In the still dark hour of that April morning, the Rev. Septimus Barmby
was roused by Mr. Peridon, with a scribbled message from Victor, which
he deciphered by candlelight held close to the sheet of paper, between
short inquiries and communications, losing more and more the sense of
it as his intelligence became aware of what dread blow had befallen the
stricken man. He was bidden come to fulfil his promise instantly. He
remembered the bearing of the promise. Mr. Peridon’s hurried explanatory
narrative made the request terrific, out of tragically lamentable. A
semblance of obedience had to be put on, and the act of dressing aided
it. Mr. Barmby prayed at heart for guidance further.
The two gentlemen drove Westward, speaking little; they had the dry sob
in the throat.
‘Miss Radnor?’ Mr. Barmby asked.
‘She is shattered; she holds up; she would not break down.’
‘I can conceive her to possess high courage.’
‘She has her friend Mademoiselle de Seilles.’
Mr. Barmby remained humbly silent. Affectionate deep regrets moved him
to say: ‘A loss irreparable. We have but one voice of sorrow. And how
sudden! The dear lady had no suffering, I trust.’
‘She fell into the arms of Mr. Durance. She died in his arms. She
was unconscious, he says. I left her straining for breath. She said
“Victor”; she tried to smile:--I understood I was not to alarm him.’
‘And he too late!’
‘He was too late, by some minutes.’
‘At least I may comfort. Miss Radnor must be a blessing to him.’
‘They cannot meet. Her presence excites him.’
That radiant home of all hospitality seemed opening on from darker
chambers to the deadly dark. The immorality in the moral situation
could not be forgotten by one who was professionally a moralist. But an
incorruptible beauty in the woman’s character claimed to plead for her
memory. Even the rigorous in defence of righteous laws are softened by
a sinner’s death to hear excuses, and may own a relationship, haply
perceive the faint nimbus of the saint. Death among us proves us to be
still not so far from the Nature saying at every avenue to the mind:
‘Earth makes all sweet.’
Mr. Durance had prophesied a wailful end ever to the carol of Optimists!
Yet it is not the black view which is the right view. There is one
between: the path adopted by Septimus Barmby:--if he could but induce
his brethren to enter on it! The dreadful teaching of circumstances
might help to the persuading of a fair young woman, under his
direction... having her hand disengaged. Mr. Barmby started himself in
the dream of his uninterred passion for the maiden: he chased it, seized
it, hurled it hence, as a present sacrilege:--constantly, and at the
pitch of our highest devotion to serve, are we assailed by the tempter!
Is it, that the love of woman is our weakness? For if so, then would
a celibate clergy have grant of immunity. But, alas, it is not so with
them! We have to deplore the hearing of reports too credible. Again we
are pushed to contemplate woman as the mysterious obstruction to the
perfect purity of soul. Nor is there a refuge in asceticism. No
more devilish nourisher of pride do we find than in pain voluntarily
embraced. And strangely, at the time when our hearts are pledged to
thoughts upon others, they are led by woman to glance revolving upon
ourself, our vile self! Mr. Barmby clutched it by the neck.
Light now, as of a strong memory of day along the street, assisted him
to forget himself at the sight of the inanimate houses of this London,
all revealed in a quietness not less immobile than tombstones of an
unending cemetery, with its last ghost laid. Did men but know it!--The
habitual necessity to amass matter for the weekly sermon, set him noting
his meditative exclamations, the noble army of platitudes under haloes,
of good use to men: justifiably turned over in his mind for their good.
He had to think, that this act of the justifying of the act reproached
him with a lack of due emotion, in sympathy with agonized friends truly
dear. Drawing near the hospitable house, his official and a cordial
emotion united, as we see sorrowful crape-wreathed countenances. His
heart struck heavily when the house was visible.
Could it be the very house? The look of it belied the tale inside. But
that threw a ghostliness on the look.
