NATALY
His master opened on the bristling business.
‘What’s this, of your name in the papers, your appearing before a
magistrate, and a fine? Tell the tale shortly.’
Skepsey fell upon his attitude for dialectical defence the modest form
of the two hands at rolling play and the head deferentially sidecast.
But knowing that he had gratified his personal tastes in the act of
serving his master’s interests, an interfusion of sentiments plunged
him into self-consciousness; an unwonted state with him, clogging to a
simple story.
‘First, sir, I would beg you to pardon the printing of your name beside
mine...’
‘Tush: on with you.’
‘Only to say, necessitated by the circumstances of the case. I read,
that there was laughter in the court at my exculpation of my conduct--as
I have to call it; and there may have been. I may have expressed myself
.... I have a strong feeling for the welfare of the country.’
‘So, it seems, you said to the magistrate. Do you tell me, that the
cause of your gross breach of the law, was a consideration for the
welfare of the country? Run on the facts.’
‘The facts--I must have begun badly, sir.’ Skepsey rattled the dry facts
in his head to right them. From his not having begun well, they had
become dry as things underfoot. It was an error to have led off with the
sentiments. ‘Two very, two very respectable persons--respectable--were
desirous to witness a short display of my, my system, I would say; of my
science, they call it.’
‘Don’t be nervous. To the point; you went into a field five miles out
of London, in broad day, and stood in a ring, the usual Tiff-raff about
you!’
‘With the gloves: and not for money, Sir: for the trial of skill; not
very many people. I cannot quite see the breach of the law.’
‘So you told the magistrate. You were fined for your inability to quite
see. And you had to give security.’
‘Mr. Durance was kindly responsible for me, sir: an acquaintance of the
magistrate.’
‘This boxing of yours is a positive mania, Skepsey. You must try to get
the better of it--must! And my name too! I’m to be proclaimed, as
having in my service an inveterate pugilist--who breaks the law from
patriotism! Male or female, these very respectable persons--the people
your show was meant for?’
‘Male, sir. Females!... that is, not the respectable ones.’
‘Take the opinion of the respectable ones for your standard of behaviour
in future.’
‘It was a mere trial of skill, sir, to prove to one of the spectators,
that I could be as good as my word. I wished I may say, to conciliate
him, partly. He would not--he judged by size--credit me with... he
backed my adversary Jerry Scroom--a sturdy boxer, without the knowledge
of the first principles.’
‘You beat him?’
‘I think I taught the man that I could instruct, sir; he was
complimentary before we parted. He thought I could not have lasted.
After the second round, the police appeared.’
‘And you ran!’
‘No, sir; I had nothing on my conscience.’
‘Why not have had your pugilistic display in a publican’s room in town,
where you could have hammer-nailed and ding-donged to your heart’s
content for as long as you liked!’
‘That would have been preferable, from the point of view of safety from
intrusion, I can admit-speaking humbly. But one of the parties--I had a
wish to gratify him--is a lover of old English times and habits and our
country scenes. He wanted it to take place on green grass. We drove over
Hampstead in three carts and a gig, as a company of pleasure--as it
was. A very beautiful morning. There was a rest at a public-house. Mr.
Shaplow traces the misfortune to that. Mr. Jarniman, I hear, thinks it
what he calls a traitor in the camp. I saw no sign; we were all merry
and friendly.’
‘Jarniman?’ said Victor sharply. ‘Who is the Jarniman?’
‘Mr. Jarniman is, I am to understand from the acquaintance introducing
us--a Mr. Shaplow I met in the train from Lakelands one day, and again
at the corner of a street near Drury Lane, a ham and beef shop kept by
a Mrs. Jarniman, a very stout lady, who does the chief carving in the
shop, and is the mother of Mr. Jarniman: he is in a confidential place,
highly trusted.’ Skepsey looked up from the hands he soaped: ‘He is
a curious mixture; he has true enthusiasm for boxing, he believes in
ghosts. He mourns for the lost days of prize-fighting, he thinks that
spectres are on the increase. He has a very large appetite, depressed
spirits. Mr. Shaplow informs me he is a man of substance, in the service
of a wealthy lady in poor health, expecting a legacy and her appearance
to him. He has the look--Mr. Shaplow assures me he does not drink to
excess: he is a slow drinker.’
