[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of thefile for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making anentire meal of them. D. W. ]

ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS

By George Meredith

1897

BOOK 5. 

XXXVI. NESTA AND HER FATHERXXXVII. THE MOTHER--THE DAUGHTERXXXVIII. NATALY, NESTA, AND DARTREY FENELLANXXXIX. A CHAPTER IN THE SHADOW OF MRS. MARSETTXL. AN EXPIATIONXLI. THE NIGHT OF THE GREAT UNDELIVERED SPEECHXLII. THE LAST

CHAPTER XXXVI

NESTA AND HER FATHER

The day of Nesta's return was one of a number of late when Victor wasrobbed of his walk Westward by Lady Grace Halley, who seduced hispoliteness with her various forms of blandishment to take a seat in hercarriage; and she was a practical speaker upon her quarter of the worldwhen she had him there. Perhaps she was right in saying--though she hadno right to say--that he and she together might have the world undertheir feet. It was one of those irritating suggestions which expedite usup to a bald ceiling, only to make us feel the gas-bladder's tightextension upon emptiness: It moved him to examine the poor value of hisaim, by tying him to the contemptible means: One estimate involved theother, whichever came first. Somewhere he had an idea, that would liftand cleanse all degradations. But it did seem as if he were notenjoying: things pleasant enough in the passage of them were barren, ifnot prickly, in the retrospect. 

He sprang out at the head of the park, for a tramp round it, in the gloomof the girdle of lights, to recover his deadened relish of the thinphantasmal strife to win an intangible prize. His dulled physical systemasked, as with the sensations of a man at the start from sleep in thehurrying grip of steam, what on earth he wanted to get, and what was thesubstance of his gains: what! if other than a precipitous intimacy, adeep crumbling over deeper, with a little woman amusing him in remarks ofa whimsical nudity; hardly more. Nay, not more! he said; and at the endof twenty paces, he saw much more; the campaign gathered a circlingsuggestive brilliancy, like the lamps about the winter park; the Society, lured with glitter, hooked by greed, composed a ravishing picture; thelittle woman was esteemed as a serviceable lieutenant; and her hand wasa small soft one, agreeable to fondle--and avaunt! But so it is in war:we must pay for our allies. What if it had been, that he and shetogether, with their united powers . . . ? He dashed the silly visionaside, as vainer than one of the bubble-empires blown by boys; and itbroke, showing no heart in it. His heart was Nataly's. 

Let Colney hint his worst; Nataly bore the strain, always did bear anystrain coming in the round of her duties: and if she would but walk, or if she danced at parties, she would scatter the fits of despondencybesetting the phlegmatic, like this day's breeze the morning fog; or ashe did with two minutes of the stretch of legs. 

Full of the grandeur of that black pit of the benighted London, with itsocean-voice of the heart at beat along the lighted outer ring, Victorentered at his old door of the two houses he had knocked into one: asurprise for Fredi!--and heard that his girl had arrived in the morning. 

'And could no more endure her absence from her Mammy O!' The songfulsatirical line spouted in him, to be flung at his girl, as he ranupstairs to the boudoir off the drawing-room. 

He peeped in. It was dark. Sensible of presences, he graduallydiscerned a thick blot along the couch to the right of the door, and hedrew near. Two were lying folded together; mother and daughter. He bentover them. His hand was taken and pressed by Fredi's; she spoke; shesaid tenderly: 'Father. ' Neither of the two made a movement. He heardthe shivering rise of a sob, that fell. The dry sob going to the wastebreath was Nataly's. His girl did not speak again. 

He left them. He had no thought until he stood in his dressing-room, when he said 'Good!' For those two must have been lying folded togetherduring the greater part of the day: and it meant, that the mother's hearthad opened; the girl knew. Her tone: 'Father, ' sweet, was heavy, too, with the darkness it came out of. 

So she knew. Good. He clasped them both in his heart; tempering hispity of those dear ones with the thought, that they were of the sexwhich finds enjoyment in a day of the mutual tear; and envying them;he strained at a richness appearing in the sobs of their close union. 

All of his girl's loving soul flew to her mother; and naturally: Shewould not be harsh on her father. She would say he loved! And true:he did love, he does love; loves no woman but the dear mother. 

He flicked a short wring of the hand having taken pressure from an alienwoman's before Fredi pressed it, and absolved himself in the act;thinking, How little does a woman know how true we can be to her when wesmell at a flower here and there!--There they are, stationary; women theflowers, we the bee; and we are faithful in our seeming volatility;faithful to the hive!--And if women are to be stationary, the reasoningis not so bad. Funny, however, if they here and there imitatively spreada wing, and treat men in that way? It is a breach of the convention; wepay them our homage, that they may serve as flowers, not to be volatiletempters. Nataly never had been one of the sort: Lady Grace was. Nonecessity existed for compelling the world to bow to Lady Grace, while onbehalf of his Nataly he had to . . . Victor closed the curtain over agulf-revealed by an invocation of Nature, and showing the tremendousforce he partook of so largely, in her motive elements of the devourer. Horrid to behold, when we need a gracious presentation of thecircumstances. She is a splendid power for as long as we confine herbetween the banks: but she has a passion to discover cracks; and if wegive her headway, she will find one, and drive at it, and be through, uproarious in her primitive licentiousness, unless we labour body andsoul like Dutchmen at the dam. Here she was, and not desired, almostdetested! Nature detested! It had come about through the battle forNataly; chiefly through Mrs. Burman's tenacious hold of the filmy threadshe took for life and was enabled to use as a means for the perversionbesides bar to the happiness of creatures really living. We may wellmarvel at the Fates, and tell them they are not moral agents!

Victor's reflections came across Colney Durance, who tripped and stoppedthem. 

Dressed with his customary celerity, he waited for Nesta, to show her thelighted grand double drawing-room: a further proof of how Fortunefavoured him: she was to be told, how he one day expressed a wish forgreater space, and was informed on the next, that the neighbour house wasbeing vacated, and the day following he was in treaty for the purchase ofit; returning from Tyrol, he found his place habitable. 

Nesta came. Her short look at him was fond, her voice not faltering; shelaid her hand under his arm and walked round the spacious room, praisingthe general design, admiring the porcelain, the ferns, friezes, hangings, and the grand piano, the ebony inlaid music-stands, the firegrates andplaques, the ottomans, the tone of neutral colour that, as in sound, muted splendour. He told her it was a reception night, with music: andadded: 'I miss my . . . Seen anybody lately?'

'Mr. Sowerby?' said she. 'He was to have escorted me back. He may haveoverslept himself. '

She spoke it plainly; when speaking of the dear good ladies, she set agentle humour at play, and comforted him, as she intended, with asouvenir of her lively spirit, wanting only in the manner of gaiety. 

He allowed, that she could not be quite gay. 

More deeply touched the next minute, he felt in her voice, in her look, in her phrasing of speech, an older, much older daughter than the Frediwhom he had conducted to Moorsedge. 'Kiss me, ' he said. 

She turned to him full-front, and kissed his right cheek and left, andhis forehead, saying: 'My love! my papa! my own dear dada!' all thewords of her girlhood in her new sedateness; and smiling: like the moralcrepuscular of a sunlighted day down a not totally inanimate SundayLonden street. 

He strained her to his breast. 'Mama soon be here?'

'Soon. '

That was well. And possibly at the present moment applying, with hercunning hand, the cosmetics and powders he could excuse for a concealmentof the traces of grief. 

Satisfied in being a superficial observer, he did not spy to see morethan the world would when Nataly entered the dining-room at the quietfamily dinner. She performed her part for his comfort, though notprattling; and he missed his Fredi's delicious warble of the prattlerunning rill-like over our daily humdrum. Simeon Fenellan would havehelped. Then suddenly came enlivenment: a recollection of news in themorning's paper. 'No harm before Fredi, my dear. She's a young womannow. And no harm, so to speak-at least, not against the Sanfredini. She has donned her name again, and a villa on Como, leaving her 'duque';--paragraph from a Milanese musical Journal; no particulars. Now, markme, we shall have her at Lakelands in the Summer. If only we could haveher now!'

'It would be a pleasure, ' said Nataly. Her heart had a blow in thethought, that a lady of this kind would create the pleasure by notbringing criticism. 

'The godmother?' he glistened upon Nesta. 

She gave him low half-notes of the little blue butterfly's imitation ofthe superb contralto; and her hand and head at turn to hint thetheatrical operatic attitude. 

'Delicious!' he cried, his eyelids were bedewed at the vision of thethree of them planted in the past; and here again, out of the dark wood, where something had required to be said, and had been said; and all washappily over, owing to the goodness and sweetness of the two dearinnocents;--whom heaven bless! Jealousy of their naturally closer heart-at-heart, had not a whisper for him; part of their goodness and sweetnesswas felt to be in the not excluding him. 

Nesta engaged to sing one of the 'old duets with her mother. She saw hermother's breast lift in a mechanical effort to try imaginary notes, as ifdoubtful of her capacity, more at home in the dumb deep sigh they fellto. Her mother's heroism made her a sacred woman to the thoughts of thegirl, overcoming wonderment at the extreme submissiveness. 

She put a screw on her mind to perceive the rational object there mightbe for causing her mother to go through tortures in receiving andvisiting; and she was arrested by the louder question, whether she couldthink such a man as her father irrational. 

People with resounding names, waves of a steady stream, were announced byArlington, just as in the days, that seemed remote, before she went toMoorsedge; only they were more numerous, and some of the titles hadascended a stage. There were great lords, there were many great ladies;and Lady Grace Halley shuffling amid them, like a silken shimmer involuminous robes. 

They crowded about their host where he stood. 'He, is their Law!' Colneysaid, speaking unintelligibly, in the absence of the Simeon Fenellanregretted so loudly by Mr. Beaves Urmsing. They had an air ofworshipping, and he of swimming. 

There were also City magnates, and Lakelands' neighbours: the gentlemanrepresenting Pride of Port, Sir Abraham Quatley; and Colonel Corfe; SirRodwell and Lady Blachington; Mrs. Fanning; Mr. Caddis. Few young menand maids were seen. Dr. John Cormyn came without his wife, notmentioning her. Mrs. Peter Yatt touched the notes for voices at thepiano. Priscilla Graves was a vacancy, and likewise the Rev. SeptimusBarmby. Peridon and Catkin, and Mr. Pempton took their usual places. There was no fluting. A famous Canadian lady was the principal singer. A Galician violinist, zig-zagging extreme extensions and contractions ofhis corporeal frame in execution, and described by Colney as 'Paganini onwall, ' failed to supplant Durandarte in Nesta's memory. She was asked byLady Grace for the latest of Dudley. Sir Abraham Quatley named him withhandsome emphasis. Great dames caressed her; openly approved; shadowedthe future place among them. 

Victor alluded at night to Mrs. John Cormyn's absence. He said: 'Ahomoeopathic doctor's wife!' nothing more; and by that little, heprepared Nesta for her mother's explanation. The great London people, ignorant or not, were caught by the strong tide he created, and carriedon it. But there was a bruiting of the secret among their set; and theone to fall away from her, Nataly marvellingly named Mrs. John Cormyn;whose marriage was of her making. She did not disapprove Priscilla'sbehaviour. Priscilla had come to her and, protesting affection, hadopenly stated, that she required time and retirement to recover herproper feelings. Nataly smiled a melancholy criticism of an inconsequentor capricious woman, in relating to Nesta certain observations Priscillahad dropped upon poor faithful Mr. Pempton, because of his concealmentfrom her of his knowledge of things for this faithful gentleman had beenone of the few not ignorant. The rumour was traceable to the City. 

'Mother, we walk on planks, ' Nesta said. 

Nataly answered: 'You will grow used to it. '

Her mother's habitual serenity in martyrdom was deceiving. Nesta had atransient suspicion, that she had grown, from use, to like the whirl ofcompany, for oblivion in the excitement; and as her remembrance of herown station among the crowding people was a hot flush, the difference oftheir feelings chilled her. 

Nataly said: 'It is to-morrow night again; we do not rest. ' She smiled;and at once the girl read woman's armour on the dear face, and askedherself, Could I be so brave? The question following was a speechlesswave, that surged at her father. She tried to fathom the scheme heentertained. The attempt obscured her conception of the man he was. Shecould not grasp him, being too young for knowing, that young heads cannotobtain a critical hold upon one whom they see grandly succeeding it isthe sun's brilliance to their eyes. 

Mother and daughter slept together that night, and their embrace wastheir world. 

Nesta delighted her father the next day by walking beside him into the, City, as far as the end of the Embankment, where the carriage was inwaiting with her maid to bring her back; and at his mere ejaculation of awish, the hardy girl drove down in the afternoon for the walk home withhim. Lady Grace Halley was at the office. 'I'm an incorrigible StockExchange gambler, ' she said. 

'Only, ' Victor bade her beware, 'Mines are undulating in movement, andtheir heights are a preparation for their going down. '

She said she 'liked a swing. '

Nesta looked at them in turn. 

The day after and the day after, Lady Grace was present. She made playwith Dudley's name. 

This coming into the City daily of a girl, for the sake of walking backin winter weather with her father, struck her as ambiguous: either ajealous foolish mother's device, or that of a weak man beating about forprotection. But the woman of the positive world soon read to thecontrary; helped a little by the man, no doubt. She read rather too muchto the contrary, and took the pedestrian girl for perfect simplicity inher tastes, when Nesta had so far grown watchful as to feel relieved bythe lady's departure. Her mother, without sympathy for the lady, was toogreat of soul for jealousy. Victor had his Nataly before him at a hintfrom Lady Grace: and he went somewhat further than the exact degree whenaffirming, that Nataly could not scheme, and was incapable ofsuspecting. --Nataly could perceive things with a certain accuracy: shewould not stoop to a meanness. 'Plot? Nataly?' said he, and shrugged. In fact, the void of plot, drama, shuffle of excitement, reflected uponNataly. He might have seen as tragic as ever dripped on Stage, had helooked. 

But the walk Westward with his girl, together with pride in a daughterwho clove her way through all weathers, won his heart to exultation. He told her: 'Fredi does her dada so much good'; not telling her in what, or opening any passage to the mystery of the man he was. She was tryingto be a student of life, with her eyes down upon hard earth, despite ofher winged young head; she would have compassed him better had he dilatedin sublime fashion; but he baffled her perusal of a man of power by thesimpleness of his enjoyment of small things coming in his way;--thelighted shops, the crowd, emergence from the crowd, or the meeting nearmidwinter of a soft warm wind along the Embankment, and dark Thamesmagnificently coroneted over his grimy flow. There is no grasping of onewho quickens us. 

His flattery of his girl, too, restored her broken feeling of personalvalue; it permeated her nourishingly from the natural breath of him thatit was. 

At times he touched deep in humaneness; and he set her heart leaping onthe flash of a thought to lay it bare, with the secret it held, for hishelp. That was a dream. She could more easily have uttered the words toCaptain Dartrey, after her remembered abashing holy tremour of the visionof doing it and casting herself on noblest man's compassionateness; andher imagined thousand emotions;--a rolling music within her, a wreath ofcloudglory in her sky;--which had, as with virgins it may be, plightedher body to him for sheer urgency of soul; drawn her by a singleunwitting-to-brain, conscious-in-blood, shy curl outward of the sheathingleaf to the flowering of woman to him; even to the shore of that strangesea, where the maid stands choosing this one man for her destiny, as in atrance. So are these young ones unfolded, shade by shade; and a shade isall the difference with them; they can teach the poet to marvel at theimmensity of vitality in 'the shadow of a shade. '

Her father shut the glimpse of a possible speaking to him of Mrs. Marsett, with a renewal of his eulogistic allusions to Dudley Sowerby:the 'perfect gentleman, good citizen'; prospective heir to an earldombesides. She bowed to Dudley's merits; she read off the honorificpedimental letters of a handsome statue, for a sign to herself that shepassed it. 

She was unjust, as Victor could feel, though he did not know how coldlyunjust. For among the exorbitant requisitions upon their fellow-creatures made by the young, is the demand, that they be definite: nomercy is in them for the transitional. And Dudley--and it was under herinfluence, and painfully, not ignobly--was in process of development:interesting to philosophers, if not to maidens. 

Victor accused her of paying too much heed to Colney Durance's epigramsupon their friends. He quite joined with his English world in itsopinion, that epigrams are poor squibs when they do not come out of greatguns. Epigrams fired at a venerable nation, are surely the poorest ofpopgun paper pellets. The English kick at the insolence, when they arenot in the mood for pelleting themselves, or when the armed Foreigner isovershadowing and braceing. Colney's pretentious and laboured SatiricProse Epic of 'THE RIVAL TONGUES, ' particularly offended him, as being aclever aim at no hitting; and sustained him, inasmuch as it was an acidfriend's collapse. How could Colney expect his English to tolerate sucha spiteful diatribe! The suicide of Dr. Bouthoin at San Francisco wasthe finishing stroke to the chances of success of the Serial;--althoughwe are promised splendid evolutions on the part of Mr. Semhians; who, after brilliant achievements with bat and ball, abandons those weapons ofOld England's modern renown, for a determined wrestle with our Englishpronunciation of words, and rescue of the spelling of them from theprinter. His headache over the present treatment of the verb 'To bid, 'was a quaint beginning for one who had soon to plead before Japanese, andwho acknowledged now 'in contrition of spirit, ' that in formerly opposingthe scheme for an Academy, he helped to the handing of our noble languageto the rapid reporter of news for an apathetic public. Further, hediscovered in astonishment the subordination of all literary Americans tothe decrees of their literary authorities; marking a Transatlantic pointof departure, and contrasting ominously with the unruly Islanders'grunting the higgledy-piggledy of their various ways, in all theporker's gut-gamut at the rush to the trough. ' After a week's privationof bat and ball, he is, lighted or not, a gas-jet of satire upon hiscountrymen. As for the 'pathetic sublimity of the Funeral of Dr. Bouthoin, ' Victor inveighed against an impious irony in the over dose ofthe pathos; and the same might be suspected in Britannia's elegy uponhim, a strain of hot eulogy throughout. Mr. Semhians, all buttreasonably, calls it, Papboat and Brandy:--'our English literary diet ofthe day': stimulating and not nourishing. Britannia's mournfulanticipation, that 'The shroud enwinding this my son is mine!'--shouldthe modern generation depart from the track of him who proved himself thegiant in mainly supporting her glory--was, no doubt, a high pitch of thenote of Conservatism. But considering, that Dr. Bouthoin 'committedsuicide under a depression of mind produced by a surfeit of unaccustomeddishes, upon a physical system inspired by the traditions of exercise, and no longer relieved by the practice'--to translate from Dr. Gannius:we are again at war with the writer's reverential tone, and we know notwhat to think: except, that Mr. Durance was a Saturday meat market'sbutcher in the Satiric Art. 

