"Yes, the box," Aminta said firmly. "It contains--"
"No false jewels? A thief might complain."
"It contains letters, my lord." "Blackmail?"
"You would be at liberty to read them. I would rather they were burnt."
"Ah!" The earl heaved his chest prodigiously. "Blackmail letters are better in a husband"s hands, if they can be laid there."
"If there is a necessity for him to read them--yes."
"There may be a necessity, there can"t be a gratification,--though there are dogs of thick blood that like to scratch their sores," he murmured to himself. "You used to show me these declaration epistles."
"Not the names."
"Not the names--no!"
"When we had left the country, I showed you why it had been my wish to go."
"Xarifa was and is female honour. Take the key, open that box; I will make inquiries. But, my dear, you guess everything. Your little box was removed for the bigger impression to be produced by this one."
A flash came out of her dark eyes.
"No, you guess wrong this time, you clever shrew! I wormed nothing from you," said he. "I knew you kept particular letters in that receptacle of things of price: Aminta can"t conceal. The man has worried you. Why not have come to me?"
"Oblige me, my lord, by restoring me my box."
"This is your box."
Her bosom lifted with the words Oh, no! unspoken. He took the key and opened the box. A dazzling tray of stones was revealed; underneath it the constellations in cases, very heavens for the worldly Eve; and he doubted that Eve could have gone completely out of her. But she had, as observation instructed him, set her woman"s mind on something else, and must have it before letting her eyes fall on objects impossible for any of her s.e.x to see without coveting them.
He bowed. "I will fetch it," he said magnanimously. Her own box was brought from his room. She then consented to look womanly at the Ormont jewels, over which the battle; whereof she knew nothing, and nothing could be told her, had been fought in her interests, for her sovereign pleasure.
She looked and admired. They were beautiful jewels the great emerald was wonderful, and there were two rubies to praise. She excused herself for declining to put the circlet for the pendant round her neck, or a glittering ring on her finger. Her remarks were encomiums, not quite so cold as those of a provincial spinster of an ascetic turn at an exhibition of the world"s flycatcher gewgaws. He had divided Aminta from the Countess of Ormont, and it was the wary Aminta who set a guard on looks and tones before the spectacle of his n.o.ble bounty, lest any, the smallest, payment of the dues of the countess should be demanded.
Rightly interpreting him to be by nature incapable of asking pardon, or acknowledging a wrong done by him, however much he might crave exemption from blame and seek for peace, she kept to her mask of injury, though she hated unforgivingness; and she felt it little, she did it easily, because her heart was dead to the man. My lord"s hand touched her on her shoulder, propitiatingly in some degree, in his dumb way.
Offended women can be emotional to a towering pride, that bends while it a.s.sumes unbendingness: it must come to their sensations, as it were a sign of humanity in the majestic, speechless king of beasts; and they are pathetically melted, abjectly hypocritical; a nice confusion of sentiments, traceable to a tender bosom"s appreciation of strength and the perceptive compa.s.sion for its mortality.
In a case of the alienated wife, whose blood is running another way, no foul snake"s bite is more poisonous than that indicatory touch, however simple and slight. My lord"s hand, lightly laid on Aminta"s shoulder, became sensible of soft warm flesh stiffening to the skeleton.
CHAPTER XXIV. LOVERS MATED
He was benevolently martial, to the extent of paternal, in thinking his girl, of whom he deigned to think now as his countess, pardonably foolish. Woman for woman, she was of a pattern superior to the world"s ordinary, and might run the world"s elect a race. But she was pitifully woman-like in her increase of dissatisfaction with the more she got.
Women are happier enslaved. Men, too, if their despot is an Ormont.
Colonel of his regiment, he proved that: his men would follow him anywhere, do anything. Grand old days, before he was condemned by one knows not what extraordinary round of circ.u.mstances to cogitate on women as fluids, and how to cut channels for them, that they may course along in the direction good for them, imagining it their pretty wanton will to go that way! Napoleon"s treatment of women is excellent example.
Peterborough"s can be defended.
His Aminta could not reason. She nursed a rancour on account of the blow she drew on herself at Steignton, and she declined consolation in her being pardoned. The reconcilement evidently was proposed as a finale of one of the detestable feminine storms enveloping men weak enough to let themselves be dragged through a scene for the sake of domestic tranquillity.