Victor straightened: ‘Bad way of health, you said?’
‘Mr. Jarniman spoke of his expectations, as being immediate: he put it,
that he expected her spirit to be out for him to meet it any day--or
night. He desires it. He says, she has promised it--on oath, he says,
and must feel that she must do her duty to him before she goes, if she
is to appear to him with any countenance after. But he is anxious for
her in any case to show herself, and says, he should not have the heart
to reproach her. He has principles, a tear for suffering; he likes to be
made to cry. Mrs. Jarniman, his mother, he is not married, is much the
same so far, except ghosts; she will not have them; except after strong
tea, they come, she says, come to her bed. She is foolish enough to
sleep in a close-curtained bed. But the poor lady is so exceedingly
stout that a puff of cold would carry her off, she fears.’
Victor stamped his foot. ‘This man Jarniman serves a lady now in
a--serious, does he say? Was he precise?’
‘Mr. Jarniman spoke of a remarkable number of diseases; very
complicated, he says. He has no opinion of doctors. He says, that the
lady’s doctor and the chemist--she sits in a chemist’s shop and
swallows other people’s prescriptions that take her fancy. He says, her
continuing to live is wonderful. He has no reason to hurry her, only for
the satisfaction of a natural curiosity.’
‘He mentioned her name?’
‘No name, sir.’
Skepsey’s limpid grey eyes confirmed the negative to Victor, who was
assured that the little man stood clean of any falsity.
‘You are not on equal terms. You and the magistrate have helped him to
know who it is you serve, Skepsey.’
‘Would you please to direct me, sir.’
‘Another time. Now go and ease your feet with a run over the town.
We have music in half an hour. That you like, I know. See chiefly to
amusing yourself.’
Skepsey turned to go; he murmured, that he had enjoyed his trip.
Victor checked him: it was to ask whether this Jarniman had specified
one, any one of the numerous diseases afflicting his aged mistress.
Now Jarniman had shocked Skepsey with his blunt titles for a couple of
the foremost maladies assailing the poor lady’s decayed constitution:
not to be mentioned, Skepsey’s thought, in relation to ladies; whose
organs and functions we, who pay them a proper homage by restricting
them to the sphere so worthily occupied by their mothers up to the very
oldest date, respectfully curtain; their accepted masters are chivalrous
to them, deploring their need at times for the doctors and drugs. He
stood looking most unhappy. ‘She was to appear, sir, in a few--perhaps a
week, a month.’
A nod dismissed him.
The fun of the expedition (and Dudley Sowerby had wound himself up to
relish it) was at night in the towns, when the sound of instrumental and
vocal music attracted crowds beneath the windows of the hotel, and
they heard zon, zon, violon, fete et basse; not bad fluting, excellent
fiddling, such singing as a maestro, conducting his own Opera, would
have approved. So Victor said of his darlings’ voices. Nesta’s and
her mother’s were a perfect combination; Mr. Barmby’s trompe in union,
sufficiently confirmed the popular impression, that they were artistes.
They had been ceremoniously ushered to their carriages, with expressions
of gratitude, at the departure from Rouen; and the Boniface at Gisors
had entreated them to stay another night, to give an entertainment.
Victor took his pleasure in letting it be known, that they were a quiet
English family, simply keeping-up the habits they practiced in Old
England: all were welcome to hear them while they were doing it; but
they did not give entertainments.
The pride of the pleasure of reversing the general idea of English
dulness among our neighbours, was perceived to have laid fast hold
of Dudley Sowerby at Dreux. He was at the window from time to time,
counting heads below. For this reason or a better, he begged Nesta to
supplant the flute duet with the soprano and contralto of the Helena
section of the Mefistofele, called the Serenade: La Luna immobile. She
consulted her mother, and they sang it. The crowds below, swollen to
a block of the street, were dead still, showing the instinctive
good manners of the people. Then mademoiselle astonished them with a
Provencal or Cevennes air, Huguenot, though she was Catholic; but
it suited her mezzo-soprano tones; and it rang massively of the
martial-religious. To what heights of spiritual grandeur might not
a Huguenot France have marched! Dudley Sowerby, heedlessly, under an
emotion that could be stirred in him with force, by the soul of religion
issuing through music, addressed his ejaculation to Lady Grace Halley.
