"Yes, my lady, we cannot, I say we cannot check time. Decidedly of the same mind. Quite so."
"Oblige me by never saying "Quite so." My lawyer says it. It reeks of the City of London. And do not look so miserable."
"I, madam? my dear lady!" the General flashed out in a radiance that dulled instantly.
"Well," said she cheerfully, "and you"re for the old woman?"
"For Lady Camper."
"You are seductive in your flatteries, General. Well, then, we have to speak of business."
"My affairs----" General Ople was beginning, with perturbed forehead; but Lady Camper held up her finger.
"We will touch on your affairs incidentally. Now listen to me, and do not exclaim until I have finished. You know that these two young ones have been whispering over the wall for some months. They have been meeting on the river and in the park habitually, apparently with your consent."
"My lady!"
"I did not say with your connivance."
"You mean my daughter Elizabeth?"
"And my nephew Reginald. We have named them, if that advances us. Now, the end of such meetings is marriage, and the sooner the better, if they are to continue. I would rather they should not; I do not hold it good for young soldiers to marry. But if they do, it is very certain that their pay will not support a family; and in a marriage of two healthy young people, we have to a.s.sume the existence of the family. You have allowed matters to go so far that the boy is hot in love; I suppose the girl is, too. She is a nice girl. I do not object to her personally.
But I insist that a settlement be made on her before I give my nephew one penny. Hear me out, for I am not fond of business, and shall be glad to have done with these explanations. Reginald has nothing of his own. He is my sister"s son, and I loved her, and rather like the boy. He has at present four hundred a year from me. I will double it, on the condition that you at once make over ten thousand--not less; and let it be yes or no!--to be settled on your daughter and go to her children, independent of the husband--cela va sans dire. Now you may speak, General."
The General spoke, with breath fetched from the deeps:
"Ten thousand pounds! Hem! Ten! Hem, frankly--ten, my lady! One"s income--I am quite taken by surprise. I say Elizabeth"s conduct--though, poor child! it is natural to her to seek a mate, I mean, to accept a mate and an establishment, and Reginald is a very hopeful fellow--I was saying, they jump on me out of an ambush, and I wish them every happiness. And she is an ardent soldier, and a soldier she must marry.
But ten thousand!"
"It is to secure the happiness of your daughter, General."
"Pounds! my lady. It would rather cripple me."
"You would have my house, General; you would have the moiety, as the lawyers say, of my purse; you would have horses, carriages, servants; I do not divine what more you would wish to have."
"But, madam--a pensioner on the Government! I can look back on past services, I say old services, and I accept my position. But, madam, a pensioner on my wife, bringing next to nothing to the common estate! I fear my self-respect would, I say would . . ."
"Well, and what would it do, General Ople?"
"I was saying, my self-respect as my wife"s pensioner, my lady. I could not come to her empty-handed."
"Do you expect that I should be the person to settle money on your daughter, to save her from mischances? A rakish husband, for example; for Reginald is young, and no one can guess what will be made of him."
"Undoubtedly your ladyship is correct. We might try absence for the poor girl. I have no female relation, but I could send her to the sea-side to a lady-friend."
"General Ople, I forbid you, as you value my esteem, ever--and I repeat, I forbid you ever--to afflict my ears with that phrase, "lady-friend!""
The General blinked in a state of insurgent humility.
These incessant whippings could not but sting the humblest of men; and "lady-friend," he was sure, was a very common term, used, he was sure, in the very best society. He had never heard Her Majesty speak at levees of a lady-friend, but he was quite sure that she had one; and if so, what could be the objection to her subjects mentioning it as a term to suit their own circ.u.mstances?
He was hara.s.sed and perplexed by old Lady Camper"s treatment of him, and he resolved not to call her Angela even upon supplication--not that day, at least.
She said, "You will not need to bring property of any kind to the common estate; I neither look for it nor desire it. The generous thing for you to do would be to give your daughter all you have, and come to me."
"But, Lady Camper, if I denude myself or curtail my income--a man at his wife"s discretion, I was saying a man at his wife"s mercy . . . !"
General Ople was really forced, by his manly dignity, to make this protest on its behalf. He did not see how he could have escaped doing so; he was more an agent than a princ.i.p.al. "My wife"s mercy," he said again, but simply as a herald proclaiming superior orders.
Lady Camper"s brows were wrathful. A deep blood-crimson overcame the rouge, and gave her a terrible stormy look.
"The congress now ceases to sit, and the treaty is not concluded," was all she said.
She rose, bowed to him, "Good morning, General," and turned her back.
He sighed. He was a free man. But this could not be denied--whatever the lady"s age, she was a grand woman in her carriage, and when looking angry, she had a queenlike aspect that raised her out of the reckoning of time.
So now he knew there was a worse behind what he had previously known.
He was precipitate in calling it the worst. "Now," said he to himself, "I know the worst !"
No man should ever say it. Least of all, one who has entered into relations with an eccentric lady.
