Chapter 487

Lord Ormont had not greatly relished certain of the flowery phrases employed by this young foreigner. 'Truth his bride,' was damnable: and if a story had to be told, he liked it plain, without jerks and evolutions. Many offences to our taste have to be overlooked in foreigners--Italians! considered, before they were proved in fire, a people classed by nature as operatic declaimers. Bobby had shown himself on the road out to Bern a difficult boy, and stupefyingly ignorant. My lord had two or three ideas working to cloudy combination in his head when he put a question, referring to the management of the dormitories at the school. Whereupon the young Italian introduced himself as Giulio Calliani, and proposed a drive to inspect the old school, with its cricket and football fields, lake for rowing and swimming, gymnastic fixtures, carpenter's shed, bowling alley, and four European languages in the air by turns daily; and the boys, too, all the boys rosy and jolly, according to the last report received of them from his friend Matthew. Enthusiasm struck and tightened the loose chord of scepticism in Lord Ormont; somewhat as if a dancing beggar had entered a kennel-dog's yard, designing to fascinate the faithful beast. It is a chord of one note, that is tightened to sound by the violent summons to accept, which is a provocation to deny. At the same time, the enthusiast's dance is rather funny; he is not an ordinary beggar; to see him trip himself in his dance would be rather funnier. This is to say, inspect the trumpeted school and retire politely. My lord knew the Bern of frequent visits: the woman was needed beside him to inspire a feeling for scenic mountains. Philippa's admiration of them was like a new-pressed grape-juice after a draught of the ripe vintage. Moreover, Bobby was difficult: the rejected of his English schools was a stiff Ormont at lessons, a wheezy Benlew in the playground: exactly the reverse of what should have been. A school of four languages in bracing air, if a school with healthy dormitories, and a school of the trained instincts we call gentlemanly, might suit Master Bobby for a trial. An eye on the boys of the school would see in a minute what stuff they were made of. Supposing this young Italianissimo with the English tongue to be tolerably near the mark, with a deduction of two-thirds of the enthusiasm, Bobby might stop at the school as long as his health held out, or the master would keep him. Supposing half a dozen things and more, the meeting with this Mr. Calliand was a lucky accident. But lucky accidents are anticipated only by fools.

Lord Ormont consented to visit the school. He handed his card and invited his guest; he had a carriage in waiting for the day, he said; and obedient to Lady Charlotte's injunctions, he withheld Philippa from the party. She and her maid were to pass the five hours of his absence in efforts to keep their monkey Bobby out of the well of the solicitious bears.

My lord left his carriage at the inn of the village lying below the school-house on a green height. The young enthusiast was dancing him into the condition of livid taciturnity, which could, if it would, flash out pungent epigrams of the actual world at Operatic recitative.

'There's the old school-clock! Just in time for the half-hour before dinner,' said Calliani, chattering two hundred to the minute, of the habits and usages of the school, and how all had meals together, the master, his wife, the teachers, the boys. 'And she--as for her!' Calliani kissed finger up to the furthest skies: into which a self-respecting sober Northener of the Isles could imagine himself to kick enthusiastic gesticulators, if it were polite to do so.

The school-house faced the master's dwelling house, and these, with a block of building, formed a three-sided enclosure, like barracks! Forth from the school-house door burst a dozen shouting lads, as wasps from the hole of their nest from a charge of powder. Out they poured whizzing; and the frog he leaped, and pussy ran and doubled before the hounds, and hockey-sticks waved, and away went a ball. Cracks at the ball anyhow, was the game for the twenty-five minutes breather before dinner.

'French day!' said Calliani, hearing their cries. Then he bellowed 'Matthew!--Giulio!'

A lusty inversion of the order of the names and an Oberland jodel returned his hail. The school retreating caught up the Alpine cry in the distance. Here were lungs! Here were sprites!

Lord Ormont bethought him of the name of the master. 'Mr. Matthew, I think you said, sir,' he was observing to Calliani, as the master came nearer; and Calliani replied: 'His Christian name. But if the boys are naughty boys, it is not the privilege. Mr. Weyburn.'

There was not any necessity to pronounce that name Calliani spoke it on the rush to his friend.

