The Celt and Saxon, Complete

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

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'Arthur must be here,' said Mrs. Adister. 'I cannot bring myself to write
it. I disapprove of telegrams.'

She was asking to be assisted, so her husband said:

'Take Patrick for a secretary. Dictate. He has a bold free hand and'll
supply all the fiorituri and arabesques necessary to the occasion
running.'

She gazed at Patrick as if to intimate that he might be enlisted, and
said: 'It will be to Caroline. She will break it to her uncle.'

'Right, madam, on the part of a lady I 've never known to be wrong! And
so, my dear, I must take leave of you, to hurry down to the tormented
intestines of that poor racked city, where the winds of panic are
violently engaged in occupying the vacuum created by knocking over what
the disaster left standing; and it 'll much resemble a colliery accident
there, I suspect, and a rescue of dead bodies. Adieu, my dear.' He
pressed his lips on her thin fingers.

Patrick placed himself at Mrs. Adister's disposal as her secretary. She
nodded a gracious acceptance of him.

'I recommended the telegraph because it's my wife's own style, and comes
better from wires,' said the captain, as they were putting on their
overcoats in the hall. 'You must know the family. "Deeds not words" would
serve for their motto. She hates writing, and doesn't much love talking.
Pat 'll lengthen her sentences for her. She's fond of Adiante, and she
sympathises with her brother Edward made a grandfather through the
instrumentality of that foreign hooknose; and Patrick must turn the two
dagger sentiments to a sort of love-knot and there's the task he'll have
to work out in his letter to Miss Caroline. It's fun about Colonel Arthur
not going. He's to meet the burning Miss Mattock, who has gold on her
crown and a lot on her treasury, Phil, my boy! but I'm bound in honour
not to propose it. And a nice girl, a prize; afresh healthy girl; and
brains: the very girl! But she's jotted down for the Adisters, if Colonel
Arthur can look lower than his nose and wag his tongue a bit. She's one
to be a mother of stout ones that won't run up big doctors' bills or ask
assistance in growing. Her name's plain Jane, and she 's a girl to breed
conquerors; and the same you may say of her brother John, who 's a mighty
fit man, good at most things, though he counts his fortune in millions,
which I've heard is lighter for a beggar to perform than in pounds, but
he can count seven, and beat any of us easy by showing them millions! We
might do something for them at home with a million or two, Phil. It all
came from the wedding of a railway contractor, who sprang from the
wedding of a spade and a clod--and probably called himself Mattock at his
birth, no shame to him.'

'You're for the city,' said Philip, after they had walked down the
street.

'Not I,' said Con. 'Let them play Vesuvius down there. I've got another
in me: and I can't stop their eruption, and they wouldn't relish mine. I
know a little of Dick Martin, who called on the people to resist, and
housed the man Liffey after his firing the shot, and I'm off to Peter
M'Christy, his brother-in-law. I'll see Distell too. I must know if it
signifies the trigger, or I'm agitated about nothing. Dr. Forbery'll be
able to tell how far they mean going for a patriotic song.

"For we march in ranks to the laurelled banks,
On the bright horizon shining,
Though the fields between run red on the green,
And many a wife goes pining."

Will you come, Phil?'

'I 'm under orders.'

'You won't engage yourself by coming.'

'I'm in for the pull if I join hands.'

'And why not?--inside the law, of course.'

'While your Barney skirmishes outside!'

'And when the poor fellow's cranium's cracking to fling his cap in the
air, and physician and politician are agreed it's good for him to do it,
or he'll go mad and be a dangerous lunatic! Phil, it must be a blow now
and then for these people over here, else there's no teaching their
imaginations you're in earnest; for they've got heads that open only to
hard raps, these English; and where injustice rules, and you'd spread a
light of justice, a certain lot of us must give up the ghost--naturally
on both sides. Law's law, and life's life, so long as you admit that the
law is bad; and in that case, it's big misery and chronic disease to let
it be and at worst a jump and tumble into the next world, of a score or
two of us if we have a wrestle with him. But shake the old villain; hang
on him and shake him. Bother his wig, if he calls himself Law. That 's
how we dust the corruption out of him for a bite or two in return. Such
is humanity, Phil: and you must allow for the roundabout way of moving to
get into the straight road at last. And I see what you're for saying: a
roundabout eye won't find it! You're wrong where there are dozens of
corners. Logic like yours, my boy, would have you go on picking at the
Gordian Knot till it became a jackasses' race between you and the rope
which was to fall to pieces last.--There 's my old girl at the stall,
poor soul! See her!'

