TIMES TO DO KNIGHTLY CONQUEST OF THEMSELVES
By the very earliest of the trains shot away to light and briny air from
London’s November gloom, which knows the morning through increase of
gasjets, little Skepsey was hurried over suburban chimneys, in his
friendly third-class carriage; where we have reminders of ancient
pastoral times peculiar to our country, as it may chance; but where a
man may speak to his neighbour right off without being deemed offensive.
That is homely. A social fellow knitting closely to his fellows when he
meets them, enjoys it, even at the cost of uncushioned seats he can, if
imps are in him, merryandrew as much as he pleases; detested punctilio
does not reign there; he can proselytize for the soul’s welfare; decry
or uphold the national drink; advertize a commercial Firm deriving
prosperity from the favour of the multitude; exhort to patriotism. All
is accepted. Politeness is the rule, according to Skepsey’s experience
of the Southern part of the third-class kingdom. And it is as well to
mark the divisions, for the better knowledge of our countrymen. The
North requires volumes to itself.
The hard-grained old pirate-stock Northward has built the land, and is
to the front when we are at our epic work. Meanwhile it gets us a blowzy
character, by shouldering roughly among the children of civilization.
Skepsey, journeying one late afternoon up a Kentish line, had, in both
senses of the word, encountered a long-limbed navvy; an intoxicated,
he was compelled by his manly modesty to desire to think; whose loathly
talk, forced upon the hearing of a decent old woman opposite him,
passed baboonish behaviour; so much so, that Skepsey civilly intervened;
subsequently inviting him to leave the carriage and receive a lesson at
the station they were nearing. Upon his promising faithfully, that it
should be a true and telling lesson, the navvy requested this pygmy
spark to flick his cheek, merely to show he meant war in due sincerity;
and he as faithfully, all honour, promising not to let it bring about a
breakage of the laws of the Company, Skepsey promptly did the deed. So
they went forth.
Skepsey alluded to the incident, for an example of the lamentable
deficiency in science betrayed by most of our strong men when put to it;
and the bitter thought, that he could count well nigh to a certainty on
the total absence of science in the long-armed navvy, whose fist on
his nose might have been as the magnet of a pin, was chief among his
reminiscences after the bout, destroying pleasure for the lover of Old
England’s might. One blow would have sent Skepsey travelling. He was not
seriously struck once. They parted, shaking hands; the navvy confessing
himself to have ‘drunk a drop’; and that perhaps accounted for his
having been ‘topped by a dot on him.’
He declined to make oath never to repeat his offence; but said, sending
his vanquisher to the deuce, with an amicable push at his shoulder,
‘Damned if I ever forget five foot five stretched six foot flat!’
Skepsey counted his feet some small amount higher; but our hearty
rovers’ sons have their ballad moods when giving or taking a thrashing.
One of the third-class passengers, a lad of twenty, became Skepsey’s
pupil, and turned out clever with the gloves, and was persuaded to enter
the militia, and grew soon to be a corporal. Thus there was profit of
the affair, though the navvy sank out of sight. Let us hope and pray he
will not insult the hearing of females again. If only females knew how
necessary it is, for their sakes, to be able to give a lesson now and
then! Ladies are positively opposed. And Judges too, who dress so like
them. The manhood of our country is kept down, in consequence. Mr.
Durance was right, when he said something about the state of war being
wanted to weld our races together: and yet we are always praying for the
state of peace, which causes cracks and gaps among us! Was that what
he meant by illogical? It seemed to Skepsey--oddly, considering his
inferior estimate of the value of the fair sex--that a young woman with
whom he had recently made acquaintance; and who was in Brighton now,
upon missionary work; a member of the ‘Army,’ an officer of advancing
rank, Matilda Pridden, by name; was nearer to the secret of the right
course of conduct for individual citizens and the entire country than
any gentleman he knew.
