That ashen look of the rise out of death from one of our mortal wounds,
was caused by deeper convulsions in Nesta’s bosom than Dartrey could
imagine.
She had gone for the walk with Mr. Barmby, reading the omen of his tones
in the request. Dorothea and Virginia would have her go. The clerical
gentleman, a friend of the Rev. Abram Posterley; and one who deplored
poor Mr. Posterley’s infatuation; and one besides who belonged to
Nesta’s musical choir in London: seemed a safe companion for the child.
The grand organ of Mr. Barmby’s voice, too, assured them of a devout
seriousness in him, that arrested any scrupulous little questions. They
could not conceive his uttering the nonsensical empty stuff, compliments
to their beauty and what not, which girls hear sometimes from
inconsiderate gentlemen, to the having of their heads turned. Moreover,
Nesta had rashly promised her father’s faithful servant Skepsey to walk,
out with him in the afternoon; and the ladies hoped she would find the
morning’s walk to have been enough; good little man though Skepsey was,
they were sure. But there is the incongruous for young women of station
on a promenade.
Mr. Barmby headed to the pier. After pacing up and down between the
briny gulls and a polka-band, he made his way forethoughtfully to the
glass-sheltered seats fronting East: where, as his enthusiasm for the
solemnity of the occasion excited him to say, ‘We have a view of the
terraces and the cliffs’; and where not more than two enwrapped
invalid figures were ensconsed. Then it was, that Nesta recalled her
anticipation of his possible design; forgotten by her during their talk
of her dear people: Priscilla Graves and Mr. Pempton, and the Yatts, and
Simeon Fenellan, Peridon and Catkin, and Skepsey likewise; and the very
latest news of her mother. She wished she could have run before him, to
spare him. He would not notice a sign. Girls must wait and hear.
It was an oratorio. She watched the long wave roll on to the sinking
into its fellow; and onward again for the swell and the weariful lapse;
and up at last bursting to the sheet of white. The far-heard roar and
the near commingled, giving Mr. Barmby a semblance to the powers of
ocean.
At the first direct note, the burden of which necessitated a pause, she
petitioned him to be her friend, to think of himself as her friend.
But a vessel laden with merchandize, that has crossed wild seas for this
particular port, is hardly to be debarred from discharging its goods
on the quay by simple intimations of their not being wanted. We are
precipitated both by the aim and the tedium of the lengthened voyage to
insist that they be seen. We believe perforce in their temptingness; and
should allurement fail, we fall back to the belief in our eloquence. An
eloquence to expose the qualities they possess, is the testification in
the promise of their excellence. She is to be induced by feeling to see
it. We are asking a young lady for the precious gift of her hand.
We respect her; and because of our continued respect, despite an
obstruction, we have come to think we have a claim upon her gratitude;
could she but be led to understand how different we are from some other
man!--from one hitherto favoured among them, unworthy of this prize,
however personally exalted and meritorious.
The wave of wide extension rolled and sank and rose, heaving lifeless
variations of the sickly streaks on its dull green back.
Dudley Sowerby’s defection was hinted at and accounted for, by the
worldly test of worldly considerations.
What were they?--Nesta glanced.
An indistinct comparison was modestly presented, of one unmoved by
worldly considerations.
But what were they? She was wakened by a lamp, and her darkness was all
inflammable to it.
‘Oh! Mr. Barmby, you have done me the honour to speak before; you know
my answer,’ she said.
‘You were then subject to an influence. A false, I may say wicked,
sentiment upholding celibacy.’
‘My poor Louise? She never thought of influencing me. She has her views,
I mine. Our friendship does not depend on a “treaty of reciprocity.”
We are one at heart, each free to judge and act, as it should be in
friendship. I heard from her this morning. Her brother will be able to
resume his military duties next month. Then she will return to me.’
‘We propose!’ rejoined Mr. Barmby.
Beholding the involuntary mercurial rogue-dimple he had started from a
twitch at the corner, of her lips, the good gentleman pursued: ‘Can we
dare write our designs for the month to come? Ah!--I will say--Nesta!
give me the hope I beg to have. See the seriousness. You are at liberty.
