The Celt and Saxon, Complete

G >> George Meredith >> The Celt and Saxon, Complete

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'We are safe nowhere from these intrusions,' Mrs. Adister said; 'not on
these hills!--and it must be a trial for the wretched men to climb them,
that thing on their backs.'

'They are as accustomed to it as mountain smugglers bearing packs of
contraband,' said Philip.

'Con would have argued him out of hearing before he ground a second
note,' she resumed. 'I have no idea when Con returns from his unexpected
visit to Ireland.'

'Within a fortnight, madam.'

'Let me believe it! You have heard from him? But you are in the air!
exposed! My head makes me stupid. It is now five o'clock. The air begins
to chill. Con will never forgive me if you catch a cold, and I would not
incur his blame.'

The eyes of Jane and Philip shot an exchange.

'Anything you command, madam,' said Philip.

He looked up and breathed his heaven of fresh air. Jane pitied, she could
not interpose to thwart his act of resignation. The farmer, home for tea,
and a footman, took him between them, crutched, while Mrs. Adister said
to Jane: 'The doctor's orders are positive:--if he is to be a man once
more, he must rest his back and not use his legs for months. He was near
to being a permanent cripple from that fall. My brother Edward had one
like it in his youth. Soldiers are desperate creatures.'

'I think Mr. Adister had his fall when hunting, was it not?' said Jane.

'Hunting, my dear.'

That was rather different from a fall on duty before the enemy, incurred
by severe exhaustion after sunstroke! . . .

Jane took her leave of Philip beside his couch of imprisonment in his
room, promising to return in the early morning. He embraced her old dog
Wayland tenderly. Hard men have sometimes a warm affection for dogs.

Walking homeward she likewise gave Wayland a hug. She called him 'dear
old fellow,' and questioned him of his fondness for her, warning him not
to be faithless ever to the mistress who loved him. Was not her old
Wayland as good a protector as the footman Mrs. Adister pressed her to
have at her heels? That he was!

Captain Con's behaviour grieved her. And it certainly revived an ancient
accusation against his countrymen. If he cared for her so much, why had
he not placed confidence in her and commissioned her to speak of his
election to his wife? Irishmen will never be quite sincere!--But why had
his cousin exposed him to one whom he greatly esteemed? However angry he
might be with Con O'Donnell in his disapproval of the captain's conduct,
it was not very considerate to show the poor man to her in his natural
colours. Those words: 'The consolidation of the Union:' sprang up. She
had a dim remembrance of words ensuing: 'ceremonies going at a funeral
pace . . . on the highway to the solidest kind of union:'--Yes, he wrote:
'I leave you to . . .' And Captain Philip showed her the letter:

She perceived motives beginning to stir. He must have had his intention:
and now as to his character!--Jane was of the order of young women
possessing active minds instead of figured paste-board fronts, who see
what there is to be seen about them and know what may be known instead of
decorously waiting for the astonishment of revelations. As soon as she
had asked herself the nature of the design of so honourable a man as
Captain Philip in showing her his cousin's letter, her blood spun round
and round, waving the reply as a torch; and the question of his character
confirmed it.

But could he be imagined seeking to put her on her guard? There may be
modesty in men well aware of their personal attractions: they can credit
individual women with powers of resistance. He was not vain to the degree
which stupefies the sense of there being weight or wisdom in others. And
he was honour's own. By these lights of his character she read the act.
His intention was . . . and even while she saw it accurately, the moment
of keen perception was overclouded by her innate distrust of her claim to
feminine charms. For why should he wish her to understand that he was no
fortune-hunter and treated heiresses with greater reserve than ordinary
women! How could it matter to him?

She saw the tears roll. Tears of men sink plummet-deep; they find their
level. The tears of such a man have more of blood than of water in
them.--What was she doing when they fell? She was shading his head from
the sun. What, then, if those tears came of the repressed desire to thank
her with some little warmth? He was honour's own, and warmhearted Patrick
talked of him as a friend whose heart was, his friend's. Thrilling to
kindness, and, poor soul! helpless to escape it, he felt perhaps that he
had never thanked her, and could not. He lay there, weak and tongue-tied:
hence those two bright volumes of his condition of weakness.

So the pursuit of the mystery ended, as it had commenced, in confusion,
but of a milder sort and partially transparent at one or two of the gates
she had touched. A mind capable of seeing was twisted by a nature that
would not allow of open eyes; yet the laden emotions of her nature
brought her round by another channel to the stage neighbouring sight,
where facts, dimly recognised for such--as they may be in truth, are
accepted under their disguises, because disguise of them is needed by the
bashful spirit which accuses itself of audaciousness in presuming to
speculate. Had she asked herself the reason of her extended speculation,
her foot would not have stopped more abruptly on the edge of a torrent
than she on that strange road of vapours and flying lights. She did not;
she sang, she sent her voice through the woods and took the splendid ring
of it for an assurance of her peculiarly unshackled state. She loved this
liberty. Of the men who had 'done her the honour,' not one had moved her
to regret the refusal. She lived in the hope of simply doing good, and
could only give her hand to a man able to direct and help her; one who
would bear to be matched with her brother. Who was he? Not discoverable;
not likely to be.

Therefore she had her freedom, an absolutely unflushed freedom, happier
than poor Grace Barrow's. Rumour spoke of Emma Colesworth having a wing
clipped. How is it that sensible women can be so susceptible? For,
thought Jane, the moment a woman is what is called in love, she can give
her heart no longer to the innocent things about her; she is cut away
from Nature: that pure well-water is tasteless to her. To me it is wine!