Yes, nearer to it than his master was! Thinking of Mr. Victor Radnor,
Skepsey fetched a sigh. He had knocked at his master’s door at the
office one day, and imagining the call to enter, had done so, and had
seen a thing he could not expunge. Lady Grace Halley was there. From
matters he gathered, Skepsey guessed her to be working for his master
among the great folks, as he did with Jarniman, and Mr. Fenellan with
Mr. Carling. But is it usual; he asked himself--his natural veneration
framing the rebuke to his master thus--to repay the services of a
lady so warmly?--We have all of us an ermined owl within us to sit in
judgement of our superiors as well as our equals; and the little man,
notwithstanding a servant’s bounden submissiveness, was forced to hear
the judicial pronouncement upon his master’s behaviour. His master had,
at the same time, been saying most weighty kind words more and more of
late: one thing:--that, if he gave all he had to his fellows, and
did all he could, he should still be in their debt. And he was a very
wealthy gentleman. What are we to think? The ways of our superiors are
wonderful. We do them homage: still we feel, we painfully feel, we are
beginning to worship elsewhere. It is the pain of a detachment of the
very roots of our sea-weed heart from a rock. Mr. Victor Radnor was an
honour to his country. Skepsey did not place the name of Matilda Pridden
beside it or in any way compare two such entirely different persons. At
the same time and most earnestly, while dreading to hear, he desired
to have Matilda Pridden’s opinion of the case distressing him. He never
could hear it, because he could never be allowed to expound the case to
her. Skepsey sighed again: he as much as uttered: Oh, if we had a few
thousands like her!--But what if we do have them? They won’t marry!
There they are, all that the country requires in wives and mothers; and
like Miss Priscilla Graves, they won’t marry!
He looked through sad thoughts across the benches of the compartments
to the farther end of the carriage, where sat the Rev. Septimus Barmby,
looking at him through a meditation as obscure if not so mournful. Few
are the third-class passengers outward at that early hour in the winter
season, and Skepsey’s gymnastics to get beside the Rev. Septimus were
unimpeded; though a tight-packed carriage of us poor journaliers would
not have obstructed them with as much as a sneer. Mr. Barmby and Skepsey
greeted. The latter said, he had a holiday, to pay a visit to Miss
Nesta. The former said, he hoped he should see Miss Nesta. Skepsey then
rapidly brought the conversation to a point where Matilda Pridden was
comprised. He discoursed of the ‘Army’ and her position in the Army,
giving instances of her bravery, the devotion shown by her to the cause
of morality, in all its forms. Mr. Barmby had his fortunes on his hands
at the moment, he could not lend an attentive ear; and he disliked this
Army, the title it had taken, and the mixing of women and men in its
ranks; not to speak of a presumption in its proceedings, and the public
marching and singing. Moreover, he enjoyed his one or two permissible
glasses: he doubted that the Chiefs of the Army had common benevolence
for the inoffensive pipe. But the cause of morality was precious to him;
morality and a fit of softness, and the union of the happiest contrast
of voices, had set him for a short while, before the dawn of Nesta’s
day, hankering after Priscilla Graves. Skepsey’s narrative of Matilda
Pridden’s work down at the East of London; was effective; it had the
ring to thrill a responsive chord in Mr. Barmby, who mused on London’s
East, and martyrly service there. His present expectations were of a
very different sort; but a beautiful bride, bringing us wealth, is no
misleading beam, if we direct the riches rightly. Septimus, a solitary
minister in those grisly haunts of the misery breeding vice, must needs
accomplish less than a Septimus the husband of one of England’s chief
heiresses:--only not the most brilliant, owing to circumstances known to
the Rev. Groseman Buttermore: strangely, and opportunely, revealed: for
her exceeding benefit, it may be hoped. She is no longer the ignorant
girl, to reject the protecting hand of one whose cloth is the best of
cloaking. A glance at Dudley Sowerby’s defection, assures our worldly
wisdom too, that now is the time to sue.