A remarkable exhibition of Aminta the woman was, her entire change of front since he had taken her spousal chill. Formerly she was pa.s.sive, merely stately, the chiselled grande dame, deferential in her bearing and speech, even when argumentative and having an opinion to plant. She had always the independent eye and step; she now had the tongue of the graceful and native great lady, fitted to rule her circle and hold her place beside the proudest of the Ormonts. She bore well the small shuffle with her jewel-box--held herself gallantly. There had been no female feignings either, affected misapprehensions, gapy ignorances, and snaky subterfuges, and the like, familiar to men who have the gentle twister in grip. Straight on the line of the thing to be seen she flew, and struck on it; and that is a woman"s martial action. He would right heartily have called her comrade, if he had been active himself. A warrior pulled off his horse, to sit in a chair and contemplate the minute evolutions of the s.e.x is pettish with his part in such battle-fields at the stage beyond amus.e.m.e.nt.
Seen swimming, she charmed him. Abstract views of a woman summon opposite advocates: one can never say positively, That is she! But the visible fair form of a woman is hereditary queen of us. We have none of your pleadings and counter-pleadings and judicial summaries to obstruct a ravenous loyalty. My lord beheld Aminta take her three quick steps on the plank, and spring and dive and ascend, shaking the ends of her bound black locks; and away she went with shut mouth and broad stroke of her arms into the sunny early morning river; brave to see, although he had to flick a bee of a question, why he enjoyed the privilege of seeing, and was not beside her. The only answer confessed to a distaste for all exercise once pleasurable.
She and her little friend boated or strolled through the meadows during the day; he fished. When he and Aminta rode out for the hour before dinner, she seemed pleased. She was amicable, conversable, all that was agreeable as a woman, and she was the chillest of wives. My lord"s observations and reflections came to one conclusion: she p.r.i.c.ked and challenged him to lead up to her desired stormy scene. He met her and meant to vanquish her with the dominating patience Charlotte had found too much for her: women cannot stand against it.
To be patient in contention with women, however, one must have a continuous and an exclusive occupation; and the tax it lays on us conduces usually to impatience with men. My lord did not directly connect Aminta"s chillness and Morsfield"s impudence; yet the sensation roused by his Aminta partic.i.p.ated in the desire to punish Morsfield speedily. Without wishing for a duel, he was moved by the social sanction it had to consider whether green youths and women might not think a grey head had delayed it too long. The practice of the duel begot the peculiar animal logic of the n.o.bler savage, which tends to magnify an offence in the ratio of our vanity, and hunger for a blood that is not demanded by the appet.i.te. Moreover, a waning practice, in disfavour with the new generation, will be commended to the conservative barbarian, as partaking of the wisdom of his fathers. Further, too, we may have grown slothful, fallen to moodiness, done excess of service to Omphale, our tyrant lady of the glow and the chill; and then undoubtedly the duel braces.
He left Aminta for London, submissive to the terms of intimacy dictated by her demeanour, his unacknowledged seniority rendering their harshness less hard to endure. She had not gratified him with a display of her person in the glitter of the Ormont jewels; and since he was, under common conditions, a speechless man, his inept.i.tude for amorous remonstrances precipitated him upon deeds, that he might offer additional proofs of his esteem and the a.s.surance of her established position as his countess. He proposed to engage Lady Charlotte in a conflict severer than the foregoing, until he brought her to pay the ceremonial visit to her sister-in-law. The count of time for this final trial of his masterfulness he calculated at a week. It would be an occupation, miserable occupation though it was. He hailed the prospect of chastising Morsfield, for a proof that his tussels with women, prolonged study of their tricks, manoeuvrings and outwittings of them, had not emasculated him.
Aminta willingly promised to write from day to day. Her senses had his absence insured to them by her antic.i.p.ation of the task. She did not conceive it would be so ponderous a task. What to write to him when nothing occurred! Nothing did occur, unless the arrival of Mr. Weyburn was to be named an event. She alluded to it: "Mr. Weyburn has come, expecting to find you here. The dispatch-box is here. Is he to await you?"
That innocent little question was a day gained.
One day of boating on the upper reaches of the pastoral river, and walks in woods and golden meadows, was felicity fallen on earth, the ripe fruit of dreams. A dread surrounded it, as a belt, not shadowing the horizon; and she clasped it to her heart the more pa.s.sionately, like a mother her rosy infant, which a dark world threatens and the universal fate.
Love, as it will be at her June of life, was teaching her to know the good and bad of herself. Women, educated to embrace principles through their timidity and their pudency, discover, amazed, that these are not lasting qualities under love"s influence. The blushes and the fears take flight. The principles depend much on the beloved. Is he a man whose contact with the world has given him understanding of life"s laws, and can hold him firm to the right course in the strain and whirling of a torrent, they cling to him, deeply they worship. And if they tempt him, it is not advisedly done. Nature and love are busy in conjunction.
The timidities and pudencies have flown; they may hover, they are not present. You deplore it, you must not blame; you have educated them so.
