CHAPTER x.x.xVII. 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 had a meaning; she felt she was praised. It might be because she made herself 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 waistcoat of his ambition," said Colney, goaded to speak, not anxious to be heard.
He kept her beside him, leading her about for introductions to multiform celebrities of both s.e.xes; among them the gentleman editing the Magazine which gave out serially THE RIVAL TONGUES: and there was talk of a dragon-throated public"s queer appet.i.te in Letters. The pained Editor deferentially smiled at her cheerful mention of Delphica. "In, book form, perhaps!" he remarked, with plaintive" resignation; adding: "You read it?" And a lady exclaimed: "We all read it!"
But we are the elect, who see signification and catch flavour; and we are reminded of an insatiable monster how sometimes capricious is his gorge. "He may happen to be in the humour for a shaking!" Colney"s poor consolation it was to say of the prospects of his published book: for the funny monster has been known to like a shaking.
"He takes it kinder tickled," said Fenellan, joining the group and grasping Nesta"s hand with a warmth that thrilled her and set her guessing. "A taste of his favourite Cayenne lollypop, Colney; it fetches the tear he loves to shed, or it gives him digestive heat in the bag of his literary receptacle-fearfully relaxed and enormous! And no wonder; his is to lie him down on notion of the att.i.tude for reading, his back; and he has in a jiffy the funnel of the Libraries inserted into his mouth, and he feels the publishers pouring their gallons through it unlimitedly; never crying out, which he can"t; only swelling, which he"s obliged to do, with a non-nutritious inflation; and that"s his intellectual enjoyment; bearing a likeness to the horrible old torture of the baillir d"eau; and he"s doomed to perish in the worst book-form of dropsy. You, my dear Colney, have offended his police or excise, who stand by the funnel, in touch with his palate, to make sure that nothing above proof is poured in; and there"s your misfortune. He"s not half a bad 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 having certain merits; they discussed it, to compliment the crownless author; and the fervider they, the more was he endowed to read the meanness prompting the generosity. Publication of a book, is the philosopher"s lantern upon one"s fellows.
Colney was caught away from his private manufactory of acids by hearing Simeon Fenellan relate to Victor some of the recent occurrences at Brighton. Simeon"s tone was unsatisfying; Colney would have the word; he was like steel on the grindstone for such a theme of our national grotesque-sublime.
"That Demerara Supple-jack, Victor! Don"t listen to Simeon; he"s a man of lean narrative, fit to chronicle political party wrangles and such like crop of carcase prose: this is epical. In DRINK we have Old England"s organic Epic; Greeks and Trojans; Parliamentary Olympus, enn.o.bled brewers, nasal fanatics, all the machinery to hand. Keep a straight eye on the primary motives of man, you"ll own the English produce the material for proud verse; they"re alive there! Dartrey"s Demerara makes a pretty episode of the battle. I haven"t seen it--if it"s possible to look on it: but I hear it is flexible, of a vulgar appearance in repose, Jove"s lightning at one time, the thong of AEacus at another. Observe Dartrey marching off to the Station, for the purpose of 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 he obtained military instruction in the Service, and left it at his convenience, for our poor patch and tatter British Army to take in his place another young student, who"ll grow up to do similarly. And Dartrey, we a.s.sume, is off to stop that system. You behold Sir Dartrey twirling the weapon in preparatory fashion; because he is determined we shall have an army of trained officers instead of infant amateurs heading heroic louts. Not a thought of Beer in Dartrey!--always unpatriotic, you "ll say. Plato entreats his absent mistress to fix eyes on a star: eyes on 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 most diverting of interventions, in the shape of a young woman in a poke-bonnet, and Skepsey, her squire, marching with a dozen or so, informing bedevilled mankind of the hideousness of our hymnification when it is not under secluding sanction of the Edifice, and challengeing criticism; and that was hard by, and real English, in the form of bludgeons, wielded by a battalion of the national idol Bungay Beervat"s boys; and they fell upon the hymners. Here you fill in with pastoral similes. They struck the 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 their work. A valiant skiff upon a sea of enemies, he was having it on the n.o.b, and suddenly the Demerara lightened. It flailed to thresh. Enough to say, brains would have come.
The Bungays made a show of fight. No lack of blood in them, to stock a raw shilling"s worth or gush before Achilles rageing. You perceive the picture, you can almost sing the ballad. We want only a few names of the fallen. It was the carving of a maitre chef, according to Skepsey: right-left-and point, with supreme precision: they fell, accurately sliced from the joint. Having done with them, Dartrey tossed the Demerara to Skepsey, and washed his hands of battle; and he let his major go unscathed. Phlebotomy sufficient for the day!"
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 a shindy."
"Suit him! They"re the scandal of our streets." Victor was p.r.i.c.ked with a 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 the word Victor constantly employed to express the thing he wanted to see. "Think of that, when the procession sets your teeth on edge. They"re honest foes of vice, and they move:--in England!
Pulpit-preaching has no effect. For gross maladies, gross remedies.
You may judge of what you are 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 English frivolity, and you"ll admit it to be the best show you make. It may still be the saving of you--on the level of the orderly ox: I "ve not observed that it aims at higher. And talking of the pulpit, Barmby is off to the East, has accepted a Sh.o.r.editch 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 the chance here."
"Good!" Fenellan exclaimed. "And that upsets his placement of the modern national genders: Germany masculine, France feminine, Old England what remains."
Victor ruffled and reddened on his shout of "Neuter?"