That other has withdrawn his pretensions. We will not blame him. He
is in expectation of exalted rank. Where there is any shadow...!’ Mr.
Barmby paused on his outroll of the word; but immediately, not intending
to weigh down his gentle hearer with the significance in it, resumed at
a yet more sonorous depth: ‘He is under the obligation to his family;
an old, a venerable family. In the full blaze of public opinion! His
conduct can be palliated by us, too. There is a right and wrong in minor
things, independent of the higher rectitude. We pardon, we can partly
support, the worldly view.’
‘There is a shadow?’ said Nesta; and her voice was lurefully
encouraging.
He was on the footing where men are precipitated by what is within them
to blunder. ‘On you--no. On you personally, not at all. No. It could not
be deemed so. Not by those knowing, esteeming--not by him who loves
you, and would, with his name, would, with his whole strength, envelop,
shield ... certainly, certainly not.’
‘It is on my parents?’ she said.
‘But to me nothing, nothing, quite nought! To confound the innocent with
the guilty!... and excuses may exist. We know but how little we know!’
‘It is on both my parents?’ she said; with a simplicity that induced him
to reply: ‘Before the world. But not, I repeat...’
The band-instruments behind the sheltering glass flourished on their
termination of a waltz.
She had not heeded their playing. Now she said:
‘The music is over; we must not be late at lunch’; and she stood up and
moved.
He sprang to his legs and obediently stepped out:
‘I shall have your answer to-day, this evening? Nesta!’
‘Mr. Barmby, it will be the same. You will be kind to me in not asking
me again.’
He spoke further. She was dumb.
Had he done ill or well for himself and for her when he named the shadow
on her parents? He dwelt more on her than on himself: he would not have
wounded her to win the blest affirmative. Could she have been entirely
ignorant?--and after Dudley Sowerby’s defection? For such it was: the
Rev. Stuart Rem had declared the union between the almost designated
head of the Cantor family and a young person of no name, of worse than
no birth, impossible: ‘absolutely and totally impossible,’ he, had said,
in his impressive fashion, speaking from his knowledge of the family,
and an acquaintance with Dudley. She must necessarily have learnt why
Dudley Sowerby withdrew. No parents of an attractive daughter should
allow her to remain unaware of her actual position in the world. It is
criminal, a reduplication of the criminality! Yet she had not spoken as
one astonished. She was mysterious. Women are so: young women most
of all. It is undecided still whether they do of themselves conceive
principles, or should submit to an imposition of the same upon them in
terrorem. Mysterious truly, but most attractive! As Lady Bountiful of a
district, she would have in her maturity the majestic stature to suit
a dispensation of earthly good things. And, strangely, here she was, at
this moment, rivalling to excelling all others of her sex (he verified
it in the crowd of female faces passing), when they, if they but knew
the facts, would visit her very appearance beside them on a common
footing as an intrusion and a scandal. To us who know, such matters are
indeed wonderful!
Moved by reflective compassion, Mr. Barmby resumed the wooer’s note,
some few steps after he had responded to the salutation of Dartrey
Fenellan and Colonel Sudley. She did not speak. She turned her forehead
to him; and the absence of the world from her eyes chilled his tongue.
He declined the pleasure of the lunch with the Duvidney ladies. He
desired to be alone, to question himself fasting, to sound the deed he
had done; for he had struck on a suspicion of selfishness in it: and
though Love must needs be an egoism, Love is no warrant for the doing
of a hurt to the creature beloved. Thoughts upon Skepsey and the tale
of his Matilda Pridden’s labours in poor neighbourhoods, to which he had
been inattentive during the journey down to the sea, invaded him; they
were persistent. He was a worthy man, having within him the
spiritual impulse curiously ready to take the place where a material
disappointment left vacancy. The vulgar sort embrace the devil at that
stage. Before the day had sunk, Mr. Barmby’s lowest wish was, to be a
light, as the instrument of his Church in her ministrations amid the
haunts of sin and slime, to such plain souls as Daniel Skepsey and
Matilda Pridden. And he could still be that, if Nesta, in the chapters
of the future, changed her mind. She might; for her good she would; he
reserved the hope. His light was one to burn beneath an extinguisher.
