THE MAGNETIC AGE
It was now, as Sir Austin had written it down, The Magnetic Age: the
Age of violent attractions, when to hear mention of love is
dangerous, and to see it, a communication of the disease. People at
Raynham were put on their guard by the baronet, and his reputation
for wisdom was severely criticized in consequence of the injunctions
he thought fit to issue through butler and housekeeper down to the
lower household, for the preservation of his son from any visible
symptom of the passion. A footman and two housemaids are believed
to have been dismissed on the report of heavy Benson that they were
in or inclining to the state; upon which an under-cook and a
dairymaid voluntarily threw up their places, averring that "they did
not want no young men, but to have their sex spied after by an old
wretch like that," indicating the ponderous butler, "was a little
too much for a Christian woman," and then they were ungenerous
enough to glance at Benson's well-known marital calamity, hinting
that some men met their deserts. So intolerable did heavy Benson's
espionage become, that Raynham would have grown depopulated of its
womankind had not Adrian interfered, who pointed out to the baronet
what a fearful arm his butler was wielding. Sir Austin acknowledged
it despondently. "It only shows," said he, with a fine spirit of
justice, "how all but impossible it is to legislate where there are
women!"
"I do not object," he added; "I hope I am too just to object to the
exercise of their natural inclinations. All I ask from them is
discreetness."
"Ay," said Adrian, whose discreetness was a marvel.
"No gadding about in couples," continued the baronet, "no kissing in
public. Such occurrences no boy should witness. Whenever people of
both sexes are thrown together, they will be silly; and where they
are high-fed, uneducated, and barely occupied, it must be looked for
as a matter of course. Let it be known that I only require
discreetness."
Discreetness, therefore, was instructed to reign at the Abbey. Under
Adrian's able tuition the fairest of its domestics acquired that
virtue.
Discreetness, too, was enjoined to the upper household. Sir Austin,
who had not previously appeared to notice the case of Lobourne's
hopeless curate, now desired Mrs. Doria to interdict, or at least
discourage, his visits, for the appearance of the man was that of an
embodied sigh and groan.
"Really, Austin!" said Mrs. Doria, astonished to find her brother
more awake than she had supposed, "I have never allowed him to
hope."
"Let him see it, then," replied the baronet; "let him see it."
"The man amuses me," said Mrs. Doria. "You know, we have few
amusements here, we inferior creatures. I confess I should like a
barrel-organ better; that reminds one of town and the opera; and
besides, it plays more than one tune. However, since you think my
society bad for him, let him stop away."
With the self-devotion of a woman she grew patient and sweet the
moment her daughter Clare was spoken of, and the business of her
life in view. Mrs. Doria's maternal heart had betrothed the two
cousins, Richard and Clare; had already beheld them espoused and
fruitful. For this she yielded the pleasures of town; for this she
immured herself at Raynham; for this she bore with a thousand
follies, exactions, inconveniences, things abhorrent to her, and
heaven knows what forms of torture and self-denial, which are
smilingly endured by that greatest of voluntary martyrs--a mother
with a daughter to marry. Mrs. Doria, an amiable widow, had surely
married but for her daughter Clare. The lady's hair no woman could
possess without feeling it her pride. It was the daily theme of her
lady's-maid,--a natural aureole to her head. She was gay, witty,
still physically youthful enough to claim a destiny; and she
sacrificed it to accomplish her daughter's! sacrificed, as with
heroic scissors, hair, wit, gaiety--let us not attempt to enumerate
how much! more than may be said. And she was only one of thousands;
thousands who have no portion of the hero's reward; for he may
reckon on applause, and condolence, and sympathy, and honour; they,
poor slaves! must look for nothing but the opposition of their own
sex and the sneers of ours. O, Sir Austin! had you not been so
blinded, what an Aphorism might have sprung from this point of
observation! Mrs. Doria was coolly told, between sister and brother,
that during the Magnetic Age her daughter's presence at Raynham was
undesirable. Instead of nursing offence, her sole thought was the
mountain of prejudice she had to contend against. She bowed, and
said, Clare wanted sea-air--she had never quite recovered the shock
of that dreadful night. How long, Mrs. Doria wished to know, might
the Peculiar Period be expected to last?