Nesta found it pleasanter to see him than to hear of his work: which, toher present feeling, was inhuman. As little as our native public, hadshe then any sympathy for the working in the idea: she wanted throbs, visible aims, the Christian incarnate; she would have preferred the taleof slaughter--periodically invading all English classes as a flush fromthe undrained lower, Vikings all--to frigid sterile Satire. And truly itis not a fruit-bearing rod. Colney had to stand on the defence of itagainst the damsel's charges. He thought the use of the rod, whileexpressing profound regret at a difference of opinion between him andthose noble heathens, beneficial for boys; but in relation to theirseniors, and particularly for old gentlemen, he thought that the sharpestrod to cut the skin was the sole saving of them. Insensibility toSatire, he likened to the hard-mouthed horse; which is doomed to theworser thing in consequence. And consequently upon the lack of it, andof training to appreciate it, he described his country's male venerablesas being distinguishable from annuitant spinsters only in presentingthemselves forked. 

'He is unsuccessful and embittered, Victor said to Nesta. 'Colney willfind in the end, that he has lost his game and soured himself by nevermaking concessions. Here's this absurd Serial--it fails, of course; andthen he has to say, it's because he won't tickle his English, won't enterinto a "frowzy complicity" with their tastes. '

'But--I think of Skepsey honest creatures respect Mr. Durance, and he isalways ready to help them, ' said Nesta. 

'If he can patronize. '

'Does he patronize me, dada?'

'You are one of his exceptions. Marry a title and live in state--andthen hear him! I am successful, and the result of it is, that he won'tacknowledge wisdom in anything I say or do; he will hardly acknowledgethe success. It is "a dirty road to success, " he says. So that, ifsuccessful, I must have rolled myself in mire. I compelled him to admithe was wrong about your being received at Moorsedge: a bit of a triumph!'

Nesta's walks with her father were no loss of her to Nataly; the girlcame back to her bearing so fresh and so full a heart; and her father wasever prouder of her: he presented new features of her in his quotationsof her sayings, thoughtful sayings. 'I declare she helps one to think, 'he said. 'It 's not precocity; it 's healthy inquiry. She brings menearer ideas of my own, not yet examined, than any one else does. I say, what a wife for a man!'

'She takes my place beside you, dear, now I am not quite strong, ' saidNataly. 'You have not seen . . . ?'

'Dudley Sowerby? He's at Cronidge, I believe. His elder brother's in abad way. Bad business, this looking to a death. '

Nataly eyes revealed a similar gulf. 

Let it be cast on Society, then! A Society opposing Nature forces us tothese murderous looks upon impediments. But what of a Society in thedance with Nature? Victor did not approve of that. He began, under theinfluence of Nesta's companionship, to see the Goddess Nature there is ina chastened nature. And this view shook the curtain covering his lostIdea. He felt sure he should grasp it soon and enter into its daylight:a muffled voice within him said, that he was kept waiting to do so by theinexplicable tardiness of a certain one to rise ascending to herspiritual roost. She was now harmless to strike: Themison, Carling, Jarniman, even the Rev. Groseman Buttermore, had been won to the cause ofhumanity. Her ascent, considering her inability to do further harmbelow, was most mysteriously delayed. Owing to it, in a manner almost asmysterious, he was kept crossing a bridge having a slippery bit on it. Thanks to his gallant Fredi, he had found his feet again. But there wasa bruise where, to his honour, he felt tenderest. And Fredi away, hemight be down again--for no love of a slippery bit, proved slippery, onemight guess, by a predecessor or two. Ta-ta-ta-to and mum! Still, injustice to the little woman, she had been serviceable. 

She would be still more so, if a member of Parliament now on his backhere we are with the murder-eye again!

Nesta's never speaking of Lakelands clouded him a little, as anintimation of her bent of mind. 

'And does my girl come to her dada to-day?' he said, on the fifth morningsince her return; prepared with a villanous resignation to hear, thatthis day she abstained, though he had the wish for her coming. 

'Why, don't you know, ' said she, 'we all meet to have tea in Mr. Durance's chambers; and I walk back with you, and there we are joinedby mama; and we are to have a feast of literary celebrities. '

'Colney's selection of them! And Simeon Fenellan, I hope. PerhapsDartrey. Perhaps . . . Eh?'

She reddened. So Dudley Sowerby's unspoken name could bring the blush toher cheeks. Dudley had his excuses in his brother's condition. Hisfather's health, too, was--but this was Dudley calculating. Where thereare coronets, calculations of this sort must needs occur; just as wherethere are complications. Odd, one fancies it, that we walking along thepavement of civilized life, should be perpetually summoning Orcus to ouraid, for the sake of getting a clear course. 

'And supposing a fog, my dearie?' he said. 

'The daughter in search of her father carries a lamp to light her to himthrough densest fogs as well as over deserts, ' etc. She declaimed a longsentence, to set the ripple running in his features; and when he left theroom for a last word with Armandine, she flung arms round her mother'sneck, murmuring: 'Mother! mother!' a cry equal to 'I am sure I doright, ' and understood so by Nataly approving it; she too on the line ofher instinct, without an object in sight. 

CHAPTER XXXVII

THE MOTHER-THE DAUGHTER

Taking Nesta's hand, on her entry into his chambers with her father, Colney Durance bowed over it and kissed it. The unusual performance hada meaning; she felt she was praised. It might be because she madeherself her father's companion. 'I can't persuade him to put on a great-coat, ' she said. 'You would defeat his aim at the particular waistcoatof his ambition, ' said Colney, goaded to speak, not anxious to be heard. 

He kept her beside him, leading her about for introductions to multiformcelebrities of both sexes; among them the gentleman editing the Magazinewhich gave out serially THE RIVAL TONGUES: and there was talk of adragon-throated public's queer appetite in Letters. The pained Editordeferentially smiled at her cheerful mention of Delphica. 'In, bookform, perhaps!' he remarked, with plaintive' resignation; adding: 'Youread it?' And a lady exclaimed: 'We all read it!'

But we are the elect, who see signification and catch flavour; and we arereminded of an insatiable monster how sometimes capricious is his gorge. 'He may happen to be in the humour for a shaking!' Colney's poorconsolation it was to say of the prospects of his published book: for thefunny monster has been known to like a shaking. 

'He takes it kinder tickled, ' said Fenellan, joining the group andgrasping Nesta's hand with a warmth that thrilled her and set herguessing. 'A taste of his favourite Cayenne lollypop, Colney; it fetchesthe tear he loves to shed, or it gives him digestive heat in the bag ofhis literary receptacle-fearfully relaxed and enormous! And no wonder;his is to lie him down on notion of the attitude for reading, his back;and he has in a jiffy the funnel of the Libraries inserted into hismouth, and he feels the publishers pouring their gallons through itunlimitedly; never crying out, which he can't; only swelling, which he'sobliged to do, with a non-nutritious inflation; and that's hisintellectual enjoyment; bearing a likeness to the horrible old torture ofthe baillir d'eau; and he's doomed to perish in the worst book-form ofdropsy. You, my dear Colney, have offended his police or excise, whostand by the funnel, in touch with his palate, to make sure that nothingabove proof is poured in; and there's your misfortune. He's not half abad fellow, you find when you haven't got to serve him. '

'Superior to his official parasites, one supposes!' Colney murmured. 

The celebrities were unaffectedly interested in a literary failure havingcertain merits; they discussed it, to compliment the crownless author;and the fervider they, the more was he endowed to read the meannessprompting the generosity. Publication of a book, is the philosopher'slantern upon one's fellows. 

Colney was caught away from his private manufactory of acids by hearingSimeon Fenellan relate to Victor some of the recent occurrences atBrighton. Simeon's tone was unsatisfying; Colney would have the word;he was like steel on the grindstone for such a theme of our nationalgrotesque-sublime. 

'That Demerara Supple-jack, Victor! Don't listen to Simeon; he's a manof lean narrative, fit to chronicle political party wrangles and suchlike crop of carcase prose: this is epical. In DRINK we have OldEngland's organic Epic; Greeks and Trojans; Parliamentary Olympus, ennobled brewers, nasal fanatics, all the machinery to hand. Keep astraight eye on the primary motives of man, you'll own the Englishproduce the material for proud verse; they're alive there! Dartrey'sDemerara makes a pretty episode of the battle. I haven't seen it--ifit's possible to look on it: but I hear it is flexible, of a vulgarappearance in repose, Jove's lightning at one time, the thong of AEacusat another. Observe Dartrey marching off to the Station, for the purposeof laying his miraculous weapon across the shoulders of a son of Mars, who had offended. But we have his name, my dear Victor! His name, Simeon?--Worrell; a Major Worrell: his offence being probably, that heobtained military instruction in the Service, and left it at hisconvenience, for our poor patch and tatter British Army to take in hisplace another young student, who'll grow up to do similarly. AndDartrey, we assume, is off to stop that system. You behold Sir Dartreytwirling the weapon in preparatory fashion; because he is determined weshall have an army of trained officers instead of infant amateurs headingheroic louts. Not a thought of Beer in Dartrey!--always unpatriotic, you'll say. Plato entreats his absent mistress to fix eyes on a star: eyeson Beer for the uniting of you English! I tell you no poetic fiction. Seeing him on his way, thus terribly armed, and knowing his intent, Venus, to shield a former favourite servant of Mars, conjured the mostdiverting of interventions, in the shape of a young woman in a poke-bonnet, and Skepsey, her squire, marching with a dozen or so, informingbedevilled mankind of the hideousness of our hymnification when it is notunder secluding sanction of the Edifice, and challengeing criticism; andthat was hard by, and real English, in the form of bludgeons, wielded bya battalion of the national idol Bungay Beervat's boys; and they fellupon the hymners. Here you fill in with pastoral similes. They struckthe maid adored by Skepsey. And that was the blow which slew them!Our little man drove into the press with a pair of fists able to do theirwork. A valiant skiff upon a sea of enemies, he was having it on thenob, and suddenly the Demerara lightened. It flailed to thresh. Enough. To say, brains would have come. The Bungays made a show of fight. Nolack of blood in them, to stock a raw shilling's worth or gush beforeAchilles rageing. You perceive the picture, you can almost sing theballad. We want only a few names of the fallen. It was the carving of amaitre chef, according to Skepsey: right-left-and point, with supremeprecision: they fell, accurately sliced from the joint. Having done withthem, Dartrey tossed the Demerara to Skepsey, and washed his hands ofbattle; and he let his major go unscathed. Phlebotomy sufficient for theday!'

Nesta's ears hummed with the name of Major Worrell. 

'Skepsey did come back to London with a rather damaged frontispiece, 'Victor said. 'He can't have joined those people?'

'They may suit one of your militant peacemakers, ' interposed Fenellan. 'The most placable creatures alive, and the surest for getting-up ashindy. '

'Suit him! They're the scandal of our streets. ' Victor was pricked witha jealousy of them for beguiling him of his trusty servant. 

'Look at your country, see where it shows its vitality, ' said Colney. 'You don't see elsewhere any vein in movement-movement, ' he harped on theword Victor constantly employed to express the thing he wanted to see. 'Think of that, when the procession sets your teeth on edge. They'rehonest foes of vice, and they move:--in England! Pulpit-preaching has noeffect. For gross maladies, gross remedies. You may judge of what youare by the quality of the cure. Puritanism, I won't attempt to paint--it would barely be decent; but compare it with the spectacle of Englishfrivolity, and you'll admit it to be the best show you make. It maystill be the saving of you--on the level of the orderly ox: I 've notobserved that it aims at higher. And talking of the pulpit, Barmby isoff to the East, has accepted a Shoreditch curacy, Skepsey tells me. '

'So there's the reason for our not seeing him!' Victor turned to Nesta. 

'Papa, you won't be angry with Skepsey if he has joined those people, 'said Nesta. 'I'm sure he thinks of serving his country, Mr. Durance. '

Colney smiled on her. 'And you too?'

'If women knew how!'

'They're hitting on more ways at present than the men--in England. '

'But, Mr. Durance, it speaks well for England when they're allowed thechance here. '

'Good!' Fenellan exclaimed. 'And that upsets his placement of the modernnational genders: Germany masculine, France feminine, Old England whatremains. '

Victor ruffled and reddened on his shout of 'Neuter?'

Their circle widened. Nesta knew she was on promotion, by her being ledabout and introduced to ladies. They were encouraging with her. One ofthem, a Mrs. Marina Floyer, had recently raised a standard of feminineinsurrection. She said: 'I hear your praises from Mr. Durance. Herarely praises. You have shown capacity to meditate on the condition ofwomen, he says. '

Nesta drew a shorter breath, with a hope at heart. She speculated in thedark, as to whether her aim to serve and help was not so friendless. Anddid Mr. Durance approve? But surely she stood in a glorious England ifthere were men and women to welcome a girl to their councils. Oh! thatis the broad free England where gentlemen and gentlewomen accept of themeanest aid to cleanse the land of its iniquities, and do not suffershame to smite a young face for touching upon horrors with a pure design. 

She cried in her bosom: I feel! She had no other expression for thatwhich is as near as great natures may come to the conceiving of thecelestial spirit from an emissary angel; and she trembled, the fire ranthrough her. It seemed to her, that she would be called to help or thatcertainly they were nearing to an effacement of the woefullest of evils;and if not helping, it would still be a blessedness for her to kneelthanking heaven. 

Society was being attacked and defended. She could but studiouslylisten. Her father was listening. The assailant was a lady; and she hada hearing, although she treated Society as a discrowned monarch on trialfor an offence against a more precious: viz. , the individual cramped bybrutish laws: the individual with the ideas of our time, righteouslyclaiming expansion out of the clutches of a narrow old-worlddisciplinarian-that giant hypocrite! She flung the gauntlet atexternally venerable Institutions; and she had a hearing, wherehorrification, execration, the foul Furies of Conservatism would in ashortly antecedent day have been hissing and snakily lashing, houndingher to expulsion. Mrs. Marina Floyer gravely seconded her. Colney didthe same. Victor turned sharp on him. 'Yes, ' Colney said; 'we unfoldthe standard of extremes in this country, to get a single step taken:that's how we move: we threaten death to get footway. Now, mark:Society's errors will be admitted. '

A gentleman spoke. He began by admitting Society's errors. Nevertheless, it so distinctly exists for the common good, that we maysay of Society in relation to the individual, it is the body to the soul. We may wash, trim, purify, but we must not maim it. The assertion of ourindividuality in opposition to the Government of Society--this existingSociety--is a toss of the cap for the erasure of our civilization, etcaetera. 

Platitudes can be of intense interest if they approach our case. --But, ifyou please, we ask permission to wash, trim, purify, and we do not getit. --But you have it! Because we take it at our peril; and you, who aretoo cowardly to grant or withhold, call-up the revolutionary from thepits by your slackness:--etc. There was a pretty hot debate. Bothassailant and defendant, to Victor's thinking, spoke well, and each theright thing and he could have made use of both, but he could answerneither. He beat about for the cause of this deficiency, and discoveredit in his position. Mentally, he was on the side of Society. Yet he wasannoyed to find the attack was so easily answerable when the defenceunfolded. But it was absurd to expect it would not be. And in fact, aposition secretly rebellious is equal to water on the brain forstultifying us. 

Before the controversy was over, a note in Nataly's handwriting calledhim home. She wrote: 'Make my excuses. C. D. Will give Nesta and somelady dinner. A visitor here. Come alone, and without delay. Quitewell, robust. Impatient to consult with you, nothing else. '

Nesta was happy to stay; and Victor set forth. 

The visitor? plainly Dudley. Nataly's trusting the girl to the chanceof some lady being present, was unlike her. Dudley might be tugging atthe cord; and the recent conversation upon Society, rendered one of itsgilt pillars particularly estimable. --A person in the debate had declaredthis modern protest on behalf of individualism to represent Society'sCriminal Trial. And it is likely to be a long one. And good for theworld, that we see such a Trial!--Well said or not, undoubtedly Societyis an old criminal: not much more advanced than the state of spiritualworship where bloody sacrifice was offered to a hungry Lord. But it hasa case for pleading. We may liken it, as we have it now, to the bumpinglumberer's raft; suitable along torrent waters until we come to smoother. Are we not on waters of a certain smoothness at the reflecting level?--enough to justify demands for a vessel of finer design. If Society is tosubsist, it must have the human with the logical argument against the cryof the free-flags, instead of presenting a block's obtuseness. That, youneed not hesitate to believe, will be rolled downward and disintegrated, sooner than later. A Society based on the logical concrete of humaneconsiderateness:--a Society prohibiting to Mrs. Burman her wielding of alife-long rod . . . . 

The personal element again to confuse inquiry!--And Skepsey and Barmbyboth of them bent on doing work without inquiry of any sort! They wereenviable: they were good fellows. Victor clung to the theme because ithinted of next door to his lost Idea. He rubbed the back of his head, fancying a throb there. Are civilized creatures incapable of abstractthought when their social position is dubious? For if so, we never canbe quit of those we forsake. --Apparently Mrs. Burman's unfathomed powerlay in her compelling him to summon the devilish in himself and play uponthe impish in Society, that he might overcome her. 