Muscular principles are sown only out in the world; and, on the whole, with all their errors, the worldly men are the truest as well as the bravest of men. Her faith in his guidance was equal to her dependence.
The retrospect of a recent journey told her how he had been tried.
She could gaze tenderly, betray her heart, and be certain of safety. Can wine match that for joy? She had no schemes, no hopes, but simply the desire to bestow, the capacity to believe. Any wish to be enfolded by him was shapeless and unlighted, unborn; though now and again for some chance word or undefined thought she surprised the strange tenant of her breast at an incomprehensibly faster beat, and knew it for her own and not her own, the familiar the stranger--an utter stranger, as one who had snared her in a wreath and was pulling her off her feet.
She was not so guileless at the thought of little Selina Collett here, and of Selina as the letter-bearer of old; and the marvel that Matey and Browny and Selina were together after all! Was it not a kind of summons to her to call him Matey just once, only once, in play? She burned and ached to do it. She might have taxed her ingenuity successfully to induce little Selina to the boldness of calling him Matey--and she then repeating it, as the woman who revived with a meditative effort recollections of the girl. Ah, frightful hypocrite! Thoughts of the pleasure of his name aloud on her lips in his hearing dissolved through her veins, and were met by Matthew Weyburn"s open face, before which hypocrisy stood rent and stripped. She preferred the calmer, the truer pleasure of seeing him modestly take lessons in the nomenclature of weeds, herbs, gra.s.ses, by hedge and ditch. Selina could instruct him as well in entomology, but he knew better the Swiss, Tyrolese, and Italian valley-homes of beetle and b.u.t.terfly species. Their simple talk was a cool zephyr fanning Aminta.
The suggestion to unite the two came to her, of course, but their physical disparity denied her that chance to settle her own difficulty, and a whisper of one physically the match for him punished her. In stature, in healthfulness, they were equals, perhaps: not morally or intellectually. And she could claim headship of him on one little point confided to her by his mother, who was bearing him, and startled by the boom of guns under her pillow, when her husband fronted the enemy: Matthew Weyburn, the fencer, boxer, cricketer, hunter, all things manly, rather shrank from firearms--at least, one saw him put on a screw to manipulate them. In danger--among brigands or mutineers, for example--she could stand by him and prove herself his mate.
Intellectually, morally, she had to bow humbly. Nor had she, nor could she do more than lean on and catch example from his prompt spiritual valiancy. It shone out from him, and a crisis fulfilled the promise. Who could be his mate for cheerful courage, for skill, the ready mind, easy adroitness, and for self-command? To imitate was a woman"s utmost.
Matthew Weyburn appeared the very Matey of the first of May cricketing day among Cuper"s boys the next morning, when seen pacing down the garden-walk. He wore his white trousers of that happiest of old days--the "white ducks" Aminta and Selina remembered. Selina beamed.
"Yes, he did; he always wore them; but now it"s a frock-coat instead of a jacket."
"But now he will be a master instead of a schoolboy," said Aminta. "Let us hope he will prosper."
"He gives me the idea of a man who must succeed," Selina said; and she was patted, rallied, asked how she had the idea, and kissed; Aminta saying she fancied it might be thought, for he looked so confident.
"Only not what the boys used to call "c.o.c.ky,"" said Selina. "He won"t be contemptuous of those he outstrips."
"His choice of the schoolmaster"s profession points to a modesty in him, does it not, little woman?"
"He made me tell him, while you were writing your letters yesterday, all about my brother and his prospects."
"Yes, that is like him. And I must hear of your brother, "little Collett." Don"t forget, Sely, little Collett was our postman."
The Countess of Ormont"s humorous reference to the circ.u.mstance pa.s.sed with Selina for a sign of a poetic love of the past, and a present social elevation that allowed her to review it impa.s.sively. She admired the great lady and good friend who could really be interested in the fortunes of a mere schoolmaster and a merchant"s clerk. To her astonishment, by some agency beyond her fathoming, she found herself, and hardly for her own pleasure, pushing the young schoolmaster animatedly to have an account of his aims in the establishment of the foreign school.
Weyburn smiled. He set a short look at Aminta; and she, conscious of her detected diplomacy, had an inward shiver, mixed of the fascination and repugnance felt by a woman who knows that under one man"s eyes her character is naked and anatomized. Her character?--her soul. He held it in hand and probed it mercifully. She had felt the sweet sting again and again, and had shrunk from him, and had crawled to him. The love of him made it all fascination. How did he learn to read at any moment right to the soul of a woman? Did experience teach him, or sentimental sympathy?
He was too young, he was too manly. It must be because of his being in heart and mind the brother to the sister with women.