"That," said Sir Austin, "depends. A year, perhaps, he is entering
on it. I shall be most grieved to lose you, Helen. Clare is now--how
old?"
"Seventeen."
"She is marriageable."
"Marriageable, Austin! at seventeen! don't name such a thing. My
child shall not be robbed of her youth."
"Our women marry early, Helen."
"My child shall not!"
The baronet reflected a moment. He did not wish to lose his sister.
"As you are of that opinion, Helen," said he, "perhaps we may still
make arrangements to retain you with us. Would you think it
advisable to send Clare--she should know discipline--to some
establishment for a few months?"...
"To an asylum, Austin?" cried Mrs. Doria, controlling her
indignation as well as she could.
"To some select superior seminary, Helen. There are such to be
found."
"Austin!" Mrs. Doria exclaimed, and had to fight with a moisture in
her eyes. "Unjust! absurd!" she murmured. The baronet thought it a
natural proposition that Clare should be a bride or a schoolgirl.
"I cannot leave my child." Mrs. Doria trembled. "Where she goes, I
go. I am aware that she is only one of our sex, and therefore of no
value to the world, but she is my child. I will see, poor dear, that
you have no cause to complain of her."
"I thought," Sir Austin remarked, "that you acquiesced in my views
with regard to my son."
"Yes--generally," said Mrs. Doria, and felt culpable that she had
not before, and could not then, tell her brother that he had set up
an Idol in his house--an Idol of flesh! more retributive and
abominable than wood or brass or gold. But she had bowed to the Idol
too long--she had too entirely bound herself to gain her project by
subserviency. She had, and she dimly perceived it, committed a
greater fault in tactics, in teaching her daughter to bow to the
Idol also. Love of that kind Richard took for tribute. He was
indifferent to Clare's soft eyes. The parting kiss he gave her was
ready and cold as his father could desire. Sir Austin now grew
eloquent to him in laudation of manly pursuits: but Richard thought
his eloquence barren, his attempts at companionship awkward, and all
manly pursuits and aims, life itself, vain and worthless. To what
end? sighed the blossomless youth, and cried aloud, as soon as he
was relieved of his father's society, what was the good of anything?
Whatever he did--whichever path he selected, led back to Raynham.
And whatever he did, however wretched and wayward he showed himself,
only confirmed Sir Austin more and more in the truth of his
previsions. Tom Bakewell, now the youth's groom, had to give the
baronet a report of his young master's proceedings, in common with
Adrian, and while there was no harm to tell, Tom spoke out. "He do
ride like fire every day to Pig's Snout," naming the highest hill in
the neighbourhood, "and stand there and stare, never movin', like a
mad 'un. And then hoam agin all slack as if he'd been beaten in a
race by somebody."
"There is no woman in that!" mused the baronet. "He would have
ridden back as hard as he went," reflected this profound scientific
humanist, "had there been a woman in it. He would shun vast
expanses, and seek shade, concealment, solitude. The desire for
distances betokens emptiness and undirected hunger: when the heart
is possessed by an image we fly to wood and forest, like the
guilty."
Adrian's report accused his pupil of an extraordinary access of
cynicism.
"Exactly," said the baronet. "As I foresaw. At this period an
insatiate appetite is accompanied by a fastidious palate. Nothing
but the quintessences of existence, and those in exhaustless
supplies, will satisfy this craving, which is not to be satisfied!
Hence his bitterness. Life can furnish no food fitting for him. The
strength and purity of his energies have reached to an almost divine
height, and roam through the Inane. Poetry, love, and such-like, are
the drugs earth has to offer to high natures, as she offers to low
ones debauchery. 'Tis a sign, this sourness, that he is subject to
none of the empiricisms that are afloat. Now to keep him clear of
them!"
