CHAPTER I

An excursion beyond the immediate suburbs of London, projected long

before his pony-carriage was hired to conduct him, in fact ever since

his retirement from active service, led General Ople across a famous

common, with which he fell in love at once, to a lofty highway along

the borders of a park, for which he promptly exchanged his heart, and

so gradually within a stone’s-throw or so of the river-side, where he

determined not solely to bestow his affections but to settle for life.

It may be seen that he was of an adventurous temperament, though he had

thought fit to loosen his sword-belt. The pony-carriage, however, had

been hired for the very special purpose of helping him to pass in review

the lines of what he called country houses, cottages, or even sites for

building, not too remote from sweet London: and as when Coelebs goes

forth intending to pursue and obtain, there is no doubt of his bringing

home a wife, the circumstance that there stood a house to let, in an

airy situation, at a certain distance in hail of the metropolis he

worshipped, was enough to kindle the General’s enthusiasm. He would

have taken the first he saw, had it not been for his daughter, who

accompanied him, and at the age of eighteen was about to undertake

the management of his house. Fortune, under Elizabeth Ople’s guiding

restraint, directed him to an epitome of the comforts. The place he fell

upon is only to be described in the tongue of auctioneers, and for

the first week after taking it he modestly followed them by terming

it bijou. In time, when his own imagination, instigated by a state of

something more than mere contentment, had been at work on it, he chose

the happy phrase, ‘a gentlemanly residence.’ For it was, he declared,

a small estate. There was a lodge to it, resembling two sentry-boxes

forced into union, where in one half an old couple sat bent, in the

other half lay compressed; there was a backdrive to discoverable

stables; there was a bit of grass that would have appeared a meadow if

magnified; and there was a wall round the kitchen-garden and a strip

of wood round the flower-garden. The prying of the outside world was

impossible. Comfort, fortification; and gentlemanliness made the place,

as the General said, an ideal English home.

The compass of the estate was half an acre, and perhaps a perch or two,

just the size for the hugging love General Ople was happiest in giving.

He wisely decided to retain the old couple at the lodge, whose members

were used to restriction, and also not to purchase a cow, that would

have wanted pasture. With the old man, while the old woman attended to

the bell at the handsome front entrance with its gilt-spiked gates, he

undertook to do the gardening; a business he delighted in, so long as he

could perform it in a gentlemanly manner, that is to say, so long as he

was not overlooked. He was perfectly concealed from the road. Only one

house, and curiously indeed, only one window of the house, and further

to show the protection extended to Douro Lodge, that window an attic,

overlooked him. And the house was empty.

The house (for who can hope, and who should desire a commodious house,

with conservatories, aviaries, pond and boat-shed, and other joys of

wealth, to remain unoccupied) was taken two seasons later by a lady,

of whom Fame, rolling like a dust-cloud from the place she had left,

reported that she was eccentric. The word is uninstructive: it does not

frighten. In a lady of a certain age, it is rather a characteristic of

aristocracy in retirement. And at least it implies wealth.

General Ople was very anxious to see her. He had the sentiment of humble

respectfulness toward aristocracy, and there was that in riches which

aroused his admiration. London, for instance, he was not afraid to say

he thought the wonder of the world. He remarked, in addition, that the

sacking of London would suffice to make every common soldier of the

foreign army of occupation an independent gentleman for the term of his

natural days. But this is a nightmare! said he, startling himself with

an abhorrent dream of envy of those enriched invading officers: for

Booty is the one lovely thing which the military mind can contemplate

in the abstract. His habit was to go off in an explosion of heavy sighs

when he had delivered himself so far, like a man at war with himself.

The lady arrived in time: she received the cards of the neighbourhood,

and signalized her eccentricity by paying no attention to them,

excepting the card of a Mrs. Baerens, who had audience of her at once.

By express arrangement, the card of General Wilson Ople, as her nearest

neighbour, followed the card of the rector, the social head of the

district; and the rector was granted an interview, but Lady Camper was

not at home to General Ople. She is of superior station to me, and may

not wish to associate with me, the General modestly said. Nevertheless

he was wounded: for in spite of himself, and without the slightest wish

to obtrude his own person, as he explained the meaning that he had in

him, his rank in the British army forced him to be the representative

of it, in the absence of any one of a superior rank. So that he was

professionally hurt, and his heart being in his profession, it may be

honestly stated that he was wounded in his feelings, though he said no,

and insisted on the distinction. Once a day his walk for constitutional

exercise compelled him to pass before Lady Camper’s windows, which were

not bashfully withdrawn, as he said humorously of Douro Lodge, in the

seclusion of half-pay, but bowed out imperiously, militarily, like a

generalissimo on horseback, and had full command of the road and levels

up to the swelling park-foliage. He went by at a smart stride, with a

delicate depression of his upright bearing, as though hastening to greet

a friend in view, whose hand was getting ready for the shake. This much

would have been observed by a housemaid; and considering his fine figure

and the peculiar shining silveriness of his hair, the acceleration of

his gait was noticeable. When he drove by, the pony’s right ear was

flicked, to the extreme indignation of a mettlesome little animal. It

ensued in consequence that the General was borne flying under the eyes

of Lady Camper, and such pace displeasing him, he reduced it invariably

at a step or two beyond the corner of her grounds.

