The Gentleman of Fifty and The Damsel of Nineteen

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This etext was produced by David Widger

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THE GENTLEMAN OF FIFTY AND THE DAMSEL OF NINETEEN

(An early uncompleted fragment.)

By George Meredith

CHAPTER I

Passing over Ickleworth Bridge and rounding up the heavily-shadowed river
of our narrow valley, I perceived a commotion as of bathers in a certain
bright space immediately underneath the vicar's terrace-garden steps. My
astonishment was considerable when it became evident to me that the vicar
himself was disporting in the water, which, reaching no higher than his
waist, disclosed him in the ordinary habiliments of his cloth. I knew my
friend to be one of the most absent-minded of men, and my first effort to
explain the phenomenon of his appearance there, suggested that he might
have walked in, the victim of a fit of abstraction, and that he had not
yet fully comprehended his plight; but this idea was dispersed when I
beheld the very portly lady, his partner in joy and adversity, standing
immersed, and perfectly attired, some short distance nearer to the bank.
As I advanced along the bank opposed to them, I was further amazed to
hear them discoursing quite equably together, so that it was impossible
to say on the face of it whether a catastrophe had occurred, or the great
heat of a cloudless summer day had tempted an eccentric couple to seek
for coolness in the directest fashion, without absolute disregard to
propriety. I made a point of listening for the accentuation of the
'my dear' which was being interchanged, but the key-note to the harmony
existing between husband and wife was neither excessively unctuous, nor
shrewd, and the connubial shuttlecock was so well kept up on both sides
that I chose to await the issue rather than speculate on the origin of
this strange exhibition. I therefore, as I could not be accused of an
outrage to modesty, permitted myself to maintain what might be
invidiously termed a satyr-like watch from behind a forward flinging
willow, whose business in life was to look at its image in a brown depth,
branches, trunk, and roots. The sole indication of discomfort displayed
by the pair was that the lady's hand worked somewhat fretfully to keep
her dress from ballooning and puffing out of all proportion round about
her person, while the vicar, who stood without his hat, employed a spongy
handkerchief from time to time in tempering the ardours of a vertical
sun. If you will consent to imagine a bald blackbird, his neck being
shrunk in apprehensively, as you may see him in the first rolling of the
thunder, you will gather an image of my friend's appearance.

He performed his capital ablutions with many loud 'poofs,' and a casting
up of dazzled eyes, an action that gave point to his recital of the
invocation of Chryses to Smintheus which brought upon the Greeks disaster
and much woe. Between the lines he replied to his wife, whose remarks
increased in quantity, and also, as I thought, in emphasis, under the
river of verse which he poured forth unbaffled, broadening his chest to
the sonorous Greek music in a singular rapture of obliviousness.

A wise man will not squander his laughter if he can help it, but will
keep the agitation of it down as long as he may. The simmering of humour
sends a lively spirit into the mind, whereas the boiling over is but a
prodigal expenditure and the disturbance of a clear current: for the
comic element is visible to you in all things, if you do but keep your
mind charged with the perception of it, as I have heard a great expounder
deliver himself on another subject; and he spoke very truly. So, I
continued to look on with the gravity of Nature herself, and I could not
but fancy, and with less than our usual wilfulness when we fancy things
about Nature's moods, that the Mother of men beheld this scene with half
a smile, differently from the simple observation of those cows whisking
the flies from their flanks at the edge of the shorn meadow and its
aspens, seen beneath the curved roof of a broad oak-branch. Save for
this happy upward curve of the branch, we are encompassed by breathless
foliage; even the gloom was hot; the little insects that are food for
fish tried a flight and fell on the water's surface, as if panting. Here
and there, a sullen fish consented to take them, and a circle spread,
telling of past excitement.

I had listened to the vicar's Homeric lowing for the space of a minute or
so--what some one has called, the great beast-like, bellow-like, roar and
roll of the Iliad hexameter: it stopped like a cut cord. One of the
numerous daughters of his house appeared in the arch of white cluster-
roses on the lower garden-terrace, and with an exclamation, stood
petrified at the extraordinary spectacle, and then she laughed outright.
I had hitherto resisted, but the young lady's frank and boisterous
laughter carried me along, and I too let loose a peal, and discovered
myself. The vicar, seeing me, acknowledged a consciousness of his absurd
position with a laugh as loud. As for the scapegrace girl, she went off
into a run of high-pitched shriekings like twenty woodpeckers, crying: I
Mama, mama, you look as if you were in Jordan!'