She did nor shrug or snub him, but rejoined: ‘I could go to battle with
that song in the ears.’ She liked seeing him so happily transformed; and
liked the effect of it on Nesta when his face shone in talking. He was
at home with the girl’s eyes, as he had never been. A song expressing in
one of the combative and devotional, went to the springs of his blood;
for he was of an old warrior race, beneath the thick crust of imposed
peaceful maxims and commercial pursuits and habitual stiff correctness.
As much as wine, will music bring out the native bent of the civilized
man: endow him with language too. He was as if unlocked; he met
Nesta’s eyes and ran in a voluble interchange, that gave him flattering
after-thoughts; and at the moment sensibly a new and assured, or to some
extent assured, station beside a girl so vivid; by which the young lady
would be helped to perceive his unvoiced solider gifts.
Nataly observed them, thinking of Victor’s mastering subtlety. She had
hoped (having clearly seen the sheep’s eye in the shepherd) that Mr.
Barmby would be watchful to act as a block between them; and therefore
she had stipulated for his presence on the journey. She remembered
Victor’s rapid look of readiness to consent:--he reckoned how naturally
Mr. Barmby would serve as a foil to any younger man. Mr. Barmby had
tried all along to perform his part: he had always been thwarted;
notably once at Gisors, where by some cunning management he and
mademoiselle found themselves in the cell of the prisoner’s Nail-wrought
work while Nesta had to take Sowerby’s hand for help at a passage here
and there along the narrow outer castle-walls. And Mr. Barmby, upon
occasions, had set that dimple in Nesta’s cheek quivering, though Simeon
Fenellan was not at hand, and there was no telling how it was done,
beyond the evidence that Victor willed it so.
From the day of the announcement of Lakelands, she had been brought
more into contact with his genius of dexterity and foresight than ever
previously: she had bent to the burden of it more; had seen herself and
everybody else outstripped--herself, of course; she did not count in a
struggle with him. But since that red dawn of Lakelands, it was
almost as if he had descended to earth from the skies. She now saw his
mortality in the miraculous things he did. The reason of it was,
that through the perceptible various arts and shifts on her level, an
opposing spirit had plainer view of his aim, to judge it. She thought it
a mean one.
The power it had to hurry her with the strength of a torrent to an end
she dreaded, impressed her physically; so far subduing her mind, in
consequence, as to keep the idea of absolute resistance obscure, though
her bosom heaved with the breath; but what was her own of a mind hung
hovering above him, criticizing; and involuntarily, discomfortingly.
She could have prayed to be led blindly or blindly dashed on: she
could trust him for success; and her critical mind seemed at times a
treachery. Still she was compelled to judge.
When he said to her at night, pressing both her hands: ‘This is the
news of the day, my love! It’s death at last. We shall soon be thanking
heaven for freedom’; her fingers writhed upon his and gripped them in a
torture of remorse on his behalf. A shattering throb of her heart gave
her sight of herself as well. For so it is with the woman who loves in
subjection, she may be a critic of the man, she is his accomplice.’
‘You have a letter, Victor?’
‘Confirmation all round: Fenellan, Themison, and now Skepsey.’
He told her the tale of Skepsey and Jarniman, colouring it, as any
interested animated conduit necessarily will. Neither of them smiled.
The effort to think soberly exhausted and rolled her back on credulity.
It might not be to-day or next week or month: but so much testimony
pointed to a day within the horizon, surely!
She bowed her head to heaven for forgiveness. The murderous hope stood
up, stood out in forms and pictures. There was one of a woman at her
ease at last in the reception of guests; contrasting with an ironic
haunting figure of the woman of queenly air and stature under a finger
of scorn for a bold-faced impostor. Nataly’s lips twitched at the
remembrance of quaint whimpers of complaint to the Fates, for directing
that a large instead of a rather diminutive woman should be the
social offender fearing exposure. Majesty in the criminal’s dock, is a
confounding spectacle. To the bosom of the majestic creature, all her
glorious attributes have become the executioner’s implements. She must
for her soul’s health believe that a day of release and exoneration
approaches.