Several times while Mr. Barmby made thus his pudding of the desires of
the flesh and the spirit, Skepsey’s tales of Matilda Pridden’s heroism
caught his attention. He liked her deeds; he disliked the position in
which the young woman placed herself to perform them; and he said so.
Women are to be women, he said.
Skepsey agreed: ‘If we could get men to do the work, sir!’
Mr. Barmby was launching forth: Plenty of men!--His mouth was blocked by
the reflection, that we count the men on our fingers; often are we, as
it were, an episcopal thumb surveying scarce that number of followers!
He diverged to censure of the marchings and the street-singing: the
impediment to traffic, the annoyance to a finely musical ear.
He disapproved altogether of Matilda Pridden’s military display,
pronouncing her to be, ‘Doubtless a worthy young person.’
‘Her age is twenty-seven,’ said Skepsey, spying at the number of his
own.
‘You have known her long?’ Mr. Barmby asked.
‘Not long, sir. She has gone through trouble. She believes very strongly
in the will:--If I will this, if I will that, and it is the right
will, not wickedness, it is done--as good as done; and force is quite
superfluous. In her sermons, she exhorts to prayer before action.’
‘Preaches?’
‘She moves a large assembly, sir.’
‘It would seem, that England is becoming Americanized!’ exclaimed
the Conservative in Mr. Barmby. Almost he groaned; and his gaze was
fish-like in vacancy, on hearing the little man speak of the present
intrepid forwardness of the sex to be publicly doing. It is for men the
most indigestible fact of our century: one that--by contrast throws an
overearthly holiness on our decorous dutiful mothers, who contentedly
worked below the surface while men unremittingly attended to their
interests above.
Skepsey drew forth a paper-covered shilling-book: a translation from the
French, under a yelling title of savage hate of Old England and cannibal
glee at her doom. Mr. Barmby dropped his eyelashes on it, without
comment; nor did he reply to Skepsey’s forlorn remark: ‘We let them
think they could do it!’
Behold the downs. Breakfast is behind them. Miss Radnor likewise: if the
poor child has a name. We propose to supply the deficiency. She does not
declare war upon tobacco. She has a cultured and a beautiful voice. We
abstain from enlargeing on the charms of her person. She has resources,
which representatives of a rival creed would plot to secure.
‘Skepsey, you have your quarters at the house of Miss Radnor’s
relatives?’ said Mr. Barmby, as they emerged from tunnelled chalk.
‘Mention, that I think of calling in the course of the day.’
A biscuit had been their breakfast without a name.
They parted at the station, roused by the smell of salt to bestow a
more legitimate title on the day’s restorative beginning. Down the
hill, along by the shops, and Skepsey, in sight of Miss Nesta’s terrace,
considered it still an early hour for a visitor; so, to have the sea
about him, he paid pier-money, and hurried against the briny wings of
a South-wester; green waves, curls of foam, flecks of silver, under
low-flying grey-dark cloud-curtains shaken to a rift, where at one
shot the sun had a line of Nereids nodding, laughing, sparkling to him.
Skepsey enjoyed it, at the back of thoughts military and naval. Visible
sea, this girdle of Britain, inspired him to exultations in reverence.
He wished Mr. Durance could behold it now and have such a breastful.
He was wishing he knew a song of Britain and sea, rather fancying Mr.
Durance to be in some way a bar to patriotic poetical recollection, when
he saw his Captain Dartrey mounting steps out of an iron anatomy of the
pier, and looking like a razor off a strap.
‘Why, sir!’ cried Skepsey.
‘Just a plunge and a dozen strokes,’ Dartrey said; ‘and you’ll come to
my hotel and give me ten minutes of the “recreation”; and if you don’t
come willingly, I shall insult your country.’
‘Ah! I wish Mr. Durance were here,’ Skepsey rejoined.
‘It would upset his bumboat of epigrams. He rises at ten o’clock to
a queasy breakfast by candlelight, and proceeds to composition. His
picture of the country is a portrait of himself by the artist.’
