Nataly had fallen to be one of the solitary who have no companionship
save with the wound they nurse, to chafe it rather than try at healing.
So rational a mind as she had was not long in outliving mistaken
impressions; she could distinguish her girl’s feeling, and her aim; she
could speak on the subject with Dartrey; and still her wound bled on.
Louise de Seilles comforted her partly, through an exaltation of Nesta.
Mademoiselle, however, by means of a change of tone and look when Dudley
Sowerby and Dartrey Fenellan were the themes, showed a too pronounced
preference of the more unstable one:--or rather, the man adventurous out
of the world’s highways, whose image, as husband of such a daughter
as hers, smote the wounded mother with a chillness. Mademoiselle’s
occasional thrill of fervency in an allusion to Dartrey, might have
tempted a suspicious woman to indulge suppositions, accounting for the
young Frenchwoman’s novel tenderness to England, of which Nesta proudly,
very happily boasted. The suspicion proposed itself, and was rejected:
for not even the fever of an insane body could influence Nataly’s
generous character, to let her moods divert and command her thoughts of
persons.
Her thoughts were at this time singularly lucid upon everything about
her; with the one exception of the reason why she had come to favour
Dudley, and how it was she had been smitten by that woman at Brighton
to see herself in her position altogether with the world’s relentless,
unexamining hard eyes. Bitterness added, of Mrs. Marsett: She is made
an honest woman!--And there was a strain of the lower in Nataly, to
reproach the girl for causing the reflection to be cast on the unwedded.
Otherwise her mind was open; she was of aid to Victor in his confusion
over some lost Idea he had often touched on latterly. And she was the
one who sent him ahead at a trot under a light, by saying: ‘You would
found a new and more stable aristocracy of the contempt of luxury’ when
he talked of combatting the Jews with a superior weapon. That being,
in fact, as Colney Durance had pointed out to him, the weapon of
self-conquest used by them ‘before they fell away to flesh-pottery.’
Was it his Idea? He fancied an aching at the back of his head when
he speculated. But his Idea had been surpassingly luminous, alive, a
creation; and this came before him with the yellow skin of a Theory,
bred, born of books. Though Nataly’s mention of the aristocracy of
self-denying discipline struck a Lucifer in his darkness.
Nesta likewise helped: but more in what she did than in what she said:
she spoke intelligently enough to make him feel a certain increase of
alarm, amounting to a cursory secret acknowledgement of it, both at her
dealings with Dudley and with himself. She so quietly displaced the
lady visiting him at the City offices. His girl’s disregard of
hostile weather, and her company, her talk, delighted him: still
he remonstrated, at her coming daily. She came: nor was there an
instigation on the part of her mother, clearly none: her mother asked
him once whether he thought she met the dreadful Brighton woman. His
Fredi drove constantly to walk back beside him Westward, as he loved
to do whenever it was practicable; and exceeding the flattery of his
possession of the gallant daughter, her conversation charmed him to
forget a disappointment caused by the defeat and entire exclusion of the
lady visiting him so complimentarily for his advice on stocks, shares,
mines, et caetera. The lady resisted; she was vanquished, as the shades
are displaced by simple apparition of daylight.
His Fredi was like the daylight to him; she was the very daylight to his
mind, whatsoever their theme of converse for by stimulating that ready
but vagrant mind to quit the leash of the powerful senses and be
a ethereally excursive, she gave him a new enjoyment; which led to
reflections--a sounding of Nature, almost a question to her, on the
verge of a doubt. Are we, in fact, harmonious with the Great Mother when
we yield to the pressure of our natures for indulgence? Is she, when
translated into us, solely the imperious appetite? Here was Fredi, his
little Fredi--stately girl that she had grown, and grave, too, for all
her fun and her sail on wings--lifting him to pleasures not followed
by clamorous, and perfectly satisfactory, yet discomposingly violent,
appeals to Nature. They could be vindicated. Or could they, when they
would not bear a statement of the case? He could not imagine himself
stating it namelessly to his closest friend--not to Simeon Fenellan. As
for speaking to Dartrey, the notion took him with shivers:--Young Dudley
would have seemed a more possible confidant:--and he represented the
Puritan world.--And young Dudley was getting over Fredi’s infatuation
for the woman she had rescued: he was beginning to fancy he saw a right
enthusiasm in it;--in the abstract; if only the fair maid would drop
an unseemly acquaintance. He had called at the office to say so. Victor
stammered the plea for him.
‘Never, dear father,’ came the smooth answer: a shocking answer in
contrast with the tones. Her English was as lucid as her eyes when she
continued up to the shock she dealt: ‘Do not encourage a good man to
waste his thoughts upon me. I have chosen my mate, and I may never marry
him. I do not know whether he would marry me. He has my soul. I have no
shame in saying I love him. It is to love goodness, greatness of heart.