Victor's house-door stopped this current. 

Nataly took his embrace. 

'Nothing wrong?' he said, and saw the something. It was a favourablemoment to tell her what she might not at another time regard as a smallaffair. 'News in the City to-day of that South London borough beingvacated. Quatley urges me. A death again! I saw Pempton, too. Willyou credit me when I tell you he carries his infatuation so far, that hehas been investing in Japanese and Chinese Loans, because they are lessmeat-eaters than others, and vegetarians are more stable, and outlast usall!--Dudley the visitor?' 'Mr. Sowerby has been here, ' she said, in ashaking low voice. 

Victor held her hand and felt a squeeze more nervous than affectionate. 

'To consult with me, ' she added. 'My maid will go at ten to bring Nesta;Mr. Durance I can count on, to see her safe home. Ah!' she wailed. 

Victor nodded, saying: 'I guess. And, my love, you will receive Mrs. John Cormyn to-morrow morning. I can't endure gaps. Gaps in our circlemust never be. Do I guess?--I spoke to Colney about bringing her home. '

Nataly sighed: 'Ah! make what provision we will! Evil--Mr. Sowerby hashad a great deal to bear. '

'A worldling may think so. '

Her breast heaved, and the wave burst: but her restraining of tears frozeher speech. 

'Victor! Our Nesta! Mr. Sowerby is unable to explain. And how the MissDuvidneys! . . . At that Brighton!'--The voice he heard was not hisdarling's deep rich note, it had dropped to toneless hoarseness: 'She hasbeen permitted to make acquaintance--she has been seen riding with--shehas called upon--Oh! it is one of those abandoned women. In her house!Our girl! Our Nesta! She was insulted by a man in the woman's house. She is talked of over Brighton. The mother!--the daughter! And grant methis--that never was girl more carefully . . . Never till she wastaken from me. Oh! do not forget. You will defend me? You will say, that her mother did with all her soul strive . . . It is not a rumour. Mr. Sowerby has had it confirmed. ' A sob caught her voice. 

Victor's hands caressed to console: 'Dudley does not propose to . . ?'

'Nesta must promise . . . But how it happened? How! An acquaintancewith--contact with!--Oh! cruel!' Each time she ceased speaking, thewrinkles of a shiver went over her, and the tone was of tears coming, butshe locked them in. 

'An accident!' said Victor; 'some misunderstanding--there can't be harm. Of course, she promises--hasn't to promise. How could a girldistinguish! He does not cast blame on her?'

'Dear, if you would go down to Dartrey to-morrow. He knows:--it is overthe Clubs there; he will tell you, before a word to Nesta. Innocent, yes! Mr. Sowerby has not to be assured of that. Ignorant of thecharacter of the dreadful woman? Ah, if I could ever in anything thinkher ignorant! She frightens me. Mr. Sowerby is indulgent. He does mejustice. My duty to her--I must defend myself--has been my firstthought. I said in my prayers--she at least! . . . We have to seethe more than common reasons why she, of all girls, should--he did nothint it, he was delicate: her name must not be public. '

'Yes, yes, Dudley is without parallel as a gentleman, ' said Victor. 'Itdoes not suit me to hear the word "indulgent. " My dear, if you were downthere, you would discover that the talk was the talk of two or three menseeing our girl ride by--and she did ride with a troop: why, we'vewatched them along the parade, often. Clear as day how it happened!I'll go down early to-morrow. '

He fancied Nataly was appeased. And even out of this annoyance, therewas the gain of her being won to favour Dudley's hitherto but toleratedsuit. 

Nataly also had the fancy, that the calm following on her anguish, was amoderation of it. She was kept strung to confide in her girl by therecent indebtedness to her for words heavenly in the strengtheningcomfort they gave. But no sooner was she alone than her torturingperplexities and her abasement of the hours previous to Victor'scoming returned. 

For a girl of Nesta's head could not be deceived; she had come home witha woman's intelligence of the world, hard knowledge of it--a knowledgedrawn from foul wells, the unhappy mother imagined: she dreaded to probeto the depth of it. She had in her wounded breast the world's idea, thatcorruption must come of the contact with impurity. 

Nataly renewed her cry of despair: 'The mother!--the daughter!'--her solerevelation of the heart's hollows in her stammered speaking to Victor. 

She thanked heaven for the loneliness of her bed, where she could repeat:'The mother!--the daughter!' hearing the world's words:--the daughterexcused, by reason of her having such a mother; the mother unpitied forthe bruiting of her brazen daughter's name: but both alike consigned tothe corners of the world's dust-heaps. She cried out, that her pride wasbroken. Her pride, her last support of life, had gone to pieces. Thetears she restrained in Victor's presence, were called on to come now, and she had none. It might be, that she had not strength for weeping. She was very weak. Rising from bed to lock her door against Nesta'sentry to the room on her return at night, she could hardly stand: a chilland a clouding overcame her. The quitted bed seemed the haven of adrifted wreck to reach. 

Victor tried the handle of a locked door in the dark of the early wintermorning. 'The mother!--the daughter!' had swung a pendulum for some timeduring the night in him, too. He would rather have been subjected to thespectacle of tears than have heard that toneless voice, as it were thedry torrent-bed rolling blocks instead of melodious, if afflicting, waters. 

He told Nesta not to disturb her mother, and murmured of a headache:'Though, upon my word, the best cure for mama would be a look intoFredi's eyes!' he said, embracing his girl, quite believing in her, justa little afraid of her. 

CHAPTER XXXVIII

NATALY, NESTA, AND DARTREY FENELLAN

Pleasant things, that come to us too late for our savour of the sweetnessin them, toll ominously of life on the last walk to its end. Yesterday, before Dudley Sowerby's visit, Nataly would have been stirred where thetears we shed for happiness or repress at a flattery dwell when seeingher friend Mrs. John Cormyn enter her boudoir and hearing her speakrepentantly, most tenderly. Mrs. John said: 'You will believe I havesuffered, dear; I am half my weight, I do think': and she did not set thesmile of responsive humour moving; although these two ladies had a key oflaughter between them. Nataly took her kiss; held her hand, and at theparting kissed her. She would rather have seen her friend than not: sofar she differed from a corpse; but she was near the likeness to the deadin the insensibility to any change of light shining on one who best loveddarkness and silence. She cried to herself wilfully, that her pride wasbroken: as women do when they spurn at the wounding of a dignity theycannot protect and die to see bleeding; for in it they live. 

The cry came of her pride unbroken, sore bruised, and after a certainspace for recovery combative. She said:

Any expiation I could offer where I did injury, I would not refuse; Iwould humble myself and bless heaven for being able to pay my debt--whatI can of it. All I contend against is, injustice. And she sank intosensational protests of her anxious care of her daughter, too proud tophrase them. 

Her one great affliction, the scourging affliction of her utterloneliness;--an outcast from her family; daily, and she knew not how, more shut away from the man she loved; now shut away from her girl;--seemed under the hand of the angel of God. The abandonment of her byfriends, was merely the light to show it. 

Midday's post brought her a letter from Priscilla Graves, entreating tobe allowed to call on her next day. --We are not so easily cast off!Nataly said, bitterly, in relation to the lady whose offending had notbeen so great. She wrote: 'Come, if sure that you sincerely wish to. '

Having fasted, she ate at lunch in her dressing-room, with some taste ofthe food, haunted by an accusation of gluttony because of her eating atall, and a vile confession, that she was enabled to eat, owing to thereceipt of Priscilla's empty letter: for her soul's desire was to bedoing a deed of expiation, and the macerated flesh seemed her assuranceto herself of the courage to make amends. --I must have some strength, shesaid wearifully, in apology for the morsel consumed. 

Nesta's being in the house with her, became an excessive irritation. Doubts of the girl's possible honesty to speak a reptile truth underquestion; amazement at her boldness to speak it; hatred of, the mouththat could: and loathing of the words, the theme; and abomination ofherself for conjuring fictitious images to rouse real emotions; all rancounterthreads, that produced a mad pattern in the mind, affrighting toreason: and then, for its preservation, reason took a superrational leap, and ascribed the terrible injustice of this last cruel stroke to thedivine scourge, recognized divine by the selection of the mortal spot forchastisement. She clasped her breast, and said: It is mortal. And thatcalmed her. 

She said, smiling: I never felt my sin until this blow came! Thereforethe blow was proved divine. Ought it not to be welcomed?--and sheappearing no better than one of those, the leprous of the sex! Andbrought to acknowledgement of the likeness by her daughter!

Nataly drank the poison distilled from her exclamations and was ice. Shehad denied herself to Nesta's redoubled petition. Nesta knocking at thedoor a third time and calling, tore the mother two ways: to have her girlon her breast or snap their union in a word with an edge. She heard thevoice of Dartrey Fenellan. 

He was admitted. 'No, dear, ' she said to Nesta; and Nesta's, 'My ownmother, ' consentingly said, in tender resignation, as she retired, spranga stinging tear to the mother's eyelids. 

Dartrey looked at the door closing on the girl. 

'Is it a very low woman?' Nataly asked him in a Church whisper, with aface abashed. 

'It is not, ' said he, quick to meet any abruptness. 

'She must be cunning. '

'In the ordinary way. We say it of Puss before the hounds. '

'To deceive a girl like Nesta!'

'She has done no harm. '

'Dartrey, you speak to a mother. You have seen the woman? She is?--ah!'

'She is womanly, womanly. '

'Quite one of those . . . ?'

'My dear soul! You can't shake them off in that way. She is one of us. If we have the class, we can't escape from it. They are not to bear allthe burden because they exist. We are the bigger debtors. I tell youshe is womanly. '

'It sounds like horrid cynicism. '

'Friends of mine would abuse it for the reverse. '

'Do not make me hate your chivalry. This woman is a rod on my back. Provided only she has not dropped venom into Nesta's mind!'

'Don't fear!'

'Can you tell me you think she has done no harm to my girl?'

'To Nesta herself?--not any: not to a girl like your girl. '

'To my girl's name? Speak at once. But I know she has. She inducedNesta to go to her house. My girl was insulted in this woman's house. '

Dartrey's forehead ridged with his old fury and a gust of presentcontempt. 'I can tell you this, that the fellow who would think harm ofit, knowing the facts 's not worthy of touching the tips of the fingersof your girl. '

'She is talked of!'

'A good-looking girl out riding with a handsome woman on a parade ofidlers!'

'The woman is notorious. ' Nataly said it shivering. 

He shook his head. 'Not true. '

'She has an air of a lady?'

'She sits a horse well. '

'Would she to any extent deceive me--impose on me here?'

'No. '

'Ah!' Nataly moaned. . . . 

'But what?' said Dartrey. 'There was no pretence. Her style is notworse than that of some we have seen. There was no effort to deceive. The woman's plain for you and me to read, she has few of the arts; one ortwo tricks, if you like: and these were not needed for use. There arewomen who have them, and have not been driven or let slip into thewilderness. '

'Yes; I know!--those ideas of yours!' Nataly had once admired him for hisknightliness toward the weakest women and the women underfoot. 'You havespoken to this woman? She boasted of acquaintance with Nesta?'

'She thanked God for having met her. '

'Is it one of the hysterical creatures?'

Mrs. Marsett appeared fronting Dartrey. 

He laughed to himself. 'A clever question. There is a leaning toexcitement of manner at times. It 's not hysteria. Allow for herposition. '

Nataly took the unintended blow, and bowed to it; and still more harshlysaid: 'What rank of life does the woman come from?'

'The class educated for a skittish career by your popular Stage and yourBook-stalls. I am not precise?'

'Leave Mr. Durance. Is she in any degree commonly well bred? . . . Behaviour, talk-her English. '

'I trench on Mr. Durance in replying. Her English is passable. You mayhear . . . '

'Everywhere, of course! And this woman of slipshod English and excitedmanners imposed upon Nesta!'

'It would not be my opinion. '

'Did not impose on her!'

'Not many would impose on Nesta Radnor for long. '

'Think what that says, Dartrey!'

'You have had a detestable version of the story. '

'Because an excited creature thanks God to you for having met her!'

'She may. She's a better woman for having met her. Don't suppose we'refor supernatural conversions. The woman makes no show of that. But shehas found a good soul among her sex--her better self in youth, as oneguesses; and she is grateful--feels farther from exile in consequence. She has found a lady to take her by the hand!--not a common case. Shecan never go to the utterly bad after knowing Nesta. I forget if shesays it; I say it. You have heard the story from one of yourconventional gentlemen. '

'A true gentleman. I have reason to thank him. He has not your ideas onthese matters, Dartrey. He is very sensitive . . . On Nesta'sbehalf. '

'With reference to marriage. I'll own I prefer another kind ofgentleman. I 've had my experience of that kind of gentleman. Manyof the kind have added their spot to the outcasts abominated foruncleanness--in holy unction. Many?--I won't say all; but men whoconsent to hear black words pitched at them, and help to set good womenfacing away from them, are pious dolts or rascal dogs of hypocrites. They, if you'll let me quote Colney Durance to you to-day--and how is ithe is not in favour?--they are tempting the Lord to turn the pillars ofSociety into pillars of salt. Down comes the house. And priests canrest in sight of it!--They ought to be dead against the sanctimony thatbelieves it excommunicates when it curses. The relationship is notdissolved so cheaply, though our Society affects to think it is. Barmby's off to the East End of this London, Victor informs me:--goodfellow! And there he'll be groaning over our vicious nature. Nature isnot more responsible for vice than she is for inhumanity. Both bad, butthe latter's the worse of the two. '

Nataly interposed: 'I see the contrast, and see whom it's to strike. '

Dartrey sent a thought after his meaning. 'Hardly that. Let it stand. He 's only one with the world: but he shares the criminal infamy forcrushing hope out of its frailest victims. They're that--no sentiment. What a world, too, look behind it!--brutal because brutish. The worldmay go hang: we expect more of your gentleman. To hear of Nesta downthere, and doubt that she was about good work; and come complaining! Hehad the privilege of speaking to her, remonstrating, if he wished. Thereare men who think--men!--the plucking of sinners out of the mire a dirtybusiness. They depute it to certain officials. And your women--it's thetaste of the world to have them educated so, that they can as little takethe humane as the enlightened view. Except, by the way, sometimes, insecret;--they have a sisterly breast. In secret, they do occasionallythink as they feel. In public, the brass mask of the Idol they callPropriety commands or supplies their feelings and thoughts. I won'trepeat my reasons for educating them differently. At present we have buthalf the woman to go through life with--and thank you. '

Dartrey stopped. 'Don't be disturbed, ' he added. 'There's no ground foralarm. Not of any sort. '

Nataly said: 'What name?'

'Her name is Mrs. Marsett. '

'The name is . . . ?'

'Captain Marsett: will be Sir Edward. He came back from the Continentyesterday. '

A fit of shuddering seized Nataly. It grew in violence, and speaking outof it, with a pause of sickly empty chatter of the jaws, she said:'Always that name?'

'Before the maiden name? May have been or not. '

'Not, you say?'

'I don't accurately know. '

Dartrey sprang to his legs. 'My dear soul! dear friend--one of thebest! if we go on fencing in the dark, there'll be wounds. Your way oftaking this affair disappointed me. Now I understand. It's the diseaseof a trouble, to fly at comparisons. No real one exists. I wished toprotect the woman from a happier sister's judgement, to save you fromalarm concerning Nesta:--quite groundless, if you'll believe me. Come, there's plenty of benevolent writing abroad on these topics now: factsare more looked at, and a good woman may join us in taking them withoutthe horrors and loathings of angels rather too much given to claimdistinction from the luckless. A girl who's unprotected may go throughadventures before she fixes, and be a creature of honest intentions. Better if protected, we all agree. Better also if the world did notfavour the girl's multitude of enemies. Your system of not dealing withfacts openly is everyway favourable to them. I am glad to say, Victorrecognizes what corruption that spread of wealth is accountable for. And now I must go and have a talk with the--what a change from the bluebutterfly! Eaglet, I ought to have said. I dine with you, for Victormay bring news. '

'Would anything down there be news to you, Dartrey?'

'He makes it wherever he steps. '

'He would reproach me for not detaining you. Tell Nesta I have to liedown after talking. She has a child's confidence in you. '

A man of middle age! he said to himself. It is the particularejaculation which tames the senior whose heart is for a dash of holiday. He resolved, that the mother might trust to the discretion of a man ofhis age; and he went down to Nesta, grave with the weight his count ofyears should give him. Seeing her, the light of what he now knew of herwas an ennobling equal to celestial. For this fair girl was one of theactive souls of the world--his dream to discover in woman's form. She, the little Nesta, the tall pure-eyed girl before him, was, young thoughshe was, already in the fight with evil: a volunteer of the army of thesimply Christian. The worse for it? Sowerby would think so. She wasnot of the order of young women who, in sheer ignorance or in voluntary, consent to the peace with evil, and are kept externally safe from thesmirch of evil, and are the ornaments of their country, glory of acountry prizing ornaments higher than qualities. 

Dartrey could have been momentarily incredulous of things revealed byMrs. Marsett--not incredulous of the girl's heroism: that capacity hecaught and gauged in her shape of head, cut of mouth, and themeasurements he was accustomed to make at a glance:--but her beauty, orthe form of beauty which was hers, argued against her having set foot ofthought in our fens. Here and far there we meet a young saint vowed toservice along by those dismal swamps: and saintly she looks; not of thisearth. Nesta was of the blooming earth. Where do we meet girl or womancomparable to garden-flowers, who can dare to touch to lift the spottedof her sex? He was puzzled by Nesta's unlikeness in deeds and in aspect. He remembered her eyes, on the day when he and Colonel Sudley beheld her;presently he was at quiet grapple with her mind. His doubts cleared off. Then the question came, How could a girl of heroical character beattached to the man Sowerby? That entirely passed belief. 

And was it possible his wishes beguiled his hearing? Her tones weresingularly vibrating. 

