‘Il segreto!’ the girl cried commandingly, with a forefinger at his
breast.
He crossed arms, toning in similar recitative, with anguish, ‘Dove
volare!’
They joined in half a dozen bars of operatic duet.
She flew to him, embraced and kissed.
‘I must have it, my papa! unlock. I’ve been spying the bird on its
hedgerow nest so long! And this morning, my own dear cunning papa,
weren’t you as bare as winter twigs? “Tomorrow perhaps we will have a
day in the country.” To go and see the nest? Only, please, not a big
one. A real nest; where mama and I can wear dairymaid’s hat and apron
all day--the style you like; and strike roots. We’ve been torn away two
or three times: twice, I know.’
‘Fixed, this time; nothing shall tear us up,’ said her father, moving on
to the stairs, with an arm about her.
‘So, it is...?’
‘She’s amazed at her cleverness!’
‘A nest for three?’
‘We must have a friend or two.’
‘And pretty country?’
‘Trust her papa for that.’
‘Nice for walking and running over fields? No rich people?’
‘How escape that rabble in England! as Colney says. It’s a place for
being quite independent of neighbours, free as air.’
‘Oh! bravo!’
‘And Fredi will have her horse, and mama her pony-carriage; and Fredi
can have a swim every Summer morning.’
‘A swim?’ Her note was dubious. ‘A river?’
‘A good long stretch--fairish, fairish. Bit of a lake; bathing-shed; the
Naiad’s bower: pretty water to see.’
‘Ah. And has the house a name?’
‘Lakelands. I like the name.’
‘Papa gave it the name!’
‘There’s nothing he can conceal from his girl. Only now and then a
little surprise.’
‘And his girl is off her head with astonishment. But tell me, who has
been sharing the secret with you?’
‘Fredi strikes home! And it is true, you dear; I must have a confidant:
Simeon Fenellan.’
‘Not Mr. Durance?’
He shook out a positive negative. ‘I leave Col to his guesses. He’d have
been prophesying fire the works before the completion.’
‘Then it is not a dear old house, like Craye and Creckholt?’
‘Wait and see to-morrow.’
He spoke of the customary guests for concert practice; the music,
instrumental and vocal; quartet, duet, solo; and advising the girl to be
quick, as she had but twenty-five minutes, he went humming and trilling
into his dressing-room.
Nesta signalled at her mother’s door for permission to enter. She
slipped in, saw that the maid was absent, and said: ‘Yes, mama; and
prepare, I feared it; I was sure.’
Her mother breathed a little moan: ‘Not a cottage?’
‘He has not mentioned it to Mr. Durance.’
‘Why not?’
‘Mr. Fenellan has been his confidant.’
‘My darling, we did wrong to let it go on, without speaking. You don’t
know for certain yet?’
‘It’s a large estate, mama, and a big new house.’
Nataly’s bosom sank. ‘Ah me! here’s misery! I ought to have known.
And too late now it has gone so far! But I never imagined he would be
building.’
She caught herself languishing at her toilette-glass, as, if her beauty
were at stake; and shut her eyelids angrily. To be looking in that
manner, for a mere suspicion, was too foolish. But Nesta’s divinations
were target-arrows; they flew to the mark. Could it have been expected
that Victor would ever do anything on a small scale? O the dear little
lost lost cottage! She thought of it with a strain of the arms of
womanhood’s longing in the unblessed wife for a babe. For the secluded
modest cottage would not rack her with the old anxieties, beset her with
suspicions....
‘My child, you won’t possibly have time before the dinner-hour,’ she
said to Nesta, dismissing her and taking her kiss of comfort with a
short and straining look out of the depths.
Those bitter doubts of the sentiments of neighbours are an incipient
dislike, when one’s own feelings to the neighbours are kind, could be
affectionate. We are distracted, perverted, made strangers to ourselves
by a false position.
