Taking Nesta’s hand, on her entry into his chambers with her father,
Colney Durance bowed over it and kissed it. The unusual performance
had a meaning; she felt she was praised. It might be because she made
herself her father’s companion. ‘I can’t persuade him to put on a
great-coat,’ she said. ‘You would defeat his aim at the particular
waistcoat of his ambition,’ said Colney, goaded to speak, not anxious to
be heard.
He kept her beside him, leading her about for introductions to multiform
celebrities of both sexes; among them the gentleman editing the Magazine
which gave out serially THE RIVAL TONGUES: and there was talk of a
dragon-throated public’s queer appetite in Letters. The pained Editor
deferentially smiled at her cheerful mention of Delphica. ‘In, book
form, perhaps!’ he remarked, with plaintive’ resignation; adding: ‘You
read it?’ And a lady exclaimed: ‘We all read it!’
But we are the elect, who see signification and catch flavour; and we
are reminded of an insatiable monster how sometimes capricious is his
gorge. ‘He may happen to be in the humour for a shaking!’ Colney’s poor
consolation it was to say of the prospects of his published book: for
the funny monster has been known to like a shaking.
‘He takes it kinder tickled,’ said Fenellan, joining the group and
grasping Nesta’s hand with a warmth that thrilled her and set her
guessing. ‘A taste of his favourite Cayenne lollypop, Colney; it fetches
the tear he loves to shed, or it gives him digestive heat in the bag of
his literary receptacle-fearfully relaxed and enormous! And no wonder;
his is to lie him down on notion of the attitude for reading, his back;
and he has in a jiffy the funnel of the Libraries inserted into his
mouth, and he feels the publishers pouring their gallons through it
unlimitedly; never crying out, which he can’t; only swelling, which
he’s obliged to do, with a non-nutritious inflation; and that’s his
intellectual enjoyment; bearing a likeness to the horrible old torture
of the baillir d’eau; and he’s doomed to perish in the worst book-form
of dropsy. You, my dear Colney, have offended his police or excise, who
stand by the funnel, in touch with his palate, to make sure that nothing
above proof is poured in; and there’s your misfortune. He’s not half a
bad fellow, you find when you haven’t got to serve him.’
‘Superior to his official parasites, one supposes!’ Colney murmured.
The celebrities were unaffectedly interested in a literary failure
having certain merits; they discussed it, to compliment the crownless
author; and the fervider they, the more was he endowed to read the
meanness prompting the generosity. Publication of a book, is the
philosopher’s lantern upon one’s fellows.
Colney was caught away from his private manufactory of acids by hearing
Simeon Fenellan relate to Victor some of the recent occurrences at
Brighton. Simeon’s tone was unsatisfying; Colney would have the word;
he was like steel on the grindstone for such a theme of our national
grotesque-sublime.
‘That Demerara Supple-jack, Victor! Don’t listen to Simeon; he’s a man
of lean narrative, fit to chronicle political party wrangles and
such like crop of carcase prose: this is epical. In DRINK we have Old
England’s organic Epic; Greeks and Trojans; Parliamentary Olympus,
ennobled brewers, nasal fanatics, all the machinery to hand. Keep a
straight eye on the primary motives of man, you’ll own the English
produce the material for proud verse; they’re alive there! Dartrey’s
Demerara makes a pretty episode of the battle. I haven’t seen it--if
it’s possible to look on it: but I hear it is flexible, of a vulgar
appearance in repose, Jove’s lightning at one time, the thong of AEacus
at another. Observe Dartrey marching off to the Station, for the purpose
of laying his miraculous weapon across the shoulders of a son of Mars,
who had offended. But we have his name, my dear Victor! His name,
Simeon?--Worrell; a Major Worrell: his offence being probably, that
he obtained military instruction in the Service, and left it at his
convenience, for our poor patch and tatter British Army to take in
his place another young student, who’ll grow up to do similarly. And
Dartrey, we assume, is off to stop that system. You behold Sir Dartrey
twirling the weapon in preparatory fashion; because he is determined
we shall have an army of trained officers instead of infant amateurs
heading heroic louts. Not a thought of Beer in Dartrey!--always
unpatriotic, you ‘ll say. Plato entreats his absent mistress to fix eyes
on a star: eyes on Beer for the uniting of you English! I tell you no
poetic fiction. Seeing him on his way, thus terribly armed, and knowing
his intent, Venus, to shield a former favourite servant of Mars,
conjured the most diverting of interventions, in the shape of a young
woman in a poke-bonnet, and Skepsey, her squire, marching with a
dozen or so, informing bedevilled mankind of the hideousness of our
hymnification when it is not under secluding sanction of the Edifice,
and challengeing criticism; and that was hard by, and real English,
in the form of bludgeons, wielded by a battalion of the national idol
Bungay Beervat’s boys; and they fell upon the hymners. Here you fill in
with pastoral similes. They struck the maid adored by Skepsey. And that
was the blow which slew them! Our little man drove into the press with
a pair of fists able to do their work. A valiant skiff upon a sea
of enemies, he was having it on the nob, and suddenly the Demerara
lightened. It flailed to thresh. Enough to say, brains would have come.