He is a respecter of women--of all women; not only the fortunate. He is
the friend of the weaker everywhere. He has been proved in fire. He does
not sentimentalize over poor women, as we know who scorns people for
doing:--and that is better than hardness, meaning kindly. He is not one
of the unwise advocates. He measures the forces against them. He reads
their breasts. He likes me. He is with me in my plans. He has not said,
has not shown, he loves me. It is too high a thought for me until I hear
it.’
‘Has your soul!’ was all that Victor could reply, while the whole
conception of Lakelands quaked under the crumbling structure.
Remonstrance, argument, a word for Dudley, swelled to his lips and sank
in dumbness. Her seeming intuition--if it was not a perception--of
the point where submission to the moods of his nature had weakened his
character, and required her defence of him, struck Victor with a serious
fear of his girl: and it was the more illuminatingly damnatory for being
recognized as the sentiment which no father should feel. He tried to
think she ought not to be so wise of the things of the world. An effort
to imagine a reproof, showed him her spirit through her eyes: in her
deeds too: she had already done work on the road:--Colney Durance,
Dartrey Fenellan, anything but sentimentalists either of them, strongly
backing her, upholding her. Victor could no longer so naturally name her
Fredi.
He spoke it hastily, under plea of some humorous tenderness, when
he ventured. When Dudley, calling on him in the City to discuss the
candidature for the South London borough, named her Fredi, that he
might regain a vantage of familiarity by imitating her father, it struck
Victor as audacious. It jarred in his recollection, though the heir of
the earldom spoke in the tone of a lover, was really at high pitch. He
appeared to be appreciating her, to have suffered stings of pain; he
offered himself; he made but one stipulation. Victor regretfully assured
him, he feared he could do nothing. The thought of his entry into
Lakelands, with Nesta Victoria refusing the foundation stone of the
place, grew dim.
But he was now canvassing for the Borough, hearty at the new business
as the braced swimmer on seas, which instantly he became, with an end in
view to be gained.
Late one April night, expecting Nataly to have gone to bed, and Nesta
to be waiting for him, he reached home, and found Nataly in her
sitting-room alone. ‘Nesta was tired,’ she said: ‘we have had a scene;
she refuses Mr. Sowerby; I am sick of pressing it; he is very much in
earnest, painfully; she blames him for disturbing me; she will not
see the right course:--a mother reads her daughter! If my girl has not
guidance!--she means rightly, she is rash.’
Nataly could not utter all that her insaneness of feeling made her think
with regard to Victor’s daughter--daughter also of the woman whom her
hard conscience accused of inflammability. ‘Here is a note from Dr.
Themison, dear.’
Victor seized it, perused, and drew the big breath.
‘From Themison,’ he said; he coughed.
‘Don’t think to deceive me,’ said she. ‘I have not read the contents, I
know them.’
‘The invitation at last, for to-morrow, Sunday, four P.M. Odd, that next
day at eight of the evening I shall be addressing our meeting in the
Theatre. Simeon speaks. Beaves Urmsing insists on coming, Tory though he
is. Those Tories are jollier fellows than--well, no wonder! There will
be no surgical... the poor woman is very low. A couple of days at the
outside. Of course, I go.’
‘Hand me the note, dear.’
It had to be given up, out of the pocket.
‘But,’ said Victor, ‘the mention of you is merely formal.’
She needed sleep: she bowed her head.
Nataly was the first at the breakfast-table in the morning, a fair
Sunday morning. She was going to Mrs. John Cormyn’s Church, and she
asked Nesta to come with her.
She returned five minutes before the hour of lunch, having left Nesta
with Mrs. John. Louise de Seilles undertook to bring Nesta home at
the time she might choose. Fenellan, Mr. Pempton, Peridon and Catkin,
lunched and chatted. Nataly chatted. At a quarter to three o’clock
Victor’s carriage was at the door. He rose: he had to keep an
appointment. Nataly said to him publicly: ‘I come too.’ He stared and
nodded. In the carriage, he said: ‘I’m driving to the Gardens, for a
stroll, to have a look at the beasts. Sort of relief. Poor crazy woman!
However, it ‘s a comfort to her: so...!’
‘I like to see them,’ said Nataly. ‘I shall see her. I have to do it.’
Up to the gate of the Gardens Victor was arguing to dissuade his dear
soul from this very foolish, totally unnecessary, step. Alighting, he
put the matter aside, for good angels to support his counsel at the
final moment.
