The most urgent of Dames is working herself up to a grey squall in her
detestation of imagerial epigrams. Otherwise Gower Woodseer’s dash at
the quintessential young man of wealth would prompt to the carrying of
it further, and telling how the tethered flutterer above a ‘devil on his
back on a river’ was beginning to pull if not drag his withholder and
teaser.
Fleetwood had almost a desire to see the small dot of humanity which
drew the breath from him;--and was indistinguishably the bubbly grin and
gurgle of the nurses, he could swear. He kicked at the bondage to our
common fleshly nature imposed on him by the mother of the little animal.
But there had been a mother to his father: odd movements of a warmish
curiosity brushed him when the cynic was not mounting guard. They were,
it seemed, external--no part of him: like blasts of a wayside furnace
across wintry air. They were, as it chanced, Nature’s woman in him
plucking at her separated partner, Custom’s man; something of an
oriental voluptuary on his isolated regal seat; and he would suck the
pleasures without a descent into the stale old ruts where Life’s convict
couple walk linked to one another, to their issue more.
There was also a cold curiosity to see the male infant such a mother
would have. The grandson of Old Lawless might turn out a rascal,--he
would be no mean one, no coward.
That mother, too, who must have been a touch astonished to find herself
a mother:--Fleetwood laughed a curt bark, and heard rebukes, and pleaded
the marriage-trap to the man of his word; devil and cherub were at
the tug, or say, dog and gentleman, a survival of the schoolboy--that
mother, a girl of the mountains, perhaps wanted no more than smoothing
by the world. ‘It is my husband’ sounded foolish, sounded freshish,--a
new note. Would she repeat it? The bit of simplicity would bear
repeating once. Gower Woodseer says the creature grows and studies to
perfect herself. She’s a good way off that, and may spoil herself in the
process; but she has a certain power. Her donkey obstinacy in refusing
compliance, and her pursuit of ‘my husband,’ and ability to drench him
with ridicule, do not exhibit the ordinary young female. She stamps her
impression on the people she meets. Her husband is shaken to confess it
likewise, despite a disagreement between them.
He has owned he is her husband: he has not disavowed the consequence.
That fellow, Gower Woodseer, might accuse the husband of virtually
lying, if he by his conduct implied her distastefulness or worse. By
heaven! as felon a deed as could be done. Argue the case anyhow, it
should be undone. Let her but cease to madden. For whatever the rawness
of the woman, she has qualities; and experience of the facile loves of
London very sharply defines her qualities. Think of her as raw, she has
the gift of rareness: forget the donkey obstinacy, her character grasps.
In the grasp of her character, one inclines, and her husband inclines,
to become her advocate. She has only to discontinue maddening.
The wealthy young noble prized any form of rareness wherever it was
visible, having no thought of the purchase of it, except with worship.
He could listen pleased to the talk of a Methodist minister sewing
bootleather. He picked up a roadside tramp and made a friend of him,
and valued the fellow’s honesty, submitted to his lectures, pardoned his
insolence. The sight of Carinthia’s narrow bedroom and strip of bed
over Sarah Winch’s Whitechapel shop had gone a step to drown the bobbing
Whitechapel Countess. At least, he had not been hunted by that gaunt
chalk-quarry ghost since his peep into the room. Own it! she likewise
has things to forgive. Women nurse their larvae of ideas about fair
dealing. But observe the distinction: aid if women understood justice
they would be the first to proclaim, that when two are tied together,
the one who does the other serious injury is more naturally excused than
the one who-tenfold abhorrent if a woman!--calls up the grotesque to
extinguish both.
With this apology for himself, Lord Fleetwood grew tolerant of the
person honourably avowed as his wife. So; therefore, the barrier between
him and his thoughts of her was broken. The thoughts carrying red doses
were selected. Finally, the taste to meet her sprouted. If agreeable,
she could be wooed; if barely agreeable, tormented; if disagreeable,
left as before.
Although it was the hazard of a die, he decided to follow his taste. Her
stay at the castle had kept him long from the duties of his business;
and he could imagine it a grievance if he pleased, but he put it aside.
Alighting at his chief manager’s office, he passed through the heated
atmosphere of black-browed, wiry little rebels, who withheld the salute
as they lounged: a posture often preceding the spring in compulsorily
idle workers. He was aware of instinct abroad, an antagonism to the
proprietor’s rights. They roused him to stand by them, and were his own
form of instinct, handsomely clothed. It behoved that he should examine
them and the claims against them, to be sure of his ground. He and Mr.
