Complete Short Works of George Meredith Part 36

d.u.c.h.ess Susan replied, 'That's what I tell him; she will do anything you wish.'

He repeated these words with an interjection, and decided in his mind that they were merely silly. She was a real shepherdess by birth and nature, requiring a strong guard over her attractions on account of her simplicity; such was his reading of the problem; he had conceived it at the first sight of her, and always recurred to it under the influence of her artless eyes, though his theories upon men and women were astute, and that cavalier perceived by long-sighted Chloe at d.u.c.h.ess Susan's coach window perturbed him at whiles. Habitually to be antic.i.p.ating the simpleton in a particular person is the sure way of being sometimes the dupe, as he would not have been the last to warn a neophyte; but abstract wisdom is in need of an unappeased suspicion of much keenness of edge, if we would have it alive to cope with artless eyes and our prepossessed fancy of their artlessness.

'You talk of Chloe to him?' he said.

She answered. 'Yes, that I do. And he does love her! I like to hear him.

He is one of the gentlemen who don't make me feel timid with them.'

She received a short lecture on the virtues of timidity in preserving the s.e.x from danger; after which, considering that the lady who does not feel timid with a particular cavalier has had no sentiment awakened, he relinquished his place to Mr. Camwell, and proceeded to administer the probe to Caseldy.

That gentleman was communicatively candid. Chloe had left him, and he related how, summoned home to England and compelled to settle a dispute threatening a lawsuit, he had regretfully to abstain from visiting the Wells for a season, not because of any fear of the attractions of play--he had subdued the frailty of the desire to play--but because he deemed it due to his Chloe to bring her an untroubled face, and he wished first to be the better of the serious annoyances besetting him.

For some similar reason he had not written; he wished to feast on her surprise. 'And I had my reward,' he said, as if he had been the person princ.i.p.ally to suffer through that abstinence. 'I found--I may say it to you, Mr. Beamish love in her eyes. Divine by nature, she is one of the immortals, both in appearance and in steadfastness.'

They referred to d.u.c.h.ess Susan. Caseldy reluctantly owned that it would be an unkindness to remove Chloe from attendance on her during the short remaining term of her stay at the Wells; and so he had not proposed it, he said, for the d.u.c.h.ess was a child, an innocent, not stupid by any means; but, of course, her transplanting from an inferior to an exalted position put her under disadvantages.

Mr. Beamish spoke of the difficulties of his post as guardian, and also of the strange cavalier seen at her carriage window by Chloe.

Caseldy smiled and said, 'If there was one--and Chloe is rather long--sighted--we can hardly expect her to confess it.'

'Why not, sir, if she be this piece of innocence?' Mr. Beamish was led to inquire.

'She fears you, sir,' Caseldy answered. 'You have inspired her with an extraordinary fear of you.'

'I have?' said the beau: it had been his endeavour to inspire it, and he swelled somewhat, rather with relief at the thought of his possessing a power to control his delicate charge, than with our vanity; yet would it be audacious to say that there was not a dose of the latter. He was a very human man; and he had, as we have seen, his ideas of the effect of the impression of fear upon the hearts of women. Something, in any case, caused him to forget the cavalier.

They were drawn to the three preceding them, by a lively dissension between Chloe and Mr. Camwell.

d.u.c.h.ess Susan explained it in her blunt style: 'She wants him to go away home, and he says he will, if she'll give him that double skein of silk she swings about, and she says she won't, let him ask as long as he pleases; so he says he sha'n't go, and I'm sure I don't see why he should; and she says he may stay, but he sha'n't have her necklace, she calls it. So Mr. Camwell s.n.a.t.c.hes, and Chloe fires up. Gracious, can't she frown!--at him. She never frowns at anybody but him.'

Caseldy attempted persuasion on Mr. Camwell's behalf. With his mouth at Chloe's ear, he said, 'Give it; let the poor fellow have his memento; despatch him with it.'

'I can hear! and that is really kind,' exclaimed d.u.c.h.ess Susan.

