"My dear lady, it is your mind; I say, it is your mind: I was saying, I am in love with your mind," the General endeavoured to a.s.sure her, and himself too.
"Or is it my powers as an artist?"
"Your mind, your extraordinary powers of mind."
"Well," said Lady Camper, "a veteran General of Brigade is as good a crutch as a childless old grannam can have."
And as a crutch, General Ople, parading her grounds with the aged woman, found himself used and treated.
The accuracy of his perceptions might be questioned. He was like a man stunned by some great tropical fruit, which responds to the longing of his eyes by falling on his head; but it appeared to him, that she increased in bitterness at every step they took, as if determined to make him realize her wrinkles.
He was even so inconsequent, or so little recognized his position, as to object in his heart to hear himself called Wilson.
It is true that she uttered Wilsonople as if the names formed one word.
And on a second occasion (when he inclined to feel hurt) she remarked, "I fear me, Wilsonople, if we are to speak plainly, thou art but a fool."
He, perhaps, naturally objected to that. He was, however, giddy, and barely knew.
Yet once more the magical woman changed. All semblance of harshness, and harridan-like spike-tonguedness vanished when she said adieu.
The astronomer, looking at the crusty jag and scoria of the magnified moon through his telescope, and again with naked eyes at the soft-beaming moon, when the crater-ridges are faint as eyebrow-pencillings, has a similar sharp alternation of prospect to that which mystified General Ople.
But between watching an orb that is only variable at our caprice, and contemplating a woman who shifts and quivers ever with her own, how vast the difference!
And consider that this woman is about to be one"s wife! He could have believed (if he had not known full surely that such things are not) he was in the hands of a witch.
Lady Camper"s "adieu" was perfectly beautiful--a kind, cordial, intimate, above all, to satisfy his present craving, it was a lady-like adieu--the adieu of a delicate and elegant woman, who had hardly left her anchorage by forty to sail into the fifties.
Alas! he had her word for it, that she was not less than seventy. And, worse, she had betrayed most melancholy signs of sourness and agedness as soon as he had sworn himself to her fast and fixed.
"The road is open to you to retreat," were her last words.
"My road," he answered gallantly, "is forward."
He was drawing backward as he said it, and something provoked her to smile.
CHAPTER V
It is a n.o.ble thing to say that your road is forward, and it befits a man of battles. General Ople was too loyal a gentleman to think of any other road. Still, albeit not gifted with imagination, he could not avoid the feeling that he had set his face to Winter. He found himself suddenly walking straight into the heart of Winter, and a nipping Winter. For her ladyship had proved acutely nipping. His little customary phrases, to which Lady Camper objected, he could see no harm in whatever. Conversing with her in the privacy of domestic life would never be the flowing business that it is for other men. It would demand perpetual vigilance, hop, skip, jump, flounderings, and apologies.
This was not a pleasing prospect.
On the other hand, she was the niece of an earl. She was wealthy. She might be an excellent friend to Elizabeth; and she could be, when she liked, both commandingly and bewitchingly ladylike.
Good! But he was a General Officer of not more than fifty-five, in his full vigour, and she a woman of seventy!
The prospect was bleak. It resembled an outlook on the steppes. In point of the discipline he was to expect, he might be compared to a raw recruit, and in his own home!
However, she was a woman of mind. One would be proud of her.
But did he know the worst of her? A dreadful presentiment, that he did not know the worst of her, rolled an ocean of gloom upon General Ople, striking out one solitary thought in the obscurity, namely, that he was about to receive punishment for retiring from active service to a life of ease at a comparatively early age, when still in marching trim. And the shadow of the thought was, that he deserved the punishment!
He was in his garden with the dawn. Hard exercise is the best of opiates for dismal reflections. The General discomposed his daughter by offering to accompany her on her morning ride before breakfast. She considered that it would fatigue him. "I am not a man of eighty!" he cried. He could have wished he had been.
He led the way to the park, where they soon had sight of young Rolles, who checked his horse and spied them like a vedette, but, perceiving that he had been seen, came cantering, and hailing the General with hearty wonderment.
"And what"s this the world says, General?" said he. "But we all applaud your taste. My aunt Angela was the handsomest woman of her time."
The General murmured in confusion, "Dear me!" and looked at the young man, thinking that he could not have known the time.
"Is all arranged, my dear General?"
"Nothing is arranged, and I beg--I say I beg . . . I came out for fresh air and pace."..
The General rode frantically.
In spite of the fresh air, he was unable to eat at breakfast. He was bound, of course, to present himself to Lady Camper, in common civility, immediately after it.
And first, what were the phrases he had to avoid uttering in her presence? He could remember only the "gentlemanly residence." And it was a gentlemanly residence, he thought as he took leave of it. It was one, neatly named to fit the place. Lady Camper is indeed a most eccentric person! he decided from his experience of her.
He was rather astonished that young Rolles should have spoken so coolly of his aunt"s leaning to matrimony; but perhaps her exact age was unknown to the younger members of her family.
This idea refreshed him by suggesting the extremely honourable nature of Lady Camper"s uncomfortable confession.
He himself had an uncomfortable confession to make. He would have to speak of his income. He was living up to the edges of it.
She is an upright woman, and I must be the same! he said, fortunately not in her hearing.
The subject was disagreeable to a man sensitive on the topic of money, and feeling that his prudence had recently been misled to keep up appearances.
Lady Camper was in her garden, reclining under her parasol. A chair was beside her, to which, acknowledging the salutation of her suitor, she waved him.
"You have met my nephew Reginald this morning, General?"
"Curiously, in the park, this morning, before breakfast, I did, yes.
Hem! I, I say I did meet him. Has your ladyship seen him?"
"No. The park is very pretty in the early morning."
"Sweetly pretty."
Lady Camper raised her head, and with the mildness of a.s.sured dictatorship, p.r.o.nounced: "Never say that before me."
"I submit, my lady," said the poor scourged man.
"Why, naturally you do. Vulgar phrases have to be endured, except when our intimates are guilty, and then we are not merely offended, we are compromised by them. You are still of the mind in which you left me yesterday? You are one day older. But I warn you, so am I."