The vicar cleared his throat admonishingly, for it was apparent that Miss
Alice was giving offence to her mother, and I presume he thought it was
enough for one of the family to have done so.

'Wilt thou come out of Jordan?' I cried.

'I am sufficiently baptized with the water,' said the helpless man. . .

'Indeed, Mr. Amble,' observed his spouse, 'you can lecture a woman for
not making the best of circumstances; I hope you'll bear in mind that
it's you who are irreverent. I can endure this no longer. You deserve
Mr. Pollingray's ridicule.'

Upon this, I interposed: 'Pray, ma'am, don't imagine that you have
anything but sympathy from me.'--but as I was protesting, having my mouth
open, the terrible Miss Alice dragged the laughter remorselessly out of
me.

They have been trying Frank's new boat, Mr. Pollingray, and they've upset
it. Oh! oh' and again there was the woodpeckers' chorus.

'Alice, I desire you instantly to go and fetch John the gardener,' said
the angry mother.

'Mama, I can't move; wait a minute, only a minute. John's gone about the
geraniums. Oh! don't look so resigned, papa; you'll kill me! Mama,
come and take my hand. Oh! oh!'

The young lady put her hands in against her waist and rolled her body
like a possessed one.

'Why don't you come in through the boat-house?' she asked when she had
mastered her fit.

'Ah!' said the vicar. I beheld him struck by this new thought.

'How utterly absurd you are, Mr. Amble!' exclaimed his wife, 'when you
know that the boat-house is locked, and that the boat was lying under the
camshot when you persuaded me to step into it.'

Hearing this explanation of the accident, Alice gave way to an
ungovernable emotion.

'You see, my dear,' the vicar addressed his wife, she can do nothing;
it's useless. If ever patience is counselled to us, it is when accidents
befall us, for then, as we are not responsible, we know we are in other
hands, and it is our duty to be comparatively passive. Perhaps I may say
that in every difficulty, patience is a life-belt. I beg of you to be
patient still.'

'Mr. Amble, I shall think you foolish,' said the spouse, with a nod of
more than emphasis.

My dear, you have only to decide,' was the meek reply.

By this time, Miss Alice had so far conquered the fiend of laughter that
she could venture to summon her mother close up to the bank and extend a
rescuing hand. Mrs. Amble waded to within reach, her husband following.
Arrangements were made for Alice to pull, and the vicar to push; both in
accordance with Mrs. Amble's stipulations, for even in her extremity of
helplessness she affected rule and sovereignty. Unhappily, at the
decisive moment, I chanced (and I admit it was more than an inadvertence
on my part, it was a most ill-considered thing to do) I chanced, I say,
to call out--and that I refrained from quoting Voltaire is something in
my favour:

'How on earth did you manage to tumble in?'

There can be no contest of opinion that I might have kept my curiosity
waiting, and possibly it may be said with some justification that I was
the direct cause of my friend's unparalleled behaviour; but could a
mortal man guess that in the very act of assisting his wife's return to
dry land, and while she was--if I may put it so--modestly in his hands,
he would turn about with a quotation that compared him to old Palinurus,
all the while allowing his worthy and admirable burden to sink lower and
dispread in excess upon the surface of the water, until the vantage of
her daughter's help was lost to her; I beheld the consequences of my
indiscretion, dismayed. I would have checked the preposterous Virgilian,
but in contempt of my uplifted hand and averted head, and regardless of
the fact that his wife was then literally dependent upon him, the vicar
declaimed (and the drenching effect produced by Latin upon a lady at such
a season, may be thought on):

Vix primos inopina quies laxaverat artus,
Et super incumbens, cum puppis parte revulsa
Cumque gubernaclo liquidas projecit in undas.'

It is not easy when you are unacquainted with the language, to retort
upon Latin, even when the attempt to do so is made in English. Very few
even of the uneducated ears can tolerate such anti-climax vituperative as
English after sounding Latin. Mrs. Amble kept down those sentiments
which her vernacular might have expressed. I heard but one groan that
came from her as she lay huddled indistinguishably in the, arms of her
husband.

'Not--praecipitem! I am happy to say,' my senseless friend remarked
further, and laughed cheerfully as he fortified his statement with a run
of negatives. 'No, no'; in a way peculiar to him. 'No, no. If I plant
my grey hairs anywhere, it will be on dry land: no. But, now, my dear;
he returned to his duty; why, you're down again. Come: one, two, and
up.'