‘But, sir, Captain Dartrey, you don’t think as Mr. Durance does of
England!’
‘There are lots to flatter her, Skepsey! A drilling can’t do her harm.
You’re down to see Miss Nesta. Ladies don’t receive quite so early.
And have you breakfasted? Come on with me quick.’ Dartrey led him on,
saying: ‘You have an eye at my stick. It was a legacy to me, by word of
mouth, from a seaman of a ship I sailed in, who thought I had done him a
service; and he died after all. He fell overboard drunk. He perished
of the villain stuff. One of his messmates handed me the stick in Cape
Town, sworn to deliver it. A good knot to grasp; and it ‘s flexible
and strong; stick or rattan, whichever you please; it gives point or
caresses the shoulder; there’s no break in it, whack as you may. They
call it a Demerara supple-jack. I’ll leave it to you.’
Skepsey declared his intention to be the first to depart. He tried
the temper of the stick, bent it a bit, and admired the prompt
straightening.
‘It would give a good blow, sir.’
‘Does its business without braining.’
Perhaps for the reason, that it was not a handsome instrument for
display on fashionable promenades, Dartrey chose it among his collection
by preference; as ugly dogs of a known fidelity are chosen for
companions. The Demerara supple-jack surpasses bull-dogs in its fashion
of assisting the master; for when once at it, the clownish-looking thing
reflects upon him creditably, by developing a refined courtliness of
style, while in no way showing a diminution of jolly ardour for the
fray. It will deal you the stroke of a bludgeon with the playfulness of
a cane. It bears resemblance to those accomplished natural actors,
who conversationally present a dramatic situation in two or three
spontaneous flourishes, and are themselves again, men of the world, the
next minute.
Skepsey handed it back. He spoke of a new French rifle. He mentioned, in
the form of query for no answer, the translation of the barking little
volume he had shown to Mr. Barmby: he slapped at his breast-pocket,
where it was. Not a ship was on the sea-line; and he seemed to deplore
that vacancy.
‘But it tells both ways,’ Dartrey said. ‘We don’t want to be hectoring
in the Channel. All we want, is to be sure of our power, so as not to
go hunting and fawning for alliances. Up along that terrace Miss Nesta
lives. Brighton would be a choice place for a landing.’
Skepsey temporized, to get his national defences, by pleading the
country’s love of peace.
‘Then you give-up your portion of the gains of war--an awful
disgorgement,’ said Dartrey. ‘If you are really for peace, you toss all
your spare bones to the war-dogs. Otherwise, Quakerly preaching is taken
for hypocrisy.’
‘I ‘m afraid we are illogical, sir,’ said Skepsey, adopting one of the
charges of Mr. Durance, to elude the abominable word.
‘In you run, my friend.’ Dartrey sped him up the steps of the hotel.
A little note lay on his breakfast-table. His invalid uncle’s valet gave
the morning’s report of the night.
The note was from Mrs. Blathenoy: she begged Captain Dartrey, in double
underlinings of her brief words, to mount the stairs. He debated, and he
went.
She was excited, and showed a bosom compressed to explode: she had been
weeping. ‘My husband is off. He bids me follow him. What would you have
me do?’
‘Go.’
‘You don’t care what may happen to your friends, the Radnors?’
‘Not at the cost of your separation from your husband.’
‘You have seen him!’
‘Be serious.’
‘Oh, you cold creature! You know--you see: I can’t conceal. And you tell
me to go. “Go!” Gracious heavens! I’ve no claim on you; I haven’t been
able to do much; I would have--never mind! believe me or not. And now
I’m to go: on the spot, I suppose. You’ve seen the man I ‘m to go to,
too. I would bear it, if it were not away from... out of sight of I’m a
fool of a woman, I know. There’s frankness for you! and I could declare
you’re saying “impudence” in your heart--or what you have for one. Have
you one?’
‘My dear soul, it ‘s a flint. So just think of your duty.’ Dartrey
played the horrid part of executioner with some skill.