She heard his voice on a carol. Men do not feel this doubtful position
as women must. They have not the same to endure; the world gives them
land to tread, where women are on breaking seas. Her Nesta knew no more
than the pain of being torn from a home she loved. But now the girl
was older, and if once she had her imagination awakened, her fearful
directness would touch the spot, question, bring on the scene to-come,
necessarily to come, dreaded much more than death by her mother. But
if it might be postponed till the girl was nearer to an age of grave
understanding, with some knowledge of our world, some comprehension of a
case that could be pleaded!
He sang: he never acknowledged a trouble, he dispersed it; and in her
present wrestle with the scheme of a large country estate involving new
intimacies, anxieties, the courtship of rival magnates, followed by the
wretched old cloud, and the imposition upon them to bear it in silence
though they knew they could plead a case, at least before charitable and
discerning creatures or before heaven, the despondent lady could have
asked whether he was perfectly sane.
Who half so brilliantly!--Depreciation of him, fetched up at a stroke
the glittering armies of her enthusiasm. He had proved it; he proved it
daily in conflicts and in victories that dwarfed emotional troubles
like hers: yet they were something to bear, hard to bear, at times
unbearable.
But those were times of weakness. Let anything be doubted rather than
the good guidance of the man who was her breath of life! Whither he led,
let her go, not only submissively, exultingly.
Thus she thought, under pressure of the knowledge, that unless rushing
into conflicts bigger than conceivable, she had to do it, and should
therefore think it.
This was the prudent woman’s clear deduction from the state wherein she
found herself, created by the one first great step of the mad woman.
Her surrender then might be likened to the detachment of a flower on the
river’s bank by swell of flood: she had no longer root of her own; away
she sailed, through beautiful scenery, with occasionally a crashing
fall, a turmoil, emergence from a vortex, and once more the sunny
whirling surface. Strange to think, she had not since then power to
grasp in her abstract mind a notion of stedfastness without or within.
But, say not the mad, say the enamoured woman. Love is a madness, having
heaven’s wisdom in it--a spark. But even when it is driving us on the
breakers, call it love: and be not unworthy of it, hold to it. She and
Victor had drunk of a cup. The philtre was in her veins, whatever the
directions of the rational mind.
Exulting or regretting, she had to do it, as one in the car with a
racing charioteer. Or up beside a more than Titanically audacious
balloonist. For the charioteer is bent on a goal; and Victor’s course
was an ascension from heights to heights. He had ideas, he mastered
Fortune. He conquered Nataly and held her subject, in being above his
ambition; which was now but an occupation for his powers, while the aim
of his life was at the giving and taking of simple enjoyment. In spite
of his fits of unreasonableness in the means--and the woman loving
him could trace them to a breath of nature--his gentle good friendly
innocent aim in life was of this very simplest; so wonderful, by
contrast with his powers, that she, assured of it as she was by
experience of him, was touched, in a transfusion of her feelings through
lucent globes of admiration and of tenderness, to reverence. There
had been occasions when her wish for the whole world to have proof and
exhibition of his greatness, goodness, and simplicity amid his gifts,
prompted her incitement of him to stand forth eminently: [‘lead a
kingdom,’ was the phrase behind the curtain within her shy bosom;) and
it revealed her to herself, upon reflection, as being still the Nataly
who drank the cup with him, to join her fate with his.
And why not? Was that regretted? Far from it. In her maturity, the woman
was unable to send forth any dwelling thought or more than a flight
of twilight fancy, that cancelled the deed of her youth, and therewith
seemed to expunge near upon the half--of her term of years. If it came
to consideration of her family and the family’s opinion of her conduct,
her judgement did not side with them or with herself, it whirled, swam
to a giddiness and subsided.
Of course, if she and Victor were to inhabit a large country-house, they
might as well have remained at Craye Farm or at Creckholt; both places
dear to them in turn. Such was the plain sense of the surface
question. And how strange it was to her, that he, of the most quivering
sensitiveness on her behalf; could not see, that he threw her into
situations where hard words of men and women threatened about her head;
where one or two might on a day, some day, be heard; and where, in the
recollection of two years back, the word ‘Impostor’ had smacked her on
both cheeks from her own mouth.