They talked for a while before, drawing a deep breath, she said: 'I fancyI am in disgrace with my mother. '

'You have a suspicion why?' said he. 

'I have. '

She would have told him why: the words were at her lips. Previous to heremotion on the journey home, the words would have come out. They werearrested by the thunder of the knowledge, that the nobleness in himdrawing her to be able to speak of scarlet matter, was personallyworshipped. 

He attributed the full rose upon her cheeks to the forbidding subject. 

To spare pain, he said: 'No misunderstanding with the dear mother willlast the day through. Can I help?'

'Oh, Captain Dartrey!'

'Drop the captain. Dartrey will do. '

'How could I!'

'You're not wanting in courage, Nesta. '

'Hardly for that!'

'By-and-by, then. '

'Though I could not say Mr. Fenellan. '

'You see; Dartrey, it must be. '

'If I could!'

'But the fellow is not a captain: and he is a friend, an old friend, veryold friend: he'll be tipped with grey in a year or two. '

'I might be bolder then. '

'Imagine it now. There is no disloyalty in your calling your friends bytheir names. '

Her nature rang to the implication. 'I am not bound. ' Dartrey hungfast, speculating on her visibly: 'I heard you were?'

'No. I must be free. '

'It is not an engagement?'

'Will you laugh?--I have never quite known. My father desired it:and my desire is to please him. I think I am vain enough to think I readthrough blinds and shutters. The engagement--what there was--has been, to my reading, broken more than once. I have not considered it, tosettle my thoughts on it, until lately: and now I may suspect it to bebroken. I have given cause--if it is known. There is no blameelsewhere. I am not unhappy, Captain Dartrey. '

'Captain by courtesy. Very well. Tell me how Nesta judges theengagement to be broken?'

She was mentally phrasing before she said: 'Absence. '

'He was here yesterday. '

All that the visit embraced was in her expressive look, as of sightdrawing inward, like our breath in a spell of wonderment. 'Then Iunderstand; it enlightens me. 

My own mother!--my poor mother! he should have come to me. I was theguilty person, not she; and she is the sufferer. That, if in life weredirect retribution! but the very meaning of having a heart, is to sufferthrough others or for them. '

'You have soon seen that, dear girl, ' said Dartrey. 

'So, my own mother, and loving me as she does, blames me!' Nesta sighed;she took a sharp breath. 'You? do you blame me too?'

He pressed her hand, enamoured of her instantaneous divination andheavenly candour. 

But he was admonished, that to speak high approval would not behonourable advantage taken of the rival condemning; and he said: 'Blame?Some think it is not always the right thing to do the right thing. I'vemade mistakes, with no bad design. A good mother's view is not oftenwrong. '

'You pressed my hand, ' she murmured. 

That certainly had said more. 

'Glad to again, ' he responded. It was uttered airily and was meant to beas lightly done. 

Nesta did not draw back her hand. 'I feel strong when you press it. 'Her voice wavered, and as when we hear a flask sing thin at the filling, ceased upon evidence of a heart surcharged. How was he to relax thepressure!--he had to give her the strength she craved: and he vowed itshould be but for half a minute, half a minute longer. 

Her tears fell; she eyed him steadily; she had the look of sunlight inshower. 

'Oldish men are the best friends for you, I suppose, ' he said; and hergaze turned elusive phrases to vapour. 

He was compelled to see the fiery core of the raincloud lighting it for arevealment, that allowed as little as it retained of a shadow ofobscurity. 

The sight was keener than touch and the run of blood with blood toquicken slumbering seeds of passion. 

But here is the place of broken ground and tangle, which calls tohonourable men, not bent on sport, to be wary to guard the gunlock. Hestopped the word at his mouth. It was not in him to stop or moderate theforce of his eyes. She met them with the slender unbendingness that washer own; a feminine of inspirited manhood. There was no soft expression, only the direct shot of light, on both sides; conveying as much as isborne from sun to earth, from earth to sun. And when such an exchangehas come between the two, they are past plighting, they are the weddedone. 

Nesta felt it, without asking whether she was loved. She was his. Shehad not a thought of the word of love or the being beloved. Showers ofpainful blissfulness went through her, as the tremours of a shockedframe, while she sat quietly, showing scarce a sign; and after he had lether hand go, she had the pressure on it. The quivering intense of themoment of his eyes and grasp was lord of her, lord of the day and of alldays coming. That is how Love slays Death. Never did girl so give hersoul. 

She would have been the last to yield it unreservedly to a man untrustedfor the character she worshipped. But she could have given it toDartrey, despite his love of another, because it was her soul, withoutany of the cravings, except to bestow. 

He perceived, that he had been carried on for the number of steps whichare countless miles and do not permit the retreat across the desertbehind; and he was in some amazement at himself, remindful of thedifferent nature of our restraining power when we have a couple playingon it. Yet here was this girl, who called him up to the heights of younglife again: and a brave girl; and she bled for the weak, had no shrinkingfrom the women underfoot: for the reason, that she was a girl sovereignlypure, angelically tender. Was there a point of honour to hold him back?

Nataly entered the room. She kissed Nesta, and sat silent. 

'Mother, will you speak of me to him, if I go out?' Nesta said. 

'We have spoken, ' her mother replied, vexed by the unmaidenly allusion tothat theme. 

She would have asked, How did you guess I knew of it?--but that the, Whyshould I speak of you to him? struck the louder note in her bosom: andthen, What is there that this girl cannot guess!--filled the mother'sheart with apprehensive dread: and an inward cry, What things will shenot set going, to have them discussed. And the appalling theme, sittingoffensive though draped in their midst, was taken for a proof of thegirl's unblushingness. After standing as one woman against the world solong, Nataly was relieved to be on the side of a world now convictedlyunjust to her in the confounding of her with the shameless. Her mind hadtaken the brand of that thought:--And Nesta had brought her to it:--And Dudley Sowerby, a generous representative of the world, had kindly, having the deputed power to do so, sustained her, only partially blamingNesta, not casting them off; as the world, with which Nataly felt, undera sense of the protection calling up all her gratitude to young Dudley, would have approved his doing. 

She was passing through a fit of the cowardice peculiar to the tediouslystrained, who are being more than commonly tried--persecuted, as they saywhen they are not supplicating their tyrannical Authority for aid. Theworld will continue to be indifferent to their view of it and behaviourtoward it until it ceases to encourage the growth of hypocrites. 

These are moments when the faces we are observing drop their charm, showing us our perversion internal, if we could but reflect, to see it. Very many thousand times above Dudley Sowerby, Nataly ranked DartreyFenellan; and still she looked at him, where he sat beside Nesta, ungenially, critical of the very features, jealously in the interests ofDudley; and recollecting, too, that she had once prayed for one exactlyresembling Dartrey Fenellan to be her Nesta's husband. But, as she wouldhave said, that was before the indiscretion of her girl had shown her torequire for her husband a man whose character and station guaranteedprotection instead of inciting to rebellion. And Dartrey, the loved andprized, was often in the rebel ranks; he was dissatisfied with matters asthey are; was restless for action, angry with a country denying it tohim; he made enemies, he would surely bring down inquiries about Nesta'shead, and cause the forgotten or quiescent to be stirred; he wouldscarcely be the needed hand for such a quiver of the lightnings as Nestawas. 

Dartrey read Nataly's brows. This unwonted uncomeliness of hers was anindication to one or other of our dusky pits, not a revealing. 

CHAPTER XXXIX

A CHAPTER IN THE SHADOW OF MRS. MARSETT

He read her more closely when Arlington brought in the brown paperenvelope of the wires--to which the mate of Victor ought to have becomeaccustomed. She took it; her eyelids closed, and her features weredriven to whiteness. 'Only these telegrams, ' she said, in apology. 

'Lakelands on fire?' Dartrey murmured to Nesta; and she answered: 'Ishould not be sorry. '

Nataly coldly asked her why she would not be sorry. 

Dartrey interposed: 'I'm sure she thinks Lakelands worries her mother. '

'That ranks low among the worries, ' Nataly sighed, opening the envelope. 

Nesta touched her arm: 'Mother! even before Captain Dartrey, if you willlet me!'--she turned to him: 'before . . . ' at the end of her breathshe said: 'Dartrey Fenellan. You shall see my whole heart, mother. '

Her mother looked from her at him. 

'Victor returns by the last train. He telegraphs, that he dines with--'She handed the paper to Dartrey. 

'Marsett, ' he read aloud; and she flushed; she was angry with him for notknowing, that the name was a term of opprobrium flung at her. 

'It's to tell you he has done what he thought good, ' said Dartrey. 'In other words, as I interpret, he has completed his daughter's work. So we won't talk about it till he comes. You have no company thisevening?'

'Oh! there is a pause to-night! It's nearly as unceasing as yourbrother Simeon's old French lady in the ronde with her young bridegroom, till they danced her to pieces. I do get now and then an hour's repose, 'Nataly added, with a vision springing up of the person to whom the storyhad applied. 

'My dear, you are a good girl to call me Dartrey, ' the owner of the namesaid to Nesta. 

Nataly saw them both alert, in the terrible manner peculiar to both, forthe directest of the bare statements. She could have protested, that herlove of truth was on an equality with theirs; and certainly, that herregard for decency was livelier. Pass the deficiency in a man. But agirl who could speak, by allusion, of Mrs. Marsett--of the existence of aMrs. Marsett--in the presence of a man: and he excusing, encouraging: andthis girl her own girl;--it seemed to her, that the world reeled; shecould hardly acknowledge the girl; save under the penitential admissionof her sin's having found her out. 

She sent Nesta to her room when they went upstairs to dress, unable toendure her presence after seeing her show a placid satisfaction atDartrey's nod to the request for him to sleep in the house that night. It was not at all a gleam of pleasure, hardly an expression; it was amanner of saying, One drop more in my cup of good fortune! an absurd andan offensive exhibition of silly optimism of the young, blind that theyare!

For were it known, and surely the happening of it would be known, that Dudley Sowerby had shaken off the Nesta of no name, who was theabominable Mrs. Marsett's friend, a whirlwind with a trumpet would sweepthem into the wilderness on a blast frightfuller than any ever heard. 

Nataly had a fit of weeping for want of the girl's embrace, against whomher door was jealously locked. She hoped those two would talk much, madly if they liked, during dinner, that she might not be sensible, through any short silence, of the ardour animating them: especiallyglowing in Nesta, ready behind her quiet mask to come brazenly forth. But both of them were mercilessly ardent; and a sickness of the fear, that they might fall on her to capture her and hurry her along with themperforce of the allayed, once fatal, inflammable element in herself, shook the warmth from her limbs: causing her to say to herself aloud in aragged hoarseness, very strangely: Every thought of mine now has aphysical effect on me!

They had not been two minutes together when she descended to them. Yetshe saw the girl's heart brimming, either with some word spoken to her orfor joy of an unmaidenly confession. During dinner they talked, withoutdistressful pauses. Whatever said, whatever done, was manifestly anotherdrop in Nesta's foolish happy cup. Could it be all because DartreyFenellan countenanced her acquaintance with that woman? The mother hadlost hold of her. The tortured mother had lost hold of herself. 

Dartrey in the course of the evening, begged to hear the contralto; andNataly, refusing, was astounded by the admission in her blank mind of thetruth of man's list of charges against her sex, starting from theircapriciousness for she could have sung in a crowded room, and she had nowa desire for company, for stolid company or giddy, an ocean of it. Thisled to her thinking, that the world of serious money-getters, and feasts, and the dance, the luxurious displays, and the reverential Sundayservice, will always ultimately prove itself right in opposition tocritics and rebels, and to any one vainly trying to stand alone: and thethought annihilated her; for she was past the age of the beginning again, and no footing was left for an outsider not self-justified in being whereshe stood. She heard Dartrey's praise of Nesta's voice for tearing hermother's bosom with notes of intolerable sweetness; and it was haphazardirony, no doubt; we do not the less bleed for the accident of a shot. 

At last, after midnight Victor arrived. 

Nesta most impudently expected to be allowed to remain. 'Pray, go, dear, ' her mother said. Victor kissed his Fredi. 'Some time to-morrow, 'said he; and she forbore to beseech him. 

He stared, though mildly, at sight of her taking Dartrey's hand for thegood-night and deliberately putting her lips to it. 

Was she a girl whose notion of rectifying one wrong thing done, was to doanother? Nataly could merely observe. A voice pertaining to no onepresent, said in her ear:--Mothers have publicly slapped their daughter'sfaces for less than that!--It was the voice of her incapacity to copewith the girl. She watched Nesta's passage from the room, somewhataffected by the simple bearing for which she was reproaching her. 

'And our poor darling has not seen a mountain this year!' Victorexclaimed, to have mentionable grounds for pitying his girl. 'I promisedFredi she should never count a year without Highlands or Alps. Youremember, mama?--down in the West Highlands. Fancy the dear bit ofbundle, Dartrey!--we had laid her in her bed; she was about seven oreight; and there she lay wide awake. "What 's Fredi thinking of?"--"I'm thinking of the tops of the mountains at night, dada. "--She couldclimb them now; she has the legs. '

Nataly said: 'You have some report to make. You dined with thosepeople?'

'The Marsetts: yes:--well-suited couple enough. It's to happen beforeWinter ends--at once; before Christmas; positively before next Spring. Fredi's doing! He has to manage, arrange. --She's a good-looking woman, good height, well-rounded; well-behaved, too: she won't make a bad LadyMarsett. Every time that woman spoke of our girl, the tears jumped toher eyelids. '

'Come to me before you go to bed, ' Nataly said, rising, her voicefoundering; 'Good-night, Dartrey. '

She turned to the door; she could not trust herself to shake hands withcomposure. Not only was it a nauseous mixture she was forced to gulpfrom Victor, it burned like a poison. 

'Really Fredi's doing--chiefly, ' said Victor, as soon as Dartrey and hewere alone, comfortably settled in the smoking-room. 'I played the manof pomp with Marsett--good heavy kind of creature: attached to the woman. She's the better horse, as far as brains go. Good enough Lady Marsett. I harped on Major Worrell: my daughter insulted. He knew of it--spokeof you properly. The man offered all apologies; he has told the Majorhe is no gentleman, not a fit associate for gentlemen:--quite so--and hascut him dead. Will marry her, as I said, make her as worthy as he can ofthe honour of my daughter's acquaintance. Rather comical grimace, whenhe vowed he'd fasten the tie. He doesn't like marriage. But, he can'tgive her up. And she's for patronizing the institution. But she isready to say good-bye to him "rather than see the truest lady in theworld insulted"--her words. And so he swallows his dose for health, and looks a trifle sourish. Antecedents, I suppose: has to stomach them. But if a man's fond of a woman--if he knows he saves her from slippinglower--and it's an awful world, for us to let a woman be under itswheels:--I say, a woman who has a man to lean on, unless she's asdownright corrupt as two or three of the men we've known:--upon my word, Dartrey, I come round to some of your ideas on these matters. It's thisgirl of mine, this wee bit of girl in her little nightshirt with thefrill, astonishes me most:--"thinking of the tops of the mountains atnight!" She has positively done the whole of this work-main part. I smiled when I left the house, to have to own our little Fredi startingus all on the road. It seems, Marsett had sworn he would; amorous vow, you know; he never came nearer to doing it. I hope it's his better mindnow; I do hope the man won't have cause to regret it. He speaks ofNesta--sort of rustic tone of awe. Mrs. Marsett has impressed him. Heexpects the title soon, will leave the army--the poor plucked Britisharmy, as you call it!--and lead the life of a country squire: hunting!Well, it's not only the army, it's over Great Britain, with this infernalwealth of ours!--and all for pleasure--eh?--or Paradise lost for a sugarplum! Eh, Dartrey? Upon my word, it appears to me, Esau's theEnglishman, Jacob the German, of these times. I wonder old Colney hasn'tsaid it. If we're not plucked, as your regiments are of the officers whohave learnt their work, we're emasculated:--the nation's half made-up ofthe idle and the servants of the idle. '

'Ay, and your country squires and your manufacturers contrive to give thearmy a body of consumptive louts fit for nothing else than to take theshilling--and not worth it, ' said Dartrey. 

'Sounds like old Colney, ' Victor remarked to himself. 'But, believe me, I'm ashamed of the number of servants who wait on me. It wouldn't somuch matter, as Skepsey says, if they were trained to arms and self-respect. That little fellow Skepsey's closer to the right notion, and the right practice, too, than any of us. With his Matilda Pridden!He has jumped out of himself to the proper idea of women, too. Andthere's a man who has been up three times before the magistrates, and isconsidered a disorderly subject--one among the best of English citizens, I declare! I never think of Skepsey without the most extraordinary, witless kind of envy--as if he were putting in action an idea I once hadand never quite got hold of again. The match for him is Fredi. Shethreatens to be just as devoted, just as simple, as he. I positivelydoubt whether any of us could stop her, if she had set herself to do athing she thought right. '

'I should not like to think our trying it possible, ' said Dartrey. 

'All very well, but it's a rock ahead. We shall have to alter ourcourse, my friend. You know, I dined with that couple, after the privatetwenty minutes with Marsett: he formally propounded the invitation, as wewere close on his hour, rather late: and I wanted to make the womanhappy, besides putting a seal of cordiality on his good intentions--politic! And subsequently I heard from her, that--you'll think nothingof it!--Fredi promised to stand by her at the altar. '

Dartrey said, shrugging: 'She needn't do that. '

'So we may say. You're dealing with Nesta Victoria. Spare me a contestwith that girl, I undertake to manage any man or woman living. '

'When the thing to be done is thought right by her. '

'But can we always trust her judgement, my dear Dartrey?'

'In this case, she would argue, that her resolution to keep her promisewould bind or help to bind Marsett to fulfil his engagement. '

'Odd, her mother has turned dead round in favour of that fellow DudleySowerby! I don't complain; it suits; but one thinks--eh?--women!'