Philip had signalled a cabman to stop. He stood facing his cousin with a
close-lipped smile that summarised his opinion and made it readable.

'I have no time for an introduction to her this morning,' he said.

'You won't drop in on Distell to hear the latest brewing? And, by the by,
Phil, tell us, could you give us a hint for packing five or six hundred
rifles and a couple of pieces of cannon?'

Philip stared; he bent a lowering frown on his cousin, with a twitch at
his mouth.

'Oh! easy!' Con answered the look; 'it's for another place and harder to
get at.'

He was eyed suspiciously and he vowed the military weapons were for
another destination entirely, the opposite Pole.

'No, you wouldn't be in for a crazy villainy like that!' said Philip.

'No, nor wink to it,' said Con. 'But it's a question about packing cannon
and small arms; and you might be useful in dropping a hint or two. The
matter's innocent. It's not even a substitution of one form of Government
for another: only a change of despots, I suspect. And here's Mr. John
Mattock himself, who'll corroborate me, as far as we can let you into the
secret before we've consulted together. And he's an Englishman and a
member of Parliament, and a Liberal though a landlord, a thorough stout
Briton and bulldog for the national integrity, not likely to play at arms
and ammunition where his country's prosperity 's concerned. How d' ye do,
Mr. Mattock--and opportunely, since it's my cousin, Captain Philip
O'Donnell, aide-de-camp to Sir Charles, fresh from Canada, of whom you've
heard, I'd like to make you acquainted with, previous to your meeting at
my wife's table tomorrow evening.'

Philip bowed to a man whose notion of the ceremony was to nod.

Con took him two steps aside and did all the talking. Mr. Mattock
listened attentively the first half-minute, after which it could be
perceived that the orator was besieging a post, or in other words a
Saxon's mind made up on a point of common sense. His appearance was
redolently marine; his pilot coat, flying necktie and wideish trowsers, a
general airiness of style on a solid frame, spoke of the element his blue
eyes had dipped their fancy in, from hereditary inclination. The colour
of a sandpit was given him by hair and whiskers of yellow-red on a ruddy
face. No one could express a negative more emphatically without wording
it, though he neither frowned nor gesticulated to that effect.

'Ah!' said Con, abruptly coming to an end after an eloquent appeal. 'And
I think I'm of your opinion: and the sea no longer dashes at the rock,
but makes itself a mirror to the same. She'll keep her money and nurse
her babe, and not be trying risky adventures to turn him into a reigning
prince. Only this: you'll have to persuade her the thing is impossible.
She'll not take it from any of us. She looks on you as Wisdom in the
uniform of a great commander, and if you say a thing can be done it 's
done.'

'The reverse too, I hope,' said Mr. Mattock, nodding and passing on his
way.

'That I am not so sure of,' Con remarked to himself. 'There's a change in
a man through a change in his position! Six months or so back, Phil, that
man came from Vienna, the devoted slave of the Princess Nikolas. He'd
been there on his father's business about one of the Danube railways, and
he was ready to fill the place of the prince at the head of his phantom
body of horse and foot and elsewhere. We talked of his selling her
estates for the purchase of arms and the enemy--as many as she had money
for. We discussed it as a matter of business. She had bewitched him: and
would again, I don't doubt, if she were here to repeat the dose. But in
the interim his father dies, he inherits; and he enters Parliament, and
now, mind you, the man who solemnly calculated her chances and speculates
on the transmission of rifled arms of the best manufacture and latest
invention by his yacht and with his loads of rails, under the noses of
the authorities, like a master rebel, and a chivalrous gentleman to boot,
pooh poohs the whole affair. You saw him. Grave as an owl, the dead
contrary of his former self!'

'I thought I heard you approve him,' said Philip.

'And I do. But the poor girl has ordered her estates to be sold to cast
the die, and I 'm taking the view of her disappointment, for she believes
he can do anything; and if I know the witch, her sole comfort lying in
the straw is the prospect of a bloody venture for a throne. The truth is,
to my thinking, it's the only thing she has to help her to stomach her
husband.'

'But it's rank idiocy to suppose she can smuggle cannon!' cried Philip.

'But that man Mattock's not an idiot and he thought she could. And it 's
proof he was under a spell. She can work one.'

'The country hasn't a port.'

