A ticket of herald newspapers told the world of Victor’s returning to
his London. Pretty Mrs. Blathenoy was Nataly’s first afternoon visitor,
and was graciously received; no sign of inquiry for the cause of the
lady’s alacrity to greet her being shown. Colney Durance came in,
bringing the rumour of an Australian cantatrice to kindle Europe; Mr.
Peridon, a seeker of tidings from the city of Bourges; Miss Priscilla
Graves, reporting of Skepsey, in a holiday Sunday tone, that his
alcoholic partner might at any moment release him; Mr. Septimus Barmby,
with a hanged heavy look, suggestive of a wharfside crane swinging the
ponderous thing he had to say. ‘I have seen Miss Radnor.’
‘She was well?’ the mother asked, and the grand basso pitched forth an
affirmative.
‘Dear sweet girl she is!’ Mrs. Blathenoy exclaimed to Colney.
He bowed. ‘Very sweet. And can let fly on you, like a haggis, for a
scratch.’
She laughed, glad of an escape from the conversational formalities
imposed on her by this Mrs. Victor Radnor’s mighty manner. ‘But what
girl worth anything!...
We all can do that, I hope, for a scratch!’
Mr. Barmby’s Profession dissented.
Mr. Catkin appeared; ten minutes after his Peridon. He had met Victor
near the Exchange, and had left him humming the non fu sogno of ERNANI.
‘Ah, when Victor takes to Verdi, it’s a flat City, and wants a burst of
drum and brass,’ Colney said; and he hummed a few bars of the march in
Attila, and shrugged. He and Victor had once admired that blatancy.
Mr. Pempton appeared, according to anticipation. He sat himself beside
Priscilla. Entered Mrs. John Cormyn, voluminous; Mrs. Peter Yatt,
effervescent; Nataly’s own people were about her and she felt at home.
Mrs. Blathenoy pushed a small thorn into it, by speaking of Captain
Fenellan, and aside, as if sharing him with her. Nataly heard that
Dartrey had been the guest of these Blathenoys. Even Dartrey was but a
man!
Rather lower under her voice, the vain little creature asked: ‘You knew
her?’
‘Her?’
The cool counter-interrogation was disregarded. ‘So sad! In the desert!
a cup of pure water worth more than barrow-loads of gold! Poor woman!’
‘Who?’
‘His wife.’
‘Wife!’
‘They were married?’
Nataly could have cried: Snake! Her play at brevity had certainly been
foiled. She nodded gravely. A load of dusky wonders and speculations
pressed at her bosom. She disdained to question the mouth which had
bitten her.
Mrs. Blathenoy, resolving, that despite the jealousy she excited, she
would have her friend in Captain Fenellan, whom she liked--liked, she
was sure, quite as innocently as any other woman of his acquaintance
did, departed and she hugged her innocence defiantly, with the mournful
pride which will sometimes act as a solvent.
A remark or two passed among the company upon her pretty face.
Nataly murmured to Colney: ‘Is there anything of Dartrey’s wife?’
‘Dead,’ he answered.
‘When?’
‘Months back. I had it from Simeon. You didn’t hear?’
She shook her head. Her ears buzzed. If he had it from Simeon Fenellan,
Victor must have known it.
Her duties of hostess were conducted with the official smile.
As soon as she stood alone, she dropped on a chair, like one who has
taken a shot in the heart, and that hideous tumult of wild cries at her
ears blankly ceased. Dartrey, Victor, Nesta, were shifting figures of
the might-have-been for whom a wretched erring woman, washed clean of
her guilt by death, in a far land, had gone to her end: vainly gone: and
now another was here, a figure of wood, in man’s shape, conjured up by
one of the three, to divide the two others; likely to be fatal to her
or to them: to her, she hoped, if the choice was to be: and beneath the
leaden hope, her heart set to a rapid beating, a fainter, a chill at the
core.
She snatched for breath. She shut her eyes, and with open lips, lay
waiting; prepared to thank the kindness about to hurry her hence, out of
the seas of pain, without pain.
Then came sighs. The sad old servant in her bosom was resuming his
labours.
But she had been near it--very near it? A gush of pity for Victor,
overwhelmed her hardness of mind.
Unreflectingly, she tried her feet to support her, and tottered to
the door, touched along to the stairs, and descended them, thinking
strangely upon such a sudden weakness of body, when she would no longer
have thought herself the weak woman. Her aim was to reach the library.
She sat on the stairs midway, pondering over the length of her
journey: and now her head was clearer; for she was travelling to get
Railway-guides, and might have had them from the hands of a footman, and
imagined that she had considered it prudent to hide her investigation of
those books: proofs of an understanding fallen backward to the state of
infant and having to begin our drear ascent again.
