One of Our Conquerors Part 56

CHAPTER x.x.xIX. A CHAPTER IN THE SHADOW OF MRS. Ma.r.s.eTT

He read her more closely when Arlington brought in the brown paper envelope of the wires--to which the mate of Victor ought to have become accustomed. She took it; her eyelids closed, and her features were driven to whiteness. 'Only these telegrams,' she said, in apology.

'Lakelands on fire?' Dartrey murmured to Nesta; and she answered: 'I should not be sorry.'

Nataly coldly asked her why she would not be sorry.

Dartrey interposed: 'I'm sure she thinks Lakelands worries her mother.'

'That ranks low among the worries,' Nataly sighed, opening the envelope.

Nesta touched her arm: 'Mother! even before Captain Dartrey, if you will let me!'--she turned to him: 'before...' at the end of her breath she said: 'Dartrey Fenellan. You shall see my whole heart, mother.'

Her mother looked from her at him.

'Victor returns by the last train. He telegraphs, that he dines with--'

She handed the paper to Dartrey.

'Ma.r.s.ett,' he read aloud; and she flushed; she was angry with him for not knowing, that the name was a term of opprobrium flung at her.

'It's to tell you he has done what he thought good,' said Dartrey. 'In other words, as I interpret, he has completed his daughter's work. So we won't talk about it till he comes. You have no company this evening?'

'Oh! there is a pause to-night! It's nearly as unceasing as your brother Simeon's old French lady in the ronde with her young bridegroom, till they danced her to pieces. I do get now and then an hour's repose,'

Nataly added, with a vision springing up of the person to whom the story had applied.

'My dear, you are a good girl to call me Dartrey,' the owner of the name said to Nesta.

Nataly saw them both alert, in the terrible manner peculiar to both, for the directest of the bare statements. She could have protested, that her love of truth was on an equality with theirs; and certainly, that her regard for decency was livelier. Pa.s.s the deficiency in a man. But a girl who could speak, by allusion, of Mrs. Ma.r.s.ett--of the existence of a Mrs. Ma.r.s.ett--in the presence of a man: and he excusing, encouraging: and this girl her own girl;--it seemed to her, that the world reeled; she could hardly acknowledge the girl; save under the penitential admission of her sin's having found her out.

She sent Nesta to her room when they went upstairs to dress, unable to endure her presence after seeing her show a placid satisfaction at Dartrey's nod to the request for him to sleep in the house that night.

It was not at all a gleam of pleasure, hardly an expression; it was a manner of saying, One drop more in my cup of good fortune! an absurd and an offensive exhibition of silly optimism of the young, blind that they are!

For were it known, and surely the happening of it would be known, that Dudley Sowerby had shaken off the Nesta of no name, who was the abominable Mrs. Ma.r.s.ett's friend, a whirlwind with a trumpet would sweep them into the wilderness on a blast frightfuller than any ever heard.

Nataly had a fit of weeping for want of the girl's embrace, against whom her door was jealously locked. She hoped those two would talk much, madly if they liked, during dinner, that she might not be sensible, through any short silence, of the ardour animating them: especially glowing in Nesta, ready behind her quiet mask to come brazenly forth.

But both of them were mercilessly ardent; and a sickness of the fear, that they might fall on her to capture her and hurry her along with them perforce of the allayed, once fatal, inflammable element in herself, shook the warmth from her limbs: causing her to say to herself aloud in a ragged hoa.r.s.eness, very strangely: Every thought of mine now has a physical effect on me!

They had not been two minutes together when she descended to them. Yet she saw the girl's heart br.i.m.m.i.n.g, either with some word spoken to her or for joy of an unmaidenly confession. During dinner they talked, without distressful pauses. Whatever said, whatever done, was manifestly another drop in Nesta's foolish happy cup. Could it be all because Dartrey Fenellan countenanced her acquaintance with that woman? The mother had lost hold of her. The tortured mother had lost hold of herself.

Dartrey in the course of the evening, begged to hear the contralto; and Nataly, refusing, was astounded by the admission in her blank mind of the truth of man's list of charges against her s.e.x, starting from their capriciousness for she could have sung in a crowded room, and she had now a desire for company, for stolid company or giddy, an ocean of it.

