Lord Ormont and His Aminta Part 18

'You have ideas about the education of girls?'

'They can't be carried out unaided.'

'Aid will come.'

Weyburn's confidence, high though it was, had not mounted to that pitch.

'One may find a mate,' he said. The woman to share and practically to aid in developing such ideas is not easily found: that he left as implied.

Aminta was in need of poetry; but the young schoolmaster's plain, well-directed prose of the view of a business in life was welcome to her.

Lord Ormont entered the room. She reminded him of the boys of High Brent and the heroine Jane. He was ready to subscribe his five-and-twenty guineas, he said. The amount of the sum gratified Weyburn, she could see. She was proud of her lord, and of the boys and the little girl; and she would have been happy to make the ardent young schoolmaster aware of her growing interest in the young.

The night before the earl's departure on the solitary expedition to which she condemned him, he surprised her with a visit of farewell, so that he need not disturb her in the early morning, he said. She was reading beside her open jewel-box, and she closed it with the delicate touch of a hand turned backward while listening to him, with no sign of nervousness.

CHAPTER XIII. WAR AT OLMER

Lively doings were on the leap to animate Weyburn at Olmer during Easter week. The Rev. Mr. Hampton-Evey, rector of Barborough, on hearing that Lady Charlotte Eglett was engaged in knocking at the doors of litigation with certain acts that const.i.tuted distinct breaches of the law and the peace, and were a violation of the rights of her neighbour, Mr. Gilbert Addicote, might hope that the troublesome parishioner whom he did not often number among his congregation would grant him a term of repose.

Therein he was deceived. Alterations and enlargements of the church, much required, had necessitated the bricking up of a door regarded by the lady as the private entrance to the Olmer pew. She sent him notice of her intention to batter at the new brickwork; so there was the prospect of a pew-fight before him. But now she came to sit under him every Sunday; and he could have wished her absent; for she diverted his thoughts from piety to the selections of texts applicable in the case of a woman who sat with arms knotted, and the frown of an intemperate schoolgirl forbidden speech; while her pew's firelight startlingly at intervals danced her sinister person into view, as from below. The lady's inaccessible and unconquerable obtuseness to exhortation informed the picture with an evil spirit that cried for wrestlings.

Regularly every week-day she headed the war now rageing between Olmer and Addicotes, on the borders of the estates. It was open war, and herself to head the cavalry. Weyburn, driving up a lane in the gig she had sent to meet the coach, beheld a thicket of countrymen and boys along a ridge; and it swayed and broke, and through it burst the figure of a mounted warrior woman at the gallop, followed by what bore an appearance of horse and gun, minus carriage, drivers at the flanks cracking whips on foot. Off went the train, across a small gorse common, through a gate.

'That's another down,' said his whip. 'Sound good wood it is, not made to fall. Her ladyship's at it hard to-day. She 'll teach Mr. Addicote a thing or two about things females can do. That is, when they stand for their rights.'

He explained to Weyburn that Mr. Addicote, a yeoman farmer and a good hunting man, but a rare obstinate one, now learning his lesson from her ladyship, was in dispute with her over rights of property on a stretch of fir-trees lining the ridge where the estates of Olmer and Addicotes met. Her ladyship had sworn that if he did not yield to her claim she would cut down every tree of the ridge and sell the lot for timber under his nose. She acted according to her oath, in the teeth of his men two feet across the border. All the world knew the roots of those trees were for the most part in Olmer soil, though Addicote shared the shade. All the people about mourned for the felling of those trees. All blamed Mr.

Gilbert Addicote for provoking her ladyship, good hunting man though he was. But as to the merits of the question, under the magnifier of the gentlemen of the law, there were as many different opinions as wigs in the land.

'And your opinion?' said Weyburn.

To which the young groom answered: 'Oh, I don't form an opinion, sir. I 'm of my mistress's opinion; and if she says, Do it, think as we like, done it has to be.'

Lady Charlotte came at a trot through the gate, to supervise the limbering-up of another felled tree. She headed it as before. The log dragged bounding and twirling, rattling its chains; the crowd along the ridge, forbidden to cheer, watching it with intense repression of the roar. We have not often in England sight of a great lady challengeing an unpopular man to battle and smacking him in the face like this to provoke him. Weyburn was driven on a half-circle of the lane to the gate, where he jumped out to greet Lady Charlotte trotting back for another smack in the face of her enemy,--a third rounding of her Troy with the vanquished dead at her heels, as Weyburn let a flimsy suggestion beguile his fancy, until the Homeric was overwhelming even to a playful mind, and he put her in a mediaeval frame. She really had the heroical aspect in a grandiose-grotesque, fitted to some lines of Ariosto. Her head wore a close hood, disclosing a fringe of grey locks, owlish to see about features hooked for action.

'Ah, you! there you are: good--I'll join you in three minutes,' she sang out to him, and cantered to the ridge.

Hardly beyond the stated number she was beside him again, ranging her steed for the victim log to dance a gyration on its branches across the lane and enter a field among the fallen compeers. One of her men had run behind her. She slid from her saddle and tossed him the reins, catching up her skirts.

'That means war, as much as they'll have it in England,' she said, seeing his glance at the logs. 'My husband's wise enough to leave it to me, so I save him trouble with neighbours. An a.s.s of a Mr. Gilbert Addicote dares us to make good our claim on our property, our timber, because half a score of fir-tree roots go stretching on to his ground.'