At the luncheon table of the Duvidney ladies, it was a pain to Dorothea
and Virginia to witness how poor the appetite their Nesta brought in
from the briny blowy walk. They prophesied against her chances of a good
sleep at night, if she did not eat heartily. Virginia timidly remarked
on her paleness. Both of them put their simple arts in motion to let her
know, that she was dear to them: so dear as to make them dread the hour
of parting. They named their dread of it. They had consulted in private
and owned to one another, that they did really love the child, and dared
not look forward to what they would do without her. The dear child’s
paleness and want of appetite (they remembered they were observing
a weak innocent girl) suggested to them mutually the idea of a young
female heart sickening, for the old unhappy maiden reason. But, if
only she might return with them to the Wells, the Rev. Stuart Rem would
assure her to convince her of her not being quite, quite forsaken. He,
or some one having sanction from Victor, might ultimately (the ladies
waiting anxiously in the next room, to fold her on the warmth of their
bosoms when she had heard) impart to her the knowledge of circumstances,
which would, under their further tuition concerning the particular
sentiments of great families and the strict duties of the scions of
the race, help to account for and excuse the Hon. Dudley Sowerby’s
behaviour.
They went up to the drawing-room, talking of Skepsey and his tale of
Miss Pridden, for Nesta’s amusement. Any talk of her Skepsey usually
quickened her lips to reminiscent smiles and speech. Now she held on to
gazeing; and sadly, it seemed; as if some object were not present.
For a vague encouragement, Dorothea said: ‘One week, and we are back
home at Moorsedge!’--not so far from Cronidge, was implied, for the
administering of some foolish temporary comfort. And it was as when a
fish on land springs its hollow sides in alien air for the sustaining
element; the girl panted; she clasped Dorothea’s hand and looked at
Virginia: ‘My mother--I must see her!’ she said. They were slightly
stupefied by the unwonted mention of her mother. They made no reply.
They never had done so when there was allusion to her mother. Their
silence now struck a gong at the girl’s bosom.
Dorothea had it in mind to say, that if she thirsted for any special
comfort, the friends about her would offer consolation for confidence.
Before she could speak, Perrin the footman entered, bearing the card of
the Hon. Dudley Sowerby.
Mr. Dudley Sowerby begged for an immediate interview with Miss Radnor.
The ladies were somewhat agitated, but no longer perplexed as to their
duties. They had quitted Moorsedge to avoid the visit of his family.
If he followed, it signified that which they could not withstand:--The
‘Tivoli falls!’ as they named the fateful tremendous human passion, from
the reminiscences of an impressive day on their travels in youth; when
the leaping torrent had struck upon a tale of love they were reading.
They hurriedly entreated Nesta to command her nerves; peremptorily
requested her to stay where she was; showed her spontaneously, by way of
histrionic adjuration, the face to be worn by young ladies at greetings
on these occasions; kissed her and left her; Virginia whispering: ‘He is
true!’
Dudley entered the drawing-room, charged with his happy burden of a love
that had passed through the furnace. She stood near a window, well in
the light; she hardly gave him welcome. His address to her was hurried,
rather uncertain, coherent enough between the drop and the catch of
articulate syllables. He found himself holding his hat. He placed it on
the table, and it rolled foolishly; but soon he was by her side, having
two free hands to claim her one.
‘You are thinking, you have not heard from me! I have been much
occupied,’ he said. ‘My brother is ill, very ill. I have your pardon?’
‘Indeed you have--if it has to be asked.’
‘I have it?’
‘Have I to grant it?’
‘I own to remissness!
‘I did not blame you.’
‘Nesta...!’
Her coldness was unshaken.
He repeated the call of her name. ‘I should have written--I ought to
have written!--I could not have expressed... You do forgive? So many
things!’
‘You come from Cronidge to-day?’
‘From my family--to you.’
She seemed resentful. His omissions as a correspondent were explicable
in a sentence. It had to be deferred.