The Bungays made a show of fight. No lack of blood in them, to stock a
raw shilling’s worth or gush before Achilles rageing. You perceive the
picture, you can almost sing the ballad. We want only a few names of
the fallen. It was the carving of a maitre chef, according to Skepsey:
right-left-and point, with supreme precision: they fell, accurately
sliced from the joint. Having done with them, Dartrey tossed the
Demerara to Skepsey, and washed his hands of battle; and he let his
major go unscathed. Phlebotomy sufficient for the day!’
Nesta’s ears hummed with the name of Major Worrell.
‘Skepsey did come back to London with a rather damaged frontispiece,’
Victor said. ‘He can’t have joined those people?’
‘They may suit one of your militant peacemakers,’ interposed Fenellan.
‘The most placable creatures alive, and the surest for getting-up a
shindy.’
‘Suit him! They’re the scandal of our streets.’ Victor was pricked with
a jealousy of them for beguiling him of his trusty servant.
‘Look at your country, see where it shows its vitality,’ said Colney.
‘You don’t see elsewhere any vein in movement-movement,’ he harped on
the word Victor constantly employed to express the thing he wanted
to see. ‘Think of that, when the procession sets your teeth on
edge. They’re honest foes of vice, and they move:--in England!
Pulpit-preaching has no effect. For gross maladies, gross remedies.
You may judge of what you are by the quality of the cure. Puritanism, I
won’t attempt to paint--it would barely be decent; but compare it with
the spectacle of English frivolity, and you’ll admit it to be the best
show you make. It may still be the saving of you--on the level of the
orderly ox: I ‘ve not observed that it aims at higher. And talking of
the pulpit, Barmby is off to the East, has accepted a Shoreditch curacy,
Skepsey tells me.’
‘So there’s the reason for our not seeing him!’ Victor turned to Nesta.
‘Papa, you won’t be angry with Skepsey if he has joined those people,’
said Nesta. ‘I’m sure he thinks of serving his country, Mr. Durance.’
Colney smiled on her. ‘And you too?’
‘If women knew how!’
‘They’re hitting on more ways at present than the men--in England.’
‘But, Mr. Durance, it speaks well for England when they’re allowed the
chance here.’
‘Good!’ Fenellan exclaimed. ‘And that upsets his placement of the modern
national genders: Germany masculine, France feminine, Old England what
remains.’
Victor ruffled and reddened on his shout of ‘Neuter?’
Their circle widened. Nesta knew she was on promotion, by her being led
about and introduced to ladies. They were encouraging with her. One of
them, a Mrs. Marina Floyer, had recently raised a standard of feminine
insurrection. She said: ‘I hear your praises from Mr. Durance. He rarely
praises. You have shown capacity to meditate on the condition of women,
he says.’
Nesta drew a shorter breath, with a hope at heart. She speculated in the
dark, as to whether her aim to serve and help was not so friendless. And
did Mr. Durance approve? But surely she stood in a glorious England if
there were men and women to welcome a girl to their councils. Oh! that
is the broad free England where gentlemen and gentlewomen accept of the
meanest aid to cleanse the land of its iniquities, and do not suffer
shame to smite a young face for touching upon horrors with a pure
design.
She cried in her bosom: I feel! She had no other expression for that
which is as near as great natures may come to the conceiving of the
celestial spirit from an emissary angel; and she trembled, the fire ran
through her. It seemed to her, that she would be called to help or that
certainly they were nearing to an effacement of the woefullest of evils;
and if not helping, it would still be a blessedness for her to kneel
thanking heaven.