'Well, yes, one thinks or should think, that if you insist on havingwomen rooted to the bed of the river, they'll veer with the tides, likewater-weeds, and no wonder. '

'Your heterodoxy on that subject is a mania, Dartrey. We can't havewomen independent. '

'Then don't be exclaiming about their vagaries. '

Victor mused: 'It's wonderful: that little girl of mine!--good heightnow: but what a head she has! Oh, she'll listen to reason: only markwhat I say:--with that quiet air of hers, the husband, if a young fellow, will imagine she's the most docile of wives in the world. And as towife, I'm not of the contrary opinion. But qua individual female, supposing her to have laid fast hold of an idea of duty, it's he who'llhave to turn the corner second, if they're to trot in the yoke together. Or it may be an idea of service to a friend--or to her sex! That Mrs. Marsett says she feels for--"bleeds" for her sex. The poor woman didn'tshow to advantage with me, because she was in a fever to please:--talksin jerks, hot phrases. She holds herself well. At the end of the dinnershe behaved better. Odd, you can teach women with hints and a lead. ButMarsett 's Marsett to the end. Rather touching!--the poor fellow said:Deuce of a bad look-out for me if Judith doesn't have a child! First-rate sportsman, I hear. He should have thought of his family earlier. You know, Dartrey, the case is to be argued for the family as well. Youwon't listen. And for Society too! Off you go. '

A battery was opened on that wall of composite. 

'Ah, well, ' said Victor. 'But I may have to beg your help, as to theso-called promise to stand at the altar. I don't mention it upstairs. '

He went to Nataly's room. 

She was considerately treated, and was aware of being dandled, that shemight have sleep. 

She consented to it, in a loathing of the topic. --Those women invade us--we cannot keep them out! was her inward cry: with a reverberation ofthe unfailing accompaniment: The world holds you for one of them!

Victor tasked her too much when his perpetual readiness to doat upon hisgirl for whatever she did, set him exalting Nesta's conduct. Shethought: Was Nesta so sympathetic with her mother of late by reason of amoral insensibility to the offence?

This was her torture through the night of a labouring heart, thattravelled to one dull shock, again and again repeated:--the apprehendedsound, in fact, of Dudley Sowerby's knock at the street door. Orsometimes a footman handed her his letter, courteously phrased towithdraw from the alliance. Or else he came to a scene with Nesta, andher mother was dragged into it, and the intolerable subject steamed abouther. The girl was visioned as deadly. She might be indifferent to theprotection of Dudley's name. Robust, sanguine, Victor's child, shemight--her mother listened to a devil's whisper--but no; Nesta's aim wasat the heights; she was pure in mind as in body. No, but the world wouldbring the accusation; and the world would trace the cause: Heredity, itwould say. Would it say falsely? Nataly harped on the interrogationuntil she felt her existence dissolving to a dark stain of the earth, andshe found herself wondering at the breath she drew, doubting that anotherwould follow, speculating on the cruel force which keeps us to the act ofbreathing. --Though I could draw wild blissful breath if I were gallopingacross the moors! her worn heart said to her youth: and out of ken ofthe world, I could regain a portion of my self-esteem. Nature thereatrenewed her old sustainment with gentle murmurs, that were supported byDr. Themison's account of the virtuous married lady who chafed at theyoke on behalf of her sex, and deemed the independent union the ideal. Nataly's brain had a short gallop over moorland. It brought her face toface with Victor's girl, and she dropped once more to her remorse inherself and her reproaches of Nesta. The girl had inherited from herfather something of the cataract's force which won its way by catching orby mastering, uprooting, ruining!

In the morning she was heavily asleep. Victor left word with Nesta, that the dear mother was not to be disturbed. Consequently, when Dudleycalled to see Mrs. Victor Radnor, he was informed that Miss Radnor wouldreceive him. 

Their interview lasted an hour. 

Dudley came to Victor in the City about luncheon time. 

His perplexity of countenance was eloquent. He had, before seeing theyoung lady, digested an immense deal more, as it seemed to him, than anyEnglish gentleman should be asked to consume. She now referred him toher father, who had spent a day in Brighton, and would, she said, explainwhatever there was to be explained. But she added, that if she wasexpected to abandon a friend, she could not. Dudley had argued with herupon the nature of friendship, the measurement of its various dues; hehad lectured on the choice of friends, the impossibility for youngladies, necessarily inexperienced, to distinguish the right class offriends, the dangers they ran in selecting friends unwarranted by thestamp of honourable families. 

'And what did Fredi say to that?' Victor inquired. 

'Miss Radnor said--I may be dense, I cannot comprehend--that the preceptswere suitable for seminaries of Pharisees. When it is a question of ayoung lady associating with a notorious woman!'

'Not notorious. You spoil your case if you "speak extremely, " as afriend says. I saw her yesterday. She worships "Miss Radnor. "'

Nesta will know when she is older; she will thank me, ' said Dudleyhurriedly. 'As it is at present, I may reckon, I hope, that theassociation ceases. Her name: I have to consider my family. '

'Good anchorage! You must fight it out with the girl. And depend uponthis--you're not the poorer for being the husband of a girl of character;unless you try to bridle her. She belongs to her time. I don't mindowning to you, she has given me a lead. --Fredi 'll be merry to-night. Here's a letter I have from the Sanfredini, dated Milan, fresh thismorning; invitation to bring the god-child to her villa on Como in May;desirous to embrace her. She wrote to the office. Not a word of herduque. She has pitched him to the winds. You may like to carry it offto Fredi and please her. '

'I have business, ' Dudley replied. 

'Away to it, then!' said Victor. 'You stand by me?--we expect our SouthLondon borough to be open in January; early next year, at least; may beFebruary. You have family interest there. '

'Personally, I will do my best, ' Dudley said; and he escaped, feeling, with the universal censor's angry spite, that the revolutions of theworld had made one of the wealthiest of City men the head of a set ofBohemians. And there are eulogists of the modern time! And the man'sdaughter was declared to belong to it! A visit in May to the Italiancantatrice separated from her husband, would render the maiden anaccomplished flinger of caps over the windmills. 

At home Victor discovered, that there was not much more than a trucebetween Nesta and Nataly. He had a medical hint from Dr. Themison, and he counselled his girl to humour her mother as far as could be:particularly in relation to Dudley, whom Nataly now, womanlike, afteropposing, strongly favoured. How are we ever to get a clue to thelabyrinthine convolutions and changeful motives of the sex! Dartrey'stheories were absurd. Did Nataly think them dangerous for a young woman?The guess hinted at a clue of some sort to the secret of her veering. 

'Mr. Sowerby left me with an adieu, ' said Nesta. 

'Mr. Sowerby! My dear, he is bound, bound in honour, bound at heart. You did not dismiss him?'

'I repeated the word he used. I thought of mother. The blood leaves hercheeks at a disappointment now. She has taken to like him. '

'Why, you like him!'

'I could not vow. '

'Tush. '

'Ah, don't press me, dada. But you will see, he has disengaged himself. '

He had done it, though not in formal speech. Slow digestion of hisnative antagonism to these Bohemians, to say nothing of his judicialcondemnation of them, brought him painfully round to the writing of aletter to Nataly; cunningly addressed to the person on whom his instincttold him he had the strongest hold. 

She schooled herself to discuss the detested matter forming Dudley'sgrievance and her own with Nesta; and it was a woeful half-hour for them. But Nataly was not the weeper. 

Another interview ensued between Nesta and her suitor. Dudley bore noresemblance to Mr. Barmby, who refused to take the word no from her, andhad taken it, and had gone to do holy work, for which she revered him. Dudley took the word, leaving her to imagine freedom, until once more hermother or her father, inspired by him, came interceding, her motheractually supplicating. So that the reality of Dudley's love rose toconception like a London dawn over Nesta; and how, honourably, decently, positively, to sever herself from it, grew to be an ill-visaged problem. She glanced in soul at Dartrey Fenellan for help; she had her wildthoughts. Having once called him Dartrey, the virginal barrier tothoughts was broken; and but for love of her father, for love and pity ofher mother, she would have ventured the step to make the man who had herwhole being in charge accept or reject her. Nothing else appeared inprospect. Her father and mother were urgently one to favour Dudley; andthe sensitive gentleman presented himself to receive his wound and todepart with it. But always he returned. At last, as if under tuition, he refrained from provoking a wound; he stood there to win her upon anyterms; and he was a handsome figure, acknowledged by the damsel to beincreasing in good looks as more and more his pretensions becamedistasteful to her. The slight cast of sourness on his lower featureshad almost vanished, his nature seemed to have enlarged. He complimentedher for her 'generous benevolence, ' vaguely, yet with evidentsincereness; he admitted, that the modern world is 'attemptingdifficulties with at least commendable intentions'; and that the positionof women demands improvement, consideration for them also. He saidfeelingly: 'They have to bear extraordinary burdens!' There he stopped. 

The sharp intelligence fronting him understood, that this compassionateejaculation was the point where she, too, must cry halt. He had, however--still under tuition, perhaps--withdrawn his voice from thepursuit of her; and so she in gratitude silenced her critical mindbeneath a smooth conceit of her having led him two steps to a broadertolerance. Susceptible as she was, she did not influence him withoutbeing affected herself in other things than her vanity: his prudishnessaffected her. Only when her heart flamed did she disdain that real havenof refuge, with its visionary mount of superiority, offered by Society toits effect, in the habit of ignoring the sins it fosters under cloak;--not less than did the naked barbaric time, and far more to the vitiationof the soul. He fancied he was moulding her; therefore winning her. It followed, that he had the lover's desire for assurance of exclusivepossession; and reflecting, that he had greatly pardoned, he grewexacting. He mentioned his objections to some of Mr. Dartrey Fenellan'sideas. 

Nesta replied: 'I have this morning had two letters to make me happy. '

A provoking evasion. He would rather have seen antagonism bridle andstiffen her figure. 'Is one of them from that gentleman?'

'One is from my dear friend Louise de Seilles. She comes to me earlynext month. '

'The other?'

'The other is also from a friend. '

'A dear friend?'

'Not so dear. Her letter gives me happiness. '

'She writes--not from France: from . . . ? you tempt me to guess. '

'She writes to tell me, that Mr. Dartrey Fenellan has helped her in a wayto make her eternally thankful. '

'The place she writes from is . . . ?'

The drag of his lips betrayed his enlightenment insisted on doubting. He demanded assurance. 

'It matters in no degree, ' she said. 

Dudley 'thought himself excusable for inquiring. '

She bowed gently. 

The stings and scorpions and degrading itches of this nest of wealthyBohemians enraged him. 

'Are you--I beg to ask--are you still:--I can hardly think it--Nesta!--I surely have a claim to advise:--it cannot be with your mother'sconsent:--in communication, in correspondence with . . . ?'

Again she bowed her head; saying: 'It is true. '

'With that person?'

He could not but look the withering disgust of the modern world in aconservative gentleman who has been lured to go with it a little way, only to be bitten. 'I decline to believe it, ' he said with forciblesound. 

'She is married, ' was the rather shameless, exasperating answer. 

'Married or not!' he cried, and murmured: 'I have borne--. These may beMr. Dartrey Fenellan's ideas; they are not mine. I have--Something atleast is due to me: Ask any lady:--there are clergymen, I know, clergymenwho are for uplifting--quite right, but not associating:--to call one ofthem a friend! Ask any lady, any! Your mother . . . '

'I beg you will not distress my mother, ' said Nesta. 

'I beg to know whether this correspondence is to continue?' said Dudley. 

'All my life, if I do not feel dishonoured by it. '

'You are. ' He added hastily: 'Counsels of prudence--there is not a ladyliving who would tell you otherwise. At all events, in public opinion, if it were known--and it would certainly be known, --a lady, wife orspinster, would suffer--would not escape the--at least shadow ofdefilement from relationship, any degree of intimacy with . . . Hardwords are wholesome in such a case: "touch pitch, " yes! My sense iscoherent. '

'Quite, ' said Nesta. 

'And you do not agree with me?'

'I do not. '

'Do you pretend to be as able to judge as I?'

'In this instance, better. '

'Then I retire. I cannot retain my place here. You may depend upon it, the world is not wrong when it forbids young ladies to have cognizance ofwomen leading disorderly lives. '

'Only the women, Mr. Sowerby?'

'Men, too, of course. '

'You do not exclude the men from Society. '

'Oh! one reads that kind of argument in books. '

'Oh! the worthy books, then. I would read them, if I could find them. '

'They are banned by self-respecting readers. '

'It grieves me to think differently. '

Dudley looked on this fair girl, as yet innocent girl; and contrastingher with the foulness of the subject she dared discuss, it seemed to him, that a world which did not puff at her and silence, if not extinguish, was in a state of liquefaction. 

Remembering his renewed repentances his absence, he said: 'I do hope youmay come to see, that the views shared by your mother and me are noterroneous. '

'But do not distress her, ' Nesta implored him. 'She is not well. Whenshe has grown stronger, her kind heart will move her to receive the lady, so that she may not be deprived of the society of good women. I shallhope she will not disapprove of me. I cannot forsake a friend. '

'I beg to say good-bye, ' said Dudley. 

She had seen a rigidity smite him as she spoke; and so little startlingwas it, that she might have fancied it expected, save for her knowingherself too serious to have played at wiles to gain her ends. 

He 'wished her prudent advisers. '

She thanked him. 'In a few days, Louise de Seilles will be here. '

A Frenchwoman and Papist! was the interjection of his twist of brows. 

Surely I must now be free? she thought when he had covered his farewellunder a salutation regretful in frostiness. 

A week later, she had the embrace of her Louise, and Armandine was madehappy with a piece of Parisian riband. 

Winter was rapidly in passage: changes were visible everywhere; Earth andHouse of Commons and the South London borough exhibited them; Mrs. Burmanwas the sole exception. To the stupefaction of physicians, in a mannerto make a sane man ask whether she was not being retained as aninstrument for one of the darker purposes of Providence--and where are westanding if we ask such things?--she held on to her thread of life. 

February went by. And not a word from Themison; nor from Carling, norfrom the Rev. Groseman Buttermore, nor from Jarniman. That is to say, the two former accepted invitations to grand dinners; the two latteracknowledged contributions to funds in which they were interested; butthey had apparently grown to consider Mrs. Burman as an establishment, one of our fixtures. On the other hand, there was nothing to be fearedfrom her. Lakelands feared nothing: the entry into Lakelands was decreedfor the middle of April. Those good creatures enclosed the poor womanand nourished her on comfortable fiction. So the death of the member forthe South London borough (fifteen years younger than the veteran inmaladies) was not to be called premature, and could by no possibilitylead to an exposure of the private history of the candidate for hisvacant seat. 

CHAPTER XL

AN EXPIATION

Nataly had fallen to be one of the solitary who have no companionshipsave with the wound they nurse, to chafe it rather than try at healing. So rational a mind as she had was not long in outliving mistakenimpressions; she could distinguish her girl's feeling, and her aim; shecould speak on the subject with Dartrey; and still her wound bled on. Louise de Seilles comforted her partly, through an exaltation of Nesta. Mademoiselle, however, by means of a change of tone and look when DudleySowerby and Dartrey Fenellan were the themes, showed a too pronouncedpreference of the more unstable one:--or rather, the man adventurous outof the world's highways, whose image, as husband of such a daughter ashers, smote the wounded mother with a chillness. Mademoiselle'soccasional thrill of fervency in an allusion to Dartrey, might havetempted a suspicious woman to indulge suppositions, accounting for theyoung Frenchwoman's novel tenderness to England, of which Nesta proudly, very happily boasted. The suspicion proposed itself, and was rejected:for not even the fever of an insane body could influence Nataly'sgenerous character, to let her moods divert and command her thoughts ofpersons. 

Her thoughts were at this time singularly lucid upon everything abouther; with the one exception of the reason why she had come to favourDudley, and how it was she had been smitten by that woman at Brighton tosee herself in her position altogether with the world's relentless, unexamining hard eyes. Bitterness added, of Mrs. Marsett: She is made anhonest woman!--And there was a strain of the lower in Nataly, to reproachthe girl for causing the reflection to be cast on the unwedded. Otherwise her mind was open; she was of aid to Victor in his confusionover some lost Idea he had often touched on latterly. And she was theone who sent him ahead at a trot under a light, by saying: 'You wouldfound a new and more stable aristocracy of the contempt of luxury' whenhe talked of combatting the Jews with a superior weapon. That being, infact, as Colney Durance had pointed out to him, the weapon of self-conquest used by them 'before they fell away to flesh-pottery. ' Was ithis Idea? He fancied an aching at the back of his head when hespeculated. But his Idea had been surpassingly luminous, alive, acreation; and this came before him with the yellow skin of a Theory, bred, born of books. Though Nataly's mention of the aristocracy ofself-denying discipline struck a Lucifer in his darkness. 

Nesta likewise helped: but more in what she did than in what she said:she spoke intelligently enough to make him feel a certain increase ofalarm, amounting to a cursory secret acknowledgement of it, both at herdealings with Dudley and with himself. She so quietly displaced the ladyvisiting him at the City offices. His girl's disregard of hostileweather, and her company, her talk, delighted him: still he remonstrated, at her coming daily. She came: nor was there an instigation on the partof her mother, clearly none: her mother asked him once whether he thoughtshe met the dreadful Brighton woman. His Fredi drove constantly to walkback beside him Westward, as he loved to do whenever it was practicable;and exceeding the flattery of his possession of the gallant daughter, herconversation charmed him to forget a disappointment caused by the defeatand entire exclusion of the lady visiting him so complimentarily for hisadvice on stocks, shares, mines, et caetera. The lady resisted; she wasvanquished, as the shades are displaced by simple apparition of daylight. 