Reviewing for a moment the enormous internal conflict undergone by
him during the period of the silence between them, he wondered at the
vastness of the love which had conquered objections, to him so poignant.
There was at least no seeing of the public blot on her birth when
looking on her face. Nor when thinking of the beauty of her character,
in absence or in presence, was there any. He had mastered distaste to
such a degree, that he forgot the assistance he had received from the
heiress for enabling him to appreciate the fair young girl. Money is the
imperious requirement of superior station; and more money and more: in
these our modern days of the merchant’s wealth, and the miner’s, and the
gigantic American and Australian millionaires, high rank is of necessity
vowed, in peril of utter eclipse; to the possession of money. Still it
is, when assured, a consideration far to the rear with a gentleman in
whose bosom love and the buzzing world have fought their battle out. He
could believe it thoroughly fought out, by the prolonged endurance of
a contest lasting many days and nights; in the midst of which, at
one time, the task of writing to tell her of his withdrawal from the
engagement, was the cause of his omission to write.
As to her character, he dwelt on the charm of her recovered features, to
repress an indicative dread of some intrepid force behind it, that might
be unfeminine, however gentle the external lineaments. Her features,
her present aristocratic deficiency of colour, greatly pleased him; her
character would submit to moulding. Of all young ladies in the world,
she should be the one to shrink from a mental independence and hold to
the guidance of the man ennobling her. Did she? Her eyes were reading
him. She had her father’s limpid eyes, and when they concentrated rays,
they shot.
‘Have you seen my parents, Mr. Sowerby?’
He answered smilingly, for reassuringly: ‘I have seen them.’
‘My mother?’
‘From your mother first. But am I not to be Dudley?’
‘She spoke to you? She told you?’
‘And yesterday your father--a second time.’
Some remainder of suspicion in the dealing with members of this family,
urged Dudley to say: ‘I understood from them, you were not?... that you
were quite...?’
‘I have heard: I have guessed: it was recently--this morning, as
it happened. I wish to go to my mother to-day. I shall go to her
to-morrow.’
‘I might offer to conduct you-now!’
‘You are kind; I have Skepsey.’ She relieved the situation of its
cold-toned strain in adding: ‘He is a host.’
‘But I may come?--now! Have I not the right? You do not deny it me?’
‘You are very generous.’
‘I claim the right, then. Always. And subsequently, soon after, my
mother hopes to welcome you at Cronidge. She will be glad to hear of
your naming of a day. My father bids me... he and all our family.’
‘They are very generous.’
‘I may send them word this evening of a day you name?’
‘No, Mr. Sowerby.
‘Dudley?’
‘I cannot say it. I have to see my parents.’
‘Between us, surely?’
‘My whole heart thanks you for your goodness to me. I am unable to say
more.’
He had again observed and he slightly crisped under the speculative
look she directed on him: a simple unstrained look, that had an air of
reading right in, and was worse to bear with than when the spark
leaped upon some thought from her eyes: though he had no imagination of
anything he concealed--or exposed, and he would have set it down to her
temporary incredulousness of his perfect generosity or power to overcome
the world’s opinion of certain circumstances. That had been a struggle!
The peculiar look was not renewed. She spoke warmly of her gratitude.
She stated, that she must of necessity see her parents at once. She
submitted to his entreaty to conduct her to them on the morrow. It
was in the manner of one who yielded step by step, from inability to
contend.
Her attitude continuing unchanged, he became sensible of a monotony
in the speech with which he assailed it, and he rose to leave, not
dissatisfied. She, at his urgent request, named her train for London in
the early morning. He said it was not too early. He would have desired
to be warmed; yet he liked her the better for the moral sentiment
controlling the physical. He had appointments with relatives or
connections in the town, and on that pretext he departed, hoping for
the speedy dawn of the morrow as soon as he had turned his back on the
house.
