After I married I came to understand that the world we are in is a world to fight in, or under we go. But I pity the young who have to cast themselves off and take up arms. Young women above all."
Why had she no pity for Aminta? Weyburn asked it of his feelings, and he had the customary insurgent reply from them.
"You haven"t seen Steignton yet," she continued. "No place on earth is equal to Steignton for me. It "s got the charm. Here at Olmer I"m a mother and a grandmother--the "devil of an old-woman" my neighbours take me to be. She hasn"t been to Steignton, either. No, and won"t go there, though she"s working her way round, she supposes. He"ll do everything for his "Aminta," but he won"t take her to Steignton. I"m told now she"s won Lady de Culme. That Mrs. Lawrence Finchley has dropped the curtsey to her great-aunt and sworn to be a good girl, for a change, if Lady de Culme will do the chaperon, and force Lord Ormont"s hand. My brother shrugs. There"ll be a nice explosion one day soon. Presented? The Court won"t have her. That I know for positive. If she"s pushed forward, she "ll be bitterly snubbed. It "s on the heads of those women--silly women!
I can"t see the game Mrs. Lawrence Finchley"s playing. She"d play for fun. If they"d come to me, I "d tell them I "ve proof she "s not the Countess of Ormont: positive proof. You look? I have it. I hold something; and not before,--(he may take his Aminta to Steignton, he may let her be presented, she may wear his name publicly, I say he"s laughing at them, snapping his fingers at them louder and louder the more they seem to be pushing him into a corner, until--I know my brother Rowsley!--and, poor dear fellow! a man like that, the best cavalry general England ever had:--they"ll remember it when there comes a cry for a general from India: that"s the way with the English; only their necessities teach them to be just!)--he to be reduced to be out-manoeuvring a swarm of women,--I tell them, not before my brother Rowsley comes to me for what he handed to my care and I keep safe for him, will I believe he has made or means to make his Aminta Countess of Ormont."
They were at the steps of the house. Turning to Weyburn there, the inexhaustible Lady Charlotte remarked that their conversation had given her pleasure. Leo was hanging on to one of his hands the next minute. A small girl took the other. Philippa and Beatrice were banished damsels.
Lady Charlotte"s breath had withered the aspect of Aminta"s fortunes.
Weyburn could forgive her, for he was beginning to understand her.
He could not pardon "her brother Rowsley," who loomed in his mind incomprehensible, and therefore black. Once he had thought the great General a great man. He now regarded him as a mere soldier, a soured veteran; socially as a masker and a trifler, virtually a callous angler playing his cleverly-hooked fish for pastime.
What could be the meaning of Lady Charlotte"s "that, man Morsfield, who boasts of your Lady Ormont, and does it unwhipped"?
Weyburn stopped his questioning, with the reflection that he had no right to recollect her words thus accurately. The words, however, stamped Morsfield"s doings and sayings and postures in the presence of Aminta with significance. When the ladies were looking on at the fencers, Morsfield"s perfect c.o.xcombry had been noticeable. He knew the art of airing a fine figure. Mrs. Lawrence Finchley had spoken of it, and Aminta had acquiesced; in the gravely simple manner of women who may be thinking of it much more intently than the vivacious prattler. Aminta confessed to an admiration of masculine physical beauty; the picador, matador, of the Spanish ring called up an undisguised glow that English ladies show coldly when they condescend to let it be seen; as it were, a line or two of colour on the wintriest of skies. She might, after all, at heart be one of the leisured, jewelled, pretty-winged; the spending, never harvesting, world she claimed and sought to enter. And what a primitive world it was!--world of the glittering beast and the not too swiftly flying prey, the savage pa.s.sions clothed in silk. Surely desire to belong to it writes us poor creatures. Mentally, she could hardly be maturer than the hero-worshipping girl in the procession of Miss Vincent"s young seminarists. Probably so, but she carried magic. She was of the order of women who walk as the G.o.ddesses of old, bearing the gift divine. And, by the way, she had the step of the G.o.ddess. Weyburn repeated to himself the favourite familiar line expressive of the glorious walk, and accused Lord Ormont of being in cacophonous accordance with the perpetual wrong of circ.u.mstance, he her possessor, the sole person of her sphere insensible to the magic she bore! So ran his thought.