A slam of the kitchen stair-door restored her. She betrayed no infirmity
of footing as she walked past Arlington in the hall; and she was alive
to the voice of Skepsey presently on the door-steps. Arlington brought
her a note.
Victor had written: ‘My love, I dine with Blathenoy in the City, at the
Walworth. Business. Skepsey for clothes. Eight of us. Formal. A thousand
embraces. Late.’
Skepsey was ushered in. His wife had expired at noon, he said; and he
postured decorously the grief he could not feel, knowing that a lady
would expect it of him. His wife had fallen down stone steps; she died
in hospital. He wished to say, she was no loss to the country; but
he was advised within of the prudence of abstaining from comment
and trusting to his posture, and he squeezed a drop of conventional
sensibility out of it, and felt improved.
Nataly sent a line to Victor: ‘Dearest, I go to bed early, am tired.
Dine well. Come to me in the morning.’
She reproached herself for coldness to poor Skepsey, when he had gone.
The prospect of her being alone until the morning had been so absorbing
a relief.
She found a relief also in work at the book of the trains. A walk to
the telegraph-station strengthened her. Especially after despatching
a telegram to Mr. Dudley Sowerby at Cronidge, and one to Nesta at
Moorsedge, did she become stoutly nerved. The former was requested to
meet her at Penhurst station at noon. Nesta was to be at the station for
the Wells at three o’clock.
From the time of the flying of these telegrams, up to the tap of
Victor’s knuckle on her bed-room door next morning, she was not more
reflectively conscious than a packet travelling to its destination by
pneumatic tube. Nor was she acutely impressionable to the features and
the voice she loved.
‘You know of Skepsey?’ she said.
‘Ah, poor Skepsey!’ Victor frowned and heaved.
‘One of us ought to stand beside him at the funeral.’
‘Colney or Fenellan?’
‘I will ask Mr. Durance.’
‘Do, my darling.’
‘Victor, you did not tell me of Dartrey’s wife.’
‘There again! They all get released! Yes, Dartrey! Dartrey has his luck
too.’
She closed her eyes, with the desire to be asleep.
‘You should have told me, dear.’
‘Well, my love! Well--poor Dartrey! I fancy I hadn’t a confirmation of
the news. I remember a horrible fit of envy on hearing the hint: not
much more than a hint: serious illness, was it?--or expected event.
Hardly worth while to trouble my dear soul, till certain. Anything about
wives, forces me to think of myself--my better self!’
‘I had to hear of it first from Mrs. Blathenoy.’
‘You’ve heard of duels in dark rooms:--that was the case between
Blathenoy and me last night for an hour.’
She feigned somnolent fatigue over her feverish weariness of heart. He
kissed her on the forehead.
Her spell-bound intention to speak of Dudley Sowerby to him, was broken
by the sounding of the hall-door, thirty minutes later. She had lain in
a trance.
Life surged to her with the thought, that she could decide and take
her step. Many were the years back since she had taken a step; less
independently then than now; unregretted, if fatal. Her brain was heated
for the larger view of things and the swifter summing of them. It could
put the man at a remove from her and say, that she had lived with him
and suffered intensely. It gathered him to her breast rejoicing in their
union: the sharper the scourge, the keener the exultation. But she had
one reproach to deafen and beat down. This did not come on her from the
world: she and the world were too much foot to foot on the antagonist’s
line, for her to listen humbly. It came of her quick summary survey of
him, which was unnoticed by the woman’s present fiery mind as being
new or strange in any way: simply it was a fact she now read; and
it directed her to reproach herself for an abasement beneath his
leadership, a blind subserviency and surrender of her faculties to his
greater powers, such as no soul of a breathing body should yield to man:
not to the highest, not to the Titan, not to the most Godlike of men.
Under cloak, they demand it. They demand their bane.
And Victor!... She had seen into him.
The reproach on her was, that she, in her worship, had been slave, not
helper. Scarcely was she irreproachable in the character of slave. If it
had been utter slave! she phrased the words, for a further reproach. She
remembered having at times murmured, dissented. And it would have been
a desperate proud thought to comfort a slave, that never once had she
known even a secret opposition to the will of her lord.
But she had: she recalled instances. Up they rose; up rose everything
her mind ranged over, subsiding immediately when the service was done.
She had not conceived her beloved to be infallible, surest of guides in
all earthly-matters. Her intellect had sometimes protested.
What, then, had moved her to swamp it?
Her heart answered. And that heart also was arraigned: and the heart’s
fleshly habitation acting on it besides: so flagellant of herself was
she: covertly, however, and as the chaste among women can consent to let
our animal face them. Not grossly, still perceptibly to her penetrative
hard eye on herself, she saw the senses of the woman under a charm. She
saw, and swam whirling with a pang of revolt from her personal being and
this mortal kind.