Howell Edwards debated the dispute for an hour; agreeing, partially
differing. There was a weakness on the principle in Edwards. These
fellows fixed to the spot are for compromise too much. An owner of mines
has no steady reckoning of income if the rate of wage is perpetually to
shift according to current, mostly ignorant, versions of the prosperity
of the times. Are we so prosperous? It is far from certain. And if the
rate ascends, the question of easing it down to suit the discontinuance
of prosperity agitating our exchequer--whose demand is for
fixity--perplexes us further.
However, that was preliminary. He and Howell Edwards would dine and
wrangle it out. The earl knew himself a hot disputant after dinner.
Incidentally he heard of Lady Fleetwood as a guest of Mrs. Wythan;
and the circumstance was injurious to him because he stood against Mr.
Wythan’s pampering system with his men.
Ines up at the castle smelt of beer, and his eyelids were sottish.
Nothing to do tries the virtue of the best. He sought his excuse in a
heavy lamentation over my lady’s unjust suspicion of him,--a known man
of honour, though he did serve his paytron.
The cause of Lady Fleetwood’s absence was exposed to her outraged lord,
who had sent the man purely to protect her at this castle, where she
insisted on staying. The suspicion cast on the dreary lusher was the
wife’s wild shot at her husband. One could understand a silly woman’s
passing terror. Her acting under the dictate of it struck the husband’s
ribbed breast as a positive clap of hostilities between them across a
chasm.
His previous placable mood was immediately conceived by him to have been
one of his fits of generosity; a step to a frightful dutiful embrace
of an almost repulsive object. He flung the thought of her back on her
Whitechapel. She returned from that place with smiles, dressed in a
laundry white with a sprinkle of smuts, appearing to him as an adversary
armed and able to strike. There was a blow, for he chewed resentments;
and these were goaded by a remembered shyness of meeting her eyes when
he rounded up the slope of the hill, in view of his castle, where he
supposed she would be awaiting ‘my husband.’ The silence of her absence
was lively mockery of that anticipation.
Gower came on him sauntering about the grounds.
‘You’re not very successful down here,’ Fleetwood said, without
greeting.
‘The countess likes the air of this country,’ said Gower, evasively,
impertinently, and pointlessly; offensively to the despot employing him
to be either subservient or smart.
‘I wish her to leave it.’
‘She wishes to see you first.’
‘She takes queer measures. I start to-morrow for my yacht at Cardiff.’
There the matter ended; for Fleetwood fell to talking of the mines. At
dinner and after dinner it was the topic, and after Howell Edwards had
departed.
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 petitioning 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
assured 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 ejaculated. ‘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 noble 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, passed from a meditative look to a malicious half-laugh. ‘You
seem to have studied the “most noble 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 amusement.
‘You see the lady to be the “most noble of ladies” through the warming
you get by passing into the feelings of Madge Winch?’
Sarcasm was in the tone, and beneath it a thrill of compassionateness
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
damnable 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?’
‘All should. I don’t presume to allude to Lady Fleetwood.’
‘She has not charged you to complain?’
‘Lady Fleetwood is not the person to complain or condescend to speak of
injuries.’
‘She insults me with her insane suspicion.’
A swollen vein on the young nobleman’s forehead went to confirm the idea
at the Wythans’ that he was capable of mischief. They were right; he
was as capable of villany as of nobility. But he happened to be
thanking Gower Woodseer’s whip for the comfortable numbness he felt at
Carinthia’s behaviour, while detesting her for causing him to desire it
and endure it, and exonerate his prosy castigator.
He was ignorant of the revenge he had on Gower, whose diction had not
been particularly estimable. In the feebleness of a man vainly courting
sleep, the disarmed philosopher tossed from one side to the other
through the remaining hours of darkness, polishing sentences that were
natural spouts of choicest diction; and still the earl’s virulent small
sneer rankled. He understood why, after a time. The fervour of advocacy,
which inspires high diction, had been wanting. He had sought more
to lash the earl with his personal disgust and partly to parade his
contempt of a lucrative dependency--than he had felt for the countess.
No wonder his diction was poor. It was a sample of limp thinness; a sort
of tongue of a Master Slender:--flavourless, unsatisfactory, considering
its object: measured to be condemned by its poor achievement. He had
nevertheless a heart to feel for the dear lady, and heat the pleading
for her, especially when it ran to its object, as along a shaft of the
sun-rays, from the passionate devotedness of that girl Madge.
He brooded over it till it was like a fire beneath him to drive him from
his bed and across the turfy roller of the hill to the Wythans’, in
the front of an autumnal sunrise--grand where the country is shorn
of surface decoration, as here and there we find some unadorned human
creature, whose bosom bears the ball of warmth.