He was raising a dead weight. The passion for sarcastic speech was
manifestly at war with common prudence in the bosom of Mrs. Amble;
prudence, however, overcame it. She cast on him a look of a kind that
makes matrimony terrific in the dreams of bachelors, and then wedding her
energy to the assistance given she made one of those senseless springs of
the upper half of the body, which strike the philosophic eye with the
futility of an effort that does not arise from a solid basis. Owing to
the want of concert between them, the vicar's impulsive strength was
expended when his wife's came into play. Alice clutched her mother
bravely. The vicar had force enough to stay his wife's descent; but
Alice (she boasts of her muscle) had not the force in the other
direction--and no wonder. There are few young ladies who could pull
fourteen stone sheer up a camshot.

Mrs. Amble remained in suspense between the two.

Oh, Mr. Pollingray, if you were only on this side to help us,' Miss Alice
exclaimed very piteously, though I could see that she was half mad with
the internal struggle of laughter at the parents and concern for them.

'Now, pull, Alice,' shouted the vicar.

'No, not yet,' screamed Mrs. Amble; I'm sinking.'

'Pull, Alice.'

'Now, Mama.'

'Oh!'

'Push, Papa.'

'I'm down.'

'Up, Ma'am; Jane; woman, up.'

'Gently, Papa: Abraham, I will not.'

'My dear, but you must.'

'And that man opposite.'

'What, Pollingray? He's fifty.'

I found myself walking indignantly down the path. Even now I protest my
friend was guilty of bad manners, though I make every allowance for him;
I excuse, I pass the order; but why--what justifies one man's bawling out
another man's age? What purpose does it serve? I suppose the vicar
wished to reassure his wife, on the principle (I have heard him enunciate
it) that the sexes are merged at fifty--by which he means, I must
presume, that something which may be good or bad, and is generally silly
--of course, I admire and respect modesty and pudeur as much as any man--
something has gone: a recognition of the bounds of division. There is,
if that is a lamentable matter, a loss of certain of our young tricks at
fifty. We have ceased to blush readily: and let me ask you to define a
blush. Is it an involuntary truth or an ingenuous lie? I know that this
will sound like the language of a man not a little jealous of his
youthful compeers. I can but leave it to rightly judging persons to
consider whether a healthy man in his prime, who has enough, and is not
cursed by ambition, need be jealous of any living soul.

A shriek from Miss Alice checked my retreating steps. The vicar was
staggering to support the breathing half of his partner while she
regained her footing in the bed of the river. Their effort to scale the
camshot had failed. Happily at this moment I caught sight of Master
Frank's boat, which had floated, bottom upwards, against a projecting
mud-bank of forget-me-nots. I contrived to reach it and right it, and
having secured one of the sculls, I pulled up to the rescue; though not
before I had plucked a flower, actuated by a motive that I cannot account
for. The vicar held the boat firmly against the camshot, while I, at the
imminent risk of joining them (I shall not forget the combined expression
of Miss Alice's retreating eyes and the malicious corners of her mouth)
hoisted the lady in, and the river with her. From the seat of the boat
she stood sufficiently high to project the step towards land without
peril. When she had set her foot there, we all assumed an attitude of
respectful attention, and the vicar, who could soar over calamity like a
fairweather swallow, acknowledged the return of his wife to the element
with a series of apologetic yesses and short coughings.

'That would furnish a good concert for the poets,' he remarked.
'A parting, a separation of lovers; "even as a body from the watertorn,"
or "from the water plucked"; eh? do you think--"so I weep round her,
tearful in her track," an excellent--'

But the outraged woman, dripping in grievous discomfort above him, made a
peremptory gesture.

'Mr. Amble, will you come on shore instantly, I have borne with your
stupidity long enough. I insist upon your remembering, sir, that you
have a family dependent upon you. Other men may commit these follies.'

This was a blow at myself, a bachelor whom the lady had never persuaded
to dream of relinquishing his freedom.

'My dear, I am coming,' said the vicar.

'Then, come at once, or I shall think you idiotic,' the wife retorted.

'I have been endeavouring,' the vicar now addressed me, 'to prove by a
practical demonstration that women are capable of as much philosophy as
men, under any sudden and afflicting revolution of circumstances.'

'And if you get a sunstroke, you will be rightly punished, and I shall
not be sorry, Mr. Amble.'

'I am coming, my dear Jane. Pray run into the house and change your
things.'

'Not till I see you out of the water, sir.'

'You are losing your temper, my love.'

'You would make a saint lose his temper, Mr. Amble.'