No, not he the man to have pity of women underfoot! That was the
thought, unrevolved, unphrased, all but unconscious, in Nesta: and while
her heart was exalting him for his generosity. Under her present sense
of the chilling shadow, she felt the comfort there was in being grateful
to him for the golden beams which his generosity cast about her. But she
had an intelligence sharp to pierce, virgin though she was; and with the
mark in sight, however distant, she struck it, unerring as an Artemis
for blood of beasts: those shrewd young wits, on the lookout to find
a champion, athirst for help upon a desolate road, were hard as any
judicial to pronounce the sentence upon Dudley in that respect. She
raised him high; she placed herself low; she had a glimpse of the
struggle he had gone through; love of her had helped him, she believed.
And she was melted; and not the less did the girl’s implacable intuition
read with the keenness of eye of a man of the world the blunt division
in him, where warm humanity stopped short at the wall of social concrete
forming a part of this rightly esteemed young citizen. She, too, was
divided: she was at his feet; and she rebuked herself for daring to
judge--or rather, it was, for having a reserve in her mind upon a
man proving so generous with her. She was pulled this way and that
by sensibilities both inspiring to blind gratitude and quickening her
penetrative view. The certainty of an unerring perception remained.
Dorothea and Virginia were seated in the room below, waiting for their
carriage, when the hall-door spoke of the Hon. Dudley’s departure; soon
after, Nesta entered to them. She swam up to Dorothea’s lap, and dropped
her head on it, kneeling.
The ladies feared she might be weeping. Dorothea patted her thick brown
twisted locks of hair. Unhappiness following such an interview, struck
them as an ill sign.
Virginia bent to the girl’s ear, and murmured: ‘All well?’
She replied: ‘He has been very generous.’
Her speaking of the words renewed an oppression, that had darkened her
on the descent of stairs. For sensibilities sharp as Nesta’s, are not to
be had without their penalties: and she who had gone nigh to summing in
a flash the nature of Dudley, sank suddenly under that affliction often
besetting the young adventurous mind, crushing to young women:--the
fascination exercised upon them by a positive adverse masculine attitude
and opinion. Young men know well what it is: and if young women have
by chance overcome their timidity, to the taking of any step out of
the trim pathway, they shrink, with a sense of forlornest isolation. It
becomes a subjugation; inciting to revolt, but a heavy weight to cast
off. Soon it assumed its material form for the contention between
her and Dudley, in the figure of Mrs. Marsett. The Nesta who had been
instructed to know herself to be under a shadow, heard, she almost
justified Dudley’s reproaches to her, for having made the acquaintance
of the unhappy woman, for having visited her, for having been, though
but for a minute, at the mercy of a coarse gentleman’s pursuit. The
recollection was a smart buffet.
Her lighted mind punished her thus through her conjuring of Dudley’s
words, should news of her relations with Mrs. Marsett reach him:--and
she would have to tell him. Would he not say: ‘I have borne with
the things concerning your family. All the greater reason why I must
insist’--he would assuredly say he insisted (her humour caught at the
word, as being the very word one could foresee and clearly see him
uttering in a fit of vehemence) on her immediate abandonment of ‘that
woman.’
And with Nesta’s present enlightenment by dusky beams, upon her
parentage, she listened abjectly to Dudley, or the opinion of the
majority. Would he not say or think, that her clinging to Mrs. Marsett
put them under a kind of common stamp, or gave the world its option to
class them together?
These were among the ideas chasing in a head destined to be a
battle-field for the enrichment of a harvest-field of them, while the
girl’s face was hidden on Dorothea’s lap, and her breast heaved and
heaved.
She distressed them when she rose, by saying she must instantly see her
mother.
They saw the pain their hesitation inflicted, and Dorothea said: ‘Yes,
dear; any day you like.’
‘To-morrow--I must go to her to-morrow!’
A suggestion of her mother’s coming down, was faintly spoken by one
lady, echoed in a quaver by the other.
Nesta shook her head. To quiet the kind souls, she entreated them to
give their promise that they would invite her again.
Imagining the Hon. Dudley to have cast her off, both ladies embraced
her: not entirely yielding-up their hearts to her, by reason of
the pernicious new ideas now in the world to sap our foundations of
morality; which warned them of their duty to uphold mentally his quite
justifiable behaviour, even when compassionating the sufferings of the
guiltless creature loved by them.