The Titans had an easier task in storming Olympus. As yet, however,
it could not be said that Sir Austin's System had failed. On the
contrary, it had reared a youth, handsome, intelligent, well-bred,
and, observed the ladies, with acute emphasis, innocent. Where, they
asked, was such another young man to be found?
"Oh!" said Lady Blandish to Sir Austin, "if men could give their
hands to women unsoiled--how different would many a marriage be! She
will be a happy girl who calls Richard husband."
"Happy, indeed!" was the baronet's caustic ejaculation. "But where
shall I meet one equal to him, and his match?"
"I was innocent when I was a girl," said the lady.
Sir Austin bowed a reserved opinion.
"Do you think no girls innocent?"
Sir Austin gallantly thought them all so.
"No, that you know they are not," said the lady, stamping. "But they
are more innocent than boys, I am sure."
"Because of their education, madam. You see now what a youth can be.
Perhaps, when my System is published, or rather--to speak more
humbly--when it is practised, the balance may be restored, and we
shall have virtuous young men."
"It's too late for poor me to hope for a husband from one of them,"
said the lady, pouting and laughing.
"It is never too late for beauty to waken love," returned the
baronet, and they trifled a little. They were approaching Daphne's
Bower, which they entered, and sat there to taste the coolness of a
descending midsummer day.
The baronet seemed in a humour for dignified fooling; the lady for
serious converse.
"I shall believe again in Arthur's knights," she said. "When I was a
girl I dreamed of one."
"And he was in quest of the San Greal?"
"If you like."
"And showed his good taste by turning aside for the more tangible
San Blandish?"
"Of course you consider it would have been so," sighed the lady,
ruffling.
"I can only judge by our generation," said Sir Austin, with a bend
of homage.
The lady gathered her mouth. "Either we are very mighty or you are
very weak."
"Both, madam."
"But whatever we are, and if we are bad, bad! we love virtue, and
truth, and lofty souls, in men: and, when we meet those qualities in
them, we are constant, and would die for them--die for them. Ah! you
know men but not women."
"The knights possessing such distinctions must be young, I presume?"
said Sir Austin.
"Old, or young!"
"But if old, they are scarce capable of enterprise?"
"They are loved for themselves, not for their deeds."
"Ah!"
"Yes--ah!" said the lady. "Intellect may subdue women--make slaves
of them; and they worship beauty perhaps as much as you do. But they
only love for ever and are mated when they meet a noble nature."
Sir Austin looked at her wistfully.
"And did you encounter the knight of your dream?"
"Not then." She lowered her eyelids. It was prettily done.
"And how did you bear the disappointment?"
"My dream was in the nursery. The day my frock was lengthened to a
gown I stood at the altar. I am not the only girl that has been made
a woman in a day, and given to an ogre instead of a true knight."
"Good God!" exclaimed Sir Austin, "women have much to bear."
Here the couple changed characters. The lady became gay as the
baronet grew earnest.
"You know it is our lot," she said. "And we are allowed many
amusements. If we fulfil our duty in producing children, that, like
our virtue, is its own reward. Then, as a widow, I have wonderful
privileges."
"To preserve which, you remain a widow?"
"Certainly," she responded. "I have no trouble now in patching and
piecing that rag the world calls--a character. I can sit at your
feet every day unquestioned. To be sure, others do the same, but
they are female eccentrics, and have cast off the rag altogether."
Sir Austin drew nearer to her. "You would have made an admirable
mother, madam."
This from Sir Austin was very like positive wooing.
"It is," he continued, "ten thousand pities that you are not one."
"Do you think so?" She spoke with humility.
"I would," he went on, "that heaven had given you a daughter."
"Would you have thought her worthy of Richard?"
"Our blood, madam, should have been one!"
The lady tapped her toe with her parasol. "But I am a mother," she
said. "Richard is my son. Yes! Richard is my boy," she reiterated.