Some one was pacing up and down. They greeted Dudley Sowerby. His
ability to speak was tasked. They gathered, that mademoiselle and ‘a
Miss Pridden’ were sitting with Nesta, and that their services in a
crisis had been precious. At such times, one of them reflected, woman
has indeed her place: when life’s battle waxes red. Her soul must be
capable of mounting to the level of the man’s, then? It is a lesson!
Dudley said he was waiting for Dr. Themison to come forth. He could not
tear himself from sight of the house.
The door opened to Dr. Themison departing, Colney Durance and Simeon
Fenellan bare-headed. Colney showed a face with stains of the lashing of
tears.
Dr. Themison gave his final counsels. ‘Her father must not see her. For
him, it may have to be a specialist. We will hope the best. Mr. Dartrey
Fenellan stays beside him:--good. As to the ceremony he calls for, a
form of it might soothe:--any soothing possible! No music. I will return
in a few hours.’
He went on foot.
Mr. Barmby begged advice from Colney and Simeon concerning the message
he had received--the ceremony requiring his official presidency. Neither
of them replied. They breathed the morning air, they gave out long-drawn
sighs of relief, looking on the trees of the park.
A man came along the pavement, working slow legs hurriedly. Simeon ran
down to him.
‘Humour, as much as you can,’ Colney said to Mr. Barmby. ‘Let him
imagine.’
‘Miss Radnor?’
‘Not to speak of her.’
‘The daughter he so loves?’
Mr. Barmby’s tender inquisitiveness was unanswered. Were they inducing
him to mollify a madman? But was it possible to associate the idea of
madness with Mr. Radnor?
Simeon ran back. ‘Jarniman,’ he remarked. ‘It’s over!’
‘Now!’ Colney’s shoulders expressed the comment. ‘Well, now, Mr. Barmby,
you can do the part desired. Come in. It’s morning!’ He stared at the
sky.
All except Dudley passed in.
Mr. Barmby wanted more advice, his dilemma being acute. It was
moderated, though not more than moderated, when he was informed of
the death of Mrs. Burman Radnor; an event that occurred, according to
Jarniman’s report, forty-five minutes after Skepsey had a second time
called for information of it at the house in Regent’s Park--five hours
and a half, as Colney made his calculation, after the death of Nataly.
He was urged by some spur of senseless irony to verify the calculation
and correct it in the minutes.
Dudley crossed the road. No sign of the awful interior was on any of the
windows of the house either to deepen awe or relieve. They were blank
as eyeballs of the mindless. He shivered. Death is our common cloak; but
Calamity individualizes, to set the unwounded speculating whether indeed
a stricken man, who has become the cause of woeful trouble, may not be
pointing a moral. Pacing on the Park side of the house, he saw Skepsey
drive up and leap out with a gentleman, Mr. Radnor’s lawyer. Could it
be, that there was no Will written? Could a Will be executed now? The
moral was more forcibly suggested. Dudley beheld this Mr. Victor Radnor
successful up all the main steps, persuasive, popular, brightest of the
elect of Fortune, felled to the ground within an hour, he and all his
house! And if at once to pass beneath the ground, the blow would have
seemed merciful for him. Or if, instead of chattering a mixture of the
rational and the monstrous, he had been heard to rave like the utterly
distraught. Recollection of some of the things he shouted, was an
anguish: A notion came into the poor man, that he was the dead one of
the two, and he cried out: ‘Cremation? No, Colney’s right, it robs us of
our last laugh. I lie as I fall.’ He ‘had a confession for his Nataly,
for her only, for no one else.’ He had ‘an Idea.’ His begging of Dudley
to listen without any punctilio (putting a vulgar oath before it), was
the sole piece of unreasonableness in the explanation of the idea: and
that was not much wilder than the stuff Dudley had read from reports of
Radical speeches. He told Dudley he thought him too young to be ‘best
man to a widower about to be married,’ and that Barmby was ‘coming all
haste to do the business, because of no time to spare.’