'Round the Euxine and up the Danube, with the British flag at the stern.
I could rather enjoy the adventure. And her prince is called for. He's
promised a good reception when he drops down the river, they say. A bit
of a scrimmage on the landing-pier may be, and the first field or two,
and then he sits himself, and he waits his turn. The people change their
sovereigns as rapidly as a London purse. Two pieces of artillery and two
or three hundred men and a trumpet alter the face of the land there.
Sometimes a trumpet blown by impudence does it alone. They're
enthusiastic for any new prince. He's their Weekly Journal or Monthly
Magazine. Let them make acquaintance with Adiante Adister, I'd not swear
she wouldn't lay fast hold of them.'

Philip signalled to his driver, and Captain Con sang out his dinner-hour
for a reminder to punctuality, thoughtful of the feelings of his wife.

CHAPTER XII

MISS MATTOCK

Mrs. Adister O'Donnell, in common with her family, had an extreme dislike
of the task of composing epistles, due to the circumstance that she was
unable, unaided, to conceive an idea disconnected with the main theme of
her communication, and regarded, as an art of conjuring, the use of words
independent of ideas. Her native superiority caused her to despise the
art, but the necessity for employing it at intervals subjected her to
fits of admiration of the conjurer, it being then evident that a
serviceable piece of work, beyond her capacity to do, was lightly
performed by another. The lady's practical intelligence admitted the
service, and at the same time her addiction to the practical provoked
disdain of so flimsy a genius, which was identified by her with the
genius of the Irish race. If Irishmen had not been notoriously fighters,
famous for their chivalry, she would have looked on them as a kind of
footmen hired to talk and write, whose volubility might be encouraged and
their affectionateness deserved by liberal wages. The promptitude of
Irish blood to deliver the war-cry either upon a glove flung down or
taken up, raised them to a first place in her esteem: and she was a
peaceful woman abhorring sanguinary contention; but it was in her own
blood to love such a disposition against her principles.

She led Patrick to her private room, where they both took seats and he
selected a pen. Mr. Patrick supposed that his business would be to listen
and put her words to paper; a mechanical occupation permitting the
indulgence of personal phantasies; and he was flying high on them until
the extraordinary delicacy of the mind seeking to deliver itself forced
him to prick up all his apprehensiveness. She wished to convey that she
was pleased with the news from Vienna, and desired her gratification to
be imparted to her niece Caroline, yet not so as to be opposed to the
peculiar feelings of her brother Edward, which had her fullest sympathy;
and yet Caroline must by no means be requested to alter a sentence
referring to Adiante, for that would commit her and the writer jointly to
an insincerity.

'It must be the whole truth, madam,' said Patrick, and he wrote: 'My dear
Caroline,' to get the start. At once a magnificently clear course for the
complicated letter was distinguished by him. 'Can I write on and read it
to you afterward? I have the view,' he said.

Mrs. Adister waved to him to write on.

Patrick followed his 'My dear Caroline' with greetings very warm, founded
on a report of her flourishing good looks. The decision of Government to
send reinforcements to Ireland was mentioned as a prelude to the
information from Vienna of the birth of a son to the Princess Nikolas:
and then; having conjoined the two entirely heterogeneous pieces of
intelligence, the composer adroitly interfused them by a careless
transposition of the prelude and the burden that enabled him to play ad
libitum on regrets and rejoicings; by which device the lord of Earlsfont
might be offered condolences while the lady could express her strong
contentment, inasmuch as he deplored the state of affairs in the sister
island, and she was glad of a crisis concluding a term of suspense thus
the foreign-born baby was denounced and welcomed, the circumstances
lamented and the mother congratulated, in a breath, all under cover of
the happiest misunderstanding, as effective as the cabalism of Prospero's
wand among the Neapolitan mariners, by the skilful Irish development on a
grand scale of the rhetorical figure anastrophe, or a turning about and
about.

He read it out to her, enjoying his composition and pleased with his
reconcilement of differences. 'So you say what you feel yourself, madam,
and allow for the feelings on the other side,' he remarked. 'Shall I fold
it?

There was a smoothness in the letter particularly agreeable to her
troubled wits, but with an awful taste. She hesitated to assent: it
seemed like a drug that she was offered.

Patrick sketched a series of hooked noses on the blotter. He heard a
lady's name announced at the door, and glancing up from his work he
beheld a fiery vision.

Mrs. Adister addressed her affectionately: 'My dear Jane!' Patrick was
introduced to Miss Mattock.

