Politeness required that General Ople should not appear to rejoice in his
dismissal as a suitor, and should at least make some show of holding
himself at the beck of a reconsidering mind. He was guilty of running up
to London early next day, and remaining absent until nightfall; and he
did the same on the two following days. When he presented himself at
Lady Camper's lodge-gates, the astonishing intelligence, that her
ladyship had departed for the Continent and Egypt gave him qualms of
remorse, which assumed a more definite shape in something like awe of her
triumphant constitution. He forbore to mention her age, for he was the
most honourable of men, but a habit of tea-table talkativeness impelled
him to say and repeat an idea that had visited him, to the effect, that
Lady Camper was one of those wonderful women who are comparable to
brilliant generals, and defend themselves from the siege of Time by
various aggressive movements. Fearful of not being understood, owing to
the rarity of the occasions when the squat plain squad of honest Saxon
regulars at his command were called upon to explain an idea, he re-cast
the sentence. But, as it happened that the regulars of his vocabulary
were not numerous, and not accustomed to work upon thoughts and images,
his repetitions rather succeeded in exposing the piece of knowledge he
had recently acquired than in making his meaning plainer. So we need not
marvel that his acquaintances should suppose him to be secretly aware of
an extreme degree in which Lady Camper was a veteran.
General Ople entered into the gaieties of the neighbourhood once more,
and passed through the Winter cheerfully. In justice to him, however,
it should be said that to the intent dwelling of his mind upon Lady
Camper, and not to the festive life he led, was due his entire ignorance
of his daughter's unhappiness. She lived with him, and yet it was in
other houses he learnt that she was unhappy. After his last interview
with Lady Camper, he had informed Elizabeth of the ruinous and
preposterous amount of money demanded of him for a settlement upon her
and Elizabeth, like the girl of good sense that she was, had replied
immediately, 'It could not be thought of, papa.'
He had spoken to Reginald likewise. The young man fell into a dramatic
tearing-of-hair and long-stride fury, not ill becoming an enamoured
dragoon. But he maintained that his aunt, though an eccentric, was a
cordially kind woman. He seemed to feel, if he did not partly hint, that
the General might have accepted Lady Camper's terms. The young officer
could no longer be welcome at Douro Lodge, so the General paid him a
morning call at his quarters, and was distressed to find him breakfasting
very late, tapping eggs that he forgot to open--one of the surest signs
of a young man downright and deep in love, as the General knew from
experience--and surrounded by uncut sporting journals of past weeks,
which dated from the day when his blow had struck him, as accurately as
the watch of the drowned man marks his minute. Lady Camper had gone to
Italy, and was in communication with her nephew: Reginald was not further
explicit. His legs were very prominent in his despair, and his fingers
frequently performed the part of blunt combs; consequently the General
was impressed by his passion for Elizabeth. The girl who, if she was
often meditative, always met his eyes with a smile, and quietly said
'Yes, papa,' and 'No, papa,' gave him little concern as to the state of
her feelings. Yet everybody said now that she was unhappy. Mrs. Barcop,
the widow, raised her voice above the rest. So attentive was she to
Elizabeth that the General had it kindly suggested to him, that some one
was courting him through his daughter. He gazed at the widow. Now she
was not much past thirty; and it was really singular--he could have
laughed--thinking of Mrs. Barcop set him persistently thinking of Lady
Camper. That is to say, his mad fancy reverted from the lady of perhaps
thirty-five to the lady of seventy.
Such, thought he, is genius in a woman! Of his neighbours generally,
Mrs. Baerens, the wife of a German merchant, an exquisite player on the
pianoforte, was the most inclined to lead him to speak of Lady Camper.
She was a kind prattling woman, and was known to have been a governess
before her charms withdrew the gastronomic Gottfried Baerens from his
devotion to the well-served City club, where, as he exclaimed (ever
turning fondly to his wife as he vocalized the compliment), he had found
every necessity, every luxury, in life, 'as you cannot have dem out of
London--all save de female!' Mrs. Baerens, a lady of Teutonic
extraction, was distinguishable as of that sex; at least, she was not
masculine. She spoke with great respect of Lady Camper and her family,
and seemed to agree in the General's eulogies of Lady Camper's
constitution. Still he thought she eyed him strangely.
One April morning the General received a letter with the Italian
postmark. Opening it with his usual calm and happy curiosity, he
perceived that it was composed of pen-and-ink drawings. And suddenly
his heart sank like a scuttled ship. He saw himself the victim of a
caricature.
The first sketch had merely seemed picturesque, and he supposed it a
clever play of fancy by some travelling friend, or perhaps an actual
scene slightly exaggerated. Even on reading, 'A distant view of the city
of Wilsonople,' he was only slightly enlightened. His heart beat still
with befitting regularity. But the second and the third sketches
betrayed the terrible hand. The distant view of the city of Wilsonople
was fair with glittering domes, which, in the succeeding near view,
proved to have been soap-bubbles, for a place of extreme flatness, begirt
with crazy old-fashioned fortifications, was shown; and in the third
view, representing the interior, stood for sole place of habitation, a
sentry-box.
Most minutely drawn, and, alas! with fearful accuracy, a military
gentleman in undress occupied the box. Not a doubt could exist as to the
person it was meant to be.
The General tried hard to remain incredulous. He remembered too well who
had called him Wilsonople.
But here was the extraordinary thing that sent him over the neighbourhood
canvassing for exclamations: on the fourth page was the outline of a
lovely feminine hand, holding a pen, as in the act of shading, and under
it these words: 'What I say is, I say I think it exceedingly unladylike.'
Now consider the General's feelings when, turning to this fourth page,
having these very words in his mouth, as the accurate expression of his
thoughts, he discovered them written!
An enemy who anticipates the actions of our mind, has a quality of the
malignant divine that may well inspire terror. The senses of General
Ople were struck by the aspect of a lurid Goddess, who penetrated him,
read him through, and had both power and will to expose and make him
ridiculous for ever.
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 amassing hoards; 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 ejaculated, with utter melancholy. Mrs.
Baerens, by the aid of a magnifying glass, assisted 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 assisting 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
compassionate regret, not badly assumed 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 glass.
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 assailed by popguns. Several of the shadows
are prostrate. 'I was saying, I assure 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
sex.
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 illustrated
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.