Dudley knew but the half, and he did not envy Dartrey Fenellan his task
of watching over the wreck of a splendid intelligence, humouring and
restraining. According to the rumours, Mr. Radnor had not shown the
symptoms before the appearance of his daughter. For awhile he hung,
and then fell, like an icicle. Nesta came with a cry for her father. He
rose: Dartrey was by. Hugged fast in iron muscles, the unhappy creature
raved of his being a caged lion. These things Dudley had heard in the
house.
There are scenes of life proper to the grave-cloth.
Nataly’s dead body was her advocate with her family, with friends, with
the world. Victor had more need of a covering shroud to keep calamity
respected. Earth makes all sweet: and we, when the privilege is granted
us, do well to treat the terribly stricken as if they had entered to the
bosom of earth.
That night’s infinite sadness was concentrated upon Nesta. She had need
of her strength of mind and body.
The night went past as a year. The year followed it as a refreshing
night. Slowly lifting her from our abysses, it was a good angel to the
girl. Permission could not be given for her to see her father. She had a
home in the modest home of Louise de Seilles on the borders of Dauphins;
and with French hearts at their best in winningness around her, she
learned again, as an art, the natural act of breathing calmly; she had
by degrees a longing for the snow-heights. When her imagination could
perch on them with love and pride, she began to recover the throb for
a part in human action. It set her nature flowing to the mate she had
chosen, who was her counsellor, her supporter, and her sword. She had
awakened to new life, not to sink back upon a breast of love, though
thoughts of the lover were as blows upon strung musical chords of her
bosom. Her union with Dartrey was for the having an ally and the being
an ally, in resolute vision of strife ahead, through the veiled dreams
that bear the blush. This was behind a maidenly demureness. Are not
young women hypocrites? Who shall fathom their guile! A girl with a
pretty smile, a gentle manner, a liking for wild flowers up on the
rocks; and graceful with resemblances to the swelling proportions of
garden-fruits approved in young women by the connoisseur eye of man;
distinctly designed to embrace the state of marriage, that she might (a
girl of singularly lucid and receptive eyes) the better give battle to
men touching matters which they howl at an eccentric matron for naming.
So it was. And the yielding of her hand to Dartrey, would have appeared
at that period of her revival, as among the baser compliances of the
fleshly, if she had not seen in him, whom she owned for leader, her
fellow soldier, warrior friend, hero, of her own heart’s mould, but a
greater.
She was on Como, at the villa of the Signora Giulia Sanfredini, when
Dudley’s letter reached her, with the supplicating offer of the share of
his earldom. An English home meanwhile was proposed to her at the house
of his mother the Countess. He knew that he did not write to a brilliant
heiress. The generosity she had always felt that he possessed, he thus
proved in figures. They are convincing and not melting. But she was
moved to tears by his goodness in visiting her father, as well as by the
hopeful news he sent. He wrote delicately, withholding the title of her
father’s place of abode. There were expectations of her father’s perfect
recovery; the signs were auspicious; he appeared to be restored to
the ‘likeness to himself’ in the instances Dudley furnished:--his
appointment with him for the flute-duet next day; and particularly his
enthusiastic satisfaction with the largeness and easy excellent service
of the residence ‘in which he so happily found himself established.’ He
held it to be, ‘on the whole, superior to Lakelands.’ The smile and the
tear rolled together in Nesta reading these words. And her father spoke
repeatedly of longing to embrace his Fredi, of the joy her last letter
had given him, of his intention to send an immediate answer: and he
showed Dudley a pile of manuscript ready for the post. He talked of
public affairs, was humorous over any extravagance or eccentricity
in the views he took; notably when he alluded to his envy of little
Skepsey. He said he really did envy; and his daughter believed it and
saw fair prospects in it.
Her grateful reply to the young earl conveyed all that was perforce
ungentle, in the signature of the name of Nesta Victoria Fenellan:--a
name he was to hear cited among the cushioned conservatives, and plead
for as he best could under a pressure of disapprobation, and compelled
esteem, and regrets.