His first impression was that the young lady could wrestle with him and
render it doubtful of his keeping his legs. He was next engaged in
imagining that she would certainly burn and be a light in the dark.
Afterwards he discovered her feelings to be delicate, her looks pleasant.
Thereupon came one of the most singular sensations he had ever known: he
felt that he was unable to see the way to please her. She confirmed it by
her remarks and manner of speaking. Apparently she was conducting a
business.

'You're right, my dear Mrs. Adister, I'm on my way to the Laundry, and I
called to get Captain Con to drive there with me and worry the manageress
about the linen they turn out: for gentlemen are complaining of their
shirt-fronts, and if we get a bad name with them it will ruin us. Women
will listen to a man. I hear he has gone down to the city. I must go and
do it alone. Our accounts are flourishing, I'm glad to say, though we
cannot yet afford to pay for a secretary, and we want one. John and I
verified them last night. We're aiming at steam, you know. In three or
four years we may found a steam laundry on our accumulated capital. If
only we can establish it on a scale to let us give employment to at least
as many women as we have working now! That is what I want to hear of. But
if we wait for a great rival steam laundry to start ahead of us, we shall
be beaten and have to depend on the charitable sentiments of rich people
to support the Institution. And that won't do. So it's a serious question
with us to think of taking the initiative: for steam must come. It 's a
scandal every day that it doesn't while we have coal. I'm for grand
measures. At the same time we must not be imprudent: turning off hands,
even temporarily, that have to feed infants, would be quite against my
policy.'

Her age struck Patrick as being about twenty-three.

'Could my nephew Arthur be of any use to you?' said Mrs. Adister.

'Colonel Adister?' Miss Mattock shook her head. 'No.'

'Arthur can be very energetic when he takes up a thing.' 'Can he? But,
Mrs. Adister, you are looking a little troubled. Sometimes you confide in
me. You are so good to us with your subscriptions that I always feel in
your debt.'

Patrick glanced at his hostess for a signal to rise and depart.

She gave none, but at once unfolded her perplexity, and requested Miss
Mattock to peruse the composition of Mr. Patrick O'Donnell and deliver an
opinion upon it.

The young lady took the letter without noticing its author. She read it
through, handed it back, and sat with her opinion evidently formed
within.

'What do you think of it?' she was asked.

'Rank jesuitry,' she replied.

'I feared so!' sighed Mrs. Adister. 'Yet it says everything I wish to
have said. It spares my brother and it does not belie me. The effect of a
letter is often most important. I cannot but consider this letter very
ingenious. But the moment I hear it is jesuitical I forswear it. But then
my dilemma remains. I cannot consent to give pain to my brother Edward:
nor will I speak an untruth, though it be to save him from a wound. I am
indeed troubled. Mr. Patrick, I cannot consent to despatch a jesuitical
letter. You are sure of your impression, my dear Jane?'

'Perfectly,' said Miss Mattock.

Patrick leaned to her. 'But if the idea in the mind of the person
supposed to be writing the letter is accurately expressed? Does it
matter, if we call it jesuitical, if the emotion at work behind it
happens to be a trifle so, according to your definition?'

She rejoined: 'I should say, distinctly it matters.'

'Then you'd not express the emotions at all?'

He flashed a comical look of astonishment as he spoke. She was not to be
diverted; she settled into antagonism.

'I should write what I felt.'

'But it might be like discharging a bullet.'

'How?'

'If your writing in that way wounded the receiver.'

'Of course I should endeavour not to wound!'

'And there the bit of jesuitry begins. And it's innocent while it 's no
worse than an effort to do a disagreeable thing as delicately as you
can.'

She shrugged as delicately as she could:

'We cannot possibly please everybody in life.'

'No: only we may spare them a shock: mayn't we?'

'Sophistries of any description, I detest.'

'But sometimes you smile to please, don't you?'

'Do you detect falseness in that?' she answered, after the demurest of
pauses.

'No: but isn't there a soupcon of sophistry in it?'

'I should say that it comes under the title of common civility.'

'And on occasion a little extra civility is permitted!'

'Perhaps: when we are not seeking a personal advantage.'

'On behalf of the Steam Laundry?'

Miss Mattock grew restless: she was too serious in defending her position
to submit to laugh, and his goodhumoured face forbade her taking offence.

'Well, perhaps, for that is in the interest of others.'

'In the interests of poor and helpless females. And I agree with you with
all my heart. But you would not be so considerate for the sore feelings
of a father hearing what he hates to hear as to write a roundabout word
to soften bad news to him?'