Bears, lions, tigers, eagles, monkeys: they suggested no more than he
would have had from prints; they sprang no reflection, except, that the
coming hour was a matter of indifference to them. They were about him,
and exercised so far a distraction. He took very kindly to an old mother
monkey, relinquishing her society at sight of Nataly’s heave of the
bosom. Southward, across the park, the dread house rose. He began
quoting Colney Durance with relish while sarcastically confuting the
cynic, who found much pasture in these Gardens. Over Southward, too, he
would be addressing a popular assembly to-morrow evening. Between now
and then there was a ditch to jump. He put on the sympathetic face
of grief. ‘After all, a caged wild beast hasn’t so bad a life,’ he
said.--To be well fed while they live, and welcome death as a release
from the maladies they develop in idleness, is the condition of wealthy
people:--creatures of prey? horrible thought! yet allied to his Idea,
it seemed. Yes, but these good caged beasts here set them an example,
in not troubling relatives and friends when they come to the gasp! Mrs.
Burman’s invitation loomed as monstrous--a final act of her cruelty.
His skin pricked with dews. He thought of Nataly beside him, jumping the
ditch with him, as a relief--if she insisted on doing it. He hoped she
would not, for the sake of her composure.
It was a ditch void of bottom. But it was a mere matter of an hour,
less. The state of health of the invalid could bear only a few minutes.
In any case, we are sure that the hour will pass. Our own arrive?
Certainly.
‘Capital place for children,’ he exclaimed. And here startlingly before
him in the clusters of boys and girls, was the difference between young
ones and their elders feeling quite as young: the careless youngsters
have not to go and sit in the room with a virulent old woman, and
express penitence and what not, and hear words of pardon, after their
holiday scamper and stare at the caged beasts.
Attention to the children precipitated him upon acquaintances, hitherto
cleverly shunned. He nodded them off, after the brightest of greetings.
Such anodyne as he could squeeze from the incarcerated wild creatures,
was exhausted. He fell to work at Nataly’s ‘aristocracy of the contempt
of luxury’; signifying, that we the wealthy will not exist to pamper
flesh, but we live for the promotion of brotherhood:--ay, and that our
England must make some great moral stand, if she is not to fall to
the rear and down. Unuttered, it caught the skirts of the Idea: it
evaporated when spoken. Still, this theme was almost an exorcism of Mrs.
Burman. He consulted his watch. ‘Thirteen minutes to four. I must be
punctual,’ he said. Nataly stepped faster.
Seated in the carriage, he told her he had never felt the horror of that
place before. ‘Put me down at the corner of the terrace, dear: I won’t
drive to the door.’
‘I come with you, Victor,’ she replied.
After entreaties and reasons intermixed, to melt her resolve, he saw she
was firm: and he asked himself, whether he might not be constitutionally
better adapted to persuade than to dissuade. The question thumped.
Having that house of drugs in view, he breathed more freely for the
prospect of feeling his Nataly near him beneath the roof.
‘You really insist, dear love?’ he appealed to her: and her answer:
‘It must be,’ left no doubt: though he chose to say: ‘Not because of
standing by me?’ And she said: ‘For my peace, Victor.’ They stepped to
the pavement. The carriage was dismissed.
Seventeen houses of the terrace fronting the park led to the funereal
one: and the bell was tolled in the breast of each of the couple
advancing with an air of calmness to the inevitable black door.
Jarniman opened it. ‘His mistress was prepared to see them.’--Not
like one near death.--They were met in the hall by the Rev. Groseman
Buttermore. ‘You will find a welcome,’ was his reassurance to them:
gently delivered, on the stoop of a large person. His whispered tones
were more agreeably deadening than his words.
Mr. Buttermore ushered them upstairs.
‘Can she bear it?’ Victor said, and heard: ‘Her wish ten minutes.’
‘Soon over,’ he murmured to Nataly, with a compassionate exclamation for
the invalid.
They rounded the open door. They were in the drawing-room. It was
furnished as in the old time, gold and white, looking new; all the same
as of old, save for a division of silken hangings; and these were pale
blue: the colour preferred by Victor for a bedroom. He glanced at the
ceiling, to bathe in a blank space out of memory. Here she lived,--here
she slept, behind the hangings. There was refreshingly that little
difference in the arrangement of the room. The corner Northward was
occupied by the grand piano; and Victor had an inquiry in him:--tuned?
He sighed, expecting a sight to come through the hangings. Sensible that
Nataly trembled, he perceived the Rev. Groseman Buttermore half across a
heap of shawl-swathe on the sofa.
Mrs. Burman was present; seated. People may die seated; she had always
disliked the extended posture; except for the night’s rest, she used to
say; imagining herself to be not inviting the bolt of sudden death, in
her attitude when seated by day:--and often at night the poor woman
had to sit up for the qualms of her dyspepsia!--But I ‘m bound to think
humanely, be Christian, be kind, benignant, he thought, and he fetched
the spirit required, to behold her face emerge from a pale blue silk
veiling; as it were, the inanimate wasted led up from the mould by
morning.
Mr. Buttermore signalled to them to draw near.
