CONCLUSION OF THE BATH EPISODE
The friends of Miss Penrhys were ill advised in trying to cry down a
man like my father. Active persecution was the breath of life to him.
When untroubled he was apt to let both his ambition and his dignity
slumber. The squibs and scandal set afloat concerning him armed his
wit, nerved his temper, touched him with the spirit of enterprise; he
became a new creature. I lost sight of certain characteristics which I
had begun to ponder over critically. I believed with all my heart that
circumstances were blameable for much that did not quite please me.
Upon the question of his magnanimity, as well as of his courage, there
could not be two opinions. He would neither retort nor defend himself.
I perceived some grandeur in his conduct, without, however,
appreciating it cordially, as I did a refinement of discretion about
him that kept him from brushing good taste while launched in
ostentatious displays. He had a fine tact and a keen intuition. He may
have thought it necessary to throw a little dust in my eyes; but I
doubt his having done it, for he had only, as he knew, to make me
jealous to blind me to his faults utterly, and he refrained.
In his allusions to the young lady he was apologetic, affectionate; one
might have fancied oneself listening to a gracious judge who had well
weighed her case, and exculpated her from other excesses than that of a
generous folly. Jorian DeWitt, a competent critic, pronounced his
behaviour consummate at all points. For my behoof, he hinted antecedent
reverses to the picture: meditating upon which, I traced them to the
fatal want of money, and that I might be able to fortify him in case of
need, I took my own counsel, and wrote to my aunt for the loan of as
large a sum as she could afford to send. Her eagerness for news of our
doings was insatiable. 'You do not describe her,' she replied, not
naming Miss Penrhys; and again, 'I can form no image of her. Your
accounts of her are confusing. Tell me earnestly, do you like her? She
must be very wilful, but is she really nice? I want to know how she
appears to my Harry's mind.'
My father borrowed these letters, and returning them to me, said, 'A
good soul! the best of women! There—there is a treasure lost!' His
forehead was clouded in speaking. He recommended me to assure my aunt
that she would never have to take a family interest in Miss Penrhys.
But this was not deemed perfectly satisfactory at Riversley. My aunt
wrote: 'Am I to understand that you, Harry, raise objections to her?
Think first whether she is in herself objectionable. She is rich, she
may be prudent, she may be a forethoughtful person. She may not be able
to support a bitter shock of grief. She may be one who can help. She
may not be one whose heart will bear it. Put your own feelings aside,
my dearest. Our duties cannot ever be clear to us until we do. It is
possible for headstrong wilfulness and secret tenderness to go
together. Think whether she is capable of sacrifice before you compel
her to it. Do not inflict misery wantonly. One would like to see her.
Harry, I brood on your future; that is why I seem to you
preternaturally anxious about you.'
She seemed to me preternaturally anxious about Miss Penrhys.
My father listened in silence to my flippant satire on women's letters.
He answered after a pause,
'Our Jorian says that women's letters must be read like anagrams. To
put it familiarly, they are like a child's field of hop-scotch. You may
have noticed the urchins at their game: a bit of tile, and a variety of
compartments to pass it through to the base, hopping. Or no, Richie,
pooh! 'tis an unworthy comparison, this hopscotch. I mean, laddie, they
write in zigzags; and so will you when your heart trumpets in your ear.
Tell her, tell that dear noble good woman—say, we are happy, you and I,
and alone, and shall be; and do me the favour—she loves you, my
son—address her sometimes—she has been it—call her “mother”; she will
like it she deserves—nothing shall supplant her!'
He lost his voice.
She sent me three hundred pounds; she must have supposed the occasion
pressing. Thus fortified against paternal improvidence, I expended a
hundred in the purchase of a horse, and staked the remainder on him in
a match, and was beaten. Disgusted with the horse, I sold him for half
his purchase-money, and with that sum paid a bill to maintain my
father's credit in the town. Figuratively speaking, I looked at my
hands as astonished as I had been when the poor little rascal in the
street snatched my cake, and gave me the vision of him gorging it in
the flurried alley of the London crowd.
'Money goes,' I remarked.
'That is the general experience of the nature of money,' said my father
freshly; 'but nevertheless you will be surprised to find how
extraordinarily few are the people to make allowance for particular
cases. It plays the trick with everybody, and almost nobody lets it
stand as a plea for the individual. Here is Jorian, and you, my son,
and perhaps your aunt Dorothy, and upon my word, I think I have
numbered all I know—or, ay, Sukey Sampleman, I should not omit her in
an honourable list—and that makes positively all I know who would
commiserate a man touched on the shoulder by a sheriff's officer—not
that such an indignity is any longer done to me.'