The day following the report of her father’s wish to see her, she and
her husband started for England. On that day, Victor breathed his last.
Dudley had seen the not hopeful but an ominous illumination of the
stricken man; for whom came the peace his Nataly had in earth. Often did
Nesta conjure up to vision the palpitating form of the beloved mother
with her hand at her mortal wound in secret through long years of the
wearing of the mask to keep her mate inspirited. Her gathered knowledge
of things and her ruthless penetrativeness made it sometimes hard for
her to be tolerant of a world, whose tolerance of the infinitely evil
stamped blotches on its face and shrieked in stains across the skin
beneath its gallant garb. That was only when she thought of it as the
world condemning her mother. She had a husband able and ready, in return
for corrections of his demon temper, to trim an ardent young woman’s
fanatical overflow of the sisterly sentiments; scholarly friends, too,
for such restrainings from excess as the mind obtains in a lamp
of History exhibiting man’s original sprouts to growth and fitful
continuation of them. Her first experience of the grief that is
in pleasure, for those who have passed a season, was when the old
Concert-set assembled round her. When she heard from the mouth of
a living woman, that she had saved her from going under the world’s
waggon-wheels, and taught her to know what is actually meant by the good
living of a shapely life, Nesta had the taste of a harvest happiness
richer than her recollection of the bride’s, though never was bride in
fuller flower to her lord than she who brought the dower of an equal
valiancy to Dartrey Fenellan. You are aware of the reasons, the many,
why a courageous young woman requires of high heaven, far more than the
commendably timid, a doughty husband. She had him; otherwise would that
puzzled old world, which beheld her step out of the ranks to challenge
it, and could not blast her personal reputation, have commissioned a paw
to maul her character, perhaps instructing the gossips to murmur of her
parentage. Nesta Victoria Fenellan had the husband who would have the
world respectful to any brave woman. This one was his wife.
Daniel Skepsey rejoices in service to his new master, owing to the
scientific opinion he can at any moment of the day apply for, as to the
military defences of the country; instead of our attempting to arrest
the enemy by vociferations of persistent prayer:--the sole point of
difference between him and his Matilda; and it might have been fatal but
that Nesta’s intervention was persuasive. The two members of the Army
first in the field to enrol and give rank according to the merits
of either, to both sexes, were made one. Colney Durance (practically
cynical when not fancifully, men said) stood by Skepsey at the altar.
His published exercises in Satire produce a flush of the article in the
Reviews of his books. Meat and wine in turn fence the Hymen beckoning
Priscilla and Mr. Pempton. The forms of Religion more than the Channel’s
division of races keep Louise de Seilles and Mr. Peridon asunder: and
in the uniting of them Colney is interested, because it would have so
pleased the woman of the loyal heart no longer beating. He let Victor’s
end be his expiation and did not phrase blame of him. He considered the
shallowness of the abstract Optimist exposed enough in Victor’s history.
He was reconciled to it when, looking on their child, he discerned, that
for a cancelling of the errors chargeable to them, the father and mother
had kept faith with Nature.
ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS
Admiration of an enemy or oppressor doing great deeds
All of us an ermined owl within us to sit in judgement
An incomprehensible world indeed at the bottom and at the top
Aristocratic assumption of licence
Arrest the enemy by vociferations of persistent prayer
Ask not why, where reason never was
Belief in the narrative by promoting nausea in the audience
But what is it we do (excepting cricket, of course)
Cannot be any goodness unless it is a practiced goodness
Claim for equality puts an end to the priceless privileges
Consent of circumstances
Consent to take life as it is
Continued trust in the man--is the alternative of despair
Country prizing ornaments higher than qualities
Cover of action as an escape from perplexity
Critical fashion of intimates who know as well as hear
Death is our common cloak; but Calamity individualizes
Despises hostile elements and goes unpunished
Dialogue between Nature and Circumstance
Dithyrambic inebriety of narration
Dudley was not gifted to read behind words and looks
Eminently servile is the tolerated lawbreaker
Exuberant anticipatory trustfulness
Fell to chatting upon the nothings agreeably and seriously
Feminine; coming when she willed and flying when wanted
Fire smoothes the creases
Frankness as an armour over wariness
Greater our successes, the greater the slaves we become
Half designingly permitted her trouble to be seen
Half a dozen dozen left
Happy the woman who has not more to speak
Hard to bear, at times unbearable
Haremed opinion of the unfitness of women
He sinks terribly when he sinks at all
He never acknowledged a trouble, he dispersed it
He never explained
He neared her, wooing her; and she assented
He prattled, in the happy ignorance of compulsion
Heathen vindictiveness declaring itself holy
Honest creatures who will not accept a lift from fiction
How little we mean to do harm when we do an injury
How Success derides Ambition!
If only been intellectually a little flexible in his morality
If we are robbed, we ask, How came we by the goods?
If we are really for Nature, we are not lawless
In the pay of our doctors
In bottle if not on draught (oratory)
Intrusion of hard material statements, facts
Judgeing of the destiny of man by the fate of individuals
Kelts, as they are called, can’t and won’t forgive injuries
Let but the throb be kept for others--That is the one secret
Love must needs be an egoism
Man with a material object in aim, is the man of his object
Memory inspired by the sensations
Nation’s half made-up of the idle and the servants of the idle
Naturally as deceived as he wished to be
Nature and Law never agreed
Nature could at a push be eloquent to defend the guilty
Nature’s logic, Nature’s voice, for self-defence
Next door to the Last Trump
No companionship save with the wound they nurse
Not to go hunting and fawning for alliances
Not always the right thing to do the right thing
Obeseness is the most sensitive of our ailments
Official wrath at sound of footfall or a fancied one
Once out of the rutted line, you are food for lion and jackal
One wants a little animation in a husband
Optional marriages, broken or renewed every seven years
People of a provocative prosperity
Pessimy is invulnerable
Portrait of himself by the artist
Put into her woman’s harness of the bit and the blinkers
Repeatedly, in contempt of the disgust of iteration
Satirist is an executioner by profession
Satirist too devotedly loves his lash to be a persuasive teacher
Self-deceiver may be a persuasive deceiver of another
Semblance of a tombstone lady beside her lord
Share of foulness to them that are for scouring the chamber
She was not his match--To speak would be to succumb
She disdained to question the mouth which had bitten her
Slap and pinch and starve our appetites
Slave of existing conventions
Smallest of our gratifications in life could give a happy tone
Smothered in its pudding-bed of the grotesque (obesity)
Snuffle of hypocrisy in her prayer
Startled by the criticism in laughter
State of feverish patriotism
Statistics are according to their conjurors
Subterranean recess for Nature against the Institutions of Man
Tale, which leaves the man’s mind at home
The banquet to be fervently remembered, should smoke
The homage we pay him flatters us
The effects of the infinitely little
The night went past as a year
The old confession, that we cannot cook (The English)
The worst of it is, that we remember
The face of a stopped watch
The impalpable which has prevailing weight
There is little to be learnt when a little is known
They helped her to feel at home with herself
They kissed coldly, pressed a hand, said good night
They do not live; they are engines
Thought of differences with him caused frightful apprehensions
To do nothing, is the wisdom of those who have seen fools perish
Universal censor’s angry spite
Unshamed exuberant male has found the sweet reverse in his mate
We have come to think we have a claim upon her gratitude
We must have some excuse, if we would keep to life
We cannot relinquish an idea that was ours
We’ve all a parlous lot too much pulpit in us
Whimpering fits you said we enjoy and must have in books
Who enjoyed simple things when commanding the luxuries
Who enjoyed simple things when commanding the luxuries
End of Project Gutenberg’s One of Our Conquerors, Complete, by George Meredith