Sir Austin most graciously appended, "Call him ours, madam," and
held his head as if to catch the word from her lips, which, however,
she chose to refuse, or defer. They made the coloured West a common
point for their eyes, and then Sir Austin said:
"As you will not say 'ours,' let me. And, as you have therefore an
equal claim on the boy, I will confide to you a project I have
lately conceived."
The announcement of a project hardly savoured of a coming proposal,
but for Sir Austin to confide one to a woman was almost tantamount
to a declaration. So Lady Blandish thought, and so said her soft,
deep-eyed smile, as she perused the ground while listening to the
project. It concerned Richard's nuptials. He was now nearly
eighteen. He was to marry when he was five-and-twenty. Meantime a
young lady, some years his junior, was to be sought for in the homes
of England, who would be every way fitted by education, instincts,
and blood--on each of which qualifications Sir Austin unreservedly
enlarged--to espouse so perfect a youth and accept the honourable
duty of assisting in the perpetuation of the Feverels. The baronet
went on to say that he proposed to set forth immediately, and devote
a couple of months, to the first essay in his Coelebite search.
"I fear," said Lady Blandish, when the project had been fully
unfolded, "you have laid down for yourself a difficult task. You
must not be too exacting."
"I know it." The baronet's shake of the head was piteous.
"Even in England she will be rare. But I confine myself to no class.
If I ask for blood it is for untainted, not what you call high
blood. I believe many of the middle classes are frequently more
careful--more pure-blooded--than our aristocracy. Show me among them
a God-fearing family who educate their children--I should prefer a
girl without brothers and sisters--as a Christian damsel should be
educated--say; on the model of my son, and she may be penniless, I
will pledge her to Richard Feverel."
Lady Blandish bit her lip. "And what do you do with Richard while
you are absent on this expedition?"
"Oh!" said the baronet, "he accompanies his father."
"Then give it up. His future bride is now pinafored and
bread-and-buttery. She romps, she cries, she dreams of play and
pudding. How can he care for her? He thinks more at his age of old
women like me. He will be certain to kick against her, and destroy
your plan, believe me, Sir Austin."
"Ay? ay? do you think that?" said the baronet.
Lady Blandish gave him a multitude of reasons.
"Ay! true," he muttered. "Adrian said the same. He must not see her.
How could I think of it! The child is naked woman. He would despise
her. Naturally!"
"Naturally!" echoed the lady.
"Then, madam," and the baronet rose, "there is one thing for me to
determine upon. I must, for the first time in his life, leave him."
"Will you, indeed?" said the lady.
"It is my duty, having thus brought him up, to see that he is
properly mated,--not wrecked upon the quicksands of marriage, as a
youth so delicately trained might be; more easily than another!
Betrothed, he will be safe from a thousand snares. I may, I think,
leave him for a term. My precautions have saved him from the
temptations of his season."
"And under whose charge will you leave him?" Lady Blandish inquired.
She had emerged from the temple, and stood beside Sir Austin on the
upper steps, under a clear summer twilight.
"Madam!" he took her hand, and his voice was gallant and tender,
"under whose but yours?"
As the baronet said this, he bent above her hand, and raised it to
his lips.
Lady Blandish felt that she had been wooed and asked in wedlock. She
did not withdraw her hand. The baronet's salute was flatteringly
reverent. He deliberated over it, as one going through a grave
ceremony. And he, the scorner of women, had chosen her for his
homage! Lady Blandish forgot that she had taken some trouble to
arrive at it. She received the exquisite compliment in all its
unique honey-sweet: for in love we must deserve nothing or the fine
bloom of fruition is gone.
The lady's hand was still in durance, and the baronet had not
recovered from his profound inclination, when a noise from the
neighbouring beechwood startled the two actors in this courtly
pantomime. They turned their heads, and beheld the hope of Raynham
on horseback surveying the scene. The next moment he had galloped
away.