'I hope we have seen the last of Shylock's great-grandnephew,' said I
emphatically.
'Merely to give you the instance, Richie. Ay! I hope so, I hope so! But
it is the nature of money that you never can tell if the boarding's
sound, once be dependent upon it. But this is talk for tradesmen.'
Thinking it so myself, I had not attempted to discover the source of my
father's income. Such as it was, it was paid half-yearly, and spent
within a month of the receipt, for the most signal proof possible of
its shameful insufficiency. Thus ten months of the year at least he
lived protesting, and many with him, compulsorily. For two months he
was a brilliant man. I penetrated his mystery enough to abstain from
questioning him, and enough to determine that on my coming of age he
should cease to be a pensioner, petitioner, and adventurer. He aimed at
a manifest absurdity.
In the meantime, after the lesson I had received as to the nature of
money, I saw with some alarm my father preparing to dig a great pit for
it. He had no doubt performed wonders. Despite of scandal and tattle,
and the deadly report of a penniless fortune-hunter having fascinated
the young heiress, he commanded an entrance to the receptions of both
the rival ladies dominant. These ladies, Lady Wilts and Lady Denewdney,
who moved each in her select half-circle, and could heretofore be
induced by none to meet in a common centre, had pledged themselves to
honour with their presence a ball he proposed to give to the choice
world here assembled on a certain illuminated day of the calendar.
'So I have now possession of Bath, Richie,' said he, twinkling to
propitiate me, lest I should suspect him of valuing his achievements
highly. He had, he continued, promised Hickson of the Fourth Estate,
that he would, before leaving the place, do his utmost to revive the
ancient glories of Bath: Bath had once set the fashion to the kingdom;
why not again? I might have asked him, why at all, or why at his
expense; but his lead was irresistible. Captain DeWitt and his valet,
and I, and a score of ladies, scores of tradesmen, were rushing,
reluctant or not, on a torrent. My part was to show that I was an
athlete, and primarily that I could fence and shoot. 'It will do no
harm to let it be known,' said DeWitt. He sat writing letters
incessantly. My father made the tour of his fair stewardesses from noon
to three, after receiving in audience his jewellers, linen-drapers,
carpenters, confectioners, from nine in the morning till twelve. At
three o'clock business ceased. Workmen then applying to him for
instructions were despatched to the bar of the hotel, bearing the
recommendation to the barmaid not to supply them refreshment if they
had ever in their lives been seen drunk. At four he dressed for
afternoon parade. Nor could his enemy have said that he was not the
chief voice and eye along his line of march. His tall full figure
maintained a superior air without insolence, and there was a leaping
beam in his large blue eyes, together with the signification of
movement coming to his kindly lips, such as hardly ever failed to waken
smiles of greeting. People smiled and bowed, and forgot their
curiosity, forgot even to be critical, while he was in sight. I can say
this, for I was acutely critical of their bearing; the atmosphere of
the place was never perfectly pleasing to me.
My attitude of watchful reserve, and my reputation as the heir of
immense wealth, tended possibly to constrain a certain number of the
inimical party to be ostensibly civil. Lady Wilts, who did me the
honour to patronize me almost warmly, complimented me on my manner of
backing him, as if I were the hero; but I felt his peculiar charm; she
partly admitted it, making a whimsical mouth, saying, in allusion to
Miss Penrhys, 'I, you know, am past twenty. At twenty forty is
charming; at forty twenty.'
Where I served him perhaps was in showing my resolution to protect him:
he had been insulted before my arrival. The male relatives of Miss
Penrhys did not repeat the insult; they went to Lady Wilts and groaned
over their hard luck in not having the option of fighting me. I was, in
her phrase, a new piece on the board, and checked them. Thus, if they
provoked a challenge from me, they brought the destructive odour of
powder about the headstrong creature's name. I was therefore of use to
him so far. I leaned indolently across the rails of the promenade while
she bent and chattered in his ear, and her attendant cousin and
cavalier chewed vexation in the form of a young mustachio's curl. His
horse fretted; he murmured deep notes, and his look was savage; but he
was bound to wait on her, and she would not go until it suited her
pleasure. She introduced him to me—as if conversation could be carried
on between two young men feeling themselves simply pieces on the board,
one giving check, and the other chafing under it! I need not say that I
disliked my situation. It was worse when my father took to bowing to
her from a distance, unobservant of her hand's prompt pull at the reins
as soon as she saw him. Lady Wilts had assumed the right of a woman
still possessing attractions to exert her influence with him on behalf
of the family, for I had done my best to convince her that he
entertained no serious thought of marrying, and decidedly would not
marry without my approval. He acted on her advice to discourage the
wilful girl.