Now once more they were to run the same round of alarms, undergo the
love of the place, with perpetual apprehensions of having to leave it:
alarms, throbbing suspicions, like those of old travellers through the
haunted forest, where whispers have intensity of meaning, and unseeing
we are seen, and unaware awaited.
Nataly shook the rolls of her thick brown hair from her forehead; she
took strength from a handsome look of resolution in the glass. She could
always honestly say, that her courage would not fail him.
Victor tapped at the door; he stepped into the room, wearing his evening
white flower over a more open white waistcoat; and she was composed and
uninquiring. Their Nesta was heard on the descent of the stairs, with a
rattle of Donizetti’s Il segreto to the skylights.
He performed his never-omitted lover’s homage.
Nataly enfolded him in a homely smile. ‘A country-house? We go and see
it to-morrow?’
‘And you’ve been pining for a country home, my dear soul.’
‘After the summer six weeks, the house in London does not seem a home to
return to.’
‘And next day, Nataly draws five thousand pounds for the first sketch of
the furniture.’
‘There is the Creckholt...’ she had a difficulty in saying.
‘Part of it may do. Lakelands requires--but you will see to-morrow.’
After a close shutting of her eyes, she rejoined: ‘It is not a cottage?’
‘Well, dear, no: when the Slave of the Lamp takes to building, he does
not run up cottages. And we did it without magic, all in a year; which
is quite as good as a magical trick in a night.’ He drew her close to
him. ‘When was it my dear girl guessed me at work?’
‘It was the other dear girl. Nesta is the guesser.’
‘You were two best of souls to keep from bothering me; and I might have
had to fib; and we neither of us like that.’ He noticed a sidling of her
look. ‘More than the circumstances oblige:--to be frank. But now we
can speak of them. Wait--and the change comes; and opportunely, I have
found. It’s true we have waited long; my darling has had her worries.
However, it ‘s here at last. Prepare yourself. I speak positively. You
have to brace up for one sharp twitch--the woman’s portion! as Natata
says--and it’s over.’ He looked into her eyes for comprehension; and not
finding inquiry, resumed: ‘Just in time for the entry into Lakelands.
With the pronouncement of the decree, we present the licence... at an
altar we’ve stood before, in spirit... one of the ladies of your family
to support you:--why not? Not even then?’
‘No, Victor; they have cast me off.’
‘Count on my cousins, the Duvidney ladies. Then we can say, that those
two good old spinsters are less narrow than the Dreightons. I have to
confess I rather think I was to blame for leaving Creckholt. Only, if
I see my girl wounded, I hate the place that did the mischief. You and
Fredi will clap hands for the country about Lakelands.’
‘Have you heard from her... of her... is it anything, Victor?’ Nataly
asked him shyly; with not much of hope, but some readiness to be
inflated. The prospect of an entry into the big new house, among a new
society, begirt by the old nightmares and fretting devils, drew her into
staring daylight or furnace-light.
He answered: ‘Mrs. Burman has definitely decided. In pity of us?--to be
free herself?--who can say! She ‘s a woman with a conscience--of a kind:
slow, but it brings her to the point at last. You know her, know her
well. Fenellan has it from her lawyer--her lawyer! a Mr. Carting; a
thoroughly trustworthy man--’
‘Fenellan, as a reporter?’
‘Thoroughly to be trusted on serious matters. I understand that Mrs.
Burman:--her health is awful: yes, yes; poor woman! poor woman! we feel
for her:--she has come to perceive her duty to those she leaves behind.
Consider: she HAS used the rod. She must be tired out--if human. And she
is. One remembers traits.’
Victor sketched one or two of the traits allusively to the hearer
acquainted with them. They received strong colouring from midday’s Old
Veuve in his blood. His voice and words had a swing of conviction: they
imparted vinousness to a heart athirst.