Her bosom sprang to descend into abysses.
‘And never a greater fool than when I sent for you to see such a face
as I’m showing!’ she cried, with lips that twitched and fingers that
plucked at her belt. ‘But you might feel my hatred of being tied
to--dragged about over the Continent by that... perhaps you think a
woman is not sensible of vulgarity in her husband! I ‘m bothering you? I
don’t say I have the slightest claim. You never made love to me, never!
Never so much as pressed my hand or looked. Others have--as much as I
let them. And before I saw you, I had not an idea of another man but
that man. So you advise me to go?’
‘There’s no other course.’
‘No other course. I don’t see one. What have I been dreaming of! Usually
a woman feeling...’ she struck at her breast, ‘has had a soft word in
her ear. “Go!” I don’t blame you, Captain Dartrey. At least, you ‘re not
the man to punish a woman for stripping herself, as I ‘ve done. I call
myself a fool--I’m a lunatic. Trust me with your hand.’
‘There you are.’
She grasped the hand, and shut her eyes to make a long age of the
holding on to him. ‘Oh, you dear dear fellow!--don’t think me unwomanly;
I must tell you now: I am naked and can’t disguise. I see you are
ice--feel: and if you were different, I might be. You won’t be hurt by
hearing you’ve made yourself dear to me--without meaning to, I know!
It began that day at Lakelands; I fell in love with you the very first
minute I set eyes on you! There’s a confession for a woman to make! and
a married woman! I’m married, and I no more feel allegiance, as they
call it, than if there never had been a ceremony and no Jacob Blathenoy
was in existence. And why I should go to him! But you shan’t be
troubled. I did not begin to live, as a woman, before I met you. I can
speak all this to you because--we women can’t be deceived in that--you
are one of the men who can be counted on for a friend.’
‘I hope so,’ Dartrey said, and his mouth hardened as nature’s
electricity shot sparks into him from the touch and rocked him.
‘No, not yet: I will soon let it drop,’ said she, and she was just then
thrillingly pretty; she caressed the hand, placing it at her throat and
moving her chin on it, as women fondle birds. ‘I am positively to go,
then?’
‘Positively, you are to go; and it’s my command.’
‘Not in love with any one at all?’
‘Not with a soul.’
‘Not with a woman?’
‘With no woman.’
‘Nor maid?’
‘No! and no to everything. And an end to the catechism!’
‘It is really a flint that beats here?’ she said, and with a shyness
in adventurousness, she struck the point of her forefinger on the rib.
‘Fancy me in love with a flint! And running to be dutiful to a Jacob
Blathenoy, at my flint’s command. I’m half in love with doing what I
hate, because this cold thing here bids me do it. I believe I married
for money, and now it looks as if I were to have my bargain with poverty
to bless it.’
‘There I may help,’ said Dartrey, relieved at sight of a loophole, to
spring to some initiative out of the paralysis cast on him by a pretty
little woman’s rending of her veil. A man of honour alone with a woman
who has tossed concealment to the winds, is a riddled target indeed:
he is tempted to the peril of cajoleing, that he may escape from the
torment and the ridicule; he is tempted to sigh for the gallant spirit
of his naughty adolescence. ‘Come to me--will you?--apply to me, if
there’s ever any need. I happen to have money. And forgive me for naming
it.’
She groaned: ‘Don’t! I’m, sure, and I thought it from the first, you’re
one of the good men, and the woman who meets you is lucky, and wretched,
and so she ought to be! Only to you should I!... do believe that! I
won’t speak of what excuses I’ve got. You’ve seen.’
‘Don’t think of them: there’ll be danger in it.
‘Shall you think of me in danger?’
‘Silly, silly! Don’t you see you have to do with a flint! I’ve gone
through fire. And if I were in love with you, I should start you off to
your husband this blessed day.’
‘And you’re not the slightest wee wee bit in love with me!’
‘Perfectly true; but I like you; and if we’re to be hand in hand, in the
time to come, you must walk firm at present.’