'How is it I am so hateful to you?' Miss Penrhys accosted me abruptly.
I fancied she must have gone mad, and an interrogative frown was my
sole answer.
'Oh! I hear that you pronounce me everywhere unendurable,' she
continued. 'You are young, and you misjudge me in some way, and I
should be glad if you knew me better. By-and-by, in Wales.—Are you fond
of mountain scenery? We might be good friends; my temper is not bad—at
least, I hope not. Heaven knows what one's relatives think of one. Will
you visit us? I hear you have promised your confidante, Lady Wilts.'
At a dancing party where we met, she was thrown on my hands by her
ungovernable vehemence, and I, as I had told Lady Wilts, not being able
to understand the liking of twenty for forty (fifty would have been
nearer the actual mark, or sixty), offered her no lively sympathy. I
believe she had requested my father to pay public court to her. If
Captain DeWitt was to be trusted, she desired him to dance, and dance
with her exclusively, and so confirm and defy the tattle of the town;
but my father hovered between the dowagers. She in consequence declined
to dance, which was the next worse thing she could do. An aunt, a
miserable woman, was on her left; on her right she contrived, too
frequently for my peace of mind, to reserve a vacant place for me, and
she eyed me intently across the room, under her persistent brows, until
perforce I was drawn to her side. I had to listen to a repetition of
sharp queries and replies, and affect a flattered gaiety, feeling
myself most uncomfortably, as Captain DeWitt (who watched us) said,
Chip the son of Block the father. By fixing the son beside her, she
defeated the father's scheme of coldness, and made it appear a
concerted piece of policy. Even I saw that. I saw more than I grasped.
Love for my father was to my mind a natural thing, a proof of taste and
goodness; women might love him; but the love of a young girl with the
morning's mystery about her! and for my progenitor!—a girl (as I
reflected in the midst of my interjections) well-built, clear-eyed,
animated, clever, with soft white hands and pretty feet; how could it
be? She was sombre as a sunken fire until he at last came round to her,
and then her sudden vivacity was surprising.
Affairs were no further advanced when I had to obey the squire's
commands and return to Riversley, missing the night of the grand ball
with no profound regret, except for my father's sake. He wrote soon
after one of his characteristic letters, to tell me that the ball had
been a success. Immediately upon this announcement, he indulged
luxurious reflections, as his manner was:
'To have stirred up the old place and given it something to dream of
for the next half century, is a satisfaction, Richie. I have a kindness
for Bath. I leave it with its factions reconciled, its tea-tables
furnished with inexhaustible supplies of the chief thing necessary, and
the persuasion firmly established in my own bosom that it is impossible
to revive the past, so we must march with the age. And let me add, all
but every one of the bills happily discharged, to please you. Pray, fag
at your German. If (as I myself confess to) you have enjoyment of old
ways, habits, customs, and ceremonies, look to Court life. It is only
in Courts that a man may now air a leg; and there the women are works
of Art. If you are deficient in calves (which my boy, thank heaven!
will never be charged with) you are there found out, and in fact every
deficiency, every qualification, is at once in patent exhibition at a
Court. I fancy Parliament for you still, and that is no impediment as a
step. Jorian would have you sit and wallow in ease, and buy (by the
way, we might think of it) a famous Burgundy vineyard (for an
investment), devote the prime of your life to the discovery of a cook,
your manhood to perfect the creature's education—so forth; I imagine
you are to get five years of ample gratification (a promise hardly to
be relied on) in the sere leaf, and so perish. Take poor Jorian for an
example of what the absence of ambition brings men to. I treasure
Jorian, I hoard the poor fellow, to have him for a lesson to my boy.
Witty and shrewd, and a masterly tactician (I wager he would have won
his spurs on the field of battle), you see him now living for one hour
of the day—absolutely twenty-three hours of the man's life are chained
slaves, beasts of burden, to the four-and-twentieth! So, I repeat, fag
at your German.
