The loveliness of the hand, too, in a perplexing manner contested his denunciation of her conduct. It was ladylike eminently, and it involved him in a confused mixture of the moral and material, as great as young people are known to feel when they make the attempt to separate them, in one of their frenzies.
With a petty bitter laugh he folded the letter, put it in his breast- pocket, and sallied forth for a walk, chiefly to talk to himself about it. But as it absorbed him entirely, he showed it to the rector, whom he met, and what the rector said is of no consequence, for General Ople listened to no remarks, calling in succession on the Pollingtons, the Goslings, the Baerens, and others, early though it was, and the lords of those houses absent ama.s.sing h.o.a.rds; and to the ladies everywhere he displayed the sketches he had received, observing, that Wilsonople meant himself; and there he was, he said, pointing at the capped fellow in the sentry-box, done unmistakably. The likeness indeed was remarkable.
"She is a woman of genius," he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, with utter melancholy. Mrs.
Baerens, by the aid of a magnifying gla.s.s, a.s.sisted him to read a line under the sentry-box, that he had taken for a mere trembling dash; it ran, A gentlemanly residence.
"What eyes she has!" the General exclaimed; "I say it is miraculous what eyes she has at her time of . . . I was saying, I should never have known it was writing."
He sighed heavily. His shuddering sensitiveness to caricature was increased by a certain evident dread of the hand which struck; the knowing that he was absolutely bare to this woman, defenceless, open to exposure in his little whims, foibles, tricks, incompetencies, in what lay in his heart, and the words that would come to his tongue. He felt like a man haunted.
So deeply did he feel the blow, that people asked how it was that he could be so foolish as to dance about a.s.sisting Lady Camper in her efforts to make him ridiculous; he acted the parts of publisher and agent for the fearful caricaturist. In truth, there was a strangely double reason for his conduct; he danced about for sympathy, he had the intensest craving for sympathy, but more than this, or quite as much, he desired to have the powers of his enemy widely appreciated; in the first place, that he might be excused to himself for wincing under them, and secondly, because an awful admiration of her, that should be deepened by a corresponding sentiment around him, helped him to enjoy luxurious recollections of an hour when he was near making her his own--his own, in the holy abstract contemplation of marriage, without realizing their probable relative conditions after the ceremony.
"I say, that is the very image of her ladyship"s hand," he was especially fond of remarking, "I say it is a beautiful hand."
He carried the letter in his pocket-book; and beginning to fancy that she had done her worst, for he could not imagine an inventive malignity capable of pursuing the theme, he spoke of her treatment of him with compa.s.sionate regret, not badly a.s.sumed from being partly sincere.
Two letters dated in France, the one Dijon, the other Fontainebleau, arrived together; and as the General knew Lady Camper to be returning to England, he expected that she was anxious to excuse herself to him. His fingers were not so confident, for he tore one of the letters to open it.
The City of Wilsonople was recognizable immediately. So likewise was the sole inhabitant.
General Ople"s petty bitter laugh recurred, like a weak-chested patient"s cough in the shifting of our winds eastward.
A faceless woman"s shadow kneels on the ground near the sentry-box, weeping. A faceless shadow of a young man on horseback is beheld galloping toward a gulf. The sole inhabitant contemplates his largely substantial full fleshed face and figure in a gla.s.s.
Next, we see the standard of Great Britain furled; next, unfurled and borne by a troop of shadows to the sentrybox. The officer within says, "I say I should be very happy to carry it, but I cannot quit this gentlemanly residence."
Next, the standard is shown a.s.sailed by popguns. Several of the shadows are prostrate. "I was saying, I a.s.sure you that nothing but this gentlemanly residence prevents me from heading you," says the gallant officer.
General Ople trembled with protestant indignation when he saw himself reclining in a magnified sentry-box, while detachments of shadows hurry to him to show him the standard of his country trailing in the dust; and he is maliciously made to say, "I dislike responsibility. I say I am a fervent patriot, and very fond of my comforts, but I shun responsibility."
The second letter contained scenes between Wilsonople and the Moon.
He addresses her as his neighbour, and tells her of his triumphs over the s.e.x.
He requests her to inform him whether she is a "female," that she may be triumphed over.
He hastens past her window on foot, with his head bent, just as the General had been in the habit of walking.
He drives a mouse-pony furiously by.
He cuts down a tree, that she may peep through.
Then, from the Moon"s point of view, Wilsonople, a Silenus, is discerned in an arm-chair winking at a couple too plainly pouting their lips for a doubt of their intentions to be entertained.
A fourth letter arrived, bearing date of Paris. This one ill.u.s.trated Wilsonople"s courtship of the Moon, and ended with his "saying," in his peculiar manner, "In spite of her paint I could not have conceived her age to be so enormous."
How break off his engagement with the Lady Moon? Consent to none of her terms!