‘I’m to go to-day?’
‘You are.’
‘Without again.’
The riddled target kicked. Dartrey contrasted Jacob Blathenoy with the
fair wife, and commiseratingly exonerated her; he lashed at himself
for continuing to be in this absurdest of postures, and not absolutely
secure for all that. His head shook. ‘Friends, you’ll find best.’
‘Well!’ she sighed, ‘I feel I’m doomed to go famished through life.
There’s never to be such a thing as, love, for me! I can’t tell you no
woman could: though you’ll say I’ve told enough. I shall burn with shame
when I think of it. I could go on my knees to have your arms round me
once. I could kill myself for saying it!--I should feel that I had one
moment of real life.--I know I ought to admire you. They say a woman
hates if she’s refused. I can’t: I wish I were able to. I could have
helped the Radnors better by staying here and threatening never to go to
him unless he swore not to do them injury. He’s revengeful. Just as you
like. You say “Go,” and I go. There. I may kiss your hand?’
‘Give me yours.’
Dartrey kissed the hand. She kissed the mark of his lips. He got himself
away, by promising to see her to the train for Paris. Outside her door,
he was met by the reflection, coming as a thing external, that he
might veraciously and successfully have pleaded a passionate hunger for
breakfast: nay, that he would have done so, if he had been downright in
earnest. For she had the prettiness to cast a spell; a certain curve at
the lips, a fluttering droop of the eyelids, a corner of the eye, that
led long distances away to forests and nests. This little woman had the
rosy-peeping June bud’s plumpness. What of the man who refused to kiss
her once? Cold antecedent immersion had to be thanked; and stringent
vacuity; perhaps a spotting ogre-image of her possessor. Some sense of
right-doing also, we hope. Dartrey angrily attributed his good conduct
to the lowest motives. He went so far as to accuse himself of having
forborne to speak of breakfast, from a sort of fascinated respect for
the pitch of a situation that he despised and detested. Then again, when
beginning to eat, his good conduct drew on him a chorus of the jeers of
all the martial comrades he had known. But he owned he would have had
less excuse than they, had he taken advantage of a woman’s inability, at
a weak moment, to protect herself: or rather, if he had not behaved in
a manner to protect her from herself. He thought of his buried wife, and
the noble in the base of that poor soul; needing constantly a present
helper, for the nobler to conquer. Be true man with a woman, she must be
viler than the devil has yet made one, if she does not follow a strong
right lead:--but be patient, of course. And the word patience here means
more than most men contain. Certainly a man like Jacob Blathenoy was a
mouthful for any woman: and he had bought his wife, he deserved no
pity. Not? Probably not. That view, however, is unwholesome and opens
on slides. Pity of his wife, too, gets to be fervidly active with her
portrait, fetches her breath about us. As for condemnation of the poor
little woman, her case was not unexampled, though the sudden flare of it
startled rather. Mrs. Victor could read men and women closely. Yes, and
Victor, when he schemed--but Dartrey declined to be throwing blame right
or left. More than by his breakfast, and in a preferable direction, he
was refreshed by Skepsey’s narrative of the deeds of Matilda Pridden.
‘The right sort of girl for you to know, Skepsey,’ he said. ‘The best in
life is a good woman.’
Skepsey exhibited his book of the Gallic howl.
‘They have their fits now and then, and they’re soon over and
forgotten,’ Dartrey said. ‘The worst of it is, that we remember.’
After the morning’s visit to his uncle, he peered at half a dozen sticks
in the corner of the room, grasped their handles, and selected the
Demerara supple-jack, for no particular reason; the curved knot was
easy to the grasp. It was in his mind, that this person signing herself
Judith Marsett, might have something to say, which intimately concerned
Nesta. He fell to brooding on it, until he wondered why he had not been
made a trifle anxious by the reading of the note overnight. Skepsey was
left at Nesta’s house.
Dartrey found himself expected by the servant waiting on Mrs. Marsett.