Their circle widened. Nesta knew she was on promotion, by her being led about and introduced to ladies. They were encouraging with her. One of them, a Mrs. Marina Floyer, had recently raised a standard of feminine insurrection. She said: "I hear your praises from Mr. Durance. He rarely praises. You have shown capacity to meditate on the condition of women, he says."
Nesta drew a shorter breath, with a hope at heart. She speculated in the dark, as to whether her aim to serve and help was not so friendless. And did Mr. Durance approve? But surely she stood in a glorious England if there were men and women to welcome a girl to their councils. Oh! that is the broad free England where gentlemen and gentlewomen accept of the meanest aid to cleanse the land of its iniquities, and do not suffer shame 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 that which is as near as great natures may come to the conceiving of the celestial spirit from an emissary angel; and she trembled, the fire ran through her. It seemed to her, that she would be called to help or that certainly they were nearing to an effacement of the woefullest of evils; and if not helping, it would still be a blessedness for her to kneel thanking heaven.
Society was being attacked and defended. She could but studiously listen. Her father was listening. The a.s.sailant was a lady; and she had a hearing, although she treated Society as a discrowned monarch on trial for an offence against a more precious: viz., the individual cramped by brutish laws: the individual with the ideas of our time, righteously claiming expansion out of the clutches of a narrow old-world disciplinarian-that giant hypocrite! She flung the gauntlet at externally venerable Inst.i.tutions; and she had a hearing, where horrification, execration, the foul Furies of Conservatism would in a shortly antecedent day have been hissing and snakily lashing, hounding her to expulsion. Mrs. Marina Floyer gravely seconded her. Colney did the same. Victor turned sharp on him. "Yes," Colney said; "we unfold the 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 may say 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 a.s.sertion of our individuality in opposition to the Government of Society--this existing Society--is a toss of the cap for the erasure of our civilization, et caetera.
Plat.i.tudes can be of intense interest if they approach our case.--But, if you please, we ask permission to wash, trim, purify, and we do not get it.--But you have it! Because we take it at our peril; and you, who are too cowardly to grant or withhold, call-up the revolutionary from the pits by your slackness:--etc. There was a pretty hot debate. Both a.s.sailant and defendant, to Victor"s thinking, spoke well, and each the right thing and he could have made use of both, but he could answer neither. He beat about for the cause of this deficiency, and discovered it in his position. Mentally, he was on the side of Society. Yet he was annoyed to find the attack was so easily answerable when the defence unfolded. But it was absurd to expect it would not be. And in fact, a position secretly rebellious is equal to water on the brain for stultifying us.
Before the controversy was over, a note in Nataly"s handwriting called him home. She wrote: "Make my excuses. C. D. will give Nesta and some lady dinner. A visitor here. Come alone, and without delay. Quite well, 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 chance of some lady being present, was unlike her. Dudley might be tugging at the cord; and the recent conversation upon Society, rendered one of its gilt pillars particularly estimable.--A person in the debate had declared this modern protest on behalf of individualism to represent Society"s Criminal Trial. And it is likely to be a long one. And good for the world, that we see such a Trial!--Well said or not, undoubtedly Society is an old criminal: not much more advanced than the state of spiritual worship where b.l.o.o.d.y sacrifice was offered to a hungry Lord. But it has a case for pleading. We may liken it, as we have it now, to the b.u.mping lumberer"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 to subsist, it must have the human with the logical argument against the cry of the free-flags, instead of presenting a block"s obtuseness. That, you need not hesitate to believe, will be rolled downward and disintegrated, sooner than later. A Society based on the logical concrete of humane considerateness:--a Society prohibiting to Mrs. Burman her wielding of a life-long rod....
The personal element again to confuse inquiry!--And Skepsey and Barmby both of them bent on doing work without inquiry of any sort! They were enviable: they were good fellows. Victor clung to the theme because it hinted of next door to his lost Idea. He rubbed the back of his head, fancying a throb there. Are civilized creatures incapable of abstract thought when their social position is dubious? For if so, we never can be quit of those we forsake.--Apparently Mrs. Burman"s unfathomed power lay in her compelling him to summon the devilish in himself and play upon the 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 favourable moment to tell her what she might not at another time regard as a small affair. "News in the City to-day of that South London borough being vacated. Quatley urges me. A death again! I saw Pempton, too. Will you credit me when I tell you he carries his infatuation so far, that he has been investing in j.a.panese and Chinese Loans, because they are less meat-eaters than others, and vegetarians are more stable, and outlast us all!--Dudley the visitor?" "Mr. Sowerby has been here," she said, in a shaking 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 circle must never be. Do I guess?--I spoke to Colney about bringing her home."
Nataly sighed: "Ah! make what provision we will! Evil--Mr. Sowerby has had a great deal to bear."
"A worldling may think so."
Her breast heaved, and the wave burst: but her restraining of tears froze her speech.
"Victor! Our Nesta! Mr. Sowerby is unable to explain. And how the Miss Duvidneys!... At that Brighton!"--The voice he heard was not his darling"s deep rich note, it had dropped to toneless hoa.r.s.eness: "She has been permitted to make acquaintance--she has been seen riding with--she has 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 me this--that never was girl more carefully... never till she was taken 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 acquaintance with--contact with!--Oh! cruel!" Each time she ceased speaking, the wrinkles of a shiver went over her, and the tone was of tears coming, but she 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 girl distinguish! He does not cast blame on her?"