Little used as he was to read behind a veil, acuteness of suffering sharpened the General"s intelligence to a degree that sustained him in animated dialogue with each succeeding sketch, or poisoned arrow whirring at him from the moment his eyes rested on it; and here are a few samples:
"Wilsonople informs the Moon that she is "sweetly pretty."
"He thanks her with "thanks" for a handsome piece of lunar green cheese.
"He points to her, apparently telling some one, "my lady-friend."
"He sneezes "Bijou! bijou! bijou!""
They were trifles, but they attacked his habits of speech; and he began to grow more and more alarmingly absurd in each fresh caricature of his person.
He looked at himself as the malicious woman"s hand had shaped him. It was unjust; it was no resemblance--and yet it was! There was a corner of likeness left that leavened the lump; henceforth he must walk abroad with this distressing image of himself before his eyes, instead of the satisfactory reflex of the man who had, and was happy in thinking that he had, done mischief in his time. Such an end for a conquering man was too pathetic.
The General surprised himself talking to himself in something louder than a hum at neighbours" dinner-tables. He looked about and noticed that people were silently watching him.
CHAPTER VII
Lady Camper"s return was the subject of speculation in the neighbourhood, for most people thought she would cease to persecute the General with her preposterous and unwarrantable pen-and-ink sketches when living so closely proximate; and how he would behave was the question. Those who made a hero of him were sure he would treat her with disdain. Others were uncertain. He had been so severely hit that it seemed possible he would not show much spirit.
He, for his part, had come to entertain such dread of the post, that Lady Camper"s return relieved him of his morning apprehensions; and he would have forgiven her, though he feared to see her, if only she had promised to leave him in peace for the future. He feared to see her, because of the too probable furnishing of fresh matter for her ladyship"s hand. Of course he could not avoid being seen by her, and that was a particular misery. A gentlemanly humility, or demureness of aspect, when seen, would, he hoped, disarm his enemy. It should, he thought. He had borne unheard-of things. No one of his friends and acquaintances knew, they could not know, what he had endured. It has caused him fits of stammering. It had destroyed the composure of his gait. Elizabeth had informed him that he talked to himself incessantly, and aloud. She, poor child, looked pale too. She was evidently anxious about him.
Young Rolles, whom he had met now and then, persisted in praising his aunt"s good heart. So, perhaps, having satiated her revenge, she might now be inclined for peace, on the terms of distant civility.
"Yes! poor Elizabeth!" sighed the General, in pity of the poor girl"s disappointment; "poor Elizabeth! she little guesses what her father has gone through. Poor child! I say, she hasn"t an idea of my sufferings."
General Ople delivered his card at Lady Camper"s lodgegates and escaped to his residence in a state of p.r.i.c.kly heat that required the brushing of his hair with hard brushes for several minutes to comfort and re-establish him.
He had fallen to working in his garden, when Lady Camper"s card was brought to him an hour after the delivery of his own; a pleasing prompt.i.tude, showing signs of repentance, and suggesting to the General instantly some sharp sarcasms upon women, which he had come upon in quotations in the papers and the pulpit, his two main sources of information.
Instead of handing back the card to the maid, he stuck it in his hat and went on digging.
The first of a series of letters containing shameless realistic caricatures was handed to him the afternoon following. They came fast and thick. Not a day"s interval of grace was allowed. Niobe under the shafts of Diana was hardly less violently and mortally a.s.sailed. The deadliness of the attack lay in the ridicule of the daily habits of one of the most sensitive of men, as to his personal appearance, and the opinion of the world. He might have concealed the sketches, but he could not have concealed the bruises, and people were perpetually asking the unhappy General what he was saying, for he spoke to himself as if he were repeating something to them for the tenth time.
"I say," said he, "I say that for a lady, really an educated lady, to sit, as she must--I was saying, she must have sat in an attic to have the right view of me. And there you see--this is what she has done. This is the last, this is the afternoon"s delivery. Her ladyship has me correctly as to costume, but I could not exhibit such a sketch to ladies."
A back view of the General was displayed in his act of digging.
"I say I could not allow ladies to see it," he informed the gentlemen, who were suffered to inspect it freely.
"But you see, I have no means of escape; I am at her mercy from morning to night," the General said, with a quivering tongue, "unless I stay at home inside the house; and that is death to me, or unless I abandon the place, and my lease; and I shall--I say, I shall find nowhere in England for anything like the money or conveniences such a gent--a residence you would call fit for a gentleman. I call it a bi . . . it is, in short, a gem. But I shall have to go."
Young Rolles offered to expostulate with his aunt Angela.
The General said, "Tha . . . I thank you very much. I would not have her ladyship suppose I am so susceptible. I hardly know," he confessed pitiably, "what it is right to say, and what not--what not. I-I-I never know when I am not looking a fool. I hurry from tree to tree to shun the light. I am seriously affected in my appet.i.te. I say, I shall have to go."
Reginald gave him to understand that if he flew, the shafts would follow him, for Lady Camper would never forgive his running away, and was quite equal to publishing a book of the adventures of Wilsonople.