Lord Ormont and Weyburn advanced the steps to the meeting. Neither of them flinched in eye or limb.

At a corridor window of the dwelling-house a lady stood. Her colour was the last of a summer day over western seas; her thought: 'It has come!' Her mind was in her sight; her other powers were frozen.

The two men conversed. There was no gesture.

This is one of the lightning moments of life for the woman, at the meeting of the two men between whom her person has been in dispute, may still be; her soul being with one. And that one, dearer than the blood of her body, imperilled by her.

She could ask why she exists, if a question were in her grasp. She would ask for the meaning of the gift of beauty to the woman, making her desireable to those two men, making her a cause of strife, a thing of doom. An incessant clamour dinned about her: 'It has come!'

The two men walked conversing into the school-house. She was unconscious of the seeing of a third, though she saw and at the back of her mind believed she knew a friend in him. The two disappeared. She was insensible stone, except for the bell-clang: 'It has come'; until they were in view again, still conversing: and the first of her thought to stir from petrifaction was: 'Life holds no secret.'

She tried, in shame of the inanimate creature she had become, to force herself to think: and had, for a chastising result, a series of geometrical figures shooting across her brain, mystically expressive of the situation, not communicably. The most vivid and persistent was a triangle. Interpret who may. The one beheld the two pass from view again, still conversing.

They are on the gravel; they bow; they separate. He of the grey head poised high has gone.

Her arm was pressed by a hand. Weyburn longed to enfold her, and she desired it, and her soul praised him for refraining. Both had that delicacy.

'You have seen, my darling,' Weyburn said. 'It has come, and we take our chance. He spoke not one word, beyond the affairs of the school. He has a grandnephew in want of a school: visited the dormitories, refectory, and sheds: tasted the well-water, addressed me as Mr. Matthew. He had it from Giulio. Came to look at the school of Giulio's "friend Matthew,":--you hear him. Giulio little imagines!--Well, dear love, we stand with a squad in front, and wait the word. It mayn't be spoken. We have counted long before that something like it was bound to happen. And you are brave. Ruin's an empty word for us two.'

'Yes, dear, it is: we will pay what is asked of us,' Aminta said. 'It will be heavy, if the school . . . and I love our boys. I am fit to be the school-housekeeper; for nothing else.'

'I will go to the boys' parents. At the worst, we can march into new territory. Emile will stick to us. Adolf, too. The fresh flock will come.'

Aminta cried in the voice of tears: 'I love the old so!'

'The likelihood is, we shall hear nothing further.'

'You had to bear the shock, Matthew.'

'Whatever I bore, and you saw, you shared.'

'Yes,' she said.

'Mais, n'oublions pas que c'est aujourd'hui jour francais; si, madame, vous avez assez d'appetit pour diner avec nous?

'Je suis, comme toujours, aux ordres de Monsieur.' She was among the bravest of women. She had a full ounce of lead in her breast when she sat with the boys at their midday meal, showing them her familiar pleasant face.

Shortly after the hour of the evening meal, a messenger from Bern delivered a letter addressed to the Headmaster. Weyburn and Aminta were strolling to the playground, thinking in common, as they usually did. They read the letter together. These were the lines:

'Lord Ormont desires to repeat his sense of obligation to Mr. Matthew for the inspection of the school under his charge, and will be thankful to Mr. Calliani, if that gentleman will do him the favour to call at his hotel at Bern to-morrow, at as early an hour as is convenient to him, for the purpose of making arrangements, agreeable to the Head-master's rules, for receiving his grandnephew Robert Benlew as a pupil at the school.'

The two raised eyes on one another, pained in their deep joy by the religion of the restraint upon their hearts, to keep down the passion to embrace.

'I thank heaven we know him to be one of the true noble men,' said Aminta, now breathing, and thanking Lord Ormont for the free breath she drew.

Weyburn spoke of an idea he had gathered from the earl's manner. But he had not imagined the proud lord's great-heartedness would go so far as to trust him with the guardianship of the boy. That moved, and that humbled him, though it was far from humiliating.

Six months later, the brief communication arrived from Lady Charlotte

'She is a widow.

