When the man who has a heart will talk of nothing but what concerns his interests, and the heart is hurt, it may be perceived by a cognizant friend, that this is his proud mute way of pet.i.tioning to have the tenderer subject broached. Gower was sure of the heart, armoured or bandaged though it was,--a haunt of evil spirits as well,--and he began: "Now to speak of me half a minute. You cajoled me out of my Surrey room, where I was writing, in the vein..."
"I"ve had the scene before me!" the earl interposed. "Juniper dells and that tree of the flashing leaf, and that dear old boy, your father, young as you and me, and saying love of Nature gives us eternal youth.
On with you."
"I doubted whether I should be of use to you. I told you the amount of alloy in my motives. A year with you, I have subsistence for ten years a.s.sured to me."
"Don"t be a prosy dog, Gower Woodseer."
"Will you come over to the Wythans before you go?"
"I will not."
"You would lengthen your stride across a wounded beast?"
"I see no wound to the beast."
"You can permit yourself to kick under cover of a metaphor."
"Tell me what you drive at, Gower."
"The request is, for you to spare pain by taking one step--an extra strain on the muscles of the leg. It "s only the leg wants moving."
"The lady has legs to run away, let them bring her back."
"Why have me with you, then? I"m useless. But you read us all, see everything, and wait only for the mood to do the right. You read me, and I"m not open to everybody. You read the crux of a man like me in my novel position. You read my admiration of a beautiful woman and effort to keep honest. You read my downright preference of what most people would call poverty, and my enjoyment of good cookery and good company.
You enlist among the crew below as one of our tempters. You find I come round to the thing I like best. Therefore, you have your liking for me; and that"s why you turn to me again, after your natural infidelities. So much for me. You read this priceless lady quite as clearly. You choose to cloud her with your moods. She was at a disadvantage, "arriving in a strange country, next to friendless; and each new incident bred of a luckless beginning--I could say more."
Fleetwood nodded. "You are read without the words: You read in history, too, I suppose, that there are two sides to most cases. The loudest is not often the strongest. However, now the lady shows herself crazed.
That"s reading her charitably. Else she has to be taken for a spiteful shrew, who pretends to suspect anything that"s villanous, because she can hit on no other way of striking."
"Crazed, is a wide shot and hits half the world," muttered Gower. "Lady Fleetwood had a troubled period after her marriage. She suffered a sort of kidnapping when she was bearing her child. There"s a book by an Edinburgh doctor might be serviceable to you. It enlightens me. She will have a distrust of you, as regards the child, until she understands you by living with you under one roof."
"Such animals these women are!" Good Lord!" Fleetwood e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "I marry one, and I "m to take to reading medical books!" He yawned.
"You speak that of women and pretend to love Nature," said Gower. "You hate Nature unless you have it served on a dish by your own cook. That"s the way to the madhouse or the monastery. There we expiate the sin of sins. A man finds the woman of all women fitted to stick him in the soil, and trim and point him to grow, and she"s an animal for her pains!
The secret of your malady is, you"ve not yet, though you"re on a healthy leap for the practices of Nature, hopped to the primary conception of what Nature means. Women are in and of Nature. I"ve studied them here--had nothing to do but study them. That most n.o.ble of ladies" whole mind was knotted to preserve her child during her time of endurance up to her moment of trial. Think it over. It"s your one chance of keeping sane.
And expect to hear flat stuff from me while you go on playing tyrant."
"You certainly take liberties," Fleetwood"s mildest voice remarked.
"I told you I should try you, when you plucked me out of my Surrey nest."
Fleetwood, pa.s.sed from a meditative look to a malicious half-laugh. "You seem to have studied the "most n.o.ble of ladies" latterly rather like a barrister with a brief for the defendant--plaintiff, if you like!"
"As to that, I"ll help you to an insight of a particular weakness of mine," said Gower. "I require to have persons of even the highest value presented to me on a stage, or else I don"t grasp them at all--they "re simply pictures. I saw the lady; admired, esteemed, sufficiently, I supposed, until her image appeared to me in the feelings of another.
Then I saw fathoms. No doubt, it was from feeling warmer. I went through the blood of the other for my impression."
"Name the other," said the earl, and his features were sharp.
You can have the name," Gower answered. "It was the girl, Madge Winch."
Fleetwood"s hard stare melted to surprise and contemptuous amus.e.m.e.nt.
"You see the lady to be the "most n.o.ble of ladies" through the warming you get by pa.s.sing into the feelings of Madge Winch?"
Sarcasm was in the tone, and beneath it a thrill of compa.s.sionateness traversed him and shot a remorseful sting with the vision of those two young women on the coach at the scene of the fight. He had sentience of their voices, nigh to hearing them. The forlorn bride"s hand given to the anxious girl behind her gushed an image of the sisterhood binding women under the pangs they suffer from men. He craved a scourging that he might not be cursing himself; and he provoked it, for Gower was very sensitive to a cold breath on the weakness he had laid bare; and when Fleetwood said: "You recommend a bath in the feelings of Madge Winch?"
the retort came:--"It might stop you on the road to a cowl."
Fleetwood put on the mask of cogitation to cover a shudder, "How?"
"A question of the man or the monk with you, as I fancy I"ve told you more than once!"
"You may fancy committing any impertinence and be not much out."
"The saving of you is that you digest it when you"ve stewed it down."
"You try me!"
"I don"t impose the connection."
"No, I take the blame for that."
They sat in dumbness, fidgeted, sprang to their feet, and lighted bedroom candles.
Mounting the stairs, Gower was moved to let fall a benevolent look on the worried son of fortune. "I warned you I should try you. It ought to be done politely. If I have to speak a truth I "m boorish. The divinely d.a.m.nable naked truth won"t wear ornaments. It"s about the same as pitching a handful of earth."
"You dirt your hands, hit or miss. Out of this corridor! Into my room, and spout your worst," cried the earl.
Gower entered his dressing-room and was bidden to smoke there.
"You"re a milder boor when you smoke. That day down in Surrey with the grand old bootmaker was one of our days, Gower Woodseer! There"s no smell of the boor in him. Perhaps his religion helps him, more than Nature-worship: not the best for manners. You won"t smoke your pipe?--a cigar? Lay on, then, as hard as you like."
"You"re asking for the debauchee"s last luxury--not a correction," said Gower, grimly thinking of how his whip might prove effective and punish the man who kept him fruitlessly out of his bed.
"I want stuff for a place in the memory," said Fleetwood; and the late hour, with the profitless talk, made it a stinging taunt.
"You want me to flick your indecision."
"That"s half a hit."
"I "m to talk italics, for you to store a smart word or so."
"True, I swear! And, please, begin."
"You hang for the Fates to settle which is to be smothered in you, the man or the lord--and it ends in the monk, if you hang much longer."
"A bit of a scorpion in his intention," Fleetwood muttered on a stride.
"I"ll tell you this, Gower Woodseer; when you lay on in earnest, your diction is not so choice. Do any of your remarks apply to Lady Fleetwood?"