The young man chose to conceive that he thought abstractedly. He was, in truth, often casting about for the chances of his meeting on some fortunate day the predestined schoolmaster"s wife: a lady altogether praiseworthy for carrying principles of sound government instead of magic. Consequently, susceptible to woman"s graces though he knew himself to be, Lady Ormont"s share of them hung in the abstract for him.
His hopes were bent on an early escape to Switzerland and his life"s work.
Lady Charlotte mounted to ride to the battle daily. She talked of her brother Rowsley, and of "Aminta," and provoked an advocacy of the Countess of Ormont, and trampled the pleas and defences to dust, much in the same tone as on the first day; sometimes showing a peep of sweet humaneness, like the ripe berry of a bramble, and at others rattling thunder at the wretch of a woman audacious enough to pretend to a part in her brother"s t.i.tle.
Not that she had veneration for t.i.tles. She considered them a tinsel, and the devotee on his knee-caps to them a lump for a kick. Adding: "Of course I stand for my cla.s.s; and if we can"t have a manlier people--and it "s not likely in a country treating my brother so badly--well, then, let things go on as they are." But it was the pretension to a part in the name of Ormont which so violently offended the democratic aristocrat, and caused her to resent it as an a.s.sault on the family honour, by "a woman springing up out of nothing"--a woman of no distinctive birth.
She was rational in her fashion; or Weyburn could at least see where and how the reason in her took a twist. The Rev. Mr. Hampton-Evey would not see it; he was, in charity to her ladyship, of a totally contrary opinion, he informed Weyburn. The laborious pastor and much-enduring Churchman met my lady"s apologist as he was having a swing of the legs down the lanes before breakfast, and he fell upon a series of complaints, which were introduced by a declaration that "he much feared"
her ladyship would have a heavy legal bill to pay for taking the law into her hands up at Addicotes.
Her ladyship might, if she pleased, he said, encourage her domestics and her husband"s tenants and farm-labourers to abandon the church for the chapel, and go, as she had done and threatened to do habitually, to the chapel herself; but to denounce the ritual of the Orthodox Church under the denomination of "barbarous," to say of the invoking supplications of the service, that they were--she had been heard to state it more or less publicly and repeatedly--suitable to abject ministers and throngs at the court of an Indian rajah, that he did not hesitate to term highly unbecoming in a lady of her station, subversive and unchristian. The personal burdens inflicted on him by her ladyship he prayed for patience to endure. He surprised Weyburn in speaking of Lady Charlotte as "educated and accomplished." She was rather more so than Weyburn knew, and more so than was common among the great ladies of her time.
Weyburn strongly advised the reverend gentleman on having it out with Lady Charlotte in a personal interview. He sketched the great lady"s combative character on a foundation of benevolence, and stressed her tolerance for open dealing, and the advantage gained by personal dealings with her--after a mauling or two. His language and his ill.u.s.trations touched an old-school chord in the Rev. Mr. Hampton-Evey, who hummed over the project, profoundly disrelishing the introductory portion.
"Do me the honour to call and see me to-morrow, after breakfast, before her ladyship starts for the fray on Addicote heights," Weyburn said; "and I will ask your permission to stand by you. Her bark is terrific, we know; and she can bite, but there"s no venom."
Finally, on a heave of his chest, Mr. Hampton-Evey consented to call, in the interests of peace.
Weyburn had said it must be "man to man with her, facing her and taking steps"; and, although the prospect was unpleasant to repulsiveness, it was a cheerful alternative beside Mr. Hampton-Evey"s experiences and antic.i.p.ations of the malignant black power her ladyship could be when she was not faced.
"Let the man come," said Lady Charlotte. Her shoulders intimated readiness for him.
She told Weyburn he might be present--insisted to have him present.
During the day Weyburn managed to slide in observations on the favourable reports of Mr. Hampton-Evey"s work among the poor--emollient doses that irritated her to fret and paw, as at a checking of her onset.