'Unlikely you will hear from me again. Death is always next door, you said once. I look on the back of life.

'Tell Bobby, capital for him to write he has no longing for home holidays. If any one can make a man of him, you will. That I know.

'CHARLOTTE EGLETT.'

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS

A bird that won't roast or boil or stew A woman, and would therefore listen to nonsense A free-thinker startles him as a kind of demon A female free-thinker is one of Satan's concubines Acting is not of the high class which conceals the art Affected misapprehensions Ah! we fall into their fictions All that Matey and Browny were forbidden to write they looked And not be beaten by an acknowledged defeat Any excess pushes to craziness As well ask (women) how a battle-field concerns them! Bad luck's not repeated every day Keep heart for the good Bad laws are best broken Began the game of Pull Being in heart and mind the brother to the sister with women Botched mendings will only make them worse Bounds of his intelligence closed their four walls Boys who can appreciate brave deeds are capable of doing them Boys, of course--but men, too! But had sunk to climb on a firmer footing By nature incapable of asking pardon Cajoled like a twenty-year-old yahoo at college Careful not to smell of his office Challenged him to lead up to her desired stormy scene Chose to conceive that he thought abstractedly Consciousness of some guilt when vowing itself innocent Consign discussion to silence with the cynical closure Convictions we store--wherewith to shape our destinies Convincing themselves that they impersonate sagacity Could not understand enthusiasm for the schoolmaster's career Could we--we might be friends Curious thing would be if curious things should fail to happen Death is only the other side of the ditch Death is always next door Desire of it destroyed it Detestable feminine storms enveloping men weak enough Didn't say a word No use in talking about feelings Distaste for all exercise once pleasurable Divided lovers in presence Enthusiasm struck and tightened the loose chord of scepticism Enthusiast, when not lyrical, is perilously near to boring Exult in imagination of an escape up to the moment of capture Few men can forbear to tell a spicy story of their friends Greatest of men; who have to learn from the loss of the woman Having contracted the fatal habit of irony He had to shake up wrath over his grievances He had gone, and the day lived again for both of them He gave a slight sign of restiveness, and was allowed to go He loathed a skulker He took small account of the operations of the feelings He began ambitiously--It's the way at the beginning Her vehement fighting against facts Her duel with Time His aim to win the woman acknowledged no obstacle in the means His restored sense of possession Hopeless task of defending a woman from a woman How to compromise the matter for the sake of peace? I have all the luxuries--enough to loathe them I hate old age It changes you so I could be in love with her cruelty, if only I had her near me I look on the back of life I want no more, except to be taught to work I married a cook She expects a big appetite I'm for a rational Deity If the world is hostile we are not to blame it Ignorance roaring behind a mask of sarcasm Increase of dissatisfaction with the more she got Lawyers hold the keys of the great world Learn--principally not to be afraid of ideas Loathing of artifice to raise emotion Look well behind Lucky accidents are anticipated only by fools Magnify an offence in the ratio of our vanity Man who helps me to read the world and men as they are Meant to vanquish her with the dominating patience Men bore the blame, though the women were rightly punished Men who believe that there is a virtue in imprecations Naked original ideas, are acceptable at no time Napoleon's treatment of women is excellent example Necessity's offspring Never nurse an injury, great or small Nevertheless, inclinations are an infidelity No love can be without jealousy Not daring risk of office by offending the taxpayer Not the indignant and the frozen, but the genially indifferent Not men of brains, but the men of aptitudes Old age is a prison wall between us and young people One has to feel strong in a delicate position One night, and her character's gone One is a fish to her hook; another a moth to her light Orderliness, from which men are privately exempt Our love and labour are constantly on trial Passion added to a bowl of reason makes a sophist's mess People were virtuous in past days: they counted their sinners Perhaps inspire him, if he would let her breathe Person in another world beyond this world of blood Policy seems to petrify their minds Practical for having an addiction to the palpable Professional Puritans Published Memoirs indicate the end of a man's activity Rage of a conceited schemer tricked Regularity of the grin of dentistry Respect one another's affectations Screams of an uninjured lady Selfishness and icy inaccessibility to emotion She had to be the hypocrite or else--leap She had a thirsting mind Silence was doing the work of a scourge Smile she had in reserve for serviceable persons Snatch her from a possessor who forfeited by undervaluing her So says the minute Years are before you That pit of one of their dead silences The despot is alert at every issue, to every chance The spending, never harvesting, world The shots hit us behind you The terrible aggregate social woman The next ten minutes will decide our destinies The woman side of him The good life gone lives on in the mind The beat of a heart with a dread like a shot in it There is no history of events below the surface There are women who go through life not knowing love They want you to show them what they 'd like the world to be Things are not equal Things were lumpish and gloomy that day of the week This female talk of the eternities Titles showered on the women who take free breath of air To males, all ideas are female until they are made facts To time and a wife it is no disgrace for a man to bend To know how to take a licking, that wins in the end Uncommon unprogressiveness Venus of nature was melting into a Venus of art Violent summons to accept, which is a provocation to deny We cannot, men or woman, control the heart in sleep at night We shall want a war to teach the country the value of courage We don't go together into a garden of roses When duelling flourished on our land, frail women powerful Where heart weds mind, or nature joins intellect Who cries, Come on, and prays his gods you won't Why he enjoyed the privilege of seeing, and was not beside her With what little wisdom the world is governed Women are happier enslaved World against us It will not keep us from trying to serve Years are the teachers of the great rocky natures You'll have to guess at half of everything he tells you You're going to be men, meaning something better than women