The histrionic self-deceiver may be a persuasive deceiver of another,
who is again, though not ignorant of his character, tempted to swallow
the nostrums which have made so gallant a man of him: his imperceptible
sensible playing of the part, on a substratum of sincereness, induces
fascinatingly to the like performance on our side, that we may be armed
as he is for enjoying the coveted reality through the partial simulation
of possessing it. And this is not a task to us when we have looked our
actor in the face, and seen him bear the look, knowing that he is not
intentionally untruthful; and when we incline to be captivated by his
rare theatrical air of confidence; when it seems as an outside thought
striking us, that he may not be altogether deceived in the present
instance; when suddenly an expectation of the thing desired is born and
swims in a credible featureless vagueness on a misty scene: and when we
are being kissed and the blood is warmed. In fine, here as everywhere
along our history, when the sensations are spirited up to drown the
mind, we become drift-matter of tides, metal to magnets. And if we are
women, who commonly allow the lead to men, getting it for themselves
only by snaky cunning or desperate adventure, credulity--the continued
trust in the man--is the alternative of despair.
‘But, Victor, I must ask,’ Nataly said: ‘you have it through Simeon
Fenellan; you have not yourself received the letter from her lawyer?’
‘My knowledge of what she would do near the grave--poor soul, yes! I
shall soon be hearing.’
‘You do not, propose to enter this place until--until it is over?’
‘We enter this place, my love, without any sort of ceremony. We live
there independently, and we can we have quarters there for our friends.
Our one neighbour is London--there! And at Lakelands we are able to
entertain London and wife;--our friends, in short; with some, what
we have to call, satellites. You inspect the house and grounds
to-morrow--sure to be fair. Put aside all but the pleasant recollections
of Craye and Creckholt. We start on a different footing. Really nothing
can be simpler. Keeping your town-house, you are now and then in
residence at Lakelands, where you entertain your set, teach them to feel
the charm of country life: we have everything about us; could have had
our own milk and cream up to London the last two months. Was it very
naughty?--I should have exploded my surprise! You will see, you will see
to-morrow.’
Nataly nodded, as required. ‘Good news from the mines?’ she said.
He answered: ‘Dartrey is--yes, poor fellow! Dartrey is confident, from
the yield of stones, that the value of our claim counts in a number
of millions. The same with the gold. But gold-mines are lodgeings, not
homes.’
‘Oh, Victor! if money...! But why did you say “poor fellow” of Dartrey
Fenellan?’
‘You know how he’s...’
‘Yes, yes,’ she said hastily. ‘But has that woman been causing fresh
anxiety?’
‘And Natata’s chief hero on earth is not to be named a poor fellow,’
said he, after a negative of the head on a subject they neither of them
liked to touch.
Then he remembered that Dartrey Fenellan was actually a lucky fellow;
and he would have mentioned the circumstance confided to him by Simeon,
but for a downright dread of renewing his painful fit of envy. He had
also another, more distant, very faint idea, that it had better not be
mentioned just yet, for a reason entirely undefined.
He consulted his watch. The maid had come in for the robeing of her
mistress. Nataly’s mind had turned to the little country cottage which
would have given her such great happiness. She raised her eyes to him;
she could not check their filling; they were like a river carrying
moonlight on the smooth roll of a fall.
He loved the eyes, disliked the water in them. With an impatient,
‘There, there!’ and a smart affectionate look, he retired, thinking in
our old satirical vein of the hopeless endeavour to satisfy a woman’s
mind without the intrusion of hard material statements, facts. Even
the best of women, even the most beautiful, and in their moments of
supremest beauty, have this gross ravenousness for facts. You must not
expect to appease them unless you administer solids. It would almost
appear that man is exclusively imaginative and poetical; and that his
mate, the fair, the graceful, the bewitching, with the sweetest and
purest of natures, cannot help being something of a groveller.
Nataly had likewise her thoughts.