Wasted though it was, the face of the wide orbits for sunken eyes was
distinguishable as the one once known. If the world could see it and
hear, that it called itself a man’s wife! She looked burnt out.
Two chairs had been sent to front the sofa. Execution there! Victor
thought, and he garrotted the unruly mind of a man really feeling
devoutness in the presence of the shadow thrown by the dread Shade.
‘Ten minutes,’ Mr. Buttermore said low, after obligingly placing them on
the chairs.
He went. They were alone with Mrs. Burman.
No voice came. They were unsure of being seen by the floating grey
of eyes patient to gaze from their vast distance. Big drops fell from
Nataly’s. Victor heard the French timepiece on the mantel-shelf, where a
familiar gilt Cupid swung for the seconds: his own purchase. The time of
day on the clock was wrong; the Cupid swung.
Nataly’s mouth was taking breath of anguish at moments. More than a
minute of the terrible length of the period of torture must have gone:
two, if not three.
A quaver sounded. ‘You have come.’ The voice was articulate, thinner
than the telephonic, trans-Atlantic by deep-sea cable.
Victor answered: ‘We have.’
Another minute must have gone in the silence. And when we get to five
minutes we are on the descent, rapidly counting our way out of the
house, into the fresh air, where we were half an hour back, among those
happy beasts in the pleasant Gardens!
Mrs. Burman’s eyelids shut. ‘I said you would come.’
Victor started to the fire-screen. ‘Your sight requires protection.’
She dozed. ‘And Natalia Dreighton!’ she next said.
They were certainly now on the five minutes. Now for the slide downward
and outward! Nataly should never have been allowed to come.
‘The white waistcoat!’ struck his ears.
‘Old customs with me, always!’ he responded. ‘The first of April,
always. White is a favourite. Pale blue, too. But I fear--I hope you
have not distressing nights? In my family we lay great stress on the
nights we pass. My cousins, the Miss Duvidneys, go so far as to judge of
the condition of health by the nightly record.’
‘Your daughter was in their house.’
She knew everything!
‘Very fond of my daughter--the ladies,’ he remarked.
‘I wish her well.’
‘You are very kind.’
Mrs. Burman communed within or slept. ‘Victor, Natalia, we will pray,’
she said.
Her trembling hands crossed their fingers. Nataly slipped to her knees.
The two women mutely praying, pulled Victor into the devotional hush. It
acted on him like the silent spell of service in a Church. He forgot
his estimate of the minutes, he formed a prayer, he refused to hear the
Cupid swinging, he droned a sound of sentences to deaden his ears. Ideas
of eternity rolled in semblance of enormous clouds. Death was a black
bird among them. The piano rang to Nataly’s young voice and his. The
gold and white of the chairs welcomed a youth suddenly enrolled
among the wealthy by an enamoured old lady on his arm. Cupid
tick-ticked.--Poor soul! poor woman! How little we mean to do harm when
we do an injury! An incomprehensible world indeed at the bottom and at
the top. We get on fairly at the centre. Yet it is there that we do the
mischief making such a riddle of the bottom and the top. What is to be
said! Prayer quiets one. Victor peered at Nataly fervently on her knees
and Mrs. Burman bowed over her knotted fingers. The earnestness of both
enforced an effort at a phrased prayer in him. Plungeing through a wave
of the scent of Marechale, that was a tremendous memory to haul him
backward and forward, he beheld his prayer dancing across the furniture;
a diminutive thin black figure, elvish, irreverent, appallingly unlike
his proper emotion; and he brought his hands just to touch, and got to
the edge of his chair, with split knees. At once the figure vanished.
By merely looking at Nataly, he passed into her prayer. A look at Mrs.
Burman made it personal, his own. He heard the cluck of a horrible sob
coming from him. After a repetition of his short form of prayer deeply
stressed, he thanked himself with the word ‘sincere,’ and a queer
side-thought on our human susceptibility to the influence of posture. We
are such creatures.
Nataly resumed her seat. Mrs. Burman had raised her head. She said: ‘We
are at peace.’ She presently said, with effort: ‘It cannot last with me.
I die in nature’s way. I would bear forgiveness with me, that I may have
it above. I give it here, to you, to all. My soul is cleansed, I trust.
Much was to say. My strength will not. Unto God, you both!’
The Rev. Groseman Buttermore was moving on slippered step to the back of
the sofa. Nataly dropped before the unseeing, scarce breathing, lady
for an instant. Victor murmured an adieu, grateful for being spared the
ceremonial shake of hands. He turned away, then turned back, praying for
power to speak, to say that he had found his heart, was grateful, would
hold her in memory. He fell on a knee before her, and forgot he had done
so when he had risen. They were conducted by the Rev. gentleman to the
hall-door: he was not speechless. Jarniman uttered something.
That black door closed behind them.