THE AMAZING MARRIAGE

By George Meredith

1895

CONTENTS:

BOOK 1. I. ENTER DAME GOSSIP AS CHORUS II. MISTRESS GOSSIP TELLS OF THE ELOPEMENT OF THE COUNTESS OF CRESSETT WITH THE OLD BUCCANEER, AND OF CHARLES DUMP THE POSTILLION CONDUCTING THEM, AND OF A GREAT COUNTY FAMILY III. CONTINUATION OF THE INTRODUCTORY MEANDERINGS OF DAME GOSSIP, TOGETHER WITH HER SUDDEN EXTINCTION IV. MORNING AND FAREWELL TO AN OLD HOME V. A MOUNTAIN WALK IN MIST AND SUNSHINE VI. THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHER VII. THE LADY'S LETTER VIII. OF THE ENCOUNTER OF TWO STRANGE YOUNG MEN AND THEIR CONSORTING: IN WHICH THE MALE READER IS REQUESTED TO BEAR IN MIND WHAT WILD CREATURE HE WAS IN HIS YOUTH, WHILE THE FEMALE SHOULD MARVEL CREDULOUSLY IX. CONCERNING THE BLACK GODDESS FORTUNE AND THE WORSHIP OF HER, TOGETHER WITH AN INTRODUCTION OF SOME OF HER VOTARIES

BOOK 2. X. SMALL CAUSES XI. THE PRISONER OF HIS WORD XII. HENRIETTA'S LETTER TREATING OF THE GREAT EVENT XIII. AN IRRUPTION OF MISTRESS GOSSIP IN BREACH OF THE CONVENTION XIV. A PENDANT OF THE FOREGOING XV. OPENING STAGE OF THE HONEYMOON XVI. IN WHICH THE BRIDE FROM FOREIGN PARTS IS GIVEN A TASTE OF OLD ENGLAND XVII. RECORDS A SHADOW CONTEST CLOSE ON THE FOREGOING XVIII. DOWN WHITECHAPEL WAY XIX. THE GIRL MADGE

BOOK 3. XX. STUDIES IN FOG, GOUT, AN OLD SEAMAN, A LOVELY SERPENT, AND THE MORAL EFFECTS THAT MAY COME OF A BORROWED SHIRT XXI. IN WHICH WE HAVE FURTHER GLIMPSES OF THE WONDROUS MECHANISM OF OUR YOUNGER MAN XXII. A RIGHT-MINDED GREAT LADY XXIII. IN DAME GOSSIP'S VEIN XXIV. A KIDNAPPING AND NO GREAT HARM XXV. THE PHILOSOPHER MAN OF ACTION XXVI. AFTER SOME FENCING THE DAME PASSES OUR GUARD XXVII. WE DESCEND INTO A STEAMER'S ENGINE-ROOM XXVIII. BY CONCESSIONS TO MISTRESS GOSSIP A FURTHER INTRUSION IS AVERTED