His Fredi was like the daylight to him; she was the very daylight to hismind, whatsoever their theme of converse for by stimulating that readybut vagrant mind to quit the leash of the powerful senses and be aethereally excursive, she gave him a new enjoyment; which led toreflections--a sounding of Nature, almost a question to her, on the vergeof a doubt. Are we, in fact, harmonious with the Great Mother when weyield to the pressure of our natures for indulgence? Is she, whentranslated into us, solely the imperious appetite? Here was Fredi, hislittle Fredi--stately girl that she had grown, and grave, too, for allher fun and her sail on wings--lifting him to pleasures not followed byclamorous, and perfectly satisfactory, yet discomposingly violent, appeals to Nature. They could be vindicated. Or could they, when theywould not bear a statement of the case? He could not imagine himselfstating it namelessly to his closest friend--not to Simeon Fenellan. Asfor speaking to Dartrey, the notion took him with shivers:--Young Dudleywould have seemed a more possible confidant:--and he represented thePuritan world. --And young Dudley was getting over Fredi's infatuation forthe woman she had rescued: he was beginning to fancy he saw a rightenthusiasm in it;--in the abstract; if only the fair maid would drop anunseemly acquaintance. He had called at the office to say so. Victorstammered the plea for him. 

'Never, dear father, ' came the smooth answer: a shocking answer incontrast with the tones. Her English was as lucid as her eyes when shecontinued up to the shock she dealt: 'Do not encourage a good man towaste his thoughts upon me. I have chosen my mate, and I may never marryhim. I do not know whether he would marry me. He has my soul. I haveno shame in saying I love him. It is to love goodness, greatness ofheart. He is a respecter of women--of all women; not only the fortunate. He is the friend of the weaker everywhere. He has been proved in fire. He does not sentimentalize over poor women, as we know who scorns peoplefor doing:--and that is better than hardness, meaning kindly. He is notone of the unwise advocates. He measures the forces against them. Hereads their breasts. He likes me. He is with me in my plans. He hasnot said, has not shown, he loves me. It is too high a thought for meuntil I hear it. '

'Has your soul!' was all that Victor could reply, while the wholeconception of Lakelands quaked under the crumbling structure. 

Remonstrance, argument, a word for Dudley, swelled to his lips and sankin dumbness. Her seeming intuition--if it was not a perception--of thepoint where submission to the moods of his nature had weakened hischaracter, and required her defence of him, struck Victor with a seriousfear of his girl: and it was the more illuminatingly damnatory for beingrecognized as the sentiment which no father should feel. He tried tothink she ought not to be so wise of the things of the world. An effortto imagine a reproof, showed him her spirit through her eyes: in herdeeds too: she had already done work on the road:--Colney Durance, Dartrey Fenellan, anything but sentimentalists either of them, stronglybacking her, upholding her. Victor could no longer so naturally name herFredi. 

He spoke it hastily, under plea of some humorous tenderness, when heventured. When Dudley, calling on him in the City to discuss thecandidature for the South London borough, named her Fredi, that he mightregain a vantage of familiarity by imitating her father, it struck Victoras audacious. It jarred in his recollection, though the heir of theearldom spoke in the tone of a lover, was really at high pitch. Heappeared to be appreciating her, to have suffered stings of pain; heoffered himself; he made but one stipulation. Victor regretfully assuredhim, he feared he could do nothing. The thought of his entry intoLakelands, with Nesta Victoria refusing the foundation stone of theplace, grew dim. 

But he was now canvassing for the Borough, hearty at the new business asthe braced swimmer on seas, which instantly he became, with an end inview to be gained. 

Late one April night, expecting Nataly to have gone to bed, and Nesta tobe waiting for him, he reached home, and found Nataly in her sitting-roomalone. 'Nesta was tired, ' she said: 'we have had a scene; she refusesMr. Sowerby; I am sick of pressing it; he is very much in earnest, painfully; she blames him for disturbing me; she will not see the rightcourse:--a mother reads her daughter! If my girl has not guidance!--she means rightly, she is rash. '

Nataly could not utter all that her insaneness of feeling made her thinkwith regard to Victor's daughter--daughter also of the woman whom herhard conscience accused of inflammability. 'Here is a note from Dr. Themison, dear. '

Victor seized it, perused, and drew the big breath. 

'From Themison, ' he said; he coughed. 

'Don't think to deceive me, ' said she. 'I have not read the contents, I know them. '

'The invitation at last, for to-morrow, Sunday, four P. M. Odd, that nextday at eight of the evening I shall be addressing our meeting in theTheatre. Simeon speaks. Beaves Urmsing insists on coming, Tory thoughhe is. Those Tories are jollier fellows than--well, no wonder! Therewill be no surgical . . . The poor woman is very low. A couple ofdays at the outside. Of course, I go. '

'Hand me the note, dear. '

It had to be given up, out of the pocket. 

'But, ' said Victor, 'the mention of you is merely formal. '

She needed sleep: she bowed her head. 

Nataly was the first at the breakfast-table in the morning, a fair Sundaymorning. She was going to Mrs. John Cormyn's Church, and she asked Nestato come with her. 

She returned five minutes before the hour of lunch, having left Nestawith Mrs. John. Louise de Seilles undertook to bring Nesta home at thetime she might choose. Fenellan, Mr. Pempton, Peridon and Catkin, lunched and chatted. Nataly chatted. At a quarter to three o'clockVictor's carriage was at the door. He rose: he had to keep anappointment. Nataly said to him publicly: 'I come too. ' He stared andnodded. In the carriage, he said: 'I'm driving to the Gardens, for astroll, to have a look at the beasts. Sort of relief. Poor crazy woman!However, it 's a comfort to her: so . . . !'

'I like to see them, ' said Nataly. 'I shall see her. I have to do it. '

Up to the gate of the Gardens Victor was arguing to dissuade his dearsoul from this very foolish, totally unnecessary, step. Alighting, heput the matter aside, for good angels to support his counsel at the finalmoment. 

Bears, lions, tigers, eagles, monkeys: they suggested no more than hewould have had from prints; they sprang no reflection, except, that thecoming hour was a matter of indifference to them. They were about him, and exercised so far a distraction. He took very kindly to an old mothermonkey, relinquishing her society at sight of Nataly's heave of thebosom. Southward, across the park, the dread house rose. He beganquoting Colney Durance with relish while sarcastically confuting thecynic, who found much pasture in these Gardens. Over Southward, too, hewould be addressing a popular assembly to-morrow evening. Between nowand then there was a ditch to jump. He put on the sympathetic face ofgrief. 'After all, a caged wild beast hasn't so bad a life, ' he said. --To be well fed while they live, and welcome death as a release from themaladies they develop in idleness, is the condition of wealthy people:--creatures of prey? horrible thought! yet allied to his Idea, it seemed. Yes, but these good caged beasts here set them an example, in nottroubling relatives and friends when they come to the gasp! Mrs. Burman's invitation loomed as monstrous--a final act of her cruelty. His skin pricked with dews. He thought of Nataly beside him, jumpingthe ditch with him, as a relief--if she insisted on doing it. He hopedshe would not, for the sake of her composure. 

It was a ditch void of bottom. But it was a mere matter of an hour, less. The state of health of the invalid could bear only a few minutes. In any case, we are sure that the hour will pass. Our own arrive?Certainly. 

'Capital place for children, ' he exclaimed. And here startlingly beforehim in the clusters of boys and girls, was the difference between youngones and their elders feeling quite as young: the careless youngstershave not to go and sit in the room with a virulent old woman, and expresspenitence and what not, and hear words of pardon, after their holidayscamper and stare at the caged beasts. 

Attention to the children precipitated him upon acquaintances, hithertocleverly shunned. He nodded them off, after the brightest of greetings. 

Such anodyne as he could squeeze from the incarcerated wild creatures, was exhausted. He fell to work at Nataly's 'aristocracy of the contemptof luxury'; signifying, that we the wealthy will not exist to pamperflesh, but we live for the promotion of brotherhood:--ay, and that ourEngland must make some great moral stand, if she is not to fall to therear and down. Unuttered, it caught the skirts of the Idea: itevaporated when spoken. Still, this theme was almost an exorcismof Mrs. Burman. He consulted his watch. 'Thirteen minutes to four. I must be punctual, ' he said. Nataly stepped faster. 

Seated in the carriage, he told her he had never felt the horror of thatplace before. 'Put me down at the corner of the terrace, dear: I won'tdrive to the door. '

'I come with you, Victor, ' she replied. 

After entreaties and reasons intermixed, to melt her resolve, he saw shewas firm: and he asked himself, whether he might not be constitutionallybetter adapted to persuade than to dissuade. The question thumped. Having that house of drugs in view, he breathed more freely for theprospect of feeling his Nataly near him beneath the roof. 

'You really insist, dear love?' he appealed to her: and her answer: 'Itmust be, ' left no doubt: though he chose to say: 'Not because of standingby me?' And she said: 'For my peace, Victor. ' They stepped to thepavement. The carriage was dismissed. 

Seventeen houses of the terrace fronting the park led to the funerealone: and the bell was tolled in the breast of each of the coupleadvancing with an air of calmness to the inevitable black door. 

Jarniman opened it. 'His mistress was prepared to see them. '--Not likeone near death. --They were met in the hall by the Rev. GrosemanButtermore. 'You will find a welcome, ' was his reassurance to them:gently delivered, on the stoop of a large person. His whispered toneswere more agreeably deadening than his words. 

Mr. Buttermore ushered them upstairs. 

'Can she bear it?' Victor said, and heard: 'Her wish ten minutes. '

'Soon over, ' he murmured to Nataly, with a compassionate exclamation forthe invalid. 

They rounded the open door. They were in the drawing-room. It wasfurnished as in the old time, gold and white, looking new; all the sameas of old, save for a division of silken hangings; and these were paleblue: the colour preferred by Victor for a bedroom. He glanced at theceiling, to bathe in a blank space out of memory. Here she lived, --here she slept, behind the hangings. There was refreshingly that littledifference in the arrangement of the room. The corner Northward wasoccupied by the grand piano; and Victor had an inquiry in him:--tuned?He sighed, expecting a sight to come through the hangings. Sensible thatNataly trembled, he perceived the Rev. Groseman Buttermore half across aheap of shawl-swathe on the sofa. 

Mrs. Burman was present; seated. People may die seated; she had alwaysdisliked the extended posture; except for the night's rest, she used tosay; imagining herself to be not inviting the bolt of sudden death, inher attitude when seated by day:--and often at night the poor woman hadto sit up for the qualms of her dyspepsia!--But I 'm bound to thinkhumanely, be Christian, be kind, benignant, he thought, and he fetchedthe spirit required, to behold her face emerge from a pale blue silkveiling; as it were, the inanimate wasted led up from the mould bymorning. 

Mr. Buttermore signalled to them to draw near. 

Wasted though it was, the face of the wide orbits for sunken eyes wasdistinguishable as the one once known. If the world could see it andhear, that it called itself a man's wife! She looked burnt out. 

Two chairs had been sent to front the sofa. Execution there! Victorthought, and he garrotted the unruly mind of a man really feelingdevoutness in the presence of the shadow thrown by the dread Shade. 

'Ten minutes, ' Mr. Buttermore said low, after obligingly placing them onthe chairs. 

He went. They were alone with Mrs. Burman. 

No voice came. They were unsure of being seen by the floating grey ofeyes patient to gaze from their vast distance. Big drops fell fromNataly's. Victor heard the French timepiece on the mantel-shelf, where afamiliar gilt Cupid swung for the seconds: his own purchase. The time ofday on the clock was wrong; the Cupid swung. 

Nataly's mouth was taking breath of anguish at moments. More than aminute of the terrible length of the period of torture must have gone:two, if not three. 

A quaver sounded. 'You have come. ' The voice was articulate, thinnerthan the telephonic, trans-Atlantic by deep-sea cable. 

Victor answered: 'We have. '

Another minute must have gone in the silence. And when we get to fiveminutes we are on the descent, rapidly counting our way out of the house, into the fresh air, where we were half an hour back, among those happybeasts in the pleasant Gardens!

Mrs. Burman's eyelids shut. 'I said you would come. '

Victor started to the fire-screen. 'Your sight requires protection. '

She dozed. 'And Natalia Dreighton !' she next said. 

They were certainly now on the five minutes. Now for the slide downwardand outward! Nataly should never have been allowed to come. 

'The white waistcoat!' struck his ears. 

'Old customs with me, always!' he responded. 'The first of April, always. White is a favourite. Pale blue, too. But I fear--I hope youhave not distressing nights? In my family we lay great stress on thenights we pass. My cousins, the Miss Duvidneys, go so far as to judge ofthe condition of health by the nightly record. '

'Your daughter was in their house. '

She knew everything!

'Very fond of my daughter--the ladies, ' he remarked. 

'I wish her well. '

'You are very kind. '

Mrs. Burman communed within or slept. 'Victor, Natalia, we will pray, 'she said. 

Her trembling hands crossed their fingers. Nataly slipped to her knees. 

The two women mutely praying, pulled Victor into the devotional hush. Itacted on him like the silent spell of service in a Church. He forgot hisestimate of the minutes, he formed a prayer, he refused to hear the Cupidswinging, he droned a sound of sentences to deaden his ears. Ideas ofeternity rolled in semblance of enormous clouds. Death was a black birdamong them. The piano rang to Nataly's young voice and his. The goldand white of the chairs welcomed a youth suddenly enrolled among thewealthy by an enamoured old lady on his arm. Cupid tick-ticked. --Poorsoul! poor woman! How little we mean to do harm when we do an injury!An incomprehensible world indeed at the bottom and at the top. We geton fairly at the centre. Yet it is there that we do the mischief makingsuch a riddle of the bottom and the top. What is to be said! Prayerquiets one. Victor peered at Nataly fervently on her knees and Mrs. Burman bowed over her knotted fingers. The earnestness of both enforcedan effort at a phrased prayer in him. Plungeing through a wave of thescent of Marechale, that was a tremendous memory to haul him backward andforward, he beheld his prayer dancing across the furniture; a diminutivethin black figure, elvish, irreverent, appallingly unlike his properemotion; and he brought his hands just to touch, and got to the edge ofhis chair, with split knees. At once the figure vanished. By merelylooking at Nataly, he passed into her prayer. A look at Mrs. Burman madeit personal, his own. He heard the cluck of a horrible sob coming fromhim. After a repetition of his short form of prayer deeply stressed, hethanked himself with the word 'sincere, ' and a queer side-thought on ourhuman susceptibility to the influence of posture. We are such creatures. 

Nataly resumed her seat. Mrs. Burman had raised her head. She said: 'Weare at peace. ' She presently said, with effort: 'It cannot last with me. I die in nature's way. I would bear forgiveness with me, that I may haveit above. I give it here, to you, to all. My soul is cleansed, I trust. Much was to say. My strength will not. Unto God, you both!'

The Rev. Groseman Buttermore was moving on slippered step to the back ofthe sofa. Nataly dropped before the unseeing, scarce breathing, lady foran instant. Victor murmured an adieu, grateful for being spared theceremonial shake of hands. He turned away, then turned back, praying forpower to speak, to say that he had found his heart, was grateful, wouldhold her in memory. He fell on a knee before her, and forgot he had doneso when he had risen. They were conducted by the Rev. Gentleman to thehall-door: he was not speechless. Jarniman uttered something. 

That black door closed behind them. 

CHAPTER XLI

THE NIGHT OF THE GREAT UNDELIVERED SPEECH

To a man issuing from a mortuary where a skull had voice, London may berestorative as air of Summer Alps. It is by contrast blooming life. Observe the fellowship of the houses shoulder to shoulder; and thatstraight ascending smoke of the preparation for dinner; and the goodpoliceman yonder, blessedly idle on an orderly Sabbath evening; and thefamilies of the minor people trotting homeward from the park to tea; hereand again an amiable carriage of the superimposed people driving to payvisits; they are so social, friendly, inviting to him; they strip him ofthe shroud, sing of the sweet old world. He cannot but be moved to theextremity of the charitableness neighbouring on tears. 

A stupefaction at the shock of the positive reminder, echo of the factstill shouting in his breast, that he had seen Mrs. Burman, and that theinterview was over--the leaf turned and the book shut held Victor in asilence until his gratefulness to London City was borne down by the morehuman burst of gratitude to the dying woman, who had spared him, as muchas she could, a scene of the convulsive pathetic, and had not called onhim for any utterance of penitence. That worm-like thread of voice cameup to him still from sexton-depths: it sounded a larger forgivenesswithout the word. He felt the sorrow of it all, as he told Nataly; atthe same time bidding her smell 'the marvellous oxygen of the park. ' Hedeclared it to be quite equal to Lakelands. 

She slightly pressed his arm for answer. Perhaps she did not feel sodeeply? She was free of the horrid associations with the scent ofMarechale. At any rate, she had comported herself admirably!

Victor fancied he must have shuddered when he passed by Jarniman at thedoor, who was almost now seeing his mistress's ghost--would have theprivilege to-morrow. He called a cab and drove to Mrs. John Cormyn's, at Nataly's request, for Nesta and mademoiselle: enjoying the Londonizedodour of the cab. Nataly did not respond to his warm and continuedeulogies of Mrs. Burman; she rather disappointed him. He talked of thegold and white furniture, he just alluded to the Cupid: reserving hismental comment, that the time-piece was all astray, the Cupid regular onthe swing:--strange, touching, terrible, if really the silly gilt figuresymbolized! . . . And we are a silly figure to be sitting in a cabimagining such things!--When Nesta and mademoiselle were opposite, he hadthe pleasure to see Nataly take Nesta's hand and hold it until theyreached home. Those two talking together in the brief words of theirdeep feeling, had tones that were singularly alike: the mezzo-sopranofilial to the divine maternal contralto. Those two dear ones mounted toNataly's room. 

The two dear ones showed themselves heart in heart together once more;each looked the happier for it. Dartrey was among their dinner-guests, and Nataly took him to her little blue-room before she went to bed. Hedid not speak of their conversation to Victor, but counselled him to keepher from excitement. 'My dear fellow, if you had seen her with Mrs. Burman!' Victor said, and loudly praised her coolness. She was neverbelow a situation, he affirmed. 