'Miss Penrhys retires to her native Wales; Jorian and I on to London,
to the Continent. Plinlimmon guard us all! I send you our local
newspapers. That I cut entrechats is false. It happens to be a thing I
could do, and not an Englishman in England except myself; only I did
not do it. I did appear in what I was educated to believe was the
evening suit of a gentleman, and I cannot perceive the immodesty of
showing my leg. A dress that is not indecent, and is becoming to me,
and is the dress of my fathers, I wear, and I impose it on the
generation of my sex. However, I dined Hickson of the Fourth Estate
(Jorian considers him hungry enough to eat up his twentieth before he
dies—I forget the wording of the mot), that he might know I was without
rancour in the end, as originally I had been without any intention of
purchasing his allegiance. He offered me his columns; he wished me luck
with the heiress; by his Gods, he swore he worshipped entrechats, and
held a silk leg the most admirable work of the manufactures. “Sir,
you're a gentleman,” says he; “you're a nobleman, sir; you're a prince,
you're a star of the first magnitude.” Cries Jorian, “Retract that,
scum! you see nothing large but what you dare to think neighbours you,”
and quarrels the inebriate dog. And this is the maker and destroyer of
reputations in his day! I study Hickson as a miraculous engine of the
very simplest contrivance; he is himself the epitome of a verdict on
his period. Next day he disclaimed in his opposition penny sheet the
report of the entrechats, and “the spectators laughing consumedly,” and
sent me (as I had requested him to do) the names of his daughters, to
whom I transmit little comforting presents, for if they are nice
children such a parent must afflict them.
'Cultivate Lady Wilts. You have made an impression. She puts you
forward as a good specimen of our young men. 'Hem! madam.
'But, my dear boy, as I said, we cannot revive the past. I acknowledge
it. Bath rebukes my last fit of ambition, and the experience is very
well worth the expense. You have a mind, Richie, for discussing outlay,
upon which I congratulate you, so long as you do not overlook
equivalents. The system of the world is barter varied by robbery. Show
that you have something in hand, and you enjoy the satisfaction of
knowing that you were not robbed. I pledge you my word to it—I shall
not repeat Bath. And mark you, an heiress is never compromised. I am
not, I hope, responsible for every creature caught up in my circle of
attraction. Believe me, dear boy, I should consult you, and another
one, estimable beyond mortal speech! if I had become
involved—impossible! No; I am free of all fresh chains, because of the
old ones. Years will not be sufficient for us when you and I once begin
to talk in earnest, when I open! To resume—so I leave Bath with a light
conscience. Mixed with pleasant recollections is the transient regret
that you were not a spectator of the meeting of the Wilts and Denewdney
streams. Jorian compared them to the Rhone and the—I forget the name of
the river below Geneva—dirtyish; for there was a transparent difference
in the Denewdney style of dress, and did I choose it I could sit and
rule those two factions as despotically as Buonaparte his Frenchmen.
Ask me what I mean by scaling billows, Richie. I will some day tell
you. I have done it all my life, and here I am. But I thank heaven I
have a son I love, and I can match him against the best on earth, and
henceforward I live for him, to vindicate and right the boy, and place
him in his legitimate sphere. From this time I take to looking
exclusively forward, and I labour diligently. I have energies.
'Not to boast, darling old son, I tell truth; I am only happy when my
heart is beating near you. Here comes the mother in me pumping up.
Adieu. Lebe wohl. The German!—the German!—may God in his
Barmherzigkeit!—Tell her I never encouraged the girl, have literally
nothing to trace a temporary wrinkle on my forehead as regards
conscience. I say, may it please Providence to make you a good German
scholar by the day of your majority. Hurrah for it! Present my humble
warm respects to your aunt Dorothy. I pray to heaven nightly for one of
its angels on earth. Kunst, Wissenschaft, Ehre, Liebe. Die Liebe. Quick
at the German poets. Frau: Fräulein. I am actually dazzled at the
prospect of our future. To be candid, I no longer see to write. Grüss'
dich herzlich. From Vienna to you next. Lebe wohl!'
My aunt Dorothy sent a glance at the letter while I was folding it
evidently thinking my unwillingness to offer it a sign of bad news or
fresh complications. She spoke of Miss Penrhys.
'Oh! that's over,' said I. 'Heiresses soon get consoled.'
She accused me of having picked up a vulgar idea. I maintained that it
was my father's.
'It cannot be your father's,' said she softly; and on affirming that he
had uttered it and written it, she replied in the same tone, more
effective than the ordinary language of conviction, 'He does not think
it.'
The rage of a youth to prove himself in the right of an argument was
insufficient to make me lay the letter out before other eyes than my
own, and I shrank from exposing it to compassionate gentle eyes that
would have pleaded similar allowances to mine for the wildness of the
style. I should have thanked, but despised the intelligence of one who
framed my excuses for my father, just as the squire, by abusing him,
would have made me a desperate partisan in a minute. The vitality of
the delusion I cherished was therefore partly extinct; not so the love;
yet the love of him could no longer shake itself free from oppressive
shadows.
Out of his circle of attraction books were my resource.