The drinking of the pure well-water as wine is among the fatal signs of
fire in the cup, showing Nature at work rather to enchain the victim than
bid her daughter go. Jane of course meant the poet's 'Nature.' She did
not reflect that the strong glow of poetic imagination is wanted to
hallow a passionate devotion to the inanimate for this evokes the
spiritual; and passionateness of any kind in narrower brains should be a
proclamation to us of sanguine freshets not coming from a spiritual
source. But the heart betraying deluded her. She fancied she had not ever
been so wedded to Nature as on that walk through the bursting beechwoods,
that sweet lonely walk, perfect in loneliness, where even a thought of a
presence was thrust away as a desecration and images of souls in thought
were shadowy.

Her lust of freedom gave her the towering holiday. She took the delirium
in her own pure fashion, in a love of the bankside flowers and the downy
edges of the young beech-buds fresh on the sprays. And it was no unreal
love, though too intent and forcible to win the spirit from the object.
She paid for this indulgence of her mood by losing the spirit entirely.
At night she was a spent rocket. What had gone she could not tell: her
very soul she almost feared. Her glorious walk through the wood seemed
burnt out. She struck a light to try her poet on the shelf of the elect
of earth by her bed, and she read, and read flatness. Not his the fault!
She revered him too deeply to lay it on him. Whose was it? She had a
vision of the gulfs of bondage.

Could it be possible that human persons were subject to the spells of
persons with tastes, aims, practices, pursuits alien to theirs? It was a
riddle taxing her to solve it for the resistance to a monstrous iniquity
of injustice, degrading her conception of our humanity. She attacked it
in the abstract, as a volunteer champion of our offended race. And Oh! it
could not be. The battle was won without a blow.

Thereupon came glimpses of the gulfs of bondage, delicious,
rose-enfolded, foreign; they were chapters of soft romance, appearing
interminable, an endless mystery, an insatiable thirst for the mystery.
She heard crashes of the opera-melody, and despising it even more than
the wretched engine of the harshness, she was led by it, tyrannically led
a captive, like the organ-monkey, until perforce she usurped the note,
sounded the cloying tune through her frame, passed into the vulgar
sugariness, lost herself.

And saying to herself: This is what moves them! she was moved. One thrill
of appreciation drew her on the tide, and once drawn from shore she
became submerged. Why am I not beautiful, was her thought. Those
voluptuous modulations of melting airs are the natural clothing of
beautiful women. Beautiful women may believe themselves beloved. They are
privileged to believe, they are born with the faith.

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS

A country of compromise goes to pieces at the first cannon-shot
A lady's company-smile
A superior position was offered her by her being silent
A whisper of cajolery in season is often the secret
A contented Irishman scarcely seems my countryman
Ah! we're in the enemy's country now
And it's one family where the dog is pulled by the collar
Arch-devourer Time
As secretive as they are sensitive
As if she had never heard him previously enunciate the formula
Be politic and give her elbow-room for her natural angles
Beautiful women may believe themselves beloved
Becoming air of appropriation that made it family history
Constitutionally discontented
Could peruse platitudes upon that theme with enthusiasm
Decency's a dirty petticoat in the Garden of Innocence
England's the foremost country of the globe
Enjoys his luxuries and is ashamed of his laziness
Fires in the grates went through the ceremony of warming nobody
Foamy top is offered and gulped as equivalent to an idea
Foist on you their idea of your idea at the moment
Grimaces at a government long-nosed to no purpose
Hard men have sometimes a warm affection for dogs
He judged of others by himself
He was not alive for his own pleasure
Hear victorious lawlessness appealing solemnly to God the law
Her aspect suggested the repose of a winter landscape
Here, where he both wished and wished not to be
Hug the hatred they packed up among their bundles
I never saw out of a doll-shop, and never saw there
I 'm the warming pan, as legitimately I should be
I detest enthusiasm
I baint done yet
Indirect communication with heaven
Ireland 's the sore place of England
Irishman there is a barrow trolling a load of grievances
Irishmen will never be quite sincere
Irony in him is only eulogy standing on its head
Lack of precise words admonished him of the virtue of silence
Loudness of the interrogation precluded thought of an answer
Love the children of Erin, when not fretted by them
Loves his poets, can almost understand what poetry means
Married at forty, and I had to take her shaped as she was
May lull themselves with their wakefulness
Men must fight: the law is only a quieter field for them
Mika! you did it in cold blood?
Never forget that old Ireland is weeping
No man can hear the words which prove him a prophet (quietly)
Not every chapter can be sunshine
Not likely to be far behind curates in besieging an heiress
Not the great creatures we assume ourselves to be
Not so much read a print as read the imprinting on themselves
Not to bother your wits, but leave the puzzle to the priest
Nursing of a military invalid awakens tenderer anxieties
Old houses are doomed to burnings
Our lawyers have us inside out, like our physicians
Paying compliments and spoiling a game!
Philip was a Spartan for keeping his feelings under
Secret of the art was his meaning what he said
Suggestion of possible danger might more dangerous than silence
Taste a wound from the lightest touch, and they nurse the venom
Tears of men sink plummet-deep
Tears of such a man have more of blood than of water in them
That fiery dragon, a beautiful woman with brains
The race is for domestic peace, my boy
They laugh, but they laugh extinguishingly
Time, whose trick is to turn corners of unanticipated sharpness
Twisted by a nature that would not allow of open eyes
We're all of us hit at last, and generally by our own weapon
We're smitten to-day in our hearts and our pockets
Welsh blood is queer blood
Where one won't and can't, poor t' other must
Winds of panic are violently engaged in occupying the vacuum
With a frozen fish of admirable principles for wife
With death; we'd rather not, because of a qualm
Withdrew into the entrenchments of contempt
Woman's precious word No at the sentinel's post, and alert
Would like to feel he was doing a bit of good
You'll tell her you couldn't sit down in her presence undressed
You'll tell her you couldn't sit down in her presence undressed

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