'Rather a missy-missy schoolgirl sort of necklace,' Mr. Beamish observed; 'but he might have it, without the dismissal, for I cannot consent to lose Alonzo. No, madam,' he nodded at the d.u.c.h.ess.

Caseldy continued his whisper: 'You can't think of wearing a thing like that about your neck?'

'Indeed,' said Chloe, 'I think of it.'

'Why, what fashion have you over here?'

'It is not yet a fashion,' she said.

'A silken circlet will not well become any precious pendant that I know of.'

'A bag of dust is not a very precious pendant,' she said.

'Oh, a memento mori!' cried he.

And she answered, 'Yes.'

He rallied her for her superst.i.tion, pursuing, 'Surely, my love, 'tis a cheap riddance of a pestilent, intrusive jaloux. Whip it into his hands for a mittimus.'

'Does his presence distress you?' she asked.

'I will own that to be always having the fellow d.o.g.g.i.ng us, with his dejected leer, is not agreeable. He watches us now, because my lips are close by your cheek. He should be absent; he is one too many. Speed him on his voyage with the souvenir he asks for.'

'I keep it for a journey of my own, which I may have to take,' said Chloe.

'With me?'

'You will follow; you cannot help following me, Caseldy.'

He speculated on her front. She was tenderly smiling. 'You are happy, Chloe?'

'I have never known such happiness,' she said. The brilliancy of her eyes confirmed it.

He glanced over at d.u.c.h.ess Susan, who was like a sunflower in the sun.

His glance lingered a moment. Her abundant and glowing young charms were the richest fascination an eye like his could dwell on. 'That is right,'

said he. 'We will be perfectly happy till the month ends. And after it?

But get us rid of Monsieur le Jeune; toss him that trifle; I spare him that. 'Twill be bliss to him, at the cost of a bit of silk thread to us.

Besides, if we keep him to cure him of his pa.s.sion here, might it not be--these boys veer suddenly, like the winds of Albion, from one fair object to t' other--at the cost of the precious and simple lady you are guarding? I merely hint. These two affect one another, as though it could be. She speaks of him. It shall be as you please, but a trifle like that, my Chloe, to be rid of a green eye!'

'You much wish him gone?' she said.

He shrugged. 'The fellow is in our way.'

'You think him a little perilous for my innocent lady?'

'Candidly, I do.'

She stretched the half-plaited silken rope in her two hands to try the strength of it, made a second knot, and consigned it to her pocket.

At once she wore her liveliest playfellow air, in which character no one was so enchanting as Chloe could be, for she became the comrade of men without forfeit of her station among sage sweet ladies, and was like a well-mannered sparkling boy, to whom his admiring seniors have given the lead in sallies, whims, and fights; but pleasanter than a boy, the soft hues of her s.e.x toned her frolic spirit; she seemed her s.e.x's deputy, to tell the coa.r.s.er where they could meet, as on a bridge above the torrent separating them, gaily for interchange of the best of either, unfired and untempted by fire, yet with all the elements which make fire burn to animate their hearts.

'Lucky the man who wins for himself that life-long cordial!' Mr. Beamish said to d.u.c.h.ess Susan.

She had small comprehension of metaphorical phrases, but she was quick at reading faces; and comparing the enthusiasm on the face of the beau with Caseldy's look of troubled wonderment and regret, she pitied the lover conscious of not having the larger share of his mistress's affections. When presently he looked at her, the tender-hearted woman could have cried for very compa.s.sion, so sensible did he show himself of Chloe's preference of the other.

CHAPTER VI

That evening d.u.c.h.ess Susan played at the Pharaoh table and lost eight hundred pounds, through desperation at the loss of twenty. After encouraging her to proceed to this extremity, Caseldy checked her. He was conducting her out of the Play room when a couple of young squires of the Shepster order, and primed with wine, intercepted her to present their condolences, which they performed with exaggerated gestures, intended for broad mimicry of the courtliness imported from the Continent, and a very dulcet harping on the popular variations of her Christian name, not forgetting her singular t.i.tle, 'my lovely, lovely Dewlap!'

She was excited and stunned by her immediate experience in the transfer of money, and she said, 'I 'm sure I don't know what you want.'