dear madam.'
'Angela!'
General Ople was blushingly delivered of the name.
'That will do,' said she. 'And as I think it possible one may be admired
too much as an artist, I must request you to keep my number of years a
secret.'
'To the death, madam,' said the General.
'And now we will take a turn in the garden, Wilson Ople. And beware of
one thing, for a commencement, for you are full of weeds, and I mean to
pluck out a few: never call any place a gentlemanly residence in my
hearing, nor let it come to my ears that you have been using the phrase
elsewhere. Don't express astonishment. At present it is enough that I
dislike it. But this only,' Lady Camper added, 'this only if it is not
your intention to withdraw from your position.'
'Madam, my lady, I was saying--hem!--Angela, I could not wish to
withdraw.'
Lady Camper leaned with some pressure on his arm, observing, 'You have a
curious attachment to antiquities.'
'My dear lady, it is your mind; I say, it is your mind: I was saying,
I am in love with your mind,' the General endeavoured to assure her, and
himself too.
'Or is it my powers as an artist?'
'Your mind, your extraordinary powers of mind.'
'Well,' said Lady Camper, 'a veteran General of Brigade is as good a
crutch as a childless old grannam can have.'