BOOK 4. XXIX. CARINTHIA IN WALES XXX. REBECCA WYTHAN XXXI. WE HAVE AGAIN TO DEAL WITH THE EXAMPLES OF OUR YOUNGER MAN XXXII. IN WHICH WE SEE CARINTHIA PUT IN PRACTICE ONE OF HER OLD FATHER'S LESSONS XXXIII. A FRIGHTFUL DEBATE XXXIV. A SURVEY OF THE RIDE OF THE WELSH CAVALIERS ESCORTING THE COUNTESS OF FLEETWOOD TO KENTISH ESSLEMONT XXXV. IN WHICH CERTAIN CHANGES MAY BE DISCERNED XXXVI. BELOW THE SURFACE AND ABOVE XXXVII. BETWEEN CARINTHIA AND HER LORD XXXVIII. A DIP INTO THE SPRING'S WATERS

BOOK 5. XXXIX. THE RED WARNING FROM A SON OF VAPOUR XL. A RECORD OF MINOR INCIDENTS XLI. IN WHICH THE FATES ARE SEEN AND A CHOICE OF THE REFUGES FROM THEM XLII. THE RETARDED COURTSHIP XLIII. ON THE ROAD TO THE ACT OF PENANCE XLIV. BETWEEN THE EARL; THE COUNTESS AND HER BROTHER, AND OF A SILVER CROSS XLV. CONTAINS A RECORD OF WHAT WAS FEARED, WHAT WAS HOPED, AND WHAT HAPPENED XLVI. A CHAPTER OF UNDERCURRENTS AND SOME SURFACE FLASHES XLVII. THE LAST: WITH A CONCLUDING WORD BY THE DAME

CHAPTER I

ENTER DAME GOSSIP AS CHORUS

Everybody has heard of the beautiful Countess of Cressett, who was one of the lights of this country at the time when crowned heads were running over Europe, crying out for charity's sake to be amused after their tiresome work of slaughter: and you know what a dread they have of moping. She was famous for her fun and high spirits besides her good looks, which you may judge of for yourself on a walk down most of our great noblemen's collections of pictures in England, where you will behold her as the goddess Diana fitting an arrow to a bow; and elsewhere an Amazon holding a spear; or a lady with dogs, in the costume of the day; and in one place she is a nymph, if not Diana herself, gazing at her naked feet before her attendants loosen her tunic for her to take the bath, and her hounds are pricking their ears, and you see antlers of a stag behind a block of stone. She was a wonderful swimmer, among other things, and one early morning, when she was a girl, she did really swim, they say, across the Shannon and back to win a bet for her brother Lord Levellier, the colonel of cavalry, who left an arm in Egypt, and changed his way of life to become a wizard, as the common people about his neighbourhood supposed, because he foretold the weather and had cures for aches and pains without a doctor's diploma. But we know now that he was only a mathematician and astronomer, all for inventing military engines. The brother and sister were great friends in their youth, when he had his right arm to defend her reputation with; and she would have done anything on earth to please him.

There is a picture of her in an immense flat white silk hat trimmed with pale blue, like a pavilion, the broadest brim ever seen, and she simply sits on a chair; and Venus the Queen of Beauty would have been extinguished under that hat, I am sure; and only to look at Countess Fanny's eye beneath the brim she has tipped ever so slightly in her artfulness makes the absurd thing graceful and suitable. Oh! she was a cunning one. But you must be on your guard against the scandalmongers and collectors of anecdotes, and worst of any, the critic, of our Galleries of Art; for she being in almost all of them (the principal painters of the day were on their knees for the favour of a sitting), they have to speak of her pretty frequently, and they season their dish, the coxcombs do, by hinting a knowledge of her history.

'Here we come to another portrait of the beautiful but, we fear, naughty Countess of Cressett.'

You are to imagine that they know everything, and they are so indulgent when they drop their blot on a lady's character.