He followed his own counsel to humour his Nataly. She began panting at aword about Mr. Barmby's ready services. When, however, she related thestate of affairs between Dartrey and Nesta, by the avowal of each of themto her, he said, embracing her: 'Your wisdom shall guide us, my love, 'and almost extinguished a vexation by concealing it. 

She sighed: 'If one could think, that a girl with Nesta's revolutionaryideas of the duties of women, and their powers, would be safe--or at allrightly guided by a man who is both one of the noblest and the wildest inthe ideas he entertains!'

Victor sighed too. He saw the earldom, which was to dazzle the gossips, crack on the sky in a futile rocket-bouquet. 

She was distressed; she moaned: 'My girl! my girl: I should wish toleave her with one who is more fixed--the old-fashioned husband. Newideas must come in politics, but in Society!--and for women! And theyoung having heads, are the most endangered. Nesta vows her life to it!Dartrey supports her!'

'See Colney, ' said Victor. 'Odd, Colney does you good; some queer way hehas. Though you don't care for his RIVAL TONGUES, --and the last numberwas funny, with Semhians on the Pacific, impressively addressing afarewell to his cricket-bat, before he whirls it away to Neptune--and theblue hand of his nation's protecting God observed to seize it!--Deadfailure with the public, of course! However, he seems to seem wise withyou. The poor old fellow gets his trouncing from the critics monthly. See Colney to-morrow, my love. Now go to sleep. We have got over theworst. I speak at my Meeting to-morrow and am a champagne-bottle ofnotes and points for them. '

His lost Idea drew close to him in sleep: or he thought so, when awakingto the conception of a people solidified, rich and poor, by the commonpride of simple manhood. But it was not coloured, not a luminous globe:and the people were in drab, not a shining army on the march to meet theFuture. It looked like a paragraph in a newspaper, upon which a LeadingArticle sits, dutifully arousing the fat worm of sarcastic humour underthe ribs of cradled citizens, with an exposure of its excellent folly. He would not have it laughed at; still he could not admit it as more thana skirt of the robe of his Idea. For let none think him a mere Citymerchant, millionnaire, boon-fellow, or music-loving man of the world. He had ideas to shoot across future Ages;--provide against the shrinkageof our Coal-beds; against, and for, if you like, the thickening, jumbling, threatening excess of population in these Islands, in Europe, America, all over our habitable sphere. Now that Mrs. Burman, on her wayto bliss, was no longer the dungeon-cell for the man he would showhimself to be, this name for successes, corporate nucleus of theenjoyments, this Victor Montgomery Radnor, intended impressing himselfupon the world as a factory of ideas. Colney's insolent charge, thatthe English have no imagination--a doomed race, if it be true!--would beconfuted. For our English require but the lighted leadership to comeinto cohesion, and step ranked, and chant harmoniously the song of theirbenevolent aim. And that astral head giving, as a commencement, exampleof the right use of riches, the nation is one, part of the riddle of thefuture solved. 

Surely he had here the Idea? He had it so warmly, that his bath-waterheated. Only the vision was wanted. 

On London Bridge he had seen it--a great thing done to the flash ofbrilliant results. That was after a fall. 

There had been a fall also of the scheme of Lakelands. 

Come to us with no superstitious whispers of indications andsignifications in the fall!--But there had certainly been a moral fall, fully to the level of the physical, in the maintaining of that scheme ofLakelands, now ruined by his incomprehensible Nesta--who had saved himfrom falling further. His bath-water chilled. He jumped out and rubbedfuriously with his towels and flesh-brushes, chasing the Idea for simplewarmth, to have Something inside him, to feel just that sustainment; withthe cry: But no one can say I do not love my Nataly! And he tested it toprove it by his readiness to die for her: which is heroically easier thanthe devotedly living, and has a weight of evidence in our internal Courtsfor surpassing the latter tedious performance. 

His Nesta had knocked Lakelands to pieces. Except for the making ofmoney, the whole year of an erected Lakelands, notwithstandinguninterrupted successes, was a blank. Or rather we have to wish it werea blank. The scheme departs: payment for the enlisted servants of it isin prospect. A black agent, not willingly enlisted, yet pointing toproofs of service, refuses payment in ordinary coin; and we tell him weowe him nothing, that he is not a man of the world, has no understandingof Nature: and still the fellow thumps and alarums at a midnight door weare astonished to find we have in our daylight house. How is it? Wouldother men be so sensitive to him? Victor was appeased by the assuranceof his possession of an exceptionally scrupulous conscience; and hesettled the debate by thinking: 'After all, for a man like me, battlingincessantly, a kind of Vesuvius, I must have--can't be starved, must befed--though, pah! But I'm not to be questioned like other men. --But howabout an aristocracy of the contempt of distinctions?--But there is noescaping distinctions! my aristocracy despises indulgence. --Andindulges?--Say, an exceptional nature! Supposing a certain beloved womanto pronounce on the case?--She cannot: no woman can be a just judge ofit. '---He cried: My love of her is testified by my having Barmby handy toright her to-day, tomorrow, the very instant the clock strikes the hourof my release!

Mention of the clock swung that silly gilt figure. Victor entered intoit, condemned to swing, and be a thrall. His intensity of sensationlaunched him on an eternity of the swinging in ridiculous nakedness tothe measure of time gone crazy. He had to correct a reproof of Mrs. Burman, as the cause of the nonsense. He ran down to breakfast, hopeinghe might hear of that clock stopped, and that sickening motion with it. 

Another letter from the Sanfredini in Milan, warmly inviting to her villaover Como, acted on him at breakfast like the waving of a banner. 'Wego, ' Victor said to Nataly, and flattered-up a smile about her lips--toomuch a resurrection smile. There was talk of the Meeting at the theatre:Simeon Fenellan had spoken there in the cause of the deceased Member, wasknown, and was likely to have a good reception. Fun and enthusiasm mightbe expected. 

'And my darling will hear her husband speak to-night, ' he whispered as hewas departing; and did a mischief, he had to fear, for a shadowy knotcrossed Nataly's forehead, she seemed paler. He sent back Nesta andmademoiselle, in consequence, at the end of the Green Park. 

Their dinner-hour was early; Simeon Fenellan, Colney Durance, and Mr. Peridon--pleasing to Nataly for his faithful siege of the Frenchfortress--were the only guests. When they rose, Nataly drew Victoraside. He came dismayed to Nesta. She ran to her mother. 'Not hearpapa speak? Oh, mother, mother! Then I stay with her. But can't shecome? He is going to unfold ideas to us. There!'

'My naughty girl is not to poke her fun at orators, ' Nataly said. 'No, dearest; it would agitate me to go. I'm better here. I shall be atpeace when the night is over. '

'But you will be all alone here, dear mother. '

Nataly's eyes wandered to fall on Colney. He proposed to give her hiscompany. She declined it. Nesta ventured another entreaty, either thatshe might be allowed to stay or have her mother with her at the Meeting. 

'My love, ' Nataly said, 'the thought of the Meeting--' She clasped at herbreast; and she murmured: 'I shall be comforted by your being with him. There is no danger there. But I shall be happy, I shall be at peace whenthis night is over. '

Colney persuaded her to have him for companion. Mr. Peridon, who was tohave driven with Nesta and mademoiselle, won admiration by proposing tostay for an hour and play some of Mrs. Radnor's favourite pieces. Nestaand Victor overbore Nataly's objections to the lover's generosity. SoMr. Peridon was left. Nesta came hurrying back from the step of thecarriage to kiss her mother again, saying: 'Just one last kiss, my own!And she's not to look troubled. I shall remember everything to tell myown mother. It will soon be over. '

Her mother nodded; but the embrace was passionate. 

Nesta called her father into the passage, bidding him prohibit anydelivery to her mother of news at the door. 'She is easily startled nowby trifles--you have noticed?'

Victor summoned his recollections and assured her he had noticed, as hebelieved he had 'The dear heart of her is fretting for the night to beover! And think! seven days, and she is in Lakelands. A fortnight, andwe have our first Concert. Durandarte! Oh, the dear heart 'll be atpeace when I tell her of a triumphant Meeting. Not a doubt of that, eventhough Colney turns the shadow of his back on us. '

'One critic the less for you!' said Nesta. Skepsey was to meet hercarriage at the theatre. 

Ten minutes later, Victor and Simeon Fenellan were proceeding thitherwardon foot. 

'I have my speech, ' said Victor. 'You prepare the way for me, followingour influential friend Dubbleson; Colewort winds up; any one else theyshout for. We shall have a great evening. I suspect I shall findThemison or Jarniman when I get home. You don't believe in intimations?I've had crapy processions all day before my eyes. No wonder, afteryesterday!'

'Dubbleson mustn't drawl it out too long, ' said Fenellan. 

'We 'll drop a hint. Where's Dartrey?'

'He'll come. He's in one of his black moods: not temper. He's got anotion he killed his wife by dragging her to Africa with him. She wasnot only ready to go, she was glad to go. She had a bit of the heroinein her and a certainty of tripping to the deuce if she was left toherself. '

'Tell Nataly that, ' said Victor. 'And tell her about Dartrey. Harp onit. Once she was all for him and our girl. But it's a woman--though thedearest! I defy any one to hit on the cause of their changes. We mustmake the best of things, if we're for swimming. The task for me to-nightwill be, to keep from rolling out all I've got in my head. And I'm notrevolutionary, I'm for stability. Only I do see, that the firm stepping-place asks for a long stride to be taken. One can't get the English totake a stride--unless it's for a foot behind them: bother old Colney!Too timid, or too scrupulous, down we go into the mire. There!--But Iwant to say it! I want to save the existing order. I want, Christianity, instead of the Mammonism we 're threatened with. Great fortunes now are becoming the giants of old to stalk the land: ormediaeval Barons. Dispersion of wealth, is the secret. Nataly's of thatmind with me. A decent poverty! She's rather wearying, wants a change. I've a steam-yacht in my eye, for next month on the Mediterranean. Allour set. She likes quiet. I believe in my political recipe for it. '

He thumped on a method he had for preserving aristocracy--truearistocracy, amid a positively democratic flood of riches. 

'It appears to me, you're on the road of Priscilla Graves and Pempton, 'observed Simeon. 'Strike off Priscilla's viands and friend Pempton'scouple of glasses, and there's your aristocracy established; but withrather a dispersed recognition of itself. '

'Upon my word, you talk like old Colney, except for a twang of your own, 'said Victor. 'Colney sours at every fresh number of that Serial. Thelast, with Delphica detecting the plot of Falarique, is really not sobad. The four disguised members of the Comedie Francaise on board thevessel from San Francisco, to declaim and prove the superior merits ofthe Gallic tongue, jumped me to bravo the cleverness. And Bobinikineturning to the complexion of the remainder of cupboard dumplingsdiscovered in an emigrant's house-to-let! And Semhians--I forget whatand Mytharete's forefinger over the bridge of his nose, like a pensivevulture on the skull of a desert camel! But, I complain, there's nothingto make the English love the author; and it's wasted, he's basted, andthe book 'll have no sale. I hate satire. '

'Rough soap for a thin skin, Victor. Does it hurt our people much?'

'Not a bit; doesn't touch them. But I want my friends to succeed!'

Their coming upon Westminster Bridge changed the theme. Victor wishedthe Houses of Parliament to catch the beams of sunset. He deferred tothe suggestion, that the Hospital's doing so seemed appropriate. 

'I'm always pleased to find a decent reason for what is, ' he said. Thenhe queried: 'But what is, if we look at it, and while we look, Simeon?She may be going--or she's gone already, poor woman! I shall have thatscene of yesterday everlastingly before my eyes, like a drop-curtain. Only, you know, Simeon, they don't feel the end, as we in health imagine. Colney would say, we have the spasms and they the peace. I 've a mind tosend up to Regent's Park with inquiries. It would look respectful. Godforgive me!--the poor woman perverts me at every turn. Though I willsay, a certain horror of death I had--she whisked me out of it yesterday. I don't feel it any longer. What are you jerking at?'

'Only to remark, that if the thing's done for us, we haven't it so muchon our sensations. '

'More, if we're sympathetic. But that compels us to be philosophic--orwho could live! Poor woman!'

'Waft her gently, Victor!'

'Tush! Now for the South side of the Bridges; and I tell you, Simeon, what I can't mention to-night: I mean to enliven these poor dear peopleon their forsaken South of the City. I 've my scheme. Elected or not, I shall hardly be accused of bribery when I put down my firstinstalment. '

Fenellan went to work with that remark in his brain for the speech he wasto deliver. He could not but reflect on the genial man's willingness andcapacity to do deeds of benevolence, constantly thwarted by the positioninto which he had plunged himself. 

They were received at the verge of the crowd outside the theatre-doors bySkepsey, who wriggled, tore and clove a way for them, where all wereobedient, but the numbers lumped and clogged. When finally they reachedthe stage, they spied at Nesta's box, during the thunder of the rounds ofapplause, after shaking hands with Mr. Dubbleson, Sir Abraham Quatley, Dudley Sowerby, and others; and with Beaves Urmsing--a politician 'neverof the opposite party to a deuce of a funny fellow!--go anywhere to hearhhm, ' he vowed. 

'Miss Radnor and Mademoiselle de Seilles arrived quite safely, ' saidDudley, feasting on the box which contained them and no Dartrey Fenellanin it. 

Nesta was wondering at Dartrey's absence. Not before Mr. Dubbleson, thechairman, the 'gentleman of local influence, ' had animated the drowsedwits and respiratory organs of a packed audience by yielding place toSimeon, did Dartrey appear. Simeon's name was shouted, in proof of thehappy explosion of his first anecdote, as Dartrey took seat behind Nesta. 'Half an hour with the dear mother, ' he said. 

Nesta's eyes thanked him. She pressed the hand of a demure young womansitting close behind. Louise de Seilles. 'You know Matilda Pridden. '

Dartrey held his hand out. 'Has she forgiven me?'

Matilda bowed gravely, enfolding her affirmative in an outline of the noneed for it, with perfect good breeding. Dartrey was moved to thinkSkepsey's choice of a woman to worship did him honour. He glanced atLouise. Her manner toward Matilda Pridden showed her sisterly withNesta. He said: 'I left Mr. Peridon playing. --A little anxiety to hearthat the great speech of the evening is done; it's nothing else. I'llrun to her as soon as it's over. '

'Oh, good of you! And kind of Mr. Peridon!' She turned to Louise, whosmiled at the simple art of the exclamation, assenting. 

Victor below, on the stage platform, indicated the waving of a handto them, and his delight at Simeon's ringing points: which were, toDartrey's mind, vacuously clever and crafty. Dartrey despised effectsof oratory, save when soldiers had to be hurled on a mark--or citizensnerved to stand for their country. 

Nesta dived into her father's brilliancy of appreciation, a trifle painedby Dartrey's aristocratic air when he surveyed the herd of heads agapeand another cheer rang round. He smiled with her, to be with her, at ahit here and there; he would not pretend an approval of this manner ofwinning electors to consider the country's interests and their own. Onefellow in the crowded pit, affecting a familiarity with Simeon, thatpermitted the taking of liberties with the orator's Christian name, mildly amused him. He had no objection to hear 'Simmy' shouted, asLouise de Seilles observed. She was of his mind, in regard to the roughmachinery of Freedom. 

Skepsey entered the box. 

'We shall soon be serious, Miss Nesta, ' he said, after a look at MatildaPridden. 

There was a prolonged roaring--on the cheerful side. 

'And another word about security that your candidate will keep hispromises, ' continued Simeon: 'You have his word, my friends!' And hetold the story of the old Governor of Goa, who wanted money and summonedthe usurers, and they wanted security; whereupon he laid his Hidalgo handon a cataract of Kronos-beard across his breast, and pulled forth threewhite hairs, and presented them: 'And as honourably to the usurious Jewsas to the noble gentleman himself, that security was accepted!'

Emerging from hearty clamours, the illustrative orator fell upon thequestion of political specifics:--Mr. Victor Radnor trusted to Englishgood sense too profoundly to be offering them positive cures, as theywould hear the enemy say he did. Yet a bit of a cure may be offered, if we 're not for pushing it too far, in pursuit of the science ofspecifics, in the style of the foreign physician, probably Spanish, who had no practice, and wished for leisure to let him prosecute hisanatomical and other investigations to discover his grand medicalnostrum. So to get him fees meanwhile he advertised a cure fordyspepsia--the resource of starving doctors. And sure enough his patientcame, showing the grand fat fellow we may be when we carry more of thedeciduously mortal than of the scraggy vital upon our persons. Any oneat a glance would have prescribed water-cresses to him: water-cressesexclusively to eat for a fortnight. And that the good physician did. Away went his patient, returning at the end of the fortnight, lean, andwith the appetite of a Toledo blade for succulent slices. He vowed hewas the man. Our estimable doctor eyed him, tapped at him, pinched histender parts; and making him swear he was really the man, and had eatennothing whatever but unadulterated water-cresses in the interval, seizedon him in an ecstasy by the collar of his coat, pushed him into thesurgery, knocked him over, killed him, cut him up, and enjoyed thefelicity of exposing to view the very healthiest patient ever seen underdissecting hand, by favour of the fortunate discovery of the specific forhim. All to further science!--to which, in spite of the petitions of allthe scientific bodies of the civilized world, he fell a martyr on thescaffold, poor gentleman! But we know politics to be no such empiricalscience. 

Simeon ingeniously interwove his analogy. He brought it home to BeavesUrmsing, whose laugh drove any tone of apology out of it. Yet the oratorwas asked: 'Do you take politics for a joke, Simmy?'