CHAPTER VI
Politeness required that General Ople should not appear to rejoice in his dismissal as a suitor, and should at least make some show of holding himself at the beck of a reconsidering mind. He was guilty of running up to London early next day, and remaining absent until nightfall; and he did the same on the two following days. When he presented himself at Lady Camper"s lodge-gates, the astonishing intelligence, that her ladyship had departed for the Continent and Egypt gave him qualms of remorse, which a.s.sumed a more definite shape in something like awe of her triumphant const.i.tution. He forbore to mention her age, for he was the most honourable of men, but a habit of tea-table talkativeness impelled him to say and repeat an idea that had visited him, to the effect, that Lady Camper was one of those wonderful women who are comparable to brilliant generals, and defend themselves from the siege of Time by various aggressive movements. Fearful of not being understood, owing to the rarity of the occasions when the squat plain squad of honest Saxon regulars at his command were called upon to explain an idea, he re-cast the sentence. But, as it happened that the regulars of his vocabulary were not numerous, and not accustomed to work upon thoughts and images, his repet.i.tions rather succeeded in exposing the piece of knowledge he had recently acquired than in making his meaning plainer. So we need not marvel that his acquaintances should suppose him to be secretly aware of an extreme degree in which Lady Camper was a veteran.
General Ople entered into the gaieties of the neighbourhood once more, and pa.s.sed through the Winter cheerfully. In justice to him, however, it should be said that to the intent dwelling of his mind upon Lady Camper, and not to the festive life he led, was due his entire ignorance of his daughter"s unhappiness. She lived with him, and yet it was in other houses he learnt that she was unhappy. After his last interview with Lady Camper, he had informed Elizabeth of the ruinous and preposterous amount of money demanded of him for a settlement upon her and Elizabeth, like the girl of good sense that she was, had replied immediately, "It could not be thought of, papa."
He had spoken to Reginald likewise. The young man fell into a dramatic tearing-of-hair and long-stride fury, not ill becoming an enamoured dragoon. But he maintained that his aunt, though an eccentric, was a cordially kind woman. He seemed to feel, if he did not partly hint, that the General might have accepted Lady Camper"s terms. The young officer could no longer be welcome at Douro Lodge, so the General paid him a morning call at his quarters, and was distressed to find him breakfasting very late, tapping eggs that he forgot to open--one of the surest signs of a young man downright and deep in love, as the General knew from experience--and surrounded by uncut sporting journals of past weeks, which dated from the day when his blow had struck him, as accurately as the watch of the drowned man marks his minute. Lady Camper had gone to Italy, and was in communication with her nephew: Reginald was not further explicit. His legs were very prominent in his despair, and his fingers frequently performed the part of blunt combs; consequently the General was impressed by his pa.s.sion for Elizabeth. The girl who, if she was often meditative, always met his eyes with a smile, and quietly said "Yes, papa," and "No, papa," gave him little concern as to the state of her feelings. Yet everybody said now that she was unhappy. Mrs. Barcop, the widow, raised her voice above the rest. So attentive was she to Elizabeth that the General had it kindly suggested to him, that some one was courting him through his daughter. He gazed at the widow. Now she was not much past thirty; and it was really singular--he could have laughed--thinking of Mrs. Barcop set him persistently thinking of Lady Camper. That is to say, his mad fancy reverted from the lady of perhaps thirty-five to the lady of seventy.
Such, thought he, is genius in a woman! Of his neighbours generally, Mrs. Baerens, the wife of a German merchant, an exquisite player on the pianoforte, was the most inclined to lead him to speak of Lady Camper.
She was a kind prattling woman, and was known to have been a governess before her charms withdrew the gastronomic Gottfried Baerens from his devotion to the well-served City club, where, as he exclaimed (ever turning fondly to his wife as he vocalized the compliment), he had found every necessity, every luxury, in life, "as you cannot have dem out of London--all save de female!" Mrs. Baerens, a lady of Teutonic extraction, was distinguishable as of that s.e.x; at least, she was not masculine. She spoke with great respect of Lady Camper and her family, and seemed to agree in the General"s eulogies of Lady Camper"s const.i.tution. Still he thought she eyed him strangely.
One April morning the General received a letter with the Italian postmark. Opening it with his usual calm and happy curiosity, he perceived that it was composed of pen-and-ink drawings. And suddenly his heart sank like a scuttled ship. He saw himself the victim of a caricature.
The first sketch had merely seemed picturesque, and he supposed it a clever play of fancy by some travelling friend, or perhaps an actual scene slightly exaggerated. Even on reading, "A distant view of the city of Wilsonople," he was only slightly enlightened. His heart beat still with befitting regularity. But the second and the third sketches betrayed the terrible hand. The distant view of the city of Wilsonople was fair with glittering domes, which, in the succeeding near view, proved to have been soap-bubbles, for a place of extreme flatness, begirt with crazy old-fashioned fortifications, was shown; and in the third view, representing the interior, stood for sole place of habitation, a sentry-box.
Most minutely drawn, and, alas! with fearful accuracy, a military gentleman in undress occupied the box. Not a doubt could exist as to the person it was meant to be.
The General tried hard to remain incredulous. He remembered too well who had called him Wilsonople.
But here was the extraordinary thing that sent him over the neighbourhood canva.s.sing for exclamations: on the fourth page was the outline of a lovely feminine hand, holding a pen, as in the act of shading, and under it these words: "What I say is, I say I think it exceedingly unladylike."
Now consider the General"s feelings when, turning to this fourth page, having these very words in his mouth, as the accurate expression of his thoughts, he discovered them written!
An enemy who antic.i.p.ates the actions of our mind, has a quality of the malignant divine that may well inspire terror. The senses of General Ople were struck by the aspect of a lurid G.o.ddess, who penetrated him, read him through, and had both power and will to expose and make him ridiculous for ever.