Society was being attacked and defended. She could but studiously
listen. Her father was listening. The assailant was a lady; and she had
a hearing, although she treated Society as a discrowned monarch on trial
for an offence against a more precious: viz., the individual cramped
by brutish laws: the individual with the ideas of our time, righteously
claiming expansion out of the clutches of a narrow old-world
disciplinarian-that giant hypocrite! She flung the gauntlet at
externally venerable Institutions; and she had a hearing, where
horrification, execration, the foul Furies of Conservatism would in a
shortly antecedent day have been hissing and snakily lashing, hounding
her to expulsion. Mrs. Marina Floyer gravely seconded her. Colney did
the same. Victor turned sharp on him. ‘Yes,’ Colney said; ‘we unfold the
standard of extremes in this country, to get a single step taken: that’s
how we move: we threaten death to get footway. Now, mark: Society’s
errors will be admitted.’
A gentleman spoke. He began by admitting Society’s errors. Nevertheless,
it so distinctly exists for the common good, that we may say of Society
in relation to the individual, it is the body to the soul. We may
wash, trim, purify, but we must not maim it. The assertion of our
individuality in opposition to the Government of Society--this existing
Society--is a toss of the cap for the erasure of our civilization, et
caetera.
Platitudes can be of intense interest if they approach our case.--But,
if you please, we ask permission to wash, trim, purify, and we do not
get it.--But you have it! Because we take it at our peril; and you, who
are too cowardly to grant or withhold, call-up the revolutionary from
the pits by your slackness:--etc. There was a pretty hot debate. Both
assailant and defendant, to Victor’s thinking, spoke well, and each
the right thing and he could have made use of both, but he could answer
neither. He beat about for the cause of this deficiency, and discovered
it in his position. Mentally, he was on the side of Society. Yet he was
annoyed to find the attack was so easily answerable when the defence
unfolded. But it was absurd to expect it would not be. And in fact,
a position secretly rebellious is equal to water on the brain for
stultifying us.
Before the controversy was over, a note in Nataly’s handwriting called
him home. She wrote: ‘Make my excuses. C. D. will give Nesta and some
lady dinner. A visitor here. Come alone, and without delay. Quite well,
robust. Impatient to consult with you, nothing else.’
Nesta was happy to stay; and Victor set forth.
The visitor? plainly Dudley. Nataly’s trusting the girl to the chance of
some lady being present, was unlike her. Dudley might be tugging at the
cord; and the recent conversation upon Society, rendered one of its gilt
pillars particularly estimable.--A person in the debate had declared
this modern protest on behalf of individualism to represent Society’s
Criminal Trial. And it is likely to be a long one. And good for the
world, that we see such a Trial!--Well said or not, undoubtedly Society
is an old criminal: not much more advanced than the state of spiritual
worship where bloody sacrifice was offered to a hungry Lord. But it has
a case for pleading. We may liken it, as we have it now, to the
bumping lumberer’s raft; suitable along torrent waters until we come to
smoother. Are we not on waters of a certain smoothness at the reflecting
level?--enough to justify demands for a vessel of finer design. If
Society is to subsist, it must have the human with the logical argument
against the cry of the free-flags, instead of presenting a block’s
obtuseness. That, you need not hesitate to believe, will be rolled
downward and disintegrated, sooner than later. A Society based on the
logical concrete of humane considerateness:--a Society prohibiting to
Mrs. Burman her wielding of a life-long rod....
The personal element again to confuse inquiry!--And Skepsey and Barmby
both of them bent on doing work without inquiry of any sort! They were
enviable: they were good fellows. Victor clung to the theme because it
hinted of next door to his lost Idea. He rubbed the back of his head,
fancying a throb there. Are civilized creatures incapable of abstract
thought when their social position is dubious? For if so, we never can
be quit of those we forsake.--Apparently Mrs. Burman’s unfathomed power
lay in her compelling him to summon the devilish in himself and play
upon the impish in Society, that he might overcome her.
Victor’s house-door stopped this current.
Nataly took his embrace.
‘Nothing wrong?’ he said, and saw the something. It was a favourable
moment to tell her what she might not at another time regard as a small
affair. ‘News in the City to-day of that South London borough being
vacated. Quatley urges me. A death again! I saw Pempton, too. Will you
credit me when I tell you he carries his infatuation so far, that he
has been investing in Japanese and Chinese Loans, because they are less
meat-eaters than others, and vegetarians are more stable, and outlast us
all!--Dudley the visitor?’ ‘Mr. Sowerby has been here,’ she said, in a
shaking low voice.
Victor held her hand and felt a squeeze more nervous than affectionate.
‘To consult with me,’ she added. ‘My maid will go at ten to bring Nesta;
Mr. Durance I can count on, to see her safe home. Ah!’ she wailed.
Victor nodded, saying: ‘I guess. And, my love, you will receive Mrs.
John Cormyn to-morrow morning. I can’t endure gaps. Gaps in our circle
must never be. Do I guess?--I spoke to Colney about bringing her home.’