But neither he nor his daughter Elizabeth attached importance to so

trivial a circumstance. The General punctiliously avoided glancing at

the windows during the passage past them, whether in his wild career

or on foot. Elizabeth took a side-shot, as one looks at a wayside tree.

Their speech concerning Lady Camper was an exchange of commonplaces over

her loneliness: and this condition of hers was the more perplexing to

General Ople on his hearing from his daughter that the lady was very

fine-looking, and not so very old, as he had fancied eccentric ladies

must be. The rector’s account of her, too, excited the mind. She had

informed him bluntly, that she now and then went to church to save

appearances, but was not a church-goer, finding it impossible to support

the length of the service; might, however, be reckoned in subscriptions

for all the charities, and left her pew open to poor people, and none

but the poor. She had travelled over Europe, and knew the East. Sketches

in watercolours of the scenes she had visited adorned her walls, and

a pair of pistols, that she had found useful, she affirmed, lay on the

writing-desk in her drawing-room. General Ople gathered from the rector

that she had a great contempt for men: yet it was curiously varied with

lamentations over the weakness of women. ‘Really she cannot possibly be

an example of that,’ said the General, thinking of the pistols.

Now, we learn from those who have studied women on the chess-board, and

know what ebony or ivory will do along particular lines, or hopping,

that men much talked about will take possession of their thoughts; and

certainly the fact may be accepted for one of their moves. But the whole

fabric of our knowledge of them, which we are taught to build on this

originally acute perception, is shattered when we hear, that it is

exactly the same, in the same degree, in proportion to the amount of

work they have to do, exactly the same with men and their thoughts in

the case of women much talked about. So it was with General Ople, and

nothing is left for me to say except, that there is broader ground

than the chessboard. I am earnest in protesting the similarity of the

singular couples on common earth, because otherwise the General is in

peril of the accusation that he is a feminine character; and not simply

was he a gallant officer, and a veteran in gunpowder strife, he was

also (and it is an extraordinary thing that a genuine humility did not

prevent it, and did survive it) a lord and conqueror of the sex. He had

done his pretty bit of mischief, all in the way of honour, of course,

but hearts had knocked. And now, with his bright white hair, his

close-brushed white whiskers on a face burnt brown, his clear-cut

features, and a winning droop of his eyelids, there was powder in him

still, if not shot.

There was a lamentable susceptibility to ladies’ charms. On the other

hand, for the protection of the sex, a remainder of shyness kept

him from active enterprise and in the state of suffering, so long as

indications of encouragement were wanting. He had killed the soft ones,

who came to him, attracted by the softness in him, to be killed: but

clever women alarmed and paralyzed him. Their aptness to question and

require immediate sparkling answers; their demand for fresh wit, of a

kind that is not furnished by publications which strike it into heads

with a hammer, and supply it wholesale; their various reading; their

power of ridicule too; made them awful in his contemplation.

Supposing (for the inflammable officer was now thinking, and deeply

thinking, of a clever woman), supposing that Lady Camper’s pistols were

needed in her defence one night: at the first report proclaiming her

extremity, valour might gain an introduction to her upon easy terms,

and would not be expected to be witty. She would, perhaps, after the

excitement, admit his masculine superiority, in the beautiful old

fashion, by fainting in his arms. Such was the reverie he passingly

indulged, and only so could he venture to hope for an acquaintance with

the formidable lady who was his next neighbour. But the proud society of

the burglarious denied him opportunity.

Meanwhile, he learnt that Lady Camper had a nephew, and the young

gentleman was in a cavalry regiment. General Ople met him outside his

gates, received and returned a polite salute, liked his appearance and

manners and talked of him to Elizabeth, asking her if by chance she

had seen him. She replied that she believed she had, and praised his

horsemanship. The General discovered that he was an excellent sculler.

His daughter was rowing him up the river when the young gentleman

shot by, with a splendid stroke, in an outrigger, backed, and floating

alongside presumed to enter into conversation, during which he managed

to express regrets at his aunt’s turn for solitariness. As they belonged

to sister branches of the same Service, the General and Mr. Reginald

Roller had a theme in common, and a passion. Elizabeth told her father

that nothing afforded her so much pleasure as to hear him talk with Mr.

Roller on military matters. General Ople assured her that it pleased

him likewise. He began to spy about for Mr. Roller, and it sometimes

occurred that they conversed across the wall; it could hardly be

avoided. A hint or two, an undefinable flying allusion, gave the General

to understand that Lady Camper had not been happy in her marriage. He

was pained to think of her misfortune; but as she was not over forty,

the disaster was, perhaps, not irremediable; that is to say, if she

could be taught to extend her forgiveness to men, and abandon her

solitude. ‘If,’ he said to his daughter, ‘Lady Camper should by any

chance be induced to contract a second alliance, she would, one might

expect, be humanized, and we should have highly agreeable neighbours.’

Elizabeth artlessly hoped for such an event to take place.

She rarely differed with her father, up to whom, taking example from the

world around him, she looked as the pattern of a man of wise conduct.

And he was one; and though modest, he was in good humour with himself,

approved himself, and could say, that without boasting of success, he

was a satisfied man, until he met his touchstone in Lady Camper.