Her rational intelligence righted her speedily. She could say in truth,
by proof, she loved the man: nature’s love, heart’s love, soul’s love.
She had given him her life.
It was a happy cross-current recollection, that the very beginning and
spring of this wild cast of her life, issued from something he said and
did (merest of airy gestures) to signify the blessing of life--how good
and fair it is. A drooping mood in her had been struck; he had a look
like the winged lyric up in blue heavens: he raised the head of the
young flower from its contemplation of grave-mould. That was when he
had much to bear: Mrs. Burman present: and when the stranger in their
household had begun to pity him and have a dread of her feelings. The
lucent splendour of his eyes was memorable, a light above the rolling
oceans of Time.
She had given him her life, little aid. She might have closely
counselled, wound in and out with his ideas. Sensible of capacity, she
confessed to the having been morally subdued, physically as well; swept
onward; and she was arrested now by an accident, like a waif of the
river-floods by the dip of a branch. Time that it should be! But was not
Mr. Durance, inveighing against the favoured system for the education of
women, right when he declared them to be unfitted to speak an opinion
on any matter external to the household or in a crisis of the household?
She had not agreed with him: he presented stinging sentences, which
irritated more than they enlightened. Now it seemed to her, that the
model women of men make pleasant slaves, not true mates: they lack the
worldly training to know themselves or take a grasp of circumstances.
There is an exotic fostering of the senses for women, not the
strengthening breath of vital common air. If good fortune is with them,
all may go well: the stake of their fates is upon the perpetual smooth
flow of good fortune. She had never joined to the cry of the women. Few
among them were having it in the breast as loudly.
Hard on herself, too, she perceived how the social rebel had reduced
her mind to propitiate a simulacrum, reflected from out, of an enthroned
Society within it, by an advocacy of the existing laws and rules
and habits. Eminently servile is the tolerated lawbreaker: none so
conservative. Not until we are driven back upon an unviolated Nature, do
we call to the intellect to think radically: and then we begin to think
of our fellows.
Or when we have set ourselves in motion direct for the doing of the
right thing: have quitted the carriage at the station, and secured the
ticket, and entered the train, counting the passage of time for a simple
rapid hour before we have eased heart in doing justice to ourself and to
another; then likewise the mind is lighted for radiation. That doing of
the right thing, after a term of paralysis, cowardice--any evil name--is
one of the mighty reliefs, equal to happiness, of longer duration.
Nataly had it. But her mind was actually radiating, and the comfort
to her heart evoked the image of Dartrey Fenellan. She saw a possible
reason for her bluntness to the coming scene with Dudley.
At once she said, No! and closed the curtain; knowing what was behind,
counting it nought. She repeated almost honestly her positive negative.
How we are mixed of the many elements! she thought, as an observer; and
self-justifyingly thought on, and with truth, that duty urged her upon
this journey; and proudly thought, that she had not a shock of the
painful great organ in her breast at the prospect at the end, or any
apprehension of its failure to carry her through.
Yet the need of peace or some solace needed to prepare her for her
interview turned her imagination burningly on Dartrey. She would not
allow herself to meditate over hopes and schemes:--Nesta free: Dartrey
free. She vowed to her soul sacredly--and she was one of those in whom
the Divinity lives, that they may do so--not to speak a word for the
influencing of Dudley save the one fact. Consequently, for a personal
indulgence, she mused; she caressed maternally the object of her musing;
of necessity, she excluded Nesta; but in tenderness she gave Dartrey a
fair one to love him.
The scene was waved away. That one so loving him, partly worthy of him,
ready to traverse the world now beside him--who could it be other than
she who knew and prized his worth? Foolish! It is one of the hatefuller
scourges upon women whenever, a little shaken themselves, they muse upon
some man’s image, that they cannot put in motion the least bit of drama
without letting feminine self play a part; generally to develop into a
principal part... The apology makes it a melancholy part.
Dartrey’s temper of the caged lion dominated by his tamer, served as
keynote for any amount of saddest colouring. He controlled the brute:
but he held the contempt of danger, the love of strife, the passion for
adventure; he had crossed the desert of human anguish. He of all men
required a devoted mate, merited her. Of all men living, he was the
hardest to match with a woman--with a woman deserving him.
The train had quitted London. Now for the country, now for free
breathing! She who two days back had come from Alps, delighted in the
look on flat green fields. It was under the hallucination of her saying
in flight adieu to them, and to England; and, that somewhere hidden, to
be found in Asia, Africa, America, was the man whose ideal of life was
higher than enjoyment. His caged brute of a temper offered opportunities
for delicious petting; the sweetest a woman can bestow: it lifts her
out of timidity into an adoration still palpitatingly fearful. Ah, but
familiarity, knowledge, confirmed assurance of his character, lift her
to another stage, above the pleasures. May she not prove to him how
really matched with him she is, to disdain the pleasures, cheerfully
accept the burdens, meet death, if need be; readily face it as the
quietly grey to-morrow: at least, show herself to her hero for a
woman--the incredible being to most men--who treads the terrors as well
as the pleasures of humanity beneath her feet, and may therefore have
some pride in her stature. Ay, but only to feel the pride of standing
not so shamefully below his level beside him.