Nataly sighed: ‘Ah! make what provision we will! Evil--Mr. Sowerby has
had a great deal to bear.’
‘A worldling may think so.’
Her breast heaved, and the wave burst: but her restraining of tears
froze her speech.
‘Victor! Our Nesta! Mr. Sowerby is unable to explain. And how the
Miss Duvidneys!... At that Brighton!’--The voice he heard was not his
darling’s deep rich note, it had dropped to toneless hoarseness: ‘She
has been permitted to make acquaintance--she has been seen riding
with--she has called upon--Oh! it is one of those abandoned women. In
her house! Our girl! Our Nesta! She was insulted by a man in the woman’s
house. She is talked of over Brighton. The mother!--the daughter! And
grant me this--that never was girl more carefully... never till she was
taken from me. Oh! do not forget. You will defend me? You will say,
that her mother did with all her soul strive... It is not a rumour. Mr.
Sowerby has had it confirmed.’ A sob caught her voice.
Victor’s hands caressed to console: ‘Dudley does not propose to...?’
‘Nesta must promise... but how it happened? How! An acquaintance
with--contact with!--Oh! cruel!’ Each time she ceased speaking, the
wrinkles of a shiver went over her, and the tone was of tears coming,
but she locked them in.
‘An accident!’ said Victor; ‘some misunderstanding--there can’t be
harm. Of course, she promises--hasn’t to promise. How could a girl
distinguish! He does not cast blame on her?’
‘Dear, if you would go down to Dartrey to-morrow. He knows:--it is over
the Clubs there; he will tell you, before a word to Nesta. Innocent,
yes! Mr. Sowerby has not to be assured of that. Ignorant of the
character of the dreadful woman? Ah, if I could ever in anything think
her ignorant! She frightens me. Mr. Sowerby is indulgent. He does
me justice. My duty to her--I must defend myself--has been my first
thought. I said in my prayers--she at least!... We have to see the more
than common reasons why she, of all girls, should--he did not hint it,
he was delicate: her name must not be public.’
‘Yes, yes, Dudley is without parallel as a gentleman,’ said Victor. ‘It
does not suit me to hear the word “indulgent.” My dear, if you were down
there, you would discover that the talk was the talk of two or three
men seeing our girl ride by--and she did ride with a troop: why, we’ve
watched them along the parade, often. Clear as day how it happened! I’ll
go down early to-morrow.’
He fancied Nataly was appeased. And even out of this annoyance, there
was the gain of her being won to favour Dudley’s hitherto but tolerated
suit.
Nataly also had the fancy, that the calm following on her anguish, was
a moderation of it. She was kept strung to confide in her girl by the
recent indebtedness to her for words heavenly in the strengthening
comfort they gave. But no sooner was she alone than her torturing
perplexities and her abasement of the hours previous to Victor’s coming
returned.
For a girl of Nesta’s head could not be deceived; she had come home with
a woman’s intelligence of the world, hard knowledge of it--a knowledge
drawn from foul wells, the unhappy mother imagined: she dreaded to probe
to the depth of it. She had in her wounded breast the world’s idea, that
corruption must come of the contact with impurity.
Nataly renewed her cry of despair: ‘The mother!--the daughter!’--her
sole revelation of the heart’s hollows in her stammered speaking to
Victor.
She thanked heaven for the loneliness of her bed, where she could
repeat: ‘The mother!--the daughter!’ hearing the world’s words:--the
daughter excused, by reason of her having such a mother; the mother
unpitied for the bruiting of her brazen daughter’s name: but both alike
consigned to the corners of the world’s dust-heaps. She cried out, that
her pride was broken. Her pride, her last support of life, had gone to
pieces. The tears she restrained in Victor’s presence, were called on to
come now, and she had none. It might be, that she had not strength for
weeping. She was very weak. Rising from bed to lock her door against
Nesta’s entry to the room on her return at night, she could hardly
stand: a chill and a clouding overcame her. The quitted bed seemed the
haven of a drifted wreck to reach.
Victor tried the handle of a locked door in the dark of the early winter
morning. ‘The mother!--the daughter!’ had swung a pendulum for some time
during the night in him, too. He would rather have been subjected to the
spectacle of tears than have heard that toneless voice, as it were the
dry torrent-bed rolling blocks instead of melodious, if afflicting,
waters.
He told Nesta not to disturb her mother, and murmured of a headache:
‘Though, upon my word, the best cure for mama would be a look into
Fredi’s eyes!’ he said, embracing his girl, quite believing in her, just
a little afraid of her.