'There were female saints, my dear,' the vicar mildly responded; and
addressed me further: 'Up to this point, I assure you, Pollingray, no
conduct could have been more exemplary than Mrs. Amble's. I had got her
into the boat--a good boat, a capital boat--but getting in myself, we
overturned. The first impulse of an ordinary woman would have been to
reproach and scold; but Mrs. Amble succumbed only to the first impulse.
Discovering that all effort unaided to climb the bank was fruitless, she
agreed to wait patiently and make the best of circumstances; and she did;
and she learnt to enjoy it. There is marrow in every bone. My dear.
Jane, I have never admired you so much. I tried her, Pollingray, in
metaphysics. I talked to her of the opera we last heard, I think fifty
years ago. And as it is less endurable for a woman to be patient in
tribulation--the honour is greater, when she overcomes the fleshy trial.
Insomuch,' the vicar put on a bland air of abnegation of honour, 'that I
am disposed to consider any male philosopher our superior; when you've
found one, ha, ha--when you've found one. O sol pulcher! I am ready to
sing that the day has been glorious, so far. Pulcher ille dies.'

Mrs. Amble appealed to me. 'Would anybody not swear that he is mad to
see him standing waist-deep in the water and the sun on his bald head,
I am reduced to entreat you not to--though you have no family of your
own--not to encourage him. It is amusing to you. Pray, reflect that
such folly is too often fatal. Compel him to come on shore.'

The logic of the appeal was no doubt distinctly visible in the lady's
mind, though it was not accurately worded. I saw that I stood marked to
be the scape goat of the day, and humbly continued to deserve well,
notwithstanding. By dint of simple signs and nods of affirmative,
and a constant propulsion of my friend's arm, I drew him into the boat,
and thence projected him up to the level with his wife, who had perhaps
deigned to understand that it was best to avoid the arresting of his
divergent mind by any remark during the passage, and remained silent.
No sooner was he established on his feet, than she plucked him away.

'Your papa's hat,' she called, flashing to her daughter, and streamed up
the lawn into the rose-trellised pathways leading on aloft to the
vicarage house. Behind roses the weeping couple disappeared. The last I
saw of my friend was a smiting of his hand upon his head in a vain effort
to catch at one of the fleeting ideas sowed in him by the quick passage
of objects before his vision, and shaken out of him by abnormal hurry.
The Rev. Abraham Amble had been lord of his wife in the water, but his
innings was over. He had evidently enjoyed it vastly, and I now
understood why he had chosen to prolong it as much as possible. Your
eccentric characters are not uncommonly amateurs of petty artifice.
There are hours of vengeance even for henpecked men.

I found myself sighing over the enslaved condition of every Benedict of
my acquaintance, when the thought came like a surprise that I was alone
with Alice. The fair and pleasant damsel made a clever descent into the
boat, and having seated herself, she began to twirl the scull in the
rowlock, and said: 'Do you feel disposed to join me in looking after the
other scull and papa's hat, Mr. Pollingray?' I suggested 'Will you not
get your feet wet? I couldn't manage to empty all the water in the
boat.'

'Oh' cried she, with a toss of her head; I wet feet never hurt young
people.'

There was matter for an admonitory lecture in this. Let me confess I was
about to give it, when she added: But Mr. Pollingray, I am really afraid
that your feet are wet! You had to step into the water when you righted
the boat:

My reply was to jump down by her side with as much agility as I could
combine with a proper discretion. The amateur craft rocked
threateningly, and I found myself grasped by and grasping the pretty
damsel, until by great good luck we were steadied and preserved from the
same misfortune which had befallen her parents. She laughed and blushed,
and we tottered asunder.

'Would you have talked metaphysics to me in the water, Mr. Pollingray?'

Alice was here guilty of one of those naughty sort of innocent speeches
smacking of Eve most strongly; though, of course, of Eve in her best
days.

I took the rudder lines to steer against the sculling of her single
scull, and was Adam enough to respond to temptation: 'I should perhaps
have been grateful to your charitable construction of it as being
metaphysics.'

She laughed colloquially, to fill a pause. It had not been coquetry:
merely the woman unconsciously at play. A man is bound to remember the
seniority of his years when this occurs, for a veteran of ninety and a
worn out young debauchee will equally be subject to it if they do not
shun the society of the sex. My long robust health and perfect self-
reliance apparently tend to give me unguarded moments, or lay me open to
fitful impressions. Indeed there are times when I fear I have the heart
of a boy, and certainly nothing more calamitous can be conceived,
supposing that it should ever for one instant get complete mastery of my
head. This is the peril of a man who has lived soberly. Do we never
know when we are safe? I am, in reflecting thereupon, positively
prepared to say that if there is no fool like what they call an old fool
(and a man in his prime, who can be laughed at, is the world's old fool)
there is wisdom in the wild oats theory, and I shall come round to my
nephew's way of thinking: that is, as far as Master Charles by his acting
represents his thinking. I shall at all events be more lenient in my
judgement of him, and less stern in my allocutions, for I shall have no
text to preach from.