‘Barmby!--if my dear girl would like him best,’ Victor said, in
tenderest undertones, observing the shadowing variations of her face;
and pierced her cruelly, past explanation or understanding;--not that
she would have objected to the Rev. Septimus as officiating clergyman.
She nodded. Down rolled the first big tear.
We cry to women; Land, ho!--a land of palms after storms at sea; and at
once they inundate us with a deluge of eye-water.
‘Half a minute, dear Victor, not longer,’ Nataly said, weeping, near on
laughing over his look of wanton abandonment to despair at sight of
her tears. ‘Don’t mind me. I am rather like Fenellan’s laundress, the
tearful woman whose professional apparatus was her soft heart and a cake
of soap. Skepsey has made his peace with you?’
Victor answered: ‘Yes, yes; I see what he has been about. We’re a mixed
lot, all of us-the best! You’ve noticed, Skepsey has no laugh: however
absurd the thing he tells you, not a smile!’
‘But you trust his eyes; you look fathoms into them. Captain Dartrey
thinks him one of the men most in earnest of any of his country.’
‘So Nataly of course thinks the same. And he’s a worthy little
velocipede, as Fenellan calls him. One wishes Colney had been with us.
Only Colney!--pity one can’t cut his talons for the space before they
grow again.’
Ay, and in the presence of Colney Durance, Victor would not have been
so encouraging, half boyishly caressing, with Dudley Sowerby! It was the
very manner to sow seed of imitativeness in the girl, devoted as she was
to her father. Nataly sighed, foreseeing evil, owning it a superstition,
feeling it a certainty. We are easily prophets, sure of being justified,
when the cleverness of schemes devoted to material ends appears most
delicately perfect. History, the tales of households, the tombstone, are
with us to inspire. In Nataly’s bosom, the reproof of her inefficiency
for offering counsel where Victor for his soul’s sake needed it, was
beginning to thunder at whiles as a reproach of unfittingness in his
mate, worse than a public denunciation of the sin against Society.
It might be decreed that she and Society were to come to reconcilement.
A pain previously thought of, never previously so realized, seized her
at her next sight of Nesta. She had not taken in her front mind the
contrast of the innocent one condemned to endure the shadow from which
the guilty was by a transient ceremony released. Nature could at a push
be eloquent to defend the guilty. Not a word of vindicating eloquence
rose up to clear the innocent. Nothing that she could do; no
devotedness, not any sacrifice, and no treaty of peace, no possible joy
to come, nothing could remove the shadow from her child. She dreamed
of the succour in eloquence, to charm the ears of chosen juries while a
fact spoke over the population, with a relentless rolling out of its one
hard word. But eloquence, powerful on her behalf, was dumb when referred
to Nesta. It seemed a cruel mystery. How was it permitted by the
Merciful Disposer! .... Nataly’s intellect and her reverence clashed.
They clash to the end of time if we persist in regarding the Spirit of
Life as a remote Externe, who plays the human figures, to bring about
this or that issue, instead of being beside us, within us, our breath,
if we will; marking on us where at each step we sink to the animal,
mount to the divine, we and ours who follow, offspring of body or mind.
She was in her error, from judgeing of the destiny of man by the fate
of individuals. Chiefly her error was, to try to be thinking at all amid
the fevered tangle of her sensations.
A darkness fell upon the troubled woman, and was thicker overhead when
her warm blood had drawn her to some acceptance of the philosophy of
existence, in a savour of gratification at the prospect of her equal
footing with the world while yet she lived. She hated herself for
taking pleasure in anything to be bestowed by a world so hap-hazard,
ill-balanced, unjust; she took it bitterly, with such naturalness as
not to be aware that it was irony and a poisonous irony moving her to
welcome the restorative ceremony because her largeness of person had a
greater than common need of the protection.