In the afternoon the last disputed tree on the Addicotes" ridge was felled and laid on Olmer ground. Riding with Weyburn and the joyful Leo, she encountered Mr. Eglett and called out the news. He remarked, in the tone of philosophy proper to a placable country gentleman obedient to government on foreign affairs: "Now for the next act. But no more horseback now, mind!"
She muttered of not recollecting a promise. He repeated the interdict.
Weyburn could fancy seeing her lips form words of how she hated old age.
He had been four days at Olmer, always facing her, "man to man," in the matter of Lady Ormont, not making way at all, but holding firm, and winning respectful treatment. They sat alone in her private room, where, without prelude, she discharged a fiery squib at impudent hussies caught up to the saddle-bow of a hero for just a canter, and pretending to a permanent seat beside him.
"You have only to see Lady Ormont; you will admit the justice of her claim, my lady," said he; and as evidently he wanted a fight, she let him have it.
"You try to provoke me; you take liberties. You may call the woman Aminta, I"ve told you; you insult me when you call the woman by my family name."
"Pardon me, my lady: I have no right to call Lady Ormont Aminta."
"You"ve never done so, eh? Say!"
She had him at the edge of the precipice. He escaped by saying, "Her Christian name was asked the other day, and I mentioned it. She is addressed by me as Lady Ormont."
"And by her groom and her footman. They all do; it "s the indemnity to that cla.s.s of young woman. Her linendraper is Lady-Ormonting as you do.
I took you for a gentleman. Let me hear you give her that t.i.tle again, you shall hear her true one, that the world fits her with, from me."
The time was near the half-hour bell before dinner, the situation between them that of the fall of the breath to fetch words electrical.
She left it to him to begin the fight, and was not sorry that she had p.r.i.c.ked him for it.
A footman entered the room, bearer of a missive for Mr. Weyburn. Lord Ormont"s groom had brought it from London.
"Send in the man," said Lady Charlotte.
Weyburn read
"The Countess of Ormont begs Mr. Weyburn to return instantly. There has been an accident in his home. It may not be very serious. An arm--a shock to the system from a fall. Messenger informs her, fear of internal hemorrhage. Best doctors in attendance."
He handed Lady Charlotte the letter. She humped at the first line, flashed across the remainder, and in a lowered voice asked--
"Sister in the house?"
"My mother," Weyburn said.
The groom appeared. He knew nothing. The Countess had given him orders to spare no expense on the road to Olmer, without a minute"s delay. He had ridden and driven.
He looked worn. Lady Charlotte rang the bell for her butler. To him she said--
"See that this man has a good feed of meat, any pastry you have, and a bottle of port wine. He has earned a pipe of tobacco; make up a bed for him. Despatch at once any one of the stable-boys to Loughton--the Dolphin. Mr. Leeman there will have a chariot, fly, gig, anything, ready-horsed in three hours from now. See Empson yourself; he will put my stepper Mab to the light trap; no delay. Have his feed at Loughton.
Tell Mrs. Maples to send up now, here, a tray, whatever she has, within five minutes--not later. A bottle of the Peace of Amiens Chambertin--Mr.
Eglett"s. You understand. Mrs. Maples will pack a basket for the journey; she will judge. Add a bottle of the Waterloo Bordeaux. Wait: a dozen of Mr. Eglett"s cigars. Brisk with all the orders. Go."
She turned to Weyburn. "You pack your portmanteau faster than a servant will do it."
He ran up-stairs.
She was beside the tray to welcome and inspirit his eating, and she performed the busy butler"s duty in pouring out wine for him. It was a toned old Burgundy, happy in the year of its birth, the grandest of instruments to roll the gambol-march of the Dionysiaca through the blood of this frame and sound it to the spirit. She spoke no word of his cause for departure. He drank, and he felt what earth can do to cheer one of her stricken children and strengthen the beat of a heart with a dread like a shot in it.
She, while he flew supporting the body of his most beloved to the sun of Life in brighter hope, reckoned the stages of his journey.
"Leeman at Loughton will post you through the night to Mersley. Wherever you bait, it is made known that you come from Olmer, and are one of us.
That pa.s.ses you on up to London. Where can Lord Ormont be now?"
"In Paris."