We picked up the hat and the scull in one of the little muddy bays of our
brown river, forming an amphitheatre for water-rats and draped with great
dockleaves, nettle-flowers, ragged robins, and other weeds for which the
learned young lady gave the botanical names. It was pleasant to hear her
speak with the full authority of absolute knowledge of her subject. She
has intelligence. She is decidedly too good for Charles, unless he
changes his method of living.

'Shall we row on?' she asked, settling her arms to work the pair of
sculls.

'You have me in your power,' said I, and she struck out. Her shape is
exceedingly graceful; I was charmed by the occasional tightening in of
her lips as she exerted her muscle, while at intervals telling me of her
race with one of her boastful younger brothers, whom she had beaten.
I believe it is only when they are using physical exertion that the eyes
of young girls have entire simplicity--the simplicity of nature as
opposed to that other artificial simplicity which they learn from their
governesses, their mothers, and the admiration of witlings. Attractive
purity, or the nice glaze of no comprehension of anything which is
considered to be improper in a wicked world, and is no doubt very useful,
is not to my taste. French girls, as a rule, cannot compete with our
English in the purer graces. They are only incomparable when as women
they have resort to art.

Alice could look at me as she rowed, without thinking it necessary to
force a smile, or to speak, or to snigger and be foolish. I felt towards
the girl like a comrade.

We went no further than Hatchard's mile, where the water plumps the poor
sleepy river from a sidestream, and, as it turned the boat's head quite
round, I let the boat go. These studies of young women are very well as
a pastime; but they soon cease to be a recreation. She forms an
agreeable picture when she is rowing, and possesses a musical laugh. Now
and then she gives way to the bad trick of laughing without caring or
daring to explain the cause for it. She is moderately well-bred. I hope
that she has principle. Certain things a man of my time of life learns
by associating with very young people which are serviceable to him. What
a different matter this earth must be to that girl from what it is to me!
I knew it before. And--mark the difference--I feel it now.

CHAPTER II

SHE

Papa never will cease to meet with accidents and adventures. If he only
walks out to sit for half an hour with one of his old dames, as he calls
them, something is sure to happen to him, and it is almost as sure that
Mr. Pollingray will be passing at the time and mixed up in it.

Since Mr. Pollingray's return from his last residence on the Continent,
I have learnt to know him and like him. Charles is unjust to his uncle.
He is not at all the grave kind of man I expected from Charles's
description. He is extremely entertaining, and then he understands the
world, and I like to hear him talk, he is so unpretentious and uses just
the right words. No one would imagine his age, from his appearance, and
he has more fun than any young man I have listened to.

But, I am convinced I have discovered his weakness. It is my fatal.
peculiarity that I cannot be with people ten minutes without seeing some
point about them where they are tenderest. Mr. Pollingray wants to be
thought quite youthful. He can bear any amount of fatigue; he is always
fresh and a delightful companion; but you cannot get him to show even a
shadow of exhaustion or to admit that he ever knew what it was to lie
down beaten. This is really to pretend that he is superhuman. I like
him so much that I could wish him superior to such--it is nothing other
than--vanity. Which is worse? A young man giving himself the air of a
sage, or--but no one can call Mr. Pollingray an old man. He is a
confirmed bachelor. That puts the case. Charles, when he says of him
that he is a 'gentleman in a good state of preservation,' means to be
ironical. I doubt whether Charles at fifty would object to have the same
said of Mr. Charles Everett. Mr. Pollingray has always looked to his
health. He has not been disappointed. I am sure he was always very
good. But, whatever he was, he is now very pleasant, and he does not
talk to women as if he thought them singular, and feel timid, I mean,
confused, as some men show that they feel--the good ones. Perhaps he
felt so once, and that is why he is still free. Charles's dread that his
uncle will marry is most unworthy. He never will, but why should he not?
Mama declares that he is waiting for a woman of intellect, I can hear
her: 'Depend upon it, a woman of intellect will marry Dayton Manor.'
Should that mighty event not come to pass, poor Charles will have to sink
the name of Everett in that of Pollingray. Mr. Pollingray's name is the
worst thing about him. When I think of his name I see him ten times
older than he is. My feelings are in harmony with his pedigree
concerning the age of the name. One would have to be a woman of
profound intellect to see the advantage of sharing it.

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