Woods were flying past the carriage-windows. Her solitary companion
was of the class of the admiring gentlemen. Presently he spoke. She
answered. He spoke again. Her mouth smiled, and her accompanying look of
abstract benevolence arrested the tentative allurement to conversation.
New ideas were set revolving in her. Dartrey and Victor grew to
a likeness; they became hazily one man, and the mingled phantom
complimented her on her preserving a good share of the beauty of her
youth. The face perhaps: the figure rather too well suits the years! she
replied. To reassure her, this Dartrey-Victor drew her close and kissed
her; and she was confused and passed into the breast of Mrs. Burman
expecting an operation at the hands of the surgeons. The train had
stopped. ‘Penhurst?’ she said.
‘Penhurst is the next station,’ said the gentleman. Here was a theme for
him! The stately mansion, the noble grounds, and Sidney! He discoursed
of them.
The handsome lady appeared interested. She was interested also by his
description of a neighbouring village, likely one hundred years hence
to be a place of pilgrimage for Americans and for Australians. Age, he
said, improves true beauty; and his eyelids indicated a levelling to
perform the soft intentness. Mechanically, a ball rose in her throat;
the remark was illuminated by a saying of Colney’s, with regard to his
countrymen at the play of courtship. No laughter came. The gentleman
talked on.
All fancies and internal communications left her. Slowness of motion
brought her to the plain piece of work she had to do, on a colourless
earth, that seemed foggy; but one could see one’s way. Resolution is a
form of light, our native light in this dubious world.
Dudley Sowerby opened her carriage-door. They greeted.
‘You have seen Nesta?’ she said.
‘Not for two days. You have not heard? The Miss Duvidneys have gone to
Brighton.’
‘They are rather in advance of the Season.’
She thanked him for meeting her. He was grateful for the summons.
Informing the mother of his betrothed, that he had ridden over from
Cronidge, he speculated on the place to select for her luncheon, and
he spoke of his horse being led up and down outside the station. Nataly
inquired for the hour of the next train to London. He called to one of
the porters, obtained and imparted the time; evidently now, as shown by
an unevenness of his lifted brows, expecting news of some little weight.
‘Your husband is quite well?’ he said, in affection for the name of
husband.
‘Mr. Radnor is well; I have to speak to you; I have more than time.’
‘You will lunch at the inn?’
‘I shall not eat. We will walk.’
They crossed the road and passed under trees.
‘My mother was to have called on the Miss Duvidneys. They left
hurriedly; I think it was unanticipated by Nesta. I venture... you
pardon the liberty... she allows me to entertain hopes. Mr. Radnor, I am
hardly too bold in thinking... I trust, in appealing to you... at least
I can promise!
‘Mr. Sowerby, you have done my daughter the honour to ask her hand in
marriage.’
He said: ‘I have,’ and had much to say besides, but deferred: a blow was
visible. The father had been more encouraging to him than the mother.
‘You have not known of any circumstance that might cause hesitation in
asking?’
‘Miss Radnor?’
‘My daughter:--you have to think of your family.’
‘Indeed, Mrs. Radnor, I was coming to London tomorrow, with the consent
of my family.’
‘You address me as Mrs. Radnor. I have not the legal right to the name.’
‘Not legal!’ said he, with a catch at the word.
He spun round in her sight, though his demeanour was manfully rigid.
‘Have I understood, madam...?’
‘You would not request me to repeat it. Is that your horse the man is
leading?’
‘My horse: it must be my horse.’
‘Mount and ride back. Leave me: I shall not eat. Reflect, by yourself.
You are in a position of one who is not allowed to decide by his
feelings. Mr. Radnor you know where to find.’
‘But surely, some food? I cannot have misapprehended?’
‘I cannot eat. I think you have understood me clearly.’
‘You wish me to go?’
‘I beg.’
‘It pains me, dear madam.’
‘It relieves me, if you will. Here is your horse.’
She gave her hand. He touched it and bent. He looked at her. A surge
of impossible questions rolled to his mouth and rolled back, with the
thought of an incredible thing, that her manner, more than her words,
held him from doubting.
‘I obey you,’ he said.
‘You are kind.’
He mounted horse, raised hat, paced on, and again bowing, to one of the
wayside trees, cantered. The man was gone; but not from Nataly’s vision
that face of wet chalk under one of the shades of fire.