He countered his questioner: 'Just to liberate you from your moribundstate, my friend. ' And he told the story of the wrecked sailor, foundlying on the sands, flung up from the foundered ship of a Salvationcaptain, and how, that nothing could waken him, and there he lay fit forinterment; until presently a something of a voice grew down into hisears; and it was his old chum Polly, whom he had tied to a board to giveher a last chance in the surges; and Polly shaking the wet from herfeathers, and shouting: 'Polly tho dram dry!'--which struck on the nob ofJack's memory, to revive all the liquorly tricks of the cabin underSalvationism, and he began heaving, and at last he shook in a lazy way, and then from sputter to sputter got his laugh loose; and he sat up, andcried; 'That did it! Now to business!' for he was hungry. 'And when Icatch the ring of this world's laugh from you, my friend . . . !'Simeon's application of the story was drowned. 

After the outburst, they heard his friend again interruptingly: 'You keepthat tongue of yours from wagging, as it did when you got round the oldwidow woman for her money, Simmy !'

Victor leaned forward. Simeon towered. He bellowed

'And you keep that tongue of yours from committing incest on a lie!'

It was like a lightning-flash in the theatre. The man went under. Simeon flowed. Conscience reproached him with the little he had done forVictor, and he had now his congenial opportunity. 

Up in the box, the powers of the orator were not so cordially esteemed. To Matilda Pridden, his tales were barely decently the flesh and thedevil smothering a holy occasion to penetrate and exhort. Dartrey satrigid, as with the checked impatience for a leap. Nesta looked at Louisewhen some one was perceived on the stage bending to her father: It wasMr. Peridon; he never once raised his face. Apparently he was notintelligible or audible but the next moment Victor sprang erect. Dartreyquitted the box. Nesta beheld her father uttering hurried words to rightand left. He passed from sight, Mr. Peridon with him; and Dartrey didnot return. 

Nesta felt her father's absence as light gone: his eyes rayed light. Besides she had the anticipation of a speech from him, that would winMatilda Pridden. She fancied Simeon Fenellan to be rather under thespell of the hilarity he roused. A gentleman behind him spoke in hisear; and Simeon, instead of ceasing, resumed his flow. Matilda Pridden'sgaze on him and the people was painful to behold: Nesta saw her mind. She set herself to study a popular assembly. It could be serious to thecall of better leadership, she believed. Her father had been telling herof late of a faith he had in the English, that they (or so herintelligence translated his remarks) had power to rise to spiritualascendancy, and be once more the Islanders heading the world of a newepoch abjuring materialism--some such idea; very quickening to her, as itwould be to this earnest young woman worshipped by Skepsey. Her father'sabsence and the continued shouts of laughter, the insatiable thirst forfun, darkened her in her desire to have the soul of the good workingsister refreshed. They had talked together; not much: enough for each tosee at either's breast the wells from the founts of life. 

The box-door opened, Dartrey came in. He took her hand. She stood-up tohis look. He said to Matilda Pridden: 'Come with us; she will need you. '

'Speak it, ' said Nesta. 

He said to the other: 'She has courage. '

'I could trust to her, ' Matilda Pridden replied. 

Nesta read his eyes. 'Mother?'

His answer was in the pressure. 

'Ill?'

'No longer. '

'Oh! Dartrey. ' Matilda Pridden caught her fast. 

'I can walk, dear, ' Nesta said. 

Dartrey mentioned her father. 

She understood: 'I am thinking of him. '

The words of her mother: 'At peace when the night is over, ' rang. Alongthe gassy passages of the back of tie theatre, the sound coming from anapplausive audience was as much a thunder as rage would have been. Itwas as void of human meaning as a sea. 

CHAPTER XLII

THE LAST

In the still dark hour of that April morning, the Rev. Septimus Barmbywas roused by Mr. Peridon, with a scribbled message from Victor, which hedeciphered by candlelight held close to the sheet of paper, between shortinquiries and communications, losing more and more the sense of it as hisintelligence became aware of what dread blow had befallen the strickenman. He was bidden come to fulfil his promise instantly. He rememberedthe bearing of the promise. Mr. Peridon's hurried explanatory narrativemade the request terrific, out of tragically lamentable. A semblance ofobedience had to be put on, and the act of dressing aided it. Mr. Barmbyprayed at heart for guidance further. 

The two gentlemen drove Westward, speaking little; they had the dry sobin the throat. 

'Miss Radnor?' Mr. Barmby asked. 

'She is shattered; she holds up; she would not break down. '

'I can conceive her to possess high courage. '

'She has her friend Mademoiselle de Seilles. '

Mr. Barmby remained humbly silent. Affectionate deep regrets moved himto say: 'A loss irreparable. We have but one voice of sorrow. And howsudden! The dear lady had no suffering, I trust. '

'She fell into the arms of Mr. Durance. She died in his arms. She wasunconscious, he says. I left her straining for breath. She said"Victor"; she tried to smile:--I understood I was not to alarm him. '

'And he too late!'

'He was too late, by some minutes. '

'At least I may comfort. Miss Radnor must be a blessing to him. '

'They cannot meet. Her presence excites him. '

That radiant home of all hospitality seemed opening on from darkerchambers to the deadly dark. The immorality in the moral situation couldnot be forgotten by one who was professionally a moralist. But anincorruptible beauty in the woman's character claimed to plead for hermemory. Even the rigorous in defence of righteous laws are softened by asinner's death to hear excuses, and may own a relationship, haplyperceive the faint nimbus of the saint. Death among us proves us to bestill not so far from the Nature saying at every avenue to the mind:'Earth makes all sweet. '

Mr. Durance had prophesied a wailful end ever to the carol of Optimists!Yet it is not the black view which is the right view. There is onebetween: the path adopted by Septimus Barmby:--if he could but induce hisbrethren to enter on it! The dreadful teaching of circumstances mighthelp to the persuading of a fair young woman, under his direction . . . Having her hand disengaged. Mr. Barmby started himself in the dream ofhis uninterred passion for the maiden: he chased it, seized it, hurled ithence, as a present sacrilege:--constantly, and at the pitch of ourhighest devotion to serve, are we assailed by the tempter! Is it, thatthe love of woman is our weakness? For if so, then would a celibateclergy have grant of immunity. But, alas, it is not so with them! Wehave to deplore the hearing of reports too credible. Again we are pushedto contemplate woman as the mysterious obstruction to the perfect purityof soul. Nor is there a refuge in asceticism. No more devilishnourisher of pride do we find than in pain voluntarily embraced. Andstrangely, at the time when our hearts are pledged to thoughts uponothers, they are led by woman to glance revolving upon ourself, our vileself! Mr. Barmby clutched it by the neck. 

Light now, as of a strong memory of day along the street, assisted him toforget himself at the sight of the inanimate houses of this London, allrevealed in a quietness not less immobile than tombstones of an unendingcemetery, with its last ghost laid. Did men but know it!--The habitualnecessity to amass matter for the weekly sermon, set him noting hismeditative exclamations, the noble army of platitudes under haloes, ofgood use to men: justifiably turned over in his mind for their good. Hehad to think, that this act of the justifying of the act reproached himwith a lack of due emotion, in sympathy with agonized friends truly dear. Drawing near the hospitable house, his official and a cordial emotionunited, as we see sorrowful crape-wreathed countenances. His heartstruck heavily when the house was visible. 

Could it be the very house? The look of it belied the tale inside. Butthat threw a ghostliness on the look. 

Some one was pacing up and down. They greeted Dudley Sowerby. Hisability to speak was tasked. They gathered, that mademoiselle and 'aMiss Pridden' were sitting with Nesta, and that their services in acrisis had been precious. At such times, one of them reflected, womanhas indeed her place: when life's battle waxes red. Her soul must becapable of mounting to the level of the man's, then? It is a lesson!

Dudley said he was waiting for Dr. Themison to come forth. He could nottear himself from sight of the house. 

The door opened to Dr. Themison departing, Colney Durance and SimeonFenellan bare-headed. Colney showed a face with stains of the lashing oftears. 

Dr. Themison gave his final counsels. 'Her father must not see her. Forhim, it may have to be a specialist. We will hope the best. Mr. DartreyFenellan stays beside him:--good. As to the ceremony he calls for, aform of it might soothe:--any soothing possible! No music. I willreturn in a few hours. '

He went on foot. 

Mr. Barmby begged advice from Colney and Simeon concerning the message hehad received--the ceremony requiring his official presidency. Neither ofthem replied. They breathed the morning air, they gave out long-drawnsighs of relief, looking on the trees of the park. 

A man came along the pavement, working slow legs hurriedly. Simeon randown to him. 

'Humour, as much as you can, ' Colney said to Mr. Barmby. 'Let himimagine. '

'Miss Radnor?'

'Not to speak of her. '

'The daughter he so loves?'

Mr. Barmby's tender inquisitiveness was unanswered. Were they inducinghim to mollify a madman? But was it possible to associate the idea ofmadness with Mr. Radnor?

Simeon ran back. 'Jarniman, ' he remarked. 'It's over!'

'Now!' Colney's shoulders expressed the comment. 'Well, now, Mr. Barmby, you can do the part desired. Come in. It's morning!' He stared at thesky. 

All except Dudley passed in. 

Mr. Barmby wanted more advice, his dilemma being acute. It wasmoderated, though not more than moderated, when he was informed of thedeath of Mrs. Burman Radnor; an event that occurred, according toJarniman's report, forty-five minutes after Skepsey had a second timecalled for information of it at the house in Regent's Park--five hoursand a half, as Colney made his calculation, after the death of Nataly. He was urged by some spur of senseless irony to verify the calculationand correct it in the minutes. 

Dudley crossed the road. No sign of the awful interior was on any of thewindows of the house either to deepen awe or relieve. They were blank aseyeballs of the mindless. He shivered. Death is our common cloak; butCalamity individualizes, to set the unwounded speculating whether indeeda stricken man, who has become the cause of woeful trouble, may not bepointing a moral. Pacing on the Park side of the house, he saw Skepseydrive up and leap out with a gentleman, Mr. Radnor's lawyer. Could itbe, that there was no Will written? Could a Will be executed now? Themoral was more forcibly suggested. Dudley beheld this Mr. Victor Radnorsuccessful up all the main steps, persuasive, popular, brightest of theelect of Fortune, felled to the ground within an hour, he and all hishouse! And if at once to pass beneath the ground, the blow would haveseemed merciful for him. Or if, instead of chattering a mixture of therational and the monstrous, he had been heard to rave like the utterlydistraught. Recollection of some of the things he shouted, was ananguish: A notion came into the poor man, that he was the dead one of thetwo, and he cried out: 'Cremation? No, Colney's right, it robs us of ourlast laugh. I lie as I fall. ' He 'had a confession for his Nataly, forher only, for no one else. ' He had 'an Idea. ' His begging of Dudley tolisten without any punctilio (putting a vulgar oath before it), was thesole piece of unreasonableness in the explanation of the idea: and thatwas not much wilder than the stuff Dudley had read from reports ofRadical speeches. He told Dudley he thought him too young to be 'bestman to a widower about to be married, ' and that Barmby was 'coming allhaste to do the business, because of no time to spare. '

Dudley knew but the half, and he did not envy Dartrey Fenellan his taskof watching over the wreck of a splendid intelligence, humouring andrestraining. According to the rumours, Mr. Radnor had not shown thesymptoms before the appearance of his daughter. For awhile he hung, andthen fell, like an icicle. Nesta came with a cry for her father. Herose: Dartrey was by. Hugged fast in iron muscles, the unhappy creatureraved of his being a caged lion. These things Dudley had heard in thehouse. 

There are scenes of life proper to the grave-cloth. 

Nataly's dead body was her advocate with her family, with friends, withthe world. Victor had more need of a covering shroud to keep calamityrespected. Earth makes all sweet: and we, when the privilege is grantedus, do well to treat the terribly stricken as if they had entered to thebosom of earth. 

That night's infinite sadness was concentrated upon Nesta. She had needof her strength of mind and body. 

The night went past as a year. The year followed it as a refreshingnight. Slowly lifting her from our abysses, it was a good angel to thegirl. Permission could not be given for her to see her father. She hada home in the modest home of Louise de Seilles on the borders ofDauphins; and with French hearts at their best in winningness around her, she learned again, as an art, the natural act of breathing calmly; shehad by degrees a longing for the snow-heights. When her imaginationcould perch on them with love and pride, she began to recover the throbfor a part in human action. It set her nature flowing to the mate shehad chosen, who was her counsellor, her supporter, and her sword. Shehad awakened to new life, not to sink back upon a breast of love, thoughthoughts of the lover were as blows upon strung musical chords of herbosom. Her union with Dartrey was for the having an ally and the beingan ally, in resolute vision of strife ahead, through the veiled dreamsthat bear the blush. This was behind a maidenly demureness. Are notyoung women hypocrites? Who shall fathom their guile! A girl with apretty smile, a gentle manner, a liking for wild flowers up on the rocks;and graceful with resemblances to the swelling proportions of garden-fruits approved in young women by the connoisseur eye of man; distinctlydesigned to embrace the state of marriage, that she might (a girl ofsingularly lucid and receptive eyes) the better give battle to mentouching matters which they howl at an eccentric matron for naming. So it was. And the yielding of her hand to Dartrey, would have appearedat that period of her revival, as among the baser compliances of thefleshly, if she had not seen in him, whom she owned for leader, herfellow soldier, warrior friend, hero, of her own heart's mould, but agreater. 

She was on Como, at the villa of the Signora Giulia Sanfredini, whenDudley's letter reached her, with the supplicating offer of the share ofhis earldom. An English home meanwhile was proposed to her at the houseof his mother the Countess. He knew that he did not write to a brilliantheiress. The generosity she had always felt that he possessed, he thusproved in figures. They are convincing and not melting. But she wasmoved to tears by his goodness in visiting her father, as well as by thehopeful news he sent. He wrote delicately, withholding the title of herfather's place of abode. There were expectations of her father's perfectrecovery; the signs were auspicious; he appeared to be restored to the'likeness to himself' in the instances Dudley furnished:--his appointmentwith him for the flute-duet next day; and particularly his enthusiasticsatisfaction with the largeness and easy excellent service of theresidence 'in which he so happily found himself established. ' He held itto be, 'on the whole, superior to Lakelands. ' The smile and the tearrolled together in Nesta reading these words. And her father spokerepeatedly of longing to embrace his Fredi, of the joy her last letterhad given him, of his intention to send an immediate answer: and heshowed Dudley a pile of manuscript ready for the post. He talked ofpublic affairs, was humorous over any extravagance or eccentricity in theviews he took; notably when he alluded to his envy of little Skepsey. Hesaid he really did envy; and his daughter believed it and saw fairprospects in it. 

Her grateful reply to the young earl conveyed all that was perforceungentle, in the signature of the name of Nesta Victoria Fenellan:--a name he was to hear cited among the cushioned conservatives, and pleadfor as he best could under a pressure of disapprobation, and compelledesteem, and regrets. 

The day following the report of her father's wish to see her, she and herhusband started for England. On that day, Victor breathed his last. Dudley had seen the not hopeful but an ominous illumination of thestricken man; for whom came the peace his Nataly had in earth. Often didNesta conjure up to vision the palpitating form of the beloved motherwith her hand at her mortal wound in secret through long years of thewearing of the mask to keep her mate inspirited. Her gathered knowledgeof things and her ruthless penetrativeness made it sometimes hard for herto be tolerant of a world, whose tolerance of the infinitely evil stampedblotches on its face and shrieked in stains across the skin beneath itsgallant garb. That was only when she thought of it as the worldcondemning her mother. She had a husband able and ready, in return forcorrections of his demon temper, to trim an ardent young woman'sfanatical overflow of the sisterly sentiments; scholarly friends, too, for such restrainings from excess as the mind obtains in a lamp ofHistory exhibiting man's original sprouts to growth and fitfulcontinuation of them. Her first experience of the grief that is inpleasure, for those who have passed a season, was when the old Concert-set assembled round her. When she heard from the mouth of a livingwoman, that she had saved her from going under the world's waggon-wheels, and taught her to know what is actually meant by the good living of ashapely life, Nesta had the taste of a harvest happiness richer than herrecollection of the bride's, though never was bride in fuller flower toher lord than she who brought the dower of an equal valiancy to DartreyFenellan. You are aware of the reasons, the many, why a courageous youngwoman requires of high heaven, far more than the commendably timid, adoughty husband. She had him; otherwise would that puzzled old world, which beheld her step out of the ranks to challenge it, and could notblast her personal reputation, have commissioned a paw to maul hercharacter, perhaps instructing the gossips to murmur of her parentage. Nesta Victoria Fenellan had the husband who would have the worldrespectful to any brave woman. This one was his wife. 

Daniel Skepsey rejoices in service to his new master, owing to thescientific opinion he can at any moment of the day apply for, as to themilitary defences of the country; instead of our attempting to arrest theenemy by vociferations of persistent prayer:--the sole point ofdifference between him and his Matilda; and it might have been fatal butthat Nesta's intervention was persuasive. The two members of the Armyfirst in the field to enrol and give rank according to the merits ofeither, to both sexes, were made one. Colney Durance (practicallycynical when not fancifully, men said) stood by Skepsey at the altar. His published exercises in Satire produce a flush of the article in theReviews of his books. Meat and wine in turn fence the Hymen beckoningPriscilla and Mr. Pempton. The forms of Religion more than the Channel'sdivision of races keep Louise de Seilles and Mr. Peridon asunder: and inthe uniting of them Colney is interested, because it would have sopleased the woman of the loyal heart no longer beating. He let Victor'send be his expiation and did not phrase blame of him. He considered theshallowness of the abstract Optimist exposed enough in Victor's history. He was reconciled to it when, looking on their child, he discerned, thatfor a cancelling of the errors chargeable to them, the father and motherhad kept faith with Nature. 

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

An incomprehensible world indeed at the bottom and at the topArrest the enemy by vociferations of persistent prayerCountry prizing ornaments higher than qualitiesDeath is our common cloak; but Calamity individualizesHow little we mean to do harm when we do an injuryNation's half made-up of the idle and the servants of the idleNo companionship save with the wound they nurseNot always the right thing to do the right thingThe night went past as a yearUniversal censor's angry spite

[The End]

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