This led to her thinking, that the world of serious money-getters, and feasts, and the dance, the luxurious displays, and the reverential Sunday service, will always ultimately prove itself right in opposition to critics and rebels, and to any one vainly trying to stand alone: and the thought annihilated her; for she was past the age of the beginning again, and no footing was left for an outsider not self-justified in being where she stood. She heard Dartrey's praise of Nesta's voice for tearing her mother's bosom with notes of intolerable sweetness; and it was haphazard irony, no doubt; we do not the less bleed for the accident of a shot.

At last, after midnight Victor arrived.

Nesta most impudently expected to be allowed to remain. 'Pray, go, dear,' her mother said. Victor kissed his Fredi. 'Some time to-morrow,'

said he; and she forbore to beseech him.

He stared, though mildly, at sight of her taking Dartrey's hand for the good-night and deliberately putting her lips to it.

Was she a girl whose notion of rectifying one wrong thing done, was to do another? Nataly could merely observe. A voice pertaining to no one present, said in her ear:--Mothers have publicly slapped their daughter's faces for less than that!--It was the voice of her incapacity to cope with the girl. She watched Nesta's pa.s.sage from the room, somewhat affected by the simple bearing for which she was reproaching her.

'And our poor darling has not seen a mountain this year!' Victor exclaimed, to have mentionable grounds for pitying his girl. 'I promised Fredi she should never count a year without Highlands or Alps. You remember, mama?--down in the West Highlands. Fancy the dear bit of bundle, Dartrey!--we had laid her in her bed; she was about seven or eight; and there she lay wide awake. "What 's Fredi thinking of?"--"I'm thinking of the tops of the mountains at night, dada."--She could climb them now; she has the legs.'

Nataly said: 'You have some report to make. You dined with those people?'

'The Ma.r.s.etts: yes:--well-suited couple enough. It's to happen before Winter ends--at once; before Christmas; positively before next Spring.

Fredi's doing! He has to manage, arrange.--She's a good-looking woman, good height, well-rounded; well-behaved, too: she won't make a bad Lady Ma.r.s.ett. Every time that woman spoke of our girl, the tears jumped to her eyelids.'

'Come to me before you go to bed,' Nataly said, rising, her voice foundering; 'Good-night, Dartrey.'

She turned to the door; she could not trust herself to shake hands with composure. Not only was it a nauseous mixture she was forced to gulp from Victor, it burned like a poison.

'Really Fredi's doing--chiefly,' said Victor, as soon as Dartrey and he were alone, comfortably settled in the smoking-room. 'I played the man of pomp with Ma.r.s.ett--good heavy kind of creature: attached to the woman. She's the better horse, as far as brains go. Good enough Lady Ma.r.s.ett. I harped on Major Worrell: my daughter insulted. He knew of it--spoke of you properly. The man offered all apologies; he has told the Major he is no gentleman, not a fit a.s.sociate for gentlemen:--quite so--and has cut him dead. Will marry her, as I said, make her as worthy as he can of the honour of my daughter's acquaintance. Rather comical grimace, when he vowed he'd fasten the tie. He doesn't like marriage.

But, he can't give her up. And she's for patronizing the inst.i.tution.

But she is ready to say good-bye to him "rather than see the truest lady in the world insulted"--her words. And so he swallows his dose for health, and looks a trifle sourish. Antecedents, I suppose: has to stomach them. But if a man's fond of a woman--if he knows he saves her from slipping lower--and it's an awful world, for us to let a woman be under its wheels:--I say, a woman who has a man to lean on, unless she's as downright corrupt as two or three of the men we've known:--upon my word, Dartrey, I come round to some of your ideas on these matters. It's this girl of mine, this wee bit of girl in her little nightshirt with the frill, astonishes me most:--"thinking of the tops of the mountains at night!" She has positively done the whole of this work-main part. I smiled when I left the house, to have to own our little Fredi starting us all on the road. It seems, Ma.r.s.ett had sworn he would; amorous vow, you know; he never came nearer to doing it. I hope it's his better mind now; I do hope the man won't have cause to regret it. He speaks of Nesta--sort of rustic tone of awe. Mrs. Ma.r.s.ett has impressed him. He expects the t.i.tle soon, will leave the army--the poor plucked British army, as you call it!--and lead the life of a country squire: hunting!