She sought refuge in the reply that nothing excused jesuitry.

'Except the necessities of civilisation,' said Patrick.

'Politeness is one thing,' she remarked pointedly.

'And domestic politeness is quite as needful as popular, you'll admit.
And what more have we done in the letter than to be guilty of that? And
people declare it's rarer: as if we were to be shut up in families to
tread on one another's corns! Dear me! and after a time we should be
having rank jesuitry advertised as the specific balsam for an unhappy
domesticated population treading with hard heels from desperate habit and
not the slightest intention to wound.'

'My dear Jane,' Mrs. Adister interposed while the young lady sat between
mildly staring and blinking, 'you have, though still of a tender age, so
excellent a head that I could trust to your counsel blindfolded. It is
really deep concern for my brother. I am also strongly in sympathy with
my niece, the princess, that beautiful Adiante: and my conscience
declines to let me say that I am not.'

'We might perhaps presume to beg for Miss Mattock's assistance in the
composition of a second letter more to her taste,' Patrick said slyly.

The effect was prompt: she sprang from her seat.

'Dear Mrs. Adister! I leave it to you. I am certain you and Mr. O'Donnell
know best. It's too difficult and delicate for me. I am horribly blunt.
Forgive me if I seemed to pretend to casuistry. I am sure I had no such
meaning. I said what I thought. I always do. I never meant that it was
not a very clever letter; and if it does exactly what you require it
should be satisfactory. To-morrow evening John and I dine with you, and I
look forward to plenty of controversy and amusement. At present I have
only a head for work.'

'I wish I had that,' said Patrick devoutly.

She dropped her eyes on him, but without letting him perceive that he was
a step nearer to the point of pleasing her.

CHAPTER XIII

THE DINNER-PARTY

Miss Mattock ventured on a prediction in her mind:

She was sure the letter would go. And there was not much to signify if it
did. But the curious fatality that a person of such a native uprightness
as Mrs. Adister should have been drawn in among Irishmen, set her
thoughts upon the composer of the letter, and upon the contrast of his
ingenuous look with the powerful cast of his head. She fancied a certain
danger about him; of what kind she could not quite distinguish, for it
had no reference to woman's heart, and he was too young to be much of a
politician, and he was not in the priesthood. His transparency was of a
totally different order from Captain Con's, which proclaimed itself
genuine by the inability to conceal a shoal of subterfuges. The younger
cousin's features carried a something invisible behind them, and she was
just perceptive enough to spy it, and it excited her suspicions. Irishmen
both she and her brother had to learn to like, owing to their bad repute
for stability: they are, moreover, Papists: they are not given to ideas:
that one of the working for the future has not struck them. In fine, they
are not solid, not law-supporting, not disposed to be (humbly be it said)
beneficent, like the good English. These were her views, and as she held
it a weakness to have to confess that Irishmen are socially more
fascinating than the good English, she was on her guard against them.

Of course the letter had gone. She heard of it before the commencement of
the dinner, after Mrs. Adister had introduced Captain Philip O'Donnell to
her, and while she was exchanging a word or two with Colonel Adister, who
stood ready to conduct her to the table. If he addressed any remarks to
the lady under his charge, Miss Mattock did not hear him; and she
listened--who shall say why? His unlike likeness to his brother had
struck her. Patrick opposite was flowing in speech. But Captain Philip
O'Donnell's taciturnity seemed no uncivil gloom: it wore nothing of that
look of being beneath the table, which some of our good English are
guilty of at their social festivities, or of towering aloof a Matterhorn
above it, in the style of Colonel Adister. Her discourse with the latter
amused her passing reflections. They started a subject, and he punctuated
her observations, or she his, and so they speedily ran to earth.

'I think,' says she, 'you were in Egypt this time last winter.'

He supplies her with a comma: 'Rather later.'

Then he carries on the line. 'Dull enough, if you don't have the right
sort of travelling crew in your boat.'

'Naturally,' she puts her semicolon, ominous of the full stop.

'I fancy you have never been in Egypt?'

'No'

There it is; for the tone betrays no curiosity about Egypt and her Nile,
and he is led to suppose that she has a distaste for foreign places.

Condescending to attempt to please, which he has reason to wish to
succeed in doing, the task of pursuing conversational intercourse
devolves upon him--

'I missed Parlatti last spring. What opinion have you formed of her?'

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