She swished her whip. Mr. Gilbert Addicote received the stroke and retired, a buried subject. They walked on at an even pace. 'You 'll see Leo to-morrow. He worships you. You may as well give him a couple of hours' coaching a day for the week. He'll be hanging about you, and you won't escape him. Well, and my brother Rowsley: how is Lord Ormont? He never comes to me now, since--Well, it 's nothing to me; but I like to see my brother. She can't make any change here. Olmer and Lady Charlotte 's bosom were both implied. 'What do you think?--you 've noticed: is he in good health? It 's the last thing he 'll be got to speak of.'

Weyburn gave the proper a.s.surances.

'Not he!' said she. 'He's never ill. Men beat women in the long race, if they haven't overdone it when young. My doctor wants me to renounce the saddle. He says it 's time. Not if I 've got work for horseback!' she nicked her head emphatically: 'I hate old age. They sha'nt dismount me till a blow comes. Hate it! But I should despise myself if I showed signs, like a worm under heel. Let Nature do her worst; she can't conquer us as long as we keep up heart. You won't have to think of that for a good time yet. Now tell me why Lord Ormont didn't publish the "Plan for the Defence" you said he was writing; and he was, I know. He wrote it and he finished it; you made the fair copy. Well, and he read it,--there! see!' She took the invisible sheets in her hands and tore them. 'That's my brother. He's so proud. It would have looked like asking the country, that injured him, to forgive him. I wish it had been printed. But whatever he does I admire. That--she might have advised, if she 'd been a woman of public spirit or cared for his reputation. He never comes near me. Did she read your copy?'

The question was meant for an answer.

Weyburn replied: 'Lady Ormont had no sight of it.'

'Ah! she's Lady Ormont to the servants, I know. She has an aunt living in the house. If my brother's a sinner, and there's punishment for him, he has it from that aunt. Pag... something. He bears with her. He 's a Spartan. She 's his pack on his back, for what she covers and the game he plays. It looks just tolerably decent with her in the house. She goes gabbling a story about our Emba.s.sy at Madrid. To preserve propriety, as they call it. Her niece doesn't stoop to any of those tricks, I 'm told.

I like her for that.'

Weyburn was roused: 'I think you would like Lady Ormont, if you knew her, my lady.'

'The chances of my liking the young woman are not in the dice-box. You call her Lady Ormont: you are not one of the servants. Don't call her Lady Ormont to me.'

'It is her t.i.tle, Lady Charlotte.' She let fly a broadside at him.

'You are one of the woman's dupes. I thought you had brains. How can you be the donkey not to see that my brother Rowsley, Lord Ormont, would never let a woman, lawfully bearing his name, go running the quadrille over London in couples with a Lady Staines and a Mrs. Lawrence Finchley, Lord Adderwood, and that man Morsfield, who boasts of your Lady Ormont, and does it unwhipped--tell me why? Pooh, you must be the poorest fool born to suppose it possible my brother would allow a man like that man Morsfield to take his wife's name in his mouth a second time. Have you talked much with this young person?'

'With Lady Ormont? I have had the honour occasionally.'

'Stick to the t.i.tle and write yourself plush-breech. Can't you be more than a footman? Try to be a man of the world; you're old enough for that by now. I know she 's good-looking; the whole tale hangs on that. You needn't be singing me mooncalf hymn tunes of "Lady Ormont, Lady Ormont,"

solemn as a parson's clerk; the young woman brought good looks to market; and she got the exchange she had a right to expect. But it 's not my brother Rowsley's t.i.tle she has got--except for footmen and tradesmen. When there's a true Countess of Ormont!... Unless my brother has cut himself from his family. Not he. He's not mad.'

They pa.s.sed through Olmer park-gates. Lady Charlotte preceded him, and she turned, waiting for him to rejoin her. He had taken his flagellation in the right style, neither abashed nor at sham crow: he was easy, ready to converse on any topic; he kept the line between supple courtier and st.u.r.dy independent; and he was a pleasant figure of a young fellow.

Thinking which, a reminder that she liked him drew her by the road of personal feeling, as usual with her, to reflect upon another, and a younger, woman's observing and necessarily liking him too.

'You say you fancy I should like the person you call Lady Ormont?'

'I believe you would, my lady.'

'Are her manners agreeable?'

'Perfect; no pretension.'

'Ah! she sings, plays--all that?

'She plays the harp and sings.'

'You have heard her?'

'Twice.'

'She didn't set you mewing?'

'I don't remember the impulse; at all events, it was restrained.'

'She would me; but I'm an old woman. I detest their squalling and strumming. I can stand it with Italians on the boards: they don't, stop conversation. She was present at that fencing match where you plucked a laurel? I had an account of it. I can't see the use of fencing in this country. Younger women can, I dare say. Now, look. If we're to speak of her, I can't call her Lady Ormont, and I don't want to hear you. Give me her Christian name.'

'It is'--Weyburn found himself on a slope without a stay--'Aminta.'

Lady Charlotte's eye was on him. He felt intolerably hot; his vexation at the betrayal of the senseless feeling made it worse, a conscious crimson.

'Aminta,' said she, rather in the style of Cuper's boys, when the name was a strange one to them. 'I remember my Italian master reading out a poem when I was a girl. I read poetry then. You wouldn't have imagined that. I did, and liked it. I hate old age. It changes you so. None of my children know me as I was when I had life in me and was myself, and my brother Rowsley called me Cooey. They think me a hard old woman. I was Cooey through the woods and over the meadows and down stream to Rowsley.

Old age is a prison wall between us and young people. They see a miniature head and bust, and think it a flattery--won't believe it.