Well, it's not only the army, it's over Great Britain, with this infernal wealth of ours!--and all for pleasure--eh?--or Paradise lost for a sugar plum! Eh, Dartrey? Upon my word, it appears to me, Esau's the Englishman, Jacob the German, of these times. I wonder old Colney hasn't said it. If we're not plucked, as your regiments are of the officers who have learnt their work, we're emasculated:--the nation's half made-up of the idle and the servants of the idle.'

'Ay, and your country squires and your manufacturers contrive to give the army a body of consumptive louts fit for nothing else than to take the shilling--and not worth it,' said Dartrey.

'Sounds like old Colney,' Victor remarked to himself. 'But, believe me, I'm ashamed of the number of servants who wait on me. It wouldn't so much matter, as Skepsey says, if they were trained to arms and self-respect. That little fellow Skepsey's closer to the right notion, and the right practice, too, than any of us. With his Matilda Pridden!

He has jumped out of himself to the proper idea of women, too. And there's a man who has been up three times before the magistrates, and is considered a disorderly subject--one among the best of English citizens, I declare! I never think of Skepsey without the most extraordinary, witless kind of envy--as if he were putting in action an idea I once had and never quite got hold of again. The match for him is Fredi. She threatens to be just as devoted, just as simple, as he. I positively doubt whether any of us could stop her, if she had set herself to do a thing she thought right.'

'I should not like to think our trying it possible,' said Dartrey.

'All very well, but it's a rock ahead. We shall have to alter our course, my friend. You know, I dined with that couple, after the private twenty minutes with Ma.r.s.ett: he formally propounded the invitation, as we were close on his hour, rather late: and I wanted to make the woman happy, besides putting a seal of cordiality on his good intentions--politic! And subsequently I heard from her, that--you'll think nothing of it!--Fredi promised to stand by her at the altar.'

Dartrey said, shrugging: 'She needn't do that.'

'So we may say. You're dealing with Nesta Victoria. Spare me a contest with that girl, I undertake to manage any man or woman living.'

'When the thing to be done is thought right by her.'

'But can we always trust her judgement, my dear Dartrey?'

'In this case, she would argue, that her resolution to keep her promise would bind or help to bind Ma.r.s.ett to fulfil his engagement.'

'Odd, her mother has turned dead round in favour of that fellow Dudley Sowerby! I don't complain; it suits; but one thinks--eh?--women!'

'Well, yes, one thinks or should think, that if you insist on having women rooted to the bed of the river, they'll veer with the tides, like water-weeds, and no wonder.'

'Your heterodoxy on that subject is a mania, Dartrey. We can't have women independent.'

'Then don't be exclaiming about their vagaries.'

Victor mused: 'It's wonderful: that little girl of mine!--good height now: but what a head she has! Oh, she'll listen to reason: only mark what I say:--with that quiet air of hers, the husband, if a young fellow, will imagine she's the most docile of wives in the world. And as to wife, I'm not of the contrary opinion. But qua individual female, supposing her to have laid fast hold of an idea of duty, it's he who'll have to turn the corner second, if they're to trot in the yoke together.

Or it may be an idea of service to a friend--or to her s.e.x! That Mrs.

Ma.r.s.ett says she feels for--"bleeds" for her s.e.x. The poor woman didn't show to advantage with me, because she was in a fever to please:--talks in jerks, hot phrases. She holds herself well. At the end of the dinner she behaved better. Odd, you can teach women with hints and a lead. But Ma.r.s.ett 's Ma.r.s.ett to the end. Rather touching!--the poor fellow said: Deuce of a bad look-out for me if Judith doesn't have a child!

First-rate sportsman, I hear. He should have thought of his family earlier. You know, Dartrey, the case is to be argued for the family as well. You won't listen. And for Society too! Off you go.'